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« Previous Entries Sunday, June 29th, 2008Review: Bear by Marian Engel
Ummm…..no. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t think I can recommend this title. That this book won the Governor General’s Award flabbergasts me. A librarian and a bear get kinky on a small Canadian island. That’s all you really need to know to realize why I didn’t like this book.
1976 Governor General’s Award
1976, 141 pp.
Rating: 
Popularity: 22% [?]
Monday, May 26th, 2008Review: Blessings
Blessings is the family home of Lydia Blessing, an 80-year-old woman with strong opinions about the right way to say and do things. Her new caretaker of Blessings, Skip, doesn’t seem to be making the grade in Lydia’s eyes. He’s keeping strange hours and doing his work at odd times. The reason? He’s taking care of a baby. Not his baby, but a little girl that a young couple abandoned at Blessings. Skip doesn’t have the first clue how to take care of an infant, but he manages after awhile and even keeps her a secret from everyone for a time. Then, Lydia finds out. Although shocked at first, Mrs. Blessing’s heart is warmed by the child as well. Will Skip get to keep Faith, the little girl that has won over everyone at Blessings, including Mrs. Blessing, or will the little girl’s mother return to claim her?
Blessings by Anna Quindlen is not just about Skip and Faith, but also about family secrets and relationships. There is an entire back story of Lydia Blessing that adds a lot to the novel as well. I listened to the audio CD narrated by Joan Allen, and she did an outstanding job.
2002, 226 pp.
Rating: 
Popularity: 53% [?]
Friday, April 25th, 2008Review: Beloved
I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.
Very uncomfortable reading for me. Disturbing and (literally) haunting. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and written by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, Beloved tells the story of a family’s life before and after their escape from slavery. Sethe and her daughter Denver live in isolation at 124 in the countryside near Cincinnati. Also ‘present’ in the house is the ghost of Sethe’s other daughter, nicknamed Beloved, who died when she was two. Sethe fled to Ohio from Kentucky many years before after escaping from her owners at ‘Sweet Home.’ Also at Sweet Home was Paul D., who has now come to Ohio to look for Sethe. Soon after Paul D.’s arrival at 124, he drives the baby ghost out; however it’s not long before a strange young woman is found near the house and who calls herself Beloved.
I had a very difficult time following the story at first, and I’d probably understand it much better if I re-read it at some point. The storyline unravels as it goes along, and we see bit by bit the horrors that Sethe escaped from. Her actions are also called into question. Her mental state is dubious. But whose wouldn’t be after undergoing the ordeals she has gone through?
Other people went crazy, why couldn’t she?
I didn’t enjoy this book, but I don’t think readers are supposed to. The subject matter is difficult, and I don’t like hearing the horror stories of Beloved or Maus. At the same time, I realize they are necessary and I’ll continue to force myself to read them.
1987, 275 pp.
Rating: 4/5
Popularity: 43% [?]
Friday, April 4th, 2008Review: Belong to Me
This second book by Marisa de los Santos is about friendship and family, and we see the highs and lows of both in the characters’ lives in this novel.
Cornelia and her doctor husband Teo move in to the ‘perfect’ neighborhood, but the women who live there are very slow to accept former city-dweller Cornelia. In fact, she sticks out like a sore thumb at her first dinner party, wearing a little black dress while the others are wearing pastels and linen slacks. It seems that the circle of friends not only dress alike, but also have an unwritten code for conduct and proper behavior as well. The ‘queen bee’ of the neighborhood, Piper, seems bent on criticizing Cornelia about everything from clothing to lawn care. While we see Piper at first as overly critical and a perfectionist, we later see her as a loving, compassionate woman as she cares for a sick friend. The development of her character as the book progesses was one of the most interesting to watch.
Cornelia does make friends with Lake, a woman who does not live in the neighborhood. Relieved to finally have someone to talk to, Cornelia spends more and more time with Lake and her gifted 13 year-old son, Dev. Dev was an interesting character to read about as well. He starts spending quite a bit of time with Cornelia and Teo at their house and through them meets his first girlfriend, Clare.
The chapters were structured such that each one was from only one character’s perspective and alternated mostly among Cornelia, Piper, and Dev. I thought this worked very well. By the end of the book, I felt that I knew and liked all the main characters in the story. Belong to Me is the second book by Marisa de los Santos, and apparently some of the characters in this novel were also in her first book, Love Walked In. I haven’t read that one, but definitely plan to after really enjoying Belong to Me. This book does stand alone, though, as I didn’t even know it was a continuation of sorts until after I had finished it.
Released 4/1/2008 by William Morrow.
2008, 388 pp.
Rating: 4/5
Popularity: 30% [?]
Saturday, February 9th, 2008The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a quick read, but by no means is it easy or light. With subjects of poverty, inc*st, and racial self-loathing (Morrison’s own description), it is difficult at times to read.
It starts off with a sappy reading of Dick and Jane, and continues on with why not all homes are the same as Dick and Jane’s. Morrison draws each character so well, and 11 year-old Pecola, especially, is a girl I won’t soon forget. My edition had an afterward by the author which gave even more insight into what she was trying to accomplish with this book.
Although The Bluest Eye was very depressing, I can see why Morrison has many fans. I hope to get to Beloved later this year.
1970, 206 pp.
Rating:
Popularity: 25% [?]
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008The Bell Jar
This autobiographical novel by Sylvia Plath certainly gives insight about her mental illness. It’s a fascinating peek into the author’s troubled mind.
Esther Greenwood (a thinly veiled Sylvia) is bright and appears to have it all, but why and where did her life go wrong? It seemingly begins when she is rejected for a writing class at the same time she is having relationship problems. Her downward spiral is swift. Esther demands much of herself and of others, and when perfection is not attainable, she cannot accept it. Although she is then admitted to a mental hospital, the book (unlike the author’s real life) eventually has a hopeful ending.
This book was a quick read, and I know I will be reading it again at some point as it is very compelling. I’ve twice seen the movie Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow, and I definitely believe it added to my appreciation of the book.
A quote from the book:
The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.
I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was EeGee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
1963, 244 pp
Rating:
Popularity: 17% [?]
Thursday, December 6th, 2007The Bridge of San Luis Rey
This Pulitzer-winning book was the first of three Pulitzers for Thornton Wilder, who also won for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. It has an interesting premise. One that people could relate to today (in light of the Omaha Mall killings) and in recent years (9/11). When a bridge collapses near Lima, Peru, the question is asked, “Why did those five particular individuals die, and the rest did not?” A monk who witnesses the event seeks to delve into the lives of the five who were killed and into the lives of the survivors to see if he can find any answers. The book then flashes back to the histories of those dead, and we get a glimpse of their goodness and piety (or lack thereof) and their usefulness to society. This ‘formula’ is used by the monk to try to determine an explanation to this question.
I have read Our Town and have also seen it performed, but I was not prepared for Wilder’s gorgeous writing. I will definitely be seeking out more of his books and plays. Two that look promising are Theophilus North and the one-act play “The Long Christmas Dinner.”
I’ll leave you with a sample of his prose:
All night they talked, secretly comforting their hearts that longed always for Spain and telling themselves that such a symposium was after the manner of the high Spanish soul. They talked about ghosts and second-sight, and about the earth before man appeared upon it and about the possibility of the planets striking against one another; about whether the soul can be seen, like a dove, fluttering away at the moment of death; they wondered whether at the second coming of Christ to Jerusalem, Peru would be long in receiving the news. They talked until the sun rose, about wars and kings, about poets and scholars, and about strange countries. Each one poured into the conversation his store of wise sad anecdotes and his dry regret about the race of men.
This was a quick read, and one that probably deserves to be re-read in the future.
1927, 129 pp.
Rating: 4.5
Popularity: 21% [?]
Monday, November 12th, 2007A Nobel Short Story Monday
Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather is a short story collection by Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian. It’s a short book, only 125 pages, and I read it to fulfill my books in translation requirement in the Reading across Borders Challenge, my “X” author [yes, I know the Chinese last name, first name deal, but it is filed under ‘X’ in bookstores], and as a book that meets the requirement for the Book Awards Challenge.
There are only 6 stories in this collection, and they were picked by Gao himself to represent his writing in an English translation. In the translator’s notes, she indicated that Gao “warns readers that his fiction does not set out to tell a story. There is no plot, as found in most fiction, and anything of interest to be found in it is inherent in the language itself.”
Of the six stories, I found the last two, “Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather” and “In an Instant” to be the most interesting. The first involves memories of childhood and the feeling that you ‘can’t go home again’. Here is a quote from that story:
Even so, I want to buy him a fishing rod. It’s hard to explain, and I’m not going to try. It’s simply something that I want to do. For me the fishing rod is my grandfather and my grandfather is the fishing rod.
The last story, “In an Instant,” sort of feels like a psychedelic trip. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on in the story, but it sure was interesting. Here is one of those ‘interesting’ paragraphs:
He is sitting at the computer with a cigarette in his mouth. A long sentence appears on the screen. “What” is not to understand “what” is to understand or not is not to understand that even when “what” is understood, it is not understood, for “what” is to understand and “what” is not to understand, “what” is “what” and “is not” is “is not,” and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why “what” needs to be understood or whether “what” can be understood, and also it is not understood whether “what” is really not understood or that it simply hasn’t been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood but that there is a pretense not to understand or a refusal to try to understand or is pretending to want to understand yet deliberately not understanding or actually trying unsuccessfully to understand, then so what if it’s not understood and if it’s not understood, then why go to all this trouble of wanting to understand it–
Hmm, you tell me!
2004, 125 pp.
Rating: 4
Popularity: 19% [?]
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007The Bookseller of Kabul
The Bookseller of Kabul, although it is non-fiction, definitely reads like a novel. Asne Seierstad changed the names of the characters in the book, but even with that, it was obvious to Afghanis who the bookseller was. When the book was translated into English, the real bookseller was outraged. He has even tried suing Seierstad and her publisher, and he has also written and published his own version of events. None of which had much impact in her home country of Norway.
Life for many Muslim women is difficult, and that is clearly portrayed in this book. However, before I give a plot synopsis I would like to caution potential readers of the book to not think that ALL Muslim women are in this predicament. I stayed in a Muslim country in the Middle East for three months and have talked with local women and girls myself to hear their views. I have seen Muslim couples and how they interact. It’s not all bad. All families are different in how they interact with each other, whether they be Afghani, American, Chinese, or Russian. I’m sure there are some families even in non-Muslim America who treat women in a similar way that these women are treated. That said, this book will do a good job opening your eyes to the plight of (some-not all) women in non-Western areas of the world.
Sultan is the bookseller whose word is law. He is the leader of the family and even his brothers must obey him, let alone his mother, wives, and children. He rules his family with an iron fist, all the while telling himself he is a progressive, modern-minded man. He replaces (technically, adds to) his 50-something wife with a young teenager. His son Mansur resents and fears him, all the while treating his mother and aunt deplorably. This aunt, Leila, Sultan’s sister, is basically a slave to the entire family and is treated like one. I felt particularly sad for her story.
Rape, forced “prostitution” of widows, and brothers’ suffocation of their sister are only a few of the awful events in this book. In reading of these, I did question how the author would know about some of them. I was also worried about the safety of some of the family members after the book’s publication. In the end, it does reveal that part of Sultan’s family left to live with another male family member. I was very relieved to know that. I’ve thought of these characters often because they’re not just characters. They are real people.
2002, 288 pp.
Rating: 4
Popularity: 24% [?]
Monday, September 17th, 2007Blue Like Jazz
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligous Thoughts on Christian Sprituality makes some very valid criticisms about the Christian community. First, that sometimes Christians are obsessed with outward appearance rather than the condition of a person’s heart. I fully agree with this. I don’t think God cares one hoot what we look like–whether it’s tattoos, piercings, the color of our hair, whatever. He is concerned with where our heart is toward him. That’s all.
Secondly, that Christians don’t love “sinners” because all they see is the sin and not the person. I wholeheartedly agree with this as well. Some may be more apt to “look down their noses” at a “sinner” rather than just reach out in love. This is obviously not what God wants Christians to do.
Thirdly, that many Christians support right wing causes to the absolute exclusion of any left of center concerns. Guilty again. We do need to give to the poor and take care of the needy, particularly widows and orphans. Jesus taught that as well.
I do have some concerns with some of his philosophy, however. He seems to advocate a grace and “acceptance” that go a little too far. I’m not talking here about non-Christians at all. I’m talking about people who claim to be followers of Christ. He lifts up Christians who appear to be following God in one or more areas, but yet are still engaging in practices not pleasing to God. He implies we shouldn’t judge and just accept. Of course God is the ultimate judge of all of us. Yet, the Bible clearly states that we ARE to point out to Christians (NOT non-Christians) areas that are not God-pleasing. Donald Miller himself has actually done that very well in his book!
My point is this. Once we are a follower of Christ, God loves us unconditionally and forgives us everything we do. That I believe. His grace does go far–really far! But, just as he forgave David for being a murderer and an adulterer, he also pointed out that there would be consequences to David’s acts. These consequences were the natural result of David’s sin. Yes, we are forgiven, but we still have to face the consequences. So why not try to obey God so as to receive our reward in heaven? I’d rather not just barely “escape through the flames” and be a toilet-scrubber in heaven. Of course, that’s just a figure of speech. What? You say you’ve tried and just can’t live up to what God wants? NONE of us can. Not without his help. That’s the whole point of Christianity. We couldn’t do it ourselves, so God took care of it for us. If you have the desire to please God, all you have to do is ask for his help to do it.
In conclusion, I think the Church would do well to examine some of Donald Miller’s points. But we can’t say that it doesn’t matter what we do because God loves us unconditionally and his grace covers all–EVEN THOUGH THAT’S TRUE!!! Because honestly, I wouldn’t want to live with the consequences of my actions if I just did what I wanted all the time. And even aside from the consequences, Christians should love God and WANT to please him.
2003, 240 pp.
Rating: 3.5
Popularity: 16% [?]
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