Author: gr4c5

I write. I read. I cook. I run. That's me, in a nutshell.

Sarah Canary

gr4c5Leave a comment

Fowler, Karen Joy. Sarah Canary. New York: Plume Book, 2004.

In a word – fascinating. On the first day reading this book I got 50 pages in before I realized I had only wanted to read the first chapter. I wanted to get my toes wet – not jump all the way in. From the moment Sarah Canary begins there is nonstop action in the most surreal way. The entire book is written like a mystery. For starters, there are the poems of Emily Dickinson at the beginning of each chapter. They are not there for show. Each poem serves as a clue to the storyline. Then, there is the structure of the story itself. Fowler writes in such a lyrical manner that it was easy to want to quote the entire book: “Chin was a small ant, picking his way over the melodic body of the world” (p 12), for example. Another aspect of Sarah Canary I enjoyed is the idea that every main character is an outcast of sorts. It is interesting to try to discover the peculiarity of each character. It becomes easy to do because character development throughout the story is strong. Sarah Canary is not without humor, as well: “Dr. Carr would have liked to see the insane on horseback, too…but he tried to deal in realities” (p 38).
It all begins when a strange woman wanders into Chin Ah Kin’s railroad camp. She is dirty and wild-looking and speaking in a series of chirps, clicks, grunts and sighs. As a white woman she is an unwelcome sight in a Chinese labor camp. Chin unwillingly becomes responsible for taking her back, but back to where is unknown. Along the way Chin and the wild woman (nicknamed Sarah Canary because of her sing-song noises) encounter different people who, in their own inexplicable way, are drawn to Sarah and develop an overwhelming desire to become attached to her for one reason or another.

Some of the many, many quotes I enjoyed: “His heart refused to  return to his chest” (p 15), “If you let go for an instant, your soul would fly to it. If you could walk inside that combination of light and ice, its beauty would blind you” (p 32), and “Chin was stabbed with the sharp edges of homesickness” (p 245).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Real Characters” (p 197). Pearl called this a book people either loved or hated…sorta like cilantro.

ps ~ I enjoyed Sarah Canary so much that I added Karen Joy Fowler as a favorite author on LibraryThing.

Day of the Assassins

gr4c5Leave a comment

O’Brien, Johnny. Day of the Assassins.Somerville: Templar, 2009.

Any action/adventure series geared toward teenage boys needs to be fast paced. It requires suspense, daring escapades, narrow escapes, and of course, a little violence. Day of the Assassins has all of that while cleverly inserting a history lesson along the way. In order for character development and foreshadowing, Day of the Assassins starts off slow. Jack Christie is a typical video-playing teenage boy who comes from a broken home. While he doesn’t really understand the nature of his parents divorce, he is smart enough to know when his questions are being evaded by mom. Interesting enough, all will be revealed when Jack and his best friend, Angus, are transported back in time to the year 1914, right before the start of World War I. Suddenly, they find themselves in Sarajevo with the bad guys one step behind. The only problem is Jack and Angus don’t know who to trust. Everyone who appears to be on the right side turns out to be a traitor of sorts. It’s a cat and mouse game played out through the days and events leading up to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Day of the Assassins is cleverly enhanced with photographs, maps, background information and an author explanation for the book.

I am assuming Angus was supposed to be named Albie in an early version – either that or there is a typo on the map on page 193.

Off Balance

gr4c5Leave a comment

Gordon, Suzanne. Off Balance: the Real World of Ballet. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Yet another book I wasn’t supposed to read this month. I have no idea how it got on the list because it’s designated for October – National Art Month. Woops. Luckily, this was easy to read and I got through it very quickly. It didn’t take away from the books I was supposed to read.

I had only read one book about ballet and all about how difficult it is to be a dancer before reading Off Balance. Off Balance: the Real World of Ballet  was pretty much the same theme. I found the entire book to be well written but extremely depressing. Having no experience with the world of ballet (“real” or otherwise) I had to take Gordon’s word for it. According to everything I have read dancers are unhealthy, prone to injury, anorexia, and mental issues; they are socially stunted and obsessed with pleasing their teachers. Dancers don’t have formal educations, family lives, or productive interests outside of dance. The family of a dancer makes sacrifices above and beyond normal expectations. Dancers earn woefully little and they don’t get vacation pay. Workloads are exhausting yet they can get fired at a moments notice. The entire book is like this. Open any page and you will find something negative about the world of ballet. It got to be so depressing and negative that I couldn’t wait to finish the last page. I started to believe that any self-respecting person should not want to be involved in the world of ballet and if he or she did it was sheer stupidity that drove ambition. After all, as Gordon herself writes, dancers don’t think for themselves – they receive constant direction from their teachers.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 700s” (p 74).

Johnstown Flood

gr4c5Leave a comment

McCullough, David G. The Johnstown Flood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.

I have no idea what possessed me to read about two large scale disasters in the same month. The tragedy of September 11, 2001 cost the United States over 3,000 lives and was entirely a man-made nightmare, The tragedy of May 31, 1889 cost the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania over 2,000 lives and was a combination of man and nature coming together to create a different kind of nightmare. I instantly thought of Hurricane Katrina descending on the levies of New Orleans.

In the case of the Johnstown Flood, it was the man-made dam that held back the waters of Lake Conemaugh. As long as the dam held, the bustling valley town of Johnstown below was safe. While the dam was surrounded in controversy – those who thought it was perfectly safe versus those who thought it needed a makeover – no one could have predicted the amount of water the heavy rainstorms of May 31st, 1889 would bring. By midday the dam was in serious trouble. Despite frantic efforts to bolster its walls, by late afternoon it was too late and the dam gave way. It was impossible stop the deluge of millions of tons of water rushing down the mountainside. In a matter of hours an entire town was demolished. McCullough does an amazing job tying personal stories with the facts of the events. His recreation of the chain of events is stunning and almost unbelievable.

For some reason, it’s the examples of innocence right before the disaster that touched me the most. “The distance between the two houses was only about five feet, so he [Horace Rose] had put some candy on the end of a broom and passed it over to her [Bessie]. That was so successful that he next passed across a tin cup of coffee to Bessie’s mother in the same way. She was just raising the cup to her lips when the first crash came” (p 145).
  The truest line of the book: “All ordinary rules of decorum and differences of religion, politics and position were forgotten” (p 187). Isn’t that what happened after September 11, 2001?

BookLust Twist:From Book Lust in the chapter called, “What a (Natural) Disaster” (p 124).

Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

gr4c5Leave a comment

Newby, Eric. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. New York: Penguin, 1986.

I think the most endearing aspect of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is the fact that Eric Newby readily admits he had no idea what he was doing when he and a friend decided to explore the Nuristan mountain range in Afghanistan. With very little training and an unclear vision of what was in store, Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is little more than a witty, humorous journal. Yet, almost by default it offers intelligent, observant insight into Afghan cultures and terrains few Westerners have ever experienced. Newby begins his tale with the idea of exploring the Hindu Kush mountain range. Recruiting his friend Hugh, they “practice” climbing by scrambling up and down a rock face in Wales. There they learn the tools and of trade and suddenly they are experts. From there, with tongue-in-cheek humor, Newby delightfully journals their subsequent adventures in northeastern Afghanistan.

Best funny lines: “He sounded almost shocked, as if for the first time he had detected in me a grave moral defect. It was a historic moment” (p 30) and “I smothered an overwhelming impulse to ask him why we had come this far to find out something he already knew, but it was no place for irony; besides, the view was magnificent” (p 149).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Armchair Travel” (p 24).

Out of the Blue

gr4c5Leave a comment

Bernstein, Richard, and the staff of the New York Times. Out of the Blue: the Story of September 11, 2001 From Jihad to Ground Zero.  New York: Times Books, 2002.

Today was a day just like September 11, 2001. Crystal bright blue skies. Not too warm, not too cold. Almost perfect weather. Weather like that makes me suspicious – on edge. Every since 9/11/01. You probably feel the same way. Not a cloud in the sky makes me nervous. I stare up expecting it to fall down. I still can’t watch CNN reports from that day. It’s still too fresh in my mind, still too soon. Eight years later and I’m thinking it’s almost too soon to be reading Out of the Blue. Still.

Out of the Blue takes us chapter by chapter through what on September 11, 2001 – from the transformation of Osama bin Laden and the emergence of Al Qaeda to the trainings of the terrorists and finally, to the day we will never forget. A day that some are calling the end of innocence. Intermingled in this “explanation” for what happened and how it all began are the personal biographies of some of the victims. It is not clear how Bernstein chose these Americans to be included in Out of the Blue, but the inclusion of their stories illustrates just how unexpected these attacks really were. Normal, everyday routines carried out by normal everyday people were shattered in the blink of an eye. Bernstein documents the terrible reality of when the planes hit; the choking smoke, the inferno flames, the lethal leaking fuel, the rescue workers rushing into the buildings while terrified victims either rushed out or jumped to their deaths. The entire New York Times staff is to be applauded for their thoroughness for facts and details that make Out of the Blue more of a matter-of-fact (and less of a sensationalized) account of a mind numbing tragedy.

Aside from the typo on page 246 I enjoyed Out of the Blue as much as I could…considering the subject matter.

Tragic lines: “Whole families, traveling together on the hijacked planes, were obliterated together” (p 7), and “After denying for months that there would have been any way for American law enforcement or intelligence  to have detected  the terrorist plot beforehand, he [Director of the FBI, Robert S. Mueller] admitted that important clues to the coming disaster were ignored or neglected by the FBI” (p 157). 

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter, “9/11” (p 171).

Reivers

gr4c5Leave a comment

Faulkner, William. The Reivers. New York: Vintage, 1990.

I’ve never had great luck with Faulkner. It takes me longer to read anything he has written because of his plots, character genealogies, and confusing dialogues. The Reivers was no different. Scottish for robbers, The Reivers blends a tangle of genealogies – everyone seems to have some blood link to someone else- with a complicated, detail packed plot and lots of run-on, rambling conversations. The Reivers is told from the point of view of eleven year old Lucius Priest. He gets involved in first the theft of Grandfather’s automobile, then after running away to Memphis, prostitutes, horse smuggling and the long arm of the law.  Then there is something about a stolen gold tooth. Trust me, it’s funny. In the beginning I found plot and dialog cumbersome. It took me several chapters to get into the cadence of Faulkner’s writing, but once I settled in and became familiar with his style it was highly enjoyable.

Moments I liked: “I’m sure you have noticed how ignorant people beyond thirty or fourty are” (p 5). I have no idea why this struck me as funny…I’m beyond 30 or 40!
“…they-we-would load everything into pickup trucks and drive two hundred miles over paved highways to find enough wilderness to pitch tents in; though by 1980 the automobile will be as obsolete to reach wilderness with as the automobile will have made the wilderness it seeks” (p 21).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Southern Fiction” (p 222). You don’t get more southern than Faulkner!

Incidentally, this was Faulkner’s last book. Somehow, I find that sad.

Metamorphosis

gr4c5Leave a comment

Kafka, Franz. “Metamorphosis.” Franz Kafka: the Complete Stories.Ed.Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schoken Books, 1971. 89-139.

What a freaking sad, sad story (or novella, if you will). Even though I read this once in high school and twice in college I wanted to refresh my memory about the details. From my previous readings I remember Gregor woke up one morning to find he had transformed into a bug. Instead of being concerned about the multiple legs, hard shell and the fact he couldn’t turn himself over, Gregor was more upset about sleeping late, missing the train and being late to work as a traveling salesman. This was a key point in the story. I also remember his parents and sister not being all that supportive of his transformation. This also was a huge point in the story. His family was repulsed by his appearance and refused to consider him part of the family. Their neglect of him gets worse and worse until dirty and broken, he succumbs to starvation and the injuries sustained when his father threw an apple at him. What I didn’t remember was the nitty-gritty psychology of it all. Gregor’s resentment about being the bread winner for the family, how underneath it all he felt like a bug even before the metamorphosis, and ultimately his family’s complete exclusion of Gregor as an insect. The other detail I had completely forgotten was how freeing Gregor’s death was to the family. They moved on without a single regret.

To mark Gregor’s severe denial of bugness: “This getting up early, he thought, makes one quite stupid. A man needs his sleep” (p 90). Only Gregor is no longer a man, but an insect.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust twice. Once in the chapter called, “Czech It Out” (p 70), and once in the chapter called, “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade (1910s) (p 177).

September 09 is…

gr4c5Leave a comment

Because I’m still up to my eyeballs in this hiring thing I have a huge, ambitious list but I doubt I’ll actually get to all of them. I ended up with two classics, though:

  • The Reivers by William Faulkner ~ in honor of Southern Gospel month
  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka ~ in honor of (supposedly) the best time to visit Kafka’s homeland, the Czech Republic
  • The Johnstown Flood  by David G. McCullough ~ in honor of hurricane season (and we’ve already had two blow up the coast)
  • Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler ~ in honor of “real character” month (guess I’ll have to elaborate on that during the review. Even I’m not sure what I mean by that!
  • Out of the Blue: the Story of September 11, 2001 From Jihad to Ground Zero by Richard Bernstein ~  need I say why?
  • Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby in honor of National Travel Month

 

For LibraryThing Early Review – just got word that I received one for September. Yay. I won’t name the book until it  actually shows up on my doorstep. I’ve had two no-shows so far and nothing is more disappointing that planning to read an exciting book and not have it arrive! 😦

For fun ~ nada. Although I heard Monhegan made it into Yankee magazine. I’ll have to check that out at some point.

August ’09 Was…

gr4c5Leave a comment

For the sake of sanity I have to recap the entire summer. Summer as we think of it in terms of the calendar, not the temperature. June. July. August.
June can only be thought of as a dark and hellish tunnel. In that case, July was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. As a result, August was not only getting out of the dark and hellish tunnel but moving as far, far away from it as possible. August was an amazing month!

August was music (loved the Avett Brothers and had a great time at Phish). August was homehome with my best boys. August was also a group of good, good books:

  • The Moviegoer by Percy Walker ~ interesting story about a man watching life go by rather than living it.
  •  Turbulent Souls: a Catholic Son’s Return to his Jewish Family by Stephen J. Dubner ~ this was fascinating.
  • The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ~ another fascinating nonfiction with great illustrations.
  • The Mutual Friend by Frederick Busch ~ a novel about Charles Dickens that I couldn’t really get into.
  • Those Tremendous Mountains: the Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by David Freeman Hawke ~ another nonfiction, this time about the Lewis and Clark Expedition (like the title says).
  • Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Expery ~ all about war-time aviation.

For the Early Review Program:

  • Sandman Slim: a Novel by Richard Kadrey ~ absolutely crazy good book.
  • Off the Tourist Trail: 1,000 Unexpected Travel Alternatives ~ an amazing travel book! Really beautiful!
  • Finished reading Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni ~ part political, part personal, this was great.

For fun:

  • My First 100 Marathons: 2,620 Miles with an Obsessed Runner by Jeff Horowitz ~ funny and informative, too!
  • Running and Being by George Sheehan ~ funny and sarcastic and informative all at once!

Off the Tourist Trail

gr4c5Leave a comment

Off the Tourist Trail: 1, 000 Unexpected Travel Alternatives. New York: Dorsling Kindersley, 2009.

What a gorgeous, gorgeous book! The photography alone makes this book amazing. From the moment it arrived on my doorstep I couldn’t wait to start turning pages and ogle all the great pictures. The concept of Off the Tourist Trail is brilliant. A team of experts searched cheaper alternatives to the well-known, sometimes more expensive travel destinations around the world. The chapters are broken up by interest: historical, beaches, sports, and cultural to name a few. Every destination has a paragraph dedicated to practical information such as how to get there, places to stay and budget. The “Need to Know” paragraphs are filled with location, maximum height and average daytime temperatures. Probably the most interesting spin to all the information is the “Forget” section. Each comparison adds a build-up and letdown component for the better known destination. For example, in the “Architectural Marvels” chapter the ever-popular New York City is compared with with the lesser-traveled Chicago. New York’s letdown (architecturally) is the fact that its architecture is spread out over several miles and at times, difficult to view.  

An added bonus is the forward by Bill Bryson. I love the way he writes. The only drawback to Off the Tourist Trail is that it isn’t portable. Oversized and heavy, this is a book you can’t take in your carry-on. Do your research at home and save room in your bags for souvenirs.

Honeymoon in Tehran

gr4c5Leave a comment

I wish I knew what happened with this review. I knew I started writing it last winter…or at least I think I did! We were right in the middle of buying a house and suddenly the pages of purchase and sales agreements became more important than the pages of Honeymoon in Tehran. Nevertheless, here I am now…months and months later, long after publication writing the review. What’s what saying? Better late than never!

Moaveni, Azadeh. Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran. New York: Random House, 2009.

Three words pop out at me when thinking of ways to describe Honeymoon in Tehran: political, cultural and fashionable. I thoroughly enjoyed Moaveni’s blend of sly personal commentary mixed with sharp political reporting. She tells it like it is without sparing the reader her own controversial viewpoints – quite the daring feat considering the scrutiny and censorship her topics are subjected to. Sprinkled amid pages of Iranian politics are tidbits of Moaveni’s personal life (pilates, friends and underground music scenes – to name a few). In the beginning it is a carefully balanced portrayal of life in Iran for a young female journalist, but then Moaveni meets and falls in love with Arash. An unplanned pregnancy speeds up already considered wedding plans. Suddenly, Moaveni’s portrayal of life in Tehran involves more than just herself as she is faced with raising a son and nurturing a marriage. Her decision to move to England is not surprising.
Critics have called Honeymoon in Tehran a sequel to her first book Lipstick Jihad but readers shouldn’t feel it necessary to read Lipstick Jihad before Honeymoon in Tehran. Honeymoon in Tehran is a completely readable book on its own. Moaveni makes enough references to Lipstick Jihad to fill the reader in.

Wind Sand & Stars

gr4c5Leave a comment

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars. New york: Time Reading Program, 1939.

It wasn’t a stretch for me to read this in honor of National Aviation Month. This book is all about war-time flying, but it also is shrouded in mystery. Five years after writing Wind, Sand and Stars (originally published in French as Terre de Hommes) Saint-Exupery went missing after a mission over southern France. He was never heard from again. Where did he go? Another tantilizing mystery is whether Wind, Sand and Stars is fiction or nonfiction. Part philosophy, part action adventure, all in the first person it is impossible to tell. Could it be semi-biographical in the sense that some of the events are real but names and places have been changed to protect the innocent? I wasn’t able to extract fact from fiction.
Another interesting fact about Wind, Sand and Stars was the fact that once the book was published in France in 1939 Saint-Exupery rushed off to the United States to write two extra chapters. It was if he could never be satisfied with the finished product and wanted to keep writing and writing.

Nevertheless, Wind, Sand and Stars was incredibly enjoyable. I could have quoted nearly the entire book, but here are a few favorite lines: “We waited to hear the rest, but no word sounded. And as the seconds fell it became more and more evident that “no” would be followed by no further word, was eternal and without appeal, that Lecrivain not only had not landed at Casablanca but would never again land anywhere” (p 9), and “Fate has pronounced a decision from which there is no appeal” (p 23).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Flying Above the Clouds” (p 89).

Those Tremendous Mountains

gr4c5Leave a comment

Hawke, David Freeman. Those Tremendous Mountains: the Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1980.

Confession time: I thought I would be bored to hell and back by this book. History was never my strong point, even if I was supposed to relate to it. Ancestry or not, I couldn’t relate to anything historical. Those Tremendous Mountains was a different story. I was really amazed by how much I enjoyed it. To say that I loved every page wouldn’t be far off the mark. Hawke blends the diaries, notes and sketches of Captains Meriweather Lewis and William Clark with his own narrative to create a lively and creative account of the famous duo’s expedition. It is not a dry retelling of the trials and tribulations of traversing  daunting mountain ranges. It is a portrait of desire, courage, friendship and loyalty. Thanks to a very specific and detailed charge by Thomas Jefferson to count every tree, flower, river, animal, and weather condition along the journey and both Lewis and Clark’s insatiable desire and curiosity to discover the world around them they documented thousands of species never seen before, making their expedition that much more famous than those gone who had before them. Their curiosity for every new plant and animal they encountered gave them a wealth of information to send back to the President. Hawke also carefully portrays Lewis and Clark as humanitarians with a keen sense of diplomacy when dealing with the Native American tribes they encountered. Knowing they would need help crossing the Rockies Lewis and Clark made sure to have plenty of gifts for the natives. Bartering for the things they needed came easier with a show a respect rather than force. 

Probably my favorite parts in the book were the displays of friendship between Lewis and Clark. While President Jefferson continuously called it Lewis’ expedition, Lewis insisted Clark was his equal and it was their expedition. Even after Jefferson downgraded Clark’s rank from captain to second lieutenant Lewis the men on the expedition “never learned of his true rank and always called him Captain” (p 51). Probably my favorite lines comes at the end: “By then the trust  between them was complete and remained so to the end” (p 248). 

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust n the chapter called ” Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).

Turbulent Souls

gr4c5Leave a comment

Dubner, Stephen J. Turbulent Souls: a Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1998.

In the beginning, Turbulent Souls started out slow for me. I’m not exactly sure why. I think, true to form, the background of any story is the least exciting. It’s the opening act, the warming up so to speak. This setting of the stage is vital to the story, though. Dubner needed to explain his Jewish parents conversion to Catholicism in order for the rest of his story to make sense.

Stephen Dubner was born into a large, upstate New York, Catholic family. Only, Stephen never really felt at home with his parents’ view on religion. Something just didn’t seem comfortable to him. As a young man in his 20’s he meets a Jewish actress who guides him to discover his family’s orginal faith. The more he learns of Jewish customs the easier it is for him to shed everything he memorized about Catholic customs. The more he practices Jewish customs the more it feels like a rediscovery, a return to a religion he left behind before birth. As a journalist Dubner begins to see his family has a story, an amazing one. He cannot ignore the fact that both his parents converted right around the time Jews were being murdered by the Nazis. He discovers Ethel Rosenberg was his mother’s first cousin. As he uncovers the secrets of his family he finds himself.

There were many, many great lines in this book. Here are a couple describing Dubner’s religious childhood: “The aberrant memory is of my father loading us all into the pink-and-gray Rambler for Sunday Mass…my father slamming his pinkie in the back door and yelling, “Shit!” I knew the word; I just didn’t know that my father did” (p 108). “The fires of Hell kept me from letting Dale Schaeffer cheat off my math test even though he offered me first a dollar and then a skull-bashing” (p 114).
Here’s one from Dubner’s college years that I particularly liked (reminded me of my house): “…but even the three of us were no match for the memories of the house. They overpowered us, sent us to bed early, made our supper conversation timid” (p 151).
And one from adulthood: “When I was an alter boy I would get nervous being alone with Father DiPace. He represented God; I represented human shortcoming” (p 201). There are many more fantastic lines, but I’ll stop there.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Me, Me, Me: Autobiographies and Memoirs” (p 162).