Category: Book Reviews

Crack in the Edge of the World

gr4c5Leave a comment

Winchester, Simon. Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. Narrated by Simon Winchester. Harper Collins, 2005.

Reason read: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened on May 27th, 1937.

From soup to nuts, Simon Winchester’s Crack in the Edge of the World tells the complete story of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 with humor, intelligence, and clarity. He begins with the humble birth of the city coupled with the scientific explanation for earth’s volatile nature.
Curiously, when talking about other disasters which have wiped out entire regions Winchester mentions Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but only hints at the destruction of a large portion of Manhattan after the attacks of 9/11. And speaking of the attacks on the World Trade Center, I imagine that witnessing the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake was similar to east coast residents watching the events of 9/11 unfold on their smartphones and television sets. If you were not suffering personal tragedy and your barometer for compassion was at an all-time low, you looked upon the destruction with awe and a strange but removed fascination.
My favorite post-disaster response. The post office was the hero of my childhood, keeping me connected to friends and family miles away. San Francisco’s post office employees made and all-out effort to save their building. As a result they were able to resume service two days after the earthquake. The postmaster understood the importance of communicating with loved ones; an early version of “marked safe.”

Edited to add: I had to come back in here to add this! How could I forget that Winchester quoted Natalie Merchant! She wrote about the San Andreas fault on her first solo album, Tigerlily.

Quote to quote, “But generally speaking, so far as their respective quiddities are concerned, great cities always recover” (p 313).

Author fact: I have a total of eight Winchester books on my Challenge list. I have read three of them so far. Crack in the Edge of the World is my favorite at present.

Nancy said: Pearl said Crack in the Edge of the World was one of the best – if not the best – books about the great earthquake.

Book trivia: Winchesters description of German photographer Genthe sparked an interest in his work.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “San Francisco” (p 196).

Princes of Ireland

gr4c5Leave a comment

Rutherfurd, Edward. The Princes of Ireland. Narrated by Richard Matthews. Books on Tape, 2004.
Rutherfurd, Edward. The Princes of Ireland. Doubleday, 2004.

Reason read: in honor of the Cat Laugh Comedy Festival in Ireland.

Rutherfurd’s Princes of Ireland opens with a lesson in geography, anthropology, and history. I am always learning something new with historical fiction, like the difference between overlords and feudal lords. Did you know that Celtic warriors rode their horses naked? Kissing each other’s nipples is a show of forgiveness? Clans buried their warriors standing up, facing their enemies camp, to keep an eye on them? So many customs and traditions and that is not even getting into the politics of the country!
Although I kept making comparisons to Thomas Flanagan’s Irish series, Rutherfurd’s Ireland is much rowdier than Flanagan’s epic tale. People stealing horses for animalistic (pun intended) pleasures was a head scratcher for me. I have heard the rumors of men with sheep, but horses? Mythology and rituals abound. As an example, the success of the season’s harvest is dependent on the druid’s blessing. All of these details are a vehicle for the clever entanglement of fact and fiction – details so interwoven it is hard to tease them apart.
My favorite part of the story was Rutherfurd’s mastermind of the relationship between Margaret and Joan. Margaret’s misconceptions and prejudices of Joan were skillful and plausible. It was like a medieval gossip rag. Here is another drama: the king’s wish to divorce his Spanish wife for the love of another. The townspeople quarrel about who is in the right.

Edited to add a quote I liked, “Marriage is like religion, in a way, it requires an act of faith” (said by Dame Doyle, p 740).

Author fact: beyond the Ireland saga, Rutherford has also written London, Sarum, and The Forest which are all on my Challenge list. I am not reading the novel about New York.

Book trivia: Princes of Ireland is epic. It spans seventeen centuries of Irish history and is only part one of the saga. The Rebels of Ireland continues the journey.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Princes of Ireland.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett, and Synge” (p 110).

The Prisoner

gr4c5Leave a comment

Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Modern Library, 1956.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November in honor of Proust.

Whatever you want to call this volume of Remembrance of Things Past, whether it be “The Prisoner” or “The Captive”, it is also for obvious reasons called “The Albertine Novel.” In the beginning of “The Captive/Prisoner” Albertine is the narrator’s mistress. As soon as she wants to visit friends he (as narrator finally named Marcel at times) bribes Albertine with furs and jewels to make her stay in his family’s Paris apartment. There he keeps a close eye on her. Despite this possessive nature, he (Marcel) soon grows tired of Albertine but cannot completely let her go, hence the title of prisoner or captive. He becomes progressively more jealous, possessive, obsessive to the point of borderline psychotic worrying and wondering about who Albertine is with, male or female. Her confession of a friendship with lesbians forces Marcel to stoop to spying to see if she has relationships with other women. As usual, Proust has his finger squarely on the pulse of human nature. Albertine is the epitome of freedom while Marcel embodies jealousy and rage.
Sadly, because I had to switch to another publication, this version does not have the beautiful and whimsical illustrations of the other volumes.

Lines to like, “People who learn some accurate detail of another person’s life at once deduce consequences which are not accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of things that have no connexion with it whatsoever” (p 2).

Book trivia: The Prisoner was published posthumously. The next book to read is The Past Recaptured.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about “The Captive” or “The Prisoner.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romans-Fleuves” (p 208).

Brunetti’s Venice

gr4c5Leave a comment

Sepeda, Toni. Brunetti’s Venice: Walks with the City’s Best-Loved Detective. Grove Press, 2008.

Reason read: prepping for a grand trip to Italy. Venice is on the list. I cannot wait to walk the same streets as Lord Byron, Wagner, Goethe, and Proust. They all went to the San Marco district of Venice for inspiration. I must see the equestrian statue of Colleoni.

Brunetti’s Venice is a very clever book. Part travel guide to Venice and part homage to Donna Leon’s character, Guido Brunetti, Brunetti’s Venice is one hundred percent entertainment. Using direct quotes from each of Leon’s mysteries a reader can tour Venice through the eyes of Brunetti. Places like Murano become more vivid. Quoting from all Leon’s mysteries was a bonus for me. I am afforded glimpses of passages from books not on my Challenge list. It also gave me a chance to get to know Guido Brunetti better, as Sepeda writes just as equally about Commissario Brunetti the person as she does the island city of Venice.
As a travel book, the most appreciated information was the time it should take to walk each route using the detailed map. I have to wonder if the information has held up. Information like when restaurants are closed, how to visit a basilica, how to avoid the seedy parts of town. When Brunetti’s Venice went to press Sepeda said, “…today only three exist until the new bridge linking Piazzale Roma and the train station designed by the Spanish architect Calatrava is finished” (p 143). Well, is it finished? Are Venetians still suspicious of Sicilians?
Aside from wondering how current the information, I loved the idea of the great authors who have wandered around Venice: Charles Dickens, George Sand, Balzac, and Cocteau to name a few. Imagine Othello in Venice…
Confessional: I fell in love with Guido from the very first book. He is passionate, sensitive, and predictable. I loved that as a member of the law he lived in an illegal apartment; a structure without permits, blueprints, or statement of intent.

As an aside: Donna Leon admits to getting lost in Venice. Tommy Puzey guaranteed we would get lost during his Walk Italy series on iFit (so far we haven’t).

Quote to quote, “One of the secrets Paolo and Brunetti never revealed to anyone was their decades-long search for the ugliest Christ child in western art” (p 127). Can you just see them whispering to each other, rating the artwork across Venice?

Author fact: I heard a rumor that Sepeda has given guided tours of Brunetti’s Venice. She must really love Donna Leon’s books.

Book trivia: Sepeda uses arrows to indicate when it is time for walkers to move on. I felt it was unnecessary.

Playlist: Vivaldi

Nancy said: Pearl said it would be fun to recreate strolls described in Brunetti’s Venice.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter “Veni, Vidi, Venice” (p 240).

Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book

gr4c5Leave a comment

Richardson, Bill. Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book. St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Reason read: to continue the series started in April.

Hector and Virgil are back! Their charming bed and breakfast is still a safe haven for bibliophiles, although this time there are not as many “bookish” moments. There is a list of must-read cookbooks, books for a baby’s first five years (I loved seeing Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne on the list), and another list of books specific for bathroom reading. The focus of book number two (pun intended) is the discovery of local controversial poet Solomon Solomon’s manuscript in the B&B safe. The town decides to celebrate his works with a festival involving a poetry contest, food, and a ball of foil.
Cutest moment in the book? When asked by their schoolteacher each twin said he wanted to be a bachelor when he grew up. Neither had no idea what that meant. My one complaint? The brothers do not narrate as much of the sequel as they did in Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast.
As an aside, Nancy Pearl has a chapter in one of her Lust books about characters you would like to meet. I would like to meet mother. She practiced chemistry, built model planes, played football, studied anatomy, collected road kill, and raised twins all on her own. She sounds like a hell raiser. Natalie Merchant has a song called “Sister Tilly” and I could see mother as a Miss Tilly as someone who would stand at the barricades; a girl in the fray.

Line I liked, “I flashed her a pertinent finger and stooped to conquer” (p 130).

As another aside, I find it strange that Hector celebrates learning how to hula hoop on the same morning I wake from a dream that involved carrying a hula hoop onto a plane. I have no idea from where that came.

Author fact: I did a what the what when I found out Richardson is also a radio broadcaster. That is beyond cool.

Book trivia: As with the first Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast there is a very cute illustration of a cat.

Playlist: Albinoni Adagio, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, Bach, Baker, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Callas, Corelli, “Do You Know the Way To San Jose?”, “Donkey Serenade”, “E Luceran le Stelle”, Elvis, Flagstad, Gigli, “Holly and the Ivy”, “I Saw Three Ships”, John Coltrane, “Like a Virgin”, “Little Drummer Boy,” “Lullaby of Broadway”, Madame Butterfly, Madonna, “Material Girl”, Mio Babbino Caro, Mitch Miller, Mozart, O Holy Night”, Pachabel Canon, Piaf, Puccini, “Red Rover Valley”, “Silver Bells”, Stratas, Village People, Vivaldi, Wayne Newton, and “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book “light-as-air.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Gallivanting in the Graveyard” (p 96) and again in the simple chapter called “Parrots” (p 183). There are no ghosts in Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book. Although, to be fair, there is a scene when Caedmon is dusting in mother’s room and he has a hint of a spirit with him. Does that count?

We Need To Talk

gr4c5Leave a comment

Headlee, Celeste. We Need To Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter. Harper, 2017.

Reason read: a colleague came back from a conference with a bunch of books. What’s better than free books?

This is a great little book full of common sense advice about how to be a better conversationalist. It is not necessarily geared towards getting ahead in the corporate world, but it is helpful. Written by a “human nature expert” Headlee offers practical tips for listening and speaking with meaning. I appreciated the reminders about repeating oneself and using negative language. Even though she did not provide much information I haven’t heard before I would like to check out her TED talk. Out of all of the self help books on communication I’ve read, We Need to Talk was the most enjoyable.

Author fact: Headlee is cohost of a PBS television show called Retro Report.

Book trivia: Headless includes some tips on meditation.

Playlist: Barenaked Ladies, Michael Jackson, Verdi, Pucci, Mozart, and Wagner.

Sacrifice

gr4c5Leave a comment

Bolton, S. J. Sacrifice. Minotaur Books, 2009.

Reason read: This is awful, but I don’t remember why this is an April book.

It all starts when obstetrician Tora Hamilton finds a human body buried on her land. She is new to the Shetland islands off the coast of Scotland, but her husband’s people have lived here for generations. To think she was trying to bury a horse! What she finds instead is the body of a young woman who used to have red hair and appears to have given birth. Who is this woman and why is she on Tora’s land? To dig into the mystery of the buried woman is to reveal a scandal much bigger than a simple death. To dig into history of Shetland is to uncover an ancient secret that is better left for dead. Despite the danger, Tora cannot let the mystery be. The more she uncovers the more she questions her marriage of five years, her job, and her future. Why has her husband stayed away from his homeland for twenty years and does her boss look so much like her father-in-law?
While Tora had questions I had questions for her. What kind of person can shrug off a pig’s heart left on her kitchen table in the dead of night? What about crushed strawberries in the basement? Are those normal occurrences in Shetland? Wouldn’t it drive her crazy that her keys go missing for days? As more strange events start to pile up I questioned Tora’s judgement. That was exactly what Bolton wanted me to do.

Line I liked, “At the end of the day, if you believe something deeply enough, it becomes a kind of truth” (p 313). Amen to that.

Book trivia: because Sacrifice is translated into English some of the sentences are quirky. Case in point: “why the hell was me going back to Shetland?” (p 210).

Nancy said: Pearl caught my attention when she called Sacrifice “creepy and riveting.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 204).

Tenants of Time

gr4c5Leave a comment

Flanagan, Thomas. Tenants of Time. Warner Books, 1989.

Reason read: to continue the series started in March in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

This is the account of the Fenian Rising of 1867 in the time of the Parnell Special Commission. All of Ireland rises up and greets war with bravery and stern determination. The chief storytellers are Patrick Prentiss and Hugh MacMahon, but you’ll also meet Robert Delaney, a shopkeeper and Ned Nolan, a terrorist. Like Katherine by Anya Seton Tenants of Time walks a tightrope between fact and fiction – a beautiful balance of great storytelling.

As an aside, I have a pang of nostalgia reading about Waterford crystal. I dated someone who lived in Waterford. He was my first “exotic” love.

Quotes to quote, “It was in a different world that he tended his roses, not the world of the white March morning” (p 174), and “It was a moment hinged upon silence, upon dreadful expectation” ( 201).

Playlist: “A Nation Once Again”, “The West’s Lake”, and “God Save Ireland”.

Nancy said: Pearl called the entire trilogy “magnificent.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of All Ages” (p 114).

Hong Kong

gr4c5Leave a comment

Morris, Jan. Hong Kong. Vintage, 1997.

Reason read: for the Portland Public Reading Challenge I needed a book about a region that interests me. Hong Kong is a place I know little about.

Hong Kong is densely factual. Someone else described it this way and that was my ah-ha moment. I couldn’t put my finger on why it was such a slog to read. Morris spends an inordinate amount of time describing one of Hong Kong’s first modern structures but fails incite any passion about it. Her detached voice left me wondering what is the fascination with the area? She spent a long time describing a photograph of a building I wanted her to include it in the book. This, you will see, is a reoccurring pet peeve of mine. Morris’s photographs are uninspiring and grainy.
A word of warning. Hong Kong is outdated. I found myself wondering about the Hong Kong of today. Are there still more Rolls-Royces per head in the city?
At first I wasn’t sure I would enjoy Hong Kong. Aside from dated material, in the early pages, Morris jumps from pleasures of the flesh to pleasure of the palette to playing mah-jongg and the mythology of disturbing the spirits in the earth within several seemingly unrelated pages.
My take-aways: honey was a euphemism for sex for hire. Opium was a legally smoked drug until 1940. A deeper understanding of the art and logic of feng shui. At least I learned something.

Author fact: I have an astounding twelve books by Jan Morris on my Challenge list. She has written many more.

Book trivia: I don’t know why but I find it selfish when an author describes a photograph that they took but don’t share the image in the book. They would rather go through great lengths to describe it. As it was, the clump of pictures Morris chose to include were grainy, somewhat irrelevant and completely uninteresting. I am repeating myself.

Playlist: “One Stolen Kiss”, and “Deep in My Heart, Dear”.

Nancy said: Pearl said Hong Kong is filled with evocative writing.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Hong Kong Holidays” (p 118).

Limitless

gr4c5Leave a comment

Otting, Laura Gassner. Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Yor Own Path and Live

Reason read: work

The emphasis of Limitless is this: do not be afraid to start your own business; do not be scared to leave the rat race of working for someone else; learn how to want to be your own boss. Most of the examples in Limitless are of high powered executives and/or people who can afford (literally) to take big risks. You never hear about the McDonald’s burger flipper who cashes it all in to open a soap store. Case in point – the lawyer who took an 80% pay cut to do something she loved. The other lawyer who quit her thriving practice to start a chocolate company in her kitchen (guess it wasn’t a galley kitchen with a one-burner stove). How many of us are called to lead an expedition to Mount Everest while working at Goldman Sachs? The example of the veterinarian who went from in-clinic appointments to home visits was the first real down-to-earth example with which I connected. That was a career adjustment I could get behind. Another observation: I would argue that gig-economy only works if a), you stored up enough reserves to see you through while you are trying to find your calling and b), you have a family network willing to support you during the paycheck gaps or c), you cobble together enough jobs to pay the bills without interruption.
The mantra is finding purpose. What if you don’t know your purpose so you wouldn’t recognize it if you saw it? The trick is to harness ambition. What if you have no idea how to do that? Of course the book ends with a bonus quiz, but in order to see the results or learn anything from them, you have to log into a website.

Book trivia: Limitless includes a list of books to read.

Why Read?

gr4c5Leave a comment

Edmundson, Mark. Why Read? Bloomsbury, 2004.

Reason read: April is National Library Month. Plus, I needed a short book for the Portland Public Library reading challenge. This fit the bill.

Why Read? is a compilation of the clever thoughts of others. Edmundson is constantly direct quoting, recalling or paraphrasing the intelligent works of Arthur Schoppenhauer, Ann Marlowe, Camille Paglia, David Denby, David Rieff, de Man, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Schiller, Foucault, Frye, George Orwell, Henry James, Harold Bloom, Heidegger, Herman Melville, James Edwards, Keats, Kierkegaard, Karen Armstrong, Jacques Derrida, JH van den Burg, Lionel Trilling, Marcel Proust, Marilyn Butler, Matthew Arnold, Martha Nussbaum, Milan Kundera, Oscar Wilde, the Marquis de Sade, Nietche, Paul Cantor, Paul Ricoeur, Sir Philip Sidney, Richard Rorty, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Robert McKee, Simon Frith, Stanley Fish, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Walter Jackson Bate, William B. Yeats, Wordsworth (among others), without a single footnote or bibliography, works cited page, or what have you. Sections on the connections to God, questioning God, and delving into the importance of critical thinking had me yawning. Is it deliberate that Edmundson’s examples of his students are mostly female? Just curious.
My favorite sections are when Edmundson was drawing connections to humanism – finding the deep parallels between individual reality and literary imagination. Can we identify with Hamlet’s situation? How does this relate to the here and now?

Author fact: Edmundson likes to start his book titles with the word why.

Book trivia: Why Read? is a very short book, but should not be read in one sitting.

Playlist: Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, and Britney Spears.

Nancy said: Pearl called Why Read? stimulating,

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed 800s” (p 76).

Katherine

gr4c5Leave a comment

Seton, Anya. Katherine. Houghton Mifflin, 1954

Reason read: I needed a book with a name in its title for the Portland Public Library reading challenge. Katherine was next in line.

This is a love story. A fourteenth century story to be exact. Katherine Swynford has loved John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster ever since she first laid eyes on him as a young girl of thirteen. As a commoner, predestined to marry a lowly knight, Katherine’s standing in society is, at best, only to be a lady-in-waiting for the Duchess of Lancaster. That is as close as she can get to the man of her dreams. Yet, meeting the duke has sealed her fate. The saga that follows spans three generations of life and love. Seton does a fantastic job weaving true history with a fabricated backstory of romance. If you get the chance, listen to the audio version. It’s fantastic.

Author fact: Seton also wrote Green Darkness which is on my challenge list.

Book trivia: the 14th century of England is accurately portrayed in Katherine.

Audio trivia: I don’t think I have ever heard someone pronounce “joust” as “juiced.”

Setlist: there were lots of songs sung, but not many by name. “Here We Come a Wassailing” was the only one.

Nancy said: Pearl said Katherine is a good example of Seton’s ability to combine fact and fiction in her work.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the odd chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love Is Here to Stay” (p 203). I would have thought it would be in a chapter about history.

West of Kabul

gr4c5Leave a comment

Ansary, Tamim. West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Reason read: I can’t remember why I chose this book.

Ansary writes with a duality that matches his bicultural heritage. His words are at once graceful and blunt; elegant and funny. He calls his upbringing “straddling a crack in the earth”, but what he doesn’t tell you is that his ability to navigate both the American and Afghan cultures is nothing short of expert mountaineering. His siblings may have chosen a definitive side after September 11th, but Ansary decided to use his bicultural perspective in an effort to find a deeper truth. It all started with an emotional email fired off to friends and family after the fall of the World Trade Towers. The email is included at the end of West of Kabul, in case you were wondering.
The entire time Ansary was traveling around Tangier I was on edge. His experiences with the “guides” were troubling; as was the time he was duped about an upgrade to a sleeping car on a train. (By the way, I would like to see jovial and overly congenial Rick Steves navigate those kinds of harassments.) Even when Ansary traveled to city to city waiting anxiously for a letter from his girlfriend, I was on edge. Would she wait for him? You just have to read his memoir to find out.

Lines I liked, “But I never liked him much personally and neither did someone else, because Uthman was assassinated” (p 48), “Power is a social construct, right down to the kick-ass level” (p 157), “Traveling can erase everything except the present, and turn the present into a hallucination” (p 184).

As an aside, the killing of the sheep was really hard to read. I am such a wuss.

Author fact: Ansary is also an author of books for children. West of Kabul is the only book I am reading for the Challenge.

Book trivia: There are no photographs in Ansary’s memoir.

Playlist: Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Everly Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, B.B. King, Mozart, Ahmad Zahir, “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “Tell Laura I Love Her”,

Nancy said: Pearl said the first chapters of West of Kabul are fascinating. I am not sure what she thinks of the rest of the book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Islamic World” (p 127).

Always Eat Left Handed

gr4c5Leave a comment

Bhargava, Rohit. Always Eat Left Handed:… and Other Secrets for Killing It at Work and In Real Life. IdeaPress, 2018.

Reason read: this was a work recommendation. Maybe because I am left handed?

Chapter titles are catchy like “Start Smoking.” He doesn’t literally mean start an unhealthy habit to get ahead in your career (although he started smoking for just that reason). He means be willing to take risks. He reminded me of the headmaster at my boarding school. His mantra was Take Risks, Take Risks. That has always stuck with me although I suck at heeding that advice. What if I am a healthy mix of taking and abstaining?
Chapters are punctuated with white illustrations on a black background. They are simple drawings on even simpler objects: an airplane window, a watch, toast with butter, an ipod playing music, a CV, Sharpie, jeans pocket, cauliflower, a high-heeled shoe, a pair of lips, a violin, a pile of books, a suitcase, cigarette, Lego, heart, eye crying, a string tied around a finger, Maybe this is a spoiler, but here are the corresponding lessons: choose your destiny, read books like choosing music for a playlist, read only what is important to you, take risks (did I already mention that?), and so on.

Playlist: Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran,

Heart of Darkness

gr4c5Leave a comment

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Penguin Classics, 1987.

Reason read: I needed a short book for the Portland Public Library reading challenge. This us under 150 pages.

We begin with two rivers of contradiction, the Thames and the Congo. Marlow’s journey begins and ends on the Thames.
After reading Heart of Darkness did you ask yourself, “what is the definition of civilized?” I know I did.
Also, I found myself paying attention to light and dark imagery throughout Heart of Darkness. There were contradiction of light and darkness – the sun setting versus the lighthouse’s beam and the glare of the stars. Light needs the dark in order to be its brightest. Night falling has an impact on people and places. All in all, the plot was slow and plodding. I kept waiting for something drastic to happen because I knew the horror could jump out and gnash its teeth any second. The pages leading up to the grand finale seemed nothing more than a vain attempt to rattle the nerves.
I know many people who couldn’t stand Heart of Darkness, but I have to offer this as an alternative. Why? Why is it so hated? I can remember reading a book about a woman working up the courage to commit suicide. I cared to little for the character that by the end of the book I was wishing she would just get it over with! I wanted her kill herself. Instead of saying I hated the book because I wanted the main character dead, I applauded the author. The power of the writing forced me to feel that strongly about a character. Maybe, just maybe, Conrad was forcing his audience to hate much in the same way.

Quotes to quote, “One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same” (p 29), “Black shadows of disease and starvation” (p 44), “Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others” (p 31),

Author fact: I was shocked to learn, according to Paul O’Prey’s introduction, that Conrad, distraught over debts and other failings, shot himself in the chest. What the what? A nicer fact is that Conrad was influenced by Henry James.

Book trivia: I didn’t realize the movie Apocalypse Now was based on Heart of Darkness.

As an aside, you know I have to make connections to my favorite singer, Natalie Merchant. I couldn’t help but think of “Hateful Hate” when I read in the introduction about the white man’s greed for ivory. To be fair, “Hateful Hate” is a 10,000 Maniacs song, but it’s Natalie’s voice I hear when she sings about spotted skins and ivory and that hateful hate.
Confessional: somehow I missed reading this in high school, college, grad school and beyond.

Nancy said: You can always tell when Pearl likes a book. She includes it in more than one Lust chapter and/or includes it in more than one Lust book. It was mentioned four times in Book Lust. Her most meaningful comments include Heart of Darkness is the story all other African novels are measured against and Heart of Darkness should be read along side The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Having read Kingsolver and Achebe earlier in the challenge, I did not get to enjoy this grouping.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapters called “Africa: Today and Yesterday” (p 10), “African Colonialism: Fiction” (p 14), “Companion Reads” (p 63), and “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1900s” (p 175). Also, in Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter “Nigeria” (p 156). To be fair, Heart of Darkness should not have been indexed in Book Lust To Go. Pearl only mentions it because Chinua Achebe wrote an essay about racism in Heart of Darkness.