Category: NonFiction

Complications

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Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science. Read by William David Griffith. Audio Renaissance: Picador, 1995.

You expect medicine to be a hard and fast science. Is versus Isn’t. Black and white. Cut and dried. Science simple as that. It is hard to imagine medicine as fuzzy, as imperfect and wishy-washy as gray area, but it is. Gawande doesn’t apologize for this less-than-exact science. He is pragmatic in his approach – sometimes doctors get it right and well, sometimes they don’t. The essays in Complications are scary and humbling. You hear about real cases. Real patients. Everyday people with seemingly normal lives. Your neighbor. You. Then you hear about the scary stuff. Medical mistakes. Doctors deferring decisions to patients. Surgeons operating with their hearts more than their minds…it happens. As hard as some of the information was to digest it was eye opening and a necessary truth.

Reason read: November is supposed to be National Health Month. Maybe that’s why I have two physical exams scheduled for this month!

Author fact: According to the back of the CD case Atul Gawande is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Book CD trivia: I inadvertently listened to the abridged version of the book. Dammit.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Physicians Writing More Thank Prescriptions” (p 185).

Edward Lear in Albania

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Lear, Edward. Edward Lear in Albania: journals of a landscape painter in the Balkans. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.

Edward Lear is such a great writer in addition to being an artist. I thoroughly enjoyed his journey through the Balkans. Each chapter begins with an outline, as if Lear didn’t want to forget a single thing. His entries are so descriptive and vibrant it’s hard to imagine that he would forgot a single detail.
At every stop along the journey Lear would take a hike to a picturesque location so that he might draw the landscape. He attracted plenty of attention and was sometimes accused of evoking the devil with his art. (It was a sign of evil to draw.) He was constantly getting himself into trouble. For example, one time he drew portraits of two brothers. Simply by mistake he had drawn one brother’s portrait larger than the other. He ended up offending them both. Like any good artist he was continually worried about losing the light and would often set out at daybreak to capture the landscape. While his art is amazing so is his journal. He manages to illustrate not only the landscape but the cultures of the community as well. Every chapter is filled with Lear’s good humor as well. For example, face washing in public was seen as “a species of water-worship” as Lear put it.
At the end of November Lear aborted his travels in the Balkans to accompany a friend around Cairo, Mount Sinai and Palestine. He returned to the Balkans to “complete his tour of Albania in April.

Best lines ever: “Yet it is a great charm of Turkish character that they never stare of wonder at anything…I am satisfied that if you chose to take your tea while suspended by your feet from the ceiling, not a word would be said, or a sign of amazement betrayed” (p 10), “The certainty of night rest is not among the good things of Akhidha; in the small cell I inhabit, a constant clawing and squalling of cats on one side of my pillow, and quacking of dicks on the other, is not favourable to sleep” (p 33),

Confession: right off the bat I was hit by confusion. In Book Lust To Go Nancy Pearl says she thought this Edward Lear was the nonsensical poet and “…It took me a minute to realize that there must have been two Edward Lears, and this was the one I was unfamiliar with” (p 13). What she meant to say was there were two sides to Edward Lear and she was unfamiliar with the painter side of Edward Lear because, according to the preface of Edward Lear in Albania, written by Vivian Noakes, the Edward Lear who wrote nonsensical poetry was also the Edward Lear who was an accomplished ornithological illustrator and Albanian landscape painter.

Reason read: November is a decent time to visit Albania, if you can.

Author fact: Edward Lear captured the imagination of Natalie Merchant and she set some of his lesser known works to music.

Book trivia: Not many libraries in my area have this book. My copy traveled from Bates College.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Albania” (p 13).

Camus, a Romance

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Hawes, Elizabeth. Camus, a Romance. New york: Grove Press, 2009.

I think what makes this biography so likeable is that Hawes includes her own memoir at the same time. The reader not only gets a portrait of one of the most influential writers of all time but Hawes displays her own life as well. Or at least she displays her obsession with Camus.
Small complaint. The photography Hawes chose to include of Albert Camus are tiny and interspersed in the text unlike other biographies where the photos are grouped together in large, glossy pages. I don’t know if Hawes didn’t receive permission to enlarge the photographs or what. The small photographs seem stingy for some reason; especially since Hawes admits that in reading Camus’s journal she finds him faceless and unknown. It is in photographs that she is able to tease out the intimacies of his spirit. The reader is not privy to most of the images she describes.
As an aside, a friend brought me three other Camus biographies just so I could see the photos. They were wonderful! It was especially nice to see the ones Hawes described in detail.

Line I heard throughout the book, “I was like an author who had fallen in love with one of his characters” (p 98).

Reason read: Albert Camus was born in October. I would have liked more Camus biographies on my list but this is the only one.

Author fact: I should call this “author rumor” because it’s not fact. In my opinion Hawes is obsessed with Camus. It’s as if, in this book, she is stalking his ghost.

Book trivia: No index.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “North African Notes: Algeria” (p 159).

Viceroy of Ouidah

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Chatwin, Bruce. The Viceroy of Ouidah. New York: Summit Books, 1980.

In the simplest of terms this short (155 pg) novella follows the life of Brazilian slave trader Francisco Manoel da Silva from 1812 to 1857 in the West African region of Dahomey. This is not a book full of character development and ambling plot lines. The writing is concise and what Chatwin doesn’t say is almost more important as what makes it onto the page. He takes a true story and weaves magic into it. Francisco grows up destined to be a slave trader. Orphaned at a young age, he was coldly indifferent to the sufferings of man. He knew early on that feelings were a sign of weakness. As he grew older he wandered from job to job, each one taking him closer to destiny; branding cattle until he moved on to work with a man who sold the equipment of slavery, for example. Francisco too a fascination with slave dealings watching the boats come in and the “cargo” unloaded.

Lines I liked: “His boot crushed a begonia as he went” (p 19) because it connects to the last line of the book, “…crushing a cockroach under the hell of his combat boot” (p 155). One final quote, “Each year, with the dry season, he would slough off the habits of civilization and go to war” (p 116).

Reason read: November is a sexy time to visit Brazil. This book may not inspire that trip, though.

Author fact: Chatwin was art auctioneer for Sotheby & Co.

Book trivia: The Viceroy of Ouidah feels like the ugly, less famous brother of a rock star; a brother deemed unworthy of even a corner of the red carpet. When holding The Viceroy of Ouidah in our hands, no less than nine times are we reminded that Chatwin also wrote In Patagonia in addition to The Viceroy of Ouidah. In fact, the entire back cover of Viceroy is dedicated to the praise of In Patagonia. It made me think I was reading the wrong book and that The Viceroy of Ouidah wasn’t worth my time. It was off putting to open a book only to read about the “other” one.

BookLust Twist: Even though The Viceroy of Ouidah was inspired by real people and real events Chatwin decided to call this a work of “the imagination” because of “the patchiness of my material” (preface, The Viceroy of Ouidah), but that didn’t stop Pearl for including it in the chapter called “True Adventures” (More Book Lust, p 224).

Lives of the Painters Vol 2

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Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol 2. Translated by A.B. Hinds. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1927.

I have to be honest. I was not looking forward to volume two of Vasari’s work. For starters, there were a lot of mistakes in volume one and for another it was a little on the boring side. Okaaaay. It was a lot on the boring side! But I am determined to stick it out and get through all four volumes, even if it kills me. Disclaimer, like with volume one I am skipping any biography that contains an error in volume two.

There is not introduction to the second volume. We just jump right into the biographies, starting with Fra Filippo Lippi, Painter of Florence (?1406 – 1469). Vasari doesn’t waste any time getting to the juicy parts of a painter’s life, “He remained so for two days, but overcome by his amorous and bestial desires, he cut up his sheet with a pair of scissors, and, letting himself down out the window, devoted many days to his pleasures” (p 3). Ooh la la. But, don’t get too excited. There aren’t that many personal facts for the rest of the biographies. Vasari, for the most part, sticks to who painted or sculpted what. One good thing about volume two is that it includes Botticello and Da Vinci, two artists I was looking forward to reading about.

Favorite quote. This is a little lengthy but tell me, does it not inspire you to go look at some art? This is from Antonio Pollajuolo:  “He always copied Nature as closely as possible, and has here represented an archer drawing the bowstring to his breast and bending down to charge it, putting all the force of his body into the action, for we may see the swelling of his veins and muscles and the manner in which he is holding his breath” (p 81).

Book Trivia: There were not as many errors in this volume!

Reason read: A continuation of the series started in honor of Art Month (September).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ciao, Italia” (p 46).

Before the Knife

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Slaughter, Carolyn. Before the Knife: Memories of An African Childhood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Before the Knife is a very quick read. Sometimes I felt I was reading fast because I wanted to get through the truly disturbing parts. In truth they were always there, lurking  behind the words Slaughter didn’t say, or worse, only alluded to. Because Slaughter announces early on, in the preface, that she was raped by her father the knowledge is out. “…the moment when everything changed only really came the night that my father first raped me” (p 4). However, she promises her story is not about that horror in particular. True to her word, Before the Knife isn’t about that trauma but having announced it, we readers are always aware of it. We translate innuendo to mean abuse every time. The story of an African childhood is lost to the knowledge something darker is at play. What a different book this would have been if we didn’t know! As expected Slaughter comes back full circle to the first night of the rape, describing it in more detail. Why, I do not know. The entire book is a tangled and confused mess of emotions.

Line that punched me in the stomach: “But once it happened, we decided that it never happened at all” (p 4). Story of my life.
Line that brought me solace: :I hoarded his words in my heart for weeks and brought them out like a talisman any time I was at my wit’s end” (p 182).

Reason Read: November is another good time to visit Africa, only not Slaughter’s Africa. Most of the places she described are no more.

Author Fact: Slaughter has written a bunch of other things including Dreams of the Kalahari.

Book Trivia: This memoir does not include any photographs.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Dreaming of Africa” (p 76).

November ’12 is…

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November is Thanksgiving. My mom’s birthday. A wedding somewhere out there. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder. Soon it will be time to crank up the woodstove. November is also a football game (Go Pats!) and maybe some music. It promises to be a good month for books, too. I have a couple of really short ones to buzz through:

  • Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Vol 2. by Giorgio Vasari ~ continuing the series started in October in honor of art month. As with Vol.1 I won’t read any bio that has a mistake in it.

    • I’m excited about this volume because Da Vinci is in it.

  • The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan ~ a continuation of the series started in October to honor the Amsterdam marathon. This should be a really quick read.
  • Camus: a Romance by Elizabeth Hawes ~ in honor of Albert Camus’s birth month
  • Edward Lear in Albania: journals of a landscape painter by Edward Lear ~ in honor of November being a good time to visit Albania.

    • I guess so.

  • Before the Knife: Memories of an African Childhood by Carolyn Slaughter ~in honor of November being a good time to take a safari in Africa. Truth be told, this won’t inspire me to travel anywhere near the dark continent.

    • I can tell already.

For audio – I’m plan to listen to Martin Gilbert’s biography of Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill, a Life and Dorothy Sayer’s The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.

For the Early Review program on LibraryThing I will finish Clay by Melissa Harrison. I have to admit I’m not wild about the story. I love the way Harrison describes the landscape around her but not a fan of her character development.

What else about November? Can I say I will be thrilled, thrilled to not have to listen to Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren bash each other over the head anymore? As a woman I have never felt more “targeted” than in this particular election. That would go for Obama and Romney as well. Grrrr.

October ’12 was…

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October 2012 was started out to sea. We landed on Monhegan sandwiched between the bustling start of Trap Day and the slowing end of tourist season. As a nod to the death of summer we readied our psyches to the coming winter. The island had shed its summer greens and stood cloaked in red rust brown and burnt yellow hues. Hiking the trails was at once magical and sobering. It was easy to curl up with a good book every night and read for at least two hours straight (something I never get to do at home unless it’s an off day). And speaking of the books, here they are:

  • Persian Boy by Mary Renault ~ a continuation of the series about Alexander the Great. I started this in September to keep the story going.
  • Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ~ in honor of Halloween (duh). Probably one of my favorite books of the month. I read this in three days.
  • The Outermost House: a year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston ~ in honor of October being Animal Month. The best book for me to read on an island; finished it in three days.
  • Lives of the Painters, Vol. 1 by Giorgio Vasari ~ in honor of October being Art Appreciation month. This was just ridiculous to read. There were a lot of errors according to the translator. I ended up skipping every biography that had a contradiction or error in it.As a result, finished it in two weeks.
  • Hackers edited by Jack Dann ~ in honor of October being Computer Awareness month. This was cool to read. I read three stories a night and finished it in four days.
  • The Dialect of Sex: the Case For Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone ~ in honor of breast cancer awareness month and strong women everywhere. I didn’t completely finish this, but I got the gist of it.
  • The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan ~ in honor of the Amsterdam marathon taking place in October. I read this in four and a half days. Easy and very entertaining!
  • The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd ~in honor of Ackroyd’s birth month. This was short, a little over 200 pages, but I took my time reading it – almost three weeks!

The audio book I chose for October was The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell. This took forever to listen to! I felt like I was constantly plugged into the story. I listened to it on the drive home from Maine, to and from work everyday. even while I was working out, while I cooking. It was a great story, worth every hour between the earphones. Can’t wait to read other Mankell stories!

For LibraryThing’s Early Review program I read Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave Introduced French Cuisine to America by Thomas J. Craughwell. While I thought I would enjoy this book (TJ is one of my favorite past presidents and I’m wild about food) it fell a little flat for me. I stopped reading on page 200. I also started reading Clay by Melissa Harrison. It was refreshing to get a first-time fiction from LibraryThing!

One thing that I failed to mention about October (and this is related to the books) is that I am back to requesting books from other libraries! Yay yay yay! This was halted in June of 2011 because we were switching ILSs and at the time I figured it would be a good opportunity to read what was on my own shelf and in my own library. Now, nearly 17 months later I am back to having hundreds of libraries to order from. Thank gawd!

We ended October with a freak storm people were calling Frankenstorm in honor of being so close to Halloween. Although we prepared like hell we saw little damage, thankfully. My thoughts and prayers go out to those in New Jersey and New York. It’s sad to see my old haunts get battered around so…

Anniversary of Crazy

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November marks the seventh anniversary of the crazy idea I would read everything indexed in Book Lust by Nancy Pearl. Subsequently that idea mushroomed into reading everything indexed in More Book Lust and most recently, Book Lust To Go as well. Let’s do a little math, shall we? In six years I have read 583 books. That is approximately 97 books a year. If I continue at that rate I will finish the Lust Challenge when I am 93 years old, give or take a year or two…..

I had this conversation with someone a few days ago and without warning the thought that I might not finish this challenge depressed me. Not because of my own mortality but because of all the interesting books I will miss. I had a horrible thought – what if I spent a considerable time slogging through something I found only mildly interesting while I missed out on something completely riveting? What a not nice thought. I shared this ugly-ugly and my companion stridently changed the subject. What if you were to consider November a “new” year and you list out the books you are planning to read? This, of course, would not include LibraryThing and the Early Review program. It would not include the “strays” (as I’ve taken to calling them). Those are the books picked up for no other reason than a good suggestion or an intriguing cover. Accountability. I like it. It gives me structure. So, without further ado, here is the conservative list for Year Seven 11/2012 – 11/2013 in alphabetical order, of course:

  1. Abide By Me by Elizabeth Strout
  2. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  3. Among the Missing by Dan Chaon
  4. Apollo: the epic journey to the moon by David West Reynolds
  5. Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton (I started this last year)
  6. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
  7. At Home in the Heart of Appalachia by John O’Brien
  8. Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner
  9. Before the Knife by Carolyn Slaughter
  10. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengist
  11. Beyond the Bogota by Gary Leech
  12. Brass Go-Between by Oliver Bleeck
  13. Breakfast with Scot by Michael Drowning
  14. Burma Chronicles by Guy Delise
  15. Burning the Days by James Salter
  16. Camus, a Romance by Elizabeth Hawes
  17. Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd
  18. Cat Who Ate Danish Modern by Lillian Jackson Braun
  19. Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford
  20. Churchill, a life by Martin Gilbert
  21. Conspiracy and Other Stories by Jaan Kross
  22. Deafening by Frances Itani
  23. Death in Verona by Roy Harley Lewis
  24. Diamond Classics by Mike Shannon
  25. Dining with Al-Qaeda by Hugh Pope
  26. Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
  27. Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope
  28. Edward Lear in Albania by Edward Lear
  29. Fanny by Edmund White
  30. Final Solution by Michael Chabon
  31. Fixer by Joe Sacco
  32. Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
  33. Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith
  34. Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Gerald Martin
  35. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
  36. Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem
  37. Going Wild by Robert Winkler
  38. Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
  39. Good Thief’s Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan
  40. Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas by Chris Ewan
  41. Good-bye Chunk Rice by Craig Thompson
  42. Grand Ambition by Lisa Michaels
  43. Guardians by Geoffrey Kabaservice
  44. Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch
  45. House of Morgan by Ron Chernow
  46. House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferre
  47. Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
  48. Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
  49. Light Infantry Ball by Hamilton Basso
  50. Lives of the Painters (vol 2, 3 & 4) by Giorgio Vasari
  51. Mortality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
  52. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
  53. Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin
  54. Ocean of Words by Ha Jin
  55. Old Friends by Tracy Kidder
  56. Panther Soup by John Grimlette
  57. Points Unknown edited by David Roberts
  58. Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson
  59. Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell
  60. Rosalind Franklin by Brenda Maddox
  61. Rose Cafe by John Hanson Mitchell
  62. Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff
  63. Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham
  64. Southpaw by Mark Harris
  65. Tattered Cloak by Nina Berberova
  66. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith
  67. Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
  68. Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  69. Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner
  70. Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
  71. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
  72. Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin
  73. What you Owe Me by Bebe Moore Campbell
  74. Widow for One Year by John Irving
  75. Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
  76. Working Poor by David Shipler

I’ll update this list May 1st, at the halfway mark. I haven’t spelled out which books I will listen to on CD. This also doesn’t reflect when I’ll read them either. All I know is that I will continue to read whenever and wherever I can. Standing in line at the grocery store, trapped in the backseat of a moving vehicle, before bed, in the bath, while my kisa watches hours of football, with a glass of wine, during storms, by candlelight and sunlight, on vacation, while I’m sick, or waiting for the pasta water to boil. I will skip the books that bore me to tears. I will start books early and finish them late. This is my new year’s resolution.

Churchill: a life

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Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: a Life, V.1 Read by Christian Rodska. North Kingston: AudioGo. 2011.

I have to admit I enjoyed listening to Churchill: a Life much better than if I had read the print. Christian Rodska’s Churchill imitation is hysterical. I particularly enjoyed the humor Rodska inserted into Gilbert’s prose. There were parts that had me laughing out loud, so much so I had to share them with with my husband, something I almost never do. One small example – when Churchill was young his schoolwork suffered greatly. He was constantly getting in trouble for not being diligent enough. Writing home to “mummy” from boarding school Churchill hoped she would not ruin his summer with a tutor because he promised to be very busy with such things as “butterflying.” It is hard to imagine a great leader such as Winston Churchill worrying about the time he could spend catching butterflies, but then again he was only twelve!
Martin flies through the first part of Churchill’s life with uncomplicated ease. His detailed pauses are like butterflies landing on well timed and important moments like Churchill’s education, his capture and subsequent escape from a Boer prison during the war, and his introduction to the political arena. Using Churchill’s own words his character comes alive. Unfortunately, the biography only covers the years 1874 to 1918.

Reason read: In honor of Churchill’s birth month

Author Fact: Gilbert was knighted by the Queen in 1995.

Book Trivia: This is considered the abbreviated version. As Churchill’s official biographer Gilbert also wrote a much longer, eight-volumed biography, one I won’t be reading!

BookLust Twist: From more Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Winston Churchill” (p 45). Can’t get anymore straightforward than that!

Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee

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Craughwell, Thomas J. Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Heming Introduced French Cuisine to America. Quirk Books, 2012.

How I would love to step back in time and follow Thomas Jefferson around! I just find him to be such an interesting character. I definitely agree that he is the most cerebral of our founding fathers. Despite Benjamin Franklin’s eye for invention I find  that Thomas Jefferson was more downright curious. He wanted to learn all that he could about the world around him.

But, enough of that. Onto the book review: This was a disappointment. I honestly expected the subject matter to match the title of the book on several different points. For starters, the obvious one – food (specifically bringing French cuisine to America). I didn’t see enough supporting evidence to believe that it was Thomas Jefferson who actually introduced the cuisine to America. Only a small handful of recipes prove that recipes like macaroni and cheese were introduced. Then there is the subject of James Heming. James Heming might have been the one who did all the work – taking the culinary classes, practicing the recipes at Jefferson’s elaborate dinner parties, and training the next cook to take his place so that he might experience freedom, but it is on Jefferson Craughwell focuses the most. Even then the focus isn’t primarily on his bringing French cuisine to America, it was on everything else.

 

Dialectic of Sex

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Firestone, Shumlamith. The Dialectic of Sex: the case for feminist revolution. Tornton: Bantam Books, 1971.

I have to start off by saying something about the cover of this book. For starters, the woman. It is a photograph of a Degas painting called simply Tete De Jeune Femme. The face of this young woman is a subject for scrutiny; her expression, debatable. She looks passive, unconcerned. To the first glance she is an observer and not a feeler. And yet, there is something sad, worrying in her eyes. But, the photograph is not the only thing that makes this cover so interesting. It’s the text. “…a slashing attack on male supremacy…” This had me worried in all sorts of ways. I’m not looking to attack men. Hell, I married one, didn’t I? And then there’s this: “Chapter 6 might change your life.” Is that a promise or a threat? That led me to question things. Wait, does my life NEED changing? Then I read the book…

I have to admit, many different parts of Firestone’s book gave me pause. For example, the concept that war (specifically World War II) was a welcomed opportunity for women to be treated as equals was really interesting. The idea that women hired as the only available workforce during that time allowed them to be and feel necessary and not just in the “female” sense of family and sex. The second concept that feminism and Freud “grew from the same soil” (p 43).
Firestone does not leave any aspect of the case for feminist revolution uncovered. She even delves into the stages of fashion for children in medieval times. For the male child dress was not to symbolize just age but to also announce sex, social rank and prosperity, whereas the female child did not have stages of fashion. She went from swaddling directly to adult garments. There was no need to differentiate social rank and prosperity because women had neither.

Lines that struck me: “We can attempt to develop a materialistic view of history based on sex itself” (p 5), and “This radical movement was built by women who had literally no civil status under law; who were pronounced civilly dead upon marriage, or remained legal minors if they did not marry; who could not sign a will or even have custody of their own children upon divorce; who were not taught to read, let alone admitted to college…; who had no political voice whatever” (p 17). And the line that made me laugh out loud, “She then assuages his pricked ego by assuring him of her undying loyalty to his Balls” (p 123).

Reason read: October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. We are in the pink once again. I have a whole slew of books dedicated to honor strong women fighting or surviving cancer. Shulamith is one such influential woman.

Author fact: I was shocked to discover Firestone passed away a little over a month ago.

Book trivia: Thanks to Wikipedia I learned a there is a documentary out there called “Shulie.” I have to look that up.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “I Am Woman – Hear Me Roar” (p 121).

Outermost House

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Beston, Henry. The Outermost House: a Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1988.

Even though Cape Cod is nothing like Monhegan Island this was a great read for vacation.

Henry Beston built a two room house on Coast Guard Beach on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Originally the house was designed to be a summer getaway cabin but after two weeks Beston decided to see what it would be like to spend a year on the beach. During that time he wrote a memoir of the experience, recording everything he saw, heard, smelled, touched and experienced. As a result he published The Outermost House which became a best seller. Along the lines of Thoreau, Beston was enamored with living the simple life and experiencing nature in it most raw form. There were many times I found myself agreeing with Beston or being envious of his adventure. Even the storms that blew up the beach produced fascinating fodder for Beston’s book.

Favorite lines: “On its solitary dune my house faced the four walls of the world” (p 9), “Listen to the surf, really lend it your ears, and you will hear in it a world of sounds: hollow boomings and heavy roarings, great watery tumblings and tramplings, long hissing seethes, sharp riffle-shot reports, splashes, whispers, the grinding undertone of stones, and sometimes vocal sounds that might be the half-heard talk of people in the sea” (p 43) and one more, “Wraiths of memories began to take shape” (p 216).

Author Fact: Well, this fact isn’t about Beston. It’s about his house. His cabin on Cape Cod was named a national literary landmark until it was destroyed in the blizzard of 1978.

Book Trivia: Beston’s wife wouldn’t marry him until he had finished The Outermost House.

Reason read: October is National Animal Month.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Wild Life” (p 244).

Lives of the Painters

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Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Vol. 1. Translated by A.B. Hinds. London: J.M. Dent, 1927.

The Lives of the Painters is about exactly what the title states – biographies of painters and sculptors and architects, beginning with Giovanni Cimabue, a religious painter from Florence, Italy. It’s pretty amazing to think his childhood was like any other normal boy, enthralled with art over school work. I could see him doodling with his bird feather and dye! (Cimabue, 1240 – 1302.) Other artist biographies included Arnolfo Di Lapo (1232 – 1302), a father and son team named Niccola and Giovanni Pisani (1205 – 1328),  Andrea Tafi (1213? – 1294), Gaddo Gaddi (1259 – 1333), Gotto (1216 – 1293?) and on and on.

Disclaimer: Vasari admits that the statements made about some lives are not to be accepted as absolute truth. In fact, many of the footnotes correct Vasari and point out inaccuracies. Interesting. But, not interesting for me to keep reading. I made a decision that any biography that had an inaccuracy didn’t deserve to be read so I skipped a lot. A lot. Another frustrating element to the text is the number of times Vasari says there is more to the story, “but I will not relate it in an effort to avoid being tedious…” Nothing drives me crazier than someone saying “I have something to tell you…oh, never mind!”

Great line, “In short, the latter part of the work is much better or rather less bad than is the beginning, although the whole, when compared with the works of to-day, rather excites laughter than pleasure or admiration” (p 56).

Reason read: October is Art Appreciation month.

Author fact: According to the first volume of Lives of the Painters, Giorgio Vasari was born at Arezzo in 1511 and died in Florence in 1574. It blows my mind I am reading the words of someone who died over 400 years ago.

Book trivia: Lives of the Painters has four volumes. To be honest I cannot imagine reading all four volumes!

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ciao, Italia” (p 46).

Persian Boy

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Renault, Mary. The Persian Boy. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

Mary Renault continues the story of Alexander the Great (the first book was Fire From Heaven) in The Persian Boy. When we catch up with Alexander it has been six years. He is now 26 years old. His prowess as a conqueror cannot be questioned, as it was covered in Fire From Heaven, so Renault chooses to explore Alexander’s sensual side as he forges a relationship with slave-boy Bagoas. As a eunuch Bagoas is used to being a plaything for royalty. His beauty is beyond compare and when Alexander is presented with Bagoas as a peace offering he cannot refuse. Despite once serving Alexander’s Persian enemy Bagoas decides to be loyal to Alexander and make Alexander love him. What follows is the classic struggle of Persian versus Macedonian cultures as Bagoas assumes the narrative.

Interesting quotes, “There are eunuchs who become women, and those who do not; we are something by ourselves and must make of it what we can” (p 40).

Reason read: to continue the story of Alexander the Great that was started in September.

Author fact: Mary Renault had a lifelong partner named Julie Mullard (more info here).

Book trivia: Renault strays from third person narrative and tells Alexander’s story through the first person narrative of Bagoas, his companion and lover.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Classical World” (p 59).