Category: Book Reviews

Immortality

gr4c5Leave a comment

Kundera, Milan. Immortality. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classic, 1999.

This was an odd book that I have to admit I gave up on. Similar to other books with magical realism, Immortality was a book I had little patience for.

It starts off beautifully. The narrator is poolside, watching an older woman make a playful, girlish, and even flirty gesture to her swim instructor as she is leaving. Watching her act so young, so unaware of her actual age prompts the narrator to ponder ageism and what it would mean to be truly ageless. From there the novel meanders through fact and fiction, weaving real historical figures like Goethe and Hemingway with fictional ones like the woman from the pool, Agnes. Kundera’s writing breaks boundaries because the style is a conversation with the reader, a philosophical journey through topics like relationships, sex and of course, immortality.

Author Fact: Kundera is a Czechoslovakian writer who was stripped of his citizenship in 1979 after moving to France. He became a french citizen a few years later.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter simply called “Magical Realism” (p 148).

Canterbury Tales

gr4c5Leave a comment

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

The premise behind Chaucer’s tale is really quite simple: out of a group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury Cathedral, who can tell the best tale? Whoever wins gets a free meal back at the Tabard Inn at the end of the journey. Most of the stories center around three themes, religion, fidelity and social class. The entire story is an example of framing a story within a story, or in the case of Canterbury Tales stories within one story.

This quote had me scratching my head, “The precise, unerring delicately emphatic characterization for which the Canterbury Tales is so famous are no more extraordinary than Chaucer’s utter mastery of English rhythms and his effortless versification” (back cover). Whatever. This doesn’t tell me anything, anything at all, about the plot between the pages.

Best quote is right from the beginning, “He may nat wepe, althogh hym soor smerte” (p 7). Awesome.

Book Trivia: there are some scholars out there who think Chaucer wasn’t finished with The Canterbury Tales and that some of the tales are incomplete.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging up the Past Through Fiction” (p 79). Interestingly enough, this didn’t need to be on the list. Pearl was mentioning it as the inspiration for another book. I am starting to call these mentions “off topic” or “not the point.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God

gr4c5Leave a comment

Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

Janie Crawford is a woman on a mission to find love. Married off by her grandmother at a very young age, Janie is convinced marriage means love. When that isn’t the case she moves on to be the wife of Joe Starks who views her as nothing more than eye candy, a trophy to hang off his arm. After the death of Joe, Janie meets a younger man who goes by the name Tea Cake. Tea Cake convinces her to leave town with him and run off to the Everglades. Convinced she has found love at last Janie bends her personality to suit the new relationship she has entered. One of the most dramatic aspects of Their Eyes Were Watching God is that it does not have the ending one would expect. However, it is a pleasure to wade through the thick dialect and watch Janie grow.

Book Trivia: Their Eyes Were Watching was not an immediate success. At first it was highly criticized for not painting the “true” picture of southern black culture in the 1930s. Many argued it didn’t “protest” their conditions enough. It was only after other prominent individuals like Alice Walker initially, and later, Oprah Winfrey, embraced it did others sit up and take notice. It has been perpetually in print since 1978.

Author Fact: Hurston was at one time in her life a librarian.

Favorite lines: “An envious heart makes a treacherous ear” (p 5). “There are years that ask questions and years that answer” (p 20). I could have found a hundred other golden nuggets to mention…

Interesting: According to the introduction, in 1971 Alice Walker was teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God at Wellesley when she found out Zora Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave. She took it upon herself to find Hurston’s final resting place to put a marker on it.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Florida Fiction” (p 89). Yup.

Grain of Wheat

gr4c5Leave a comment

Thiong’o,  Ngugi Wa.  A Grain of Wheat. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1968.

A Grain of Wheat takes place during Kenya’s struggle for independence from British rule in the 1950s. It centers around four central African characters and one British administrator. The central theme of the story is deceit both on a national and personal level. Two examples:
Ngugi’s main character is Mugo, a quiet Kenyan who is sent to the concentration camps. He is a complex, yet human character in that he is seen as a hero in the concentration camps but once released he sides with the British as a traitor.  Another strong character of A Grain of Wheat is Gikonya, another detainee from the concentration camp who is released early only to find that his wife has been unfaithful and has a child with another man.

Favorite quote: “Gikonyo greedily sucked sour pleasure from this reflection on which he saw as a terrible revelation. To live and die alone was the ultimate truth” (p 117).

Author fact: Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was detained for one year in a Kenyan prison in 1979.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “African Literature in English” (p 16). Oddity: Pearl indexed the author as James Ngugi (baptism name) but in the text uses his formal African name.

Dr. Zhivago

gr4c5Leave a comment

Pasternak, Boris. Dr. Zhivago. New York: Pantheon, 1997.

At the heart of Dr Zhivago is a simple love story. The only problem is the love story involves the lives of more than just two people. Loyalty struggles with passion on a regular basis throughout the entire plot. The central thread of the story is these romantic relationships and how far people will go, literally and figuratively, to be together. Yuri Zhivago is married to someone he considers more of a friend but falls in love with the beautiful Larissa (Lara). Lara is married to a World War I soldier and when he goes missing she enters the war as a nurse to look for him. Surrounding these romantic struggles is the political unrest of Russia. Dr. Zhivago is laden with the events of the February and October Revolutions, the Russian Civil War and World War I. Lenin’s Bolsheviks, socialism, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dictate the plot and almost bury it beneath the political rhetoric.

Book Trivia: One of the most fascinating things about Dr. Zhivago is how it’s publication, exposure and subsequent recognition came about. Written at a time of political unrest in the Soviet Union it had to be smuggled to Italy where it was published in both Italian and Russian. Even after Pasternak was awarded the Noble Prize for literature he was unable to accept the award for fear of exile from his beloved country.

Author’s son Fact: When Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature he was forced to decline acceptance of the award. Years after his death his son was allowed to travel to Sweden to collect it.

Confession: I saw this as a movie way before I read the book. I remember two things from the movie: everything was very white and looked really cold and Julie Christie was a Barbie doll.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Russian Heavies” (p 210).

Flags of Our Fathers

gr4c5Leave a comment

Bradley, James. Flags of Our Fathers. New York: Bantam, 2000.

The reading of Flags of Our Fathers was very timely. February 19th marked the anniversary of the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima, Japan. The first word that comes to mind when I think about Flags of our Fathers is respect. This was a book written with the utmost respect, not only for the author’s own father, but for the other five men responsible for raising the flag on Japan’s Iwo Jima. Everyone knows the photograph born of that historical event but not many can name the six men involved. In fact, even fewer would guess there were six men there. Unless you scrutinize the photograph, at first glance, there are only four. James Bradley, with the help of Ron Powers, brings to life all six men. He  brings them out of historical obscurity and into present-day focus.

Favorite lines (if there can be such things in a book about war): “The fatigued boys knew what lay in store when the winter sun rose again” (p 177). I liked this line for it’s sense of foreboding.
“And then the heroes of the day began literally stand up and be counted” (p 183). This sentence sounds so benign, so harmless on its own.
“On this night, the madman in the haunted house unleashed all his ghouls” (p 191). Again, such a simple sentence but the horror behind it is unimaginable.

Book Trivia: Clint Eastwood directed the movie version of Flags of Our Fathers in 2006.

Author Fact: James Bradley traveled to Iwo Jima with his mother and siblings to the very spot where his father helped raise the American flag.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter simply called “World War II Nonfiction” (p 254).

March ’12 is…

gr4c5Leave a comment

What is March 2012 all about? Hard to say . Or as they say on Monhegan, hard tellin’ not knowin’. Fitting I suppose for a reading project still in limbo. I’m still reading books off my own shelves and borrowing books from my own library. To those not in the know that sounds strange, but there you have it.

Here are the books I *think* I’ll be reading in March:

  • A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (baptized James Ngugi) ~ in honor of March being African Writers Month
  • Little Town in the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder ~ in honor of the Dakotas (series was started in January)
  • Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101 Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest by Stephen Ambrose ~ in honor of March 4th being “Hug a GI Day.” Since I don’t have a GI to hug, I’ll hug a book about World War II.
  • Lord of the Rings: Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien ~ in honor of New Years (series was started in January)
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ~ in honor of March being National Literature month.

For the Early Review program for LibraryThing – I never got the February book so we’ll see if it comes in March…Incidentally, I just checked the LibraryThing website and I was awarded a March book as well. Now the race is on to see which book makes it here first.

Far Cry From Kensington

gr4c5Leave a comment

Spark, Muriel. A Far Cry From Kensington.

Can I just tell you how much I loved, loved, loved listening to this audio book? There were times when I nearly fell off New Guinea laughing so hard. By far, the best character of the lot was Agnes (Nancy) Hawkins. She was hysterical. Yes, she is the main character, but yes, she was that funny.

Mrs. Hawkins is the glorious and very witty narrator of A Far Cry From Kensington. Now decades older and living in Italy, Mrs. Hawkins reminisces with the reader about her life as a young war widow working in publishing and living in a rooming house in South Kensington, England. She recounts, with great hilarity to the reader, a mystery surrounding one of her former housemates, a Polish dressmaker by the name of Wanda. Wanda is being threatened, ultimately blackmailed, by someone sending anonymous letters. Mrs. Hawkins, being one of such confidence and admiration, is immediately called to consult on the issue. The plot thickens when Wanda subsequently commits suicide. I do not want to give more of the plot away but this was the first time I had ever heard of radionics or the phrase, “pisseur de copie.”

 

Because I listened to this as an audio book I don’t have any favorite lines to quote verbatim, but I can reference a couple of funny moments. Both quotes relate to advice Mrs. Hawkins is parsing out to her her friends and coworkers – first, in order to concentrate you need a cat. A cat that will lay all over your important papers. Second, when you don’t have sex you feel “spooky” whatever that means!

Author fact: Muriel Spark married a man much like the soldier she describes in A Far Cry From Kensington. I can’t help thinking maybe a little autobiography seeped into the story?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust twice. First in the chapter called “My Own Private Dui: Books I Reread When I’m Feeling Blue (p 166) and again in “100 Good Reads: Decade by Decade (1980)” (p 179).

Blues Dancing

gr4c5Leave a comment

McKinney-Whetstone, Diane. Blues Dancing: a Novel. New York: William Morrow and Co, Inc. 1999.

We had a long weekend to laze around and do nothing so I decided to spend part of that time lazing around with a really easy book to read. Indeed, I read it over the course of three days.

To say that the plot of Blues Dancing simple doesn’t do McKinney-Whetstone’s novel justice. The plot is pretty straightforward but the substance of it is, at times, difficult to read. At the center of the story is Verdi. We bounce between her naive life as a young college student and, twenty years later, her adult life as a professional in the field of education. Young Verdi is dating Johnson. Mature Verdi is dating Rowe. Johnson is a college student one year her senior while Rowe is a college professor twenty years older…guess where they met? Throughout the plot Verdi’s over-the-top, willing to do anything passion for Johnson is revealed and her reasons for being with stoic, stodgy, stick-in-the-mud Rowe twenty years later are at best, murky. It isn’t until the past and present collide that it all makes sense. Along the journey we learn that Johnson introduced Verdi to heroin and being so eager to love Johnson allowed Verdi to love the drug even more. Rowe’s presence during this time is shadowy, progressively coming more into focus.

Author Fact: Diane McKinney-Whetstone won the American Library Association’s Black Caucus Award for Fiction twice, once in 2005 and again in 2009.

Book Trivia: There was a lot of music in Blues Dancing (beyond the title of the book). Artists like Johnny Hartman, Louis Armstrong, Roberta Flack, The Temptations, and Sarah Vaughn perform within the pages.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “African American: She say” (p 12).

Fellowship of the Ring

gr4c5Leave a comment

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. “The Fellowship of the Ring.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I kept confusing this information whenever someone would ask me what I was reading. I kept saying “Lord of the Rings” when in fact I meant “Fellowship of the Ring.” I guess I was right to say “Lord of the Rings” because technically I AM reading a part of LOTR, but it’s not entirely accurate. Oh well. The devil is in the details as they say.

Anyway, on with the review:
A deadly ring, first acquired by the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, has been passed along to Biblo’s cousin, Frodo. With this ring comes a request to destroy it at the Cracks of Doom, the one and only place it can be destroyed. It’s that evil. Frodo cannot refuse this request and must make the terrible journey across Middle-Earth through rough and dangerous enemy territory. He takes along a band of hobbits and enlists the help of elves, dwarves and, of course, Gandalf, the wizard.

I love the detailed descriptions Tolkien used to describe the landscape. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: “Ragged clouds were hurrying overhead, dark and low” (p 272).

BookLust Twist: Mentioned twice in Book Lust. First, in “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade (1950s)” (p 177), and again in “Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror” (p 215). Of course.

Personal History

gr4c5Leave a comment

Graham, Katharine. A Personal History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Even though I categorized this as an autobiography it is not a traditional “my life” story. Instead, it is Katharine Graham’s personal history with The Washington Post first and foremost. She begins with a brief overview of how her parents met, when and where she was born, and her college years. This sets the stage for her increased involvement with the paper. From the time she was 16 years old, when her father bought the failing Washington Post at auction, until the end of her role as chairman of the board in 1991, 58 years of Graham’s life was immersed in making the paper a success. Raised without a strong mother-figure or adolescent role models Katharine Graham was a trendsetter for women in business. For her era, her rise to power was nothing short of remarkable. But, in addition what makes Personal History such a fascinating read is Graham’s unflinching view of her world. She does not hide the fact she had a strained and difficult relationship with her absentee mother. Her voice drips with contempt when she recounts her mother’s failed attempts at guidance in life. Graham addresses her husband’s mental illness and subsequent suicide in a matter of fact manner. She does not sugar coat the difficulties she faced being a woman of influence in a world traditionally reserved for the man of the house. Despite being born into privilege Graham exemplified the meaning of hard work and perseverance.

Favorite quote (but only because you can just hear the disdain in Graham’s voice as she describes her mother), “…she could often be found reclining with a book in her hand” (p 31).

Book Trivia: Personal History won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Author Fact: Katharine Graham died in 2001 and is buried in one of my favorite cemeteries, Oak Hill, in Washington D.C.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Fourth Estate” (p 92).

Mornings on Horseback

gr4c5Leave a comment

McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: the Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. Narrated by Edward Hermann. New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2003.

I am really, really glad I chose this as an audio book. I don’t think I would have had the patience for an out and out page turning book. Don’t get me wrong. The writing is amazing. David McCullough can hold your attention like no other. The story in itself is extremely detailed and reads like a pool liner breaking – slow and trickling at first but by the end gushing out of control. It follows the lives of not just Theodore Roosevelt (the man we think of as President) but also the lives of his parents, siblings, and other important figures in his life. Indeed, the building up of Theodore Roosevelt’s childhood with his family is meticulous and yet his adult, political years and presidency are hardly touched upon with the same amount of detail. Those years are mentioned almost as an afterthought in the wrap-up.
What Mornings on Horseback is really good at is describing a culture; what it means to born into privilege. It is also really good at painting the complete picture of the Roosevelt clan from a genealogical perspective. The reader is immersed in the lives of everyone and not just the future president of the United States. From a listener standpoint I enjoyed every word.

Shocking moments: Theodore Roosevelt could be a violent man. According to McCullough Roosevelt once shot and killed a dog running beside his horse. Another shocking moment – learning TR lost his dear mother on Valentine’s Day and later that same day his wife (all of 22 years old) died as well. So sad!

I think the title of this book is misleading. Theodore Roosevelt was born Theodore Roosevelt so he didn’t become his namesake. I think it would have been more appropriate to say “…the unique child who became president.” Yes, Theodore had many nicknames (Teedee as a child) but he didn’t become Theodore Roosevelt.

Book Trivia: Mornings on Horseback won a National Book Award in 1982.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Presidential Biographies” (p 192), and again in “What a (Natural) Disaster (p 242). Note: There are no substantial natural disasters in Mornings on Horseback.

February ’12 is…

gr4c5Leave a comment

I feel like I should be singing that diet song that Jennifer Hudson sings – you know the one about it being a new day, a new dawn or a new whatever? Every February I see a chance to refresh, renew, in other words start the fukc over. Think New Years resolutions only a month late. But. But! But, I have my reasons. I was born in the month of February so to me, this month IS my new year. I shouldn’t be here so every year that I am is like starting over. But, enough about all that. Here are the books:

  • Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban in honor of Hoban’s birth month. I plan to read this on a smoke break. LOL
  • Personal History by Katharine Graham in honor of February being Journalism month.
  • Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer in honor of February being a big month for history.
  • Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien to continue the Lord of the Rings series that I started with The Hobbit last month.

I did get notification that I got an Early Review book from LibraryThing. That’s cool. What’s even cooler is that it’s a book about the Coast Guard. Having just come from an very, very classy veteran’s (air force) funeral for my uncle I am interested to explore the history of my father’s military branch.

Edited to make a correction: I misspelled Mrs. Graham’s first name as Katherine. My apologies.

Bread and Jam for Frances

gr4c5Leave a comment

Hoban, Russell. Bread and Jam for Frances. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.

Okay. A confession first and foremost. I am fortunate enough to work in a library. While it’s an academic I often can find books for the Book Lust Challenge in our collection. Since we have an Early Childhood reading program that means we have most of Russell Hoban’s books as well; specifically his ‘Frances’ series. Normally it isn’t big deal to grab a children’s book off the shelf, read it at lunch and return it without fanfare. Not so this time. Our copy of Bread and Jam for Frances is over-sized which means walking around with it isn’t as inconspicuous as I would have liked. You can’t exactly slip out from the stacks with a 2′ x 1′ book in your hand without being noticed. It’s not like I can hold it up and announce I’m reading War and Peace, the large print version.

Unlike an earlier Hoban review (Bedtime for Frances) I enjoyed rereading this childhood favorite, Bread and Jam for Frances. This time around I identified with wanting too much of a good thing. Frances the Badger only wants to eat bread and jam. Morning, noon, and night it’s the only meal she will stomach. This time when her parents give in to her every whim the lesson is soon learned. You can have too much of a good thing. I feel the same way about Chipotle restaurant being in my back yard. When it was all the way across the country and harder to get to going there was a treat. Like Christmas. Having the big burritos I obsess over just down the road diminishes their specialness, their chocolate-cakeness, if you will. Frances learns this the hard way, too. While her family is enjoying such delicacies as veal Frances is clearly missing out only she doesn’t know it until the repetition of bread and jam finally gets to her. Soon she too is enjoying lobster salad sandwiches like the rest of her family.

Cute moment in the book: Frances questioning her food: “string” bean, for one. I wished she would have asked her parents where veal comes from. I would have loved their answer to that!

Today is my birthday and it seemed more than appropriate to read something from my childhood.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Russell Hoban: Too Good To Miss” (p 113). PS ~ Only two more books to read from this chapter of More Book Lust.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

gr4c5Leave a comment

Max, Tucker. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. New York: Kensington, 2009.

If there really is a Hell down? there, those fated to that destination will have this book to read, over and over again. Seriously. How can I describe this thing? Honestly, in one sentence, it’s the escapades of a guy in his early 20s. Big deal. That’s it. Only this guy happens to be an alcoholic womanizer with money to burn and a posse like-minded friends to have tag along. The book is nothing more than a series of drunk-to-excess adventures hooking up with ditzy, drunk, trashy women. Sex described in minute detail. Reading it is like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, only each story gets progressively worse and worse. Every misadventure is more and more exaggerated until you start to question the author’s grip on reality. Drink to the point of puking. Have outrageous sex with big chested blondes. Repeat. The most stupefying thing about this book is that not only was it born out of conquest-written blogs, but it was so popular that it was made into a movie. People love it (the blog, the book, the movie). Women (supposedly) throw themselves at Max and his crew at every chance they get. The more vile he is the more people adore him. His biggest dilemma used to be ‘which woman do I fukc?’ until he realized it didn’t matter. Both would have him.
I admit, there were parts of the book I giggled about. There were certain lines I had to reread because they were funny. Max does have a sense of humor. But, he can’t write. I spent more time cringing at the grammatical errors and implausible situations than anything else. Then, there is that repetition I mentioned before. I ended up skimming or even completely skipping parts if I thought they sounded too familiar (which ended up being half the book). The best thing about I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is that I will be selling it back to the bookstore and getting my money back.