Volcano

gr4c5Leave a comment

Hongo, Garrett. Volcano: a Memoir of Hawaii. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

I didn’t know what to expect when I first picked up Volcano. For starters I thought it would be about a volcano. You know, the thing that spouts out molten hot lava; the thing that ultimately created the islands of Hawaii? I had no idea there is a tiny town called Volcano just below the summit of Kilauea.
Like West of Then by Tara Bray Smith, Volcano is about the author’s search for something. Interestingly enough, both authors suffer from abandonment issues and both return to Hawaii for resolution. While Smith’s search is more tangible (she is looking for her actual mother), Hongo’s is more spiritual. He has ghosts in the form of memories he must confront in the mists of Hilo. Like Smith’s story, Hongo’s is meandering and seemingly without plot or purpose. However, one of the magical elements to Hongo’s book is it is obvious he is a poet. His writing is lyrical and fairly dances off the page. He doesn’t have to have character, drama or even plot for his writing to be beautiful and entertaining.

Lines that were poetic enough to move me: “I walked, vaguely supplicant, through the aisles and from shelf to shelf, weighing memory against need…” (p 46), and “I wanted an encounter, an embrace or a showdown with the past” (p 83).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Hawaii: memoirs” (p 94).

West of Then

gr4c5Leave a comment

Smith, Tara Bray. West of Then: a Mother, a Daughter, and a Journey Past Paradise. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Tara Bray Smith’s story is haunting. Her childhood and subsequent adult relationship with her mother is tragic. What unfolds before you is a young woman’s story about an almost always drug-addicted and sometimes homeless mother who was constantly abandoning her children. Karen had four children with four different men. Luckily for her second oldest, Tara grew up with some sort of stability with her pot-smoking father and his second wife, Debbie. Tara spends most of the book looking and finding and looking again for her mother. What is especially hard to take is that after you have gotten through the 319 pages you realize nothing has really changed. I am not ruining the end of the story by saying nothing gets resolved. There is no ending. Interspersed are stories of Hawaii, past and present, cultural and historical. It’s this writing that makes the entire book come alive.

As an aside – I don’t know if this was intentional or not but Bray does a good job of making her mother out to be an absolute whore and not in the literal sense but in the derogatory sense. She subtly names no less than 14 different men Karen was having some sort of revolving door romantic relationship with throughout the book. Neil, Ron, Owen, Kirk, Eric, Stan, Terry, Ray…and so on. I found it distracting.
The drawbacks to reading a book with no set chronological order or apparent plot is it is really easy to lose your place. I don’t use bookmarks because usually, I can remember what’s going on in the story enough to pick up where I left off. With the chronology as jumbled as it was I found the search for her mother disorientating. Maybe that was the point.

Lines I liked: “He has his studies; I have my missing mother” (p 117) and “The desire for something sweet makes you stupid” (p 243).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Hawaii: memoirs” (p 94).

May ’12 is…

gr4c5Leave a comment

Hawaii. Hawaii. Hawaii. This is going to sound sick but I am trying to get psyched for an upcoming trip to the islands. Not The Island that I know and love. The Sandwich Islands. Hawaii. Or, more specifically Oahu and Maui. My first time to either. Here are the books that are helping me learn about Hawaiian culture and history:

  1. Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen , Lilioukalani
  2. West of Then by Tara Bray Smith
  3. Six Months in the Sandwich Islands by Isabella Bird
  4. Volcano by Garrett Hongo
  5. Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl (don’t you just love his name?)

In addition to that (completely unplanned) list I am trying to stick to the reading schedule. That would include

  1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott in honor of May being Eeyore’s birth month (in other words, something sad)
  2. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan in honor of May being Asian American Heritage month,
  3. and last but not least, Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks in honor of May being sex month.

It’s a bit of reading but I think West of Then and Kon-Tiki are going to be really quick reads. Volcano might also be quick…not sure yet.
Oh! Two last books! For the Early Review Program (LibraryThing) – I almost forgot! I have the United States Coast Guard and National Guard by Thomas Ostrom and Letters to Kurt by Eric Erlandson. Both arrived this month. The Coast Guard book is a January book and I think Letters is a February book. So, a little late, but I’ll get to them! Letters to Kurt I’m sure I’ll read in a weekend or less. Hello coffee in bed!
What else to tell you? In less than two weeks I will be walking 60 miles for Just ‘Cause. In less than four weeks I will be saying goodbye to my cousin. What can I say? I can’t wait for June.

April ’12 was…

gr4c5Leave a comment

April 2012 was a few days ago. Yup. Late again. I have been busy and not just with the personal stuff. There has been some Challenge related stuff going on as well. For starters, I needed to put together a plan for implementing the additional 1,698 books Book Lust To Go would add to my Lust Challenge list (damn you, Hub!). I needed to figure out a) how to evenly spread all 1,698 books out over 12 months, b) what reasons would I give to the new assortment of books and, c) find the time to organize it all. I’m not finished, but I think I’ve figured it all out. It looks like each month will have 350-400 books and I’ll be reading in honor of annual festivals and historical events, as well as national holidays. It should be pretty interesting.

But, enough about all that – Here is the list of books read for the month of April:

  • John Barleycorn by Jack London ~ read in honor of Alcohol Awareness month
  • Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser ~ read in honor of Food month
  • The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald ~ read in honor of Humor Month
  • Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier ~ read in honor of the Civil War
  • Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien ~ read to finish the series (confessional: I didn’t get through the whole thing)
  • These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder ~ read to finish the series

What else? I read The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy by David Halberstam (not scheduled) and Longitude by Dava Sobel (also not scheduled). I also read Small Fortune by Rosie Dastgir for LibraryThing and the Early Review Program. I tried to listen to an audio book while I trained for the Just ‘Cause walk but it skipped so bad I gave up and started watching Natalie videos instead.

April was National Poetry Month so I tackled the following poems:

  • “House of Blue Light” by David Kirby
  • “Ithaca” by Constantine Cavafy
  • “Happiness” by Jane Kenyon
  • “America To Me” by Henry Van Dyke
  • “Golden Retrievals” by Mark Doty
  • “Tortures” by Wislawa Szymborska
  • “Unexplorer” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • “True Love” by Wislawa Szymborska

“Unexplorer”

gr4c5Leave a comment

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “The Unexplorer.” Collected Poems.New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960. p 138.

I don’t know how to take this poem. Okay. So it explains why one doesn’t explore; why someone is an UN-explorer. Someone wants to know where a road goes. The answer is to the milk-man’s door. Interesting enough. Blame it all on childhood and your mother, as the therapist would say. Mom tells you something scary and it scars you for life. That would make sense if mother replied with something hideous, something deep and dark and scary. But the milk-man? Why is the milk-man someone to fear? Unless he’s daddy? I don’t get it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers’ Tale in Verse” (p 237).

“True Love”

gr4c5Leave a comment

Szymborska, Wislawa. “True Love.” Poems New and Collected 1957 – 1997. 1998. Trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2000.

I couldn’t help but think of Natalie Merchant singing “Jealousy” when I read this poem for the first time. It sounds spiteful and catty. It could have been written by someone sitting alone on prom night or someone with no one to kiss on New Year’s Eve. That wallflower with the mad-enough-to-spit-nails attitude. It’s sad and snarly. The echo of longing for a relationship is loud and resonating and clear and yet, the poem speaks of true love being a farce, a joke, something he or she cannot possibly believe in.

As an aside…I have been struggling with what to say at my cousin’s burial. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the guy. It’s the love that has me livid. I’m thinking if I had been a little less loving while he was alive this wouldn’t hurt so much NOW. There is truth to not believing in love.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Polish Poetry and Prose” (p 188).

Longitude

gr4c5Leave a comment

Sobel, Dava. Longitude: the True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. New York: Penguin, 1995.

This book interested me on several levels. I was born in the sign of water. I grew up with the Atlantic surrounding me on all possible sides. My father started his career on the ocean in the Coast Guard. I learned about longitude and latitude before I could multiply or divide. The ocean is as essential as air in my life.

In less than 200 pages Sobel answers the “longitude problem” of the eighteenth century. Back in the day, for an ocean bound vessel to lose sight of land was the equivalent of shutting off the solitary light in an otherwise pitch black room. Sailors were literally directionally blind without land. Thousands of lives were lost and millions of dollars of precious cargo were destroyed when ships lost their way and ran aground. It was imperative that a solution for the “longitude problem” be found and quickly. For many scientists they felt the solution lay in the stars above. Astronomy was their answer to the problem. One man, John Harrison, dared to argue that the real answer was a mechanical one in the form of a clock that could keep precise time at sea. In answer to a competition Harrison obsessed for most of his life creating several different versions of his seafaring clock until one in particular proved successful.

Best quote: “The placement of the prime meridian is a purely political decision” 9p 4).

Book Trivia: Longitude was made into a movie starring Jeremy Irons.

Author Fact: Sobel has continued her “longitude” fame with another book on the subject called Illustrated Longitude.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 70).

“Tortures”

gr4c5Leave a comment

Szymborska, Wislawa. “Tortures.” Poems New and Collected 1957 – 1997. 1998. Trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2000.

This was a difficult poem to read because the first few times I read it literally, I imagined feeling specific tortures inflicted on a body: whippings, bones being broken, knuckles being popped…To me it was an admonishment – society changes but our methods of torture remain the same. It’s the mantra “nothing has changed” that haunts the entire tone of the poem. There is a sense of violence behind every word.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Polish Poems and Prose” (p 188).

Small Fortune

gr4c5Leave a comment

Dastgir, Rosie. A Small Fortune. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012.

On the surface A Small Fortune is about a lonely man who obtains an inheritance from a recent divorce. The dilemma is not what Harris should do with the money; there are plenty of family members who all feel entitled to at least a portion of it. First, there is the family back home in Harris’s native Pakistan. Then there is his struggling nephew who can’t find happiness with any employment venture. While she hasn’t asked there is also his fiercely independent and completely Westernized eighteen year old daughter four hours away in London. The real struggle arises when Harris impulsively hands over a majority of the inheritance to the least deserving yet most conniving cousin. When Harris realizes his mistake and then wants the money back he cannot summon the authority to demand its return. Amidst all this turmoil Harris wrangles with starting over as a single parent to a secretive daughter while trying to juggle a new relationship with a woman equally as independent as his daughter. Harris’s entire personality has to undergo a transformation in order for him to cope.

The majority of the time I was reading A Small Fortune I had this nagging thought that wouldn’t shake loose. The main character, Harris, reminded me of someone else in fiction. Someone epic. It bothered me that I couldn’t put my finger on who that other character could be; I couldn’t pin her/him down. So, I started a list of characteristics for Harris: fatherly, over-protective, slightly unlikeable, scheming, paranoid, eager to please, impetuous…And then it dawned on me. Garp. T.S. Garp from The World According to Garp. Dastir’s Harris could be related to Garp, a half-brother of sorts. Throughout A Small Fortune Harris is so wishy-washy I wanted to slap him several times over. The fact that Dastgir was able to create a character that evoked such emotion in me is a testament to her writing ability. Harris really did annoy me that much.

My favorite character was Harris’s daughter, Alia. She hovers between obligatory concern for her father and resentment because he hinders her freedom to be modern. Her independence as a western girl is compromised by his old world culture.

“Ithaca”

gr4c5Leave a comment

Cavafy, Constantine. The Complete Poems of Cavafy. “Ithaca.” Translated by Rae Dalven. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., 1961.

When I first saw the poem name “Ithaca” I thought I would be reading about Ithaca, New York. Silly me.

This was a poem I reread a few times. Not because it was taxing or troublesome, far from it. I just love the admonishment behind the words. It the advice given to someone traveling to Ithaca, Greece. The message is pretty simple and one we have heard before – it’s not the destination, but the journey. The unknown adviser is asking for the journey to be important. “But do not hurry the voyage at all” (p 36). Savor the way as you go.

Author Fact: Cavafy’s full name was Constantine Petrou Photiades Cavafy. How’s that for a nice Alexandrian name? Another interesting fact (according to Wikipedia) is that he was born and died on the same day, April 29th.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers’ Tales in Verse” (p 237).

Fast Food Nation

gr4c5Leave a comment

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001.

When I first realized Fast Food Nation was on my Lust list I had but one burning question. I wondered if my own personal opinions about fast food establishments would be altered after reading Schlosser’s book. As a rule I don’t eat fast food, so if the answer ending up being yes, how then would my opinions be altered? Was it possible I would turn against my previous dietary sensibilities and try a Big Mac? I will readily admit I am two-faced and biased when it comes to “fast” food. Subway and Chipotles are considered “fast” establishments and yet I don’t put them in the same swamp as McD, BK or Wendy. I guess that’s because you can’t technically drive through Subway or Chipotle. You can’t order and eat without ever getting out of your car the way you can with the clown, the king and the kid.

From the very first chapter of Fast Food Nation I felt as though I had been slapped upside the head with a whole bunch of really disturbing facts about the country in which I reside. Schlosser doesn’t leave a single aspect of the fast food industry untouched or without scrutiny. To use a bad pun, he devours it all and then spits it back out. At us. From the historical humble beginnings of the hot dog cart to the corporate conglomerates of tomorrow Schlosser covers it all. It’s fascinating and yet distracting. Fast food Nation took too long to read because I kept rereading passages out loud to anyone who would listen.

Best thing I learned: Malling is a verb. To mall is to cover this great nation of ours with shopping malls. What’s that Natalie Merchant lyric about sprawling concrete? You get the point.

Wake up moments: “The whole experience if buying fast food has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is not taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a read light” (p 3). Obviously Mr Schlosser hasn’t driven in my neck of the woods. Who stops for a red light?
Another wake up moment from the same page, “A nation’s diet can be more revealing than its art or literature” (p 3).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Guilt Inducing Books” (p 112). Read in April because April is national food month.

“Golden Retrievals”

gr4c5Leave a comment

Doty, Mark. “Golden Retrievals.” Sweet Machine: Poems. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.

This is such a great poem to read out loud. Read it to a child in a really funny voice and watch him laugh with his imagination running wild. It’s not hard to see the golden retriever waiting for the ball to be thrown, eyes watching his master anxiously. Short attention span: the breeze, another animal, his owner’s distracted mood. Everything captivates and yet, he’s still waiting to play fetch. Love it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Great Dogs in Fiction” (p 105).

These Happy Golden Years

gr4c5Leave a comment

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. These Happy Golden Years. New York: HarperTrophy, 1971.

When we meet up with Laura again she is fifteen years old and off to teach school at the Brewster settlement, twelve miles away. This is a period of great confusion for her. On the one hand, she is still a child, wanting to go to school to learn and to be with friends. On the other hand, she is a young adult, wanting to teach school to earn money for her family. Mary is away at a school for the blind and needs help with tuition. As she says, “only yesterday she was a schoolgirl; now she was a schoolteacher” (p 1). During this time Laura’s fashion sense is becoming more adult with floor-length dresses and fancy hats. She takes up sewing on Saturdays to earn money for new clothes. She is starting the receive the attention of Almanzo Wilder as well. While this attention is, at first, unsettling to Laura she begins to look forward to his cutter (winter) and buggy (summer) rides. Soon they are courting under the guise of taming wild horses, but I don’t think I will be spoiling anything to admit their inevitable engagement seemed sudden and uneventful to me.
Probably the most interesting part of the story was when Laura was negotiating her wedding vows with Almanzo. She doesn’t want the ceremony to include the word “obey” in it. Almanzo is fine with that but when Laura learns the reverend also feels strongly about not including the vow of “obey” she is shocked. Yet she is not a feminist. She doesn’t want the privileged of voting. Interesting.

This is the last book in the “Little House” series for my challenge. It has been a pleasure to reread these classics and I thank Nancy Pearl for bringing them back to me.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 107).

Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy

gr4c5Leave a comment

Halberstam, David. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy. New York: Random House, 1968.

In a nutshell, Unfinished Odyssey is the campaign story of Robert Kennedy. Halberstam follows Kennedy’s entire campaign from his beginning reluctance to run to his fateful ending assassination. Along the way Halberstam paints an interesting picture of the attitudes towards the U.S.’s involvement with the Vietnam war. Those in power who felt the U.S. needed to become more involved were the hawks while those in favor of pulling out were the doves. Kennedy was a dove. He delves into the lives of the supporters and the detractors starting with Lyndon Johnson and ending with Herbert Humphrey.

Some issues with Unfinished Odyssey: the chronology is scattered and hard to follow from time to time. Then again, I often find flashbacks in nonfiction are often clunky. Also, I disagreed with Halberstam’s ending. Everyone (myself included) expects a story about Robert Kennedy to include his murder. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy is no different. Everyone expects it to include the bitter end. Even if the funeral and country’s reaction to Kennedy’s death isn’t part of the story surely the murder would be. Maybe Halberstam was thinking everyone knows the end of the story, so why include it? It is, after all, called the unfinished odyssey.

Favorite line (partial): “…a few eggheads here and there…” (p 10) and “Kennedy was still playing Hamlet on whether or not to run” (p 18).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss.” (p 113).

“America To Me”

gr4c5Leave a comment

Van Dyke, Henry. “America To Me. ” The Poems of Henry Van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911. p 167 – 168.

“America To Me” is begging to be set to music. In my mind it has all the makings of a really great patriotic song, complete with cheerful verse and enthusiastic chorus. It is the perfect post-9/11 anthem; a rally of sorts. It’s simple in its message: a traveling individual has grown tired of the Old Country. He (or she) has seen enough of France, Italy and England. It is simply time to go home, back to young America. After all, as Van Dyke has quoted Frank Baum, “there is no place like home.”

Favorite line, “I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea…” (p 168).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers Tales in Verse” (p 237). Read in April for poetry month.