A Separate Peace

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Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1959.

I freaking love this book! I have always compared Gene’s preparatory boarding school to the one I attended when I was of the same age. It wasn’t just that both schools are New England based and have similar landscapes. Knowles describes the culture of a private school set in the middle of a northeastern community really, really well.  The imposing brick and ivy buildings. The sprawling athletic fields. The massive trees that line the campus, the air of academia…I could go on.

I first read this book when I was 14. Fresh meat in a Freshman English class. We read A Separate Peace as an introduction to literature. Funny how it’s the only book I remember in detail from the course. It’s the only book I don’t mind rereading on a regular basis. Mr. Hill guided us through what we were supposed to get out of it. I know because all the important parts are underlined. Four years later and Mr. Hill was still having his students read the same book. I know because my sister used my copy (why buy a new one?) and had highlighted the all same sections. I’ve never forgotten those sections, especially the words, “I jounced the limb.” I. Jounced. The. Limb. To this day it is the most profound confession of wrongdoing I have ever read. Nothing else compares.

Okay. So. To review the book- A Separate Peace is about a friendship between two opposites. Gene is smart, Phineas is athletic. Gene is sensitive, Phineas is carefree. Gene is reserved and cautious, Phineas is bold and daring. The one thing they have in common is being roommates at Devon, a prep school for boys. Throughout the entire story Gene is constantly in a mental tug-of-war with his feelings towards Finny. He is resentful of the way everything comes so easily to his athletic roommate (like when Phineas broke a long standing swimming record without even trying). It’s as if Gene has to forcefully remind himself everyday they are best of friends. He tags along, a willing participant in Finny’s daily adventures but he has to convince himself he is having fun. When Finny starts a secret society where members must jump from a tree into a river on school property Gene goes along with that as well, hating each and every jump. But, when Phineas falls out of the tree, missing the river completely things get complicated. Did Gene make his best friend and roommate fall? The psychological struggle of doubt that ensues is the central theme of the entire story.

Favorite lines (bear with me for there are a few), “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even death by violence” (p 6), “Everyone has a moment in history which belongs to him” (p 32) and ” ‘the only real swimming is in the ocean’ ” (p 37).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Boys Coming of Age” (p 45).

Undaunted Courage

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Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

This is not your ordinary retelling of the Lewis and Clark expedition. This is not the regular, run of the mill, same old story. Undaunted Courage is a different perspective of the story often told in the history books. While elements of the expedition are rehashed like interactions with the Native Americans, obstacles relating to weather, terrain and health, and supply management (how could they not?) Ambrose focuses mostly on the collaboration between Commander in Chief Jefferson and Captain Lewis. He tries to get inside the head of Meriwether Lewis to portray thoughts and feelings beyond what was written in the surviving journals and notes, thus making the text more conversational in tone. Because President Jefferson considered the expedition to be Lewis’s gig Clark is mentioned where necessary and never becomes a focal point of the story. To make sure the reader is completely aware this is a Lewis story Ambrose continues it beyond the famous expedition and details Lewis’s devastating suicide.

Favorite lines, “Lewis took his advice and became a great hiker, with feet as tough ass his butt” (p 30), “It was always cold, often brutally cold, sometimes so cold a man’s penis would freeze if he wasn’t quick about it” (p 191), and a startling observation about Lewis, “My guess is that he was manic-depressive” (p 312).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 137).

Meaning of Everything

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Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

I suppose since Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything serves as a follow-up to The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary I should link to the review of The Professor…here.

I hate to admit this, but I didn’t care for The Meaning of Everything. Okay, while I’m being honest I’ll go for broke – I didn’t get beyond page 19. There. I said it. I was bored. As a person deeply connected to reading you would think I would be intimate with words, especially the origin of words. I mean, words form sentences and sentences form paragraphs and paragraphs form pages and pages fill books, right? And books are what it’s all about, right? No. I guess the bottom line is I don’t care about where the word came from. The word, when it stands alone, is boring. How sad is that? I need words strung together into sentences. Those sentences need to be woven together to ultimately make a story interesting. This, however, was not.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).

Zarafa

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Allin, Michael. Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris. New York: Walker and Company, 1998.

I read this in honor of Napoleon being born in the month of August and even though Zarafa wasn’t exactly about Napoleon I was delighted by the tidbits of information that involved him: did you know the camel Napoleon rode while in Cairo was stuffed and put on display in a museum? (p 27) and Napoleon was such a big fan of books that he arranged for every guest at a banquet to receive translated copies of the Koran and Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (p 31)? Interesting. But probably the best story was about Napoleon’s reading habits while on the march. He would tear out the pages of a book, one by one, after he had read them – tossing them back to the soldiers behind him. The soldiers in turn would read the torn-out pages and the pass them back until the entire company had read the same book (p 32).

Zarafa is the story of a giraffe’s remarkable journey from Egypt to Paris. Charles X of France was presented with a young female giraffe as a gift (and political strategy) from the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. I can only imagine what the people of 1845 France thought of this unusual gift. Michael Allin not only sets out to describe this giraffe’s amazing two and a half year journey but provide the political, economic and historical backdrop for the trip. What makes Allin’s account so enjoyable is his ability to make the supporting subject matter interesting. He gives Zarafa a personality, allowing for the humanization of her traits with such descriptors as “aloof dignity” and “orphaned.” This humanizing made it difficult to read the details of how Zarafa’s mother was murdered and how her pelt, teeth, tail, meat, etc became commodities.

Favorite lines, “Under Muhammad Ali, Egypt went from the Stone Age to the Enlightenment in a single personality” (p 37), “the traveler from the south is reluctant to proceed, homesick for immortal things” (p 86).

BookLust Twist: In both Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Wild Life” (p 245). From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Complex Napoleon” (p 53).

Zel

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Napoli, Donna Jo. Zel. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 1996.

Zel is the very creative retelling of the fairy tale classic, ‘Rapunzel.” In Napoli’s version Zel and her mother live in isolation in the Swiss countryside, far away from human contact. Mother does her very best to give Zel everything she needs in the hopes of binding Zel to her forever. As her daughter reaches maturity mother realizes Zel will have an important decision to make, marry and raise a traditional family, or follow in her mother’s footsteps and sell her soul to become a witch. Afraid Zel will make the “wrong” decision Zel’s mother locks Zel in the tower everyone knows from the traditional story. Napoli does a clever job at including small details from the original story including the obsession with lamb’s lettuce.
The very first thing I noticed about this book was its voice structure. Zel is told from the point of view of three different characters: Zel (in third person present), Konrad (in third person present), and Zel’s mother (oddly enough, in first person present). In the beginning I wanted to complain about it, but by the end of the third chapter I found it ingenious. Through Zel’s mother’s thoughts you get the incredibly twisted psychology of love and obsession. The story wouldn’t have been as dark and dangerous if all voices were the same. We needed to see mother’s reasoning for locking Zel away in the tower. This psychological insight allowed us see the story from a different angle and not lean on the original story of Rapunzel.

Favorite lines (all from ‘Mother’), “Such crass people, whose warmth can be bought with a coin” (p 16), “Panic teases my skin” (p 59), and “I live the life I would have have lived if I never had Zel in the first place. Only it is far worse – for I know what I have lost” (p 142).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Fractured Fairy Tales” (p 94).

All-Girl Football Team

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Nordan, Lewis. The All-Girl Football Team. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

At first I didn’t know what to make of the collection of short stories within The All-Girl Football Team. Most of the stories take place in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and Sugar Mecklin is almost always the central character. Sugar is a typical young boy looking for ways to grow up fast in a stranger than strange household. Mama is obsessed with drama and tinged with mental illness and Daddy is an alcoholic with a thing for rock ‘n roll. All of the stories are laced with an off-kilter humor that alternately made me want to laugh and cry. The very first short story called, “Sugar Among the Chickens” tells the tale of eleven year old Sugar literally fishing (with a pole, hook and all) for the chickens in the front yard. Since his parents won’t let him go to the local watering hole chickens are his substitute for fish and fresh kernels of corn serve as bait…However, the third story, “Sugar, the Eunuchs and Big G.B” wasn’t nearly as funny as it was dark. In it Sugar tries to shoot his father. You’ll begin to notice Nordan has a things for guns, especially loaded ones. Probably the hardest story to read was “Wild Dog.” If you have a thing for animals read it with one eye shut tight.

Favorite section, “I threw a cat into the chicken yard…The rooster killed the cat, but it didn’t take a hook. Too bad about the cat. You’re not going to catch a rooster without making a sacrifice or two” (p 9).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, ” Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 173). Here is what I find interesting. “Off-kilter humor that alternately made me want to laugh and cry” was how I described Nordan’s autobiography, Boy With a Loaded Gun. Truth is stranger than fiction.

August ’10 is…

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August is another trip homehome, this time for something happy – a wedding! Actually Kisa and I have two weddings to go to this month. We haven’t planned much of anything else because July was such a crazy busy month. Here’s the lowdown on the books:

  • Zarafa: a giraffe’s true story by Michael Allin ~ in honor of Napoleon being born in August
  • All-Girl Football Team: Stories by Lewis Nordan ~ in honor of Nordan being born in August
  • Zel by Donna Jo Napoli ~ in honor of August being fairy tale month
  • The Meaning of Everything: the story of the Oxford English dictionary by Simon Winchester
  • Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose in honor of the Lewis & Clark expedition

I don’t know if I actually got an Early Review book from LibraryThing this month…

July ’10 was…

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July was the great escape. I was able to go home twice. Each trip was for a very different purpose and as a result each was a very different experience, but I was homehome just the same. Got the tan I didn’t need. July was also a double shot of Natalie music. Again, two very different experience, but amazing nonetheless. Blogs about both shows coming soon. An absolutely fantastic Rebecca Correia show rounded out the month, musically. She performed with Jypsi at the Bennett Farm. A really great night.
All in all, July was so many different things and unfortunately, reading wasn’t a big part of it. I stole time where I could (often in cars driven by other people):

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ~ something small and short to read on the cliffs of Monhegan
  • Firewall by Henning Mankell ~ a murder/police procedural mystery set in Sweden; something to read in the tent!
  • The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt ~ a great book for kids about living by the ocean. Another great book to read on the cliffs of Monhegan.
  • Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume ~ a blast from the past! Read this on the couch…
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference ~ read in honor of job fair month & added because I gave up on the Richard Rhodes book (see below)
  • Love of a Good Woman: Stories by Alice Munro ~ read in honor of Munro’s birth month
  • In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country by Kim Barnes ~ in honor of July being the month Idaho became a state

If you notice I focused on stuff for young adults – kind of like easy listening for the brain.

Attempted, but did not finish:

  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes ~ see, I told you so! I added it back on the list for another time…

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program:

  • My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff ~ a really fun book.
  • What is a Mother (in-law) To Do by Jane Angelich ~ unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this very much.

I guess nine books is a decent “read quota” for the month. At least five of them were extremely easy to read, though…

Love of A Good Woman

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Munro, Alice. The Love of a Good Woman: Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

I have always been attracted to short stories in the summer. For some reason short stories just work better during those months of busy.

The first story, “The Love of a Good Woman, starts off with the exploration of the different adolescent reactions to an apparent accidental drowning of the town’s ophthalmologist. Three boys, with three very different home lives, struggle with the knowledge of this death. Each of them takes a different view on how to tell an adult about the accident. From there the story takes on an unusual twist.
All of the stories explore different human connections. Unfaithful marriages, nursing the dying, landlord and tenant, mother and child…each relationship is riddled with conflict and emotion. Munro captures these relationships so well they seem to be her specialty.

Most unusual line (from ‘Cortes Island’), “My instinct was to lie to her about anything” (p 128).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the very first chapter called, “A…is for Alice” (p 1).

My Formerly Hot Life

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Dolgoff, Stephanie. My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches From Just the Other Side of Young. New York: Ballantine Books, 2010.

Funny, funny, funny. I loved My Formerly Hot Life and not because I am over 40 and formerly had a hot life. I am over 40 but I would call my past “fireside cozy” and leave it at that. Dolgoff, however, claims to have had a hot life. Her book is all about how “formerly” her life has become now that she is over 40 and married with children. She dishes out how reality bites when gravity takes over. Sexy clothes don’t fit anymore, bars are too loud and it takes forever to plan a girls night out. Yet, all that doesn’t matter because you’re too tired to go out anyway.
My Formerly Hot Life is not just all fun and games. There is a serious side to Dolgoff as well, especially when she delves into subjects such as aging parents, the question of having kids at a Formerly age, health issues, and ultimately recognizing your own mortality. These are sections of the book I hope she keeps because as fun as it is to poke fun at sagging breasts and lumpy butts, there is this not-so-fun side to aging that shouldn’t be ignored.

In the Wilderness

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Barnes, Kim. In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country. New York: Anchor Books, 1996.

In the Wilderness is Kim Barnes’s ode to her childhood. Within its pages she gives reason to what made her experiences growing up so different from yours or mine. Deep in the logging camps of Idaho Barnes is confronted with parents who sign on to a religion movement with such fervor that it feels like an overnight shift in ideals. Indeed, Barnes can remember her mother’s pierced ears – here today, gone tomorrow.
Kim Barnes writes with the fluidity of water. Her words flow and paint a seamless picture. Part of the reason why I liked In the Wilderness so much was because Barnes was able to portray her family and home life without compromise. She didn’t shy away from revealing short-comings and failures. She didn’t try to gloss over the hardness of her upbringing or surroundings. At the same time, despite the difficulties, the love and respect she has for her childhood is abundantly clear. Another aspect of the memoir that struck a chord with me was the naked truth about sex and the realities of coming of age. Barnes addresses her first preteen crush as openly as discussing what she wore to school. It is stark and unflinching. In some places I am reminded of  Ariel Moore (do you remember her? She was a Reverend’s daughter from the movie ‘Footloose’ in 1984), and in others I am reminded of myself. I too had a shaving incident very reminiscent of Barnes’s experience and I also hid under the covers later at night listening to rock and roll until the batteries dropped dead.

Favorite lines, “I felt around for grief or sadness to match my mother’s but all that I came to was the sense of something gone from the world” (p 60), and “Guilt had been replaced by a simple and practical aversion to consequences” (p 179).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Idaho: And Nary a Potato to be Seen” (p 122).

Tipping Point

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Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.

Judging by how many people have Tipping Point in their LibraryThing libraries and how many reviews have been written about it I feel as though I am late to the Tipping Party. And I call myself a librarian! Sheesh!

This book was fascinating! Within the first 22 pages I was hooked. I found myself googling different references Gladwell made like the names Darnell McGee and Nushawn Williams. To explain a tipping point Gladwell used some variation of the word ‘yawn’ no less than 25 times. His point was yawning is contagious and by using the word over and over he could get me to yawn. He didn’t, but I understood his point.

Malcolm Gladwell explains the tipping point as epidemics, fast-paced mysterious changes in society such as the sudden interest in a fashion or a sharp decline in crime in an isolated area. It’s a fascinating look at why major shifts in societal influence happen so suddenly and without warning. He explains how a single idea or behavior can influence an entire population. Everything from fashion trends to severe life-threatening epidemics are analyzed. Have you ever wondered where the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon came from? Gladwell explains it and the root of where it came from. You can thank a man named Stanley Milgram.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter, “BBB: Best Business Books” (p 33).

What’s a Mother (in-law) To Do?

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Angelich, Jane. What’s a Mother (in-law) To Do?: 5 Essential Steps to Building a Loving Relationship with Your Son’s New Wife. New York: Howard Books, 2009.

I have to start off by saying this was a May 2009 Early Review book from LibraryThing. That means roughly a year ago I was supposed to read and review this book. I received it in the mail today. Today. June 26th, 2010. I am assuming this has already hit book stores and doesn’t really need my promotion. However, because I respect the program and the review process I am still going to write about it.

My first impression of What’s a Mother (in-law) To Do? was, “wow, this is short!” Indeed, it’s an odd little book. Hardcover yet the size of a paperback and only 130 pages long. As a librarian I automatically went to the back pages to look for a bibliography of sorts. If this is a book that involved research I expected to see a works cited page. There wasn’t one.

In the end I was disappointed by What’s a Mother (in-law) to Do? because I felt like it was something any old MIL could write: all she would have to do is fill 131 pages with a variety of stories from other in-laws (mothers and daughters), sprinkle in a few personal experiences, and add a layer of common sense advice.  What would have been really interesting (and cater to a larger audience) is if Angelich researched building a relationship with your child’s new spouse. In other words, remove the specificity of the subject and make it work for any in-law relationship.

I honestly couldn’t take What’s a Mother (in-law) To Do? seriously. Angelich talks about conducting research but doesn’t provide real sources. She mentions “research conducted” but there’s no weight behind like what kind of research it was or who conducted it. She talks about taking advice from experts but doesn’t elaborate on how she solicited this advice. In short, I didn’t believe her “research.” This is a book I would have picked up and immediately put back, writing it off as “fluff” or pop psychology. I would recommend it for someone with a fair to mediocre relationship with their new daughter-in-law, but not to someone with a strained or terribly difficult one.

Are You There God?

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Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. New York: Dell, 1970.

What woman in her 40s or even 50s doesn’t remember reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret? Seriously. If you were anything like me, all you could focus on were the parts of the story related to sex and the human body. I remember being insanely embarrassed by “the cotton ball” incident. So much so that I didn’t even attempt it myself (although I was tempted, being so flat-chested and all). What I don’t remember is being that anxious to grow up. Maybe because in some ways when I was Margaret’s age I was already way ahead of her when it came to certain life experiences.

Margaret Simon is a well-rounded eleven year old who has just moved from Manhattan to suburbia New Jersey. She quickly makes friends with three other girls her age. All four of them are in a hurry to have breasts, get their periods, and kiss boys. Margaret learns about all these things by keen observation, but what she really wants to know in detail is religion. With her mother’s side of the family being Christian and her father’s side Jewish, Margaret doesn’t know what to be. She has been raised without a religion which her friends think is cool but Margaret disagrees. She is so desperate to fit in she feels she needs to decide on religion to be like everyone else. The irony is every night Margaret talks to “God” about her hopes and fears without really knowing who she’s talking to.

BookLust Twist: From  More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Best For Boys and Girls” (p 21). Yes, I double-dipped from the same chapter in one month.

Okay – since this book was (and still is) so freaking popular I am very surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie…something for the Oxygen or Lifetime channel. An after school special? Think about it – it covers sex, puberty, religion, interfaith marriages, morals, social class distinction…

Making of the Atomic Bomb

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Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

I think I should feel more disappointed that I didn’t get through this book. And yet, I don’t. Quite simply put – I’m just not that into atomic bombs. I think I knew this would happen when I said I didn’t exactly see it as summer reading, despite the clever connection of the first bomb being testing in July…

Here’s what I know – The Making of the Atomic Bomb won a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In other words, people liked it. A lot. I can also tell you it is a thick read. Over 800 pages long (and the pictures don’t count). I got through the first 50 and called it quits. Again, no regrets.

If I had been able to devote more time to The Making of an Atomic Bomb I would have found it to be a portrait of personalities ranging from scientists (Einstein) to political leaders (Roosevelt). I would have found it to be a commentary on the state of world economics (The Great Depression) and warfare (World War II). I would have found it to be scientific and philosophical, psychological and historical. All those things.

Believe it or not, I do have a favorite line from the little I read: “As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woe, the shape of things to come” (p13). This was in the opening paragraph and sets the stage for science to unleash its dangers.
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Bomb Makers” (p 42).