Zorba the Greek

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Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek. Trans. Carl Wildman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952.

I will be the first to admit it wholeheartedly. I did not enjoy Zorba the Greek. There, I said it. I am beginning to feel I have a built in prejudice against translated stories because this is not the first time I have said this. Something gets lost in the translation. I am sure of it. Not only that, but this time I was bored. Supposedly, Nikos Kazantzakis’s Last Temptation of Christ is more exciting. I can only wait and see.

Lines I did happen to like, “And I’m making it snappy so I don’t kick the bucket before I’ve had the bird!” (p 36), and “The mischievous demon in the wine had carried her back to the good old days” (p 37).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “The Alpha, Betas, Gammas of Greece” (p 9).

Wobegone Boy

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Keillor, Garrison. Wobegon Boy. New York: Viking, 1997.

It is strange to (finally) read something written by Garrison Keillor. For years and years and years I have heard wonderful things about Lake Wobegon Days and it seems,  for even longer, I have heard Keillor on NPR radio. Yet – nothing in print has been before my eyes or in my hands. Ever. Go figure.

John Tollefson is the manager of an academic public radio station. He has an idyllic life that is boring him to tears. His job, his home, his relationships, all are going well – so well that he no longer feels like he is in the drivers seat. Coasting through everything his life lacks depth and more importantly, it lacks meaning. John, with the help of his can’t-commit-to-marriage girlfriend Alida, sets out to make his life more interesting by opening a farm restaurant and other daring risks. John is perpetually guided by history, the life stories of his ancestors – a butcher, publisher, politician, among a wild cast of others, and a philosophical slant unlike any other.

While the plot of Wobegon Boy is a little slow and laborious, the voice is exceptional. As John Tollefson tells his story you cannot help but often laugh out loud. The sly wit and juicy humor radiate from every page. I wanted to quote line after line until I realized I what I really wanted was to quote the entire book.

Here are a few of my favorites: “Lake Wobegon was a rough town then, where, all on one block, for less than five dollars, you could get a tattoo, a glass of gin, and a social disease, and have enough left over to get in a poker game” (p2). See, by page 2 it’s funny! Here’s another one, “You could romp naked in periodicals and copulate on the carpet, and the librarians would be grateful if, after climax, you took down a magazine and thumbed through it” (p 7-8). Knowing the importance of circulation statistics, yes. Yes, we would be grateful.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Minnesota)” (p 28).

Homer’s Odyssey

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Cooper, Gwen. Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat. New York: Delacorte Press, 2009.

A friend of mine gave this to me a few weeks ago. No, I take that back. She gave it to me several, several weeks ago. I meant to write a review about it in April but I wasn’t quite finished reading it. I wanted to make sure I was on page 287 (which is the last page in case you were wondering) before I wrote anything about it. The sad truth is, it took me until now to get to page 287. The training for Just ‘Cause simply took reading away from me for a few months (18 weeks to be exact). But, now that I am back on track I can finish what I started.

Gwen is great. Her story of Homer (the blind wonder cat) makes you fall in love with all things cats. I am clearly defined as a cat person (either you are or you aren’t) so this wasn’t a stretch for me. What I wasn’t prepared for was enjoying Gwen’s style of writing as much as I did. She is funny, sensible (dare I say logical?), and sometimes downright sassy. Homer’s Odyssey takes you on a journey from Homer’s start as a kitten, but you also get a sense of Gwen’s growth as well. How she handled the events of September 11th, 2001 and its aftermath are heroic and probably my favorite part of the entire story. If I had to gripe about any of it, it would be a small gripe and it would have to be about a story  towards the end. Homer gets sick and stops eating. I had a cat who stopped eating. I didn’t have to Google this to know what it could mean: cancer, tumors… Indeed, My Chessie died a few weeks later. But, I digress. Gwen’s detailed account of Homer’s listlessness and refusal to nibble at the most favorite of meals brought back painful memories. As I was reading I feared the worst and I honestly think that was Gwen’s plan. Decidedly, it was nothing more than a dirty drama trick. Homer regained his health and the illness was explained away as an unsolved mystery. But, as I said before this is a trivial gripe. It didn’t ruin the read for me. I’m sure Gwen has been asked (and asked and asked) about a Homer sequel. I, for one, would read it.

Fundamental Weight Training

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Sandler, David. Fundamental Weight Training: 102 Exercises to Start Training. Champaign: Human Kinetics, 2010.

I had many false starts trying to write a review for this book. My hesitancy directly related to my love-hate relationship with content and how it was arranged. There were many, many things to love about this book…and yet I found a few things to hate.

On the didactic side of things Fundamental Weight Training has it all. Simple weight lifting exercises for beginners that take into consideration using a professional gym, a home gym, or even just a person’s own body weight. There are simple black and white photographs to illustrate each exercise, showing correct form and posture. There is even sections on stretching, warming up and cooling down – all essential elements of working out and avoiding injury. In addition, Sandler goes above and beyond to explain gym etiquette and terminologies with a chapter called, “weight room language and protocol” (p 7). My favorite section was “Give it a Go” which gives the reader the opportunity to put lesson to life and try a series of exercises dedicated to a particular group of muscles like arms, for example.

But, here is where the hate comes in. The “Give it a Go” section assumes a person has every weight machine and accessory at his or her disposal. The exercises are a mix of free weights and machines usually found at the gym. Organization-wise, Fundamental Weight Training would have been easier for me if the “Give it a Go” section was combined with the “Take it to the Gym” and “Train at Home” sections rather than separate section.

A final frustration is, as with any exercise book, a person would need to not only memorize the names of each exercise but the proper way to perform them. Holding a book while trying to flex the a dumbbell is not all that easy. Flipping from the “Give it a Go” page to the section with the exercise can be frustrating.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Fundamental Weight Training. After reorganizing the information on my own I have a great training plan that I can take to the gym or use at home.

Fall Asleep Forgetting

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Packard, Georgeann. Fall Asleep Forgetting. New York: Permanent Press, 2010.

I have a love-hate relationship with books like Fall Asleep Forgetting. The problem is Packard’s writing is too good. Like a delicious meal I couldn’t slow down when it came to eating it up; devouring whole chapters at a time. What’s wrong with that? In truth, this is a book meant to be savored slowly. The writing is delectable, deliriously rich and expressive. One minor distraction is character focus is a little out of focus. I would have preferred Claude as the obvious heroine rather than swirled in a mishmash of other incredibly strong personalities. Because Fall Asleep Forgetting really is about Claude and her strange involvement with a married couple, Paul and Sloan, that fact really needs to be teased out. Paul is dying and his wife is bisexual and mentally ill…sort of. Claude is caught up in their relationship until it becomes her relationship, her obsession, but as I mentioned before, she is not the only one. There is nine-year-old Six and her parents Rae and Sonny, Cherry the transvestite owner of the trailer park where most everyone lives and her partner Barton, and elderly Mr. and Mrs. Saugerties. Each one of these characters has a unique and tantalizing story.

Quotes that I really hope are kept: “Once your parents hate you for who you are, the scorn of others in mere child’s play” (p 42), and “I see now that equal parts repulsion and attraction make for the most voracious form of lust” (p 124).

Personal note: I was really excited to see e.e. cummings quoted at the beginning of the chapter called “The Curving Support of Feather Pillows” (p 129). ‘Milly and Maggie and Molly and May’ is a great poem. My only argument would be against calling it a poem about just Maggie because Milly, Molly and May all had important parts.

Samuel Johnson is Indignant

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Davis, Lydia. Samuel Johnson is Indignant: stories. Brooklyn: McSweeney’s Books, 2001.

I always love it when I get a collection of short stories to read. For some reason I like idea of the simplicity of keeping something short when sometimes, nothing could be further than the truth; especially when it comes to a short story. A short story might be short on words or sentences or even paragraphs, but long on meaning and, in the end might turn out to be a little thought provoking or dare I say didactic? In other words, I might learn something!

Lydia Davis is funny. But, more importantly she has an amazing range of subject material. So much so that I found myself asking what subject does Lydia Davis NOT cover in a short story? What’s more, Lydia Davis has a wide range of writing styles. Everything she writes has a common theme: strange and wonderful, but no two stories could be characterized as “the same.” Her stories are eerie and contemplative, funny and sad, wise and irreverent.

Favorite lines, “You can’t tell everyone the truth all the time, and you certainly can’t tell anyone the whole truth, ever, because it would take too long” (p 7).

BookLust Twist: From  Book Lust in the chapter called simply, “Short Stories” (p 221). Duh.

You Make Me Feel…

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Newman, Judith. You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother. New York: Miramax Books, 2004.

There are three reoccurring themes in You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman. Judith likes to portray herself as an over-forty, unhappily married,  yet wealthy woman with a moral on parenting: be careful what you wish for. While she is extremely funny about it, she is constantly criticizing her husband, John, for not being around more to help with twins, born after seven years and & $70,000 worth of IVF procedures. As an over-sixty man living at a different address, what exactly did she expect? He’s not about to change. Judith handles the trials and tribulations of raising twins with more aplomb and name dropping than any new mom I know. Having a $250 a day nanny certainly helps!

Favorite funny lines, “If he’s like most men I’ve known he’ll spend the rest of his life thinking of his dick as a masterpiece anyway. “Yes, honey, that’s art,” I said” (p 215).

My only complaint? Newman tries so freakin’ hard to be funny all the time that the tenderness of what she has (supposedly) longed for for so long gets lost. There were glimpses of caring at times, like, when she describes thinking her babies are beautiful. But, on the whole, it was if Newman was constantly “on” all the time. I never really thought I saw the real mother because she was veiled behind a thousand jokes.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Nagging Mothers, Crying children” (p 172). Appropriate for Mother’s Day, don’t you think?

Endless Love

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Spencer, Scott. Endless Love. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

At the center of Endless Love is David Axelrod. David starts his story remembering how, as a 17 year in love, he set fire to his girlfriend’s house. Not as an out-of-anger act of revenge but more of an uncontrollable response to an all-consuming love for his girlfriend, Jade Butterfield, and her family. Having been banished from the Butterfield home David’s plot is to ignite the house in the hopes the fire will give him the perverse opportunity to become the hero and ultimately rescue the entire family from the inferno he started. His desire to be needed by the entire family is blinding. Of course David’s plot doesn’t work out so smoothly…and thus begins Unless Love. It is a dark and tangled tale about obsessions and the inability to see past them. It is about dysfunctional families that use one another to seem normal. It is about struggling relationships set against the ever turbulent late 1960s. In the middle is confused, young, obsessed David Axelrod. He reminds me of Llyod Dobler from ‘Say Anything’ – an all-around nice guy with little direction and not much more ambition who can sum up his life in one sentence, “I just want to be with your daughter….sir.”

My favorite quotes are on the subject of love: “Love gives us a heightened consciousness through which to apprehend the world, but anger gives us a precise, detached perception of its own” (p 40) and, “If endless love was a dream, then it was a dream we all shared, even more than we all shared the dream of never dying or of traveling through time, and if anything set me apart it was not my impulses but my stubbornness, my willingness to take the dream past what had been agreed upon as the reasonable limits, to declare that this dream was not a feverish trick of the mind but was an actuality at least as real as that other, thinner, more unhappy illusion we call normal life” (p 162).

I think the reason why I liked Endless Love so much is because every character was a head-scratcher. It wasn’t just David Axelrod who had a personality worth paying attention to. the story of his parents held mysteries to be explored. Every member of Jade Butterfield’s family kept the story alive and buzzing with intrigue. The questions most asked – who would defend David? Who would forgive him? Who wouldn’t forget?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in the chapter called, “First Lines to Remember” (p 87), and again in “Sex and the Single Reader” (p 218).

May ’10 Is…

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  • Endless Love by Scott Spencer ~ in honor of Lust Month
  • Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis ~ in honor of National Short Story month
  • Wobegone Boy by Garrison Keillor ~ in honor of May being the month Minnesota became a state
  • The Victorians by A.N. Wilson ~ in honor of Antique Week
  • You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother by Judith Newman ~ in honor of Mother’s day

Promises. Promises. I should know better. With the Just ‘Cause walk happening (finally) this month I will refrain from writing any more than than this…

April ’10 was…

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April was that kind of month that just flew by without warning. When Just’ Cause is over I will get back to writing in the real sense… for now here is the literary month of April.

For books it was:

  • Affliction by Russell Banks ~ can’t wait to see the movie
  • Belshazzar’s Daughter by Barbara Nadel ~ speaking of movies, this should be one
  • Truth & Bright Water by Thomas King ~ probably my second favorite read of the month
  • South Wind Through the Kitchen by Elizabeth David ~ a collection of “best of” Elizabeth David
  • Without End by Adam Zagajewski ~ a collection of poetry
  • Water Witches by Chris Bohjalian ~ my favorite read of the month

For poetry it was:

  • “Luncheon on the Grass” by Carl Phillips (In the Blood, 1993.)
  • “Rebus” by Jane Hirschfield (Given Sugar, Given Salt, 2002.)
  • “Hospital” by Karl Shapiro (Poems: 1040-1953, 1953.)
  • “A Secret Life” by Stephen Dunn (Landscape at the End of the Century, 1999.)
  • “The Welcoming” by Edward Hirsch (Earthly Measures, 1994.)
  • “Prophet” by Carl Dennis (Practical Gods, 2001.)
  • “Funeral II” by — (New & Collected Poems, 2000.)
  • “Days of Pie and Coffee” by — (Shroud of the Gnome, 1997.)
  • “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski (Without End, 2002)
  • “Kaddish” by Allen Ginsberg (Kaddish and Other Poems 1958 – 1960, 2001)
  • “Wisdom of the Desert Fathers” by Katha Pollitt (the mind- body problem, 2009)
  • “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins (Sailing Alone Around the Room, 2002)

For poetry set to music it was Natalie Merchant’s long awaited Leave Your Sleep. This is the track listing for the fantastically amazing album:

Part I

  1. Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience by Charles Causley
  2. Equestrienne by Rachel Field
  3. Calico Pie by Edward Lear
  4. Bleezer’s Ice-Cream by Jack Prelutsky
  5. It Makes a Change by Mervyn Peak
  6. The King of China’s Daughter by Anonymous
  7. The Dancing Bear by Albert Bigelow Paine
  8. The Man in the Wilderness by Mother Goose
  9. maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings
  10. If No One Ever Marries Me by Laurence Alma-Tadema
  11. The Sleepy Giant by Charles Edward Carryl
  12. The Peppery Man by Arthur Macy
  13. The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe

Part II

  1. Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash
  2. The Walloping Window Blind by Charles Edward Carryl
  3. Topsyturvey World by William Brighty Rands
  4. The Janitor’s Boy by Nathalia Crane
  5. Griselda by Eleanor Farjeon
  6. The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson
  7. Vain and Careless by Robert Graves
  8. Crying, My Little One by Christina Rossetti
  9. Sweet and a Lullaby by Anonymous
  10. I Saw a Ship A-Sailing by Anonymous
  11. Autumn Lullaby by Anonymous
  12. Spring and Fall: to a young child by Gerard Manley Hopkins
  13. Indian Names by Lydia Huntley Sigourney

For LibraryThing’s Early Review program it was: a browse through a weight training book. Full review coming next month…

For fun it was: The Book of Calamities by Peter Trachtenberg

The Book of Calamities

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Trachtenberg, Peter. The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning. New York: Little, Brown & co., 2008

This was an off-list addition. Glutton for punishment? Maybe. April had already been a hard month and here I am, deciding to add to the drama by deciding to read a book about suffering. It’s perverse but I find comfort in my little, uneventful life when I am reminded of fates worse than mine…much, much worse than mine. It’s the same reason why I watch ugly shows about murder and drug addiction. It’s my constant reminder that anyone, at anytime, can fall from grace. And fall hard.

But, anyway, back to Calamities. I will be honest. I picked up the book after reading a dedication. After researching the recipients I realized I needed to know more. It wasn’t enough to be aware and move on. I wanted knowledge. Who were these people and why did they die? Notice I didn’t say how? That much was obvious. Their tragedy deserved more than two seconds of my time. Which led me to Peter Trachtenberg’s book.

The Book of Calamities covers man-induced sufferings as well as the ones seemingly without explanation. The answer to each catastrophe lies in simple words like religion, nature, sanity, hatred, illness but try explaining those words beyond dictionary etymology and terminology. What exactly IS hatred? What drives two religions to war? How can Mother Nature be so cruel to the ignorant? Who defines mental illness and calls it insanity? These are hard questions but, Trachtenberg asks an even bigger question – why is suffering such a shock to us? It happens all the time. It happens everywhere. Why aren’t we more prepared for catastrophe? Is it a cultural thing? For some reason we, as a society,  have this sense of entitlement to happiness; this sense of denial that bad things always happen to someone, anyone, else but us. Not so.

I didn’t have favorite quotes in this book, but there was one particular event that stood out. Here is the quote: “The first thing they did for me was to make me stop, kindly, with care not to make me feel any more foolish than I already felt, for who feels more foolish than a failed suicide?” (p 95). The reason why this passage stood out to me is this – in my friend’s suicide note he made reference to being embarrassed by possible failure. He understood suffering and didn’t want to make compromises to accommodate that suffering. Here’s the thing – he didn’t need to be embarrassed. He didn’t fail on May 10th, 1993.

“Funeral II”

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Szymborska, Wislawa. “Funeral II.” New and Collected Poems. New York: Mariner Books, 2000. p 206.

This poem disturbed me to the core. To read it quite literally it is people standing around before (or after, or anytime in between) a funeral and gossiping. This sort of thing happens all the time. Events like funerals and weddings bring people together. Conversations are bound to happen, especially when people haven’t seen each other since the last milestone – wedding, or funeral…
I think what disturbed me the most is that I could identify with it so readily. I, too, have stood around making small talk; commenting on the people strangers around me. Call it catty. Call it human nature. It happens.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Poetry Pleasers” (p 189).

Water Witches

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Bohjalian, Chris. Water Witches. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995.

This is the story of environmentalists against developers. The storyline is simple. A Vermont ski resort needs to expand in order to stay in business. They are looking to clear trees and tap into a river in order to build more ski trails and man-made snow. That means obtaining permits and permissions. For lawyer Scottie Winston, working for Powder Peak, this means more jobs for the community…or so he says over and over again. Is he trying to convince himself? The trouble is Scottie is married to a water witch with minimal skills. More so, his sister-in-law is considered the most talented dowser in the country. Her abilities to find water, and even missing travelers is legendary. She is marrying the region’s most vocal environmentalist who opposes Powder Peak’s expansion. To make matters worse, Scottie’s own daughter is proving to be an even more accomplished water witch than her aunt…Scottie must chose between his job and his family especially when a drought complicates things not only for Powder Peak but for the entire community.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Ecofiction” (p 77).

Note: this review is lame because somehow I lost the one I thought I had already written….I didn’t have the energy to write it twice.

“Forgetfulness”

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Collins, Billy. “Forgetfulness.” Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poetry. New York: Random House: 2002. 29.

You know that point in a conversation when someone says something so true and indisputable all you can do is nod in emphatic agreement? “Forgetfulness” is that point in the conversation. How many of us read something, whether it be an article, book or poem and couldn’t remember who wrote it a week later? A week after that and now we can’t remember the title of what we read. We find ourselves saying stupid things like, “I read this great book about the tenth largest island in the world by…by..oh what was his name? Anyway, it was really interesting.” I also like Billy’s imagery of a brain making room for something else to remember. When a new address or phone number is added to the brain, the author or title of a book must come out. For every new piece of information stored, something older must come out and slip away. Who knows where it goes? Billy has the answer:
“…to a little fishing village where there are no phone lines” (p 29).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Kitchen-Sink Poetry” (p 138).

Without End

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Zagajewski, Adam. Without End: New and Selected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Nancy Pearl mentions “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” in Book Lust in the chapter called, “Polish Poems and Prose” (p 187), but she also recommends the book from which the poem is from, Without End: New and Selected Poems.

I quite enjoyed reading Without End from start to finish. The diversity of poetry within the 270+ pages is refreshing. I especially liked the poet to poet dedications. It’s as if Zagajewski is saying, “from one writer to another, I feel your craft and it influences mine.”

“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” reminds me of Natalie Merchant’s song “Life is Sweet” in that they both try to point out the beauty in the world in spite of the glaring ugliness.

Favorite lines:
“The innkeeper’s daughter was so thin
that she kept bricks in her backpack to outwit the wind…” (p14).

Favorite poem: “Treatise on Emptiness”
A friend and I both agree that this poem moved us in startling and profound ways.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Polish Poems and Prose” (p 187). Yeah, I know I already said that.