Tag: book lust i

The New Well-Tempered Sentence

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Gordon, Karen Elizabeth. The New Well-Tempered Sentence: a Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed.NewYork: Ticknor & Fields, 1993.

This is the kind of book the coolest of cool professors would use in a writing class. The language is hip and humorous, the illustrations funny and fabulous. While Gordon lays down the law about when and where to use an exclamation point, a period, a comma, or semi colon, I don’t feel obligated to follow her to the letter (or period). I read The New Well-Tempered Sentence as merely suggestion; here’s what you can do, if you so chose (and obviously I don’t). Think Edward Estlin Cummings. Gordon is careful to use witty examples and whimsical illustrations to prove her points to go along with that hip and cool vibe. This is the essential reference book you have on your shelf and because it is so funky you are not ashamed to have it in plain sight.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Words to the Wise” (p 249). For this particular inclusion the chapter would have been more appropriate if called, “Words to the Wise About Writing Words” because Gordon’s book is all about punctuation.

Perma Red

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Earling, Debra Magpie. Perma Red. New York: BlueHen Books, 2002.

Perma Red takes place in the 1940s on a Wyoming Indian Reservation where ancient customs prevail and old secrets hang heavy. Louise White Elk is a contradictory girl. Independent yet needy. Brave yet frightened. An orphan with family. Louise is also has attention of many men. The list of attendees is long: trouble maker Baptiste Yellow Knife; cousin Charlie Kicking Woman (Perma’s Tribal police officer); rich man Harvey Stoner; and mystery man Jules Bart. They all want something from her whether it be under the guise to own her or protect her. They all end up using her or abusing her. At one time or another they all get their way. It is a ruthless existence. Yet, Louise welcomes it in her own strange way. She perpetuates the vicious cycle of running away at the same time as being drawn to violent and needy men. What keeps Perma Red magical is its descriptive language. The landscape is as wild and as beautiful as untamed Louise White Elk.
Ages are vague. Charlie is at least seven or eight years older than Louise and Bapstiste is older by three years or so. The reader never gets a sense of how old Louise is supposed to be when her experiences are described as coming of age and womanly all at once.

Favorite sentences, “Louise sat down at the bar long enough so no one would recognize her broken heart” (p 43), “together their thinness made them appear stingy and dangerous” (p 64), and “I felt heavy with marriage” (p 114).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “American Indian Literature” (p 23).

Strange observation – the author’s name is a footnote on every even page. I’ve never seen that before so it seems a little hubris to me.

Nothing Remains the Same

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Lesser, Wendy. Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.

The title, Nothing Remains the Same comes from a letter Mark Twain wrote to William Dean Howells in 1887. What he is referring to is also the premise of Lesser’s book – rereading a book at a different stage of life shouldn’t be the same experience as the first time. Twain argues that “nothing remains the same.” I am in agreement. When I was in high school I read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne for an English class. As a 14 year old I was guided through the pages like a blind girl. Six years later I reread The Scarlet Letter for a Women in Literature class. I was forced fed the ideals of a feminist faculty; seeing the story through her sense of self while struggling with my own. Finally, I reread Scarlet for me and myself last year. This time I read it without bias or guidance, without ulterior motive. No grade rested on my comprehension of text. It was like reading it for the very first time and oh so self indulgent. Lesser offers a literary criticism of a handful of books she has reread throughout her life. Each chapter of Nothing Remains the Same takes on a different well known book starting with Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady. Sprinkled throughout each chapter are details of Lesser’s life, some seemingly unrelated to the book in question, others all about the reading (using it in graduate school, for example).

Lessing spends a great deal of time quoting from the books she is remembering which can be nice if you have never read them yourself but slightly irritating if you know them well. (I was somewhere in the middle.)

Favorite lines, “I had constructed a life in which I could be energetic but also lazy; I could rush but I would never be rushed” (p 3), and “In the meantime, as is always the case, the process of winning the batle has slightly cheapened the prize for me” (p 208).

Small gripe – say what you mean, mean what you say. Why write, “I decided to leave Anna Karenina out of my book” when you go on to mention it five times and dedicate an entire section to it? Complete with a quote, the section was at least a full page. This decision to discuss a book you originally wanted to leave out seems self indulgent, contradictory and rambling.

Overall I enjoyed Nothing Remains the Same. I think I would have enjoyed it more had it not been for the initial tone Lesser took. Example – early on (page 9) Lesser makes the comment, “Twelve seems young for a first reading…” (of Don Quixote) but in the next sentence she adds, “…when I first read Don Quixote I was eleven.” I felt like Lesser could have added, “so there!” punctuated with a tongue sticking out. It felt condescending and made me very aware of how many times she mentioned her age. I half expected her to say something about reading War and Peace in kindergarten.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Books About Books” (p 43).

Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape

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De Waal, Frans. Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape. Berkley: University of California Press, 1997.

Not to be snide or anything but how can you forget the ape when you didn’t know the ape? Everyone lumped Bonobo apes with Chimpanzees because they seemed more similar than different. They weren’t forgotten, just misunderstood. de Waal goes to great lengths to compare and contrast the distinctions between the two primates.

From the very beginning you learn that Bonobo apes are different from any other kind of primate with the description, “female-centered, egalitarian primate species that substitutes sex for aggression” (p 4). The sexuality of this species is very much celebrated and discussed. So much so that the sexuality of Bonobos is argued to be a window to the aspects of human sexuality. But sex is not the only discussion worth having about Bonobos. There is social life, a political life, a family life worth exploring. But, what makes Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape so appealing is its photography. Big, glossy “coffee-table book” pages illustrate the allure of these primates. Their facial expressions, family values and even their sexuality is on display in eight different photo essays.

Favorite quote: isn’t really a quote at all. It’s an illustration of the hands and feet of primates and man (p 27).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Our Primates, Ourselves” (p 180). Bonobo was forgotten in the index yet de Waal’s name wasn’t. Interesting.

Ways of Seeing

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Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972.

My copy of Ways of Seeing arrived battered and falling apart. That coupled with the fact it is clearly a product of the 1970s gave the book a tired, worn out appearance. I thought of it as cheap and flimsy as well, given it is only 154 pages long and mostly illustrations and photographs at that. So, my way of seeing the book was definitely influenced by age, condition and size. Interesting. That, in a nutshell, is the premise of Ways of Seeing. Coming from a Marxist way of thinking John Berger provokes thought with the art he has chosen for his book. For example one can either be offended or intrigued by his chapter on women depicted in art. Because the chapter is lacking text the reader is on his/her own to process what the art is (or isn’t) trying to convey.

Another interesting thing to note is this book is the first example of a book made from a television series. In my mind, when questioning the “which came first?” it is always the book before the screen no matter what the size – television or movie.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Art appreciation” (p 25).

Report From Ground Zero

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This should have been posted sometime in September – sorry!

Smith, Dennis. Report From Ground Zero. New York: Viking, 2002.

I chose to squeeze this onto my September reading list because it matched my mood, my New York State of Mind, if you will. When you are embraced by sadness additional tragedies are easier to handle. It’s as if someone wants to throw a bucket of water on a man standing in the pouring rain. What’s a little more precipitation to an already drowning man? Bring it on.

The first thing you notice about Report From Ground Zero is how stark it is. My copy didn’t have publisher or copyright information. It was if my version was a rough draft, a real report from bowels of hell. It disturbed me and I can’t tell you why.

Dennis Smith asks the question everyone can answer even nine years later, “where were you on September 11, 2001?” In Report From Ground Zero Smith asks key rescue personnel to recount the moments directly after seeing, hearing, or learning of the attack on the World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan. He calls each story a testimony. Smith starts by giving his own account which amounts to a litany of questions surrounding logistics and survival. As a retired New York City firefighter he anticipates the magnitude of destruction and ponders the challenges surrounding survival with great concern. As each rescue worker recounts that fateful, awful day a pattern starts to emerge. Initial disbelief turns into a sense of determination as the magnitude of destruction is fully realized. Every single response was to roll up the shirts sleeves, harden the jaw and with single minded pure grit get to work. After the dust has literally and figuratively settled other shared memories come to mind – how deathly quiet and dark everything became after the towers fell; how surreal the landscape. Like nothing they had even seen before or since.
While the first half of the book contains the powerful testimony of others around him, the second half of Report From Ground Zero is Smith’s diary of the aftermath of 9/11. It isn’t as emotional as the first half of the book, but sheds critical light on one man’s determination to document just how tireless and faithful those rescue personnel searched to rescue fellow officers and even family.

Favorite lines: “I am attached to the television as if every friend I had is about to cross the screen” (p 6). I think we were all that way, for days to come.
Another one: “There is no reason why I’m alive and anyone else is dead” (p 32). Words remembered by Deputy Chief Pete Hayden.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, simply ” 9/11″ (p 171).

Messiah

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Vidal, Gore. Messiah. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954.

John Cave, as a professional embalmer, is intimate with death. While working on a client he has an epiphany of sorts. Suddenly he has deemed the act of dying a good thing. Cave is so taken with this revelation that he must share his idea with as many people as possible and without warning a new religion is born. His followers call it “Cave’s Word” or Cavesword. It’s strongest message is death is to be welcomed. As Cavesword spreads Cave establishes a following so large he needs a team to promote and protect him. Closest to him is Iris Mortimer, Paul Himmell, Clarissa Lessing, and Eugene Luther. Each individual has a different purpose for being part of Cave’s inner circle. It’s Eugene Luther who narrates the story of John Cave. With the help of Cave’s inner circle he develops and promotes a product to go with his message. Cavesway is a drug taken to make death even easier to initiate. As the world’s suicide rate rises, thanks to Cavesway, Luther’s perception of Cave and the cult-like message starts to distort and crumble. Messiah is prophetic and mesmerizing. I thought of it as “a hideous evil you can’t tear your eyes from.”

Favorite lines, “Stars fell to earth in a blaze of light, and where they fell, monsters were born, hideous and blind” (p 4). How’s that for a start? Other lines I liked, “The sky that day was like an idiot’s mind, wild with odd clouds, but lovely too, guileless, natural, elusive” (p 13), and, “We’ve finally made dying simply swell” (p 95), and finally, “Any direct statement of personal innocence has always made me feel completely criminal” (p 140). The last quote is probably my favorite.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Gore Vidal’s Historical Novels: Too Good To Miss” (p 237). Obviously, Messiah is not a historical novel like Burr or Lincoln. Pearl threw it in the chapter as a personal favorite.

Clock Winder

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Tyler, Anne. The Clock Winder. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.

The Clock Winder could be seen as a cautionary take about what it is like to get caught up in situations beyond one’s control. It’s about what happens when someone lets his or her guard down and becomes too involved. Elizabeth Abbott is a twenty year old drifter. Having left her North Carolina home the summer before her last year of college Elizabeth finds herself in Baltimore, Maryland where she becomes the handyman for an elderly woman. The meeting is purely by chance but everything beyond that is not. Mrs. Emerson is struggling to put away lawn furniture after firing her gardener of nearly 25 years when Elizabeth walks by and offers to help. The longer Elizabeth stays in Mrs. Emerson’s employment and becomes involved with her seven children the more complicated Elizabeth’s life becomes.The Clock Winder is what happens when people make lasting impressions. Just as Elizabeth has made an impression on the Emersons they have changed her life as well.

Favorite lines: “Oh, everything she said nowadays was attached to other things by long gluey strands, calling up other days, none of them good, touching off chords, opening doors” (p 61), and “He felt burdened by new sorrows that he regretted having invited (p 123).

My least favorite part of the book was the ending. *Spoiler alert* I was disappointed Tyler used Peter to tell the last part of the story. Peter hardly factors into the most important parts, yet it’s from his perspective that we learn Elizabeth has married Matthew, has had two children with him and is now living in Mrs. Emerson’s house. We also learn that Andrew and Elizabeth have kissed and made up despite Andrew’s previous belief that Elizabeth killed his brother…Confused yet?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Real Characters” (p 197). Chosen for the eccentric characters within the Emerson family.

Where Bigfoot Walks

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Pyle, Robert Michael. Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.

Where Bigfoot Walks is much more than a search for Bigfoot. It’s more than a need to discover the existence of a legend. Robert Michael Pyle was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to investigate the mesmerizing myths that bring Sasquatch to life in the minds of millions. The grant basically allowed Pyle to take a leave of absence from ordinary bill-paying work (other writing) to pursue Bigfoot’s legacy across the Dark Divide and beyond. In that time Pyle met a variety of individuals most of whom fervently believe. If you are looking for a recount of all the Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti sightings in glorious detail, Where Bigfoot Walks is not the book for you. Pyle traverses the landscapes that hold the myths but his attention is more on what he can see rather than what he cannot. His lovingly vivid descriptions of birds, plants, flowers, rivers, mountains, animals, trees and grasses are tantalizing as is his equally scornful descriptions of bike tracks, logging scars, and other man-made abuses against nature. Only a couple of times were his attention to detail distracting – I didn’t need to know how many times he remarried nor did I care about his bodily functions along the trek(s).

But, there is no doubt Pyle is a skilled and entertaining author. Here are a few quotes that had my attention: “My tent was a hammock suspended between the sun and the moon, guarded by three volcanoes” (p 27), ” But unless I caught an arrow in the ass from some wannabe Robin Hood who mistook it for an elk’s rump, I was at little risk” (p 80), and “Anyone who sneers and never embraces a tree is missing out on one of the finer sensual compensations for life in a mortal body” (p 116).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Companion Reads” (p 63). I read this with Wild Life by Molly Gloss.

Optimist’s Daughter

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Welty, Eudora. The Optimist’s Daughter. New York: Random House, 1972.

Southern story broken into four distinct sections.
Part I – Laurel McKelva Hand comes from Chicago to care for her elderly father after eye surgery. Judge McKelva subsequently dies and Laurel is left to deal with her young, silly stepmother, Fay. Part I sets the tone for Laurel and Fay’s strained relationship.

Part II – Laurel and Fay bring Judge McKelva home for the wake and funeral where Laurel is heartily welcomed and supported by her friends and community. Fay’s family comes from Texas and brings out the worst in Fay. Part II illustrates southern charm and manners.

Part III – Laurel has to come to terms with her father’s new, young wife. As silly as she is, Laurel’s father adored her. Laurel also has to come to terms with the death of her mother ten years prior.

Part IV is all about Laurel’s introspective growth and acceptance of the future. The burning of her mother’s letters and the letting go of the breadboard are very significant.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two different chapters. First, from “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade:1970s” (p 178), then in “Southern Fiction” (p 222).

PS ~ I liked knowing a little about the authors I read. It was fun to discover Welty had connections to Smith and was a Guggenheim fellow (just like Robert Michael Pyle).

Tinker Tailor

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Le Carre, John. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1975.

I have seen this book peering out at me from my parents bookcase for years and years. I was always fascinated by the title, but scared of the plot. As a teenager I could never get into spy books. I don’t think it had anything to do with being a girl because I read the Hardy Boys just as readily as Nancy Drew. I think it was the fear of spies in general. I mean, think about it – a spy is someone you think you know, but don’t. A spy is someone completely different than who they appear to be. That scares the crap out of me.

To be honest Tinker Tailor was one of the most confusing books I have ever tried to read. For starters, it’s one of those start-in-the-middle-of-the-plot books. The only successful way to catch the reader up on what has been missed is a series of flashbacks. I kept getting the flashbacks confused with the here and now. Another thing I kept getting confused was the language. le Carre has a whole series of secret words to describe the Cold War spy game. For example, a babysitter is really a bodyguard.The plot itself is really straightforward inasmuch as an espionage thriller could be. George Smiley is pulled out of retirement as a British Intelligence officer. He is recruited to uncover a Russian mole deep in the BIA’s ranks. Of course, that it the simplest, dumbed-down plot synopsis I could make. Many reviewers have called Tinker Tailor “complicated” and I would have to agree.

I did manage to find a favorite line in the 50 pages I did read, “Only food could otherwise move him so deeply” (p 23). Go figure.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Cold War Spy Fiction” (p 61).

Interesting sidenote: John le Carre is the pen name of David John Moore Cornwell.

Wild Life

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Gloss, Molly. Wild Life.New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

I suppose I could make some wiseazz crack about my college days, but I will refrain 🙂 for your sake.

Wild Life takes place in the wilds of Oregon/Washington state in the early 1900s. Charlotte Bridger Drummond is a feisty, independent, feminist, single mother of five (all boys) who supports her children by writing dime store novels. She has a bit of an ego and flies the feminist flag a little too frequently, but has a good heart. When her housekeeper’s granddaughter goes missing in the logging hills of the Oregon/Washington border she bravely joins the search believing her strength and savvy will bring the child home. To her utter surprise Charlotte gets lost herself and must depend on a group of shy Big foot-like beasts for survival. While the overall premise of Wild Life is fascinating and the strength of Gloss’s writing is intoxicating, the mishmash of storytelling misses its mark. Interspersed between Charlotte’s tale (in the form of a diary) of her search for the missing child and her adventure with the wild ones is a third-party narrative about barely related characters, short literary quotes, science related newspaper and journal clippings, and substantial excerpts from CBD’s current in-the-works novel. Much like I wanted to see the Ya-Ya scrapbook in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells I think Wild Life would have benefitted from a scrapbookish approach (think Nick Bantock).

I am in love with how Molly Gloss writes. Here are a few of my favorite one-liners. First, “They wrestled daily over important matters such as whose arrow came nearest to killing a particular Indian or slavering wolf, and trivial matters such as who wiped whose snot on whose trousers” (p 25). I instantly thought of Silas and Atticus. Here’s another, “There is something about a lighted room when you are standing outside it in the cold night” (p 32); and one more, “I’m a notoriously poor friend where tears are concerned” (p 54).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Companion Reads” (p 63). I’m reading Where Bigfoot Walks by Robert Michael Pyle as the companion to Wild Life.

Between Parent and Child

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Ginott, Dr. Haim G. Between Parent and Child: the Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1965.

This book starts off with the best introduction, “No parent wakes up in the morning planning to make a child’s life miserable” (p 1). As soon as I read that I knew I was in for a good read. Between Parent and Child is all about psychological perception and what you say (as a parent), how you say it, and even what you don’t say, can influence a child both at that moment and years down the road. What Dr. Ginott offers up is common sense advice about how to communicate with small children and even teenagers. His advice is no-nonsense and extremely practical. It is so straightforward it seems simple, a no-brainer, if you will. The ah-ha moment is not in what to say, it’s how to say it to avoid conveying a message you do not intend. Choosing tone as well as the right words are crucial to emotionally intelligent communication with a child. My one naysayer comment? Many, many times Dr. Ginott suggests mirroring the child’s emotion to illustrate understanding. The go-to catch phrases are “You wish you could play with Sam,” “You wish you could have ice cream for dinner,” and, “You’re angry about losing the game.” Here’s where I would get annoyed. I dislike anyone telling me how I feel. As a small child I probably would have connected with someone “understanding” me… but as a teenager I wouldn’t appreciate dad calmly regurgitated what I just angrily spit out.

I would recommend Between Parent and Child to anyone – parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers. In short, I would recommend this book to anyone who is around children of all ages. If I were planning to have a child I would also plan on reading Between Parent and Child several times over. Once while pregnant and definitely more often during my child’s formative years. Maybe even during labor just for good measure.

Favorite quote, “Often after getting angry at their parents for not listening to their argument, children will present their case in writing” (p 56). Yes, but what Dr. Ginott doesn’t mention is that after getting said missive parents often ignore it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Babies: a Reader’s Guide” (p 30).

Moo

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Smiley, Jane. Moo. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996.

Moo had its moments of being incredibly bogged down, sluggish even. I found myself getting bored with the wordiness of some of the chapters, as if there were too many subplots.

Moo is an agriculture university somewhere in the midwest (my guess would be Iowa). Characters range from four in-coming freshmen girls to administrative bigwigs and everyone in between. Moo is a satire that is incredibly silly in places. Superficial relationships collide and somehow become meaningful. What makes the story so interesting is the drama, the scandals, and mischief the campus seems to promote. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has someone they would either like to kill or screw. The word everyone uses to describe Moo is “wicked” and it fits.

Favorite lines: “Diane wondered if Mrs. Johnson had understood that was making her pregnant” (p 12), and Under her own version of Ivar’s signature, Mrs. Walker had, over the years, authorized the library to buy as many available databases as they could. She had actually transferred funds out of the athletic budget into the library from time to time…” (p140). Don’t I wish!

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Academia: the Joke” (p 3) and again in the chapter called, “Growing Writers: (p 107).

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).