Tag: book lust iii

Lawless Roads

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Greene, Graham. The Lawless Roads. London: Heinemann, 1960.

Graham Greene was a deeply religious man. When he was commissioned to write of the Mexican government’s forced anti-Catholic secularization and anti-clerical purges he traveled to the country to see for himself what effects this had on the people. Churches were being destroyed and clergymen were being driven into exile or brutally murdered at an alarming rate. As Greene traveled to the areas where the Catholic persecutions were the most violent Greene was deeply affected and reaches an almost despondent state. It is hard to tell if his depression was cause by an inability to connect to people and culture of Mexico (his Spanish was limited and their English was nonexistent), his on-going illness or the inability to open his mind beyond his own colonialism. In the end Mexico was a country he could barely wait to escape.

Best head scratching line: “Four one-armed men dined together, arranging their seats so that their arms shouldn’t clash” (p 9). Kisa and I do that, too. Only we sit that way not because we are missing arms but rather because he is right handed and I am left.

Author Fact: Graham Greene died in April 1991 which is the main reason why I chose to read Lawless Roads. Another reason is April is a good time to visit Mexico, if you dare.

Book Trivia: Lawless Roads was published as Another Mexico.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Postcards From Mexico” (p 185). Note: This is my first Book Lust To Go “accomplished” book. At least it’s the first one that wasn’t already read because of Book Lust or More Book Lust.

My Antonia

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Cather, Willa. My Antonia.New York: Everyman’s Library, 1996.

Rereading My Antonia was like spotting a familiar face in a crowd somewhere in a country I have never been to before. It was like coming home after forty years away and remembering houses and neighbors. An old familiarity that was somehow comforting and true. I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this classic. Structurally, My Antonia is separated into five different books: The Shimerdas (introducing Antonia and her Bohemian family), The Hired Girls (delving into Antonia’s life in town), Lena Lingrad (Antonia’s good friend), The Pioneer Woman’s Story (Antonia’s friend, Tiny’s return to the farmland) and Cuzak’s Boys (Jim visiting Antonia after a twenty year absence and meeting her large family).
The premise of the story is in the introduction. Two friends are traveling by train and reminiscing about Antonia, a girl they both knew growing up. They agree to write their thoughts of her but James Quayle Burden is the only one to do so. He tells the story of growing up on the Nebraska plains with Antonia as his lifelong friend.

Best lines: “Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great” (p 20), “Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about whether he had taken cold or not” (p 159), and “Clearly, she was the impulse, and he the corrective” (p 262).

Author Fact: Willa Cather was born Wilella Cather and lived in New York for most of her life.

Book Trivia: My Antonia was made into a movie in 1995.

BookLust Twist: My Antonia is indexed in all three Lust books: in Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1910s” (p 175), in More Book Lust in the chapters called “The Great Plains: Nebraska” (p 107) and “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123), and in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Nebraska: The Big Empty” (p 148). If Pearl had written a chapter called “Women Channeling Men” she could have included My Antonia there as well.

Don’t Look Back

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Fossum, Karin. Don’t Look Back. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2002.

This is one of those mystery books you read on a rainy Saturday afternoon in one sitting. The story flows in a simplistic but compelling manner; An easy read with a great story line. As someone from LibraryThing once said suggested for a genre, “a bring-to-the-beach kind of book.” In that case Don’t Look Back was summer fare read too early (for me). It is the mystery of the death of a teenage girl. Known throughout her small town she was loved by nearly everyone. How could someone so charming, so lovable, so perfect die so young? Inspector Sejer is the lead investigator on the case. With calm and quiet tenacity he unravels a seemingly sweet life only to reveal lies and suspicions. This is the kind of mystery that keeps the pages turning as things become more and more complicated. Originally written in Norwegian and translated by Felicity David, Don’t Look Back urges the reader to keep turning the pages until compulsively, the entire book has been read from cover to cover.

Favorite lines: “Puberty was a really rough time. She was a sunbeam until she turned thirteen, then she began to snarl. she snarled until she was fourteen, then she began to bark” (p 71). ”

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “Crime is a Globetrotter: Norway” (p 59).

Edited to add: I read this back in 2009 but what I just discovered five years later is that it is also included in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Norway: the Land of the Midnight Sun” (p 163). So there!

Dubliners

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Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Signet, 1991.

When I was in high school I fell in love with James Joyce’s style of writing. We share the same birthday. The Dead, a short story from Dubliners was my all time favorite. Gabriel became my favorite name; a long lost child.

Dubliners is comprised of 15 short  and simple stories all centered around the people of Dublin. To sum up the collection it is a portrait of a city as seen from the eyes of the people living there. The very first story, The Sisters, is nothing more than a family’s reaction to a priest’s death. While the characters are not connected, their stories are. Life and death, love and loss, youth and aging, poverty and wealth. Joyce does a remarkable job capturing the spirit of the Irish while revealing universal truths about mankind as a whole. It is as if we, as readers, get to peek into the character’s lives and are witness to moments of our own circumstances.

What I find so remarkable about Dubliners is that Joyce originally had great trouble getting it published. And even after he finally did it didn’t sell that well.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Irish Fiction” (p 125). Where else? Edited to add: I’ll tell you where else…Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett, and Synge” (p 110). I guess you could say Dubliners shouldn’t be included in this chapter because it’s supposed to be about “beyond Joyce.” Something to think about.