Tag: Fiction

The Stranger

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Camus, Albert. The Stranger.Translated by Matthew Ward. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

The quick and dirty about The Stranger: Meusault kills a man while on a weekend vacation with his girlfriend. Part I entails the events leading up to the murder and Part II is post-murder arrest and trial. The interesting component to the story is Meursault’s (although not surprising) attitude towards the crime. From the very beginning Meursault has an apathy towards life in general. When he is confronted with a marriage proposal or a job offer he feels nothing. He barely shows emotion when his mother dies. It’s as if he doesn’t care about anything and yet, curiously, he keeps an old scrapbook where he collects things from the newspapers that interest him. He doesn’t seem to understand love/hate relationships like the one his neighbor has with his dog of eight years. Meursault’s attention span is also something to note. He is often distracted by lights being too bright, the ringing of bells and the chatter of people around him. the presence of light is particularly interesting since it is the sun that “causes” Meursault to murder.
When Meursault murders a stranger for no apparent reason the fact he did it is not up for debate. It is the reason why that is questioned. Calling Meursault The Stranger is a contradiction because he is not a stranger in the traditional sense. He is not a loner or outcast. He has friends, coworkers, even a girlfriend. What Meursault is a stranger to is expected societal behavior, like mourning the loss of a parent or having feelings for someone he is in a sexual relationship with. Nothing that happens around Meursault has an emotional impact on him.

Favorite line: “I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold” (p 19).

Book Trivia: The Stranger has inspired musicians and made its way into pop culture. It was made into a 2001 movie.

Author Fact: Camus won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “North African Notes” (p 159). The Stranger takes place in Algiers.

June ’12 is…

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June 2012 is…not late! For once! I have to rejoice in simply being on time for the first time in oh, I don’t know how long and I’m too lazy to look. June. What about June? June is a retirement luncheon with some people I barely know. June is a graduation party for someone I love more than a sister (and only she will really get that statement and not misinterpret it as some lesbo love declaration). June is another charity walk – a no-pressure walk of sorts. No fund raising, no training (3.1 miles, a walk in the park – or around a business park as the case may be). June is a few birthdays, but no parties. June is the opening of the pool and June is the beginning of our Hawaiian vacation (lest I forget). We’ve already nixed horseback riding due to age and weight (over 65, under 10 and under 235lbs). That wipes out all but two of us. Anyway, more on that later.
June is also National River Cleanup month, the best time to visit Norway and the month to celebrate fathers. And that is the perfect segue to books:

  • Kristin Lavansdatter by Sigrid Undset ~ in honor of Norway. This is actually in three parts (totaling over 1,000 pages) so I’m going to parse it out: The Wreath in June, The Mistress of Husaby (The Wife) in July and The Cross in August.
  • A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean ~in honor of river cleanup month.

For Hawaii, two books I can read and leave behind**:

  • Damage by Josephine Hart ~ in honor of Father’s Day
  • Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (a reread) ~ in honor of Father’s Day as well

I have been notified that I have “won” two Early Review books from LibraryThing (such an honor). I have been having some problems with delivery but if they arrive they are:

  • How Should a Person Be: a Novel From Life by Sheila Heti ~ this has been described as “seriously strange” by a respected author on Heti’s website. I’m intrigued!
  • Waterlogged by Tim Noakes ~ this is something I cannot wait to read. I have been told I need to drink more water and while I don’t consider myself an athlete (this book focuses on them) I am curious about “the facts of hydration.”

** I should add that I plan to load the iPad with ebooks in case I finish the Father’s Day books sooner than expected. I really want to read on the beach one or two days and of course I’ll need to read on all those flights!!

May ’12 was…

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Is it okay for me to say I am glad May is over? May was the search for a new boss (we found one), a 60 mile walk for breast cancer awareness ($180,000 raised) a funeral/memorial/burial – whatever, and just a little time for books. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Carry on, Mr Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham ~ kind of reminded me of other historical biographies for kids. Read in one week.
  • Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan ~ in honor of Asian American heritage month.
  • Of Men and Mountains by William O. Douglas ~ in honor of deadly Mount Everest. I read this in one weekend (up to Maine and back)
  • Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl ~ (probably my favorite book of the bunch. I now want to see the documentary).
  • Death of Ivan Ilich by Leo Tolstoy ~ in honor of May being a good time to go to Russia (I’ll take their word for it).

Here are two I didn’t finish:

  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ~ this was a reread so I don’t feel bad I didn’t get through it again this time, and
  • China To Me by Emily Hahn ~ I got the point after 120 pages. Since Pearl mentioned this in three different Lust books I feel as though I have to give it another chance…maybe another time.

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program:

  • Letters to Kurt by Eric Erlandson ~ read in one weekend, and
  • The United States Coast Guard and National Defense: a History from World War I to the Present by Thomas P. Ostrom ~ I didn’t get through this one either which is really sad since I wanted to enjoy it.

So, there it is in a nutshell. Not a ton of good reading. More unfinished stuff than I’m used to. Oh well.

Death of Ivan Ilich

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Tolstoy, Count Lev N. Dramatic Works: the Death of Ivan Ilich.Translated by Leo Wiener. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Death of Ivan Ilich opens with Ilich’s death already a reality in the year of 1882.

As a person struggling with the death of a loved one there were certain parts of Death of Ivan Ilich that struck a nerve with me. Early in the story Ilich’s colleagues are standing around discussing his death, having just learned of it. One man exclaimed, “And here I have not called on him since the holidays. I was meaning to all the time” (p 4). That bears repeating. I was meaning to all the time. Exactly.
I found Death of Ivan Ilich to be extremely psychological and painful. Here is a relatively young man of 45 who dies from an unexplained illness after falling off a chair. He bruises his side and mysteriously falls ill a short time later. Even more troublesome – he never recovers from this fall. Was it cancer? Many scholars seem to think so. What I found particularly disturbing is the lack of care and sympathy his family feels for him. His wife and daughter all but cast him aside once they realize he is dying. Only his long-faithful butler remains true to him.
The actual death of Ivan goes largely unexamined. Instead we crawl into Ivan’s mind as the dying process takes its toll. In the beginning he is indignant, believing as a good man who has led a moral life he does not deserve such a fate. He questions his life’s purpose and begins to compare it to that of his butler. While he never accepts his death at the end he seems to understand it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Russian Heavies” (p 210).

Joy Luck Club

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Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ivy Books, 1989.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking. This should be a reread for me at this stage of the game. Believe it or not, I’d never read it before. Nor have I seen the movie. It bears repeating. I didn’t know this story. At all. Surprised? Don’t be. There are a lot of books I need to catch up to. I have a lot of words to chase. Still.

So. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. In a word, magical. In two words, thought provoking. In three, very well written. In four, impossible to put down. I’ll stop there but you get the point. I liked it.

I feel a little redundant writing about a book that has been around for so long. Everyone knows it either through reading it (hey, it did spend nine months on the best seller list) or from seeing the movie. I’m the only who has been living under a rock! But, anyway:
The Joy Luck follows the lives of three immigrant Chinese women who had started up a Mahjong club called Joy Luck in 1949. (There is a fourth founder but she dies before the book starts.) When the fourth founder dies from an brain aneurism her adult daughter is invited to join the group. Each chapter is a vignette, alternating between the Chinese mothers of the group and their American-born daughters. Through memories, parables, heritage and tragic history the visuals and dialogues make each character come alive.
One of the elements that makes The Joy Luck Club so fascinating is that it is structured like the game Mahjong the Joy Luck Club plays. To be fair, I had to do a little research about  mahjong because I wasn’t sure how it is played. After learning how the game is set up it dawned on me it was the identical design of Tan’s book.

Four parts that are divided into four sections totaling 16 different slices of story.
Personal joke: “…Ted introduced me to all his relatives as his girlfriend which, until then, I didn’t know I was” (p 124). Been there!

Book Trivia: The Joy Luck Club was translated into over 30 different languages, was a best-seller for nine months and was made into a movie in 1993 starring Tsai Chin. Chin also starred in Memoirs of a Geisha, another book on my list.

Author fact: Amy Tan co-authored a book with one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, in 1994 called Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour with Three Cords and an Attitude .

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Asian American Experience” (p 26).

Little Women

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Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. New York: Scholastic, 1987.

I think it goes without saying that Little Women is a classic. Who doesn’t know the story of Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth? Okay, so female readers of all ages probably know it better than men but either way there is no denying it’s a classic! Plus, they made a movie out of it!
So. To repeat the obvious: This is the story of the March women – Mrs. March and her four daughters. Too old to be drafted into service, Mr. March enlists to be a chaplain in the civil war. While he is away Mrs. March and her girls keep a modest house house in Concord, Massachusetts. The story centers around the four daughters and their four very different personalities. Alcott was ahead of her time when she created the character of Josephine (“Jo”). Jo is an ambitious tomboy who cuts her hair and wants to be a unmarried writer. She is referred to as male by herself (saying she is the man of the house while Father is away) and by her father (who calls her “son”). It’s an interesting dynamic to the plot. The rest of the March women are as Victorian as can be. I try to refrain from seeing them as prissy. They are all very pretty and wishy-washy and have talent. As a aside, the storytelling reminded me of Anne of Green Gables.

Disclaimer: Alcott intended Little Women to the first of a two volume set (with Good Wives being the second). Because Good Wives is not on my reading list I didn’t read it with Little Women.

Author Fact: Louisa May Alcott is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA. I wonder if I’ll have time to look her up while I am there in another week?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Three-Hanky Reads” (p 236). Of course Pearl is referring to the part when Beth dies.

Carry On, Mr Bowditch

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Latham, Jean Lee. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955.

Read this in a day. May is National History month and while that alone was a good excuse to read Carry On I also chose to read it because of Kon-Tiki. Seemed like the perfect transition.

This was reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s account about growing up in the unorganized territories of the midwest in the Little House series; better known as historical fiction. I call it biographical with a little imagination thrown in. It covers the life of Nathanial Bowditch, navigator extraordinaire. While the details of his childhood and subsequent personal adult years are somewhat abbreviated for adults, the content is perfect for children. I appreciated the way Latham didn’t minimized or sugarcoat the tragedy in Bowditch’s life. Nor did she gloss over his relationships with his first wife Elizabeth, or Polly, his second. What does come across is Bowditch’s love of mathematics and the seriousness with which he applies it to navigating the high seas. He does not suffer fools easily but his passion for teaching is enthusiastic and patient.

Favorite lines: “Sometimes women get a little upset about the sea” (p 71). Well, can you blame them? Husbands were gone for months and even years. Sometimes they didn’t come home at all. Another line I liked “You know, you’re real humanlike – in spite of your brains” (p 86). Funny.

Book Trivia: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch won Latham a Newbery Medal.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of All Ages” (p 114).

May ’12 is…

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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.

“Unexplorer”

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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”

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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).

“Tortures”

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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

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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”

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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).

“Golden Retrievals”

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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

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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).