Holli has
135 books
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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
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date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0307700003
| 9780307700001
| 3.56
| 13,617
| 2011
| Aug 23, 2011
|
I loved this book about the Japanese picture brides who came to this country early in the 20th century hoping for a better life. It reminded me of a h...more
I loved this book about the Japanese picture brides who came to this country early in the 20th century hoping for a better life. It reminded me of a haiku in that there are just enough words and no more; it touches the reader's emotions without telling the reader what or how to feel; it presents things as they are--allowing the light and the dark to inhabit the same space; it captures a moment in time, but in that moment there is everything. I loved Otsuka's use of the collective first person narrator. It was like a Greek chorus only more because the particular story was woven into the big picture story. The effect of this is that you feel like you've just watched a Ken Burns PBS special on the Japanese picture brides--you have a grasp of the historical details of the period, but you also have faces and individual stories that make the historical event come to life. Like Burns, Otsuka addresses our intellect, but she changes our hearts. I looked up the significance of the laughing Buddha and found this: "The Buddha does not laugh at himself or at others, he does not laugh because he has acquired something others don’t have. The laughter is neither cynical, sarcastic, bitter nor defiant. It is the laughter of compassion, an amusement at the interplay of knowledge and ignorance that makes up the joys and sorrows of what we call life." The Buddha is in the attic, but perhaps the Buddha is also on page 115 with a thick stick of pink chalk in her hand, skipping away, laughing, without looking back. I like this about Julie Otsuka. She believes there is hope for us yet.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Apr 2013
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May 11, 2013
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0099416425
| 9780099416425
| 4.12
| 6,972
| 1933
| Feb 01, 1990
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I really enjoyed this book. Stone did a good job getting inside Vincent's head and showing us the world as he experienced it. It is a testament to Sto...more
I really enjoyed this book. Stone did a good job getting inside Vincent's head and showing us the world as he experienced it. It is a testament to Stone's storytelling abilities that I found myself rooting for Vincent--hoping he would sell a painting, hoping that his seizures would abate, hoping that he wouldn't die so young afterall. Now when I view Van Gogh's paintings, I understand them more and I know where they fit chronologically in his life and in his development as an artist. I also have a better understanding of the artists who influenced him--both those who came before him and those who were his peers. I took the time to look up information about some of these artists and while not everything Stone included was accurate, it seems that he captured the spirit of each painter and the spirit of the times as the old rules were being broken and the world of art was being turned on its head. While I was reading Lust for Life, I was also reading a book by Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey of Your True Calling. Cope gives examples in his book of people who have lived out their calling, or dharma--people like Beethoven, Robert Frost, Jane Goodall, Henry David Thoreau, etc. Van Gogh could easily have been one of Cope's examples. Stone gives voice to Van Gogh's calling in the following passage: "In the Borinage he had slaved for God; here he had a new and more tangible kind of God, a religion that could be expressed in one sentence: that the figure of a labourer, some furrows in a ploughed field, a bit of sand, sea and sky were serious subjects, so difficult, but at the same time so beautiful, that it was indeed worth while to devote his life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them." My favorite passage comes at the end of an argument with Gauguin about the nature of art in Book Six, Chp. 8. The whole passage is great, but especially this paragraph: "The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and the grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, the corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life….” Another favorite passage comes late in the book when Vincent is talking with Dr. Gachet and Vincent says, "I would gladly exchange my calling for yours." Dr. Gachet holds a glowing yellow sunflower canvas before Vincent and says: "If I had painted just one canvas like this, Vincent, I would consider my life justified. I spent the years curing people's pain - but they died in the end, anyway - so what did it matter? These sunflowers of yours - they will cure the pain in people's hearts - they will bring people joy - for centuries and centuries - that s why your life is successful - that is why you should be a happy man." (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Apr 2013
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Apr 08, 2013
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1590514637
| 9781590514634
| 3.99
| 6,650
| 2002
| Jan 31, 2012
|
Sometimes I hate giving stars. I waffled between 3 and 4 on this one. Based on the title and a review I read, I wanted this to be one of my favorite b...more
Sometimes I hate giving stars. I waffled between 3 and 4 on this one. Based on the title and a review I read, I wanted this to be one of my favorite books of all time. Unfortunately, the writing didn’t sing for me. But since it is a translation, I am giving Sendker the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it would have if I had been able to read it in German. The reason I am being so lenient is because I think this book has an important message for us Westerners. In several of the other Goodread reviews, readers use the word “fairytale,” but I’m wondering if this isn’t more of a parable, or maybe even a koan. Can Tin Win really hear heartbeats? Is it possible for two people to stay that committed over that long period of time when they’re so far apart? These are questions that our rational minds ask, but maybe the point in this story is to read with our hearts rather than our minds, with our intuition rather than our reason. This is one of those situations where I would really like to talk to the author and ask some questions. I know that Mr. Sendker has visited Burma and that he fell in love with the country. I wonder if he would say that the Burmese have a different way of looking at reality. I wonder if they see the world in a more seamless way, that they see themselves as part of a greater whole rather than as being separate. This comes across in the relationship between U Ba and his mother when he is willing to give up his career to take care of her. And as he explains to Julia, this is the norm in Burma. Also, in an interview I read, Sendker said that it wasn’t necessary for Tin Win and Mi Mi to be disabled for the story to work. But in this case I don’t see their conditions as disabilities. I see them as differences that give them a deeper perspective on the world and allow them to see connections that the rest of us ignore. They have a beautiful, symbiotic relationship where he becomes her legs and she becomes his eyes. As MiMi says, “There were things a person who walked through the world on two sound feet simply couldn’t understand. They believed that people saw with their eyes. That footsteps overcame distances.” P. 171 Perhaps this really does deepen their bond in a way that most of us can’t understand. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but my hunch is that the point of the book is not that hearing heartbeats is necessarily magical realism or a special talent that Tin Win has because he is blind. I think that Sendker would say that we all have the capacity to hear heartbeats; we just don’t know it. The main reason I am going with 4 stars is because it occurred to me one day while I was out walking, thinking about the book, to juxtapose this love story with the story of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet who could not be together because of family differences and we all know what happened to them. Tin Win and Mi Mi also couldn’t be together because of family relationships and their story turned out very differently. Wow, I wondered to myself, how would the world be different if this was the classic love story? What if love wasn’t bound by close physical proximity? What if romantic love was understood as U Ba describes it to Julia: “Of course I am not referring to those outbursts of passion that drive us to do and say things we will later regret, that delude us into thinking we cannot live without a certain person, that set us quivering with anxiety at the mere possibility we might ever lose that person—a feeling that impoverishes rather than enriches us because we long to possess what we cannot, to hold on to what we cannot. No, I speak of a love that brings sight to the blind. Of a love stronger than fear. I speak of a love that breathes meaning into life, that defies the natural laws of deterioration, that causes us to flourish, that knows no bounds. I speak of the triumph of the human spirit over selfishness and death.” P. 11 Below are some of the quotes that I might want to refer back to at some point. Any book that gives me quotes like these is worth 4 stars. (All page numbers refer to the large print edition.) When U May and Tin Win have a discussion of who is blind: “The true essence of things is hidden to the eye . . . We must learn to divine the true nature of things, their substance, and the eyes are rather a hindrance than a help in that regard. A person who relies too heavily on his eyes neglects his other senses—and I mean more than his hearing or sense of smell. I’m talking about the organ within us for which we have no name. Let us call it the compass of the heart.” P. 127 In answer to Julia’s question, why does love have to be so difficult? U Ba replies, “Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities—for good as well as evil—onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. P. 245 Julia asks U Ba how long it took him to get over his mother’s death. “Over it? I’m not sure I would put it that way. When we get over something, we move on, we put it behind us. Do we leave the dead behind or do we take them with us? I think we take them with us. They accompany us. They remain with us, if in another form. We have to learn to live with them and their deaths.” P. 315 (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| Oct 2012
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Dec 12, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0385343833
| 9780385343831
| 3.36
| 46,321
| Mar 08, 2011
| Mar 08, 2011
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I gave this book a thorough reading because I knew I would be leading discussions of it at the library. I read about 25 pages at a time, stopped and j...more
I gave this book a thorough reading because I knew I would be leading discussions of it at the library. I read about 25 pages at a time, stopped and jotted down notes, then reviewed my notes periodically as I continued to read. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have “gotten it” quite the way I did. That’s why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. Actually, I’m still not completely sure I got it. But that’s also why I love it. After doing all the usual things that I do to prepare for a book discussion—reading reviews and interviews with the author, considering discussion questions, and googling things that I don’t know about (what the heck is a guslar and does chalk water induce labor?), I’m still pondering the book. The story is basically a hero’s journey with Natalia as our heroine, called on a journey to make sense of her grandfather’s death and, in the process, his life. Like Odysseus, Alice (in Wonderland), Dorothy (of Oz), Natalia is journeying in an unfamiliar place—an unnamed Balkan country where things are topsy turvy because of age-old conflicts and war. Natalia’s story is set firmly in reality--she is a dedicated young doctor on a mission to inoculate orphans (who were made orphans by the soldiers from her side of the border). But the world of myth and superstition (which are not the same thing) are always close at hand. I think that the conflict between reason and myth lies at the heart of the story. In our scientific age when we understand what makes thunder and why the sun disappears in the winter, we think we no longer need myths. But there are some things that we still can’t explain, like why we abandon our children or batter women or participate in ethnic cleansing. What’s up with all that? Well, did I ever tell you the story of the girl who loved tigers so much she almost became one? This is how Natalia’s grandfather attempts to explain these dark places in the human heart. It makes me think of Carl Jung and his concept of the shadow. "Everyone carries a shadow," wrote Jung, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It may be (in part) one's link to more primitive animal instincts, which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.” So this is a great gift that her grandfather gives to Natalia, this ability to imagine herself as a tiger. “Because I am little, and my love of tigers comes directly from him, I believe he is talking about me, offering me a fairy tale in which I can imagine myself—and will, for years and years.” And it is what makes her grandfather such a good doctor and noble human being. He has experienced first-hand this animal wildness. He knows how easy it is to become both predator and prey. My guess is that this is why he carries his copy of The Jungle Book in his pocket at all times, and why he visits the tigers regularly at the zoo, and why he doesn’t shield Natalia from the tiger incident that takes place in the prologue. He knows that all human beings have a shadow and that the shadow, when shoved down and denied, will eventually have its way with us. At the same time, when we are conscious of the shadow and find safe ways to acknowledge it and get to know it, it can be a source of power and wisdom. I give Obreht extra points for using the word “ritual” when referring to the grandfather’s regular visits to the zoo. Rituals and mythology go hand in hand. They touch a place in our brains and in our hearts where logic and reason can never go. It reminds me of a definition I read once for myth: a myth is a story that isn’t true on the outside but is true on the inside. (That’s from To Dance With God by Gertrud Mueller Nelson. That definition, by the way, came from her 4 year old daughter—a little child shall lead us!) I mentioned the hero’s journey. The whole point of the journey is for the hero/ine to gain some gift or boon that they can bring back to the community. I think I can say, without revealing a spoiler, that the gift Natalia receives is the ability to hear the voice of the tiger. I give the book a high rating because Obreht made me want to hear the tiger’s voice too. If I had more time I would write a paper called “Befriending Your Inner Tiger,” or “The Importance of Carrying a Tiger in Your Pocket.” (Which is different from a tiger in your tank.) I would look at the archetype of Tiger as it appears in The Jungle Book, Life of Pi, The Tiger’s Wife, and Calvin and Hobbes. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Nov 2012
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Dec 12, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0345521307
| 9780345521309
| 3.74
| 78,898
| Feb 22, 2011
| Feb 22, 2011
|
We tried to read this one for our library Book Discussion group last spring, but there was such a long waiting list that we had to postpone it for thi...more
We tried to read this one for our library Book Discussion group last spring, but there was such a long waiting list that we had to postpone it for this fall—which tells you how popular this book has been. Although The Paris Wife got some not-so-good reviews from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, I tend to agree with the more positive review in The Washington Post and the overall consensus of reviews from us regular people on Good Reads and Amazon who both gave it 4 out of 5 stars. In fact, my only real criticism of the book is the cover. The woman on the cover is too skinny and chic to be Hadley and her outfit is from the 40’s, not the 20’s. (I think they got mixed up and used Martha Gellhorn’s picture instead of Hadley’s!) McLain really cares about her main characters and she presents them in a multifaceted way. Even though I wanted to see Ernest as a rotten s.o.b. for doing Hadley wrong, McLain wouldn’t let me. (It’s hard to hate a guy who has to sleep with the light on because of battlefield nightmares and who grew up with a domineering mother who was so big and loud she could change the gravity in a room.) McLain gives us reasons for why Hemingway is the way he is and why Hadley is the way she is (she also suffered a domineering mother and a father who committed suicide). And even though I knew how it was all going to turn out, I couldn’t help rooting for them and enjoying their tender moments. According to what I’ve read about Hadley in her later years, she didn’t hold a grudge against Ernest and I really like the way McLain deals with this. I love the paragraph on p. 308 that begins “There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer than I did for my marriage. . . .” I won’t quote any more here because it’s sort of a spoiler. Just watch for it as you read. In my mind, the whole book comes down to this. Ironically, even though I liked feeling torn about Ernest and Hadley, it was very pleasurable not to have to see Pauline’s side of things. I was very happy not to have too much of her back story—no bad childhood experiences that might make me understand how she could be so . . . how would you describe her? . . .conniving? manipulative? mentally ill? Anyway, it was very satisfying to hate her. Maybe someone will write, or has written a book from her perspective, but I don’t want to know about it right now. (Too late. One of my colleagues just handed me a review of a new book called Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage. I guess I’ll have to read it at some point when I’ve cooled off a little and can give Pauline the benefit of the doubt.) My favorite thing about historical fiction is the way it draws me in to the real life and times of the setting and characters. In addition to reading The Paris Wife, I also read A Moveable Feast, and a good bit of The Sun Also Rises. (The only Hemingway I had read up until this point is The Old Man and the Sea and a few of his short stories.) I also enjoyed exploring www.thehemingwayproject.com which has a good bit of information about Hadley. I checked in with Google several times to find pictures and info about some of the people mentioned in the book (including Scottie Fitzgerald—I wanted to make sure she made it to adulthood!). I want to read A Farewell to Arms and re-read some of Fitzgerald and Pound. For years I’ve known vaguely about the “lost generation” and what Paris was like in the 20s. This book gave me the opportunity to explore this period a little more and get a better handle on things. If nothing else, at least I understood Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris a little better! :) P.S. Is it just me or does Paula McLain bear a resemblance to Pauline Pfeiffer? (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Sep 2012
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Sep 15, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0061120073
| 9780061120077
| 4.21
| 156,382
| 1943
| May 30, 2006
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Somehow, I missed out on this book until now. When I read the first chapter I had the same feeling I had all those years ago when I first read Little...more
Somehow, I missed out on this book until now. When I read the first chapter I had the same feeling I had all those years ago when I first read Little House in the Big Woods. I’ve always loved books that transport me to another time and place and show me what life was like for people whose lives were so different from my own. It’s all in the details—the little things that would seem ordinary and inconsequential at the time, but are interesting to me because things are so different now and because they represent the wonderful ingenuity and indomitable spirit of human beings. Reading the description of how Francie’s Mama turned six loaves of stale bread into a week’s worth of meals was just as fascinating to me as reading how Laura’s Ma made head cheese. (Not that I would want to eat head cheese, but the grossness makes it that much more thrilling!) What do I do that will someday be a lost art and someone from the future will find interesting? As Francie would say, “I wonder.” These kinds of books don’t really have a central plot line, but that doesn’t mean that nothing happens. In fact, just about everything happens in this book: birth; death; marriage; alcoholism; bigamy; pedophilia; political corruption; war; hunger; etc. As Anna Quindlen says in her Foreword: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not the sort of book that can be reduced to its plot line. The best anyone can say is that it is a story about what it means to be human. But the book is not heavy or depressing. Francie is one of those children who pays attention to everything around her, but in her innocence, she presents her observations in a non-judgmental way. So even though some people would call her father a “drunk” and her aunt a “floozy,” Francie loves them both and presents them to us with their dignity still intact. Francie and her great attention to detail (especially in the passage when she reads the headline, “WAR DECLARED” on April 6, 1917 and pauses in her day to look around her and absorb the scene, right down to the patterned grain of the wood on her desk and the sound her purse’s catch made as she clicked it open) made me think of Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. You know the scene after she dies and is allowed to come back for one more day and she can’t stand it because no one is paying attention to anything or looking at one another. As she leaves to go back to the cemetery she says, Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover’s Corners… Mama and Papa.. Good-by to clocks ticking.. and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths… sleeping and waking up. Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it- every, every minute? STAGE MANAGER: No. (Pause.) The saints and poets, maybe--they do some. Francie realizes life while she lives it. She doesn’t have money or prestige or even enough to eat, but she has the ability to pay attention to her life and that is enough. It’s really all any of us can hope for. It allows her to find beauty and happiness in the midst of her difficult life in the tenements: People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness. As Granma Mary Rommely would say, “To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” This is the gift that Betty Smith and Laura Ingalls Wilder bring to their readers. Their books give us the chance to take a peek into the life of someone who lived long ago and far away, but as we journey through the experiences of these beloved characters, we eventually find ourselves. That’s why their books withstand the test of time. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Mar 2012
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Mar 08, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1400068045
| 9781400068043
| 3.95
| 4,507
| Jan 01, 2011
| May 03, 2011
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A fan letter that I sent to Mary Doria Russell after reading Doc: Hi Mary, Just wanted to let you know that we will be discussing Doc this coming week a...more A fan letter that I sent to Mary Doria Russell after reading Doc: Hi Mary, Just wanted to let you know that we will be discussing Doc this coming week at our Monday Book Talk. You have loyal fans here since your visit to Coshocton County in 2009 when you spoke on A Thread of Grace and gave us a sneak preview of Doc. Multiple generations in my family have enoyed Doc. I brought the book home when it first came out and my son Michael read it, then my husband Kevin read it. They both loved it. During the past few years the two of them have been working their way through The Top 100 Movie Westerns of all time--so they were primed for it. Michael has been in and out of a cowboy phase for the past few years. Last October (2010) he dressed up as Doc Holliday for Halloween. In fact, we all dressed as cowboys, but he was the only one who researched his costume and insisted on authenticity. I made him a brocade vest and donated a silk scarf to use as a cravat and drew his mustache. He used his own money to buy the replica Colt. 45 (which was not Doc's actual gun, but the closest one Michael could find in his price range) and handmade leather holster. (As it turns out, that was Michael's last "little kid" dress up Halloween. He is now 13, taller than me, and his interest in guns and the Wild West has been replaced with an interest in Buddhism and Japanese poetry.) We bought a copy of Doc for my dad for Father's Day and he pretty much read it in two sittings. He just raved about it. You have to realize what a compliment this is--my dad is the biggest Western fan of all time AND he's a dentist. He was very impressed with the dentistry that you described--he says that your descriptions are very authentic! Then he launched into an explanation of gold foil work and how difficult it would have been for Doc with that cough. As for myself, I decided to save the book to read closer to our book discussion. As the leader of the discussion, I read it slowly, taking notes, and savoring it. As usual, I love your characters and knowing what makes them tick. It's amazing--the insight you give us into everyone from John Riney, to "China Joe" to Mattie Blaylock, to Father Alexander von Angensperg, S.J. Let alone, Wyatt, Kate, and JHH himself. You're a master at weaving all of these small stories into the larger story. I think you've done an excellent job of writing the story of Alice Holliday's son. As a mother of three sons and the sister of four brothers I know how complex and multi-layered menfolk can be. Having watched my brothers and my sons grow up, I can still see their 3 year old selves shining through their square jawed, manly, whiskered faces. I don't think they can see that--I think that even the most sensitive of men (my husband included) loses sight of their own little boy. That's partly why they need us womenfolk around--to cherish the little boy in them--without him they lose a piece of their humanity. Kate couldn't really do that for JHH, could she? He did that for her--he could see her lost little girl and cherish her, but she was too busy trying to save her own self to see much of him beyond what he could do for her. That's why JHH needs you, Mary! I love the passages like this: " Anyone out in the street who happened to look up would have seen a slim, well-dressed young man lounging not a sickly boy grieving." As I think about it, you've done the same for Wyatt and Bat and many of the other characters. In your hands they are more than cowboys and lawmen and card players and prostitutes. You help provide the other side of the story--the side of the story their mother's would tell if they were here. You're like the den mother of Dodge City. These cowboys have needed someone like you for a long time to take them in hand, remind them who they are, and not let them take themselves too seriously! It all comes together in the party scene at the end--the ghost life scene--where everyone is revealed to be more than they, and we, thought they were. How appropriate that it happens on the dance floor! It's the kind of scene I've come to expect from you when you surprise the reader with a little glimpse of heaven and heaven isn't all that far away. Like the scene in A Thread of Grace when Schramm realizes that Mirella is Jewish as she makes preparations for the Sabbath. It's like that final scene in Places in the Heart when they are passing communion from person to person, living and dead. Just one more thing. I knew that in the end Doc's tuberculosis was going to kill him, but as I got to know him so well I kept hoping that maybe this time he wouldn't have to die. (Sort of like I felt when I went to see the Titanic--maybe the captain will pay attention to the iceberg warnings this time and they'll miss the iceberg this time!) I found myself thinking, along with Kate, "Don't die on me, Doc. Don't die . . ." And finally, I've enjoyed reading your blog entries about Doc. I read the one about Going West-ern (your justifications for all your cowboy gear) aloud to Cheri, one of my co-workers the other day and we had a good laugh! We looked further, hoping to find an entry about how you put together a saloon girl outfit, but were disappointed. Cheri figured the first line would have been something like, "Well, I already had the fishnet stockings . . . " Mary's reply: Holli, this is just the best letter I've gotten all year about DOC. I love the idea of being the Dodge City den mother! I've been putting off replying to your note because I wanted to send you back photos from the Vendetta ride. Still don't quite know how to attach them -- my husband the software guru has all the jpegs filed someplace that takes 38947 clicks to get to and I don't know where to find them on my machine. But he's working a less baroque storage solution for digital archives. So soon... In the meantime, thank you so much, and I am just thrilled that you enjoyed the book so much. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Nov 2011
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Dec 28, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0007178379
| 9780007178377
| 3.72
| 15,372
| Jan 01, 2009
| Aug 24, 2009
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Chevalier does a fine job of getting inside the heads of people who didn't know about dinosaurs. I enjoyed the discussions among the characters of wha...more
Chevalier does a fine job of getting inside the heads of people who didn't know about dinosaurs. I enjoyed the discussions among the characters of what this means and what it says about God and the way the world works. I liked Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot and felt for them as they negotiated in a man's world. I liked that they were true to their gifts and interests and ultimately to their friendship. I liked that in the end it all came back to long walks on the beach where the curies were waiting to be found.(less)
| Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Apr 2011
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Oct 10, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0142001430
| 9780142001431
| 3.97
| 56,488
| Aug 06, 2001
| Apr 30, 2002
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A pretty good book, but not as good as March and People of the Book. I didn't care about the characters enough. Michael Mompellion was a huge disappoi...more
A pretty good book, but not as good as March and People of the Book. I didn't care about the characters enough. Michael Mompellion was a huge disappointment--I really thought he knew what he was doing. I like the way Anna's character grew during the course of the novel, but maybe she was a little too good. The ending? I kind of liked it, but I needed more convincing or more time to get used to the idea that this could happen. She sort of sprung it on me and, whereas I usually like it when I don't see something coming, this seemed to be pulled from thin air. It's too bad because I really wanted to like this one--I had heard great things about it, but it just didn't do it for me.(less)
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Oct 10, 2011
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| 0061671789
| 9780061671784
| 3.92
| 1,251
| Jan 01, 2009
| Jan 27, 2009
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Chapter 3 ends with this statement, "Here now, we have entered another state." That about sums up the book. John, who is a victim of Alzheimers, and E...more
Chapter 3 ends with this statement, "Here now, we have entered another state." That about sums up the book. John, who is a victim of Alzheimers, and Ella, who is in the last stages of cancer, have taken off on a road trip against the advice of their doctors and their children and their own better judgment. Ella narrates their journey, marking their progress by the states they pass through as they re-trace historic Rt. 66 from their home in Michigan to their ultimate destination, California. But on a subtler note, Ella traces the journey of their lives, their marriage, and the progression of their illnesses. By the end of chapter 3, they have enough miles under their tires to take them out of their ordinary lives and put them in traveling mode where new possibilities lie just around the next bend. Zadoorian is a fine storyteller, giving voice to the melancholy of two people who are approaching the end of their lives, but tempering it with new adventures and relationships. Especially poignant are the slide shows the couple watches at night of their past vacations when their children were young and their friends were still alive. These excursions into the past are juxtaposed with the people they meet along the way and the challenges they conquer even in their depleted states--Ella figures that the two of them together add up to one whole person! They are still waking up every morning and making sure they have a full tank, still drinking Pepsi and eating hamburgers, still up to their necks in the flow of human interaction, still giving and receiving. One of the ladies in my Sr. Center Book Club told me that she had a hard time reading this book--it struck too close to home and made her think of people she misses. I know what she means--the book definitely forces us to come face to face with our mortality. But I found a lot of hope as I traveled along with Ella, full of spit and vinegar and pain pills, and John, who kept fading in and out of the present moment. Theirs is a story about love and loyalty and courage. With humor and persistence they invite us to travel with them, allowing us to reflect on how remarkable an unremarkable life can be, and bringing us ultimately to a state of grace. A few quotes I liked: "How upset should you get over a suicide note where the person seems to lose interest in the middle?" (p. 67) "All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather--all the things so unimportant that they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren't." (p. 174) "He has a little dementia." (p. 264) "If love bonds us during our lives, why can't it still somehow bond us, keep us together after our deaths?" (p. 272) (less) | Notes are private!
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Oct 03, 2011
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| 0316098337
| 9780316098335
| 3.95
| 206,701
| Sep 13, 2010
| Sep 13, 2010
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**spoiler alert** Wow. Wow. Wow. I almost didn't read this book. Even after I started it, I almost put it down after the first 20 pages or so. As Mich...more
**spoiler alert** Wow. Wow. Wow. I almost didn't read this book. Even after I started it, I almost put it down after the first 20 pages or so. As Michael Cunningham says on the jacket, "Potent, darkly beautiful, and revelatory." I was afraid it was a little too potent and dark for me. I actually loved those first pages--the description of Jack and Ma's day and all the fun things they did in Room. I just hated the thought of why and for what purpose they were in Room. But I stuck with Jack and he pulled me through. I loved his voice--so matter-of-fact and innocent and quirky--and I realized that I had a lot to learn from him so I stuck it out. Donoghue says on her website about Jack's voice, "I made myself a dictionary of my son’s kid-English, then narrowed it down to some classic errors and grammatical oddities that would not seriously confuse readers." I think it would be very hard to tell this story from a 5-year-old's point of view, but she does it beautifully through Jack's unsentimental explanations of the world from his viewpoint (what's real and what's "TV")and his magpie reporting of the adult conversations that go on around him (which he often doesn't understand, but which give the reader enough of the back-story to fill them on the details they hate to know). Be sure to visit the website www.roomthebook.com and poke around Room, which Donoghue says she designed on home-decor website. I was especially interested in the bookshelf, which reveals Emma Donoghue’s reading list and how ROOM connects to other literature. Fascinating! This is really an archetypal story we're dealing with here. These are two of the reasons I give the book 5 stars--Donoghue's skill with a narrator and the way she came up with a story which seems so new and different but is really so old and elemental. The other reason I give it 5 stars is Ma's line, "I think what babies want is mostly to have their mothers right there." She says this in response to the TV talk show host's comment on how terribly difficult it must have been to raise Jack on her own, without books or professionals. It's pretty simple really, and this may be the most important thing Jack and Ma have to teach us. (less) | Notes are private!
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Aug 15, 2011
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| 1565125606
| 9781565125605
| 4.05
| 629,755
| May 26, 2006
| May 01, 2007
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I wanted to like this one more than I did. It was interesting and the story kept me turning pages, but I didn't care about the characters as much as I...more
I wanted to like this one more than I did. It was interesting and the story kept me turning pages, but I didn't care about the characters as much as I wanted to. Other than the fact that Marlena looked good in pink sequins I didn't really understand why Jacob loved her so much. Gruen alluded to her skill with horses and if she had developed this a little more I probably would have admired Marlena more and thought she deserved Jacob's attention. I liked Jacob--he was a very loyal and honorable man. But he reminded me a little bit of Richie Cunningham. I like Richie too, but he's a sitcom character--he's supposed to be one-dimensional. I guess I wanted Jacob to be a little more complicated. And part of me didn't believe that he had to join the circus. He had a string of bad luck, but was this really his only choice? August was easy to hate--maybe a little too easy. He must have had some redeemable character trait. Was he just bad because he was a "paragon schnitzophonic" or was there something more? Did his mother love him? And then there's Rosie. I really wanted to like her and it's not that I didn't like her, but like the other characters, Gruen just didn't give me enough. That's why I sort of felt cheated at the end of the story. The ending surprised me, which was good I guess, but it also felt a little cheap. It could have been spectacular if I had cared more. When I really love a novel, I think about the characters when I'm away from them. I didn't think much about these characters. Gruen didn't let me inside their heads and hearts enough. It was more like reading an interesting story in a newspaper or magazine than reading a really good novel that you just can't put down. (less) | Notes are private!
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Aug 08, 2011
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| 0374161143
| 9780374161149
| 3.50
| 918
| 2009
| Sep 29, 2009
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I give this book four stars partly because it's so thought provoking. When you read it you'll get all caught up in your thoughts about the ethics of g...more
I give this book four stars partly because it's so thought provoking. When you read it you'll get all caught up in your thoughts about the ethics of genetic enhancement. The scene involving the debate between the Nobel Prize winning author and the "notorious geneticist" really brings this home. I was really pulling for the author, but the geneticist had some good points . . . it's not easy to choose sides. But this plot line is only part of the story. Throughout the novel there are references and remarks about writing, creative nonfiction, story, the role of the novel in our modern world, etc. You'll want to pay attention to this theme as it weaves itself through the story. That's the only way the ending will make sense. The title of the textbook that Russell uses in his creative nonfiction writing class, Make Your Writing Come Alive , sort of sums it up. I must admit that part of the reason I wanted to read this book was to find another piece to the secret of happiness. If this had been ignored or if Powers had given an easy answer, I would have been disappointed. In my opinion he handled it beautifully. Thassa's speech on the Oona Show (p. 222) is koan-like enough that I understand it on one level, but I'm also still trying to figure it out (and probably will be for a long time to come). The way Powers delivers Thassa's speech is brilliant. I'm going to include the speech here so I'll be able to refer back to it when I need it. It's not really a spoiler because it doesn't give the plot away and if you're like me, you won't fully understand it anyway: "Oona, listen. I promise you: This is easy. Nothing is more obvious. People think they need to be healed, but the truth is much more beautiful. Even a minute is more than we deserve. No one should be anything but dead. Instead, we get honey out of rocks. Miracles from nothing. It's easy. We don't need to get better. We're already us. And everything that is, is ours."(less) | Notes are private!
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Aug 08, 2011
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| 1400064945
| 9781400064946
| 3.50
| 4,934
| Sep 01, 2009
| Sep 01, 2009
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An interesting book. I kept thinking about Homer, the blind narrator and Homer, the blind poet. This seemed sort of like a reverse Odyssey--instead of...more
An interesting book. I kept thinking about Homer, the blind narrator and Homer, the blind poet. This seemed sort of like a reverse Odyssey--instead of going on a journey, the journey came to them. In fact, the whole 20th century sort of paraded through their house, bringing all kinds of quirky characters from different decades. None of the reviews I read mentioned this, although I did see a reference to it on someone's blog. At least twice, Homer depicts himself as a traveler. When the house really begins to get junky and he was having trouble finding his way through the rooms, he says, "I was a traveler who had lost his map" (p. 96). And later, just before the gangsters move in, he says, "I think now what happened I had wanted to happen, though what I will describe here was finally only one more passing event in our lives--as if our house were not our house but a road on which Langley and I were traveling like pilgrims." (p. 112) I didn't know much about the Collyer brothers until I looked them up online after I finished the book. I admire the way Doctorow, as pointed out by Liesl Schillinger, in her review in the NY Times, "considers them in a less lurid fashion, casting them as sympathetic, if eccentric, players in the drama of the departed American century . . . .Where other writers, titillated by the brothers' ghoulish history, have asked, 'How did they die?' Doctorow asks the more respectful, and thus more surprising, question: 'How did they live?'" To me, this made all the difference. I kept thinking about an older gentleman in our town who used to come into the library to get our discarded newspapers. People said that his house was completely filled with stacks of old papers and magazines. It's easy to look at people like that and see them as one-dimensional, stereotyped characters. This book made me wonder about the circumstances of his life and see him in a more compassionate light. (less) | Notes are private!
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Dec 17, 2010
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| 0385722206
| 9780385722209
| 3.56
| 24,065
| 2000
| Oct 29, 2002
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This was a fun little book. I read it for Coffee Club, Books of Asian Influence. It was part fable, part coming-of-age, almost part memoir. The author...more
This was a fun little book. I read it for Coffee Club, Books of Asian Influence. It was part fable, part coming-of-age, almost part memoir. The author is good at saying a lot with few words, which adds to the authentic voice of the teen-aged boy narrator. To me, the book says a lot about the transforming power of literature, the power of storytelling, and the importance of "loving what is." I loved the part about "Mozart is always thinking about Chairman Mao" and the rooster alarm clock. I got the movie and watched it. And I brushed up on my history--Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. From Publishers Weekly The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale. (Sept. 17)Forecast: Sijie's debut was a best-seller and prize winner in France in 2000, and rights have been sold in 19 countries; it is also scheduled to be made into a film. Its charm translates admirably strong sales can be expected on this side of the Atlantic. (less) | Notes are private!
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May 08, 2008
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| 0618485228
| 9780618485222
| 3.90
| 106,998
| Sep 16, 2003
| Sep 01, 2004
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I listened to this one on tape and really enjoyed the performance by Sarita Choudhury. I like the way Lahiri shifts tone when she shifts point of vie...more
I listened to this one on tape and really enjoyed the performance by Sarita Choudhury. I like the way Lahiri shifts tone when she shifts point of view. When we see the story from Ashima's point of view, the tone is restrained, timid, almost veiled. When the point of view shifts to Gogol, the tone becomes more forthright and a little angry. Overall, the book has a refined feeling to it. Even though the characters are trying to make their way in this culture and in this life, they maintain their dignity and respect for one another.--hr Amazon.com Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks. Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 29, 2008
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| 0449912558
| 9780449912553
| 4.17
| 21,784
| 1996
| Sep 08, 1997
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This was truly a riveting book. I read it on vacation and kept excusing myself from visiting with family so that I could slip away to read. At the sa...more
This was truly a riveting book. I read it on vacation and kept excusing myself from visiting with family so that I could slip away to read. At the same time, however, it was a haunting and disturbing book. The things that happened to Sandoz were hard to read and the book raises a lot of questions like where was God in all of this? Russell is brilliant and makes good use of her training in paleoanthropology in creating the world of Rakhat. Her descriptions of the ship and the technology that it took to get them there was very interesting, but not overbearing. Also, he r insights into language and the way she created two languages for the novel was fascinating. Woven through all the technical stuff of the story was a cast of characters that I really loved. They are the kind of people you would want to invite to a dinner party because they are all so bright, but really down to earth and funny. The theological questions that the author raises adds to the authenticity of the story. She doesn’t offer any easy answers, but her characters display a lot of integrity and authenticity in their struggles. I found two passages in the book that I photocopied for future use in worship services, one about a funeral and one about communion. I’m currently reading Children of God, which is a follow-up novel and further explains what happened on Rakhat. Stay tuned . . . . From Booklist When readers meet Father Emilio Sandoz, he's a wreck, inside and out. His hands are maimed, his body bruised; he suffers from scurvy, anemia, and spiritual devastation. The year is 2059. Although Jesuit missionaries thrive on suffering, something particularly dire has happened to this skilled linguist. Four decades earlier, he proposed an expedition to discover the sentient beings whose strange yet beautiful music had been detected by radio telescope. As the only survivor of this spiritual odyssey to Alpha Centauri (the star system four light years from Earth), Sandoz was found dazed and filled with terror by rescuers who inferred that he had resorted to prostitution to stay alive. Returned to the Jesuit Order, Sandoz is forced to face truths about the godless alien societies on the planet Rakhat that he and his colleagues grew to know, love, and perish at the claws of. Miscommunications, misplaced trust, and tiny mistakes led to their downfall. The dense prose in this complex tale may at first seem off-putting, but hang on for the ride; it's riveting! Russell's first novel is also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 29, 2008
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| 1593760787
| 9781593760786
| 4.20
| 2,075
| 2004
| Sep 30, 2005
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What can I say? It’s Wendell Berry. I especially liked his image of the room of love, as quoted below and as described in the chapter. Maybe her life...more
What can I say? It’s Wendell Berry. I especially liked his image of the room of love, as quoted below and as described in the chapter. Maybe her life didn’t turn out quite as she would have wanted, with her children all so far away and her way of life passing out of existence, but that image of the room of love speaks of hope, reconciliation, and shalom.--HR From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. "This is the story of my life, that while I lived it weighed upon me and pressed against me and filled all my senses to overflowing and now is like a dream dreamed.... This is my story, my giving of thanks." So begin the reflections of Hannah Coulter, the twice-widowed protagonist of this slim, incandescent novel in Berry's Port William series. In 1940, the precocious, innocent Hannah leaves her small Kentucky farming town to work as a secretary in nearby Hargrave, where she meets Virgil Feltner, seven years her senior, who gently courts her. They marry and have a daughter, but Virgil, "called to the army in 1942," dies in the Battle of the Bulge. Love follows mourning, as a kind but driven farmer, Nathan Coulter, returns from combat and woos Hannah. In delicate, shimmering prose, Berry tracks Hannah's loves and losses through the novel's first half; the narrative sharpens as Hannah recounts her children's lives—Margaret becomes a schoolteacher with a troubled son; Mattie ("a little too eager to climb Fool's Hill") flees rural life to become a globe-trotting communication executive; Caleb, Nathan's hope to run the family farm, becomes a professor of agriculture instead. Beneath the story of ordinary lives lies the work of an extraordinarily wise novelist: as Hannah relates her children's fate to her own deeply rooted rural background, she weaves landscape and family and history together ("My mind... is close to being the room of love where the absent are present, the dead are alive, time is eternal and all creatures prosperous"). Her compassion enlivens every page of this small, graceful novel. (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 29, 2008
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| 0142000655
| 9780142000656
| 4.30
| 165,110
| 1952
| Feb 05, 2002
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We read this for a book discussion at church. Since I had never read it, I was glad for the opportunity. I read part of it and listened to part of it...more
We read this for a book discussion at church. Since I had never read it, I was glad for the opportunity. I read part of it and listened to part of it on tape. We also watched the movie with James Dean. I enjoyed Steinbeck's descriptions and use of metaphor. I did not like the little essays he inserted here and there. They interrupted the flow of the story. (Although I must admit that his comparison of the church and the whore house made me smile). I also did not like the way he portrayed the "Eve" character, Cathy. She was evil through and through and I'm tired of Eve getting the blame. My favorite characters were Sam Hamilton and Lee. I really enjoyed that whole scene where Lee describes how his Chinese mentors studied Hebrew in order to understand the Genesis story. The whole thing pivots around the "thou Mayest" part. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature Novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1952. It is a symbolic recreation of the biblical story of Cain and Abel woven into a history of California's Salinas Valley. With East of Eden Steinbeck hoped to reclaim his standing as a major novelist, but his broad depictions of good and evil come at the expense of subtlety in characterization and plot and it was not a critical success. Spanning the period between the American Civil War and the end of World War I, the novel highlights the conflicts of two generations of brothers; the first being the kind, gentle Adam Trask and his wild brother Charles. Adam eventually marries Cathy Ames, an evil, manipulative, and beautiful prostitute; she betrays him, joining Charles on the very night of their wedding. Later, after giving birth to twin boys, she shoots Adam and leaves him to return to her former profession. In the shadow of this heritage Adam raises their sons, the fair-haired, winning, yet intractable Aron, and the dark, clever Caleb. This second generation of brothers vie for their father's approval. In bitterness Caleb reveals the truth about their mother to Aron, who then joins the army and is killed in France. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 29, 2008
| Mass Market Paperback
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| 0743225740
| 9780743225748
| 3.29
| 5,230
| 2005
| Jul 11, 2006
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A little melancholy for my taste, but still a well-written book. Well-developed characters and setting. From Publishers Weekly Fans of Diamant's The Re...more A little melancholy for my taste, but still a well-written book. Well-developed characters and setting. From Publishers Weekly Fans of Diamant's The Red Tent who were disappointed by her sophomore effort (Good Harbor) will be happy to find her back on historical turf in her latest, set in early 1800s Massachusetts. Inspired by the settlement of Dogtown, Diamant reimagines the community of castoffs—widows, prostitutes, orphans, African-Americans and ne'er-do-wells—all eking out a harsh living in the barren terrain of Cape Ann. Black Ruth, the African woman who dresses like a man and works as a stonemason; Mrs. Stanley, who runs the local brothel, and Judy Rhines, an unmarried white woman whose lover Cornelius is a freed slave, are among Dogtown's inhabitants who are considered suspect—even witches—by outsiders. Shifting perspectives among the various residents (including the settlement's dogs, who provide comfort to the lonely), Diamant brings the period alive with domestic details and movingly evokes the surprising bonds the outcasts form in their dying days. This chronicle of a dwindling community strikes a consistently melancholy tone—readers in search of happy endings won't find any here—but Diamant renders these forgotten lives with imagination and sensitivity. (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 28, 2008
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| 0802139256
| 9780802139252
| 3.94
| 36,429
| Aug 02, 2001
| Aug 07, 2002
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Great book! Great story! Great characters! I especially liked Swede and her vocabulary, not to mention her epic cowboy poems. I didn’t care that she...more
Great book! Great story! Great characters! I especially liked Swede and her vocabulary, not to mention her epic cowboy poems. I didn’t care that she can write better than I can. And of course, Rube, who is so human, struggling with what is the right thing to do. The feeling of a brother gone bad, wanting to protect him, bring him back into the fold—I know that feeling. And the breathing—even though mine doesn’t get that bad, I could still identify. The book was full of great imagery. I especially liked the line about searching his brain like opening every drawer of a bureau. I didn’t see the end coming, but it was inevitable. I can’t wait for Enger to write another novel. Amazon.com's Best of 2001 To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben "Rube" Land, the asthmatic 11-year-old boy at the center of Leif Enger's remarkable first novel, Peace Like a River. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, in small-town Minnesota circa 1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic, verbal stoicism of the northern Great Plains. "Here's what I saw," Rube warns his readers. "Here's how it went. Make of it what you will." And Rube sees plenty. In the winter of his 11th year, two schoolyard bullies break into the Lands' house, and Rube's big brother Davy guns them down with a Winchester. Shortly after his arrest, Davy breaks out of jail and goes on the lam. Swede is Rube's younger sister, a precocious writer who crafts rhymed epics of romantic Western outlawry. Shortly after Davy's escape, Rube, Swede, and their father, a widowed school custodian, hit the road too, swerving this way and that across Minnesota and North Dakota, determined to find their lost outlaw Davy. In the end it's not Rube who haunts the reader's imagination, it's his father, torn between love for his outlaw son and the duty to do the right, honest thing. Enger finds something quietly heroic in the bred-in-the-bone Minnesota decency of America's heartland. Peace Like a River opens up a new chapter in Midwestern literature. (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 28, 2008
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| 0312353766
| 9780312353766
| 4.12
| 236,914
| 1997
| Nov 01, 2005
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One of my favorite books. After I read it, I began taking "Red Tent Days." I live in a household of men (one husband, three sons), but one day a mont...more
One of my favorite books. After I read it, I began taking "Red Tent Days." I live in a household of men (one husband, three sons), but one day a month I go to my room and drink tea and read and tune out the testosterone. The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider's look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob's daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah--all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery. "Like any sisters who live together and share a husband, my mother and aunties spun a sticky web of loyalties and grudges," Anita Diamant writes in the voice of Dinah. "They traded secrets like bracelets, and these were handed down to me the only surviving girl. They told me things I was too young to hear. They held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember." Remembering women's earthy stories and passionate history is indeed the theme of this magnificent book. In fact, it's been said that The Red Tent is what the Bible might have been had it been written by God's daughters, instead of her sons. --Gail Hudson (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 28, 2008
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| 0770430074
| 9780770430078
| 3.84
| 481,466
| Sep 11, 2001
| Aug 29, 2006
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I heard what this was about and put off reading it because I didn't think I would like it. It's one of those books that you just keep pondering. I'm...more
I heard what this was about and put off reading it because I didn't think I would like it. It's one of those books that you just keep pondering. I'm still not sure what it was all about! But it turned out to be a great book. I listened to it on tape and the narrator did an excellent job. His innocent voice and observational style provide a great contrast to the multi-layered, truth-filled story as it unfolds. Many things took me by surprise. I used my “willing suspension of disbelief” just to see where things were going and waited eagerly for the end to see how he would wrap it all up. I admit that the middle part of the plot got a little lengthy at points. I was tired of the castaway situation, but his beautiful descriptions and observations kept me interested. My favorite thing about the book was the way he played with the idea of what is real. I really enjoyed the dialogue between Pi and the Japanese representatives from the shipping company. They were so concerned with what “really happened” and Pi was so good at showing them that we can’t really be sure of anything. Just like Loving What Is. There was one line in particular, something about how with any “real thing,” we bring ourselves and our experiences to it and that changes it. It reminded me of quantum physics and What the Bleep Do We Know? Our influence on reality. Always multiple choices, multiple possibilities. I really liked the main character, Pi, and his collection of religions. He is the kind of person you would want to be stranded on a lifeboat with, resourceful, thoughtful, well-read. Richard Parker is another story . . . . Amazon.com Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion." An award winner in Canada (and winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize), Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S. At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike Life of Pi is such a book. --Brad Thomas Parsons --This text refers to the Paperback edition. (less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 24, 2008
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| 0142001740
| 9780142001745
| 3.92
| 577,576
| Jan 28, 2002
| Jan 28, 2003
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I haven't talked to anyone who didn't like The Secret Life of Bees. It really strikes a chord. We're all like Lily--poor white girls searching for a r...more
I haven't talked to anyone who didn't like The Secret Life of Bees. It really strikes a chord. We're all like Lily--poor white girls searching for a rich black mother. I read Kidd's Dance of the Dissident Daughter and realized that we're all searching for the sacred feminine, the black madonna who has been in exiled. Maybe The Secret Life of Bees will help bring her back.--HR From Publishers Weekly Honey-sweet but never cloying, this debut by nonfiction author Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter) features a hive's worth of appealing female characters, an offbeat plot and a lovely style. It's 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, in Sylvan, S.C. Fourteen-year-old Lily is on the lam with motherly servant Rosaleen, fleeing both Lily's abusive father T. Ray and the police who battered Rosaleen for defending her new right to vote. Lily is also fleeing memories, particularly her jumbled recollection of how, as a frightened four-year-old, she accidentally shot and killed her mother during a fight with T. Ray. Among her mother's possessions, Lily finds a picture of a black Virgin Mary with "Tiburon, S.C." on the back so, blindly, she and Rosaleen head there. It turns out that the town is headquarters of Black Madonna Honey, produced by three middle-aged black sisters, August, June and May Boatwright. The "Calendar sisters" take in the fugitives, putting Lily to work in the honey house, where for the first time in years she's happy. But August, clearly the queen bee of the Boatwrights, keeps asking Lily searching questions. Faced with so ideally maternal a figure as August, most girls would babble uncontrollably. But Lily is a budding writer, desperate to connect yet fiercely protective of her secret interior life. Kidd's success at capturing the moody adolescent girl's voice makes her ambivalence comprehensible and charming. And it's deeply satisfying when August teaches Lily to "find the mother in (herself)" a soothing lesson that should charm female readers of all ages. (Jan. 28)(less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 24, 2008
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| 0449004139
| 9780449004135
| 3.97
| 5,836
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| Dec 06, 2005
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I stayed up until after midnight last night finishing this. I started out listening to it on tape and got half way finished and it was on hold for so...more
I stayed up until after midnight last night finishing this. I started out listening to it on tape and got half way finished and it was on hold for someone so I had to turn it in and get the book. The narrator did a great job with the French, German, and Italian accents. Russell is so smart. She weaves the fictitious characters and places with historical fact and makes a beautiful and difficult story. This novel is very character-driven. I wondered about the characters when I wasn’t reading about them. And even though some of them are larger than life, they are believable and human all the same. I can understand how Schramm would embrace Nazism so totally. I love the way Russell uses Schramm in juxtaposition to the priest, Dom Osvaldo Tomitz. How Tomitz refuses Schramm absolution for killing 91,867 people because he feels no remorse. And then Schramm in the end gives Tomitz his last rites and has a conversion/redemption experience at his death. I also love the scene where Mirella presides over the Sabbath with Schramm at her table and he realizes for the first time that she is a Jew, this woman who has been nursing him for months. The novel points out the overall absurdity of war and what defines an enemy—the last battle the partisans engage in, killing the Republicans right and left, finding out the war is over, staying up all night to bury them because they are fellow countrymen. And, of course, there’s the death of Renzo Leoni—masterful and perfect. He risked his life again and again to save Jews, fight with the partisans, bring them supplies, etc. And he is hung as a Fascist/Nazi sympathizer because that was one of his disguises. There are no easy answers in this novel, but Russell certainly helps us live with the questions. “There’s a saying in Hebrew,” he tells her. “’No matter how dark the tapestry God weaves for us, there’s always a thread of grace.’ After the Yom Kippur roundup in ‘43, people all over Italy helped us. Almost fifty thousand Jews were hidden. Italians, foreigners. And so many of them survived the occupation. I keep asking myself, Why was it so different here? Why did Italians help when so many others turned away?” (p. 421—conversation between Rabbi Iacopo Soncini and Suora (Sister) Corniglia). This is one of my favorite novels of all time. Like Russell's earlier book, The Sparrow, there are a few scenes where the characters wrestle with difficult theological questions. She handles this so well, so authentically, and so truly. No easy answers, but somehow she makes it okay to live with the questions. There is one exchange between Doktor Schramm and Don Osvaldo that I would put in the top 5 literary "scenes" of all time.--HR Amazon.com Mary Doria Russell's extraordinary and complex historical novel, A Thread of Grace, is the kind of book that you will find yourself haunted by long after finishing the last page. It opens with a group of Jewish refugees being escorted to safe-keeping by Italian soldiers. After making the arduous journey over a steep mountain pass, they are welcomed into a small village with warm food and clean beds. They have barely laid their heads to rest when news is received that Mussolini has just surrendered Italy to Hitler, putting them in danger yet again. This opening sequence is a grim foreshadowing of the heart-breaking journey these characters will experience in their struggle for survival. The rich fictional narrative is woven through the factual military maneuvers and political games at the end of WW II, sharing a little-known story of a group of Italian citizens that sheltered more than 40,000 Jews from grueling work camp executions. Rather than the bleak and hopeless feeling that might be expected, the novel has the opposite effect; it reminds us that just as there will always be war, crime, and death, so too will there be good people who selflessly sacrifice themselves to ease the suffering of others. Perhaps best of all, Russell succinctly opens and closes her writing with short pieces that bookend the story with the force of a freight train. Her moving finale wraps up her narrative in the present day, with a death bed scene that's sure to rip the heart out of readers of every faith and ancestry. On the surface, Russell's third novel may seem quite different from her earlier works. Both The Sparrow and its sequel, Children of God , were futuristic stories about Earth's first contact with alien life forms, but a closer look reveals several similarities. Fans of her earlier books will be pleased to find that Emilio Sandoz, the charismatic Jesuit priest from the first two books, finds new life in Renzo Leoni--A Thread of Grace's charming and haunted chameleon. The two have different circumstances and histories, but both characters are made of the same cloth--tormented by their consciences and plagued by unrequited love. Also similar to her earlier books, the characters in A Thread of Grace don't all enjoy a happy ending. A note in the reader's guide tells us that Russell flipped a coin to determine the fate of some of the characters. This may be upsetting for many readers, particularly those used to Hollywood endings, but it does serve as a frank reminder of the arbitrary nature of war and death. --Victoria Griffith(less) | Notes are private!
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Apr 24, 2008
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