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<![CDATA[Kathryn
is on page 249 of The Journals of Lewi...
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http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77498207
Kathryn
is on page 249 of 576 of
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
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<![CDATA[Kathryn
is on page 203 of The Journals of Lewi...
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http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77498207
Kathryn
is on page 203 of 576 of
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
As usual, I finished this fiction book that I needed to read for tonight’s Third Tuesday Book Club meeting right before I ate lunch today. I had read it before (at the end of June, 2003), but I had forgotten a lot in the intervening six years. It is the first book in a four-book series (Rabbit, Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest), but stands well alone, I think. And I had forgotten how very much John Updike tosses in details upon details.
Written in 1960 and set in 1959, this novel (the second from John Updike, in his long career) deals with one Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, aged twenty-six, and set in Mt. Judge, Pennsylvania (a suburb of the city of Brewer), some 50 miles east of Philadelphia. Harry was a high school basketball star, getting his nickname for his style of play and setting school records before graduating in 1951; since then, he has been in and out of the Army, got married, and produced a son. As the novel opens, his wife is seven months pregnant (and alcoholic), and Rabbit feels trapped by his life, which is nothing like being a high school basketball star. So, he runs; but a rabbit never runs far in a straight line, and never runs far from his home burrow.
So, Rabbit circles back from an abortive all-night drive (he was aiming for the Gulf of Mexico, but never got farther than West Virginia), and ends up spending the rest of the book evading everything that does not seem to mesh with his idea of himself as someone who is, despite all appearances, somehow a star. He also demonstrates the sexual maturity of, well, a high school basketball star; every woman he sees is sized up in terms of her sexual potential.
It is a treat in many ways to revisit 1959 (a territory I only know of from hearsay, as I was born in 1958). A full Chinese meal (with liquor) for four people costs less than $10, everyone smokes constantly (and everywhere), the worse thing that could happen from unprotected sex is pregnancy, the only phone contact is by land lines, and some sexual practices (most notably penilingus) are considered less honorable than others.
It was a treat to re-read this book, and I anticipate a most interesting book club discussion tonight; especially as there seems to be an undercurrent from the Club that some did not like this book.
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<![CDATA[Kathryn added 'Rabbit Redux']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/54283546
to: Rabbit Redux (Hardcover)byJohn Updike bookshelves: 2003
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<![CDATA[Kathryn added 'The Journals of Lewis and Clark']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77498207
The Journals of Lewis and Clark (Lewis & Clark Expedition)
byMeriwether Lewis bookshelves: currently-reading
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<![CDATA[Kathryn added 'Death With Interruptions']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75198059
to: Death With Interruptions (Hardcover)byJosé Saramago bookshelves: 2009
It did not take me long at all to read this small book, and I immensely enjoyed it; reading José Saramago (even in translation) is always a treat, and I am used to his books having a distinct lack of punctuation (no quotation marks for dialogue, precious little capitalization, etc.)
“The following day, no one died.” This is January 1, in the nameless quasi-European country where Saramago’s books are usually set; and death (with a small ‘d’) has apparently taken a holiday. No one dies, which is not to say that everyone is suddenly blessedly immortal; for those who should die (by illness, accident, old age, whatever) simply do not die, but just continue alive. (In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus for the mortal Tithonus to be immortal, she forgot to ask for eternal youth for him, and eventually discarded him when old age rendered him immobile, but undying.) This development deeply consternates the funeral home directors (who are reduced to working with household pets to survive), the hospitals and nursing homes, and the Roman Catholic Church (one must die to be resurrected; so without death, one cannot have eternal life).
It turns out that death (small ‘d’) is only that small subsection of Death who takes care of human deaths in this landlocked country of ten million souls, for those who are outside the borders still die in the normal way.
Essentially, this book is two books; one made up of the reaction of the country to the cessation (and eventual resumption) of death, and the second made up of death and her (death is female) rationale and motivations and eventual problems. I am not sure I like for the book to be so divided; but overall, I do like the book, though I wish the book had returned to the country as a whole, instead of suddenly narrowing down to one or two characters.
I will be returning this book to its owner on Tuesday night (at the Third Tuesday Book Club meeting), and I am very happy that he lent this book to me; thanks, J!
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<![CDATA[Kathryn added 'The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75110665
to: The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History (Paperback)byStephen Jay Gould bookshelves: 2009
I finished reading this book today (a good thing, as I have two other books that must be read before next Tuesday night), and very much enjoyed this not-quite-penultimate collection of essays that the author wrote for Natural History magazine on issues revolving around Evolution and Charles Darwin. Alas, Gould is no longer with us, but I treasure the essay collections, and enjoyed reading this one, as I have enjoyed reading the others in the series.
Gould writes with wry humor, but he is quite the scientist (there are times when reading this that I felt that my head was trying to expand, to fit in the advanced concepts; although the essays are written for the popular press, the author assumed a quite educated popular press reader). This can be seen from the chapter subheadings. Section 1 contains three essays, and is titled “Episodes in the Birth of Palenontology: The Nature of Fossils and the History of the Earth”. Before one dismisses out of hand this section, I must note (at some risk of tripping naughty-word software all over the Internet) that one of the essays is titled “How The Vulva Stone Became a Brachiopod”. We continue onward with Section 2: Present at the Creation: How France’s Three Finest Scientists Established Natural History in an Age of Revolution”, and Section 3 gives us “Darwin’s Century – And Ours: Lessons from Britain’s Four Greatest Victorian Naturalists”. The final three sections, oddly enough, have very short headings. Section 4 is “Six Little Pieces on the Meaning and Location of Excellence”, Section 5 covers “Science in Society”, and the final Section 6 covers “Evolution at All Scales”.
I have been reading (and collecting) the books of essays, ever since I discovered Stephen Jay Gould’s essays while reading Natural History magazine. By my count, I have one more to read, and then I am done, a fact that saddens me, for while I could always go back and read the books again, it’s more fun (and, perhaps, a better use of my time, as I am not yet immortal) to read new collections of essays.
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<![CDATA[Kathryn added 'When Perfect Isn't Good Enough: Strategies for Coping with Perfectionism']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/62712225
to: When Perfect Isn't Good Enough: Strategies for Coping with Perfectionism (Hardcover)byMartin M. Antony bookshelves: 2009
I had picked up this book earlier this year (it was on the half-price table at Barnes & Noble) and started reading it early in July; I finished reading it last night, not because I couldn’t put it down, but more out of a sense of obligation. Indeed, I have perfectionist tendencies; but I felt that this book would have been much handier to have back when I was first working out some of my problems. (Not that I am done working through my problems – indeed, more seem to crop up – but this book is fairly elementary.)
The book is set up into three major sections. Part I is Understanding Perfectionism; The Nature of Perfectionism, The Impact of Perfectionism, Perfectionism and Thoughts, and Perfectionism and Behavior. Part II covers Overcoming Perfectionism; Assessing Your Perfectionism, Developing a Plan for Change, Changing Perfectionist Thoughts, and Changing Perfectionist Behaviors. Part III then deals with Working With Specific Problems and Perfectionism; Perfectionism and Depression, Perfectionism and Anger, Perfectionism and Social Anxiety, Perfectionism and Worry, Perfectionism and Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior, and Perfectionism, Dieting, and Body Image.
Throughout the book the authors invite the reader to compile worksheets and assessments, and give space for doing so in the book; I tend to dislike such invitations, because I was raised that one never writes in a book (except to put one’s name in the front), although I did relax this rule in college, when one highlights material in one’s textbooks.
I did get some useful information out of this book, especially in the section relating to Perfectionism and Depression (the black dog has been with me, off and on, for many years), but a lot of it was old news to me. However, I can see where this book would be of great use to a reader who is only now realizing that their perfectionist tendencies may be impacting his or her life in a negative manner.
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<![CDATA[Kathryn added 'Sarah's Key']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71226648
to: Sarah's Key (Paperback)byTatiana de Rosnay bookshelves: 2009,
third-tuesday-book-club
While I finished this fiction book last night before going to sleep, I deviated from my usual course, and am writing this review of the book after discussing it at the Third Tuesday Book Club at the Lafayette, Louisiana Barnes & Noble. So, it’s possible that this review is not entirely my doing, but also part of what thoughts came forth in the discussion. In any case, we (and I) loved the book, and I am happy that I purchased my own copy to have on hand.
In the beginning, the book weaves back and forth between Paris, 1942, and Paris, 2002. In 1942, it is July 16; and the French police have come to take 10 year old Sarah, her four year old brother, and their parents away. But Sarah hides her brother in the secret cabinet in their bedroom (where they would play and lock each other in), with his teddy bear, some water, and a flashlight, and tells him she will come back to get him when the police let her and their parents go. In 2002, Francophile Julia Jarmond, a journalist married into a French family for some 17 years, is assigned the project of writing about the upcoming 60th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv’, when the French police rounded up over 13,000 Jews in Paris (men, women, and children between the ages of 2 and 12), penned them up in a velodrome for days without food or water, and then shipped them on rails to camps in France and then to Auschwitz.
As Julia attempts to find out what happened sixty years ago, in the face of collective French amnesia, Sarah and her family endure the horrors of the velodrome and the camps; and the only thing holding Sarah together is the knowledge that she somehow has to get back to the apartment and get her little brother. In the course of her research, Julia discovers both that she is pregnant (she has an eleven year old daughter, and had three miscarriages), and that the apartment that her husband’s grandmother recently moved out of, and that she and her husband and daughter are due to move into once it is remodeled, is one that was suddenly vacated in the middle of July, 1942.
Sarah’s story and Julia’s story dovetail in unexpected ways; by the end of the book, secrets that have been buried for sixty years come to light, and Julia’s life, her family’s life, and the lives of many other people are changed forever. There are, perhaps, things that are unbearable to talk about; but not talking makes them even more unbearable.
This is a shocking book, about a place and time in history that I did not know of; but I feel I am the better for knowing, and am confirmed in my conviction that it is better to know than not to know.
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