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What Are You Reading / Reviews - Nov 2017
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Karma – Cathy Ostlere – 3***
This young adult novel is told entirely in verse, making for a very fast read. While there is a “love story” in the plot, the book includes some pretty serious matter: religious strife between Sikhs and Hindus, civil and political unrest in India, and the treatment of women. Maya is a strong female lead, despite the trauma she’s faced and her withdrawal into herself.
LINK to my review
Honoré de Balzac,
Un début dans la vie
[1842] 182 pages [in French, on Kindle]A comic novel in which an intrigue about property serves as the excuse for a trip in a public dilegence, where a group of people try to mystify each other with strange tales of their lives. At the conclusion of the trip, one of the seemingly least important characters turns out to be the main subject of the novel; there are some other largely comic scenes and the novel ends with about the same cast of characters on the same route many years later.
Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills [1982] 183 pages
As usual this time of the year I'm beginning to read the new Nobel Prize winner in literature; this year it's Kazuo Ishiguro, and for once (the first time since Doris Lessing in 2008) an author I've actually already read something by (his most recent novel, The Buried Giant). This one is his first novel, but there is none of the awkwardness of a first novel; the writing is similar to the later novel even though in a totally different genre (this is realistic, the other is an allegorical fantasy), with the same sense of strangeness and things not revealed, and confusion of events, and the same theme of selective remembering and forgetting and what should be remembered and faced; here there is an additional theme of lack of comprehension between generations, with Sachiko and Mariko, Etsuko and her two daughters, and Ogata-San and Jiro. The novel moves between the present in London and the past in Nagasaki, a decade or so after the war. In the end, nothing is really made clear, again as in the later book.
Dead Woman Walking by Sharon Bolton
4 ★
Jessica takes her sister, Bella, on a hot air balloon ride for her birthday that ends up turning into the worse day of both their lives. Told from the point-of-view of 3 people, this books jumps between the past and the present. It is done in a very smooth fashion that does not confuse the reader. The story line is quite interesting and the twists around just about every corner make you rethink everything you've already read. Some of the surprises make you wonder how you missed it. The readers train of thought gets changed many times throughout the book and it may make some readers wonder how it's all going to come together. Trust me...it comes together extremely smoothly and there are no loose ends. This is the first book I have read by Sharon Bolton and I look forward to reading many more by her.
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Ukulele Murder – Leslie Langtry – ZERO stars
This is just bad. The writing is hackneyed, the dialogue is tortured, the plot is ridiculous, and none of the characters is believable. Even worse, in my opinion, is the lame attempt at humor in re Nani’s mother’s alcoholism. Alcoholism is *never* funny.
LINK to my review
David Cairns,
Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness 1832-1869
[1999] 895 pagesThis is the second volume of the definitive English biography of Hector Berlioz. It has been almost a year and a half since I finished the first volume; because it was so long I kept putting other books ahead of it, which I need to learn not to do. This volume begins with his marriage to Harriet Smithson, and ends with his death; it covers the period of most of his important works. The works are all discussed, but without too much technical musical detail; the focus is on the life of the composer rather than the music itself, unlike for instance Abert's biography of Mozart, which it resembles in length. The book avoids taking too romantic an approach, which is a temptation with Berlioz especially, and clears up various misconceptions about his life and music, such as his relationships with Liszt and Wagner. One advantage of my procrastination is that I was reading this at the same time as I am working my way through Balzac's novels; Berlioz was a friend of Balzac, so I was reading nonfiction and fiction about the same period of French history.
Honoré de Balzac,
L'Interdiction
[1836] 82 pages [in French, on Kindle]A short novel about a lower level Paris judge, who is assigned the case of a marquis (the marquis d'Espard) whose wife is trying to have him declared mentally incompetent (I think that the English translation is titled "the commission in lunacy"). The story of the marquis has similarities to the plot of Mme. Firmiani. Here, Balzac is more cynical; the honesty of the judge and the marquis are contrasted to the general corruption around them. With this novella, I have finally finished the first and longest division of the Comédie Humaine, "scènes de la vie privée" (according to the list on Wikipedia, although the Norph-Nop edition I am reading assigns it to the third division, "scènes de la vie parisienne" -- Balzac moved things around in different editions and I'm not sure the order and divisions really matter that much.) Now according to my original plan, I will just read the most important novels of the other divisions -- including at least the ones I have print copies of; I'll see whether I can limit myself to that or not.
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Drums of Autumn – Diana Gabaldon – 3.5*** (rounded up)
Book number four in the bestselling Outlander series, has Jamie and Claire making their home in the mountains of North Carolina. I just love this series. Gabaldon writes compelling stories with characters I care about. Even the ones I hate (Brianna) keep me interested and engaged, and the action is non-stop.
LINK to my review
The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old by Hendrik Groen, 4****sThis is a wonderful book that is real and funny and sad all at the same time.
It is Hendrik Groen's diary of his life in an assisted living home in Amsterdam. The year is 2013.
He tells what it is like living there, the ups and downs, the silly things that happen, and the sad part of living in a place where most people go to die.
But as he and a few friends band together, they do things to make their lives more worthwhile, and begin to care for each other through the good and the bad situations that take place.
In the description of the book, Mr. Groen says "Not a single sentence in this book is a lie, but not every word is the truth." So that kind of gives the reader the idea that as he writes his 2013 diary, he tells the truth but may embellish a little along the way.
I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it!
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong, 4****sThis is a touching story of a 30-year-old woman who elects to stay home for one year and help take care of her father who has the beginning, and worsening, symptoms of Alzheimer's. It is told in first person in the form of a diary, so goes from January through December telling different things that happen within the family (the mother and brother are also part of the story) during this year and the progression of her father's illness. It is sad, but thankfully, not depressing. It has some kind of funny parts, although it is not a comedic book in any way; and some of it is even uplifting. But, overall, it feels like what a real family might go through with real problems and situations that must be dealt with the best they can be. I liked the author's style, and I'm glad I read this book.
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Educating Rita – Willy Russell – 3.5***
A marvelous play about one young woman’s desire for an education, and the professor who teaches her, and learns from her. I much prefer to watch plays performed, but this was an enjoyable read. Rita is a marvelous character, and I loved watching her grow.
LINK to my review
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The Hidden Child – Camilla Läckberg – 4*****
This is the fifth book in the series featuring crime writer Erica Falck and Detective Patrik Hedström, in the village of Fjällbacka, Sweden. However, it’s the first one I’ve read. Läckberg uses a dual time line to tell this story. There are the events of 1945, when one young couple’s plans are shattered by prejudice and violence. And there is the current-day mystery of an artifact that threatens to reveal long-held secrets. I look forward to reading more of this series.
LINK to my review
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV & Bishop Desmond Tutu, 5*****sThis is a wonderful book of a recent interview of the Dalai Lama XIV and Bishop Desmond Tutu. It is exciting to hear the two of them talk with each other about love and forgiveness of others and of ourselves. They also tease each other and often laugh, even though they have each suffered much in their lives. They discuss how to be joyful in life no matter what a person has been through. That, of course, makes it sound so simple, which, of course, it is not. But they discuss these difficulties of life and the act of living together peacefully, accepting others as human beings who are just the same as we are. They even give some exercises and tips on prayer and meditation at the end of the book to help the reader learn to have a more peaceful and joyful attitude in life. I loved their joyfulness. I think everyone should read this book. Maybe we'd learn to get along better together!
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Bookplate Special – Lorna Barrett – 3***
Book number three in the Booktown Mystery series. This is a typical cozy mystery, with a cast of colorful characters, and a nosy amateur sleuth who simply cannot help herself when it comes to investigating a crime on her doorstep. It’s not great literature, but it’s entertaining and a quick read.
LINK to my review
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, 4****sA sweet story of an 18-year-old girl with a disease that has kept her in the house, germ-free, all her life. Until she meets the new boy next door and falls in love.
It's sweet, fairly predictable overall, lots of teen-aged angst, and a little mystery which helps to bring a surprise ending. But it is a YA novel, so it's exactly what you expect when you start reading.
I personally think the author had to maneuver the story a bit to get it to end the way she wanted, but that's just me. I really did enjoy it though :)
Helen Simonson,
The Summer Before the War
[2016] 479 pagesI read this for the Utah State Library/Library for the Blind discussion group, more out of duty than interest, and it's also scheduled for one of my Goodreads groups; it was actually somewhat better than I expected it would be. I admit to a certain prejudice as I'm not fascinated by the foibles of the British upper classes -- even if I had a television I wouldn't be watching Downton Abbey or the like. The label "postmodern" gets applied to everything, but this novel seems to me to be using a typical postmodernist strategy: wrapping a serious novel inside a genre novel (or parody of a genre novel).
My immediate impression from the first few chapters was that this book crams in every possible cliché of the British upper class romance; I thought, if this is intended as a deliberate parody, it's somewhat amusing -- if not, it's hilarious. The book begins with the arrival of a poor but proud orphaned schoolmistress, Beatrice Nash (at least she's not a governess) at the home of an aristocratic Suffolk family headed by an eccentric matriarch named "Aunt Agatha", whose husband "Uncle John" is usually away in the foreign office in London, and who has two nephews, Hugh, a surgeon in training, and Daniel, a fop and poet. There is an immediate suggestion of possible romantic interest between Miss Nash and Hugh, although he is officially in love with his chief surgeon's daughter -- named "Lucy", of course. There is a feud between Aunt Agatha and her friend "Lady Emily" on the one side and the Mayor's wife, Bettina Fothergill, and the conservative school governors on the other. Miss Nash naturally has to tutor three rowdy working class boys, "Jack", "Arty" and "Snout". (With names like these, the novel has to be a parody, right?) Other characters include a famous author, a pair of stereotype (and probably lesbian) suffragettes, a bevy of loyal servants, and a tribe of gypsies.
About a quarter of the way through the book, World War I breaks out in Europe, and the town begins feeling the effects in the form of patriotic rallies and committees, food shortages, and the arrival of refugees from Belgium. At this point, the book moves from genre parody (if that's what it is) to a more serious satire, which continues to get more biting as the novel continues. The themes of women's position, class differences, and of course the stupidity of the first world war are all dealt with. There are still touches of humor, and much that is predictable from the genre -- without going into detail, there are two episodes I think were intended as surprises, and I predicted both a hundred pages before they happened. Despite the necessary quota of tragedies, overall the "happy endings" predominate in most of the subplots as well as the main plot -- I don't think it is even a spoiler to say that the novel more or less ends with a wedding, apart from an epilogue set after the war.
I don't want to give too negative an impression; the writing is good, the characters are well-delineated if stereotyped, there is a good deal of humor throughout, and the serious themes are well handled if not particularly deep in analysis. The novelist shows a bit of hubris, however, in caricaturing Henry James, if that is who Mr. Tillingham is supposed to represent.
Tell Me Exactly What Happened: Dispatcher from 911 by Caroline Burau
5 ★
I bought this book because it's about what I do for a living. The chapters are all just short stories with no real story line, but they all flow together well. I laughed, cried and agreed with things a lot while reading this incredibly accurate portrayal of a 911 dispatcher. I even had to read some out loud to my coworkers because it sounded just like us! Caroline Burau covers just about every call a dispatcher may get during their career. One of her chapters actually helped me with a call I took which involved the death of a child. Caroline is an amazing writer. I highly recommend this book to all 911 dispatchers. It really shows that we are all in this together and doing it because we love it.
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Miss Julia Hits the Road – Ann B Ross – 3***
Book number four in the popular series starring Miss Julia, a widow of a certain age. I just love Miss Julia, who frequently gets embroiled in one scandal / scheme or another when she jumps to conclusions and/or fails to fully understand the implications of what she’s been told. But her heart is always in the right place. Miss Julia is just a hoot, and I was laughing aloud at several scenes.
LINK to my review
George Saunders,
Lincoln in the Bardo
[2017] 343 pagesAn interesting and imaginative experimental fantasy novel, this is set in the "Bardo", the period immediately after death in some versions of Buddhism. The first book I read this year was The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is a description of the Bardo; although the setting of this novel does have some points of resemblance with the Buddhist view -- a temporary place where the spirits of the newly dead arrive before making the choice of their future existence, whether Nirvana or reincarnation -- and one vision in the novel is similar to the descriptions in the Tibetan scripture, the version here is definitely Christianized, conflating the Buddhist belief with aspects of Purgatory and an external judgement, and of the vulgar conception of "churchyard ghosts". The spirits who leave the cemetery apparently go to Heaven or Hell rather than Nirvana or reincarnating, although the details are never spelled out. The chapters in the Bardo alternate with chapters made up of quotations from books about Lincoln and the Civil War, often contradicting each other. At least some of the books quoted are ones I have read, but I'm not sure whether they are all real or if some of them are invented as in Eco's The Name of the Rose. The premise is that when Lincoln's son Willie dies at the beginning of the war, he finds himself in the Bardo and his spirit interacts with his father. The main point seems to be to reimagine the situation of Lincoln at that time in history, although there are also other things going on, such as digs at Calvinist theology. Some sexual themes and strong language might make it difficult for me to recommend in this community, but apart from that it would be a refreshing change from the derivative sort of fantasy that many of my friends read.
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TEXT –
The Xibalba Murders / Lyn HamiltonAUDIO in the car –
The Good Lord Bird / James McBrideMP3 Player AUDIO –
The Lost City of the Monkey God / Douglas Preston
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A Piece of the World – Christina Baker Kline – 3.5***
As she did in Orphan Train , Kline uses multiple time lines to tell the story. I thought Christina Olson was a marvelous character, and appreciated the way Kline took what little is known of this real woman and expanded it to weave this narrative. I liked that she focused more attention on Olson’s relationships with her family and friends than on her connection to Wyeth.
LINK to my review
The Revolving Door of Life by Alexander McCall Smith, 4****sThis is just the next installment (#10) in the lives on the characters who live in Edinburgh, some of them on Scotland Street. It's always fun to see what they are up to, especially Bertie -- he sure has his ups and downs! I really enjoy this author and this series :)
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All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot – 4****
I am definitely *not* an animal person but Herriot’s reminiscences of his early efforts to build a veterinary practice in Yorkshire in the mid to late 1930s were delightful, if a bit repetitious. This is a re-read for me, and my rating reflects my first impressions when I first read it in the early to mid-1970s.
LINK to my review
Book Concierge wrote: " All Creatures Great and Small
– James Herriot – 4****
I am definitely *not* an animal person but Herriot’s reminiscences of his early efforts ..."
I read those books years ago and loved them!
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The Making of the President 1960 – Theodore H White – 3***
Subtitle: A Narrative History of American Politics in Action. About a year before the November 1960 election, Theodore H White began studying the likely candidates for President. He followed them through primaries, state caucuses, the national convention and the campaign for the Presidency. It’s somewhat dated – the process is different more than half a century later. And yet, there is something timeless about this story.
LINK to my review
Honoré de Balzac,
Ursule Mirouët
[1841] 377 pages [in French]Moral: Greedy relatives who secretly steal inheritances will be exposed and punished by God. (I hope this isn't a "spoiler"; everything is strongly foreshadowed from the beginning -- Balzac's novels don't really depend much on surprise plot twists.)
The first novel of the second division of La Comédie humaine, Scènes de la Vie de province, this was very different from the other books I've read of Balzac. It is a very well structured book -- not always Balzac's strong point. Unlike his more realistic novels, it has a Romantic feel to it, and not solely in the supernatural (or perhaps paranormal) aspects. The eponymous character (I can't really say heroine, much less protagonist) like many female characters in Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and other Romantic authors, but unlike the typical Balzac women, is essentially passive and dependent, prone to become ill or collapse when confronted with any unpleasantness, and her male guardians act for her without usually consulting with her or informing her, protecting her from unpleasant realities; this is largely a "male rescue fantasy", except that the rescuer is not only the young lover, Savinien, but a whole committee of mostly old men -- beginning with the orphaned Ursule's original rescue by doctor Mirouët, we then have the curé, the juge de paix, and of course the old man with the white beard, Dieu. At the beginning of the book, Ursule is a few weeks short of sixteen, and by the end she is twenty, but she comes across as a very young girl; she is constantly described with words like "pur", "angelique", etc., but the best description is from a member of the opposing family -- "cette petite fille, qui certes est d'une grande beauté; mais elle est d'une dévotion outrée" (that little girl, who is certainly a great beauty; but she is outrageously religious).
Here we have the other problem with the novel; it is essentially a thesis novel, arguing for a particular view of religion. The doctor, a lifelong "Voltairean" atheist and "child of the Enlightenment", for some reason raises Ursule to be a devout (or in the stronger French sense, "dévote") Christian, who apparently doesn't notice that he is an atheist until she is a teenager, when she starts praying for him every night to be converted. He then suddenly converts due to a miraculous experience with a Mesmerist/Swedenborgian psychic and becomes himself a pious (though not especially orthodox) Catholic (in the original rough draft, which is included in the version I read (Le Livre de Poche, introduction by Renaud Matignon) the family are all Protestants). The paranormal/supernatural elements ("animal magnetism", telepathy, remote viewing, visions) are not a plot device but the point of the novel, and the introduction says that Balzac was himself strongly influenced by Swedenborgianism.
An interesting, well-written novel with some criticism of the bourgeoisie (from the wrong direction) and the irrationality of French inheritance law, but not really to my taste.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allen Poe, 4****sI enjoyed this 1838 adventure tale of mutiny, shipwreck, and exploration. It felt to me like it could have been written by Herman Melville or Jules Verne, but Poe wrote his first -- by several years! Verne wrote a sequel to this tale ("An Antarctic Mystery") in 1897. And I've read that H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" (1931) was partially inspired by this tale also. Try it out, it's not too long, and see what you think!
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The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett – 3.5***
What I have come to love about Patchett is the masterful way she draws her characters. The story unfolds in bits and pieces, much as it would in real life. You don’t tell everything at once to someone you’ve just met, and likewise Sabine and Dot each keeps some things to herself. The environment also plays a role; Sabine is a different person in Los Angeles than she is in Nebraska.
LINK to my review
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott, 3***sI read this to satisfy a challenge category. I know it is an award winner, but I wasn't personally impressed :/
Ludwig Feuerbach,
The Essence of Christianity
[1841] 339 pagesThe version I read is the Harper Torchbook edition, containing the nineteenth century translation by the novelist George Eliot, a forward by H. Richard Niebuhr and an introduction by Karl Barth.
Feuerbach has the misfortune to be usually considered simply as a transitional figure, as the (merely biographical) link between Hegel and Marx. In large part, this is true -- seen prospectively from the philosophy of Hegel, Feuerbach is (as he considered himself; see his own preface) a radical materialist, replacing the abstractions of theology with the real nature of man; seen retrospectively from Marx, he is still very much an idealist, dealing with "essences" rather than concrete individuals in a concrete historical milieu. I might also add that compared to Hegel, he is a model of clarity; compared to Marx (or almost anyone else) he is a monument of obscurity. There are basically two groups of people who read him today; a small group of theologians who take him seriously as a challenge (note that the forward and introduction to this edition are by theologians, as are two of the three blurbs on the back cover, by Barth and Martin Buber), and those who are interested in the origins of Marx's views (the third blurb is a quotation from Sidney Hook's From Hegel to Marx).
The thesis of the book is that religion consists in an "anthropology"; that psychologically speaking it takes the "essence of man", or human nature, and objectifies it in a separate being, God. He develops this idea at length (with much repetition and a good deal of self-contradiction), showing that the predicates of God are actually predicates of human nature and that the error of religion is in confusing the predicate with the subject -- that while pagan religion takes the idea that for example "love is divine" (love being part of the "essence of man") and makes love a particular god or goddess, Christianity takes the idea that love is a god and reverses it to say that God is love; and likewise with understanding, mercy, etc., making the predicates of human nature into predicates of a single particular being, who in fact does not exist except as the sum of those predicates -- that if you take away the predicates of God there is no subject left. He also argues that religion abolishes the limitations of the finite human by considering them as unlimited in God, as the limited understanding of a particular man becomes omniscience in God, the limited power of the individual becomes His omnipotence, etc.; and that creation from nothing and miracles are the unlimited form of will, or personality, as pure arbitrariness, and thus linked to the idea of God as a personal being. Much of this is not wrong but just obvious; my reaction was basically why spend 339 pages telling us what everyone (including Christian theologians, even if they disguise it by talking about "analogy") already knows, that God's predicates are just human predicates without limitation -- even if sometimes he has striking formulations, such as that the real god of Christianity is Adam Kadmon. He does have some good insights along the way, however; some things that I had already realized but never seen in print -- that the real god of every religion is its mediator figure, for instance -- and other things that made me say, why hadn't I seen that before, e.g. that Calvinist "predestination" is just the religious equivalent of everything happening by chance. He ends up by proposing a kind of religion of human nature.
Writing at the time he was, and with a background in Hegelian philosophy and theology, he obviously knows very little about other religions, and what he says about them tends to be very superficial; this is definitely the essence of Christianity, even if he sometimes talks about the essence of religion in general -- in fact, it might better be called the essence of Lutheranism, because most of his quoted examples are from Luther or the patristic writers most favored by Luther. He also shows very little knowledge of the actual history even of Christianity; this is a psychology of the existing doctrine rather than a serious account of its origins. It also ignores totally the social functions of religions as they actually exist as institutions. I won't bother to repeat the Marxist criticisms of Feuerbach; anyone who reads this should follow it up, if they haven't already read it, with the wonderfully humorous early book of Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, where they settle accounts with Feuerbach and his "Young Hegelian" followers, that is with their own early origins.
The real question is why did this rather boring and obvious work have such an influence, and even caused such excitement among people like the young Marx and Engels, at the time it was written? I think the answer is that in Germany at the time, which was relatively backward compared to France or England, there was a desire, not for a real empiricist or materialist atheism such as had long existed in those countries, but for a kind of religious atheism, a doctrine that would let people reject religion while still considering themselves religious. Feuerbach faded into insignificance a few years later, with the revolution of 1848. Nevertheless, I think the book is still worth reading to understand why people are so attracted to the ideas of religion.
Ferdinand de Saussure,
Course in General Linguistics
, ed. by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye [1915] 240 pagesThis is not actually a work by de Saussure, but rather (a translation of) a posthumous reconstruction of his teaching by Bally and Sechehaye based on student notes of three separate courses of lectures (given between 1906 and 1911) plus some other writings of de Saussure; nevertheless, it is one of the founding texts of what is now known as "structural linguistics." I took an introductory course in structural linguistics at Columbia about 1973, or more than sixty years after this material was delivered (and of course that course itself is now almost fifty years in the past). Here we can see de Saussure working his way toward the science that was presented in a more systematic way in my textbook then; without that experience, I would probably have had much more difficulty understanding this book, because it is rather polemical and tentative -- he spends much time defining the subject matter of linguistics and what he means by language, separating language ("langue") from speech acts ("parole"), and giving philosophical and methodological arguments for things that were later taken for granted as simply the facts about how language works. The most important part of the book is probably making the then new distinction of synchronic and diachronic linguistics as essentially different types of study.
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Victim Six – Gregg Olsen – 3.5***
A serial killer is terrorizing towns around Puget Sound. Kitsap County Sherriff’s Detective Kendall Stark is a really strong female lead character – smart, resilient, resourceful, intelligent and compassionate. This is a tightly-written, fast-paced psychological thriller. It’s not for the faint of heart; it’s about a sexual sadist serial killer, and there are some very graphic scenes.
LINK to my review
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The Xibalba Murders – Lyn Hamilton – 3***
Number one in the Lara McClintoch Archeological Mystery series, takes our heroine from her home in Toronto to the Yucatan peninsula. I am a fan of magical realism, but Hamilton’s efforts seemed heavy-handed. All in all, it was a somewhat entertaining mystery and I enjoyed learning a bit more about Mayan lore.
LINK to my review
Paging All Bookworms!
Books mentioned in this topic
The Xibalba Murders (other topics)Victim Six (other topics)
Charming Billy (other topics)
The Magician's Assistant (other topics)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Amanda Stevens (other topics)Lyn Hamilton (other topics)
James McBride (other topics)
Douglas Preston (other topics)
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