Xingu

Monsoon Summer

2011-02-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

Mitali Perkin's Monsoon Summer tells the story of likeable Jasmine Gardner's summer in India. Her mother was adopted as a tot from an orphanage where she gets a grant to start a clinic. Leery at first, India's monsoon madness eventually infects even guarded Jazz as she opens her heart to her mother's homeland and uses her business acumen to help Danita, an orphan and friend whose considering marrying a rich geezer for financial security. Throughout the summer Jazz worries about her friend/object of unrequited love, Steve who's back in Berkeley running their business and fending off cool girls.

I enjoyed the characters especially Jazz who overcomes her own doubts and preconceptions about herself as the summer progressives. The teen novel shows a realistic encounter with a different culture and addresses issues bi-cultural people feel as they come to terms with their identity and how others relate to them. This won't be the last of Perkin's books for me.

Antigone

2011-01-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

For January, my book club read the sparse, powerful Antigone. My copy included some insightful essays to provide a context for this play. The culture this comes from, was so different from our own. I was struck by Antigone's single minded idealism as she took on Creon, who wanted to execute her for disobeying his edict by burying her brother, who opposed the government.

It's a powerful play with flawed characters, which can teach any playwright or screenwriter a lot about doing more with less.

My Great Book Club's Reading Timeline

2011-01-13T03:51:00.000-08:00

Jack's Great Book Salon on Dipity.

Just a start

Anne of Green Gables

2010-12-15T18:28:00.000-08:00

Last month's book club choice was Anne of Green Gables, which I'd never read before. I expected it would be too corny for me, but I actually liked it. Anne is a cheerful, innocent girl, whose appeal as a character is saved by her mischief and her status as an orphan who's had to put up with a lot of ill treatment. So I was rooting for her.

Marilla and Matthew take her in, though they wanted a boy and by accident get a girl. They have the a rural stoicism that often conflicts with Anne's dreaminess, but comedy is the result.

Anne really did grow on me and I'd read more. It was a good choice after reading about poor Tess in September and October.

My Book Quiz Results

2010-12-15T18:17:00.000-08:00

You're Love in the Time of Cholera!

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions
barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff could get you killed.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Hardly, accurate

Homesick

2010-11-15T22:58:00.000-08:00

Jean Fritz' Homesick describes her childhood in China during the 20's around the time of the first revolution. It's funny, perceptive and touching. She's a spirited girl of 9 or 10 years old who likes some aspects of life in China, but not all. I loved how honest and real her writing was. This book is geared to young readers, but appeals to all because she doesn't sugarcoat things or spare her readers from the hardship life can throw at us. She weaves the history in so that it doesn't come across as pendantic, rather it's just natural.

I wanted to read more. That's the sign of a good book.

Begin Here

2010-11-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

Jacques Barzun's Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning is terrific. He examines education from grade school to grad school pointing out the ridiculous and offering better solutions and perspectives. Although it was first written in the 70s and updated in the 90s, its still current (sadly). It's a fun, intelligent read and highly recommended for anyone with a serious interest in education.

Tess D'Urbervilles

2010-10-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

I was blown away by Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Thomas Hardy. It was our book club's choice for September and October, but really isn't that long, yet I'm glad I didn't have to race through it in a month.

It's the story of a young woman from a poor family who has hardship after hardship. No one cuts her a break. Yet she keeps on going. She doesn't have any lofty aspirations, unlike her pathetic father who's already a drinker, but becomes more useless once he hears that he's descended, in more ways than one, from an aristocratic family.

I'd seen the movie in the 80's and vaguely remembered some scenes and the tone of the story. I also remember Monty Python spearing Hardy quite often. Yet this is a well written book about a compelling character. I'm so glad I read it.

Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language

2010-09-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

I feel rather privileged to get an advanced copy of Deborah Fallows' Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Languagevia my friend Sally's relative who works at NPR. (Talk about a dream job.) Fallows describes her various efforts to learn Mandarin interspersed with her experiences in China over the years. She includes both linguistic loves and characteristic Chinese moments. It's a fun and quick read for a Sinophile. There weren't any lessons in Love as in romantic love. That's a tease in the subtitle.

Yet others might not enjoy it that much. They might not care about some of the facets of Mandarin and wish there were more stories about life in China. A reader who has studied Mandarin could find this too basic.

Danica McKellar: Are her math books bad for girls?

2010-09-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

Danica McKellar: Are her math books bad for girls? is an article about former Wonder Years star's books on math. I'd say they seem worthwhile. I just read about them on Salon.com

Knowing Christ Today

2010-09-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge by philosopher Dallas Willard logically refutes the idea that it's impossible to know God or that all this faith-stuff is just a matter of belief. He respectfully and intelligently tackles that notion before moving on to reason why we can know there is a God and why Christ is God. It's a really bold move in this era and Willard uses his reasoning, rather than nonsense or feelings to address these issues. It's a powerful book using strong evidence.

Of course, not all will be swayed, but Willard writes well and anyone who cares about such matters should give this book a read. It will challenge believer and non-believer alike, though in different ways. It's very much a modern book for our time, but Willard doesn't simply modify the gospels or logic to present a Christianity every one will like. He explains Christianity in modern terms that will challenge people today.

The Barn

2010-09-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished Award winner Avi's The Barn. it was a quick, enjoyable read about three siblings growing up in the Oregon Territory in 1855. Their mother died years ago and when their father suffers a stroke, the youngest boy, Ben, must return home from boarding school. With his older brother Harrison and older sister Nettie, they must work the fields and care for the father who can't feed himself or sit up.

Ben takes on the full time responsibility of caring for the father, who can't talk. Ben soon decides that the way to get the father to recover is to build the barn the father spoke of. Against obstacles including common sense, the kids decide to build the barn the father wanted.

In many ways the plot offers little new, but the ending is real and non-Disney-ish. The book reads fast and I got caught up in the language, but when you think about it few 10 year olds are as wise as Ben -- actually, none I've met are. It was hard to believe a boy would make all the observations he made, even if he was bright. I taught the highly gifted class which required an IQ of over 140 and few if any of those fourth and fifth graders had Ben's level of maturity. I think it's a good book for 4th and 5th graders, but doesn't stand up to much analysis.

Dante's Divine Comedy as a Graphic Novel

2010-09-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

Seymour Chwast's Dante's Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation is an engaging "read" that made me want to read the the original
again. I liked the black and white drawings that showed Dante's journey through Hell to Paradise. Hell seemed hellish and paradise was quite nice. The drawings make the poetry clearer and so one can visualize Dante's understanding of these supernatural realms. Dante and Virgil are dressed in outfits that evoke film noir and that worked for me. This poem a perfect choice for a graphic novel, which simplifies without really dumbing down the original. I do think it will spur many to read the original. What more do you want?

Tempo Change

2010-08-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

By Barbara Hall, the creator of Joan of Arcadia, wrote Tempo Change, an intelligent, touching young adult novel. It tells the story of Blanche, a perceptive, sometimes sarcastic student at a fringe private school in L.A. Her father's a once famous musician who left the family when Blanche was six. Her mom now owns a store after working one undignified job after another to take care of her daughter. Blanche treasures her email relationship with her "artistic" father, who indulges himself in all the tortured artist platitudes to justify his wanderings and irresponsibility.

Blanche gets pulled into starting her own band and finds new talents and challenges as they compete for a spot at a reknown music festival. Throughout Blanche smart and engaging. The plot progresses in interesting directions and the minor characters are well drawn and all able to challenge Blanche to divest herself of easy answers and idealized notions. It's a good read and goes beyond what I expect to find in a work written for teens. (I realize that's my own bias.)

It's interesting that I read this as I watched Once another work that looks at the world of musicians, who're outside the mainstream fame and fortune.

This could make a good family drama on television. One, like "Joan" with authentic smart characters coping with tough issues.

A Comrade Lost and Found

2010-08-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

A Comrade Lost and Found: A Beijing Memoiris the third Jan Wong book I've read and I highly recommend it. This book chronicles Wong's search for the woman she turned in during the cultural revolution. As an exchange student at Beijing University in the 1970's Wong was smitten with the Great Helmsman's ideology and felt she was doing her duty when she turned in a woman who approached her one day to find out how to immigrate to America. Later this woman was interrogated and shipped off to do hard labor in the hinterlands of China.

Wong later remembered this incident and felt guilty and concerned. Many years have passed and Wong returns to look for the woman who's name she's unsure of. As she searches for this woman, she and her family encounter the nouveau riche of today's China. They drive expensive cars, live in vast, expensively decorated condos and make tons of money.

While I enjoyed Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now and Jan Wong's China more. Still this book features the humor and insight that make Wong's work well worth reading. Because she knows the language and culture so well, lived in China on and off from the '70s through the 90's, Wong can penetrate the culture as few can.

A Walk in the Woods

2010-08-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

While driving to Colorado, I got to listen to Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woodson CD. I should share that this was the first time I'd listened to a book "on tape" (CD actually). It took me a while to warm up to this, but I did. I'd never read any of Bryson's other work, but I did know that he was a well known writer.

A Walk in the Woods describes Bryson's adventures hiking the Appalachian Trail with Stephen Katz, a friend he hadn't seen in 25 years, a friend who never said no to a Little Debbie cake and who owed him $600. The addition of Katz and the humor he provides made the book.

Throughout the narrative, Bryson sounds like a Victorian dandy. Though he grew up in Iowa, spending several years in England left him with an English accent, a rather upper class accent at that. He uses a lot of language like "mis-attired" and "we hastened across the road." I can see some readers getting put off by that.

Yet, I found it funny. Often I laughed with Bryson as he bore Katz's eccentricities and laughed at him when he just got to foppish. In both cases, I'd laugh out loud.

Despite the affectation, I did find the book enjoyable and learned a lot about the history, flora and fauna of a great trail.

Naked in Baghdad

2010-08-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

I listened to Anne Garrels' Naked in Baghdad book on CD while driving across country. It blew me away.

NPR Correspondent Garrels has covered wars in Russia, Kosovo and Iraq. She is intelligent, brave and personal as she describes her work covering the lead up to the war starting in the fall of 2002 up to and shortly after the invasion in 2003. It was a riveting story that reveals the behind the scenes look at the getting of the stories as well as the personal insights from the Iraqis she spoke with and got to know. Garrels has a good voice, and I dare say this CD set was more powerful and touching than reading the book would be. I came away with an even greater appreciation of the reporters who strive to be our eyes and ears in these danger zones.

Garrel's observations and remembrances are interspersed with her husband's messages to their friends and family. These were perceptive and interesting, but I'm not sure they were necessary.

A Terrible Book

2010-07-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

How to Ruin Your Life is one of the few terrible books I've read. Even poorly written books usually have something redeemable, not this. It's a waste of paper.

By Ben Stein, who can be too conservative for my tastes, this slim book is just mean spirited and misses the humor mark by a mile. It consists of 35 short essays on how to ruin one's life. Topics include: Don't Clean Up After Yourself, Be a Perfectionist (Right like Martha Stewart has ruined her life), Don't Learn Any Self-Discipline, Don't Learn Any Useful Skills.

The book's problems are many. I'll list a few:

It's not funny and a humorous book should be. This just comes off as smug and obvious. There were no surprises or insights into human nature, which one expects from even mediocre humor.
It preaches to the choir. There's no way anyone with one of these chronic bad habits would read this book.
It's mean-spirited. Stein just comes across as condescending, as someone who's looking down at people with problems from some Mt. Olympus vantage point.

I'm glad I didn't waste my money on this and decided not to waste more than a half hour reading and hoping it would get better.

Anna Karenina, up to Part 4

2010-07-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

My online book club is reading Tolstoy's marvelous novel about infidelity, Anna Karenina. Here are my comments on Parts I - III:

This is my second time reading Anna. I have Sean's version* and agree that it's a very accessible translation. I'm not sure what translation I read before, but the characters were harder to keep track of and the read was tougher.

That said, I love this book. I'm learning a lot as a writer about how to reveal characters' reactions, thoughts and motivations. Tolstoy does this so naturally and gracefully. Also, I find the plot structure very natural. He goes in and out of Levin and Anna's worlds without making a reader feel it's jumpy or overly aware of what he's doing (so next I expect to return to Levin's country estate, then back to Anna).

I'm learning a lot about the real history, how people thought about workers and society. It's interesting that Levin opposed universal education and that he had an explanation for seeing it as not good for Russia. I disagree, but thought that at the time that would be an issue with two sides to it.

I really look forward to my daily reading and suggest you give Anna a try if you haven't.

*This is the version Oprah recommended a few years ago by Pevear and Volokhonsky. Jack, the group's leader, said his translation, an older one, made for slower reading.

I don't know if it's the translation or if it's because I've read this before, but I am not as confused or put off by all the Russian names and nicknames.

Little Women

2010-06-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

My online book club read Little Women this month. I remember seeing a play of it as a child and being struck by Beth's death. I don't think I'd seen a young main character die. I may have read the book then. I'm pretty sure I did.

I was struck by how moralistic the book is. All the characters are so good and are constantly urging each other to live out their favored virtues. The style wasn't great, but there's enough that's sufficiently charming that it's readable.I did pick it up with the feeling of obligation, but got through each daily selection so I'd finish in time. Louisa May Alcott just isn't a great writer.

I did wonder about the society and woman that produced this book. This book is so overtly moralist and the problems quite easy to address that it doesn't instruct modern readers, but it does tell the about an earlier time, or one corner of the country during an earlier time. I can see how many people wouldn't like this. However, I am struck by how popular this book is in China. Many of my students love it. They love the sisters' togetherness and the feeling of family. They also love the morality and romance though it's predictable.

Raw Talent

2010-06-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

Right up front: My friend David wrote this book, an autobiography, and this isn't an impartial review. How can one be impartial about a friend's autobiography.

Also, I haven't finished reading it yet.

However, after laughing about three times while reading a bit today, I had to write about it and recommend it.

Raw Talent follows the life of a journey man writer-filmmaker, one who so far hasn't hit the big time, but has found success and it seems peace.

Starting as a boy, Hall loved to write and make films. He chronicles his development of his craft, his mistakes, naivete, successes and insights. Now I'm reading about a time when he was living in Los Angeles, where we met, and he was getting a lot of opportunities to pitch stories. The anecdotes about the characters and egos he meets is hilarious.

He does mention me in the book a little and it's rather weird reading about a friend's perception of me.

A good book for anyone interested in making it in Hollywood.

Out of Mao's Shadow

2010-06-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

Philip Pan's Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China (Paperback) is an excellent read. He investigates China's current handling of issues like free speech, rural taxation, displacing hutong dwellers in Beijing and honoring those who died during the Cultural Revolution by looking at the work of brave individuals. Each chapter follows a person who has dedicated himself (yeah, it's mainly men here) to righting a particular wrong. Thus readers learn of a documentary filmmaker who worked for years on a film about a young woman who was imprisoned and executed during the 1970s, a blind human rights attorney who fights for fair implementation of the one child policy, and a man who succeeded in protecting a cemetery for those who died during the Cultural Revolution. (The local government wanted to turn it into a parking lot.)

The book is well researched. Philip Pan was a Washington Post reporter in China for many years and got good access to his subjects. Learning about China's current issues through the lives of brave individuals is a powerful way to learn about the country.

Mansfield Park Notes--Fanny's Tears

2010-05-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

Jack shared a list of all the times Fanny cries in the novel: Mansfield Park Notes--Fanny's Tears

Jane Austen's House Museum

2010-05-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

You can visit one of the houses Miss Austen lived in and take writing workshops there:Jane Austen's House Museum

On Mansfield Park

2010-05-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

Our online book discussion is in progress and several people just don't care for Fanny all that much. She really is a weakling and obsequious, but this article that I found while looking for something else sheds some light on Fanny.

In some ways, it is not surprising that Mansfield Park was not among the novels initially adapted for film or that the filmmaker altered the novel so radically. Although Mansfield Park has never been without defenders, it has long been regarded as Austen's least-popular novel, largely because of the supposed unattractiveness of the novel's heroine, Fanny Price.( n18) Literary critics have tended to regard Fanny as at best "essentially passive and uninteresting,"( n19) and at worst "morally detestable," "a monster of complacency and pride...under a cloak of cringing self-abasement."( n20) In one of the most famous critiques of Mansfield Park, Lionel Trilling remarks, "Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park."( n21)

Those who, like Trilling, regard Austen as reactionary, a defender of society against the newer claims of romanticism or the self, tend to see Mansfield Park as Austen's clearest and most explicit statement of her position. Although such critics argue that all of Austen's works support conventional morality, they maintain that in her earlier novels, especially Pride and Prejudice, which she rewrote for publication just before beginning Mansfield Park, Austen's defense of society was done in a way that was pleasing, that depicted characters with humor and wit as worthy of emulation, due chiefly to Austen's much admired use of irony. However, in writing Mansfield Park, such critics maintain, Austen turned her back on this style of writing, and taking on a more sober and excessively moralistic style, wrote her least-pleasing, most overtly rationalistic tome, in which irony has no place.

Even among those who claim that Austen is a romantic, that she defends individual happiness over and against the claims of society, some express disapprobation toward Mansfield Park and argue that it is an anomaly among Austen's works.( n22) However, in recent years, a number of critics within this camp have begun to argue that Austen's intentions in writing Mansfield Park have long been fundamentally misunderstood. They claim that Austen does not intend her readers to regard Fanny Price as the heroine of the novel, as is the case with the central female characters in her other novels, but rather as a kind of antiheroine, to be pitied perhaps, but not to be admired and emulated.( n23) Austen wrote Mansfield Park, such critics claim, as a parody of the popular instructive novels of the day, frequently of an evangelical, pietistic nature, which were intended primarily to provide moral guidance to young women. The plots of such novels center on innocent, exemplary young women whose purity of heart both enables them to avoid many moral pitfalls and motivates those fortunate enough to know them to take up the path of moral righteousness as well. Arguing along these lines, the well-known critic Claudia L. Johnson maintains that in writing Mansfield Park Austen turns the instructive novel on its head. Rather than defending the social institutions of the day, especially the family, Austen condemns them "by registering [their] impact on a heroine who, though a model of female virtue and filial gratitude, is betrayed by the same ethos she dutifully embraces. ...This painful and richly problematic identification makes Mansfield Park Austen's most, rather than her least, ironic novel and a bitter parody of conservative fiction."( n24)

Mansfield Park has been subject to such harsh and divisive interpretation, I believe, not because it is anomalous among Austen's works but because of Austen's treatment of its three pre-eminent and interrelated themes, (a) proper female behavior, (b) the role of religious belief in human life, and (c) the connection between virtue and happiness. Although, as I shall argue, Austen does not treat these themes in a way that conforms simply to the conservatism of her day, she treats them in a way that also contrasts sharply with the claims of modernity.

First, in regard to Austen's treatment of female behavior in the novel, it is true, as critics frequently claim, that Fanny Price is different in many ways from Austen's other central female characters, particularly the witty Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice and the charming Emma Woodhouse of Emma. Unlike any of Austen's other central female characters, Fanny is described as displaying "great timidity" (MP, 14).( n25) Furthermore, Fanny is not as physically robust as Austen's other central female characters. As a result of the unhealthy conditions of her early childhood, her lack of freedom to exercise, or some combination of the two, she tires easily. However, it is not the case, as many critics claim, that Fanny is inherently sickly or "debilitated," and certainly not the case that Austen presents such a condition as a virtue.( n26)

Neither the character of Fanny Price nor the novel as a whole is as anomalous as some claim. Like Anne Elliott of Persuasion and the Dashwood sisters of Sense and Sensibility, Fanny Price is a young woman of unusually deep feelings, what Austen calls "sensibility." Austen suggests that the heightened sensibility of each of these characters is due, at least in part, to the loss of her childhood home. Fanny's more extreme sensibility, Austen suggests, stems from her having lost both her home and her family at a young age and her awareness that the family and house within which she lives are not truly her own.

Furthermore, while the claim that Mansfield Park is in some sense a satirical response to the instructional novels of the day is quite persuasive, it is not true that Austen meant to present Fanny Price as unlikable, and certainly not as an antiheroine. To the contrary, Austen writes in such a way that, as the book progresses, the reader comes to sympathize more and more with Fanny, to admire her strength of will, purity of heart, and good judgment. As Anne Crippen Ruderman remarks, "Fanny is not charming, and yet the remarkable thing is that it is extremely difficult to read Mansfield Park without rooting for her in some way."( n27) The reason is that, although Fanny is different from Austen's other heroines in many respects, she nevertheless shares with them in an overarching characteristic, the love of virtue.( n28)

Like Aristotle, Austen points to the centrality of prudence in the achievement of virtue. While Austen sometimes uses the word "prudence," she more frequently refers to this virtue by using words such as "good judgment" and "understanding." Austen indicates, like Aristotle, that the development of prudence requires training from one's youth. One must have someone external to oneself who possesses what Aristotle's calls "right reason" as a teacher or guide, but eventually this guidance or direction must come from within oneself. That is, a human being becomes truly prudent when she no longer relies on another for guidance, but rather understands for herself why she should perform or refrain from certain actions. Aristotle defines prudence as a virtue of intellect, but one that, to be perfected, must be combined with emotive disposition or character. That is, prudence entails both intellectual virtue with respect to directive action--in particular, it is associated with the ability to deliberate well in achieving one's ends--and moral virtue in regard to feeling as one should. Mansfield Park, as all of Austen's novels, supports this view.

At the age of ten, Fanny is taken from her large, relatively poor family in Portsmouth and placed in the home of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, at the large estate known as Mansfield Park. Fanny grows up alongside her four cousins: Tom, the heir, then eighteen; Edmund, a prospective clergyman, then sixteen; Maria, then fourteen, and Julia, then twelve. Almost immediately upon arriving at Mansfield, Fanny is befriended by her cousin Edmund, who seeks to make her feel more comfortable in the household. Edmund enables Fanny to write to her brother William, two years her elder, whom she loves dearly and with whom she thereafter regularly corresponds as she grows up at Mansfield. Edmund eventually oversees her education by directing her reading of books and discussing them with her. Unlike the other Bertram children, Edmund grows into a morally serious young man and, admiring Fanny's intelligence and moral goodness, comes to hold her in deep, sisterly affection. Although Edmund is wholly unaware of it, Fanny eventually falls in love with him. Fanny keeps her feelings for Edmund hidden, believing that her lowly position makes it almost impossible for him or any of the Bertrams to consider her his equal.

One of the first things Edmund discerns about Fanny when he becomes acquainted with her is her love of virtue, observing that she has "an affectionate heart, and a strong desire of doing right" (MP, 14). Rather than valuing "reason" over "emotion," or vice versa, Fanny combines great emotional depth--"sensibility"--with the desire to be good, that is, to discern and abide by rationally discerned principles of morality. It is because of this, Austen indicates in Mansfield Park, as in all of her novels, that Fanny is capable of achieving true happiness. Although Fanny is timid and thinks little of her importance within the Mansfield household, she takes seriously the development of virtue in her life. Grateful for the attention she begins to receive from her cousin Edmund, Fanny takes advantage of the circumstances in which she finds herself to improve her mind and her character.

Over and over again Austen makes reference to Fanny's struggles to act in ways that conform to her "duty," which Fanny understands to involve both thinking or judging correctly as well as feeling correctly.( n29) For example, when Fanny is sixteen years old, her uncle, Sir Thomas, in the face of financial difficulties brought on largely by the profligate behavior of his elder son and heir, Tom, departs for what turns out to be a two-year-long trip to Antigua, where he owns a sugar plantation. Sir Thomas's daughters, Maria and Julia, take great joy in his departure, knowing they will now be "relieved...from all restraint" and "have every indulgence within their reach" (MP, 25). Although Fanny is as relieved as her cousins, she cannot take pleasure in Sir Thomas's departure. Rather, "a more tender nature suggested that her feelings were ungrateful, and she really grieved because she could not grieve" (MP, 25). Furthermore, as she comes to realize that Edmund is falling in love with their new neighbor, Mary Crawford, Fanny is aware that her judgment of Mary may be adversely influenced by feelings of jealousy. Aware that her jealousy of Mary might cloud her judgment, she continually challenges herself to judge Mary's character fairly, that is, "independently of self" (MP, 249). However, Fanny cannot help judging Mary to be morally flawed, believing her to have "a mind led astray and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so; darkened, yet fancying itself light" (MP, 249). Nevertheless, in reflecting on the fact that Edmund will likely propose marriage to Mary, even Fanny's feelings of jealousy do not lead her to abandon virtue. Unlike her cousin Julia, whose jealousy upon realizing that Henry Crawford prefers Maria to her leads her to want revenge against them both, Fanny's jealousy leads her to experience sorrow rather than spite, and she responds to Edmund's preference for Mary by offering "fervent prayers for his happiness" rather than wishing that he or Mary be made to suffer (MP, 181).

Walsh, G. (2002). Is Jane Austen Politically Correct? Interpreting Mansfield Park. Perspectives on Political Science, 31(1), 15. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.

I found this on my library's database so most anyone can I think with the above citation.

Mansfield Park

2010-05-20T06:46:00.001-07:00

For my book club I reread Mansfield Park (Norton Critical Editions).

And again I enjoyed the language and insights Austen offers. This story is quite different as the main character is meek and doesn't have the spunk that Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse have. Still she's an interesting character. Also, the last chapters are considerably darker as Austen planned and the ending is so abrupt, but if you're going to be an Austen devotee, you should read Mansfield Park

The Reason for God

2010-04-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

What an intelligent book! A friend recommended a few of us read Tim Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.Admittedly, I was skeptical that this would be a quality read. I'm glad to say I was wrong, very wrong.

Keller's book is an apologetic for smart, skeptical readers. He tries (and many would say succeeds) in explaining why God's existence makes sense. He debunks the current claims that attempt to "prove" God doesn't exist like How could there be a hell if God's all loving? or the question of pain and suffering. He presents his side thoroughly and intelligently.

In the end, God's existence or non-existence is a leap of faith. I thought Keller was brilliant when he points out that not believing in God or not thinking religion should enter into realms like politics was in fact a belief so that those who might say let's keep religion out of social policy are actually advocating for their belief system to dominate, was insightful.

Keller started a church in New York years ago. So many told him he'd never get people to go to church in New York. Yet he's built a big, thriving faith community with members from all walks of life, from artistes dressed in black to Wall St. financial whizzes, many of whom are highly educated, skeptical and street smart. What's interesting is he didn't compromise the faith by ditching dogma or rules to do so.

The Master Puppeteer

2010-04-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to like Katherine Paterson's The Master Puppeteer, an historical novel for young readers set in Japan during a time of famine. It seemed like a good choice for a quick read about a culture I find fascinating. It took me so longer to read than I expected because I'd put it down and just lack the interest in reading more. I never connected or really believed in the characters.

The story is set in feudal Japan during a famine when a Robin Hood-like figure, Saburo, roams the city stealing food from the rich to give to the poor. The main character is Jiro, a boy whose father makes puppets for Bunraku theater, an artistic fine art. His siblings died in the famine and the family has little to eat. The mother resembles Cinderella's step mother she has no love for Jiro, whose birth she blames for the death of her other children. His father seems like a kind, but weak man.

Jiro realizes it would help his family if he took a position as an apprentice at a reknown Bunraku theater. Like many such arrangements, Jiro finds himself in a new "home" with a tyrant who's talented, but intimidating, a kindly older man, and a collection of peers each with a different tick - e.g. the stutterer, the nice older boy, the resentful boy, etc. You've seen and read this kind of thing before.

As I read, I could easily see how the story would play out, and it followed the predicted course pretty much. Because I've lived in Japan, I was familiar with the historical era and Bunraku. I just never felt transported there and doubt that the intended audience, say 5th grade kids would really wrap their heads around life in that era or this art form. Paterson visited Japan to research this book, but it still just felt so stilted. So different from Sigrid Undset's work which is just or maybe more foreign to me. Yet with Undset I felt right in the thick of things.

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife

2010-03-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished Kristin Lavransdatter II: The Wife and is still fascinated with Medieval Norway, more so than after book one, which was great. Here Undset takes Kristin to Husby and her husband Erlend's other estates. She knows no one and the estates are in complete disarray because Erlend is such a poor manager. In time she wins the respect and affection of the servants and things fall into place. Yet she does face great hardship from childbirth, which was hazardous at the time, and dealing with her own guilt and complex feelings about her marriage and her past. In addition, there's political turmoil in the land, which Erlend gets caught up in. He opposes the king and gets involved with a scheme to depose him. In time this is discovered, through Erlend's own stupidity.

Undset describes the era and emotions with authenticity and art. Great reading.

Alice in Wonderland

2010-03-29T07:04:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend I saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. I went excited to actually see a film in a theater and to see fantastic eye candy. There was plenty of eye candy, but I thought it actually overwhelmed the film. The make up, especially the darkened eyes that made some of the characters look like they had TB, was quite distracting. There was a continuity problem with Alice's eyes as they randomly alternated between darkened and not.

The classic tale is framed by Burton's addition of a story of Alice's life. In the first scenes she's about 5 or 6 and nightmares wake her. She asks her father if it's normal to see Madhatters, etc. I just thought what young child is concerned with "normalcy." None I've met and some I know are very imaginative and eccentric. Later we see Alice getting pushed into an engagement with a simpering wimp with good family connections and prestige. I wished the story had something I hadn't seen over 100 times in various forms. There are other ways in which society makes women conform.

The computer graphics were well done, but the narrative was weak. The showdown in the end was particularly lazy. To prove a young woman is strong, must she slay a dragon? Does she have to prove that she's manly? Can't someone be more creative? I hope someone else does another version in a few years that uses this story in a novel way. Give me more than just eye candy.

This book looks good.

Northanger Abbey

2010-03-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

This month my book club read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. I have to join the majority of Austen's fans and say that while it's not her best work, as it's her first novel though she rewrote it a few times as her writing got better, it's a fine read. It's like okay chocolate. It's not the best, but why complain about eating chocolate?

One thing I loved was the essays and extras in the back. This book has a lot of conversation in defense of novels. Nowadays it's hard to imagine that reading novels would be seen as a waste of time (some sure, but all, no). In the back of the book, readers are treated to a few of the rantings against novels. Here's an excerpt from Coleridge:

For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their pass-time, or rather kill-time, with the name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness, and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole material and and imagery of the doze is supplied ab extra (from without) by a sort of mental camera obscura manufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes, reflects, and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of a hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should therefore transfer this species of amusement--(if indeed those can be said to retire a musis, who were never in their company, or relaxation be attributable to those whose bows never bent)--from the genus, reading, to that comprehensive class characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely indulgence of sloth, and hatred of vacancy.

What a snob. He continues, but you get the point. Wordsworth also felt novels blunted the mind. They never got to read Proust.

Moll Flanders

2010-02-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

This month's book club selection was DeFoe's Moll Flanders (Norton Critical Editions).I'd say it's a fun read once you get used to the language and the convention of capitalizing most nouns. "Moll" whose name we never really learn, leads a wild life. She's born to a convict and luckily is raised by a prosperous family, but once she gets older and catches men's eyes, trouble begins. She racks up the husbands and lovers. The unexpected is the norm in this life as Moll even winds up inadvertently marrying her brother. The second half of her life, she takes to crime with unbelievable success and creativity. Throughout this chronicle, the main character looks back on her adventures and is quite open though we can see her unreliability and Defoe's hand behind the character.

It's a good read, but not a favorite, as some parts seemed contrived. It is one of the first novels so we should cut it some slack. There's a lot of energy and spice.

Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, a documentary

2010-02-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

My inattention to my Netflix queue landed a documentary on Chaucer, that I placed there last February, but it was unavailable then, in my mailbox. I watched it anyway though I had no particular urge to see it. Chaucer & the Canterbury Tales
wound up being an edifying, though sometimes dry, look at Chaucer's life and times. I learned a lot about the peasant revolt, the early stirrings against church corruption and how Medieval politics and government worked. The people were beginning to be more involved than I expected. I had never heard of this major peasant revolt against the baronage. The peasants wanted a good king to rule with no self-interested class in between. (They'd have seen a self-interested king as a tyrant.)

Terry Jones from Monty Python offered lots of interesting commentary. That was a high point. The weakness of the documentary was the long narration. The visuals were fitting when they should art of the period or some of the building from that time, but often it got repetitive. It seemed they were at a loss as to how to visualize Chaucer's life and times. I do see this as good for students learning about Chaucer, because they'll get a lot of information, though I'd probably break down the viewings to half hour segments.

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath

2010-01-31T19:30:00.000-08:00

Kristin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath is set in Medieval Norway. Although I didn't know much about life in Norway in the early 14th century, I soon felt fascinated by this period. Undset deftly weaves in facts about life in this era when Christianity had become widespread, yet old pagan ways had not completely died out. It was a transition time when some priests still married and those who didn't, but had children (yep, plural) with their housekeeper were forgiven by the parishioners who figured "Yeah, I could see how he'd get lonely." It wasn't a completely tolerant time, but no Scarlet A's were handed out.

The story follows Kristin, daughter (i.e. datter as the suffix of her surname) of Lavran, from childhood when she's showered with fatherly love and given lots of freedom to her young adulthood when she is betrothed to a man she respects but doesn't love and falls for dashing Erlend, a handsome, callow rake. While many novels deal with such situations, Undset takes readers down unexpected paths in this first book of a trilogy.

I read this book for my online book club, and am so glad our leader chose it. I had never heard of Undset, though she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The book reads fast. The descriptions are vivid and readers get such perceptive insights into all the major characters, whom one seem truly of their period rather than moderns placed back in time. I will get the next book in the series: Kristin Lavransdatter II: The Wife (Penguin Classics)

Morality for Beautiful Girls

2010-01-29T05:02:00.000-08:00

Alexander McCall Smith's Morality for Beautiful Girls seemed like exotic African cotton candy. It's sweet and charming, but when all's said and done there's more air that substance. It's entertaining and devoid of a real detective story or complex characters.

Wild Ginger

2009-12-27T07:49:00.000-08:00

In Wild Ginger Anchee Min introduces us to two teenaged friends who grow up during China's Cultural Revolution. Many books expose readers to the brutality and betrayals that marked this age. Min adds to the usual expected experiences by focusing on Wild Ginger, whose grandfather was French and thus gave her light colored eyes, and her admiring friend Maple. Both are victims of the class bully, who has the power of the Red Guards behind her. Yet Wild Ginger whose mother's death forces her to scrounge to survive, gains power when she is honored for catching a thief. We soon see her transform into a Model Maoist.

The story reads fast and is detailed and accurate. Of course, when a handsome boy enters the picture romance ensues followed by sex and betrayal. The ending was a surprise, though I knew the story wouldn't end happily.

After reading a few books on this era, one gets saturated. If you have't read many, this is an easy, interesting read.

Three Cups of Tea

2009-12-15T10:26:00.000-08:00

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time chronicles Greg Mortenson's journey from mountain climber to one man NGO powerhouse, as he takes on the challenge of building schools in remote areas of Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan. Mortenson is a nurse by profession and lived a rather hand to mouth peripatetic existence centered around saving money for the next climb. An unplanned stop in Pakistan where he's nursed back to health in Korphe, a remote Pakistani village. He promises to build a school for this forgotten town.

In the beginning he does bumble along. He has no clue how to raise funds. He's got no savings so even the needed $20K is well beyond his reach. Lucky breaks interspersed with cultural misunderstanding characterize his early experiences. It takes longer than he figured but in the end he does build a school for Korphe. From that school, others follow and in time Mortenson gains wisdom and builds trust in the region as he builds school after school. Along the way he faces conflicts with extreme Muslims, kidnappings and money problems. Yet he perseveres and his mission flourishes.

The book is part hagiography, though we do see some of Mortenson's short comings, e.g. his lack of organization skills and his early refusal to hire staff. Yet there's no arguing that he's doing good work. More power to him.

In the early chapters I wished that the book were written in the first person, but then it's clear that Mortenson's not going to take time off from his NGO to write about himself. His story is compelling, but sometimes the prose was overblown, and sometimes it was just mundane. A better co-author, like Tracy Kidder, who did a great job chronicling Paul Farmer's work in Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the Worldwould be even better. Kidder was more objective and his subject was just as admirable.

Celebrating Another Law School Failure

2009-12-12T05:22:00.000-08:00

It's the birthday of Gustave Flaubert, (books by this author) born in Rouen, France (1821). His father was a surgeon, and the family was one of the most respected in Rouen. He was nonplussed about the prospect of leaving Rouen for to Paris to go to law school. He wrote to a friend: "I'll go study law, which, instead of opening all doors, leads nowhere. I'll spend three years in Paris contracting venereal diseases. And then? All I want is to live out all my days in an old ruined castle near the sea."

Although he enjoyed Paris for its brothels, he didn't like much else. He failed his law exams and ended up collapsing, dizzy and then unconscious. It was the first of many such episodes throughout his life, probably epilepsy, and Flaubert gave up on law, left Paris, and moved to a house in Croisset, near Rouen.

He worked hard on his first novel, The Temptation of St. Anthony, and he thought it was a masterpiece. He spent four days reading it aloud to two friends, and he wouldn't let them comment until the end, at which point they suggested that he burn it. So he stopped working on it although it was eventually published in its finished form more than 25 years later, and even then, he considered it his best novel.

Flaubert traveled for a while, and then he started a new project, a novel about a doctor's wife named Emma who tries to fill her empty life by having affairs. He wrote carefully, working long hours, agonizing over each word. He wrote to his mistress, the poet Louise Colet: "Happy are they who don't doubt themselves and whose pens fly across the page. I myself hesitate, I falter, I become angry and fearful, my drive diminishes as my taste improves, and I brood more over an ill-suited word than I rejoice over a well-proportioned paragraph." But after five years of work, he finished his novel, which he published in installments in 1856, and it was Madame Bovary.

In 1911, The New York Times reported that Madame Bovary had been voted by the French as the "best French novel." In 2007, editor J. Peder Zane published a book called The Top Ten, in which he asked 125 contemporary writers to name what they consider "the ten greatest works of fiction of all time," andMadame Bovary was number two, after Anna Karenina.

Gustave Flaubert, who said, "I can imagine nothing in the world preferable to a nice, well-heated room, with the books one loves and the leisure one wants."

From The Writers' Almanac

From the Writers' Almanac

2009-12-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

It's the birthday of cartoonist and writer Ashleigh Brilliant, (books by this author) born in London (1933). He's famous as a writer of epigrams, and best known for what he calls his Pot-Shots, which are an illustration with a one-liner below.

He limits his sayings to 17 words, and many of them are found in the titles of some of his books: I Have Abandoned My Search for Truth, and Am Now Looking for a Good Fantasy (1980), We've Been Through So Much Together, and Most of It Was Your Fault(1990), and most recently, I'm Just Moving Clouds Today, Tomorrow I'll Try Mountains (1998).

(This is the sort of guy I could marry.)

The Jungle

2009-11-30T04:53:00.000-08:00

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (Norton Critical Editions) is an iconic book, that everyone knows something about without even reading it. After reading Oil I felt compelled to read his earlier classic.

I had my qualms as I'd heard that it's a gory indictment of the meat industry in the early 20th century, but was relieved that the gore wasn't as bad as I expected. The novel follows Lithuanian Jurgis and his family who immigrate to Chicago hoping to prosper. He soon gets a job as does his fiancée and adult relatives. They get a house and check with a lawyer that everything's kosher. They're assured that the contract is good. No worries.

They don't really get the discontent and skepticism of their neighbors. They suppose they're just lazy. Well, the system begins to take its toll. They discover a load of hidden fees for the home, which they'll lose if they miss a payment. The kids must work. One by one they're plucked out of school. Back-breaking labor soon results in an accident. Lost wages, lost job. The women are shocked when they go to work and the factory's closed so there goes that much needed income. The family spirals downward.

The book doesn't just deal with the Stockyard environment. One learns a lot about the political machine, real estate scams, prostitution, sexual harassment, child labor, farming, of course food safety and saloon life. The bars were the one place one could get a cheap meal and a place to stay warm. Sometimes it was the only place a homeless person could go and the bartender would allow some congenial bums to linger if they could get a patron to buy them a drink and a meal out of charity.

The characters are rather flat and the story is quite polemical, but it's interesting historical fiction. Again I love the Norton Critical edition which has essays Sinclair wrote, editorials on social ills his contemporaries wrote and literary criticism. It is a book that should be read by more Americans. We should know more about this era than the glossy view we get from high school history.

The writing style isn't as good as Oil! but the events are riveting.

Sea Change

2009-11-06T23:32:00.000-08:00

What a disappointment! In Sea Change Peter Nichols recounts his journey in a small wooden boat across the Atlantic. The back cover hinted at adventure, disaster and insights into the reasons for his divorce. None of this was really delivered.

While I hoped for something like Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster that planted a strong interest in Everest climbs, this book just bored. Too often, without much penetrating insight Nichols rattles off all he experienced as he sailed his boat, the Toad across the ocean hoping to sell it after his marriage broke up. The voyage is complicated by a leak in the boat, but while that meant towards the end he couldn't sleep well, it was never the life or death situation I expected. The trouble that comes to a head doesn't appear till p. 205 and is resolved by 218..

Mixed in with the tales this journey are his thoughts reading his ex-wife's diary, his superficial understanding of his marriage and its demise, and probably tidbits on every interesting solo journey Nichols knew of. How I wished I was reading those books!

His writing style is subpar and I'm shocked Penguin published this. I'd just groan over phrases like: Instinctively, without thinking I . . . . Redundancy anyone? I admit I skipped whole paragraphs and skimmed the last pages because nothing essential was being said and I just wanted to finish..

This is one boat I wish I had missed.

An Area of Darkness

2009-10-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

What an exquisitely written book! Nobel Prize winner, V.S. Naipaul's nonfiction account and his conjectures on traveling through India, the home of his grandparents is trenchant and compelling. It's beautifully written and though I've never been to India, I have dealt with third world life and can imagine he's described the bureaucracy and way of life with dead-on accuracy. He manages to do more than to scoff and complain, he does provide insights into the culture, his immigrant and culture hopping heritage and his own bad moods as well as those of the people who surround him.

Each page was a joy to read. I can't believe I had 20 pages left to go, that I decided to save for the train ride back home, and I left the book on the train to Beijing. It'll be the first book I get from the library when I get home.

Jan Wong's China

2009-10-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

I usually wait till I finish a book before reviewing it, but who knows if I'll be able to get on to blogger then?

I'm currently on page 265 of Jan Wong's Chinaand really find it engrossing. The author of Red China Bluesreturns to the Middle Kingdom in the late 1990s to see how things have changed. (Seems it's time for another return trip for Ms. Wong.) She visits villages and friends she had when she left in the '70s and '80s. Some have grown rich and others bitter. Some are furious with her for Red China Blues, which they thought was all lies. (Those were Americans who came to help with the Revolution and are die hard in their allegiance to their adopted land.)

Since she speaks fluent Chinese she gets the scoop on AIDS in China, car ownership, corruption, gay rights, Tibet, and drug addiction. Her chapter on customer service is hilarious. It's filled with anecdotes. I thought passengers on US flights had it bad. Not too long ago the Chinese flight attendants would refuse to take people's food trays, spent most of the flight time lounging in Business Class and at least once were caught having taken all the meat from the meals and eating it themselves in the galley.

Though it's bound to be dated, Jan Wong's China presents an interesting snapshot of China circa 1999.

The book's got 321 pages so I should finish soon.

People of the Book

2009-09-21T06:28:00.001-07:00

People of the Bookoffers Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brook's conjectures into the history of a rare Medieval haggadah which survived the Inquisition, invasions, book burnings and the Bosnian war. Book conservator, Hannah Heath is charged with examining the book which is about to be put on display at a museum in Sarajevo. What follows is part Biblio-CSI, part historical fiction and part modern fiction dealing with dysfunctional families. I found the descriptions of book conservation fascinating. Perhaps you have to be rather nerdish or bookish to do so. If you aren’t maybe this book isn’t for you.

The novel moves back and forth between the “present” and Hannah’s work and life and the past when the book was created and saved. Since it did go from one era to another and another, I found I was quite aware of the structure so I didn’t completely forget that I was in a story. I always knew I was reading a story that a writer constructed.

Hannah’s like a lot of intrepid single women, usually they're detectives. She’s very independent, sleeps with one of her colleagues, but maintains an emotional distance and was an only child with a demanding parent. She was interesting, but other than her work, she wasn’t unique. Also, I couldn’t believe that a smart woman would agree to take on the mission she took on at the end. That didn’t ring true.

Still it’s a good story that introduces one to interesting bits of history like life for Jews in the Middle Ages, and gambling practices in days of yore. I did find the voices of some of the historical characters to sound very much alike. Their narration was almost identical. Also occasionally, I just quietly groaned when there was a statement like “I smelled the rank smell of fear.” Yeah, right. The history is intriguing though and I learned about these eras and book illumination.

Bridget read and reviewed this novel a few months back.

The Conch Bearer

2009-08-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

A book for older children, The Conch Beareris a typical adventure story with a bit of spice, a little bit. It follows the formula of a young, unwilling hero getting chosen for a quest. A magical object, here a conch, accepts him and protects him. Like Dorothy's ruby slippers an corrupted character tries to get it and doesn't mind if the hero must die. The usual hardships and friendships ensue and eventually the hero learns and wins. The characters were fine, but the conch could be rather annoying. I should mention it can talk.

The story is spiced up because it's set in India, but once the boy, his wizard-like teacher and Nisha, a girl who tags along leave Kolkatta leave the city there are few reminders that this story takes place in India. The story's gotten several positive reviews, but I disagree that it's a page-turner that will make me want to stay up to read. I actually misplaced the book for a week and wasn't induced to exert much energy to finish it.

Home Game

2009-08-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

I heard about Michael Lewis' Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhoodon NPR.org.

I'm happy to say that the book was as engaging and funny as the interview. Lewis, who's written Liar's Poker and Money Ball, kept a journal of key points in his career as a father, a role that never came easily to him. He's refreshingly honest and witty. He muses over how he fits in now that his family's grown and shares great stories of raising a baby in France, navigating fatherhood in Berkeley and taking his girls to the horse races in New Orleans. It's a fun quick read. Do NOT skip the introduction.

Looks very interesting

2009-08-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Christopher McDougall

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

I've got no time to read it before I leave for China, but it is on my list of books I plan to read.

Winning the Race

2009-08-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

John McWhorter's Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America follows his earlier book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black Americawhich I read last year .

I picked up Winning the Race expecting McWhorter to offer solutions to the problems stated in his first book. While there are some implicit in the book, this book continues to identify and explain the problems McWhorter sees which hold African American's back. He's very logical and thorough as he picks apart ideas he doesn't agree with so the book's a good model for argumentation, and boy do people need that. He writes with intelligence and style, and that's always welcome. Yet I suppose I wanted more hope, say a program that will change things, but that's not here. I realize my hope was naive and that to a large degree change can come from people who read the book and decide to change themselves. Yet how many kids dropping out of high school, for example, will pick this up at the library?

This is an intelligent, novel book, but if you've read Losing the Race you probably don't need to read this book as well.

Renovation of the Heart

2009-08-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ
is a book for smart people interested in Christianity. Willard intelligently gets to the heart of spiritual formation. As a reviewer on amazon.com writes he begins " an introduction to spiritual formation, he then outlines the avenues through which transformation takes place, including thoughts, feelings, choices, social context, the body, and the soul." I respect how he grounds his points in history, theology and scripture. He can concretely convey complex ideas.

Since many churches seem to aim to deliver a nice service with extracurriculars like bridge clubs and golf outings to spice things up, it seems that spiritual growth is really left up to each individual. This book helps one figure out how to do that and why. I got it at the library, but will buy it. It's a book you can refer back to as time goes by.

The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2009-08-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates came up in Baltimore, a middle son of a father who had seven children by four women. A Beautiful Struggle is the lyrical, poetic story of Coates’ parents’ struggle to imbue their children with the skills and education needed to master their often unfriendly environment.

Walter Moseley called Coates the James Joyce of the hip-hop generation and before starting the book, I questioned this assessment as perhaps overblown. As I read the book, however, I came to fully agree. Coates has an amazing facility with language, creating vivid visuals utilizing an interplay of rap inspired prose.

Having lived in DC and Maryland during the years Coates was growing up in Baltimore and aspiring to Howard University, I connected all the more with Coates’ memoir. But, even those readers not familiar with the world Coates inhabited will find The Beautiful Struggle a beautiful read. Sorry, I couldn’t resist . . .

Oil!

2009-07-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

Oil!by Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle,caught my eye at the library. I'm so glad it did.

Oil! is a brilliantly constructed satire or exposé of the oil industry in the early part of the 20th century, with many parallels with recent history, sadly. Sinclair makes each character realistic and flawed. He has great insight into people and how they muck things up because they're too soft, too greedy, too idealistic, too divisive, etc.

The main relationship is between Bunny, who is a young teenager, and his father, an oil man who's driven to make more and more money and to give his son a good life. The father feels that school doesn't teach much of importance so when Bunny's middle school age, he travels around with his father learning how things are done. (When there's time a tutor comes to get the boy, who eventually does go to high school and college, up to speed on the three R's.) The father is a self-made man who can sincerely justify any short cut in business. He reminded me of the first Richard Daley, since he was more street smart than book smart and really often came across as clueless about how things should be done.

Bunny, is a refined, nice boy, who attracts some interesting friends. There's Paul a boy about his age, who's run away from home and trying to escape a father who's a religious fanatic, while earning money for his siblings' food. There are Socialist friends at college and a movie starlet girlfriend. Since he's a sympathetic person, Bunny becomes associated with people from all walks of life, often on very different sides of the era's burning issues. He uses the money his father earned from fields fleeced from families like Paul's to pay Paul's bail when his friend cum hero is arrested by instigators his father's associates hired to put an end to unionizing. There are many shades of gray though it's clear some are far darker than others to Sinclair.

Through this story which follows Bunny as he matures, Sinclair skewers business, government, religion, Socialism, academia, college sports, the movie industry, well just about every institution in the society with the exception of the food industry, which he tackled previously in the 1903 novel The Jungle.

There are many history lessons in this novel as Dad is one of the men who funded or bought Harding's way to the White House.

This book is action-packed and witty. It reads fast, but it's no longer in print, even though it was the inspiration for the film There Will be Blood. It should be at your library though.

Living Gently in a Violent World

2009-07-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

I'd read other books by Jean Vanier and have been blown away. Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness had such a promising title for our times, but it wasn't what I expected. I had thought there'd be references and anecdotes about living in L'Arche, the community Vanier helped start to connect with people with disabilities. I thought it would then provide insights for people who don't live in that community to deal with the violence, large and small in our society.

It really doesn't. Instead Vanier and co-author Hauerwas describe Vanier's life and times in L'Arche and add some theology to shed light on our attitudes towards those with disabilities. It never offered enough about life in other settings. It was just too limited for me in that regard. Also, I could have done with out Hauerwas' chapters since they seemed so distant and theoretical.

Book Geek

2009-07-20T19:53:00.001-07:00

This is a much more interesting book list thingie than the "15 Books" or "page 56" ones that are out there -- Thanks to Jan for posting it! I look forward to reading the answers from all my book friends (you know who you are) .... (And I love the "Don't italicize" instruction!)

Rules: You have received this note because someone thinks you are a literary geek [not that that's a bad thing!]. Copy the questions into your own note, answer the questions, and tag any friends who would appreciate the quiz, including the person who sent you this.

Don't bother trying to italicize your book titles, even though we know you want to...

This took a lot of thought - I bet I'd change this every year.

What author do you own the most books by?
Thomas Merton or Jane Austen
What book do you own the most copies of?
Japanese - English dictionaries
Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Nope.
What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Mr. Darcy springs to mind
What book(s) have you read the most times in your life?
Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

The Doll's House (Ibsen - took a lot of classes that required that)
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathon Swift - see above)
King Lear (Shakespeare - see above)

Actually something by Dr. Seuss or a fairy tale would probably be right since kids reread a lot
I'm not much of a rereader. I intend to go back and reread, but there are too many good books I haven't read.
What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
The Crazed (Ha Jin)
What is the best book you've read in the past year?
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The Flounder (Grass)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
Factory Girls (Leslie Chang)
Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
Haruki Murakami
What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
The Republic by Plato - actually it could be a good play
Maybe The Flounder could be a good movie
What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Ulysses (James Joyce)
Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Can't think of any
What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
Who Moved the Cheese? (Or is it "my cheese'?)
What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust - worth the effort)
Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Tie Shakespeare & Milton
Austen or Eliot?
Austen
What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Can't think of one.
What is your favorite novel?
Hard to choose. The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow), Soul Mountain (Gao, Xing Jian and The Flounder (Gunther Grass), Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Play?
Our Town
Short story?
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (Delmore Schwartz)
Work of non-fiction?
Mountains Beyond Mountains (Tracy Kidd) or Working (Studs Terkel or anything by him)
Who is your favorite writer?
Can't limit to one: Proust, Austen, C.S. Lewis, Gunther Grass, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Merton, Parker Palmer
Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
John Grisham?
What is your desert island book?
Grimm's Fairy Tales
And ... what are you reading right now?
Oracle Bones (Peter Hessler)
Oil! (Upton Sinclair)
Symposium (Plato)
Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness (Stanley Hauerwas, Jean Vanier, and John Swinton)
Who's your favorite children's author? (I'm adding this one)
E.B. White
And on the immediate to-read list (meaning I have the copies in hand):
Through the Painted Desert (Donald Miller)
An Area of Darkness (V.S. Naipal)
Winning the Race (John McWhorter)
The Discovery of Heaven (Harry Mulisch)
Never the Bride by [Cheryl McKay (from Act One) & Rene Gutteridge - it's enroute from amazon.com]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2009-07-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

My July book club selection was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,which I didn't realize was almost 500 pages when I alloted 10 days to read it. In the beginning I didn't get into this. I was impatient with so many details and found Betty Smith's off-hand racist comments offensive. I realize she wrote this in the 1940's but I wasn't able to let her off the hook. Luckily, there weren't many slurs, etc as the book progressed.

Smith's Francie Nolan and all her family did win me over as they struggle amidst poverty moving from one tenement to another. The characters were smart, witty, (often) diligent, kind and worthy of respect. They were drawn warts and all including Johnny, the idealistic, dreamer alcoholic father and Sissy, an aunt who went through men in a hurry. Sissy was one of my favorites. She couldn't read, but she did outsmart Francie's teacher when felt her niece needed someone in her corner. She posed as Francie's mother and confronts and fools a snobbish teacher who Sissy sized up immediately.

It was interesting to read as a sociological portrait of a culture with descriptions that I came to relish. For example, in Brooklyn they used to celebrate Thanksgiving as we do Halloween with kids dressing up and going to different stores begging for treats. Since kids were the did so much of the shopping ("Here's a nickel go to the store and get two loaves of bread) smart merchants catered to them (frugally) to win their loyalty. Smith provided so much insight into how people doctored up old bread and left overs to last days. I also loved how dignified the Nolans were, how they wouldn't accept charity and always found a way to survive.

Francie has interesting relationships with all her family members. It was fascinating to see how honest and open Katie (the mother) was about sex and boys when Francie was a young teen, how she didn't sugar coat romance, how she was always practical even when Francie broken hearted.

The story got more vital and witty as I went through it. It's really got everything: injustice, jealousy, endurance, murder, weddings, births, deaths, success and failure. When I started reading, it felt like a homework assignment. Now I'd definitely read more Betty Smith.

Factory Girls

2009-07-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

Leslie Chang's Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China fascinated me. Chang is a journalist for the Wall St. Journal posted in China. In this book, Chang spends years getting to know two girls who migrate from their villages to factory cities, where they pursue fortune and opportunity. It's the story of the people who make the glue for our shoes, the molds for the plastics we use, our Coach bags, well, more or less everything we touch in a given day.

Chang becomes their confidant and thus learns all about their work, their bosses, the struggles to survive in a society that promotes movement and makes long term friendship or trust seem foolish. Chang discovers how dating works or doesn't in modern China. What do these women look for in men, how do they find it and how do they make do till the man with the apartment and good job come along?

The first part of the book centers on life scrabbling in the city how fresh off the bus or train, these girls, some as young as 15, manage to survive in spite of little education, no contacts, and no experience. I was completely engrossed to read about how the girls quickly succeeded and failed. Chang accompanies them to "finishing schools" that train workers in public speaking, success, people skills, bluffing your way through a job interview, and all the skills needed to make it. Chang also returns to the village with her subject to see the family and home. As a young Chinese-American who speaks the language fluently, Chang blends in well and is very much a fly on the wall, privy to everything. Both girls Chang follows are completely candid about all their desires and means of attaining them.

These girls may lack education, but they soon show themselves to be shrewd and bright. While they are exploited, this never stops them. One day, they're ripped off, the next they're off to the next opportunity without looking back.

Any language teacher will appreciate the chapter on "Assembly Line English," a new method developed as a get rich quick scheme by a man who's never taught and holds the

guiding principle that treating people like machines was the key to mastering English. After learning the alphabet and the phonetic sounds of the language, a student sat at machine while columns of English words rotated past. The student read aloud each word and wrote it down without knowing what it meant, week after week, until he attained the highest speed. He (sic*) then proceeded to another machine that showed the Chinese definitions of words; next he advanced to short sentences. At each stage, he wrote the word or sentence in English and said it aloud without comprehending its meaning.

once the student could reach "top speed" i.e. 600 sentences an hour could she start to learn basic grammar. studnets would work eleven hours a day on this and yes, they paid handsomely for such lessons.

My only criticism, and it was a real annoyance, was the two and a half chapters on Chang's family history. While her grandfather's story is interesting and significant, it belongs in another book. Once I'd turn a page and see the next part was about her relatives I slowed down, sighed, promised myself that soon I'd get back to the girls' story. I have no idea why an editor would let her keep these sections in.

Taking Woodstock by Elliot Tiber

2009-07-15T16:21:00.001-07:00

Not for the prudish or homophobic.

But so long as you don't belong to either of those two groups, this book appeals.

Many of the anecdotes beg disbelief and, of course, since most of the players are deceased, there's no real fact checking to be done but Tiber's story is an aspect of Woodstock that hasn't been previously explored.

How and why The Woodstock Music & Art Festival ended up 50 miles from Woodstock is yet another piece in the improbable, nay, impossible event that took place nonetheless.

As a baby boomer who was 7 years old at the time, my knowledge of Woodstock was woefully lacking and Tiber's book is an intriguing, if at times appalling, introduction.

The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike

2009-07-14T17:40:00.001-07:00

Um, not so much.

Much more graphic sexually than the original, not as interesting and really just blah.

Updike's last novel and certainly not his best (although what do I know, having only read this one and the Witches of Eastwick?).

Every once in a while, his descriptions caught me up short but for the most part, I was reading for plot, in a hurry to get it over with and find out what happened to the three friends.

If not for the plane ride, I still wouldn't be done with it.

From Today's Writers' Almanac

2009-07-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

It's the birthday of a man whose entire reputation is built on one novel that is more than 3,000 pages long: Marcel Proust, (books by this author) born in Auteuil, France (1871). His parents were well off — his father had been born poor but had worked his way up to become a respected doctor. Marcel was a sickly child, prone to asthma attacks, and he was in and out of school. He studied law and philosophy, but he was most interested in writing and in his own social ambitions.
He published stories and essays in literary magazines, and he started work on a long novel, but after writing several thousand pages he was frustrated and gave it up.

He continued to live with his brother and parents in their apartment. Finally, his father insisted that he get a job, so he found work as a volunteer and almost immediately applied for sick leave, and never went back to work.
But then, within a couple of years, his brother got married and moved away from home, and both his parents died. After his mother's death, he spent awhile recovering in a sanatorium. When he got out, he started to write again — supported by a large inheritance left him by his mother — and he set out to write his great novel.

And he spent the rest of his life working on The Remembrance of Things Past, which is sometimes titled In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate translation of the French.

In one of the most famous scenes in the novel, the narrator, Marcel, tastes some cake with tea:

I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory — this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

Looks Good

2009-07-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

I saw Ms. Moyo, the author of Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africaon CNN yesterday. She's got an interesting perspective. A former World Bank economist, Moyo believes that aid does more harm than good in Africa. She feels if the aid stopped, so would the corruption and new, innovative solutions to serious problems would result. I remember a class in grad school with a woman from South Africa who asserted the same idea. I'll read this once I finish the stack of books I got today at the library.

With Moyo yesterday was the author of The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, who did strike me as well-meaning but ineffective.

15 Books

2009-07-06T12:22:00.001-07:00

This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose...

1. The Flounder by Gunther Grass
2. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
3. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austin
4. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Our Town, Thornton Wilder
6. Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami Hiruki
7. American Dreams Lost & Found, Studs Terkel
8. Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
9. The Procedure, Harry Mulisch
10. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
11. In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
12. Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton
13. The Enchiridion, Epictetus
14. Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton
15. The Bible, a whole slew of folks

It's really hard to think of just 15. Fifteen authors might be easier. This list just gives you a feel of the scope of things I really like. And I tagged more than 15 people since I know a lot of readers.

Red China Blues

2009-07-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

I found Jan Wong's Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Nowso compelling. It's a memoir of Wong's relationship with China. In the late 1960's Canadian-Chinese Wong convinced her dismayed parents to let her go to Maoist China to learn the language and soak up some Maoism. They couldn't fathom why their daughter wanted to go back. Why would a middle class girl opt for bad food, cold showers and deprivation?

But that's what Wong wanted. She donned the whole Mao look from cotton Mao jacket to black cloth shoes. She and a Chinese American Yale student were the two first foreigners to study in the new China. She lobbied against the comforts like a private dining room to the dismay of the staff. Who'd want to eat gruel twice a day? It was fascinating to read about her relationships with her roommate, other students, teachers and the administration. She begins very idealistic view of Maoism early on, and holds on to it for quite some time, but does question her beliefs as she bumps into the secrecy, restrictions, sexism and hypocrisy that was part of this system.

Her one year language immersion becomes a longer stay as she is allowed to enter Beijing University as a bona fide exchange student. Her studies coincide with the Cultural Revolution and she participates in the peasant labor and marching that entailed.

Eventually Wong marries another Sinophile, an American man who'd grown up in China. As she becomes fluent in the language and can pass as a native, she gets a position as a New York Times reporter. Except for a brief stint in the U.S. when she and her husband get graduate degrees she remains in the country to witness the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Tienanmen Square protests and massacre, and the beginning of China's economic boon as a reporter for Toronto's Globe and Mail.

She provides fascinating background on both the personal and political events she experiences. Readers learn about Chinese history and her firsthand experiences working at Big Joy farm, about such issues kidnapping and selling brides and her travails getting the interviews with these girls. There's no comparison between Wong's description of the Tienanmen protests and the tepid account by Jin in The Crazed. Clearly, Wong lived the experience and it changed her. Jin must have just heard about it - third hand.

The question of what was all the suffering during (and due to) Mao's tenure which sought in part to eliminate inequality, exploitation and materialism plagues Wong and I think must at least nag at outsiders like me who now see the new China. If you know the history, you have to ask that.

This book was absorbing. If you're curious about China, read it.

What to read for an encore? That is a dilemma but I'm a quarter of the way through Lesley Chang's Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. So far it's just as engaging and even better written in my humble opinion.

Canterbury Tales

2009-06-27T18:28:00.000-07:00

My online book club read The Canterbury Tales. (original-spelling Middle English edition) I got started late due to inertia, grading, and packing, but I did get started. I was daunted by the bulk of my edition - over 800 pages.

But once I discovered that this edition by Barnes & Noble had the Middle English on the left and a modern version on the right, I became more enthused.

I had read the Canterbury Tales in high school and in college (twice) and I do appreciate the humor and how groundbreaking it was to write in English rather than French, the language of the court. Yet this time around I wasn't in the mood. I read the Prologue and thought, "Yes, these characters are funny and Chaucer is poking fun at them, but they're all rather one dimensional. Shakespeare would give them more complexity." Perhaps that's not fair, but it's what I thought.

I did enjoy listening to BBC 4's In Our Time: Chaucer, which is my new find on unlocking philosophy and culture, etc.

As I got into the Knight's Tale my mind drifted often. I did remind myself that there is an alternative interpretation of the staid, good guy knight but Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. When in college, I read his Chaucer's Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary which contends that we just don't get the allusions and satire directed at this character. If one's more familiar with the history and culture of the day, you'd view it as a portrait and tale of a hypocrite. Warning: when I mentioned this book in my survey of English literature class the professor got incensed. He would not consider this thesis and immediately deemed me a trouble maker, rather than a student with a curious mind who went the extra mile. My grade suffered as a result. I vividly remember that class when I shared this alternative view and got eviscerated for it.

In the end, I learned to shut up. I did write to Jones and got a rather encouraging letter about how it takes a long time for new ideas to percolated throughout the halls of the academy. That was a thrill.

Anyway our discussions' come and gone. I chimed in with some thoughts, but no one else in the online group read it, so I will but it aside till the fall. One thing that is cool about the book, or maybe just distracting is the language. For example Chaucer doesn't use "go" he uses "wend" as they did in that day. Doesn't wend make more sense since "went" is the past tense? For some reason we pretty much abandoned "wend" (seems only rivers "wend" now) for "go" which had no past tense. Makes no sense to me.

Fifteen Books

2009-06-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

The meme is to choose fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose . . .

1. D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
4. Our Bodies, Ourselves by The Boston Women's Health Book Collective
5. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
6. 1000 White Women by Jim Fergus
7. Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
8. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
9. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
10. A Story that Stands Like a Dam by Russell Martin
11. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
12. Native Son by Richard Wright
13. The Color Complex by Midge Wilson, Kathy Russell and Ronald Hall
14. Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase Riboud
15. Divided Sisters by Midge Wilson and Kathy Russell

In no particular order! I'm sure I've left more momentous books out which I will think of as soon as I post this. Many of the books, especially the older ones, I've included because of the lasting impact they had on me, either by virtue of the book itself or because of where I was in my life when I read it.

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

2009-06-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

Since I really enjoyed the movie version of Witches of Eastwick, I decided to read Widows of Eastwick. But I couldn't read Widows of Eastwick without having read Witches of Eastwick first.

The book and movie are vastly dissimilar. That I found this surprising is surprising. I mean, I've read enough books after seeing the movie adaptations to be well acquainted with the fact that the book and the movie are often vastly dissimilar. But I was surprised.

What I also found surprising is how intriguing I found Updike's prose. I read novels for plot. I skim the extraneous details, the superfluous descriptions. If it doesn't move the plot forward, it doesn't hold my attention.

And yet, Updike's prose grabbed me in spite of myself. Yes, even the ridiculously lengthy recitation of Jane's middle of the night cello concert kept me, if not engrossed, at least paying attention.

I enjoyed the story told by the movie better, especially the end but on a more superficial level. I found the book's story deeper, more conflicted, more unapologetic about its main characters' amorality.

Now, on to the Widows . . .

2009-06-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Susan Isaac's funny, insightful Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir. The book chronicles Isaac's ups and downs as she tries to make sense of the confusion and disappointment that she encounters in her life. She'd been told to consider God as her spouse and takes that imagery seriously so she goes off to couples therapy with God. (She lived in California at the time so finding a therapist to go along with that was possible.) The memoir is very funny, honest and insightful. I could feel for her as she copes with all kinds of disappointments and doesn't get why things are not working out for her.

She's got her own style, but does remind me of Anne Lamott. Isaacs is on the Act One faculty, which is how I learned of her.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

2009-06-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

Brooks uses the true story of an ancient Jewish book saved by a Muslim museum curator during the Bosnian war as a jumping off point to take the reader on a sweeping, if fitful, journey through the centuries.

In the spirit of novels which imagine the realities behind works of art such as Tracy Chevalier's Girl with the Pearl Earring, Brooks uses clues found in the binding of the ancient work to fashion a creation story, one that unblinkingly exposes the reader to the separate and intertwined struggles of Jews and Muslims, especially as they attempted to navigate a harsh Christian world.

A bit choppy as it jumps back and forth between present day and days past, the novel also has a disingenuous foray into romance which hits a false note.

But, when it's focused on its primary mission, that of detailing the past, the book finds its groove.

The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris

2009-06-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

A pleasant enough read.

While I have read another Joanne Harris novel, it was not Chocolat. That one I saw as a movie. I mean who can pass up a movie adaptation with Johnny Depp? Usually, if I hadn't already read the book, I would read it as a follow up to the movie but with this one did not do so.

So, while I picked up this book because of my familiarity with its characters, I'm unsure as to whether the book version and the movie version of the characters are all that similar, although it does occur to me that since Harris wrote this sequel after the movie, she could very well have smoothed out any discrepancies.

I was never enthralled but the book kept my interest well enough. Because Harris makes no bones about Zozie's amorality, a sense of impending doom hangs over the entire novel which frustrated me but also kept me invested enough to see how it all played out.

The novel is rife with identity issues and morals about the perils of not being true to one's self.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

2009-06-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Let me just start by saying that I highly recommend this book.

Just as I was beginning it, a friend forwarded me a rather snarky analysis of Kearns Goodwin's thesis or, I should say, thesis as he imagined it. I'm still not clear on whether he actually read the book or was just reacting to the press about it but, thankfully, I stopped reading about two lines in when his condescension became clear. Suffice it say that he believes that there was nothing remarkable about Lincoln's cabinet since all presidents up to that time culled their governments from their rivals.

Thankfully, Kearns Goodwin analysis of Lincoln is far more nuanced. While she clearly has a love affair going on with our 16th president, she persuasively shares Lincoln's qualities with her readers. As painted by Kearns Goodwin, Lincoln was a remarkable, ambitious but not egotistical, pragmatist. His ability to look past his rivals' personal slights and to see the strengths that they could bring to bear coupled with his innate diplomacy allowed him to cobble together a government during this country's most trying times.

Would that Lincoln's abilities had been equally as successful in his choices of generals. The most frustrating part of reading this book was the repetitiousness of the struggles Lincoln experienced with his parade of incompetent generals. More than once I found myself exclaiming out loud in frustration as Kearns Goodwin related yet another ridiculous episode with this general or that one.

Kearns Goodwin is obviously enamored of her subject and successfully persuades the reader that this admiration is well placed.

The Crazed

2009-05-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

The Crazeddisappointed me. I really can't recommend it. There are better novels and nonfiction on China. This is the story of a graduate student in China whose mentor has a stroke. He's engaged to the professor's daughter and genuinely is fond of him so he agrees to look after the old teacher since his daughter and wife are both out of town.

In his sleep the professor babbles or rants in full paragraphs for extended periods of time revealing his past infidelities, disappointments, and betrayals. I've been around people who talk in their sleep and it's never clear prose. It's fragments of truth mixed with the imagined. Thus I couldn't buy the main part of the story.

At the end the main character gets sucked into the Tienanmen Square uprising, which the cover blurbs played up. These important events are very much in the background till the end. I realize most people aren't actual witnesses to major historical events, but the marketing department didn't want anyone to know that. I was led to believe that those events were more central to the plot.

There's a lot on the politics of Chinese universities, but I think that's only of interest to students or people working in universities.

Find something else. Read something by Jan Wong instead.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

2009-05-25T02:19:00.000-07:00

The May choice for my online book club is Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I was curious about reading a Wilder novel and can see his style for description throughout. Yet this book left me a bit cold.

It's the story of Brother Juniper's attempt to figure out the reason why the rickety old San Luis Rey bridge suddenly collapsed killing five people. Was it fate? Retribution? What? Through this search we get to read the stories of five characters whose lives are all at a turning point.

I just couldn't get that interested in these characters or Brother Juniper. I really felt that old bridges collapse in this world that God created. They aren't likely to collapse when no one's on them, are they? I may have found the story more compelling and fresh if I read it when it first came out. Now several Latin authors are well known and weave wonderful stories. I'm thinking of Isabelle Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, etc.

For more on the book you can go to Thornton Wilder Society website

King Lear - Again

2009-05-10T05:36:00.000-07:00

My online book club read King Lear so I reread it. I had about the same reaction. I realize it's a classic, but it's not my favorite. I discovered I'm not alone.

I finished Lear last night and it's actually the second time I read it in the last 9 months or so as I read it for another Great Books group.

I have to say, while I know this is considered his best play, I don't like it as much as MacBeth or The Tempest or several others. I think I lose patience with Lear because as Jack mentioned, he brings on all his troubles. If he knew his daughters better . . . if he hadn't divided the kingdom which he obviously still wants to rule . . . .

Also it gets rather gruesome - Gloucester's eyes getting put out was too much for me.

The language is excellent as one would expect. I did like every scene with the fool in it.

In the back of my edition they included some of the source material for the play and criticism. One critic said that in other hands, this would be a disaster, I agree.

According to one critic, A.C. Brady, Lear is both Shakespeare's most admired play and one of the less popular and financially successful. He believes it's uneven and that it's in many ways too big for the stage. There is a log of emotion to take in.

If you're going to read this get, Norton's Critical Edition. I found the background and critical essays interesting.

In the online discussion one writer said that Kurasawa's version of Lear (Ran) convinced him to switch from theater to film as a major. That is a powerful movie. I think Lear makes a better film than play as a director can be more panoramic in film.

Confucius Lives Next Door

2009-04-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

To get more insight into the Confucian-influenced psyche, I read T. R. Reid's Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West.A reporter for the Washington Post Reid and his family lived in Japan for many years. His work took him throughout the region and he wanted to figure out just how Confucian philosophy influences Asians.

In some respects the title is quite literal. Reid learned heaps from his next door neighbor Matsuda san, who handled complaining about loud rock music emanating from Reid's son's room so differently from the American way. Rather than calling and yelling, Matsuda san knocked on Reid's door, came in for tea, chatted about all sorts of inconsequential matters and then cleared his throat to introduce the meiwaku or trouble you're causing those around you. We really don't have a specific word for that, do we? Reid explains how other meiwaku's have been handled in business and politics. He provides readers with facts they may not know about Confucius and how he strove to make communication more direct and social relations more balanced.

It is fascinating to read about how children in Japan are educated and how societies from Singapore to China in various ways infuse more moral good citizen messages throughout the environment. He acknowledges that the average American would find this rather hokey, but that many of us do wish for more consideration from those around us.

I did think he presented some statistics and facts on literacy and school achievement that were questionable. He'd never met an illiterate Japanese person, but I have. He reports that if one or two children in a class don't meet the grade level standard, it's an emergency in the faculty room, but from my time teaching in rural Japan, I'll tell you that a lot of teachers don't worry about failure since the society has a spot for underachievers. So I'd read this with a grain of salt, but I do recommend reading it.

The book is very Japan-centered and I did expect more about at least Korea and China, which are covered, but so briefly. Each country takes on Confucius thought differently. I wished that could be examined. Also, it was written in the late 1990's and seems a bit dated.

The book reveals a lot about Japanese business practice and social policy and makes it clear that many countries look at the US and think, "Okay, you are number one, economically and militarily, but you sure pay a high price for that in social costs. Your streets aren't all that safe. Your prisons are overflowing. People fear losing their jobs. Your schools don't teach students well." (Yes, I think the Japanese literacy rate is under the 98% they report, but I bet it is higher than ours.)

When I finished, I felt eager to read the real thing. Looking forward to famed lines like:

Isn't it a pleasure when you can make practical use of the things you have studied? Isn't it a pleasure to have an old friend visit from afar? Isn't it the sure sign of a gentleman, that he does not take offense when others fail to recognize his ability?

One thing Reid does that I liked is that he added an atogaki, a traditional afterword in Japanese books in which the author points out the weaknesses in his or her own thesis to make sure the cracks in the wall are acknowledged. The idea is that the author thinks s/he had built a good wall, but wants the readers to see the cracks too. Then everyone can see the problems and contribute to an improved thesis down the road. Quite a communal approach, huh?

Since Bridget's in London

2009-03-24T02:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd add this from the Writers' Almanac:

It's the birthday of journalist and social critic Malcom Muggeridge born in Croydon, Surrey, England (1903). In 1953 he became the editor of the British humor magazine Punch. Muggeridge eventually left after he got tired of his staff; he said they were "all anguished men, trying to discover what, if anything, was funny." He said, "It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh." He also said, "Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.

The Pearl Jacket

2009-03-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

The Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China is a collection of short short stories which let readers see modern China from a variety of angles. Divided into sections such as family, portraits, society, truth and art, the book consists of stories, no more than four pages long, which remind me of O. Henry stories. They present sharply focused scenes of both country and city life with a dash of sentimentality and a surprise ending. Here's an example:

Happy Family
by Wu Du

Like any other day he returns home from work. He is about to take out the key to open the door when the door opens. She stands by the door, a smile on her face. One, two, three kids peek from inside to greet him, “Welcome home, dad.”
The three kids are beautiful. So is she. The kids busy themselves around him excitedly, getting him his slippers, his tea, his newspapers. He sits down in the cushioned chair, rests his head against its back, and takes a deep breath. It feels so different with a woman around the house. He notices she has cleaned the curtains and the cushions and tidied up things. Somehow the entire room looks much brighter than before.

The kids are bright and thoughtful. They all come over to kiss him, the youngest one still smells like a baby. They “pester” him for a while, asking if he is exhausted from work, if he knows the latest news, and so on. They are sensitive to even his facial expressions so they know how far they can go and what questions they should not ask. They are experienced. Third Hair, the youngest, even recites a Tang poem for him. He is amazed. It's taught by the kindergarten teacher, he is told. He likes to call the kids this way, “Big Hair, Second Hair, Third Hair.” They are like the kids he has seen on television. The boy has long, like a girl, his eyes big and deep. The girls have on cute skirts and squat on the floor like little princesses.

He likes to call her “Mei.” She comes out from the kitchen. She is beautiful, but not the obvious kind of beauty. It's the housewife kind of beauty, not quite that of a young secretary or a film star. She has on just a little make up. Her thin lips fresh red. She tells him what kind of dishes she has prepared. They are all his favorite.

During dinner he sits at the head of the table where the head of a family is supposed to sit. The kids are enthusiastic and chatter with him nonstop. They are ready to answer any question he asks. He asks, “How do you like Uncle Qin?” The kids reply without hesitation, “Dad, we like you better.” She stops her chopsticks, smiles and exchanges a knowing glance between them. Heavens how can he not melt into all this? Third Hair prints on his face one last kiss with the same baby fragrant mouth. They are all neatly dressed as if they are gong somewhere. They all say “goodbye” so sweetly. Just before they leave, he hands her an envelope with money in it. She hands him a card, the same promotion card of their company, which he has seen so many times before. Yet he reads it one more time:

FIRST RATE WARM FEELING OF FAMILY
Good news for single people in the world: Our company provides happy families of all stripes and types to meet the emotional needs of all kids of single, lonely people . . . .

He breaks into a smile. Perhaps he should try a different flavor next time, a hot and spicy one that gives you no peace whatsoever. Old Qin said, “You should try that kind of family life, too. It can be exciting."

It's a good book to pick up and read a story or two now and then.

I'm going to share a few with my students. The language is simple, while the irony and descriptions add a bit of sophistication.

The Defining Moment by Jonathan Alter

2009-03-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

Illuminating.

Timely.

Eminently readable.

I read it because it's one of the books our new president is reading because, you know, our new president reads.

From the start, I was learning. There were many details of the Depression of which I was unaware. It was troubling how many of them mirrored today's headlines. But do the solutions attempted during the Depression have any applicability to today's circumstances?

Alter makes the argument that the key to the New Deal was the persona of the newly elected president and his willingness to basically just keep throwing darts at the dart board. According to Alter, Roosevelt didn't have so much a vision regarding what to do as a drive to simply do something. The appearance of activity went a long way in creating optimism.

Alter creates a revealing, well-balanced portrait of FDR. While his focus is the first 100 days of FDR's presidency, he provides plenty of lead in and follow up which gives the reader a solid overview of the entire era and a great deal of detail about the defining moment.

Give Me Liberty by Naomi Wolf

2009-03-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

While Wolf hooked me with The End of America, she loses me with Give Me Liberty.

She comes across as a left-wing conspiracy theory nut who, prior to the 2009 Inauguration, questions whether the Republican administration of George Bush will allow the newly elected president to be sworn in.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, there were so many legitimate accusations to level at the Bush administration that it really calls Wolf's credibility into question for her to move so far into the realm of panic.

Wolf's book does provide an interesting dissection of the obstacles to exercising one's First Amendment rights of speech, assembly and petition erected by our various local, state and federal governments.

The book is not totally without merit as it marches us through Wolf's often less than successful attempts to be politically active and then provides us with a roadmap for overcoming the difficulties she encountered but like most books of its genre, whether right or left, it must be taken with a grain of salt, culling out the reasonable from the inflammatory.

Losing the Race

2009-03-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

In Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black AmericaJames McWhorter examines why African American students underachieve academically, not just those from low income homes, but those in all socio-economic strata. He presents a lot of data that I'd never seen and argues his points logically and persuasively. The book is trenchant and brave, in that he often says things that will get him in hot water, that other Black scholars don't want to address. It's a good book for anyone interested in addressing the achievement gap and for anyone who wants to learn how to argue well. How to present your side and refute critics.

As a language teacher, I enjoyed his explanations of linguistics and Black English. I admire him for standing alone in the Ebonics controversy. Others might find those passages off-topic.

I can see that some will use his thesis to bolster their prejudices and to say we can't help "some people."

When I get home, I plan to read his next book Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America.Evidently, he doesn't merely criticize and diagnose, he presents a solution.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2009-02-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

Yet another instance involving a short story where the movie is oh much better than the story upon which it is based.

Although, in this case, I'd have to say, loosely based.

The short story is rather monotone and drone-y. Emotionally gray, it merely marches the reader through the rather pathetic life of Benjamin Button with little empathy.

Fortunately for the viewer, the movie differs significantly from the story. Unlike Brokeback Mountain, which took every detail from the short story and fleshed it out to great advantage, the screenwriters for Button changed almost everything, retaining only the framework. This is to the movie's benefit.

So, the bottom line is see the movie, skip the short story.

Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak by Writers Famous & Obscure

2009-02-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

The editors at Smith Magazine have published another book of six word memoirs, this one focused on love and heartbreak.

This book, like their last, inspired me to cull out the six word memoirs with which I identified.

I've thrown in a few of my own, too.

He did not laugh at Airplane.

He was way ahead of me.

He called me, asked for her.

He was addicted, too many women.

I left though I loved him.

I wrote her a thank you.

First thought: He has nice eyes.

He's an artist and I'm not.

Couldn't give up B for W.

Eight years alone, met my guy.

He makes me laugh every day - Detta Owens, p. 11.

Became the other woman. Didn't know - Cameron Vest, p. 22.

Good sex was all we had - Kimberley Yvette Price, p. 39.

Forgot why I left; went back - Sharon Lewis, p. 44.

It helps to label the books - Juan Antonio del Rosario, p. 47.

Love plus laughter: happily ever after - Dan Goggin, p. 50.

Love almost always leads to heartbreak - Raoul Felder, Esq., p. 60.

Love at first sight is blind - Jace Albao, p. 61.

My heart is my strongest muscle - Shanna Katz, p. 64.

More complicated than movies let on - Erin McIntosh, p. 77.

Maybe he will call me tomorrow - Jody Madala, p. 80.

I love you and I'm leaving - Christine Stewart, p. 81.

Happiness is a bed to myself - Michelle Ponto, p. 82.

Three word memoir: Paper. Pen. Revenge. - Lora Mitchell, p. 120.

It's just a matter of luck - Ayelet Waldman, p. 122.

In hindsight, I'd still choose you - Natana Gill, p. 128.

On Abe & "Team of Rivals"

2009-02-21T06:40:00.000-08:00

Often lately I think I should get a PhD in history. I do love it and I know I couldn't dream of a full time job in the US, there are some overseas. I wrote to my historian friend about seeing Doris Kearns Goodwin and buying her Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Here's his response

Perhaps if I agreed with the Team of Rivals thesis more.... Over the first seven decades under the Constitution, the president was viewed as only incrementally more important than the cabinet officers; not until Jackson fired everyone except the Postmaster for dissing Peggy Eaton was the precedent clear that they were "his" cabinet officers. As a result, there were many "teams of rivals" before Lincoln, particularly in appointments of past rivals to the Secretary of State position. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, all at least equivalent to William Seward, let alone Hillary Clinton, had each done service running foreign relations, as had future presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Van Buren, and Buchanan. What changed under Lincoln, I think, was that, under the pressure of the unprecedented crisis, the presidency gained in decision-making leverage, which in retrospect made his willingness to include past rivals in the cabinet seem a more self-confident commitment to power-sharing than it would have at the time. Also, there were special circumstances in 1860-61 that need to be taken into consideration.

Above all, the 1860 election had been only the second presidential sweepstakes in which Lincoln's party had contested, and the first in which, it was widely recognized as the Democrats splintered, it was likely to win, with the result that almost all Republican politicians of any consequence, including those like Seward who had ducked in 1856 to avoid being labeled losers, had thrown their hats in the ring. The most obvious exception, Charles Sumner, was only gradually returning to his official duties after his beating by Preston Brooks. As a result, Lincoln would have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find competent cabinet officers who had not been rivals in 1860. And even then, some of the choices, like Cameron, turned out pretty bad. But I'm not trying to turn you aside from her book, only to note that David Donald's biography may still be the best place to start with Lincoln, and the two-volume Library of America collectionof his writings remains the most fulfilling reading experience.

He has a doctorate from Harvard by the way.

I find the arguments in history so intriguing.

I now have a lot more books on Lincoln on my reading list. All must wait till after China.

A Year in Japan

2009-02-19T15:22:00.000-08:00

Kate T. Williamson's A Year in Japan presents her impressions, written and illustrated of Japan. It's a quick read and offers an artistic glimpse into some of the culture's artifacts. I did wish there was more person insight into Japan. I felt removed from the author more than usual in a travel book. Here's a sample of the book:

China! New Art & Artists

2009-02-19T15:13:00.000-08:00

Two above both by Tang Zhi Gang

by Fang Li Jin

by Yu Hong

by Li Jin

by Zhang Xiao Gang

China! New Art & Artistsis a beautiful book that introduces readers to the work of current Chinese artists, who I think are among the best in the world. They have such wit in their work. Take a look:

At a Crossroads

2009-02-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

Kate T. Willliamson, whom I met while living in Japan, wrote and illustrated At a Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents' Placeabout her year in limbo post-college. After living in Japan on a fellowship for a year, Kate returned to her parents place to work on a book. At a Crossroads describes the year when she spent lots of time with her parents, went to Cher and Hall & Oates concerts, attended wedding showers and other family functions. Towards the end she includes a bit about the embarrassment of meeting friends or neighbors and not having the usual accomplishments to share e.g. a great job, a posh apartment, a cool boyfriend.

Her illustrations, watercolors with penned lines, are gentle and detailed.

The book reads quickly and is pleasant enough. This chronicle doesn't describe a year of angst or existential crisis. It seems for the most part this was not a bad way to spend a year. She gets along with her parents and grandparents. She makes connections with neighborhood kids. She hears from an old college crush. Yet she seems distant from all. Maybe that's the key to not having conflict - maintain a safe distance. It really seemed like a fine year, no great highs, but no great lows either. It was interesting that she seemed to worry more about the squirrels she heard in the attic over her bedroom than what her future held. Money was never an issue. She seemed to have it good.

Talent is Overrated

2009-02-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

I got Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else after watching Geoff Colvin on Charlie Rose.I Colvin researched the question of what makes someone a top performer in her field and shares the results.

He did discover that talent is a small factor. What really matters is deliberate practice and lots of it. By putting 10,000 hours of deliberate practice into an endeavor one should excel. That's a lot of time and often not fun, but that's what it takes. So you don't have to give up if you weren't born a prodigy. There's still hope. Also, while it's best to start young, it's not essential.

The book reads fast and includes lots of apt anecdotes.

My Guantanamo Diary by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan

2009-01-31T08:51:00.000-08:00

Mahvish Khan was the rare combination of a law student and a fluent Pashto speaker. This made her attractive to the pro bono habeas lawyers who were attempting to represent the detainees at Guantanamo. While still in law school, she signed on with a firm to serve as its interpreter.

This book is the result of her observations and experiences in Guantanamo, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Khan is a less than artful wordsmith. She ends up coming off a bit like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, young, at times shallow and yet at other times startlingly graphic and nuanced. Her book alternates between being painful due to her prose and painful due to her subject while also managing to work in a surprisingly personal perspective and a deep degree of empathy for the detainees with whom she deals.

Khan claims to be objective,

Though it may appear to some readers that I give ample, and perhaps naive, credence to prisoners' points of view, I have made every effor to verify their accounts and to explore the military's contrasting perspective . . . My objective is simply to tell the stories of some of the men held captive by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, the stories they themselves have never been able to tell.

but saying it's so doesn't make it so. She is clearly charmed by all of the detainees she met, even Taj Mohammad, the suspicious "goatherd" whose story, she admits, never added up. She concludes by stating,

I can honestly say that I don't believe any of the Afghans I met were guilty of crimes against the United States. Certainly, some of the Guantanamo detainees were, just not the men I met.

Were the men she met truly not guilty or were they simply not guilty because she met them?

And yet, that's not the point. Guilty or not, the abuses that Khan details are appalling. Members of the US military performed ghastly acts. Commander Jeffery Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, comes across as particularly ignorant, defensive and asinine.

And in the end, there is no disagreeing with Khan's central point,

Some readers may also argue that detainees, or "enemy combatants," as the Defense Department calls them, aren't entitled to the protections of U.S. law. This is an argument I reject. While I believe that Guantanamo may hold evil men as well as innocent ones, I also believe that only a full and fair hearing can separate the good from the bad.

And that is the point.

Passage to India

2009-01-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

Again this book wasn't what I expected. I'd heard of E.M. Forster's A Passage to Indiaand expected it to be a romantic novel (not like a Harlequin) wherein the characters come to acclimate to India. Not at all. Rather it's the story of the divide between the English and the Indians, a divide that will not ever be mended or understood no matter how eager some of the expats were to get to see the "real India."

The story features long time expats who're ossified in their understanding of Indians and are quite racist in their thinking. Then there are some newcomers who dislike how their fellow English look down on the Indians. They do try to get acquainted with Indians like Dr. Aziz and try to experience the culture rather than just importing their own in this new country. Yet despite their best efforts misunderstanding and confusion thwart them. In fact, their impact on Indian may have been more harmful than their compatriots'.

It is rather sad, but probably very true. Forster presents what was no doubt the real situation between these two groups. It's very honest and realistic.

Barzun on Race

2009-01-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

Race a Study in Superstitionwasn't exactly what I expected. It was first published in 1937, which explains why the author's perspective was not what I was used to. Don't get me wrong, Barzun is not a racist or anything, it's just that the book examines the history of how 19th century social scientists and thinkers thought about race. Primarily, Barzun compares how the French classified themselves and how Nordics did, etc. He shows how this was nonsense, but nowadays we all agree.

He did begin by mentioning how no sooner is say Department 1 devided into two new groups and the people who were once "one of us" are now those annoying idiots on the second floor. We do have to fight that propensity.

It was an interesting book to pair with A Passage to India.

If my shopping cart weren't so full, I'd get this

2009-01-18T11:39:00.001-08:00

A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

2009-01-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

Donald Richie's A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics is a fascinating exploration of Japanese philosophy(ies) of beauty. It's written in a zuihitsu ((随筆) style. Meaning random thoughts, zuithitsu essay is very much, I think, written by instinct and the subconscious. The wisdom therein often surprises the author.

So in this book Richie, one of my favorite authors and Japanophiles, describes or explains Japanese terms and concepts like wabi, sabi, gyo, shin, so, etc. I realize that sounds like the book is basically a dictionary. It isn't. The best way to convey the book is to give you a sample of the text.

Shibui. . . is a term one sometimes encounters in ordinary conversation, and everyone still knows more or less what it means. I was recently complimented on a necktie that was approvingly see as shibui. It was a subdued tie, brownish, slightly murky, but wiht a neary indiscernible touch of dark green threaded in it.

Ah, I don't think that or any quote taken from the whole really does give you a good sense of the book's power. So you'll have to trust me. If you're interested in Japanese culture, Richie conveys its meanings and experiences with trenchant insight.

The Japanese have all these rich words that need to be experienced rather than just defined. Wabi sabi is one (technically they're two terms frequently combined like salt and pepper) that could be defined as old and tattered yet beautiful. A Japanese friend explained them as " . . . imagine you've hiked a long way up a hill or mountain and come upon a temple and just feel very . . . ahhhh!" Well, that's sort of it. And with Japanese culture there's a lot of "sort ofs". You have to be comfortable with the ineffable or indeterminate to thrive in Japan, I think.

I agree with Michael Dunn who writes in The Japan Times that:

This is no "How to look at Japanese Culture Lite," and Richie neither condescends nor dumbs down. He presumes that his readers are able not only to think for themselves, but also intuit the subtleties of Japanese aesthetic sensitivities clarified in his concise prose. So concise in fact that with fewer than 80 pages this little book is, in itself, a distilled demonstration of "less is more" — one of the prime tenets of so many Japanese arts. It provides essential and profound reading for anyone having even a passing interest in Japanese culture, and is small, portable, and affordable enough for ever-present reference.

Wikipedia on Zuihitsu
a blog called Zuihitsu
An brief example of zuihitsu:
"Trust, even when misplaced, creates stability." from a blog called Thought.

Bill of Wrongs by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose

2009-01-14T07:56:00.000-08:00

As a bit of a latecomer to Molly Ivins, I'm sure that I'm just discovering what others have known for some time. Molly Ivins was fabulous. Three pages into the introduction, I was exclaiming out loud that everyone should read this book.

Witty, compelling and with no fear of skillfully using profanity to make their point, Ivins and Dubose shine a light on the crimes of the Bush administration against the constitution, American citizens and people of the world.

They present a picture that is at times triumphal and at times frustrating but is always appalling.

They also provide a vision of hope in the courage and strength of everyday Americans willing to stand up to the abuses of a rogue administration.

Growing up in a relatively conservative environment, I used to be frustrated by the ACLU's interventionalism in various matters which I saw as ridiculous meddling. After reading this book, I say, thank god for the ACLU.

For Writers

2009-01-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

On Writing, Editing and Publishing (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, & Publishing) by historian and scholar, Jacques Barzun is a collection of his essays on writing. It's witty, trenchant and useful. His essay "The Paradoxes of Publishing" is a hoot. The one on Lincoln's style is thoughtful. Barzun is quite accessible.

I borrowed the library's copy. On Amazon, this out-of-print edition is going for a whopping $103! In the UK it's up to $285!

Now I'm reading his Race a Study in Superstitionand for my book club I'm reading A Passage to India,which is a fortuitous combination.

Geeks on Call

2009-01-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

Since my sister's PayPal account got hacked into I thought Geeks On Call Security and Privacy: 5-Minute Fixeswas worth picking up at the libary. It does help users set their computers and download helpful security software--some free, some not. Better safe than sorry.

Critical by Tom Daschle

2009-01-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

It's difficult for me to be objective about this issue.

It is not difficult for me to be pessimistic about this issue.

I truly get the feeling that the people who realize just how complicated this issue is are exceedingly rare. And this is what leads to my pessimism.

And yet, I don't question in the least that the system is broken. In fact, I often can be heard telling people just that.

And perhaps it'll take someone or some ones willfully ignoring the depth of the complexity of the situation to fashion a workable solution. Because, god knows, it certainly seems an insurmountable problem to most who pay attention to the details.

With his thin book, Daschle can't be accused of getting mired down in details. It is a superficial look at the problem. The anecdotes he trots out to illustrate his points are compelling on the surface but frustrating in their omissions. Omissions which are not obvious to most but will strike those who work in the industry.

Daschle's basic idea is that a board akin to the Federal Reserve Board should be set up to manage health care decisions, just as the Fed manages interest rate decisions. Given the current financial crisis, the suggestion that anything should be modeled after the Fed is a bit unfortunate. And yet, the reasoning behind his approach seems sound. A board of qualified individuals in position to make difficult and painful decisions, insulated from political pressures but with transparency so there is trust and buy-in.

It does seem utopian. I don't much trust utopian . . .

It's a scary time to be in the industry and to be trying to make decisions with long-term repercussions when the premises upon which those decisions must be based have their foundations in shifting sand.

I'm just going to hang on tight for a wild ride.

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

2009-01-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

Another one of our purchases during our Santa Fe trip.

Blood and Thunder tells the story of Manifest Destiny and the expansion of the United States using Kit Carson as its fulcrum. Sides follows Carson from his birthplace in Kentucky to his childhood home in Missouri and then, finally in his myriad, fascinating journeys around the West as Carson, sometimes unwittingly, serves as one of the key architects of Westward Expansion.

A master storyteller telling an epic story, Sides enthralls the reader by weaving a complex tapestry filled with illuminating detail. Sides never takes the easy way out of making any of the players one dimensional. There are no absolute villains or no heroes, although there is plenty of villainy and heroics.

The Christmas Pig

2009-01-01T13:43:00.000-08:00

Kinky Friedman's The Christmas Pig: A Fableis a fun fable about King Jonjo Mayo I, his sycophant advisor Feinberg, a peasant boy who never speaks but is a tremendous artist, and a talking pig. The king needs a masterful portrait of the nativity scene by Midnight mass on Christmas Eve. There isn't much time. Feinberg suggests a 10 year old genius, who of course is quirky. It's a gamble. Will he finish in time? Will the picture be just to weird? Will the king and the crowd like it or want to throw tomatoes and all involved?

Friedman employs all the conventions of the fable to a witty, fun, brief story. Of course, there's a message. Readers can anticipate the moral, but it's satisfying.

From the Writers' Almanac

2008-12-26T09:27:00.001-08:00

On this day in 1927, Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary:

The tree was illumined — more presents given away. Mother's dinner was efficiently disposed of, without much grace or wit — the Danish spirit prevailing. Stupefied by the labor of digestion, all the family sat around in a circle: Manny, like a wilted flower; Liska, like a tired athlete; Emily, with her hands on her stomach and her knees wide apart; Betsy, with sagging shoulders.

The Same Man

2008-12-23T17:59:00.000-08:00

I loved this book. It compares and contrasts writers Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, and Evelyn Waugh.

In The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and Warthe author Deavid Lebedoff presents the childhood experiences that formed each writers' consciousness. I learned that while Blair's father was a civil servant and thus the family had less income than Waugh's the intricate English social system did confer rather high status on the family. Though he needed a scholarship (and was sneered at for this reason) Blair went to Eton, a prestigeous, if not the most prestigeous boarding school in England. This education, though painful at times, left an indelible mark on Blair. In their respective schools Waugh was the bully and Blair the bullied. Lebedoff mentions that someone once said that if you were the bully in school you become a conservative, if you were bullied, a liberal.

Then even more surprising, I learned that Waugh, whose family was more obsessed with social class, who was so enthralled with aristocracy, could not afford Eton or a boarding school of that ilk. He had to settle for school in his town and eventually got into a rather second class version of Eton.

Both writers were born in 1903 and their lives took radically different paths. They subscribed to different belief systems, and their writing achieved success at different points in their lives. Waugh was recognized early on as a writer of great style and wit, whereas Blair started out as a terrible writer and slowly improved to the greatness of his 1984.

The last chapters describe and interpret these authors' beliefs towards politics, communism, family life, speaking out, and their own writing. It was most engaging. While both men would vote differently, parent differently and pray (or not) differently they shared some common beliefs. They both were skeptical of the modern age and its trust of technology and meritocracy. They believed instinct and character were human's most important attributes and were leary of a society, like ours, where high SAT scores and such determined our leaders. (Though I doubt they'd be thrilled by Bush.) They saw that intellect without character led to great troubles.

I was inspired to learn that Blair wrote while sirens went off during air raids. What excuse to I have to neglect my writing?

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

2008-12-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain my reaction to this book.

Perhaps, it's due in part to reading it immediately after the rather weak 109 East Palace.

Perhaps, it's due simply to how well done it is.

All I know is that I recommend it. Highly.

American Prometheus is a 784 page paperback book that despite its length is never dense. In crafting their biography, the authors wisely made the decision not to get weighed down with the science that played such a central role in the protagonist's life.

The reader is treated to a clearheaded depiction of a compelling man, one which makes no bones about his flaws while at the same time celebrating his triumphs. The book delves into Oppenheimer's life from start to finish and provides the reader with a perceptive perspective on his motivations.

The section on the Gray Board hearings and the concomitant government abuses which culminated with Oppenheimer's loss of his security clearance is eerily reminiscent of the government misdeeds during the Watergate era (in the news recently due to the death of Mark Felt) and the more recent attack on civil liberties which we have suffered through under the current administration.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

2008-12-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

At Rachel's insistent and repeated urging, I finally read Twilight. (Of course, it didn't help that I started a 784 page book, instead of starting Twilight. She was basically apoplectic.)

But, I finished the 784 page book in a few weeks and then read Twilight in 24 hours.

As Rachel promised, Bella is not quite as much the victim as she is in the movie. Well, actually, she's probably every bit the victim but because you're privy to the inner dialogue, her victimness isn't as stark.

As usual with books and movies, the book is better. The reader comes away with a much better understanding of the motivations and intentions of the characters than the movie is able to convey.

The romantic teenage girl in me definitely thrilled to the budding romance between Edward and Bella. The cynical adult in me was a bit put off by the ooziness of Meyer's love scenes.

I guess I liked it in spite of myself . . .

Bushido

2008-12-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobé explains samurai philosophy to Westerners. Nitobé lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born and grew up in Japan and later moved to Europe for study. He worked for the League of Nations and retired in Canada. He came to have a deep understanding of both east and west. His knowledge of Western philosophy and cultural anthropology far exceeds mine for depth.

He is the perfect writer to compare and contrast Japanese and Western thinking. He helps readers understand foreign concepts and practices like ritualized suicide, the roles of women, bushido loyalty. In doing so he gets readers to consider their own culture in a new light. His writing is graceful and insightful. I read this on the train to help me develop a warrior-like mind for law school. It didn't exactly do that as it showed that the samurai were more complex and merciful that I previously believed.