Hmmm...what can I say? Sandra gave me this to read, and I started it with interest and enthusiasm, first because it's appearing consistently on best-seller lists, and it's a "Heather's Pick'' from Chapters as well.
The story is interesting for sure, but - well, I guess I'm still getting over the mastery of language, plot and character in "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" - after the first 100 pages which slipped by quite quickly, I just skimmed through to find out where the story was going to lead. There just wasn't good enough character development; the plot, though illuminating as a study of modern family in Mumbai, was pretty weak, and I couldn't help thinking of Mistry's "A Fine Balance" and how I was able to enter the story more fully and really feel the emotions of the characters. This one read like a newspaper feature in comparison - just not enough substance for me to let my eyes suffer the consequences of devouring a well-written novel. I owe them more than that!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith.✔✔✔
McCall Smith is a real favorite of mine. I love the No. 1 Detective Agency novels, and the "portuguese series" novels were so funny - The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, etc. This one begins a new series, and is set in London in an apartment building named Corduroy Mansions. The story revolves around some interesting characters who either live in the building or have some connection to people who do reside there. There's William, a wine merchant in his fifties whose son, Eddie, aged 24, is proving to be a bit of a nuisance in the apartment and William is trying to find an appropriate way to get him to leave. His solution is the rent - yes, rent- a dog, because Eddie hates dogs. This one's name is Freddie de la Hay, and he was a former luggage sniffer at Heathrow.
There are the four girls who room together - Caroline, who is doing a Masters' degree in Art History, Jennie, who works for Oedipus Snark, A MP, Dee, who works in a Vitamin store and wants to do a colonic irrigation on one of her (male) co-workers, plus Jo, whom we haven't yet met. Oedipus Snark is also a character in this novel, as is his erstwhile girlfriend, Barbara Ragg, plus Bertea Snark, his mother, who is writing a biography of her son, and Terrence Moongrove, my favorite character and Oedpius' uncle. Terrence is a kind of left-over flower child who is completely and utterly inept at just about everything he does, especially when it comes to cars.
Here's a couple of quotes I loved. The first illustrates how the author satirizes modern social and business values:
This is William, the wine merchant speaking about his job: " A semi-promise was where the client said that he would take something and the merchant said that he would set it aside, both knowing that neither meant it."
And the second concerns dogs - Freddie de la Hay is very central to this novel, but I feel this is so true.:
"Not much happens to dogs; they lead their lives around our feet, in the interstices of more complex doings, from which perspective they look up at the busier human world, eager to participate,eager to understand, but for ever limited by biology and the vagaries of evolution to being small-part players in the drama."
I found this read, as with all of Smith's books, a gentle, humorous, yet enlightening read. He is a keen observer of human nature. Can you imagine an MP named OEDIPUS SNARK?????
There are the four girls who room together - Caroline, who is doing a Masters' degree in Art History, Jennie, who works for Oedipus Snark, A MP, Dee, who works in a Vitamin store and wants to do a colonic irrigation on one of her (male) co-workers, plus Jo, whom we haven't yet met. Oedipus Snark is also a character in this novel, as is his erstwhile girlfriend, Barbara Ragg, plus Bertea Snark, his mother, who is writing a biography of her son, and Terrence Moongrove, my favorite character and Oedpius' uncle. Terrence is a kind of left-over flower child who is completely and utterly inept at just about everything he does, especially when it comes to cars.
Here's a couple of quotes I loved. The first illustrates how the author satirizes modern social and business values:
This is William, the wine merchant speaking about his job: " A semi-promise was where the client said that he would take something and the merchant said that he would set it aside, both knowing that neither meant it."
And the second concerns dogs - Freddie de la Hay is very central to this novel, but I feel this is so true.:
"Not much happens to dogs; they lead their lives around our feet, in the interstices of more complex doings, from which perspective they look up at the busier human world, eager to participate,eager to understand, but for ever limited by biology and the vagaries of evolution to being small-part players in the drama."
I found this read, as with all of Smith's books, a gentle, humorous, yet enlightening read. He is a keen observer of human nature. Can you imagine an MP named OEDIPUS SNARK?????
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Losing My Religion by William Lobdell.✔✔✔✔
This was the first complete book I read on Kindle!
William Lobdell wrote this memoir of becoming an evangelical, then a Roman Catholic, then a somewhat reluctant athiest. He was the religion journalist for the L.A. Times and was preparing to enter the RC church when he began reporting on RC clergy sexual abuse claims. He was disheartened both for the way the hierachy of the church covered for abusive priests and vilified their victims, and by how congregations rallied to the side of those priests rather than to the victims. The result was he gradually, yet completely lost his faith and never did join the church.
In his column he also reported on "prosperous ministries"- the TV evangelists who charm money out of their viewers' pockets - Benny Hinn in particular.
He describes in some detail his life after losing his religion, and many of his thoughts mirror my own - reluctance to describe his fall from faith, feeling more peace and security than he ever did as a Christian, and he has better relationships with people as a result.
When he published the column in which he described his new thinking, he received countless e-mails, mostly of support, but many, as you could expect, lamenting his loss of faith and offering to lead him back to God. " The tone of response caught me off guard, but it was what Jesus would have expected of his followers: plenty of love, understanding and gentleness. The outpouring of concern didn't rekindle my belief in Christianity, but it strengthened my faith in humanity."
This was a quick, but engrossing read, informative and honest. I highly recommend it.
William Lobdell wrote this memoir of becoming an evangelical, then a Roman Catholic, then a somewhat reluctant athiest. He was the religion journalist for the L.A. Times and was preparing to enter the RC church when he began reporting on RC clergy sexual abuse claims. He was disheartened both for the way the hierachy of the church covered for abusive priests and vilified their victims, and by how congregations rallied to the side of those priests rather than to the victims. The result was he gradually, yet completely lost his faith and never did join the church.
In his column he also reported on "prosperous ministries"- the TV evangelists who charm money out of their viewers' pockets - Benny Hinn in particular.
He describes in some detail his life after losing his religion, and many of his thoughts mirror my own - reluctance to describe his fall from faith, feeling more peace and security than he ever did as a Christian, and he has better relationships with people as a result.
When he published the column in which he described his new thinking, he received countless e-mails, mostly of support, but many, as you could expect, lamenting his loss of faith and offering to lead him back to God. " The tone of response caught me off guard, but it was what Jesus would have expected of his followers: plenty of love, understanding and gentleness. The outpouring of concern didn't rekindle my belief in Christianity, but it strengthened my faith in humanity."
This was a quick, but engrossing read, informative and honest. I highly recommend it.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.✔✔
Okay, so what were some good features of this book?
1. I had never heard of the Vel d'Hiv incident, so this was new to me, and I thought this part of the story was well-told.
2. I finished it. I sure didn't read every page, though.
3. I like the fact that I won't be here when my Book Club discusses it because I'll find it hard to be negative in a nice way.
So what didn't I Like?
1. Julie's husband was a jerk. Why did she stay with him? Why did she even consider aborting his baby just because HE didn't want it?
2. Because of my two questions above, I ended up not liking Julie either, so much so that I didn't think she even deserved to tell Sarah's story because Sarah was so much better a person, so much braver.
3. There were too many coincidences, so many pat turns of plot just to get things done in the story. This author needs to sit down and talk about writing coincidences with an author like Kate Atkinson.
4. I felt manipulated by the writing, and I felt bad for all the people who went through that horrible, horrible time who were supposedly honored by this book, but instead were trivialized.
I hate it when I read a book that I dislike so intensely. There are so many others more worthy of my time.
So I'm not going to write any more about it!
1. I had never heard of the Vel d'Hiv incident, so this was new to me, and I thought this part of the story was well-told.
2. I finished it. I sure didn't read every page, though.
3. I like the fact that I won't be here when my Book Club discusses it because I'll find it hard to be negative in a nice way.
So what didn't I Like?
1. Julie's husband was a jerk. Why did she stay with him? Why did she even consider aborting his baby just because HE didn't want it?
2. Because of my two questions above, I ended up not liking Julie either, so much so that I didn't think she even deserved to tell Sarah's story because Sarah was so much better a person, so much braver.
3. There were too many coincidences, so many pat turns of plot just to get things done in the story. This author needs to sit down and talk about writing coincidences with an author like Kate Atkinson.
4. I felt manipulated by the writing, and I felt bad for all the people who went through that horrible, horrible time who were supposedly honored by this book, but instead were trivialized.
I hate it when I read a book that I dislike so intensely. There are so many others more worthy of my time.
So I'm not going to write any more about it!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.✔✔✔✔✔
This was not an easy read, but a very rewarding one, so much so that I will re-read it soon. There's just so much in it- a reviewer has named it "dense" in details, plot, dialogue, although you never get the feeling the author is exploiting your understanding by lengthy descriptions, etc. David Mitchell, the author, manages to dispense as much information as is necessary fairly efficiently, but in such a colorful, richly-detailed way that you marvel at what kind of mind can even hold all that knowledge, let alone share it so well with the reader. To be sure, this novel will be around for a very long time- I would call it a classic of contemporary literature. Even though all the events in the novel take place between 1799 and 1817, and there are times when you think of Charles Dickens or Herman Melville, it is very much a contemporary novel in its outlook and writing. At one point I remember thinking: This is Star Wars, or Avatar even, only two centuries ago and in Japan!
I borrowed this short summary from the New York Times Book Review :
As the novel opens, it’s 1799, and the Land of the Rising Sun is closed to the West, save for one trading post on the island of Dejima near Nagasaki that is run by the Dutch. Young Jacob de Zoet has arrived there to make his fortune and to win the hand of his beloved, Anna, back home in Rotterdam: her father has promised they can wed after Jacob has served a five-year posting in the Far East as a clerk.
The fastidious Jacob is both fascinated and repelled by the teeming street life he sees around him: “gnarled old women, pocked monks, unmarried girls with blackened teeth,” chanting street urchins, unscrupulous merchants, expensive courtesans, the smells of “steamed rice, sewage, incense, lemons, sawdust, yeast and rotting seaweed.”
Jacob also finds himself magnetically drawn to Orito Aibagawa, a young Japanese midwife with a scarred face, who is studying medicine on Dejima, under the tutelage of a Dutch doctor, Marinus. Orito has earned this unheard-of privilege for a woman by successfully delivering the seemingly stillborn son of Shiroyama, a powerful magistrate. Though Jacob soon becomes obsessed with Orito, his love for her is forbidden — as a Westerner, he is persona non grata in Japan, and Orito is prohibited from ever leaving her homeland. What’s more, Jacob has an equally unlucky competitor for Orito’s affections: a translator named Uzaemon, whose wish to marry her has been denied by his father, who is concerned about her family’s many debts.....( end quote)
So there's forbidden love, daring adventures, corruption, stealing, global trade, sea battles, good and evil, longing, a contrast between faith and science, plus, and - charmingly humorous for me - the difficulties of trying to explain English words to Japanese interpreters, not to mention the skewed sense of English that the Japanese use without any trace of hesitation or embarrassment.
Now I never once wanted to put this novel down because I had to concentrate too hard, or because I couldn't understand what was going on - although I experienced both those things while reading it. I just seemed to realize that this was literature at its very best and I'd really miss something if I didn't perservere with it.
My favorite character? Dr. Marinus, who is training young Japanese to be doctors, and who uses the clerks and hands like Jacob de Zoet to teach human anatomy to his students, cleverly trapping them into service.
David Mitchell is Irish. I have heard of another of his novels entitled "Cloud Atlas", which was mentioned by someone in book club last June when we chose our books for this year. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was longlisted for the Booker this year, but did not make the shortlist. Too bad.
I borrowed this short summary from the New York Times Book Review :
As the novel opens, it’s 1799, and the Land of the Rising Sun is closed to the West, save for one trading post on the island of Dejima near Nagasaki that is run by the Dutch. Young Jacob de Zoet has arrived there to make his fortune and to win the hand of his beloved, Anna, back home in Rotterdam: her father has promised they can wed after Jacob has served a five-year posting in the Far East as a clerk.
The fastidious Jacob is both fascinated and repelled by the teeming street life he sees around him: “gnarled old women, pocked monks, unmarried girls with blackened teeth,” chanting street urchins, unscrupulous merchants, expensive courtesans, the smells of “steamed rice, sewage, incense, lemons, sawdust, yeast and rotting seaweed.”
Jacob also finds himself magnetically drawn to Orito Aibagawa, a young Japanese midwife with a scarred face, who is studying medicine on Dejima, under the tutelage of a Dutch doctor, Marinus. Orito has earned this unheard-of privilege for a woman by successfully delivering the seemingly stillborn son of Shiroyama, a powerful magistrate. Though Jacob soon becomes obsessed with Orito, his love for her is forbidden — as a Westerner, he is persona non grata in Japan, and Orito is prohibited from ever leaving her homeland. What’s more, Jacob has an equally unlucky competitor for Orito’s affections: a translator named Uzaemon, whose wish to marry her has been denied by his father, who is concerned about her family’s many debts.....( end quote)
So there's forbidden love, daring adventures, corruption, stealing, global trade, sea battles, good and evil, longing, a contrast between faith and science, plus, and - charmingly humorous for me - the difficulties of trying to explain English words to Japanese interpreters, not to mention the skewed sense of English that the Japanese use without any trace of hesitation or embarrassment.
Now I never once wanted to put this novel down because I had to concentrate too hard, or because I couldn't understand what was going on - although I experienced both those things while reading it. I just seemed to realize that this was literature at its very best and I'd really miss something if I didn't perservere with it.
My favorite character? Dr. Marinus, who is training young Japanese to be doctors, and who uses the clerks and hands like Jacob de Zoet to teach human anatomy to his students, cleverly trapping them into service.
David Mitchell is Irish. I have heard of another of his novels entitled "Cloud Atlas", which was mentioned by someone in book club last June when we chose our books for this year. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was longlisted for the Booker this year, but did not make the shortlist. Too bad.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
This Time Together by Carol Burnett.✔✔✔
I was a huge fan of the Carol Burnett Show back in the 70s. You couldn't get through a show without a belly laugh or too, and more often than not, laughing almost to tears, especially at Tim Conway, who just had to walk into a skit to make me start laughing.
There were a few good laughs in this book too, as Carol related many anecdotes, which is basically how the book was written. For example, and this is an actual happening, Carol, dressed in pants, went into an ice cream parlour in NYC where women were only welcome if they wore skirts ( we're back in the 50s here). A waitress loudly berated her for wearing pants, and Carol finally explained herself - and certainly silenced the waitress - when she said she had just received a wooden leg and was too embarrassed to wear a skirt! Then there was the skit where Tim Conway, as a dentist, injected himself with novocaine to check out the effectiveness of the drug - once in the arm, once in his leg, and then finally between his eyebrows, with Harvey Korman writhing with laughter in the dentists' chair, trying unsuccessfully to be the terrified patient.
This was a very quick read, but thoroughly enjoyable. There's even a memorable quote from her daughter Carrie who died of cancer in 2002, and who when asked why she was always so cheerful even amidst such invasive treatments, said: "Every day I wake up and decide: today I'm going to love my life". It's evident her mother did - and it's a decision we'd all be better off making every day of our lives.
There were a few good laughs in this book too, as Carol related many anecdotes, which is basically how the book was written. For example, and this is an actual happening, Carol, dressed in pants, went into an ice cream parlour in NYC where women were only welcome if they wore skirts ( we're back in the 50s here). A waitress loudly berated her for wearing pants, and Carol finally explained herself - and certainly silenced the waitress - when she said she had just received a wooden leg and was too embarrassed to wear a skirt! Then there was the skit where Tim Conway, as a dentist, injected himself with novocaine to check out the effectiveness of the drug - once in the arm, once in his leg, and then finally between his eyebrows, with Harvey Korman writhing with laughter in the dentists' chair, trying unsuccessfully to be the terrified patient.
This was a very quick read, but thoroughly enjoyable. There's even a memorable quote from her daughter Carrie who died of cancer in 2002, and who when asked why she was always so cheerful even amidst such invasive treatments, said: "Every day I wake up and decide: today I'm going to love my life". It's evident her mother did - and it's a decision we'd all be better off making every day of our lives.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.✔✔✓
Some years ago, I read Brooks' first novel, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, and then last winter, I read about half of March, the book for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. I don't know why, but I find her books boring. The topics are interesting enough, and I'm involved in the first parts of them, but then, my interest wanes.
People of the Book was no different. This was Shirley's pick for our "Birthday Book Event" - two years ago, Shirley, Sandra and I decided not to exchange birthday gifts any longer. Instead each of us purchases a book for ourselves and each of the other two has first dibs on reading it if we wish. We get together for lunch to open our books, talk about them and decide who gets which book first. It's worked quite well and even though the three of us exchange books regularly anyway, it's sort of a special book occasion - we choose a date after the final birthday of the year has passed, which is October. I've already purchased mine, and then one week later, won the same book in one of those monthly draws from publishers!
Now my thoughts have moved on to another sort of "quirky" thing I do about books, and choosing which book to read. Like all avid readers, I have many books on my shelf which I haven't read yet. Presumably they're there because they called out my name from wherever I saw - or read about- them first, but occasionally I really can't decide which one to read next. Often I just go to the library and get something else, but once in a while, I pull six books off the shelf, line them up, and then toss a dice. Whichever number comes up, that's the one I read! And there's no losers - the remaining books may or may not be in the next lineup.
Back to People of the Book, which is about books, and one book in particular- the Sarajevo Haggadah," a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain and recently saved from destruction during the shelling of Sarajevo's libraries". Hanna Heath is a book expert who uncovers the history of the book, a journey which takes her research back to the fifteenth century, during which she uncovers the stories of those who worked on the book.
There are interesting stories to be told, and I particularly enjoyed Lola's story because, during the Nazi headhunt for Jews, she took refuge in the Partisan Army mountain camps of Yugoslavia - one of which Mike, Karen and I visited when we went to Slovenia six years ago. There are others, too, like the Inquisition and its many terrors, especially for Jews.
But then I found myself skimming through to the end. Maybe there were too many stories, too lengthily related, or maybe the subject matter just wasn't strong enough to hold my interest. It could even be my frame of mind at the moment. I'm at least interested enough to skim through to the end, rather than just closing the book, but I may do that only so I can tell Shirley I enjoyed the book.
Two and a half stars for this one, anyway.
People of the Book was no different. This was Shirley's pick for our "Birthday Book Event" - two years ago, Shirley, Sandra and I decided not to exchange birthday gifts any longer. Instead each of us purchases a book for ourselves and each of the other two has first dibs on reading it if we wish. We get together for lunch to open our books, talk about them and decide who gets which book first. It's worked quite well and even though the three of us exchange books regularly anyway, it's sort of a special book occasion - we choose a date after the final birthday of the year has passed, which is October. I've already purchased mine, and then one week later, won the same book in one of those monthly draws from publishers!
Now my thoughts have moved on to another sort of "quirky" thing I do about books, and choosing which book to read. Like all avid readers, I have many books on my shelf which I haven't read yet. Presumably they're there because they called out my name from wherever I saw - or read about- them first, but occasionally I really can't decide which one to read next. Often I just go to the library and get something else, but once in a while, I pull six books off the shelf, line them up, and then toss a dice. Whichever number comes up, that's the one I read! And there's no losers - the remaining books may or may not be in the next lineup.
Back to People of the Book, which is about books, and one book in particular- the Sarajevo Haggadah," a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain and recently saved from destruction during the shelling of Sarajevo's libraries". Hanna Heath is a book expert who uncovers the history of the book, a journey which takes her research back to the fifteenth century, during which she uncovers the stories of those who worked on the book.
There are interesting stories to be told, and I particularly enjoyed Lola's story because, during the Nazi headhunt for Jews, she took refuge in the Partisan Army mountain camps of Yugoslavia - one of which Mike, Karen and I visited when we went to Slovenia six years ago. There are others, too, like the Inquisition and its many terrors, especially for Jews.
But then I found myself skimming through to the end. Maybe there were too many stories, too lengthily related, or maybe the subject matter just wasn't strong enough to hold my interest. It could even be my frame of mind at the moment. I'm at least interested enough to skim through to the end, rather than just closing the book, but I may do that only so I can tell Shirley I enjoyed the book.
Two and a half stars for this one, anyway.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Tales of Wonder by Huston Smith.✔✔✔
CBC's Tapestry on Sunday afternoons is one of my favorite radio shows, and having just heard the end of the program when Huston Smith was interviewed, I decided to read one of his many books. Huston is now in his early 90s, was born in a remote village in China to missionary parents, and has spent his life "chasing the divine", adventures which have led him to examine and experience first-hand such religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, native American religions and yet he calls himself a practising Christian. It was this all-embracing spiritual journey that intrigued me, plus his voice in the interview, where he replied to questions very slowly but with complete humility.
His spiritual reading includes the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur'an and Sufi poems. a practise he follows every day after he does some yoga poses. ( He relates teaching a class of students while standing on his head!)
The book has been designed around the image of a cross, not the Christian cross but an ordinary cross, where the horizontal arm signifies the historical dimension of his life, while the vertical arm suggests the sacred dimension- his life "amid timeless truths".
He has become friends with such diverse and interesting persons as Aldous Huxley, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, and Timothy Leary - and yes, he tried mescaline with him. He has also travelled extensively, both on his own and with students.
Quoting from this autobiography: " The proper response to a great work of art is to enter into it as though there were nothing else in the world. The proper response to a major spiritual tradition, if you can truly see it, may be to practice it. With each new religion I entered into, I descended ( or ascended?) into hidden layers within myself that, until then, I had not known were even there"
And the last words of his book? "Thanks for everything! Praise for it all!" He certainly has lived life to the fullest.
I now want to read his book "The World's Religions".
His spiritual reading includes the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur'an and Sufi poems. a practise he follows every day after he does some yoga poses. ( He relates teaching a class of students while standing on his head!)
The book has been designed around the image of a cross, not the Christian cross but an ordinary cross, where the horizontal arm signifies the historical dimension of his life, while the vertical arm suggests the sacred dimension- his life "amid timeless truths".
He has become friends with such diverse and interesting persons as Aldous Huxley, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, and Timothy Leary - and yes, he tried mescaline with him. He has also travelled extensively, both on his own and with students.
Quoting from this autobiography: " The proper response to a great work of art is to enter into it as though there were nothing else in the world. The proper response to a major spiritual tradition, if you can truly see it, may be to practice it. With each new religion I entered into, I descended ( or ascended?) into hidden layers within myself that, until then, I had not known were even there"
And the last words of his book? "Thanks for everything! Praise for it all!" He certainly has lived life to the fullest.
I now want to read his book "The World's Religions".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)