Escape to Books

Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin

2011-12-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

This novel is based on the diary (and other material) of an American in Nanjing when the Japanese invaded in 1937. Minnie Vautrin is the temporary head of a small Christian college funded by donations from the US. Most of the faculty and students as well as the president have gone elsewhere as it becomes more and more evident Nanjing is going to be attacked.

The story is told from the point-of-view of Anling, who helps Minnie run the school. They make elaborate plans so that the school can be a place for women and children refugees and figure out where they may be able to put 2000 people. The actual invasion is, of course, more chaotic and they end up with more than 10,000 refugees.

This novel is almost like two different stories. The horrors of the attack of Nanjing are detailed. It is a fiction book, but obviously based on historical events. Minnie has to make some terrible decisions and fights to keep the refugees on campus safe. After the fighting is over and the occupation of Nanjing continues, the action slows down dramatically.

It is still challenging as many of the refugees stay. Minnie open a school for them to learn crafts, but a former president, Mrs. Dennison, arrives and wants to return the college to the way it was without really understanding all that happened over the past year. Anling also faces her own problems with a son who was studying in Japan at the time the war broke out and a husband being pressured to join a puppet government.

Here Minnie goes on a short vacation about a year and a half after the initial attack. She’s suffering from depression and the stress of dealing with Mrs. Dennison who wants to get of the rest of the refugees. She comes back to find many gone.

“Minnie rebuked herself for caring too much about her personal feelings and about losing face. How could she let petty personal disputes stand in the way of more important matters, such as saving a woman’s life and protecting the two schools? … She couldn’t escape feeling small-minded. How could she make amends? The more she thought about her faults, the more disappointed she was in herself. ”

Nanjing Requiem is a worthwhile, but difficult, book to read. It is difficult because of the depictions of war and war crimes committed on civilians. It would be really interesting to read Minnie Vautrin’s actual diary, but I don’t think that’s very accessible.

Straight Man by Richard Russo

2011-11-15T19:09:00.000-08:00

Straight Man is one of my favorite books. I find it laugh out loud funny and I don’t say that about many books. The main character and narrator, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., aka Hank, is the chairman of an English department at a college in Pennsylvania.

Here’s how one committee meeting ends:

“The spiral notebook caught me full in the face with enough force to bring tears to my eyes. Everyone, including Finny, who brought to meetings he chaired the emotional equilibrium of a cork in high seas, looked on, bug-eyed. But what confused me was the fact that the notebook Gracie used remained, unaccountably, right in front of my face. For an irrational moment I actually thought she had written something on the cover that she was inviting me to read. Cross-eyed, I tried to examine what was before my nose. Only when I realized that Gracie was in fact trying to retrieve her notebook, and that each tentative tug sent a sharp pain all the way up into my forehead, only then did I realize that the barbed end of the spiral ring had hooked and punctured my right nostril, that I was gigged like a frog and leaning across the table toward Gracie like a bumbling suitor begging a kiss.”

It’s a tense time at the college with rumors of massive cuts in state funding and, therefore, potential faculty cuts. Hank is also dealing with turning 50, his professor father coming to town after leaving him and his mother 40 years ago, his daughter’s troubled marriage, and animal rights activists protesting his threats against a goose.

It’s a fun read. You’ll especially appreciate if you’ve ever sat through endless committee meetings. I also learned about scrapple – a common listing at breakfast restaurants in Pennsylvania, yet I could never get a straight answer about exactly what it was.

“It turns out that scrapple is like a lot of food that’s conceptually challenging. That is, better than you might expect. We chew our intestines in silence until Mr. Purty sees me grinning and reads my thought. ‘I’d never ask your mother to eat scrapple,’ he assures me.”

The Nature of Words

2011-10-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

It’s that time again. The Nature of Words is Nov. 2-6. There are definitely some interesting authors and poets coming to Bend, including Augusten Burroughs and William Kittredge. I haven’t read much from either of them, but I did like Burroughs’ brother’s memoir, Look me in the eye; my life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison.

I recently read Heidi Durrow’s first novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. She will be at the Nature of Words as well and her novel won many awards including Barbara Kingsolver's 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change. The main character, Rachel, is the daughter of a Danish immigrant and a black G.I. After a family tragedy in Chicago, Rachel moves to Portland, OR to live with her grandmother. There is some uncertainly about exactly what happened to the rest of her family. The story is told from a few different points of view, including a neighbor of Rachel’s in Chicago and her mom’s co-worker. I did find it too coincidental that her neighbor from Chicago managed to find her in Portland.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is worth reading. I also hope to read Keith Scribner's novel, The Oregon Experiment, and something by Mark Spragg; both of these authors will also be at the Nature of Words: www.thenatureofwords.org.

The Case Against Homework by Bennett and Kalish

2011-09-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Homework for my elementary school kids caught me off guard. I don’t remember having homework until high school. It seems common now to hear about kindergarteners having homework and upper elementary kids having significant amounts. This book by two parents addresses what to do when you think your kids have too much homework.

I think the authors make a number of good points including discussing recent studies that show there is no correlation between the amount of homework given and achievement in the elementary grades. Another point they make is that for any student doing 2 or more hours of homework is just as physically detrimental as playing two hours of video games. They are especially concerned with lost family time due to homework.

“Parenting magazines and books urge us to slow down and reconnect with our children and partner when we get home. But if our child’s response is a heart-sinking ‘I have a lot of homework,’ we can say good-bye to any hope of meaningful time together.”

This book is a worthwhile read if you have kids in elementary school or beyond who are struggling with hours of homework. They offer suggestions on approaching the teacher to lighten the load for your kid and even working on developing a homework policy for an entire school district. The general consensus on experts in this area seems to be to focus on reading and no more than 10 minutes of homework per grade per night.

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

2011-08-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

I haven’t ever read much science fiction so when my local library reading program (see previous post) suggested trying it, I looked up award winners in the area. I also learned a new word – diptych. These two novels by Willis together (a diptych) won the 2011 Hugo Award for best novel. And, they should be read as one novel, but each are pretty long (512 and 656 pages, respectively) on their own.

In these novels historians from 2060 are sent back in time. Grad students, rather than reading about WWII, pick their topic of study and then schedule visits back in time. For example, one grad student, Michael, is interested in heroes so he picks 5-6 different heroes he wants to observe. He has to go to wardrobe for the correct costumes and for one of his characters he has to get an implant so that he has an American accent. There are some limits to time travel. For example, he’s not allowed near divergence points where he might impact the historical outcome. However, something goes wrong and three grad students remain in 1940 London long after their assignments are over.

Historians might be interested in seeing how accurate Willis got all the bombings going on in England at the time. I know it made me realize I hadn’t quite understood the full impact of the bombings on London during WWII. Willis depicts life in the underground shelters and how ordinary citizens adjust to a new normal where every night they head to a shelter. And, each morning they come up wondering what buildings will have been destroyed. One of the graduate students, Polly, works in a department store and it really becomes an act of courage to report to work every day. Not so much for her as her adviser insisted she pick a store that wasn’t hit, but for everyone else showing up each day so people can continue to come in and buy clothes.

The third graduate student is working with evacuated children outside of London. She has two especially challenging charges. Once the three graduate students realize something has gone wrong and meet up in London they begin to wonder if these two kids or possibly their own interactions with people during their time travel trip are causing some kind of upheaval that is preventing them from leaving 1940 and returning to 2060. Meanwhile in 2060 their adviser and a young student with a crush on Polly are trying to bring them back.

I do recommend reading the two books together. The history of WWII and the drama of the three graduate students all seem realistic – that is you come to care whether they make it back to 2060 or not.

Summer Reading Program

2011-07-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

We’re at the library at least once and usually twice a week all summer long. The Deschutes Public Library has a great kids’ program and, surprisingly, an adult summer reading program as well. Adults who read for three hours get a free book. I got the latest from C. J. Box, a mystery author whose books I’ve reviewed before.

In addition there’s a Bingo card to fill out. Each box is either a different type of book to read or an activity associated with the library or reading. For each Bingo you make you’re entered in a drawing to win a Nook eReader. I have no plans to buy an eReader. but I wouldn’t mind one for free - especially one that is compatible with eBooks available at the library.

The Bingo squares take me out of my reading comfort zone. One square requires reading a graphic novel. I’ve read a few of these, like Maus: a survivor’s tale and Good Eggs, which are more like illustrated memoirs. This time I randomly went on the web and picked one that is supposed to be one of the best graphic novels of all time, Watchmen. This is what I would think of as a comic book. The superheroes are much darker than those I watched growing up, i.e. the Superfriends. So far it has helped me get a Rorschach reference that I would have otherwise completely missed on Facebook. The most interesting character in the book is Dr. Manhattan, who was exposed to nuclear radiation, disintegrated, somehow regenerated and is now America’s weapon. I don’t know enough about the comic book world to know whether all these characters were created anew for this book or were old favorites, but the authors do make it seem to be a complete world.

I might have trouble getting through all the library Bingo squares. One is a suggestion from a librarian. Even as the librarian I asked was giving me a reading suggestion he mentioned how he didn’t like the book. Do I have to read it or should I get a different suggestion or does just getting the suggestion count? I’d love to hear from others whether it is common practice to have adult reading programs at libraries.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

2011-06-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

It is quite rare that I watch a movie and then later find out it was adapted from a book. Winter’s Bone is a relatively recent movie and the book was published in 2006. I highly recommend both, although it is rather dark subject matter. Having read the book after seeing the movie, I think the movie did a pretty good job of capturing the bleak winter countryside, the convoluted family ties, and the way drugs seem to have become the new, more deadly, moonshine.

In both the book and the movie the main character, Ree Dolly, is a high school dropout taking care of her two younger siblings and her mom.

“Mom’s morning pills turned her into a cat, a breathing thing that sat near heat and occasionally made a sound…. Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.”

The tension ratchets up when her dad skips bail. If Ree can’t find her dad, she’ll lose the house and any chance of being able to take care of her family. Her attempts at finding her dad lead to encounters with some scary relatives.

“But the great name of the Dollys was Milton, and at least two dozen Miltons moved about in Ree’s world. If you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he’d love before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectation and history. Some names could rise to walk many paths in many directions, but Jesups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those bloodline customs fiercest held.”

If you’re lucky, your public library will have both the book and the movie like mine did!

The Plutonium Files by Eileen Welsome

2011-05-09T06:48:00.000-07:00

This is a non-fiction book published in 1999. Its focus is on experiments with radioactive materials on humans. It is shocking. Some of the experiments described include:
•18 people injected with plutonium without their consent in 1945-46. One was a four-year-old boy.
•751 pregnant women given a radioactive tracer without their consent in 1945-1947.
•74 boys at a state institution recruited to join the “science club” in the 40’s and 50’s for which they received special outings and radioactive compounds in their oatmeal.
•131 prisoners in Oregon and Washington irradiated in the 1960s.

The early experiments were to determine what effects scientists working on developing nuclear bombs prior to WWII might be exposed to in their labs. A 23-year-old chemistry graduate, Don Mastick, recruited to Los Alamos, got 10 mg of plutonium in his mouth when a vial exploded.

“After the accident, Mastick’s breath was so hot that he could stand six feet away and blow the needles on the radiation monitors off scale. His urine contained detectable plutonium for many years.”

His treatment consisted of two different mouth rinses every 15 minutes for 3 hours. Then he had his stomach pumped several times. After that he was handed the beaker containing his bodily fluids and told to separate out the plutonium!

Once nuclear bombs were developed, many tests involved military personnel. A number of nuclear bombs were detonated in Nevada. One larger than that dropped on Nagasaki was tested in Feb. 1951. Three young soldiers, including Jerry Schultz, ages 19 to 21, were supposed to gather weather data about 6 miles from point of impact.

“The AEC official had warned Schultz that the atomic bomb the aircraft was lugging toward them would be the biggest ever dropped from a plane. Be sure to protect yourselves, he had warned. ‘How do we do that?’ Schultz asked. There was a long pause and then the voice said, ‘Frankly, we don’t know.’”

Details about the tests of nuclear bombs at the Pacific Proving Ground, as it was known, are also included. I found it unbelievable that young servicemen were sent in just a few hours later to clean up ships hit by nuclear bombs. Testing pilots flew through the immediate aftermath of bombs to gather data.

It is definitely an eye-opening book about what went on prior to WWII and during the Cold War. Many reports on these activities were declassified in the 1990’s. The book also includes a detailed history of the nuclear experiments going on at Berkeley, Chicago, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford during the war. I had never heard much about this nuclear development period, although I listened to Glenn Seaborg’s annual talk to general chemistry students at Berkeley in the early 90’s. That was definitely a feel good talk with pictures of him with every president and students coming up afterwards to get his autograph. The building where he first made plutonium now has a plaque up. I worked in a building connected to this building for 5 years and never realized that’s where plutonium had been discovered. The half-life of plutonium 239 is something like 24,000 years!

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

2011-04-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

This is a fiction book with a very novel premise. Marylou Ahearn lost her daughter, Helen, when she was 8. Marylou attributes Helen’s death to a radioactive drink she had at her doctor’s office when she was pregnant. It is now more than 50 years later and Marylou is obsessed with finding and killing the doctor in charge of that unbelievable study to give pregnant women radioactive drinks.

Dr. Wilson Spriggs was in charge of the study. He’s now living in Florida with his daughter, her husband, and their three children. Marylou moves to their neighborhood in Florida, changes her name, and insinuates herself into their lives. She first approaches Suzi, their youngest daughter, while out on a walk. Soon she is over at their house quite a lot. Suzi is vulnerable because she feels her mother, Caroline, never pays her attention. The two older children, Otis and Ava, have Asperger’s. Caroline spends most of her attention on Ava while Otis is left to his own devices, which involve a lot of science experiments in the backyard shed.

The story seems to take some incredible turns, but it is enthralling. It is unclear to Marylou if Wilson Spriggs remembers the study at all.

“Okay. She’d tabled her initial plan to murder Wilson, because there wouldn’t be any satisfaction in murdering him if he didn’t know, or understand, why he was being murdered, but it wasn’t that she felt any sympathy for the wretched old coot.”

So, Marylou turns her attention to the rest of the family, but much of the trouble that ensues is due to the problems in the family in the first place. An affair, a hurricane, a pedophile and, least-likely, a home-built breeder reactor all overwhelm the family and Marylou.

Incredibly, the two most unbelievable events in this fiction book are actually based on real life. I’m trying to track down Eileen Welsome’s book The Plutonium Files, which details studies that actually took place at Vanderbilt University where pregnant women were given radioactive cocktails. And, I’m currently reading The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein. This is a non-fiction book about a high school boy who got enough of a start on building a reactor in his shed that an EPA clean-up crew in full protective gear descended on his neighborhood. They’d discovered radiation high enough to endanger 40,000 nearby residents.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

2011-04-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

This is an easy, quick read with a very pointed message. The author, a Yale law professor, believes that pushing kids to be their best, whatever the tactics, is a superior parenting practice. She calls this type of parenting “Chinese parenting” as opposed to “Western parenting”.

It is a lot of work to parent this way. She spends hours after school drilling the children or forcing them to practice their musical instruments. She picks them up at school during non-essential classes (in her opinion) like PE or music or art to do more practicing. She has two girls. The eldest, Sophia, adapts relatively well to this parenting strategy. At fourteen, Sophia plays the piano at Carnegie Hall.

“Once, Sophia came in second on a multiplication speed test, which her fifth-grade teacher administered every Friday…. Over the next week, I made Sophia do twenty practice tests (of 100 problems each) every night, with me clocking her with a stopwatch. After that, she came in first every time.”

I have to wonder if every child had a parent pushing them to succeed and was so utterly invested in their success what our nationwide test scores would look like. Sophia recently was admitted to both Harvard and Yale. Of course, she was never allowed to have a playdate, go to a sleepover, try out for a play, watch TV or get anything lower than an A.

There is another side. Lulu, the author’s other child, does not take so well to the threatening parenting style. Here’s one episode when she’s seven years old.

“Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed, and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years….. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent, and pathetic."

Can you imagine? The child is seven. Lulu continues playing an instrument though she does switch to the violin and eventually quits at age 13. She takes up tennis. I wonder what she will do next. In the scheme of things her rebellion was small, as her grades at school were still excellent.

The author emphasizes that all her actions were done out of love and that her children knew that. She has come in for a lot of flack as to whether she was emotionally abusing them. I think she has a point about developing a work ethic in children, but her tactics seem pretty extreme. Plus, how does she have the time to do this?

You can hear an interview with the author on NPR here. Or listen to other moms discussing her parenting tactics, also on NPR.

Gone Tomorrow by P. F. Kluge

2011-03-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

Gone Tomorrow is a novel set at a small college in Ohio. The bulk of the book is a discovered story/memoir by a retired English professor. It details his last year at this small college. Prof. Canaris was a well-known author based in LA when he took a teaching position, seemingly on a whim. His story moves back and forth in time explaining why he stayed.

Here he gets a preview of life as a professor from an older, tenured professor:

“‘But you have no idea how this place will come at you. Headaches, problems, issues. Letters of recommendation, reports, committees, invitations, lecture. All delivered with respect, flattery, affection, appealing to your heart, your art, your character, your stomach, ego, id, libido… Well maybe not that, not the libido. You may like it. You may love it. But the world won’t know you and you won’t recognize yourself. And you will not have done whatever you came here to do.’”

Prof. Canaris is there to write a book. However, it appears the predictions above come true because as he reaches retirement age there is no sign of the book. He is killed in a hit-and-run accident shortly after he retires and it is his literary executor who finds the one-year memoir/story and tries to determine whether this book, The Beast, exists or not.

I enjoyed Kluge’s writing. Here Canaris discusses books:

“Books stay around if we let them. They survive one move after another, they sit on shelves for decades, reminding us not so much of how much we have read as how much we have forgotten, an uneven contest between reading and memory which might well end with someone surrounded by all the world’s books yet incapable of summoning up his own name.”

As an English professor Canaris complains about grading student paper with missing quotation marks and such. I found it curious that in the Canaris story/memoir I ran across such things. I wonder if this was done deliberately by the author or just a bad job of editing. Regardless, it is definitely one of my favorite fiction books read so far this year.

Escape to Books

Elly Griffiths, mystery author

2011-02-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

I haven’t read many new mystery authors that I’ve been really taken with lately. Elly Griffiths is an exception. The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone are set in an isolated part of England along the east coast. Ruth (or Dr. Galloway), the main protagonist, is a forensic archeologist, which entails investigating and dating old bones – like remains from the Bronze or Iron Age in England.

In The Crossing Places, Griffiths’ first mystery, Ruth is called to a scene on a beach and meets DCI Harry Nelson. The remains turn out to be much older than any case he has going, but he subsequently calls her to other scenes. In The Janus Stone a child’s skeleton is found under the doorway of a former children’s home and Ruth becomes involved in figuring out who this child could be.

The descriptions of the area where Ruth lives, a desolate saltmarsh, are also well done. Having only been to London, it’s interesting to read about a very different part of England. Here she’s walking near her house:

“For about twenty minutes she plods on, head down against the driving rain. Then she stops. She should have reached the gravel path by now. It is almost completely dark, with just a faint phosphorescent gleam coming from the marsh itself. Ruth gets out her torch but its shaky light shows her only flat marshland in all directions. Far off, she can hear the sea roaring as it thunders inland.”

In The Janus Stone Ruth is also dealing with an unexpected pregnancy as she heads out to various sites:

“They climb the hill. Ruth trying to disguise how out of breath she is. Jesus, at this rate she’ll be immobile at nine months.”

I enjoyed the humor throughout the books, even as they’re digging up bones.

Nemesis by Philip Roth

2011-02-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

I had to look up the definition of nemesis. I had always thought it referred to a person. Clearly in this novel by Philip Roth it refers to polio. Nemesis is set in 1944 in New Jersey. Bucky Cantor is a summer playground director who couldn’t follow his friends into the war because of his poor eyesight. He feels guilty about that and then when a polio epidemic hits the neighborhood he has to face illness and death.

He escapes to a summer camp:

“Inside was the noisy clamor of children’s voices reverberating in the spacious lodge, the racket that reminded him of how much he enjoyed being around kids and why it was he loved his work. He’d nearly forgotten what that pleasure was like during the hard weeks of watching out for a menace against which he could offer no protection. These were happy, energetic kids who were not imperiled by a cruel and invisible enemy – they could actually be shielded from mishap by an adult’s vigilant attention. Mercifully he was finished with impotently witnessing terror and death and was back in the midst of unworried children brimming with health.”

Unfortunately this quote is only halfway through the book. Polio didn’t really respect class, race or any other type of barrier.

The story reminds me how lucky we are to live in a time where children don’t get polio. At least according to the CDC there hasn’t been a case in the US since 1979. I had a grandfather with a brace due to polio. I got the idea it was off limits to ask him about it, but I wish now I had. I wonder how old he was when he got polio and what kind of treatment he had to go through. I believe my mom also mentioned a child in her class dying from polio – that must have been right around the time the vaccine came out. I will grill her more about that.

Nemesis is not as complex as some of Roth’s other work. The Human Stain is one of my top ten favorite fiction books. I also like his relatively short novel, Indignation. Nemesis is written in a similar style to Indignation, but I think the story in Nemesis is more compelling and will stick with me longer.

Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne

2010-12-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

A Novel Idea is an excellent program that is put on by the Deschutes Public Library. The selection for 2011 is Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne. The idea is to have the local community come together to read the book and participate in different programs. It culminates with the author speaking at the Tower Theater.

I checked out this book and didn’t touch it for 3 weeks. I didn’t know much more than it was set in New York City and I’m kind of burned out on books set there. However, this book, as the author calls it, is a “pre-9/11 novel.” Karim Issar arrives in NYC to briefly work for Schrub Equities to help prepare for the Y2K bug. Remember that?

Karim has to adjust to a new culture and also appears to be slightly autistic. He develops a computer program, which he calls Kapitoil, that has the potential to make a lot of money based on instabilities elsewhere in the world. He almost immediately gets the attention of the president of the company and then has to make choices about the ethical uses of his program. He is also juggling his social interactions with his co-workers and others as well as issues back home.

Karim carries a pocket recorder everywhere and later analyzes what people say to him. He tries to incorporate all the new idioms he hears. Here’s an example of his narrating about working on his program.

“I made some progress, and soon I forgot about my nervousness with Rebecca and reentered the world of programming where I have ultimate control, and I worked through the night in my office, and I remembered how enjoyable it is to concentrate on a project that stimulates me, and by the end of the night I had hurdled some obstacles and received encouraging results, and once I finalize my program and presentation I will propose the concept to Mr. Schrub. If he was impressed with me initially, then this will bowl him over.”

Once I started reading it, I did really like this book. It brings up issues about assimilation and staying true to your own values. I’m looking forward to the author’s visit and hope I can get tickets to the free event. Here’s a quote from the DPL website by the author about his visit.

“I look forward to my visit to Central Oregon with great anticipation, because, as a writer, I work in a vacuum. I mean that literally; I have repurposed an industrial-sized Hoover vacuum as my writing room. It’s drafty and dust-choked in here, and I expect my time in your city to be stiller and cleaner.”

I’m also interested to see what kinds of programs the library puts together. Will the focus be on New York City, the financial world, Qatar, assimilation, Islam or something else altogether?

The Wilding by Benjamin Percy

2010-11-22T08:37:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Percy was here for the Nature of Words a few years ago. He resides elsewhere, but has written short stories and now a novel set in Central Oregon. Percy grew up hunting in Central Oregon and that tends to be a big focus in his stories. In The Wilding a father, son, grandfather hunting trip takes some strange turns.

Justin, the father, reluctantly agrees to go hunting with his dad and brings along his twelve year old son. Justin, in his everyday life, is an English teacher at Mountain View High School. He is not getting along that great with his wife Karen and she’s rather relieved to see them go for the weekend. They head out to Echo Canyon in the Ochocos; it’s the last weekend before destruction of the area begins for a golf course community.

And, then, this is where the book becomes two distinct stories. One story follows the hunting party weekend, which rapidly deteriorates, especially when they realize something is hunting them. In juxtaposition to this Karen is simultaneously being stalked. It is interesting to compare the possible dangers in the forest to those in the city of Bend.

Here Percy captures how Justin can go from mild-mannered English teacher to exultant hunter throwing around deer viscera:

“Justin feels gripped by a reckless idea. The darkness of the woods and the thrill of the hunt and the wildness of his father have torn away some protective seal inside him; he cannot control himself. For a moment, just a moment, he forgets about his mortgage payment, his shaggy lawn, his Subaru and the groaning noise it makes when he turns left, his desk and the pile of ungraded papers waiting on it. All of that has gone someplace else, replaced by an urge, a wildness.”

The Wilding is a worthwhile read. It gives some insight into hunting, something I have never been tempted to do, and am even less likely to do after reading this. It also examines a culture shift that is going on in the west, where previously open wild areas are being turned into havens for the wealthy. I also reviewed and enjoyed Percy’s short story collection The Language of Elk.

Tomato Rhapsody by Adam Schell

2010-11-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

Tomato Rhapsody is a novel set in 16th century Tuscany. It is a fairy tale for adults. It was fun to read and it seems like the author probably had fun writing it. From the very first page we know who is the villain in the story, as well as who is the fool.

The author offers asides like this one:

“A romance’s conflict, unlike a love story, stems not from self-created issues of pride, but from the more severe burdens that family and society place upon the lovers. ‘Tis why the romance is predisposed to tragedy, for the whittling away of one’s vanity is often a comical affair, but the confronting of deeply held societal and familial prejudices, resentments, laws and traditions is an altogether different and all too often tragic set of challenges.”

The romance is this case involves a young Jewish tomato farmer, Davido, and a young Catholic olive grower, Mari. The tomato is new to this region of Italy and thought to be the “love apple” or what tempted Adam and Eve in the garden. The townspeople are afraid to try it. There are many descriptions of food in the book including the invention of pizza.

There are a myriad of other characters, including a very unusual priest and a Duke playing at being a farmer. The ways their lives entangle with the rest of the villagers and the main characters is entertaining. The villagers common use of rhyme in everyday speech would probably make this a fun book to read aloud.

Here the fool explains why he will not eat a tomato until the priest has eaten one a day for 13 days:

“'So, let the priest eat twelve, plus one. Then we’ll wait a twelve-plus-one-day week and at the feast we’ll have the truth we seek. So on the day of our patron saint, let us judge then if he be healthy or faint.’”

The author is currently a Bend resident and has done some readings around town. I haven’t made it to any, but I would guess they’d be fun.

Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

2010-10-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

This novel is a surprisingly light-heartened and humorous look at illegal immigration from Mexico to the US. The main character, Nayeli, decides that her town needs to bring back men who have left for the US to find work. She puts together a team including herself, two girlfriends and a gay café owner, Tacho, to cross the border and bring them back. She’s backed by her aunt, the first female mayor of their town, and helped by Atomiko, a young man they meet at a garbage dump in Tijuana.

Nayeli’s group pins their hopes on a missionary boy who had stayed in their village for a few months and a long ago boyfriend of Nayeli’s aunt, both of whom do end up helping. Nayeli and Tacho also undertake a cross-country trip to try and find Nayeli’s father in a small town in the Midwest. Their descriptions of Las Vegas, Estes Park and other places are fun to read.

“They skirted the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains without knowing the name of what they were seeing. Nayeli thought of it as the Sierra Madre. Tacho thought of it as the Mountains. They didn’t care for Boulder – too much traffic, too many skinny people jogging in ridiculous clothes. At Lyons, they turned up the mountains and again found themselves climbing, among vast spikes of pines, dark, nearly black. Bright pale granite upthrusts. Butterflies burst from the weeds beside the precipitous highway like little scraps of paper.”

It is not all happy times. They meet people who feel threatened by them, but they do make it to Iowa and then back to San Diego. Nayeli’s aunt, nicknamed la osa, joins them to recruit men to return to their village. The other characters in the story are also interesting, especially Nayeli’s companions Yoloxochitl (Yolo) and Veronica (Vampi).

Urrea has also written a non-fiction book about crossing from Mexico to the US called The Devil’s Highway. It is hard for me to believe the same person wrote both of these books. Although both are about border crossings, Into the Beautiful North is a much less depressing and more hopeful read. Urrea was here for The Nature of Words one year and reading this reminds me that event is coming up soon!

Atonement by Ian McEwan

2010-09-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

The novel Atonement is initially set in the English countryside prior to WWII. McEwan sets up the classic chaotic country house. It includes an ineffectual mother, an absent father, three cousins staying as their parents divorce, and the oldest son home for a visit with a friend. Briony is 13 at the time and constantly writing. McEwan captures a 13 year olds view of herself as the center of the universe perfectly.

Briony’s older sister, Cecilia, is home from college and trying to figure out why she’s having trouble getting along with Robbie. Robbie is the son of their cleaning lady and a friend since the age of 7. One of the things that McEwan does best is to describe feelings.

“This was what happened when they talked these days; one or the other was always in the wrong, trying to call back the last remark. There was no ease, no stability in the course of their conversations, no chance to relax. Instead, it was spikes, traps, and awkward turns that caused her to dislike herself almost as much as she disliked him.”

Cecilia and Robbie realize almost simultaneously that they are in love. They have one brief moment together before the events of that night unfold. Briony plays a role in separating them and the juxtaposition between the house in the countryside and Robbie fighting in the war is masterful. Robbie is involved in a horrific retreat from France and keeps flashing back to his former life.

“It seemed like another man’s life to him now. A dead civilization. First his own life ruined, then everybody else’s.”

I highly recommend Atonement and it is on my list of my favorite 10 novels. I don’t usually like reading about war, but the story here is so interesting the war scenes are worth it.

Maus : a survivor's tale by Art Spiegelman

2010-07-22T21:10:00.000-07:00

It was only recently that I noticed there was a section for graphic novels at my local library. I wasn’t sure if they were mainly for kids or a whole new genre. Were they comic book like? Even when I was a kid I didn’t read many comic books. I asked a friend for a recommendation and am glad I did.

Maus is primarily the story of Vladek Spiegelman as told to his son Art. Vladek is living in Poland before the war where he meets and marries Anja Zylberberg in 1937. Soon Anja and Vladek, along with their new son Richieu, are struggling to survive together with their families. A twist is that throughout the story the Jewish people are mice and the Nazis are cats.

The story doesn’t gloss over the hardships and atrocities that Vladek witnessed during the war. I don’t know that it makes it any easier to look at because all the dead bodies are mice. Vladek and Anja do end up in Auschwitz and eventually Dachau. Art only has Vladek’s account because his mother, Anja, committed suicide when he was twenty.

The relationship between Vladek and Art is also depicted. Vladek is a difficult, old man. Is he difficult because of the Holocaust or would he have been difficult no matter what? And, does going through something like that give (or should it) Vladek extra privileges? One scene with Vladek and Art where Vladek returns food sticks in my mind. Art is sure he’s going to be kicked out of the store and they do see the manager yelling at Vladek, but he comes out to the car with more food for only $1.

Vladek:”He helped me as soon as I explained to him my health, how Mala left me, and how it was in the camps.”

This took place sometime in the 1980’s. Of course, the pictures add greatly to the scene.

This book didn’t tell me anything new about the Holocaust, but I’m probably not the target audience. This would be a reasonable introduction to a difficult topic for a mature pre-teen.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

2010-07-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

In the prologue to this book the author states:

“American Wife is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the life of an American first lady. Her husband, his parents, and certain prominent members of his administration are recognizable.”

This immediately caught my attention. As I began reading the book I couldn’t identify the first lady, but she seemed a very sympathetic character. Her life is shaped by a car accident she is in as a high school student that kills another student. She also loves books and becomes a librarian. At this point I’m thinking this must be about Laura Bush, but it is set in Wisconsin.

The character, Alice Lindgren, meets a very handsome, gregarious son of a former governor. He also seems like a good guy, but is from a wealthy privileged family with quite a difficult mother. He doesn’t do much outside the family business until he becomes managing partner of a baseball team. So, this must be about Laura and George Bush. It was hard for me to sort out fiction from non-fiction.

Alice Blackwell is a democrat and remains a democrat throughout even Charlie Blackwell’s presidency. She openly states her pro-choice opinion. When Charlie first runs for president and their finances are investigated, he is given credit for her donations made without his knowledge.

“These were, of course, the modest donations I had made surreptitiously; when our financial records were first vetted and this bit of duplicity emerged, Charlie and Hank were both thrilled. ‘God bless your sneaky liberal ways!’ Charlie exclaimed.”

I didn’t realize until recently that it is slightly unusual to be in a mixed political family. I grew up with a mother who was a democrat and a father who was a republican, and there are obviously examples of couples that work on different sides. It did not seem to be a big deal in our household, except during presidential elections. It never occurred to me, though, that the wife of former President G. W. Bush might be a democrat. To support someone running for president I would think you’d have to support their views and policies. This book is about how Alice Blackwell does support Charlie while not being a republican.

American Wife is worth reading and almost, almost makes me want to read a biography of Laura Bush.

Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

2010-06-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Manhood for Amateurs is a collection of essays by one of the most well-regarded living authors in the US today. It is subtitled The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. I enjoy Chabon’s fiction writing and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was my favorite fiction book read in 2008.

This is an interesting book to pick up if you’d like to know more about Chabon’s family and his thoughts about random things like Jose Canseco or using a murse (a man purse). I think the best essay in the book is the first one entitled “The Loser’s Club.” It’s about 10 year old Michael Chabon and the comic book club he initiates by writing a newsletter and advertising in the paper. You get a hint of how determined he is and yet it is a somewhat depressing view into his life at that age.

He reflects on what he learned then:

“Success, however, does nothing to diminish the knowledge that failure stalks everything you do. But you always knew that. Nobody gets past the age of ten without that knowledge.”

I liked the essays that were about his father or other father figures in his life, like his father-in-law from his brief first marriage. I didn’t enjoy the essays that were more rants about legos or books today and how his children are experiencing a different, more commercialized, childhood than he did. It seems like he could take action to change that.

Chabon lives with his wife Ayelet Waldman, also a writer, and their four kids in Berkeley. She has a memoir out as well, but it focuses more on parenting. It is called Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. She wrote it after some controversy about a NY Times article she wrote where she stated she loved her husband more than her children.

Chabon has this to say about being a parent in an essay about the Obama family entitled “The Binding of Isaac”: “Being a father is an unlimited obligation, one that even the best of us, with the least demanding of children, could never hope to fulfill entirely.”

The Husbands and Wives Club by Laurie Abraham

2010-05-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been completely surprised by an announcement that a couple you know is separating or divorcing? “But they seemed fine,” is always the refrain. Usually no one knows what is really going on in a marriage other than those involved. Well, The Husbands and Wives Club is a book that lets you peak into other people’s marriages. In this non-fiction book the author follows five couples for a year as they attend monthly group counseling sessions.

I don’t remember where I heard about this book, but it might have been on literarymama.com. In a fun section called Essential Reading various editors comment on what they are currently reading.

This book is interesting as it doesn’t just follow one couple and the couples all have some serious issues.

“Before the year is out, the couple for whom I perhaps least expected it will be weighing divorce. Another pair will be confronting the husband’s attraction to men, while a third will make a stunning turn for the better. There will be miscarriages and infertility to confront, job loss and betrayal.”

The book intersperses dialogue and incidents from the therapy sessions, which were all recorded, with current research on the effectiveness of therapy for couples. I didn’t find the research parts so interesting and they seemed more like asides. It doesn’t seem like therapy can be easily evaluated in general.

One couple in particular is exceptionally difficult. A bump by her husband during a class exercise sends the wife out the door obviously furious. The therapist feels that these individual crises help the group bond and allow for other couples to grow while concentrating on someone else’s problems for a bit.

I can’t imagine why any of these couples agreed to have all their issues aired publically. Maybe readers will be comforted by the thought that their marriages are nowhere near that bad.

Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach

2010-04-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

I recently read this book after hearing about it from a friend multiple times. I have to admit the premise is very interesting; Washington, Oregon and Northern California secede from the United States to become Ecotopia. Also interesting is that it was published in 1975. It is written from the point-of-view of a reporter, William Weston, who is the first American allowed in the country in twenty years. The book alternates between his columns he is sending back to the US and his journal writings.

Many of the ideas in the book are beginning to be implemented now. For example, in Ecotopia all the plastics are made from plants. Weston reports what happens if these plastics come in contact with the soil:

“However, by chemical advances that have so far remained secret, Ecotopian scientists have built into these molecules “keyholes,” which can be opened only by soil micro-organisms! Once they are unlocked, the whole structure decomposed rapidly.”

And, here is what happened with dams in Ecotopia:

“The new government even went so far as to dynamite some of the dams which had been built on the rivers – on the dubious grounds that they prevented ‘white-water’ recreational boating or interfered with the salmon runs – which have been reestablished with great effort and enjoy much public support.”

We are currently seeing debate about dams all over the Pacific Northwest. And, salmon ladders are routinely added to dams these days. We’re talking about turning a small dam area here in Bend into a kayak or rafting throughway. Biodegradable plastics or compostable products are also more commonly being used. I think the most radical event in Ecotopia was that after the secession cars were immediately banned and a public transit system instituted.

I think this book raises some interesting ideas to think about. Actually I’d recommend just reading the dispatches and skipping the journal entries. The journal entries are in italics so that is easy to do. The plot involving the personal life of the journalist seems rather weak and can only really go in one direction. Will Weston fall in love? Will he stay in Ecotopia? If Ecotopia is all it seems to be, there can only be one reasonable decision.

Having Faith An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood by Sandra Steingraber

2010-03-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve read a number of books by mothers about having children over the past few years, so I was surprised I had not heard of this book by Sandra Steingraber, especially since it was published in 2001. It was an interview with the author in The Sun in January that first caught my attention. Steingraber has a Ph.D. in biology and is also a cancer survivor. She is passionate about environmental toxins and the problems they cause. I have yet to read her first book entitled Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. In the introduction to her interview with The Sun she takes issue with the idea that her cancer stemmed from genetic causes.

“Years later, when cancer research began to focus on genetic causes, she submitted to doctors’ questions about her family history. She would recount her mother’s breast cancer, her uncles’ prostate and colon cancers, and her aunt’s bladder cancer. The doctors would nod knowingly. Then she would reveal that she was adopted.”

So, Having Faith is not your typical memoir about having a first baby. In fact, I would not recommend it to anyone who is currently or soon to be pregnant. It starts off gently. I completely agree with her complaint about gestation and how obstetricians consider you pregnant two weeks before you are pregnant, not because it is accurate, but because it is easier. She also gives some interesting historical perspectives. For example, morning sickness used to be considered a psychological problem.

“In one hospital in the 1930s, pregnant women prone to sickness were confined to bed and forbidden visitors and vomit bowls until they showed improvement. As further incentive for recovery, the nurses who cared for them were instructed to refrain from changing their sheets promptly.”

The book is initially organized with a chapter devoted to each month of her pregnancy. The really scary stuff starts in Chapter 3 where she looks into four different problems from the past and their impact on pregnancies. Her examples of rubella, thalidomide, Minamata (a town in Japan with mercury waste in the water), and diethylstilbestrol are not for the faint hearted. Thalidomide was given in the late 50s to quell morning sickness, however, it results in what is called reduction limb deficit, which is exactly what it sounds like. The day that thalidomide was taken would correspond to different birth defects, for example, a pill taken on days 35-37 of the pregnancy would result in a baby with no ears, and this is mapped out for which limbs would be lost depending on what day the drug was taken.

Her main point is that the fetus is very vulnerable to environmental toxins, but this is rarely discussed with pregnant women, instead the focus is on possible genetic problems.

“The most troubling aspects of prenatal testing still seem to me the single-minded search for rare genetic defects and the concomitant disregard of environmental threats to pregnancy. For expectant mothers over thirty-five, the hunt for chromosomal trisomies has become a routine part of prenatal care. But ask if your amniotic fluid contains pesticides, and if, so, how this contamination may affect the development of your baby, and you are likely to be met with blank stares. Genes and environment are two partners in a dance of creation.”

The second half of the book, immediately prior to and once her daughter Faith is born, is easier reading and tends to sound more like a memoir. She begins to wonder if a birth at a renowned teaching hospital is the best idea, especially one where epidurals and episiotomies are routine. She quarrels with the idea that pregnant women are sick and should be treated as patients.

“As more than one advocate of natural childbirth has pointed out, if labor and delivery were viewed less as medical events and more as Olympic ones, this distinction would be obvious. Who, after all, would rush up to a marathon runner in the final stretch with a needleful of narcotics?”

She does return to environmental toxins and makes the point that man is not at the top of the food chain, but rather a breastfeeding infant resides there. She examines toxins found in breast milk and looks at studies for how these toxins impact children later in life. Should we tell women, not just pregnant ones, but any 10 year old considering ever having a child, to behave in certain ways and avoid certain foods, or should we clean up those foods? It seems clear to me that we would all be much better off with the cleaned up foods.

Her book reminds me of an article in National Geographic where the author was tested for 320 different chemicals. It would be so interesting for each person to know this information for themselves, but obviously not feasible considering the $15K price tag. I think this is a book I’m going to purchase and set on my shelf next to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

2010-03-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Each year the Deschutes County Public Library picks a novel and encourages the whole community to read it. This year’s “A Novel Idea” is The Help. This novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960’s and focuses on the lives of black maids in white households.

This was a very interesting novel to read. It was not a tradition to have maids where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and so this is a window into a whole different life where a woman invites another woman into her house to clean it and to raise her children. Added to the mix is that the maids were always black and that segregation was in full force during this time period. One of the maids in the story, Aibileen, has to listen to a discussion about building a separate bathroom for her in the garage so that she won’t “contaminate” the inside bathrooms.

The main plot is that a white woman, Skeeter, has returned home and is hoping to break into journalism. She sees how Aibileen is treated at her friend’s house and comes up with the idea of writing the stories of black maids. Aibileen agrees to do it and after much coercing and some traumatic events finds other maids that are also willing to talk with Skeeter. During this time period Medgar Evers is shot in Jackson and the author brings that into the story. It highlights the danger these maids are exposing themselves to by simply telling their stories, even anonymously.

It did take me some time to get into the dialect used in parts of the story. The story is told by alternating from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen, and another maid Minny. I also found it hard to believe the characterization of some of the white women in the story. For example, Skeeter’s friend, Elizabeth, seems to really dislike her own child. It is an interesting look into the everyday lives of people who were not actively engaged in the civil rights movement, yet were impacted by it, either by trying to keep the old ways of segregation or by trying to live in a different, and at that time, unacceptable way.

In looking at the events the library will be putting on around this book, it is great to see there will be some discussions about segregation and civil rights leaders as well as demonstrations of Southern cooking. I’m hoping they’ll add some events for kids.

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