In Consideration of Books

The Sea House by Esther Freud (2003)

2011-12-21T23:58:00.000-08:00

Esther Freud was born in London in 1963. She trained as an actress before writing herfirst novel, "Hideous Kinky" in 1991, which was made into a moviestarring Kate Winslet. I haven't readthat book but did see the movie a few years ago.

I picked up "The Sea House" at the library, andenjoyed it, although it was sometimes a difficult to follow - the novelalternates between the past and the present in the same seaside town on theEnglish coast. In the present we haveLily, who comes to Steerborough to do academic research on the architect KlausLehmann, a German who emigrated to the UK with his wife Elsa. Lily stays in a seaside cottage and finds Lehmann's letters to his wife strangely evocative of the feelings she has forher boyfriend, Nick, back in London. Shestarts questioning their relationship and her life in London as she becomesentranced with the slow paced life in the village and the two little girls whoare staying next door, as well as their father.

The passages about Lily are alternated with the late 1950sin the same location, where we see the artist Max, a deaf German immigre whosesister recently died. He comes toSteerborough, invited by his sister's good friend Gertrude to come and paint. Little by little Max comes into contact withLehmann and his wife and as the story progresses we begin to see theconnections between Lily's work in the present and the impact that Max, at thebeginning a simple observer, ends up having on the history of the village andthe people in it. At the end of thestory all the connections are made clear.

Helpless by Barbara Gowdy (2006)

2011-12-19T01:55:00.000-08:00

Barbara Gowdy, (born 25 June 1950) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer, who lives in Toronto. Gowdy's novel "Falling Angels" (1989) was made into a film of the same name.

I'm not that familiar with Canadian novelists, so I knew nothing about her work when I found a few of her books on the shelf in our library. "Helpless" caught my attention so I took it home, and it turned out to be one of those books you can't put down until you find out what happens.

The novel is the story of the stalking and kidnapping of nine-year-old Rachel, who lives with her mother, Celia, a struggling pianist, in Toronto. Ron, an appliance repairman who lives in the neighborhood, becomes obsessed with Rachel, quietly stalking her as she walks home from school and keeping an eye on her while she is at home and on the playground.

The first few chapters of the book made me think of the way Jodi Picoult writes about similar themes, but it got much darker once the abduction takes place. The striking thing about this novel is the access we are given to the inner workings and the past of Ron, the kidnapper - it's almost too close for comfort. In June 2008, the novel was abridged and adapted for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. This resulted in several listeners complaining that the novel was 'dark', 'disturbing' and had '(frightened) the life out of them'. One listener described it as 'inappropriate for any time of day least of all at bedtime' and another claimed that Gowdy's graphic description made him feel 'physically sick'. I won't say there were passages that made me physically sick, but a lot of it was definitely disturbing.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the book was the character of Nancy, Ron's unwilling accomplice, and how someone who is not mentally ill (I suppose) was, due to her life circumstances and current situation, unable to take a decision on a moral issue that seems so obvious and clear cut. I found myself angry at Nancy, shouting at her in my mind to just get Rachel back to her mother and turn Ron in! She immediately knew what Ron was doing was wrong, it just seemed to take her forever to put her own self interest aside in order to do something about it. And even then, it only seemed she took action when it became clear that there wasn't anything in it for her anymore. Nancy reflects the modern person who won't stop and help someone who needs help, because it might inconvenience them, someone we are all in danger of becoming, in one way or another...

Renee

2011-12-15T01:49:00.000-08:00

This lovely statue of a girl reading is called "Renee", the artist Armand Loveniers, and is located in the city where I live, on the Naamsestraat, appropriately right next to a bookstore! It is also the location of many university buildings and the first female dormitory at the KU Leuven.

I love to find artwork about books and reading...

This statue is sometimes called "Fronske" (Little Frown) because, as a serious and hardworking female student she is the antithesis of the "Fonske" statue of the merry male student on the Fochplein in Leuven, who simply pours knowledge (or is it beer?) effortlessly right into his head.

Renee has been on her spot, studying, reading, dreaming... since 1997.

This is How by M.J. Hyland (2009)

2011-09-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

M.J. Hyland was born in London in 1968, studied Law and English at the University of Melbourne and she is currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Manchester.

The book "This is How" tells the story of Patrick Oxtoby, a young man who is going through a very difficult time in his life. His girlfriend, who he thought he would marry, has broken off their engagement, and he decides to move away from his home town to get away from the discomfort and shame he feels.

Patrick has never felt easy around other people, he has never felt confident that others really like him, and he has always had a hard time interacting with others, including his own mother, father and older brother. Throughout the book I felt that Patrick was in some way autistic. He was very intelligent as a child and got into university but simply couldn't settle into life there, so he came back home after failing his first year and took a mechanics course, something he really loved to do and was good at, in spite of the fact that his family is very disapproving of this choice. He ended up getting a job at a local garage where the customers and his boss really appreciated him.

But because of the break up of his relationship, he decides to move to a seaside town, get a room in a boarding house and work at a different garage. His boss is sorry to see him go, but helps him find a new job. So at the beginning of the novel we see Patrick arriving at the boarding house, where his discomfort with other people becomes immediately clear in his first moments with his landlady Brigit, and then later with the two other men who are boarders at the house.

Patrick tries to fit in and tries to make a go of his new life, but things simply don't seem to go his way. His mother shows up for a desastrous and embarasssing visit, the two other boarders seem to look down on and ridicule him, his new boss turns out not wanting him there full time, and his attempts to date a local cafe waitress, Georgia, don't work out the way he hopes. Frustration builds up inside of Patrick, something he attempts to deal with through drinking binges, and he ends up doing something violent and irreversible which lands him, in the second half of the book, in prison.

Physically frail and mentally unstable as Patrick is, as a reader one is terribly apprehensive about him being funneled into the penal systerm, but is just as powerless as Patrick is to stop the flow of events. Throughout his initial nights in jail, through his trial and later imprisonment, it is difficult to imagine how he is to survive in the hostile environment. His family has completely dropped him, and his father only comes to visit him once before informing Patrick that they are moving very far away. He is an easy target for guards and fellow inmates alike, although he does find a few individuals in prison who seem to want to help him, they often expect something in return.

This is a very grim book, but in the end, it seems that Patrick finally finds a small shred of hope with his new life in prison: "I'm sometimes happier in here than I was out there. I'm under no pressure to be better in here and life's shrinking to a size that suits me more."

Wow. I was totally struck by that statement. And having gotten to know Patrick in the previous 338 pages I could totally understand that, while prison life may be brutal and dehumanizing and violent and filthy, that for some people, it might well be the size of life that fits them better than the one that was possible for them in the outside world. It also got me to thinking that we all have a certain size life that suits us best. Some, like the Madonnas and Lady Gagas of this world, are suited to a life that is huge, loud, crazy and constantly moving; while others of us, perhaps nuns or monks, those who still choose a cloistered life, are more fit for a much smaller, quieter, well contained life. It got me to thinking, what size life am I best suited to, and more importantly, does my current life reflect that? Food for thought - and this is an excellent book.

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (2006)

2011-03-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

The weekly literary supplement in our newspaper tipped me off to this book. Because of the current events in Libya and the fact that the author has a new book out (Anatomy of a Disappearance, published March 2011), there was a two page article on him. This novel was his first novel and I was lucky enough to be able to find it, in the original English, in our library.

Hisham Matar was born in 1970 in New York City, to Libyan parents. His father was a member of the Libyan delegation to the UN. When Hisham was three they moved back to Tripoli, where he spent his early childhood. In 1979 his father was accused of being against the Qaddafi regime and the family had to flee, to Egypt. He finished his secondary education in Cairo and then went to the UK for university studies in architecture.

In 1990, Matar's father was kidnapped in Cairo and has been missing ever since. Two letters the family received seem to indicate that his father was being held prisoner in Tripoli. The last news they had was that he had been seen alive in 2002.

Matar began writing In the Country of Men in 2000 and it was published in 2006, and nominated for the Booker Prize.

The novel is written in the first person from the point of view of Suleiman, a nine-year-old boy who lives with his young mother and older father in a residential area of Tripoli. He does not understand why his father disappears for days at a time, nor does he understand why his mother gets "sick" when his father is gone and drinks a foul smelling "medicine" she buys clandestinely from the baker. Suleiman is an observer and relates to us the smells, colors, and feelings he has in his daily life, while all around him the political situation creates a feeling of quiet menace and danger.

It is clear that Matar's own experiences and observations as a child for the basis for this book, and when you read the description of how Suleiman and his mother watch a neighbor tried and executed on Libyan television, it is obvious that something very similar was witnessed by the author, as it is impossible to imagine someone could make it up. The book is a fascinating window into how it was to live under the thumb of the Qaddafi regime.

At the same time, however, the book is a coming-of-age story of a young man who learns that his parents are not infallible, and how even though he escapes by moving to Egypt, there is always a link to his homeland because his family is still there. The book is also in part the story of Suleiman's mother and her oppression as a woman in a male-dominated society. There is a parallel to be found between the way Qaddafi oppresses the citizens of his country and the way the father and brothers of Suleiman's mother dominate and oppress her. She has no choice and behaves in the book like an animal cornered, self destructing through alcohol addiction as her only escape.

This is an extemely well-written book that opened my mind to a people who having been living for 42 years under oppression. It also reminded me how universal the job of being a mother is, and how difficult it is to get it right.

Incendiary by Chris Cleave (2005)

2011-03-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

The subtitle to this book is "A Novel of Unbearable Devastation and Unbounded Love". This phrase immediately made me think of the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, also published in 2005. But there are more similarities to these novels: both tell the story of a survivor of a terrorist attack in a large city, and how this person deals with the loss of someone they loved.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the story is about Oskar, a 9-year-old boy, whose father dies in the September 11 attacks in New York City, and how Oskar deals with this afterwards. (I loved this book and recently blogged about it here.)

In Incendiary, the story follows a young working class mother in London, who loses her 4-year-old son and husband in a fictional terrorist attack during a soccer match between Arsenal and Chelsea. We never learn her name, as the entire book is a letter she is writing to Osama Bin Laden, trying to convince him to stop bombing by showing him how much she loved her little boy. The bulk of the book is her story of how she tries to live after the attacks.

She spends weeks in the hospital, she becomes wrapped up in a sick relationship with a wealthy journalist and his girlfriend, she seems to get back on her feet by taking a job with her husband's old boss at the police, but just seems to keep getting kicked down again. As the novel progresses and her circumstances get worse, she sinks further and further down into desolation, and ends up seeing and talking to her deceased child nearly all the time, which are the most difficult scenes to read, extremely heart wrenching.

The terrorist attacks not only devastate the narrator's life but it also changes the way of life of the whole of London, and this is very realistically portrayed - as a reader, especially if you've ever been to London, you can easily imagine all the paranoid measures that are taken to protect the population. Tragically, the day Incendiary was released was the day of the terrorist bombings in the London underground in July 2005; the author talks about the novel and this horrible coincidence here.

This is a very gritty and dark novel. Where Incredibly Loud is poignantly hopeful and where Oskar is surrounded by people who do love him and want to help him get over the loss of his father, in Incendiary, we feel the complete hopelessness of the narrator and how alone she is - the few people in her life who seem to care about her are actually selfishly using her. She somehow manages to carry on, but as I finished the book I felt sad and deflated for her; she is physically alive but the magnitude of her loss will surely continue to pull her down. I can only think about the Japanese survivors in those towns that were completely washed away by the tsumami last week - how do you rebuild your life after everything is taken away from you?

Little Bee (aka The Other Hand) by Chris Cleave (2008)

2011-03-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

I finally found this novel in my library under its UK title "The Other Hand". I read it in one day, unable to put it down until I found out what happened to Little Bee, the young Nigerian girl who is seeking asylum in Britain.

Little Bee's story is heartbreaking. We have an asylum center not far from us here in Belgium, and it is regularly in the news - and it is such a shame that we are unable to figure out how to help the people who come to Europe seeking a better life. It often makes me think of the European immigrants who went to North America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, who were seeking the exact same thing - hope for a better life. I always think that none of them would have undertaken the journey and the suffering that in itself entails, if their situation in their home country wasn't truly desperate.

Little Bee was also in a desperate situation and did what she had to to save her life. She is an amazing heroic character. I found myself disliking the character Sarah, the English woman who tries to help Little Bee. Even more than that, I hated her lover, Lawrence. At a key moment, when Sarah unthinkingly asks Little Bee to phone the police when her son is missing, Lawrence is instantly aware of the consequences this will have for Little Bee and he fails to step in. He could have so easily made the phone call in her place, and he did nothing.

This novel is eye-opening and confrontational for those of us who live easy lives in countries that attract refugees and asylum seekers. Are we like Sarah, naive and unaware, or like Lawrence, aware but unwilling to do anything?

The Last Life by Claire Messud (1999)

2011-02-14T01:40:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you accidentally come across a book that has strange parallels with your own life. I recently bumped into just such a novel by author Claire Messud, which has had me completely enthralled. Born in Connecticut in 1966, the same year I was born, Messud grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada, returning to the United States as a teenager. Daughter of a Canadian mother and an Algerian French father, she attended both Yale and Cambridge. I did not look for any information about Messud until after finishing the book, but the entire time, I knew she must have had an international upbringing, because she knows exactly what it feels like to be a foreigner, an immigrant, whether invisible or not, and brings the feeling out in her writing and her characters incredibly well.

The Last Life, published in 1999, is the story of three generations of French Algerians, told mainly through the eyes of Sagesse, who through most of the novel, is a teenage girl growing up in a city on the French Mediterranean coast in the late 1980s. She lives with her father, a French Algerian, her mother, an American, and her handicapped brother, in close proximity to the hotel owned and operated by her father’s parents. I lived in France for a year in the late 80s and much of the current events of that time and general description of the society Messud shares with us rang very true for me.

I was initially attracted to the book by the idea of what it was like to grow up as a teenager in Europe having an American mother – thinking of my own children and especially my oldest, who is now 16. The relationship between Sagesse and her mother, and especially the way her mother tries to fit in with the French in-laws and ultimately gives up, really spoke to me. I could relate to many of the attempts to blend in, to not rock the boat, and how you realize at a certain point that none of your efforts have really been appreciated, and all you have managed to do in the end is make yourself disappear.

Sagesse at one point spends a summer visiting family in Boston, and it was fascinating to me to read about her feeling of being foreign in American society; having lived for more than 20 years out of it, I could relate to a lot of what she described. Also the teenage angst Messud writes about so poignantly is also familiar territory.

A good portion of the story takes place in Algeria in the 1950s, the years leading up to the country’s independence from France, and how the situation became very dangerous and most of the French citizens had to flee, leaving everything behind. Sagesse’s grandparents go, to the property in southern France her grandfather has purchased to build a hotel on, but her father, a young man, stubbornly stays on in Algiers to be with his dying grandmother. This part of the story is incredibly gripping, the desperation palpable. Ultimately, the experience marks her father for the rest of his life.

Sagesse’s family seems doomed, as one tragic event after another comes to haunt them. But Sagesse herself, and her mother, seem to have an invisible strength that carries them through. Is this ability to survive and carry on despite numerous setbacks, something typically American? Messud does not say. But Sagesse eventually ends up as a young woman in living in New York City, where,

I am invented and reinvented...I can appear foreign or native, exotic or
invisible, depending on my whim. I am, to different friends, American or French,
or a plausible mid-Atlantic hybrid...There is nothing real about my history, and
most of it I do not tell.

This struck me as being applicable to many children who grow up with parents from different cultures and countries – they have the ability to be chameleons if they so choose – and this can be a blessing or a curse. It makes me wonder what it will feel like for my three children, young Belgian-Americans, as they get older, and some of the children of friends who are also in similar bicultural situations. How will it play out for them? How will it feel?

I was completely enthralled by this book and enjoyed reading it, even though much of it is sad. Aside from the Algerian parts, so much of it was nostalgic for me personally. And Sagesse is a character I will not quickly forget, a young woman of flesh and blood, feeling and thought, whose story gave me so many things to consider.

The Last Life is Messud’s second book. Her debut novel, When The World Was Steady (1995), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her 2001 work, The Hunters, consists of two novellas, and her most recent novel, The Emperor’s Children, which is set in New York City during nine months surrounding 9/11, was long listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (2009)

2011-02-10T05:24:00.000-08:00

This book was recommended to me by my mom, who found it in her library, and luckily, I found a copy in mine, as well.

The author of this book, Jamie Ford, whose great grandfather immigrated from China to Nevada in 1865, has written a fascinating and moving novel about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. But this is also a coming-of-age novel, a family chronicle, and a love story.

The story takes place in Seattle and bouces back and forth between 1942 and 1986.

Henry Lee, a 12-year-old Chinese-American, lives in Seattle in 1942 and is the only Asian child in his school, where he is constantly bullied. One day, a Japanese girl arrives and is put to work with him in the school cafeteria. Henry has learned from his father to hate the Japanese, but he soon forms a strong friendship with Keiko. As the war heats up, Japanese citizens of Seattle begin to be targeted and disappear, and then internment of all Japanese begins on a large scale. Henry does his best to help Keiko and her family as they are shipped out to a camp, but they lose touch, and Henry eventually moves on with his life, making peace with his father and repairing their difficult relationship as well.

Later, in 1986, having lost his wife to cancer, Henry by chance sees a hotel in the old part of Japanese town where belongings of Japanese people who had to leave the city have been kept for all these years. A flood of memories comes back and before he knows it, Henry is searching for Keiko.

I found this novel to be extremely interesting from a historical perspective - I really knew next to nothing about the Japanese internments during World War II, and I learned a lot from this book. The author also paints a vivid picture of what life was like in the international part of the city of Seattle in the 1940's - including the racial discrimination between different nationalities, the way of life at that time and the local jazz club scene! I definitely could tell the author knows Seattle inside and out.

The love story between Henry and Keiko was bittersweet and a bit syrupy at times, but that did not detract from my enjoyment of the novel. I really enjoyed the well written side characters, such as Henry's friend the sax player and his son and son's girlfriend, and especially the tough lunch room lady who ends up being quite a help.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)

2011-02-08T05:25:00.000-08:00

My friend Joy sent me this book for my birthday and I loved it. The author took me into what felt like an alternate reality, a completely different way of looking at and being in the world. I was so mesmerized by it that I was sorry when the book ended, and I almost want to read it again, now that I have the entire puzzle of the story put together.

The story alternates between the past (1969) and present day of a family in Ayemenem, India. The family has a rich and complicated history that the author presents in a tapestry of imagery, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. The story centers around Estha and Rahel, boy and girl set of twins who are 7 years old in 1969 and live with their mother, Ammu, in the extended family’s home next to their grandmother’s pickle factory. Their uncle Chacko is expecting a visit from his ex-wife and daughter, Sophie Mol, from England, so the whole family drives to Cochin, the city where the flight will arrive.

Sophie and her mother arrive and are taken back to the family home where a few days later a tragedy will occur that will forever change the lives of Estah, Rahel and their mother. The entire novel builds up to this event little by little but in the very first pages of the first chapter, the reader is told that Sophie Mol dies, because we are immediately transported to her funeral.

So we know what is going to happen, but we don’t yet know why or how. And by alternating between those fateful days in 1969 and Rahel and Estah’s adult lives, we see the terrible things that happened to them, their mother, and the young untouchable man who became their friend, while at the same time we are privy to how those events affected them in their adult lives. I was impressed by how the author accomplished this back and forth motion between the two time zones in her novel, and still managed to keep the reader glued to the page.

Politics, history, human rights, child abuse, incest, the caste system, religion, racism, … the book touches on so many things and through so many beautifully drawn characters. And the idea of the God of Small Things appealed to me very much.

As Estha and Rahel discover:

1. Anything can happen to Anyone, and
2. It’s best to be prepared.

How true and how sad that they had to learn such an adult lesson so early on. Another lesson Rahel learns after saying something thoughtless and ugly to her mother that struck me as tragic but achingly true: “When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

With so many sad things happening around them and to them, ultimately Estha and Rahel have to grow up quickly. This book deservedly won the Booker Prize and it is one I will read again. Thanks, Joy!

Still Alice by Lisa Genova (2007)

2011-01-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

This book was recommended by my aunt, and since she just turned 70 I find it very brave of her to have read this, as it is the story of a woman who discovers she is suffering from Alzheimer’s and it is at times very frightening to read. But at the same time it is fascinating and moving and I simply couldn’t put it down.

Alice is 50 years old and a professor at Harvard when she begins to notice that she has difficulty remembering things. At first she puts it down to menopause, but when she gets inexplicably lost in her own neighborhood one day, she decides to see her doctor, where she receives the devastating diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s.

This was extremely painful to read about – Alice is an intelligent woman with a busy life who also runs and takes good care of herself, and is only 6 years older than me and the same age as some of my good friends – I could really relate to her!

The author wrote the book from Alice’s perspective all the way to the end, and so the reader feels the frustration, disorientation and confusion right along with Alice as her life slowly but steadily shrinks down. It is very scary to feel what Alzheimer’s does to your mind, especially in the beginning when Alice is desperately trying to contain the damage and still function in her daily life. It is easy to understand her when she says she would gladly trade Alzheimer’s for cancer, and when she makes suicide plans. This book feels incredibly authentic as to what might go on in the mind of someone suffering from Alzheimer’s and it is eye-opening to be in Alice’s head. It is incredible to realize how much we rely on our memory for all the miniscule details in our lives and how devastating it is to lose it.

One of the saddest things for me was how Alice eventually had to give up her running…the one thing that she turned to to keep herself feeling good was eventually no longer possible, even with someone running with her. It makes you realize how lucky you are to be able to go and do as you please and having your body and mind cooperate with everything, without you even being aware of it. Quite an eye opener.

The book is also very informative and contains a great deal of scientific information about the disease. The reactions of Alice’s family, colleagues and friends are very realistically presented, as well as the life of an academic. Everything in the book is so realistic and tragic, and yet, there is a note of hope at the end. In spite of that this is definitely a book where you will need a box of kleenex.

The Age of Orphans, by Laleh Khadivi (2009)

2011-01-19T07:05:00.001-08:00

An unexpected find on the shelves of our library...

Laleh Khadivi, the author, was born in Esfahan, Iran, in 1977, to a Kurdish father and an Esfahani mother. Her family fled Iran after the revolution there, and they lived in many places (including Belgium) before settling in North America. Khadivi is a filmmaker and this is her first novel.

The story begins with a small Kurdish boy who lives in a remote area of what is now Iran, in a tiny village with his mother and father at the beginning of the 1920's. He is soon taken by his father and all the other male villagers to a valley where he undergoes the traditional ritual that makes him a man. At the age of 9 or 10, along with all the other Kurdish men, he sets off to defend their territory against the nationbuilding that is going on in the name of the Shah of Iran. They are crushed by the Iranian army and the boy, orphaned, is brought up in the Iranian military, as the captain's pet at first, and then later as a talented soldier.

He is given an Iranian name, Reza, and takes on an Iranian identity, foresaking his Kurd roots as much as he can, in spite of his tell-tale green eyes. He eventually makes his way to the capital city, Tehran, where he finds a young wife in the Iranian middle class. His superiors, pleased with they way he has developed into the ideal Iranian soldier, decide to send him back as a captain to the Kurd region where they expect he will have special talent in dealing with the local population, as he understands the language and the customs.

Back in the landscape that evokes his childhood, Reza's facade slowly begins to crack, as he loses control over his wife, who after bearing seven children will die in tragic circumstances, leaving the children to flutter away from their father and the father to end his days in the place he started it.

The story is a commentary on identity, on minorities, on poverty, and on the unique position of the nationless in this world. It explains a small part of the situation of the Kurdish people and why they struggle on without their own nation to this day. It is also a shocking look into the cruel life of a boy taken from his mother, the only love he knew, and thrown into an army and forced to be brutal and deny anything that ever defined him. At times I was really in awe of the author's ability to get inside this man's head.

This is not an upbeat, uplifting book but it is certainly thought-provoking and will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult (2002)

2011-01-15T12:33:00.001-08:00

Whenever I am in the mood for an easy read that grabs me by the scruff of the neck and won't let me go til I get to the last page, but at the same time is sure to be topical, deal with tough moral dilemmas and peopled by characters I feel like I know, then I can't go wrong with a book by Jodi Picoult.

I was at the library and decided to pick up one of her books I hadn't read yet (still waiting for "House Rules" to be turned in) and sure enough, I started reading it last night and just couldn't put it down and finished it this afternoon.

"Perfect Match" is definitely topical - it deals with a young boy that has been sexually abused by a priest - and also includes a terrible moral dilemma - is it right for the mother of that boy to take the law into her own hands, when she herself is a District Attorney, and dish out her own version of justice? And what are the unforeseen consequences when she does?

I am still not sure what side of the fence I am on after reading this book. Being a mother myself it was easy to understand what drove the main character to do something so desperate but still, didn't we all learn in grade school that two wrongs don't make a right? And the thing that kept going through my mind, again as a mother, was what example was she setting for her son? Ultimately we want our kids to be good people. Wanting to protect them from every single bad thing is simply not possible even though we would like to think otherwise. In this way, I think the mother in this book, while very intelligent, was missing some basic insight.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (2009)

2011-01-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to read this book for a long time after hearing rave reviews from many of the readers I respect the most (mainly my mom) and I finally got the chance while staying in Texas over the holidays and after a visit to my mom's library.

This book, the story of black maids and the white women they work for in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's, is a wonderful, funny, sad story and it had me from the first page. The words of Aibileen and Minny, the two black women, and Skeeter, the young white woman, are so authentic and real, as a reader you immediately have sympathy for them and their friends and family. When they set out to undertake writing a book of interviews of maids in their town, I was excited and scared right along with them.

This is a story that shows us what is was like for both black and white women in those days in the South, but it also explores friendship, loyalty, and family. It is wonderfully written and kept me turning the page, desperate to find out what happened at the end. I finished it today on the roof top patio of a hotel in San Antonio TX, sitting in the sun and trying not to cry, so happy to have finally had a chance to read this wonderful first novel and completely satisfied by the ending. Thank you, Ms. Stockett.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)

2010-12-08T05:01:00.000-08:00

I absolutely loved Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, which was his first novel and so I decided to read this one as well...

Safran Foer is a very creative and original writer and in this book, he includes photographs, fingerprints, and all kinds of graphic additions to illustrate the story, which is about 9-year-old Oskar and his search for the lock that fits a key he has found in his father's closet.

Oskar's father died in 9/11. He was on the top floor of the World Trade Center and Oskar suspects that he jumped from the top of the building, but does not know for sure. The uncertainty haunts him and he struggles to come to terms with losing his father. He feels that he must solve the mystery of the key in order to make some sense of his father's death.

At the same time, the story is about Oskar's grandmother and grandfather, and their very difficult relationship which stems from their having both been in the bombings in Dresden during the Second World War and the losses they suffered back then. This is a theme that is central to his first novel and is of great interest to me, after having done a lot of genealogy research on my own immigrant ancestors: how do people move on with their lives in a brand new country after having suffered so much in the old country? How does the past continue to affect us in the present, and how do the traumas get passed down to later generations?

Just as Safran Foer was brilliant in his first novel with the voice of the Ukrainian translator, he is brilliant here as well with Oskar's voice, a very intelligent but troubled child, as well as his grandmother, a loving and slightly neurotic older German woman. It is wondrous to me how he does this so well and makes his characters so real. And just as in his first novel, the side characters get just as much attention to detail and love from the author to make them pop right off the page. The writing is breathtaking and the story is very moving.

The only character I felt that got a little bit ignored was that of Oskar's mother, but towards the end of the book you realize that she has been looking out for Oskar all along, while trying to give him space to grieve, and deal with her own grief at the same time.

I would definitely recommend this beautiful book, just as I highly recommend his first novel, Everything is Illuminated and his recent non-fiction book, Eating Animals.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Relin (2006)

2010-11-12T06:42:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine lent this book to me some time ago and for some reason it took me a long time to get started reading it. I recently had lunch with her in Brussels at an Ayurvedic vegetarian restaurant called Slurps and on the menu they had a version of the “butter tea” served in Pakistan that Greg Mortenson talks about in his book. It reminded me that I really needed to read the book so I could give it back to her. So the next day I started it and I was quickly hooked.

I learned a lot from this book. I knew very little about Pakistan and Afghanistan and I had never heard of Greg Mortenson. Greg, an American who had spent a good deal of his childhood in Africa, came to Pakistan originally to climb K2, one of the highest and most difficult climbs in the world. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he failed in his attempt and nearly died getting off the mountain but by accident ended up recuperating in a small isolated mountain village which was completely cut off from the rest of the world. While there, he saw a need for a school for the children of that village and before he left he promised the people there he would come back and build one for them.

Back in the US he struggled to find funding for his project, but eventually managed to scrape the money together and return. As it turns out, that first school was just the beginning. The book details the growth of his project from building just one school and all the mistakes and dangers of the early days, to the growth of his charity, Central Asia Institute, into a fully fledged NGO that not only builds many schools in Pakistan but also moves into war torn Afghanistan to try to help children there as well.

At times Greg takes great risks trying to get schools built in the most remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, getting himself into precarious situations with local tribes. But he seems to have an angel watching over him as his friendly demeanor and carefully diplomatic respect for local customs allows him to earn the trust of the locals, in spite of the way that Americans are seen by many people in that part of the world.

It is a fascinating story and certainly Greg Mortenson is someone to be admired for his selflessness and dedication to helping children in what is a very difficult place to grow up. Hopefully his mission to create peace by giving those children a good education will be a force for good in the world in the coming years. More info at www.threecupsoftea.com or www.ikat.org.

Challenged to write

2010-10-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

I think most people who keep blogs really enjoy writing. And those of us who keep book blogs definitely appreciate good writing and the ability, talent and perserverance it takes to finish and publish a novel. Writing can be so cathartic and rewarding, and it is a way of communicating with others but also with yourself, since having to put your thoughts down in writing forces you to clarify what you are thinking.

I recently discovered a great website that is wonderful if you are interested in expanding the writing you do on a daily basis: it's called 750 Words and the idea is to write 750 words every day. The idea is based on the writer's practice of "morning pages" - that is, the first thing you do in the morning is write three pages on anything that comes into your mind. It's a great way to get your writer's flow going, use it for "brain dump" or just rant about whatever you want in the privacy of your own mind! The website makes it fun because you get badges for writing so many days in a row and there are other neat features that keep you motivated. Intrigued? Check it out - I love it!

Another great writing challenge is National Novel Writing Month which is coming up in another week or so. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, November. This is a big challenge and I have always been a bit scared to sign up for it. But this year I decided, what the heck? It's worth a try, right? I already have my story idea stewing in my head, but I'm not going to say anything more about it til I'm done - I don't want to lose steam talking about it when I am going to need to be writing about it. To complete 50,000 words in one month you need to write about 1700 a day... please wish me luck and perserverance! Oh, and...anyone wanna join me?

Pompeii by Robert Harris (2003)

2010-10-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

Good friends of ours lent my husband this book and he really enjoyed it, so I thought I would read it to see if it was appropriate for my kids who are doing Latin and Greek in high school, and it turned out to be a great read! (And yes, I think it is appropriate for my 15-year-old.)

The story follows a young "aquarius", the man responsible for maintaining the flow of water in the aqueducts that bring the precious liquid down from the springs to the coastal towns on the Bay of Naples. He has recently started his new job after the mysterious disappearance of the previous aquarius. Unfortunately, problems soon arise as one of the branches of the aqeduct suddenly runs dry and is contaminated by sulphur. He and his staff must figure out the problem as soon as they can, before there are problems in the coastal towns for the local leaders.

His mission takes him to Pompeii and the way he wants to solve the problem doesn't endear him to the town's leader, an ambitious and ruthless man. As the aquarius discovers just what is causing the problems with the water supply and the imminent threat of the eruption of Vesuvius, he realizes they are all in mortal danger.

The final part of the book details the eruption of Vesuvius and how that affected the people in various parts of the coast. It is fascinating and fast paced. It is also an interesting book as regards what it might have been like to live in roman times. I think my son will enjoy the Latin words that come up here and there as well!

Feather Crowns by Bobbie Ann Mason (1993)

2010-08-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

Another one of my random picks from the library shelves... I was not familiar with the author but the book looked interesting and it turned out to be a wonderful read. Of course a book where the first three chapters are about a woman in labor and giving birth to quintuplets might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I was riveted. It is the story of a young tobacco farmer's wife who unexpectedly gives birth to five children in 1900, and what effect this has on her life, as well as her husband, older children, extended family, and the small rural community they live in.
This is an incredible story - warm, funny, tragic - and the author does such a great job of making the early years of the 20th century seem so real, as if she lived through those times herself.

Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage by Alice Munro (2001)

2010-08-13T05:02:00.000-07:00

Normally I am not a big fan of short stories...just as you are getting involved with the characters and the plot, there's a sudden twist and it's over! But there is one big exception for me and that would be the short story collections by Alice Munro, which are fantastic. Each story is like a perfect gem, or a spectacularly decorated tiny cupcake, to be savored. It is true what the blurbs on the back of her books say, she does manage to encapsule the depth and scope of a novel in each of her short stories. It is mastery, pure and simple - to die for.

I first read Munro's work a few years ago when her book, The View from Castle Rock came out. At the time I was very busy with genealogy and was intrigued by the idea of writing based on the history of one's ancestors, which she did in the short stories in this book. It's a great book that moves along gradually and bumpily through the lives of various immigrants, recent arrivals and longtime residents of Ontario, Canada, where she is from.

I recently picked up two of her short story books at my library. This particular volume, with the wonderful title Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage, did not disappoint. The nine stories vibrate with detail and meaning, and let us be observers of all sorts of intimate relationships, personal struggles, the pain we cause and the sacrifices we make. Highly recommended!

A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman (2009)

2010-07-14T22:36:00.001-07:00

Another brand new book I discovered at the library. I was intrigued right away when I saw it was a first novel and it was by a writer from Sri Lanka, Ru Freeman. I had to take the book home and I am so glad I did - it was excellent.

The story takes place in modern Sri Lanka and moves back and forth between two women's stories - Latha, a young girl who is a servant in a wealthy home; and Biso, a mother of three small children who has decided to leave her abusive husband on the southern shore of the country and take her children to her aunt's home in the north - a long journey by train.

Latha's life is dramatic, due to her inability to resign herself to her fate as a servant. She wants to be seen as a person just as valuable as Thara, the daughter of the family she works for and the same age as herself. Her "disobedience" has far-reaching consequences, not just for her, but for the entire family.

Biso is an incredibly devoted mother but also "disobedient", also unable to resign herself to a loveless marriage and at the point when her husband's violence begins to include one of her children, she plans her escape, which is not without uncertainty or risk. This decision and their trip up north ends in unforseen tragedy, but not before they have some beautiful moments together and meet several random strangers who help them in unexpected ways.

First and foremost, this is a story of women. The men are a bit marginal to the plot and they nearly all let the women down or are dominated by women. It is a story of women as mothers, as daughters, as loyal friends and sisters; helping and supporting each other but also betraying each other. It is also a story about courage, about not giving up and fighting for what your heart desires and for your dignity. In spite of the tragedy in their lives, both Biso and Latha do the best they can with the resources they have, and even though they both make mistakes and suffer the consequences, the ending of the book is bittersweet.

This book is also a fine introduction to life in Sri Lanka, in several layers of its society. There are many scenes with cooking and food, clothing, housekeeping, and other daily routines that gives the reader a real feel for what life is like there.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was sorry when it was finished - I would have liked to know the rest of Latha's story!

Plainsong by Kent Haruf (1999)

2010-07-05T02:36:00.000-07:00

A little gem I found by accident...I was looking to see if my library had English translations of Haruki Marukami and thought they might have shelved them under HAR. No such luck but a couple of novels by Kent Haruf caught my eye and a when I saw he was a writer and professor at Southern Illinois University I was intrigued, so I took "Plainsong" home with me.

A delicately written realism...plain people struggling with difficult times in their lives...described with respect and a generous heart... I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was sorry when I finished it.

The author describes the lives of a few people in a small Colorado town - a young high school girl who discovers she is pregnant, a father and his two young sons struggling to come to grips with the fact that their wife and mother abandoned them, the high school teacher who helps her pregnant student in more ways than one and at the same time cares for her father with Alzheimers, and finally the two elderly bachelor farmers who take the risk of stepping out of their years of isolation and against better judgement, become involved in the lives of strangers. Little by little, the lives of these characters become intertwined and at the same time, the author gives us, through them, a portrait of the whole town, both good and bad. A book that had me truly caring for the characters by the end. I highly recommend it.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme (1984)

2010-06-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

Keri Hulme (born 1947) is a writer from New Zealand and The Bone People is thus far her only novel; she has also written poetry and short stories. Her ancestors were native New Zealanders as well as Europeans.

In 1985 Hulme won the Booker Prize for The Bone People. This book is a mystical fable that weaves the history and language of the Maoris and the grim realities of contemporary life (alcoholism, poverty, child abuse) with the story of three individuals who become wrapped up in each other's lives.

The story begins with Kerewin Holmes, a reclusive intellectual and painter of mixed ancestry who lives in an isolated tower on the New Zealand coast. She spends her days fishing and drinking and is frustrated by her inability to paint. One day she finds a little boy, Simon, has broken into her home. She soon discovers he is mute, but very clever and has a reputation for being a thief and a trouble-maker. She keeps him at her house until his father, Joe, comes to pick him up.

Joe, a Maori, explains how he came to be blond Simon's father: Simon was found washed up on a local beach after a terrible storm and was the only survivor of the boat he was on. He was severely traumatized, and since he has never spoken, his origins were a complete mystery. Joe and his wife volunteerd to raise the boy as their own but soon thereafter, she and their infant son died, leaving Joe and Simon on their own.

Kerewin, Joe and Simon soon become friends and something of a family but at the same time, Kerewin begins to see that Simon is more than a handful for Joe, and while the father and son love each other devotedly, Joe simply cannot cope and is physically violent with Simon.

Kerewin herself (I kept thinking that she represented the author - look at the similarity of their names, profession and ancestry) has her own issues; she is estranged from her family and avoids all intimacy, and is struggling with her art.

Joe and Kerewin both try to make things work for Simon but the story takes a dramatic turn which results in severe injuries for Simon, prison for Joe and a life threatening illness for Kerewin - and they are all separated from one another, and forced to find their own way back.

This novel was a bit difficult to get into at the beginning due to author's very unique style of writing and my unfamiliarity with life in New Zealand but once I began to know and care about the three main characters, it was very difficult to put down. It was a painful book to read at times - I found it especially sad when it became clear that Joe was beating Simon, and it was so difficult to reconcile the caring father who hugged and kissed his son with the vicious drunk that violently abused him. I could understand why Kerewin tried to help them in the way she did, and also why it did not work in the end.

This book is also a fascinating introduction to New Zealand's culture and society. I would highly recommend it for "Books Around the World".

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris (2010)

2010-06-15T02:44:00.000-07:00

I love looking at the "new arrivals" shelf in our library - sometimes I find a brand-new book by an author I never heard of and it intrigues me and I take it home and am swept away by a new story. This book was one of those.

I admit I hadn't hear of author Joshua Ferris before. His first novel was "Then We Came to the End", which won several awards. This is his second novel and I was immediately caught up by the premise: Tim is a partner at a prestigious law firm in Manhattan, with a lovely home in the suburbs, a wife who sells real estate and an overweight teenage daughter. Inexplicably, he suffers from a never before described disease that has incredible and far-reaching consequences for his life and everyone around him, and no one can determine if it is a physical illness or a mental disorder. Namely, he suffers from bouts of uncontrollable walking.

Are you intrigued? I was. I couldn't put the book down! The storyline shifts back and forth between different periods in his life when he suffers from the walking on a regular basis as well as the periods of remission in between, and little by little we learn what the disease really entails, how he manages it and what effects it has on him, his career, his wife and daughter and his relationships with them. Sometimes the story reminded me a bit of "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Nieffinger; towards the end of the book it often made me think of "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

The book deals with the idea of "til death do us part" in a marriage: to what lengths should a partner go to support the other partner with a debilitating illness? Should the sick partner stop accepting help and support from the other, and set them free to live a "better" life? Or is this also a kind of betrayal? It also adresses the question of a man's identity and how it can be so wrapped up in his career that nothing seems to be left when it is taken away from him.

Finally, the utter helplessness of the medical community when faced with something so unexplainable...the biggest question that I had in my mind all through the book was why didn't they consider amputating his legs? If that sounds barbaric, read the book and tell me if that doesn't occur to you as well, especially towards the end. Or does it seem that he finally finds some kind of peace with his existence? I couldn't decide.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell (2006)

2010-05-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

On Saturday my youngest son had a badminton tournament so I wanted to have a gripping, fast read to keep me occupied during the long waits we have between matches. Out of my stack of library books, I chose this book by Maggie O'Farrell. I have read one of her books before, her debut novel "After You'd Gone" which I remembered as being gripping, un-put-downable, and with a twist at the end. So I thought this might be just the right kind of book!

Indeed it was! The story hooked me in from the get-go. Esme Lennox, of the title of the book, is the key character. She is a 70-something woman who has been kept in a mental institution in Edinburgh for 60 years. Her great-niece, Iris Lockhart, receives word that she is Esme's only remaining relative and is suddenly responsible for Esme, whom she never even knew existed before now. The mental institution is due to close and Iris has to make arrangements for Esme's further care.

Iris discovers that Esme was Iris's grandmother's younger sister. Iris's grandmother, Kathleen, who is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's, is no help in sorting out the mystery of why Esme was put in a mental home at the age of 16 and never released, never visited, never acknowledged as being a member of the family. As she learns more and more and gets to know Esme personally, she unearths long buried family secrets that have an enormous impact on her life.

This was a well-written story that moves along and is very hard to put down! The scenes of Esme and Kathleen's early childhood in colonial India and return to Scotland are well done - we can easily imagine the culture shock it must have been to move to such a different place for the two young girls. I also loved how the book not only focused on Esme, but is in fact the story of three women's lives: Kathleen and Iris are more than just side characters, the author's development of them adds great depth to the story and helps us understand more about the family and societal dynamics that led to the great tragedy of Esme's life.

Ultimately, this is a book about identity and how it is intertwined with our family and our ancestors as well as our descendants. As Esme realizes after she meets Iris:

We are all...just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, and then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)

2010-05-02T11:08:00.001-07:00

I was so glad I found this in my library. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and was also one of Oprah's ten books she chose that made the most impact on her in the past ten years (latest issue of Oprah magazine). So I knew it would be thought-provoking.

The story follows various characters in Manchester County, Virginia in the mid 1800's, a time when white landowners had black slaves. What I didn't know is that free black landowners sometimes also had slaves, and one of the main characters in the book is Henry Townsend, a black farmer with a large estate and many slaves. Henry has done well due to the good graces of the County's most powerful white landowner, William Robbins, who allowed Henry's father to first purchase his own freedom and then his wife's and finally his son's. Before he had enough money to free his son, Robbins made Henry his personal valet and taught him much of what made him able to be successful when he finally had his own estate.

We become acquainted with so many characters: white, black, Native American; free, enslaved; educated, uneducated; those with values and morals and those with no scruples. This book also gives an incredible close view of life in those times: how people ate, worked, interacted, loved and hated. We see the lack of freedom of the slaves but also the other "second-hand citizens" of those times, i.e women, Native Americans, homosexuals. The portrayal of this society is also surprisingly violent, especially the conclusion of the novel.

The story is elegantly woven and tips back and forth between many characters, different points in time, and various points of view. Sometimes it is difficult to remember which character is which - as a reader you must be attentive with this book. But it is well worth it as towards the end you have a wide view of the humanity and inhumanity in Manchester County. I do agree that it is thought-provoking, eye-opening and very well written, and I learned a lot reading it.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1999)

2010-04-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying this is one of the best books I have ever read. I read it a long time ago and picked it up at the library again recently because its subject matter has become very timely - this year Congo celebrates its 50th anniversary of becoming independant from Belgium, and the major events of the book take place during the violent period surrounding Congo's independence in 1960. At the moment there are many commemorative events planned here in Belgium to mark this anniversary and so I thought it a good time to re-read this book.

Aside from being a historical-political novel, which it certainly is, this is also an intimate portrait of a family. The family mirrors the family I grew up in, in that there are daughters. Their father, Reverend Price, a Baptist minister in Georgia, decides to take his wife Orelanna and their four girls to Congo as missionaries. He will be in charge of trying to convert the inhabitants of a small Congo village to christianity, a crusade he takes to with a fiery passion and without any regard for the local customs or diplomacy.

The four daughters are: Rachel, about to turn 16 and more concerned with her hair and clothes than anything else; Leah and Adah, 14-year-old twins who are both incredibly intelligent but still very different as Adah was born paralyzed on one side of her body and does not speak; and Ruth May, the precocious and brave baby of the family. Mother Orelanna has no idea what is in store for herself and her girls until they arrive in the village and discover how difficult it will be to survive the year. Especially when the political situation in the Congo becomes very precarious and her husband refuses to leave, despite the advice from his church. This results in the Price family becoming cut off from all outside support and left to survive on their own and with the good will of the villagers. This ends up having tragic consequences for the family.

As Leah says, "You can't just point to the one most terrible thing and wonder why it happened...Each bad thing causes something worse...you'll go crazy if you think it's all punishment for your sins. I see that plainly when I look at my parents. God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves."

What I love about this book is that even after the disaster that ends up pulling the family apart, we still get to follow their lives and see what the long term effects of this experience had on the members of the family. This book also touches on so many themes that I care about: motherhood, marriage, the relationships between sisters, religion, respect for other cultures, living abroad, culture shock, the failure of foreign policy and politics to help African countries, and the nature of evil. At the end of the book, Leah, who once worshipped her father and believed in his goal of saving the world through christianity, must admit that "There is no justice in this world...this world has brought one vile abomination after another down on the heads of the gentle, and I'll not live to see the meek inherit anything." But at the same time she sees there is the possibility to love, live and experience grace: "What there is in this world, I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water throughout the sphere of their influence...there's the possibility of balance. Unbearable burdens that the world somehow does bear with a certain grace."

Round Rock by Michelle Huneven (1997)

2010-04-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

I have decided to try to be more proactive about blogging my reads - I find if I procrastinate I kind of forget what was most important to me in the book. I just finished this last night and brought it downstairs with me this morning and set it by the computer so I would remember to blog about it today...

There was a more recent novel by this author recommended in a recent Oprah magazine, but our library only had this book, her first. Since I love reading first novels, I took it home.

This starts out as a very quirky novel, it follows several characters in a small town in a California citrus producing valley, and a local mansion that is used as a facility for recovering alcoholics. It took me a while to get invested in the characters. There is Red Ray, the former alcoholic who runs the facility and is everyone's friend. Lewis, a messed up PhD student who doesn't want to see that he has a drinking problem. Libby, a woman living in a trailer after her architect husband left her. Billie, her best friend and heiress to a huge citrus fortune, who lives with her father and son in her mansion and is lawsuit happy. Add to that many more colorful characters and a small town mentality of everyone knowing everyone else's business... the more I read, the more interested I became.

The story has some twists and turns in the plot, and there is both sadness and resolution in the end. It was well written and makes me want to read more from this author.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)

2010-04-11T05:15:00.000-07:00

This book won the 2009 Man Booker Prize and when I saw it in paperback in our local bookstore that carries English books, I was intrigued. It was nice and thick (652 pages) and caught my interest because it was a historical novel about Thomas Cromwell, who was the most powerful of Henry the 8th's courtiers. I recently read a historical novel about Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, so I decided that I would read this one as well - one of these days I am going to have those historical figures straight in my head!

The novel follows Thomas Cromwell from the time he is a boy, skims over his career abroad as a mercenary, and picks up when he returns to England as the right hand man of the Archbishop of York. The book is extremely well written and gives great insight into the intrigues, politics and brutal ugliness of life at court. But it also shows the main characters as human beings, people we could imagine in our society today. Anne Bolyen, in particular, and especially Henry the 8th himself stand out. But Thomas Cromwell is our hero, and however brutal he must be to defend his King's interests, he also is the beloved patriarch of his family, a loving husband and father, taking in young men as his apprentices and raising then as members of his extended family, making sure the young girls in his care marry well, and creating a very successful law practice and a warm home base.

This is a book to read slowly and savor. It does not always read easily, some passages are dense or cryptical, but it is worth it to experience the unfolding of the story.

The Photograph by Penelope Lively (2002)

2010-02-18T00:18:00.000-08:00

I was out with my kids yesterday and we made a stop at our main library downtown where they have a huge selection of English books. I picked out four to take home and I started on this one first. It was not very long and once I got into it, I couldn't put it down, just kept reading and reading until I was finished. It was a very compelling book.

The story starts out as Glyn, a 60 year old professor, is looking for a document in a cupboard and unexpectedly comes across a picture of his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. As he looks closer, he sees that the other man is Nick, Kath's sister's husband. Glyn is in shock - what does this mean? He decides to find out and goes straight to Elaine, the sister, to find out if she knew about this. The book is about the consequences of him finding the picture but also about what happened to Kath, which we only find out little by little.

The book also examines two marriages, and the theme of paying attention to those closest to us, and how important this is. Glyn realizes, through his search for information, that there was a lot about his wife he simply didn't know, and this turns out to be tragic.

Recent reading

2010-02-17T00:16:00.000-08:00

I've been reading (as always!) but been too lazy to sit down and write a respectable post about some of the books I've been enjoying. So here is a quick review of two books I got from the library:

Gilgamesh by Joan London (2001)
I loved this book! It was a bestseller in Australia and is a well written first novel about three generations of a family of outsiders in search of a place to call home. From London to the Australian wilderness, back to pre-war London, to Armenia, Persia, and back to Australia again... It was a quick read and I got completely caught up in it and finished it in one day. The characters came to life, as did the landscapes they travelled through. I highly recommend it - look for it at your library!

The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos (1994)
If you like history you will enjoy this. Based on original documents (diairies, letters, sermons) which are extensively quoted in the book, the author tells the story of Eunice Williams, a young girl who was captured from the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1704 by a French and Indian war party, and adopted by an Indian family at a settlement in Canada. The rest of her family, along with many others in the town, are also captured or killed, some manage to escape. Her father, the prominent Puritan minister John Williams, is captured but released after a few years. He mananges to get the rest of his family back - all except for Eunice. And as they discover, after many years of negotiation with the French and the Indians, she doesn't want to come back. Fascinating story, very detailed and gives the reader a good idea of what life was really like for early Americans.

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon (1992)

2010-01-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

I loved the first installment of this series (see my post on it below), but I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the second book, "Dragonfly in Amber". Of course I wanted to find out what happened to Claire after she returned back to modern times and her first husband, of course I was dying to find out what happened to Jamie, her hot Scottish Highlander second husband...but the second book, once you got back to following Claire and Jamie's adventures in medieval France, began to drag on and on. I kept thinking Claire's pregnancy was taking forever and the same about Jamie's involvment in the spying and intrigues around Charles Edward Stuart and the plotting of his uprising in Scotland.

Perhaps this is the disadvantage to reading a series of books after they have all been published - you can hop right to the next one without having to wait a year or two in anticipation and forgetting some of the finer aspects of the plot and characters. Then it doesn't seem so dull when the second book rehashes some of these items to remind you.

In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the originality of the first book, but I think I will be moving on to other things - especially since our library only had books 1, 2, 5 and 6.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

2010-01-12T04:39:00.001-08:00

I heard about this series from my mom and was intrigued - apparently this book and the six that follow it in the series have a big fan base. So what I always do when my mom mentions an interesting book is go check the online catalog of our public library to see if they have it. They did so I picked it up and read it over Christmas....

...or should I say I got swept away by it over Christmas?! I can certainly understand the fans - this is a story that sucks you in and keeps you hooked because you want to know more. And it includes elements of the historical novel (Scotland in the 1700's and post WW2), romance novels (steamy sex), science fiction (time travel), action and adventure (clan warfare, intrigues, spies looting and plundering, wild rescues), social history (daily life in the 1700's) - so there is really something to appeal to everyone. It's also a satisfyingly thick book, great for a long trip.

The story is about Claire, a young woman who was a nurse in military hospitals in World War II. She is on a holiday with her husband, Frank, in Scotland, a sort of second honeymoon since they had been separated so long because of the war. Visiting an ancient mystical stone circle, she is somehow transported to 1743 and thrown at the mercy of a clan of Scottish warriors who, suspicious of a lone English woman in strange clothes, take her with them to determine whether she is an English spy. One thing leads to another and she is forced for her own safety to wed Jamie Fraser, a Scottish outlaw. The marriage of convenience quickly turns into a passionate union and while events take Claire and Jamie all over Scotland and even to northern France, they become a real team, intensely loyal and devoted to each other in the face of any obstacle. At its core this book is a love story in "Gone with the Wind" style!

I am now busy with book two in the series, "Dragonfly in Amber". More soon!

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill (2007)

2009-12-17T02:09:00.000-08:00

This book was a gift to me from Mary, my sister’s mother-in-law – I had recently given her one of the Penguin Great Journey series which told the true story of Olaudah Equiano, a man born in Africa and taken as a slave to the Americas in the late 1700’s. Coincidentally, Mary’s reading group was reading “Someone Knows My Name” this fall, which not only tells the story of Aminata, a young girl trapped as a slave and also taken to the Americas, but also mentions Equiano in the later parts of the book. There are many similarities between the life journeys of Aminata and Equiano, a major difference being that Aminata is a fictional character and Equiano a real person of flesh and blood, who published his own autobiography in London in 1789.

This does not at all diminish the power of Aminata’s story or the feelings you have as a reader accompanying her on her brutal journeys. Told in the first person, based on the actual history of that time and sparing no details, we first see Aminata in her near idyllic life in Africa, a beloved only child of her Muslim father and midwife mother. She learns much from both her parents, important things which will serve her well: the basics of the Koran and the desire to read and write, and gynecology and obstetrics skills paired with a knowledge of herbal medicine.

She is ripped from her family in the most brutal way imaginable and is forced to make the harsh journey to the Americas, first on foot and later by ship. It is a miracle that she arrives in the Carolinas still alive, just barely hanging on to her humanity and her physical health. She ends up being sold to an indigo plantation where the second phase of her life takes place, but always in the back of her mind the desire to return home to Africa one day.

Through Aminata, we are privy to many aspects of the slave’s experience: daily life and tremendous hardships, the different relationships between fellow slaves as well as slaves and owners, the possibilities and limitations to a person who was held as a slave, the historical context and the role of black slaves and freemen in the Revolutionary War, and what happened to them after the defeat of the British. We are also a witness to the creation of the “Book of Negroes”, a real genealogical document created to register all the free black persons who emigrated to Nova Scotia after the war. Aminata was one of these who regained her freedom through service to the British, but heartbreak and hardship continued in her life, in spite of her new situation in Canada.

Her greatest wish remained: to return to Africa. After years of struggle she finally gets her wish, through the colonization of Freetown by black people from Nova Scotia. But all is not what it seems and the Africa of her youth is difficult to find, so towards the end of her life, the abolitionists convince her to join their struggle as a witness for the British parliament, and she travels to London, where she finally finds a kind of peace.

This is an incredibly moving tale, at times impossible to get out of your mind, or to put down. Also when you consider the conditions that she traveled and lived in, and still managed to survive, it is truly mind boggling. I can’t even imagine as a young teenager, having to go through the indignities and suffering that she bore. How lucky I am for the place and time I was born. But finally the most important aspect of all – at our very heart we are all the same, and want the same things – to be with our parents and family, to live in a safe community, to be able to provide for our children and see them grow up, to learn and to be free to come and go where we will. Today still there are so many of us in this world who do not possess these basic rights, and Aminata’s story is a witness to the tragedy of slavery, the dark side of the human condition, and the beauty and strength of the human spirit. A moving story, a well-written book, and a powerful reminder of things we must never forget.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (2002)

2009-12-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

I think I have already mentioned that I have a thing for first novels - I am already impressed before even opening the book at the tenacity and talent it takes to get a first book published! I bought this because it was included in a special Penguin collection of important books put out in 2007 called “Penguin Celebrations” – all the books had a cool retro cover and they were really cute. I bought a few of them, and this was one that appealed to me.

The novel is about a young American writer who travels to Ukraine to search for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazi’s. He is assisted by two Ukrainians: a young man who is a translator and his “blind” grandfather, who serves as their driver. The book is unusual in that half the chapters are actually written by the young Ukrainian translator – and let’s just say his English isn’t that great! It sounds as though the author spent a lot of time listening to Ukrainians speak English because once you get used to reading it, you can really hear Sasha speaking.

The story alternates between the three men’s journey as described by Sasha, letters from Sasha to the American discussing the writing of story and his own life, and then the novel itself, which starts with the history of the village they are searching for and the writer’s great-great-great-great-grandmother and builds up slowly to the grandfather.

Some parts of this novel made me laugh out loud – especially the scene where the American tries to tell the two Ukrainians he is a vegetarian and that this means no meat, “not even sausage” – it was so funny I read it out loud to my husband and then to my one of my kids. But much of the novel is heart wrenchingly sad and deals with extreme cruelty, intolerance, hatred and tragedy.

An excellent, creative and courageous book. One of my favorite lines in the book:

...once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you
heard it.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2003)

2009-12-09T06:55:00.000-08:00

This was a birthday gift from my friend Joy, who said it is one of her favorites. I had heard of it, knew it had been made into a film, but had never read it and didn’t really know what it was about. But I knew it would be good if Joy liked it! I was intrigued when I saw that it was a first novel, I am always impressed by first novels because I know how tough it must be to get that first one turned out and published.

This is a very unique and unusual love story about Henry and Clare. Henry has a genetic disorder that causes him to involuntarily time travel, which turns out to be rather dangerous as he can never predict when or where he will show up – and he is always naked when he arrives. He meets Clare on his time travels to the past when she is a young girl and they become friends as he continues to appear in her time. Later they meet when they are both adults, and in the same present, fall in love, and marry. But Henry’s time travelling begins to cause more and more problems…

I truly admire the author’s imagination and ingenuity in describing Henry’s disorder, it is amazing how well thought out the details are, all the little practical implications have been carefully puzzled into the story so that it becomes completely plausible.

I also found the family relationships described in the book were finely drawn, especially Henry’s grief for his mother, his skewed relationship with his father, Clare’s family dynamics and her mother’s mental illness, Henry and Clare’s friends and their issues, Henry’s work colleagues at the library, Henry’s Korean surrogate mom …by the end of the book they all were a real cast of characters to me, not just extras.

The other thing I loved about this book was the silent main character: the city of Chicago! Having lived in the Chicago area as a child and teen, I was very familiar with a lot of the places the author describes, like the Art Institute, the Natural History Museum, and felt like I was there again. Obviously the author knows the city very well and has spent a lot of time in its many neighborhoods. This could easily be one of those books that inspire tours of the city (like Barcelona and “The Shadow of the Wind”), taking fans to all the spots mentioned in the book, because they are all real places. I loved that the author included an actual real bookstore and record shop in the story!

Ultimately this novel is about loyalty, sacrifice and love, and the last couple of chapters had me staying up late and getting all choked up. A great read. So glad I didn’t see the movie before I got a chance to read it. I don’t even know who the actors were and don’t care – Clare and Henry are so clear in my mind.

Thanks, Joy!

The Constant Princess, by Philippa Gregory (2005)

2009-11-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

This was the book I won over at Sheila's blog (Journey Through a World of Books) - she constantly has great giveaways, so go over there and check it out. If I can win, anybody can!

The book is a historical novel that reconstructs the life of Katherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess and daughter of powerful Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain. From birth, she is betrothed to Arthur, the oldest son of the English king, and thus destined to be Queen of England and crucial cement in the relationship between Spain and England and just a pawn in the diplomatic power games going on in Europe at the time.

As soon as she reaches marriageable age, she is shipped off to England to wed Arthur. Their marriage is short lived, as he dies unexpectedly, and then Katherine is left to rot away while her father-in-law basically holds her hostage until financial arrangements have been agreed with her parents. But Katherine does not give up trying to have a hand in her destiny and she perseveres and manages, by holding fast to a crucial lie, to marry Arthur's brother, and next in line for the throne, Henry the 8th.

Fascinating stuff, which makes me want to get out a history book and get clear on all the historical details. Author Gregory does a good job of getting inside her characters' heads without it seeming too implausible. I was most impressed by the years that Katherine was in exile in England, alone and for all intents and purposes abandoned by both sides of her family, which must have been very difficult for a young woman. But she managed to come back and fulfill her destiny as Queen of England after all, and do an excellent job of it, too. Until Anne Boleyn catches her husband's eye...but that is another book!

Boo!

2009-11-20T05:21:00.000-08:00

Just a postcard I picked up at a recent visit to the Magritte museum in Brussels - couldn't resist sharing it here!

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

2009-11-17T01:33:00.000-08:00

This book was a gift from my long lost friend Rebecca who I reconnected with on
Facebook earlier this year. She came to visit us this summer and brought this book with her from London. I had vaguely heard of the book, but never read it.
Apparently it is a well known satirical comedy, and has been adapted many times for the stage and radio. I read the introduction with great interest, becoming rather intrigued by the book and the author’s background. The book is essentially a parody of the romantic rural novel popular at the time (eg novels by D.H. Lawrence).

The story follows sensible young Flora Poste, who, having lost both her parents at the age of 19, decides to go live with relatives. But not just any relatives – she tries her best to figure out which set of relatives could most use “improving”, as she loves nothing better than fixing others’ lives. With the inhabitants of Cold Comfort Farm she has found the mother lode of people needing all sorts of lifestyle advice!

Cold Comfort Farm has been dominated for years by reclusive Aunt Ada, who stays in her room but nevertheless manages to keep everyone on the farm under her thumb by constantly reminding them of her childhood trauma: “I saw something nasty in the
woodshed”. With the arrival of Flora, events are set in motion that will soon change the balance of power. With gusto she sets about improving just about anyone she can get her hands on, with wafts of “What Not to Wear”-style good intentioned and practical advice left and right. No stone is left unturned and she even applies herself to improving the life of the farm’s bull, Big Business.

An enjoyable read, even though I am sure much of the very British humor went over my head!

The Shipwrecked Men by Cabeza de Vaca

2009-10-26T03:07:00.001-07:00

This is another from the Penguin series "Great Journeys" - fabulous little gems! This title is the true account of a Spanish expedition to the New World in 1527 that goes terribly wrong. The writer, Cabeza de Vaca, tells the incredible story of the shipwrecks, hurricances, starvation, disease, cannibalism, being enslaved by Indian tribes and his harrowing journey across the American southwest and into Mexico, together with four other survivors out of the six hundred who perished. It is an amazing story. Most interesting to me was his narrative about the lives of the native Americans, what they ate (seemed like very little and not especially good) and their customs. He ended up spending ten years roaming in miserable conditions before finally finding other Spaniards again and returning to Spain, where he wrote his story for the Spanish king.

It is incredible what people went through 500 years ago to travel - it makes our modern inconveniences seem petty by comparison. I'll try to remember that when I get on that "long" flight to America this week!

Middlemarch by George Eliot (1872)

2009-10-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

I loved this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the weeks I spent reading it, and looked forward to reading a few chapters every night. It is a surprisingly modern story about several families and couples in a small provincial town in England in the mid 1800's. George Eliot uses the storylines to touch on many themes like women's roles in marriage and public life, greed, gossip, the nature of a good marriage, family ties and expectations.

Sometimes it felt like I was reading a soap opera, as the book moved back and forth between some of the main characters just like scenes in a movie. It was also fascinating to read such a realistic depiction of what life was like nearly 200 years ago, for example, the details of the way the houses were furnished and used, the clothing, the daily habits. Most of the characters in the book are wealthy or working middle class, and we see that social status was a determining factor in many parts of life back then.

Finally, the individual stories themselves:

the marriage of young, intelligent Dorothea to the older scholar Casaubon and her unsuitable friendship with his nephew Will Ladislaw
the young ambitious doctor Lydgate who is trying to build his new practice in Middlemarch, and his difficult marriage to the spoiled little rich girl Rosamond Vincy
Rosamond's brother Fred Vincy's hopes of inheriting from their rich eccentric uncle Featherstone, and the implications for his later life and his engagement to Mary Garth, a practical and sensible young woman from a middle class family

A good long read to keep you company on a cold winter night!

Update!

2009-10-03T05:41:00.001-07:00

Just in case anyone was wondering, I haven't stopped reading! I am in the middle of Middlemarch by George Elliot (a very long book) and will be back soon!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling (1999)

2009-09-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

Book 3 starts out with the familar: Harry "causing" some disaster at the Dursleys. This time it happens to be accidentally blowing up the horrible Aunt Marge. Harry needs to get away very quickly, and is picked up by the Knight Bus, but not before he catches sight of a Grim (a giant scary dog) stalking him in the darkness. He also makes the unpleasant acquaintance of the Dementors, spooky creatures that are supposed to be on the lookout for the escapee from Azkaban, Sirius Black. The Dementors are horrible, and suck all joy out of their victims' bodies.

Safely at Hogwarts, the school year begins with a new class: Divination with Professor Trelauney, who promptly predicts Harry's iminent death! And there is again a new professor of the Dark Arts, Professor Lupin, who has some very strange habits.

The book is filled to the brim with magical drama: the Marauder's Map that helps Harry find his way to Hogsmeade Village for forbidden visits, the conflict between Crookshanks (Herminone's cat) and Scabbers (Ron's rat), the great Quidditch final, Herminone's big secret (which enables her to attend more classes than anyone else), the hippogriff (part horse, part bird) Buckbeak's death sentence, the appearance of Sirius Black who turns out to be Harry's godfather, and the discovery that Harry's father James was an Animagus and could turn into a stag. As always an exciting, whirlwind of a story!

American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld (2008)

2009-09-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

I LOVED this book, devoured it, savored it, completely enjoyed it. It made me think about things in a way I hadn't before, about marriage, being a woman sacrificing her career and identity to a husband...

And the funny thing was, when I first read the review of this last year I thought I would not like it. After all, the premise of the book is a fictional account that very closely follows the life of former first lady Laura Bush. Yes, the names are changed and the state they come from is changed (Wisconsin instead of Texas) but many of the larger events remain. And I was never a big fan of Laura Bush so I never gave it another thought until a fellow blogger suggested it a while back. Thanks, because I loved it.

The Voices, by Susan Elderkin (2003)

2009-09-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

I bumped into this book at the library when I was looking for something else in the E's. The cover, a picture of an aborigine girl with a stark blue sky and red earth behind her, intrigued me. So I picked it up, thinking I could read it for Books Around the World Challenge for Australia.

The main character is Billy, whom we meet as a 13 year old boy who has a special connection to kangaroos and loves collecting rocks and minerals. He lives with his parents in a small outpost in Western Australia. We also meet Billy as he is admitted to the emergency room as a young man, seriously injured in some mysterious way and very delirious. As the story unfolds, we learn bit by bit what happened to Billy over the course of his life.

The novel weaves Billy's history together with white and black members of his town, gives us some insight into the situation of the aboriginal community and modern Australia off the beaten path. The author has a canny ear for the way Australians speak - having watched lots of Australian TV series here in Belgium (Neighbors, Flying Doctors) when I was reading the dialogues I could just hear them in my head! The imagery of the landscape, especially the otherworldliness of the mining set up, is well drawn.

Apart from the landscape, the wild animals, the colorful inhabitants of the town, the other main element in the book are The Voices, who seem to be aboriginal spirits who lie in their hammocks all day and argue with the wind. The Voices are having an existential problem - no one wants to believe in them any longer and they fear for their existence. Through a young girl they call the spirit child, they have put their last hopes in Billy for their redemption.

At first the interruptions by The Voices are jarring, but little by little it becomes clear what thier role is in the story, and their hand in Billy's fate.

This novel really grew on me and I felt like I learned something about Australia, not only information about what it is like for people there, but also what it feels like to be there.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling (1998)

2009-08-27T04:08:00.000-07:00

In the second book of the Harry Potter series, it again starts off with a terrible disaster happening at the Dursleys, for which Harry of course gets the blame. This time, Dobby, the house-elf appears, and proceeds to ruin Uncle Vernon's important dinner party with a business client. Luckily Harry is saved by Ron in a flying car and whisked off to the Weasleys for the rest of the summer before school starts.

Harry and Ron somehow miss the Hogwarts Express train and decide to fly to Hogwarts in the car, where they end up crashing into the Whomping Willow and get in big trouble.

Trouble is brewing at Hogwarts as well: the new professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, the vain and pompous Gilderoy Lockheart, and all the other staff, cannot prevent a series of attacks on students whereby they are petrified. Rumors abound, some blame Harry for the attacks, and word has it the mysterious Chamber of Secrets has been unlocked, unleashing the Heir of Slytherin upon the school. Of course, Harry, Ron and Hermione set out to unravel the mystery! Their plan includes Polyjuice Potion to turn into Malfoy's pals for a few hours and get information out of him, former student Tom Riddle's interactive diary, Hagrid's friend Aragog the giant spider and a clue from Moaning Myrtle in the girl's toilets.

In the end, Harry finds out much more about Voldemort, prevails in a wizarding battle, saves Ginny Weasley (and wins her heart!) and cleverly sets Dobby free from bondage to his master.

This and much much more takes place in the whirlwind second volume in the Harry Potter series - what a great read!

BBC Book List - how does your reading history stack up?

2009-08-26T03:56:00.000-07:00

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 great books here... how do your reading habits stack up? I recently saw this and thought I would put it up, as a kind of wish list for future reading for myself! (x = have read or currently reading)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x (currently reading!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x (just got this from the library!)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x (LOVED these as a child!!!)
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x (re-read this recently)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x (ages ago when I loved sci-fi in high school!)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon x (read part of this)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt x
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x (re-read this recently, great children's book)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola x (French major in college!)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x (see 78)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albomx
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

How did I do? 34 that I am sure I read, I am not so sure about some of them, especially which Jane Austen novels I have read. Some of them I know I will most likely never read, but it does inspire me to look for some of the others!

Harry Potter Challenge: Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone (1997)

2009-08-19T03:26:00.000-07:00

I still remember my mom telling me about this great children's book she had heard about and how I should get it for my boys. So I got ahold of it somehow, and started reading it aloud to my oldest. He loved it! And by the time the second one came out, he was hooked and able to read on his own. I credit the Harry Potter series to my oldest son's love of reading, and his proficiency in reading in English.

So for me, re-reading Philospher's Stone was very nostalgic. I love the feeling of how new everything is for Harry and the wonder of finally discovering a place where he really feels he belongs, after all the mistreatment he has received at the Dursleys. The affection he gets from Hagrid, his new friendships with Ron and Hermione, his search for knowledge about his parents, make this in fact, a romantic story.

And then of course, there is all the adventure, mystery and danger... but with the satisfying wind up at the end of the year banquet, where everything seems to work out in the end. Totally appropriate for ten year old readers. What I think is brilliant about J.K. Rowling's plan for the books is how they get progressively longer, darker, and more grown up, right along with Harry himself and his friends...and the readers themselves.

Trans-Sister Radio, by Chris Bohjalian (2000)

2009-08-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

I loved "Midwives", I loved "Buffalo Soliders", both by Chris Bohjalian, but when I saw this one in the library I wasn't sure... the story is about a 40 something divorced school teacher who meets this film professor, starts dating him, falls in love - and then he tells her he is scheduled to have sex change surgery in a few months. What would you do? Would your life fall apart?

Well, that is exactly what happens to Allie in this book, as well as to her boyfriend, her ex-husband, and the town she lives in. The only person who seems to be able to deal with the fall out is her daughter, a freshman in college. Chris Bohjalian manages to write about this rather delicate topic in a way that doesn't make you see the main characters as players in a vaudville, they are real people and as a reader you manage to get past the raw details of their lives and see the bigger picture. I could not put it down, and finished it late at night the same day I started it!

I saw the twist at the end coming, but it makes for a fitting way to end the story, even if it is just a tiny bit implausible.

I won!

2009-08-17T03:25:00.000-07:00

I am so excited - I actually won a book, The Constant Princess, over at http://bookjourney.wordpress.com/ - she has some great giveaways on her blog. I am really looking forward to reading this book, as it is a historical novel about the Spanish Princess Catalina, who married into the British royal family. I will certainly post a report about it here when done

The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant (2005)

2009-08-14T04:00:00.001-07:00

Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" is one of my all-time favorite books. So when I saw "The Last Days of Dogtown" in the bargain section at Half Price Books a few years ago, I grabbed it. It took me a long time to get to, however, and it rested in my pile of "to be read" books. Finally this summer it got its chance!

The story is about a real village called Dogtown, situated on a desolated and rocky pennisula on Cape Ann, off the coast north of Boston. Based on actual history, the story follows the last inhabitants of Dogtown as they slowly die or move elsewhere with their lives, the great majority of them women who were outcasts of "normal" society. Their stories are gracefully interwoven in this novel, and the cast of characters grows on you until at the end, you are sorry to leave them behind but satisfied to know their various destinations.

Most moving to me was the story of the relationship between Judy Rhines, independent and lonely spinster, and the freed slave, Cornelius Finson, which is spun bit by bith through the entire book. Additionally, I loved the sense of community and caring (aside from a few individuals) that develops between the group of outcasts and how they help each other survive with dignity.

Harry Potter Book Reading Challenge

2009-08-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

This is so seredipitous! My son has read all the Harry Potter books, many times over, and we have always gone to see the movies right when they come out. I always planned to read the books myself, but kept putting it off. A few weeks ago, after seeing the movie for #6, I finally decided to get started on the books – I realize there is so much that you miss when you haven’t read the books and I decided I want to see the last movie being totally “in the know”. So now I am busy with the second one, and recently discovered a reading challenge over on GalleySmith that fits me like a glove! Anyone else up for it?

The Sabbathday River, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (1999)

2009-07-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

You want a compelling, riveting, thick book for a summer read? Go find this book at your library - it was excellent. I never would have found this had it not been for the Oprah summer reading list - they had another book by Korelitz listed, and my library didn't have that one, but they did have this one, and boy, am I glad.

The story is anchored by Naomi, a Jewish woman who moved from New York city to rural New Hampshire for idealistic reasons, and is struggling to make a place for herself in the conservative community. While out running one day, she discovers the body of a dead infant floating in the river. It is this discovery that will turn the town upside down, and ultimately change forever the lives of Naomi and the other main characters: Heather, the naive and strange young outcast in town, and Judith, Naomi's lawyer friend.

Twist and turns in the plot, thriller like suspense and courtroom drama - this novel has it all. But it also includes thoughtful passages pertaining to women's rights, small town cruelty, motherhood, feminism, religion and spirituality. I was sorry when it was over, and the twist at the end is actually tempting me to go back and read it again, to see if there were any clues that would have given the secret at the end away.

The Truth about Love, by Josephine Hart (2009)

2009-06-24T02:13:00.000-07:00

Don't you just love finding a brand new book in the library, and then you get to be the first to crack the spine a little bit? That was the case with this book, and since it also looked like an intriguing story, and was written by Josephine Hart who also wrote Damage many years ago, I took it home.

The story is about an Irish family who loses two children in tragic circumstances and how they deal with that and get on with their lives. At the same time, it is about a German man who has immigrated to their village to escape the demons in his home country after the two world wars and his own personal tragedy. Additionally, it is a kind of philosophical-political treatise on the history of Ireland, woven in with bits of the history of wartime Germany.

I think for someone who knew much more about Irish history at the beginning of the 20th century this book would have had a lot more meaning, but with the limits of my own knowledge about it, I felt lost during those sections and have to admit I skimmed through them. I did not enjoy the feeling that so much of the book was inacessible to me, and it left me with a negative feeling, although some of the passages about the family, and especially the oldest daughter and her mother, were very moving.

The Honeymoon, by Justin Haythe (2004)

2009-06-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

One of my random picks from the library...this was a strange, sad, and subdued story. Written in the first person, it tells the tale of Gordon, a twenty-something young American man living in London and trying to get over the end of his marriage and reconcile the fact that its failure had so much to do with his relationship with his very odd mother.

Gordon and his mother, Maureen, spent most of his childhood traipsing around Europe, for she was doing research for a travel guide to the best art in different European countries. He tells us about his mother's odd habits, and their solitude. He seems to be numb, when as a reader, you feel like he should be angry at what she selfishly did to his childhood.

Gordon meets Annie after he finally gets out on his own to go to art school in London. They marry and things seem to be going fine until they are invited on a honeymoon trip to Venice with Gordon's mother and her new Swiss boyfriend. It is there that the marriage unravels, due to the unbalanced and cruel behavior of Maureen.

An odd read, strangely compelling - because you want to find out what Maureen is capapble of and what she will do to Annie - but the ending is somewhat of a soft landing, considering the expectations and dread that are created by the creepy atmosphere.

Summer reading

2009-06-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

I recently popped into our library to pick up a few novels...I have to say we really do have a large collection of English books in Leuven. I meant to bring the list from Oprah's Summer Reading club with me, I had hoped to find at least a few of the books on her list (www.oprah.com/summerreading) this year in the library. But sadly, I forgot the list! So I picked out a few other interesting looking books that I will be sharing my thoughts about soon, here.

The Honeymoon, by Justin Haythe (2004) - was nominated for the Booker Prize and looked sad and a bit creepy.
The Truth about Love, by Josephine Hart (2009) - brand new, I don't think anyone's read it yet! Family drama set in Ireland.
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton (1970) - remember the movie with all those angst ridden teen actors that are now middle aged stars? I thought it might be interesting to revisit the book!

Back at home, I went to the online catalog, and to my great surprise, not one book from the Oprah list is held by our library! Not even Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast! (They do have it in Dutch but I hate reading English books in Dutch translation - it is just too weird.) What a disappointment.

On a bright note, they do have American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld, which was recommended to me by Kristin. So the next time I go to the library that will be the one I get!

The Senator's Wife, by Sue Miller (2008)

2009-06-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

Mom was reading this while she was here in May and I got the impression that she was not entirely happy with it. She left it for me to read, and all she would say was that it was weird. Hmmm.

I am not familiar with Sue Miller's other books, but I have to agree with Mom. This book is weird. More precisely, the ending is weird, and a let-down.

The story follows Delia, the wife of a senator, who has built up an indepedent life of her own after separating from her husband because of his inability to be faithful to her. They remain married and see each other intermittently, but in order to endure his philandering, she found she had to create distance from him, and although this is not how she would have wanted her life, she can live with things as they are.

A young couple moves into the house next door and Delia becomes friends with the wife, Meri. Meri has issues of her own, having to do with being a young wife, and how to reconcile herself with her new roles as wife, soon-to-be mother and someone who loves her job as a radio producer. I could certainly relate to both of the characters and some of the challenges they faced, being somewhat in the middle of the two by age and shall we say, "profession"? Sue Miller writes knowingly about marriage, intimacy and the particular difficulty women face to maintain a professional alter ego in spite of being most strongly identified with home and hearth, and raising children.

Towards the end of the book, through tragedy, Delia suddenly finds herself in the role of caring for her husband - after all those years of having absolutely no say in his comings and goings, he is suddenly completely under her thumb. She is in a strange way happy with this new situation, in spite of the limits it places on her own freedom - he has finally come home to her and she feels secure at last that he will finally be 100% faithful.

Until, of course, the final creepy twist in the story, up until which I was really enjoying the book and the characters. I found what Meri does at the end of the book to be incomprehensible, and although it might fit with the insecurity she feels, it just did not feel right to me. So, yes, I agree with Mom, it is a weird book.

A Note on The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

2009-05-31T05:12:00.000-07:00

A fellow avid reader, Joan, just sent me a link to his review of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides: http://jmlanfranco.blogspot.com/2008/09/virgin-suicides-by-jeffrey-eugenides.html It's so interesting because I really wasn't aware that he had written this book, although I saw the film a while ago. It intrigues me because I wonder how he gets such insight to the pysche of adolescent girls. I will have to look for the book at the library and think about it.

Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan (2007)

2009-03-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, you cannot help but know who Frank Lloyd Wright is; in fact there was a Wright home in our town (Geneva) and the Oak Park prairie houses were of course world renowned. However, aside from that, I personally never knew any other details about his life - that is, until Mom lent me this book.

Nancy Horan spent 7 years researching her incredible novel (it is fiction historically based in fact) which details the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and one of his Oak Park clients, Mamah Cheney. They first meet in 1907 when Mamah and her husband commission a home from Wright, and sparks fly. It does not take long before Mamah and Frank are secretly meeting each other. Mamah had long felt stifled in her marriage and Frank offered her the intellectual and spiritual relationship she had missed, along with a powerful physical attraction. A mother of two children, Mamah struggled with the implications that leaving her husband would have on them and on herself. In those days it was not obvious for a woman to walk away from a marriage and come out unscathed on the other side. But Frank, himself a father of six with a wife who refused to grant him a divorce, was compelling, and convinced her to move to Europe with him while he worked there.

Of course, it must be said, Mamah had a ideal situation which enabled her to escape real life - her unmarried sister and a devoted nanny both lived in with the family, and were able to step in and take over her duties as a mother and running the household. At times I found Mamah to be, in fact, rather selfishly self absorbed, in the way she deserted her children and simply accepted that others pick up the slack. This did have a consequence for her later, most poignantly in her later, strained relationship with her sister.

Mamah was a talented writer and translator and became involved with the early feminist movement, as the American translator for the Swedish feminist Ellen Keys. It was vitally important to her to have her own work, her own contribution to the world, and admirably, she did make this a priority in her life, spending time alone studying, even leaving Frank for a time in order to pursue her goals.

After spending time in Europe and Japan, she and Frank finally settled down in the home he was building for them in Wisconsin. At the outset, the couple was beleaguered by the press - their relationship was one of the biggest scandals Chicago society had known at that time and the newspapers smelled blood. But finally things died down and Mamah was able to make a real home for herself, finally spend time with her children, continute her literary work, and make plans for the future. The feeling that things in Mamah's life were at last getting on track and there seemed to be hope for a happy life, makes the dramatic ending all the more shocking, and truly sad.

This book is admirable in the imagination it must have taken to piece together the factual puzzle and fill in the blanks with educated guesses about how Mamah would have felt or behaved. Whether or not you sympathise with Mamah and agree or disagree with the life decisions she made, you cannot help but admire her as a powerful, daring person who never gave up trying to live her ideals.

The Cobra's Heart, by Ryszard Kapuscinski

2009-03-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

This is another of the Penguin "Great Journeys" series that I have mentioned before, this time in Africa. Ryszard Kapuscinski was a correspondant for a Polish newspaper in the 1960's and spent many years travelling around Africa. This little book pulls together some of his more memorable experiences there, especially off the beaten track, and about the people: "Their life is endless toil, a torment they endure with astonishing patience and good humour." A quick, engaging read with some fascinating tales.

The Buffalo Soldier, by Chris Bohjalian (2002)

2009-03-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

I was just with my mom and sister in Florida last week for our half marathon and my mom passed this book on to me to read on the plane home. I have to say, I was not very enthusiastic when reading the short summary on the back, but when I found out it was by the author of Midwives, which I read some time ago, I became intrigued, because I loved that book, and was amazed to find out the author was a man, not a woman. How could a man have written so poignantly and with so much understanding about pregnancy, delivery, being a midwife?? So I decided to give him a chance with Buffalo Soldier. I started reading it during my journey and it kept me company all the way.

The novel tells the story of a couple who lost their twin daughters in a tragic accident and who are struggling to put the pieces of their lives back together. They decide to foster a child, and a young black boy is placed with them. The husband struggles to come to terms with the child, his own grief and the distance between himself and his wife. The wife feels a close connection to the child, Alfred, which turns into a fierce loyalty when she faces possibly having to choose between him or her marriage. Alfred does his best to fit into the small and insulated white community, while warding off his own fears of abandonment.

I was entranced by this book. The characters are all real people, not one sided - even the secondary characters are superbly drawn. I was sorry when I got to the end of the book, even though it was a satisfactory ending, with some of the characters having to make hard choices, but the right ones, I think. And the Bob Marley song, "Buffalo Soldier", was in my mind all week...

I am definitely going to see if our library has more books by Mr. Bohjalian.

Diet for a Small Planet

2009-02-03T06:02:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading the classic book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé. This was one of the first books, originally published in 1971, to make the link between diets heavy in meat and environmental, ecological, social justice and poverty issues. It's fascinating to see how it got started as a grassroots, unconventional movement and how today it is becoming a more mainstream, even fashionable (i.e. Skinny Bitch, as well as Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan's recent books) thing to cut back on consumption of animal foods.

Interestingly enough, Lappé points out that she does not necessarily "advocate what most people think of as vegetarianism". She pleads for a return to the diet on which our bodies evolved: mainly plant foods, with animal foods "playing a supplementary role". While she personally does not eat meat, she acknowledges, just like Bittman and Pollan, that a difference can be made to our health, the environment, animal welfare and social justice if we simply start by reducing the amount of animal products we consume.

One of Lappés original reasons for writing this book (which started out as a mimeographed pamphlet) was to show that it was possible and indeed easy to get enough protein for good health on a meatless diet. The book includes many recipes, all of them vegetarian, most include dairy and/or eggs, as they are all trying to provide plenty of protein.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, by Tennesee Williams

2009-01-21T07:47:00.000-08:00

This was a Bookcrossing book I picked up at Greenway recently. Of course we have all heard of Tennessee Williams famous plays (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, , The Glass Menagerie, among others) but I personally was not familiar at all with his fiction.

This novel acquaints us with Mrs. Stone, a formerly famous stage actress who has moved to Rome to try to find some meaning in her days as a newly widowed, unemployed but very wealthy woman. She falls prey to various Roman vultures who are looking to get a share of her fortune by providing her with company and friendship. And while she is well aware of their intention, for some reason, she goes along with the scam, up until the end, that is, when she has a sudden change of heart, which Williams refers to as the "drift".

With only 117 pages, this book was a good, quick read, thought provoking and sad. I found some parallels to people's empty lives today, working so hard to achieve success and then finding at the end of the ride complete emptiness. I think the message of Mrs. Stone's life is to build meaning and introspection into our lives early on, or there will be no substance left when all our worldly pursuits fade away.

I'll be releasing this book back into the "wild" here in Leuven, unless there is someone who would like for me to pass it along to them to read (what the Bookcrossing website calls a "controlled release"!)

A Free Book

2009-01-19T01:54:00.000-08:00

Scott Blum, one of the founders of one of my favorite websites, The Daily OM, will be publishing two books in 2009, and is offering the first one, Summer's Path, free at his website: http://www.scottblum.net/

I downloaded it and just finished reading it. It is an intriguing exploration of what happens to us when we are about to die, when we are faced with a debilitating illness, where our souls reside, etc. all told as a parable which reminded me of The Shack in many ways. It follows Don, who has incurable cancer, and his struggle to decided what to do as he faces mounting medical bills and his worries about the burden he will leave behind for his wife. He finds assistance from an unexpected source, and the way he decides to handle his situation will surprise you. It certainly makes you think.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

2008-12-04T02:27:00.000-08:00

This book was published in 1989 but I never heard of it until Oprah had it as a book club selection this past year. Then my friend Aisling lent it to me this summer along with a bunch of other books, and she told me both she and her husband really enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to reading it.

At 1076 pages, it is a very thick book and a great one to keep at the side of your bed and read a bit in every night. The advantage to it being so thick is that, even if you get swept up in the story and want to keep reading late into the night, you know there is no possible way you can reach the end so you give up quicker and leave it for the next night and get more sleep! At least that's how it was for me.

And I did get swept up in the story, but at the same time I was able to take my time (a real feat for me) and savor it. At times it has the feel of a trashy romance novel, especially in the numerous rape scenes, but aside from that, it is an epic historical novel, following priests, builders, townspeople, earls, knights and the politics of a town in medieval England that is building a cathedral. I especially enjoyed the connection to real English history with the ups and downs of the crown and how it affected the local people. A great read!

Red Room

2008-11-14T05:40:00.001-08:00

No, not "Redrum" from The Shining.... Red Room is an online social network for authors, readiers, literary agents, book clubs. My mom pointed it out to me, and it looks very interesting. Especially the "write a novel in a month" challenge! Very interesting...

Mary just sent me a new supply of New York Times Book Reviews and after reading just one issue, I have a list of at least six books I'd like to read. I don't think my local library is going to be that up to date on English language literature, so I will just have to add them to my notebook and have hope or wait til my next trip to the US or England. But it is amazing how enthralling it can be to read something written about something written and read.

Anita Shreve: A Wedding in December

2008-11-06T02:54:00.000-08:00

My mom and I were just talking about how you can get on a reading jag with books by a certain author, voraciously devouring everything they've written and anxiously waiting for the next one to come out. And how, then, inevitably, you get tired of that particular author's books, they start to sound a bit the same, and then you stop being so enthuisiastic when a new book comes out.

The nice thing is, after you've broken up with your author for some time, you can often come back to their books and really enjoy the reunion! You read something new by them again, after a long time, and you remember why you loved their books so much in the first place.

My mom has just had this experience with Patricia Cornwall, I have recently with John Grisham (see below) and now Anita Shreve, with her novel "A Wedding in December" which was published in 2005.

A while back I read everything I could get my hands on by Shreve. I think she is an incredibly gifted writer and a wonderful craftsman of tales. This latest novel did not disappoint me. It follows a group of high school friends, now in their forties, who meet at for the wedding of two of them. They all have had their struggles over the years, some have secrets, some have major health problems and they all still grieve the death of one of their friends back during their high school days.

I certainly can relate to that feeling you start getting as you hit your forties and start ruminating about certain points in your life, the "road not taken", the "what if's", and others of your generation that you haven't heard from in years! This novel explores that for all of the characters - while they all have totally different lives, they are still touched by their shared past. It was a great read.

The Testament by John Grisham

2008-10-28T02:12:00.000-07:00

Remember that Bookcrossing book I found a while back at Greenway in Leuven? Well I just finished it on Sunday. I was down and out with the flu and spent the whole day napping and reading and being taking care of by my husband and boys (they did a good job).

This book was exactly what I expected: a fast paced story, lots of legal twists and turns, colorful characters, and once I got into it, I was unable to put it down. I have always enjoyed Grisham's novels and this was no execption.

The story follows the legal battle over billionaire Troy Phelan's last will and testament - he excludes his six children in favor of giving all the money to a daughter he has never known as she was given up for adoption long ago. Lawyer Nate O'Riley has to track her down in the Pantanal area of Bolivia where she is a missionary, at the same time he has to keep his own demons in check.

The part of the novel that takes place in the Pantanal is well researched and captivating. So I learned something about this part of the world.

I am going to be posting about this book over on Bookcrossing, too, and will be releasing it into the wild sometime soon (although I think my husband wants to read it before I let it go)!

Something to Share

2008-10-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

This summer we accidentally discovered a lovely bookstore in Brussels: Passaporta Bookshop. Not only was it open on Sunday afternoon and offered coffee and a place to sit, it is definitely one of those bookstores that invites browsing and perusing and generally getting lost among its stacks of treasures (my sister Christy will tell you this is one of my major character faults - do not take me into a bookstore if you have to be somewhere else on time later, for some reason "bookstore" trumps "not wanting to be late").

One of things I discovered at Passaporta was a new series by Penguin called "Great Journeys": a series of 20 slim volumes of excerpts from history's greatest adventurers' stories. I could not resist - the books have beautiful artwork and are such a dotey size, you can't help but pick them up. I actually ended up buying several of them, for gifts but also for myself, which felt really indulgent. But like I said, books are a real weakness!

I just finished number 16 in the series, "The Congo and the Cameroons" by Mary Kingsley, who writes about her travels in Equatorial West Africa in the late 1800's. It is amazing to follow her up and down the Great Peak of the Cameroons, through mangrove swamps, in all sorts of weather, narrowly avoiding bottomless pits, and doing it all on her own, in charge of her own troop consisting of a cook, boys to carry water and supplies, and several trackers. She was certainly a woman who did not let the prevailing customs of her day stop her in her love of travel and adventure and Africa itself:

Why did I come to Africa? thought I. Why! who would not come to its twin brother hell itself for all the beauty and charm of it!

After her second trip to Africa, she wrote the bestselling "Travels in West Africa" (1897), from which the Penguin book is excerpted. Tragically, during her third trip to Africa, while working as a volunteer nurse in a POW hospital during the Boer War, she died from enteric fever at the age of 37.

The Penguin series is a great opportunity to get acquainted with these obscure but amazing writers from long ago - when travelling was still a grand but risky adventure and there was so much of the world still to be discovered!

Back to Bookcrossing?

2008-10-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was so excited. You see, I was having lunch with a friend at Greenways, a nice little vegetarian spot in Leuven, and we accidentally discovered a whole pile of Bookcrossing books sitting on the table next to us. (Well, actually it was after my friend accidentally knocked over the table and we were picking the stuff up, that we discovered the books!) There were several in English, a couple in Dutch and one in French.

I had to explain to my friend what Bookcrossing is because she had never heard of it. It's basically a way to share books you've read and what you thought about them with complete strangers and at the same time be able to follow the book's journey around (ideally) the entire world, by leaving the books to be "found" in public places. First, of course, you register the book on the Bookcrossing website, whereby it gets its own specific number, which you write in the book.

I've been a member of Bookcrossing for about four years, and I love the whole idea behind it, but I gave up on it after a while because I got discouraged, none of my books ever really being "found". I did pass on some books to friends, hoping they might journal about them on the site and pass them on to others, or trade with other Bookcrossing members, but it never really took off for me. Perhaps I will have to give it another shot, now that I know I good spot to leave books in Leuven.

What book did I pick up yesterday? The Testament by John Grisham, left behind by someone from Gent. I'll write more about it here and on the Bookcrossing site as soon as I've read it!

I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti

2008-09-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

Another entry for Book Around the World, this time for Italy! My friend Aisling lent me this book - we always exchange books in the summer - and it turned out to be a gripping, tragic story.

The story is told from the point of view of nine-year-old Michele, a boy living with his sister and parents in a small village in Italy in 1978. It's a blisteringly hot summer and Michele and his friends bike around the hills, trying to stay out of the adults' way and have a good time. Unfortunately they make a discovery in an old abandoned barn that will change their lives forever.

It was certainly hard to put this book down once it got into the thick of things. The tension builds up as the ending approaches. Apparently it was also made into a movie. Finally, the novel bears a strong connection to many of the themes in Lord of the Flies. Not uplifting, but beautifully written.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why, by Amanda Ripley

2008-09-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

I received this book completely free in the mail through the program Read It Forward. I was excited to get it, because I had actually read a short review of it in Oprah magazine, and it sounded interesting. While I was reading it, it was the week of 9/11 and there was a lot in the news and on TV about those days. I saw the film United 93 and a National Geographic special on 9/11 at the time I was reading the book, so it all seemed incredibly topical to me, not to mention the fact that we had just returned from a visit to the US and had just been through all the international plane travel hullaballo. Who doesn't think about a disaster happening while travelling?

Amanda Ripley is a Time Magazine journalist and her book is excellently written and researched. In spite of its very serious subject matter I highly enjoyed it. Using examples and survivor stories from various disasters, accidents, and terrorist attacks, Ripley walks us through the different stages people go through when put in such a dire situation. Reactions ranging from denial, fear, resilience, panic, paralysis, and heroism are all explored.

Of course, what I was most interested in were Ripley's recommendations for those of us who might one day be in an unthinkable situation. The website for the book has more specific advice here, but two things she does mention in the book struck me:

- always read the safety card on every plane (all plane models are different) and be sure to locate the nearest exit as you board
- after checking into a hotel, take the stairs down from your room so you are familiar with a safe route out

And it is important to be aware of the normal psychological pitfalls that we are all liable to fall into as unexpected things happen, such as being overly optimistic or passive or sucumbing to group dynamics; by reading this book, you can make yourself more aware of what they are and hopefully keep yourself safe in future.

Mira Stout: One Thousand Chestnut Trees

2008-09-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

I found this book at my library and it sounded intriguing, about an young American woman whose mother immigrated from South Korea and her search for her identity through her mother's memories of Korea during the war as well as during her own actual visit to family in South Korea in 1987. It is a fascinating story, although I only really got into it when she finally got to her grandmother and mother's stories in Korea, and then at the end, her own visit there.

This book will teach you a lot of facts about Korea's history but at the same time it is an incredibly moving story of a family being torn apart by war and repression, first by the Japanese and then through the events of the Korean War. Living abroad myself, I could relate to many of the author's thoughts and impressions on being multicultural, removed from your home country, feeling like an alien. Of course, for her, being half caucasian and half asian brought its own challenge:

Naïvely I had expected to discover an instant identity; to be clasped to the country's bosom and greeted like a returning prodigal daughter. Instead I drew stares of indifference, incredulity or sufferance. After all, I was an outsider. Being half-caste had the same effect in the East as in the West. Your face was subliminally unsettling to both races. Eyes brushed over you as if you did not quite count, you were an aberration, a blip that would be smoothed over by the next manifestly white or coloured face that came into view

Stout writes about the division of Korea, and the families that were split by it, in a way that makes it seem so tangible to those of us who cannot imagine having no news, no visits, no information whatsoever about our loved ones. I got as choked up as the main character did while she visited the demilitarized zone:

A strange pressure built up behind the lump in my throat, burning and pushing at my chest; a surge of grief so powerful that I knew it could not be mine alone, but an accumumated, collective grief. My mother's unclaimed loss lay within me, along with aunts', uncles', and grandparents' suffering, and the interwoven despair of myriad families similarly caught in this division.

While visiting Korea she briefly toys with the idea of staying there, learning the language and making a life there. She can appreciate the way the Koreans' lifestyle differs from what she has known in the United States:

I felt exhausted by being American; weathering a constant storm of revisionism and the accompanying babble of inflamed opinion; the abrasive worship of celebrity and riches; even the massive choice of junk foods in the supermarket was tiring...

The descriptions of life in Korea are detailed and fascinating, the cultural mishaps often amusing. An engaging story that allows the reader to learn a great deal about the country - the perfect kind of book for the Book Around the World Challenge!

Garth Stein: The Art of Racing in the Rain

2008-08-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Jenny and Mark brought this book with them on their recent visit to us and left it for me to read and bring back to Mom (our own family version of Bookcrossing). I was initially very resistant to reading it, as I try to avoid books and movies with dogs, because they are always too sad - something bad always happens to the dog. But both Jenny and Mark convinced me that this book was worth it, and yes, although the dog does die at the end, that it is from natural old age and not some tragic accident, so I gave in and put it in my carry on to read on the plane.

Well the first chapter got me all teary eyed from the get go, and by the end, on the last leg of our journey I was nearly bawling - having to dig in my bag and find a tissue to blow my nose. The story IS sad, but it WAS worth reading.

The race car references were a bit over my head at times, but I absolutely loved the part when the main character, Denny, takes his dog, Enzo, the narrator of the story, for a test run at the race track, Enzo's first and only time to join his master at top speed. In fact what makes this book brilliant is the way the writer gets us inside Enzo's head, showing us what he thinks, feels, and observes. Incredibly well done.

Summer reading

2008-08-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

Why, oh why, do I do this to myself? Staying up til the wee hours reading books that I just can't put down, because I have to find out what happens! I was at our library on Saturday and brought two books home and now I am all finished and hoping to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight!

Anita Shreve: Body Surfing

Just finished this last night! The story of a young woman, Sydney, who has been divorced once and widowed once by the age of 29, and is spending the summer at a cottage on the shore as a tutor for the daughter of a wealthy family. All is well til the two older sons arrive for the weekend, and one of them sweeps Sydney off her feet. This causes a rift between the two brothers, and a year later, on her wedding day, Sydney finds out why.

I enjoyed it, Shreve's novels are always so well written, they just barrel you along like a train. The characters are well presented, real people. And the twist between the two siblings certainly gave me food for thought!

Jodi Picoult: The Pact

This was the one that kept me up all Sunday night. This book is already ten years old, but I hadn't heard of it. I have a read some of Picoult's other books and enjoyed them, and this one is just as engaging.

It's the story of two neighboring families who have a son and daughter, respectively, who have grown up together all their lives and become a couple in high school. The daughter carries a secret with her that makes her desperately unhappy and she convinces her boyfriend, the son, to help her commit suicide. The rest of the story follows the prosecution of the son for killing her, and what this does to everyone involved.

Well written, could not put it down! Even though the outcome was what I was rooting for, in some sense, it did not come across as believable that a jury would make that decision at the end of that trial. It seemed a bit too convenient.

Tara Brach: Radical Acceptance

2008-07-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

The full title of this book is "Radical Acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha". I bought it some time ago in my attempts to explore meditation and fit a practice into my daily life. I've done quite some reading on the subject, quite a lot less actual meditation, but it is still something I strive towards as it has huge benefits, spiritually, mentally, as well as physically.

Tara Brach's book approaches meditation through the Buddhist concept of Radical Acceptance, which Brach defines as "the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is." By accepting everything as it is in the present moment, we free ourselves from suffering and pain. Of course, this is no simple task, it takes attention to our state of mind, which is best achieved through the practice of meditation, for which the book gives detailed instruction of many types and ways to meditate.

Another crucial concept in the book is compassion, both for ourselves and others. The first step is to have compassion and loving kindness for ourselves, and then move on to extend it to people around us:

Even if we don't like someone, seeing their vulnerability allows us to open our heart to them. We might vote against them in an election, we might never invite them to our home, we might even feel they should be imprisoned to protect others. Still, our habitual feelings of attraction and aversion do not have to overrule our basic capacity to see that, like us, they suffer and long to be happy...Our circle of compassion naturally widens to include them.

In what was to me one of the best chapters in the book, Brach further talks about seeing the goodness in and forgiving ourselves and others. A Herculean task sometimes, but something worth striving for as being able to forgive is so important in relieving pain and suffering:

We maintain the intention to forgive because we understand that not forgiving hardens and imprisons our heart. If we feel hatred toward anyone, we remain chained to the sufferings of the past and cannot find genuine peace. We forgive for the freedom of our own heart.

Brach's book is filled with insight, food for thought, case histories from her therapy clients and her own personal experiences with meditation and Radical Acceptance, and detailed instructions of how to go about incorporating these ideas into your life. I highly recommend it.

William Golding: Lord of the Flies

2008-07-06T12:01:00.001-07:00

Who else had to read this in high school? We had this one year, I think it might have been sophomore English class with Mr. Seidel, where we had to read all these very depressing novels. Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and a couple others along those lines. It seemed dangerous to me at the time, because if you were already a little bit bummed out, the books we had to read would have really pushed you over the edge.

I was at our library recently, stocking up on some books for summer, when this caught my eye. I thought my oldest might be interested in it, since he's an avid reader, and then I thought perhaps I would re-read it myself, wondering what the effect would be after all this time. I remember that reading it as a high school student, certain things in the book just didn't seem clear to me, and it always had this air of mystery to it for me.

Well, re-reading Lord of the Flies didn't have quite the same effect on me as when I saw the original Willie Wonka movie in college (I was amazed at how many things in that movie simply flew over my head as a kid), but I definitely "got" certain plot elements much better this time around. Especially the whole thing about the kids having confused a parachutist who crashed on the island as some kind of a "beast". Golding is sometimes very subtle in his way of describing certain things and you have to be reading with attention not to miss things.

The other thing that was interesting was reading it with the perspective of being a mom of three boys as opposed to being a teenage girl which gave me much more compassion and sympathy for the boys on the island. I felt sorry for them that things went so terribly wrong.

Another thing that was fun about reading it again was realizing how much the makers of the television series "Lost" must have been influenced by this book. Only a brilliant novel could still inspire us like that 50 years on.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

2008-06-19T03:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen the movie, but stopped in my local library last week and picked up a few novels in English, and decided to take this one home. I didn't know anything about it except that it was made into a movie and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, so I figured it must be good.

I just loved this book. The supsense in the first part of it was nearly unbearable, as you just know something bad is going to happen and the feeling of impending doom is palpable. I actually couldn't sleep the first evening I started it because I kept worrying about what was going to happen, and to whom.

Then the awful sequence of events starts to get underway and I had a sickening premonition of what it would be. And yes, three lives ruined, two families destroyed...and no way back, no way to fix it.

And then the war. Robbie as a soldier trying to get himself evacuated out of northern France, struggling for the landing beaches while suffering from a shrapnel wound in his side. Cecilia and Briony both nurses in military hospitals, with their gruelling work load. At the end a sort of reconciliation, a possibility of atonement...or is it?

The third and last section of the book was devastating: I had to read the fourth-to-last paragraph of the book at least five times before the "reality" of the ending got through to me. The promise of atonement and a life after the war were but a "fictional" account, nothing more.

More on "The Sorrow of Belgium"

2008-06-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

I was glad to be able to lend my copy of the English translation of "The Sorrow of Belgium" to a fellow blogger who just happened to be a student in one of my husband's classes (talk about that 'it's a small world" feeling!). The semester is drawing to a close, and my book came home with a nice note from Joan, where he gave his take on the first part of the novel:

From the first part I especially liked the description of Flanders and Belgium. It is also interesting, the personal evolution of Louis, how he loses many things throughout the years...It's amazing, the descriptive ability of Mr. Claus.

Joan promised to review the book if he ever finds time to finish it once he returns to Barcelona!

Samantha in the Netherlands also recently reviewed the book at: http://bookwormsandtea.blogspot.com/2008/05/sorrow-of-belgium.html I enjoyed where she said sometimes she liked Louis and sometimes she didn't! I think this speaks to the ability of Hugo Claus to create complex charachters, that, just like people in real life, are not all good or all bad, but a mixture of both.

Jeffrey Eugenides: Middelsex

2008-04-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

I realize it's been nearly three weeks since I've posted here, and it's not that I haven't been reading but have simply been busy with other things. It seems that no matter how busy I get, reading is the one thing that I always have time for! Even if only for a few minutes before turning the lights out at night...

I finished Middelsex by Jeffrey Eugenides about two weeks ago, but did not find the time to sit down and post about it then, although I wanted to. The book is incredible, impressive and I got completely caught up in the story. Which surprised me, because when I first heard what the book was about, I had a hard time imagining being interested in it.

The story is about Callie Stephanides, a girl growing up in Detroit in the 1960's and 70's, the three generations of her Greek-American family, and her discovery as a teenager, that she is actually genetically a boy and the impact this has on her and the family.

This is a brilliant epic novel, and at the same time an intimate portrait. I loved the tale of the grandparents' immigration from Greece to America, their adjustment to life in Detroit, the portrait of Detroit itself through the years, and the way the family's life was depicted. I could totally relate to Callie's insecurities as a pre-teen girl (didn't we all feel ugly and awkward and insecure?) which for her became magnified a million times over by the discovery of her true identity.

I am including this novel in my "Book around the world" challenge for the United States, because I feel the novel, through its portrait of immigrants making their way in the new culture, assimilating but at the same time holding onto old traditions, tells us a lot about what is was like for so many millions of people who came to America. I am very interested in genealogy and how it must have been for them. The novel also gives us a view of a major American city, Detroit, and the way it changed over the years, through immigration, poverty and racial tensions.

It is a novel with many layers. And it is all so beautifully written and every character so fully alive and real! My only regret: I would love to hear the rest of the story of Cal and Julie and what happens to them in Berlin.

Maarten 't Hart: Het Dovenmansorendieet

2008-04-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

Sorry to be going on again about a book in Dutch but my husband brought this home from the library and it was so good, I wanted to put an entry in about it. I have no idea if it might be translanted into English, but I'll try to give you an idea about it here.

Maarten 't Hart is a very well known Dutch novelist, whose books are required reading in school here. I had never heard of him, but my husband had to read him in secondary school. He also writes essays on various interesting subjects, like a recent book on composers and a scientific study of rats (!).

This book, of which the title could be translated as "The Falling on Deaf Ears Diet" is a very personal account of 't Hart's take on food and the point or pointlessness of trying to lose weight. The author lets us know right off the bat that he is a tall, thin, rather ascetic person, and has never really had a weight problem. His thesis is that, being thin and never having had a weight problem (except for the short time he lived with an overweight aunt and her family and ate what they ate), he might be able to help people who do have a weight problem by explaining to them his food habits.

The interesting thing, in reading the book, is that from his so interestingly described childhood in the Netherlands after the war, living through food shortages and austere meals at home, he comes full circle to a nearly vegan diet today, but perhaps not for the classic reasons. For example, while he does feel that fish and seafood must have been a very healthy part of human diet in the past, he simply cannot recommend eating it today because of the devastation to the oceans and the high risk of toxin contamination. He simply cannot bring himself to buy fish anymore. As far as dairy is concerned, he is a self-professed cheese lover, but limits himself because of the high fat and salt content, and recommends that people in the Netherlands should really cut back on their high dairy consumption, also citing Colin Campbell's work in "The China Study" (the book that originally got me on the path to veganism). As a young man he worked for a time in a local butcher and he says that after seeing what they put in all their sausages, cold cuts and other prepared meat products, he never ate them again. Finally, one of his most interesting theories about why so many people struggle with obesity today is that they simply drink too much, whether it be soft drinks, alcohol, or even water. Looking back, he says that people never drank so much in the past as they do today, and thinks the trend today whereby we constantly have something to drink is unnecessary.

For people who are interested in losing weight, he recommends:
- eat lots of laxative foods (fruit, veg, pulses, whole grains)
- moderation with bread, rice, pasta and other carbohydrate-rich foods
- get plenty of exercise
- avoid alcohol, sugar, packaged food "products" and all junk foods

Foods he recommends: quinoa, teff, amarant, buckwheat and other whole grains, brown rice, pulses, fruits and vegetables, potatoes (only boiled or steamed), rye and spelt breads, red wine (no more than two glasses a day), every day a handful of almonds, pumpkin seeds and dried apricots, all kinds of nuts, especially walnuts, olive oil, dark chocolate, tea, sea vegetables, and mushrooms, and quorn.

He does veer from vegan diets in that he also recommends butter (in moderation), yogurt, young cheese (preferably goat or sheep), buttermilk, cottage cheese and eggs - but he is able to obtain these products from a local dairy farmer who produces them biologically and without salt. Not everyone is able to get this kind of quality and freshness, and the guarantee that there are no hormones or other added uglies. My personal experience with eliminating dairy is that it can have profound health effects. Perhaps if one was able to get very high quality dairy to use in small amounts it might not be so detrimental. As for the eggs, he only uses eggs from his own chickens who live freely in his yard and eat lots of yummy weeds full of healthy omega 3's, but just this week the Belgian food agency released a study that shows home-produced eggs actually have higher levels of dioxins and other toxins than store bought eggs!

Finally, as above, he would recommend fish and seafood, if it were not for the environmental implications of those industries. And he says that anyone who wants to eat meat should be required to slaughter the animal themselves.

This book, while not very thick, was chock full of "food for thought" and completely took me by surprise in how he ends up promoting a near-vegan diet. At times the book reminds me of Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food" (he quotes Pollan many times). He is also an excellent writer and a real intellectual! Highly recommended to anyone who is as interested in food and health as I am.

Maarten 't Hart. Het Dovenmansorendieet. Arbeiderspers, 2007.

Hugo Claus: The Sorrow of Belgium

2008-03-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

In 1983, 25 years ago, Hugo Claus' Het Verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium) was first published. Next to his poetry it is his most personal book; one in which he weaves many of his childhood memories. He spent his entire childhood, from the age of 18 months until he was eleven, in a boarding school, and this made a huge impact on his life.

The Sorrow of Belgium is a family epic which takes place from 1939-1947. Louis Seynaeve is eleven years old at the beginning of the story and attends a Catholic boarding school, where he together with three of his friends has a secret club called the "Four Apostles".

Louis' family is pro-German, and they are relieved when the Germans invade Belgium, as they feel the war will be good for Flanders and will help it to get out from under the domination of the French-speaking Belgians. Louis decides to become a writer, and once he begins to be exposed to other ideas and books, his opinion of the Germans slowly starts to change. When Belgium is liberated, Louis' family disintegrates; his father is arrested and jailed for collaborating with the Germans.

The book paints a detailed and colorful picture of Belgium: family relationships, village life, politics, poverty, Catholicism, and finally, it is an intimate portrait of a child's life and coming of age.

As I mentioned in a previous post, even before Hugo Claus passed away last week, there were many activities surrounding the 25th anniversary of this book, considered one of the classics in Belgian literature. One of those activities was a "reading marathon" held here in Leuven in February. DJ Bobby Ewing (our official "town DJ") has just made an audio "remix" of this event including well known Belgians reading passages from the book, set to music. It can be downloaded for free at: http://www.leuven.be/showpage.asp?iPageID=7330

A memorial service for Claus will be held this Saturday at 11 am in the Bourla Theatre in Antwerpen.

Hugo Claus, 1929-2008

2008-03-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

Today Hugo Claus died at the age of 78. He had had Alzheimers for several years and chose to have euthanasia, which took place this morning in Antwerp, Belgium.

Belgium is in mourning for one of our greatest artists. Hugo Claus was a writer, poet, painter, film directer and playwright. Having only ever read his most well known book, "The Sorrow of Belgium", I can't say I am very familiar with his work, but everyone here recognizes him as one of the monuments of Belgian literature.

This year, "The Sorrow of Belgium" celebrates its 25th anniversary. Just last weekend there was a whole section in our newspaper dedicated to it and a few weeks ago a "reading marathon" of it here in Leuven. I am currently re-reading it for "Book around the world" and will post more about the book itself in the future.

In the meantime, my sympathy goes out to the family and friends of Hugo Claus.

Anne Enright: The Gathering

2008-03-19T03:29:00.000-07:00

This was an impulse purchase when I was out with my boys shopping at FNAC, the multimedia chain here that actually has a pretty good selection of English books. We were looking for the fourth book in the Wolf Brother series for my middle son (and he only wanted to read it in English) but they didn't have it - so we ended up ordering it from Amazon. Anyway, while we were in FNAC of course I had to browse the adult fiction section...and I ended up buying The Gathering, which won the Man Booker prize last year.

The few books by Irish writers I have read, I have enjoyed very much, and this was no execption. There is something faintly unfamiliar about Irish fiction that makes it exotic and interesting to me: certain words (like "eejit"!), a certain atmosphere of melancholy, the slightly different way of life that is portrayed, and of course the Irish language itself that pops up every now and then.

The Gathering is a dark first person account by a middle aged woman, Veronica, who is dealing with the suicide of the brother she was closest to in her large family, and at the same time dealing with many demons from her difficult childhood, but also her discontent with her present life, especially her marriage. In fact, the novel was much more about Veronica than her brother Liam. Veronica also spends a great deal of time imagining what her grandmother Ada's life was like when she was young and her strange relationship with her husband, Grandpa Charlie, and his best friend, Lamb, who ended up playing a pivotal role in the childrens' lives.

The novel touches on heavy themes: child abuse, alcoholism, mental illness...but also Veronica's struggle to love her husband and be a good mother:

...and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to even love you, even that, let alone find their own shoes under their own bed; people who turn and accuse you - scream at you sometimes - when they can only find one shoe.

Haven't we all felt like that as mothers (or fathers) at times? Ultimately the book is a fatalistic view of families and how love is expressed, or not expressed, to our spouses, siblings, parents, children, aunts, uncles...

There are so few people given us to love...We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love anymore. And there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see.

A suggestion

2008-03-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

My friend Joy emailed me, having just read The Deep End of the Ocean, by Jacquelyn Mitchard. An Oprah book club entry. Joy said she spent the weekend speeding through it. "I had hesitated to pick it up, since it dealt with the kidnapping of a 3-year-old, but it was worth it (although I really did squirm at times). Another reason to read this: the author is another U of I alum!"

Joy and I both graduated from the University of Illinois so we love to support alumni authors! I have this sneaking suspicion that I already read it, but I am going to look it up at the library or on Amazon to make sure. We'd love to hear anyone else's comments on it!

Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food

2008-03-04T03:57:00.000-08:00

One of my major interests is how diet affects health, and I have read a lot of books on this topic. Most recently, this book by Michael Pollan, who also wrote The Ominvore's Dilemma (which I haven't read). In Defense of Food is excellent. He doesn't try to scare people into veganism, but he shows very reasonably, how we can make better food choices, which affect not only our own health, but the whole food chain, in a positive way. His basic premise is: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

"Eat food" refers to Pollan's opinion that "the most important fact about any food is not its nutrient content but its degree of processing". Therefore we should be eating food as close to its natural state as possible, and avoiding processed food "products".

"Not too much" refers to Pollan's thoughts on good eating habits: eating regular meals instead of grazing all day long, eating less food but better quality, sitting down at the table, eating slowly, cooking at home, and even gardening.

Finally, "mostly plants" means just that: "a diet rich in vegetables and fruits reduces the risk of dying from all the Western diseases." Pollan does not require full fledged vegetarianism or veganism - eating very small amounts of meat is still acceptable and beneficial in his book.

I found this to be an eloquent exploration of our modern eating habits and how we do have the power to make small changes that have enormous impact. Read more about my own personal take on food at my health and fitness blog here: http://fitandfabulousatforty.blogspot.com/2008/03/transition-from-flexitarian-to.html

Johanna Spaey: Dood van een soldaat

2008-02-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading this quirky novel, and in spite of the fact that it has not been translated into English, I wanted to mention it. I picked it up at our library which had a display of books by local writers. Johanna Spaey is a native of Leuven and born the same year as myself. The story takes place around Leuven in 1919 and follows a single female doctor in a small village who, together with the local "veldwachter" (rural police officer) is investigating the murder of a soldier, as well as trying to reconnect with her brother and boyfriend, who both returned from the war as broken men. It's part love story, part thriller, part detective novel, part feminist tract...

I wish it was translated into English: I'd love to pass it on to my mother because about every other chapter the doctor character is eating some kind of cake, pie or pastry, which I know she would get a kick out of! The story is a bit hectic and is like one of those plays where people are constantly going in and out of the doors on the stage - from one house to the next, back and forth...bit by bit the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

For more information on the author and her book, check out this website which promotes Dutch literature: http://www.nlpvf.nl/basic/auteur1.php?Author_ID=352

My husband just finished reading this novel and he actually liked it better than I did but found the ending confusing. And he is a native Dutch speaker...hmmm.

Hugo Claus: The Sorrow of Belgium

2008-02-20T02:54:00.000-08:00

Bonnie of the "Book around the world" challenge just let me know that she added The Sorrow of Belgium to the site: http://bookaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/02/belgium.html She wanted to know if I would be willing to write some comments (of course!) but since it has been 18 years since I read it, I am going to read it again. Which is quite ironic, since this year is the book's 25th anniversary and there was a reading marathon of it in Leuven last weekend. So it is actually a great opportunity to re-read a classic of Belgian literature. I own the English translation but I am seriously considering reading it in Dutch this time. When I first read it, my command of Dutch was nowhere near good enough to read it in the original but now it would work!

Another fun reading challenge

2008-02-19T13:30:00.000-08:00

Ok, I admit it, I've been spending some time lately lurking around other blogs about books! I found another intriguing reading challenge: books around the world: http://bookaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/ . The idea is to read a book dealing with each and every country in the world - thankfully there is no time limit! The challenge blog has a list with suggestions for many countries, but sadly enough they didn't have Belgium listed. So I suggested The Sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus. A wonderful book! Hopefully this will inspire someone to read it.

Jane Austen book challenge

2008-02-18T02:42:00.000-08:00

Being new to book blogging, I have been looking around at other blogs about books and literature and I discovered that there are loads of wonderful blogs by readers, writers, reviewers and book lovers like myself. A lot of them set up reading challenges. I found a blogger who's holding a Jane Austen challenge this year and decided to join in: http://blbooks.blogspot.com/2007/09/two-mini-challenges.html

The goal is to read at least two Jane Austen novels in 2008. As it so happens I love Jane Austen, and always enjoy the movies. The Dutch TV channel is currently showing one of the BBC mini series of Pride and Prejudice, I think. Now I have a reason to get myself to the library this week to check some books out - as usual I know I've read some Austen novels, but simply cannot remember which ones. So this will be a good opportunity to sort that out once and for all.

On another note, we have just decided to go to London over spring break and I am so looking forward to making a stop at the Persephone bookshop. They are the coolest publisher, re-publishing literature by, for and about women in beautiful editions: http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/ I have never been to the bookshop in person, always ordered the books via post. I better bring an extra suitcase!

Zadie Smith: White Teeth

2008-02-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

Remember I was busy reading this a few posts back? I just finished it and it took me longer than normal on this sort of novel. I think part of the reason I was slower with this was the large amout of dialogue in North London accents which I sometimes had to read several times to figure out what it was, or simply wanted to read it several times (sometimes even out loud!) to get a feel for how it would sound. But I'm not complaining - I often find myself zooming through books much too fast and it was nice to take this one a bit slower.

White Teeth was Zadie Smith's debut novel, published in 2000. It is a kind of epic novel following two main characters, Archie, an Englishman and Samad, Bengali, who were in the same tank crew in World War II, and who later in life meet again in North London, and the subsequent relationships between their wives and children. Late in the novel another family gets thrown into the mix. The novel is a rollercoaster ride from one theme to another, from one character to another, touching on things like race, immigrants, religion, genetic engineering, sibling rivalry, parenting, fundamentalism, class and cultural differences, feminism, love and history. It is a fascinating ride, very intellectual at times, humorous and entertaining at others. I have to say, despite the two main characters not being the easiest of protagonists to identify with (for me anyway) I ended up really enjoying the book. I also liked the way the author wove the image of teeth (from the title) in and out of the book.

My favorite character in the book was Irie, Archie's daughter, and the one I liked the least was Joyce, the mother of the third family that gets involved. And of course, Future Mouse steals the show at the end!

I also loved that the ending was very satisfying, tying up a few loose strings, bring some themes full circle and leaving you with the feeling that the characters lives went on and on, just like real people, but no dreadful feeling like I sometimes have with books, where it seems to me that the most interesting part of the characters lives is what comes after the conclusion of the book. No, with this book, I definitely have the feeling that I have just been served all the most significant parts of their lives and I can live quite happily with the ending.

I will definitely be looking to read more of Zadie Smith in the future. I noticed that our library has a few of her novels in the original and I am thinking On Beauty might be the next one I read.

Thyroid Balance

2008-02-13T00:03:00.000-08:00

Three years ago I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and while I don't have a severe case and have managed to do really well on hormone replacement, I do have to keep on top of it and have my levels checked periodically. The last few months I started to feel more and more of some of those odd little symptoms that signal that the thyroid is not working optimally, and scheduled my appointment with my doctor a bit sooner than usual, and lo and behold, my gut feeling was right - my TSH levels are nearly two points higher than they have been the last two years and it looks like I'll need to increase my dose a bit.

Why am I writing all of this in my blog about books? When I was first learning about hypothyroidism I bought several books on the topic and there is one in particular that I think is excelllent and I turn to it again and again for reference. One of the reasons my gut feeling worked so well is from what this book taught me to pay attention to. Just recently when I suspected there was something not right, I got it out and re-read certain parts to help me figure out what was going on. The book is:

Thyroid Balance: Traditional and Alternative Methods for Treating Thyroid Disorders. Glenn S. Rothfeld, M.D. and Deborah S. Romaine. (Adams Media, 2003)

What I love about this book are the excellent explanations of both hypo- and hyperthyroidism, the very clear information about the endocrine system as a whole, which is important to understand (at least to me, but I realize I am a wonk about health info - not everybody is going to find this as interesting as I do!), and the clear and unbiased review of all your options for treatment. Out of the several books I bought, this is the one I would definitely recommend as the one book you should have if you have any kind of thyroid problem.

Marianne Williamson's latest book

2008-02-11T02:58:00.000-08:00

Marianne Williamson is one of my all-time favorite spiritual writers. Her writing and spiritual philosophy is based on the classic work A Course in Miracles, which is in itself so dense and difficult to understand, that Marianne's interpretation of it in her own books is far easier to understand and apply to real life than the Course itself, I find. The basic premise of the Course, as I understand it, is how the practical application of unconditional love and forgiveness for others as well as for ourselves can help us deal with all sorts of problems in our lives.

So of course while I was in the US recently and saw her newest book (The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife) in the bookstore, I had to buy it. Unfortunately at the beginning I was a little disappointed by it. Simply because it felt to me that she was recycling insights she had already written elsewhere and that there was little new to be found, and it is fluffier than her previous books. Still, Marianne writes beautifully about love, forgiveness and spirituality, and by the end of the book I was happier with it. She applies the principles of the Course to the middle phase of life - 40 and up.

However, if I was recommending one of her books to read to someone who has never read her before it would not be my first choice. Here are three others I personally find better:

A Return to Love : Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (1992)
Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness and Making Miracles (2002)
The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life (2004)

I actually read these in reverse order, having first discovered Marianne Williamson with The Gift of Change. This is a fabulous book, much denser than her most recent one. My copy has tons of passages underlined. A major theme in the book is the fact that we have a choice in how we respond to things in our life, and by consciously choosing to respond in a certain way, we create our life:

Practive kindness, and you start to become kind. Practice discipline,
and you start to become disciplined. Practice forgiveness, and you
start to become forgiving...We have the power to generate as well as react
to feelings; to hone our personalities as we travel through life...It is
never too late to become who we really are

Everyday Grace is a gem of a book, taking some of the core principles of the Course in Miracles and applying them to everyday situations. Another book that I have lots of pencil marks in and one I turn to in difficult moments for inspiration and comfort.

A Return to Love was the first book she wrote, which grew out of her extensive lecturing on the Course in Miracles. It might be better to read this one first before the others as her explanations of the principles of the Course are more fundamental, and the applications of it are more to individual problems and themes, rather than the more universal viewpoint that Marianne later adopts.

And I don't feel that it is necessary to get a copy of The Course in Miracles to benefit from Marianne Willamson's books. I have a copy of it, but to be very honest, it is so dense and difficult to understand that I quickly gave up my attempt to read it (at this point in my life anyhow!) and rely on Marianne and other spiritual philosphers like Dan Joseph (http://www.danjoseph.com/) to point out and clarify the important points to me - in ways that I can apply in my own life.

Incidentally, for those of you who have XM radio (we don't here in Belgium) Marianne has a regular show on Oprah's network. For more information about Marianne Williamson, go to: http://www.marianne.com/

Quick Update on Penguin Celebrations

2008-02-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

I happened to be in the store where I originally bought the three Penguin Celebrations editions and thought I would see if they still had some...scanned the shelves once, twice, three times...didn't see them. Finally thought to ask a salesman and he told me they were all GONE. The distributor took all the unsold Celebrations in Belgium and put them all in some bookshop in the Brussels Airpot. Dang!

I did check the Penguin website and you can still buy some of them online...but not all of them are available. I am nearly done with Zadie Smith...

Penguin Celebrations

2008-01-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

So I already mentioned I recently finished Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History. I bought it in the edition published by Penguin last year in their series "Penguin Celebrations", a collection of 36 books (philosophy, mystery, fiction, travel, autobiography and viewpoints) to celebrate their winning the British Book Awards Publisher of the Year Award in 2007.

When I saw them in a local bookstore, I was charmed and very tempted to get the entire collection. The bookstore was running a special, buy two, get one free, so I managed to limit myself to just three, but it was hard because I fell in love with their cute retro covers and their old fashioned feel. Also the fact that I had already read some of them helped me to resist. If you happen to see them anywhere, check them out, they are darling books and great titles to boot.

At the moment I am reading the Penguin Celebrations edition of Zadie Smith's White Teeth. I am so tempted to go back to the bookstore and see if they still have some of the other volumes from the collection!

Ann Patchett: four titles

2008-01-29T00:05:00.000-08:00

Bel Canto: A Novel (2002)
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship (2004)
The Patron Saint of Liars: A Novel (1992)
Taft: A Novel (1994)

This is the other reason I was inspired to start this blog: I recently completely by accident got on a streak of reading some of Ann Patchett's books, and I guess I just wanted to share it with someone!

My mother left the novel Bel Canto here at my house a while ago, and it was on a bookshelf with other books I hadn't gotten around to reading. Something about the description of the book just did not grab me: the story is about an opera singer who is supposed to perform at a big party at an embassy in a South American country and everyone is taken hostage by rebels, and the story is about how they all cope with being held hostage and the fallout from the situation. Hmmm.

So the book sat on my shelf for a while. Then an issue of Runner's World came in the mail last year with a book review of Ann's latest novel Run. The review intrigued me and suddenly I remembered I had this other book by her sitting on my shelf. So that is what got me to read Bel Canto.

I loved Bel Canto! Once I started reading it, I just couldn't put it down. The relationship that develops between the singer and the Japanese gentleman who admires her is so unusual and intimate and private that is it sometimes almost uncomfortable to read about, you feel like a voyeur knowing too much about them; yet, they are surrounded all the time by the other hostages and rebels and in fact, have no privacy. The other characters, hostages and rebels alike, are also very interesting, well done and I was taken with all of them, and very invested in the outcome! I won't give away anything else about the end, but I enjoyed the book very much and highly recommend it.

So then I was at Jenny's house earlier this month (for our half marathon: read about that in my other blog at http://www.fitandfabulousatforty.blogspot.com/) and up in her guest room there is a bookshelf with books visitors leave when we are done with them. I had just finished Donna Tartt's The Secret History on my long flight over (yes, I left it at Jenny's house!) and was looking for another book to read, and saw that there was another book by Ann Patchett sitting there: Truth & Beauty.

Truth & Beauty is not a novel, it is a memoir of the author's friendship with another writer. But it is so well written that it reads like a novel. Again, I loved reading it, although so much of it is sad and hard. It makes me want to be a writer, but also not want to be a writer, if you know what I mean. You see how both of them struggle to make a living out of their writing, how her friend Lucy struggles with her health and how Ann does everything she can to be supportive. At times I was amazed at her bravery in putting everything out there for all of us to read, but at the end of the book, I felt it was a warm and honest tribute to her friend and their friendship.

While I was still at Jenny's (and still reading Truth & Beauty) we stopped at a bookstore one day...it is dangerous to take me to a bookstore, sometimes I buy far too much and then my suitcases are way too heavy. But I promised myself I would be good. One of the four books I got was Ann Patchett's debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. I would have wanted to buy Run, her latest, but it was only available in hardcover and weight and budget constraints made me decide to wait til it comes out in paperback and my next trip to the US.

The Patron Saint of Liars is a novel about a woman from California who is unhappy in her marriage, discovers she is pregnant, and decides to leave without telling her husband or her mother (who she is supposedly very close to) and go to a home for unwed mothers in Kentucky to have the baby and give it up for adoption. So far, this is my least favorite (but it is still a good read) of Ann Patchett's books. I had a hard time relating to the main character and understanding why she felt compelled to leave everybody behind. I liked the characters of her second husband and her daughter, whose stories complete the book, but I felt bad for them that she treated them so coldly. She ended up having all these people around her who loved and admired her, but for some reason it meant nothing to her. Finishing the story made me feel deflated and sad.

I finished The Patron Saint of Liars after I was already home in Belgium. Last week my oldest son wanted to go to the main public library in downtown Leuven. The advantage to the main branch over our little local branch is that not only do they have a huge collection of music CD's (for my son) but they also have a great selection of English fiction (for me!) So while I was waiting for him to decide what CD's he wanted to borrow, I thought I would see if they had (you guessed it) anything by Ann Patchett.

Well, they did, actually, they had just about everything (except Run, probably too recent still). I decided to check out Taft. This is another novel that I couldn't see myself picking based just on the description and not knowing anything about the author. It is about a black man, John, who used to be a blues drummer but now is a bar manager in Memphis and the weird relationship he develops with a young white woman who works as a waitress in his bar and her brother. It is also about his struggle and desire to be a good father to his young son while dealing with the difficult relationship he has with the boy's mother. The book was so good I read it in one day.

For me the best part and the core theme of the book was about fatherhood. The relationship he tries to maintain with his boy and his grief at being so far away from him, the minefield of the in-laws...this is beautifully countered by the parts of the book that are about Taft, the father of the white girl and her brother, who also tried his best to be a good father. It was not clear to me if the parts about Taft (who had died) were what John imagined or dreamed about Taft, or what had really happened to Taft, but somehow it didn't matter. You could see that somehow John felt compelled to help the sister and brother as some kind of substitute for not being able to fully be with his own son. What clashed for me a little bit was how John related to the girl. Their attraction to each other never seemed realistic to me. But totally believable was the sacrifice he made to protect her brother, who didn't really deserve it but had no father of his own to step up to the plate for him.

So I will definitely be looking to read Run when I can get a copy of it, and my next trip to the library I am going to get The Magician's Assistant, her other novel. I'll keep you posted!

And if you want to know more about Ann Patchett and her books, go to: http://www.annpatchett.com/.

Why "In Consideration of Books"?

2008-01-28T05:05:00.000-08:00

Since I began to read as a child, I have always been a book worm. But in our family that is the norm, I think...we are all always reading books and these days, we read books and leave them at each other's houses and then someone else reads them and passes them on. Our own version of Bookcrossing! My mother is always telling me about the latest book she has read and she is always interested in new titles, always inspiring me to read more.

My sister Jenny and I were recently talking about how sometimes you read a book and then you completely forget what it was about and how annoying this is, especially when you end up reading it again and then realize halfway in that actually, you've read it already. Jenny's mother-in-law started keeping a journal of all the books she has read since she retired a few years ago, and while I was visiting recently, she showed it to me. It seemed like a great idea to somehow keep track of what you had read, what you felt and thought about it.

Last year at my sister's urging, I reluctantly started a blog about the half marathon we were preparing to run, and I found to my surprise that I really enjoyed the process of blogging on a regular basis. Now that the half marathon is behind us, I was thinking about how I wanted to continue blogging on something else I am passionate about and then it hit me - I can blog about the books I am reading, not only for myself but also to share with others and hopefully get feedback and exchange ideas, something that I sometimes miss after finishing an especially good - or terrible! - book.

So check back soon for my first post in consideration of books!