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Life
With Pop - (Janis Abrahams Spring, Ph.D.) -
From a bestselling author and clinical psychologist comes a
refreshingly honest and tender portrait of a devoted daughter
shepherding her father through his final years of life. After
her mother died, Janis Abrahms Spring "inherited" her father
(Pop) and set off on an all-consuming, five year mission to make his
days as rich and comfortable as possible. This is their story,
overflowing with humor, insight, and love.
In beautifully crafted vignettes, Janis brings their deepening
relationship to life-both the joy and the imposition, the happiness
and the heartache. Early on, she watches with relief as her father
adjusts to an assisted-living facility, buoyed by a resilient spirit
and a network of new friends. She and her father share the intimacy of
afternoons in the park, discovering wonder in the colors of a sandwich
or a rose, and solace in a smile or a reassuring touch. But as Pop's
health declines, Janis finds herself tested by daunting health-care
and financial decisions, and the guilt of trying to balance her
father's growing needs against her own.
- Comment:
Carolyn: A quiet 2 hour read brings tears to your eyes,
and important lessons to mind for the last years of life. As
real as I know. So I can remember, here are her reminders:
Infidel
- (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) -
Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will,
and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of
religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi
Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings,
adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely
ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced
marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a
college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically
depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of
Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of
Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by
reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and
expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an
Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made
the movie Submission.
- Comment:
Carolyn: Hirsi Ali questioned why things are the way
they are from an early age. This may be her defining
characteristic, and a theme throughout her life. - only
spending her teen years conforming to ______, but even then,
occasionally asking..... She is the daughter of a Grad
of Columbia U i NY, from one of Samalia's first families, and her
mother , a second wife and love match with her father who came back
to S to be a new kind of leader for his country - he taught her
English. - was the favorite of her was driven to look at why the three
African countries of her youth where chaotic, corrupt and
non-functional compared to Germany and Holland. In answering
this question she looks to her Muslim culture that _____.
-
Don't
Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight -
(Alexandra Fuller) -
When the ship veered into the Cape of Good Hope, Mum caught the
spicy, heady scent of Africa on the changing wind. She smelled the
people: raw onions and salt, the smell of people who are not afraid to
eat meat, and who smoke fish over open fires on the beach and who
pound maize into meal and who work out-of-doors. Alexandra
Fuller's dazzling debut recounting an unconventional childhood in
war-ravaged Africa.
With a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller
describes her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between
blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes. Curfews and war,
mosquitoes, land mines, ambushes and "an abundance of
leopards" are the stuff of this childhood. "Dad has to go
out into the bush... and find terrorists and fight them"; Mum
saves the family from an Egyptian spitting cobra; they both fight
"to keep one country in Africa white-run."
The family constantly sets up house in hostile, desolate
environments as they move from Rhodesia to Zambia to Malawi and back
to Zambia. But Fuller's remarkable affection for her parents (who are
racists) and her homeland (brutal under white and black rule) shines
through.
- Comment:
Carolyn: Flat honesty - juxtaposed phrases highlight the
point. The resulting amusement makes this family's life
bearable-compelling to hear.
I like her style - it's just like mine. My jaw hung in
amazement through most of this book. Her life - just the
opposite of my easy life - but with, say three times the dysfunction
- somehow I related. I vaguely knew this life existed.
Now I feel I've experienced growing up white in hardscrub black
Africa - at a comfortable armchair's length. Her picture makes
her look so normal....
-
After
Dark - (Haruki
Murakami) -
A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching
hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki
Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka
on the Shore.
At its center are two sisters—Eri, a fashion model slumbering her
way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary
reading at an anonymous Denny’s toward people whose lives are
radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they’ve met
before, a burly female “love hotel” manager and her maid staff,
and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These
“night people” are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them
together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might
keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Eri’s
slumber—mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of
his crime—will either restore or annihilate her.
After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical
speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and
perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency—the
interplay between self-expression and empathy, between the power of
observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakami’s
trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and
morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.
- Comment:
Carolyn: I'm in the middle of reading After Dark,
by Haruki Murakami. I keep flashing on Pale Fire, by
Nabokov, which I read eight years ago. It's all throughout the
book - foreshadowing, time-twisting, viewpoint, references to light,
ghosts. Except it's music that seems to ground the book - no references
to chess or butterflies. Hurakami is just one year older than
I, so I know some of the musical references (unlike my knowledge of
chess and butterflies - which is nil). I had forgotten the
"plot" of Pale Fire - remembering just the tone and
feel of the narrative, the symbols and structure of the book, and
how it made me feel reading it. Now that I read my notes from
eight years ago, I see the link. It's the end of Chapter
8. I have had suspicions of what's coming - seems
confirmed by the plot of Pale Fire.
-
Little
Women - (Alcott,
Louisa May) -
Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen
in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular
and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and
author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic,
spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their
struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.
It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life.
While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson
Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau,
and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with
“woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a
domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money
writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and
far from being the “girl’s book” her publisher requested, it
explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the
conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and
the clash of cultures between Europe and America.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: I didn't expect to find Little Women as
compelling as I did a girl. But I was surprised to find that
these women caught me as few modern-day heroines do.
Alcott's work does stand up to an adult read. Not just
because it was written 150 years ago and has fascinating social
and historical details to glean.
-
- Meg foolishly buys 25 yards of silk for a gown that costs her $50!! (in
1867 dollars) just to save her prideful dignity. She's tired
of feeling and revealing that she is so poor when she's with her
friends who are as wealthy as her family had been before their
reversal of fortunes. In small town Concord, Mass., the
fallen from wealth maintain connections outside of their new
income status. It's rare these days for much difference in
wealth class to even live within the same town taxing district,
let alone to socialize with or live within walking distance.
Zoning and property values are defined by the school district boundaries
these days. In 1867 Concord, the wealthy and not-so live
mixed together - the wealthy Laurences are across the road, and
it's close enough for Beth walk to the severely impoverished German
family (that generation's ethnic group at the bottom of the wealth
pile). She brings food. There doesn't yet exist public
charity in small New England towns. Alcott sets her book
just as the Civil War is raging, and the real Alcott family took
in runaway slaves working their way into Canada, but Blacks are
not in evidence in the Little Women's Concord - it is now legal
for Southern bounty hunters to drag someone South if they are believed
to be an escaped slave. The Irish are, no doubt in Lowell,
working in the mills, not in Concord. So the Germans are at
the bottom of the economic ladder in Concord.
-
- Two of the more interesting chapters are never represented in
the movie versions, so they're rarely remembered: Meg's life
as a new wife and mother. In "Domestic
Experiences", Meg spends $50 on dress material the family
can't afford. After she admits she bought the extravagant
material, her husband cancels a new great coat he had
ordered. When she learns this, she gives up the dress and
buys her husband the new great coat. All is domestic
bliss... Presumably, the new great coat is a necessity that's
affordable, and the silk dress is not. In "On the
Shelf" Meg immerses (and exhausts) herself in being the
perfect mother for her twin babies, leaving husband John to seek
the company of his friend and friend's pretty, interesting
wife. Meg is jealous and the marriage begins to spiral
down. When asked for her advice, Marmee tells Meg to leave
the twins more often in the care of the housekeeper, Hannah, so
she can spend some time on developing herself alone and her
relationship with John. She also advises Meg to encourage John to
be with the babies more (Meg lets them get away with everything,
and they are turning into charming terrorists). In a scene
right out of T.V.s The Nanny, John keeps putting his two year old
back to bed until he stays there. Marmee's secret to a good
marriage: "We each do our part alone in many things,
but at home, we work together, always.
In many ways this book is all about how the little women differ in
how they feel about wealth, charity and their futures. Each
one makes a different marriage-life choice. Meg chooses a
poor but educated man, Amy, the "Jane" of this book,
decides she can't live in poverty, and must be the one to marry
for money and save the family - even if love is secondary.
Beth is never meant to live a full life - she is too good to live
- as if such pure goodness belongs to God - not to humans.
And the heroine, Jo, was meant to earn a living writing and
teaching - not to marry at all as Alcott originally wrote her (and
lived herself). Joe could have a fling at being an independent
writer in New York, but the publisher insisted that Alcott change
the ending - Jo
had to marry Prof. Bhaer. Society's values had to be
reinforced.
-
Three Cups of
Tea - (Mortenson,
Greg) -
In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt
to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost
through Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and
nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani
village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.
From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible
humanitarian campaigns of our time—Greg Mortenson’s one-man
mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for
girls, throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban.
Award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin has collaborated on
this spellbinding account of Mortenson’s incredible accomplishments
in a region where Americans are often feared and hated. In pursuit of
his goal, Mortenson has survived kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged
mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his
wife and children. But his success speaks for itself. At last count,
his Central Asia Institute had built fifty-five schools. Three Cups
of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring
true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at
a time.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: Mortenson lives the life one fantasizes about
when dreaming of living a purposeful life of service to
humankind. One that changes life for the most forgotten of
all the world's populations. I never dreamed of being a
Mother Teresa - selfless immersion in misery to provide comfort by
service. But I have dreamed of connecting with those that
are not easily reached - then jetting back to a life of
semi-normalcy. Of providing bricks and mortar proof of
accomplishments that have touched thousands - perhaps eventually
millions. One wants to give back in meaningful ways - but
it's always necessary in my dreams to feel the personal
satisfaction of doing good for others - the kind of good that they
want, appreciate and acknowledge - of actually getting the thanks
- face to face. Definitely not a selfless act.
I could easily do the time Mortenson has devoted - but never risk
the physical danger he has. I imagine he has the kind of
brain-need for that rush of adrenalin that extreme sports provides
to would-be heroes - all those young men who risk life and limb -
hanging from some rock (Those for whom insurers write those
exclusion clauses). No, if I can sit at home in a chair to
do my good deeds, I am happy. But bone satisfaction comes
from the face-to-face. Can't do that sitting in a
chair. This book leads my thoughts to puzzling the way I can
make such contact for good not so far from my chair. We
shall see what I make of my life......
-
The Glass Castle -
(Jeannette Walls) -
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn
nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose
Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like
nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains.
Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his
children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all,
how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and
couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called
herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be
consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a
painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life
faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town —
and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape.
He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the
dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and
sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they
weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources
and will to leave home.
Gossip columnist Jeanette Walls dishes the dirt on her own troubled
youth in this remarkable story of survival against overwhelming odds.
The child of charismatic vagabonds who left their offspring to raise
themselves, Walls spent decades hiding an excruciating childhood
filled with poverty and shocking neglect. But this is no pity party.
What shines through on every page of this beautifully written family
memoir is Walls's love for her deeply flawed parents and her
recollection of occasionally wonderful times.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: Feeds my perennial fascination attempting to
understand how neglected children come to survive and
thrive. A page-turner - quick read. These kids formed
a plan to get out together - and achieved it. Then each
carved out the life that fit them. As intellectually gifted
as they are, it seems to me that their own parents' single-minded pursuit
of their own interests fueled an ability for the kids to do the
same - in a more socially acceptable fashion. Whatever
unmentioned mental illness comes with the package is part of the
price. One hopes the story isn't over - that the kids will
find strength from each other at other stages of their lives.
Body Surfing -
(Anita Shreve)
At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once
divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again,
she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do
couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire
cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at
the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web
of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her
affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt for herself is
threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant
insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an
author at one with her métier"
- Comment:
- Carolyn: Tightly written - nice flow. Was with her
right up until her last stupid move.
Pompeii
- (Robert Harris)
Ancient Rome is the setting
for the superb new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one
bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel.
Where else to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay
of Naples. All along the coast, the Roman Empire’s richest citizens
are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world’s largest navy
lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their
money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Only one man is worried. The engineer Marius Primus
has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that
brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns
around the Bay. Springs are failing for the first time in generations.
His predecessor has disappeared. And now there is a crisis on the
Augusta’s sixty-mile main line somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on
the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Marius decent, practical, incorruptible
promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can
repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. But as he heads out
towards Vesuvius he is about to discover there are forces that even
the world’s only superpower can’t control.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: Perfect beach book - page-turner, great historical
fiction about one of my favorite historical spots.
-
Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- (J. K. Rolling)
It's hard to imagine a better ending than the one
she's written for her saga after 10 years, more than 4,000 pages and
close to 400 million copies in print. Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows may be a miracle of marketing, but it's also a miraculous
book that earns out, emotionally and artistically. …I cried at the
end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's that rare
thing, an instant classic that earns its catharsis honestly, not
through hype or sentiment but through the author's vision and hard
work.
- Comment:
-
- Carolyn: There is nothing better in July than anticipating
the next Harry Potter - no matter what your age. It's a good
thing I enjoy re-reading my favorite books, for this is the last
and the best of them all. I read Harry when I'm sick - or
just sick at heart. He (and Dumbledor's sage advice) give me
confidence to do the hard, brave thing that I know is right (even
if it's - 'don't eat that donut'.) - My form of the ultimate
bravery. For me that's climbing the mountain without a
safety line.
Human foibles abound and become life lessons to teach to others -
much of my informal mission in life. I have always seen
myself a a teacher of life's lessons - even when I was just 11 years
old ("Can a boy really force himself on you against your
will?" - It was hard to picture, and by today's standards, we
were really coming late to the game). Funny how a
fundamental nature doesn't really change over the years.
Even better when you consider that you have conquered a thing or
two - become a better person. Continue to chip away at those
personal foibles - that's me (or at least keep that list of
'faults to be worked on'.) It's only decent to feel guilty
about those that are still at the top of the list. In this
book, Dumbledor's advice to Harry gave me the courage to take a
hard personal step. Not even self-help books usually elicit
that kind of result.
Triangle
- (Katherine Weber)
By the time she dies at
age 106, Esther Gottesfeld, the last survivor of the Triangle
Shirtwaist fire, has told the story of that day many times. But her
own role remains mysterious: How did she survive? Are the gaps in her
story just common mistakes, or has she concealed a secret over the
years? As her granddaughter seeks the real story in the present day, a
zealous feminist historian bears down on her with her own set of
conclusions, and Esther's voice vies with theirs to reveal the full
meaning of the tragedy.
A brilliant chronicle of the event that stood for ninety years as New
York's most violent disaster, Triangle forces us to consider how we
tell our stories, how we hear them, and how history is forged from
unverifiable truths.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: The concept was good: take a first person account by
the oldest living survivor of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire
and expand it into a mystery of historical fiction. The
execution missed the mark.
The Tender Bar -
(J.R. Moehringer)
In a place that inspired Scott Fitzgerald's Great
Gatsby, young J. R. Moehringer lives with his single mother
and mercurial grandfather in a cramped home with a rather-too-colorful
cast of strident aunts, down-on-their-luck uncles, and their various
offspring. It is 1970s Manhasset, Long Island, and J.R. is lonely and
adrift.
Desperate to escape, J.R.'s mother takes him on long drives, where his
dreams are fueled by the sight of the deep, plush lawns and dazzling,
gated mansions that served as Fitzgerald's East Egg. But it is J.R.'s
introduction to the local pub and its vibrant constellation of
characters that would have the greatest effect on him. A panoply of
discordant human notes, by turns raucous, witty, vulgar, and wise,
these men -- who never quite grew up themselves -- became, for the
forlorn young J.R., a veritable symphony of human succor and safety.
As J.R. becomes a man, however, he realizes that the bar doesn't grant
wishes as much as fill needs in a place where accepting the
inevitability of failure is a defense against future disappointment.
A keenly heartfelt memoir by a writer who has been deemed "the
best memoirist of his kind since Mary Karr," The Tender Bar
is filled with insight into the most fundamental human longings.
Before J.R. can grasp such insight though, he is forced to face the
truth -- about others and, most important, about himself. (Holiday
2005 Selection)
- Comment:
- Carolyn: I loved this survivalist coming-of-age.
02/07 - The
Book Borrower Alice Mattison (fiction,
1999).
3
02/07 - Nature
Girl Carl Hiaasen (fiction, 2006).
3
02/07 - Home
Town Tracy Kidder (non-fiction,
1988). 4
01/07 - The
Turn of the Screw Henry James (fiction,
1898). 3
01/07 - The
Echo Maker Richard Powers (fiction, 2006).
3
2006*
11/06 - The
Bookseller of Kabul Asne Seierstad (non-fiction,
2002). 4
11/06 - Fat
Girl Judith Moore (non-fiction,
2005). 4
11/06 - Slow
Man J.M. Coetzee (fiction,
2005). 3
09/06 - One
Thousand White Women:
Journals of May Dodd, Jim Fergus,1999
novelized journal
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
- (Dai Sijie)
n 1971 Mao's campaign against
the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend,
Luo, distinctly unintellectual but guilty of being the sons of
doctors, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be
're-educated'. The kind of education that takes place among the
peasants of Phoenix Mountain involves carting buckets of excrement up
and down preciptous, foggy paths, but the two seventeen-year-olds have
a violin and their sense of humour to keep them going. Further
distraction is provided by the attractive daughter of the local
tailor, possessor of a particularly fine pair of feet. Their true
re-education starts, however, when they discover a comrade's hidden
stash of classics of great nineteenth-century Western literature -
Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and others, in Chinese translation.
They need all their ingenuity to get their hands on the forbidden
books, but when they do their lives are turned upside down. And not
only their lives; after listening to their dangerously seductive
retellings of Balzac, the Little Seamstress will never be the same
again. NYT
book review NYT
review 2
- Comment:
- Carolyn: I was very distracted and never really got into this
fine book.
Under the Banner of Heaven -
A story of Violent Faith (Jon Krakauer)
n Under the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer shifts his
focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious
belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling
double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and
Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God
commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a
meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired"
crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of
messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith.
Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America's
fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the
nature of religious belief. Krakauer takes readers inside isolated
communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some
forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon
Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying
both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City,
the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God.
Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the
largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural
wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen
or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets
exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and
preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane
of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents. Weaving the story
of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a
clear-eyed look at Mormonism's violent past, Krakauer examines the
underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United
States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious
extremism.
- Comment:
-
- Carolyn: Creepy. Also creepy that the author writes
with seeming tolerance of these heinous murderers. Could
have been happier reading the 6 page magazine version.
Drop City -
(T.C. Boyle)
It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels California commune
devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to
relocate to the last frontier—the unforgiving landscape of interior
Alaska—in the ultimate expression of going back to the land. Armed
with the spirit of adventure and naïve optimism, the inhabitants of
“Drop City” arrive in the wilderness of Alaska only to find their
utopia already populated by other young homesteaders. When the two
communities collide, unexpected friendships and dangerous enmities are
born as everyone struggles with the bare essentials of life: love,
nourishment, and a roof over one's head. Rich, allusive, and
unsentimental, T.C. Boyle's ninth novel is a tour de force infused
with the lyricism and take-no-prisoners storytelling for which he is
justly famous.
- Comment:
-
- Carolyn: I guess I'm not much of an Alaska cabin kind of girl
- raw self-sufficiency is the telling of the man? This is a
guy book, with enough hippie chicks thrown in to make it
human. Joe Bosky is the devil - no one could be that
single-mindedly evil. But he drives the plot - which gives
this book a flawed premise. It should have been nature vs.
man, and it turned into a dull man vs. man. It was a
page-turner in it's way. But the end disappointed - just
dropped off a cliff, like the author didn't have the guts to tell
the real story: how does man survive
isolation?
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies -
(Alexander McCall Smith)
In the newest addition to the universally
beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the charming and
ever-resourceful Precious Ramotswe finds herself overly beset by
problems. She is already busier than usual at the detective agency
when added to her concerns are a strange intruder in her house on
Zebra Drive and the baffling appearance of a pumpkin. And then there
is Mma Makutsi, who decides to treat herself to dance lessons, only to
be partnered with a man who seems to have two left feet. Nor are
things running quite as smoothly as they usually do at Tlokweng Road
Speedy Motors. Mma Ramotswe's husband, the estimable Mr. J.L.B.
Matekoni, is overburdened with work even before one of his apprentices
runs off with a wealthy woman. But what finally rattles Mma Ramotswe's
normally unshakable composure is a visitor who forces her to confront
a secret from her past. . . . All this unfolds against the sunlit
background of Mma Ramotswe's beloved homeland, Botswana-a land of
empty spaces, echoing skies, and an endless supply of soothing bush
tea.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: One of the best.
The
Number: A Completely Different Way To Think About the Rest of Your
Life -
(Lee Eisenberg)
It's the last question you think about before
going to sleep, and the first on your mind in the morning. It's a
taboo that you can't easily discuss with friends and can barely face
with family. It's The Number: the amount of money you need to secure
the rest of your life. Do you know what your Number is? Do you know
how to think about it? Do you know what you really want to do with it?
A provocative field guide to our psyches and our finances, Lee
Eisenberg's The Number will help you have the money conversations you
have been avoiding. It will make you think about the kind of life you
want and the kind of help you need to achieve it. You will also
discover: • Why you wander through your financial "lost
years" until it is almost too late • Why downshifting into
retirement is so challenging • How the second half of life is being
reinvented as we live longer An important program for anyone over
thirty, The Number is the audiobook to listen to before you consult an
investment adviser or a retirement guide — and above all, before the
rest of your life slips by, unexamined.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: I'm still searching for my number - just in a
different kind of way.
Running with Scissors -
(Augusten Burroughs)
Running with Scissors is the true story
of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him
away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a
lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs
found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor.
The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in
the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules;
there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and
Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always
the vintage electroshock-therapy machine under the stairs...
- Comment:
- Carolyn: As crazy a tale as The Glass Castle - but less
understandable. This is a boy who could not survive
adulthood without telling this bizarre childhood story. If
the educated were ever to be clients of DCF, both families would
surely be in the top of their list. But the poor and violent
usually only make the rolls of DCF's client list.
The Full Cupboard of Life -
(Alexander McCall Smith)
"In this fifth novel in The No. 1
Ladies' Detective Agency series, we are once again transported to
Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and enter the world of Mma Precious
Ramotswe and her friends." "Mma Ramotswe is engaged to Mr.
J. L. B. Matchani. She wonders when the wedding date will be set, but
she is anxious to avoid putting too much pressure on her fiance. For,
indeed, he has other things on his mind - notably a frightening
request made of him by Mma Potokwane, the pushy matron of the Orphan
Farm." And there is the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to tend
to. Mma Ramotswe has been hired to determine whether the several
suitors of a wealthy woman - who made her fortune in hair braiding
salons - are really interested in her, or only in her money. A
difficult task, but no one can match Mma Ramotswe in resourcefulness
and spot on intuition.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: Mma Ramotswe is as precious as her name. I
admire - and identify with such practical self-containment.
How to puzzle your way to the facts - The real question is what
you do once you know the facts. So often, inaction is the
solution - or a well-placed nudge with a little help from your
friends to tip a reluctant other in the right direction. At
all costs, you try to keep out of the official system of overt,
documented action. Some things are hard to overlook once the
unforgivable word or action has been realized.
The Secret Life of Bees -
(Sue Monk Kidd)
Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with
her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life
around one devastating, blurred memory - the afternoon her mother was
killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has
been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman
Rosaleen, who acts as her "stand-in mother." When Rosaleen
insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to
spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can
think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina - a name she
found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her
mother. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black
beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as
the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees
and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household
of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and
forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her
heart longs for most.
- Comment:
- Carolyn: We forgive this author her somewhat
overpowering female-power perspective, because the tale and the
characters are wonderful.
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