Debi Cates
Stories that have a female protagonist that do not center on domestic life or romance are always refreshing. And if they are written by a woman, all the better.
Besides being a good outdoor adventure that kept me intrigued all the way through, I am mulling over its larger story and meaning. Filled with native traditions, imperialism and capitalism, limitations of gender-defined roles, all of that packed into a book aimed at younger readers. That's a good thing.
The last few paragraphs surprised me at how sad they hit me. Realistic but sad. I understand George wrote a couple of sequels, but I'm not ready for them. I want to savor this one and its ending and to think how the life of Julie/Miyax might have continued, drifting in and out of my thoughts for a while.
This Pym work makes me wish I could read a couple of books a week like I used to, back in my thirties. I'd like to enjoy more of this caliber of novel. Now double thirty, it takes me a month (!) to read a short novel like this one. Sadly, instead I read a few pages then later wake myself with book still in hand, or sometimes book on nose.
The description describes it “high comedy.” I did laugh audibly a few times, but it is no laugh riot. That that doesn't mean it isn't humorous, it's just not the kind of humor we think of when we use the word “comedy” these days. Instead, let's call it a mild, well-mannered Comedy of Manners of a small certain middle class “village” in post-war London.
Told in first person by thirty-something unmarried Mildred Lathbury. The story includes many pots of tea being made and the small interactions of the social circle of Miss Lathbury's Anglo-Catholic church members and friends. She is best esteemed for being at the ready on every occasion with an agreeable, banal comment, one of the helpful skills she mastered as a vicar's daughter. In her thirties, not especially stylish or attractive, she is an “excellent woman” – which is code for being a good but unmarried woman who, in different not post-war times, would certainly have been married. Still, she is satisfied with her single life (she says often enough when the subject frequently comes up), accepts without question the 1950s social mores that judge women primarily based on their domestic skills and, for the unmarried women, how well they cope with being unmarried yet still admirably serve “mankind” (and keep a tidy home).
She is happy to be of service to others, willingly accepts all the many things she is asked to – or more commonly, assumed will – do, and doesn't want more.
Right.
Made me COL (chuckle out loud). Funny and sweet. I think granddaughters will like it. All kids love crayons, right? And all kids imagine their crayons have personalities, and some even imagine their crayons have lives, right? Right. I remember my daughter (their mother) would make up songs when she was about their age, and once she was singing about her crayon box. I wrote it down.
Update: When I brought a few books over for the Grands, including this one, I mentioned that this was an especially fun one, whereupon my daughter asked me to read it aloud. So I did! I read to the two Grands, Mom and Dad, and a visiting cousin. I haven't read out loud to anyone in a very long time and it was an absolute pleasure to do again. Smile and chuckles abounded. The plight of the white crayon had my son-in-law laughing out loud. The cousin, a sweet young woman, was as enraptured as any child; she loved my enthusiastic, animated style. Delight all around!
And now an especially fond memory for me.
Ljo: “It was funny. My favorite was the page with all the colors.”
Bought to give to my granddaughters and so, of course, had to read it before giving.
I remember liking Frog & Toad (Are Friends) better. This one seemed more anxiety-ridden than my recollection of the other, back from when my own children were small. But maybe this one would help a child with their own anxieties?
I bought this for the Littles (my two youngest granddaughters). Letty loved it! She loved it so much SHE read it to me. She is in first grade and only just begun to read but has taken to reading like a fish to water.
I was so impressed that she could read this herself that I googled around for its reading level. I found something called a Lexile Rating and this book was given a Lexile rating of AD550L. That rating means this book is considered appropriate for an adult to read to a 3rd grade reader. Yet, Letty read it to me!
To learn more about Lexile ratings see https://lexile.com/parents-students/find-books-at-the-right-level/about-lexile-text-codes/
I'm looking forward to following Letty's reading journey. Wonder if I can talk her Mom into setting up a GR account to keep track of what her girls have read? I know that I would love to have a record of all the books I read since I first started reading. Or books that my mom read, or books that my own girls read. More valuable than a baby book, don't you think?
My six year old granddaughter read this to me. An understanding, helpful book about feeling left out.
She said she and her mom read it the night before. Her mom read out loud one page and she read out loud the next page. How sweet. I'm so glad my mom gave me the gift of the love of reading and that I was able to give it to both my girls, and they have passed it down to their kids.
Me, I think the protagonist is a chickpea. :)
Sometimes I will make a salad and think to myself how beautiful it is. But, oh my, Amber Locke's salads are Works of Art! No, really. She sells prints of her works, and after just a quick flip through this book you will understand why. I am adding this book as part of my permanent library because just looking through it I am filled with pleasure.
Beyond the mesmerizingly beautiful photos (on every page), she also gives helpful hints about ingredients – like some taste completely different when fully ripe, some are easier to digest when sliced very thin, some are bland but have great texture, and so on. Just reading the recipe headers is educational and inspirational. You'll pick up tidbits whether you choose to make that one particular salad or not.
I also love her visual conveyance of information. For example, on pages 10 and 11 she has another gorgeous photographic layout of salad fixings, grouped by flavors Neutral, Grassy, Spicy, Bitter, Sour, and Sweet. She has another layout covering the standard required explanation of cutting techniques. Her photos turn that into a delight too.
Locke's Vegan Salads includes dressing recipes and toppings, too. Again, everything seems top notch there. She has a vegan parmesan that I've not seen anywhere else, done without nutritional yeast. That gets a wow from me and from anyone who does not think nooch tastes all that much like cheese. It tastes fine, but only goes so far as “cheese-y” to my taste buds.
I have one beef – er– one complaint. WHY WHY oh WHY do publishers think that printing text in light colors is an in-thing? I hate it. I see it all the time. (Rather, I barely see it.) Yes, I'm old and get cranky about things like this, but don't tell me that in my younger days I would have enjoyed the eye strain then either.
One last curious thing. Who is Mitchell Beazley and why is his name on the Title page in the book?
Ever wished the history you were reading had more footnotes? Ever wonder what reading nothing but would be like? Turner's book is that, and it's a case of be careful what you wish for.
The book, laid out in his fascinating themes covering the history of European attitudes toward spices that any history buff would be sure to love, was unfortunately marred by excluding enough flow and prose that makes a good history a good read. Back-to-back sequences of historical quotes were often only minor to illustrate his point, and were also encapsulated with more eye-crossing minutia to accurately attribute the source material. The author could write well and engagingly when he did, but did so too infrequently and instead relied on dumps of the mass of wide research that he most certainly must have done. Yes, that's interesting and I love that stuff. But that level of detail belongs in footnotes, out of the way of the narrative body.
It would be a great resource for another historian doing research. For a regular reader like myself, all that minor and major data dump overwhelmed me; it became a drudge – albeit an interesting drudge. Turner definitely knows his history and has an interesting take. He should write more. Next time with a stern editor.
Oh my, what a sad but important story, based on research and facts related to a dark part of American history, part of our history of racism that has not yet ended.
The Buddha in the Attic is about the wave of “picture brides” that in the early 1900s came to America from Japan to become wives of Japanese immigrant men living in California, marriages arranged via letter exchanges that were often filled with deceptions about their future husbands and about what their lives would be like in America. The reality would be sobering beyond what they could have imagined in their young girl hearts.
At first, the first person plural narration that Otsuka used was awkward for me, never following any particular immigrant, just sentences of experiences, one after another beginning with “We...” The poignant prose, though, kept me under her spell. Soon I got used to “we,” lost my expectation of following a single person or family, and got into step with the march of sentences with many Japanese names, many American places, many experiences. Then, it hit me: Otsuka's choice was wise and apt. How else to tell the story of this incoming group as seen by Americans, lumped together as simply a different race, a different culture? Individuals were unseen. How else to convey that treatment of the Japanese as being as “Other,” as unknowable? By telling so very many stories, not just one or even a few, Otsuka drives it into our hearts – there were thousands of stories, of individuals never recognized, never respected. Following just one story would not have had the effect that all those “we's” did.
We (readers) follow their stories of the voyage, their hopes and their disappointments on seeing their new husbands. We follow them through wedding nights, marriages, their back-breaking labor in agriculture or as housecleaners or other lowly jobs. We read about suicides, affairs, and madness. We follow them through births and deaths of their children. We follow their strategies to not stand out more than they must. We follow them until they near acceptance, their dreams adjusted, and they acclimate to America and its racism.
Then, they disappeared. The Japanese especially on the coasts were shipped off, both the Japanese immigrants and the Japanese-American citizens. They were sent far inland, forced to leave all they had worked and built. They left sentimental items (including a buddha in the attic). They left pets and, worse, left sick children in hospitals.
Put on trains, they were forced to live in camps for the duration of WW II.
Trains. Camps. America.
No one protested on their behalf. Neighbors were mildly curious where their quiet neighbors were sent, greedy neighbors thieved their homes and businesses, some tried to stay in touch with letters and inquiries, and a small few missed them. But, before long, life simply moved on without their neighbors.
The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II, from WTOP news article about the memorial and history, dateline August 15, 2019
2 stars = it was ok.For me, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was not riveting like [b:The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession 228345 The Orchid Thief A True Story of Beauty and Obsession Susan Orlean https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328347217l/228345.SY75.jpg 911511]. Nor, in the end, did I get a clear or a psychologically interesting picture of Gilkey as a thief. Maybe that's not Bartlett's fault: could be, he just wasn't interesting. He was a crummy guy who wanted to appear to others to be a classy book collector and didn't have the class to pay for books. Instead, he did have an abundant and irrational sense of entitlement, and lack of empathy for those he ripped off. He came from a family that collects and admires collections, albeit most were of the Hummel figurines type, picked up at garage sales on the cheap. I am glad Gilkey was caught multiple times and served sentences. At least he was off the streets, giving booksellers (and libraries!) a temporary reprieve from his thieving scams which, after slight modifications, continued after his release from each incarceration.The “detective” of the title was Ken Sanders, a good guy bookseller in Utah who also has an obsession with books (like many of us on Goodreads). I was prompted to BUY this book to read about him, having bought several Wilderness calendars he used to publish back in the 80s that featured writings and other miscellanea related to his friend, writer Edward Abbey. And as a special bonus the calendars included illustrations by R. Crumb. The dormant collector in me wishes I had kept those and didn't actually write appointments all over them before throwing them away, after a full year's enjoyment.Ultimately, Bartlett's book was a breezy read that gives the reader an introduction to the world of book collecting and book sellers, some idea of what makes a book valuable, and a scattering of brief histories of other book thieves and their crimes. I enjoyed all that, even if Gilkey, “the man who loved books too much,” was unexciting and not all that cunning.Lastly, I have to include a beef I have with the publisher: the footnotes which were often equally interesting but as footnotes had a serious design flaw. Why weren't they on the page of the footnote? Instead, they were in the back where it is impossible to find the original footnote number it went with because the book has no Contents page So good luck even finding the chapter page numbers: you'll have to thumb through the deckle-edged pages to find chapter breaks yourself. And of course no page numbers with the back-of-the-book footnotes that would have solved the whole problem. Boo, Silverhead Books publisher!
I read this back when I was 11 or 12. I read the whole series, three books and I just re-read the first one again, now – gulp – 50 years later.
I'm surprised at my preteen self. The vocabulary was larger than I would imagine I would have understood, and back in those pre-Google dark ages when I wanted to understand a word, I had to “look it up” as my mother directed me many a time when I asked what a word meant. I don't recall doing a lot of looking up, especially not while deep into a book. I figured it out, or just gave it my own meaning.
Because it's a story with a boy protagonist and because it's sci fi, I'm equally surprised it could enthrall me so. I remember having a narrower reading focus. But maybe I'm wrong. Wouldn't it be fun to go back and meet our younger selves, ask questions, get to know our budding selves as children? After re-reading this novel, I figure I would find little me more interesting than my old me gives her credit for.
Oh, and yes, it's still a pretty good YA book. I would immediately re-read the others next if I had copies on hand.
This is a book I've been waiting to come along since I was in 2nd grade. That was back in the sixties when my family lived and worked on a farm in New Mexico and every Sunday went to a small Grace Assembly of God church. Even being so young, the convoluted Jesus story with its strange ancient magic didn't make sense to me. It wasn't supposed to make sense,I was told. It was all real and I just had to have faith.
Not being able to just have faith has continued my whole life. I don't reject Jesus. I believe he lived and remarkably changed the world. But I never have been able to throw in with Christianity and its oddly self-congratulatory emphasis on belief and conversely its general rejection of inquiry and doubt. In my Western culture it's a subject – overt and covert – that never goes away . It makes me ask periodically but regularly, who was Jesus really and how did “his” religion become derisive like this?
At last, in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography there are answers, answers that don't dismiss the questions, answers that for me are even more inspirational because of their realism. In this “revolutionary biography,” Crossan presents a realistic portrait of Jesus without dismissing his remarkable message. Of course, so much information has been lost to time, and so much was never saved in time anyway it's probably impossible to be sure about anything about Jesus, but Crossan puts the man Jesus in context based on what can be known by using contemporaneous written sources, plus modern archaeology and sociology. He places Jesus firmly in the life and times of a Jewish peasant man living under brutal Roman rule and steeped in a highly religious and highly regulated society that was under great pressure. Jesus had ideas and teachings that were original, amazingly progressive and, probably even then, puzzling. These ideas were – and were not – what we often are led to believe they were.
In a nutshell, Jesus was teaching and living radical social egalitarianism. (Remarkable how 2000 years of devotion and study later, we can fall so very far below the mark.) He used healing and communal eating to set the example of the Kingdom of God he believed in.
After his ignominious and tortuous death, the message morphed, and Crossan sifts through the many ways that happened.
Scribes went searching for and incorporating exegesis items to the gospels in order to boost Jesus as the Jewish prophesied messiah. Crossan points where messages were politically tweaked and subsequently encoded into the gospels based on the leadership struggles of the First Christian factions. Then there was even the need to make Jesus interesting and competitive with the standard gods of the day, when gentiles were accustomed to a good yarn about a god's magical life and was a virtual requirement in order for the new message to be received. In spite of all that, Jesus' message is still there to be teased out from the New Testament, and in the non-canonical gospels too. (Like Crossan, I dig the Gospel of Thomas for the feeling of it being the least adulterated voice and message of Jesus.)
Of course I'm not a Biblical scholar and am aware Crossan's ideas are controversial to some. While reading, I wasn't always fully convinced by certain of his arguments. But I doubt there is anyone else who has given more rational study and intelligence to Jesus than Crossan. I am indebted to his work, it's been a revelation. Good to know someone is out there dedicated to understanding a profound (not magical) Jesus.
Francine Prose has a perfect name.
Her Household Saints is both a delight and a heartbreak. (I'm reminded of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.)
I loved vicariously living in this book, in NY's Little Italy as a devout Catholic starting with the years right after WWII. I loved being a young woman who falls in love with her husband on her wedding night, living with a wise but smart aleck and superstitious mother in law, and eating delicious Italian homemade food, especially the sausage (I'm actually vegan now).
So different from my real life, but it was so recognizable as how life is and how sometimes we need a household saint sitting on a dresser just to make it through.
I loved the humor. I loved the richness of everyday life and the everyday struggles to find it meaningful. And I really loved the scene with Jesus and the red and white checked shirts. Quirky but heartfelt. Tender but profound. Joyful but serious.
Like life.
As a refresher for an old 70s chick, but more likely designed for those just entering college, this was easy to read introduction to the novel. Written by a congenial professor, this felt like it would be an easy and enjoyable A.
As would be expected, the novels Foster discusses cover a wide range, heaviest on the classic authors of the late 19th and 20th centuries. He covers a brief history of the novel, with special attention to Victorian times and the serialization of the novel. Then, as the 20th century comes along, writers exploded in experimentation, unleashed from the serialized publishing approach.
He includes insights on multiple writing developments, including those I don't enjoy like metafiction and streams of consciousness. I can't say Foster converted me to purposely seek them out again – no, too recent is my painful and failed stab at Ulysses – but at least he convinced me to more than mildly appreciate them as innovations. (Foster didn't fawn over and guilt me about Joyce. That was nice.)
Mostly Foster encourages readers to recognize that someone wrote this novel, this way. And he gives you ideas about the thousands of deliberate choices made by the writer and how there's insight into the novel in those choices. Sometimes we even need to recognize when writers can have no choice; for example no one can escape writing based on their own time in history even if writing about the past or the future. Every novelist writes from their “now.” No surprise that even master novelists write from sources like their personal life experiences, personal likes and dislikes, their curiosity, their foibles. They write based on all the writers they've read and who those writers read, too. Novelists write based on their opinions and preferences of what a novel should or could be. Foster is convincing when he explains how thinking of any number of those things while reading can make for a more stimulating and expansive experience.
At the heart of forging every novel, writers write to entice readership. Yep, all novels are written for readers. Not necessarily for all readers, but no novel is written without wanting a reader. Readers are the partners that come to a novel after the author is done. We are, in a way, half of any novel.
Here's some advice from Foster,
Own the novels you read...take psychological and intellectual possession of those works. Make them yours. You're not a frightened schoolchild asking for extra gruel...You're a grown-up person having a conversation with another one.
Read this survival YA classic during the Great Texas Freeze of 2021, while huddled under blankets during the daylight hours. I was hoping for a fictional disaster to take my mind off of my real-life, real-time, real-effin' cold disaster.
I'd say it mostly worked, a testament to Paulsen.
P.S. Mr. Ted Cruz who flew to the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun to escape the freeze just like the coward we know he is and with thoughts only of his super privileged little family (see Beto and AOC for how politician's service to others is done right), this 62 year old Texas survivor says he can now just go on to hell, where I hear it is warm all year round.
I thoroughly enjoyed the TV series The Jewel in the Crown and really wanted to read it, but couldn't find a used copy so I chose this available novel by Scott about India.
It took me a long time to read but that is not because it was a drudge but because I started it at the holidays. I don't mind a leisurely paced read, especially if it has an exotic (to me) setting and an interesting historical backdrop that I can mull between bedtimes. This fit the bill nicely. It was a plus that some characters from The Jewel were included, off-scene.
Scott has a nice talent for developing realistic female characters. Good on him. And I liked reading about “seniors” since I am one myself now. I didn't find it a mind-blowing work of literature requiring lots of deep thinking on my part although Staying On won the Booker Prize. To me, this was just a solid story with a number of well developed characters experiencing their unimportant lives during a time of big social change in history.
Enjoyed. I'd like to read more by him.
Not great, but plenty entertaining. Heck, even a mediocre Wharton story is better than most. One I found to be very well done: The Other Two, about the awkwardness of all the exes showing up at the same time. Throughout the short stories there is such a wonderful command of language that is a delight in itself. This collections' theme was romance, mostly of the old married couples type and that is where she seems to shine the best. Her descriptions of the relationship between husbands and wives can be absolutely stabbing, done by sharp cuts down to the vital truth.It was more feminist than I expected, which is a good thing. I was afraid it would be of a lot of Victorian shrinking violets being abused by brute husbands. And certainly the roles of men and women were different then, but she gives women their own power which was a refreshing surprise. It's been ages since I read [b:The House of Mirth 17728 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328729186l/17728.SY75.jpg 1652564] and the sad vulnerability of Lily Bart wasn't something I connected to. After the breadth of females in this collection, I'm thinking I should add another Wharton novel to my To Read list.(I did notice an odd thing that stood out as awkward to me in this group: blushing. Was there really so much blushing in 1904?)I listened to the Librivox recording by Nicholas Clifford which was superb.
Pat begins her day with a phone call from her eighty year old father asking when she is coming over to take him to his driver's license test. He calls before 9, the test is at 4, and all day he asks her what time is it and what time is the test. He's failed it three times already and this is his last chance appeal.Told in first person, present-tense Pat spends the day observing her father, wrangling his decisions large and small, thinking of her deceased mother, and trying to figure out the real story of the life of her family, “What Really Happened” she calls it. There's no big revelation. She's just trying, like so many of us, to figure out a parent who has now become a lot of work and who was never someone she liked a lot or understood very well to begin with.Nothing like [b:The Kin Of Atta Are Waiting for You 2045311 The Kin Of Atta Are Waiting for You Dorothy Bryant https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 2050244]. Felt like it was a memoir.