What motivates people to find each other, to join hands and try to travel the road together? While even the constant connection of technology can sometimes hide the truth of partners' true motivations, a century ago it was not uncommon for people to order spouses from catalogues, or to simply place an ad in newspapers around the country, and wait to see who showed up. Could you imagine agreeing to spend your life with someone that you only knew through a few letters, giving up your possessions, friends and locale, and moving across the country to find... who knew what, really? Would you be ready to deal with whatever you found?
Catherine Land and Ralph Truitt do just that in Goolrick's A Reliable Wife. Truitt, a wealthy, heartbroken, emotionally stunted widower, places an ad in a paper looking for a steady, sturdy partner, and he believes he has found one in Catherine, who professes to be the simple daughter of a missionary. Both have ulterior motives, and more baggage than any train could carry.
This is a great, great book, one that is difficult to put down. Just when I thought I had an idea of what was coming, the entire story would change tracks and go in a completely different direction! It was wonderful to read a novel that could surprise me, and be so beautifully written that I found the characters, ugly or pathetic as they were at times, redeeming and human and lush. Even the ending is immensely satisfying. Goolrick's uses of imagery and quiet, almost silent foreshadowing make the story extremely realistic and multi-dimensional while allowing the reader to discover the truths of these people in his or her own time, and to then realize that the path had of course been leading there all along.
Rating: five stars. Excellent, absorbing, mysterious read.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Review: The Good Book, by David Plotz
The Good Book, which is completely titled, The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible (but which was too long to fit in the title section), was quite amusing. As with The Year of Living Biblically, where the semi-secular author decides to try and live every rule in the bible, while objectively critiquing it, so Plotz, a non-practicing Jew, provides Cliff notes, if you will, to the Old Testament / Torah / Jewish Bible.
Plotz' summaries are simple, well-worded, and work well due to several important factors. One, he skips over the boring parts, aka the 'begats', reiterations, and plain boring stuff. Two, he includes rational questions when confronted with obvious contradictions in text or events that he feels make no sense based on other sections or books. Three, he does this in a breezy, snarky manner that makes the whole thing fairly easy to read, or at least a heck of a lot easier than the actual book itself.
Why would someone read this, rather than the Bible itself? Let's face it, the Bible is looooong. Even the Torah, which I had to read in college, is looooong, and difficult to get through, especially considering the time, cultural, and linguistic differences. Plotz gives the casual reader, say, someone who recognizes the continual biblical allusions in everything from Shakespeare to The Matrix as such, but doesn't know the significance of the linkage, the opportunity to make the connection without having to plod through a thousand pages and potentially difficult-to-parse wording to find out. Also, because the bible as a piece of literature is culturally significant, it's not a bad idea to have a working knowledge of its basic contents. Finally, for anyone actually willing to read the bible itself, beginning here with a plainly written outline isn't a bad idea.
Even so, getting through even Plotz' humorous translation was work, and took me almost a week, whereas I would usually finish a book of this length in about two days. It was worthwhile, and when I finished I had the sense of actually Completing Something, but it was still work.
And besides, the next time I watch The Matrix, I'm going to know where all the seemingly-random names come from.
Rating: five stars out of five. Cleverly worded and well-paced, this is a good basic education in common references and stories, as well as an interesting discussion of questions posed.
Plotz' summaries are simple, well-worded, and work well due to several important factors. One, he skips over the boring parts, aka the 'begats', reiterations, and plain boring stuff. Two, he includes rational questions when confronted with obvious contradictions in text or events that he feels make no sense based on other sections or books. Three, he does this in a breezy, snarky manner that makes the whole thing fairly easy to read, or at least a heck of a lot easier than the actual book itself.
Why would someone read this, rather than the Bible itself? Let's face it, the Bible is looooong. Even the Torah, which I had to read in college, is looooong, and difficult to get through, especially considering the time, cultural, and linguistic differences. Plotz gives the casual reader, say, someone who recognizes the continual biblical allusions in everything from Shakespeare to The Matrix as such, but doesn't know the significance of the linkage, the opportunity to make the connection without having to plod through a thousand pages and potentially difficult-to-parse wording to find out. Also, because the bible as a piece of literature is culturally significant, it's not a bad idea to have a working knowledge of its basic contents. Finally, for anyone actually willing to read the bible itself, beginning here with a plainly written outline isn't a bad idea.
Even so, getting through even Plotz' humorous translation was work, and took me almost a week, whereas I would usually finish a book of this length in about two days. It was worthwhile, and when I finished I had the sense of actually Completing Something, but it was still work.
And besides, the next time I watch The Matrix, I'm going to know where all the seemingly-random names come from.
Rating: five stars out of five. Cleverly worded and well-paced, this is a good basic education in common references and stories, as well as an interesting discussion of questions posed.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
New Book Announcement! for July 1!
I can't believe that we'll be into July already! I want to give people plenty of time to finish up The Book Thief and get started on this next book, which is...
(drumroll, please)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
I know, this is a big departure from what we've been reading, but after a few months' worth of Heaviness, I thought it might be fun to read something totally different. If we all hate it, we'll still have learned something... right????
Let me know what you think. If there's a general outcry, we can always find something else. :)
(drumroll, please)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
I know, this is a big departure from what we've been reading, but after a few months' worth of Heaviness, I thought it might be fun to read something totally different. If we all hate it, we'll still have learned something... right????
Let me know what you think. If there's a general outcry, we can always find something else. :)
Monday, May 4, 2009
Book Thief Discussion Question #5 - Opinion
What did you think of The Book Thief? How did you feel while you read it? Who was your favorite character, and why? Are there any passages that have stayed with you?
Book Thief Discussion Question #4- Narration
How did having Death as the narrator of the novel change the tone of the story for you? Was it a welcome departure from the normal, or an unsettling intrusion?
Book Thief Discussion Question #3- Thievery
Leisel's thievery of books throughout the novel can be seen as a euphanism for stealing for one's life; Leisel's books enable her survival, both mentally and, during the bombing, when her love of the written word saves her life. Think of other ways that the characters steal pieces of life from the death around them in order to make lives for themselves.
Book Thief Discussion Question #2- Beauty and Brutality
Near the end of the novel, as Leisel's life is at an end, Death says that he wants to share with her the beauty and brutality of humanity, but she has already lived it. How do you think this story shows the beautiful side of brutality? Can one exist without the other?
Book Thief Discussion Question #1- Bravery
All of the characters in this novel display tremendous bravery in the face of terrible situations. Pick one that was particularly meaningful to you and discuss.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Review: Crazy Love, by Leslie Morgan Steiner
Sometimes, people who seem to have it all on the outside really have almost nothing to hold onto on the inside. In fact, their very affluence and intelligence act as a shield hiding their actual situations from the world. This can lead to deadly consequences, as it almost did in Steiner's case.
Crazy Love is the memoir of a woman who grew up with every financial benefit. Her family lived in affluence, in a high-class part of the country, with a summer home and trips to foreign countries to perfect accents. Unfortunately, underneath it all was a mother who had succumbed to the family trait of alcoholism and a father who rarely was away from his high-profile job. Steiner herself was an exceptionally odd combination of drinker and A-student, a girl who had sex for drugs, whose mother would call her The Washington Whore. Even more exceptionally, Steiner graduated, got into Harvard, overcame her addictions, and graduated to move to NYC as a writer and editor for Seventeen magazine.
Steiner protected her new life carefully, never forgetting for a moment her past and her ideas of people's opinions of her, which swirled in her mind as she carefully crafted her conversations with her friends and family. Even at this level of success, she still internalized her mother's words, and her fears of what others thought of her. She stayed away from men, celibate for four years, and kept her nose down. It was this combination of destructive internal monologue and successful-girl-from-good-family that made her a perfect target for Conor, who was in much the same situation. The difference between them was, his anger and fear of his past destroyed his ability to be safely close to women, a secret that Steiner learned painfully at his hands increasingly over the years.
In her memoir, Steiner explains how Conor separated her from her friends and family, extracted her from her beloved city and career, and literally beat her into submission. As many abusers do, he carefully played on her insecurities, and her desperate desire to have make a family where she could be loved and safe. He lured her in, and once she had nowhere to go, the beatings and threats began, continuing for years, until one night when the intervention of a neighbor during one of Conor's rages was the only thing that saved her life. Steiner picked herself up and left, not without looking back multiple times, and not without losing even members of her own family in the process.
Her strength is obvious, even during the worst of the situation, and that's what makes her tale so incredible. She very successfully debunks the idea of the beaten woman as uneducated or unintelligent, and shows how even the smartest, most determined women can be pulled in. Her story is extremely absorbing.
While I think it's inappropriate to comment too far on a memoir like this, where the author is working through what happened to her, I can say that I wish there had been more of some things and less of others. Steiner goes into a lot of detail, which sometimes was skimmable, but leaves out parts of the end of the story that would have been interesting to know, such as whether she has been able to restore any relationship with the family that betrayed her during her divorce, or how the settlement itself ended up - there was a potential for her having to support him rather significantly, and of his getting part of her family's property; did that happen?
While I can't say I enjoyed the book, because you can't enjoy reading a tale like this, I can say that it was very, very well-told, and I read it in one day. Every time I put it down, I was thinking about what was coming, and hurrying to get back. The back story on her family, and her subsequent realizations about her actual relationships with them, were extremely interesting. Steiner herself has since remarried and had a family, and her remarkable story will stay with me for a long, long time.
Review: four out of five stars - incredible story of the fight to survive, both mentally and physically
Crazy Love is the memoir of a woman who grew up with every financial benefit. Her family lived in affluence, in a high-class part of the country, with a summer home and trips to foreign countries to perfect accents. Unfortunately, underneath it all was a mother who had succumbed to the family trait of alcoholism and a father who rarely was away from his high-profile job. Steiner herself was an exceptionally odd combination of drinker and A-student, a girl who had sex for drugs, whose mother would call her The Washington Whore. Even more exceptionally, Steiner graduated, got into Harvard, overcame her addictions, and graduated to move to NYC as a writer and editor for Seventeen magazine.
Steiner protected her new life carefully, never forgetting for a moment her past and her ideas of people's opinions of her, which swirled in her mind as she carefully crafted her conversations with her friends and family. Even at this level of success, she still internalized her mother's words, and her fears of what others thought of her. She stayed away from men, celibate for four years, and kept her nose down. It was this combination of destructive internal monologue and successful-girl-from-good-family that made her a perfect target for Conor, who was in much the same situation. The difference between them was, his anger and fear of his past destroyed his ability to be safely close to women, a secret that Steiner learned painfully at his hands increasingly over the years.
In her memoir, Steiner explains how Conor separated her from her friends and family, extracted her from her beloved city and career, and literally beat her into submission. As many abusers do, he carefully played on her insecurities, and her desperate desire to have make a family where she could be loved and safe. He lured her in, and once she had nowhere to go, the beatings and threats began, continuing for years, until one night when the intervention of a neighbor during one of Conor's rages was the only thing that saved her life. Steiner picked herself up and left, not without looking back multiple times, and not without losing even members of her own family in the process.
Her strength is obvious, even during the worst of the situation, and that's what makes her tale so incredible. She very successfully debunks the idea of the beaten woman as uneducated or unintelligent, and shows how even the smartest, most determined women can be pulled in. Her story is extremely absorbing.
While I think it's inappropriate to comment too far on a memoir like this, where the author is working through what happened to her, I can say that I wish there had been more of some things and less of others. Steiner goes into a lot of detail, which sometimes was skimmable, but leaves out parts of the end of the story that would have been interesting to know, such as whether she has been able to restore any relationship with the family that betrayed her during her divorce, or how the settlement itself ended up - there was a potential for her having to support him rather significantly, and of his getting part of her family's property; did that happen?
While I can't say I enjoyed the book, because you can't enjoy reading a tale like this, I can say that it was very, very well-told, and I read it in one day. Every time I put it down, I was thinking about what was coming, and hurrying to get back. The back story on her family, and her subsequent realizations about her actual relationships with them, were extremely interesting. Steiner herself has since remarried and had a family, and her remarkable story will stay with me for a long, long time.
Review: four out of five stars - incredible story of the fight to survive, both mentally and physically
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