Two Kathleens

I have two book recommendations for you…. both by “Kathleens” and both first time novelists. Great books!

#1 - The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom (Audio)

Title: The Kitchen House
Publisher: Touchstone
Web: www.kathleengrissom.com
Date of Publication: February, 2010
ISBN-10: 1439153663
Readers: Orlagh Cassidy,  Bahni Turpin
Length: 12 hours, 55 minutes

Source: Hmmm…. I think a friend said it had been recommended to her… I think.
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

Synopsis from Goodreads.com: When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family.

From B: This was a very captivating “listen.” I imagine the paper version is awesome, too. As always, I am so amazed at the ability of readers to sweep you up into a story. Kitchen House is set on a plantation in the 1780’s and is told in the alternating voices of Ladvinia and Belle. Ladvinia is a slave but also the daughter of the plantation owner. Belle is a young girl who comes to the plantation at the age of 7 as an indentured servant. Bottom line – it’s a story about how bad humans can treat each other. It’s about how good we can be to each other, too. I was sad to see this book end…. an indicator that the characters were strong, the story smooth, and the writing beautiful. I’m sure if I had been reading the paper version there would have been lots of dog-eared pages marking well crafted passages to go back and study. Highly recommend!

#2 – The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent

Title: The Heretic’s Daughter
Web: www.kathleenkent.com
Date of Publication: October 12, 2009
ISBN-10: 031602449X

Source: See below “From B”
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

Synopsis from Goodreads.com: Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.

From B: A few months back I watched this adaptation of  Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. I’m pretty sure I had never read the play. I watched it because of cast – Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis…. two of my favorites. The movie was great and got me interesting in knowing a little more about the Salem Witch Trials. That led me to looking for novels set in that time period… which led me to The Heretic’s Daughter. I found it a few weeks later in one of our local used bookstores. If you are at all interested in this time period, or in the trials, or in mother-daughter relationships, this is an awesome read. Kent is tenth generation descendant of Martha Carrier and the book shows her personal attachment to the story. She has crafted a wonderful first novel. Highly recommend!

Good Words:  
“And what finally of the tortures of a guilty soul? What concoction is there that can be chewed and swallowed and downed in the belly to force the poison of self-recrimination back through the pores in the skin? In what organ of the body does it reside? A seeping wound can be bound. Salve can be dabbed to a burn or a swelling bubo. Poison can be drawn with a leech, or a lance. But guilt is a ghost that takes the shape of the body it inhabits and consumes all that is tender within its shell: brain, bowels, and heart. I cannot pluck it out like a splinter of glass or treat it with herbal brews.”

“It was as if time for us within the cells had shortened against the time that lay outside the cold and seeping walls of the prison. And like a smaller cog within a larger one, we were outpacing the outer world in our rush towards our endless sleep.”

You can find more of my reviews at these links:

Titles A to E

Titles F to J

Titles K to O

Titles P to T

Titles U to Z

CONTINUE READING...

Audio Book Love

I’m sooooo far behind on writing book reviews. Like a year behind! But I’ve been pretty slack about reading lately so I think I can actually catch up if I give it a good try. I thought I’d start with a post on audio books. Over the past three or four years I’ve discovered a great love for audio books. Our public library has a great collection and I listened to books I think I would have never read otherwise. Most notable are Pillars of the Earth and its sequel World Without End.  Awesome books!

So, here’s a quick list of audio books I’ve listened to and their ratings:

Bel Canto (by Ann Patchett; read by Anna Fields):

Source: This has been on my TBR List for a long while. She wrote a book, Truth & Beauty, that I really loved about her relationship with her best friend Lucy Grealy. That led me to read Lucy Grealy’s book Autobiography of a Face. I highly recommend both of those…. in that order. Anyway, after reading Truth & Beauty, I wanted to read her fiction work. Rating: 4 of 5 STARS. Good solid story, great writing, the reader was amazing.

**********************************************************************

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (written and read by David Foster Wallace)

Source: I’ve picked this book up at least half a dozen times at book stores but never took the plunge. Finally, I was browsing Audible for a non-fiction book and thought I’d try it. Rating: 1 of 5 STARS. This was just not a good book. The essays were either boring or offensive. The only one that kept my attention was the one about the Main Lobster Fair. Highly DO NOT recommend.

**********************************************************************
Peony (written by Pearl S. Buck; read by Kirsten Potter):

Source: The Good Earth is one of my favorite books. I read it well over 15 years ago but there are still some scenes that I can visualize in my mind. Great, powerful book. I thought I’d try something else by Pear S. Buck and found this on Audible. Rating: 5 of 5 STARS. Ms. Buck didn’t disappoint me. This is another great book…. Probably not as memorable as The Good Earth, but very, very good story. It’s about the life of a young bondmaid sold to a Jewish/Chinese family in the 1850’s in the province of Honan. Peony is a wonderful mixture of being informative, entertaining, and wonderful writing.

**********************************************************************

The Namesake (written by Jhumpa Lahiri; read by Sarita Choudhury):

Source: I’ve read Lahiri’s two short story collections (Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth) and loved, loved, loved them. This is her only novel and it’s been on my TBR list for a good long while, too. Rating: 4 of 5 STARS. Lahiri definitely has a way of weaving the threads of her story into a beautiful tapestry. And her writing is just beautiful. I think I enjoyed her short stories more than her novel, but I’d recommend Namesake, too.

**********************************************************************

I’ve put back up the tabs on my blog that takes you to a lot of different things, most notably (I think) is my “bookish things” – the index to all the book reviews I’ve done on this blog and my TBR lists.

Happy listening, bloggy friends!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, 528 pages, Anchor (January 20, 1998), ISBN-10: 0385491034

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS
Source: Just hanging out on my shelves, waiting to be read!

So, I’ve mentioned before (I think) that I’m having trouble reading. Ack! I’ve gone from reading over 50 books a year to maybe 10. Not sure what is going on – focus, busyness, dunno. My fear is my 40+ brain is turning to such mush that I’m going to lose one of the biggest joys I’ve had in my life since I can remember – reading, reading, reading! I just haven’t been able to engage with a book. In desperation, I turned to one of my most favorite authors – Margaret Atwood – she of The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace (7+ STARS!!), Oryx & Crake, The Blind Assassin, etc. I figured if I couldn’t finish a Margaret Atwood novel, something must really be wrong with me and I was going to make an appointment with my doctor.

Well, after admittedly a rather longish time, I finished The Robber Bride and Atwood did not disappoint. Although not my favorite story of hers, it kept me interested, her characters seemed real, and I just simply wallowed in her wonderful, wonderful prose.

It’s not an uplifting story. And one reviewer I read said it’s a man-hater book. I’m not sure about that, but men are not strong characters nor overall shown in a very good light. Here’s a short description:

Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless; a man’s dream and a woman’s nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make sure Tony, Roz and Charis are there for the funeral. But five years on, as the three women share an indulgent, sisterly lunch, the unthinkable happens; ‘with waves of ill will flowing out of her like cosmic radiation’, Zenia is back.

I would recommend it, but if you’ve never read Atwood, I would start with Alias Grace or The Blind Assassin.

So, I’m trying to working through a book called The Writer’s Idea Book and one prompt is something I’ve done a good bit of in the past -

1. Keep an ongoing list of new words you learn while reading.

2. Keep an ongoing list of phrases and sentences that strike you as particularly good in what you read. Get into the habit of writing them down.

I used to do this as “Good Words” posts and have gotten out of the habit. So – hopefully later today I’ll be posting some “Good Words” from The Robber Bride. Until then, happy reading, bloggy friends!

Oh - one more note. This is not the cover of the book I own, but I wish it were! Mine has some weird eyeball and dangling gloved hand. I like this one much better!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Really!

I've been having a little bit of a problem the last oh..... three or four months or so.... I haven't been able to read! I mean I can "read", I just can't seem to finish a book. The last one I remember finishing was in September when I was home recovering from surgery. It was Elegy for Iris, the story of author Iris Murdoch's life as told by her husband. Very good, if a little depressing. I followed up by watching the movie. Very, very good. (Kate Winslet was great!) 

Anywhoo.... I don't know what happened after that. I just lost interest or focus or something. Couldn't seem to finish anything. So, yesterday I finally finished a book I've been working on since October, Peace Like a River.  It's been on my TBR list for a while and our book club chose it for our November read. 

Peace Like a River  by Leif Enger, Atlantic Monthly Press; Later Printing edition (August 20, 2002), ISBN-10: 0802139256

Source: Heard of it for a long time, on my TBR list, chosen by book club

Rating: Definitely 5 out of 5 STARS

So, my taking so long to finish Peace Like a River is absolutely NO reflection on how wonderful this book is! There are a ton of reviews on it (here is a good one) so I won't really add much to all the words floating around out there in Bloglandria except to say "read it!" Great story told with wonderful words. Period. 

I dog-eared so many pages! (Yes, horrors! I do indeed dog-ear pages of *my* books that have especially beautiful writing or interesting tidbits of information. Here are just a few examples of Mr. Enger's ability to produce "good words":

"...it had Judge Raster, who I'd pictured as some predatory deep-sea critter, sitting behind his high desk. In the flesh the judge had the kind of wavy white hair I associated with benevolence, the hair of soft-touch aunts who keep mints in candy dishes within your reach; though his eyes, behind half glasses, evoked no such hopeful impressions. Surprisingly, my first sense of Judge Raster was of a man who clung to small vanities. He had a preening look. You do't like to think it of a judge." page 83 (Just a great character description.)

"Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long." page 54 (Do you know that kind of grief? The description brought tears to my eyes.)

"Davy didn't reply. It was deepest night. I remember his shape in the stuffed chair next the window: clean map of chin and cheekbone, cup of coffee under drifting steam. He was watching the meadow and after some silence rose and stood close to the glass. A herd of deer had come out from a black tangle of trees. They were crossing the meadow, so shapeless at this distance seeing them was an act of faith." page 298 (Lovely!)

That's just a few random pages I flipped to.... there's so much to admire in Enger's writing! Truly a man who can write a story with an obvious Christian worldview to a wider audience. Excellent!

Since I finished this one (hooray!) I thought I'd pick up another novel to read and bought When She Woke  for my Kindle based on a recommendation from a friend. Ai Yi Yi! I am *sorely* disappointed. It's so bad, I've put it down for good without finishing. I usually try not to be too harsh about books I don't like, but this one really was shocking to me. Great premise but very poorly executed with an obvious political agenda. Contrived characters, forced dialogue, stilted writing.... you get the idea. From some reviews I've read I gather Ms. Jordan's first novel, Mudbound, was much, much better. 

So, now I think I'm off to bed to start Leaving Van Gogh.... a recommendation from a (different) friend that I hope gives better results.  

CONTINUE READING...

3rd of 3 Book Reviews

Two posts in one day! Haven't done that in a long time! Here's the 3rd book review I wanted to get done this weekend:

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood, Paperback: 240 pages, Publisher: Anchor (March 16, 1998), 

ISBN-10: 0385491115

Source: snagged it off a friend's bookshelf (Yes, CD, I'll bring this one back!)
Rating: 3 of 5 STARS

Atwood is one of my top five favorite authors. I love her stories and the way she strings words together into something intricate and beautiful yet still simple. A friend had this collection of short stories sitting on her bookshelf just begging for me to borrow. I'm working on a short story or two myself and I had the idea of reading these and maybe dissecting them a bit to see  how a master does it.

These stories didn't particularly resonate with me, though. I didn't find myself marking one passage of great writing like I usually do for Atwood. (See my review of Alias Grace and the "Good Words" I collected there.) It wasn't hard reading or boring or anything like that. These stories just didn't touch my soul like I've come to expect from Atwood. Still, I plan to pick my favorite and pull it apart for my writing edification.

So, if you're an Atwood fan, definitely read since being a fan myself, I'd like to read everything by her. But if not, and looking for a good set of short stories, I'd recommend her collection Moral Disorder and Other Stories instead. I read that pre-blogging days so don't have a review for you, but it is super-excellent!

Here are a couple more of her books I've reviewed on this blog:

 The Blind Assassin

Cat's Eye

AND - as a help to me, here's a running list of books I've read this year but have yet to review! (@#%$^!!)

•Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (3 of 5 STARS)

•In the Time of the Butterflies (5 of 5 STARS)

•Still Alice (4 of 5 STARS)

•Let the Lady Speak (5 of 5 STARS)

•Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (4 of 5 STARS)

•Safe from the Sea (4 of 5 STARS)

•A Broom of One's Own (5 of 5 STARS)

PS. The cover above isn't what the cover of the book I read looked like, but I really liked this one instead! Which brings me to a cool site to share with you of an artist in St. Louis, Matt Roeser, who makes alternate covers for popular books. Hop over. I like his work. Here's his take on the cover of The Disappearing Spoon I reviewed earlier today! I also really liked his version of  Lord of the Flies.

CONTINUE READING...

2nd of 3 - Book Reviews

Here's number 2 of the 3 book reviews I'd like to get done this weekend:

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean, Narrated by Sean Runnette, Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (August 24, 2010), ISBN-10: 9781400169528

Source: Where I get all my audio books - our wonderful local public library!

Rating: 4 of 5 STARS

This is simply a very, very interesting book. But here this is coming from a person who truly remembers the instant she fell in love with atoms in sophomore chemistry class and who went on to get a degree in chemical engineering. So I could be biased and the "normal" person (a group I sometimes include myself but not often) might find it dull and hard to follow. It's hard for me to tell. Also, since I listened to this book instead of reading it, I tended to get lost in all the techno-language of orbitals and quantum mechanics and radioactive decay and spent a good deal of time backing up to relisten to sections. Or either just admitting I wasn't following along and zone out until something intriguing (and less difficult to understand) caught my attention. Hence the 4 instead of 5 rating. But that could just be a fault of my personal brain and not the reading public in general.

The Disappearing Spoon is chock-full of fascinating stories about the scientists involved in constructing the periodic table. I've gotten tons of ideas for tangential short stories I hope I eventually follow through with and put pen to paper. Stories of Robert Oppenheimer, Tycho Brahe, and Louis Pasteur to just name a few.

Minus a few sluggish areas, this book is well worth the listen! And actually, I'm not sure I would have made it through the book in print. Narrator Sean Runnette does a fabulous job. His voice is very expressive without being annoying and carried me along from disc to disc whereas if I were reading The Spoon it very easily could have been one of those books that I might have been tempted to put down for a while and never gotten back around to.

CONTINUE READING...

1st of 3 - Book Reviews

I'm so very behind on book reviews! I'm going to try to do a little catch-up work this morning, so here's the first:

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art & Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer; Hardcover: 320 pages; Publisher: Penguin Press HC, (March 3, 2011); ISBN-10: 159420229X

Source: Random from Public Library
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

I really, really liked this book. As a 40-something (ahem) woman, my memory seems to be beginning to let loose and fail. Yes, I know going into a room then forgetting what you were going to do once there is relatively normal... but I'm doing some other weird things such as forgetting I've done things like taking a can of food out of the pantry to cook and then going back to the pantry to look for it five minutes later. (And getting mad because who in the world would have eaten my one can of green beans??) So, when I saw this book at my local public library, I couldn't resist.

Journalist Joshua Foer takes the reader on a journey to look at not only how to improve one's memory but also tells the tale of the history and science of memory. He takes us on a tour of memory anomalies like S, a young Russian journalist who remembered (literally) everything and EP, a man with the most extreme case of amnesia ever documented - his memory only extended back to his most recent thought. A really interesting aspect of the book is Foer's training for the U.S. Memory Championship during the year he performed research for the book. He actually won and shares his techniques for training. Especially interesting (and useful) is the hundreds of years old "memory palace" technique. I've tried it and, yep - it really works!

As an aside - if you're interested at all in classical education (which I am since I've taught at a classical school and have had two children attend) this should be on your reading list. Great thoughts on why it is still important for children to do memory work.

So, I highly recommend this one bloggy friends! It's one after reading I wished I owned to add to my personal library. And here's a great video of Foer being interviewed with RSA.

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Dearest Creature

Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler, Paperback: 96 pages, Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Original edition (September 29, 2009), ISBN-10: 0143116355
Rating: 3 of 5 STARS
Source: Random selection at a used book store

I read this little volume of poetry on the way to DC last weekend. Although there were a few poems that I thought were lovely, mostly I found them strange and a bit hard to follow. Could be a failing on my part, so don’t rule this poet out. Here’s the description from the back of the book:

”Hallucinogenic plants chant in chorus. A thoughtful dog grants an interview. A caterpillar offers life advice. Amy Gerstler's newest collection of poetry, Dearest Creature, marries fact and fiction in a menagerie of dramatic monologues, twisted love poems, and epistolary pleadings. Drawing on sources as disparate as Lewis Carroll and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as well as abnormal psychology, etiquette, and archaeology texts, these darkly imaginative poems probe what it means to be a sentient, temporary, flesh-and- blood beast, to be hopelessly, vividly creaturely.”

My favorite was probably the first – “For My Niece Sidney, Age Six”. You can read it here. I loved that she mentioned Martin Luther:

……………………………………..…Martin Luther
believed we human beings contain the “inpoured
grace of God,” as though grace were lemonade,
and we are tumblers brimful of it. Is grace
what we hold in without spilling a drop,
or is it an outflooding, a gush of messy,
befuddling loves?”

Other lines I liked:

From “Chanson:”
Seriously undermedicated, I waltz
downstairs into the soaked street
during a short storm.
*I just thought “seriously undermedicated” was funny.


From “Birds of America:”
…cavorting by the frilly hem of the foaming ocean…

and
Then fall hurled itself down
with it's customary thud.


From “Mrs. Monster Pens Her Memoirs:”
At my age, memory hiccups and tics.

and

Beauty only divides the world -
ugliness is far more fascinating,
contains infinitely more variation,
its existence crucial to beauty,
therefore all the more precious.

and

If only someone else could slip inside this body
(the soul’s meaty Halloween costume:
sometimes it’s pinkish, or the brackish color of wet wood:
depends on my mood) and look out through these pinhole eyes,
work the opposable thumb, squeeze into the driver’s seat
beside me, they could pilot this rig while I sleep.
I am so tired. And I demand to know:
who stuffed me into this old-lady suit and how
do I burst out now – unzip it and step free?

Oh! And on a ‘poetical’ note – Poetic Asides from Writer’s Digest has started their Poem-A-Day Challenge for April. The first prompt was to write a “What got you here” poem. I did this challenge two (maybe three?) years ago and it got me writing more than most anything else every has. You should try it!
I hope to give it a go this year, too.

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Paperback: 226 pages, Publisher: Vintage (May 18, 2004), ISBN-10: 1400032717

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS
Source: My Fiction TBR List

Ok, so I have picked this book up and put it down I don’t know how many times since it’s been published. I always decided not to buy it because I just didn’t think I could connect with a narrator who was an autistic 15-year-old boy. However, I finally put it on my TBR list after seeing it on so many lists of top modern fiction.

It’s good. Really good. I didn’t find it to be great literature so much as a touching story with insight into the world of an autistic child and his family. The story itself was very entertaining and kept me interested in what was going to happen next. It was a quick, easy, engaging read. 

One note – I’ve read that Haddon describes himself as a “hardline atheist” and that’s pretty obvious from the book: a few snippets belittling belief in God or an afterlife plus Haddon offers no real hope for any of his characters at the conclusion. Even with that, it’s an excellent book and definitely worth the time to read. 

Highly recommend.

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Paperback: 224 pages, Publisher: New Directions (September 2004), ISBN-10: 9780811216029

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS
Source: E had to read for Senior AP English class

As we were heading out last Friday for DC, Ellen asked if we could stop by a bookstore so she could pick up A Streetcar Named Desire because she needed to have read before she went back to school from Spring Break. I’m always up for a bookstore, so of course we stopped! (She also bought this and this since the Borders we stopped at was going out of business and was having a ginormous sale! She’s told me I should read both so I can have some idea of what’s going on in our country as I am totally oblivious these days. Oh, it’s going to be fun to have a Political Science major in the family!)

When we got back on the road, E started to nap so I began scanning Streetcar just to see if I could remember if I had read it in high school. I was hooked after about ten pages and didn’t want to put it down. E and I shared it back and forth all weekend and discussed it a bit as we went along.

I don’t think I had read this particular play of Tennessee Williams before. I’m pretty sure I read The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And I’m guessing it’s been since high school that I read a play. I really liked Streetcar and enjoyed the genre. It makes me want to read other plays and this looks like a good list to start with. (By the way, I saw Wit: A Play in movie form years ago and still recall how much it touched me. I didn’t realize it was a Pulitzer Prize winner. See it, if you can.)

I won’t review the actual play except to say by the end of it I felt compassion for Blanche and a good bit of disdain for her sister. The long and the short of it is I really enjoyed Streetcar and look forward to dipping into a new genre. I’ve already put the1951 movie version with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in my Netflix queue. (When I saw Vivien Leigh played Blanche, I couldn’t resist! Scarlett is my favorite literary character and Vivien Leigh will always be may image of her. Can’t wait to see how she pulled off Blanche!)

Sorry for the rambling review. Highly recommend this one!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Normal Kingdom Business

Normal Kingdom Business: A Collection of Essays by Andree Seu, 128 pages, God's World Publications; Limited 1st edition (October 26, 2006); ISBN-10: 0977929922
Source: Given by a friend

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS
Andree Seu was known to me from her weekly essays in World Magazine. They are always excellent and usually in the very last pages of the magazine. I love World and Andree's essays are like a scrumptious dessert at the end of a great meal. Normal Kingdom Business is a collection of her essays on topics ranging from greeting cards to mentoring. It's just a plain good book. The only negative I have is that each essay is about 800 words and I had to keep myself from devouring too many in one day. Just like a great dessert, you're tempted to eat the whole book in one sitting when instead you really should string out the pleasure over multiple days. She gives much to ponder and enjoy in each essay.

My favorite essay is tittled "Strike Up the Lyre" and is about the "worship wars" that happens in a lot of churches and Christian communities. You know, praise and worship music vs. age-old hymns. In 800 words, Andree summed my feelings on it with much more clarity and grace than I ever could. Here's a snippet:

" Yet we take our orders from Scripture alone (sola Scriptura), which says nothing about 18th-century music being holier than 21st-century, or "thou" being better than "you," or Hammond organs more spiritual than Yamaha guitars. The unflattering truth is that I am a recovering musical snob - some latter day Michal despising David from her latticed window, scruples barely concealing the devil in her heart (2 Samuel 6:16). 

...Why not embrace all kinds of reverent and God-honoring song as a way of loving the brethren? As we enlarge our tents to make place for organ, fiddle, lyre, horn, and drum, we acknowledge that God's heart in this age is an evangelizing heart. 

Modernity and reverence. No necessary contradiction. "The Little Drummer Boy" sings: "I play my drum for Him" (i.e., it is only a crude and humble thing that I am able to bring). He also sings, "I play my best for Him" (i.e., I don't bring Him sloppiness but only my utmost for His Highest.)"


I thought of these words as we sang "Sanctuary" this morning in church with piano, drums, guitars, and (a new beautiful addition to our praise team!!) sax. The musicians (and I think the congregation, too) were bringing our crude, humble, and best gifts to the King to worship and adore Him on this beautiful Sabbath day in the Sandhills.

So - I highly recommend this little book and know I'll come back to it again sometime to read as part of morning devotions.

Blessings!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Unbroken

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, Format: Kindle Edition, File Size: 2140 KB, Print Length: 496 pages, Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1400064163, Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (November 16, 2010)

Source: Church Book Club Selection
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

This book is being raved about all over the place. I'm sure there's a movie forthcoming, too. The author of Seabiscuit has definitely done it again! What an amazing story. And inspirational.

Bare bones: It's the story of Louis Zamperini, the Olympic runner who, during WWII, survives a plane crash in the Pacific, floats in a raft for some 47 days only to be captured by the Japanese and made a POW for over two years in unspeakably cruel conditions. But it's more than just a story of the resilience of "human mind, body, and spirit" as one reviewer said. It's the story of God's redemption of one man and how He went on to use him to further the Kingdom of God.
  
Here's the first of four videos on Zamperini that are worth watching. The book is even more worth the time, though.

Kindle Update: This is the second non-fiction book I've read on the Kindle. I said I didn't really like reading the first book, mainly because I couldn't get to the notes. Unbroken, however, allowed me to click on reference and go straight to the note then right back to the text. It was *much* better. So, I'm not ready to rule out Kindle non-fiction yet after all.

Finally, here's a quick excerpt from Unbroken that really spoke to me. It's from a period when Louie and his friend are floating in the Pacific with not much hope that they would survive:

Louie and Phil had found the doldrums, the eerie pause of wind and water that lingers around the equator. They were, as Coleridge wrote, "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

It was an experience of transcendence. Phil watched the sky, whispering that it looked like a pearl. The water looked so solid that it seemed they could walk across it. When a fish broke the surface far away, the sound carried to the men with absolute clarity. They watched as pristine ringlets of water circled outward around the place where the fish had passed, then faded to stillness.

For a while they spoke, sharing their wonder. Then they fell into reverent silence. Their suffering was suspended. They weren't hungry or thirsty. They were unaware of the approach of death.

As he watched this beautiful, still world, Louie played with a thought that had come to him before. He had thought it as he had watched hunting seabirds, marveling at their ability to adjust their dives to compensate for the refraction of light in water. He had thought it as he had considered the pleasing geometry of the sharks, their gradation of color, their slide through the sea....Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil.

I'll leave you with that, bloggy friends, and say I highly recommend this book. 

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, Format: Kindle Edition, File Size: 515 KB, Print Length: 304 pages Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0312370849, Publisher: St. Martin's Press; Reprint edition (April 1, 2010)

Source: A friend told me about it and I downloaded it on a whim to my Kindle. (Hence the danger of a Kindle.... automatic gratification at about $10 a pop!)

Rating: 4.5 of 5 STARS

This was a super interesting book to me from a historical perspective. It is based on the 1942 Paris roundups of thousands of Jewish families who were first arrested and held at the Velodrome d'Hiver just outside the city and then eventually deported to Auschwitz. Incredibly this was done by Paris police and not German soldiers. De Rosnay flashes from 1942 to modern day to tell the story of Sarah, a little girl caught with her family in the roundup and Julia Jarmond, an American born but French-married journalist writing a magazine article on the 60th anniversary of the event. 

De Rosnay does a wonderful job writing the story in a clear and compassionate way, making the characters come to life. I have to say, though, I enjoyed the voice of Sarah much more than Julia. Julia, with modern-day marital problems, was rather predictable. About three-fourth's of the way through the book, it turns completely over to Julia which is why I didn't give it a full 5 STAR rating. I would have liked to hear more from Sarah and less from Julia. With that said, though, I had a hard time putting the book down... which is unusual for me. 

So, I definitely recommend this one, my reading bloggy friends!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: A Geography of Time

A Geography of Time: On Tempo, Culture, and the Pace of Life, by Robert E. Levine, Format: Kindle Edition, Print Length: 280 pages, Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (May 31, 1997), ASIN: B001FSJ96M

Rating: 4.5 of 5 STARS

Source: Read about in Time by Eva Hoffman and reminded of it by a friend a few weeks ago

 

Sleep and time are two subjects that interest me very much. When a friend told me she was reading A Geography of Time on her Kindle, it reminded me that I had read about Levine's work in another book (Time by Eva Hoffman). So, with the instant gratification that the Kindle offers (*smile*), I added it to my digital library!

First, from a Kindle perspective: This was my first non-fiction title to try out electronically and I can't say I enjoyed it as much as novels. I think I'll give a non-fiction title one more go on the Kindle, but if I don't have a better experience the second time around, I think I'll stick to novels.  My main complaint was not being able to flip to the back of the book and read the footnotes easily. This particular book didn't have links that would take you straight to the footnotes and it was pretty awkward to go all the way to the end of the book to the 'notes' section each time there was one I wanted to read. Also, I just like being able to physically highlight things I find interesting in non-fiction books... quotes, things that are new to me, things I might want to use in a class or in something I'm writing... Yes. I know you can highlight with the Kindle but it just doesn't feel the same. 

Second, the book: Very, very good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Levine's research on the pace of life and how time is experienced in different places really made me think about the pace of my own life. I didn't give it a perfect 5 STARS because there were a couple of places I felt like he was just filling pages and not really saying anything new. Here are the chapter titles:

• Tempo: The Speed of Life
• Duration: The Psychological Clock
• A Brief History of Clock Time (My favorite chapter!)
• Living on Event Time
• Time and Power: The Rules of the Waiting Game
• Where is Life Fastest?
• Health, Wealth, Happiness, and Charity
• Japan's Contradiction
• Time Literacy: Learning the Silent Language (Least favorite!)
• Minding Your Time, Timing Your Mind

A couple of things I 'marked':

The trait of punctuality came to be associated with achievement and success.  Living on clock time became a defining characteristic of a new class of people on the move. 

Not until the late seventeenth century did the word 'punctual,' which formerly described a person who was a stickler for details of conduct, come to describe someone who arrived exactly at the appointed time. Only a century after that did the word 'punctuality' first appear in the English language as it is used today. 

The thing this book made me think about the most is how our exact measurement of time, to the seconds, minutes, and even hours, is a actually pretty new thing.  We plan to meet up at 10:15am for breakfast or get frustrated when someone is ten minutes late meeting us.... We are so driven and stressed by what our clocks have to say... Not that very long ago time was measured (approximated, actually) by where the sun was in the sky or by what part of the daily cycle farm animals were in (i.e. I'll see you when the cows come home). Seems much more laid back and peaceful, doesn't it, than what we do today? Now we have constant reminders (usually via our cell phones) of exactly what time it is, how late we are, or how much more time we have to spend on a certain activity before we must move on to the next. Clocks control our lives!! :-) I say we just get rid of them all! 

I highly recommend this book, bloggy friends. Well written, engaging, full of interesting information and insight. I'm just not so sure I'd say to read it on the Kindle!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Tinkers

Tinkers by Paul Harding, Paperback: 192 pages, Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press; First Edition 4th Printing edition (January 1, 2009), ISBN-10: 193413712X

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

Source: 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, first seen in a bookstore in DC then a friend bought it for me.

Very simply: This is a beautiful book. I've had it in my "to be read" pile and picked it up to take with me on a recent trip to New York. 

It's the story of two men, father and son, both "tinkers." (The father is a wagon salesman who piddles with all kinds of odds-and-ends while the son repairs old clocks mostly for a hobby.) The book begins with the last hours of the son's life and then rotates from son to father through the book until eventually the two meet up again after the son is grown. Mainly, the story is about the father, an epileptic living in that late 1800's in New England. 

When I read a book I usually dog-ear pages that hold passages, sentences, or phrases I admire and hope to learn from. I only dog-eared one page in Tinkers because the whole book was so beautifully written. I have to admit sometimes I did get a bit lost in the prose... I couldn't always see where Harding was going, but it was like soaking in a bathtub of beautiful, comforting words. I just steeped in it until the story came back to me. 

One thing I especially admired about the book was that Harding interspersed excerpts from a book called The Reasonable Horologist by Rev. Kenner Davenport, 1783. The excerpts were lovely and I just assumed it was a real book he was quoting from. Reading up on Harding I discovered that he had made the whole thing up!  

Here's a really good interview with Paul Harding from Open Loop Press. (Which, by the way, is a place I plan to explore with a cup of coffee sometime this weekend!) Especially scroll down and find the link where Paul Harding reads from the first pages of his book. It's really good. 

Obviously, I highly recommend this book. It's not a quick, entertaining read. It's a piece of art to be savored. 

Here's a short little passage from the one page I marked:

He could not have let himself be witness to the simultaneity of his wife passing him a plate of chicken or a basket of hot bread as she worked out her plans to have him taken away. Howard had assumed that their silence over his fits, over everything, stood for his gratefulness to her and her loyalty to him. He has assumed their silence was one of kindness offered and accepted.


Finally, on a personal note - I found it amusing that I happened to be reading this book with all it's connections to time and clocks while also reading A Geography of Time (non-fiction on how time is perceived in different locations) and Einstein's Dreams (collection of 30 fables that represent Albert Einstein's dreams as he was developing the Theory of Relativity.) I find myself thinking a lot about the subject of "time" these days! :-)


Have a wonderful Saturday, bloggy friends! 

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: What is Left the Daughter

Well, here we are in February and I'm just getting to my first book review of the year! Not a good start. I think I'm only down two books, maybe three...

What is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman, Format: Kindle Edition, File Size: 306 KB, Print Length: 256 pages, Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (July 6, 2010), ASIN: B003U4VES0

Rating: 3 of 5 STARS
Source: Read about it somewhere...

This was my second book to read on the Kindle. Although the book was a bit of a disappoinment, the reading experience wasn't. I continue (with some surprise) to really enjoy reading books electronically. I've always been a die-hard printed book fan and thought e-books just weren't for me, but I suppose it's time to say I was wrong. However, that said, I still think printed books are better and can't imagine ever totally moving over to electronic. Some books, especially those you are learning from, just have to be read in print. Entertaining novels? Another story.

So, to the book at hand - What is Left the Daughter. I've never read anything by Howard Norman. This was an interesting, if a little disjointed, plot so even though I'm not giving it a stellar rating, I would definitely read another book by him.

What did I like? It was set in Nova Scotia, an area I know nothing about so it was interesting to read about it. Also, the time period was WWII which often makes for a story full of historical insight.

What didn't I like? The story started off with the information that the main character's parents had both killed themselves by jumping off different bridges within an hour of each other because they were in love with the same woman. But that part of the plot wasn't ever really tied in or fleshed out. It was like some bizarre overture to the whole book that just hovered there. Also, I didn't find any of the characters extremely likeable.... There wasn't anyone I was particularly rooting for.

Here's the product description from Amazon:

Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges--the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda.

Setting in motion the novel's chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents--including a German U-boat's sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry Caribou, on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be traveling--lend intense narrative power to Norman's uncannily layered story.

Wyatt's account of the astonishing--not least to him--events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It's a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one.

I think Mr. Norman is a good writer... this book just fell a little flat for me.

CONTINUE READING...

2010 Books-I-Read Wrap Up

For the third year running, here's a wrap up on the books I've read the past year. A really cool thing about keeping a blog is you can see where you've been. In 2008 I read 56 books. In 2009 I read 58 books.

In 2010 I read 36 books. Wow. I knew I was reading less, but didn't realize it was that much of a difference. I suppose with an increased interest in developing art skills, a son's wedding, and the illness & death of a good friend, I have an excuse for my reading to have dropped so much. But interesting (and concerning?) is the fact that my reading of Christian non-fiction books is really the category I decreased in the most. Hmmm.... Guess I needed to see that in black-and-white. (I read 9 Christian non-fiction books in 2008 and 15 in 2009.)

Here are the totals:

Non-Fiction (Christian) - 3
Non-Fiction (General) - 9
Fiction - 12
Fiction (Audio) - 11
Poetry - 1

So, favorites? It would have to be Pillars of the Earth and World Without End (both audios) by Ken Follet. Hands down. Fabulous stories, amazing characters, and wonderfully performed on audio.

If I had to choose a fiction favorite that wasn't an audio I'd say Cutting for Stone or The History of Love. Beautiful writing, both!

Non-fiction? A tie between A Homemade Life (I'm not a foodie, but this was good!) and Drawing Lab (I learned so much from Carla Sonheim!)

CONTINUE READING...

Last of the Tardy Book Reviews for 2010!

FINALLY - the last of my overdue book reviews for 2010!! I actually wrote this entire post once already and somehow it disappeared before I could post! Egads! So, here's a really quick review on four books to finish up 2010. Better late than never, I suppose.

1. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby; Paperback: 131 pages, Publisher: Vintage; Later Printing edition (June 23, 1998), ISBN-10: 0375701214

Source: Random selection at a used book store
Rating: A really high 5 of 5 STARS

I thought I had heard of this book before when I came across it in the bottom of a cardboard box in our local used book store. For a buck, it wasn't much of a chance. I am so glad I read this. It's the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby (editor of Elle Magazine in France) written after he had a stroke at age 42. The stroke resulted in Bauby living with Locked-In Syndrome meaning he was left with a totally intact mind but with no control over his body except his left eye. He wrote the memoir by blinking through the alphabet with an assistant. He wrote and edited whole chapters in his mind before blinking them out. The title comes from the thought that his mind (the butterfly) could take him anywhere even though he was tethered to his useless body (the diving bell.) His writing is lovely and the story is moving. There's a movie based on this memoir that I'd like to see. Highly recommended.


2. Christ Our Mediator: Finding Passion at the Cross by C.J. Mahaney, Hardcover: 96 pages,
Publisher: Multnomah Books (September 21, 2004), ISBN-10: 1590523644

Source: I've read him before and picked this little book up off a sales rack
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

This is a very short book aimed to bring us back to the simplicity and beauty of the Cross of Christ. The chapters are short and it made a wonderful daily devotion book for about a week and a half. It would probably be a great Easter devotional but, really, like Mahaney says, we should daily be looking to the Cross over and over again so it would be a great read anytime. Highly recommended.


3. Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life by Terry Brooks; Paperback: 208 pages, Publisher: Del Rey (February 3, 2004), ISBN-10: 0345465512

Source: Yet another random choice from a used book store (I have store credit. Really, it's ok!)
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

I've never read any of Terry Brooks novels and doubt I ever will as they are a genre I don't really enjoy - fantasy. But this memoir was a great read. If you're at all interested in the publishing industry or how a writer gets his start and develops his career, this book is for you. There's some advice on the craft itself but mostly this is about Brooks career and experience as a writer. It was really good. It makes me want to try one of his fantasy novels. Almost! :-) Glad I read this one, though.

4. Beautiful Girls by Beth Ann Bauman; Paperback: 186 pages, Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing (March 2004), ISBN-10: 1931561664

Source: And ANOTHER used book pick-up
Rating: 4 of 5 STARS

I love short stories and this is a nice collection. I wouldn't say the writing is especially moving or the characters especially clever. It's just a good, solid gathering of stories about everyday women. One is about a young lawyer whose father is dying in a nearby hospital and she tries to figure out how to be with him, work, and get her laundry done. Another is about three sisters living with a single mom who has rotting food in the basement no one wants to deal with. That sort of thing. The reason I like these stories is that they are pretty much all about ordinary women doing ordinary things. And usually I find that interesting. (P.S. I thought the choice for the cover photography was unfortunate. It's really not a reflection of the book at all!)

WHEW! That's it for 2010. Much better than I did on reviews for 2009. I think there were about seven books I never got around to reviewing last year (er... or I guess it's actually year before last, huh?) I've already finished my first for 2011. THAT review to come soon! Promise!

I.Will.Not.Procrastinate.This.Year!

CONTINUE READING...