What Happened in September, 2014

Reviews

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

Two Christmases ago, my daughter gave me Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks.  The movie was coming out, and the plan may have been to trick me into taking her to see it by giving me the book first.  The plan didn't work, and Safe Haven sat in my nightstand  unread for a year and a half.  In August, my family rented a house in North Carolina, and I decided that it was the perfect time to give Safe Haven a try.  I expected it to be a good beach book, with the added benefit that my daughter would see me reading it and appreciating her gift.

I have to say that Safe Haven was pretty much exactly what one might expect from a Nicholas Sparks book.  The main character, Katie, has left her abusive husband and fled to a small North Carolina town.  There she meets the recently widowed Alex, and falls in love with him and his two children.  All is going well until, yep, you guessed it. 

While the story was predictable, it was a page turner, and I found myself oddly unable to put it down.  Sparks played some hokey name games, and threw in an unexpected but equally unbelievable twist at the end.  Still, if you are renting beach house and looking for something to bring along, you might as well bring this one!

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Light and Fluffy

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I'm a pretty persistent reader.  Most of the time, if I can make it through the first hundred pages, I'll finish the book.  Last month, I put down . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer after over 400 pages.  This month, I'm quitting The Finkler Question, despite being 2/3 through.

The Finkler Question is the story of three men living in London, Julian Treslove, Sam Finkler and Libor Sevcik.  Julian and Sam are about the same age as each other - mid 40s, and Libor is in his 80s.  Libor and Sam are recently widowed.  They are also Jewish.  So what, you ask?  Jewishness is all that they talk about.

Julian is mugged, and believes that he was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack.  Although he is not Jewish, he then experiences a huge case of Jewish envy, and tries to become Jewish by changing his manner of speaking and actions, without actually converting.  Libor is seemingly happily Jewish, although he spends a great deal of time thinking about whether attacks on Jewish people and places are understandable, if not justified.  Sam Finkler, on the other hand, joins a group who identify themselves as ASHamed Jews and are opposed to the Israeli state.

Much of the dialogue in The Finkler Question is focused on what it means to be Jewish, whether one can be Jewish and be ashamed of other Jewish people, and whether Jewish people who disagree with what other Jewish people are doing, especially in Israel, are anti-Semitic.

If you are Jewish, and are questioning your beliefs, this might be a great book for you.  I was actually not aware that some Jewish people don't support Israel, which I probably should have known.  So much of the book is about Jewish people as a group, and then the opinions of particular Jewish people.  All of this is great, but it just got old.  I was looking for another dimension to the characters.  Being Jewish, or being jealous of people who are Jewish, shouldn't be all that they are.

The Finkler Question won the Man Booker Prize for 2010. 

Challenges: Rewind, Audiobook, and I Love Library Books

Tags: British Stories, Man Booker Listed, Questioning Religions

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Well, I picked it up again.  This time I read from where I left off, at page 413 in 1880, until page 613 in 1887.  Some more club members have died, others have married, and the kids are mostly grown.  There are some hints that someone might be a lesbian, but I'm not sure if that was a topic discussed in popular fiction in 1982 when the book was first published, so I'm not expecting anything explosive.

The other members of The Typical Book Group are also struggling with this one.  We usually discuss our summer Big Fat Book in August, or possibly in September if everyone is out of town at the end of the summer.  This year, we have decided to move the meeting back until October.

Although this book is taking me forever, I am liking it.  It has a nice, soothing rhythm.  There's not a ton of action, but there is something about it that I like.  I'm taking a break again, but after I finish The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon, I'll try and knock out another 200 pages.

The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon

In 1930, a judge in New York named Joseph Crater suddenly disappeared and became the "The Missingest Man in New York".  His wife, Stella was at their vacation home in Maine, while Crater went to Atlantic City with his mistress, Sally Lou Ritz.  He came back to the City, had dinner with Ritz and his lawyer, William Klein, then got in a cab, and was never seen again.  In her book, The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress, Ariel Lawhon offers a theory of what may have happened.

Lawhon's story focuses on the tangled connections between Stella and Crater and a cast of characters including a mob boss, Owney Madden, his unexpectedly friendly thug, Shorty, and the Craters' maid, Maria.  No one seems to actually have liked Crater, so there were lots people who might have preferred for him to disappear.  In fact, in real life as in the book it took 10 days for anyone to start wondering where he was.

During Crater's lifetime, there were rumors about how he secured his appointment to court. Lawhon speculates that Owney Madden was involved, and became worried when a grand jury was convened to investigate alleged corruption.  She then also guesses that the police investigating the crime may be indebted to Madden themselves.

Sometimes in a historical fiction book, there is something that happens that is so unbelievable that you know it must be true.  In this story, when it turned out that the Craters' maid was married to one of the policemen investigating the case, I knew that it must have been true, because there's no way that a police officer would be charged with investigating his wife's boss' mysterious disappearance, so no author would make that up.  However, when I got to Lawhon's end notes, it turned out that was a fictional twist.  The Craters did have a maid, but there's no indication that she was married to an investigator. 

All told, this was an interesting story, made all the more so with its morsels of truth.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books Challenge

Tags:  Historical Fiction   

In Other News

Pass it On

You might remember that I got my copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson from a Little Free Library.  I finished that book while I was staying that the beach house that I talked about in my review of Safe Haven, and so I left it there.  The shelves were crowded with more beach reads than literary fiction, but I found it a nice spot next to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  While Safe Haven would have fit right in, I wasn't done with it yet.  So, I'll return Safe Haven to my Little Free Library instead.  Pass it on!

Man Booker Short List

The Man Booker Prize Shortlist was announced on September 9.  To my surprise, David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, did not make the cut.  Instead, Joshua Ferris' book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour made the list, along with books by Howard Jacobson, Karen Joy Fowler, Richard Flanagan, Neel Mukherjee and Ali Smith.  Despite an earlier so-so review, the Times published this almost glowing review of To Rise Again on September 15.  What brought on the reconsideration?  I just might suspect that they didn't want to be left on the wrong side of the hype if Ferris wins this one.  More power to him.

Blogging for Rivera

This month, I had dinner in the Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  No biggie really, I've been there before, and anyone in my tri-county area can go for free.  But it is pretty spectacular.  If you need a reason to visit Detroit, this could be it.

But anyway, sitting there, sipping wine, I was thinking about Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, and I couldn't help but think about The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.  The thing about The Lacuna is that although I know that it was a good book, and it was about Rivera and Kahlo, I can't tell you much about it.  Unfortunately, I read it during the period when I had officially started my blog, but before my Parent Rant that got me really writing about what I read.  And this is why I'm still blogging.  I'm convinced that if I stop, I won't remember the details about the books that I read.  So, here I go, blogging toward another month.

October Preview

In October, I plan to read and review the following books:

On Paper or Electronic Format:

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

White Woman on a Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

Bread and Butter by Michelle Widgen

On Audio

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami



What Happened in July 2014

 

Reviews:

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

Edmund De Waal is a famous twenty-first century potter (did you know that there was one?) who I first read about in this NYT article.  Although the article was intended to be about De Waal's new exhibit, the reporter talked enough about De Waal's family memoir, The Hare With Amber Eyes that I had to add it to my TBR list. 

What is amazing about Hare is that while it could have been the epitome of vanity publishing, instead it is a really great book, without bragging or pouting.  De Waal's family first made its fortune in Odessa through grain trading.  His great-great grandfather pushed the family into Europe, where they established banks in Paris and Vienna.  De Waal's great uncle was Charles Ephrussi, whose name was familiar to me, but for a while I didn't know why. Charles was the third son, and was able to avoid the family business and do things that were more interesting, like collect art.  He lived in Paris in the time of the Impressionists, and his collection included works by Pissaro, Monet, Renior, Cassatt, and Degas, all in one room of his home.  When De Waal discussed his uncle's relationship with Renoir, I knew why I knew Charles.  Charles Ephrussi is the man in the top hat in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party.  Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party is a book that I loved reading, and is on my list of books that I would like to re-read this year.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) I lent my copy to my friend, Kim, so I couldn't take a detour into fiction while reading Hare.

That's OK, because in Hare, the truth is better than the fiction could have been.   When Paris became obsessed with Japanese art in the 1800s, Charles jumped in, and amassed a collection of netsuke.  Netsuke are small, intricately carved objects, made sometimes from stone, ivory, or even wood.  Time passed, and the netsuke went out of style.  Charles sent his valuable collection to a nephew, De Waal's grandfather, as a wedding gift.  De Waal's grandfather went on to live in Vienna, where he ran the family owned bank.  According to De Waal, his grandfather's pre-World War II wealth, in today's dollars, was $400 million.  Unfortunately for the De Waal family, they were Jewish, and living in a Nazi state.  By the end of the war, most of the wealth was gone, but amazingly, the netsuke survived and passed through another generation, before landing in De Waal's capable hands.

While billed as the story of the netsuke, this is really a story of a family living in an incredible time.  It somehow doesn't read as a memoir, so much as a telling of historical events in a new and interesting light.  Definitely worth the read. 

Challenges: I love library books

Tags:  Memoir, Non-Fiction, WWII Civilian Stories, Paris

McSweeney's 44

McSweeney's is a quarterly something that generally includes short stories and articles, and was created by Dave Eggers.  I say that it is a quarterly "something" rather than magazine or journal or book, because it is really none of these.  Sometimes it comes with the stories loose in a box, sometimes it looks more like a magazine.  Usually, it looks a lot like novel, which is the case with 44.  The main contributors to 44 were Joe Meno, Rebecca Curtis, Tom Barbash, Jim Shepard, Stuart Dybek, and Wells Tower.  There was also a 82 page tribute to Lawrence (Ren) Weschler, to which many others contributed.

One of my favorite parts of 44 were the letters to the editor, which were all witty and quirky, and generally what one would expect from McSweeney's readers who are hoping to get published themselves. 

Jim Shepard wrote a particularly un-McSweeny-ish story that I liked called "The Ocean of Air", about the Montgolfier brothers who were the first to invent a hot air balloon safe for human travel.  I also liked Stuart Dybek's piece, "Happy Ending" which tells the story of a man, Gil, attending a party thrown by a mogul who claimed to be unhappy.  Gil shows the mogul how happy he is by inventing a scenario which would make his life much worse.  Another interesting story was "Birthday Girl" by Tom Barbash, where a driver who is possibly (almost surely) drunk hits a young girl, and then tries to make things right.

The story by Wells Tower, "The Dance Contest" is well written and interesting, but also strange.  It is about a man named Osmund Tower, the fictional father to Wells, who finds himself imprisoned in the luxury wing of the Theb Moob Mens' Prison in Thailand, due primarily to his naivete.  While he may be in the best possible part of the prison, it is a prison none the less.  The Captain in charge comes up with the idea of rewarding the prisoners with prizes, based on their performance in a dance contest, as judged by Internet viewers.  Cruel and unusual?  You decide.  What I didn't get about this piece is why Tower wanted to make it seem like his character was his father.  Why not just name him Tom Sutherland or Osmund Miller?

Although I, personally, didn't need such a long, funereal, tribute to Ren Weschler, he seems to be a person I should know more about.   I would recommend starting with the Errol Morris conversation with Weschler, and then skipping ahead to Jonathan Lethem's tribute.   If they leave you wanting more, 44 is well stocked.  As always, I finished McSweeney's feeling a little smarter (and maybe a little more smug) than when I started.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Keeping it Short, Historical Fiction, Non Fiction

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam is the third book in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy.  The first book, Oryx and Crake, focused on Jimmy, a guy in his early 20s who survived some sort of a plague, and wonders if he is the only human who made it.  He lives among people he calls "Crakers" because they were developed in a lab by his friend, Crake.  Much of that book was told through flashbacks about Crake and their shared love, Oryx.  The second book, The Year of the Flood, was told mostly by Toby and Ren.  They are members of a group, The God's Gardeners, who try to live in a more simple way among the corporations and criminals of the modern world.  MaddAddam again focuses on Toby, but this time the story is more about two other God's Gardeners, Zeb and Adam. 

MaddAddam takes place after the waterless flood of the plague, and begins right where The Year of the Flood ended.  Toby, Ren, Amanda and Jimmy are all in a confrontation with dangerous painballers, who are criminals who have fought to the death and survived.  Toby is happy to be reunited with her old crush, Zeb, and much of the book is Zeb telling about his life as a boy with his brother, Adam.  Adam and Zeb had to flee from their abusive but powerful father, the Rev.  Zeb found adventure slaying bears and impersonating big foot, while Adam went on to recruit like-minded people to become MaddAddams and God's Gardeners.

While MaddAddam brought resolution to the series, I found it a little lacking compared to the earlier two books.  Ren and Jimmy were marginalized and treated like children here, when they had much stronger roles in the earlier books.  At the end of the trilogy, I still don't know what the point of the MaddAddams was.  Was it just to be a  group of people gathering information about the bad things the corporations were doing?  The MaddAddamers don't seem to do anything, although they investigate a lot, and know a lot.  Also I'm totally lost about Adam.  Was he really into his Adam 1 God's Gardeners persona, or did he establish the God's Gardeners just as a front to hide corporate escapees and further the MaddAddam cause?  Much of the plot was also redundant, with Zeb telling his story to Toby, and then Toby telling the same story to the Crakers.

My favorite part of MaddAddam was the Crakers.  When Crake invented them, he intended them to be post-religion, and had no idea that they would come to worship him and Oryx as deities.  He also didn't anticipate Toby teaching one of them, Blackbeard, to read, or the creation of a Craker bible, the Book of Toby.  Atwell was also incredibly timely in describing how the religion of corporations can lead to the destruction of mankind.  In light of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, the world as she predicts it is all the more likely.  In MaddAddam, Adam and Zeb's dad was the leader of the Church of PetrOleum.  As he preaches, the "Petr" is from the apostle, Peter, and the "oleum" is because of all the references to oil in the Bible.  Clearly, God created oil for our use, and any government attempt to regulate the drilling or sale of oil is a violation of the religious beliefs of the Church.  Maybe, just maybe, we could learn from the mistakes that Atwood's characters make in the name of a self serving religious belief.

MaddAddam was a NYT Notable Book for 2013.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books and AudioBook

Tags:  NYT Notables, Sci-Fi-Ish, Questioning Religions

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

During the early days of  the siege of Sarajevo, in 1992, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera named Vedran Smailovic, played his cello in ruined buildings and at funerals which were frequently targeted by snipers.  In The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway takes Smailovic's story, and sets it to fiction.  In Galloway's Sarajevo, a young woman who calls herself Arrow is working as a sniper defending the city.  A man with a young family, Kenan, walks from one side of the city to the other in order to fill water bottles for himself and his neighbor.  An older man, Dragan, tries to get to the bakery where he works and where he knows bread is waiting for him.  Each of these characters faces the possibility at every intersection that he or she may be shot by a sniper or hit by a shell.  All of  them are eventually drawn to the cellist.

Sarajevo fell from being the host of the Olympics in 1984, to being a place where a person could expect to get shot while walking down the street just eight years later.  Galloway's characters face their new reality while not quite believing that it could be true.  Each of them refuses to be that person, living in that city.  They believe that if they can hold on to their integrity and standards, Sarajevo has hope of being restored.  Unfortunately the siege and the war waged on for years after this story ends, and after Smailovic left the city.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is the story of life in a war zone, where no one is coming to help.  It tries to be a story of hope, but the reader is left with the feeling that if Arrow, Kenan and Dragan aren't killed on one day, they may be the next.

There was some controversy about Galloway's use of Smailovic's actions in this book.  Galloway defends his story as being fictional but inspired by Smailovic's public acts.  Smailovic apparently was not told about the book before it was published and felt exploited by it.  However the story came to be told, it is worth knowing.  

Challenges:  Rewind, I Love Library Books, Audiobook

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group

The Neighborhood Book Group met in June to discuss This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.  I was a lame book-grouper, and had to leave after only half an hour to go play bunco instead.  Life in suburbia!  Luckily, this book group is all business, so I actually got to do some book discussing before I left.  With the movie coming out this fall, we talked a lot about the characters and the stars who will play them.  Although I love Tina Fey, I just can't see her as Judd's sister, Wendy.  Like 90% of the characters in this book (Am I underestimating?  Is it 100%?), Wendy is having an affair, and her life is just basically  sad.  Maybe Tina will make her situation seem less pathetic.  We also talked about who was the most dysfunctional.  This discussion could last hours.  Most of the group sided with the mom, Hillary, or the younger brother, Phillip.  And, this is where I left them, so I'm not sure where the conversation went from there. 

Next month they (we?) will discuss The Vacationers by Emma Straub.  I'm so bogged down in The Typical Book Group's summer BFB, that I don't think I'll have time to get to this one.

 The Typical Book Group

The Typical Book Group never meets in July, but in June we pick a Big Fat Book (BFB) to read all summer long.  This year we picked . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Talk about a BFB.  My copy is 1184 pages, and it's actually a little uncomfortable to hold. After two weeks of reading, I am only 200 pages in.  I'll have to pick up my pace if I'm ever going to make it through this!

Tags:  Book Group Reports, Big Fat Books

In Other News:

Local Libraries

Are these cute neighborhood libraries popping up near you? 

My friend, Debby's father-in-law installed one in his front yard.  There's another one in the park at the end of my street.  They are the cutest things.  The idea is, you can pick a book to take, and leave a book for someone else to read.  No sign out slips, no late fees.  It's the honor system at its best.  Debby's F-I-L lives in a bit of a hoity-toity neighborhood, but in an area where lots of people walk, so I think his library will get lots of action.  Doing my best to convert young future Republicans to a more reasonable party, I deposited a copy of The Believer, which is a book review magazine by the McSweeney's people, as well as a cookbook, and my copy of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.  In exchange, I took a copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which has been on my TBR list since it became a NYT Notable.  Score!

Winner, Winner, Goldfinch Dinner

Guess what?  I won a copy of The Goldfinch audiobook by Donna Tartt.  Remember way back when when I was giving away a copy?  No, I didn't enter and win my own contest.  Because The Goldfinch won two Audies, there were two copies to give away, and I entered the giveaway on Wholly Books.  And I won!  I can't wait to get it and start listening!

Loss of a Legend

On July 3, we lost Louis Zamperini.  The real story here is not that a 97 year old man died, because really, what more could we expect?  What is remarkable is that Zamperini was still alive.  Zamperini was a former Olympic athlete who was shot down over the Pacific during World War II, and then taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese.  His story is told in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which Angelina Jolie has turned into a soon to be released movie.  Here is a link to the NYT Obituary.

Man Bookered

On July 23, the Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced.  This was the first year that authors from everywhere around the world were eligible, rather than just authors from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.  So, with Americans now eligible, 5 made the list.  The only author who made it this year who I have read is Joshua Ferris, and the reviews of his recent book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour have been pretty mixed.  Some might have expected The Goldfinch, which already won the Pulitzer, to edge out a few of the lesser known picks.  However, it was no surprise that Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn didn't make the cut.  Lost for Words is a thinly veiled satire of the Man Booker Prize, and it would have been a shock if the Man Booker judges were thick skinned enough to select it.  The Shortlist will be announced on September 9.  My money is on David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, even though it hasn't been released or reviewed on this side of the pond yet.

Tags:  Man Booker Listed

August Preview:

In August, I hope to review the following books:

Audios

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - I'll only get started on this one - it's 32 hours!

Traditional or EBooks

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (IF I make it through Ladies)

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson  (OK - this will be a stretch!)

Life in the Snow Globe

The blurb on the back of The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham says that it is the story of Barrett, who sees a light which causes him to turn to religion, and of his brother Tyler, who uses drugs to try to enhance his creativity while he writes a song for his dying fiance.  While that it is accurate, it is such an oversimplification of The Snow Queen that it almost does the book a disservice. 

Barrett does in fact see a light, and attach significance to it.  He feels like the light is trying to tell him something, and he hopes that it is saying what he wants to hear.  Barrett lives with his brother, Tyler, and Tyler's fiance, Beth, in New York City in the early twenty-first century.  Beth owns a clothing/resale/hipster store in Brooklyn with her friend, Liz.  Barrett also works at the store.  Tyler is a bartender who is trying to break through as a music artist. The Snow Queen is the story of these four characters and their relationships, told primarily from the perspectives of Tyler and Barrett.  Beth is seriously ill, but the story somehow avoids being sentimental about her condition. Through the course of the novel, Tyler and Barrett accidentally find their best selves, while looking for something else.

There is a lot about The Snow Queen that reminded me of Cunningham's earlier novel, The Hours.  Both have New York as a setting, and feature a gay man and the women who love him.  In both stories the gay men cannot seem to part with their mother's upholstered furniture, and a character is drawn to high windows, from which he may or may not jump.  I listened to The Snow Queen on audiobook, and at the end of the story there was an interview with Michael Cunningham, in which the interviewer suggested that all of the characters from Cunningham's books seem like they could be friends with each other.  I found that observation to be dead on, and could easily see the characters from The Snow Queen popping over to visit with the characters from The Hours.

In a way, The Snow Queen is also a twenty-first century version of the musical, "Rent".  If the characters from "Rent" aged gracefully, they could have become Barrett, Tyler, and their friends.  Rent was also set in New York, and was the story of two boys in their early 20s and their friends trying to find their place.  Like Tyler, Roger from "Rent" believed that if he could just write one great song, everything would change.  Both Tyler and Roger also turn to drugs, and the woman that each loves faces death.  The stories also include meaningful gay relationships, and in both, New Year's Eve is a turning point.

The writing in The Snow Queen was incredible. I think that if I was reading the book in paper form rather than listening to it, I would have underlined tons of passages.  One thing that I really appreciated about this book is that it is the first that I can recall that was focused on the first decade of the twenty first century and set in New York, which did not mention 9/11.  It seems like 9/11 references have become compulsory and it was nice that while this story included lots of George W. bashing, Cunningham was able to resist the need to address the day itself.

The audiobook was narrated by Claire Danes, which I couldn't understand at first.  I couldn't figure out whose voice she was supposed to be.  I found myself wishing for Jeff Woodman or Wil Wheaton, as they seemed like obvious voices for hipsters like Tyler and Barrett.  I knew that they didn't choose Danes just because she was the most famous voice they could find, but then why?  I liked Danes best when she was talking for Liz, but Liz accounted for less than 10% of the speaking in the story, so they couldn't have chosen Danes for that reason.  Twice, characters referenced God as being a woman.  Could Danes have been intended to be the voice of God, or of Barrett's light, or of the Snow Queen?  By the end I knew that Danes was the right person for this role.  If Woodman or Wheaton had been reading, I wouldn't have ever been able to tell if Barrett or Tyler was speaking, since they said so much in a similar way.  Danes was simply the voice of the story.

I listened to this book at the request of Esther Bochner of Macmillan Audio.  I received a free copy of the audiobook, but other than that, no promises were made and no payments were received. 

This is another book down for the Audiobook Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Still Reading:  The Titans by John Jakes

The Alchemy Test

For years, I had heard about The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, but I really didn't know what to expect from the book.  The first surprise was its size.  My copy is only 167 pages, and that is with the words spaced out and wide margins.  The second surprise was how profound a story it is.

Santiago, a shepherd boy in Spain, has a recurring dream about the pyramids in Egypt.  He soon finds himself sitting next to a stranger claiming to be a king, who advises him that he needs to follow his dream, and pursue his Personal Legend.  Capital P, capital L.  A person's Personal Legend is the thing that he or she is really meant to do, and the universe will conspire to help that person achieve the goal.  There will be omens that must be followed.  If the omens are ignored for too long, the universe will stop talking to the dreamer, and ultimately, the Personal Legend will be lost.

Like most dreamers, Santiago has lots of reasons not to listen to the omens.  First and foremost, it is hard.  It is easier to find a job, get good at that job, and stay at that job forever, than to leave a profitable job in pursuit of a goal one may not reach.  Also, there is love.  Falling in love might lead the dreamer to believe that his Personal Legend isn't worth it if following it means losing his soul mate.  Soon after meeting the woman who he loves, Santiago meets the Alchemist.  The Alchemist tells him  "You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend.  If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love."

The Alchemist has elements of the Muslim faith, Judaism, and Christianity.  It is clearly a story of faith, without claiming that one religion is superior to the others.  Additionally, in the story, Santiago is not following God's word, but is following the voice of the universe. 

The Alchemist is a book that everyone should read.  Whether they love it or hate it, I don't care.  I just think it should touch everyone's life.  The Alchemist is on my son's 11th grade summer reading list, along with several other titles.  The kids get to select which books they read, but they have to read a certain number.  I'm excited that probably 90% of the 11th graders from my son's school will read it, simply because it is shorter than any other choices. 

If The Alchemist is not on reading lists in your area, it would make a great graduation or even wedding gift.  Although it doesn't rhyme or have illustrations like Oh! The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss, the message is the similar, and it will look a little more dignified on a dorm room book shelf.

My one criticism is that The Alchemist could be read to be sexist.  There aren't any meaningful female characters other than the gypsy at the beginning.  The Alchemist says that Santiago's love, Fatima's, Personal Legend is to find him.  It's demeaning to Fatima that her greatest goal should be to find a husband.  I choose to believe that a woman could fit into Santiago's role just as easily as a man could fit into Fatima's, and that the lessons should be read to apply to all.

I listened to The Alchemist on CD.  It was read by Jeremy Irons, who had a great voice for the story.  I also checked the CDs out of my library, so I am counting this for 3 challenges - The Rewind Challenge, The Audiobook Challenge, and The I Love Audiobooks Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  I'm already two discs into Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

Still Reading:  Night Film by Marisha Pessl

The Story of the Son

The Testament of Mary is Colm Toibin's take on what Mary, mother of Jesus, would have written if she had the opportunity to write her own version of what happened when her son died.  Although Mary is said to be illiterate, Toibin's story is  in her voice, telling the truth as she knows it, as opposed to what Jesus' disciples would have wanted her to say.  In fact, throughout the story, some of Jesus' followers are asking her for her story, and claiming to write down what she says.  Mary doubts that they are really writing her words when they refuse to read her what they have written.  As time goes on, they worry less about offending her, and simply tell her that she is remembering wrong, but that they'll write the story as it "really" happened.

As Jesus is raising Lazarus from the dead and turning water in to wine, Mary doesn't doubt what her son is able to do, but she wishes that he would stop.  Like the worried mother that she is, she doesn't want her son to draw attention to himself. She is convinced that if she could just get him to come home and stay there for a while away from his friends, maybe the authorities would forget about him.  Like a typical son, Jesus is having none of that, even if he knows that his mother is right.

While I don't purport to be a Biblical scholar, even I can recognize that there are significant differences between the story of Jesus's life as we have learned it, and the story that Mary tells.  My major objection to the Bible is that although much of it has remained the same for hundreds of years, there is no denying that it has been edited, and entire books have been omitted or deleted.  There are many current versions, all calling themselves "The Bible", but using different words to say the similar things.  People who believe that the Bible is literally true are putting their faith in these editors, without knowing who they are or what motives they may be pursuing.  In Toibin's story, even the very first written version of Mary's testament has been shaped to fit the disciples' objectives.

At only 81 pages, The Testament of Mary  is testament sized.  It is a very fast read, and very well written.  It is believable that this could have been another book of the Bible.  I'm pretty sure that once again, I will treat historical fiction as fact, and will always remember the story of the crucifixion through the mother's eyes.

The Testament of Mary was a NYT Notable Book for 2012, and is currently on the Man Booker Longlist.  The Shortlist will be announced on September 10, and I would not be surprised to see Testament move up.

Next Up:  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Still Listening To:  The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison

Karma in the Psalms

I'm not sure that I can explain exactly what it is that I liked about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, by David Mitchell, but I tore through it, and kept trying to sneak away to find time to read more. 

Set in 1799, the story is based in Dejima, which was an island in the port of Nagasaki.  At that time, the Japanese would not allow foreigners into Japan proper, but they had allowed the Dutch to establish a trading post on Dejima.  Dejima is full of politics among the Dutch, and more complicated politics between the Dutch and the Japanese.  DeZoet is a sincere character, who strives to maintain his integrity.  He is more respectful of the Japanese culture than most of his compatriots, and even makes efforts to learn the language.  Through the course of the story, Jacob falls in love, fights injustice, and stays true to himself. 

What is it about talking cats in books set in Japan?  There was a talking cat here, reminding me of the character in Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami who talked to cats.  Apparently, it's not just a Japanese thing.  When I was googling around about this, I found lots of YouTube videos purporting to feature cats speaking Japanese, but I also found this site, where avid readers posted a huge list of books set all over the world and in outer space, where the cats talk.  So, if you are interested in books including talking cats . . . . Funny that no one listed The Cat in the Hat which has to be the most famous talking cat book ever.

In Dejima, the Dutch were not allowed to practice Christianity at all, and had to turn over all of their Christian artifacts if they wanted to live there.  Jacob managed to conceal his family's book of psalms, which had been given to him by his father.  Although The Thousand Autumns was not an overtly religious book, my two favorite quotes both had to do with religion.  The first is the thirty-seventh Psalm.  It goes a little like this:

"Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of inequity.  For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.  Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in land, and verily thou shalt be fed. . ."

I had no idea that I liked a psalm, but I like that one.  Jacob tries to live his life by those words, and he does a pretty good job of it.  The other quote that I liked is "we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love."  That may have been applicable in 1800, but it is certainly true in the modern day.

Mitchell also returned to his question of whether there is a light at the end of the working man's tunnel, which he first explored in the Sonmi chapters of Cloud Atlas.  As in Cloud Atlas, certain members of the society are slaving away at a truly terrible labor, with the belief that if they only do it for 20 years, they will be allowed to retire and be reunited with their families.  A little inquiry punches holes in the propaganda.  By returning to this question again in an entirely separate book, Mitchell is clearly posing a challenge to his readers.  Do you love your job, or do you just plan to suffer through it for another 10 or 20 or 30 years so that you can enjoy your golden years?  What if those golden years never come?  Mitchell wants us to realize that what we are living now is our life, not just something to do until we get to our real life in the future.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2010.  It was also a NYT Notable book for that year.  This is the 11th book that I read for the Off the Shelf Challenge.

Next up on paper:  The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman

Still Listening to:  Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.  Yes, I finally got it.

Historical Fact

I started listening to Cleopatra:  a Life by Stacy Schiff with some trepidation.  I knew I liked the subject, but I wasn't sure I could handle listening to a biography on audio book.  The first time I heard a footnote, I almost ejected the disc.  So that you understand where I am coming from, this is what a footnote sounds like in audio form:  "Footnote:  This is an example.  End of Footnote"

Part of me thought "It's Christmas time and I am crazy busy.  I should listen to something light and fluffy".  The rational part of me thought "It won't kill me to get some historical facts, since my brain is growing mushy with all this historical fiction."  The first part of me argued that I didn't need any more real history after 21 years of public school education.  The rational part of me laughed out loud at that one.  And so, I kept listening.

My previous knowledge of Cleopatra came from Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George, which is, of course, historical fiction.  When I read Memoirs, I felt really stupid, because I had no idea that Cleopatra had a child with Julius Caesar.  However, since all of my Caesar knowledge comes from Shakespeare instead of from history classes, and since Shakespeare kept his Caesar and his Cleopatra in separate stories, I would guess that I am not the only one who never made the connection.

I learned more about Cleopatra in Schiff's book, as should be expected.  One thing that surprised me was that in Cleopatra's time, the Sphinx had already been buried in sand for a thousand years.  Another was that Cleopatra lived just one generation before Jesus was born.  Cleopatra died in 30 BC, and Jesus was born sometime around 4 BC.  In fact, one of Cleopatra's most reliable biographers, Plutarch, was writing about Cleopatra at the same time that some of the New Testament gospels were being written.

Cleopatra: a Life is a very good biography.  It was a NYT Notable Book in 2010.   My library has picked it as a book group book for February.  It seems like an odd choice at first, but I could see how this particular biography would appeal to people who normally prefer fiction.  Schiff researched her subject thoroughly, and throughout the book, she tells the reader whose story she is relying on for certain facts, and why she determined that one author might be more reliable than another for specific issues.  I liked how Schiff said things like "Cleopatra probably did this" or "It is likely that this happened in this way"  without being stubbornly definitive.  History is, of course, written by the victors, and Cleopatra was ultimately a loser.  She should have been relegated to being a footnote herself, but her reputation was so intriguing that even her contemporary conquerors couldn't keep from writing about her. 

I, personally, preferred George's telling.  But then, why wouldn't I?  Since she was writing fiction, George could invent juicy dialogue, and be creative with any "facts" that true historians now question, such as the method of Cleopatra's death.  Schiff is a Pulitzer winning biographer (for her biography of Nabokov's wife, Vera), and she manages to tell a story full of historical facts and details in a way that is interesting, and almost conversational.  Given her unbiased treatment of Cleopatra, I would like to propose another subject for her - Jesus.  If anyone could take apart the propaganda and the edits that were made after the fact to get to something as close as is possible to what really happened, that person would be Schiff.  I for one would read it, footnotes and all.

One thing that the "light and fluffy" part of me found really funny about the audio book, was that the reader pronounced Caesar and Cleopatra's son's name, Caesarion, as "Cesarean".  I am sure that she pronounced his name correctly, but if I had been reading it, I would have contorted it in some way to sound less like the medical procedure.  With the reader's pronunciation, every time I heard his name, I wondered if he was still hanging out with his friends, Epidural and Episiotomy.  Yep.  I'm that easily distracted this time of the year.

Next up on CD:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

Still Reading:  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Homage to the Menstrual Cycle

I delayed reading The Red Tent by Anita Diamant for a long time, because of what I thought I knew about it.  What I expected was a book about women in 14th century England who were forced to go to an island (island?  why did I think an island?) and live in red tents each month when they had their periods.  I imagined them scheming against the men, and discovering their own strengths.  In short, I thought The Red Tent would be "an homage to a menstrual cycle", to quote Tim Gunn's recent commentary on an unfortunate Project Runway dress.

Basically, I was all wrong. 

The Red Tent is set in the time of Jacob, from the book of Genesis.  The main character, Dinah, tells the story of Jacob and his many sons from her perspective.  Dinah is apparently mentioned in the Old Testament, and is better known for being the only sister of the famous Joseph, of the Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Genesis 34 tells the story of Dinah's rape.  In The Red Tent, Dinah tells the tale from her point of view, and includes her version of what happened to her before and after.

Yes, there is a red tent, and women go there when they have their periods.  However, it is considered an honor to get to go to the tent.  The women of Dinah's family were all on the same schedules, so the red tent was a place where they could get together and tell their stories to each other.  While there, they also were freed from their regular daily chores, and were waited on by others.

Reading The Red Tent reminded me of something that I forgot to mention when I was discussing The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali - the perception that Muslims have many wives.  Ali-Karamali mentioned that it is very uncommon now for a Muslim to have multiple wives, but that in the past it was common, with Muhammad having several.  She also pointed out though, that in other religions, multiple wives were also common.  In fact, Jacob had 4 wives, including two who were full sisters, and two more who were born of the same father as the first two wives, but with slaves as mothers, and were treated as slaves themselves.

The Red Tent got off to a slow start, but picked up, and was a worthwhile read.  If I had known my Old Testament better, I may have liked the book more, as I would have known what was coming, and appreciated the differences between this book and the Bible's story.

That's one more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge, and a challenge double countsie, since I listened to it on CDs that I checked out of my library.  Now I just need to read one more book to complete the Support Your Library Challenge.

In Other News:  Guess who "liked" my Goodreads review of The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont?  Amber Dermont.  One of my favorite things about Goodreads is how easy it is for authors to interact with readers.  I wish that I could "like" her like!

Running Commentary:  Just a quick brag - my son made the varsity cross country team as a 13 year old freshman at his high school!  I may not be a runner, but I seem to have become a Cross Country Mom.  Now to convince the politicians that we are just as important as the Soccer Moms . . .

Next up on CD:  Bear with me.  The next book that I will listen to on CD is World Without End by Ken Follett.  This is 45 hours of story, on 36 discs, and it will be the longest book that I have ever listened to, if I make it through.  I finished The Red Tent a couple of days ago, and since I've done a lot of driving lately (including picking up another 1/4 cow!) I am already on disc 5. 

Still Reading:  Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst

Next Perspective

I read The Muslim Next Door - The Qur'an, the Media, and that Veil Thing by Sumbul Ali-Karamali with the hope of gaining some understanding of the Qur'an.  But, as I should have expected from the title, it is about much more than that.  Living in South East Michigan, I was probably not Ali-Karamali's target reader, as Muslims are already a part of my family's daily life.  In fact, when my daughter was in 4th grade, I brought in rice krispy treats for her birthday, thinking that I was doing well by avoiding both nuts and gluten.  But alas, the Muslim girls wouldn't eat them.  This was a new one for me!  It turns out, as Ali-Karamali mentions in her book, that marshmallows contain pork gelatin, and instead there are special Halal Krispy Treats made for Muslim children.

Although much of the book was an introduction to the lives of Muslims in America, I did learn a thing or two about the Qur'an and rules that most Muslims follow.  Specifically, I didn't realize that the Qur'an is as new as it is.  It was first compiled into a book in 650 A.D.  For its time, the Qur'an was actually quite progressive in treating women as equals in terms of issues like inheritance, when they would not inherit equally in England for centuries.  Additionally, the Qur'an is somewhat fluid, in that its interpretation changes with the time and culture.  I was also surprised that there are not central leaders, and that imams are just people who are able to lead prayers, not necessarily people trained in the meaning of the Qur'an.

In the wake of 9/11, the media and many commentators quoted sections of the Qur'an in support of the position that the Muslim religion is necessarily violent, and seeks to dominate others.  Ali-Karamali accurately responds by pointing out that lines of the Bible, taken out of context like the lines of the Qur'an quoted by these talking heads, are just as violent and domineering.  Ali Karamali's message is that Muslim Americans are just like us, and are outraged by extremists who act in the name of Islam but are actually defying the word of the Qur'an.  The Qur'an itself, as she explains, authorizes violence only in defense, and places a premium on maintaining peace and offering forgiveness.

I also hadn't realized how many of the issues that we may think of as being Islamic or Muslim are really culturally specific to the country.  For instance, there is nothing in the Qur'an that says that women can't drive, and Muslim women drive in most countries, just not Saudi Arabia.  The same is true of the veil.  Whether a woman wears a veil or not may have more to do with where she is living or where her family is from than with the words of the Qur'an.

If you are looking for an in depth study of the Qu'ran, this is probably not the book for you.  However, if you don't know any Muslims, and would like to hear the perspective of a Muslim American woman, you may enjoy this book.

One more down for the Support Your Library Challenge!

Next up:  I was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley

Still Listening to:  Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

Another Guilty Pleasure

A couple of Augusts ago I told you about a few of my guilty pleasures.  Now I have one more to add to the list:  Jodi Picoult books.   I can't help liking them more than I want to.  In theory, I am opposed to reading any book that one can pick up at a grocery store.  However, there is something about Picoult's books that keeps me coming back, even though it's embarrassing to my inner literary snob.

Picoult books generally follow a formula.  A child does something wrong, or has an illness.  The family is traumatized dealing with it.  A lawyer gets involved.  A doctor gets involved.  There are predictable twists and turns, and the pages keep turning.  I talked about this formula earlier this year when I was wishing that This Beautiful Life  by Helen Schulman had been written by Picoult instead.  Change of Heart is another Picoult formula follower, and another page turner.

In Change of Heart, a woman, June, loses her husband and daughter in a double murder for which a handyman working at her home is convicted and sentenced to death.  Of course, June is pregnant at the time of the murders, and her baby is born with a defective heart.  One of the jurors is so affected by the death sentence that he helped to impose that he becomes a priest.  An ACLU attorney gets involved to challenge the death sentence, but the whole case gets complicated when the convicted killer decides not to fight the death sentence, and that he wants to donate his heart to June's child after his death. 

Did I mention that everyone thinks that the killer is performing miracles and may in fact be The Messiah?  I know, I know, that's too hokey.  But it worked.  Picoult takes the opportunity to inject a religious debate regarding one of my favorite subjects:  How can we take the Bible as the truth, if we don't know who edited it or translated it, or what they chose to omit or change?  She introduces the Gospel of Thomas which didn't make the final cut, and persuades me that I should really be Gnostic instead of Presbyterian.  All that from a book I could have picked up at a 7-11.

Someone who has read Picoult before will know that she doesn't waste words, and that if she is telling you something, it is for a reason.  Sometimes obvious foreshadowing shows that the author is an amateur, but Picoult foreshadows in such a way that the reader can feel smug about figuring out what is coming, and then keep reading to be rewarded for their good guessing.  It is somehow not disappointing to figure out the twists in advance, and in fact, it increases the tension as the reader waits for the characters to catch on.

Change of Heart is a great book, and I'm sure it would be a very quick read.  I listened to it on CD, which took about 15 hours, but that was due to all of the dramatic pauses.  I'm glad that I picked this up at last year's Typical Book Exchange - Thanks Laurie!  Oh, and this is another double-countsie for the challenges since I owned the book to begin with, but then listened to it on CDs that I check out of my library.

Next up on CD:  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  I have already listened to the first disc and I am loving it so far!

Still Reading:  The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali

Next Year in Jerusalem

So why, exactly, did I read New American Haggadah?  Because Jonathan Safran Foer edited it.  That's why. 

A Haggadah is a book of readings for the Seder dinner during Passover.  As a Presbyterian, I first learned about a Haggadah when I read People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.  That book is about the very famous Sarajevo Haggadah, which has survived since around the year 1350.  There are many Haggadahs, and my assumption is that most Jewish families probably have one that they bring out year after year. 

At first I was put off by the size of JSF's Haggadah.  It is the same size as my daughter's hard cover middle school yearbook, to give you an idea.  That made it inconvenient for taking with me to read in spare moments.  But then it occurred to me that a Haggadah is really not meant for reading in random minutes, and that the size is probably very suitable for positioning on a Seder table.  Additionally, the art work on the pages is in watercolor, mostly in jewel tones.  After reading just the introduction, I learned that it is common for the pages of a Haggadah to become wine stained, which will blend in perfectly with the art.

New American Haggadah has commentary every few pages, with sections titled "Playground", "Library", "Nation" and "House of Study".  The Playground sections were the best, with wisdom aimed at children.  For instance, here the child is advised how to respond to the four kinds of parents at the Seder table, in parody of the four kinds of children referenced in the reading.  The Simple Parent will say "'. . . stop slouching at the table.' In answer to such statements, the Wise Child will roll his eyes in the direction of the ceiling and declare, 'Let my people go!'  The Parent Who Is Unable to Inquire has had too much wine and should be excused from the table."  The Playground also points out how Elijah has it much better than Santa, since Elijah is welcome to eat anywhere and Santa only gets cookies if he bribes children with presents.

As a new comer to the Haggadah, I learned a lot, though admittedly, I skimmed some of the readings.  The three things that I like about the Haggadah (not just this one, but the Haggadah as a whole) are:

1.  The whole point of the Haggadah is to help Jewish celebrants to remember.  As such, there are step by step instructions as to who should say what, and what should be consumed when.  No one is expected to remember on their own, and the directions are clear. 

2.  The Haggadah changes over time, and for the intended reader.  For example there's Haggadah for Jewish Buddhists, a feminist Haggadah, and an optional orange added to the Seder in recognition of marginalized members of the community.

3.  It is a do-it-yourself project.  The Open Source Haggadah is an online software framework that makes it easy for a person to make their own Haggadah.

So, should you rush out and get New American Haggadah?  If you are in the market for a Haggadah, absolutely!  However, if you, like me, are looking for something Jonathan Safran Foer-ish, you won't find it here. 

Next up:  Three Weeks in December by Audrey Schulman

Still Listening to:  Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Can of Worms

Helen of Troy by Margaret George is an enormous novel exploring the life of Helen of Troy, and the Heroes that lived in her time.  George is a master of the long, historical fiction novel.  Prior to Helen, I had also read The Autobiography of Henry VIII and The Memoirs of Cleopatra by George.  The difference here is that while the books about Henry and Cleopatra were true historical fiction, Helen may just be fiction.

To my mind, and I would guess, in the minds of most Americans, Helen is every bit as real as Cleopatra. We know her legacy:  she was the face that launched 1000 ships.  We know about the Trojan war, even if we think that it was Trojans hiding inside of the famous horse.  But apparently, historians generally believe that Helen is a myth. 

In the myth, Helen is a beautiful woman who was born of her mother Leda, and the god, Zeus.   When Helen was deciding which suitor to marry, her father made all 40 eligible bachelors, who were mostly princes and kings, swear that they would uphold Helen's choice, and defend the marriage.  Helen chose Menelaus, but never fell in love with him because she forgot to thank the goddess of love, Aphrodite.  As vengeance, Aphrodite casts a spell on Helen, causing her to fall in love with the younger Paris, Prince of Troy.  Helen loves Paris so much that she flees Sparta to move with him to Troy, leaving Menelaus and their child, Hermione, behind.  Helen and Paris don't believe that the suitors will actually uphold their promise and defend her marriage, but that is exactly what they do.  All of the suitors bring their armies and besiege Troy, resulting in the 10 year Trojan war.  The war finally ends when the Greeks pretend to retreat from Troy, but leave behind a giant wooden horse, as a tribute to the goddess, Athena.  Instead, the horse concealed some of the strongest Greek warriors, who would wait until the Trojans fell asleep, then sneak out of the horse, and open the gates of Troy so that all the other Greek warriors could enter. The Greek warriors included Odysseus, Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, and many of the other "characters" from The Odyssey and The Iliad.

Although I have told you all of this, I haven't really spoiled the story for you.  First of all, you probably knew everything that I have just said already.  Second of all, what I say in one paragraph, George spreads over 638 pages.

So my question to you is this:  why do we call Helen a myth?  According to Wikipedia, the legend of Helen dates back to at least the 7th century B.C.  In her Afterward, George states that there is great debate among historians not just as to whether Helen existed (she is generally thought not to have) but whether Troy existed, and even if Troy existed, if there was a Trojan War.  Wikipedia seems to say that Troy did exist, and that there probably was a Trojan War, even if there was no Helen.

So I guess, if I am honest with you, my question is why do we believe in Jesus and not in Helen?  What makes the Bible more "historically accurate" than The Odyssey?  George says that Helen is believed to be fictional because "no evidential corroboration" exists.  Is there evidence of Jesus?  The story of Helen, Odysseus and  the other Heroes is even older than his story, so evidence should be even less likely to exist.  Homer wasn't the only person to write of these people, even though the story was likely handed down orally for years before it was committed to paper, much like the Bible. 

One reason that we may not be ready to "believe in" Helen and the Heroes is the idea of there being many gods who interacted in the lives of normal people.  But really, couldn't the gods have just been an excuse?  "I didn't mean to leave my husband, Aphrodite made me do it."  Any undesirable feelings could be explained by blaming them on the gods.  Achilles (according to George) was feared like a god, but known to be mortal during his life.  After his death, his legend made him into a god.  Don't we do this now?  We take famous people who do great (or not great as much as well publicized) things and worship them.  Would the ancient Greeks have felt that Kim Kardashian must be the child of a god?  Perhaps.

So George has told a great story, but I think that for me, she has opened a can of worms.  I want to know more about the "gods", the "heroes", Sparta, Troy, and why the stories are widely considered myths.  Although this story took me over a month to listen to on CD, I still want more.  Can I give a stronger endorsement?

To make it even better, this one is another Challenge double countsey.  I have had the book in my drawer, so it counts for the Off the Shelf Challenge, but I listened to it on CD, which I checked out from the library, so it counts for the Support Your Library Challenge too!

Next Up On CD:  Following Atticus:  Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship by Tom Ryan

Almost Done Reading:  Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.  This book is so good that I made myself stop reading it last night so that it will last longer.  I will certainly finish tonight.

Correction:  Last entry, I told you that The Typical Book Group will be reading Paris Wife by Paula McLain next.  We will not.  Instead we will read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

JSF News

Well, my Facebook BFF, Jonathan Safran Foer, has just informed me that his new book is coming out on March 5!  Here is a link to a review.  You may recall that I mentioned just over a year ago that I had heard a rumor that he was working on a version of a Haggadah.  It appears that the rumors are true, and this new Haggadah will be out in time for Passover.  According to Wikipedia, a Haggadah is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder, and is read at the Seder table. 

A great book about a Haggadah is People of the Book by Geraldine March, which tells a fictionalized version of how the Sarajevo Haggadah (one of the oldest known to exist) may have survived through the ages.  Based on the review, JSF's book is not about a Haggadah, but is a Haggadah.

As a Presbyterian, I don't need to rush to get this book in time for Seder, but due to my devotion to JSF, I have added it to my TBR list.  Do you think that JSF announced that his book is coming out today as a special birthday present to me?  Somehow, I doubt that, but it is a strange coincidence . .  .

Thinking about reading a traditional text from another religion reminded me of the thought that crosses my mind from time to time that I should read the Koran.  I did some quick Googling, and found an online Koran reading group,  but of course, that took place last year.  I also found some Western Koran scholars who suggested that one cannot just pick up a Koran and read it without explanation. So, as an attempt to learn something about the Koran, without overwhelming myself, I have also added The Muslim Next Door:  The Qur'an, The Media, and That Veil Thing by Sumbul Ali-Karamali to my reading list.

Not that I'm considering making any spiritual changes in my life, but a little knowledge never hurt anyone.  Right?

Still Reading:  Emma by Jane Austen

Still Listening to:  Helen of Troy by Margaret George