What Happened in August, 2014

Reviews

And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

I tried.  Seriously, people, I tried.  For a full month I have been reading . . . And Ladies of the Club and I am still only 1/3 of the way through. 

. . . And Ladies of the Club was a popular book in the 1980s, and The Typical Book Group picked it as our summer BFB (Big Fat Book).  The story starts just after the Civil War, when two of the main characters, Sally and Anne, graduate from college and enter the real world of Waynesboro, OH.  They are asked by one of their teachers if they are interested in becoming part of a yet to be formed literary women's club, and they quickly agree.  From there, we meet 10 other women who become club members, their families, and their husbands. 

400 pages in, I am still in the late 1800s, three of the club members have died, and several others have been admitted.  The members have confronted social and political issues, like calls for prohibition, presidential elections, and the challenges of reuniting a divided country. 

The story reads like a classic, with not a lot of action, and lots of social dilemmas.  While I don't find it  boring, it is so soothing that it frequently lulls me to sleep after 5 or fewer pages.  So, I'm taking a break.  I would hate to waste two months reading a book only to say "meh" at the end.  We'll see.  If I read a couple more books and keep thinking about this one, I'll come back.

Tags:  Historical Fiction, Big Fat Books

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle is a company, likely based on Google or Facebook, where everyone who is smart and young wants to work.  They have a campus, which they would prefer that you not leave, where bands clamour to perform, where food and health care is provided and where innovation is constant.  The Circle wants to find out everything that is knowable in the modern world.  Do 27 year olds prefer Cancun or Hawaii?  How many grains of sand are there in the desert?  What happens when you transfer sea animals that have never before been seen into a Circle designed habitat?  The Circle is all about transparency.  If a person visits a park and doesn't post pictures to Facebook to tell their friends about it, why didn't they?  Were they ashamed?  Are they trying to hide their activities?  Or are they being anti-social?  It is quickly determined that all people are entitled to all experiences.  If you go to an art show in California, and I am stuck in Michigan, I can be there with you if you post about it.  But if you don't post about the experience, you are stealing that opportunity from me.  

Mae, a floundering Carlton College graduate, begins to work for The Circle when her friend, Annie, invites her to apply.  Mae quickly finds herself overwhelmed with gratitude to Annie, but also surprised by how much of her life The Circle wants to consume, and how much she is willing to give it.  Mae's dad is suffering from MS, and she is able to get better insurance coverage for him through The Circle.  In exchange, The Circle will monitor all of his care, which will obviously require live video supervision from 10 different cameras in his house.  Soon her parents begin to feel that this is too much, but Mae is insistent that The Circle knows best. 

The Circle is a commentary about how much of our privacy we are willing to give up while getting little in return.  As a customer experience worker, Mae finds herself devoting valuable time to people who she has never met but who have asked her to like them, instead of spending time with her family members and real life friends.  The instant gratification of having another "friend" and getting a favorable rating outweighs anything that Mae believes her parents could provide to her.

Part 1984, part "War Games", and part MaddAddam, The Circle predicts a not so distant future where online participation is mandatory.  Individuals control crime by mounting inexpensive video cameras which anyone can log into and see through.  This sounds good enough, but in a world where secrets are considered lies the superficial takes the place of the real.  Margaret Atwood calls much of her work "speculative fiction" instead of "science fiction", which is very apt in this case.  We can't be too many years away from a time when much of The Circle's technology is possible.  It is as though The Circle is a predecessor to the corporations that control the world in Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy.  In MaddAddam, each corporation has a campus and controls the lives of its employees, but there secrets are essential, and the corps will do anything to keep their secrets from getting out.  In the timeline of speculative fiction, The Circle would be placed between Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and Oryx and Crake.  The Circle was a NYT Notable for 2013.

Eggers did an incredible job of imagining the world that could be.  Some of the technology that he explains, especially the "See Change" video cameras which can be mounted anywhere and are so inexpensive that they are readily available to everyone, seems possible.  My guess is that this is something that Eggers has mulled over, and that he hasn't gotten too many hours of sleep, for fear of the future.

The Circle was read by Dion Graham, who also read several of Egger's earlier books including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What.  To me, he is the voice of Dave Eggers.  It is a testament to Graham's ability that he is able to read these stories with such a range of topics and characters.

Challenges:  Audiobook Challenge, I Love Library Books Challenge

Tags:  NYT Notables; Sci-Fi-ish

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Have you ever had that feeling that if you just had something to do over again, you would do it differently?  So has Ursula Todd.  In Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, the novel consists of a series of episodes in Ursula's life.  There are three primary story lines, being the stories of Ursula's birth, that of her 16th birthday, and that of her World War II experience.  In each of these, the first time the story is told, it ends horribly for her, and she dies.  Each story is then retold, with Ursula making slightly different choices, as though she knows that she is trying to keep something from happening, but doesn't quite remember what.  Again, something horrible happens, and she dies.  The stories are retold again and again until Ursula has carefully navigated around all of the hidden hazards of her life, and can move on to the next episode.

Ursula feels a strong sense of deja vu, and eventually realizes that she has the ability to change the course of history, one tiny interception at a time.  If her maid falls down the stairs and can't go to a celebration in London, she won't bring the flu back to Ursula's household.  If she befriends Eva Braun, could she prevent World War II?

Atkinson's novel twists and turns while moving two steps forward and one step back.  It is almost as though she took Ursula's life, couldn't decide which way to go, and told the story every way that she could imagine.  However, the result is so carefully constructed that the novel presents Ursula's choices almost as a form of Darwinian evolution rather than simple drafts that didn't work out.

Life After Life was a NYT Notable Book for 2013, and the 2013 GoodReads Choice winner for Historical Fiction.

Tags:  Historical Fiction, NYT Notables, WWII Civilian Stories, British Stories

September Preview:

In September, I plan to read and review the following in paper or electronic form:

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hoover Santmyer (Try, Try again!)
The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon

I also plan to finish listening to The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, and will post about that, and will start listening to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  However, at 32 hours, I am unlikely to post a review of this one before October.

 

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!)

Great House Redux

In February of 2011, when I first read Great House by Nicole Krauss, I tore through it in 6 days, and as soon as I finished, I wanted to read it again.  Finally, this year, I did. 

Great House is the story of an enormous desk, and the people who owned it through the years.  Sort of.  It is told through four different stories, and each story has two parts.  I described the stories in 2011, and I hate to repeat myself, but the shortest synopsis of the stories is this.  "All Rise" is told by Nadia.  She is a writer who received the desk from a person named Daniel who later disappears under ominous circumstances.  She turns the desk over to Leah.  "True Kindness" is a great father-son story showing the distance that can grow between two people.  The son, Dov, wanted to be a writer, but his father so discouraged him that he became a judge instead.   The third story is "Swimming Holes".  This is the story of Lotte, who is a writer, and her husband, Arthur.  Lotte escaped the Holocaust as part of the Kindertransport, and she doesn't like to talk about that part of her life.  When Lotte gets Alzheimer's late in her life, she inadvertently lets Arthur in on some important secrets that she has kept for years.  Where Lotte got the desk is a mystery, but she gives it to Daniel.  The final story, "Lies Told by Children" is of Izzy, and her strange relationship with Yoav and his sister, Leah.  Their father, who is called by their surname, Weisz, escaped the Holocaust, but his family's home was ransacked, and his father's desk was stolen.  It is his life's purpose to reclaim all of the items stolen by the Nazis and the family's opportunistic neighbors.

When I first read the book, I was left with lots of questions.  I wanted to find the connections between the characters that I knew that I had missed.  This time, I did everything differently.  I read the book quickly in 2011.  Instead of going even faster on the second reading, I took more than twice as long, and read with a pencil in hand.  I underlined every name, eye color, and year.  I made parallel time lines for each story inside the front cover of the book, and kept checking them.  And after the first story, I was embarrassed.

It was so obvious!  How could I have missed it?  Clearly, Daniel was Leah and Yoav's father, who just used a different name with Lotte and Nadia.  It was plain as day that Lotte was his mother.  Until I read further, and it was clear that she was not, and he was not.

After my second reading, with attention to detail, notes and time lines, I still feel like I have missed the connections.  Don't get me wrong.  The novel is great, and it isn't confusing.  I just feel like there are clues and I am still not seeing them.  My best guess after the second time around is that Lotte and Weisz were siblings or cousins who lost each other in the war.  Daniel is related to both of them.  Maybe he was a descendant of another sibling.  It's possible that he was a nephew to them both, or a descendant of a cousin.  I don't have a good connection to the "True Kindness" characters, other than to speculate that the father could have been involved in the theft of the desk somehow or he could have sold the house in Israel to Weisz.  But maybe that's not the point.  Maybe the whole point of the book is that if we look hard enough for connections between people, we can find them, whether they are real or imagined.  It's the Keven Bacon game, times ten thousand.  Maybe the characters are all just people who happened to live near each other or are unrelated owners of a desk.  Maybe Lotte put an ad in the newspaper that she had a desk for sale and Daniel saw it.  Nothing more.

This is the first book that I read for the Year of Re-Reading Challenge.  Great House was a NYT Notable Book for 2010.

If you are reading this before June 13, 2014, don't forget to click here to enter to win the audiobook of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Next Up:  The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

Still Listening to:  The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

The Egg Hunt

In City of Thieves by David Benioff, Lev is a boy in his late teens who is living in Leningrad during the siege.  His father has disappeared, and his mother and sister left to find safety away from the city, leaving Lev a virtual, if not a true, orphan.  When a dead German paratrooper falls from the sky outside his building, Lev and his friends break curfew to see what they can claim from his body.  Lev is caught and arrested, and faces execution for looting.  Soon a Red Army desserter, Kolya, is thrown into Lev's jail cell.  Kolya and Lev are given a reprieve, and told that if they can just bring a dozen eggs to a certain colonel by the following Thursday, they will be set free.  Of course, finding a dozen eggs in Leningrad during the siege is no easy task.

Kolya and Lev are given a letter from the colonel allowing them passage out of Leningrad, and they are off, searching the Nazi filled countryside for eggs.  Along the way they encounter a cast of characters - some who help them and some who make their journey more difficult.  If this is sounding like a chummy little adventure, remember that they are in the middle of World War II, everyone is starving, it is winter, and the Nazis are everywhere. 

This story of the siege of Leningrad is completely different from Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah.   City is a men's coming of age story, and Winter Garden is a mother's version of the siege.  Both stories were great, and they really compliment each other with their differences.  A reader looking for more action would prefer City of Thieves.

While I really liked City, I would have liked it even more if it was true.  Benioff teases the reader by starting off with a prologue where a young writer named David is interviewing his grandfather about his life in Leningrad.  It was enough to make me think that City of Thieves is David Benioff's grandfather's story, much like Everything is Illuminated is based on Jonathan Safran Foer's grandfather's experience during the war.  Unfortunately, Benioff insists that the story is pure fiction.  I was willing to accept some of the more unlikely plot twists, and was especially impressed with Benioff's grandmother, when I thought that most of the story was true.  After all, if Louis Zamperini's story is true, what is so strange about two young men escaping execution by finding eggs? 

This book is one off my list for the Rewind Challenge.  Since I checked the audio book out of my library and listened to it that way, it also counts for the Audiobook Challenge and the I Love Library Books Challenge.  I'm moving right along. . .

Next Up On CD:  Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn

Still Reading:  The Vanishing by Wendy Webb

The War Part 2

A lot has happened between the end of  Fall of Giants, and the start of the sequel, Winter of the World, by Ken Follett.  The whole next generation has grown up, and as expected, they are old enough to fight in the second World War.  We catch up with some of our favorites from the first book, and we lose some others.  

Much of Winter focuses on Maud Fitzherbert, who became Maud Von Ulrich in Fall.  She and her husband, Walter, are living in Berlin with their teenage children, Carla and Erik.  Erik is enthralled by the Nazis, and quickly joins their ranks.  Carla starts off as a young girl, but is a nurse as the war gets underway, and later enters politics.

We also reunite with Maud's brother, Fitz, who lives with his wife, Bea, and their son, Boy, in England.  This family becomes entangled with Lev Peshkov's American family when Lev's daughter, Daisy, visits London.  Fitz had a child with Ethel Williams in Fall, and in Winter, that child, Lloyd, is an important player.  The Williams and Fitzherbert families remain entwined in Winter, with Boy and Lloyd living very different lives, but finding it hard to get away from each other none the less. 

Lev Peshkov also has two illegitimate sons, Gregory, who lives in America, and Vladimir, who lives in Russia.  These boys are both strong characters in the novel, with Gregory drifting between politics and physics, and Vladimir becoming a skilled spy, who can't help questioning his loyalty to his country.

Finally, the Dewar family in America is even more important in Winter than they were in Fall, with Gus Dewar serving as a senator, his son, Woody, working in Washington and his other son, Chuck, serving in the Navy and stationed in Hawaii.

Of course, there are also lots of new characters who make appearances.  Some of my favorite characters from Fall did not have very important roles in Winter.  One such character is Grigori Peshkov, who is only relevant in Winter as the step-father of Vladimir.  Another is Billy Williams,  who is just a sideline character in Winter.  I missed Billy more than Grigori, probably because Vladimir was a such great character that he made up for his father's loss.

The fun of this story is to guess how the characters will find themselves connected, and I'm not going to spoil that for you.  The nut shell synopses of this 940 page book is this:

The story starts with the Nazis rising to power in Germany.  The Nazis close Maud's newspaper, and her husband's cousin, Robert, is persecuted for being gay.  Ethel is a member of Parliament in England, and is doing everything that she can to fight fascism, while not getting caught up in a war with Germany.  The Americans, the Peshkovs and the Dewars, are less concerned about the unfolding problems in Europe, but have their hands full with politics and social engagements.  In Russia, Vladimir is involved with the Red Army, and trying to protect Russia from Germany.  Soon, Daisy is in London, flirting with Boy and Lloyd.  The Germans are beginning to suspect that the Nazis are rounding people up and killing them, but are not sure what they can do to stop them.  Eventually, all of the children are involved in the war effort, with Erik fighting for Germany, Lloyd fighting in Spain, Boy flying for the British, Vladimir in the Red Army, Woody and Chuck in the US military, and Greg is using his skills for America, even if he doesn't wear a uniform. 

By the end of the story, Carla has two children, Greg has one, Woody has two, Daisy has two, Lloyd has two, and Vladimir has one.  Lloyd, Carla, and Maud are all in Berlin on the Russian side, but no one has mentioned a wall.  And so the stage is set for Follett's next book, Edge of Eternity, which is due out on September 16, 2014.

One thing that I'd like to note is that Winter is a World War II story, and not a Holocaust story. Obviously, Follett did his research, and I think that his goal was to present the story of the concentration camps from the perspective of the people who lived outside of them during the period.  In Winter, the Germans know that Jews are sometimes rounded up, that gays are targeted, and that the disabled and the elderly seem to disappear.  But some of the Jews come back, and in the story as in real life, the Jewish hospital remains open in Berlin, with Jewish doctors and nurses treating Jewish patients, right up until the Russians invade the city.   After the war ends, the Americans mention camps being found, and the Germans claim that the Russians are re-opening the camps.  The words "concentration camp" are never used, that I can recall.  Additionally, there is no mention of the siege of Leningrad, even though there are Russian characters.  If you are interested in Holocaust stories, you should read Night by Elie Wiesel, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, or Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.  For a great story about the Siege of Leningrad, try Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah.

This book is the first that I have finished for the I Love Library Books Challenge, and for the 2014 Audiobook Challenge.  Winter of the World was read by John Lee, who did a great job handling all of the accents, just as he did in Fall.

Next up on CD:  City of Thieves by David Benioff.  I must not have had enough of WWII.  This is another Siege of Leningrad story.

Still Reading:  The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman

Just Amazing

It is time for you to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and in fact, I might ask, what has taken you so long?  Amazing was published in 2000, was a NYT Notable Book for that year, and won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2001.  And still you haven't read it?  Neither had I, despite the fact that it had been sitting in my nightstand for 3 or 4 or 5 years, just waiting for me.

Amazing is the story of Josef Kavalier, who starts off as a teenage boy living in Prague as Hitler rises to power.  Josef is interested in magic, and worships Houdini.  His mentor, Bernard Kornblum, teaches him illusions and the tricks of escape artists.  Joe's training is tested when he escapes from Prague and manages to find his way to the United States.  Joe's cousin, Sammy Klayman, is living in New York, where one day Joe appears.  Joe and Sammy are about the same age, and form a quick bond.  Sammy wants to find Joe a job at the Empire Novelty Company, where he works.  Joe has an artistic talent that gives Sammy a great idea.  What if he and Joe could create a comic book that Empire could publish to compete with the new Superman comics?

Joe has never even heard of a comic book before, but he trusts Sammy, and will do what Sammy says to help him get a job.  As Sammy tries to persuade his boss to start a comic book, Joe draws up a few quick sketches of a Golem.  A Golem is a character from Jewish folklore which is formed from inanimate materials, such as sand, but becomes alive and powerful.  The Golem is all wrong as a superhero for America in the 1940s, but with Sammy's boss' tentative approval, they try to come up with something else that the American public will embrace.  And so, the Escapist is born.  The Escapist fights Nazis and other evil forces, and becomes an immediate hit. 

Sammy and Joe's boss becomes incredibly wealthy from the success of the Escapist, and even Sammy and Joe are making more money than they need.  Joe saves every penny to try to help the rest of his family escape from Prague before it is too late.  The juxtaposition of the golden age of comics in the US versus the oppression of Jews in Prague is stark, and leaves Joe feeling lost and conflicted. The years go by, and the cousins grow up and grow apart, while always remaining connected by one woman, Rosa.  Rosa is the inspiration for their most successful female character, Luna Moth.  The love triangle between Joe, Sammy and Rosa is entirely unconventional, but it works. 

There are a couple great quotes in Amazing.  The first that I loved is when Joe is explaining that he's not satisfied to write the Escapist in more commercially viable terms.  He says "I'm tired of fighting, maybe, for a little while.  I fight, and I am fighting some more, and it just makes me have less hope, not more.  I need to do something . . . something that will be great, you know, instead of trying always to be Good."

Another is explaining why Joe loved comic books, even years after he had quit working for Empire:  ". . .he loved them for the pictures and stories they contained, the inspirations and lubrications of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could dream for fifteen years, transfiguring their insecurities and delusions, their wishes and their doubts, their public educations and their sexual perversions, into something that only the most purblind of societies would have denied the status of art."

A few years back, when I was reading McSweeney's 36, which included Fountain City:  A Novel Wrecked by Michael Chabon, I mentioned how he had given us such intimate details of his writing process and personal life, that I knew that he slept in the nude, which was maybe a little more than I wanted to know.  In Fountain City, Chabon comments about how although he hadn't realized it, other people had told him that in his novels he seems to have a thing about sleepwear.  I laughed the first time that I noticed a detailed description of pajamas on page 471 of Amazing, but by the end of the book I had turned down the corners on 4 more pages of PJ descriptions.  A thing indeed.

I have often wondered, and complained to anyone who would listen, about why Carter Beats the Devil by Glenn David Gold has gotten so little attention, when it is a truly great book.  I have attributed its lack of acclaim to the fact that it was published less than a month before The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen which was ridiculously (but deservedly) hyped, and also less than a month before 9/11.  It seems obvious now, that while Gold and Chabon likely took years to write their respective books,  it was really unlucky for Gold that Chabon was able to publish a great book also focused on magicians just before Gold's book hit the stores.  While the stories are entirely different, there may have been a little bit of magic burn out in 2001.  But, if you do read and like Amazing, I recommend that you also give Carter a try.

I am adding The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to my Favorites list.  At 636 pages, it is also a BFB.  Amazing is the last book that I need to complete my revised goal for The Off the Shelf Challenge.  This is THE book that has made doing the OTS Challenge for the last 2 years worthwhile for me.  I never would have gotten around to it if I hadn't had a goal of trying to get through the books that had been crowding my nightstand.  In its honor, and since it's only September, I think I'll extend my goal by another 5 books, to 25.

Next Up:  Who Asked You by Terry McMillan

Still Listening to:  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Unbelieveably True

So, if you were a publisher, and someone pitched you a novel about a boy who was smoking cigarettes at age 5, competing as an Olympic runner at 20, a World War II war hero before he was 30, and a downhill skier in his 90s, how fast would that manuscript hit your circular file?  My guess is immediately.  It just isn't believable.  But, in this case, it's true. 

Unbroken:  A World War II Story of  Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand is the biography of Louis Zamperini.  And yes, Louie did all of those things, and many, many more.  Louie first became famous when he was a part of the US Olympic team that went to Berlin in 1936.  Another member of that team who Louie befriended was Jesse Owens.  Although Louie didn't medal, he set a new American record. 

When World War II started, Louie considered himself lucky to get stationed in Hawaii.  He was a member of a B-24 flight crew that quickly gained recognition of one of the best crews in the air.    Since this is on the book's cover, I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that Louie's plane went down, and he and other members of the crew found themselves floating in the Pacific Ocean, battling sharks, starvation and enemy fighter planes.  What happens after that is just as unbelievable and amazing as Louie's life up to that point.

While I've read a lot about World War II, almost all of my reading has focused on the European part of the war or the Holocaust.  Only Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris addressed the Japanese.  When I read Scarlet Leaves, I thought that McMorris may have been mentioning some of the worst things that were supposed to have happened to prisoners in Japan.  Hillenbrand reported many more atrocities, and has the documentation to support her claims, giving credibility to her story and McMorris'.  In fact, McMorris sites Louie's autobiography as one of her sources.

There was so much that I learned about World War II that I somehow never knew before.  I never knew why Japan attacked Hawaii, seemingly out of the blue.  Hillenbrand explains that on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese also attacked other countries all throughout the Pacific, in an attempt to gain control of the Pacific, and if that went well, all of Asia.  I had no idea that 37% of American prisoners of war who were held in Japan died in captivity, compared to only 1% of those held in Germany.  And I was shocked to learn that the Japanese charged with war crimes were granted amnesty and released from prison less than 10 years after being sentenced, as part of an American political plan to make an ally of Japan.

This was the best biography that I have ever read.  Part of what made it so good was that all of the information is so detailed.  I've always heard that people who survive a war hate to talk about it, but in Louie's case, because he was famous going into the war, he was giving interviews before he even returned to the US.  Hillenbrand spent 7 years researching the book, and interviewed Louie 75 times.  Although there are footnotes throughout the paper version of the book, as an audio book listener, I appreciated not having those read to me.  For the most part, the footnotes are documenting sources, and not providing additional information, so I don't feel like I missed anything by not hearing them.  A good reason to read the book instead of listening, however, is that Hillenbrand includes tons of pictures in the paper version. 

If you have any interest at all in World War II, Unbroken is a Must Read.

One more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!

Next up on CD:  This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

Still Reading:  The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

And a Bag of Chips

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter has it all.  It starts off with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of "Cleopatra" in the 1960s.  Soon one of the extras has to leave the set, to seek quiet in the seaside village of Porto Vergogna in Italy.  There, a young man, Pasquale, is realizing that he is the only person under 40 left living in the dying town.  Fast forward 50 years, and there is Shane, a young screenwriter-want-to-be who is trying to sell a story about the Donner Party, and Pat, a former one hit wonder who is trying to find one more hit.  Then slip back to Italy during World War II, and the scars that it left on all involved.  And there you have Beautiful Ruins.

The story is told through letters, discarded memoirs, chapters of books that never got published, scenes from plays, translations, flash backs, and flash forwards.  The same characters reappear from time to time, but frequently enough that you remember who everyone is.  In this way, Beautiful Ruins is similar to A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, except that Walters actually tells the reader what year we are in. 

The Pat storyline also is similar to a story in AVFTGS.  Pat is a musician in his 40s, who found some recognition as a singer in a band 20 years earlier.  He hasn't given up, but the crowds have stopped appearing, and may even wonder if he is still alive, if they think of him at all.  His self proclaimed life theme is "There must be some mistake; I was supposed to be bigger than this."  Pat also brings to mind Nik Worth from Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.  In all of these books, there is a person who found some degree of fame as a musician in his 20s.  Even though he found a little fame, he didn't get as much as he thought he should have.  He feels that the public never really "got" him, even though he has been brilliant all along.  He is certain that his latest works are his best, if only someone would be willing to listen.  And then it happens, or maybe it doesn't.  But the hope is there.  Can a great musician find true critical acclaim and commercial success after turning 40?  Or 50?   It's a rock and roll fairy tale.  And we love it.  AVFTGS won the Pulitzer, and all three books, AVFTGS, Stone Arabia, and Beautiful Ruins were NYT Notables.

I also liked the relationship between Pasquale and the extra who left the Cleopatra set.  They speak different languages, but they are more honest with each other than they could have been with someone who they thought understood them.  Pasquale, as the manager and owner of the Hotel Adequate View, is in awe of any American who will come to his small village, and is especially taken with this beautiful woman.  Together they explore a bunker that was used by soldiers in World War II.  The bunker could have been left behind by a character from Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War.  Helprin's Italy of World War I is not so different from Walter's Italy of World War II.

One thing that worked well in Beautiful Ruins was the final chapter, where the reader learns what happened to most, if not all, of the characters mentioned throughout the many eras of the book.  It could have been too contrived, but Walters lays out all the finales like he is reporting data, so it feels true.

The lessons in Beautiful Ruins are plentiful.  Do the right thing.  Live in the present.  Love the one you're with.  Accept faults in others.  Forgive.  Don't exploit.  For some reason, I think because I was so busy, it took me longer than it should have to get caught up in the stories.  I think that this is one that I'd like to read again.  It's a great novel that has something for everyone. 

Next up:  Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr.

Still Listening to:  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Bridging the Gaps

A week ago, I started reading a 420 page book by Kristina McMorris, called Bridge of Scarlet Leaves.  Today I finished it, and it only took that long because I forced myself to put it down and get some sleep last night.

Like Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves  is the story of an interracial couple living on the West Coast of America during World War II.  In Hotel, the couple consisted of tweenagers, one Chinese and one Japanese, but both American nonetheless.  In Bridge, the couple is a little older, and is made up of a Japanese American man, and a Caucasian American woman, Lane and Maddie.  Lane and Maddie get married against their families' wishes, on the day before Pearl Harbor is bombed.  Instantly, Lane and his family are targeted as enemies.  Shortly thereafter, they are uprooted and moved to an internment camp.

In Hotel, the internment camp is painted as being a pretty nice place, given the circumstances, and the perspective of a young girl.  Bridge tells a more historically accurate story, conceding that due to the hostility of other Americans, the Japanese at times may have felt safer within the camps, while still portraying the camps as a place where a person would want not to be.  The idea of a white American choosing to live in a camp in order to remain with her spouse, even with the sparse accommodations and tense atmosphere, was an interesting twist, about which little has been written.

Bridge also tells the story of American and Japanese soldiers fighting at the Pacific front.  Maddie's brother,  TJ, and Lane both enlist in the army, but they have different opportunities based on their races and the prejudices of those around them, both friend and foe.  Eventually another character is introduced who is an American born man who found himself in Japan on the December 7, 1941, was not permitted to go back to America, and was forced to enlist in the Japanese army.  These three men make tough choices and realize that while they need to look out for themselves, sometimes there are risks worth taking.

All told, if you liked Hotel, but would prefer a little more action, Bridge is the book for you.  The author, McMorris, is half Japanese herself, and meticulously researched the story.   Bridge  is a great book, and a fast read.  As an added bonus, McMorris includes a number of Asian fusion recipes after the story ends.  The recipes are a combination of Western and Japanese dishes, including Wasabi Mashed Potatoes, which I just have to try.

In the interest of full disclosure, Tyson Cornell of Rare Bird Lit  asked me to review this book, and sent me a free copy.  I promised him that I would read the book and write about it, and nothing more.  Really, Bridge deserves all of the praise that I have given it.  It's just my kind of book.

Next up:  The Pioneer Woman:  Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond

Still Listening to:  Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart

Back to the War

When I started reading Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, I felt like I had read that story before.  Not in the sense that I had actually picked up that book and read it, but in the sense that I have read so many stories of the civilians of World War II, that I was wondering if I was getting a little burnt out on them. 

TWSU  is divided into two parts, with one story set in Germany from 1939-1945, and the other set in Minnesota from 1993-1997.  At first, the German story had echos of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, with a German girl hiding a Jewish man who was even named Max in both stories.  The more modern story started off in practically the same way as Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah, with the death of the father, the mother who wouldn't talk to her daughter, the mother's decline in health, and even a university study relating to the mother's war years.  However, TWSU could not have stolen it's story from these other two, since it was published years before either of them.

My interest was piqued when I understood the angle of the university study, which Trudy, the daughter of the German mother, Anna, was conducting.  Trudy was born in Germany during the war, and then grew up to be a university professor teaching German studies.  Her project focused on how German civilians could live with themselves after the war.  Obviously, this is a thinly veiled accusation of her mother, but Trudy learns more than she anticipated. 

A comparison that I didn't expect to make is that Anna's predicament during the war was really not so unlike Ma's situation in Room by Emma Donoghue.  A Nazi officer falls in love with Anna, and provides her with food and supplies not available to other civilians.  However, Anna doesn't have any choice in the relationship and must do as he wishes.  The children in the stories, Jack in Room and Trudy in TWSU, both think of their mother's captor as a person who brings them gifts, like Santa Claus.  Jack refers to the kidnapper as "Old Nick" in reference to "Old St. Nick", and Trudy refers to Horst as "St. Nikolaus".   A significant difference between Anna and Ma is that if Ma had managed to escape, the neighbors would have helped her.  Anna's neighbors see her as an enemy deserving of their scorn.

All told, once I was able to spot the differences that made this story unique, I didn't want to put TWSU down.  And I am certainly not done with my "Civilians of World War II" genre.

Next Up:  As Always, Julia:  the letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto by Julia Child

Still Listening to:  The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman

Safe Keeping

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is a sweet but predictable story about a boy who befriends an American born Japanese girl, growing up in Seattle during World War II.  The twist that makes this story interesting is that the boy, Henry, is Chinese, and that the difference matters in the 1940s.  In 2011, people who are not part of the Asian community frequently refer to people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese descent all as being "Asian", or if the speaker is over 60, as being "Oriental".  In the 1940s, whether a person was Japanese or Chinese made a huge difference, even when both people were actually born in the US.  The Chinese were our friends, and the Japanese were our enemies.

The story in Hotel alternates between the war years of the 1940s, and 1986, when the belongings of several Japanese families were found in the basement of an old hotel.  In 1986, Henry is still living in Seattle, but now he has an adult son.  At the beginning, the relationship between Henry and his son, Marty, is much like the relationship between the Major and his son in Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.  Like the Major, Henry has recently lost his wife, and his relationship with his son has suffered.  Both sons are dating white American women, and judge their fathers harshly.  However, as Hotel progresses, the relationship evolves in unexpected ways.

The story of the Japanese internment was told by Henry, who was not "evacuated for his own safety" like the Japanese.  He struggles to understand how Americans are turning against each other, based solely on the countries of their grandparents' birth.  Another book that tells the story of the internment of the Japanese in America is When the Emperor Was Divine  by Julie Otsuka.  Emperor details the lives of various members of a Japanese American family, in a way that is more harsh, and probably more real than that in Hotel.

Next up on CD:  The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman.  I started listening to this one today, and am not impressed so far.  Hopefully the plot will thicken in the second and subsequent chapters.

Still Reading:  Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

The Friends Book Report

Tonight was the second meeting of the Friends Book Group.  We had 9 people at the meeting tonight to discuss Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah, and 7 of us had finished reading the book.  On the whole, we liked the book, with just two people who didn't really care for it.

It was sort of crazy: This book group actually spent most of the time talking about the book.  In my other book group, we always discuss the book for 20 minutes or a half hour, and spend the rest of the time gossiping.  This group is focused. 

An interesting perspective that came out of our discussion was that Meredith's dad was selfish in being the sole provider of love in the family, and should have forced or at least more strongly encouraged Anya to be a better, warmer mother.  I was surprised that a number of people at the meeting felt that the sister relationship in some ways mirrored their own relationships with their sisters, with some of the Friends being the responsible Meredith, and some being the fly-away Nina.  I sort of thought I was the only one who would recognize herself in these characters.  Maybe I'm more normal than I give myself credit for being.

Our next book will be Left Neglected by Lisa Genova, but we won't meet to discuss it until September.

Still reading (and loving):  All is Vanity by Christina Schwarz

Listening to:  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  I tried listening to The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, but the reading was so campy that it drove me crazy before the end of the first disc.  I will keep the book, and try reading that instead of listening to the CD.

Close to Home and Far Away

As I started reading Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah, I was quick to criticize.  The story began with a woman, Meredith, who works with her father in their family business (just like me!), who lives 1/4 mile from her parents (my parents just moved, so they are at least a mile from me now), whose sister has a more glamorous life (duh!) and who is married with two children (ditto).  It is true - there are authors who develop fuller characters than Hannah and who are more convincing with their dialogue.  But some of my initial resistance to Winter Garden may have been more about how closely Meredith's life mirrors mine, and the challenges that she faces, which I could have to face in the (hopefully distant) future.

Winter Garden is actually two stories, one in the modern day, and one in the form of a fairy tale that may touch on some facts from a character's past.  In this sense, it is not unlike Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, but it reads more like something by Jodi Picoult.   The fairy tale is amazing.  I kept promising myself that I would only read to the end of the chapter, then I would go to bed.  But if the next chapter started with or continued part of the fairy tale, I couldn't stop reading.  The ending was a little predictable, but still a welcome resolution.

The fairy tale, while not at first giving dates, soon reveals itself to be the story of a family's struggle to survive the siege of Leningrad.  The Seige of Leningrad lasted from September of 1941 through January of 1944, during which period over a million civilians from Leningrad died. A million.  If you've read other posts, you know that the stories of the civilians of World War II is my favorite genre, and this one fits right in. 

The modern day tale is a story of learning about family members who you thought you knew.  To say that it is about communication within a family is way too simplistic in this case, but it absolutely is about that too.  Some of the blurbs I read about the book mentioned it being about how it is not possible to know one's self until one knows one's mother.  In this case, the daughters do know their mother in the sense that she raised them and they have regular contact with her, but they don't know her thoughts, motives or regrets. 

I never would have read this book if it hadn't been picked for The Friends Book Group.  This is reason #32 why I love book groups - discovering a great book that would have otherwise been missed.

Next up:  The Furies - Book 4 in the Kent Family Chronicles by John Jakes.  I've been putting this one off for a long time, since I wasn't too excited to pick up the story where Book 3 left off - with a 10 year old girl who had already been raped, kidnapped, sold to Indians, and was now married.  But, like Meredith, I will face some challenges to get to know my family better as well.  It will all make more sense soon.

Still Listening to:  The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory - I'm loving it!  No surprise there.

How Much Will You Give Me?

When I started reading Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland, I was expecting to compare it to Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriett Scott Chessman.  However, in the first chapter, I realized that Hyacinth was the story of the owners of a picture as opposed to the story of the creating of a painting.  This led me to hope for something like Great House by Nicole Krauss or People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.

Great House is the story of a many-drawered desk that was owned by a series of writers through decades, with very little obvious connection.  People of the Book is the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah that passed through the hands of unrelated people of varying faiths through centuries.  Compared to the others, I found Hyacinth lacking.  In Hyacinth, the numerous owners of the painting all recognized that it was beautiful, said that they loved it, and then all converted the painting to cash.  To me, it read a little like the story of a dollar bill. 

In Great House, the desk figured in the story, but was not the very meaning of any of the individual stories.  It was a cherished, appreciated piece of furniture, and it passed hands through generosity and trust, but never for money.  In POTB, the Haggadah was considered precious, and was guarded, but was actually more of a liability than an asset in most of the eras in which it existed.  If it had been discovered, it would have been destroyed, and its owner may have been killed.  It was also interesting that each owner put his or her own mark on the Haggadah while owing it.

It seemed simplistic that every owner  in Hyacinth recognized the painting as valuable, and sold it or gave it away to relieve an obligation.  It wouldn't have been much of a stretch for an angry wife to throw the painting away, and then for some lucky person to find it in the trash, love it, and then keep it until giving it to a favorite niece for a wedding present.  The only time it even passed through a will was when the owner knew that it was a recognizable piece of stolen art, and that he would be arrested for trying to sell it.

It also surprised me that Vreeland would invent an unknown Vermeer.  In other (fictional) books that I have read, there have actually been questions about whether Vermeer painted all of the works for which he has credit, rather than claiming that he may have painted even more.

One thing that Great House, People of the Book, and Girl in Hyacinth Blue all have in common is that the prized possession changed hands during the Holocaust.  There had to have been other ways to lose family heirlooms in the 1940s.  In Hyacinth's defense, it was written before the other two, and couldn't have copied their device.  In Great House, the Jewish faith played a key role in the stories, so the Holocaust was obvious as a reason for the transfer of treasures.  The story of the Sarajevo Haggadah in People of the Book  is based on truth, and in that case, the story of its possession (but not its ownership) during the Holocaust is unavoidable.

Next up on CD:  The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Still reading:  Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart.  Don't rush me!