Yesterday I wrote about the upcoming 60 Minutes episode about Greg Mortenson on my other blog, Every Day Is a Miracle. I am truly hoping that the claims that he fabricated stories are not true!
A couple of things give me pause to wonder: where has this supposed close friend (who said that Mortenson didn't in fact wander into a Pakistani village after his failed K2 climb) been all these years, and why has he never spoken up before? And it's clear, reading Three Cups of Tea, that Mortenson is not the type to be anal about keeping receipts and accounts in order. On the other hand, one would think that with a multi-million $ nonprofit, he could hire people to help him. As a friend noted, General Stanley McCrystal himself has lauded Greg Mortenson and worked in partnership with him. Why have these claims, if true, never come out before?
It must be said that Mortenson has done amazing work in Pakistan and Afghanistan and I've long admired him as a brave, philanthropist hero, regardless of whether these recent claims are true.
But I will be disappointed in him if they are...and they will cast a dark shadow on what he's done.
Kimberly Chang leaves Hong Kong to move to Brooklyn, New York, with her mother, and neither of them speak a word of English. They, like so many other immigrants, expect to find a wonderful land of promise waiting for them. Instead they find themselves buried in debt (owed to Kimberly's aunt and uncle), living in a roach- and rat-filled hovel without any heat, and working night and day--for pennies--in a sweatshop.
Kimberly is determined to escape, and she focuses all of her energies on learning English so that she can get back to being an outstanding student as she was in China. After she's finished with school, she goes to the sweatshop to work side by side with her mother, who had been a gifted music teacher back in Hong Kong.
Because of Kimberly's determination and innate intelligence, she is able to win a scholarship to an elite private high school. While there she constantly struggles with fitting in and managing to keep all the balls in the air. In the meantime, her mother struggles to learn English and has to work constantly to keep a filthy roof over their heads.
As Kimberly becomes a young woman, she falls in love with a young man, Matt, who also works in the factory. She's faced with a terrible choice between love or ambition.
Much of this novel is based on Jean Kwok's own experiences--she too was an immigrant from Hong Kong whose family ended up working in a sweatshop. Her family lived in a filthy, heatless, vermin-infested apartment. She too relied on her smarts to get her out of that difficult environment. Here is a video of Jean Kwok speaking about the novel:
Warning: SPOILER AHEAD!!
Many reviewers have commented that they did not like the ending. I'm guessing that they believe Kim should have chosen love instead of continuing to follow her path of pulling her family out of deep poverty. At the beginning of the book, I was concerned that she would have forsaken her ambitious dreams. What Kim only alludes to at the end is that she would not have made Matt happy.
This is a feminist novel to me, because the protagonist makes choices for her own independence. Never again does she want to have to rely on someone else (as she and her mother have been indebted and abused by her aunt and uncle). She is determined to change her life and give her mother the life she deserves. Matt is one of those traditional Asian men who would never abide his wife making more money than he does. I agree that it is sad that he never knows about her son...and sad also that Kimberly ends up alone...but I think it would have been far sadder had she given up her dreams.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua My rating: 3 out of 5 stars
I first heard about this book back in January when it lit up the blogosphere after an excerpt in the Washington Post titled "Why Chinese mothers are superior." As you can imagine, mothers came out of the woodwork, fiercely attacking her and defending their own parenting approaches. As much as I can understand their perspective, I also find it amusing when people attack each other's parenting styles. What they didn't quite understand about the book was that Chua meant it to be a parody of this parenting style. The front of the book says: "This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a 13-year-old."
Chua, who arrived in the U.S. as a very young child, was raised here by her immigrant parents, and she was convinced that her daughters would be far more successful (and happy) if she made all the choices for them. For example, they were never allowed to do the following things:
Attend a sleepover
Have a playdate
Be in a school play
Complain about not being in a school play
Watch TV or play computer games
Choose their own extracurricular activities
Get any grade less than an A
Not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
Play any instrument other tan the piano or violin
Not play the piano or violin
Chua, a Yale law professor and writer married to a Jewish law professor, makes a bargain with her husband. They would raise the kids in the Jewish faith if she could apply Chinese parenting principles. Honestly, the man must be a saint. I don't know how he put up with it. She is far stricter, demanding, and (in my opinion) cruel than her parents were with her.
Her two long-suffering daughters could not have gotten much enjoyment out of their childhoods. They were too busy studying, learning Chinese, and practicing violin or piano. She hires a Chinese tutor for them (even though Chua herself does not speak Chinese). She comes across as a complete snob, telling her kids that other children (who are able to go to slumber parties or do not have to practice 4 to 5 hours a day) come from bad families. Anything less than the top performance is not acceptable. She rejects birthday cards her daughters make for her and tells them to do them over again.
A friend who lives in Maryland tells me that half of the kids in her children's school live like this. Their parents constantly pressure the schools to accelerate the curriculum well beyond the usual grade levels.
It's hard to tell, at times, whether Chua is making fun of herself or if she really believes what she did is right. For example, she calls her daughter "garbage" when Sophia acts disrespectfully toward her. When she mentions this conversation later at a dinner party, the other adults ostracize her. One guest breaks down in tears and has to leave early. So she must have known, on some level, the kind of reaction this book would get. Chua says that this approach worked "great" with her daughter. She speaks with admiration of the Chinese (or other) cultural more of insulting their children--for example, saying to an overweight child, "Hey fatty--lose some weight." In contrast, "Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of 'health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image."
She goes on to recount ONE anecdote of hearing a "western" father toasting his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent," and the daughter later telling Chua that it made her "feel like garbage." I do not know anyone who would feel like garbage upon being told they were beautiful and incredibly competent. Chua likes to spout one-off anecdotes to defend her actions. Another one is the fact that her husband had been asked if he wanted to play the violin as a child, and he said no...and now he always regrets it. Hence, it's okay to FORCE your child to play the violin.
Each time Chua forces her daughters (often the younger, more defiant one, Lulu) to do something unreasonable, and hours of angry fights ensue, the daughters eventually cave in to Chua's ridiculous demands. She considers these triumphs as her rightful due as a mother, and feels justified in her methods.
Chua perhaps unintentionally pits Asian parenting styles against "western" parenting styles. She consistently puts down the latter. She writes "There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests." I find this comment pretty hilarious, because this is the best-known book about Asian mothers, and it does just that!
She truly believes that only she knows what would make her children happy--in the case of Lulu, "I wanted her to be the best violinist in the state--and that was for starters. I knew that was the only way Lulu could be happy."
I think Chua is a little bit crazy, actually. In the midst of her incredibly high-stress life (teaching law, writing books, going on lecture tours, on top of screaming and shouting at her daughters to practice all hours of the day), she decides to get a puppy. She chooses a Samoyed, and then begins to focus her competitive energy on her dog! As if one unruly puppy wasn't enough (she ended up doing all the dog walking and care on top of her other responsibilities), later she decides to get a second one.
During the course of the book's time period, she loses her mother-in-law, a vibrant, independent woman, and comes close to losing her beloved younger sister, Katrin, to leukemia. You would think that these experiences might prompt her to think more about her family's quality of life and her daughters' happiness. It can't have been fun or relaxing to live in a household constantly fraught by fights (usually about practicing the violin, and sometimes the piano). Why doesn't she realize how short her time with her daughters would be (while they were young) and make the most of it? Well, she says it herself: "The truth is I'm not good at enjoying life. It's not one of my strengths...I saw childhood as a training period, a time to build character and invest for the future. Florence (her mother-in-law) always wanted just one full day to spend with each girl--she begged me for that. But I never had a full day for them to spare. The girls barely had time as it was to do their homework, speak Chinese with their tutor, and practice their instruments." So Florence died without getting to spend a full day with her granddaughters. How sad is that??? Especially because Chua doesn't realize that it is sad.
When their beloved grandmother dies, Chua forces her grief-stricken adolescent daughters to give eulogies. When they protest, Chua demands it and pours on the guilt. She then rejects Sophia's first draft as totally unacceptable and calls her selfish. Both girls come through in the end, but it shocks me to think of how callous and unfeeling she was to demand that they speak at the funeral.
Chua writes about some of the arguments she had with her long-suffering husband, Jed, but for the most part he lingers in the background. In one argument, he accuses her of making crazy overgeneralizations about "westerners" and "Chinese people" and asks her to stop insulting people all the time. "I know you think you do people a huge favor by criticizing them, so that they can improve themselves, but have you ever considered that you just make people feel bad?" When he points out how wrong it is to praise Sophia in front of Lulu, she completely refuses to see his point, claiming that Lulu doesn't "need affirmative action."
The fights continue when she hosts a 50th birthday party for Jed. She demands, again, that Sophia and Lulu give speeches, and Lulu refuses. It is the first of many battles Chua loses, and she accuses Lulu of dishonoring the family. After Lulu hacks off all her hair after Chua tells her they don't have time for her to get a haircut, you'd think she might consider backing off...but no.
The simmering hostility begins bubbling and finally explodes when the family travels to Russia. Chua tries to force Lulu to sample caviar and calls her a juvenile delinquent and a barbarian when she refuses. Lulu throws a temper tantrum in the middle of the restaurant and tells her mother she hates her, her life, and her family. Chua tells her she's a terrible daughter. Finally, Chua realizes she must change.
She allows Lulu to give up the violin and take up tennis. But it's clear at the end of the book that she doesn't have any regrets and feels good about the way she has raised her daughters. That's why I'm not sure it's a parody. Everyone around her--her husband, daughters, parents-in-law, and even her own strict Chinese parents--tell her to chill out and back off, that she's going too far, but she refuses until Lulu ultimately explodes. She's extremely lucky that she didn't alienate her children forever.
Even though Chua and her husband are law professors, I wondered how they could afford their extravagant lifestyle. Full-time Chinese tutors (at least in early childhood), expensive piano and violin lessons, trips all around the world, constant dining out, and when Sophia performs at Carnegie Hall, a truly extravagant reception to which Sophia's entire class is bussed into the City?
In summary, this book was compulsively readable and a welcome break after The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, which took me weeks to finish. I admire Chua's honesty--she does expose herself to heaps of criticism. But I truly feel sorry for Chua's daughters and husband. She admits that her family is not the type who has intimate conversations about their feelings. She believes that her daughters are happy and well adjusted, but how would she know what they really feel about her? (After I wrote this review, a Facebook friend sent me this link to a letter written by Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, which defends her mother and says how much she loves her. Chua apparently has received death threats, so I understand why she wanted to defend her mom.)
Yes, she realizes she couldn't win, continuing the way she was going, but her closing pages smack of the kind of person who realizes, deep down, that she was right all along.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, by David Mitchell My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
I had this book on hold at the library for ages and had been looking forward to reading it. It takes place in a reclusive Japan circa 1799. The Dutch are the only Europeans who trade with the Japanese, in the island port of Dejima (just outside of Nagasaki), imperial Japan's only entry and exit to the outside world. Jacob De Zoet is a Dutch clerk, who has five years to earn his fortune before returning to The Netherlands to marry his love, Anna. He forms a tenuous friendship with an interpreter, Uzaemon.
Then he meets Orito Aibagawa, a bright young midwife and daughter of a samurai, who has a disfiguring burn on her face. Jacob cannot get Orito out of his mind. Any hope of a relationship between them, though, is doomed. Soon Orito's fortunes change for the worse and she ends up being sold to a Buddhist convent with shocking secret habits. It turns out that Uzaemon was also in love with Orito, but he was forced to marry another woman. Soon Uzaemon plots a rescue attempt.
This novel contains much, much more than this basic plot, but these were the most compelling, multidimensional characters and the most interesting part of the book. As you'll see if you read through the reviews on Goodreads or Amazon, many readers find the first and third parts of the book to be deadly boring. The middle of the book, with the attempted rescue of Orito off the mountain, was the most compelling. Then she vanished off the pages and it got back to Dutch trading.
Clearly, Mitchell meticulously researched this novel. But I found the vast number of characters and subplots, not to mention the lack of depth of so many of the characters, to be tiresome. The page after page about Dutch trading and backstabbing got to be painful, and at the end, I found myself scanning the pages. As one Amazon reviewer wrote, "A thousand autumns is nine hundred ninety nine too long."
Nearly all of the characters were evil, untrustworthy, or unethical, or simply lazy and only out for themselves. Even though Jacob De Zoet did feature throughout the novel, I never felt that I really understood him. I didn't care what happened to most of the characters. Those that I did care about (the mountain herbalist, for example) just disappeared.
I know this book is packed with metaphor and symbolism, and perhaps Mitchell's brilliance is just beyond me. I've never read his other books, so I don't have any mode of comparison.
Historical fiction set in Japan is usually my cup of tea. But after those months of waiting, I was disappointed in most of this book. I was relieved to be done with it, and that's not a good sign!
This is such an important and long-overdue book. I've always loved this quote:
Women hold up half the sky.
I've seen it attributed to Madame Mao, Chairman Mao, or as a Chinese proverb. No matter. It's a powerful quote, and it's the basis for this book by Pulitzer Prize winners and married authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
Kristof and WuDunn investigate the widespread abuse of women and girls via sex trafficking, prostitution, and slavery (across the globe); rape; "honor" killings; maternal mortality; and neglect of health issues. They also explore issues related to family planning and the "God Gulf," whether Islam is patently misogynistic, the importance of investing in education, and the benefit of microlending.
Stop--don't get depressed yet! Not only do they report on these widespread abuses and shocking inequality across the globe, but they also share success stories and the lives of women who have risen above these horrible situations. The power of this book is in the stories of those individual women. Stories always help to personalize tragedy and help us to understand it better on a personal level. Furthermore, they give tons of suggestions for what we--as a country and as individuals--can do to help.
The authors packed so much into this book that anything I write in a review seems grossly inadequate. Everyone must read this book. The future of our planet and the sake of humanity depend on all of us to stop the terrible abuse of women and girls across the globe. To begin that process, we must understand what is going on. This book is a step in the right direction.
Toward the end of the book, they discuss societies that have come a long way in changing the lives of women. Two such countries they cite are China and Bangladesh. This is not to say that the plight of women in those countries is easy, but only that they have made a great deal of progress over the years by gradually changing their culture and introducing more women into leadership. Imagine my horror when, after just having finished this book, I read Nicholas Kristof's blog post about a 14-year-old girl in Bangladesh who was raped by a relative and then executed for "her" crime. Kristof expresses hope that Bangladesh's "robust civil society" will send a strong message that misogyny is not only immoral but illegal. But as a commenter says, "Can any society be described as 'civil' when misogyny is this deeply ingrained in its social fabric?" Another commenter points out that blaming the victim is not unique to the developing world.
Let's hope that the world will one day recognize that women do indeed hold up half the sky and will stop the oppression of half of our population.
Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention,
by Katherine Ellison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Q: How many kids with attention deficit disorder does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Let's go ride bikes!
Katherine Ellison's son Buzz (a pseudonym) was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) not too long before she received the same diagnosis. Not only did Buzz have ADHD, but he had a side order of obsessive-defiance disorder (ODD) to make things even more complicated and stressful. Buzz constantly made waves...from beating up on his brother to demanding extremely expensive toys and constant caffeine. Rock bottom was the day Buzz called 911 after Ellison confiscated his Gameboy as a punishment for beating up on his brother.
Ellison embarks on a one-year journey to chronicle her parenting struggles with ADHD, exacerbated by her own personal challenges. It also happens to be the year when Buzz is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. To demonstrate the up-and-down journey of ADHD, she offers her own experiences:
"(ADHD)...may even illuminate how I managed to win a Pulitzer Prize just three years after being sued for $11 million because of a careless reporting mistake, then realized my childhood dream of becoming a foreign correspondent, only to break my leg by running into a manhole in Managua while chasing Nicaragua's newly elected president--and did I mention that she was on crutches at the time?"
In an effort to bring some peace into their lives, she pursued every option she could find to treat Buzz's ADHD. After desperately fighting against the medication option, ultimately she and her husband succumbed and found it to be helpful. I had to laugh reading the scene where she berates a friend for putting his child on medication, only to eat her own words later when her own family decided to give it a try with Buzz (and herself). (Reminds me of all those sanctimonious people who think that they know what's best for you.) At least she called him to apologize after she realized what an ass she had been. The cry for help that led her to consider trying medication was her son grabbing a butcher knife and aiming it at his own throat. I feel immensely grateful not to have had to deal with this kind of behavior or stress in my own family.
Ellison explores the history and biology of ADHD and investigates a number of alternatives (or additions) to medication. She takes him to a variety of therapists and experts. She gets to know people in the Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) support group (and notes its marriage with the drug companies) and meets some authors on the subject (including Blake Taylor, who wrote a book called ADHD & Me, and his mother, Nadine Taylor-Barnes).
She investigates alternative education options and spends a chapter specifically on education and why the public school system is rotten for kids with ADHD. One of the experts she meets believes in "evidence-based teaching," the importance of developing a "sense of excitement and relevance, stories and mystery...and a student's connection with his teacher." The brain has to be excited to be able to learn and retain information. How often do we find teachers above the elementary school age who are able to do this with kids? As much as I sometimes question Chris' 8th grade science teacher's unconventional methods, Chris is way more engaged in science than he has been in the past two years, when he had rotten teachers.
Ellison tries neurofeedback for both herself and Buzz and finds some benefit...but it's very expensive and time consuming. She attends a silent meditation retreat (easier said than done for someone with ADHD). Ellison includes a helpful list of "What Else Worked" in the Epilogue and covers items such as supplements, toxins, exercise, snake oil salespeople (who are everywhere waiting to lurk on worried parents), and education advocacy. The book also contains several pages of notes at the end.
But this is the best thing I took from this book, wisdom from Toni Morrison:
"The author Toni Morrison says that the best gift a mother can give her child is to light up when he enters the room. I think of all the times my mind was elsewhere, dim to him, and now focus on shining extra brightly."
Ellison also makes a genuine attempt to respond positively to her son as often as possible, which takes a concerted effort at times.
This is what I strive toward: lighting up when each of my children (and for that matter, all of my loved ones) enters the room. That's how my boys react when I come home from work--I just need to take a leaf out of their books. If I retain one thing from this book, let this be it. It's so easy for me to get distracted or stressed out and take our children for granted--the ones that we desperately wanted and waited for. And I'm not talking just about the one with ADD! Before they received the dual diagnoses, Ellison was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor (a meningioma), followed by thyroid cancer. It seems that extremes follow her wherever she goes.
I haven't read this young adult novel yet--I'm waiting for our 14-year-old son to get through it first--but am looking forward to sinking my teeth into it.
It's about a girl in Afghanistan who has a cleft lip. My writer hubby loved it and reviews it here on his blog.
I do not recall ever reading a book about a heroine with a cleft lip, so I'm immediately intrigued by that. (I had a cleft lip and palate at birth.)
The Waves by Virginia Woolf My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
I am not typically drawn to experimental novels. In the book group we belonged to before we had children, I remember reading John Fowles' The Magusand Vladimir Nobokov's Pale Fireand becoming frustrated with both of those books (for different reasons).
In my relatively new book group, we decided that each member would nominate three or four books and we would vote on one book for each member. The Waves was our book for March, and even though it was difficult to get through, we agreed that we would not have tried otherwise. That's the great thing about book groups--it gets you out of your comfort zone. I do not regret reading it, and it will be a book I will remember for a long time.
The Waves, Virginia Woolf's most experimental novel, is a series of soliloquoys spoken by a group of friends, individually. These people are supposedly friends, but they do not seem to have much of a connection to one another. Apparently these characters represent various personalities in Virginia Woolf's life...T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forester, Lytton Strachey, etc. It's been alternately described as following six characters from childhood to adulthood or taking place all within one day, or being several parts of one consciousness. In simple terms, it's difficult to ascertain exactly what's going on for much of the time. There is very little plot. And the characters talk about each other, but do very little interaction with each other.
The language is masterful, yes, but not in a way that draws me in enough to put up with the lack of plot or connection between the characters. I found myself scanning through so much of the book that I can't in good conscience give it more than two stars. I think if I had read it in college, and had been listening to a professor lecture on the novel's merits, I would have appreciated it more. However, at age 46, I found myself dreaming of what else I could be reading that would be more worthwhile.
It didn't help that halfway through the book, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami hit. I found myself wondering why I should care about the privileged, narcissistic perspectives of this book while people were suffering on the other side of the world.
Even though none of us loved The Waves, it made for an interesting discussion at book group. We found it interesting that although Virginia Woolf wrote some great feminist manifestos, her female characters in this book were the weakest. The males took over the book--perhaps a message in itself.
I find it fascinating that on amazon.com and goodreads.com, the vast majority of readers rate this book as five stars. (In Goodreads, 43% of readers give it 5 stars, and only 2% give it 1 star.) Many people comment that they've reread this book several times. That makes me feel completely inadequate. Maybe I've just become too old and particular to appreciate this type of book. Or maybe I would appreciate it more at another stage of my life. I found myself looking forward to moving onto a book that is more gripping.
I'd definitely agree with Dolores Umbridge--she was the first one who came to my mind, and she does indeed resemble Nurse Ratched. I'd have to add Count Olaf from the Lemony Snicket series to that list as well...he's one of the most colorfully depicted and creative villains I've read about.
Here he is, played by Jim Carrey (who was the perfect choice for this role):
In 1752, 17-year-old Agnes Trussel, an English country girl, finds herself pregnant after she is raped by a boy in her village. Ashamed and horrified by her predicament, she finds herself in a position to steal some gold coins from a dead neighbor and flees to London to prevent any shame from falling on her poor family.
On the way to London she meets a pretty young prostitute, Lettice Talbot, who offers Agnes to get her life started in London. Naive and ignorant, Agnes agrees to meet Lettice later on at her boarding house (nee brothel). However, alone in confusing and very dirty London, she gets lost. As night nears, she finds herself wandering the streets, desperate, freezing, and hungry.
She sees a sign advertising help wanted at a house and knocks on the door. The house belongs to Mr. J. Blacklock, who makes fireworks and is mourning his dead wife. Blacklock soon takes Agnes under his wing as his apprentice.
Many other characters feature in the book--the other servants in Blacklock's house and Cornelius Soul, who provides the gunpowder for the fireworks. Agnes fixes on Mr. Soul is the solution to her problems, but he is not as she thought he would be.
At times this book was a bit slow going (especially with all the detail about the fireworks making), but I enjoyed it. At the time, fireworks were not yet made in color, and it is the quest of color that fascinates Blacklock and Agnes both, drawing them closer together.
Blacklock is an enigma, a dark and brooding character. Some of the characters were not drawn as fully as they could have been. But the amount of research Borodale must have had to do is astounding. The list of references is impressive. She effectively captures the cadence of dialogue, food, setting, and habits of the British in the 18th century. What a lack of options an unmarried pregnant woman had in those days...and telling anyone that she was raped would have only worsened her lot. A very satisfying read!
It seems like everyone is reading or has read The Helpthese days. I read it last year and although I enjoyed it, I could understand why African-Americans gave it mixed reviews. My assessment was: great idea, awkward follow-through and lack of awareness of white privilege.
My book group has selected this book for April, so I'm anxious to hear what others think about the book...one of the members is married to an African-American man, and another comes from the south.
Besides the similarity of their names, Ablene has a gold tooth and lost her son, just like the fictional Aibileen. It's interesting to note that not only has the book sparked a feud between brother and sister, but Stockett's father seems to think his daughter is only out to make money.
According to the ABC News article, "he also noted that his author daughter, who has moved north to Atlanta, 'is also a New Yorker now.' Stockett, a retired developer and lawyer, said he did not know her phone number. 'Sure, I liked the book. It's fiction. They didn't give me the critics' copy until it was too late,' he said. 'I would have got some factual things changed. But I'm low down the totem pole.' He charged media with 'stirring up the pot' in the dispute between his son's maid and his daughter, adding that the ensuing publicity surrounding the feud would benefit his daughter financially. 'Kathryn will appreciate that she gets a cut,' he said."
Sort of sounds like Stockett's own words in The Help, "Another white lady trying to make a dollar off of colored people."
Have you read The Help? Do you think Stockett overstepped her white privilege?
Everything Is Going to Be Great,
by Rachel Shukert
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
After graduating from college, Rachel Shukert gets an unpaid, unrewarding "job" as an actor in a play, and after a run in New York, the play is staged in Vienna, Austria, and Zurich, Switzerland. After that, she journeys to Amsterdam, where much of the action takes place.
Shukert, a Jewish girl from Omaha, Nebraska, drinks heavily, smokes some, sleeps around, and generally parties her way indiscriminately through Europe. Halfway through this book, I questioned myself: why am I still reading this book? Silly me. I kept thinking it was going to get better.
Perhaps part of the problem is that it was supposed to be funny, and I've realized that I am not easily amused. (Take, for example, my feelings about David Sedaris.) I guess I don't find drinking until you end up in the hospital with broken bones...or sleeping with a Viennese man old enough to be your father and whose ancestors' whereabouts during the war you question...to be amusing.
Upon visiting the Anne Frank museum with her parents in tow, Schukert observes: "Say what you will about the horrors of the concentration camps, they might at least present some interesting networking opportunities. But to be trapped for years in five rooms with your family was a torment I could scarcely fathom." Interesting networking opportunities? I do not understand how Shukert, as a Jewish woman, can even joke about something like that.
I did learn some new information in the book: that of the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas, which is akin to Santa Claus. What is most startling about this tradition is that Sinterklaas is accompanied by the character of "Zwarte Piet," a man in blackface who is Sinterklaas' "servant." Yes, blackface. See below. In recent years, this racist tradition has been debated in Holland and elsewhere, but it still continues. Many Dutch people insist that there's nothing wrong with this tradition. In fact, speaking of David Sedaris, he wrote about this oddity in Esquire.
Zwarte Pieten in Holland
Schukert has an ill-fated, pointless affair with an American, Pete (no relation to Zwarte Piet), who was living with his long-term girlfriend. Everyone around her--certainly the reader--could see that the relationship was worthless and he was an asshole. When Pete breaks up with her (repeatedly), she enters into a deep depression. That's when I knew I should have given up on this book long ago. I just didn't care, and I didn't really like this person. Maybe I would like her now, years later, assuming that she's grown up a little. Who knows?
She ultimately meets the man she ends up marrying in Amsterdam--he's a Jewish South African named Ben. About the only thing I could relate to in the book was at the end, when she wrote about how "showing up in Omaha while involved in a marriage-track relationship with a well-mannered, gainfully employed, age-appropriate coreligionist who is on paper virtually identical to whomever they would have arranged for you to marry a hundred years ago in the shtetl will...dispel any doubts your parents may still harbor about the viability of your future." She calls her grandmother to wish her happy birthday and after first throwing her off the trail by saying her new boyfriend is African (at which her grandma panics), then she informs her that her new boyfriend's name is Abramowitz...and her grandma screams.
I have a great relationship with my parents (especially compared to Scukert's, although I suspect some of what she was writing was purely for laughs), so it's not completely the same. But I do have to admit that it's gratifying to end up marrying someone whom your parents actually like and approve of!
Conclusion: not my cup of tea. I couldn't care about this woman or the way she was wasting her youth away. Lovers of David Sedaris, however, might find it amusing.
When I received this book via Paperbackswap.com, I was a bit dismayed by the cover. Except for a brief foray into Danielle Steele when I was in college, I DON'T DO ROMANCE. And the book cover definitely looks like romance, "women's" type of fiction. Blech.
Naples and Mount Vesuvius, the setting for this novel
So I was happily surprised to enjoy this book very much. Young British army captain James Gould is stationed in Naples, Italy, assigned as the "wedding officer," to discourage marriages between British soldiers and Italian women. In dire straits, most women in Naples could only find one way to make a living: by selling their bodies. Therefore, how would it look for upright Brits to be marrying prostitutes? Not good. Naive Gould approaches his job at first in a very black-and-white way, but eventually he comes to realize that truth and beauty, and in fact justice, often lie in the gray areas.
Women with their children in wartime Naples, Italy
Gould falls in love with extraordinarily talented chef Livia Pertini, who grew up at the base of Mount Vesuvius. After her family falls into ruin, she ends up taking a position as the cook for the British officers. Capella is not the first author to portray the stirrings of young love among the appetizing aromas and flavors of exquisitely prepared (and described) food. Livia was a wonderful character: spunky, passionate, brave, and wise.
As with all great historical fiction, I learned a great deal about that era and setting during World War II. I knew about Pompeii and had heard about Mount Vesuvius, but I did not know that it erupted during the allied occupation of Italy. In fact, I knew very little about Italy during the war.
The 1944 eruption of Mount Vesuvius
Apparently scientists say it's overdue for another eruption, but this time millions of people will be killed. Naples is only 6 miles away from the volcano.
Toward the end of the book, I found myself wondering whether Capella was a happy-ending or tragic-ending sort of guy. The plot could have gone either way. I won't spoil the ending by answering that for you.
This book review has been cursed. First, I spent about 1/2 hour writing this book review, and then when I hit "publish," the entire review was gone. Then when I rewrote it this evening I kept getting HTML form errors. If it were not such a good book, I would not have put so much effort into it, I can assure you. Of course, the earlier review was completely brilliant, but now I have run out of steam!
In this moving memoir of his wife Kirsten's battle with Stage 4 lung cancer, novelist Brendan Halpin offers a beautiful, loving, brutally honest tribute to his beloved wife, who died a year after the book was published.
Some people might find it ironic--or stupid--that I read this book so soon after my own minor (in comparison) breast cancer scare. I recently had my first mammogram, which resulted in a terrifying morning of further mammograms, ultrasound, and painful and traumatic breast biopsy...followed by days of waiting to get the all clear. So yes, I'm a little crazy to read this memoir so soon afterward...but it gave me perspective...and I am not scared off by sadness or death.
I've read Halpin's novel, Donorboy, and also follow his blog, so I was aware that his wife died after this book was published. The book sat on my bookshelves for a few years before I finally decided to pick it up.
I dog-eared several pages and made notes about my favorite bits (in the blog post I wrote earlier). Here are a few, but not all, of those notes:
Brendan, Kirsten, and their preschool-age daughter experience amazing caring from the members of their family and church. As he discovers, "God has no hands but our hands (Saint Teresa of Avila). As we too experienced when our oldest child was born 4 months early and we received similar TLC, "It is very difficult under such circumstances to maintain the idea that God is not working in the world. When we are in our time of need, we are suddenly surrounded by love and we can't forget even for a day how many people care about us."
This man clearly adores his family. "I know this sounds corny and probably unbelievable in light of everything I've just said, but it is absolutely true that the whole rest of the room just falls away because my whole life just walked in the door, and I hug and kiss them both."
I admire Halpin's brutal honesty about his anger at the 50-year-old men in the cancer survivor spouse group...whose wives are ill with cancer...not knowing whether his own wife will make it to 50.
Tragically, Halpin lost his own father when he was nine years old...and he realizes in the midst of this crisis that "I was always so afraid of ending up like my dad that I never bothered to worry about ending up like my mom."
One day when Halpin met a woman whose sister-in-law had given birth to a stillborn baby and nearly died herself, the woman expressed her belief that all of the prayers had worked. Halpin notes "presumably the people who are praying for her now were also praying for her to have a healthy baby. So how can you say it works?" I remember people commenting that Chris did so well in the NICU after his horrific birth and first few months of life because of prayer--and our steadfast love and presence. Yes, of course our prayers were answered, but were our prayers or love any more powerful than those of parents whose babies had died? I think not. It doesn't compute. I don't believe in a God who values the prayers of one person or family over another.
I could also relate to his frustration in having to deal with family drama (with his mom and in-laws) while he was facing his own family crisis. I remember that, too.
Halpin experiences the powerful healing and understanding that comes when someone else--who has been through what you have gone through--can offer simple validation and support. A coworker expresses how when her girlfriend had cancer, all she wanted to do was work (because it helped him escape), validating how Halpin had been feeling...and he comments "I don't know whether Jesus was God, or God was Jesus, or whether either of them had uncontrollable boners when they were thirteen (though every human male I know did), but I do know that for me, today, God's face is the face of a gray-haired lesbian who tells me she understands me."
If you can handle books with sad endings (even though the book ends on an uncertain note), I strongly recommend this beautiful memoir. I'll forgive him for his hatred of James Taylor and the Indigo Girls and his love of B-grade horror movies.
Unclutter Your Life in One Week, by Erin Rooney Doland
It's hard to give this kind of book a rating: how can I compare it to the typical fiction and nonfiction books I read?
I like to read an inspiring organizational book occasionally, because it keeps me motivated. This did the trick, although I found the premise of uncluttering and organizing my life in one week to be distracting and downright ANNOYING! The author, who is the editor-in-chief of unclutterer.com (a Web site I like very much), even admits that it took her more than one week to unclutter her own life. And at the time, she was living in an apartment! So why does she say one week? One month would have been a tiny bit more realistic, but I like Regina Leeds' much more practical, measured approach by using a whole year for the organizing process. (Okay, no cracks about how my "One Year to an Organized Life" blog has stretched into its third year now--ha!)
Doland approaches the uncluttering process in a similar way to other organizers: room by room, with guidance on what to keep and what to get rid of. In Chapter 1, she provides a list of "Questions for Items Already in Your Home" and "Questions to Ask Before You Buy," which I've already found helpful in the past few days of uncluttering (or decluttering). She also provides lists of what to do in the spring and fall. Much of the guidance she provides is not new for me, but as I said, it's always good to read these types of books to get me off my butt!
Some of the tactics are not practical for my own family...for example, the laundry schedule she proposes:
Monday: Launder all the sheets from the beds Tuesday: Launder children's clothing Wednesday: Launder adults' clothing Thursday: Launder towels
Friday: Launder children's clothing
Saturday: Launder adults' clothing
Sunday: Rest
If we had separate laundry hampers for every room, I can see how this approach would make sense. But we have a laundry chute (reduces clutter in theory!), so dividing up the clothing into various age groups and towels, sheets, would be a pain in the neck and not helpful in any way. And even with five people in my family, I don't particularly want to run the washing machine six days a week.
Here's one thing I discovered from this book: higher-thread count sheets are usually a waste of money. According to Consumer Reports, "Pick a sheet between 200 and 400 thread count. Paying more for higher thread count is wasting money." I found this out when I ordered some expensive, higher-thread count sheets from overstock.com (they were a good deal, but supposedly a great bargain). Not long after we got them, they started pilling....not what I expect from high-quality sheets!
Doland also gives lots of advice about organizing your workplace, your work style, and your approaches to communication. Here are some good ones about e-mail:
Cure your e-mail addiction: Check it only once or twice an hour--don't feel compelled to check it constantly. Most of the e-mails you get are not going to be urgent.
Kill the notifications: Turn off the notification that a new message has arrived, and check your e-mail at regularly scheduled times when you need to be focusing on another task.
Know that the fewer you send, the fewer you will receive. Find alternative ways to talk to your clients and coworkers to cut down on e-mail traffic.
Make it short and sweet. When you send short e-mails, you're more likely to get a short one in return. Doland said that Kevin Rose, founder of digger.com, is rumored to write "Sent from mobile phone" at the bottom of his e-mails, even ones he sends from his computer.
Keep it out of the news. Before you send any e-mail, ask yourself how you would feel if your message ended up on the front page of a national newspaper. (This is one of the tenets one of my company founders wrote about in the early days of our firm, and even though I do not always remember to follow it, it's a good one!) Who hasn't had the experience of someone else forwarding our e-mail unintentionally or without reading the whole content?
Another recommendation she makes is to blind copy a large group of people, to eliminate people's tendency to reply all (one of my major pet peeves at work!). The challenge I would have in implementing this is that people often want to know who else got the message, so they can figure out if they need to forward it or not. I also find saying "do not reply all" to work, although it's tiresome to have to say it!
Doland also offers some good suggestions on how to say no politely in the workplace:
Treat the request with respect.
Express appreciation that the person thought you would be qualified to fulfill the request
Communicate alternatives, such as a different date or a different person to help
Don't leave room for negotiation; state the facts and be firm
Moving back to the house (the book goes back and forth from home to workplace--not sure that format is ideal, really, but she's proposing that all this stuff gets done in 1 week, remember? I'm not sure how any real work is supposed to get done during that time...).
She also advises that people take a full inventory of everything in their house and store the data securely online. This should be a goal for us, as friends lost their home in a fire a little over a year ago...and they lost nearly everything.
Another thing I'm considering is purchasing a photo scanner so I can scan many of our photos (not to mention receipts and other paperwork). Then I wouldn't have to keep all of them in storage. I have boxes and albums of photos from the many years before the digital camera age.
Getting back to the week premise (the subtitle is "A 7-day Plan to Organize Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life!")...another unrealistic thing about this book is that it's patently clear the author does not have children. I would say that 80 percent of the clutter in my home comes from my children. Yes, clearly, I have not raised them well enough to clean up after themselves! But having kids just means more clutter. So does more people in the house. Isn't it fascinating that most of the authors of these organizing books do not have children at home? I'm now going to hunt for an organizational and decluttering book for families! I'm sure there has to be one out there. And I don't want one written by an OCD, organizational overachiever, but a practical, focused-on-parenting-and-not-just-a-clean-house parent.
In summary, this book had some helpful hints and some inspiration for continuing my efforts to simplify my life. But the one-week idea is purely ridiculous.
"When you get to page 50 of a book, ask yourself whether you are really liking it. If not, put it down and seek out another one. Perhaps you'll pick it up again later, and perhaps not. She talks about how she had to overcome the guilt of letting the author down to be able to choose her own reading content."
As Marie's book garden readers will know, I have reached a stage in my life where I too will put down a book if I'm not enjoying it. Sometimes I give it beyond 50 pages, and sometimes I do continue because I want to see how it ends. Pearl says if "all you’re really interested in is who marries whom, or who the murderer is, then turn to the last page and find out. If it’s not on the last page, turn to the penultimate page, or the antepenultimate page, or however far back you have to go to discover what you want to know." I think I could be more disciplined about this practice, and after reading Pearl's wisdom, I will give that a try. (I realize that not all books have to be fine, upstanding literature, but even if they are light they should at least be enjoyable!)
Pearl goes on to say:
"As I wended my way toward 60, and beyond, I could no longer avoid the realization that, while the reading time remaining in my life was growing shorter, the world of books that I wanted to read was, if anything, growing larger. In a flash of, if I do say so myself, brilliance, I realized that my Rule of 50...needed an addendum. And here it is: When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book. As the saying goes, 'Age has its privileges. And the ultimate privilege of age, of course, is that when you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a book by its cover.'"
Excellent advice from one of our best Northwest book experts!
I first discovered Paul Theroux back in my early 20s when I was living in Japan and traveling through Asia. Theroux wrote about his adventures on the Trans-Siberian Railway across Asia and Russia in The Great Railway Bazaar, the fascinating book that launched the travel memoir industry. I also read Riding the Iron Rooster about Theroux's travels in China. Theroux is a keen observer of different cultures, traditions, and people. Back in those days, Mike read his novel Saint Jack, but I do not recall reading it. Theroux also wrote the book The Mosquito Coast, probably the most famous of his works because of the movie.
So I approached A Dead Hand with some experience of Theroux. His insightful observations and colorful descriptions of India were the best part of this book. It's the story of a travel journalist, Jerry, who is slumming in Calcutta...waiting for the next freebie hotel stay and experiencing writer's block (one reason for the novel's title). He receives a letter from a wealthy American woman, Mrs. Unger, who has adopted many of India's customs for her own. (She wears a sari and henna tattoos, practices tantric and sensual massage, and eats only Ayurvedic food.) A friend of her son had woken up in a hotel room one morning and discovers a dead body on the floor. He had panicked and run away. She professes admiration for Jerry's writing and because of this, asks him to investigate the situation, presumably to clear the boy's name.
He soon enters into an odd romantic relationship with her, whereby she summons him when he fits into her schedule and shares only tiny, strange tidbits of her life. Even though she claimed the investigation of the dead body was her primary purpose for contacting him, she soon seduces him into being her devotee. Jerry becomes completely besotted with her, and we have pages and pages ad nauseum where he writes about how pure and saintly she is. Blah.
Mrs. Unger (always called by this name) arrived in India to work with Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity. She hates Mother Teresa and badmouths her to Jerry. (For this reason, many have called this book anti-Catholic.) (And now a little diversion about M. Teresa...)
What I was not aware of before reading this book was that Mother Teresa was a highly controversial figure. She collected millions of $ for her charity, but very little of the collected funds went to help the sick and poor. Nearly all of it was given to the Vatican. She did what she did for her beloved church. (And as many have written, those funds given for the specific purpose to help the poor and destitute have instead been used to defend pedophile priests.) Mother Teresa believed that to be poor is to be holy. She did not allow her sisters or other workers to spend money on improving their own lives or the lives of the poor and sick. Google searches for "myth of Mother Teresa will yield all sorts of disenchanted stories and experiences, such as this one
Mother Teresa was also heavily anti-abortion and anti-birth control and reproductive technologies. Much of what's on the internet is hardly objective or from respected authorities, but here's an article in the New Statesman about the squalid conditions in her homes. I certainly will think differently of her from now on.
It's ironic that Mrs. Unger criticizes Mother Teresa, because she turns out to be far worse than the tiny nun...as of course, the reader could see coming a mile away.
I was not very impressed with the plot of this book...it meandered all over the place, and some parts were more interesting than others. On the pages and pages where Jerry blathers on about what a saint Mrs. Unger is, or about how he's able to write again, I felt bored to the point of scanning. As apparently is typical for Theroux, he includes a scene with himself in the book. This is a bit weird, and if it were a better book, or if I could understand the point of the scene better, I would have accepted it more. I believe that Theroux meant this book as an indictment on white rich people dabbling in developing countries, swooping in to help the poor and destitute...while actually hurting them. He is missing the point, though, by ignoring all of the reputable and indeed-helpful white people working in the developing world, providing sustenance and support to millions of people.
Theroux needs to hit the road again and go back to writing nonfiction. Or maybe he's just past his prime.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough, by Ruth Pennebaker My review: 1 of 5 stars
I picked up this book at the library (on the "new" shelf) and decided to read it, mostly based on the recommendation of Sarah Bird, a talented Texas writer. Ruth Pennebaker is another writer from Texas. According to the book jacket she is a commentator for an NPR facilitator and keeps a blog (which looks much better than her novel!).
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough is about a trio of generations living under the same roof. Joanie is mom to Caroline and daughter to Ivy, and they all want to tear each other to bits. Caroline is a sullen teenager, Ivy is an overly critical older woman, and Joanie is a sad, bitter divorcee. The life she was holding together by shreds comes crashing around her when her ex-husband announces that his new girlfriend is having a baby.
I found the writing and story to be overly simple, the characters one-dimensional, and the interactions between them grating. Perhaps this is meant to be written in such a way, and I just have no appreciation for it...sort of like Hemingway. (I can't stand Hemingway.)
Or maybe it's that I have a wonderful relationship with my own mother and can't imagine living my life in battle with those around me. I could not relate to the characters at all. Ivy, in particular, I found to be downright grating.
One thing I found completely implausible is that Joanie was out of the workforce for 20 years (and has minimal computer skills) and then she lands a plum job in the advertising industry. Never going to happen.
I read to page 100 or so, and then gave up. Life is too short to waste on mindless books that don't give us at least some amount of pleasure.
My only conclusion is that Sarah Bird must be biased in some way--perhaps she personally knows the author, or she was just being polite.
I'd never heard of The Beekeeper's Apprentice (by Laurie R. King) before my friend Kristin recommended it as a book group selection. It's the first in a series of five, and I will definitely be reading more of the series.
Mary Russell is a girl of 15 when she is wandering about in Sussex Downs, her nose in a book. Right at the beginning, I knew I would like her--I do not know many other people who are crazy enough to read while they are walking. Like Mary Russell, I have had one accident while doing so...but I was not too terribly injured. I'm just more careful now!
Whilst she was wandering, she nearly tripped over Sherlock Holmes, who was bee peeping at the time. After an initially rough start together, the eccentric Holmes realizes what a bright spark she is and adopts her as his apprentice and erstwhile daughter/friend.
"Russell," as Holmes calls her, goes off to Oxford when she comes of age (she is an orphan and was living in the care of her unlikable aunt) and returns home to visit Holmes and his housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson. Russell has a brain similar to Sherlock Holmes; she is extremely observant and intuitive, in addition to being off-the-charts bright. She and Holmes get involved in some small cases, followed by a rescue of an American senator's daughter, who has been kidnapped. These all lead to the penultimate case, in which someone is trying to kill both Russell and Holmes. At last, they meet their match.
I have never actually read any Sherlock Holmes stories. The most I know about him comes from that clumsy Robert Downey film that came out a few years ago (I saw it while riding on an Amtrak train going up to Tacoma). From what I've deduced, the author paints a faithful picture of Holmes and Watson. She doesn't shirk from his drug habits, but they are minimized.
The story is told from the perspective of Mary Russell, and what a great young feminist role model she is! It's also rare to find a novel about the purely platonic friendship between a young woman and an older man. They had a marriage purely of minds.
Definitely recommended for mystery or historical fiction fans who like spunky young heroines.
Yesterday I wrote about the upcoming 60 Minutes episode about Greg Mortenson on my other blog, Every Day Is a Miracle. I am truly hoping that the claims that he fabricated stories are not true! 
, and also follow 
by using a whole year for the organizing process. (Okay, no cracks about how my "
