Island Under the Sea by Isabel Allende

I read a different book by Isabel Allende previously and didn't like it particularly. I can't remember the title but the thing I didn't like was the spiritualism, or mysticism, or whatever you want to call it, that was in it. There were things about ghosts and spiritual worlds that I didn't enjoy having as part of the story.

This book, however, I liked a lot better. It is well written and has some very interesting characters. It's told in first person by "Tete," who starts out as a slave in Haiti, called Santa Domingue at the time. You learn a lot about the history of Haiti, which was interesting since it's been in the news lately with the flooding and all. Tete and her family and friends leave Haiti for Louisiana later in the book, when the revolution is going on in Haiti.

It's good writing and I was interested to read what was going to happen next. I didn't find it super compelling -- I read a different book in between starting and finishing this one -- but I did want to finish it.

The Risk Pool by Richard Russo

This book is cracking me up. I'm less than halfway through but it's made me laugh out loud several times already. Here's the scene I just read:

The narrator is a boy. He's in a restaurant with his father and a man walks in with his daughter, "the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and she looked about my age." His father talks to the girl for a while and then says,

"I tell you what, how about I introduce you to somebody your own age. He's not as good-looking as his father, but you can't have everything."


Suddenly, everyone was looking at me, as luck would have it, just as a song ended on the jukebox. Tria Ward gave me a weak smile, as if to acknowledge my reality, or perhaps the fact that I wasn't too bad-looking, or that, yes, it was true, I wasn't as as good-looking as my father.


And in response to her beautiful smile, I bleated.


I remember the horror of it even now. The sound I made resembled no word. It didn't even sound human. My father blinked, probably in disbelief, and for long terrible seconds nobody said anything. I flushed so deeply that my skin burned.

That struck me so funny I laughed until I cried and actually had to run to the bathroom to prevent peeing my pants.

The book is separated into four sections named after something the boy's grandpa used to say about Mohawk, the town the book is set in (as are many - maybe all? - of Richard Russo's books):

"There are four season in Mohawk," he always remarked, "Fourth of July, Mohawk Fair, Eat the Bird, and Winter." No way around it, Mohawk winters did cling to our town tenaciously. Deep into spring, when tulips were blooming elsewhere, brown crusted snowbanks still rose high from the terraces along our streets, and although yellow water ran along the curbs, forming tunnels beneath the snow, the banks themselves shrank reluctantly, and it had been known to snow cruelly in May. It was late June before the ground was firm enough for baseball, and by Labor Day the sun had already lost its conviction when the Mohawk Fair opened.

Apologies to my Michigan friends and family, but I thought this was a great description of the weather in Michigan.

I like all of Richard Russo's books that I've read. This one is my favorite, at least so far.

So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger

After reading Wolf Hall, like a chain smoker I put that book down and immediately picked up So Brave, Young and Handsome, which I'd bought earlier because I'd like Peace Like a River, by the same author. I loved it. Loved it, loved it.

It's very different from Wolf Hall, no historical fiction to it, no list of many characters or family trees, just a great story. In one of her movies, Katherine Hepburn says, "My, she was yar." That's how I felt after reading this book.

The main character is a writer, Monte Becket. He was a postman who wrote a book that became a bestseller so he quite his day job and thought he'd devote himself to writing. His first book was about a pony express rider and Monte Becket loves cowboys. At the beginning of the book he's realizing that he's not going to be able to write another book. He has a wife Susannah and a son Redstart. He can't bear to confess to Susannah that he's unable to write.

He becomes friends with a kind of mysterious man named Glendon Hale who builds beautiful rowboats. Glendon and Monte end up going on an adventure together, meeting up with other great characters including a boy who wants to become a cowboy and an ex-Pinkerton Detective.

I love the story and I love the writing. Here are a few quotes:

"I'm afraid Franco is taciturn." "Well, disappointment comes to us all.")

"You authors, I mean--this world ain't no romance, in case you didn't notice." "So I am discovering," I replied...but now I am taking it back. I take issue with Royal, much as I came to like him; violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance it certainly is.

"...You were never in jail, I suppose." "Not yet." "Well, it ain't any good. You don't ever wake up and say to yourself, What a pretty day, I feel good today. No," he reflected, "a jail ain't nothing but a collection of corners."

"Of course it's been years, but I doubt forgiveness is the sort of fruit he cultivates."

At this we heard a sharp metallic lurch and Hood roared a string of impolite adjectives. He might even have cried a little. It wasn't his fault. I've looked under a car or two myself, since then--it's bedlam down there, no beginning no end, and a consequence for everything you touch.

That's just from flipping through the first several chapters. I thought the book was enchanting.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The librarian at Sinaloa recommended Wolf Hall to me, and then so did several other people. It's about Thomas Cromwell, a novel but historical fiction.

When I first opened the book I was worried I might not be able to keep track of things. It starts with a list of characters and also some family trees. This is during Henry VII's time. I decided to read slowly and not skim things, which I often do otherwise, and so far so good (I'm a little over halfway through the book). The only thing that makes it a little difficult is that the author often doesn't use Cromwell's name as she's describing his actions, just "he" and since the sentence before often is about a different male person, I sometime realizes after several sentences that this must be Cromwell and not the other person. It's rather annoying. Why would she do that?

But, besides that minor complaint, I'm very much enjoying the book. The writing is good, and you really feel like you're in England in the 1500's. It's incredible what life was like then. It's horrible the way they burned people at the stake and tortured them in the Tower. She writes about Tyndale and Luther, not as main characters, but several people are killed or tortured because they have Tyndale's book in their possession. Sir Thomas More is rather obsessed with finding those people, it seems. How we take things for granted -- these people were killed for believing that we should be allowed to read the Bible in our own native language.

The peoples' belief in what the Roman Catholic church proclaims is also remarkable. It's a novel so you don't know how exactly right this is, but she writes about King Henry being very worried about whether he'll go to hell if he divorces his wife Katherine and marries Anne Boleyn, although that is most definitely what he plans to do. He, and those who are helping him, do all kinds of things to try to get the church to declare Henry was never married to Katherine in the first place. So far the book's been during that time -- when Henry's trying to get Anne Boleyn. Since I'm over halfway through, I wonder if it'll end when he finally does. The author is working on a sequel.

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later addition
My sister wrote the following about this book. Thought it would be good input to include. She knows her stuff:

I liked Wolf Hall but I was disappointed at the portrayal of Thomas More. He may not have been as wonderful as he was portrayed in "A Man for All Seasons" (or maybe he was), but Hilary Mantel goes to the opposite extreme to make it seem like he really didn't have a redeeming feature--even his martyrdom was just showing off for his European fans. It seemed spiteful. I looked her up on Wikipedia and it seems she grew up in Catholic schools; maybe she's one who has turned against her upbringing.
 
From what I've read elsewhere, I could buy her portrayals of Anne Bolyn and Henry VIII.
 
I'm not sure I believe in her Jane Seymour, however. From what I've read, Jane Seymour did her best to turn Henry back toward Catholicism. She also did her best to bring his daughter Mary back into his favor, while trying to undo Anne Bolyn's legacy. On the other hand, her brother who was regent for her son, Edward VI, promoted more Protestant reforms than Henry VIII had ever implemented.
 
It was interesting to learn anything at all about Thomas Cromwell, the central character of the book. I'd read his name in reading biographies of other figures of the time, but never knew much about him. I was always curious if he was an ancestor of Oliver Cromwell. I looked that up too, and it seems Oliver Cromwell is a descendant of Thomas Cromwell's sister.
 
One thing I was dubious about as a part of Thomas Cromwell's life was the description of really brutal abuse by his father. It seems unlikely to me that someone whose dad beat him up regularly and neglected his education as described in this novel would grow up into the cultured, multi-lingual, Latin-speaking, and humane person Mantel shows Cromwell to be as an adult.
 
Just a few thoughts. And, below, a poem by Thomas Wyatt, reputed to be about Anne Bolyn.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." 

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

 How much do I love this book and movie? Oh my goodness, so much!


If I remember rightly, I think I saw the movie before reading the book and I fell in love with the movie. I don't know what year it was that I went to the movie. I think I went with Randy and my sister Jan. I remember we arrived late and had to sit so far in front we had to lay our heads on the seat backs to watch. When the chapter headings came up between scenes, I sometimes didn't have time to read what they said because I had to move my head from side to side to side to read all the words.


But what a great movie it was. First, it's British and I do love British movies. The stars are wonderful, too. Helena Bonham Carter is beautiful -- all that thick, long hair -- and so good as Lucy. I love her expressions and mannerisms. Her pettish look when Charlotte bothers her, her giggle when she sees Mr. Beebe by the pond, her disgust when her mother says she's just like Charlotte -- "to a T." The other actors, too. There's one scene that I just wait for, and all it is is a look. Lucy's mother and brother are sitting at the piano and both look out the window on Lucy and Cecil with such a look of *sigh*.


Another scene I love is when they're all in the carriages "and Italians drive them." The Reverend Mr. Eager kicks the driver's girlfriend off and Mr. Emerson says, "Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?" Classic.


I could go on and on. Much of the dialog in the movie comes straight out of the book. I love the book, too, and have read it several times, but in my mind's eye I see and hear the actors, scenery and rooms of the movie, and I feel my reading is all the better for it.

My Life With the Saints by James Martin

Doesn't it just figure that when I finally sit down to blog about some reading again, I can't find the first book I want to write about? I found it in Google Books, though. The main thing I am left with after reading this book is the feeling that my life is meaningful and worthwhile just by living a life of faith and prayer.

The other night at a meeting Brad said he finds that when he reads books by some great theologians their message is: Read Scripture. Pray. Be in community.

There you go. In My Life With the Saints, James Martin writes about one saint per chapter. He writes them in the order that he "met" them in his life. In each chapter he tells about how the saint came to his attention and attracted him, then he writes the story of the saint, then he reflects on the saints' life and what he can see as he relates his life to that, and finally summarizes how and when he prays to that saint.

In the first chapter he writes about why he decided to write the book. He says he started researching and learning about the saints and "Gradually, I found myself growing fonder of these saints and developing a tenderness towards them. I began to see them as models of holiness relevant to contemporary believers, and to understand the remarkable ways that God works in the lives of individuals. Each saint was holy in his or her unique way, revealing how God celebrates individuality. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, 'How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.'" He quotes someone who says the saints are like "older brothers and sisters to whom one can look for advice and counsel." He says "Some might argue...that all you need is Jesus....But God in his wisdom has also given us these companions of Jesus to accompany us along the way, so why not accept the gift of their friendship and encouragement? ....Everything the saints say and do is centered on Christ and points us in his direction."

Over and over as I read about the saints, people so very much dedicated to living a life in Christ, I saw that in many cases it was not because of some spectacular contribution to mankind that they were saints. In fact, some of the saints lived secluded lives and performed menial tasks in a religious community. But, they read Scripture, prayed and were in community.

I'm sure I'll find the book again, and I am confident I'll re-read it.

Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez was a speaker at the Festival as well. He's an interesting man. He is an essayist. I was going to write, he's got lots of opinions. But that's kind of a dumb thing to say.

Anyway, this is a memoir. He and his family were immigrants from Mexico, and he grew up in the Sacramento area. He talks quite a bit about the experience of learning English after only speaking and knowing Spanish in his home. He writes about the intimacy of the language they use at home vs. the public language of English in school. The experience was very significant, maybe even traumatic for him. He talks about the guilt of hearing his parents' halting English, about losing his ability to speak easily in Spanish although he continued to understand it fine. He also talks about being a "scholarship boy," someone who doesn't fit in with the people around him.

Although the process of getting his education in a different language than he'd learned as a child was traumatic, Rodriguez is definitely not a proponent of bilingual education. He sees it as part of a "decade when middle-class ethnics began to resist the process of assimilation -- the American melting pot." This reminded me of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She talks about assimilating, too, and the need for Americans (and other countries) to have some beliefs and standards that people must agree to when they live in the country. It makes a lot of sense and I can see where speaking the language would need to be a part of that. I'm not so positive, though, that having some bilingual education would necessarily prevent the learning of English. I'd hope that it would be a gentler way to learn English. But it's true that the pendulum often swings too far.

I like the book. I haven't finished it yet but I plan to.

Peace Shall Destroy Many be Rudy Wiebe

I got this at the Festival of Faith & Writing. I've started it but I'm not very motivated to keep going. I'll try to get back to it.

It feels a little slow moving and heavy. It reminds me of some pioneer books I've read before. Not just the story of a pioneer but the thoughts and struggles.

It's about Mennonites.

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later addition

Kind of funny. I didn't finish this book and I also didn't finish this blog. Couldn't get through the book. It just seemed too slow.

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter

I heard Stephen Carter at the Festival of Faith & Writing, too. He was very interesting and articulate. I read his book The Culture of Disbelief quite a while ago. I know I liked it but I can't remember details, I'll have to find it and re-read it.


The Emperor of Ocean Park is a mystery. His mysteries involve politics somehow, and upper middle class black families. I'm only about 1/4 of the way into the book and I like it so far. The writing is excellent, and it's interesting. A member of my book club said that she likes the book but not the main character. Often if I don't like the main character, I don't like the book. I can see why this main character, Talcott Garland, may not be that likeable. So far he seems a little, I don't know, selfish maybe. But I'm still enjoying the book.


A review from the Washington Post on Amazon.com says (about another of his mysteries):

But let's be honest: No one should read a Carter novel for the mystery.

We know by now that the author is only partly concerned with whodunit; he'd rather ponder why any of us does the things we do -- especially the bad things. For instance, we know it's wrong to cheat, lie, steal or wound, and yet hardly a day passes in which most of us don't commit at least one of these transgressions on some scale. Human weakness is troubling, fascinating stuff, and Carter has spent much of his career plumbing its depths.

So I'll keep that in mind.


Talcott Garland is a law professor. He's married to a lawyer who is trying to become some kind of political judge. They have one child. Talcott's father dies near the beginning of the book and I'm up to the funeral. Talcott's sister has suggested that their father was murdered but Talcott's not convinced yet.

Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson

I saw Eugene Peterson at the Festival of Faith & Writing. What a wise man he seems to be. He wrote The Message Bible which is an amazing thing. I would have thought that was written by a group of people. Imagine sitting down and rewriting the entire Bible!


This book, Eat This Book, is about reading the Bible, "A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading." I have not finished it yet but it's good. It is written in a very conversational style. The title is based on a verse in Revelation where an angel tells John to take a book and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey."


I've just started the part where Peterson is writing about Lectio Divina. I've participated in some of that in a group but have not tried it myself. I'm eager to read what he says about it. He is trying to be practical and really describe what to do.


In one part he wrote about praying after reading the Bible and asking, "How can I obey?" I'm reading a devotional that has a short passage for each day. Last night's passage was the parable about an enemy planting weeds among the seeds a farmer had planted (not the one where there's different soils). In the parable the farmer sees the weeds and decides not to take them out because he may mistakenly take out the good with the bad. He says he'll separate them at harvest. When I prayed after, it seemed to me the way I could obey was to continue to grow strong in the Lord regardless of the "weeds" around me. A kind of simple answer but not simple to do.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

I am loving this book. It's cracking me up! I heard about, and saw, this writer at the Festival of Faith & Writing. It's a memoir. She grew up in a Mennonite family, moved on to live outside the Mennonite community, and then went home after her husband left her and she had a bad car accident.

She writes in a very witty way. I wish I could talk and write that way. Here's an excerpt. She is writing about after coming home from the hospital with a catheter, and planning a shopping trip with her friend.

And so it was that I sallied forth into public carrying my pee bag in an aqua patent tote, shopping with urinous enthusiasm...And less than a week later my doctors upgraded me to the kind of pee bag you strap on with Velcro around your leg, under your skit, like a nasty secret. I taught for half the semester like that. And dang, I'm here to tell you that when it's ninety degrees outside, nothing reminds you of your own mortality like a steaming hot bag of urine hugging your thigh.

I'm happy to report that I made a full recovery from the netherworld of tube and clamp...Whereas before I had taken for granted my miraculous ability to run without wetting my leg, I now silently praised my bladder, "Good show! You're holding up great in there honey!" I'd sneeze and think, Bravo! You have achieved true excellence, my friendly little sphincter!

Some parts where she writes about her mother made me laugh out loud until I cried. I'm not finished yet and I'm not looking forward to being finished. Always the sign of a good book.

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott

Good book. It's a story of a family with a daughter, Rosie, in high school who gets into drugs. The mom and dad have to figure out how to handle it. Rosie excels at academics and is great with kids, but she lies repeatedly about where she is and what she's doing.

The characters are in a previous novel, according to what I've read. She's got a novel called Rosie so I imagine that's the one. I need to go back and re-read it.

I liked this book. It's not funny or sad, it's just a good story, well written. It felt real, the way the parents reacted, what the mother was thinking. The end does not tie everything up but it still felt like a decent ending. You don't know what's going to happen, you hope for the best.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Last night one of my book clubs met to discuss Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. We all liked the book.

It's about twins who were conjoined at the head and separated after birth, born in a hospital in Addis Ababa to an Indian nun. They were brought up by an Indian couple living and working at the hospital.

We wondered about the name. "Cutting for stone" is in the Hippocratic oath so we knew that was part of the reason for it but we weren't sure what the phrase actually means. One member said it meant quarrying, searching for something, which made sense.

Our discussion drifted when we started talking about the way the two boys in the novel would fall asleep with their heads touching, as they'd been in the womb. We started talking about sleeping with our siblings and having our kids join us in bed. My kids all learned to go to Randy's side of the bed because I couldn't take their wiggling around and bumping me.

We all liked the character Ghosh a lot. He was like the boys' father, although not their biological father. He was a rock, everyone could rely on him and he always had sage advice.

I recommend this one, too.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

So, it's been forever since I've written, but I'm going to try again. I won't try to go back and do all the books I've read since my last post, but I'll do a couple anyway.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a very good book I read for a couple of my book clubs. It's set in Mississippi (how fun is it to write that, thinking "M-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-humpback-humpback-i"?) right at the beginning of the civil rights movement. Three women are the "voices" in the book. One is a young white woman who wants to be a writer and decides to write the stories of the black women in the town. The other two are two of the black women.

I was afraid it'd be more of that Southern women's book kind of stuff but it really wasn't. The women's voices seemed genuine, and it felt like you kind of got in their heads. The women served as maids/housekeepers and also nannys. There was definitely a comment on the way that these women were trusted so implicitly with such an important task as raising the family's children, yet they were not allowed, in some cases, to use the same bathroom facilities. And then those children grew up to have servants of their own.

I recommend it.