Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

This book is written by the same author who wrote the sreenplay for The Imitation Game, which I thoroughly enjoyed as well. He wrote another book called The Sherlockian that I may read later.

Last Days of Night is a novel that really is a biography of a young lawyer who works for George Westinghouse, and through it meets Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, among others. It was interesting to me to learn more about these legendary people. I associate them with things like light bulbs and inventions, but this made them real people.

We read this book in my book club and one of the members pointed out that there is a section in back where the author talks about what parts of the book are true, based on reports from the time, and those where he imagined what scenes were, and places where he either changed the order or combined things that happened at different times, and so on. I was glad to know that. As I read those notes, they seemed to point out that, really, the book is good history - the changes made it a story, a novel, instead of a textbook.

I liked the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. They were often by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and others of that ilk. It was interesting to read again Thomas Edison's quote "I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that don't work." But one of Tesla's issues with Edison was that when he was working in Edison's lab, they would have to experiment over and over and Tesla found that a waste of time. He felt he could determine if something would or would not work through, I think, exploring it thoroughly in his mind, and he didn't need to do all that actual experimenting.

The main character is a lawyer named Paul Cravath. He is based on a real person, too. Paul becomes employed by George Westinghouse pretty much straight out of law school. Westinghouse is suing Edison for the light bulb patent. The courts keep ruling that Edison invented the light bulb and Westinghouse improved it, but Westinghouse believes he truly invented something new, not just an improvement.

There was also a big hullabaloo about DC and AC. I had no idea! Direct current and alternating current were big concepts that had a lot to do with safety and costs and what worked over a distance and therefore what made sense to provide electricity for cities, and from there, everything else. In that fight, the invention of the electric chair was a tool to prove a point. The description of the first use of an electric chair is just horrific. And to think we are still figuring out if that is cruel and unusual punishment or not.

Here's a good passage that helps illustrate how the book is historical and you can learn a lot, yet it's a story, it keeps your interest, and it's characters "acting" to tell the story, not a textbook.

"I am being sued."   [George Westinghouse]
Paul was well aware. In the time since his invitation to dinner, he'd devoured all the newspaper accounts of Westinghouse's legal troubles. The dispute was highly public. "Thomas Edison has sued you for infringing on his patent on the incandescent light bulb."
"Edison's bulbs are terrible--poor-quality designs, two generations behind mine. There are a dozen companies across this country making bulbs of more advanced design than Edison's. Mine just happen to be by far the best."
"Yours are better. But Edison's were first. It's the latter issue that is of legal concern. Your difficulty is that he's the one with the patent."
"I did not copy Edison's design for the light bulb. I improved upon it. Tremendously. My light bulb is to his as a motor wagon is to a horse-drawn carriage. Would there be justice in forbidding Mr. Benz from selling the former because of the existence of the latter? Of course not. Edison is not suing me--he is suing progress itself because he lacks the ability to invent it."
"It sounds," suggested Paul, "as if you're in need of a very good attorney."

This book is a good story. Even if you, like me, have no special interest in learning about electricity, Thomas Edison, or Westinghouse, you'll enjoy the book for the story. Good writing, good plot, good characters.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Ordinary Grace was a good story from the Prologue to the Epilogue. The first sentence of the Prologue is, "All the dying that summer began with the death of a child, a boy with golden hair and thick glasses, killed on the railroad tracks outside New Bremen, Minnesota, sliced into pieces by a thousand tons of steel speeding across the prairie toward South Dakota."

The second paragraph of the Prologue begins, "It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder. You might think I remember that seems tragic and I do but not completely so."

So the book is the story of that summer. The narrator is Frank, the son of a Methodist preacher in the small town of New Bremen. He has a younger brother Jake and an older sister Ariel. It's set in the year 1961. The way the story is told, or maybe the way it felt as I read it, reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird and also A Prayer for Owen Meany. And Gilead. A small town, several decades ago, and a family going through a seemingly ordinary time, but full of significance.

I loved the turns of phrases in conversations. In an early conversation between Frank and Jake, Jake wants to go along with Frank and Frank says, "Like hell." Jake: "You said hell." So simple, but I can just hear them saying it. And I felt like I was right there, in New Bremen. I could see the roads, the houses, the paths by the river, the woods, the trestle bridge, the river.

This was one of the most skillful uses of foreshadowing I've seen. Sometimes foreshadowing bugs me. It almost seems like a spoiler. Or I'm frustrated and think, "Stop hinting around and get to the story already." But that didn't happen in this book. Those 2 first sentences I quoted above had foreshadowing, right out of the gate. In this case, those hints made me want to keep reading.

At the beginning of this blog entry I thought about writing that the book is compelling, but I didn't want to make it sound like some kind of suspenseful mystery or something. Yet it is compelling. It was a good story, and I wanted to see what would happen. It was one of those books where I stayed up much of one night just to keep reading.

I think the foreshadowing was effective because I was more than content to stay in the story where I was. I didn't want to rush to find out what would happen next because I was happy right where I was, in whatever part of the story I read one of those hints about what was to come.

Frank is a kid who wants to be good but who also is filled with curiosity and eager to know everything there is to know. When his father gets called to situations, Frank always wants to go along. His brother Jake wants to go with Frank anywhere he goes. Sometimes -- often -- Frank's curiosity and wanting to know everything doesn't make him happier. But it definitely makes the story better.

Jake has a stutter. Kids make fun of him for it, and even though Frank sticks up for Jake over and over, Frank, when he wants to rile up Jake, sometimes mocks his stuttering. Because of his stuttering, Jake doesn't speak much, but he sees and understands much, often surprising Frank with insights Frank himself never would have noticed.

You get to know everyone in the family and they all have interesting personalities. Probably one reason the book reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird is because the father, Nathan Drum, like Atticus, is a respected, honest, wise man of few words. The characters in the book love him, and you know he loves them.

Ariel, Frank's older sister, is in high school and looking ahead to going to Julliard to develop her musical talent. She plays piano and sings, and has inherited that talent from her mother, Ruth. Beyond the family, there are several other important characters you get to know and love.

I highly recommend this book. Good story, great characters, gives you food for thought, too. Kirkus review said, "A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike," and I would agree.

Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig

Last Bus to Wisdom was a fun book to read. In a previous post I mentioned reading another book by Ivan Doig, The Bartender's Tale, and that one was fun, too. I plan to read more by Doig.

In this book, the hero of the story is Donal ("Donny") Cameron, 11 years old. His parents have died and Donny lives in Montana with his Grandma. She has to have surgery so Donny is sent to her sister Kate in Wisconsin. Donny travels there in a Greyhound bus (they call it "the dog bus").

He does not like staying with Kate. She is a crabby, selfish, rather mean lady. Donny does like her partner "Herman the German." After a few adventures and mishaps, Kate sends Donal back to his grandma, back on the dog bus. It turns out Herman joins him, leaving Kate. Donal and Herman go on a great journey with lots of adventure and wonderful characters they meet while traveling.

They end up with a group of hoboes near a town named Wisdom on a ranch owned by a rodeo broncing buck rider named "Rags." There's a satisfying happy ending. I highly recommend this book and any by Ivan Doig.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

I enjoyed Outlander. I didn't really know much about it when I started so I was not at all sure what I was getting into. I had heard of the TV show based on the series of books, but I knew nothing of what the story was or anything.

This first book of the series starts with a nurse who has returned from World War II, Claire, and is on a vacation with her husband. She goes to a kind of mini-Stonehenge and suddenly falls through the rock somehow and ends up in Scotland in the 18th century. She ends up with a Scottish man named James.

I enjoyed the book. It's a good, gripping story, and you really get the feeling you're in another world. It was more of a "bodice ripper" than I had expected. Nothing vulgar or even "hot and heavy" or at all embarrassing, but a bit more detailed about Claire and James' love life that I expected.

As everyone probably knows, this is the first of a series of books and it is a series on TV as well. I will try to see at least some episodes of the show. I haven't decided yet if I'll read more of the series. Right now my to-be-read pile is very high, so I'll wait at least a while.

The Eliot Family Trilogy - The Bird in the Tree, Pilgrim’s Inn, and The Heart of the Family - by Elizabeth Goudge

I loved all 3 of these books. If you like British literature or are an Anglophile like me, you'll love these, too, and I'm sure anything by Goudge. They are all about the Eliot family, starting with the matriarch, Lucilla. As I'm thinking about these books, I just realized they remind me of the movie "Enchanted April."

Place plays a big role in these books -- two country houses where the family lives. You grow to love those places in the same way you love the characters. 

Here, in my sister's blog, she talks a little bit about Elizabeth Goudge.

Besides the homes, Goudge writes a lot about the woods nearby. I usually find it hard to read every word of descriptions of landscapes. I often skim them. But in these books, kind of like the homes, the woods become important, too, and I had no problem at all reading every word and picturing those woods.

I don't want to call it "supernatural," but there's a little bit of sixth sense, or maybe spirituality, or a kind of magic, maybe a sense of God's presence, in the books. There's a place in the woods where it is hinted that the children seem to meet a long-ago inhabitant who helped to heal the animals. There's some kind of spirit to the houses, perhaps also from a long ago inhabitant of the homes. There are times where the characters seem let to actions or places by a force beyond them.

This force, or whatever you may want to call it, felt good to me. I was glad to read about it and feel it. That's not always true for me. Sometimes that kind of thing causes fear or a spooky feeling, which happened in the one book by Isabel Allende that I read. I might call it a little Narnian but I wouldn't want you to think the books are fantasy or science fiction. Not at all.

The stories are excellent. Here is a good review, where the writer summarizes what they are about. I highly recommend these books. 

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

Kent Haruf is one my favorite writers. His books are such good stories. The first book of his I read was Plainsong and then its sequel Eventide. I still think those are the best of the lot. I believe I've read all his novels, and I hope he'll write more so I can keep reading them all.

Our Souls at Night is, like all his novels, set in the small town of Holt, Colorado. In this story, a 70-year-old woman, a widow, Addie Moore, asks her neighbor, a widower, Louis Waters, to sleep with her. Sex is not necessary; it's a matter of relieving the loneliness, and nights are the worst.

Both Addie and Louis (persuaded by Addie) decide they don't need to care what people think anymore. Louis openly walks over the Addie's house in the evenings. They enjoy the companionship of sleeping in the same bed and their lives become more engaging by getting to know each other's life stories. Both the characters are people I enjoyed getting to know.

Haruf does not tie everything up in happy endings. I wouldn't call his endings sad or at all depressing, but they feel real. In this book, too, the good thing that Addie and Kent have going is messed up by Addie's grown son. At the same time, the interaction between her son's son and both Addie and Louis is a highlight of the book. So there's good and bad that happens as a result of the connection between Addie and her son.

I highly, highly recommend Our Souls at Night and all of Haruf's novels.

After You by Jojo Moyes

I heard that the sequel to Me Before You was even better than the first. I did enjoy it just as much.

The book picks up when Louisa is working as a waitress again, after her travels that began at the end of the other book. She enjoys waitressing -- which is hard for me to imagine since I am, I believe, pretty much the worst waitress in the world. I'm too forgetful.

It continues with Louisa trying to figure out what to do next in her life. She liked traveling but after a while decided she had had enough of that. She starts going to a grief therapy group and those people become her friends. Also through one of them she meets a new man who becomes an important part of her life. Her parents go through a crisis but they also grow close to her again through a close call that Louisa goes through. And Louisa meets a daughter of her previous love who neither he nor anyone else knew about it. This leads to more connections with his family.

So, as you can tell, it's an eventful book. It kept me turning the pages. I was interested in what Louisa would do and her thought process for making decisions about what direction to go. Besides being event-filled, Moyers writes with some humor as well. I definitely recommend both these books.

Felicity by Mary Oliver

I have just started reading this book of poetry by Mary Oliver. It's wonderful. Here's one for you to enjoy, and I have a few questions, too, you can weigh in on.

Roses
by Mary Oliver

Everyone now and again wonders about
those questions that have no ready
answers: first cause, God's existence,
what happens when the curtain goes
down and nothing stops it, not kissing,
not going to the mall, not the Super
Bowl.

 "Wild roses," I said to them one morning.
"Do you have the answers? And if you do,
would you tell me?"

The roses laughed softly. "Forgive us,"
they said. "But as you can see, we are
just now entirely busy being roses."

I love the image of the wild roses, of them laughing and talking. Their answer is so good - "entirely busy being roses."

There's one part that I don't understand. Where it says "what happens when the curtain goes / down and nothing stops it, not kissing, / not going to the mall, not the Super / Bowl." I think that the part about the curtain going down is one in the list of "questions that have no ready answer," like "first cause" and "God's existence." Then it seems like the phrases about not kissing and the mall and Super Bowl would be things that don't stop the curtain from going down.

But that's what I don't get. What do those actions (kissing, going to the mall and the Super Bowl) have to do with stopping the curtain going down, with stopping one of the hard questions to answer?

Maybe she's saying actions of that kind don't stop life from continuing on to death (death being the curtain going down)? Not understanding doesn't take away how much I like this poem, but it does make me curious.

Any thoughts?

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

I'm not exactly sure why I liked this book so much, but I did. I read it almost in one setting. You could call it predictable; The end was not a surprise by any means. And maybe you could even call it a little schmaltzy, since it's a love story that makes you cry.

Somehow, though, I did like it a lot. It's the story of a young woman in Great Britain who loses her job, then is hired as a caretaker/companion for a rich young man, Will, who is a paraplegic.

The main character is the young woman, Louisa. It is written in first person, from her point of view. But there are a few parts where the first person is one of the other characters.

One reason I liked the book is I liked Louisa. I liked listening to her narration. She has a good sense of humor and she feels like a person who I would like to know. 

A big part of the book is that Will wants to die. I hesitate to even write that because it makes the book sound maudlin. It did make me cry, but it didn't feel like a tear-jerker to me. I felt like I learned more about what it feels like to be a paraplegic like Will. Of course there's no way to really understand, but there were definitely insights I had never thought of.

I liked all the characters in the book. I see there is a sequel and others who have read it say they liked the sequel, too, some even better than the first. I plan to read it, too.

The Arsonist by Sue Miller

The Arsonist was recommended to me by "the librarian", my friend at Sinaloa Cafe where we go for Mexican dinner nearly every Friday. Way back years ago when I met her it was because she was reading a book while we were waiting for a table. I asked her what she was reading, and that started a friendship that includes exchanging book recommendations nearly every time we see each other.

Aileen was a librarian at a school when I met her. She and her husband are retired now. We don't see them every Friday, but they are regulars at Sinaloa, just as we are.

This Friday Aileen recommended The Arsonist and You Before Me. I ordered both of them and started with The Arsonist, which I finished yesterday.

When I read the summary on the back of the book, I thought it would be a mystery. That's why I chose to read it first, because I enjoy mysteries. I would not call it a mystery, though. There definitely is a mystery involved -- who is the arsonist -- but even though the fact that there are fires set by an arsonist as a central part of the book, the story is not about figuring out who is setting the fires.

The story is set in "a New Hampshire village" (says the synopsis on the back of the book), Winslow. The main character is Frankie Rowley, whose family has a summer home there, and where now her parents are living year round. Frankie is in her forties, single, and has a career as an aid worker in Africa. When she goes back to Winslow at the beginning of the book, she is not sure whether she'll go back to Africa or not, nor is she sure of what she will do at all.

I hesitated to write "the main character" because two other characters are featured prominently and the author reveals their thoughts and feelings, in the same way she does Frankie's. One of these is Frankie's mother, Sylvia, and the other is her romantic interest in the story, the town's newspaper editor, Bud. Frankie is the main character, but I feel like Bud is a close second, and Sylvia is in third place.

I like the writing, and I thought the story was compelling -- I wanted to keep turning the pages and find out what was going to happen. It's set in nearly present time, but not quite. There are no cell phones, but there are pagers. Some of the sources of uncertainty, making you want to keep reading, are the growth of Bud and Frankie's relationship, her growing awareness of her father's dwindling mental capacities, her mother's feelings toward her husband (Frankie's father), the differences of the town "year-rounders" vs. the summer people, and, of course, the mystery of the fires.

All in all, I recommend the book as a good read. I wouldn't consider it a contender to be a favorite, but I enjoyed it and I could even see myself re-reading it at some point in the future.

Delicious Sentences

I have a friend who posted this on Facebook:

"She enjoyed registering her fellow citizens' neuroses, intimacies, and habits, plotting them on a scale of decency, and knowledgeably passing on her opinions to others. She was generous in that regard." Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop.
What delicious sentences.

I thought about what my friend had written as I was re-reading Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym. It is full of delicious sentences. Some examples below:

"But I've never thought of myself as caring for canons," said Jane rather wildly.

"What are we having for supper?" asked her husband.
"Flora is in the kitchen unpacking some of the china. We could open a tin," added Jane, as if this were a most unusual procedure, which it most certainly was not.

"I suppose old atheists seem less wicked and dangerous than young ones," said Jane. "One feels that there is something of the ancient Greece in them."
Father Lomax, who evidently thought no such thing, let the subject drop.

Jane often thinks or says things "wildly." Little comments like "as if this were a most unusual procedure, which it most certainly was not" and "who evidently thought no such thing." Delicious.

Between You and Me by Mary Norris

I just started this book but I want to write out a quote already. Mary Norris calls herself a "comma queen" at the New Yorker. She checks the grammar and other aspects of stories in the magazine.

In this quote Norris is talking about autocorrect, and it made me laugh out loud.

Autocorrect I could do without. It thinks I am stupid and clumsy, and while it's true that I don't know how to disable it and I can't text with my thumbs like a teenager (though I am prehensile), why would I let a machine tell me what I want to say? I text someone "Good night" in German, and instead of "Gute Nacht" I send "Cute Nachos." I type "adverbial," and it comes out "adrenal," which is like a knife thrust to my adverbial gland. Invited to dinner, I text my friend to ask whether I can bring anything, and she replies that the "food and dissertation" are under control. Good news, I guess. I understand to bring wine and not ask anyone the topic of his PhD thesis.

Fiction is fun

It's turned out to be quite a long time since I've read a novel (a new one; I've been doing a lot of re-reading lately). I kind of forgot how fun it is to read a really good story, and just enjoy the story.

Yesterday I finished A Dangerous Place, by Jacqueline Winspear, the latest of the "Maisie Dobbs" novels she writes. It was great, as have been all the others.

Today I started reading The Bartender's Tale by Ivan Doig. I am enjoying it so much! I've only just started but loving it so far. I was lying in bed this morning thinking over what I've read so far and wondering about what will happen next. I haven't done that in a while, either. It's been a pretty happy, kid-growing-up kind of story so far and I was lying there thinking that eventually probably something bad or sad will happen. There has to be a climax coming at some point, right?

Anyway, I'm having fun. I recommend both books. I'll try to come back and blog more thoroughly about them later.

Georgette Heyer Makes Me Laugh

This is one of the reasons I love reading books by Georgette Heyer: They make me laugh.

Today I am re-reading Faro's Daughter. Who knows how often I've read it already? I keep these books on a shelf by my bed and grab them to read over and over.

A passage I just read made me laugh aloud. The main character, Deb Grantham, and her aunt, Lady Bellingham, are hiding Phoebe Laxton, a young, rather foolish woman, in their home. Phoebe has just been discovered by her persecutor and is so frightened at being seen that she faints when she runs to tell Deb and Lady Bellingham. They succeed in waking her and try to find out what happened to scare her so.

First there is the passage where Phoebe faints and Lady Bellingham is trying to figure out how to revive her:

'Oh, heavens, if it is not one thing it is another!' wailed her ladyship, looking round wildly for the vinaigrette. 'Untie her laces! Where are those salts? Why is nothing ever where it is wanted? Ring the bell! Oh no, the hartshorn is in that cupboard! I shall go distracted! You ought to burn some feathers under her nose, but there are only the new ostrich plumes in my best hat, and really---- However, take them if you like! I am sure I do not grudge them!'

I must admit I snorted as I wrote this. Not very ladylike, I know, but it cracks me up. Barbara Pym also uses "wildly" in this way. Her characters sometimes speak or think "wildly" like Lady Bellingham does here. And I love the way her ladyship is willing to sacrifice her ostrich feathers. Too funny.

The book goes on to describe Deb and Lady Bellingham's unsuccessful attempts to calm Phoebe down with reason and reassurances. They are quite frustrated that nothing they say makes any difference. Then Phoebe's fiance, Lord Mablethorpe, comes in and learns of the problem.

...his brows drew together across the bridge of his beautiful nose, and he said with more decision than Deborah had ever before heard in his voice: 'That settles it, then!'
    Miss Laxton [Phoebe] heaved a huge sigh, and tucked her hand in his. 'I knew you would know what to do!'
    'Well, it's to be hoped he does,' said Lady Bellingham, with some asperity. 'If I had known that all you wanted was to hear someone say that settles it, I would have said it myself for I am sure it is easy enough to say, and doesn't signify in the least!'

I find that quite hilarious. "Asperity" itself is just a funny word. And the absurdity that if her ladyship -- or anyone -- had just said that settles it, all would have been well.

I only know a few other people who love Georgette Heyer novels like I do. My best friend from high school, Cindy B, was the one who discovered them and told me about them; my sister Jan shares my enjoyment; my good friend Gert Bamford also was one of the rare people who not only had heard of Georgette Heyer but, like me, often tested the worthiness of used bookstores by checking to see if they carried Georgette Heyers.

One time when I was sad and scared about some health tribulations going on, my sister was trying to comfort me on the phone. She said, "I wish there was something I could do to help, Mave." I asked her to bring over some of the Georgette Heyer books she owned. Jan said she would bring them all and, "You be the keeper of our Georgette Heyer books." It makes me tear up to think about. What sisterly love.

 

Links:
On Georgette Heyer
Georgette-Heyer.com
Wikipedia
Amazon author page

Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans

I loved this book! I love Rachel Held Evans so I had pre-ordered it when Held-Evans announced it was coming. It's full of memorable statements like the one below.

The book is divided into 7 sections, for 7 sacraments: Baptism, Confesion, Holy Orders, Communion, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, and Marriage.

In the prologue, Rachel talks of how "religious folk have always had it out for us night owls." I am not a night owl myself, but my daughter is and I thought of her as I read, "'...At the break of light it [the Church] rememebers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrated in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.' This comes as unfortunate news for someone like me who can barely remember who she is at the 'break of light,' much less ponder the theological implications of the resurrection...No doubt I would have shooed poor Mary Magdalene away with a soft, pillow-muffled grunt had she asked me to help her bring the burial spices to the tomb that fateful morning two thousand years ago. I'd have slept right through the Main Event."

Later, still in the prologue, she writes about some reasons she feels people are leaving the church: "We don't want to choose between science and religion and between our intellectual integrit and our faith...When our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren't welcome at the table, then we don't feel welcome either..."

My own theory about why people aren't coming to church goes beyond what the church has or has not to offer. That's definitely a factor. But I feel, actually it's more practical than that -- they don't feel like setting the alarm on a weekend day and having to get up, get dressed, and go somewhere. But that's a whole different subject I won't go into right now.

The subtitle of this book is "loving, leaving, and finding the church." A big part of Held Evans' life story is that she grew up in an evangelistic church her father pastored, was very gung-ho, excelling in the Biblical pursuits espoused by the church, and believing wholeheartedly everything taught there. Then as she grew older and started being exposed through books and life to many other types of beliefs and conflicting values, she started to wonder and doubt about the teachings of the evangelistic church.

This book talks of leaving the evangelical tradition and looking for a church she felt better matched her beliefs, yet also coming to terms with the evangelical church that is her heritage, and even realizing she loved that history and needed it.

A great quote from the baptism chapter: "The good news is you are a beloved child of God; the bad news is you don't get to choose your siblings." So funny because it's so true.

Held Evans talks in this chapter about the feeling that you are not fit for church membership until you've conquered your "demons" -- the sin in your hearts. She writes: "demons are as real as the competing identities that seek to possess us. But rather than casting them out of our churches, we tend to invite them in, where they tell us we'll be children of God when

•  we beat the addiction.
• we sign the doctrinal statement
• we help with the children's ministry
• we get our act together.
• we tithe.
• we play by the rules.
• we believe without doubt.
• we are married. 
• we are straight.
• we are religious.
• we are good."

I had not thought of sin or demons that way. I know there is sin in the world and in our hearts. I just hadn't thought of them in such a concrete way, as devils or demons.

And, "...sometimes I think what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird...In the ritual of baptism, our ancestors acted out the bizarre truth of the Christian identity: We are people who stand totally exposed before evil and death and declare them powerless against love. There's nothing normal about that."

Rachel writes about doubt coming in to her life, "like an invasive species, like kudzu trellising the bran: What if none of this is true? What if it's all one big lie?"  I can related to this kind of doubt. Over the years I would periodically go into a kind of season of doubt. Now, though, I am usually successful in avoiding those seasons. I was in a doubting season when I heard that my brother had ALS. I decided then that I did not want to think any more about doubt; that I would believe like a child. It was and is basically mind control. When those kinds of thoughts start sneaking into my brain, I start thinking about other things. For this situation, I usually start thinking about my blessings and all the things I believe without doubt. 

In another place in this book, Held Evans says, "people bond more deeply over shared brokenness than they do over shared beliefs." That struck me as true. It is in her chapter nine, called "Dirty Laundry." I know we shouldn't try to present a perfect church face to the world, however there definitely have been times where I felt that, even if I was inclined to invite someone to my church, I could not do it because I was too afraid they'd find out my church (at that time) did not let women be elders or ministers, or I had a fear that my minister (at that time) might say something I was ashamed of and that would be offensive. Yet I get the sentiment that Rachel wrote, "I've heard many recovering alcoholics say they've never found a church quite like Alcoholics Anonymous. They've never found a community of people so honest with one another about their pain, so united in their shared brokenness." How do we strike a balance between not airing our diry laundry and being that shared-brokenness-community of love to each other?

I love this phrase, too, "broken and beloved."

This blog entry is about just the beginning of the book. It's chock full of more and deeper thoughts, as well as interesting, funny stories. I highly, highly recommend it.

The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

Can you imagine this woman, Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, is the first person featured in this history of technology - the internet and computers? I read about Lord Byron in the Georgette Heyer Regency novels that I love. He was a famous, romantic novelist. In this book, The Innovators, it sounds as if he married for money and the marriage did not last long. Ada's mother must have disliked Bryon a lot because she had Ada tutored in Math in order to "counteract" any tendencies Ada might have to poetry.

It turned out Ada had a love for the poetry of mathematics and science. I did not know this but it turns out that Steve Jobs always featured an image of the intersection of technology and liberal arts when he gave demos of new products. The book had this intersection as a theme, writing about the many different people who exemplified that intersection, and who built on each others' ideas to develop computers, networking and the internet.

Walter Isaacson wrote a biography of Steve Jobs that was a bestseller, and that I also read. It was great. I was thinking at first to describe The Innovators as a bunch of short biographies. But really, it's a biography of technology.

One of the things that surprised me as I read it was the communal aspect of the technology world. When they said, "Power to the people," they meant it. Or many of them did. Many of the creators and inventors who were a part of the development of technology strongly believed in NOT having a central authority that determined rules and so on. They believed in spreading the control throughout the system, with no one person or entity in charge. There was even an early technology company called "The Love and Grace Company."

The structure of the internet is kind of like a fishnet, with multiple paths from one thing to another. There's a piece of equipment in our server room, and millions of other server rooms, called a "router" because that's truly what it is. It routes the data from place to place. And if one router goes down, the data is routed around it.

I was also surprised by the women featured in the book, who were integral parts of the growth of technology. There were a team of women who did the programming of the huge, early computers. They configured the pathways and plugged the cables in and out to program the computers manually. They were usually very much unacknowledged, but they still loved their work.

There's a story of the "mother of all demos" that early inventors had in order to show others the power of computers. It is mentioned not only in the history itself, as an event and what happened, but often referred to by people who attended it as being a big influence for them. For this demo, 4 women did the programming and worked 24x7. The book recounts how the night before the demo they were all exhausted and even though there was still an unsolved problem, they had to go home and go to bed. One woman woke up at 4am with the solution in her head and she went over to the room at that wee hour in the morning to put in the fix.

But these women were not even invited to the demo. There was a big dinner afterward to celebrate and the women were not included. As the men went off to their dinner, the women walked to their hotels in the cold. Sheesh. However, one of those women was in the Navy, became a brigadier general, and had the longest career of anyone in the Navy.

With my work being in the technology arena, it's not surprising I found the book interesting. But I think people not even as geeky as I am would enjoy it, too. It's about people and how they worked together and alone, how they built on each others' ideas, how ideas came to them, how technology involved, the culture surrounding them -- so much more than just how computers were invented.

I highly recommend it.

Scary Close by Donald Miller

I pre-ordered this book when I read about it coming out. Partly I pre-ordered it because I read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller but also because if you pre-ordered it you got two freebies with it, the ebook of Blue Like Jazz, and a soundtrack of 16 songs that Miller made in honor of the book. The sound track seemed like a fun idea. I just downloaded it and started to play it for the first time.

It turned out, though, that I liked the book more than I'd even expected I would. I kind of devoured it. I have been thinking a lot about how to be more...essential? ...transparent? ...vulnerable? Not sure of the best word. I think of it as "Mavis being Mavis," not trying to be someone or something I'm not, not worrying so much about what other people might think of me or what I say or do.

This book fed right into this line of thinking. Miller wrote about the process of changing himself while falling in love with his now wife, Betsy. It's about relationships and things he learned about how to be good at relationships. It talks a lot about marriage and falling in love, but you can take what he writes about and apply it to any relationship.

When my brother Dan died, as I've written about before, one of the many things I realized was how important relationships are. It was beautiful to see Dan's friends, including co-workers, and family surround him with faithfulness and love. It made me not just realize but start to live with the priority of building good relationships with whoever is in my life. This book is full of thoughts and stories about how to do that.

It's got some helpful kind of self help type of tips, like 5 kinds of manipulation, but I didn't really feel like I was reading a self help book. It felt like Donald Miller was just talking to me about what he went through and learned. He has a friendly style of writing. It never bored me or seemed like a slog.

I think it'd be a good one for my two sons and wife and girlfriend. There are even online courses for pre-marriage, marriage and parenting. Quite a package deal.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Loved, loved, loved it. It inspired me to read 2 more of Robinson's books, Home and Gilead. I'm going to try to write about Gilead later.

Lila is set in Gilead, at least the present-day part of it is. Home, too, is set in the town of Gilead, as is, of course, Gilead. I like it when authors write books that interlace the way these 3 do. There are different main characters, different plots, different times, but it's kind of like catching glimpses of old friends from other books. Barbara Pym does a good job with this, too.

Lila is the name of, and story of, the woman who becomes the wife of Reverend Ames, the main character in Gilead. She's a strange character. She grew up very poor, mostly looked after by a woman named Doll. Doll and Lila lived a kind of hobo life. The book begins when Lila is alone, grown, and staying in an abandoned house in the town of Gilead.

It's been quite a while since I read the book and I had to take a look to remember if the book was written in first person or not. Even though it is not, it kind of felt like you were inside Lila's head, and seeing the unfolding of events from her perspective.

You follow the progression of her relationship with "the Reverend," as she calls him. It is a strange coupling, it seems. They are so different. Yet there is a lot of attraction between them, and they do love each other. Reverend Ames, who knows so much about theology and faith, and who is so much older than Lila, is fascinated by her even though she is so "un-scholarly" compared to him, and kind of "un-eloquent," too. But she's wise. And she loves him, too.

It's hard for me to write about Lila in a way that makes it sound interesting. I'm not sure what to say. Partly, it is such a good book because Marilynne Robinson is such a good writer. It always sounds kind of off-putting to me when someone says they love a book because the writing is so good. It makes me imagine beautiful descriptive passages. They ARE beautiful, but I often start to skim them as I get involved in the story and just want to read for the story, not the writing.

Maybe instead of saying it's so good because of the writing, I could say it's because of Robinson's wonderful way with words. I am all about the story, especially in fiction, and Robinson writes so that I do get into the story. Yet, without making me annoyed by moving away from the story, she fits in flashbacks and passages of inner thoughts.

Festival of Faith & Writing 2014

I started writing a bunch of Festival notes under my photo gallery but then thought it would probably fit better if I write a blog and embed the pictures. It'll be long but basically I'm transposing little notes I took at the Festival. Most were sentences/quotes that I found thought-provoking.

My photos:
http://moonfamily.smugmug.com/Travel/Festival-2014
Faith & Writing Festival:
http://festival.calvin.edu/
Speakers:
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/

Gene Luen Yang

Is Art Selfish? was the name of Yang's talk. I had never heard of Gene Luen Yang, but he was so interesting. Definitely want to read and learn more. He's a graphic novelist but prefers to call himself a cartoonist. He spoke on whether art is selfish or selfless. When you write you are alone and need to shut yourself off from others. He has 4 kids and had a photo of a tiny child's hand sticking out from under the door of the room he writes in. They bang and knock on the door.
He asked his wife, "Is art selfish?" and her answer was, "It can be."

He spoke of 4 points:

1. Art as an icon - Intense discipline to point you to something higher than self, our stories as part of a lineage.
2. Art as prayer - Holy Spirit work to create something else. Tame the "monkey mind" to get to flow.
3. Art as an organ - Like a liver. Vital, can't function without it.
4. Art as our act of service - Collection of stories that bind a community together.

Art as a service that renews a people.

From the interview. Boxers and Saints based on the Boxer rebellion.

• It's really irritating that Jesus talked in story.
• He never wrote anything, only in the sand.
• If only he'd written on paper -- like, bullet points
• His (Yang's) heroes of faith:
• Henri Nouwen - Caring for others out of your own brokenness. Don't have to be complete to help others.

http://geneyang.com/

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/gene-luen-yang/

Scott Cairns

Time to write:

• start with reading
• poring over a line or two
• praying for something to come of it.
• writers who have found a way to find things to say

Discipline - language - pursuit of truth.

Wallace Stevens poem - "The Idea of Order at Key West."

Make good friends with accomplished dead people.

Midrash says, "And another interpretation might be...."

Threnity - song or poem for the dead

Kol Nidre - recanting from ill-considered vows.

Saint Isaac of Syria / Ninevah - rominent in The Brothers Karamazov.

Poem = Not pointing to or at; not a document of meaning made, but a scene of meaning making.

Language that provokes a vision and more.

People he reads:

• Simeon the Theologian
• W.H. Auden
• Samuel Coleridge
• Emily Dickinson
• Constantin Kovafy
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Robert Frost

Idiot = 

1. Monks who have their own rule
2. Monks who share a rule

Isolated figure. Also, the fool - concern for other, bigger than self.

An idiot who hopes to become a fool.

Writing = coming to terms, but not conclusive. Get more from it each time.

Poem - opportunity to make something useful to the reader.

http://www.faithandleadership.com/qa/scott-cairns-words-lead-you-ideas

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-cairns/
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/scott-cairns/

James McBride

He spoke extemporaneously and genuinely about living a good Christian life.
One of McBride's pieces of advice was to forget about mistakes. Try, and then just let it go, put it behind you, then try again later. 

Love and faith are action words.

http://www.jamesmcbride.com/
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/james-mcbride/

Brett Lott

• The word "Christian" was never meant to be a modifier, like "Christian plumber," "Christian writer." It makes it a lesser person. We are people who are Christians.
• Descriptions - Triangulate - Points us to a known item to help us know the thing.
• To write precisely, you must be there. Paying attention. Inside the story itself.
• Precision calls for patience, stumbling over.

• Exercise:
• She steps onto the boardwalk, unnerved to hear it creaking under her feet.
• Take the "ing" out. "Creaking" is a gerund, and implies always happening. Make it "creak." Don't rob it of its power.
• Marilynne Robinson - You should always think of your audience as someone who's a little smarter than you.
• Show emotion, don't tell.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/06/12/bret-lott-on-being-a-christian-who-is-a-writer/
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/bret-lott/

Richard Foster

• Words matter. They are the best carriers of idea. And ideas rule the world.
• We are what we think about.
• Allow our words to be grounded in silence.
• Distraction is a key problem.
• Need silence - discipline.
• Silence is writing.

http://richardjfoster.com/
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/richard-foster/

Raymond Singer

Screenwriter / Filmmaker. he showed a documentary he directed called "Battlefields to Farmfields." 

It was inspiring. It's a program to get vets into growing food. They find it calms their troubled minds and it also gives them a new purpose in life - to grow food for the world. More about it here:

http://www.groundoperations.net/

It started in Santa Rosa. I'd like to learn more!

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/raymond-singer/

Okey Ndibe

I had not heard of Okey Ndibe, either. I loved his voice and manner, and his story. He is from Nigeria and has written several books plus writes essays and commentaries.

Okey Ndibe is working on an autobiography that I hope to read when it comes out. He also is publishing online stories of coming to America. The title begins with "Going Dutch..." He's got intriguing views, looking at the world and religions in a different way than we usually do.

Another book is Foreign Gods, Inc. He mentioned the commodization of gods, buying and selling gods, the ultimate outsider.

http://www.okeyndibe.com/
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/okey-ndibe/

Rachel Held Evans

Rachel Held Evans is one of my big favorites who was at the Festival. I've read her books and follow her blog. I wrote a note to a friend after listening to her interview: "There's a scene in "Notting Hill" where the goofy sister says to the movie star, '...and more importantly I genuinely believe and have believed for some time now that we can be best friends. What do YOU think?' That's kind of how I felt." So much of what Evans said seemed like things I would say or do. She seems like a kindred spirit. I know many others feel the same way.

One scene was really funny. During the Q & A time after her talk, someone asked her about how she responds to people who say she is sowing disunity in the church when she voices some of her differences of opinion and so on. She walked away from the podium, closer to the questioner and started talking about how, often, the status quo works for people, and it's natural that they would object to changing it. She said, though, that it is right to express what you believe is true. Then we all heard a low rumble from outside. She stopped and looked out at the audience. "Is that a storm rolling in?" she asked. Before anyone could answer, she scurried over, back behind the podium, folded her hands demurely, and said quickly, "The church is wonderful just as it is, and we should not cause any disunity." We all cracked up.

Before her interview, I had said to my sister that it seemed kind of a shame to me that several of the speakers had talked about the downside of technology such as social networks, e-books and so on. I actually agree that the internet has changed our behaviors. My own reading is most definitely affected. But I said that I wished we could get into a discussion of the best way to take advantage of the benefits of technology, while still encouraging reading. I felt that affinity to Rachel Held Evans when she turned to the audience and said, "It seems like some of the people here are kind of dissing the internet, doesn't it?" And then she went on to talk about how collaborative her writing is, with involving those who respond to her web-based contributions.

Some quotes/gems from Rachel Held Evans.

• Social media - connection with the readers
• From certainty, through doubt, to faith.
• Recognize doubt and uncertainty are part of faith.
• A lot of people are afraid of grace getting out of hand.
• Get out of the way and let Jesus do his thing.
• The Bible as a conversation starter, not a conversation ender.
• Jesus' teachings are annoyingly straightforward.
• Proverbs 31 - This woman is like a Pinterest board come to life!
• The banana of self control. There are so many ways you could make that interesting. (She was referring to how, often when the fruits of the spirit are posted on walls as fruits, self control is a banana because it's the longest.)
• The act of writing is the best part.
• Post-it above her desk: The next sentence is not in the refrigerator.
• Process: Start with animal crackers, move on to more complex carbohydrates.
• Writing is the work of paying attention.
• What makes the gospel offensive is the people it lets in, not those it keeps out.
• Mary Carr, author of Lit, is an author she admires.
• She also reads old prayers as a way to begin writing - Teresa of Avila prayer, Julian of Norwich.
• Other favorites: To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain.

http://rachelheldevans.com/

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/rachel-held-evans/

Anne Lamott

Anne I love. I think I've read every book she's written, and I follow her on Facebook. Some gems:

• I don't think we're here to figure it out. "Figure it out" is not a good slogan.
• The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
• The sacrament of puttering.
• Closet shrinkage.
• Toxic self-consciousness
• "From Mau to Mozart" - documentary she loves.
• Laughter is carbonated holiness.
• We're not hungry for what we're not getting.
• Kill your little darlings - speaking of writing and then editing your writing.
• If you can't find an hour, even Jesus can't help you.
• I have not found inspiration to be a useful tool.
• Voice of distractor and seducer - Have to be firm, strict and nice. You choose which voice.
• You can kind of gently bust yourself...I know, honey, I know.
• Structure and discipline - it's the way to freedom.
• Every day you have to ask yourself, "Do you want the hit or the serenity?"
• We hope for the wrong things.
• People don't need as many casseroles ad you may have thought. I really think it's helpful to offer to do the laundry.
• Barry Lopez - When all is said and done, all we have is compassion and stories.
• Barbara Johnson - We are Easter people in a Good Friday world.
• Can only do it in community.
• Christianity is Jesus saying, "Got a minute?"
• Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..which is everyone else...and the courage to change the things I can...which is me.
• Annabel - Kathleen Winter - about Inuit in Canada. Ulitmate story of restoration.
• Authors she loves:
• Mary Oliver
• Adrienne Rich
• Fredrick Buechner
• We don't share our good ideas with people so that we may be more comfortable.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7113.Anne_Lamott

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/anne-lamott/

James Schaap

Jim read from a poem he is planning to publish, still in draft form. It reminded me of "Our Town." The narrator is based on a reporter from a small Iowa town who is dead, talking to the reader who is also dead, introducing him to others in the cemetery "up the hill." He spoke of the dead as "redeemed souls."

I thought it was good writing and I will keep an eye out for the new book.

http://siouxlander.blogspot.com/

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/james-schaap/

Miraslov Volf

Volf's talk was the most dense, most truly a lecture, talk I heard. I took tons of notes; there was so much in what he said.

• Theology  articulated way of life.
• Exclusion & Embrace
• Two major cultural elements
• Failure of world to secularize and resurgence of religion
• Gradual pushing out of exploration of the meaning of life from colleges and universities
• Expected secularization - help from Hawkings, Stalin, Mau.
• Thought religion was superfluous. Don't need God to explain.
• Thought religion would privatize
• Thought religion would atrophy
• 1990-2000s - Number of Buddhists, Christians, Hindu, Muslims has grown extensively, also relativity.
• Charles Taylor - philosopher, great book.
• People continue to choose religion for many reasons.
• One reason, central, is:
• Faith explains the world.
• Also, faith manipulates people
• Presumes faith, like science, is to explain and manipulate. 
• Vigorous debate. Debate is misdirected. Leaves out religion.
• Augustine: You move us to delight in you. You have made us to delight us. Our hearts are restless until we find you.
• References to transcendence defines us as human beings.
• Secularists presume religion needs explaining. But religion presupposes humans need religion.
•  When we rest in God, it becomes the axis of our being. To be free and flourishing, life is to be lived in relation to the divine.
• World faiths bring people to transcendence, so their lives have purpose and meaning.
• Science doesn't compete with this.
• Now the debate is, how do we understand transcendence?
• Pushing out the quetion of the meaning of life from colleges and universities.
• End = goal. What is a life worth living?
• Age of purity - goal to parse out the assumed way of life
• Secular humanism - to 1968. Explain meaning of life without religion. Pluralistic.
• 1968 - all changed - Question of life's meaning has ceased to be recognized. Professors swa themselves as scholars, not there to discuss that question, just advancing knowledge.
• Humanities lost out and are at the bottom of a hole, according to a scholar he was talking about.
• Volf thinks more important: You can see a loss of understanding of human nature. As many meanings of life as there are individuals.
• Faith leaders may or may not contribute to this.
• Decisions about life worth living are chosen by preference, like consumerism.
• Stream of new goods is an opiate of people.
• Preferences come under the meaning of life.
• In university, it is about research, the question is how.
• Question for humans is, "to what end?"
• We have lost the ability to deliberate.
• He teaches a course looking at religions/philosophy and ask how would your life change if you followed each religion or philosophy?

After this session I was thinking especially about the part where Volf spoke about preferences, about how we make decisions based on preferences rather than on what will give us a life worth living, help us to answer "to what end." I had been involved in a conversation with two young women discussing choosing a church to join when moving into a new area. I wondered how thinking about this would affect that decision. Rather than preferences, thinking what church would help you to live a life worth living, help you answer "to what end?"

http://divinity.yale.edu/volf

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/miroslav-volf/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpUxIynUA7Q

Amy Leach

Another author I had not heard of. She is very animated, almost hyper, extremely cheerful, exudes enthusiasm. Some gems.

• Degree in "creative non-fiction."
• Thinking new thoughts - session was on how to encourage thinking new thoughts.
• How can we think independent thoughts?
• I get out of my own ruts, go to things without preconception.
• Why should conversations be so much more understandable than experience?
• Reading old books illuminates our current times
• A longing/yearning to think new thoughts.
• Don't be satisfied with the beginning thoughts. Keep thinking to find new thoughts.
• Find surprising words - dictionary, old poetry.
• Some authors:
• Edward Lear
• Thomas Carlyle
• Lewis Carrol
• Laura E. Richards
• Felicia Lamport
• Shel Silverstein

http://milkweed.org/authors/amy-leach/

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/amy-leach/

Dearie by Bob Spitz

Dearie, the Remarkable Life of Julia Child

I haven't written here in a while and now I notice that the last time I wrote it was about Julia Child's best friend, Simca, and now I'm writing about her biography.

Our bookclub chose this book on the recommendation of one of the members who is a fantastic cook. I've been an admirer of Julia Child for quite a while, and have read her memoir, My Life in France. (By the way, that was written with the help of her nephew, Alex Prud'homme, and was used as inspiration in the movie "Julie and Julia," written and directed by Nora Ephron.)

I liked this book a lot. Bob Spitz did a great job of filling the book with facts and details, yet making it interesting and fun to read. In his Afterword he writes about having written a "tome" about the Beatles. Now that I've seen his work, I may check that out, too.

But to get back to Dearie, I loved getting to know Julia Child more. Did you know she was actually 6'3"? I guess she told people she was 6'1" but she was shaving off a couple inches. And her sister "Dort" was 6'5", their brother was 6'4". Have to love a tall family! She seems to have never let it bother her. She sort of galloped through life, making her presence felt wherever she went.

She was not perfect by any means, but what a wonderful woman! She had lots of fun as she grew up in California, in a fairly wealthy family, but she didn't figure out what she really wanted to do until she was somewhere in her 40's, I think it was. That was part of the memoir and movie: her discovery of her love of French food when she went to Paris with her husband Paul, and then going to culinary school to become a chef.

Her devotion to Paul is one of  the things I admire. She loved him so dearly. He loved her, too, of course. In the book you learn that Paul was kind of a difficult guy. He was very smart and creative, but stuck in government jobs and he didn't advance easily in his career because he was rather blunt and sometimes irritating. Even when he got old and lost his memory and eventually needed to live in an assisted living facility, Julia still called or visited him every day and told him all the details of what was going on in her life.

She was not sentimental, though. She was practical in matters of money, for example. She really did not make a whole lot of money for many years of her cooking, TV and book-writing career, and part of the reason for that was her loyalty to those who contracted with her in the beginning. Sometimes she was a contradiction - accepting much less pay than she could get elsewhere in some cases, and other times deciding to go with the party that offered the most money even though she had a longtime friendship with the other person involved.

She liked to flout convention and break the rules. That's another one of the things that makes her endearing to me. I sometimes have a tiny problem with authority myself, and it's fun to read about her doing things pretty much only in order to break the rules. One time she was working on the show, "Julia and Jacques," and insisted on drinking beer with the meal they made even though she never drank beer with meals - she always had wine. But Kendall Jackson was sponsoring the show and some of their representatives were watching, and she just wanted to be contrary. As the author wrote, Kendall Jackson did not sponsor any more shows for her. Not the wisest action for Julia to take, but I can't help but laugh.

Those "Julia and Jacques" shows are a favorite of mine. I want to find them and watch them again. I always felt that Jacques was treating Julia with so much love, even when she was purposely exasperating him with insisting on her methods over his. I was so glad this biography included a bit about these shows. They were a big hit precisely because of that back-and-forth disagreement between the two of them. I knew they were both being genuine, but I didn't know that Jacques was as exasperated by Julia as he must have been. The author said that on some breaks, Jacques would stand on the porch with his fists clenched and let out a stream of French swear words. But then he'd go back on camera and lovingly bow to her opinions. (And speaking of swearing, Julia did her share. She was known to say, or advise others to say, "Fuck 'em!" as she moved forward in what she felt was right.)

By the time she was filming those "Julia and Jacques" shows, she could pretty much get away with anything. She was truly the queen of the cooking scene, treated like royalty wherever she went. Usually she was kind and gracious to her admirers. Even when she didn't approve of a chef's methods or foods, she would avoid unkindness and find some way to say something encouraging.

It was interesting to learn about her writing, too. Julia took her cookbooks very seriously. She tested every recipe over and over. She'd call authorities to learn the chemistry of ingredients, or the best cuts of meat, or any other answer she needed. It's no wonder it took her years to complete the books. She worked hard and put in long, exhausting hours. Julia spurned cookbooks with vague recipes and made sure hers were precise in measurements and instruction. I've been trying new recipes lately and have come to appreciate those precise recipes.

I highly recommend the book. You'll enjoy getting to know a remarkable woman. Julia Child has been and continues to be one of my heroes.