Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

author's website

A friend told me she thought I'd enjoy the Maisie Dobbs series, and she was right. There are 8 in the series, so far. It's good to know that there are, I hope, more to come!

Maisie Dobbs is a young woman who started out in life as a poor girl working as a housemaid. Her employers discovered her curiosity for learning and decided to encourage her to get an education. Her life starts before WWI, but the setting of the first book is right after WWI, when she is beginning her career as an "investigator and psychologist" in London. The book goes back to describe her life story and introduce the readers to several important characters in her life and the books.

During WWI Maisie became a nurse. She goes back to finish her education after the war and then takes up her career. The books are mysteries, but they're more than just a who-done-it. You get to know Maisie deeply, and care about her and the people around her.

One thing I especially like about these books is the fact that they are set during that time right after WWI. You (or at least I) don't hear that much about that time. I've read lots of books set during or after WWII that include references to that war and its effects, but not so much with WWI.

I was talking to another friend who's read these books and she said the same thing. I told her I had heard about WWI and how a whole generation of young men was lost, the terrible trench warfare, the gassing and so on. But I had not read a book like this where you were living during the aftermath of that -- with many single women because there just were not men available for marriage.

I bought the first two books to see if I liked them, then purchased all the other 6. I read them all straight through and now am trying to be patient for the next one. I would not call them sophisticated literature or anything, but they are very well written. The fact that they aren't super deep is a point in their favor, I think. They're a fun read while still being more than just a lightweight, nothing kind of book. I highly recommend them!

Not Sure by John Suk

Link to interview w author

I liked this book very much. It gave me so much to think about.

The book is written by John Suk, a pastor -- at the time he wrote it -- of the CRC. He had been the editor of The Banner for 10 years, then took a year's sabbatical and this book mainly came from his thoughts and discoveries during that sabbatical and after. In the foreword Nicholos Wolterstorff wrote:

This book is not about loss of faith...It's a story about changes in the author's Christian faith, from the undoubting and unwavering faith of a child, through a bout with wracking doubt, to the faith of a mature adult who is able to say about many of his former certainties that he is no longer sure.

He kind of intertwines a historical look at faith with his own faith journey. It's an easy book to read, but yet very deep and thought-provoking. One of my book clubs read it last month and the members felt the same. They said they could have talked about it for a lot longer than the hour or so we had in the meeting.

Here's a good quote talking about some of his main topics.

...exploring some contemporary misconceptions about faith that have not helped me in my own journey. These include the notion that faith is having a personal relationship with Jesus, that faith has cash value, and that faith is about obedience and doctrine.

When I read that line about faith not being about having a personal relationship with Jesus, my interest was piqued right away. That's always been a problem with me -- at least the way that some people claim they can talk to and hear Jesus as easily as other people in the world. They claim Jesus told them to do something, or spoke to them in some way or other.

I remember once when my mother were at some kind of chapel event and a woman said Jesus had told her to make a particular decision in a certain way, my mom afterward said she wished Jesus would talk to her that way once in a while. So even as a kid, I grew up with some skepticism of that kind of claim. On the other hand, as a kid I imagined a personal closeness to God, and still do that sometimes now -- imagining God holding me in his arms when I'm frightened, for example, or my guardian angel walking beside me.

The part where he discusses faith having a cash value is about what he calls "pragmatic faith," where one has faith in order to receive benefits -- maybe not actually saying it that way, but believing that, because you have faith you somehow have special protection from bad things, or access to miracles others don't have. I've kind of worked through that in my mind, feeling fairly content with knowing that we have no idea what will be around the corner in our lives, but we do know Jesus will be there beside us.

Now the part about faith not being "about obedience and doctrine." That was a new perspective to me. Suk wrote, "In fact, faith became not a matter of knowing the story and caritas [Latin-Christian love of humankind; charity]; it became a matter of critical understanding and acceptance of propositions." When I read that I kind of sat back thought, I guess I have been defining faith as a belief in certain things or doctrines. It's making me think now about what it means for faith NOT to be that. What does it mean for faith to be "knowing the story and caritas"?

The parallel, intertwined look at the history of Christianity, or religion, is also interesting. Suk talks about the sort of mystical way of believing that entire societies had before everyone could read or had access to books. In a way, they were living more with the faith that is knowing the story and living a certain way rather than subscribing to certain beliefs. He parallels that with the way he, and many of us, start out as children believing in that way. Doubt is almost not applicable in that environment.

Suk attributes a big change in religion to the invention of the printing press. Once nearly everyone could read and had access to books, and as people wrote more and more about religion and beliefs, faith started to change into being about believing certain doctrines or propositions.

There's much, much more in the book but this blog is already longer than most people will probably read anyway. I highly recommend the book. I've almost read it twice already and I hope to go back to it again. I want to think more about these things.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

The author's website

I really liked this book. I guess it would be categorized as a memoir. Cheryl Strayed walked a part of the Pacific Coast Trail (kind of the West coast version of the Appalachian trail) about 14 years ago, as a young woman in her twenties, and alone.

It was shortly after her mother died, which was a traumatic event for Strayed. Of course, that would be true for most of us but Strayed really seemed to fall apart when her mother died, and it also seemed to pretty much end her family life. Her stepfather became more and more remote and married a new woman after a while. Her brother and sister did not keep contact. Cheryl pretty much went off the deep end. She got into drugs, cheated on her husband who, she said herself, was a wonderful, selfless man who loved her very much.

After several years, Cheryl decided to start hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. It was kind of a flukey thing. She had never heard of it (neither had I) and saw a brochure/booklet about it in a random store and for some reason it just stuck in her mind and she felt she needed to go.

She bought clothes and read up about the trail and hiking and stuff, but she really did not prepare much. She didn't get herself in shape. She didn't break in her shoes. She didn't manage to save up much money, either, but she did plan ahead and gave a friend boxes with supplies and money to send to various places on the dates she expected to get there. In spite of that, she had a way-overfilled backpack that she could barely lift, let alone get on her back. She walked all hunchbacked when she finally got up with it on. She called it Monster.

Her shoes were a big thing. They were too small, but even when she learned that the store would replace them with a bigger size for free, and she got the bigger size, they still did not fit right. She ended up losing most of her toenails. And besides her feet getting all messed up, she got all kinds of scrapes and stuff from the backpack hitting her in different spots. It sounded like torture. But, pushing herself through all the problems and slowly getting in shape and figuring things out somehow made it all worthwhile to her, something she feels great about. My sister-in-law, who hikes, said something about that feeling, too. It's hard to believe that would happen to me, I'm so incredibly out of shape and so hate sweating. But good for those who do, right?


Speaking of my sister-in-law, when we talked about this book (I sent a copy to her, I knew she would love it), she said the one thing she felt was missing was faith. And I felt that way, too. I wish that Cheryl had faith, as I often wish for people. I feel sorry for them. But there were a couple of references to God and faith. Here's the one that sticks most in my mind. She's talking about when her mother was dying.

I prayed and prayed, and then I faltered. Not because I couldn't find God, but because suddenly I absolutely did: God was there, I realized, and God had no intention of making things happen or not, of saving my mother's life. God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.

"God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch." Wow. I quoted that to a group of my friends the other day and they all looked shocked. But I think it's powerful. It's one of my favorite things in the book. It's so honest. It's how it feels. For me, though, even though it feels that way to me, too, it doesn't change my faith. Somehow -- by the grace of God -- I can rest in the love of my Lord and Savior, even though it seems like God is a ruthless bitch. 


I don't take comfort in thinking, either, that someday I'll understand it or somehow I'll see how the terrible thing that happened was actually a good thing. To tell the truth, I get more comfort by thinking about and imagining that God is at my side crying with me. He hates the bad, sad things that happen probably even more than I do, just as I feel terrible when something awful happens to one of my children. I know that he loves me. That's it. He loves me, he's full of infinite mercy, he's got it all in his hands.


Anyway, I absolutely enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to you. And you can get even more content by checking out Oprah's Book Club 2.0 website. She started her book club again with this book, and she's got videos of interviews and other interesting things about the author and the book.

Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction by Richard J. Mouw

link to book in Amazon

I read this book because it's the choice for my "theological book club" this month. I voted for this selection because I've wanted to learn more about both Abraham Kuyper and Richard Mouw.

Mouw begins with a reference to Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism, the "Stone Lectures" he delivered at Princeton Seminary in 1898. Mouw said, "In Kuyper's robust Calvinism I discovered what I had been looking for: a vision of active involvement in public life..."

Mouw goes on to reference what is probably Kuyper's most well known statement: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'"

And, several more sentences I highlighted:

For Kuyper, every Christian is called to be an agent of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, wherever they are called by God to serve.

He called them to organize their lives so as to show the rest of the world what it is like to live in obedience to the will of the Creator in all dimensions of human life.

The important question, of course, is: How are we to do that? How are we as Christians to work at redeemed cultural activity? What does this say to nurses and artists and lawyers and corporate managers?

Either God is at the center of our lives or something else is.

Kuyper would urge business people to see their places of work as providing important opportunities for Kingdom service.

What people need from the church is what is essential: the gospel and the way it sets forth the basic patterns for living the Christian life. Whether Christians happen to spend most of their time in our homes or in the marketplace, we need to know what is central to the biblical message and the Christian tradition, and we must be nurtured in our growth in the faith by Christian fellowship, spiritual formation, and the sacraments. For the church to be faithful in a changing world, performing these tasks well is challenge enough.

When we leave church each Sunday, we should have marching orders for service in the Kingdom.

There is so much to think about from these and the many other things written about in this book. The above list of quotes speaks to me as I continue to think about what the church's work should be. At our last book club meeting we were discussing the church and its role in the community. I was saying that I didn't think it made sense for the church to try to be a social agency unless we somehow made it a professional enterprise - with paid employees. I think it's just not feasible to expect people to work as volunteers in efforts such as food pantries or providing other social services, in addition to all the rest they do in their own lives.

When another member of the book club asked, "What do you think the church should do then, Mavis?" my answer was, "We should provide a place of worship." I don't think that's a complete, thorough answer, so I liked reading what Mouw/Kuyper said about the church and Kingdom service in all that we do.

Mouw had much to say, too, about Kuyper's understanding of grace, my very favorite thing about Christianity. There are too many to list here, but one was, "Grace, for Calvin, is simply undeserved favor," and then he goes on to discuss common grace and the way God's grace is revealed even through sinful people and our fallen creation. It gives me optimism and hope to be reminded of this.

I thought it was interesting when he started talking about the humble family meal, of all things. What a practical thing to discuss in a theological book. He talks about citizenship being in trouble, and the rise of incivility, the way we shout at each other and don't listen, and says, "One cause of all this, as I see things, is the decline of the family meal," at which, in other times, "children learned manners" and "cultivated patience -- by being forced to sit at a table for forty minutes with people they found irritating. This prepared them for citizenship." He says the church should support and strengthen families, and he also writes about the value of inter-generational worship and relationships.

All in all I got a lot of food for thought from this book. I appreciate Mouw's easy writing style and the many nuggets of wisdom he gives us.

The Girls From Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

The Girls from Ames website

I read this book at the recommendation of my friend Barb. I could see immediately why she liked it. Barb had told me about her experience with high school friends, a large group in a small town high school, and I had also seen evidence of the great love of her closest friends as she went through some incredibly tough times in her life.

When I first started reading The Girls From Ames, I wasn't sure if I'd stick with it. It seemed a little shallow and not terribly interesting at the very beginning. But as I got in further, I became more and more interested in the friendship and the women themselves.

Here's a quote that made a lot of sense to me:

Bottom line: Women talk. Men do things together. Researchers explain it this way: Women's friendships are face to face, while men's friendships are side by side. In research labs, women have even proven themselves better than men at maintaining eye contact. Women's bonds are explicit. Men's feelings for each other might be strong but their feelings are more implicit.

 The girls loved each other and stuck with each other through thick and thin, but they were not always kind, especially when they were younger. There was one event they call "the intervention" when they were quite unkind to one of the girls, giving her a bunch of negative feedback about herself. Probably most of us can relate to this kind of thing. Sometimes the urge to talk everything through can bite back, if what is being said is not constructive, or said in love. For this girl, at the age of 16, the effect of this "intervention" actually turned out to be positive, partly due to good advice from her mother, and to her own maturity:

"After feeling beat up by my friends and going home and telling my mom, she said exactly what I needed to hear. She did not go to the other moms to try to fix everything. Instead, she reminded me that I was a smart, funny, kind person who had a lot to offer and I had plenty of other friends. 

"This was a great lesson in parenting for me. It is not our job as parents, to go to coaches, teachers and other parents and try to make everything run smoothly for our kids...They're trying to make everything just right for their kids. They want a perfect world for them. But I've come to see that our job is to help our kids become people who are capable and believe in themselves enough to deal with the world..." 

In the days after the intervention, Sally says she felt the need to take an honest look at who she was. That soul-searching process turned out to be a gift she gave to herself. "...I realized that although I sometimes made mistakes, I was pretty happy with the person I had become and didn't feel the need to change for anyone. It was wonderful and comfortable and a huge relief to come to that realization..."

This group of women friends gets together every year. They've supported each other through the death of one of their own, sickness and death of children, cancer for several of them. That friendship and love is an amazing thing in their lives.

It made me appreciate the friends and friendships in my life. Friendship is certain evidence of God's love in our lives. I enjoyed reading about the friendship of these women and reflecting on my own.

Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

Hiroshima in the Morning

A friend was reading this book and said she wished someone else would read it so she could talk about it. She said a little bit about it and I thought it sounded good so I ordered it.

My friend had said that many of the reviews of Hiroshima in the Morning were all about how the author went to Japan and ended up leaving her husband and children. I was interested to hear that happen "live," when another friend said something like that when I mentioned I was reading this book. She said something along the lines of it being a book about a woman who goes by herself to Japan and discovers she likes it so much she leaves her husband and children.

I don't think that's quite an adequate summary of what the book is about. The author does go to Japan by herself, leaving her husband and two young children at home in New York City. She goes to do research for a novel she plans to write that includes the things that happened to Japanese-Americans who came back to Hiroshima right after the bomb. She was inspired by the life of her Aunt Molly. Molly was an American citizen who, like other Japanese American people, was interned during the war. Then she goes to Japan right after the bombing and sees all the devastation that caused. Then eventually she went back to the US to live the rest of her life. The author wrote, "Aunt Molly may, at that point, have been one of the few people still alive who had lived the unique Japanese American triptych of the internment, the American occupation of Japan and the atomic bomb aftermath."

At the beginning of the book the author explains that she applied for a grant she found in a journal, after being urgently encouraged to do so by her husband. To her surprise, she wins the grant and finds herself planning to leave for 6 months in Japan. She and her husband married when she was just 17, and by this point had two little boys. She writes about how she had never actually lived by herself before, and when she was first in Hiroshima on her own, she started thinking about her girlhood in Hawaii and says, "Solitude has led me back to the last time in my life when choice was not collective."

I thought that was an interesting sentence. I can relate to the feeling of freedom when I am on my own and can decide what I'll do based only on what I want, rather than wondering and trying to guess what my husband would want. When I'm with my husband I don't actually notice the "collective decision" process, but when I'm not, I do notice the difference.

As she is doing her research in Japan, the author is also working through the loss of her mother. She starts to feel her mother's presence beside her, in a way. But as time goes on, she loses that feeling of her mother's process. It seems to be a part of her process of learning to be on her own.

At first she can hardly stand the homesickness of not being with her husband and children. She and her husband are both heartbroken and even wonder why she ever decided to leave. When 9/11 happens, it deepens those feelings. At one point the boys both get the flu and the husband has to deal with two children throwing up all over, cleaning them and the house up all on his own.

After a while he begins to resent the fact that he's carrying the entire burden alone, and doesn't even read or listen to her talk about what she's accomplishing. When he and the boys come to visit her in Japan, it's pretty much a fiasco. A few times she needs to meet with people for whom she's waited a long time to get an appointment, and he doesn't see why her work should take precedence at any time while they are there visiting.

She draws a comparison of the before and after of her relationship with her husband, 9/11 and Hiroshima and the bomb:

So there is that moment, then; the last breath of before: when life is about to change, utterly and forever, into something we have no way to conceive of. When the trajectory is already being drawn and there is no way to stop it.

Have we been living in that moment all along?

This talk of the "before moment" sticks in my mind. It goes along with my constant feeling that we never know what will happen in the next moment or hour or day of our lives. This feeling started when my brother called to tell me he had been diagnosed with ALS, and then 6 months later he was gone. One moment he was there, then he wasn't. We never know what's around the next curve; all we do know is that Christ will be there with us.

I didn't see in the book exactly when the author and her husband actually divorced, but I assume they did. In the book she ends when she goes back home after the six months. The afterword is 10 years later and she just says that her "marriage unravels." She calls the book a memoir, and that's what it is, a memoir of her 6 months in Japan.

I found the author to be a sympathetic person. Reading her thoughts and memories as she is living away from her husband and children, I feel convinced that she loves them. I don't feel like I can condemn her for deciding to leave them, and that isn't the central subject of her memoir, although coming to the point where you can see that her marriage is unravelling is a part of the story, for sure.

It was interesting to read about her finding her way in Japan, not easy in Hiroshima where many people do not speak English. It was also very interesting to read the accounts from the people who lived through the bomb. At first when she tried to get the witnesses' stories, they seemed to kind of recite a story, but after 9/11 they opened up more and told honest, more open stories of what they had seen and how they had felt. Incredible what they went through.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson's website

As I was reading this book I realized I had "met" one of the characters before -- Jackson Brodie. I saw "Case Histories" on "Masterpiece Theater" and thought it was good. It was fun to run across him again. Now I plan to track him down in all the books he's in.

Don't you love that the British love mysteries? I'm so glad they respect them and seem to afford their authors as much respect as novelists and other writers. I'm an anglophile and a always attracted to a British mystery. My Netflix queue is full of them. My son is disgusted that every time he turns around we're watching another one.

Anyway, When Will There Be Good News was a good book. It starts with the story of a horrible, random murder of a mother and 2 of her children as they were walking home from the bus stop. The 3rd child, the middle daughter, runs away, hides in the tall wheat and survives. After telling that story it cuts to a man who seems to be stalking a little boy and possibly preparing to kidnap him. Then it starts a chapter named "The Life and Adventures of Reggie Chase, Containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings, and Complete Career of the Chase Family." Reggie is a young woman working as a nanny for Dr. Hunter.

Pretty soon all of this connects and you realize who is who. It may sound confusing but I promise you if I can understand it, anyone can. I don't often work hard to retain a lot of details as I'm reading -- or maybe I should say I am not able to retain a lot of details as I'm reading -- and I got what was going on and the back stories with no problem. Probably most people would have understood it all sooner, but, whatever, it's not an issue, in fact it's just a fun book to read.

I liked the characters. It was fun to be in Reggie's head and hear what and how she thought. Jackson Brodie is a good character who's interesting to get to know. He's an ex-detective, by the way, who ends up being instrumental in solving the mystery. Louise, the actual detective, is also someone I liked getting acquainted with. Even the minor characters, even the ones who do bad things, are well written.

As far as the plot, Dr. Hunter and her baby disappear and Reggie is pretty much the only one who doesn't believe Dr. Hunter's husband's story that she went to be with a sick aunt. There's a big railroad crash that eventually connects Reggie with Jackson, and she also tries to get Louise to investigate the disappearance. At first Louise dismisses Reggie, but she comes around.

I pretty much devoured the book, just kept reading and turning the pages and loving being in it. I believe I'll be starting a Kate Atkinson "jag" any day now.

Still by Lauren Winner

Lauren Winner's website

I heard Lauren Winner speak at the Faith & Writing Festival one year. It was several years ago and she seemed quite young but I liked her a lot. I liked the way she just said whatever, even if it wasn't something you'd expect from a literary, highly educated writer.

This book, Still, has the subtitle "Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis." It's written shortly after Winner divorced her husband of, I think, 7 years. Winner grew up "with a Jewish father and a lapsed Baptist mother who had agreed to raise my sister and me as Jews." She writes that she loved Judaism and everything that went with it - the food, the songs, even "every letter of the Hebrew alphabet." But in college she had a dream about Jesus, read Jan Karon's Mitford novels, bought a Book of Common Prayer and after graduating from college she was baptized. After seeing her at the Festival I read and enjoyed her book Girl Meets God: On the Path to Spiritual Life.


I suppose you could compare Lauren Winner to Anne Lamott, who I love, but I didn't even think of that until now, when I was trying to figure out how to write about Winner and this book. It is a memoir about faith, as some of Lamott's books have been, but Winner has a very different style of writing. She's more serious, for one, although not heavy or preachy or anything like that.

Winner is writing about "middle" in this book. She feels she's in a mid-Faith crisis, when she is no longer as certain and joyful in her faith as she was in the past. Yet even while she expresses doubt, I never felt she'd lost her faith. One thing I thought was notable is that she continued to go to church, to kind of go through the motions, even when she didn't feel like it, and she found that was good. It helped. That's good to hear.

I liked all the meditations and musings on the word "middle." I had never heard of the "middle voice," a grammatical term. She says that we don't have the middle voice in English but it's found in ancient Greek, Sanskrit and some other languages. She says it's "somewhere between the agent and the one acted upon. When you have something done to you. I will have myself carried. I will have myself saved." She said she started listening for hints of the middle in English and heard it in sentences like "That scotch drank smoothly; politicians bribe easily." She says the middle voice is used "when the subject has some caracteristic, some quality, that makes it partly responsible for whatever has happened in the sentence...The subject is changed....but the subject is not just being...acted upon; something in its own qualities...is necessary for the action, too--if the scotch weren't smooth, it wouldn't drink well."

I don't know why I think that is so interesting, but I do. She writes about middle verbs being verbs that "name a change in bodily posture but not much motion (lie down, kneel). Also...verbs for speech actions with emotional overtones (confess), verbs of cognition (think), and verbs of spontaneous happening (grow, become, change) and she says "these middle verbs...are religious; they are the very actions that constitute a religious life: to forgive, to imagine, to grow, to yearn, to lament, to meet, to kneel." Cool. Never thought of that.

Finally she writes, "If I could make English speak middle, I would use it to say this: I wait; I doubt; as the deer yearns for a drink of water, so I yearn. I long. I praise."


I highlighted this quote from a historian Christopher Grasse who, she said, was writing about the religious late-eighteenth-century America: "Faith...meant more than intellectual assent to a set of doctrines. It was a commitment of the whole self, a hope and trust that, if genuine, ought to be the foundation of an entire way of life and vision of the world."

I also liked this: "I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God."

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

"Fresh Air" interview w Isaacson

Steve Jobs is a fascination. He was so mysterious. You heard so many rumors about him, you saw him on t.v., you heard him quoted, you were amazed at the products his company produced, he was like a rock star for many of his years yet he disappeared from the news for quite a space of time. He started Apple, they kicked him out, he came back, Apple became amazing.

Reading this biography was very enjoyable to me. I wanted to know more about Steve Jobs, what he was like as a person and as the man who ran Apple. It was great that Jobs gave Isaacson so much access to himself.

I came away thinking that it would have been hard to live or work for Jobs. I have a feeling I would have been unhappy if I'd actually ever been around him. He was unkind, more than that he was just plain mean to people. He loved his wife and kids but he was still odd and basically selfish.

One thought in my mind after reading about how Apple started and some of the people who worked there and had the ideas that produced the products such as the ipod, ipad, the Mac and so on was I wondered if he, or Apple, would have been as successful as they were if he had not been such a difficult person to work for. Would they have succeeded if he'd actually treated his co-workers with respect?

Some people who worked for him said they didn't think so. They felt like when he made them feel so bad, it inspired them to prove him wrong. I'm sure that's true for some people. But I thought that one incident in the book showed he probably could have succeeded without being so mean. There was one time when Jobs was talking to a supplier about what he wanted. The supplier was saying there was no way he could give Jobs the product he wanted and no way do it in the time Jobs wanted. Jobs stared at him in the way he was famous for staring at people, and said something like yes, he could do it. And he told the supplier not to be afraid, he knew he could do it. And the supplier did it. To me, that shows that he could have worked that way with others and gotten results, too. But who knows?

Anyway, I thought it was a good book. I plan to reread it sometime to refresh myself on the details. There's no doubt he was an incredible person who made a company that created some amazing things.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

New York Times Article

I liked Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking and I liked this one, too. They are similar in that they are both memoirs about the death of a beloved family member. Magical Thinking was written during the year after her husband suddenly and unexpectedly died, and Blue Nights is about surviving the death of her daughter, who died tragically young.

You'd think these would be depressing books but for some reason they did not affect me that way. When other people say about a book that it has beautiful writing, I immediately become skeptical that I won't like the book. I'm all about the story, I think, and often say. But these books by Joan Didion are not books with a story of the traditional sort - with the beginning at the beginning, then the middle, then the end. They are like listening to Didion's thoughts.

I could say that I like them because she so eloquently says what I feel, what I think we all feel when such sad, inexplicable things happen. One of the reasons I admire writers is their ability to do that -- to express what I feel, but so much better than I can. And that is one of the reasons I like these books.

But you wouldn't think that would be enough to make you turn the pages and keep reading the whole book. Just because she is so good at expressing feelings isn't enough. But I can't really figure out how to say much more than that about why I like the books.

Another thing that makes my liking of the books somewhat surprising is that Joan Didion has no faith, or at least she does not profess any faith or belief. She doesn't even bring up the subject of what she believes. She certainly does not say that her faith is giving her strength and helping her to get through these tragic events. And it seems impossible to me to even understand how anyone can get through things like this without faith. Yet I admire the way she gets through them.

I read this book from Kindle on my iPad. A nice little bonus in that format is it includes three videos of Joan Didion reading chapters 1, 2 and 7. The filmmaker does a good job showing scenes of Joan in her apartment, in New York, the city skyline, and so on. I love the smell, feel and look of paper books, but I do also love the richness of this kind of additional material in digital books.

True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy

So, yeah, this is Ted Kennedy's memoir. I probably would not have picked it from a shelf, but someone loaned it to me and said they'd enjoyed it. Now I can't remember who loaned it to me. I thought it was my friend Sally but she says it's not her. I can picture her face in my mind telling me she'd gravitated to the biographies and picked this up -- but I've got the wrong face in my brain. Hopefully it'll come to me or someone will ask.

Anyway, I did enjoy the book. It was interesting to read about him growing up in that nearly mythical Kennedy family. Ted was quite a lot younger than Jack and Robert but he was highly influenced by them. And they did a lot for him.

I liked the tone of Ted Kennedy's book. He wasn't bragging and he wasn't being defensive. He seemed to be trying to be honest. I believe that by the time he was writing this he knew he was near the end of his life.

I wondered what he'd write about the "Chappaquiddick incident." He didn't go into a lot of detail, but he did tell the story. I actually never heard any accounting of the whole story -- only the bits about how he had gotten himself out of the water but not the woman he was with, Mary Jo Kopechne.

He wrote that they were only acquaintances who'd met that night at a gathering. When she needed a ride to the ferry, he was happy to have the excuse to leave. Then there was the accident and the car slipped off a bridge into the water. He says that he can't even remember how he got out of the car and he dived back in for Mary Jo many times and couldn't see her. He hoped she'd gotten out but was afraid she hadn't; he got help and others also dived in and could not see her.

About the hours after the accident he wrote that they have been "copiously recorded....my devising and rejecting scenarios with Joe and the others...; swimming across the channel...; elaying in reporting the accident. My actions were inexcusable." He also said he's lived with the guilt of causing an innocent woman's death for years and felt that he should atone for it.

After reading about all that he did and tried to do, I think it's a shame that he was not able to make the big changes in healthcare that he was working for. I wish he would have succeeded. Our healthcare is so terribly messed up, and he did honestly seem to have devoted most of his political life to trying to ensure that everyone, regardless of their income or status, would have the basic health care that everyone needs.

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

Our book club chose this "old school" book. Alexandre Dumas is most famous for having written The Three Musketeers. This book is much shorter than that one.

It's set in Holland, and the title is referring to an actual flower. The government offered a large prize to anyone who could produce a truly black tulip, and the quest to get that prize is central to the plot.

The beginning of the book is quite exciting. Two men are fleeing for their lives from a mob who thinks they are traitors and liars. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what the two men did but some papers they had hidden with a friend led us into the actual story. That friend, Cornelius Van Baerle (Dutch enough for you?), is the main character.

Cornelius has not read the hidden papers, and has actually almost forgotten them. He took on a quiet life, devoting himself to gardening and breeding tulips, trying to produce that pure black tulip. Because of the papers he is arrested and put in jail. In prison he falls in love with the guard's daughter and entrusts her with the 3 bulbs that he is sure will produce a black tulip. His fiendish neighbor, though, is watching and determined to steal the bulb. He does, but his evil plans are foiled in the end.

This is a good story. It's a little old fashioned but not enough to bother you. The story moves along like a rollicking movie. I felt like I could see the characters, scenes, landscape and action in my mind. According to Wikipedia, it has been made into a movie and BBC miniseries. It'd be fun to see a movie version.

I'm glad to have read this. If you want a good, historical adventure, I recommend The Black Tulip.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

I didn't think I was going to like this book. I thought it might be old fashioned or boring or something but it turned out I did like it.

The book is set in Vietnam, in the 1950's, I believe, when the French were fighting there. The main characters are a British reporter, Fowler, and an American man, Pyle.

There's a sort of love story/love triangle but it's probably not fair to call it love. Fowler is living with a Vietnamese woman named Phuong and Pyle falls in love with her. Phuong wants to marry a man who will take her out of Vietnam. Once she feels that won't happen with Fowler, she goes with Pyle. That's why it might not really qualify as love.

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass

I enjoyed this book. The main character is Greenie, wife of Alan, mother of George. They live in a small apartment in New York. Greenie started her own business as a baker, and Alan is a psychoanalyst. George is 4 years old.

Greenie gets a call from the assistant to New Mexico's governor who has tasted her coconut cake and fallen in love with it. He asks her to come to New Mexico and be his chef. She decides to do it, as a kind of adventure. She takes George and goes out to New Mexico. Alan stays in New York. Greenie ends up loving New Mexico and encourages Alan to join them so he begins to "wean" his patients (which are very few anyway) and prepares to move.

But that move doesn't happen. Greenie meets an old boyfriend and falls in love with him. She decides to separate from Alan. Some things happen that end up with Alan taking George back to New York with him. Then September 11 happens and everything changes again.

It sounds kind of shallow as I describe it, and I was kind of disgusted with Greenie for leaving Alan. But she still was a likeable character. There are a lot of other characters, too. The governor, his assistant, the restaurant owner next door, the bookstore owner across the street, a woman named Saga who has brain damage from an accident, memories of Greenie's mother. Somehow it all works. I liked the characters and the writing. It was a good story that kept me turning the pages. I enjoyed being in New York and New Mexico, especially New Mexico. I thought it was a good presentation of what marriage can feel like, too.

It was interesting to read a novel with September 11 as an event within it. That's a first for me. The author described one of the characters in New York looking out her window and seeing paper falling like snow. I suppose that happened. I had not thought of it, although I saw the photos of all the debris at the towers and on the people there at the scene. It sounds like paper fell in a similar way to ashes falling when a volcano happens.

I recommend this book, and I think I'll try another book by Julia Glass. The book references "the National Book Award-Winning" Three Junes. That sounds familiar; I'm not sure if I've read it or not.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

I liked this book a lot. At first I thought it was kind of confusing. There were a lot of characters, and their names were either Japanese or Dutch, both kind of strange to remember, although the Dutch ones had a ring of familiarity. But it wasn't long before I was caught up in the story and enjoying it very much.

Jacob De Zoet works for the Dutch East Indies Company in Japan, in 1799. I didn't (and still don't) know much about this period of Japan's history, but the book talked about it being after Japan had thrown out all the Christians, and killed many, then tried to keep themselves isolated from the Western world. But they did allow the Dutch Indies Company to have this one port and conduct trade.

The Japanese were so anti-Christian that they actually had a holiday where the people stepped on a picture of Jesus and gave an oath to declare their hatred of Christianity. There were "Hidden Christians" who were killed if discovered. The people of the Dutch East Indies Company were not allowed to bring any religious material into the country. Jacob, though, smuggled in a Psalter, of the Dutch Reformed Church, which had been his great grandfather's. It had a bullet hole where the book had stopped a bullet while being carried by his great grandfather during a war. Jacob felt he could not be so disloyal as to give up that Psalter so he hid it among many other books and hoped it would not be discovered.

It turned out his translator did see it but did not inform on Jacob. This translator had loved and wanted to marry a woman named Aibagawa, but his family would not let him marry her. Aibagawa is a midwife and, rare for a Japanese woman, was studying medicine with a doctor from the company. Jacob becomes infatuated with her, but they cannot pursue a relationship either and Aibagawa is sent to what is almost like a convent run by a secret society.

The author goes back and forth between Jacob and Aibagawa as the story unfolds. He does a good job of telling enough from one character's perspective before changing to the other. I did not get at all frustrated at the switches. There are even a few places where other characters are telling the story and that works, too.

I thought it was interesting to be in another time and country like that, and to get to know these characters. I would definitely recommend it.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

So very British. That's this novel -- Anglophiles, you'll love it.

I was trying to underline very British-sounding sentences but, of course, I got caught up in the story and only remembered once or twice. Here are a few.

And yet there was that fine line across which one might be betrayed into womanish fretting over details...He decided that perhaps he would undertake a brief, manly attempt at carpentry...

...the color seemed incongruous, thought the Major, in a woman who preferred mushroom-brown tweeds. Today's dull burgundy and black blouse and dark green stockings would have rendered her invisible in any mildly wet woodland. 

"My dear lady, what is there to fear?" he said. "Except putting the other ladies quite in the shade."

"Oh, it's simple pragmatism, Dad. It's called the real world. If we refused to do business with the morally questionable,...then where would we all be?"  "On a nice dry spit of land known as the moral high ground?" suggested the Major.

The Major wished young men wouldn't think so much. It always seemed to result in absurd revolutionary movements or, as in the case of several of his former pupils, the production of very bad poetry.

The story is about Major Pettigrew who lives in a small British village. He is a widower with one grown son. When the story begins, the Major's brother has just died. He and his brother each have a "Churchill gun," a pair of valuable guns which their father had given them with the dying promise that they would be joined back together as a pair when one of the brothers died. The other main character is Jasmina Ali, a woman of Pakistani background who owns and runs a shop in the village. She, too, has lost her spouse and her nephew is helping her to run the shop, which sounds kind of like a 7-11, a convenience store where they have a little bit of everything but no one does their full shopping there.

The Major and Mrs. Ali start to enjoy each others' company. They both love books and they like to talk and spend time with each other. This is a little extraordinary because there is some prejudice against the two of them having a relationship, including from Jasmina's nephew and family.

There are several other characters who play a part in the story -- the Major's son, Mrs. Ali's nephew, a young woman who has a child who turns out to be the nephew's, a nice woman in the village who seems like a more perfect match for the Major, and the Lord of the manor in the village.

An exciting climax happens when the nephew threatens to kill himself. Everything isn't tied up into a completely happy ending for all concerned, but it definitely is wrapped up well & tidily at the end.

I highly recommend this book. I felt it was charming and just a joy to read.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

I finished The Postmistress this week. I liked it a lot. It definitely kept me turning the pages. In fact, I finished it very late at night because I didn't want to stop reading.

The book starts with a kind of prelude where one of the characters is seemingly at a dinner party and asks, "What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?" Those first couple pages are written in first person, by one of the main characters, Frances Bard, a woman who'd been a reporter with Edward Murrow, in England, in the years before the US joined World War II.

Then it switches to third person and gets into the full story. Most of the characters come from a small town in Maine. There's Iris, the postmistress (except the author says it is incorrect in the US to say postmistress even when the person is female); Emma a young wife of the town doctor; and Henry, Iris' boyfriend. The author begins with these Maine characters -- Iris realizing she's falling in love at  rather a late age with Henry, Emma ecstatic at being loved by her husband Will, the doctor, after a fairly unloved childhood.

We pick up with Frances, called Frankie, the reporter, in London. It doesn't state it explicitly but you get the feeling that Frankie is thrilled to be working with Murrow, living in such exciting times and reporting on it all.

The lives of the characters in Maine progress, and it's fun to read about it. Because of a crucial event in his career, the doctor decides to go to London to help in the war effort. When he and Frankie end up together in a bomb shelter, the stories and characters become connected.

I won't give away any more. I recommend the book. I felt like I got a little better feeling of what it felt like to be in that time, which seems kind of limbo-like to me just because the US wasn't in the war yet -- and how strange is that since I wasn't even alive then? Anyway, good writing, excellent storytelling, characters you like getting to know.

A note - Stars & Ebooks

I've decided to try to go back in the blog and use the labels to indicate a star rating, from 0 to 5, kind of like grades A through F. That way these ratings will be listed under "Labels" and it will be possible to find books by their rating.

On another subject, I've felt almost guilty that the last several books I've read have been on my iPad using Kindle. I love physical books. I love their smell and feel and look. I love sitting surrounded by them in my library. I feel conflicted about not purchasing them or going to the library for them. My plan is that if I think I'll re-read a book because I think it's so good, I will purchase it. And I know that I won't purchase all my books that way. It's a changing world. Even a big chain bookstore like Borders is going bankrupt. I wonder how it will all turn out.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken is by Laura Hillenbrand, who wrote Seabiscuit. I like both these books. Hillenbrand is a good writer who can make non-fiction interesting. I don't read as much non-fiction as fiction but I've always liked biographies because they are still a story.

My brother and father both mentioned reading this book, which is why I picked it up. It's about Louis Silvie Zamperini. I'd never heard of him but it turns out he was quite a famous runner. He came close to breaking the 4-minute mile record back in the days when everyone was trying to beat that mark.

The book tells about his childhood. It sounds like he was a naughty boy and got into more serious trouble in his teenage years, but his brother encouraged him to put his energies into running and that turned out to be something he could do well at. He went to the Olympics and would have continued competing in running except the war started -- World War II.

Louis joined up and became a bombadier. I never knew that the saying "bombs away" came from such a literal source. As a bombadier Louis would sit by the bomb doors, open them, and when the bombs had gone out he'd yell, "Bombs away!" so the pilot knew he could start climbing higher.

Louis was in the Pacific arena in the war. It was interesting to read about the way the war went over there, some of the strategies and reasons the U.S. was fighting for these islands, and also the way the mechanical abilities of the planes had a lot to do with those strategies. That may sound dry but, trust me, it wasn't, which is why I say that Hillenbrand is good at making non-fiction interesting.

Louis' plane was shot down and he was one of 3 survivors. The tale of their survival for more than 3 weeks on an inflatable raft is amazing. One of the 3 died during that time and then Louis and the other, the pilot, were captured. Japanese prisoners of war had a horrible time, much worse than those taken in Europe, another thing I had never known. Louis' experiences in prison were horrible and unforgettable.

After the war Louis' body had been so wrecked by prison that he couldn't go back to running. He bacame a kind of celebrity for the military but started drinking and went into a downward spiral. He also started to be obsessed about killing a particularly horrible Japanese officer who had singled Louis out for torture during the war. Hillenbrand also chronicles that officer's life.

Louis' wife persuaded him to attend a Billy Graham crusade. What Graham said affected him so much and reminded him of his childhood plus the promises he'd made to God during the war and he absolutely turned his life around. He opened a nonprofit boys camp where he helped boys learn how to turn their lives around, too. He also went on speaking tours and was given many awards. He lived a long, active life, even skiing at the age of 90.

As you read the book you get to know other people important in Louis' life, such as the pilot who survived the plane crash and prison with him, his brother, and others. I just found it very interesting to get to know Louis and these others and to hear how they lived and changed.

Never in My Wildest Dreams by Belva Davis

I read this book for a book club. My overall assessment is that it was good, rather more interesting because it is about a "local girl" but I didn't feel like it was extremely well written or compelling.

Belva Davis is a journalist/reporter in the Bay Area. She was born in Louisiana but nearly immediately was given to her Aunt Ophelia and her husband, who had no children, to be cared for by them. When Belva was 3 her aunt died and Belva then went back to her mother & father's home and for the rest of her childhood was shuffled around from one part of the family to another. She wasn't always badly treated, but she was pretty much unwanted, there was a period where she was molested by one of her male relatives, and when her father was under the influence of drugs and alcohol she was abused, so her childhood was an unhappy one. It got to a point where Belva was ready to commit suicide. She didn't do that but she did decide to escape somehow.

By high school they were living in Berkeley and she attended Berkeley High. They were integrated but Belva experience many instances of discrimination, at places of business refusing to serve her and many other things.  She got married at 18  and had two kids. Belva worked throughout her marriage and eventual divorce. Eventually she started to write and became a reporter. She had many jobs around the Bay Area and ended up with a career at NPR.

It was interesting to read about the experience of growing up as a black woman, especially as she was experiencing the changes that happened in the '60's and '70's. When I try to figure out why I didn't particularly love the book, I think it's because I didn't feel like I got to know her well enough. When I read of all that she went through, it is a marvel that she turned out so strong and successful, but I feel like I didn't really learn how that happened.

So, a pretty good book.