We met last night, Wednesday July 21st, again on Ann Wing's deck and enjoyed a balmy, warm summer evening together talking about good books we have recently read and enjoyed. The following are the books that we discussed:
1. Geri Christensen:
(1) " The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler". This is a DVD produced by Hallmark that was aired on television last April. It is the true story of a young Catholic Polish social worker living in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II. In her work of going to the Ghettos and orphanages in the city, Irena became aware of the danger the many Jewish children faced of certain extermination and she devised a plan to try to save as many of these children as she could. She knew of the dangers she faced, not only to herself but also to the those in the underground who volunteered to help her and to the Polish mothers of individual and group homes who risked their lives to take in these children and give them the love and help that they needed. She was successful in saving 2,500 young lives before she was caught and tortured for her complicity. Ann Wing now has the video, but it is available to anyone who would like to watch it. Please return it to Geri when you are finished with it.
Geri also told about the 'Whodunnit' game. It involves reading a short mystery that has the final chapters stapled together. You then put in your guess of who the killer might be and pass it on to the next person. After we have all had a chance to read it, the last person to have the book will read the ending and then report it at our next Bookshare get-together. The winner who guesses it right gets a prize. (Chocolate, of course!) The next mystery is called "Murder on the Candlelight Tour" by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter. We will go in order of our seating last night starting with Geri, then Nancy, Sara, Marjean, Beth, Ann and Liz. If you know anyone else who might be interested, please let me know.
2. Nancy Nay:
"Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader" by Anne Fadiman. Ex Libris is an extended love letter to language and to the wonders it performs., Fadiman is a woman who loves words: in "The Joy of Sesquipedalians" (very long words), she describes an entire family besotted with them: "When I was growing up, not only did my family walk around spouting sesquipedalians, but we viewed all forms of intellectual competition as a sacrament, a kind of holy water as it were, to be slathered on at every opportunity." From very long words, it's just a short jump to literature, and Fadiman speaks joyfully of books, book collecting and book ownership. ("In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar".) In "Marrying Libraries" Fadiman describes the emotionally fraught task of merging her collection with her husband's: "After five years of marriage and a child, George and I finally resolved that we were ready for the more profound intimacy of library consolidation. It was unclear, however, how we were to find a meeting point between his English-garden approach and my French-garden one. "Perhaps some marriages could not have stood the strain of such an ordeal, but for this one, the merging of books beocmes a metaphor for the solidity of their marriage.
Over the course of 18 charming essays Fadiman ranges from the "odd shelf" ("A small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection reveals a good deal about its owner") to plagiarism("The more I've read about plagiarism, the more I've come to think that literature is one big recycling bin") to the pleasures of reading aloud ("When you read silently, only the writer performs. When you read aloud, the performance is collaborative".) Fadiman delivers these essays with the expectation that her readers will love and appreciate good books and the power of language as much as she does. Indeed, reading Ex Libris is likely to bring up warm memories of old favorites and a powerful urge to revisit one's own "old shelf" pronto. (Amazon review).
3. Sara Trivedi: (1) "Secret Daughter" by Shipi Somayn Gowda. This is the story of an American physician (internist) from Palo Alto, California who marries a man from India whom she meets while at Stanford Medical School and who goes to India to adopt a daughter (which closely shadows Sara's own life experience). The book has great authenticity and is very well written, giving both the natural and adoptive mothers' insights and feelings regarding the choices they made and the lives they ultimately lived. (2) "Pearl of China" by Anchee Min. From Amazon: In this book, the author tells the story of Pearl Buck, who was the child of Christian missionary parents spending her childhood in China and an activist who was more familiar, loving, and patriotic of her second heritage in Asia than she was of her native one. I leave it to you to look up who Pearl Buck was on Wikipedia or whatever your favorite resource may be, but for the purposes of this review I will only say that Anchee Min tells her story in a way just as vivid as she did her own story in Red Azalea. BOTTOM LINE: I ended up writing an essay for a class at Harvard comparing Anchee Min to other great Chinese-American Female Authors: Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston. (I'm not Asian by the way, but I have lived in Asia). But I have to say this is great literature on its own, not simply within the genre of Asian-American Literature or as a work by a female author. It's a great book by an author who has written other great books, and readers should be pleased with themselves to have discovered her a such an early stage in her writing career.
(3) "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. This book was discussed in an earlier Bookshare gathering, but all who have read it agree that it is one of the best new books of the year and is certain to be thought of as one of the greatest books written on Civil Rights movement in the South. There are plans to make it into a movie.3. Beth Hedengren: (1) "The Girls from Ames: The Story of Women and a Forty Year Relationship" by Jeffrey Zaslow. Mr. Zaslow is a newspaper columnist who advertised to find a group of friends who had remained close for many years and found this group from Ames, Iowa who told him their stories and he put them into this book. The author writes a column for the Wall Street Journal called "Moving On", and one piece dealing with turning points in women's friendships yielded an e-mail from one of the "Ames Girls", telling about their group of 11 who had remained friends since childhood until now, in their forties. He decided to do a year-long study of that friendship which results in this book. We get a good look at each of the girls as they're growing up and as they become adults. Amazing to me is the diversity of these women and the fact that they could all stay close for this many years. That's the beauty of the book, and of the friendship. In spite of different life philosophies, political leanings, and careers, through thick and thin (and there are plenty of life crises among them), they are always there for each other, regardless of geographic distances. Whether physically, emotionally, or both, they are there. The author does a bit of comparison with men and their close friendships, and how they differ so completely from women's friendships. But this doesn't come off as a "study". It comes off as an accolade to the diversity and the loyalty of these women who have been so blessed to have each other.
(2) "Ballet Shoes" by Noel Steatfeild is the story of three British orphans and their loving caretakers in Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes (Random, 1937). Pauline, Petrova, and Posie start life off as carefree children, but when their adopted Great Uncle Max (a.k.a. Gum) disappears on a fossil hunting expedition, the young girls find themselves becoming the breadwinners of the family. As stage performers they are able to give back to the only family they have ever known, and have their own adventures while they're at it. This charming and often humorous story stands the test of time. The strong female characters solve many conflicts on their own. In the end, each girl is also able to choose her own path in life. Sastre gives each character a distinctive voice and conveys the warmth and vivacity of the story, making this a highly enjoyable book.5. Ann Wing:(1) "The Honey Thief" by Elizabeth Graver. A mother and daughter trying to overcome trauma, loneliness and an uncertain future are not a new combination in literary fiction. But in her wise and accomplished novel, Graver navigates the crossroads in her characters' lives with compassion and skill, and tells a story that touches the heart without succumbing to sentimentality or easy answers. After 11-year-old Eva Baruch is caught shoplifting for the third time, her desperate widowed mother, Miriam, decides they must move from their apartment in lower Manhattan to a place where they can start new lives. She finds a job as a paralegal in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, and they move to a farmhouse a distance from the nearest town. Miriam seems competent and self-contained, but she has been frightened since the first year of her marriage to Francis DiLeone, and the facts about her husband's fatal heart attack when Eva was six are revealed only gradually through flashbacks. Miriam is Jewish, while Francis was the son of a fanatically Catholic mother who talks to saints; the specter of inherited mental illness haunts Miriam even as she struggles to support herself and Eva and strives to keep her daughter safe and healthy. Meanwhile, a resentful Eva, suddenly transplanted to a place where she has no friends or resources, visits Burl, a shy, middle-aged loner who has quit his career as a Philadelphia lawyer to retreat to his grandparents' farm, where he raises bees. Burl's kindness and patience in teaching Eva the intricacies of bee-keeping and honey gathering help her to quell the panic attacks that presage her kleptomania, an irresistible impulse to acquire talismans against imagined disasters. When events come to crisis, Graver wisely refrains from resolving them in a neat or romantic closure. Her touch is both subtle and honest, grounded in reality but acknowledging the essence of human striving for companionship and happiness. Her ability to create nuanced, fallible characters who doggedly strive to go on with imperfect lives adds emotional resonance to this touching tale. Readers who enjoyed Amy and Isabelle will welcome the similar sensibility they find here.
(2) "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett. In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.
Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Reuben Iglesias, the diminutive and gracious vice president, quickly gets sideways of the kidnappers, who have no interest in him whatsoever. Meanwhile, a Swiss Red Cross negotiator named Joachim Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.
With the omniscience of magic realism, Ann Patchett flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in doing so reveals a profound, shared humanity. Her voice is suitably lyrical, melodic, full of warmth and compassion. Hearing opera sung live for the first time, a young priest reflects:
Never had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that God's own voice poured from her. How far she must have gone inside herself to call up that voice. It was as if the voice came from the center part of the earth and by the sheer effort and diligence of her will she had pulled it up through the dirt and rock and through the floorboards of the house, up into her feet, where it pulled through her, reaching, lifting, warmed by her, and then out of the white lily of her throat and straight to God in heaven.J
Joined by no common language except music, the 58 international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course, something has to give, even in a novel so imbued with the rich imaginative potential of magic realism. But in a fractious world, Bel Canto remains a gentle reminder of the transcendence of beauty and love.
6. Liz Orton:
"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. Collins hasn't tied her future to a specific date, or weighted it down with too much finger wagging. Rather less 1984 and rather more Death Race 2000, hers is a gripping story set in a postapocalyptic world where a replacement for the United States demands a tribute from each of its territories: two children to be used as gladiators in a televised fight to the death.Katniss, from what was once Appalachia, offers to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, but after this ultimate sacrifice, she is entirely focused on survival at any cost. It is her teammate, Peeta, who recognizes the importance of holding on to one's humanity in such inhuman circumstances. It's a credit to Collins's skill at characterization that Katniss, like a new Theseus, is cold, calculating and still likable. She has the attributes to be a winner, where Peeta has the grace to be a good loser.It's no accident that these games are presented as pop culture. Every generation projects its fear: runaway science, communism, overpopulation, nuclear wars and, now, reality TV. The State of Panem—which needs to keep its tributaries subdued and its citizens complacent—may have created the Games, but mindless television is the real danger, the means by which society pacifies its citizens and punishes those who fail to conform. Will its connection to reality TV, ubiquitous today, date the book? It might, but for now, it makes this the right book at the right time. What happens if we choose entertainment over humanity? In Collins's world, we'll be obsessed with grooming, we'll talk funny, and all our sentences will end with the same rise as questions. When Katniss is sent to stylists to be made more telegenic before she competes, she stands naked in front of them, strangely unembarrassed. They're so unlike people that I'm no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds were pecking around my feet, she thinks. In order not to hate these creatures who are sending her to her death, she imagines them as pets. It isn't just the contestants who risk the loss of their humanity. It is all who watch.Katniss struggles to win not only the Games but the inherent contest for audience approval. Because this is the first book in a series, not everything is resolved, and what is left unanswered is the central question. Has she sacrificed too much? We know what she has given up to survive, but not whether the price was too high. Readers will wait eagerly to learn more.Megan Whalen Turner is the author of the Newbery Honor book The Thief and its sequels, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia. The next book in the series will be published by Greenwillow in 2010.
Other books that were mentioned and recommended:
"The True Story of Hansel and Gretel" by Louise Murphy. A provocative transformation of the classic fairy tale into a haunting survival story set in Poland during WWII, Murphy's second novel (after The Sea Within) is darkly enchanting. Two Jewish children, a girl of 11 and her seven-year-old brother, are left to wander the woods after their father and stepmother are forced to abandon them, frantically begging them never to say their Jewish names, but to identify themselves as Hansel and Gretel. In an imaginative reversal of the original tale, they encounter a small woman named Magda, known as a "witch" by villagers, who risks her life in harboring them. The story alternates between the children's nightmarish adventures, and their parents' struggle for survival and hope for a safe reunion. This mirror image of the fairy tale is deliberately disorienting, as Murphy describes the horrors of the outside world compared with the haven inside Magda's hut, and the fear and anguish of the other people who conspire to save the children and protect their own families, too. The na‹ve siblings are only half-conscious of much of this, though they are perfectly aware of their peril should they be discovered. The graphic details-the physical symptoms of near starvation, the infestations of lice, the effects of bitter cold-make it plain that this is the grimmest kind of fable. Eventually, the Nazis indulge in wholesale slaughter, and the children barely survive, hiding and on the run. No reader who picks up this inspiring novel will put it down until the final pages, in which redemption is not a fairy tale ending but a heartening message of hope.
"Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay. A provocative transformation of the classic fairy tale into a haunting survival story set in Poland during WWII, Murphy's second novel (after The Sea Within) is darkly enchanting. Two Jewish children, a girl of 11 and her seven-year-old brother, are left to wander the woods after their father and stepmother are forced to abandon them, frantically begging them never to say their Jewish names, but to identify themselves as Hansel and Gretel. In an imaginative reversal of the original tale, they encounter a small woman named Magda, known as a "witch" by villagers, who risks her life in harboring them. The story alternates between the children's nightmarish adventures, and their parents' struggle for survival and hope for a safe reunion. This mirror image of the fairy tale is deliberately disorienting, as Murphy describes the horrors of the outside world compared with the haven inside Magda's hut, and the fear and anguish of the other people who conspire to save the children and protect their own families, too. The na‹ve siblings are only half-conscious of much of this, though they are perfectly aware of their peril should they be discovered. The graphic details-the physical symptoms of near starvation, the infestations of lice, the effects of bitter cold-make it plain that this is the grimmest kind of fable. Eventually, the Nazis indulge in wholesale slaughter, and the children barely survive, hiding and on the run. No reader who picks up this inspiring novel will put it down until the final pages, in which redemption is not a fairy tale ending but a heartening message of hope.
Here is the recipe for Sara's wonderful chocolate oatmeal cake that she shared with us last night called "No Frost Oatmeal Cake"
Pour 1 1/2 cups boiling water over 1 cup regular oatmeal and let it stand for 10 minutes. Add the following to the oatmeal mixture and beat well:1 cup (2 cubes) butter1 c packed brown sugar1 cup white sugarThen add 2 eggs and beat well.Add gradually and beat well:1 1/2 c flour1 teasp baking soda1/2 teasp salt1 tablespoon cocoa powderStir in 1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips.Pour into a greased and floured 8x12" or 10x10"pan or glass baking dishSprinkle 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and 1/2 cup chocolate chips evenly over the top of the batter.Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes (sometimes takes longer - till not jioggling)Keeps well if kept covered.Enjoy!See you at our next Bookshare meeting that will be held on Wednesday, August 25th. (the 4th Wednesday in August.) Until then, happy reading!geri
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