This book catches everyone's attention with its title, taken from Darwin's exaggerated account of Captain's Cook's first interaction with the Maori people. The book tells two stories: one is of the author falling in love with a Maori man while doing post-graduate research in New Zealand, and the other is of the explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries and their interactions with the indigenous people of New Zealand. The parallel is well-done.
Thompson did a good job balancing both stories. Her own life is fascinating, as she and her eventual husband adjust to life together while they are living all over the world. The historical pieces held my attention equally - Thompson uses a combination of letters, historical documents, and other books to put together a coherent and reasonably complete account of several hundreds' years worth of interactions between Europeans and Maoris. And I wasn't bored.
Earlier this year I read Paradise Lost and that was an interesting background for this book. The tragedies on Pitcairn Island detailed in Paradise Lost had their genesis in the clash between Europeans and indigenous people - a theme Thompson returns to several times in her narrative. Another point of reference I had was Hulme's The Bone People, which I had read several years ago - the fictional account of a small group of Maori. Thompson's description of her husband and his extended family didn't come right out of The Bone People but was not inharmonious with it either. Together, these three books were interesting to think of together in learning a little something about that part of the world.
Even taken alone, Thompson's book was a good read - serious scholarly work to be sure, but also personal, making a good combination.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
A few years ago, I enjoyed See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, so when Shanghai Girls came out I put it on my library queue. Yes, I know the cool kids have Netflix queues, but I have a library queue. In any case, I shouldn't have been in such a rush because it was not one of the best things I've read this year.
The story follows two sisters who grow up in Shanghai in the mid 1930's with every privilege. Suddenly, their father is bankrupted and he promises them to Chinese men living in the U.S. to pay off his debt. Young, naive, and reluctant, they go to America and their lives change completely.
While See's writing is very good and the story moved quickly, I didn't get that 'into' the book. The narrator, who is the older sister, had a detached style of storytelling. While this may have been an attempt to create a character who protected herself by being unemotional, it ended up creating a character who I didn't care enough about. There were also a few parts of the book where ostensibly large secrets were revealed, but they weren't surprising to me at all.
What kept me most interested in the book was the descriptions of the environs in which the sisters lived, both in Shanghai and in Los Angeles. See did a great job of describing scenes on the street, interiors of stores and restaurants, and details around everyday life that transported me to the settings she was describing. In Shanghai, it was the upper-class life the girls lived, and in Los Angeles it was the tourist-friendly Chinatown that was alien to the Chinese characters. I wish See had made the characters and story as compelling as the settings were.
The story follows two sisters who grow up in Shanghai in the mid 1930's with every privilege. Suddenly, their father is bankrupted and he promises them to Chinese men living in the U.S. to pay off his debt. Young, naive, and reluctant, they go to America and their lives change completely.
While See's writing is very good and the story moved quickly, I didn't get that 'into' the book. The narrator, who is the older sister, had a detached style of storytelling. While this may have been an attempt to create a character who protected herself by being unemotional, it ended up creating a character who I didn't care enough about. There were also a few parts of the book where ostensibly large secrets were revealed, but they weren't surprising to me at all.
What kept me most interested in the book was the descriptions of the environs in which the sisters lived, both in Shanghai and in Los Angeles. See did a great job of describing scenes on the street, interiors of stores and restaurants, and details around everyday life that transported me to the settings she was describing. In Shanghai, it was the upper-class life the girls lived, and in Los Angeles it was the tourist-friendly Chinatown that was alien to the Chinese characters. I wish See had made the characters and story as compelling as the settings were.
Assorted Nuts by Sandy Bax
Disclosure: The author of this book is someone I know, and some of the people in her story are close friends of mine. This made it hard to be objective -- but it's fair to say that this book stands out as incredibly honest and, at times, side-splittingly funny among what I've read this year. It's not a perfect book but I am awed that someone I know could have written an entire book from scratch just because one day she sat down and decided to start doing it. I am also flattered to have received a pre-release copy which really made me feel like a serious book critic.
The book is a memoir, one that is built around the author's daughter's wedding, but told almost entirely in flashbacks. Bax covers a range of topics, including her childhood, several marriages, having a child, substance abuse, and breast cancer. Nothing is too private for Bax to share in the book, which is probably her most important characteristic as an author - her complete transparency in telling the stories with all their details. Bax's voice is clear throughout, and knowing her, I know it's authentic. I found myself laughing out loud (to the chagrin of a car full of Amtrak passengers) at several parts, and appreciating how important humor had been to Bax throughout her life.
Bax is a great storyteller which is not true of every memoirist. There are reflective parts of the book where my attention wandered a little but I was always drawn back in by the next set of anecdotes, fresh and cleverly told. From stories about her childhood with her siblings to later interactions with her ailing mother (and everything in between), she has a way of telling a story that is powerful: the story represents a particular incident but also encapsulates a stage of her life in just a few paragraphs.
If there's one thing about the book I would have wanted to be different it's that certain parts of the book (most notably Bax's childhood and first marriage) were told slowly with plenty of detail while other pieces (such as the sections on breast cancer and alcoholism) were given proportionally shorter airtime. Given the bravery of the author in sharing intimate details, perhaps it was easier to write at length about the parts of her life that had happened longer ago. Whatever the case, I was invested enough in the story and the journey she was going through that I could have read an entire book about her life through her daughter's birth, then another book about the more recent years.
That said, the structure of the book, as a series of trips into different parts of her life as she's reflecting on all of this at her daughter's wedding, is a nice way for her to cover a lot of material without needing tell a continuous narrative. Now, I happen to know that Sandy just became a grandmother - again. Hopefully she is taking some notes on the experience that will one day become a sequel - may I suggest A Little Nuts - about the grandkids.
Congratulations, Sandy.
The book is a memoir, one that is built around the author's daughter's wedding, but told almost entirely in flashbacks. Bax covers a range of topics, including her childhood, several marriages, having a child, substance abuse, and breast cancer. Nothing is too private for Bax to share in the book, which is probably her most important characteristic as an author - her complete transparency in telling the stories with all their details. Bax's voice is clear throughout, and knowing her, I know it's authentic. I found myself laughing out loud (to the chagrin of a car full of Amtrak passengers) at several parts, and appreciating how important humor had been to Bax throughout her life.
Bax is a great storyteller which is not true of every memoirist. There are reflective parts of the book where my attention wandered a little but I was always drawn back in by the next set of anecdotes, fresh and cleverly told. From stories about her childhood with her siblings to later interactions with her ailing mother (and everything in between), she has a way of telling a story that is powerful: the story represents a particular incident but also encapsulates a stage of her life in just a few paragraphs.
If there's one thing about the book I would have wanted to be different it's that certain parts of the book (most notably Bax's childhood and first marriage) were told slowly with plenty of detail while other pieces (such as the sections on breast cancer and alcoholism) were given proportionally shorter airtime. Given the bravery of the author in sharing intimate details, perhaps it was easier to write at length about the parts of her life that had happened longer ago. Whatever the case, I was invested enough in the story and the journey she was going through that I could have read an entire book about her life through her daughter's birth, then another book about the more recent years.
That said, the structure of the book, as a series of trips into different parts of her life as she's reflecting on all of this at her daughter's wedding, is a nice way for her to cover a lot of material without needing tell a continuous narrative. Now, I happen to know that Sandy just became a grandmother - again. Hopefully she is taking some notes on the experience that will one day become a sequel - may I suggest A Little Nuts - about the grandkids.
Congratulations, Sandy.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Strand Bookstore
Web and I got to New York Saturday around 3 and headed down to Union Square. We checked out the farmer's market then went to the Strand Bookstore - famous for having "18 miles of books".
And it felt like we walked through all the 18 miles! The first floor had a great selection of tables laid out with popular books and the Strand's customers' top 80 books. (Interestingly, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Wells, which I had never heard of but Jo recently recommended was among the top 80.) It was my first look at Eggers' Wild Things with its furry cover. Also on the first floor was a huge selection of cookbooks and fiction. I could have moved in there. The basement and third floor had non-fiction, including huge sections on art and design. Each major section had a table for the top books in that section, an option I really liked. They seemed to intersperse New and Used books in all the sections.
The top floor, only accessible by elevator, had been recommended to me by Kung...it had special editions and rare books. The first thing we both noticed getting off the elevator was the delightfully musty smell of old books. It was fun to see unedited galleys and very old editions. It was obvious that serious work went on there assessing and repairing books.
Of course we bought two books from downstairs: Seeing by Jose Saramago (the sequel to Blindness), and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Web's lucky he got me to leave the store at all.
And it felt like we walked through all the 18 miles! The first floor had a great selection of tables laid out with popular books and the Strand's customers' top 80 books. (Interestingly, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Wells, which I had never heard of but Jo recently recommended was among the top 80.) It was my first look at Eggers' Wild Things with its furry cover. Also on the first floor was a huge selection of cookbooks and fiction. I could have moved in there. The basement and third floor had non-fiction, including huge sections on art and design. Each major section had a table for the top books in that section, an option I really liked. They seemed to intersperse New and Used books in all the sections.
The top floor, only accessible by elevator, had been recommended to me by Kung...it had special editions and rare books. The first thing we both noticed getting off the elevator was the delightfully musty smell of old books. It was fun to see unedited galleys and very old editions. It was obvious that serious work went on there assessing and repairing books.
Of course we bought two books from downstairs: Seeing by Jose Saramago (the sequel to Blindness), and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Web's lucky he got me to leave the store at all.
Monday, October 12, 2009
City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
I noticed this book reviewed on one of the book blogs I read and bumped it up in the queue since I had just read Eggers' Zeiton and wanted to compare the two stories about New Orleans. While Eggers' was non-fiction and this was a novel, I came out of the two books with reversed reactions - Eggers told a story while Piazza's best accomplishment with this book was a reasonably comprehensive view of New Orleans in the months after Katrina.
Surprisingly, reading this book felt much more like reading non-fiction. There were two families whose lives the book followed and certainly their stories were compelling, but it was the city of New Orleans itself that he seemed to take the most care in characterizing. The characters were reasonably predictable in their concerns and their conflicts, and he made some easy choices: for example, making one of the families affluent and white while the other was poor and black, and making one of the main characters a newspaper reporter. But I forgave Piazza his trite setup for his portrait of the pure devastation and ruin that New Orleans experienced.
During Hurricane Katrina, Web and I had been traveling in Argentina. Skillfully avoiding televisions and newspapers to fully immerse ourselves in the culture there, we had little idea what was going on at home until we got back about a week after the storm. It was hard to understand how bad things were, and completely surreal to believe it was going on in the United States. Even reading this book I had a hard time believing that our government really reacted this poorly, and I felt shame reading the descriptions of the city and how it was that so many people lost their lives.
When I chose to read the book I was hoping for more of a story with characters I cared about, but I value what I got out of the book - a sad education on the before and after of New Orleans, with a cautiously optimistic view of the rebuilding that continues today. Eggers says in his forward that he did not intend to provide a comprehensive survey of Katrina, but Piazza may have succeeded in doing this. Ironically, the line between non-fiction and fiction that has been subject to much discussion in literary circles lately (and that has historically been navigated carefully by Eggers) seems to have been toyed with by Piazza too - his characters are composites of so many of the both heartbreaking and uplifting stories that we've heard in the years since Katrina, the situations all potentially leads for stories in the New York Times or Newsweek.
I'm not sure that I would say I liked this book more or less than Zeiton - I liked both of them, and neither was what I expected. Together, they gave me a multi-dimensional view of an important chapter in our recent history.
Surprisingly, reading this book felt much more like reading non-fiction. There were two families whose lives the book followed and certainly their stories were compelling, but it was the city of New Orleans itself that he seemed to take the most care in characterizing. The characters were reasonably predictable in their concerns and their conflicts, and he made some easy choices: for example, making one of the families affluent and white while the other was poor and black, and making one of the main characters a newspaper reporter. But I forgave Piazza his trite setup for his portrait of the pure devastation and ruin that New Orleans experienced.
During Hurricane Katrina, Web and I had been traveling in Argentina. Skillfully avoiding televisions and newspapers to fully immerse ourselves in the culture there, we had little idea what was going on at home until we got back about a week after the storm. It was hard to understand how bad things were, and completely surreal to believe it was going on in the United States. Even reading this book I had a hard time believing that our government really reacted this poorly, and I felt shame reading the descriptions of the city and how it was that so many people lost their lives.
When I chose to read the book I was hoping for more of a story with characters I cared about, but I value what I got out of the book - a sad education on the before and after of New Orleans, with a cautiously optimistic view of the rebuilding that continues today. Eggers says in his forward that he did not intend to provide a comprehensive survey of Katrina, but Piazza may have succeeded in doing this. Ironically, the line between non-fiction and fiction that has been subject to much discussion in literary circles lately (and that has historically been navigated carefully by Eggers) seems to have been toyed with by Piazza too - his characters are composites of so many of the both heartbreaking and uplifting stories that we've heard in the years since Katrina, the situations all potentially leads for stories in the New York Times or Newsweek.
I'm not sure that I would say I liked this book more or less than Zeiton - I liked both of them, and neither was what I expected. Together, they gave me a multi-dimensional view of an important chapter in our recent history.
The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas
I think this is one of the best books I've read this year. The backdrop of the story is a friendship between two girls, Lily and Irene, who are growing up in Venezuela during the revolution. Irene disappears while they are on vacation and fifteen years later, Lily finds herself on bedrest towards the end of her first pregnancy wondering what happened to her friend.
The book is told from alternating points of view, forming a complete story through several different narrators who each take one chapter. Irene's fate is revealed at the end but it was easy to forget that as the main theme because Mascarenhas weaves several other compelling stories and characters into the book. There are numerous love stories, glimpses into revolution politics, and native Venezuelan folklore all centered around this family and, tangentially, around what may have happened to Irene. Some of the narrators are unexpected - they seem to be minor characters - and it is not until pretty far into the book that certain connections between people are made.
This book also felt like a classic South American novel - some magical realism, some political statements, and at the heart of it, excellent storytelling. There was a style that made many of the chapters seem like someone telling me a story - I didn't like all the characters but I did grow to understand most of them.
I'm surprised this book did not get more exposure, but I'm glad I didn't let that dissuade me from giving it a try.
The book is told from alternating points of view, forming a complete story through several different narrators who each take one chapter. Irene's fate is revealed at the end but it was easy to forget that as the main theme because Mascarenhas weaves several other compelling stories and characters into the book. There are numerous love stories, glimpses into revolution politics, and native Venezuelan folklore all centered around this family and, tangentially, around what may have happened to Irene. Some of the narrators are unexpected - they seem to be minor characters - and it is not until pretty far into the book that certain connections between people are made.
This book also felt like a classic South American novel - some magical realism, some political statements, and at the heart of it, excellent storytelling. There was a style that made many of the chapters seem like someone telling me a story - I didn't like all the characters but I did grow to understand most of them.
I'm surprised this book did not get more exposure, but I'm glad I didn't let that dissuade me from giving it a try.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty by David Harris
When I read Michael Lewis' Blind Side and Moneyball, I missed out on some of the fun by reading during their respective off-seasons. Though I noticed this book a few months ago, I waited until the start of the NFL season to read it.
The story is about Bill Walsh, coach of the 49'ers during the 1980's. Walsh coached the 49'ers through several Superbowl victories and worked with Hall of Famers such as Joe Montana, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice. Walsh is probably most well-known for creating the "West Coast Offense," a collection of strategies that changed passing into a more flexible and common move in the NFL.
What was most interesting in this book was not the evolution of the strategies or the history of the team, although those were covered well. Harris' character study of Walsh as a really successful, emotional, easily offended, sometimes brash, coach was the fascinating part. I had no idea that a coach would feel so humiliated or inadequate that he would cry or decide not to talk to his players for months. Harris also did a great job of describing the relationship between Bill Walsh and the 49'ers' owner, Ed Bartolo, as well as Walsh's early disappointments in not being promoted to be the Bengals' head coach prior to his career with the 49'ers. The whole characterization of Walsh made me understand Belichek's not shaking hands after the Superbowl loss a lot more.
Overall, a great read, particularly for September.
The story is about Bill Walsh, coach of the 49'ers during the 1980's. Walsh coached the 49'ers through several Superbowl victories and worked with Hall of Famers such as Joe Montana, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice. Walsh is probably most well-known for creating the "West Coast Offense," a collection of strategies that changed passing into a more flexible and common move in the NFL.
What was most interesting in this book was not the evolution of the strategies or the history of the team, although those were covered well. Harris' character study of Walsh as a really successful, emotional, easily offended, sometimes brash, coach was the fascinating part. I had no idea that a coach would feel so humiliated or inadequate that he would cry or decide not to talk to his players for months. Harris also did a great job of describing the relationship between Bill Walsh and the 49'ers' owner, Ed Bartolo, as well as Walsh's early disappointments in not being promoted to be the Bengals' head coach prior to his career with the 49'ers. The whole characterization of Walsh made me understand Belichek's not shaking hands after the Superbowl loss a lot more.
Overall, a great read, particularly for September.
Time of my Life by Allison Winn Scotch
I saw this on a few booklists and recommendation lists and it was always sort of in my subconscious of books I'd get to one day. Then I read a review that said that it definitely wasn't chick-lit and was quite thought-provoking so I got to it sooner rather than later.
Meh. Nothing special, probably chick-lit. The story is about a woman who is married with a young child and lives in the suburbs. She sometimes longs for the ex-boyfriend and urban life she left behind and one day she wakes up back in that life again. The book is about her conflict in seeing the problems with the life she didn't choose and missing the one she did choose. It was a quick read with no real surprises.
Maybe part of why the book did not enchant is that there is no one ex-boyfriend I return to, wondering, "what if...". I certainly have moments where I wonder "what if...", but they are not about any one person in particular. I'm not sure that even if I had felt that way that I would have enjoyed this any more than I did.
Meh. Nothing special, probably chick-lit. The story is about a woman who is married with a young child and lives in the suburbs. She sometimes longs for the ex-boyfriend and urban life she left behind and one day she wakes up back in that life again. The book is about her conflict in seeing the problems with the life she didn't choose and missing the one she did choose. It was a quick read with no real surprises.
Maybe part of why the book did not enchant is that there is no one ex-boyfriend I return to, wondering, "what if...". I certainly have moments where I wonder "what if...", but they are not about any one person in particular. I'm not sure that even if I had felt that way that I would have enjoyed this any more than I did.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Zeiton by Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers always distracts me from whatever I am doing with his compulsively readable books. Fortunately I read this at night (all in one sitting) so all it interfered with in my life was a night of sleep.
This book is a chronicle of one family's experience after Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman (the husband) is a Syrian-American who decides to stay in New Orleans during the hurricane to look after the properties his family owns and manages. His wife Kathy and their children evacuate when the mayor suggests it.
First Abdul takes care of his own house and possessions, then starts to paddle around New Orleans helping out people in his neighborhood. Kathy and the children make it to a family member's house outside the flood zone. They both expect their lives to go back to normal reasonably quickly, but then things take an unusual turn.
As New Orleans succumbs to the issues that followed Katrina we are familiar with (overcrowding in the Superdome, lack of proper medical and evacuation resources, looting, rioting, etc), Kathy and the children remain away from Abdul, traveling to a friend's home in Phoenix. Abdul continues to help his friends and neighbors, then suddenly Kathy loses touch with him. The balance of the book is what happened to each of them after they lose touch. Interspersed with the narrative is a lot of Abdul's personal and family history. The book ends with a followup of where the family is in 2008, several years later.
Eggers' superb writing aside, this book was incredibly interesting as all my knowledge about Katrina had been from sources like CNN and a recent story in the New York Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/08/30/magazine/index.html). This look at one family's story was a new point of view for me. Abdul and Kathy were Muslim which also put an interesting twist on the story - on more than one occasion, other people who were angry or overwhelmed with their own situations wanted to blame the state that New Orleans was in on terrorists.
The other things about this book that held my attention were the parallels I could draw between it and Saramago's Blindness. These books both dealt with what happens in an environment when the usual social services and government are overwhelmed and typical life is no longer possible. Saramago did it by blinding a city while in this story Katrina provided the impetus, but in both cases the behavior of the citizens and the people in charge was, literally, unbelievable.
Tom Piazza's City of Refuge is on my reading list and I think I'll read it sooner rather than later so I can compare that to this.
This book is a chronicle of one family's experience after Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman (the husband) is a Syrian-American who decides to stay in New Orleans during the hurricane to look after the properties his family owns and manages. His wife Kathy and their children evacuate when the mayor suggests it.
First Abdul takes care of his own house and possessions, then starts to paddle around New Orleans helping out people in his neighborhood. Kathy and the children make it to a family member's house outside the flood zone. They both expect their lives to go back to normal reasonably quickly, but then things take an unusual turn.
As New Orleans succumbs to the issues that followed Katrina we are familiar with (overcrowding in the Superdome, lack of proper medical and evacuation resources, looting, rioting, etc), Kathy and the children remain away from Abdul, traveling to a friend's home in Phoenix. Abdul continues to help his friends and neighbors, then suddenly Kathy loses touch with him. The balance of the book is what happened to each of them after they lose touch. Interspersed with the narrative is a lot of Abdul's personal and family history. The book ends with a followup of where the family is in 2008, several years later.
Eggers' superb writing aside, this book was incredibly interesting as all my knowledge about Katrina had been from sources like CNN and a recent story in the New York Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/08/30/magazine/index.html). This look at one family's story was a new point of view for me. Abdul and Kathy were Muslim which also put an interesting twist on the story - on more than one occasion, other people who were angry or overwhelmed with their own situations wanted to blame the state that New Orleans was in on terrorists.
The other things about this book that held my attention were the parallels I could draw between it and Saramago's Blindness. These books both dealt with what happens in an environment when the usual social services and government are overwhelmed and typical life is no longer possible. Saramago did it by blinding a city while in this story Katrina provided the impetus, but in both cases the behavior of the citizens and the people in charge was, literally, unbelievable.
Tom Piazza's City of Refuge is on my reading list and I think I'll read it sooner rather than later so I can compare that to this.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Lost Symbol
So today a package from Amazon showed up at my door (thanks, Dad!) with a big red sticker on it reading, "Do Not Deliver Before September 15th". Yup, Dan Brown's newest book "dropped" today. Apparently there was a lot of mystery and secrecy around its release, but now I have a copy and look forward to digging into it.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent
This book was a pleasure to read; it was like having a friend describe an incredibly interesting PhD thesis over lunch. In this book, Okrent surveys five types of languages that have been intentionally invented by individuals or groups.
The first section covers several attempts at "philosophical language" starting in the 1600's, which sought to improve people's ability to communicate. Then she covers several attempts at a universal language, such as 1800's Esperanto. She goes on to discuss symbolic languages, including different countries' 'dialects' of sign language. The following section is on logical languages, concluding with a final section on, no kidding, Klingon.
What I most liked about this book was that it was not out to prove or claim anything important - it was a pleasant survey of the different attempts humans have made to invent language, and a cursory evaluation of their level of success. Okrent did a nice job of characterizing the language inventors, many of whom are quite...err...quirky to say the least. It is the rare humanitarian who has no selfish motives for inventing a language.
Okrent also drew a few light conclusions about why different types of languages because popular at certain times. For example, Esperanto and Modern Hebrew both emerged in the late 1800's amidst a socialist ethos and as a reaction to nationalism. I had never thought of it that way.
I also enjoyed Orkent's attempts to learn each of these languages. She makes several efforts to converse with practitioners of many of the languages, and her experiences are both funny and informative - without drawing any major conclusions, she demonstrates the difficulties in having a natural language brain process an invented language.
The first section covers several attempts at "philosophical language" starting in the 1600's, which sought to improve people's ability to communicate. Then she covers several attempts at a universal language, such as 1800's Esperanto. She goes on to discuss symbolic languages, including different countries' 'dialects' of sign language. The following section is on logical languages, concluding with a final section on, no kidding, Klingon.
What I most liked about this book was that it was not out to prove or claim anything important - it was a pleasant survey of the different attempts humans have made to invent language, and a cursory evaluation of their level of success. Okrent did a nice job of characterizing the language inventors, many of whom are quite...err...quirky to say the least. It is the rare humanitarian who has no selfish motives for inventing a language.
Okrent also drew a few light conclusions about why different types of languages because popular at certain times. For example, Esperanto and Modern Hebrew both emerged in the late 1800's amidst a socialist ethos and as a reaction to nationalism. I had never thought of it that way.
I also enjoyed Orkent's attempts to learn each of these languages. She makes several efforts to converse with practitioners of many of the languages, and her experiences are both funny and informative - without drawing any major conclusions, she demonstrates the difficulties in having a natural language brain process an invented language.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
I chose to read Blindness on this vacation because Saramago is Portuguese. Web had devoured it a few vacations ago and I had enjoyed Saramago's All the Names, so I had high expectations for the book, and I wasn't disappointed.
The story is about a city where all the occupants inexplicably and suddenly go blind. Though I had read All the Names several years ago, Saramago's style and rhythm were immediately familiar to me (scarce punctuation, no proper nouns) as was the setting (an unnamed city with semi-military bureaucratic government). All the Names was more about the anonymity of individuals in such an environment, while this book shared more of the themes from Lord of the Flies - what happens to society when it is stripped of its typical order and rules?
The story in Blindness follows a small group of citizens as they navigate the new order in the now-blind city. With a few well-written phrases and anecdotes, Saramago completely characterizes the people who we follow in the story, making it irrelevant if we like them or not and more relevant that they are our only window into the story. That was a real contrast to Olive Kittridge where I got really stuck on not liking the characters. I really enjoyed Blindness, finding it very accessible, and surprisingly easy to read given Saramago's fame and accolades.
The story is about a city where all the occupants inexplicably and suddenly go blind. Though I had read All the Names several years ago, Saramago's style and rhythm were immediately familiar to me (scarce punctuation, no proper nouns) as was the setting (an unnamed city with semi-military bureaucratic government). All the Names was more about the anonymity of individuals in such an environment, while this book shared more of the themes from Lord of the Flies - what happens to society when it is stripped of its typical order and rules?
The story in Blindness follows a small group of citizens as they navigate the new order in the now-blind city. With a few well-written phrases and anecdotes, Saramago completely characterizes the people who we follow in the story, making it irrelevant if we like them or not and more relevant that they are our only window into the story. That was a real contrast to Olive Kittridge where I got really stuck on not liking the characters. I really enjoyed Blindness, finding it very accessible, and surprisingly easy to read given Saramago's fame and accolades.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
This book really disappointed me. Despite having loved short stories in my teens (I would devour the excess short story compilations my mom would bring home from the high school she taught at), I have not found too many authors I enjoy in this format as an adult, with the exception of Alice Munro. That said, Olive Kitteridge was so highly acclaimed that I decided to give it a try.
Yuck. Not yuck for the format, because I could see what Strout was doing - she wrote several stories all related to the same characters spanning fifty years or so. However, the title character was completely unsympathetic and unlikable that it marred my desire to read more about the town and its citizens. Perhaps I thought someone with such a unique name would be quirky and likable - which may have been my own problem.
But while I liked some of the other characters in the town, and I respected the scope of what the author attempted, the book just didn't hold my attention. I didn't enjoy being a voyeur into the town's secrets enough to want to find out what happened next. If I hadn't been on vacation I'm not sure I would have even finished reading it.
Yuck. Not yuck for the format, because I could see what Strout was doing - she wrote several stories all related to the same characters spanning fifty years or so. However, the title character was completely unsympathetic and unlikable that it marred my desire to read more about the town and its citizens. Perhaps I thought someone with such a unique name would be quirky and likable - which may have been my own problem.
But while I liked some of the other characters in the town, and I respected the scope of what the author attempted, the book just didn't hold my attention. I didn't enjoy being a voyeur into the town's secrets enough to want to find out what happened next. If I hadn't been on vacation I'm not sure I would have even finished reading it.
Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
This book had been on my reading list for years so I finally decided to give it a try. The story is about a British child named Peekay growing up in South Africa as apartheid is beginning in the 1930s and '40s. As a young child, he is sent to a boarding school where he is terrorized by the older children, a formative experience that influence many of his decisions going forward.
While he is bright and well-educated, Peekay's lifelong dream is to become a world champion boxer, and he pursues this dream alongside his other experiences throughout the book. (I had no idea how much strategy went into boxing - I started to get very interested in how the fights were orchestrated although you could enjoy this book without any interest in boxing.) The reader follows Peekay for roughly fifteen years, and sees him grow into a empathetic and strongly principled young man, keenly aware of the racial inequalities around him. Courteney does an excellent job of showing how apartheid was developing in different environments within South Africa - Peekay goes from boarding school to an evangelical environment, works at a jail, attends prep school, and works in the mining industry. What a fascinating collection of settings.
A few parts of the book were a little too "O. Henry" for me, introducing unlikely coincidences to move the plot along. That aside, I enjoyed reading the book and thought the author did a good job of representing realistic emotional growth. There was an innocence about the narration that sometimes made me feel like I was reading a YA novel, but there was enough sophistication that it still kept my attention. I think part of why it felt that way is that Peekay has a strong collection of adult role models and mentors throughout the book but is effectively abandoned by his parents early on, at least emotionally. So in some ways he grows up very quickly and in other ways he is taken care of by many adults along the way.
Apparently, Courteney wrote a sequel called Tandia that I will have to check out. This book certainly will stick with me for a long time.
While he is bright and well-educated, Peekay's lifelong dream is to become a world champion boxer, and he pursues this dream alongside his other experiences throughout the book. (I had no idea how much strategy went into boxing - I started to get very interested in how the fights were orchestrated although you could enjoy this book without any interest in boxing.) The reader follows Peekay for roughly fifteen years, and sees him grow into a empathetic and strongly principled young man, keenly aware of the racial inequalities around him. Courteney does an excellent job of showing how apartheid was developing in different environments within South Africa - Peekay goes from boarding school to an evangelical environment, works at a jail, attends prep school, and works in the mining industry. What a fascinating collection of settings.
A few parts of the book were a little too "O. Henry" for me, introducing unlikely coincidences to move the plot along. That aside, I enjoyed reading the book and thought the author did a good job of representing realistic emotional growth. There was an innocence about the narration that sometimes made me feel like I was reading a YA novel, but there was enough sophistication that it still kept my attention. I think part of why it felt that way is that Peekay has a strong collection of adult role models and mentors throughout the book but is effectively abandoned by his parents early on, at least emotionally. So in some ways he grows up very quickly and in other ways he is taken care of by many adults along the way.
Apparently, Courteney wrote a sequel called Tandia that I will have to check out. This book certainly will stick with me for a long time.
Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler
This was the first book I read in Lisbon. It tells the story of a young man in Lisbon during the 1500s whose Jewish family and friends are threatened as the Inquisition spreads from Spain through Portugal. The book is part historical novel and part mystery story - reviews compared to In the Name of the Rose and Count of Monte Cristo. While I didn't think it reached the level of complexity represented by those books, I did enjoy it.
For me, though, the experience of reading this book will always be intertwined with my own experiences of getting to know Lisbon as a tourist. We had a great trip there, and on our first afternoon took a walking tour of several neighborhoods. Our guide, extremely knowledgeable and agreeable, answered myriad questions we had about the city and the history. At one point, we were walking through the Alfama, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Lisbon. I said that our guide book mentioned an old Jewish quarter in the Alfama and asked her to point out any buildings or items of note. She responded apologetically but quickly - there were no real remnants of Judaism left for us to see. While I usually seek out the Jewish sites while on vacation, there was practically nothing in Lisbon, except for a memorial plaque in one of the main squares commemorating the slaughter of Jews during the Inquisition. Our map noted one synagogue which I distantly remember visiting on my last trip to Lisbon ten years ago, but compared to other countries I have visited there was precious little to see.
So it was with that backdrop that I read The Last Kabbalist - the narrator describing how Jews were tortured and burned in the streets, then my own visit seeing where Lisbon, otherwise very cosmopolitan and diverse, is today. In conclusion, I engaged with the book very deeply but I don't know how much of my affinity towards it coincides with my visit there.
For me, though, the experience of reading this book will always be intertwined with my own experiences of getting to know Lisbon as a tourist. We had a great trip there, and on our first afternoon took a walking tour of several neighborhoods. Our guide, extremely knowledgeable and agreeable, answered myriad questions we had about the city and the history. At one point, we were walking through the Alfama, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Lisbon. I said that our guide book mentioned an old Jewish quarter in the Alfama and asked her to point out any buildings or items of note. She responded apologetically but quickly - there were no real remnants of Judaism left for us to see. While I usually seek out the Jewish sites while on vacation, there was practically nothing in Lisbon, except for a memorial plaque in one of the main squares commemorating the slaughter of Jews during the Inquisition. Our map noted one synagogue which I distantly remember visiting on my last trip to Lisbon ten years ago, but compared to other countries I have visited there was precious little to see.
So it was with that backdrop that I read The Last Kabbalist - the narrator describing how Jews were tortured and burned in the streets, then my own visit seeing where Lisbon, otherwise very cosmopolitan and diverse, is today. In conclusion, I engaged with the book very deeply but I don't know how much of my affinity towards it coincides with my visit there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
