The Painted Veil

Kitty is a beautiful young woman, raised by her shallow and socially aggressive mother to be equally shallow and ambitious. In spite of her beauty, Kitty finds herself unmarried at the age of 25 and losing her place as her mother's beloved when her much younger and less attractive sister, Doris, becomes engaged to a baron. Embarrassed by her sister's superior match, desperate to leave the disappointed glare of her mother and panicked that another decent offer won't come her way, she says "yes" to Walter Fane, a bacteriologist working in Hong Kong, whom she barely knows.

They marry and she accompanies him to Hong Kong where she finds herself bored, ambivalent and unmoved by her husband's love for her. Quickly, she falls in love and begins an affair with Charles Townsend, a handsome, suave politician who, like her, views life as a shallow thing to be lived as selfishly as possible. When Walter discovers their relationship, he coldly gives her an ultimatum: accompany him to inland China where there is a cholera outbreak or he will cause a scandal and divorce her (this was written in 1925 when an affair such as this would, indeed, be an actual scandal) unless Townsend will agree to divorce his own wife and marry her within the week.

Predictably, to all except Kitty, Townsend's true colors appear and he disappoints her. Disillusioned and actually afraid of her husband who she believes only wants to kill her, she travels inland and her deeper, more understanding, more aware life begins.

The title comes from the English poet, Shelly's, sonnet, "Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live/Call Life." I love the multiple layers found throughout the book that stem from its title. There are several descriptions of reflections on water, camouflaging the death and disease of the village condemned by cholera with scenes of light and beauty. As Kitty is a front-row witness to death, she observes the veil that lifts when life leaves a body several times. Most poetically is her own veil, lifted to experience a life so different from the superficial one she had expected.

I hate that I wanted the Hollywood ending (apparently...there actually IS a Hollywood ending. The book was made into a movie and I hear it gave the story the satisfying ending I didn't even know I wanted until it didn't happen). Seriously, why do I feel disappointed? Maugham writes a fantastic portrayal of a shallow woman developing into something more. I suppose I wanted her progress to have an effect beyond her own awareness. I wanted it to fix her marriage, alter her relationship with her sister and parents, and finish the relationship with her adulterous lover for the right reasons. Eventually, Maugham allows those things to happen but not at a pace which allows Kitty to avoid loss, pain and humility. Once again...why do I feel disappointed? Those consequences are truths and I appreciate and respect truth. Maugham unflinchingly writes Kitty's growth as a woman as it would have realistically happened.

But, it's a gritty reality.

James and the Giant Peach

I shouldn't be allowed to read classic children's literature. My brain simply doesn't appreciate its intended purpose - creativity, imagination, fantasy. Instead, I wonder, "What's the point here?" Sometimes, there is a point, but I think with Ronald Dahl, the focus is placed on the magic and if there happens to be a story in there somewhere in it..so be it.

I borrowed it from the library because it was on the most-commonly-banned-books-in-America shelf and I wondered how the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory could upset so many modest American readers?

I still don't know. Unless there is some upsetting symbolism that went way over my head and would be sure to go over the head of its intended audience, I don't understand how this book could offend anyone but mean, crusty old aunts who don't love and take care of their orphaned nephews.

That being said, I wish I loved this non-controversial story, but I didn't. I thought it was overly strange. Strange in a did-you-write-this-while-tripped-out-on-LCD? kind of way. Giant talking bugs. Living in a peach. Flying over the Atlantic Ocean with the help of string tied onto 501 seagulls via the giant silkworm and spider. Landing on the needle of the Empire State Building in New York. A ladybug marrying a police man (What the?). O.K then.

James was surrounded by mean, nasty aunts and now he's happy and living in a giant peach in New York City's Central Park. Wildly imaginative but famous through the ages?

To make sure it deserved its fame, I had my eight year old son read it (even though the word a** is in it twice. Why did Dahl do that?) and he liked it. He didn't love it. Not because it was strange but because like most things he reads, the characters are magical and the plot bizarre. For him, it seemed almost standard fare. When he finished, he handed it back to me and I asked, "Did you like it?" "Yeah." That's it. No buzz. No acting out parts of the story and certainly no regurgitating details from it like he does with some of his other books.

I guess we're just a bunch of fuddy-duddies around here because I found nothing extraordinary about James and the Giant Peach except it's eccentricity.

The Woman In White

Regarded as the first mystery novel, The Woman In White tells the story of Laura Fairlie, a young, beautiful heiress engaged to marry an older baron, Sir Percival Glyde. Before the marriage, a drawing master, William Hartwright, comes to Limmeridge House to give Laura and her half-sister, Marian Halcombe, art lessons. On his way to their country home, he crosses path during the night with a mysterious and troubled woman wearing all white.

Her appearance begins to unravel the secret of Sir Glyde, whom Laura Fairlie eventually marries. The marriage is doomed not only due to Glyde's obsession with keeping his secret in tact, but also because Mr. Hartwright and Laura Fairlie fell in love.

Throw in a truly terrific villian, Count Fosco, maids, cooks, doctors and lawyers all giving their own versions of the truth and what's left is an authentic mystery loaded with plot twists and turns developed through many interesting characters.

The author, Wilkie Collins, was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, although I have to admit that this was the only book of his I'd ever heard of. He's a talented author and uses several different voices quite convincingly to tell this story.

I appreciated the book more from a historical standpoint than its storytelling. While I found the first two-thirds of the book to be intriguing the climax of the story unfortunately happened with several hundred pages still left for the much less fun wrap up. Oh, several things still needed to be figured out for us readers to be completely satisfied, but, in spite of Collins putting Mr. Hartwright in danger a few times, the book became a little too comfortable and predictable. I knew the smooth ending was coming, but it took a long time to get there!

I'm glad I read it, though. It's very readable for being written in the mid 1800s, more so than Dickens, I would say, and an all-together entertaining story.

Flowers For Algernon

This book will get me up to date and hopefully I'll lose that feeling of being behind and unorganized. Maybe. At least in this area of my life.

This was another book I saw on the most commonly banned book shelf at my library. I may have read it before, because I sort of knew the story already. Although if I did, it was when I was much too young to understand the depths of this novel.

I loved it. I really loved it. I even cried at the end, which is so, so rare these days (unless I read Nicholas Sparks who always seems to get me at the end. Blast him.).

Charlie Gordon is a thirty-two mentally retarded man with an IQ of 70. He works as a janitor and errand boy in a bakery and considers his life good and happy because he has lots and lots of friends. He is aware, however, of not being very smart. He thinks if he can learn to read and write properly, he'll be smart and able to understand and participate in what everyone else is talking about.

When an opportunity to undergo an experimental surgery as part of a neuro-psychological study to artificially increase intelligence arises, he happily signs on. He can't wait to become smart.

Algernon is the name of a mouse who has reached unprecedented levels of intelligence following the same surgical procedure. Charlie, the first human subject, mirrors Algernon's success and reaches levels of intelligence far beyond what the doctors behind the study are capable of understanding. Alongside his increased intelligence are emerging emotional capabilities, such as romantic feelings towards women, and troubling memories he was previously unable to remember or understand with his lower IQ, about his childhood and friends.

The entire story is important and poignant. The author, Daniel Keyes, includes part of Plato's, The Republic, to begin the story. Plato writes:

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderment of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.

I don't know if he read Plato's words and then wrote this story, or if he serendipitously found it afterward, but it is the perfect prologue. As Charlie adjusts his sight from living in the den of his limited mind to the brighter light of understanding, the growing pains the rest of us have had years to adjust and become accustomed to, are uncomfortable and awkward.

Likewise, at the peak of Charlie's intelligence, when he viewed the world around him in the brightest light possible, Charlie understands the flaws of the experiment that those who developed it were unable to see. With that understanding, the tragedy of watching him lose his grip on so much knowledge feels overwhelming.

As far as being commonly banned, I have no idea, at all, how this could be. The only thing even mildly questionable, to me, is Charlie's struggle to come to terms with the negative sexual conditioning he received from his mother as a boy. As he begins to express the feelings he has for women in general, and specifically towards Alice, a woman he loves, he struggles to understand, beyond theoretically, the complexities of the male-female relationship. While these situations are included, I actually think it's a critical part of the discussion of light and dark. Perhaps not for middle schoolers, but definitely for those of us who live with our own conditioning and judgment.

I highly recommend reading this. Even if you know you've read it long ago for school, read it again as an adult. And then test your own eyes.

Slaughterhouse Five

I've never read Kurt Vonnegut, but have been told by enough readers that he's one of their favorite authors to pick up one of his books. When I passed by a shelf at my library that was full of the most commonly banned books in America, and found Slaughterhouse Five, with its distinctive "V" embellishing the front cover in plain view, I thought to my rebel self, "Perfect."

On any given day, I'm going to be an opponent of book banning. If any one person has a problem with a book, I fully embrace that person's agency to not read, never read, and with as much influence as they believe they have, persuade others to do the same.

ban1 /bæn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ban]
- verb - banned, ban·ning,

1.	to prohibit, forbid, or bar; interdict: to ban nuclear weapons; The dictator banned all newspapers and books that criticized his regime.

2.	Archaic. a. to pronounce an ecclesiastical curse upon. b. to curse; execrate.

Waaaaay too extreme an action for this book, and, really, for any book. Notice the sentence in italics used above. Notice it contained the word "dictator".

Banned or not, I found Vonnegut's part memoir/part novel about free will and war in general, but the bombing campaign against Dresden, Germany during World War II in particular, to be extremely provocative.

The plot is not your straightforward, everyday war novel plot. Rather, Vonnegut puts his character, Billy Pilgrim, an unambitious and fearful optometrist from New York, in the war and makes him the unwilling companion of a psychopath. As Billy becomes "unstuck in time" and later abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the novel takes several unexpected twists.

It sounds weird, which it is, but not overly so. Somehow, even when describing the Tralfamadorian's ability to see in four dimensions, their ability to see everything that has ever happened at once but their choice to concentrate instead on any one moment of their lives, the hands that comes out of their bodies pointing straight up and their telepathic communication, it doesn't seem like a gimmick. Not only does it provide comic relief to a horrific subject matter, but it also allows Vonnegut to write a parallel perspective - perhaps his but probably more what he thinks the masses believe. As Billy Pilgrim narrates each scene, he does so with this Tralfamadorian understanding of time. The atrocities he faces in the rail car that takes him from France to Germany as a POW, the complete destruction and death of a once beautiful city and the execution of a good man are written with the matter-of factness and reality that would have been impossible for him to describe in detail otherwise.

I think part of the uproar, if there still is any, is over its age appropriateness. I know this is required reading for a lot of high school students, and while I think a mature and interested reader could appreciate the opinion Vonnegut attempts to give form to, the language, description and attitude of the book could easily offend many a student and parent.

It would be a hard thing to be an English teacher and give a "required reading list" to your class. You want to choose books that create discussion and trigger thought, which this book certainly does. However, just as I feel no book should truly be banned, I equally feel that every reader should have a choice as to what they read. But then, how do you have a class? I don't know.

As Billy Pilgrim famously says, "So it goes."

Anna Karenina

At the conclusion of Karenina's 800 plus pages, I add my name to Tolstoy's long list of admirers. What a thinker! Like a talented photographer, Tolstoy has an eye for realism and his writing inside the heads of his characters is perfection. For a book where nothing really happens (besides wealthy people hanging out in various places...and a few people dying) to still manage to have such a fascinating effect on readers takes a certain kind of genius. So many times, while reading, I thought to myself, "Nothing is happening. How did Tolstoy get away with writing this and why are we all convinced it's one of the greatest novels of all time?" Continued reading converted me, as it has the masses, but it reminds me of an old movie, where the story stands alone, without being propped up by special effects and dramatic music. It's good - naked.

These are my take-away overall impressions. But, there were some very frustrating moments that happened along the way. Sometimes, my eyes blurred as I waited for Levin, a wealthy land-owner who has no understanding or appreciation for insincerity and falseness (characteristics that run rampant among his aristocratic peers), to finish his conversation with the peasants or friends about farm management. The amount of time Tolstoy dedicated on a Russian painter living in Italy, and his opinion about art and technique and style seemed wholly unnecessary to me. Almost like Tolstoy introduced the portrait, knowing he'd need it later in the story for contrast, but couldn't simply write leave it at that. Instead, he had to include whatever obscure experience or knowledge he had about art too...throw it into another character. I felt, a bit, like I was being taken on a ride.

Obviously, I am a modern reader, and need my greatest-novels-of-all-time written modernly! Imagine, me...little reader from nowhere, thinking, "This Russian guy needs an editor!"

I include the critical thoughts along the way, because I don't think I'm alone in thinking Anna Karenina is, perhaps,a little bloated. However, bloated or not, this is an incredible, incredible book. Embarrassingly incredible. Like, how in the world does Tolstoy see the ridiculous inside everyone's head? How does he know how insecure a man like Levin is - a man, who from the outside, appears to have everything? How does he understand how a woman can be instantly irritated and irrational from something that her lover has said, or...more frequently, has not said?

It's not only the realism that makes this book famously good. It's the artful way he makes his case against falseness. Through one of his dual protagonists, Levin, he cleanly paints his case with soft, muted colors - conversations, thoughts, and actions - that reflect,ultimately, a very likable character. Levin does the right thing, usually thinks the right thing - so his thoughts are beautiful, enjoyable thoughts. If Levin hates falseness - well...I will hate falseness too!

Then, on a canvas located directly beside the pretty picture, he paints Anna, with dramatic boldness - including the vividness but also the awful, the disturbing, and chaotic result of a woman, who, every bit as passionately, hates falseness too. Whereas Levin is ultimately rewarded for his inability to accept hypocrisy, Anna, a woman we know isn't really bad, but who makes choices that aren't sympathetic either, is punished for it.

It may seem bizarre to review a book named Anna Karenina and only now mention her. I was surprised that this isn't more her book. Her story, along side Vronsky's, is certainly the most intense and tragic, but the novel's overall point isn't limited to her infidelity, or about her choice to leave her husband and child (which is what I thought it was going to be about. Even my husband, when he saw I was reading this said, "Oh. Reading the adultery book, huh?").

In fact, it's about a group of Russia's aristocratic upper class, and their motivations and justifications about the way they live their lives. Their stories are all tangled together and each of their decisions and actions create shock waves throughout the group. Tolstoy shows how, even within a privileged group such as this, where access to information, money, justice etc., supposedly is the same, how differently they think and choose to behave. There's the brilliance. I read a quote from another famous author who said that if the world could speak on it's own, it would sound like Tolstoy. Exactly.

Thousands of reviews have been written about this book, and I certainly have nothing new to add, but, if you have hours and hours of spare time or a penchant for 19th century Russian socioeconomic exposés or simply enjoy the thoughts of a great mind - read this book.

Great Expectations

As my husband got into bed last night and looked over to see what I was reading, he said, "You're still reading Great Expectations?" I admit that I have not been able to plow through this book. Instead, I have taken many, many detours and interspersed three different, easier-to-read books along the way. I finally finished last night, after about three weeks of off and on reading. Still, I have to say that it's a wonderful book. Like many wonderful books, it should be included on some list called"Great Books That Are Boring". As this was my first attempt reading Dickens's fiction ( also to be considered semi auto-biographical) and I was surprised by how much I loved it but even more surprised by how much I hated it.

Charles Dickens is my kind of guy. He's funny (tons of humorous parenthetical details that add so much to the story) and he's wordy. In the earlier parts of the book, I found myself thinking, "Finally! A truly funny author! Why have I been assuming I have to read Jennifer Weiner or Sophie Kinsella or even David Sadaris to get a laugh? Dickens is funny!" He also really knows how to paint a scene. From the food to the positions of the characters in a room to someone's smell to how they are feeling, Dickens leaves no detail out. This worked great for me...until I got bored. Then, I felt irritated and impatient and simply wanted to know what was going to happen. Enough with the side comments! Enough.

The story begins with young Pip (thus nicked-named due to his Christian name being Philip Pirrip), a young orphan of seven, being brought up by his cruel older sister and her husband, Joe Gargary. One evening, Pip finds himself in the marshes and is cornered by an escaped convict, Magwitch. With the threat of losing his life, Pip helps the convict escape by bringing him a file he found among blacksmith Joe's tools along with some food. Pip continues in his simple, lower-class lifestyle until he is asked to entertain an old,wealthy spinster, Miss Havisham, and her haughty adopted daughter, Estella. It is through this encounter that Pip learns about the finer things in life and begins to aspire to be a gentleman.

His life is suddenly completely changed when he is informed by Miss Havisham's lawyer that he is to become a gentleman, on behalf of an anonymous benefactor. Assuming this benefactor to be Miss Havisham, and that she did this to allow for a future marriage between himself and Estella, whom he has fallen in love with, he adopts this lifestyle in both thought and deed. This transformation perversely changes many good qualities about Pip and in addition to the refinement and education gained, he also gained an attitude of pride and snobbery.

In the end, when his "great expectations" are destroyed, Pip is left with a decision about what kind of man he is to become without the fortune he anticipated having. The themes, attitudes and moral lessons in this story are timeless and what makes Great Expectations a classic.

While Dickens's wordiness gets in the way of the story at times, his gift of weaving life lessons into a narrative ultimately makes it worth the effort. Yes...even a three-week effort.

Franny and Zooey

More of a play than a novel, Salinger creates two dissatisfied intellectuals and their fall out with convention resulting from their unorthodox education and childhood.

The book is divided into two parts: Franny's shorter section and a much longer section devoted to her older brother, Zooey.

Franny Glass, the youngest child of the fictional upper class New York family, breaks down after spending the weekend with her pretentious boyfriend, Lane. Lane seems to be the face of everything she decides to be wrong with life. Pretense, insincerity, knowledge without wisdom, and ego, ego, ego contrast drastically with a book she stumbled upon in her brother Seymour's room about a pilgrim who discovers how to pray unceasingly. With her own exposure to world religions at an early age, the book's idea takes hold of her and she ends up at her parent's home, crying and muttering to herself.

Zooey Glass, a somewhat successful actor with contradictions of his own, talks his way through helping Franny. Through his monologues, the reader is able to understand the trouble with knowing so much and trying to reconcile it all in order to successfully function in society. The conclusion he reaches isn't exactly tidy or startling, but the arguments that get both of them there are entertaining and provide much to discuss.

Unconventional with its sparse narrative and long-winded conversations, I was surprised by how much I liked this.

A Room With A View

I found myself in the rare situation of reading a book after I've watched the movie. Unfortunately, my mind was forced to conform to the images of the actors and actresses playing the parts of George and Lucy and Cecil. Thankfully, they were good images and I was comforted to know that a movie I loved was as good as the book it stemmed from.

Kind of a quirky book for period literature, but I like it all the more because of it. It's funny and honest and satisfying. If you're not up to reading it, rent the movie. It's a fair copy.

Joan Of Arc

First of all, how embarrassed am I that I didn't really know the story of Joan of Arc? I thought it was about a girl soldier that was burned at the stake because she dressed up like a man.

This story is so much more complicated than that. This is a story about faith, courage, revelation, miracles, pride, power, corruption, martyrdom and enduring to the end. This is a story that is so astonishing that most should be thoroughly schooled in its details. It is very inspiring. In short, Joan of Arc's story could easily be found in any set of scriptures.

I find it interesting that Mark Twain wrote this book. He, a man of little to no faith and disdain for those who practiced it, clearly loved and admired Joan. Twain's familiar wit and satirical prose are all but absent within these pages. Instead, he writes as a man named de Conte, the fictional page and scribe of Joan, thus allowing himself to write with his own adoring perspective, without having to actually be Mark Twain. He called this the "best of all his books" and no doubt felt that way after a result of twelve years of research. As there is plenty of historical data available about Joan's life, including the full transcript of her trial, I have little doubt that this is a very accurate representation of her life.

On one hand, I like his choice in narration. As Joan's friend and scribe, Twain's de Conte manages to allow the reader to witness Joan's life from his own memory, a memory that included first hand accounts of most of Joan's life. And although his biting wit is extremely toned down, little glimpses are seen here and there through the telling of personal side notes.

On the other hand, the narration allowed the book to frequently become overly sentimental. Louis de Conte oft wandered away from the main story line to regale a story of the Paladin, or La Hire or his attraction towards Catherine de Boucher. In addition, I lost track of how many paragraphs were lent to remind the reader, once again, about Joan's saintliness. I feel it was unnecessary and writing it, over and over again, gave the book a "dumbed down" feel (which really is quite silly because this is NOT an easy read - I should have been grateful for any dumbing down). I think the caliber of her person, as well as her righteousness, were made obvious by her very actions, by her charity and by her speech. To point it out so often was overdoing it and eventually wore down my good opinion. I have a hard time loving a book that bored me at times.

That being said, this is an incredible book about an even more incredible historical figure. I could write and write about how much I loved Joan and her goodness, about her persecution and how much her story reminded me of Joseph Smith's. There are striking similarities, down to the resigned knowledge of their own endings. But they knew what they knew, they knew God knew what they knew, and they could not deny it. With their knowledge, they accomplished great works and forever changed the course of history. Read for yourself and become smitten with the power of a seventeen year old girl who became commander in chief of all the armies in France...because God told her to do it.

Thank you, Amy. I am so much more enlightened because you sent this to me. I can walk around with confidence knowing all I now know about the life of Joan of Arc.

The Life Of Our Lord

A very quick read (I read it in less than an hour last night), this contains a personal narrative of the life of Jesus Christ given by Charles Dickens to his children. The language is informal and written so that his children could follow and understand.

While there is nothing contained within the pages that those familiar with the Bible haven't already heard, to read it so condensed, so casually and with such love is refreshing. This isn't a history lesson, nor is it a sermon. It is simply the testimony of an important author about the man he knew was his Lord.

You'll hear no complaints from me.

The Witch Of Blackbird Pond

I know this is a classic. A Newberry award winner for juvenile fiction, I can hardly criticize such a loved book. Sadly, I did not read this when it was meant to be read, as a youth struggling to know it's more important to do the right thing than to fit in with what everybody else is doing.

Important, worthy lesson, but after reading two young adult novels this week with very similar themes (does this happen to anyone else? I always seem to inadvertently read books in "themes"), I feel there is something lacking when an adult reads young adult literature. Innocence, perhaps. It's too simple. The protagonists don't fit inside the story. They are almost always ahead of their times and privy to understanding that their peers don't seem to have access to. Where did Kit come from? Barbados, yes...but possibly from the 20th century as well? As modern readers, we have the hindsight to see and learn from the foibles of our ancestors and their limited understanding, but the author gave this sort of vision to Kit immediately.

I don't know if this is ever argued (and why am I arguing, didn't I promise not to?) but part of me feels like there is an anti-obedience theme in this book. Kit is almost always disobedient, and her disobedience always turned out to be the right thing to do. Because it's young adult literature, everything turns out fine in the end, but there is a difference in doing the right thing and doing what you want to. This is a much deeper discussion to be typed out here, and I won't blaspheme this good book any more. I know it's a favorite.

Mrs. Mike

This wasn't on my list of scheduled reads but while I was in a bookstore last month to purchase a book for a Christmas exchange, I saw Mrs. Mike on the shelves and felt compelled to buy this much beloved book.

I'm often asked what my favorite book is. I always answer that I don't have one; there are many books I love but they are too different to say one is superior to another.

I have changed my mind. Mrs. Mike is my favorite book.

A coming of age story set in the Canadian North in the year 1907, Katherine Mary O'Fallon, a young woman of 16, goes to live with her uncle somewhere north of Calgary as treatment for her pleurisy. There she meets Sergeant Mike Flannigan, a Mountie who has "eyes so blue she could swim in them." They are eventually married after a brief (but fantastically romantic) courtship and she follows him by dog sled to the arctic wilderness to live among the fur traders and Indians.

I love this book for many reasons. Most importantly, as a book, it's my first love. Mrs. Mike was the book that made me realized how much a book could move and stick with me for years. I rarely re-read a book, but I believe I've read Mrs. Mike five times now. Each time, my stomach swoons when Kathy and Mike fall in love, I laugh when Kathy covers her daughter and Mike spanks Kathy instead, I cry when the unimaginable happens and I sigh as I close the book, thinking the line at the very end is one of the best ever written.

Another reason I love this book is that it's based on a real woman's life who the authors met before writing the book. I'm sure it's juiced from the reality, but even the skeleton of the story is moving.

I can't claim that it's the best written book. It is simple in structure, dialogue and description, but as I've read more and more over the years, and compare it to other literature, I believe the style matches the story perfectly.

It's the kind of book I can't help but promise that anyone who reads it will love it. But I also know that with our diverse personalities and preferences, it wouldn't be true. Like a biased mother who adores her baby, I don't think I'd enjoy anyone pointing out the flaws of this book. Perhaps its eyes are too close together and the head oddly-shaped, but it's my baby, and I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

The Chosen

I love how Chaim Potok is able to create a story about so many different things. There are dozens of topics within his books to discuss, enjoy and ponder, but he manages to twist and turn his story, so at its end, you get the Rubik's cube sides all neatly back to the same color.

Like My Name Is Asher Lev, which I loved, Potok writes about a Jewish boy torn between his own genius and his orthodox father's expectations. Danny Saunders, a genius boy with a photographic memory, is destined to take his father's place as the community tzaddik, or spiritual leader of Hasidic Jews. To teach his son compassion, he parents him with silence, like his father did before him, and the only time father and son talk is when they discuss the Talmud, a Jewish book consisting of different rabbi's discussions of Jewish laws and ethics.

But, the father-son relationship is only one side of the thematically complicated but narratively simple story. There is much food for thought about friendship ("You think it is easy to be a friend? If you are truly his friend, you will learn otherwise") which Danny's father, Reb Saunders, tells the narrator of the story, Reuven Malter, and certainly proves to be true. There is a fantastic development about the Zionist movement, and the opposition within the Jewish community against Israel to be created after the second World War. There is an interesting, albeit outdated, flirtation with psychology and Freudism. And much, much more...especially if someone could simply live inside my head and answer back whenever I had a "and what do you think about this?" moment.

I find that one of Potok's greatest achievements is his ability to narrowly write a story that happens in a close, sheltered environment about a specific religious belief, and have it easily apply to many different beliefs and situations. I found myself thinking to myself most of today about how this story, about a community of ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews, has a lot in common with my current community. This place, where I live, has the broadest spectrum of believers/non-believers, practicing/non-practicing, ultra conservative/ultra liberal members of my own religion. The characters in the story are living and functioning in an almost self-contained environment. Their schools are Jewish. Their sports teams are Jewish. Their stores, hospitals, friends and neighborhoods are Jewish. The conflict is not "us vs. them" but "old us vs. new or changing us" and "holier us vs. secular us". They don't see the world around them.

Ding, ding, ding!!!

I'm not going to go much into it, although I'd like to, because I simply have too many different thoughts (and it'd be much better left for a conversation with someone who has read the book as well), but I have been thinking most of the day about how appropriate Potok's story, which takes place in the 40s, applies to the LDS faith today. Especially here in Utah, where there is a cocoon, of sorts, that envelops people that were born here, grew up here and have since reproduced here. Not that "here" is a bad place to be, but like this small Hasidic community in New York, they simply do not see outside. Rather than grasping on to our common denominator, our love and belief in Christ and his gospel, we separate and divide ourselves over things that make us human. Like whether we went to BYU, or not. Or whether or not we like Mitt Romney.

These things don't matter. Like poor Reb Saunders had to discover by isolating his son from his best friend, and what David Saunders knew, but didn't have the courage to proclaim, good exists in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life. It exists down the street, where perhaps the homes aren't matching brown stucco craftsman style. It exists at the other school. It exists in literature and areas of study and even at the church with the different shaped spire. There is goodness everywhere.

This belief of mine is fundamentally different from Reb Saunders, who explained that each person is born with a tiny spark of goodness which is enveloped in a shell of ugly and evil. It is the responsibility of the parent, the church, the community to protect that spark, encourage it, feed it so that it can grow and expand to eventually fill the shell and push out the evil.

While there is certainly plenty of evil surrounding us all, I think it only gets more bold and has more room to grow when we huddle around our goodness. It, goodness, is bigger than we allow it to be. We need to link goodness to goodness and charge down the street, all ablaze together.

Kind of a tangent, but I love books that make me go off down one. I can't say this book is a favorite, because it didn't make me feel the way a book needs to, but I'm certainly glad I've read it and happily encourage anyone who hasn't to do so.

East Of Eden

LOVED. EVERY. BIT. OF. IT!

What a story! I've been typing book reviews for a couple of hours now and my mind is a bit shot, but I finished this last night and afterwards, I lay back on my pillow extremely satisfied just thinking about it. It's so rare that I read something that delights me from beginning to end. While there were a few turns on the journey that confused me and seemed to take the book in a different direction, his connecting all the characters, the stories and to do it with profound meaning is nothing short of brilliant. Now add the facts that he weaved in a little of his own personal history, and one of the oldest, and best known stories of the Bible and Steinbeck's brilliance is only amplified.

I'm always surprised when I love a classic. Perhaps because there are a lot that I haven't liked, or merely tolerated, but this was a joy to read. The characters are so multi-dimensional and interesting that their stories and development become almost personal. Adam, Samuel, Lee, Abra, Cal, Aron, Kate/Cathy and even Liza were real for me. Their homes were real. Their towns were real. Best of all, the consequences to their actions were real.

How do you summarize East of Eden? It's a story about good and evil. But most of all, it's a story about choice. For me, the central part of the book was the realization made by Lee, Adam and Samuel when they were dissecting the story of Cain and Able and their offerings. In one translation, the Lord rebukes Cain's offering by saying, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."

It was while reading a different translation that Lee, a Chinese servant, noticed a difference. In it, rather than saying "thou shalt rule over him" it said "do thou rule over him" They noticed that it wasn't a promise, it was an order. Such a difference got Lee wondering what original word different translations came from.

After years of studying with Chinese philosophers and a rabbi, the consensus was that the original Hebrew word, Timshel, actually means "Thou mayest". Therefore, the bible does not order that man triumph over sin or promises that it will. It says that the way is open. For if thou mayest...that mayest not.

Brilliant! Because that's what I think! Agency is so important to Heavenly Father that he allowed 1/3 of His children to leave him permanently. Of course we have a choice over sin.

Steinbeck leaves the story briefly in Chapter 34 when he writes a short essay about the one story that exists. He says,

Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil....A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well -- or ill?

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world. We have only one story.

All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

This is what his book is about it. Man's struggle over good and evil. In a completely human story, Steinbeck captured THE story with his characters and storylines. This is a book I happily recommend to anyone and will buy for my all-time greatest books library.

Cry, The Beloved Country

I have been a little bit worried that I have become a book snob. My sister, Maureen, is a music snob. She can't help it. But to someone like me, who loves music but isn't surrounded by it all the time like she is, I look at her a little sadly because it's harder to enjoy the simple things when jaded by snobbery.

The last two books I reviewed were ones loved by a lot of people. And, I didn't love them. Which worried me. Why didn't I love them or even like them A LOT? Am I reading too much? Am I being a nitpicker?

But, then, I read Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton and rejoiced in its greatness. I can still love and enjoy and feel a great book. This is a wonderful book.

It was written shortly after World War II, when apartheid and segregation in South Africa was the growing trend but not yet law. It explains the breakdown of an old system, the fear and confusion that followed with a lost generation. It was written with hope for a beloved country - hope to heal wounds. It's almost tragic to read knowing the history that followed.

But, other than than tragic hindsight, this book uplifts the spirit and gives hope to me that all of the different ways we segregate now can still learn. We can learn that, different as we may be, we can live together...help each other...try to understand each other. I want the religious right to read this book. I want the intellectual elite to read this book (and not just apply it to others). I want those afraid of immigration to read this. I want Michael Moore to read this.

Learn. And Change.

Best quote in the entire book (and there are a lot to choose from):

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.

Read this book.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

This was another book I had little knowledge of when deciding to add it to my "to-read" list. I'd heard of the title, learned it was an Oprah's Book Club choice, and saw it at Sam's Club which inspired me to put a hold on it at the library, but I didn't actually know what it was about.

For that reason, I was a little nervous when I read the foreward and the critic walked me through its rediscovery in the 60s (it was written in 1937) and subsequent controversy over its worthiness as a part of African American literature. Yikes. What's a white, middle class, northerner to do? I prepared myself to read with a sheltered caution.

Honestly, I don't understand the controversy. I don't think it white washes over the ugly aspects of the south in the 1930s, but it also doesn't dwell on every injustice or the blatant unfairness of the times. It simply tells the story as is. Perhaps the African American community fears fingers and voices pointing to the book saying, "See? It wasn't so bad? Your history isn't all oppression and misery." If that is or was the case, I think its safe to say that while the Zora Neale Hurston's portrayal of African American history doesn't attempt the heights of horror of, say, a Toni Morrison novel, it also doesn't give the reader a rosy tinted view of their history either.

The main character, Janie, is an African American teenage girl, raised by a grandmother who, while a slave, was raped and impregnated by a white man. The grandmother bore a daughter, Janie's mother, who, later, was also raped by a peer while in school, which left Janie's mother traumatized and uninterested in her baby. Left to be raised by her grandmother, Janie's childhood and rearing was old-fashioned and she was left with a limited understanding of the world, especially the male/female romantic relationship. Janie does have a vivid experience involving watching pear blossoms being pollinated by bees, which leaves her yearning for romantic love.

Convinced by her grandmother that love can develop after marriage, Janie marries an older farmer who is looking for a hard working wife to help take care of his land. After a short amount of time, Janie realizes there are no pear blossoms there, and that this life does not make her happy. One day, while doing a chore, she comes upon a charismatic man named Jody, who dresses and acts like a free white man, much different than the other men she has been exposed to, and is on his way to live in an all-black community, Eatonville.

Jody smooth talks Janie into going with him and she leaves the farm and her husband in search of her pear blossom. Unfortunately for Janie, this new opportunity doesn't present happiness either and after 20 years or so of marriage and being a trophy to her powerful husband who became Mayor of Eatonville, she finally becomes a widow and experiences independence for the first time. With that independence, she meets and marries the much younger Tea Cake, her pear blossom, and begins to understand and enjoy the inner person she always knew she was.

The power of this novel comes from the phonetic dialogue which transports you to the black south, and the honest expose of the attitudes and expectations of blacks during this period of our country's history. I feel that Janie went through a great deal of growth and discovery and is an excellent example of the silent and dignified power women have and have always had, even when its ability to express itself is limited.

Possession

Wow.

Wow.

What an original book! A.S. Byatt was awarded the Booker Prize of Fiction in 1990 for her ambitious love story between two fictional poets from the 19th century, R.H. Ash and Cristabel LaMotte, and two modern day literary experts on their works and life, Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell, who uncover a series of unknown love letters between the poets and piece together clues that have been well hidden for over a century. Journal entries, poems, fables, letters, dialogue and narrative are all used by the author to progress the plot and expose the century old secret love affair. The fierce competition over discovery and possession of the recently discovered documents within the world of academia explains the urgent drive and need to uncover their past.

The result is not always easy to read. The poetry, for me, was especially difficult. Reading poetry, complicated poetry...not Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein, is like reading a foreign language that I only had one semester of in middle school. I can read it, pronounce it but simply don't have the patience, background knowledge or vocabulary to comprehend it. Victorian era poetry is like multiplying that difficulty ten fold. And, many times, it wasn't a few lines or stanzas to muddle my way through, but pages and pages of subtle irony and word play about relationships or observations embedded in a poem about a garden or insect.

That's the hard stuff. But the conversations about life, creation, religion, independence, gender, and language within a charged current of attraction and need had me on edge and completely absorbed in the story. The characters are impossibly real. Byatt captures a unique personality through past writing of each of her historical characters. Ash's writings are consistently and clearly his. Christabel has a completely different style in communication and poetry. Even Ash's wife, Ellen's writings (yes, he is married. It's a romance but not a happy, feel good one) are purely hers. There is no contamination from other characters or limits created from the author herself. I really thought the italicized print were reprinted documents. Not being a poet or scholar of Victorian English literature, I had no idea that Ash or LaMotte were actually fictional. I knew the story was fictional, but I assumed the author took license with two actual historical figures. They are so tangible, so smart and their voices and thoughts so believable and detailed that it wasn't until I finished the book and googled Ash and LaMotte that I discovered their lives were limited to this book. The letters, the poems, the journals...each had their own tone and style. What a feat to accomplish in one book. No wonder it won such a prestigious award!

Incredible fiction. I'll remember this book for a long time.

The Good Earth

Written by Pearl S. Buck, an American citizen who spent most of her childhood and much of her adult life in China, in 1931. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. I've heard much about it, mostly about a moment in the story when a woman gives birth and then goes back to work in the fields the same day, and have wanted to read it for quite some time.

I think it's always intimidating to read a classic. They are usually reserved for English classes or intellectuals and I worry that my understanding won't be up to snuff. Here goes:

The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day. He is a peasant farmer, in China, who goes to the house of a wealthy farmer to pick up the bride his father has arranged for him to have: a plain, unattractive slave whose feet have never been bound and appear hideous to him. Large feet notwithstanding, he quickly learns to admire his hard-working and frugal wife. With their hard work and savings, Wang climbs up the economic ladder by being able to buy additional land to farm on. It's ALL about the land, in Wang's opinion. Land is forever. Land cannot be taken away.

Sure enough, what I heard about birthing and returning to work in the fields the same day was true. O-Lan, Wang's wife, is this incredibly docile, unassuming woman. She's the kind of woman that made me feel like a slacker for sitting around reading a book. Or taking a few weeks off of going to church after having a baby. I longed for more O-Lan, but that wasn't what this book was about. There were moments when I saw her pain, when I understood that in this culture, no one really loved O-Lan, despite her humility and service. Not her parents, who probably considered having a girl a burden and sold her as a slave when she was very young, not her owners, not her husband, and eventually, not even her own children. Wang appreciated her but all his appreciation did was allow him to feel ashamed when he brought a concubine to the home.

The beauty of the book, to me, was the irony that Buck skillfully weaves throughout the story. The rise and fall of the House of Hwang, where O-Lan was a slave, parallels Wang Lung's own story. It's the whole Nephite Pride Cycle! In fact, Buck's style of writing felt a bit like reading the scriptures. It was written dispassionately, even when writing about the character's passion. I also appreciated the Epic nature of the story. There is something to be learned from the successes and the tragedies.

As much as I liked it, and I liked it very much, I wasn't completely smitten. I read some of the original reviews which led to the Pulitzer Award, and most of them focus on the groundbreaking honest look into China. Apparently, up until that time, China, or the Orient, was poorly understood and most of the stories about it were romanticized and mystifying. Buck wrote about the China she saw, the day to day work and customs, the glory of sons to their families and the disregard to their daughters. While many parts of the story transcends time, parts of it felt obsolete and simple. Kind of like the first of anything. An original...yes. Groundbreaking...definitely. But then other books follow suit and readers have a choice of style and characters. I've read several books before that tell the chilling tale of peasant life in China. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan each detail the beauty, simplicity, horror and hardship of pre and post revolutionary China. Perhaps that exposure kept me from truly loving this story. Or maybe my expectations were too high.

No doubt, some of you who did read this in a class and had the opportunity to dissect it with an instructor, see what I am missing. If so...please share.

Until being convinced otherwise, my opinion is that this is a great book. Definitely a classic. But not one of my favorites.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

I cannot remember why I checked this book out. I saw it on something and like to throw in a classic every once in a while. The only Hemingway I've ever read is The Old Man and the Sea in high school. One of my great regrets is not taking any great literature classes in college. Writing papers scared me to death! But, I think some books need the classroom setting to explore and explain why they are so great. This is one of those books.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a book about the Spanish Civil War. Robert Jordan, an American, is over in Spain fighting with the International Brigades in behalf of the anti-fascists or Republicans. His mission is to blow up a bridge and seeks the aid of a small guerrilla group hiding in the mountains led by a drunken, broken man named Pablo. The book takes place over a four day span and much of the book centers around the theme of death. What is bravery or cowardice? What is a man's life worth in comparison to a great cause?

I had read a little about Hemingway's prose. The most common descriptions are "terse" and "understated". His sentences tend to be shorter and more direct without losing any vividness. They are just more direct. This was no easy read for me. All of the dialogue was written in old English as a direct translation from Spanish. Lots and lots of "thee"s "thou"s and "thy"s. Sometimes, I felt like I was reading the scriptures but without the uplifting part of it:) Whenever the characters were mad at each other or at the situation, a popular phrase used was "I obscenity in the milk of...." which is probably a vulgar profanity but since I don't know what it means, I plead pure ignorance. The dialogue was hard to read. It got easier but this took me days to get into.

Hard or not, I think it's a worthwhile novel. Hemingway took his title from a poem written by John Donne:


"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

This was Robert Jordan's enlightenment. This was his awakening.