Started: Feb. 13
Completed: Feb. 22nd
ebook
Pages: ~160
I've read Huckleberry Finn before, of course, but it would have been more than 30 years ago. A couple of things brought the book back to mind and back on the mental "list": the recent publication of Twain's unexpurgated autobiography, and the recent controversy about publishing a version of Huck Finn that doesn't contain the word "n*****".
Huckleberry Finn didn't make a big impression on me when I read it as a kid. For one thing, I've never been fond of books written in dialect. For another, it's a very "boyish" book on the surface, full of picaresque adventures that I found difficult to identify with.
But on rereading, the satire that was invisible to my childhood self is the most notable part of the book. And the slave narratives I've read since then (most recently the Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill) gives a poignancy and urgency to Jim's plight that I couldn't understand in the same way back then.
Okay, now I get it.
Monday 27 February 2012
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (spoilers)
A lacuna is "a blank space or a missing part", a "deficiency". or "a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical part". Kingsolver also uses it to describe the small missing piece, that once found, makes a different whole.
Which is a purpose of Barbara Kingsolver's novel: to describe a missing bit of North American history that once added back makes Fox News, and "birthers", and the Tea Party ..... if not make sense, at least fit into a larger pattern of pathological American behaviour.
I was attracted to this book by my recent trip to Mexico. The book begins there, with the early life of (the fictional) Harrison Shepard, a half American/half Mexican boy who becomes a cook and secretary first for Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera, and later for their friend and colleague Lev Trotsky. The book ends with Harrison's "death" by persecution by a McCarthyist witchhunt.
The description of McCarthyism is superb. Kingsolver describes how "anti-communist" hysteria at first appears risible, then dangerous, and then inexorable in its immunity to proportion, logic, or even facts. The hysteria rolls over American culture, and although it now calls itself something different and has different bogeymen, rolls over it still.
I also very much enjoyed the first, Mexican half of the book. Today Frida is far more famous in popular American culture than either her husband or even Trotsky. The book gives much more context. Frida was an acclaimed artist in her own lifetime, but her husband was a Mexican superstar. Rivera helped create what is now a founding myth of Mexican culture: the triumphant vision of the Mexican people as the heroic merger of Spanish and Indigenous cultures. A friend commented on facebook that she found the ubiquity of that message in Mexico creepy and kind of totalitarian (think Aryan "master race" talk). But consider the Canadian alternative: indigenous invisibility. And Trotsky emerges as a surprisingly sympathetic character, while Stalin appears malevolent beyond description.
Started: Feb. 9, 2012
Finished: Feb. 20, 2012
Pages: 507
Which is a purpose of Barbara Kingsolver's novel: to describe a missing bit of North American history that once added back makes Fox News, and "birthers", and the Tea Party ..... if not make sense, at least fit into a larger pattern of pathological American behaviour.
I was attracted to this book by my recent trip to Mexico. The book begins there, with the early life of (the fictional) Harrison Shepard, a half American/half Mexican boy who becomes a cook and secretary first for Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera, and later for their friend and colleague Lev Trotsky. The book ends with Harrison's "death" by persecution by a McCarthyist witchhunt.
The description of McCarthyism is superb. Kingsolver describes how "anti-communist" hysteria at first appears risible, then dangerous, and then inexorable in its immunity to proportion, logic, or even facts. The hysteria rolls over American culture, and although it now calls itself something different and has different bogeymen, rolls over it still.
I also very much enjoyed the first, Mexican half of the book. Today Frida is far more famous in popular American culture than either her husband or even Trotsky. The book gives much more context. Frida was an acclaimed artist in her own lifetime, but her husband was a Mexican superstar. Rivera helped create what is now a founding myth of Mexican culture: the triumphant vision of the Mexican people as the heroic merger of Spanish and Indigenous cultures. A friend commented on facebook that she found the ubiquity of that message in Mexico creepy and kind of totalitarian (think Aryan "master race" talk). But consider the Canadian alternative: indigenous invisibility. And Trotsky emerges as a surprisingly sympathetic character, while Stalin appears malevolent beyond description.
Started: Feb. 9, 2012
Finished: Feb. 20, 2012
Pages: 507
Sweetness at the bottom of the pie by Allan Bradley
I had a cold. I couldn't concentrate. I decided that nothing would do but to find a mystery to relax with while my head cleared. So I popped by the library and picked up a few books suitable for reading on the couch with a cat on my lap.
Allan Bradley got a lot of press when this book was published: he's a Canadian writer and I believe first time published author in his 70s who got a contract for several books on the basis of this one. It also won a first mystery novel award.
Summary: it's engaging, relatively well-written, and certainly has an original detective in its precocious 11 year old heroine. Unlike many mysteries by less-experienced authors, the plot was plausible within its context, and barely creaked (although I continue to wonder how the stamps survived some of their adventures). However, after having just spent 3 days with several very bright kids in the 8-12 year old range....I have to say that I find Flavia a bit too precocious for plausibility. Sure, she has an appropriately hostile relationship with her elder sisters, and an entertaining passion for poisons....but her knowledge of chemistry is a titch too comprehensive for me.
Started: Feb. 25th
Finished: Feb. 26th
Pages:292
Allan Bradley got a lot of press when this book was published: he's a Canadian writer and I believe first time published author in his 70s who got a contract for several books on the basis of this one. It also won a first mystery novel award.
Summary: it's engaging, relatively well-written, and certainly has an original detective in its precocious 11 year old heroine. Unlike many mysteries by less-experienced authors, the plot was plausible within its context, and barely creaked (although I continue to wonder how the stamps survived some of their adventures). However, after having just spent 3 days with several very bright kids in the 8-12 year old range....I have to say that I find Flavia a bit too precocious for plausibility. Sure, she has an appropriately hostile relationship with her elder sisters, and an entertaining passion for poisons....but her knowledge of chemistry is a titch too comprehensive for me.
Started: Feb. 25th
Finished: Feb. 26th
Pages:292
Saturday 25 February 2012
Four books at a time
I enjoyed blogging about my recent trip to Mexico (see my Tea or Chocolate blog). Now that I'm back in Canada and am preparing to go back to work, I'd like to continue. When thinking about a theme, books naturally occurred to me. I read a lot (or at least I used to). Blogging about what I read would give me an excuse to keep blogging, would likely help me get more out of the books that I pick up, and who knows? Someone might be interested in reading my reviews. I think I'll give it a try, anyway.
As an added twist, I'm going to try to review every single book that I read over the course of the year. I'm curious how much I read these days, and am also curious what the current distribution of books is. I don't usually keep track.
As for the blog title......I like reading more than one book at a time. I'm not always in the mood for the same thing. For example, I may alternate between something serious and something light. When I have more time I might read three things: maybe something non-fiction, a serious novel, and a mystery. But when I have even more time and more energy (like I did on our recent Mexico sabbatical), I sometimes go farther..... up to four books at a time.
Frankly, reading four books is something I've tried to do many times but may never have actually achieved. Three books is doable, where "success" is defined as making progress on all of the books and eventually finishing them all. But every time I start that fourth book....one of them seems to fall off the mental radar.
So, I'm not sure if reading four books at a time is an aspiration (one day I will have enough time and focus to successfully keep four books going at once!), or a fool's errand (who on earth can keep that many mental threads going at once? And who would even want to?). But given that this book blog is an experiment of similar "dubiosity", I'm taking "four books at a time" as my title.
As an added twist, I'm going to try to review every single book that I read over the course of the year. I'm curious how much I read these days, and am also curious what the current distribution of books is. I don't usually keep track.
As for the blog title......I like reading more than one book at a time. I'm not always in the mood for the same thing. For example, I may alternate between something serious and something light. When I have more time I might read three things: maybe something non-fiction, a serious novel, and a mystery. But when I have even more time and more energy (like I did on our recent Mexico sabbatical), I sometimes go farther..... up to four books at a time.
Frankly, reading four books is something I've tried to do many times but may never have actually achieved. Three books is doable, where "success" is defined as making progress on all of the books and eventually finishing them all. But every time I start that fourth book....one of them seems to fall off the mental radar.
So, I'm not sure if reading four books at a time is an aspiration (one day I will have enough time and focus to successfully keep four books going at once!), or a fool's errand (who on earth can keep that many mental threads going at once? And who would even want to?). But given that this book blog is an experiment of similar "dubiosity", I'm taking "four books at a time" as my title.
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