We've got 2 suggestions for our next read:
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Since I'm late posting, let's leave the polls open till Wednesday, 3pm.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Everything Is Illuminated
I could write something, but why bother when this review from Salon says it perfectly:
"Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer
Apr 26, 2002 | There are two stories wound together in this first novel, and as is often the case, one is more engaging than the other. The first describes a visit to Ukraine by a 20-year-old American named Jonathan Safran Foer. (You just have to ignore the fact that the device of putting a character with the author's name in a novel outlived its freshness before Foer was born, in 1977.) This part of the book is told by Alexander Perchov, a Ukrainian, also 20, who gets shanghaied into acting as Foer's tour guide and semi-competent translator when Foer visits the country. Like many Jews of his generation, Foer wants to touch the pulse of his roots, to see the village of Trachimbrod, where his grandfather was born and raised, and to meet the woman whose family saved him from the Nazis. The two young men are trading manuscripts, and so the narrative alternates excerpts from Alex's account of Foer's visit and his letters to Jonathan with installments of Jonathan's own novel.
At first, Alex's version of English resembles an out-of-control garden hose turned on full-force and allowed to thrash away on a summer lawn. He's got a thesaurus and he'll be damned if he's not going to use it. After bragging about the number of girls who "want to be carnal" with him, and his propensity for "performing so many things that can spleen a mother," he explains his love for American-style culture: "I dig Negroes, particularly Michael Jackson. I dig to disseminate very much currency at famous nightclubs in Odessa." His youth and his mangled English at first make him seem simply naive, but that hides a native apprehension that, uninhibited by oversophisticated politesse, can be startling. "There were parts of it I did not understand," he writes of Jonathan's novel. "But I conjecture that this is because they were very Jewish, and only a Jewish person could understand something so Jewish. Is that why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?"
If only the fictional Jonathan's novel were really that esoteric. The manuscript he sends to Alex is a tiresomely familiar thing, a folklorical saga of life in the shtetl of Trachimbrod, full of lusty villagers and their quasi-magical adventures. The Alex sections of the book feel utterly alive and teeter invigoratingly between hilarity and a terrible, creeping dread. By contrast, the Trachimbrod sections only remind the reader of other works -- rehashed Chagall and dime-store Garcia Marquez. There are some pretty passages here, but even these have a framed, almost twee quality. (And, in what seems to be an effort at earthiness, the story also strays into the simply gross, as when a male character with a withered arm uses it as a dildo to console all the widows in town.)
Ordinarily, this caveat would make "Everything is Illuminated" unrecommendable, but the Alex portions of the novel are so good that in the final calculation they far outbalance the book's weaknesses. (Plus you can skim the Trachimbrod sections without missing that much.) With Alex's grandfather (who keeps claiming he's blind and insists on bringing along a "seeing-eye bitch" obtained from "the home for forgetful dogs") as their driver, the two youths head into the Ukrainian countryside and the darkness of the past. Their burgeoning friendship and the way that history and chance keep the balance of power between them -- and their capacity to know each other -- in constant flux, make this feel like a story that, astonishingly enough, has never really been told before.
Foer exquisitely executes the book's best jokes: the way that Jonathan's minor flaws -- his vanity, his American cluelessness, his tendency to patronize -- filter through Alex's admiring portrait of the young man he calls his "most premium friend" and "the hero." As the novel shades inexorably into the tragic mode, and as Alex comes to be a much better writer than Jonathan, with both a finer sense of truth and a more urgent understanding of the need for happy endings, his stumbling English incandesces into eloquence. And that alone is worth the price of admission.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Holiday Read, the Sequel
I think this time we've got some promising suggestions. They are, in the order they arrived:
Everything is Illuminated
Snow Crash
Slowness
Good News: A Novel by Edward Abbey
Looking for something to load on the i-pod for the long holiday flight? Check out the RadioLab podcast....a quirky science show that often features interviews with Oliver Sacks and Robert Sapolsky. The shows on the brain are terrific.
Now, to the voting. Polls close Monday, 5pm.
Everything is Illuminated
Snow Crash
Slowness
Good News: A Novel by Edward Abbey
Looking for something to load on the i-pod for the long holiday flight? Check out the RadioLab podcast....a quirky science show that often features interviews with Oliver Sacks and Robert Sapolsky. The shows on the brain are terrific.
Now, to the voting. Polls close Monday, 5pm.
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I think I’m having a mid-life crisis. Could I be having a mid-life crisis? Do women have mid life crises? What are the symptoms? A flashy new sports car? No, I love my boxy old Volvo too much. A fabulous new wardrobe? Really, when would I have the time to go shopping? And where would I wear it? A daring new hair cut? The last time I had my hair cut, I was so allergic to the shampoo, my eyes swelled shut. I’m afraid to go back.
No, I’m afraid of my own mortality. Last week, I officially put 40 even farther behind me. My husband, who has cancer, just turned 50. We have reached, if not passed, mid life.
Perhaps that was why I was drawn to The Diving Bell and the Buttery, the “uplifting” and “inspirational” autobiography of Jean-Dominique Bauby. In his early 40’s Bauby suffered a stroke which caused paralysis of all but one eye. He dictated his memoirs letter by letter by blinking to indicate his choice of letters as someone read an alphabet out loud. He tells of longing to once again tousle his son’s hair, of reliving favourite meals he could no longer chew, and the horror of seeing his own “scarecrow” face in the mirror. He relates these stories, of trip to the beach, of visits to Lourdes, with self-mockery not self pity.
But is it uplifting? No. It is terrifying. Someday that will be me. Age or disease will one day leave me unable to move. Will I be able to communicate? Will I too scare small children? Will my family and friends, like Bauby’s, find me horrible to visit?
I’ve made those visits to the hospital. My grandfather was a business owner and, to hear the ladies tell it, a handsome, well-dressed gentleman. By the time I was born, a series of accidents has cost him the full use of his legs. His legs hurt, his pride hurt, and he became increasingly cantankerous. A quadriplegic in his last decade, he was largely unable or unwilling to communicate. It broke my heart to visit him in the hospital. Where was the man I loved? Could he tell how uncomfortable I was, how anxious I was to leave? Now it breaks my heart that I didn’t spend more time with him, when for that one week a year I was in driving distance.
When I suggested we read The Diving Bell, I listed its chief selling points as being short and a medical freak show. While reading it, I told others that it was not inspirational. In retrospect, it is. Not in a Lifetime movie “Look-at-me-I’m-Lance-Armstong-I-Can-Overcome-Cancer-and-Win-Four-Tours-de-France” sort of way. It is a sincere celebration of the life he lived, a savouring of his favourite memories. If forces me to wonder if I will have his grace and humour as I face my inevitable decline or will I become bitter as my grandfather.
No, I’m afraid of my own mortality. Last week, I officially put 40 even farther behind me. My husband, who has cancer, just turned 50. We have reached, if not passed, mid life.
Perhaps that was why I was drawn to The Diving Bell and the Buttery, the “uplifting” and “inspirational” autobiography of Jean-Dominique Bauby. In his early 40’s Bauby suffered a stroke which caused paralysis of all but one eye. He dictated his memoirs letter by letter by blinking to indicate his choice of letters as someone read an alphabet out loud. He tells of longing to once again tousle his son’s hair, of reliving favourite meals he could no longer chew, and the horror of seeing his own “scarecrow” face in the mirror. He relates these stories, of trip to the beach, of visits to Lourdes, with self-mockery not self pity.
But is it uplifting? No. It is terrifying. Someday that will be me. Age or disease will one day leave me unable to move. Will I be able to communicate? Will I too scare small children? Will my family and friends, like Bauby’s, find me horrible to visit?
I’ve made those visits to the hospital. My grandfather was a business owner and, to hear the ladies tell it, a handsome, well-dressed gentleman. By the time I was born, a series of accidents has cost him the full use of his legs. His legs hurt, his pride hurt, and he became increasingly cantankerous. A quadriplegic in his last decade, he was largely unable or unwilling to communicate. It broke my heart to visit him in the hospital. Where was the man I loved? Could he tell how uncomfortable I was, how anxious I was to leave? Now it breaks my heart that I didn’t spend more time with him, when for that one week a year I was in driving distance.
When I suggested we read The Diving Bell, I listed its chief selling points as being short and a medical freak show. While reading it, I told others that it was not inspirational. In retrospect, it is. Not in a Lifetime movie “Look-at-me-I’m-Lance-Armstong-I-Can-Overcome-Cancer-and-Win-Four-Tours-de-France” sort of way. It is a sincere celebration of the life he lived, a savouring of his favourite memories. If forces me to wonder if I will have his grace and humour as I face my inevitable decline or will I become bitter as my grandfather.
Suggestions for our Holiday Read
Looks like a selection of classics:
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The House of God by Samuel Shem
The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Sorry Erica, but we read Middlesex not that long ago.
Deadline for voting is Wednesday at 5pm.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The House of God by Samuel Shem
The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Sorry Erica, but we read Middlesex not that long ago.
Deadline for voting is Wednesday at 5pm.
Monday, October 15, 2007
November Books
Please ignore this post. I'm determined to figure out how to make the links work!
Voting closes Wednesday at 5pm.
Nominations are:
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Best American Short Stories 2007
Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Domique Bauby
Voting closes Wednesday at 5pm.
Nominations are:
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Best American Short Stories 2007
Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Domique Bauby
Sunday, October 14, 2007
The Omnivore's Dilemma
My six year old and I love to read together each night. We put on our jammies and cuddle up in the big bed with our favourite Roald Dahl books. We giggled together through Matilda's adventures and shuddered every time one of the bad kids met a nasty end in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This weekend, I picked up a copy of The Witches. It seemed like a good idea until he really thought about it. "Witches, that could be really scarey. Mom, how does it end? Are the kids alright?"Many of us seemed to have the same response to The Omnivore's Dilemma. How does it end? Is my food alright?
The Omnivore's Dilemma is this: confronted with so many possibilites, what should we eat? Is nutritious or poisonous? Michael Pollan takes it a step further. Not only does he ask if our dinner is good for us, but is it good for the environment? Are the chemicals used in growing, processing, packaging, and transporting it poisoning us and the farmer? Are there really any small farmers left and can they make a living?
Pollan doesn't tell you that you can't eat meat, or that you have to grow all your food in your backyard. Through the course of the book, he presents 4 meals: MacDonalds, Whole Foods organic, sustainably grown, and one he foraged himself. He attempts to trace each element in the meal from its planting or birth, through to its appearance on his table. The route each takes is sometimes disturbing or surpisingly different from the way it is presented at the point of purchase....like those "free range hens" that have never been out of the barn.
I'll tell you how the books ends. The food is alright. Pollan never tells the reader what to eat and what not. Yes, you can still eat meat if you wish. However,he suggests you think about the food you are eating, really think about the food you are eating. Was it grown in a manner that I am comfortable with? Was my meat treated humanely? Was the grower paid fairly? What did my meal do to the enviroment. Pollan examines these issues in a detailed and thougtful manner, never preaching. The book is well written, although sometimes digressing, and often amusing.
Check out this debate between the author and the CEO of Whole Foods:
http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3234.html
The Omnivore's Dilemma is this: confronted with so many possibilites, what should we eat? Is nutritious or poisonous? Michael Pollan takes it a step further. Not only does he ask if our dinner is good for us, but is it good for the environment? Are the chemicals used in growing, processing, packaging, and transporting it poisoning us and the farmer? Are there really any small farmers left and can they make a living?
Pollan doesn't tell you that you can't eat meat, or that you have to grow all your food in your backyard. Through the course of the book, he presents 4 meals: MacDonalds, Whole Foods organic, sustainably grown, and one he foraged himself. He attempts to trace each element in the meal from its planting or birth, through to its appearance on his table. The route each takes is sometimes disturbing or surpisingly different from the way it is presented at the point of purchase....like those "free range hens" that have never been out of the barn.
I'll tell you how the books ends. The food is alright. Pollan never tells the reader what to eat and what not. Yes, you can still eat meat if you wish. However,he suggests you think about the food you are eating, really think about the food you are eating. Was it grown in a manner that I am comfortable with? Was my meat treated humanely? Was the grower paid fairly? What did my meal do to the enviroment. Pollan examines these issues in a detailed and thougtful manner, never preaching. The book is well written, although sometimes digressing, and often amusing.
Check out this debate between the author and the CEO of Whole Foods:
http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3234.html
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