Reading, Writing and Retirement

The Sunday Salon - Mid-Year Report Card

Good Sunday morning everyone. I hope you're enjoying your weekend. On June 30^th I read my 50th book of the year – since my 2008 goal is 100, I’m right on target (though I was hoping for a little padding). Here’s a synopsis of the best and the worst and the somewhere in between. (For a complete list of my 2008 reads, see the sidebar at right.)

My picks for the best reads (in no particular order):

Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Gardens of Water by Alan Drew (Early Reviewers copy - my review)
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (non-fiction; my review)
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (graphic novel - my review)
Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Interpreter of Maladies (stories) by Jhumpa Lahiri
Wild Life by Molly Gloss (my review)
Small Island by Andrea Levy (my review)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

Also recommend

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (my review)
The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell (non-fiction; my review)
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
At Mrs. Lippincote's by Elizabeth Taylor
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire (my review)

Disappointed in:

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich – I love Erdrich's writing and couldn’t wait to dive into this. I thought it was great until the last 50 pages or so and IMO it just fell apart.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (audio) - overrated. Much of it was about Krakauer.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson – silly story, not all that well written.
The Gathering by Anne Enright – bleak novel, good writing, just not a good read. Much attention to male body parts. This won the Booker Prize – there's no accounting for taste.

Waste of natural resources:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – I really do not understand the fuss about this book. I’ve been told it’s much better in its original Portuguese.
Digging to America by Anne Tyler – I am apparently NOT an Anne Tyler fan. I thought this was dreadful.
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah (Early Review book) – this was an appallingly bad book.

Classics read for the first time:

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

It's been an amazing reading year so far; the second half promises to be every bit as good.

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Booking Through Thursday - What Am I Reading?

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?

Since I embarked on Orange July two days ago, I've started on my luscious list of Orange Prize winners or listed books.

First up was When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. What an exquisite book. The story is of a Japanese American family's internment during WWII -- I loved the points of view. I was a ways into it before I realized the main characters weren't named - the author used pronouns only, "he" "she"

"the girl" "the boy." You'd think this would distance the reader from the characters, but for me, it didn't at all. Later in the story, the POV changes to first person plural quite subtly, the boy and girl telling the story. Finally the father gets his say and it is quite a dramatic shift.

The story begins when the notice is posted in Berkley - all people of Japanese descent must report to a relocation center. "The woman" - the mother in the story - calmly prepares to evacuate. The children are curious but no one is angry or resentful. We learn that the father has already been removed to a camp - immediately after Pearl Harbor he was taken from their home in the middle of the night, wearing his bathrobe and slippers. One of the children is dismayed - their father never left the house without a hat.

I wanted them to be angry and resentful, not to go so willingly and quietly. I wept when the mother destroyed their Japanese belongings. They lost so much - not just material goods but their spirit, especially the father and mother. The author portrayed the family relationships beautifully, they were so dear with each other.

We follow the children and mother to a camp in the desert in Utah. It is a dull and harsh existence, and they remain there for more than three years. When they return after the war, they are able to move back into their house (many internees lost all their property), but their belongings are gone or destroyed and the house is trashed. Father eventually returns, a broken man who never regains his spirit.

So much racism is based on fear of "other." Otsuka made her characters so real and so "American" (I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding insensitive or ethnocentric), so like their neighbors in many ways. Their rejection, the hatred toward them was so painful to me because I grew so fond of them - and because, of course, this was a monumental error on the part of the US government (relocations also happened in Canada).

We have come close to repeating this history in the US in the last seven years. We have repeated this history in other countries, imprisoning and torturing many innocent people in Guantanamo , Abu Ghraib and other undisclosed locations. There wasn't a backlash from the Japanese Americans after WWII, even though so many of their lives were destroyed. I fear that the damage being done today is exacerbating the anti-American sentiment around the world; illegal torture and imprisonment is not the answer to terrorism. It must stop and those responsible must be held accountable.

My next Orange Prize read is The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I started it late last night in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm. So far I'm loving the writing. Nothing on my Orange list is what I'd consider light summer reading, but I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy every bit of it.

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Guess the plant #2

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Earthly Delights

We went to Sauvie Island this morning to a U-Pick farm for fresh strawberries. We picked about 20 pounds of juicy sweet Hood berries, brought them home and popped them in the freezer (those that we didn't pop directly into our mouths). What a treat that will be in January. We'll probably go once more for another batch and then it's on to...

blueberries! These are in our garden but we'll need to supplement with some U-Pick. We do have enough raspberries in the garden to keep us happy for the rest of the year.

In the non-edible sections of the garden, here's what bloomed this week:

Hydrangea...

...poppy (this one survived the curious fingers)...

...and the lavender keeps the bumble bees busy.

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The Sunday Salon: Complementary Reading

Hello Sunday Salonsters. It's hot hot hot here in Portland this weekend (triple digits yesterday), so I'm doing chores early in the morning and then hunkering down in the coolest places I can find with my books and my laptop.

I just happened to be reading these two books at the same time. Dovegreyreader referred to this phenomena awhile back as 'bookendipity.'

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is set in New York in the 1870s, but was published in 1920. It's a rather scathing commentary on New York's "polite Society" (of which Wharton was a part until she moved to France).

Gibson Girls and Suffragists: Perceptions of Women from 1900 to 1918 is partly an overview of the "polite Society" of New York at the turn of the century. Topics include fashion, physical activities, women's employment opportunities (or lack of), education, women's sphere of domesticity and their participation in World War One.

The one featured author in Gibson Girls is --- Edith Wharton, and particularly, The Age of Innocence.

Of course, I was particularly fascinated by the clothing in Gibson Girls, the corseted bodies and

fashion rules that most women in polite Society strictly adhered to. In The Age of Innocence, during Newland and May's honeymoon, May spends a month in Paris tending to a new wardrobe. Newland...

... was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress. "It's their armour," he thought, "their defence against the unknown and their defiance of it."

I found it interesting that in the first years of the 20th century women's increased physical activities, including dance and bicycling, informed fashion, requiring looser, shorter clothing.

The writing in Gibson Girls is geared toward young adults; the photos and old posters can be marveled over by anyone. Here's one that made me gasp: the one on the right is a piece of sheet music.

I like to think we've made progress.

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Some garden firsts

It was delicious.

The first poppy bloom - I went back to photograph it last night and all the petals were off. I suspect curious little children.

Broccoli several days ago -- it will be dinner tonight.

The cabbage is furling, the kale is curling
and the broccoli is broccoling.
It's a good life.

Lezlie was curious about the artichoke plant. Here's a photo I took a couple years ago when it went to bloom (note the industrious bees! well, and the aphids too, sigh.) Click on it to enlarge.

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Reading is Fundamental - Read-a-Thon Fundraiser

My friend Wendy (caribousmom) is participating in the 24 hour Read-a-Thon this weekend. It's a fund raiser for Reading is Fundamental (RIF), a children's literacy program that has suffered extreme budget cuts under the Bush administration (don't get me started). To support Wendy's venture into this reading challenge, I'm pledging $30 to RIF. You can support RIF too; either visit Wendy's blog about the challenge or leave a comment here to let us know you're supporting the cause. Thanks!

Wendy would be embarrassed that I'm telling you this, but she does some fabulous work out in the world, volunteering her time for some really wonderful programs. And she's preparing for this Read-a-Thon while forest fires rage around them, not knowing if they'll need to evacuate from their home in Northern California. Wendy, you're amazing! Read More!

Booking Through Thursday: Books/Authors I Love and Why

This week's Booking Through Thursday conundrum:

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

Great questions - what draws me to some authors and makes me run from others.... I love authors that tease a story out, with enough foreshadowing to keep my interest but not so much as to be obnoxious. Great examples are two I just finished reading: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell. Kazuo Ishiguro also does this brilliantly - it's like watching a slow strip tease (an elegant one, not one of those pole dances, ewww).

Well drawn characters are essential. Nothing is worse than getting to the end of a book and feeling like I don't know or don't like any of the characters (there are exceptions to the latter, e.g. Fingersmith, in which most of the characters have questionable motives and actions, but it makes for a wonderful romp).

I do love books that have some sort of morality message or that unveil human foibles - but again, the message must be subtle. Please don't bang me over the head with it (I felt that was the downfall of Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, though I usually love her writing).

Other qualities I love: subtle humor, a unique story, I-did-not-see-that-coming twists, and, of course, well crafted writing. Authors I think accomplish these so well: Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich (I'll be starting her new book The Plague of Doves this weekend), Sarah Waters, Isabel Allende, Joanne Harris. Read More!

The Sunday Salon - Self-Survey

Last week I was inspired by Katrina to do a little survey of my reading shoulds and desires. Thanks, Katrina! I made a few changes to it and added some of my own:

Author/s I've always wanted to read but haven't yet: Iris Murdoch; Kurt Vonnegut; Ray Bradbury (this could be a very long list, but I'm for brevity today)

Author/s I'd like to read more of: Charles Dickens; John Steinbeck; Kazuo Ishiguro; Sarah Waters

Author/s I think I should read but have no interest in (true confessions): James Joyce; John Updike; Joyce Carol Oates

Book/s I think I should read but have no interest in: Moby Dick

Authors I love that I've recently discovered (thanks to LibraryThing!): Kazuo Ishiguro; Robertson Davies; Elizabeth Taylor; Anita Shreve; Jhumpa Lahiri; Per Petterson.

The genre/s I've wanted to read more of: sci-fi; mystery

The book/s on my TBR pile I always mean to read next: Brave New World; 1984 (that fits in with #6!)

Book/s I want to try again:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - I've started this 3 or 4 times and couldn't get past the first 20 pages or so. I'm still curious about it though and haven't given up yet.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - I quit this one at about 50 pages; I've heard so many raves about this book, and I think so much of her as an activist that I want to give it another go.

Books I want to re-read:

To see if I love them as much as I did the first time: House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende); Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood); Ishmael and My Ishmael (Daniel Quinn); The River Why (David James Duncan).

To see if I can change my poor opinion of it: Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver). This is on my book group list for this year, so I'll get my chance.

Books I will never, ever read: anything by Danielle Steele; The Secret. Never.

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I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Blind Assassin and am thoroughly enjoying it. Atwood is such a stunning writer. Next up: Probably The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which awaits me at the library.

Until next time, Sunday readers! Have a great week. Read More!

In - and out - of the garden

Time to start harvesting a few things.

The strawberries are beginning to ripen. I sat by the garden the other evening and watched a brazen scrub jay jump into the garden and start pecking at an almost-ripe strawberry! The nerve.