Gilead

I grew up attending church. We went to a Presbyterian Church in Wichita, or, when in Oklahoma City, went to the church my grandparents and parents went to. As a kid, I almost always went to Sunday School-- an hour of songs, crafts, snacks and a Bible story. On occassions I'd have to go to the "adult" service and it would seriously try my patience. In my mind, the sermon was always 45 minutes, with the remaining 15 minutes song singing, prayer and offering collection. This was all followed by donuts in the fellowship hall. It was a time to try to avoid fidgeting and maybe a time to try to understand the sermon, which didn't seem to have anything to do the Bible stories and miracles we learned about in Sunday School. By the time I got to high school, I didn't really have to go to church any longer, so I didn't.

Twenty some odd years later I've decided to give church another try. I wanted a spirit of community, a calmness and a reason to wake up on Sunday mornings. Most suprising is that the sermons are maybe just 15 minutes and are also totally understandable now!

This is all a long way of saying that reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson was a little like attending a church service as a kid-- kind of tedious and sleep inducing, but poetic-- and a little like attending a church service as an adult-- thought provoking, relaxing and at times even entertaining.

Robinson composes the novel as a letter from Pastor Ames, a man in his 70s, to his young son. It's a loving and detailed journal and at times, it was all I could do to remember that Robinson is in fact a novelist and Ames is a fictional character. The letter/journal is part observation-- detailing what his son is wearing (a favorite red shirt), part philosophical and religious musing and part family history-- from finding and visiting a grandfather's grave in Kansas, to admitting his jealousy and confusion over his best friend's family, with special focus on young Boughton.

I started this book months ago and had a lot of trouble getting into it. I'd read some, then start another book...so I was continually reading it but while I had other books going. It wasn't until about half way through the book that a plot/storyline took hold. There's no doubt that Robinson is an amazing writer. Housekeeping remains one of my all time favorite books. But I can't in good faith recommend this book fully. It was worth the effort in the end, and I'm glad I read it, but it was a tough journey. Thus I'm giving it 3/5 netflix stars.

In The Skin of a Lion

I chose to check out Michael Ondaatje's book, In The Skin of a Lion for two reasons. First, I had just recently rewatched The English Patient and was reminded what a fantastic story teller Ondaatje is. The second reason was a recommendation from an NPR series, "You Must Read This." Kamila Shamsie recommends it so thoroughly that she almost doesn't recommend it, for fear of anyone not loving it as much as she does.

In The Skin of a Lion is a dreamy story of Patrick, the son of a Canadian logger, his life, loves and friends. The narrative skirts between fiction and magical realism; a nun falling off a bridge is miraculously saved, but has a chance to change her identity and become an actress. Caravaggio (the thief from The English Patient) escapes jail by being painted blue. Patrick helps build a waterworks, and then subsequently swims through the plumbing with the aim of destroying it with dynamite. The lives of all the characters intersect and then pass. Like yarn on a loom, they are separate, but complete a whole.

I read most of this book on a rainy bus home from New York and was transported. I thought about books that I have loved and implored friends "they must read": The Living, by Annie Dillard, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence. I think it would be safe to add this book to that list as well.

Netflix rating, 5/5.

Flower Children

A few weeks ago, in a post dentist high, I bought a bagfull of books at the Booksmith. It's been a dreary spring and early summer and I was craving some beach reading, even if it's too rainy to go to the beach. The cover of Flower Children, by Maxine Swann, showed a 70s era photo of kids romping in a field of flowers. A small volume, it looked promising, and in fact, it was light and if not completely engaging, at least harmless.

The "children" in questions are the offspring of a pair of hippies, living in a ramshackle old country home. The book is comprised of related short stories taking place over the children's lives. The children go on ski and road trips with their father, divorced from their mother, and generally make life difficult for his girlfriends. They go to their grandma's and swim in the pool while the adults have cocktails. They ride ponies with the neighborhood boys and have their first kisses.

But this book lacked the magic the glowing cover seemed to offer. There was no hook and the characters lacked depth. In all, though, it wasn't terrible. If you were to find it on the bookshelf of your beach house on a rainy afternoon, it would suffice.

3/5 netflix stars.

Crazy Love

While reading Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner, I wanted more than anything for the book to be fiction. I wanted this in part because Leslie's story was sad and difficult and I wouldn't want anyone to suffer the injustices she described. But I also wanted it because the memoir was just so sloppily written that I wanted to just read it as a throwaway book.

Leslie writes about her first marriage in her early 20s to a man who first hit her five days before their wedding. She describes the violence inflicted on her during their honeymoon and also her isolation when they moved away from her friends and family to Vermont. Conor meets many hallmarks of an abuser-- he came from a family where he was abused and slowly controls Leslie, even though she doesn't think of herself as a "typical" battered wife. And in many ways, she's not what we think. She comes from an old, rich family, went to a prestigious college, interned at Seventeen magazine, went to business school. Not to be picky, but these are the exact reasons I wanted the book to be better written! The chronology was confusing, her's and Conor's characters were not multi-dimensional and there were some many inaccuracies (ie, Bostonians do not say "pop" for a Coke-- a detail, but if you're going to throw it in, it better be correct!).

I've read a couple memoirs in the past year or so. The best was An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination and the so-so was Trail of Crumbs. This leans more to the latter-- a need to get the story out.

I admire Leslie for telling her story and for the ultimate "happy ending" even though it wasn't as sophisticated as I would have liked. I'm giving it 3/5 netflix stars.

Those Who Save Us

About five years ago I mentored a 10 year old boy. We spent nearly every Saturday together for two years and had to come up with a lot of creative ways to spend our time in Boston. More than once we went ice skating on the Frog Pond and spent many mornings rollerblading along the Esplanade. We trekked parts of the Freedom Trail with stops along the way for treats (Mike's Pastry and Faneuil Hall). Anyone who has spent time with kids aged 7-12 knows this: endless questions and arguments that are oddly more logical than should be fair.

J: Will you buy me those Pokeman Cards?

Me: No, sorry!

J: Why not?

Me: Because...

J: But I know you have money and they are only $2.

Or...

Me: I'm going slow rollerblading because I don't know how to stop.

J: But what if you were coming to the end of the dock and the river was in front of you?

Me: I'd fall to the side first.

J: What if you were rollerblading down a mountain and a bear was chasing after you?

Me: What??

Or...

(At the Holocaust Memorial in Boston by Faneuil Hall)

J: Why? I don't understand?

Me: Me neither.

So it really wasn't a surprise that Steph's pick for book club this month, Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum, raised a lot of questions and generated more discussion than most books we read.

Anna and Trudie are a mother and daughter of German descent currently living in Minnesota. Trudie doesn't know much about her early childhood during WWII in Weimar and Anna refuses to talk about it. But Trudie harbors guilt that her father was a high ranking SS official based on a small photo in a cigarette case her mom has held onto. Because her own mother won't discuss what she did to survive during the war, Trudie starts interviewing other Germans living in Minnesota, capturing their stories on video.

In the meantime, the story flashes back to Anna's life during the war, and we realize that everyone's decisions on everything were colored by fear and the desire to just survive.

In a speech today, President Obama recognized survivors of the Holocaust and remarked, "We are awed by your acts of courage and conscience. And your presence today compels each of us to ask ourselves whether we would have done what you did. We can only hope that the answer is yes," he said.

Ms. Blum's book asks the same questions and comes up with some difficult answers.

5/5 netflix stars

American Wife and The Wordy Shipmates

Periodically I'll put in requests for books at the public library and if the books are "best sellers" I might be number 80 on the list. I don't mind waiting, but invariably what happens is that all the books will arrive at the same time. So a couple weeks ago I got notification that American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld had arrived along with a fellow blogger's recommendation for The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell. With limited time to read both, I shoved my New Yorkers to the side and plowed in. Fortunately I was sick for a few days so could only read and watch KU basketball on the couch. More importantly, I realized these books are nice complements to each other.

The Wordy Shipmates is Sarah Vowell's research on the origins of American settlers in New England and American Wife is a fictionalized life story of Laura Bush (Alice Blackwell in the book)-- in short, these two books are bookends on American History.

Ms. Sittenfeld creates a thoughtful and sympathetic portrait of an average American woman. Alice grows up in a small town in Wisconsin and leads what anyone would consider a fairly ordinary life from the outside. She attends public school, goes to church, interacts with her neighbors, and has a best friend. Her dad works at a bank and her mom stays at home. Her grandma is the spunky antithesis of "normalcy"-- she provides the inspiration for Alice's lifelong liberal leanings. When Alice falls for Charlie Blackwell, a son from a strong and old Republican family, they are still years away from Charlie becoming president (based on W.). Alice is confident she and Charlie can keep their politics separate and to an extent they do, but she does find that her mores and ethics are often at odds with Charlie's public persona. She maintains a fine line between her personal feelings and public face.

Alice's conflict can directly be traced back to the 1630s. In school we learned that the Pilgrims came from England for religious freedom. That's part of the story. Ms. Vowell explains that they were all for religious freedom as long as they all adhered to an agreed upon set of rules. Sound familiar? She gives us the backstory on the founding of different colonies and the seemingly petty disagreements that led to vicious attacks on American Indians, multiple banishments of colonists and beheadings of those who disagreed with the King(s) of England. I liked Ms. Vowell's account of this history because she writes with humor and personal insight and honestly loves our founding fathers (and mothers) despite, and because of, their shortcomings. She cringes when Anne Hutchinson shoots herself in the foot and rolls her eyes at Winthrop's and Williams' disagreements. But she never apologizes for being American-- she loves America.

Both of these books were so well written and edited. They were both worth the wait, and even the $0.60 fine I'll pay for finishing The Wordy Shipmates after its due date.

5/5 netflix stars to each.

Three Cups of Tea

I just finished Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin and alternately admired it and despised it. Right now I have an angel on my right shoulder and a devil on my left. I'll ask them to go through the pros and cons of this book.

Angel: What's not to love? Greg Motensen has really lived an amazing life-- not only for himself but humbly giving what he can to those less fortunate. He was able to identify a need-- schools for those who didn't have them-- and a means to provide them.

Devil: Sure, sure...but he was always running away, couldn't commit to a life and career in one place.

Angel: His missionary parents raised him and his siblings in Africa! He has a family history of selflessness.

Devil: Selflessness? What about the idea that this whole book is self promotion? And how many times so his Pakistani friends and good deed recipients say, "Praise be to Allah! And also Greg Mortensen!" Andrea, you know you hate that.

Me: That self aggrandizement does bug me...

Angel: He was just stepping in and helped get things going- the Pakistani people built and ran the schools, plus he provided jobs and pay to several upstanding Pakistani and Afghani citizens. Plus he really focuses on providing education for girls and providing community centers for village women as a means of empowerment.

Me: Ah, I really do love female empowement.

Devil: But would you really love being his wife and being 9 months pregnant while he's unreachable in Afghanistan? He's away from his own family for months out of the year!

Angel: She knew that going into the relationship.

Devil: And how about how they named their kids after places in Pakistan? So corny!

Angel: Attacking kids' names?? Classy, Devil, Classy.

Devil: Seriously, why do we always hear stories about white people going in and making life better for brown people? What, there's no brown people helping themselves?

Angel: Why make such a big deal out of it? Just look at it as one man doing his best to make a positive difference-- don't read so much into it! So, Andrea, what do you think?

Me: I think I still don't know...I'm just going to give this book exactly 2.5 out of 5 stars.