Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Book, Movie & Podcast Reviews my own book page

Time for Kathy to chime in. Every Ladies' Detective Whatever is for her an A+, which grates on my soul because in my book world THERE ARE FEW, IF ANY, A+S. OK, Mellow, the Nazi through the little girl's POV comes close. And maybe Revolutionary Road--the book, not the movie.

Dead apple tree? Sounds closer to my type of book.

On page 238 out of a 332-page book, specifically James Lee Burke's In the Moon of the Red Ponies, I gave up. I don't know if my lack of follow-through is due to hospital lag or not, but I'm giving up on Burke's Billie Bob Holland, attorney at law, series. The first Billie-Bob one I read left me lukewarm. Red Ponies left me several steps below that.

I will, however, remain a devoted David Robicheaux fan.

Wow! I finished reading Chaim Potok's I Am the Clay last night. First, I was surprised to find the book at Barnes & Noble this summer. I became a Potok fan in the 1970s when I read My Name Is Asher Lev, and I thought I'd kept up with his writing pretty well until his death a few years ago. Turns out I was wrong—which means more books on the to-be-read list. Like it's not long enough already!

Anyway, I Am the Clay reminded me of a Stephen-King-recommended book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The Road describes the adventures of a father and son, traveling the highways of America after the atomic bombs have been dropped. Potok's I Am the Clay tells of the struggles of an old man, an old woman and the injured boy they rescue as they travel south to avoid battles in the Korean War. Both books are amazingly powerful; both writers use similar techniques to achieve that power. Characters are not named. Specifics of what led to the wars remain vague. The stories are of the survival of Everyman-like characters.

Specifics from I Am the Clay that grabbed me.

1) "The old man looked fearfully at the soldier. Short, thin, a hooded fur-lined combat parka and gloves. Closed, arrogant face, the face of magistrates and bureaucrats, the face of landowners." (page 115) All over the world, for ever and ever.

2) The boy observes aircraft. "Machines on the ground and machines in the air. The foreigners seemed to have an endless supply of machines. … Do the foreigners live this way in their own land, machines everywhere?" (page 197) Yes.

3) Eventually the old woman dies, and the old man is forced to acknowledge some truths he has always denied. "Now the spirit of the woman seemed to be everywhere around him, even when he went to the town with the carpenter to forget his sorrow and one morning, as he watched the boy climb the hill to the grave wearing the hat of mourning, he felt deep within himself a slow and torturous turning and then an opening of doors to deeper and deeper recesses within himself, caves leading to caves, and his heart raced and he wondered if this was meant by the word love, which he had heard spoken from time to time, this baffling sensation of trembling warmth and closeness he now felt for this boy, and of course he said nothing of it to the boy and not even a word of it to the carpenter." (page 229) I read things like the above and think of my husband who is apparently quite vocal about his feelings for me—when I'm in a coma.

I recommend I Am the Clay—but not for everyone.

I read "The Road" and I don't want to travel that path again. Ya'll I have a new person in my life. Her name is Tabitha. She is 26 years old and morbidly obese. She has seizures, high blood pressure, diabetes, and takes that blood thinner stuff. I met her taking her to the doctor. Now I do have a point here. I found out that she has no human contact except for her mother. She loves to read junior books. I took her to get her first library card two weeks ago. Ya'll her first visit to a library. Twenty-six. I just got back from Fort Library in Huntsville. I found the book "Holes" and recommended it for her. "No thanks." She is more into dragons. I guess she is so removed from the real world that to read about people who inhabit the lives that you and I do would be too jarring for her.

I see that the author of "Holes" has a new book out "Small Steps." It was, of course, checked out so I just stopped off here on my way to Amazon.

BTW, I took Tabby grocery shopping today. Whole sugar, macaroni, cheese. I almost felt my veins clogging up just carrying in her groceries. The family lives on disability and maybe junk food is cheaper than real food.

What do you do when you see people killing themselves before your very eyes? The daughter and mother are the most marginalized people I have ever met.

Sorry for stealing this thread - I'm giving it back now. I just get home and I'm on sensory overload. I want to take a shower and eat some lettuce and celery and read a GOOD book and be with you friends.

Kathy

I started the "Earmarks" thread with a quote from Henning Mankell's [u]Italian Shoes[/i]. Here's another sentence from the same book, which fits perfectly in the context:

"I went into the other room and showed the ants my new shoes."

Or how about

"Dog, bone, sorrow."

Mankell is primarily known as a mystery writer (see earlier posts about the Kurt Wallender series), and mystery isn't my favorite genre. I've read a couple of his and they are well-done. He is described as "the master of atmosphere," and for good reason.

[u]Italian Shoes[/i] is not a mystery; it's a book about a man living on an island off Sweden's coast, a man "so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive." (from the jacket)

It is, the jacket also says, a book about redemption.

For me, most of all, it's a book that makes me wish I were a better reader - that I retained and understood enough detail to be aware of how the various characters balance each other, to note the use of moods and symbols.

He's a Really Good Writer. And the mysteries I've read (so far) aren't bad either.

400 pages later, Foucault's Pendulum finally is moving ahead with the actual plot line! Reading this is kind of like watching Congressional debate; there may be an actual point in there somewhere but why hide it so well?

Oh, but it has been very interesting to read so much of what showed up in Da Vinci Code in its "original" form.

(snide emoticon unavailable!)

I'm being surprisingly pleasantly surprised by Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper. More in a couple days.

PS I'd tried her before and she didn't pass the 50-page test.

Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, which I loved Thursday afternoon, had by 2 AM Friday turned into a total bore. But I'll start with the positive. It's the story of a 13-year-old who, conceived and born to be spare parts for her older sister with leukemia, sues her parents for medical emancipation. Great story, IMHO. Well drawn and complex characters. Interesting moral dilemmas. Occasionally clever dialogue. A real pager-turner. Examples:

1) Jesse, Kate's younger and Anna's older brother is asked what his favorite number is. "Nine. Because it can be a number, or how old you are, or a six standing on its head." (page 121) Well, I thought it was clever. But we know I'm easily amused.

2) "Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they (sic) tell you, it's (sic) not because they (sic) enjoy solitude. It's (sic) because they (sic) have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them(sic)." (page 189) Interesting thought. I'm not sure I agree with it, and I wouldn't give the sentence's construction more than a D. But it's still interesting.

3) Structurally the book is first person, various characters narrating various chapters. Of all of them I found Sara, the mother, to be the most interesting. Never did I fail to respond emotionally to her. At one point she is being forced to give Anna, the spare parts daughter, a shot so she can donate bone marrow to Kate, her sister with leukemia. The shot hurts. The mother writes, "I wonder if it hurts as much as having your six-year-old stare you in the eye and say she hates you." (page 272) I react: Just what you deserve, you bitch!

4) But on the next page I experience a wave of sympathy. Sara is lambasting a spokesman for the insurance company that's refusing to pay for a kidney transplant. "This time I'm expecting the click when I'm disconnected." (page 273)

5) About the oncology ward: "The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where they left off from the previous visit, but it is the nurses … who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathed in ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floor kitchens might have Popsicles to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove the stains of blood and chemotherapy from clothing" (page 277) Essentially true in all the hospital wards I've been on.

6) Sara and her husband are in a restaurant. She writes, " notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The other couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?" (page 284) I remember the first time my husband and I ate in silence at a restaurant. It was sad. But sadder still is the occasional realization when I'm listening to someone, that I'd rather be reading a book. Or being silent with my husband.

7) Wonderful moment: Anna, Kate and Sara are in Kate's hospital room working a crossword puzzle. A clue is a four-letter word for vessel. Sara comes up with ship. Kate falls asleep. Anna and Sara argue about Anna's lawsuit, her refusal to donate a kidney. On the way out of the room, Anna says, "Anna." Sara asks what she means. Anna explains, "A four-letter word for vessel." (page 302) I understood what Anna was saying after a second reading, and now I'm angry at the writer, wondering how a writer clever enough to come up with that scene and dialogue could come up with some of the crap that ends this book.

So let's talk about some of that crap. Up until, say, page 400 I was reading a book about a family with a genuinely engrossing problem. But there's also a subplot about a past—and ultimately present—relationship between the lawyer Anna hires and the woman the court appoints to protect Anna's rights. The last hundred pages explain that relationship, resolve it and use all elements in the story to point out that "honesty is the best policy." Oh, yuck!

If [i]My Sister's Keeper had been solely about the ramifications of the parents' decision to produce and use a child for spare parts, I'd be a Picoult fan, busy searching out more of her books to read. But it wasn't, and I am therefore not!

The characters in Richard Price's The Wanderers, male teenagers residing in a project in the Bronx, are horrible. Their days are filled with sex and violence. Life itself has no meaning. Their language is obscene. The only thing important thing to them is their gang. It's as if the cast in Lord of the Flies had been coarsened up and dropped onto the streets of New York in the 1960s. I couldn't put it down.

Writing comment: to me, the best writing lies in its detail. "He stood there looking at her, intoxicated by her Juicy Fruit breath." (page 83) That one sentence, at least IMHO, reveals so much about the two characters.

I know this is your own thread, Martha, but I just had to share what I am reading this weekend: "Practices and beliefs in mistake-handling activities:A study of Italian and U.S. mathematics lessons;" "Collaboration and Comparisons: a bilateral study of mathematics performance in Scotland and France;" "Negotiating meaning in cross-national studies of mathematics teaching: kissing frogs to find princes;" and "Comparative Studies on U.S and Chinese Mathematics Learning and the Implications for Standards-Based Mathematics Teaching Reform."

I won't be providing any reviews.

EmmaG