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

Woods? That's the musical with the unending second act. Isn't the survival "Into Something Else"?

Correcto Martha! It's "Into the Wild." ...an unusual book because we know the outcome before we finish the first chapter. Still, all in all, a good read with lots of beautiful quotes from other sources.

BTW I had read "Birds of Prey" previously but it was so nice to read it while doing a cruise. It also gave me some helpful hints. Mr. Bama read it after I finished it and loved it too.

I'll be dropping it by as soon as I'm allowed back out of the house!

Movie compared to book: Oil and There Will Be Blood both have in their list of characters an oilman who has a son and a showy reverend who has a brother named Paul. Beyond those, I see no similarities.

Help! I've fallen into the 1930s and I can't get out. But at least Zora Zeale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God isn't a political statement that warns about fascism or supports aspects of communism. It's about a black woman who moves through three relationships and comes to grips with herself. And, actually, it may have been in the twenties—Hurston was part of the Harlem renaissance—but it felt like the other two books, except that the characters were black and in most cases had way less money.

Hurston's life itself fascinates: she wrote tons (I'm particularly interested in her essays), wrote and produced a Broadway review, spent six months in Hollywood as a script consultant, spent gobs of time in places like Haiti and undeveloped countries in South America, taught, worked for and was fired by the Air Force, finally died as a ward of the state and was buried in an unmarked grave. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, has been instrumental in renewing interest in Hurston's work. In fact the next Hurston I'll search for is a Hurston reader, edited by Alice Walker. Seems like the best place to find some essays.

So what about Their Eyes Were Watching God?

1) Ill start with what I found to be the biggest problem—although it's listed as one of the book's achievements in the one essay I read. Problem/asset: all the dialogue is in dialect. I'm sure it was accurate and I'm sure it was startling at the time, but it sure slows down one's rate of reading—at least it does mine. I'd have to literally hear each word in "Did he wade in de lake and uh alligator ketch him" (page 52) to figure out what was said. Then a few lines later on that same page a stutterer joins the conversation with "Ah-ah-ah d-d-does feed 'im! Ah g-g-gived 'im ah full cup ah cawn every feedin'." Hard to scan, but I have to admit the book wouldn't have worked with anything else.

2) Sometimes Hurston was able to express a thought in a way that took my breath away. Husband #2 has just beaten Janie, the protagonist, because his dinner was flawed. Hurston writes: "Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell of the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood image of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. … She found she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen." (page 72) Wow! I'm reminded of the mind/body statement in Oil and aware of limitations.

3) "Ah turnt him every way but loose." (page 127) I'm wondering if the director of that movie Clint Eastwood was in (Every Which Way But Loose?) ever read this book. Or was that title a common expression that I never heard before it was a title?

4) An interesting brush with prejudice within the black community occurs in one subplot. Hurston describes a woman who tries to be friends with Janie. "Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid to herself in direct relation to their negroness. Like the pecking-order in a chicken yard." (page 144)

5) The following bothers me. The woman mentioned above brings her light-skinned brother to meet Janie. Tea Cake, Janie's third husband, beats her. "Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but because it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show who was boss." (page 147) Nope. We can't ever be forgetting that women are possessions—slap 'em, offer 'em up in beauty contests. The Man? He the boss!

6) A big storm is coming. "Several men collected at Tea Cake's house and sat around stuffing courage into each other's ears." (page 156) "…stuffing courage into each other's ears"? Wow!

7) During the storm: "They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God." (page 160) That's in case anyone was wondering about the title.

As I read, I started to recognize scenes and remembered a TV movie with Halle Berry. It's available on Netflix. Guess I'll rent it and see it again with Hurston's book fresh in mind. Bet Halle Berry doesn't get slapped. Also bet the book says lots
more than the movie.

See? The book/movie pattern again. I really can't get out of the thirties.

Oh, Martha, I am soglad you liked this book. I was 99% sure you would but there's always that chance.

I have read a couple of her others (Dust Tracks on a Road and Jonah's Gourd Vine), but this is the one that made it onto curriculums.

Okay, now I have to reread that one, too.

By the way, Hurston called Dust Tracks an autobiography, although it appears to be somewhat fanciful in places.

In Stephen King's introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2007, he has a throwaway line suggesting that anyone not reading books by Alfred Bester should do so. So I did, specifically a novel entitled The Stars My Destination. Now science fiction isn’t my favorite genre, but I did find a few things worth mentioning.

1) The book took me way out of the 1930s; it's set in the 25th century, where some things aren't all that different.

2) A woman complains, "After a thousand years of civilization … we're still property. (page 74) Sigh. Apparently there's so little hope for advancement.

3) Not surprisingly, there's an ongoing war. "It became evident that the last of the World Wars was done and the first of the Solar Wars had begun." (page 123) Sigh. Apparently there's so little etc.

4) "Thirty worshippers of assorted faiths were celebrating the New Year with a combined and highly illegal service. The twenty-fifth century had not yet abolished God, but it had abolished organized religion." (page 145) Guess some would consider that a step in the right direction.

All in all, the book was okay. Like I said, sci-fi isn't really my thing. I did however notice that Bester also wrote The Rat Race, which I remember as a book and movie in the late 1950s or early '60s. I might give it a try.

One of my current bathing nurses, a lady who's very into faith, brought me The Beautiful Side of Evil by Johanna Michaelson. It worked its way through the shelf of unreads, had its turn, and now I've read it. Surprisingly it turned out to be quite helpful, although not in the way Mercedes intended. The thing is the play I've started working on uses the occult—a Ouija Board, tarot cards, a séance, all that stuff—and the book gave me some really good ideas. I dog-eared some pages (There were signs of previous dog-earing so I figured it was okay.), but I think they were mostly ideas for the play. I'll go through them and see.

1) "I began to ascertain that I had not, after all, committed some exquisite form of intellectual suicide by my embrace of Scripture (sic) as the revelation of absolute truth." (page 156) Personally, Ms Michaelson never convinced me of that. Her life prior to the "embrace" had involved encounters with spirits, drug experimentation while a theatre major in college, and participating in faith-based surgeries. I spent a lot of time questioning the validity of the source. Indeed, I still had doubts about her even after the "embrace" when she and her husband prayed one evening about a back problem he had and when they awoke the next morning, he was cured. Call me skeptical.

2) "… my unabashed affection and concern for the welfare of stray kittens marked me as 'psychologically unstable' …" (page 157) No, Ms Michaelson, there I find you reasonable. The rest of the book however …?

3) The author is very concerned about books dealing with the occult being used to interest children in reading and horrified by those who think "the Bible was not the revelation of Absolute Truth (sic), given by the Living (sic) God, but rather the writings of insecure men who were desperately seeking to protect their jobs and status." (page 170) I have to wonder if she ever realized that the Greeks and Romans and even other religions today are just as convinced their god(s) is(are) the real, true deity and all others are dangerous and untrue. Maybe my whole problem with Christianity is that it allows no room for thought, questions or discovery.

4) "Good works don't earn your way into heaven." (page 202) And there's my other big problem with Christianity. George W. Bush lies, sends young men and women to their deaths, but because he has faith in Jesus, he'll be welcomed into heaven (if there is a heaven)? In the vernacular, gimme a break!

5) "It is also important that you collect every book or object related to occultism in your possession and destroy them (sic). … Make sure the objects are smashed, burned or ripped beyond repair." (page 210) NO! Related incident: A couple years ago someone gave Joan a necklace with a cross made out of tiny skulls. It grossed her out, I said it sounded cool, so she gave it to me. Yesterday Mercedes happened to open the box where I stuck it. She saw what it was and, heading to a wastebasket, asked if she could throw it away. NO! Even if the necklace isn't something I look at every day or –heaven forbid!—actually wear, I still think it's cool.

Now I'm pretty much hoping Mercedes and I can maintain the banter we have on most subjects. I like her and, as I learned back in December, it's hard to find good bathing nurses.

(PS: For those who followed the saga, Rachel and I never bantered. We always came out of our corners fighting.)

A friend sent me Robert B. Parker's The Boxer and the Spy. She likes Parker because of his Boston-set, PI series featuring some guy whose name I can't remember. Kathy can fill it in, if she so desires.

Anyway, The Boxer and the Spy turned out to be YA, a genre which leaves Marlene (the friend who sent it) cold. So I inherited.

It wasn't bad. There are high school students—one of whom dies mysteriously, teachere who appear to be up to no good, the not unexpected pompous jock, lots of dialogue and not much description. Add to that big print and wide margins, and you wind up with quite an acceptable book, IMHO.

Parker has three characters that he follows in books: Spencer, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone. I've read some of the Spencer books and they leave me with an "so what" attitude. I actually liked the one Sunny Randall book I read. I love the TV shows based on Jesse Stone but have yet to read a Parker book.

Parker does more with character development than he does with circumstances or landscape descriptions. I would think Martha would like his books because without looking at one, I would suspect he is heavy on spoken dialog or dialog of the mind.

Kathy

The book that I couldn't get rid of......

(I just can't find a way to write that sentence any other way.)

I had started "Fearless Fourteen" before we left for our Alaskan vacation. I don't like to take hardback books on trips because they weigh too much and take up too much space. I had, however, gotten interested in the plot (which I can't even remember now) and wanted to finish the book. I did finish it on the plane. Evanovich, I believe, wrote mindless romance novels before she hit it big with "One for the Money." I found that book hysterically funny. From that high point in her career, IMHO it has been a downhill snowball. I knew that I would not be giving this book to Martha, and that my husband would not want to read it; so upon finishing the book on the first leg of the plane trip, I tried "forgetting" the book at bistro seating or in the corals used to hold the people who fly in the cattle cars called coach. Each and every time, some nice person would say, "Ms, you forgot your book." I would have to give a thank you and pick the thing up again and tote it to the next spot. Finally, while waiting outside for me on a bathroom break, Mr. Bama put the book under the suitcase and then rolled the suitcase away. That time the book didn't follow us.

If you like to read Evanovich, I'd suggest waiting for the paperbacks.

"Fearless Fourteen" (Stephanie Plum, No. 14) by Janet Evanovich