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Julia
My reading of the quote/observation is that a difficult decision would be where there are relatively evenly matched pluses and minuses. And the implication being that no matter what you choose in such a situation, the result will be some good and some bad. But the likely result of a different choice would be exactly the same, only different... sort of like Clinton vs Obama.

Where as a non difficult choice would offer clear distinctions for one decision vs the other decision.... IE Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin.


I personally have often adopted a similar approach to what you describe. My theory being that with either choice there are likely a range of positive positive possiblitities whihc I have likely overlooked... and the negative poassiblilities I have proably over estimated. And what ever choice I make can usually be modified if it turns out badly.... and in the end, the WORST choice is almost always to do nothing based upon indecision and looking for the perfect option.

I finished The Pearl Diver, Jeff Talarigo's first book, last night. It's very good.

It has some similarities to the book I reviewed last week, but it's also very different.

It's much longer, for one thing - Amazon says 256 pages - which makes sense, because the writing style is different. The book is well-written but it seems to me to stay closer to the ground, closer to the story, than Ginseng Hunter. It is 100% prose, whereas Ginseng Hunter ventured into poetry on a regular basis, I think.

The story in Pearl Diver is more compelling. The book narrates the life of a woman who is a pearl diver in Japan as the war ends, is diagnosed with leprosy in her late teens, and sent to a leper colony, where she remains for most of her life.

Her situation is rather unusual because treatment became available shortly after her diagnosis. She is not deformed in any way and could easily "pass" as a healthy person in normal society. She is not contagious. Her imprisonment (that's what it really is) is continued primarily because of prejudice in the medical community and in the community at large.

The book follows her personal growth, changes in (medical and social)treatment, the ways that she sees and deals with the outside world, the people who live with her in the colony, and issues they face.

I should make one thing clear: there are people who probably shouldn't read this book. If you have difficulty dealing with abortion or with suicide, you might want to give it a miss. But if you can deal with those topics on an emotional level, it's worth reading.

This is Talarigo's first book. His description of events and emotions is very good - painfully good, in some passages. His ways of showing the passage of time are just wonderful -- Miss Fuji (the main character) notes the first time she sees a jet flying at night; her first encounter with a vending machine. Television is introduced to the colony, she discovers, when she hears the laugh (cry?) of an infant for the first time since her diagnosis.

His second book seems to me to be much more ethereal. It remains my favorite, but the two are not far apart.

There are some books that are very good books, and then there are some very good books that are both paintings and book. Pearl Diver is a very good book. Ginseng Hunter is part painting. And Jeff Talarigo is now near the top of my list of favorite authors.

I have a Jewish friend who held that once three Jewish families move into any town, a Chinese restaurant automatically opens. I guess with six you get egg rolls.

Obama? McCain?

Shoot. I thought he was saying "don't sweat the small stuff" and "it's all small stuff." Wrong again.

Yes... well for some people it is a difficult choice, and for some people it is an obvious choice. And, in this case, it seems that many of the people who feel it is a difficult choice also happen to feel it is mostly a meaningless choice.

I've decided something—or maybe I decided it a long time ago and am just now admitting it. I don't like the writer E. L. Doctorow. Once upon a time I did. I remember reading and really liking Ragtime. Billy Barthgate was a 50-pages-only book. I read another Doctorow a few years ago. I guess it was okay; I no longer remember either the title or the story. And now I've read World's Fair.

On the back cover a quote from Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times reads: "When you finish reading E. L. Doctorow's marvelous novel, you shake your head in disbelief and ask yourself how he has managed to do it." Sorry. Didn't work that way for me. I read the quote, read the book, reread the quote, and now I'm shaking my head in disbelief.

World's Fair is the heartwarming story of a Jewish family's struggles in New York as they go about their lives and eventually take a trip to the 1939 World's Fair. Kind of like the Waltons visiting a big city. "'Night, John-Boy" fits right in.

In spite of my overall opinion, however, four moments in the novel did grab me.

1) On page 41 there's a really neat transition. The narrator is describing a neighborhood grocery store and ends the paragraph with "I liked this store because of the coffee smell and the sawdust on the floor. I liked sawdust as long as it was dry." The next paragraph begins with "In Irving's Fish Store, the sawdust was often wet." He, of course, doesn't like Irving's nearly as well as the grocery. Cool, huh? Maybe even sweet.

2) Later: " … I drink cherry Kool-Aid, which is like liquid Jell-O." (page 62.) You know, it really is. And I know this because now that I'm a Medicare-card-carrying senior citizen, I've gone back to drinking Kool-Aid—but just the old-fashioned type where you add your own sugar. That pre-mixed stuff that comes in plastic bottles is downright nasty.

3) Bit of description got to me. "The Automat was on Forty-second Street, a great glittering high-ceilinged hall with murals on the walls and rows and rows of tables." (page 126) And what's so appealing about that? I've actually eaten in that Automat and remember doing so. It's that senior citizen thing again.

4) Finally, on page 136 there's mention of a Upton Sinclair novel called Boston that's based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. I've never heard of that one. I'll have to read it. Or maybe I'll just reread John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Absolutely amazing how books continue to lead onto books.

Sudden realization: I like this thread. In the real world--and on our "front page"--everything's scary: the economy, the presidential election, my nagging fear that McCain is gonna win, but here we talk about things we like. Or even if we don't all like the same books, it doesn't mean worlds are going to fall apart. Okay, maybe we're hiding our heads in the sand, but everyone needs "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" sometimes. Why the capitals and quoes? It's a Hemmingway story that if you haven't read, you should--even if you don't like Hemmingway.

A Clean Well-Lighted Place

Martha, I like this thread too. It is a safe place.

I agree also about Doctorow. I "liked" Ragtime but never made the 50 page limit on any of the other books. Several are in my library on the "one day" shelf. When am I going to realize that on this ten-year plan of mine (I don't plan to be around in ten years) that the "to do" list should be eliminated?

My massage therapist and friend gave me a book that I am reading now entitled, "The Dark Side of the Light Chasers." It's only about 175 pages long and I'll probably finish it.

But after reading 1/2 the book I'd say, "Damn, in spite of all the stuff that has passed through my life, I'm pretty mentally healthy."

really!


Well damn, I've been doing something right all these years after all!

Reading this book and working through the exercises is supposed to be called "shadow work," and it should reclaim your power, creativity, brilliance, and dreams.

Except for the 'dreams' part, I've got it 'in the vault.'

If anyone has read any of Debbie Ford's work or has comments on this "therapy," I'd appreciate feedback.

Respectfully,

Kathy Albers

I found Darin Strauss' More Than It Hurts You to be both very good and horrid, enough so that I half expected to see a curl appear right in the center of its title page. Overall, it's your standard Munchausen-by-proxy story, with some added racial elements.

A drawback, IMHO, is that the story didn't really interest me until I'd read close to 100 pages in. At my usual 50, I could have stopped, but since it was a hardback and I'm a bit on the miserly side, I gave it 50 more. I'm mostly glad I did.

A point of interest, at least to me, is that the reader knows pretty early on that the mother did it. The basic question in most of the fictionalized Munchausen stuff I've read/seen is: did she do it? (Interesting. I just wrote "she," thought about pronoun choice and realized I've never run into a story where a father suffers from Munchausen by proxy. Can men get it? Anyone know? When looking it up to check spelling, the examples of people having it were always women. But men get breast cancer. Stop the drift, Martha! Okay, back to the book.) Instead of did-she, the basic question in More Than It Hurts You is will-the-husband-find-out. Looking at the book that way, the end is both satisfying and annoying.

Race enters the story in that Darlene, head of pediatrics in the hospital where the baby is first taken, is African-American. Strauss presents compelling backgrounds for all his major character and is especially successful as conflict between the yuppie Jewish couple and the overachieving single black mother grows.

All the above is the story itself. Strauss did have some writing moments that reached out and grabbed me. Examples:

1) The book begins, "Fifteen minutes before happiness left him, Josh Golden …" (page 1) Wow! Dare you stop there. I sure couldn't.

2) In the first meeting the Goldens had with their lawyer, "he sat with calculated informality of the edge of his glass-topped desk." (page 204) And how many times has an individual who holds all the cards positioned himself somewhere "with calculated informality" in an attempt to put you at ease? Never? Then, for an example, watch the Law and Order episode where Lieutenant Van Buren interviews the light-skinned black man who has been passing for white. "So, my brother, you really did it. You passed."

3) "Rage, that devoted propagandist, airbrushes memory whenever it can." (page 300) I like the idea and the expression, but it has since dawned on me that it isn't just rage that can airbrush memory. Any emotion can. But Strauss does express the idea well.

4) Josh returns to his job in advertising after the DSS has taken his son, and, of course, everyone is sympathetic. But it's not working. "His grief had gone public. Sympathy is poison to salespeople. Salespeople needed to be Teflon." (page 303) Somehow the picture of Reagan and his "selling" of the country popped into mind. Who would ever feel sympathy for that shining city on a hill.

5) "Words, Darlene thought, are amazing little implements. Because of words something can be awful and untrue, while still being factual." (page 314) Maybe those sentences stood out because I read them shortly after watching Friday's debate.

So, summing up: Would I read another book by Strauss? Not sure. It'd probably depend on the subject. Do I recommend? I'll give it thumbs slightly up. It was interesting but it rarely grabbed me emotionally.

OK let’s talk books and forget politics and our collapsing economy for a few minutes. The Gauguin painting in today’s Round Table posted by Phil got me thinking about this book I read several years ago—even though the author (first published 1839) only got to Hawaii, not Tahiti.

The book is Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia River by John Kirk Townsend, an ornithologist. He accompanied an early journey on the opened Lewis and Clark trail. He stopped at Fort Vancouver, took a sailing ship to Hawaii, then finished with a boat ride around Tierra del Fuego ultimately ending up back in the East Coast.

The writing style is a little stilted but it is hypnotically fascinating. He writes of the natives and wildlife he came across, visiting Hawaii in the early 1800’s, a revolution in South America he witnessed and other interesting things. Anyone curious to read in an eye witness account of those times should find the book wonderful. I know I did.

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