Fuzzy's fancy reading feast 2013

It looks like another year is almost over, and it is time to start a 2013 thread of the cat-food of literary journals. Much like a poor person who must eat Fancy Feast, I tend to read whatever I can get. This includes books from the library and library book sales because I am a cheapskate. When I purchase an ebook for my Nook, it will mostly be from the under ten dollar selections. My favorite books are Early Review books because they don't require me to purchase gas to get to the library. That's the type of book that is well within my price range.

When I am not being a cheapskate reader, I teach history and economics at a local high school. Throughout college, I mostly read non-fiction because I was a history and political science major. That burned me out on reading history for awhile so my interests turned mainly to fiction after graduation. Since then, I have sprinkled in some history every now and again, and I read about sports on occasion as well. However, most of my reading is still fiction, and I hope to start reading some poetry this year as well.

Happy reading Club Read 2013 friends!

Books read in 2013

1. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh ()
2. Hard Times by Charles Dickens ()
3. Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()
4. The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville ()
5. The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola ()
6. The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
7. Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison ()
8. The Stranger by Albert Camus ()
9. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth ()
10. War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier by Carter Malkasian ()
11. Hi, This Is Conchita: And Other Stories by Santiago Roncagliolo ()
12. This is Paradise: Stories by Kristiana Kahakauwila ()
13. River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh ()
14. Horrors of History: City of the Dead by Neill T. Anderson ()
15. Little Joe (Book One of the Round Rock Series) by Michael E. Glasscock III ()
16/ The Trial by Franz Kafka ()
17. The Trial of Dr. Kate by Michael Glasscock III http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1400069165.01._SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
18. My Name Is Dee by Robin Wyatt Dunn ()
19. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling ()
20. The Circle by Dave Eggers ()
21. We Are What We Pretend to Be by Kurt Vonnegut ()
22. Top Down by Jim Lehrer ()
23. Baseball's Creation Myth: Adam Ford, Abner Graves, and the Cooperstown Story by Brian Martin ()

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh ()

This book centers on a large group of characters from India in the nineteenth century involved in the opium trade and the trade of indentured coolie labor. There are a wide variety of characters from various backgrounds such as landed Englishmen, high caste Indians, low caste Indians, Muslim Indians, Hindu Indians, a crew of sailors, and even an American seaman. This variety of characters enables Ghosh to contrast the various roles that each plays in Indian society and to show the inequities between each. For example, he contrasts the expectations of a landed Indian that he should get special treatment at court with the reality that he is treated unfairly by the English court that favors westerners. As such, the European imperialists became the new Brahmin class and upset the social order of Indian society. This provides Ghosh with great opportunities to show the reader how devastating it can be to have your cultural norms forced to change by outsiders as well as how power over others whom you perceive to be less human than you can corrupt you.

I enjoyed reading this book. It moves quickly and makes you question the foibles of our humanity without being overly preachy about it. Instead, most of the characters in the book are very human and treated fairly with few two-dimensional always good or evil characters. The only exceptions were a couple of members of the ship crew, who were portrayed as being very evil. The novel would have been even stronger if Ghosh had given more backstory on these characters to show how they became like they were so that they would be more human and believable to the reader. Outside of that weakness, I thought this was an excellent novel, and I look forward to reading the second book in this trilogy.

This one is near the top of my TBR pile -- hopefully I'll get to it soon.

Jane, I really enjoyed it. My local library doesn't have the sequel, River of Smoke, and money is tight right now so I can't buy it at present. Otherwise, I would get started reading it immediately. I can't wait to find out what happens next.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens ()

Thomas Gradgrind believes in a system of education in which children should be filled with facts and only facts. There is no room for sentiment or imagination. He runs a school that operates in this fashion, and he has raised his children the same way. Since there is no room for sentiment or love in her life, Tom sees know problem with sending his daughter Louisa to marry Bounderby, a cold businessman who is obsessed with the myth that he has pulled himself up from poverty. Likewise, Gradgrind's son, Tom, goes to work for Bounderby in the bank he owns, and Bounderby respects that young Tom is as cold and fact-based as Bounderby and the elder Gradgrind. Meanwhile, someone robs the bank, and Bounderby is obsessed with bringing the robber to justice.

In typical Dickens fashion, many of the characters in this novel exist at extremes, such as Bounderby who cares only about money and facts. This provided Dickens with an opportunity to prove points about the ills that he saw in nineteenth century English society, and it also provides him opportunities for comedic opportunities to poke fun at his characters. While I found the former to to ham-fisted at times, the latter was quite comical and gave the novel a lot of charm.

As a teacher myself, I thought the best part of the book was Dickens's point about the folly of an education that stresses facts and only facts. In our modern era of standards based education as in his time, this approach fosters students who are cold, uncaring, and uncreative. Dickens deftly shows us possible results of producing this kind of student by showing us situations in which his characters flaws lead to tragedy and inhumanity.

Nice review of the Dickens book.

this approach fosters students who are cold, uncaring, and uncreative.
And may I add bored!
Not a teacher myself but have talked to enough frustrated teachers and bored and/or frustrated kids.

Boy, I hear ya!

Avidmom, I think the frustration and boredom come from a lack of connection to what is being taught. Rather than showing students that learning can be fun, schools are increasingly focused on pushing students towards measurable levels of achievement. My students have become data points rather than people. It reminds me of Pink Floyd. They're all just bricks in the wall.

Now that I have finished Hard Times, I have moved on to Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will post my thoughts on some of the short stories in this collection because having them all in one place will help me to compose my review when I finish the book.

The Jelly Bean by F. Scott Fitzgerald () (short story)

I liked this short story. It was sad and emphasized that popularity and a good name can be fleeting. However, I thought that it lacked the punch of some of Fitzgerald's novels.

The Camel's Back by F. Scott Fitzgerald (short story) ()

This story is hilarious and charming. The surprise ending was great. The only bad part was that the middle of the story bogged down a bit, but the rest was fantastic.

"I will post my thoughts on some of the short stories in this collection..."

Glad you are doing this, very interesting. Enjoyed your review of Hard Times and love hearing a teachers response to Dickens bashing of teaching in his time. He's rough on them.

May Day by F. Scott Fitzgerald (read in a short story collection but it's really more of a novella) ()

I thought this was an interesting story, and at times the writing was brilliant. However, there were times when it seemed to lack cohesiveness. I also found myself wondering if it might have been an influence on the writers of the film American Beauty. Parts of it were very similar.

While the first few short stories in this collection were more novellas than short stories, the next one is much shorter so there will be no touchstones or anything. It is titled "Pink and Porcelain."

"Pink and Porcelain"- This was a rather boring case of mistaken identity. I think Fitzgerald intended for it to be a comedy, and it was funny at times. Unfortunately, it wasn't funny enough to redeem it. (2 stars)

The next group of stories in Tales of the Jazz Age are what Fitzgerald calls his fantasies in the introduction. They are stories that were written for his enjoyment rather than to be published in magazines. They are as follows:

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Tarquin of Cheapside (the touchstone actually leads to a collection of two Fitzgerald works
"Oh Russet Witch" (no touchstone available

I've been wanting to read Sea of Poppies. It looks so good! I liked Hard Times a good deal more than you did, it looks like. It was the book that made me finally like Dickens (after I avoided him for 15 years because of the horrors of being forced to read A Tale of Two Cities as a 9th grader).

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()

This story bored me for the first 2/3 of it. A character, John, comes from Hades, Mississippi. His parents send him to a school in Boston, where he meets Percy, who claims his father is the wealthiest man in the world. John goes with Percy to meet Percy's family and finds that they live on a mountain made entirely of diamond in Montana that Percy's family has managed to keep excluded from maps. They are waited on hand-and-foot by slaves. Percy's grandfather had managed to convince the slaves that the south had one the civil war so they never tried to escape. While all of this sounds interesting, albeit implausible and a bit disturbing, Fitzgerald managed to make it very boring with constant puns and word-play that were ridiculously obvious about one character being from Hades and the other from paradise. It was all very boring and obvious.

However, the last 1/3 of the story was very exciting. I won't mention the details so as not to spoil the story, but it involves plans of assassination of one of the characters, attempts at escape, a battle between airplanes and anti-aircraft guns, and a love affair. This is as equally implausible as the rest of the story and strikes me as Fitzgerald trying to put as many awesome things in a story as is humanly possible, but somehow it works. The last 1/3 somewhat redeems the rest of the story.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()

I never saw the movie so this story about a man who is born at 70 years of age and ages backwards was new to me. I found it to be one of the better Fitzgerald short stories that I have read. It was quite comical at times and yet very sad as well hinting at the problems inherent in being a bit different from everyone else.

I had no idea that Benjamin Button was an F. Scott Fitzgerald story!!! (Shows ya' how much I know!) Benjamin Button was one of those movies I kept DVRing or checking out from the library and never watching. My mother saw it though and said she loved it.

I quite enjoyed the movie Benjamin Button, but a lot of that was because it was filmed in New Orleans. :)

Tarquin of Cheapside (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()

This short story is about a character who reads all the time and has to hide another character who is on the run. That's about all that I can really say without giving too much away. While it was clever in a way, I didn't find it particularly poignant or very interesting.

"Oh, Russet Witch" (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()

This was the first story in the collection that I thought was the work of a truly mature writer. "Oh Russet, Witch" is about a man who is constantly coming in contact with a beautiful woman who represents vivacity and excitement, and he is clearly madly in love with her, or at least with what she represents. Meanwhile, he marries a safe choice and lives a safe, dull life as the owner of a book shop and has a son that doesn't respect him. The story is touching and sad and speaks to our human ability to always find opportunities to regret what we might have had and wish we had been more daring in our youth.

I have finished Tales of the Jazz Age. Here are my brief thoughts on the last three short stories in the collection. I will follow this with my overall review of the book.

The Lees of Happiness (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()
This is a touching story about a woman, Roxanne, who must take after her husband, Jeff, after Jeff has a stroke. In the meantime, she is frequently visited by Jeff's recently divorced friend Harry. I really liked this story. It was both sad and sweet and the characters were well-crafted and felt real. This was one of the stronger short stories in the collection.

"Mr. Icky" (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()
Like "Porcelain and Pink," this story was a comedy written as a play. Also as with "Porcelain and Pink," this one really didn't work. Fitzgerald took a lot of liberties in writing ridiculously silly stage directions that might have been comical if the play were to be actually performed but came off as overly indulging to be read as a story. To make things worse, they were so ludicrous as to be unperformable, which robs the story of any redeeming value it might have had.

"Jemina" (short story) by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()
This was another story in which Fitzgerald indulged himself in silliness that was so over the top that it lost its humor. It's a story about a girl who lives in the mountains of Kentucky and falls in love with a stranger from "civilization." Unfortunately, there love is not to be because they end up fighting to the death against another family that the girl's family as been having a feud with. The names of the families were the Tantrums and Doldrums, which was a bit over the top, and the constant jokes about hill people in Kentucky were equally over the top. This story didn't work for me.

Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald ()

This short story collection was written very early in Fitzgerald's career (1922), and you can tell. there are moments of brilliance, such as "Oh Russet Witch" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." There are moments of great comedy, such as "The Camel's Back," and there are moments of Hollywood blockbuster type action, such as "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." There is also "May Day," which is on the verge of greatness but could have used some fine tuning. Unfortunately, there are also several stories that a more mature author would have never allowed to see the light of day. These are stories that were over-indulgent moments from a young author who admits in the introduction of the book that they were written more to entertain himself than anything else. You can see the burgeoning brilliance that will write The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, but it isn't quite here yet with the exception of a few stories.

Enjoyed your romp through Tales of the Jazz Age

I liked your method of reviewing a book of short stories.

Me too. I may R&D it, if that's OK... (rip off and duplicate!)

Go for it, Lisa. I've had trouble reviewing short story collections in the past because a few stories can sometimes get in the way of my thoughts on the overall collection. I thought this might work better, and it did. I will probably do this again the next time I review a collection like this.

That was all entertaining to read through. I have had the same problem with short story collections - can't summarize them without confusion (to myself and anyone listening) because I have a different response to each story, and then each story needs a set-up before I can write about it. I like the method you used here.

Thanks, dchaikin!

I enjoyed the way you reviewed it as well. I have a similar problem as everyone else - by the time I finish and am ready to review the book, I just don't feel like commenting on every story. This looks like it works pretty well.

The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville ()

While this book is a very exciting thriller, I had several problems with it. For one thing, I went into the book excited by the premise of a book that imagines what would have happened had the Nazis achieved victory in Europe and then moved onto Africa. Unfortunately, Saville does not give a lot of detail about how any of this has happened and instead focusses more on using the Nazis as the ultimate villain to take on his protagonist, Burton. I'm not sure why the Nazis had to be in Africa during the 1950s. This book would have worked just as well in Eastern Europe during the 1940s. The details were unimportant and seemed to merely be a hook to get people to read the story.

A second problem that I had with it was that I am really not a fan of the kind of thriller where it is obvious who the hero is supposed to be, and the reader knows that the hero is never in any real trouble because a dead hero would mean a premature end to the story. Consequently, all of the tension that Saville spent so much time building fell completely flat for me. I never felt that Burton was in any real danger because Saville could not kill him before he had finished writing the book.

I will, however, admit that I did like some of the characters in the book. In particular, the Neliah character was particularly strong, and I found myself rooting for her. Giving the reader some interesting characters who have some depth and are not just cliches to root for makes for a more rewarding reading experience for readers, and this attribute of the book was particularly strong in the second half of the book as Saville revealed more and more about each character. The fact that I had begun to care more for the characters by the end of the book made the constant action sequences much more thrilling since I was finally starting to care what would happen to these people.

The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola ()

The Fortune of the Rougons is the first book of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels centering on the Rougons and Macquart family. The book centers around the 1848 revelation in France, and introduces us to a family of characters of varying dispositions, many of whom hope to gain power and privilege through backing one side or the other in the revolution.

The brilliance of this novel is in its ability to show us all types of people and what makes us who we are. Some of us are social climbers who will stop at anything to get by, such as Pierre in the novel. Others of us are true believers who are willing to fight for love or a cause, such as Silvere in the novel. Others are more interested in inward interests such as delving further into our chosen fields of study, such as Pascal in the novel. Yet others, such as Felicite, are not willing to risk much to achieve our goals, but we are more than willing to manipulate others into achieving those goals for us. In portraying this plethora of characters in such a realistic way, Zola manages to show us who we are in a believable and enlightening way.

Zola is definitely realistic, some might say melodramatic. Enjoyed your review Pat. Now onto the next one?

I decided to read The Possessed first, but I'll probably move onto the next one after that.

>32 fuzzy_patters:, 33 Good review, fuzzy_patters. I'm yet to read any Zola, and I've been biased against him by reading Nietzsche, who didn't like him at all (mostly for the "melodramatic" reason).

26 - Just picked myself up off the floor from laughing at R & D!

Great reviews!

Thanks for the compliment, mkboylan!

By the way, I should point out that I am still alive. I haven't reviewed anything because I have been bogged down with work and The Possessed. I will review it if I ever finish reading it.

Demons or The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()

Demons is a very political novel about extreme political views and the ineptitude of the conservative status quo to control them. The book centers around Pyotr Verkhovensky, who is a nihilist and a bit of an opportunist, whose political views lead to death and destruction. Also present is Shigalovism, which is kind of a twisted sort of Communism, and the conservatism of the local governor, Lembke. Meanwhile, the reader is left to make sense of Pyotr's intellectual father, Stepan, who seems to be muddled in his beliefs, and there is also the enigmatic Nickolay Stavrogin, who seems to lack any real convictions at all. This interplay of different characters and their beliefs, both harmless and destructive, lie at the heart of the novel and tell us a lot about Dostoyevsky's view of Russia at this time.

While I found the characters and the politics interesting, I was a bit put off by this book. For one thing, it took Dostoyevsky way too long to get past basic characterization and get to the plot of the novel. For this reason, I thought that this was not nearly as well crafted as the other three Dostoyevsky novels that I have read. Additionally, the use of first person narrator who was a confidante of Stepan was off-putting as well. There were several scenes that seemed to drift into third person as the narrator could not have possibly have known about what was happening. An example of this would be a conversation between two people who would not live long enough to share their conversation with anyone else. However, just when I thought that Dostoyevsky had switched narrative styles, the narrator would start telling you things that had happened in the first person. It was very jarring and made it difficult for me to enjoy the novel. For these reasons, while this is a decent novel, I didn't find it to be nearly as good as the other three Dostoyevsky novels that I haver read.

That is interesting about the narrators. In The Brothers Karamazov, D appears to change narrators several times, but it's very subtle and the reader may not notice if they are not looking for it. Also in Crime and Punishment, the book was written in first person until D found that method too complex and rewrote it in 3rd person. It seems like D fought and experimented with different narrators quite a bit.

>39 dchaikin: Good points! I think he must have had better execution in The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment because I loved both of those. I don't recall feeling annoyed at the narrator at all while reading those.

Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison ()

Juneteenth is Ralph Ellison's posthumous follow-up to Invisible Man. It's about a senator, Bliss, who is shot on the senate floor, and the African-American man, Hickman, who raised him. It's also about identity and how the way we identify ourselves affects our actions and how we treat others. Despite having been raised by African-Americans, Bliss grows up to become a racist, white senator. Once he decides to be white, this influences the future actions of his life, which leads to the assassination attempt.

The book alternates between first person from Bliss's point of view, to first person from Hickman's point of view, to third person. It also alternates from detailing the present relationship between Bliss and Hickman by his hospital bed to the past as told by Hickman and remembered by Bliss. This enables Ellison to tell the story from all sides and give the reader greater insight as to how the characters developed to become who they were. This aspect of the novel potentially could have made for a frustrating and incomprehensible read, but Ellison does a wonderful job of sequencing and pacing the story so that it is easy for the reader to understand the story as Ellison intended it.

The book also has resonance in the twenty-first century despite the fact that Ellison began writing it in the late 1950s. We can all relate to how our sense of identity and our circumstance can influence who we are and who we could become. Sure, the twenty-first century American reader may take civil rights for granted nearly fifty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964; however, this doesn't make the overarching themes of identity and circumstance any less relevant. This is still and enjoyable and enlightening read regardless of the many changes since it was written.

This is a really nice review of Juneteenth. Certainly sounds worth a try, if I ever get to Invisible Man.

Thank you for the kind words, dchaikin. Invisible Man is a great book. I hope you enjoy it.

The Stranger by Albert Camus ()

The Stranger is about Meursault, an unemotional, rational man who shoots and Arab on the beach. After the shooting, he stands trial and is sentenced to be executed by the guillotine. He spends the latter part of the novel dealing with his impending death, which is the heart of the novel. How do we deal with death, and how do we become free from our fear of death and living?

I loved The Stranger, but I shouldn’t have loved the stranger. As a Christian, I should have been appalled at Camus’s insistence, through the story of the condemned criminal Meursault, that life is meaningless and the world is absurd. Yet, I did love it. Regardless of religious beliefs, it is impossible to escape and fail to appreciate the rationality of Camus’s point. Regardless of when we die, we are all going to die eventually, and the world will go on without us. Our existence has no great purpose, and there is nothing to fear in death. Freedom comes from accepting these premises. While I may not agree with the underlying warrants in this viewpoint, it is difficult to disagree with these conclusions if you accept these warrants. For this reason, I loved the novel. Camus’s entire philosophy of the absurd was portrayed beautifully in an engaging story that was difficult to refute if one first accepts Camus’s underlying beliefs.

That is a striking cover of The Stranger. My old copy is so boring in comparison.

Excellent review of The Stranger

Thank you, baswood.

RidgewayGirl, the copy that I read came from my local library, but that is the cover that they had.

Very interesting to read your response to The Stranger.

and Juneteenth goes on the list. What a great review.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth ()

This book imagines what might have happened if Charles Lindbergh had been elected US President in 1940. It centers around Roth's own family, a Jewish family from New Jersey. His father is very concerned that Lindbergh is a pro-Nazi fascist, while Roth's aunt and brother support Lindbergh. This leads to family turmoil that mirrors the turmoil the rest of the country is facing in dealing with the "Jewish question."

Most of the book is believable, and the characters are interesting and likable. Unfortunately, parts of the book become repetitious. Roth's father repeatedly sees problems with the Lindbergh government that others don't see, and Roth, only a child, is constantly torn on who to believe. Once this pattern has been established, the reader doesn't need constant events to reestablish everyone's role in this drama. Roth could have shared just a few key events and had a more tight, engaging story.

War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier by Carter Malkasian ()

Malkasian takes a look at the war in Afghanistan through looking at the past, present, and future of Garmser, one district in Afghanistan. The book is very informative and shows how structural problems within Afghanistan and problems from decision makers in the US and UK have both contributed to how drawn out the war has been. Malkasian concludes that success in Afghanistan would have been possible much sooner with better decision making, and that the Taliban's successful rule proves that Afghanistan in governable.

The biggest issue that I had with the book is that Malkasian's chapter on conclusions makes him come across as a fence-sitter. He mentions different decisions that could have been made and lays out the strengths and weaknesses of each but often stops short of making a definite decision on what the best course of action would be. Furthermore, he points out that part of the problem in Afghanistan is the the Taliban has had a safe-haven in Pakistan, but he does not adequately discuss what can be done to mitigate that safe haven.

Overall, I liked the book and found it to be a good exposition on the war, but I would have liked to have seen Malkasian take more of a stand about what he believes could have been done differently. It is one thing to say that mistakes have been made. It is quite another to supply definite solutions. Perhaps other historians will build on his work take a look at those issues. Malkasian has provided a step towards better understanding of this conflict even if he hasn't provided the final step.

Sounds balanced though? or not?

I thought it was balanced. That would be a strength.

Malakasian takes a stand in some situations and says what definitely could have been done differently. At other times, he says that mistakes were made but does not show what other course of action there was or how it might have turned out differently. I found that to be frustrating. If you are willing to go beyond mere reporting of events and start laying out alternate courses of actions, you should do so rather than pulling punches and only doing so where it is convenient.

Hi, This Is Conchita: And Other Stories by Santiago Roncagliolo ()

This is a collection of short stories and one longer work that could probably be categorized as a novella. The longer work is the title work and is the best of the four, although all four are good. The work were originally written in Spanish by Stantiago Roncagliolo, who lives in Barcelona, but they have been translated by Edith Grossman.

The title work is told through a series of phone dialogues. There is no narrator. The only thing the reader is given is the dialogue. Each chapter is a different conversation from one of four phone numbers. The conversations seem unrelated at first but they begin to interweave as the story moves forward. Eventually, the author draws the reader into an elaborate, murderous plot.

The other three stories also deal with death or at least growing older. Our own mortality and the absurdity of it is a major theme of the entire collection. Each of the other three stories is inventively told and unique compared to the rest of the collection. The first of the three, "Despoiler," is about a woman who loathes growing older and is forced by her coworkers to dress up for Carnival to celebrate her fortieth birthday. "Butterflies with Pins" is a reminiscence of people who have committed suicide. The final story in the collection, "Passenger Beside You," is about what being dead is like.

As morbid as they are, these stories are humorous and absurd. I enjoyed reading them and found them so engrossing that I read the entire collection in a day. In some ways, they could be compared to Vonnegut's works in that they are filled with dark humor that is at times hilarious. However, they are much more modern than Vonnegut and speak as much to our twenty-first century disconnectedness as to our impending doom. This is a very enjoyable, humorous, and macabre read.

53 - Thanks for info.

54 sounds rather fun in a weird way.

I am currently reading This Is Paradise: Stories by Kristiana Kahakauwila. It is a short story collection, and, as I did with Tales of the Jazz Age, I will post my thoughts on each story as I read the book.

This Is Paradise (first short story in the collection by the same name) () One thing that made this story a little confusing was the use of first person plural narration, but it worked for this story and served a purpose in that the story was about what life is like for Hawaiian islanders who live amongst the tourists. The word "we" is used in the narration to show a difference between "we" islanders and "them" tourists. The story centers on a murder of a tourist that probably could have been prevented by many women from the island if they had chosen not to ignore the tourist. In the end, the "we" and "them" turn out to be not much different from each other after all as the girls reflect on their own youth and the choices that they made.

That sounds like an interesting story!

"Wanle" (second short story in This Is Paradise: Stories ()Wanle is a about a woman cock fighter who fights cocks because it is in her blood and to get revenge for her father's death. The woman, Wanle, lives with The Indian, a man who does not approve of her cockfighting.

I really liked this story. There was a lot of significance placed in the way the successful cocks fought, which was comparable to how to the characters acted when they were at their most dangerous. Similarly, there was a lot of significance placed in Wanle's relationship with her father, which, upon deeper reflection, turned out to be similar to the Indian's relationship with his father.

"The Road to Hana" (third short story in This Is Paradise: Stories) () This short story was about a "haole" man and a Hawaiian woman who are in dating. Throughout the story, the man wants to propose to the Hawaiian woman, but things keep coming up that stop him. The story is about identity and what makes us who we are more than anything, which is normally something I like. However, I had difficulty connecting with this one for some reason. Perhaps because I am not Hawaiian and have never been to Hawaii, or maybe it just wasn't that good..

"Thirty-Nine Rules for Making a Hawaiian Funeral into a Drinking Game" (fourth story in This Is Paradise: Stories)() This short story made a drinking game out of attending a woman's (the authors?) Hawaiian grandmother's funeral. I liked this story better than the previous one even though it was about the same theme of being Hawaiian and how we identify ourselves. I think I liked this one better because I could relate to getting together with extended family at a funeral and what that dynamic entails. Although I think the author intended to relate what this experience is like in Hawaii, I think the experience is recognizable to most people regardless of background.

>54 fuzzy_patters:: Hi This is Conchita sounds interesting - I'll have to keep an eye out for that. It reminds me a bit of Le Magasin des Suicides, a novella about a family run suicide-assistance shop: also dark humor about family, death and suicide.

"Portrait of a Good Father" (fourth story in This Is Paradise: Stories) () This short story is about a young woman and her relationship with her father. The relationship is complicated by her father's infidelity, which leads to divorce and remarriage, towards her mother, and it is further complicated by the death of her brother. The story was an interesting character study, but it was nothing groundbreaking.

At my age it seems difficult to find a groundbreaking book, fiction or non-fiction.

I see your point, but I think the story should at least grab me and seem new or original even if it isn't. "Portrait of a Good Father" just seemed kind of pointless to me. I get that people sometimes have difficulties with their relatives because of past experiences. I thought it was banal.

"The Paniolo Way" (fifth story in This Is Paradise: Stories) () This short story is abou a gay man and his struggle to decide if he should "come out" to his dying father. Once again, we have someone having issues with their father in adulthood based on their love life. In the previous story it was the father's love life, and in this one it is the adult child's love life. In the end, it really isn't any different and is equally boring.

(This Is Paradise: Stories) by Kristiana Kahakauwila ()

These short stories are character studies as much as anything about Hawaiians and what it means to be Hawaiian. This sort of identity literature normally appeals to be, but they become repetitive and banal by the end of the book. The highlight of the book was "Wanle," which is about a woman who cockfights to avenge her father's death. It is the only story that has much depth to it, and the book becomes soap-opera-ish by the end. I didn't hate it.

"I didn't hate it" ahhahahaha!

63 - Especially with fiction it should grab you, right?

Glad you didn't hate This is Paradise. I read a bit on Hawaii about two years ago and loved learning about the insane mix of cultures and some of the fiction I read that took advantage of this.

Intrigued by your reivew of Santiago Roncagliolo.

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh ()

This is the second historical fiction novel in a planned trilogy by Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh has not released the third installment of the series as of this writing.

In the first novel, Sea of Poppies, Ghosh introduces the reader to a large group of characters, who are involved in the opium trade in India in various capacities. Eventually, the characters are on a ship, the Ibis, that is headed for Mauritius. In River of Smoke, events lead to some of these characters travelling to Canton, China, which is where most of this second novel takes place.

Many of the characters in River of Smoke were real people in the historical record, and the research that Ghosh undertook to write the novel is very impressive. Most of this novel takes place during the events leading to the First Opium War. The central dilemma in the novel is whether the British, American, and Indian citizens living in Canton should cease smuggling opium, per the orders of the Chinese government. While anyone with any historical knowledge of the situation already knows how this will develop, this is still a fascinating read. Ghosh does an excellent job in characterizing these historical figures, and he gives the reader a vested interest in finding out how each character is affected by this.

I liked this novel. I did not think that it was quite as good as Sea of Poppies, but I still liked it. Sea of Poppies had more of a mysterious quality and an epic scope than River of Smoke. River of Smoke started out in much the same vain as Sea of Poppies, but it seemed to lose some of that quality as the scene moved to Canton.

The other issue that I had with the novel was that Ghosh was too descriptive at times. In some parts, I found myself rolling my eyes and thinking, "Just get on with it already!" Description is a good thing, but there is such a thing as overkill, and I thought that Ghosh was guilty of this at times.

Still, this is an interesting read. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in the time period, drug smuggling, and nineteenth century China. I am anxiously awaiting the third installment of the series, which I think says as much as anything.

()

Horrors of History: City of the Dead by Neill T. Anderson ()

City of the Dead is a historical fiction novel about the Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900, that is intended for young adults. I must say that a thirteen year old version of me would have loved this because it is very exciting, scary, and you know that it could happen since it is based on a historical event.

The novel could be improved, though. Anderson has a tin ear for dialogue. Much of the dialogue reads like it is from a poorly-written 1950s sitcom. Anderson might have been trying to dumb down the dialogue for a younger audience, but as a high school teacher, I do not think that gives young people enough credit. There could have been more depth and nuance in the dialogue between characters, and it still would have an appeal to young people.

The other improvement would be more back story on the characters. There were characters that died in horrible ways, but I didn't really care that much as a reader because I was never given enough of a chance to begin to care about the character. They still seemed like strangers to me.

The novel was interesting and worth reading, but these last two failings took away some of the enjoyment of reading it. Still, it is a quick read for someone wanting to learn more about the Hurricane. I think I might pass it on to my eight year old to read because he would probably find it exciting. I just wish it had more development.

Happy birthday to my favorite author, Ernest Hemingway.

In addition to other books, I am currently rereading The Sun Also Rises. It is still great!

Little Joe by Michael E. Glasscock III

This is a World War II era historical fiction about a boy, Little Joe, who lives with his grandparents in Round Rock, Tennessee after Little Joe survives a car accident that kills both of his parents. He will befriend two neighbor children and grow to love his grandparents through a variety of experiences. Most of these experiences center around the difficulties of an urban child growing up in a rural culture and grandparents trying to understand their grandchildren despite age differences.

There were a couple of things that I found problematic with this novel. For one, the grandmother was a well-read woman who was uncommonly anti-prejudiced considering the time period; yet, she expressed bigotry towards Catholics. I found it hard to believe that this woman who seemed to be the conscience of the novel would be so liberal in her dealings with African-Americans and feminist issues but would be so intolerant of people with different religious beliefs from her own. This inconsistency of character made her a difficult character for me to believe.

A bigger problem was the wooden dialogue between characters. I found it difficult to buy into the existence of any characters who spoke so often in exactly the same voice at all times. It seemed like Glasscock spent too much time researching Tennessee during the war and not enough time putting thought into characterization. This bothered me throughout the novel.

Despite these flaws, at its heart, it is a charming story about a boy and his grandparents. It would have been better with better execution, but it still wasn't a terrible read. For the most part, I liked it, but it wasn't great.

I hear you about the inconsistency and don't disagree. However, I heard so much prejudice against Catholics while growing up in Tennessee, that I wonder if it was more acceptable because they were white. I also heard the idea expressed that "They are white. They should know better." Pretty ugly stuff.

I have hit a bit of a quandary. I am about 200 pages into a book, and I feel like I know exactly how the author would speak in real life because every character in his novel has the exact same voice. It is very off-putting. I was holding my nose and slogging through this mess, when he had a character explaining that they are from the east side of Chicago. Living less than and hour from Chicago and visiting frequently, I know that there is now such thing as the east side of Chicago. Did the guy live as a fish swimming around Lake Michigan? At this point, I am about to quit reading the book and move onto something else, but I always feel guilty if I don't finish something that I start. What to do?

>74 fuzzy_patters:

Skim read the rest. Basically, I, too, hate abandoning books, but I have found that some books just do not turn out to be what I expected.

Skimming sometimes helps me find good parts of a book, so I might slow down again.

Reading all your books in the same way and at the same speed, I think, is not the way to go. That said, I do not buy books expecting to skim them. My hope is to enjoy them, each and all. Actually, I am a quite slow reading (voicing all words in my mind).

The number of books I end up skimming is actually very low. They are usually books that end up with 1 star or less.

Life's too short for "bad" books; there are too many good ones out there.

I think I'm going to put it down for a day or two and then reevaluate if I want to finish it. I have other things I can read instead.

I once put down a long book with only fifty pages to go. It wasn't worth my time. There are so many books, and time spent with the one you're not enjoying is time you won't have to read a potentially great novel.

I'd make an exception for a worthy book. Is it a classic or a book which was groundbreaking in some way? Did it shape future writers? Is it something you feel you want to read to become better rounded as a reader? Then, by all means, plug away. It took me 200 pages to get into Byatt's Possession, but I felt that the reputation both the writer and the book enjoyed justified my continuing with the book and it ended up being a book I loved.

It isn't a classic or anything. I received it through ER. It's really bad. However, it does have an interesting plot, and I would like to see how it turns out. It's just poorly executed. I think I'll skim it and post my review.

I agree with RidgewayGirl - I sometimes start skimming books, usually because they are annoying me, and very very rarely settle back into them. So after a few dozen more pages I realise that I'm not giving the book a fair go and might as well give up straight away. If I'm really in two minds I imagine that I have left the book on a train - would I be bothered to get another copy to read on? But I have no compunction about ditching books if they aren't working for me - too many others lying around! Good luck with it, anyway.

The Trial by the scurvy dog Franz Kafka

I'm not sure what to say about The Trial that hasn't already been said. It's elusive, infuriating, and beautifully dark. Parts of it reminded me of my wife. I'm not sure what that means.

The Trial of Dr. Kate by Michael E. Glasscock III ()

This novel is so vapid that I read 2/3 of it and couldn't finish it.

My Name Is Dee by Robin Wyatt Dunn

My name is Dee is about aliens and a magician who must save the world. Or is it? My take is that it is about a schizophrenic murderer, but the book is unclear enough to leave on guessing and the truth is never fully revealed. A lot of this is because of the way that the narrative jumps between time and place and how nonlinear it is. Most of it is because the narrator is very unreliable and even admits to being prone to hallucinations. This serves to make the book an interesting read that I thought could have been great. However, I felt that there were a few rushed parts near the climax of the book and that some parts of the book should have been edited because they didn't add much to the narrative and merely frustrated the reader.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling()

I have several coworkers who are rather obsessed with Harry Potter. Since I have a six and an eight year old, I thought it would be a good idea to read the series to them at bed time so that I would get my coworkers jokes at work. My eight year old wasn't that into it, but my six year old loved this book. As soon as we were finished, she said, "When are we going to read the next one!" This may not be great literature, but if it is the gateway drug to a love of reading for my daughter, it seems to be pretty great to me.

84 -
I find that a topic could be the most fascinating topic in the world but if it's read to me I lose all interest and hardly focus. Do your children read on their own as well or do you do most of the reading? I'm wondering 'cause I think it's interesting to see how presentation of a work influences someone's liking of that work.

My mother read Heidi to me when I was about 5, and I reread it every year until I went to college -- along with hundreds of other books.

The one thing I noticed about the Harry Potter series, was that Rowling wrote it in such a way that as the kids, who were hooked on the series, got older, so did the depth of the stories. Your eight year old might like the stories from the third on. The later ones get quite dark.

That's so interesting Colleen.

In some ways most of us still love being read to, otherwise there wouldn't be audiobooks.

I read to my kids, and the older two also read to themselves. My oldest had previously picked up the same book on his own and didn't like it then, either. My daughter, however, loved it when we sit down and read it together each night.

The Circle by Dave Eggers ()

There were parts of this book that I liked and parts that I didn't like. I appreciate what Eggers is trying to do in painting a slippery slope world in which we have sacrificed privacy in exchange for connectedness. I even like the symbolism of Mae's last name being Holland, a country associated with using tulips as currency, since this draws the reader's attention to the idea of privacy being a medium of exchange.

However, there were parts of the book that were just too far-fetched for me. Without adding spoilers, I will say that there are jumps made in the plot without adequate explanation of how those jumps were made logically and legally. It seemed like people just came up with ideas that sounded good, and they were enacted without questioning. That would be fine if Eggers had gone into more detail about what made that possible.

We Are What We Pretend to Be by Kurt Vonnegut ()

This book has both Vonnegut's first and last works, which were published posthumously. The first is a very sweet story about a boy who goes to work on the farm of some relatives after his parents died. The second is about a middle aged comedian. What is interesting about these two stories is how different they are. In Vonnegut's first work, he hasn't found his voice yet, and it could be a novel written by anyone. In his last, the reader gets to experience Vonnegut's trademark wit and dark sense of humor. While neither novella is great, they are at least enjoyable and provide a glimpse at the growth of a writer over time.

What a great idea to pair those! Must be very interesting comparison.

It was an interesting comparison. There was almost no humor whatsoever in the first story. It's tone reminded me of Steinbeck.

Did you participate in the LT group read of The Circle? I'd be curious to hear how you liked the discussion, format, etc. I was interested in participating, but couldn't get the book from the library in time and wasn't willing to buy it as it didn't sound like the kind of book I'd really like all that much.

I liked the discussion a lot better than I liked the book. It is a book that lends itself to discussion even if it isn't a particularly good novel. I'm curious to see what the next selection will be. The big debate in that group right now is whether the books should older books that are more readily available or newer books that more people would be reading for the first time. I'm just hoping for better novels as I thought that The Circle was poorly executed.

Top Down by Jim Lehrer

Top Down is a novel by Jim Lehrer of PBS about a newspaper writer in Dallas, Texas who assists a young woman in attempting to prove that her father is not responsible for the Kennedy assassination. Her father is dying of mental anguish because he thinks that he killed Kennedy because he ordered that the bubble top not be put on Kennedy's Lincoln on the day of the assassination.

I found this book to be very straight forward. It is so straight forward as to lack depth. Lehrer's writing is very straight-forward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get writing. This is ironic because his main character, Jack, is also a newsman who wants to be a novelist, and Lehrer has Jack mention several times that he admires Hemingway. Hemingway was best known for his iceberg theory on writing where the author should leave a lot unsaid. Reading Lehrer, one get the sense that nothing is left unsaid because the story is so thin that there isn't much to say.

Another problem with the novel is that Lehrer tries to create sexual tension between the main character and the college-aged woman that he is trying to help. This is presented through very clunky dialogue that seems almost like an older man's fantasy of what it would be like to flirt with a younger woman. None of it felt natural and all of it felt contrived. If Lehrer did not know how to present this aspect of their relationship in a natural and realistic way, he probably should have left it out.

Finally, I never found myself really caring whether a plexiglass top could have really saved JFK's life. The best literature has something to say about ourselves or society. This novel didn't have much to say about anything. Even as a cheap thriller, it wasn't that thrilling. Lehrer never convinced me to care.

Baseball's Creation Myth: Adam Ford, Abner Graves, and the Cooperstown Story by Brian Martin

In Baseball's Creation Myth: Adam Ford, Abner Graves, and the Cooperstown Story Brian Martin takes a look at the men behind the story of baseball's supposed invention in Cooperstown, New York by Abner Doubleday in 1839. It is generally accepted that the story of Doubleday's invention of the game is a hoax that began with a letter from Abner Graves to a commission that was created by AG Spalding to prove that baseball had American origins. Martin accepts this. His purpose is to explore why Graves might have written the letter that enabled the hoax.

The greatest strength of Martin's work is how much history outside or organized baseball he includes. In telling about Graves and Adam Ford, who wrote a similar story about an early game of baseball played in Canada that Graves might have plagiarized for this Cooperstown story, Martin interweaves the history of the two men, the two countries involved, and all of the different locales that the two men called home during their lives. It turns out that these two men would both be interesting to read about if they had never written letters about baseball. There stories are stories of the old west, speculation, poison, murder, civic duty, success, and failure. Putting it all together makes for a very interesting book.

I only recently became aware of the hoax, from Bill Bryson's One Summer, America 1927. The book sounds interesting, but maybe in unexpected ways, i.e. maybe not specifically about baseball.

While there isn't much about the game per we, there is a lot about how the game began and how the Hall of Fame came to be in Cooperstown. It's a very thorough history. I enjoyed it very much.

Since it looks like this will be my last post in my 2013 thread, this is a good time for a 2013 post-mortem.

The highlights of the year for me were The Trial, The Stranger, Hi! This Is Conchita and Other Stories, and Juneteenth. One thing that I was disappointed in was that I only read one book by a female author the entire year. I'm not sure why that is, but I intend to be a more balanced reader in the coming year. I would say more, but the baby is crying! On to 2014...