February 2008 - Page 2 of 3

Princess Sultana\’s Circle

by Jean Sasson

This is the third book telling the story of Princess Sultana, member of a Saudi Arabian royal family. In unfolding further events in the lives of her family, friends, relatives and acquaintances, she reveals many more injustices and indignities committed against women in the strict Muslim culture. In addition to her struggles to protect and further the cause of women in her country, Sultana shows a more personal side in Princess Sultana\’s Circle. The life of a rich, sequestered princess is difficult for me to relate to until I see her private struggles: her attempts to become a more patient and spiritual person, to overcome a weakness for alcohol and deal with her daughter\’s revolutionary activities all made her less a foreign personage to me.

There is also a vivid picture in this book of how the fabulously wealthy live. It seemed to me that you could tell a lot about the people in the story by reading what they spent their money on: one friend had an enormous book collection, others private zoos of exotic animals; Sultana herself bought tons of expensive clothes (she gave many away to friends), and donated large amounts of money to the poor. Others used their money to gratify lust- some to a degrading extent, and against the will of women involved. It was these women Sultana strove to help and succor.

My favorite part of the book was when Sultana\’s family was forced to flee their palace for a while, and spent a period of time living in the desert alongside some Bedouin people. It was very interesting.

For further information, visit the author\’s website.

Rating: 4/5 Published: 2000, pp 255

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Bios / Memoirs, Past Reads

Meme: Out of Love

Question from Chris, posted on Booking Through Thursday:

Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?

I can only think of one author this has happened with, but I don’t think it was due to a book being bad. I think it’s just because I grew up. When I was a teenager I first read Clare Bell‘s books about intelligent, speaking prehistoric cats- Ratha’s Creature and its sequel Clan Ground. I also loved a third book that wasn’t part of the series, Tomorrow’s Sphinx, about cheetahs. I couldn’t find any other books by this author at the time, or I would have gobbled them up. As an adult I stumbled across two more Ratha books, but they didn’t grab me the same way the first two had. I think it was just one of those cases where books that strongly appealed to me when younger don’t enthrall me the same way as an adult.

Most of the time I’m pretty forgiving with authors. I understand that not everything they write is going to appeal to me personally. I often only like one or two books an author has written, or half a series, but not the rest. That doesn’t bother me. There are a few authors I really like everything I’ve read- Chaim Potok and George Orwell are two that come to mind.

There have, of course, been times when I began reading a new author (not one I was “in love with” yet) and became disillusioned by their work; quitting it for good. A notable case was Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I got pretty hooked and read a fair way into the series- I think five out of the twelve books. Then it just got too tedious- there were so many details and characters the storyline got confusing to me. And the repetitive manner in which some of the main characters’ personalities were portrayed began to annoy me. Like a certain woman always yanking on her thick braid- I swore once if I ever read that phrase again I’d scream, and that’s about when I quit the series. Too bad. It was actually pretty impressive, the mass of details in the entire world Jordan created. I just couldn’t handle it.

I may have digressed from the question of the meme, but it sure was interesting to think about!

Tags: memes

The Snow Goose

by Paul Gallico

It begins with a crippled, friendless man who lives near an abandoned lighthouse on the Essex coast. He works alone painting the surrounding marshes and waterfowl, building a small sanctuary to protect migrating birds from hunters. One day a young girl brings a wounded goose to his doorstep. It is a snow goose, far from its native home in Canada. They name the bird \”The Princess\” and work together to heal it. To their delight, the snow goose returns next season, and the girl resumes her daily visits during the its stay. Slowly over the years they develop a special friendship. But then one day the painter, long an outcast from regular society, discovers a means by which he may assist his fellowmen. He sets off on a brave mission of rescue, accompanied by the Princess, which places them in grave danger… The Snow Goose is a quiet, moving and rather solemn story.

Rating: 4/5 Published: 1940, pp 58

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Short Stories

Snow White, Blood Red

edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Years ago as a teenager I read several of these books, collections of adult fairy tale writings by various authors, all with cover illustrations by Tom Canty and edited by Terri Windling. When I saw this copy of Snow White, Blood Red at the Book Thing, I recognized it as one I hadn\’t read yet, and brought it home expecting something curious and fun. I don\’t know what has changed, but I don\’t remember the stories being so dark and sensual. Maybe my memory is dim, maybe I glossed over or didn\’t understand those passages when I was younger? But several of the tales in this collection were so blatantly s-xual they made me uncomfortable and I had to skip them outright. (Yes, I\’m something of a prude). If this is an example of gothic fiction then I\’m not sure I like it at all, and may reconsider the werewolf and vampire stories that have made their way onto my TBR recently.

I did enjoy reading the introduction by Datlow, which explains that fairy tales (\”about ordinary men and women in extraordinay circumstances\”) were originally not intended for children at all, and had much darker, more violent implications and endings than the pap we see Disney regurgitating today. Out of the twenty-one stories, my favorites were \”Like a Red, Red Rose,\” \”Troll Bridge\” and \”The Snow Queen.\”

The writers include Charles de Lint, Susan Wade, Tanith Lee, Jane Yolen, Patricia McKillip, Lisa Goldstein and many more, who \”have produced richly imaginative retellings of existing fairy tales, as individual as the authors themselves, penned for a contemporary, adult audience… [set in] a time not so long ago, in a land much like our own, with no guarantee of safe travel, timely rescue or of ending Happily Ever After. Much like life itself.\” (p.20) They are strange and dreamlike, and don\’t shy away from the darker side of human nature. Deliciously frightening at times, if you want to curl up under a blanket and explore stories of wild imagination that sometimes feel a little too close to home…

Rating: 3/5 Published 1993, pp 411

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Short Stories

Princess Sultana\’s Daughters

by Jean Sasson

This book picks up where Princess left off. The cover page states: \”A Saudi Arabian woman\’s intimate revelations about s-x, love, marriage and the fate of her beautiful daughters.\” It seemed to me there was more about the traditions, customs, religious beliefs and societal woes of a Muslim country than the story of her family, per se. I certainly learned a lot more about Muslim culture in this book. There are several chapters in particular describing a family pilgrimage to Mecca. The heightened conflicts of religious and social ideas were expressed in her own family\’s division: one of her daughters became a religious fundamentalist, preaching to and condemning family and friends. The other reacted to her horror of how men treated women by engaging in a love affair with a female friend. The beliefs and actions of her daughters were very distressing to Sultana as a mother. Just like in the previous book, Princess Sultana\’s Daughters describes many injustices and abuse experienced by women in Saudi Arabia. Although I admired Sultana\’s cause, I found myself uneasy about some of the means she used to promote her ideas and defend other women: verbal insults, hysterics, physical assaults, even blackmail and petty theft. Perhaps these were the only way to get results when her life was so controlled by men, but all this alongside the tales of scandals and scenes of high drama made me feel at times like I was reading a soap opera.

I just now found these two articles which may be of interest. Claims were made that Sasson is guilty of plagiarism and that Princess Sultana is a fictitious character. I don\’t know if that\’s true, and it doesn\’t make me like the books any less; but it does make me wonder if all the atrocities described in these books actually happen to women in Saudi Arabia. Some of them are just too horrible to mention.

*My information about the lawsuit against the author has been updated. Please read the comments.*

Rating: 3/5 Published: 1994, pp 231

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads

oops

I have an answer now for question #4 in Eva\’s meme. I thought I had read the first two books about Princess Sultana, and wrote the two previous posts by memory of those readings years ago. But when I sat down to read the third book, Princess Sultana\’s Circle, I quickly realized that I already had! The book I missed the first time was the second one of the three. (It must have been unavailable at the library at the time). So that post I just wrote (and now erased) wasn\’t about Princess Sultana\’s Daughters, it was about Princess Sultana\’s Circle. I\’m now reading Daughters, and then will refresh my memory better of Circle before rewriting that post. Such confusion, fickle memory!

Princess

A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia
by Jean Sasson

This is the story of a woman\’s life in Saudi Arabia. Not any woman, but an anonymous princess (called Sultana in the book) from a high-ranking royal family. Apparently she secretly conveyed information to the author in order to have her story written, and changed all the names to protect herself and her family. From reading the book, one would think that repercussions would be great upon this woman if her family knew she had publicly revealed what goes on behind the walls of their palaces. Princess begins with Sultana\’s childhood, where she quickly learns of the disparity in treatment between men and women. Even though she lives in astonishing luxury, her life is constricted by many rules. She has to submit in everything to her domineering father, cruel older brother, and later her husband. She is married at sixteen to this man she never met before. Although throughout the story Sultana herself is fairly well-treated and even receives a measure of education, the dismal situation of many women surrounding her is revealed in awful detail: double standards of allowed behavior, extreme punishments, forcible separations from family when married or divorced, denials of education, constrictions on where they can go and to whom they may speak, etc. etc. This book was dismaying, riveting and at the same time admirable, for in spite of all the oppression Sultana felt, she never looses her spirit and independent thought.

Rating: 4/5 291 pages, 1992

Read another review at: SMS Book Reviews

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Bios / Memoirs, Past Reads

Jhereg

by Steven Brust

Jhereg is the first book Steven Brust wrote about his imagined world, Dragaera. Aliens once visited this planet and genetically mixed humans with native animals, creating seventeen different humanoid forms and factions. They have special abilities, live to be hundreds of years, and are over seven feet tall. Normal humans are despised and on the bottom of society. The main character, Vlad Taltos, is a human who inveigled his way into one of the lower factions, the House of Jhereg. He becomes a successful assassin, using disreputable methods of sorcery and the dangerous companionship of a dragon-like jhereg as protection and leverage. I was attracted to this book by the cool-looking cover image, the description of Vlad\’s acquisition of the jhereg-egg, and the fact that the creature has a telepathic connection with him. But it\’s more about a mafia-like organization, crime, intrigue, power struggles and death duels than the animal figures or magic. Not a usual subject for me, but this one is written so fluidly, with humorous observations by the young, ambitious Vlad that I actually enjoyed it. I read the next two books (though they\’re not really written in chronological order) Yendi and Teckla before leaving the series. Now there\’s at least ten of them, with all kinds of interesting names.

Rating: 3/5 Published: 1983, 239 pp

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Past Reads

Unstrange Minds

Remapping the World of Autism
by Roy Richard Grinker

Grinker is an anthropologist and the father of an autistic child. Unstrange Minds is an in-depth look at the history and cultural context of autism, in conjunction with personal accounts of living with the disorder. In the first half of the book, Grinker looks at autism in the US- especially the issue of the growing rate of reported cases, which he argues is due to greater public awareness and improved medical diagnoses, not outside causes like vaccines. (For more on this position, read this statement). In short, he posits that we see more autism now than a decade ago because it is easier to recognize, not because more people have it. The author explores different attitudes towards autism in other cultures, from the Navajo in America to India, South Africa and South Korea. The second half of the book is a memoir of his own life with his autistic daughter. Including a wide range of information: statistical numbers, diagnoses and treatment, cultural perceptions and individual anecdotal stories, this book is a beautifully written examination of autism. It is very easy to read and quite interesting, even for someone like me (personally, I don\’t know anyone who has autism).

Rating: 4/5 Published: 2007, 340 pages

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Nonfiction (general), Past Reads

The Years of Rice and Salt

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Is this going to be the week of abandoned books? I really made an effort to finish this one. I got to page 354 before it became tedious and I couldn\’t continue. The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternative history, covering over 600 years. It starts in the 1400\’s, when the Black Plague wipes out over 90% of the European population. Thus, in the chapters that follow, Christianity is a small minority, Chinese and Muslim powers dominate the world and discover the Americas. The story is told through several characters who are continually re-incarnated through the centuries, always having the same basic personality: one is a revolutionary prone to violent action, one a philosophical nurturing-type, one an inquiring intellectual… If anything, this book gave me a much better picture of the concept of reincarnation than The Reincarnationist did. There was also a strong sense of rebellion against the gods, which I found curious (it made me think of the His Dark Materials books). Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with all the various religions represented in the book: Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. There were so many cultural and religious terms I didn\’t recognize that I lost much of the meaning. Similarly, I\’m not too strong on history, and this book covers so much that I couldn\’t appreciate the subtle differences between reality and invented historical events.

Having recently read Pastwatch, I found the sections dealing with discovery of the Americas an interesting comparative. I also like another part where one of the characters was reincarnated as a tiger. But by the time I got through those 350 pages, the plot was really dragging and I had lost interest in what any of the characters were experiencing.

Abandoned Published: 2002, 658 pages

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Historical Fiction

Month: February 2008

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