July 2009 - Page 3 of 4

Living to Tell the Tale

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Marquez, in a high school literature class. It was a serious struggle. Most kids I knew hated the book. I found it nearly incomprehensible. I couldn\’t keep track of the myriad characters (often with duplicate names) but the fantastical, dreamlike events intrigued me. I had a similar experience with this book. Living to Tell the Tale is Marquez\’ memoir of his childhood, and reading it you realize just how much his novels draw on incidents and people he knew in real life. Of course, I only recognized things I\’d come across in Hundred Years of Solitude, but I know there are echoes of Love in the Time of Cholera and other works here. It was kind of thrilling to recognize bits and pieces, even though it\’s been at least ten years since I read the novel, and I don\’t remember it very clearly. But even so, Living to Tell the Tale could not keep my interest. It jumps back and forth in time (always something I find distracting) not only between Marquez\’ adult life and his childhood, but also in telling about his parents\’ love story, his grandparents\’ lives, etc. Myriad relatives, friends, fellow villagers, etc fill the pages with curious events and wonderful descriptions, but all in a puzzling whirl. I tried to let go of my desire to hold onto a thread, or pay attention to who all the people were, and just bounce along the top of the words, taking in each moment that was presented to me- but it all became a muddle too soon and I couldn\’t follow any longer. Maybe my attention is just lax, maybe I\’m just not into complex books anymore- after all, I doubt I would have ever initially made it through One Hundred Years of Solitude without a teacher\’s guidance. So while I stopped reading this memoir on page 80, I have to say it\’s just my lack of appreciation. It feels like a fantastic book. If you\’re a fan of Marquez, if you\’ve loved any one of his novels, I would urge you to read this one. You will likely find a treasure and delight, where I just encountered headaches.

Abandoned 533 pages, 2003

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Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Bios / Memoirs

I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Comfort, Support and Advice for New Moms
by Nina Barrett

For the new mom or mom-to-be, this is a book full of eye-opening stories written by real-life mothers. Revealing all the unpleasant things that people usually don\’t talk about when anticipating a new baby- difficult and painful births, colicky infants that scream for hours on end, strains in the marriage relationship, etc. Nothing very rosy here. If you want to know just what you might be in for, it can be an interesting read, but I can\’t say I agree with the subtitle. It\’s not comforting, unless knowing you\’re not alone in your misery is comforting. And I didn\’t find much advice given in how to handle things; if I had, this book would have felt more worthwhile. I Wish Someone Had Told Me is like a dash of cold water to wake you up and realize: hey! new babies are not all sweet cuddles and smiles- it\’s tough to be a new mom, but we survived, so you can, too. That\’s the message I got. Well, it did make me laugh a few times, but I can\’t really give this book a wholehearted recommendation. (If they changed the subtitle to something like: Warnings, Alarms and Scares for New Moms, that would be more like it).

Rating:2/5 238 pages, 1997

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Parenting / Pregnancy, Past Reads

Seaworthy

Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting
by T.R. Pearson

I thought this book looked interesting because it\’s about a man who followed close on the heels of the Kon-Tiki expedition. Twenty years after Heyerdahl\’s famous voyage, William Willis, a part-time sailor and aspiring author, decided to attempt his own ocean crossing on a raft. There were several stark differences in this trip, namely that Willis designed the raft himself (and not very well), went solo (unless you count the cat and parrot) and was sixty years old. He wasn\’t out to prove any points about navigation or history, but to seek an experience, to test himself against the elements in the most extreme way possible (rather like Into the Wild, I thought). He deliberately skimped on some planning and supplies, ate a very restricted diet (of mainly rye flour, raw sugar and fish) and was full of a ludicrously optimistic attitude, in spite of his journey being a series of disasters. It\’s a miracle he made it across alive. I kept thinking, this guy is asking for hardship: why? By the end of the book I was no closer to an explanation- he had a decidedly different outlook on life, and a nearly insane desire to continue doing ocean crossings on cheaply built, poorly designed rafts.

Seaworthy wasn\’t quite what I expected. In the first place, it\’s not- as both the back cover copy and flyleaf claim- just about Willis, but also spotlights several other men who made similar hairbrained attempts to raft across the ocean, with various degrees of success. One man went in a small rubber boat, seeking to create shipwreck conditions and prove what man could survive. Other trips were organized with more proper crews- four or five men- and better-built rafts, but with crazy ideas of what they were trying to prove, with poor supplies, with mutiny on board. Along the way they\’re all compared to the more successful and well-known Kon-Tiki. And then Willis himself made four more attempts, the last one when he was seventy-four! I could not believe the deprivation and suffering this man intentionally put himself through. He drank salt water. He fought off sharks. He had two hernias and went on voyages anyways, refusing medical treatment. There was no end of astonishments in this book for me.

Another one for the Non-Fiction Five challenge.

Rating: 3/5 280 pages, 2006

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

Meme: Unread

from Booking Through Thursday:

So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, ‘No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!’

You must have read my mind, BTT. I really wasn\’t going to post again today, but I was already planning to take stock of the remaining piles after my challenge-progress evaluation earlier this morning. I rearranged all my books so that the unread ones are in, on or around my bedside shelf. It\’s overwhelming! The ones I\’m planning on reading next, for various current and upcoming challenges, are stacked on top. I have 132 total unread books, and if you want to see what they all are, the list is on Library Thing. Hm, even though I feel I\’ve read a lot of books since the last post, I don\’t feel like I\’ve made much progress… somehow more books come in than go out…

Tags: bookshelves, memes

challenges…

It\’s time to take stock of my reading challenges- this is the first year I\’ve participated in any, and I\’ve really been enjoying it. I\’ve been feeling a lot more motivated to read through my TBR piles (which means, sadly, less visits to the public library right now, but I know I\’ll be haunting stacks there again sooner or later).

Well, about five months ago I signed up for three challenges. I won\’t list all the titles here, because I\’m going to do a wrap-up post when I finish each one, but here\’s a little note on my progress:

9 for \’09 Challenge– I only have one book left to read for this- the long one. I gave up on Quicksilver, but am going to attempt to read America\’s Women (556 pages) and if I can\’t make it through that one, Irving Stone\’s The Origin (765 pages). The Stone book may look more daunting because it\’s longer- but it might be an easier read, being fiction.

Non-Fiction Five Challenge- I read four of my original picks, and gave up on one. That leaves me with one more book to choose, but I realized recently that I actually started too early- the challenge began in May but I read The Other End of the Leash in April. So maybe I\’ll pick two more. On my shelf I have Seaworthy, a book about another guy who tried to duplicate the Kon-Tiki adventure -only solo– across the ocean, and Splendid Solution, about the discovery of the polio vaccine. They both look really interesting.

2009 TBR Challenge- I\’ve read eight off my original list, gave up on three and am slowly getting through Living to Tell the Tale right now. Not sure I\’m going to finish that one; so I have some from my alternate list ready at hand: The Burn Journals, Dust Bowl Diary, And Then We Came to the End, Maggie-Now, The Horse\’s Mouth, Of Human Bondage…

And when those are all done, I think I\’m going to sign up for the What An Animal II challenge, because you know me, I always love reading animal books!

Celebrating the Wild Mushroom

A Passionate Quest
by Sara Ann Friedman

This book is just what it says: a celebration of wild mushrooms. Its author describes in easy, flowing prose how she gradually became more and more fascinated with wild mushrooms- searching for them, collecting them, studying them and eating them. She describes various hunts for mushrooms in all different seasons, across the country, alone, in small groups of friends or in large organized forays. I never thought about mushroom-lovers having conventions, but they do! Friedman attends as an amateur and passionate mushroom hunter, rubbing shoulders with college professors who specialize in mushrooms, and eager students constantly asking \”what\’s this one?\” People who just want to paint mushrooms, or photograph them. People who are interested in wild mushrooms as culinary art, others who are fascinated by the puzzle of identifying them- there are thousands of species, and apparently no two books or field guides agree on their taxonomy or nomenclature. And of course, people who are interested in their hallucinogenic properties. Celebrating the Wild Mushroom explores all aspects of the fungi- how it has been alternately feared, loathed or practically worshiped in times past. The mysteries of its growth, the puzzles of its properties. Did you know that some mushrooms taste like chicken, or fruit? That some smell like chlorine, or burnt rubber, or fish? From the accounts of a few people who tried to subsist on mushrooms alone for a period of days, Friedman learned that mushrooms have little nutritional value- yet their flavors and textures can be delectable. Personally I like mushrooms, but I\’m not crazy about them. Even though she gives a little mini field guide (with recipes) in the back of the book, I\’d never be bold enough to try and eat a fungus picked off my neighbor\’s lawn, or dug from the leaves under a tree. But this book is so intriguing, because mushrooms are curious and fantastic things- not plant, not animal, but an entity all their own.

The only other place I\’ve read about mushrooms before was in The Omnivore\’s Dilemma, but it only gets a small section there. I read this book as part of the TBR Challenge.

Rating: 4/5 265 pages, 1986

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Nature

wondrous words

for this week, my new words came from reading Living to Tell the Tale:

Rarefy– \”He had a power of evocation so intense that each thing he recounted seemed to become visible in the room rarefied by heat.\”
Definition: to purify or refine

Tutelary– \”The two tutelary almond trees that for years had been an unequivocal sign of identity had been cut down to the roots and the house left exposed to the elements.\”
Definition: one that serves as guardian or protector

Shirred– \”Recent generations do not seem moved by that princess with the shirred skirts, little white boots, and a braid hanging down to her waist…\”
Definition: cloth gathered into decorative rows by parallel stitches

Tertian– \”She had spent an uncertain childhood plagued by tertian fevers…\”
Definition: recurring every other day, or every third day

Parvenu– \”The majority of adults, however, viewed Luisa Santiaga as the precious jewel of a rich and powerful family whom a parvenu telegraph operator was courting not for love but self-interest.\”
Definition: a person newly risen to a higher social position who is lacks the culture or education of that status

Obdurate– \”… he expressed his heartfelt certainty that there was no human power capable of overcoming this obdurate love.\”
Definition: obstinate, hardhearted

and from Celebrating the Wild Mushroom:

Mycologist– \”The squadron leader is Kent McKnight, a highly respected professional mycologist who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\”
Definition: a botanist who specializes in the study of fungi

Umbonate, Fibrillose– \”I knew immediately when a cap was striated or fibrillose, whether it was bell-shaped or umbonate.\”
U: having a knob or knob-like protuberance
F: covered evenly with small, threadlike fibers

Glabrous, Viscid– \”Is it glabrous or viscid?\”
G: smooth, having no hairs or projections
V: having a sticky or clammy coating

Amyloid– \”They are all pale yellow- to brown-capped, are amyloid, and posses a ring and a bulbous base.\”
Definition: a starchlike substance

Balkanized– \”Even within the genera, rules change from year to year, as old characteristics are reevaluated and new ones discovered; whole groups of mushrooms are balkanized while others are unified.\”
Definition: a territory or region divided into small, hostile states

Mycophogist– \”For mycophagists, they are a pleasant dream, and it matters not at all what they are called.\”
Definition: a person (or animal) who eats fungi

Tomentose– \”He goes outside and returns with his tennis racket covered with a magnificent array of chestnut-capped boletes in perfect condition, their pale pink pores firm, their thick, white, slightly tomentose stipes solid enough to walk on.\”
Definition: covered with short, dense matted hairs

Saprophyte– \”There are still thousands of varieties out there doing their job, acting as saprophytes or trading nutrients with trees and shrubs.\”
Definition: a living organism that absorbs its nourishment from dead organic matter

Duxelle– \”… with a little care you will have a full winter supply of ingredients for stews and ragouts, quiches, duxelles and omelettes.\”
Definition: a finely chopped mix of mushrooms, shallots, herbs and onions sauteed in wine

Duff– \”As with so many other mushrooms, the first one is the hardest to spot, and more often than not a little digging among the pine duff will produce more…\”
Definition: decaying leaves and branches on the forest floor

Find more wondrous words at the host of this meme, Bermudaonion\’s Weblog

Tags: wondrous words

bookmark giveaway!

Winner of the giraffe bookmark is: Lezlie from one of my favorite blogs, Books \’n Border Collies. Hey, Lezlie, email me your address and I\’ll mail you a giraffe!

Next giveaway is for this rooster bookmark, edged with a bold green ribbon. It\’s a bit smaller than the others, 2 x 6\”, not counting the tassel. If you\’d like to enter to win, just leave your name in the comments! Contest closes next tuesday, 7/14.

Tags: giveaways

Gentle Gorilla

The Story of Patty Cake
by Susan Green

I\’ve read many books over the years on great apes- chimpanzees and gorillas- marveling at their social intelligence and abilities. This is the book that began it all, back one day as a teen browsing the public library. I\’d never had much interest in gorillas before, and didn\’t know much about them. I saw this title and stopped short. I thought gentle? How could a gorilla be gentle? So I read the book. And read it again. Probably four times over the years. It\’s an interesting, thoughtful and touching story.

Gentle Gorilla began as an artist\’s journal. Susan Green visited the Central Park Zoo daily to sketch the animals, and one of her favorite places was in the Lion House, where the gorillas were. She was such a regular visitor the animals came to accept her, and the keepers permitted her to stay when other zoo-goers were denied admittance. Green was present when the female gorilla Lulu surprised everyone with the birth of a baby, named Patty Cake. She spent hours at the zoo watching the gorilla family- Lulu, Patty Cake and the father, Kongo- observing their interactions, feeling part of their joys and sorrows. This was back in the seventies, when the animals still lived in bare, concrete cages. One of the things that I liked most about the story was seeing how the animals would express their curiosity or find things to entertain themselves with, even in a rather barren environment. I remember one scene in particular where Lulu had a bunch of beets and instead of eating them, rubbed them against the floor to leave red marks… It\’s a lovely book, and if you haven\’t read anything about gorillas, I\’d recommend this as a start.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 303 pages, 1978

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Past Reads

Beast

by Donna Jo Napoli

This is Beauty and the Beast retold from the Beast\’s point of view. In Napoli\’s story, the Beast was originally a Muslim prince from Persia, who angered a fairy when he failed to make a ritual sacrifice properly. As punishment, he was turned into a lion, one of several recently brought from India so that his father the King could hunt and kill a lion the next day. The prince-turned-lion fled for his life, traveling through the wilds back to the lion\’s home in India, and then into France where he sought to lift the curse by making a woman fall in love with him. My favorite part of this book was the middle, which describes his efforts to live as a lion, fighting the bestial instincts of his new body, struggling to reconcile what he must do to survive- hunt and kill- with the tenants of his Islamic faith. The first part of the story, seeped in details of Persian culture (and full of unfamiliar words), just wasn\’t as interesting. And the final part of the book- when the Beast settled in France, built a rose garden, and wooed Beauty- felt too abrupt. I understand that the main focus of the story was how the prince overcame the lion\’s bestial nature to feel and act like a man again- and that when he had redeemed himself by gaining Beauty\’s love thus the story was over- but I didn\’t get any sense of a real relationship being formed between them, and wished there had been more depth about that part of the story. If you like original retellings of fairy tales, you should certainly read Beast, it\’s very different. Some of the parts about his life as a lion are rather brutal (not just killing, but also mating scenes of the lions are described), so it might not appeal to all readers.

Rating: 3/5 272 pages, 2000

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Past Reads, Young Adult

Month: July 2009

RATINGS / SUBJECTS: