Monday Musings

I'm almost caught up on reviews. My reading, however, has slowed down. I've begun several fiction books that are not very good, and I'm trying to stay with my resolution to abandon books that invite me to make fun of them sotto voce. They will go back to the library unfinished.

On the other hand, I've got a couple of good nonfiction books in progress and an ever-growing list of "want to reads" garnered from miscellaneous blog reviews.

Two more good documentaries to report:

10 Questions for the Dalai Lama is full of lovely scenes from Tibet, some good background on the Dalai Lama's childhood, terrible scenes of the Chinese occupation and the destruction of 6,000 monasteries. Over a million Tibetans have been killed as a result of Chinese policy...pretty stunning. The documentary presents actual footage of the 1949 occupation. The history is only a part of the documentary, but it is fascinating.


The other excellent documentary is The Cats of Mirikitani. Interesting on many levels, this film captures Mirikitani as a homeless street artist, his friendship with Linda Hattendorf (the filmmaker), the effect the events of 9-11 had on Jimmy and other street people, and the transformative power that results from his friendship with Linda. The film documents his life over a five year period.

It is really a marvelous film about homelessness and the available resources; about frustration and pride and dedication to art; about the camps and the residual effects of the Japanese interned in them (Jimmy was born in the U.S., an American citizen); and about friendship and kindness and reunions.

An excellent synopsis of the film here.

The Creative Habit

Tharp, Twyla. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.

Loved it! Practical, useful, highly entertaining. Twyla Tharp is certainly an individual with a Vigorous (and Renaissance) Mind--one of America's greatest choreographers; extremely well-read and knowledgeable in so many areas; curious and determined; and a perpetual student of art, music, literature, philosophy, and film. When something "exceeds her grasp," Tharp just keeps reaching.

I read The Artist's Way and The Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron seven or eight years ago and (forgive me those of you who adore these books) found them neither helpful nor entertaining. Not that there was nothing good there, but that the good parts could fit in a few paragraphs. Maybe Cameron's "Way" simply did not appeal to my personality. Tharp, on the other hand, had me hooked immediately.

Twyla Tharp's sharp insight and dedication to hard work; her love of good literature, art, and music and her investigations in these areas; and her examples of historical and current creative individuals...make fascinating reading.

She has worked with Jerome Robbins, Martha Graham, Balanchine, Baryshnikov, and Peter Martins in the dance world. She has collaborated with Milos Foreman on Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus. She's created dances for the Joffrey Ballet, the New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, London's Royal Ballet, and American Ballet. She has worked with creative people in the arts and in business. Her close personal friends have included Richard Avedon and Maurice Sendak. Her own creativity aside, Tharp has known and worked with some of the most creative people of her era.

I read avidly, and while I may not be that creative, I enjoyed and appreciated this book tremendously. Tharp gives excellent practical advice for creative people in any genre, but more than that, she provides a intriguing, refreshing, and insightful look at creative people and their creative habits.

My copy is from the library, but this is a book that I want to own.

Nonfiction. Inspiration/Creativity. 243 pages.

Where Memories Lie

Crombie, Deborah. Where Memories Lie.

Another Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mystery. I've been reading and enjoying this series for years because I like the characters, the detailed and interesting settings, and the tight plots. I also love the end papers which display a map with drawings of important sites in the broader area in which the novel is set.

Laura Hartman Maestro does the maps for each novel, and I love the sense of immediacy they add. Of course, I'm also a great fan of illustrated maps in general, her maps are quite beautiful. The map below is from Crombie's novel Water like a Stone.

This the map from A Finer End.

I could scan the end papers for this novel, but it is a library book and has "jacket interference."

Where Memories Lie begins with an Art Deco brooch showing up for auction and leads to Gemma looking into a cold case involving the murder of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and a connection to current murders. As usual, I enjoyed this mystery by Deborah Crombie.

Fiction. Mystery. 2008. 295 pages.

More on the Orphan Trains

Thanks to Sam of Book Chase, I found a YouTube version of the song he mentioned about the Orphan Train.

The Orphan Trains

One of my goals in my Renaissance Mind self-challenge was to watch 2 documentaries from Netflix a month. Last month, I watched 3-- two were interesting, the third was not so great.

The other night, I watched this month's first documentary, and it was fascinating! I'd never heard of this particular segment of our American history, and The Orphan Trains was so fascinating that I made Fee watch it with me the second time.

During the 1850's, a young minister named Charles Loring Brace was stunned and saddened by the abandoned street children in New York. I've read about these abandoned children many times, but was totally unaware of Brace's solution to the problem. He formed the Children's Aid Society and began shipping the children to farming communities in the West, hoping that loving Christian families could take the children in and save them from the horrible conditions they faced alone on the streets of New York.

Everything was well-documented. Names of children, where they went, entries in Brace's journals, letters from the children and their new families, etc. From the 1850's until 1929, the Orphan Trains carried over 150,000 children from New York to points west.

Some of these situations didn't work out so well; despite the efforts of the Children's Aid Society, many potential families were no better vetted than foster families are today and the check ups on situations were difficult and spotty because there were so many placements. Some families undoubtedly saved the lives of many children; other situations must have been terrible disasters. Photographs of the children taken by Brace's photographer and by the families that took the children in tell a remarkable story on their own, but the interviews with many elderly individuals who rode the trains to new homes from the early part of the 2oth century are both engrossing and touching.

Brace worked hard to save the children who wandered bare foot and slept in door ways, but he grappled with the dilemma of what to do to help:

"When a child of the streets stands before you in rags, with a tear-stained face, you cannot easily forget him. And yet, you are perplexed what to do. The human soul is difficult to interfere with. You hesitate how far you should go."

The Orphan Trains is a remarkable story and a remarkable documentary. I highly recomment it.

More information can be found here (and these are just a few sites):

Charles Loring Brace
Orphan Trains
The Adoption History Project
The Children's Aid Society
National Orphan Train Complex


Cross-posted at Bayou Quilts.

Hatha Yoga Illustrated

Kirk, Martin, Brooke, Boone, and Daniel DiTuro. Hatha Yoga Illustrated.

I'm finally going to call this one finished. It isn't, of course, because I keep referring to it and will continue to do so.


What I liked about this one:

• brief, but informative background information, even if philosophy is not in depth
• asanas are divided into sections (standing, balancing, inverted, twisting, etc.)
• excellent photographs
  
• postures are shown step by step
• both English and Sanskrit names for the asanas are included
  
• counterposes
• drishti (where the eyes should focus)
• physical & mental benefits for each pose
• contraindications
• gentle variations & more advanced variations

I've been through all of the poses (although some of the advanced versions are still beyond my ability) and have used this book in conjunction with some of the others books on yoga that I'm reading. When I have a question, I look it up in one of the other books, but the photographs and information in HYI are excellent.

It does not include the pronunciations for the Sanskrit poses, but one of the other books does. Yoga Anatomy and Yoga as Medicine (still in progress) are much more detailed about complicated anatomical aspects and medical benefits of poses, but HYI is the best book for learning over 70 asanas. It is suitable for basic and advanced practitioners, has clear, easy to read info and instructions, and marvelous, helpful photos. Great learning and reference tool.

Nonfiction. Yoga. 2006. 232 pages.

Bone by Bone

O'Connell, Carol. Bone by Bone.

I'm a great fan of O'Connell's Mallory novels, but this novel featuring another character, left me cold. In fact, none of the characters seemed to lift from the page and some were so far in the realm of bizarre that I felt completely bewildered about why so much weirdness was packed into one novel. I remember being disappointed by Judas Child (another departure from the Mallory series), but nothing much pleased me about this one.

There are plenty of elements in the novel that would have fascinated me if presented differently, but the over-the-top nature of the novel was simply too much with which to contend without some sense of identification with the characters.

Perhaps I would have liked Hannah Rice if she had had any back-up characters, but poor Hannah's character faded into the overall weirdness. She had no support system. Oren, the lead character, was too flat to really play off the housekeeper's interesting qualities and no real sense of genuine feeling came through.

A great annoyance was being hit with the phrase, "No one every goes to the library." This device was evidently supposed to provide a mysterious and humorous note, but being hit over the head with it so frequently was a problem, and the solution to that vapid mystery was disappointing and (once again) bizarre.

I had been eager to read Bone by Bone because the premise sounded interesting and because I'd seen some positive reviews (not by bloggers, but if you've read it, let me know). Evidently several critics appreciated this book much more than I did, so maybe the problem is simply mine.

The strange, flawed characters in the Mallory novels appeal to me, but even if they seem far-fetched, they are so well-developed that I was always eager for the next installment. Oren is dull as ditch water and his attachment to Isabelle...masochistic and given that he had never spoken to her, peculiar. However, that appears to have been Isabelle's situation as well. Hmm, masochistic describes several relationships in this novel: "You hate me; I love you."

Fiction. Mystery. 2008. 340 pages.

Talking to the Dead

Weisberg, Barbara. Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism.

The Fox sisters gained fame in 1848 when eleven-year-old Kate and fourteen-year-old Maggie began communicating with the dead by means of mysterious rappings and knocks that were heard throughout the Fox home. Instant celebrity followed: first locally, among friends and neighbors who came to the Fox home to be amazed and who attempted to uncover the source of the noises. Later, as word spread, the girls gained national and international acclaim.

Attempts to discover how the strange noises were manifested and to discredit the sisters were never completely successful, although many mediums who followed in their footsteps were easily exposed as frauds. The sisters, including older sister Leah, who knew an opportunity when it appeared, underwent many humiliating attempts to debunk their abilities, but the attempts had little effect. The young girls, guided by Leah, initiated a phenomenon that surprised almost everyone with its rapid spread, and soon the number of individuals who could talk to the dead multiplied.

Weisberg does a fine job of examining the Spiritualist movement, the cultural underpinnings of the era, and the lives of Kate and Maggie. What is amazing is the number of intelligent and well-known individuals who believed, who attended seances, and/or who attempted to expose them. Among those who attended their seances were Horace Greeley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and James Fennimore Cooper.

Weisberg's research is extensive and includes many primary documents from the time period, including books, letters, newspaper articles, and pages of secondary sources. Unfortunately, none of the Fox sisters left much in writing, and what there is (mostly in letters to devoted followers) never reveals evidence that is conclusive about their belief in their chosen profession. Maggie gave a lecture much later in life that decried their abilities as fake, but she later recanted.

I was originally drawn to the book by the "prophetic dreams" Captain Crozier experienced in Dan Simmon's novel, The Terror. His dreams included, but did not name, the Fox sisters and Elisha Kent Kane, one of the arctic explorers who searched for the lost Franklin Expedition. Elisha Kent Kane evidently fell for Maggie and pursued her with determination. The book did little to bolster Kane's reputation on a personal level, and his letters to Maggie are a combination of longing and contempt, as he felt Maggie to be beneath him.

Kane was 3o and Maggie was 19 when they met. He tended to be quite controlling, and believing the seances to be fraudulent, Kane attempted to separate Maggie from Leah (he saw the older sister as manipulative) and to persuade Maggie to give up her activities.

Shortly after "marrying" Maggie--this was not a formally legal marriage--Kane became seriously ill and died. His family denied that he had made any provision for Maggie, and a feud simmered between the evidently heart-broken Maggie and the Kane family for years.

Although their careers as mediums increased their financial status and their celebrity for a time, a serious down-side was that as they were entertained by the rich and famous, both Kate and Maggie developed a taste for alcohol that certainly aided in their fall from grace. Serious alcoholics by the end of their lives, both women died in impoverished circumstances.

Talking to the Dead tells the engrossing story of the rise and influence of Spiritualism, the Fox sisters, and the fears and uncertainties of the age in which they lived.

Update: The Stay At Home Bookworm has posted her review here.

Nonfiction. Biography/History. 2004. 273 pages.

Procrastinating

I've finished several more books, but I'm having trouble making myself write the reviews. The review of Talking to the Dead, which I started to write the other day, just seems to elude me. I write and delete and try again.

The new television show Lie to Me seems to be based on the research about facial expressions that Malcolm Gladwell included in Blink. That particular research was one of the most interesting portions of the book, and it seemed uncanny that right after I'd read the book, the show premiered. You can watch the pilot here. The research of Paul Ekman, the psychologist who has done extensive work in the field, is absorbing and a bit unnerving.

Gauntlet

Aaron, Richard. Gauntlet: A Novel of International Intrigue.

The first few pages of the novel had me worried, and I was about to follow through with my plan to abandon any book that didn't really interest me, when things began to pick up. And when they did, I found myself amazed at the fast pace of this novel.

Aaron is able to keep several stories on the go, uniting them when necessary to futher the overall plot, then separating the strands again to fill in background, motive, history. In this manner, he is able to introduce a substantial number of characters and develop them in depth without ever confusing the reader.

My favorite character, of course, is Hamilton Turbee, a highly functioning autistic mathematician and computer genius. (I'm not sure where the line is drawn in regard to a diagnosis of high-function autism and Asperger's, but Turbee has the typical difficulty of reading expressions and extreme difficulty and discomfort in social interaction.) Poor Richard, who annoyed me so profoundly at the beginning, grew on me until I suddenly realized that I liked him a lot! Indy Singh and Catherine in Vancouver might deserve a book of their own.

Even the villains in this novel are portrayed with enough understanding to keep them from being perceived as evil incarnate and, given the scenario that Aaron develops, this must have required some time and effort.

The story opens with 600 tons of Semtex scheduled to be destroyed in Libya. Some of the Semtex is stolen before reaching its destination, setting off the complex and fast-paced plot as the United States attempts to track the explosives before the terrorists can complete the threatened strike against an unknown American target.

After my first few doubtful pages, I was completely drawn in and found it difficult to put the novel down. There are several places where my heartbeat picked up noticeably. The novel follows different characters in different chapters, but without that awful technique of ending each chapter in a cliff-hanger. The development of the narrative in such a complex plot is remarkably smooth, and there are no instances of wondering which character the new chapter is following. Aaron moves seamlessly from Pakistan to TTIC headquarters to Vancouver, B.C. and from good guys to bad guys.

The drawback? The conclusion. Abrupt. Incomplete. No closure at all.

The ending, upset me a great deal, until I did some research and discovered that Gauntlet is the first novel in a trilogy. Still, while I love trilogies, I resent cliff hangers. I want some resolution, even if I know the story has not been concluded. I want to feel happy to know the characters I enjoy will return, not resentful about being left in the lurch. The feeling of being manipulated annoys me.

So, Mr. Aaron, don't leave us hanging for long and try to make the next book's conclusion a little less abrupt and unsettling.

If you've read this one, let me know, and I'll link to your review.

Fiction. Suspense. 2009. 488 pages.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville

Dickinson, Amy. The Mighty Queens of Freeville.

I want to live in Freeville and have Amy as a friend! I really didn't know what to expect of this ARC, but feel lucky to have received it. It is probably not a book I'd have chosen on my own, and I would have missed a wonderful opportunity. The book will be released on Feb. 3, don't miss this one.

Amy Dickinson is the "new" Ann Landers; she writes the syndicated advice column, "Ask Amy."

The book is full of wry humor, and I was hooked after the introduction when she says of her (almost entirely female) family:

We seem to be less than successful on many superficial levels. We don't have money. We aren't upwardly mobile. We aren't naturally thin or beautiful. We don't have advanced degrees, long-term career goals, or plans for retirement.

The book opens with Dickinson looking back on her divorce and the difficulty she had in accepting the end of her marriage. "Granted, the day my husband showed up at our marriage counseling session wheeling a suitcase, having just come in from a trip to Europe with his girlfriend," she says, "was a clue that our marriage was in trouble."

Her family, however, is the core of who she is and provides her with a sense of place and history. She is always cognizant of their impact on her life; her mother, sisters, aunts, and cousins, Amy and Emily--The Mighty Queens of Freeville.

With retrospective insight, Dickinson relates the events involved in the divorce: being left with an infant daughter, learning to deal with her husband's betrayal, and security provided by the family support and nurturing she received. She examines the past with more than insight, however, because enough time has past for her to tell the story of her divorce and recovery with a perfect pitch of humor attached to the old grief.

She and her daughter Emily prosper. As a single parent, Dickinson learns many things about being a mother and the importance of having a place like Freeville as a base of emotional cheer leading. She learns from her mother, her aunts, her sisters, and from experience.

The numerous little vignettes of mother and daughter making their way in the world are touching and hilarious. One of my favorite chapters is "Making Peanut Jesus: Finding God in the Community of Faith and Casseroles."

As a Sunday School teacher in Washington, D. C., Dickinson worked hard at crafts. When, after creating a creche including Mary and Joseph (made of toilet paper rolls) and Baby Jesus (a swaddled peanut), she must deal with the second-grader who ate the Baby Jesus, she finds herself struggling for words. Responding to questions like, "Does the Virgin Mary have nipples?" teaches Dickinson the skill of quick recovery.

Counteracting the wealthy Episcopalian church in D.C. is the Freeville United Method Church--the church of faith and casseroles. The women in her family are all musical, and "It was the sound of my family's gene pool choir that first brought me into the mysterious community of faith and casseroles...."

Pumpkin the cat, holidays and summers in Freeville, the move to Chicago, Emily's leaving for college are all part of Amy Dickinson's journey from divorce to the present.

The book is charming, funny, and a joy to read! Dickinson's voice is a pleasure from beginning to end.

Nonfiction. Biography/Memoir. 2009. 225 pages.

Frozen in Time

Beattie, Owen, and John Geiger. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition.

My interlibrary loans came in earlier this week, so I finally got my hands on Frozen in Time.

The first portion of the book tells the story (in a concise manner) of the Franklin Expedition and its disappearance, giving a brief account of some of the rescue missions and what those missions discovered. After reading Resolute which had so much information and so many names that it would be almost impossible to take it all in, I enjoyed having the information in such a concise form. (This by no means is a reflection on Resolute, just that this book gave a succinct version of the history before moving on to the contemporary portion).

The second portion of the book examines anthropologist Owen Beattie's trips to the arctic (1981-1985) to solve the mystery of how and why so many died in such horrific circumstances.

In 1984, the first of 3 well-preserved bodies was exhumed, and the labor that went into digging up that first grave, buried deep in the permafrost; the time involved in thawing it sufficiently; and the autopsy itself has a strange and disorienting effect on the reader. The first body recovered was that of John Torrington, and it was so astonishingly well-preserved, that the easy distance that can be maintained with skeletal material is simply impossible.

The following summer, the bodies of John Hartnell and William Braine were exhumed and autopsied, as painstakingly as that of John Torrington had been. The results of the autopsies and forensic investigation supported Beattie's theory of lead poisoning from poorly sealed canned foods having contributed to the deaths of the officers and crews of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

Lead poisoning would also have interfered with the thinking process and could have been responsible for the wrong decisions at crucial moments. The expedition failed for a variety of reasons including scurvy and starvation, but the bodies and minds of the men were being weakened by lead poisoning from the moment they set sail.

The photographs of the frozen bodies are eerie and disturbing, yet compelling. The men had been dead 140 years when they were exhumed, but seeing them in the "flesh" brings the human possibility for tragedy poignantly to the surface.

Margaret Atwood included a chapter about Frozen in Time in her book, Writing with Intent.

**Interesting details that relate to Dan Simmon's novel The Terror:

• In M'Clintock's 1859 attempt to discover something that would help solve the mystery, he found a notebook belonging to Harry Peglar. Two different handwritings were in the notebook, but only one important (and coherent) passage referred to their situation: "Oh Death whare is they sting, the grave at Comfort Cove for who has any doubt how...the dyer sad..." The message took time to decipher because most of the words were written backwards. Simmons made use of this in his novel, creating an engrossing storyline for the two men who wrote in the actual notebook.
  
• A photograph of Dr. Harry D.S. Goodsir, one of my favorite characters in the novel; I had seen pictures and photographs of Sir John Franklin, Captain Francis Crozier, and Lt. Fitzjames before. However, since young Dr. Goodsir played an important role in Simmon's novel, I was pleased to find his photograph.
• The Beattie expedition discovered that John Torrington's body had been autopsied before burial, another fact that Simmon's included in his novel.

Nonfiction. History/Anthropology. 1987. 168 pages.

Two More Down

Finished Frozen in Time and The Mighty Queens of Freeville. Both were good, but I loved The Mighty Queens. Hope to have both reviews completed today.



I'm still reading several yoga books. Initially, I was going to read them one at a time, but I found myself putting one down and picking up another for comparison. It is interesting to see the different way the books present information.

Recent acquisitions (ARC's and library books) that have joined the stacks:

Becoming Enlightened - the Dalai Lama - An ARC from Atria Books, I look forward to this one because it gives information about Buddhism, meditation, and anecdotes from the Dalai Lama's life and experiences. It will fit in well with my yoga study.


Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism - Barbara Weisberg - A digression from my reading itinerary on the Franklin Expedition. Both this one and Frozen in Time are on interlibrary loan and arrived the other day.



Gauntlet - Richard Aaron - An ARC from Glen House Press, it is described as a techno-thriller and a novel of international intrigue. Looks suspenseful.



The Creative Habit - Twyla Tharp (in progress) - Choreographer Twyla Tharp has lots of interesting accounts of creative people in different professions, examples from her own life, and a practical philosophy of hard work and the importance of habit. I love that she quotes from her own wide reading of some of the literary greats.

The Seance

Harwood, John. The Seance.

A suspenseful and atmospheric Gothic "ghost" story complete with visitations, moldy old mansions, dark woods, secret passages, seances, and a monk.

This ARC arrived just as I finished Blink, and I couldn't resist picking it up and beginning it, even though I had several other books in "the stacks." I thoroughly enjoyed it; a perfect antidote to nonfiction.

The story is presented by three different narrators (reliable?). Constance Langton's narrative opens and closes the story. After Constance inherits Wraxford Hall, the story moves back in time and the other two narrators relate past events.

I had a few questions that bothered me, mostly after I'd finished the book, but nothing interfered with the Gothic pleasure experienced during the reading. It was great fun, and I was not ready for it to be over.

Truthfully, I was a bit surprised because I didn't care much for Harwood's The Ghost Writer, although it was certainly well received elsewhere. The Seance makes me eager for the next John Harwood.

Also reviewed at A Girl Walks Into a Book Store

Fiction. Gothic/Supernatural. 2008. 328 pages.

Blink

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

Gladwell relates both anecdotal information and research experiments concerning the way our brains make snap judgments. I really enjoyed reading about some of the things that are involved in our intuitive decisions...those decisions that we can't really explain.

It was also interesting to have a great many examples of ways that our decisions are influenced. Many of these influences are not obvious to us on the surface, but our minds are busy processing the information-- and not always correctly.

One interesting area was "mind reading," which is really the ability to read the facial expressions of others. Some people do this exceptionally well, other people have much less skill. One of the characteristics of autism is the inability to read expressions, and there is an experiment with an autistic man that shows how confusing and frustrating the lack of the ability would be.

While the ability to make snap decisions is frequently important--and too much information is often detrimental-- there are plenty of situations that require more time. Gladwell discusses this side of the coin as well and warns that we can be "primed" to make a decision by any number of factors of which we are not consciously aware. In other words, our decisions can be manipulated by any number of factors.

The book was entertaining and made me think a little more about the process of making decisions. It isn't very long and doesn't go into a lot of depth about how to improve your decision making process. Practice and experience seem to be key.

I want to read Gladwell's Outliers next.

Nonfiction. Popular psychology. 2005. 254 pages

The Immortal Prince

Fallon, Jennifer. The Immortal Prince.

The first in the Tide Lord Quartet, this fantasy novel has an interesting premise concerning the Tide Lords, whose magic waxes and wanes in cycles. At low Tide, they have almost no power, but since they are immortal, they simply wait for the Tide to turn. Unfortunately, the Tide Lords have much in common with the Greek gods-- they are arrogant, petty, jealous, frequently bored, and have a tendency to destroy countries and people when they are in power.

It is still low Tide when the book opens, and Arkady Desean, Duchess of Lebec, has been asked to interrogate a prisoner who survived being hanged. He claims to be a Tide Lord, but Arkady and the Duke believe him to be a spy. Kyle Lekesh is, however, not only a Tide Lord, but Cayal, the Immortal Prince.

Duke Stellan, Arkady, and Declan Hawkes, the King's Spymaster, all have secrets that add interesting twists to the narrative; their relationships are complicated by all of these secrets. Cayal, the Immortal Prince, is less complicated, he has simply grown tired of immortality and wants to die.

The story moves back and forth in time as Cayal tells Arkady about how he became a Tide Lord; his story does not completely correspond with the myths of the present day population. Cayal corrects misconceptions and explains events from his viewpoint in his attempts to convince Arkady that he is not insane.

I enjoyed this novel, but the Crasii disturbed me. Created by the Tide Lords, the Crasii are human/animal hybrids bred to be completely subservient to their Tide Lord masters.

Fiction. Fantasy. 2007. 512 pages.

The Great Mortality

Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time.

I mentioned some of my problems with this book in an earlier post. Kelly wanders around and circles back a great deal, and he has a tendency to create his own scenarios that are strictly imaginative.

An early example of this occurs when Kelly creates a story to go with a headstone from 1339 that commemorates the death of a husband and wife, Kutluk and Magnu-Kelta. Kelly takes the brief inscription on the headstone and extrapolates:

On that first day he felt lightheaded and nauseous, symptoms so unobtrusive Magnu-Kelka did not even realize her husband was ill until dinner, when Kutluk suddenly vomited into his meal. On the second day of his illness, Kutluk awoke with a terrible pain in his groin; overnight, a hard, apple-sized lump had formed between his navel and his penis. That afternoon when Magnu Kelka probed the tumor with a finger, the pain was so terrible....

You get the idea. It goes on for two extremely detailed paragraphs of conjecture about the awful deaths the two experienced. The importance of Kutluk and Magnu-Kelka whose headstone inspired this conjecture is real. They were among the first victims of the particularly virulent form of the plague that circled the known world during the mid 1300's. I just found Kelly's eagerness to "novelize" annoying.

An especially interesting portion of the book, however, was the evidence of the strange and unusual environmental and ecological changes and events that frequently preceded outbreaks of the plague. Earthquakes, unprecedented rains, drought, tropical cyclones, and other climactic changes can influence rodent populations and locations. These events can also cause famine among human populations, weakening their resistance to disease.

Also interesting were the routes of the Genoese plague ships that visited harbor after harbor spreading the plague. Such an efficient way to spread the disease by sea, although the plague was soon moving overland as well.

My favorite aspect of the book, however, was the inclusion of so many first-hand accounts. Records from the cities overwhelmed by the plague, both personal and those of public record, are fascinating, distressing, and touching.

The Great Mortality has a great deal of information about the plague, fascinating depictions of medieval society, shocking estimates concerning the number of deaths in various areas, records of frantic efforts by governments and individuals to prevent and contain the disease, and accounts of the murderous pogroms against the Jews.

While I can wish that the book had been presented in a more straight-forward manner, it was educational and engrossing.

*Another detail that I found interesting is that when the plague arrived in Poland in 1349, King Casimir offered asylum to Jews fleeing from persecution and genocide. He was influenced by his Jewish mistress, Esther. Interesting Biblical connection of two brave Jewish women influencing kings.

Other reviews: Of Books & Bicycles

Nonfiction. History. 2005. 303 pages + notes.

Reading Trails...

Finished The Great Mortality last night and will review soon. I did enjoy it, in spite of frequent annoyances with the author. :)

I would have finished Marley & Me, too, but as Marley became old and ill, I became sadder and sadder and had to put it aside with only a few pages left.

Started Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Loved The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and expect much of this one.

I received an email the other day inviting me to join Reading Trails. After checking it out and discovering that the site provides a way to keep track of certain "reading itineraries," I happily joined and created a couple of trails. Added two more today. Check them out here. Love this idea!

In a recent comment on one of my itinerary posts, Dark Orpheus had recommended creating a flow chart for reading, and I liked the idea. Now Reading Trails provides exactly that without additional effort on my part.

Galileo's Daughter

Sobel, Dava. Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love.

Although her letters give such a human touch to the great man's life, this not really the story of Galileo's daughter. It is a book mainly about Galileo and some of the most important discoveries and events in his life. What makes it different from most biographies of Galileo, however, is that the book also reveals the close relationship between Galileo and his oldest daughter. It is especially interesting because the relationship was, for twenty years, conducted mostly through letters.

Worried that his illegitimate daughters were unmarriageable, Galileo placed Virginia and her younger sister in the convent of the Poor Clares when Virginia was thirteen. She took the name Suor Marie Celeste (to honor her father's interest in the heavens) and she remained sequestered there for the next twenty years, the entire rest of her life. Her life was so circumscribed by poverty and labor that it is amazing that she seemed to blossom quietly in spite of her situation.

The book opens with a letter from Marie Celeste to Galileo, but quickly moves into the story of Galileo-- his birth, education, relationship with the mother of his children, his theories and experiments. All of this information is presented in an interesting manner, so while I longed for more information about Marie Celeste, I was kept well occupied with Galileo himself.

In the first of Galileo's problems with the Inquisition (over Copernicus' theory of a sun centered universe), Galileo is exonerated. However, any individuals supporting the Copernican theory (and there were many others besides Galileo who found the sun centered universe more logical than a universe with the earth at the center) were warned that to treat it as anything other than a theory would be considered "heretical."

Galileo's first contretemps with the Inquisition occurs about the time that Virginia is old enough to take her vows and becomes Suor Marie Celeste. It is also about this time that the letters play a larger part in the book. Here is a portion of one of her letters to her father:

I am returning the rest of your shirts that we have sewn, and the leather apron, too, mended as best I could....Now I am tending to the work on the linens, so that I hope you will be able to send me the trim for borders at the ends, and I reminde you, Sire, that the trimmings needs to be wide, because the linens themselves are rather short.

Her letters are often in this domestic vein, but they are also in response to Galileo's letters and to the events in his life. The love and affection is obvious on both sides even though we don't have the benefits of Galileo's letters. Marie Celeste occasionally petitions her father for help (often for the convent or for other nuns), and in the follow-up letters thanks him for generosity.

The plague returns in 1630, and Sobel includes a good bit of interesting information about the deaths and various preventive measures undertaken. The Poor Clares, already confined to their convent, found themselves even further cut off, but it did not prevent Marie Celeste from sending medicines she prepared herself for her father and heart-felt prayers for his safety.

During this outbreak of the plague, Galileo once again finds himself in trouble with the Inquisition and the Pope, himself. At 68, old and ill, Galileo's latest book angers the pontiff and results in his being called to Rome. This time, Galileo does not fare so well. Throughout the trial, and his resulting frustrations and depressions, Marie Celeste offers support and prayers. All of her energy is expended on convent labor and worry for her father.

The final chapters are touching, and the reader grieves for both Galileo and Marie Celeste, but these chapters are also moving in the love and loyalty Galileo inspired in his daughter and among his friends and colleagues. Especially admirable are the efforts of Vicenzio Viviani, who at sixteen became his assistant, writing letters for the almost blind Galileo, reading aloud the replies, and aiding him in every way. Viviani continued his devotion after Galileo's death and is responsible for the tomb and its occupants.

A rewarding read!

Nonfiction. Biography. 1999. 368 pages.

In Progress

I've finished Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel and need to review it, but I'm afraid that since I have about 20 pages marked with page pointers, it will be difficult to boil this one down. Especially since there are so many interesting details and the narrative so engrossing!

Currently reading The Great Mortality by John Kelly, Marley and Me by John Grogan and Hatha Yoga Illustrated (I put this aside when I returned to Chakra Yoga, but have picked it up again). How's that for contrast?

I'm having internal discussions with John Kelly about beginning, middle, and end as a matter of order. It is a proven technique, and it usually works; although there are exceptions, the exceptions are usually in fiction. :)

The Great Mortality is about the plague of the late 1340's and contains some excellent information, but the author's style drives me nuts. He skips around, repeats information and phrases, and includes his own scenarios in rawther florid language.

I'm a little more than half way through, and there is enough that is worthwhile to keep me reading and enjoying making snarky asides to the author. The essential information isn't new, and I'm familiar with much of the factual stuff, but the primary sources, those first-hand accounts, are new to me and are particularly fascinating.

Have not heard from the library about the books I ordered through interlibrary loan. I do have enough books to keep me busy, but I'm eager to get those two books.

Interesting article (via Dorothy Of Books & Bicycles):
From Books, New President Found Voice

The Vigorous Mind by Ingrid E. Cummings

Cummings, Ingrid E. The Vigorous Mind: Cross-Train Your Brain to Break Through Mental, Emotional, and Professional Boundaries.

I accepted the opportunity to read this book when it was offered by Lisa for the TLC Book Tour. The chance to "break through boundaries" sounded great, and I knew I wanted a vigorous mind. Especially after looking back over my last year's reading--an overabundance of fiction (much of it poor fiction) and a dearth of good nonfiction.

When The Vigorous Mind really came through and provided motivation to improve the quality of my reading (and much more), I was delighted! Yes, I know that I've hinted about it on several posts; I simply couldn't resist. It has been difficult to wait until my appointed date to review the book, and I've been busy applying the philosophy to my own life and reading.

Cummings begins by saying that our society has come to value the specialist over the generalist; she protests this dichotomy throughout the book. She advocates cross-training the brain, developing diverse interests, "curiosities, and enthusiasms," and maintains that individuals who have done so are best able to fight the blahs and even career burnout.

I find it hard to debate that outlook. Cummings, moreover, wants to show us how to become more well-rounded. She encourages looking beyond career and finding activities "that have no apparent connection to your professional specialty." New experiences encourage neuroplasticity, changes in the brain, and these changes can bring surprising advantages to your approach to your profession.

Who wouldn't want to engage in activities that not only broaden their horizons and make them more satisfied human beings, but might also aid them in their career paths?

So how do you accomplish such a thing, a vigorous mind, a Renaissance Mind? Cummings has two techniques that will help us reach our goals:

• "Triumph in Twenty" - devoting 20 or fewer minutes a day to your activity of choice, several times a week (knitting, photography, learning to play an instrument, tennis, palm reading, growing orchids, etc.)
• Kaizen - "consistent, incremental baby steps" - cutting goals down to size and consistently moving toward them one step at a time.

With the third chapter, things began to snowball. The book is immensely readable, full of inspiring anecdotes concerning not just the Renaissance Men of the past, but our contemporaries, an odd assortment including businessmen, employees, scientists, comedians, academics, and actors. Among the group: Richard Feynman (yes, this is why I read Surely, You're Joking Mr. Feynman), Ben Stein, Steve Martin, John Malkovich....

I've taken the author's advice and have composed a curriculum for myself and several beginning courses that I'm in the midst of undertaking. Specific to my interests and subject to change if I so decide. I'm having a ball doing it. I've composed a lift-list of things I'd like to learn or learn about, have made additions to my fitness activities, and have made some personal commitments to myself.

My first and foremost goal at the moment is to increase my reading of nonfiction and to read outside my comfort zone. I'm supplementing books with new magazine subscriptions to The Smithsonian and Mental Floss, among others, and I'm watching documentaries from Netflix on a variety of subjects.

Book Overview:

Part One (chapters 1-3) gives some of the reasons that Cummings came to write the book.

Part Two (chapters 4-10) gives the seven imperatives, "global attributes," you might want to cultivate. They include curiosity, individuality, selectivity, empathy, stretch, spirituality, and courage. (I particularly enjoyed these chapters.)
Part Three (chapters 11-13) examines choice and provides insight into way we actually live our lives.

The Vigorous Mind - Ingrid E. Cummings
I'm almost embarrassed by how much I'm enjoying myself! I do need to be aware of what Cummings calls The Law of Unintended Consequences. This weekend I kept talking about the books I'm reading, and not even my family can endure that indefinitely.

Nonfiction. 2009. 316 pages.

The Polysyllabic Spree

Hornby, Nick. The Polysyllabic Spree.

Oh, yes, I know that you former readers have extolled the virtues of this little volume and that I'm late to join the throng. It is true, however, that Hornby's (notice that I am now spelling his name correctly) monthly columns in The Believer are marvelously funny and educational.


Here are some of the details from the columns that I particularly enjoyed:

• Hornby takes on "spare" writing. Very funny! Speaking of writer's writers whose writing is spare to the point of the minimum number of words required for a novel, Hornby says if you can reduce it to 70,000 words, why not 2o,ooo, and why stop there? Why write at all, he asks? Then he says that big fat airport books sell! And to quote him: "(And, conversely, the writer's writers, the pruners and the winnowers, tend to have to live off critical approval rather than royalty checks.)" I'm so with him on this!
  
• 13,000 characters! He then informs us that Dickens created 13,000 characters! My gosh, I don't know a fraction of that many people. Except, perhaps, through literature. How odd to realize I know so many more fictional people than real ones.
• Love his comments about "The Believers" and his having been summoned before a committee of "twelve rather eerie young men and women (six of each, naturally) all dressed in white robes and smiling maniacally" to be scolded for a snarky comment in his column. All tongue-in-cheek, but the references to The Believer staff always made me chuckle.
  

Short, funny, and a joy! Highly recommended.

Nonfiction. Literary Criticism? :) 2004. 140 pages.

Oops, Sorry! and Ta Da!

First, I need to take spelling lessons. Nicholas Hornby (without the additional "s") will hopefully forgive me. I may eventually go back and correct all of my previous misspellings of his name, but not today.

Here is what I made last night: My own almost perfect reading pillow. At home, I have a special pillow that I keep in my lap as I read, but I wanted more. Last night, made a new cover and stuck the old pillow inside!
The green roll in the above pocket is margin tape, for those annotations in library books. The Page Points are wonderful ways to find excerpts, quotes, etc. that you like and might want to find later. Both are from Levenger's.

Discovered the Page Points a couple of years ago when Iliana posted about good gifts for readers. I gifted myself!
There are a few things I'd do differently, but nevertheless, I love my new reading pillow! It will hold my pages open when I eat and will keep necessary items near by.

Now, I must get ready, pack a few things, and head down to the country. Which books shall accompany me?

Friday Fun

Interesting that as I'm reading Galileo's Daughter (which is really about Galileo) and having read in the last day or so the chapter about Galileo's discovery and drawings of sun spots, this correction needs to be made. Galileo was not the first to do so; British astronomer Thomas Harriot made a moon map that predated Galileo's by a few months. Article here. Harriot never published his drawings, however.

Also reading Know It All: The Little Book of Essential Knowledge (an ARC sent by Anna some time back, which I just recently rediscovered) and have been reading about sun spots, planets, stars, comets to accompany Galileo's theories. The first chapter is Exploring the Universe, which I've just finished. So much stuff that I can parrot, but not understand. The book covers just the basics (much of the stuff we had in school), and much is still over my head.

The next chapter, however, The Story of the Earth, will make more sense to me...I hope! Then on to the rest of the 9 chapters which include invention & discovery, exploration, religion, art, etc.

AND... because I needed something light and more in tune with my normal interests--Nick Hornsby's Polysyllabic Spree. Yes, I know, everyone else has read it and loved it! It has been on my list forever, but now it is mine, and I love it! Joining the throng of fans who have so enthusiastically recommended this book, I stand humbled by my delay.

Someone recently posted a review of Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Hornsby, but I can't find my note to give credit to the blog. The review was, of course, positive. Another one to look forward to reading!

Then yesterday's mail brought a wonderful surprise! A blogging friend sent me her copy of Amagansett. It was totally unexpected, and I am totally grateful because for some reason my library didn't have this one either. Of all the books I had on my list, I was able to find only three. It must have been checked out, as were several of the others. Anyway, my thanks to Debby for sharing the goods and providing that ultimate mail experience!

Surely, You're Joking Mr. Feynman!

Feynman, Richard P., and Ralph Leighton. Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character).

Richard P. Feynman was a genius: a theoretical physicist, a Nobel Prize winner, a member of the Manhattan Project, a safe-cracker, the founder of quantum mechanics, a practical joker, a womanizer, a multi-talented man who painted and played the drums and studied Mayan hieroglyphics. He had an insatiable appetite for learning and a compulsive curiosity.

The book is a series of anecdotes told to his friend Ralph Leighton, recorded, and later transcribed to create this book. The stories range from Feynman's childhood, MIT and Princeton education, his work at Los Alamos during the war, through his teaching career. None of it is ordinary. Feynman was a genius with characteristics of a ten-year-old boy: brains, audacity, a bit bawdy, full of practical jokes, and frequently, no doubt, annoying.

As much as the man loved physics, physics remains in the background in all of these little vignettes. What comes to the fore is his curiosity, his humor, his love of learning and teaching, and his refusal to "play the game." Or rather, the games he played were by his own rules.

One of my favorites is "Judging Books by Their Covers" which tells about his experience serving on the State Curriculum Commission to choose new math and science text books for the state of California. Having been involved in this procedure (a committee of teachers) during my teaching career, I knew whereof he spoke when he told about having hundreds of pounds of text books delivered to his door. As he describes the experience of being the only one to read the books, the influx of calls from the publishers, the problems with the Board of Education regarding money...you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Another one titled "Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake" covers his reluctant acceptance of the Nobel prize and the changes it made to his life. Irreverent!

How one man could have been involved in so many adventures boggles the mind.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Nonfiction. Memoir/biographical. 1985. 346 pages.

Mind the Gap

Golden, Christoper, and Tim Lebbon. Mind the Gap: A Novel of the Hidden Cities.

I liked the title and knew that Christoper Golden had been a co-author with Mike Mignola on Baltimore,: Or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. (And yes, I do wonder whose idea it was to include the commas in the title.) Anyway, Baltimore was weird, but original and interesting.

Mind the Gap began fast and furious, but lost steam and characters along the way.

Jazz Town escapes into the vast system of abandoned tunnels in the London Underground after discovering her mother's murder. The "uncles" are busy searching for Jazz, as she finds a kind of sanctuary when she joins a Fagin-like group of thieves under the city. Oh, Harry wasn't really like Fagin, but the idea was certainly there.

Ghosts, magicians, magic are part of the mixture. Although there were places where I would become interested again, each was followed by an incident that seemed just plain silly. I'm willing "to suspend disbelief" but the author(s) need to help! The conclusion? Well...what conclusion?

Fiction. Fantasy? 2008. 368 pages.