This novel is based on the diary (and other material) of an American in Nanjing when the Japanese invaded in 1937. Minnie Vautrin is the temporary head of a small Christian college funded by donations from the US. Most of the faculty and students as well as the president have gone elsewhere as it becomes more and more evident Nanjing is going to be attacked.
The story is told from the point-of-view of Anling, who helps Minnie run the school. They make elaborate plans so that the school can be a place for women and children refugees and figure out where they may be able to put 2000 people. The actual invasion is, of course, more chaotic and they end up with more than 10,000 refugees.
This novel is almost like two different stories. The horrors of the attack of Nanjing are detailed. It is a fiction book, but obviously based on historical events. Minnie has to make some terrible decisions and fights to keep the refugees on campus safe. After the fighting is over and the occupation of Nanjing continues, the action slows down dramatically.
It is still challenging as many of the refugees stay. Minnie open a school for them to learn crafts, but a former president, Mrs. Dennison, arrives and wants to return the college to the way it was without really understanding all that happened over the past year. Anling also faces her own problems with a son who was studying in Japan at the time the war broke out and a husband being pressured to join a puppet government.
Here Minnie goes on a short vacation about a year and a half after the initial attack. She’s suffering from depression and the stress of dealing with Mrs. Dennison who wants to get of the rest of the refugees. She comes back to find many gone.
“Minnie rebuked herself for caring too much about her personal feelings and about losing face. How could she let petty personal disputes stand in the way of more important matters, such as saving a woman’s life and protecting the two schools? … She couldn’t escape feeling small-minded. How could she make amends? The more she thought about her faults, the more disappointed she was in herself. ”
Nanjing Requiem is a worthwhile, but difficult, book to read. It is difficult because of the depictions of war and war crimes committed on civilians. It would be really interesting to read Minnie Vautrin’s actual diary, but I don’t think that’s very accessible.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Straight Man by Richard Russo
Straight Man is one of my favorite books. I find it laugh out loud funny and I don’t say that about many books. The main character and narrator, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., aka Hank, is the chairman of an English department at a college in Pennsylvania.
Here’s how one committee meeting ends:
“The spiral notebook caught me full in the face with enough force to bring tears to my eyes. Everyone, including Finny, who brought to meetings he chaired the emotional equilibrium of a cork in high seas, looked on, bug-eyed. But what confused me was the fact that the notebook Gracie used remained, unaccountably, right in front of my face. For an irrational moment I actually thought she had written something on the cover that she was inviting me to read. Cross-eyed, I tried to examine what was before my nose. Only when I realized that Gracie was in fact trying to retrieve her notebook, and that each tentative tug sent a sharp pain all the way up into my forehead, only then did I realize that the barbed end of the spiral ring had hooked and punctured my right nostril, that I was gigged like a frog and leaning across the table toward Gracie like a bumbling suitor begging a kiss.”
It’s a tense time at the college with rumors of massive cuts in state funding and, therefore, potential faculty cuts. Hank is also dealing with turning 50, his professor father coming to town after leaving him and his mother 40 years ago, his daughter’s troubled marriage, and animal rights activists protesting his threats against a goose.
It’s a fun read. You’ll especially appreciate if you’ve ever sat through endless committee meetings. I also learned about scrapple – a common listing at breakfast restaurants in Pennsylvania, yet I could never get a straight answer about exactly what it was.
“It turns out that scrapple is like a lot of food that’s conceptually challenging. That is, better than you might expect. We chew our intestines in silence until Mr. Purty sees me grinning and reads my thought. ‘I’d never ask your mother to eat scrapple,’ he assures me.”
Here’s how one committee meeting ends:
“The spiral notebook caught me full in the face with enough force to bring tears to my eyes. Everyone, including Finny, who brought to meetings he chaired the emotional equilibrium of a cork in high seas, looked on, bug-eyed. But what confused me was the fact that the notebook Gracie used remained, unaccountably, right in front of my face. For an irrational moment I actually thought she had written something on the cover that she was inviting me to read. Cross-eyed, I tried to examine what was before my nose. Only when I realized that Gracie was in fact trying to retrieve her notebook, and that each tentative tug sent a sharp pain all the way up into my forehead, only then did I realize that the barbed end of the spiral ring had hooked and punctured my right nostril, that I was gigged like a frog and leaning across the table toward Gracie like a bumbling suitor begging a kiss.”
It’s a tense time at the college with rumors of massive cuts in state funding and, therefore, potential faculty cuts. Hank is also dealing with turning 50, his professor father coming to town after leaving him and his mother 40 years ago, his daughter’s troubled marriage, and animal rights activists protesting his threats against a goose.
It’s a fun read. You’ll especially appreciate if you’ve ever sat through endless committee meetings. I also learned about scrapple – a common listing at breakfast restaurants in Pennsylvania, yet I could never get a straight answer about exactly what it was.
“It turns out that scrapple is like a lot of food that’s conceptually challenging. That is, better than you might expect. We chew our intestines in silence until Mr. Purty sees me grinning and reads my thought. ‘I’d never ask your mother to eat scrapple,’ he assures me.”
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Nature of Words
It’s that time again. The Nature of Words is Nov. 2-6. There are definitely some interesting authors and poets coming to Bend, including Augusten Burroughs and William Kittredge. I haven’t read much from either of them, but I did like Burroughs’ brother’s memoir, Look me in the eye; my life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison.
I recently read Heidi Durrow’s first novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. She will be at the Nature of Words as well and her novel won many awards including Barbara Kingsolver's 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change. The main character, Rachel, is the daughter of a Danish immigrant and a black G.I. After a family tragedy in Chicago, Rachel moves to Portland, OR to live with her grandmother. There is some uncertainly about exactly what happened to the rest of her family. The story is told from a few different points of view, including a neighbor of Rachel’s in Chicago and her mom’s co-worker. I did find it too coincidental that her neighbor from Chicago managed to find her in Portland.
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is worth reading. I also hope to read Keith Scribner's novel, The Oregon Experiment, and something by Mark Spragg; both of these authors will also be at the Nature of Words: www.thenatureofwords.org.
I recently read Heidi Durrow’s first novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. She will be at the Nature of Words as well and her novel won many awards including Barbara Kingsolver's 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change. The main character, Rachel, is the daughter of a Danish immigrant and a black G.I. After a family tragedy in Chicago, Rachel moves to Portland, OR to live with her grandmother. There is some uncertainly about exactly what happened to the rest of her family. The story is told from a few different points of view, including a neighbor of Rachel’s in Chicago and her mom’s co-worker. I did find it too coincidental that her neighbor from Chicago managed to find her in Portland.
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is worth reading. I also hope to read Keith Scribner's novel, The Oregon Experiment, and something by Mark Spragg; both of these authors will also be at the Nature of Words: www.thenatureofwords.org.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Case Against Homework by Bennett and Kalish
Homework for my elementary school kids caught me off guard. I don’t remember having homework until high school. It seems common now to hear about kindergarteners having homework and upper elementary kids having significant amounts. This book by two parents addresses what to do when you think your kids have too much homework.
I think the authors make a number of good points including discussing recent studies that show there is no correlation between the amount of homework given and achievement in the elementary grades. Another point they make is that for any student doing 2 or more hours of homework is just as physically detrimental as playing two hours of video games. They are especially concerned with lost family time due to homework.
“Parenting magazines and books urge us to slow down and reconnect with our children and partner when we get home. But if our child’s response is a heart-sinking ‘I have a lot of homework,’ we can say good-bye to any hope of meaningful time together.”
This book is a worthwhile read if you have kids in elementary school or beyond who are struggling with hours of homework. They offer suggestions on approaching the teacher to lighten the load for your kid and even working on developing a homework policy for an entire school district. The general consensus on experts in this area seems to be to focus on reading and no more than 10 minutes of homework per grade per night.
I think the authors make a number of good points including discussing recent studies that show there is no correlation between the amount of homework given and achievement in the elementary grades. Another point they make is that for any student doing 2 or more hours of homework is just as physically detrimental as playing two hours of video games. They are especially concerned with lost family time due to homework.
“Parenting magazines and books urge us to slow down and reconnect with our children and partner when we get home. But if our child’s response is a heart-sinking ‘I have a lot of homework,’ we can say good-bye to any hope of meaningful time together.”
This book is a worthwhile read if you have kids in elementary school or beyond who are struggling with hours of homework. They offer suggestions on approaching the teacher to lighten the load for your kid and even working on developing a homework policy for an entire school district. The general consensus on experts in this area seems to be to focus on reading and no more than 10 minutes of homework per grade per night.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis
I haven’t ever read much science fiction so when my local library reading program (see previous post) suggested trying it, I looked up award winners in the area. I also learned a new word – diptych. These two novels by Willis together (a diptych) won the 2011 Hugo Award for best novel. And, they should be read as one novel, but each are pretty long (512 and 656 pages, respectively) on their own.
In these novels historians from 2060 are sent back in time. Grad students, rather than reading about WWII, pick their topic of study and then schedule visits back in time. For example, one grad student, Michael, is interested in heroes so he picks 5-6 different heroes he wants to observe. He has to go to wardrobe for the correct costumes and for one of his characters he has to get an implant so that he has an American accent. There are some limits to time travel. For example, he’s not allowed near divergence points where he might impact the historical outcome. However, something goes wrong and three grad students remain in 1940 London long after their assignments are over.
Historians might be interested in seeing how accurate Willis got all the bombings going on in England at the time. I know it made me realize I hadn’t quite understood the full impact of the bombings on London during WWII. Willis depicts life in the underground shelters and how ordinary citizens adjust to a new normal where every night they head to a shelter. And, each morning they come up wondering what buildings will have been destroyed. One of the graduate students, Polly, works in a department store and it really becomes an act of courage to report to work every day. Not so much for her as her adviser insisted she pick a store that wasn’t hit, but for everyone else showing up each day so people can continue to come in and buy clothes.
The third graduate student is working with evacuated children outside of London. She has two especially challenging charges. Once the three graduate students realize something has gone wrong and meet up in London they begin to wonder if these two kids or possibly their own interactions with people during their time travel trip are causing some kind of upheaval that is preventing them from leaving 1940 and returning to 2060. Meanwhile in 2060 their adviser and a young student with a crush on Polly are trying to bring them back.
I do recommend reading the two books together. The history of WWII and the drama of the three graduate students all seem realistic – that is you come to care whether they make it back to 2060 or not.
In these novels historians from 2060 are sent back in time. Grad students, rather than reading about WWII, pick their topic of study and then schedule visits back in time. For example, one grad student, Michael, is interested in heroes so he picks 5-6 different heroes he wants to observe. He has to go to wardrobe for the correct costumes and for one of his characters he has to get an implant so that he has an American accent. There are some limits to time travel. For example, he’s not allowed near divergence points where he might impact the historical outcome. However, something goes wrong and three grad students remain in 1940 London long after their assignments are over.
Historians might be interested in seeing how accurate Willis got all the bombings going on in England at the time. I know it made me realize I hadn’t quite understood the full impact of the bombings on London during WWII. Willis depicts life in the underground shelters and how ordinary citizens adjust to a new normal where every night they head to a shelter. And, each morning they come up wondering what buildings will have been destroyed. One of the graduate students, Polly, works in a department store and it really becomes an act of courage to report to work every day. Not so much for her as her adviser insisted she pick a store that wasn’t hit, but for everyone else showing up each day so people can continue to come in and buy clothes.
The third graduate student is working with evacuated children outside of London. She has two especially challenging charges. Once the three graduate students realize something has gone wrong and meet up in London they begin to wonder if these two kids or possibly their own interactions with people during their time travel trip are causing some kind of upheaval that is preventing them from leaving 1940 and returning to 2060. Meanwhile in 2060 their adviser and a young student with a crush on Polly are trying to bring them back.
I do recommend reading the two books together. The history of WWII and the drama of the three graduate students all seem realistic – that is you come to care whether they make it back to 2060 or not.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Summer Reading Program
We’re at the library at least once and usually twice a week all summer long. The Deschutes Public Library has a great kids’ program and, surprisingly, an adult summer reading program as well. Adults who read for three hours get a free book. I got the latest from C. J. Box, a mystery author whose books I’ve reviewed before.
In addition there’s a Bingo card to fill out. Each box is either a different type of book to read or an activity associated with the library or reading. For each Bingo you make you’re entered in a drawing to win a Nook eReader. I have no plans to buy an eReader. but I wouldn’t mind one for free - especially one that is compatible with eBooks available at the library.
The Bingo squares take me out of my reading comfort zone. One square requires reading a graphic novel. I’ve read a few of these, like Maus: a survivor’s tale and Good Eggs, which are more like illustrated memoirs. This time I randomly went on the web and picked one that is supposed to be one of the best graphic novels of all time, Watchmen. This is what I would think of as a comic book. The superheroes are much darker than those I watched growing up, i.e. the Superfriends. So far it has helped me get a Rorschach reference that I would have otherwise completely missed on Facebook. The most interesting character in the book is Dr. Manhattan, who was exposed to nuclear radiation, disintegrated, somehow regenerated and is now America’s weapon. I don’t know enough about the comic book world to know whether all these characters were created anew for this book or were old favorites, but the authors do make it seem to be a complete world.
I might have trouble getting through all the library Bingo squares. One is a suggestion from a librarian. Even as the librarian I asked was giving me a reading suggestion he mentioned how he didn’t like the book. Do I have to read it or should I get a different suggestion or does just getting the suggestion count? I’d love to hear from others whether it is common practice to have adult reading programs at libraries.
In addition there’s a Bingo card to fill out. Each box is either a different type of book to read or an activity associated with the library or reading. For each Bingo you make you’re entered in a drawing to win a Nook eReader. I have no plans to buy an eReader. but I wouldn’t mind one for free - especially one that is compatible with eBooks available at the library.
The Bingo squares take me out of my reading comfort zone. One square requires reading a graphic novel. I’ve read a few of these, like Maus: a survivor’s tale and Good Eggs, which are more like illustrated memoirs. This time I randomly went on the web and picked one that is supposed to be one of the best graphic novels of all time, Watchmen. This is what I would think of as a comic book. The superheroes are much darker than those I watched growing up, i.e. the Superfriends. So far it has helped me get a Rorschach reference that I would have otherwise completely missed on Facebook. The most interesting character in the book is Dr. Manhattan, who was exposed to nuclear radiation, disintegrated, somehow regenerated and is now America’s weapon. I don’t know enough about the comic book world to know whether all these characters were created anew for this book or were old favorites, but the authors do make it seem to be a complete world.
I might have trouble getting through all the library Bingo squares. One is a suggestion from a librarian. Even as the librarian I asked was giving me a reading suggestion he mentioned how he didn’t like the book. Do I have to read it or should I get a different suggestion or does just getting the suggestion count? I’d love to hear from others whether it is common practice to have adult reading programs at libraries.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
It is quite rare that I watch a movie and then later find out it was adapted from a book. Winter’s Bone is a relatively recent movie and the book was published in 2006. I highly recommend both, although it is rather dark subject matter. Having read the book after seeing the movie, I think the movie did a pretty good job of capturing the bleak winter countryside, the convoluted family ties, and the way drugs seem to have become the new, more deadly, moonshine.
In both the book and the movie the main character, Ree Dolly, is a high school dropout taking care of her two younger siblings and her mom.
“Mom’s morning pills turned her into a cat, a breathing thing that sat near heat and occasionally made a sound…. Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.”
The tension ratchets up when her dad skips bail. If Ree can’t find her dad, she’ll lose the house and any chance of being able to take care of her family. Her attempts at finding her dad lead to encounters with some scary relatives.
“But the great name of the Dollys was Milton, and at least two dozen Miltons moved about in Ree’s world. If you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he’d love before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectation and history. Some names could rise to walk many paths in many directions, but Jesups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those bloodline customs fiercest held.”
If you’re lucky, your public library will have both the book and the movie like mine did!
In both the book and the movie the main character, Ree Dolly, is a high school dropout taking care of her two younger siblings and her mom.
“Mom’s morning pills turned her into a cat, a breathing thing that sat near heat and occasionally made a sound…. Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.”
The tension ratchets up when her dad skips bail. If Ree can’t find her dad, she’ll lose the house and any chance of being able to take care of her family. Her attempts at finding her dad lead to encounters with some scary relatives.
“But the great name of the Dollys was Milton, and at least two dozen Miltons moved about in Ree’s world. If you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he’d love before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectation and history. Some names could rise to walk many paths in many directions, but Jesups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those bloodline customs fiercest held.”
If you’re lucky, your public library will have both the book and the movie like mine did!
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Plutonium Files by Eileen Welsome
This is a non-fiction book published in 1999. Its focus is on experiments with radioactive materials on humans. It is shocking. Some of the experiments described include:
•18 people injected with plutonium without their consent in 1945-46. One was a four-year-old boy.
•751 pregnant women given a radioactive tracer without their consent in 1945-1947.
•74 boys at a state institution recruited to join the “science club” in the 40’s and 50’s for which they received special outings and radioactive compounds in their oatmeal.
•131 prisoners in Oregon and Washington irradiated in the 1960s.
The early experiments were to determine what effects scientists working on developing nuclear bombs prior to WWII might be exposed to in their labs. A 23-year-old chemistry graduate, Don Mastick, recruited to Los Alamos, got 10 mg of plutonium in his mouth when a vial exploded.
“After the accident, Mastick’s breath was so hot that he could stand six feet away and blow the needles on the radiation monitors off scale. His urine contained detectable plutonium for many years.”
His treatment consisted of two different mouth rinses every 15 minutes for 3 hours. Then he had his stomach pumped several times. After that he was handed the beaker containing his bodily fluids and told to separate out the plutonium!
Once nuclear bombs were developed, many tests involved military personnel. A number of nuclear bombs were detonated in Nevada. One larger than that dropped on Nagasaki was tested in Feb. 1951. Three young soldiers, including Jerry Schultz, ages 19 to 21, were supposed to gather weather data about 6 miles from point of impact.
“The AEC official had warned Schultz that the atomic bomb the aircraft was lugging toward them would be the biggest ever dropped from a plane. Be sure to protect yourselves, he had warned. ‘How do we do that?’ Schultz asked. There was a long pause and then the voice said, ‘Frankly, we don’t know.’”
Details about the tests of nuclear bombs at the Pacific Proving Ground, as it was known, are also included. I found it unbelievable that young servicemen were sent in just a few hours later to clean up ships hit by nuclear bombs. Testing pilots flew through the immediate aftermath of bombs to gather data.
It is definitely an eye-opening book about what went on prior to WWII and during the Cold War. Many reports on these activities were declassified in the 1990’s. The book also includes a detailed history of the nuclear experiments going on at Berkeley, Chicago, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford during the war. I had never heard much about this nuclear development period, although I listened to Glenn Seaborg’s annual talk to general chemistry students at Berkeley in the early 90’s. That was definitely a feel good talk with pictures of him with every president and students coming up afterwards to get his autograph. The building where he first made plutonium now has a plaque up. I worked in a building connected to this building for 5 years and never realized that’s where plutonium had been discovered. The half-life of plutonium 239 is something like 24,000 years!
•18 people injected with plutonium without their consent in 1945-46. One was a four-year-old boy.
•751 pregnant women given a radioactive tracer without their consent in 1945-1947.
•74 boys at a state institution recruited to join the “science club” in the 40’s and 50’s for which they received special outings and radioactive compounds in their oatmeal.
•131 prisoners in Oregon and Washington irradiated in the 1960s.
The early experiments were to determine what effects scientists working on developing nuclear bombs prior to WWII might be exposed to in their labs. A 23-year-old chemistry graduate, Don Mastick, recruited to Los Alamos, got 10 mg of plutonium in his mouth when a vial exploded.
“After the accident, Mastick’s breath was so hot that he could stand six feet away and blow the needles on the radiation monitors off scale. His urine contained detectable plutonium for many years.”
His treatment consisted of two different mouth rinses every 15 minutes for 3 hours. Then he had his stomach pumped several times. After that he was handed the beaker containing his bodily fluids and told to separate out the plutonium!
Once nuclear bombs were developed, many tests involved military personnel. A number of nuclear bombs were detonated in Nevada. One larger than that dropped on Nagasaki was tested in Feb. 1951. Three young soldiers, including Jerry Schultz, ages 19 to 21, were supposed to gather weather data about 6 miles from point of impact.
“The AEC official had warned Schultz that the atomic bomb the aircraft was lugging toward them would be the biggest ever dropped from a plane. Be sure to protect yourselves, he had warned. ‘How do we do that?’ Schultz asked. There was a long pause and then the voice said, ‘Frankly, we don’t know.’”
Details about the tests of nuclear bombs at the Pacific Proving Ground, as it was known, are also included. I found it unbelievable that young servicemen were sent in just a few hours later to clean up ships hit by nuclear bombs. Testing pilots flew through the immediate aftermath of bombs to gather data.
It is definitely an eye-opening book about what went on prior to WWII and during the Cold War. Many reports on these activities were declassified in the 1990’s. The book also includes a detailed history of the nuclear experiments going on at Berkeley, Chicago, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford during the war. I had never heard much about this nuclear development period, although I listened to Glenn Seaborg’s annual talk to general chemistry students at Berkeley in the early 90’s. That was definitely a feel good talk with pictures of him with every president and students coming up afterwards to get his autograph. The building where he first made plutonium now has a plaque up. I worked in a building connected to this building for 5 years and never realized that’s where plutonium had been discovered. The half-life of plutonium 239 is something like 24,000 years!
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French
This is a fiction book with a very novel premise. Marylou Ahearn lost her daughter, Helen, when she was 8. Marylou attributes Helen’s death to a radioactive drink she had at her doctor’s office when she was pregnant. It is now more than 50 years later and Marylou is obsessed with finding and killing the doctor in charge of that unbelievable study to give pregnant women radioactive drinks.
Dr. Wilson Spriggs was in charge of the study. He’s now living in Florida with his daughter, her husband, and their three children. Marylou moves to their neighborhood in Florida, changes her name, and insinuates herself into their lives. She first approaches Suzi, their youngest daughter, while out on a walk. Soon she is over at their house quite a lot. Suzi is vulnerable because she feels her mother, Caroline, never pays her attention. The two older children, Otis and Ava, have Asperger’s. Caroline spends most of her attention on Ava while Otis is left to his own devices, which involve a lot of science experiments in the backyard shed.
The story seems to take some incredible turns, but it is enthralling. It is unclear to Marylou if Wilson Spriggs remembers the study at all.
“Okay. She’d tabled her initial plan to murder Wilson, because there wouldn’t be any satisfaction in murdering him if he didn’t know, or understand, why he was being murdered, but it wasn’t that she felt any sympathy for the wretched old coot.”
So, Marylou turns her attention to the rest of the family, but much of the trouble that ensues is due to the problems in the family in the first place. An affair, a hurricane, a pedophile and, least-likely, a home-built breeder reactor all overwhelm the family and Marylou.
Incredibly, the two most unbelievable events in this fiction book are actually based on real life. I’m trying to track down Eileen Welsome’s book The Plutonium Files, which details studies that actually took place at Vanderbilt University where pregnant women were given radioactive cocktails. And, I’m currently reading The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein. This is a non-fiction book about a high school boy who got enough of a start on building a reactor in his shed that an EPA clean-up crew in full protective gear descended on his neighborhood. They’d discovered radiation high enough to endanger 40,000 nearby residents.
Dr. Wilson Spriggs was in charge of the study. He’s now living in Florida with his daughter, her husband, and their three children. Marylou moves to their neighborhood in Florida, changes her name, and insinuates herself into their lives. She first approaches Suzi, their youngest daughter, while out on a walk. Soon she is over at their house quite a lot. Suzi is vulnerable because she feels her mother, Caroline, never pays her attention. The two older children, Otis and Ava, have Asperger’s. Caroline spends most of her attention on Ava while Otis is left to his own devices, which involve a lot of science experiments in the backyard shed.
The story seems to take some incredible turns, but it is enthralling. It is unclear to Marylou if Wilson Spriggs remembers the study at all.
“Okay. She’d tabled her initial plan to murder Wilson, because there wouldn’t be any satisfaction in murdering him if he didn’t know, or understand, why he was being murdered, but it wasn’t that she felt any sympathy for the wretched old coot.”
So, Marylou turns her attention to the rest of the family, but much of the trouble that ensues is due to the problems in the family in the first place. An affair, a hurricane, a pedophile and, least-likely, a home-built breeder reactor all overwhelm the family and Marylou.
Incredibly, the two most unbelievable events in this fiction book are actually based on real life. I’m trying to track down Eileen Welsome’s book The Plutonium Files, which details studies that actually took place at Vanderbilt University where pregnant women were given radioactive cocktails. And, I’m currently reading The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein. This is a non-fiction book about a high school boy who got enough of a start on building a reactor in his shed that an EPA clean-up crew in full protective gear descended on his neighborhood. They’d discovered radiation high enough to endanger 40,000 nearby residents.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
This is an easy, quick read with a very pointed message. The author, a Yale law professor, believes that pushing kids to be their best, whatever the tactics, is a superior parenting practice. She calls this type of parenting “Chinese parenting” as opposed to “Western parenting”.
It is a lot of work to parent this way. She spends hours after school drilling the children or forcing them to practice their musical instruments. She picks them up at school during non-essential classes (in her opinion) like PE or music or art to do more practicing. She has two girls. The eldest, Sophia, adapts relatively well to this parenting strategy. At fourteen, Sophia plays the piano at Carnegie Hall.
“Once, Sophia came in second on a multiplication speed test, which her fifth-grade teacher administered every Friday…. Over the next week, I made Sophia do twenty practice tests (of 100 problems each) every night, with me clocking her with a stopwatch. After that, she came in first every time.”
I have to wonder if every child had a parent pushing them to succeed and was so utterly invested in their success what our nationwide test scores would look like. Sophia recently was admitted to both Harvard and Yale. Of course, she was never allowed to have a playdate, go to a sleepover, try out for a play, watch TV or get anything lower than an A.
There is another side. Lulu, the author’s other child, does not take so well to the threatening parenting style. Here’s one episode when she’s seven years old.
“Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed, and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years….. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent, and pathetic."
Can you imagine? The child is seven. Lulu continues playing an instrument though she does switch to the violin and eventually quits at age 13. She takes up tennis. I wonder what she will do next. In the scheme of things her rebellion was small, as her grades at school were still excellent.
The author emphasizes that all her actions were done out of love and that her children knew that. She has come in for a lot of flack as to whether she was emotionally abusing them. I think she has a point about developing a work ethic in children, but her tactics seem pretty extreme. Plus, how does she have the time to do this?
You can hear an interview with the author on NPR here. Or listen to other moms discussing her parenting tactics, also on NPR.
It is a lot of work to parent this way. She spends hours after school drilling the children or forcing them to practice their musical instruments. She picks them up at school during non-essential classes (in her opinion) like PE or music or art to do more practicing. She has two girls. The eldest, Sophia, adapts relatively well to this parenting strategy. At fourteen, Sophia plays the piano at Carnegie Hall.
“Once, Sophia came in second on a multiplication speed test, which her fifth-grade teacher administered every Friday…. Over the next week, I made Sophia do twenty practice tests (of 100 problems each) every night, with me clocking her with a stopwatch. After that, she came in first every time.”
I have to wonder if every child had a parent pushing them to succeed and was so utterly invested in their success what our nationwide test scores would look like. Sophia recently was admitted to both Harvard and Yale. Of course, she was never allowed to have a playdate, go to a sleepover, try out for a play, watch TV or get anything lower than an A.
There is another side. Lulu, the author’s other child, does not take so well to the threatening parenting style. Here’s one episode when she’s seven years old.
“Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed, and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years….. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent, and pathetic."
Can you imagine? The child is seven. Lulu continues playing an instrument though she does switch to the violin and eventually quits at age 13. She takes up tennis. I wonder what she will do next. In the scheme of things her rebellion was small, as her grades at school were still excellent.
The author emphasizes that all her actions were done out of love and that her children knew that. She has come in for a lot of flack as to whether she was emotionally abusing them. I think she has a point about developing a work ethic in children, but her tactics seem pretty extreme. Plus, how does she have the time to do this?
You can hear an interview with the author on NPR here. Or listen to other moms discussing her parenting tactics, also on NPR.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Gone Tomorrow by P. F. Kluge
Gone Tomorrow is a novel set at a small college in Ohio. The bulk of the book is a discovered story/memoir by a retired English professor. It details his last year at this small college. Prof. Canaris was a well-known author based in LA when he took a teaching position, seemingly on a whim. His story moves back and forth in time explaining why he stayed.
Here he gets a preview of life as a professor from an older, tenured professor:
“‘But you have no idea how this place will come at you. Headaches, problems, issues. Letters of recommendation, reports, committees, invitations, lecture. All delivered with respect, flattery, affection, appealing to your heart, your art, your character, your stomach, ego, id, libido… Well maybe not that, not the libido. You may like it. You may love it. But the world won’t know you and you won’t recognize yourself. And you will not have done whatever you came here to do.’”
Prof. Canaris is there to write a book. However, it appears the predictions above come true because as he reaches retirement age there is no sign of the book. He is killed in a hit-and-run accident shortly after he retires and it is his literary executor who finds the one-year memoir/story and tries to determine whether this book, The Beast, exists or not.
I enjoyed Kluge’s writing. Here Canaris discusses books:
“Books stay around if we let them. They survive one move after another, they sit on shelves for decades, reminding us not so much of how much we have read as how much we have forgotten, an uneven contest between reading and memory which might well end with someone surrounded by all the world’s books yet incapable of summoning up his own name.”
As an English professor Canaris complains about grading student paper with missing quotation marks and such. I found it curious that in the Canaris story/memoir I ran across such things. I wonder if this was done deliberately by the author or just a bad job of editing. Regardless, it is definitely one of my favorite fiction books read so far this year.
Escape to Books
Here he gets a preview of life as a professor from an older, tenured professor:
“‘But you have no idea how this place will come at you. Headaches, problems, issues. Letters of recommendation, reports, committees, invitations, lecture. All delivered with respect, flattery, affection, appealing to your heart, your art, your character, your stomach, ego, id, libido… Well maybe not that, not the libido. You may like it. You may love it. But the world won’t know you and you won’t recognize yourself. And you will not have done whatever you came here to do.’”
Prof. Canaris is there to write a book. However, it appears the predictions above come true because as he reaches retirement age there is no sign of the book. He is killed in a hit-and-run accident shortly after he retires and it is his literary executor who finds the one-year memoir/story and tries to determine whether this book, The Beast, exists or not.
I enjoyed Kluge’s writing. Here Canaris discusses books:
“Books stay around if we let them. They survive one move after another, they sit on shelves for decades, reminding us not so much of how much we have read as how much we have forgotten, an uneven contest between reading and memory which might well end with someone surrounded by all the world’s books yet incapable of summoning up his own name.”
As an English professor Canaris complains about grading student paper with missing quotation marks and such. I found it curious that in the Canaris story/memoir I ran across such things. I wonder if this was done deliberately by the author or just a bad job of editing. Regardless, it is definitely one of my favorite fiction books read so far this year.
Escape to Books
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Elly Griffiths, mystery author
I haven’t read many new mystery authors that I’ve been really taken with lately. Elly Griffiths is an exception. The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone are set in an isolated part of England along the east coast. Ruth (or Dr. Galloway), the main protagonist, is a forensic archeologist, which entails investigating and dating old bones – like remains from the Bronze or Iron Age in England.
In The Crossing Places, Griffiths’ first mystery, Ruth is called to a scene on a beach and meets DCI Harry Nelson. The remains turn out to be much older than any case he has going, but he subsequently calls her to other scenes. In The Janus Stone a child’s skeleton is found under the doorway of a former children’s home and Ruth becomes involved in figuring out who this child could be.
The descriptions of the area where Ruth lives, a desolate saltmarsh, are also well done. Having only been to London, it’s interesting to read about a very different part of England. Here she’s walking near her house:
“For about twenty minutes she plods on, head down against the driving rain. Then she stops. She should have reached the gravel path by now. It is almost completely dark, with just a faint phosphorescent gleam coming from the marsh itself. Ruth gets out her torch but its shaky light shows her only flat marshland in all directions. Far off, she can hear the sea roaring as it thunders inland.”
In The Janus Stone Ruth is also dealing with an unexpected pregnancy as she heads out to various sites:
“They climb the hill. Ruth trying to disguise how out of breath she is. Jesus, at this rate she’ll be immobile at nine months.”
I enjoyed the humor throughout the books, even as they’re digging up bones.
In The Crossing Places, Griffiths’ first mystery, Ruth is called to a scene on a beach and meets DCI Harry Nelson. The remains turn out to be much older than any case he has going, but he subsequently calls her to other scenes. In The Janus Stone a child’s skeleton is found under the doorway of a former children’s home and Ruth becomes involved in figuring out who this child could be.
The descriptions of the area where Ruth lives, a desolate saltmarsh, are also well done. Having only been to London, it’s interesting to read about a very different part of England. Here she’s walking near her house:
“For about twenty minutes she plods on, head down against the driving rain. Then she stops. She should have reached the gravel path by now. It is almost completely dark, with just a faint phosphorescent gleam coming from the marsh itself. Ruth gets out her torch but its shaky light shows her only flat marshland in all directions. Far off, she can hear the sea roaring as it thunders inland.”
In The Janus Stone Ruth is also dealing with an unexpected pregnancy as she heads out to various sites:
“They climb the hill. Ruth trying to disguise how out of breath she is. Jesus, at this rate she’ll be immobile at nine months.”
I enjoyed the humor throughout the books, even as they’re digging up bones.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Nemesis by Philip Roth
I had to look up the definition of nemesis. I had always thought it referred to a person. Clearly in this novel by Philip Roth it refers to polio. Nemesis is set in 1944 in New Jersey. Bucky Cantor is a summer playground director who couldn’t follow his friends into the war because of his poor eyesight. He feels guilty about that and then when a polio epidemic hits the neighborhood he has to face illness and death.
He escapes to a summer camp:
“Inside was the noisy clamor of children’s voices reverberating in the spacious lodge, the racket that reminded him of how much he enjoyed being around kids and why it was he loved his work. He’d nearly forgotten what that pleasure was like during the hard weeks of watching out for a menace against which he could offer no protection. These were happy, energetic kids who were not imperiled by a cruel and invisible enemy – they could actually be shielded from mishap by an adult’s vigilant attention. Mercifully he was finished with impotently witnessing terror and death and was back in the midst of unworried children brimming with health.”
Unfortunately this quote is only halfway through the book. Polio didn’t really respect class, race or any other type of barrier.
The story reminds me how lucky we are to live in a time where children don’t get polio. At least according to the CDC there hasn’t been a case in the US since 1979. I had a grandfather with a brace due to polio. I got the idea it was off limits to ask him about it, but I wish now I had. I wonder how old he was when he got polio and what kind of treatment he had to go through. I believe my mom also mentioned a child in her class dying from polio – that must have been right around the time the vaccine came out. I will grill her more about that.
Nemesis is not as complex as some of Roth’s other work. The Human Stain is one of my top ten favorite fiction books. I also like his relatively short novel, Indignation. Nemesis is written in a similar style to Indignation, but I think the story in Nemesis is more compelling and will stick with me longer.
He escapes to a summer camp:
“Inside was the noisy clamor of children’s voices reverberating in the spacious lodge, the racket that reminded him of how much he enjoyed being around kids and why it was he loved his work. He’d nearly forgotten what that pleasure was like during the hard weeks of watching out for a menace against which he could offer no protection. These were happy, energetic kids who were not imperiled by a cruel and invisible enemy – they could actually be shielded from mishap by an adult’s vigilant attention. Mercifully he was finished with impotently witnessing terror and death and was back in the midst of unworried children brimming with health.”
Unfortunately this quote is only halfway through the book. Polio didn’t really respect class, race or any other type of barrier.
The story reminds me how lucky we are to live in a time where children don’t get polio. At least according to the CDC there hasn’t been a case in the US since 1979. I had a grandfather with a brace due to polio. I got the idea it was off limits to ask him about it, but I wish now I had. I wonder how old he was when he got polio and what kind of treatment he had to go through. I believe my mom also mentioned a child in her class dying from polio – that must have been right around the time the vaccine came out. I will grill her more about that.
Nemesis is not as complex as some of Roth’s other work. The Human Stain is one of my top ten favorite fiction books. I also like his relatively short novel, Indignation. Nemesis is written in a similar style to Indignation, but I think the story in Nemesis is more compelling and will stick with me longer.
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