Better than Meh but

Searching the Ruins: Growing Up in WWII Germany

by I.B. Hunger

As Marie Kondo would say, it certainly didn't thrill with pleasure.  It's a good description of a unique time and place and thus needed to be written...but all it did for me is teach me that I didn't particularly need to read it.  It got interesting enough to finish, but I learned only this--humans haven't changed much in 100 years.  There are still mothers and fathers who think an expedient marriage is the best hope for a daughter without fortune.  And many more who don't see the point of wasting a university education on a daughter.

My own parents--in 1976 U.S.--didn't have the money to pay for a college education for either of their kids, but if they had, they wouldn't have preferred the daghter over the son. (I hope)  But in hundred of societies around the world, they would have.

Interesting perspective of the years after the war from a child growing up.  But for a memoir, shallow and unenlightening.

Belated post from last weekend

What a weekend for cooking!  I did myself proud--or shameless--at the farmer's market on Saturday morning; came back and jogged for an hour; then did absolutely no prep work for Sunday.

Sunday was, needless to say, painful.  But I've a fridge full of tasty eats for a week of meals, not to mention a couple of things I totally forgot to prepare.  Another weekend's worth, I hope.

Breakfast today was Oatmeal with Blueberry-Ginger Sauce--promising but not enough salt and honey and ginger flavor to suit my taste.  Very clever way to get chia seeds into your breakfast and not know they're there.

Dinner tonight will be Green-Packed Stir-fry with Quinoa, washed down with a lot of wine. Note to self (and everyone else)--if you can't cut up a chili pepper without choke-coughing, it's hot!  I don't remember what they were, only that they were red and little bigger than the average grocery store Jalapeno.  Probably Anaheim but they're usually quite mild.  I used 1-1/2 rather than the 3 listed in the recipe but it's still pretty scary.





And then lunch--Blackeye Pea Cakes with Collards. Great way to fix greens and a pretty cool way with blackeyes.



All recipes adapted from http://joanne-eatswellwithothers.com/

Bad examples but great Girrrrl

Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature
by Robin Brande

 Being totally unable to finish my current printed book, I've been not allowing myself to start another.  I've finally decided to give up on it and get on with my life.  It's a good book--Japan At War, an Oral History--and I highly recommend it to all history buffs.  In fact I'm not going to completely quit, just move it to the end of the list.

But I did manage to finish an audiobook. A great audiobook.  I'm beginning to think Robin Brande is a genius--she starts out with a lesson to tell but tells it so well you don't really see that you're being lectured.  Like Mary Poppins, she hides her medicine in a spoon full of sugar.

In this case the lesson involves evolution, God, and the separation of church and state.  Plus some on bullying, family problems, puppy love, and the importance of honesty.  She nailed 'em all.

My only complaint--and you need to read it to see if you agree--is with the 'articles' she wrote, in particular the second one.  Was that really a sensible parallel?  It seemed like an absurd interpretation, one that any Biblical scholar--or anyone else--would see as utter nonsense.  That parable--her meaning--no connect.  Even the first article is a bit of a stretch, because selective breeding by humans has been known about forever, although it took Darwin to help explain how nature did the same as humanity. Knowing about selective breeding isn't the same as knowing about natural selection.

Suprised me and I loved it

True Grit

by Charles Portis

In general, I've never felt a fascination for westerns. We kids did used to watch The Lone Ranger and undoubtedly went around whooping and hollering on horses, sixguns popping caps and leaving a trail of outlaw' corpses behind. We didn't have to tie the bodies onto a horse and haul it into town to collect the bounty, because our corpses always stood back up and rejoined the game.

Those were the days, for sure, and this is the perfect book for those days. Innocent and pure-hearted as they come. I didn't once feel a pang of modern conscience sting me as I embraced Mattie Ross and went willingly along on her quest to see her father's murderer hanged or she'd kill him herself.

And that, I believe, is the whole point of literature--living a point of view that would never in a thousand years be yours--and getting it.

Sweet said haunting and all that stuff

All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr

I'm scared to look back and see why some people I admire didn't like this book.  Don't count me among them.

Sometimes the writing was provokingly beautiful.  Sometimes he used words in unfamiliar ways that didn't make sense but I'll forgive him--so many other times he used words that made me see and feel it all: the grit of coal mining, the crash of war, and the squishy aliveness of small sea creatures. 

In scope, story, and drama, I think he created a masterpiece--neither too much nor too little.  Of course I wanted more, but sometimes you can't have it any more than the real people he imagined could have it. War sucks. A lot. Always will, any where and for any reason.

The narrator of the audiobook was a genius with a charming gift for (or rigorous training in) accents.  I always knew who was speaking--or thinking--and never had to said for the 'he said'.




I see it won a Pulitzer prize. As a teenager I undertook a task to read all of the Pulitzer prize novels for literature. I didn't make it very far, but I guess I'm one book closer now.

Aside: I've not yet found an explanation for the tin can thingy. Author's mistake?

Kids and lions, for real

The Lion Children

by Angus McNeice, Maisie McNeice, Travers McNeice
Three clever children write about their lives in Botswana among the lions.  With pictures.

Best thing I like about it is, they don't have a hidden agenda.  Other than lions--lions are cool. And southern Africa is full of amazing creatures we need to preserve at all costs.  But other than that, they're just telling it like it is without a lot of moralizing. They're just kids having adventures, good and bad, but always great.

The family story is pretty beautiful, too. The one thing I never exactly understood was why their mother took them to Africa in the first place.  It said she'd begun to study biology and she didn't think that the civilized world was a good place for children to grow up. In the modern world, all knowledge is (apparently) available at the tap of a button; all things we might ever need are easily procured and casually tossed away when no longer useful.

I wasn't brought up that way--I know there are things we don't know. Heaps of them. And I know it's a lot more satisfying to build or invent or concoct things that to buy them on Amazon. But it general, you shouldn't romanticize ignorance, nor should you long for a time when the mere struggle for basic needs could occupy one's whole life. There's a different way to bring up strong, independent children in the modern world, and I expect she would have found it no matter where she went.

But, hey--Africa!

A modern day children's classic

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
by John Boyne




What a shocker!  I was lucky not to have known all about it beforehand.  I started the book with no more than the mental image of a small boy sitting on the ground behind a tall, barbed-wire fence.

After the end they had an interview between the author and the publisher--I wish all books would have that!  They talk about where the idea came from, how the book was written, and what the readers' reactions were. He didn't give very many specific reader's criticisms, unfortunately because I was wondering if some people were upset at the things he left out.  Not me--I was glad to be spared the details.  Some were things you wouldn't expect a 9-year-old to understand or even recognize, like his mother's issues.  And a few were simply to awful for him to speak about, if he even knew the words to use. I think Mr. Boyne  made a very wise choice to leave some pages blurry and let the reader imagine what he would, based on his age and level of sophistication.  It broadens his base of readers. I hope the movie did the same.