Sunday's cooking was adventurous.

And good.  Greek Style Baked Salmon and Green Beans With Cherry Tomatoes.  The feta cheese on top of the fish needed to be crumbled much, much finer.  And the kalamata olives were a waste of money.  Maybe they made it "authentic" but plain old black olives would have made it "better."



Anyway, yum.  And I have leftovers.

It's somewhat presumptuous of me

to submit a review for

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Attwood

It's been around forever; everyone knows it; and even I had read it already, long ago.  I didn't remember much of it except the frozen bank accounts, the declining birth rate and the surrogate mothers.  I don't remember if I was too young to understand or if I just consumed books too fast in those days.  She creates a society held together by violence and the threat of violence...only through denial can you survive.  It's the American old south--it's Nazi run Holland--it's maybe even now in some parts of the world.  What's it like to be a woman in Khandahar province of Afghanistan?

On the radio yesterday NPR reviewed a book that described how Hitler looked to Americans living in Germany during the pre-war period.  The overwhelming consensus was that it was "simply impossible" for him to have become chancellor.  He was insane; the people were too civilized to accept such a lunatic as a leader.  And then later--no one would start a war against Russia; no one would be crazy enough to try to destroy an entire race of people.  No one took him seriously.

Just like today, only a few crazies nowadays believe that the Holocaust didn't happen, but what about Khamenei's people?  Don't they trust that he wouldn't say such lies?  They don't have access to Wikipedia; they don't travel to holocaust museums; they could easily believe that the thousands of frames of movie footage are all a modern fabrication and the eye-witness books are created by ghost writers hired by the Jewish elders in some weird secret plan for world domination.  Also like today, no one believes Assad can stay in power in Syria except Assad himself, yet he's been murdering his own citizens for two years.  Why can't the world stop him?  Why won't it?

The Handmaid's Tale is a reminder that insane things happen when a minority takes control and the voices of reason are stifled.  No one thought it could happen there either--until it did.  But it's not that simple--in another recent book, The Poisonwood Bible, you get a vivid case against simple majority rule.  Majority rule, without checks and balances and open debate of the issues, is just as dangerous.

One last point from the book and then I hope I'm off women's issues for a while.  Margaret Attwood is a true master of the zippy one-liners. 

A man is just a woman's way of making other women. 

Tee hee.

What I ate yesterday.

Gardening is worth it!
It's too bad that tomatoes and lettuce aren't in season at the same time.  Not here, anyway.

Girls night out. Way, way out.

Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan...

is about a society of high school girls sworn to love and protect each other. It's little more than a sorority of chatty, stuck-up do-gooders, until (a) they elect three new members and (b) they acquire a new faculty advisor with a troublesome past.  We soon find out that the three new members have some serious self esteem issues and that the new advisor has some issues of her own.  Least of which is her dissatisfaction with the status quo--boys go to college or get jobs; girls learn to keep house and make themselves pretty for boys.

Wow.  I'm not saying Daughters of Eve is a "great" book or anything, but it sure is a daring book.  It presents the worst excesses of '70s male dominance in a way that makes your skin crawl.  Men suck!  At least they used to suck...but do they still?  Maybe they do!  All men always suck!  Then it takes the female reaction to an extreme verging onto sickness...maybe even tipping over into madness.  You don't know whether to scream, "Yeah!  He deserved it!" or whimper, "...but at the cost!"

Ms. Duncan drew stereotypes into people you know by heart.  The angry husband.  The sacrificing wife.  The child witness of a decade of abuse.  The ambitious girl who is so doubtful of her abilities that she self-sabotages her scholarship.  The artist who wants to be a mother, too.  The teenage boy who just wants to love and be loved but can't--it's not 'cool' enough.  The psychic--

Okay, maybe just one of the ten Daughters of Eve isn't as well-drawn as the others.  She's the token psychic.

Highly recommended for girls of all ages.  It's a time--it's not our time, but it may have been our mothers'.

Garden in spring

Doesn't look like much, does it?  Just a weedy patch of possibilities.

Book 31 shall not be

After 30 successes ranging from "fair" to "jaw-dropping," I finally admit a failure.  I won't review it because I might ruin it for you.  If you like it--and Lizzie Skurnick surely did--read it.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

I gave up at about chapter 9.  If I'd read it at age...say...ten, I might have thought it was a great mystery.  But at age fifty-something I can't keep track of the twenty some-odd characters, the random jumps of perspective, and the mixed up mash-up of the plot.

Enough.  Since it's one of the teen books, I'm just going to drop it off the list and add the honorable mention book #101 at the end of the list.  And that one is not a teen book.  Yeah!

I am humbled

I am humbled at the prospect of trying to write a book review for

The Poisonwood Bible.
by Barbara Kingsolver, of course.

How does she do it?

Somehow she's inside five brains, seeing Africa, seeing the Congo, and it never feels like a novel at all.  It's a documentary written by five people and it's not to be believed.

What she must have put into writing this!  Not just emotionally but creatively--four sisters, all unique.  Leah is energetic and matter-of-fact; Adah is mystical; Ruth May is curious; Rachel is homesick and angry.  The story is told by the four girls in smooth narration--sometimes sequential, sometimes parallel, and on occasion skipping a whole decade.  The girl's stories are pieced together with an occasional chapter from their mother, who is writing far in the future, far away from Africa.  They all get their own voices--Adah has a talent for palindrones and turning the English language on its head.  Ruth May, the youngest, has shorter chapters and makes grammatical errors.  Rachel is the original Mrs. Malaprope but her mistakes have a way of making a picture,  "...like a putative from the law."  "naked as a jaybird's egg."  (That's really naked.)  And Leah, poor Leah, the one most in the shadow of their father, will be the one first to reach for the light and be burned.

They say it's a novel but it's way past a novel.  It's way past historical fiction.

But what is it about?  It's about a wife and four daughters of a Baptist preacher from Georgia who go on mission to the Congo in 1959  We first suspect and then know it for real--he's a nutcase.  A violent, abusive, monomaniac with no feeling for the reality of the Christian faith let alone the reality of compassion, humanity, or love.  Not even for his own family.

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

He is an incarnation of the western world encountering Africa.  Some men went to grow rich from diamonds and uranium ore; some to gather up heavenly riches by collecting souls.  With no attempt to understand the flora, fauna, culture or history of the continent, he transplants his own culture and expects it to take root.  On his first day, he sees the women topless and calls them sinners who must be rebuked for their nakedness.  And it gets worse. 

But the story isn't really about him.  It's about the five women whose lives he dominates, even unto death.  Why did they let it happen?  You'll grow to understand, just as I did.   It's all in the words they wrote.

The story is sad but no sadder than it needs to be.  It's just...
Real.
It didn't really happen, but it did.  In many times and many places, it did.

Book #29 and back on schedule

Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan





It really was scary.  See there--a book can be scary without chainsaws, axes, buckets of blood or ghoulish creatures that strip a man's flesh like a rabbit's.

How would you feel if your cousin came to live with you and started to steal your pink dress, your bedroom, your boyfriend...and then your family?

Powerless.  Isn't the lack of power at the root of all our deepest fears?

Ms. Skurnick remembers it from her pre-teen years as a book where she totally identified with the heroine--her envy of the Arkansas cousin's shape; her anger at her boyfriend's betrayal, her pain at....something I won't say.  If you're going to read it then I don't want to give away the plot and if you're not, it will just make you sad.

My verdict is...read it if you're a teenager and you think it sounds interesting.  If you're an adult, only if you're going to write teen fiction.  It's an lesson in the art of keeping things moving.

I Am Not Literary

 
I Am The Cheese
by Robert Cormier


...eluded me.  It made less sense than A Canticle For Leobowitz which actually did make sense after a while.  I even tried to look it up online later to figure out what was the point of it and I still didn't get it.

I never get it.

Sometimes this feeling of helplessness over allusion and innuendo has the effect of making me want to go back to college, get a degree in literature or something.  My educations was limited to Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision--with a major in modern languages (Fortran, Snobol, Pascal and PL/1).

I don't know why Lizzie Skurkick included it.  I wish she hadn't.

musical worth the speeding ticket

 






Wicked was so amazingly amazing I nearly died.  They applauded Dee Roscioli (Elphaba) when she came on stage, which seemed unusual to me--but if I'd known then what she would do, I would have shrieked.


And the musical actually had a plot that made sense!  I'd read about half of the book and never could figure out how my CD of the songs could possibly fit into the plot of the book.  It probably didn't--the musical didn't follow at all with the plot of the book so far as I read it, but I'm not able to judge since I never finished the book.

For three hours I didn't breathe.  I didn't fidget.  I didn't think of the end--if I'd thought at all, I would have hoped it would never end.

Wicked!

Wow

The book review by The Onion A.V. Club compares it to Tolkien, but I say that's pushing a bit.  A lot.  It's not Tolkien but it's a good, solid modern fantasy with writing both plain and fancy.  The "flights of fancy" don't irritate, they sing.  The characters keep you guessing and the plot just won't stop moving.

It's full of beautiful songs----but the songs are only words.  I find it sad that the songs can't be made real in the medium of paper.  The only reason movies are sometimes better than books is that books can only transcribe the words--movies can make the songs come to life.  It can put them in the mouth of a wizened old wizard or a trio of merry hobbits.   I wish Peter Jackson would fall in love with this book and bring it to life.

Many things the writer created masterfully, but my favorite is that he was just as good as J. K. Rowling at making magical creatures and objects seem familiar.  A draccus.  Denner resin.  Bone-tar, which you don't want to mess with--it burns at room termperature and it burns hot.  And sympathy lamps...lights without a flame or power source other than, I guess, your body.  I want one.

I have one warning--it's first of a trilogy and the third one is not out yet.

April showers bring overnight frost

Izzy must have had a stressful day.  It might have thundered.  I know it rained.  A lot.  And then it got cold (50's) and she was undoubtedly outside through it all.  When I tried to postpone her supper until eight, she positively pestered me until I got up and fixed it.

I've just been out covering all the tomato and pepper plants with buckets.  Drat it.

will i never learn?

So today...after seeing the tarantula yesterday on the dog walk...I still didn't take the camera today.
Tarantula!

The hummingbirds are going crazy.  It's exceedingly hot (80s) but a cool front is coming through tomorrow and it may drop close to freezing on Wednesday.  Isn't it great being a gardener?

Movie review

 
 The Croods was good in spite of itself.  All the physical humor was pure kid stuff.  The animation seemed fresh and just possibly would have been worth the 3D premium.  The bit of serious philosophizing was gently innocuous and the story it told was "don't be too afraid to live" crossed with "show your love before it's too late." 

Take a kid if you go.

Next teen classic deserved the designation

Ludell 

by Brenda Wilkinson



I'm kind of scared to say anything bad about this book.  It's the kind of book people can fall in love with and totally lose sight of why they love it.


I didn't (fall in love), but I'm glad I read it.   It evoked a time and a place and a people that I've seen only in glimpses...for all my life.  It was set in 1955 but not written until 1975, so I just bet it's an author writing from her memories, just as I did in my story Fountain Ave.

The book cover is wrong about the whole point of things.  It says, it's not easy growing up when you're poor....   Wrong!  That's not the point of the book--the story isn't about poverty.  The heroine isn't even all that poor--she's got a grandmother with a secure job.  She gets to buy hot dogs on Fridays, has decent clothes to wear, even if she doesn't always like them, has enough good plain food to eat every day.  Of course, enough's never enough for a growing kid, but please!  They had chicken for Sunday dinner!

They're working people, just like my folks were.  We didn't use to have a TV either, or an infinite supply of candy bars or a box of fancy toys.  We were working poor too.

But skipping the blurb on the cover, it was pretty darn good.  The author told a good story and she told the truth--no varnishing.  The truth from the perspective of a twelve-year-old, beloved, slightly sheltered, child.  I'll read it again--at least once.

Being an adult, I kind of wanted to hear the grown-ups' stories--how did Miss Johnson really feel about working so many hours to feed her kids?  Where were the men and what were they doing?  Why were the teachers such jerks?  Could they really not afford to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter to feed the kids who went hungry at lunch?

When I get through this year of challenge, I'm going to seek out a copy of the sequel and read it.
What I didn't like?  The writing style.  I don't mind dialect in a novel--Mark Twain's books where chock full of it.  But I hate it when authors misspell words that sound the same either way you spell them and they don't contribute to the rhythm and the poetry of the way people spoke.  I understand "shut yo mouf", "she cain run me outta nowhere", "gon bus all their brains out."   But what's the point of spelling Miss as Mis?  Sheez.

Book #25 starting the second quarter

Secret Lives
by Berthe Amoss

I guess sometimes there's a reason why a book goes out of print.  And the reverse, too--I'm sure there are a number that stay in print but ought to bow graciously out.  I don't fret about them because they aren't on my reading list.

So as to this one...I wish I had my 99 cents back.

It's about a girl (Addie) growing up in New Orleans, raised by her two maiden aunts and their colored housekeeper.  The housekeeper's granddaughter comes to visit and together, the girls attempt to discover the secret of Addie's mother, killed in a tsunami when Addie was a baby.  The mother is a mystery--how could a person be so beautiful, talented and perfect as she was described, and be for real?  No one is that perfect, are they?

Mixed in is a good bit of adventure and a lot of growing-up angst, and I sort-of think that if I'd read it as a pre-teen, I might have liked it a little. A little.  It just...didn't age.

I wonder why Lizzie Skurnick liked it enough to include in her list?

Maybe she liked the portrayals of the girl's Aunt Eveline and Uncle Malvern.  They were some kooky adults.  But the heroine--I didn't like her at all.

Ah, April showers bring insidious greenery

After a couple of years of drought, it's good to get some nice, gentle, all-night rains.  Ff course, I wouldn't have minded if it had waited until after dog-walking time to start.  And if my tomatoes were in the ground, happy and free--rather than poor, pot-bound individuals stuffed in a milk crate.  And if my grass were mowed....

This is from two weeks ago.  If the same picture were taken today you wouldn't be able to see much of her legs.  Insidious greenery.

I can't review

 It's a literary work and I'm not literary.  Okay, maybe it's not "literature" in the style of James Joyce's Ulysses or E. L Doctorow's Ragtime, but it's full of poetry and classical allusions and clever writing.  (And by that, I don't mean the Moon Runes of Thorin Oakenshield's map.)  The clever writing irritated me for the most--how many times can you use "darkly" as an adverb and have it be effective?   Winter was darkly coming.  Clouds were darkly gathering.  And sadly, I just couldn't get my mind around most of the pseudo-Victorian poetry.  Basically...I skimmed it.

But the mystery was superb, the characters so real as to be painful, and the unfolding of The Romance kept me flipping pages to the end--and I loved the end.   I only skimmed the poetry--all the rest was engagingly riveting.

If you're at all knowledgeable about Victorian era poetry, you must read it.  Or if you're a mystery lover who can stand a little monkey-wrenched history, you should try it.  Otherwise...only if you're a fast reader who can tread water a foot over your depth and still have a great time--
Like me.