Lory

I thought this was just okay. Tree Ear was a rather bland character, seemingly just in the story to convey facts about pottery. It would have been nice to see him interacting with other kids in some way. Not sure how many readers will be really that interested in the pottery.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

The authors puncture several everyday illusions in a way that can make us both laugh and think. It can be a little unsettling to realize how unfounded many of our assumptions about our minds, and thus the world we perceive with them, really are — but if you are strong enough to take it, the reality check is exhilarating. This is a work of popular science, so the explanations of cognitive processes and experimental methods are simplified for the layperson, while the presentation is engaging and personal - with examples from the authors' own experience as well as their studies. Fun to read as well as enlightening. (I only wish the word “assumptions” had been used instead of “intuitions” – I think it would be more accurate.)

I read this after reading Constance's 1976 Club review, remembering I had read it long ago as a child and not liked it much. It seemed like something I should adore (Wales, harps, magic) - I couldn't recall why I had disliked it.

Upon starting the reread, I immediately understood why. The first half of the book is incredibly depressing. Wales is cold and wet. The family in the story is sad and dysfunctional. Neither Peter nor Jen, the two main viewpoint characters, are very sympathetic, although I feel sorry for them and their plight. Their bereaved father is frankly in need of therapy and advice as to how to be a parent (hint: you don't do it by blaming your son for being unhappy at being torn away from all his friends and familiar surroundings immediately after his mother dies, nor by expecting your 15 year old daughter to step into the role of caregiver and confidante).

The “magic” consisted of Peter finding a harp tuning key from the 6th century bard Taliesin, and having visions of his life that also sometimes bled into the present day. However, it was all very static and lacking in interactivity or tension, like Peter was watching Taliesin TV. Even when things happened in the present, it did not affect anyone in any lasting way.

Peter's depression and anger eases through his magical experience, though it's not really clear why, unless it's just that it distracts him from obsessing over his negative feelings. And the family grows into a new kind of relationship, mostly through the children realizing they have to be the grownups and take care of their father. “I can't help thinking of you as my children,” he says near the end. Um yes ... maybe you should treat them that way and actually give them some care and attention?

The descriptions of Wales are sometimes interesting, although clearly drawn from the author's trips, which seem to have inspired her to take her travel journal and turn it into a novel.

Overall, a pale imitation of Susan Cooper's The Grey King, which won the Newbery the previous year, and includes many of the same elements, including a grieving bereaved man, a troubled father-son relationship, and a dramatic hunt for a sheep-killing canine. And harps, of course.

I appreciated this view of life in Cairo, with all its challenges, but in spite of the title did not gain much insight into the appeal of Islam for the author. I was also concerned by her plunging into marriage in a misogynistic society with little knowledge of her spouse. I hope she is really all right.

“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish rabbi, teacher and theologian

Why are people afraid to think? Why do they want to suffocate their own free thinking, and that of others, with rigid ideologies? That's what I wondered as I read this memoir by a professor of English literature who experienced the frenzied descent of her country into pseudo-religious madness.

It's not a faraway happening. These days, ideology is everywhere, threatening to overwhelm our individual ability to connect to one another through a dynamic relationship to an evolving truth, which is too often replaced by a drive to protect our fixed ideas of what truth is at all costs. In the great literature of the past, may we still find a space to think more freely, to feel more flexibly and humanly, to develop the will to reject tyranny's hold over our minds, if not our bodies.

Lovely book exploring the intersections between Buddhism and Christianity, which I think benefit greatly from the interchange. Christianity could use a good dose of Buddhism to bring it back to its original emphasis on love and compassion and away from its current status as a tool of domination and oppression. And I'd venture to say that when handled rightly, the individual consciousness fostered by Christianity can help to bolster what can become formless and impotent, through an overdose of Buddhist non-self.

My personal belief is that all religions should be seen as windows on a common spiritual reality and that the historical wars between them now have to be overcome, so that we can better understand that multidimensional reality from many sides. Books like this are a help in that endeavor.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I wanted to read this because I'm personally interested in the theme of the wounded healer. I've been severely burnt by the attitudes and practices of people in positions of leadership and authority, who have not addressed their own wounds and become hurtful rather than helpful. They may want to be healers, or believe they are, but they just make things worse, or most often cover up and mask the underlying issues while failing to take any responsibility for the results. I definitely don't want to do this myself, so I need guidance about how to avoid that trap.

I found Nouwen's perspective helpful, especially the last chapter. He points out that it's a false goal to promise wholeness and immortality. What the wounded healer can offer is “hospitality,” a safe space for the other to unfold his or her own soul, and to share the suffering that is the common ground of our human condition. When suffering is shared in this way, recognized and held in a compassionate consciousness, it becomes a path to liberation.

I think this is an extremely important and profound point. Any relationship, any faith, or any political regime or movement, that promises to remove all our pain and make everything great again, should be suspect. Nouwen believes that the loneliness which is our deepest human wound is also, viewed from a true Christian perspective, our greatest gift. The paradoxical mystery of the Christian path is to share this loneliness and make it into a way forward, rather than a dead stop.

I know already of many places in my own life where I can try to practice this, and see for myself whether it does indeed lead forward into paths of liberation. Thanks to Nouwen for pointing the way.

“Long ago when they first invented the atomic bomb people used to worry about its going off and killing everybody, but they didn't know that mankind has got enough dynamite right in his guts to tear the f*** planet to pieces.”

Read this with one of my English students who had enjoyed a story by Cheever (“The Swimmer”) and wanted to try a novel. I'd never read this author before and did not know what we were in for.

Falconer is a nightmarish, phantasmagorical tale of imprisonment and escape, more of a series of vignettes than a coherent narrative, of which some or even most of the scenes may be dreams or fantasies. The protagonist, a former WASP professor who rejoices in the name of Ezekiel Farragut, has been sent to prison for killing his brother (an act he denies and which is further explained only in the final few pages of the book). Through Cheever's stylized, mannered prose, we move in and out of his current and past experiences, impressions, memories, and visions, which are comic, repulsive, pathetic, and squalid by turns.

I would not go to this book expecting realism of any kind. It's not a realistic prison exposé. It's a sort of Inferno through which Farragut must pass, coming in the end to a kind of apotheosis, but not giving us anything solid for our tidy minds to grasp. We are only left with the certainty of what another prisoner expresses in the quote above, that in the guts of man is all the explosive needed to blow up the world – but maybe also all that is needed to redeem it.

Michelle Cooper takes the basic premise of I Capture the Castle (eccentric father and variously charming/feisty/driven/thoughtful children, including one compulsive diarist) in a crumbling castle, and plunks it on a fictional nearly-uninhabited island 200 miles south of Cornwall. Oh, and makes them royalty. Plus, there are Nazis, a Grail quest, ghosts, family secrets, an underground crypt, and more. It could have been a disaster, but Cooper's writing is so sure-handed I'd follow it anywhere. Her characters are believable and engaging, and their story is both funny and heart-rending. More! (Fortunately, there are two sequels.)

I have to mention, though, that I find it a bit odd that the Montmaravian “royals” never question their right to be rulers, although they essentially have nobody to rule over. What is the point of that, exactly? Maybe this will get taken up later in the series...

Some people just don't “get” fantasy. They are unable to comprehend the appeal of stories full of people who never existed and never could have, genealogical tables composed entirely of unpronounceable names, and endless endpaper maps portraying craggy coastlines that look like Wales, but aren't, quite. They prefer to stay within the known world, with names which somebody, somewhere, can pronounce, and lands reliably mapped by National Geographic.

There's plenty of great reading in the realms of realistic fiction, to be sure; but there is nothing quite like the pleasure of opening a book and stepping into a world that is purely of the imagination, yet inwardly coherent and recognizably real. Something in the human mind and spirit, something of its boundless possibilities, can perhaps best be expressed thus. Some authors, we can feel, are not so much painstakingly inventing a world full of cumbersome accoutrements, but discovering one that reveals a hidden aspect of ourselves.

Such a world is given to us by Diana Wynne Jones in Howl's Moving Castle, one of her blithest and most enchanting novels. “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three,” she begins, and immediately we are caught up in the realm of fairy-tale logic, where everyone knows the eldest of three is doomed to failure, should three siblings set out to seek their fortunes.

Sophie Hatter, who happens to be the eldest of three sisters, never questions this law of existence. She resigns herself to a mundane existence in the family hat shop (not even being “the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success”). Her determination to be ordinary is disrupted by a call from the wicked Witch of the Waste, who casts a very inconvenient spell on her; and by the fearsome Wizard Howl, who, in spite of his reputation for sucking out the souls of young girls, allows her in to his mysterious moving castle, and seems to be in need of some saving himself.

As Sophie puzzles through the riddle posed by witch, wizard and castle, she finds that all is not as it seems, including her assumptions about herself. Is magic all about showy transformations and fiery battles? Or is there even more power in the stories we tell ourselves?

Read more at http://emeraldcitybookreview.blogspot.com

Originally reviewed at www.emeraldcitybookreview.com

In The Nutmeg Tree, our heroine is Julia Packett, a very different but equally idiosyncratic character. Summoned to the south of France by an impulsive message from the daughter she hasn't seen since infancy, who is seeking approval of her intended marriage, Julia immediately identifies the young man in question as a “wrong one,” but how can she convince her besotted daughter? And how can a former showgirl pull off the role of a respectable member of a very proper family, when in fact she is nothing of the sort?

Julia's “misbehavior” (leaving her daughter to be raised by the father's family, taking up with a series of male companions, and ending up having to sell off furniture to pay the rent) might not seem utterly damning today, but on the novel's publication in 1937 this lifestyle would have raised some eyebrows. Julia is portrayed with so much sympathy and humor, though, that we embrace her follies as part of her inimitable verve and zest for life. In her outer and inner battles, we root for her and forgive her many lapses, which if we are honest may remind us of our own efforts to “be good.”

But can Julia forgive herself? In contrast to Cluny Brown, whose youthful imperviousness to criticism is part of her charm, the more world-worn Julia is struggling toward a new level of self-knowledge. Because this is a comedy, this is symbolized by the possibility of union with a man who can complement and appreciate her. And because this is Margery Sharp, their story is told in a way that is both larger-than-life funny, and relevant to deeper human concerns. How can Julia “marry” the experience that has given her insight and compassion for other people (but left her a bit worse for wear), with what remains unspoiled in her, still worthy of love and honor? It's a question we all have to resolve in our own way – though we may not all do it through dealings with acrobats met on trains.

[Spoiler alert for book and series] Read this along with watching part of the Netflix series. It was interesting to see what was changed and not changed in the film. On the one hand, many parts were extremely faithful to the book, with word for word dialogue. On the other, there were many small and large changes that significantly altered the emotional trajectory. In the book, Beth is not in the car when her mother crashes it and dies (on purpose, the movie suggests), and there is much less backstory of her traumatic childhood. Beth grudgingly agrees to her adoptive mother taking a 10% commission on her chess earnings, whereas in the film she raises it to 15% with a warm smile. To the film was added a suggestion that Beth's genius may be close to madness. Subtracted was an unnecessary sexual overture by a character who makes more sense without it. And so on.

Overall, I preferred this approach. It expands the human side of the story, while de-emphasizing the chess moves that take up a lot of space in the book and are pure gobbledegook to those of us who do not play chess. Other readers seem to feel differently, but for me there is simply not a ton of human interest in whether somebody is going to come up with the right chess move. There is nothing to relate to for normal non-chess-playing humans.

This makes the final face-off with Borkov anticlimactic, for me. I'm not interested in who moves what piece where. The real “endgame” took place when Beth put away her wine bottles and reconnected with Jolene, facing her past and reconceiving her priorities. The mental gymnastics of chess are astounding, amazing, but human beings can't live without human, emotional connection. And it was the last-minute call from Benny that gave Beth a necessary dose of that.

After Borkov's surprising hug at the end, it would have been nice to see some more interaction between them, or between her and the Russians. That would have been interesting to me. I've not finished the series yet, so I wonder if they picked up on this.

The series made more of Beth as an addict than the book. In the book, she goes through spells of using tranquilizers and/or alcohol, but she seems relatively able to free herself from them with some mental effort. I don't think it's so easy in the real world of substance dependency, especially for a person with so much trauma in her life. In general, the book left me feeling rather flat and disappointed, with Beth as a more robot-like chess whiz and less of a human being.

“Emotional nurturance is an absolute requirement for healthy neurobiological brain development” - Ch. 17

I have many thoughts in connection with this book and plan to post a fuller review soon on my blog, Entering the Enchanted Castle.

The basic idea is that it's useless to address addiction as an isolated individual problem or moral issue, or even as a “disease.” We have to uncover and address the underlying causes, the reasons why people embark on such a self-destructive path. This involves understanding how our social environment affects our brains and enables us to become aware, emotionally mature, self-determining individuals who are not pushed around by unconscious mental programming – or, more often, how it does not help us to do this, due to adverse experiences early in life. The true cost of childhood trauma MUST be revealed, and new paradigms created that enable us to prevent and to heal it, without blaming, judging, and condemning the victims, making them into the opposition side in an unwinnable, deeply harmful war. A fascinating topic that gets to the heart of our human crisis today.

It's a fine idea to focus on Anne Sullivan Macy, the brilliant, damaged woman who has always been in the shadow of her famous student, but due to the loss or absence of primary material, Nielsen has to step in with much speculation, much “perhaps” and “could have been.” Some of this is inevitable when writing biography, but here it begins to seem like padding. And I object to the frequent “must have beens” which assume feeling and thoughts which may or may not have been the case.

I ended up feeling it would have been more interesting and revelatory to read the original source material, the letters and autobiographical manuscripts from Macy that do exist, with linking notes and commentary, rather than subjecting her to so much external interpretation.

A lovely book.

Recommended by Rennie of Whats Nonfiction. I was riveted by this memoir of a survivor of relational trauma (which I think is a much better name than C-PTSD!) Her mother was a sick woman who should have been put in prison for what she did to Stephanie, and her father was a weak, emotionally incompetent man who essentially left her to live on her own when she was in high school. Stephanie became a “success” with a coveted job on This American Life, but inwardly she was a mess. She takes us through her process of healing, which includes a survey of the terrible conditions for anyone seeking mental health or medical help in the US, the horrors of bad therapy, the ineffectiveness of much well-meaning therapy, and the amazing potential of good (rare and expensive, sadly) therapy. It's a very individual journey, but through it Stephanie discovers the healing power of relationship, the importance of self-knowledge and self-trust, and even the way trauma responses can become “superpowers” when they are needed to react to extreme situations (like a pandemic). The wedding scene where she and her husband prepared letters for all their friends telling them why they loved them was incredibly moving and gave such an important message. Anyone who is looking for a single other person to save and complete them is in trouble, while those who build a vibrant community and celebrate love in all its forms are building the future we need to strive for. Great read.

I finally made it through this! I did not always find it easy going, and I know I did not understand everything, while there are other points I might disagree with if I felt more qualified – but overall I learned a lot and I'm glad I did. I was struck especially by the reasoning behind why learning a language is only possible in early childhood (it takes up a lot of energy and since in most of evolution humans only needed to learn one language, it was more evolutionarily favorable to divert those forces once it has been learned); and why our left brain controls the right side of our body (a 180 degree twist of the head at some point in evolution, during the change from crawling creatures whose spine is on the ground and in “front” to walking creatures with the spine in back and soft parts in front.)

This was an interesting idea, some fun twists on standard medieval/Arthurian fare (Merlin as a gender-bender is cool), the writing is not bad, but I got tired of the “Christianity Is Evil” theme and quit reading before the halfway point. It's hard to understand how people really experienced religion in the past. So much comes across as modern Wicca meets contemporary evangelicalism and it just was not like that back then. I'm not sure what it was like exactly, but not this.

Reviews and more on my blog, Entering the Enchanted Castle I got interested in this from the review at annabookbel.net – unlike Annabel, I've never seen Cox onstage or even on film (except in Braveheart, where I must have seen but didn't consciously notice him), and I don't watch TV so haven't seen him in his current hit show. Still I enjoyed his memoir about his life in the theatre, later emphasizing more movies and TV since he chose to go Hollywood and become a successful character actor. The earlier part of the book was more compelling; later on it became very fragmented and name-droppy. Aside from repeated self-castigations for being such a bad husband to his first wife and bad dad (and it seems he really was), there wasn't much coherence to the thoughts his personal life or inner journey. Often reads like he's talking to you over a beer, with his conversational asides and quips. The most interesting musings are about acting as a form of “expiation,” but he's never able to make it quite clear exactly what he means by it, except that he does it and Ian McKellen doesn't.

I can't understand the reviews that describe this book as “beautifully written.” The writing is clunky, with awkward attempts at eloquence, hackneyed descriptions, and clichéd “wisdom” - here's a sample chosen at random: “The window was not so high, and he could see the tiled roofs and bare-branched trees shimmering in the orange light, and the birds singing and gliding across the sky. This, the everlasting stillness of morning, brought him unbearable joy and sorrow. Tears flowed down his cheeks raked by time. Death was such a small price to pay for life.”

Besides this uninspiring prose, the POV switched so often and so rapidly between so many different characters that I had a hard time caring much about any of them. The tragic central love triangle left me completely cold, and there were long stretches where not much of anything happened. The exciting tiger hunt at the beginning was by far the best part. Oh, and the cover is gorgeous.

After Beverly Cleary's autobiographies, I had to read this, her first book. The storytelling holds up today, even if the circumstances of the children's lives make it dated. Henry is an immediately believable, endearing character, with conflicts and crises that are both relatable and amusing. Each of the 6 short episodes is simply but engagingly told - perfect for an early reader. There is no moralizing, no patronizing of children or suggesting their concerns are less important than adults'. Interesting to consider that this was all so unusual at the time of writing, that Henry and his author caused quite a revolution in books for children. Cleary surely wrote better books, but this was the first and it's still a fine achievement.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

For an immersive journey into the ancient Roman empire, look no further – but beware, it's a harrowing experience. Harper lifts off the obscuring veils through which we look back at Rome, as the source of our systems of government and justice, of pompous prose and marble statues, and shows how degrading and brutal it really was for the female slaves at the bottom of the hierarchy, the town prostitutes of Pompeii.

The lives of five of these “she-wolves” are traced through the course of several months, centering on Amara, an intelligent doctor's daughter from Attica fallen on hard times. Each one is richly characterized and human, showing the strength of the human core that survives in such difficult circumstances, looking for love and connection, even when sometimes it is cruelly betrayed or cannot be expressed.

It's inevitable that some will fall into despair and be lost, some will be victims of the unjust who reign supreme, but some will rise through their refusal to be defined by the bullies who exploit them. For those who wonder how it is to read a book based on institutionalized sexual violence, I found that Harper struck a fine balance between exposing the realities of the women's lives, and leaving much of the detail respectfully off-stage. She also made marvelous use of the visual evidence left from Pompeii in her descriptions, adding authentic atmosphere that did not scream “historical research” (though it whispered it at times). A brief but crucial appearance by Pliny the Elder is similarly a touch that adds historical weight, without feeling gratuitous.

This is apparently the first in a trilogy, and I'll certainly be looking forward to the next book, and to the ultimate fate of the she-wolves of Pompeii.

I would like to read about a young Muslim woman negotiating life in London and a dysfunctional family, but the writing of this one was so clumsy and stiff it turned me off.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Really loved the atmosphere, characters, and voice of this one. The way it switched from Annie's first-person narration to third-person was a little jarring and unexplained, but I shrugged it off as I was enjoying the story overall. I think the plot could have used a boost, however; there is a love story with absolutely no tension, for example. Sweet but quite boring. It seemed the author wanted to bring in excitement through fistfights, but I started to skip the blow-by-blow descriptions as those also are dull for me. Others may differ!

More interesting was when Annie was first learning to fight and she described it as a process of reading. I would have appreciated more on that theme. She did learn to read, as well, but there was not much about that except her gushing about how lovely Burns and Wordsworth were.

Another enjoyable read from McFarlane, mixing quirky characters, witty banter, and some seriously deep topics in a way I've never quite encountered before. It's as if P.G. Wodehouse decided to throw some PTSD awareness into the mix of his madcap comedies – and it works somehow.

The one qualm I have is that in both the books I have read so far, all the main characters are heavy drinkers. They drink when they are happy, they drink when they are sad. They drink to calm down and to pep themselves up, and just for the heck of it. If I had to reckon up the amount of time they spend being seriously intoxicated during the main action of the story and important conversations, I would estimate about 80%. Yet absolutely no one has a problem with that, not an inkling of a notion that it might be going too far or a form of self-medication that should be reconsidered.

Even though there are good messages about self-empowerment and authentic relationships, alongside these is the constant assumption: “We can't really have fun and live life to the fullest unless we are sozzled.” I find this a little weird. And sad. Alcohol is not to the human body as oil is to a car engine, something it needs in order to run happily and smoothly. It's a harmful toxin, however pleasurable its use may be, and should be treated with some caution. Call me a spoilsport if you like (Bertie Wooster certainly would), but in our day and age, it's just strange to promote drinking culture so one-sidedly without ANY awareness of the drawbacks.