Early this summer while I was stuck at home with a cold and poison ivy, I had the wonderful opportunity to read as much as I wanted. I had stumbled across a practically new copy of Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maughm at a thrift store downtown. It had recently been proffered as a suggested read for the Meredith College Alumni Book Club. I voted for it, but alas, it was not chosen. So, being stuck in bed, I decided it was the perfect time to read a 600 page classic. And boy did it end up being good! The story is about a young orphan named Phillip who is left in the care of his aunt and uncle after the death of his mother. He is sent to boarding school where he is made fun of for having a club foot. He is churlish and mean and leaves school early to travel abroad. He searches for the meaning of life; he becomes obsessed with a woman named Mildred. Phillip returns to her every time she casts him aside. I fully expected to hate Phillip throughout the course of the book, but he grows as a person as the book progresses. He learns to empathize with the poor and, most importantly, he learns to give and receive love. I liked Of Human Bondage much better than The Painted Veil by Maughm. There was a recent article in the NYT about Maughm that essentially labeled him a second class writer. I have to disagree. I thought Of Human Bondage was great!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Movie Review: The Book of Eli
I bought Joel a movie for his birthday-one that he had been raving about and had to own. Normally he won't watch a movie more than once in about five years, but he wanted to re-watch this one as soon as the credits ended. The movie was The Book of Eli. He told me the plot line as soon as he got home, which was fine since I don't normally watch rated R movies. This one, however, sounded interesting. Picture post-apocalyptic America (imagine the TV show Jericho 30 years on) and you have the idea. An unnamed man (Denzel Washington) is traveling west through the country with only a sack on his back. He has some essential weapons and a book which he fiercely guards. He comes to a town that is run by a power-seeking despot (Gary Oldman) who is searching for books, one in particular. He evenutally finds out that the traveler has a book in his possession and sets out to retrieve it at all costs. I can't say any more without giving away essential information-you'll have to watch the movie. It is a fabulous. There is language and violence (hence the R rating), but provided you are a mature adult it is a must-see. Denzel Washington is, as always, an amazing actor. If you don't watch it for his performance, though, watch it so that you can see Michael Gambon (a prolific British actor) play a country/Western post-apocalyptic American. I think it is the funniest and most unusual role I have ever seen him in. Though never touted as a Christian movie, it will build your faith and leave you pondering what is really important in life.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Essays, Short Stories and a Change of Heart
I was never a fan of short stories or essays until a year ago... I didn't like the fact that they were over so soon-I felt like I was getting a snippet of something that could be longer and better. However, on a trip to Washington D.C. to see the Red Sox play the Washington Nationals and visit my college roommate, I was encouraged (wait a minute, was that forced?) to read a book of essays by E. B. White. Despite the fact that we lived 5 hours from each other, she lent me the book. If you read E. B. White's books as a child (Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little), you will love him even more as an adult. He is insightful and witty and his essays will downright pull you in and not let you go. It is a book to own and re-read throughout the years; it is a book that will grow with you. Run to the bookstore and buy Essays of E. B. White. It might open up a whole new world for you just as it did for me.
After reading most of the essays in the book, I felt comfortable moving on to short stories. It was obvious that I had been missing out on something. We read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows in the Meredith College book club. It is the story of a book club that meets during the German occupation of Guernsey during WWII. One member of the book club reads the Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb. I was curious about these essays, so I got an alumnae library card at Meredith College and checked out a VERY old copy of the essays. I was entranced. Though they are called essays, some of them seem to be short stories that fall somewhere in between the categories of fiction and non-fiction.
And so I moved on to fiction-specifically short stories by Willa Cather. My favorite short story of the bunch was The Bohemian Girl, but there was not a bad story in the entire collection. (The Essays of Elia and many short stories by Willa Cather are all in the public domain and can be downloaded for free through book reading applications like Stanza and Kindle.)
I found a collection of short stories at a yard sale about a month ago for 50 cents. I love to own the books that I read, and so I try not to pay more than $1 for a used book. I decided to read a short story by W. Somerset Maughm called The Book-Bag. It was extremely interesting, beautifully written, and quite tragic.
Next on the list was The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad. This was such a wonderful short story. I first read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness at camp in Brasil. There is a bookshelf full of old, termite eaten books which has yielded up some of my favorite books. The Secret Sharer did not disappoint. As with all of his books that I know of, it takes place on a ship. I am amazed by his grasp of the English language (he uses nautical words that I have never even heard of), yet he only learned to speak English around the age of 20. His command of the English language is much better than many native speakers; this only enhances the beauty of his writing.
Long post short, don't be afraid to try something new. I have grown so much since I allowed my college roommate to challenge my notion of good writing. Now if I could only learn to like modern fiction...
After reading most of the essays in the book, I felt comfortable moving on to short stories. It was obvious that I had been missing out on something. We read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows in the Meredith College book club. It is the story of a book club that meets during the German occupation of Guernsey during WWII. One member of the book club reads the Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb. I was curious about these essays, so I got an alumnae library card at Meredith College and checked out a VERY old copy of the essays. I was entranced. Though they are called essays, some of them seem to be short stories that fall somewhere in between the categories of fiction and non-fiction.
And so I moved on to fiction-specifically short stories by Willa Cather. My favorite short story of the bunch was The Bohemian Girl, but there was not a bad story in the entire collection. (The Essays of Elia and many short stories by Willa Cather are all in the public domain and can be downloaded for free through book reading applications like Stanza and Kindle.)
I found a collection of short stories at a yard sale about a month ago for 50 cents. I love to own the books that I read, and so I try not to pay more than $1 for a used book. I decided to read a short story by W. Somerset Maughm called The Book-Bag. It was extremely interesting, beautifully written, and quite tragic.
Next on the list was The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad. This was such a wonderful short story. I first read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness at camp in Brasil. There is a bookshelf full of old, termite eaten books which has yielded up some of my favorite books. The Secret Sharer did not disappoint. As with all of his books that I know of, it takes place on a ship. I am amazed by his grasp of the English language (he uses nautical words that I have never even heard of), yet he only learned to speak English around the age of 20. His command of the English language is much better than many native speakers; this only enhances the beauty of his writing.
Long post short, don't be afraid to try something new. I have grown so much since I allowed my college roommate to challenge my notion of good writing. Now if I could only learn to like modern fiction...
Monday, May 31, 2010
A Love Affair
I have a love affair.
With ketchup.
My family will attest to this. As an adult, I finally stopped sucking the ketchup packets clean when my husband (then fiancee) told me how many germs were on said ketchup packet.
The following exchange cemented my love for the new t.v. show called The Middle. Mike is the father and Brick is the quirky, book-loving youngest child. (Even though I'm the oldest, I'm the quirky one. Just ask my sister):
"Ketchup packets?" -Mike
"They are my security condiments. They soothe me." -Brick
Three facts about ketchup:
1. Ketchup is spelled ketchup, not catsup. That is what we say in North Carolina when the 20 lb. cat finally comes into the living room at the end of the day. "Cat'sup."
2. Ketchup is good on everything. Especially on some pinto beans with a little onion chopped up on top. YUM. They practically laugh at you at the Angus Barn if you ask for ketchup to go with your steak. Too bad, people. Laugh on.
3. Ketchup can lead you to a lot of good places and one strange, entertaining, mentally ill man named Joe Gould, aka Professor Seagull. He lived in Greenwich village and sometimes survived on coffee and ketchup. So much ketchup that when the local diner waitresses saw him coming, they would hide all the ketchup bottles. He was a well known bohemian figure in Greenwich Village and posed nude for the famous portrait artist Alice Neel. (A note for my audience, the portrait is NOT G-rated. It is impressive nonetheless.) Joe Gould was most famous for working on An Oral History of Our Time. He claimed it was the longest book ever written with over 9,000,000 words. After his death some of his notebooks were found but they were not the impressive work that he claimed-they were just a few stories from his life along with his diary.
e.e. cummings featured him in the following poem from his collection called No Thanks:
little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where
to find them(and found a secondhand set which click)little
gould used to amputate his appetite with bad brittle
candy but just(nude eel)now little joe lives on air
Harvard Brevis Est for Handkerchief read Papernapkin no laundry
bills likes People preferring Negroes Indians Youse
n. b. ye twang of little joe(yankee)gould irketh sundry
who are trying to find their minds(but never had any to lose)
and a myth is as good as a smile but little joe gould's quote oral
history unquote might(publishers note) be entitled a wraith's
progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged or an amoral
morality sort-of-aliveing by innumerable kind-of-deaths
(Amerique Je T'Aime and it may be fun to be fooled
but it's more fun to be more to be fun to be little joe gould)
You should read the book Joe Gould's Secret. It was my find of the year at the Wake County Public Library sale last November.
I'll leave you with Joe Gould's poem My Religion even though it has nothing to do with ketchup.
It makes me laugh. A LOT.
With ketchup.
My family will attest to this. As an adult, I finally stopped sucking the ketchup packets clean when my husband (then fiancee) told me how many germs were on said ketchup packet.
The following exchange cemented my love for the new t.v. show called The Middle. Mike is the father and Brick is the quirky, book-loving youngest child. (Even though I'm the oldest, I'm the quirky one. Just ask my sister):
"Ketchup packets?" -Mike
"They are my security condiments. They soothe me." -Brick
Three facts about ketchup:
1. Ketchup is spelled ketchup, not catsup. That is what we say in North Carolina when the 20 lb. cat finally comes into the living room at the end of the day. "Cat'sup."
2. Ketchup is good on everything. Especially on some pinto beans with a little onion chopped up on top. YUM. They practically laugh at you at the Angus Barn if you ask for ketchup to go with your steak. Too bad, people. Laugh on.
3. Ketchup can lead you to a lot of good places and one strange, entertaining, mentally ill man named Joe Gould, aka Professor Seagull. He lived in Greenwich village and sometimes survived on coffee and ketchup. So much ketchup that when the local diner waitresses saw him coming, they would hide all the ketchup bottles. He was a well known bohemian figure in Greenwich Village and posed nude for the famous portrait artist Alice Neel. (A note for my audience, the portrait is NOT G-rated. It is impressive nonetheless.) Joe Gould was most famous for working on An Oral History of Our Time. He claimed it was the longest book ever written with over 9,000,000 words. After his death some of his notebooks were found but they were not the impressive work that he claimed-they were just a few stories from his life along with his diary.
e.e. cummings featured him in the following poem from his collection called No Thanks:
little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where
to find them(and found a secondhand set which click)little
gould used to amputate his appetite with bad brittle
candy but just(nude eel)now little joe lives on air
Harvard Brevis Est for Handkerchief read Papernapkin no laundry
bills likes People preferring Negroes Indians Youse
n. b. ye twang of little joe(yankee)gould irketh sundry
who are trying to find their minds(but never had any to lose)
and a myth is as good as a smile but little joe gould's quote oral
history unquote might(publishers note) be entitled a wraith's
progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged or an amoral
morality sort-of-aliveing by innumerable kind-of-deaths
(Amerique Je T'Aime and it may be fun to be fooled
but it's more fun to be more to be fun to be little joe gould)
You should read the book Joe Gould's Secret. It was my find of the year at the Wake County Public Library sale last November.
I'll leave you with Joe Gould's poem My Religion even though it has nothing to do with ketchup.
It makes me laugh. A LOT.
My Religion
In winter I'm a Buddhist,
In summer I'm a nudist.
In winter I'm a Buddhist,
In summer I'm a nudist.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
A few of my favorite things :-)
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Rereadables
Hmm... I'm not really sure if "rereadables" is a word, but I'm going to use it today. Here is my list of rereadable books in no certain order. These are books that I have loved; books that hold so much more in them than what you can absorb the first time you read them. All of these novels, for some reason or the other, resonate inside of me.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Memoirs of a Geisha barely made the list, but when I read it I was enraptured with the culture and I remember being in awe of the book. It was unlike anything I had read before. The two most recent additions are Wuthering Heights and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The first is mostly full of terrible people while the latter is full of great people; both are fascinating. Jane Eyre is a beautiful love story and Great Expectations is a masterpiece. Narziss and Goldmund describes the balance that needs to be achieved between humanity and the spirit. If you go too far in one direction or the other, you end up being unable to understand that you need a little of both to live in peace. The Good Earth is beautiful because it shows man's relationship with nature. Finally, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is hilariously funny, and there is just way too much craziness inside that book to only read it once. My descriptions don't explain these books the way I want, but hey, it is a start.
Please leave feedback today! What are the books that you think are worth rereading?
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Memoirs of a Geisha barely made the list, but when I read it I was enraptured with the culture and I remember being in awe of the book. It was unlike anything I had read before. The two most recent additions are Wuthering Heights and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The first is mostly full of terrible people while the latter is full of great people; both are fascinating. Jane Eyre is a beautiful love story and Great Expectations is a masterpiece. Narziss and Goldmund describes the balance that needs to be achieved between humanity and the spirit. If you go too far in one direction or the other, you end up being unable to understand that you need a little of both to live in peace. The Good Earth is beautiful because it shows man's relationship with nature. Finally, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is hilariously funny, and there is just way too much craziness inside that book to only read it once. My descriptions don't explain these books the way I want, but hey, it is a start.
Please leave feedback today! What are the books that you think are worth rereading?
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