The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

Surely you've read The Life of Pi by Yann Martel when it came out in 2001.
Everyone did.

Or maybe you saw the movie, which was pretty good, but still not the book.

From that book, and the HOURS that I spent thinking about it and its meaning, I began to understand a concept that my friend Kendra introduced me to: Magical Realism. A concept that, according to Kendra, appears often in Mexican literature, like hers. In magical realism, smack dab in the middle of a normal piece of literature, the author plops bizarre or symbolic bits of magic. And, interestingly, as Kendra told me, it is all without fanfare or attention of any kind. We are merely to accept its existence in the literature.

It took me years to truly appreciate magical realism and The Life of Pi, though I'm quite sure I misinterpreted THAT ONE for years, helped me to understand magical realism and to savor the flavor and color that it adds to the dish (subtle allusion to Like Water for Chocolate by Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel).  

And so, in my reading of The High Mountains of Portugal, besides the gorgeous language and everyday wonder, I thought I was reading a novel of magical realism. But when I went to the lit analysts of the internet, I discovered that I, again, had missed the whole point of the book. Apparently it's about religion.

Oh well. Stay tuned for my review anyway. 

 

Just One Damn Thing After Another

I was at the library on a rainy and cold day just passing some time. One of my favorite things is passing time at the library. I love exploring the stacks, reading in the reading room, ...being there. I usually stash my stuff somewhere, grab my reading glasses, and sit in front of a spot of the shelves and check out every single book on that shelf. 

On this particular rainy, cold day I was in the T section, novels with authors whose last names begin with the letter T. Think Tan, Theroux, Tolkien, Tyler, Turow.

I found a couple of books from a book series by Jodi Taylor, books number three and seven in an eight book series called The Chronicles of St. Mary's. These two books had the look of an early Rick Riordan book or Brandon Mull, teen books that I used to read to the kids back in their childhoods. Fantasy, adventure, excitement. I picked up the two books from the shelf and took them to the librarians to locate book number one from the series. 

I'm telling this little bit of the search for a book because of this bit: both of the librarians got excited about the books when I brought them up to the counter! We all looked at the books, getting more and more excited about them.  lol

From the cover it looks like a teen adventure series, but it is not for teens. It is definitely for adults. If the sex and language was removed from the text, it would be great for teens. As it stands, I wouldn't really recommend it for younger folks, and I'm pretty liberal that way...

The story is less detail and more adventure. The characters are less depth and more fun. The scenarios are less realistic and more fantastic. It's just a fun book to read if you have some time to kill. I wouldn't go out of my way to read this series if you prefer serious fantasy. 

BUT, if time travel, bumbling mistakes in times of crisis, and sass-appeal entertain you, you will not be sorry. I do plan on reading the next book in the series, A Second Chance.

I give this book six stars for the fun...and the romance.

All is True

It's not often that I review a movie on this blog, but I must. I am a huge fan of the classics, of historical films, of classic literature film, of theater. I thought I'd seen just about everything history and Shakespeare worth seeing. But, as it happens, I accidentally stumbled upon a, possible, perfect film of this genre. A film that feels like a true gem of discovery. All is True.

I don't know how much is true in All is True, or how historically accurate the film is. Nor do I know if accuracy is able to be determined at this point. Webpages and writing exist online discussing this very thing, the truth and accuracy of the story; I won't address that here.

Let's focus on the film, the set, the cast. Let's start with this stellar cast, for it is formidable. Kenneth Branagh as Shakespeare is...quiet and human, yet explosive. I'm a fan of Branagh, have been since Much Ado About Nothing, this affection for him despite his overall cheesiness in general. In this role as William Shakespeare, someone who seems larger than life and legendary, Branagh plays the bard as a very human and flawed individual. Comedy and tragedy, in a single man.

Dame Judy Densch as Mrs. Anne Shakespeare. Ian McKennen as the Earl of Southampton. We're talking a stellar cast here. And the set is basically some sylvan, rustic farming villa, the home of William's wife Anne and children at Stratford on Avon. And a garden.

William Shakespeare has retired from his theater competitions with Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nash, and others at the Globe Theater. He has retired and has moved back to the discomfort and unfamiliarity of his family home, a place where he has only visited for many years, Stratford on Avon. In these, his final years, William must reintegrate with his wife, his two daughters, and all family at the house. When watching the film, at some parts, I recommend pausing the film and going to learn more about William and Anne's children Susanna, Judith, and Hamnet for the more you understand, the more fully satisfying is the story.

As Anne and William begin to settle into their lives together, William is contacted by the Duke of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, alerting William of the Duke's upcoming visit to Stratford. Several of William's popular sonnets are said to be written about his love affair with the Duke, so Anne is less than welcoming to this visitor. These scenes are truly among the best in movie making.

Another ongoing drama in the film, at the end of William's life he is belatedly obsessed with his grief over the loss of his young son from years ago, and William's feelings of sincere loss of his son Hamnet and of Hamnet's writing abilities. William is haunted over this loss, weakened by this belated grief, a grief that blinds him and nearly destroys William and the relationships with his remaining family.

The many familial stories woven into this film of the final days of Shakespeare are wonderful and compelling. The simple humanness of the genius William Shakespeare...I loved the film.
I really did. Eight stars.

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

Is it a fairy tale, a folk tale, an allegory, an ode?
I couldn't say. Perhaps it is all of these.
Unexpectedly.

I stumbled upon this title one day while roaming the shelves of my local library. I had read nothing else by Marisa  Silver, nor had I heard of the book before checking it out.  I had about ten minutes to grab a book from the library as I was going out of town for a few days and needed something to pass some time. Little Nothing by Marisa Silver grabbed my eye based on the unusual story line from the flap.

The basic story began as many childhood fables begin, with a childless couple longing for a child. This older couple from an unnamed country in the later part of the 19th century, I think, takes their desire for a child to a local witch and do, in fact, give birth to a child, a child who turns out to be born with dwarfism. In spite of their love for their child, they do, eventually return to the witch after seeking help from medical professionals, seeking to elongate their daughter. 

Through the black magic from the witch, the little girl, Pavla, experiences a number of transformations, seeking a life worth living. Her experiences, as well as the assistant of one of the country doctors, Danilo, become the central figures in the narration. Pavla and Danilo become strange and wonderful friends and, through the magical transformations and the progression of life, they are drawn apart, far apart, as we long for their reunion and for a happy ending.

Medical quackery and black magic play a part on both the pain and abuse suffered by Pavla as well as in her need to be happy and connected, to find meaning. I don't wish to give away any specifics of the story, but I do highly recommend this wonderful and surprising tale of magic and nature. I enjoyed the beautiful writing as well as the shocking parts. Some of the writing felt poetic and lyrical and that always draws me in. In short, I found Little Nothings to be a surprising tale of magical realism that kept me awake long into the night when I should have gone to bed far earlier. And, for that sleep loss and those pink morning skies with this book before my eyes, I award this novel eight stars. Check it out!

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

I just finished a book that was so surprising that I had to run over here to write about it immediately! I have to begin by saying something about Joshilyn Jackson, the author of The Almost Sisters. Namely, how did Jackson escape me all of these years? Her writing is fresh and fun and dark and bright and nuanced and insightful and, as it happens, quite popular and well-selling. Again, how did I miss her?

It turns out Joshilyn Jackson has at least twelve titles out there with quite a following. Who knew?

Somehow, on my ereader, I randomly bought the book The Almost Sisters, and I can honestly say that from here on out I will completely trust my instincts when purchasing an ebook, even without ever picking up the real book and sniffing the pages. Now, on to the book.

The Almost Sisters is a story told from the perspective of Leia Birch Briggs, a comic book writer and illustrator, yes, you read that right. Leia is a bit wayward, a bit lonely, a bit lost, and a bit pregnant when she gets the family trumpet call to head down to Alabama to step up to help her very beloved grandmother who is beginning to exhibit some serious dementia.

Leia, in Alabama, discovers that her grandmother is in a far more serious condition and situation than she could have expected because family secrets are being unearthed all over the place at Grandma Birchie's house; watch OUT for that attic! Leia settles in for a long bout of protecting her grandmother, getting her own personal life into some semblance of order, and helping to solve the family mysteries that she feels all around her. As the reader, I had a mystery of my own to solve, exactly who or what are the almost sisters? I had a number of ideas as I read this one and I was, I'll admit, rather surprised at the revelation.

Enter a hot Batman, a Southern Old Bitty of a neighbor, and a precocious niece, and Leia's humor and wonderful nerdiness prove her to be totally up for the challenge.

I don't want to say more about his book, only that I can highly recommend it if the weather is getting cooler in your neck of the woods and if you're a hot tea drinker...this is the book for that rainy, cold Saturday afternoon. I have to give this surprising find a high rating of 8 stars, see if you aren't as generous with your stars after reading this little gem...now I'm off to read something else by this author!

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

Fergoodnesssake Go Read This Book! 

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

How did I locate this amazing gem at our local library? Did I just browse across it? YES, I think that is how it happened! However it happened, let me just say that, during these early weeks of my job that has had me truly overwhelmed, this book has been a GO-TO, in spite of my busyness. I didn't want to miss a word of it.


Lindy West, mostly according to Wikipedia, is an American writer, comedian and activist. She is the author of the essay collection Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. The topics she writes about include feminism, popular culture, and the fat acceptance movement. But she's so much more than that. She's me. She's you. She's all of us in spades.

Her realism had me literally laughing out loud, crying, again laughing out loud, and then closing the book to think...all in about a two page tirade...just READ IT. 

West uses her platform to talk about being fat. Yes. Fat. I have always lived in a culture of tiny*; so have you. Tiny waists, tiny bottoms, tiny tops, tiny necks, tiny ring fingers, tiny thighs (PLEASE get the center fat from your thighs removed so that the thighs no longer touch each other!), tiny feet, tiny wrists. We have all lived in this weird cultural obsession with thin. Not healthy, thin. We barely see it, we barely notice its power. But it's there and it's in our heads.

We females and males who are "larger" know that moment that someone looks from our eyes to our hips, to our thighs, to our oversized tunic. We know the second we're so very seen and unseen at the same moment. We know the exact second the other person's eyes squint in frustration at having to be exposed to "larger". It's unfair to them. It's uncomfortable for them. 
We're SO sorry.

Lindy West opened my eyes to this in this book full of essays that range in subject from Kick Ass Femaling to Body Pride to the hilariously unfunny career of comedians to The Abortion Story to painful relationships that make you laugh until you cry to revolutionary self love to self loving ANYWAY to those compromising, painful years of young adulthood. Shrill is the book I've been looking for this year. All I can do is share some moments from the book with you and hope you'll go out and get it. It's about body positivity, yes, but it's SO much more.
Go get it.
Because I care about you; I want you to read it.

Here are a few of my favorites:

I believe unconditionally in the right of people with uteruses to decide what grows inside of their body and feeds on their blood and endangers their life and reroutes their future. There are no ‘good’ abortions and ‘bad’ abortions, there are only pregnant people who want them and pregnant people who don’t, pregnant people who have access and support and pregnant people who face institutional roadblocks and lies.
For that reason, we simply must talk about it.

I reject the notion that thinness is the goal,that thin = better—that I am an unfinished thing and that my life can really start when I lose weight.That then I will be a real person and have finally succeeded as a woman.

I am not going to waste another second of my life thinking about this. I don’t want to have another fucking conversation with another fucking woman about what she’s eating or not eating or regrets eating or pretends to not regret eating to mask the regret.

OOPS I JUST YAWNED TO DEATH.

Please don’t forget: I am my body. When my body gets smaller, it is still me. When my body gets bigger, it is still me. There is not a thin woman inside me, awaiting excavation. I am one piece.

One time, I noticed that the little waxy strips you peel off the maxi pad adhesive were printed, over and over, with a slogan: 'Kotex Understands.' In the worst moments, when my period felt like a death - the death of innocence, the death of safety, the harbinger of a world where I was too fat, too weird, too childish, too ungainly - I'd sit hunched over on the toilet and stare at that slogan, and I'd cry. Kotex understands. Somebody, somewhere, understands.

When I look at photographs of my twenty-two-year-old self, so convinced of her own defectiveness, I see a perfectly normal girl and I think about aliens. If an alien came to earth - a gaseous orb or a polyamorous cat person or whatever - it wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between me and Angelina Jolie, let alone rank us by hotness. It'd be like, 'Uh, yeah, so those ones have the under-the-face fat sacks, and the other kind has that dangly pants nose. Fuck, these things are gross. I can't wait to get back to the omnidirectional orgy gardens of Vlaxnoid 7.

...who decided that “astronaut” would be a great dream job for a kid? It’s like 97 percent math, 1 percent breathing some Russian dude’s farts, 1 percent dying, and 1 percent eating awesome powdered ice cream. If you’re the very luckiest kind of astronaut ever, your big payoff is that you get to visit a barren airless wasteland for five minutes, do some more math, and then go home—ice cream not guaranteed. Anyway, loophole: I can already buy astronaut ice cream at the Science Center, no math or dying required. Lindy, 1; astronauts nada. (Unless you get points for debilitating low bone density, in which case… I concede.) Not

Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial.

I had been erroneously led to believe that “veterinarian” was the grown-up term for “professional animal-petter.

The active ingredient in period stigma is misogyny.

As a woman, my body is scrutinized, policed, and treated as a public commodity. As a fat woman, my body is also lampooned, openly reviled, and associated with moral and intellectual failure. My body limits my job prospects, access to medical care and fair trials, and – the one thing Hollywood movies and Internet trolls most agree on – my ability to be loved. So the subtext, when a thin person asks a fat person, ‘Where do you get your confidence?’ is, ‘You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would definitely throw myself into the sea.”

When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time—that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

To be shrill is to reach above your station; to abandon your duty to soothe and please; in short, to be heard.

And for those of you who wondered if I would ever give out full stars for a book review, today is the day and I thank Lindy West from the bottom of my heart for Shrill.

*  Except for the HUGE hair and shoulder pads of the 80s.
 

The Lost Letter by Jillian Cantor: Proof of Unusual Daring

I've discovered a favorite story frame.
I love that thing where action is going on in the past while people in the present are researching or investigating or uncovering that story from the past. And we, too, are having that past revealed to us slowly as the people in the present are being drawn in or effected in some way.
Ya know?

Not unlike how coolly Dan Brown did The DaVinci Code. That was excellently written.
 
Jillian Cantor pulls off this story frame beautifully in The Lost Letter.


Set in both the present in California, 1989, and the past, 1933 in Austria as the Nazis are moving into the countryside of Austria and spreading their antisemitic violence, The Lost Letter  tells of a young man named Kristoff who has come to apprentice with an Austrian master stamp maker named Frederick Faber. Kristoff, a young man who, as a baby, was orphaned, has come to the Faber household to learn the trade of making stamps, postage stamps, using the engraving tools of his mentor Frederick Faber. All the while, Kristoff is amazed with his supreme good fortune to experience the warmth of the Faber family, the kindness and goodness of Frederick, and the comforting family-focused rituals of the Faber's Jewish traditions carried out each week. The weekly traditions display the family bond in a way that Kristoff has never experienced or imagined before.

A non-Jew, Kristoff sees the violence wrought by the Germans while standing on a hill overlooking Vienna on the night known as Kristallnacht, the night that Vienna was destroyed by the Nazis leaving glass strewn across the streets and buildings destroyed by fire. On that night, Frederick had traveled to Vienna and is now missing. The Faber family panics and grieves, all while the Nazis begin to terrorize the small bergs in the Austrian country side. Seeing the utter devastation of Kristallnacht, Kristoff muses, It is called Kristallnacht but it should be called Night of Tears rather than Night of Glass.

As a result of Krystallnacht and the encroaching Nazis, Kristoff becomes aware that the Faber's elder daughter Elena has been involved in a resistance movement with small efforts to thwart the Nazis and to defend her beloved Austria. This story line is inspired by real resistance workers during World War II Austria and shows us the strength and great determination of Elena. She is quite an admirable young woman.

In 1989, we have a devastated young woman, Katie Nelson, still fragile and wounded from her husband Daniel leaving her because he can't tolerate the time she is spending with her father, an elderly philatelist who has developed Alzheimer's.* Katie's father Ted has recently entered into a nursing home because his Alzheimer's has made it necessary for him to have continuous care and Katie spends a great deal of time with him. Her mother died years ago and Katie has had a wonderfully loving relationship with her father for all of these years.

In Katie's first scene, we see her taking her father's letter and stamp collection to a philatelist, hoping to find something of value in order to help with her father's care. Carrying her crumbling pile of stamps and things into the stamp store, Katie meets the store's manager and master appraiser Benjamin who promises to review the collection and call her if he discovers anything interesting among Katie's father's stamp and letter collection. A gem. That's what Katie is hoping to discover in the collection: a gem.

I'm not completely certain why Katie brings that dusty pile of papers to the stamp guy, Benjamin, when she does. She is in a place of utter devastation. Her husband has abandoned her in a moment of need. She is losing her beloved father to the ravages of Alzheimers, slowly, surely losing him one day at at time. Perhaps she is seeking something meaningful in his strewn life detritus? Perhaps she is seeking memories in this place where her father is losing his...

Edelweiss

The book is called The Lost Letter because Benjamin, the stamp appraiser guy, discovers an unopened letter in the pile of stamps and whatnot with an enigmatic stamp, a stamp known to have been carved and circulated during the Nazi occupation of Austria, however this stamp seems to have a faint, hidden (?) outline of the Austrian flower blossom edelweiss. Furthermore, the stamp is placed upside down on the envelope, symbolically suggesting that the letter is a love letter from one to another. Katie and Benjamin are both intrigued and, after some further research, set off on a bit of a journey to discover more about the stamp, the stamp maker, and, ultimately, the letter itself.

We begin to understand that Kristoff and Elena, the eldest daughter of Ted Faber, are, in 1933, in a silent and growing romance in spite of the horror in which they are living. And we begin to understand that the letter we are holding, with the upside down stamp, the fading ink, and the crumbling paper, might contain a heartbreaking love letter between two separated lovers, never to see one another again in the devastating world of Nazi-occupied Austria. 

Furthermore, we begin to understand that a delicate alliance is forming between the gentle Katie and the wounded Benjamin, somehow allowing a whisper of healing and love. Can this lost letter bring something found? 


While I have not read anything else by Jillian Cantor, I imagine I'll be adding more of her books to my growing pile of Must Read books. In The Lost Letter, I thoroughly enjoy her historical flair, her incredibly emotive writing, the tender and the pragmatic, the horror and the beauty, the pain and the promise. It's a must read. 

I'm giving this book a rating of seven of ten stars.

 

Will you read it?
If so, I promise you'll discover the contents of the captivating letter.  😊

*  Yeah, Daniel never really improves in this book...

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula Le Guin

Ursula K. LeGuin was doing her thing in the 1970's, the years of the hippies and the exploration of Eastern philosophies. The daughter of an anthropologist father and a mother studying psychology, Ursula was coming of age in a family rife with speculative study, cultural observation, academics, feminism, and Jungian philosophy.
I'm jealous.

I have to admit right here and now that I had to go online to figure out what, exactly, I'd just been reading...  
Turns out it's about Taoism and Utilitarianism.
No, seriously.  ☯



The Lathe of Heaven opens up with a dream sequence, a dream of a jellyfish floating in a vast sea. I'm sharing that dream sequence here because the writing grabbed me immediately and I know you will love it:

Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.
(Bold text is mine.)

I'm starting with this quote from the very first page of The Lathe of Heaven because jellyfish seems to be a theme of the book because the main character, George Orr, is frequently compared to a jellyfish. A man moving through life, letting ebbs and flows carry him along, never quite making a plan or a choice. Yet, somehow, he becomes the hero; the strength of the whole ocean is behind him, afterall. 
Stay tuned.

∾

Ursula Le Guin

At the opening of the book, our main character, George Orr, is waking up from a strange dream (stick around, dreams play heavy in this book) and he is immediately confronted with medical first responders, and confusion. It turns out that George is being busted for overdosing on medication, medication designed to keep him awake at all costs. We soon learn that, in this strange dystopian age, George's medications are being monitored by the state and he is known to be using his medications incorrectly.

Because of this culturally gross abuse of medications, George is directed to see a therapist in order to avoid stronger punishment. While meeting with his new therapist, Dr. William Haber, a sleep and dream specialist, we learn that George's misuse of the pep pills is almost understandable. It turns out that George is taking the medications to avoid sleeping, not because he is afraid of nightmares or sleepwalking, but because sometimes when George dreams, his dreams come true. His dreams change reality.

At first glance, this sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? 
Who doesn't want to have their dreams become reality?
For example, just last night, and this is true, I was dreaming of Benedict Cumberbatch. Just as I asked him to come back to my hotel room and he said yes, my cell phone alarm went off. 

Long story short, I need a new phone...
😉

The problem, though, even with this sweet problem, George keeps finding himself making terrible things happen through his dreaming, even when he has the best of intentions. Thus, he tries to stay awake indefinitely.
Sadly, upon entering into the care of Dr. Haber, George does not realize that he, George, has come under the thumb of a power-hungry man who attempts to bring George's dream powers into his own control.

Image by  Eleanor Wood

Dr. Haber seeks, first, to control George's dreams by planting suggestions into the dreams. For example, each time George goes to sleep in the doctor's office, he wakes up to grander and grander office spaces occupied by Dr. Haber because Dr. Haber is using the dreaming as a way to improve his own life, in addition to trying to make improvements in the wide world. 

Unfortunately George's dreaming, in spite of Dr. Haber's direction and control, leads to greater and greater problems in the wide world, beginning with the town in which this book is set, Portland Oregon, which begins experiencing terrible volcanic activity from the formerly-dormant Mount Hood. The problems from the dreaming become more and more awful, including huge losses of the population, alien invasion, even the end of the world.
Did they even THINK of a dream catcher?

In his disgust with George being jellyfish-like, Dr. Haber works out some high-falutin' scientific device and plans to move the Trumped-Up dreaming from George's head to his own head, megalomaniac style. I'm going to leave the cute technologies to the reader to find out. Suffice it to say that this book was written in 1971 and computers were in their, what comes before infancy, zygote-hood. Dr. Haber's device is a bit hilarious, but deviously so. Lucky for us, George figures out the plan and saves us all from a fate worse than death...he rescues us from the end of All That Is.


Weirdly, even though George is quite depressed and sad, although he is quite wishy-washy, and although he is really quite dull, it is his propensity for mediocrity and the Middle Way that saves us all. He is quite exceptional for his mediocrity. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the book is when George is getting results back from the personality test administered by Doctor Haber. Here's a part of the test results, a short excerpt that actually made me laugh:

I believe it's time for you to know that, within the frame of reference of those standardized but extremely subtle and useful tests, you are so sane as to be an anomaly. Of course, I'm using the lay word 'sane,' which has no precise objective meaning; in quantifiable terms, you're median. Your extroversion/introversion score, for instance, was 49.1. That is, you're more introverted than extroverted by .9 of a degree. That's not unusual; what is, is the emergence of the same damn pattern everywhere, right across the board. If you put them all onto the same graph you sit smack in the middle at 50. 

Furthermore, the doctor, in his case notes describes George as Unaggressive, placid, milquetoast, repressed, conventional.  
How Dr. Haber despises George's boring weakness, his jellyfishness.


Now what was that about Taoism and Utilitarianism?
 
Consider when Le Guin was writing. 1971. She was living during a time when, culturally, the US was deep into the hippies (think counterculture and the sexual revolution), the Vietnam War (think of the war on TV each night and those fighting the war), Civil Rights (think MLK and his I Have a Dream speech), Women's Lib (think Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique), Space Exploration (think Apollos 1 and 11), Race Relations (think segregation and the protests to segregation), threats of nuclear war (think the Cuban Missile Crisis), protests in the streets (think Che Guevara, among others), and the Beatles.

As a result of these and many other influences, Eastern mysticism became hip and cool and trendy about this time. I remember it. So Le Guin explores her own Taoism journey right here in the pages of this book.
 

So what is Taoism?

According to about fifty websites, Taoism or Daoism, is a philosophy centered on the belief that life is normally happy, but should be lived with balance and virtue. Taoism is also known as The Middle Way or The Path.

Cool. So what is Utilitarianism? 

Utilitarianism is a theory in philosophy about right and wrong actions. It says that the morally best action is the one that makes the most overall happiness or "utility" (usefulness). The greatest good for the greatest number of people.

And how do these two concepts interact in this book?

Easy, surprisingly.
George is a walking, talking Taoism symbol, almost like Yoda (not). And, it turns out, the doctor represents utilitarianism, though a slightly messed up version of it. Although the doctor and George experiment with dreams about creating a happier, better world for us all, Utilitarianism, none of these dreams actually come to fruition without serious complications. It isn't until George insists on walking the Tao way, the center, the simple way, do we see some semblance of joy and peace. 

Is this simplified?

YES.
I'm no philosophy major.

But I'll keep trying:


☯
The yin-yang symbol fits here. In every good is an equal bit of bad...just like the stuff resulting from the good-intentions of the dream.
SEE, I'm getting it!

The greatest good for the greatest number of people—we can all get on board with that one, can't we? Utilitarianism seeks to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. While the principles of utilitarianism might seem pretty reasonable, in The Lathe of Heaven we see how things can go horribly, horribly wrong, even with the best of intentions. And even more horribly wrong in the hands of the ego-maniacal Dr. Haber.

Anytime these man seek to alter the reality of things, they unbalance things, move things from the center, and create chaos. It is only in the middle where we are safe, happy, productive.


Le Guin, in this tiny little novel, also explores subjects of race, love, power, good vs. evil, ...even freedom is explored right here in this tiny little book. And far better than this choppy blog post.
I'd say go and read it!

I'm giving this book a total of seven stars for the number of times I had to go online and remind myself about the various bits of philosophy that hid in the text. SO worth it.

Do you think you'll go and read it?

The Fifth Doll by Charlie N. Holmberg

I started wondering why I'm writing these blog posts about the books that I read. The internet is populated by so many wonderful and useful book sites. Goodreads, Literary Hub, Bookbub (recommended by my mother-in-law, Sharon), LibraryThing, and so many more book review sites exist, not even to mention Amazon.com, that it would seem that a teeny tiny little blog like this would be kind of ridiculous. But I have to be honest.

I don't write these book blog posts for you.
I write them for me.

I read so much that I actually forget my books, and quickly too.
These blog posts about books are almost entirely so that I can look back and think DANG, That was a great book; I'd forgotten!
😆

And I do do that! I've already forgotten about half of the books that I've reviewed already.  lol  I'll look back at a book and think, HEY, I forgot about that one!  Ridiculous and embarrassing to admit, but there you are.

So you, the reader, are the very fortunate beneficiaries of my terrible memory.

Before I look again at The Lathe of Heaven  by Ursula Le Guin I'm going to give you a quick taste of a quick little book I picked up from the library: The Fifth Doll  by Charlie N. Holmberg. Holmberg is fairly well known for her The Paper Magician series of fantasy books. I haven't read them at all and knew nothing about this author before this. If you've read The Paper Magician, I'd love to hear from you about it!

Instead, at my library, I was browsing and picked up The Fifth Doll, a small little book with the cover above with the colorful little matroyshka dolls. The description was so compelling I slapped it onto the pile of books I was bringing home to read...and it waited there on my living room table for about a week before I picked it up.

The Fifth Doll is fantasy or sci-fi, kind of a mixture. But even more, it reads like a Russian story of folklore or like a fable, which is cool. I've not always been a reader of sci-fi, and I certainly have not been a reader of fantasy. But as I get older, I enjoy the mind-stretching, the thought experiment of it all. In the case of this book, I read a couple of pages and thought, Nah, this isn't my cup of tea, and I started to put it down.

But I then thought, Wait a minute. What if it's a hidden gem?  Well, just a few pages later - I was hooked and could not wait to explore what was going on. Let me bring you in on a quick taste of the book.


Matrona is a very satisfied young woman living on the outskirts of a small, peaceful village with her parents. She and her parents had recently arranged a marriage with a young man from a good family in the village (Feodor) and Matrona was busy helping her parents with the milking of the cows and the churning of the butter and she was supporting her best friend who was about to give birth. A very simple and lovely life.

One day Matrona stumbles upon a paint brush on the street and she goes to return it to an elderly, rather isolating man in the village, Slava. Upon knocking on the door she hears sounds within the odd little house, though Slava does not answer her knocking, which cause her to be concerned for his safety. She enters Slava's house, going deeper into the house, as she hears sounds and fears that he is injured and in need of help.

What she finds, instead, is a bird making sounds. But also a peculiar little room with tables and shelves, all covered with wooden matroyshka dolls. Upon further inspection, she notices that each of the dolls is painted to resemble people in her little village. Matrona picks up a doll resembling her father and, accidentally, turns the two pieces that make up the doll...ever so slightly.

When she returns home, her father is behaving oddly, clumsily falling about, some confusion... After a bit, Matrona begins to wonder if the doll in his image has anything to do with her father's behavior.

Naturally she has to go back and open her own doll...so expect some magic, some dark magic, some secrets, and expect the whole down to blow wide open!



I'd love to give you another author to compare this writing style to but the only thing I can come up with is Æsop's fables. The deceptively simple writing, the pastoral setting, the magical surprises... The writing might also seem like a children's book at times, but maybe that is one style of fantasy writing...I don't know.

What I do know is that I was right. This book is a hidden gem!
I enjoyed it tremendously and recommend it! Plan on being surprised, plan on thinking you're figuring it out (you'll be wrong), and plan on finding it to be deceptively simple, but deliciously complicated too. Plan on enjoying a forbidden and surprising romance. Plan on having the entire village turned upside down. And plan on staying up too late to read just to figure out WHAT is going on!

For the simpleness of writing, for the surprises and the magic, and for the cool mystery, I give this book a rating of six stars. 
And that ain't bad, друг, Friend.

Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven

Well, I'll be darned, I found another one!

This book has been a total mind fuck in the absolutely best sense and I have to admit right here and now that I had to go online to figure out what, exactly, I'd just been reading...  😂

 
But let's look at the author first and I'll write about the book/story/etc tomorrow.

Ursula K. LeGuin was doing her thing in the 1970's, the years of the hippies, the war, the economy, rebellion of authority, overpopulation, nostalgia for a simpler time, and the exploration of Eastern philosophies. The daughter of an anthropologist father and a mother studying psychology, Ursula was coming of age in a family rife with speculative study, cultural observation, academics, moralism, feminism, and Jungian philosophy.
I'm jealous.

Having earned a master's degree in French, Le Guin began doctoral studies, but abandoned these after her marriage in 1953 to historian Charles Le Guin. She began writing full-time in the 1950s, and achieved major critical and commercial success with with her sci-fi writing, namely A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), two books that are now on my list. Ursula went on to win several writing awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula award; she was the first woman to do that.

Her novels often explored themes of feminism, race, Taoism, and gender identity, making her, in my opinion, pretty cool in the 1970's. These themes do rear their provocative heads in The Lathe of Heaven.  And, get this one, The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000. (A Library of Congress Living Legend is someone recognized by the Library of Congress for his or her creative contributions to American life.) Is that cool, or what? With that honor, she joined the ranks with other Living Legends like Sally Ride, Yo-Yo Ma, I.M. Pei, and Fred Rogers, to name a few.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies.
We will need writers who can remember freedom.
Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.- Ursula K. Le Guin

...

A young Le Guin

I know that I will be reading more Le Guin at some point because I've requested about six of her books, including one that is her memoir, from my library. I've been pulled in by her writing, some of which was simply gorgeous. And I'm interested in her 1970's exploration of themes, some of which we are still exploring today. I love the little time capsule of books, giving the reader the chance to see, not only what is being written as the story or content, but also to be able to see the time and culture in which the book was written. In this book, The Lathe of Heaven, the decade of the 1970's was as much of a shady character in the book as any walking, talking turtle. It was quite fascinating to see the play of topics in her book.

And, interestingly enough, at least to me, this is the exact same reason I'm enjoying the old TV series "Room 222" right now.

Anyway, give me a few days to process the book a bit and I'll be back with some thoughts!

Have you read anything by Le Guin?
What do you recommend?
What do you think of her writing?

Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer

Just read it.
Hope Never Dies: An Obama-Biden Mystery. It's hilarious, easy, cheap, liberal-loving, and available at your local library.

This book was a gift from a dear friend, Ronnie, who knows that I feel strongly about President Barack Obama. He gave it to me for my birthday, but my book stack was too tall to get to quickly. It's been sitting here mocking me for months. 
I finally read it.

Long story short, it's a total bromance, crime-fighting, time-passing trip inside of Joe Biden's mind. Can you imagine this crime-fighting duo? Can you picture a comical Joe Biden knocking over the coffee while his sidekick, Barack lifts an eyebrow and says Really Joe? Really?

In some ways, I would rather be in Barack Obama's head, with Barack as the main voice. But I can't even imagine that! Barack's too smooth, too cool, too suave to let us know what's running through his mind. But Joe Biden? He's every man. He's average.


...Hey, he's running for president this time, isn't he?

Without giving a summary of the story, just know that the story is solid. But even better, the comedy had me literally LOLing for most of the book. One time my husband even came into the room where I was reading and asked WHAT are you doing???  I flapped the book at him and he said I want it next.

Let's just say this, if you long to see President Obama taking down a lowlife scum of a dude, you'll want to read this book. If you want to visit the shady side of town with the white bread Joe Biden narrating the whole time, you want to read this book. (Imagine a white old man as Stephanie Plum...) And if you have a fondness for dudes caring about each other with sarcasm, dirty looks, and hilarious bromance tête-à-tête, Girrrrrrl, you want to read this book.

I just discovered that Andrew Shaffer put out a second book in this series and I'll get myself out to get it, because I'm giving this fun read six stars, only six because it's not a serious piece of literature.
😆

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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Last week I read Edith Wharton's book
A House of Mirth and loved it. This week I read her book An Age of Innocence. And loved it. Sometimes I immerse myself in a single author, enjoying their worlds, enjoying their words. I've done this with Herman Hesse, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Crichton, Karen Armstrong, and Alexandre Dumas, to name a few.

Edith Wharton books, though, now that's an acquired taste. Wharton isn't the first author I'd recommend to someone. In fact, a new online friend of mine, Julia, thought she might read Wharton and I suggested that, perhaps, she start with something more fun.
Like Jane Austin.

The Age of Innocence is another book by Wharton that was made into a film, this one starring Daniel Day Lewis as Archer, Michelle Pfeiffer as the Countess Ellen Olenska, and Winona Ryder as May. Man, I dislike knowing the casting of a film of a book. I so prefer to visualize characters myself. But there you are. In every case, I always prefer the book to the film, though I do plan on watching this movie later this week. I don't see how there is enough content to make a full-length movie of this book! There is so much musing, remembering, thinking, planning, etc...

Here's a quick look at the story of The Age of Innocence, just enough to whet your whistle:

Our protagonist, Newland Archer, a man brought up in a life of extreme privilege living in New York society in the 1870s, is engaged to the lovely May Welland, a young woman of a similarly high-society family. May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, is returning to New York society after leaving her husband in Europe. Dear Countess Ellen is followed to NYC by her untoward reputation, whispers of her behavior in leaving her husband, gossip of her bohemian ways, and concern for her ruined position in society.

May's family protects and nurtures Ellen to the best of their ability. As a part of the protection and recovery plan, May asks Newland, her affianced and, eventually, her husband, to treat Ellen with public respect, lending his upstanding reputation to hers. It is through the early conversations between the stodgy Newland and the worldly Countess that Newland begins to see the wool removed from his eyes with regards to the upper crust of his class. He begins to see the world more as it is, and this, he owes to Ellen. His respect for and understanding of the countess rises. Furthermore, his work as a lawyer helps her involvement with legalities regarding her pending divorce, all of which adds to the depth of the intimacy and secrecy of their exchanges.

Newland begins to see her in a new light, as well as seeing the small cadre of socialites in a new light, including May and her family. Thus begins the forbidden attraction between Newland and Ellen.

Who doesn't love a good love triangle?
 
In the culture of 1870's New York society, important things are not discussed openly, even in the most intimate of relationships. The convoluted, stilted dialogue of the cream of society is painful at worst, almost comical at best, and completely confusing most of the time for nothing of importance is ever spoken of clearly, concisely, or openly. Important issues are discussed through allusion and suggestion. How any understanding ever comes about is a real testament to the ability of the crème de la crème  to read nonverbal communication so well, or did they?

He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

A lift of the eye. A slight coloring of the cheek. Hesitation in speech. All of these tiny physical movements carry large amounts of information. How handicapped we would be to reply on these types of non-communicative communication in 2019. How handicapped were they then? Again and again I found myself rereading sections of text, wondering if I'd missed something crucial that was, now obvious in the story.

 In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

I found myself amused and constantly wondering why Wharton would put so much energy and effort into describing homes, rooms, and property...that is, until I discovered that Wharton also wrote books on home decorating in her time! She also seemed to enjoy writing on the history or time line of developing New York City and city culture. I found her exploration of cultural advancements entirely fascinating. Writing in the 1920's, Wharton is looking back a period of fifty years in this book.

...he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic communication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also visited several times by the protag Archer who muses, wouldn't it be interesting to see this museum get larger and more grand?  Wharton entertains her readers (and probably herself as well!) with a variety of historical references, including a beautiful moment when one character is being gaped at by passers by as she writes a note on paper on her knee in the park using the new stylographic pen, such an unwonted sight! Another wonderful moment on this cultural timeline is when our literate socialite protag, Archer, opens a crate of the newest and most popular books and authors of the time...another beautiful moment in time.

That evening he unpacked his books from London. The box was full of things he had been waiting for impatiently; a new volume of Herbert Spencer, another collection of the prolific Alpohonse  Daudet's brilliant tales, and a novel called "Middlemarch," as to which there had lately been interesting things said in reviews...he turned the pages with the sensuous joy of the book lover..."

Considering some of the characters in this novel, the Countess Ellen Olenska is, likely, considered the most interesting character in the book, but I have to give props to the innocent and simple  May. Living within the restrictive confines of her role as a newlywed lady of society, she has to find a way to both live with the fact that her husband is straying in his heart and to move through all social and family gatherings with her head held high. While Newland is discounting May as boring and the epitome of noblesse milquetoast, she is actually stronger than he is and capable of surviving and winning at a life that is unfair to the weaker sex.

Newland Archer, on the other hand, I must give some credit to for being able to open his eyes and see the facade inherent in the gentility of pedigreed high society. His romantic heart, however, proves to be a bit too bothersome to this middle-aged reader. I might have sighed over his amorous pronouncements to Ellen, given in hushed tones in the private places, when I was younger: Each time you happen to me all over again.  As an older reader, though, I found him tiresome, weak, and a tiny bit annoying at times. He does have several moments of marked saving grace, and he is  living during a time of immense social change, so I'll let him off of the hook and give him credit for making the most of his burgeoning awareness of a larger world. Coming from his Old Family, and having been brought up in the traditional way, I guess we can give Archer credit where credit is due.

The truth is, if the story had been set in the 2000's, it would have been over in a month. May would have moved on to a more worthy wealthy guy. Newland and Ellen would have had a weekend affair and then bored one another to death. Ellen would move on to a wonderful European decade, involved with a variety of dark, wealthy men while Newland would boringly work as an attorney and, forever, feel slighted. 😄
 


As a more mature reader myself, I wonder if I would have appreciated the fullness of this novel in my younger years. Edith Wharton's irony and humor is wonderfully placed throughout the novel. The subtlety and subtext of the writing is probably intended for an older audience, though some younger readers might appreciate the love story. A deeper historical understanding of the social changes in which this story takes place moves the novel from merely entertaining to quite superb. 

I'm delighted I decided to read this book before the stack of other books I have waiting for me. I give the surprising An Age of Innocence a high score of eight stars.

"Ah no," Newland thinks as he realizes May's similarity
 to her mother, "he did not want 
May to have that kind of innocence, 
the innocence that seals the mind 
against imagination and the heart against experience!

  Have you read it? .