If I didn’t have to read Lessons in Chemistry for a book club, I wouldn’t have finished it. This story of chemist Elizabeth Zott in the 1950s and 60’s painfully chronicles the prejudice and sexism in that era. Brainy and assertive, Elizabeth was a one dimensional character as were the others in the novel.
Life does have injustice, crime, violence, religious bigotry, death and broken marriages, but packing them into one novel that’s marketed as hilarious didn’t work for me. Nor did the deus ex machina.
Sisu is a Finnish cultural word that describes a kind of fortitude and resilience that they value in Finland. Since I enjoyed reading The Little Book of Hygge, I thought I’d like this too.
I didn’t. Everyday Sisue should have been a magazine article in my opinion. Instead Katja Pantzar drones on and on about her life and the many steps it takes her to get to one expert or acquaintance who knows a bit about sisu or another. So much is padding here. Zzzzz.
The writing style is average and even if Pantzar felt compelled to talk about her yoga pals or the people she met at a conference, she could tighten up those passages. I acutely felt like she was paid by the word. That’s how it is in some writing work, but here it’s so noticeable.
The best book, definitely the best memoir, that I’ve read in years, The Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg chronicles her experience of imprisonment in USSR during the Stalin era. Since she saw no evidence against her colleague, Ginzburg refused to wrongly condemn him as a Trotskyite. Thus she was imprisoned for over a decade.
A poet and writer, Ginzburg writes of how she was torn from her husband and two young children and imprisoned in 1937 for over a decade. Ginzburg was a faithful Communist, but that didn’t matter. Stalin’s henchmen would imprison millions, many of whom agreed with him.
I was astonished by Ginzburg’s bravery. She stood her ground when pressured with the threat of torture unless she signed documents that falsely charged her with terrorism and other crimes. Her refusal saved her life since admitting to those crimes would allow the Soviet government to execute her. Even when interrogated in marathon sessions, Ginzburg stuck to her principles.
To communicate, Ginzburg and her fellow prisoners ingeniously devised codes consisting of taps on the walls and songs. This was how they shared news of the outside and changes in the prison. Prisoners were allowed to write home, but their letters were censored. Ginzburg eventually developed a code with her mother so rather than using her own name or her family members’ names, using fictitious names of imaginary children. So rather than asking about her husband, she’d make up a little boy’s name and ask if he’s back from camp to find out if her husband had been released from prison. The codes were quite clever and worked.
Conditions in the prison, train to the work camp and work camp were horrific and Ginzburg described them vividly, but the dignity and bravery she showed throughout the book, elevated her writing so that I could keep reading. She also provided astute observations about the people she was imprisoned with. Some retained their haughty airs, while others banded together and sacrificed to help a sick woman who needed food or who needed information on how the system worked.
This was a period that knew about at a textbook level of generalities and read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’sOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I now want to reread. Ginzburg’s book made this chapter of history crystal clear. There is a 2009 movie but I doubt I could watch it. If the torture and injustice are accurately depicted, it’s probably too much for me and if they aren’t I’d be upset by the cherry-coating.
Is this a parody or a clever gimmick intended for children? I wanted more satire. This disappointed. There are a lot of riffs on the Good Night Moon book, which is something of a literary lullaby. Good Morning Zoom tries to explain the Lockdown culture. I think something else could do that better.
I saw this beside the cash register at my local book store. It’s intended as an impulse buy. Try to resist as I did.
A graphic history of the first atomic bomb, Trinity shows the history of development of The Bomb from the Curie’s experimentation with radioactivity to the Manhattan Project to the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s a concise book with lots of science, math and history. I was surprised that it would offer so much detail on the scientists’ work and personal history.
I enjoyed this quick, educational read. It’s good for ages 12 and up.
After watching the Hillsdale College Classic Children’s Literature lesson on The Snow Queen, I had to read the story for myself. I got a version of this Hans Christian Anderson story, which was illustrated by Yana Sedova. The pictures were sumptuous with lots of icy blues to capture the world of the story.
After watching the lecture, I noticed so many facets of this tale and its theme of reason vs. imagination (a false dichotomy if ever there was one). I don’t remember ever reading The Snow Queen though I had a vague familiarity with its plot. I liked it’s depiction of friendship and loyalty as well as its emphasis on friendship.
Sharon Creech’s Hate that Cat is a super quick read, perfect if you have a book report due tomorrow and hadn’t started a book. Though Creech’s Walk Two Moons is among my favorite novels for children, Hate that Cat didn’t grab me.
Evidently, Hate that Cat is the second book in a series. The hero writes letters to his favorite teacher and shares all his thoughts about poetry, cats, dogs, and writing with the teacher. The book introduces young readers to poets like William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allen Poe. The most interesting facet of the book was that the narrator’s mother is deaf and he can sign ASL.
For a mature reader, there isn’t much in the theme that isn’t well worn ground. The book doesn’t delight readers of all ages, which is a hallmark of the best of children’s literature. The narrator seemed like a cookie cutter Creech hero, but one who shares little of his personality or background.
I started Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet February 6. Bellow’s one of my favorite writers and I was looking forward to a story I hadn’t read. I picked it up and put it down again after again. Often weeks went by when I didn’t pick it up.
Mr. Sammler survived the Holocaust and went on to become a fairly successful professor in New York. The novel’s a slice of life as he runs across a wide array of relatives and associates who aggravate him. He’s perceptive and erudite. The main plot involves him having to track down a colleague’s manuscript and he has to go from one person to the next and they all have messy lives. He muses a lot about all these people, whom he analyzes ad nauseam.
After months of trying to get into this book, I’ve given up. While I admit that Bellow always has good style, but I wasn’t drawn to any of the characters and their plight didn’t grab me. As I was half way through the book, I didn’t think it was worth spending more time on so I’ve abounded it.
If you want to try Saul Bellow, start with The Adventures of Augie March. That’s quite a ride.
To catch up on my Good Reads reading challenge, I figured an Horatio Alger book was just the ticket. I got Frank Fowler: Cash Boy in a couple days. Frank Fowler, an orphan decides to go to the big city to get a job. He leaves his step-sister, who he thought was his biological sister. On her deathbed his mother admitted that Frank was adopted, that he was adopted under mysterious circumstances. Such is the storyline of a Horatio Alger book. Frank’s pal’s family agrees to take in his sister to keep her from the Poor House.
Though he comes across the swindlers common in these books, it’s not till Frank is hired to read to a wealthy man each evening that he meets his nemeses, the housekeeper and the man’s nephew. They fear Frank will worm his way into the old man’s heart. They plot to get Frank out of the house so that they can get the lion’s share of the old man’s will.
Although Alger’s books follow a formula, I don’t tire of his spunky, honest, courageous boys living in tough times when there were many children who had to take on adult responsibilities. It’s a quick, fun read.
It’s 1954 and outcast Alice Kim works as a translator for the US Army. She struggles to keep on keeping on after the horrors of war and the emotional wounds from her earlier romantic affairs. Alice gets chosen to translate for Marilyn Monroe who’s coming to Korea to entertain the troops, who remain.
Nervous, emotional and guilt-ridden, Alice feels alienated. A young woman, whose past haunts her must deal with seeing her past lovers and tries to track down an orphan she promised to care for.
While the story’s full of angst, I felt it lacked authenticity, which is surprising since the author researched war diaries and other primary sources. I felt there was too little Marilyn Monroe in the book and thought those chapters were based on stereotypes. I think Monroe was in the story to make it marketable.
The love triangle and the emotional crash that ensued when the married lover caught her in bed with her other lover didn’t endear Alice to me. She lacked the insight to figure out her own responsibility even though all the dots where there. I didn’t find the spy work compelling either.
I prefer Lisa See’s, Jung Chang’s and Winston Graham’s historical fiction. Ji-Min Lee’s The Starlet and the Spy is not a novel you must read.
OmoresOtempora
smkelly8
Xingu, Volume 2 
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