I wasn't raised religiously. We didn't celebrate any holidays with anything other than a special dinner with another family (we took turns going to one another's houses). We didn't participate in the gift-giving holidays, we didn't attend religious ceremonies, we didn't contribute to religious houses. And yet I had a feeling that there was God watching over me. I always felt protected by this unnamed spiritual force. I remember one night when I was 19 and had inadvertently partaken of an illegal drug (and I do mean inadvertently -- I did not know the drug had been added), I was certain I was going to die by morning. I lay there in my summer job cabin on a summer job cot, alone, staring into the dark night, convinced I would not wake in the morning. Suddenly I felt this overwhelming sensation, this awareness that I was being held and comforted. It was a life-changing feeling. And of course, I awoke the next morning.
Then college educated the spirituality right out of me. Was it the classes I took, or the people I hung out with, or the cynicism of the time? I don't know, but by my mid-twenties, that feeling of protection was gone. And it wasn't until I came into program in 2002 that I began to experience it again.
But I haven't lost the cynicism. I still need proof. And I struggle with envy at the obvious proof experienced by others -- "I was down to my last $5 and I needed to pay my rent, and I prayed about it and the next day I got a check in mail for cahoozes dollars." "I couldn't find a job after a year of looking, and I prayed about it, and that day someone called me and offered me a job I hadn't even applied for!" "I was despondent over my divorce and I prayed about it and within a week I had met a new guy and we're getting married next month!" None of this kind of stuff ever happens to me.
And, in fairness, I have to add, I don't often "pray about it."
In my heart, I feel the comfort of having a spiritual guide -- call it an angel, or my deceased father, or God himself -- that helps me when the pain is overwhelming. But my head argues with my heart and looks for the proof, and it's this that defines my struggle to find God.. I would love to give myself completely to the care of a God of my understanding. I'd just like to have a little chat with him first.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
George's Women
I finished the book, Believe the Lie, by Elizabeth George, late last night. I knew I should go to sleep as I had to teach in the morning, but with so few pages (100 or so), I also knew I wanted to finish and find out how it ended. At 2:00 am, I closed the book, turned off the light, and put my head back on my pillow, and then I thought. I thought and I thought about this book, and there was something bothering me about it, something not quite right about it. All day today, my mind drifted back to the book and I puzzled over what was not quite right. This afternoon, I realized what it was: there is not a single female character in this book who can be seen in as positive a light as their male counterparts.
Believe the Lie is a sprawling book of some 600 pages, heavy to lift (especially when a cat demands real estate beneath your chin and across your chest). It is George’s latest in her Inspector Lynley series, and it is quite good – compelling and well-written, suspenseful and ably crafted. In it, Lynley travels to the Lake Country at the request of his superior in order to look into the death of the nephew of this superior’s friend. He travels incognito, and he brings with him my favorite character in the series, Simon St. James, and Simon’s wife, Deborah (whom I have never liked and my opinion did not change in this book). I would love to read a book devoted entirely to the story of the two men’s friendship; they have a complicated history involving Lynley’s driving accident and St. James’s subsequent crippling. Oh, and Deborah dated Lynley before she married Simon. And Simon dated Helen Clyde before she married Lynley and later died and made him a widower. These things are mentioned, the characters consider them briefly, but then they move on. They don’t talk about their past; as proper English gentlemen, they refuse to cause pain to one another. Please, Ms. George, let the two men go somewhere together, just the two of them, just Sherlock and his Watson, and let them talk.
Trying not to give too much away to those of you who have not yet read the book or the series, here are my issues with the female characters.
Barbara Havers
Havers is Lynley’s subordinate and partner, loyal to him, dependable, willing to sacrifice her needs in order to fulfill his. Hinted at is the possibility that were he to express interest, she would drop everything to enter into a romantic relationship with him, all the while knowing she was of inferior breeding. That’s lovely. But George makes a point of explaining how ordinary she is, how plain and even homely she is. Do not judge Havers’ looks by the appearance of the actress who plays her on the BBC’s version of these stories, Sharon Small. Small is a dreamboat compared to the way Havers is depicted in print – she can’t dress right, she cuts her own hair, and she is incapable of coordinating colors. She is chastised by her superior and ordered to change her look or be terminated. She is shown to be less than elegant in her speaking and her behavior causes her to stand out in an upper class crowd. Lynley frequently finds himself apologizing for her. In Believe the Lie, her reluctance to speak to a close friend results in a terrible tragedy for him.
Deborah St. James
Conversely, it is Deborah’s decision to speak that leads to a tragedy. George seems to insist that we see Deborah as a free spirited, talented, and artistic soul, someone beloved by Simon (did I mention he’s my favorite character?) and respected by Lynley. Lynley engages the St. Jameses to help in his undercover mission, and Deborah clearly and obstinately ignores the instructions she has been given, and instead allows her female-driven nature to guide her course. Deborah, we know by now, has wanted a baby for several books and is unable to carry one to term. In Believe the Lie, she meets another woman who she believes suffers from the same grief. She allows that belief to determine her actions – something specifically noted by both Lynley and Simon – and ultimately causes a perfectly avoidable tragedy. Somehow, George expects us to witness Deborah’s selfish and self-absorbed acts, and then to forgive her because Simon and Lynley love her so.
Isabelle Ardery
I’m not sure even George likes Isabelle, a caustic, career-driven alcoholic who has become Lynley’s lover. She is also his superior, clearly a no-no. Isabelle knows just how to aim her barbs, particularly toward Barbara Havers – and if we are meant to side with Havers, we must necessarily despise Isabelle Ardery. She seems to exist only to torment Havers and cause Lynley extremes of emotion: pain from the death of his wife, guilt at having moved on (at least sexually), joy at finding someone he can share things with, frustration at having to keep things from her, anger at hearing her drunk over the phone, and sorrow when she makes things other than him her priority. Isabelle is not a character, she’s a role.
Mignon Fairclough
If there’s a villain in this novel, George wants this to be her. Mignon fakes a disability in order to live off her parents, blackmails her father, spies on her family, and wreaks havoc with strangers over the internet. She is not a nice woman, and no one likes her. There is nothing redeeming about her. There is nothing here to allow us to see her as a rounded character; she is simply Nasty Woman.
Alatea Fairclough
I do believe we are meant to feel for this woman, especially once we learn her secret and witness her fate. But she seems cold toward everyone, save her husband, and we know she’s keeping a secret even from him. She’s not trustworthy. She’s shrill. It seems that only her husband likes her; everyone else keeps their distance.
Niamh Cresswell
Before I begin to discuss this bitch, I want to comment on her name. I had never seen it before – it is an old Irish name, pronounced Nee-ev. I’d spent the whole book hearing Neye-am in my head. I think I prefer it my way; it seems to correspond more with the way she is portrayed. Niamh has reason to be bitter, but she takes this bitterness to sorrowful depths when she rejects her children to pay back her ex-husband. She is portrayed as a selfish, money-hungry, sex-hungry, revenge-hungry woman. Absolutely no one in this book likes her – even her children, desperate as they are for her love, learn to turn elsewhere.
Manette Fairclough McGhie
If there is one woman for whom we can feel some pity, some connection, some recognition that we finally have someone with humanity, it is Manette. She is a woman who has been rejected by her parents in favor of her younger brother, yoked to a bitter and nasty twin sister, and disappointed in marriage. She alone reaches out to her cousin’s children, is physically beaten in response, and still returns for another try. She heroically comes to the aid of one of those children, despite contrary instructions from those in authority. She is a rule-breaker, but with good cause. And yet she spends most of the book in a passive, back of the room manner. I think this is the closest I can come to finding a sympathetic character among the women in this book.
Angelina Upman
I saved the worst for last. Look at her name – the implied angelic behavior (and she certainly plays that part well) in her first name, then balanced by a hard and – once we know what she does – understandably male-hating last name. Angelina does what Niamh does, just differently.
These are the women who appear throughout the novel – I do not include the women who pop in for expository interludes – and they’re a bleak group, aren’t they? Contrast them with intelligent, always-doing-the-right-thing-(or-at-least-trying) Lynley; noble, crippled, ever-patient Simon; sadsack Zed, all 6 feet 8 inches of him, with a shock of red hair and the inability to see what’s in front of him but who engages in a romance that surprises even him and Does The Right Thing In The End; and Bernard Fairclough, who, though he has his foibles and peccadilloes, and despite his lower class upbringing, tries to protect his wife from the pains of his past. George is far gentler on her men than she is on her women.
I love these books. I read them as soon as they are published, and I recommend them to friends looking for a new series to fall into. But I do wish George would lighten up on the women. I suspect that the majority of George’s readers are women – and perhaps as women, we are meant to care more for the men than the women – and it would be nice to have at least one woman (short of the one who had that potential but who died a few books back) with whom to identify.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Quality of Life -- in Whose Eyes?
Today, I read a story about a little girl who needs a kidney transplant, and the doctor who said she couldn’t have one because she is mentally retarded – she has Down syndrome – and her quality of life wasn’t worth saving. Here is the original story:
I am horrified that now, in 2012, we can still face this kind of prejudice, this kind of hatred – and make no mistake, this is hatred. This is the belief that unless someone is experiencing the kind of quality of life society understands to be “normal,” he or she is not entitled to the same rights, the same medical treatment, the same respect as the normal people. This is the kind of thinking that leads to abortion of imperfect babies, and in its extremity, the abandoning of babies on mountain slopes if they are damaged, as was done in ancient Greece. No one now is, of course, saying we should abandon our children with disabilities on mountaintops, but consider Peter Singer.
Peter Singer is a philosopher from Australia who specializes in ethics. There was a huge uproar back in 1989, the year Ian was born, when he was criticized for his stated beliefs that a baby born with a disability has a life that is so blighted as to be unworthy of living. He said that such a baby’s parents would have the right to let the child die – to have medical procedures stopped, even nourishment refused. This is true – he said these things. There were protests held wherever he appeared to speak. Disability advocates published papers and letters to the editor decrying Singer’s beliefs. I was among those who felt he had no right to recommend such a frightening premise, especially once I was holding my own child in my arms. What I didn’t know at the time was that he also said that once such a child is born, once the decision is made to keep that child alive, everything possible should be done to improve the quality of this child’s life. I don’t know if that would have mitigated my fear of this man, and recently I learned that he has also argued in favor of rationing health care, which is a dangerous slope to get near. It's funny how I once thought his words should be silenced, while now I wish he would talk to the transplant doctor.
It is an awesome power we allow our medical professionals to possess. And I don’t mean awesome in its teenaged sense – this is awesome as in “inspiring awe,” and what is awe? It is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, and fear. This is the awesome to which I refer. We have given the power to decide life or death to our doctors and, especially, to our bean-counting insurance companies.
I don’t know what I would do if Ian faced a life-threatening illness and was refused treatment because of his disability. The anger and distress I am experiencing now just thinking about these parents and their daughter is overpowering, and this is simply on their behalf. Thank the internet and its millions of tendrils that this story is making its way across vast numbers of people who are doing whatever they can to overturn this doctor’s judgment about this child’s life.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Punishing Myself Through the Movies (and TV)
I went to see The Descendants yesterday. Is it my imagination, or is every movie coming out these days about people finding out that their spouses cheated on them? If this isn’t a general trend, I must have my self-punishment radar going strong, because I keep ending up at them. I even bring them into my own home on DVD.
It started with Stupid Crazy Love, in which Steve Carell’s character learns that his wife of 20some years has had an affair with a co-worker and wants a divorce. It is a fairly Disneyfied version of a separation, though, with clean and clear borders and a (spoiler alert) reconciliation at the end. True love conquers all, everything is forgiven and forgotten, and the man and wife even share a laugh over the year’s events together. I can’t imagine laughing at the deep pain I have experienced this past year. That will never happen.
Soon after that came Chess, a wonderful and appreciated birthday present from my daughter. Josh Groban plays a Russian chess player who leaves his country – and his wife – to flee to the west and into the arms of the former manager of his rival. We see this relationship from their point of view, this lovely and loving young couple, and all is fair, their lives filled with the awe inspired by their new love. We don’t see his wife, the mother of his children, left behind the Iron Curtain – until near the end, when she is brought to him to convince him to return. That’s where I lose it – when we see her pain at having to beg her husband to come back with her.
That was followed by Walk the Line, which is about Johnny Cash and his developing career as it was helped along by his love for June Carter. We focus on their relationship, but we don’t spend a lot of time on the person I was focused on: the wife he left to be with June Carter. In another life, I might not have paid any attention to the first Mrs. Cash. Like the rest of the audience, I would have cheered for the Cash/Carter alliance, wished them success as they struggled into their relationship. But this is my life now.
Then I started watching the first season of In Treatment, in which a man my age, with children the ages of my children (including two with the same names as my children), learns that his wife has had an affair; he discovers this in the second week of episodes. The lines that haunt me from that conversation: “Whatever I did, it was not intentional. But what you did was deliberate. You made a choice – a deliberate choice to betray me and our kids.” This was so close to home, so painfully close to home, and yet I could not stop watching.
Up until this point, I could claim ignorance of the existence of infidelity in these productions. I knew very little about any of them before I saw them – I had heard that Stupid Crazy Love was funny, and I adore Ryan Gosling, so I went to see that; I knew nothing about Chess before I saw it; I knew that Johnny Cash and June Carter were married, but I did not know the circumstances of their relationship; and In Treatment took me completely by surprise. But the next movie – another Ryan Gosling film – I knew going into it that watching was going to be difficult. Blue Valentine was touted as the hardest, best movie to see last year. I knew it was about a deteriorating relationship, but the circumstances were so different from my own life that I felt I could handle it. What I didn’t count on were the universals involved with all deteriorating relationships: the broken promises, the desperation, the lust and disgust. It broke my heart to watch it, but I did.
And yesterday, The Descendants. I watched George Clooney’s face as his character learned about his wife’s infidelity, and I could feel my face matching his, muscle for muscle. When he said he had to see the face of the man his wife had slept with, I knew that feeling. That universal need – as Lara Fabian wrote in her song, “Broken Vow”: “I need to see her face, I need to understand why you and I came to an end.” I’ve seen her face, and I still don’t understand. I don’t think we ever really do.
I think it may be time to declare a moratorium on movies about the destruction of marriages. But wait – here comes The Artist. Three guesses what s
Sunday, January 1, 2012
My 10 best reads of 2011
I read 61 books this year, some good, some excellent, some I wished I hadn’t had to read, and others I gave the time despite my usual “50-pages-to-win-me-over-life-is-too-short-to-waste-time-on-a-less-than-great-book” rule.
Here are the best of my 2011 picks, in the order in which I read them. You will notice one author repeats – once I discover an author’s voice I like, I try to read whatever they have written. This is the case with Kate Atkinson, who wrote a series of mysteries that I thoroughly enjoyed, but I don’t remember enough of them to let them lay claim to a spot on my top ten list. In the interest of fairness, however, let me tell you that they are: Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? (which was actually the first of them I read – then I went back to start at the beginning), and Started Early, Took My Dog. I should mention that when I get started talking about books, well, I do go on.
The Know-It-All, by A.J. Jacobs – Jacobs spent a year reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and wrote about that year as it happened. I believe he calls this “Stunt Journalism.” Another stunt journalist you might know of is George Plimpton, who wrote about his experiences joining the Detroit Lions’ 1963 training camp in Paper Lion. In The Know-It-All, Jacobs writes about trying to share his newfound knowledge with family and friends, only to be shunned or derided. One very funny sequence depicts Jacobs’ joining of Mensa, the organization for geniuses. Jacobs’ writing is easy and witty and charming, and I became enamored enough to read his other two books. I am anxiously awaiting his next, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection.
A Thousand Cuts, by Simon Lelic – Lelic’s book is by genre a police thriller/mystery, but there is so much more to it. Lelic’s protagonist, Detective Lucia May, is the sole woman in her department and must suffer the sexist comments and sexual harassment of her fellow police officers, including her supervisor. To these men, there is no mystery: a history teacher walked into his London school, took out a gun, and killed some students in front of witnesses. But to May, there are intricate and complicated relationships at play, and she wants to discover what pushed the teacher to do what he did. Lelic uses a combination of first-person accounts of the shooting and related events and third-person narrative to present his story, and it is compelling. As a reader, I felt incensed that May herself was experiencing the very things she was learning about her case; as a woman, I wanted her to fight back but I understood her reluctance to do so. This is another writer I will be eager to follow to future books.
The Guinea Pig Diaries, by A.J. Jacobs – This is a collection of essays, some of which were published in Esquire magazine, about some experiments taken on by Jacobs in an attempt to learn more about human nature. In one essay, he writes about Radical Honesty, a movement that encourages not only the suppression of lies but the expression of truths no matter how painful. In another essay, he writes about outsourcing his life to two companies in India, one to arrange his personal life, the other his professional life. The former even sends flowers to his wife! Another essay describes his experience posing as a celebrity at the Academy Awards, and in another, Jacobs decides to agree with everything his wife says and wants. Again, Jacobs’ writing drew me in and I thoroughly enjoyed reading – and learning about what our human nature compels us to do.
The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs – I remember when this book was published, it seemed to be a bit ridiculed in the press. I saw images of Jacobs in his Biblically white gowns, his beard grown according to Biblical instructions. In this year, Jacobs attempted to live according to the moral codes presented in the Old Testament – including rules about eating, celebrating holidays, and how to interact with the world around him. I found this fascinating. Some of the moral codes – such as stoning adulterers – are clearly outdated and rightfully illegal, and Jacobs comes as close to following them in spirit as he can without actually committing them. As in all this books, Jacobs writes about his relationship with his wife and the struggles they endure to become a family, and the result is a satisfying mix.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley – This book has been on my to-read list since I was in high school. What made me get to it now? I found an audio version read by Michael York, and I wanted to hear it. It took me a while to get into the book – given the nature of the presentation, there was no turning back to re-read past sections for clarity and understanding – but after a short time, I found myself thoroughly involved in the lives of the characters and the society they lived in. I know comparisons are often made between this and George Orwell’s 1984, but I found this book to be fuller and richer than the other. I was particularly intrigued by the method of creating willing castes – tweaking embryonic development and subsequent brainwashing to encourage members of each caste to consider themselves better off than those in other castes. It made me contemplate how we mold our own class system. I do think I’d like to re-read this sometime, in hardcopy form (or perhaps on the Kindle!) to catch the things I might have missed while trying to figure out which way to point my car.
Making Toast, by Roger Rosenblatt – When his 38-year-old daughter died suddenly, Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and grandchildren to help. This is the story of that time. His expression of his deep loss, combined with the humor necessary to raise small children, make this a lovely book. I found it sad and yet enlightening, and all too familiar in its depiction of grief, surrender, and delusion.
365 Thank Yous, by John Kralik – I don’t remember why I initially wanted to read this – one day I found I had purchased it and loaded it on my Kindle – but I am glad that I did. Kralik was living a life of negativity; his personal life was a mess, his professional life was no better, and it looked like there was no end to the downward spiral. Then a friend suggested to him that he might want to change his outlook on life, and his ex-girlfriend wrote him a thank you note – and both of these things inspired him to begin thanking the people in his life. He vowed to write thank you notes – one a day for a year – and in the process, found that his life was changing for the better. I would love to do this, just to see what change might be wrought in me – but I also know that I tend to take on New Year commitments that far outweigh my ability to maintain them. If I can do this on a smaller scale, I will.
A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness – Okay, I admit it: I read books about vampires. I’ve read the Twilight series (good story, terribly written, neglectfully edited), the Sookie Stackhouse series (entertaining if inconsistent), the first of the Vampire Diaries (eh), and lots of other books about vampires, many in connection with a course I developed a few years back called Vampire Literature. When this book was published and I heard there was a vampire, and that this was a story for adults instead of for teens and tweens, I was interested – but it wasn’t until a colleague of mine plunked it down on my desk and told me I had to read it that I actually gave it serious thought. Even then, I didn’t get to it for a few months, but when I did, I loved it. I am frustrated that it is the first in what is proposed to be a trilogy, and that much of what I, as a reader, looked to get out of the first book was delayed to a future book, but I will read the next in the series.
V is for Vendetta, by Sue Grafton – Back in 1988, pregnant with my oldest son and headed out with my husband for our delayed honeymoon on Nova Scotia (I thought we had better have our honeymoon before the baby was born, or we’d end up one of those elderly couples on their overdue honeymoon on Love Boat), I packed four paperbacks I had heard were worth a read: A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, C is for Corpse, and D is for Deadbeat. Because I was sick with a cold for the first few days of our trip, we spent a lot of time in our hotel rooms and I spent a lot of time with my nose in these books. I loved them, and have continued reading the series since. There have been great entries in the series, and some not-so-great, but I kept reading because I needed to know what would happen next – and this is the hallmark of great writing. This latest in the series is one of the best: fast-paced action, emotional weight, easy accessibility even to those new to Kinsey Milhone. There are four letters left in the alphabet, and Grafton says that when she finishes those, she will be through. She is 71 now and with approximately 8 years of writing to go, she figures she’ll be old enough to retire respectably. What I love about Grafton is her refusal to sell film rights to these books, which leaves Kinsey firmly in our own imaginations. (She says she will haunt her children if they ever sell those rights after she is dead.)
Fiction Ruined My Family, by Jeanne Darst – The last of my ten best list is a memoir written by the daughter of a would-be writer father who rarely achieved publication and a mother who allowed her alcoholism to take over the family’s emotional and financial stability. I will always remember this book because of the circumstances of my reading it: nestled in a cushy chair in front of a fireplace at the home of one of my dearest friends, having been invited for a few days of respite during a particularly difficult time of my life. With my daughter gleefully entertained by my friend’s daughters, I had the luxury of reading and dozing in the warmth of the firelight. The book itself is written in an easy, breezy tone, and though it gets a little heavy when Darst begins to deal with her own writing and drinking issues, the humor continues throughout.
So there you have it: my chosen ten best of the books I read this year. Each of them meant something very special to me, and it’s been a wonderful trip back over the year in the remembrance of them.
Here are the best of my 2011 picks, in the order in which I read them. You will notice one author repeats – once I discover an author’s voice I like, I try to read whatever they have written. This is the case with Kate Atkinson, who wrote a series of mysteries that I thoroughly enjoyed, but I don’t remember enough of them to let them lay claim to a spot on my top ten list. In the interest of fairness, however, let me tell you that they are: Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? (which was actually the first of them I read – then I went back to start at the beginning), and Started Early, Took My Dog. I should mention that when I get started talking about books, well, I do go on.
The Know-It-All, by A.J. Jacobs – Jacobs spent a year reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and wrote about that year as it happened. I believe he calls this “Stunt Journalism.” Another stunt journalist you might know of is George Plimpton, who wrote about his experiences joining the Detroit Lions’ 1963 training camp in Paper Lion. In The Know-It-All, Jacobs writes about trying to share his newfound knowledge with family and friends, only to be shunned or derided. One very funny sequence depicts Jacobs’ joining of Mensa, the organization for geniuses. Jacobs’ writing is easy and witty and charming, and I became enamored enough to read his other two books. I am anxiously awaiting his next, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection.
A Thousand Cuts, by Simon Lelic – Lelic’s book is by genre a police thriller/mystery, but there is so much more to it. Lelic’s protagonist, Detective Lucia May, is the sole woman in her department and must suffer the sexist comments and sexual harassment of her fellow police officers, including her supervisor. To these men, there is no mystery: a history teacher walked into his London school, took out a gun, and killed some students in front of witnesses. But to May, there are intricate and complicated relationships at play, and she wants to discover what pushed the teacher to do what he did. Lelic uses a combination of first-person accounts of the shooting and related events and third-person narrative to present his story, and it is compelling. As a reader, I felt incensed that May herself was experiencing the very things she was learning about her case; as a woman, I wanted her to fight back but I understood her reluctance to do so. This is another writer I will be eager to follow to future books.
The Guinea Pig Diaries, by A.J. Jacobs – This is a collection of essays, some of which were published in Esquire magazine, about some experiments taken on by Jacobs in an attempt to learn more about human nature. In one essay, he writes about Radical Honesty, a movement that encourages not only the suppression of lies but the expression of truths no matter how painful. In another essay, he writes about outsourcing his life to two companies in India, one to arrange his personal life, the other his professional life. The former even sends flowers to his wife! Another essay describes his experience posing as a celebrity at the Academy Awards, and in another, Jacobs decides to agree with everything his wife says and wants. Again, Jacobs’ writing drew me in and I thoroughly enjoyed reading – and learning about what our human nature compels us to do.
The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs – I remember when this book was published, it seemed to be a bit ridiculed in the press. I saw images of Jacobs in his Biblically white gowns, his beard grown according to Biblical instructions. In this year, Jacobs attempted to live according to the moral codes presented in the Old Testament – including rules about eating, celebrating holidays, and how to interact with the world around him. I found this fascinating. Some of the moral codes – such as stoning adulterers – are clearly outdated and rightfully illegal, and Jacobs comes as close to following them in spirit as he can without actually committing them. As in all this books, Jacobs writes about his relationship with his wife and the struggles they endure to become a family, and the result is a satisfying mix.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley – This book has been on my to-read list since I was in high school. What made me get to it now? I found an audio version read by Michael York, and I wanted to hear it. It took me a while to get into the book – given the nature of the presentation, there was no turning back to re-read past sections for clarity and understanding – but after a short time, I found myself thoroughly involved in the lives of the characters and the society they lived in. I know comparisons are often made between this and George Orwell’s 1984, but I found this book to be fuller and richer than the other. I was particularly intrigued by the method of creating willing castes – tweaking embryonic development and subsequent brainwashing to encourage members of each caste to consider themselves better off than those in other castes. It made me contemplate how we mold our own class system. I do think I’d like to re-read this sometime, in hardcopy form (or perhaps on the Kindle!) to catch the things I might have missed while trying to figure out which way to point my car.
Making Toast, by Roger Rosenblatt – When his 38-year-old daughter died suddenly, Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and grandchildren to help. This is the story of that time. His expression of his deep loss, combined with the humor necessary to raise small children, make this a lovely book. I found it sad and yet enlightening, and all too familiar in its depiction of grief, surrender, and delusion.
365 Thank Yous, by John Kralik – I don’t remember why I initially wanted to read this – one day I found I had purchased it and loaded it on my Kindle – but I am glad that I did. Kralik was living a life of negativity; his personal life was a mess, his professional life was no better, and it looked like there was no end to the downward spiral. Then a friend suggested to him that he might want to change his outlook on life, and his ex-girlfriend wrote him a thank you note – and both of these things inspired him to begin thanking the people in his life. He vowed to write thank you notes – one a day for a year – and in the process, found that his life was changing for the better. I would love to do this, just to see what change might be wrought in me – but I also know that I tend to take on New Year commitments that far outweigh my ability to maintain them. If I can do this on a smaller scale, I will.
A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness – Okay, I admit it: I read books about vampires. I’ve read the Twilight series (good story, terribly written, neglectfully edited), the Sookie Stackhouse series (entertaining if inconsistent), the first of the Vampire Diaries (eh), and lots of other books about vampires, many in connection with a course I developed a few years back called Vampire Literature. When this book was published and I heard there was a vampire, and that this was a story for adults instead of for teens and tweens, I was interested – but it wasn’t until a colleague of mine plunked it down on my desk and told me I had to read it that I actually gave it serious thought. Even then, I didn’t get to it for a few months, but when I did, I loved it. I am frustrated that it is the first in what is proposed to be a trilogy, and that much of what I, as a reader, looked to get out of the first book was delayed to a future book, but I will read the next in the series.
V is for Vendetta, by Sue Grafton – Back in 1988, pregnant with my oldest son and headed out with my husband for our delayed honeymoon on Nova Scotia (I thought we had better have our honeymoon before the baby was born, or we’d end up one of those elderly couples on their overdue honeymoon on Love Boat), I packed four paperbacks I had heard were worth a read: A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, C is for Corpse, and D is for Deadbeat. Because I was sick with a cold for the first few days of our trip, we spent a lot of time in our hotel rooms and I spent a lot of time with my nose in these books. I loved them, and have continued reading the series since. There have been great entries in the series, and some not-so-great, but I kept reading because I needed to know what would happen next – and this is the hallmark of great writing. This latest in the series is one of the best: fast-paced action, emotional weight, easy accessibility even to those new to Kinsey Milhone. There are four letters left in the alphabet, and Grafton says that when she finishes those, she will be through. She is 71 now and with approximately 8 years of writing to go, she figures she’ll be old enough to retire respectably. What I love about Grafton is her refusal to sell film rights to these books, which leaves Kinsey firmly in our own imaginations. (She says she will haunt her children if they ever sell those rights after she is dead.)
Fiction Ruined My Family, by Jeanne Darst – The last of my ten best list is a memoir written by the daughter of a would-be writer father who rarely achieved publication and a mother who allowed her alcoholism to take over the family’s emotional and financial stability. I will always remember this book because of the circumstances of my reading it: nestled in a cushy chair in front of a fireplace at the home of one of my dearest friends, having been invited for a few days of respite during a particularly difficult time of my life. With my daughter gleefully entertained by my friend’s daughters, I had the luxury of reading and dozing in the warmth of the firelight. The book itself is written in an easy, breezy tone, and though it gets a little heavy when Darst begins to deal with her own writing and drinking issues, the humor continues throughout.
So there you have it: my chosen ten best of the books I read this year. Each of them meant something very special to me, and it’s been a wonderful trip back over the year in the remembrance of them.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)