I haven't read anything by Amy Tan in a long time (decades?)--since The Kitchen God's Wife and The Joy Luck Club-- and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy her writing style. The story here is narrated by Bibi Chen, a recently deceased woman. She is murdered shortly before she and her friends were to depart on a Christmas excursion to Myanmar, and she follows them as they proceed with their trip. Being dead, she is able to see into their thoughts and motivations, which makes for all kinds of surprises. Without Bibi's leadership, this group of American tourists bumble through Myanmar and are quickly kidnapped by a group of Karen tribesmen. The tourists don't realize they have been kidnapped and believe their "adventure" in the jungle to be a tourist special gone awry. The book is quirky, as are the characters. Tan has a wonderful ability to capture characters without stereotyping. Warning: the book jumps from character to character and requires concentration. I had to flip back several times to remember details about characters, but about midway through I was familiar enough with them to keep them straight.
Amazon.com reviewers didn't rate this book well, but I enjoyed it and will go back and read the Tan novels I've missed in the past 15 years or so.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Book Review: Saving Fish From Drowning
2007: The Year in Books
This has been a marvelous year of reading. So many memorable books (most of them memorable in a good sort of way)! So many pleasant evenings spent in the company of a cast of characters from Afghanistan to Alaska, the past and the future, from the circus to the coal mine. I am reluctant to move on to next year because I fear disappointment. Truly, this year was filled with some of the best books I've ever read.
The Top 10
* The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
* The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
* Water for Elephants (by Sara Gruen)
* The Thirteenth Tale (Diana Setterfield)
* Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Lisa See)
* The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini)
* A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)
* Mrs. Mike (Freedman)
* The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
* Crow Lake (by Mary Lawson)
* Night (Elie Wiesel)
Not in the Top Ten, but Enjoyable and I'm Glad I Read Them
* The Endless Steppe (Esther Hautzig)
* Talk to the Hand (Lynn Truss)
* The Nazi Officer's Wife (Edith Hahn Beer)
* The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (by Terry Ryan)
* The Hinterlands (by Robert Morgan)
* Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer)
* When Crickets Cry (Charles Martin)
* The Myth of You and Me (Leah Stewart)
* My Sister's Keeper (by Jodi Picoult)
* The Widow of the South (Robert Hicks)
* Ellen Foster (Kaye Gibbons)
* This Rock (by Robert Morgan)
* The Innocent Man (John Grisham)
* Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer)
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
* I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)
* Veil of Roses (Laura Fitzgerald)
* A River Runs Through It (Norman Mcclean)
* Saving Fish from Drowning (Amy Tan)
* We're Just Like You, Only Prettier (Celia Rivenbark)
Classics Re-Read (I don't include these in rankings because they are classics, for Pete's sake)
* The Pearl (John Steinbeck)
* My Antonia (Willa Cather)
* A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
* Ethan Frome (by Edith Wharton)
* The Red Pony (John Steinbeck)
* A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
* The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Biggest Disappointments
(i.e., Books That Came Highly Recommended that made me want to shake someone)
* The Eyre Affair (by Jasper Fforde)
* Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
* Crossing Over: One Woman's Escape from Amish Life (Irene Garrett)
* The Way They Learn (Cynthia Tobias)
And the Entire List Itself* **
(*Books that aren't on any lists above are neither fabulous nor hideous but lie somewhere in the land of mediocrity. In my opinion, of course.)
(**This list does not include the dozens of novels read aloud to the children. Perhaps in the coming year I can be diligent enough to review those, as well. Perhaps. )
1. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (by Terry Ryan)
2. In My Mother's House (by Elizabeth Winthrop)
3. The Hinterlands (by Robert Morgan)
4. Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer)
5. Talk to the Hand (Lynn Truss)
6. The Pact (Jodi Picoult)
7. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
8. Bathsheba (by Roberta Kells Dorr
9. The Garden at the Edge of Beyond (by Michael Phillips)
10. Crow Lake (by Mary Lawson)
11. Water for Elephants (by Sara Gruen)
12. Arctic Son (by Jean Aspen)
13. Solomon's Song (by Roberta Kells Dorr)
14. The Queen of Sheba (Roberta K. Dorr)
15. New Stories from the South, 2006
16. The Children's Blizzard (by David Laskin)
17. When Crickets Cry (Charles Martin)
18. The Myth of You and Me (Leah Stewart)
19. The Eyre Affair (by Jasper Fforde)
20. My Sister's Keeper (by Jodi Picoult)
21. Jerusalem Vigil (Brock and Bodie Thoene)
22. Crossing Over: One Woman's Escape from Amish Life (Irene Garrett)
23. The Pearl (John Steinbeck)
24. My Antonia (Willa Cather)
25. The Endless Steppe (Esther Hautzig)
26. The Thirteenth Tale (Diana Setterfield)
27. One Thousand White Women (Jim Fergus)
28. This Rock (by Robert Morgan)
29. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
30. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Lisa See)
31. The Innocent Man (John Grisham)
32. The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini)
33. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
34. Ethan Frome (by Edith Wharton)
35. The Way to Rainy Mountain (by N. Scott Momaday)
36. The Red Pony (John Steinbeck)
37. A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
38. Wrapped in Rain (Charles Martin)
39. The Nazi Officer's Wife (Edith Hahn Beer)
40. A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)
41. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
42. The Other Side of the River (Alex Kotlowitz)
43. Alice's Tulips (by Sandra Dallas)
44. The Dead Don't Dance (Charles Martin)
45. Mrs. Mike (Freedman)
46. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
47. Man and Boy (Tony Parsons)
48. I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)
49. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
50. Between, Georgia (Joshilyn Jackson)
51. Peace Child (Don Richardson)
52. Night (Elie Wiesel)
53. The Diary of Mattie Spenser (Sandra Dallas)
54. Winter Birds (Jamie Langston Turner)
55. The Lighthouse (P.D. James)
56. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
57. Girl with the Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier)
58. The Way They Learn (Cynthia Tobias)
59. The Widow of the South (Robert Hicks)
60. New Mercies (Sandra Dallas)
61. Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer)
62. Ellen Foster (Kaye Gibbons)
63. How Strong Women Pray (Bonnie St. John)
64. The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
65. Veil of Roses (Laura Fitzgerald)
66. A River Runs Through It (Norman Mcclean)
67. The Lady and the Unicorn (Tracy Chevalier)
68. * Saving Fish from Drowning (Amy Tan)
69. *We're Just Like You, Only Prettier (Celia Rivenbark)
Reviews in Past Years:
Book Review: We're Just Like You, Only Prettier
Hilarious! Subtitled "Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle," this book by Celia Rivenbark had me laughing hysterically. Oh, I recognized so much of this book--and I am assuredly not a Southern belle. Really only the first few chapters are truly reflective of a uniquely Southern culture; the rest of the book can take place anywhere in the country where there are telemarketers, overzealous mothers, and Jiffy Lubes.
The book is a collection of reflections on life, including such chapters as:
* "No, we don't marry our cousins--unless, of course, they got cable";
* "How to be a hands-on parent using field trips, dead butterflies, and beefaroni";
* "Never Saw 'Em Before in My Life: What to say at the wedding reception when hubby's dressed your kid in Batman sweats and Tweety Bird swim socks";
* "Stamp Out Gossip? My Best Friend's Mama's Sister's Hairdresser's Cousin Won't Like This a Bit!"
Those are just a very few selections. One chapter had its funny moments but was sweet and poignant as well: "Mother's Day Memories: Make Mine Macaroni." Rivenbark is of the sandwich generation--having a first child at 40 and also watching her parents age. She writes: "Our time is fleeting and dear. As a good friend explained it, one day it is our mother who is buying us the Chatty Cathy that we begged for; the next, or so it seems, we find ourselves taking a baby doll as a gift to a mother in the nursing home. It has always struck me that women in nursing home beds almost always have baby dolls in their rooms. I suspect it is because they remind them of the happiest time of their lives. I know it is mine."
I can totally relate to Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy, who writes "I laughed so hard reading this book, I began snorting in an unbecoming fashion." I have Rivenbark's books, Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank and Bless Your Heart, Tramp and Other Southern Endearments on my reading list.
Book Review: We're Just Like You, Only Prettier
Hilarious! Subtitled "Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle," this book by Celia Rivenbark had me laughing hysterically. Oh, I recognized so much of this book--and I am assuredly not a Southern belle. Really only the first few chapters are truly reflective of a uniquely Southern culture; the rest of the book can take place anywhere in the country where there are telemarketers, overzealous mothers, and Jiffy Lubes.
The book is a collection of reflections on life, including such chapters as:
* "No, we don't marry our cousins--unless, of course, they got cable";
* "How to be a hands-on parent using field trips, dead butterflies, and beefaroni";
* "Never Saw 'Em Before in My Life: What to say at the wedding reception when hubby's dressed your kid in Batman sweats and Tweety Bird swim socks";
* "Stamp Out Gossip? My Best Friend's Mama's Sister's Hairdresser's Cousin Won't Like This a Bit!"
Those are just a very few selections. One chapter had its funny moments but was sweet and poignant as well: "Mother's Day Memories: Make Mine Macaroni." Rivenbark is of the sandwich generation--having a first child at 40 and also watching her parents age. She writes: "Our time is fleeting and dear. As a good friend explained it, one day it is our mother who is buying us the Chatty Cathy that we begged for; the next, or so it seems, we find ourselves taking a baby doll as a gift to a mother in the nursing home. It has always struck me that women in nursing home beds almost always have baby dolls in their rooms. I suspect it is because they remind them of the happiest time of their lives. I know it is mine."
I can totally relate to Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy, who writes "I laughed so hard reading this book, I began snorting in an unbecoming fashion." I have Rivenbark's books, Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank and Bless Your Heart, Tramp and Other Southern Endearments on my reading list.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Book Review: A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
So Sunday after church, I was finally ready--after a weekend packed with performances--to truly nurture my hideous cold. I was going to lie in bed all day, alternating between napping and reading. I despise being sick, but when one can be sick all day because her fabulous husband is taking care of everything, well, it's not really so terrible. Not so terrible, that is, until I discovered that I had about 10 pages left in my current book--and nothing else to read!
Now that is tragedy. I actually considered going to the library, but I was too sick for that trip. And we do have an entire house full of books. (It's times like this that I wish I had the re-reading gene.) So anyway, 1stSon2Dad2Three has been begging me to consider adding A River Runs Through It to our spring reading for American Literature, and we just happened to have a copy, and so I read it.
And I feel as if I need to apologize before I write my review. I realize that this has become known as an American classic, and it's been called the "greatest fishing book ever written." But it just didn't do a whole lot for me. Now let me defend myself a little bit:
* First, I don't get fishing. I grew up on a huge lake in upstate New York, and everyone fished. Everyone except for the people in sailboats, like me. I understand that fishing is its own world, and fly fishing is another world of its own, and all that. But I have this Block up that says, "Fishing. Snore."
* Second, I was sick when I was reading, and so my concentration levels weren't at their best. (But I still won't read this book again, no matter how much you try to convince me that I'm missing out on one of the best pieces of literature ever written.)
This memoir is actually two novellas and a short story. The main one is the story of his family and the bond of fly fishing that drew them into each other's lives again and again. Ultimately, though, it doesn't save them. The other two stories come from Macclean's days working for the forestry service in his late teens and early 20s. I couldn't savor the time and place. Macclean's writing style was a bit too jumbled for me (or was it that cold medicine?). But there were moments of sheer beauty, like this:
"I lay there watching mountains until they made me well. I knew that, when needed, mountains would move for me."
And so, no, 1stSon2Dad2Three, we won't be reading this in class. But not because I personally didn't love it. As I tell my students, you don't have to love a piece of literature for it to be considered a classic. I don't love all the classics by any means, and this happens to be one of them. We won't read it in class simply--and is often the case with 20th century writers-- because there are too many expletives and graphic scenes to which parents would object. Otherwise, we would have read it. I would have enjoyed the challenge.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Book Review: The Lady and the Unicorn
I loved Tracy Chevalier's Girl with the Pearl Earring so much that I right away ordered another Chevalier book from PaperbackSwap. As so often happens, I didn't have the same wonderful experience in my second encounter with an author. Like Girl with the Pearl Earring, The Lady and the Unicorn is based on a famous work(s) of art. In this case, the story centers on the creation of Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, commissioned by the Le Viste family toward the end of the fifteenth century. The tapestries were rediscovered in 1841 in a chateau in France and became much publicized. Chevalier takes what little is known about their creation (including the actual artist himself) and weaves a tale of two families, one noble and one working, and the artist who creates havoc among the women in both houses. The story is intriguing, but somehow I wasn't as captivated by the characters and was frequently lost. This sometimes happens to me when each chapter is told from the point-of-view of a different character. (Sometimes my concentration skills are lacking, especially when I am reading only a chapter each night.) Still, I enjoyed the story. The concept of elaborating on the creation of a piece of art--be it literature, a painting, architecture, etc.--fascinates me, and I will seek out Chevalier's other novels of a similar nature.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Book Review: Veil of Roses
I did enjoy the book; it's just that I always feel a bit emotionally manipulated and cheap when I crave these mostly fluffy beach reads, you know? I think I hear Charlotte Mason whispering, "Twaddle" in my ear....(Yes, I know, she'd have stopped reading my twaddly blog a long time ago.)