Sunday Salon

Well, I have missed Sunday Salon for a few weeks, but I am back today! I was out of town for a few weekends in a row, but also Sundays often seem to slip past before I realize they are over.

I haven't been reading particularly intensively recently, just more or less at my average of a book a week. I had a run of good fiction (mostly during a couple recent trips) including Memoirs of a Geisha and People of the Book, and this past week I've started on a non-fiction run. Yesterday I finished Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, by Melanie Rehak, and today I started Shelter for the Spirit: How to Make Your Home a Haven in a Hectic World, by Victoria Moran. I am in a bit of a self-improvement mood so I expect to enjoy it. I have some other books in mind (of a different sort of non-fiction) to follow this one if I'm still in a non-fiction mood.

After finishing Girl Sleuth, I did have to get one fiction book at the library as well: the first Nancy Drew, The Secret of the Old Clock. I am disappointed, however, that it is the usual revised edition that is the main one sold these days and the same as what I read as a child. All the original books were significantly revised in the late 1950s and the revisions are the primary ones still published and sold. I am really very curious to read an original now that I have read all about the authors and origination of Nancy. My library website claims they have the original, but they also think the one that I checked out is one of those originals, which it definitely is not, so it may not be that easy to acquire. Anyway, I will save further commentary for my review of Girl Sleuth.

What sort of reading did you do today and this week?

Swallows and Amazons

Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome, is a delightful and timeless children's book. I had not read it many times since the first time when I was young, so when I was at my parent's house recently and saw it on the shelf amongst all the children's books I have kept, I decided to read it again. I remembered enjoying it but not being as captivated by it as some of the other books I read as a child, so I wasn't sure if I would like it now or not. I was in fact a little bored at first, but once I got in to it I found it quite engaging and even took it home with me as plane reading. It is a simple story in the typical fashion of British children's novels from the earlier part of the 20th century. Four children at a lake for the summer sail to an island in the lake and camp on it for several days, encountering two other children and having a variety of adventures. One of the things that makes it most delightful is that the author is in the childrens' heads most of the time. You hear about the adventures from the point of view of the fantasy world of the children, in which they are brave explorers charting unknown territory. At the same time, though, the children are not just in a fantasy world: they really are having adventures. They are sailing and camping on the island by themselves and they have much more freedom than most children do today. If for no other reason I think the book is wonderful for its depiction of children living wholesome, unstructured lives. I wonder if the children of the era (1930) that the books were written really did have so much freedom. It seems a shame to me that it is no longer this way.

Swallows and Amazons is the first of a series, and the remaining volumes are still at my parent's house. I will probably continue reading them on future visits. I highly recommend it, especially if you have children in your life to introduce them to!

Memoirs of a Geisha

I generally prefer to read books before watching the movie based on them, but a few years ago on a plane flight I watched the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha" even though I hadn't read the book. I enjoyed the movie, although the tiny in-seat screen on the plane did not exactly do it justice, and have had the book on my TBR list ever since. I finally got around to reading it during my recent trip. It was even better than I expected, and also better than what I remember of the movie (although now I would like to see the movie again).

Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, is a beautiful book and story. I was a little nervous about how well a white man could write about a Japanese Geisha, but my worries were quickly dispelled. Golden treats the subject with incredible sensitivity, and draws you into the life and mind of one particular Geisha, the narrator whose memoir you are supposedly reading. The narration is wrapped in beautifully written, luscious details. Since it is in the form of a memoir, the narrator is looking back on her life and thus sometimes inserts reflections and contemplations on the meaning of things. Golden expertly weaves together a story containing interesting events, detailed descriptions, and deep thoughts. He draws you in to another world, one that was utterly foreign to me.

I highly recommend Memoirs of a Geisha, to everyone. I leave you with a sample of the beautiful writing:

In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a "tipsy house." It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing. As a child it seemed to me as if the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze - which is to say there was a burst of wind with a tremendous spray. I decided our tiny house must have been offended by the ocean sneezing in its face from time to time, and took to leaning back because it wanted to get out of the way. Probably it would have collapsed if my father hadn't cut a timber from a wrecked fishing boat to prop up the eaves, which made the house look like a tipsy old man leaning on his crutch.
Inside this tipsy house I lived something of a lopsided life.

She stood as tall and thin as a broom, with long hair that trailed behind her as she scurried about. And her face was narrow like a grain of rice, so that I couldn't help thinking that one day she too would be thrown into the pot just as I had been, and would fluff up white and delicious, to be consumed.

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

People of the Book

I love historical fiction, books about books, and books about Jewish people, so it is no surprise that I enjoyed People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. It is a novel based on a real life object, the Sarajevo Haggadah. A Haggadah is the book that tells the story of Passover, and it is used during a Passover Seder. The Sarajevo Haggadah was created in the 15th century in Spain, and is richly illuminated. It is enshrouded in mystery: why was an illuminated Haggadah created, when creating graven images goes against orthodox Judaism; how did it survive for so many years; and how did it end up in Sarajevo?

Geraldine Brooks takes us from here on a fictional story of a book conservationist examining the Haggadah in the 1990s, through which she discovers various clues to its past. Interspersed with the book conservationist's story are segments telling the story of some aspect of the Haggadah's past. Through the course of the stories Brooks gives a sensitive treatment to Jewish traditions and stories, and it got me thinking about how Jews have kept alive a rich culture dispite living in diaspora.

People of the Book is well-written and engaging. My only disappointment with it was that the scope was smaller than I expected. For some reason I thought it was going to be an epic novel, but instead it is a novel with a small scope, emphasizing the importance of family, love, honor, and tradition. Despite it being a bit different from what I expected, I greatly enjoyed it and I highly recommend it.

Anathem

I read Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, primarily because it was sitting on our shelf and my husband said I might enjoy it (although he felt only lukewarm about it). I didn't really know what to expect, but I expected something more than I got. It is very long, almost 1000 pages, and it actually felt long. The story is science fiction; it takes place in a world similar to Earth but different, one with a longer human history and in which the academics live separated from everyone else, in monastery-like enclaves called "maths". The premise is unique, but I didn't feel that Stephenson did as much with it as he could have. He draws on a large variety of ideas from philosophy and physics to construct a complex plot, but he doesn't go anywhere with it. It felt like a big jumbled hodgepodge of philosophy, like Stephenson was just having fun with himself and trying to pull in as many different things as possible, but without going very deep into anything or taking ideas to their logical conclusions. As the book progressed it felt like it became more and more like a typical sci-fi novel and lost the uniqueness that it started with.

Stephenson's writing is not bad, but not great. During the action- or dialogue-packed parts I was quite engaged, but I actually got bored during some of the (quite long) descriptive passages. It took me awhile to get into the book as well, as the beginning was not very exciting and I had no idea where it was going. I was also quite annoyed by the way Stephenson made up words that sounded similar to English words and were clearly meant to describe an object or concept in his made up world that was more or less than the same as the concept in our world with the similar-sounding name. I think I get the point, that he didn't want to use the English word since he meant to imply something that was not quite the same as the English concept, but for some reason it annoyed me and felt neither here nor there.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I don't particularly recommend Anathem. I wonder if his earlier work is better.

A bit of miscellany

I got a new used bike from craiglist a few weeks ago, and today I was featured in a post on one of my favorite bike blogs, Let's Go Ride a Bike (with my permission and after having emailed the two ladies who run the blog about my wonderful new bike). I bike for most daily transportation purposes, except for some evenings and to go out of town, and I am very excited about this bicycle. Go take a look at their post to see some pictures! Also, if you know anything about it (it is Swiss-made, by Aarios, and I can't find much about its history online), I would love to learn more about its history.

A quick Sunday Salon

It's late and I should be in bed, but I wanted to write a quick Sunday Salon. For the past couple weeks I have been reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, which is almost 1000 pages long. Parts of it grabbed me, but I haven't been that captivated by it overall. However, I am leaving town for a week tomorrow and wanted to finish it before I left, as it is way too heavy to take with me. So I have been reading a lot this weekend and now have only a few pages left. I'll write a review later but my reaction is pretty lukewarm at best.

For my trip (which involves three plane flights), I got People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. I have heard good things about so I hope it lives up to my expectations! In case I finish it before the trip is over, I am also bringing Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden. I have seen the movie and look forward to the book. And in case I get bored of reading I have a crochet project :)

When I was at the library getting books for the trip I also got Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, by Melanie Rehak. I loved Nancy Drew when I was young and this book looks like it should be fun and informative! I look forward to reading it when I get back (it's a little heavy to bring with, and two books should be more than sufficient).

That's all for tonight. I hope you had a good Sunday!