A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (Midway), plus two other books.

I am in the midst of A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, it is an interesting book, rich with characters and history in this small town. I am enjoying it immensely and will have further review when I have finished the book. I am trying to guess what could possibly happen next, we have had science, pregnancies, deaths, unexplained relatives, firing squads, revolutions, premonitions, seers and gypsies. All brought forth in interesting manners. The only difficulties is keeping the names straight as they are very similar to one another, except Ursala and Rebeca. Lots of variations of Arcadia or people with that as part of their name. Also, we see into the future as well as the past, which s all being experienced at the same time as the present. A little confusing, but it is manageable, just have to connect the dots sometimes. Other books I have read: THE EARL CLAIMS HIS WIFE by Cathy Maxwell, this was a fast read. It is a romance novel and the author is going to be speaking at our Book and Author dinner. She weaves a nice tail of betrayal and hurt feelings, with some sexual tension. Not a bad book, but I have to say I am a fan of Kathleen Woodiwiss's romance novels because they are full of history, which I did not get much of in Cathy Maxwell's book. AMAZONIA by James Rollins, another author speaking at the book and author dinner. This is an adventure that takes place as you can seen the Amazon. I really liked this book and get a chance to sit with this author over dinner. He takes you into the jungle with these fantastic genetically modified creatures, a tree that uses existing and past life to create these creatures, a very intelligent tree. The story is woven well and there is death and mayhem throughout. I liked so much that I have taken out some of his other books from the library. SPEAKING FROM THE BONES by Alan Bradley, this is a Flavia Deluce Novel. She is still 11, but is having some emotional turmoil because their life is changing drastically and of course there is another murder. I just finished this book, 5 minutes ago and found out that it definitely has a sequel which is the new book THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES. The last words in SPEAKING FROM THE BONES is............ Did you really think I would tell you. Read it yourself and find out. But if you are going to read this book, read the first one and work your way through all 6 books.

Howards End the Movie

Yesterday I borrowed from the library HOWARDS END the movie. They did not put all the extra things in like the bitterness towards Germany or delve to deeply in the politics regarding the poor. As in any movie, you do not hear the inner workings of the mind, but the actors did a pretty good job of displaying these emotions on there faces. With a cast like Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Hopkins you can't go wrong. However, it did seem rather drawn out, it was a 2 hour and 20 minute movie. It also fell flat with some of the explanations, especially why Helen was coming home after being so secretive. In the book you got a clear explanation but in the movie, it is really not answered, I had to explain to my husband why certain things occurred. Plus they used a weird technique in which we would be in the same scene but they would go black of a second and we would come back to the scene but the characters were in different positions. This would happen several times during that particular scene. All in all it was pretty true to the book, but seemed to lack energy.

A Long Way Down: Finished

I have completed A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby. This book was published in 2005 by Riverhead Books a Penguin Group. This is a very amusing but troublesome book because it deals with suicide. I will not spoil details but in my last blog I tell you about 4 people who meet on a roof, thinking that they will be the only one trying to commit suicide. From that point on they make dates in the future and start hanging out together. In some ways it puts suicide in perspective, you do not know who you are going to meet and what their circumstances are that would lead them to kill themselves. I had a professor of Psychology in college who received a note from his friend saying he as going to kill himself, immediately upon receiving this letter my professor called his friend. He missed him by an hour. Suicide is not funny, but this book looks at relationships, misunderstandings and the character of 4 people who become friends. That is the part that is amusing. To anyone out there thinking this is the route, find someone, talk to them and make a date in the future to talk to them again.

Books read

Last blog I stated that I was going to read 75 books this year 2014. I have read a fast book called A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD by Alan Bradley, which is a good series if you like mysteries. It is about an 11 year old girl around WWII, who has a chemistry lab inside her house thanks to a deceased uncle who was a chemist. She also is a inquisitive little girl with two sisters, her father, but her mother is deceased. The mother died climbing a mountain and from what is implied Flavia is very much like her mother. She tends to get into lots of mischief unfortunately for the father who is on his way to being broke. A good book but not for young children because there are some adult topics brought into play. Another book I am in the middle of reading is A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby, this book is on the list of 16 to read before they come out in a movie. I am rather enjoying this book though it is on the topic of suicide. Four random people meet on the top of the Topper, a place tall enough for people to die if they jump off. It has been covered by wire mesh to keep people from doing this. It is New Years Eve, and you meet the first person Martin and his tale, followed by Maureen, Jess, and JJ. Martin is a talk show host who got in trouble for going out with a 15 year old, Maureen is a woman with a disabled son, Jess is a 18 year old who just lost her boyfriend and JJ is young man who feels worthless since his band broke up. All think this is the perfect night to kill oneself, but they really are struggling with the actual deed. The book relates what is going on in each characters minds through all this process. I am hoping for one ending but we will see where the book goes. The only downside, in which I agree with the character Maureen, is too much cursing, though there are times they just use f____, but you get the meaning. I am also in the middle of SNOW CHILD this is a book club pick about a couple who lost their child and move to the wilds of Alaska. Their marriage is struggling and they are about to give up hope when a young girl appears in the woods after a snow. She is like the wind and knows her way around the woods. More later. My next 100 book is ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which I hope to start right after I finish A LONG WAY DOWN. Happy reading

Howards End- Finished

I really liked this book and I think that I may have to read some more of E. M. Foster. It has all the goodies that make a book worth reading, intrigue, social clashes, layers of personalities. The main characters as I said the day before are the Schlegel's and the Wilcoxes, with a Mr. Bates thrown in to turn up the volume. The Schlegel's and the Wilcoxes do not get along due to two things: the first is the impetuous flirtation that had the Schlegel's Aunt Juley jumping on a train to stop an engagement that had already run its course. The second is the fact that Mrs. Wilcox left Margaret Schlegel her home when she died. Now though the men and daughter in this family do not want Howards End, because they dislike the Schlegel family they do not tell her this and say it is the whim of a sick woman. The Schlegel family consists of two woman and a brother, who really does not play apart in this book, except to sit back and refuse to get involved. The Wilcoxes consist of the father, two sons and a daughter. Both the families feel superior to each other. Where does Mr. Bates come in, he is thrown in around the 6th chapter, he meets the Schlegel girls at a concert that he has spent considerable money to go to. His umbrella is stolen by Helen Schlegel and he goes with Margaret to retrieve it, realizes he is outclassed and leaves in distress. We learn he is in a miserable relationship, wants to improve himself by reading and reciting passages. He is a clerk and somehow ends up ruining his life completely after meeting with the girls once to clear up the matter of his wife. A carefully woven story that takes us into social conflicts of the time, snobbery, woman's rights, rising fear of England and Germany having a war, and the life of English people and the changes with time. There is even a woman's reading club, so might be fun to discuss this book at a book club. Highly recommended Oh I did read the introduction and I am glad I waited until I finished the book because it would not have nearly been as fun, if I had known all that was going to happen before reading it.

1/2 through HOWARDS END

I am currently at the 1/2 way point in HOWARDS END. Howards End is a place that is owned by the Wilcox's, well actually it was the dowry for Mrs. Wilcox. The main characters so far are the Schlegel's, Margaret the oldest who had to take over the family after her mother died in childbirth with the youngest brother Tibby. The middle child is Helen. There father also dies leaving them in charge of the house that they rent and the upbringing of each other. I think that there is a part where you get the feeling that Tibby may possibly be gay. A quote is made by his sister, when they are arguing about the feminine feeling in the house she says that Tibby is a man, just the other half of a man. MArgaret also accuses the sister of making the place more masculine by smoking cigarettes. It is a very funny book, in my opinion. It was first published in 1910, which makes the comments about Germany and England very interesting, especially since is so close to the beginning of WWI. The Schlegel's are part German, father, and English, mom. There all these comments about the Germans being boorish and that is why the father left. There are also mentions of hostilities rising between the two countries. So in between the banter about social justice and life in England you get a good picture of what the times are like through this book. Howards End is near a town called Hilton and a quick trip from London, because when Helen at the beginning writes a quick note to Margaret that she is engaged, her aunt jumps on the train and heads that way. Also in the time it takes her to get on the train and arrive, Helen has sent another telegram telling them it was a mistake and Margaret has time to respond while the aunt is still on the train. More later.

Howard's End and misc. stuff

My next book of the Reading the 100 is HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster, first published in 1910. The edition I am reading was published by Alfred A. Knopf, in an edition called Everyman's Library. There is an introduction by Alfred Kazin. I will not read the introduction until after I read the book, so that I will not be swayed by any commentary. The book has 359 pages without counting the introduction, but it has wide margins and is no bigger than a paperback. So I feel that this is going to be read by this coming weekend. Also I love the quote at the front page before the title page, I usually call this the front piece but I am not sure if this is a quote associated with the book or the Everyman's Library. Here it is: EVERYMAN, I WILL GO WITH THEE, AND BE THY GUIDE, IN THY MOST NEED, TO GO BY THY SIDE Okay so I went online and found that this is the quote by the EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY people. I like it, maybe I should start trying to collect their books, the originals. I am also will be starting WINTERS TALE and SNOW CHILD this week. I think that there is a new challenge for book reading but this is how many books do you think you will read in 2014, I am going to make an estimate of 75. So far I have read 7 books in 2014: THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG by Alan Bradley THE ORCHID HOUSE by Lucinda Riley STILL LIFE by Louise Penny ORPHAN TRAIN by Christina Baker Kline GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon MONUMENTS MEN by Robert M Edsel LABOR DAY by Joyce Maynard 75 should be easy since I have 9 books for my book club, though I did read one already, the 42 of the 100, 10 for the movie challenge and my personal reading should get me to that magical 75 number. I will keep you posted on that as well, 68 more books to read this year. For the movie challenge I am a little behind, since I wanted to finish GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and MONUMENTS MEN, two large books I put off reading WINTER'S TALE, so I missed the movie coming out deadline, and as mentioned before decided since I was not going to see the movie I did not read VAMPIRE ACADEMY. I may miss another movie deadline but then I should be good for all the others. A LONG WAY DOWN comes out this week and I do not have that book. All the other books I have either read or the movie does not come out until after May. Three cheers to snow, reading and writing.

Finished: The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

THE MONUMENTS MEN by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter is a book that required lots of research as it seems this was not something that either the service or the men themselves promoted. There were several books at the time but the dedication is lost to us now, except for maybe this book. I am not happy with the people who wrote the movie, but my husband said because they changed the book, that is why they had to change the names of the men. So the movie has some parts of the book in it's scenes, but it misses some key elements. In the movie we have a team that was started by personal invitation, he goes to each character and invites them on this mission. They all work together with some going off by themselves, but they still seemed to form a cohesive group. In the book this is not what happens, they do not even meet each other except towards the end and then that is just a few of them. At the end the book, you find that the main character Stout does not even like to talk about his time over in Germany. So yes artifacts were recovered and yes there are still artifacts unrecovered, and yes two men died in their attempt to find artifacts. But it is not the movie version. If you love history and if you have always wondered about what happened to the art, treasures taken from other countries and from the Jewish population, then read the book. But is you want the drama only the movies can give, but in my thoughts didn't, then see the movie.