June Reads

I am having a in between fast paced mystery book between my book club book and my 100 book pick. I had to clear my head from all the sad looks at life I just read, before I continued with what I am sure will some hard hit areas of life. The book club pick is a book called THE DIARY OF  MATTIE SPENCER, by Sandra Dallas. It looks to be a fast read about a woman who has traveled with her husband out west to Colorado Territory. This could mean that I can get two of my 100 book list in this month. LOLITA is my choice for my 100 books. I may also read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, which had been turned into a miniseries for PBS. These three books should be finished by June or maybe a little in July. Sometimes, when I am not that enthralled with a book, I tend to misplace the book. I hope I do not do that with these three. The books I have left to read for my 100 book challenge, besides those listed above are:

TROPIC OF CANCER
UNDER THE VOLCANO
ULYSSES
DON QUIXOTE
THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME
LES MISERABLES (My husband says that the small version I read in French class does not count)
SLAUGHTER HOUSE 5
THE AMBASSADOR ( I am going to attempt to read this again) 

Happy summer reading

Review x 2: The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

You may wonder why do two at the same time, but these two books hit on similar subjects and have similar results at the end. One is a little better written than the other, sorry Ms. Rowlings. Maybe I thought I would be grabbed like I was with Harry Potter and maybe you made the characters and the election seem way to normal to bite us at the end, but the first half dragged on too long. Having said that the ending was brilliant, except for one sad bit. I will do both books individually and then bring in the similarities.

THE CASUAL VACANCY by J.K. Rowling, copyright 2012, published in 2012 by Little, Brown and Company. One of the things I liked about the book was the definition of various terms, that I would have not know, at the beginning of each Part of the book. Part One we have the description of a Casual Vacancy - a vacancy that occurs under certain circumstances which it lists the three.

In Part One we have the sudden death of Mr. Barry Fairbrother who is taking his wife to their anniversary dinner when he drops dead while they were entering the Golf Club. This is a small parish, town, where everyone knows, everyone so the rumor mill starts churning with everyone vying to be the first to tell someone else about the news. He was on the Parish council for Pagford and this leaves his seat open. We also find out there are factions on the council some who want the Fields to be taken care of by the town and others who feel it is not their responsibility and it is eating into their town funds to clean trash etc. Also on the table is to ban the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic from using an abandoned church nearby. So all of this part is interesting, but then we get into a very long and drawn out, meeting of the characters and there thoughts and feelings and hints of things that might be happening behind the scenes with these people.

Eventually, it gets to the point where I connect to certain people and want them to achieve what they need. We find out the secrets and we laugh at the way they are exposed. But the book is sad and a reminder that not every book has a happy ending. SO, whereas I liked the book, I did not love the book. I had waited to read it so that my mind would not be skewed by previous books, but alas, the thoughts kept popping up. My husband said, " It did take 7 books to finish Harry Potter. So in that vain, not a bad book.

A FINE BALANCE by Rohinton Mistry, copyright 1995, published in 1997, by  Vintage International a division of Random House books. This book is set in India during the period of 1975 to 1984. It starts off in a train heading to the big city. On the train two tailor's and a college student meet and start to talk. We find out their names where they are from and eventually where they are going. The two tailors are related, Uncle Ishvar and his nephew Om are headed to work as tailors for a woman named Dina Dalal. The young college student Maneck is also traveling to the same address but as a boarder not a worker. After some suspicion of the tailors, they travel together to Dina's residence. The young man checks out the residence, the tailors tell Dina they will be back with their work things next week.

We are taken back into time, to see how the tailors, Maneck and Dina end up in their current situations. Each situation unfolds, leading us back and forth through time, until we are entirely in their current time. A time when the Prime Minister rigs an election and then makes a policy to make what she did okay. A time when the corruption is rampant, various pocketing of funds and bribes to make things happen, even if those things are horrendous. The Beautification project, destroying the only homes the homeless have, than abusing them because they are homeless, rounding up beggars and anyone who happened to be on the street at that particular moment and throwing them into harsh working conditions. They would not listen to you even if you had a job. The tailors found themselves in these conditions all the time. The Parent Control situation, where they sterilized people because they could, again just going to a street or festival and rounding up as many people as they could, reminding doctors if they wanted jobs they would do what they were told.

SO many things I did know about the circumstances in India and thinking this was happening all in the 1970's and through the 1980's. I need to pick up or talk to some of my friends who come from India, but what if they were the ones whose families acted the way some of these families did hurting other people because they did not fit into the plan. It makes me shudder. Then ending of this book is so tragic because the one person who may have made it, ends his life. Good read, but it is very graphic in its telling of the brutality.

COMBO:  At the beginning of this review I talked about the fact that these two stories have some similarities and of course some differences. They are both dealing with politics and the downtrodden. Both have people who want to suppress the problem by not dealing with it in realms of reality. In A FINE BALANCE we have the Prime Minister not caring about the people but that her streets look clean, removing people by force, castrating, sterilizing people without their consent and letting people get paid for the number of people they can do this to, which makes for a very corrupt situation. In  THE CASUAL VACANCY, we have some members of the Parish Council ticked off that the Fields, which never should have been built in their estimation is encroaching on their territory, which means the drug addicts, welfare recipients and poor are using Pagford's funds to maintain the area. They want it to be gone, the difference is that on this council there is the counterpoint, where people believe that the people in the Fields could be helped and are pushing back. The problem is that the leader of helping the Fields is the guy who died.

In both stories it is the children who suffer, in A FINE BALANCE, Om loses his entire family because of the caste system, which was supposed to be abolished, but not in the small mountain villages. His father is tortured for standing up for his rights and the man in control makes sure the whole family disappears. Om is in the city with his uncle and is spared for the moment. For Dina it is the notion of the men having the power, her brother is abusive and hates that his sister is smarter than he is and when the parents die basically enslaves her. Trying to get her to marry one of his friends and hates when she marries someone she actually loves. He considers her an embarrassment. For Maneck who just wants to be home in the mountains with his parents, he is depressed because progress in his small village means his father fears their small store may not be enough for Maneck and sends him to boarding school and college where he is abused sexually by the other students there. He does not tell his parents and they do not tell him how much they wish he would stay at home with them. Instead he feels like they do not want him around and he falls into depression.

THE CASUAL VACANCY is full of parental abuse, (beware there are a ton of characters in this book, so I will be brief). Andrew is called names by his father, punched, smacked and ridiculed her wants nothing more than to find an excuse to destroy his father. Sukvinder is constantly being told by her mother she is a useless person, why could she not be like her siblings. In addition, one of her classmates keeps saying nasty things to her in person and on the internet, she cuts herself. Fats the abuser has to deal with his father and his secret. He goes to school where his father is in charge and his mother is a counselor, so he is always trying to mess with his father. Krystal is the saddest of the characters, always cursing always getting into trouble, sexually active and dealing with her mother the drug addict. She is in charge of taking care of her baby brother making sure he is clean, fed and at nursery. All the parents, except Krystal's are about the power of position and do not care who they tread on to get it. Krystal is in the power of the system and hoping her mom gets clean so she does not have to lose her brother. She has already lost the only person who believed in her, Barry Fairbrother.

These books have a fair amount of death, not only of lives, but spirits being trampled just for the sake of money and power. They both end in tragedy. A tragedy that could have been averted if they only felt they had a way out. I have to say I do enjoy a happy ending, but it is nice when something is not sugar coated. Life is not sugar coated and these two books are all about life, whether it is a corrupt nation or a corrupt small town Parish. I liked the books, but hope my next books are not as depressing.

Running Behind

Still in the midst of reading A FINE BALANCE and my book club book A CASUAL VACANCY. I have been trying to read one or two chapters a day in both books, I promise that I will be done soon. I do have one thing to say about A FINE BALANCE, whomever picked the title of the book and the cover of the book, made an excellent choice. This book is all about living life balanced on a pinhead, one step the wrong way and your life could be over. I am hoping that this brutality is just fiction, but I suspect like all fiction there is a truth in this story.

For all mom's out there, Happy Mother's Day and strength be with you if your children cannot be with you this mother's day. My kids are hiking the AT and working in DC, so they are not with me in person but always with me in love.

Keep Quiet-review

KEEP QUIET by Lisa Scottoline published by St. Martin's Press in 2014. This book is a very fast read, why? First you just want to smack the characters in the head and then you want them to do the right thing and you are hoping that they do it sooner rather than later. I did not want to put the book down because I wanted desperately to find out the above things.

This book starts out with two characters Jake the father, financier and workaholic, picking up his son Ryan, high school basketball player and good student, who is somewhat estranged from his father. This is because his father is a workaholic and hardly has time for his son's academically or with sports. That seems to be the job of the mother Pam. Pam wants them to bond more so she sends Jake to pick up Ryan from the movies. Jake wants to be the cool parent so when Ryan begs to let him drive his new car, Jake says yes. Then on a blind curve they hit a body, one not seen by either person. Ryan had been smoking marijuana, so instead of calling 911, they leave the body. They do not tell anyone, including Pam who is a judge. They decide to keep quiet.

However, our author decided to put some twists and turns in the book, that come out slowly, which makes you want to read faster. At my book club we discussed the style of book, what our emotions were and whether we would do what Jake did to protect his son, especially when that son had to deal with the fact that the body was a classmate and he had to go to school where everyone was mourning her. Maybe my book club is not risk takers, but we would not have left the body there. We, unanimously, said we would have called 911. I said why not hide the weed, they may have checked if he was drinking, but with the father in the car, they probably would not have been so suspicious of the event. But, then we would not have a story with blackmail, murder, guilt, ruin and deceit.

Overall, an emotional account that makes you think "What would I do?" Good book.

Hamlet review

HAMLET by William Shakespeare?, my copy was in THE COMPLETE OXFORD SHAKESPEARE, III-Tradgedies, published by Oxford Press in 1987. The book play starts on page 1121 with an introduction and backstory why the play was written and some questions about the multitude of copies with additions and subtractions to the story. In the back of this play are the scenes that had been left out in the copy that I read. I have to be truthful, I have never sat down and read all of Shakespeare, I do prefer to see it acted out. The thing is I have this series all which is divided into sections: Histories, Comedies and Tragedies, so I think I will read some of them maybe not all of them.

One of the difficulties I had was getting into a rhythm to read the account of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I would be rolling along and it was if Shakespeare, went hold on lets trip them up a bit, I'll add some rhyming sections and then throw them into the wind. That is why I thought the part: Act 3 scene 2, line 273, Hamlet is talking to Horatio and has just finished saying
           " A whole one, I.
           For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
             This realm was
           Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
             A very, very -pajock"
Horatio: You might have rhymed.,
was rather funny, because I was thinking the same exact thing.

Anyway we have lovely passages in this tragic story of murder, betrayal, madness and revenge. In the end well, if you have ever seen the play or had to read snippets in English class, you know how it ends. IF you have not done any of those things, then read the play. It is not that difficult and you may be surprised at the number of passages you have heard people use around you. Things like "Get thee to a nunnery" or "To be or not to be; that is the question:" It is so much fun to read things in context and see how much Shakespeare contributed with his plays. O

You may ask, "Why did you put a question mark next to William Shakespeare," well there has always been some little controversy about whether he did or did not write theses plays. and the introduction says that in 1598, this play was not attributed to Shakespeare, and there is a person named James Roberts that was recognized as the playwright in 1602 for one called The Revenge of Hamlet Prince [of] Denmark. Just like Shakespeare's plays, his life was full of controversy.

Back to the other books

I have started reading HAMLET again and I need to check out A FINE BALANCE again at the library. I think I may just find a used copy, so that I do not have to keep rechecking out the book. I did find a used copy of LOLITA and several other books that I was having difficulty being able to check out at my local library. TROPIC OF CANCER, seems to be in the where the heck is this book, because I have had it on order at the library for several months. They think it maybe lost. That means I have at least 5 used books coming in the mail in the next couple of weeks. This should speed up the review process. In the meantime, I do have some book club books I can review, but I am going to wait until Monday to see what other people thought of the book. I have written my own notes as comparison.

If I finish HAMLET this weekend I will write a review by Sunday.

Happy Earth Day.

Review: Catch-22

CATCH-22 written by Joseph Heller in 1961, though the copyright was 1955 and 1961. My copy was a re-release in 2011 by Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. in this copy there is an introduction by Christopher Buckley. I did not read the introduction, preferring to read it after I have written a review. There are also notes in the back that goes over Mr. Heller's notes and reviews from various people. I did not read those either, choosing to come up with my own thoughts on this book. I will read them after I write this review. Maybe I will add some new notes after reading them, but that will be a different page.
The phrase Catch-22 is still in use today. I have used it several times to explain the way the world works to my children. In this book there are some crazy uses, such as Catch-22 used when someone says they are crazy to get out of service, the catch is that if you think you are crazy then you are not really crazy because you want to get out of the service because you are trying to preserve your life which is clearly not a crazy thing to do. The book goes on and on dumping the Catch-22 when ever they want to explain something away. Even if that is all they say, " Well, it was because of Catch-22," leaving the hearer trying to figure out what it means.
The characters are terrific and terrifying. We have the main character Yossarian, who is tired of flying missions, only to have the number of flights increasing every time he is within three flights of going home. Then Colonel Cathcart who is the one increasing the missions, for a couple of reasons, one he gets mad at something the men do or he is afraid to order in new replacements because he has to train them. Milo Mindbender who is making money on both sides of the war effort, with his syndicate, even bombing his own men to make a buck. The Chaplain who is questioning God and whether he saw a miracle of a naked man in a tree. Plus a whole host of other characters which make this story come to life.
The setting like the characters are fictitious, an island in the Mediterranean Sea which serves as the Air Force base where excursions to Rome to meet prostitutes was the norm. Mindbender used resources to fly everywhere to help the syndicate get supplies. He wanted to bilk the military of 1000's of dollars and give it to members of the syndicate, which was everyone.

I loved this book, being a military spouse there were several times our orders changed just because of what was needed at the time. I related to you can't do this because of that, then the change where they did it anyway. A very comical, dramatic and well written book. GREAT.