Vacation Book Report #9

The Lady and the Unicorn (2004) by Tracy Chevalier

*** out of five

Did you read Girl With a Pearl Earring? Then you've read The Lady and the Unicorn. The artwork in question is a tapestry, not a painting; the setting is France and Belgium, not Holland; the guilds are the weavers and the dyers, not the painters; but other than that, this is the same novel. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it; but having read the earlier novel, this is a rewrite, wonderfully elegant, but disappointing for its sameness.

Vacation Book Report #8

The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005) by Kim Edwards

**** 1/2 out of five

I didn't think I'd like this book because the premise is so bizarre. A young doctor's wife goes into labor during a freak snowstorm in Kentucky, and he is forced to deliver his own baby with the help of a nurse. His son is born healthy, but a second child is delivered; a daughter with Down Syndrome. The doctor's own sister died of Down Syndrome when she was a teenager, and to save his wife the pain his own mother suffered he hands the baby to the nurse with instructions to take the child to an institution. The nurse, who is secretly in love with the doctor, takes the child, moves away, and raises her as her own. The doctor tells his wife her second child was born dead.

Completely implausible, but according to the author's notes, this is based on a true story told to her by a minister. The writing is beautiful, lush and lyrical. Even the doctor who gave away his own child becomes a sympathetic figure. It's the second book I've read here that reduced me to tears.

I return to the frigid north tomorrow, so only one more book to be read here on the pink sand beach.

Vacation Book Report #7

Friday Night Lights (1990) by H. G. Bissinger

**** 1/2 out of five.

Friday Night Lights was approached from my low expectations. I had seen both the movie and the TV show, and felt that they glorified racism, sexism, and football as religion. Turns out that is because the film and the television version stripped the book's exploration of those factors and reduced this fine complex book to the simple story of Permian High School's 1988 football season. If you've seen the celluloid versions, you must read the book.

Racism? From the book I learned that Odessa, Texas public schools were not integrated until 1982. 1982! 28 years after Brown v. Bd. of Education was decided. 19 years after George Wallace blocked black students from entering the University of Alabama, and John F. Kennedy sent in the National Guard. In 1982 I was 25 and had graduated from integrated public schools and college. I couldn't have imagined that segregated schools still existed in the USA.

Sexism? Pressure on girls at Permian High School to conform was so intense that girls scored on average 75 points below the boys on scholastic aptitude tests.

Football as religion? It's the whole book, but especially the chapter near the end about how Permian's foe in the state semi-final game changed their entire grading system to ensure that no football player would be suspended for failing to maintain a 70 average. And woe to those who challenged the orthodoxy. A 35-year teacher, Will Bates, who refuses to give a star football player a grade he didn't earn, is drummed out of the school.

And as a bonus, I enjoyed the chapter about the great oil bust of the 1980s, which led an anonymous Texas oilman to say: "After all, we're just another Middle East war away from another boom." (p. 230)

Odessa is just 15 miles from Midland, Texas, where Chimpy McFlightsuit grew up.

On to the next tome!

Vacation Book Report #6

A Gesture Life (1999) by Chang-rae Lee

**** out of five

I was a little unsure of this book given that all the endorsements on the back cover were for Lee's first book, Native Speaker (1995), although that is not surprising when I find that Native Speaker won the PEN/Hemingway Award, QPB's New Voices Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the American Book Award.

A Gesture Life started slowly, introducing the main character, 'Doc' Hata, and his exemplary life in his bland surburban community on the outskirts of New York City. The book slowly opens up as Doc describes his distant past as a medic in the Japanese army during WWII (where he fell in love with a comfort girl), to his more recent difficulties with his adopted daughter Sunny. He is a great storyteller.

The prose is lovely, clean and lyrical, and I was not surprised to learn on the Penguin website that Lee is the director of the MFA program at Hunter College in New York City.

I look forward to reading Native Speaker.

Vacation Book Report #5

The Dog of the South (1979) by Charles Portis

*** out of five

I picked up this book because of Roy Blount, Jr.'s blurb on the back cover: "No one should die without having read The Dog of the South." Now I can die a happy woman.

It's a funny meandering story about Ray Midge who journeys to find his wife, Norma, who has run off with her first husband in Ray's beloved Ford Torino. The trail leads him to Mexico and Honduras and he meets many lost souls and crackpots along the way. As I read the book I thought of the movie "The Player" and decided that The Dog of the South is Fannie Flagg meets Hunter S. Thompson. It's definitely a period piece, of a time when border crossings were routine and casual drug use more mainstream.

I read some of the book in the middle of the night because on Friday night, I was awakened to hear my brother's name being shouted over and over. I finally realized that I was not dreaming and hurried to dress (although I was still asleep enough that I dressed without ever turning on a light, stumbling around trying to locate my shoes with my feet.) Someone had rattled the locked door of guests at the hotel, and they were trying to rouse my brother the manager to tell him. I hurried to his quarters and woke him. He sleeps with a sleep machine due to sleep apnea and had slept through all the commotion. After we checked the premises and called the police I went back to bed at 2:00 a.m. but of course was too wired up to sleep. So I joined Ray Midge on his mad trip and read for an hour before I could relax and sleep. (We have decided, on reflection, that the marauder was actually another set of guests, a young couple who appear to have gotten quite drunk and apparently couldn't find their room in their condition. The following morning they required bloody mary's for breakfast and reeked of stale alcohol.) It fit in perfectly with this crazy book.

Vacation Book Report #4

Mistler's Exit by Louis Begley

*** 1/2 out of five

I read Louis Begley's Wartime Lies when it first came out but hadn't read any of his later novels. I did not know that he wrote About Schmidt (later made into a memorable film with Jack Nicholson and Kathy Bates).

Mistler's Exit is a short book, about a powerful New York adman who had just learned he has terminal cancer. Rather than tell his wife and son, he takes a solo trip to Venice where he is somewhat surprised to find he is never alone. It's beautifully written. Definitely the point of view of a rich powerful man, which is interesting to me because it's so other. Enjoyable.

Vacation Book Report #3

A Million Little Pieces (2003) by James Frey

0 (nil, nada, nothing, zero, zilch) out of five

I was aware of the controversy about this book, that the author sold it as a nonfiction account of his six weeks in rehab, but much of it was either totally aggrandized or completely made up. It was on the shelf here in the library so I read it. What a piece of crap. The guy makes himself the hero of his own rehab. Despite having succumbed to the terror of what he calls "The Fury", the rage that rules his life and sends him careening down the road of addiction from age 10 to age 23, suddenly in rehab he becomes all Mr. New-age, Tao-Te-Ching-reading, stand-up tough guy who irrevocably quits drugs and alcohol by sheer willpower alone, eschewing AA. Right. The conceit became larger as the book went on and he went from vomiting scumbag to righteous saviour of others.

Frey writes in a very stylized way. Every paragraph (many of which contain only a word, or a sentence) is left-adjusted. There is no punctuation other than periods, and many sentences would be marked as "run-on" by a sixth-grade teacher. There is a breathless quality to the whole book which makes me see how Oprah could have been conned. Read The Smoking Gun's take-down for the truth of Frey's little memoir.

Now that I've read it, I want my six hours back.

On to the next book.

Vacation Book Report #2

Today's book is The Ladies' Man by Elinor Lipman (1999)

** 1/2 out of 5

A light frothy romantic comedy of a novel, true to the blurb on the back which compares her writing to a 'wryly perfect New Yorker cartoon'.

Perfect for a short-attention span vacation book, although my attention did flag a few times. The book is written almost exclusively in dialogue which kept making me think of turning it into a Broadway play. The kind of dialogue that is never actually spoke in real life, smart arch sentences, clever, no stumbling or filler words.

Vacation Reading List

OK, I know I said I was going on hiatus, but you know what? I lied. I have a access to a computer and I am reading up a storm. So, here's the first book I read on my vacation:

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family (2001), by Patricia Volk

Rating: ***** (five stars out of five)

I love books about food and this is a great book about food and family. Volk's family ran a series of restaurants in New York City from 1888 to 1988, but this book is more about her amazing family. I loved it. I laughed and I cried. And I drove Coach Mom crazy by interrupting her book several times to read her the parts that made me laugh out loud.

A favorite passage:

Maybe you've heard of my Aunt Ruthie. She's the woman who was taken hostage in her Bronx apartment by an ex-paratrooper on August 4, 1990. It was a hot night. She left her bathroom window open. Jose Cruz climbed in and held Aunt Ruthie at gunpoint for seven hours. BRAVE, the Daily News ran under her photo on page 1. YIDDISH CHARM NAILS SUSPECT, said the New York Post. He ate all her plums, a wedge of Jarlsberg, and three nectarines before the police exchanged her for two cigarettes.

"When you go to prison," Aunt Ruthie counseled him, "Take out some books. Learn a different profession. It's important in life to get hold of yourself."

Gooch Rerouted to St. James Park

Contrary to previous reports (shame, Sports Illustrated), Oguchi Onyewu has signed with the Magpies of Newcastle. He won't play with Franck Ribery, but he will play with Obafemi Martins, and he may play with Michael Owen (swoon).

International Herald-Tribune: United States defender Oguchi Onyewu joins Newcastle on loan

SI: Gooch joins the Toon
U.S. defender Onyewu headed to Newcastle on loan

FoxSports: Onyewu joins Newcastle on loan

Independent (uk): Onyewu eager to make Newcastle move permanent

Hiatus

Heading to the islands, mon, back in two weeks.

Bease!

BBC: DaMarcus Beasley completes the scoring 20 minutes from time as Manchester City book their place in the fifth round

FA Cup third round: Man City 3-1 Southampton

ObamaMania

NYTimes: Barack Obama at his fellow student Bradford Berenson’s apartment, where he watched the 1990 election returns.
Articles on Obama everywhere this weekend. Does he have the greatest press people ever, or did a memo go out amongst the corporate media?

NYTimes (Page 1): In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice

Boston Globe: (Page 1): At Harvard Law, a unifying voice
Classmates recall Obama as even-handed leader

LATimes: Early on, Obama showed talent for bridging divisions

WaPo: Harvard Experiences Sculpt Obama Appeal

WaPo: Obama Excites Entertainment Community

Sunday Times (uk): Secrets of Obama family unlocked

Just For Laughs

Bob Geiger: The Saturday Cartoons

And a bonus laugh: WaPo: Norm Coleman Injured in Dumpster Dive

Gooch Lands

SI: Oguchi Onyewu was a key member of the U.S. back line at last summer's World Cup.
FotoSports/WireImage.com
In France, where he will sign for Olympique Marseille. One of his teammates will be Franck Ribery, the exciting young French striker. Good luck Gooch!

Goal.com: Onyewu Set For Marseille Switch

SI.com: Onyewu to Marseille
French giants reportedly land coveted U.S. defender

SoccerTimes.com: Onyewu move to Marseille is completed.

Racist Injustice in Douglas County, Georgia

ESPN: If he had accepted the plea bargain, Wilson would've had to register as a sex offender and wouldn't have been permitted to live in the same house as his younger sister.
ESPN covers the Genarlow Wilson case. Look at the case they found to compare to his situation:

The position of Barker [the judge] and the district attorney, McDade, who refused to comment, is that Wilson is guilty under the law and there is no room for mercy, though the facts seem to say they simply chose not to give it to Wilson. At the same time this trial was under way, a local high school teacher, a white female, was found guilty of having a sexual relationship with a student -- a true case of child molestation. The teacher received 90 days. Wilson received 3,650 days.

This is a disgrace.

So, Did You Listen to Chimpy McFlightsuit Last Night?

Wonkette

I didn't bother, because when his lips move, I know he's lying.

Actually, blogger Greg Palast has discovered a Bush tell:

He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat.

In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times — my kids kept count.

If you want to see a real speech, written by the person who is giving it, watch Sen. Jim Webb's Democratic response. Crooks & Liars.

The real good news? Legislators in New Mexico have started the impeachment process. Drip, drip, drip, let's wash Bush out of our hair. Chimpeachment, baby.

News Round-Up, January 23, 2007

Stories I didn't get around to this weekend, in no particular order:

Yesterday was Blog for Choice day (see photo, above). Why am I pro-choice? Because I believe women are equal and free. In order for women to be equal and free, we have to have the right to make decisions about what happens to our bodies. It's that simple. Digby nails the argument.

Steve Clemons at the Washington Note asks Bill Richardson, do you have a problem with inappropriate behavior towards women? Making lewd gestures to women. Jeez. If I worked with him, I'd already have been fired for kicking him in the jewels. Welcome to the 21st century, Bill.

Scooter Libby is using the Marion Barry defense: "Bitch set me up!" The bitch being Karl Rove.

The NYTimes sez, lower your cholesterol the old-fashioned way, with niacin (vitamin B).

The NYTimes also has a ridiculous article peddling White House spin about how involved Chimpy McFlightsuit is in editing his speeches. Right. The guy doesn't like to read, but he's a great editor.

The US has created a new superbug, an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, in Iraq; according to Wired News, 700 US soldiers have been infected to date.

The WaPo ran an attack-piece on the front page this weekend about the sale of John Edwards's house; TPM has been following the blow-back.

Steve Gilliard's News Blog moved. Note to self, update bookmarks.

Cheney is a Synonym for Warmongering Chickenhawk Moron

Sorry for lack of posts, I went to a family wedding this weekend and now am laboring to glaze my work for a sodafiring Friday.

For entertainment today, I recommend reading Liz Cheney's (yes, daughter of Dick) op-ed in today's Washington Post. Then read the hundreds of comments. 46 pages of 'em right now. Here's mine (page 22):

Fact-free BS masquerading as opinion in the WaPo. First off, Lieberman isn't a Democrat -- he's a member of the Lieberman for Connecticut Party. Second, winning is no longer an option. The time for winning was when we invaded Iraq, based on lies, with a too-small force and a ridiculous strategy conceived by the stupidest foreign policy team in the history of the United States. We're just enjoying the fruits of being greeted as liberators, like your idiot father said. Why is the Post letting the idiots who got us into this mess tell us how to get out? Why not give a column to someone smart, oh, someone like Scott Ritter, or Al Gore, or a liberal blogger, or any of the smart people who said, there are no WMD, this whole thing is being made up by Cheney and PNAC, the British tried this 80 years ago and it didn't work, why don't we stick with the real problem which is Al Qaeda and bin Laden and forget about secular Hussein? Oh, that would hurt your cocktail party reputation. Got to stay in the Kewl Kids Klub. Thanks for nothing, WaPo.

Charity?

dailykos: Salvation Army's War on the Poor

The Salvation Army is evicting low-income women from two buildings in Manhattan that were donated to the Salvation Army specifically to provide housing 'for women of modest income'.

The Salvation Army also discriminates against gays and lesbians. Send your charitable donations elsewhere.