“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” This novel greatly illustrates what can happen when a man gets bored. It’s an amazing tale about Wang Lung (pronounced Wong Lung), a poor farmer in China, and what happens when he goes from poverty to wealth.
This is the memoir by the author of The Yearling. She tells about her 13 years living in Florida on 72 acres in the northeastern part of the state near the St. John’s River between Jacksonville and St. Augustine.
Drawings by Robert Lawson
Ferdinand the Bull just wanted to sit under his favorite cork tree, “smelling the flowers just quietly.” I loved this book as a child and they made a movie of it, which is pretty good, and made me want to read the book again. Learned about cork trees and makes me want to visit Spain, where cork trees grow (Andalusia and a town called Ronda).
Jean Perdu owns a book barge in Paris. He is 20 years into grieving his lost love. She gave him a letter but he never opened it. Finally he does and she left him because she was dying of cancer. He unhooks his barge and travels south with Max Jordan, a young author with writer’s block, and 2 cats. They meet Salvatore Cuneo, also looking for a lost love, and who eventually meets the love of his life – an author – and Jean gives them the boat and travels on by car to Sanary de Ser or something like that where he swims, gets tanned and in shape and discovers he loves Catherine and they live happily ever after. Book Club book – no one liked it except Mom and 2 others. Mom fell in love with lavender after reading this book and makes lavender snickerdoodle cookies, drinks lavender tea, and wants to see fields of lavender in bloom.by Geraldine Brooks, 2008
Fictional tale of the true “Sarajevo Haggadah,” an ancient (1350) Jewish prayer book beautifully illustrated — “Illuminations.” It is now in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, valued at $700 million in 1991 – most valuable book in the world.
She goes back in time from Hanna Heath, and Australian book preserver, to 1: 1940 Sarajevo where Jewish girl, Lola, escapes Sarajevo with the help of a Muslim couple to the mountains with the book (where an insect’s wing gets into the book). 2. Backwards to Vienna, 1894, where a very ill Florien Mittl is given the book to rebind and he steals the silver clasps and gives them to his doctor to try and cure him of his V.D. – silver clasps missing. 3. Backwards to Venice 1609 where a Jewish man (gifted Rabbi) with a gambling problem loses the book to drunk friend priest, Father Vistorini – who signs his name to it that he clears it and it’s not burned. Wine stains on the book. 4. Backwards to Tarragona, Spain, 1492, where a Jewish man buys beautiful Illuminations from a beggar in the market and adds scripts as a wedding gift for his niece or nephew but he ends up dead by Spanish Inquisition. His daughter escapes with the book, and her newborn nephew – who she baptizes in the sea (that’s how saltwater got on some pages). 5. Backwards to Seville, Spain, 1480, where a young Muslim girl learns how to paint beautiful illustrations and she paints some beautiful Illuminations of the emira and to save her, the emira gives her to a Jewish doctor who has a deaf-mute son. She paints pictures of the Passover so he can understand the Passover.
Very difficult to get into-backwards, made-up history. Not really all that good. Interesting in each historical section but over too quick and on to the next, while switching back to Hanna in modern times.
by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, 2011
A true story about Kamila Sidiqi and her 5 sisters and how they survived under the Taliban. Very similar to My Forbidden Face. Khair Khana is the neighborhood in Kabul in which they lived. When the Taliban took over, they could no longer leave the house, unless accompanied by male relative “Mahram,” had to wear chadri, and feared for their lives whenever they ventured out. Her father and mother had to flee to the north since her father had been in the military before the Taliban. Her brother had to flee to Iran to keep from being taken for service with the Taliban. That left Kamila and 4 other sisters and a little brother, who became Kamila’s Mahram. Kamila decides to start a dressmaking business in their home. She soon has about 30 neighborhood women taking classes and sewing dresses and pantsuits. Kamila sells them clandestinely in the market to clothing shops. She brings her little brother as her Mahram and when inside the shop, conducts business while her and shopkeepers keep a close eye out for Taliban. I guess women still needed clothes to wear in their homes and under their chadris. Kamila’s efforts give relief to the women and money for their families to survive.
Kamila hopes to help rebuild Afghanistan. Her ideas are to empower women to be business women and young men so they can educate their families. Her new company is called Kaweyan. Interesting book. She bloomed where she was planted and had very little fear. She saved her family.
P.S. Afghans loved Titanic – they went crazy for everything Titanic when the movie came out – despite the Taliban’s efforts to stop them.
by Latifa, 2001
Sept. 27, 1996, Taliban take over Kabul, Afghanistan. No longer can women go to school or work – must cover themselves entirely. Also, no music, etc. No whistling, no TV, no pets, no kites, no weddings, not allowed to laugh in streets, no photos.
“One thing and one thing only, unites Afghans in spite of their ethnic divisions: resistance against all foreign invaders, be they British, Pakistani, Arab – or Soviet, of course.”
She remains in her apartment for basically 4 entire years, from age 16 to 20, while the Taliban make everyone miserable, publicly whipping, beating, and executing people in the beloved soccer stadium. They even destroyed a centuries-old statue – the Buddha of Bamiyan – “Colossi,” from 5th century AD – that is after they destroyed all art in the museum of Kabul and the frescoes of Behzad.
At first Latifa is depressed (no duh!) but then her friend convinced her to start an underground school for neighborhood children. That helps her keep going despite how dangerous it is.
Women are not allowed to work so there are no longer any female doctors. Women cannot be seen by a male doctor. So there is no health care for women any longer. They are forced to marry at age 14. Latifa’s mom is a former nurse/doctor and treats women in the apt. clandestinely. Until she no longer can because no medicine and no way to get any.
Finally, her mom and dad sneak out with her (leaving a sister and brother at home in Kabul) to France to do an interview with Elle magazine.
That is when this book is published (2001) and shortly before 9-11.
Osama bin Laden, the “rich Saudi Arabian,” bank-rolled the Taliban in Afghanistan. They believe most of the Taliban are from Pakistan. Afghanis hate Pakistan!
The Taliban are bad, bad, bad!
As I was reading this, we (CIA and Navy seals) got (killed) Osama bin Laden on 5/1/11 in Pakistan in a fortressed mansion.
A good timeline of Afghanistan from 1919 – Dec. 22, 2001 in the back of the book.
We helped the “Northern Alliance” topple the Taliban in Mazar-i-Sharif on 11-9-01. The Taliban abandon Kabul on 11-13-01 “overnight.” Mullah Omar is the leader of the Taliban.
Here is an article from The Denver Post on May 7, 2011:
Death may change dynamic in Afghanistan – Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
The killing of Osama bin Laden could be a game changer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan by splitting the Taliban from the al-Qaeda terrorist network, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday during a stop at Seymour Air Force Base. “I think it’s too early to make a judgment, in terms of the impact inside Afghanistan, but I think in six months or so, we’ll know,” he said.
“We’ll have to see what that relationship looks like,” Gates said of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in a post-bin Laden world. “Bin Laden and (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar had a very close personal relationship. There are others in the Taliban that felt betrayed by al-Qaeda–that it was because of al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States that the Taliban got thrown out of Afghanistan.”
Denver Post Wire Services
by Alexander McCall Smith, 2011
12th book in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency
Wonderful, wonderful book! Mma Ramotswe solves the mystery of the cattle maulings – not really – but everyone else is satisfied; the kind neighbor who just wants to be friends buys the unkind Mr. Botsalo Moeti salt lick and offers to fix the fences. The maid and her dwarf-teacher lover say it will never happen again, and so does her little son. It is an example of how an unkind, evil person can bring trouble on himself.
Mma Grace Makutsi buys new shoes for her wedding and decides to wear them out of the store. Then she sees Mma Ramotswe’s little white van and as she is running after it, she breaks the heels and an ankle strap. She is too afraid to tell Phuti.
Charlie supposedly got a girl pregnant and she had twins. Grace berates him for not taking care of her. Charlie runs away. Mma Ramotswe finds out where he is (at Fanwell’s) and invites him over for a talk at her house. She agrees to talk to the girl and Mma Makutsi. When she talks to the girl, she finds out Charlie is not the father–She had 2 boyfriends at the same time and is going to marry the father. When Mma Ramotswe tells Charlie, he is so happy! He tells Mma Ramotswe, “I am going to be different from now on…” She says, “Don’t change too much…We like you the way you are, Charlie.” He stared at her incredulously and she realized that he might not have heard many people say that. So she repeated herself: “We like you, Charlie; you just remember that.”
And Charlie and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni go and buy back the tiny white van and surprise Mma Ramotswe with it early one morning–it is in her driveway.
When she drives to work in it, she cries and has to pull over, “her triumphal journey, her proud return.”
Finally, in the last chapter, Grace and Phuti get married. A beautiful wedding. Mrs. Potokwane arranges to get invited by offering to help with the food – “never enough pots” and the cakes – never enough cakes. And she takes over and Grace is so happy. Charlie tries to fix Grace’s shoes and apologizes for calling her a warthog. Mma Ramotswe buys her a new pair of shoes and Grace explains what happened, finally, to Phuti and, “He had not minded in the least.”
Beautiful, interesting, sweet, wonderful story! He just gets better and better. My doctor visit to Dr. Stephanie Lockwood (for penicillin for gross cough) – I brought the book with and she said, “Is that the new #1…?” and I said, “yes – it’s great.” She said, “I have it on hold at the library!” and I told her, “so did I!” When we were finished she said , “Now, hurry up and finish that book so I can read it!”
But Mom gets it first.
by Stieg Larsson, 2005
Intriguing characters but poorly written and very ugly – lots of perverse sick dark sexual crime and a serial murderer. Why is this an international best seller?
Lisbeth Salander – 24 yr. old – tattoos, piercing, ward of state (Sweden) – genius computer hacker, very unemotional, loves her mother, though – visits her in a home.
Mikael Blomkvist – journalist – hired to investigate Harriet Vanger’s supposed murder in 1966. They team up and together discover Harriet is alive and well in Australia – disappeared to escape her brother, Martin, a sexual lunatic- serial murderer-like her father, who she murdered. SICK!
by Jeanette Walls, 2009 “A True-Life Novel”
Jeannette Walls tells the life story of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who grew up on a ranch in Texas and then New Mexico. Her dad taught her how to break horses and work on the ranch. She was the oldest of 3 children-smart, hard-working, fearless. She really wanted to get educated but her dad spent all her tuition money on some dogs, Great Danes, that he was going to breed and make money from. Their neighbor ends up shooting them because they wandered freely.
She ends up going to teach school in Red Lake, AZ – rode her horse, Patches, 500 miles to get there. But when the Great War ended, she lost the job because she wasn’t certified. She goes to Chicago and works as a maid-marries a two-timing crumb-bum, finds out he was married already with 3 kids and the diamond ring he gave her was fake.
She ends up getting her teaching job again at Red Lake, AZ. Her sister, Helen, ends up living with her – Helen was pregnant and abandoned by the father in Hollywood. Helen is shamed by the Catholic priest in Red Lake and sees no way out of her predicament so hangs herself. Lily by then has met Jim Smith, the man she marries and spends her life with. He’s into automobiles but in the Great Dust Bowl – they end up running a huge ranch in Northern Arizona on the Mogollon Rim. He runs the ranch with Lily’s help and they spend 15 happy years there. Have 2 children, Rosemary and Little Jim. They are happy there. Lily saves the ranch by deciding to build dams to catch rainwater so the cattle have water. After 15 years, the owners sell the ranch to Hollywood movie makers. They fire Jim. They move to Phoenix, hate it-then to Horse Mesa in the Superstition Mountains. Rosemary ends up marrying Rex Walls, a fly boy-and they have Jeannette – the author – along with other babies. Lily dies when Jeannette is 8 years old. She was quite a lady-tough, hard-working, resourceful, fearless.
Loved the relationship between Jim and Lily. Husband and wife but teammates. In Phoenix, Lily gets jealous and worried that Jim might cheat on her. She has Rosemary follow him at lunch. He goes to a park and eats his lunch. The next day, Lily tells Rosemary to follow him again, “…then around the corner came Jim with Rosemary. He was holding her hand, and she looked a lot happier than she had when she’d left.
“Jim knelt down by my window. “Lily, what the hell is going on?”
“I thought of coming up with some complicated lie, but Jim was smarter than that, and I knew the game was up. “I was trying to prove to myself and Rosemary what I hoped would be the case – that you are a faithful husband.”
“I see,” he said. “Let’s all go have lunch.”
Also, Lily beats one of her students who put his hand up a girl’s dress: “That boy needed to be taught to keep his grimy hands to himself, so I put my book down, walked up to him, and slapped him hard in the face. He looked at me, bug-eyed with shock, and then he reached up and slapped me in the face.
“For a second I was speechless. A smile started creeping across Johnny’s face. The little squirt thought he had the best of me. It was then that I hauled him up and threw him against the wall, backhanding him again and again, and when he cowered down in a ball on the floor, I grabbed my ruler and started whaling his butt.”
She ends up getting fired for that.
On training horses, “He was always repeating that phrase: “Think like a horse.” “The key to that, he said, was understanding that horses were always afraid…They were all the time looking for a protector, and if you could convince a horse that you’d protect him, he would do anything for you.”
Also: “I cut her out from the herd, lassoed her, and then slowly walked up to her, following Dad’s rule: “around strange horses to keep your eyes on the ground so they won’t think you’re a predator.”
Good book – once you get to the ranching part with Big Jim on the Mogollon Rim.
Mom gave me the book to read and then send to Adam because she thinks his writing style is like Jeannette Walls – and he has stories to tell, just like she does.
by John Steinbeck, 1937
Strange, unsatisfying little book about a little boy (Jody) who lives on a ranch with his mom, dad, and a ranch-hand, Billy Buck. His mean dad brings home a little red pony, a treasure, for Jody, to raise and train and have as his own. One day the pony is left out in the rain all day, even though Billy Buck promised to watch out for the rain. The pony gets sick and despite Billy Buck’s excellent vet skills and Jody’s tireless nursing, it dies. Dad decides to breed their old mare (Nellie) to a neighbor’s stallion and the colt will be Jody’s. Jody takes good care of Nellie. But when it comes time to have the colt, he’s in the wrong position and Billy Buck has to take a hammer and crash in Nellie’s skull and cut her open to deliver the colt. The colt is born but that’s the last we hear of it.
The version I read includes a last story, The Leader of the People, about Jody’s Grandpa coming for a visit and Jody’s Dad, Carl Tiplin, being cruel to him because he tells the same story over and over about how he led a wagon train on the Western migration to California. The book ends with Jody telling his grandpa he likes to hear his stories. They are sitting on the front porch and Jody goes in to make him a glass of lemonade. That’s it. The End. Never hear another word about the second Colt. Strange and sad.
By Suzanne Collins, 2008
Teen fiction-fast moving. Set in futuristic North America where the “Capitol” holds the Hunger Games annually as a reminder to the Districts, twelve of them, not to ever rebel again. Two teens from each of 12 districts are drawn in a lottery. These 24 youths are sent to an arena in the Capitol to fight until only one remains. Story focuses on Katniss and Peeta from District 12, the coal-mining district. Peeta has been in love with Katniss since he saw her for the first time at the age of five. She hunts with Gale, a young man, and provides meat for her family-Mom and little sister, Prim. Peeta is the Baker’s son. After much strategy-during the Hunger Games – they change the rules so that Katniss and Peeta can both win-they don’t have to kill each other. Peeta thinks Katniss really loves him, but she was mostly doing that as an act. Or at least she thinks so. To be continued in Book 2, “Catching Fire.”
by Laura Hillenbrand, 2010 (she wrote Seabiscuit)
“A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption”
Louis Zamperini, from Torrance, CA, grows from a delinquent to an Olympic runner. Then a bombardier for the Army Air Force in WWII. He flies in B-24 bombers and they participate in the bombing of Nauru in the Pacific. On the way back to Funafuti, in their beloved B-24 Superman, they are shot full of 594 bullet holes from 4 or 5 zeroes, but they make it back. Then the island of Funafuti is bombed by the Japanese one night later. That scared them more than the Nauru ordeal. Then a “despised” lieutenant makes them fly the Green Hornet, a bad junk plane, to search the Pacific for a downed B-24 flown by Clarence Corpening. The Green Hornet’s engine number 1 dies and they end up crashing in the Pacific Ocean. Only Louis, Phil, and Mac survive the crash. They drift on rafts in the Pacific longer than anyone else known (47 days). Mac dies (after many, many days) – he lost all hope. Phil and Louie – good friends – quiz each other. They catch rainwater, albatrosses, and fish. They battle sharks, including a great white. They survive a strafing attack by a Japanese plane. They end up in the doldrums where Louie and Phil share a beautiful site: “It was an experience of transcendence. Phil watched the sky, whispering that it looked like a pearl. The water looked so solid that it seemed they could walk across it. When a fish broke the surface far away, the sound carried to the men in absolute clarity. They watched as pristine ringlets of water circled outward around the place where the fish had passed, then faded to stillness.
“For awhile they spoke, sharing their wonder. Then they fell into reverent silence. Their suffering was suspended. They weren’t hungry or thirsty. They were unaware of the approach of death.
“As he watched this beautiful, still world, Louie played with a thought that had come to him before…Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil.”
Then this experience: “On the fortieth day, Louie was lying beside Phil under the canopy when he abruptly sat up. He could hear singing. He kept listening; it sounded like a choir. He nudged Phil and asked him if he heard anything. Phil said no. Louis slid the canopy off and squinted into the daylight. The ocean was a featureless flatness. He looked up.
“Above him, floating in a bright cloud, he saw human figures, silhouetted against the sky. He counted twenty-one of them. They were singing the sweetest song he had ever heard.”
They finally drift to the Marshall Islands, are taken prisoners by the Japanese-first on Kwajalein and then to Japan. First in Ofuna, then Omori, where he meets the Bird–a sadistic prison guard who constantly beats and harasses Louie. His real name is Mutsuhiro Watanabe. Then to Naoetsu – harassed by the Bird there also. War ends after 2 A-bombs dropped. Prisoners set free – taken to Okinawa, then home.
Louie’s nightmares and alcoholism ensue once he’s home. He marries Cynthia and they have a baby girl. Cynthia decides to divorce him when he is found shaking their baby girl – also named Cynthia.
Cynthia comes back to L.A., goes to Billy Graham revival, is converted, convinces Louie to go. He finally does, and storms out the first night. She convinces him to go again. Billy Graham preaches that night on how God created this beautiful universe yet numbers the very hairs on our heads. “‘God works miracles one after another…if you suffer, I’ll give you the grace to go forward.'”
“Louie found himself thinking of the moment at which he had woken in the sinking hull of Green Hornet, the wires that had trapped him a moment earlier now, inexplicably, gone. And he remembered the Japanese bomber swooping over the rafts, riddling them with bullets, and yet not a single bullet had struck him, Phil, or Mac. He had fallen into unbearably cruel worlds, and yet he had borne them…
“Louie pushed passed the congregants in his row, charging for the exit…
“As he reached the aisle, he stopped. Cynthia, the rows of bowed heads, the sawdust underfoot, the tent around him, all disappeared. A memory long beaten back, the memory from which he had run the night before, was upon him.
“Louie was on the raft. There was gentle Phil crumpled up before him, Mac’s breathing skeleton, endless ocean stretching away in every direction, the sun lying over them, the cunning bodies of the sharks, waiting, circling. He was a body on a raft, dying of thirst. He felt words whisper from his swollen lips. It was a promise thrown at heaven, a promise he had not kept, a promise he had allowed himself to forget until just this instant: If you will save me, I will serve you forever…
“It was the last flashback he would ever have…”
Louie threw out all his cigarettes, alcohol, and girlie magazines that night.
“In the morning, he woke feeling cleansed. For the first time in five years, the Bird hadn’t come into his dreams. The Bird would never come again.”
He took his Bible, went to a park, sat under a tree and began reading.
“Louie felt profound peace…In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation.”
For the rest of his long life, Louie remained joyful. He goes back to Japan and meets some of the prison guards who are now in prison for their war crimes. He was told that Watanabe (the Bird) had committed suicide (not true). Louie felt compassion for him.
“At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless, and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.”
He goes on to open “Victory Boys Camp.” He is honored to run the Olympic torch at 5 different games. Lomita Air Field is renamed Zamperini Field. “A plaza at USC was named after him, as was the stadium at Torrance High.”
In his seventies, he learned skateboarding.
Laura Hillenbrand’s Acknowledgements, last paragraph, May 2010:
“Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they sacrificed, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book is dedicated.”
by Mark Twain, 2010
He requested that much of his autobiography be unpublished until 100 years after his death.
Introduction = 58 pages
Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations, 1870-1905, Pgs. 59-199
Autobiography of Mark Twain, pgs. 203-467
Explanatory Notes, pgs. 469-650
Appendixes, pgs. 651-667
Note on the Text, pgs. 669-679
Word Division in this Volume, pg. 680
References, pgs. 681-712
Index, pgs. 713-736
From the Autobiography of Mark Twain
Page 209, “My brother Henry was six months old at the time. I used to remember his walking into a fire outdoors when he was a week old. It was remarkable in me to remember a thing like that, which occurred when I was so young. And it was still more remarkable that I should cling to the delusion, for thirty years, that I did remember it–for of course it never happened; he would not have been able to walk at that age.”
Page 210: “For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my memory is not as active as it used to be.”
Describing “a limpid brook” on his uncle’s farm “…it had swimming pools, too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For we were little Christian children, and had early been taught the value of forbidden fruit.”
“In the little log cabin lived a bedridden white-headed slave woman whom we visited daily, and looked upon with awe, for we believed she was upwards of a thousand years old and had talked with Moses…and so we believed that she had lost her health in the long desert-trip coming out of Egypt…She had a round bald place on the crown of her head, and we used to creep around and gaze at it in reverent silence, and reflect that it was caused by fright through seeing Pharaoh drowned.”
“We had a faithful and affectionate good friend, ally and adviser in “Uncle Dan’l,” a middle-aged slave whose head was the best one in the negro-quarter, whose sympathies were wide and warm, and whose heart was honest and simple and knew no guile. He has served me well, these many, many years…and have staged him in books under his own name and as “Jim,” and carted him all around–to Hannibal, down the Mississippi on a raft, and even across the Desert of Sahara in a balloon–and he has endured it all with the patience and friendliness and loyalty which were his birthright. It was on the farm that I got my strong liking for his race and my appreciation of certain of its fine qualities. This feeling and this estimate have stood the test of sixty years and more and have suffered no impairment. The black face is as welcome to me now as it was then.”
Page 213: “A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch…often I brought them home to amuse my mother with…”There’s something in my coat-pocket for you,” she would put her hand in.”
Page 217: “I can remember the bare wooden stairway in my uncle’s house, and the turn to the left above the landing, and the rafters and the slanting roof over my bed, and the squares of moonlight on the floor, and the white cold world of snow outside, seen through the curtainless window.”
Page 221: “In this Autobiography I shall keep in mind the fact that I am speaking from the grave…nineteen-twentieths of the book will not see print until after my death.
“…I can speak thence freely…
“It seemed to me that I could be as frank and free and unembarrassed as a love letter if I knew that what I was writing would be exposed to no eye until I was dead, and unaware, and indifferent.”
Page 241, re: “Villa di Quarto” describing the countess-an American-from whom he rented the villa in Italy – near Florence: “She is excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, obscene, a furious blusterer on the outside and at heart a coward. Her lips are as familiar with lies, deceptions, swindles and treacheries as are her nostrils with breath.”
Page 229, re: Robert Louis Stevenson: “…his splendid eyes. They burned with a smouldering rich fire under the pent-house of his brows, and they made him beautiful.”
Page 229, Thomas Bailey Aldrich: “…that Aldrich was always witty, always brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as the red hot iron on the blacksmith’s anvil–you had only to hit it competently to deliver an explosion of sparks. I added –
“‘Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equaled him…Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn’t help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he was always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell–you will see.’
“Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, “I hope not.”
“Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset.””
Pages 273-277, Mark Twain’s little brother, Henry, works with him on a steamboat. Henry is on the boat, the Pennsylvania, when it explodes. Henry is badly scalded and a kindly doctor doesn’t believe he will die so treats him. He is almost better and ready to go but that night, young doctors gave him an overdose of morphine and killed him. The coffin, the suit Henry wears in it, the place the coffin is put, and the flowers on Henry’s body–All match a dream Mark Twain had 2 weeks before Henry dies.
Page 281: After posting a newspaper article about the “Morris Incident” in the book, he writes: “When an eye witness sets down in narrative form some extraordinary occurrence which he has witnessed, that is news–that is the news form, and its interest is absolutely indestructible; time can have no deteriorating effect upon that episode. I am placing that account here largely as an experiment. If any stray copy of this book shall, by any chance, escape the paper-mill for a century or so, and then be discovered and read, I am betting that that remote reader will find that it is still news, and that it is just as interesting as any news he will find in the newspapers of his day and morning–if newspapers shall still be in existence then–though let us hope they won’t.”
Page 312, the Character of Man: “…of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable of the entire brood. He is the only one–the solitary one–that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices–the most hateful.”…
“…There are certain sweet-smelling sugar-coated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate. One of those is, that there is such a thing as independence: independence of thought, independence of opinion, independence of action. Another is, that the world loves to see independence-…” “We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.”
Pages 315-316, speaking to a “rabid Republican,” the father of William R. Hearst: “This was a man who was afterward a United States Senator, and upon whose character rests no blemish that I know of, except that he was the father of the William R. Hearst of today, and therefore grandfather of Yellow Journalism–that calamity of calamities.”
He said, “…To lodge all power in one party and keep it there, is to insure bad government, and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals. The parties ought to be so nearly equal in strength as to make it necessary for the leaders on both sides to choose the very best men they can find.”
“…And I have never voted a straight ticket from that day to this.”
Page 355: “…I used to vex myself with reforms, every now and then. And I never had occasion to regret these divergences, for whether the resulting deprivations were long or short, the rewarding pleasure which I got out of the vice when I returned to it, always paid me for all that it cost.”
I LOVE MARK TWAIN!!
I own this book now, brand new in its wrapper, bought for $10 at Bizarre Bazaar.
by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. 1949, won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1950
Lije Evans, his wife, Becky, and son, Brownie, decide to go to Oregon with a wagon train. 1840’s, I think. Lije convinces Dick Summers to be the pilot. They leave Independence, MO with about 12 other families in wagons. At first, a cruel, greedy, arrogant, impatient man named Tadlock is the captain. One of his first orders is to kill all the dogs. Evans refuses to let that happen to his beloved dog, Rock. Only one dog is actually killed.
Eventually, Tadlock is removed as captain and Evans is voted in as captain. Tadlock wanted to continue-rush-on – while his hired man is dying of camp fever. So the men voted Evans as captain – big, strong, good man – didn’t think he had it in him to lead a wagon train to Oregon – but his wife (big, strong Becky) knew it all along, and with the piloting of Dick Summers – wise old mountain man (not really that old) who knew the way and kept them out of dangers, they make it!
Brownie, 17 yr old son of Lije and Becky, falls in love with Mercy McBee, beautiful quiet 16 yr old daughter of the McBee’s – family of poor white uneducated.
Mack, a man whose wife, Amanda, is frigid, drives him crazy so one night when Mercy is dancing at camp, he takes her away and has his way with her. Mercy falls in love with Mack but keeps silent about it. Mack learns how to deal with Amanda and when Mercy is pregnant and tells him, he can’t help her. He says isn’t there someone you could marry?
Brownie loves her and marries her – she told him what happened and he marries her anyway. He tells no one but Dick Summers.
Dick and Brownie develop a strong bond. While hunting buffalo together, Brownie saves Dick – thrown from a horse and about to get charged by a buffalo – Brownie shoots the buffalo dead in the nick of time. Dick saves Brownie’s life when he decides to hang back so he could carve his name and Mercy’s name on Chimney Rock and gets attacked by Indians. Dick rides up and convinces the Indians not to scalp him.
Charles and Judie Fairman – little son Tod always sick with fever – going to Oregon where there will be no more fever but little Tod, who just wants to play, runs off chasing a grasshopper, gets bit by a rattlesnake and dies.
Buffalo stampede on a stormy night. Evans in the midst of it – shooting to steer them away from camp – worried Brownie is crushed, but he’s okay. Camp is spared.
Crossing the Snake River – all the wagons make it except the Byrd’s – Evans saves Mrs. Byrd from drowning, but she is 6 months pregnant and loses the baby that night.
Tadlock and a few others decide to go to California instead of Oregon. When they hear how dangerous it will be getting to Oregon, the last 800 miles.
Brother Weatherby, old Methodist preacher, who comes along because God has called him to Oregon. Devout, judgmental, but performs admirably throughout – funerals, sermons, prayers – Mercy and Brownie’s wedding.
They finally make it to the Columbia River. Dick Summers disappears in the night despite Evans trying to convince him to stay on to Willamette.
Last 2 paragraphs: “He let himself look around and saw the Byrds’ and Fairmans’ boats lapping close behind and, on his own, Brownie idle with his sweep and Becky with the home gleam in her eye and Mercy sitting by her. Mercy who, Rebecca said, was going to have a child. Sweet Mercy who would bring a baby to the house. Blood of his blood, Evans thought. Blood of his blood once removed.
“He winked at his women and spoke loud about the tremble in his throat. “Becky,” he said, “Hurray for Oregon!”
Another book by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. is “These Thousand Hills” about the world of cattle ranchers in the 1880s. Published in 1956.
Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. lived most of his life in Montana. He wrote the screenplay for Shane, died in 1991.
by John Steinbeck, 1945
Finished in 2 days. Exquisite, painful story about Kino, Juana, and little baby boy, Coyotito. Coyotito gets stung by a scorpion – that Kino, his father, couldn’t catch in time. Jauna, Coyotito’s mother, sucks out the poison but decides they must see the doctor. The rich doctor won’t see them because they have no money. They go pearl hunting and Kino finds a huge, perfect pearl. The doctor and the whole town find out. The doctor comes to visit, gives the baby a pill of white powder and gelatin. One hour later, baby Coyotito is vomiting. Doctor comes back, pretends to cure him. Asks for a fee. Kino tries to sell the great Pearl at the pearl buyers the next day. They are all working for the same man, unbeknownst to the town. They all say, this Pearl is too big, no one wants it! Kino decides to leave for the big city. That night, someone tries to steal the pearl, Kino kills him. Juana tries to throw the pearl in the ocean. Kino beats her. Kino, Juana, and little Coyotito escape for the city. They are tracked through the desert and into the mountains. Hiding in a cave, Kino kills the trackers at night but not before one errant shot finds his little son and kills him.
Kino and Juana trudge back to their little town on the Gulf with their little bundle – throw the Pearl into the sea.
Last 2 paragraphs: “And the pearl settled into the lovely green water and dropped toward the bottom.The waving branches of the algae called to it and beckoned to it. The lights on its surface were green and lovely. It settled down to the sand bottom among the fern-like plants. Above, the surface of the water was a green mirror. And the pearl lay on the floor of the sea. A crab scampering over the bottom raised a little cloud of sand, and when it settled, the pearl was gone.
“And the music of the pearl drifted to a whisper and disappeared.”
A story of how great wealth can ruin, utterly, your life.
by Stacy Schiff, 2010
I read 2 chapters – gave up – too speculative – Ptolemy and on and on – couldn’t finish – Thanks to Wayne – No time for bad books.
by Charles Dickens, 1861
Pip as a young boy meets an escaped convict in a church cemetery. The convict scares him into bringing him food and a file to cut off his leg iron. Pip does this. Pip lives with a much older sister and her blacksmith husband, a saint of a man, Joe Gargery. The sister is a mean, abusive woman, to both Joe and Pip.
Pip gets hired by a rich, broken-hearted woman, Miss Havisham. He goes to her house and entertains her and her adopted daughter, Estella. Pip falls in love with beautiful Estella as a young lad the first day he meets her.
Pip grows and becomes an apprentice to Joe in the forge. He is dissatisfied with the commonness of his life and relatives, when he comes into his Great Expectations by anonymously donated money. He moves to London, meets good friend Herbert, the genius lawyer Mr. Jaggers and his clerk, Wemmick.
After years of the good life, Pip meets his true benefactor, the convict he helped so long ago, who had been exiled from England and earned his fortune all for Pip – to make him a gentleman.
Pip recoils from him at first but gradually, with Herbert’s help, learns all about him – he is actually Estella’s father! The convict’s wife had killed a woman in a jealous rage but Jaggers was able to get her off – the woman becomes Jaggers’ housekeeper and Jaggers takes Estella, then 3 yrs old, and gives her to Miss Havisham to raise. Miss Havisham was jilted by an evil man, Compeyson, who led a life of crime and coaxed the convict (Magwitch) to join him. When he gets caught, the jury pins it all on Magwitch. Magwitch knows nothing about his daughter still being alive – Pip figures it all out and reveals it to Magwitch (Mr. Provis) as he lay dying in the prison hospital. Pip tried to get Magwitch back out of England before he got caught but Compeyson finds him and turns him in – exciting river escape attempt ending with Magwitch grabbing Compeyson out of his boat and them both going under. Magwitch comes up alive but wounded and then arrested. Penalty of death since he was never to return to England. Compeyson drowns.
Estella was raised by Miss Havisham to be cold-hearted and cruel. Pip always thought his benefactor was Miss Havisham but when he finds out it isn’t, he confronts Miss Havisham and exposes her cruelty – to raise this beautiful daughter and toy with Pip all these years – thinking there was hope for him to marry Estella. Miss Havisham shows deep remorse when her cruelty is exposed. But Estella goes and marries a real turd – Drummle – against Pip’s warnings.
Years later, Pip returns to Miss Havisham’s (now deceased-mansion torn down) to visit the old place and finds Estella there! By that time, she had endured an abusive marriage to Drummle, who died while abusing a horse. She is now a widow and realizes the good heart in Pip.
Last paragraph: “I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”
What a rich, beautiful tale! The characters so deep and picturesque. The growing up of Pip from young, sweet boy, to young gentleman who gradually learns that goodness of heart is never something to be ashamed of (he was often ashamed of Joe as he grew up after meeting Estella and coming into his expectations).
The clerk, Wemmick, was one of my favorite characters. He and Pip become special friends – Wemmick lives in a little cottage he turns into a tiny castle with a moat and everything. Wemmick takes care of his aged parent (Aged P.) with love, patience, and tenderness.
I haven’t mentioned Biddy – She was a young girl who ends up befriending Pip as a boy, teaching him, then coming to help Joe and Pip’s sister – who by that time was completely destroyed mentally by a murder attempt that left her alive but barely. Biddy nurses Pip’s sister until she dies. Biddy loves Pip but knows he loves Estella.
After many, many years, Pip decides to return to the forge and ask Biddy to marry him – he arrives on the day of Biddy’s wedding to Joe! Pip is so very happy for them – he truly loves them both. That is when he goes to the garden and meets Estella there.
The relationships between Joe and Pip as a young boy, Pip and Herbert (dear friend), Wemmick and the Aged P, Biddy and Pip’s sister, Pip and Provis (Magwitch), Joe and Pip (Joe comes to London to nurse Pip back to health) are full of self-sacrificing love, care, devotion. Sometimes humor.
Miss Havisham is a very interesting character. She is jilted on her wedding day (by Compeyson) and she never recovers. She stops all the clocks in the mansion, she leaves her wedding dress on, she never goes outside again, she leaves the dining room with wedding cake on the table. When Pip is there the cake is full of cobwebs, spiders, mice. When Pip finally confronts her years later when he finds out she is not his benefactor and that he was merely used to be a toy to Estella’s cruelty, she shows deep remorse. Pip decides to walk through the garden and then leave forever (the garden and all the grounds are decayed and wretched). He decides to check on her one last time and she has gotten too near the fire and bursts into flames. Pip saves her life by wrapping her in his cloak. His arm and hands get burned in the process. I have not written this book report in very good order, but it is such a rich, detailed, engrossing tale! I loved it!
Thank you, God, for Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, my 2 favorite authors!
Translated by Husain Haddawy
“This translation is of the complete text of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a 14th century Syrian manuscript, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and considered to be the most authentic.”
Shahrazad marries the King Shahrayar who typically puts his wives to death after one night since his 1st wife cheated on him. She asks if she can tell him a story. He says yes, and so each night she tells him a story or a part of a story and he never puts her to death because he’s excited to hear the rest of the story the next night.
My favorite was “the Third Dervish’s Tale.” He was a prince who gets shipwrecked and ends up in a palace with 40 beautiful women. He lives in paradise with them for 1 year. When they have to leave for 40 days they tell him there are 100 rooms in the palace and he can explore 99 of them but cannot go in the 100th or they will lose him. After 39 days he has explored 99 rooms – all beautiful and delightful and Satan tempts him to open the door plated with gold – he does and that is his undoing – he rides a black horse who flies away with him and dumps him on a roof and kicks him and tears out his eye.
This is a common sentence throughout the stories: “There is no power and no strength save in God, the Almighty, the Magnificent.”
I also liked the last story, “Jullanar of the Sea.” About a ‘mermaid’ who becomes the wife of the king of Persia – a good and benevolent king, and bears him a son who is as beautiful and wonderful as she is. He (Badr) grows up and they try to find a wife for him. He eventually marries the Princess Jauhara and, “Then King Badr and his wife and mother and relatives continued to enjoy life until they were overtaken by the breaker of ties and destroyer of delights. And this is the completion and the end of their story.”
“Translator’s Postscript”
“Tradition has it that in the course of time Shahrazad bore Shahrayer three children, and that, having learned to trust and love her, he spared her life and kept her as his queen.”
Most of the stories were full of beautiful palaces with rooms, gardens, birds, fountains, beautiful princes and princesses, slave girls, music and singing, and fantastic events–supernatural events, some demons, magic.
by Mark Twain, 1882
Fabulous book! Set in 1500’s in England. Two little boys; one the prince, the other a pauper (Tom Canty) change places. The real prince learns what it feels like to be poor and downcast and to see his laws in action (such unfairness!). The pauper becomes rich and catered to. In the end, the real prince is accepted back to the throne and rules with compassion. Miles Hendon is an adult which befriends the true prince when he is on the streets. He protects him, takes his lashes for him, and saves him from the rabble. He calls him his little lunatic. He doesn’t believe he is really a prince. The interplay is so precious! Absolutely loved this book!
Last lines: “‘What dost thou know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, but not thou.'”
‘”The reign of Edward VI was a singularly merciful one. Now that we are taking leave of him let us try to keep this in our minds, to his credit.”‘