“I have a story that will make you believe in God.” Piscing Molitor Patel – named after a swimming pool – Pondicherry, India. His dad was a zookeeper. He grew up in a zoo. His Mom and Dad, fed up with Mrs. Ghandi, decide to move to Canada. They board a cargo ship, TsimTsum, that sinks in the Pacific Ocean. Pi ends up the only survivor on a lifeboat with Hyena, Zebra with broken leg, Orang-utan, and Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. The Hyena kills the Zebra and the Orang-utan. Richard Parker kills the Hyena. Then it’s just Pi and Richard Parker, alone on the boat for 227 days. Pi builds himself a raft from oars and life vests and lives on the raft tied to the boat. He learns to fish and feeds and trains Richard Parker. They are both almost dead when they drift to a floating island of algae.
London and Paris, approximately 1770 to 1793 or 1794, French Revolution 1789
Wow! What an incredible story! Dr. Manette is rescued from 18 years in prison in France. His daughter, Lucie, now an adult, cares for him and makes him whole again. They participate in a trial of Charles Darnay, a former French aristocrat, wrongly accused of treason. He is freed, not guilty, mainly because of the expert questioning and defense of Stryver, through his friend, Sydney Carton. Both Charles and Sydney fall in love with Lucie. Charles marries Lucie and they have a special home in England. But Charles decides to return to France to try and save an old servant. He ends up imprisoned in France during the French Revolution, a time when La Guillotine is killing up to 60 people/day. Charles is due to be beheaded but because Sydney Carton looks like him, and is so smart, and cares so deeply for Lucie, he devises a plan – gets into prison and switches places with Charles – and dies in his place! Sydney had once pledged to Lucie that he would be there for her if she ever needed him. And he was.
The story begins, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and ends, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” (Sydney Carton at his death, sacrificially, in place of Charles Darnay.)
WOW!! (Need to get movie – Masterpiece Theatre – ending made Wayne cry!)
Mma Ramotswe and Mr. JLB Matakoni finally get married! The orphan mgr, Mma Potokwane arranges it all (a surprise) after the parachute jump event, which she had trapped JLB Matakoni into, but Mma Ramotswe got Charlie, one of the apprentices, to do it instead, so he could get famous with the girls.
Mma’s case this time was for a rich lady, investigating 4 suitors. She only investigated 2 and they both wanted her for her money, but the first one, the teacher, wanted her money for the House of Hope, home for “bad girls,” and it turns out the rich lady didn’t care. She discovered her passion to help the girls also and willingly wanted to marry this man and help him out.
Mma Makutsi moves into a new house; 2 rooms with a yard!
Christy Huddleston, 19 yrs. old, volunteers to teach in a mission school in Cutter Gap, Tennessee in 1912 (Appalachia). She learns to love God and the poor mountain people who have it so hard. Some are mean, cruel. But in the end, love conquers. She teaches 67 children in a one-room school house. She is mentored by Miss Alice, a Quaker woman with a deep and joyous faith in God. She (Christy) thinks she is in love with David Grantland, the pastor, but on her deathbed she is pulled back from Heaven by Dr. Neil MacNeill, the mountain doctor, praying to God, confessing his sins and surrendering to God.
Beautiful book! Especially her descriptions of Heaven near the end:
Light was drawing me irresistibly, dazzling light, refulgent light of a quality I had had but hints before…The grass was dotted with flowers – I spotted buttercups and the orchid of fairy fringe and the vermilion of fire pinks, and mountain bluets like patches of sky fallen into the grass – all of such intense coloration that they were not like flowers at all: they were explosions of color…over there was the light…green wood, green wood, flower-starred grass. The air was crystal. It was as if some sun of suns was glinting off numberless prisms, shattering the light rays, deflecting them, reflecting them so dazzlingly that I had to put my hand up to shield my eyes…Bathed in its luster, the leaves of the trees, the blossoms on the boughs, the blades of grass did not seem to be lighted from the outside. Rather the light appeared to come from the inside of each object, from its heart, from its very nature…energy in balance. Something had been stripped from my eyes..For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face…”
She was dying of typhoid – the cove was in an epidemic and she had finally succumbed after nursing so many others. But, she doesn’t die. She is pulled back from the brink by Dr. MacNeill’s loving prayer to God at her bedside.
Graphic violence & sex, even lesbianism. Why?!! “Gratuitous” sex and violence.
June, young Korean girl, loses her entire family one by one in aftermath and during Korean war. She is found by GI, Hector, on the road, follows him to orphanage. They both fall in love with Sylvie Tanner, minister’s wife, who had a tragic childhood also – witnessed her parents murdered by Japanese in China where they were missionaries. She is a heroin addict. Hector is a troubled, handsome, hero. Can drink forever w/o getting drunk. His dad used to take him to bars and set up drinking contests to win money. Hector leaves him one night to go have sex with a woman whose husband was away for WWII. His Dad ends up dying that night – drowning. Hector has to identify his bloated body days later – blames himself. Blames himself for Sylvie’s death in a fire that June started in the orphanage. Long, involved tale full of sorrows, woe, sex, violence, confusion. End doesn’t redeem it.
Here’s a review of this book from the Parade magazine of March 7, 2010: “The casualties of war extend beyond the battlefield. In The Surrendered, the victims include three Korean War survivors: a young refugee girl, a troubled GI, and the missionary woman they both love. Chang-rae Lee’s haunting novel follows the three from an orphanage in Korea, where their lives first collide in the 1950s, to New York City and Italy three decades later, as they confront the secrets that once bound them together and wrenched them apart. Read Lee’s remarkable, complex exploration of guilt and grace, sacrifice and (perhaps momentary) salvation before it lands on all the Top 10 lists.”
1200 pages. What a great book!!! Recommended by Sandy Calhoun.
Jean Val Jean – ex-convict, imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving nephews, who changes into a saint after Bishop Digne gives him his silver candlesticks too, rather than having him arrested for stealing his silver. Jean Val Jean becomes Monsieur Madelaine and makes black glass ornaments and becomes wealthy but kind and benevolent to all, giving to the poor, treating his employees well and building hospitals and schools.
Javert – the rigid perfectionist policeman recognizes Madelaine as the ex-convict, Jean Val Jean, when he lifts a heavy cart off a man who was under it. He is going to turn him in, but the precinct says they have caught Jean Val Jean in another city. Jean Val Jean can choose to let an innocent man go to jail for him so he can continue on doing good, or he can turn himself in during the court proceedings.
He spent a whole evening in torment struggling with what to do:
Thus he strove in torment as another man had striven eighteen hundred years before him, the mysterious Being in whom were embodied all the saintliness and suffering of mankind. He too while the olive-leaves quivered around him, had again and again refused the terrible cup of darkness urged upon him beneath a sky filled with stars.
Three Englishmen go on an adventure to find King Solomon’s diamond mine. After nearly dying many times, and being in a war in Kukualand, they make it! Almost die in the mine, too. Gagool, the ancient witch, locks them in but they manage to get out with a few diamonds and make it back, rich forever. Set in South Africa/Zimbabwe. Recommended by Ryan Flynn as a good classic.
Racy novel about 1500-1536 England with King Henry VIII. Mary Boleyn, the sweet one, is the only one to survive. Brother, George, and sister, Queen Anne, are beheaded in 1536, accused of adultery. Anne was evil, ambitious – ruined Queen Katherine – poisoned a man – would do anything to get herself to the king. He eventually did marry her after taking over the church. The people of England despised her. She fell out of favor when she didn’t have a son – had daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who became Queen Elizabeth – and 3 miscarriages – one of whom was a monster (deformed).
George, the brother, was accused of homosexuality and hinted at incest with Anne. Mary had 2 of the king’s children when she was his mistress at age 14 (while married to William Carey!) Then the king lost interest in her because of Anne’s seductive ways. Mary eventually falls in love with William Stafford and lives happily ever after with her kids on a farm.
Really good read – pretty historically accurate – “the broad facts of Mary Boleyn’s life are accurate.”
The witchcraft and incest (George and Anne) is debatable.
by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Robin Buss, 1996, 2003, first published 1844-5
1243 pages – WHAT A WONDERFUL BOOK!
All human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’!
Recommended by Tim Wolsey.
Edmond Dantes, a fine young sailor, is thrown into prison in Chateau d’If for 14 long years. He befriends Abbe Faria, also imprisoned, after the Abbe digs over many years, only to come out near Edmond’s dungeon. Abbe Faria teaches Edmond everything! They plan another escape but Abbe has a seizure and knows the next one will kill him. He tells Edmond where treasure is buried on the Island of Monte Cristo. When Abbe dies, Edmond places his body in Edmond’s dungeon in his bed and Edmond sews himself up in the burial shroud. The workers carry him out, tie a cannonball onto his foot and throw him into the sea.
Page turner! Set in Afghanistan from 1959 to present.
Main characters: Mariam and Laila. Mariam was a harami, an illegitimate child. Yet her father (Jalil) set up her and her mom (Nana) in a nice little shack in the hills by a stream near Herat and visited Mariam every week. When Mariam was 15, she was stood up on her birthday by her Dad. She had asked him to take her to the movies. He was embarrassed to be seen with her. She walked all the way into town and asked where he lived. Went to his house and he refused to see her. She spent the night outside in his yard and a servant took her home the next day where they found her mom had hung herself in the willow tree. So they took Mariam in until they could get her married to Rasheed, a widower from Kabul. He (Rasheed) took her to Kabul. He was kind to her until she lost child after child (miscarriages) and then the beatings and cruelty began.
The 300 Spartans go to battle at Thermopylae where all are eventually killed but not until they have killed millions of the enemy (Xerxes of Persia). What a great book! What warriors! Became intimate with the Spartans-their king, Leonidas, and their officers; Polynikes, Dienekes, Olympieus, and their wives. 480 B.C.
Beautiful book – I have been to Greece in 480 B.C.!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Spanish 1985, English 1988
Florentino Aria falls in love with Fermina Daza. She marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead. Florentino whores around for 54 years waiting for Dr. Urbino to die. Dr. Urbino dies trying to capture his parrot from a mango tree. Florentino takes Fermina on a riverboat cruise on the Magdalena River. They fly the yellow cholera flag so they can have it to themselves on the way back. Discover they can’t dock, so it ends with Florentino telling the captain to continue sailing forever.
Didn’t enjoy it: too chaotic, run-on sentences, millions of characters (none of them very appealing) and just a mess of a book.
by Jane Austen, 1803 but published 1817 (posthumously)
Seems so petty – young girls falling in love – but I couldn’t put it down!
Catherine Morland, 17, gets to go to Bath with Mr. and Mrs. Allen. She meets the Thorpes – Isabella becomes her dear friend. Isabella is in love (supposedly) with Catherine’s brother, James. Isabella’s brother, John, is a conceited liar. Catherine met Henry Tilney and his sister, Eleanor. They are true friends and they invite her to their home, Northanger Abbey. Their father, General Tilney, at first adores Catherine. Then, one day, he orders her to leave, no explanation. It turns out John Thorpe had told General Tilney the Morland’s were wealthy. And then he told them they were not. When the General found out she wasn’t rich, he wanted her gone. Henry would have none of that – rushes to her home 70 miles away and asks to marry her. All’s well that ends well! The General gives his blessing and they get married.
Isabella was only pretending to love James Morland because she thought he was rich. When she found out he wasn’t, she dumped him for Capt. Tilney, Henry’s brother. However, General Tilney would never have his children marry beneath them so Isabella didn’t have a chance. When Capt. Tilney dumped, her, she wrote to Catherine, begging her to ask her brother to renew their engagement. Despicable woman! Catherine saw through her then.
I don’t know how to describe Jane Austen; her books seem to be so trivial but they are so good!
The year 1868, the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s fantastic submarine, is thought to be a narwhal. M. Aronnax, a French scientist and his servant, Conseil, end up on a boat aimed to kill it. They end up thrown into the Pacific Ocean and are picked up, along with Ned Land, the Canadian whaler-master harpooner, by Capt. Nemo and taken prisoner on the Nautilus. They spend the next 10 months with Capt. Nemo – treated very well, fed very well, taken along on many adventures: coral gardens, the South Pole, etc. Capt. Nemo bears a grudge against mankind. He destroys a ship at the end. M. Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land escape in the boat connected to the Nautilus while it is in the “Navel of the Ocean,” a dangerous whirlpool that forms off the coast of Norway. He doesn’t know if the Nautilus escaped or not. No ship ever has, but then again, no ship has ever existed like the Nautilus.
Fantastic book! He is considered the father of science fiction. With this book, he invented the submarine; none had existed before! What an imagination! 20,000 leagues doesn’t mean that deep-it’s how far he went with Capt. Nemo under the sea over 10 months.
At the age of 58, in 1960, John Steinbeck leaves Sag harbor, NY, and his loving wife to travel across America with his French poodle, Charley.
“We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” Pg 4.
He got a 3/4 ton pick-up with a “little house” on top. He named it Rocinante, Don Quixote’s horse.
Pg 26: “The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use…I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness…”
Regarding hunting, pg. 57, “They shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might…”
Pg. 61, the word charm to not be afraid of evil spirits: “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” (In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit)
Charley says “Ftt” when he needs to go pee.
Wisconsin, pg. 125: “Why then was I unprepared for the beauty of this region…” Pg 126: “…I saw it for the first and only time in early October…butter-colored sunlight…I’ve seen that kind of light elsewhere only in Greece…The land dripped with richness.”
The Badlands, pgs. 156-157: “And the night, far from being frightful, was lovely beyond thought, for the stars were close…This is one of the few places I have ever seen where the night was friendlier than the day…In the night the Badlands had become Good lands.”
Montana, pgs. 158-159: “The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana…I did not rush through the towns to get them over with. I even found things I had to buy to make myself linger…Of all the states it is my favorite and my love.”
Redwoods, Southern Oregon, pgs. 188-189: “The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark…from them comes silence and awe…they are ambassadors from another time…a spell of wonder and respect…One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns.”
“San Francisco put on a show for me…The afternoon sun painted her white and gold…This gold and white acropolis rising wave on wave against the blue of the Pacific sky…I’ve never seen her more lovely…She leaves a mark.”
Texas = hospitality.
The South = Racism – ugly, ugly.
Then home.
Oh yes – mobile homes – a new thing @pg. 102.
Pg. 140 – “I found I was talking aloud to Charley. He likes the idea but the practice makes him sleepy.”
1850’s New Mexico; two French-Catholic priests are sent from Ohio to New Mexico. They settle in Santa Fe but travel far and wide to the Mexicans and Indians in New Mexico and Arizona. Beautiful descriptions. Learned a lot about Catholicism. Bishop Jean Marie LaTour and Father Vaillant.
Clare waits for Henry, her time-traveling husband, never knowing when he’ll disappear or reappear. Clare always drives because Henry doesn’t-never knows when he’ll disappear. Henry cooks-Clare doesn’t know how since she had a cook, Nell, while growing up (rich girl). Henry recruits Dr. Kendrick, a geneticist, to try and find a cure for his time-traveling, a genetic disorder, because he’s sure it’s going to kill him, and after they have Alba, and she has inherited it, he wants to save her from a life of time traveling.
First-Polynesians from Bora Bora. Then skipped to missionaries from New England. They were good people but prejudiced. Then the Chinese came to work in sugar. Learned about leprosy and Molokai. Then the Japanese came to work. Then WWII – Japanese Hawaiians fought in Italy then France.
Intricate tale about a young girl (Chiyo) with beautiful gray eyes, sold to be a geisha from her seaside home. Separated from her sister (Satsu) in Kyoto, raised in an “okiya” with Hatsumomo, an evil geisha who tries to ruin her life. Crying by the Sirakawa stream one day, she meets a kind man who gives her his handkerchief. She keeps it, decides to become a geisha, and does. She meets him about 5 years later as an apprentice geisha. His partner, Nobu, falls in love with her and works for many years to try and become her Danna. She knows if she becomes Nobu’s, she will never be able to be the Chairman’s, so she betrays Nobu with another man on the island of Amima(?). The disgusting Minister, and Pumpkin, leads the Chairman to see her, rather than Nobu. Sayuri (Chiyo’s geisha name) feels her plan has backfired but the Chairman (of Iwamuri Electric) forgives her where Nobu cannot, and becomes her Danna. Most of the story takes place in “Gion” district of Kyoto. Set in 1940’s – present. Geisha are entertainers, mostly, in teahouses. They pour sake, tell stories, jokes, drinking games. They are not prostitutes. If a man wants one, he becomes her “danna” and keeps her like a mistress. Her virginity was sold to the highest bidder, Dr. Crab, called “mizuage.” Mameha was the geisha who became Chiyo-Sayuri’s older sister and trains her up. Loved the kimonos!!
