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!
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.
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.
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.”
“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.”
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.
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.
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!
“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.
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.”‘
Book “lite” about assassin turned true believer who works for the Angels now. Is sent back to Rome in 1500’s to save a young Jewish scholar and put a ghost to rest. Not much depth to her writing; “fluff.”
Another fantastic modern novel! A real page-turner, set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960’s. Three heroes: 1. Miss Skeeter, the young white girl who just graduated from college and wants to be a writer. 2. Aibileen, the black maid who takes care of Mae Mobley, little 2 yr old white girl, and cooks and cleans for Miss Leefolt. 3. Minny, the black maid who has a sassy mouth and many children of her own and an alcoholic, abusive husband.
The demon in this book is Hilly Holbrook who epitomizes the evils of racism. She is the League president and one of Miss Skeeter’s best friends, along with Miss Leefolt (Elizabeth).
Skeeter misses her old maid, Constantine, terribly. She loved her like she was her mother. But she’s mysteriously gone when Skeeter returns from college and Skeeter’s mother only tells her she quit. She gets a job for the Jackson newspaper writing Miss Myrna-household hints. She knows nothing about keeping house so she uses Aibileen for her tips. She keeps asking Aibileen what happened to Constantine but Aibileen won’t tell her. Through it all, Hilly tries to get Skeeter to add a column for separate restrooms in homes to be built for the maids because everyone knows colored people carry all sorts of diseases. Skeeter refuses.
Eventually, she is prompted to write about what she really cares about by a Helen Stein-publisher for Harper and Rowe. Skeeter talks Aibileen into telling her story of what it’s like to be a black maid for white people. Aibileen then convinces Minny to tell her story. Minny works for Celia Foote, a white woman who is from the poor white country folk who meets and marries Johnny Foote – who used to date Hilly. Hilly never got over him.
Celia wants to belong to the League but they never allow her to be a member. She loves Minny and Minny gradually comes to trust her. Minny saves her life when she has a 4th miscarriage. Johnny loves Celia and loves Minny too. Celia can’t cook or clean – she can only garden. It’s a wonderful part of the book.
Eventually, 12 more maids agree to tell their stories. What spurred this was Hilly getting her maid, Yule May, locked up for 4 years in the penitentiary for stealing (a cheap ring that Hilly didn’t like – Yule had asked for a loan for $70 to pay tuition for her twin sons. Hilly refused.)
Much of the book is the suspense of meeting clandestinely with the maids getting the manuscript together and the worry of what would happen if the white people in Jackson realize the book is about them. The book does come out – and everyone in Jackson is reading it, wondering if it’s about them. And Minny’s ending – about the Terrible Awful thing which Minny decided to put in at the end, saves them from Hilly’s wrath. The Terrible Awful was a chocolate custard pie Minny baked for Hilly after Hilly spread lies all over town about Minny so no one would hire her. Minny was Hilly’s mother’s maid. When Hilly put her in a nursing home, then she had to find a new job to feed her 5 kids and drunk abusive husband. Then Hilly tried to get Minny to work for her (which would have put Minny’s friend, Yule May, out of a job) but Minny refused. Hilly had told all the white women in town that Minny was a thief and no one would hire her. That’s when Minny makes the custard pie and brings it over to Miss Walters where Hilly is waiting for the people from the home to come pick her up. Hilly eats two slices and asks Minny what she put in there that makes it so good. Minny put her own shit in the pie! That’s the Terrible Awful. And that’s the end of the book – called Help. Minny knew that when Hilly reads that part of the book, she will tell everyone in town that the book is not about Jackson.
Saves them. Not until after some tense moments before Hilly gets to the end of the book.
The book ends with Skeeter getting a job with Harper and Row – hating to leave the maids – worried sick about them. Aibileen tells her to go – so does MInny.
Aibileen is let go by Miss Leefolt at the urging of Hilly – not before Hilly accuses her of stealing – but backs down when Aibileen confronts her with all that she knows about Hilly and all the writing she could do in prison. But Aibileen gets to be the new Miss Myrna – Skeeter told her boss that Aibileen is the real Miss Myrna and he agrees to hire her. Poor Mae Mobley cries and cries. So does Aibileen.
And Minny’s husband Leroy gets fired (he works at a plant owned by Holbrook). Leroy tries to kill Minny – she escapes with the 5 kids and calls Aibileen. Aibileen calms her down – Minny will leave Leroy for good. She has a good job for life with Celia and Johnny Foote. She will finally be free from the abuse working for good people who appreciate her.
Sweet little romance about 20 yr old English girl (Selina) who goes to a Spanish island in search of her father and finds her true love (George, 37 yrs old) instead. She has to dump her lawyer fiance who is only marrying her for her money and George has to dump his drunk American ex-patriot girlfriend. They end up in love and happily ever after. Lots of wonderful characters and the setting was beautiful–too short, though!
Precious book! Told by Enzo the dog. Set in Seattle. Enzo is a yellow lab mix raised from a puppy by Denny Swift, a race car driver. They are both incredible “people” – the best. Denny marries Eve and they have Zoe. Eve gets sick – brain cancer – and moves in with her parents – the Evil Twins – on Mercer Island. They also keep Zoe. Denny tries to take Zoe back after Eve dies but they sue for custody. Denny hires a lawyer. Then the Evil Twins have Denny arrested for felony rape. A 15 year-old cousin of Eve’s actually tried to seduce Denny but he refused, and is now accusing Denny of rape at the manipulation of the Evil Twins. They try to ruin Denny’s life – he can’t leave the state so his promising racing career dies, they drag things out so all his money goes to pay for the lawyer. They sue him for child support. They offer him a settlement – sign for “misdemeanor harassment and probation; no sex offense on your record.” No more child support. He gets to see Zoe more often. The Evil Twins can support her and pay for her college. He can resume his racing career. He’s getting ready to sign and his best friend, Mike, hands him a pen – it is from a zoo and there is a zebra sliding in liquid at the top of the pen. Enzo sees it – he has had run-ins with zebra-demon – Zoe’s stuffed zebra tormented him once when he was left by Eve accidentally for 3 days in the house. He hallucinates and sees the zebra doing terrible things to Zoe’s other toys. When they come home (Denny was at a race – Eve got very sick and went to her parents with Zoe – leaving Enzo alone for 3 days in the house) the zebra is in shreds on Zoe’s floor. It was her favorite. Since then, the zebra demon represents succumbing to evil to Enzo. Enzo sees the zebra in the pen and realizes that if Denny signs those papers, as Denny knows inside, it is evil. Enzo grabs the papers with his mouth and leaps through a screened window in Mike’s house and tries to bury them in Mike’s back yard and finally lifts his leg and pees all over them.
Mike, Denny’s best friend, says “Call Lawrence. He’ll print them again and you can sign them.” Denny stood. “No,” he said, “I’m with Enzo. I piss on their settlement, too. I don’t care how smart it is for me to sign it. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not giving up. I’m never giving up.”
So, he holds fast and they go to trial and everyone believes that he raped the 15 yr old Annika until the last day of trial. Annika ends up telling the truth. She recanted – they dropped the charges!
A few months before the trial, Denny and Enzo were walking and they see Annika (the 15-yr old) sitting at an outdoor cafe with a friend. She’s now 18. Denny walks over to her, sits down with Enzo, and tells her, “I may have given you signals. That’s totally my fault…But, you know, I wasn’t available. I was married to Eve. And you were far too young. But, Annika, while I understand how angry you must be, I wonder if you understand what’s going on, what the fallout is. They won’t let me have my daughter…Annika, when I saw Eve for the first time, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t walk…My entire world revolved around her…It never could have worked between you and me. There are a million reasons. My daughter, my age, your age, Eve. In a different time, a different place? Maybe. But not now. Not three years ago…But one day you will find someone who stops the world for you as Eve stopped the world for me…Zoe’s my daughter. I love her like your father loves you. Please, Annika, don’t take her away from me.”
“I think she heard me,” he said.
“I thought so, too, but how could I respond? I barked twice. He looked at me and laughed. “Faster?” he asked. I barked twice again. “Faster, then,” he said. “Let’s go!” and we trotted the rest of the way home.
So, Enzo keeps Denny from signing away his life. Denny holds fast in the face of insurmountable odds, wins, and goes on to be a successful test driver for Ferrari in Italy! Enzo was going to go with him and Zoe but the day Zoe was going to move back in with them, Enzo dies. He had bad hip dysplasia and was old by then. He came to the kitchen. Denny is making him pancakes for the first time in years – Enzo’s favorite food – gives a pancake to Enzo but it drops out of his mouth. Enzo collapses and Denny pets him and holds him and says it’s okay, you can go, and loves him until he dies – passing to fields of green where he can run and play in the sun.
A few years later, Denny is a champion in Italy and Zoe drives up in a golf cart with a father and son. Fans of Denny. The son’s name is “Enzo” and he wants to be a race-car driver when he grows up. Enzo the dog always said he’d be reincarnated as a man.
What a beautiful, funny, wonderful, poignant book!
Karl Marlantes is a graduate of Yale, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Marine in Vietnam, awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. This novel took him 30 years to write.
Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas shipped off to Vietnam to fight for his country. He leads a platoon in the jungle. His commanding officers, Lt. Col. Simpson and Major Blakely, are incompetents who by their decisions cause the deaths of many fine young men.
Matterhorn is a fictional hill in the jungles of Vietnam close to the DMZ. Mellas’ company is ordered to take position on it. They do and then they get ordered to build bunkers on it, then to abandon it. They get sent on patrols without enough water and food, and then get stranded when the choppers can’t fly in due to weather.
There are problems with immersion foot, leaches – one went up Fisher’s urethra – they couldnt’ get him out so the corpsman cut into him to get it out before it killed him (couldn’t pee). That happens in the beginning. We find out at the end, he is okay – no problems at all.
The Corpsmen (medics) are godsends and heroes helping their wounded Marines. One time when they are sent back to Matterhorn (because the North Vietnamese Army took it over when they abandoned it). They run out of water and can’t get any shipped in day after day due to fog and clouds. The Corpsman (squids) must decide which of the wounded will not make it so their IV fluid and water can go to the healthy.
They lose many of their heroes trying to re-take Matterhorn.
Mellas is certain he killed one of his own men – trying to save him but shot uphill and bullet entered his brain.
The best man of all, Hawke, the one who is the bravest, funniest, smartest, ends up in the wrong place – asleep in Cassidy’s tent – when 2 black soldiers decide to frag Cassidy – a prejudiced, mean, staff sergeant who cannot stand the black Marines, and shaved off one’s afro, busted another’s teeth out with a rifle. The blacks think he is in his tent, when it is really Hawke – a leader they love, and they frag him – throw a live grenade in the tent. It explodes and kills Hawke. That is near the end of the book.
The Marines face fear of death constantly – when they march through the jungle, they have a point man who leads the way – he has to be eyes and ears to warn his platoon – sometimes he is the first to die.
One of their men gets attacked and killed by a tiger while on watch one night.
I miss these Marines! They get under your skin. This book woke me up – I would be tired and start reading it and end up awake and reading and cannot go to sleep. It was a great book! No gratuitous sex or violence.
“Riveting” – Vince Flynn
“Unforgettable…A beautifully crafted novel…filled with jungle heroism, crackerjack inventiveness, mud, blood, brotherhood, hatred, healing, terror, bureaucracy, politics, unfathomable waste, and unfathomable love.” Christina Robb
On the title page, author writes something like: Novels need villains and heroes…I had the honor of serving under 2 very fine battalion commanders, one of whom was killed in action, and their superb S-3, a crackerjack infantry officer. This is to contrast with the 2 battalion commanders in the novel, Blakely and Simpson, and their racist S-3, Cassidy.
Dedicated to the Island of Guernsey. He lived there in exile from France for about 15 years. He wrote Les Miserables while there (1862).
Story of Gilliat, a fine, young, lonely man who saves birds and children, cures sickness and is a fantastic fisherman, gardener, and bagpipe player.
He falls in love with Deruchette, an old fisherman’s niece (Mess Lethierry). Lethierry builds a steamboat and becomes rich. His captain, Siear Clubin, who seemed so honest and good, was really evil. He murders a coast guard, gets 75,000 francs from Rantaine (who stole it from Mess Lethierry years ago) and wrecks the Durande (the steamship) on the Douvre rocks in a fog. He was going to swim to shore and escape to Costa Rica and live out his days. Instead a huge sea monster captures him (unknown to all but the reader).
The crew of the Durande report the tragedy to Mess Lethierry. He is devastated. The community is discussing the wreck. A fisherman sees it and says the engine is still intact. Mess Lethierry says whoever can bring back the engine can marry Deruchette. Deruchette echoes this. Gilliatt goes unknown and alone to the Douvre rocks and 2 1/2 months of extremely hard work and survival of wind, sea, and the sea monster, brings back the Durande’s engine and the 75,000 francs that Clubin stole. Gilliatt is looking for food in an underground cavern and is found by the sea monster – octopus – the tentacles wrap around him – he has one arm free with his knife. He kills the octopus, sees a human skeleton and around its chest cavity is a leather belt – and iron box containing Mess Lethierry’s 75,000 francs.
He brings all home to Guernsey in hopes of marrying Deruchette. That night, hiding in her garden, he hears the priest propose his love and ask her to marry him. She says yes. Then Mess Lethierry has seen his steam engine moored outside his house and rings the bell and the whole community gathers and Gilliatt is a hero. Mess Lethierry says he shall marry Deruchette the next day. She faints. The priest and Deruchette are parting the next day in sadness. Gilliatt shows up and tells them they can marry. He takes them to the Church, gives them a ring, a note to the priest, written by Mess – meant for Gilliatt- and they marry and leave for England in a boat. Gilliatt follows the boat along shore out to a rock. The tide is rising. He sits on the rock watching the boat until the tide overtakes him. The end.
Beautiful island – Guernsey – Victor Hugo loves it and he admires the old fishermen – the Toilers of the Sea. He writes some really long, hard to understand chapters about the rocks, the sea, the wind, octopus, ships…but the story itself is moving and the characters are deep and incredible, especially Gilliatt. Tragic ending.
by Ranya Idliby (Muslim), Suzanne Oliver (Christian), and Priscilla Warner (Jew), 2006
Borrowed from BJ Stoner. Started out good – they face their prejudices and stereotypes. Ends up not good. The Christian woman loses her faith – becomes a “Christian Universalist” – Jesus isn’t the only way to salvation.
The Muslim woman is so amazing – gracious, elegant, smart (rich, too – St. Bart’s, Dubai, France). She finds her imam – a way to be an American Muslim. She was originally (her parents) from Palestine and her family had to leave when Israel formed.
The Jewish woman (Priscilla) basically had religion but no faith – was an anxious, neurotic, worrier, with constant panic attacks. She found God through the friendship with these women. Even thinks of Jesus as her friend.
It’s just sad what happened to the Christian.
Liked “10 things you should know before your first faith club meeting:”
Mark Twain and about 100 others set sail in a steamer from New York in early June 1867. They are bound for the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. A pleasure cruise-picnicking many days crossing the Atlantic. He writes about seasickness (everyone but him) and their routines – eating, and all their leisure pursuits: promenade the decks, look at ships at sea, whales, dolphins, sharks, play cards, dominoes, other games, sing, dance, play instruments (none of which anyone could do well) and journalling – which didn’t last too long.
2nd stop – Gibraltar – while still in the ocean on their ship, a beautiful sailing ship went by them and everyone looked at it and then saw the flag – the Stars and Stripes – here is what he writes: “Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country’s flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!”
3rd stop – Tangier, Morocco: “Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one…” It’s also very ancient.
July 1867, France: 1. Marseilles – He toured the Chateau d’if where Monte Cristo was imprisoned. 2. Paris – He kept talking about Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon. 3. Versailles (a palace complex Louis XIV built – absolutely gorgeous – Garden of Eden!)
“France is a bewitching garden.” Here’s how he describes the French countryside: “We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France. What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses trimmed by the barber…There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish anywhere – nothing that even hints at untidiness-nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful – everything is charming to the eye.”
“We had glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks; of cozy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery…”
Here’s how he describes Versailes:
“VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze, and stare, and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden – but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite dream…”
Then to Italy. 1. Genoa – streets like crevices, houses that would “laugh a siege to scorn.” 2. Milan – gorgeous cathedral. 3. Lake Como – Tahoe is clearer and deeper but “mountains beyond are veiled in a dreamy purple haze…glorify it with a beauty that seems reflected out of Heaven itself. Beyond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we have yet looked upon.” They stayed at the Bellagio. 4. Venice – gondolas.
He got very tired of the art of Old Masters, doesn’t know what people see in them. They “have seen thirteen thousand St. Jeromes, and twenty-two thousand St. Marks, and sixteen thousand St. Matthews, and sixty thousand St. Sebastians, and 4 million of assorted monks…”
5. Florence – he’s tired of traveling. “How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices sometimes!” First, “Magnanimous Florence! Here jewelry are filled with artists in mosaic.”
He gets lost in Florence – taken into custody and searched – they find a sliver of soap, “(We carry soap with us now), and I made them a present of it, seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity.”
6. Pisa – the leaning tower – they went up in it.
*Italy – people are poor, government is bankrupt, churches are rich! “Why don’t they rob their churches?”
“Vituperation” – verbal abuse or castigation.
“vituperate” – to find fault with; censure harshly or abusively.
He writes a whole chapter on how rich are the churches in Italy and their priests and how poor the people are and bankrupt the gov’t is. “And now–However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.”
Rome – The Coliseum – Parody on the barbarism that went on there – a review of one of the “performances.”
Naples – Vesuvius – climbs to the top – very steep – very beautiful in the crater – all the colors under the sun.
Isle of Capri – Blue Grotto – “The waters of this placid subterranean lake are the brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined.”
Vesuvius – “The Vesuvius of today is a very poor affair compared to the mighty volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it. It was well worth it.” (Hawaii wasn’t called Hawaii yet in 1867 – the “Sandwich Islands!”)
Pompeii – describes in detail.
Athens – couldn’t go due to quarantine so he and 3 others snuck ashore at night and toured the Parthenon by moonlight!
Constantinople – lazy dogs, dirty streets full of little shops and shopkeepers.
Sebastopol, Russia – destroyed by 18 months of war, natives friendly to Americans.
Odessa – so like an American town, he cried.
Then they visit the Czar of Russia – and he treats them like friends and they are so like “mere mortals’ that Twain will never be able to watch the theatrical kings again without saying, “This does not answer – this isn’t the style of king that I am acquainted with.”
Here’s what he says about the Czar’s school-aged daughter: “Every time their eyes met, I saw more and more what a tremendous power that weak, diffident school-girl could wield if she chose to do it. Many and many a time she might rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word is law to seventy millions of human beings! She was only a girl, and she looked like a thousand others I have seen, but never a girl provoked such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A strange, new sensation is a rare thing in this humdrum life, and I had it here.”
The Emperor and his family take them on a tour of their palace themselves! He writes: “We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring the cozy apartments and the rich but eminently homelike appointments of the place, and then the imperial family bade our party a kind goodbye, and proceeded to count the spoons.”
Then they proceed to the Holy Land:
Smyrna – a long explanation of Revelation-the crown of life.
Ephesus – beautiful ruins.
Syria – through the desert to Damascus. They are camping in luxury – set up and taken down by the Arabs. Then, Christians who don’t want to travel on the Sabbath force them to get to Damascus in two, 13-hour days on their old horses (day before that he tours Baalbec; beautiful temples made of huge cut stones – no one knows who built them or how they did it.) Back to the Sabbath; he writes: “We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point.”
All through this book, Twain talks about the “Saviour.” His Christianity is heartfelt and spot-on. I love him!
Damascus – beautiful from a distance on a hill but leave it at that, like the prophet Mohammed. The Arabs there hate Christians.
“…five thousand Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks…and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a Christian in Damascus!–and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And how they will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again!”
“It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved for a thousand years….”
He is in the Holy Land, seeing all the spots mentioned in the Bible. He is at “Joseph’s Pit” and writes:
“It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain that not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite story of Joseph.”
The Holy Land – deserts and begging Arabs, desolation. He sees all the places in the Bible. He sees Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Jordan River, Sea of Galilee, Dead Sea, on and on. His companions, the “pilgrims,” constantly chip away pieces of these places to take home. Then they go to Egypt and see the Pyramids – climb up them – and the Sphynx. He loves that! Then home from Egypt through the Mediterranean – couldn’t stop anywhere due to quarantines due to cholera.
In Spain, they (four of them) “ran the quarantine blockade and spent 7 delightful days in Seville, Cordova, Cadiz, and wandering through the pleasant rural scenery of Andalusia, the garden of Old Spain.”
They anchored “in the beautiful islands we call the Madeiras…But we could not land…” Quarantine again.
They couldn’t land again until the Bermudas. He writes: “A few days among the breezy groves, the flower gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that went curving in and out, disappearing and anon again appearing through jungle walls of brilliant foliage…”
What a fabulous book – to see the world in 1867 (the Mediterranean and the Holy Land) through Mark Twain’s eyes and words was truly a “pleasure excursion” for me! He is so funny although you have to savor his words to catch all the humor – it’s there in every page! He is also very, very brave and adventurous!
LOVED THIS BOOK!
(I told Wayne about many parts of this book and his favorite part is where they are sailing one direction and they are all praying for fair winds to help them along and Twain wonders about the 900 ships traveling the other direction and how they might be praying for the winds to be in their favor and how does that work out.)
