Review: House of Prayer No. 2 by Mark Richard

Author: Mark Richard
Publisher-Format: New York : Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, e-book
Year of publication: c2011.
Subject: growing up poor and special
Setting: Southern Virginia, California, Texas, variety of sites
Genre: Memoir
Source: public library download 
Recommended? For readers who enjoy memoirs, southern settings, life success stories
 


This one was a complete surprise to me. I downloaded it from the library out of just plain curiosity - hadn't seen very much buzz here, or on the blogs. And that's a shame. THIS IS AN OUTSTANDING PIECE OF WRITING. Great memoir, great capturing of place and time, and written in the 2nd person....something that took a few minutes to settle into, but boyo boyo does it work. Mark Richard is a writer of spartan prose that grabs the reader and won't let go. Once I started this, all 7 of the other books I had going got shoved aside and I spent every spare minute for the next two days reading it.

It's the story of his childhood and his rather adventurous and torturous adolescence and early manhood. Labeled a "special child" from birth, he shows us how a life of poverty, labels, physical deformity all played a role in making him the incredible writer he is today.  His descriptions of lying in body casts for months on end could have been quite depressing; instead his straight-forward narration, sometimes peppered with an irreverent tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, encourages the reader to cheer for this "special child" and spurs us to keep going to see how life turns out. We watch as he avoids disaster after disaster to evolve into the highly functioning successful writer and husband/father that he is today.

RUN don't walk to get a copy. I may have borrowed this from the library, but very soon, we're going to hit the "buy" button on the Nook, because Mr. Tutu wants to read it too, and it's so good we'll both want to re-read it.  Trust your Tutu.....this one is not just good, it's outstanding. Coming on top of just having finished The Sense of an Ending I'm feeling like 2012 is gonna be a very good reading year.

Review: The End of Normal by Stephanie Madoff Mack

Author: Stephanie Madoff Mack with Tamara Jones
Narrated by the author
Publisher/Format: Penguin Audio, 2011,6 hr, 42 min
Subject: betrayal, suicide, coping with grief
Setting: New York, Greenwich CT, Nantucket
Genre: Memoir
Source: audio download from the Publisher Penguin audio

Stephanie Madoff Mack had it all: homes in Soho, Greenwich and Nantucket, a doorman, a dog walker, reliable childcare for her two beautiful children, a handsome rich husband who adored her, a famous even wealthier father-in-law, luxury cars, nice clothes.  Then in December 2008, her father-in-law Bernard Madoff, confessed to his two sons that his entire life and business was a giant lie.  The rest is history.  Thousands of people lost millions of dollars from "investing" with Bernie Madoff, including Stephanie Madoff's own step-father.

Over night all members of the Madoff family became pariahs, hounded by the FBI, the SEC, and the media.  Mark and Andrew, Bernie's two sons, were the ones who turned their father in to the FBI, but no one would believe that the sons had not been involved in the fraud.  As lawsuits piled up, and bankrupcy loomed, Mark and Stephanie faced total isolation, and became estranged from the rest of the family who refused to sever relations with Bernie.  Mark spiraled down into a deep depression and attempted suicide. After his failed attempt, he went into counseling and seemed to be recovering.

Two years to the day from his father's arrest, Mark hanged himself in the Soho loft, while his wife and daughter were in DisneyWorld, and his son slept in the next room. His final texts, sent on December 11, 2010, at 4:14 a.m., while Stephanie slept, simply said: Please send someone to take care of Nick and I Love You.  Suddenly Stephanie's life was totally upside down. Now she not only had no money, no job, and myriad legal problems, but she had no husband, and her children had no father.

I was hesitant to listen to this in audio, although it is a format I really enjoy, because the author reads this herself.  I thought it might be self-serving, or whiny, but it's not.  It's a straight forward account of a young woman's change in circumstances and how she is dealing with the problem.  Oh. Yes. there is certainly some rancor toward her mother and father -in law. There is certainly still an unsteady relationship with Mark's brother Andrew.  And yes at times it is difficult to feel sorry for someone who still has a dogwalker, nice cars, a doorman, and several houses.  But she is very clear that all that privilege does not make up for being deprived of Mark's presence.  She tells her story, from the beginning of her relationship with Mark, to their early days together, meeting the senior Madoffs, their wedding, early days of marriage and pregnancy and parenthood.

She is bluntly honest about the trauma and terror of the days following finding out about the Ponzi scheme, and her anguish as she watched the agony her husband and brother-in-law went through trying to convince the world that they were not involved.  Her animosity toward her mother-in-law Ruth Madoff is especially well documented.  She relates her panic at receiving those last two text messages from her husband, her frantic efforts to get her step-father to gain access to the apartment home to check on her son, and the subsequent flight home and how she had to explain to her 4 year old daughter that "daddy had a boo boo in his brain, and it made him die, and now he's in the sky and you can talk to him anytime you want.  He can't come home but he's there for you anytime you want to talk to him."

She ends by reading from the first paragraphs of Mark's unfinished book that he had begun writing before his death.  He wanted desperately to vindicate himself, to recapture the respect he felt he'd earned by all his hard work, and that he'd lost because of his father's transgressions.  Her heart-felt passion is at once emotional and composed.  No matter whether the reader believes that the sons were involved or not, and no matter what other financial tragedies that Bernie Madoff unleashed on the world, this story is a compelling personal one that presents a story needing to be told.

Penguin sums it up in their press release: "Stephanie Madoff Mack has written this at once searing and poignant memoir in order to tell her husband’s story—for him, for their children, and for the world."  It works especially well in the audio format.  Ms. Madoff gives us just enough  emotion to be able to understand her feelings, without having to wallow in them.

About the Author

Stephanie Madoff Mack is the widow of Mark Madoff, whom she married in 2004. She worked at George magazine and for the fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez, and since 2007 has been pursuing a master’s degree as a Child Life Specialist and working at Mount Sinai Hospital. She lives in New York City with her two children.

My thanks to Penguin Audio for making this available for review.

An Absolute Stunner - I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

Author: Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui
Publisher/Format:Broadway (2010), Paperback, 188 pages
Subject: arranged marriage, child abuse, women's rights
Setting: Yemen
Genre: memoir
Source: public library

This book left me speechless.  It was recommended by one of my LibraryThing group participants, and when I saw the cover, I was struck by the shy expression on this young lady's face that was so similar to my 10 year old grand-daughter's.

Thank the good lord that my grand-daughter lives in a country that  would never knowingly tolerate the abuse this young woman suffered. At the age of somewhere between 8 and 10 (there are no official birth records in poor villages where babies are born unattended at home), Nujood was married to a man in his 30's.  Her father signed the contract, claiming that the groom promised he would not touch the girl sexually until she reached 13 or puberty.  Ripped from the school and the childhood friends she loved, she was taken miles away to an isolated village, where she was immediately raped by her "husband" with the support and encouragement of his mother and the rest of his family.  For months she begged and pleaded to be left alone, to go back home to her parents (even though her mother had not prepared her at all for what would be involved in "being married" and her father was the one who put her in this position to begin with.)  Finally the husband took her back to visit her parents, where she daringly left home one morning when her mother asked her to go to the corner store, hopped a public bus, then used the bread money to pay a private taxi and asked to be taken to the court.

When she finally came before a judge, and was asked what she wanted, she answered "I want a divorce." The ensuing story of her journey through the legal system, her befriending by a prominent female attorney and ultimate triumph are a tribute to the strength of the human spirit.  Overnight, she became somewhat of a media darling (see for instance articles from the Los Angeles Times). Her life has improved, and she hopes by telling her story that other women will never have to suffer the trauma she went through.  She is back in school now and says she wants to become a lawyer to help other girls.

The book itself was published awhile ago, and her story may not be front page news in FOX or CNN land anymore, but the story is still compelling.  The writer Delphine Minoui who helped Nujood by putting her words onto paper did a splendid job of capturing the anguish of the young girl without making it a soap opera tear jerker.  It's factual, depressing, but hope filled.  It's short, clear text makes it easy to read in one sitting, but impossible to forget.  It's a must read.

Review: Governor's Travels by Angus King

 Governor's Travels

How I Left Politics, Learned to Back Up a Bus, and Found America

Author: Angus King
Publisher Format:Down East Books (2011), Paperback, 128 pages
Subject: Traveling Through America with family
Setting: broad spectrum of US visitor attractions
Genre: memoir
Source: Review copy from the publisher

Such a fun book!  I wanted to run right out, buy (or at least rent) an RV and start driving.  Angus King, former governor of Maine, walked out the door of the Governor's mansion, went "home", finished packing, and took off in a 40 foot RV with his wife, a 12 year old son, and 10 year old daughter on a six month adventure across the US.  Now right there is a recipe for disaster!  The King family however, turned it into a luxurious episode of learning, loving and living.

The book is loaded with pictures, and uses them to tell the story with well-written captions, along with some thoughtful essays by the author offering reflections on the environment, family dynamics, friendship, the beauty of the US, aging, politics (not too much) and educating our children. It's an easy read (about 2 hours), a great conversation starter, and a book that begs to be shared.

It definitely brought back memories for me of a trip my family took back in the late 60's.  My mom and dad loaded their 4 daughters (ages 20,17,14, and 11) into a 1964 Dodge Coronet (no A/C in July), put five suitcases and four "train cases" into the trunk (back then the trunk was the size of a small aircraft carrier) and headed west from Baltimore.  In 27 days we saw something like 18 states, visited the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, LosAngeles, Disneyland, San Franciso, Reno, Yosemite and Yellowstone Parks, the Corn Palace, the Badland,  Mt Rushmore, saw friends in Lincoln Nebraska, and Cincinnatti OH.  We had no Ipods, no personal computers, no airbags, no shoulder belts, no GPS and no satellite radio --in fact, if I remember correctly, we didn't even have FM radio.  We were NOT allowed to eat in the car.  We had maps (and learned to read them), we each had a book, and we fought to sit in the front seat between my parents, or to get a window seat in the back. We became best friends and built memories that have lasted our entire lives.

The King family had a self-contained world inside their RV -satellite TV, internet, cooking, bathing, etc, but did not allow those modern devices to interfere with their experience of and appreciation for the sheer majestic beauty and diversity of the US.  I think this was the best gift they gave each other and the strength of the book: by letting us join in the experiences of his family, Angus King shows us our country, shows us that while "there's no place like home," we have so much else to be thankful for.  His descriptions and reflections certainly show why the US is never to be taken for granted.

This is a book to be shared, to be out and available for visitors.  If you only buy a few books a year, get this one.  It's the real deal - - one of those books that is going to keep print books on real paper from dying. 

Many thanks to Judy Paolini at DownEast publishers for making a review copy available.

Memoir of the Month: Orange is the New Black

 Subtitled: My Year in a Women's Prison
Author: Piper Kerman 
Publisher/Format: epub from Random House Pub group - 300 pages
Subject: life inside a federal woman's prison
Genre: memoir
Source: Adobe digital edition download from public library

Piper Kerman is not the stereotypical felon.  She is college educated, funny, literate, articulate, she had a good job, good family support, a fiancè, and altogether what most people would consider a good life.  She also made really poor choices during a period of her life and she paid for those choices by having to spend 15 months in the women's prison facility in Danbury CT as #11187-424-her new identify.

With self-deprecating honesty, she gives us a memoir of how she got there, what life was like inside, and her relations with her fellow prisoners.  It is the day-to-day relations with these sister inmates that captures us.  Kerman is quite insightful in her explanations of their plights, in her assessment of the prison system, in her stories of learning to work the system (for instance how to obtain items not available through the prison commissary), and work outside the system (how to get a manicure) and how to work for the system (she worked first as an electrician, then on  a construction crew).  Throughout it all, she shows how she maintained her equilibrium with the help of, and by helping, her fellow inmates.

Their stories are funny, sad, uplifting and depressing.  She has changed names and identifying circumstances, but the cast of fellow prisoners she presents help us understand not only the rules and workings of the prison, but the circumstances that brought many of these women to their current residence.  The stories of mothers separated from their children are particularly touching.

It was an eye-opening memoir: one that does not sugar coat, that does not cry "woe is me".  The author accepts responsibility for her actions and appears to have learned valuable life lessons. She is now working to provide those same opportunities for others who did not have her resources (either personal, financial or legal).  Kerman's work inside, and now outside is actually somewhat inspiring and causes the reader to sit back and think whether or not he or she could have survived the fifteen months the author did.

The book includes an extensive list of Justice Reform Resources and an interview she did for SMITH magazine about her current work.  Kerman also has a facebook page and a webpage Piper Kerman.  The paperback is due out this week, and promises to be well-received.  It's a memoir to make you think.

Review: Half-Broke Horses

Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher/Format: Scribner (2009),first edition, hardcover, 275 pagesCharacters: Lily Casey Smith, Big Jim Smith, Rosemary, Little Jim
Subject: growing up on a ranch in SW US
Setting: Arizona, Texas, Chicago
Genre: Fictional memoir
Source: Public library

The jacket cover says this is "Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults."  That was all it took to grab me.  Jeanette Walls had a very colorful grandmother. She tells her grandma's story using the format of a memoir  in grandma's voice, but admits that she has written it as fiction.  The enchanting tale of Lily Casey Smith is entirely believable whether it is fictionalized or not.  Walls obviously draws on actual interaction with her grandmother, and incorporates family anecdotes to embellish the story.  It is oral history at its best.

Lily Casey was an independent, intelligent, and tradition defying woman.  Raised on a ranch during the depression, she was a child of poverty, desperation, violent weather, famine, and limited opportunities.  By the age of six, she was helping her father break wild horses, and learning that the only real obstacles to her future were ones she allowed to go unchallenged.  When she was fifteen, she left home, riding her horse by herself over 500 miles of wilderness and desert to take a teaching position in a small village (she herself hadn't even formally graduated from the 8th grade.)  Later, she learned to fly a plane, she went off to live in the big city (Chicago) to make her fortune, but gave up that dream because she missed the West and returned to continue a series of teaching positions in various small towns.  Eventually she completed college and got her teacher certification, but was never happy in 'big city' schools with all their bureacracy.

With her husband, "Big Jim" Smith, she helped manage a huge (160,000 acre) spread owned by an overseas corporation.  She taught her two children and their numerous farmhands how to herd, brand, and slaughter cows, how to geld stallions, how to make do with whatever was available, and how to mend fences.  Drawing on her memories of drought when she was a child, and learning from the example of the great Hoover dam which she had visited, she was able to convince her husband they needed to build a series of earthen dams throughout their ranch to guard against dry times.

Walls takes the story through her mother's early marriage to Rex Walls, and leaves us with a picture of an incredible woman - a true 'pistol packing mamma', a school marm extraordinaire, and a grandma every little girl would definitely enjoy.This was the pick of our book club this month, and a great one it was.

I listened to parts of it in audio--read by the author.  It was the only negative part of my experience.  Jeanette Walls' voice just didn't sit well with me, and her diction is not crisp enough to carry the story through.  It would have been better done by a professional reader.

Another Memoir Review: The Bucolic Plague

How Two Manhattanites became Gentlemen Farmers

An Unconventional Memoir

Author: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Format: Harper (2010), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 320 pages
Subject: goat farming in rural New York, middle year life changes
Setting: Upstate New York
Genre: memoir
Source: public library

Two gentlemen with great New York City jobs--one, Dr. Brent Ridge, works for Martha Stewart, the other--the author--is an advertising agency rep, when they decide on an impulse to buy an old mansion they discover while on their annual apple picking trip. They take on the task of re-doing the mansion, putting in a huge garden, and also take on 70 goats and a goat farmer to tend them.  The plethora of goat milk leads to a booming online business selling hand-made goat milk soap.  Ahh....the bucolic life is wonderful ....except...

They are the stereotypical gay yuppie couple trying to have it all--living at the mansion on the weekends while still working full time in the city, driving and training  back and forth, weeding, painting, pickling,  weeding, canning, entertaining, weeding, sweeping flies (you gotta read the book), slaughtering a home grown turkey for a REAL Thanksgiving, etc etc etc.  They are spending so much time trying to be perfect, that their relationship begins to suffer.  When Brent is 'pink-slipped' by Martha, and  Josh becomes disgusted with the advertising world and quits his job, they suddenly find themselves without a steady income, with a business that is severely impacted by the economic downturn that cost Brent his job, and with emotions they are not used to dealing with. They are in danger of losing everything---the mansion, the farm, themselves and their relationship.

Told with compassion, wit, and a unexpectedly deep understanding of human emotion and vulnerability, this is a well-written memoir of middle-aged reflection and contemplation.  On his thirty-ninth birthday, spent alone in his garden, Josh reflects that

Flowers don't blossom then disappear into thin air.  They fade.  Then the plant drops its leaves. Then the stem browns. And then the whole thing topples over.  I figured I was lucky to have been as colorful a bloom as I had been.... pg 225.

Their ability to see the beauty and positives in their lives, including the friendships they formed in the small town,  allows them to muddle through and arrive at the other side of their troubles with a recommitted relationship, a re-energized business, and  a future that bodes well.

I especially appreciated the respect that he shows for the rural life style and his neighbors. In the front of the book he states:

This is a memoir of a certain time in my life.  The names of the characters have been changed, and some are composites of various people, experiences, and conversations...If you think that unfair, you've obviously never lived in a small town and written a memoir about your neighbors.

I live in a small town, and my only regret is that we don't get Planet Green on our TV....the two now have their own show The Fabulous Beekman Boys.  At least Dr. Brent has his own blog about the farm and their enterprise so we can keep up with what happens next.  It's a delightful story told with candor, humor, love and respect.

Memoir # 7 - American on Purpose

Author: Craig Ferguson
Format: audio - 7 1/2 hours, 288 pages equivalent
Subject: alcoholism, addiction, emigration, patriotism
Genre: memoir
Source: public library audio download
Challenge: Month of Memoirs

Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for a man in a kilt. The cover of this one grabbed my interest; several of my LT friends recommended it highly, and the scottish accent was a big draw.

Craig Fersugon, currently the host of the LateLate Show on CBS, was born in Scotland.  Listening to him read his delightful memoir, one has no doubt about his origins.  He speaks easily, eloquently, poignantly of his childhood and adolescence - his less than stellar record in the educational system, and his early start at drinking alcohol. Needing some type of employment, he joined on with a punk band as a drummer.  The drummer skill set stays with him to this day.

In the story, he takes us through years of drinking, drugging, bouncing from job to job, woman to woman, sleeping on friend's floors to buying a house in the country with a very wealthy woman.  We accompany him through 3 unsuccessful marriages and several other romantic relationships.

He drops many names, not in a name-dropping fashion, but more to establish opportunities received and often blown.  He drifts back and forth from Scotland to London to the US and back again.  Finally, he lands in a very expensive re-hab unit outside of London.  Unlike many other "I found religion when I gave up the bottle" memoirs, he tells this part of the story very matter-of-factly, and without the excruciating detail many such stories subject the reader to. While he is brutally honest about his failures, he is deeply apologetic about the havoc wreaked and the lives injured over the years.  He is justly proud of his now 17+ years of sobriety--it took him over 7 years to pay off debts he owed to a long line of friends.

His career since coming to the US in 1993 has steadily improved.  He is now a writer, an actor, a producer and  director.  He is very proud of becoming an American citizen and speaks powerfully of why he is.  He recognizes that the U.S. is not a perfect place to live, but still wouldn't be anyplace else.  He is even more proud of his life- having his own show on CBS, living a sober life, and being ---finally-- a loving husband and father.  He still remembers with great affection the giant color poster he received from NASA when he was a child and wrote to say he wanted to be an astronaut.  It was this first touch with American in fact, that put the idea into his head that he wanted to go to America.

In short, this is a story worth reading.  The language can be a tad raw, but it is true to who the author is.  If you really want the full flavor, I'd recommend the audio format.  Listening to him read the story truly brings it alive. It is laugh out loud funny, inspiring, and memorable. He explains in the ending paragraphs exactly what being an American means to him.

America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far, not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of dissent...we must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism.  If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand, then good....I'm glad we're in America and don't have to oppress each other over it.  We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity, we are a  dream  of justice that people have had for thousands of years.

Americans taught me failure was only something you went through on your way to success.  For me becoming an American was not a geographical or even  political decision.  It was a philosophical and emotional one based on a belief in the reason and fairness of opportunity. 

Memoir #5: The Things They Carried

Author:  Tim O'Brien
Publisher/Format: Mariner Books (2009), Paperback, 256 pages
Subject: memories from the Vietnam War
Genre: short stories/memoir
Source: My own shelves
Challenge: Read from my shelves; War Through the Generations

What a way to honor our Veterans today!   This is a book I read for the Vietnam Reading Challenge sponsored by War Through the Generations.  The author, Tim O'Brien, is featured over there this week as he compares the Vietnam War to today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His thoughts are a good addition to what is featured here.

It seems strange to read a book written about death, mire, dismemberment, fear, and squalor and then call it beautiful.  But it is just that.  O'Brien is truly one of today's most gifted writers, giving us the ugliness of war in beautiful eloquent prose.  As he tells the stories of "A" company and his fellow soldiers humping their way through the killing fields of Vietnam, slogging through marshes, creeping blindly through jungles at night, and hiding in pits, we see them as individuals, we feel their fear, their bravado, their anguish and their emotions.  We also see the author's torment as he tries to tell the stories.  Does he give us bare truth?  What is truth?  Should he embellish?  He says:

The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque.  But in truth, war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat....It's not pretty exactly, it's astonishing. It fills the eye.  It commands you.  You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not.  Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference--a powerful implacable beauty--and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. (pg. 77).

 Each story is a stand-alone, but together they form an aggregate of emotions that help us feel.  We may never have had to endure what they did, but we at least know what they felt as they went through the experience, because the very first story lets us understand that among the things they carried, the heaviest were the fear, the hope, the love, the nostalgia, the loneliness that each young man took with him as he went to war.

If you never read another book about war......any war.....you should read this one.  It is jaw-dropping in its beauty, and that is what is so special: that a subject so ugly can be described in such splendor.

Memoir #2: The Color of Water

Author: James McBride
Publisher/Format: Riverhead Trade (2006), Paperback, 352 page
also audio: Phoenix Books, narrated by Andre Braugher and Lanie Kazan
Subject: tribute to a mother
Setting: The Bronx, Suffolk VA,
Genre: memoir
Source: public library

Another outstanding memoir. This is the November read for our book discussion group. I read the print, and listened to portions of it while in the pool. Andre Braugher and Lanie Kazan do a truly devoted job of reading this one.

James McBride tells us the story of growing up black, in Harlem, then in projects in the Bronx. Raised by his white mother (his black father died before he was born) and black step-father, he was one of 12 children. He describes a loving family life, where children were expected to be successful, respectful, and STAY IN SCHOOL. Children were due in the house by 5:00 in the evening, and slept 5 to a bed. Dinner might often be a jar of peanut butter or several spoons of sugar.  He never met his mother's family and did not discover until he had completed his master's in Journalism at Columbia U, and decided to write a tribute to his mother, that she was Jewish, that her family had disowned her, that her father was an orthodox Jewish rabbi who sexually abused her, and  just how hard her life had been.

The story is told both in the son's and the mother's voices. It is very well-written, and gives us an incredible insight into each mind. James' father was a preacher, and his mother converted to Christianity and insisted on church attendance and prayer from all her children. As he begins to realize that his mother is different from other mothers, he asks her "Is God Black?" "NO" she answers. "Well is he white?" Mom replies in the negative. Still the young boy persists. "Well what color is he?" "The color of water." I just loved that image, and fell in love with this family.

As he lovingly recounts his search for his mother's family, and helps her confront a past she has repressed, he comes to an acceptance of his Jewishness, his multi-cultural roots, and gives us a picture of an exceptional family. In the epilogue he gives us a breakdown of the incredible achievements of them all. Every one of the 12 graduated from college. There are two doctors, school teachers, musicians, journalists, nurses, artists, and the mother completes her degree in her late 60's.

It's a tribute any mother would be proud to have her son write.

Mini Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Now that we're back home, I can settle down and catch up on reading. I really didn't get much done while we were on the road. I did finish this, although it took me a while. I kept going back to listen to parts again, thinking I had missed something, but I think it's just the way the book was written.

Author: Rhoda Janzen
Narrator: Hilary Huber
Format: audio 8:15, 272 page equivalent
Subject: life as a non-practicing Mennonite
Genre: memoir
Source: public library audio download
Challenge: Support Your Local Library; audio books


It's uproariously funny in parts,--almost bawdy, and not at all what I was expecting. I can't figure out what the point was. It's just a rambling series of autobiographical reflections about the life of a 43 yr old college professor whose atheist husband of 15 years leaves her for a guy named Bob he met on gay.com.  She certainly has a rather sarcastic, smart-A viewpoint, and I enjoyed that.

She tells us about a car accident, her going home to recuperate with her parents, which leads to vignettes about growing up 'in the community', her mother's champion flatulence, the advise she gets from everyone about coping with her suddenly single state, but nothing seems to tie together. Worth reading, but don't expect the definitive treatise on anything.

Review: West with the Night

Author: Beryl Markham
Format: trade paperback 296 pages
Setting: British East Africa (1920-1940) 
Genre: Memoir
Source: originally from library, but personal copy bought from Amazon
Challenge: Support your local Library

An amazing memoir written by a pioneering aviatrix about her early life in British East Africa (now Kenya) as a farmer's daughter, race horse trainer, and eventually, bush pilot delivering mail, supplies, and ferrying people across the uncharted territory of eastern Africa.  She was the first person, male or female to fly solo from London to America going from east to west. Her mother left her with her father in Africa to return to England. "Baru" as she was called by the natives, worked with her father, living in mud huts, then later her own wood cottage, reading at night by oil lamp.  There is no mention in the book of any nanny, governess, or tutor.  She appears to be entirely self-taught, a concept making this book all the more exceptional.

Her exquisite prose makes the book. The story is exciting and interesting, almost unbelievable (I supposed teen aged white women could go hunting lions accompanied only by African tribesman and equipped only with a spear!) but told with such clear and image-evoking words that the reader just sinks into this book. It is a book to be savored, read slowly, marked up, and read again.  And if it's first read as a library book, it is one to run out and purchase to have to look back at.

I found myself breathless and stopped dumb in my reading tracks at points, having to put the book down, and then read and re-read passages. My library copy is full of little yellow stickies to mark such passages as:

(speaking of a 'pet' lion kept by her father's farmhands): "He spent his waking hours..wandering through Elkingtons' fields and pastures like an affable, if apostrophic, emperor, a-stroll in the gardens of his court."

"One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day this will be an airborne life. But by then men will have forgotten how to fly; they will be passengers on machines whose conductors are carefully promoted to a familiarity with labelled buttons, and in whose minds knowledge of the sky and the wind and the way of weather will be extraneous as passing fictions." (this book was written in 1942, and she was relating this as she spoke of her early flying lessons around 1925-30.)

Her imagery, particularly when relating treks through African jungles and deserts is spellbinding:

"You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and the hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time....When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being."

Even Ernest Hemingway, who at some point crossed paths with Ms. Markham, remarks on the back cover:

"...she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers...I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book."

 Who am I to argue with Hemingway?

Review: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Author:William Kamkwamba with Bryan Mealer
Format: ARC paperback, 347 pgs
Subject: growing up, famine, science experiments, building windmills
Setting: Malawi Africa 2000-2008
Genre:  memoir
Source: Review copy from Harper Collins


At the age of 12, William Kamkwamba is literally dying of starvation. His country, Malawi, a small land-locked slab of sub-saharan Africa is suffering raging famine exacerbated by totally corrupt and inept rulers.  The Kamkwamba family (parents and 4 children) has been reduced to eating one small meal a day consisting of a small handfull of a grain concoction and sometimes the addition of a pumpkin leaf.  William, the only son, has been forced to drop out of secondary school because his farming family cannot afford the tuition. The erratic rain patterns (too much, then too little) of the past year have meant that their tobacco and maize crops failed.  No food, no money to buy food, no crops to sell to make money, malaria and cholera adding to the mix, and no work for William or his father.  Life could have been very dismal.

But William is a curious and basically happy child.  He returns to the local grade school where the village library is housed.  There he spends his days reading everything he can get his hands on so he won't be too behind if the chance to return to school ever happens.  He finds books that came in a shipment from America, among them Integrated Science and Explaining Physics.  His world expanded, and he immediately realized that if they could have electricity, his father could run a pump that would allow them to manage their water supply and have not only one, but two harvests a year.  His family would not have to spend money on kerosene to have light at night, nor would they have to go to bed when it got dark at 7pm if the kerosene were running low.

Inspired by his reading and by seeing bicycle lights glowing from the energy generated from the dynamos run by pedals, he set about to build a windmill to generate that electricty for his family.  It never occured to him that this was something many would consider impossible.  The story of how he scavenged, begged, borrowed or found enough work to pay for parts and tools, and then built a working windmill is only the beginning of this inspiring story. Once the windmill became reality, and his house was 'wired', his family became the local cell phone charging outlet, and visitors began arriving to see this strange contraption made of a bicycle wheel, a bamboo tower, melted PVC pipes for blades, and hundreds of feet of bare metal wires.  My favorite part was the 'insulated' light switch made from a discarded flip-flop.

The story of his adventures out of his village after he was 'discovered' by scientists and philanthropists is even more endearing.  His first airplane ride, sleeping on a real bed in a hotel, and most of all discovering computers and the internet are joyfully related. Now in his 20's, and a university student, William is determined to bring electricity and education to his entire country.  I can't wait to see him succeed.

This is a book that can be enjoyed by readers from about age 10 through adulthood.  It is an uplifting tale that affirms our belief in human nature.  It would make great extra credit reading for a basic high school physics class.

Many thanks to Harper Collins for the review copy.

Challenge: ARC

Review: A Year in the Merde

Author: Stephen Clark
Format: paperback, 276 pgs
Subject: life in France
Setting: Paris
Genre: fictionalized memoir
Source: My personal shelves



A light piece of fluff destined for the library sale bin. The story of a very self-centered Brit who goes to 'work' in Paris for a year, and his discovery of and sarcastic take on French workers, French food, French women, the propensity of the French to go on strike for anything, and his misadventures as he tries to make himself understood with his schoolboy French. Heavy on the sexual adventures, light on brains.

Recommended only if you need something to take your mind off impending dental surgery.


Challenges: Read from My Shelves 1/20