Books - Book Review - Madeleine’s Ghost – Robert Girardi

I was determined to finish this book before Halloween. My friend, JP, recommended it to me.

It’s a novel with many plots. Ned, a history graduate student, leaves New Orleans for New York, after falling in love with a woman, who isn’t ready to love him unconditionally.

His thesis is going nowhere, because he dreams of her and New Orleans.

He gets a job in Brooklyn: looking for information to get a nun beatified. He does research in both New York and New Orleans.

Meanwhile, his apartment is haunted; the ghost wants to tell him something, but he can’t get the message.

This is a fast-paced novel. It was fun to read. However, the story dealt too much with Ned and his problems, and not enough on the ghost and the past. I wanted to be frightened a bit more.

Since this novel was Girardi’s first, I going to look for his more recent work. The settings of the cities are pre-9/11 NYC and pre-Katrina New Orleans.

Pick up this novel to take a nice trip to two cities!

Books - Book Review - The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coehlo

This was the last selection of the year for the International Fiction Book Group of New Orleans.

The members liked the bare plot; however, they found the novel oppressive in some ways. There are words of wisdom. The morality aspect was beating down too much on the readers.

In a town, where nothing happens, a stranger comes in. He offers the townspeople unspeakable wealth, but there are many strings attached to get it.

The novel takes place in about a week, a trend that Coelho had used in his most recent works.

While deciding whether the risks were worth taking, everyone starts to think about their lives.

Chantal, one of the younger ladies in the town, is seized with fear: “..She had just realized there were two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune, when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of life full of new challenges, the fear of losing forever everything that is familiar.

People want to change everything, and at the same time, want it all to remain the same.”

This paragraph really spoke to me. I have recently made some decisions that seemed too hard to make just a year. I am glad to know that others go through the same crisis of new things.

And, while I start to implement steps to make my decision come true, I will follow, Berta’s husband’s advice. (He used to take hunters on trips; if they didn’t know how to shoot, he would make them shoot cans.) “Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open. Concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.”

Coelho is one of my favorite authors, but I didn’t fall in love with this novel. Even though it was short, it didn’t feel as interesting as his previous novels.

Stuff - Illustration Friday - Trick or Treat

I haven't done anything Halloween for a long time, so this was fun!

I call my work: Hat Man. I found the picture in an old, falling apart book. I made him modern with his ribbon hat. Don't you love his earring?

I stamped the Boo and IMPORTANT date on a gesso page, covered with orange watercolors.

Stuff - Little Joys and Grrs

Joys - First

1. The meeting to help out the indie bookstores went well. I will keep you updated as more news happens.
   
2. I have finished a couple of books for the Seafaring Challenge, but I can't post my reviews until Nov 1st.
3. I am giving away some of my books tonight to a teacher, whose school in New Orleans East doesn't have a library. I am excited about meeting such a caring person. She wants to build a library in her classroom. Whatever books aren't good for her students' reading level, she will give to other students.
4. I have chosen the books that I will nominate for my bookclub's selection night in November:
   

Star of the Sea - Joseph O'Connor

Gilgamesh - Joan London (reviewed previously)

The Liberated Bride by A. B. Yehoshua - a Jewish professor thinks about his family life and cares about all his students, especially his Palestian ones.

I am also try to find one non-fiction to recommend and maybe one more fiction.

Now, the Little Grrs

1. A steady rain almost drowns the city and surrounding suburbs! Huh?
2. I still don't have Internet at home. After waiting 3 weeks for a tech, we find out that that company can't enter our neighborhood or home due to a lawsuit by a neighbor. Urggh.
3. I tried another company, but my computer doesn't recognize the hardware.

Ok, so I hope that your week is going better.

Suff - Illustration Friday - Grow

This theme is Grow. I wanted to post yesterday but it rained a little bit in New Orleans, and the city and the suburbs almost flooded! The boss let us go home at 2:30 p.m., during a lull in the storms.

The background is an old book. I put two or three layers of gesso last summer and colored it in watercolor.

I wanted to show how life passes when you grow through the growth of a hand.

I traced my hand with a marker, then I found a baby's hand in a magazine ad, traced it and enlarged the baby's hand to draw the middle one.

The baby's hand is on musical notes with various pencil colors. The middle hand is a library date due sticked, painted in oil pastels.

I also added some botanical images with stamps and paper. The paper has leaves or trees. The stamps are of plants.

Books - Challenges and More Challenges

Ok, if you have won the lottery or are rich, you can participate in ALL these reading challenges.

Check it out!

I'll see what I can do with the books that I have.

Books - Book Review - Portrait of an Unknown Woman - Vanora Bennett

This delightful novel centers around Meg Giggs, a ward of Sir Thomas More, the advisor of Henry VIII of England.

Meg is a very educated young woman for her times. She is outspoken, and sometimes gets in trouble for that.

The novel presents Thomas More, the family man. It just touches on his political life, but is not the focus of the novel.

Meg forms a friendship with the artist, Hans Holbein, who later paints Henry VIII. Hans doesn't paint on canvas, but on wood. He spends a lot of time preparing the wood for any work.

Hans paints two portraits of the More family, with a very perceptive eye. He is able to see secrets among the family members, that some wish would stay hidden.

Meg marries John Clement, a man with a past to hide for his own safely. It's refreshing to read about a young couple who doesn't have an easy time in marriage. Even a love match can have problems.

London seems like a large city at that time, even though I know it was a lot smaller than its present configuration.

You will learn a bit about English history and about how the mind of an artist works.

(Portrait drawn by Hans Holbein the Younger)

Books - Indie Bookstores in New Orleans

Progress Report

There is interest in helping the local, independent bookstores in New Orleans!

• I have a meeting set up this week with the New Orleans Visitors and Convention Bureau to share ideas on marketing the bookstores
• Thanks to Miji at Idea Village, I will also be meeting with members of Stay Local, an organization that supports local merchants in New Orleans. Both the Stay Local people and I contacted Idea Village almost at the same time about letting the world know about our fabulous bookstores. Great minds think alike, don't they?
• Larry Portzline will start a tour next year called: "Why Indie Bookstores Matter" Tour. I emailed him, and he responded quickly. He has made some contacts here, so let's see what else can happen.

If you have any ideas or people to contact, please let me know!

Suff - Illustration Friday - Extreme

One of my goals is to be more creative in terms of collage/assemblage. (I can't draw a lick, so I give up on that!)

I found this site. A theme is given on Fridays, and one decides the media to use.

This week's theme is EXTREMES. Since I am hooked on Project Runway and What Not To Wear, I decided to do an extreme shoe. All the contestants in WNTW and all the models in PR wear high, high heels, which are very impractical.

My shoe is a butt-ugly one. If a famous designer slapped his/her name to this shoe, it would be a bestseller.

Materials used: packing paper (for the leg) with brown watercolor
polka-dot tissue paper
marbled paper
crocheted heel with NORO yarn

Stuff - Little Joys

Since I don't have cable nor satellite TV installed yet, and my TV never came with antenaa, I am doing a lot of reading. Plus, the resting my foot is helping my recovery along.

I changed the colors of my blog and eliminated some graphics. I am now mentally composing the layout for my header graphics.

I finished Star of the Sea. I found my journal (in one of my moving boxes) in which I write my favorite quotes of a book and hope to post a review in the next few days.

I also finished The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho for my bookclub. It's a short book but has a lot of wisdom in it; I am still thinking about it. Not being able to figure out the setting is also bothering me. Give me a shout, if you know.

The Classical Theatre of Harlem will be presenting Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, not far from my new home. I hope that it will be cool enough for me to walk to the site and enjoy this free performance, which is close to the 'Kane-destroyed London Ave. levee . (The other stage will be at the Lower 9th Ward.) I am happy that people still care about our downtrodden area.

And, if the US government wants to keep ignoring the 'Kaned Gulf Coast, the Russians wants us! Former Premier Mikhail Gorbachev so declared in a recent visit.

Have a great rest of the week!

Books - Borders coming to the Big Easy

A few months ago, I wrote about a rumor that will become reality: Borders coming to New Orleans

Well, it's going to happen next year! Here's what locals have to say about the matter.

I still feel ambivalent about the matter.

But, now, I am going to do something to help the independent bookstores.

I have a meeting next with the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. I am going to let them know about the success of Hay-on-Wye, Wales and Wigtown, Scotland, two great booktowns in the UK.

We already have the infrastructure to be a booktown; most of the independent bookstores are still in business, there are enough hotels and B&Bs to accomodate visitors, and easy transportation to all the indie bookstores.

The only thing that is needed is to gather all the information about the bookstores, literary festivals, and accomodations in ONE site and market the regions as a bookstore haven!

Wish me luck in this venture!

Books - Book Review - Still Life - A. S. Byatt

Going backwards, but by accident.

This is the second novel of a trilogy. Each book can stand on its own. I read Babel Tower, the third book, years ago.

I didn't like one of the characters, Frederica, in Tower and I dislike her a little bit more in this novel.

Frederica was born 20 years too late. She stands out like a sore thumb.

She is a brilliant student, studying literature at Cambridge. She makes no female friends, despite the fact that there are female students there in the 1950s. She indulges in sex but acts like a man, in that she feels nothing for her partners, even though they sometimes "fall" in love with her and gets annoyed when they want more attention from her.

Frederica goes into London a lot, a run down area with lots of bombed-out plots of land and buildings. Byatt also mentions that the children who grew up in the UK during WWII were shielded from the ugly truths. Frederica is just finding out what really happened in the concentration camps. She didn't realize how badly attacked London was until she sees it herself.

Growing up in the US, I am accustomed to knowing peoples of different countries. Frederica is surprised that a brillant tutor is German, a foreigner. I read the man's last name and was thinking "no really. I have seen this name before." But then I remembered the times and place of the novel.

Her brother and sister are up north, in Yorkshire. Stephanie has married a minister, is a mother, takes cares of church matters, and her mother-in-law, and doesn't have a servant. She wants to have time to study her poetry, but she doesn't get much of a chance. She is intellectually starved.

Marcus was abused by a teacher. However, treatments for these cases are still not advanced, and poor Marcus is having a difficult time mentally. He does manage to make friends, finish high school, and start living again.

The book has a lot of information about literature. If you have always wanted to go to the university in Cambridge or Oxford, you might have learned these facts. Some of the details were too much for me, so I glossed over them.

This book requires a lot of concentration with all the thoughts about literature. The storyline isn't hard to keep up with, although some of the characters are not likeable.

Stuff - Bits and Bobs

Good news: I found more of my books while unpacking! Yeah.

My foot is feeling better! Yeah.

So, I am hoping to go to knitting group next week and make my reading group in two weeks!

My goal is to read all my books in my personal library by mid-2008 and not buy too many from now on. I want to contribute some books to a teacher in New Orleans East (which got really 'Kaned in 2005). There is NO, I repeat, NO library at her school (She is probably teaching in a a trailer.) She wants to have some books in her classroom to encourage her students to read.

I am ready to contribute my copy of Book Thief and some art books. I am thinking some magazines would be great also.

I decided to join the Russian Reading Challenge. Right now, I have three books in mind.

• I bought War and Peace in Wigtown (3 separate volumes; I remember reading A Work in Progress' troubles with her paperback versions.)
• At Gatwick, I bought a non-fiction book, Moscow 1941 – Rodric Braitwaite. I heard about this horrible seige in passing while watching the History Channel and in novels. I want to learn more about it.
• I have a great book that I bought when I was a teen: Photographs for the Tsar. It has early, early color photography of places and people that don't exist anymore with stories about the villages.
• Still deciding about the fourth book.

In my Seafaring Challenge, I am making progress on Star of the Sea. I am considering recommending it for my bookgroup as a selection.

GROSS TIDBIT: To get rid of lice, the captain ordered blankets to be soaking in boiling, hot, get ready, URINE.

I am also considering moving up to Commadore Level. I found a pictoral book about Skackleton's trip to Antartica and an early biography of him. Within the Antartica, one had to sail sometimes. Plus, he was in the Royal Navy, so it counts.

Books - Book Review - Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

This book was my September book club selection, but I hadn't had time to review it. Too much was going on in my personal life.

Basically, most of the members hated the book. MM said that the author wanted to show how well he could incorporate post-modernist writing in his novel. (Matt, please tell me what this means! I forgot what she said, and I can't find my Moleskin with my notes.) D mentioned that if she hadn't seen the movie, she might have had trouble understanding what went on.

Another reader and I were the only ones who really enjoyed it.

This novel is unconsciously following a trend in our bookgroup. We seemed to have chosen books with multiple storylines (Cloud Atlas, for example). And, a couple of characters in this book remind me other other characters; the girl genuises, Brod and Pope Joan.)

The novel has many stories. Jonathan (is it the author himself or how he wants to project himself?) has gone to the Ukraine to find the people who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII.

Jonathan speaks only English, so he hires a translater (Alex) and a driver (Alex's grandfather.)

Alex learned English, but some of the expressions that he uses are hilarious. He refers to himself as a premium person. His mother gets irritated with him and screams, "Alex, stop spleening me!" The family dog is a female called Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.

There are several stories going on in the novel:

• Jonathan's search for the village where his grandfather lived and the person who saved the grandfather, which uncovers some secrets that Alex's grandfather has kept hidden about what happened in that time period
  
• Jonathan's writings to recreate the village in the 1700s and the 1930s
• Correspondence between Alex and Jonathan, where they talk about their lives and Jonathan's work in progress. Alex freely criticizes the novel.
  
• Alex's recounting of his family life

You need to read the beginning of each chapter carefully, so you can know which story you are reading.

There are sections in the writing that are really touching and beautiful.

In the Jonathan novel within the novel, the chapter called, Falling in Love 1791, Yankel, the father of Brod, is described as "..like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend." How is that for a character reference?

Alex and Jonathan send each other real letters. In a 17 November 1997 letter, Alex tells Jonathan why he likes to write to him:

"...I want Little Igor (Alex's brother) to be able to boast to his brother, and to want to be viewed in public places with him. I think that is why I relish writing for you so much. It makes it possible for me to be not like I am, but as I desire Little Igor to see me. I can be funny, because I have to meditate about how funny, and I can repair my mistakes when I perform mistakes, and I can be a melancholy person in manners that are interesting, no only melancholy. With writing, we have a second chance."

If you read this novel, you must be ready to be challenged. You must keep your wits about you. This is not a beach book!

Books - Book Review - My Dream of You - Nuala O'Faolain

This is one of my Oxfam-Bloomsbury St-London buys.

I must admit, I was attracted by the cover; it’s sooo blue and beautiful.

The plot is about Caitlin de Burca, a brilliant travel writer from Ireland, who lives in London and is known Kathleen Burke.

She is an interesting character. Very smart, book-wise and career-wise (she won a scholarship to Trinity College and received a journalism degree in London), but she is promiscuous without enjoying sex. Any stranger asks for sex and she just passively gives in. I just don’t understand it. She examines her behavior at various parts of the novel, but I still am lost as to why she does this to herself.

There are many stories within this novel (maybe I should recommend it to my book group?)

• Kathleen’s examination of her life and the return to being Caitlin
• Her interactions with her family, both blood relatives and her circle of friends in London
• Searching for the truth about the Talbot divorce case of 1849. Mr. Talbot of Mount Talbot, near Ballygall, petitions Parliament so he can divorce his wife, Marianne, for not keeping her marriage vows and being involved with William Mullan, who worked in the stables of the estate
• Writing a historical novel about the Talbot case and then finding facts that don’t agree with her version of the event
• Learning more about the Famine caused by the potato crop failures and how it is still in the hearts of the Irish people

As a girl, Caitlin learns about the Famine from an English historian who is examining the remains of the cottages of the tenant farmers and relates just the bare details of the events. She goes homes to ask her parents and gets no answer. She later finds out more at school.

In order to explain her family life (her father always being angry and her mother being quiet and depressed), little Caitlin concludes, “..so I put two and two together, home and the famine, and I used to wonder whether something that happened more than 100 years ago and that was almost forgotten, could have been so terrible that it knocked all the happiness of people.”

An important lover gives her the basic piece of information about the Talbot case, and she starts to research it about 25 years later, as a result of a sad event.

When she goes home, she realizes about all the prejudices that she had to deal with in England and how she doesn’t have to worry about being singled out as Irish in her homeland.

(Since the US is the land of immigrants and the Irish came over relatively early, the Irish here don’t have the same problems as Caitlin, although in the beginning, they didn’t have a great time either. Many of the Irish descendants hold positions of power in this country; it’s the Hispanic immigrants that are the source of outrage these days. And, if a lass or lad now has an Irish accent, he or she will be surrounded by admirers. So, this piece of information surprised me, although I understand the role that the IRA played in not endearing themselves to the Brits.)

In the novel, William Mullan sets sail to come to New Orleans. Everyone assumes that all the Irish people stayed in NYC, but it’s not true. There was a great need for labor in the 1840s and 1850s for the dangerous work of draining swamps to build roads, levees, and bridges. The slaves didn’t work in this capacity.A lot of Irish and German immigrants died in taming New Orleans.

At work, I have access to a city directory from the 1850s. I found a William Mullen, whose occupation is a painter. Could it be the same William from the Talbot case, which is a real case? The spelling of the last name varies by one letter, though. And, would he have changed his last name on the voyage to New Orleans or would he have kept it? The mystery may never be solved.

When Caitlin is back in Ireland, you can feel the openness of the land, because the people were either chased away or died. You also understand how this Famine destroyed the civilization.

I don’t understand the workhouse. I need to research this topic.

Once I started this novel, I couldn’t put it down. The economics and politics of the Famine were interesting; it kind of reminds me of the indifference of the current administration during the ‘Kane crisis.

Books - Book Review - The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster

My friend, JC, lend me this book to read while I was recovering from surgery. Since I don't read too much U.S. fiction, I was looking forward to trying some. I also heard about Paul Auster from Reading Matters.

Nathan Glass, a divorced and lonely man, returns to his childhood neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. He meets up with his nephew,Tom Wood, by acccident. Tom quit a PhD program and works as a taxi driver and later in a bookstore.

The Brooklyn that Nathan encounters is not the same as in his memories, but he and Tom manage to build a new "family" with people in the neighborhood.

Nathan and Tom also become parents, when Tom's niece shows up on his doorstep one day from North Carolina. It's funny to read how these two bachelors are trying to relate to a little girl who refuses to talk.

The Brooklyn of this novel seems small, more like a small town, instead of being part of the NY metropolis.

I like the interactions among the new "family" that Nathan and Tom form. It's interesting to read how people utilize different buildings for homes and businesses!

Some of the early parts of the book are depressing, especially when Nathan first moves back to Brooklyn, but as the novel unfolds things become better, even if there is a death later on.

This is a great book to get a taste of US life in this century.

P.S. The setting is pre-9/11, but barely.