Stuff - Watching Movies to Help with the Reading

When the summer comes, I will once again try to finish reading Moby Dick and War and Peace.

I am having trouble with these classics; there is just too much description in them. However, I started to think of original audience for these novels and realized that movies hadn't been invented yet. So, when a novelist wanted his readers to know the world of the characters, he really had to go into details.

I've read about half of Moby Dick. Many parts of the novel bore me; I really don't need to know all the details of how to prepare a dead whale for the market. But, reading about Nantucket, before it was overrun by tourists, and learning what innkeepers served for breakfast (lobster bisque). I also laugh at some of the nautical terms; they are words that rap star use but have nasty meanings now.

I've seen both movies recently, and it will help me understand some of the background. I'll keep you updated on my reading progress later in the year.

Books - Book Review - After the Fire, a Still Small Voice

This is my second book for War Through the Generations - VietnamI received my copy of After The Fire, a Still, Smal Voice from the publishers.

This novel is the story of three generations affected by different wars:
1. Leon's parents, who escaped certain death during WWII, by being smuggled from Holland to Australia, instead of going to a concentration camp. The parents had a bakery shop, and the father fought in the Korean War
2.Leon Collard, who fought in the Vietnam War and really fell apart with the death of his wife
3.Frank Collard who is Leon's son. He didn't fight in any war but has trouble with relationships.

The story is not told linearly. Leon tells the story of his parents' adjustment to Australia and the post-traumatic stress that his dad suffered after returning from the Korean War. Leon's struggle to stay in school, and later, to run the bakery by himself, is recounted in the voice of a young man.

Another stream of the novel is Leon's experiences in Vietnam, and the start of his own post-traumatic stress. When he drives around in Australia as a veteran, he experiences same thing that US Vietnam veterans experienced: scorn. Leon saw a woman with a t-shirt that said "GIRLS SAY YES TO BOYS WHO SAY NO. STAY OUT OF VIETNAM."

The third stream of the novel is Frank, telling of his relationship with his horrible father, Leon. Frank doesn't have much love for his father and manages not to have friends and has trouble with his relationships to women.

Frank moves from Canberra to Mulaburry, which seems to be in the northern Australia. It's the town where his grandparents moved, before Leon went to the Korean War.

Frank talks to Linus, an Aborigine who met Frank's grandparents. Linus was suprised that Mrs. Collard was interested in his life and experiences and called Frank "a European." Frank thought that was weird; I suppose being in Australia two generations and not knowing anything about his grandparents was enough to distance him from Europe.

This novel has some Australian slang. I've seen enough Aussie movies and read many novels to know what the words mean. However, I really want to find out what a bunyip is. Frank tells Sal that it's like Father Christmas, a ghost, birdlike, a criminal,etc. If you can help out, let me know what it is.

I finished reading this novel about a month ago, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it. For being Wyld's first novel, the construction is impressive; the streams of the stories kept my mind working. And, I realized that a main theme is emptiness: the vastness of Australia, the time spent away at war and how it affects the family, and no knowledge of one's family's past can leave a hole in the next generation's soul.

Stuff - Starting and Restarting

It's time to restart my collage/creative journals. I am starting small with Muddy for Illustration Friday. Muddy doesn't have to involve dirt, but it can be something that is obscure.

Thanks to BookGirl for getting me the elusive UniBall Signo White Pen. Both of us were on the hunt for this pen, but she found the prize. I had fun creating the dots with the Signo.

Does this count as a new start or restart? You decide. When I was younger, I had a penpal; I loved receiving my letters. (This was before email existed for the general public.)

Simon also misses receiving letters, so he is starting a club that matches bloggers to the books that they like in common. Do you want to join. Read here for details!

Stuff - They Won

The Saints won the Superbowl. Yeah.

Listen here to songs that are popular with the fans.

Books - Book Review - Novel without a Name - Duong Thu Huong

This is my first novel for the War Through the Generations Challenge - Vietnam. I am interested Vietnam War literature. I know almost nothing about this era; I was a kid when the war ended, and there weren't really a lot of movies made of this era, like WWII.

Huong's work is about Loung, a North Vietnamese soldier who serves about 15 years. Most of the novel deals with events that happened during the 10th year of service. Quan finds out that a childhood friend, Bien, had a meltdown. Another friend, Luong, enlists Quan to get Bien to another unit, so he can have a chance to recover. However, the novel doesn't stay in that year; Quan thinks of events from his childhood and early days of his army stint.

He recalls: "This war was not simply another war against foreign aggressions; it was also our chance for a resurrection. Vietnam had been chosen by History: After the war, our country would be humanity's paradise..

Houng, the author was jailed for a time in Vietnam. Her views of the "paradise" didn't follow the company line. In the same section, she writes about Quan's views after 10 years of fighting, "..The deeper we plunged into the war, the more the memory of that first day (when the soldiers first went off to war) haunted us. The more we were tortured by the consciousness of our appalling indifference, the more searing the memory of our mother's tears."

Another snippy comment is made by two high officials, who opine that Marxism was the opiate of the people.

I enjoyed reading the metaphors, which are so different from my world. Two pale men, were not pale as ghosts, but "as pale as two crickets left too long in a match box." Quan's realization that he and his father would never understand each other led to the description of the relationship, "like two ponds in the same field with no canal to link them."

Even though Huong has a lot of descriptive and thoughtful passages, she always gets the reader back to the reality of the war. The earlies scene was of Quan and Luy burying decaying women's bodies, who had also been raped and beaten before their deaths. Dao Tien gives Quan a package to take to Tien's family: "a comb made of aircraft metal for his daughter, a scarf made of parachute netting for his wife, and an American ballpoint pen with three different colors for his son."

This novel opened my eyes to a closed society. It's not an easy read, but you will benefit from it.