It’s time for yet another clearinghouse post for this dang 50 Book challenge. I’m realizing that reading 50 books won’t be a challenge for me at all, but the writing about them sure is a pain in my butt. These books have been sitting next to my computer for weeks, so long that the OCD in me is screaming to put them away, and just long enough for me to forget everything I was going to say about them.
The Broken Heart by Bruce C. Hafen
This is the second book in a series dealing with the Atonement of Christ and applying it in your life. I really love this author because he’s not a happy happy joy type. He fully admits the things that suck in life and still finds ways to get through it, and that’s so much more approachable than someone who thinks there should be no problems just because you have faith. He taught me a ton.
The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo
I’ve been into the short stories lately, and this is yet another collection. This time from the author of Empire Falls, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel and mediocre movie from HBO. I think if I have aspirations of writing short stories, I should probably stop reading them. Or at least stop reading them from such a high caliber of author. Holy crap it’s intimidating. His stories were so good, and so complete even in this short format. I usually bristle at short stories because there is so much left unknown and unsaid, but not in Russo’s work. The title story was especially moving, but each story focused so intently on people trying to come to terms with one thing or another. That laser focus provided a clarity to emotions, conversations, descriptions, and plot. The reader watches as one after another, Russo’s characters journey to acceptance. It’s an elegant transition to watch.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
What could I possibly add to the reviews of this legendary book. It’s legendary for a reason? I liked it? Sufficed to say, all the raves are true. So let me just say, Yadda yadda yadda, great book and comment on one thing. Twain fearlessly experimented with dialect throughout this whole book, even carefully noting the difference in pronunciation between two white southeners from different parts of the south. Before the text, this “Explanatory” note is included,
“In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
“I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.”
I am in awe of this effort. In modern fiction, it’s not in vogue to write in dialects, but the work Twain put in to the construction of these written languages is astounding and pays off in the novel. This was not a racist construct, it’s another way of watching Huck’s travels through the US and making that journey real. It’s a shame it’s not done properly anymore.
The All True Travels and Adventures of Lydie Newton by Jane Smiley
Oh I was so disappointed in this book. Granted, I read it write after Huck Finn, so it would have been hard for anything to measure up, but seeing as I bought this book at the remainder table, I think I’m not the only one who felt that way. I love Jane Smiley. She’s one of my favorite authors, partly because of the intense research she shoves into each of her books. After writing Moo, she’s probably qualified to run a college by herself, among other things. So here we have a book by one of my favorite authors, set in the turbulent “Bloody Kansas”,with a main character that one reviewer said, “Huck Finn would have been proud to claim as his big sister.” It should have been great, and yet it goes so wrong.
Namely because Smiley seems to get mired down in the minutia of frontier life. So much time is spent building houses and making dinner and spent with the women involved with their own contributions to the war, all things that are interesting in their way, that the plot just drags and drags by.
Lidie Newton is an unattractive woman who marries an eastern preacher and abolitionist and comes to Kansas to try to help settle the slave question. There she encounters the hardships of the western frontier as well as the constant threat of war from the Missouri ruffians trying to settle the slave question their way. Her husband is eventually killed, and Lidie decides to seek revenge.
But by the time she cuts off her hair and starts living like a man, the book is nearly 2/3 over. And she ends up getting distracted from her mission, and that’s where the book lost me.
When the book ends, it’s so unsatisfying that it feels like Smiley just wrote to a word limit and stopped. So disappointing.
Say When by Elizabeth Berg
Elizabeth Berg is my go-to author whenever I’m looking for a book to take on a plane, to the beach, or, in this case, as a palate cleanser. Her books are reliable for two things: 1)The plot will not tax your brain as anything complex or weighty, and 2)Her characters are so relatable, her dialogue so believable, that you really won’t care. Berg is as close as I get to chick-lit, or straight fiction. She’s not exactly literature, but her books are well written with sharp characters, so I’m not wasting my time or brain cells.
This latest book involves a couple, Ellen and Frank struggling to decide whether to stay together or divorce. Ellen decides that she has found true love outside of her marriage, and leaves her husband and child while Frank tries to move on with life and get over her. Berg’s specialty is understanding the emotional motivations behind each person’s actions. So even in circumstances that are foreign to me, and that I cannot imagine forgiving so easily, I understand why they behave the way the do, because Berg as shown it so clearly. She has a masterful gift for understanding and deep compassion for her characters.
Whew! Now the stack is cleared off. Too bad I just finished another book last night. I just can’t seem to stay ahead!
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