A Lesson In Understatement

They Were Strong and Good by Robert Lawson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Lawson's illustrations sometimes undermine the reverential tone of this book.  When he says that his mother's mother did not like sailing on the sea, he provides a drawing of her very expressive backside as she hangs forlornly over the side of the ship. 

Despite the stereotypical representations of mammies and indians, this book would make an excellent model for kids to do their own family biographies in the same simple declarative style.  I know I was bored by my parents' old time-y stories.  Surely, today's youth can recall some of the stories they themselves have endured.



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Suspect Sympathy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


People's imaginations never cease to amaze me.  Perhaps "amaze" isn't the exact word.  Terrify? Stun? Disgust? Repel?  I'm sure there are really bad people out there, even without Larsson providing statistics.  But, you know, I don't have to read about what they do.  The book was well-crafted (although the series of photos showing the girl's change of expression was pretty hokey) and kept you interested.  I liked the lead characters - they were fully conceptualized and realistic.  Larsson manipulated the reader beautifully, alternating between plot lines to build dramatic tension that really got my blood pressure up and me to want to read on and on and on into the night (but I didn't - I set it down right at a most critical point, the sentence ending in "hell," and let Malcolm Gladwell lull me to sleep reading from one of his books). 

But I don't think I'll be reading another one of these. 

The nice thing about mysteries, in general, is that there is a rent in the universe and someone repairs it, somehow, by the end.  All is restored to normal.  It's a safe thrill.  I just don't want to get my thrills from stories about the abuse/torture of women, children, or pets - especially when it gets graphic (I guess I must think abusing men is fair).  This is where I start worrying about people's imaginations. 
I just think people enjoy writing or reading about abuse too much.  Even when they add retribution - especially retribution in kind.  I can't blame those long, dark, Swedish winter nights for Larsson's imagination when the real life tortures of the "Disappeared" in Argentina are thrown in the balance.  What does it take to imagine torture or abuse and then write about it?  I don't have an answer.  I guess I just don't have the imagination.



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And I Thank Hitch For This Book ...

  Hitch 22: Confessions and Contradictions by Christopher Hitchens

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was an e-book from Jasmine Overdrive.
Why I had not heard of Christopher Hitchens before being introduced to god Is Not Great is beyond me.  I read gING in a day (staying up all night with my heart in my mouth because he was not pulling any punches) and suddenly Hitchens is on my radar.  In this memoir, Hitchens exposes his life, owns up warts and all, with more modesty than apology.  In fact, he takes as much pride in his communist/socialist past, it seems, as in his newly minted American citizenship, which required a Bosnian Muslim cabdriver in the US to knock him off the fence. 
Hitchen's life makes one (by that I mean specifically me) feel like they have gone nowhere, seen nothing, met no one, and accomplished buggerall.  And I moved to Manhattan and tried to break into theatre.
 
Hitchens was a journalist who actually used English and I'm sorry I was not exposed to it soon enough.  I don't totally agree with him in the gING book - although I am a fellow atheist, but I could have used that sort of writing on other topics to put some besom in me at a younger age. 

Now suffering from the same cancer that killed his father, Hitchens is a figure of quiet and, if not steely, perhaps platinum composure.  I wish him the best.

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When Is a Curtain Not a Curtain?

  The Lion and the Stoat by Paul O. Zelinsky

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



 Now that the poetry thing is over, I can start back putting my reviews here. I'm sure you all missed them.
Zelinsky has put together (having adapted some of it from Pliny the Elder's Natural History) a fine story about competition, ego, and art.  The lion and stoat are artists who compete with each other on three separate occasions.  In the end they decide to not compete with each other any more ... at least not in art.  The illustrations are charming as well - especially the "nude" tigers.

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Vengeance Is Mine

  Verdi With a Vengeance: An Energetic Guide to the Life and Complete Works of the King of Opera by William Berger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


An entertaining book - both light-hearted and serious by turns, this book shows a real love for the "King of Opera."  I have to admit that I read this whole thing just to get to the material on one of my favorite operas, Falstaff, which would be his last one.  The historical information on Verdi himself was an easy read, but the in-depth review of each and every opera dragged out, especially over operas I was not familiar with.  Although I am familiar with quite a few Verdi works and can picture them in my mind's eye or ear when reading about them, there are still plenty I've never heard, much less seen.  This, therefore, is not a book for sitting and reading through the whole thing as I tried to do.  I recommend reading Verdi's background and then dipping into the operas as needed.  This would require purchasing the book to have on hand.

Berger also recommends some recordings and has some pointed (but amusing) remarks to make about how some opera singers perform or, perhaps, how fast some conductors move it along, but I'm afraid that regardless of what anyone else says, the first version of any opera you see or listen to will almost always be your gold standard and rarely will you find any to surpass it.  [And I will grant you that Maria Callas was an outstanding actress and a great singer - but she still sounds like she's singing with a mouthful of fruit which, to me, means she is singing for herself and not us.  She did not sound like that on her earliest recordings, so I can only imagine that she developed that muffled, fruity sound later when she was an undisputed diva and no one had the nerve to tell her what it sounded like because she was beautiful and talented.  Then, of course, she also proceeds to do what she likes with her roles.  Thus endeth the rant.:] 

I love operas the way I love cats: with a passion that allows me also to laugh at them.  This, I am sure, has caused some not slight consternation from Baltimore, MD (Where I was the only one laughing at Bardolpho - I suppose everyone else was reading the damn supertitles) to Newberry, SC (where my husband and I almost hurt ourselves when don José polished his rifle and then his sword to Carmen's Habanera).  Books like this key into my need to study and laugh.  Perhaps I should just buy the damn thing.

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Elizabeth Bishop

"In the Waiting Room" - something I can relate to again, with just a long succession of unsettling imagery: a dentist office, the dead man in the National Geographic ("long pig" being a euphemism for a cannibal's treat), pain, war, and the painful recognition of the conflict of your individuality with womanhood or even general humanity.  We are not just ourselves, but we are everyone else as well - for good or bad. 
A dentist office is just the worst setting I can imagine for a poem, putting anyone's "teeth on edge."  The familiarity and adventure in National Geographic are made eerie with the dead man - and then the yelp creates a confusion of Self with Other.  It was very unsettling ... but in a good way!