The Sunday Salon

It's been another beautiful week in CA. The temps have been between the 70s and the 80s with a nice little breeze which is as close to heaven as I can imagine. I've spent a lot of time at various parks, soaking up as much sun as I can. I always take a book with me but then I get so caught up in looking at the nature that is blooming all around me that I don't read. But I don't consider it a waste of my time. It brings me so much happiness.

I am still working on Drood but it is very slow going. I'm only 200 pages in after 2 weeks. I hate to say it but I am bored. There is a big attempt at making it suspenseful but so far it is not working for me. But I won't give up. Instead I will start something to read simultaneously. :) Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton was sent to me by the author this week and I have spent a pleasant afternoon getting into it. I am also reading the short story collection Nothing Right which I am liking a lot more than I thought I would. And I still plan to start Bleak House very very soon.

Life changed for me in a big way this week. I became the mother of a 16 year old. While saying that phrase out loud sounds scary(and makes me feel old) I have to say that there is not a better teenager. I call him my anti-teenager. He loves his family and wants to spend his time with us. For 16 years I have been blessed to be his mom. Watching him mature into a responsible young man has been my pleasure. I am one lucky lady.

Refocusing

In my Sunday Salon post I asked for feedback about regular posts recapping my favorite TV shows. Well none of you people that live in my computer responded but I did receive one influential piece of feedback from my first and most important reader, my husband. He told me he would be disappointed if I started posting about TV shows. Educating Petunia was begun as a place where I could share what I'm learning, primarily from my reading but occasionally from homeschooling and from life. I have mentioned before (here and here) why I don't actually have TV. I watch a few shows on abc.com but generally our household considers television to be the antithesis to intellectual stimulation. We realize that there are some valuable shows out there but generally speaking, the television is much more about escapism and numbing the mind, filling our heads with noise instead of thoughts, than it is about learning anything useful. So I respect that my husband shared his thoughts with me about this and I am grateful that he is there to remind me of my goals. I desire to be an intelligent and thoughtful woman. This doesn't just happen, it takes work. I need to be able to think for myself if I am to have any self respect. I want to diminish my desire for pop culture and trendy America as they only leave me unsatisfied and a bit lighter in the pocketbook. At the end of the day I want to be able to look back and say that I did something useful and learned something new each and every day. I don't want to have wasted my time. I don't plan to stop watching Dancing with the Stars or Lost anytime soon because I like to be entertained once in a while; just like I will continue to read Nicholas Sparks when I need a bit of mindless romance but I will keep this blog as a place where I can share my meaningful pursuits.

Yesterday I chose nonsense. Today I choose knowledge.

The Sunday Salon

It has been a truly beautiful week here in California. Yesterday was 75* and I came home from a party with a pink glow upon my skin. Note to self: buy sunblock. But today has been 20* cooler with an icy breeze and ominous black clouds. The rain can't make up its mind if it wants to come down or not. But not to worry. It will be back up to the 70s by Tuesday so this little storm will only help to nourish our newly budding spring. Springtime in the non coastal areas of CA is so short that I savor every minute of it.

I am working my way through Drood by Dan Simmons, a fictional tale about the last years of Charles Dickens life when he possibly suffered from a mental breakdown. This 700 page tome is proving to be one of those books one must read a little slower than usual. It will take me a while to get through it. Hopefully I can finish it before I have to return it to the library. I'm waiting on a couple of other readers to join me before I get into Bleak House.

Since I won't have many book related things to talk about I may post a few TV recaps. Dancing with the Stars has begun and the first elimination has already taken place(bye bye Belinda). Lost is in full swing(hello bizarre plot twists). A new series called Castle about a writer tagging along with a police detective looks interesting. The only problem I have with recapping is that I don't actually have TV. I watch abc.com which runs a day behind the TV airing. If this doesn't bother you then it doesn't bother me either.

My mood is high and the week looks to be full of promise. What are you looking forward to this week?

Dysfunctional Reading

Check out this quiz at the Guardian: How Dysfunctional is your Reading? My score?

"You scored 8 out of a possible 13
Borderline. I don't know whether to give you a book deal or a book token."

Not bad considered I guessed the answers to all but two, and one of those two was based on my knowledge of the movie. :)

Reading a Winner

The National Book Critics Circle awards have been announced. Among the lucky winners is one of my favorites from last years reading: My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar(read my review here). Congratulations Ariel!

Other winners include:
2666 by the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (trans. by Natasha Wimmer)
The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French
Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler
Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera
Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer

The Sunday Salon

I heart Spring!

I love the sun and the breeze and the new plant growth and Easter and shorts and sandals and green lawns and eating out on the patio and gardening and afternoon walks to the park and cooking on the bar-b-q and all the vibrant colors and sounds and long days and the anticipation that school will soon be over and the pool will soon be open. Yes sir, I can't get enough of it. And today was just as beautiful as it could be, at least here in CA it was. Finally, spring has arrived.

Well, you probably saw my scathing review of the one book I dragged myself through this week, A Peculiar Grace. Ironically, it lacked grace and the only thing peculiar was that so many at Amazon like it so much. Now I am stuck with the dilemma of choosing my next book. I have a handful from the library, including the newly released with fanfare Drood by Dan Simmons. For goodness sakes, that is a thick book! I also feel a growing sense of guilt over the shelves and shelves of books I've been collecting over the years but not actually reading. I bought these books because I really wanted to read them but then something new catches my eye or an interesting ARC comes along that needs immediate attention. Aw me! What's a girl to do?


I will make a concerted effort to immerse myself in Dickens for the remainder of the month, that's what. I've already started The Mystery of Edwin Drood, then there is the afore mentioned Drood. On top of that I have agreed to read and discuss Bleak House with a small group on Library Thing(another thick book at 800+ pages). I will try to post little bits and bobbles when they come up but don't get too worried if I lack any scholarly critique for a while. (yes, I flatter myself)


Do you have any "out in the sunshine" reading plans?

And what do you think of my new spring dress? :)

Review:A Peculiar Grace

A Peculiar Grace
by Jeffrey Lent

I'd never heard of this book or it's author before I bought it from the bookstore. I liked the title and the cover and the description on the back sounded interesting. At home I looked up some reviews on Amazon. Most were positive and the few negative reviews said it was a disappointment compared to Lent's other works which were historical fiction, which this one is not. But one thing that every review said was the writing was wonderful, poetic even. "I'm in for a treat," I thought as I pushed aside all other books on the TBR stack and dug right in.

The writing is terrible. Of all the things wrong with this book, and there are many, the writing is what bothered me the most. Jeffrey Lent is being compared to Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, and Faulkner. One review on the cover says "the best book to date by one of the two or three most gifted American novelists since William Faulkner." Are they kidding? Surely they must be kidding!

What bothered me about the writing was the leaving out of words. Sometimes, in an attempt to make the dialogue sound authentic a writer will write how people talk and I am fine with that if it is done well. This technique is used throughout the book, not just in the dialogue but the whole novel and it was not done well in my opinion. An example: in real life people will say "How you been?" with the word have being understood. Lent takes this one step further and simply writes "You been?" Every character speaks in this manner and it's done throughout the narrative. Every paragraph is missing at least one word that makes understanding difficult. I can't tell you how many times I had to start and stop and reread sections because one word was missing. It didn't add to the atmosphere; it distracted from the story.

Another problem I had was with the bizarre use of (or lack there of) punctuation. He should have used three times as many commas as he did. Sometimes he used periods when they were not needed, usually in the place of a comma. Why did the editor allow this?

Added to all of this the story isn't very good. I hated most of the characters. The protagonist is a self-indulgent idiot. The women all have filthy mouths and no class. There are scenes that served no purpose. The story moves very slowly and is predictable. There is heavy drug use, sex, abortions, a man hitting a woman, unnecessary adultery(meaning it didn't serve to further the storyline) and tons of bad language. A lot of this stuff I can handle if it is an integral part of the story(like in Breathing Out the Ghost) but this book is a mess. The only reason I kept reading to the end is because I paid $15 for it. Oh well. At least now I can move on to something better, and anything has got to be better that A Peculiar Grace.

Shocking Reading Habits

Go read this article (or don't but pretend you did) from the Guardian about the reading amoral in the UK. 65% of those taking the survey said they have lied about reading a book. 48% admit to buying a book as a gift but reading it before gifting it. 62% admitted to turning down the corners of library books and 14% admit to writing in library books. What is the world coming to?

For the record, I have never lied about reading a book, read a book intended for a gift, or turned down the corner of any book. I may have written in a book or two over the years but never a library book. I have given used books as gifts but I've never tried to pass off my gift as new when it was used.

What about you? Are you a reading amoral? Be careful how you answer. I am an official member of the book police. ;)

Review: Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese

Though I finished reading it over the weekend it took me a few more days to ponder what I had experienced with Cutting for Stone. It was a marvelous book. Within the first 100 pages there is a nun giving birth to conjoined twins before she dies and an airplane falling out of the sky. If that sounds a little ridiculous I can assure you that it is masterfully done and not nearly as outrageous as it sounds.

The narrator tells his story from his unusual birth through his upbringing in Africa to the experiences that define his relationship with his family and specifically his twin brother. While the story seems to lag a little after those first 100 pages I found it well worth it to keep reading. Somewhere in the middle I made a connection to my favorite character, Ghosh. He appears earlier in the book but it is in the raising of the twin boys that he becomes a truly wonderful man that is worthy of the reader's respect.

This novel reads like a memoir instead of a fiction. In the acknowledgements at the end the author explains what small parts were fact and what was fiction. He also thanks his good friend, John Irving, the author of A Prayer for Owen Meany. Once I read that I could see Irving's influence here. Verghese uses the same techniques to build an engaging story, bringing many different elements together by the end. While Owen Meany wasn't a book I'd say I liked, it did make me think and it did leave a rather vivid impression on me. I remember a lot of it clearly though it's been a year and a half since I read it. Cutting for Stone uses some of those same techniques and it is a story that I can say I liked.

Pretty much all of the characters in the book are doctors so there is quite a bit of medical terminology and descriptions. If you can stomach watching CSI and can keep up with the medical mysteries of House, MD then you can handle this book. It's a bit graphic and a bit unfamiliar but it wasn't too hard to follow and I learned a few things. The details gave the book an authority and showcased the author's knowledge and his ability to make this knowledge understandable to the masses. I had a harder time figuring out how to pronounce the characters' names(mostly Indian and African names) than I did with the medical aspects.

So I liked it. It was an interesting story with some fantastic characters. And it's over 500 pages long so there's enough there to keep you busy for a little while.

Buy this book at Amazon.