Becky's Books –

The Eye of the Storm
by Patrick Whie
1972 / 608 pages
rating 10 / 20th cent Aust.

Elizabeth Salkeld Hunter is dying. Her children have come to pay their respects to the old lady in her bed in her Sydney mansion with round-the-clock nurses and regular staff.

Dorothy, now Princess Lascabanes, Elizabeth’s daughter, flies her pathetic divorced self in from Paris while Elizabeth’s son Basil, an exceptional actor, comes from England. Their father, Alfred Hunter, has been dead for many years so the family estate will be broken up and Arnold Wyburd, the family solicitor is present to assist with that.  >>>>MORE>>>>

The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World
by Margaret Cavendish
1666 / classic fiction
(totally unable to rate this)

Fascinating, author but this story although short, is difficult to read. Cavendish created a world of sci-fi with talking animals and specialized thinking where her protagonist lands after being kidnapped. It’s at the North Pole but you can’t really get there from here.

She learns about this world, becomes Empress and returns to her own land to rescue it. It’s part sci-fi, part adventure, part satire and part romance.

Margaret Cavendish
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cavendish,_Duchess_of_Newcastle-upon-Tyne

The Blazing World
Siri Hustvedt
2013/359 pages
rating  – 9/ contemp US

Artists are sometimes quite eccentric but Hustvedt has invented a real corker in the large, red-haired, brilliant and probably mad Harriet Burden, rich widow of Felix Burden the successful NY art dealer. This book is a collection of fictitious letters, diary entries, interviews, reports and so on collected by one I.V. Hess, the fictional editor.

The result is a kick – for me, it’s one of those “I wish I’d thought of that” deals. Hustvedt skewers the art world via a plot dealing with a scheme Burden cooked up to pull off a very pointed hoax. Burden creates installation art including metamorphs, dolls of various size and shape which are sometimes warmed. She installs them in “rooms” which are viewed by observers. She does other art projects, too.  >>>>MORE>>>>

The Master
by Colm Toibin
2003 / 338 pages
rating 4/contemp fiction

Imo, this is a fictionalized character-driven study of Henry James based on as many letters, diary entries, and other evidence as Toibin was able to find and sometimes the imaginings of other books and writers, notably Shelby Novick whose 1996 biography of James, “The Young Master” (1996), created quite a ruckus.

The first third or so makes for a good read, especially if the reader is familiar with the life and times of Henry James and his work. The over-arching tension seems to revolve around gaining insight into James’ sexuality – fascinating when the book came out (the same year as Author, Author” by David Lodge another novel about the sexuality of James). >>>>MORE>>>>

Singapore Grip
by J. G. Farrell
1978 / 568 pages
rating 8.5/ 20th cent lit

In 1937 Walter Blackett is the owner of a large rubber plant and export firm in Singapore where he lives with his wife Sylvia and their three children.  Monty, the eldest, is immature and not a businessperson type of guy, while Joan, beautiful and well-educated, tends to be attracted to unsuitable men. The youngest, Katie, an interesting adolescent, is growing up a tad fast.

Mr. Webb was Blackett’s business partner for many years but is now old and in poor health, dying actually. His wife is deceased and their only child, Matthew, is an idealistic wandererwhen the book opens. Major Brandon Archer (from Farrell’s Troubles) is a middle-aged single man who is employed by Webb. His name, Major, was his rank in the Great War and it stuck. >>>>MORE>>>>

The Hanging Garden
by Patrick White
2012- posthumously / 228 pages
rating 8.5 / 20th cent fiction

This is an unfinished novel by Australia’s Nobel Prize winner. I read and loved Voss but White’s other books seem to be more difficult to get ahold of in the States.

Gilbert Horsfell and Irene Sklavos are children who have been left by their respective parents, English and Greek, with Mrs Essie Bulpit in Australia until the war is over. Gilbert’s mother is dead as is Irene’s father. Irene aunt is Mrs Lockhart who takes on some parental duties. Irene’s mother has returned to England as has Gilbert’s father.  >>>>MORE>>>>

Death With Interruptions
by Jose Saramago
2009 / 239 pages
rating 5 (out of 10) /contemp fict

If an author is too lazy to give characters names and use traditional punctuation and formatting (sentence- paragraph breaks) then I don’rpt see any reason not to just gulp it down. So that’s what I did.

Yes the couple ideas were interesting but it just went by so fast, no time to pause or think. Oh, well, must have been the author’s intent.

With that off my chest, I loved Blindness and the other works by this Nobel-winning author, but too bad- so sad, this one didn’t work mostly because it was a new story in an old wrapper which didn’t even fit.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
by Louise Erdrich –
2003/ 355 pages
rating – 9 / contemp fiction

This is the third book I’ve read by Erdrich which focuses on the Ojibwa Indians of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in north central North Dakota. I fell in love with Erdrich and this series with “Love Medicine” which I read twice, back-to-back, and have continued through the books “Four Souls” and Tracks.” The books are not written in chronological order but are about the same families, characters and situations as they developed over a period of about 100 years ( a guess) between 1890s or so to late 1980s? . The stories within the books are not told in a linear manner either so it all works together.

In The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Erdrich explores the missionary work of Father Damien Modeste, first known as Sister Cecilia and Agnes DeWitt (yes, and not a spoiler as this is known very early in the book) who has made brief appearances in the other novels. >>>>MORE>>>>

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galillee
by Bart Ehrman
2014/ 371 pages
rating 8 / history of Christianity

Although Ehrman is no longer a believer, he presents a fair picture of the “historical” Jesus and his times without invalidating the spiritual element. Much of this book is a rehash of old material, but Ehrman writes with an engaging style and there is always some new material tucked into his books. This time, for me, the latter part of the book with specific details regarding the disputes amongst the early Christians (Gnostic and/or Orthodox – from the first century to the 5th) about the “divinity” or “humanity” of Christ was mostly new. The whole thing was very good but the last couple chapters and epilogue were great.

http://www.lamblion.com/articles/articles_jews12.php

The Gnostic Gospels
by Elaine Pagels
1979 /182 pages
rating 8 / history of Christianity

Interesting exploration of how the gnostic gospels interacted with orthodoxy and to shape the Christian church as it developed.

Good book – it’s not about any one of the found gospels found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 but there is more focus on some (Thomas) than others. Pagels’ focus is on how these sources were so varied and how they shaped the early Christian Church. I went on to read Bart Ehrman’s How Did Jesus Become God (2013) and will probably read more along these lines – maybe a tad more academic stuff.

Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming
by Anthony Barnosky
2008/ 288 pages
rating 7 / non-fiction/ environment

Not a top-notch anything, but pretty good for a freebie. The focus of Heatstroke is the effects of global warming on larger mammals in nature preserves such a Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other places including Kroger National Park in South Africa and somewhere else in Peru. Barnovsky is mostly concerned with large animal extinction. So the book is part memoir, because he has studied and done field work in many of these places, part history of the areas and people and part polemic, but it’s all related to the issue of global warming and its effect on the earth and its larger creatures – especially in relation to humans coming into the environment – that’s a biggie.

Parts read like an elementary school text, other parts like some science journal, it gets a bit clumsy. Still there are a lot of good parts and they all make for a good whole. It should be noted that the book is dedicated to some high school students so perhaps the style is right on.

Interesting to note:
Extinctions seem to have followed the human pathways – after people arrived in Australia extinctions dramatically increased. The same thing occurred in North and South America – probably other places. Barnovsky emphasizes this to an extent.

A Tale of Love and Darkness
by Amos Oz
2003/ 517 pages
rating 7 (but parts are 10) / fictionalized memoir

Perhaps I’ve just read too much Israeli history and lit to really appreciate this book. It started out quite well, lovely really, with the personal stories of Oz’s early life in Jerusalem. But the general impression is so very much like the other autobiographical novels and memoirs I’ve read re Israel that it got old and repetitious after a short time. The main difference here is that Oz writes better than most – Meir Shalev excepted (the Blue Mountain).

About 1/3 of Oz’s book is interesting or amusing – something. I suppose those parts generally have to do with his own development from Zionist upbringing and the difficulties of his parents in Jerusalem to the kibbutz years. (?). >>>>MORE>>>>

Asunder
by Chloe Aridjis
2013 / 192 pages
rating 7.5 /contemp fiction

By day Marie, like her great-grandfater, is a guard at the British Museum where she watches the paintings and patrons as well as thinks. After working hours she keeps company with her friend Daniel, another guard and poet. She also creates miniature landscapes inside egg shells.

From her great grandfather she knows about the radical feminist who slashed the Venus painting as well as other feminists of the pre-WW1 England era. This is important and quite interesting, although I knew the highlights. >>>>MORE>>>>

The Red and the Black
Stendhal – 1830
rating- 10/ French Classic

A bleak yet somehow charming and in the end complex satire of hypocrisy in love and politics (of all kinds) during the Restoration Era in France.

Julien Sorel, the hero of Stendahl’s tale, starts out life as the very intelligent but physically abused son of an ignorant carpenter. He is befriended by the parish priest who tutors him through enough school to get him a position as a tutor in the home of the rich local mayor.   >>>>MORE>>>>

A Tale For the Time Being
by Ruth Oziki
rating 8.5 / contemp.

There are at least two interwoven stories involved in this tale. The first concerns Yasutani Nao, a 15-year old Japanese girl, partly raised in California, who writes in her diary from Tokyo. She writes a lot about her difficult life, her 104-year old great-grandmother, Jiko, a Buddhist nun with whom she spent some time, and an uncle who was a scholar and then a kamikaze pilot.

Nao’s diaries include a memory from 9/11 so the chronology is hard to figure. Is Nao is 15 (or so) in 2001 or is she 5 then – probably 5 – but then she should be in California. The tsunami was in 2011, 10 years after 9/11/01 which was 70 years after the 1941 suicide missions. >>>>MORE>>>>

Posts right now only (no “pages”) as I’m working from my iPad alone, traveling with lots of time to read but very limited internet access other than the 3G.  This will likely continue for a couple months.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich
by Leo Tolstoy 1886 / 62 pages (Kindle)
rating 10 / Russian classic

If you haven’t read this book please put it on your “to be read” list – somewhere near the top.  If you have read it one time long ago,  go read it again because it deserves it.  I’ll only let you off the hook if you read it within the last couple years.

Ivan Ilyich is dead from the start – the announcement is made on about page 2. >>>>MORE>>>>