November Book of the Month

Hello dear readers,

Are you all enjoying Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.  Since I read it years ago,  I decided to just enjoying my month off from writing the blog and didn't attempt to reread the book.  I have been doing some lighter reading and getting pleasure from not thinking about what I am reading.  So much so that now I can't even remember what book I read without searching for it!  Goes to show you: the mind is a terrible thing to waste.  Maybe you should challenge yourself to write a paragraph or two into a reading journal about each book read to help you remember, think about and express your thoughts and feeling about the books you are reading and how they affect you.  Writing about these books each month had helped me to remember and recommend books to friends with clear distinction about each one and how stories from the same time period differ and are alike.  

I am ready to get started with the November Book of the Month.  DH and I will be leaving for a trip to Arizona and Colorado until mid November.  I have downloaded three books to my IPad and hope to read them all during the month.  I know, it is a imposing proposition and I will probably only finish one during the trip so I will only tell you one of them and maybe save one for December Book Club. 

All that and the book for November is:

LONE WOLF by Jodi Picoult

I have read many books by Jodi Picoult and have enjoyed them.  I am hoping this one is a thought provoking and interesting.  

Have a wonderful Halloween and catch up with you later.

Happy Reading,

Barbara

The Sandcastle Girls Part 3

This will be the last part of examining the Sandcastle Girls.  I welcome your comments and hope you are out there! 

What will the world become with recording on tape, disc, phones, computers and all the other systems of saving our memories?  Back in 1915 they had people’s memories (which we all know can be faulty) and photographic plates.  The world has changed a lot in the past century but now we have endless ways to capture history.  Now, at least in America, every person who is wronged by any thing can post it on YouTube and get satisfaction if you get enough people to view.  Can you relate to the German who preserved the photographic plates?  The jeopardy he placed himself in (I know it is fiction but think about if you would do it?).  In the end, isn’t this entire book about the adventures of these inanimate objects that tell a story? 

Chapter 12: History does matter. ‘There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians, the Bosnians, and the Rwandans.’  There is a connecting line between all of us.  As I was reading this book I went to the nail salon and met an interesting young woman, Holly.   We discussed our recent books and I mentioned The Sandcastle Girls about the Armenian slaughter.  Well, it just so happened that she is Armenian and suggested I read: 

It will be on my short list as soon as I read some uplifting books. Anyway, as we were discussing the book and the heinous acts committed against the Armenians, she told me of Hitler’s comment when challenged about extinguishing the Jews.  Supposedly he said: ‘no one remembers the Armenians, they will also forget the Jews’.  Back to History – if we forget it we will soon relive it. 

Anyway, this entire subject is depressing me on the gloomy, rainy day I am writing it.  I will close the discussion of this excellent book with a quote used in this book and attributed to  Aldous Huxley who observed, ‘Every man’s memory is his private literature.’  Go out and create your own literature for your heirs to uncover.

Happy Reading,

Barbara 

PS:  Do you think the title of this book is appropriate?  What would you have named it?

Angela's Ashes Update

Good Day fellow Book Clubbers!

A cold, damp and rainy day here in Vermont and a perfect day for my promised first comments/entry on our book of the month.  I am about halfway through the book, and for those of you who have started reading Angela's Ashes you will know that such weather fits Limerick (no not where we used to live in Pennsylvania the original one) to a "Tea"(yes I know that is grammatically incorrect but it fits the Irish theme).

Speaking of Irish a couple of quick observations before our stimulating food for thought questions.

I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood (filled with cops and firemen).  Granted they were mostly second generation Irish but I can certainly see some of their Irish cultural "traits" in McCourt's writing.  No doubt Irish men enjoyed a nip or pint often to excess.  Certainly my observation of our Irish friends and neighbors in Philadelphia was a genuine enjoyment in having a pint or a nip after a hard days work.  In addition as I read this I think often of a friend of ours who grew up in an Irish/American family in Philly (Kensington).  She described to us how her mother always asked for her medicine another term for a beer.  She also testified that gourmet cooking (or cooking much of anything but meat and potatoes) was not a part of Irish culture.  

Now  Frank's father, Malachy McCourt, is obviously a troubled man as respects his drinking and it's effect on his personal life, and for him at least the "curse of the Irish" is no myth.  Centuries of life in Ireland under English rule do not erase easily.  One can see in Malachy the sense of hopelessness he felt in coping with both holding a job and supporting a family.  His mantra to his children seems to revolve around dying for Ireland, and in an ironic way a few of them do.

Malachy is an extreme example (in my humble opinion). Those characters in the background reveal that most Irish men were able to cope while "enjoying the pint" in ways that did not preclude holding a steady job.  They did this despite the suffering that the Irish experienced in America and Ireland both before and during the Great Depression.  What I have found most interesting was even in the face extreme hardship the characters held to a strong sense that "begging" from others or taking what did not belong to you to survive was considered morally wrong.  Even Malachy had such pride, although it was OK for his wife to "beg" for help.  

OK enough with my overall impressions so far.  Now on to some specific questions to ponder:

1.  Early in the book Malachy enthralls Frank and his other children with tales of Cuchulain a mythical Irish hero.  He is described in one passage of having a bird or birds on his shoulder.  What type of bird where they?  Hint-I kept seeing a pirate with parrot, I was wrong!
2.  Within the Irish community there was a suspicion of those who "Drank the Soup".  This was symbolic of submission to who?
3.  The St Vincent De Paul Society played an important role in the community back in Limerick.  What is their modern day equivalent here in America? (Hint I am not looking for St Vincent De Paul of America).
4.  How many Chapters are their in the book? Added twist in your response please translate the Roman Numerals to binary code.
5.  The Irish are often thought of as the most "catholic" of all European countries.  For me this was humorously portrayed by Frankie's grandmother's  horror at his reaction to taking first communion.  What happened?

I will add this final comment and observation.  While I agree with Barbara's comments about reading Liberian slang I must interject that for me the Irish slang...forget about it!

Keep reading and I will touch base one more time before wrapping up!  Hopefully your responses will demonstrate your desire to have our real leader return to the bloggers seat!

Murray Rider

Sandcastle Girls Part 2

Hello Happy Readers,

I hope you are enjoying Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.   I know Murray Rider is working diligently on some probing questions like what is the best Irish Whiskey!

To continue our discussion of The Sandcastle Girls by Christ Bohjalian I would like to interject a story that came from my mother.  Now I wish I had more details and could ask further questions about it.  For those of you who don’t know, my mother was of Greek ancestry.  Her story was that the Greeks and Turks hated each other for one reason or another (most likely religion – Christian vs. Muslim or land ownership).  Her father was orphaned at a young age.  The story follows that his mother or grandmother was killed by the Turks and that they had cut off her breasts.  So he had passed his hatred for the Turks to my mother and she also tried to pass that hatred along.  So my question to you is there reason to ethnically cleanse?  When you have a homogeneous group living together do they naturally develop a hatred of others?  Chapter Six begins with a wonderful statement:  ‘Ancestral bonds have a tendency to fray over time.  Our connections with the blood that once – generations past – was all that mattered become worn and snap.’

In Chapter 5, Silas Endicott states: ‘We came here to save these exotics, not romance them.’  ‘Exotics’ – defined is distant, foreign, outside the ordinary.  My though on reading this term used is that Silas thought he was saving some sort of flora or fauna. 

Diaspora – defined loosely as the dispersal of Jews initially from Babylon – is a word I had to look up while reading this book.  In most definitions it solely relates to Jews but Bohjalian uses it in relation to the Armenians and it can also be used in relation to the American slave trade.  Do you think we have read enough books dealing with diasporas in recent months????

Maria related that the beginning of this book was confusing without knowing what generation was speaking and the multitude of characters.  There were numerous characters to keep track of in this book and maybe a short diagram of them may have helped in the beginning – kind of a family tree.

For now I will close but I promise to be back in a short time. 

Happy reading,

Barbara

The Sandcastle Girls

Dear fellow readers,

Obviously my promise to get back to you about The House at Sugar Beach was a ruse – or I just didn’t get around to it!  Your choice!

Let’s get on with the Sandcastle Girls review by Chris Bohjalian.  Bohjalian never loses a chance to get into my psyche and teach and twist me into learning something new.  He never disappoints me – challenges my preconceived notions but does not disappoint. 

First let me say I was ignorant to the Armenian Holocaust.  Somewhere in my brain I know that people are cruel, dictators are heartless, and ethnic people have been persecuted from the time of humanity’s beginning.  However, history has never been brought to me doorstep as harshly as in the Sandcastle Girls. 

Ethnic cleansing – YIKES!  To rid the world of a people because of ‘anything’ is totally beyond my comprehension.  Jew, Christian, Muslim, Armenian, Russian, Indian, male, female, Downs Syndrome, Genius, one legged, six toed – I could go on and on with the people we could annihilate for the sake of ‘cleansing’.  So I am told that I speak from an American idea that we are better as a mixing pot of all peoples. 

So, how many of you read this book of the month?  What did you think??? 

Happy Reading,

Barbara

PS: I hope you will enjoy the entries of Murray Rider and hope you don’t mind me taking a month off.

October's Book of the Month

Good Morning fellow book worms, this is your old friend "Murray Rider", guest hosting this month’s Book Club selection.

Our fearless leader deserves a month's respite from the hard, intensive work of leading this demanding group.  Therefore I have volunteered (actually she plied me with alcohol one evening and when I woke up was told I said I wanted to lead a month) to host the discussions.

Our selection this month is Frank McCourt's Angela’s Ashes.  This won a Pulitzer Prize, and was also a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the LA Times Book Award.  Now readers I know many may be wondering if this is another book about Armenians, or Russians, or Germans, or The French, or the Japanese, or Jewish people or even say The Liberians?  Do not to fear guys this is nothing like that!  No this is about the Irish!!

I have started it and it looks "good to go" so get going!  Oh and do not worry about difficult probing questions on the author's sexuality etc.  My quizzes will focus more on more important things most readers ponder, like the design of the cover, difficulty in reading the print fonts, and stuff like that!

So I will check back in say 10 days and will look to get a progress update from all.  Be prepared to give your thoughts on say chapter's I through VII (yes they are Roman Numerals...oops I spilled the beans on my first quiz question!).

Keep Reading

Murray Reader, oops Murray Rider