Treausre Box (HarperPaperbacks, 1996; 372 pages), by Orson Scott Card, tells the story of Quentin Fears (pronounced, it is pointed out more than once, as "fierce"), a software millionaire and recluse who turned his back on most of humanity after his sister was killed in an accident when he was a teenager. He has reached his thirties without ever having had a real relationship. Then he meets Madeleine, who appears to be the perfect woman. She is smart, beautiful and is as reclusive as he is.
It only takes a short time for them to marry, and then Madeline finally takes Quentin to meet the family that she has so far carefully kept him from meeting. They are an odd family, eccentric to the point of strangeness, living in a remote old house along the Hudson river. Madeleine has warned Quentin that she is "not herself" when she visits there, and it doesn't take him long to discover exactly how accurate that characterization is, and Quentin soon finds himself fighting to keep an ancient evil from being unleashed on the world.
Treasure Box isn't a bad book. But as I read there were things that bothered me about it, things that I couldn't quite put my finger on at first, and I was over halfway through the book before I realized what wasn't sitting right with me. What was wrong is that Card falls back on the old stereotype of women as manipulating their innocent, noble male victims. It doesn't just appear in the relationship between Quentin and Madeleine, but is hinted at in the relationship between Quentin's parents and stated more boldly in the relationship between Quentin's attorney and his wife, who is portrayed as cheating on the attorney while insisting that he is the one who is cheating.
I probably wouldn't have finished the book if it had become clear earlier exactly what Card was using the story to say about male-female relationships, but I kept reading in hopes that the subtext wasn't really what I was interpreting it to be. Yet, there it was, right up until the end of the story, with the added jab that the women who were manipulating Quentin were witches but the woman who he finds himself attracted to at the end of the story is not.
I don't know if Card did this consciously, or if such attitudes are so ingrained in him that he wasn't aware that he was dividing his female characters in the traditional bitch-whore/virgin dichotomy, with the whore presenting as virginal, literally in this case, in order to manipulate him before he saw through the deception. He is a man who holds very conservative values regarding family, and portrays his "good" characters as living out those values.
Despite the ideology lurking in the story, Treasure Box is a well-told tale, although I prefer a little more ambiguity in characters, and not the kind that was used here, where any contradictions in the characters' behavior was explained by their being "enthralled" by the witches rather than by the fact that few people are consistent in their behavior all the time.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Reading update...
I picked up a couple more books by Patricia Cornwell at the library the other day, thinking that because I enjoyed reading The Scarpetta Factor, I would give more of her work a try. Yeah. Not so much.
I gave Predator (Berkley Books, 2005) most of 100 pages, but I could not stick with it. The main problem with the book, from my point of view, is that it is written in the present tense. That hardly ever works, and in this case it not only did not work, it bugged the crap out of me. My brain kept switching the verbs to past tense, but then reading along that would mess the whole sense of a paragraph off. I refrained from throwing the book against the wall, because the wall hadn't done anything to me and I couldn't see inflicting that on it. But, the book is now back on the library, no doubt lurking on the shelf and ready to snag some other unsuspecting reader.
I still have Scarpetta (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008) out of the library and might give it a try later today. I hope it is better...and not in present tense.
Meanwhile, I've been reading in Medieval Women Writers (University of Georgia Press, 1984), edited by Katharina M. Wilson, not as recreational reading, but in beginning the research for a project called (I think) the 50 Challenge, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA), of which I am a member. The idea is for members of the SCA which, for those of you who are not familiar with the organization does medieval re-enactments, to celebrate the founding of the group by doing 50 of something tied in to each person's interests in the Middle Ages. For example, to learn to do 50 things that someone living in the time of the individual's society persona would know how to do, or to make 50 items that their persona would have used or, in my case, to write a 50-page research paper on some aspect of the medieval period.
Choosing to write about women writers in the Middle Ages was a fairly easy decision for me, as I am both a woman and a writer, and because I don't really know that much about women who wrote in that era. So far, what I'm finding is fascinating. There were more women writing in that period that I expected, and not all of them were nuns. This surprises me, I suppose, because of the general perception that the only way a woman in the Middle Ages could gain an education was by entering the religious life. Apparently, this was not always the case.
I expect, however, that it will be a challenge to find sources for research, and that I'll probably end up spending some time in the library at the local CSU. Which is fine, since I love to play in libraries. The parking situation over there is hideous (knowledge I gained while living right across the street from the school for five years), but a main bus line goes right to the campus, so I'll probably just take advantage of that.
I've also been doing some other reading in history, as I'm gearing up to do some general writing on history, part of which will land up in a blog (once I figure out what to call the blog), and which is meant to end up as a book about exploring various aspects of history.
I gave Predator (Berkley Books, 2005) most of 100 pages, but I could not stick with it. The main problem with the book, from my point of view, is that it is written in the present tense. That hardly ever works, and in this case it not only did not work, it bugged the crap out of me. My brain kept switching the verbs to past tense, but then reading along that would mess the whole sense of a paragraph off. I refrained from throwing the book against the wall, because the wall hadn't done anything to me and I couldn't see inflicting that on it. But, the book is now back on the library, no doubt lurking on the shelf and ready to snag some other unsuspecting reader.
I still have Scarpetta (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008) out of the library and might give it a try later today. I hope it is better...and not in present tense.
Meanwhile, I've been reading in Medieval Women Writers (University of Georgia Press, 1984), edited by Katharina M. Wilson, not as recreational reading, but in beginning the research for a project called (I think) the 50 Challenge, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA), of which I am a member. The idea is for members of the SCA which, for those of you who are not familiar with the organization does medieval re-enactments, to celebrate the founding of the group by doing 50 of something tied in to each person's interests in the Middle Ages. For example, to learn to do 50 things that someone living in the time of the individual's society persona would know how to do, or to make 50 items that their persona would have used or, in my case, to write a 50-page research paper on some aspect of the medieval period.
Choosing to write about women writers in the Middle Ages was a fairly easy decision for me, as I am both a woman and a writer, and because I don't really know that much about women who wrote in that era. So far, what I'm finding is fascinating. There were more women writing in that period that I expected, and not all of them were nuns. This surprises me, I suppose, because of the general perception that the only way a woman in the Middle Ages could gain an education was by entering the religious life. Apparently, this was not always the case.
I expect, however, that it will be a challenge to find sources for research, and that I'll probably end up spending some time in the library at the local CSU. Which is fine, since I love to play in libraries. The parking situation over there is hideous (knowledge I gained while living right across the street from the school for five years), but a main bus line goes right to the campus, so I'll probably just take advantage of that.
I've also been doing some other reading in history, as I'm gearing up to do some general writing on history, part of which will land up in a blog (once I figure out what to call the blog), and which is meant to end up as a book about exploring various aspects of history.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Reading Update: The Scarpetta Factor, by Patricia Cornwell
I just finished reading The Scarpetta Factor (Berkley Books, 2009; 572 pages), by Patricia Cornwell. I'm not completely sure how I feel about it.
There's no doubt that it kept me turning the pages. However, 572 pages to tell a story that takes place in about a day and a half sometimes seemed a bit excessive. And there were places in the story where two or three things were taking place all at the same time, and it was, occasionally, slightly difficult to follow. This could also have had to do with the fact that I have not read all of the other books in the series, and so probably lacked some background that could have made some of the relationships between characters easier to follow.
Also, I've had a sort of variable relationship with the books of Cornwell's that I have read. I've liked some of them a lot; others, not so much. This one probably isn't one I'll read again, but the journey was interesting, and I'm glad I picked it up at the library and read it.
There's no doubt that it kept me turning the pages. However, 572 pages to tell a story that takes place in about a day and a half sometimes seemed a bit excessive. And there were places in the story where two or three things were taking place all at the same time, and it was, occasionally, slightly difficult to follow. This could also have had to do with the fact that I have not read all of the other books in the series, and so probably lacked some background that could have made some of the relationships between characters easier to follow.
Also, I've had a sort of variable relationship with the books of Cornwell's that I have read. I've liked some of them a lot; others, not so much. This one probably isn't one I'll read again, but the journey was interesting, and I'm glad I picked it up at the library and read it.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Review: My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok
When I read Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev (Knopf, 1972; 369 pages) years ago, I loved it at least enough to buy a copy so that I could read it again someday. So, without anything else I wanted to read the other day, I picked it up and reread it. I hadn't been expecting it to capture my attention in the way it did, and spent a couple of nights up reading much later in the night than I should have done because I couldn't put it down until I got so sleepy that my eyes wouldn't stay open any more.
It is the story of Asher Lev, an Orthodox Hasidic Jew, who also happenes to be, almost despite himself, an artist. He shows promise in his drawings from a very early age, but in his community his talents - his genius, for he is a child prodigy - are not valued and in fact are considered a waste of time better spent doing other things. Those other things, in Asher's case, include following in his father's footsteps in promoting his branch of Judaism all over the world at a time (during the Cold War) as well as bringing Russian Jews out of the Soviet Union, which was a difficult and hazardous undertaking in the 1950s and 1960s, when the story takes place. He does this at the behest of his Rebbe, the spiritual leader of the branch of Hasidic Judaism that Asher's family belongs to. Asher is expected to go to school and learn the things he must to take over for his father someday, as Asher's father took over for his own father in doing this work on behalf of the Rebbe.
But art has hold of Asher and, after not drawing at all during the first years he in school, the art does not just take hold of him again. It seizes him. He sometimes draws without even knowing that is what he is doing. This is not just a problem for Asher, but for his whole community, which is very conservative and has set ideas of what boys like Asher should and should not be doing, with the "should not's" including drwaing picutres of the Rebbe in one of his religious books.
As Mr. Potok pointed out in a talk in 1986, "The Jewsih tradition is essentially an anti-iconographic tradition for the most part. Certainly it opoposes the making of any human image." He explained that this goes back to Mosaic monotheism and continued, saying "Therefore Jews have never participated in art of any kind that was connected to worship."
The Rebbe, though, sees that Asher has a talent that will not be denied and arranges for him to study with Jacob Kahn, an acclalimed artist who is a non-observant Jew but who counts the Rebbe as among his friends. Inevitably, the clash between Asher's artistic vision and his community becomes too much for the community to take, and as the book ends, Asher, still a young man, has acclaim as an artist but is asked to leave the Brooklyn community he grew up in and to return to Paris, to the yeshiva there where, the Rebbe says, "You did not grow up there. People will not be so angry in Paris."
In Mr. Potok's hands, Asher's story becomes about being an artist in a community that does not approve of being a visual artist and does not really understand what it means to Asher to be an artist. It is also about being an alien child to one's own parents. This is something I understand very well, having been my own mother's "alien child", who she did not understand after having grown up in a family that did not value any of the things I was interested in as a child and still am interested in as an adult. She never disapproved of my interests, as Asher's father does in Mr. Potok's novel, but she did not understand, either, why I couldn't be a "normal" child. We used to have what became a sort of ritual exchange when I was growing up.
She wasn't a reader and to her, reading wasn't "doing something."
My Name is Asher Lev is a good book, told in Asher's voice and from his point of view. He never strays from his religious beliefs but, after his childhood break from drawing, never seriously strays from his determination to be an artist, although he wonders from time to time if his gift is, as he is told from time to time by others, from the Other Side, meaning that it is not from God but from more malevolent forces in the universe. The main flaw of the novel, from my point of view as a reader, is that sometimes years are glossed over in a few sentences. It is a trivial complaint, though, and I recommend this book highly.
There is a sequel, by the way, called The Gift of Asher Lev, and I'm looking for it right now so that I can read it again, as well.
It is the story of Asher Lev, an Orthodox Hasidic Jew, who also happenes to be, almost despite himself, an artist. He shows promise in his drawings from a very early age, but in his community his talents - his genius, for he is a child prodigy - are not valued and in fact are considered a waste of time better spent doing other things. Those other things, in Asher's case, include following in his father's footsteps in promoting his branch of Judaism all over the world at a time (during the Cold War) as well as bringing Russian Jews out of the Soviet Union, which was a difficult and hazardous undertaking in the 1950s and 1960s, when the story takes place. He does this at the behest of his Rebbe, the spiritual leader of the branch of Hasidic Judaism that Asher's family belongs to. Asher is expected to go to school and learn the things he must to take over for his father someday, as Asher's father took over for his own father in doing this work on behalf of the Rebbe.
But art has hold of Asher and, after not drawing at all during the first years he in school, the art does not just take hold of him again. It seizes him. He sometimes draws without even knowing that is what he is doing. This is not just a problem for Asher, but for his whole community, which is very conservative and has set ideas of what boys like Asher should and should not be doing, with the "should not's" including drwaing picutres of the Rebbe in one of his religious books.
As Mr. Potok pointed out in a talk in 1986, "The Jewsih tradition is essentially an anti-iconographic tradition for the most part. Certainly it opoposes the making of any human image." He explained that this goes back to Mosaic monotheism and continued, saying "Therefore Jews have never participated in art of any kind that was connected to worship."
The Rebbe, though, sees that Asher has a talent that will not be denied and arranges for him to study with Jacob Kahn, an acclalimed artist who is a non-observant Jew but who counts the Rebbe as among his friends. Inevitably, the clash between Asher's artistic vision and his community becomes too much for the community to take, and as the book ends, Asher, still a young man, has acclaim as an artist but is asked to leave the Brooklyn community he grew up in and to return to Paris, to the yeshiva there where, the Rebbe says, "You did not grow up there. People will not be so angry in Paris."
In Mr. Potok's hands, Asher's story becomes about being an artist in a community that does not approve of being a visual artist and does not really understand what it means to Asher to be an artist. It is also about being an alien child to one's own parents. This is something I understand very well, having been my own mother's "alien child", who she did not understand after having grown up in a family that did not value any of the things I was interested in as a child and still am interested in as an adult. She never disapproved of my interests, as Asher's father does in Mr. Potok's novel, but she did not understand, either, why I couldn't be a "normal" child. We used to have what became a sort of ritual exchange when I was growing up.
My Mother: (to me, when I was reading, which was most of the time): "Go do something."
Me: "I am doing something. I'm reading."
My Mother: "Go outside and do something."
She wasn't a reader and to her, reading wasn't "doing something."
My Name is Asher Lev is a good book, told in Asher's voice and from his point of view. He never strays from his religious beliefs but, after his childhood break from drawing, never seriously strays from his determination to be an artist, although he wonders from time to time if his gift is, as he is told from time to time by others, from the Other Side, meaning that it is not from God but from more malevolent forces in the universe. The main flaw of the novel, from my point of view as a reader, is that sometimes years are glossed over in a few sentences. It is a trivial complaint, though, and I recommend this book highly.
There is a sequel, by the way, called The Gift of Asher Lev, and I'm looking for it right now so that I can read it again, as well.
Monday, August 8, 2011
And...I'm back
Yeah. It's been strange the past month or so, and I haven't been reading much. So there hasn't been anything to write about.
But...
I just finished reading "My Name is Asher Lev", by Chaim Potok. It's a re-read, actually, and I loved this book as much as I did the first time I read it, but I suspect that the reasons this time are entirely different from last time. I've got to go think about it for a little while, and then I'll be back to write more about this book and what it meant to me when I read it this time.
But...
I just finished reading "My Name is Asher Lev", by Chaim Potok. It's a re-read, actually, and I loved this book as much as I did the first time I read it, but I suspect that the reasons this time are entirely different from last time. I've got to go think about it for a little while, and then I'll be back to write more about this book and what it meant to me when I read it this time.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Borders asks court for permission to liquidate...
Borders is going to bankruptcy court Thursday to ask permission to liquidate and close its stores. If this permission is granted, the liquidation sales could start as early as Friday and all its stores will likely be closed by the end of September. It has already closed a third of its stores and was working to get out of bankruptcy, but that isn't going to happen now.
It's sad to see any bookstore close, ever. I love the Internet, but I still prefer my books physical and in my hands. I'm old-fashioned, I guess. And I don't really like even buying actual books on-line, because I don't really like buying anything online. I like to be able to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. Again, old-fashioned. What do you want? I was born in 1956. You know, back when dinosaurs walked the earth.
That said, however, I'm not as sad to see Borders going. I never liked Borders much. The stores I've been in have never been organized very well, have not always had what I was looking for, and often had uninformed and unhelpful employees.
This was not universally the case, I have to say. I was in one Borders store in Southern California a couple of years ago and was looking for a particular book that was just out in paperback. After looking in all the sections where the book, which was Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi, could have been and not finding, I asked an employee about it. He looked in all the places I had looked, just to see if I had missed it, but it wasn't there. And then he said he thought he might have seen the boxes still in back and unpacked. He disappeared and then returned a few minutes later with a copy of the book for me.
Still, I had more bad than good experiences in Borders, including one time asking an employee in my local store here in Fresno where the anthropology section was, and being asked in return, "What's anthropology?" I finally found the section on my own, but it would have been helpful to have a magnifying glass. The section was that small.
So, I guess it's goodbye to Borders. I'll continue to shop across the street at Barnes and Noble, where the selection is better and the employees much more knowledgeable and helpful. And where the sales are much much better. Now, if they'd just get their comfy chairs back.
I've cross-posted this at I Was Just Thinking.
It's sad to see any bookstore close, ever. I love the Internet, but I still prefer my books physical and in my hands. I'm old-fashioned, I guess. And I don't really like even buying actual books on-line, because I don't really like buying anything online. I like to be able to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. Again, old-fashioned. What do you want? I was born in 1956. You know, back when dinosaurs walked the earth.
That said, however, I'm not as sad to see Borders going. I never liked Borders much. The stores I've been in have never been organized very well, have not always had what I was looking for, and often had uninformed and unhelpful employees.
This was not universally the case, I have to say. I was in one Borders store in Southern California a couple of years ago and was looking for a particular book that was just out in paperback. After looking in all the sections where the book, which was Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi, could have been and not finding, I asked an employee about it. He looked in all the places I had looked, just to see if I had missed it, but it wasn't there. And then he said he thought he might have seen the boxes still in back and unpacked. He disappeared and then returned a few minutes later with a copy of the book for me.
Still, I had more bad than good experiences in Borders, including one time asking an employee in my local store here in Fresno where the anthropology section was, and being asked in return, "What's anthropology?" I finally found the section on my own, but it would have been helpful to have a magnifying glass. The section was that small.
So, I guess it's goodbye to Borders. I'll continue to shop across the street at Barnes and Noble, where the selection is better and the employees much more knowledgeable and helpful. And where the sales are much much better. Now, if they'd just get their comfy chairs back.
I've cross-posted this at I Was Just Thinking.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Review: "Weird Hollywood"
So, yeah. It's been a month.
It's not that I haven't been reading. I just haven't been reading books, as in sitting down, starting at the beginning and keeping on until I hit the last page. It's mostly been reading for work, and when it hasn't been that, it's been reading for research for other projects.
But...I did just finish reading something last night. An actual book, although it's really more like a coffee table book, or at least something that can be dipped into at will without reading it from cover to cover. Which, of course, meant that I just had to sit down and read it cover to cover.
It is Weird Hollywood (Sterling, 2010) by Joe Oesterle. I found it at the library and had to pick it up. I grew up in Southern California and love it and still consider it home, so I'll read just about anything about the area. I'd also seen Oesterle's previous book, Weird California, in a bookstore once and looked through it, and been quite impressed that one of the places he had highlighted in the book was Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village. The Bottle Village was just down the street from my grandma's house (literally just a few doors down) when I was growing up, and I can remember seeing Mrs. Prisbrey pulling her wagon to or from the dump, where she picked up the materials to build her village. Seeing it in the book was a nice reminder of my childhood. People in the neighborhood saw her as eccentric, and really didn't understand why she was doing what she did, but I always thought it was kind of cool.
Anyway. There's very little in Weird Hollywood that brings back memories like that for me, although there are a couple of places in there that made me instantly homesick because they are intregal parts of my growing up. One is the Capitol Records building; another is the Hollywood sign. And mentions of places like the Griffith Park Observatory, which I visited often when I was a child. I still get homesick every time I see a picture of it.
Living up to its title, there are lots of ghost stories in the book, and sort of a tour of the cemeteries that are the resting places of they famous and infamous of the area. There are scandals in the book, and celebrities, mostly of the past, and a few UFO stories. And did you know that Los Angeles has tunnels below it that some folks think is where the Lizard People live? And if you look in just the right places, you can come across the remnants of Lemuria? I'd actually never heard the Lemuria story before.
So, yes, the title claims "weird" and it delivers it. But that's part of what makes it fun. Not everything in the book is strictly in Hollywood, of course, but as I've tried to explain to people who didn't grow up in SoCal, Hollywood isn't so much a geographigal region as it is a state of mind. With this in mind, there are a couple of places I would have liked to see in the book that weren't there. First and foremost is the Alligator Farm that used to be across the street from Knott's Berry Farm. I always loved the Alligator Farm. But maybe it's in Weird California and I just didn't see it when I was thumbing through that volume in the bookstore.
Anyway, if you enjoy the unusual, I'd defintely recommend you give this book a look.
It's not that I haven't been reading. I just haven't been reading books, as in sitting down, starting at the beginning and keeping on until I hit the last page. It's mostly been reading for work, and when it hasn't been that, it's been reading for research for other projects.
But...I did just finish reading something last night. An actual book, although it's really more like a coffee table book, or at least something that can be dipped into at will without reading it from cover to cover. Which, of course, meant that I just had to sit down and read it cover to cover.
It is Weird Hollywood (Sterling, 2010) by Joe Oesterle. I found it at the library and had to pick it up. I grew up in Southern California and love it and still consider it home, so I'll read just about anything about the area. I'd also seen Oesterle's previous book, Weird California, in a bookstore once and looked through it, and been quite impressed that one of the places he had highlighted in the book was Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village. The Bottle Village was just down the street from my grandma's house (literally just a few doors down) when I was growing up, and I can remember seeing Mrs. Prisbrey pulling her wagon to or from the dump, where she picked up the materials to build her village. Seeing it in the book was a nice reminder of my childhood. People in the neighborhood saw her as eccentric, and really didn't understand why she was doing what she did, but I always thought it was kind of cool.
Anyway. There's very little in Weird Hollywood that brings back memories like that for me, although there are a couple of places in there that made me instantly homesick because they are intregal parts of my growing up. One is the Capitol Records building; another is the Hollywood sign. And mentions of places like the Griffith Park Observatory, which I visited often when I was a child. I still get homesick every time I see a picture of it.
Living up to its title, there are lots of ghost stories in the book, and sort of a tour of the cemeteries that are the resting places of they famous and infamous of the area. There are scandals in the book, and celebrities, mostly of the past, and a few UFO stories. And did you know that Los Angeles has tunnels below it that some folks think is where the Lizard People live? And if you look in just the right places, you can come across the remnants of Lemuria? I'd actually never heard the Lemuria story before.
So, yes, the title claims "weird" and it delivers it. But that's part of what makes it fun. Not everything in the book is strictly in Hollywood, of course, but as I've tried to explain to people who didn't grow up in SoCal, Hollywood isn't so much a geographigal region as it is a state of mind. With this in mind, there are a couple of places I would have liked to see in the book that weren't there. First and foremost is the Alligator Farm that used to be across the street from Knott's Berry Farm. I always loved the Alligator Farm. But maybe it's in Weird California and I just didn't see it when I was thumbing through that volume in the bookstore.
Anyway, if you enjoy the unusual, I'd defintely recommend you give this book a look.
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