Recent Reads: Half the Sky and A Call to Action

I recently listened to Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It was tough, a very difficult book to listen to. Even though I knew I should stick with it, I almost had to stop it was so upsetting. Somehow, hearing about the dangerous, exploited lives of women around the world was harder to hear for me than if I'd read a physical copy of the book. On into the book there are some success stories that are really powerful, and that's what helped me get through it. I had reached more than my fill of frustratingly sad stories of women so limited by their circumstances and so abused and manipulated by men (both strangers and family members), stories that had no easy solutions. I even had to stop listening about one-third of the way in. I asked a friend I knew had read the book previously if she, knowing me well, thought I should continue the book. She encouraged me to, and I'm glad I finished it. It was perhaps THE most difficult book I've ever read.

I followed that up shortly thereafter with Jimmy Carter's latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. In part, the same idea from Half the Sky is here, but with a little bit different spin. For one, Carter covers the injustices to women done both in the United States and  other parts of the world, which made the book feel more personal to me. And, Carter gave more solutions and success stories, which kept me from getting that completely hopeless feeling I got from Half the Sky. 

(Disclaimer: I do realize to affect change people have to be made uncomfortable.)

Have you read either of these books? What did you think? 

**A few years back I traveled to Plains, Georgia, to attend Jimmy Carter's Sunday school class, a great experience.

Recent Read: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

Have you ever decided what you think will happen in a book based on the title, front cover or the first few chapters, then left confused when that doesn't happen? I recently listened to The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe). While I enjoyed the book overall, the title just simply doesn't measure up to the storyline of the book.

The book takes place in two different times and places that come together later in the book. Sookie is a 60-year-old woman living in Alabama who discovers that she was adopted, a fact that her nonagenarian mother (still living) never revealed to her. Fritzi is a young woman in Pulaski, Wisconsin, working with her family at a filling station when the United States enters World War II. As Sookie begins researching her past, she puts previously unknown pieces of her history together, which fits in with the Jurdabralinski sisters.

I had in my head early in the book that with "Reunion" in the title, Sookie would discover not that she had been adopted, but that her mother had worked at at all-girl filling station during World War II when some women were placed in men's roles while they were overseas. I had in mind that Sookie's mother Lenore would be invited to a reunion of all the women who worked at this filling station. Sookie, whose relationship with her mother wasn't an easy one, would have traveled with her mother to this reunion. All this extra time together would have helped them talk through some things from their past, and come away from the trip with a greater understanding of each other and a stronger mother-daughter relationship. I had also imagined that Sookie would have really enjoyed meeting all the women who knew her mother decades before and hearing those women tell stories about her mother that she'd never heard.

As the book went on and my first ideas didn't line up with the plot, I formulated a new plan: as Sookie learned of her birth family and their business, she would become interested in meeting her mother and aunts who had run the filling station during the war. "Reunion" would mean that Sookie would travel to Wisconsin to meet them all, and this would be her first meeting of her birth family.

Neither one of these theories panned out, and I won't go into detail in case it spoils the book for the rest of you. I will say, though, that while I enjoyed a fun story with some historical base, the book needs a better, truer title. The title just doesn't measure up with what the book is really about.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

My summer has begun! Late last week I wrapped up my spring semester at an Atlanta-area homeschool group where I teach middle school American history, and high school American literature and advanced literature and composition. These past two semesters have had me reading a lot to keep up with them. Now that school is out for me until the fall, I've got an ambitious reading list planned for the summer. Here's what's at the top of my stack:

In the car on audiobook: I'm waiting for one of several options to come up for me at the library. So for now, just a lot of 90s on 9.

On my iPod: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion: A Novel by Fannie Flagg

For fun (and variety): 
Jason Priestley: A Memoir by Jason Priestley
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter

What are you reading?

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

Here's what I've got in my stack for this March 3rd week:

In the car on audiobook: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and one more once I get to the library to pick up my holds.

For fun: One Moment One Morning by Sarah Rayner.

For the classes I'm teaching: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire and A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

What are you reading?

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

Here's what I've got on tap for this September 23rd week:

For the classes I'm teaching: The Scarlet Letter, On Writing Well, and Discovering Our Past: A History of the United States, plus selections from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

For upcoming review: Elizabeth Gilbert's latest, The Signature of All Things.

For fun (and on audiobook): Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner

What are you reading?

It's Monday. What are you reading?

 

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

Here's what I've got on tap for this July 4 week:

Reading:
Blog, Inc.: Blogging for Passion, Profit, and to Create Community by Joy Deangdeelert Cho
Finding Colin Firth by Mia March for review next week
Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton

Listening:
Pawley's Island by Dorothea Benton Frank

Working on:
Edits on chapters of a Southern historical fiction novel
A feature article for Georgia Connector magazine
A grant draft for a nonprofit organization
Wrapping up syllabi for this fall's Advanced Composition and American Literature
Editing an article for an academic journal

And more blogging!

Monday....

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

I enjoyed every moment of reading Therese Anne Fowler's latest novel, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. I had one course with her back in 2005 during our graduate studies at NC State University. Each week our class members read aloud from the larger project we were working on and gave feedback to our classmates. It was one of the best classes I've ever had because I developed a lot in a short time with my own writing, and fine-tuned my listening and editing skills. I tap into that all the time when I'm helping others through writing coaching services. (Elaine Orr, who has also just published a book, was our professor. I'll be reading her latest, A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa, soon.)

Therese's writing now is fiction and different from the creative nonfiction we were workshopping in that class. I thought what Therese was working on in that class was wonderful, and I'm hoping that one day she'll publish some her creative nonfiction work.

I'm a little obsessed with the Fitzgeralds right now since the latest movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby is about to be released, I've just listened to Tender is the Night in the car, read The Paris Wife (the Fitzgeralds appear in this book about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley by Paula McLain) and I'm thinking through the high school American literature course I'll be teaching in fall. The Great Gatsby is at the top of my list of novels my students will read.

Z is written from the perspective of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Montgomery, Alabama, socialite and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Though Zelda was a talented dancer, artist and writer on her own, her talents were overshadowed by her husband's fame. The book chronicles the Fitzgeralds' courtship and marriage through both budgets and financial excess, home life and travel abroad, deep passion and disdain for each other, and the highest highs and lowest lows of their marriage. Their relationship started out beautifully: they were the perfect couple, well-known and deeply in love with each other. As the years progressed Zelda was pushed aside by Scott so he could focus on his writing career and his affairs with other women, some of which he barely attempted to conceal from Zelda.

Throughout the novel, Zelda struggles to support her husband, the breadwinner of their family, while raising their daughter Scottie and developing herself as an artist. Scott is often resistant to letting Zelda pursue anything that will get in the way of how he thinks Zelda should be spending her time.

This book is one of several that have come out in the past several years that give a voice to the wives of important men through historical fiction. Loving Frank (Nancy Horan) and The Paris Wife were two such books I very much enjoyed. Many of us know that the Fitzgeralds had a difficult marriage at times, and this books gives us a window into that relationship from the wife's perspective, something I'd love to see more of in fiction. I'm liking this trend. 

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Here's what I'll be reading this week:

Finishing All Quiet on the Western Front for class discussion Thursday 
Continuing with Tender is the Night, my audiobook in the car
Starting Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson. My book club is waiting on me to read it so we can all discuss.
And, I'm very excited to be reviewing Jill McCorkle's latest novel, Life After Life

Free Books!

I could never afford to read all that I do without borrowing books from friends and public libraries, and other good resources that are out there. One of my favorite ways to get a free audiobook is through LibriVox. I've listened to countless classic novels (many of which I'm revisiting for the first time since high school) on my iPod while exercising or cleaning the house. I've particularly enjoyed blogger Annie Coleman's versions of Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables, two of my favorite novels. LibriVox seeks volunteers to read and record stories like these.

Project Gutenberg is also a volunteer organization that provides free ebooks for download to computer, Kindle or Android phone. I don't often read books on my computer (preferring the handheld, old fashioned method or reading, or listening to a book best), but if I wanted to, this is where I'd go.

Free books! It just doesn't get any better.

What will you be reading over Thanksgiving break this week?

Oscar Wilde

I've mentioned before that I love audiobooks, and frequently listen to Librivox audiobooks on my iPod while training to walk half marathons. I just completed my latest one for my birthday about a month ago, and two of the things I listened to during the process were Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband. In both cases, these plays were read by a variety of voices, which  made them much more entertaining and easier to listen to rather than read. I followed this up last week by watching movie versions of both of these productions, which further helped these plays come to life for me. The casts on both versions I watched were great. The Importance of Being Earnest featured Colin Firth (one of my favorites - Mr. Darcy, anyone?), Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon and Judi Dench. An Ideal Husband starred Rupert Everett again, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett and Minnie Driver. They were both fun to listen to and watch.

Listen up!

I've found the perfect way to pass the time while putting the miles in to train to walk my second half marathon: book podcasts. Listening to books seems to keep my mind occupied more than just listening to music. Before I know it, I'm finished with a workout! Currently, I'm listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I have A Tale of Two Cities waiting in the wings.

To find your own free audiobook podcasts, search iTunes. Two of the podcasts I like most are called LoudLit and Audiobooks by Annie.

Books and Movies

I love to watch movies adapted from books I've already read. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the book is better. Recently, I've read two World War II novels, and over the weekend I watched the movies that correspond with each.

Late last year I listened to The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I enjoyed it, but found it just a bit harder to follow the story via audiobook than I'd hoped. Over Christmas this year, I read The Good German by Joseph Kanon and I just could not put it down. Because of this, I was especially interested in the movie version that came out in 2006.

I liked that The Good German movie was filmed in black and white. I really think that added so much to the destruction of Berlin and the hopelessness felt by many of the characters. Thumbs up for that. Also thumbs up for Cate Blanchett. She is especially glamorous filmed in black and white. Thumbs down for most everything else, though. I like Tobey Maguire just fine, and I liked his performance a lot in Seabiscuit, but I thought he was terrible in this movie (and not just because he plays a jerk). Thank goodness the audience doesn't have to endure it for too long before his character is killed (I don't think I'm giving away too much by saying that; it's an integral part of the story). There is a lot from the book that is left out of the movie. Unfortunately, all of them are things that gave such depth to the novel, and wove a complex tale of amazing interconnectedness. Very little of this comes through in the movie. It's too bad that the movie left me feeling so unfulfilled after reading such an excellent book version.

The English Patient, however, was a great movie. I would go as far as saying that I liked the movie version better than the book, though I realize I might have liked the book better having read it rather than listened to it. The scenery was gorgeous and so is the story. I liked the book, but the movie really made the story come alive for me. I thought the casting was excellent. And, I didn't realize until I started watching the movie that Colin Firth played in it. I was also surprised to see that Naveen Andrews, who plays one of my favorite characters on the TV show, Lost, had an important role. Definite bonuses!

I'm not the only one who thought this movie was great. It won Academy Awards in 1997 for Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Music Score, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actress, and it was nominated in several other categories. It also won five Golden Globes in 1997, including Best Motion Picture.

So, I highly recommend reading both books and watching the movie version of The English Patient if you haven't already. I have to say that I'm fascinated by World War II stories. Between these two and hearing of Miep Gies' death, I think I should probably reread Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl soon, especially as the PBS adaptation is coming in April.

As a side note, my husband and I are headed to Las Vegas for a few days in March. I've done some research, but can't seem to find any fiction or interesting non-fiction books where Las Vegas is the setting. I'd love to be reading something Vegas-related on the plane ride. Does anyone have any suggestions? To cover all our bases, we watched Rain Man over the weekend, and Honeymoon in Vegas and What Happens in Vegas are both coming soon via Netflix.

Cheers!