Recommended reading during the World Series playoffs:
Wait Till Next Year, Doris Kearns Goodwin (earned one of my only Goodreads' five stars this year)
This Dark Road to Mercy, Wiley Cash (earned one of my only other Goodreads' five stars this year)
Calico Joe, John Grisham
The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Howard Bryant
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, Josh Hamilton
What other baseball books have you read?
And, Go Cubs!
Showing posts with label five stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label five stars. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Monday, November 17, 2014
Do the classics get better as we age?
One of my favorite classes in high was (not surprisingly I'm sure) my freshman English class. With Mrs. Reardon I experienced for the first time Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Lady or the Tiger, The Lottery, The Odyssey and countless other important works of literature. One of them, To Kill a Mockingbird, quickly turned into a favorite of mine. In fact, I revisited it again in college and wrote my undergraduate thesis on its critical response.
Near the end of our time in Mrs. Reardon's class she mentioned that she and a fellow teacher had recently discussed whether or not To Kill a Mockingbird was wasted on high school freshmen. Were we really capable of digesting all of the complicated themes and grown-up world ideas as 14 year-olds? Of course we thought we were, and we told her so.
Since that first reading more than 20 years ago, I've read the book several more times, and Mrs. Reardon was right. With more life experience, the book means more to me each time I read it.
Fast forward to last week. With my American Literature class at the homeschool co-op where I teach once a week, we began discussion of Willa Cather's My Antonia. Cather is one of my favorites too. I find her prose lovely. It really makes me want to visit Nebraska and see those rolling prairies for myself (one day).
If you're not familiar with My Antonia, the basics with regard to the point I'm making involve a narrator named Jim looking back on his time growing up on his grandparents' rural Nebraska farm, particularly around a special friend he made, Antonia, who was the oldest daughter of Bohemian immigrants on a nearby farm. There is some question of whether Jim falls in love with Antonia (it makes for good class discussion).
But, years later, Jim is a successful New York City attorney, and his job requires some travel across the country. On one trip out west he arranges to visit his hometown. He's heard bits and pieces from Antonia and about her over the years, but it's been decades since they've seen each other. He borrows a horse and buggy and drives out to the farm where she lives with her now-husband and nearly a dozen children. Antonia is surprised and happy to see him. Jim relishes their time together catching up and meeting her children.
Jim is struck by how time and hard work on the farm have changed her appearance, though her personality has remained very much the same. After their visit, Jim returns back to his life in New York City and his wife.
During our class discussion last week, I had a Mrs. Reardon moment when I almost let slip out of my mouth, "Read this book again right after you've been to your 20th high school reunion!" I thought better of it, both because as homeschoolers they may not ever attend a high school reunion and also because they might have had the same indignant reaction my classmates and I did.
I imagine that, like To Kill a Mockingbird, My Antonia would have not had such a profound effect on me in high school.
Near the end of our time in Mrs. Reardon's class she mentioned that she and a fellow teacher had recently discussed whether or not To Kill a Mockingbird was wasted on high school freshmen. Were we really capable of digesting all of the complicated themes and grown-up world ideas as 14 year-olds? Of course we thought we were, and we told her so.
Since that first reading more than 20 years ago, I've read the book several more times, and Mrs. Reardon was right. With more life experience, the book means more to me each time I read it.
Fast forward to last week. With my American Literature class at the homeschool co-op where I teach once a week, we began discussion of Willa Cather's My Antonia. Cather is one of my favorites too. I find her prose lovely. It really makes me want to visit Nebraska and see those rolling prairies for myself (one day).
If you're not familiar with My Antonia, the basics with regard to the point I'm making involve a narrator named Jim looking back on his time growing up on his grandparents' rural Nebraska farm, particularly around a special friend he made, Antonia, who was the oldest daughter of Bohemian immigrants on a nearby farm. There is some question of whether Jim falls in love with Antonia (it makes for good class discussion).
But, years later, Jim is a successful New York City attorney, and his job requires some travel across the country. On one trip out west he arranges to visit his hometown. He's heard bits and pieces from Antonia and about her over the years, but it's been decades since they've seen each other. He borrows a horse and buggy and drives out to the farm where she lives with her now-husband and nearly a dozen children. Antonia is surprised and happy to see him. Jim relishes their time together catching up and meeting her children.
Jim is struck by how time and hard work on the farm have changed her appearance, though her personality has remained very much the same. After their visit, Jim returns back to his life in New York City and his wife.
During our class discussion last week, I had a Mrs. Reardon moment when I almost let slip out of my mouth, "Read this book again right after you've been to your 20th high school reunion!" I thought better of it, both because as homeschoolers they may not ever attend a high school reunion and also because they might have had the same indignant reaction my classmates and I did.
I imagine that, like To Kill a Mockingbird, My Antonia would have not had such a profound effect on me in high school.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Book Review: Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin
Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin
My Review:
Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan was for years where an eclectic but now well-known group of artists and writers gathered to share their ideas with each other. At the center of this group was young poet Walt Whitman. Those who drifted in an out of this group over the next years are others who were making names for themselves: actors Edwin Booth and his brother John Wilkes Booth, comedian Artemus Ward, drug experimenter Fitz Hugh Ludlow and a scandalous actress named Adah Menken. The group was widely traveled but kept Pfaff's Saloon as a home base, gathering nearly every evening at the same table in the bar.
I read this book shortly before teaching Whitman's poetry to my American literature* class and found Martin's book to be meticulously researched and absolutely fascinating. This book featuring this quirky cast of characters with Whitman at the center really brings the bohemian group of American romantic artists to life. As the book progresses, Martin reveals, layer by layer, the connections this group formed with other notable people of the time. In particular, Martin tells of the very short degree of separation between Whitman and the assassination of the man he admired perhaps more than anyone else: President Abraham Lincoln (and, this connection isn't through John Wilkes Booth but someone else).
Martin's book is no stuffy biography but a book that reads more like a novel and painting a picture in my head of the smoky basement bar and all the debauchery that must have ensued night after night.
It's a fascinating look into a world I knew next to nothing about before reading Rebel Souls, and I'm glad I did.
Published by: Da Capo Press
Published on: September 2, 2014
Page Count: 368
Genre: Biography
My Reading Format: ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover, Kindle, Audible
My Review:
Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan was for years where an eclectic but now well-known group of artists and writers gathered to share their ideas with each other. At the center of this group was young poet Walt Whitman. Those who drifted in an out of this group over the next years are others who were making names for themselves: actors Edwin Booth and his brother John Wilkes Booth, comedian Artemus Ward, drug experimenter Fitz Hugh Ludlow and a scandalous actress named Adah Menken. The group was widely traveled but kept Pfaff's Saloon as a home base, gathering nearly every evening at the same table in the bar.
I read this book shortly before teaching Whitman's poetry to my American literature* class and found Martin's book to be meticulously researched and absolutely fascinating. This book featuring this quirky cast of characters with Whitman at the center really brings the bohemian group of American romantic artists to life. As the book progresses, Martin reveals, layer by layer, the connections this group formed with other notable people of the time. In particular, Martin tells of the very short degree of separation between Whitman and the assassination of the man he admired perhaps more than anyone else: President Abraham Lincoln (and, this connection isn't through John Wilkes Booth but someone else).
Martin's book is no stuffy biography but a book that reads more like a novel and painting a picture in my head of the smoky basement bar and all the debauchery that must have ensued night after night.
It's a fascinating look into a world I knew next to nothing about before reading Rebel Souls, and I'm glad I did.
Four out of five stars
If you liked this book, you’ll like Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton, John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson, and any of Walt Whitman's poetry.
**Here's what else I included in my syllabus for American literature.
John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson
- See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-john-wilkes-booth-beyond.html#sthash.N9bf4MMV.dpuf
John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson
- See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-john-wilkes-booth-beyond.html#sthash.N9bf4MMV.dpuf
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Recent Reread: Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera is hands down one of the best books ever written. Everything about the story and the writing evokes beauty. I just reread it over the weekend in light of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's recent passing. I read a lot of it while at the neighborhood pool. Who needs a romance novel when you can read something like this, right?
I had taught all day the day that happened, and strangely enough, I had a conversation with a student about him. She's from Colombia and loves his writing just like I do. Then, later that evening I got a news blast that he'd died in his home in Mexico City.
A few days afterward, I got word that a celebration of Marquez's life was planned in Decatur near Atlanta: 100 people would read aloud his 100 Years of Solitude in an event called, appropriately, 100 Readers of Solitude (clever!). I thought about going. Then my husband broke his collarbone and I honestly forgot all about it. I'm sure it was a great even though, and I hope I'll be able to go to another read-along event again.
USA Today published a story that Garcia Marquez has an unfinished manuscript that may be published. Here's hoping!
I had taught all day the day that happened, and strangely enough, I had a conversation with a student about him. She's from Colombia and loves his writing just like I do. Then, later that evening I got a news blast that he'd died in his home in Mexico City.
A few days afterward, I got word that a celebration of Marquez's life was planned in Decatur near Atlanta: 100 people would read aloud his 100 Years of Solitude in an event called, appropriately, 100 Readers of Solitude (clever!). I thought about going. Then my husband broke his collarbone and I honestly forgot all about it. I'm sure it was a great even though, and I hope I'll be able to go to another read-along event again.
USA Today published a story that Garcia Marquez has an unfinished manuscript that may be published. Here's hoping!
Monday, August 26, 2013
Book Review: In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl
In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl
Published by: Penguin Books
Published on: August 27, 2013
Page Count: 454
Genre: Historical fiction
My Reading Format: ARC paperback
Available Formats: Paperback and Kindle versions
My Review:
Iris and Tom Crane, siblings in Australia as World War I breaks out in Europe, watch the conflict unfold. Tom, only 15 years old, confides to Iris that he'd like to fight for Great Britain. Iris, proud that her brother wants to make a contribution as such a young age, encourages him to join the army. It's not long after Tom has left that their father's grief at Tom's absence makes Iris regret her support of her brother. To put their father's mind at ease, Iris heads for France herself. In a chance encounter at a train station, Iris, a nurse, is convinced by Frances Ivens, a Scottish doctor working to establish a field hospital for French soldiers in an abbey called Royaumont, to join her cause. Almost immediately, Iris is named Miss Ivens' assistant and spends the war years tending to wounded soldiers with her fellow medical staff and helping with hospital administration. Iris gets sucked in by the work: she feels useful and enjoys the camaraderie the doctors and nurses (all female) share. Some time goes by before Iris is able to take leave and seek out Tom, who since he is so young is a postal carrier for the army rather than a soldier on the battlefield, much to Iris' and their father's relief.
Iris tells her story as an elderly woman looking back on her time as a nurse in France, and tells her present-day story, which takes place in 1978 in Australia where she lives near her granddaughter Grace and her family. Grace, an obstetrician balancing career and motherhood, has a voice in the book as well, and the two women's three story lines blend beautifully.
In Falling Snow is a story about women and the choices they make: career v. family, attend to duties at home v. travel, and making the right judgment calls along the way. It's a story about forgiving those who have done wrong in the past, and how to move ahead, and a story about making choices for oneself and deciding when to make decisions for someone else. And it's about how one acts under pressure.
Though decades have come and gone between Iris' time as a young women as a talented nurse and Grace's time as a doctor, the struggles they face in their careers in what's more a man's world than a woman's (even in obstetrics and gynecology) are surprisingly similar. And, both women realize that both family and career are what's important to them.
Though I can't relate to working in the medical profession, I found Iris and Grace to be likable characters I still felt I could identify with. They are both honest and real. They make mistakes and they strive to overcome them. They feel a strong sense of duty and that's what leads them through their lives. I liked the intergenerational approach to the story, and the fact that Iris got to tell her story as a young woman and as one nearing the end of her life. I also liked that even though Grace has a lot on her plate, MacColl gave her a supportive husband, when some authors might have been tempted to let Grace's job and family pressures strain her marriage. I liked David as a character and the role he played in the story.
I was so engrossed in this book from the first page, which involved Iris' early days in nursing during the war, that at first I was speed-reading through Grace's parts just to get back to Iris, not sure if Grace would hold my interest as well as Iris was. After a few chapters I caught on to what MacColl was doing by mirroring the two women's stories and relished them both.
This book is one my favorites from 2013.
Five out of five stars (only a handful of books get this rating from me each year!)
If you liked this book, you’ll like the movie A League of Their Own, the nonfiction book by Leslie Bennetts called The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees, Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, Z by Therese Ann Fowler, and The Paris Wife by Paula McClain.
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