You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Non-Fiction’ category.
I’m not a big nonfiction reader. I generally prefer my books to be fictive. Sometimes, though, a nonfiction title will catch my eye, as did Maps and Legends, recently released by Michael Chabon. Maps and Legends is a collection of Chabon’s essays. The essays and their arrangement were infinitely readable. I scarfed down essay after essay about maps and comic books and Sherlock Holmes and Israel. My favorite essays, though, were those that comprised the last half of the book—the essays about Michael Chabon’s own writing adventures. I love writing about writing, which is the main reason I checked out this book.
Michael Chabon has a nice writing style that is difficult to describe. It’s affable and talkative and at the same time, erudite and literary. I’m now working on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I’m sure I’ll be as pleased with it as I was with Maps and Legends.
Maps and Legends, by Michael Chabon: (55) * * *
Is “Fiction Friday” too trite? Probably. Good thing I didn’t pick it. Plus, if I set up too many weekly features, I’ll have to come up with something everyday.
I have had a book-ridden week. Sadly, that left little time for reading. On Wednesday night, I went out with two women from my church to discuss the intricacies contained in The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. See my review here. Last night, I hosted my regular book club. The book was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. We had a very nice discussion over tea. It was a perfect beverage and book for a blustery day. Anyway, I was very pleased with the discussion. It made me realize that there is a lot of redeeming qualities to the book, even though some of the writing was atrocious. See my review here.
My reading horizon is now quite cluttered. I started reading Emma after the PBS Masterpiece Classics presentation on Sunday. Then I put Emma on pause to read The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett universally beloved among booklovers and bookbloggers. See blogs here and here and here. I will finish The Uncommon Reader today, hopefully on my lunch break. Then it’s probably back to Emma, unless I decide to hurriedly devour the next book club selection, The Whaleboat House (also known as Amagansett) by Mark Mills. I also checked out Cannery Row from the library, so I’m going to try and squeeze that in before I have to return it in two weeks.
I like having so much to look forward to.
In The Uncommon Reader, the Queen of England suddenly, and quite by accident, becomes a book addict. This has interesting consequences for both her personal and her public lives. I’ll do a full review this weekend after I finish the book, but I have been thinking a bit about the Queen’s reading methodology. She always reads with a notebook and pencil in hand, jotting down passages that catch her attention.
I haven’t ever really read while taking notes, unless it was a textbook and I was reading it for a class. I have thought for sometime now that it would be interesting to start a kind of book journal in which I record my contemporaneous reactions to books, jot down good (or bad) quotations, and thereby keep a log of my reading activities. This has also been a subject of interest on other blogs of late. See here and here and here. How do you people out there read and record?
The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands is based on the premise that men are simple and rather stupid. The thesis then, on that basis, is “give him direct communication, respect, appreciation, food, and good lovin’, and he’ll do just about anything you wish–foolish or not.”
Dr. Laura Schlessinger demeans men throughout the book, constantly noting that a man is “inexorably dependent upon the approval, appreciation, and acceptance” of the woman. That may be true, but his self-worth is and should be based on more than that.
The book also blames women for every marital ill–real or imagined. Woman are even blamed when men have affairs, view pornography, neglect their responsibilities at home, or abandon their families.
I do have to admit that the book, and therefore Dr. Laura, does have some good points about the damaging effects of the feminist movement. Also, some of the advice about husbands is well taken, if taken and used in small doses.
However, I lost all regard for the book in the chapter on marital sex. Dr. Laura argued that a wife should “be expected to have sex when [she doesn't] want to just because he wants to.” This is because the wife expects “him to go to work and earn money to support the family even on days he didn’t feel like it.” Wow. Dr. Laura also noted that housekeeping and childrearing are not personal enough to repay a husband for his hard work. However, she ignores the corollary: that working and protecting are not personal enough to repay a wife for her work.
In short, this book is overly simplistic, narrowly constructed, and over-rated.
The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands, by Laura Schlessinger: (75) *
Three Cups of Tea contains a hint of a beautiful story. There were parts that made me tear up. Some of the parts that made me tear up were touching; other parts that made me tear up were painfully written.
Greg Mortenson is really an American hero. His work in Pakistan and Afghanistan is truly amazing. David Oliver Relin is an American journalist. His work, at least on this book, is not so heroic. The following are some of my favorite, terrible sentences from the book:
“And by the time the rising sun iced the hanging glaciers of Masherbrum pale pink, like a gargantuan pastry dangling above them at breakfast time, Mortenson had agreed to shift the funds his board had approved for the doomed Khane school upside to this village whose headman had traveled so far downriver to educate himself.” (p. 206)
“And rippling out from Mortenson’s headquarters in Skardu, over the parched dunes, through the twisting gorges, and up the weather bound valley of Baltistan, the legend of a giant infidel called Dr. Greg was likewise growing.” (p. 210)
“In the fall of 2003, at the desk of his aviation company in Rawalpindi, as he tried to arrange a flight for Mortenson to Afghanistan, now that the CAI’s work in Pakistan was on firm enough footing for him to leave, Bhangoo’s boss, the bull-like Brigadier General Bashir Baz, ruminated on the importance of educating all of Pakistan’s children, and the progress America was making in the war on terror.” (p. 310)
As the above sentences might indicate, the writing in this book was painful, to say to the least. Some of the folks on Amazon suggested skimming through most of the book. I don’t know if that is necessary, but it might save you a few tears.
Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin: (55) * *
At the halfway point in this book, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t usually read nonfiction. This book is about a guy, Greg Mortenson, who went to Pakistan to climb K2. After a failed attempt at the summit, he got lost on the way down and ended up in a remote village called Korphe. The people of Korphe were so nice to Greg that he promised he would come back and build a school. The book chronicles all of the events I’ve just described through building the Korphe school and 50 some odd other schools in the region.
The beginning dragged a bit for me – mostly because I was lost by all of the climbing jargon and horrendous descriptions. Now, however, I find myself pretty compelled. I even teared up a bit when the book described the sacrifices the people made to help build the school.
I’m reading it for a book club, and I’m glad for that. It’s not a book I would have picked up on my own, but (at least so far) it is probably worth the read.
I am getting towards the end of Divisadero. This book has taken some serious time and effort to get through. I can’t exactly pinpoint what about it is so difficult. Some of it is that it takes place in several different places in several different eras and has several different narrators. In fact, the narrator sometimes changes from third person to first person, which can be disconcerting.
I don’t know yet where all of the characters are going to wind up. There are still the three main characters: Claire (in CA), Coop (in NV and CA), and Anna (in France). However, some of the other characters (like the dead French author that Anna is researching and Anna’s French-gypsy lover) have begun to feel like main characters because of all the back story. Right now, Claire has an amnesia-stricken Coop, and they are on their way to see the farmer/father. I don’t know what it is all building up to, but I’m excited to find out.
Maybe “excited” is overstating it a bit, but I am ready to find out and have the book be done. Maybe the ending of Divisadero will change my mind, but I would recommend reading In the Skin of a Lion rather than Divisadero, if you are going to read just one of Michael Ondaatje’s books.
OTHER READINGS
Old Testament: I’m just past the part where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25: 29-34) and then Jacob dresses up as Esau to trick Isaac into giving him the father’s blessing (Genesis 27). I know that there are several explanations for Jacob’s obtaining the birthright and blessing by cunning and trickery, but it is still hard to swallow. Next up is the material from Genesis that spawned Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Good times.
In Defense of Food: I just started this book last night. Fascinating stuff. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the history of the food industry. The second part deals with the development of what the author calls the “Western diet” and its relationship to modern diseases. The last part has suggestions for following the book’s mantra: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. I like it so far because it is a realistic way to look at eating and disease and the relationship between the two.
