Updike Improves On Shakespeare, Haha

Oh my stars.  Of   course John Updike is about the  finest writer we’ve got around today, but who would have guessed he would have presumed to write a prequel to Hamlet, of all things, and have pulled it off beautifully in the hilarious Gertrude and Claudius?

He even answers some of the wilder questions in Shakespeare’s play, changes some of the names to keep you guessing, makes motives really interesting, and I think makes Shakespeare proud.

If you’re not familiar with Updike I don’t think this is where you’d like to start with him. And if you’re not familiar with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you probably don’t want to start here either. But if you’re familiar with both, I think this’ll give you a really good time. Like I said, I love John Updike, and I do like Shakespeare and this blend is a  beaut. 

E.L. Doctorow Does It Again

William Tecumseh Sherman’s storied march through the south to free the slaves is wonderfully told by E.L. Doctorow in his The March, richly and clearly illustrated by various persons and stories, placed together, sometimes harshly, sometimes gently, never without us caring about each, giving us yet another view of another war and its hideousness, compassion, wildness and death.  

Pearl, a white slave, is particularly fascinating character as is Sherman himself.  So are many, many other members of the cast who make up this story whose lives were heroic or callow to say the least.  

I couldn’t believe how much I cared about these people and what was happening to them.  There were the slaves, those medical people who were were working to patch together the lives and bodies of military men, both on the side of the Union and the Rebels, the freed slaves trying to get to the north and those slaves who couldn’t see their ways to freedom, the inhabitants of the south run through by the armies passing by.  

E.L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner award for The March.  Also he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for the National Book Award for this book.  Needless to say, others feel his work is a literary achievement of the first rank as well.  

Those interested in the history of the Civil War and in the history of the United States might give this book a chance as it more than gives a great view of what took place in a small part of the final days of that piece of the history of our country.  

Churchill, The Man of the Twentieth Century, And What A Man He Was

From the ridiculous to the sublime, I finish first Cheever, then Churchill.  I enjoyed Cheever more but certainly admired Churchill much more.


But Churchill taught me one thing:  I knew next to nothing about the World War I from the point of view of the British.  Plus, I really knew relatively little about World War II from the perspective of the British.  


He was the only British Prime Minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and the first person to be recognizes as an honorary citizen of the United States.  He singularly impacted the twentieth century as no one else could.  He is quoted to this day.  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/winston_churchill_2.html He was Prime Minister of England twice, he was listened to by everyone, loved by his countrymen, inspiring, though certainly not loved by all, but a brilliant, and incredible speaker and writer. 


His public image was first greatly damaged in the First World War in the Dardanelles as he underestimated the power of the Turks and the British suffered tremendous losses.  He again took his blows as he supported King Edward VIII in his marriage to Mrs. Wallis Simpson in 1936.  Many felt, each time, his political career was over, but as history shows, it was indeed not. He showed his resilience and became, well, Churchill.


In spite of his philandering mother, he was always faithful to his Clementine and she to him even though they had their own bedrooms right from the first.  They did have four or five children (I foget which) and adored one another.  


He took up painting in mid-life to and profesionals were more than amazed at his abilities.  He entered an amateur painters' contest anonymously and judges could not believe he was an amateur.  He painted all the rest of his life and his many paintings have sold for very high prices.  


He landscaped his own home, as well, complete with lakes he carved out himself with his own dredging machinery and walls he built himself.  He even applied to a masonry union only to be refused on general principles and not because of his lack of skill.  He was an amazing man to say the least.   


I've studied World Wars I and II a bit since and plan to do more.  I must read this book again after I do.  

I do remember one thing that wasn't mentioned in the book.  My father used to say that Roosevelt and Churchill were drunk at Yalta and sold us out to Stalin.  My dad was one interesting guy and I kinda don't want to know for sure anyway.  However read this article from a 1955 Time Magazine article.  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,937135-1,00.html

Can't Learn Enough About Theodor Geisl

Trust me on this one.  You can't.  And you can't wish too much he was your uncle.  

And also, still alive.  Let's just hope Heaven is happier for having him around because they're sure all the better for it.  Know who he is?  Hit the link.  

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/8Vzkqu/www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/66293

John Cheever -- A Book Worth Reading

Oh, no.  I’ve finished another good book.  I hate that.  

Cheever, A Life, the biography of the writer, John Cheever was fabulous and I’m not sure why I liked it so much.  He was a lonely bi-sexual, a drunk for most of his life, an unhappy man, yet  I loved this book.  

It was honest, sharp and so insightful yet no one around him seemed to know him well.  Everyone seemed to think of him as a nice and kindly man except for his wife who despised him for most of his life and his children who didn’t understand him.  These were the people, incidentally, he wanted to please most, but he didn’t seem to know how to do it.  Relationships of all kinds seemed to elude him.  

What interests me, too, is that much is told from the point-of-view of his journals which he seemed not to want to hide, in which he referred to his loathing of his homosexual tendencies and fears that his drinking is what made his wife hate him so much (though she fixed him dinner without fail for all the years of their marriage and cared for him during his final bout with cancer.)  I wonder, too, why more didn’t read his journals during his life and find out more about him.  He invited his son to read them and sat watching him at one point as he read.  No one seemed interested.  It made me want to keep a journal better and more honestly.

I think I love the beauty of the writing of this book and the mingling of that with the beauty and honesty of the writing of John Cheever himself is what got me.  I don’t really know if I’ve read much of John Cheever’s work at all.  I’ve read much of his rivals’ works:  John Updike, whom I love, Saul Bellow, John Irving.  Cheever is mostly known for his short stories.  But I’d heard so much about this biography that I had to give it a shot and I’m so glad I did.  I still may not try much of his work as it has settled back into obscurity a bit, but his life I love.  

Hope my family, friends and former students aren't too alarmed at the range of my reading interests.  Somehow such things don't alarm me as much as they seem to other people.  I think there is great beauty in understanding the difficulties of others.  I don't enjoy crassness nor do I have a prurient interest in obscenity and suffering.  In fact I'll stop reading if I find in books things that appeal to such things.  

But perhaps that is what the appeal in my Master's Degree in Educational Counseling was.  To understand the human heart a little better and sympathize, empathize and wish a little I could help out those for whom life is tough.  God knows everything and I am so far from that but something inside me tells me that he approves when I seek to understand the hurting that goes on.  I think that's why he made me tough and not especially judgmental.  No excuses, just a little explanation I guess.

Hope for the Brain

Brain problems have been mixing around in my life since forever.  

I had a fiance who had an aneurysm while we were alone together in his car on a Sunday afternoon.  He never recovered.  

My father had a stroke when he was my age, never recovering his speech or his ability to use his arms, legs, or any kind of useful movement in his body aside from the ability to turn his head in a direction he chose.  This lasted almost a year until he died eleven months later.

My mother suffered from serious dementia and had so for too long a time. 

My brother’s sons suffered from serious, debilitating OCD.  

I have a great-nephew who potentially has Asberger’s Syndrome.  

ADD and ADHD seems to have its way with about everyone in my family.  

As a result, The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D., really intrigued me, but it’s cutting edge ideas and hope really won my heart. It deals with all these difficulties and more.  

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to adapt, and is the topic of the book.  


It was earlier thought that areas of the brain were set from infancy and damage to various areas caused permanent damage to different skills and functions.  But this book shows that other parts of the brain can take over where failure in a specific area takes place.  Dozens of examples are given.

The first story is of a man, a professor in higher education in the 1960’s who suffered a stroke.  His son worked with the man well beyond the time, two-plus years, when recovery is expected by health-care professionals to be worthless.  His son had him crawl like a baby, pick up marbles, worked with his speech, until finally the man was able to return to teaching.  After the man died a few years later in his seventies, an autopsy was performed and it revealed he had indeed suffered a massive, debilitating stroke.  But his brain had rerouted its innerworkings to where it could re-command his functions

I wish we’d known this.  The professionals had given up on my father well after the time of this man.  His stroke was in 1988.  

The book spoke of a man who had had a stroke while in-utero during the second trimester.  Yet at an age about in his mid-forties was able to recover substantially through working with the principles of changing his brain in a clinic designed with this hope in mind though he had never been able to function well in his life to this point.

OCD, it would seem, can be worked with by some of these ideas as can autism.  

The same principles, however, can work in a negative way.  Addiction to pornography can recircuit the brain in the same way to a terrible result.  Hope for recovery from this, however, is in the same vein.

This book is really is quite readable as well. It won the 2008 U.S. National Alliance on Mental Illness Ken Book Award, it was a New York Times bestseller and a Scientific American Main Selection.  

If the brain interests you and hope for brain health appeals to you, it’s worth a read.  

Looking For a Mouthwatering Book to Read?

Salubrious is a word my father used for some incongruous reason, but it always worked.  

And it’s a word that works for for Joanne Harris’ novel, Five Quarters of the Orange.  Delicious.  But fiercely delicious.  I loved every bite.

Here is a woman, Framboise Simon, recalling herself as a wild and willful tomboy, raised in a little French town, occupied by the Germans during World War II by a strange, and sickly mother.  There are marvelously developed secrets and bizarrely formulated interplays that can hardly be anticipated.  

But now she, as an elderly woman, has returned to the town, unrecognized, opens a restaurant and puts the whole thing together.  Believe me, my Kindle got its workout.  

This book never moves slowly;  You delight in the child and fear for her just as you do for her as the old woman.  It makes you long for the food, the smells, the sights, the sounds.

It even teaches.  War is Hell.  But it is fought with and around people who love, feel, suffer, live, long and certainly have to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives.  

This book was yummy.   Wish I could read it fresh and new again.  

Walt Oleksy -- Just Another Reason to Love Facebook

More than forty years ago, Walt Oleksy bounced in and out of my life.  Then less than a week ago, there he was again, friending me on Facebook!

He sat behind me in a bullpen at the Home Office of Allstate Insurance Company located in Northbrook, Illinois.  We were writers of various employee publications for the company and I loved it.  I did the Home Office publication "All Hands".   Walt hated it.  There were about four of us, maybe five.  All of us were happy except Walt.  

Never a corporate man, he’d slide his face down daily holding his cheeks with his enormous hands and would groan something like “Kill me, get me out of here now.” Often I couldn’t understand what he was saying because his face was smashed into his desk.  Most writers were thrilled with a steady paycheck to supplement their freelance work, but not Walt.  

Ultimately, I was never sure whether he was fired or if he quit or if it was something in between, but I talked to him on the phone afterwards one day, and he was blithely researching an article which involved a tennis racket and an ironing board as I recall.  He really didn’t like many people a lot, and men in suits weren’t people at all to him, I don’t believe.  

Then he hit his niche.  He wrote articles galore and something like thirty books.  He’d grab hold of a topic, work it like a pit bull, write a book then move on to another topic that was totally unrelated.  Here's a list:  http://www.ranker.com/list/walter-g-oleksy-books-and-stories-and-written-works/reference

He’s amazing and fascinating.  He has at least one website devoted to old movies, loves Errol Flynn, his dog and has lived in the same place, I think, for as long as I’ve known him. Eccentric, interesting, always ready with book recommendations, never married and nobody’s fool, Walt is worth keeping track of.  I found one of his books in a library once and then I found him on the web, got an email address somehow back when and we chatted a little but now this.  

I love Facebook for more reasons than Walt, but he’s reason enough.  What a guy.  I feel sorry for people Facebook scares.  Consider what they might be missing!

Reading Going Way Back

I bought Ozma of Oz and The Velveteen Rabbit for Sophia and Ali. Those books  span five generations potentially.


The Wizard of Oz was written by L. Frank Baum in 1900 and he went on to write fourteen other books, including Ozma, most or maybe all, of which my mother, Helen Peterson Cannon, owned, read tons of times and which I read over and over and was also crazy about, like her.  


The glue had crumbled and the string came loose on all those books by the time I got them and I'm sure they went into the garbage or the D.I., but we loved them.  Following is a list of the books of them on Wikipedia if you'd like to check them out just for fun:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_books  


They and Mom are part of the reason I love reading.  During the month I didn't blog, I read quite a few books I'll have to tell you about later,  but I wanted to tell you about these first.

The second book I bought,The Velveteen Rabbit, was published in 1922.  I told the girls I really wanted Brad to read it to them.  I'm surprised I didn't read it to him and Ben, but I guess I didn't.  The one problem I thought they might have was that it was about a boy.  Soph and Al used to like books about girls, but I think they've let go of that.  I hope so.  And I hope it's not too young for Sophia -- I don't know.


Here's some quotes:  

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

How nice is that?  I don't know if my grandmothers, Mary Salmon Cannon and Nellie Bull Peterson, ever read any of these books, but they could have.  They likely did. That would be Ali and Sophia's great-great grandmothers.  Astonishing.  

I want to tie generations together in both directions and maybe this will do it.  I don't know but I'm trying.  I hate doing genealogy but maybe this will contribute something.  

Maybe these books are not as good as I remember, but it's worth a try. And my granddaughters are potentially old enough to hear a chapter a night instead of a whole book -- at least Sophia is.  Maybe she can read them herself.  I don't care what she does.  



All I hope is that they love to read as much as my mother did and as much as I do and they don't put the same restrictions on themselves as Mom did;  she always felt that she couldn't reward herself with reading until all her work was done and she so seldom felt she was there.  


How sad is that?  

The Lost Symbol -- a Fun Read for Mormons and Americans

I read The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown some months ago with several expectations in mind.  

I had read a couple of his other books.  The first was the DaVinci Code and the second, I think, was Angels and Demons but I’m not sure.  I did like the DaVinci Code but I didn’t like the way the Catholic Church was eviscerated.  Just me on that.

I also wanted to learn something more about the Masons as they do have a famous or infamous tie-in with Joseph Smith and the Mormons.   I didn’t want them thrashed like the Catholics.  They were not. 

I also wanted to find out what the deal was with the our Founding Fathers, and specifically the fresco painted on the dome in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. that depicts George Washington becoming a God which is entitled “The Apotheosis of Washington”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington It is definitely of some interest to Mormons who indeed to believe that man, indeed, can become as God is.  Aha!  That fresco is reprinted here.  Also, did the Masons have a hand in laying out Washington, D.C.?  Apparently Brown did go a little far in putting this idea across.  

Another item of great interest to me that is broached in the book is that of Noetic Sciences, or powers of the mind, which I did not expect.    I’d like to know more.  

I would suspect that much of what Dan Brown writes about has been thoroughly researched and it would be difficult to find what it is about his writings that make the leap from fact to fiction, but I’d love to do more follow-through on some of it.  

I have done research on the Mormons and Masons, have been to their downtown Salt Lake Temple, inside and out, seen their uniforms they wear and talked to their members, and am confident there is little commonality between the two, and that Joseph Smith had his revelations on the Temple Endowment long before his association with the Masons in 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois.  So rumors that the Temple Endowment was taken from the Masons is really of no concern to me.  I’ll do something on that later.

The Lost Symbol started out a little slowly for me as I was in Hawaii and Dan Brown is a rather formulaic writer, but things get heated up about three-quarters of the way through.  The killings, the goofy tattooed guy and the menacing stuff got a bit old to me by this book because they are too similar to former books though there were some twists, but I did like learning about the Masons, Noetics and, of course, Washington, D.C.  I’d even recommend it on those accounts.  In fact, I’d recommend it on all accounts.  

I wouldn’t be surprised if Dan Brown didn’t have the Mormons in his sights for one of his next books.  It might be kind of interesting, in fact.  The Church is true, God is in His Heaven so it might be kind of interesting and put some interest our way.  I guess we do get into trouble when “anti-Mormons” get rolling, but we can take it.  On the other hand . . . Yipes?

The Koran Speaks Up For Women

Just a little extra something from Half the Sky.  (Now don't abandon me yet!!!  This is the end of this book's blogs.)

Something that is quite well received is lessons from the Koran throughout much of the world of Islam specifically for women.

The deal is, the Koran teaches that women should be treated well and equally, but those are not the scriptures that are well-known among the people of Islam.  So, when the women go to their Koran classes and learn of these scriptures, they go home and teach them to their husbands and something wonderful happens.  The men begin to better adhere to these teachings, because they believe and love the Koran.

Further, an interesting note is made that though the Koran is beautifully written, it can be misinterpreted, and scholarship is coming increasingly becoming more and more into the camp of believing that those who are martyrs for the cause are not going to be welcomed by seventy-two black-eyed virgins, but by a plate of seventy-two white grapes!!!!

"If the martyr-wanna-be's were to realize the prize in heaven for martyrdom was the Aramaic "Hur" (white grapes) and not the Arabic "Hur" (described variedly as a beauty, enchantress and virgin), argues Kristof, then Muslims would probably would not be in such a rush to kill themselves."  http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0805-02.htm

"Half the Sky" - A Study in the Value of Education

Here I am.  A lifelong teacher and again I have to learn the lesson I’ve known forever.  Legislation doesn’t work.  Force doesn’t work.  Fear doesn’t work.  What works is education.  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  An adage that’s so true.   

In the sixth grade we saw a film on drug addiction and saw a picture of an addict who they said was an old addict.  They said he was in his twenties.  I don’t know what his drug of choice was, but he looked like so many miles of bad road, that I never wanted to run the risk of ever looking like him.  Drugs never had an appeal for me.  Other things did, but not drugs.  I had learned in sixth grade.

I remember when AIDS, full-blown AIDS was killing so many young men.   Then there was a huge program embarked upon that taught about unprotected gay sex in fliers, in billboards, in radio public-service announcements, and particularly in areas where gay men congregated and lived,  such as San Francisco, and other large metro areas.  Many people thought it was hilarious and worthless.  But a miracle took place.  The death rate due to AIDS dropped radically and never reached the proportions that had been predicted.  

The same thing has been found to be true with methamphetamene use.  Meth is so bad, yet education has been found to be a deterrent to its use.  Children whose parents talk to them about it are half as likely to use than those whose parents don’t speak to them about it at all.  (http://www.kci.org/meth_info/faq_meth.htm)

And then I learn in “Half the Sky” -- remember my blog from a few days ago? -- that the single greatest thing to help the women in third world countries and in repressed situations is again, education.  The women who are abused, hurt, those in the sex trades, those who have genital mutilations, those who have terrible fistulas from rapes and poor maternal care.  

There are those who have given up their lives to provide such education.  There are those who have started programs to fund such educations and there are those who have merely sent funds to help with these educational endeavors and they are working.  Miracles are happening throughout the world.  

It doesn’t take much more than a little look online to see what has happened as a result of this book and what things are taking place, what people have been helped and what groups have been mobilized.  

Embroidery, crop and animal raising and other enterprises have been developed among women and the respect for women by their husbands has grown such amazing ways.  Family decision making, equality, physical decency have all grown between spouses because of this education.  It has been remarkable.

This book is life-changing, I think, for everyone.  I learned about it on Oprah, and laugh if you will, her crusade on behalf of the women of the world has changed me.  I hope mine at least encourages you to read this book.  Or at least listen when it is spoken about.  It matters.  

Looking Towards the Women of the World

I'm killing myself.  I am listening to Half the Sky on Audiobook written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, a husband and wife.  But it may be as important an endeavor as I've done in a long time.

It's the story of women in third-world countries and the terrible plight that often they're in; sex-trafficking, prostitution, terrible health-care, poverty, violence, suppression, the lack of education and respect and powerlessness in general.

First it inspires me, then it discourages me, alarms me then makes me want to sell everything I have and do something.  Then I learn something more and I'm in despair again.

It is a story of how difficult it is for us, individuals and nations of power, to make a difference and yet it is a book that needs to be read because without this information coming to the fore, nothing will be done.  Throughout there are terrifying stories to illustrate, but there are also thrilling ones.

And as I persevere through, I'm finding hope.  The hope is not only in help monetarily, but from within.  And though I'm not finished with the book, I'm seeing the solutions coming as the book reconciles itself.  They come through education of both the women and men.  They come through changes starting from the top and from the bottom.  These changes are coming from within and from without.  These are coming miraculously and from simple things.

I'm not finished but when I am, I'll finish this blog.  But in the meantime, I hope you read it yourself.  It is something that needs to be read.  We need to know this.  It matters to our  futures.

What Not To Read

Pat Conroy is a great author.  I really enjoyed The Water is Wide.  It was a Memoir of his time as a teacher of black students on an island off the east coast in the south. It was fabulous.  

‘

I read Beach Music which I enjoyed thoroughly and I recently read My Losing Season, which, though it was a book on basketball, I enjoyed it a lot. 

His book, Prince of Tides, was made into a pretty fair movie.  Pat Conroy is a pretty great author, like I said.  

So I really looked forward to The Lords of Discipline which he referenced in My Losing Season.  Yikes.  I don’t know quite what to say.

The story is about a military college in Charleston during the Viet Nam war.  I presume that young men in such a setting can be vile and crude, and they definitely are in this book.  They also are misogynistic, violent, cruel and totally indifferent to human suffering.  

Your question, worth asking, would be, “Why did you continue reading the book?”  I’m not really sure.  I think it’s because of the above.  It did start out slowly but once it got going, it got quite compelling.  The story has twists, turns, interesting things, and unbelievably awful things happening.  Things you probably wouldn’t want to know about.

So as for a recommendation, you’re not going to get one from me.  If you like young men, particularly young military ones, don’t read this book.  I really can’t explain why I finished it.  

Try some of the others, though.  Particularly the first.  You’ll like it.  

Courage Is The Beauty That Never Fades

The heroic story of Meip Geis flies in the face of the stupid saying of "only the good die young.

She lived from February 15, 1909 to January 11, 2010.

She was a member of that wonderful family that hid Anne Frank in Holland and was the one who raced in front of the Nazis to grab the diary of little Anne and gave us the wonderful story that inspired so many of us, including me, so many years ago.

I'm just a little sorry I didn't write this sooner but we've been gone so much and writing my blog on my IPhone is really next to impossible and finding hotspots with my computer is really a bit ole pain.

When Carl and I were in Israel, there was a grove of trees planted, each tree honoring people who had helped Jews during WWII and I was astonished at how many there were.  I also remember wanting to be a tree among them.  I was in my forties at the time.

I don't know if I have that kind of courage because it has never really been called up even yet.  That kind of worries me.  Remember "Where much is given, much is required."  But at least I haven't lived to be as old as Meip Geis yet.  Give me time.

Thinking Without Thinking?

Did I tell you I liked listening to Blink?  (My hearing is terrific, don’t you think?)  

Paul Eckman’s work is mentioned in this book upon which the television series Lie to Me is loosely based.  This is the guy who “collects” facial expression details and can actually read whether or not someones is telling the truth.  

 The book tells you the “why” of the “New Coke” debacle and  talks about a guy named John Gottman who can tell within about an hour whether or not a couple or going to make it through a appreciable (maybe fifteen years?) marriage.  There was also a weird-on-and-off deal about Kenna, a musician, plus another about a really horrible killing of a man in Brooklyn by the police who didn’t understand what he was doing out on the street.   The whole deal is kind of a psychological treatise on why we react the way we do.  

Do I recommend you read (listen to) it?  Maybe.  Maybe more than maybe.  There’s probably more to it than just this book but if you like psychology, you might pursue more.  What I’m saying is that I’m a little skeptical but we could pursue it.  Couldn’t we?  

As for the joke at the first -- I’m pretty funny I think.  Don’t you?  

The Circus Comes to Town

What a great idea for a book -- Water for Elephants.  It's about the circus.  It was good in some ways but not-so-good in others.

The circus part was good.  It talks about the early twentieth-century traveling circus and the train travel between venues.  That part was great as was the banter and talk between the performers and the working men who set up the circus and cared for the animals.  The brutality was not so good against people and animals.  I did like the narration by the old man together with the narration from his younger self, but I was a little put off by the author being female and the pie-in-the-sky ending.  I would have appreciated knowing a little more about how she got the story together and about the love story between the young vet and the circus performer.  It smacked of not being plausible which troubled the story for me.

I didn't like a couple of really lewd scenes, one of which kept haunting me for a couple of days.  Maybe that's what it takes to sell books but it's not my cup of tea.

Vonnegut

Just finished Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano". It was written in 1952 and is extremely dated in it's references to technology, but was fun anyway. It is about a United States that is run by machinery, by-and-large and by people with high IQs who think that the vast human wasteland that remains is happy with housing, income and nothing to do. I would recommend it to anyone who can overlook references to vacuum tubes and mechanical means and the lack of references to microchips. After all, it was 1952. Human interaction is quite dated as well, but overlook that, dear reader.

Vonnegut was inspired to write it when he was working for GE. That should interest my brother, Mark. He also says he took the plot from Brave New World which in turn was taken from We. It was also his first novel. I think it is also dead-on with its premise of what human nature comes to.

I read Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut about twenty years ago while travelling shotgun around Yellowstone Park. It was the summer I was wearing a wig due to my being in chemotherapy and was not especially thrilled with anything. I barely checked out the beauty of our great national park. For that I feel deeply guilty, but anyway . . .

I must read that one again, sometime, because that is Vonnegut's biggie and I barely remember the plot at all. All I remember is that I couldn't put it down. Sigh. Cooked brains is all the excuse I can give.

Shalimar the Clown -- Not Especially Funny But Worth an Audiobook Download

I finished a Salman Rushdie book on audiobooks. Not Satanic Verses yet, but I did it and it was wonderful. I feel I've achieved something, but it wasn't really difficult at all.

Reading Salman Rushdie was a bit daunting since he was quite the literary lion, international, and wrote the Satanic Verses. Remember he immediately he had a fatwa put out on him for writing SV because he had offended Allah and had the whole Muslim world furious with him? I wondered then if this was a guy I wanted to read. But his writing was touted and I went for it.

Shalimar the Clown was actually not the favorite of the critics but to me it was thrilling. I love the way he writes, I learned about India and its customs and about the difficulties it is going through. It was a little difficult figuring out who was who at first since the names were Indian, very strange and I was only listening to them. But soon it worked. I got the names down without knowing how they were spelled.

The F-bomb was dropped quite often but I didn't care. I wondered at first if I should persevere, but on I went. His words are elegant and his phrasing is so rich and beautiful. And I was so sorry when it was over. Talk to me if you read it too.

Shackup, Shackdown

The Shack is reported on its cover to "have the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good."

No it's not. And I've never read Pilgrim's Progress. It was well-enough written, but that's about it. My book club, the Wasatch Women's Club Page-Turners group voted it a three out of ten. Then we gave it a one-point-five out of five. It's easy to say that several of the group are usually fairly unhappy with books, but this one's "thumbs down" was justified. How did it ever find its way to the New York Times Bestseller list, let alone spot #1?

It started out fine then it took a strange turn. A pretty horrendous crime (the fine part) and then a giant segue into a religious experience the likes of which they only had during the sixties on special medication. Let's not even discuss who gets to represent God. Let's just get on with things.

The story takes place largely in and near the shack where the crime initially took place. Some pretty decent religious doctrinal ideas were presented about the nature of God, but they were presented in the most bizarre and out-of-the-way scenarios ever. It was just too strange -- and that's saying something.

Should you read it? I'd say no unless you'd like a kind of feel-good, contrived religious experience. It won't teach a whole lot to anyone who has been to Church every so often and listened up a bit.

And then if your book club chooses it, I guess you have no choice. But there are better options.