Fable Review

This book was a chore to read.  (And yes, I realize there is not a picture of yarn above, that is because this one is rated a big fat zero.) I was determined to read the entire book no matter how difficult it became and I did it.  What was it about?  I really am not sure I can tell you.  Mr. Faulkner and I don’t speak the same language.  Half of the time I was reading something and thought, “What does this have to do with anything?  Why is this happening?”  He tends to go on and on and on and on.  His sentences last half a page and there were a few paragraphs in this book that lasted 5 pages and by the time you finished the paragraph you can’t remember what he was talking about because it just kind of rambled on.

This book was supposed to be a Fable about the life and death of Jesus Christ.  There were moments in reading it that I recognized the characters and who they related to in the Bible, but I’m still not sure what some of the things I read had to do with the story of Christ.  The story takes place during WWII and is mostly in France.  It starts out telling about a troop of soldiers and they were commanded to attack and they mutinied against their leader (I can’t remember if he was a captain or a lieutenant).  Their leader goes to the general and they end up putting the leader under arrest.  After that there are random stories about pilots in Germany and a man who stole a racehorse in Louisiana.  There are some women in the story that represent Mary Magdalene and I could understand the parallel there.  

I could tell you more about the book, but like the book it would be jumbled and disjointed so I’ll spare you.  If you want a challenging book then pick this one up, otherwise I would suggest skipping over this one.

Old Man and the Sea

 

 

X 5

(our computer died and I lost my yarn clipart and can't find it again, so until I do, this will have to do-actually I kind of like this, maybe I'll keep it.)

 

I’ve never read a book by Hemingway and so I was a little nervous to read this one, but I was pleasantly surprised.  It was an enjoyable book and not because it is short, (it is only 127 pages) but because the main character is easy to like and is inspiring.  

It’s about a fisherman named Santiago from Cuba.  He is a lonely and very humble man.  He has one friend, a young boy named Manolin.  Manolin cares for the old man very much.  Santiago taught Manolin to fish but was unsuccessful for a time and so his parents decided that Manolin needed to fish with a someone who could bring him more fortune.  Manolin still comes and visits the old man every night where they talk about American baseball and Joe DiMaggio, their favorite player.

One day Santiago goes out to do his regular daily fishing trip and gets a giant marlin on his line.  He cannot pull the fish in so he lets the marlin pull him out to the sea for two days and two nights when he finally tires the fish out and is able to kill him with his harpoon.  During those two days and two nights you learn of the man’s respect for the great fish.  He also displays great determination and patience.  I know if it had been me I would have cut the line and gone home, but Santiago stays with the fish.

After he kills the marlin he attaches it to the boat and starts to go home.  He has no idea how far away from home he is but is able to know the right direction to go.  As he’s going home the fish is attacked by sharks.  He is able to fight off the first shark with his harpoon but he loses his harpoon.  He makes a new harpoon with the oar and his knife and uses that to kill more sharks.  He kills five sharks, but it’s not enough.  There are so many sharks coming to attack the marlin that he can no longer fight them off and the sharks eat the marlin leaving only a skeleton.

When Santiago finally makes it to shore he leaves his skiff and goes home to sleep.  Many fisherman gather around the skeleton and measure the backbone to be 18 feet long.  Manolin is so worried about his old friend and is so happy when he finds him asleep in his hut.  He cares for him when he wakes up and they talk about fishing together again.  There are some tourists who are eating at a local restaurant who see the skeleton of the fish and think it’s a shark.  The book pretty much ends there.  I usually like an ending that wraps things up nicely but it didn’t bother me so much in this book.  I like thinking that the tourists buy the large skeleton and helps Santiago to live comfortably through the remainder of his life.  

I highly recommend this book, especially if you want to read a classic novel but are intimidated by the length.

Caine Mutiny

I know it's a little surprising to see so many balls of yarn for this book, but it was excellent.  This book is right up there with my favorites.  I was really nervous to read this book and one reason was because I thought it would take place more in the Victorian Era, which would make it more difficult to read.  But this book actually takes place during World War II.  I know I've said this many times, but I am a character reader and Caine Mutiny is a character book.  There are many characters, but not too many to keep track of and the author does a great job of developing these characters.

It is the story of a young man named Willie Keith.  He was raised in a very well-to-do home; his mother especially spoiled him.  He goes to Princeton and then decides he'd rather play the piano in night clubs than go on to do any more schooling or any serious job.  He kind of has a very laid back attitude about everything.  While starting a new job at a night club he meets a singer named May Wynn (that's her stage name) and they start a courtship and soon fall in love.  He doesn't want to be drafted into the army so he enlists in the Navy.  While he is in the Naval Academy the love story continues and he kind of strings May along because she wasn't raised in the same class as Willie and so he can't seriously consider marrying her, but he doesn't want to give her up.  She on the other hand enrolls in school and tries to improve herself so she can fit in with his crowd.  Willie starts out as kind of a smart alec in the naval academy and gets into a lot of trouble, but just before he gets kicked out he buckles down and graduates as one of the top of his class.  He then gets assigned to a minesweeper ship, the Caine.  He's not excited about it, but does his duty.

It then goes into life on the ship and what his first captain is like (Willie doesn't like him at all).  You get to know a lot of the crew members and a little feel of what the Navy is like.  Before long a new captain is assigned to the ship, Captain Queeg.  Willie is very happy about this because of his great dislike for the previous captain.  So much happens to them on the ship and I don't want to write about it all, but you soon learn that Captain Queeg is a little weird and has some mental problems.  One of the crew members, Lieutenant Keefer starts putting it in the Executive Lieutenant Maryk's mind (he's the assistant to the captain) that Captain Queeg has mental problems and can't function as the head of the ship.  Lieutenant Maryk begins to keep a book of all the things that Captain Queeg does that shows his mental handicaps.  One of them is a strawberry incident where the Captain searched the entire ship and all the crew members for keys because he was sure that someone snuck into the fridge and stole his strawberries;all this after someone told the Captain who ate the strawberries.  The Captain also runs from battle many times and stays cooped up in his room most of the time eating ice cream and most of the time he has two little steel balls that he rolls around in his hand.

During a massive typhoon Captain Queeg makes some decisions that Lieutenant Maryk felt weren't right and then Captain Queeg just kind of shuts down and doesn't give any more orders even though the ship nearly capsizes several times.  Lieutenant Maryk then relieves Captain Queeg of his duties and Willie Keith and one other officer, Stilwell, begin to follow Maryk and ignore the Captain.

The next part of the book talks about the Court Martial to determine whether they were justified in relieving the Captain of his duties. This part of the book was just as enjoyable and exciting to read as the time they spent on the ship.  I'm not going to tell you the outcome though; I really think you should read this book so I don't want to give anything away.

During all of this Willie Keith and May Wynn keep their romance going, and even get engaged, but right before the court martial Willie decides he needs to break it off with May. 

After the court martial, Willie and Lieutenant Keefer go back to the Caine to finish out the war.  Just as the war ends Willie becomes the Captain of the Caine and brings it back to the United States for it to go to the junk yard as it's a really old and beat up ship.  When he gets home he decides that he really does want to marry May and so he goes and finds her.

The actually mutiny and the verdict of the court martial are actually a little anti-climatic.  If you weren't paying attention to the book you just might miss them.  But the build up and the aftermath of each are exciting and interesting. 

It also paints an excellent picture of a boy and how he matures into a man through his experiences in the Navy.  The author mentions his appearance several times, but mostly you see it through his decisions and his actions throughout the book.  I came to really like Willie and saw him as a good Naval Officer.

Another reason I loved this book was that throughout the book it would mention Willie Keith or Lieutenant Keefer were in their rooms reading books like, Bleak House, one of my favorites.  They were often reading literature that didn't fit into their surroundings.  I thought that contrast was great.

Sometimes I read these Pulitzer books and wonder, "why in the world did this book win?"  I didn't wonder that at all with this book.  It was well written and so enjoyable to read.  Sometimes a good book is like a drug and I definitely had a good buzz when I finished this one.

The Town

This book was such an enjoyable book after the last few that I have read.  It had nothing to do with the military and was about the frontier.  I do love me a good frontier book.  This book is the third in a trilogy; the other books are The Trees and The Fields.  Someday I'm going to read all of them. I really liked this book.

It is a story about the Wheeler family and their role in settling a new town.  The town originally was named Moonshine Church, but they wanted to be the county seat and so decided a new name would be better and came up with Americus, Ohio.  Mr. Wheeler was an attorney and later became a judge.  He came from a wealthy family in the East and for some reason or another (we never really find out) he had to leave his family and come West and that's where he met Sayward who became his wife.  They had 9 children:  Resolve, Guerdon, Kinzie, Huldah, Libby, Sooth, Dezia, Massey, and Chancey.  There are stories that go along with all of them.  One becomes the Governor of Ohio; another brother is accused of killing his wife's lover and has to go on the run; one daughter runs away and is found by a man across the river and lives with him for a couple of days before her mother comes and gets her; but the one that is spoken of the most is Chancey.  Chancey was born rather sickly and never really comes out of it.  Instead of running with the other children he usually is found sitting in his father's office looking out the window.  He seems to have some heart troubles and so can't be really active. 

My favorite story that they tell about Chancey is the time his father was helping a newlywed couple with some legal trouble and they were invited to sleep at the Wheeler's house.  Whenever someone was invited to sleep at their house (and this happened often) they slept in the same bed as Chancey.  Before the couple come up to bed, Chancey's older brothers tell him he needs to sleep in the middle or else the bed will flip over so Chancey plants himself in the middle of the bed.  Chancey's mother also tells the couple that Chancey has heart problems and can't be bothered while he's asleep or it could kill him.  So the couple goes up on their first night together with a little boy in the middle.  The husband keeps trying to reach over to his bride and she makes him stop because she's afraid they're going to kill the little boy.  The husband finally gets so frustrated he sleeps outside on a bench and the bride stays in the bed.  It becomes a joke that Chancey slept with the new bride.  There are other stories to do with Indians coming and taking Chancey away to raise him that frightens the boy out of his wits.

As Chancey grows up he meets a girl named Rosa.  They become very good friends.  Rosa is actually Judge Wheeler's daughter from a time when he took advantage of the school teacher.  Nobody talks about it and Rosa is banned from the Wheeler house.  Judge Wheeler doesn't even take notice of her and he doesn't do anything to help care for her.  The school teacher becomes a shut in.  She was once very beautiful but now she doesn't ever leave her house, all she does is stay inside and read.  She is married and has other children, but they live very poorly while the Wheelers live very well.  Chancey knows the secret, but Rosa never finds out.  Chancey and Rosa become very good friends and eventually fall in love with each other.  Many things are done to try and keep them separate and tragedy happens  so they cannot ever be together.  Chancey grows up to be a very bitter and hateful young man and does everything he can to ruin his relationship with his family.

Chancey moves away to Cincinnati and writes for a paper that goes against everything his family believes and even writes mean things about his brother, the Governor.  He has a secret subscriber that keeps his paper going, but then the money stops at the same time his mother starts to get very ill.  In the end of the book Chancey's paper runs out of money and he is forced to move back home to help take care of his mother.  It shares his insights into who he thinks his mother is and it's all wrong.  He then finds out that his mother is the secret subscriber and that she alone has helped run his paper for many years.  He then realizes that his views of the world are all wrong and tries to figure them out, but it's too late for him to ask his mother anything because she can't speak or hardly move.

Overall, even though there are sad parts I really enjoyed this book.  I love the writing style of Conrad Richter, it's almost poetic.  He doesn't have to give all the little details, but through dialogues you find out everything you need to know.  This was a relief after the last few books I've read.  I found this book to be an enjoyable read. It has humor and sadness and at the end of the book I felt sad that I wasn't going to be a part of the Wheeler family any more; to me that is a measure of a good book.

Way West

I was kind of excited to read this book, I really enjoy stories of pioneers and thought this one would be like others I have read; I was wrong.  It was an unusually written book, written in first person, but skipping from character to character.  There were many times I wasn't sure who was thinking or speaking, especially in the beginning.  It was really like a Charles Dickens book, where you don't understand what the people are saying and then about 1/3 of the way into the book all of the sudden you realize that you're actually understanding what is going on.  The book is about a group of people who leave Missouri in hopes of finding a better life in Oregon.  Each of the families is different.  The main family is a man, Lije Evans, his wife and their teenage son.  The other members of the party had all kinds of views, and many of them weren't really cut out for traveling in covered wagons and were more fit for cities and politics.    Lije Evans soon leads the train and does a great job and learns that he is a leader, something his wife knew all along.  Just a warning at the beginning there are parts where you delve into some of the minds of the older men looking at a beautiful young lady; it's not real bad, just enough to make me a little uncomfortable.

They of course meet with many dangers and sad events, one time loosing a young child, (which was an extremely sad part) and an act of adultery.  Soon you see how tough the people are and even though I didn't think it was possible in the beginning, you come to care for the families that finally made it to Oregon. 

The Evans' friend Dick Summers was probably my favorite character.  He was a rough, tough, true cowboy.  He had lived many years as a trapper and knew the land and territory and also the Indians well.  He gave up that life and married and settled down in Missouri.  His wife died (this part was a bit confusing) and so he decided to help the group travel to Oregon.  While on the trip he realized that he wasn't ready to give up that lifestyle and continues on after the other people in the group settle.

Overall, it wasn't my favorite book ever.  It was good, but I felt it dragged on a bit.  It felt like we were forced to hear what happened everyday, even though it gets a bit monotonous.  

Guard of Honor

What is another word for boring?  I just looked it up and some of them that fit this book are tedious, dull, mind-numbing, wearisome, uninspiring and tiresome.  Can you see how much I enjoyed this book?  I almost stopped reading it in the middle and thought about writing in my review that I just couldn't read on.  When I reached page 100 and knew I had 531 pages to go it felt like I was fighting an uphill battle.  The thing is this book had so much potential to become something interesting and to have a plot, but then it would falter.

The book is mostly about the behind-the-scenes of the military during WWII.  It focused on the AFORAD army base in Ocanara, Florida and mostly centers around the general of the base.  I'm not sure what AFORAD stands for, something about the Air Force Operations, it doesn't really exist.  The book starts out on a flight back to Ocarana with lots of characters, almost too many to keep track of.  I couldn't keep one apart from the other, except the one woman, Lieutenant Turck.  As they come in to land they almost run into another plane that is landing at the same time.  This other plane happens to be flown by an African-American bomber group coming to the AFORAD base as an experiment in integration. Unfortunately one of the officers from the original plane gets upset and hits the African-American pilot.  Because of this incident a lot of racial problems occur, but it doesn't really go anywhere and there really isn't a resolution; it just kind of hangs there in the background.  If this book centered on the racial tension in the army (the army didn't officially discriminate against black soldiers, but segregation was still culturally normal) it would have made for an interesting story. Instead it was just like a teaser.  The book would talk about it and then switch gears and focus on something else.

There is also talk of a big celebration taking place  on Saturday-  I think it's to celebrate the general's birthday.  I should take this time to let you know that this book happens over three days.  That's right, three days .  Thursday goes from page 1 to 88, Friday from page 89 to 286 and Saturday from 287 to 631.  Those are some long days.  And those days are spent in meeting after meeting with so many different characters you easily lose track of which officer is which and which rank is which.  I think that if someone had served in the military, especially during this time period, then they might find it interesting to read about all the meetings they had and all the conversations that took place.  Unfortunately, I have never served in the military or have a real knowledge of how military life is and so I found it dull.

As the General's birthday celebration approaches there is some more racial tension when the  African-American bomber group decides to go to the Officer's Club and they are not welcomed in.  They get arrested and they have to figure out how to cover it all up because some of the leaders in Washington, D.C. aren't happy.  Thus follows more meetings to figure out what to do and who was there when it happened and what their stories are, and blah, blah, blah.  Admit it you're even bored just reading my review, aren't you.

After the celebration commences there are some guys who jump from the planes to make a big show.  A group of officers are watching close by so they can write about it and see one of the soldiers break both his legs when he lands.  Then they notice about seven more soldiers land in a lake.  They weren't wearing life jackets and so they are assumed to have drowned.  Of course, we never find out if they were drowned and who was responsible for the soldiers not wearing life vests because this book is all about not having any resolution. 

There was one character who I enjoyed whenever he would come up, which was often.  His name was Captain Nathaniel Hicks.  He worked in the Public Relations Department and was all around a good guy.  He lived with two other officers, one a devoted husband and one a lady's man.  Captain Hicks was married with children and he talks about in the book how he would never be tempted to cheat on his wife because he loved her and it just felt wrong.  Unfortunately, he doesn't follow this and at the end of the book ends up sleeping with Lieutenant Turck (from the airplane).  I was so disappointed.  He is then called up and ordered to go back to New York (where is wife and kids live) to work on a big project for the General.  I guess he gets what he deserves.

All in all, I'd say stay away from this one.  Of course, I'm sure at this point I don't need to tell you that.

Tales of the South Pacific Review

I was really excited to read this book.  I love the South Pacific and have some ties to it.  My Grandpa served a mission for our church there and then later in their lives my Grandpa went back with my Grandma and served again.  At the same time my Grandpa was there my husband's Grandparents were there serving a mission.  It is a place I feel a connection to and that I want to visit some day.

Tales of the South Pacific are short stories of WWII and people serving in the South Pacific Islands (obviously).  Each story isn't  completely disconnected from the others because there are a few characters that pop up in several of the stories.  One soldier makes appearances through the whole book. 

The stories that tell about army life and what they had to go through to fight battles during the war are so interesting. Those stories speak of what they ate and how many of them didn't have enough to do to pass the time and were very bored and had to find other things to keep their minds sane.  Some of the chapters talked about battles that they fought and how many lost their lives.  Other stories share the personal struggles that some faced as they were away from their families and had seen so much sadness and a different part of the world so foreign to the one they came from.  I think one of my favorite stories is about a small island that they need to build a landing strip on.  The officer who is sent out there to inspect the island and find the right spot gets to know the people there and the history.  It was really neat to hear about these people and how they live on this isolated island away from civilization.  Also on this island there used to be prisons from a previous war and you get a little glimpse of the island's history.  If the book only contained these types of stories I would have given the book 5 balls of yarn, but it didn't.

The stories that shared how men couldn't control themselves with the native women, how they had to clear an entire island of all the women and move them to a separate and more secluded island to save them from the American soldiers raping them, how some soldiers fell in love with the women and then after being intimate with them flat out refused to marry them because of the color of their skin (I know it was a different time and era, but if they could just keep it under control…) and left them behind with a broken heart.  It's these kinds of stories that made me not enjoy the book.  It made me think of something that my Father-in-law shared about the time when he was waiting to be shipped out for the Vietnam War.  The chapel on the base in Southern California where he shipped out from had a sign that said, "War is Hell.  Leave your conscience here and we will keep it safe for you".  I understand that these men were on a secluded island far from their wives or their girlfriends for many, many months, but it did seem that they left their conscience behind and lived for the moment.  I was rather disgusted with these stories and they left a bad taste in my mouth.