Late George Apley

This was just about the most boring book I've read in a long time. I've never been to Boston, let's just get that out of the way. So if you've ever been to Boston, or know someone who lives in Boston, or if you have money to burn or come from a wealthy east coast family then you might like this book.
I've said before that I'm a character reader. I like books with good characters; I feel it's more important than a story line, and this book had neither. George Apley was not an exciting man, he had his own little world and he lived in it very happily. Nothing exciting really happens. You think he's going to break with tradition and marry a girl outside of their social ring but then his father kind of makes it so it couldn't happen and later George marries a girl inside their social ring. They have the perfect life in a big house and are very concerned about the rose bushes in the front. They have a boy and a girl. And he likes to go bird watching (this is the only way I related with the character, because I too am a birdwatcher) with a lady friend (and she's only a friend). His children rebel and go along with the times and George has to conform to it and he does so quite well, better than his wife. His son marries outside the social circle and I was proud at how well George accepted her and welcomed her into his home even though he had a little disappointment in his son's choice.
All in all it is a book I won't read again and I probably won't suggest it to someone, unless they were a Kennedy.

Gone With the Wind

I have to start by admitting that in the beginning I wasn't completely thrilled to read this book. I've seen the movie and it was cheesy; how could the book be any good? Well, I think this book is one of the best written character books I've read. The story and the characters pull you in. I've thought a lot about how I could review this book, I'm sure there are many reviews of it so what can I say that is different than the other reviews? Probably nothing. I've decided that I would break it down into more of a character review.

Scarlett O'Hara - Scarlett is one of those characters you want to strangle. At the beginning of the book she is a spoiled little brat that has to have her own way. She is in love with Ashley Wilkes, but he is marrying someone else. Even in the beginning you can see that she doesn't understand Ashley and that she and he are completely different; he just fills an ideal. In the middle of the book where she had to leave Atlanta when it was under siege and go back to Tara, I thought so much of her. She was such a fighter and wasn't going to back down from anything! She worked hard to put food on the table for everyone, she took charge, she was admirable. When she needed the tax money and decided to be Rhett Butler's mistress things went down hill. She married her sister's fiancé and became a business woman. Again she was a fighter but this time she was fighting for selfish things, money in particular. She had no regard for anyone else and was once again a brat. When her second husband died and Rhett proposed to her she then turned into the most selfish human being. This is when I wanted to strangle her, I knew she loved Rhett but she wouldn't give up Ashley and then when she finally realized how much she loved Melanie and Rhett and that she didn't love Ashley it was too late. Such a sad ending, but she kind of deserved it.

Ashley Wilkes - I think Ashley is a bit of a wimp. I'm not impressed with him at all and knew for a long time that Scarlett didn't really love him. They had absolutely nothing in common, I think they were just both in love with the past, when life was careless. They were each other's link to that time of their life. He was an intellectual and had lots of book smarts but no common sense. After the war and he had lost all his money and his land he had nothing. He couldn't support a family and gave in to Scarlett and Melanie (his wife) too easily.

Rhett Butler - I know that I shouldn't have liked him as much as I did. He really is a dirty, lying, cheating scoundrel. He loved Scarlett though, truly loved her and was truly hurt by her. He did all he could for Scarlett , Melanie and Melanie's Aunt Pitty Patt. He knew what a good person Melanie was and recognized it. He had so much passion for those he loved and respected and the rest he treated as fools. I think he liked to push people's buttons. He first met Scarlett when she declared her love for Ashley on the same day Ashley became engaged to Melanie, the war started and Scarlett became engaged to Charles Hamilton (she married him to try to make Ashley jealous and he was Melanie's brother). Rhett fell in love with her right then. When Charles dies and Scarlett moves to Atlanta to live with Melanie and Aunt Pitty Patt, Rhett shows up on and off and helps them out. He tells Scarlett he's not a marrying man and tries to get her to be his mistress, Scarlett turns him down but he doesn't give up. He finally gives in after Scarlett's second husband dies and proposes to her on the day of the funeral. He spends his life trying to make Scarlett love him by pampering her and giving her whatever she wants. Scarlett has a baby girl and Rhett realizes that Scarlett doesn't love him and gives up on her (they actually begin sleeping in separate rooms) and turns all his attention to their daughter. When their daughter dies in a tragic accident, Rhett falls apart and leaves Scarlett just when she realizes that she never did love Ashley, or at least she hadn't for a long time, and that she really did love Rhett. It broke my heart, not so much for Scarlett because she's an idiot, but for Rhett. He really did love Scarlett and did everything he could to show her and to win her love. He had to live with the knowledge that Scarlett loved someone else (or at least she thought she did) and in the end when Scarlett finally comes to him to love him he is so tired and so sad that he doesn't want to deal with it. Maybe I took the wrong side of this story but this is how I felt.

Melanie Hamilton Wilkes - What can I say about her except she is the most loyal friend that anyone could ask for. Scarlett did not deserve her. After Ashley left for the war Scarlett stayed close to Melanie so that she could be close to Ashley. A couple of times Scarlett and Ashley met up in secret and declared their love for each other and when Ashley refused to run away with Scarlett she never showed her love for him again (in the physical sense). Scarlett saved Melanie's life when Melanie had a baby on the day that Atlanta was being raided and they had to evacuate. Scarlett took Melanie, Melanie's new baby and their servant to Tara (after Rhett abandoned them on the road so he could join the army). She fought when they arrived at Tara to keep Melanie and the baby alive, she made sure they had enough to eat. So because Scarlett did all this Melanie became a devoted friend to Scarlett and stood by her even when the city of Atlanta was accusing Scarlett and Ashley of having an affair. Scarlett hated Melanie until the day Melanie died and then she realized that Melanie was the best friend she had.

These are the main characters of the story. Of course, there are many others but I won't go into all of them. Gone With the Wind is an epic novel and even though it is over 1,000 pages it keeps you involved and interested the entire time. I don't think at any point I was bored and anxious for it to end. I always judge a book by how I feel when it is over. If I'm happy it's over than the book wasn't that great for me. If I mourn the loss of the companionship of the characters from the book than that book goes on my favorites list. I mourned the loss of these characters and thought of them often after I put the book down. I enjoyed Gone With the Wind and highly recommend it as a classic everyone should read.

Honey in the Horn

This book was rather refreshing to read. After the last few books that have all been sad and a bit depressing this book had none of that. It was a good old Western novel. It is about a young man named Clay who has a strange family history and is taken in by an old man who loves to tell stories. When the book first starts it seems that this man will be the main character of the story and that he will go on and on about these old stories, but thankfully it only lasts for the first chapter or so. Well, this old man has a couple of sons who are bad kids and law breakers, but have outsmarted the law until now. His older son was killed and the younger son was arrested. The older man goes to Clay and asks him to help break his son out of jail. Clay who is a bit of a hard and ornery young man agrees to help. He passes a gun to the guy in jail and then takes off. He becomes a sort of outlaw running from the law. At one point he sees a young girl who is traveling with a horse racer (who is her father) and he kind of falls for her. Luckily they meet up again and he travels with them. This girl, Luce, and Clay kind of fall in love. They both have secrets: she doesn't know that he helped a man escape from prison, and he doesn't know her secret, which is tied up in his secret. But they are happy not knowing each other's secret.

They go along traveling and working in different places. They have a fight and then get back together and become even stronger and leave her father and mother (they are strange in their own way) and go out on their own. At one point she becomes really sick and is afraid for him to leave her but he knows that he can't help her so he leaves her to go find someone to help her, but she told him that if he left her when he came back she wouldn't be there. He leaves anyway and comes back and she is gone. He goes on and works odd jobs and eventually they meet up again and stay together.

This book didn't "move" me or make me think real hard about life and things, it was just a good story and was enjoyable to read. I learned to like Clay, even though at the beginning he's kind of a stinker, in the end he is a good guy and does care about people around him.

Now in November

I've been thinking a lot about what to write about this book, not because it moved me to ponder much but mostly because it DIDN'T move me. It's a story about a family with three girls, a mother, and a father. The father gets laid off at a factory job so he decides to farm. They have to mortgage their farm and this is like a monkey on their backs. The girl, Margret who is the middle child, is the narrator and she often refers to the mortgage as something they have to bear and constantly worry about. The father sounds like an unfeeling, over stressed man. He doesn't seem to care for his girls and is so worried about the farm and all the work that comes with it that he rarely seems happy at all. Luckily his wife is a kind, loving woman who makes up for her husband's lack of emotions. The oldest daughter, Kerrin, is a nutcase, seriously. If I had a psychiatry degree I could diagnose her problem for you, but I don't so all I can say is "cuckoo". The summary on the outside of the book says that she wishes she was a boy, I didn't get that at all. To me she just seemed like she needed to escape the farm and fall in love and go away to a big city where there is lots of excitement and she would kind of blend in with the crowd. As it is she is stuck on the farm and to me it seemed she hates the farm and all the work that goes with it. She becomes a teacher in the nearby town but gets fired because she isn't really teaching at all and is very short wit the students. That's kind of the second to last straw for her. Then the narrator, Margret, is kind of a plain Jane who no one really thinks of but everyone likes. She does her chores and helps out the best she can. The youngest is Merle; everyone loves Merle. She is very quiet and kind and apparently beautiful. A young man Grant comes to live with them and help their Dad work on the farm. Kerrin and Margret fall in love with Grant, but Grant falls in love with Merle and Merle won't have anything to do with Grant in that respect. In fact, Kerrin tries to make a pass at Grant and he didn't respond and that was the very last straw and she ends up running off with her Dad's knife and kills herself.

The family has lots of hardships as the depression comes on. It describes the months of no rain and how it affects their farm and their livelihood. One night a fire breaks out on their property and they all run out to put it out and while they're doing that their mom catches fire and later dies from those injuries. There are stories of neighboring farmers who also have nothing. One is a family who is renting a farm and just can't make ends meet to pay the rent and they are kicked off their property. It's a sad view of life during this stage of the depression and what they had to endure and how they had hope that it would end soon.

I only gave this book two balls of yarn mostly because it was sad, and I think I'm tired of reading sad books. It was also written very abstractly. For the first third of the book I wasn't sure if I was reading about the present or past. Near the end of the book I began to understand the writing and really started enjoying it and then it ended. It was hard for me to feel engaged or to care about the characters. The only character who caused me to feel anything was Kerrin and she only made me uncomfortable. I actually bought this book because it was so hard to find here, but I think it might be one I'll give to the Friends of the Library for the book sale, not my favorite.

Lamb in His Bosom

I have dreams, one of the things that I dream about doing sometimes is living in the middle of nowhere long ago, before modern conveniences and living off the land. Well, that dream is no longer there after reading this book. This book centers around one woman Cean (said see ann) and her life. At the beginning of the book she gets married to a good man named Lonzo and they are heading to their new home, a brand new cabin built in the middle of the Georgia woods. Cean is young (I don't remember if it tells how old she was, but I think she was around 16 or 17), but she is excited about the prospects of her new life coming up. Her husband is good to her and they are quite happy and seem to have everything they need. She is soon pregnant with their first and it spends a lot of time on how she feels being pregnant and then the horrors of delivery. She is not anxious to have another but soon conceives and bears another daughter. After her second child is born she returns to her happy free self until she becomes pregnant with her third which she is not happy about. The story that got me the most happens when her third child, a son, is born. Lonzo is away to the coast where he goes once a year for two weeks to trade their goods from their farm for other things they need. She went into labor early and worked through it for the day with her two daughters running around. It is so hot that the little girls are not wearing any clothes and they have the windows and doors open. As night falls she puts the girls to sleep on her bed (again not wearing any clothes, it's so hot) and around midnight she bears her son. She is so exhausted, for obvious reasons, that she lays on her bed with her newborn son and begins to fall asleep. She remembers that she left the windows open but decided she didn't need to worry because the hound dogs were quiet. Of course, right then the dogs started howling and she realizes that the mountain lions (or painters as she called them) could smell the blood from the delivery of her son and were drawn to her house. She gets out of bed to close the windows and the door, and after she does she turns around only to find a mountain lion in her home standing between her and her newborn baby and two older daughters. She grabs the gun and shoots the mountain lion and then climbs into bed. It made me thankful for hospitals and epidurals and that I don't have to worry about wild animals coming into my house. Also, I've been imagining the scenario and realized that there were probably flies everywhere, so it makes me also grateful for screens on my windows and door.

Times goes on and she ends up bearing around 16 children. The reason I gave this book three stars was because it is so sad. She is surrounded by sorrow and death. Her brother is an adulterer and leaves his wife to go to California and his wife marries his brother. Her parents die and another time Lonzo is gone to the coast she has 14 or so children at this point her house burns down in the middle of the night and she has to take her 14 kids and walk 6 miles to her parent's house to stay until Lonzo could come home and build them a new house.

This book cured me of ever wanting to live in the wilderness. In my mind it sounds so ideal. Surrounded by nature, living off the land, working hard to provide for my family, the only sounds are sounds of nature, etc. But this book brought me back to reality and what it really means, bugs everywhere, wild animals, no air conditioner, no dishwasher or washer and dryer, no lights that come on with the flip of a switch, no running water straight from the faucet , and most importantly no flushing toilets.

There was one thing that struck me about this book. Cean loved her children very much, it showed in how she grieved for those she lost and how she thought about her children, but I don't think she enjoyed them much. At this time her children were there to work for her, her oldest cooked the meals and cared for the younger children, the boys worked out in the field for her husband. She didn't have time, like I do now, to stop and play with her children to tickle them and tease them. I love being with my children, talking to them, laughing at their jokes and just learning who they are. This is another thing I didn't think of. Like I said she was so busy doing her work, cleaning, spinning cotton for clothes, cooking, and caring for the animals that it consumed her time and all those children were a burden to her because they were mostly girls, which meant they couldn't be out in the field helping their father. Another thing that I'm grateful for living in this time is education. She did know how to read, but she had never gone to school and neither do her children. Well, actually they did for a few short weeks until she developed a grudge against the new priest who was running the school (she actually marries him later on) and then she pulled them out to make a point. I'm glad that my children get an education and for the opportunity to see them learn.

This book opened my eyes to reality and how much I do have to be grateful for, so maybe I should give it five stars instead for doing that for me.

The Store

I'm still not sure what to write or think about this book. It is a gray book. The main character Colonel Miltiades Vaiden is a gray person. By this I mean he is honest and brave but he's also domineering and highly prejudiced, which is according to the time and place that he lived. This story takes place shortly after the Civil War in Alabama. Colonel Vaiden was the leader of the Klan where he lived and also ran a cotton plantation where he was in charge of all the slaves. The book starts by telling about how after the war ended he didn't have any prospects of being great; he's married to an overweight woman named Ponny (he married her for money which he never received), and he is very poor and living in a shabby house. The whole town is anxious for Grover Cleveland to be elected as President of the U.S. because he's a democrat and they think he will help the economy of the South. On the other hand, all the African Americans there are afraid that they will have to be slaves again if a democrat is elected to office.

Col. Vaiden has a mortal enemy named Mr. Handback. Years before Col. Vaiden's family had a great cotton harvest and "sold" it to Mr. Handback in the morning of the same day that Mr. Handback declared bankruptcy and the Vaidens were never paid the money they earned. They blamed this incident of why Co. Vaiden had a lack of prestige and income. Col. Vaiden, however wants to start a store and goes to work for Mr. Handback in his store to see how it is done. All the African Americans go to him at the store because he's honest with them. He will give them a pound of bacon if they ask for it and Mr. Handback asks him to stop. This is the most irritating thing about the book-- the treatment of these ex-slaves. It really opened my eyes to the struggle that they had after they were set free and what they had to go through to make a voice for themselves. Even though they were free, they were still treated like slaves and the older men and women felt they had to continue to act this way to live a happy life.

Meanwhile we are introduced to Gracie Vaiden who was a slave for the Vaiden family and her son, Toussaint. We find out that Toussaint is actually the Colonel's son, though neither of them know it. The night before Col. Vaiden was to be married to a rich girl, Drusilla Laceback, she ran off with another man. In his rage, Col. Vaiden rapes Gracie and she becomes pregnant. Poor Gracie. She was a "companion" for a captain in the army (this is who Col. Vaiden thinks is the father of Toussaint) and for Mr. Handback. She is barely dark at all, there is so much Vaiden blood in her and Toussaint is almost completely white. He dreams of moving to the North where he believes he could live as a white man and no one would know.

While Col. Vaiden is working for Mr. Handback he basically steals all of Mr. Handback's cotton and sells it. He makes over forty thousand dollars, then for some reason after he gets the money he goes to confront Mr. Handback. By this time Mr. Handback already knows what happened (he originally thought the cotton had washed away in a big rainstorm) and they get into a fight. A young law student (I forgot his name, sorry) comes and tries to help them come to an agreement. Col. Vaiden has to spend the night in jail. The next morning the young law student comes and tells the Col that he only has to give Mr. Handback ten thousand dollars and sign a document that he won't press any charges and they'll forget the whole thing. After he gets out of jail thinking he got off pretty free he finds that his wife had a miscarriage and died because she was frightened by the sheriff and Mr. Handback who were looking for the money and digging in their back yard. He's really not too saddened by Ponny's death and is now wealthy.

All the while the Colonel has a nephew who came to Florence to go to college and he is boarding with the Colonels brother and his wife. Jerry (this is the nephew's name) is odd. He declares he is an atheist and has a desire to reach a higher power. He knows that if he can overcome certain emotions, such as, lust, anger, revenge, that a wise man will come to him and tell him the secrets of life and he will be elevated to greatness. Unfortunately he meets Sydna Crowninshield who is Drusilla's daughter. He falls in love with her even though she is a few years older than him.

Well, the Colonel begins to buy property and buys the old plantation that he used to run (the Lacefield's, all these families are intertwined) from Mr. Handback because he is broke and needs to sell things off. The Col puts Gracie and Toussaint out there to run the plantation and they do a great job of it. So the Colonel thinks that now that he is wealthy and has all this land and he also opened a store in the town that Drusilla will marry him. He begins to go to the Crowninshield home to get back into their good graces. I need to mention that Sydna always looked to the Colonel as her protector. She was told by her mother that the Colonel was there when Sydna's father died on the battlefield and asked the Colonel to look after his daughter, so she admired the Colonel greatly. When the Colonel asks Drusilla to marry him she refuses and he finds out that she believes her daughter is in love with the Colonel so he asks Sydna if she is and if she would marry him and so she does. It never tells how old he is, just middle age and Sydna is in her mid-twenties, but they do get married. At one point I thought Jerry and Sydna might run off before the wedding, but they don't and she marries him.

At this time Mr. Handback is depressed because he is so poor and losing so much money. He goes to Gracie and asks her to run away with him to Mexico where they could have a normal life together. She is about to, but tells him that she let the Colonel hide the money he stole from Mr. Handback in her house and he gets angry at her betrayal to him and he goes out and kills himself. Toussaint meets a young school teacher and marries her and they begin to run the plantation.

The young law student and Mr. Handback's son accuse the Colonel of not having the correct deed to the land and so he's about to loose it. The postmaster, who is a character in himself, but I feel like this is getting too long so I won't go into him too much, approaches the Colonel and tells him he was visited by someone who was dead and had a message for the Colonel that what he needs is in the cash drawer. The Colonel goes to his store and searches his cash drawer but there isn't anything in there. The Colonel now has to sell off some belongings to make up for the money he owes to everyone. He goes to the plantation and tells Toussaint and his wife, Lucy, that they need to bring all the farming tools to town so he can sell them. They go to the young now attorney (he passed the bar) and they file a suit against the Colonel saying that he was going against the contract. This enrages the town and they go to court. The ending is strange and I think a little strained. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. The town freaks out about two thieves who the Sheriff brought in and puts in the jail. These thieves are alluded to throughout the book, but they never actually come into Florence, so I'm not sure why they are all so angry about these two men. But they attack the jail, but Toussaint is in there awaiting the judge's ruling on his suit against the Colonel. The town people are waiting for the Governor to leave the town so they can lynch these two thieves, around four o'clock. Gracie goes to the Colonel and tells him that Toussaint is his son and they go to save him from the jail but are too late. They see three men hanging from the tree. While the Colonel is grieving and thinking over the events of the day one of Mr. Handback's clerk comes to him and says that he was going through Mr. Handbacks documents and found the deed the Colonel needed in the cash drawer.

The story of this was good. It was very unpredictable. As I was reading I thought I knew what was going to happen, but something entirely different and rather strange would happen. The whole story of Jerry and his enlightenment seemed to be a strange character for the time and place that this novel is set. I think that it was interesting to read the social change that was slowly coming through this book, but irritating at the same time at the white men who felt that the n-----s (yes, this is what they called them through the whole book) shouldn't be educated because nothing good could come from it and that they should be kept in their place of manual labor for the white man. It makes me admire those of the African American race who stood up for themselves and made a change.

Review of The Good Earth

This is the second time that I've read this book and I've enjoyed it thoroughly both times. I love the underlining message of the book about keeping oneself busy. An idle mind belongs to the devil, isn't that right? This is what the book teaches us. It's about a man living in China named Wang Lung; he is a poor farmer and he is getting married to a servant from the rich man's house. The earth and his farm are his world. He buys land from the rich man and having this land and remembering this land is what carries him through a horrible famine. They have to leave their farm and go south, otherwise they would have all died. While living in the south they have to beg for food and he runs a rickshaw through the city. When a riot happens and the city's peasants storm the rich man's house, Wang Lung and also his wife, Olan, come across money and jewels; they can't wait to get back to their farm and their land.

Since Wang Lung is now rich, he can hire people to work his land and care for his animals. He adds rooms onto his house and wears better clothes, but he is bored. He feels too rich for the normal tea house and so he goes to a more upscale tea house and gets into trouble. He never thought his wife, Olan, was beautiful but he meets a concubine who is beautiful and he falls in love with her and buys her and moves her into a wing of his house. He is a rich man and all rich men have concubines. Poor Olan who has done so much for Wang Lung and his house is forced to live with this woman, but she refuses to wait on her or cook her meals or anything of the sort.

Wang Lung soon realizes that he can't make everyone happy. His sons cause problems for him and his uncle and family move in with them and are not good people, but he feels under pressure to take them in or else the local gang will rob him and take all his possessions. Soon his oldest son who is so concerned about appearances talks his father into moving into the rich man's house, where Olan used to work. He buys the house and they fix it up. Before they move though Olan dies. This woman has been through so much. She did so much for Wang Lung, but he never appreciated her. He only felt a small amount of grief when she died. As time goes on he begins to realize that riches aren't what make you happy. His family who all lives together in the big house are bickering and his concubine has grown fat and he doesn't go to her anymore. He does have a last fling with a very young servant girl, which makes my stomach turn and my anger boil: can't he control himself? Seriously. After their little affair he looks to her as a daughter (weird) and he only finds solace in her and his daughter who has mental problems because of the famine she survived.

Soon he grows old and feels he is going to die. All he wants to do in the end is get back to the earth. He moves back out to his little house with his daughter and the young girl to live out the rest of his days. As I mentioned earlier I love the underlining theme of the book, which is to keep thing simple. Money doesn't buy you happiness, what brings you happiness is work and providing for oneself, not being idle. This book will always be a classic because of its timeless theme and message.

Review of Years of Grace

I connected with the main character, Jane Ward, so many times in this book. The author must have been a little older in life before she wrote this (I need to look into that) because she is able to write her story from the point of view of the main character, Jane, from age 14 to age 51 and in each stage in her life the writing makes sense. At one point when she was in her mid 30s, her kids come running in from the bus and one of them needs new shoes, another wants to take his rabbits to school and the other wants friends over and they are all asking her at once. The dialog at this point really rang true to me: "'Hush!' said Jane. 'Pick up your coat, Jenny, and hang it in the closet. Steve - your books don't belong on the floor. Yes Cicily, you can telephone Aunt Isabel tonight and ask them.'" Then she sends them upstairs and sighs and goes in the other room, sits down and thinks "they were terrible noisy. They never seemed to behave like other people's children." I think that anyone who has children has had this conversation on a daily basis when they come home from school. Reading her viewpoint of motherhood, I totally related to her.

This book is about a girl, Jane (as I mentioned before) and it starts out when she is 14 years old and has fallen in love with a young boy, Andre, who is sixteen. Before long, Andre is moving to Paris to study to become a sculptor and asks Jane to marry him (at this time she is seventeen and he is nineteen). She of course realizes that she is in love with him and wants to marry him, her mother freaks out, but her father (I think he is my favorite character in the entire book) handles it well. They decide that it wouldn't work out and that they shouldn't have any contact with each other until Jane is twenty one. This is in contrast when Jane's own daughter, Cicily, wants to marry at the age of seventeen and Jane and her husband are not able to stop it, a difference in parenting and loss of influence, I suppose.

Jane and Andre obey her parents wishes and in the mean time Jane meets another young man, Stephen, who falls in love with her and pursues her for a couple of years and asks her to marry him at least a dozen times. When Jane is actually twenty one she gets a letter from Andre and he tells her that he won't be able to come to Chicago because he has a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to Rome for two years to study with the best instructors. She apparently felt betrayed or offended; if it were me I think I would have understood. But she decided then and there that she would marry Stephen. If Andre couldn't make the effort to come to Chicago to see her then he must not care; I think it was a rash decision and not entirely a wise one, although I did like Stephen a lot.

This book is divided into three sections, the first is named Andre, second is Jimmy, and third is Cicily, Jenny and Steve. The second book is where it kind of started to disappoint me and the whole theme of the book comes out in one little sentence that her father says to her out of concern, "Avoid the appearance of evil". This is something that I think Jane doesn't understand. She agrees to help her old college roommate's husband to feel welcome in Chicago. As she does this she spends entirely way to much time alone with him and he is far too flirtatious with her. If she would have thought to heed her father's advice, she probably never would have fallen in love with Jimmy and avoided a difficult time in her life. She doesn't seem to mind Jimmy's attention though, she thinks it is all a bit of a game and before she knows it she has fallen in love with Jimmy and he asks her to run away with him, which she agrees to do. When she wakes up in the morning, however, she realizes that she can't do it and tells him so. He then runs off to travel the world, joins the army and dies in the war in France. She never tells her friend about her love affair with her husband, but instead lets her friend believe he died an honorable and faithful husband. I'm not sure if that was the right choice or not.

The last book is all about her children and who they become. Her daughter Cicily marries young, as mentioned before, and then she begins a love affair with her cousin's husband. She acts just as her mother acted, but I don't think that Jane is aware of it. She thinks Cicily is horrible for her actions. Her other daughter Jenny doesn't want to marry, she wants to run a dog kennel in New York with her college roommate. Her son moves to Boston (where her husband's family is living) and works at a bank. I don't want to give the whole book away for those of you who want to read it, but it does end up well. One warning: you have to understand French in order to understand the ending. She finally does meet up with Andre in the end and goes with him to his studio and he says something to her in French and it offends her and she cares no more for him. I don't speak French and so therefore I didn't get what was going on. I did look it up on Google translation and this is what he said, "Love makes time pass, time makes love pass". I guess she was offended because after all this time his love had passed or maybe he thought her love for him had passed. I don't know.

One other thing that bothered me about this is how nonchalant her husband was about everything. Once they got married Stephen's character took a back seat. The night Jimmy asked her to run away with him she tried to get Stephen to go walking with them (I do have to admit that she tried really hard not to be alone with Jimmy and she was very faithful until the night she said she would run away with Jimmy) but Stephen just told her to go with out him. He was a little unaware of what was going on. His wife was spending all this time with Jimmy, going to lunch with him, having him come out to their house for long periods of time, etc. Even the nurse and the maid had an idea of what was going on. Maybe he just had a lot of trust in his wife and was never concerned about it.

All in all this book was enjoyable to read and quite interesting. I enjoyed it for the most part. I do have to admit that it kind of dragged on in the end and a lot of the book was her thoughts instead of conversations, but it was still good.

Review of Laughing Boy

This book was in the Young Adult section of my library. This surprised me because I thought most Pulitzer Prize winning books were written for adults and I think this one was, but was in the wrong section. As I read it I felt strongly that I wouldn't want my young adult reading it. It wasn't a bad book at all, but the underlying theme was questionable.

This book is about a young Navajo boy named Laughing Boy. He fell in love with a girl named Slim Girl. Their meeting and courtship was unusual to us, but it must have been common at that time for their culture. Slim Girl had been taken away from her parents as a young girl to California and raised to be white. At the time of their meeting she is trying to get back to her roots and needs Laughing Boy to help her. I think that initially that's why she wanted to marry Laughing Boy. She saw that he had interest in her and she thought he could help her, but she does fall in love with him.

While she was living in California with the white folks she met a rancher that she fell in love with, had relations with and became pregnant. He of course left her, because in this book white people are bad people. She was lonely and pregnant (she did loose the baby) and came to a small town and was helped by the local prostitutes who of course were white. They taught her their trade and she realized that she could use rich men to get what she wanted. She continued this practice so that her and Laughing Boy could have lots of money before they returned to live with his family. Unfortunately, she was caught in the act and Laughing Boy had to do the honorable thing for their culture and that was to kill her, but he loved her so much he couldn't and just shot her in the arm with his bow and arrow.

When he returned to their house to pack up and leave she was there and told him her whole story. He forgave her and they decided to go back to be with his family. Unfortunately on the way a jealous Navajo sees them and kills her.

It was good for me to read this story because I grew up in a town surrounded by Native Americans and I never really gained an appreciation for their culture. Through this book I was able to see into their early culture and gain an admiration for the Native Americans. The main theme of Laughing Boy is a love story. It's set in a place where true love seems unlikely, but these two do truly love each other and find joy in building their world. Many times Slim Girl wants to change, but she is able to get money and other things that made their life simpler. She does try to get back to her roots by weaving Navajo rugs, she learns to do it well enough she is able to sell them and make money with them. After she is killed Laughing Boy has his mourning period and travels on to a new village where he is unknown and decides to settle there. He decides that Slim Girl wants him to live on and be happy and that's what he does.

Scarlet Sister Mary Review

This book is about an African American girl, Mary, who lives in a community that is an old plantation, several decades after slavery is abolished. The big house of the plantation is run down and not in use anymore but there is a community that lives in the old slave quarters. Overall it seems like a happy life they have. They work hard and care for one another. Mary lives with an old lady, Maum Hannah, and her son Budda Ben (who is crippled because his mom dropped him when he was a baby). I don't think she's related to them, but something happened to her parents and so she comes to live with them. At the start of the book Mary is around 15 or 16 and she is getting ready to marry the man she is in love with, July. She is also a member of the church and is a good person, but on her wedding night she sins, by dancing, and is kicked out of the church. She is also pregnant before she gets married and this is where she becomes Scarlet Sister Mary. She and July are happy for a while, but then he gets lured away by another woman who is in love with him, Cinder, and July leaves Mary. Mary becomes bitter and just begins to sleep around with whatever man she can get (with the help of a love potion given to her by a witch doctor). She begins to have many children, in the end I think she ends up with 9. She doesn't seem to care too much for doing what's right and kind of laughs at people who thinks she is sinning. In the end of the book she has twins and her grown daughter also has a baby girl, who she hides in the corner and is ashamed to claim, but Mary takes her in and cares for her like she's her own. July comes back after many years and tries to get Mary to take him back, but she refuses him and sends him away. Also her oldest son, Unexpected or Unex for short (and the only one who is July's), comes back and he has a baby with him. The baby's mother died (he was married to her, which I thought was nice) and he just couldn't care for it alone. He gets sick shortly after arriving back home and dies. Mary is so sad and realizes that she is really a sinner. After they bury Unex, she has a vision of nine white cloths (one for each of her children, because they were all conceived in sin)and they all have scarlet stripes on them. She has to pray and pray for forgiveness until they all become clean and she is forgiven. She then joins back up with the church and is baptized again, because she is the worst sinner any of the other church members have seen.

The ending of the book is the only reason I gave this book two balls of yarn. I liked the overall message of the book. That although she lived in sin she could be forgiven, but only after she humbled herself and prayed for forgiveness all day and night. Otherwise the book kind of drags on and often repeats itself. When she is upset after July leaves it goes on and on about her sorrow and her despair. I got to a point where I thought, "just move on, girl!". I liked the characters and the story line, but the book would have been half the size if the author didn't repeat the same emotions and the same situations over and over. I did like how industrious everyone was and how they all helped each other. If someone was sick or needed help, a neighbor or friend was there immediately to help. This helped me to care about the characters, especially Mary who took in all those babies. She had twins and then her daughter's daughter and then her son's daughter. She had four babies all at once and didn't even think twice about how she was going to care for them and if she was going to get any breaks, she just took them in. I didn't however like her philosophy of men, that they would stay until the next great thing (or in other words, woman) came along and then they would move on, so a girl should just please him one time and let him move on, this I don't agree with - for obvious reasons.

Bridge of San Luis Rey Review

So just when I thought I had the Pulitzer books figured out, I came to this book. All the books until now have been about the shaping of America, the wars, politics, and social issues. This book so far is the exception.

The book centers on a bridge (obviously The Bridge of San Luis Rey) in Peru. It is a very old and sacred bridge that the people in Lima love and respect. One day the bridge suddenly falls and no one understands why. There is a priest who witnesses the bridge falling and decides it is an act of God. Five people were on the bridge and fell to their death. The priest wonders why these five people were chosen to die by this act of God and so he does great research into each of these people. That is what the book is about, it's about the lives of the five people and what was happening in their lives leading up to their death. It ends with a look into the life of the priest.

When I understood what the book was going to be about, I was excited. I love learning about people's lives. Unfortunately, the writing was a little abstract for me and a bit hard to understand. I got most of the stories, but I failed to feel a connection with the characters because the writing didn't flow for me. I felt that the writing was supposed to be deep and make you ponder and think about life and death and if there really are accidents or acts of God. I did think about it, but not long and hard. It didn't move me to do that, it just made me wonder.

It was an interesting book and a good way to have a look into the Peruvian culture, something I don't know a lot about; maybe if I did know more about it then I would appreciate this book more. It's a short book and one I would recommend, but not highly.

Early Autumn Review

I actually finished this book about a week ago and I've been struggling with what to write about it. It wasn't a bad book, in fact I enjoyed reading it very much, but it also wasn't a memorable book. As I've remembered I need to write this review I had to stop and think, "What was it about?"

This book reminds me much of other romantic mystery type books I've read in the past. It centers around a woman named Olivia Pentland. She marries into the Pentland family and is in a very unhappy marriage. Her husband, Anson, appears to be self centered and self involved. He doesn't see what's happening around him. Olivia and her father-in-law, John, have a special bond; he only trusts Olivia with his concerns and when he passes away leaves everything to her instead of his son. He also confides in Olivia and tells her things that no one else knows. There is of course a meddling old aunt, Aunt Cassie, who tries to make everyone's business her own and also a cousin of the family, Sabine, who left and went abroad, had a failed marriage, and a daughter, and came back to make fun of the family and try to make their lives miserable. One of the themes that I liked in the book was between these two women. They both disliked each other and disapproved of each other's way of life, but in the end they were very similar. As John Pentland points out, Sabine is Aunt Cassie turned inside out.

Olivia is miserable and unhappy. She wants to escape from the routine of her life. There are many things that keep her there though. One is her son, Jack, who has a heart problem and eventually dies; another is her daughter, Sybil, who has just returned from school abroad and is looking for a husband. Another is her mother-in-law who is crazy. She lives in a wing of the house under the constant care of a nurse and doesn't come out. Most people can't visit her, but Olivia can talk to her and can sooth her. There is a reason that the woman is shut up, but for those of you who want to read the book I won't tell it. I don't want to completely give the book away. However, she and Olivia also know some family secrets;only they know them and they're bad enough that they could ruin the Pentland family.

There is another man who is an outsider to the Pentland family who buys up some of the property. His name is Michael O'Hara. Michael is an Irishman and was raised in the streets and lived a rough life, but he has fought his way through and came into some money and is now trying his hand at politics. However, he has a problem: he is in love with Olivia. They begin riding together and eventually she falls in love with him, too. Now, just an observation, but 9 out of 10 of the Pulitzer books I've read have had something to do with an affair happening. I don't know if this is a requirement, or just a coincidence, but it's just sad. Anyway, he asks her to run away with him and she wants to. At this point in the book your not sure what to root for. You want Olivia to be happy and to have a happy life, but you don't want her to be unfaithful to her husband - even though he's kind of a loser.

Olivia decides to wait until her daughter, who has fallen madly in love with a young man, elopes and then she is going to run off with Michael. Somehow her husband comes out of his hole long enough to notice that something is going on between Olivia and Michael and approaches his wife. She asks for a divorce and he refuses so she tells him she is unhappy and that Michael could make her happy. The next day after her daughter runs off to get married, she goes out to find Michael to tell him her decision. While she is doing this she sees the stable man carrying someone on a gurney and she knows that Mr. Pentland is dead. (I forgot to mention that Mr. Pentland had a long time mistress or I guess you could say a long time good woman friend, because he shares with Olivia that he has never been unfaithful to his wife. ) At this point Olivia knows what she has to do. She tells Michael O'Hara he has to leave and she decides she has to stay. She has to be the glue to hold the family together. She also looks at John Pentland and how he has stayed faithful to his wife under hard circumstances and realizes that she admired him for this and feels that in the end she wouldn't be happy with herself if she didn't follow his example.

I'm glad that she stayed. It made me proud of her and glad that a book took that approach rather than the approach of instant gratification. Maybe she would have been happier with Michael, but she needed to stay with the Pentlands.

This book had a great story line and kept my interest. I was concerned for some of the characters and annoyed by the annoying ones. It just didn't seem as memorable and dynamic as you would expect an award winning book to be. This book will be on my like list, but not at the top.

A Break From Books

I will probably post my review for Early Autumn this coming week so look for that. Right now we're going to take a break from my book reviews for a recipe review. The other day my husband saw a post on CNN.com about a vintage recipe. You can read the article here http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/02/11/vintage-cookbook-vault-franks-a-lot/?hpt=Sbin. The recipe is for Frank and Corn Crown.

Now my husband and I love to cook and try new recipes so when we saw this we decided we had to try it. I was convinced that it wouldn't be too bad, my husband on the other hand was a little concerned and my kids were just plain excited. I mean, come on a crown made of hot dogs! What could be better? It was easy to make and kind of fun too (as a side note we omitted the green peppers as I have a complete dislike for cooked peppers ever since my second pregnancy).

What did everyone think of it? Well, the kids LOVED the hotdogs, each of them ate at least 3 of them but I'm not sure they liked the corn stuffing in the middle. What did the adults think? It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't that good. My main problem with it was the texture of the corn stuff in the middle, it was a little mushy and so I had a problem eating it. So my final thoughts - I think that this recipe is better if it was kept in the vault for good.

Early Autumn visited

So I'm about half of the way done with this new book and it is complete opposite of the previous book, Arrowsmith. The language is very emotional and flowery and detailed. There is a little Jane Eyre type mystery in it, as in there is a mad woman living in a wing of the huge house. I have been enjoying this book so far. Today while on the internet I decided to look up the author, Louis Bromfield. I don't know what I was thinking, maybe that the name was Lois, but I thought the author was a woman. According to Wikipedia, Louis Bromfield is a man, which makes since. It has changed the voice of the book for me, the language is now oddly flowery and emotional. For a woman it seems normal, but for a man, maybe a little over the top? I don't know, in any case, I'm enjoying the book.

Arrowsmith Review

Well, I finished it. This was a seriously difficult book for me to read and I'll tell you why (since this is the purpose of the blog!!). I am not interested in medical science to begin with and also I've discovered that I really like character novels, which this is not. Sure it has characters in it and follows one man through his career, but there is no real development of the main character, Martin Arrowsmith. When Martin's wife died I wasn't so sad, in fact I wasn't a hundred percent sure she did die. The book is not only written about science it is written very scientifically, just the facts.

Martin is a doctor who in college has his ideals and is forced to change those ideals several times throughout the book. At one point after he and Leora (his first wife) are married he moves to a small town to be a small town doctor and for a short time lives with his in-laws. This was not what I expected him to do and in fact after a few years does not turn out well for him, so he moves on to work for the Public Health official in Iowa. His boss, Mr. Pickerbaugh, is a politician. He writes silly little poems about health and makes public appearances to promote health. He's a loud, rather silly man and Martin doesn't think too highly of him. Mr. Pickerbaugh ends up being elected to congress and so Martin takes his place and he is more interested in his research than he is in kissing up to the public so again he needs to move on. He moves to Chicago to work in an expensive, "catering to the rich" type medical office and does okay, but he gets sick of the rich people and just wants to research and do his work so he finally ends up in New York working with Dr. Gottlieb (see my previous post) at McGurk Industries where he is able to just do research and is finally truly happy. Through all of this his wife (they are unable to have children) follows him around and supports him better than he deserves, especially since he casually cheats on her (mostly in thought and slightly in action) with Mr. Pickerbaugh's daughter, practically in front of Leora's face. She is truly the example of a supporting wife, but in my opinion she's a little too supportive and needs a little bit more gumption to stand up to Martin and give him a good talking to.

While at McGurk he finds a cure for the plague and goes to an island in the West Indies (his wife follows him there too so she can nurse him if he gets ill) to cure the people there of the plague and conduct his experiments. I actually enjoyed this part of the book. There was a little bit more focus on characters and the sorrows of the plague (kind of sad I enjoyed the sad part the best-- hmmm what does this say about me? Again Martin meets a woman while he's away from his wife (she stayed in another part of the island where it was supposed to be safer) he casually cheats again (mainly kissing and dreaming of her) and then runs to bring his wife with him and finds her dead with the plague. He mourns and kind of ruins his experiments and then returns to New York.

I could go on and on telling the story, but this is how it sums up. He gets married again to the woman he met in the West Indies; she is very wealthy and he finds himself in the world that he has always detested. It is a world where people are more concerned with money and finding favor than they are with the research and science. In the end I really didn't like Martin because of his final decision. In truth I never really did find myself liking him much, but when he decided he needed to work full time and so he left his wife and son to move to a cabin in Vermont with a fellow worker to do research uninterrupted, that was the last straw. A man who writes a note to his wife and says "maybe I'll see my son when he's grown, he can come out and work with me" is truly not a man, he is a coward. Don't get me wrong I'm thankful for the people who have done this kind of research which allows for immunizations for my children and cures people of horrid diseases, but I hope none of them acted so selfishly to do this.

If you choose to read this book I suggest you do it with a medical thesaurus nearby and many hours to devote yourself to reading a scientific tale. All in all, not one of my favorites.

You Can't Judge a Character

If you're looking for a review of Arrowsmith, you'll have to wait a couple of more weeks. This book has been a challenge for me. I really like books where I can identify with the main character or I actually care about the main character, I'm not there yet. I feel like this book is a chore, but we'll get into that more when I review it.

What I want to write about this time is one of the characters in the book. His name is Max Gottlieb and he is a professor of bacteriology at the university Martin Arrowsmith (the main character) attends. Martin has a fascination with Dr. Gottlieb, but through a falling out they separate and go their own ways. The author takes a break from Martin and focuses on Dr. Gottlieb. When I first started to read this chapter I was not at all interested. I pictured Dr. Gottlieb as a dark, bitter, angry man and maybe a little bit dirty and smelly. No one likes him, his home life is not the greatest and yet he deserves it in a way because he doesn't try to get people to like him and he is very harsh and just plain mean. As I followed him through some rough stages in his life - loosing his job, loosing his wife (she passed away), taking a job that questioned his ideals - I began to find myself caring for this character. When he did finally get the job he longed for I celebrated and found myself truly happy that he could find some happiness and satisfaction in his life. He has now made a comeback in the book and is still the cranky, stern man, but I don't mind it as much and I was actually glad to have him back in the story. Have any of you met a character like this in a book? If so, which book and who is the character?