Arrowsmith Beginnings

Okay folks, I think I have found the first Pulitzer that has me a bit baffled. So far I'm not too excited about this one, mostly because there are a lot of big medical words I don't understand. I get the basic underlining story, but I'm afraid a lot is going over my head because I don't know what he is talking about. So far the story is about a young man who is going to medical school because he has always wanted to be a doctor, thanks to an old doctor in his hometown that he assisted. While at medical school he realizes that he doesn't agree with all the commercialism that comes with being a doctor, namely getting patients and where to practice to earn the most money, etc. He loves the science and is in awe of a professor named Gottlieb who is a bacteriologist and Martin Arrowsmith (he's the main character by the way) wants to be just like him. He just got out of a huge bind with two girls and seems to be on tract to being happy. I'm only about 76 pages in and feeling a big overwhelmed. I really like to read books blind, meaning I don't want to know what it is about before I start, that way I don't have any expectations for the book. I've really enjoyed this approach with these Pulitzer books, so we'll see where this one leads.

So Big Review

There are three possible morals of the book and I can't decide which is the right one. The first moral is to listen to your mother, she is always right. The mother, Selina, who is my favorite character of the book, gives her son some advice and of course it pans out exactly the way she says. This goes along with the second moral, which is: if you want something, work for it. Selina's son, Dirk, studies to be an architect and gets frustrated because it's not going anywhere and the woman he is in love with, Paula, won't marry anyone who isn't making millions; she just wants him if he is making money. After the war he decides to give up his goal of being an architect to sell bonds because he can make his yearly salary from his architect job in two months time. Unfortunately, Paula marries an older man who is a multimillionaire. The third moral is to be yourself and not follow the crowd. This is something I've noticed happening around me. Many of the homes I go into look so similar, there is no personality. I couldn't tell you what the people love or who they are except that they are following the trends and are trying to be like everyone else. The author, Edna Ferber, feels the same way about the wealthy people she writes about in her book. She paints them all as just trying to be like the others in the way they dress and act, and the activities they partake in. Dirk gets caught up in all this crowd. He becomes very successful and many of the young women would like to catch his eye. Paula and Dirk begin to spend lots of time together, she starts to control him, and they start meeting in secret places. It never actually says that they have an affair, but it's heading that way when Dirk meets another woman. Her name is Dallas O'Mara, she is an artist and is not concerned with what other people are doing; she's her own person. She is much like Selina in that she looks for the beauty in everything and sees it in places the rest of society doesn't. Dirk realizes that this woman is who he wants to be with and Paula begins to get on his nerves. What was the advice his mother gave him? "Someday you will want beauty and she will not want you." This is how the book ends. Dirk views Dallas as beauty, he loves all that she is and how she looks at the world. He loves how she doesn't follow the crowd and how she is her own person. He loves her, she likes him but chooses to go to Paris to study portrait painting. Her reason for not loving him back? He didn't work for what he wanted. He gave up architecture because he wasn't successful fast enough, she wished he would have stuck it out and worked hard for it. She mentions his hands how they're smooth and not bumpy from work, she would like his hands to be bumpy.

This story is actually only about the last third of the book. The beginning of the book is a portrait of the Dutch culture and the life of truck farmers. It's a story of a woman Selina, who is told life is an adventure and she should try other things, when she does just that she ends up married to a poor farmer and shortly after that a widow. She takes those lemons and makes lemon crème pie out of it. I love her attitude, her love of beauty in everything, her strength and her intelligence. If the story was all about her I would have given the book five balls of yarn, she is a great character and one I will remember.

So Big So Far

As I began to read this book, I wasn't sure if I would like it. The author skipped from one character to another so much that I was unsure which character the book was about; it caused me much confusion. As I continued reading I realized that the book is named after a nickname of the main character's son. The nickname came from the game you play with babies: "how big are you? Soooo Big!". The son’s real name is Dirk.

This book has made me reflect on my own life and how blessed I am. It tells the story of a young girl who marries a farmer and what the life of a farm wife in the late 1800s is like. As I read the book lying on my couch, while my two younger kids are having quiet time, I realize that I have no room to complain about the small amount of work required of me. Often I feel too busy to do the simplest task or I complain that my appliance that washes the dishes so I don't have to, doesn't work so well. No more. She describes feelings and emotions so well, it's not too hard to feel the exhaustion as well as the emotions of love that the characters feel.

I love that so far the main character Selina is very head-strong and independent, unlike many of the other farm wives in her community. One week after her husband dies she is at the market selling the vegetables from her farm—the only woman in a “man's world”. Her vision of what the farm could be shows her willingness to think outside the box, where her husband (obviously before his death) doesn't want to change from the way his father farmed the land. As the future plays out her visions prove to be correct and profitable.

Dirk is away at college now. I don't think the author thinks too much of young college coeds. She kind of goes on a rant for about three pages talking how they don't value their college education very much. So we'll see what Dirk becomes in his life, he doesn't know what career path he wants to take, he just knows he wants to be "successful" or rich. So we'll see how it continues, stay tuned.

New Approach

Okay, so I'm trying to make this blog a little more interesting so from now on I'm going to review the book as I read it. I haven't started the next book, but will probably tomorrow. When I read something interesting I will post about it. If any of you would like to read along and discuss it with me as I read that would be lots of fun.

The next book that I'm going to read is So Big by Edna Ferber. I hope you read along and make lots of comments! Until then, happy reading.

Able McLaughlins Review

I think that I enjoyed this book more than I've enjoyed any book for a while. It is just a good book full of good people, well mostly. I guess the main characters are good, but there always has to be someone bad in it to make for an interesting story. I had a really hard time finding this book to borrow from the library. The university my husband works for only had a copy that was not for circulation and our city library didn't have any. I tried an interlibrary loan and was told there were only 100 copies in our entire state (and I live in a LARGE state) so I went online hoping to buy one for $5.00, but the cheapest copy I could find was $20.00. My point in telling you all this? It may be a hard one to find, for those of you who live near me and want to borrow it, you're welcome to.

The story is about a group of people who came over from Scotland and settled in Iowa. It's a small community and most of them are related, but not all. It starts with a story about the McLaughlin's son, Wully, who has been fighting in the Civil War and he has a short homecoming. While he is home recovering from some wounds he is reintroduced to Chirstie and falls in love and decides that she is the one for him to marry. In fact they both kind of fall in love right a way. He has to go back to the war for several months but returns home anxious to see Chirstie and to marry her, but she doesn't respond to him and in fact is cold and almost frightened of him. I don't want to go into detail about why because it would ruin the book, but it is a bad thing that happens to her while he is away.

The rest of the book is a love story between these two people and how they build their lives and make something great out of something tragic that happens. I really liked Wully, I think he is an excellent man and personifies all that is good in the world. I also loved to read about Wully's mother, Mrs. McLaughlin. She is the kind of woman I would like to be. She's industrious, kind, funny, and all around just a great woman and mother, she is one of my favorite characters.

Although there is sadness and some angry emotions in this book, mostly of revenge, it is an uplifting story about human nature and how healing it is to forgive and to love. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

One of Ours Review

I was really excited to read this book because I'm a fan of Willa Cather. She is most known for her books "My Antonia" and "Oh, Pioneers" and it was surprising that "One of Ours" was her prize winning book and one of her least known, at least to me. It started out talking about a young boy named Claude and his desire to make something of himself. He and his father had kind of a rocky relationship. I think that Claude was a little embarrassed of his father and definitely of his older brother, Bayliss. As he grew his desire to move on from their farm into the world to make something of himself and hopefully loose some of his awkwardness grew. He tried to go to the University of Nebraska, but his mother was adamant that he go to a little church college. Claude began to take some courses that he was excited about (one he took at the University, but I don't think he told his mother) and he made friends with a family. For some of this section you think there will be a romance between Claude and one of his friend's mother, but nothing comes of it and I have to say, thank goodness. When Claude returns home for his break his father tells the family how he bought a ranch in Colorado and his son, Ralph, will be going to run it so that would mean Claude had to stay and take care of his mother and the older black lady, Mahailey, that works for them, thus crashing all of Claude's dreams of becoming something other than a farmer. He takes it and runs with it though, which was something I was impressed with. He didn't do a lousy job of it, he threw himself fully into making the farm something great and he did it.

During this time he hooked up with some friends from high school and fell in love with one of the girls, Enid. With a name like that you have to know she's no good and she isn't. After they get married she denies Claude any marital enjoyment and becomes actively involved in politics and prohibition. Her sister in China becomes ill and so she leaves Claude (not in a divorce way, just in a leaving on a trip way) and goes to be with her sister. All in all, this made Claude happy. Before he got married he believed Enid would change to be like his own mother, but she was too modern and I think extremely selfish. I wondered why she even married him, she never seemed to love him. Admirably enough he stays true to his unhappy marriage throughout the book.

Soon after this the war breaks out in France (this is really the focus of the book) and Claude has a desire to become involved. At this point he joins the army and we catch up with him on his break before he ships off to France, when he's coming home to Nebraska. His farewell to his mother was one of the most touching points of this book, you could truly see the love this mother and son had for each other and I have to admit my eyes moistened.

The rest of the book, I hate to say, was not as enjoyable. It was very choppy. It seemed that the author heard some stories of the war and just threw them in; they didn't really connect to each other. We hear about a soldier he saw at one of the stops who was handicapped and he had a girlfriend. Claude becomes interested in them and follows them around, the next day he asks about this boy, but that is the end. The soldier never comes into the book. This is just one example, there are many stories that don't really pan out, they're just stories.

All in all, I could hardly put the book down at the beginning and when I came to the war I read only to see how he would die because you knew that finally Claude was making something of himself and it wasn't going to last. I think that the author should've won for her other books, but I'm glad she did win because she is a great author.

Alice Adams Review

The main character Alice is a young female with parents and an older brother. Her vision of the world at the beginning of the book is very naïve. She believes in the good in every body and isn't aware that they don't like her and think she is pushy and a flirt. When she attends a dance, with her brother who hangs around with the wrong sort of people, she comes to a realization that the people she thought were her friends really weren't. Nobody asked her to dance and no one really talked to her. All the boys who used to come around her house stopped coming and no longer associate with her. Her mother, who I believe is a little over dramatic, thinks it's all her father's fault because he is settling in his job and not trying to make more of himself. Many times in the book Alice's parents have an argument over this subject. Alice's mother believes that the father could make a great living running a glue factory, but thinks he is lazy because he refused to do it and remains with his employer, Mr. Lamb. Alice's mother believes that Alice would have more friends if they had more money.

Alice's father is very sickly and at the beginning of the book is off work because of being ill. As he finally gets better Alice begins having regular visits by a great young man who is wealthy and is a relative to a wealthy family in town. Alice makes up a lot of stories so that he will think more highly of her and her family. The father decides he needs to help Alice and begins to open the glue factory. There are some ethical questions regarding the recipe for the glue that has been stopping him all these years and it has something to do with his boss, Mr. Lamb. The poor father almost drives himself mad wondering what Mr. Lamb thinks of him. Mr. Lamb in the end turns out to be a great man and not so much the typical rich person that the Adams family believes him to be, although the mother still isn't satisfied with her husband and the decisions he had to make. The young man who is visiting Alice on the other hand, turns out to be not so great, and does listen to what other people say of Alice.

The book made me really think about how much emphasis I put on what other people think of me. In the end does it really matter? Throughout this book that is the Adams family's concern: they are embarrassed of their small rickety house and that they don't have paid help and that Alice's dress is the wrong material. What it boils down to in the end is what you make of yourself and how you treat other people. Alice realizes that and makes a change in her life for the better.

The beginning of this book was rather slow and uninteresting to me, but as it went on and I got to know the characters better and begin to have interest in their lives the book improved a lot.