Beloved / Toni Morrison

5 out of 5 stars 

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

I read this book to fill the Magical Realism square of my 2019 Halloween Bingo Card.

Wow.  Toni Morrison writes gorgeously about an ugly reality.  If her writing was any less majestic, it would be difficult to make it to the end of the book.  The situations she describes are searing in their intensity. As it was, I found I had to take my time.  Read a chapter, then rest and reflect. Read another chapter. Repeat. This wasn’t a book that I could hurry through.

It is an unflinching look at slavery and freedom.  An examination of what exactly freedom means and doesn’t mean.  It is horrifying and despairing and hopeful. Beloved haunts this family as slavery haunts our society.

I recommend it to everyone.  It is a powerful book and well worth your time.  Take your time and really feel it. Another good book on the same subject is Kindred by Octavia Butler.  Very different but also worthwhile.

Anne of Green Gables / Lucy Maude Montgomery

4 out of 5 stars

Everyone's favorite redhead, the spunky Anne Shirley, begins her adventures at Green Gables, a farm outside Avonlea, Prince Edward Island. When the freckled girl realizes that the elderly Cuthberts wanted to adopt a boy instead, she begins to try to win them and, consequently, the reader, over.

***Wanda’s Summer Carnival of Children’s Literature***
Finally, I met Anne of Green Gables. Honestly, it’s taken me so long that I’m surprised my Canadian citizenship hasn’t been revoked. (I never watched the TV show, either). I don’t know the source of my prejudice against the tale, but it was unwarranted. I quite enjoyed Anne with an E. It is definitely a tale of an earlier time in Canadian history.

Actually, in many ways it reminded me of stories that my parents told of the one-room school houses that they attended here in Alberta. The kids they got along with and the kids that were difficult. Knowing everybody else’s business in small communities. The teachers they liked and the teachers that they merely endured.

In that time period, people really did “acquire” orphans in this way. Lucky children were actually part of the family, as Anne was. Unlucky ones were more like indentured servants and worked half to death. Child welfare has changed considerably!

In a small community, you make the best friends that you are able to in the small pool of people that you have to choose from. If you are lucky, you find a few to be your secure circle as Anne does. I had my dependable 3-5 people in our small town school and I’m still in some form of communication with several of them. This book brought back many happy memories of good friends, good teachers, and the thrill and anxiety of leaving home for the big city.

The Call of the Wild / Jack London

3 out of 5 stars

Buck, a sturdy crossbreed canine (half St. Bernard, half Shepard), is a dog born to luxury and raised in a sheltered Californian home. But then he is kidnapped and sold to be a sled dog in the harsh and frozen Yukon Territory. Passed from master to master, Buck embarks on an extraordinary journey, proving his unbreakable spirit...

First published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.

***Wanda’s Summer Carnival of Children’s Literature***

Maybe I would have been more impressed with this book as a child or if I was a dog lover. It was waaaaay too anthropomorphic for my taste. Although I have no doubt that animals think and have feelings, I don’t believe that they experience the world exactly as people do. Buck exhibited far too many “thoughts” and was far more dependent on “reasoning” to be believable for me.

But, I do think that animals can learn and adapt to new circumstances and that part of Buck’s behaviour no doubt came from London’s observations of real dogs in real situations. And there’s no doubt that big powerful dogs like Buck can return to wild behaviours fairly easily. Likewise, I have watched a kennel of sled dogs, realizing that a sled will be leaving soon. The chaos that ensued as all the dogs in the kennel entreated to be one of the chosen was amazing. All those dogs wanted to run and they let their owner know it! So that desire to run and to work was highly realistic.

I was also struck by the romanticism of the novel. London portrayed the hardships of the frontier quite honestly, but at the same time made it seem much more desirable that I think it really was. John Thornton’s depiction I think idealizes the image of the tough, wise frontiersman, just as Buck is the ideal dog, tough, smart, and devoted to Thornton. Only Thornton’s death releases Buck from his last remaining ties to civilization.

The theme of the civilized vs. the primitive also permeates the novel, adding to its romantic nature. Somehow, the primitive condition is right for the dog, the civilized condition is better for the humans, unless they are particularly strong individuals. The three greenhorns who buy Buck and his sled team are weaker specimens, unable to survive outside their luxurious civilization and unable to listen to instruction. Their deaths are unlamented.

I’m surprised I didn’t read this as a child, but I must have been preoccupied with horsey literature. I do think that I would have been much more impressed with it back then.

Charlotte's Web / E.B. White

5 out of 5 stars

Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter.
E. B. White's Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. 

 ***Wanda’s Summer Carnival of Children’s Literature***

I distinctly remember my grade one teacher, Doris Wright, reading Charlotte’s Web to us, a chapter or two per day. I suspect there was some snivelling when we reached the end of the tale.

Boy, could I identify with the main human character, Fern. I grew up on a small farm like the ones in the book (without the work horses—we used tractors during my childhood) and it was primarily a hog farm. I was very familiar with how sweet baby pigs are. In fact, when children came to visit, my mom would assemble her camera and some old towels and we would head to the pig barn. She would scoop up a piglet in a towel, hand it to a child, and photograph the proceedings. That cute little round snout on a piglet is irresistible to a child—we have many photos of kids kissing piglets right on the snout! Mostly, however, we didn’t spend much time getting to know the pigs—they would be leaving after they were weaned, sold on to farmers who would raise them to market weight. Not a good idea to get too attached.

I also had a spider phobia as a child (which has thankfully subsided as I’ve aged) and I do remember Charlotte being an example that I told myself about, trying to convince myself that spiders were not the horrible creatures that I had imagined them to be.

Like Fern, I spend many happy hours in the barn, watching chickens, pigs, cows and horses. In fact, when I was about 3, my uncle gave me some duck eggs and a Bantam hen to incubate them. She hatched four ducklings from the eggs (and was quite distressed when her charges went swimming in mud puddles) and those ducks lived for many years! They would stand and quack at us when we were playing baseball if they wanted to cross the yard for some reason. When we paused the game, the ducks would quickly waddle across, as if they didn’t want to hold up play for very long.

Farms have changed so much! Not just horses being replaced by tractors, but the mixed use family farm being lost in favour of large, single purpose farms. Wheat farms, chicken farms, intensive hog farms, cattle feed lots, etc. Fewer children learn to milk cows, gather eggs, and weed gardens. I feel like mine was an idyllic childhood and I’m so glad I grew up when I did.

Charlotte’s Web was a great exercise in nostalgia for me, remembering all those wonderful childhood details.

Watchmen / Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

3 stars out of 5

This Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.


A formative volume in the history of the graphic novel. My impression is that Watchmen is the title that took the genre from being the lowly comic book and elevated it to the graphic novel level, garnering more respect for the illustrated story. As a child, I read stacks of comic books—Batman, Superman, Super Girl, Spiderman, plus the more traditionally female comics like Archie and Classics Illustrated. We had an enormous stack of comics, which my cousins used to enjoy when they came to visit. But I’m pretty sure that no one at that time considered them to be “literature.”

Watchmen takes many of the early tropes and turns them on their heads. The costumed “super” heroes are far from being the uncontested good guys that I remember reading about. . Rorschach is arguably a psychopath, holding people to his very strict “letter of the law” standards of justice, not recognizing compassion or extenuating circumstances. The Comedian is cynical from the very start and prefers expediency over the law. Doc Manhattan is the only one who truly possesses what we would consider to be super powers—and they remove him so far from human concerns that he gets distracted by the inner workings of subatomic particles.

We are left to wonder (and the characters sometimes discuss) what inspires a person to dress in tights and go out in the dark to fight crime. Are they noble or crazy? Or both? What qualifies them to put themselves forward as crime fighters? I found the women’s participation in this world very disturbing, as they most seem to be playing dress-up, rather than being functioning super heroes and they get pushed to the side as appendages to the men almost immediately.

The art work is detailed and dark. The story line is shot through with the fallout from the Second World War (when society thought we could tell the good guys from the bad guys) to a Cold War reality where our former allies, the Soviets, are suddenly a huge threat. Underlying the main story line is a comic book story, read by a bystander in the Watchmen’s world—a tale which is maybe even darker and more desperate than the main story line (and very meta).

I can certainly appreciate the effort that went into the creation of this volume—the deconstruction of the super hero, the examination of the changes in society, and so on. A little too dark and violent for my taste, however.

No. 216 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project.

Beowulf / translated by Seamus Heaney

4 out of 5 stars

Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the classic Northern epic of a hero’s triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed in the exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels in this story to the historical curve of consciousness in the twentieth century, but the poem also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating.

Beowulf is an interesting window into the past—specifically where Christianity and older pagan religions overlapped. It was fascinating to see the older, warrior culture being lived with an overlay of Christianity. But deeds of bravery and being able to hold your liquor whilst on the mead-bench were still valuable commodities! Modesty was not yet a virtue—a warrior was expected to declaim his exploits (a la the Norse god, Bragi, from whom we get the English verb “to brag.”)

Although I was familiar with the story line of the first half of the poem, dealing with Grendel and his mother, I found the second half completely new. I was unaware of the portion dealing with a dragon that Beowulf faces. I know that Tolkien also translated this poem and I was amazed at how similar some sections of it were to parts of The Hobbit when Bilbo and the dwarves are dealing with Smaug, the dragon occupying the former home of the dwarves. Obviously, Beowulf was inspiring for Tolkien.

I know that I had to translate parts of this poem from the old English for a linguistics course that I took many years ago. I remember it being a difficult task and I have to admire Seamus Heaney’s accomplishment. He has created a very readable version of the text. I tried something quite different for me with this work—I borrowed both the text and the audio book from the library and allowed the poet to read his work to me, while I followed along in the text. The only problem with this arrangement was the abridgement of the spoken-word version, requiring occasional pausing on my part to find my place further ahead in the text. Despite this, I enjoyed the experience very much and plan to use audio-books for other foundational texts of Western literature, such as The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Several of my friends have warned me that is it very important who is providing the vocal performance on an audio-book. I felt that a poet of Heaney’s stature would have a good grasp of performing his work and I was not disappointed.
 

The Handmaid's Tale / Margaret Atwood

4 out of 5 stars

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...  

“It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress, and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.”

Once again, I wonder at the prescience of Margaret Atwood. I know that she was thinking of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, back in the 1970s and early 1980s, but it sounds exactly like a headline in next week’s paper. It is completely believable in 2015, a time when a shyster like Donald Trump stands on stages telling people that the Bible is his favourite book. We exist in a time when anyone who wants to be president of the US has to trumpet his religious belief, something which would horrify the founding fathers of the United States, who worked hard to separate church and state.

Fundamentalism seems is epidemic in the United States and the Middle East—Christians, Israelis, and various flavours of Islam, leaving the moderates in all of those religions frustrated that they are being represented worldwide by the extremists, being forced to apologize for their religions while also trying to point out that not all members of their religions are bigoted idiots. And one of the symptoms of fundamentalism is the desire to exert complete control over female sexuality and female lives.

Add to that the increasing comfort with violence—police who feel justified in shooting anyone who isn’t immediately completely submissive, politicians who feel increasingly justified in bombing the opposition, general media audiences who prefer explosions and shooting to relationships and sex, the prevalence of violent woman-hating pornography that has become common on the internet.

Ursula K LeGuin has noted that women can get to about the 30% mark of winning awards and gaining recognition for their art and then men start to protest that women are “taking over” and that there is some conspiracy against male artists.

“Those years were just an anomaly, historically speaking, the Commander said. All we’ve done is return things to Nature’s norm.”

Combine it all—fundamentalism, violence, and intolerance for female freedom & sexual expression, and The Handmaid’s Tale seems almost inevitable. Thankfully, although Atwood imagined it 30 years ago, we have managed to avoid fulfilling her prophecy for at least that long.

Book number 193 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain

4 out of 5 stars

Finally, I have read something substantial by Mark Twain. It has taken a very long time—Mr. Twain’s works have never been assigned reading for me in any high school or university courses that I have taken. Here in Canada, we are much more likely to be assigned the classic of Stephen Leacock’s, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (I may have read that, although it does not stand out in my memory).

I borrowed a 1918 printing of Huck Finn from our university library, so I got a politically incorrect edition, complete with copious use of the N word. It is jarring to the modern reader, but it provides a look back into the heads of people in the past that is intriguing. Scholars will probably continue to debate whether the work is a critique of racism or not, but to my way of thinking, Twain humanized those who were considered to be “other.”

Common wisdom would have it that a writer should avoid using dialect, but Twain does this masterfully in Huckleberry Finn. The book is very readable and comprehensible, especially considering that it was the dialect of the 1880’s southern states and I am a Canadian reading it in the 21st century. I’ve certainly encountered science fiction books with more difficult language (the slang in Clockwork Orange for example, or pretty much all of Riddley Walker).

What struck me hardest, I think, was the persistence of social problems—Huck’s drunken & abusive father, the judgments of society on poor people, and the difficulty of making a living when you are on the fringes of society. In some ways, Huck was lucky because he could hunt and fish to provide for himself—many of our modern folk living on the edge are in cities and don’t have those avenues available to them.

As many have pointed out, few people would criticize Huck for escaping from his abusive father, so his flight would likely be considered legal, despite his status as a minor. Jim is doing exactly the same thing, but his skin colour makes his escape illegal. The reader must wrestle with this dichotomy and make their own determination of the rightness or wrongness of the situation. This may be the crux of why people object to the book—Twain doesn’t get preachy on the subject. He doesn’t come right out and tell us what to think. The story is what it is, and he considers his readers intelligent enough to come to their own conclusions.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4 out of 5 stars

If you are an enthusiastic reader of crime/noir/mystery novels, at some point you should get back to its roots—by reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur set many of the patterns which can still be observed in the modern genre novel.

Sherlock Holmes is an eccentric expert—but he defines the crime expert, what with his monographs on cigar ash, his studies of foot prints, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of crime. Many of the heroes of today’s literature are forensic anthropologists, FBI agents, and police detectives, people with formidable and specialized expertise in their fields. Holmes was multifaceted, in that he was also an expert boxer and an amateur violin player. It reminds me of Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, who is also a wonderful cook and who cooks to clear her mind of the case at hand—just as Holmes works on his chemistry experiments or plays his violin in order to come at a problem obliquely.

Especially prescient was Conan Doyle’s depiction of what we would now call profiling, getting into the mind of another person and using that insight to catch the criminal. It is especially pronounced when Holmes is dealing with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty—he bases his judgments of Moriarty’s next moves upon what he himself would do. They are equally matched.

Many of our favourite 21st century protagonists also have their Dr. Watson, a sidekick who can assist as necessary and provide an ear to listen to the latest theory, thereby filling in the reader on what is happening in the main character’s mind. Think Benton Wesley or Pete Marino for Kay Scarpetta (Cornwell) or Amelia Sachs with Lincoln Rhyme (Deaver). The Scandinavian noir writers seem to prefer the isolated expert—like Holmes, who has only 1 or 2 friends and absolutely refuses a romantic relationship, the Scandinavian main characters are frequently divorced, unable to maintain healthy relationships with their girlfriends and/or children, and generally somewhat socially isolated. For example, Henning Mankell’s Wallander, Arnaldur Indridason’s Erlandur, or Yrsa Sigudardottir’s Thora Gudmundsdottir.

Of interest to me was the story which I think we would all think of as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time—the dog which didn’t bark, indicating that it knew the man who entered the barn. Conan Doyle called this story Silver Blaze, after the stolen horse of the tale. Also interesting to me was the Adventure of the Speckled Band, in which Holmes foils a plot involving a trained venomous snake. This snake was trained to respond to a whistle—not a physical possibility for snakes, which cannot hear air-borne sound waves. Realistically, the criminal might have recalled his pet by thumping on the wall, causing vibrations which the creature might have picked up through its lower jaw (but then if it was busy biting the inhabitant of the bed in the next room, it would likely miss even this cue.)

An interesting and entertaining series of stories, albeit a trifle repetitious when read one after the other in this volume. They would have been much more effective when read one at a time, as they would have been at the time of publication. Many of the prejudices of the 1890s are firmly on display, making this an interesting historical document as well. I wonder what our literature will reveal about us to future generations?

The Book Thief / Markus Zusak

4 out of 5 stars

HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE

1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.

SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH

It's a small story, about: a girl, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.

ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW - DEATH WILL VISIT THE BOOK THIEF THREE TIMES.

I have found that reading from book lists is an excellent way to read outside my comfort zone. I think I have previously said that I usually avoid novels set during World War II. This year, I have read four novels (in four months) set in that time period. Three of them have been on recommended reading lists and I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed them.

Told from the perspective of Death, who follows the story of a young girl in Germany during the war, this book is an important reminder of the hardships suffered, especially by the poor and by those who were not enthusiastic participants under the Nazis. So many of the books set during the war are told from the Allied viewpoint and we forget that there was suffering on the other side as well.

The Book Thief also appealed to my love of books and reading, which play such an important part of the novel. I read the book while at home with a cold—my only complaint was that I cried at the end, resulting in worse congestion than ever.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe / C.S. Lewis

4 out of 5 stars

When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy took their first steps into the world behind the magic wardrobe, little do they realise what adventures are about to unfold. And as the story of Narnia begins to unfold, so to does a classic tale that has enchanted readers of all ages for over half a century.

I’m pretty sure that I read this when I was 11 or 12—but I didn’t remember it at all. In my defense, that was about 40 years ago. Here’s the funny thing though—as a kid, if I liked a book, I re-read it numerous times. So, if I did read it, lo those many years ago, I didn’t like it enough to re-read it. Around 12 or 13, I also read The Lord of the Rings, for example, and I have read it innumerable times now and continue to enjoy it every once in a while.

Now, I’m not sure if I believe this premise or not, but in The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe, his mother had a theory—we are all either Narnia fans or Middle Earth fans. In her experience, people rarely loved both fantasy worlds. She and one child were Narnia people and her son Will inhabited Middle Earth in a way that both of them envied.

Reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe now as an adult well into middle age, I find the Christian symbolism in it to be obvious and heavy handed. (Mind you, if you had little exposure to Christianity, I’m sure many parts of the story line would be inexplicable!) By contrast, although many people say they see similar things in Tolkien, I seem to be blind to it. Yes, there is a struggle between good and evil, but it doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly Christian world or world view and The Lord of the Rings certainly doesn’t clobber you with Christianity the way than Lewis’ work does. (In fact, LOTR feels very pagan to me).

I guess this is my way of saying if the world really does split itself evenly into Team Narnia and Team Middle Earth, count me in as a member of Team Middle Earth. Despite the fact that I quite enjoyed the fantasy adventure, the Greek mythological beings (fauns, centaurs, dryads, etc.), plus the references to Northern European mythology (the Witch seems to be to be a relative of the Snow Queen, and Father Christmas has become a regular everywhere). Mind you, it also seems to me to be a bit unfair to compare definite children’s literature (Narnia) with a book that I began enjoying as a tween and that continues to comfort me now in my 5th decade (LOTR).

I certainly see why this book has become a classic and why it still appeals to children today.