(no subject)
finally, a summer reading.
so far:
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
(guilty pleasure, it was free and it'd been too long since my last novel. beautiful prose, but in a rugged 1960s-in-Kentucky way that doesn't do half as much for me as Ann Patchett, let alone Jhumpa Lahiri or for godssakes Arundhati Roy. A doctor delivers his own two baby twins in a snowstorm, a girl and a boy. because the girl is born with downs syndrome, he give her away to the nurse with instructions to leave her at an asylum and leads his wife to believe the baby died. and all things fall apart, ect. i read three reviews online and therefore had no surprises left for me. i'd advise against that ...)
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
(drags a bit, but I picked it up based almost solely on name recognition. wasn't expecting all the young girls having homosexual experiences. did succeed in putting me entirely inside my head, which was a steamy, primitive pacific island jungle, for minutes at a time.)
Peace Like A River by Leif Erikson
(amazing. wonderful. witty, with every line - he made me wish I *was* most of the characters, beyond admiring them - I admire immensely his craftsmanship as a writer and the attitude he takes toward his craft as expressed through his 11-year-old narrator Reuben. again I found myself in the Midwest in the 1960s, not anything planned. loved. reccomended. yes.)
the Qur'an
(okay, so maybe I've just read the Sura of Maryam, because its Jumana's favorite. quite jumpy. without lots of interpretation and/or already knowing the Christian tradition, this makes no sense. its like ... the footnotes, or selected editorial rephrasings, of the new testament. but only three bits. le sigh. more investigation needed.)
BLOWOUT by Chalmers Johnson
(blowout being a CIA term for 'people will harbor feelings of ill-will toward us, and eventually act on those sentiments, when our foreign policy involves regieme change and slaughter of innocents abroad.' he documents Brzezenski and others explaining how the US didn't aid the mujahideen after the USSR invaded Afghanistan - rather, we started bulking up the mujahideen to intentionally provoke the soviet invasion, "giving them their own Vietnam". read: hundreds of thousands of people dead for abstract reasons of our grand strategy. and then he goes, "what's more significant, a few riled Muslims or the fall of the USSR and the liberation of eatern europe and blah blah blah? gladly, most of this material was familiar. quick read.)
so far:
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
(guilty pleasure, it was free and it'd been too long since my last novel. beautiful prose, but in a rugged 1960s-in-Kentucky way that doesn't do half as much for me as Ann Patchett, let alone Jhumpa Lahiri or for godssakes Arundhati Roy. A doctor delivers his own two baby twins in a snowstorm, a girl and a boy. because the girl is born with downs syndrome, he give her away to the nurse with instructions to leave her at an asylum and leads his wife to believe the baby died. and all things fall apart, ect. i read three reviews online and therefore had no surprises left for me. i'd advise against that ...)
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
(drags a bit, but I picked it up based almost solely on name recognition. wasn't expecting all the young girls having homosexual experiences. did succeed in putting me entirely inside my head, which was a steamy, primitive pacific island jungle, for minutes at a time.)
Peace Like A River by Leif Erikson
(amazing. wonderful. witty, with every line - he made me wish I *was* most of the characters, beyond admiring them - I admire immensely his craftsmanship as a writer and the attitude he takes toward his craft as expressed through his 11-year-old narrator Reuben. again I found myself in the Midwest in the 1960s, not anything planned. loved. reccomended. yes.)
the Qur'an
(okay, so maybe I've just read the Sura of Maryam, because its Jumana's favorite. quite jumpy. without lots of interpretation and/or already knowing the Christian tradition, this makes no sense. its like ... the footnotes, or selected editorial rephrasings, of the new testament. but only three bits. le sigh. more investigation needed.)
BLOWOUT by Chalmers Johnson
(blowout being a CIA term for 'people will harbor feelings of ill-will toward us, and eventually act on those sentiments, when our foreign policy involves regieme change and slaughter of innocents abroad.' he documents Brzezenski and others explaining how the US didn't aid the mujahideen after the USSR invaded Afghanistan - rather, we started bulking up the mujahideen to intentionally provoke the soviet invasion, "giving them their own Vietnam". read: hundreds of thousands of people dead for abstract reasons of our grand strategy. and then he goes, "what's more significant, a few riled Muslims or the fall of the USSR and the liberation of eatern europe and blah blah blah? gladly, most of this material was familiar. quick read.)