Category: Reading

Round-up: Books & Film

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Books

My recent reading has ranged from the very serious to the quite serious to the more frivolous.

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor. Sound depressing, but it wasn’t. Yes, Ms. Fechtor did suffer a brain aneurysm at the tender age of 28, but her optimistic spirit and determination along with time in the kitchen saw her through a 2-year recovery period. There are medical details here, but also wonderful passages about the role of food and the emotional as well as physical sustenance good cooking can provide. She is a PhD candidate at Harvard as well as author of the Sweet Amandine food blog.

Consequence by Eric Fair. This is a memoir by a former soldier and contractor who was posted to Iraq and served as an interrogator. It is a disturbing, unsettling read, but one I couldn’t abandon. Mr. Fair grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., was active in the First Presbyterian Church there, and after college became a police officer before serving in the Iraq War.

With its spare, unemotional style, it’s almost as if Mr. Fair is writing about someone other than himself. He made a series of poor choices from high school onward and while stating that he made them and acknowledging that some of them were unwise, he doesn’t seem to own them. And he did things at Abu Graib that he feels guilty about and that haunt him, but he has not reached any closure. It probably took some courage to write this book (neither the military nor his contractor company come off very well), but I found it hard to applaud him for doing so.

Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George. Hard to believe, but this is the 19th Inspector Lynley mystery. Inspector Barbara Havers is the primary mover with Lynley in a more supporting role as she and Nkata delve into the murder of a noted feminist author and the convoluted relationships she had with her personal assistant and her publisher. Not her best, but still entertaining.

The Restaurant Critic’s Wife by Elizabeth LaBan. This is a novel about food and restaurants, but even more so about the trials of being a stay-at-home mother of two young children constrained by a husband’s demands that she remain inconspicuous and invisible. Craig LaBan is the longtime restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and originally from New Orleans like Sam Soto in the book. For my Philly foodie friends, this lighthearted fare will have you guessing which restaurants are being reviewed!

Film Fare

Eye in the Sky. There are several female actors whose films I would see no matter what and they include Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren. In this film, Helen Mirren is the British colonel in charge of a missile strike on some key terrorist leaders who are holed up in a house in a residential area outside Nairobi. She, working with the general played by Alan Rickman, must evaluate how great are the odds of injury or death to nearby civilians (including a young girl) and get all the stakeholders to agree to the timing of the strike. The stakeholders are scattered from England to Nevada and both British and U.S. leaders and politicians are involved or need to be consulted. A sobering and suspenseful look at how warfare by drone is carried out.

Love & Friendship. This one’s for Jane Austen fans of which I’m one. Based on her short novel, Lady Susan, it’s not a great film, but an enjoyable one. There are lots of characters, the principal ones introduced with name, title and relationship in the opening scenes, which makes for a somewhat slow beginning. The pace picks up once Lady Susan, schemer extraordinaire, is installed at her sister-in-law’s country estate, and begins to weave her web to ensnare Sir James Martin for her daughter Frederica and Sir Reginald deCourcy for herself. But, complications ensue, her true colors start to emerge, and what ultimately results is a complete turnabout.

 

Book Notes: Strout & Winspear

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BOOK GROUPS

I have been a participant in a book group of some sort almost forever.  In my 20’s, I was part of a group that was made up of English professors and two librarians, me being one of the latter.  All members were female.  I can’t recall the titles we discussed, but I do know I felt intimidated by the intellectual heft of this assemblage.  Over time I came to realize that this feeling was due somewhat to the competitive egos of these women each one trying to outdo the other with her insights.

In my 30’s, a colleague and I co-founded a lunchtime book group with the possibly risque Fear of Flying by Erica Jong as our first title.  Still going strong, the group  is democratically run with everyone taking a turn selecting a book and leading the discussion.  Subsequently, I’ve been a member of two women’s book groups on the west coast, one with a paid facilitator and the other more casual where the members choose the book by consensus.  Having a paid leader was quite a different experience; she presented the options for what we might read and had some definite ideas about each work.  She was a skillful facilitator and her unique lens made for lively discussions.

In my last job, I convened and facilitated a book group for museum members which focused on books related to science and the natural world.  While there were a few regulars, different people showed up each time, making each meeting its own event with little in the way of a cohesive group.  One particularly noteworthy book was the graphic biography of Marie and Pierre Curie, Radioactive by Lauren Redniss.   This group expanded my own reading of science-related works—who would have thought it?

Today I follow the selections of my San Francisco book group virtually (and even occasionally read the book) as well as participate in a group here in Florida.  I like the discipline of reading a book for discussion, particularly if it is one that I wouldn’t otherwise have read.  I enjoy the give and take of a group and am keen to hear others’ perspectives—it enriches and expands the reading experience!

RECENT READING

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.  The book group here is small and only meets five times a year, but it does offer an opportunity to share reactions to a work.  My Name is Lucy Barton was my pick for April.  I thought Strout’s earlier book, Olive Kittredge, was excellent and it’s a title I’ve recommended over and over and given as a gift.

My first reading of Lucy Barton left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed.  It’s a quiet book with an intriguing structure (a novel within a novel) that I didn’t fully appreciate until re-read it more slowly.  This time I was drawn in and captured by Lucy’s plaintive child-like voice and her slightly probing, but mostly unsatisfactory, conversations with her mother.  Her accounts of the abject poverty her family experienced (living for many years in a garage), her allusions to the abuse she suffered, her struggle to pass in a sophisticated Manhattan world, and her growing sense of herself as a writer and a person worth knowing, unfold during her mother’s nights at her hospital bedside and in Lucy’s reflections years after.  It’s a novel about a mother-daughter relationship weighted with love, need, and tension and about the mean-spiritedness of social class that divides and separates people.  It’s also a novel about what it means to be a writer and the story that person has to tell.

Here’s Lucy reflecting on her behavior:

“I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves.  I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.  I know faintly, even now, that I have embarrassed myself, and it always comes back to the feeling of childhood, that huge pieces of knowledge about the world were missing that can never be replaced.  But still—I do it for others, even as I sense that others do it for me.”

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear.  On a different note, I always look forward to the next installment in the Maisie Dobbs mystery series.  This one did not disappoint.  Maisie is given the assignment of going to Munich in 1938 in disguise as his daughter to rescue a man important to the British government.  Leon Donat is being held in Dachau and Munich is a tense and pall-laden city as Hitler tightens his grip on the country.  What happens in a Winspear novel is as much interior as it is overt action.  Maisie’s character is so well-fleshed out that her thinking and her pragmatic and philosophical approach to life ring true and provide a backdrop for the events that unfold.  For those readers who haven’t read the previous books, Winspear fills in Maisie’s history and the life-altering events that have shaped who she is now.

 

 

Reading & Eating

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PRAISE FOR FICTION

You may have seen the reports that reading fiction can improve your social skills.  Ann Lukits of the Wall St. Journal writes the following:  “People who read a lot of fiction are known to have stronger social skills than nonfiction readers or nonreaders.  A new study suggests that reading fictional works, especially stories that take readers inside people’s lives and minds, may enhance social skills by exercising a part of the brain involved in empathy and imagination.”  So, all you novel readers, rejoice!  There is an added benefit to getting lost in “novel-novel land” (as the Chief Penguin calls it).

WHAT I’M READING NOW

The spate of historical novels about wives of famous men and about overlooked or understudied notable women continues apace.  We had The Aviator’s Wife about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Loving Frank about Frank Lloyd Wright’s second wife, The Paris Wife about one of Hemingway’s wives, and Circling the Sun about Beryl Markham.  Now I’m reading The Arrangement by Ashley Warlick about a 5-year period in the life of M.F. K. Fisher.  I saw it on Amazon and was attracted to it because I like reading about food, and I don’t know that much about her personal life.  My paperback copy arrived and looks like a proof copy—no publisher or date, no blurbs front or back, and unusual page numbering.  I’m instantly suspicious about its merits.  But I’ve started reading it and am mildly entertained so we’ll see how it goes from here.

DOCUMENTING CONFLICT

I received this book as a gift several months ago and it has been sitting in my “to be read” pile.  I re-discovered it the other day and, having heard New York Times war correspondent Carlotta Gall talk about the conflicts she had covered, it seemed the right time to read it.  Lynsey Addario is a prize-winning freelance photojournalist who has been in the thick of crises in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Congo.  She aims to document the human story, especially that of the women, and to show the impact on ordinary people of bombs and airstrikes be they enemy ones or American.

Afghanistan 2009 by L. Addario
Afghanistan by L. Addario (www.youtube.com)

The book is It’s What I Do:  A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.  Addario is frank about her need to do this—it’s a calling more than a profession—and she willingly and eagerly puts herself in harm’s way.  It’s a risky, dangerous life (she’s been kidnapped and almost killed) and hard on lovers and family left behind.  Early on, she thought she’d never marry or have children, but she did and her story of combining work and family is both impressive and daunting.  Adding to the text are her compelling color photos.

 

 

EATING

With all the meals out I report on, some might think I’ve given up cooking.  Not so.  One of the joys of this phase of life is the luxury of preparing a meal without pressure.  No more hurrying home from work and hastily assembling ingredients to have dinner ready in the next 45 minutes.  Now I can select a new recipe, do the prep work in a leisurely fashion, and then do the actual cooking late in the day.

The Chief Penguin and I first became acquainted with contemporary Israeli food at Zahav (chef Michael Solomonov) in Philadelphia, thanks to good friends.  We returned solo and have since become fans of another Israeli chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, and his cookbooks, Plenty and Jerusalem.  Chicken with caramelized onion & cardamom rice is a tasty dish I’ve made in the past.

Source: purewow.com
Source: purewow.com

Yesterday I dared to try and serve to guests his roasted chicken with clementines & arak.  Arak, not being that common, I used the suggested Pernod instead.  It was a lovely combination of fennel bulbs and fennel seeds with soft notes of orange and brown sugar perfuming the chicken thighs.  Epicurious has a version of this recipe which is quite close to the original, but uses a much lower oven temperature.

 

 

SOMEONE TO WATCH

We had the pleasure, and pleasure it was, of seeing and hearing baritone John Brancy perform songs by Schubert and others last week.  Marilyn Horne told our interviewer, June LeBell, to get him while he was still affordable.  In conversation, Mr. Brancy was charming and engaging, and oh, what a voice and a presence.  Definitely a name to follow as his career gains momentum in the opera and recital worlds!

Tidy Tidbits: Tides & Titles

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WORDS ON WEATHER

Hunkering Down

Last weekend our friends and family cocooned in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York during winter storm Jonas.  We watched from afar, thanks to the Weather Channel and the Web, almost gleeful that we were here in Florida.  But, like men’s sympathetic pregnancies, we hunkered down too—staying indoors, feasting on forbidden foods (a luscious strip steak!), and savoring hot soup.  After all, outside was only 50 degrees with a cold stiff wind and white caps on the bay!

Minus Tides

Living on the edge of said bay, we get to observe the daily and seasonal variation of the tides.  The changes over the course of a typical day are not usually extreme, but the other morning I noticed that it was low tide and we were getting a “mud flats” effect.  This is unusual for us and it got me to wondering about the tide levels.  I checked the newspaper and the low tide that morning for just before 8:00 am was a negative .6 feet.  Getting even more curious, I did a bit of research (thank you, Google!) and learned that there is a mean low tide number for each area that is considered zero; high and low tides are measured up or down against this.   So my minus six meant that this tide was half a foot lower than the mean low tide!  Hence the mud, hence more birds at the water’s edge.

And since the tides are governed partly by the moon, this week’s very low tide was associated with a gorgeous buttery-colored full moon.  My citizen science colleagues in California were always keen to be observing life in the tidal areas during minus low tides and scheduled outings with our volunteers for those dates, even if it meant being on the water at 5:00 or 6:00 am.

TITLES STACKED UP

2016-01-29 09.49.48

As usual, I have too many books waiting to be read, but that only means that I’ll never lack for reading material!  Here is a small selection of those waiting in the wings.

Expatriate Lives by Janice Y.K.  Lee.  (A much touted new novel by the author of The Piano Teacher.)

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.  (I’ve put off long enough reading this highly praised novel from the author of The Monsters of Templeton.)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout.  (The latest novel from the author of Olive Kittredge, one of my favorite books.)

West with the Night by Beryl Markham.  (A memoir by an early aviator, this will be a re-read for me for the local book group.  I first read it many years ago with the Penn book group.)

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr.  (From the author of several raw, lay-it-bare memoirs, this book supposedly informs the reader how to create a memoir.)

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  (A pass along from my sister and an important contribution to the national discussion about race in America.)

POSTSCRIPT

I also want to report that I finished A Master Plan for Rescue and it was wonderful!  There’s a parallel story about a passenger on the ill-fated and unwelcome ship, St. Louis, and this man intersects with the boy Jack in ways that are initially amusing and touching and ultimately, life-changing.