Tanka-poetry Reviews

Thanks to Lark Writes for giving me the inspiration to write short, poetic book reviews. Hers are called 'Haiku Reviews.' I'll make mine a little longer and call them tanka-poetry reviews. Similar to haikus, tanka poems are short, using only 31-syllables in the cadence pattern of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. I call these reviews tanka-poetry but the books I am reviewing are not specifically poetry books.

 I am back from a two week vacation which involved much driving. That gave us a chance to listen to several audiobooks. Pool-side time allowed me to complete several other books. These tanka-reviews are for the books I don't plan on reviewing more fully.

 

Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven

 Speigel and Grau, 2021 

A wild fox befriends

a lonely naturalist.

This memoir recounts

details of their unusual 

friendship. Very surprising.

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars; audio.

 

 

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

William Morrow, 2009. Originally published in 1930.

Agatha Christie,

queen of suspense, introduces

us to Miss Marple.

Murder is solved after a

few false starts and red-herrings. 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars; e-book.

The Return of Jeeves: A Jeeves and Bertie Novel by P.G. Wodehouse

Perennial Library, 1985; first published in 1953

Humorist writer,

P.G. Wodehouse pokes fun at

aristocrats and

monied folks. Jeeves, the butler,

serves with straight face. Funny. 

My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars, print.

A Continual Feast: Words of Comfort and Celebration, Collected by Father Tim by Jan Karon

Penguin, 2006

Inspiring quotes,

scriptures, and thoughtful phrases, 

compiled by Father Tim,

a character in Karon's book.

I used to collect the same.

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars, print.

Remarkable Trees of the World by Thomas Markham

W.W. Norton and Company, 2003

We visited big trees

in Kings Canyon National Park.

Returning back home

it was a perfect time to 

read about trees of the world.

My rating: 5 out of 5, reread, print.

-Anne

Review and quotes: A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA

Title: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

Book Beginnings quote:

The young soldier was part of the "Baby Bottle Conscription," the boys called up when there were no more men, young or old, to fight the war.

Friday56 quote:

They came to a halt, sizing one another up. On a hunch, Aitor called out in Catalan and Basque: bona nit! kaixo! gabon! After a pause that to him seemed an eternity, the one who appeared to be their leader welcomed him with a brief ongi etorri burkide! Aitor realized they were fellow comrades, no doubt deserters.

At the age of eighty Victor Dalmau, the book's protagonist, looks back on his life. “My life has been a series of journeys. I’ve traveled from one side of the world to the other. I’ve been a foreigner without realizing I had deep roots,” he says. So, from a vantage point of looking back, we can see that The Long Petal of the Sea is a story of displacement and exile. It is also a story of love and one about craving for our home and belonging where we are.

A Long Petal of the Sea traces the exile of the Dalmau family in 1939 from Barcelona just as Franco's forces are nearing the city and their fight for the republic in the Spanish Civil War has ended in defeat. The tattered remnant of the family escape to France where they are inhumanely detained in camps with little food and less shelter. Victor marries his younger brother's pregnant girlfriend, Roser, out of necessity to save their lives and so they can get a berth on board the SS Winnipeg. The famous Latin American poet and hero, Pablo Neruda, organized an evacuation of 2,200 Spaniards out of France heading toward Chile just weeks ahead of the beginning of WWII. These immigrants settled into Chile, many bringing the seeds of revolution with them from Europe. Victor and Roser among these immigrants, though they were less interested in politics and more interested in how to make a life for themselves in this new land. 

After many years of struggling to get by both Victor and Roser find themselves thriving in their new country, Victor as a doctor, Roser as a musician. But in the early 1970s Salvadore Allende (who happened to be Isabel Allende's godfather) is the first freely elected Marxist head of state. Immediately the country is thrown into turmoil. Three years later Salvadore Allende is dead and a CIA-backed coup installs General Augusto Pinochet, as the new leader. Suddenly Allende's friends, like Victor, are rounded up and either "disappear" or barely survive in concentration camps. Due to a lucky break, Victor is released after a year of detainment, forcing he and Roser to escape to Venezuela. Once again the couple must learn to live in exile.

The title, The Long Petal of the Sea, comes from a Pablo Neruda poem that depicts Chile as a “long petal of sea and wine and snow […] with a belt of black and white foam.” Neruda plays an important role in the book, as does his poetry, excerpts are included between chapters. 

Isabel Allende was born in Peru in 1942. She too lived a displaced life, moving to Chile when she was two, later to Venezuela after she was targeted by Pinochet for her work against his repressive regime. She now lives in California. I haven't read many of her books, though she has published over twenty, but I understand that displacement and belonging are often themes of her books. In A Long Petal to the Sea, Allende also shines a light on the role love plays in making torturous events in life bearable, as we see through the slowly evolving love story between Roser and Victor.

I found this book to be not only beautifully written but also phenomenally profound. After listening to the audiobook together, my husband and I had a long discussion about extreme politics on both the left and right sides. It also does a remarkably good job of educating the reader of actual historical events by placing those events against the stories of average people. I highly recommend it and know it will generate a good book discussion next week at book club.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from current book.The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material. 

-Anne

TTT: Books I've Recommended the Most In the Past Three Years

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I've Recommended the Most In the Past Three Years

1. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

2. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

3. Deacon King Kong by James McBride

4. Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

5. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

6. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

7. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

8. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

9. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare

10. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

11. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

12. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Looking for recommendations yourself? The Lincoln Highway, Lessons in Chemistry, and Project Hail Mary, have been my most popular suggestions.

-Anne

Review and quotes: THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY

Title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Book Beginnings quote:

In later years, holding forth to an interview or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos to his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, seal and hog-tied in the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

Friday56 quote:

The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

Summary:

A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. The story spans continents and eras. It is one of the defining novels of American literature. (Publisher)

Review: In preparing myself to write this review, I asked the Internet why The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won the the Pulitzer Prize for Literature the year after it was published in 2000. The reward of my search was finding this essay by Gail Caldwell, "An ode to the golden age of comic books heroics." The book, she says, "is full of pizzazz and testosterone and street smarts, with a moral center that tethers its intelligence. Like the writing of Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace, the novel is big and blustery and self-assured, and its reach and dynamism speak well to the future of the form. This is boy fiction in the purest sense: like a young colty quarterback running, on an autumn night, for the love of the game."

One of the duties of Pulitzer committee is to select the best American novel of the past year, one which tells an American story. That thought kept running through my head as I listened to all 24+ hours of the audiobook version: I am reading an American story. While the world was consumed with war and rumors of war abroad, American children (and some adults), were completely enthralled with comic books here at home. When Josef Kavalier, a young Jewish teen, escapes from Prague by the skin of teeth and arrives at the doorstep of his aunt in Brooklyn in 1939 he is not so quick to shake off his past. In fact he creates his first superhero, The Escapist, as a hero who fights and beats the Nazis. Others in the comic book industry urge him to take a lighter touch, after all America is not involved in that awful war in Europe. The Nazis weren't our enemies (at that time.) 

Though the book was long, over 600 pages, it was full to the brim with STORY. Even the subplots captured the mood and the era, and seemed as important and as delightful as the main plot. Caldwell referred to it as "a bountiful story, with infinite flights of fancy." Who knew, for example, that golems were hidden in buildings by Jewish congregations as a form of protection; or that comics about Superman, the first superhero, spun off thousands of copycats; or that the US Navy had a post on Antarctica during WWII? Just when I would settle into one plot line, the story would shift, keeping both it and me on our toes.

 

Gail Caldwell closes her essay with this: "...throughout the rousing, sometimes beautiful expedition that Chabon has charted here, there's the sense, both exhilarating and consoling, that he's given us a novel that actually matters. And that all those collective years spent in the company of Green Lantern and Spider-Man really mattered, too. Holy Toledo!"

I found it. The answer to my question of why The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won the Pulitzer Prize -- Because it is a novel that actually matters. And I'll give a second 'Holy Toledo' to that!

Challenge: I read this book as part of my personal Pulitzer Challenge to read all Pulitzer Prize winning novels published in the 21st century. With the completion of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay I have but three books to go to completion, counting the 2023 winner which will be announced next week! Yippee!

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from current book.The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material. 

-Anne

TTT: Ten Random books

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Random Books. 

Today we are challenged to select ten books randomly from our books shelf. Since I am on vacation and don't have access to my physical bookshelves I decided to "randomly" select ten titles from my Goodreads account. I mixed up books from both my 'read' list and my 'to-read' one. Here they are in random order. 

1. Necessary Christianity: What Jesus Shows We Must Be and Do by Alexander. I picked up this small study guide-type book at the library and found the first chapter very thoughtful and insightful. Shouldn't Christians live like Christ wants them to, as good examples of love and acceptance in the world? Unfortunately the book didn't live up to the promise of its first chapter and it was all downhill from there. I finished it but found it was mostly forgettable. [19th book down my read list.]

2. New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 by Mary Oliver. I am a big fan of this poet and have read many, many of her books of poems. Oddly I've never read this one. I placed it on my TBR on Aug. 19, 2019 hoping its placement there would spur me to action.

3. Imasaurus by Anne Yvilsaker. A darling and funny children's illustrated book which plays with dinosaur's names. My grand-kids loved it. Read in Sept. 2022. [138th book down my list.]

4. Jack (Gilead #4) by Maryanne Robinson. I got a free copy of this book on my e-reader in November of 2020. I selected it because I've read the first book in the series and really like Robinson's writing. Now that I know it is the 4th in a series, I may just delete it since I have no interest in drumming up the two middle books.

5. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. My family and I listened to the audiobook of the National Book Award winner on a trip going to celebrate Thanksgiving with the family. It's format is very unique, written as a script with stage directions. It is about Asian-American seterotypes especially in the entertainment industry. [257th book down the list. Read in November 2021.]

6. The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett. Placed on my TBR in October 2021 I have no memory of why I wanted to read it other than it sounds like something I'd like. If you've read it, please leave me a comment of what you thought of it. 

7. Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread by Kakutani. I read this book in February 2021, before COVID vaccines, that maybe explains why I can't remember a thing about it. I did rate it with 5 stars. [376 down.]

8. What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer. Described as a "stunning and honest debut poetry collection about being a mother, a wife, and a woman." I recently read her book I Hope This Finds You Well, which I adored. Moving this one up the list. (Placed on TBR May 25, 2022.)

9. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Flavia du Luce #4) by Alan Bradley. I was a fan of the Flavia du Luce series until I read this book. Other fans have urged me to read on, stating this book is an outlier, worse than the others. I haven't gotten around to reading any more in the series since this one, read in 2020. [498 down on my read list.]

10. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Zevin. Added to my TBR on December 9, 2022. I kept seeing the book on everyone's 'read' list but when I daughter to its audiobook earlier this year she was very 'meh' about it. Should I shouldn't I? Help me out.

I have to admit these books are a very good example of being random:

• Of the books I've read, I liked two, disliked two, and can't remember one.
• Of the books on my TBR, two are poetry collections, one is the 4th book in a series (which I haven't read the middle books), and two others I need advice to help me decide if I should read them.
  

-Anne