Sunday Salon: the Thunderstorm Post

ETA: WordPress managed to delete part of my post, and I just realised it. The coding got all weird, so my paragraph about Tibet, Tibet disappeared but the cover image remained next to my whining about The Virgin Blue. Anyway, see my thoughts on Tibet, Tibet. I really liked it!!!.It feels so good to be getting back into Sunday Salon mode! :) The weather here is delicious: I love thunderstorms, but we don’t get them nearly as often as back in Texas. I’m hoping it clears up tomorrow, though, because my mom’s doing the ‘Bolder Boulder,’ a 10K race, tomorrow, and I imagine it will significantly less fun in the rain.

This was a weird week in reading for me. I actually gave a book ‘one star’ for the first time this year, and then a couple days later, I did it again. Several of the other books I read left me with mixed feelings, but I did have two solid five star reads as well, so that’s good! :)

First, I’m going to briefly talk about a book I read last week, but since I didn’t do a Sunday Salon I don’t want it to feel left out. Dreams and Shadows by Robin Wright is an incredible book that looks at contemporary Middle Eastern politics, both the region’s larger trends and what individual countries are experiencing. I had high expectations for this one: Wright is a journalist fluent in Arabic with decades of experience in the Middle East, and she didn’t disappoint me at all. While the book contains a lot of fascinating information, it’s written for an intelligent lay audience; her writing style is brisk, not technical, and you won’t encounter any international relations theory here (that makes me happy: I hate theory!). Wright interviewed all sorts of people for the book, and their personal stories really add an extra dimension. I highly recommend this one if you’re looking to understand the Middle East today.

To balance the nonfiction reading, I picked up The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer. This is my third or fourth Heyer, and I really enjoyed it (though the title of my favourite Heyer still firmly belongs to Friday’s Child). It’s not one of her regency novels, since it’s set a couple decades earlier, which means there isn’t a ton of slang in it. Also, it all takes place over a few days for the most part in a country inn; you won’t find the ton involved. The story’s a romp; young Eugenie is determined to clear her cousin Ludovic of his murder accusation, so that he can legally come back to England, claim his title, and marry her. She has help from a new older woman friend (I think she’s twenty eight) and her other cousin, in his early thirties, who is immune to the romanticism of the rest of the party. They must find the real murderer, who will be given away by his possession of a signet ring, while keeping Ludovic hidden from the authorities. It has a lot of farcical elements of course, but the characters still feel like people (silly people, sometimes, but still), and I’d recommend it for people looking for some well-written fluffy fiction that will make you laugh.

Next I finished Tibet, Tibet by Patrick French. This is the last of the books I got during my travelogue phase, and it’s definitely well written. I also know way more about Tibet than I used to, which is cool. The book alternates chapters about French’s experiences with Tibet (travelling there, campaigning on its behalf) with chapters about Tibetan and Chinese history. Additionally, there are sprinkles of French’s evolving views on how the West and Tibet interact. While sometimes the book gets a touch bogged down, the majority of it is pretty quick moving: since the history chapters include both general overviews and stories of people French has interviewed, they really come to life. What I loved about it was that French as an older man comes to a more nuanced, shaded view of the issues than his youthful fervor. He’s obviously quite intelligent, so his analyses of the situation, since they weren’t one-sided, felt strong to me. If you’re at all curious about Tibet, I think this would be a great book to read!

Then came the first one-star book of the year:Tracy Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue. I know a lot of people really like her, but I’ve reached a point where I’m not interested in gratuitous, depressing events. The book is split between the story of a modern woman who moves to France with her husband and the story of her medieval ancestor. But it all just felt pointless. I didn’t sympathise with any of the characters, they didn’t feel particularly real to me, and I saw the horrible thing that was going to happen (the ‘shocking’ ending) when I was a third of the way in. And quite frankly, it pissed me off. The book didn’t need to have it happen, it wasn’t explored in an intelligent way, and I’m annoyed that I spent time reading this one. (Sorry: I don’t do negative reviews that often, but this one upset me.)

Fortunately, I then read two five star novels in a row! Each deserves their own review, so for now I’ll just say that This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce both rocked. They’re completely different books, of course, but either one of them would be a wonderful read for anyone.

And now we get to the books I felt ambiguous about. I’m sorry this isn’t going to be the most positive Sunday Salon ever, but what can you do?!

Herbert Kohl’s A Grain of Poetry: How to Read Contemporary Poems and Make Them Part of Your Life started out great. I agreed with everything he said in the introduction, and I loved almost all of the poems. Unfortunately, the rest of the book felt a bit too cursory (in the ‘how to read a poem aloud’ section, he kept talking about how important it is to establish a flow, but he never actually said how to handle line breaks vs. punctuation, etc.), and I wasn’t a big fan of most of the poems he selected. I think I’ve ODed on ‘how to read poetry’ books, though, so others who haven’t read in the genre might like this one more!

The other book I gave one star to, Spoken Here by Mark Abley, is getting its own review, since I have sooooooo much to say about it.

Then I finished up Ain’t Myth Behavin’ by Kate Macalister. It has two novellas: one about Cernunnos and the other focused on Vikings and Norse mythology. Both are humorous looks at what might happen if ancient mythological guys fell in love with twenty-first century, mortal American girls. This wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t my type of book. I prefer good, strong writing even in my superficial reading (i.e.: Heyer), so even though Macalister had cute stories, her style didn’t appeal to me. If you enjoy the comedy romance genre (there are several explicit sex scenes-I thought they were well written, but if you don’t like that in a book, this isn’t for you), and value plot more than style, I bet this would be a great pick! :)

And finally, there’s Gifted by Nikita Lalwani. I’ll be giving this one a separate review too. For now, I’ll say that while Lalwani’s a wonderful writer, the subject matter of the book had me so stressed out I couldn’t really enjoy it.

So this wasn’t my best reading week ever. But I’m in the middle of two great books right now: Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope and Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson. I love reading both of them, and they’re highly recommended! Oh, and I’m sampling short stories from a great anthology: Children of the Night, ed. by Gloria Naylor. It’s full of contemporary African American writers. So I’m still ending on a good note. :D