a book suggestion for October if anyone's wondering

Hey Everyone, I wonder about this book for an October possibility for any of us: Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, by Patrick Kavanaugh, 1992. It's quoted from in that wonderful book, The Infinite Atonement, by Tad Callister. Mim

Great minds...

...think alike...or it must be the genetics! I, too, have chosen Musicophilia as my October read. I was so excited to see that Sacks had a new book coming out. We will just have to read quickly in late October! I ordered my copy through Amazon.

After weeding my books once in Lancaster, then packing them up, then unloading them and still not finding enough room on my existing bookshelves, reality hit me hard. I have way too many unread books and too few hours left in my life to read them. What a depressing thought that was...and then to turn another year older! Sadness.

Ivan and I now have a deal. When I have read ten books and discarded them (unless I really want to keep one) I can then purchase a new book. I asked Ivan and Bill to help me out so that I can keep things under control. They let me cheat with the Sacks book in that I was halfway through my tenth book and the new book doesn't actually arrive until mid-October! Maybe by then I will have read another ten?

Mim, I enjoyed your report on The Good Earth. I had no idea that Buck had a retarded child or that she had adopted other children. That adds quite a bit to the story and her characterization. It really is true that we write what we know. I think every author, whether they intend to or not, reveals themselves in their work. Did you find it different reading it as a mature married woman versus reading it in high school? Did you ever read The Inn of the Sixth Happiness...also an Asian setting? I guess I can ask you these things next week, huh!

FYI: Grandpa is reading outloud to Grandma every day...David McCullough's Truman. They are loving it and are almost three-quarters through. Even now, they continue to set a great example of learning and loving!

Happy reading!

The Good Earth, Mobius Strips, and Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

I've searched long and unsuccessfully for the criteria for the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel won by The Good Earth, but can't find anything substantial about that prize or the William Dean Howells Medal that Pearl Buck also won for it. Oh well, at least I learned that the old Novel prize (around till 1948) was pretty prestigious, especially for a woman. I learned more about Pearl Buck than about the prizes, and she was awesome. I knew she had a profoundly retarded daughter (this explains much of her characterization of Wang Lung and his "poor fool" daughter). The daughter, Carol, would've been 10-15 when the book was written. But I'd forgotten the great extent of Mrs. Buck's humanitarian work for the retarded, for children (she adopted nine other children after Carol came), and for Asian-American relations.

While I'm here in Asia I'm often reminded how different the Asian outlook can be. So I loved The Good Earth for reflecting such a different view of self (although Chinese, not Japanese) while still depicting the people as real human beings like you and me. A couple of reviews criticized Mrs. Buck for giving Wang Lung some "enlightened ideas" that he might not have had as a Chinese peasant in the early 1900s, but I disagree. I think he was still pretty dense about a lot of things! But she made him loveable. I'm really keen, right now, on understanding and loving people who are totally different from me.

I also read Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone this month. You all know how many awards it's won and I don't need to tell you I feel the awards are justified. It was a fun light read and I think I'll read the others (having listened to the first four books on tape before 2003). Not sure though. I'm in a weird season (menopause?).

My choices aren't typical anyway, are they?! For example, I'm excited about a book I just found called The Mobius Strip: Dr. August Mobius's Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology, and Cosmology (2006). Some of it is really quite beyond me and I probably won't read it all, but there's cool stuff in it like a picture of an oak stair railing that's a Mobius strip (so your hand ends underneath the rail when it started out on top) and a maze on a Mobius. (My apologies, Beccy, for leaving out the umlaut in "Mobius.")

None of you will be surprised by my October choice, then. I could've read a lot of things in our Music category but I Google-searched music with science terms, just for kicks, and quickly found Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks. Rae, I loved Sacks's Uncle Tungsten so much when you gave it to me, so I'm hoping this one is just as readable and fun. This one doesn't even come out till October 16th and then has to be shipped to my APO, so I'll be late with my October read. That's okay with me, though, because I'll be pretty busy the first two weeks of the month visiting several of you!! Love, Mim/Mom

Abby's October Read

That's just uncanny Rae. It's like you knew I'd be starting Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon very soon. Weird!

So...that's going to be my October read. We're introducing the girls to opera, starting with The Magic Flute (which is by Mozart), and I'm taking advantage of already thinking about Mozart to pick up a biography of him and learn more about him. Later I'd like to read the Grove Composer Series biography of him, but I think it might be a little dry and from what I understand Solomon writes well. I'm still new to the world of biographies and want something that won't read like a history textbook. So I'll let you know how it goes!

October Reading

Traditionally, people read scary stuff in October. I'm not very conformist, however, and really despise the roots of Halloween...and don't like to be scared. Besides, we are reading non-fiction.

Did you know that October is a most musical month? Giuseppi Verdi, John Lennon, Vladimir Horowitz, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Dizzy Gillespie and Franz Liszt were all born in the month of October. That covers the whole gamut from opera to jazz to pop to classical!

Your assignment for October is to find a musical read...non-fiction and related to music in some way. If you need to browse the shelves, the Dewey number is 780 or thereabouts. As always, I will be intrigued by what you find.

Happy reading!

The March by E.L. Doctorow

...has won two different awards--the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

The National Book Critics Circle Award has been around since 1974. Each year, 700 book reviewers get together in committees and select what they feel is the best fiction (and other categories) book of the year. Past winners include Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, John Upchuck, I mean, Updike (twice no less), Anne Tyler and Stanley Elkin. Incidentally, Liz, Jane Smiley won the award for A Thousand Acres. Doctorow has won three times, once each for Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March.

The PEN/Faulkner Award is even newer...it has been around since 1980. It was named in honor of William Faulkner (who didn't give a fig for quotation marks and most usage standards) who used his Nobel prize money to create an award for young writers. PEN is an international organization of writers. This particular award honors only American authors and is considered the largest peer-juried award. Winners are "first among equals." Kind of like the Oscars..."it's an honor simply to be nominated"...yeah, right. Three judges (different each year) who happen to be noted fiction writers select five books from the over 300 that are submitted. They then choose the one they consider the best.

Doctorow deserved some sort of award for The March as he quite nicely gives the reader the overall feeling of war...in this case the Civil War. I could not help making comparisons in my mind to other wars and our current unrest in Iraq. I guess war really is hell and its effects are universal. Although Doctorow focuses on Sherman's march through Georgia, North and South Carolina only, he does a great job of showing how the war effected all peoples...the slaves, the plantation owners, the children, the military on both sides, the parents, the political leaders, etc. It was really quite well done. I enjoyed the read...even if the subject matter was dark and dreary. I found it most relevant to today. Ain't history awesome!

Happy reading!

Switching Books Too

Well I've decided to change my September selection as well! I started the Niffenegger and it didn't take long to feel like it wasn't worth my time. I'm sad too! I was really excited! I think the story is probably quite creative and fun, but there are some "flies in that ice cream", so to say.

Lucky for me, I just finished reading Madame Curie and hadn't even realized it fit for our category! Madame Curie won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1937. At least, I just read that somewhere. But as I've looked into it more, I'm not even sure how that'd be possible. In the first place, the National Book Awards were started in 1950. And then the National Book Awards are supposed to award American authors -- Eve Curie was French/Polish. So...maybe the book didn't receive an award after all - but I think it should have.

I already wrote about it on my personal blog, but I'm copying the text to here so that it's more convenient for everyone to read and be able to comment on. I'd love to discuss it with anyone who's read it. If you already read this on my personal blog, I've added a sentence or two and they are in the green text.

I recommend Madame Curie by her daughter Eve Curie to anyone. It was SO good! I was surprised at how easily I was drawn into it and also how easy it was to understand the scientific jargon. Granted, I do lean toward what I might call being "scientifically minded", but I think Eve Curie did a masterful job of telling her mother's story in a way that laymen could understand many of the details of Marie Curie's work.

I admire Marie Curie greatly. She worked in awful conditions alongside her husband, Pierre, for many years to discover Polonium and Radium. I was struck by her drive to continue her work. I think she was a little insane about her rigorous work schedule but at the same time it's admirable. And she loved what she did. She even worked 12-14 hour days right up to her death at age 66! She was so driven that she would stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning sitting on the floor with pages of equations spread around her. (I loved that. I could go for that myself. If it was math anyway.)

I wish she could have had better resources for her research earlier on her career. I'm not sure that's changed much for scientists over the years. They slave so hard to make new discoveries, but very few are "sponsored" or supported with the things they need until those discoveries are actually made.

When I started the book, I knew very little about Marie Curie and her life. I think I knew what most people know - that she was a great scientist and discovered radium with her husband. I really enjoyed learning about the work she did during World War I! She created mobile x-ray "cars" that could be used in surgery and also found a way to make x-ray hospitals throughout France. She was only able to put together something like 10-15 of the cars, but she personally started 200 X-ray hospital rooms during the war to help the war effort. Amazing!

I was also struck by how intense her relationship with Pierre was. I was really sad reading about his death and how much her life changed after that. She never was able to speak with her daughters about him. It hurt too much.

I thought several times as I was reading about how wonderful it is to have a testimony of the Gospel and have perspective when it comes to this life and how it fits into the plan. Her inner struggles would have been so different and she could have been comforted in knowing that Pierre was waiting for her and in knowing that there is a greater plan than our mortal lives. I think she is waiting peacefully and happily in the spirit world though, and knows more of our Heavenly Father's plan for us now. At least, I like to think so. She was such a smart woman, I think she'll figure things out!

I second that

I agree regarding security--just keep it how it is until necessary to do otherwise. :)

Lulu

Security

Thanks for those thoughts, Rae. I agree. I'd like to keep it like it is unless anyone else feels strongly that we should do it otherwise. :)

Bookish Thots

In re security...I think its perfectly fine to block a personal blog. I read a set amount of blogs each morning and sometimes I wonder about the personal details they give out. On the other hand, I read some that just give opinions without revealing much. I don't know that our book blog reveals anything we wouldn't want any stranger to know. I do like the fact that only certain individuals can make comments or post things. That, in itself, is a security. Abby, you are great to keep us technologically savvy. Let's just be careful.

Liz...I didn't want to say anything re A Thousand Acres when you picked it as your book. I didn't want to prejudice you in any way. I'm glad, though, that you ultimately chose not to read it. I kept thinking of your little ones and wanted to tell you to skip it...but figured you had the smarts to make that decision on your own!

I read it years ago in conjunction with King Lear, which it is supposed to be a modern retelling of. [How's that for a bad sentence?] I wouldn't recommend it for any other reason. It's quite a dark and depressing story. Not uplifting at all. An Oprah book :) Something I have had to learn over the years is that even some books that are very well written are not worth our time.

What I find really intriguing is that The Good Earth, which so many of you have chosen to read, addresses some very adult issues. But I found that book uplifting and unforgettable. It just shows ta goya that an author can take on dysfunctional topics without making the reading oppressive or distasteful.

Happy reading!

access & book change

Hi Dear Sisters, Aunties, & Momma!

In response to Abby's query, I like being able to read our posts w/o logging in, but it wouldn't really be a big deal if I had to each time. As far as others reading our posts, I don't mind. ;)
Abby, thanks for being on top of all of this for us!

I'm switching my book choice . . . I decided that the book I'd chosen wasn't going to be what I'd hoped. I already had put up with a lot of language when things started changing for the worse in other ways. So although it was interesting I'm not interested enough to keep going with it.
I think I will join the The Good Earth club this month.

Love to all!!
Liz

Access

Right now, only Mom/Mim, Rae, Beccy, Liz, me, Lulu/Rae, and Maddie are blog authors. But anyone can read the blog. Would you like me to change it so that only those invited can read it? If we choose to do it this way, you'll have to log-in at blogger each time you check our blog.

Abby's September Read - The Time Traveler's Wife

I'll be reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger this month. It won the Popular Fiction British Book Award (they're also called "nibbies") last year.

It's about a guy who randomly time-travels (due to some genetic problem...), but falls in love and marries. The story alternates between his and his wife's viewpoints.