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