The More You Read

I have been looking forward to this book ever since I heard the title.  I grew up in a Mennonite/Church of the Brethren church and am familiar with the Mennonite community.  It was more of a non traditional Mennonite background (my husband was disappointed that I didn’t wear a bonnet) but I was interested to hear about how this author was going to describe the Mennonite community.

Rhoda Janzen has a car accident the same week that her husband has left her and these coinciding events lead her to go home to live with her parents while she is recovering.  Much of her story is different anecdotes from her marriage and from her childhood growing up.  She is a good story teller and there were several moments that she described that made me laugh out loud.  Most of these had to do with her mother who is out spoken and has an interesting logic.  The author does describe parts of her Mennonite background such as a built in nature to cook (from scratch) and she details some traditional Mennonite meals that she always had to eat.  She talks about a Mennonite’s lack of style, and how it is looked at as sinful to dance, drink or play cards.  However she did not go into several of the things that I always felt differentiated Mennonite’s from other protestant religions such as their pacifist beliefs.

Overall this was a quick read and it was a book that I enjoyed.  It started a little rough for me because she put these little box quizes into the beginning of her story that I was not a fan of.  This was a story about going home and how that made her examine her background and culture after being away from it for some time.  I think we would all find surprises in doing that at the things that bring back fond memories and the ones that horrify us.

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Memoir, Mennonite, Rhoda Janzen

It took me a long time to decide to read this book.  I saw it everywhere and people had told me it was great, but for some reason I was hesitant to start it.  There have been several books that have come so highly recommended that there is no way they can live up to their hype.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ended up being a pretty good book.  It is a mystery/thriller about an unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl on an isolated island in Sweden.  She has been missing for almost forty years and her uncle hired Mikael Blomkvist in one last ditch effort to try to find out what happened to Harriet Vanger.

The book starts with Mikael, a financial journalist, losing a libel suit in court.  He is trying to figure out what to do with himself as he fears his reputation is now tainted and he knows he has several months in jail ahead of him.  Henrik Vanger is a wealthy retired businessman who hires Mikael at a large salary to spend a year living in the Vanger family compound where his niece, Harriet, went missing many years ago.  Mikael is to write a biography on the family but also to review the disappearance case in one last effort to figure out what happened.  Mikael agrees mainly because Henrik also promises information against the person who Mikael lost the libel suit against.

Mikael ends up being fascinated by the project and by the characters that he meets in the Vanger family.  He ends up hiring Lisbeth, a young woman (with a dragon tattoo) who does thorough research on just about anyone, to assist him and she too becomes very involved in the mystery of what happened to Harriet.  Many people in the Vanger family want the research to stop due to different personal reasons and Mikael begins to be threatened.

This book moved very quickly once I got into it.  The first chapter or two were a little slow, but once I got past that I couldn’t wait to find out what happened.  One of the main themes in this book was violence against women.  I was interested to learn that the original title to this book was Men Who Hate Women.  I liked that Lisbeth was a strong prominent part of this book.   There are two more books in this trilogy and I can’t wait to read what happens next.

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Fiction, Stieg Larsson, Sweden

This was a very good book about a woman dealing with her first year as a widow.  Janie’s husband Robby was killed in a motorcycle accident.  It was one of those life changing moments that I can imagine always looking back on and thinking ‘if only….’  Janie had a three-month old baby and a five-year old son and Shelter Me is the story of her grief and healing as she copes with this loss.

Janie is surrounded by support.  Her neighbor, Shelly, helps her with her finances.  Janie’s Aunt Jude and cousin Cormac play central roles that keep her going and helping with the kids when she needs it.  Janie was not very involved in the church at the time of the accident yet  Father Jake makes weekly visits that Janie at first resents and then comes to count on.

As life goes on Janie is surprised by one last gift her husband had arranged for her before his death.  He had met with a contractor, Tug, to build a screened in porch.  Tug works on this project throughout the summer bringing joy to five-year old Dylan with his power tools and bringing friendship to Janie.

There are many touching moments in this book that pull on your heart.  I have a young baby right now and it was hard for me to even read about someone with a young baby losing their husband.  Janie often makes comments in the book about how it’s Rice Krispies for dinner and that is completely believable for me.  Janie has to cope with a lot of firsts as she learns to make decisions again on her own and as she works to trust the world that has hurt her.  I really liked this book even though there were times when it brought me to tears.

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Fiction, Juliette Fay

This is the story of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. A Diamond In The Desert is written as a memoir but includes a lot of historical and background information, which I appreciated since I didn’t know much.

Jo Tatchell first went to Abu Dhabi in 1974 when she was a small child.  Her father was working there and it was a city that was just starting to realize and develop the wealth that it had based on oil reserves.  Before the oil wealth that flooded the area people had lived a simple, almost nomadic lifestyle going where they needed to in order to survive.  The desert climate is harsh and the main ways to make a living were pearl diving and farming.  With the money that started to come into the city within the last forty years there has been a great deal of development and urbanization.  The style of life has changed dramatically within people’s lifetimes.  However it has also lead to Emirates needing to redefine who they are and how they want to present themselves to the world.

The development of Abu Dhabi has been planned and there has been a recently more of a push to become a center for art and culture.  This was what brought the author back to the region because she had a hard time understanding how the society she had known could be open in the way it would need to in order to embrace art.  She describes a society that brushes the bad things that happen under the rug in order to present a good face in public.  She also describes a society in which there are strict rules to live by and how a lot of business is taken care of through connections, backwards deals, and with a lot going on under the surface.

I found this book very interesting and was happy to be both entertained by the personal accounts of the author’s time there as well as being able to learn about a different place and culture.  I was struck that some would put the number of Emirates living in Abu Dhabi at about fifteen percent, making the majority of the people there having come from around the world.  The author seemed to describe her time there as in some ways being part of things but in others being separate as she would always be an expatriate and an outsider.  I also found it fascinating to think how quickly a place has changed and gone from one simple lifestyle to a more complex modern one.

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Abu Dhabi, Jo Tatchell, Memoir

This is one of my favorite books by John Irving…and I’m not even sure why.  It is quirky like a lot of his other books.  A Widow for One Year is about the Cole family.  Marion and Ted Cole have had tragedy in their life with the death of their two teenage sons in a car accident.  After their boys died they had a daughter, Ruth, however they were not able to pull it together as a family and their marriage was falling apart.  The book starts with Ruth at age three the summer that Marion and Ted are separated.  Ted is a writer and has hired Eddie O’Hare as a writer’s assistant knowing that he will remind Marion of their sons.  Marion ends up having an affair with Eddie…which is a little strange.  At the end of this part of the book, Marion leaves and Ted is left with Ruth.

Over thirty years later Ruth is a writer and she is working on her own novel.  She is upset with her father after finding him in an awkward situation and she has been reunited with Eddie after many many years.  Eddie still carries a torch for Ruth’s mother and tends to date older women who remind him of her.  Ruth goes to Amsterdam primarily to research a book but also as an escape from her family and relationship troubles.

Every character in this book is unique and interesting.  I liked that almost all of the main characters were writers and how their stories play a part in the overall book.  Many of the characters are fairly dysfunctional yet they are still likable and you want the best for them.  The reader is only given a glimpse at the life of the Coles prior to their sons deaths but it did strike me how such a tragedy can change a whole family as people grieve and react in different ways.

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Fiction, John Irving

The Pilot’s Wife is one of my favorite books by Anita Shreve.  It is the story of the wife of a pilot who is involved in a plane crash and the investigation that follows.  Kathryn Lyons has been the wife of Jack Lyons for many years.  They have a fifteen-year-old daughter together, and she has been a pilot’s wife long enough to know what its like to be a single parent for stretches at a time as her husband flies international trips.  Holidays and important events have been missed yet Kathryn has depended on Jack to come home again.  This changes with a knock on her door telling her that her husband has died in a plane crash.

Very quickly the press swarms Kathryn and Mattie as the airline investigates whether the crash was an accident or not.  As the investigation goes on Kathryn learns more and more about a secret life that Jack had, one that devastates her as much, if not more than the actual crash does.

I enjoyed this book even though when I read I always put myself in the position of the main character and it is so hard to imagine the emotions that you would feel with a life changing knock on the door, or phone call to tell you that your loved one has died.  It is even harder to imagine that the person that you put so much trust in has betrayed you so dramatically.  This is a page turner and every book I have read by Anita Shreve, I have read because I enjoyed this one so much.

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Anita Shreve, Fiction

This is a beautiful book written by Ha Jin.  It takes place in China.  Lin Kong is a doctor who spends his years working in a military compound, away from his wife who is caring for his parents and raising their daughter in his village.  Lin Kong had married in an arranged marriage as a young man and had been at least content with his situation for a time.  He then went away for work and met and fell in love with a woman named Manna Wu.

Lin Kong does not ever consummate his love for Manna while still married, even though they spend their time together and grow emotionally intimate with each other.  There is a law stating that a man cannot divorce his wife without her consent until eighteen years has passed.  Year after year Lin Kong returns home to his wife to beg for a divorce.  And year after year she does not give it to him.  During this time the forbidden love only grows stronger as Lin and Manna wait until they can be together.

After eighteen years Lin divorces his wife and marries Manna only to find that what he has been pining for is not quite is wonderful in reality as it had seemed during the years of waiting.  Is this not a lesson we have all learned at one time or another?  This is a beautiful book that tells a lot about China during this time as well as showing the conflicting emotions that Lin Kong has as he waits to realize his dream or marrying the woman that he chooses.

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China, Fiction, Ha Jin

Half Broke Horses is a second book written by Jeannette Walls.  Her first book was a memoir where she detailed her nomadic childhood and the colorful parents and siblings that she has.  Half Broke Horses is sort of a prequel in that it tells the story of her grandmother, Lily Casey, but in first person form.  Jeannette Walls is another author that writes using a voice that I love.

Lily Casey was born in 1901 on a ranch in Texas and grew up there and in Arizona striking up a life as it came and making the best out of what there was.  In the beginning of the book Lily survives a flash flood and protects her younger siblings from it by climbing up a cottonwood tree and hanging on throughout the day and night until the waters subsisted enough to escape.  She has a quick mind and a quick wit and while she seems to try anything new that comes her way, she also has enough confrontation in her that she rubs some people the wrong way.

Lily is not able to finish school as she is a girl and her parents plan for her to get married.  She is able to become a teacher anyhow, at age 15, because of the teacher shortage in the southwest with the war going on.  She has numerous teaching jobs and is known at one as the horse back riding, poker playing teacher.  Lily is very independent and does what she can to stay that way.  After some family tragedy she decides to have children of her own and Rosemary, Jeannette’s mother, is born.

Some of the highlights of this book were the sassy character of Lily and the setting and time frame when it took place.  I also enjoyed getting to know Rosemary as a child since I had previously read The Glass Castle and had read about Rosemary as an adult.  I did find it a little bit odd to be reading in the first person a story that was like a memoir, knowing that Lily Casey was no longer living.  Jeannette Walls interviewed a lot of people to have a pretty complete picture of her grandmother, yet no one can tell accurately tell someone else’s story without a small piece missing.  This was a quick read (in fact I read it in the car on a four hour trip) and I was entertained throughout.  I will definitely read more of what Jeannette Walls writes.

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Fiction, Jeannette Walls, Memoir

I was not familiar with the term “snakehead” when I first came across this book but the blurb on the front and back were enough to catch my interest.  It is a story of illegal Chinese immigration focusing on a period in the late 80s to early 90s when it was at it’s highest.  A snakehead is someone who helps immigrants navigate their way from China to America.  The different paths that they take and the international connections that they have are astounding.  This story focuses on a snakehead named Sister Ping who was part of a smuggling family and potentially brought thousands of customers from a small area called Fuzhou to Chinatown in New York.

Chinese families would come together to pay the upfront price of bringing a family member to America as an investment in the family’s future.  The cost could be anywhere from $17,000 to $30,000 and the immigrant would then work in any number of jobs to pay off the debt to their family.  Many people took long (and sometimes tragic) routes to reach the United States and the hope of future wealth.

The story starts with the Golden Venture.  The Golden Venture was a boat carrying over 280 illegal Chinese immigrants that ran ashore off of the coast of New York City in 1993.  The people on the boat jumped off and tried to swim to shore.  Many needed to be rescued and some died.  Almost all of the immigrants were caught and arrested and eventually held in jail for years as their cases were appealed and re-appealed.  Previous to this incident illegal Chinese immigrants were coming to America primarily by plane from countries such as Thailand that were a little more relaxed with thoroughly checking the validity of passports.  Once the immigrants reached America they would ask for refugee status due to a number of reasons.  The INS began investigating illegal Chinese immigration more after the incident of the Golden Venture and found that Sister Ping was one of the primary people involved.  Yet it took many many years to catch and prosecute her.

This book takes you through the underworld of Chinatown, the desires of many to come to America at any cost and the world of human smuggling.  It was very interesting and I learned of things, such as the Gold Venture incident, that I had never heard of.  It was a great book.

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immigration, Non Fiction, Patrick Radden Keefe