What Cruel Parenting!

“Between the ages of nine and fourteen, I was reading up to three or four books per week. This was mainly because my parents finally broke down and bought a television, and the rule was that I had to read a full book for every half hour that I watched it. The second rule was that I had to mute all the commercials so I would not be brainwashed into wanting products that I didn’t need.

When I started reading nothing but Sweet Valley High and The Baby-sitters Club, my parents decided that sugary teenage books didn’t count and that I had to read a literary “classic” for every half hour of television. My mom created elaborate (and oddly draconian) charts for my brother and me to keep track of all this. All I know is that suddenly I was plowing through Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte as fast as I could—just so I could watch a measly hour of Saturday morning cartoons.”

~Jerramy Fine
from her memoir
Someday My Prince will Come

What Cruel Parenting!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-cruel-parenting.html

Garden Spells (copy)

Clair is at home in her garden and kitchen. From the time she rises in the morning until she lays her head in bed, she can be found tending to the Waverley garden and creating delicious recipes from its flowers, fruits, and herbs.

These culinary creations, known all over the county, have flourished into a profitable catering business. Wines, jams, jellies, soups, sauces, and breads producing heady smells in the kitchen and having a heady effect on consumers, are her specialties. This past week she whipped up a batch of Rose Geranium wine for her friend and neighbor Fred Walker. He is having a little love trouble with his partner of 16 years, and the mixture promises to bring back sweet memories.

The town folks rave over her concoctions and use her catering ecstatically, but they keep a distance from Clair personally. See, the Waverley family is a little different. Each member has a special gift such as Clair’s way with food. Her aunt, Evanelle, can predict other people’s needs. Out of the blue, she will walk up to you and hand you a knit hat in summer, but oddly enough it will come in handy before the end of the week. No, they are not witches; they are Waverleys, and long-lost baby sister is coming home.

At 28, Sydney is running away from an abusive boyfriend before he kills her or does damage to her 6-year-old daughter Bay. It has been 10 years since she has seen Bascom, NC, and her sister, Clair. While away she has been under an assumed name and believes they will be safe and untraceable back in her hometown. As you can guess, they are not.

Garden Spells is an enchanting read by new, Southern author Sarah Addison Allen. The book contains a mixture of mysticism, mystery, romance, and relationships. By mysticism, I mean a magical apple tree in the backyard which likes to throw apples at unsuspecting passer-bys.

I decided to give this book a try after going to the Lunch with Books at Senatobia Public Library. Lighty Durley and Jane Billingsley gave an informative program on culinary books which included yummy dessert. Culinary books contain plots with cooking and recipes as either vital character or scenery element to a story. Garden Spells is the latest one on the market; although it does not contain recipes. One will need to visit the author’s website for those.

Garden Spells (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/garden-spells-copy.html

Nabokov's Art as Story

Landscape with the Voyage of Jacob

Claude Lorrain (1677)

After Lolita’s mother is hit by a car, HH and Lolita begin a yearlong driving tour of North America. They have been on the road now for months and their views of the countryside are understandably different. HH takes an artsy approach (as in the below paragraph) where Lolita reads road signs to pass the time. She is fascinated by the different bathrooms signage such as Guys/Dolls, Jack/Jill, John/Jane and ignores his pleas to be transformed by the scenery. A mark of their different ages, sure, but also their futures; HH foresees a tempest coming and Lolita is merely biding time until her rescue.

View of Toledo

El Greco c1597-9

“By a paradox of pictorial thought, the average lowland North-American countryside had at first seemed to me something I accepted with a shock of amused recognition because of those painted oilcloths which were imported from America in the old days to be hung above washstands in Central European nurseries, and which fascinated a drowsy child at bedtime with the rustic green view they depicted—opaque curly trees, a barn, cattle, a brook, the dull white of vague orchards in bloom, and perhaps a stone fence or hills of greenish gouache. But gradually the models of those elementary rusticities became stranger and stranger to the eye, the nearer I came to know them. Beyond the tilled plain, beyond the toy roofs, there would be a slow suffusion of inutile loveliness, a low sun in a platinum haze with a warm, peeled-peach tinge pervading the upper edge of a two-dimensional dove-grey cloud fusing with the distant amorous mist. There might be a line of spaced trees silhouetted against the horizon, and hot still noons above a wilderness of clover, and Claude Lorrain clouds inscribed remotely into misty azure with only their cumulus part conspicuous against the neutral swoon of the background. Or again, it might be a stern El Greco horizon, pregnant with inky rain, and a passing glimpse of some mummy-necked farmer, and all around alternating stripe of quicksilverish water and harsh green corn, the whole arrangement opening like a fan, somewhere in Kansas.” (Lolita p150 Peguin edition)

Nabokov's Art as Story

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/nabokovs-art-as-story.html

Lolita (copy)

He is a pervert, this E. Humbert Humbert from mysterious places in Europe. The deviant lurks in a handsome face capable of playing the leading man. The voice charms unassuming Americans within listening distance of his romantic French phrases. What knowledge can be gleaned from his façade? How can anyone close enough to smell his cologne realize it masks his spoil?

As the narrator, Humbert Humbert realizes his behavior is unacceptable. See, HH likes his mates on the young side, preferring prepubescent females between the ages of nine and fourteen. These beauties, these flickers of light, these exquisite nymphets swarm his mind and control his every action.

The obsession starts as all innocent encounters during youth when one becomes attracted to the opposite sex. Normal preadolescent HH spends a summer at the coast with his aunt. His father, away on business, leaves the youth without a consultant for his growing admiration of friendly neighbor, Annabel. The faunlet, two months HH’s junior, seems to enjoy her new pet, too.

Left to their own devices, the two embark on a summer of discovery. The journey, thwart at every apex, leaves HH fragmented; this sultry summer of ‘23 becomes the foundation of his madness.

Oh, but in the summer of 1947, after being in and out of sanatoriums, Double H meets Lolita. Fresh, young, 12-year-old Lolita, who seems as independent as Bathsheba Everdene, is the ideal faunlet. HH sings, “My sin, my soul. Lo—lee—ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

Vladimir Nabokov asks the reader to suspend judgment until the end of his favorite book titled Lolita. It has been over 50 years since its American publication, and I am still unable to remain indifferent. I loathe the character HH and his equally sinister shadow Clare Quilty. I deplore the sexual contact and feel icky for participating in the act of voyeurism through reading.

Not only do I have trouble suspending judgment on the characters, but the author as well. What kind of man writes about pedophilia without realizing his readers will be left with a bitter taste? Does he want the reader to be repelled or titillated? I would love to hear another reader’s view.

Here is Nymeth's thoughts at Things Mean a Lot.

Lolita (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/lolita-copy.html

Irish Movie Meme!

Number 9 is Far and Away! Thanks to everyone for playing! :D

Here's a fun meme I saw on Lynne's Little Corner of the World.

The Rules!

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies. (I picked 10 of my favorite Irish movies.) 2. Go to IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and find a quote from each movie. 3. Post them here for everyone to guess (if you know them all, please don't guess every one). 4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie. 5. No Googling or IMDb-ing. (That would be cheating, and no fun!)

Here are my quotes and hints: All these movies are set in Ireland! Don't think Irish mobs in America, Think Dublin, Limerick, etc!

1.) Sir!... Sir!... Here's a good stick, to beat the lovely lady.
(The Quiet Man, one of my all time favorites! Miriam has written a lovely post about this, her favorite movie, too!)

2.) Is there a greater twist of fate Annie? To win half a million and the next minute die from the shock of it.
(Waking Ned Divine! Great job Mary!)

3.) How do you know he was Spanish? Or a sailor? He could've been a Pakistani postman if you were that drunk!
(The Snapper! Mary's gettin' giggie wid it!)

4.) Do heavy metalers eat chips?
(The Van and Mary Rocks!)

5.) Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud.
(The Commitments! Way to go, Diane!)

6.) All is nothing, therefore nothing must end.
(My Left Foot! Give that Mary a shillelagh!)

7.) Have you ever seen the seagulls a-flyin' o'er the heather, or the crimson sails on Galway Bay the fishermen unfurl? Oh, the Earth is full of beauty, and it's gathered all together in the form and face and dainty grace of a pretty Irish girl. Oh, she is my dear, my darling one, her eyes so sparklin' full of fun, no other, no other can match the likes of her! She is my dear, my darling one, my smilin' and beguilin' one; I love the ground she walks upon, my darling Irish girl!
(Darby O'Gill and the Little People! W2G Tiffany!)

8.) Fairy land was never like this!
(Finian's Rainbow! Mary Donley got this jewel by contacting me through e-mail! You Go Gal!)

9.) I recognize these hedges by their dullness.

10.) Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been a minute since my last confession.
(Angela's Ashes! Faith and Begorrah Deana!)

Irish Movie Meme!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/irish-movie-meme.html

Memory Troubles (copy)

Note: I need to thank Sam Houston at Book Chase for this article idea. It was sometime last fall when Sam (I think) reported on Beah's timeline troubles in A Long Way Gone. Seems an Australian reporter did not believe his story because one year did not match Beah's uncle's recollection. We are talking 1994 vs 1996, and I totally see how time can be a problem in memoirs. Beah is forgiven in my eyes. But these others, bah!

I am currently between books, but deadline looms. For this reason, I decided to report a book controversy sweeping the globe. Remember James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces lie? Well, folks, it happened again. I am talking about authors who pass off false stories as truth in the form of memoirs.

Motoko Rich, a journalist for International Herald Tribune, reported, “In Love and Consequences, a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.”

Here is the truth: “Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.”

A week before this news broke, Misha Defonseca admitted her 1997 memoir, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, is fake.

According to Blake Eskin of Slate, “Misha is about a Jewish girl from Brussels who walked across Europe by herself during World War II and spent months living in the forest…Even if you forget for a moment that Defonseca has two prolonged encounters with wolves in war-torn Europe, her story strains credulity: She walks from Belgium to Ukraine, sneaks into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and stabs to death a Nazi rapist who attacks her—all between ages 7 and 11.”

Two decades after the European bestseller was translated into 18 different languages, a fact finder tried to research Misha’s family tree. The results exposed Misha, whose real name is Monique De Wael, is Catholic by birth and spent the war safe in Brussels.

This is a troublesome trend to read as a lover of memoirs. Memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies have a natural tendency for inaccuracies, but to fabricate a whole book is disgraceful.

Memory Troubles (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/memory-troubles-copy.html

The Canon (copy)

My father-in-law was a reader. Before his demise, bless his soul, I used to love talking to him about books. One of his favorite authors, Patrick O'Brian, wrote 23 books in the Aubrey/Maturin series with Master and Commander as the anchor. Mr. Moran was in a happy seafaring knot as he would read all 23 then turn around and start again.

A very curious thing was pointed out to me during a visit in the summer of 2003. On Mr. Moran’s nightstand was a textbook titled Ionic and Non-Ionic Surfactants. When asked about the book, he said he read it when unable to sleep.

This is the first thing I thought when picking up The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier. The premise is promising, but sleep is certain.

I am happy to report this is one of the most engaging science books read. Angier won a Pulitzer Prize Beat Reporting award in 1991 for her compelling science writing at The New York Times. It was well deserved as she tackles topics in this book such as physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and astronomy with intelligence and humor.

The book begins with discussions on critical thinking, probability, and calibration before delving into major topics. In the probability chapter she demonstrates how one can predict whether a class of students, broken into two groups, tosses a coin 50 times or pretends. Both groups must record the number of heads and tails in sequential occurrence. Within seconds of looking at the two results, she has an answer. How?

The first topic, physics, is the foundation on which other sciences are built. Angier explains, “Physics is the science of starter parts and basic forces, and thus it holds the answers to many basic questions. Why is the sky blue? Why do you get a shock when you trudge across a carpeted room and touch a metal doorknob? Why does a white T-shirt keep you cooler in the sun than a black one, even though the black one is so much more slimming?”

Angier advocates teaching physics before all other topics. She likens beginning with chemistry and biology as to building walls and a roof before pouring the slab. I like the idea but wonder if students have enough math skills to accomplish physics first.

This is the perfect book to prop up on your chest while in bed. No need to worry about the effects of gravity.

The Canon (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2008/03/canon-copy.html