The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

Jan30

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown.

With the (winter) Olympics coming up and my aforementioned current interest in the 1930’s, The Boys in the Boat was just the ticket for reading on a very cold day in January. The nine Americans in the title were: Don Hume, Bobby Moch, Stub McMillin, Johnny White, Gordy Adam, Shorty Hunt, Roger Morris, Chuck Day, and Joe Rantz. They were the crew of an eight-man shell for the University of Washington. Their coach was Al Ulbrickson, and George Pocock, famous for building racing boats for Washington and for many other championship rowing teams, was their mentor and the builder of their shell, the Husky Clipper.

The story focuses on crew member Joe Rantz, since he was the member of the Olympic team that the author first met and from whom he heard the story of the “boys'” journey to the Berlin Olympics. I put “boys” in quotation marks because by the time their story was published last year (2013), the boys in the boat had all passed on. But Mr. Brown got to interview some of them before they died, and he spent a great deal of time researching the backgrounds of the boys, talking to family members, reading journals that some of the boys kept, and preparing to write an inspiring and flowing account of their rise to glory at the Olympics.

One of things that the book emphasizes is that rowing is not easy:

“Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body. . . And rowing makes these muscular demands not a odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. . . The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the sport: ‘Nobody ever took time out in a boat race,’ he noted ‘There’s no place to stop and get a satisfying drink of water or a lungful of cool, invigorating air. You just keep your eyes glued on the red, perspiring neck of the fellow ahead of you and row until they tell you it’s all over. . . Neighbor, it’s no game for a softy.'”

I was filled with admiration for these college boys who practiced in rain, sleet, wind and snow to go to a total of two races: one in their own Washington waters against arch rival, the University of California, and the other in Poughkeepsie, competing against California again and against all of the East Coast teams who saw the westerners as country cousins who were out of their league in the East. The persistence and fine-tuning of the team and its precise movements required all that the nine member team could give, mentally and physically–and then, a little more.

The book also made much of the contrast between Depression-era country boys struggling in Washington State to get an education and make the Olympic team at the same time, and Hitler’s desire to make the Berlin Olympics into a showcase for the Nazi regime in Germany and the Aryan youth of Germany who would be competing for the glory of the Reich. The impending war serves as a focus and a frame for the story, even though the boys in the boat were completely unaware of the imminent approach of a world war that would change all of their lives.

Some interesting mentions in the book:

Actor Hugh Laurie’s father, Ran Laurie, was member of the British eight-man crew at the 1936 Olympics.

Louis Zamperini (Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand) is mentioned once in this book, as possibly the only athlete on the boat to Europe for the Olympics who had a bigger appetite than rower Joe Rantz.

Swimmer Eleanor Holm was expelled from the U.S. Olympic team for drunkenness on the boat over, after an all-night party with some journalists, who then proceeded to make headlines with The Eleanor Holm Story in newspapers all over the United States.

The coxswain for the team, Bobby Moch, found out for the first time in a letter from his father just before he left to go to the Olympics, that his relatives in Europe, whom he had never met, were Jewish, and therefore that he was of Jewish heritage.

Hitler’s pet filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, made a well-regarded propaganda film about the 1936 Olympics, called Olympia. The film was secretly funded by the Nazi government, and it was shown all over the world to great acclaim.

All in all, The Boys in the Boat is a great book for anyone interested in sports stories in general, rowing in particular, the rise of Nazism, the 1930’s, Olympic history, and just plain inspirational stories of perseverance and courage. If there were a few extraneous details, they were details that I enjoyed learning. And the prose was well above average.

Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

Jan29

Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets is the kind of book I should like very much, It’s a “problem novel” (think ABC After-School special, for those of you old enough to know what that was) about a teenage boy who has been abused by his parents and who is dealing with clinical depression (or bipolar disorder or something similarly challenging). The main character, James, is engaging and sympathetic. He hugs trees to cheer himself up, and he imagines a pigeon analyst, Dr Bird, who advises him on his mental and family issues. (I could only picture Dr. Bird as Mo Willems’s Pigeon, with glasses.) James is a fan of the poetry of Walt Whitman, and he’s a budding poet himself.

So, why did I only sorta, kinda like this book? I know one thing that bothered me: the implication that mental illness is caused by parental abuse or neglect. No, the book never said that James’s parents made him depressed and suicidal, but his sister is also depressed and angry and seeing a counselor. And a lot of James’s issues seem to be at least exacerbated by his parents, who by the way, are very one-dimensional, angry people. I understand that the book is written in first person from James’s point of view, and that he probably doesn’t see his parents as real people. For him they are “the Banshee” and “the Brute”. Still, the author could have used the plot and dialogue to tell us something about the parents that would make us see them as full, if not very likable, characters.

Or maybe I’m just coming at this book from a parent’s perspective, not that I’m terribly sympathetic with parents who beat and verbally abuse their children. Nevertheless, teens get depressed, and it often has nothing to do with their admittedly imperfect parents. (Do I sound defensive? Well, I do have family members who deal with depression.)

OK, so that said, I’ll tell you what I did like about this book. I liked Dr. Bird, the imaginary therapist, who actually gives sound advice to her “patient”. I liked the Walt Whitman quotations and allusions, even though I don’t generally care for Whitman, and I liked James’s self-awareness and intelligence. The narrative showed that people who are dealing with mental illness are still “normal” people. They’re smart; they write poetry; they hug trees; they have jobs; they go to school; they make sometimes good and sometimes bad choices.

I didn’t totally fall for Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets (oh, yeah, love the title) because of the parent angle, and it does include the obligatory crude language (briefly in comparison to other YA novels I’ve read lately). However, you might find it amazing, or at least enlightening.

Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets is a finalist for the Cybils Awards in the category of Young Adult Fiction.

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

Jan27

Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo won the Newbery Award for best children’s book of 2013. The announcement was made this morning, and I realized that I actually had the book, checked out from the library and waiting to be read on my shelf. So I read it.

Flora and Ulysses is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. For some reason, the story and the writing reminded me of P.G. Wodehouse, although for the most part it’s nothing like Wodehouse—except in their shared wackiness. Anyway, I’m exquisitely pleased that this partiular book won the Newbery Medal. I recommended it to Z-baby as soon as I finished it, and she’s reading it now. Let’s see . . . how to tell you what the book is about: a giant magical vacuum cleaner, a flying squirrel poet, a cynical ten year old girl named Flora Belle Buckham, dunking donuts, superheroes, nefarious malfeasance, and a vanquished cat. That ought to be sufficient to whet your appetite.

Young readers will also enjoy the interspersed graphic novel parts, the wisdom of our round-headed protagonist, Flora, and the intrepid squirrel. I liked it all. Who wouldn’t enjoy a book for kids that dares to use big, beautiful words like “capacious” and “preternaturally” and “positing” and “hyperbole”? And it’s a book that asks questions, lots of questions, such as:

What good does it do you to read the words of a lie?

Is gianter a word?

Who can say what astonishments are hidden inside the most mundane being?

Don’t we all live in our heads? Where else could we possibly exist?

So, now that the Newbery committee and I have built up your expectations to impossible heights, go read Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures with no expectations at all. Just think of it as possibly another boring award-winning book that those East Coast librarians and publishing-types have picked because it’s good for you.

Then be delighted.

Footnote: I must be prescient or something because I also have the Caldecott winner, Locomotive by Brian Floca, on hold at the library.

Setting: 1936-39, Just Before the War

Jan27

A friend of ours is writing a book of stories set in a small English village just before World War II, and I’m reading The Last Lion, the second volume of a three volume biography of Winston CHurchill, about the years from 1932-1940. So I’m particularly interested in the time period right now, especially in Europe and Asia. (I didn’t include books set in the United States during the 1930’s.) Do you have any recommended additions to this list?

Spanish Civil War:
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. Nonfiction.
Life and Death of a Spanish Town by Elliot Paul. Fiction.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Fiction.
Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom. Fiction. Semicolon review here.

Sino-Japanese War and The Nanjing Massacre:
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. Fiction. Semicolon review here.
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. Fiction. Semicolon review here.
Living Soldiers by Ishikawa Tatsuzo. Fiction.
Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin, reviewed at Semicolon. Fiction.
The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder. Fiction. Reviewed by Nicola at Back to Books.
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. Nonfiction.
Dragon Seed by Pearl S. Buck. Fiction.

The Kindertransport, 1938-39:
Sisterland by Linda Newbery. YA fiction.
Far to Go by Alison Pick. Fiction.

Stalinist Russia, Before the War:
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.
Sashenka: A Novel by Simon Montefiore.

Britain, Before the War:
Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson. Fiction.
A Blunt Instrument and No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer. Fiction.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Fiction.
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson, reviewed at Semicolon.
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester. Nonfiction.
Several Agatha Christie mysteries take place during this time period, titles too numerous to mention.

Continental Europe, Before the War
Pied Piper by Nevil Shute.

12 Projects for 2014

Jan26

I love projects. Even if I don’t finish them, even if the list itself reproaches me and makes me feel guilty for my broken promises to myself, I still love projects. So, here are my projects for 2014. May this be the year of finishing, or at least starting, all of my projects to the glory of God.

1. West Africa Reading Project. I intended to read a great many books last year that were set in West Africa (Benin, Biafra, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo). I did read some. The stand-outs were Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. I’m feeling as if I only scratched the surface of the literature set in this part of Africa, however. So I’m planing to devote another year to the books of West Africa. Any suggestions for can’t-miss books set in the countries of this region?

2. I have a Restore the House Project that has been forced upon me by the fire we had at our house. I’m choosing to think that it will be fun to see my forty year old house made new again and to participate in the planning and the restoring and the remodeling. In particular, we will be remodeling the kitchen. Any advice?

3. Homeschool Library Project. My plans for a private lending library for homeschoolers in my area have been put on hold by the fire, but I’m hoping to resume work on that project as soon as #2 is completed.

4. Bible Study Project. I am hoping to do some intensive Bible study this year, first on the Bible study I’m writing for my churches’ women’s retreat in April, a study of Jesus’s I AM statements in the book of John (I AM The Light of the World, I AM The Bread of Life, etc.). Then, I’m not sure what will be next, but I am open to suggestions.

5. Prayer Project. I’d like to deepen and enrich my prayer life, maybe spend a set amount of time each day in prayer. I’m curious: do you pray at a set time(s) every day, or just “on the fly”? How do you organize your prayer life? How do you stay motivated to pray consistently?

6. Picture Book Around-the-World Project. I’ve been working on a follow-up to my Picture Book Preschool curriculum (for several years I’ve been working, ruefully), called Picture Book Around the World. I’d like to really bear down and finish this year. If I do get to work on this project, expect to see lots of picture book reviews for books set in countries all over the globe. Again, recommendations?

7. Cybils Challenge. I’ve decided I’m going to at least TRY to read all of the Cybils nominees, although there are a few (mostly YA) that I’m fairly sure I won’t like well enough to finish.

8. Homeschool Co-op Project. I am one of two head coordinators for a homeschool co-op that ministers to over 100 families in this area. We offer parent-taught classes one morning a week, and we provide fellowship opportunities for homeschooling moms. It’s a time-consuming project, but I love serving there where God has called me to help parents follow their calling to homeschool.

9. U.S. Presidents Reading Project. I may only read one or two books for this project, but slowly, surely, I should manage to read a book about each president before my reading days are over.

10. Century of Books Project. I read about A Century of Books here at the blog Stuck in a Book (and here is Stuck in a Book’s 2012 Century of Books completed project). I couldn’t resist. The idea is to read one book from each year of a century, whatever century you choose, to total 100 books. Simon at Stuck in a Book chose the century from 1914-2013. I’m going to choose the century from 1851-1950. I’m using my subscription to Forgotten Books digital library to get copies of many of the books on my list.

11. Poetry Friday Project. I’d like to participate in Poetry Friday this year, at least most Fridays.

12. Bible Note-Taking Project. I continue to take notes in my Bible during Bible study, sermons, and other Biblical endeavors. I’m planning to transfer many of the notes in my current Bible to a new one that I got last year and start using the new one for future note-taking. I just jot down whatever the Holy Spirit brings to mind with the intention of giving each of my Bibles to one of my children someday.

Too many projects, especially reading projects? Probably, but I go to this list whenever I tire of what I’m working on at the time, and I can always find something else worthwhile to replace the project (or housework) from which I need a break. So in that way my project list is a blessing. I just don’t get too stressed about finishing the reading projects in particular.

Saturday Review of Books: January 25, 2014

Jan24

“When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren’t told or books weren’t written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day.” ~Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus by Isaac Bashevus Singer

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Locomotive by Brian Floca)
2. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Emily Climbs)
3. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Miss Buncle’s Book quote)
4. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (All You Want to Know About Hell)
5. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Shadowed by Grace)
6. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Critical Pursuit)
7. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Mr. Spunky and His Friends)
8. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Headmistress of Rosemere)
9. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Redeemed)
10. Cathy@ThoughtsonBooks (The Goodness of God)
11. Jessica Snell (Pen on Fire)
12. Barbara H. (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy)
13. Barbara H. (A Study in Scarlet)
14. Barbara H. (The Blue Castle)
15. Books&Monika (A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki)
16. Janet (Last Chronicle of Barset)		 17. Hope (Victorian Challenge Wrap-Up)
18. Jama’s Alphabet Soup (A Fine Romance)
19. Reading World (City of Women)
20. Becky (Dare to Love Again)
21. SmallWorld Reads (When She Woke by Hillary Jordan)
22. Yvann@Readingwithtea (The People in the Photo)
23. Yvann@Readingwithtea (The Incredible Inheritance of Wilberforce)
24. Becky (Pastwatch Redemption of Christopher Columbus)
25. Becky (Aquifer)
26. Becky (A Corner of White)
27. Becky (Lady of the English)
28. Becky (Alexander the Conqueror)
29. Becky (Good Morning Miss Dove)
30. ~ linda @The Reader & the Book (One)
31. Thalia @ Muses and Graces (Across the Great Barrier)
32. Glynn (The Watchman of Ephraim)		 33. Glynn (St. Martin-in-the-Field)
34. Glynn (Wounded Women of the Bible)
35. Glynn (How the Bible Came to Be)
36. Susanne@Living To Tell (Almost Forever)
37. Joseph R.@ZombieParentsGuide (St. Benedict and St. Therese)
38. Sophie (Hatchet)
39. Sophie (Double Happiness)
40. Alex @ Is It Amazing (Plague Town)
41. gautami tripathy
42. gautami tripathy (something About Her)
43. gautami tripathy (The Doctor’s Secret Bride))
44. gautami tripathy (Baby, It’s Cold Outside)
45. gautami tripathy (Where’s My Son?)
46. gautami tripathy (The Lantern)
47. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Somewhere in France)
48. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (No Surrender Soldier)

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Poetry Friday: The Country Clergy by R.S. Thomas

Jan24

I stole this poem fragment by poet R.S. Thomas from Glynn because I loved it and wanted to share it/preserve it here.

I see them working in old rectories
By the Sun’s light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men’s hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.

This poem reminded me of my father-in-law, a Baptist preacher in tiny West Texas Baptist churches. He didn’t usually work full time as a pastor, but rather he was what we now call a bi-vocational pastor. His churches were in places that don’t stand out on the map: Buda, Prairie Lea, Robert Lee and Maverick—all in rural Texas. He left no books, only journals written in spiral-bound notebooks, talking about things like the weather, the comings and goings of family members, and the many things he was thankful for.

My father-in-law, John Early, has gone to his reward, and his words and ideas often read as somewhat quaint and outmoded, but always faithful. God in his time or out of time will correct this.

Tara is hosting today’s Poetry Friday Roundup at A Teaching Life.

For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund

Jan21

Futuristic, post-apocalyptic science fiction that’s very loosely based on or inspired by Jane Austen’s novel of manners and thwarted love, Persuasion. Eliot North, the main character, is a girl who, like Ann Eliott in Persuasion has chosen duty over love and passion. As she is unavoidably throw together with the man she rejected over four years previously to the opening of our story, Elliot must decide how to guard her heart and remain true to her principles of loving and caring for the innocent and helpless.

There is, as I said, a science fiction apocalypse aspect to this story: the world is living in the aftermath of genetic experimentation gone awry, and the Luddites, who rejected the genetic experiments, are the only ones who are holding things together and providing for the Reduced, the mentally challenged victims of the experimentation. Elliot is a Luddite. Some characters, called Posts, have transcended the Reduction of their ancestors, but the Luddites still treat the Posts like Reduced slaves.

What I liked best about this novel was the Jane Austen tie-in. It made me want to go back and re-read Persuasion. I also liked Elliot as a character, although she could be remarkably obtuse at times. In fact, all of the characters in the novel had their moments when they should have seen what I as the reader could see clearly, but they didn’t. And sometimes, in a way I can’t exactly put my finger on, the characters jumped to slightly erroneous conclusions or unusual interpretations of events that didn’t seem to be warranted by the information given in the book. It made the novel skew very juvenile, maybe middle grade even, definitely YA rather than adult.

Maybe the problem was that Elliot North and her rejected suitor Malakai Wentforth just aren’t adult in the same way that Ann Elliot and her erstwhile love Frederick Wentworth are grown-up and mature in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Elliot and Malakai are only eighteen, and they act emotionally like sixteen year olds or younger. None of these issues spoiled what was essentially a good story, but they were there nagging at the back of my mind as I read.

The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine

Jan20

Kathryn Erskine’s middle grade novel Mockingbird, about a girl who has Asperger’s Syndrome, won the National Book Award in 2010. The Absolute Value of Mike is about a boy with a math learning disability whose father is a math and engineering genius and wants him to be one, too. Mike’s father is a little bit annoying, and he seems to be dealing with (undiagnosed) Asperger’s himself. Mike is a talented kid, just not at math and science.

I enjoyed this story about a boy who spends the summer with his extremely eccentric great-aunt and uncle, Moo and Poppy. Mike becomes involved in a town project to raise the money for Moo’s friend Karen’s overseas adoption of a boy named Mischa. Then, somehow through a series of improbable events, Mike ends up in charge of the money-raising project. He also manages to nag and yell at Great Uncle Poppy enough to pull him out of his depression brought on by the recent death of Poppy’s and Moo’s adult son. And fourteen year old Mike drives Moo’s car, gets Gladys to sing on video, and organizes a town-wide Do Over Day (the town is called Do Over).

Mike’s relatives and friends take quirkiness to whole new level as Mike spends the summer ostensibly helping get Mischa home, but really figuring out how to deal with his dad’s expectations and his own growing self-knowledge about his real talents. It’s a good story, and Ms. Erskine is an author to continue to watch for good, engaging stories about out of the ordinary middle school/teen characters. She has a new book out (September, 2013) called Seeing Red. I think I’ll look for a copy at the library.