While We’re Far Apart by Lynn Austin

Sep27

I read this book because it’s one of the many novels that has been nominated for the INSPY Award in the category of General Fiction. Also, I like historical fiction,and this book set during Word War II sounded interesting. In fact, I gave it to my mom to read first, thinking she might like the time period setting; she actually remembers the end of World War II. She says she remembers marching around her front yard banging with a spoon on an old pan to celebrate VE Day or VJ Day, one of the two.

However, for my mom the book was a non-starter. She read a few chapters, but since the main characters, or at least one of the main characters, is a twelve year old girl, the book felt too juvenile to her. She suggested I give it to Betsy-Bee who is also twelve years old.

However, since it’s classified as adult fiction, I thought I should read it myself. I’m glad I did. There’s not much in there that a mature 13 or 14 year old wouldn’t understand and appreciate, but the book, especially the pacing, is probably more suited to adults. It doesn’t move too quickly, but rather it’s what I would call a character-centered story. Esther, the twelve year old, is a love-starved little girl who’s just on the edge of adolescence and growing into adulthood. Her mother has died in a car accident, and her father is so absorbed in his grief that he has little or no emotional strength to give to his children. Esther’s brother, Peter, is just as confused and needy as Esther, but he expresses his suffering by becoming mute. The two children are further traumatized when their father decides to volunteer to go to war in order to escape from his memories and from the pain of his wife’s death.

Then, the most interesting character enters the story. Penny Goodrich is the girl next door who’s always, unbeknownst to him, had a crush on the children’s father. When their grandmother refuses to care for the children (she’s a hoarder and has her own issues), Penny steps up, hoping to make Eddie Shaffer, the dad, fall in love with her as she cares for his children. I thought at first Penny was going to be border-line mentally impaired, but as the story progresses, Penny is only very sheltered and a bit slow on the uptake because of her peculiar background and discouraging and over-protective parents who have always told her that she is as “dumb as a green bean.”

I liked figuring out Penny, and then the Jewish characters who show up in the story are also intriguing. Mr. Mendel, the Shaffers’ friend, neighbor, and landlord, is waiting to hear from his son who was trapped in Hungary at the beginning of the war. Mr. Mendel also lost his wife in the same accident that killed Esther’s mother, and he is quite bitter towards “Hashem” the name he uses to speak of God. The book includes lots of questioning about the goodness of God and His role in suffering and evil. “If God is good, why does He let bad things happen?” No easy answers are given, but Mr. Mendel eventually realizes that he cannot leave his faith, or else his faith in God and community will not leave him.

I liked it. If the setting and characters sound like somewhere you would like to visit and people you would like to get to know, if only briefly, check it out.

1916: Art and Entertainment

Sep26

On May 20, 1916, artist Norman Rockwell publishes his first cover for the magazine Saturday Evening Post. The picture was called Boy With Baby Carriage., and it shows a boy who is having to push a baby in her carriage while his friends go off to play baseball.

Also, during 1916 and until his death in 1926, Claude Monet continues to paint his murals of water lilies even though he develops cataracts on his eyes and is unable to see as clearly or paint in such detail as he was in his earlier work.

Christina Bjork (b. 1938) is author of the beautiful book, Linnea in Monet’s Garden. In the book, Linnea, a young girl, and her neighbor, Mr. Blom, get to visit Paris and Giverny and see the places where Monet created his paintings. The book is a wonderful introduction to impressionist art and to the work and life of Claude Monet.

1916: Books and Literature

Sep26

Seventeen A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family, Especially William by Booth Tarkington; illustrated by Arthur William Brown, published by Harper and Brothers, 1916, is a humorous novel about a seventeen year old boy’s first love. Mr. Tarkington’s novels were very popular in the first part of the twentieth century.

Listen to W.B. Yeats’ poem, Easter, 1916 about the Irish Uprising that occurred in Dublin, Ireland on Easter Monday of that year. The rebels proclaimed Irish independence and an Irish republic, but they were forced to surrender to superior British forces on April 29, 1916. Over 300 Irish died, and over 2000 were imprisoned by the British.

Here’s the last verse of the poem which celebrates those Irish heroes who died in the Easter Uprising:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

1916: Events and Inventions

Sep26

January, 1915. Austro-Hungarian forces overrun and take the small country of Montenegro.

February 21, 1916. German guns fire on the French positions near the fort of Verdun in the beginning of a major assault on the French line. The French, who have concentrated their armies elsewhere along the front, retreat before the German onslaught.

March, 1916. The Austrian War Dog Institute and the German Association for Serving Dogs begin training dogs as guides for the blind.

March 15, 1916. 4000 U.S. troops under the command of General John Pershing cross the border into Mexico in pursuit of Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa. Villa and his Villistas have been raiding towns along the border in Arizona and New Mexico. Some say he is purposely trying to draw the Americans into the continued civil war in Mexico. The picture on the right is Pancho Villa and some of his men in 1914.

April 24, 1916. The Easter Rising. Irish nationalists in Dublin stage an uprising against British rule on the Monday after Easter Sunday. The Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein, two nationalist organizations, lead the rebellion and attempt to declare Ireland to be an independent republic. The British government sends reinforcements to the army in Dublin to fight and capture the rebels.

May 31, 1916. British and German Dreadnoughts clash at Jutland off the coast of Denmark. Called the battle of Jutland, the fight ends in a German retreat but greater losses of men and ships for the British.

July 1, 1916. The Allies launch an attack on the German lines near the Somme River in northern France. Over 57,000 Allied soldiers and 800 Germans die in the first day of the offensive. The Battle of the Somme will end in November after more than a million deaths on both sides.

August, 1916. Romania, neutral until now, joins the Allies and invades Austria-Hungary.

September 15, 1916. Great Britain’s army reveals its new secret weapon: the tank. 32 tanks are deployed on the Somme, and German machine gunners scatter in their path. 2000 Germans are taken prisoner.

December, 1916. Cutex, the first liquid nail polish, is introduced in the U.S. by Northam Warren.

December, 1916. The â€˜turnip winterâ€™ in Germany and Austria sees food shortages caused by the Allied naval blockade and a high mortality rate among the civilian population.

The Five Love Languages of Teenagers by Gary Chapman

Sep26

I have a low tolerance for psycho-babble. Although I don’t think this book is complete psycho-babble, there is an (un)healthy portion of it that just reads like psychological speculation and filler. I’ve read about the “five love languages” before, and there is a core of useful information there. I just think it can be explained in a simple way and in far fewer words than are in the several books that have been written and published on the subject.

So, the five love languages are:
1) words of affirmation
2) quality time
3) touch/physical expression of affection
4) gifts
5) acts of service

It is Mr. Chapman’s contention that everyone uses one of these five love languages as his or her primary way to express and receive love. The point of knowing your own primary love language and the primary love language of significant others in your life is to be able to express your love to them in a way that most plainly communicates love to that person. For example, if my primary love language is quality time, I will feel most loved by my husband, by my friends, and by my family when they decide to spend quality time with me. I will also tend to assume that that’s how they feel most loved by me. However, each of those people may have a different primary love language, and my husband or my teenage son may feel more loved and affirmed if I simply give them a a hug or a sincere compliment or a small gift or if I do something for them.

That’s it in a nutshell. The book takes a lot more words to say not much more than the preceding paragraph. If you want the concepts fleshed out with stories and lots of explanation and a few disclaimers and qualifications, read the book. Otherwise, just try to figure out how the people around you most readily receive and give love, and then try learning to give your affection to each one in a way that suits that person’s personality and “love language.” Not a bad idea at all, just too many words.

1915: Art and Entertainment

Sep25

On March 3, 1915 the D.W. Griffith film The Birth of a Nation premiered in New York City. It was three hours long, a silent movie about the Civil War and Reconstruction, and many critics thought then and many still do that the film itself was a masterpiece of cinematic art.

However, the film is also racist and glorifies the Ku Klux Klan while portraying black people as foolish at best, violent and sexually predatory at worst. The movie’s heroes are Klansmen who rescue the innocent young Lillian Gish, daughter of the Confederacy, from the evil black men, played by white actors in black-face make-up, who intend to despoil her.

Film critic Roger Ebert: “Certainly The Birth of a Nation (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet.”

I find it difficult, if not impossible, to separate a work of art from its message. If a piece of music or a painting or a film or a book, says something that is evil or depraved, then it may well be worth viewing or reading in order to understand how some people think—if the person consuming the art is able to remain untainted and unswayed by the message. However, a work of art cannot be truly “good” if its intent is evil, no matter how technically adept and talented the artist.

What is your opinion about “good” art with an evil intent or message?

1915: Events and Inventions

Sep24

February 4, 1915. In response to the British blockade of Germany, the Germans announce that they will begin to attack any vessels, neutral or not, sailing in the waters of the British Isles. Although the British navy controlled the ocean’s surface and the british were already searching for and confiscating any goods bound for Germany that could possibly be helpful in the war effort, German U-boats (submarines) and their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare would prove to be a valuable weapon for Germany.

April 22, 1915. The Germans introduce the use of poisoned gas as a weapon in the war in the Battle of Ypres on the Western Front. The first poisoned gas is not very effective, but the Germans promise that “more effective substances can be expected.” Anti-chlorine gas masks are issued to British troops.

April 30, 1915. Allied forces, mostly British, Australians, New Zealanders and French, land on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in an attempt to force an entrance through to the Black Sea and supply weapons and goods to Russia through her ports there.

May, 1915. In spite of a German warning that “a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies”, the Lusitania leaves New York bound for Liverpool, England. The Germans advertise in the New York newspapers, “Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction . . . travelers sailing in the war zone . . . do so at their own risk.” Passengers filled the ship anyway, and on May 7, just off the coast of Ireland, a German U-boat fired on the Lusitania and caused it to sink. 1,198 people died, and 128 of them were Americans. Many Americans advocate war against Germany, but President Woodrow Wilson continues to counsel and pursue peaceful negotiations with the Germans.

May 23, 1915. Italy leaves the Triple Alliance (Central Powers) and goes to war against Austria-Hungary, joining the side of Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia.

June, 1915. Armenians, a Christian minority in a mostly Muslim Turkey, are seen as traitors and potential rebels. So the Turkish government begins a program of deportation and secret genocide for the Armenians. The Road from Home by David Kherdian tells the story of the author’s mother, Veron Dumehjian, who was a 15 year old survivor of the Armenian holocaust. It’s an excellent book.

July 29, 1915. 400 U.S. Marines land in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to protect American lives and property as revolution and civil war rage throughout the small island country in the Caribbean.

September, 1915. Bulgaria enters the war on the side of Austria and Germany and moves its troops eastward toward Serbia.

November 14, 1915. Tomas Masaryk, a professor of philosophy exiled by the Austrians, calls for a free Czechoslavakia —combining the two parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into one free country.

December 20, 1915. After eight months of fighting, Allied forces retreat from Gallipoli Peninsula leaving it in Turkish hands. Newspapers call the retreat the biggest setback of the war so far for the Allies.

December, 1915. German physicist Albert Einstein publishes his new Special Theory of Relativity.

Note-blogging Forbidden by Tosca Lee and Ted Dekker

Sep24

I’ve never read anything by Tosca Lee or by Ted Dekker, although my nephew says Ted Dekker is his favorite author. Maybe reading this book for Faith ‘n Fiction Roundtable is a good way for me to get a taste of Mr. Dekker’s writing and see if my nephew and I are on the same page.

Chapters 1-5: Forbidden posits a weird dystopian world in which people have no emotions except for fear. I’m not sure why they kept fear. But some people are drinking some bloody magic potion/poison and regaining emotions—maybe only the bad stuff like jealousy, rage, greed and ambition. There should be a violence warning on the front of the book since two people get murdered in the first two chapters, and lots of blood and gore ensue.

Chapters 6-10: For some reason, this book is reminding me of the Dune books by Frank Herbert. Lots of violence. Some kind of strange hierarchical government. People who act as if they’re on drugs. Maybe they are on drugs. I do think it’s difficult, if not impossible to write about people have no emotions. For instance, Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series was supposedly without emotions, purely logical. However, Spock had emotions, and eventually they had to say that he was only half Vulcan and so had to battle his emotions to some extent. The people n this book are also not completely without emotions (other than fear); they show some sense of pleasure and loyalty and even anger or at least annoyance.

Chapters 11-end : Now this is getting too interesting for me to stop and blog.

So I started out blogging as I read, but I became absorbed in the story and forgot to blog. I suppose that’s a recommendation in itself. Some of the other F’nF roundtable readers found this book to be way too reminiscent of Mr. Dekker’s very popular Circle trilogy, but since I’ve never read anything else by either of the co-authors, it was all new to me. I did think that the central idea of the book was hammered a little to obviously and a lot too often. Some explanation like the following was repeated several times in the last half of the book:

“Yes. I drank some ancient blood and it changed me. If I’m right . . . If the vellum is right, the world is dead. Everyone! But I was brought back to life by the blood.”

The theme is that the lack of emotions and the pervasive fear in this future dystopia are a type of living death, and only a special potion made of blood and then, later, a saviour whose blood is pure and untainted, can reverse the death that pervades the planet and bring new life and feeling to the inhabitants of earth.

It’s a series, so the usual non-ending ending warning is applicable. The series is called The Books of Mortals. Forbidden is available now in bookstores. The second book in the series, Mortal, is promised for September 2012, and the third one, Sovereign, will be available in September 2013.

You can visit the blogs of other Faith ‘N Fiction roundtable members to find out more about Forbidden:

World War I: The Poems

Sep23

Sonnet V: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. Brooke died in 1915 of blood poisoning due to a small wound, left unattended.
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.”

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
“If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

As the war dragged on, men became disillusioned, and the poetry became darker and more pessimistic.

Dulce et Decorum by Wilfred Owen. Listen to this poem by a British soldier who was killed in action in 1918 a week before the war ended.
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.”

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

American Alan Seeger foretold his own death in the poem, Rendezvous.
“I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade . . .”

This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong by Edward Thomas.
“I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.”

Saturday Review of Books: September 24, 2011

Sep23

â€œIt is very pleasant losing one’s memory. One can read old favorites with breathless curiosity.â€ ~Evelyn Waugh

If you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™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 youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™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.

Saturday Review of Books Participants

1. the Ink Slinger (Books Every Guy Should Read Pt. 2)
2. Hope (Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien))
3. Barbara H. (The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God)
4. Barbara H. (Amy Inspired)
5. Bonnie (The Man in the Queue)
6. Bonnie (A Mind to Murder)
7. Alice@Supratentorial(Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Chidl)
8. Collateral Bloggage (Ranger’s Apprentice, Book One)
9. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl)
10. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Polar Shift)
11. Donovan @ Where Pen Meets Paper (Wolf Hall)
12. JHS @ Colloquium (The Grief of Others)
13. JHS @ Colloquium (Call Me Irresistible – GIVEAWAY)
14. JHS @ Colloquium (The Lantern – GIVEAWAY)
15. JHS @ Colloquium (Before Ever After – GIVEAWAY)
16. JHS @ Colloquium (Wedlocked)
17. Graham @ My Book Year (The Good Doctor)
18. Janet (Prophetic Untimeliness)
19. Janet (A Book of Hours)
20. SmallWorld Reads (Nickel and Dimed)
21. Lazygal (Alice Bliss)

22. Mental multivitamin (Shakespeare resources)
23. Dawn -TooFondOfBooks (The Beekeeper’s Lament)
24. Dawn -TooFondOfBooks (Wonderstruck)
25. Dawn -TooFondOfBooks (Beekman 1802 Heirloom Cookbook)
26. Sarah Reads Too Much (The Winters in Bloom)
27. DebD (Twelve Babies on a Bike)
28. Sarah Reads Too Much (The Power of Six)
29. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Heiress)
30. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Monster In The Hollows)
31. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Kiloton Threat)
32. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Chair)
33. jama’s alphabet soup (Hound Dog True)
34. S, Krishna’s Books (Tainted)
35. S, Krishna’s Books (Friday Mornings at Nine)
36. S, Krishna’s Books (Saraswati’s Way)
37. S, Krishna’s Books (The Keeper of Lost Causes)
38. S, Krishna’s Books (The Most Dangerous Thing)
39. S, Krishna’s Books (To Be Sung Underwater)
40. ChristineMM @ The Thinking Mother (Wonderstruck)
41. S, Krishna’s Books (Sonia Gandhi)
42. ChristineMM (The Bird Photography Field Guide Book)

43. ChristineMM (DIY U)
44. ChristineMM (Mockingjay)
45. Girl Detective (A Bevy of Books)
46. Pussreboots (The Goddess Test)
47. Pussreboots (xxxHolic 03)
48. Pussreboots (Oz: The 100th Anniversary Celebration)
49. ReadingWorld(Cecelia&Fanny.The Remarkable Friendship between an Escaped Slave..)
50. Pussreboots (A Long Long Sleep)
51. Cindy At Ordo Amoris (The Bible and the Task of Teaching)
52. Cindy At Ordo Amoris (The Abolition of Man Bookclub))
53. Cindy Swanson (She Walks in Beauty”
54. Debbie Rodgers – Exurbanis.com (Soul Clothes)
55. Mystie (Hospitality Commands)
56. Mystie (The Organized Heart)
57. Staci Eastin (Words Made Fresh: Essays on Literature and Culture)
58. The Literary Butterfly (The Help)
59. Diary of an Eccentric (Only Time Will Tell)
60. Diary of an Eccentric (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star)
61. Diary of an Eccentric (To the Moon and Back)
62. Gina @ Bookscount (Aralen Dreams)
63. Julie (The Little Friend)