"The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society"

   What a title!  "Sweetgum" is the name of the small town in Tennessee, named after the sweetgum trees growing there. And the novel is about a group of ladies that knit and read.

sweetgum tree

   It certainly is no literary masterpiece, but I thought it was fun- only 5 ladies of various ages.  The town librarian is the leader who chooses the books and she also chooses a knitting project to fit the theme of the book. e.g. a hat for the goatherder in "Heidi".
   Each of the ladies is facing serious life issues  that you become aware of as the story goes along.
   The focal point is Hannah- a teenager who lives in poverty in a trailer with a mother, whose boyfriend is a problem for Hannah.  The librarian, Eugenie, meets Hannah when she discovers that Hannah has ripped a knitting pattern from a library book.  In her strict librarian way, Eugenie suggests that she work off the price of a new book, and takes note of Hannah's interest in knitting.     Hannah is introduced to the 'knit and lit' group, so she can pursue her interest in knitting and also read the classics that Eugenie thinks would be helpful to her life- classics about strong girls.
  This book was a nice change of pace for me, as I thought of women's issues and how helpful it can be to share experiences with other women.  Reading and knitting are lovely themes, along with friendship, that warm the heart.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

   This non-fiction book is the story of a black woman in Maryland, whose cells were taken (without her permission) while she was a patient at John Hopkins Hospital, suffering from cancer.  She died shortly after, in 1951. But her cells are a multi-million dollar business and continue to multiply to this day.  
   These cells have been used for research and advances in medicine.  Here is a partial list of the uses: polio vaccine, chemotherapy, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, herpes, leukemia, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, and the list goes on and on and on!
   But, her poor black family still live in poverty, unable to pay for health care.  They were completely unaware that their mother's cells had been used by science, and when they found out, they could not understand the complications of science.  No one took time to describe- in language that they could understand.  But many people were contacting them to get information and further 'testing' on the family.
  This author, Rebecca Skloot heard about this situation in 1999 and wondered about the person Henrietta Lacks.  She initiated contact with the extended family and was very respectful of the people who had been used and abused over the years.  She moved very carefully- in fact, it took her over ten years to finish writing this book.  In the process, she grew very close to the family and helped them understand and accept their mother's place in history.
  This book is 'chock-full' of detail!
  Not only is there description of the large Lacks family, but many, many doctors, nurses, medical researchers, lawyers, con men, and odds and ends of the general public thrown in.   
  The book is full of ethical issues: experimentation on African Americans over the years, the history of bio-ethics, battles over who owns our body parts.
   It did leave me exhausted!

  In closing, a note of appreciation to the author, Rebecca Skoot, who honoured the immortal life of Henrietta Lack.
  Oh, by the way, Oprah made a movie of this book and she starred in it as Henrietta's daughter.

"The Great Alone" by Kristin Hannah

  The title for this book came from Robert Service's poem called "The Shooting of Dan McGrew":
"Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear?"
   The "Great Alone" is Alaska.  There is great description of Alaska in this novel!



  In 1974, Leni Allbright was a young teenager trying to fit in with her classmates.  She had moved many times because her father couldn't keep a job and was suffering from P.T.S.D. after being a POW in the Vietnam war.
  When her father inherited some property in Alaska, it seemed like an answer to the family's problems.  
  
Quote:
"They lived on a piece of land that couldn't be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you.  There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream".

  Yes, the wild animals are dangerous, and the weather is harsh, but the biggest danger turns out to be Leni's father.
Quote: "All this time, Dad had taught Leni how dangerous the outside world was.  The truth was that the biggest danger of all was in her own home."

  This is another time when I stand alone in evaluating literature. This novel has been given 4.35 stars from Goodreads and 4.6 stars from Amazon.  So..what do I know?
   I know that the first half pulled me in and the last half devastated me!  I read long into the night, but that was not a good thing.  The book does pull you in, but I felt that the ending was like a 'thriller', which we have already discovered I have no tolerance for.
  It was overly dramatic and seemed to romanticize abuse.  When I expected some resolution of the plot...... the plot exploded!
  Because I invest so much of myself in a novel, it is not the book for me. Abuse, abuse, and more abuse!
  Many parts did not seem realistic- especially the ending.

  Such wonderful descriptions of Alaskan life!  I love description, but not when it involves bruised and battered bodies, half-dead, and dead bodies. 
   I had such  expectations of plot development.  Greatly disappointed!

The Great American Read, part 4

The last of the 100 books:

The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
The Pillars of The Earth, Ken Follett
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
The Shack, William P. Young
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
The Sirens Of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut
The Stand, Stephen King
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Swan Song, Robert R. McCammon
Tales of The City (series), Armistead Maupin
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
This Present Darkness, Frank. E. Peretti
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Twilight Saga (series), Stephenie Meyer
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Watchers, Dean Koontz
The Wheel of Time (series), Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

   Good old favourites- "To Kill a Mockingbird", Wuthering Heights", "Rebecca", "Pride and Prejudice", "The Picture of Dorian Grey", "Siddhartha".
  And, a contemporary favourite of mine - Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth".  
  We will discover in the fall which book has been chosen as 

"THE GREAT AMERICAN READ"

The Great American Read, part 3

   Here is the third set of titles.   I haven't read many of these books.  
   My favourite probably would be "Jane Eyre" or "Memoirs of a Geisha".

Hatchet (series), Gary Paulsen
Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Help, Kathryn Stockett
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hunger Games (series), Suzanne Collins
The Hunt For Red October, Tom Clancy
The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
Left Behind (series), Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
Looking for Alaska, John Green
The Lord of the Rings (series), J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
The Martian, Andy Weir
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
Mind Invaders, Dave Hunt
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Outlander (series), Diana Gabaldon

   "The Hunger Games" was certainly popular recently and "The Help" was a good movie.  But there are also lots of obscure books in this list.

                                                .........continued in the next blog entry

The Great American Read, part 2

   Here are more titles for  "The Great American Read".  What is interesting here?  I have read 15 of this group and I think the future winner is here.  I am putting my money on "The Great Gatsby". It isn't my personal favourite, but it is on the curriculum of many courses and I am making a prediction that it will be the 'Great American Read'.

The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
Doña, Bárbára Rómulo Gallegos
Dune, Frank Herbert
Fifty Shades Of Grey, (series) E. L. James
Flowers In The Attic, V.C. Andrews
Foundation (series), Isaac Asimov
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Game of Thrones (series), George R. R. Martin
Ghost Jason, Reynolds
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
The Giver, Lois Lowry
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Harry Potter (series), J.K. Rowling

   "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Great Expectations" are my favourites in this group of titles.
                                                .........continued in the next blog entry

"The Great American Read", part 1

The Great American Read

What a fabulous T.V. program!  Two hours of pure delight for readers! It is produced by PBS with Meridith Viera as the host.  There are clips of books, authors, celebrities and ordinary people.  All talking about the joys of reading!  Beautifully produced- pure delight!  If you missed it, you can get the whole two hours on your computer.

It is a quest to find America's best-loved book.

Meredith Viera- host

  
   The quest begins with a list of 100 books. People are encouraged to vote for their favourite.  The winning book will be announced in the fall.
   I am printing the titles in groups of 25, while I comment on my favourites.  Overall, I am really impressed with the combination of the old and the new, the quirky and the conventional- lots of variety.
  There is a book here for everyone!



The list begins.....
1984, George Orwell
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Alex Cross Mysteries (series), James Patterson
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Another Country, James Baldwin
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
The Call Of The Wild, Jack London
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
The Chronicles of Narnia (series), C.S. Lewis
Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
Coldest Winter Ever, Sister Souljah

What is the best book here?
I would vote for "Charlotte's Web" for sure!  A great children's books about friendship between children and animals.  It teaches children about life, death and change. 
I also enjoyed the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series.

                                            .....continued in the next blog entry.

Books for a desert island

  The 'desert' in 'desert island' is actually an archaic form of 'deserted'.  It doesn't mean that the island is dry; it means that the island is uninhabited.

   While re-reading "The Power of One", mentioned in the last blog, I was conflicted about the time needed to read such a book.  Because I have a pile of books that I want to get into, and my book clubs all have deadlines, I wasn't sure that one book should take up so much time.  And...there is life to be enjoyed!

   So...I thought that this would be a good book for a desert island.  No phone, no T.V., no computer, no social engagements of any kind.  Wow!  This book would be a delight!  So many storylines and characters to ponder.

  In this novel, the story of a boy in South Africa, it was interesting to think about all the people who came into his life.  Every person seemed to be there for a reason, even if it was a short acquaintance.  Even the people who had a negative affect, taught him things about life and left their stamp.  

  This book could definitely keep you thinking about life, love, destiny, and other engrossing thoughts.  There are many quotes in the book that you could philosophize about- to yourself!

All on a desert island, with no interruptions.

Bryce Courtenay

Bryce Courtney was born in South Africa and now lives in Australia.  This is his first book - many followed.

   "The Power of One" (1989) has an interesting opening sentence: "This is what happened".
    Peekay, aged 5, moved into a boarding school.  Another student, nicknamed "The Judge", constantly tormented Peekay. 
  While Peekay was on the train going home for the holidays, he met Hoppie, the conductor, who introduced him to boxing.  This short relationship set Peekay on the road to the boxing welterweight world championship and taking control of his life.

    Later in Peekay's life, he met Doc, a famous German pianist, who taught him to play the piano.  Doc also was a botanist and a fascinating character.  

   This story exposes apartheid, prejustice, hate in a powerful way!
The quotes are one of the best things about this book:

"Good conversational debate was an end in itself and talking for the love of conversation is what makes us human."

"When a man knows somebody cares, he keeps some small place, a corner maybe, of his soul, clean and lit".
"I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out.  That as long as it exists within us, we cannot be destroyed."

"All children are flotsam driven by the ebb and flow of adult lives. The tide had turned and I was being swept out to sea."
 "The loneliness bird had entered to build a nest of stones in the hollow place inside of me".

"Deep inside me the loneliness bird laid a large stone egg".

"I knew I would be in control of loneliness and no longer its servant".

The power of one- one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination.  Great book!

   "Tandia", which followed in 1992, was a real disappointment after "The Power Of One", although it continued many of the characters. "Tandia" is 900 pages with a convoluted plot.  There still were some philosophical thoughts: 
"When you cut hope from the heart, the hole you leave is filled with the worms of hate."
"The tragedy of the human condition is that the very things that make us interesting and culturally important and progressively brilliant are our differences: and these are also the principle reason for our prejudices."
*****************************************************************************************************

A very short (87 pages) sketch of Courtney's childhood in South Africa.  When he was five years old his sister was six and a half.  Their mother was delirious with malaria.  A very large doctor arrived at their door, picked up their mother, took her to the hospital and took the children to his home.  They stayed there for six months with nine other kids- all eleven in two beds.  There was a theft on the property and Monkey Man (a witch doctor) was brought in to  find the thief.
When the thieves were discovered they were badly beaten.  Bryce was very upset and the witch doctor taught him, by counting forward and backward, how to go to the 'Night country' when he was afraid or lacked courage.
The witch doctor called him a white Zulu.
A sad little story of a frightened little boy.  The basis of his first novel.