Collected Miscellany

Sometimes books I read or receive just get lost in the hustle and bustle of life. I am sure this never happens to you, but sometimes I just am not that organized. But I am trying this year to improve catch myself when books get lost.

One such book is Best-Loved Chinese Proverbs by Theodora Lau.  Here is the publiser blurb:

“By filling one’s head instead of one’s pocket, one cannot be robbed.”

The appeal of Chinese proverbs is profound and universal. With brevity, clarity, and simplicity, these carefully chosen words help pass wisdom and insight throughout the ages. This timeless, eloquent collection of proverbs offers fundamental truths about the natural world and the human condition, on subjects such as:

Ability • Adversity • Beauty • Chracter • Conflict

Cooperation • Deception • Defeat • Fortune • Greed • Happiness

Honor • Inspiration • Knowledge • Leadership • Love

Moderation • Necessity • Neighbors • Obstinacy • Opportunity

Perseverance • Pride • Sincerity • Strategy • Success

Thought • Trust • Victory • Wisdom • And More

And really there is not much else to add to that.  If you have an interest in China or just enjoy Chinese Proverbs (or pithy insights in general) then this is the kind of book you will want.

It is attractively designed – including traditional calligraphy with a pronunciation key – and laid out by subject as noted above.  It is a handy book to have on the coffee table or to dip into when the mood strikes.  It is also handy if you are looking for a particularly apt quote to use to introduce a subject; a creative twist on quotable quotes.

Here are a couple of my favorites so far:

• “First attain skill; creativity comes later.”
• “Fashion is a tyrant who dictates never-ending change.”
• “That which is beautiful is not always good.  But that which is good is always beautiful.”
• “Often one finds destiny just where one hides to avoid it.”
• “Pleasure cannot be pursued to its limit, for pleasure could also be a fountain of sorrow.”

Do you have a favorite saying or proverb?  If so leave in the comments.  If not, check out this handy collection.  Who knows you might learn something . . .

When I first started reading Asta in the Wings I thought of another Tin House book Salvation by Lucia Nevai.  Both have central characters who are girls raised by less than ideal mothers and who are adopted by odd but caring surrogate mothers.  Both stories focus on the transition from one world to the next that is involved in being taken from your family and placed elsewhere.

But despite their similarities they are quite different.  If Crane Cavanaugh in Salvation comes from a clearly neglectful to the point of abusive home, Asta Hewitt is raised in a less clear cut situation.  And that is where the story lies.

Here is PWs one sentence description:

Seven-year-old Asta grows up in rural Maine in the late 1970s, where she and her sickly nine-year-old brother, Orion, are kept locked in their house by their crazy mother, who fills their heads with tales of the plague-ravaged wasteland waiting outside their door.

At first you think perhaps their mother was just eccentric, and emotionally unstable, but not a clear threat to the children’s ultimate welfare.  But soon you realize that as creative and intelligent as the kids are, they are surviving and growing despite their mother’s actions rather than from her care.  She loves them but is not equipped or able to be a parent.

Once circumstances force Asta and Orion to explore the outside world it becomes that much more clear how warped their life inside the house was; imaginative and intimate in many ways but warped.  The story, however, is about how the two children come to grips with this childhood and try to relate to their mother moving forward.

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For a variety of reasons I never got around to reviewing a number of books I read last year.  As a way to catch up I thought I would post “Quick Takes” that give a brief description and some comments.  The first is below.

There are two things about A Bound Man by Shelby Steele that are worth mentioning.  One, its core isn’t really about Barack Obama the politician so much as his cultural significance and the lens it provides for race relations in this country.

If you have read Steele’s previous work his analysis won’t be new to you.  But I found it absolutely fascinating and incredibly insightful.

Steele outlines how African-American leaders fall into two rough categories: bargainer and challenger.  Bargainers “grant whites the innocence and moral authority they need in return for their goodwill and generosity.”  While challengers “presume whites to be guilty of racism in the same way that bargainers presume them innocent-as a strategic manipulation” and put whites “in the position of having to chase after their racial innocence.”

Bill Cosby, Collin Powell, and Oprah Winfrey are classic bargainers and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are  challengers.  And Steele argues Obama is a bargainer; in fact, the Oprah of politics if you will.  And it is this fact that explains in large part his incredible success while shedding light on the state of race relations today.

The second point worth noting, is the now problematic subtitle “Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win”.  Steele says he didn’t come up with the subtitle and didn’t believe the claim.  Nonetheless, that aspect of the book outlines an interesting dynamic between Obama and the African-American community that is worth thinking about even if it seems outdated today.  I have a theory about what happened to change the dynamic but that is a “whole ‘nother ball of wax” as they say.

Regardless of whether you are an Obama supporter, agree with Steele’s thesis, I think this slim book is well worth a read.  It presents a fascinating way to look at the issue of race in our country and how it became tied up with presidential politics.

Cover of The Old Country

At a recent trip to Half-Price Books I picked up The Old Country by Mordicai Gerstein.  It fit right into my interests of late: myths and fables, young adult fiction, etc.  When contemplating writing a review, I thought one way to look at this interesting book is through what you might call dueling reviews.

School Library Journal:

Framed as an elderly immigrant’s story, this overly ambitious tale transpires in a war-torn Balkanesque country in which various factions fight for possession of the land while everyone wishes to oust the Crags. When her brother is conscripted and goes off to war, young Gisella is left to hunt for and kill a chicken-stealing fox that has terrorized her family. However, a trial is held among the forest animals and the fox is exonerated for her “crimes.” In spite of her lifelong warnings, Gisella looks too long into its eyes and she and the fox trade shapes. War separates the humans from the now fox-girl and her animal companions, but they arereunited in prison. A shape-shifting woodland sprite and an enigmatic “owl person” appear to explain the human ravages on the magical world at a “crossroads,” where animals can communicate with humans. Through them, Gerstein explores whether evil is inherent in the world, the costs of war, and the existence of magic. Elements of fantasy and traditional literature are threaded through the realistic and semi-historical horrors of war. This pastiche of theme and genre, tone and voice confuses readers’ expectations and ultimately dilutes the story’s power. Humor follows horror. Buffoonish royalty is overthrown by covetous generals, Gisella’s blinded brother recovers his sight via some gruesome magic and leads the fight for a Crag homeland, and the baffling outcome of the fox/girl body swap may put off readers as well. This is a challenging burgoo of a novel and a rambling character-ridden tale that may have a difficult time finding and holding an audience.

Versus

Publishers Weekly

Gerstein (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) skillfully shapes a story by turns disturbing and comforting. His hybrid of fantasy and fable explores such themes as human nature, war, magic and music. The tale within a tale opens as Gisella visits her great granddaughter, gives her a present and shares a story of her childhood in the Old Country, where, she says, “I was a little girl and where I was a fox.” Gisella builds on this note of intrigue, as she describes her wise great-aunt warning her that in the woods “things may not be what they seem. Things change; now it’s this, then it’s that. Look closely, be careful, and never look too long into the eyes of a fox.” Indeed, danger befalls the young Gisella when her brother is drafted into the army, and it’s up to her to kill the fox who’s been stealing the family’s chickens. Deep in the woods, strange things occur-talking animals and “small people.” The girl finds herself gazing intently into the fox’s eyes, and the two mysteriously exchange bodies. Meanwhile, war breaks out (“Air that had been full of springtime now had a new odor, bitter and jagged. It was the smell of pain, and it was everywhere”), sending Gisella on a labyrinthine journey with a forest sprite as her guide. Gerstein brilliantly ties the war’s escalation with the dwindling of magic, and caps off this vividly descriptive narrative with an unexpected ending.

My thoughts on the above reviews below.

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The New York Times starts its review of The Silent Man by Alex Berenson this way:

A novel can, and should, do many things, but a thriller need do only one. If it thrills, it succeeds, and if it does not, no matter how well it does everything else, it fails. Alex Berenson’s third novel, “The Silent Man,” succeeds in seizing the attention from the start and never letting go until the end.

I might want to argue with the first two sentences, or at least quibble a bit, but I think the review is right when it comes to Berenson’s latest book.

As we have discussed in our reviews of the previous John Wells novels (The Faithful Spy and The Ghost War), John Wells started out with an interesting hook (first Western spy to infiltrate Al Quada, convert to Islam, etc.) but hasn’t much developed beyond all round tough guy super spy.  Not that he is a particularly one dimensional for the genre, just that he is typical of the genre.

What Berenson does well is set up a plausible terrorist attack or military threat and then start the clock on Wells’s attempt to keep it from happening.  As the story plays out the pace quickens and the tension rises.  And Berenson gives the reader the view from all sides; inside and out of the plot – minor and major characters.  In the end you know Wells will save the day, but you don’t know how and how many people will die in between.

This time the focus is on a plot to smuggle a  nuclear bomb into America and detonate it for maxim damage: at the State of the Union address.  Character depth aside, Berenson again delivers an entertaining high stakes action thriller.

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The last book in my recent stint of reviews on the American Civil War is a good one – Jeffry D. Wert’s Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J.E.B. Stuart. Kevin asked me if I wanted to read and review this book and I hesitated because I normally do not like to read biographies (many of them are boring). I am glad I made an exception for this book.

J.E.B. Stuart is one of those Civil War figures everyone has an opinion of. Some love him and think he was the greatest cavalryman in the war and others loath him and think that he cost the South a victory at Gettysburg (and possibly for the war). I have to admit that I was part of the latter group. However, since reading this book, I have changed my tune and lean more toward the former camp.

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Cover of The Ghost War

You had to think Alex Berenson felt a little pressure on his second book.  The first won an Edgar Award after all and ended with its hero saving New York City from a biological attack.  How to top that?

In The Ghost War Berenson continues the exploits of John Wells while mixing in a little more geopolitical tension.  Here is how Publishers Weekly describes it:

Having foiled an al-Qaeda plot targeting Times Square in 2006’s The Faithful Spy (which won an Edgar Award for best first novel), maverick CIA agent John Wells confronts a very different threat in this pulse-pounding sequel from New York Times reporter Berenson. When the CIA’s efforts to extract Dr. Sung Kwan, a North Korean scientist and an invaluable source on Kim Jong Il’s nuclear ambitions, result in the deaths of Kwan and the rescue team, Wells’s significant other, Jennifer Exley, searches to identify the person in U.S. intelligence who compromised Kwan’s security. Meanwhile, Wells returns to Afghanistan, the scene of much of the action in The Faithful Spy, to find out what outside country has been helping the Taliban reassert itself. While the mole hunt will be familiar to genre buffs and the characters and the perils they face aren’t as nuanced as those in John le Carré or even David Ignatius, the author’s plausible scenario distinguishes this from most spy thrillers.

If the first book was focused on the character of Wells, the second book is propelled more by the looming conflict between China and the US.  It also introduces the stress and strains involved in the relationship between Wells and Exley.

Berenson continues to give you a variety of perspectives as you see the action through the eyes of multiple characters.  As the plot points touched on by PW above reveal, he builds up a series of seemingly unrelated but ultimately interconnected threats and/or plot threads.  North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and China all play a part.

But the big picture is China.  The tension builds as Berenson lays out a plausible scenario whereby the US and China could find themselves on the brink of war.

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