Reading Notes

I was shocked to realize I haven't written about my reading since February. I'm going to aim for once a month from now on.

Chocolat--Set in France during Lent, it seemed an appropriate book to read during Lent while preparing to visit France. The book was enjoyable and adequately crafted, but it was less than I expected. Less sensual. Less controversial. Less substantial. A French beach read, with the unfortunate side effect of making you crave chocolate.

Chasing Vermeer--A children's book the twins were reading. It reminded me of The Westing Game, which I read when I was their age.

My Life in France--I saw Julie & Julia in the theater last year during one of my trips to Waltham, so I had some idea of what to expect when Michael brought the book home from the library. The descriptions of the food were fantastic, of course, but I found that I prefer Meryl's Julia to Julia's Julia. By the end, there were simply too many examples of underhanded criticism and self-centeredness. I was happy to finish the book and leave her behind, so I was surprised when I looked through my quotation book to discover I had one from My Life in France:

Oh, how I yearned for a passel of blood-brother friends to celebrate with. We had plenty of acquaintances in Oslo, but, as in Plittersdorf, we suffered months and months of nobody to really hug but ourselves. p215

The Zookeeper's Wife--Some books are in the air and you can no longer remember who recommended them first. Such is the case with this one. I interrupted my French series to read it in April because it was the selection for a fledgling book group. (So fledgling it has yet to meet.) I have mixed feelings about The Zookeeper's Wife. On the one hand, I came away with a new-found understanding of the Polish experience in World War II and an appreciation for the Polish spirit. (And more information about the Nazi party. Did you know Nazis were frequently environmentalists and animal rights activists? Humans truly are baffling.) On the other hand, the author is prone to long, flowery descriptions and the subject of the book suffers somewhat in comparison to the side stories. Still, I filled my book with quotations such as these:

One of the most remarkable things about Antonina was her determination to include play, animals, wonder, curiosity, marvel, and a wide blaze of innocence in a household where all dodged the ambient dangers, horrors, and uncertainties. p166

At the outbreak of the war, thinking to decapitate the country, the Nazis had rounded up and shot most of the Polish intellegentsia, then outlawed education and the press, a strategy that boomeranged because it not only made learning subversively appealing, it also freed the surviving intellectuals to focus their brainpower on feats of resistance and sabotage. p169

Yet 70,00o-90,000 people in Warsaw and the suburbs, or about one-twelfth of the city's population, risked their lives to help neighbors escape. p189

After the defeat of Communism in 1989, with characteristic good humor the Poles turned the former Gestapo headquarters into the Ministry of Education, the former KGB headquarters into the Ministry of Justice, the Communist Party headquarters into the Stock Exchange, and so on. p321

A Marginal Jew, vol. 1--"Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew and an agnostic--all honest historians cognizant of 1-st century religious movements--were locked up in the bowels of the Harvard Divinity School library, put on a spartan diet, and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended in his own time and place." (1) A Marginal Jew attempts to be that document. This volume describes the concepts, evaluates the sources, discusses Jesus' birth and family, and provides a basic chronology. The author (a Catholic priest and professor at Notre Dame) does a fantastic job of weighing evidence and explaining why he draws the conclusions he does. I found especially interesting his discussion of why the Last Supper was not a Passover meal. I need to go buy volume two.

Queenmaker--I was handed this book by a friend when I saw The Red Tent on her bookshelf and said how much I enjoyed it. This is the story of Michal, daughter of Saul and wife of David. I was surprised a couple of times to find that a situation I had assumed was the author's creation was in fact taken from the Bible. Queenmaker was enjoyable, but it didn't have as much of an impact on me as The Red Tent. That might have more to do with changes in me than with the respective qualities of the books.

The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest)--I read Assassin's Apprentice in 2007, but abandoned the trilogy because it felt wrong to pay $3 in Inter-Library Loan fees for each paperback book. Instead, I put them on my Christmas wish list, and Michael bought them for me last year. Since it had been so long, I decided to start by rereading the first book. I really liked it. (Again.) The second book turned darker, and I started to realize I wouldn't get an ending as happy as I would like. The third book dragged for a bit in the middle, but I found myself sobbing through the last 100 pages. PMS? The fact that I had just said goodbye to our closest friends after a week-long visit? I don't know, but I was relieved I was reading in the privacy of my bedroom. Think Frodo leaving Middle Earth.