Books: The Glass Castle
February 15, 2008 | Books
I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Anyone?
I’ll write about these books at some point. I’m just busy reading now and curious what others think. I thought this one was incredible. It took my breath away more than once. It was published in 2005 and is being made into a movie.
Most interesting is how these books compare and contrast with each other. It’s always random — the order and and sequence of books I read — but I’m often struck by how some of them fit together. Does that make sense? This sequence of books (Life of Pi, The Girls, Three Cups of Tea, The Glass Castle) was compiled by suggestions and votes from a reading group, not by any one person deciding that these books would go well together. I sometimes feel there’s a lit prof somewhere putting reading lists together for me so we can discuss them in class.
Anyway. Now I’m reading A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown, and I have a feeling it will fit well with the others.
In the meantime, here are some questions.
- What are you reading?
- What do you plan to read next?
- What’s your favorite book of all time?
- Was it made into a movie? If not, do you wish it were?
- What did you learn from it?
- What other book(s) would you recommend reading with it?
Posted by Becky @
2:10 pm |
Books: Three Cups of Tea
February 11, 2008 | Books
I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Well … you know the drill.
Posted by Becky @
6:45 pm |
Books: The Girls
February 2, 2008 | Books
I just finished reading The Girls by Lori Lansens. Anyone else? What did you think?
Posted by Becky @
8:04 pm |
Books: Life of Pi
January 29, 2008 | Books
I just finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Anyone else? What did you think?
Posted by Becky @
2:02 pm |
Accepting the quiet, by Wendy Hoke
What an honor and a thrill to be asked to guest blog here at Deep Muck Big Rake. I’m a freelance journalist who also writes at Creative Ink and I’m happy to count Becky among my regular readers. I’ve not written there lately because I’m attempting a vacation.
Problem is, I’m a needy writer and so when things get quiet, I get nervous. Makes no sense, you see, because I’m working on several ongoing projects and have another story due next Friday and got an e-mail this morning about doing some editing on another book project. So I should really just learn to accept and enjoy the quiet.
This may not be true for every writer, but I need to unplug from time to time to recharge the creative batteries. For inspiration, I’ve turned this week to “The Gay Talese Reader: Portraits & Encounters.” Last March, I had the privilege of meeting him at a storytelling workshop in Anniston, Ala.
With the exception of “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” I hadn’t really read any of his work. I mean, I was familiar with all the titles, “The Kingdom and the Power,” “Honor Thy Father,” and his notable profiles of boxers and baseball players. But I hadn’t really read his work.
I still believe that the Frank Sinatra/Esquire piece has tremendous resonance and stands as a model for reporting. Not all of his pieces in this book struck me the same way. However, the piece about Floyd Patterson (“The Loser”) was heartrending in its simplicity.
As a nonfiction writer, I find his reporting astounding, asking myself what questions he asked to get certain information, or wondering where he was standing in a room when he observed certain things, or what he’s looking for when he scans a room or a place and what particular details of a person fill his notebooks.
He reveals some of his trade secrets in a piece called, “Origins of a Nonfiction Writer,” and some of the details written here about being a boy in his mother’s dress shop in New Jersey, he shared with journalists in Anniston last March.
“The shop was a kind of talk show that flowed around the engaging manner and well-timed questions of my mother; and as a boy not much taller than the counters behind which I used to pause and eavesdrop. I learned much that would be useful to me years later when I began interviewing people for articles and books.
“I learned to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments (as the listening skills of my patient mother taught me) people often are very revealing—what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them. Their pauses, their evasions, their sudden shifts in subject matter are likely indicators of what embarrasses them, or irritates them, or what they regard as too private or imprudent to be disclosed to another person at that particular time. However, I also overheard many people discussing candidly with my mother what they had earlier avoided—a reaction that I think had less to do with her inquiring nature or sensitively posed questions than with their gradual acceptance of her as a trustworthy individual in whom they could confide. My mother’s best customers were women less in need of new dresses than the need to communicate.”
Too often, Talese is credited with founding, “The New Journalism,” so labeled by Tom Wolfe. But Talese steadfastly rejects such labels, maintaining now—and then–that what he was doing didn’t involved any new style. It was simply storytelling as we all know it (using scenes, dialogue, description, etc.) in a nonfiction format.
What interests me most about Talese, and frankly when I find his work most moving, is not those celebrated profiles of notable personalities, but his portraits of the ordinary people. His “unnoticed things” of New York City, his decision to talk about the Selma riots with white members of a local country club, his decision to write about losers more often than winners.
I turned to Talese for quiet inspiration this week and did not fail to deliver.
Posted by Wendy @
12:37 pm |
Oy To The World, the Chinese Is Come, Let Jews Receive Their Food!
Aviva and Devra are in da house! Merry Christmas Ya’ll!  Maybe you aren’t expecting a holiday greeting from the Two Jew Crew, but when Becky asked if we would guest blog, we requested Christmas. Why? Because we know You People our Christian mishpuka should be able to spend time with their families, so we shall work today so you don’t have to! (So when Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur roll around return the fave. K?)
Jews and Chinese Food.  Add Christmas to the mix and you get a Holy Trinity representing a Trifecta of Treyf. Why is this night different from any other night? Why on this night do Jews eat at Shun Lee instead of at home?  From Christmas Eve to Christmas Day Jews are making their Kung Pao pilgrimages. Even Working Mother Magazine Jews can’t tell you where this longstanding holiday observance originated, we only know it’s tradition. It’s how we roll.   Everyone should  know more about Jewish holiday observances beyond, “They tried to annihilate us. We survived. Let’s Eat!”  If Becky where here, she would no doubt be calling out the people striving to be our nation’s leader to tell us why Jews eat Chinese food On Christmas.Â
 Hillary should know.  Fred Thompson may have the secret. Is Barack is just one consonant away from unlocking the mystery?  Oh hell. Move over politics! Let’s dish…
Believe it or not, the combination of Jews and Chinese food is an ancient custom – OK, not biblical ancient nor is it an Ancient Chinese Secret, but it does appear to go back to the late 1800’s – no putzing around!
“In lower Manhattan, immigrant Jews opened delicatessens for other Jews,Italians ran restaurants for other Italians, and Germans had many places serving primarily Germans. But Chinese restaurants welcomed everyone. As a result, even in the 1890s both Jews and Italians usually felt more at home in Chinese restaurants than they did in each other’s eateries.” (Originally published; “New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern” by Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine)Â
Fast forward a few hundred years and it is still generally true.  Chinese food does not include dairy products. The fear of mixing a little dairy with your meat isn’t an issue. (You say, “Pork!” We say, “Kosher house, not Kosher stomach.”) Look, Chinese food became a status symbol for our people during The Depression – immigrant Jews who ate out at Chinese restaurants identified themselves and others as being chic and sophisticated-why should we want to change that practice? Is it so terrible? Who does it hurt? Don’t you want your mother to be happy?Â
Nowadays, you can find many eateries willing to open their doors to make a buck on Christmas, and you can find quite a few folks who would rather buy a meal instead of cook one.  However, it wasn’t so long ago, Chinese restaurants were about the only option for eating out on Christmas day. Another bonus to Chinese food on Christmas is the holiday repast is available before or after the matinee. Just because Christmas is not a Jewish holiday, does this mean no Jewish observance? Feh. Whatever your observance, we wish you Good Fortune and a very Merry Christmas!
Posted by Devra and Aviva @
8:43 pm |
Attack of the long-winded book review!
Hello! My name is Théa, and I will be your guest blogger today. Becky did me the tremendous honor of asking me to guest post here at Deep Muck Big Rake, which prompted me to perform an awkward happy dance in our living room. I say “awkward” because my living room is presently full of empty boxes and piles of stuff waiting to be sorted and stored in those boxes.
My husband and I are the sort of fools who consent to move to a new apartment one week after Christmas.
Becky compiled a list of topics to get us guest bloggers thinking, and, while all of them were interesting and several of them downright intriguing, I opted to go with what I know: books. For you, I will review a book that has been out for several years and has already been made into a movie (that I haven’t seen). I give you a book you’ve heard about, discussed and possibly even read, one whose statistics are horrifying when taken out of context and even more horrifying when given in context, but whose statistics demand to be quoted, one way or the other.
I present to you, dear faithful readers of Deep Muck Big Rake, a review of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.
When Fast Food Nation was first released, I was in my first year of college. Friends who had recently turned vegetarian lobbed passages from Schlosser at me in misguided attempts to scandalize me into quitting meat completely; several of my classes featured excerpts from Nation on the recommended reading list; in one nonfiction writing workshop, we examined the opening paragraph to chapter 6, “On the Range,” stripped it down to its bare bones and used Schlosser’s sentence structure and scene-building techniques to write opening paragraphs of our own.
Perhaps it was the sudden abundance of Fast Food Nation quotes at a point in my life when I was immersed in books of all shapes and persuasions that allowed me to think that I had, somehow, read the book in its entirety. Whatever my reasoning, five years passed before I caught on to the fact that I was boasting (as I often am) half-formed opinions based on half-earned knowledge. I finally picked up a copy of my own and dug in.
What I presumed to be a rant against the American diet turned out to be a study of the vast damage done by the fast food industry to nearly every aspect of American culture. From what I had read, I assumed that Schlosser’s book focused primarily on the effects of the fast food industry on the American diet, but I was startled to learn that Schlosser aims for a much higher mark: in illustrating not merely how fast food companies have changed our diet but also our lifestyle, Schlosser examines the roll of fast food in today’s car culture, marketing strategies, food production industries, corporations and attitude toward the rest of the world.
Schlosser is thorough in his research and approach, if not entirely unbiased. At points it became clear to me how the reader ought to feel about the information presented and certain people, when interviewed, were painted in shades that seem intended to sway the reader’s opinion. These brief moments where Schlosser’s opinions broke through made me slightly wary, but otherwise I couldn’t complain – the man puts up a solid argument and closes with a few chapters that sound (considering the context) downright optimistic.
If corporations can do this much damage in less than a century, Schlosser theorizes, surely we – the consumers, the ones with the true power – can go a long way in another, better direction, can’t we?
But of course, he says it better than I do. You really ought to hear it from him.
Posted by Thea @
9:47 am |
And the winner is …
Rhonda Van Diest!
One signed copy of The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression by Tracy Thompson is on the way. Thanks, Rhonda, and thanks to everyone who played along. Big thanks to Tracy, too.
Posted by Becky @
9:51 pm |
It’s time to choose a winner for the book
Did you participate in the teleconference? It’s time to put names in a hat and draw a winner. Let me know if I should include your name.
Here’s what you do.
- 1) Register for the teleconference. (It’s free.)
- 2) Leave a comment or e-mail me so I can add you to the list.
- 3) Call on Nov. 15.
- 4) Blog your reaction, and send me the link. (If you don’t have a blog, you can guest post here.)
- 5) Win the book! (I’ll draw a name at random.)
Join us, won’t you?
Posted by Becky @
7:02 pm |
Books: Twists and turns
November 23, 2007 | Books
Judge Irwin was his father? Did everyone else not see that coming? Or is it just me?
Now if he just gets to the point where “the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story” … two chapters to go, Jack. I hope it’s good.
Posted by Becky @
10:55 pm |
