Review: The Convert

This is a tale of Margret Marcus a Jewish girl growing up in the shadows of War World Two. While she hears about the horrors going on in Europe, her fascination  is with the Arabs. She gets upset at the formation of Israel and decides to convert to Islam. She has also spent time in mental wards.

Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi a man known for his staunch support of political Islam became her guardian when so moved to Pakistan. While in Pakistan Margret Marcus who became Maryam jamaleh upon her conversion to Islam, wrote a number of book supporting militant Islam and condemning the West. She was very influential in some circles in Lahore.

However it was not all smiles and writing in Pakistan. Before she had left the United States she had spent time in a mental hospital with Schizophrenia. She states in her letter that her decision to come to Islam is one of the sanest she has made in her life but one wonders. Then she ends up in a notorious madhouse in Lahore.

One gets the sense of reading this of how much of her thinking is muddled by her mental state and how much she really believes. Then again she was probably freer in Pakistan than she would have been in the US. In Pakistan she was able to marry and have kids and have her sister wife take care of her kids leaving her to write and so what ever else she wanted. while if she had stayed in the US she would probably ended up a ward of the state in a hospital somewhere.

Ever since 9/11 it has been a zero sum game for Islam and the West. If one wins the other loses. It was fascinating to trace back this ideology on the Muslim side to a specific political group and how they in a way took Maryam in and used her to showcase just how degraded the West really was.

Here was a perfect example of how when one followed the west your parents could kick you out, get rid of you or drop you off at the local state hospital while you traveled the world. While in Islam once you had a child you are responsible for it forever. That was the thinking anyway. It seemed it was to their own best advantage to use her to their political ends.

I found this book fascinating. The whole thing seemed unreal. Even the author admits all this was hard to imagine until she went to Lahore. First when she read the letters in New York public Libary it seemed that Maryam had finally found a place she could call home. That it was not rife with the strife that afflicted her with her parents in the US. However when the author went to Lahore she found something unsettling. From her old foster family saying that what she wrote home to her parents is not exactly what transpired in Pakistan. That she was guilty of a multitude of sins. When the author finally reached her for an interview she found a woman who acted complete different than what her letters portrayed. I felt that the author was being a little harsh in her judgment of Maryam. But who am I to say? I wasn’t there. Where the author gets to this point in the book I felt that it starts to fall apart. It as if the author let her emptions color what she wrote and we only get a nuanced version of the “real” Maryam. With sayings such as “I could not wait to leave the room” we are getting the author's emotions instead of what the story was supposed to be focused on.

The rest of the book is tightly written and a fascinating look at Maryam life as a political Islamist. Pick this book up if you want to know why someone would trade a middle class existence to a Life under a veil in poverty struck Pakistan.

Best of 2011

I have a couple that I have read that are my favorites ones was published in 2010 but it is among my all time favorite books. It is BoneShaker.

It was my first foray into the world of steampunk. I told myself that this year I was going to branch out into all genres instead of limiting myself with literary fiction. I was so glad I read this. It was a perfect read for the cold dreary northern winter. (I am originally from the south).

The second is a nonfiction book and it is

I liked this because she gives real advice on how to be happier right where you are. And the advice she gives it well researched and works. I know cause I have been following my own happiness project and and corny as it sounds I am happier.

I got this book for an ARC and it impacted me too so I don’t want to leave it out.

The man wrote 365 thank yous for things to ne grateful about. This really had a deep impact on me because sometimes in my deep dark depressions I feel as there is nothing. So I started thanking people for little things and keeping a gratitude journal and now I do feel more positive and I interact more positive also.

Armchair BEA: How I Armchair

This is my first armchair BEA that I have partispated in. I look forword to what the week will bring. I will be armchairing (can I use that word) in my new favorite lazy-boy recliner.

I love reading and writing and tech stuff above all else. After trying different career paths I decided to go back to school and get my degree in Library and Information Technology. My days are spent studying for the GRE and trying to remember math I took a life time ago.

I love meeting new people but sometimes where I am Deaf it gets in the way cause I cant understand what people are saying. That’s why I love the internet so much! It levels the playing field.

I will read just about anything. I am a very eclectic reader. My gulity pleasure is self-help books. My friends don’t hesistte to tell me most are full of crap but I cant help it. It like a great big choclate chip cookie dough ice cream (another thing I love) for the brain.

I look forward to meeting all of you! If you want to know anything else feel free to ask!

Sunday Salon

I am jealous of the people that are getting to go to BEA this year. I will be participating in Armchair BEA. I cant wait for it to start. This will be my first time participating. I am sure it will be an enjoyable week.

I have read on twitter and on blogs how many people go to author and book events. I have been trying to come up with any ideas on how get the same for North Eastern Ohio. It seems that it is only located in the big cities but I wish there were more located nearer to me so that I could attend. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

Studying for the GRE has taken up most of my time this week. I have decided to go to Library school. I hope I get in. The part of the GRE that concerns me most is that math part. The written and vocab I am not worried. I know how to make it stick but I not had any math in over 5 years and I have forgotten most. Oh well I will just pray that I score high enough to make it to Library school.

The book I am reading now is called “West of Here”. I heard about it on a few blogs so I decided to check it out. The first few chapters were slow going and I really did not get the point but after page 100 it starts to make sense and is really really good.

I look forward to meeting some of you on Armchair BEA!

Review: A Sport and a Pastime

This is a novel that on the surface is about an unnamed narrator and lovers Dean and Ann-Marie.

Dean is a Yale school dropout and comes to France for what is supposed to be a short holiday. The narrator meets him at a party in Paris and lets him stay in the narrator's borrowed house in the French countryside (The real France). It is in the village of Atun that Dean meets Anne-Marie and begins an affair which increases in volume and passion until his departure from France.

We can also get a sense of the narrator thru his retelling of Dean and Anne-Marie affair. The narrator is seemly impotent and thus cast his desires onto the couple. Even though there is few direct evidence of the narrator by paying attention to the subtle retelling of the story we can glean a second story underneath.

Beneath that story is stories about love and sex and classism among other things. As this story was published in the 60’s and retains reverences to subtle racism this story is easily dated but the language which is at the heart of this book remains as beautiful as ever.

Salter is known for his artful writing and how to best craft a sentence. This book is full of evidence of that. Not one word wasted and the prose is precise and inflicts the exact sort of mood it portrays.

One gets a sense that in the retelling it has lost some of its glamour or novelty. There seems to be a veneer of dullness that is spread across the words. Like a knife that has lost it sharpness and is now only a dull blade.

Many people love this book for the telling of a principle story but if you ask me this fails to give it justice. There are so many more gems that this book has to offer than just a story about love and sex.

My one complaint about this book is that I wanted to know more about the narrator. I have read that many people feel this way but it is perhaps one of Salter greatest achievements that he is able to disregard this and still have a book that offers so much and does not distract from the story.

Review: Club Dead

GoodReads Summary: Things between cocktail waitress Sookie and her vampire boyfriend Bill seem to be going excellently (apart from the small matter of him being undead) until he leaves town for a while. A long while. Bill's sinister boss Eric has an idea of where to find him, whisking her off to Jackson, Mississippi to mingle with the under-underworld at Club Dead. When she finally catches up with the errant vampire, he is in big trouble and caught in an act of serious betrayal. This raises serious doubts as to whether she should save him or start sharpening a few stakes of her own.

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*Spoiler Alert* I am probably the last person on earth reviewing this book but just in case you haven't read it consider yourselves warned.

 

This is the third in a series of what is now known to be thirteen books. This book is deeper and darker than the first two books. It like the first two books are all exciting and she is in love then bam Bill cheats on her and things go downhill from there. Well not completely downhill she doesn't get killed but you get my drift.

For me reading about this betrayal was painful. I did not realize just how invested I was in Sookie as a character until this happened. I was so pissed at Bill and this is a fictional person but seriously my emotions were as if they were real. Then when I started trying to tell Sookie to not mess things up more by getting involved with Eric, I knew I have become a die hard sookie fan. I will now order ALL books from my library.

In all seriousness though this book takes a darker turn. There is almost no sex in this book and there is Bill who decides to take up with his ex. I liked how this book explored that relationship. The author captured the emotions that are inherent in a betrayal.

Even though I was rooting for her not to I also liked how she showed how the “chemistry” was between Sookie and Eric. It made sense in that she was hurting over Bill to want to betray him back but she doesn’t all the way.

This not “great works of art” by any means but like a good candy bar it is hard to resist. It is great to read between more substantial books.

Review: The Weird Sisters

GoodReads Summary:The three Andreas sisters grew up in the cloistered household dominated by their Shakespearean professor father, a prominent, eccentric academic whose reverence for the Bard left its imprint on his daughters' names: Rosalind (As You Like It), Bianca (The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordelia (King Lear). The siblings eventually left home and escaped their ponderous monikers with nicknames, but their mother's medical maladies brings them back. Before long, their unwelcome reunion reveals that they all have problems: Rose is force-feeding a troubled relationship; Bean is entangled in a big city case of embezzlement; and unmarried Cordy is pregnant. Eleanor Brown's first fiction has justly won praise as "thought-provoking... poignant... sparkling and devourable."

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I have to admit when I first started reading I was confused by the narrating style. Then I realized it was a first person plural style and it made perfect sense. The way the story is told you get the sense that the events have already happened and the sisters are re telling it along with their new insights. It was the perfect way to tell this story.

The author selects something that a majority of people, especially women, can relate to. The sisters come home because in one way or another they are not where they want to be in life and decided to return home in the hopes of finding their way. The fact that their mother has cancer is just a superficial reasons that they used to hide the real reasons from each other and themselves. As many people do they lose their way in life and have to find a way to go on. They book has illustrates how what we imagined is not what we have planned but sometimes the way things work out is exactly what we need.

The author poignantly uses sister relationships to describe ultimately human relationships in candid honesty. The relationships reflect how people keep secrets and attempt to hide them but ultimately through sharing and exposing oneself you can  find redemption. But at what cost does this redemption come? Does it mean being more free and having to give up a dream and settle into a new life? If you give up something is it worth the cost or is the alternative even better?

There are many  surprises in this book that keep the reader engaged. The reader should be able to feel a bond with one of the sisters and relate to how things are going and how things ended. I myself could relate to more than one and was invested in how the story ended. It kept me turning the pages until the end.