The story begins with the Santa Ana winds. The girl’s mother tells her that women who kill their lovers on a night like this will blame it on the wind. Naturally, her mother is about to kill her lover.

You’d think that would be enough of a story. But not for Janet Fitch. That’s only the setup for the main story. The main story is about the daughter, Astrid. Astrid is left to fend for herself in a series of horrific foster homes. And in those places, she goes through a very dramatic coming of age transformation. Yes, we know all about coming of age stories. But the usual problems of that time are thrown on their head. How different is it to become your own person, separate from your parent (s), when your mother is a murderer?

This story was really good. It has all the terrible sensational things in it (occult references, murder, forbidden sex), but somehow for me, it worked.

One of the redeeming features was the constant references to beauty. The murderer mother was a poet. Astrid cut her teeth on fine art. It was bordering unbelievable to me, how much this girl knew about authors and artists. But perhaps there are such people, such 14 year olds, that can know about Kandinsky and have well-formed opinions about him.

The other thing that made this story really great for me was how much it was rooted HERE. HERE, as in Los Angeles. She described exactly exactly how things are here. She talks about the wind, which anyone who is not or has not been here does not know about. The wind is crazy.

And she talks about the apartments in Hollywood, and the wildness just not very far North. She talks about how different people shop and dress differently. The author knows this area, this strange area that is Los Angeles.

The story is a good one, I recommend it.

I am still pondering this book.

It occurs to me that I am a gluttonous reader. I read these amazing, complicated books. I LOVE their texture and the feelings and the beautiful words I am reading.

But then…I don’t stop and savor them enough. I read one, and I like it…But If I finish one early in the day, I’m on to the next one by night.

Perhaps I am too greedy for these books. I don’t stop and linger.

When I am eating a truly delicious dish, I like to savor it.

But my reading does not work like that.

I miss my university classes.

I would take a class again, just for the joy of discussing the books. But the fact of the matter is, I cannot go back to literature classes at the jr. college level. They are not enough. I have more questions and ideas than would fit there anymore.

Well…So I miss those literary cud-chewing sessions. And I don’t know what to do with my observations and thoughts.

Journal them?

ta da! Here i am!

I had been making a concerted effort to write short reviews of the books I read.

But then, my brother Mark mentioned that he preferred a more personal approach on my blog.

Hmm…Yes. So do I. You know what though? It’s harder to be personal. I end up rambly and not particularly proud of what I write.

It requires a lot of discipline to be personal. and practice. So maybe this is practice.

Stream of consciousness shift here…My co-worker practices his keyboard (piano) 4 HOURS A DAY!

holy crap!

I told him I was ashamed, because I try to make an effort to just play one song a week. I have this whole big beautiful piano, and I squander it.

He said, He is in a band, Jazz fusion, and the sax player is so good, he is ashamed to do a solo after him. He is VERY inspired to practice.

Hey, this does wrap around. See, he is inspired to do his best because he is in an environment that challenges him.

Me, I was more challenged in my school environment. Because somebody there notices, cared, and I paid more attention to what I was reading.

It is important, I think, to foster environments that drive us to excellence.

Oh man. That’s the tough part. Good friends are hard to find.

So.

i have finished White Oleander. I feel like there is so much I would want to think about and talk about in it.

And I have already begun A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I’m 95 pages into it, having started it yesterday.

i was reading it, and in between reading it, I was watching Zorba the greek.

I wonder if there is a mental equivalent of a vomitorium?

No, my appetite is endless.

But there are SOME books that are too steep a climb to go swiftly.

Ulysses.

I’m working very slowly on that one.
I’m on pg 122. 700 more to go. I read it in between the other books I’m reading.

Which is probably the wrong way to do it. I should sit down and savor and ponder and try to GET all the little references and stuff.

But life doesnt’ let me separate and savor. It zips by, the hour gets late and then the alarm clock goes off.

More work and more meniality, and bills and catboxes and plans for the catboxes of the future.

I will tell myself that it is better to read 10 books too fast than read one slow and miss out completely on the other nine.

I can’t help it anyway. I love to read.

I also have this feeling, like, I have to study, I have to get the basics down before I can get to the important question. Start working, with the right tools and theorums and laws, on the important, significant questions.

I obviously don’t have the tool now, because I don’t even know the question.

I finished this a while ago. I was so completely moved by it that I have been carrying it around with me, wishing I could do a good enough review to do it justice.

But I am not going to write the perfect introduction/recommendation for this mandatory reading for the decade. I will do the best I can.

Nafisi is a professor of english literature. She is also Iranian. The first was her gift and calling. The second was a fact of fate.

How do you tell the story of Iran? They always say, “Begin at the begining.” Ah, but which begining?

Nafisi’s book begins with her plan to continue teaching after she has left the university for not submitting to the extreme rules for women.

She loves to teach, and she chooses some students who love to learn. THey must be all female, because a mixed class would be too risky. She has the women come to her home to study the forbidden works of literature.

But don’t get too excited; almost all books from the west were forbidden. The book in the title,Lolita, was studied. We all know that Lolita is a risque subject. But Jane Asten, and Henry James are also studied extensively.

The characters of the women in the group are important. Not everyone in Iran is a fundamental zombie. And not everyone longs for the freedoms of the west. There are a whole spectrum of desires felt in each individuals heart.

Nafisi goes back in time to tell how things began to be the way they are. What was this revolution against and what was it for? The tensions and factions, and who won and the results of what those winnings were.

And the battleground over women’s bodies. Why must a woman cover herself so completely? And why then, should she be sent home in shaame for wearing pink socks?

And what does Jane Austen have to do with all this?

Indeed, the women themselves wondered what they had to do with all of it. All this attention centered on them. They, who felt so powerless, were so feared.

Where can a person possibly find answers for these questions?
Nafisi finds them in books.

I could kiss her for that! I find them in the same place.

Nafisi interjects her stories of happenings with what can only be called classroom lectures. But the subject matter of the lecture is so relevant, one cannot think of them as interruptions.

In a place where women’s bodies, selves and personalities are kept so far out of sight that the manifestation seen by the public are only fictional characters, one must study real fictional characters to learn how to be real.

This is what Nafisi tells us in this book.

But she does not pretend to have answers for everything.

This book left me deeply sad for days. I felt the heavy blessing of my own freedom. I cannot more highly recommend this book. It is a new perspective.

It’s a familiar story: Boy grows up without dad, dad enters boy’s life once more, boy must figure out what he thinks about it.

This time, though, the story is told by comics. Chris Ware takes nearly 400 pages to tell the story with comics. I’ll be honest, this is really an exciting example of a new way to tell a story. Pictures can say things, repeat things, that words cannot do.

I mean, how many times can you write the word ‘pathetic’ in a story? Ware seems to write it all over every page, but without the redundancy. You can use the same image, when you can’t use the same word. And this gives a weight to the story, the sadness of the little boy and the depths of his loserishness, that made it almost repellent.

Except, I wanted to flip the pages and see what the next page had.

In the same way that Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was initially impenetrable, Jimmy Corrigan is hard to figure out.

‘what?’ i felt like asking. “what just happened here? Who’s that?” It becomes more clear as the book progresses, but not so much that all my questions are answered.

I am really thinking, now, about how different mediums communicate different ways.

Of course, Catcher in the Rye! Everyone has heard of Catcher in the Rye. A heckuva lot of people have read it. I decided i had to finally read it after Six Degrees of Separation. The con artist in that book does this whole discussion about how so many serial killers have this book.

Plus, it looked short. This was a nice diversion from the very long books I haven’t been finishing lately.

Well. Having finished the books mere moments ago, and having read absolutely no criticsm of it, I can give my opinion.

Holden Caulfield is an incredibly annoying kid. I don’t know why all the people in the story were so nice to him.

It’s hell to be an adolescent. All dressed up and nowhere to go, basically. Holden is stuck in a very stuffy period in history, growing up in the very late 40s.

But I guess his main problem is that he can’t find a way to get to where he wants to be. He is so caught up in all the details of his life, he doesn’t know what he wants. He gets vague and foggy ideas from the books he reads and some snatches of moments. But in the end, all he comes up with is empty.

He seems so involved in his dissaticfaction with his life that I’m not even sure he wants to be satisfied. Once in a while, he seems to want to find something that makes him happy. But he can never grab onto it.

Is that how every kid felt in the 50s? Like Rebel without a Cause?

My dad was in high school then. He tells me he felt that way a lot. What is up with that?

Is that the sort of vague dissatisfaction the was the 50s? Is that what led to the sort of vague protest of the foggy “establishment” that was the 60s?

Maybe serial killers like this book because it is so vague. It lets them bank the fire that fuels the logicless reasoning for their actions.

I don’t know. I’ve met some rather disasffected youth., and a lot of times I’ve felt like sitting them down and talking with them.

That’s what Holden makes me feel like doing.

But with the fictional Holden, and with the real kids I’ve known, it’s a little harder than a single convesation. The problems are not in their heads.

But the solution, at least the start of it is in the individual control. I do believe that.

But really. This book is also about more than just Holden’s problems.

what i DID like about it was the way Salinger wrote it. He wrote in a way that would drive English teachers nuts. Repeating, and inarticulate sometimes.

But the book is from Holden’s perspective, and the way Salinger writes takes the reader exactly into his head. He writes inarticulately because Holden is 16 and inarticulate.

I love the fact that this book is so “canon” while being so technically ‘bad’. I mean, If I were peer-reviewing this book, I would have to redpen the crap out of it.

And I hate doing that. Because i don’t like the arbitrary and inaccurate rules about what makes “good writing” in an English class.

So. I don’t think that Catcher in the Rye changed my life, but it was worth the time to read it.

Detriech Bonhoeffer is a thoelogian who lived in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. He’s known for repeatedly attempting assasination of Hitler.

A Theologian who was a self-appointed assasin! Here is a man who is not satisfied with the abstract.

I actually had heard of him before, but only in the shallowest passing. I got to heat more about him on the radio today, because there is a new documentary about his life.

I am electrified! From the snippets I heard, he went through the fire of the mass delusion that was Nazi germany and hung on to the truth. And he found new facets of the truth, hard truths about themeaning of peace and the value and purpose of the church.

I wish i wish I could see this documentary. But it seems to be airing only in select churches. So I can’t seem to find it.

But I can read his works. I am going to have to.

Okay, so I’ve been looking at a lot of guide books for Germany

This one was the first one I bought, but that’s because it was on sale at AAA when I went down to renew my membership. I was also trying to shake them for free maps of Germany.

They don’t have them. You have to pay for maps not it America. That’s what the last A in the series is for.

So, I bought this guide. It seems very good, if you don’t read any other guides. But the problem, is, Rick Steves is very opinionated. He only tells you about the parts he likes. So he tells you all kinds of things about the stuff he recommends, gets you all excited. But he doesn’t give you a chance to make up your own mind.

If you want to just follow his footsteps, go ahead and use this book.

Otherwise shop around.