Season’s Readings:
Notable Books read in year 2005 by Eva. Order is not significant.
- The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri. Unabridged on 6 cassettes, Read by Sarita Choudhury. A significant hunk of this novel was excerpted in the Nyer but I did not mind re-reading it. It’s about an immigrant Indian couple in Cambridge MA, and later suburbia. Their son and a daughter are born in America. The parents socialize mostly with other Indian expats. The focus is on the son, Gogol Ganjali. The weakest part of the book is Moshimee’s affair with Dmitri. I would have preferred to read about other marital problems such as what if she got a job in Iowa. What are they going to decide about children? How are they going to resolve the fact that Nikhil (Gogol) doesn’t care for some of her friends? Everything else seemed like a true representation of life.
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. ©2002. 529pp. This novel, which reads like a memoir, won the Pulitzer prize. It’s a page-turner that follows three generations of a Greek-American family from 1922 to 2001. The narrator was born in Detroit in 1960 with 5-alpha reductase deficiency syndrome. This means that a genetic male does not appear to be a male at birth because of an inability to synthesize DHT (dihydrotestosterone). However, in adolescence when testosterone kicks in the "girl" appears to morph into a boy. This book tells of Bithynios, the village in Asia Minor where this family originated, and follows the rogue gene. It’s also about how Calliope/Cal and the Stephanides family coped. There is humor. A lot of the themes—finding a life’s partner, earning a living, guilt, marriage, parenting, adolescence, race relations, religion, heredity, and sexual attractions—are universal.
- Call It Sleep ©1934 by Henry Roth (b. 1906). "One of the masterpieces of American literature"-The Nyer. An immigrant story set in NYC in the early twentieth century. The book is about the effect of not communicating. Aunt Bertha was the only one who let it all out, but she could keep a confidence, and she fought like a hellion to keep her husband Nathan from blurting out something harmful in anger. The book took on some big topics: sex, religion, and family dynamics. David was a Mama's boy. The angrier Albert got over that the more Genya really did need to protect her son and the more David sought comfort in his mother. It was a good story, though full of anguish. David's mental state was pretty much one big "Ow." I thought for sure the police would pick up Albert after his violence towards the bum who stole a bottle of milk; I did not know WHAT would happen after David ran out leaving his mother and father and Bertha and Nathan to finally spill a lot of their pent up issues in the big fight. At the end the air had been cleared by that fight. MD read this a couple of years ago and was not impresssed. I was impressed..
- Ursula Under by Ingrid Hill 476 pp. This is my year for immigration novels. The author managed to have her cake and eat it too, in that there is a happy ending but, in the sub-stories about ancestors, some unhappy endings. Ursula Wong and her parents Annie and Justin live in northern Michigan. They all have mixed ancestry. This book mostly samples the Chinese and Finnish branches, with a trace element of French Jesuit. There are Irish and Polish branches to the tree but they are only mentioned in passing. It’s all very engaging, and true about human behavior and feelings. I learned a few facts. I had not realized 82,000 Finns died in WW II, out of a population of 4 million, and that half a million Finns were homeless at the end of the war. I had not known Paisley was a town in Scotland. I learned details about Search and Rescue. The novel handles sex and religion and love well. Alabaster Wong’s approach to parenthood was not foreshadowed or followed up enough, though.
- Fathers and Sons,
by Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), ©1862. Unabridged on 6 cassettes. Except for the duel, the generational conflict could have happened in the U.S. in the 1960s, instead of in Russia 100 yrs earlier. Arkady, 24, is a new college grad returning home to his widowed father. He’s brought a friend with him, Bazarov, a medical student and self-described "Nihilist." Arkady’s father, Nikolai, a fairly liberal provincial doctor, welcomes any friend of his beloved son, but Arkady’s bachelor uncle, Pavel Petrovich, who lives in the household, is a conservative who takes an immediate dislike to Bazarov. The two young men meet some women in the district. Both fall in love, despite the nihilist not believing in romance or marriage. At first they fall for the same woman, but that gets sorted out. We also meet Basarov’s parents (religious, a little worried about his lost faith). He’s also much beloved. His parents are so thrilled when he comes to visit (seldomly), and then feel bereft when the visit is so short. Bazarov’s father privately tells his mother not to hover. One is reminded of Jonathon Franzen’s piece in the Nyer where he said in his adulthood he always kept his visits to his mother to one weekend. His mother remarked one Fall weekend when she drove him to the airport that she loved it when he came when daylight savings time was ending because then she got one more hr with him.
- American Scoundrel, Murder, Love, and Politics in Civil War America
by Thomas Keneally, © 2002. Dan Sickles was a Civil War general who did his utmost to discredit his superior officer, General Meade. He was a neglectful father to his 3 children and an unfaithful husband to his 2 wives. But he was a charmer. He was a Congressman from NYC and a Tammany Hall insider. He lived to 92, into the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The most interesting part of this biography for me was Sickles’ first marriage to Theresa Bujoli. There was a duel in this book too, but it was a shocking anachronism. I had not known before that some U.S. leaders wanted to annex Cuba to make two slave states of it to balance the new free states.
- The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot, ©1860 (14 1.5 hr casettes). The Floss is the name of the river on whose banks Maggie and Tom Tulliver grow up. The book is set in some vague distant past. Railroads are not mentioned. Philip Wakem, a hunchbacked young man, is smart, well educated, well-travelled, and the only son of a lawyer who is Mr. Tulliver’s archenemy. Philip loves Maggie, but he is way too passive. Then Maggie is secretly pursued by her beloved cousin Lucy’s almost-betrothed, Steven Guest. The attraction is mutual, but Maggie does not believe she can build happiness on the unhappiness of others. Was anyone ever fooled for a minute by George Eliot’s pseudonym which implies she’s male?
- A Trial by Jury by D. Graham Burnett, ©2001 read by the author. 5 CDs. A true account of serving on a jury in a murder/manslaugher trial. It was worse than that group project during my Java class. Trying to come to a consensus about our project architecture was so frustrating. Some people obviously think other people don’t "get it." It’s not fun to be on either side of that relationship. In Burnett’s group interaction, though, a life was at stake and they were sequestered into a second week. One juror ran out of medicine. Another had to cancel a trip to Europe. The power of the State and the power of judges was underlined.
- All Over But the Shoutin
by Rick Bragg. Unabridged on 8 cassettes narrated by Frank Muller. An autobiography with the spotlight tilted towards the author’s mother. The author was "white trash" who’d spent 6 months max in college before his journalism fellowship Niemann year at Harvard (which he loved) well into his journalistic career, yet by his 30’s he was a Pullitzer Prize winning NY Times reporter. I had liked Bragg’s previous book, a recreation of his grandfather’s life, Ava’s Man.
- Dark Tide, The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo. 251pp. Nonfiction. Old photographs. Heros and knaves. ©2003 but I have the 2004 eddition that contains an afterward about readers who came forward with old letters and new info about descendants of the historical figures in the book. This was a Christmas gift from Herman’s sister. There’s a QA element to it (inspecting the tanks). There’s a Courtroom element. The defense tried to blame the collapse of the tank on anarchists. The case was settled in 1925. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Boston in 1926. I was reminded that rum is made from molasses, and I learned that industrial alcohol is too, which in the WW I era was used to make explosives. Calvin Coolidge was sworn in on a pro-business platform 8 weeks before the decision against USIA (U.S. Industrial Alcohol) was handed down.
- Black Mass, The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob © 2000 by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, read by John Rubinstein.. The authors are two Pullitzer Prize winning Boston Globe reporters who were on the Whitey Bulger/La Costra Nostra/Winter Hill Gang/John Connolly case from the beginning. Connelly is the FBI agent who became too chummy with his mole. Connelly, a Southie boy himself, had looked up to Whitey (11 years older) in his childhood, and thought it would be mutually beneficial to reel him in as an FBI informant. But he fraternized too much and pretty soon his whole career was about protecting Whitey at all costs. Many of the events in this book took place since I moved to Boston. I was aware of fragments. This pulled it all together for me. Whitey is still on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. He’s BAD. His brother, a Massachusetts politician, can play hardball too. An example was given where he damaged a judge’s career when the judge did not rubberstamp Billy’s political appointee. The book floats the idea that Whitey planted Connelly in the FBI! (Not too seriously).
- Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. Abridged to 4 cassettes. I liked the book differently than the movie. Did the movie tell of Red Pollard’s courtship and marriage to his nurse, Agnes? Did the movie tell about George Wolf’s diabetes, and generally how tough it was to manage diabetes in the ’30s? Did the movie tell us the lengths jockeys go to to keep their weights down? I don’t think I knew before that bulemics lose their teeth enamel because of all the stomach acid passing through.
- Prime Obsession, Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics ©2003 By John Derbyshire. 403pp. This is a keeper, a book I want on my shelf. There’s math in here as well as history. There are books mentioned in passing that I want to read. Some of the math was too elementary so I skipped it. Some was a nice review of nifty proofs. Some advanced my knowledge. Some could have advanced my knowledge more but I was too lazy to follow it in detail at this time. It would have been better to have read the footnotes in conjuction with the book, but I only noticed them at the end (where they are located), so I skimmed them out of context. John Derbyshire is a wonderful author.
- The Riemann Hypothesis by Karl Sabbagh, ©2002 330pp. The previous book left me wanting more, so I tried this. Another keeper! I guess I just like the subject. The two books are not re-phrasings of each other. What overlap there was did not bore me at all. This book’s emphasis is on how mathematicians feel and work. Prime Obsession’s emphasis was on presenting an overview of the math (lite). Louis de Branges did prove the Bieberbach Conjecture in 1984—at age 52! (not my exclamation point), but now he’s shunned by the math community because he several times announced a proof of the Riemann hypothesis only to have to withdraw it. Verifying a proof can take weeks, so mathematicians are now reluctant to tackle his next "proof."
- Old School, by Tobias Wolff. ©2003 195pp. Discussed by my book group at the Von Au’s. Set in 1960. The narrator is never named, but I shall call him N. N is a senior scholarship student at a new England Boys’ boarding school he loves. The school has a tradition of sponsoring writing contests. The prize is a personal audience with a famous writer. These boys revere writers like other boys revere sports heros. Authors who are invited in the course of the novel are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Earnest Hemmingway. Having read The Fountainhead last year I was particularly prepped for N’s temporary enthrallment to Ayn Rand.
- The Photograph
by Penelope Lively. Unabridged on 6 compact discs. A widower, Glyn Peters, 62, comes across a photograph of his deceased wife Kath holding hands with her bother-in-law Nick. He shows the photo to Kath’s sister Elaine, mostly because he needs to know whether everybody in the world knew but him (No, Elaine did not know), and he wants to know who the other people in the picture are, and who the photographer is. Elaine’s in the picture. He makes the rounds interviewing all these people. A whole new picture emerges of Kath. I’m interested in this kind of obsession with another person. Set in the Home Counties.
- The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
by Janis Hallowell. 6 cassettes, unabridged. This novel has both feet on the ground even though some of the characters in it don’t. It is about parenting and about a flare-up of extreme religion. The narrators are Chester, a homeless man who smells fear, disease, and holiness, and had a vision of Francesca as "The Virgin;" Anne Dunn, Francesca’s paleobotanist mother; Syd, her high-school classmate; and Francesca herself, who, in the course of the book, becomes deluded by the way she’s treated by the ‘devotees.’ Mental illnesses are well described. Francesca’s father, Anne’s ex, has a bit part.
- Heart Full of Lies
by Ann Rule. True Crime. Abridged to 4 cassettes, which was sufficient space to tell this story. Lisa neė De Witt murdered her 3rd husband Chris Northrum (That’s what I think). She plea-bargained down to 12.5 years. She was a pathological liar. Since lying is repulsive to me I was amazed that she had many normal friends and all those husbands. Some of her friends did not realize she was a liar. I just had no idea a person could get away with lies like that. Well I guess she did not get away with it. She got 12.5 years. I liked the scenes from life that revealed personalities through actions and interactions..
- The Burglar Who Studies Spinoza by Lawrence Block. © 2002 Unabridged on 5 cassettes. Read by Richard Ferrone. This was a fun and satisfyng murder mystery that I consumed while doing chores such as fixing my bicycles, ironing, and washing dishes. Bernie Rhodenbarr is a respectable used-book dealer by day and a notorious burglar by night. Bernie’s partner in crime is Carolyn, a lesbian dog-groomer. Their fence is Abel Crowe. There are 2 murders to be solved. I learn about the 1913 V nickel. Set in NYC.
Please send suggestions to eva@theworld.com
This page has been accessed 
times since November 8, 2005
Last revised: November 15, 2005