Whew! I can’t believe we are halfway through 2010. As I did in March, I thought I’d check in with my challenges and see how I’m doing.
– This challenge ended on May 16th. Thus this is a challenge I failed to complete, and I’m okay with that. I used to read poetry in college, but the motivation is just not there anymore.
– This has been one of my favorite challenges to do. It’s a satisfying feeling to “follow-up” with an author, see the similar themes between books, or the evolution in the author’s writing.
I’m feeling pretty good about the challenges, and except for the poetry challenge, the motivation is still there to complete them. So, yay!
2009. 206 pages. Faith Words.
Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of geosciences and climate change researcher and Andrew Farley, pastor and professor make the case for the existence of global warming and why action needs to be taken. Their intended audience is mainly American Christians, though the facts presented would be of interest to anyone.
I was excited when I heard about this book on Bookfool’s blog and even more excited when I won a copy from the giveaway she hosted. I’ve never really doubted the existence of global warming, but I didn’t know many of the facts about it either. As a Christian, I have been frustrated to see many people of the same faith who seem to reflexively dismiss that global warming is happening. I wanted to know more so that I could hopefully help people to reconsider this dismissal.
Hayhoe and Farley’s book definitely satisfied that desire. The authors are always firm about the reality of global warming, but never condescending. Doubts about climate change and the human contribution to this change are evenly and clearly addressed. They seem to have anticipated a lot of the arguments and quibbles people might have with global warming.
I also really appreciated that the authors did not take shortcuts in their arguments. When I came to the section where they explain why Christians should care about global warming, they surprised me. I’ve seen Bible verses quoted about why we should be stewards of the Earth and that’s what I expected again. But Hayhoe and Farley acknowledge that there is no explicit mandate given in the Bible for Christians to take care of the earth. Rather, they argue that we should work to combat global warming because it is the wise and compassionate thing to do. This is an example of the clear-eyed approach that is taken throughout the book.
The book is well-organized and includes many helpful graphs and images to support the text. (It’s actually a very good-looking book overall.) I know I will be referring to it in the future and already have plans of either lending my copy or giving a copy to others. It’s just such a pleasure to encounter a book that so gracefully transcends the polarizing nature of debate that too often surrounds global warming and Christianity.
On Memorial Day weekend, I spent a little time at Shiretown Books in Woodstock, VT. The atmosphere was friendly and I liked the selection. I ended up purchasing three books: The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, and Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I’ve read A Town Like Alice before, when I was in high school. This edition’s cover is quite attractive, and the cover of Cranford even more so. Both the woman working at the store (who may have been the proprietor) and I admired it.
I received Valeria’s Last Stand by Marc Fitten from Goodread’s First Reads. I entered into the giveaway because I was intrigued by the story’s setting in a Hungarian village after the fall of the Soviet Union. I started reading the first chapter while waiting for my car’s oil change, and it’s quite funny. I look forward to returning to it in the near future.
Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young arrived thanks to Tracee of Pump Up Your Book Promotion. I’ve never participated in a virtual book tour before, but I was intrigued by the premise and the author’s bio and thought I’d check it out.
It’s not an expectation that publishers provide Spotlight Series participants with anything. So it was a pleasant surprise when I heard that NYRB was going to give a little gift package to all those who posted reviews as part of the Spotlight Series. A copy of the New York Review of Books and a NYRB shopper bag were also included in the package.
The back cover summary of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne gives little away, but as I’ve loved the previous two NYRB books I’ve read, I have high hopes for this one.
Which brings me to two books that just came today! I really want to read current “it” book, The Passage by Justin Cronin, and I know there’s no way I can read all of this chunkster during one library loan period. So I decided to go ahead and buy it when I saw it in the bookstore today.
Thanks to some credit card reward points that can take the form of Amazon gift cards, Sara Wheeler’s Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island arrived today in the mail. Seems like a perfect summer book!
I borrowed this nifty idea from Daphne of Nevertravelled’s Blog, who borrowed it from Stefanie of So Many Books. Basically, this is a list of books that it feels like “everyone” has read except for me.
1. Animal Farm by George Orwell – I read 1984 in high school as required reading, but was never assigned Animal Farm. I have about zero interest in reading it now. I feel some aversion to it because I know it’s allegorical, and I tend to think that allegorical works will distancing and too ‘instructional’ somehow for my tastes. That said, I do enjoy The Chronicles of Narnia, so it’s not a clear-cut preference.
2. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger – I think I’m too old for this book now.
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett – Even after seeing so many glowing reviews, including reviews that said, yes, actually it lives up to the hype, I just can’t seem to muster any urgency about reading it. I think that I probably will read it . . . someday.
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – I tried this in high school and it didn’t quite click. I’ve picked up on a lot of the references (“42”) and yet have not read the source material.
5. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – There is no real reason that I haven’t read this yet, as I think I’d like it. However, I don’t tend to blind-buy books a lot, and I’d probably have to put myself on a long library waiting list to check it out.
6. Life of Pi by Yann Martel – I know it’s about a tiger and a boy and a boat. Because that is what is on the cover.
7. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger – I don’t think this book is so much discussed anymore, but I remember feeling like “everyone” had read it because I think most of my family had at the time.
9. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen – Despite my tendency not to blind-buy books, I’ve come sooo close to buying this book in airport bookstores.
10. any book by Margaret Atwood – I started reading The Handmaid’s Tale, but it was college and I really didn’t have the time. Years later and I still haven’t read anything by her although she is such an admired and beloved writer by many.
So will you show me that I’m not alone in the comments or confirm my suspicions? Also, feel free to throw in some titles of books that you haven’t read that “everyone” else has.
1946. 326 pages. Paperback. Harcourt Brace.
Delta Wedding portrays the lives of a Mississippi Delta planter family in 1923 as they prepare for the wedding between their second eldest daughter, Dabney, and their overseer.
The Fairchild family, with nine children, is already large, but is made larger and even more chaotic with the arrival of extended family and their range of personalities. The viewpoint shifts throughout the book between various female characters, but mostly rests with Ellen Fairchild, the mother of those nine children; Laura, a young cousin whose mother has recently died; and Shelley, the oldest, unmarried Fairchild daughter.
Delta Wedding is a story driven not by plot but by characters, dialogue and a deep sense of place. I can often be bored when authors trot out dry descriptions of a room’s features. In Welty’s hands, descriptions of rooms and houses drip with atmosphere and are suffused with the human personalities that inhabit them.
The characters in Delta Wedding are best appreciated as an ensemble. Sure, I have my favorites, such as impish nine-year-old India and Shelley, the oldest daughter who keeps a journal. Forthright Aunt Tempe reminds me so much of certain people I know. The family is almost a character of its own, analyzed by themselves and by outsiders as a single entity. The Fairchilds, whose cotton plantations sustain a small town named after them, are self-absorbed when they are all together at the family home of Shellmound. It’s as if the outside world doesn’t exist and it is just their family. Woe to those perceived as outsiders by the family.
The dialogue, especially between large groups of people talking over each other, is lively and often humorous, with India getting some of the best lines.
These are the aspects that I adore about Delta Wedding, and what made it quite accessible when I first read and loved it as a senior in high school.
However, Delta Wedding can also be a difficult book at times. There are many passages where characters go into deep contemplation about their family, namely their Uncle George. Uncle George is the hero of the family who also seems to buck expectations the most, particularly with his marriage to the ‘low-born’ Robbie Reid, who has just left him when the story starts. To be honest, especially in this re-read, I got tired of all the ruminations about Uncle George. These often impenetrable descriptions of his motivations and relationships were sometimes hard to follow or be invested in.
Still, the complexity of the narrative means that there are always new layers and aspects to consider in each re-read of the book.
For instance, this time around, I was particularly fascinated by the book’s depiction of the family’s black servants. The black characters are present in most of the scenes, an integral part of the ensemble in terms of conversation and events. However, as a writer named Tess Taylor aptly put in this essay, none of the white characters “see” black people. The characters contemplate the motivations of the other family members, but never, that I can recall, on the servants who are in such close and constant proximity. One character orders a young black girl out of a shelter into the hot sun, so that she herself can rest in the shelter. Shelley witnesses the overseer using violence on a black field hand to assert his authority, but thinks little of it later. Ellen is perturbed when a servant disagrees with her about roses.
Of course, these attitudes are consistent with the setting of the novel. Still, even the writing, not just the characters, seems to leave the interracial dynamics unexamined. It seems to beg for a passage or section that illuminates one or more of the servants’ perspective. As it was, I liked to read the comments made by the black servants to the family and speculate on my own about they really meant. For those who have read this book, I definitely would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this subject.
As mentioned earlier, I first read Delta Wedding in high school when I picked Eudora Welty for an AP English author project. As part of this project, I also read her books The Robber Bridegroom, The Optimist’s Daughter, Losing Battles and some of her short stories. Delta Wedding was by far my favorite. I’ve found that Delta Wedding is a very rewarding book to re-read, as there are so many layers to explore. I like how important revelations in the book are rarely telegraphed, but rather tucked in here and there for discovery and re-discovery. I’ll be returning to this book again.
I have finished re-reading Delta Wedding and plan to write a review of it tomorrow night. Tonight, I just have time for a quick post!
My Teaser Tuesday this week is from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I have just started reading it. To give some context to the quote, the author has just finished describing the Church of Notre Dame and is about to describe the spectacular view of Paris from the cathedral’s towers.
The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago, the Paris of the fifteenth century, was already a gigantic city. We modern Parisians in general are much mistaken in regard to the ground which we imagine it has gained. Since the time of Louis XI. Paris has not increased above one third; and certes it has lost much more in beauty than it has acquired in magnitude.
My teaser comes from a book that I am re-reading, Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding. This is one of many scenes where all sorts of relatives are gathered together and the conversation is rapidly bopping from one person to the next.
“I always thought Robbie was a very strenuous girl,” said Aunt Primrose hesitantly, looking up at George..