Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: "Bottom line" reviews

You may or may not have noticed, but I have tweaked my layout again. It looks almost the same, but I have tweaked my font and color choices. But really I did all this because I have also added a new page to my blog.

As time has gone on, I've found myself offering more and more reviews on books I've read, movies I've seen and other things I felt you needed to know about, good or bad. I've finally gathered these reviews in one place. I've named the page "Bottom Line" (found between the blog name and posts) because I tend not to be wishy-washy with my reviews. If I hate a novel, I'll tell you. And if I love a movie, I'll insist you see it. I'm all about the bottom line in my opinions.
These reviews span back at least two years, so feel free to check out the page and reread (or read for the first time) those posts. In the process, I revamped and reorganized some of the reviews so there is a little continuity between posts. I also ended rereading every post, and I actually want to go back and read at least one book and I definitely need to sit down and watch the biopic Chaplin again. Maybe after we've moved in and I'm not in the middle of a six-day workweek.

EDIT: Not to change things up too much for you, but I've added a second page (called "An outsider in Suffolk") featuring links to all the columns I've written for the Suffolk News-Herald. I've allowed comments on that page, so if you have any thoughts on my columns or ideas for new column topics, please share. Thanks.

Mainstream Avant-garde: The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd

I've mentioned I've been reading a lot, right? Well, I figured it's time to start sharing my thoughts on what I've been reading. So, look for a weekly review of the books I've been reading. I'll attempt to post on Tuesdays so you always know when to check back for tips on a good book, or to ignore my blog if books really aren't your thing.

Overview
Today's book is called The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters. Chip Kidd, a man known more for his graphic design skills than for his writing, authored a novel. The book is set in the 1950's and follows a college freshman as he acclimates himself to a new school and his seemingly random decision to be an art major. Kidd touches on themes of love, young relationships and even a first foray into gay infatuation.

Reactions
Upfront I have to admit that the book really isn't that great as a novel. As a collection of entertaining anecdotes and lessons on life, Kidd does deliver some great one-liners and surprising twists. Considering it had been a while since I had been able to read books for fun, it offered a quick summer read with just enough substance to leave me hungry for more books.

But my favorite part about the book was the design of it, likely furnished by Kidd as well. Depending on how you look at the edge of the pages, you can see some of the graphic design teacher's favorite life lessons to the students.

As a designer myself, I got a kick out of it. Unfortunately for people picking up this book with intention of delving between it's pages, the best thing about it really is this quirky design choice.

Bottom Line
I wouldn't necessarily run out and buy this book, but if you feel like a quick, entertaining read, I wouldn't mind loaning out my copy.

On blog upkeep and life updates

What can I say? I've been busy. While I haven't gotten much accomplished in the past few months, I've still felt as though my life is full of everything I'm doing and everything I need to get done. In any case, I've been neglecting my blog specifically and my writing in general. My editor asked me if I would write a column for the paper and I froze. Imagine that! Me, the writer, refused to write. And I felt I was justified since I didn't really have anything to say. And yet, that is blasphemy of the highest order to a self-proclaimed writer. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said "You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say." And it's been eating at me ever since that day and I wish I could say that I have offered to write a column to make up for my earlier refusal. Unfortunately, I cannot say that since I haven't actually done it.

So if I haven't been writing, since I obviously haven't, what have I been doing?

Well, if you're reading this post I am relatively confident you've seen the new redesign of my blog. I love the new look of my blog. Sometimes I'll just scroll up and down the page to see how my posts look on the new backdrop. Apparently along with having lost my ability to want to write, I've also lost my ability to have a life.

I've also been cooking. If you are reading this post I am also reasonably confident that you've seen my many posts detailing recipes I've been trying out. You'll have to deal with seeing many more of those since I just received 3 awesome cookbooks for my bridal shower. I've also been spending quite a bit of time with Miyagi, though mostly we just cuddle on the couch together as I watch this or that t.v. show online. And I've been working and planning a wedding (Less than a month to go!).

The books I've read in the last month (I'm almost done with Crescent).

But most of all, I've been reading - a lot. And that, at least, is good penance for my recent blasphemy. As my good friend Leighton has often said on her highly entertaining blog, "Read a lot, write a lot – that's the golden rule for all writers to follow." I'm just bulking up on the first part before I get on with the second. And let me say this: There is nothing better than reading a book because you want to read it and then enjoying almost every single moment you've been reading. I get to the point when I near the end of a book where I'll struggle with wanting to get to the end because I want the fulfillment and wanting to put the book down so I can prolong my enjoyment. Such is the curse of finding so many good books to read. Honestly, I have no idea why I still don't have a library card. I would read those books so hard if my bank account didn't take such a hit with every book I buy.

But it's not just books. Every month I read the new National Geographic Magazine, every week I check out the Sunday Magazine from the New York Times and almost every day I scan a huge assortment of blogs, ranging from anecdotal blogs written by friends, to food-, design-, book- and wedding-based blogs written by people whose names I don't even know, nor care to. But I do know the title of their blog and have often enjoyed the stories, photos, inspiration and advice they've shared.

When I was a child, books were my friends, sometimes my only friends, if you don't count the cats or dogs I've confided in over the years. From the age of three (thank you, Hooked on Phonics), I've devoured any scrap of the written word that I could find. Even now, I remember the mistakes of characters in what I've read and I use those mistakes to shape my own path. Many of the Sunday Magazine articles, which are often first-person ruminations on a writer's marriage or another's life in therapy, have helped me recognize aspects of myself. In fact, you could say that my love of reading has increased my circle of friends exponentially. Though, I guess not knowing most of these sources keeps them from truly being my friends. I say all this to counter my mother's old admonishments that I was wasting my life with my nose stuck in a book.

And yet, I must acknowledge that I've been using reading as an escape from what I should be doing, be that writing, taking classes in multimedia journalism and nonprofit communication or even planning a wedding. While reading has been beneficial, and still is, it's time I recognize when I've had too much of a good thing (people who know me know that's never been my strong suit).

I find trying to make myself productive harder and harder when I'm not letting anyone down by not accomplishing a task (I always worried about letting professors down. Letting myself down has been a non-issue since I tend to just revise my expectations of myself as I fail to meet previous ones).

And now I will be getting to the point: I'm going to try to write more, without getting caught up in what I think people want to read. This is about what I have to say, which, it turns out, is a lot if this post is any measure. But here's the caveat: Just because what I'll be writing is what I "have to say," doesn't mean it's of any interest to you, dear reader. The point is to get those juices flowing again, regardless of the menial subjects I will likely be writing about. But please yell at me if I seem to stop writing for a long period of time. I would like to be held accountable for not living up to my proclamations about who I am. So, let's see if I can prove, even to just myself, that am a writer.

NaBloPoMo: Organ donors

I actually really want to see this movie. I've read the novel and the trailer seems to have created something that honors it. It doesn't come out until October, but I think I may read the book again in the meantime.

NaBloPoMo: A long time ago, in a bookcase far, far way

Sometimes I am amazed by the cool things I find online. Then I am usually sad that I can never afford such awesome things. Such as this ridiculously awesome Star Wars bookend set. Unfortunately it also costs a cool $59.99. Just teeny but out of my price range.

But hey, I can still dream about having wall to floor bookcases filled with books that are held up by these beauties. That's what daydreaming is for, right?

NaBloPoMo: Recognition

Yesterday's prompt was quite lame. Today's would take me too long to write about (What is the first thing you think of when you think of your father?). I may return to it at a later time, but until then I wanted to congratulate myself. I found out a few weeks ago that my book review on Powell's.com was chosen for the Daily Dose contest. Basically the Portland-based indie store offers a Daily Dose e-mail, in which it shares reader reviews of books. When a review is chosen, the writer gets a gift, usually a monetary credit on the site. Well, I was chosen for my review of How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall. It was one of the best books I received through Powell's Indiespensable program. I never reviewed it for this blog because it's one of those books that I found hard to describe. It's amazing, but its amazingness is difficult to put into words. Yet, somehow I did well enough for Powell's to choose me.

As a postscript, I wanted to mention that I added another feature to my sidebar. It's called "One night to read a poem" and will feature a new favorite poem whenever I discover one. I have to say that the e.e. cummings poem featured there is my longtime favorite and I may never remove it from its hallowed spot. If you've never looked at my sidebar, here's your chance to see everything from my photography to blogs that I consistently read. Bottom line folks: I put stuff on my sidebar because I want to share it with you, so take a look.

Lessons in dog training: Working for food

I'm a general fan of Jon Katz's basic training philosophy: Research as many dog training methods as you can find information on, then decide for yourself what will work for you and your dog. As he writes in Katz on Dogs, "Each dog and each owner is different. What matters is what works for you and the dog you live with." I mentioned this philosophy in my previous post about my decision to crate train Miyagi. Katz explains that "We need a patched-together training method that understands the dog's nature and our own..."
One thing I've done research on is how feeding can make or break your relationship with your dog. This is actually a pretty huge area that is often intertwined with all areas of training. For example, many say hand feeding is the best way to quickly bond with your dog. An easy way to help a dog learn his or her name is to repeat it while the dog is eating. Even handing out kibble in exchange for good behavior (thus cutting down on overfeeding by cutting out treats) is often encouraged.
For Miyagi, all of these things are working. But one that I was highly skeptical of was the idea of making a dog work for his food. It seemed a little cruel to me, but I was having trouble keeping my high-energy pup entertained. Then I realized I was again putting my human emotions on my dog. Because I thought withholding food until satisfactory work was accomplished seemed cruel, I assumed I was hurting Miyagi by doing just that.
But dogs have always worked for their food, in fact many dogs are happier to solve a puzzle in order to partake of breakfast than to have it plopped in front of them (Miyagi often didn't finish his food because he got bored with it).
Having a dog expend energy mentally can often help him be calmer overall. So with Miyagi, I began feeding him by stuffing some of his kibble into a Kong ball.



The rest I fed to him during training sessions. Because of this, his training has also improved as he became more willing to work for a treat when he hasn't already stuffed himself with breakfast or dinner. Here's a video of Miyagi eating dinner recently.



Of course, Miyagi didn't quite get it at first. But now it takes him less than 2 minutes to pull all of his kibble out. This morning I stuffed the openings with peanut butter to challenge him more. It's been fun to see his mind click and suddenly figure out just what to do.

We all live in a yellow submarine...

This might be the best thing I have ever seen.



It's a yellow submarine, which you then fill with tea and it works as an infuser. Super cute, right? I've been in more of a tea mood lately. Don't get me wrong. I still need my first cup of joe in the morning, but there's nothing quite like curling up with a good book and sipping a soothing cup of tea. Get it here and see what else they've got.

Book Review: "The Cry of the Sloth"

As I mentioned before, upon finishing Salman Rushdie's "The Enchantress of Florence," I had several books to look forward to. The first one I picked up was "The Cry of the Sloth," by Sam Savage. Unlike "Enchantress," less than a week later I turned the last page to find there was no more. And it's taken me this long to write a post on it because I've spent the last week soaking it up from my memory of it. That's how I read, though I'm not sure why. Some people move right on to the next book when done reading a previous book. It takes me a bit to fully digest that book enough to move on to the next. And so it was with "The Cry of the Sloth."

Overview

"The Cry of the Sloth" is a collection of a man's writings. From grocery lists to letters to signs he posts on the apartments he owns, Savage slowly, but surely, leads us into the life of a down-on-his-luck author/literary magazine publisher/reluctant landlord named Andrew Whittaker. These glimpses into his divorce, his growing disillusionment with the his literary magazine called "Soap" and his inability to succeed as a writer grow more and more depressing as the novel continues.

Gut feelings

There is something in Andrew that is quite possibly a mirror of us all. His faults mirroring our own faults, and that also creates quite a bit of food for thought. As Andrew gets more and more wrapped up in himself and hides from the world in his dark, empty house, you can almost feel the despair seething from the pages as Andrew attempts to fake a cheery outlook on life to his ex-wife. And perhaps the most haunting passage is the book's namesake, when he explains how the cry of the sloth would sound if naturalists actually understood that lonely creature. Savage sneaks this metaphor in until suddenly you realize that this is really Andrew, a sloth at the end of his age crying out in despair over the lonely, sedentary life nature has forced him to have (again, the fact that he blames nature for all the sloth's troubles also helps remind the reader how Andrew got where he is today).

And it was the growing detachment and desperation is really what made it so difficult to get over this book. There are moments when you feel as though Andrew is just a victim of circumstance and then there are times when you know that he has brought this all on himself, in fact he deserves his fate for all that he has done. And perhaps the most thought-provoking part of Savage's story is that you aren't quite sure what his fate was. To that question I dedicated several days, reading my most recent issue of National Geographic to distract myself when it all got too much to comprehend. I'm still not quite sure what his fate was, but it was definitely a speedy read, due partly to the content and partly to the fact that it is often much easier and quicker to read separate letters in first-person than to slog through long chapters of third-person prose.

Bottom line

It's worth reading, but not if you're looking for the next beach read, or even, a drink-hot-chocolate-as-the-snow-falls-outside-read. It also made me want to pick up Savage's other book, which he published before "Cry." I'm told that "Fermin" is about a rat who not only learns to read, but also likes to. Sounds intriguing, no?

Enchantress of Florence: Less than enchanting

On several strong recommendations, I purchased the Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie back in July. By all accounts, this book would provide an engrossing escape with a thoroughly enchanting world and many engaging characters. I admit the world was beautifully described by Rushdie, not to the point that you felt you were in it, but his words left you with a sense that you were at a glorious art museum and had just fell into a bright, impressionist painting. Unfortunately, it took me four months to get past the first chapter, which I read several times simply because I would put it down and not want to pick it back up until I accidentally found it hiding under the bed in a layer of dust.

As a side note, this generally does not happen to me. With most books that I read, I find myself thinking about the book even when I'm not reading it, the realistic settings, the enchanting characters, and generally I can't wait to get home and fall back into that story again. Not so with "Enchantress."

Overview

In his latest novel, Salman Rushdie creates a world that connects disparate times, locales and infamous figures in a web that has the potential to be a great read. Admittedly, there are moments when you can lose yourself in the book, namely when you are finally privileged to hear the main character's tale that he has crossed oceans and continents to tell (the tale is the source of the title of the book, the so-called Enchantress of Florence).

Gut reactions
Unfortunately for Rushdie, he spends far too much time on trying to develop his frame story about a man who travels from America to Hindustan (India) to tell the king an important tale. Indeed, he spends far too much time on these secondary (in my mind) characters (the king and the traveller), while still failing to develop them as much as the characters we are allowed to glimpse in the book's inner tale (the enchantress, her companion and mirror and the men who love them).

I managed to begin reading "Enchantress" in earnest in mid-December. Now that it is mid-January, I am disappointed to say I finally finished it, and only because I needed something to do between loads of laundry. I would have much rather spent the whole time exploring the world of the Enchantress than to be rushed through it between descriptions of the traveller and the king.

Bottom Line

In the end, it will take a very positive review from a trusted individual to get me to pick up another Rushdie tale. Until then, I have several more promising books on my shelf waiting for my attention, including Sam Savage's "The Cry of the Sloth" and Dave Eggers' "The Wild Things."

Amid the noise

I often forget how mesmerizing Joseph Conrad is to me. The love affair started in high school with the infamous Heart of Darkness. Since then, I've been able to get lost in many Conrad adventures.
Time slow with Conrad, though it doesn't stand still. Restless in my too-full house, I went to Barnes&Noble (what I wouldn't do for a small, independent bookstore) looking for a coffee and a quick browse through the collection. The thing with B&N is that it is not the place to read a book. Unlike cozy independent stores, there are no nooks and crannies to get lost in. You can't hide from the conversations and the people browsing and gossiping for no reason.
But with Conrad I could. Stuck between a toe tapper who obviously just wanted to sit in a chair to lounge around and a couple waiting gossiping about their parents in the next chair, I almost threw in the towel. But then I got swept away in Conrad's The Shadow-Line: A Confession. An hour later I was shook out of the humid world of the Southeast Asian coast to realize that an hour was indeed gone, as were the annoying couple and the lazy toe-tapper.
I promptly bought Shadow-Line (though you can read for free at the above link if you are crazy enough to think reading on computer screens will ever replace the organic beauty of print), as well as The Secret Agent.

Thanks Conrad.

The wonderful Bill Bryson

For the past couple months (and believe me you'll need that long if you don't have that much time to read) I've spent much of my free time reading the perfect book: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I've blogged about this author before and have since spread an interest in him by using his books as gifts for several people.

Reaction
To put it succinctly, this book is perfect. As the back of the book says, "Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge: to understand - and, if possible, answer - the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves." Though on the long side, it's chapters are written in more of an anecdotal form. This means you can pick up pretty much anywhere and not feel lost. And his anecdotes are a mixture of amusing and informational. With chapter titles such as "How to build a universe" and "The restless ape," readers get a sense of his simple, succinct wit and ability to dilute years and years of scientific history into a relatively short 475 pages in the paperback copy (we're talking billions and billions of years here!).

Bottom line
This is the book that will make you fall in love with Bill Bryson's writing style and make you welcome scientific and mathematical insights, even if you don't have the best handle on the two subjects.

Disrespecting 'real' writers

When you're a nobody who suddenly becomes the centerpiece of a hardfought presidential campaign, I can see the urge to want to tell your story. But when that nobody is a (unlicensed) plumber who hasn't paid his taxes in years and failed a takeover of his boss's (who actually is licensed) business, he or she should not be the one who gets a book deal when there are so many other talented authors who can't get their novels published or people with real stories that we can learn from can't get published because they live in China. Really, Joe, or whatever your name is, cease and disist.
As Timothy Egan writes in his guest column in the New York Times opinion section, "With a resume full of failure, he now thinks he can join the profession of Mark Twain, George Orwell and Joan Didion."
I love books. I hate people who write books that waste paper and money that others deserve.

Much ado about (literally) nothing...

Bill Bryson is a journalist who turned to nonfiction novels years ago. His subjects range from travel writing to science to language and even history (generally incorporating historical knowledge into most of his books). His writing is marked with a humorous style that is also informed by a huge knowledge of words and language. So you get highly informed, flowing prose that is both simple and straight forward as well as deep and reflective, all wrapped in a tone of humility and amusement. Upon reading Bryson, right, you tend to get a sense that he is a genial fellow with a big laugh who has a unique love of learning, and who wants to impart that love as well as the learning itself. I also feel as though he is quite bemused by the world around him as well. Bryson has a long list of titles to his name. His most famous ("A Short History of Nearly Everything") garnered him an Aventis award for general science writing and a Descartes award for science communication. Both awards are highly prestigious for a book not really written for the science community, but for those of us who can't really understand what all those big words and five-chalkboard-long equations mean. I have quite enjoyed the first book that I read by him, called "Shakespeare: The World as Stage," published in 2007.

Overview

From the beginning, where a quick look at the three visual representations of the literary giant show that we still don't know what the man looks like, Bryson whisks you away on a journey into the unknown, literally. As Bryson is fond of saying, there is little we can actually know about Shakespeare other than the 4 or 5 recorded mentions of his name (spelled several different ways, by the way).
On the journey you learn from Bryson all of the legends of Shakespeare, mostly false, cooked up by a populace that needed to know more about the man that shaped so much in theatre and literature. It is written in his trademark humorous style and with an audience that is clearly not an expert on the subject. And yet, his use of language is so strong that you can almost hear him speaking in your mind (or I can, at least). Oddly enough, my head makes the 57-year-old American sound like David Attenborough (the British naturalist responsible for such BBC specials as "The Living Planet"). Maybe I've been watching these shows too much recently.

Bottom line

I would recommend this book to anyone who is mildly curious about the man who gave us so many words, phrases and plays. It's also a must for those out there who, like me, have a special obsession about all things Shakespeare.
But don't stop there. I myself am moving on to "A Short History of Nearly Everything." I've actually already begun reading it and have laughed out loud several times (making me look like a crazy person to my roommates). And so begins a new obsession, with a man with arguably as much wit and command of language as his subject himself had.

Doubts

I've read many good books in my travails through college. One of the things I loved about the people I knew was their ability to recommend exactly the book I needed to read to get me out of the 'assigned' reading doldrum and make me hunger for reading again. That book for my Junior year was "White Noise" by Don Delillo. Even now, when I think on some of the profound passages in that book, I can remember ones that never had any greater applicability than they do in this present (with me being unfulfilled by my current job and questioning one of my greater goals of becoming a professor). And so, I give you a relevant passage from a great novel by a wonderful American postmodernist:

“Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn’t it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don’t want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn’t an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn’t want to go there in the first place. I can’t control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It’s all this activity in the brain and you don’t know what’s you as a person and what’s some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire.”

Obsessed with Doggie nonfiction...

So every since reading a review of Puppy Chow is Better than Prozac on this blog, I have become enamored with a genre seemingly exploding in popularity, mostly thanks to a little book called Marley & Me. I have probably dropped a hundred bucks on nonfiction books about dogs and their humans in the past month. I mostly blame the fact that I've had dogs, cats and assorted other animals all my life until I got to college. Even now, 'my' animals at the SPCA are not mine at all. Unfortunately, owning and loving and caring for my own dog is not going to happen anytime soon.

Until that time, though, I've been living vicariously through people such as Bruce Goldstein, who wrote a fascinating story chronicling his battle with manic depression and the black lab that saved his life.

Overview

The first section of this book is a personal, in-depth account of how Bruce's brain works during his swings. Hallucinations of devils and his kitchen knives encouraging him to kill himself are so realistic that you are terrified for him and also heartbroken as he drives the people in his life away (my uncle ended up divorcing my aunt cause he couldn't handle the periods when she would drive him away and accuse him of trying to kill her).

When it seems like too much for even the observer to take (imagine Bruce living this life) the star of the show enters, as if by magic. But, as the real world often teaches, things are not hunky dory right away. Panic sets in just after getting the puppy and Bruce almost gives up several times. It is only through trial and error, courage and unconditional love that Ozzy the black lab trains Bruce to live well.

Gut reactions

What's so great about this particular piece of puppy nonfiction is that you also get a heartbreaking and almost terrifying glimpse into the addled mind of a manic depressive. Manic depression is a combination of two mental disorders: Mania (which is a high mood usually accompanied by disjointed talking with broken up thoughts and rushed speech - kind of like someone who's had one too many espressos) and Depression (a severe low in mood usually accompanied by self-deprecating thoughts and sometimes thoughts of suicide). Both highs and lows in a manic depressive get accompanied by various forms of hallucination or paranoia.
And just like all examples of puppy nonfiction, you join the humans on a journey that can only begin when you live with a dog.

Bottom Line

All in all, one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Next on my list: Something by Jon Katz, no doubt. His stories of Bedlam Farm and the animals a city boy like him are raising there are quite poignant (A Good Dog made me laugh out loud and break out in sobs).

Finding history in the fairy tale

I was a rather unusual student in that I loved getting a new syllabus/book list from professors. When you just receive this you've got all of these 'smart-people-recommended' books that you are required to buy and read. Talk about a fairly easy way to some good new books to read. I found some great authors in my four years of college. For example, Graham Greene remains one of my favorite British (loosely categorized, of course) authors, while Stephen Asma's "The God's Drink Whiskey" will always be my tome when I'm looking for great anecdotes combining travel, enlightenment and amusement. One of the best genres (literature and movies alike) that I have discovered in my time as a reader (meaning since I started reading Dr. Seuss when I was 3) are the ones that pillage history. In the same breath, those stories that pillage fiction to find the fact are also wonderful.

I was lucky in my college years. I came in with roughly 5 classes worth of credits. This means that I could take at least 5 classes that had nothing to do with my major. One of those classes was a modern language class (taught by a German professor, actually) on the Grimm's fairy tales. As just about any peson knows, the fairy tales that we know are majorly doctored versions of those tales (which were, in turn, majorly doctored versions of folk tales they stole from other traditions and legends). My professor made it a point to tell us this every class period. She also made it a point of say that there was nothing wrong with rewriting fairy tales.
In any case, one of the most poignant and moving books that we read in that class was assigned to illustrate her point. The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: a novel of war and survival was written by Louise Murphy, a poet and novelist born in 1943. This work places her on the map for many people, and remains the work that she is best known by.

Overview
Set in one of the least recorded times and places of Holocaust history, this novel begins with a Jewish family (a father, stepmother, daughter and son) trying to escape the oncoming Nazi's on a motorcycle. All the elements of the well-known fairy tale show up: a stepmother who talks the father into sending the kids away, a 'witch' living in a cottage in the middle of a deep forest, even a stint in an oven. What Murphy does marvelously well is to integrate all of these aspects, twist them, and create a story of war, love, loss and loyalty. The witch, Magda, narrates the story. The first line reveals the basis in legend and the narrator's focus on the truth of the legend. "The story has been told over and over by liars and it must be retold." It is Magda, as well, who offers up the nuggets of wisdom that such stories always hold. It is she who finally ends the tale as well, with the core lesson that Murphy spent the whole novel trying to impart. Generally I do not enjoy stories with morals that slap you in the face. And this one really doesn't, mostly because of the beauty of language that Magda seems imbued with at the very end. In her (the narrator and author) words:

"There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold."

Bottom line

Read it. You'll be glad you did. And if you know me personally, you might even be able to bum a copy off of me, keeping in mind that if you lose it, I might have to put you in an oven!