Review: "Travels With Charley" Classic a Month #5.2014

Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck

4 out of 5 stars

I wasn't sure about this one at first, since it's a travel memoir or a biography of sorts. But I really enjoyed it, just as much as the others. Every time I open a Steinbeck book now, it's like coming home. He's just so comfortable and easy to read. Do you have an author like that? If not, may I suggest Steinbeck? ;) Especially if you've never read him as an adult...you are missing out!

Steinbeck travels across America in a custom-made camper truck with just his dog, a blue French poodle called Charley, for company. Charley was the real star of this story. He made a peculiar Ffft sound with his teeth when he wanted attention and engineered many a meeting between Steinbeck and the strangers they met on the road. Steinbeck kind of acts like a curmudgeonly old man, but he's really not. He enjoys talking to the people he meets and soaks up the local culture everywhere he goes. The whole purpose of his trip, so he says, was to get to know his country again. Learn what makes people tick and what they are feeling, see how times have changed and how they have stayed the same, what the heart of America is and why.

For how can one know color in perpetual green, 

and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?

This book will really inspire the wanderlust in you. To just leave and travel the back roads, not the busy highways where you never see anything but speeding cars, and see where the day takes you. "he is going somewhere but doesn't greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction." To head to the coast and dip your toes in the ocean, visit the national parks and the not-so-famous local parks, see the sun rise in Montana and the sun set in California, and feel how the wind and air changes across the country. Seriously, this book and Amy & Roger's Epic Detour will make you want to summer road-trip like nothing else!


I have to end this review with Steinbeck's feelings on Texas. I can't help it, I'm a Texan. And everything he says is true.

Most areas in the world may be placed in latitude and longitude, described chemically in their earth, sky and water, rooted and fuzzed over with identified flora and people with known fauna, and there's an end to it. Then there are others where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing, or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high-colored magical confusion takes permanent hold. Greece is such an area, and those parts of England where King Arthur walked. One quality of such places as I am trying to define is that a very large part of them is personal and subjective. And surely Texas is such a place. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it.

Review: "Night" Classic a Month #3.2014

Night by Elie Wiesel
4 out of 5 stars

You may have noticed that I'm a month behind in my classics. Well, I just couldn't get it together in March, so I decided not to worry about it. I'm sure I'll catch up eventually, probably with my Summer Steinbeck-palooza. And Night is actually the second classic I started for April...I first started with Vanity Fair, recommended by a few friends, but I just couldn't get into it and things were stressful at work (which is where I was reading it) so I wanted something lighter and switched books.

Then my 14 yr old sister said she was reading Night for school and I decided to read it too. Mostly because it's a super quick read, but also because I hadn't read it since I was her age. She spoiled it a little for me too, I hadn't remembered who had died and who hadn't. Also, I learned recently that Wiesel had written 2 other books about that time and I'd like to get them soon.

It's hard to review a book like Night. At 109 pages, it is a succinct account of Wiesel's harrowing years in Auschwitz and several other concentration camps. It doesn't have the same flow and poetry that The Book Thief does, but this is a true story. Elie Wiesel is still alive. He will never forget what he went through. He still remembers how he never got to say goodbye to his mother and sisters.

"Men to the left! Women to the right!"

And that is what makes this an important story. I remember being so fixated on this book and Auschwitz in the 8th grade. It was probably the first time I really questioned historical events. I couldn't believe something like this had happened in recent history. Survivors of that time were still alive. How could the rest of the world not know? And if they did know, how could they just keep letting it happen?

"Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible..."

Review: "Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany"

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans J Massaquoi
3 out of 5 stars

I added this book to my to-buy list almost exactly a year ago which happens to be when Massaquoi died. Maybe I saw an article about him and that sparked my interest in his memoir (what's the difference between a memoir and a biography?) but after searching in tons of bookstores for it, I finally just gave up and ordered it on Amazon over the summer. Then it sat on my shelf for months (I'm so bad about that!) and I finally decided I needed some serious reading for the new year. I read this for the whole month of January at work (minus the week I was on vacation) and while it was a long read, I never really lost interest in it.

As much as I hated history throughout school (I have a horrible memory for dates and places), I've always been interested in reading about Nazi Germany. How do you say you're interested in something that destroyed so many people? I don't know. Anyway, Hans Massaquoi's story was such a different perspective, one that I had never even considered, and I highly recommend it. And I'm sorry, Dad, but I still don't want to read Rise & Fall of the Third Reich. ;)

Hans Massaquoi was born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. He was the son of a white, German woman and black, Liberian man. After his father returned to Liberia to help Hans' political-minded grandfather gain the throne back, Hans was raised exclusively by his mother in a tiny one-room apartment. This stark change of scenery, from riches to rags essentially, made life difficult for Hans at first. "If...I believed that the universe revolved around me and that I was something quite rare and extraordinarily precious, I came by my belief honestly enough." He had spent the first 4 years of his life believing that his dark skin and curly hair were enviable assets and now he was learning a harsh new lesson in his predominately white neighborhood and school. After a few skirmishes with classmates and quickly learning to keep his mouth shut against racist teachers, Hans began to fit into his new life. And fitting in meant becoming a Hitler supporter.

Barely seven, I, of all people, became an unabashed proponent of the Nazis simply because they put on the best shows with the best-looking uniforms, best-sounding marching bands, and best-drilled marching columns, all of which appealed to my budding sense of masculinity.

It was so interesting and heart-breaking to read how Hans came to realize that he was classified as non-Aryan and therefore unable to join his friends in the Hitler Youth Movement. His struggles as a black child in white Germany continued thru his teen years and into adult-hood. Although he managed to escape serious harm or capture, he definitely did not have an easy time. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, because I think it's better if you read it yourself, but he got into plenty of trouble in school, work, and beyond. Hans also had good times though and worked to make something of himself, in honor of all his mother's hard work. His ultimate goal, like many Europeans at that time, was to move to America and have all the freedom it offered. Or so he thought.

During his time exploring a US Military base after the war with a black friend, he discovered "...racial discrimination was not only condoned but openly practiced by the United States government. As much as [he] hated the Nazis for it, somehow, their overt racism and refusal to accept [him] in their military ranks seemed more honest to [him] than the United States' lip service to democracy and eagerness to recruit blacks while keeping them at arm's length in segregated, low-status service units commanded primarily by whites. [His] newly created ideal of an America that had mounted and won a crusade to free the oppressed had received a severe, perhaps fatal blow."

This book has a good balance of serious and humor. "...like most self-respecting German men of his era, [he] wore the symbol of manhood, a heavy handlebar mustache." It did slow down a bit after adulthood, but Hans wisely kept that part of his story brief and succinct. I think it's an important lesson to realize that the Nazis' persecution did not just end with the Jewish people and I'm sure it is probably still not mentioned in schools.

Review: "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee"

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J Shields
4 out of 5 stars

It's been a little over a year since I read To Kill a Mockingbird and I have been meaning to read this biography of Harper Lee since then. It was recommended to me by my nonrelated-aunt :) and I'm glad I finally picked it up at the library the other day. Harper Lee is an intensely private person (honestly, before I reread TKAM last year, I didn't know she was still alive) and has refused to do most interviews or even talk about her book since the 70s. So obviously, she did not consent or assist in this biography at all. Taking that into context, I think Shields did a good job of protecting her privacy while still giving us a decent picture of her life and work.

I hadn't realized how much TKAM was based on her own family: Atticus Finch was almost an exact replica of her father, AC Lee, right down to his law degree and penchant for pocket watches. Her mother had a "nervous disorder" and was absent, physically and mentally, much of her childhood so Lee just wrote her out of the story completely. Big brother Jem was there along with next-door neighbor BFF Dill. Only her two sisters were missing from the book, maybe because they were so much older? Seems kind of odd, considering most of her hometown neighbors and friends are in the book as well.

Truman Capote was her real-life only and best friend; I knew next to nothing about him other than his name before this. Now I want to read more about him too. He was a character for sure. "It was the 1930s, the Great Depression [...] children came to school with no shoes [...] Truman in Hawaiian shirts, white duck shorts, blue socks, sandals, and Eton caps from the best department stores in Mobile and Montgomery, he looked, as one teacher expressed it, "like a bird of paradise among a flock of crows." The implied insult to the other children could not be ignored." Lee ended up protecting Capote a lot of the time in their younger years and they grew to be life-long friends. Shields did seem to be overly fixated on Lee and Capote's relationship in regards to Capote's book In Cold Blood though. I enjoyed those chapters greatly, so much that I want to read his book next, but I don't think every little decision that the 2 made was based on the other's approval. I do think it was rotten that Capote did not give Lee credit for her extensive help researching the book though.

It was so interesting to read how Lee got TKAM written and published. She had wonderful friends who supported her (literally) for a year so she could just sit and write, she was incredibly lucky in finding a publisher and agent that loved her and her work. She was not lucky in traffic tickets though, the same cop gave her 2 tickets in one day for jaywalking lol. (Reminded of The New Girl when Nick kept getting tickets!) Lee had no idea how popular TKAM would be, she just didn't want to be completely ripped apart by reviewers. It's incredible how humble she was and is still about a book that won the Pulitzer Prize a year after its publication and created a classic movie as well.

I think that's why people are so frustrated that she never published a second book. She worked on one for ages after TKAM, but it never came together apparently. No one knows why, except a statement from her sister that "just as Nelle was finishing the novel, a burglar broke into her apartment and stole the manuscript." We will just have to be satisfied with one perfect novel from her, I guess.

Review: "The Reading Promise: My Father & The Books We Shared"

The Reading Promise: My Father & The Books We Shared by Alice Ozma
5 out of 5 stars

This is the first of 6 books left over from 2011 that I still wanted to review. It was my second of four 5 star books (non-BSC or rereads) and even though it did have it's faults, I still enjoyed it immensely. Many of the reviews I've seen comment on the fact that the author omits large parts of her life (including her mother's apparent suicide attempt) or that she doesn't really discuss the books that they are reading at the time except for little quotes at the beginning of each chapter.

"To observe attentively is to remember distinctly." -Edgar Allan Poe, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

I don't think that matters. The author makes her point very clearly: reading is important. "Someday, I will tell my children this story"..."Of how I risked my life for the book fair. And it will make them think about the importance of books, and how wonderful they are." She starts a reading challenge with her father when she is a child to read out loud every night; they end up with a streak of 3,218 nights until she goes off to college. This book is the story of that relationship with her father and how that reading streak impacted her.

What did I like about this book? The passion the author and her father (a retired children's librarian) have for books. Even when he is sick and has no voice, he whispers a few chapters to her. On prom night, he reads to her before her date arrives. And on the last day, they find an empty stairwell in her dorm and end their tradition.

There are some truly humorous parts too, like the "Boy-Haters Club of America" and the chapter where Alice is terrified John F. Kennedy's dead body is in her bottom bunk bed. As someone who spent an entire semester in an English class at college writing papers on the man and conspiracies surrounding his death, I can say with certainty that this is a logical fear. ;)

What did I not like about this book? Yes, the skimmed over parts involving her mother and sister were annoying. Her father's attitude towards her at times was sad. The winter they had to sleep in coats and "typing gloves" hit a little too close to home lol. (Speaking of, it is absolutely freezing in the library right now where I am typing this!!) But none of that was enough to make me knock a star off. Give this book a shot. Make a Reading Promise with your children. Your parents. Your friends. Yourself.