2012 End-of-the-Year Update

Wow!  I can't believe how badly I've neglected my book blog. My apologies. I didn't do much reading in November, when the weather really started giving me pain. 

A painful smile after hiking Starved Rock St. Park

I read voraciously on my good days, stealing precious moments that I should be tending the wood stove, doing the laundry, walking the dog (it's too cold outside!), running the vaccuum, mopping up muddy paw prints (canine, human, and sometimes sneaky feline).

Below are some reviews from a few of the books I read in November and December:

HALF BROKE HORSES - Jeannette Walls (273)

c. 2009  I’ve been meaning to read this book ever since I read Jeannette Walls autobiography, The Glass Castle over a year ago.  I enjoyed that rollicking book so much, I just had to read the story of the author’s grandmother.

Lily Casey was quite a character.  She grew up on a rustic homestead in gritty western Texas and was helping her father break horses at the age of six.  Without even an eighth-grade education, she got her first job, at age 15, as a teacher in remote northern Arizona.  It took her a whole month of riding alone on her favorite mustang, Patches, to cover the 500 miles it took to get there.

In a harsh country of droughts, sandstorms, tornadoes and flash floods, Lily grew up fast and resilient, married a good man, and had two children. The girl, Rosemary, grew up to be the author’s equally unusual mother, an important character her autobiography.

Although a true story, this book is called a “novel” by the author because it was based on family legends and second-hand anecdotes about her wild-West ancestor. Lily Casey died when her grand-daughter was a little girl, so Walls didn’t personally remember that much about her. Told in first-person, I thought the author really captured the “voice” of her grandmother, distinctly different from her own voice as the grand-daughter in The Glass Castle.

I was also interested in reading this book because my own grandmother, according to our family legends, was quite a horse trainer herself.  She moved west as a young bride and bore the first two sons of eleven children in a tiny sod cabin on the Kansas-Oklahoma border.  I could easily see in Lily Casey a lot of the pioneer spirit my own dear grandmother had.

Both books are quick, easy reads and immensely fascinating. 5 stars & highly recommended.

THE LACUNA - Barbara Kingsolver (507)

c. 2009  Barbara Kingsolver is a favorite author of mine. But I must admit, this wasn’t a favorite among the books I’ve read by her. Weighing in at a little over 500 pages, I thought it would never end.

Nine years separated Kingsolver’s fifth (The Poisonwood Bible) and this, her sixth, novel. Not having read The Poisonwood Bible, I don’t know if she was experimenting with something new in her writing, or if she was simply being overly-ambitious with such a large subject --- but this book fell a bit short of the epic it seems to try to be.

Told through the journals and letters of a (fictitious) famous author, who is half-Mexican, half-American and grew up in Mexico, this historical novel centers around cold-war politics after WW2, and its effect on individual “freedoms”. The author also adds in some real and imagined news clippings that help establish the setting: a time of fear and suspicion in our country.  Using this format for shaping her story, the author runs the risk of a choppy feel. And there were times when it did seem that way.  Also there were long stretches of boredom, when the book just failed to hold my attention.

I enjoyed the “Frida” part of the book and that, in itself, would have been enough for me. I could have used a little more of it. It was a colorful and lively beginning to what turned into a dark and gloomy tale. But this wasn’t just a story of camaraderie with the Riveras, who young Shepherd had worked for back in Mexico. In having Shepherd’s life continue on in the U.S. as he matures into a successful author, Kingsolver demonstrates that a pleasurable, passionate time early in a person’s life can have unforeseen consequences later on down the road.

Several times in the book, it is remarked that the average American doesn’t have a clue what a Communist is or looks like. I’d also add that there aren’t many people left who are old enough to remember McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s. Even if they did, what would they remember of it?  Did they even understand what was happening? Were they aware of how public opinion was being swayed and shaped by the media (primarily newspapers and magazines back then)? Could history repeat itself?

I rate this book 3.5 stars, better than average. If you read it for no other reason than to familiarize yourself with the Cold War and the era of McCarthyism, it will have been time well spent. I was impressed by Kingsolver’s historical reference list --- more good reading there.

 

THE END OF OIL - Paul Roberts (332)

c.2004  The big, oily teardrop on the book’s cover tells the whole story: The world will soon run out of oil. Then what? If you think the scientists, geologists, and governments have this all planned out and under control, you’d better read this book.

“Americans are, in general, the least energy-conscious people in the world. We are not only profoundly ignorant about what energy is, and the critical role it has played and continues to play in economics and politics, but most of us simply don’t care about energy,” explains the author.

This sometimes wordy, but comprehensive. guide to the energy economy was slow reading, but I learned so much from it. There were times when I thought the author was being repetitious. The book seemed like it would never come to an end. It had so many facts and figures, and yet it was never boring. Just slow going for me.

There’s also the problem of the material being dated (2004).  I would like to find another book, like this one, that shows what’s going on now, in 2012.

I probably liked this one so much because it mirrors my own opinions on the subject.  You could probably read the prologue and the last two chapters and still get the gist of this doomsday scenario. Five stars and highly  recommended.

That's enough for today. 

I'll see what I can scrape up for tomorrow.