"Lotus Moon" by Rengetsu *****

• Poetry
• Japanese author, a Buddhist nun, born in 1791
• This translated collection was originally published in 1994
• #7 in "The Journey Series"
• Introduction by John Stevens:
• p.9..."Rengetsu was born in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto in 1791, the illegitimate offspring of a high-ranking samurai and a young geisha."....pleasure quarters....
• p.11..."...she once likened herself to 'a drifting cloud blown by a fierce wind.'"
• p.14..."A reader  'waka' is also expected to augment the sentiments expressed in a poem with his or her own experiences."
• Afterword:  Hermitage Heart by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei:
• "Rengetsu lived what could have easily become a tragic life."
• p.120...."One pleasure of discovering the lives and teachings of the rare women we find in the history f Buddhism is seeing how they take up the tragedies in their lives and transform them.  They remind us of the freedom that no circumstance can take from us.."
• p.123..."At dawn she sees snow blanketing the hills and knows that there must have been a fierce storm in the night.  She kindles the fire.  In its thusness, it is just thus."
• Notes:
• produced 50,000 pieces of art
• an artist, a Buddhist practitioner, and an emancipated woman
• p.35..."Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"
• Review:  Oh!  How incredibly lovely!  This is a collection of "waka",  a form of Japanese poetry, written by a Buddhist nun named Rengetsu.  The poems are organized by season and are stunning!  The Introduction and Afterword are excellent accompaniments in terms of the biography of the poet and the offering of insights into Buddhist practice and symbolism.  This is a collection which I will keep close at hand to enjoy throughout the year.

"Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery" by Catherine Musemeche, M.D. *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Non-Fiction
• US author
• Originally published 2014
• Epigraph:
• "conch
  
  Hold a baby to your ear, As you would a shell: Sounds of centuries you hear, New centuries foretell.
  Who can break a baby's code? And which is the older--, The listener or his small load? The held or the holder?"
  
  ---E.B.White
• Quotes:
• p.3..."There is no such thing as a routine operation in a baby."
• p.66..."Whether a patient's demise is predictable, expected, or unavoidable, losing a patient is personal to a surgeon.  He has reached inside his patient's body, manipulated those human organs, and made changes that last a lifetime.  Surgeon and patient are forever linked by the outcome of such an intimate endeavor: both of them must live with the consequences."
• p.68..."Adult human lungs measure ten to fourteen inches in height and four to six inches across, about the size of a baseball glove.  Within the two spongy masses are a total of 300 to 500 million alveoli within 750 square feet of compressed surface area, the size of one side of a tennis court."....Absolutely amazing!
• Review:  From the perspective a a lay person who has long been fascinated by all things medical, this was an absolutely fascinating read.  I have taken for granted the notion of the existence of such a thing as a pediatric surgeon, yet had no idea that it is a relatively recent development, in fact, still coming into it's own.  The book presents case studies which in and of themselves are amazing, but the cases serve as the platform to the truly engrossing brief history of pediatric surgery, the differences between a child's body and an adult's (significantly more than just size}, the hurdles in the way of creating instruments and devices for use in these tiny bodies, the ethics and politics in this field of endeavor, and above all, the heroic ingenuity, courage, and determination of the innovators in this field.  This is a book which is definitely accessible to the lay person and it is also a riveting education for anyone who is interested in the medical aspects of fetuses, preemies, and children in general.  Excellent read! 

"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking ***

• Book Club selection for January 2015
• English author
• Originally published in 1987
• Review:  Let's just get this part out of the way.  I am the epitome of the lay person when it comes to physics.  I could understand the book's introduction, general statements, and conclusion.  That's about it.  So, for what it's worth, my take away is that humans continue to be driven to make meaning of their existence and scientists do so by trying to find absolutes.  

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Originally published in 2014
• English author
• 1984
• Miner's strike...socialist movement
• Holly Sykes.....Ed Brubeck
• Daymares...Miss Constantin
• Dr Marinus/Horologists  v.  Pfenniger/Anchorites
• Rhymes
• Esther Little, 
• "asylum"..  hide in a body
• Vocabulary:
• coracle:  a small, round, or very broad boat made of wickerwork or interwoven laths covered with a waterproof layer of animal skin, canvas, tar covered or oiled cloth, or the like: used in Wales, Ireland, and parts of western England.
• Cathar: (in medieval Europe) a member of any of several rigorously ascetic Christian sects maintaining a dualistic theology.
• psychosoteric:  created by author
• epiphyte:  a plant that grows above the ground supported non-parasitically by another plant or object, deriving its nutrients from rain, air, dust....from air
• chatoyant:   reflecting a single streak of light when cut in a cabochon.
• Quotes:
• p34..."What if...what if Heaven is real, but only in moments?  Like a glass of water on a hot day when your dying of thirst, r when someone's nice to you for no reason, or...".
• p.41...."Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices."
• p.52..."Life's a matter of Who Dares Wins."
• p.58..."....his voice is like the wind swerving through a weird day."....referring to Bob Dylan
• p.100..."Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed.  Power is a visitor to,, not a possession of, those it empowers.  The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long term side effects.  Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul.........The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields an bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral."....Immaculee Constantin
• p.126..."You, Hugo.....are a sordid, low-budget French film.  The sort you'd stumble across on TV at night.  You know you'll regret it in the morning but you keep watching anyway."....LOL...Holly to Hugo Lamb
• p.135..."...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good."
• p.150..."Love is the anesthetic applied by Nature to extract babies."
• p.151..."Love wants love in return, and I right, Olly?  Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users.  But when the side-effects kick in --jealousy, the rages, grief, I think count me out.  Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity.  Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind."
• p.157..."here's the truth:  who is spared love is spared grief
• p.161..."Racial differences I'be always found to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, but class difference is sexuality's Berlin Wall."....Hugo
• p.263..."A journalist marries the news, Seymour.  She's capricious, cruel and jealous.  She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off.  You, your safety, your family are nothing."...Ed Brubeck
• p.325..."I riff on notions of the soul as a karmic report card; as a spiritual memory-stick in search of a corporeal hard-drive; and as a placebo we generate to cure our dread of mortality."
• p.387..."Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose.".....LOL
• p.427..."One cannot cross the same river twice."...i like that
• p.565..."There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.  I've met it before."
• p.565..."...if you could reason with religious people, there wouldn't be any religiou people."
• p.597..."Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."
• Notes:
• References to Orwell's "Animal Farm"
• Horologists/Atemporals refer to the body as "bone clocks", when the body dies they go to "the dusk" for 49 days then "awake" in a child's body (p.449)
• Anchorites move into another's body and do not physically age, "a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church.  a living human sacrifice, in a way."(p.436), they fuel their atemporality on engifted souls
• The two groups are referred to as Carnivores and Herbivores
• Capitalism metaphors
• Iceland fares well post "Endarkenment"........connection to "enlightenment"?
• Doubt is the chink in the armor of the Anchorites....to beat them one must take advantage of it
• Anchorites stay at twelve......disciples?
• Frequent use of the phrase "it is Scripted"....like Jews..."It is written"...lending a statement weight.....fatalism?
• Anchorites...all white...racist white power
• Review:  David Mitchell has done it again.  He has written a cross-genre, mind-twisting, thought-provoking novel.  Mitchell's use of language is marvelous.  His characters, particularly the protagonist, Holly Sykes, and Marinus are vividly memorable.  The plot is complex and multi-layered and then winds down into a singularly profound statement about the power of the will to survive and continuity over time.  Meanwhile, Mitchell is somehow also able to make clear and pointed statements about the state of our social-political irresponsibility, our climate busting, Dark Ages inducing behavior as a species and the soul destroying properties of power. If that isn't enough, this is just a gripping story full of mystery, imagination, and plot twists. Outstanding! Moral of the story?  "Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."

Link to 2015 Reading Journal

my2015readingjournal.blogspot.com

"Blood Memory" by Greg Iles ****

◆  Audiobook
◆  Originally published in 2005
◆  German author

Review:  Greg Iles definitely knows how to tell a multi-layered story very well.  As is often true with his novels, the protagonist becomes a vehicle for the exploration of a human experience via the examination of its psychological, social, and physical perspectives.  Iles has demonstrated the consistent ability to describe the macro and micro of complex issues, in this case incest/sexual abuse.  Set in New Orleans, the protagonist moves from confusion to complicity to clarity in a manner that strikes this reader as realistic and very human.  Nice twists and turns as well, which are de rigeur for a good serial killer mystery.

"The Time Regulation Institute" by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar *****

• Book Club selection for November 2014
• Turkish author
• Originally published in translation in 2014
• Originally published in 1962
• Author lived from 1901-1962, going through the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the secularized, Western style society envisioned by Ataturk.
• Review:  An absolutely brilliant satire of capitalism and bureaucracy set during the transition period in Istanbul under the rule of Ataturk. The forced adoption of Western priorities did not sit too well with traditionalists of Istanbul and this novel is one of the results! I laughed out loud multiple times reading this.  The writing is somewhere in the vicinity of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Just imagine all the time lost by adding up the minutes misplaced by clocks set to the wrong time?  I know...mind boggling......right?  Well some bureaucrat at the Time Regulation Institute figured it out.  Way too funny!  

"Snow Hunters" by Paul Yoon *****

• Book Club selection for December 2014
• US author
• Originally published 2013
• Review:  This debut novel is absolutely exquisite!  Paul Yoon is a phenomenal writer.  His prose is poetic and profound, yet simple.  This is a tale of tragic loss and the transformative power of kindness.  In a short novel with minimal dialogue, the protagonist is a veritable phoenix, surmounting unimaginable loss, yet retaining kindness, compassion, and love.  A meditative, touching tale.  A must read!!!

"The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells" by Andrew Sean Greer. **

◆  Audiobook
◆  Originally published in 2013
◆  US author
◆  Review:  Another time travel novel.  In this novel time travel is induced by electroshock treatments which lead the protagonist to repeated visits to parallel lives. Bland.

"Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck. *****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 1945
• Review:  I love John Steinbeck's prose! Meet a marvelous cast of characters who reside on Cannery Row and come to life at night. Exquisite! Enough said!

"The Child: An Audible Drama" by Sebastian Fitzek ***

• Audiobook only
• German author
• Originally published in 2014
• Review:  This was a story translated from the original German and only available performed as a combination narrated/dramatic production by Audible.  Listening to it was like listening to an old time radio program with sound effects and the intensification of the emotion of the story.  The rhythm of the story was occasionally disrupted by the switching from narrator to performers and back.  The story itself is the suspenseful, dark, and poignant tale of loss, the search for love, the acceptance of the existence of both good and evil, and acceptance.  Not bad at all.

"Winter Journal" by Paul Auster ***

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published 2011
• Review:  Auster's second memoir was interesting, if a bit weird.  Who writes a memoir in second person?  I am sure, knowing the profound nature of his novels, that Auster has a reason, but it was distracting to me.  Frankly, the last third was the most interesting.  Auster compares writing to dance, and both of them to expressions of the heart rhythm.  Love that part of it!  Auster is one of my favorite authors, but this fell short of my expectations.

"The Painted Girls" by Cathy Marie Buchanan ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2012
• Setting:  1878 Paris, a ballet school 
• Review:  Yes, I know....another bit of fiction built around famous artwork.  Ho hum!  Wait a minute!  This novel apparently is closely tied to historical fact and is actually quite well done. The writing is straightforward, which I found to be true for this author's previous work.  The characters are young, impoverished women who aspire to a better life found via the ballet, in particular, three sisters from a very poor family.  Only one has real talent, and the other two try but fall into what was , apparently, a common path.  Seeking to survive they model for artists, in this case, Degas, and must tolerate some really disgusting men, who nonetheless help them to provide sustenance to their family.  The family of three really did exist, and the model for the Degas statuette referred to frequently was actually one of the sisters.  Not a happy tale, and unfortunately quite realistic.  Well done!

"The Breast" by Philip Roth ****

• US author
• Originally published in 1972
• Review:  Only Philip Roth could tell this story of a middle aged man who metamorphoses into a 155 pound breast.  Yes, you read that right.  This is unlike any other novel I have read by Roth due to its Kafkaesque nature.  What does it mean to change from a person to an object?  Roth is somehow able to do the question justice with wit and psychological depth.  Wonderful novella!

"The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje ****

• October 2014 Book Club selection
• Sri Lankin author
• Originally published in 2011
• Setting:  aboard the Oronsay from Ceylon to England via Aden, the Suez Canal
• Epigraph:  "And this is how I see the East...I see it always from a small boat - not a light, not a stir, not a sound.  We conversed in low whispers, as if afraid to wake up the land... t is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it.  I came  upon it from a tussle with the sea." - Joseph Conrad, "Youth"
• Vocabulary:
• coelacanth:  a crossopterygian fish, Latimeria chalumnae, thought to have been extinct since the Cretaceous Period but found in 1938 off the coast of southern Africa.  
• mangosteen:  the juicy, edible fruit of an East Indian tree
• Characters:l
• Michael:  age 11, narrator, nickname on board was "Mynah"
• Cassius:  his buddy, became an artist
• Ramadhin:  his buddy, gentle soul, died young
• Mr. Mazappa:  played with the ship's orchestra
• Mr. Nevil:  ship dismantler
• Emily de Saram:  distant cousin
• Miss Lasqueti:  ?
• Flavia Prins:  ?
• Mysterious prisoner:  murdered a judge?
• Massoumeh/Massi:  Ramadhin's sister, eventually wife of Michael, then divorced
• Larry Daniels:  botanist
• Narayan: family manservant
• Gunepala:  family cook
• Mr. Fonseca:  travelling to England to be a teacher, smoked hemp
• Sir Hector de Silva:  cursed to die by dog bite
• Vocabulary:
• Quotes:
• p.4..."He could hear singing and imagined the slow and then eager parting of families taking place in the thrilling night air."
• p.4..."I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was.  Perhaps a sense of self is not even there in his nervous stillness in the narrow bunk, in this green grasshopper or little cricket, as if he has been smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future."
• p.10..."So by the end of our first day, we discovered we could become curious together."
• p.21..."Silent as corpses we looked at the stars.  We felt we were swimming in the sea, rather than a walled-in pool in the middle of the ocean."
• p.25..."Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet."
• p.29..."Who realizes how contented feral children are?"
• p.32..."It was easy to fool the three of us, who were naked with innocence."
• p.33..."There was something extraterrestrial and indelible about the verse Mazappa sang on that afternoon, whatever the words meant."
• p.37..."Thinking backwards I could remember the comfort of being curious and alone."
• p.55..."We released all the breath from our bodies and sank to the bottom and stood there waving our arms softly like Mr Daniels's palm trees, wishing he could see us."
• p.64...But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live.  And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by."
• p.81..."What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power."
• p.85...Michael describes the three of them as "freed mercury"
• p.135..."Who hath desired the sea?  Her excellent loneliness rather / Than the forecourts of kings."...Rudyard Kipling...Mr. Fonseca recited it at the sea funeral for de Silva
• p.138..."We had crossed open seas at twenty-two knots, and now we moved as if hobbled, at the speed of a slow bicycle, as if within the gradual unrolling of a scroll."
• p.139..."So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement."...during Suez Canal passage
• p.157..."We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to loosen and untie."
• p.158..."My shipboard nickname was 'Mynah'.  Almost my name but with a step into the air and a glimpse of some extra thing, like the slight swivel in their walk all birds have when they travel by land.  Also, it is an unofficial bird, and unreliable, its voice not fully trustworthy in spite of the range.."
• Notes:
• Title:  "the least privileged place"
• Trying to smoke the entire cane chair before the end of the cruise had ended
• p.60..Narayan made Michael listen to the insects in Bullock shit
• description of going through the Suez canal was wonderful
• Cassius' paintings of Suez experience....dare I say, rite of passage?
• Review:  This is a story full of a kaleidoscope of characters, full of the antics of three boys on an ocean liner from Ceylon to England, and an amazing array of events, and that is only one part of the novel.  Unfortunately, the other portion did not work well for me, and that was the portion about adulthood.  Although the parts written about the events on board the ship were wonderful, it did not blend well with the other portion.  Ondaatje's prose was at times the lyrical, magical prose which I love, and fell flat at other times.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, my real life book club discussion did raise my awareness that it may be that the contrast was deliberate, but I am not sure.  It was a very good read, just not my favorite Ondaatje.

"Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands" by Chris Bohjalian ***

• Audiobook
• Narrator is author's adolescent daughter, interview with them at the end
• Originally published
• US author
• Originally published in 2014
• Review:  This was my least favorite Bohjalian novel to date.  I am not a huge fan of post-apocalyptic tales. which in desire to provide full disclosure, should be included in my review.  This was an unengaging tale of a young girl and the trials of life not only as a survivor, but as a survivor whose parents both died, both worked at the nuclear plant that melted down, and whose father was being held at least partially responsible for the disaster.  Okay....not an easy burden to bear, but I think the author went overboard and had her experience every possible horrible consequence and it just did not come off as believable to me.  Oh well....I like his other books?

"Humboldt's Gift" by Saul Bellow *

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 1973
• Review:  Humboldt's Gift...not going to happen. There is something so ludicrously intellectual and detached in this writing. I get angry and then just quit.

"A Song for Issy Bradley" by Carys Bray ****

• An Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• English author
• Debut novel
• Originally published August 2014
• Epigraph:  "For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.".....(Doctrine and Covenants 25:12)
• Quotes:
• p.20..."Maybe that's how repentance works, a sort of gradual baptism of skin and tissue, the shedding of the old self and the cultivation of the new."
• p.33..."It always feels weird when ordinary people come round; the picture of Jesus in the hall seems to double in size and Al feels like an outsider, someone who has grown up in the country of the house without managing to learn its language."
• p.35..."It's as if Dad lives in the overlapping bit of one of those Venn diagrams, straddling both worlds.  Other people adapt, they step from circle A to circle B, they act normal in real life and accessorise their Sunday clothes with holy words and best manners, but Dad is unchanging.  He exists in a perfect egg of divine assurance."
• p.94..."Never is a word that doesn't always mean not-on-your-nelly and absolutely-no-way.  Sometimes never means not yet."
• Notes:
• Oldest daughter, Zippy, is reading old classics like "Persuasion", "Jane Eyre", etc.  
• Review:  This is the story of a family in a crisis of faith after the loss of a loved one.  The fact that the family are Mormon adds a dimension to my reading because the author, who was herself raised as a Mormon, shares details which are informative about some of the Mormon traditions.  However, I think this test of faith can occur for any person and that is what makes this novel so meaningful.  I particularly like the treatment of all the children and the way this questioning takes developmentally accurate forms.  The author subtly and tastefully calls into question some of the practices while never crossing into disrespect.  I am not Mormon.  I think this book can be understood in different ways, and I think that the reader's belief system prior to reading it will largely determine how they will walk away from it.  I hope it was the author's intention for that to happen.  Excellent debut!

"Mr. Tall: A Novella and Stories" by Tony Earley ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Novella and short stories
• Originally published August 2014
• Epigraph:  "What luck did ye have this time, Jack?"  "Why, King, I didn't see no unicorn." - Richard Chase, "The Jack Tales"
• No page numbers
• "Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands":  First night empty nesters
• p.17..."Find me a Hardee's.  Find me a room.  Stay with me until I die.  It was all the same thing, really."
• p.30...."Well, since you're so damn curious, let me tell you the secret to a long marriage.  If you want to stay together; then don't leave."
• p.35..."It was the only way he knew to make a life, the transfigurative ordering of event into story, something he could not do without Cheryl."
• "Mr. Tall":  Misunderstanding leads to lonely isolation for two people in the mountains
• p.41..."She felt as if she had been granted admission into some benevolent, secret society to which almost everyone belonged but of which hardly anyone ever spoke."...marriage
• "The Cryptozoologist":  chasing the mysterious skunk ape, and an understanding of her late spouse
• "Yard Art";  All lives have value, whether famous or not....art is beautiful to whomever sees the beauty
• "Have You Seen the Stolen Girl?":  Lonely old woman, isolation, misunderstanding
• "Just Married":  Three couples who remain faithful during difficult times find themselves crossing paths at a pivotal moment
• "Jack and the Mad Dog":  What happens to characters when a story ends?
• Review:  First night empty nesters, the misunderstood Mr. Tall, the widow of her misunderstood artist husband, Jack of the beanstalk and what happens when we close a book.  Are you interested yet?  I absolutely loved "Jim The Boy", and Tony Earley once again demonstrates his wonderful storytelling skill in this wonderful collection.  Each story is a metaphor about life.  Sounds trite, I know, but in this case not so!!

"Police" by Jo Nesbo *****

• Audiobook
• #10 in the Harry Hole series
• Norwegian author
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review:  So...normally I do not give mystery/suspense novels a 5 star rating, but this installment of the Harry Hole series was great!  The author manipulated me so well.  At several points I was holding my breath only to be taken by surprise at what came next.  I think this series is best read in order, but this particular one was just a great read!  As always, Nesbo is able to force the reader to hold the best and worst in the palm of the hand at the same time, just as life does!