The book was very well researched. You could tell, because the author managed to stuff every single fact she had learned into it. At the expense of the book's organization, making it difficult to keep track of all of the different people. I also had problems with the discord between the horrific events described and the very simple declarative sentences used to describe them. The holocaust and its aftermath, told on a grade school level. But I did learn things, so I'd say that it was a worth-while read.
In this memoir, Janzen chronicles the experience of re-connecting with her Mennonite roots after her …
Review of 'Mennonite in a little black dress' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
No one was terribly impressed with the book. At best, it was regarded as humorous fluff. But even then, too much of the humor was at the expense of other people, including her friends and family. I'd assumed going in that the book was Janzen's foray into self-therapy, but in the course of the book she never seemed to reach any conclusions, or figure out how to go forward in her life (other than, don't marry any bi-polar bisexuals). I now suspect that the real reason for writing the book was to make enough money to make the payments on the house in the country that her ex saddled her with. (However, there was, towards the end, a moving essay on compassion, Christian or otherwise.)
Review of "Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The reaction to this one was skewed in both directions. Jill had to read it three times in college, each for a different class, and hated it each time. And wondered why each course couldn't have chosen a different author, or even a different book by the same author. Some loved the richness of the metaphors that filled the narrative. But the characters were, almost literally, one-dimensional - set in their ways early in life and rigid and unchanging thereafter. Some scenes were livid and arresting, while others plodded. Several people felt an echo from The Good Earth, only set in Africa instead of China.
Review of 'What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
For anyone thinking of walking the Camino, this book will open your eyes. Don't do it. Don't even think of doing it. The walk is grueling. Your fellow pilgrims will be bitchy and cruel. But the alternative is solitude, which will drive you batty.
Review of 'The new encyclopedia of watercolor techniques' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A clear and concise overview of bunches of different ways to paint with watercolors.
Each technique gets a two-page spread, with one example of a finished painting, followed by written and pictorial step by step directions on exactly how to do it. (Which must then be followed by a chunk of hands on practice time.)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is a 2012 short story …
Review of 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Short stories, in which the characters are stripped down to their bones. We learn things about them that we didn't expect. And would maybe have preferred not to know.
As a follow-up to The Good Earth, we'd wanted to read a contemporary book about China, written by a Chinese. What we got was a book, written by a Han Chinese, about Mongolia.
About a Mongolia that no longer exists. One in which the grassland Mongolians were still nomadic herders, shifting their herds of horses and sheep across the vast grassland, in constant battle to protect their animals from the packs of wolves, but realizing that the wolves themselves protected the health of the grassland by keeping all the herbivores in check.
But during the cultural revolution, this ecological equilibrium was seen as one of the old anachronisms that needed to be swept away, along with the wolves and the marmots. And the nomadic life. In the end, the grassland was turned over to farming and the nomads moved to houses with fenced enclosures. And the desert started moving in. …
As a follow-up to The Good Earth, we'd wanted to read a contemporary book about China, written by a Chinese. What we got was a book, written by a Han Chinese, about Mongolia.
About a Mongolia that no longer exists. One in which the grassland Mongolians were still nomadic herders, shifting their herds of horses and sheep across the vast grassland, in constant battle to protect their animals from the packs of wolves, but realizing that the wolves themselves protected the health of the grassland by keeping all the herbivores in check.
But during the cultural revolution, this ecological equilibrium was seen as one of the old anachronisms that needed to be swept away, along with the wolves and the marmots. And the nomadic life. In the end, the grassland was turned over to farming and the nomads moved to houses with fenced enclosures. And the desert started moving in.
The novel is told from the point of view of Chen Zhen, a Han Chinese who has been 'invited' to move to the countryside and take up the rural life. He works as a sheep herder, supplementing the Mongolian production brigade, and adapts to the Mongolian way of life, learning from an elder how they have survived in their inhospitable land. He's fascinated by wolves, whom the Mongolians revere, and, perhaps after reading too much Jack London, decides to kidnap and raise a wolf cub. The experiment works for a while, but as the cub grows he turns into a thing torn between two worlds, and able to live in neither. He never learned to be a wolf, and cannot survive in the wild. But cannot be tamed to live as a dog in man's world.
