Erin Reads

Reading Buddies: November’s Pick

Just a quick post today! Voting is now closed, and the Reading Buddies book for November will be The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. With over 40% of the votes, it’s this month’s clear winner.

To entice you to participate, here’s the Goodreads blurb:

“The Woman in White is a Victorian melodrama concerning a mysterious woman in white who bears an uncanny resemblance to the fiancee of Count Fosco, a sophisticated fortune hunter. First published as a serial between 1859 and 1860, this chronicle of evil, suspense, and villainy is believed to be the first English novel to deal with crime detection.”

I’m excited to finally read this classic. It’s been recommended to me again and again by plenty of people whose opinions I trust, so I’m expecting a good read!

My Woman in White posting schedule for November will be:
Discussion post: Friday, November 18th
Wrap-up post: Friday, December 2nd

A note on the dates: I pushed the schedule for November back a week so that the second post wouldn’t follow Thanksgiving so closely. Plus, it’s a longer book, so we’ll have a bit more time to read it.

If you’re thinking of reading along, please let me know in the comments so I have some idea of who’s most likely participating. Also, December’s poll is now up in the sidebar. Be sure to vote for your pick!

Winners: “Death Wishing” by Laura Ellen Scott

Today is the day I announce the winners (one US, one international) of Death Wishing by Laura Ellen Scott! They are (as chosen by Random.org):

US: Lisa G!

International: Carol Thompson!

Both winners have been notified by email and have 72 hours to respond. Thanks to all who entered! I urge you to check out Death Wishing — it’s a great novel. For a little more about it, check out my review from last week.

As part of the giveaway, I asked entrants to answer a question. In Death Wishing, certain people have the power to make a wish for the world with their final breath. One person eliminated cancer; another wished away housecats. Many more such wishes are fulfilled between the covers of Death Wishing. Here’s what some of the contest’s entrants would wish for a world without them:

“A better preservation of the world’s natural resources.”
“An absence of sickness and pain.”
“For my friends and family to find peace and comfort in life without me.”
“An end to poverty.”
“No more hunger.”
“For my children to know nothing but happiness.”
“Literacy for all.”
“An immediate end to animal cruelty in any manner, shape or form.”
A ban on “drive-through windows and cursing.”
“For the Library of Alexandria to magically reappear. Imagine how history would change.”
“As cliched as it sounds, peace between the countries. I would love no diseases, but that’s all part of nature, while terrorism so isn’t.”
“A free pumpkin spice latte for everyone at the beginning of fall!”
“That the whole world would recognize and value the pleasure of reading!”
“World peace, of course!”
“That sexual assault would no longer be perpetrated.”
And two people reinstated housecats!

I really enjoyed reading the responses of everyone who entered. I suppose, to be fair, I should share my own wish, huh? Since poverty, hunger, peace and other big issues have already been tackled above, I’ll wish that everyone would find the book that, in all the world, speaks best to them, at the time they need it most.

Laura Ellen Scott runs a site where she posts wishes from people all over the world. Check it out, and maybe even submit a wish of your own!

If you haven’t participated yet, what would you wish?

Thoughts on “Swing Low” by Miriam Toews

I won an ARC of Swing Low by Miriam Toews during the April 2011 Readathon. It is a memoir of the author’s father, written by her but from her father’s perspective.

About the Book:

Mel Toews is in the hospital. Why, he cannot quite remember. There are other select bits of memory that seem to have slipped away as well. His daughters visit, and his friends, and of course the nurses, who are always telling him what to do (or not do). As a way to keep himself busy as well as encourage his memory to reveal its secrets, Mel begins to write, tracing his life back to childhood and moving forward from there. As the days follow one another in the hospital, Mel tells his story, interrupting here and there to record the doings of visitors, nurses, and the tiny baby across the hall.

My Thoughts:

Going into Swing Low, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve read memoirs, but never about someone other than the author. That sort of book, I’d always assumed, was called a biography. But Swing Low is certainly not the latter. Toews has written her father’s story through his own eyes, as she pieced together and imagined it herself.

The resulting portrait is of a deeply complex man: a Mennonite husband, father, teacher and friend who adored his job and family but struggled daily with bipolar disorder. As a writer, he is warm and witty, though it is difficult to ignore the streak of melancholy that lies beneath his narrative. The story is written as though Mel is thinking in real time, as he lies in his hospital bed. He comments on the nurses who come in, visitors who stop by, and the things that happen near his hospital room, his own written internal monologue reflecting his mental and emotional state. In between these brief episodes, he reflects on his life, telling his story from its beginning to the present moment in the hopes that he may sneak up on the blank parts and reclaim them.

The whole time I was reading, I kept thinking how courageous Miriam Toews must be to have taken on so delicate and personal a project. I was impressed, too, marveling at the way she portrayed her subject with the eye of a biographer or memoirist and the heart of a daughter. Such a balancing act cannot be easy, yet Toews pulls it off with grace and eloquence. Swing Low is beautiful, heartbreaking, impressive, and enthralling all at once, all the while serving as a kind of memorial to a troubled but beloved man.

Because of its unique perspective, I think Swing Low would appeal to memoir lovers but also to readers of fiction. Toews’s skill as a writer shines plainly through as she blends the pieces of her father’s life into a cohesive story. I am eager to read more by this talented author.

Those are my thoughts. Check out Swing Low by Miriam Toews on Goodreads or LibraryThing, or read other bloggers’ reviews:

If I’ve missed yours, please let me know!

Sunday Salon: Looking Back, September 2011

We’ve reached the end of yet another month! Here’s what my September looked like:

Books

Total books read: 6
Total pages read: 1, 749
Favorite book: I actually really enjoyed all six of the books I read this month and rated them all the same on Goodreads. But if I had to choose one, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh probably had a tiny edge.
Least favorite book: none, see above!

Audiobooks

Total audiobooks listened to: 6
Total hours listened: 59 hours, 21 minutes (the most so far this year!)
Favorite audiobook: the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik (I listened to books 2-5 this month, read by Simon Vance)
Least favorite audiobook: The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

I started the month by sharing a few pictures of where I’d been for most of August.
The big event last month was Book Blogger Appreciation Week! Participants posted about community (twice), reading, and blogging. We also interviewed one another! After the event, we got to know one another a little better.
The big event in October is the Read-A-Thon! I encouraged you to sign up to cheer for the event. In the same post, I introduced #wordverify and shared some recent acquisitions.
In September, Reading Buddies read Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, a book that’s been on my TBR forever (discussion post, wrap-up post). I also reminded you about the upcoming Reading Buddies schedule.
I kicked off an international giveaway for two copies of Death Wishing by Laura Ellen Scott (still going on — you have until Tuesday to enter!).
In one post, I shared my favorite banned books in honor of Banned Books Week and my experiences with nonfiction audiobooks for BAND’s September discussion.
And finally, I reviewed some books: Still Life with Brass Pole by Craig Machen, That Day in September by Artie Van Why, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente, Death Wishing by Laura Ellen Scott, and The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai.

Your Turn!

That was my September. How was yours?

Reading Buddies Wrap-Up: “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh

Just a quick note: Be sure to vote for your November Reading Buddies pick in the sidebar if you haven’t done so already! I’ll be announcing November’s book next Friday.

Now, on with the Reading Buddies wrap-up for Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh! It was certainly a long book, and it took me nearly the whole month to get through, but I did end up enjoying it.

Beware: the rest of this post contains spoilers!

We left off last time about midway through the book, so I’ll pick up with the second half. The various characters, already drawing slowly together, finally all arrived in one place and were thrown together aboard the Ibis.

I loved the way Ghosh brought all the stories together. I thought it was so cool how we got to see the process of preparing and boarding the ship from different perspectives: an officer (Zachary), a migrant (Deeti), a stowaway (Paulette), a crewman (Jodu), a prisoner (Neel), a company representative (Baboo Nob Kissin)…did I miss anyone?? Having those various perspectives on the same events gave Ghosh amazing flexibility. And since we already knew everyone by the time the characters all meet on the ship, there was no background information to stand in the way of the story. It took a lot of pages to get to that point, but I’m thinking it was worth it.

As several readers have pointed out, the language was, at times, a bit of work, since Ghosh tossed in copious amounts of foreign terms without ever really defining them. I did think this became a little easier as I got used to Ghosh’s vocabulary — words started at least looking familiar and so slowing me down less — but I never really felt totally comfortable. Do you think his heavy reliance on foreign terms added to the story, or did it just make the novel harder to read?

I was absolutely not expecting Sea of Poppies to end the way it did. As the number of unread pages dwindled and the sea voyage wore on, I realized we wouldn’t get to see the ship’s destination in this first installment of the story. I’m not sure I would call it a cliffhanger, since Ghosh gave us some foreshadowing that things would work out, like when he mentioned earlier the generations that would descend from Kalua. But goodness, what a place to leave off! I especially loved the final paragraph, where the story came full circle. I just about got chills.

There are a couple of things I’d noted down to look up, and I thought I’d share my findings with you. The first is the phrase “under weigh,” which turned up a few times in Sea of Poppies in connection with ships. When I read it the first time, I was struck by how much it sounds like “underway” and made a note to investigate further. Turns out the two phrases mean the same thing. Here are a few excerpts from Phrases.org tracing the phrase’s origins:

“‘Way’ doesn’t mean here road or route but has the specifically nautical meaning of ‘the forward progress of a ship though the water’, or the wake that the ship leaves behind. Way has been used like that since at least the 17th century.”

“‘[U]nder’ was originally ‘on the’…. ‘On the way’ migrated to ‘underway’, probably due to the influence of the Dutch word ‘onderweg’, which translates into English as ‘underway’ but to 17th century sailors must have sounded more like ‘on the way’.”

“The term ‘weigh anchor’, and the fact that when ships are loaded with cargo and ready to sail they are weighed down, has led to the phrase being written as ‘under weigh’.”

Kind of interesting, no? I love discovering how idioms and phrases came into being, so this was a fun discovery for me.

Second, I was very curious about what a bore wave was after reading the scene where Jodu and Zachary end up riding out one such wave in the river. According to Wikipedia, a bore is “a tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave (or waves) of water that travel up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the river or bay’s current.” They are apparently rather turbulent and produce a rumbling sound. I couldn’t find a concise video of a bore wave, but here’s my favorite of the ones I found:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKA39LQOIck

I had no idea these existed. Have you ever experienced one?

Well, now that we’ve reached the end, I suppose the final judge of how well you liked Sea of Poppies is: will you be picking up River of Smoke? I actually wasn’t planning to until I finished Sea of Poppies, but now I’d really like to. What about you?