Stupid conscience.  Don’t I do enough for you already?  Yes, I know, I have been a total slacker on the whole Read it or Rant thing.  The perfectionist side of me just has a real problem reviewing drivel, and for the most part? That is all I have read lately.  Trashy bodice rippers, and my magazines, (Cookie, Parents, Marie Claire, New Beginnings, and whatever MMIL gives me when she is done for those of you wondering.)   Maybe my brain thinks it is still in the sixth grade.  During summer vacation I read The Babysitter’s Club, and Sweet Valley Twins, and hit it hard in the fall with To Kill a Mockingbird, and Beowulf.

To make up for it, I am inviting all of you to write reviews and then send them to me.  “Good Lord, Hey You, can’t you even write your own damn blog anymore?” (Do you think my conscience would take the Lord’s name in vain? Say Damn? I don’t think so either. This must be someone else’s conscience, probably JHJ’s.)  Anyway, I get GOBS of email, so make sure you put “Read it or Rant” in the subject line.   Maybe I will actually get around to reading something else sometime soon, but in the mean time, Ang (who I can’t link to because she has no blog, get on that Ang!)  has graciously agreed (actually it was her idea, but I plan on taking credit for it just like the reviews! Bwhaha!) to review something I have on my to read list already, Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. Take it away Ang.

This book was loaned to me by a good friend when I visited a few weeks ago. Because I was already in the throes of 2-3 books at that time, it was a while before I got a chance to read this one. It was worth the wait.

Gods Behaving Badly is about ancient Greek gods living in modern-day London. They are all sharing a house and living somewhat normal lives. Artemis (dog-walker), Aphrodite (phone sex operator), Apollo (TV psychic, along with the help of his sibyls), and the others are cramped into a tiny, filthy house and are finding that their powers are waning. Athena (scientist) is trying to find ways for the gods to regain their powers, but, like most brilliant minds, she is unable to adequately communicate her findings to her fellow gods. Apollo falls into unrequited love with the housekeeper, and her would-be boyfriend is none too pleased with the situation. Not to ruin the book for anyone who might actually want to read it, a catastrophic event occurs, the Underworld is involved, and an unlikely hero emerges.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was smart and funny, and the hero and heroine are so cute you just want them to kiss already. It also gave me a bit of a refresher course in Greek mythology. I giggled throughout the entire thing, and it only took me a few days to finish it (granted, I’m not working and seem to have a lot of free time on my hands). If, however, you have delicate sensibilities, you may want to pass on this book. It freely used the f-word, and contained a few intimate proceedings. But, if you can overlook that (which I can, seeing as Stephen King is my favorite author and he oh-so-freely uses the f-word) the characters are lovable and the dialogue is hilarious. All in all, two enthusiastic thumbs up! A good summer read.

Thanks Ang! It will stay on my to read list.

So a couple of weeks ago I went in there with every intention of grabbing a David Sedaris book, (Eat, Pray, Love is still checked out at the Library). The Son was climbing the bookshelves and pulling down decorative containers and throwing Buddhas (seriously dude, what is with all the Buddhas, I understand you may not consider yourself Methodist anymore, but you certainly are not Buddhist!). I was trying to hurry, because I do not want stuff to get permanently broken, so when I got out to the car, I realized that somehow I had not grabbed Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim, but The World’s Smallest Unicorn. So I read it. And LOVED IT!

It is a compilation of Short Stories by Shena Mackay, and I devoured it. I adored almost every single one. I had so never heard of this chick before, but am now actively seeking out every word she has ever written. My favorite stories in the book were Crossing the border, about a retirement home for clowns (!) and Death by Art Deco, a young girl becomes her inspiration’s apprentice, oh and Trouser Ladies, lesbians before it was done. Oh and I can’t forget the Index of Embarrassment, don’t we all have relatives like that? Ones that we appease because we are afraid we will turn out to be just like them?

Her language is just exquisite, her descriptive prowess is amazing for example, “This splay-footed eater of processed foods” (dog) and “…an old woman in purple pompommed slippers, with her hair piled in an elaborate confection of peroxide peaks and swirls on top of her head, cirlces of rouge on white powdered cheeks and a crimson mouth in which her own lips were lost somewhere. Giggling with relief Flora said, I see I have come to the right house!” “What do you mean?” “…The house for retired clowns.” “Next door.”

Anyway, I loved the book, I highly recommend it. And I am glad I missed David Sedaris, because I probably would not have read it any other way. Next up! David Sedaris, Really!

For example, Maxim published a review of the Black Crowes’ new album, Warpaint. It didn’t like it much, giving it only 2.5 stars out of 5. There was just one problem. The album hadn’t been released yet, and advance copies hadn’t been made available. So how had the Maxim reviewer heard the album? Turns out he hadn’t. Maxim explained to the Black Crowes that the reviewer made an “educated guess.” Maxim later released this statement: “It is Maxim’s editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers.”

This is not a new practice, as the Scottish reverend Sidney Smith famously remarked, “I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.” So anyway, it may be late, but I really do READ the books I am reviewing, so take that disgruntled reader! **plbzzzzz**

Mothering Your Nursing Toddler by Norma Jane Bumgarner

I very well may be the only one interested in this one, but ya know what? My Blog! I get to choose what to review, but it will be short. This is about Mothering! Mothering your toddler! Mothering your nursing toddler! Wow, that was a really good title for it, huh. It was pretty good, it did answer a few questions I had, such as why does The Son switch sides every thirty seconds? Answer, he likes a fast flow. Books like this are always good to read when you are having a bad nursing week, or feeling frustrated, or just in general wondering if you are a freak for still nursing. This book was a huge rah-rah yeah extended nursing, and to be honest…I like that. It may insult your intelligence sometimes, or Hey You may just know more about nursing than the average bear. There were a few things I did not care for, for example I really felt that it pushed reeeeaaaally extended nursing a little hard. Like if I do not nurse until he is four or five I quit too soon. Really? Wow, whatever. Also, it does not give much advice for nighttime non-co-sleeping nursing (my baby sleeps in his crib, in his room, with the door shut 87% of the time). This was a hard core AP parenting book (check out this for an intro to Attachment Parenting, so good it is on my favorites list.), so if you are not AP then this is not the book for you (and chances are you are not really nursing still anyway.)

The chapters on fathering the nursing toddler and marriage with a nursing toddler were excellent. This book really acknowledges how much of a family commitment breastfeeding is. I got this book out of our LLL book trunk, and it fits the LLL standards and beliefs perfectly, so a great read for my fellow LLLers. So in other words, if you plan on extended breastfeeding read this book BEFORE you have toddler so you know what to expect. If you disagree with Attachment Parenting and are Ferberizing your kids already, or formula feeding, then this is so not the book for you.

next up? Irresistible Forces by Danielle Steele.

Alternate Alternate Title: Dear God Why did I choose this book?

Oh, The Grapes. Sigh, I shoulda just watched the movie. You should just read my review and save the six hours it took me to read it. Really. I usually really like John Steinbeck, in fact East of Eden is one of my favorites. I picked The Grapes, because I wanted something deep, a thinker, something to counteract all the Sandra Boynton books I read each week. Yeah. Um, I was really wishing I was reading Hippos go Berserk three chapters in. I now think that John Steinbeck is a communist, racist, sexist, ageist, ignorant of female anatomy, homophobic, sadist, bipolar tool. I could go on for pages about all of the inconsistencies, and explanations for the above list but, eh. It has been done already by more qualified readers than I, so if you are interested go Google some reviews. Make sure you pick one that mentions the lack of editors during the Depression, that is the only explanation for this book! Now for the plot…only plot, don’t go looking to the Grapes for any characters you can’t describe in a five word sentence. One dimensional would be half a dimension too much. Anyway, on to the story…

The Grapes start with Tom Joad just after he is paroled from prison after serving four years for manslaughter (He kilt him a man with a shovel). As he walks home, he meets a preacher, (a former, disenfranchised minister) Jim Casy, who baptized him in a ditch when he was a kid, and Tom invites him home with him. When they arrive at the Joad home, they find it deserted. They are then off to his Uncle John’s residence a few miles away, where he finds his family loading an old clunker truck(the used car chapter was one of my favorites actually, very poetic) with everything they own; he learns that his family’s crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and that they were forced to default on loans, and they were “tractored off” (a tractor pushed over their house to make longer rows of cotton. Or corn. Or pot or whatever.) With their farm repossessed, the Joads put all their hope on yellow handbills that are distributed everywhere in Oklahoma (And Arkansas, and Kansas, oh and Missouri ), describing the beautiful country of California and the high pay you get for doing easy jobs, like picking peaches. (FWIW, I have picked peaches, and they are itchy, and the fuzz sticks to your arms, oh, and they are full of June Bugs). Okay, so anyway, the Joads, along with Jim Casy (hey, anybody notice who else has JC initials? hmm, not too creative are we Steinbeck?), are seduced by the handbills and invest everything they have into the exodus. Although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides that it is a risk he has to take.

Moving on, Grandpa and the dog die within the first 24 hours, they should have taken it as a sign and turned around. They soon discover that the roads are crowded with thousands of other families making the same trip all on the faith of those friggin yellow handbills. As the Joads continue and hear stories from other road weary travelers, and meet some coming BACK from California, they are starting to think that all may not be as the handbills promised. So by this time they are pretty much there, and they have to find work, because they can’t afford to go back! By the time they do get there Grandpa and Grandma (and the dog) are dead and Noah (the elder wackadoo Joad son) and Connie (the ((strangely named)) husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, ((strangely named))Rose of Sharon), have left, yup, just up and left.

The shriveling (in numbers and in weight—turns out not much to eat for migrants) family find hordes of applicants for every job and little (no) hope of finding a decent wage, because of the oversupply of dust bowlers. All they want is the simple American Dream: a house, a family, and a steady job. At first they have a glimmer of hope at the government camp, Weedpatch,(BEEP< BEEP<BEEP, COMMUNIST ALERT!). At Weedpatch they are clean, and safe, and have flushing toilets, but still no jobs, no food, and no money.

So they move on and find other laborers have begun to join unions (have I mentioned anywhere that I am a Republican, and how I feel about unions?). The surviving members of the family unknowingly work as strikebreakers on a peach orchard that is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent, killing the preacher Casy and forcing Tom Joad to kill again and become a fugitive(again or still or whatever). As he bids farewell to his mother in a (supposedly tear jerking) speech (whatever, I am just pushing through at this point, the end and my Marie Clarie are near!), and promises that no matter what happens, he will be a tireless advocate for the oppressed. Blah, blah, Yada, Yada. Rose of Sharon’s baby is stillborn (this would have been more sad if she were not such a sniveling moron((and she is supposed to be the Madonna archetype?!?)). Ma Joad keeps the family moving(if not the plot) and forces the family to leave another camp that has been flooded out. It is winter, and there is NO work. They have NO money, and NO hope. In the end, (next sentence is not mine, Thank God. I just stole it so that you could see how full of himself Mr. Steinbeck truly is) Rose of Sharon commits the only act in the book that is not futile: she breast feeds a starving man, still trying to show hope in humanity after her own negative experience. This final act is said to illustrate the spontaneous mutual sharing that will lead to a new awareness of collective values. Okay, whatever you say. As for the part about her breastfeeding, shall I point out how wrong this is? Cause ya know, I know a thing or two about breast feeding. No, I will move on! YEAH book OVER! Yippee!

So I copied and pasted some of the symbolic parts of the book, all VERY obvious, a ninth grader could have caught each of them, so read them for you’re your own edification, and so you can win the The Grapes of Wrath Section of Jeopardy with out having to actually, you know, read it.

The turtle in Chapter 3 is a metaphor for the working class farmers whose struggles are recounted in the novel. Significantly, the dangers posed to the turtle are those of modernity and business. The intrusion of cars and the building of highways endangers the turtle, and the truck that strikes the turtle is a symbol of big business and commerce. The struggling of the turtle also evokes the workings of narratives in general, since the trajectory of the turtle mimics the trajectory of the novel: moments of action and pauses, slow process, peripecias. This land turtle becomes a proleptic device for the following chapters.

Rose of Sharon’s pregnancy holds the promise of a new beginning. This promise is broken when she delivers a stillborn baby. However, the family moves boldly and gracefully forward, rather than slipping into despair, and the novel ends on a hopeful note.

There are numerous Judeo-Christian symbols throughout the novel. The Joad Family, like the Israelites, are homeless and persecuted people looking for the promised land. Jim Casy can be viewed as a symbol of Jesus Christ, who began his mission after a period of solitude in the wilderness. When the group first leave for their journey West, there are thirteen of them, representing Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Like Jesus, Jim offers himself as the sacrifice to save his people. Jim’s last words to the man who murdered him was: “Listen, you fellas don’ know what you’re doing,” similar to Jesus’s “Father forgive them; they know not what they do.” Tom becomes Jim’s disciple after his death.

A great flood at the end of the novel is related in the Bible as the story of Noah and the Great Flood. A flood symbolizes uncontained water, which has gone beyond the basic boundary between the earth and water. Floods also symbolize the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of a new cycle of time. Therefore, a flood symbolizes both death and regenerative birth at the same time. The image in which Uncle John disposes of the stillborn baby recalls Moses being sent down the Nile River, suggesting that the family, like the Hebrews in Egypt, will be delivered from the slavery of its present circumstances.

Next up for the Read it or Rant? I don’t know yet. I will pick something up at the library tomorrow, and let you know.

]]> http://www.thehuckablog.com/2008/04/13/fridays-read-it-or-rant-the-grapes-of-wrath/feed/ 11 http://www.thehuckablog.com/2008/04/11/fridays-read-it-or-rant-incomplete/ http://www.thehuckablog.com/2008/04/11/fridays-read-it-or-rant-incomplete/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:35:41 +0000 Hey You http://thehuckablog.com/2008/04/11/fridays-read-it-or-rant-incomplete/ A few of the things I have done today other than write a review of the Grapes of Wrath:

• opened all my windows,
• flew a kite,
• taught The son how to climb the wobbly ladder at the park,
• laundry,
• watched The Son eat powdered parmesan cheese and crushed ice for lunch (though served something much tastier and slightly more nutritious), and
• took a nursey-nap

Despite set backs, I actually did finish reading the Grapes this week. It just turns out that writing this review is a little more time consuming than others I have done. I will try to get it posted this weekend, my apologies for the tardiness. In the mean time, A GUEST REVIEWER!!

“Son, hey! Hey, hold still a minute! Tell me about what book you are reading right now!”

“Boouck?”

“Yes, book. Hey, come back here! ”

(He returns with Monday the BullFrog, and plops himself in my lap.)

“BOOOCK! BOOOCK!”

“Okay, we can read Monday again.”

(reads Monday the BullFrog for the twelve hundredth time this week.)

“So what did you think?”

“aapergthableph! Boouck, rempick, clemgfghff. Appy.”

“ooookay. Um, what about the plot? The characters? The syntax?”

“Nack?”

“No, not snack. SYNTAX.”

“Nack! PAPLE!”

“Okay, we will have an apple after you finish your review.”

“NOOOOO! PAPLE! PAPLE! OOkie?”

“Good enough.”

(hands The Son some dried apple slices and a Tagalong)

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven: A Novel by Fannie Flagg

I have recently read about 1980s Kabul, A child murder case, Sierra Leone, and a depressed family. I was all set to read a nice, light hearted book about a small town and quirky, yet mildly entertaining characters. And then the main character died! In the second chapter! I swear y’all, I almost chucked this one, and picked up a bodice ripper. I stuck with it because I have enjoyed Fannie Flagg in the past, and this was a return to Elmwood Springs, Missouri, a place I thoroughly enjoyed in Standing in the Rainbow.

So this is old school chick lit at it’s best. The back cover says that it asks the age old question: “What is life all about, anyway?” Um, whatever. Plato, it is not. It is about Aunt Elner Shimfissle who is a really old (no one knows how old because she has no birth certificate, and her sister buried the family bible) country woman. She climbs a ladder up a fig tree in her front yard, dislodges a wasp nest, gets stung bunches of times, falls, and dies. The End. No just kidding, she really does die, but the novel covers the ripple effect that she had in hundreds of people’s life. Everyone in her town, and many out of it, have hilarious stories and touching anecdotes about Aunt Elner. The novel also follows Elner to heaven. Yes, Really. So this is the part of the book that you really need to read with a grain of salt,(read the meaning of that here). This is not a religious manifesto by any stretch of the imagination. I would not read it with your Sunday School class or anything. Heaven is whatever she wants it to be, and God’s name is Raymond. He also calls himself Buddha, Mohammad, and Elvis. My summary stops here because I can’t tell any more without giving away the whole thing.

Which brings us to the million dollar question, does Hey You recommend it? Well, that depends. This book is light. Real Light. Like a half eaten Peep light. If that is what you are looking for, then yes, I would recommend it. The characters are charming, if not as well fleshed out as they could be. The plot does have some nice twists, but not exactly inspired ones. It is a good book to read on the tread mill, or while your child is watching Elmo. It is not a good book to write your senior thesis on.

Next up: Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. That should be a little heavier than a Peep.