Tag Archives: bookreview

Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

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The Holocaust was storm, lightning, thunder;
wind, rain, yes.
And Le Chambon was the rainbow.
— Jewish mother whose children’s lives were saved at Le Chambon

 

Let me digress: One habit served me well and introduced me to the story of Le Chambon. I read books with a soft lead pencil in hand. When a word, phrase, sentence or paragraph nudges me, I mark a line in the margin, | .  When I read an unfamiliar word or one I can’t confidently define, I put a √ in the margin. And when I see a reference to a song, a painting, a book title, an event that I’d like to know more about I also use the √. I usually don’t stop reading to look further at the subject. But when I comb through the book a second time, writing down compelling quotes, etc. I will follow up on the check marks.

How did I find Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed?  I had decided to cull out Barbara Tuchman’s sparkling book of essays, Practicing History, from my library, a decision that still gnaws. Before I let it go, I transferred notes to my journal. In an essay entitled Mankind’s Better Moments Tuchman notes some astonishing accomplishments:

the enclosure of the Zuider Zee in the Netherlands adding half a million acres to the country;
the marvel of Gothic cathedrals;
Viking seamanship;
the perseverance of La Salle, who mastered eight languages before he set off exploring;
William Wilberforce’s work to abolish slave trade;
Le Chambon, a Huguenot village in Southern France devoted to rescuing Jews. √ 

Le Chambon? I had heard of Huguenots—French Protestants—but not Le Chambon.


Intrigued, I found this clip on YouTube:

 

 

And I found Philip P. Hallie’s book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. The book is essentially a biography of the Reformed pastor, André Trocmé and his wife, Magda. Trocmé’s belief in God was at the living center of the rescue efforts of the village xxi. Le Chambon was a remote mountain village, predominantly Protestant (Reformed and Plymouth Brethren) in a predominantly Catholic country. The Trocmés were unshakably committed to obeying the Sermon on the Mount 28.

In practice this means that the village rescued between 3,000 and 5,000 Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. They kept many Jewish children at a private school; some family groups stayed until they could seek refuge in Switzerland. All the villagers took great risks, but they considered harboring others more important than their own safety.

 

“Look hard for ways to make little moves against destructiveness.”  — André Trocmé

Trocmé attended Union Theological Seminary in 1925 (five years before Dietrich Bonhoeffer was there) and found the Social Gospel too secular, too rational, lacking piety. Like Bonhoeffer, Trocmé lived intimately with those he shepherded.

For the rest of his life he sought another union [an organization he belonged to as a child during WWI], another intimate community of people praying together and finding in their love for one another and for God the passion and the will to extinguish indifference and solitude. From the union he learned that only in such an intimate community, in a home or in a village, could the Protestant idea of a “priesthood of all believers” work. Only in intimacy could people save each other. 57

A recurring motif in the book is that André Trocmé gave himself. He gave himself to his people, visiting them in their homes regularly. He gave himself to his community by his involvement in their lives. When he came home his children rushed him, enveloping him in hugs because he brought himself to them.  Hallie expatiates on this theme in one of the most profound passages in the book:

When you give somebody a thing without giving yourself, you degrade both parties by making the receiver utterly passive and by making yourself a benefactor standing there to receive thanks—and even sometimes obedience—as repayment. But when you give yourself, nobody is degraded—in fact, both parties are elevated by a shared joy. When you give yourself, the things you are giving become to use Trocmé’s word, féconde (fertile, fruitful). What you give creates new, vigorous life, instead of arrogance on the one hand and passivity on the other. 72

At one time, Trocmé is asked whether another group struggling in WWII should practice non-violent resistance. His response was that a foundation first has to be laid before such a tactic can be efficacious. Trocmé, along with Pastor Edouard Theis and schoolteacher Roger Darcissac had poured their lives into resisting evil and teaching their neighbors before such visible means of resisting became necessary.

I tend to look for perfect heroes and tidy endings. I was sad to read that a personal tragedy reduced Pastor Trocmé’s faith and that Mme Trocmé seemed to hold faith at arm’s length even as she worked indefatigably.

Writing about this book brings threads of recent events together: Today, April 9th, is the anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s death. There are striking similarities and certain differences between André Trocmé and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As I look at the photo of the Trocmés above, Magda Trocmé reminds me of Edith Shaeffer, a different kind of rescuer, who died on April 6th. And finally, the news of Rick Warren’s son’s suicide on April 5th coincides with a Trocmé family tragedy.

Ever curious, I wondered where the surviving children were. I discovered that Nelly Trocmé Hewett, 85, was giving talks last October and is scheduled to speak tomorrow at Macalester College in the Twin Cities. How immensely would I love to be in that audience.

Well, Hello Will Shakespeare

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For more than a decade I’ve been thinking, I really want to read through all of Shakespeare’s works. It’s like the idea that someday all my photos will be in scrapbooks. Happy thought. Inspired by my sister-in-law who recently read a whole slough slew of Shakespeare, and suspecting that it would be like cleaning a cupboard—it feels so good that I want to keep going—I plunged into The Comedy of Errors. More on that, later. But it was true: drinking the language was drinking a Caramel Macchiato.  I had to read sections more than once to tease out the meaning, but that was offset by laugh out loud lines and the satisfaction of fitting words.

How many plays did the bard write? Thirty-seven. I’ve read eleven, but I’d like to read through them all fresh again. If I averaged one play a month, I’d hit pay dirt by the end of 2015. I want to read the poems too, but that’s another thing.

Although I own a Complete Works of Shakespeare, I find it annoying. It is formatted in two columns and whenever there isn’t quite enough room at the end of the line the leftover is printed on the line above it. You can get the complete works on Kindle for $1.99, but I don’t want to read from the Kindle. I want an edition with footnotes on the same page, a running synopsis, explanatory notes. I want to converse with Shakespeare via pencil marks in the margin. I want a book for a student. I have a few student editions: Cambridge University Press, Oxford, Modern Library. I’m using my Paperbackswap credits and looking for $0.01 Amazon deals to fill in the gaps.

I’m going to try to read each play in one sitting, with a short intermission if needed. If I saw the play, I would sit through the all the acts in one performance.

Comedies

All’s Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors √
Cymbeline
Love’s Labour’s Lost √
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice  √
A Midsummer Night’s Dream √
Much Ado About Nothing
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Taming of the Shrew √
The Tempest √
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night √
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter’s Tale

Histories

Henry IV, part 1 √
Henry IV, part 2
Henry V  √
Henry VI, part 1
Henry VI, part 2
Henry VI, part 3
Henry VIII
King John
Richard II
Richard III

Tragedies

Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Hamlet  √
Julius Caesar  √
King Lear
Macbeth √
Othello √
Romeo and Juliet √
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus

In The Comedy of Errors two sets of identical twins converge at Ephesus. They were separated in a shipwreck, and both twins share the same names. The man [Antipholus] and his slave [Dromio] (from Syracuse) are searching for their lost brothers [Antipholus] and his slave [Dromio] (from Ephesus). You can imagine the confusion.

Early in the play these Antipholus-S speaks poignant words of one on an impossible quest:

I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop…

When Antipholus-S finds his supposed slave, Dromio-E, hasn’t fulfilled the commands he gave him, he begins to beat him. Dromio-E is astonished!

What mean you, sir? For God’s sake hold your hands.
Nay, an you will not, sir, I’ll take my heels.

I find this word play (hold, hands, take, heels) charming. Shakespeare’s rhythms also delight me. Saying the next sentence ten times would not quench the joy it brings.

Dromio, thou Dromio, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot.

When her supposed husband is acting cold and distant, Adriana has some poignant lines. When her sister shushes her, Adriana exposes the discrepancy in how we view trouble, depending on who owns it:

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry.
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.

This is a comedy, which means there is a happy ending. Everything is sorted out and brothers—two sets—are reunited with much embracing and feasting.

Les Misérables, Quotes from Part One: Fantine

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It’s been three weeks since I’ve finished Les Misérables. It is so enormous, that I find myself intimidated. I decided to break my responses into bits. One post will be Great Quotes from the Boring Parts; another post on Words I Learned from Les Miz; another, perhaps, on Problems with Hugo’s Theology. After those, I might gird myself with courage and write my response to this masterpiece.

For now, however, I will just shower you with favorite quotes from Part One: Fantine. Read them and you may be drawn to the source. Or not.

…in the remaining time he (Monseigneur Myriel) worked. That is to say, he dug his garden or read and wrote, and for him both kinds of work bore the same name; both he called gardening. ‘The spirit is a garden,’ he said.  P. 33 [Garden, read and write: a life I could love]

The devil may visit us, but God lives here.  p.47 [a great distinction]

With the admirable delicacy of instinct they knew that some forms of solicitude can be an encumbrance. p. 48 [Isn’t this profound? And so true?]

There are men who dig for gold; he dug for compassion. p. 69 [Monseignor Bienvenu: my favorite character. Name means well + come]

The priest’s forgiveness was the most formidable assault he had ever sustained; p. 116 [forgiveness = assault: intriguing]

She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger. p.125

Gluttony punished the glutton. Indigestion was designed by God to impose morality on stomachs. p. 136 [Ouch!]

…with the chaste indecency of childhood, displayed a stretch of bare stomach. p. 145 [chaste indecency: another glorious paradox]

‘What’s your little girl’s name?’ ‘Cosette.’ In fact, it was Euphrasie, but the mother turned it into Cosette by the use of that touching alchemy of simple people which transforms Josef into Pepita and Françoise into Silette. It is a kind of linguistics which baffles the etymologist. We once knew a grandmother who contrived to turn Theodore into Gnon. p. 149 [Laugh out loud delight!]

The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself… p. 162

He [Javert] possessed the conscience appropriate to his function, and his duties were his religion; he was a spy in the way that other men are priests.  p. 166 [a chilling comparison]

Curiosity is a form of gluttony: to see is to devour. p. 183 [Guilty as charged]

God moves the soul as He moves the oceans. p.213

 

October Reads

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Picadilly Jim  (1917)  P. G. Wodehouse’s descriptions delight: a comfortable stoutness, a face that had been “edited and re-edited” by a boxing career, affected imitation geniuses, the art of raising eyebrows, dazzled by the glamour of incivility. And my favorite from this book: 

…her mouth had the coldly forbidding look of the closed door of a subway express when you have just missed the train. It bade you keep your distance on pain of injury. 

I first met Ogden Ford, “a fourteen-year-old boy of a singularly unloveable type”, in The Little Nugget; the kidnappers are ready at the end of the book to pay the family to take this son of a millionaire back. In Picadilly Jim there is another scheme by family members to get him kidnapped again. The main character pretends to be someone else who is pretending to be himself. Five stars, pure joy.

 

Moby Dick  (1851)  I read my husband to sleep every night with Herman Melville’s classic, in preparation for seeing Jake Heggie’s opera, Moby Dick, in San Francisco. We have officially abandoned Moby as a read aloud together. I plan to continue reading about cetology, or study of whales, and the story of Ahab’s vengeance.   I keep thinking this is a re-read, but I can’t be sure. There are gems, but the pace is slow.

 

Kitchen Sonnets and Lyrics of Domesticity (1931)  Ethel Romig Fuller, poetry editor for The Oregonian and Oregon’s third poet laureate, writes poetry that glorifies the common things of life. She sees cleaning as creating beauty. Fuller sees poetry in hanging the wash on a clothesline, beauty in canning, tidied calm in ironing, and a happy heart in washing windows.  She glorifies the common stuff of life.  A Song of Home speaks of happy hearts and tallying every blessing.  While a few of the poems made my modern head wince, overall I was inspired to devour those dust bunnies in the corners and love the blessing of making a home beautiful.

Are petitions less fervent, if one only asks
As one works, for strength for finishing tasks?

 

Skylines (1952) Ethel Romig Fuller — The poet turns her eye to nature: the rivers, the mountains, the sea, the seasons of life in the Pacific Northwest. Infused with joy and sorrow, she writes of the surgery of grief, a fugutive beauty, of “binning” the summer. 

Sea

Sea is a great hunger pressed
To a full white mother breast,
Where it ravens till the tide
Of appetite is satisfied;
Where it slumbers till the shore
Aches with plenitude once more.

 

Spot the Book Title (2007) Simon Drew — A Collection of Cryptic Nonsense and Pointless Hidden Meanings. A fun puzzle book, so visual that it is hard to describe using only words. Here’s an example under “The Plays of Williams Shakespeare”:  comma + pot of tea + o + carousel + oars.   There is no page at the end of the book with answers. If you must have a puzzle solved, you send a check to Drew’s charity. He explains, “This is not a payment: it is a fine for giving up.” 

My Reading Life (2010) Pat Conroy — He reads, he writes, he journals, he talks, he listens. From the time I could talk I took an immense pleasure in running down words, shagging them like fly balls in some spacious field.  He honors the mother who hungered for art, for illumination, for some path to lead her to a shining way to call her own. She lit signal fires in the hills for her son to feel and follow. 

I think I like Pat Conroy because we share the same writing weaknesses: sentimental, often disastrously so; I was over-dramatic, showy with adjectives, safe with form, weak on verbs, over-reliant on adverbs. I love his love for words, but ache at the estrangement that still exists in his personal life. One side of me would love to read 200 pages a day like he does, but I would have to isolate myself from people—more than I already do— in order to achieve that goal. 

A Chain of Hands (1993, posthumously), Carol Ryrie Brink — Ironic, on the last day of Daylight Savings Time, with the gripes about the change, to read this phrase: day-by-day satisfaction of daylight and dark. This book only makes sense if you have read several other CRB titles first.

 

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2008) Maggie Jackson  The premise of this book is simple. The way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention — the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. Jackson writes about a culture of skimming, new ways to disconnect from others, attention splicing, the dangers of multitasking, detachment, untethering, outsourcing memory to gadgets. The structure of the book did not make sense to me, but I found much to ponder.

 

The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (2011)  David Mamet — Conversions fascinate me. “I used to think…” is my favorite dinner party prompt. Mamet, former voice of Liberals, becomes the voice of Conservatives. The chapters don’t appear to build on one another; it feels like reading a collection of essays. Mamet’s Judaism informs his perspective and sits under every page of the book. He is blunt, articulate, and controversial. And he quotes Anthony Trollope.

My interest in politics began when I noticed that I acted differently than I spoke, that I had seen ‘the government’ commit sixty years of fairly unrelieved and catastrophic error nationally and internationally, that I not only hated every wasted hard-earned cent I spent in taxes, but the trauma and misery they produced…

 

For All the Tea in China

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How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History

Tea met all the definitions of intellectual property: it was a product of high commercial value, it was manufactured using a formula and process unique to China, which China protected fiercely; and it gave China a vast advantage over its competitors.

Robert Fortune was a plant hunter sent to China by the East India Company to steal tea plants. He shipped them to Great Britain’s greatest possession, India, where they would be grown, giving England its own source of a precious commodity, thus bringing the price of tea down and making it available to England’s citizens.

This is a fun book on many levels: 19th century, England, China, espionage, horticulture, tea and opium.

I listened to the audio book, read by the author. I found her voice a bit off-putting. I have found few audiobooks read by authors that I’m crazy about. My interest lagged at times. This is the kind of book which required close attention: unfamiliar place names and era, scientific, political and economic considerations of a complex subject. I listened to several discs more than once to keep up with the details.

Recommended for history buffs, tea enthusiasts, and science lovers.

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I enjoy participating in Semicolon’s Saturday Review of Books.

The Giraffe That Walked To Paris

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My first exposure to the Egyptian pasha’s gift to the king of France came by reading Michael Allin’s book Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris (my review). Since then I’ve wanted to buy an affordable edition of Nancy Milton’s children’s book The Giraffe That Walked to Paris. An inter-library loan (thank you Enterprise Public Library) allowed me to test-drive it with a 7-year old and a 3-year old. Two thumbs up!

This is the kind of book which can create a thirst for history. There are 20 pages of solid text, denser than a typical picture book, but with illustrations that keep kids interested.  Imagine it is 1826, and a nation that had never seen a giraffe. Think through the logistics of moving such a large animal before the time of cars and trucks or trains.  A ship was fitted to transport her from Alexandria across the Mediterranean Sea to Marseilles. She walked from Marseilles to Paris, about 425 miles! The illustration shows one man leading the giraffe. Actually it took four men with four ropes to keep the giraffe secure. A gift for the king can’t be running off! For France, it was the Next Big Thing: there was an explosion in giraffe art, giraffe china, giraffe linens, and even a giraffe hairstyle.

I am fascinated how one animal can so greatly impact a culture. If you happen to be in Paris, you can see La Girafe’s remains (what does one call the non-living specimen?) mounted, on display. If you happen to be in Paris, make sure you visit Jardin des Plantes, the second oldest zoo in the world.

One could easily springboard from the reading of this book to a short introduction to geography, zoology, taxidermy or meteorology.

Here’s a fun quote:

It isn’t easy to make a raincoat for a giraffe,
but Professor Saint-Hilaire designed a good one
that covered her whole body and buttoned down the front.
It even had a hood to keep her head and long neck dry.

 

I want to read two other children’s books about La Girafe: Mary Holmes’ A Giraffe Goes to Paris and Judith St. George’s Zarafa: The Giraffe Who Walked to the King.

In a most delicious synchronicity, it turns out my other grandsons went to the San Diego zoo and saw giraffes.

 

Two Are Better Than One

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I haven’t read your novel, but I can imagine what it’s like.
I think it is an excellent exercise in the use of your imaginations.
I’m pleased with you for writing it.
But now you must begin to look around you here at home.
Use all of your senses to find out what kind of a place you are living in.
Ask yourself how it smells, how it tastes, how it sounds,
as well as how it looks.
Then someday when you wish to write real books,
you will put your real experiences into them.
You will not need to go to imaginary countries half the world away
for your material. Perhaps someday you will even write
about this very year in your lives in Idaho. 180

My friend Noel and I were sitting in her van, waiting for the key to a building. As we chatted, she looked straight ahead and said, “Carol Ryrie Brink grew up in that house. You know the author of Caddie Woodlawn?” My eyes widened as I nodded. At one time I loved Caddie Woodlawn more than Laura Ingalls. “She wrote several adult novels about the early days of Moscow,” Noel continued. “You might like them.”  I put the titles on my wishlist and waited. This summer I am on a Carol Ryrie Brink reading streak. Before I began her trilogy about Moscow, ID, I read a little-known children’s book.

Two are Better Than One is a superb story for girls in that delicate time between dolls and bras.  Chrystal Reese and Cordelia Lark live a few blocks apart in the early 1900’s. Chrys is alone with her aunt and grandmother in a quiet house. Cordy lives with her dad and mom and four older brothers in a bustling house. When they aren’t playing with dolls, or going to Dorcas Club meetings, or exclaiming “Swellissimus!”, Chrys and Cordy decide to write a novel—by taking turns writing a chapter— about two dolls: The Romantical Perils of Lester and Lynette. This novel, included in the book with its juvenile spelling and construction gave me the loudest horse laugh:

“Lester!” screamed Lynette, trying hard not to swoon,
“You have come in the very niche of time.” 85

Miss Hickenlooper, a new teacher, is a problem. She doesn’t understand them, even confiscates the miniature dolls. The girls nourish their grievance by writing a hate poem. She discovers the poem, the girls see the hurt they’ve afflicted. This section has stuck with me weeks after I finished the book. Here a few snippets from that scene:

All along they had thought of Miss Hickenlooper as their enemy,
a comical one to be sure, but an enemy nevertheless.
And now she seemed to be not an enemy or even a villain
but just a person who had been mocked and hurt
by a couple of girls. 52

 
…we didn’t mean it for hate.
We thought it was—well, sort of funny.
It made us feel better.
We didn’t think about how you would feel. 53

The girls go to some parties and begin to neglect the dolls. They serve punch at a college dance. The novel gets finished and Chrys and Cordy decide to stage a wedding for the dolls. This back and forth between the little girl and the almost grown-up mimics the conflict I’ve witnessed in adolescent girls. 

As I get to know Carol Ryrie Brink, I see many autobiographical elements in this sweet story of friendship. The dedication is “…for Charlotte. She, better than anyone else, will be able to sift through all the make-believe and find the grains of truth.”  Like dear Laura Ingalls, the story of Chrys and Cordy harks back to a time when a girl had to learn how “to keep herself happy and amused.” 

 

I Know, Let’s Talk About Hormones

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Ah, you know…hormones. At my age, I hear this all the time. I say it myself. It’s the reason we are hot, the reason we are cold, the reason we are wet, the reason we are dry, the reason we can’t sleep, the reason we can’t wake up.  Many women my age feel like a hostage to hormones.

If you need to take back your body, you will find much to consider in this book. Stanton addresses diet, exercise, stress, supplements, and, most importantly, bioidentical hormones. The book’s design and writing is about as exciting as a Wikipedia article. But the content is helpful.

Bioidentical? Huh? This neologism describes a “hormone [which] is exactly the same as a hormone made by our bodies.”  This is different from conventional hormone replacement therapy.

And we have just tripped off the path of traditional medicine onto the scenic bypass of alternative medicine. In other words, (lean close to me so I can whisper) the FDA hasn’t approved bioidentical hormones.

Yes, there is controversy. Google “bioidentical hormones” and you will dance your way into the debate.

 

May I tell you my story? Purely anecdotal evidence, but it’s my anecdote. 

I’m not a physician, but I’m a pretty good reader. When the hot/cold/wet/dry problems began—roughly seven years ago—, my most pressing problem was an utterly deflated outlook on life. I woke up, took a shower, and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed.  Stanton discusses this in a section delightfully titled NOT YOUR MOTHER’S MENOPAUSE. 

Initially, many women notice they have less energy or zest for life.
They don’t get as excited about things that should matter,
or just don’t have the energy to do things they used to enjoy.
One day follows another, but none of them brings much joy.
They might notice themselves getting irritable or exploding
for reasons that, in retrospect, seem ridiculous.

 

My respoonse to problems is to read. Shoot, my approach to life is to read. I looked through the lenses of both traditional and alternative medicine, searching for some sense. Across the spectrum, three words flashed: diet and exercise. No one argued with basic stuff like drinking more water and taking a walk. And I firmly believe that so many problems we blame hormones for can be corrected with real food and real movement.

I work for a compounding pharmacy; I am an accountant and cannot pronounce the drug names. But, we have a library of books and CDs (where I got Hormone Harmony) that we lend out to physicians and customers. I took John Lee’s What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause. When I read parts aloud to my husband, he dismissed it as rubbish. But one Sunday afternoon, we listened to Dr. Lee speak and his words filled us with hope.  “Let’s do this,” Curt said, although all the “doing” was mine. So I began using an over-the-counter bioidentical progesterone cream. 

Because of my symptoms, my doctor had urged surgery as a solution. Well. He hadn’t urged surgery, but I’ve been longing to pair up that delicious pair of words. The big H. Take it out and be done with it. It made sense to everyone but me. I acknowledge that I have issues: my mom died immediately after a minor gynecological surgery. I wasn’t hysterical, but I refused to consent to a hysterectomy, to use another phrase I’ve tasted these many years.

It wasn’t a shazam! solution, but I made progress with progesterone. I knew my OB/GYN would raise his eyebrows when I disclosed this bit of information. “I think you are wasting your money,” were his words. I decided to push back. “Are you telling me not to use bioidentical hormones? Because I want full cooperation between us; if you say to stop I will either stop or I’ll find a different doctor.”  I respected him and don’t believe in doing stuff—medically speaking—behind my physician’s back. He shrugged and relented.

After a few years, I did my own experiment. I stopped the progesterone. The hot/cold/wet/dry symptoms came right back. That convinced me, and I continue on, with over the counter progesterone (which doesn’t require an RX to buy). Ideally, one should take a $150 saliva test that tells exactly what your hormone levels are. A physician or nurse practitioner uses that data to prescribed an individually formulated compound prescription for you.

If you are curious, click on the link above and use the Look Inside! feature. If you type “frequently” in the search, you’ll be able to read a large part of the the FAQs.

China Road & City of Tranquil Light

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One blessing of living in the age of interwebs is that it is much easier to communicate directly with an author. After I finished Bo Caldwell”s exquisite City of Tranquil Light, I found her Facebook page and thanked her for her transformational book. And she graciously replied! This morning, after I finished reading Rob Gifford’s eye-opening book China Road, I sniffed around and found a podcast of Gifford in which he reads segments of his books.  [Addendum: even better is this 7 part series On the Road in China.]

Two of my favorite genres are travel memoirs and historical fiction. China Road takes us west from Shanghai to Kazakhstan along the 3,000-mile-highway, Route 312 in the twenty-first century. City of Tranquil Light tells the story of Will and Katherine, who move to northern China as Mennonite missionaries in 1906.

Gifford’s book put a face on China. It was the first book I’ve read about China that didn’t read/feel foreign, where the I thought of the subjects he interviewed first as people, then Chinese. Gifford created a thirst in me to know more about China; his list of recommended books has weighted down my to be read (TBR) list. His prose and style reminded me of Colin Thubron’s  The Lost Heart of Asia.  William Kirby writes, “If there is one book to read before you visit China, it is China Road.”

Bo Caldwell’s lyrical writing took me apart and put me back together again. The story is inspired by her maternal grandparents, missionaries who adopted China as their homeland. Caldwell effectively alternates the telling of the story between Will’s reminiscences at the end of his life and Katherine’s contemporary journal entries. I thought, when I finished Eric Metaxus’ Bonhoeffer in January, that it would be my favorite book of 2012. But City of Tranquil Light at least is tied for first, and is clearly my favorite fiction of 2012, thus far. Reading Bo Caldwell is like reading Wendell Berry, a lofty compliment.

Missionaries have gotten a bad rap in most books published in the last twenty years. It was refreshing to read, in both titles, winsome accounts of missionaries. Rob Gifford calls James Hudson Taylor one of his childhood heroes. He also introduced me to Mildred Cable and Francesca French, two stalwart middle-aged English women who tramped across the Gobi Desert and wrote “one of the great China travel books.”  Bo Caldwell makes you love her main characters. I want to find an elderly man in an assisted living home in Claremont, CA, put my hand on his arm, and say, “Tell me your story.”

Two highly excellent books that are guaranteed to raise your interest in China.

Heart of a Soldier

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Heading out the door, remembering that my iPod needed to be re-charged, I swung by the library to pick up audiobook. As I scanned the shelves, someone bumped into me and apologized. “Oh, it’s you!” my dear friend Jan said. We were both in the same lane: looking for a good listen on a long, solo driving trip. In her hand was The Heart of a Soldier, which she pressed into mine. “I just finished this: it’s quite good, you’ll appreciate it,” she assured me.

That’s how I came to listen to Kate Blaise’s memoir of a military marriage. The first half could be the story of any bright-eyed spunky grand-daughter of a Lutheran minister raised in a small town. I had read David McCullough’s Truman last summer, so I connected with the flavor of Missouri.

My interest was peaked after Kate and Mike—high-school sweethearts—combine marriage and the military. I am neither a fan of women in combat positions nor of married couples living in separate quarters; yet I found Kate’s story compelling. She is honest about the stress of dual military careers. Because she held a higher rank than her husband, he saluted her in public. They were stationed in Korea when the 9-11 attack was made; later they were deployed in Iraq. I had just started the last disc when I arrived home. The next morning I sat down and wept—unable to combine listening with cooking or housework—as I came to the heart-breaking conclusion. Like all good stories, this one stuck with me long after I had finished it.

When Mike and I did manage to squeeze in a weekend together, we fought over even the smallest things: where to eat, what movie to see. We had fallen out of the habit of being together. Our visits, thought short, were extremely stressful. There was the pressure to get along because we didn’t know when we would see each other again; the pressure of squeezing a month’s worth of good times into a weekend when what we needed to do was resolve countless problems and issues. There was simply too much catching up to do and too little time to do it. We were fighting and clawing to feel needed in each other’s lives. 125

You won’t find a gushy, sentimental story: Kate strikes me as a stoic. You won’t agree with all her opinions. But if you are interested in a military memoir that isn’t so edgy that you might lose your lunch (there is mild profanity), if you are curious about a life as a woman in the military, if you are interested in a ground-level view of Iraq, I would recommend The Heart of a Soldier. Reading it was a vivid reminder to me of the risks our soldiers take and the sacrifices they make.