Tag Archives: bookreview

Outliers

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Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software engineers appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are.

 

Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, strikes a blow against individualism. When he looks carefully at the super successful—outliers—he examines the generation, class, ethnicity, and culture of the outlier. Granted, an outlier like Bill Gates has genius.  But that alone cannot explain Gates’ success. Gladwell tells us why. This engaging book is a string of stories illustrating both the opportunities and the legacies given to many outliers, some whose names are household words, others more obscure. Gladwell discusses the 10,000 hour rule: that to excel at anything you must spend at least 10,000 hours working at it. In the story of Korean pilots, Gladwell discusses frankly how our ethnicity affects our success and/or failure.

While I’ve been digesting this book, I thought of an outlier in the blogging world: Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman. Many of you knew her as a homeschool mom on the Well-Trained Mind forum. She started a blog in 2006 that quickly exploded into a Big Deal. If you look at Ree’s gifts, you will find a writer whose appeal crosses cultural lines, a little naughty for some and wickedly funny to the rest. She parlayed her story of city girl transplanted to a cattle ranch into an entertaining story compete with cliff hangers. But Gladwell would urge us to look at where Ree is from, what opportunities she was given. My theory is that she is a marketing genius. In one sense she bought her audience, offering regular giveaways for high-ticket items. She had the capital to give away Nikon cameras and $500 Amazon gift cards, converting the number of clicks into advertising revenue. That alone would not have been enough to keep her audience, but it attracted them in the first place. The daughter of a surgeon, she was raised with the expectation of hard work and excellence. This does not  diminish Ree’s writing, Ree’s photography, Ree’s cooking, Ree’s everything: she just didn’t do it alone.

Happily, my favorite part of this book is the introduction. Happily? Yes! Because you can go Amazon click on Look Inside! and read it yourself. It tells the story of Roseto, PA, a community whose medical history is so much better than the norm that researches spent years working to crack open its secret. The answer, revealed in the eleven page introduction, is profound. I urge you to read it.

 

In the continuing saga of synchronicity, in one of my current reads, The Creative Habit, which predates Outliers, Twyla Tharp employs the same reasoning of Outliers to explain Mozart’s success. You can also read this by following the link, clicking Look Inside!, and entering Mozart in the search box.

Marriage Bureau for Rich People

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If Alexander McCall Smith were to write a book about an Indian matchmaker, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People would be the book. Light and delightful, exotic yet familiar, this cheerful book charmed me.

Through Mr. Ali, a retired government clerk, and owner of a newly opened marriage bureau, and his assistant, Aruna, the details of daily life in India are displayed. How, for instance, offering a drink of water to a guest is traditional courtesy, necessary for basic hospitality. That doesn’t sound earth-shattering, but if you fail to offer the glass of water, great offense is given/taken. Zama names many of the Indian dishes/customs, but always offers an explanation. Some of the caste and religious distinctions are harder to grasp, but don’t distract from the flow of the story.

Gentle humor pops up like marshmallows in hot chocolate.

He scowled and turned to Ramanujam and said, “Take a seat.” He added, sotto voce, “You are taking our daughter, what’s a seat?” 

What I appreciated the most about Marriage Bureau is the perspective it gave me on arranged marriages. 

I never expected this of you…. Have you no thought of your family’s honor? And what about [her sister’s] future? Which respectable family will accept her into their household if you have a love marriage? I am disappointed in you. You are the last person I expected to do something like this.

We don’t marry for love. You know that. Love is supposed to follow marriage, not the other way around. A marriage is not just about two people. It is about two families.

Even better for understanding arranged marriage was this first-hand essay, First Comes Marriage, which Zama wrote for the New York Times. I am impressed and intrigued by Farahad Zama. Raised in the slums of an Indian coastal city, he was raised from the slums by the encouragement of his parents and his love of books. His acknowledgement at the end of the book made me smile: This book would not have been possible, but for […] My two boys, who think that all writers will be as famous and rich as J. K. Rowling. If only. 

Thank you to Laura, without whom, I would not have known about this title.

To Say Nothing of the Dog

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Whenever I’ve mentioned Jerome K. Jerome’s 1889 classic, Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog), a small chorus of readers entreated urged me to read Connie Willis’ science fiction book To Say Nothing of the Dog.

This chorus included readers I trust, those with whom I share a kinship in books. But, really. Look at the cover. I ask you: would you feel compelled to read this book? And when was the last time I read science fiction? I just don’t have the stamina or brain power to keep all the galaxies and unfamiliar creatures straight.

But I have a personal reading philosophy: deep and wide. I choose to read a few books that require patience and effort. Similarly, I like to widen the scope of my reading so I’m not stuck in one genre, one century, or one culture.

So.

I read the book.

And, dear chorus of friends, dear ones…I LOVED IT.

How can an author born in 1945 write so timelessly? With such humor and grace?

And how does one describe this book? The story is set in Oxford in 2057. Historians use a time travel machine to research historical periods. They are not allowed to change history. Ned, a specialist in 20th century history, is transported to 19th century Victorian England. So the book is much more Victorian, more literary than sci-fi. As he mingles and converses with Victorian-era people, Ned runs his thoughts through a mental screen to see if they would make sense. Before he can reference a poem, a piece of music, or an historical fact, he must make sure it is truly historical to 1888.

My delight gurgled when Ned is boating down the Thames with Terence, an Oxford student he met, and he sees three men in a boat, and breaks the cardinal rule of time-travel behavior.

“It is them! I said. “Terence, do you know who that is? It’s Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog.”

“Dog?” Terence said contemptuously. “You call that a dog?” He looked fondly at Cyril, who was snoring in the bottom of the boat. “Cyril could swallow him in one bite.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s the Three Men in a Boat. The tin of pineapple and George’s banjo and the maze.”

“The maze?” Terence said blankly.

“Yes, you know, Harris went in the Hampton Court Maze with this map and all these people followed him and the map didn’t work and they got hopelessly lost and they had to call out for the keeper to come and get them out.”

I leaned out for a better look. There they were, Jerome K. Jerome and the two friends he had immortalized (to say nothing of the dog) on that historic trip up the Thames. They had no idea they were going to be famous a hundred and fifty years from now, that their adventures with the cheese and the steam launch and the swans would be read by countless generations.

Each chapter has a dozen or so sub-headers listed at the beginning, the kind of delightful detail one seldom sees in modern books. Here’s an example from Chapter Seven:

Importance of Locks in the Victorian Era—”Loose lips sink
ships”—Tristan and Isolde—Pursuit—The French Revolution—An
Argument Against Tipping—A Traumatized Cat—Soot—The Bataan
Death March—Sleep—The Boat Is Found at Last—An Unexpected
Development—Importance of Meetings to History—Lennon and
McCartney—I Search for a Tin-Opener—What I Found

If you are an Anglophile, if you like Jeeves, Holmes, Jerome, Chesterton or Agatha, you would enjoy this book. If you like books with the interjections Pshaw! Balderdash! and Rubbish!, you’ll like this one. It isn’t necessary to have first read JKJ’s Three Men to enjoy To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I recommend you read it sometime. Here is a generous sampling of quotes from Three Men. 

Connie Willis has made me eager to read more science fiction. I want to re-read C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy and I definitely want to read more Connie Willis.

Fiction by Elisabeth Elliot

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The foreword by J.I. Packer is worth the price of the book. From his advice to writers,

…there are three essentials: first, something to say, something you have seen and want to share; second, enough technique to enable it to find its own best shape on paper; third, a strong bottom on which you can sit for hours together handcrafting sentences, paragraphs, and chapters.

to his justification of the novel,

Thus, if you want to feel the force of Tolstoy’s view of Christianity, you read, not What I Believe, but his novel, Resurrection.

to his discussion of Christian fiction,

Unhappily, these moral tales, though not novels, often claim this name, and so spread the idea that this is what “real” Christian novels are like. The result, both funny and sad, is that when folk feed on this diet read a genuine novel by a Christian novelist (Graham Greene, say, or Charles Williams, or George Target, or Flannery O’Conner, or Fyodor Dostoevski, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) their appreciation, if any, is overshadowed by regret and puzzlement that the author did not so manipulate his characters as to produce a straightforward moral tale, clearly illustrating the gospel.

and, finally, his assessment of how Elisabeth Elliot’s book illustrates the task of a novelist, are spot on. Four pages of profundity. I repeat: worth the price of the book.

 

No Graven Image is not a feel-good, light read. It makes demands on the reader. But it is a book I highly recommend. Margaret Sparhawk is a young single woman, a solo missionary in a small mountain village in Ecuador. The story gives an honest portrait of the joys, frustrations, doubts, questions, hopes, and confusion of a Christian trying to spread the gospel. She sees and critically evaluates both the efforts, attitudes and culture of fellow missionaries and of the Quichuas.

At the time of its publication (1966) it had to be controversial. My brother-in-law saw me reading the book and remarked, “Oh. The book where the missionary swears.” Well, yes. The missionary swears. And is shocked that such a word is even part of her vocabulary. But one word should not define the tenor of the whole book.

Though the ending isn’t happy, neither is it hopeless. There are questions: some answered, some left unanswered. The clear and flowing narrative is a joy to read.  Here are some samples:

[fashion] “Sensible” shoes carried all the stigma of the missionary spinster image which I loathed, but I could unhappily foresee my own progressive conformity to this image. Even that, however, could be endured for Christ’s sake. 85

[children’s vaccinations] If only missionary work were so simple, I reflected. If people could be corralled and injected, like so many cattle branded, without explanation or persuasion or personal sense of need. I had heard missionaries say “I gave him the Gospel!” as though it had been an injection, and now, as the comparison presented itself, I began to ponder just how important it might be that an individual be prepared for the Gospel. 151

[overwhelming need] I suppose anyone who tries to help people in any way soon becomes overwhelmed with the endlessness of the task. So he has two choices. He can give up at the start, or he can accept his limitations and go on doing what he can. 152

[Quichua culture] It was all very well to accept life and its conditions without complaining—I had been pleased to find that the crises need not be turned over to the professionals as I had been taught to think. Birth, marriage, accidents, old age, death—all these things were dealt with by the people themselves, in the sanctuary of the home as a part of the course of life, not to be interfered with by outsiders, and whatever might be said for the other side, the Indian way seemed laudably humane and in harmony with nature. 200

[simple life] Rosa sat back with one heel curled under her, one neat small foot stretched out beside the fire, and laid the baby across her lap. He burrowed furiously under her blouse, found what he wanted, and let his feet flop in contentment. His small snortings and smackings mingled with the scraping of the spoon and the rattle of the corn. Firelight, shelter, food to eat, love. You don’t know what you’ve got, Rosa. 218

[after a bad outcome] God, if He was merely my accomplice, had betrayed me. If, on the other hand, He was God, He had freed me. 243

 

Barbara Tuchman’s Practicing History

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I started out loving Barbara Tuchman’s book of essays. The first eight essays, on the craft of writing history, sent me over the moon. My ardor went down just a degree or two in the next section, which might be described as history in small chunks. Although the final section, in which she comments about (1960-1970) current affairs, yields nuggets, I found myself in disagreement with Tuchman and disengaged with her writing. It seems to me the further away the period about which she writes, e.g. Medieval times, the Great War, the more I like her.  That said, I would have no qualms recommending this book to an aspiring writer or an avid student of history.

Tuchman returns often to the theme of selection, the art of leaving things out.

The historian is continually being beguiled down fascinating byways and sidetracks. But the art of writing—the test of the artist—is to resist the beguilement and cleave to the subject. 18

Happily, Tuchman utilizes some great stories that were cut from her books to illustrate this point. Striking discoveries, fascinating though they be, must fit into the structure and scope of the book to be useful.  These behind-the-scene revelations reminded me of watching a DVD with the director’s commentary. Consequently, this book is more valuable to one who has read many of Tuchman’s books.

Tucked in this collection is a love song to libraries.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. 76

The breadth of Barbara Tuchman’s experience—even expertise—leaves me breathless: China, Japan, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Europe, Medieval times, late 19th century, WWI, Vietnam. Those interested in Israel will appreciate two essays on the young/ancient nation written in 1967.

One of my favorite essays was her portrait of her grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., an advocate of assimilation, a Jew opposed to Zionism. (His Zion was America; he wanted to be a Jew in America.) After donating time and money to Woodrow Wilson’s election, he was awarded, not a Cabinet position, but a minor ambassodorship to Turkey, a post set aside for Jews. With the advent of the Great War, Morgenthau, in his position in Constantinople, was able to give life-giving aid to Jews in Palestine, Armenian refugees, and later to Greeks.

Here is a sampling of Barbara Tuchman:

…the reader is the essential other half of the writer. 81

…concerning all cafeterias in American government basements the only polite comment is silence. 79

With the appearance of the tape-recorder, a monster with the appetite of a tapeworm, we now have a new problem of what I call artificial survival. 72

There are gems of quotations, as when Dean Acheson, asked why a meeting of senior advisers lasted so long, replied, “We are all old and we are all eloquent.” 220

My 2011 Reading List

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I read 87 books in 2011. I’ve arranged the titles I’ve read this year into genres. Yes, Alexander McCall Smith is a genre unto himself! Each list is presented in the order of my preference, the top being the favorite. I found it very difficult to rank disparate books. How does one compare Elisabeth Elliot’s novel with Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts? The omega icon (Ω) indicates an audio book. K = Free Kindle K$ = Kindle at a price. I only read a few of these on my Kindle, but I’m especially interested in free Kindle books, and think you might be too.

Last year I began noting the date of publication, which helps me see trends in my reading. I find it interesting/curious that as much as I think I love the classics, the only classics I read this year were children’s books. Unless you count Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which I read to get a feel for Hemingway’s taut and sparse writing style. If I didn’t care for it, it doesn’t count as a classic, right? Seeing this list makes me determined to read Dickens, Trollope, Chesterton and Shakespeare in 2012.

All in all it was a satisfactory year of reading. I look over the list and sigh many happy sighs. My 2011 book of the year is Unbroken. My children’s book of the year is Auntie Robbo, which you are obliged, if you have a Kindle, to read for free. Why I’ve never heard of this book before this year perplexes me. I found it on a fluke: curious about a reference to the author, I Googled her name. That’s one Google I will never regret.

The quotes interspersed are from this year’s reading.

 

As the train drew out of town, Matthew looked out into the gathering darkness
of the late autumn evening. There were clusters of light here and there, and beyond
them the dark shape of the hills. That was what the world is like, he thought:
a dark place, with small clusters of light here and there, where there is
justice and concord between men.  ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith                             

The World According to Bertie 2009 K$ review
Love Over Scotland 2006 K$ review
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones 2008 K$
The Charming Quirks of Others  2010 K$
La’s Orchestra Saves the World 2009 K$
The Double Comfort Safari Club 2010 K$

 

And when the fresh curling trout had been eaten, with a mound of scones and butter,
they lay late round the fire, swilling cocoa, arguing again about stags and cows,
telling stories, and looking back on yet another well-spent perfect day. ~ Ann Scott-Moncrieff

Children’s Fiction

Auntie Robbo Ann Scott-Moncrieff, 1941 K review
Moccasin Traill Elouise Jarvis McGraw, 1952
Tamar Mal Peet, 2007 K$ review
Hans Brinker Mary Mapes Dodge, 1865 K review
Escape from Warsaw Ian Serraillier, 1963
Tom Sawyer Abroad  Mark Twain, 1894 K review
A Wonder Book  Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1852 K review
Nothing to Fear Jackie French Koller, 1991
The Christmas Rat Avi, 2002
Tanglewood Tales Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1853 K
Onion John Joseph Krumgold, 1959
A Dog of Flanders Ouida de La Ramée, 1872 K review
Pinocchio Carlo Collodi, 1882 K
Tom Sawyer Detective Mark Twain, 1896 K
The Peterkin Papers Lucretia Peabody Hale, 1880 K review
The Little Lame Prince Dinah Mulock Craik, 1875 K review

 

I used to tell my children that learning was like building shelves for the mind,
some of which would come to bear much weight, some little,
but all useful for reasoning and classification. ~ Janie B. Cheaney

Children’s Non-Fiction

String, Straight-edge & Shadow Julie E. Diggins, 1965 review
Duel in the Wilderness Karin Clafford Farley, 1995 review
Meter Means Measure S. Carl Hirsch, 1973 review

 

Beauty is a key part to understanding God. ~ Brian Godowa

Christian

A Godward Life Book 2 John Piper, 1999 K$ review
One Thousand Gifts Ann Voskamp, 2011 K$
No Graven Image Elisabeth Elliot, 1966
Wind from the Stars George MacDonald, 1992
For Women Only Shaunti Feldhahn, 2004 K$
Passion and Purity Elisabeth Elliot, 1984
50 People Every Christian Should Know Warren Wiersbe, 1984 K$
The Wisdom of Tenderness Brennan Manning, 2002 K$
The Ragamuffin Gospel Brennan Manning, 1990 K$
Women of the New Testament Abraham Kuyper, 1934

 

On Thanksgiving Day, anyone who wants to wash dishes
is my friend for life.  ~ Rick Rodgers

Cooking

Thanksgiving 101 Rick Rodgers, 2007 K$ review

 

Despite its seeming mundanity, the ritual of flying remains indelibly linked,
even in secular times, to the momentous themes of existence—and their
refractions in the stories of the world’s religions. We have heard about too
many ascensions, too many voices from heaven, too many airborne angels
and saints to ever be able to regard the business of flight from an entirely
pedestrian perspective, as we might, say, the act of traveling by train.
~ Alain de Botton

Cultural Studies

A Week at the Airport Alain de Botton, 2009 K$ review
The Crisis of Civilization Hilaire Belloc, 1937 review
How Proust Can Change Your Life Alain de Botton, 1997
From Cottage to Work Station Allan C. Carlson, 1993

 

An essay is more than just a report; an essay takes a position or makes a point.
It requires higher-level thinking. ~ Janice Campbell (not exact quote; cobbled from my notes)

Essays

Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer Tim Stark, 2008 K$ review
Small Wonder Barbara Kingsolver, 2002 K$ review

 

I love fiction, strangely enough, for how true it is.
If it can tell me something I maybe suspected, but
never framed quite that way, or never before had
sock me so divinely in the solar plexus, that was a
story worth the read.   ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Fiction

Gilead Marilynne Robinson, 2004 Ω K$
Green Journey Jon Hassler, 1985 review
In the Company of Others Jan Karon, 2010 K$ review
Dear James Jon Hassler, 1993
Half Broke Horses Jeannette Walls, 2009 K$
The Marriage Bureau for Rich People Farahad Zama, 2009 K$
The Rector of Justin Louis Auchincloss, 1965
Up and Down in the Dales Gervase Phinn, 2004 K$
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand Helen Simonson, 2010 K$
Staggerford Jon Hassler, 1977 K$
Small Island Andrea Levy, 2005 K$
Shanghai Girls Lisa See, 2009 K$
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout, 2008 K$
Amy Inspired Bethany Pierce, 2010 K$
News from Thrush Green Miss Read, 1970 K$
Miss Julia Strikes Back Ann B. Ross, 2008 Ω K$
No Dark Valley Jamie Langston Turner, 2004 review
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway, 1926 K$

 

Commit to one thing: You must change your life.
But if you don’t have fun doing this thing, my friend,
then it will be the dumbest damned thing you have
ever done. You won’t know if you enjoy it until you do it.
 ~ Richard Watson

Health

Hormone Harmony Alicia Stanton, 2009
The Philosopher’s Diet Richard Watson, 1985 K$

 

History lessons were my joy.  ~ P.D. James

History

Unbroken Laura Hillenbrand, 2010 K$ review
Truman David McCullough, 1992 K$
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris David McCullough, 2011 K$
Eisenhower Stephen E. Ambrose, 1983 review
1,001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History John Garraty, 1989

 

The years are getting so they flash past me like pickets in a fence.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower on 61st birthday

Memoir/Biography

West With the Night Beryl Markham, 1942 Ω
The Sword Of Imagination Russell Kirk, 1995 review
The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis Alan Jacobs, 2005 Ω K$
Time to Be in Earnest  P.D. James, 1999 K$ review
Blind Hope: An Unwanted Dog and the Woman She Rescued Laurie Sacher, 2010 K$
German Boy: A Refugee’s Story Wolfgang W.E. Samuel, 2000 K$ review
Heat Bill Buford, 2007 K$

 

It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes. ~ Dorothy Parker

Mystery

Original Sin P.D. James, 1995
The Singing Sands Josephine Tey, 1952
Break In Dick Francis, 2007 Ω K$
Old House of Fear Russell Kirk, 1961 K$ review
Dead Heat Dick and Felix Francis, 2007 Ω K$
Crossfire Dick and Felix Francis, 2010 Ω K$
Poirot Investigates Agatha Christie, 1924 Ω K$

 

To be proud of knowledge is to be  blind with light. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Non-Fiction

In a Word Margaret Ernst, 1939 review
Poor Richard’s Almanac Benjamin Franklin, 1747 K$ review

 

We were as happy as people can possibly be in a malarious country. ~ Jessie Currie
I like roads. I live to move. ~ Harry S. Truman

Travel

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains Isabella Bird, 1873 K
Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers ed. Jane Robinson, 1994 K$ review
The Crofter and the Laird John McPhee, 1969 K$
Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure Matthew Algeo, 2009 K$ review
The Guynd: A Scottish Journal Belinda Rathbone, 2007 review
Two Towns in Provence M.F.K. Fisher, 1964 K$ review
Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House Sally Gable, 2006 Ω K$
Wonderlust Vicki Kiyper, 2007 review

 

Happy Reading!

Adams, Washington, Franklin

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Two books and a miniseries.

Duel in the Wilderness is a historical novel about young George Washington’s mission to bring a message from the English king to the French commander in Ohio. An enormous responsibility for a twenty-one year old man, the trip requires physical stamina, diplomatic savvy, and acumen under pressure. Several more experienced officers declined the job, fearing it would lead to certain death. Washington, though, wanted to make a name for himself. You will find no sword or pistol duel. The duel—full of thrusts, parries, feints—is between two nations over control of the continent.

Poor Richard’s Almanack is a collection of Benjamin Franklin’s proverbs and aphorisms. Thrift, diligence, humility, attention, temperance, cleanliness, and resolve are praised and encouraged; I believe the Almanack is the basis of the stereotypical Yankee thrift. Franklin’s economy of words makes these pithy sayings easy to remember.

Fish and Visitors stink after three days.

Eat few Suppers, and you’ll need few Medicines.

Little strokes fell great Oaks.

Death takes no bribes.

Keep flax from fire, youth from gaming.

Dost thou love Life?
Then do no squander Time;
for that’s the Stuff Life is made of.

I found it curious to read Franklin’s Almanack in light of John and Abigail Adams’ opinions of Franklin.  David McCullough writes:

[John Adams] found Franklin cordial but aloof, easygoing to the point of indolence,
distressingly slipshod about details and about money….Franklin acknowledged that
frugality was a virtue he never acquired. p. 198

John Adams, a 7-part HBO series based on David McCullough’s masterpiece, John Adams, was excellent. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney shine as John and Abigail Adams. The heart of John Adams’s life story is his marriage with Abigail, a woman both beautiful and brilliant. If you are a bit hazy on the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate, watching this will help set the stage for this struggle. The best part of this series, though, is the Special Feature: David McCullough, Painting with Words.  Happily, Painting with Words is available to watch on YouTube in four parts.

 

Heirloom

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Tim Stark’s Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer was a jolly good read. The opening sentence hooked me: An unsustainable writer’s life—hunkered down at a desk on the top floor of a Brooklyn brownstone— proved to be the soil in which the farmer within me took root. Tim Stark knows writing. He knows hard work. And he definitely knows tomatoes. Heirloom is a narrative of the starts and setbacks, the disdain of local farmers and the high praise of five-star chefs, the doubts and difficulties and the joys of growing heirloom tomatoes.

An heirloom tomato, according to Wikipedia, is “an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) heirloom cultivar of tomato. Heirloom tomatoes are grown for historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year.” If you are looking for a practical manual on how to find seeds and grow heirlooms, this is not your book. At best you can glean names and descriptions of varieties: Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, Garden Peach, Plum Lemon, Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, Black Drim, Extra Eros Zlatolaska, Zapotec Pleated.

No, this is a book to read for the joy of a ripe garden tomato.

For all their efforts to make the homegrown variety as readily available as Murphy’s Oil Soap—from hydroponics to gene manipulation to those non-stop comfort flights from the greenhouses of Holland—the agro-industrialists have succeeded only in stocking the grocery shelves with expensive tomatoes that appear to bear the succulent richness of the fully ripe, just-picked specimen. To fall for them is a bit like talking dirty on the telephone for $3.99 a minute. You pay a lot of money and you still don’t get the real thing. 45

The bits on the Mennonite and Amish neighbors delighted me. Stark describes one Old Order Mennonite neighbor—a resourceful friend and mentor—as my guide to all things Anabaptist. That’s the Pennsylvania part of the equation. The other side includes the gourmet chefs who come down to Manhattan’s farmer’s market—Greenmarket—to peruse and purchase produce. It is fun to watch Tim weave through these disparate worlds. 

Some of the farmers who live near me are amused almost to the point of intoxication by my techniques. 191

Again and again, we were written up: The holy grail of tomatoes. Best tomatoes on the planet. Once the laughingstock of all nightshade-dom, our tomatoes graced the cover of Gourmet. 88

I cried reading about the week after 9/11, the peak of harvest, and how providing tomatoes for meals for volunteers brought a slice of normalcy and stability to a city reeling with loss.

Again, I am inspired to try my hand at growing heirloom tomatoes. I’ve been inspired before, but haven’t followed the inspiration with perspiration. Or even initiation to find heirloom seeds.

 

Small Wonder

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The first Barbara Kingsolver I read, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, gave me respect for her writing and passion, even though our core beliefs don’t often align. Small Wonder is a collection of essays written in response to the 9/11 attacks. The first essay, written on 9/12/01, begins sorting out the implications of this changed world. She alternates between a wide-angled view of the world and a macro lens focusing on her closest relationships. The letters to her daughter and to her mother are tender, honest, and vulnerable. Kingsolver’s collection was like a sidewalk: broad expanses that didn’t resonate or where I disagree with her strongly (stridently?) stated premises…and then a little crack where we deeply agree.

My favorite essay, What Good Is a Story, reminded me of thoughts I’d been pondering from N.D. Wilson in this interview. And I nodded and murmured assent while I read The One-Eyed Monster, and Why I Don’t Let Him In. And her turns of phrase, like being flattered and flattened by any kind of male approval, made my heart sing.

On writing:

What makes writing good? That’s easy: the lyrical description, the arresting metaphor, the dialogue that falls so true on the ear it breaks the heart, the plot that winds up exactly where it should. 209

I love [fiction], strangely enough, for how true it is. If it can tell me something I maybe suspected, but never framed quite that way, or never before had sock me so divinely in the solar plexus, that was a story worth the read. 210

A good short story cannot be simply Lit Lite. It should pull off the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces. 211

The business of fiction is to probe the tender spots of an imperfect world, which is where I live, write, and read. 213

On television:

It’s fairly well documented that TV creates a net loss in contentment. 135

Anyone inclined toward chemical sedatives might first consider, seriously, turning off the TV. 141

 

Tamar, a Novel

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As with any good mystery, I immediately wanted to re-read Tamar to look for clues and to see the significance which I missed in the first reading.  The 1944-1945 story of two spies for the Dutch resistance, code named Tamar and Dart, is interwoven with the life of a young woman—named Tamar—in 1995 London, attempting to learn her Grandad’s and Gran’s shrouded personal history.

Grandad defends his silence: I happen to think there are certain things that are best left buried, that we should take to our graves with us. Terrible things that we have witnessed. I’m sure you disagree. You belong to a liberated generation; you believe in freedom of information.  Gulp.  This took me back to a moment around a table when I waltzed into our aunt’s memories of growing up in WWII Austria. “What was it like?” I probed, with no clue what my question cost. Aunt Anita was quiet, looked down, gathered herself, and then replied, “Oh, we really don’t want to get into that now.” 

It is hard to write about the narrative without a spoiler. The espionage parts are intense; my muscles tensed while reading them. The nighttime ambush of Nazi SS Lieutenant General Rauter and retaliatory executions is true.   

Some quotes:

It was so damned hard to know what the old man was feeling. He was like one of those office blocks with tinted windows; you could only see in it you happened to look from a certain angle when the light was right. 5

The fear was on him suddenly, like a thin covering of ice over his entire skin. 65

Dart had become so unused to good feelings that he’d acquired the habit of examining them like a careful shopkeeper who’d been paid with a big banknote. 173

The teenaged Tamar finally connects with Grandad through algebra and crossword puzzles.

Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on the paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different angles, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart, and put them together in a variety of shapes, like Lego. I stopped being afraid of them.

I discovered that Grandad’s world was full of mirages and mazes, of mirrors and misleading signs. He was fascinated by riddles and codes and conundrums and labyrinths, by the origin of place names, by grammar, by slang, by jokes—although he never laughed at them—by anything that might mean something else.

He taught me that language was rubbery, plastic. It wasn’t, as I’d thought, something you just use, but something you can play with. Words were made up of little bits that could be shuffled, turned back to front, remixed. They could be tucked and folded into other words to produce unexpected things. It was like cookery, like alchemy. Language hid more than it revealed.

I’m not an expert in Young Adult fiction, but I question that slot for this book. It tilts strongly adult and not so much young. I have some other quibbles, but to bring them up here would spoil things.

Reading this fiction made me want to read Leo Mark’s non-fiction Between Silk and Cyanide, a book waiting patiently on my TBR shelf. I was delighted the Mal Peet acknowledged this title as very helpful in his research.

I wanted to read this book after reading Sherry’s review at Semicolon. Her Saturday Review of Books is a primary source of good reading!

 

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