BkLvr's Open Salon Blog

2010.24 At Home In Japan

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:06:30 -0400

At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman’s Journey of Discovery. Rebecca Otowa. Tuttle Publishing, 2010.

Rebecca Otowa married a Japanese man in 1982, and has lived the life of a Japanese wife for nearly thirty years. It seems to have been a happy life. although some details jar. (Her own family was not invited to her wedding. Page 106.) This is her meditation on Japan, on being an expatriate, on nature, on being an outsider in a group-based culture.

Speaking about the old ladies in the vegetable patch, with whom she has the closest connection, outside of her immediate family: “These old aunties have seen a lot in their day – war, depression, upheaval, shortages and modernization. Perhaps most poignantly, they have seen society itself shift paradigms, so that they lost out twice: when they were young, age was respected and youth wasn’t important; not that they are old, age is pushed aside in favor of the young.” (Page 48.)

When contemplating Shinto beliefs: “The longer I live here, the more I feel that everything around me is in some measure sacred. How can God, whoever or whatever that is, be present in some things and not in others? And if God is in everything, is God in me as well? The main alter of a Shinto shrine suggests the possibility – the central decoration is a mirror, in which I can see the divine in myself.” (Page 76.)

Highly recommended.

2010.23 Cheerful Money

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:06:01 -0400

Cheerful Money: Me, My Family and the Last Days of WASP Splendor. By Tad Friend. Little, Brown and Company. 2009.

The essence of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture is reserve, hiding one’s feelings. Tad Friend’s parents encouraged this demeanor by giving their children “cheerful money”, a reward for being cheerful, whatever the circumstances.

I agree that reserve is an underrated virtue today. It’s exhausting to deal with people who believe the world needs a Tweet about their every passing sensation.

But excessive reserve has its downside, too. It often results in people who can’t say a sentence without a double meaning, who can’t praise without also criticizing, who can’t express an unmixed emotion to save their lives. There are more than a few of these in "Cheerful Money".

Friend is an excellent writer, which makes subjects of otherwise middling interest – the fading of WASP power and influence in the US, and the WASP lives of his grandparents and parents, his siblings and himself – fairly entertaining . So I can recommend this book as a way to relieve the tedium of a sick week. It’s far, far better than the stupid stuff you’ll find on daytime TV.

Tepidly recommended.

(Full disclosure: I read this book after a run of holocaust memoires. After Primo Levy's "Survival in Auschwitz", and its tale of surviving the worst the Nazis could devise, "Cheerful Money", about surviving a rather distant relationship with one’s mother, isn't as gripping. But we make our lives of the circumstances we are given and, thank heavens, most of us aren't given Auschwitz.)

2010.22 Bucket Nut

Mon, 7 Jun 2010 23:06:29 -0400

Bucket Nut. Liza Cody. Isis Publishing. 1997

Eva Wiley is a woman wrestler – a villain - in London. She’s tough, big, a survivor. But she may have taken on more than she handle when she takes in a backup singer who has run into trouble.

One of the pleasures of reading reviews is finding an under-rated treasure. Liza Cody is one of those finds – at least here in the United States. This is London noir with a flawed, likeable heroine.

Well worth reading if you can find it.

2010.21 I Have Lived a Thousand Years

Mon, 31 May 2010 23:05:22 -0400

I Have Lived a Thousand Years. By Livia Bitton-Jackson. Simon & Schuster. 1997.

Young adult. Memoire.

Very few children survived the concentration camps. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers immediately, of course, because they couldn’t work as hard as an adult. The author only survived because she was tall for her age, and because she had blond hair and blue eyes. That coloring saved her life several times, as did the fact that she was with her mother.

Bitton-Jackson writes about being interned in Auschwitz, about surviving the forced labor and the selections for the gas chamber, about fighting desperately to survive the insanity of the Nazi regime.

Victor Frankl, in "Man's Search for Meaning", suggested that the difference – besides sheer luck – between those who survived the camps and those who died, was that those who lived had a goal, something that gave this terrible struggle meaning. Bitton-Jackson’s goal was to survive the camps and be reunited with her entire family. She mostly achieved her goal; her brother, and her mother did survive. Her father died.

Recommended for teens who are not over-sensitive. The section about surviving an Allied plane attack – the train she was on seems to have been mistaken for a troop train – is particularly disturbing.

2010.20 Catching Fire

Sat, 22 May 2010 18:05:43 -0400

Catching Fire. By Suzanne Collins. Thorndyke Press, 2009.

A young adult novel. Book two in the Hunger Games trilogy.

The leaders of the Capital have decided that one way to spike a revolution in the enslaved districts is to destroy the natural leaders of that fight. So Katniss Everdeen and Peeta, and all of the other previous Hunger Games winners, are back in the Hunger Games arena. Only one will survive.

Katniss is willing to die if she can preserve Peeta’s life – but Peeta’s only aim is to keep Katniss alive.

Catching Fire isn’t as heart-grippingly involving as the first book, but that leaves it plenty of room for excellence.

Highly recommended.