No Enlightening Haiku

My favorite new mom/redhead/substitute teacher/fellow book lover, Jackie, told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to blog again. She said "enlightening haiku or book reviews". Well, the weather hasn't changed enough for any haiku to come visit me so I'll get caught up with a few book reviews. Hopefully, I'll be able to write enough to keep her satisfied. Pushy redheads.

I'll start with "Born to Kvetch" by Michael Wex. This is non-fiction about Yiddish. You're asking,"What? You can't read a nice book about English? You're breaking my heart!" My inner Jew loved this book for two main reasons. First, the author is a teacher and translator of Yiddish and knows the language inside and out, including regional dialects,differences in accents, and slang. Second, he's extremely funny. So even though the subject had the potential of being a history lesson from hell, it more closely resembled a stand-up comedy routine. I'm a total geek for languages and I make no apologies for loving this book. P.S. Jackie, I own it if you want to borrow it.

Next, we have "Great House" by Nicole Krauss. This writer is married to Jonathan Safran Foer, my favorite from "Everything is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" which is being made into a movie.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the movie.

Anywho, must be interesting at their house. But I digress. "Great House" was hard to read for me. Krauss is an amazing author in that she can express very complex and lengthy thoughts, emotions and ideas without resorting to pretentious vocabulary. I admire that greatly in an author. I don't need to know you know how to use a thesaurus, for crying out loud. Tell me the frickin' story. So that aspect of the book was really enjoyable for me, reminds me of Margaret Atwood and her profound ability to move you through time so effortlessly. But the story Krauss was telling didn't quite grab me hard enough. It was several stories and characters and time lines that shared the common inanimate character of a large desk. While I didn't need her to wrap up every story line in a neat package for me (in fact, that would've made me angry)I did need a stronger thread to connect all her stories. I do still like her very much, I picked up "Great House" because I read her "History of Love" last year and liked it. So if she publishes again, I'll bite.

Next, we have "How to Be Good" by Nick Hornby. He's one of my recent favorite authors with "Juliet, Naked", "A Long Way Down", "Slam", and (Carla will kill me because I still haven't read "About a Boy" and "High Fidelity"). You'll recognize some of these titles from movies. His books make very good movies. And you can envision Hugh Grant in every one of them. "How to Be Good" is about a middle-class family in England (Hornby is British and writes very much in a British voice, one of the reasons I like him)where the dad/husband has a spiritual epiphany and decides to quit work and only do humanitarian work. This means sacrifice, not only for him, but for everyone. The kids are resentful they have to give away toys and games and extra computers, the wife is REALLY resentful when he invites his new spiritual guru to live with them and starts inviting homeless people to live them as well. She's a doctor and struggles with the question "Don't I do enough good already? Am I not a good person doing what I'm already doing?" It has a some funny moments and very touching moments between the husband and wife as they struggle to deal with the changes that a life together brings. What would you do if your spouse suddenly thought whatever you were doing wasn't good enough? Good in the big picture of Good. Not just that the house wasn't clean or the trash didn't make it out on trash day.

Next, "Elizabeth the Queen Mother" by William Shawcross. This is the official biography of The Queen Mother. I read it after seeing The King's Speech. As an official biography, it's a little dry. Quite a bit of it just reads like an itinerary. But parts were interesting like she was the first non-royal to marry into the royal family. All those crazy royal families in Europe all married each other. Heck, Queen Elizabeth II is third cousins with her husband, Prince Phillip. It used to be law that you had to marry another royal, but right before The Queen Mother's time, they changed it. Granted, she was Scottish nobility, Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, but that's different than royalty. So just that one step away from royalty made her like a breath of fresh air up in that crazy tree. I like The Queen Mother because she reminds me of my Grandma Linsday. They were born a few year apart, come from different universes(although that branch of my family is extremely British), but for some reason it just makes me think of her a lot. When you're a kid, you love your grandparents, but you don't really think about them and the times they lived in and the experiences they had. Not until you're older and have a perspective on history do you appreciate that and then, typically, it's too late to talk to them about it.

Lastly, the book I'm currently reading, "Eleanor of Aquitaine" by Alison Weir. I guess I'm on an Anglophile kick. One of my favorite movies is "The Lion in Winter" with Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn as Henry II and Eleanor. Those crazy royals were even crazier back in the Dark Ages. They all married each other, but had strict rules about how closely you could be related to a prospective spouse. They frequently ignored these rules, had the Pope sign a dispensation to sanctify the marriage, and then when the marriage didn't work out like they'd hoped (no male heir was produced, loyalties changed, they wanted to kill each other, etc.)they would just say "My bad! We're too closely related! We're sinning against God! Quick! Pope! Annul us!" And the Pope would and crazy new branches would ensue. Eleanor was queen to two different kings in two different countries, had ten children (officially), and was Queen Mother to three kings and two queens. She outlived all of them except two. During the times she was actually allowed to rule, she was very wise and fair. She had no qualms about advancing the prospects of her children, although some of them she never saw past their infancy as it was common practice, especially for girls,to be betrothed as toddlers and go live in the household of the future spouse. I like Eleanor. She learned quickly how to function in a world where girls were used as property. Any girl, even queens, could be kidnapped, imprisoned, raped, have children taken from them at any point in time, have marriages arranged and dissolved without their knowledge or consent, and be restricted from about 90% of worldly activities. Her youngest son, King John, was such a horrible king that the rebellion that created the Magna Carta happened under his rule.

So, there you go, Jackie. Hope that's a nice grown-up distraction from your world of all things babyish.