This first Spenser mystery wasn't written as historical fiction by Edgar Grand Master Award winner Robert B. Parker but it's as a portal back to the lThis first Spenser mystery wasn't written as historical fiction by Edgar Grand Master Award winner Robert B. Parker but it's as a portal back to the late 60s and early 70s that I found it most interesting. Even having been there only once for a week's visit, I could tell he knew his Boston setting. His views on women are of the time but jarring today. The titular rare manuscript stolen from a university is merely a MacGuffin in a story that introduces private eye Spenser and engages him with Boston police, a student radical group, organized crime, drugs and the politics of an English Department at a university probably much like Northeastern University, where Dr. Parker was teaching when he wrote this. That Spenser lived on Scotch, coffee, and lovingly described breakfasts he cooked himself wasn't surprising for the genre, but the frequent and obsessively detailed descriptions of the outfits his characters wore were....more
Middle-aged Bostonian Nora Eldridge once had lovers and dreams of a successful career as an artist and mother, but instead drifted into the dutiful liMiddle-aged Bostonian Nora Eldridge once had lovers and dreams of a successful career as an artist and mother, but instead drifted into the dutiful life of 'the woman upstairs', teaching the children of others, caring for her dying mother and aged father, and occasionally glancing at the artwork she long ago abandoned in the second bedroom of her apartment.
She's almost instantly enchanted and obsessed with new student Reza Shahid and his parents, enigmatic Lebanese professor Skandar and passionate Italian artist Sirena, falling in love with each, feeling loved in return and rejuvenated and reconnected with her dreams. The relationships move through highs and lows until the Shahids return to their home in Paris and drift apart from Nora, who nevertheless continues to think about them constantly. A European trip and brief reconnection with the family results in a shattering conclusion.
Messud writes with great insight into Nora's thoughts and feelings....more
I bought this at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City earlier this summer, part of a project of exploring prose poems that started with last summer's purI bought this at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City earlier this summer, part of a project of exploring prose poems that started with last summer's purchase of Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End at Powell's Books in Portland. I liked "The Phone Call", "The Liar", and "Too Late", which share the deadpan surrealism of the whole collection, but close with a humorous twist. If you're intrigued, you can watch a variety of people read some of these poems here: https://www.jamestate.net/the-governm.......more
The Expedition logged 87,000 miles, surveyed 280 Pacific islands, and created 180 charts-some of which were still being used as late as World War II. The Expedition logged 87,000 miles, surveyed 280 Pacific islands, and created 180 charts-some of which were still being used as late as World War II. The Expedition also mapped 800 miles of coastline in the Pacific Northwest and 1,500 miles of the icebound Antarctic coast. Just as important would be its contribution to the rise of science in America. The thousands of specimens and artifacts amassed by the Expedition's scientists would become the foundation of the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. ~ Preface
So why hadn't I ever heard of this largest, most ambitious, and most successful sea voyage of discovery ever undertaken by the United States? Philbrick's answer to that question, the organizing theme of the book, is that the insecurities and resentments of the Expedition's commanding officer, Lt. Charles Wilkes, brought him into such intense and continuous conflict with his officers that the flurry of courts martial that ensued upon their return home overshadowed the many and significant achievements that would otherwise have brought them fame and glory.
The book is full of accounts of hair-raising adventure on sea and land, particularly in the Antarctic and on the Fiji and Hawaiian Islands. Darker chapters describe the revenge killings of Fijian men, women, and children, and vicious lashings of sailors and marines with cat o'nine tails, beyond Navy guidelines, ordered by Wilkes. I was fascinated to learn that the appearance of the character Queequeg, in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, is probably based on an engraving of Kotowatowa, a Maori chief from New Zealand, published in the Narrative of the Expedition.
Recommended for anyone interested in the sea, exploration, American history of the period, or leadership....more
Chafing at not being able to march off to war because a woman, Alcott decided on her 30th birthday in 1862 to volunteer to be an Army nurse. She serveChafing at not being able to march off to war because a woman, Alcott decided on her 30th birthday in 1862 to volunteer to be an Army nurse. She served at a hospital in Georgetown for six weeks, caring for casualties of the Battle of Fredericksburg, before contracting typhoid fever.
At the urging of family and friends, she later lightly fictionalized the letters she wrote home describing her experiences, and they appeared to acclaim in newspapers before being collected into this book, which provided her with her first literary success and fame.
She was aware of the humorous tone of most of her sketches, and defended it from some contemporary critics who thought it inappropriate, saying "it is a part of my religion to look well after the cheerfulnesses of life, and let the dismals shift for themselves". Certainly, there are poignant, moving scenes of suffering, sadness and death that are described touchingly, as well.
She was a member of a staunch Abolitionist family and believed fiercely in the cause herself, but it is striking how clearly this coexisted with a sense of white supremacy even as she takes more overt racism to task.
The late Peter J. Gomes, the only black, gay, Republican, Baptist Minister of Harvard's Memorial Church with whom I am familiar, argues that most contThe late Peter J. Gomes, the only black, gay, Republican, Baptist Minister of Harvard's Memorial Church with whom I am familiar, argues that most contemporary, church-going Christians would find the actual gospel of Jesus to be scandalous.
Most people do not go to church to be confronted with the gap between what they believe and practice and what their faith teaches and requires. One of the reasons that religious people are often cultural conservatives, and that cultural conservatives take comfort in religion, is that religion is seen to confirm the status quo.
In shocking contrast:
When Jesus came preaching, it was to proclaim the end of things as they are and the breaking in of things that are to be: the status quo is not to be criticized; it is to be destroyed. There is no appeal to an earlier Golden Age when things were done right, and the contemporary scene holds no promise, for it merely makes sacred the experiences of the people in power.
Gomes traces what he sees as the history of Christianity's distraction from Jesus's radical gospel in favor of a veneration of Jesus himself, a Pharisaical obsession with Biblical texts, and various flavors of Christian triumphalism that have resulted in the church becoming associated with temporal power, sometimes even becoming the dominant temporal power, and therefore too invested in the status quo.
Along the way, he "afflicts the comfortable", taking aim at spiritual arrogance wherever he sees it, definitely in the evangelical churches, but also in the mainline, Protestant community to which he belongs. His belief that "the most profound of all religious sentiments should not be certainty, which inevitably leads to arrogance, but modesty" resonates with me.
Although the author and some reviewers think that this book should appeal to readers of any or no faith, I think it will appeal mostly to mainline Protestant Christians, including those who've drifted away. I don't see how it could offer much to atheists, agnostics, members of non-Christian faith traditions, nor even Catholics or Orthodox Christians, and evangelical Christians will find much to take offense at.
I liked the book, which was a selection of a church-related book group I belong to, but have a couple of minor criticisms. Although some of Gomes's anecdotes were very effective in driving home points he was making, I think he stretched to fit others in so as to name drop, e.g. opening the book with a conversation he had with the Queen Mother. Also, there is a very heavy dose of traditional Protestant hymn lyrics that Gomes clearly loved, but might lose many readers.
Otherwise, I found Gomes's last book to be a thought-provoking call to Christians to focus on the challenge of Jesus's radical gospel instead of settling into complacent defense of a comfortable, church-going status quo.
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