Though Raissa HaCohen says she wrote the book to be cathartic for other parents in a similar situation, and for her son to read in the future..this book is an inspiration for everyone. It is the story of a young new mother advocating for her child through serious medical problems. It shows the strength of love and how young parents working together can move mountains for their child. Raissa is a young newly married women with a good career pregnant with her first child.
Raissa grew up in The United States in New Hampshire. She attended Brown University and having met her husband on a student trip to Israel has settled in this new country to bring up her family. In this book, Sugar: A Tale of Motherhood and Medicine. Raissa shares all the raw, emotional experiences that happen when a routine situation like giving birth take an unexpected turn. Her son is born with a rare diagnosis, hyperinsulinemia, a disease where the pancreas makes too much insulin.
Interestingly Raissa heads the chapters in this section of the book as Freshman Orientation and Sophomore Orientation. Because it is like an education that we have never been prepared for that parents enter parenthood. No matter the health of your child, it is a job that we have not been properly educated for. In this Raissa and her husband have bigger obstacles to face than most young parents. Raissa and her husband face them and overcome them with aplomb!
Also it is the story of personal growth in the work place as Raissa also learns to negotiate for herself in the workplace. She finds her voice and asserts herself to keep and improve her working situation. Again I could read the book without feeling proud of how she handles herself in the workplace. She is analytical, poised and displays calm, self-assurance, even if she does not feel it inside. She has learned valuable lessons in how to move ahead in work and how to advocate for her child.
It is a rare, in the moment story, with raw emotion and it is thoughtful examination of life and relationships. It is about growth and strength. It is a book anyone can relate to in some way.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
Indignation
Philip Roth has written another witty, snappy coming of age novel. He once again has set the scene in Newark NJ with a young high school graduate about to leave his family and his job assisting his father in the kosher butcher shop as he heads off to college.
This wonderful novel has been also turned into a movie that I went to see last night. I find it interesting that someone would want to make a movie from this title. The movie stayed very close to the original, just two changes are made to the original story that I guess make it easier to explain the story line in less time. Seeing the movie made me pull the book off my bookshelf and reread the plot to delve back into Roth's world of a Jewish young man facing being Jewish on a Midwestern college campus and the Anti-Semitism on colleges campuses in the 1950s.
The protagonist in this story, Marcus Messner, is also faced with the challenge of a relationship with a young troubled woman. He gets involved romantically with her, though he knows it will lead to trouble. All the problems he experiences on his first journey into the larger world, from his protected childhood, are experiences of growing up. He grapples with foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual experimentation, courage and error. Trying to escape what he perceives as overprotectiveness of his father and the Korean War, Marcus heads to a small college in Ohio. He is assigned to a dorm room with other Jewish students who make up a very small minority of the students on campus. He is rushed by the Jewish fraternity and resists at first. He gets romantically involved with a beautiful blond girl, who he doesn't realize has a troubled past. The choices he makes in each of these relationships pushes him further into the final results of his follies.
The book is a statement of the times and of how the choices we make in life lead each of us in the direction our lives will take. That each of us, while we are in the middle of life cannot see where we are heading, but that each decision leads to the next.
This wonderful novel has been also turned into a movie that I went to see last night. I find it interesting that someone would want to make a movie from this title. The movie stayed very close to the original, just two changes are made to the original story that I guess make it easier to explain the story line in less time. Seeing the movie made me pull the book off my bookshelf and reread the plot to delve back into Roth's world of a Jewish young man facing being Jewish on a Midwestern college campus and the Anti-Semitism on colleges campuses in the 1950s.
The protagonist in this story, Marcus Messner, is also faced with the challenge of a relationship with a young troubled woman. He gets involved romantically with her, though he knows it will lead to trouble. All the problems he experiences on his first journey into the larger world, from his protected childhood, are experiences of growing up. He grapples with foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual experimentation, courage and error. Trying to escape what he perceives as overprotectiveness of his father and the Korean War, Marcus heads to a small college in Ohio. He is assigned to a dorm room with other Jewish students who make up a very small minority of the students on campus. He is rushed by the Jewish fraternity and resists at first. He gets romantically involved with a beautiful blond girl, who he doesn't realize has a troubled past. The choices he makes in each of these relationships pushes him further into the final results of his follies.
The book is a statement of the times and of how the choices we make in life lead each of us in the direction our lives will take. That each of us, while we are in the middle of life cannot see where we are heading, but that each decision leads to the next.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
The Bridge Ladies
The Bridge Ladies is a memoir written by Betsy Lerner. This is a mother/daughter story of learning to talk to your mother and understanding her and her friends, the Bridge Ladies.
The nicest thing about this book is that Lerner finds a way to have a better relationship with her mother before it is too late. So many women have a strained relationship with their parents, not feeling comfortable talking about important topics. Lerner finds a way to get to know not only all the ladies who have been playing bridge every week with her mother for many years, but a way to talk to her mother while learning the game of bridge.
The book is interesting and I am sure even more so to someone who plays or at least understands the game of bridge. I have never been someone who can sit and play bridge or mah jong for hours on a regular basis. I do envy the women who have their weekly group that plays and talks every week, sharing their lives, good times and bad together.k
This is a memoir about the lives these women have lived. A generation that is fading away, women who were expected to get married, have children and take care of the home, while the husbands went out and earned a living. This is a vanishing lifestyle.
So though interesting it kept my interest for awhile, but then if you do not know these women personally, there came a point in the book where I felt I had read enough. There was not enough fascinating events or experiences to keep my interest all the way through. Maybe if I was more knowledgable about how to play bridge or interested in learning, I would have appreciated the bridge lessons Betsy and her mother were attending. But there the only thing I appreciated was that they had found area of interest.
I hope Betsy finds the same kind of long term friendships that her mother did. I am always looking for that also. I think that those friendships will be very important as we age.
The nicest thing about this book is that Lerner finds a way to have a better relationship with her mother before it is too late. So many women have a strained relationship with their parents, not feeling comfortable talking about important topics. Lerner finds a way to get to know not only all the ladies who have been playing bridge every week with her mother for many years, but a way to talk to her mother while learning the game of bridge.
The book is interesting and I am sure even more so to someone who plays or at least understands the game of bridge. I have never been someone who can sit and play bridge or mah jong for hours on a regular basis. I do envy the women who have their weekly group that plays and talks every week, sharing their lives, good times and bad together.k
This is a memoir about the lives these women have lived. A generation that is fading away, women who were expected to get married, have children and take care of the home, while the husbands went out and earned a living. This is a vanishing lifestyle.
So though interesting it kept my interest for awhile, but then if you do not know these women personally, there came a point in the book where I felt I had read enough. There was not enough fascinating events or experiences to keep my interest all the way through. Maybe if I was more knowledgable about how to play bridge or interested in learning, I would have appreciated the bridge lessons Betsy and her mother were attending. But there the only thing I appreciated was that they had found area of interest.
I hope Betsy finds the same kind of long term friendships that her mother did. I am always looking for that also. I think that those friendships will be very important as we age.
Dead Wake
I just finished listening to Dead Wake written by Erik Larson and narrated by the very expressive voice of Scott Brick.
Larson once again has put together an incredibly well researched, fascinating history lesson. His books catch the reader in their grasp and like a gripping story of fiction don't release you until the very end. Even though you may know how the story is going to end, you are learning new in depth facts along that way that keep you riveted to the story. Also Brick who has narrated other Larson books, has a smooth, quiet, yet commanding voice that is pleasant to listen to and adds to the reader's connection to the tale being revealed.
Larson presents the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania in precise detail. He has collected incredibly exhaustive amounts of information about many of the passengers who traveled on that fateful crossing. He also has done a extremely thorough job of gathering the information about the ocean liner, Lusitania and its parent company, Cunard. Of course, Larson has also has compiled a comprehensive amount of data about the German submarine, U -20, whose captain Walther Schwieger, called the command to torpedo the 787 foot ship as it was underway from New York to Liverpool, on May 7, 1915.
It is amazing the number of coincidences that seem to have occurred. The happenstance that so many pieces fell into place to put the Lusitania in the direct path of the U-20 at the precise moment and time. Larson points out how if the ship had left at a different time, or had been traveling with all four of its smoke stacks firing, instead of trying to save power and only using three stacks, which slowed the ship down, or if it had taken a slightly altered route, the two boats, the submarine captained by Schwieger and the Lusitania with William Thomas Turner at the helm would never have been in the same waters at the same time.
Larson describes in great detail about a number of the passengers as they board the ship in New York City. He follows their experiences, interactions through their correspondences while on the ship. He learns many minute details about the passengers and also follows them as the ship is sinking and then afterwards. Who escapes and lives, who dies. Out of a guest list of almost 2,000 people, 764 people were rescued and about 1, 195 perished.
The hardest part of this book to read is that in so many ways the tragedy could have been averted or at least after the torpedo had hit its target fewer people could have died. There are many lessons learned from the sinking of this fabulous superliner and other ships sunk which led up to the United States entering World War One. Reading about the British Admiralty and the knowledge they had but did not follow through with. The story of Woodrow Wilson, recently having lost his wife and being depressed. Wilson busy meeting and wooing Edith Galt with rides in his favorite car the 1919
Pierce- Arrow.
Larson constructs a wonderful depiction of building suspense as the Lusitania steams toward its inevitable doom.
Larson once again has put together an incredibly well researched, fascinating history lesson. His books catch the reader in their grasp and like a gripping story of fiction don't release you until the very end. Even though you may know how the story is going to end, you are learning new in depth facts along that way that keep you riveted to the story. Also Brick who has narrated other Larson books, has a smooth, quiet, yet commanding voice that is pleasant to listen to and adds to the reader's connection to the tale being revealed.
Larson presents the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania in precise detail. He has collected incredibly exhaustive amounts of information about many of the passengers who traveled on that fateful crossing. He also has done a extremely thorough job of gathering the information about the ocean liner, Lusitania and its parent company, Cunard. Of course, Larson has also has compiled a comprehensive amount of data about the German submarine, U -20, whose captain Walther Schwieger, called the command to torpedo the 787 foot ship as it was underway from New York to Liverpool, on May 7, 1915.
It is amazing the number of coincidences that seem to have occurred. The happenstance that so many pieces fell into place to put the Lusitania in the direct path of the U-20 at the precise moment and time. Larson points out how if the ship had left at a different time, or had been traveling with all four of its smoke stacks firing, instead of trying to save power and only using three stacks, which slowed the ship down, or if it had taken a slightly altered route, the two boats, the submarine captained by Schwieger and the Lusitania with William Thomas Turner at the helm would never have been in the same waters at the same time.
Larson describes in great detail about a number of the passengers as they board the ship in New York City. He follows their experiences, interactions through their correspondences while on the ship. He learns many minute details about the passengers and also follows them as the ship is sinking and then afterwards. Who escapes and lives, who dies. Out of a guest list of almost 2,000 people, 764 people were rescued and about 1, 195 perished.
The hardest part of this book to read is that in so many ways the tragedy could have been averted or at least after the torpedo had hit its target fewer people could have died. There are many lessons learned from the sinking of this fabulous superliner and other ships sunk which led up to the United States entering World War One. Reading about the British Admiralty and the knowledge they had but did not follow through with. The story of Woodrow Wilson, recently having lost his wife and being depressed. Wilson busy meeting and wooing Edith Galt with rides in his favorite car the 1919
Pierce- Arrow.
Larson constructs a wonderful depiction of building suspense as the Lusitania steams toward its inevitable doom.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Ways To Disappear
Ways To Disappear written by Idra Novey is a light fun story about an author who has lived life beyond her means and now decides to disappear rather than face her creditors. She leaves behind her publisher, her translator and her children to pick up the pieces.
Her American translator, a young woman named Emma, flies from Pittsburgh, PA to Brazil to help track down author, Beatriz Yagoda. She feels that having translated all Beatriz's novels has given her incite into where Beatriz may have disappeared off to. Emma is also escaping her own personal life in America. The cold winters and an engagement she is not sure she wants to continue. Emma teams up with siblings Raquel and Marcus to help find their mother. They are shocked to learn that their mother has incurred major gambling debts.
In a humorous style, author Novey, builds a sense of mystery as a hitman comes looking to collect the debt Beatriz Yagoda has accumulated from the loan shark. The characters are involved in romance, kidnapping and ransom as they search for the illusive author, who the longer she remains hidden the more her novels build in popularity. Her longtime editor reissues her original books and edits her latest manuscript. As a translator, Emma feels that her life is lived quietly in the shadows. Never the center of attention, always interpreting someone else's words. "And wasn't the splendor of translation this very thing - to discover sentences this beautiful and then have the chance to make someone else hear their beauty who had yet to hear it?" Later in the novel, Emma also describes the role of the translator as someone who helped clarify to the reader the author's intent, "A translator could justify moving around the objects in a sentence if it made it easier for her audience to grasp what was going on. She could even change an object into something more familiar to the reader to avoid baffling him with something he wouldn't understand."
Written using short chapters, some laying out the story as it unfolds, some giving us dictionary style definitions that explain a plot point. There are chapters that are written as news reports, moving the story to another direction and emails written to Emma by the fiancee she left behind in Pittsburgh.Then either to make light of a dramatic scene or for emphasis at one point, Novey, writes in poetry verse. All these varied styles make reading the novel more enjoyable.
Her American translator, a young woman named Emma, flies from Pittsburgh, PA to Brazil to help track down author, Beatriz Yagoda. She feels that having translated all Beatriz's novels has given her incite into where Beatriz may have disappeared off to. Emma is also escaping her own personal life in America. The cold winters and an engagement she is not sure she wants to continue. Emma teams up with siblings Raquel and Marcus to help find their mother. They are shocked to learn that their mother has incurred major gambling debts.
In a humorous style, author Novey, builds a sense of mystery as a hitman comes looking to collect the debt Beatriz Yagoda has accumulated from the loan shark. The characters are involved in romance, kidnapping and ransom as they search for the illusive author, who the longer she remains hidden the more her novels build in popularity. Her longtime editor reissues her original books and edits her latest manuscript. As a translator, Emma feels that her life is lived quietly in the shadows. Never the center of attention, always interpreting someone else's words. "And wasn't the splendor of translation this very thing - to discover sentences this beautiful and then have the chance to make someone else hear their beauty who had yet to hear it?" Later in the novel, Emma also describes the role of the translator as someone who helped clarify to the reader the author's intent, "A translator could justify moving around the objects in a sentence if it made it easier for her audience to grasp what was going on. She could even change an object into something more familiar to the reader to avoid baffling him with something he wouldn't understand."
Written using short chapters, some laying out the story as it unfolds, some giving us dictionary style definitions that explain a plot point. There are chapters that are written as news reports, moving the story to another direction and emails written to Emma by the fiancee she left behind in Pittsburgh.Then either to make light of a dramatic scene or for emphasis at one point, Novey, writes in poetry verse. All these varied styles make reading the novel more enjoyable.
The Two-Family House
I just finished reading the last page of The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Logiman. I am still wiping away the last tears from my eyes as I start writing this review. It is surprising that even though the secret that occurs early in the novel and that is supposed to have a suspenseful build up throughout the novel was not really a surprise ( I had it figured out right away), I still could not put the book down and was waiting to see how Logiman would use it at the end. Also I was so caught up in the characters and plot line that even though I knew what would be revealed I could not wait to read about it and I was so emotionally moved by the ending.
This a story about family, love and loss, selfishness, greed and longing. The classic, "the grass is always greener in someone else's yard" plot line runs through this book. This book illustrates how jealousy can not only tear apart relationships, but can tear a person apart inside themselves.
Logiman follows the lives of two brothers who work together and share a two family house with their wives and children. For a while I thought about how much fun it seemed to be sharing your children upstairs and down, sharing meals and having coffee with your sister-in-law whenever. But of course life does not always follow a perfect course. We see how misperception can start to naw away at people when they think things are better in another person's life. We see how secrets and deception can unravel relationships. It does not always work out for the best when you alter the course of destiny.
The two brothers have issues they have never been able to discuss and come to terms with. One is envious of the other. One is intimidated by the other. The two wives who seem so close make a decision that will tear their relationship apart. So many people living under one roof and in the end it shows how little they all know and understand each other. As readers we are almost privy to a secret, but we are on the outside hearing the story of life in their Two-Family House from the perspective of each different family member. So the suspense is built as time goes by and we find out the outcome of the secret when the members of the family do.
Logiman has written a terrific plot that grips the reader from the beginning and makes you wonder who are the good guys and who is at fault. Are there evil characters in this novel or are all the family members just naturally flawed as real human beings are flawed?
This a story about family, love and loss, selfishness, greed and longing. The classic, "the grass is always greener in someone else's yard" plot line runs through this book. This book illustrates how jealousy can not only tear apart relationships, but can tear a person apart inside themselves.
Logiman follows the lives of two brothers who work together and share a two family house with their wives and children. For a while I thought about how much fun it seemed to be sharing your children upstairs and down, sharing meals and having coffee with your sister-in-law whenever. But of course life does not always follow a perfect course. We see how misperception can start to naw away at people when they think things are better in another person's life. We see how secrets and deception can unravel relationships. It does not always work out for the best when you alter the course of destiny.
The two brothers have issues they have never been able to discuss and come to terms with. One is envious of the other. One is intimidated by the other. The two wives who seem so close make a decision that will tear their relationship apart. So many people living under one roof and in the end it shows how little they all know and understand each other. As readers we are almost privy to a secret, but we are on the outside hearing the story of life in their Two-Family House from the perspective of each different family member. So the suspense is built as time goes by and we find out the outcome of the secret when the members of the family do.
Logiman has written a terrific plot that grips the reader from the beginning and makes you wonder who are the good guys and who is at fault. Are there evil characters in this novel or are all the family members just naturally flawed as real human beings are flawed?
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