Books – Page 37 – …on the B.L.

Food; A Love Story

November 21, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 340
Quick Review A hilarious memoir through the lens of a man in love… with food. Gaffigan goes to great lengths to describe the depths of his feelings.

I have been a Jim Gaffigan fan for a while. I, however, had not committed to reading his book. Granted, I knew it couldn’t possibly take me terribly long to finish… He isn’t exactly setting himself up to be the next Chaucer.

I finished the book in a grand total of two sittings. It ended up being two because he made me hungry, so I had to go take a food break. This can’t be too shocking, but we both rather enjoy food immensely. After reading his book, I think we could be friends bonding over our love of food and our loving-hatred of our shared Midwestern roots. (We can make fun of the Midwest because we grew up there, you can’t; unless, you’re one of us.)

Gaffigan is relentlessly funny and opinionated. Through his book it is easy to tell the two great loves of his life: his food and his family – which is number one and two I am not sure, though. If you’re familiar with his comedy, you will hear his voice ringing loud and clear through the book. Not that I’m a stalker, but it feels like he is speaking to you. His humor transcends the written word.

I highly enjoyed his innovative map of the United States, or as it will come to be known as “The Jim Gaffigan Food Map.” I particularly identified with his chapter on Seabugland. Have I mentioned, we should be friends.

Nothing that I’m about to say will surprise his fans. He has an affinity for making up conversations, which are equally hilarious and probably better than the truth. From now on, I will be citing these conversations as answers to my friends’ questions as often as possible. I found his use of repetition a bit well… repetitive, but that is his style, and he writes the way he speaks. Though it works in stand up, it is a bit much for a book.

All in all, if you are a lover of food or comedy or both or you have a pulse, you should read his book.

Memorable Quotes
“Anyway, I’m overweight.”
“I for one can think of a thousand thing that taste better than thin.”
“I was from Indiana, which tho many is considered the trailer park of the Midwest”
“I like to think coffee comes from beans; therefore, it’s a vegetable.”
“My heart with all its clogged arteries belongs to bratwurst.”
“There is something profoundly sad about eating cake while you are alone.”

Title: Food; A Love Story
Author: Jim Gaffigan
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (Crown Publishing Group)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9780804140430

Books

13 Hours

November 16, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 320
Quick Review Six men put everything on the line to protect their fellow Americans during a brutal attack in Benghazi, Libya on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.

Zuckoff writes an enthralling account of the men who protected an American safe hold in Libya on Sept ember 11, 2012. I had a hard time putting the book down once I got into it. As an American who watches as little news as possible when the word Benghazi is mentioned, it has an air of sadness to it. Although, I never really knew the particulars of what happened. To be honest, I would be surprised if many do. It is thought of as a sad moment in a sea of depressing incidents we live in post 9/11.

Zuckoff focuses on the six men who put their lives on the line that night. He wants the book to be impartial telling the events as the Annex Security Team remembers them with no political implication. It would be hard to call the book completely impartial because there were more people present that night than just the members of the Annex Security Team. It would have been interesting to hear their accounts of the night as well.

It’s hard not to begin the book optimistically because, like Titanic, the ending is already common knowledge. If it isn’t to you, I won’t spoil the depression.

Zuckoff makes it easy to get to know the Annex Security Team. He has an incredible ability to take himself out of the narrative allowing each man’s personality to bleed in when necessary while staying factual. Zuckoff spends a great deal of time describing people and places. The descriptions can drag a little over geography, but he includes diagrams making it possible to skim those sections to look at the pictures instead.

This is incredibly moving and a testament to the men who put their lives on the line to protect their country and their people. Their complexities come through in how they view the world, each other, and their superiors. It is always important to remember that heroes are people, and Zuckoff is able to portray this sentiment clearly throughout.

13 Hours is an important read for anyone who wants to be aware of recent history. Unfortunately, the events are not isolated, and similar attacks and atrocities happen all over the world to more or less media attention.

Memorable Quotes
“Oil had yet to be discovered, so no one wanted colonial responsibility for an impoverished, bombed-out Arab sandbox.”
“…telling each other that the United States had gotten its money’s worth for teaching them how to be soldiers.”

Title: 13 Hours; The Inside Account of What Really Happened
Author: Mitchell Zuckoff and the Annex Security Team
Publisher: Twelve (Hachette Book Group)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9781455582273

Books

Awakened by Love

November 9, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 302
Quick Review A young, conservative Muslim woman begins a journey of self-discovery when she removes her headscarf. Trying to balance her parents beliefs with the Western world she grew up in, Zoha is torn between two selves.

Awakened by Love is the first book in a trilogy about a young Muslim woman living and attending college in California at UC Davis. Born and raised in California, Zoha is torn between her traditional Islamic beliefs upheld by her family and her own desire to explore the world she has never truly felt a part of.

At 19 years old, Zoha is a junior bio-chem major about to graduate and enter medical school. She is hiding a secret from her family. When she began college, she decided to remove the headscarf she had been wearing since she was eight years old. Zoha had started expanding her horizons when she met a handsome senior. Making new friends, entering her twenties, and studying, Zoha is racked with guilt from keeping a secret from her conservative family she loves.

Zoha was raised in a traditional Iranian, Muslim family full of love and extended family members. She was born in California spending the summers in Iran. Her faith and crisis of faith is so tangible throughout the story that it almost becomes a character in and of itself. In a country where Christianity is the belief system at large, it is wonderful to have a narrative depicting Islam in a positive light with questioning as a part of the story line.

Sametipour writes about love, friendship, self exploration, religion, rebellion, and culture, which is far more relatable than you’d first imagine. Every teenager and young adult experiences the difficulties of navigating parental expectations and ideals while achieving their own dreams and goals. I love reading books by authors from diverse backgrounds. I have a special spot in my heart for Iranian culture and literature; why, I don’t really know. It’s something that brings me pleasure. Sametipour writes on a subjects that is very obviously important to her.

The novel is self published and very well done. There are a few yet minor grammatical mistakes. Over all it is a fabulous novel. I’m looking forward to the second and third in the trilogy.

Memorable Quotes
“Zoha couldn’t and shouldn’t live for herself.”
“But she knew what she wanted and what she was supposed to do were two different things.”
“In Islam, no matter what the age, a woman’s place was always behind a man; something Zoha had struggled to accept all her life.”
“Religion was a tool to make them look good and respectable.”

Title: Awakened by Love
Author: Azin Sametipour
Publisher: Self-Published
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780999061411

Books, NonFiction

the sun and her flowers

November 4, 2017March 29, 2019 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 256
Quick Review A collection of poetry that is both deeply emotional and eerily undemanding.

In honor of the sun and her flowers being on the shelf for a month, I am publishing my review of Rupi Kaur’s collection.

Rupi Kaur is an Indian-Canadian poet, who rose in fame through Instagram. After self-publishing her debut collection milk and honey with extraordinary success, her book was picked up by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Two years after Milk and Honey, her second and much awaited for collection the sun and her flowers was published on October 3, 2017.

As a student of literature, I have spent an exorbitant amount of time reading poetry for both pleasure and scholarly necessity. Through much practice and discussion, I have been able to unlock the difficult language of poetry. Reading it is an exercise in patience and detection. Poetry is often inaccessible.

I have not read Kaur’s milk and honey… yet. I picked up the sun and her flowers a bit hesitant because I have stayed away from poetry for awhile. The two adjectives I would describe this book with are: deep and accessible. I have never read poetry quite so accessible. It is no wonder she has met with such resounding success. Kaur is creating a generation who can appreciate poetry for what it is: beautiful.

Thematically, the sun and her flowers span issues of heartache to sexual assault to masturbation to death to immigration to beauty to infanticide and more. It is safe to say, there are few emotional heart strings Kaur does not strum. As a woman, it is impossible to read her work without feeling a kindred spirit. You can find my favorite poems on pages 65, 91, 173, 220, and 224. Although I love them all, these were some of the most powerful for me.

Kaur’s work ranges from a few lines to several pages. Usually each poem is accompanied by an illustration Kaur drew herself. Though they are simple drawings, emotion is deeply evident. Kaur’s writing style is unique. She was born in India, but she grew up in Canada. Her poems do not utilize capitalization or punctuation outside of the period. This is out of respect to her cultural and linguistic heritage; the Gurmukhi script only has one case and one punctuation mark. Kaur has mentioned she enjoys writing in this style because it indicates an equality between letters, which is non-existent in the English language.

I could not recommend her work more. It is beautifully rich in issues, emotions, and thought provoking sentiments.

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Memorable Quotes
“you’re everywhere, except right here”
“from head to foot i am layered in dust”
“it takes a broken person to come searching, for meaning between my legs, it takes a complete. whole. perfectly designed person to survive”
“i am willing to pay any price, for a beauty that makes heads turn”
“how can i verbalize consent as an adult if i was never taught to as a child”
“if i just learn to act like a lady”
“i have survived far too much to go quietly”
“my twenties are the warm-up, for what i’m really about to do”

Title: The Sun and Her Flowers
Author: Rupi Kaur
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781449486792

Books

Dead Souls

October 24, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 512
Quick Review When Tchitchikov comes up with a brilliant plan, he embarks on an adventure bringing him a name and fortune after encounters with interesting people.

Nikolai Gogol published Dead Souls in 1842. I read it for the first time in Russian while I was in college. This is the first time I am reading the English translation by Constance Garnett. She translated a majority of classical Russian literature to much critical skepticism at this point in time. The work in its original form is more nuanced and beautiful than the translation, but that is always the case. It is impossible to relay the original in its entirety to another language and culture. Although, Dead Souls is an incredible read in English. So I highly recommend it.

The narrator, even Gogol himself, views and refers to the novel as an epic poem, though, in prose form. It is intended to encapsulate the mindset and attitudes of the middle class in Russia during the mid-1800’s. Gogol is able to capture a range of emotions, attitudes, psychology, and culture within this epic novel, which garnered him the role as grandfather of Russian realism.

In order to understand the plot of the novel, it is important to understand the culture in which it was written. Serfs were referred to as souls in legal jargon. Before 1861, serfs belonged to the land and landowners, who could sell them, trade them, or mortgage them at will. The word poshlost is incredibly important to the novel, but it does not translate to English well; it deals with the character of a human always negative. Poshlost is always in bad taste, self-serving, petty, and even to the point of evil. It’s hard to encapsulate this word in English.

Tchitchikov comes up with a brilliant plan to basically get rich quick. The novel revolves around the idea that Tchitchikov collects the dead souls, or dead serfs, from the landowners who have to pay taxes on them until the next census. Tchitchikov’s plan eventually reveals itself, but he amasses a large holding of souls, who are not dead in the eyes of the law.

Tchitchikov has his own sordid past, but he arrives in an area of Russia and turns all of his charms on the landowners in the region. Tchitchikov is his own caricature. Each landowner he meets is a ridiculous caricature of personality failings Gogol bears witness to in society around him. The landowners, though absurd in their own way, is not a flat character. They have their own evolutions and complexities. None of the characters are overly likeable; they do come across as understandably diluted.

The title Dead Souls refers to two different concepts. The souls of the deceased serfs, obviously. The second is more thematic and requires reading to understand and revolves around the word poshlost. The other dead souls in the novel are the living characters suffering from an unrivaled amount of poshlost. Their souls are dead in Gogol’s eyes. Arguably, there is no “hero” in the traditional sense. Tchitchikov is more of an antihero.

Gogol is an amazing writer even in translation. He is one of my favorite Russian authors. He is not as well known outside of Russia like Tolstoy or Dostoevsky is, but he is just as important if not more so. Gogol set the tone and bar for all Russian writers after him.

Memorable Quotes
“”What… a sale of dead souls?””

Title: Dead Souls
Translator: Constance Garnett
Author: Nikolai Gogol
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Copyright: 2005
ISBN: 9781593080921

Books

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

October 20, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 226
Quick Review A look into the psyche and thought process of a teen boy with Autism. He goes on an adventure to solve a mystery but solves a much larger one.

Christopher Boone is a fifteen year old boy living in Swindon, England; he is an autist. Late one night, he goes for a walk only to find his neighbor’s dog has been murdered. He loves dogs because they do not lie, so he is devastated by the murder. Christopher decides to solve the mystery of who killed the dog because detectives use logic and facts to solve problems, and he is very good at solving problems with facts and logic.

Mark Haddon does fantastic work creating a world inside the mind of an autistic boy allowing the outside world to better understand how autists perceive the world around them. Christopher is telling the story. He is unable to lie and is fairly impartial spectator in the world and even his own life. He is very logical preferring science, facts, and numbers to everything else. He prefers prime numbers, so the chapters are labelled with prime numbers instead of the more common numerical order.

This is an incredibly important novel because autism is a highly misunderstood part of society. Haddon is able to convey this through how Christopher views and interacts with the world around him and his comments on how people interact with him. Society does not view autists as capable contributors to the world, when in fact they can be if we took extra time and effort to understand and help them. Christopher is incredibly intelligent, but he functions differently in perceiving and interacting with social cues in the world. Christopher is demanding because of his autism, and that affects those around him. Haddon is not afraid to show the difficulties his caretakers go through emotionally to help him have a better life.

I think this book should be read far and wide because it raises awareness for a population that is under-served and misunderstood.

Memorable Quotes
“Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”
“…maths wasn’t like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end.”
“It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question.”

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Mark Haddon
Publisher: Vintage Books (Random House)
Copyright: 2003
ISBN: 9781400032716