The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye by: Raymond Chandler

I started this on the hot sunny Jersey beach in June. Brought it with me on vacation, read it in the car traveling with my family. Read it poolside at the hotel in Colorado, at the breakfast table drinking coffee and listening to the early morning bluejays feeding on the birdfeeder (in Minnesota), in the park in Chicago and finished it back in my apartment in Jersey. I would not suggest picking it up and putting the book down as much as I did. There were a lot of pages that I had to re-read and prior chapters that I had to refresh my memory on.

The Long Goodbye is an interesting murder mystery book, written in 1930 detective style: "I sat there in a dark bar. The dame across the room caught my eye. She was sitting there. Alone and distraught over something. I ordered a martini--extra dry, two olives--for the lady and another gimlet for myself" This style was kind of fun to read in the beginning, because I would have to narrate the entire story in my head in that detective voice. As the murder mystery went on, I dropped the internal voice to concentrate on the story. But picking the book up so may times, I think some of the little details got lost in translation, my voice, or went on vacation.

The cast of characters grew and the story became predictable. After the second death I had figured it out, but wanted to keep reading to see if I was right. Did others find this predictable? Is the 1973 movie the same as the book?

unfinished

I haven't posted in over a month! That doesn't mean that I haven't been reading.

I started E.B. White: A Biography. He was interesting to read about because he never grew out of his five year old viewpoint of the world. His love for exploring nature and writing took him all over. After traveling all over the country trying unsuccessfully to find a journalism job he settled back in NY, where he started. What I just stated in a few sentences, Scott Elledge tells in over 200 pages (half the book!). Elledge loves to tell the story of E.B. White, but I think he could have written this book with atleast 100 pages less. I got bored of Elledge's rambling, so I put it down. 

I started A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. The first half was incredible. It was so interesting to read about John Nash's upbringing, his schooling and how he found his love in math. About 150 pages in, the book turned into math symbols, theories, Mathematicians, and that's when I stopped. Sorry John, I'm just not as smart as you.
 
I started The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America for my book club. Timothy Egan's prologue jumped around a lot and gave un-relevant background information. I pressed on and the writing got better. I thought it would be about Teddy Roosevelt's presidency and his desire to save the National Forests-- as the title suggests-- it was; however, it was also about Gifford Pinochet and his role in the saving of the forests. It seemed as if Egan maximized Pinochet's work and left Roosevelt in the shadows. I don't know if this is factually accurate or not, but if you are going to write more about Pinochet- than don't put Roosevelt in the title! Needless to say, this frustrated me and I never finished this for my book club.

Drowning Ruth

Drowning Ruth 

by: Christina Schwarz

photo from: http://www.andycollin.com/2011/02/cyanotype/

"I drowned too.

That's stupid. If you drowned, you'd be dead.

Sometimes you die, sometimes you don't"

Drowning doesn't always mean death. There is literal drowning-- suffocating under water-- and there is figurative drowning--loosing control of emotions. 

This book is about drowning.

All of the above drowning.

What does it mean to lose control? What does it mean to lose a life? To lose a love? To lose sanity? To lose the ability to hold on? To lose a sister, daughter, wife, mother, friend?

This book is about loss.

All of the above loss.

All families have their secrets. Secrets untold between other members of the family, or secrets kept  only within the family. Family secrets kept hidden, secrets leaked out over time, and secrets itching at the surface.

This book is about family secrets.

All of the above family secrets. 

Written in the first person of Amanda, Ruth, and Mathilde, this book gives several different perspectives of the same stories. Jumping back and forth in time, and between first and third person, the reader is left to put the pieces together.

Hershey

Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams
By Michael D'Antonio


Milton S. Hershey spent most of his life failing. He quit school. He started working at the local candy shop (because his mom forced him to, and it was the only way to meet girls!). Milton quit that. He started making candy and failed. He started making caramels and after a small success- he failed. He moved out west with his caramel recipe and failed out there. Milton moved to Chicago and failed. He spent every day observing how the wold fair confectioners worked. After the fair came down he bought all of their equipment and shipped it back East. After he came back East, Milton failed again. Pretty soon, he sold all of his equipment. He started making chocolate with a small success. He bought new equipment, hired a team, built a factory and after the initial boom- there wasn't enough demand so Milton fired everyone and sold his equipment. Milton S. Hershey never gave up; he went bankrupt several times; his family stopped giving him loans; his family even stopped believing in him.

It wasn't until he heard that the Cadbury Family was mixing milk into their chocolates, that he tried that. He combined his caramel and candy making skills into a new milk chocolate product. Milton created something wonderful! It was so wonderful in fact that someone overseas wanted a couple hundred of these chocolate bars. After pleading with his family and the bank- no one would give him money. He happened to go to the bank again- for one last plea. It just so happened to be at a time when the manager wasn't there, the new bank teller approved the loan and gave Milton the money. (Later the bank teller got in trouble with his manager.) With this loan, Milton bought equipment, made the chocolate bars, sent them off and SUCCESS!

It all went uphill from here. Milton's business took off, he created a school for orphan boys, and created a small (which later turned into a very large) community to support his business. Throughout all of Milton's successes he was always willing to give back to the community. He even invested all of the business's stock into the school stock so that if the business went under, the school would remain steady. He made quite a name for himself and his chocolate business just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Even when the country was rationing sugar because of the war- the US Military gave Hershey a sugar stipend to continue making his chocolate for the soldiers. Chocolate not only boosted the soldiers' morale, but it reminded them of home. This turned the Hershey bar into a classic American icon. Same thing happened to the Coca-Cola company. After Coca-Cola was shipped overseas, they decided to create factories worldwide. Hershey remained tied to Pennsylvania and did not want to follow in Coca-Cola's footsteps in this way.

Hershey had ties or connections with a lot of other big names throughout this time period. His biggest rival was Wrigley. And thankfully, Hershey did not invest in the Wrigley Company, nor in baseball. He did buy smaller candy companies and there was an interesting disagreement on which candies E.T should eat in the movie (between M&M and Reese's). Reese's ended up winning and Hershey received the benefit. Hershey was constantly looking to the Cadbury Company to see what they do, what they added to their chocolate, and how their community ran.

Milton Hershey never gave up. He was 80 years old and still experimenting with chocolate, trying to find new products. He even tried to make chocolate healthier by combining vegetables- broccoli chocolate. Even after all of his failure throughout his life- he kept trying to perfect his business. He died a very humble billionaire. The last 100 pages deal with the politics surrounding his estate, Hershey Park, the school and the business after Milton's death. 
 
One of my favorite parts is that during the beginning of his success, Hershey was so overwhelmed because he was trying to do everything well. After he realized that he cannot do everything well, he downsized to do a few things perfectly. It was during this time that he perfected the little chocolate Hershey Kiss. The Kiss was something that everyone could afford and convenience stores could buy it by the thousands.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
By: Azar Nafisi

Society defines you.

No matter how many times you have heard it. No matter whether you choose to believe it or not. Society defines you. There are laws that help keep peace; there are laws for protection; there are religious laws. There are different laws in different countries, different laws in different religions, and men and women have different laws in some places. The women in Tehran were jailed for flirting, or beaten for not wearing their veils. They were married without their consent, forced into relationships, and killed or tortured without reason.  They were stripped of all their humanity and left feeling emotionless, helpless, and alone. "Living in the Islam Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe" (329). In Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov beautifully illustrates horrific accounts of Lolita's suffering. As the reader, I am on the outside catching a small glimpse into Lolita's world, I was not living it-- unlike the women in Tehran.  Reading and discussing literature became Manna, Mashid, Nassrin, Yassi, Azin, Sanaz, and Mitra's safety against the war, murder, torture, and crime around them. They were comforted by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Jane Austen, other great poets and authors, and yes- comforted by even Vladimir Nabokov.

These women related to these great pieces of literature, questioned the author's motives, and dreamed of far off places of West Egg, and longed for a relationship--with feelings and emotions--like Darcy and Elizabeth. They saw themselves as Lolita: alone and afraid, Daisy: longing for love, and Elizabeth: exploring what it means to be in a relationship. "A novel is not an allegory... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you wont be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience" (111). The experiences told through this book are not only those of Azar, Manna, Mashid, Nassrin, Yassi, Azin, Sanaz, and Mitra but also those experiences within Lolita, The Great Gatsby, The Ambassadors, Daisy Miller, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, poets, authors, scholars, and the others in Tehran.

Azar Nafisi helps Manna, Mashid, Nassrin, Yassi, Azin, Sanaz, and Mitra through this troubled time in Tehran, by not only teaching them great literary classics, but re-establishes in them the human desire to think and feel for themselves. "Art is no longer snobbish or cowardly. It teaches peasants to use tractors, gives lyrics to young soldiers, designs textiles for factory women's dresses, writes burlesque for factory theaters, does a hundred other useful tasks. Art is useful as bread" (107).

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away
By: Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson was born in America and then went to Europe. While over there, he got married and started a family and then decided to move back to his home country. His 288 page book pokes fun at everything American. Everything.

Post Office Appreciation Day: A day where they serve their customers bagels and coffee as a thank you for your business. The other 364 days out of the year, the mail is slow and cannot or will not or just simply refuses to deliver your mail correctly.

Going shopping for those things that you have no idea what they are called: I do this and I have lived in this country all of my life. This is especially true in a hardware store- "I need something to fix this"- as I show them a mangled, ripped up piece of metal. Who knows where this piece of metal came from- all I know is that it is broken and I need to fix it. I cannot imagine trying to explain to a sales person what those things are that prevent the nail from ripping holes in the walls.

How people injure themselves by sitting: Bill has this fascination with statistics. He likes to rattle on that XXX people get injured in couches, sofas or getting in/out of bed. This number is staggeringly higher than those XX people who died engulfed in flames last year. Or those XX hospital visits due to office supply injuries is double the number of people who got hit by lightning. His comparisons in statistics is hysterical and makes you think- "What the hell are these people doing, that they are injuring themselves on a sofa?"

Putting up Christmas decorations: Bill has this love/hate relationship with Christmas. He dreads getting ready for this holiday. His dramatic tale starts with getting half stuck in the attic and ends with those damn pine needles that you end up finding in your house on Easter. 

Going to a baseball game: New baseball stadiums are no fun. The old ones smell old, have hundreds years of goo on the floor and the seats are busted- this makes it nostalgic- right?

How many cup holders do we need in our car?

Where do diners get all of their paraphanelia?

Why do people drive to visit their next door neighbor?

Why are odd roadside attractions so much fun to visit? (The giant ball of yarn- anyone?)

Does dental floss really need a hotline number?

What's the difference between a hotel and a motel?

Bill addressess all of these questions and many more in his laugh-so-much-you-cry book. Bill could write about dental floss for 100 pages and I would read it because it would be so funny. (So there are not 100 pages about dental floss in this book, but he does have a lot to say about the subject).

Seriously, read it!

Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time
By: Greg Mortenson

I had a very hard time getting into this book. I admired what Mortenson was trying to do and how he kept pushing forward despite failure. The thing that held me back was the writing style. Long descriptions are written about eating all of the animal; however, I felt that it glazed over some key moments- like his descent down the mountain--the failed attempt at climbing K2, the reason for building the schools in the first place.

The way this book was written, made my mind wander into wild cartoony imaginations. When he describes his journey up the mountain, with all his belongings in the car and him sleeping on top- made me think of a Disney Hercules type character. Greg, too, was blonde and taller than most Afghani people. I picture the blonde Disney Hercules going up the mountain in this little cartoon-y car with crates and goats flying off. After that image- I had to put the book down for awhile because I know that what Greg Mortenson did was not a laughing matter.

A month later, I picked up the book again and pushed forward.  The middle section read like a geography/history book- so I skimmed that. I did think the last 100 pages were the best part of the book, the 9/11 reaction to what Mortenson was trying to do. This part was written the most realistically with the descriptive parts highlighting the importance of his efforts.

The thing that I did not enjoy was the book neglected to mention his wife's reaction to his insane schedule, his midnight emails/phone calls to the other side of the world, his kidnapping, the fact that he was unable to get home directly after 9/11--the fact that he didn't want to come home, but finish the school on schedule, and the fact that he was gone for most of the year.

I just couldn't get into this book. Sorry for all you out there who loved it. I admire Mortenson for his ambition, determination, and desire to make the world better. I envy his ability to face his failures and do something.

"The enemy is ignorance." Perhaps it is because I know nothing about that part of the world, the people, customs, land, religion and daily life struggles- that I didn't like the book. It's because I don't know enough about what he is talking about.