God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane

In 1948, hundreds of Segenalese railway workers along the main rail line left work in a strike against the French colonist’s repression of the native’s way of life and status as employees of the railway. In God’s Bits of Wood, Sembene Ousmane tells their story.

Ousmane’s writing was impressive. Although I’ve never been to Senegal, I could picture the setting. He also did a wonderful job of capturing the people in action. It was not a comfortable read given the subject matter, and it was not a novel to be rushed. It was, ultimately, rewarding.

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Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

I was a bit disappointed by Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. I’m glad I read it: it gave me a new perspective on Wharton, because it was a different setting, cast of characters, and theme from those I’ve read before. It was wonderfully written, with Wharton’s elaborate and realistic descriptions of the setting and thought processes. As in the other Wharton novels and novellas I’ve read, there was a moral dilemma.

Yet, the overall mood to Ethan Frome was so bleak that I felt depressed both while I was reading and afterward. It also felt like a study in symbolism for high school students to read: it seemed Wharton was hitting us over the head with “subtlety” to discover if we just read close enough. I felt it didn’t have the depth that The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth had, nor the matter-of-fact dilemma that The Touchstone had.

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Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

Mary Barton is the only living child of John Barton, poor factory worker and Union leader in Manchester. He hoped for better for her, so he apprenticed her to a dressmaker, hoping that she could avoid the dreary life of a factory girl. Mary has high ambitions, hoping to snare the attentions of the young Harry Carsons, son of the mill owner, and thereby rise above poverty once and for all. However, because her neighbor and childhood friend Jem Wilson also adores her, and Mary must determine where her true affections lie.

While I can say in retrospect that I enjoyed reading Mary Barton, I really struggled for the first 200 pages. I could not connect to the characters, nor did I find anything in the plot engaging. At about page 200, things start to happen and I didn’t need to force myself to read for the last 300 pages, as I had for the beginning portion. Continue reading »

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist surprised me.

Oliver’s story is familiar to me: I watched the musical many times as a young girl (my mother fast forwarding past That Scene). I loved the music and found the characters delightful. I always loved Artful Dodger!

And yet, when I read the book, I was surprised.

I expected this book to elegantly written, engrossing, complicated, and suspenseful, and I won’t say that it wasn’t those things at various points. I really enjoyed reading it, and I really loved some of the characters. However, to me, most of Oliver Twist was convenient and pretty ordinary. I felt Dickens had a little bit of genius, and yet something was missing from the novel as a whole. As I reviewed his list of novels this morning, I realized that Oliver Twist was one of his first. I wonder, then, if Dickens was still working toward a masterpiece.

The bonus of Oliver Twist being “convenient” is that I don’t think anyone should be intimidated by it. Although it is Dickens’ wordy writing (and that takes a little getting used to), Oliver Twist is easy to follow, the characters are delightfully described, and the plot is not overly complicated. Plot-wise, it felt like a modern novel. It was a best-seller of its day, and I’m not surprised. Continue reading »

Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams

Jane Addams was born shortly before the Civil War to a privileged family in rural Illinois. After graduating from Rockford College, Addams determined to “live with the poor” (page 44). In the coming decades and for the remainder of her life, Addams was an influential leader for Chicago social reform. Beyond her leadership, though, Addams was a friend to thousands of poor immigrants in the Chicago slums.

Twenty Years at Hull-House is Jane Addams’ autobiography until about 1910, a chronicle of the various reforms she brought to life and some of the things that changed the lives of the immigrants (9,000 a year). Hull-House was a non-political, non-religious haven for those that had no other advocate in a busy city. The story is remarkable.

I have never read anything quite like this before, and so this “review” is more of a collection of notes, quotes, and issues that stood out to me as I read it.

Twenty Years of Hull-House is written not in chronological order (except for the first few chapters covering her childhood) but rather in topical order.  In places, the text did become dry when it discussed people, philosophies, and economic issues I was unfamiliar with. But reading a more difficult book was well worth the effort for me. In a sense, it opened my eyes to the plight of the poor. While the issues have changed in the past 100 years, I believe that the underlying isolation that comes with poverty or immigration is still pertinent today. I liked reading this book both for the historical value and for the interesting perspective of hands-on social work. Continue reading »

Listen to the Wind by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth

I can finally recommend something related to the Three Cups of Tea story.

Remember how I hated listening to the audiobook of Three Cups of Tea, which felt like a journalistic report despite being called a memoir? My mother loved Three Cups of Tea and thought it was wonderful, so I enlisted her help in writing my post for Rebecca Reads: I shared a Counterpoint post, with each of us writing our thoughts of the book.

Long story short: The issue of my “hating” Three Cups of Tea was revived last week by someone who wasn’t so happy with my very scathing review. Hate, apparently, is too strong a word, considering Greg Mortenson is in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. (FYI, apparently more than 100 people are nominated each year.) Despite that, I still thought that the character described in the book is not a likeable person: he’s a bit too flighty for me to trust with my money. Besides, the book dragged along with horribly unnecessary details. I had to reiterate to my visitor that I have no intention of rereading Three Cups of Tea, but if the story were completely rewritten I may revisit the issue. (I said, “If Greg’s story is rewritten by a different author in a completely revamped structure, I may consider revisiting it.”)

Well, it has been rewritten. Twice. Continue reading »

Hunger: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell

A few weeks ago, I overheard an eight-year-old girl say to an adult in all seriousness, “I’m so hungry, I’m going to die!”

I couldn’t help thinking to myself that she had no idea what true hunger was; nor do I. In Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell details what it means, physiologically, to be hungry. Then she goes beyond the science of hunger and into the social aspects by reviewing the history of how we learned to help starving people recover and the various current worldwide issues surrounding hunger, from Anorexia Nervosa to refugees. It is an intriguing look into a social problem that everyone experiences, even to a small extent, every day. Continue reading »

Material World by Peter Menzel

In a similar manner to What the World Eats (reviewed here), Material World by Peter Menzel attempts to illustrate the material wealth (or material poverty) of various families around the globe by photographing a family’s household belongings and illustrating the family’s daily life in photographs.

Using full-color photography, each country is highlighted first with a two-page photograph of an “average” family in the street (or a field) with their possessions and a listing of those basic possessions. Then, there is a summary of the country’s history and the family’s statistics, such as house size, family size, and income (which are average for the country). There is also an information bar with statistics relating to the country, such as fertility rate and country population. Text and photographs illustrate the daily life of the chosen families. Continue reading »

What the World Eats by Peter Menzel

What do you eat in one week? What does a typical American eat? What does a typical Brit eat? What does a family in the Darfur Refugee Camp in Chad eat? What do the people of the world eat?

These are the questions that photographer Peter Menzel seeks to answer through his coffee table book of pictures and information: What the World Eats.

The pictures of families from around the world with their week’s worth of food and the short accounts of their eating habits were interesting. In the end, however, I felt Menzel’s book was forcing a social problem on the reader, and it seemed to further contribute to stereotypes of eating habits around the world. Continue reading »

Four Christmas Novellas by Charles Dickens

Most people have heard of A Christmas Carol, but few are familiar with Charles Dickens’ other Christmas novellas. I read his other four this season. Some were more interesting than others. The superiority of A Christmas Carol makes it clear to me why it has lasted as a “classic” through the years, and while most of these have not. Continue reading »