The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is thread where you can submit reviews for the Best Review contest. The thread opened for submissions on September 1 and will close at Midnight EST on November 18, 2011. Voting will start the next day and run until the end of the day on NOVEMBER 30TH. The person whose review gets the most votes will get to design a 20 point task for the WINTER Challenge.

Just a reminder that each person can only submit one review - but you can make edits to your review up until the end. The review does not have to be any particular length and doesn't have to be a positive one (i.e. you can choose to review a book you didn't like).

PLEASE DO NOT comment on people's reviews in this thread - this is for submissions only - you will be able to comment when voting begins.

SPOILER ALERT!- These reviews may include spoilers.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein


Sometimes I wonder how any of us (women or men) make it through life without deep psychological issues. After reading this book, I have to wonder even more. How do we stand a chance when everything around us is pink and made for a Princess? Where are the strong and smart role models for young girls? Can girls' toys do anything besides shop and get dressed up for boys? Does it really matter? Why try and teach young girls that getting dressed up, wearing makeup, and looking like Barbie are bad when they will become women who will do the same thing anyway? I think that was the largest flaw in this book for me. The author complains that even "positive" role models, like Dora the Explorer eventually capitulate to consumerism (at least in their toy and book form- Dora's makeup kit and vanity mirror, anyone?) and that girls are being taught that their worth lies in what they buy and how they look, but adult women are slave to that, too. In order to not be hypocrites, we'd need to eliminate the wrinkle cream ads, the hair dye ads, the makeup purchases, and the emotional shopping. The author says over and over that girls need to be taught that their worth does not lie in what they can buy, but who can show them what the alternative is?

I realized as I was reading this book that even now, nearly 30 years old, I would love to be able to get dressed up like a princess, yet life doesn't allow me that option. Until I get married. I was thinking about how fun it will be to pick out a wedding dress ($$) and be the center of attention for the day. How fun will it be to have my hair and makeup done ($$). Then I stopped myself short. Hair and makeup? I don't do anything with my hair now. I never wear makeup. Why would I for my wedding? Because I want to look beautiful. Am I not beautiful as I am? If I wanted to look beautiful, I should do my hair and makeup daily, but I don't believe that I should subject myself to that. Why would I do so on my wedding day? Suddenly, I felt myself drowning in that same commercialism that little girls are being subjected to and that I had thought I'd throw off. It feels hopeless. I have to give a lot of kudos to people who try to fight it.

My other complaint is the chapter on facebook and the internet. I don't have kids yet, but I could already lose sleep over fears of what my kids could get themselves into online. I remember well how horrible being bullied and teased in school was. I can't imagine how I would have survived if it had followed me home at night. How do you escape it? How do you help your kids deal with it? The thoughts alone make me want to run for the hills and turn Amish. I'm sure there are tons of books out there on the dangers of the internet and how to handle them, and that's probably why the author didn't go into it further, but that chapter left me hanging.

Though it may not sound like it, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I think it's important for parents to be aware of what they're buying their children, what messages are being relayed to kids, and that you need to pick your battles and yet realize that rigidity may not be an option.

hpaddict

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom

This book is the reason why I like to read the book before I see the movie version.

I know the movie version of Forrest Gump rather well. I recently saw it, and I got all 20 trivia questions right at the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant. (How many Dr. Peppers did he drink before he met President Kennedy? What is the name of the host where Forrest met John Lennon? etc.) I happen to remember weird things like that.

Knowing the movie so well made it harder to enjoy the very different book. In the movie, things just happen to Forrest. He just goes with the flow that takes him to a number of historical moments. In the book, he always has a choice. Groom has him contemplate the choices, and since we can read his thoughts we see that he isn't just a pawn when it comes to life's choices. He is deliberate about each one. Some cause triumph but most cause failure. Also, he always knows and says that he is an "idiot." The movie has a poignant moment where you finally see that Forrest was aware of his differences the whole time. He didn't let on before. He might have been too stupid to know. In the book, he is fully aware and he tells people that he is an idiot.

This leads me to another problem that I have between the 2 versions. There are people in the movie-Forrest's life who know he is different but don't treat him that way. His mother, Jenny, Lt. Dan, and Bubba all treat him like everybody else. These same characters in the book call Forrest "stupid, idiot, moron," etc. to his face and treat him as one. His own mother says that he can't start a shrimping business because "you are a moron." That really struck me the wrong way.

I know that I should be reviewing this book for its own sake, but it is really hard when the movie is so iconic. Who can read Gone With the Wind and not picture and hear Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable? I saw that movie before I read the book too, but I could appreciate the book for itself (even though I kept picturing the movie actors).

I couldn't separate this book from the movie, because I thought the book just wasn't that good. It didn't matter that Forrest did some things different in the book (i.e. he was an astronaut too). I think it was because of the relationships around him. The movie was about a mentally slower person who encounters extraordinary events and meets the challenges bravely and with a child like innocence.

The book is about an idiot savant who chooses to try and be great but always fails. He fails because he looks down upon himself, and he does that because his so called friends look down on him too.

Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your country were invaded by an enemy army tomorrow? Well, in Tomorrow, When the War Began, this becomes a reality for the country I live in, Australia.

When friends Ellie and a bunch of her friends decide to go on a camping trip for a week, away from their parents and homes, the last thing they expect is to see the country taken over by enemy soldiers before they even get back. With absolutely no warning dozens of fighter planes make their way over the country and soldiers descend. While almost everyone is captured and forced to live in makeshift camps, Ellie and her friends must learn to survive on their own, and at the same time come up with great plans to hinder the progress of the invading army.

To tell you the truth, this book is scarier than reading about zombie outbreaks. Something about zombie outbreaks doesn't seem plausible to me, however this does. It works because John Marsden creates a war for the present time. It's as humane as wars come, because the enemies know that if they don't treat Australia's citizens fairly, the UN steps up and here comes America with an army greater than the population of Australia.

This is one of those books that adds a new fear to the list of fears generated by popular culture. Will I wake up and be herded into what is just about a concentration camp? Will they bomb my home and loot my wares? Western countries just don't seem to get this kind of treatment. However, there's always the what if, and this book definitely highlights that.

As for the writing, multiple times throughout this book we are sent into a suspenseful scene that kept me reading. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did. It felt very real to me, especially as this is the country I live in. I am also very pleased to know that this is one of the standard books read throughout Australian high schools. Unfortunately my school didn't provide this book until after I went through the relevant grade, and I was forced to read something that put the non-reading members of the grade off books for life.

Overall, I gave this book 4/5 stars and am looking forward to reading the following 6 books in the series and seeing how the war progresses from here. Lets hope a war doesn't actually start in the meantime!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

There is a line early in this book that reads, “Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if it were true.” It must be true, because I avoided this book for some time while everyone else was raving about it. It sounded much too sappy. A story told complete in letters? How could that possibly work? But Shaffer and Barrows pull it off brilliantly. Not since "The Help" have I read a book that I simply did not want to see end. I rationed the chapters like sugar during a wartime shortage. It is the story of Juliet, a writer, and the odd circumstances that involve her with a group of people on Guernsey, one of the islands in the English Channel just after the end of World War II. The tales of how they survived the German occupation through books, subterfuge and flat-out heroism are delightful, charming, witty, romantic and heartbreaking. I came to fall in love with every single character. Dawsey is the least likely of romantic heroes. Amelia and Issola are big sisters you just want to hug. Troublemaker Adelaide Addison will make you laugh out loud. And over it all hangs the unknown fate of Elizabeth McKenna, the quick-thinking founder of the group, who was shipped off to a concentration camp, leaving behind a small child. The story builds and recedes like the tides, throwing up an answer to one question, raising a new one. Each builds on the next to create a wonderful beachhead of stories that create one book. To say more would be to give some of the stories away, and I don't want to do that. Each one is like a tiny present. This is the book I will now be forcing on people saying, “You must read this!”

Bento's Sketchbook by John Berger

BENTO'S SKETCHBOOK is certainly not conventional. Blending words (both John Berger's own and those of seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza) and images (mainly Berger's own drawings, with a few appearances of works by other artists), the author pursues an answer to the question, “How does the impulse to draw something begin?” Berger's musings introduce the reader to a thrilling variety of places and times – the suburbs of Paris, post-World War II Dresden, India in 2002 – through personal anecdotes. The characters we meet in these anecdotes are lovingly rendered with carefully chosen details, and vividly alive; I liked Luca, the easygoing, moustachioed Italian airplane mechanic whose life and personality Berger describes at length in a discussion of the caprices of fate.

The book’s format preserves the unique visual appeal of a sketchbook, and as such the text maintains a somewhat jumbled composition. While the strong underlying themes of the work (e.g. the challenge of creating a truly accurate artistic representation of reality, the need for art as a means for communicating the seemingly incommunicable) help unite the disparate personal and historical anecdotes, the sudden temporal shifts and changes in topic are at times disorienting.

However, the ultimate effect of the book’s unique manner of presentation is to feel fully submerged in Berger's mind, which is evidently a brilliant and complex one. The connections Berger makes between Spinoza's philosophies and his own life experiences are lucid, and his writing crisp. Berger's distinct voice and descriptive precision are undoubtedly informed by the nuanced, hyper-visual eye of an artist. His descriptions are evocative and colorful (literally: on his narrative canvas, Berger renders plums the color of “vivid but vanishing blue smoke” and irises the colors of “the instruments of a brass band being played with abandon”). The writing takes on an intriguing synesthetic quality in places, most notably in Berger's discussion of the inadequacies of verbal expression: “From the side I could see how language was paper-thin, and all its words were foreshortened to become a single vertical stroke – | – like a single post in a vast landscape.”

Reading BENTO'S SKETCHBOOK, I am reminded of Umberto Eco's History of Beauty, which takes a similar approach to the subject of the representation of beauty in art by juxtaposing passages from philosophical texts, illustrative works off visual art, and Eco's own interpretation and analyses. The tone of History of Beauty, however, is fundamentally academic – whereas, despite the erudite nature of many of Berger's artistic references (Antonello, Velasquez, Kollwitz), Berger's lofty themes are made more accessible by BENTO'S SKETCHBOOK's secondary focus on autobiography.

A previously published author many times over and a recipient of the prestigious Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel, G., Berger's impressive literary pedigree combined with the quality and eye-catching unconventionality of BENTO'S SKETCHBOOK holds unique appeal. As Berger's exploration of his subject is so wide in scope, I expect the text to attract those interested in art books, philosophy, memoirs, and even social theory (Berger extends his discussion of his and Spinoza's philosophies to include their applications in radical, revolutionary thought). A stimulating and refreshing book; recommended.

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