Just Finished: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I am just a simple reader. I don't have the beautiful words to describe a book, and I don't seem to be a sophisticated reader. I can't analyze the prose, compare it to any other American author, delve into the language like so many of the reviews I read at Goodreads. When I read, I either like the book or I don't. And every now and then there are books which I can't sort out in my neat piles of liking or disliking. This is one of these.

There is much to dislike about the book, I think. For starters, it is a bleak topic: the survival of a few in an post-apocalyptic world. The dialogue is scarce, simple and repetitive, almost mundane. Except that sometimes in those mundane words there are pearls hidden. The story is vague. We never now what really happened, how they survived, where are they headed to,what are their plans. Heck! We don't ever know even their names!The main characters are simply referred throughout the story as the man and they boy. It drove me crazy at times! I wanted details. I wanted to know. I wanted to get more glimpses at their pre-disaster lives. Who were they before? How come the man knew so much about survival? And there were other questions in my mind: How long have they lived like this? How old was the boy?

I have the hunch that the vagueness was on purpose. I think the author was tapping into some kind of universality. Fears are universal. Relationships are universal.Death is present to us all, disasters can happen and how we react and what kind of person will they make us, is a question that we all could face. In the book the survivors were of two kinds, the "good guys" or the "bad guys". The man and the boy belonged to the "good guys". I think the boy is a prototype of all that is innocent and good, the goodness that we struggle to hold on to when corruption is all around us. He has the black and white way of children, in whose views the world is easily classified and things fall into neat categories. You are either good or bad, coward or brave. He was my favorite character in the book. I picture him like my son N. He had that same ability to think and question, to take things in and when you least expect it, come out with some profound observation. The boy, in my view, kept the man being a man of integrity and honesty. He kept him from sinking into that sub-human state that so many of the survivors have fallen into.

I was touched by their relationship. The man loved his son. The son loved his father. Why was the boy good? I think he was father because the father managed to do, in more than bleak circumstances, what fathers do:direct, guide and instill morals in his son. He managed to nurture in the boy that goodness that comes from the imprint of the Creator.

This book is about love, the love between father and son. It is also a book about hope in the midst of despair; goodness in the midst of evil; courage in the midst of constant fear. It is the triumph of the human spirit in the midst of death.

Just Finished: Horses of Heaven by Gillian Bradshaw

I love to discovered new authors! Gillian Bradshaw is a writer of historical fiction and as the search on Google yielded, she has also written some children books and some science fiction and fantasy. Horses of Heaven takes place in the region between the Middle East and India: The kingdoms of Saka and Bactria. Apparently these kingdoms are real. I have to say that I have never heard of them. The time of the story is after Alexander the Great but before the rise of Rome as a world power.It is the story of the Bactrian king's sister who has been given in marriage as a way to seal an alliance between two neighboring kingdoms that are facing a common enemy. She is a Buddhist who has trained herself in the ways of duty and detachment. Her training doesn't serve her well when she is faced with the repulsion she feels towards her husband. She is determined to do her duty but the more she tries, the more her efforts make the king mad because he demands, and wants to obtain, something she can't give: love. She, who thought love to be impossible finds herself falling in love with the king's son, Izaz. He, who also loves her, is determined not to betray his father. Events get in the way and they are finally thrown together.

The book is interesting and the story is well told. At first I had trouble getting into the book, the descriptions were detailed and, as much as I like historical fiction, I don't like detailed descriptions of things that I find difficult to picture in my mind. Once the story picked up it was hard to stop reading. That said, there were some things I did not like about the book. First, I did not like the mix between historical fiction and fantasy. Personally I think the book would have been better without that horse (or god)that kept appearing. It seemed as an added element-like the author didn't know how to solve the problems and needed some "supernatural" intervention. Also, the story was told as an account written by one of the queen's attendants.But the story goes into great details, like the persons thoughts and inner feelings and emotions, that another person can't possible know. That really bothered me. It took credibility away. I kept asking "how would you know that?". In sum, I liked the book well enough, enough to search for other books by the same author but, it is definitely not one of my favorites.

Clearing Spaces Mission # 3

The temperatures have been warming up here. This forced me to tackle the boys' dressers. Poor A! Nothing from last summer fits him now. We cleared his drawers, packed up the clothes that could be of use for N. in the future and then sat down at the computer to order him some clothes. It is a lot easier than taking him out shopping. I had to do the same thing for N. except that for him we go shopping in our attic. Unfortunately this time the attic shop proved not too adequate since there was hardly any clothing that will fit him. As a bonus, I got to do the same thing for my clothes. I switched the winter clothes for the summer ones and try to purge some in the process. (Note to self: I need to remember to take pictures again- a blog without pictures is kind of boring)

Just finished reading:

Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett: Enjoyable little book. While taking her dogs for a walk the Queen of England stumbles upon the Bookmobile. After all the racket her dogs caused she felt compelled to check out a book. Poor Queen! She didn't know what ride she was about to begin. One thing leads to another and the Queen learns to enjoy reading more and more. Totally fictional but really enjoyable. I appreciated following the development of the Queen as a reader. First the light, indiscriminate reading; then learning to be more careful, reading more serious authors and starting the dialogue with the authors. I love the passage when she realizes that for all her pomp and position, she has no voice and she decides to do something about it.

Hershey Herself by Cecilia Galante: This is one is a young adult fiction title. Hershey is a twelve or thirteen years old girl living with her mom, baby sister and her mom's abusive boyfriend. She has taken upon herself the responsibilities of the well being of her family. She seems to know better than her mom what is good for their family.

With the help of her friend Phoebe, Hershey devices a plan to drive Slade, the cruel boyfriend, crazy hoping that the mother will have the sense to leave him. This plan proofs more disastrous that she ever imagined. They left but instead of a rosy life without Slade, they end up living in a battered women's shelter. There unexpected things happen and Hershey discovers a gift that will get her a chance to do something to repair the damage and alleviate her guilt.
I can't say I liked the book. Maybe I should say that I liked it but didn't love it. The writing was OK. The characters were likable if not always believable. I liked Hershey. She has a problem. She lives in a crappy family. She has a crappy life. She stuffs herself with junk food. She is bullied by Andrea. But she has been loved. Her mother loves her and people in the shelter like her. She is honest, frank and stronger that people might think. She has a rich interior life. She has courage. All in all it was an entertaining reading but not my favorite.

From My File Cabinet

I found some jewels in my drawers. Here is one:

"Motherhood is unique as a spiritual discipline because its practice requires neither ascetic withdrawal nor contemplative silence nor the acquisition of esoteric knowledge. You cannot mother from afar, only from the very center of daily life. It is the little choices that I make everyday as I practice my mothering - to be harsh or kind, giving or withholding, critical or affirming- which shape me and define me more clearly than any degree program or professional affiliation."
Cornelia Odom (CCL newsletter, 1993)

Clearing Spaces Mission #2 ( a little late)

The second mission has been accomplished! The file cabinet drawers have been de-cluttered, the two that belong to me that is. I don't dare de-clutter M's. I don't think he will appreciate my throwing out any of his precious papers.

It took me two days, mostly because there was a lot of articles that I wanted to thin out. Actually, it was like taking a walk through the things that have interested or preoccupied me in the last 10 years or so.:

• There were the articles on motherhood. The ones that I read to convince myself that I was doing the right thing staying at home. The ones that I could throw away. They have accomplish their purpose. I no longer feel ambivalent about my vocation. I no longer need to convince myself of the worth of what I am doing.
  
• There were articles from when I was trying to get a degree on Pastoral Ministry from a too-liberal-for-me program. Those I threw out without thinking much about it, maybe just a slight surprise at why I have ditched them earlier.
• There were copies of homilies I had requested from a former pastor because at the time they touched me, taught me or meant something to me. They also have fulfilled their purpose because as I read through some of them, I couldn't figure out what was it that they meant to me.
• There were the myriad of homeschooling articles that I don't longer need because I am set in how I home school and don't need more articles about methods or techniques.
• And then there was all the articles that have been made obsolete by Google. I don't need to keep hard copies when on the Internet they are just a click away.

Of course, there were also those that I couldn't part with. There are Fr. Alonso's lectures. There were those articles on faith issues that I want to someday share with my children. There are those old photocopied things from when I was a psychologist. Things that, maybe, one day I'll re-read to rekindle the love for my profession (just maybe). There are a small number of People of Praise articles that chronicle some aspect of our community's history. And there are the numerous reading list that I have managed to collect, that are probably on the obsolete category, but since I love lists, I couldn't throw them away.

This mission had an unexpected benefit: a walk into my past and an opportunity for some "philosophizing" (which I like ) :-)