Wilkerson’s own personal experiences of being black, being unseen, bring it into focus.  She compares slavery and racism in our country to the caste system of India and holocaust of Nazi Germany.

Our larger book group discussed this timely book the day after the mob attack on the US capitol.  The insights we gained from it helped us understand why people did this, why so many are attracted to Trump, and that unanswerable question for many of us, why do people vote and behave against their own interests.  Wilkerson’s plausible answer is that they are willing to give up things that would help them in the short term to protect their long-term interests. What are those long-term interests?  To keep the prestige, power, and supremacy they feel is their due simply because they are white.  People will vote and act against anything that might help the brown or black person rise above the lowest rungs of society and threaten white position.  It is especially threatening for the white people who feel unsuccessful to see nonwhites getting things they are unable to get for themselves.                                                                                       

But it is not all fluff.  I expected this to be a welcome contrast to Wilkerson’s book, but the depressing mistreatment of and attitude towards the brown caste by the dominant white caste (her word is colonizers) suffuses the essays.  In her discussion of the Brady Bunch in Hawai’i she points out that teen Greg Brady may ogle the many “bikinis” on the beach but when he speaks to one, she isn’t a local girl, but a blond Californian.

I liked Prato’s information and sharp observations but thought her language a little too breezy.  I suppose that I am showing my age, but I like some decorum in a book and fewer f-words.  She talks about the islands, including Kaua’i the Garden Isle, as a refuge, a place of healing.  This is the perfect segue to the next book I want to talk about.                                                             

 As always with Lively, I love her musings on time, the past, and memory.  The discussions of the “uses” of a garden, as refuge or creative expression, were interesting.  But those chapters that were essentially lists of flowers species, gardens, gardeners, gardening books?  I found them boring and skimmed through.   No, it was the philosophical sections I enjoyed.

She says, “I have the universal old age failing with names…but in fact (plant) names seem to surface more readily than those of politicians or celebrities, which is as it should be, as far as I’m concerned.”

I like her attitude about removing plants that no longer serve the purpose she wants.  That section combined with the section on husband-and-wife gardeners reminded me of my own situation when I want to remove something. I see it as overgrown, out of proportion, three times bigger than its intended size and my husband says – but it is doing so well!

And finally, after talking about the expulsion from that first garden so central to our mythology, she wonders if there is something primeval about people’s affinity for gardens, “Here we are, …in possession again….”  Yes, I like Lively’s attitude.

                                                                                        

In addition to the definition, the daily page has other word facts and games which I don’t usually take the time for, but this one intrigued me, “You Need a Hobby:  7 Words for Those Who Pursue Their Passions.”  I liked cruciverbalist, a person skillful in creating or solving crossword puzzles.  And then there is phillumenist, one who collects matchbooks, or matchbook labels.  Really? People do that?  Probably, not so much since smoking has declined.  The idea of hobbies though resonated with me in our time of still-being-quarantined.

Addendum

I meant to end on the relatively upbeat note of hobbies during quarantine, but have found myself, the last few days, looking up the exact meaning of words like sedition and what was the Reichstag and what does it mean today.  These are not words or concepts I ever expected to need to know in connection with my own country.  My reading time has been devoted to newspapers.  First, there was the reporting of the incredible attack on the capitol and now, the thoughtful analyses, opinion pieces, and editorials that being written.  One from the NYT especially struck home, “…the mob tested more than policy or ideology.  The intentions of the president’s supporters struck at an idea at the core of the American experiment – that, in time, the country’s commitment to democracy will overtake its history of intolerance.”  In Caste, Wilkerson wonders about the same thing.  If people have to choose between whiteness (supremacy) and democracy, which will they choose?

That is what happened with Nabokov’s Pale Fire.  The language is still poetically beautiful and funny.  The story is still outrageous.  Nonetheless, it was also more boring and incomprehensible than I remembered.  Is this typical of memory – we make things nicer than they were?  Or have our tastes just changed?  This kind of literature requires a lot of effort and maybe we just want something more accessible. Nonetheless, this rather difficult novel is worth thinking about.  And if at its end we’re left wondering, “Really, what is the truth of it all?” Maybe that is the point.

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I’ve always loved a good story and sometimes that story appears in a movie not a book.  Brigsby Bear, creative and original, is one of those movies.  It isn’t a mystery; it isn’t a love story; there isn’t any violence.  It is a tale of compassion and kindness, a story about people helping a unique main character adjust to reality and come into his own.  I hadn’t heard  much about this movie beforehand so it was an unexpected pleasure.

                                                                        ——–

Speaking of reality, I am sometimes reminded that reading can have a very utilitarian use.  In this time of semi quarantine, I entertained myself one day by cleaning the dishwasher, in particular the filter.  Afterwards, I decided that reading the manual to see how often this activity is recommended would be a very good idea.

All this reading for information got me thinking about more serious topics, non fiction books available about the environment, poverty, or civil rights.    

                                                                         ——–

As readers, we often turn to books to educate ourselves on these problems.  I have just started to read Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.  It is an overwhelming examination of race and its affiliates in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany.  She is an excellent teacher who gives clarity to difficult-to-define words such as race, class and caste.  As all good teachers, she gives many examples which is where the overwhelming part comes in. More to come on this one when I finish it.

                                                                        ——–

Now that the solstice has come and gone, we are all looking forward to the new year and lighter days.  In the excellent NYT article, “How We Survive Winter,”  Elizabeth Dias says, “Look for the smallest bit of beauty around you…at a time where it seems like the mega-systems are all broken…return your gaze to the small….The great irony of winter is that the moment darkness is greatest is also the moment light is about to return.  Each year the winter solstice comes with the promise that the next day will be brighter.”  Sounds good to me.

12/2/20  A Nobel Prize in literature sounded impressive, so I thought I should give Faithful and Virtuous Night by poet Louise Gluck a try.  Poetry hasn’t resonated with either of my groups, so we have read very little of it together.  I like her work.  It is approachable, moving poetry, not the abstract obtuse language which we are so often presented with. 

The poems, filled with lovely images, tell a story which I can mostly understand the first time.   On the second reading, metaphors emerge; I see connections among the poems.  And on the third reading? This is why I don’t read poetry.   I know there is much more to find in this slim volume, but there is a stack of books on the table and a long list on the computer.   

Some lines I especially liked, which are appropriate for the winter:

12/9/20  After the November election, we invited some neighbors to the open garage with heaters for a celebratory glass of bubbly, and naturally, the conversation turned to politics.  They had all read Michael Cohen’s Disloyal which someone owned and offered to lend. 

The book is overly dramatic and somewhat trite, but then writing is not what Cohen was known for.  He was Trump’s hit man, a position he loved, until suddenly he was on the receiving end of what he had been dishing out.  The storyline tells of his seduction, how he loved the power, loved being told he was part of the “in” group, loved knowing what was really going on.   And pretty soon this started to feel familiar.  He was telling us, the readers, the true story, what really went on, making us feel that because we were reading his book, we were part of the “in” group.  Hmm…  Cohen knows his business very well.  But although I started to feel conned, I read about two thirds until all the mea culpas and dirt finally got to me and I fast skimmed to the end.

12/14/20  Much more relaxing was The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.  I’m not sure why murder mysteries are relaxing or why some of them are termed cozy, but this qualifies on both counts.  Located in a retirement village with four lively oldsters as sleuths, this sounded perfect for an old lady who reads. Our four detectives met every Thursday in the activity room to solve cold cases, but now, suddenly there is a real live murder on the doorstep.    

Sometimes, if a book builds a lot of tension, I like to skip to the end to see what happens.  I think that I can enjoy the characters and writing more if I’m not galloping along to see what happens.   In this book, like other well plotted ones, it wasn’t easy to spot the answer and I had to wait until the end like everyone else.

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12/15/20 A poem that is worthy of being reread at least once a year, every year, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” evokes the feeling of the season for me.  Legend has it that Clement Clarke Moore wrote it on Christmas Eve, 1822, during a sleigh ride home after buying a turkey for his family.   The inspiration for his St Nicholas was his chubby, bewhiskered driver.  Alas, like so many legends these days, it is being disputed as current scholarship suspects the poem was really written by Henry Livingston, Jr.  It was first published in 1823 in an upstate New York newspaper.

I love this charming nostalgic poem with its famous first lines:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,                                       not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…

And its wonderful ending:

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,                                                           And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle.                                                              But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight-                                                     Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

She says: “…about two years ago a friend’s daughter said, ‘Why not set up a website?’ …and I thought ‘Why not?’ I just blithely set it up. I had no idea what I was doing.”  Does that sound familiar!  Just like starting a blog on reading.  Only for me, it was my own daughter, not a friend’s.  It made me laugh.

12/4/20  In my “other” book group, the seven of us looked back over the year to remember the books we had read together.  One of the most memorable, although not the best, was Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21^st Century, by Jessica Bruder.  It describes Americans who have given up on home ownership to travel the country in trailers, not for fun but necessity.   These people, many in their 60’s and older, look for seasonal work.  It was the section on the harsh conditions of the  Amazon warehouse that grabbed our attention the most, especially since Covid has forced us into so much online shopping.

We next got onto a discussion of whether a person should reread books.  One person thought that at our age we don’t have the time to repeat books; there are so many new ones to read.  Others talked about getting so much more the second time; changing from disliking to liking; revisiting a favorite. 

Two talked about rereading There There by Tommy Orange several times and getting a picture of wholeness, almost beauty, so different from the first reading.   As for me, I couldn’t get beyond the subject matter of drug addiction among Native Americans and found it too depressing to read a second time. 

But reread old favorites?  Yes, I’m a fan of that.  This is especially true since library services are limited.  It is great to turn to a bookshelf full of favorites and know there is something wonderful there.

12/6/20  This is exactly what our threesome book group did this week.  What we found on our shelves, what each of us had chosen to buy and keep, was Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.   This “resplendent rare bird of a novel” as described by the New Yorker critic Giles Harvey is great fun to tackle if you are in the mood for something literary and challenging.

The novel contains a serious poem at the beginning followed by a commentary, which isn’t the least bit serious, but is a whole other fantastic story – and maybe a joke.  Who the narrator of the commentary is may be part of the puzzle, which only maybe can be solved.  It is Nabokov at his best with gorgeous alliterative language, but keep your dictionary at hand.  Nabokov, who is trilingual, is showing off here and putting us natives to shame.  This is not a casual read, and we are taking three weeks to give it its due.

11/18/20 When riding up and down the freeway, which we do on a regular basis, I’ve gotten in the habit of writing haikus.   Here is one I played around with after a few hours of watching the roadside scenery on a recent trip.

Gold leaves turning brown; Gray fog obscures the hill tops; November drifts in.

Around lunch time we stopped to charge our electric car.  Although it was my birthday, the prime consideration was something quick and safe, not fancy, and McDonald’s it was.

Big Mac, fries, and coke; Seagulls in the parking lot; 78 years!

11/24/20  Getting books for our book group isn’t as easy as we are accustomed to.  Because of Covid, our libraries are closed or on limited hours.  Holds are not promptly transported among libraries.  We request books we want to discuss two weeks from now and they don’t even come for two weeks.  So – in addition to electronic visits on Zoom, we are getting used to ebooks and audio books.  This leads to interesting challenges.   How can we decide what page to read up to when there are no page numbers?  How can we point out a beautiful description on page so and so?  Where is the map?

This is our current situation.  We are not reading from books.  All three of us are reading or listening on our devices.   We all complain about how we miss actual books.  Nonetheless – all three of us have been able to get the same novel from our libraries at the same time.  We are reading To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey, an excellent choice for the start of winter.  This is one of those dual time books – in the present and the 1850’s – that is filled with lush descriptions of ice and frozen landscapes in Alaska in the early days of American exploration.  There are several story lines here, and I especially liked that of the second main character, Sophie, the wife.  She is unable to join the adventurer husband so fills her time waiting for him by learning to photograph birds.

My art loving friends will appreciate her comment: “…a sculpture does something words cannot, and…so too a photograph”  Pretty good description of art in general, I would say.

11/26/20  Thanksgiving dinner in the garage was memorable!  We invited good friends, set up bistro tables properly distanced, carried out the living room rug, took out pumpkins and lights, turned on the heaters, and opened the door.  Good wine and a turkey dinner helped us feel festive.  Luckily the weather cooperated and we had a fun two hours.

Here’s another thought-provoking idea from Ackerman’s Bird Way.  She explores the many stories that suggest birds, not humans, might be the original fire makers.  Certain kinds of raptors have long been observed picking up burning sticks from the edge of a fire and dropping them into nearby grasslands, thus causing the fire to spread.  They then feast on the small insects, animals, etc escaping the fire.  That myth about Prometheus, fire, and the eagle may have a wholly unexpected layer of meaning.

11/5/20  The once a month meeting with my “other” book club was this morning.  When I lead, like today, I’m always a bit apprehensive.  Do I have too many questions?  Not enough to fill the time?   Don’t talk too much.   But those concerns couldn’t spoil the joy of this wonderful book.  Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, one of my all-time favorites, was our choice for today.  I love the main character, Father Latour’s approach to life – non confrontational, patient, persistent.  Cather gives us many vignettes, told like family stories after a good dinner, and from them emerge the story of an adventurous, successful life in the new world of New Mexico in the mid 1800’s.  The Archbishop defines that success: “To fulfil the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man.” 

The serene ending is one of my favorite in literature.  The dying Archbishop relives the emotional turmoil of a young man leaving the French home he loved for the adventure of the unknown world.  Now as an old man, it is time for him to repeat that scene; he will leave his beloved new world for the next unknown.

11/5/20  An appropriate article for upcoming winter from the NY Times:  “What Scandinavians can teach us About Embracing Winter.”  Hygge in Danish; Koselig in Norwegian are the words used to describe the comfort of coziness when the weather is dark and cold.  Bundled up, sitting around the bonfire, drinking something hot  – these things create comfort in an unfriendly environment.  Getting outdoors is key.  Hmmm. 

11/8/20  Last year, our daughter gave us tickets to the Rolling Stones concert in Seattle.  It was an amazing experience – wailing guitars, a wall of sound.   Front man Mick Jagger ran back and forth for two hours dominating the stage.  What great physical shape.  He was 76.   Today, it is Joe who is the inspiration.  Running for and being elected president!  We are the same age – 78.  These two men are wonderful examples of the new old age.

11/10/20  We finished our discussion of As I Lay Dying.  Two books with death in the title in a short time, but both were about ways to live.  This one I didn’t care for.  Why does Faulkner use illiterate people to explore the most sophisticated ideas – being/non being, what is language? His stream of consciousness and dialect made this a very difficult book with little return.

11/15/20  I was gifted The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman, non-fiction and yes, about birds.  Fascinating to read what scientists have learned in the last couple of decades with new mini equipment and to think of the patience required to conduct their experiments.  One kind of bird, while still in the egg, can understand its parent’s concern about heat and adjust its growth accordingly.  How do scientists know this? I’ll take their word for it, but it is mind boggling.

Another bird fact learned this week from a totally different source is that a group of coots is called a cover.  It was my birthday and we rented a house on a lake hoping for some good birding.  There was little variety, but one afternoon along came thirty or so coots swimming in a V.  It was a first for us and Google was able to supply the word.

I started this blog in October but it took until now to overcome my resistance to something techie and figure out how to get online.

Life brought an unwelcome surprise to everyone this year. No more meeting inside or at restaurants. We had to learn to Zoom. Luckily there were people still working, or grandchildren, who could help with that. As summer came, we three readers ventured outside for picnics with our bookbags, and finally an outdoor restaurant. What a treat!

Our last outdoor meeting required a coat at lunch time as we sat around a picnic table in front of the taco shop discussing The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak.  We enjoyed her take on differing views of history.  For the Armenians, it was important and part of their lives; for the Turks, not so much.  Her writing, tho, is the classic definition of “overwrite” – way too much rambling for me.

10/23 “The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk”.  What a wonderful saying for old age.  I came upon it today when reading David Brooks’ article in the Atlantic, “Bruce Springsteen and the Art of Aging Well.”

10/31  Halloween.  No masks; No coats.  Rainy weather so our group stayed inside and zoomed.  Our discussion today was the second half of Safek’s book.  One of us liked the warm family feelings evoked by the “aunties.”  The other enjoyed the exploration of memories on our current lives.  I found a murder/suicide scene set in the middle of all this unrealistic. 

But in a book I didn’t care for, this great nugget:  The overwhelming majority of people never think and those who think never become the overwhelming majority.

An escape to Vancouver and a restaurant along the river with both an overhang and heater.  Fun to see on the wall a quote from Virginia Woolf.  “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”  A woman after my own heart.

11/3/20  Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is today’s book.  We read only the first 60 pages and it took that long to get the characters straight.  I had a routine hospital procedure but couldn’t bring myself to take that book into the waiting room and let someone see the title.