Home Game or The Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis

I laughed out loud throughout this book. Lewis is a best-selling author (Blind Side, Moneyball, The Big Short) but this book is about his adventures as a new father...his honest reactions, his reluctance to engage, his less than noble feelings. It is a wonderful book for those parents who finally get around to having kids in their late 30s and into their 40s. His wife is Tabitha; his kids are Quinn, Dixie and Walker. The cover of the paperback is wonderful, isn't it?

Going Rogue by Sarah Palin

I am glad I read this book, but I have to admit (coward that I am) that it was a book I didn't read in public for fear someone (yeah, like so many people are just watching everything I do) would think I was a fan. I'm not, but I respect Sarah Palin more after reading her book. I have no idea what the REAL back story is; perhaps, there is so much more that she chose not to write, and perhaps she generously edited events in her favor, but there was enough in Going Rogue to at least make me sit back and wonder about the machinations of some of the media (a lot of the media) and John McCain's advisors/managers during and after the campaign. This is her side of the stories we all heard, and about which most of us Democrats rolled our eyes. In this book, to her credit, she never once said anything negative about McCain and seemed to have the highest respect for him and his wife, and she made very few negative comments about Obama or Hillary Clinton, or even the Democrats except in general ways as she disagrees politically.

Sarah Palin truly admired Ronald Reagan. She barely mentions other Republican presidents. She believes in and knows about fossil fuel energy, and even occasionally gives a nod to alternative energy sources. She did a lot for Alaska, but I cringe to think that she COULD be President (truly a remote possibility, I hope), not because she isn't intelligent enough but because she has utmost confidence in her skewed beliefs and philosophies which, in my opinion, are way too parochial and limited, and unfortunately probably racist. It may be that she thinks what worked in Alaska would work in the country as a whole. LIving in Alaska for almost her whole life, with its land and space and resources and lack of diversity has certainly shaped her perspectives, and she has easy responses to why government shouldn't be involved as much as it is. It is hard to tell how her personal beliefs would influence her policies. Maybe not as much as we think, but then again......

I do think she is an extraordinary woman in what she has accomplished and in that she continues to have the energy and passion and (perhaps) ambition to be a catalyst for political change.

What happened when I read this book is that I admired her personally but not politically. She is a mother, a wife, a professional...she seems to handle all of it without too much ado, nor does she seem to take herself all that seriously (could be wrong here....) I did not get the impression that she was unduly bothered by the angst of most modern women. Perhaps I am naive, but Sarah Palin seems to be a very grounded modern woman, with a supportive, lively family, juggling it all. She is physically active; she is a mother and wife and participates in the lives of her kids and her husband in ordinary ways; she has a large extended family and dozens of friends, and she has a solid faith, but does not seem dogmatic or uncompassionate, or too judgmental or critical (could be wrong....)

Not that I don't have reservations and curiosity about how faithful to the truth she was in her book, but I won't be as quick to dismiss her. On the other hand, I am certainly thankful she and McCain are not in the White House.

UPDATE 08/28/2010: I am reconsidering my opinion of SP....let's see what happens today at the Mall.

Country Bread

I got up Saturday morning and quickly started in. There were still 2 recipes in the current menu that need to be made. This bread is one and the other (which I may make later today) is Cheese-Nut Pate.

It's been very hot and the yeast-knead thing is hard work. I procrastinated but I have no room in this project to skip a recipe or move ahead without making every single soup, salad, bread, dessert, etc. And yeast projects have not been particularly successful for me so far. This time it all went better. The yeast actually foamed up; the kneading was doable early in the morning; and the final product was tasty. Oat flour, rye flour, white flour, sugar, butter, salt... I still cannot imagine doing this regularly though, but perhaps that's because I am not much of a bread or sandwich eater.

Summertime by J. M. Coetzee

What is this book? Autobiography? Novel? Non-fiction? A bit of all of those. Coetzee writes about himself as if he were deceased and, in this book, a would-be biographer interviews five people who knew Coetzee in the 70s, who knew him prior to his fame as a writer. As I read the book, I would go back and forth between thinking this was written by a man who needs to stop obsessing about himself, stop the endless, wearying introspection AND thinking it was a clever and original way of writing about oneself.

I didn't know much about Coetzee except that the milieu for his books is South Africa. He was apparently raised in the stern Dutch Protestant-Abrahma Kuyper tradition, but "saved" somewhat by his Mother's more enlightened ideas about educating a child. However, that material is not in this book. Instead, there is commentary about the South Africa of Afrikaners, British, Coloured and Africans on the verge of change. These imminent changes are not the story, only the background, as the narrator tries to glean significance about John Coetzee from those he interviews.

I liked the book more as I read it, and a definite, quite precise characterization of Coetzee in that time frame is the end result. (He currently lives in Adelaide, Australia.)

Here is one vignette about his cousin Margot (one of those interviewed) and her husband Lukas who have a small farm but also have second jobs, and we find out that they work so hard so as to be able to "house their workers properly and pay them a decent wage and make sure their children went to school and support those same workers later when they grew old and infirm..." This sort of simple observation tells so much; it is what good writers can do.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

Am I glad I read this? I don't know. There are vignettes and sentences and descriptions of the dynamics of a modern family told in the skillful way Anna Quindlen can. She is an established writer with many good books already written. This novel is in the genre of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold or Cage of Stars by Mitchard. I wonder why these women write novels with such story lines? Not just for profit, right? Of course I found it compelling but also think that ultimately these novels with their nearly unbearable events add a layer to the dark distractions in our minds of disturbing images and possibilities that wait there for us in our vulnerable moments. It's just a novel, I know, but.......Of course, there is much more to this novel than the cataclysmic event, much more that is redemptive / instructive as we all try to figure out relationships with our families, with our parents, with our kids, with our friends. AQ always does well with this material. Maybe it is a matter of getting our attention in the first place. That must be getting more and more difficult in our media-saturated world.

Zeitoun by David Eggers

Zeitoun is the last name of a Muslim family who live in New Orleans and who also lived there when Katrina arrived. This is their specific story set in the general context of Katrina and its immediate aftermath. It is thought-provoking and certainly raises issues about what happens as the infrastructure fails and how quickly some members of our society (the poor and sick and those with little primary support) find themselves in survival mode. David Eggers is a good writer. In addition to the particulars of what happens to the Zeitoun family, we learn, again, about these disenfranchised as the levees fail and water pours into and over New Orleans.

Term Limits by VInce Flynn

A typical Vince Flynn political thriller. Bad guys close to the President and good guys working for the CIA, FBI, etc. A disgruntled young congressman, his Irish grandfather, retired "spooks" and Navy SEALS, etc. Lots of technology and chases and murders and meetings and deals. I read this while in Washington, DC, which was fun, as the neighborhoods and buildings and streets and geography of that area were the venues for the story. An airplane book as Bob O said, or a beach book.....

Reading this type of book always makes me wonder how much actually does happen "behind the scenes." Of course, the mayhem and resolutions did get a bit contrived at times, but still, it kept my interest to the end.