Well, I am moving slowly along in my reading titles, with three more completed and ready for report.
The Mother in Law Dance: Can Two Women Love the Same Man and Still Get Along by Annie Chapman is a quick read with lots of good information. It is not in artful prose or novel ideas that Mrs. Chapman hits her mark, but in lots of useful reminders and ideas given in a short, straight-forward way in a few pages. It brought many things to the conscious-level that I know from my experience as a daughter-in-law, but may not have thought about in my new and expanding role as mother-in-law. Many real-life stories and advice are given. I laughed at some stories, felt anguish at others, and picked up lots of good tips. I particularly liked the advice that the automatic response to anything the son and his wife say should be one of three words: "Wow." "Really?" or "Interesting..." That is useful! I recommend this to anyone entering the mother-in-law stage, and hoping to do so with some modicum of grace...Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by
Theodore Dalrymple is a fascinating collections of essays by a practicing
psychiatrist from inner-city London. He covers the horrifying realities
of life in a large urban environment among the "lower" classes, the intellectual
ideas that hold them captive there, and the causes of crime and moral
disintegration. He divides his book into two parts: Grim Reality, and
Grimmer Theory. In a writing style that is lively, engaging and clear,
Dalrymple communicates and convinces the reader (at least THIS reader)
of his grasp of the follies of human philosophies that trivialize reality and
are created by those who cannot be affected by their ideas. Dalrymple is simply brilliant, and though these true-life stories are harder to take than the Jerry Springer Show at times, I highly recommend this book, and intend to read more by him in the future.
The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge was an interesting novel. I can't say I really liked it, but I found it interesting, and I had no trouble finishing it. Like the only other book I've read by the author, The Dean's Watch, Goudge represents a charming picture of common folk in the England of her time period: here, the English Civil War. Not knowing much about this time period (sorry to acknowledge my own ignorance here), I found her obvious siding with the Royalists and hatred for the Puritans a bit irritating, particularly because she feigned an author's unprejudiced stance. But being ignorant of the time period, perhaps the Puritans of that time were truly arrogant, ungodly and harsh. I am predisposed to question this, based on my own reading of the Puritans from this time period (the second half of the 1600's). So, while the story and the characters were interesting and well-drawn, I remained a bit aloof and ambivalent to the end. It did whet my appetite to do some historical reading about that time period. Any one have some good suggestions for me?
No comments:
Post a Comment