Orange is the New Black

A nonfiction book!  What a change of pace!  For those who have seen the television series about life in a women’s prison, this is the book its loosely based on.  To sum it up very quickly:  well-to-do white girl goes to federal prison on an old drug charge, makes friends, and influences people.

There are some eye-opening pieces of information here.  That the federal system can move so slowly, to the point that people who have reformed themselves are doing time for charges in their relative youths.  Piper Kerman, the author, waited for six years to find out the disposition for her case!  The crimes she committed were ten years old when she entered prison.  It all seems a bit ridiculous.

For the actual time in prison – there were a lot of astute observations, and they were blended in to the general story well enough.  Nothing came across as preachy or as having an agenda, except for Kerman’s opinion on the US’s war on drugs, which I think is one gaining more and more traction of late.

As an piece of writing – I wasn’t terribly impressed.  Pretty average stuff, really.  It was a bit hard to follow a timeline.  Something would sound endless, and then you’d realize it was a day or two. People were introduced in a way that made you think you should know who they were, when it was really the first time they’d been talked about.  Little trip-ups like that.

I will admit, one aspect of the book rubbed me the wrong way.  I’m sure Kerman was only trying to demonstrate how her perspective cannot be said to be an average one.  That she had more resources than most people, both in dealing with the legal aspects of her case and in making prison life more bearable.  But she comes across as weirdly boastful many times:  I had so many visitors.  My family still loved me despite everything.  I had hundreds of books mailed to me.  These hard-boiled women procured numerous difficult-to-find things for me because I was so awesome.  My friend created an executive job in his business so I could work post-release.  It got a little old after a while, although I am sure it was not done with deliberate intent.  It also read to me as Kerman knowing she was privileged, but still possibly not aware of just how privileged.

Final call:


I actually brush up to similar issues (what is the purpose of prison, do nonviolent people really belong there, how much rehabilitation should occur, how can people reintegrate in society) in my day job, and while Kerman’s story is interesting, the questions it raises are really pretty basic now.  I’m happy to say that, looking back over the 10 years since the book was published, there has been plenty of public policy debate about these questions.  Unfortunately, it seems to be because we can’t afford to put more people in prison, not because people see a better way to deal with crime and punishment.

Euphoria

This book is not a part of my pre-arranged reading list this year.  But when I stumbled across a fictionalized take on Margaret Mead’s life, with a cover like that?  I was a goner.  Take a minute and look at that cover again.  I was over a third of the way through the book when I realized the cover has a photographic credit.  That’s a picture, not a painting, folks.  A rainbow gum tree’s bark, which plays a small part in the book.  Thank goodness that’s not something she made up (see below).

It's appropriate that it shows up in the middle of my posts on Ireland, because I read this during the trip (somewhat unusual for me, also see below).

For the text itself – I love this book but I’m still not sure why.  No one should ever say what I just did, that this is a fictionalized take on Margaret Mead.  It’s an author who thought, oh, three anthropologists in New Guinea, what a wonderful start.  Let’s change their names slightly but make everything else up!  I think my love comes from King just doing such a good job of making everything else up.  There is a real emotional richness to the story.  And King winds it all up much more neatly, if also far more dramatically, than the threads appear to have been tied in real life.

There are some slip ups, particularly in research.  I read a review complaining that the book mentions the howling of monkeys, when monkeys are not found in New Guinea.  And I found another one – describing thousands of white osprey lifting off of a lake.  Birders know that white ospreys are not a thing and that your standard osprey wouldn’t be caught dead acting like that, much less with thousands of its peers.  They’re essentially hawks, for crying out loud.

But in the end it just seems like more of King’s imagination at work.  She needed thousands of white osprey for a particular moment in the story, and they didn’t exist, so she made them up.  That’s impressive in an odd way, and it IS a beautiful moment in the book.  I can forgive that.

Final call:


I always take books on vacation, but I rarely find the time to read them.  That I started and finished this during a fantastic visit to Ireland should tell you how strongly it was pulling on me.  I should give it a five based on pure entertainment value, but I know this book is like ice cream.  Tasty but not  a lot of nutritional value :)

Irish Details - the Second Day

Day 2 in Ireland involved taking a ferry out to Rathlin Island, six miles off the coast.  There are three lighthouses and large seabird colonies to explore.  This is from the ferry, looking across the South Lighthouse on Rathlin out to Fair Head on the mainland, where we walked the day before.

The first day's hike was long and over difficult terrain.  So our idea was to take it easy and rent bikes for the second day.  Little did we know how out of shape our bike-riding muscles were!

Rathlin has some interesting local building traditions.  These stone fences with cone-topped gate posts were all over.

At the western edge of the island, large seabird colonies can be found.  Here's an example.  These birds are mostly Guillemots, with some Razorbills mixed in.

The big draw here are the Atlantic Puffins.  They nest near the base of the sea cliffs.  You can see two here, near the small burrows they call home.  They are mixed in with a few Razorbills.

Black-legged Kittiwakes also nest here, using ledges on the cliffs to raise their broods.

Volunteers from the Royal Society for Protection of Birds were at the lighthouse, pointing out interesting things to the tourist observers.  They gave us a great hint - on the way back out, look for an "evil-looking" bird at the top of the cliffs, by a rock.

  

We did find the bird, as promised.  Actually, two birds:  Ireland's only nesting pair of Great Skuas.  These are heavy, gull-like birds that raid nests and eat young, earning their evil reputation :)

Here we are on the way back to the harbor, with a lovely church and a bright hillside of gorse, or whin, behind.

Lastly, we have one of the golden hares of Rathlin, partially hiding and very wary of what on earth we were doing.

  

Then, my first glimpse of the bird known as a Robin in Europe, which is nothing at all like our Robins.  Still a very sweet bird, with a wonderful little song.

Nothing left after that except a choppy ferry ride back to our home away from home in Ballycastle:

Irish Details - The First Day

While we were in Ireland, I took advantage of the camera on my phone and posted pictures every day to Facebook.  I hit a lot of the high points there, so I thought it would be fun to get into some of the details I didn't post through other forms of social media.

These are all from the first full day of hiking, east of Ballycastle.

This is a Northern Wheatear in breeding plumage.  Interestingly enough, I've seen one of these before - waaaaaaay out of range in a hotel parking lot off of Interstate 81 in PA in winter.  An Irish meadow is much more their natural habitat.

We were walking through plenty of farm fields this day.  The multiple ways and means designed to cross the fences had us smiling.  This is a simpler one, just a cross piece placed on two small posts.  I was never able to get good photographs, but these fields were full of Skylarks, small sparrow-ish birds that flutter 30-40 feet above the ground, singing for mates.  A unique and charming behavior.  

We met these two dogs on the trail.  Yes, there's two, note the ear tip sticking out from behind the rock.  The hiding dog was definitely passive, while the one you can see was actually a wee bit aggressive.  I think he felt he was protecting his buddy, but yeeesh!

Ireland has a lot of birds that have analogues in the New World.  Here's the Grey Heron, which is obviously quite similar to our Great Blue Heron.

And this is a Blackbird, which is not related to American blackbirds at all, but is actually a type of what we would call a robin!  Striking bird, for one that is working only with black and yellow for colors.

One thing we learned very quickly was that, whatever the weather was at the moment, it was unlikely to stay that way for long.  By the end of the day, our nice sunny adventure had turned into low clouds and spitting rain.  But it did make for a moody shot of Ballycastle harbour!

The Sound of Waves

Here’s the book that made me create a new shelf on my Goodreads profile.  What shelf is that, you ask?  It’s one called “Perfect Little Books.”  It has a few other slim volumes for company – The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaimain, and A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons.  I drew an arbitrary line at 200 pages – if you’re perfect and you’re under that, you’re in!

For a short book, The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima is full of atmosphere.  The ocean, the sea, the waves are always in the background and often at the forefront.  This is a timeless story – I was well into it before a few mentions of movies or wartime activities made me realize this is indeed set in the 1950s.  It seems much earlier, and I think intentionally reads as myth or fable.  A simple story of teenage love with plenty of beautiful observations couched in wonderful prose.  A story where those who do the honorable thing are rewarded. 

In the end, the effect is almost hypnotic.  All that being said, I found the story of the author’s life to be more interesting than this particular book. Mishima committed ritual suicide while in his 40s, after he completed a set of four books he considered to be his masterpiece.

As a total tangent - I would love to know more about the cover art, because, yes, that's a fish with some jewels wrapped around it!

Final call:

   

Really four and a half.  Highly recommended for a time when you need a peaceful read.  Take some time to read about the life of the author, too.

White Teeth

White Teeth by Zadie Smith is, I think, the current holder of the “Least Likely but Most Interesting Book Found in a Chambersburg Thrift Store” title.  (That’s a little misleading, because that town’s second-hand stores are strangely above average in terms of inventory and selection.)  So you know this is a real winner.

I say it’s a pretty unlikely find because it’s a British author, edgy, something of a tough read, and the subjects are Muslim immigrants in London.  Just not a lot in common with your average Central Pennsylvanian, lol.  But I am so glad I found it, and even happier that I put it on this year’s reading list.  One of the better dollars I have ever spent.

When you take the story as one big whole, it does get shaky.  The plot becomes far-fetched, especially at the end.  Extremely, incredibly far-fetched.  But Smith is just such a darned joy to read.  Her sentences have a strong rhythm and she’s very clever.  Plays with words and meanings, and there’s a lot of zip and snap to her style.  Just slightly reminiscent of Arundhati Roy in effect, although the mechanics are completely different.

Oddly, the interludes that occur during the Second World War were some of the most appealing to me.  I’m not sure why.  Along with the parts that feature Irie.  Irie steals the show in her own quiet way. 

Final call:

I didn’t mark that many quotes from White Teeth, but that’s because I could easily have found hundreds and became overwhelmed.  Go find some good quotes for yourself J

On a break ...

Sorry to let things go for over a month.  I've been busy, and once you get a little behind, it's easy to get more and more behind.  If you can't tell, I'm kind of a pro at that, lol.

But I'm going to try to catch up! The biggest thing, of course, is that we went to Ireland for ten days at the end of May.  You probably saw some of the photos on Facebook.  I'll try to post more about that trip, but they are going to have to be spaced out a little, I think, because we haven't really sat still for long since then, and don't plan to sit still anytime soon, either!

Here's a snippet from Ireland ...

This is the coastline in Northern Ireland, at the start of our first day of "hill walking."  But more on that later  :)

And of course I have a lot of good books to share with you!