The Postmistress by Sarah Blake - Book Review

I am convinced that The Postmistress by Sarah Blake will be made into a movie sometime this century.  Not only do I think this novel is interesting enough to be a film, but I think it could win Best Adapted Screenplay or maybe even Best Picture at the Oscars if placed into the right hands.  I read the book in one sitting, closed it, and sort of gasped Wow!  Even days later, I am having trouble finding the words to describe exactly how good The Postmistress is to convince you to go out into this horrible snowstorm and buy this book immediately.  I read this book during a highly stressful and busy week in my life, but despite all my distractions, this book instantly took me out of my life 2010 and put me in 1940.  I can’t quite put my experience and enjoyment into the right words, but I can give you an idea of what I felt while reading this book by telling the follow story. 

In 2005 my husband and I traveled to Europe to travel to 15 cities in 8 countries in 14 days.  It sounded good on paper, but never having traveled to Europe, we had no idea what to expect, no matter how much research I did or how many travel guides I studied.  After traveling sixteen hours straight (due to my compulsive need to arrive at all airports way too early, as being a former flight attendant has taught me it is imperative you must) and having to switch flights due to an airline strike, we arrived in London a day late completely frazzled.  I had been awake for nearly two days, especially since I was forced to sit behind eight of the most annoying and shockingly drunk people on a red eye international flight.  After arriving at the wrong airport and being forced to take the same tube trip just one month after the London bombings occurred, I stepped into the bright sunlight nearly in tears and utterly exhausted.  I was starving and stressed out, but I suddenly stopped, dropped my suitcase, and gasped Wow! when I had my first look into the streets of London.  Unfortunately for me, I was crossing a busy street at the time while looking the wrong way, and I had dropped my suitcase on my foot, which sent my shoe flying into traffic, causing it to get run over.  I was literally stuck in the middle of two-way traffic while standing on one foot, and yet lost in experiencing the first moment I ever saw London, my favorite city in the world.  It was such a Wow! moment in time, and it had nothing to do with my shoe or near-death experience.      

I tell you the above story for two reasons.  One, it is very hard for me to put into words the way I feel when I read fabulous books, especially during hard times in my life.  The Postmistress is one of those fabulous books, so I’m just trying to come up with a way to get you to understand how darn good the book really is.  My other reason is that I think it is hopefully more entertaining for you to read a different type of book review than you can find by other wordpress bloggers, or even EW Magazine which gave it a great review this week.  Instead of me saying that this book takes place in Cape Cod and London during WWII and it is historical fiction novel written by Sarah Blake, I can tell you my own way to make it more appealing to those who get scared off by historical fiction or WWII stories.  Plus I am not the type of blogger who writes things like “this book is in the vein of The Help by Kathryn Stockett or Atonement by Ian McEwan.”  If I can get just one of you to look past your dislike of historical fiction or WWII stories by explaining what I felt while reading a book of this magnitude, then I’ve done my job.  

I want all of you to read The Postmistress because it is such an interesting story about three women and how their lives become intertwined during war-time.  The war, while important and quite interesting to those of us who already enjoy reading WWII stories, isn’t all that those of you who don’t like reading about wars will be thinking about.  The story of The Postmistress really is about what happens to these women during the war and the consequences these ladies have to live with are the true heart and soul of this novel.  There are so many other things I learned from this book that I never knew about, which was a major bonus.  Anytime I find a book that can take me out of a hard week, and it overwhelms me so much that I forget what I was dealing with back in reality, well… I think that is the type of book worthy enough of your attention.  I’m simply telling you that The Postmistress is a must read of 2010.  Go get it, love it, and come back and talk about it!

To learn a little more about The Postmistress, watch the following YouTube video and see Sarah Blake talk about her novel and how she was inspired to write it.

To buy The Postmistress, click here.

To visit Sarah Blake’s website, click here.

[Via http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com]

Review of Roy Hallums' "Buried Alive"

Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes Correspondent, called this book “…vivid, absorbing and chilling.”  She was correct.  The descriptions are vivid, the story is absorbing and the fact it is true is chilling.   Roy Hallums was a contractor working in Iraq who was taken hostage and held captive for 311 days by a Sunni terrorist cell. 

My caveat before I continue is that I did enjoy reading the book and found it difficult to put  down.  It was interesting to me that Hallums could find humor in some of the events that took place during his captivity.  Without the humor in this book, it would have been a very difficult read.  I almost felt bad for laughing at some of the events he described.

Having said that, I was disappointed he did not explain his faith with the exception of mentioning praying that God would get him out and asking God to let it rain if he was going to make it out alive.  There was also a mention of  a prayer vigil held by his family and friends.  I am certain that Hallums attributes his rescue to answered prayer just as much as the military men and women who participated in his rescue.

I found this book to be worth reading.  There are still contractors and others being held hostage who have never been found.  The Hallums family has a good ending, but that is not always the case.  We need to pray for those still missing and their families.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their Book Review Blogger program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

[Via http://iambelievinggod.wordpress.com]

Book Notes, Feb 5, 2010

I’m reading so many books right now I feel I could run four or five blogs. I’ll only mention a few of them here. I’m interested to know if other Messianic Jewish Musings readers have read any of these or if there are ant great books burning on your soul right now.

The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart
Okay, I should be done with this one by now, but I tend to read fiction slowly, a little each day, unless I am reading a page-burner.

This is difficult though brief fiction. I am considering it as a selection in the upcoming Jewish Book of the Month Club here on MJM. I want to get a whole lot of you reading books together and discussing them (it may fail as an experiment, though I’ve already been told by one person they intend to get a group at their synagogue all participating). We’ll launch sometime around Passover.

The problem with Schwarz-Bart’s book is that sometimes the prose is unclear. Did that really happen or was the character imagining it? What exactly happened in that part? Sometimes I’ll read a paragraph five times and not understand it. Other times I’ll read a dozen pages with no problem. He needed a better editor, IMO. But the powerful parts are unforgettable.

Maybe it will be a selection a little further down the road in the book club, after people have had time to get into reading the great Jewish books and will not be put off easily by a little difficult prose.

The Last of the Just is a different kind of Holocaust story, tracing a family back a thousand years in a line of Lamed-Vovniks (the thirty-six righteous sufferers in Israel whose righteous suffering keeps God from judging the world — an idea that is not too distant from the vicarious suffering of Yeshua).

Holy Subversion, by Trevin Wax
A Baptist pastor from Tennessee writes a simple but effective book explaining the gospel in holistic terms. I am delighted with the idea of an Ephesians Road, a variation and subversion of the Romans Road which for a previous generation made the gospel a weak message of life after death, all but irrelevant to living now. This is a great book to give to those who need to see a bigger idea than “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” God has a wonderful plan for the cosmos, and if you’re smart and humble, you’ll lay down everything to join in the Tikkun Olam.

I will review it next week here on MJM.

Divine Reversal: The Transforming Ethics of Jesus, by Russ Resnik
This is a major book for the MJ movement. I hope entire synagogues will read it.

Russ Resnik, longtime Messianic pioneer and Executive Director of the UMJC, shares with Jewish wisdom the ethics of Yeshua. Ethics is an area we need a great deal more of in our movement. Russ blogs about this and gives you a taste of what the book is about at rebrez.wordpress.com.

The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, by Dale Allison Jr.
My podcast yesterday and the one next week are about this book.

Dale Allison is a top-shelf New Testament scholar. He develops the theory that Matthew emphasizes the Moses theme in order to protest a movement in his time to remove the Way of Yeshua from Judaism. Matthew, he says, sees Yeshua in completely Jewish terms.

How about you? What are you reading? Have you read any of these? What books do you recommend for the book of the month club?

[Via http://derek4messiah.wordpress.com]

Book Review: The Windup Girl

Are you ready for this? Prepare thyself for the unthinkable: A positive book review from me! Spoiler Alert: I like this book. A lot.

Paolo Bacigalupi (a name I only mis-typed twice just now) has delivered a brilliant science fiction novel about the collapse of the global economy, genetically engineered plants run amok, cyborgs, food wars, politics, race relations, religion, and, well, lots of other things.

The Windup Girl is set in Bangkok several centuries from now. Genetically modified animals and crops have (accidentally) swarmed across the world, destroying countless species of plants and animals and bringing most countries to their knees. The dwindling Japanese have created a race of New People to replace their shrinking work force. American companies feed the world with sterile foods that cannot be planted and grown, only bought. Oil-starved machines have been replaced with animal labor. Hideous diseases are constantly mutating to kill plants, animals, and people.

Through hard work, sacrifice, and dedication, the Kingdom of Thailand has survived this global collapse (the Contraction) by balancing power between a brutal Environmental Ministry that burns factories and farms to contain the endless contagions and a schemeing Trade Ministry that wants to engage with the outside world and usher in a second age of global Expansion (we’re in the first one right now).

To explore this world, the author gives us several characters from very different worlds, including:

• Anderson, the American industrialist trying to get access to Thai genetic material and open Thai markets to his company.
• Hock Seng, the Chinese refugee who lost an corporate empire and his family and is now trying to rebuild his life as a hated migrant worker.
• Jaidee, one-time muay thai champion turned government agent dedicated to protecting his homeland from biological invaders.
• Emiko, a Japanese “windup” abandoned by her owner and left to survive as a sex worker and hunted by the authorities for being unnatural.

It’s rich, it’s complex, it’s exciting and horrifying and thought-provoking.

But it’s not perfect. For starters, it takes a very long time for the various characters’ story lines to coalesce into a real plot. Much of the book feels like four separate stories jammed together to paint a richer portrait of this dystopian future. This issue no doubt comes from the author’s background in writing short stories instead of novels.

There is also a certain stagnant quality to the character arcs. Each person clings to their central identity throughout the whole book without evolving or learning or changing at all. Which made the chapters feel a bit repetitive.

When the plot finally does come together, it still feels a bit thin. There’s plenty of action and drama, but I didn’t find myself very invested in the outcome.

Bottom line: The Windup Girl is a well-conceived novel that explores countless science fiction concepts in technology, biology, economics, and politics. But it suffers from a disjointed and less-than-epic plot. Still, it’s 350 pages worth reading.

[Via http://josephrobertlewis.wordpress.com]

Spurgeon on Prayer

“Priceless as the gift of utterance may be, the practice of silence in some aspects far excels it. . .I am persuaded that we most of us think too much of speech, which after is but  the shell of thought.  Quiet contemplation, still worship, unuttered rapture, these are mine when my best jewels are before me.  Brethren, rob not your heart of the deep sea joys; miss not the far-down life, by for ever babbling among the broken shells and foaming surges of the shore.

“I woud seriously recommend to you, when settled in the ministry, the celebration of extraordinary seasons of devotion.  If your ordinary prayers do not keep up the freshness and vigour of your souls, and you feel that you are flagging, get alone for a week or even a month if possible.  We have occasional holidays, why not frequent holy days?  We hear of our richer brethren finding time for a journey to Jerusalem; could we not spare time for the less difficult and far more profitable journey to the heavenly city? 

“. . .It would be a great thing every now and then for for a band of truly spiritual brethren to spend a day or two with each other in real burning agony of prayer.  Pastors alone could use much more freedom than in a mixed company.  Times of humiliation and supplication for the whole church will allso benefit us if we enter into them heartily.  Our seasons of fasting and prayer at the Tabernacle have been high days indeed; never has heaven-gate stood wider; never have our hearts been nearer the central glory.  I look forward to our month of special devotion, as mariners reckon upon reaching land.  Even if our public work were laid aside to give us space for special prayer, it might be a great gain to our churches.  A voyage to the golden rivers of fellowship and meditation would be well repaid by a by a freight of sanctified feeling and elevated thought.  Our silence might be better than our voices if our solitude were spent with God.  [Emphasis mine.]

“That was a grand action of old Jerome, when he laid all his pressing engagements aside to achieve a purpose to which he felt a call from heaven.  He had a large congregation, as large a one as any of us need want; but he said to his people, ‘Now it is of necessity that the New Testament should be translated, you must find another preacher:  the translation must be made; I am bound for the wilderness, and shall not return till my task is finished.’ 

“Away he went with his manuscripts, and prayed and laboured, and produced a work–the Latin Vulgate–which will last as long as the world stands; on the whole a most wonderful translation of Holy Scripture.  As learning and prayerful retirement together could thus produce an immortal work, if we were sometimes to say to our people when we felt moved to do so, ‘Dear Friends, we really must be gone for a little while to refresh our souls in solitude,’ our profiting would soon be apparent, and if we did not write Latin Vulgates, yet we should do immortal work, such as would abide the fire.”

LECTURES TO MY STUDENTS
C. H. Spurgeon

[Via http://goodwinsherry.wordpress.com]

The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy by Sara Angelini

If you’re trying to relax before going to bed, this is not the book to read. If however, you’re looking to stay awake for a while, consider reading it aloud with a partner. There are several X-rated scenes here, but they are handled tastefully, and with proper anticipation—on yours, and the characters’, parts.

The story begins with Darcy (a descendant of our beloved hero) advising Bingley about the purchase of a new Lamborghini (Netherfield). Darcy tempers Bingley’s enthusiasm with a warning to slow down his actions with thought, just as our Darcy did, but this Darcy uses the F word as he does it.

In this modern version of our tale, Darcy is a judge (fitting, I thought, since that is, after all, what he does throughout the text), and Elizabeth is a confident lawyer in his court. When he first meets her, he assumes she’s on trial for speeding, only to have his first impression put quickly to rest as she defends a Mr. Collins, on trial for solicitation of prostitutes. (Darcy mentally gives him herpes to punish him).

This is a “thoroughly modern” version of our story, according to the back cover, and while, at first, the use of profanity and sometimes obscene situations may be off-putting to readers of this publication, I’d venture to recommend reading it anyway. This story is fun and light, and many of Angelini’s changes work well, if you can stomach an occasional Harry Potter reference (too lowbrow for some of you, but perfectly acceptable for others), many sexual puns and intimate scenes, and Mr. Hurst’s metamorphosis into a gay hottie who resembles Rupert Everett. 

Bingley is a doctor (you might wonder, is he smart enough for that, until you recall some of the doctors you have met), and Jane a resident in his circles; Darcy has meaningless sex with Caroline until he decides not to anymore; the Netherfield Ball is a Halloween party; the first proposal Darcy makes to Elizabeth is of writing a joint law review article; and karaoke is as you’ve never seen it.

This is a sexed-up version of our beloved tale, and if you’re one who has always read much of the tension between Darcy and Elizabeth as being sexual in nature, you will probably be more comfortable with the openness of that tension than those of you who prefer chemistry to be understated. The latter group does not likely imagine Georgiana warning her big brother not to “dip [his] stick in” a woman she dislikes, but regardless of your reaction to such lines, the sex is intense here because the connection on all levels is intense here. Darcy and Elizabeth belong together, and one barometer of that fit is their sexual chemistry.

There are others. Each is a professional who works to develop a plan for any situation that requires attention. Each is smart and successful and wants, long-term, to find love that transcends the “relationships” of the past. Both exercise to absorb desire (Elizabeth runs; Darcy rides). Both agree to keep the affair short—and then almost simultaneously realize that they have fallen in love with the other.

The relationship—or rather—the break-up of it—feels very real. It is mutual, but it makes them both miserable. She was so tough, and becomes so broken, even as she tries desperately to resurrect her world. She wears his shirt just to smell him, even when it starts smelling like her.

Before you know it, you’ve been reading for an hour, when your plan was a few minutes before drifting to sleep. And I haven’t even started on all the links to the original novel. I thought I spotted Wickham right away, only to discover that the guy flirting with Elizabeth had to be the Colonel Fitzwilliam character. I thought the proposal of the brief was the real thing; it isn’t. Then I thought the suggestion to get back together was the real thing; it isn’t either. Two decoys! Darcy reaches out to Elizabeth’s boss—Mr. Gardiner—when he needs help with Elizabeth. Then it turns out there is a Wickham, but he appears much less often (and in an even worse context) than I had imagined. Georgiana is not the subject of Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth—she’s the one who suggests he write it. These are smart twists that kept me constantly revising my assumptions, as, one might argue, Elizabeth and Darcy must do, both in the original novel and in this one.

Lines from P&P are sprinkled throughout the text, in contexts that make sense. One of my favorite changes occurs when Elizabeth (who thinks Caroline and Darcy are dating when they aren’t) comes home to Jane snuggling with Charley, and groans inwardly that the house is “overrun by Bingleys.” Even Lady Catherine’s infamous shelves in the closet are included in this veritable treasure hunt for details from Austen’s novel.

This is indeed a story of the trials of a man, and the pun works well. It is also a deeply emotional, romantic, sensual, and literary exploration of a companionate relationship in our complicated world. And I’ll never look at pears in the same way again.

[Via http://fansofjane.wordpress.com]

Mortimer Smith and the Diminished Mind (book review)

One common retort to those who criticize the historical ascendancy and stranglehold of “progressivism” in education is to simply deny the charge. Diane Ravitch, for instance, met just this type of denial when she published “Left Behind: A Century of Failed School Reform.” Critics, generally with an affinity for “progressive” pedagogy, told us that Ravitch’s history was hopelessly biased and a bunch of spin. Progressive ideals, they say, did not fail: they were never really tried.

It is too bad for these critics that books like The Diminished Mind by Mortimer Smith, were published. TDM was written in 1954 as a way to chronicle the educational landscape as it looked at the time. Smith’s verdict?

I do not think anyone will challenge the statement that pragmatism has become the official philosophy of the public education; there may be an occasional maverick scattered her and there but the great majority of the professors of education are committed to this philosophy and they transmit it to the future teachers and administrators whom they train to run the American public school system (Smith 1954, PG78-79).

By “pragmatism,” Smith is referring to “the pedagogical principles which formed the basis of what came to be known as progressive education and is now more commonly referred to as modern education.” (PG78)  The educational pragmatism Smith judged to be the dominant philosophic force in education (ushered in by Dewey; perverted by followers) included the idea that education is to center around the child’s immediate needs and should serve not to convey knowledge but to “reconstruct experience” (which, of course, Dewey was never really clear on what was meant). These ideas manifested themselves in various curricular theories, two of which Smith examines in some detail: education for life adjustment and education for social reconstruction.

Chapters II and III (Adjustment Replaces Education and Adjustment Replaces Education Continued) discuss and thoroughly document the rise of the “life adjustment” theory of curriculum through the public schools. As Smith explains, since the idea was that education should prepare students for life and that students learn best what is interesting to them at the time, students should learn less academics (language, mathematics, science) and more “applied” life skills (hygiene, socialization, gardening). Smith details several school districts and theorists of education’s attempts to do such thing as get rid of the requirement to learn grammar in school, in favor of learning reading and writing through only “real world” reading and writing tasks. (Sounds eerily like a precursor to the failed “whole language” approach to reading acquisition.)

Chapter IV (Educational Brainwashing, Democratic Style) demonstrates how pragmatism was also taken in another direction: the idea that curricula should focus on “social reconstruction.” Quite bluntly, this was the idea that schools should guide students and advocate for social virtues that educators felt promoted “social justice.” Rather than educate by relaying various points of view (and facts allowing individuals to arrive at their own points of view), schools needed to become mechanisms of social change. Smith even documents how many of the educators advocating this position drew their inspiration from the educational goals and methods of the Soviets.

What Smith istroubled by in both of these philosophies that were alive and well in the 40’s and 50’s – besides the obvious – is that they get away from what Smith sees as the fundamental goal of education: to introduce young minds to the facts and ideas that have come before so that they might take them into the world. The new theories were as anti-academic as they were indoctrinational:

[T]he controversy today is between those who continue to believe that the cultivation of intelligence, moral as well as intellectual, is inextricably bound up with the cultural heritage and accumulated knowledge of humankind, and those who feel that education’s primary task is to adjust the individual to the group to see that he learns to respond “satisfactorily” to the stresses and strains of the social order.” Ideally the tow tasks are not mutually exclusive but the advocates of the latter consistently deride the former, engaging in a vigorous anti-intellectualism and a belittling of, and contempt for, content in education.” (Smith 1954, PG20)

Another difficulty that Smith notes with both “life adjustment” and “social reconstruction” theory of education is that both are quite unegalitarian while professing to be egalitarian (or, if you like, undemocratic while purporting to be democratic). While education theorists at the time were crying for more egalitarian and democratic education, both of the theories that they were espousing attempted to steer individuals towards pre-determined ends, seeing students almost as tools to be manipulated. While both professed to be child-centered, both saw the child as something to be molded in a specific way, and while both philosophies professed to be liberating the child, they both stultified the child by treating her mind as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

The rest of the book is devoted to decrying the ascendancy of an academic elite in education schools which bought and taught these anti-academic theories, a lament that is reminiscent of ED Hirsch’s current labeling of ed schools as a quite unanimous “thoughtworld.” Chapter V (“The Stranglehold of the Educationists”) examines how this ascendancy occurred and how it has been able to self-perpetuate even in the face of varied criticism. Chapter VI (“Putting Parents in Their Place, or, The Customer Is Always Wrong”) recounts the troubling way in which these educationists silence dissent. It is ironically noted that while the educationists mentioned in this chapter often push for “democratic schools,” they never fail to accuse the numerous parent groups who criticized their methods as having no rightful voice in education policy. The final chapter (“The Prospects Before Us”) take an optimistic view of the potential for bringing back schools’ primary purpose: the conveying of academic knowledge.

When one reads books on educational history, one tends to notice that things occur in cycles: educationists seize on each new idea (often a rehashing of old ideas), press it to the extreme, and, when it fails to produce the hoped for result, begin looking in the other direction, ad infinitum. It is difficult to say whether the re-academicizing of the public schools has occurred the way Smith so hoped in his final chapter. On the one hand, there has been a renewed emphasis on standards-based learning; on the other, those standards are often decried as watered-down.

Whatever has happened since, Smith has given us a very good document of the educational landscape in 1954. Progressive education was tried and it did fail. Anyone who cares to see that it is not tried again will want to read this book.

Bibliography

Smith, Mortimer. The Diminished Mind. Chicago, IL: The Henry Regnery Company, 1954.

[Via http://edphilosopher.wordpress.com]