Upcoming Event

My dear friend Annie just sent me information about an upcoming event she is hosting here in the Charlotte area, so I wanted to spread the word for anyone who might be interested. If there is anyone who can teach folks about writing, it’s Annie Maier. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve learned from reading her thought-provoking, descriptive poetry and prose as well as the insights she’s provided in critiques of my work. Highly, highly recommend.

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Yoga and Writing as Meditation Workshop

 

Who/What: All writers interested in learning to express themselves with more power and intention. Combining a series of writing examples and exercises with stimulating yoga and meditation sequences, writer Annie Maier and certified yoga instructor Lisa Moore will help you unlock the hidden power of silence to create a space of enhanced creativity and confident self-expression. No yoga or writing experience necessary.

When: Saturday, February 11^th, 1:00-4:00pm

Where: Harmony Yoga (11731 Carisbrook Lane, Charlotte, NC 28277)

Registration/Additional Information: Annie Maier at WordJunkiesPress@gmail.com or Lisa Moore at HarmonyYogaNC.com. Cost is $50.00.

A Week of Philosophy and History

Finished Reading:

• Alexander McCall Smith – The Sunday Philosophy Club
• J M Coetzee – Disgrace

Currently Reading:

• William S McFeely – Grant: A Biography
• John J Reardon – Edmund Randolph: A Biography
• William A Link – North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State
• Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome – North Carolina: The History of a Southern State
• Thomas L Friedman – Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America
• David Dachauer – Tether Me Not

Two books finished this week! Now we’re rocking and rolling. I’ll begin with those two first then move on to the others. First, I finished the first book in Alexander McCall Smith’s second mystery series, The Sunday Philosophy Club. On the positive side of things, I am interested enough in the characters to pick up the next book in the series. However, the plot did leave something to be desired. It took me forty or so pages in before I was really interested in the book, and overall, I feel that Smith was still trying to figure out what to do with these new characters and new setting just as much as the reader. However, some of the images that he invokes of Edinburgh are wonderfully stimulating, and doing some online research, it seems like the subsequent books in the series get better reviews.

Coetzee’s Disgrace. I’ve mentioned it in the last two reviews as an upcoming book, and I managed to complete it in a week. While it is a quick read, it is not for the faint of heart. It is a brilliant work, but it is a very brutal and harsh tale of life in modern South Africa. Coetzee’s examinations into the human condition are fascinating, and one is left with a sense of a disordered, mixed up world far removed from the sterile order sought and unattained by so many.

Speaking of harsh truths, Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded continues to pile on evidence at a bleak future. Thus far, it’s much less optimistic than That Used to be Us, but I’m hoping that the discussion of how the situation can be improved is coming soon. As it is, I’m reading it very slowly as I’m trying to digest just how oppressively immense the challenges are as presented by Friedman.

Lefler/Newsome and Link are progressing as my North Carolina history course progresses. We’re on the eve of the Revolution now. It’s interesting — I’m finding that both books provide unique perspectives on the history of the state. They each have different aspects of the history that they focus on, and ultimately I feel that I’m getting a much richer experience by reading both than I would have reading either one or the other.

McFeely’s Grant is coming along nicely. Grant and his associates are beginning to think of his reelection. I think in the reading this week, two things struck me the most. First, the sadness at the lost of Grant’s close friend and good conscience from the war, John A Rawlins. I was nearing the point of tears at McFeely’s description of Grant’s desperate scramble to get back to DC before Rawlins died and arriving only to find that he was an hour too late. It makes one wonder if the Grant administration would have been so marked by scandal if Rawlins had been around. Second, Grant’s stubborn determination to annex Santo Domingo (now known as the Dominican Republic) captured my attention. I find myself asking the same question that contemporary observers asked: Why? Why was Grant obsessed with annexing that one rather small, comparatively speaking, bit of land when he had been against the annexation of Mexico following the Mexican War? Did Grant have some kind of personal financial interest in the deal, or was it just that he was blinded by his advisers and by Sen. Charles Sumner’s equally obsessive opposition to the scheme?

I haven’t read much in Uncle Tom’s Cabin this week. The characters in the plot are still settling in to St. Clare’s estate in New Orleans, and it seems like St. Clare’s obnoxious wife Marie has been droning on and on ad infinitum. I’m hoping she won’t make much of an appearance in the book because otherwise, I’d have to reach into the fictional 1850s and slap her for her ignorant pronouncements about African-Americans. I also began a new book which I received in a Goodreads giveaway — Tether Me Not by David Dachauer. It seems that it will be about the spiritual aspects of life, but since I just began it, I haven’t formed an opinion of it yet and will likely discuss it in greater detail next week.

Reardon has been neglected yet again this week. I’m thinking that, once I finish the McFeely, I’ll try to finish Reardon before moving on to Hoogenboom’s Hayes. Also, the next book coming up in the book club is Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor, which I’m looking forward to. It’s been on my to-read list since 2009, so it’s about time to pick it up.

Adding more to the stack

Currently Reading:

• William S McFeely – Grant: A Biography
• John J Reardon – Edmund Randolph: A Biography
• William A Link – North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State
• Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome – North Carolina: The History of a Southern State
• Alexander McCall Smith – The Sunday Philosophy Club
• Thomas L Friedman – Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America

So not only did I not finish a book this week, but I added more to my stack of books I’m reading! The little flimsy bookstand beside the bed is straining under the weight, but here we are. These things just seem to happen sometimes. Luckily, I’m nearing completion with one.

Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club is going faster after I got through the first forty pages. I have to admit that initially it took me a bit to warm up to it. Isabel Dalhousie is no Mma Ramotswe. However, after page 40 or so, that became a good thing. It seems to me as if Smith himself was getting used to the new character at the beginning, but once she came to life, she became an interesting character. Strange thing, though. Less than a hundred pages to go, and no Club yet. It has been a fun read, though, of which I was in need.

The Friedman book is for work. That’s my justification with adding that one. The fact that I just finished another Friedman book is simply a coincidence…at least it would have been if not for the fact that I picked the book to read for Professional Development credit because I had read the other Friedman book. In any event, this is the book preceding That Used to be Us, so it’s interesting to see Friedman begin some themes that he picks up in the book I’ve already read. It’s good thus far, though rather overwhelming in outlining the challenges of the 21st century.

In my reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the title character, Tom, has reached a city I know all too well — New Orleans. Stowe’s writing style is fascinating in how she introduces new characters. She pauses the story to give some backstory and speaks directly to the reader while doing so. It’s a rather more intimate writing style than usual, and I wonder if she deliberately did it to invoke a personal touch to bring to heart her message of the inhumanity of slavery.

As mentioned before, the Link is for my North Carolina history class. We’re currently up to the early colonial period, just past the Tuscarora War. I haven’t read in the Lefler/Newsome yet for this week, but I’m sure that will be coming at some point this weekend. I also have not read any more in the Reardon. Hopefully I can get back to it soon if I can get through some of the others.

The McFeely is going really well. I’m past the Civil War and up to Grant’s involvement in the Johnson administration. What a crazy time in American history the Johnson administration was. So much political intrigue and power grabs in a time that the nation was supposed to be working towards coming back together. Meanwhile, Grant was trying to walk the middle line and stay above the fray. It must have worked well enough for him to be elected the next president, so I’m interested to read how he managed that one.

I promise to be done with at least one of the seven books I’m reading by next week, though I’ll have to add at least one more to the list — Coetzee’s Disgrace, which is waiting for me at the library. A member of the book club said that it was a quick read. We’ll see how quick it goes when added to six other books!

Two books down, many more to go for 2012!

Finished Reading:

• Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum – That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back

Currently Reading:

• William S McFeely – Grant: A Biography
• John J Reardon – Edmund Randolph: A Biography
• William A Link – North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State
• Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome – North Carolina: The History of a Southern State

So after saying last week that I felt like I was stretching out the Friedman and Mandelbaum book, I decided to go ahead and finish it up. I’m glad that I did because the last part brought up some interesting concepts about the dysfunction of politics that will be good to keep in mind as the election season continues. As I said last week, I highly recommend That Used to Be Us to anyone who admits that America is facing some serious issues in the near future and who is looking for constructive non-partisan (i.e. non blame game and ideas that go beyond sound bites) possibilities of how we can move forward together as a nation.

I had my first North Carolina history class this week, which went very well. I’m holding off on progressing any further in the Link book as the next class meeting will cover material from the same chapter that I’ve already read, but I decided that I wanted to go a little above and beyond (because, yes, I’m that big of a geek) and read Lefler and Newsome’s book on North Carolina that I’ve had for a while but haven’t taken the time to read. I figure that I’ll read this one in conjunction with the Link since it goes a little more in-depth into North Carolina history than the Link book.

I’m still working on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I’m finding myself near the point of tears at certain parts of it because of the cruelty of the slavery system and how it destroyed individuals and families. I can only imagine how someone living at the time, especially along the border states who might have actually seen slavery in practice, would have felt. No wonder Lincoln allegedly called her, upon their meeting, “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

Speaking of the war, I’m in the midst of it in McFeely’s Grant biography. Vicksburg just surrendered, and Grant’s off to Chattanooga. I’m really enjoying McFeely’s style. While he gives you a good sense of what’s going on in the battles, the focus always remains on Grant rather than getting lost in the technical details of troop movements and positions as some writers have a tendency to do. He’s also provided some fascinating insights into Grant’s life that have really helped to flesh out in my mind this iconic figure of the war.

I didn’t get far, but I did pick up Reardon’s Edmund Randolph again. I’m intending to work a bit more on it over the three-day weekend. I realized when I started reading how much I had missed one of my reads being from the early republic.

Next on tap for my reading list is a quick read from the Times Books American Presidents series on Andrew Jackson as well as Coetzee’s Disgrace, both of which I’m picking up from the library shortly.

First (reading) week of the year

Finished Reading:

• Jack Beatty – Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900

Currently Reading:

• Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum – That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back
• William S McFeely – Grant: A Biography
• John J Reardon – Edmund Randolph: A Biography
• William A Link – North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State
• Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin

I enjoyed reflecting on my 2011 reads so much that I decided I’d try to make a point to blog each week about my reading habits to both get me back in the habit of writing regularly and to share what I’m reading with folks.

The first completed read of the year was Beatty’s Age of Betrayal. While I did enjoy it and it enhanced my knowledge of the Gilded Age in US history as well as stimulated my thoughts about the parallels to our modern time, I wish that Beatty’s transitions between topics had been a bit smoother. Either he could have split the subjects out to various works as he had a great amount of material from which to draw or he could have lead the reader through the various facets of the time period a bit better. My favorite part of the book was the two chapters on the Supreme Court during the Gilded Age. I feel like I better understand why the Fourteenth Amendment is used to support corporations and why the Fifteenth Amendment was made to not guarantee African-American suffrage, leading to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

I’ve got a good number of other books I’m currently working on. I opened up Link’s North Carolina today because I begin a class on North Carolina History next week. On the reverse end of the spectrum, I’ve been reading on the Friedman and Mandelbaum for a while (looks like since September according to Goodreads). It’s an interesting book, but I think I’m deliberately stretching it out in order to allow myself time to process all of the ideas that they bring up. Though I’m only halfway done with it, I’d still recommend it to anyone. It’s one that I had originally picked up at the library and decided I must have in my library.

McFeely’s Grant is the latest in my journey through presidential biographies from Washington to Obama. Thus far, it’s been a very good, insightful book, and I’m enjoying McFeely’s writing style. It’s very approachable. Reardon’s Edmund Randolph highlights the rather checkered career of our first Attorney General and second Secretary of State. I’m currently at the beginning of Randolph’s taking over as Secretary of State in 1794. Once Randolph entered the Cabinet, the book became more detailed, revealing some aspects of the Washington administration that I hadn’t even known previously. I haven’t picked it up for a few days so that I could finish up the Beatty, but now that I’m done with that one, I might return to it in the next few days.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is part of a new challenge that I issued myself this year. Instead of focusing as much on quantity of books read as I have the last couple of years, I’d like to make a concerted effort to read works that are often referred to as important in historical and intellectual development. I realized as I began reading this one that I really didn’t know much about Uncle Tom’s Cabin besides the fact that it caused an uproar in the 1850s and was one of many points in the path to the Civil War. The story has been executed well thus far. I can see why it caused a stir as it highlights the painful realities of slavery for individuals who were caught up in a system over which they had no control.

I should mention that I did get David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas from the library, but due to a good number of requests for the book and my existing reading commitments, I will probably return it and read it at another time. The few pages that I did read though were interesting. Also, I’m going to begin J M Coetzee’s Disgrace soon as it is the February read for my book club. I’ve heard that Coetzee’s an author people either love or hate. We shall see which it shall be for me!