6. Dr. Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak, Rated A++

This is going to be a long entry because this book made me think a lot so therefore I have a lot I want to write down.

This an epic story of Dr. Zhivago, his family, friends and acquaintances over the background of Russia's transition from Czarist rule to Bolshevism, passing through the First World War, Revolution and Civil War.

It’s really funny how much my perspective and feelings about this novel have changed since I first read it in 1969 or 1970. Back then I got all caught up in 1) the love story and 2) how much the Russian people suffered. The politics of it all sort of flew right past me. This time I have spent a lot of time thinking about this book and trying to figure out whether I saw the book as a historical novel that focused on the politics of the country at that time or as a story that put the spotlight on how the people of Russia survived them. I seem to remember that Pasternak got into a whole lot of trouble with the Soviets when he published this novel so presumably they saw it as a non flattering look at the politics. But I am going to stand by my original feeling that it is primarily a novel of survival. I sort of saw Yurii as a universal man, caught up in circumstances way beyond his control and trying in his way to point out the absurdities of war. A kind of poet journalist in a way.

And since this is my Journal and I can write anything I want I will stoop to cherry picking bits of Yurii's dialog and mention that some of Yurii's words ring true today:

"Don't they remember their own plans and measures, which long since turned life upside down? What kind of people are they to go on raving with this never cooling feverish ardor year in, year out on nonexistant, long vanished subjects, and to know nothing, to see nothing around them?",

The writing in the book is very lyrical but then Pasternak was primarily a poet so that is not surprising. But he did not do so well in plotting it in places. It bothered me how many coincidences there were in it. Russia is a vast country but yet the main secondary characters (I think I just did an oxymmoron) kept running into each other and crossing Zhivago's path. I really had to stretch a couple of times to shrug them off. But overall, a really marvelous book.

Ride a Painted Pony

by Kathleen Eagle, rated DNF (did not finish)

My problems with this book probably had a lot to do with the fact that my mind was having a hard time disengaging from Dr. Zhavago. However this the third book in a row of hers that I have had problems with. Eagle used to be one of my favorite Romance authors but I think she had moved on to a different style of writing and has left me behind. Oh well......

5. The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett, rated A

For more than twenty years Sabine has loved the magician Parsifal and served as his assistant even though Parcifal is gay When Parsifal's lover dies of aids and he realizes he is also infected with the disease he marries Sabine and puts most of his property in her name so she will be his widow and save on inheritance taxes. Sabine believes her husband has no living relatives and when he dies she is shocked to learn of a trust fund established for a mother and two sisters in Nebraska. When his family contacts her, she invites them to visit and then visits them in Nebraska in order to discover the truth about the man she loved and thought she knew.

I was very surprised at how this book ended. I guess I am just a lot more naive than any woman my age has a right to be. Oh well.

4. Mrs. Palfrey at the Clairmont

by Elizabeth Taylor (DVD) Rated b

Amazon Blurb:
Mrs. Palfrey is recently widowed and decides to move to a small hotel in London to spend her last years as a lady of independence. The Claremont is a crumbling old edifice that serves as a retirement home for a small but fascinating group of tenants. Mrs. Palfrey meets her fellow 'inmates' at dinner, and announces that she has a grandson who will be calling on her at times. Yet despite multiple attempts her grandson Desmond doesn't respond and Mrs. Palfrey realizes she has entered a world of loneliness.

Out on an errand she falls and is befriended by a handsome young busker/writer Ludovic Meyer who nurses her leg wound, makes her tea, and escorts her home. Ludo is a loner and also lonely and when Mrs. Palfrey offers him dinner at the hotel he gladly accepts. But at the hotel the guests presume that Mrs. Palfrey's guest will be her grandson Desmond. Mrs. Palfrey hastily informs Ludo that she has erred and Ludo agrees to pose as her grandson. The guests at the hotel are charmed by Ludo, and Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo grow increasingly bonded - they share many likes and tastes and meld into a beautiful relationship that would be the envy of any grandmother and grandson. Mrs. Palfrey's loneliness is dissipated by Ludo and the effect is vice versa. How the two progress to the end of the film, finding new lives from old ones, forms the immensely touching finale to the film.

My Comments: I watched this over the weekend. I thought it was a very beautiful but bittersweet movie. I loved how the relationship of Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo progressed but the atmosphere of the Clairmont and the
situation of the residents made me very sad.

3. Awakened heart

by Betty Neels, Rated B

I don't know why I like this author's cheesy romances. I just do. I always read them and they are always basically the same. The hero is always a doctor and is Dutch, the heroine is always English and a nurse. He is rich, large and handsome, she is poor, dumpy and plain. It's always a marriage on convenience and they later fall in love sometime between the first and second helpings of dessert. I am exaggerating here but not by much.

The chaste courtship is mainly conducted traveling from one restaurant to another where they order sumptuous meals that the author describes in great detail. All the passion in these books is restricted to food. One can only imagine if she ever wrote a sequel to any of these books how heavy the couple would be.

But I liked it, I will read the next one when it comes out. So there!

2. Home, The Blueprint of our Lives

edited by John Edwards, Rated B+

A coffee-table type book with short essays on Home and what it meant to each of the 60 people who wrote about the homes they grew up in. It includes novelist Isabel Allende, chef Mario Batali, musician John Mellencamp, quarterback Joe Montana and architect Maya Lin to numerous to mention here of lesser-known people from all walks of life. The first-person testimony is very effective

1. My Life in France

Julia Childs - Audio CD, Rated C

I checked this book out on a whim and while it was OK, it was really not my cup of tea. A memoir of that begins when Julia and new husband Paul Child moved to france where he was working at the American Embassy. She became interested in French cooking and enrolled the Cordon Bleu Cooking school and later went on to co-write a French Cookbook aimed at the American market. It drug in parts and had my eyes rolling when she describes in detail how she spent three months obsessively trying to perfect the perfect mayonnaise. But then I, a complete cretin, think the perfect mayonnaise comes in a jar marked Hellmans.