This non-fiction book, by an American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun, is a great primer for those interested in this ancient tradition of practical spirituThis non-fiction book, by an American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun, is a great primer for those interested in this ancient tradition of practical spirituality. And I am glad to have read the book, although I have no desire to become a Buddhist.
The book is designed for those in the West who have questions about anything concerning the Dharma. Within each section, the author gives a typical question, then answers the question clearly and concisely. I came to this book with a background of Roman Catholicism, and I am fascinated by the parallels between the two spiritualities.
This was a great book to read, and a good resource work....more
This book is the first in the series featuring Mrs. Murphy, a Grey tiger short-hair cat who, along with a Welsh corgie dog named Tee Tucker, solves myThis book is the first in the series featuring Mrs. Murphy, a Grey tiger short-hair cat who, along with a Welsh corgie dog named Tee Tucker, solves mysteries with the assistance of Mary Minor Haristeen, the young Postmistress of the small town of Crozet, Virginia, some ten miles west of Charlottesville. (It should be noted that all animals can talk to each other, and that they all understand humans, but humans, being dense imperfect beings, cannot understand the animals.)And these are fun mysteries to read.
Harry, at this time thirty-three years old, lives with the animals in her deceased parents' house just outside of town. She is the midst of an acrimonious divorce from her husband of ten years, Pharamond Haristeen (known as Fair), the town veterinarian. When the mail sack comes from Charlottesville, she and the animals sort the mail into the post office boxes. In fairly short order, two people in town are killed. Harry realizes that both people received postcards, showing a famous grave, and with the message in computer script "Wish You Were Here". And Mrs. Murphy and Tucker become increasingly worried that their person might become the next victim of the killer.
I very much enjoyed reading this book, and I look forward to the next book in the series....more
This Oprah 2.0 Book Club Book was announced on August 4th, 2020, but I have only now read this nonfiction book about how one of the major problems in This Oprah 2.0 Book Club Book was announced on August 4th, 2020, but I have only now read this nonfiction book about how one of the major problems in America is not racism, but Caste, the same kind of Caste that exists in Hindu society in India. This book is very well researched, by an author who belongs to America’s subordinate Caste, and I am very glad that I read this book.
Way back in the early 17th century, the settlers at Jamestown and Virginia needed a way to differentiate between the servitude of European indentured servants and the involuntary servitude of enslaved Africans. The obvious solution was color – those of European ancestry are various shades of white, and the Africans, depending on their tribe, were various shades of black. Thus was begun the caste system in America. Everyone who came to America for the next three or four hundred years has found it necessary to fit into the Caste system to find their level; this has happened even if a given person did not want to do so in any conscious way. So what we have now is a very large upper caste of White (even if before arriving, a given person was Irish or German or French), a midcaste of Other (Asians and Latinos), and a large subordinate caste of African Americans. I have known for years that the hierarchy goes White Men, White Women, Other, Black Men, Black Women, and I found out years after I left my small town on the Ohio River in West Virginia that my town was a “sundown town” (I had always wondered why people of color lived in the county seat town, but now my town). I also know that the indignities I have experienced as a White Woman are as nothing compared to those visited on a woman of color of my own age, either in our own lifetime or in the lifetimes of our ancestors in America. What is also of interest is that the author posits that the White Caste in this country, run by White Men largely, would prefer to have their White Caste maintained rather than to see Democracy maintained in this country. This is what happened in Germany before the War (when the Nazis encouraged the country to hate the Other to the point of acquiescing in the deportation and killing of the Other), and to a degree what is happening in Hindu India (where the Caste system has been going on for millennia, to the joy of those on top and the deep despair of those who are born so low that they are not even allowed into the Caste system). I have lived in Louisiana for fifty-one years (several of those years in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, which are more racist than other areas), and I know that I have had advantages by being a white person in my parish (if I am stopped by a traffic cop, I sigh because I am about to get a ticket; I do not break into a cold sweat because I might be shot dead).
This is a great book, and one that I think every person in this country should read. ...more
This book is the third book, in chronological order, in what is known as the Leatherstocking Tales, but it was the fourth book written. As such, the aThis book is the third book, in chronological order, in what is known as the Leatherstocking Tales, but it was the fourth book written. As such, the author had to fit certain things into the book, namely, that our main character (known in this book only as Pathfinder) has to fall in love, but cannot actually win fair maiden, as that would not work out well with what the public knew of the later life of the character. Besides that complication, it takes place almost entirely on or near the shores of Lake Ontario during the French and Indian War. And there are plenty of alarums and attacks in this book, along with more than usual comic relief, to make me happy that I have read this book.
Circa 1758, and four people are in the woods, heading for the English fort on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River. These people are Mabel Dunham, a nineteen year old damsel, who lost her mother at a very early age, and since has been living on the New-York coast, and Charles Cap, invariably called Cap, who is Mabel’s maternal uncle, and who is a salt-water sailor with contempt for any alleged fresh-water sailing. They are en route to the fort to meet up with Mabel’s father and Cap’s brother in law Sergeant Dunham, who is at the fort, and are being escorted by Arrowhead, a Tuscarora Indiana allied with the Mingo, and Dew in June, Arrowhead’s wife. They meet up with Chingachgook, a mighty Delaware Indian; Jasper Western, also known as Jasper Eau Douce, a twenty-something noted sailor on the fresh water of the Great Lakes; and Pathfinder, who has come to meet the travelers and to convey them on to the fort and Mabel’s father, whom Pathfinder has known and fought with against the French for some twenty years. Arrowhead and his wife abandon the group, and everyone else makes it to the fort. Sergeant Dunham has decided that Mabel should marry the Pathfinder; Mabel is unaware of this plan, as others at the fort have designs on her, including Lieutenant Davy Muir, the quartermaster, who has had some three or four wives already. An expedition is planned to sail to the Thousand Islands to relieve a small garrison, but an anonymous letter indicates that someone is actually a traitor to the French, and Uncle Cap is certain that the traitor must be Jasper, because Jasper knows how to speak French.
This was a fine book, and funny in places where it should not have been (one character is shot in the back, falls flat on his face, then rolls over), and I look forward to continuing the series at some later point in time. ...more
This nonfiction book is fairly short; it consists of over sixty heartwarming stories about coincidences – and, invariably, positive coincidences. I haThis nonfiction book is fairly short; it consists of over sixty heartwarming stories about coincidences – and, invariably, positive coincidences. I have nothing against good things happening to people, except that I am enough of a person to wonder – where are the unpositive coincidences?
Now, I know that things do happen, but if we assume that when something good happens, is that God, or a good Angel, or some sort of cosmic goodness working to do good, that is happening? And if that is so, then who is responsible for the other side of the coin – when bad things happen, was it a bad Angel, or a demon, or what? A few months ago, my sister called on a Monday that she needed me to come visit; I told her I could make it up to her house on Wednesday or Thursday. As it was, I got up to her house on Wednesday, took care of her and the house, and wished her good night – and she died during the night. If I had gotten up there on Thursday, I would not have seen her, and talked with her, before she died. But I am not willing to say that God, or Jobu, or the angels watching from above, had anything to do with the outcome. And what are we to make of the attempted assassination of a political figure – the political figure in question was not killed, but someone else was, which seems to indicate that God or Jobu had some wider idea of good in mind, perhaps. As a devout Catholic, I would love to think that all good things come from above, and might mitigate the evil that does happen, but I am not ever going to say that I am somehow favored more than the average person. Having said all of that, I know of at least one story in this collection that was frankly made up, which may not be the fault of the authors, as this book was published in 1997, before the truth of this one story came out. But not everything that happens can be categorized as miraculous, and I insist that for every coincidence there is a bright side and a dark side. ...more
This relatively short non-fiction book was published in 2000, so besides being a little old as regards current history, it also came out before the evThis relatively short non-fiction book was published in 2000, so besides being a little old as regards current history, it also came out before the events of 9/11, which among other things was a watershed in relations between the Muslim World and the West. But I enjoyed reading this book, and it is a good reference book to have on one’s shelves The book takes us back to the giving of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and the giving of the concept of the One God in a revelation to the Arab peoples. The expansion of Islam was necessary; in the barely subsistence lands of the Sinai, one obtained goods by raiding other groups, and since the Quran forbade infighting with other Muslims (and gave Jews and Christians freedom of religion), the Muslim world was forced to look outward. A few hundred years later the Faith was in two sections (the Shia and the Sunnis), and the Caliphs ruled large swaths of territory; this was problematical, as the Caliphs were by and large autocratic, which is against the egalitarian goals of the Quran. The goal of the Islamic world, never yet achieved, is to have a perfect synthesis of religion and politics, with everything under the aegis of the Quran. The Crusades of the West to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land affected only a small percentage of the Muslim world. For centuries the Muslim world was ahead of Europe in learning, but when the West developed the ideas of the industrial revolution and humanism, the West began colonizing other lands, and trying to bring in Western ideals without development of the whole colony. This threw the Muslim world into a defensive posture, and Western politics towards Islamic lands has been less than benign. And while there are extremists in the Muslim world, there are also extremists in the West; and the Muslim world did not become anti-Jewish until 1948. And there is some grounds for nothing that a government that is religiously based is no better or worse than one that is not religiously based.
Basically, we fear what we do not understand; and I hope that the West will continue learning about Islam, just as I hope that Islam will continue learning about the West. ...more
This book was written in 2016 during Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, which lasted from December 8th, 2015 (the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception)This book was written in 2016 during Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, which lasted from December 8th, 2015 (the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception), to November 20th, 2016 (the Feast of Christ the King). To say that the book was written by Mother Teresa was both accurate and not-accurate; what the editor did was to take many things written or said at various times during her ministry, and stories about Mother Teresa from her Sisters of Charity and others, and apply them to the subject of the book, the Corporeal Works of Mercy and the Spiritual Works of Mercy. As such this is a very good devotional book, and perfectly illustrates the work that Mother set herself to do.
There are seven Corporeal Works of Mercy: to feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to visit the sick, and to visit the imprisoned, or ransom the captive, and to bury the dead. There are also seven Spiritual Works of Mercy: to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to admonish the sinners, to bear patiently those who wrong us, to forgive offenses, to comfort the afflicted, and to pray for the living and the dead. Each chapter of this work takes the Works in order, and uses Mother’s own words first, and then the words of stories about Mother, to show how Mother saw that particular Work of Mercy being expressed in the work of the Missionaries of Charity in India and throughout the world. When a disaster would arise in the world, Mother would come, or would send her sisters, and they would start working with what they had to help people, especially those people who were considered marginal by society to start with. Her preference was always with the poorest of the poor, those who were sunk so low as to be invisible; her gift was that any given such person she saw was not invisible, but was a part of the Body of Christ. Each chapter ends with recommendations for the reader and with prayers.
I thought this was a very good devotional book, and I am glad that I have read this book. ...more
What if, once you died, you ended up in a sort of way station city, where you stay until the last person in the land of living who ever met you dies, What if, once you died, you ended up in a sort of way station city, where you stay until the last person in the land of living who ever met you dies, at which point to disappear to whatever comes next? And what if a worldwide pandemic took out everyone in the world except for someone in literal isolation? This is a novel that covers both ideas, and where the ideas meld together, and it makes for fascinating reading.
The odd-numbered chapters are in the City of the Newly Dead; when people die, from disease or accident or war or a viral 100% deadly pandemic, they go through a sort of journey, and end up in the City. The City seems to be infinite, holding hundreds of thousands of the newly dead, from all over the world; but as the pandemic of the late 21st or early 22nd century kills all of its hosts, suddenly the population of the city drops to several thousand people. The even-numbered chapters are about Laura Byrd, a wildlife biologist working for Coca Cola, who ends up on a mission with two other higher employees at Coca Cola to investigate whether the melting ice in Antarctica could be used for soft drinks. The three are suddenly isolated, with none of their communication devices working, so the two men take a sledge to the emperor penguin research facility on the Ross Shelf, and never come back. Laura is thus left alone to her own devices; through the even-numbered chapters, she learns about the pandemic, and starts to wonder if she is the only person left alive in the world. And though she knows nothing about the City of the Newly Dead, if she is the only live person left, then the only people in the City are the ones she knew personally, from any point in her life, and everyone else in the City has gone – wherever they go.
I very much enjoyed reading this book, and I found it a most thought-provoking read. ...more
This book, written in 1823, is the fourth of the Leatherstocking Tales in chronological order, but the first one in the order of writing (in fact, it This book, written in 1823, is the fourth of the Leatherstocking Tales in chronological order, but the first one in the order of writing (in fact, it was the third book of any kind written by the author). He set the scene of his story along Lake Otsego, in New York, in the settlement of Templeton, which essentially stands in for the town of Coopersville, settled by and named for the author’s father. And he made one of the major characters Nathaniel (aka Natty) Bumppo, who at the time of this tale (1793) has reached his three score and seven years; the Leather-Stocking’s friend is Chingachgook, also known as Indian John Mohegan, who has seen his Delaware tribe dwindle down to nothing while reaching the same advanced age of seventy. This was a good book, though quite wordy.
The book opens with Judge Marmaduke Temple bringing his daughter Elizabeth home from her schooling in the east. It is Christmastime, and Temple cannot resist shooting from the sleigh at a deer; instead he slightly wounds a young man, who turns out to be Oliver Edwards; there are those who think him a half-breed, as Chingachgook has been heard to call him Brother. At home in Templeton, the Judge lives with his first cousin Richard Jones, who has an inflated opinion of his abilities and accomplishments. Jones takes issue with the Judge protesting the cutting of trees indiscriminately; after all, there are millions of trees, and the wood is needed for construction and for fuel. Jones takes the same view of fishing (he uses a seine, to capture many more fish than are necessary) and of keeping flocks of pigeons off of the plantings (he uses a swivel cannon). Meanwhile, some distance around the lake, is the cabin of Natty and Indian John, a cabin to which no one else is admitted, save the young Oliver. There are mutterings from Oliver that Judge Temple has taken his land from someone who has a better title; he apparently is of good family and education (at least the non-alleged-half breed side of him). Over the ensuing year, Judge Temple makes his cousin the Sheriff of the area, and the question of shooting deer out of season brings the Leatherstocking and the Judge into conflict.
To a certain degree, this is what now might be called an ecological book, deploring the wastage of the land by the first pioneers while not really disputing the right of those pioneers to do what they felt was right to do with the land they owned. Again, this book pits those who first lived off the land against those who make the land to be something to be tamed and turned to different uses. But I enjoyed this book, and look forward to one more book in the (chronological) series. ...more
This book was announced as an Oprah 2.0 Book Club selection on July 6, 2020, so I am slowly but surely catching up to the present time in reading OpraThis book was announced as an Oprah 2.0 Book Club selection on July 6, 2020, so I am slowly but surely catching up to the present time in reading Oprah books. And I am tremendously glad that I read this one; the only way to describe it is that it is a black comedy set in the housing projects of Brooklyn in 1969, and that it is an amazing book to have read.
The Cause is a housing project, notable for three or four landmarks; there is the main building, which is your typical housing building of substandard apartments, mostly inhabited by blacks or Latinos who have been living there for some twenty or thirty or so years, having come from the American South, or Puerto Rico, or Jamaica. The Five Ends Church is in the Cause as well, plus an old boxcar down by the docks that is used as a base of operations for moving stolen goods by an Italian man known as the Elephant. And there is a plaza with a flagpole, which is used by gossiping old folks or young mothers with babies until noon, when the drug dealers take over. The story begins when Deacon Cuffy, also known as Deacon Sportcoat, who used to be the umpire at the baseball games between the buildings of the Cause and the other Projects until the kids quit to do drugs, widowed for two years since his Hettie walked into the river (since then she badgers him constantly, but will not tell him where the Christmas Club money is hidden), who is a member of Five Ends, but who works at odd jobs and is either mostly drunk or all the way drunk on homemade King Kong liquor, comes wandering out of his apartment, goes down to the Plaza just at noon, and with a gun that looks like a relic from the First World War shoots Deems, the main drug dealer kid who used to be the best pitcher on the baseball team, after which Deacon goes wandering off again. What happens next is a very convoluted story, during which we learn the history of just about every character in the book.
I did enjoy reading this book, and I thank Oprah Winfrey for having brought this book to my attention. ...more
This Oprah Book Club 2.0 selection was announced on April 7th, 2020 (so I am still four years behind); it is a nonfiction book about schizophrenia, boThis Oprah Book Club 2.0 selection was announced on April 7th, 2020 (so I am still four years behind); it is a nonfiction book about schizophrenia, both about the disease itself and the historical and current thinking on causes and treatment, and about a family that ended up becoming famous in the literature (albeit namelessly) for having several schizophrenic children in the family. It is a very good book, and one that I was happy to have read.
Schizophrenia is a disease, or a spectrum, that has been with mankind for eons; essentially, reality for the schizophrenic is not the same as for the regular world. It is not split personality, which is much rarer and entirely different. The Gavin family, which eventually settled in Colorado Springs, was a family of twelve children, ten boys followed by two girls, born between 1945 and 1965. The father was at first in the Navy during the war, and eventually went to the Air Force; the mother saw her role as being his supporter, and in raising the children. The family was early into falconry, and the father started the raptor program at the Air Force, and was one of the people who suggested that the mascot for the Air Force be the Falcon. As the book details how the boys, then the girls, were raised (good Catholics and into sports, but far too often left to their own devices), the book also details the history of research into schizophrenia, which started with a personal memoir written in the late 1800s. Just as some of the boys in the Gavin family developed schizophrenia, the scientific world held that the secret was nurture, and that bad parenting caused the disorder. The book follows the family and the science to the present day; it is discouraging to realize that adequate medications for this disorder, or for any other disorder, is driven by the profit margin of Big Pharma.
I did enjoy reading this book, and since just about no one in this world is in perfect mental health, it behooves all of us to read books like this. ...more
This book came out in 2002; while computers were on the scene, the Internet as we now know it was not, and neither were ubiquitous cell phones. I mentThis book came out in 2002; while computers were on the scene, the Internet as we now know it was not, and neither were ubiquitous cell phones. I mention these facts because this is a book that depends on land lines and on methods other than Google to find out information. But this is also a book that deals with identity, and what we feel to be our identity, and it is a very good, and funny, and sad book.
Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a divorced secondary history teacher who spends his nights reading about Mesopotamian civilizations; he has a girlfriend (he is thinking about ending the relationship) and a widowed mother. One of his colleagues, a math instructor, suggests that he watch a video, so Afonso gets the video from the video store and watches it that evening. It is not much of a film, and he goes to bed, but wakes up distressed; he puts the film back into the VCR, and realizes that a very minor character is his double, save that the actor has a mustache. This minor difference reassures Afonso, until he realizes that the movie came out five years ago – and that five years ago, he, Afonso, had a similar mustache. The movie only lists the names of the minor characters, not their roles. He decides to rent more movies by the production company, see if the actor is in any of those movies, and work out by process of elimination whom his double might be, in a city of some five million people. Thus begins a tale of deception, betrayal, love, rancor, and identity, with a twist at the end.
I very much enjoyed reading this book (in English translation); I doubt that I will watch the 2013 movie Enemy, which was adapted from this film, as I would worry that a minor character in the film might be my own double. ...more
This book is the second of the Leatherstocking Tales in chronological time (after the events of The Deerslayer), but the second book to be published bThis book is the second of the Leatherstocking Tales in chronological time (after the events of The Deerslayer), but the second book to be published by the author in the series (after The Pioneers). This book is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War, and is set in upstate New York, some fifty miles north of Albany. The book is another tale of Hawkeye, otherwise known as Natty Bumpo, and his Delaware Indian companions, and is a good book, with a fairly convoluted plot.
At Fort Edward, a detachment of about a thousand Anglo-English soldiers at Fort Edward, which is commanded by General Daniel Webb, leave for Fort William Henry, some twenty miles north, on the southern end of what is now Lake George. Fort William Henry is held by Lieutenant Colonel George Munro, but it is in danger from the French forces of Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. The daughters of Munro, Cora and Alice, leave Fort Edward for Fort William Henry; they are accompanied by Major Duncan Heyward, and led on an alternative route by a native named Magua. They are joined by one David Gamut, who is a singing teacher totally unconscious of danger in the wilderness. Major Heyward, who has feelings for Alice Munro, begins to think the party is being led astray by Magua, and they head in another direction, and meet up with Hawkeye and his two Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas. On realizing that he has been unmasked as a Huron (and aligned, not with the British, but the French), Magua escapes, and the party heads for Fort William Henry. There are several pitched battles, several captures of principal characters by hostile Indians, several rescues, and at least once massacre described in quite lurid detail. Through it all, Magua acts as a wily man who is actuated by a spirit of revenge against Lieutenant Colonel Munro, and by extension to his family.
This is a very good book, though quite complicated, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series. ...more
This book about books is a nice coffee-table book; my only problem with the book is that it was published in 1979, which means it is before the adventThis book about books is a nice coffee-table book; my only problem with the book is that it was published in 1979, which means it is before the advent of modern audiobook technology, E-books, manga, graphic novels, and Harry Potter. I did enjoy reading the book, as it was a fun read.
The cover of the book is taken from a woodcut of Dr. Samuel Johnson breaking a book over a bookseller’s head. The book is full of quotations, artistic plates, and illustrations having to do with books, arranged in some eight chapters, on such subjects as Bookmaking, Disastrous Books, The Enemies of Books, and Ex Libris (the last dealing on how to select books to read).
As a confirmed lover of books (although I cannot smell them, being born without a sense of smell), I have books in nearly every room of the house, though I have cut down drastically on my purchase of physical books, due to being retired and on a fixed income (god bless good libraries). As noted, this was indeed a fun book to read. ...more
This novel is about the life of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of the eleventh century Japanese epic novel The Tale of Genji (which I last read in 2008)This novel is about the life of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of the eleventh century Japanese epic novel The Tale of Genji (which I last read in 2008). While she did leave some poems and diary entries, and while a bit is known about her life, not much is actually known about her. The author of this work has done a wonderful job of imagining just what her life must have been like, and I loved reading this book.
The book begins as a letter by Murasaki’s daughter Katako to her own daughter; she recalls how she was pregnant with her daughter when Murasaki died in the nunnery, and that she was given papers that were in Murasaki’s room when she died; the daughter took the papers, as paper was precious, and can be reused. Katako found out, some years later, that the papers on one side were religious prayers, and on the other side was a reminiscence by her mother about her life and about the writing of The Tale of Genji. The book then moves to Murasaki’s writing; she was the daughter of a Chinese scholar, in the minor nobility, and her writing and poems were an outlet for her to express herself, since a noble Japanese woman of this time had practically no autonomy. Eventually, after her marriage and the death of her husband, her writings brought her to the attention of Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027). He was the grandfather of three emperors, the father of six empresses or imperial consorts, and the grandfather of seven additional imperial consorts; it is no exaggeration to say that it was Michinaga who ruled Japan during this period, not the titular Emperors, and the character of Genji was partially based upon him. He arranged for Murasaki to become a lady in waiting to his daughter, the Empress Shōshi. Eventually Murasaki tired of court life, and life in general, and took religious vows. The book ends with what Is supposed to be the lost last chapter of The Tale of Genji.
This is a wonderful book, and I recommend it to all lovers of The Tale of Genji ...more
This book is the first book in chronological order of The Leatherstocking Tales, but the last of the five books to be written. It is written in the RoThis book is the first book in chronological order of The Leatherstocking Tales, but the last of the five books to be written. It is written in the Romantic style, which, since it deals with Native Americans and such, struck me as being not unlike Ivanhoe, if the Saxons in that book had worn moccasins. But it is a good book, even with certain defects in the writing.
In about 1740, two men are heading towards what is now known as Lake Ostego, in east central New York State. They are Henry March, a giant of a man known as Hurry Harry, and his young friend Natty Bumppo, also known as Deerslayer, who, though full white, has lived for several years with the Delaware tribe. March wishes to meet with “Floating” Tom Hutter, who lives on the Glimmerglass with his two daughters, Judith and Hetty, either in a house built out on the lake, or on an “ark”, a scow with living quarters. Judith is known to be somewhat flighty, and has a reputation among the soldiers of the English garrisons a few days’ journey away, and Hetty is “feeble-minded”, and quite devoted to her Christian upbringing. March is enamored of Judith, and Deerslayer is to make a rendezvous with his great friend Chingachgook, whose Delaware girlfriend was captured by the Huron / Iroquois / Mingos (the author seems to use the names interchangeably). At this time neither Deerslayer nor Chingachgook have ever killed an enemy in war. But, at this time, war has been declared, and the Huron / Iroquois / Mingos are allied with the French in Canada. During a period of about seven days, there are many adventures around the lake. The Deerslayer is quite an honorable man (though not yet twenty); he is honest, plain speaking, and believes that the Indians have their proper gifts, and that white men have their own proper gifts; there is much friction between him and Hurry Harry and Floating Tom, as both Harry and Tom see nothing wrong with taking Indian scalps for the bounty from the Crown, while Deerslayer refuses to do so; he holds that it is proper for Indians to take scalps, as part of their gifts, but that doing so is not one of the gifts of the white man.
This is a good book, though full of florid language (the Deerslayer has a tendency to rhapsodize about the woods and the forest and the deer and the birds), and over time I will be reading the rest of The Leatherstocking Tales. ...more
This novel is by a Kenyan writer, and is her first book; I found the book to be very good, and one that I did not want to put down.
Mugure, born in KeThis novel is by a Kenyan writer, and is her first book; I found the book to be very good, and one that I did not want to put down.
Mugure, born in Kenya and a graduate of CCNY, has an absent father (who did pay for her schooling); her mother, who was a single mother rejected by her family, is deceased, having died sometime after her daughter went to America. While working at a law office in Manhattan, Mugure meets and falls in love with Zach, whose father was Estonian and whose mother is Italian-American. They marry, and are unable to have a child of their own, so they adopt a two-year-old racially mixed boy born by a native of Kenya. All is good in Mugure’s world until the year Kofi turns five; at that point Mugure starts wondering about the adoption procedure that brought her adoptive son to her, and finding out that things are murkier than they seem. The story takes us from Manhattan to Middle America to Africa, where, with the help of friends that she can depend on, she find out what is really going on with her husband and his friends, male and female.
This is a good book, and the main character is a strong woman; I may have to look for more books by this author. ...more
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