About six months ago, at a fundraising event for the nonprofit I founded, Project H, a six-year-old girl handed me a pickle jar full of pennies....
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I pretty much thought this book was brilliant--I've read it twice now and I shall read it again. It is difficult to write about, and read about, a subject of horror. Because, c'mon, that's what it is. If the earth in Dresden becomes a veritable tomb for stinking, rotting corpses, and the few survivors have to spray fire into the holes to incinerate the rot because it is physically impossible to smell and touch the rot without hacking all your guts out...well, that's horrific. Yet Vonnegut mangag...more I pretty much thought this book was brilliant--I've read it twice now and I shall read it again. It is difficult to write about, and read about, a subject of horror. Because, c'mon, that's what it is. If the earth in Dresden becomes a veritable tomb for stinking, rotting corpses, and the few survivors have to spray fire into the holes to incinerate the rot because it is physically impossible to smell and touch the rot without hacking all your guts out...well, that's horrific. Yet Vonnegut mangages to write about such experiences with a certain degree of humor; he can look straight at a subject but give the reader enough breathing space and entertainment that he or she does not have to throw the book aside in total disgust. Vonnegut can get you to think, not by standing on a soapbox, but by placing an object before you and saying, "Well--here it is." And then, sliding his hands in his pockets, "What do you think of it?"
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(5 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
Lerman is awesome. Her poems are conversational, like she's talking right to you. Maybe over pie and coffee, maybe in black boots, stillettos. She's one smart, somewhat brash, and very funny woman: "Liquid metal debris, alien hieroglyphics, ranch hands threatened by the goverment--/I love it all! I love Area 51!" (We're Ready in Roswell). So when you read the poems, you feel as if you've joined one heck of a discussion, and Lerman is not afraid to challenge you, either ("Where are You?" Lerman demands in "Why we Need to Start a Dialogue").
I loved how sassy this narrator is, but also how unflinching: "and yes, that sure is/ my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And/ just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains/ of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She's damn/ ready and so am I" (That Sure is My Little Dog). My favorite poems were about science, where Lerman got fanciful and--dare I say it?--spiritual: "And this is true: You are a stardust person" (Muons are Passing Through You). This poet is a hard-hitter but there's no navel-gazing here, she makes the things she thinks about Universal...and they are.
I didn't give this book 5 stars because I had to be honest. If I had grown up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, I'm sure I would have connected to this book 100%. But I was born in 1980 in Los Angeles, so Nintendo, beaches, and the Simpsons make more sense to me than New York Jews, the Red Menace, and old Russian ladies. That's entirely personal and subjective, though. The book is highly recommended.
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
This was one of the best memoirs I’ve read yet. Memoir is not my first pick among reads because, in general, I find them tedious and long-winded—what will do in 100 pages is instead done in 300 or 350. I’d rather read a novel and be entertained. However, McGarrah’s memoir not only reads like a novel and jaunts along quickly to its end (there are many page-turning stories in this book), but it has the added benefit of a real-life-narrator admitting vulnerabilities and sharing hard-won wisdom with his reader throughout.
McGarrah begins his story in the present moment, as a Vietnam veteran arriving at the VA Clinic. The reader is quickly introduced to the lasting effects of the narrator’s experience as a soldier in Vietnam. McGarrah juxtaposes the realities of physical and psychological treatment for war veterans in America with visceral flashbacks of combat. It is a little unnerving but McGarrah swiftly brings the reader back in time to his childhood in Indiana, where we get the beginnings of her story but also a healthy dose of humor. In this way McGarrah balances the horrors of his story with laughter and a sense of shared experienced between reader and writer. This is a hallmark of the entire book and one of the reasons why it was so enjoyable to read.
The first quarter of the book highlights the main developments in the writer’s life prior to Vietnam. The mid-section is life in Vietnam—a well-plotted string of stories about the smells and tastes of a new culture, life at camp, frightfully real action scenes of combat, and the psychological tolls that were taken upon the men and women struggling to survive on both sides. Here McGarrah shows his prowess as a poet as well as a man of humor. Describing his mess hall food as “some kind of roasted pseudo-beef with huge globs of mashed potatoes drowned in a dark brown gelatinous substance labeled gravy” offers a necessary respite from the terror of combat and violent death.
But even in these scenes, McGarrah manages to make his prose beautiful, as if to contain the gore and violence in a digestible format for the reader: “The trees dipped and swirled with the monsoon breeze. The bamboo played a tango so hypnotic and hallow I hardly noticed another whistle, the harsh hiss of a RPG ripping through the melody like off-key fusion jazz. Sheep must have heard it, though, because he opened his arms wide and embraced the rocket. It entered him and became him, sending all unnecessary attachments in different directions. Arms flew east and west and his head shot skyward as if it were a basketball some referee had tossed for the opening jump. Damp grit splattered my fatigues and face.”
In the final quarter of the book, McGarrah relates his experience in the Tet Offensive and his resulting wounds. He also shares his time in the hospital with other wounded vets, exploring the psychological impact of war, and his return to American life. What is so striking about the last part of the book, though, is when McGarrah returns to Vietnam in 2005. Here he meets the honored Vietnamese poet Vo Que, and together they create a new relationship based on peace, respect, and understanding. The photographs in this book are outstanding, and the last scene in the book will make you gasp.
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Overall, a satisfying first collection that will no doubt grab the hearts and minds of readers who are looking for clean, simple lines of poetry that speak of soul growth, natural wonders, inspiration in the everyday, and the process of transforming loss into understanding. These poems are wise—and often short, straightforward in their use of language and image—as they reflect on the speaker’s life experiences, people she has known, her cultural ancestry, and the soul lessons she has learned.
The poems in Unscrambled Eggs remind me of the poetry of Lucille Clifton for their tautness, their focus on ordinary life and experience. In her poem, “Liquid Muse,” Brown describes well her approach to writing the poem: “tell me what do your imageries speak/ what good are handsome metaphors/ when profoundness eludes your pen/ I have no fancy rhymes/ my poetry will not boast of windmill autumns/…but at least I offer more than words.” She is writing for every man and woman, without pretention or pretense. She writes from her Being, hard and true about what she sees (and knows) in her life. For example, in “The Writer,” Brown writes of an adolescent girl living in poverty who dreams of being a writer: “You seem beyond your fifteen years/ quite older than the strawberry jam girl you are/ but underneath your myth of make believe stars/ you are like every one else/ trying to figure their place to dam a need/ along this stretch of creation/ where days are no longer trusted/ and nights don’t care much for anyone.”
There is also a musical quality to these poems that remind me of song. Take, for example, “Only a Girl,” the lines in the final stanza: “If only I followed you with earnest/ I would not shake like December limbs/ or fetter my wings with snow,” or the first lines of “There Were No Bells”: “She said there were no bells/ only her clam hands/ and fretful feet rattled in the eve.” Beautiful imagery, a somewhat unusual syntax that marks Brown as an original voice, and a lovely rhythm that moves like spoken song. Only a handful poems in this collection fall short of their full potential, such as “Sea of Poor,” where the speaker is onto something right and true, yet the words are possibly too abstract to create strong feeling: “In a country of gold and ledger/ lives a sea of poor/ living in calamity/ and discontentment.” However, I think this collection will be a welcome and loved edition to a reader’s bookshelf, especially outside academia and among “ordinary” readers—people just like you and me.
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Well, well--another beautiful novel by Sarah Waters. I'm actually on the crack between giving the book a 4 or a 5; if you would have asked me what I thought for the first half, I would have said 3.5, but by the end I thought 4.5. Like, almost perfect, but somehow boring in some places. I really really loved Duncan and his whole story, but for whatever reason, Mickey and Kay were less interesting. Maybe because in Tipping the Velvet there were characters so similar that I couldn't help but "feel" that book in this book. I was confused half the time between the female characters of Helen, Viv, Julia. They just didn't seem all that different (except that I kept reminding myself that Viv had dark hair, and was with Reggie).
So all this sounds pretty bad, right, why would I give the novel a 4.5? Well, it certainly made me want to keep reading it, I wanted desperately to know how everything was connected at the end. I really liked the backwards telling, actually, and the little things that were kept out of the story. The dialogue and descriptions in this story are *amazing*. And the end--wow. Wow! It's like "pow pow pow!" and that made it all worth it to me. Even the boring parts. And I finally did get everybody sorted out in the end, and that made everything that came before it brilliant. I can say that in retrospect, I guess. An enjoyable read
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(1 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
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Tara McDaniel has commented on (7) products.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Tara McDaniel, June 1, 2009
I pretty much thought this book was brilliant--I've read it twice now and I shall read it again. It is difficult to write about, and read about, a subject of horror. Because, c'mon, that's what it is. If the earth in Dresden becomes a veritable tomb for stinking, rotting corpses, and the few survivors have to spray fire into the holes to incinerate the rot because it is physically impossible to smell and touch the rot without hacking all your guts out...well, that's horrific. Yet Vonnegut mangag...more I pretty much thought this book was brilliant--I've read it twice now and I shall read it again. It is difficult to write about, and read about, a subject of horror. Because, c'mon, that's what it is. If the earth in Dresden becomes a veritable tomb for stinking, rotting corpses, and the few survivors have to spray fire into the holes to incinerate the rot because it is physically impossible to smell and touch the rot without hacking all your guts out...well, that's horrific. Yet Vonnegut mangages to write about such experiences with a certain degree of humor; he can look straight at a subject but give the reader enough breathing space and entertainment that he or she does not have to throw the book aside in total disgust. Vonnegut can get you to think, not by standing on a soapbox, but by placing an object before you and saying, "Well--here it is." And then, sliding his hands in his pockets, "What do you think of it?"(5 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds: Poems by Eleanor Lerman
Tara McDaniel, June 1, 2009
Lerman is awesome. Her poems are conversational, like she's talking right to you. Maybe over pie and coffee, maybe in black boots, stillettos. She's one smart, somewhat brash, and very funny woman: "Liquid metal debris, alien hieroglyphics, ranch hands threatened by the goverment--/I love it all! I love Area 51!" (We're Ready in Roswell). So when you read the poems, you feel as if you've joined one heck of a discussion, and Lerman is not afraid to challenge you, either ("Where are You?" Lerman demands in "Why we Need to Start a Dialogue").I loved how sassy this narrator is, but also how unflinching: "and yes, that sure is/ my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And/ just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains/ of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She's damn/ ready and so am I" (That Sure is My Little Dog). My favorite poems were about science, where Lerman got fanciful and--dare I say it?--spiritual: "And this is true: You are a stardust person" (Muons are Passing Through You). This poet is a hard-hitter but there's no navel-gazing here, she makes the things she thinks about Universal...and they are.
I didn't give this book 5 stars because I had to be honest. If I had grown up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, I'm sure I would have connected to this book 100%. But I was born in 1980 in Los Angeles, so Nintendo, beaches, and the Simpsons make more sense to me than New York Jews, the Red Menace, and old Russian ladies. That's entirely personal and subjective, though. The book is highly recommended.
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
A Temporary Sort of Peace by Jim Mcgarrah
Tara McDaniel, June 1, 2009
This was one of the best memoirs I’ve read yet. Memoir is not my first pick among reads because, in general, I find them tedious and long-winded—what will do in 100 pages is instead done in 300 or 350. I’d rather read a novel and be entertained. However, McGarrah’s memoir not only reads like a novel and jaunts along quickly to its end (there are many page-turning stories in this book), but it has the added benefit of a real-life-narrator admitting vulnerabilities and sharing hard-won wisdom with his reader throughout.McGarrah begins his story in the present moment, as a Vietnam veteran arriving at the VA Clinic. The reader is quickly introduced to the lasting effects of the narrator’s experience as a soldier in Vietnam. McGarrah juxtaposes the realities of physical and psychological treatment for war veterans in America with visceral flashbacks of combat. It is a little unnerving but McGarrah swiftly brings the reader back in time to his childhood in Indiana, where we get the beginnings of her story but also a healthy dose of humor. In this way McGarrah balances the horrors of his story with laughter and a sense of shared experienced between reader and writer. This is a hallmark of the entire book and one of the reasons why it was so enjoyable to read.
The first quarter of the book highlights the main developments in the writer’s life prior to Vietnam. The mid-section is life in Vietnam—a well-plotted string of stories about the smells and tastes of a new culture, life at camp, frightfully real action scenes of combat, and the psychological tolls that were taken upon the men and women struggling to survive on both sides. Here McGarrah shows his prowess as a poet as well as a man of humor. Describing his mess hall food as “some kind of roasted pseudo-beef with huge globs of mashed potatoes drowned in a dark brown gelatinous substance labeled gravy” offers a necessary respite from the terror of combat and violent death.
But even in these scenes, McGarrah manages to make his prose beautiful, as if to contain the gore and violence in a digestible format for the reader: “The trees dipped and swirled with the monsoon breeze. The bamboo played a tango so hypnotic and hallow I hardly noticed another whistle, the harsh hiss of a RPG ripping through the melody like off-key fusion jazz. Sheep must have heard it, though, because he opened his arms wide and embraced the rocket. It entered him and became him, sending all unnecessary attachments in different directions. Arms flew east and west and his head shot skyward as if it were a basketball some referee had tossed for the opening jump. Damp grit splattered my fatigues and face.”
In the final quarter of the book, McGarrah relates his experience in the Tet Offensive and his resulting wounds. He also shares his time in the hospital with other wounded vets, exploring the psychological impact of war, and his return to American life. What is so striking about the last part of the book, though, is when McGarrah returns to Vietnam in 2005. Here he meets the honored Vietnamese poet Vo Que, and together they create a new relationship based on peace, respect, and understanding. The photographs in this book are outstanding, and the last scene in the book will make you gasp.
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Unscrambled Eggs by Nadia Brown
Tara McDaniel, June 1, 2009
Overall, a satisfying first collection that will no doubt grab the hearts and minds of readers who are looking for clean, simple lines of poetry that speak of soul growth, natural wonders, inspiration in the everyday, and the process of transforming loss into understanding. These poems are wise—and often short, straightforward in their use of language and image—as they reflect on the speaker’s life experiences, people she has known, her cultural ancestry, and the soul lessons she has learned.The poems in Unscrambled Eggs remind me of the poetry of Lucille Clifton for their tautness, their focus on ordinary life and experience. In her poem, “Liquid Muse,” Brown describes well her approach to writing the poem: “tell me what do your imageries speak/ what good are handsome metaphors/ when profoundness eludes your pen/ I have no fancy rhymes/ my poetry will not boast of windmill autumns/…but at least I offer more than words.” She is writing for every man and woman, without pretention or pretense. She writes from her Being, hard and true about what she sees (and knows) in her life. For example, in “The Writer,” Brown writes of an adolescent girl living in poverty who dreams of being a writer: “You seem beyond your fifteen years/ quite older than the strawberry jam girl you are/ but underneath your myth of make believe stars/ you are like every one else/ trying to figure their place to dam a need/ along this stretch of creation/ where days are no longer trusted/ and nights don’t care much for anyone.”
There is also a musical quality to these poems that remind me of song. Take, for example, “Only a Girl,” the lines in the final stanza: “If only I followed you with earnest/ I would not shake like December limbs/ or fetter my wings with snow,” or the first lines of “There Were No Bells”: “She said there were no bells/ only her clam hands/ and fretful feet rattled in the eve.” Beautiful imagery, a somewhat unusual syntax that marks Brown as an original voice, and a lovely rhythm that moves like spoken song. Only a handful poems in this collection fall short of their full potential, such as “Sea of Poor,” where the speaker is onto something right and true, yet the words are possibly too abstract to create strong feeling: “In a country of gold and ledger/ lives a sea of poor/ living in calamity/ and discontentment.” However, I think this collection will be a welcome and loved edition to a reader’s bookshelf, especially outside academia and among “ordinary” readers—people just like you and me.
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Tara McDaniel, May 5, 2009
Well, well--another beautiful novel by Sarah Waters. I'm actually on the crack between giving the book a 4 or a 5; if you would have asked me what I thought for the first half, I would have said 3.5, but by the end I thought 4.5. Like, almost perfect, but somehow boring in some places. I really really loved Duncan and his whole story, but for whatever reason, Mickey and Kay were less interesting. Maybe because in Tipping the Velvet there were characters so similar that I couldn't help but "feel" that book in this book. I was confused half the time between the female characters of Helen, Viv, Julia. They just didn't seem all that different (except that I kept reminding myself that Viv had dark hair, and was with Reggie).So all this sounds pretty bad, right, why would I give the novel a 4.5? Well, it certainly made me want to keep reading it, I wanted desperately to know how everything was connected at the end. I really liked the backwards telling, actually, and the little things that were kept out of the story. The dialogue and descriptions in this story are *amazing*. And the end--wow. Wow! It's like "pow pow pow!" and that made it all worth it to me. Even the boring parts. And I finally did get everybody sorted out in the end, and that made everything that came before it brilliant. I can say that in retrospect, I guess. An enjoyable read
(1 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
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