Turkey, voting, and freedom

My sister Patricia at Patricia's Pages has a great little post on why we should vote today on our Canadian Federal election, here.
I'd like to add, she has a military husband (now out of the army, but after 20 years in the military, I think the military will always be part of him), and one of our other sisters also married a young man currently in our Canadian Armed Forces. Whatever our views are on the war in Afghanistan, the desire is the same: to make sure all our soldiers come home safely. That's one good reason to vote.

Another reason has to do with reading. Last week many of the American bloggers were reading banned books, in support of freedom to read. In Western society, we have a lot of freedom. In order to keep that freedom, we have to vote, we have to care, and we have to realize that what we say and think, somehow, eventually, does matter. In my own personal world view, if a person doesn't vote, they have no right to complain over the next 4 years, because they didn't bother to take the time to vote. I look at book banning in much the same way - we are going to end up with the world in Fahrenheit 451 if we don't challenge the reasons why books are banned, if we don't stand up for the right to choose our books to read. I don't want someone telling me I can't read this or that book because they think it's unsuitable for me. I want to make that choice myself.

It's all about freedom, Gentle Readers. And I take the right to cast my vote seriously. So, tonight my husband and I took our children with us to the polling booth, and as I did with the eldest son (now able to vote for himself), I showed the youngest how to vote - what the ballot looks like, the names, and how to put the X on. Then I marked my choice and folded it up, and it was done.

We have 10 minutes and the polls close! Hurray!! Please don't let the Conservatives get a majority, please don't let the Conservatives get a majority.....

Yesterday was the Canadian Thanksgiving Day. We ate turkey - indeed, we have turkey leftovers for most of this week. It was a success, we ate far too much, and I managed to not read a word of my book. Either I ate too much turkey today at lunch, or I'm tired, because The House of Dr Dee today kept putting me to sleep. I want to like it, I have to read it for the 1% Challenge - so the question I put to you, my Gentle Readers, is this: if I try to read a book for the challenge, and I just can't get through it, does it count as being a book I've read? Let me know what you think....I guess not, it will end up being one I could not finish. I'm going to keep at it, but honestly, it's boring and I really want to read The Graveyard Book, Tamsin, Coraline, and Odd Thomas for the rest of the RIP3 Challenge!!! Why do I find 'good literature' so boring to read? It's like the vegetables we were forced to eat as kids: I cannot like tomatoes, will not ever, but I love spinach now. So I try and try to please my Cool Inner Literary Bookworm, but she might have to abandon me to Fantasy Book slut. I just have more fun with the latter!!!

Ok, polls are done, election results coming in.....happy day after turkey day, gentle Readers, from Canada!!

The House of the Spirits

I finished reading this book yesterday, and all day today bits of it kept floating into my mind. I was surprised when I thought about my lunch and realised I wouldn't be reading this book. I think I know why so many people love this book. I think I have fallen in love with it too.

It is the ending that convinced me this book is worth being on the 1001 Books to read before you Die List. It is part of my 1% reading challenge. I have to say my inner literary bookworm is so thrilled that I ended up liking this book that she is actually speaking to me (I don't read enough classics for her, this elitist book snob part of me that prefers I read only the best books. My constant argument with her is that these are books chosen by other people, not by me, and they are snobs since they don't consider fantasy or other genre writing to be 'classic' in most cases. This is an ongoing argument with myself, but since I've signed up for the 1% challenge my ILB is happily planning how to convince me to read Proust and is leaving me alone with Charles de Lint for the next year instead making me read Canadian authors I don't like just to please her. I wish I could like Carol Shields, but her early book Swann's Way I couldn't finish, and I can't stand Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. I hate that book!!! So I don't care what the rest of the world says, I'll keep reading LM Montgomery and Charles de Lint instead....yikes, I think my Inner Literary Bookworm just snarled at me!) Sorry for the side comments, you see the struggle I have between wanting to be well-read and actually reading 'classics'.....

So, I opened The House of the Spirits not knowing what to expect, except that I knew a lot of people, both in the blogging world and from my years at the bookstores, who read and loved this book. From the beginning this book swept me up into the story of the Trueba family. Clara, Esteban, Alba, Miguel, Ferula, Nanny, Pedro, Blanca, they were alive in the way that only the best characters are. Clara floated through the novel as she floated in her world, and in the same way she was the heart of the house, and her family, she was the heart of the story. Clara the clairvoyant, who talked with the spirits and dreamed the future; Esteban, who seems to be a loud tyrant, and slowly is revealed to represent the old Chile - he is the voice for the wealthy landowner, conservative MP, who doesn't understand why his serfs want rights and equality. It is fascinating to see how Allende gives voice to all her characters, so we see Esteban proud of what he has accomplished and unaware of how feared he was - yet knowing he had to 'rule his peasants with a firm hand because they are like children'. Clara, who knows the future, but unable to run her household or prevent her dear sister-in-law being thrown out, or stop the future from happening - she just sees it. Blanca, the only one to get her heart's desire in the end. All these characters are the centre of the book, the heart of the family, this proud, dysfunctional family caught up in Chile's tumultous 20th century culminating in the terrible coup d'etat in Sept 1973 that saw President Allende - the uncle of the writer - overthown. The Trueba family is caught up in these events, and to my mind, the most powerful part of the book is the ending, when Alba is taken away in the night to be tortured. I stayed up late Tuesday night to finish the book, and I wept through all the terrible suffering and torture. Isabel Allende takes the story of Chile's change from an agricultural country with the land held by a few to a semi-industrialized nation with the dispossessed workers moving to the city and starving and makes it become real through the position the Trueba family holds and the differing values and beliefs of each of the family members. While this is a common technique in novels, in this book, this brings the struggles to change, the resistance by the rich, leading to the Marxist president and then his eventual overthrow by the army a gripping one that had me on edge, because the characters are intimately involved in different levels of society in that world. Jaime is a doctor, Esteban is a senator and landowner, Blanca loves a revolutionary, as does Alba. Knowing the outcome of the real-life events only gives the novel a deeper edge. One of the most shocking moments for me was when Jaime (one of Esteban and Clara's sons) receives a phone call from the President's Office on the morning of the coup. He goes. It gave me a start because in real life, I had recently watched one of our talk-show hosts on TV Ontario (a public station like PBS in the US) interview Ariel Dorfman, who worked as one of the spokesmen for President Allende. He survived the coup because on the morning of the coup, he didn't receive a phone call. He wondered why later, and found out that someone already at the Presidential Office had crossed his name off the list and offered herself instead, thereby saving Dorfman's life. Dorfman was allowed to flee the country, and eventually ended up in the US, and has just recently made a film about the coup, called "A Promise to the Dead", and what life has been like for him as an exile. I also would like to say that I lived next door to a woman for many years here in Ottawa, who was also an exile from Chile. She and her brother fled after the coup. She only ever talked about being away from Chile and not being able to go back, and what her family did before, a little. She was always so sad, and for her, life was before the coup, and after. So I brought all this with me to the book, and when I read that paragraph: "The day of the coup the sun was shining, a rare event in that timid spring that was just dawning. Jaime had worked practically all night and by seven in the morning his body had had only two hours of sleep. He was awakened by the ring of the telephone. It was a secretary, her voice slightly agitated, who scared his drowsiness away. She was calling from the Presidential Palace to inform him that he should present himself there as soon as possible; no, the President was not ill, no, she was not sure what was happening, she had simply been instructed to call all the President's doctors." I gave a little jump. From now on, it was the recounting of what really happened, in the guise of fiction. And by putting into fiction, by writing about it, Allende has born witness to what happened, and made sure the story is told.

This is why writing is important, why books are censored, why writers are feared by dictators, presidents, tyrants, anyone who fears free speech: writers, and the stories and books they tell, show the truth. They tell the stories so people will remember what happened. So all the people who died in Chile, in Rwanda, in the Congo, in World War 2, in the past and in the future, will be remembered. So their voices will be heard.

"they can't do that to someone from my own family, in my own house, because then what the hell is left for everybody else, if people like us can be arrested then nobody is safe, that more than twenty years in Congress aren't worth a damn and all the acquaintances I have, I know everybody in this country, at least everyone important, even General Hurtado, who's my personal friend but in this case hasn't lifted a finger to help me locate my granddaughter, it's not possible she could just disappear as if by magic, that they could take her away in the night and that I should never hear a word of her again...." Every parent is in those words, every person who lost someone in that coup, and in Argentina, and anywhere else where people disappear because of what they stand for.

This book breaks my heart, and puts it back together, and is amazing, beautiful, and haunting. It is a story about love, and death, about idiosyncrasies and human souls and evil and ghosts and it is above all wise and haunting, like Clara, like the ghosts who run up and down the halls of the house of the title.

I will do another post of the banned book Challenge, but as I still have to review A Wrinkle in Time (which I also loved), I will leave it for another day, when it is not so late! It's well past midnight now! I, and my Inner Literary Bookworm, are still mulling through all the ideas and emotions The House of the Spirits brought up. And I haven't even discussed the poetry of the settings, the language, the humour, the life in this novel. If you haven't read it yet, then it's worth it to get it. and if you have, let me know and I'll add your review link to the bottom, and I'll come see what you thought about the book. If I had a book club, this would be one of the books we'd read the first year.

And, in a side note, the coup in Chile occurred Sept 11, 1973. Ariel Dorfman has written a book titled : "Other Septembers, Other Americas". Here is a link to a recent interview with Dorfman on Salon , about his film, and what it was like to go back to Chile and revisit his memories of President Allende and the coup. If we get the film up here I will be going to see it.

The 1%Challenge, or How to Become Well-Read

Yes, I'm joining another one! This is thanks to 3M over at 1 More Chapter, who has decided that she would like to read more on the '1001 books to read before you die' list that came out last year. Now, while many of the books are from the 20th century, and certainly I am not interested in alot that came out in the last 10 years, I do want to read many from early 20th century back into the 19th century, a time I prefer to read in. I am happy to say I have read 7.79% already! That's 78 books on the list! I'm not totally illiterate....thank you, university courses and English degree!! But I could do with reading more, as ever looking for ways to read more classics and read more of the authors I did enjoy or have heard about. Other than Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, who I read every couple of years anyway. There are so many books that I haven't read yet, that I have always meant to read - War and Peace, I'm looking at you!! Ulysses, why can't I find you anywhere???

Here are 3M's rules (I've given you the link, above):
The goal of this challenge is to read 10 books in 10 months from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. For you non-math people, 10 out of 1001 is approximately 1%, hence the title. The challenge will run from May 1, 2008 through February 28, 2009.

You may change your list at any time and cross-posting to other challenges is permitted. The only requirement is that your ten book choices must be on the ‘1001 List‘. Another helpful tool is an Excel spreadsheet by Arukiyoma that is found here.

And, the Arukiyoma link is a fantastic spreadsheet that is easily downloaded (if I can do it, anyone can!) to keep track of what you've read, and have yet to read. It even calculates it all for you!

So, all you have to do is choose 10 books from the Well-Read list....and then you can go to any dinner party, and when someone asks you, "and what have you read lately?" or "and what do you read?" you can say, "Well, I read War and Peace recently - or Everything is Illuminated, or Cryptonomicon!" (look, it's on my list already to read this year!!!) or any number of books you've been meaning to read that fall into the supposedly-literature designation.....you don't have to agree with the '1001 books to read before you die' list, and certainly I don't intend to read all of them, I disagree with the list - so many authors are left off, or books by authors that aren't considered must read - No Ursula K. LeGuin, but Douglas Adams is, for the Dirk Gently series, no less! Not Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I would have picked for the list. No Dune. This list, I've seen written somewhere, is supposed to be a list about the books that developed the novel. That is why so many favourites are missing. I still disagree with it, and consider that if I read The History of the Kelly Gang instead of Oscar and Lucinda (both by Peter Carey), I will still be well-read AND have read the book I wanted to!!! Besides, Kelly Gang won the Booker prize, which is a list I am going to complete (one day). Many of the books on the Man Booker Prize list are on this list. So, it's an easy way to read books that are considered important in the history of the novel. So, see if there are 10 books you've been meaning to read, and come join the fun. Let 3M know, and come join the well-read party :-) Also, lest you think this list is really pretentious, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Gone With the Wind and I, Robot, and The Story of O are also on this list!!!! And Kurt Vonnegut....Interview with a Vampire...even The Shining, which I am very very happy to see, as I think Stephen King should be on this list, and this is one my favourite horror novels of all time.

Here is my list of books I am going to read:
1.Middlemarch - George Eliot (also on my 888 classics and chunky challenge list, yaay!) - DONE
2. Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
3. The Once and Future King - T.H. White (see, not a pretentious list at all!!)
4. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (chunkster, was on From the Stacks....)
5. Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut (depending on which I can find)
6. The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch
7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (already on my Man Booker Prize challenge)
8. The House of the Spirits - Isabelle Allende (thank you Kim at Bold.Blue.Adventure!! I won this in her BAFAB giveaway....) -DONE June 2008
9. White Teeth - Zadie Smith (888 challenge)
10. The House of Doctor Dee - Peter Ackroyd (sounds really good and scary, could read with RIP 3......)
11. Underworld - Don DeLillo
12. All Soul's Day - Cees Nooteboom

my spares, alternate choices (some of the above are hard to get or out of print now)
13.The Afternoon of a Writer - Peter Handke (I never heard of this book or writer! Must have this!)
14. The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
15 Possession - A.S. Byatt
16. The Secret History - Donna tartt
17. Legend - David Gemmell
18. Ulysses - James Joyce (still looking for a copy.... already on the Birthday and TBR challenge)
19. Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges (mentioned in A History of Reading (my previous post), now I want to read it!)
20. If On a Winter's Night A Traveler - Italo Calvino (thank you Eva!)

Yikes, I have enough for two challenges!!! There is so much to read! I want to read everything! Well, not everything, but apparently more than 100 books on the 1001 books to read before I die!!!! I had to leave some titles off...Of course, next to reading these books, and making these lists, is going shopping for the books!!