Dawn's Reading Blog

Bittersweet Decision isn’t something I’d have read if my Grandmother weren’t in it. She was one of the war brides interviewed for the book. I have a copy of the manuscript she wrote in response to the original questionnaire and can pick out the spots where she appears. She’s called Ann in the book.

It’s a little sad how many of these women ended up unhappy, although I think they unfairly attributed their unhappines to America and Americans. It can’t generally be a good idea to marry someone you’ve only known briefly and have never seen in their home environment, no matter what country you or they may come from.

Culture shock is harped on in the book. You wouldn’t think there’d be that much cultural difference from the UK to the US. I suppose there were more significant differences back then but it sounds like some of the differences were really about social rank – that some of the women married way “beneath” them without understanding either that they were doing it or the ramifications of doing it. I must say that I had no idea so many houses in the US still had outdoor toilet facilities at the end of World War II. The US is a big place, very different from one end to another. I imagine you could have a similar shock if you met someone in NY City and he took you home to live in Kansas or Kentucky.

I think that if you live some place your entire adult life and still feel homesick for the place you grew up, that it might be more about you than the place. At some point you need to either accept the place you live as home or leave. I suspect many of these women wouldn’t have been any happier if they’d married their own countrymen. Anyway, I’m glad to say that my Grandmother was one of the happy ones.

Sentence: Siberia was a bit of a dud. Although Ann Lehtmets eventually spent something like 17 years in Siberia after being deported there, the book only covers the first couple of years. But boy does it cover them, in such excruciatingly uninteresting detail that it’s impossible to believe. No one can remember, 17 years later, how many peas they got for dinner night after night, even if they were starving all those nights. And who wants to know anyway?

It’s funny because of all the hoopla going on right now over Million Little Pieces. It certainly does seem like the memoir genre lends itself to fictionalization. Since no one could possibly remember conversations word for word and enough detail to flesh out a book, we do allow authors to blur the lines. But we trust that the important events really happened and that the overall picture is accurate. Sentence: Siberia is probably substantially true. It just wasn’t all that interesting, considering that she and everyone around her was engaged in a life or death struggle.

One interesting point was the way the Estonians were rooting for the Germans in WW2. To them, it was the Russians killing people in concentration camps and the Germans were going to be their saviors. Funny. Also, how do people walk around all winter barefoot in the snow without getting frostbite? Is that really possible?

You won’t find this book on Amazon. It was written by my Grandfather and self-published for the enjoyment of our family. But one of the biggest stories from the book is available online: La Paloma.

I have been lucky that both my Grandfather and Grandmother on my Father’s side have chosen to write about their lives. My Grandmother’s book was more personal. She lived a domestic life and her family was always her biggest interest. My Grandfather has always been a nature lover, feeling most at home in the outdoors. Many of his stories and poems are about his experiences communing with nature. He also wrote poems about his loved ones. His poem, Remembering Mark on His 44th, written to my Father on his birthday, is my favorite.

So, little boy anomaly–
Leader of the pack
And stripper of green apple trees
You, the non-sleeper, teaser,
And patio ice-rink builder,
You are now too old to enjoy
Being Rudolph in the Christmas play.
Yet, you’re still a nailer-of-nails,
Thinker, doer, and self starter
A house builder, though not on beach stilts.
Do you still not sleep unless held down
Eyes wide with plans for infinity?
Dear enjoyer of what’s at hand
And non-complainer,
At forty-four you’re not too old
For us to wish you all our love.

I seem to be reading too many autobiographies these days. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is another one, which I didn’t actually realize when I picked it up. First, I associate Maya Angelou with poetry and secondly, it starts out feeling fictional. But as the story went on, the telltale randomness of real life started to assert itself. (That plus it was revealed that the narrator, Marguerite, was also known as Maya.) The trouble with autobiographies is that most people’s lives don’t make that much sense. That’s why I like novels. They’re better plotted.

However, this was a good read. Angelou puts you right into the action, so it’s fictionalized not summarized, and she lived in some interesting places in some interesting times. It’s nice to read about people who manage to learn and suceed despite the obstacles of poverty and racism. Unfortunately, she quits just when she’s gotten to the good part. This is only the story of her childhood.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is not only self-concious, it’s knowingly self-concious. If the title makes you shudder with visions of overblown, self-aggrandizing, wallowing, bloated text, you’ve got the right idea. To be firmly avoided.

The trouble with My Sister Life is that the book jacket made the book sound a lot more interesting than it really was. A sister’s disappearance, child prostitution, teenagers with their respective children finding each other after years of separation and joining forces, intertwined and mirrored lives. In reality it was a couple of troubled kids who, voluntarily, did things they probably shouldn’t have and got in some of the same trouble at different times. So it was an OK story, written well enough, but not all that gripping or new.

A Drinking Life could have been more appropriately titled A Life. Since he starts from very early childhood, not all of it relates that much to drinking. It was moderately interesting from an autobiographical point of view, not much interesting at all from an addiction/recovery point of view. The recovery takes about a paragraph. He decides to stop drinking and he does. And although I’m not saying his drinking was healthy, it didn’t top the charts for unhealthy behavior either. I’ve seen and read worse.

I’d never heard of this guy, frankly. Perhaps I’d have been more interested in his life and how he developed a drinking problem if I had. Plus, the attempts to explain how he developed a drinking problem ring hollow to me. He saw people drink. Drinking was associated with celebration. Drinking made him feel confident and got him laid. I mean, who doesn’t have those experiences? There must be more to it than that.

Dry is another recovery story. This one starts from recovery instead of starting at birth and quitting at recovery. Backstory is filled in as you go along (sounds like this guy has lived a chaotic life) but the book focuses on the recovery itself. It’s nice to see that people can have interesting times without being drunk, since it seems like most of these books tell one interesting (albiet frequently destructive) story after another until arriving at the moment where they got all better and, apparently, stopped doing anything worth writing about.

But then he does relapse, so perhaps that explains it. All that good non-drinking stuff was leading up to the moment when he started drinking again. Then he quits again and the story is over. Hmmm. A definite start-from-the-end story is A Million Little Pieces, but it’s not as clear that that one is actually true.

The book may be called A Walk in the Woods, but he sure doesn’t do as much walking as I’d expected him to do. There’s a lot of background information on the trail and some chapters on other things going on his life, preparation and so on. Few of the chapters involve his actual experiences on the trail and he walks much less of it than I’d assumed (I suppose I thought he’d done the whole thing). But an enjoyable read and the educational parts are interspersed with more entertaining parts so it doesn’t get tedious.

The most amazing thing about Dear Friends and Darling Romans is that you can still buy it on Amazon. How is this not out of print? It’s a cute travellogue, written in the 1950s, by an American woman who ended up living in Italy for years. It’s entertaining and heartfelt. It’s also terribly out of date, of course. I wonder if that Italy still exists or if we only want to believe it does.

Mostly humorous, the book meanders from topic to topic. She’s involved in a court case, lives in various places, shops. At one point she tells the stories of a few other women (probably apocryphal) and their Italian romances. She doesn’t seem to need to earn a living but isn’t living the socialite life either. It’s a sweet, homey book that won’t make you think but that goes a little deeper than the usual stereotypes.