River Town by Peter Hessler. Recommended by a guest writer on Reading Matters. Written by an American journalist who spent two years at a town at the juncture of the Wu and Yangzte rivers. Available at Jeff-Madison, UVa, and as audiobook. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough. available as an audiobook and kindle. Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine...
Audiobook. At the young age of 58 this biblical scholar received a cancer diagnosis that he thought signaled the end of his life. The immediate effect was to stop the music of everyday life, an effect that moved him to try to address the pivotal question put by the subtitle of this book, “On the Foundations of Religious Belief.” While there is much of great interest to me in the...
The subheading, "The First Chinese in the Wild West" better describes the subject of the book than the main part of the title. The story of Polly Bemis was the impetus for the author to investigate the immigration and exodus of Chinese in the West a few years after the Gold Rush began. Chinese, especially from the Pearl River Delta, came to "Gold Mountain" to...
Jacob de Zoet arrives in Japan in 1799 on the small artificial island created for the Dutch traders, the only barbarians the Japanese allow near their country. Only a few of them can leave Dejima for the city of Nagasaki and only on rare occasions. Even on the island they are severely restricted and closely watched. Of great concern to the Japanese was the contamination of...
Audiobook. Once again the storyteller makes it happen. I don’t know how he can make characters come alive in so few words. Scully is a hardworking, rough-looking Australian who has landed in Ireland, after traveling throughout Europe for several years with his wife and 5 year old daughter, Billie. She was a University trained ambitious bureaucrat who married a good-hearted working-class...
This popular history of the painting of the Sistine Chapel focuses, of course, on Michelangelo, but ranges into the area of the military history involving Pope Julius II, as well as quite a bit about Raphael. Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor and a few years before he began painting the Sistine Chapel, had been contracted to create a marble tomb for the Pope and in fact had...
Audiobook. Before I decided to read this Man Booker prize winner, I read some strongly worded dismissals of the book and the author. But John Self (no relation) at Asylum said it was funny so I went with that. And I’m glad I did. The focus is mainly on Julian, a 50ish nebbishy fellow and his connections with Sam Finkler, his very successful friend from school days, and Libor, their...
Audiobook. After spending a several weeks in Reformation England with Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall), I decided to move ahead to 1605 and acquaint myself with Guy Fawkes to learn why the British have bonfires with effigies of him on November 5. It remains something of a mystery that it is Guy Fawkes, who came late to the conspiracy to blow up Parliament, kill the king and his family, and...
Gemmy had an unspeakably awful childhood in Britain and in the 1840s was cast ashore from a shipwreck off the coast of Australia at age 13. The aborigines took him in and it is 16 years later that three children in a very remote settlement in Queensland came across him. Such a strange creature creates great fear and mistrust, as the isolated settlers are terrified by the rarely seen...
Audiobook. While reading much of this book, I was conscious of its cleverness, and some of the bits made me think of Tina Fey. I think that means I haven't seen Steve Martin do a comic turn in a long time. The characters are well-described, but for much of the time, not too real. For example, Mirabelle, the shopgirl, in contrast to the completely unreflective...