The Webber Family Bookshelf is the blog of the Strange-Webber family, descendants of Dorinda Rebecca Strange and Myron David Webber. Shake the family tree and you will discover diversity in education, ethnicity, viewpoint and reading habits. Whatever family members are reading may be reviewed: fiction, history, theology, cookbooks, poetry, children’s books, etc. At least two reviews will be published each month. Reviews represent the viewpoint of the writers, not the family.
Dr. Seuss, Scrambled Eggs Super (New York: Random House, 1953). Other editions also available.
Note: Dr. Seuss is the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel.
Reviewed by Lucas Fernandez
My favorite Dr. Seuss book is Scrambled Eggs Super. Peter T. Hooper went out and got all the eggs to cook them, to make the best scrambled eggs. He got eggs from all the birds he observed or heard of. They were make-believe birds.
I liked the pictures and the rhymes and the names of the birds. I like it when Grandpa reads it to me.
(NOVEL) The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Ballantine Books, 2011). Also available on Kindle.
Reviewed by Sally Dayton
The Paris Wife is a fictionalized version of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage. The story follows Hemingway and Hadley Richardson as they meet and fall in love in Chicago, eventually moving to Paris so Ernest can become part of the vibrant arts community there during the 1920’s. McLain details the pair’s separate family issues so that the reader has some insight into what might have drawn them together as lovers. The novel is written mostly from the perspective of Hadley.
Much of the story revolves around Ernest’s interest in bullfighting, the writing of The Sun Also Rises and the “characters” in their lives who end up coming alive in the story he is writing. This book is enjoyable not only for Hemingway enthusiasts but also for anyone interested in the literary history of the period. Many famous Modernists make appearances in the book, including Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.
The story covers five years, the length of Hadley and Ernest’s marriage. The last segment of the book is a summary of the rest of their lives until Ernest dies in 1961. I thought it seemed tacked on and unnecessary since most people are aware of how Hemingway's life ended. I don’t think that it really did anything to illuminate their marriage, which is the focus of the book.
I would definitely recommend this book. It is well written and engaging.
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage International, 2009, paperback $15.95).
Reviewed by Laird Addis, Jr.
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk is yet another great novel by the Turkish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. I have read all of his novels (at least all that have been translated into English) as well as his memoir of growing up in Istanbul, and may have enjoyed this one the most. It is a perhaps slightly improbable love story that takes place mostly in Istanbul over several years, in the 1970’s and 80’s, and involves at many levels the conflicts of the traditional Muslim culture of Turkey with the secular, European- oriented culture that the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk, established after the first world war. There is much description of Istanbul itself (the city I most want to visit of those I have not yet visited) and the surrounding area, especially where the wealthy went (and probably still go) to get out of the city in the summer. The history it tells during the years of the story includes the military coup of 1980, and its immediate consequences. Finally, the story includes a wonderful kind of self-reference insofar as the author is himself a minor character in the story but with a twist not to be revealed here. (Vintage International, 2009, paperback $15.95)
(Pamuk, incidentally, was a student in the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop in the 1980’s, which was then located in my own office building. So I must have seen him many times, before he was famous. The University hoped to give him an honorary doctorate a few years ago, but because of death threats against him by Islamic fanatics, the University decided it couldn’t give him adequate security.)
The Warmth of Other Suns – The Epic Story of American’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2011; Vintage; Reprint edition, 2011).
Reviewed by Chuck Dayton
This book relates the story of the migration of millions of African Americans from the south to the northern “receiving centers” (author’s term for large northern cities) in the 20th century following WW I until 1970. As they were able, people fled the Jim Crow (segregated) south in pursuit of safer places to live. Crimes against African Americans in the south often went unpunished. Whites often killed them for no reason, and without fear of punishment. Their hopes were for not only safety, but opportunity to succeed financially.
Wilkerson focuses on the lives of three migrants as a tool for telling this story –Ida Mae Gladney who moved from rural Mississippi to Chicago, George Starling traveling from Florida to New York, and Robert Foster who migrated from Louisiana to Los Angeles where he practiced medicine for many years. The stories of their leaving are harrowing and the stories of their resettled lives unsettling. These three people are very different, yet face some of the same trials and tribulations in the places they chose to settle. The Chicago location was interesting to me. It put in focus how ghetto formation first began and how some of the problems encountered today by the city of Chicago are a direct result of policies restricting where African Americans could live when they first moved to the city.
I was interested in what it meant for “colored people” (author’s term for African Americans mid twentieth century) to cross the line from north to south while riding the train. The book describes colored people having to move to the Jim Crow cars, separate from whites, often involving standing outside in the rain and waiting. White folks never had to leave the train. No commentary in my collection of passenger train books describe what a Jim Crow car was, or speak to segregation on the rails at all.
This is a very readable book, and the author does a good job presenting the information she received from the three people in her extensive interviews with them. There is a thorough explanation of her methodology at the end of the book. I recommend this book because it is so well written, and to me, an eye opener of the trials of African Americans even during my lifetime.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).
Reviewed by Lisa Proehl
The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany, and explores Liesel Meminger’s relationship with a Jewish man, Max, who hides in the basement of her home during part of World War ll. As their friendship deepens, he shares his life story through a series of sketches.
This is a beautifully written story, interestingly narrated by Death, which adds to the depth of the novel. The story reveals the brutality and horror of the war, while at the same time expressing the beauty of words, art, literature, and friendship. Liesel learns the great value of knowing how to read, and of having a voice. She also believes that words are what hold the country under the power of Hitler and the Nazi party. She sees literature as being partly responsible for the upheaval, but also as her escape from it. Words can cause destruction and peace. So can humans.
How do these two sides of humanity coexist? As Death reveals at the end of the novel, “I am haunted by humans.”
I couldn’t put this book down; I highly recommend it.
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The Spinal Cord Perception by Joshua S. Porter (Aardvark Global Publishing. 2006).
Reviewed by Kevin A. Penrod, Jr.
This is a book that I have read numerous times and have never gotten tired of. It’s excellently written. It is a novel made up of interweaving stories from the narrator’s past experiences. David Rivers, a substitute teacher, loses his teaching license after an incident in an elementary school when he brings a monster to class. The monster, the Llapasllaly, traumatizes the students. David then moves to California where he starts suffering from hallucinations involving a co-worker turning into a giant lizard, a giant talking fly, and more. After an accident occurs, he moves back to Georgia and gets his teaching license back. The Llapasllaly returns and his life is forever changed. This is the debut novel from Josh Porter who is also known by his stage name for the band Showbread, Josh Dies. It is an amazing dark and tragic love story with a great message hidden in its pages. Every word paints a picture of what is happening to this character. The novel is overflowing with imagination and genius in every chapter. The author had great insight on everything he wrote about in this novel. Due to some very graphic content, I wouldn’t recommend it to younger readers. But I highly recommend it to everyone else.
If you wish to comment on this or the previous review, click on "comments" below the review. If you have trouble with that link, you may send comments to Webberfbs (at) gmail (dot) com (substitute @ for "at" and . for "dot" and don't leave spaces).
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (New York: Signet Classics, 1999). First published in installments in the magazine, Belgravia, in 1878.
Narrated by Patrick Tull (Recorded Books, 2002).
Reviewed by Wilda Morris
Regretting that I did not take any literature courses in college, I decided a couple of years ago to attempt to remedy that mistake. From time to time, I either read a classic novel, or listen to a recording of one. Recently, I selected the Recorded Books edition of The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.
In this novel, set at Egdon Heath, Hardy engages many issues, including desire (and failure) to escape the impact of social conventions; illicit relationships; social class; failure to learn from experience; the danger of acting on false assumptions; good intentions leading to negative consequences; guilt; damage done by an over-controlling parent; the high cost of waiting too long to seek reconciliation; and the perils of falling in love with false expectations of the other, rather than with the real person.
The story circles primarily around four young adults. They are:
* The fickle Damon Wildeve;
* Clym Yoebright who returns from Paris planning to settle down in his native area and start a school, so as to improve the lives of its people;
* Thomasin Yeobright, a gentle and conventional woman; a cousin of Clym, who was raised by Clym’s mother (who would like to see Thomasin and Clem marry); and
* Eustacia Vye, a beautiful and somewhat exotic young woman who is living with her grandfather; she hates the heath. Some of her neighbors believe she is a witch.
As a love story, The Return of the Native is complex, involving two very different kinds of women, and three very different men. Eustacia comments (page 200), that “many a man’s love has become a curse to him.” In the plots and subplots of this dark book, romantic love and attempts to find life partners seem to curse both the men and women. The games the young people play to attract mates, as well as the well-intentioned but sometimes ill-conceived interventions of the “supporting cast” (Diggeoy Venn, the reddleman and Mrs. Yoebright, in particular), leads to two mismatches and various levels of disaster to most of the characters.
I recommend this forerunner to the modern psychological novel.
