The English Roses by Madonna - RM 10.00
Amazon.com Review
Madonna hangs up her material-girl cloak to teach children the importance of looking beyond a surface sheen. In The English Roses, the superstar's children's book debut, four little girls (the roses in question) "play the same games, read the same books, and like the same boys." Nicole, Amy, Charlotte, and Grace all love to dance the monkey and the tickety-boo… and they all are horribly jealous of Binah, the perfect, beautiful, smart, kind girl who lives nearby. Even though they know Binah is lonely, she makes them sick. They would say, "Let's pretend we don't see her when she walks by." And even, "Let's push her into the lake!" The pleasantly bossy narrator explains, "And that is what they did. No, silly, not the lake part, the pretending not to see her part." One night, however, the four girls all have the same dream that sets them straight. A fairy godmother sprinkles them with fairy dust and takes them to spy on Binah. When they see that she lives alone with her father, slaving away night and day at household chores, the four girly grumblers feel very sorry for her. The fairy scolds them, "… in the future, you might think twice before grumbling that someone else has a better life than you." And they do. This morality tale is nothing new under the sun, but it is cleverly told, with many teaspoonfuls of good humor. Jeffrey Fulvimari's illustrations are no less than stunning--filling every page with vivacious black ink lines and gorgeous watercolor reminiscent of 1960s fashion sketches. Children will enjoy this "don't hate me because I'm beautiful" story that celebrates friendship as much as it teaches compassion. (Ages 6 and older) --Karin Snelson
The Fifth Book of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston - RM 9.90
When the hillside fires raged into Oakland in 1991 and demolished the Kingston home, Maxine Hong Kingston was devastated. She lost to the flames The Fourth Book of Peace, a long labor of love that revisited Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book and carried out Kingston's resolve to bring her characters to resolution by depicting them at older, perhaps wiser stages of their existence. Devastated especially since the fire followed close on the death of her father, she found herself unable to write. Her idea for the book had originally come from the search for the ancient Chinese...
Dreams Never End, Nicholas Royle - RM 9.90
Noir stories often reflect images of chaos at the edges of contemporary urban life. Moral standards are a luxury in “the stone-cold heart of a visceral metropolis” where people make their own mistakes and others suffer for them. The lighting may produce the stark chiaroscuro of noir cinema, but the moral landscape is painted in shades of grey. No one is as pure as driven snow, which in “a city of dark, illuminated rain” turns to slush, and even the most callous assassin may yet be saved. Many of these characters have dreams of saving themselves, or at least dreams of escape. Practical attempts to break free of nightmarish circiumstances inevitably meet resistance, but dreams never end - Nicholas Royle, from his introduction
The basic premise of THE BEAUTY MYTH is that forced adherence to standards of physical beauty has grown stronger for women as they gained power in other societal arenas. Wolf argues that this standard of beauty has taken over the work of social coercion formerly left to myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity, all of which have been used to keep women powerless. In the author’s view, “the gaunt, youthful model [has] supplanted the happy housewife as the arbiter of successful womanhood.” The myth of beauty spreads the belief that an objective measurement of beauty exists, and that woman must want to embody it, and that men must want such women.
However, Wolf contends that the beauty myth is really not about women, it is about men’s institutions and power. Beauty is about behavior, not appearance. The qualities labelled “beautiful” in women in any given time period are no more than symbols of female behavior considered desirable at that time. Besides weakening women psychologically, the beauty myth feeds a multibillion-dollar cosmetics industry, and keeps women from rising too high in the workplace by offering a way around antidiscrimination laws.
THE BEAUTY MYTH is an impassioned book. While occasionally didactic, it is carefully thought out and backed by exhaustive research. Wolf offers chapters on how the beauty myth functions at work, in the media and culture, in the religious sphere, and in sex and sexual relations; she also discusses relationship to violence against women by men and by women themselves in the form of eating disorders and cosmetic surgery. In a final chapter Wolf calls for a third wave of feminism that will dismantle the societal machinery that enforces adherence to the beauty myth.
- Magill Book Reviews
Vivienne Flesher (Illustrator)
In Paul Monette's deceptively simple fable, Sanctuary, Renarda the fox and Lapine the rabbit fall in love in an enchanted forested watched over by a benevolent witch. That Renarda and Lapine are both female and of different species proves no impediment to their love, until the witch mysteriously disappears and her familiar, the Great Horned Owl, takes over. Suddenly, the animals are advised to "keep an ear cocked for any behavior that doesn't feel quite right," and all at once Renarda and Lapine are banished to separate parts of the forest.
Activist and writer Paul Monette authored six novels and four collections of poetry, including National Book Award-winner Becoming a Man, before succumbing to AIDS in 1995. Renarda and Lapine's eventual triumph over the forces of fear and ignorance is an apt memorial for a man who led the fight against both for so many years.
The Secret Language of Eating Disorders: How You Can Understand and Work to Cure Anorexia and Bulimia by Peggy Claude-Pierre - RM 9.90
Amazon.com Review
What makes Claude-Pierre's treatment of anorexia and bulimia revolutionary? Perhaps it's that the astonishingly high success rate of even the most chronic cases at Claude-Pierre's Montreux Clinic (only sufferers near death who have not been helped by doctors and hospitals are admitted) defies the common misconception that eating disorders are incurable. Claude-Pierre has made a personal commitment to dispel this damaging myth. Having cured her own two daughters of anorexia, you might say hers was a vested interest. The Secret Language of Eating Disorders reveals the details of Claude-Pierre's unique program.Myths and misconceptions have shaped conventional treatment of anorexia and bulimia, leading to a cycle of hopelessness for those who suffer. Claude-Pierre's work reveals that victims share a common feeling of self-contempt. Further, she asserts that these overwhelming feelings of worthlessness are established at birth and slowly erode the healthy self. The revolutionary aspect of Claude-Pierre's program stems from her conviction that this negative mindset can be completely reversed.
The book describes the five stages of recovery, discusses the challenges peculiar to working with them at home, and presents a plan for working with health professionals. Also offered are stories of former Montreux patients, adding insight and depth to understanding these disorders. The book and the program have already saved many lives and will continue to do so.
A Cat Is Watching: A Look at the Way Cats See Us
by Roger A. Caras (Hardcover) - RM 13.00
This is a great follow up to Roger Caras' A CELEBRATION OF CATS which I have also reviewed. In the first book, he gives an overview of the history, geneology, and psychology of the cat and of the cat's relationship with humans. In this book, he zeroes in on understanding of the cat and on seeking the cat's perspective.
The first few chapters deal with the biological makeup of the cat and with the cat's basic five senses. Much of this we already must realize. Some senses including that of smell and that of hearing are superior to our own, and much of the cat's behavior can be understood by realizing how their senses present our world to them. From that foundation, Caras' goes into cat psychology and discusses a number of issues such as how cats tell time, how many know how to get home if lost, and much more. Such topics as how cats respond to music, their thinking abilities, and even their emotions such as love and hate are examined. For those who have read A CELEBRATION OF CATS, there is little repetition, just what is necessary for those who haven't read it as a basis for the thrust of this volume.
Not all questions that are discussed are answered. Caras presents possibilities and leaves it to us to decide.
Also, Caras tends to demystify many of the "mysteries" surrounding cats, but this demystification tends to heighten one's respect for the cat's uncanny abilities. Certain aspects, such as whether or not cats have ESP, are left for the reader to decide.
The book is profusely illustrated with drawings, reproductions of artwork, and photographs, and as in the previous book, there is humor. Caras draws on many authorities and on personal experience in presenting us with an entertaining, educational, and thought provoking work.
Asa, As I knew him by Susanna Kaysen - RM 9.90
It seems to me that this author is getting great reviews for this pretentious book based on her Academy Award for "Girl, Interrupted." What a terrible novel full of racial assumptions, bad Bostonian behavior, & all this wretched talk about Brooks Brothers, cufflinks, and trustfunds. I never write negative reviews - I finish the books I dislike and put them back on the shelf. This time, I felt compelled to vent about the stupidity of this book because of all the great reviews this book has recieved. Susanna Kaysen - Grow up and look at the world in a real way.
In The Hold by Vladimir Arsenijevic - RM 9.90
THE narrator of this moving, very personal novel, among the first works of fiction to come out of the Yugoslav wars, observes the attenuation of his Belgrade circle of friends long before the fighting begins. ''Ever since I'd gotten used to adulthood,'' he tells us, ''I had lived at the center of a long-drawn-out Armageddon.'' Acquaintances have hanged themselves or succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses. Others have fled to London and Madrid. As darkness falls on the Balkans, Vladimir Arsenijevic testifies to the demoralization of a generation of Yugoslav youth.
Mr. Arsenijevic was 26 in 1991, the year the country's constituent republics went to war, and his first novel, ''In the Hold,'' has the intimacy and particularities of autobiography. The unnamed narrator and his drug-dealing, drug-using wife, Angela, have begun their tempestuous life together. Their contempt for the war does not spare them its tragedies: Angela's gentle brother, Lazar, a Hare Krishna devotee, is drafted into the Yugoslav National Army and killed, and their friend Dejan, once a drummer in a punk band, loses his right arm.
By the autumn of 1991, events have taken an especially savage turn: ''Throughout the satellite channels, our boys were slaughtering each other.'' Angela and her husband channel-surf in horror and wait for his induction notice. When she gives up drug dealing, the couple slip into poverty, even though he has a steady job. War has crippled the already ailing Yugoslav economy. As the army destroys towns in eastern Croatia, the narrator and his wife realize that things could be worse. This will come the following year, in Bosnia.
I happened to be living in Belgrade in the season of this novel's discontent -- when October evenings were ''sort of flaky, and greenish yellow,'' and ''November was devouring its own heart'' -- and I can swear to its verisimilitude. A pall was cast over that passionate, cosmopolitan city, ''the deceived capital city,'' Mr. Arsenijevic calls it. After the exhilarating anti-government demonstrations of the previous March proved, in retrospect, to have been pointless and self-indulgent, many young people knew they had squandered their single opportunity for a normal life. Their future had been hijacked by nationalist thugs.
Employing relatively little physical description, Mr. Arsenijevic portrays a city of friends -- the knot of community -- at the edge of extinction and dispersal. But while all is being sacrificed in the Balkan chaos, the author moves his main characters toward a kind of redemption. Angela has stopped using drugs, or at least opiates. (''The only thing she had for breakfast, lunch and dinner was Benzedrine.'') The deflation of city life draws the couple together.
In the end, a novel about the end of Yugoslavia becomes a love story. Cuddling in their apartment as they await the birth of their child, ''a kind
of psycho-twilight materialized above us; a dense, doughy mass covered us, and we felt as though we were in the hold of a ship, condemned to play the role of culprit for all the world's sufferings.''
One might read this sentence, and the novel itself, as yet another self-pitying Serbian claim of victimization. The claim would fall short: while Angela and her husband are not responsible for the world's woes, the Serbian political leadership, with the strong support of the Serbian people, certainly bears much of the blame for Yugoslavia's misfortunes. But as far as this novel is political at all, its partisanship is generational, not national. The author speaks for the youth of his country -- impoverished, manipulated and fated to refight their grandfathers' battles.
Mr. Arsenijevic glazes his sorrow with soft-spoken irony, winningly expressed in Celia Hawkesworth's translation from the Serbo-Croatian. His tone is hip and engaged, having less in common with other Serbian writers than with young writers elsewhere in Europe and America. He is the amazed, sardonic and eloquent witness to the spectacle of a country devouring its own heart.
