Book review--City of Light

Sometimes when a book is really good, it's hard to come up with much more to say about it than, "it's really good." But I'll try.

The book in question is Lauren Belfer's City of Light. It's set in Buffalo in 1901 during the time of the Pan Am Expo and the early days of hydroelectricity (from Niagara Falls). There are many actual historic figures in the book, including presidents and very rich people of the day.

The story is told from the perspective of the headmistress of the all-girls' school, and her personal story is slowly revealed throughout the novel. Her character, as all the other characters, are interesting, complex, and well-developed. The plot weaves social commentary (on environmentalism, business, racism, class distinctions, gender discrimination, etc.) with historical fact and the stories of the created characters. (If you want more plot summary, check Amazon or a similar website--I hate knowing what books are about before I read them so I don't divulge much in my reviews!)

Our entire book club really enjoyed this book and had a great discussion about it, which I believe is testimony to its multi-faceted nature--some history, some mystery, a tad bit of romance, etc. We had a lot to talk about concerning the issues that faced the characters and how things had changed or stayed the same.

Some people felt it was a bit long (my copy was 500 pages, the large print one from the library was 800, and the others were somewhere in between) and had too complex a set of characters--if you're prone to think that, you might want to take notes on the characters. Everyone except one person did finish it, though, and I really liked being able to sink my teeth into it.

One more thing--the actual writing style is pretty similar to the Victorian writing style, so if you like classics, this might be your book.

New Camera

So, as you know, Alex recently came back from Zambia. Unfortunately, he came back without the camera, which is why we haven't posted any pix. (He can tell the story sometime, and we do plan to get some from his teammates at some point.) The silver lining is that I got to pick out a new camera, and there's some really nice under-$200 digital cameras out there now. We picked an Olympus FE340, in pink. It's nice and slim, and my favorite thing about it is the "cuisine" setting. It's for still lifes in general, and you can see in the above photos what a difference it makes--the left one of the dressing bottle was taken using "cuisine" setting, the right one was just "auto." The other photos are of a berry smoothie we made this week, and a hummus/veggie pita I whipped up for a snack a couple days ago. I'm impressed with the clarity of the photos.

It never rains but it pours

As you probably know, we've been having rains of deluvian proportions around here lately. You can see my whiskey barrel above--this year I learned that whiskey barrels are great for holding whiskey (and apparently rainwater), not so great for allowing adequate drainage for my poor impatiens or dusty miller (which we call Dusty Chaps in honor of our brother-in-law). There's standing water in it, and if you press on the soil anywhere, water just rises up. I think I'll have to replant most of it once it dries out. (Which of course is nothing compared to replanting corn.)
The other picture is the backyard--my hydrangeas can't get enough water, it seems, and you'll notice the one on the right is drooping. Drooping like it needs water--and this after innumerable inches of rain. I guess some things can never get enough.

Timing

While in Zambia, I had the opportunity to discuss the book of Job with about 2o pastors from Zambia and then again with about 30 from Malawi. On the one hand I was a little apprehensive about teaching this book to men who have experienced far more suffering than I am likely to ever know. One of our cultural norms is that those who haven't experienced the same thing should keep their mouths shut. But one of the things that is striking to me about the Bible is how it tends to ignore our cultural norms about how to talk to people in the midst of suffering. Job's friends were not reprimanded for speaking when they hadn't experienced the same thing, they were reprimanded for having their theology wrong. When God finally addresses Job at the end of the book, he spends chapter after chapter reminding Job how little he knows in comparison to God, which also would likely get you a poor grade in most counseling classes. Peter and James write letters telling people to rejoice in their suffering while they are suffering, which is of course exactly what our culture would say you shouldn't do. Now all of this has to be tempered with Romans 12 which does tell us to mourn with those who mourn, so I don't think the Bible is forbidding sympathy. But from my experience in Zambia I get the impression that they may actually be quicker to say things we would be reluctant to say, and it is not because they have suffered less.

Reader's Advisory

So when they say there is a weather advisory that always means there may be bad weather coming. They don't say "Weather Advisory: 70 degrees, low winds, and sunny." And when they have a travel advisory it is to tell you about something that may mess up your travel plans. So in my wife's library world they have what they call "reader's advisory" and every time I hear the phrase my instinct is to assume they must be talking about how to warn people about bad books. Now of course this might mean warning about scandalous material, but maybe also poor character development, contrived endings, and other things you might want to warn someone about in a book. Of course I have also known for years that this reaction of mine is wrong. In their world "readers advisory" just means making recommendations to people about what to read. Knowing this, however, doesn't keep me from thinking the other every time I hear the phrase. Of course as an academic, I am the last person to have grounds for complaint that people use jargon that the rest of us are confused by.