The Help

After many recommendations from family and friends, I read The Help by Kathryn Stockett and really enjoyed it. The book takes place in Jackson, Mississippi and chronicles a few years in the lives of a group of friends and their "help," their maids. The novel takes place in the 1960s, and race relations is a major theme throughout.

Having only visited Jackson once (and that was in the 1990s), it was informative to read about segregation from the perspectives of both the white housewives and their black maids. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the main characters. I don't want to give anything away about the plot, but I do wonder how authentic the various voices are. Stockett has received some criticism as a white woman writing in the voices of black women--that even in a fiction book, she would not be able to capture the maids' experiences.

What do you think? Does one owns experience impact one's ability to tell the story of an other's experience?

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Water for Elephants is a historical novel by Sara Gruen. The novel centers on Jacob Jankowski and his experiences in a travelling circus called The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. This one had been on my "to read" list for a while now since it was on the NY Times Bestsellers List, but once I heard that it was going to be turned into a film, it quickly rose to the top. Hehe.

The novel is told through Jacob's perspective when he is an old man living in a nursing home reminiscing about his time working in the circus in his early 20s. The dynamic that develops between Jacob, the dysfunctional foreman, and his beautiful wife is the main cause of drama in the novel and had me turning the pages quickly to find out what was going to happen. I don't want to give too much away because I would definitely recommend this for you ladies to read. The film will star Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, and Reese Witherspoon, so as I was reading the novel, I visualized them as the characters and I think it made the story come more alive for me.

What do you think about reading novels that already have a film adaptation or one in production? Does it help you get a clearer image of the characters or would you rather be able to come up with your own visual of the characters?

PREP

I read PREP after AMERICAN WIFE (completely randomly) which is a story about a girl who moves from her hometown in the Mid West to attend a swanky boarding school on the East Coast. The chapters are divided into semesters of the year and you see the main character as she attempts to make friends in the first year among her very privileged peers, endure boy crushes and family embarrassment, all the while just trying to fit in. It was a really interesting read, especially since it was almost like they were going off to college instead of high school. College is normally the first time that you are really away from your parents and able to make most of your own decisions. There's no parental guidance, but the teachers and headmaster are there to make sure you follow the rules.

I actually enjoyed the book. Did any of you read it?

Did any of you go to a boarding school? What were your experiences like there?

And the Band Played On

It's take me almost a month, but I finally finished And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. Originally published in 1987, And the Band Played On is a non-fiction account of the founding of AIDS and the HIV virus. Shlits, who reported for the San Francisco Chronicle, tells the story of the discovery of AIDS through people infected by the disease. He intersperses the individual narratives with the politics and science involved in the founding of AIDS. (If you've read/watched any movies about Harvey Milk, many of the characters in the book will be familiar. For example, Bill Kraus and Cleve Jones, both very involved with San Francisco politics, are characters.)

As the Band Played On is an incredibly informative read and very interesting. It's dense at times, although Shilts does a good job at explaining the political jargon. Having not yet been born when AIDS was discovered, I was surprised to read how little media coverage AIDS received. I also realized how little I know about the gay liberation movement of the '70s. Today, discrimination against gays comes in the form of banning same-sex marriage or in issues related to adoption. In the late '70s and early '80s, discrimination against gays came in the form of ignoring a disease that was killing people!

It's truly amazing how far we've come in fighting AIDS. I'm going to try to find a book that chronicles the progression of AIDS research through the late '80s and '90s. With the book ending in 1987, it seems like there is so much of this story to tell.

Have any of your read And the Band Played On or seen the movie? What did you think?

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

I'd like to recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. The book covers major moments in American history starting from 1492 (Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, The First and Second World Wars, Vietnam, etc). The version I read ends in the 1970s, but there's an updated version that goes through the 1990s. Zinn writes about hisorical events from the perspective of how they affected everyday people. For example, when he writes about Columbus, he focuses more on the Native Americans, showing how they struggled and failed to hold to their land. He also argues that it's the American people who've shaped the laws of the country rather than political leaders. He shows how working-class people played a pivitol role in ensuring that the government passed Civil Rights, Women's Rights and Worker's laws amongst a host of other important legislation. I like Zinn's writing style a lot; it's clear and simple, not stuffy at all. Really enjoyed the book and discovering new things I was unaware of in our history.

AMERICAN WIFE

I recently read American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a "fictional" account of a woman's life from childhood to adulthood where she ends up marrying a man who eventually becomes president. Anyone who reads this book can't help but see the parallels between the book's protagonist and Laura Bush's life. She was a teacher. She married a man who came from a very wealthy family. He had a drinking problem. He recovered and became governor and then president.

With all of these similarities, it was hard to know what was true and what wasn't true, but that didn't stop me from really enjoying the book. I felt like even though it wasn't a biography of the First Lady, I felt like I identified with her and respected her more than ever. This may be a false sense of those things since I don't know what's true and what's not true. But if it is true, then Laura Bush is a strong lady who had been through a lot in her life, even before George Bush ever came in the picture. And then dealing with all of his issues and the pressures of being in the public eye while still keeping her own identity in tact--wow. She just seems so inspiring as a woman who really tried to keep all of her priorities in perspective.

But it did bother me that there are parts to the story that aren't real and therefore I really shouldn't be taking all of it so seriously. I was surprised that Laura Bush didn't sue Sittenfeld for changing her story so much, but I'm also not sure what the law is for public figures who have things written about them.

Does anyone know how that works?

Has anyone else read this book? Have you read Sittenfeld's other book Prep?

Got Faith?

I remember reading Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom when I was 16. Even as a teenager, I found Albom's portrayal of his teacher and mentor Morrie and his life lessons meaningful and inspiring. I found Have a Little Faith: A True Story, Albom's most recent novel, to be equally as inspiring.

After being asked to write and deliver the eulogy for his childhood rabbi "Reb" (Reb makes this request himself of Albom), Albom spends eight years learning about Reb and the meaning of faith. In his recounting of his meetings with Reb, Albom intertwines the story of a Detroit Pastor, Henry. Much like Morrie, Have a Little Faith is full of life lessons. And although the main characters in the novel are a rabbi and a pastor, it is not about religion--it is about faith and what it means to have faith. Albom does not describe himself as religious before his meetings with Reb, and I'm not sure he would describe himself as religious after those meetings.

What do you think about faith? Is it something intricately tied into religion, or is it something that you have have even without religious beliefs?