Leap of Faith

 Books  1 Response »
Dec 012006
 

The book club I belong to decided to read Queen Noor’s “Leap of Faith: Mem­oirs of an Unex­pec­ted Life”, her auto­bi­o­graphy, and this is a sum­mary of our review. Part of the reas­on we chose this book was in the hopes that it would be a more access­ible way of learn­ing more about that part of the world, and par­tially because one of the mem­bers used to work in the same com­pany as Queen Noor when she was still Lisa Halaby, and was curi­ous as to what the book would be like.

The book was obvi­ously pop­u­lar amongst book clubs; there was a list of poten­tial ques­tions for people to dis­cuss in the back, most of which missed the point of the book in our opin­ion. So we ignored them.

Leap of Faith was writ­ten not only as an auto­bi­o­graphy, but also to expose Jord­an’s point of view to a wider (West­ern) audi­ence; Queen Noor is quite clear about that in the book. As such, it’s suc­cess­ful. It’s an easy read, though very choppy. The book has a mostly chro­no­lo­gic­al struc­ture, but keeps wan­der­ing off into themes and so you hear about vari­ous chil­dren and what they did before you get to read the chapter in which they’re born, for example. If you can read the book reas­on­ably quickly, then it all still hangs together. 

Our book club mem­ber who had known Lisa before (albeit not very well) poin­ted out that a lot of things were miss­ing; this is not a tell-all book and Queen Noor seems to be at some pains to paint her­self as naive and inno­cent before her mar­riage, des­pite her edu­ca­tion and work exper­i­ence. But the book does suc­ceed where it presents Jord­an’s point of view on issues, par­tic­u­larly the issue of Israel and Palestine. I am not par­tic­u­larly well read on Middle East­ern issues and pre­vi­ously had­n’t known that any­body there con­sidered the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 a bad idea; the book goes into some detail on why (chiefly that many wanted a com­pre­hens­ive peace treaty and feared that a piece­meal solu­tion would hinder that). I also had­n’t known that Jordan is a poor coun­try with no oil, or any­thing about the Hashemites, and this book is an access­ible intro­duc­tion to both of those topics.

In sum­mary, I found the book worth read­ing even though the chop­pi­ness and incon­sist­en­cies annoyed me. A good intro­duc­tion to a part of the world that I did­n’t know enough about pre­vi­ously, and prob­ably still don’t, but at least I know more than I did.

Books on Raising Children

 Books, Family  6 Responses »
Oct 142006
 

There seem to be as many philo­sophies about how to bring up chil­dren suc­cess­fully as there are par­ents, which fact you tend not to dis­cov­er until you are a par­ent your­self. And then you have to hope that your philo­sophy is reas­on­ably con­gru­ent with that of the oth­er par­ent and/or care­givers in your child’s life. We’ve been lucky in this regard; there are always issues that need to be dis­cussed but Tim and I gen­er­ally have sim­il­ar views on child-rear­ing issues. Most of this we had to fig­ure out as we went along (for­tu­nately there are few things you do that are really crit­ic­al and can­’t be fixed later). I found a couple of books to be really use­ful in fig­ur­ing things out, so here’s a quick run-down on which and why.

There are a large num­ber of books on the sub­ject of rais­ing chil­dren, each with their own philo­sophy and assump­tions, so it’s inter­est­ing try­ing to fig­ure out the dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives they were writ­ten from. And the books all have to be writ­ten to allow for the old adage of “they’re all dif­fer­ent” (when you have two, you find out just how true that is). I’ve found with this second baby I’ve ten­ded not to read the books as avidly as I did with the first, prov­ing I guess the oth­er adage about first-time par­ents being tense and want­ing to do everything per­fectly, while more exper­i­enced par­ents relax more and settle for hav­ing things be done well enough. When you have two chil­dren, well enough really is good enough and that leaves you a little time to try to keep your own san­ity as well.

I found three books worth read­ing and hav­ing. First, Penelope Leach’s Your Baby and Child, which is divided into sec­tions accord­ing to the age of the child up until the age of five. The book’s philo­sophy is to be “be kind to and gentle with your baby”; there is lots of mater­i­al on the child’s point of view and how to inter­pret reac­tions and actions. As an added bonus, the pho­tos are great and our son loved look­ing at them when he was a toddler. 

Dr. Spock­’s Baby and Child Care is the clas­sic I turn to when I’m not sure about wheth­er the baby needs to go to the doc­tor for some­thing that looks minor but might not be, or for an issue affect­ing our sev­en-year-old who’s “out­grown” the oth­er book. The tone seems to me to be more mat­ter-of-fact although there’s also a lot of psy­cho­logy in the book; the dif­fer­ence is tone is prob­ably because of the issues deal­ing with older chil­dren and the emphas­is on bal­ance with­in the family.

And for boys from tod­dler age up, I recom­mend Steve Bid­dulph’s Rais­ing Boys. This is a quick read that has ideas on how to cope with the bio­lo­gic­al dif­fer­ences between boys and girls that affect how many boys behave once they’re past the tod­dler stage. I’ve recom­men­ded this to sev­er­al people and lots have told me they’ve found it use­ful with their sons. I’m going to get anoth­er one of his books out of the lib­rary to read to see wheth­er it has use­ful stuff to say about rais­ing a daughter.

There are lots of oth­er books I’ve read but would­n’t neces­sar­ily recom­mend for any­thing oth­er than get­ting out of the lib­rary, since I read them once and not again. Libby Purves’ How Not to Be a Per­fect Moth­er fits into this cat­egory; fun to read once but not a must-have for the par­ent­ing lib­rary. Edward Chris­toph­ersen’s Little People: Guidelines for Com­mon Sense Child Rear­ing was mostly good, though I dis­agreed with some parts of the book. I read it once, figured out the import­ant bits of the “catch them being good” mes­sage (which is use­ful) and haven’t read it again since. YMMV on any or all of these books of course (what was that about they’re all dif­fer­ent? So are the parents…)

“Maps for Lost Lovers”

 Books  2 Responses »
May 212006
 

For a change, I’m going to review a book that has­n’t been read by the book­club I go to, the only reas­on being that it’s a rel­at­ively slow read. “Maps for Lost Lov­ers” by Nadeem Aslam is the story of events and people in a Pakistani com­munity in Eng­land. But it’s a much deep­er, multi-faceted, and lyr­ic­al work than a curs­ory read­ing of the back cov­er would indicate. 

The first chapter of the book details a murder, and who’s been arres­ted for that murder. This murder is the start­ing point for an exam­in­a­tion of the life that people in the com­munity lead, and what drives many of the chil­dren to leave the com­munity. The ties to Pakistan, the influ­ence of the cler­ics, the inhu­man­ity of many of the cus­toms, are all examined in a sens­it­ive but unflinch­ing man­ner. This makes the descrip­tions of these cus­toms and laws and what they lead to even more hor­ri­fy­ing; this nov­el shows the effects on people who are try­ing to do their best to cope with the effects of a sys­tem that val­ues men greatly and women very little, that has extremely strict rules on beha­viour, and that encour­ages “hon­our” killings. The main char­ac­ter, Shamas, is well-mean­ing but weak, his wife Kaukab so pious and naive she wreaks hav­oc on the fam­ily She is a sym­path­et­ic char­ac­ter des­pite her actions, her thoughts and hopes and fears pic­tured as she slowly comes to the real­isa­tion that not all the cler­ic advises her to do is neces­sar­ily cor­rect. When read­ing about Kaukab, I could­n’t help but think of the women in Palestine who are inter­viewed on tele­vi­sion and say how happy they are their sons have become sui­cide bombers and how they wish they had more sons to become sui­cide bombers. It gave me a little more idea how someone could go down that path.

The reviews on Amazon vary wildly from those who highly recom­mend it to those who find the por­tray­al of the cul­ture and people racist and ste­reo­typ­ic­alb. I don’t know enough about Pakistani cul­ture to know how truth­ful the por­tray­al of much of it is. One item struck me as odd so I did a bit of research — one of the char­ac­ters, Suraya, was divorced by her hus­band, who later regret­ted it and wished to remarry, but they could­n’t remarry until she had mar­ried and divorced someone else. This turns out to be true, although the inform­a­tion I found made it sound like the divorce pro­ced­ure itself isn’t quite as easy as por­trayed in the book, and that recon­cili­ation is encour­aged. So, a little exag­ger­a­tion there for the pur­poses of the story, and it’s likely that such exag­ger­a­tion hap­pens in oth­er places in the book as well. That being said, “hon­our” killings do take place, and women who are depressed over arranged mar­riages are some­times sub­jec­ted to exor­cisms to get rid of the djinni the cler­ics claim have pos­sessed them.

I have seen a little of Pakistani cul­ture — I knew a woman in Aus­tralia who was mar­ried to a Pakistani. She came from Afgh­anistan and it was an arranged mar­riage that her par­ents wanted to get her out of Afgh­anistan (this was dur­ing the Taliban regime). The pre­vi­ous wife had been divorced as she bore the hus­band no chil­dren. I watched the video of the mar­riage — I have sel­dom seen any­one look as scared as this poor woman did, being told to marry someone she first met on the day of the wed­ding and move to a coun­try she knew noth­ing of, where she knew no-one and did­n’t speak the lan­guage. For her it worked out well (apart from hav­ing the moth­er-in-law liv­ing with them) since the hus­band was kind, she was lucky enough to bear him sons quickly enough (after hav­ing four chil­dren in not very many years the doc­tors for­bade any more), and even­tu­ally her sis­ter mar­ried her hus­band’s broth­er and they also moved to the same dis­trict in Sydney. She got lucky; I doubt that the first wife found life as good.

Although the main interest of the book is the por­tray­al of an unfor­giv­ing cul­ture and the clashes it has with West­ern styles of liv­ing, it does speak to prob­lems that any immig­rant faces when in a new coun­try, that of try­ing to save what is pre­cious and worth­while from the cul­ture and beliefs you were brought up in, and fold­ing that into the cul­ture you live in. This book is full of regrets, people who thought they were only going to live in Eng­land for a short time and miss the flowers and trees of Pakistan, people who bring their pre­ju­dices with them and hate that they can­’t force oth­er people to do what they want them to, people who no longer have any­where to live where they truly feel “at home”. And the gen­er­a­tion clash (exacer­bated by the cul­ture clash) of par­ents doing what they think is best for their chil­dren, where the chil­dren dis­agree. Don’t read it when you’re feel­ing down.

“The Curious Incident”

 Books  3 Responses »
May 212006
 

I’d heard quite a lot about the book “The Curi­ous Incid­ent of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Had­don, but I tend to dis­count the breath­less reviews in news­pa­pers and the like, since I find I often don’t have any­where near as high an opin­ion of any giv­en book as review­ers do. But when a couple of blog­gers I read recom­men­ded it, I decided it was prob­ably worth a try (thereby prov­ing the old adage about word of mouth being much more effect­ive than oth­er forms of advert­ising). So when I was last in Oxford, I picked it up in one of the 3‑for‑2 Sum­mer Read­ing sales. And promptly decided it was worth read­ing, and worth the book­club read­ing. Which we did.

The book works on a num­ber of levels, I find. It’s writ­ten simply enough that it’s a quick read, without los­ing depth of mean­ing. As an adult read­ing the book, you know what’s going on long before the nar­rat­or Chris­toph­er does, leav­ing you to observe his fig­ur­ing it out too, and to won­der what he’ll do when he knows. Chris­topher­’s observ­ances of life and people, the seem­ing logic (although much of it isn’t at all logic­al) are remin­is­cent of vari­ous sci­ence fic­tion char­ac­ters, such as Spock in Star Trek, or the wit­ness Ann in “Stranger in a Strange Land”. The book lets you see the dicho­tomy where sci­ent­ists are trained to not jump to con­clu­sions, and to be care­ful about assum­ing that A implies B, but in social inter­ac­tions people are expec­ted to infer motives from beha­viour, and to make assump­tions about likely causes and mean­ings. Chris­toph­er has prob­lems in large part because he does­n’t make the con­nec­tions and infer­ences that most people would make. The big­ger part is that his reac­tions to vari­ous stim­uli are so over­whelm­ing that oth­er people can­’t under­stand them.

I like tak­ing books like this to book­club because we dis­cov­er dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the dis­cus­sion; every­one sees dif­fer­ent points. One mem­ber, who works in the school sys­tem here, poin­ted out how high-func­tion­ing Chris­toph­er was when he could make him­self remem­ber the extra teach­ing he was giv­en, that he could learn what the expec­ted reac­tions were to every­day social inter­ac­tions even if he did­n’t under­stand them. And that the care-givers also have to be taught how to react, how to sup­port the learn­ing pro­cess that takes so much longer and is so much harder than with chil­dren who don’t have Asper­ger­’s or autism.

All in all, an excel­lent book to read and think about, espe­cially if you’re a geek, sci­ent­ist, or have friends or fam­ily who are. There are cer­tain traits that Chris­toph­er has that geeks and sci­ent­ists share, though (of course) not usu­ally to the same degree.

Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”

 Books  6 Responses »
May 122006
 

The book­club decided to read Hein­lein’s mas­ter­piece — the bril­liant spec­tac­u­lar and incred­ibly pop­u­lar nov­el (quote from the back cov­er of the Ace Sci­ence Fic­tion edi­tion, pub­lished in 1987). The book Stranger in a Strange Land has­n’t quite stood the test of time (assum­ing it ever did match up to the breath­less praise). War of the World’s review is decent and points out some of the strengths and weak­nesses of the book.

The book­club found the book worth read­ing for its his­tor­ic­al value, even though the sex­ist and racist tones are irrit­at­ing, the dia­logues don’t quite match up to the sup­posed soph­ist­ic­a­tion of the char­ac­ters (par­tic­u­larly Jubal), and the bits about the archangels don’t appear to serve any pur­pose. The book could have done with a good edit­ing. A couple of inter­est­ing ques­tions came up – we spent some time dis­cuss­ing pri­vacy in a tele­path­ic world, espe­cially on how one would bring up chil­dren with a sense of who they are in such a com­munity, and the implic­a­tions of a group where people take money as they need it and give money as they can (shades of the social­ist ideal from each accord­ing to his abil­ity, to each accord­ing to his needs that nev­er seems to work bey­ond a small circle of people, such as a family). 

In the end, we came to the con­clu­sion that there were good ideas in the book, and parts of it were reas­on­ably well-writ­ten, but that there must be bet­ter sci­ence fic­tion out there, with believ­able dia­logues and char­ac­ters. Does any­one have recommendations? 

Kate Atkinson’s “Emotionally Weird”

 Books  No Responses »
Feb 182006
 

Kate Atkin­son’s “Emo­tion­ally Weird” (Amazon link link, Pow­ells link) is anoth­er book­club selec­tion, and is per­haps not the easi­est book to write about. As befits the title, the entire book is weird both in plot and in con­struc­tion, and at times feels a little over-clev­er, as if parts were intro­duced as some sort of game the author plays with the read­ers. To me the book was worth read­ing, but if you look at the reviews on Amazon, you’ll see a lot of people dis­agree (everything from 1 to 5 stars).

Effie, the cent­ral char­ac­ter (I’m not sure wheth­er she really ful­fills the require­ments of the word “heroine”, since she mostly is cata­pul­ted into situ­ations rather than tak­ing charge of any­thing) is a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Dun­dee in the early 1970s. Effie’s fam­ily cir­cum­stances are mys­ter­i­ous, she has no idea who her fath­er is, she and her moth­er Nora spent her child­hood mov­ing from small town to small town, and she finds the solu­tion to the mys­tery once she and her moth­er spend some time togeth­er on a remote Scot­tish island. 

The book is con­struc­ted as inter­leaved pas­sages of talks between Effie and Nora, and the nar­ra­tion of Effie’s life at the uni­ver­sity. The pleth­ora of char­ac­ters is dis­tract­ing; it’s hard to tell who will be import­ant to the plot, and who is simply func­tion­ing as the clas­sic­al mys­tery red her­ring (the yel­low dog men­tioned on the dust­jack­et being one good example). Nora sums it up when she says there are too many minor char­ac­ters and also com­plains about the lack of plot (Effie: “not neces­sary in this post-mod­ern day and age”). But of course there is a plot, a plot about who Effie’s moth­er is (open­ing line: “My moth­er is a vir­gin.” and later on “my moth­er is not my moth­er”), who her fath­er is, how all these threads may or may not interconnect.

The descrip­tions of uni­ver­sity life and stu­dents in the 1970s, when it was much easi­er to get into uni­ver­sity and many people felt no oblig­a­tion to actu­ally do any work once there, are bit­ing and have the ring of truth. The pom­pos­ity and self-right­eous­ness that seems to inhab­it many uni­ver­sit­ies, the tend­ency of ivory towers to find things import­ant that make no sense to out­siders, are described and lam­pooned. The con­ver­sa­tion­al style also helps with this as it allows lots of room for “exag­ger­a­tion for effect”. In fact much of the time I found myself won­der­ing how much was truth, how much exag­ger­a­tion for effect, and how much out­right lies in Effie’s nar­rat­ive. Most of the appar­ent con­tra­dic­tions were resolved by the end of the book, the oth­ers were not of major import­ance to the plot. As an example, I nev­er did quite fig­ure out the plot­line with the yel­low dogs, but that was prob­ably because I did­n’t put much effort into it.

The book­club mem­bers enjoyed the book, not great lit­er­at­ure, but a fun read with some sat­is­fy­ingly weird twists and turns. One of our bet­ter picks, I think.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries
/* ]]> */