WAR: Iron Council

Before I get into my book for WAR, I would like to give a shout-out to another book that fits this theme perfectly that I read before we started on this little journey.



Code Name Verity is an incredible story about two friends who are torn apart when their plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France n the middle of a spy mission for Britain during World War II. "Verity" is captured by the Gestapo and forced to reveal her mission to them. Weaved into her confession is a brilliant tale about the role of women in World War II (both main characters were part of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force), an amazing and heartbreaking friendship, and of courage and determination.

I really cannot say much about the plot, in fear of ruining it for anyone who might pick it up, because really.. reading it is an experience, and it's one of those books that part of reading it is taking the journey yourself without any preconceived notions. 

Rating: 5 stars

Recommendation: READ IT

And now on to my actual book for this month..

Iron Council is the third book in Miéville's Bas-Lag series set in the fantastic city of New Crobuzon, which is under siege from inside and out. The elusive threat of war from the region Tesh is always looming above the city, putting fear in every citizen. However, it quickly becomes clear the real threat is coming from within. There is unrest among the citizens of New Crobuzon, and there are rumors that the legendary Iron Council is returning.

Twenty years ago, New Crobuzon was building a rail system that would connect itself to many other regions. In it's greed and power, it mowed down many outlying settlements of defenseless creatures and attracted many prostitutes for the workers, and Remade (horrific bodily reconstructions from animal and machine parts that permanently brand criminals as outcasts and slaves). The prostitutes were not getting paid, and the Remade were being forced into labor. In the wilderness far away from the city, they revolted and took over the train, turning it into the Iron Council--the perpetual train, a symbol for freedom and equality.

The book follows a cast of characters that set this citizen's revolution into motion--Judah, the golemancy scholar who saw the birth of the Iron Council and has spread the legend of the Iron Council throughout New Crobuzon; Cutter who is fatally flawed in that he'll follow Judah to the death; Ann-Hari, the woman that led the revolt against the militia to claim the Iron Council; and Ori, who is a discontent revolutionist that is tired of the talk of revolution--he wants action.

WAR: At first, it seems like the war between New Crobuzon and Tesh should be at the forefront of everyone's mind, but never becomes more than a shadowy threat on the horizon. In fact, the war starts and ends on the sidelines, the reader only hears about it through whisperings and rumors via the secondary characters. The real war lies within the city of New Crobuzon and the inception and return of the Iron Council.

There are many lessons folded into the story of the Iron Council--those that support strength in rightfulness, but also a deep sense of history and timeliness. Although the Iron Council is built on the idea of free citizens, equality, and an Utopian society, when it returns to New Crobuzon it is not certain that the city is ready to accept it. There are also warnings against being so passionate about something you will do anything to make it happen even if it blinds you to the truth. Sometimes, that passion is good.. but more often than not your logic must be grounded. And running through all this is one of Miéville's central themes: life isn't fair and doesn't always work out the way you want it to--but hope can and will live on. 

Overall, I love Miéville in this book for everything I've always loved him for--his inventiveness, his social messages, his ability to weave incredible and intricate worlds that are beautiful and flawed. His characters fall a bit flat, but they are just vessels for the messages he's trying to convey. I can overlook that for the sheer genius that is his worldbuilding.

Rating: 4 stars

Recommendation: If you've never read Miéville, I would suggest starting out with something a bit less dense. The City & The City is BRILLIANT, and perhaps my favorite book of his. In terms of Bas-Lag, The Scar (Bas-Lag #2) still has my heart.

WAR: Forgotten Country

For the theme "WAR" I read the book Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung. First of all, GOOD JOB MS. CHUNG! This book received many awards and came to my attention via Oprah magazine, it was a great book. And yes, I read Oprah magazine. THIS BOOK VALIDATES THAT CHOICE.

Synopsis (************SOME MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*******************): This book recounts the family history of Janie & Hannah aka Jeehyun and Haejin through Janie/Jeehyun's perspective as the family faces serious difficulties. The first difficulty is the voluntary disappearance of her sister and how the family copes with that. From reading book synposes I expected the book to really center around this event and though that is the beginning the book quickly transitions to the family's difficulties moving to the US from Korea and the father's illness. Yet, I was not bothered by this transition (but surprised), I got sucked in at the beginning and then 100 pages later was like, "whoa how did we get here?" This book really got to my heart with some of the challenges the family faced with being in another country, far away from their known culture and family members, racism that the young girls dealt with, and loss that any family would be challenged by. Oh my, the resiliency of this family.

This book made me think a lot of about the idea of "generational trauma". Here I go getting all psychology-y again. But this book is very illustrative of how events that DID NOT HAPPEN TO YOU but were highly traumatic and influential for another, like your parent, really do shape who you are. And how much they affect you is hugely related to how the parent's cope.

For Janie and Hannah their parent's experiences of the Korean war and ongoing conflict (inasmuch as though there is no outright war anymore but North Korea is cut off from South Korea and many families had loved ones across the border they cannot communicate with) was a huge part of who they are even though they didn't experience it. They did not experience all their father's loved ones being killed and having to live as servants in a relative's house, yet, because of the way this shaped their father, such as how he loved and honored his sister because she was his only living relative, totally affected them in huge ways. This sister's children were awful and abusive and to Janie and Hannah and this may have not been tolerated if they had been the children of another family member. Or maybe not, a huge theme of this book is family and what that means. I feel like I learned a lot about traditional Korea culture reading this book. Interestingly, though Janie and Hannah are "very Asian" but "American" (classic bi-cultural kids and all the rifts that can bring) they way they dealt with the traumas they experienced was so classic to me (in the sense of common), they dealt with those just like any other young women. And perhaps that shows just how human it is to experience these kinds of things, awful as they are, and deal with them best you can.

War: The Korean war was the backdrop for this story and though it was explicitly talked about for a relatively short amount of the book it was lurking in many scenes. More prominent was the "war" within the family between Hannah and the rest of them, vs. Janie at times, vs. Janie + her parents at other times. It is interesting to think of the traditional "war" between nations and how similar that can be to the mini-wars we play out against each other in families. Purposefully hurting each other to gain something, lashing out in retaliation, etc. We under-estimate how much we can really harm each other.

Map of Korea with close-up on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) 

In sum, this book ended in a totally different place than I expected but I gladly followed to where it led me. This is an easy book intellectually, a tough book emotionally. This book is an excellent look at how some things affect all families but also the unique challenges of a family immigrating to the US.

Rating: 3.75 stars (first half: 4.5, second half: 3.0)

Recommendation: Go read it!

Love continued: Marmee & Louisa

I finally finished this book a few weeks ago. Once I got over the initial hump I read it much faster.

Overall thoughts: It was very hard to drop my "modern eye" at times reading this. For example, the state of Abigail and Bronson's marriage was SO AGGRAVATING and it was so frustrating to see how trapped she was in the situation because of the times. However, this kind of thing STILL happens to women all over the world today. It is so tragic! Not just because of the personal suffering when a marriage is dysfunctional but because relationships can be wonderful, powerful, fulfilling things and it is a tragedy when they don't fill their potential and instead are life-sucking. Also, their relationship is a really good example of how sexism hurts everyone. Neither of them fit into the "role" they were supposed to and it made them both unhappy though in very different ways. If Abigail had been free to make a living for the family and Bronson had been free to work on his ideas they would have both been much happier. Of course, Abigail would have been even happier if she could be taken more seriously for HER ideas....

This book was really a biography of Louisa May Alcott and her mother Abigail but I found the transition to focusing on Louisa a bit lacking. We didn't get to know her life and personality the same way we did her mothers even though she was so much more famous and well known. Side note: I totally did not realize how famous Louisa was in her day, it is really amazing how many books she sold.

I find it really interesting that Louisa and her mother both journaled extensively their whole lives. In our lab we do research on expressive writing for anger. Clearly they were doing this at times! I wonder how much writing has played a role in emotion regulation in history. I also wonder how journaling affects intellectual development more generally.

As for the theme love, Louisa and her mother did truly care for each other. I find it interesting that they were very much self-sacrificing for each other in a way that was different from their other relationships. Abigail especially was very self sacrificing in general though it was really expected of her in many ways. We expect mothers (and parents more generally) to sacrifice for their children and it seems like she really took this to another level due to their family's unique situation. Yet, when it came to Louisa it seemed more a matter of choice than in some of the other situations. I really wonder how the rest of the family viewed their relationship - were they envious? appreciative? I would guess a mixture of both.

Rating: 3 stars.

Recommendation: If you want to learn more about what it was like living during this time, read on sister. If you want to know what Louisa May Alcott was like as a person or how her writing influenced the world, read something else as you will just get a taste of those topics.

LOVE: The Shadow on the Crown

The book follows the lives of multiple people as they move about England (and some of Norway): Emma, the Norse princess who is given to the English King, Aethelred, the English King who is haunted by his brother’s ghost, Athelstan, the eldest son of the King--and rightful heir to the throne (unless Emma bears the King a son), and Elvirga, an ambitious woman who will do anything for the crown on Emma’s head. The book follows Emma from when she is told her life has been negotiated for peace with the King of England through loss, trials, and growth in her young years.

She begins a strong, albeit naive, girl, but she quickly learns the way of court. And as her unwilling husband draws further and further away from her, she finds joy and love in other areas of her life--namely, the King’s son--who she falls deeply in love with. Throughout the course of the book, she grows immensely.. learning how to survive her husbands wrath, learning from the miscarriage of her first pregnancy, learning how to make friends from people who mistrust you, and learning how to be a Queen.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was an extremely light read--which I was not expecting. Honestly I think I’ve read too much George RR Martin recently.. the setup was incredibly similar (multiple points of view, court intrigue, wars, backstabbing, feasts, kings, and passion) and I kept unwillingly comparing it to GRRM, which is completely unfair.

Anyway, the inner struggle of her duty as a wife and queen vs. her own desires was very intriguing to me. I wish it had been explored a bit more, but I think it was still done really well. I admire her character for making mistakes, realizing her mistakes, and recovering from them. Most of all, I admire her for living up to her situation and making the best out of it. I am amazed at how strong she must have been to endure her husband--which, I imagine, is the case for most arranged marriages.

Insofar as love is concerned, this book had an interesting angle--Emma was able to find love in all of the places except the one she should have been able to--in her husband’s arms. And she learned an important lesson about love: love can triumph over the largest hurdles and it can make you the strongest person you’ll ever be.

I didn't know this when I started, but this book is the first in a trilogy. I am looking forward to reading the rest of them.

 Rating on Goodreads: 3

Love: Marmee & Louisa

Rather than focusing on romantic love for this theme, I opted for familial love. Coincidentally, this is also how I love to celebrate Valentine's Day - it's about EVERYONE I love, not just my man-mate (though I was less successful at that this year, sorry for the e-card Mom!).

Any-who, I have only just started this book, Marmee & Louisa by Eve LaPlante, about the strong, loving relationship between Louisa May Alcott and her mother. The title is from how this relationship was immortalized in the book Little Women, which I love. Though I was rather miffed about the ending at first - that's a point for another day. I am not so well versed in the Alcotts but even I have gathered that Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott, gets much more press than her mother did. This book is about correcting some of that historical oversight, that Louisa valued her relationship with and was influenced by her mother just as much, if not more, than by her father.

I am only about 40 pages in but this book already had me in tears. Perhaps I was a bit hormonal that day but works from this time period tend to get me.

*************SPOILERS*********************

It's the child mortality folks, gets me EVERY TIME. This book is very much a historical, biographical account and thus starts with her mother's family. Abigail May's parents lost more than one of their children early on, but it was the death of one of their sons in middle childhood that greatly influenced her upbringing, by bringing her close to her brother Sam Jo. This small child's death really hit me, I just can't imagine losing a child and it was so commonplace at that time. Samuel Joseph May provides Abigail with many opportunities she would normally not have gotten, purposefully bringing his little sister into many of his educational experiences. Her father wasn't really down with this and Abigail caused some drama by refusing to many a suitor or really even be on the market for suitors. She was really captivated early in her life by education and very much aware of the many opportunities denied to her by her gender. I like that this book very firmly places her life in it's historical context but maintains a modern eye; let's be real we are all thinking about the contrast so I appreciate it when authors work with it. So, so far so good. I hope this post motivates me to get moving a bit faster on this book. American's Best Science and Nature Writing 2012 edited by Dan Arielly has been distracting me. Love that stuff.

We're Back! Now with more Pages!

A little re-introduction if you will, as allison k. and I decided to get back into the swing of blogging about out books. I feel reinspired - I have still been reading a ton, but writing about what I am reading does bring it to another level - and reading old posts was quite fun. Guess it's the narcissist in mean but damn, we are hilarious at times.

So this time it is just allison k. and I. And perhaps I will finish out the penguin year alphabet that inspired this little blogging adventure in the first place, but for now that is on hold. This time around we are freestylin' a bit more about what we read, but are trying to try it together with some themes, interpreted quite broadly. The themes we brainstormed encompass quite a range to accommodate our interests and our tendencies to read very different works.

The first theme, in honor of Valentine's Day, is Love. Yes, Love with a capital "L". Cue Sinatra. Get ready!

"V" is for Verne

Ok so I am skipping again a bit. I don't remember how I ended up reading this one - it was on the list, formally for what letter I don't remember, Ill check at a later date. In any case, I actually finished this book at least a month ago, and am just now updating.

Around the World in Eighty Days was a fun book that read really fast. This is in mind definitely an "adventure" book, in that the fun parts of the book are the crazy escapades the characters take on, not the characters themselves. That's also the drawback of this book, you don't get to know the characters very well and I tend to enjoy character driven plots more myself.

******spoilers*********

The whole point of the book, the journey around the world, was taken up on a bet, which seemed somewhat implausible and a very bored rich white male thing, though I did like the balancing of the attitude of the protagonist "just getting it done" with all of the things that accidentally come up to disrupt the journey that other characters throw into the mix. I especially enjoyed the detective, Fix, who follows them for most of the journey. Ok, I don't want to give too much away, but its a fun little read.