Longbourn by Jo Baker

What a glorious book! I loved it. 

I am a Jane Austen junkie. Anything with Jane Austenish take on it, and I'll read at least 150 pages before I give up and decide it's a waste of time. However, I've learned to revise my rule to the first 100 pages because my time is too precious to waste on a bad book, even if it is a take on Jane Austen's books.

I'm a mom with two kids, and I finished this book in 16 hours! Call me crazy, sleep deprived woman for a day, but it was worth it. This book stayed with me long after I finished it. It gave me so much to think about...such as how a household like the Bennet's ran in Jane Austen's time. 

I never gave much thought about who cooked the meals and did household chores when Mrs. Bennet and the girls were busy socializing and attending parties, dinners, and dances. I didn't care to know how labor intensive laundry day could be for those who actually had to do it. I didn't know how unfair their world could be without rank or wealth. I didn't realize how beautiful Jane, Lizzie, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia's clothes were to others who were less fortunate. All in all, this book was a revelation, in so many ways.

SPOILER ALERT~

The characters are finely drawn. I feel as if they are living, breathing members of Bennet's home. Sarah's characterization is a work of art, with her deep thoughts and feelings driving her actions. James, though known to Sarah and seen through her eyes, he is a mysterious stranger with a heart. Each is driven by need for love, acceptance, and following their heart. I love the portrayals of Mr. & Mrs. Hill, Polly, and Ptolemy Bingley, because they are so human and anchored in reality.

On the other hand, I don't like Ms. Baker's portrayal of Mr. Bennet and his involvement or lack thereof with James' life, but I can see how it can true to what might be deemed as "acceptable behavior" of a gentleman of that time. I was never a fan of Mr. Bennet, but in Ms. Baker's book, he could be considered the biggest villain in James' life. Some might argue that that title belongs to Wikham, but I disagree. Had Mr. Bennet taken some responsibility, James might not have fallen as much as he had. Some might argue that he had done what he could, but I'd say not enough. And poor Mrs. Hill.... It must have been hell to have to bear it all because she can do nothing to improve her son's situation. She had done what she could, but not him.

The book is divided into three volumes, and in volume three, I wish there was more of James' life there, instead of Sarah's. There was James' back story in volume three, but I wanted to know more about what he did after he left Longbourn. How did he overcome his disappointment in having to leave an employment that became more like a home, but more importantly, a woman he came to love dearly. I wanted to know the kind of mental strength he had, needed, and used to survive. I was disappointed that Sarah was the one who gave up her nice, comfortable life at Pemberley and go in search of James, with absolutely no assurance of finding him. Truly a case of blind faith and courage.

Sure, I was glad that she found him, and they decided to head back to Longbourn together, but I wish James had more active role in their reunion. However, these are minor complaints. I loved this book. I absolutely loved this book, and I went back to reading it immediately after I finished it, just in case I've missed something important.

I would recommend this book to any Jane Austenphile, but to anyone who likes a good read. Stories of Sarah and James, Mrs. Hill and Mr. Bennet have stayed with me long after I finished the book.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Where do I start? Stunning, harrowing read. Visceral and emotionally draining. A must read for anyone who is interested in learning something new about the most insulated and isolated state in the world. My heart aches at the thought of millions who still live in that country.

Before I start, I would like to tell you my North Korean encounter story.

I know a Korean-American man who visited North Korea as an American citizen in 1990 (before the great famine of 1995). As an aspiring writer, I wanted to talk to him about the experience. He said Pyongyang had the cleanest, emptiest streets he had ever seen. He said none of the restaurants was open for business. Whenever he asked about a particular restaurant, his minders (two men) told him that it was closed on that specific day of the week. His children asked for souvenirs, any souvenirs, but the man came back with nothing. He said there was simply nothing to buy.

He came from a family of six brothers and three of his brothers still lived in North Korea, so it was his dearest wish to see them all. His eldest and second eldest brothers had died, and he was the third brother. When he went to North Korea, he was able to his fourth and sixth brother, but couldn’t see his fifth brother. When he went to visit his brothers’ homes, he could smell the fresh wallpaper paste and all the furniture was new. Everyone associated with his brothers’ families had days off from work, and they came to see him. 

One day, one of his brother’s bosses came to visit, and he brought something the North Koreans hadn’t eaten for a while, a chicken. This Korean-American man said that people were going after the chicken before it was cooked, and they asked why he wasn’t eating the chicken. When this Korean-American man told them that he could have chicken anytime, and he wanted them to have it, they all thought he was just repeating the American propaganda stories. A few believed him, and told him in secret, that it was a living hell. But private moments were very limited. His two minders slept in the same room with him, and they wouldn’t leave him alone with anyone. The Korean-American man said the lack of privacy was quite irritating.

The North Koreans drove the Korean-American man in a Mercedes, and when Korean-American man begged to see his fifth brother who was interned in a gulag system by the northern border, one of his minders told him that he and his family would be sent to the same gulag if he tried to do anything like that (he told the Korean-American man this when the other minder wasn’t present). The North Korean minders told the Korean-American man to spend all the American dollars he took with him, and told him that for $500, a family of five could buy all the white rice that the family needed for a year.

The children of his fourth and sixth brothers were not allowed to attend high school or college because they were from a tainted family whose members chose to escape the communist regime during the Korean War. The fifth brother was considered a traitor to the state, and maybe he couldn’t see his brother because his brother had died already. Who knows… The sixth brother, as if to make up for his family’s lack of communist credentials, was an ardent communist who sent letter after letter to the Korean-American man, begging for money yet bad-mouthing everything America supposedly represented. But he never once told his brother to come back and live with them in North Korea.

Now, back to the book…. There are so many shocking episodes, but what’s most startling was the randomness with which the acts of violence were inflicted upon people. People just disappeared and no one said anything. The random disappearance was the norm. That was the scariest part. There was no set of rules that the North Koreans could follow to assure their safety. It was all about the story that an unfortunate group of people would have to tell, and they hung their hopes on keeping their story consistent. Whether it was the truth of not, it didn’t matter.

In the beginning, part 1 and part 2 of the book don’t seem to go together, especially part 2. It was confusing to figure out how characters all fit together. Parts of it were jarring, especially with a lot of point-of-view changes, but in the end, I have to concede that it’s brilliant. That jarring experience is what the main character experiences. There are many viscerally shocking scenes (but I have to admit, what I read in this book is mild compared to some true accounts I read in books written by North Korean defectors), but what I found even more unbearable was that even family members couldn’t be trusted to keep each other’s secrets and thereby keep one another safe.

In a world such as that, I wonder why people even have children. I wrote somewhere (maybe in the blog for the book The Road) that in a truly hopeless world, I didn’t think people would have children. If I had to live in North Korea, I wouldn’t have children, but then I wouldn’t know any better, either, I suppose. Also, I wondered what the suicide rate is for the country.

When my husband and I had our first child, our American friends asked if we’d name him after my husband and add junior. My parents were horrified by such thoughts because for Koreans, each name should be unique. There’s much thought, science (astrology in some cases), and aspirations all put in a name. You’d never jinx or burden a child with someone else’s already lived life associated with that name. So, I found it really interesting that the main character started off his life, as far as he could remember in the orphanage, with someone else’s name. He never had his own identity, and it was his duty to become whoever his country needed him to be.

I found the escape phase of the book to be something hard to believe, but because it’s hard to believe, I think it might actually be based on the truth. I intentionally stayed away from talking about the book more specifically because I want the reader to experience everything fresh. 

 

I would recommend this book to everyone. It might be a hard read, but it’s something that we should all read, at least once, sort of like Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (however, this book, I wouldn’t recommend to everyone. The pictures are enough to induce nightmares). Good thing this book didn’t have pictures.

The important question is – what can we do to make the lives of everyday North Koreans a little better tomorrow? 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That’s the saddest part of this book.

David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell

2/05/14 – David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell

I don’t usually read non-fiction (except some history) but I’ve read several of Malcolm Gladwell’s books (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers). I guess I should review all these since I really like them all. Anyhow, the reason I like Malcolm Gladwell’s books is that he starts with something you think you know already. Something most of us would dismiss quickly and wonder why anyone would want to spend time delving into it. But therein lies his magic.

He starts the book with the story of David and Goliath. This is one story that almost everyone thinks he or she knows, right? A little shepherd David with a rounded stone and his slingshot against a giant of a man wearing full armor and carrying a javelin, a spear, and a sword. Do we even need to think about who is going to win this match before we bet on the winner? But, Malcolm Gladwell goes on to explain that it was really a one-sided match up, and it was David, not Goliath who had all the advantage. Almost from the beginning, a positive outcome was assured…for David.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

I’m just going to summarize these people’s experiences in a couple of sentences.

The Advantages of Disadvantages (and the Disadvantages of Advantages)

Vivek Ranadive – a man who didn’t know how to play basketball game and ended up taking his daughter’s team to almost win the National Junior Basketball Championship.

Teresa DeBrito – upending the educational holy grail of class sizes…, that smaller isn’t always better and the optimum size is actually larger than you’d think.

Caroline Sacks – sending your children to Ivy League schools might give you bragging rights, but it might be one of the worst things you could do if you want your children to live their dream careers, especially in science and technology.

The Theory of Desirable Difficulty

David Boies – you wouldn’t wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you? Dyslexia might be a contributor to dizzying success.

Emil “Jay” Freireich – how hardship in life makes a person an optimist, how German Blitz on England failed because although people died, many remote misses helped the Londoners feel invincible, and how he revolutionized the treatment of childhood leukemia.

Wyatt Walker – the most famous photograph in the history of the American civil rights movement was taken on 5/3/1963, and it’s not at all what it seems.

It’s May now (I read this book in February, but couldn't finish the review until now), and I can’t easily remember the less memorable parts in the book, and I don't have time to go back and reread parts of it. So, I’ll let you find out for yourselves. 

There are more people and topics Malcolm Gladwell covers in the last third of the book, and as usual, in almost every case, the conventional wisdom of how things should be is upended. We learn that, in many cases, one person or a small group of people could face almost impossible obstacles and triumph.

I love this book because I’ve learned so much from this book. I’ll be sure to go back and refresh every so often to make sure I don’t forget the lessons. I think everyone should read this book. As a parent of two young children, I want to recommend this book to all the parents who covet Ivy League education. That eye-opening section (Caroline Sacks) alone is worth the price of a hardback book.

The Death of Jesseline by Margaret Regan

I am very conflicted about this book. I think that's why I forgot to post the blog when I originally wrote it almost a year ago. 

6/20/13 – The Death of Jesseline by Margaret Regan

This is a book about immigration, and I’d like to start by telling you a little bit of my immigration story. As long as I could remember, we were coming to America. I can’t remember a time when we weren’t planning to come to America. 

My mother had two brothers. The younger brother had the luck to be scouted by an American company in the late 60’s and came to America. The younger brother started the paperwork for the visa for my mother and her older brother. Ten years later, the visa finally came out for us and we immigrated to US in 1978. However, my uncle, my mother’s older brother, died a few months before the visa came out for him and his family. Therefore, because of a matter of months, my cousins and my aunt didn’t receive their entry visa and couldn’t come to US. Our cousins were like our brothers and sisters, and losing them like that when we had planned for ten years to come to US together was a blow and a life-long loss to all of us. 

Even now, I’m not convinced that my parents’ decision to emigrate was the correct one for our family. We had a good life in Korea. A lot of people have nannies in Korea, and we had one, too. We took fun vacations, and we had a comfortable home. My father was on track to become a vice-principal of a girl’s high school, and my mother stayed home. I remember her bringing hot lunches to our elementary school.

My parents, they definite had a better life in Korea. Once in America, my parents both held down several jobs to make ends meet, and I think they usually go 4 – 5 hours of sleep each night. They never took vacations, and we lived from paycheck to paycheck for many years. Just recently, I asked them what induced them to give up all they had to come to America. They said, it’s hard to understand now, but a long time ago, a chance to come to America was like winning the lottery. Only those who had money to be educated abroad could come here and settle down, then invite his family to join him. Or like my uncle’s case, only those with very special skills could come. So, they asked back – if you thought you had won a once-in-a-lifetime lottery, would you turn it down? Of course, not!

I have to say, I think I’m more interested in the matter of the American Immigration policy than most people. Because of my personal history, I expected a lot from this book, and I don’t know what it is that I feel about this book. I know. It’s funny. I can’t say I liked the book because I didn’t. I wouldn’t read it over. However, it doesn’t take away the fact that this is an important book. Everybody who is associated with shaping of the American immigrant policy should read it. 

Every life, both lived and died, described in this book is worthy of notice and remembrance, and every one of the stories is heart rendering. There are no happy stories because even those who make it over the fences, through the scorching desert, and disappear into the vast American landscape must face the harsh realities of living in America – long separation from loved ones, uncertain future, and walking on egg shells every day for detection and deportation. Yet, hundreds and thousands make the arduous journey because there are definite rewards for making it into America – being able to provide for their families better. Is it worth risking their lives? Depends on how desperate their lives were…. 

If these people want to come to America so badly that they’d risk their lives to get here, how many would work toward to weakening that society? This book does talk about the toll the illegal immigrants have on government budgets, but I don’t think this book does a good job of talking about what these immigrants bring to America. 

But when the people complained about how long the visa process takes (10+ years!) for them to come to America legally, I had little sympathy for them. We waited that long or longer. There are thousands of people, all over the world, who wait that long for an official visa to come here. The only difference is that the geography prevents them from coming here illegally. So, why should that be any different for the people mentioned in the book? I guess I’m torn by the human misery and toll versus those thousands who are patiently waiting for their visas. 

I’ve learned some important things from this book. I’ve learned some oxymoronic laws that seem to punish the good and reward the bad, but the more importantly, we need some kind of reform. There must be a way, we must be able to figure out a way, to save lives.