Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale

2017 Reading Challenge: Reading for Fun

A Book You’ve Read Before

If you’d never heard of this book before, the odds are good that if you live in the US that you have now. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, published in 1985 has seen its sales soar and at this moment, sits at #3 on Amazon’s hourly updated best seller list.

I read this book most probably in the early 1990s and enjoyed it enough to search out other books by Atwood. But I enjoyed it then as a dystopian novel that was just fiction. Just Fiction.

Did she portend the future? With a group of men making decisions about women’s healthcare, her book about a theocratic military dictatorship taking away all rights of women seems more relevant today than it did when I first read it. I read it more carefully this second time around and found it more horrifying.

Written in first person by Offred (pronounced Of-Fred), she describes her situation and day to day activities assigned as a handmaid to The Commander. As a handmaid, her sole responsibility is to become pregnant by The Commander, carry the baby and then hand it over at birth to him and his wife, Serena Joy. What she can and cannot do is strictly regulated with her only freedom being daily shopping trips for the family’s provisions with a fellow (assigned) handmaid.

In between chapters describing her current life, Offred describes what life was like before government was overthrown, her life with her husband and daughter.

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Atwood considers this book speculative fiction vs science fiction because nothing is in the books that either hasn’t happened in society before or that is possible. And there is really nothing too science-y about it anyway. In fact, it seems that society has moved backward in scientific development. Sounds like something that could happen with climate change deniers, the removal of scientific information from government websites and the potential dissolution of some government agencies.

This week, a group of women in Texas donned red capes and white winged bonnets to protest proposed anti-abortion measures in the Texas senate. This really happened. I’m thankful that women and men are outraged enough about what is happening in regard to health care to take action and be seen, and if making a point about losing women’s rights by wearing costumes from the imagination of Margaret Atwood, then more power to them.

The Handmaid’s Tale is not the only dystopian speculative fiction novel to see an increase in sales. 1984 by George Orwell is currently #1 on Amazon’s Science Fiction best seller list and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley has also found some new readers.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo

2017 Reading Challenge: Reading for Fun

A Book You Chose for the Cover

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. That’s a sentiment I’ve always tried to live by, so when the reading challenge has “read a book you chose for the cover”… Well, that’s a bit of a head scratcher. And so technically becomes like the free space on the bingo card.

Since I’m trying to get all 24 books read without repeating a category (not to say that I won’t repeat a category) some books may just have to fit into more than one. I have already read the juicy memoir, so I’m putting Amy Schumer’s book The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo into the cover category. According to Amy, this book isn’t a memoir anyway because she is too young to have written a memoir. It is simply a book of stories about her life.

PotAto. PotAHto.

If you know anything about Amy Schumer’s stand up comedy, you know that she is unapologetically raunchy and will say almost anything about sex and her sex life. (She does not give out the names of her partners.) Her book is no different. In fact, if you catch her Leather Special on Netflix it is the equivalent of a musician going on tour with their new album. Many of the stories in her book are retold in shorter comedy-style bites on her special. The special on Netflix is a hour long.

It takes longer than an hour to read her book, and if you are sensitive to her preferred topics and language you may need a palate cleanser between chapters. If you are offended in any way by her topics and language, you’ll want to give this book a pass.

Her book is not all raunch. Amy was deeply upset by the Lafayette theater shooting during a showing of her movie, Trainwreck, leaving two young women dead and others injured. This has prompted her to become an advocate for gun control. She mentions it on her special and has promised to speak the names of the two women whenever she can. Promise delivered. In the book she goes into much more detail about her efforts and provides more information at the end of the book about how others can get involved.

Amy Schumer is a hard working comedian who has earned her moment in the sun and I respect her for that. I also admire her ability to say what she wants to say without censor. In a society where women especially are afraid to offend and afraid to speak their minds the ability to speak up and stand up for yourself and others is invaluable.

However, I’m not really the demographic she’s playing to. Her hour-long special was plenty for me, and it’s unlikely I’ll pay money to see her in person. And I while did enjoy her book I didn’t love it and I suspect she’s okay with that.

Oh, and the lower back tattoo? You’ll have to read the book to find out if it’s real or not.

Book Report: Pale Horse, Pale Rider

2017 Reading Challenge: Reading for Growth

A Book Published Before I was Born

I have so many books hanging around the house that were published before I was born, so the only hard part was choosing one I hadn’t read before. I chose Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter, a collection of 3 novellas published in 1939, 1937 and 1936 respectively. Well before I was born!

After reading her bio in my favorite resource, I was surprised that I had not ever heard of her. In college, I earned, by accident, an English minor, and I was drawn to the literature of 20th century American writers. She has written only one novel, Ship of Fools, and was far better known for her short stories and essays which might help explain the gap in my knowledge.

All three of the novellas were completely different, but focused on similar themes of life and death, morality, and what society expected as acceptable behavior. The first, Old Mortality, was my least favorite. This story was told through the point of view of two sisters, Miranda and Maria, but focused on the story of their late Aunt Amy and her widower, Uncle Gabriel and how the entire family seemed to compare all others’ behavior using Amy and Gabriel as the standard.

In the last novella, Pale Horse, Pale Rider we again encounter Miranda, this time about 6 years after the end of Old Mortality. She is 24 years old, a society reporter who has just fallen in love with Adam, a soldier about to head off to Europe in World War I. During their whirlwind romance, Miranda feels she is becoming ill, but does not want to miss a minute of time with Adam. Funeral processions are a constant sight when they are out and about, as the story takes place during the 1918 flu pandemic. Surrounded by those dying of the flu at home, and the boys dying in the war abroad, death is constantly on Miranda’s mind, and she has indeed come down with the flu.

Porter’s descriptions of both Miranda’s dreams and her hallucinations when she is ill are vivid and dark, and compelling. In all 3 novellas, Porter writes with careful detail, letting the reader know exactly how the characters are dressed, their surroundings, etc. This did not detract from the stories. After reading the collection, I was drawn into the setting and stories and would call them page-turners.

My favorite, and also the darkest novella, was the middle story, Noon Wine, which surprisingly has very little to do with any alcohol until near the end. This is the story of the Thompson family, Royal Earle and Ellie and their two sons Arthur and Herbert and life on their small south Texas dairy farm. The story begins in 1896 when Olaf Helton, a Swede from North Dakota comes to the farm asking for a job. He is a quiet, strange fellow who never tells the Thompsons his story, and Mr. Thompson frankly doesn’t care because Helton is such a great worker, increasing profits and the quality of life for the family for 9 years until his past catches up with him which is, of course, when the pedal hits the metal and the story comes to a disturbing resolution.

Reading a book published before a reader was born (in my case 1960) gives a reader a glimpse into life decades before one’s own and reveals that those lives were not so different than our own when stripped down to basic themes of humanity. There is also opportunity, when reading older books, to stretch your reading and writing skills with the different styles of writing you might encounter.

 

 

2017 Book Challenge

Happy New Year!!

Wanted to get that out of the way. 2016 is now good and gone, and I’ve eaten my black eyed peas for good luck, so I’m ready for whatever 2017 wants to throw at me. By the way, my family never ate the greens so I don’t either though I did buy some collard greens. Kyle said he wanted some but then he didn’t come home for dinner so they are still hanging out in the veggie drawer. Maybe tonight?

On to the book challenge. This year, I am choosing the 2017 Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge, a choose-your-own bookish adventure. The modern Mrs. Darcy is a real woman named Anne, and I chose her challenge because I follow her blog, her challenge seemed to fit with my reading goals and I didn’t feel like researching other reading challenges though there are plenty to be had.

This challenge has two paths and readers can choose to do one or both, or, as Roland likes to say, we all have free will and can mix and match and read whatever we damn well please. Yep, that’s him. I’m going to try the deluxe challenge and do both paths and we’ll see how it goes.

The two paths? 1) A stretch yourself in 2017 Reading for Growth path and 2) a put the oomph back in your reading life Reading for Fun path.

There are 12 categories on each path, and you can click on the Challenge link above or wait until I reveal them one by one, but here’s a taste. The Growth path encourages choices of a book in translation, a book of any genre that addresses current event or a more than 600 page book. The fun path includes books like something you chose for the cover, a juicy memoir and a book set somewhere you’ve never been.

I’ve scribbled a few books down in some of the categories, but they are totally subject to change. It will depend on what’s laying around the house and what is available at the library because I would like to not buy any new books if at all possible (unless they’re a great deal for my kindle because then all bets are off).

I’m starting with a Pulitzer Prize winner (in the growth category): Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, the 2005 winner.