Siddhartha

Siddhartha is another book from my high school days that I loved. I have wanted to reread it for a while and the Read it Again Sam Reading Challenge gave me the opportunity.

Hermann Hesse began writing Siddhartha in 1919 and finished it in 1922. He was fascinated with India as his parents had lived there as Christian missionaries. He even tried to travel to India to live but became ill on the ship in Southeast Asia and returned to Switzerland where he had been living. The book was immediately successful in his native Germany but he probably never thought that it would become popular with the hippie culture of 1960s America.

The story begins with Siddhartha going on a spiritual journey with his best friend Govinda where they eventually meet Gautama Buddha. Govinda stays with the Buddha and becomes his disciple but Siddhartha leaves, still in search of finding his true self. He continues to be a self-denying samara until he figures out how to be made whole. Just when Siddhartha finds himself he meets a woman named Kamala. Kamala is a prostitute who Siddhartha falls in love with but she will have nothing to do with him as he has no money, fine clothes or possessions. Siddhartha gives up his samara ways, gets a job with a merchant and and becomes one of Kamala's lovers. He becomes wealthy, buying a house and a garden. After 20 years he leaves her as he realizes that he has changed from what he has sought to be his whole life. He does not recognize his soul.

He begins to walk back to where he originally started from and runs across Govinda. Govinda does not recognize him. They have a short talk and then Govinda leaves him. Siddhartha comes across a boatman he met 20 years ago and finds him to have become wise from the river that he plies his trade from. Siddhartha moves in with him and regains his soul. There is more to the story but for Siddhartha he has learned that he had to err in life in order to find wholeness.

While this book was written 100 years ago it is still relevant today.  The character Siddhartha found that there was no happiness in following the ideas of others, that you must find it within yourself. After he endured a period of suffering Siddhartha was able to pull himself up out of his pit and make a new life for himself. There is a lesson for us all here.

Siddhartha is a short 80 page book whose words flow beautifully making it a wonderful read. I highly recommend it.

The Weight of Ink

The Weight of Ink won the Book Club Award from the National Jewish Council in 2017.  It's chapters alternate between the stories of two women, one living in the 1660s and one in the 2000s. Ester Velasquez was an immigrant to London from Amsterdam and was permitted to be a scribe for a blind rabbi for a period of time before the plague hit the city.  Helen Watt was a historian who ran across some newly discovered Jewish documents from the 1600s that had been kept hidden in a storeroom under the staircase of a London mansion.

The Weight of Ink is not for the faint of heart. It is 560 pages long and it is not a light read. What keeps the reader interested is primarily the incredible character Ester. You want to know how life turned out for her who had a rough start in life. She lost her entire family while she was young, in separate incidents, and then was sent by her Amsterdam community to London to live with a stranger, Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes. The Rabbi becomes her mentor which puts her at risk. Women in that era were not supposed to be educated, let alone work as a scribe, and doing so affected their marriage prospects.  Ester was required by society to hide her intelligence. Helen Watt is a less compelling character. She suffers from Parkinson's Disease and is near retirement age. Consequently, she needed help in studying the documents that she found as quickly as possible so that she could publish a paper about them before her retirement. She hired a Jewish American student, Aaron Levy, to assist her. She is somewhat similar to Ester in that she must kowtow to younger male historians at her college who are always ready to take any advantage over her that they can. Ester, however, is the reason you will want to read this book.

Since Ester is scribing for a blind rabbi the novel is heavy on Jewish theology and Jewish heresies of the time period. Secular philosophies of the era are also discussed. The history of London's Jewish community is also shown in great detail.

It took me awhile to finish this book but it was a satisfying read. I am both glad and sad that I have finished reading it! I am happy to be done with it but sad that this lovely story is over. The author, Rachel Kadish, is an incredibly talented writer. This is her third book.

Way over 5 out of 5 stars!

Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches

Carole Samples' book is the go-to guide for crazy quilters seeking new stitches and stitch combinations for their quilts.

I had been doing crazy quilting for a few years when I first learned about Carole Samples out of print book. All of my crazy quilting education came from blogs at that time and 3 years into my crazy quilting experience one blog post mentioned this book as having every stitch and stitch combination imaginable within its pages.  I found a copy and was amazed at what I found inside.

This book is very different from other crazy quilting instruction books. It does not have stitch instructions or pretty pictures to get inspired by. What it does have is quite helpful for the intermediate or advanced crazy quilter who is looking to expand her stitch repertoire.  The book shows every stitch on black and white pages by stitch category, ie, single stitch, fan stitch, holbein, comb, alphabet, T, triangle, geometric, cross stitch, stem stitch, star, herringbone, arrowhead, chevron, fern, zig zag, fishbone, satin stitch, blanket, buttonhole, feather, cretan, and chain stitch. The book then shows numerous examples of stitch combinations.  When the title says the book is a "treasury of stitches" it is telling the truth!

If you want to advance in your crazy quilting craft then you need this book to help you see new ways of doing common stitches.  It helps you to be creative in your embroidery on your crazy quilt top.

I would rate this book 10 of of 5 stars! That is how fantastic it is. As I said above, this book is out of print. However, you can still find it on Amazon as well as Ebay.  It is a must have for the crazy quilter.

12th Annual Graphic Novel and Manga Challenge

I am rejoining this challenge again despite having to post review links on Facebook. I prefer to keep my Facebook separate from my book reviews for personal and business reasons. However, I read a lot of graphic novels each year and it would be foolish not to join the challenge and meet other readers and see their reviews.

To ensure that I can meet challenge requirements I will join at the Modern Age level which is the smallest reading level.  It requires that 12 books be read throughout the 2019 calendar year.

Murder by Misrule

Murder by Misrule is Anna Castle's first book in her Francis Bacon Mystery Series. Francis Bacon is a 25 year old new barrister at Gray's Inn who is tasked by his uncle, Lord Burghley, to find out who killed fellow barrister Tobias Smythson in Westminster. Smythson had been working with Bacon's uncle to get information on the Catholics in the country, particularly the Jesuits who may have been bringing unlawful pamphlets into the country. With Mary Stuart condemned to die, England's Catholic citizens were in turmoil and Queen Elizabeth wanted to stamp out their rebellion. Smythson's death meant that the three law students he tutored needed to find someone new. The student's leader,Thomas Clarady, picked Bacon and Clarady primarily assisted Bacon in the investigation.

The mystery formula was followed here with the murder occurring early in the novel and the suspects and red herrings being in their proper order. The fact that the story took place in 1586 was secondary to the solving of the crime. Murder by Misrule, while a historical mystery, followed the formula of a straight mystery not the formula of a historical mystery.

I found the novel to be enormously entertaining. I was engaged in the plot from the first chapter. It had a light feel to it similar to a cozy mystery which made it a fast read.  The Francis Bacon character was interesting. As a 25 year old he had a brilliant mind but was a bumbling young man who had made some major political mistakes in his career. This is not how I remember him from history but everyone has to start somewhere.

Murder by Misrule was a pleasant surprise. I didn't know what to expect since I had never heard of the author before. Now I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Book of the Month: January

My top book for the month of January is The Sisters of Versailles. Based on a true story, this historical fiction novel presents the bizarre story of the five Mailly Nesle sisters, four of whom had affairs with Louis XV.

While the background of the story was about sex, it did not go into detail about the sex itself. The book showed the differences between the sisters' personalities and how each of their strengths, or vanities, propelled them toward Louis and power in his Court.

They loved backstabbing each other like no other characters you have ever read about before. They grew up on the poor side of aristocracy but had an incredible zest for power and had an innate sense on how to obtain it.  They mesmerized me.

I have already read book two of this trilogy.  It was good but I don't think the mistresses in book 2 can beat the ones in book 1 for their political and sexual maneuvers. I will soon be getting the third novel and conclude reading this delicious trilogy.

The Splendor Before the Dark

The Splendor Before the Dark is the sequel to Margaret George's The Confessions of Young Nero.  The story begins when Nero is 26 and has been emporer for 9 years.  It covers a 4 year period of time which is also the last 4 years of Nero's life.

The story opens with Nero helping to put out the Great Fire of Rome.  Here he is a benevolent ruler with concern for the poor citizens as well as the rich citizens of Rome. His political and administrative skills are top notch.

Rumors begin to circulate that Nero started the fire which wasn't true because he was out of town when it started. He brushes the rumors aside initially because all emporers have to deal with them. Nero sets about to rebuild Rome with grand public features even though some wealthy citizens will have to be displaced to make room for them. The houses will be grander and the placement of them will be organized into a beautiful city plan. The rumors become more intense that Nero started the fire so that he could rebuild the city and he decides that he can no longer ignore them. He comes up with a plan to blame the Christians for the fire.

The author presents a Nero who loved to stage plays, play music, engage in athletics and compose lyrics. He is a man who fiercely loved 2 women. Acte is the girl he grew up with and who knew him as he really was, not as an emporer. He adored his wife of 2 years, Poppaea. When she died he was devastated. This is a sensitive man, not the man of history that we have come to know, except for the part about blaming and punishing the Christians by burning, crucifixion and feeding them to beasts.

While I enjoyed the book in the beginning, it was slower reading than the first book The Confessions of Young Nero. It was a little wordy and less exciting than Confessions. It took me 6 weeks to read it! In addition, I don't remember Nero being such a nice guy in the first book. He had to become evil in order to survive his family.  The family was rough. They killed each other for power. There seems to be a missing link between what Nero was like at the end of book 1 and what he was like in book 2. Am I missing something here?  Did becoming emporer free him to be himself or did being the only surviving member of the family free him? I am just speculating.

Margaret George is well known for her research on the people she writes about.  It is confusing to me that she gives us a nice Nero. Nero is not known historically as a nice person. She shows us Nero as a human being and explains in the Afterward that most of what we know about Nero was written by his enemies who had an agenda to destroy his reputation.  However, she whitewashes the treatment he ordered against the Christians by preferring to focus on his leisure activities both before and after he made decisions to torture and kill them. This did not sit well with me. Most of the book was about Nero finding time to be an artist. If he was truly just an artist, why does she need to end the book with his successor killing everyone associated with him? He does not sound like a benevolent ruler here and it seems that she left out many of his ruthless actions as emporer.

She explains in her Afterward that she agrees with the historian Edward Champlain that Nero's actions were rational and that much of what he did resonated with contemporary social attitudes. She further stated that the Christians may have started the Great Fire in order to bring about the end times which is exactly what Nero believed and was the reason he persecuted them. However, she writes in the novel that they had no involvement in the fires but writes in the Afterward that they may have. In addition, she states that no one knows how widespread the persecution was and that the Christians may not have known about it. Ms. George has failed to read all of the historical accounts of the persecution. I find her thoughts offensive.

What is "the dark" referred to in the title? It's the last chapter where Nero is forced to commit suicide for an unknown reason. If you know history you know why he had to commit suicide. If all you know is the history presented in this book you must be confused.

The Splendor Before the Dark is thought provoking. It gives the reader a different perspective on Nero than history provided but still shows him as a ruthless killer albeit indirectly. I must state, though, that my opinion of Margaret George has changed. In historical fiction writing the reader expects the author to be true to history. In this book she wasn't. It seems to me that she and Nero have the same opinion on Christianity. Otherwise she would not have focused so much attention on how more important his leisure activities were than ordering the slaughter of a group of people.

2 out of 5 stars.