Book Review: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet

I wanted to like Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  I really did.  I recently finished reading Laura Hillenbrand's unbelievable, but true account of Japanese POW survivor Louis Zamperini:  Unbroken. That book really gave me a whole new perspective on the U.S. "evacuations" of the Japanese in WWII to places like Manzanar, CA.  I had heard first hand accounts from survivors of Manzanar and had never understood how the U.S. (in the throes of fighting Germany and its horrific concentration camps) could ever possibly do such a thing to its own citizens.  Reading Unbroken certainly didn't convince me it was the right thing to do, but it did give me a clearer picture of the fear and rage people felt towards the Japanese at that time.


This book promised a look into the other side of the story.  The book details a young Chinese-American boy from Seattle who befriends and loves a young Japanese-American girl who is then shuttled off with her family and the other residents of Seattle's Japan Town to an internment camp.  The book focuses on the prejudice that surrounds the boy from all sides -- his father and his white schoolmates hate the Japanese and his schoolmates hate him for being an Asian of any stripe.  The other Chinese-American kids on his block tease him for going to an all white school and his best friend, a black jazz musician, is also subject to racism.


I liked the voice of the young boy and the jazz angle, but the plot was ridiculously predictable and too often it slipped into an almost sickly sweet, "romance novel" style.  I felt like the author was trying to drag an emotional reaction out of me.  There were also odd anachronisms that were irritating.  The book goes from the early 1940s to 1986, but apparently in Jamie Ford's 1986, the internet exists allowing the main character's now grown son to participate in "on-line counseling" sessions after his mother's death and find his father's long lost friend with a few minutes of internet searching.  The 1986 internet????  Ok.


I finished the book, which surprised me.  I usually can't force myself to follow these through to the end when they're so predictable.   I think I just kept hoping the author would prove me wrong and do something unusual with it all -- never happened.  Skip it -- reread Farewell to Manzanar instead :)

Sock Love-Monkey See/Monkey Do!

If loving these socks is wrong, well.....

The first thing I love about these socks is the colorway, which is "Stonechat."  I love all Malabrigo sock yarn, but this is far and away my favorite.  Malabrigo sock yarn is so soft and easy to work with.  Feels marvelous through the fingers!

Secondly, the pattern here is the well known "Monkey" pattern by Cookie A., but this is the first time I've made the "no purl" version of this pattern.  It's not only easier, but I like the result even more than the originals.  It's an easy pattern repeat to memorize and I can tell already this will be one I knit often.

Thirdly, I knit on these during my after-Christmas visit with my sister and her family.  We had a wonderful and truly relaxing time and these socks will serve as a sweet reminder.

Fourthly, did I mention the colors?  The picture doesn't do justice to them.  Something about the flash on my camera over-brightens yarn dyes.  The colors are much deeper and darker than they appear here and although there's a little pooling around the cuff and gusset, the majority of the sock is beautifully and subtly striped.

...and yes, that's the nefarious Timmy of kittenish tree climbing fame, astonishingly at rest alongside the socks -- See, the mystical power of these socks can calm even the most savage of beasts.

I have more of this colorway (2 skeins to be exact) and I'm strongly tempted to throw one on the swift and wind for another pair of socks.  I'm going to do my best to restrain myself though because I think it would make a gorgeous lace shawl.   Now to find just the right pattern....   suggestions?

Book Review: Unbroken

Reading Unbroken was an EXPERIENCE!  Hillenbrand is an amazing writer and I see now why people made such a fuss about Seabiscuit, which I will now be sure to read.  This is the story of an Olympic Athlete, Louis Zamporini -- a runner from Torrance, CA.  He'd been a troublemaker in his youth and focusing on his running turned him around.  He was good and probably would have been great, had he been given the chance to compete in his 2nd Olympics, but the 1940 Olympic games were cancelled for WWII and Zamperini went to war.  When his plane goes down in the Pacific, leading to an extended (seriously extended) stay in a flimsy raft, you think this is about as awful a fate as anyone could imagine.  But wait, things are just getting started.  I found myself thinking, over and over again, that this situation couldn't possibly get any worse.  From sharks to Japanese gunfire attacks, starvation and dehydration, the situation does nothing but worsen and just when you think salvation and rescue are around the corner, the man is beaten down again.  To say this is a page turner is frankly an understatement.


If this were fiction, I would've complained that the author had seriously overdone the hardship plot.  This however, is a true story and Louie Zamperini, as of the writing of this post, is still alive and kicking -- he's the quintessential man with a mission.  "True Grit," as a description, doesn't begin to cover him.   I never want to give away too much in these reviews -- I've never been interested in reviews filled with plot summary that just end up as one big spoiler -- so, suffice it to say, what I've described here is the merest hint of all that this man endures.  That his story ends as it does is truly inspirational and I'm not one who usually goes in for inspirational story-lines.  There's nothing corny here though.


The book does such an exceptional job of making Zamperini's experiences real for the reader, that I found myself with a whole new understanding of WWII and a bit more empathy for an older generation that still displays quite a bit of animosity towards the Japanese.  As a homeschool Mom, when my kids are a bit older -- this is most definitely a book I will use to teach them about WWII.  My own education regarding that war focused primarily on the events in Germany and this book provided great insight into what was happening in the Pacific and what it meant to be a POW in that war.  I hate learning anything about history from textbooks as they usually render events dry and dull.  This book is definitely one that brings history to life in an unforgettable way.


Below is the television special on Zamperini's life mentioned at the end of the novel (Youtube has split it into 4 parts). It was amazing to see the real life incarnations of these people I'd read about with rapt fascination for nearly 500 pages.  Enjoy!


Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Book Review: Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese is a surgeon and a writer, but most importantly for me, he's a teacher.  He does in fact work as a Professor at Stanford Medical School, but I'm referring to the teaching he does in his book.


On its surface, Cutting for Stone is a coming of age novel about a boy born in a mission hospital in Ethiopia to an Indian nun (who dies giving birth to him and his (briefly) conjoined twin) and a British surgeon (Dr. Stone -- the name providing one layer of meaning for the title which refers to part of the Hippocratic oath -- see addendum below).  The father abandons the brothers the moment their mother dies and they are raised by two married Indian surgeons who also work at the mission hospital and who teach the boys to love the medicine they practice and apprentice them at an early age.


It's a good yarn and I enjoyed the story being told, but the best part of the book is Verghese's ability to take you through incident after incident at the hospital and teach you about medicine as you go in a meaningful and captivating way.  He uses medicine as a metaphor for life at times and it usually works, but his greatest accomplishment is combining his skills as surgeon and writer to dissect and separate various aspects of the work at the hospital with a surgeon's precision and write about them with the compassion and poetry they deserve.


This book struck me as a combination of fiction and non-fiction, in the best possible way.  I believe Verghese has mentioned in interviews that some parts of the book are autobiographical and his intimacy with his subject matter shows.  He takes his skills as an author (he holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop) and uses them to make the easily dry and tedious world of medical knowledge captivating.  His characters are very well drawn and the reader's fascination with the material grows along with theirs.


I love the combination of literature with any profession because poetry should infuse everything we do -- it humanizes our actions.  The best authors can make drying paint a fascinating subject.  Medicine is, of course, inherently captivating if handled by a skilled author and Verghese certainly is that.  This is definitely a book that entertains and informs in the best possible way.


There is also a deep spirituality that runs through the book -- almost a variation of magical realism -- that imbues meaning to the actions and events that occur.  It's not magical realism though -- the magic, I think stems from a literary resonance.

I read an interview with Verghese about his dual careers and found him fascinating.  Any medical professor who regularly assigns literature to his students (for example, to teach his students about end of life issues, he assigns Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illych), is my kind of guy.


ADDENDUM:  Verghese, explaining his title in an interview...

"There is a line in the Hippocratic Oath that says: ‘I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest.’ It stems from the days when bladder stones were epidemic, a cause of great suffering, probably from bad water and who knows what else. […] There were itinerant stonecutters—lithologists—who could cut either into the bladder or the perineum and get the stone out, but because they cleaned the knife by wiping it on their blood-stiffened surgical aprons, patients usually died of infection the next day. Hence the proscription ‘Thou shall not cut for stone.’ […] It isn’t just that the main characters have the surname Stone; I was hoping the phrase would resonate for the reader just as it does for me, and that it would have several levels of meaning in the context of the narrative."

Stylish Blogger Award

Stylish Blogger Award is both an honour from a fellow blogger and a way of networking with other bloggers. Thank you so much to Kat from Books, Crafts & Pretty Things for including me in her award recipients.  Be sure to check out her blog -- she has some lovely photographs.   Here is a little explanation of the tasks you need to do should you choose to accept the award. 

There are 4 duties to perform to receive this award:

1.  Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award

2. Share 7 things about yourself

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

7 Things about Me

1. I'm currently snowed in and flailing about trying to find a sub to take my classes tomorrow in town.  I usually love being snowed in, but today it's a drag.
2. I love to read and I love to knit -- this makes the Audible/ipod combo, my absolute favorite technological advance.  Sheer genius -- I can now multi-task my favorite things.  May have to do a bit of that while I'm snowed in tomorrow :)
3. My dissertation was on witches in Renaissance literature -- specifically drama.  When people come into my house and see the titles of some of my books -- they get a little pale until I explain.
4. I was a high school drop out at 16.  I did in fairly short order go right on to college and graduate school, by way of a year at a CC, but I still like to call myself a high school drop out.
5. I knit more than I should and my stash is way bigger than it ought to be.  I don't see the problem with this, but others sometimes DO! :)
6. My daughters both knit -- maybe more than they should -- though unfortunately, they consider my stash to be their yarn store.  Funny how no actual purchases are ever made, just a lot of thievery! :(
7. I rarely make my bed.  My mother used to always get on me about this, so maybe that's why I'm so resistant.  Whatever the reason -- I justify it all sorts of ways... my bedroom's upstairs, so nobody every goes up there; it's a good thing to air out a bed; my cats prefer it that way..... but, it probably all boils down to general laziness and stubbornness.  

Here are some of my recently discovered great bloggers.

I am delighted to award the following blogs with

The Stylish Blogger Award

Just Enough and Nothing More
Knit Purl Gurl
Alasandra's Homeschool Blog
Knitting to Stay Sane
Saffron Knits
101 Cookbooks
80 Breakfasts
Albion Cooks
Mrs. Rooster's Hen House
Joyful Learner
Single Dad Laughing
The Wednesday Poem
The Loopy Ewe
Yummy Yarn
Wendy Knits:  Adventures with Sticks & String