Atlas Shrugged

How to even begin a review of a book that is over 1100 pages long?!

This book book follows a young female railroad tycoon, Dagny, as she operates the nation's largest railroad.  She and some of the other main characters who work in industry are seen as greedy and selfish when what they are really trying to do is follow their passions, see their job done "right", and in many cases work in  innovative new ways to improve their industry and the world around them

The story shows her struggles trying to succeed in a country where the social/political atmosphere seeks to shame and work against her and others like her simply because of their success.  The politicians and public think the industrialists should show more concern for "the people", stressing things like equal share and equal opportunity, even though the services they provide are, themselves, providing for the good of the people.

As politicians, and less-motivated industrialists, pass regulations to "even the playing field" a little, for fairness, and "most importantly" to help the good of "the people"--discouraged businesspeople begin simply vanishing--closing up shop and leaving without a trace.

Dagny begins to feel that there is an actual destroyer working against her efforts to succeed--someone coming along collecting the last of the competent and intelligent people left in the country, leaving her with a greater and greater burden to carry on her own to keep the ever-more fragile country running, and eventually posing her with the question of whether or not she is fighting on the right side of the conflict.

This book was fascinating.  It showed how quickly our country can be changed for the worse, by constantly operating in the present and in reactionary attitudes, and most-importantly by punishing those who can help things change for the better.  It was actually a book that I felt pretty "somber" while reading.  There is just so much that goes on that was so frustrating, and discouraging (particularly the things that rang true to the state of our nation right now).

This book had a sub-theme of sexuality that ran through it (written in the 50's, it was pretty mild there were, I think, two paragraphs where I skipped to the end).  But the theme of sexuality was important in the way it was a metaphor for the contradictions existing in the general values and morality of the society as a whole.  This was demonstrated  through their different relationships which served to give a concrete example of the product of their values. This string of quotes between two characters helps describe this view of sexuality. 

"We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies. . . You knew that the physical desire I was damning as our mutual shame, is neither physical nor an expression of one's body, but the expression of one's mind's deepest values. . . I love you, my dearest, with the deepest passion of my body which comes from the clearest perception of my mind.(pp 859-860)"

This discussion was of a "good" relationship, but these same ideas were shown through a few "bad" relationships as well--that the physical was a manifestation of the person's truest inner values. 

I'm coming to believe that I really appreciate a cognitive discussion on healthy sexuality simply to counteract all the immorality that we are exposed to so frequently.  So I really appreciated the quote of sexuality being "the deepest passion of my body which comes from the clearest perception of my mind".  I really believe that to be true, and what a different view than the worldly idea of sexuality being involuntary physical lusts!

In the end I'll put this book on my "to read again" at some point list.  I enjoyed it and would love to pull out some more quotes from it--the philosophy is fascinating--but that task just seemed a little too daunting the first read through.  

Domestic Mysteries

I've discovered a new genre of fiction, and I'm dubbing it, "Domestic Mysteries."  They are murder mysteries where the main character is of the highly domestic type.  I love them and that makes me such a nerd!

The first one I found just by chance on the shelf when looking for another book.  The main character has a home business selling homemade soaps. (Apparently this is the second in the series, and the first one was more about soap and called Lye in Wait).  In Heaven Preserve Us the mystery revolved around home canning.  Though it did talk about some of the characters' other domestic forays as well.  The main character is volunteering at a local helpline, and after getting a strange call from a suicidal man (that her boss calls a hoax, and hangs up on) she starts getting stalked around town, and her boss ends up dead.  I read this one earlier in the summer, and don't remember the story in as much detail, but I definitely remember it getting intense, and wondering how she'd ever make it out alive!

I picked up A Deadly Grind, from  my library's "New" shelf last week.  In this book the main character is collecting vintage Pyrex, and kitchen tools and adapting vintage recipes to write her own cookbook.  She picks up this vintage Hoosier cabinet at an antiques auction, and realizes she may have brought home more than she was bargaining for.  This book seemed to be kind of predictable at first, until I realized that all my predictions were wrong!  So I really enjoyed having that surprise. 

I haven't read mysteries for a while, so it was really fun to read a few, and yes, I thought it was really fun to read books about people with my same quirky hobbies!  And a great bonus is that both these books have recipes in the end. 

The Language of Flowers

I've heard of the language of flowers before.  Like the time Jeremy was reading an article on the Art of Manliness about wearing boutonnieres which warned of not wearing just any flower because you may not realize the "message" you are sending with that flower.

The Language of Flowers written by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, is about a difficult 18-year-old girl being "emancipated" from the foster care/group home system.  She has often used the language of flowers to communicate with people around her without them realizing her meanings.  As she works on creating a life for herself as an "adult" we also get glimpses of a significant period of time from her past, then watch the connection between the two become apparent.

As her story progresses, she has the opportunity for happiness, but she holds herself back from allowing that to happen.  She allows her damaged past to keep her from feeling deserving of happiness or success in her relationships and her life.  For a period of time she looses everything that she had been able to achieve, and it is only after she learns to accept herself and to allow herself to have imperfections that she is able to allow herself to have happiness and success in her relationships an life.

I loved this story and immediately began to reread it upon completing it.  I wanted to go back to reread the passages now that I understood how the whole story worked out together.

Lately I have pondered over the topic of whether or not it is appropriate for me to "like" books in which the characters are not living the moral standards that I believe are important.  This book would fall in that category.  But the ending message of the story is definitely appropriate and important.  Victoria's past was not perfect, and she felt like that meant she could not have a perfect future.  I have an imperfect past.  There are many things in my life that are far from the ideal circumstances I would have hoped for.  So do I allow myself to believe that I have no chance for a happy future?  I love how Victoria came to understand that she could accept her past and just let it be and not allow it to keep her from the possibilities of her future.

I now have an aching desire to propagate Moss in my garden.  Moss which means "maternal love" grows without roots.  And I can use motherhood as a metaphor for my whole life and accept that goodness can grow notwithstanding a lack of what I might consider necessary roots.

The Weird Sisters

This is a review for a book I just read for Blogher.  It's up on my other blog as well. 

I'll admit--Shakespeare's not really my thing.  I read a few plays required in high school, but Shakespeare is really more Jeremy's thing.  He read it, acted in it, even sacrificed his body for it when he had his nose broken by broadsword during Macbeth--turns out that stage blood wasn't necessary after all. 

But I thought this book The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown sounded interesting, about three adult women all returning for their own reasons to the home of their parents, where their father, who is a college professor on Shakespeare speaks to them and tries even to give cryptic advice to them through lines of Shakespeare.



The book is fascinating in that it is narrated by the sisters collectively. The sisters tell of sister number one and her problems and then move on to sister number two, still speaking strictly collectively but omnisciently.

It’s a story about life and struggles, and though my life is quite different from everyone in the book, I still found some parts that really spoke to me.

After a conversation with her fiancé Rose, the eldest, considers the way she has lived her life, “[C]hasing some shadow of the way things were Supposed to Be? There were days, yes, when Rose felt as though she had been on this earth forever, since the dinosaurs at least, but she knew she was young. It seemed so early to have signed her whole life away, but it seemed so exhausting to change anything” (p 119).

I’ve found as I get a little bit older that I really have held myself back according to some standard of the way things are “supposed to be”. In many different areas of our culture there are a lot of unspoken rules that I find myself rebelling against these days.

At one point, reflecting on their parents’ marriage they say, “We have always wondered why there is not more research done on the children of happy marriages. Our parents’ love is not some grand passion, there are no swoons of lust, no ball gowns and tuxedo’s but here is the truth: they have not spent a night apart since the day they married” (p 156).

Though Jeremy and I spent our first night apart less than a month after being married (he was traveling with BYU Men’s Chorus) I like this thought of the simple things being meaningful in a marriage of true love—though I’d still like a ball gown!

After Cordy, the youngest sister, witnesses her Mom’s true frailties the sisters ask, “How old were you when you first realized your parents were human? That they were not omnipotent; that what they said did not, in fact, go; that they had dreams and feelings and scars? Or have you not realized that yet? Do you still call your parents and have a one-sided conversation with them, child to parent, not adult to adult?” (p 262)

I still remember the moment I realized this. The experience is too personal to share. But, though I do still call my parents as a child, I hope that I also often call as an adult as well.

Perhaps because I’ve been appreciative of my own ecclesiastical leaders recently I really welcomed Bean, the middle sister’s, “confession scene” and counseling from Father Aidan. In confronting the true source of bean’s behavior he advises her, “We all have stories we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves we are too fat, or too ugly, or too old, or too foolish. We tell ourselves these stories because they allow us to excuse our actions, and they allow us to pass off the responsibility for things we have done—maybe to something within our control, but anything other than the decisions we have made” (337).

If that doesn’t cause pause for a moment of reflection on our own lives and behaviors then I don’t know what will.

I recommend this book with reservations. The “F-word” (and variations) was used about 6 or so times, and there was talk of sex—not descriptions of sex, but talk of it. If you feel capable of skipping past a few things like that then I think you’ll be able to find plenty of interesting things in this book.