Ecova Book Club: March Newsletter!

Ecova Book Club

Issue #25 Wednesday, March 12th, 2014

Spring?! Well, the childhood chant of March “Arriving like a Lion and Leaving like a Lamb” comes to mind. With new snowfall and then warm days mixing beautifully so far this month, I am eager to see the bountiful Spring we are sure to enjoy!

Of course, with Spring in the air, it is about time to do the dreaded Spring Cleaning. Dreaded? Yep. This means it is time to clean out the corners and make sure the mud doesn’t set in! But it also means, JOY! Joy? YES! This means there are many yard sales about to explode into existence! And with those yard sales come the discovery of many new books to explore!

This year, I have decided to dedicate myself to exploring new avenues of devotion and renewal. My first devotion has manifested in jiu-jitsu and the art of juggling three very eager children! My second is to take advantage of that brief daily window to read insightful texts on wisdom, charity, strength, and insight. What change have you made this year in your daily reading? What avenue of interest has drawn you at this point in your life? Do you seek to enrich your thinking patterns? Are you drawn to discover a genre that has been undesirable in the past? While I may not be drawn to the ancient texts of China just yet, I am definitely discovering new and delightful reading! Thanks to Roberta and Rose we have a delightful selection for you this month! And I may have thrown a title too!

Happy reading!

What we were reading in February 2014

February Featured Title:

Serendipity (Southern Comfort #1) by Lisa Clark O’Neill

February Titles:

Where the Bodies are Buried (Sharp Investigations #1)

by Christopher Brookmyre

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

Practical Duct Tape Projects by Instructables

The Tyrant’s Daughter by J. C. Carleson

Everneath (Everneath #1) by Brodi Ashton

He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory Series #1) by Derek Raymond

American Assassin (Mitch Rapp #1) by Vince Flynn

Forever Black (Forever Trilogy #1) by Sandi Lynn

March Feature…

O Pioneers! (Great Plains Trilogy #1)

By Willa Cather

One of America's greatest women writers, Willa Cather established her talent and her reputation with this extraordinary novel, the first of her books set on the Nebraska frontier. A tale of the prairie land encountered by America's Swedish, Czech, Bohemian, and French immigrants, as well as a story of how the land challenged them, changed them, and, in some cases, defeated them, Cather's novel is a uniquely American epic.

Alexandra Bergson, a young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm and must transform it from raw prairie into a prosperous enterprise, is the first of Cather's great heroines, all of them women of strong will and an even stronger desire to overcome adversity and succeed. But the wild land itself is an equally important character in Cather's books, and her descriptions of it are so evocative, lush, and moving that they provoked writer Rebecca West to say of her: "The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world almost as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us."

Willa Cather, perhaps more than any other American writer, was able to re-create the real drama of the pioneers, capturing for later generations a time, a place, and a spirit that has become part of our national heritage.

March Picks…

Where would we be without the Irish?

“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
― Bram Stoker

Throughout history the Irish have been vilified and reviled. They have starved and have helped hew a nation from their own soil and new nations from the soil of their adopted lands. They have been seen as drunkards, associated with religious wars, they have fought, loved, laughed….and written some of the most memorable creations in literature while doing so. They have changed the landscape of the known, the unknown and the unknowable. They have created memorable characters; characters that have changed our lives and the lives of others, scared us in the dark of the night, lead us to safety and taught us to never take a nap in areas inhabited by little people. So Let Us Begin…..

GOTHIC HORROR AND CREATOR OF AN ENTIRE GENRE OF LITERATURE THAT EXISTS TO THIS DAY

Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born on the north side of Dublin in 1847. As a young man he was educated at the famous Trinity College, Dublin. While he was president of the University Philosophical Society his first paper was on "Sensationalism in Fiction and Society". (Imagine!) Later, while a London resident, he wrote the one book that scared me so thoroughly that I have yet to finish: Dracula. While not the first to write of the Vampire in literature his book is one of the most remembered, influencing both stage and screen, though I imagine that not even Bram Stoker would have thought of making his vampires sparkle.

A synopsis of the beginning: Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, travels to Castle Dracula in the Eastern European country of Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction with a nobleman named Count Dracula. As Harker wends his way through the picturesque countryside, the local peasants warn him about his destination, giving him crucifixes and other charms against evil and uttering strange words that Harker later translates into “vampire.” Frightened but no less determined, Harker meets the count’s carriage as planned. The journey to the castle is harrowing, and the carriage is nearly attacked by angry wolves along the way. Upon arriving at the crumbling old castle, Harker finds that the elderly Dracula is a well-educated and hospitable gentleman. After only a few days, however, Harker realizes that he is effectively a prisoner in the Castle. The more Harker investigates the nature of his confinement, the more uneasy he becomes. He realizes the count possesses supernatural powers and diabolical ambitions. One evening Harker is nearly attacked by three beautiful and seductive female vampires, but the count staves them off, telling the vampires that Harker belongs to him. Fearing for his life, Harker attempts to escape from the castle by climbing down the walls….You will have to read on by yourself to find out what happens next!

The irish influence on stage – and later screen and music

George Bernard Shaw was another Dubliner whose creations have also taken on a life of their own – mostly after his death. Shaw was an Irish playwright, novelist, journalist, essayist and critic on both music and literature. His play, Pygmalion, is the basis of a more likely to be known musical called “My Fair Lady”. The title, Pymalion, refers to a Greek myth about a sculptor who fell in love with one of his sculptures. In the play Shaw has professor of phonetic Henry Higgins make a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility-the most important part of which is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women’s independence. Shaw won both a Nobel award in Literature for Pygmalion and an Oscar for his film adaptation of the same name, still being the only person to win both prestigious awards. Shaw had once allowed another musical adaptation of one of his works to be created. He was so disenchanted by the results that he never allowed another, hence “My Fair Lady” came about after Shaw’s death.

Making a lot out of little things

– a lion, a witch and a wardrobe

Clive Staples Lewis. Is that a name you know? Or is he better known to you under the sobriquet C.S. Lewis? This Belfast born and bred man has introduced ages of children and adults alike to many memorable characters: Aslan the Lion, The Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve-better known as Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund Pevensie, Tumnus the Faun, Prince Caspian, Reepicheep and others. Many of us had our imaginations captured as children by these books, but they are a worthwhile read even as adults. There are arguments for an against these books being Christian Allegory, but whether you decide to intrepret them as such or not, they are still a good, fantastical read. Even better is to gather around with your own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews or friends and have a reading party to introduce a new age of children to the wonderful land of Narnia.

learning not to take a nap without checking your environs first

Another Irishman whose creation has influenced us through the ages is Jonathan Swift – a satirist, political pamphleteer, essayist, novelist, poet and cleric. His was a prolific pen who gave us characters and terms that are still used in modern linguistics. If something is “Lilliputian” it is very small. If something is “brobdingnagian” it is very large. But do you know what a person represents if that person is a “Yahoo”? If not, it is time to revist Gulliver’s Travels. According to Swift, a Yahoo is a person that Swift describes as being filthy and with unpleasant habits. The Yahoos are obsessed with finding “pretty stones” in the mud, thus representing the materialism and elitism Swift found in British society at the time he was writing. Gulliver’s Travels is an essay in time, travel and the human condition. Shipwrecked castaway Lemuel Gulliver’s encounters with the petty, diminutive Lilliputians, the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Swift’s fantastic and subversive book remains supremely relevant in our own age of distortion, hypocrisy, and irony.

And if you enjoy a good bit of satire check out Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” – one of my favorites!

Socs and Greasers

An excerpt from the memoir

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe is of Irish, German, English, Welsh and Scottish descent

Taken from one of the most beloved 80s movies The Outsiders, Rob Lowe breaks down in layman’s terms what it was like working with the star-studded cast of this popular classic film, which was taken from the even more popular classic book written by S.E. Hinton.

Not only is there inside info on how certain scenes were shot, but Mr. Lowe writes what it’s like to be a “no name kid” actor who kind of thinks he knows what he’s doing, but with the help of fellow actors along the way, he learns a lot more about the business and friendship.

I found his conversation with Francis Ford Coppola about the Godfather films to be quite enlightening and his experience on the South Side of Chicago one night with a young actor by the name of Andrew McCarthy to be extremely humorous.

This particular story is a two chapter excerpt that was taken from his own memoir written a few years ago, was a free download from an app called ShoutCast, but you can get it for Kindle also.

I think I would like to get the entire book eventually just so that I can read what else went on back then, sometimes when you read the “tabloids” they don’t tell you everything that’s happening, just the so called “drama” of it all.

Word on the street has it that Mr. Lowe is working on another memoir where he discusses all of the women he has been involved with, and he says for that one, he is going to put away a “legal fund” because it may cause some backlash.

Loads of laughs and heartwarming anecdotes for the nostalgic at heart, it’s a short read but definitely worth the time.—GUEST REVIEW BY ROSE FULLERTON, OLYMPIA

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST…AND HAVING A PORTRAIT OF YOURSELF THAT NEVER AGES

Students of drama or attendees of the theatre will know of the play, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, a still performed romp by the Dublin born Oscar Wilde. A farce of mistaken identities, trying to dodge social obligations and satire poking fun at elitist notions, this play is a standard in many a theatre. But the Oscar Wilde piece we are going to concern ourselves with has a darker, more Faustian theme. Who would equate the writer of a comedic play as the same author of The Picture of Dorian Gray? This story, according to Goodreads, is “The tale of a youth whose features, year after year, retain the same appearance of innocent beauty while the shame of his abhorrent vices becomes mirrored on the features of his portrait.” This theme has been mirrored over and over, in writing, in film, in many other venues, but this was the first. If you have ever seen the film, who can forget the horrific sight of the portrait that portrays the vice-ridden Dorian, hidden in the attic? Check out this tale of how giving in to shallowness, vanity, casual cruelty can affect the decisions one makes and how the thought processes of one who can get away with heinous actions influences the actions they take.

when irish eyes are smiling…..