Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)
Haven't been here for awhile because I'm off rethinking my writing career. But I have been reading. I've made changes in my list and will probably make more.
Here are the reviews of books I've read while off site; I'll post the list sometime later, maybe at the end of the year:
Tales From the Teapot by Dolly Yates: While this book is a short and easy read, it won't be my favorite book for the year...except for the way I came by it. Not only is sometimes inaccurate, but it uses a least one of those inaccuracies for the sort of offensive Christian preachment that made me look elsewhere when I was looking for spiritual nourishment. But there are a few funny anecdotes, like the time the author's 2 year old "helped" his parents by emptying the contents of a tea packet on the frosting for a wedding cake...during wartime England when sugar was hard to come by.
But I'm jazzed by the way this book came to me. It's a long story. I became a Sikh in 1986, and by 1987, Mr. Siri was looking around for spiritual fulfillment of his own that wouldn't require him to grow a beard. His favorite coworker then attended a Methodist Church an easy walk from our house, so he decided to try it out. One of the ladies there was this tiny and vibrant elderly woman who had been through the Japanese Relocation/Interment. The most profound moment I've ever had in a Christian church occurred when she read the scriptural passage one Palm Sunday. Instead of the usual texts for that day, she was unexpectedly given to read the passage of Jesus being taken away by Roman soldiers...and Georgette broke down and sobbed. And as she did so, I could sense the Presence saying, "This was me."
We maintained contact with Georgette after we moved and that particular church folded. A few years ago, her daughter contacted us to say that Georgette was now in an assisted living situation and gave us her new address. We put the daughter on our end of year mailing list also.
Then this year of all years, I had the idea that while everyone (nearly everyone) was home, it might be a good time to write a letter wishing everyone well and cheering them up with a beautiful card. And it occurred to me that if anyone had passed, I'd hear about it sooner than if I waited for the usual time to send people greetings. I suspected one of these might be Georgette. Sure enough, a week or two after we sent off the first batch of cards/newsletters, we got a call from Georgette's daughter. Georgette had indeed passed, peacefully and not from Covid, just old age. That phone call lasted about 45 minutes, and the daughter wanted to have a really long phone call with us. So a week or so later, we did that.
During that conversation, the daughter mentioned a friend of hers who'd written a book about tea. The daughter, who is a devout Methodist to this day, also mentioned that she didn't know anything about Sikhism and would be interested in learning more. I suggested a book trade, which we did.
This book replaces Jim Butcher's Storm Front, which I do plan to read. But the story of how I got the Butcher book is less interesting than how I got Tales From the Teapot, which takes the cake...or maybe I should say "the scones."
In addition to sending me Tales From the Teapot, Georgette's daughter also sent the full price plus the cost of shipping (I thought it would be an even steven trade) for Sikh Spiritual Practice in bills wrapped in gorgeous Japanese paper. That was more precious than money and is now on my altar.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, attributed. Translated and abridged by Martin Palmer assisted by He Yun (who checked for accuracy), Jay Ramsay (who helped turned the raw poetry translations into poetry), and Victoria Finlay (who located the illustrations): I'm glad I read this, and I'm glad it's over. I'm also glad I didn't know this was an abridgement until I got it, because I don't think I could have stuck it out through a book three times the size of the doorstopper I did read.
I decided last year that I needed to read more Asian literature, Chinese classics especially. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a Chinese classic if there ever was one. I've heard that if you turn the TV on in China, you're likely to find a show based on this book. The first opera I ever saw was not by Puccini or Verdi or any other European, but The Beauty Bait, a classic and popular Chinese opera. Its story can be found in this book. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is considered a novel, but is more of an epic in prose. It predates Cervantes by 200 to 300 years.
The translation uses colloquial English, which would be easy to read if it weren't for the issue of names. Chinese traditionally place the family name first and the given name last. When you have a cast of thousands and people whose names all begin the same way, some of whom are on opposite sides of battlefields and some of whom don't appear all that often, it gets more than a little confusing.
Parts of the book were very interesting, notably the shenanigans some of the generals used to trick their enemies. And parts of the book were revolting, notably the revenge culture and the things some of the "good guys" did to exact that revenge. It almost made me lose my taste for Chinese culture. Almost.
*Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie: A fast and fun read. (Something I needed after enduring the long epic.) The usual Christie improbabilities are at least plausible in this case. Not too marred, and maybe even helped, by the psychologizing that was so popular in the '50s when this book was written. For a lot of reasons, this book wouldn't work if it were written nowadays, but given its era, I could overlook the shortcomings and enjoy it for what it was.
Some people would be bothered by some of the things a half-Indian (Asian) young woman was called, but I noted that only a guy who proved himself to be a bit of a wart called her the worst of those things, and the woman herself was made out to be the best (in some ways) of all the suspects. And no, she didn't do it.
(*)The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker's Reflections by George Nakashima: I had originally planned to pair the Balboa Park book with this one since both came to us as gifts from my youngest brother. But then I decided to pair Balboa Park with a book called Chetco, a book I thought I could use for research. Bad decision! The Chetco book was so bad I only made it through a chapter or so. So, I returned to this one.
That proved to be a good decision, since I was dealing with a rather revolting emotional situation (not Covid related) and needed something positive as a counterbalance. This book fit the bill. Part memoir, part veering on how-to (but not quite going there), part meditative essay. The writing was good and the photos often gorgeous. The one jarring note was the constant use of the word "man" to mean humanity, mankind, human beings and even men; only in a few cases, did he use the word people, and then only to refer to specific groups of people; I constantly had to remind myself that the book was published in 1981, before universal language was more universally accepted, and that Nakashima was born in 1905, when universal language was almost non-existent.
*!The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-Jung, trans. by Heinz Insu Fenkl: This may be the best book I read this year. Very few novels are both cheerful and profound, but this book is one of them. Although it's little known outside of Asia, it's considered by many to be the crown jewel of Korean novels and even strongly influenced The Dream of the Red Chamber, considered by some to be the greatest Chinese novel. It predates all English novels.
It's a frame story of a Buddhist monk who meets eight fairies on a bridge. And then the monk is punished for his desire for those fairies by being reincarnated as a man born lowly but rising through merit to being a general, a prime minister, and an imperial son-in-law, plus another wife and six concubines, and yes, these are those fairies.
The translator, thankfully, was the sort who likes to let his readers in on the joke, and so, the book is annotated so that you get as many jokes as possible. The introduction, too, was fascinating and made it much easier to grasp a fuller understanding of the book's multi layers.
Happy reading, all!
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal