Quarantine-while! A Few Good Reads - August

Playing a bit of 'ketchup'!!!  First installment of - A Few Good Reads, pages (and pics) I've enjoyed...

AUGUST ~

• Disease and History - Frederick Cartwright.  I pulled this off my shelves for a re-read given the current state of disease across the globe.  This historical account of how humans dealt with diseases as diverse as Bubonic Plague, Typhus, Malaria, and Hemophilia demonstrates effects, not just in terms of individual suffering and survival, but changes wrought on civilizations depending on how well they recognized the reality of their circumstances ~ or not.  If I were Queen of the World, this would be required reading for EVERY creature in Whoville!
• The Wings of the Dove - Henry James.  Also from my shelves, having been on the back burner for some time.  It is not for everyone.  Not even sure it was for me!  HA! An unknown critic in 1903 wrote, "[On reading this tome, consisting] of 576 closely printed pages, we were curious to know the average number of dashes, commas, and semi-colons on a page; and we found the calculation entirely beyond our powers.  Suffice it to say it is enormous; and most of these interruptions serve no purpose save that of making the reading more difficult.  The effect is irritating:  what might have been clean prose is broken, finicked, piffled away. ... There is no energy, passion, color, and because there is no motion, there is no rhythm in this prose."  George Moore, noted quite correctly, "...Mr. James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition.  Suicide or adultery has happened before the story begins, suicide or adultery happens some years after the characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothings happens..." Still there is the draw Joseph Conrad described this way: "One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James' novels.  His books end as an episode in life ends.  You remain with the sense of the life still ongoing..."  For all its lengthy verbiage created the sensation of attempting to sail on a pond with rippling water but absolutely no breeze, the language and lives of the characters Millie, Ms. Stringham, Kate and Densher demanded my attention until the end.
• Turn of the Screw - Henry James.  Read to round out my perspective of the writer.  But, Nah!  Couldn't tell whether the main character was crazy or if other characters were ghosts.
• Love, Loss, and What We Ate - Padma Lakshmi.  Delicious.  And not because of the food.  An honest telling of lovers, choices made, and family in a way that is never maudlin, self serving, or over-the-top.  Instead, Ms. Lakshmi is intensely human as she shares the life of a woman making her way in the world.  Fearless in tackling what is hard ~ living with endometriosis, life as an immigrant, the pain of divorce, the wrenching beauty of love, and the price that cancer can exact ~ without self pity or preaching.  I really recommend.  She touched my heart. 
• Taste the Nation, with Padma Lakshmi.  I watched due to the beauty of her book.  A very well done series addressing the lives of American immigrants using their cuisine to tell  of their history, lives and culture.  Looking forward to her next season!
• Immigration Nation.  NetFlix series.  While incredibly hard to watch at many points, unless you are an American Indian, this should be required viewing for each of us in this country while placing ourselves, our children, our friends and family, in the shoes of those who fill the screen. 

If clothes make the man, reading provides the wardrobe of the mind.  September installment coming soon! - les