Peachy Reads

Train stations are the cathedrals of the modern age. And there is no better example than Grand Central in New York City. Enter through the stone portals from the bustling sidewalks of 42nd Street to the main concourse and you can’t help but be awed-- your gaze will be pulled to the celestial heavens, which in the case of Grand Central are reproduced in cerulean blue on the vaulted ceiling. February 2013 marks one hundred years since the beaux arts train temple in the middle of Park Avenue emerged as an elegant gateway to Midtown Manhattan (the present edifice replaced earlier buildings). The evolution of Grand Central reflects the history of the modern city itself. At one time an open gash of dangerous rails traveled by smoke-belching locomotives burned through NYC from 125th to 42nd Street, and pedestrians and other traffic risked life and limb to cross from one side of Manhattan to the other. Nearby inhabitants inhaled the fumes of the coal-powered machines and endured the no...

I had been intending to read this novel for a bit.  I think I've read everything by Barbara Kingsolver, but I kept postponing reading this 500 pager.  It came out in 2009, but it was the opening of the new exhibit  Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting  across the street at the High Museum of Art that finally motivated me to buckle down and read it. I'm sorry I waited so long.  The history was fascinating, not only of the portrayal of the Kahlo-Rivera household at the time of their greatest fame, but of Trotsky's Mexican exile and eventual assassination, the Bonus Army riots of Washington D.C., and the Red Scare in the United States after the end of the war.  Plus there was all the cultural geography of Xochimilco, Teotihuacan, and Chichen Itza.  After reading about it, I wanted to plan a visit to Mexico City to visit the Bauhaus inspired Kahlo-Rivera house and see Rivera's murals at the Palacio Nacional....

The mysterious figure of Bertha Mason provides much of the tension in Jane Eyre , but what does the reader really know about her?  Rochester provides some details of her past, but is his account reliable?  Caribbean author Jean Rhys attempted to tell the story of Rochester's insane (and perhaps misunderstood) wife in her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea .  It's a sort of prequel to Jane Eyre .  I'm afraid Rochester doesn't come out looking good, though we always knew he had a bit of a wild side with his continental dalliances.  Anyway, there's a lot of interesting backstory about Bertha's origins in Jamaica, her real name, the tragic circumstances of her upbringing, and how she was established at Thornfield Hall.  Gosh, if Jane had only known all these details about Rochester, she might have taken St. John up on his offer of marriage.  All in all, Wide Sargasso Sea is pretty credible, but I missed Charlotte Bronte's flowery language, and of course th...

Jane Eyre .  I've seen several film versions of it, but until now I'd never read the novel.  Shame on me.  I was motivated to read it after it appeared on my daughter's English literature syllabus this year.  I didn't read it simultaneously with her class, but nearly so-- I was a month or two late.  Most literature from the 1800s always frightened me off in the past ( Jane Eyre was published in 1847), and I'm still not over my somewhat inexplicable Dickens-phobia (but maybe I'm coming closer to a cure).  Jane Eyre is amazingly accessible and a real page-turner full of unique characters and plot-twists.  Of course, I knew the secret of the madwoman in the attic, but what a treat it must have been in 1847 to read it with no spoilers.  Such suspense!  It really is a haunting story, full of tragedy, but one that is full of life and love as well.  I think I would have to say it's definitely a girls' book and I was surprised at ...

I can’t remember where I saw the review for this.  Somehow it caught my eye, but in retrospect I’m not sure why.  I've already had the sermon on the ubiquity of corn in our diet from Michael Pollan.  In the opening chapters of  Wheat Belly , William Davis explains how wheat has been so radically hybridized and modified in the last half of the twentieth century, that it little resembles the grain that our grandparents consumed and used as flour.  The “wonder wheat” that grows with tremendous yields worldwide is a gen-modified stubby dwarf variety that is resistant to disease, winds and stormfall (no amber waves of grain anymore) and will not grow without generous allotments of chemical fertilizer (no surprise there). No studies have ever been conducted on this superwheat’s compatibility with human digestion, since its fundamental makeup is radically different from its forebears. Davis suggests that eliminating wheat, all wheat, from our diet has manifold benefit...

This book is part of the Open Letter Initiative from the University of Rochester, an effort to translate world literature into English and expose it to a wider audience and foster a deeper appreciation for international literature. Billie is an eleven-year-old girl living at a country home for children in need. The nation is unnamed, but it seems to resemble Norway a lot.  Anyway, the time is some point in the future and there is some unexplained armed conflict consuming the nation.  Even the isolated country home at Reindeer Woods is not immune from the violence, and Billie’s life is changed forever when soldiers arrive at the home and kill all but her.  It’s not clear why she was spared. Is Billie a bit “retarded” as she herself sometimes wonders, or was her survival a fluke? Billie does seem, somewhat uncharacteristically for a child, to be a bit numb to the violence that she is confronted with when one of the soldiers continues the killing by topping off his co...

Atlanta-Fulton County Public Libraries picked this title for its one book/one community initiative.  It’s a good choice since A Lesson Before Dying is a novel full of issues and provides many points of departure for discussion.  Set in the Jim Crow South, it deals with the limitations and injustices that African Americans faced before the Civil Rights Movement.  AFPLS will sponsor some community read initiatives on this novel during the month of February.  Check out the events listing on the library homepage for more information. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and a 1997 choice for Oprah’s Book Club