Where's the water for the elephants..

I finished reading Elephants yesterday afternoon. I'm still trying to figure out if there is a deeper meaning to the title. Water for elephants is only mentioned in one conversation and no where in the book does anyone actually water the elephants nor does the lone elephant in the story ever take a drink of water or take a bath. Like everyone else in the story, Rosie the elephant prefers liquor, or an occasional lemonade. The story is told from the perspective of a graduate student at Cornell University who is about to take his exams so he can practice veterinary medicine. A few days before the exam his parents are both killed in a car accident. The story takes place in 1931. He learns that his parents have mortgaged their lives in order to send him to the university and consequently they owned nothing. The bank takes the house. Alone and destitute, he walks out in the middle of his exams and jumps on a train that happens to be transporting a circus troupe. We are introduced to an interesting and bizarre cast of freaks, mostly drunken drifters, but also a clowning dwarf and his dog, a fat lady, an abusive ring master, and his "damsel in distress" equestrian acrobat wife and a greedy, villainous owner. Jacob, the narrator is the only "normal" person in the bunch. And then there is of course Rosie the elephant, who only responds to commands when they are in Polish. Although this cast is colorful and has lots of potential, I think Gruen fails to really develop them. As I said before, its like a second rate film intended for a mass audience. Apparently the masses don't care about character development. They just want to know what happens next. There are some interesting albeit unlikely scenes, like when Jacob leaps from car to car on a moving train in the middle of the night with a knife in his mouth. (Gimme a break.) He intends to slay the dragon but chickens out and for his trouble he gets a small cut on his face from the knife. Another unlikely episode: when the show collapses and local sheriff begins to auction off the animals to other passing shows, the damsel bursts out of her sleeping car, races to the scene and proceeds to threaten, both verbally and physically, the guys who are attempting to sell her horses. She manages to bully them into leaving the 15 Arabians out of the deal. The guys appear to be genuinely intimidated. In reality, I think they would have laughed at her, pushed her aside and sold the horses. Anyway, I'm glad I read it, but I won't bother to see the movie.

Been a busy summer...

Well, its been a while since my last installment. Since then I have read the following:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Dewey the Library Cat by Vicki Myron & Bret Witter, Life Among the Lutherans by Garrison Keillor, The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller, an Historical Atlas of the Vikings by John Haywood and Mexico by James A. Michener, all of which are fine books. My favorite was of course the Michener novel, but The Help was a close second. Keillor was charming and funny. The Viking atlas was informative. Dewey was written for a young (elementary school) audience, but if you love cats you can't help but love this book. Bridges was passable. It's one of those sappy, romance, artsy kind of novels that middle aged women swoon over. I don't swoon over anything, least of all this novel. My husband bought it at a souvenir shop in Winterset, Iowa. We were on our way to see John Wayne's birthplace and decided to stop and see the Roseman Bridge and well, we saw the bridge so we had to buy the book to see what all the fuss was about. Biggest surprise to me was that it is pure fiction. I thought they made a movie out of it because it was a true story. It's not, and now that I've read the book, I'm not interested in the film, even though Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood are outstanding actors. Mexico was excellent, but I grew a little weary of the violence and gore of bullfighting. I guess Michener thought it was necessary for understanding Mexican history. The novel was written/published late in Michener's career in 1992, just five years before his death. My current read is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It was a gift, so I have to read it. I'm not liking it. It's depressing. It's almost as if Gruen wrote the screen play before the novel because it has all the elements of a second rate film: profanity, sex, violence, cruelty and abuse of people and animals. If you like reading about human beings at their worst, read this book. Alas, I'm just 20 pages short of having read half the book, but I hope it gets better soon. I was thinking about the book this afternoon and I wondered: just what does it mean to be a New York Times Bestseller ? Just because something sells doesn't mean it's good. After all, lots of people spend lots of money on things that have no useful purpose or redeeming value. So what is the criteria? I don't read the NYT, so I don't know why they need to endorse or recommend books. I've read enough books to recognize good fiction when I read it and, so far, this one doesn't even rank in the top 50%.

Another notch in the Michener belt.

Its been so long since my last entry I couldn't remember how to get to my blog. Finished another Michener novel last night: The Covenant, an epic tale of South Africa. This must be one of his longest novels; seemed like it took me forever to get through it. It was worth every minute. I always learn a lot from Michener. On a recent visit to Minneapolis, Steve and I visited The Mill City Museum. As we were waiting for the next tour up the Flour Tower, we were chatting with the guide about Cadwallader Colden Washburn, founding father of the Minneapolis Milling Company (a.k.a. General Mills). The guide mentioned Washburn's pioneering work in the livestock feed industry (using wheat byproducts for cattle feed vs. dumping it in the Mississippi River), and I commented that Michener talks about Washburn in Centennial. "Michener!", the guide exclaimed, "that's a long time ago!" As if reading Michener was passe or somehow out of fashion. I was a little offended. Good thing there was no one else around to listen to this guy blather about flour. Centennial was first published in 1974, which is not exactly "a long time ago". (This guide was no spring chicken.) I believe that Michener's novels will be, if they aren't already, hailed as timeless classics, in the company of Austin, Dickens and Hardy. Anyway, enough about that....

The Covenant was first published in 1980 when the battle to abolish apartheid was finally getting the world's attention. As customary for JM, the story begins at the beginning, when the indigenous animals ruled and the indigenous humans, wandering around in search of water and hunting grounds, were only small players in the grand game of survival. The story chronicles the lives of three influential families: the Nxumalos (don't ask me how to pronounce that) of Zimbabwe, the Van Doorns of Holland and the Saltwoods of England. Their histories date back 14 generations and nearly 5 centuries. No wonder my copy is over 1200 pages. These three families, crossing paths throughout history, shape South Africa for better and for worse. On a recent visit to Michigan, my Dad gave me a few copies of National Geographic. One of them just happened to be June, 2010 and when I had time to look through them when I got home I discovered this issue contained a feature entitled Mandela's Children: Redemption in South Africa. The timing couldn't have been better and this article provided an interesting "update" to the novel. Apartheid ended in 1994, but change lags far behind. Indigenous customs persist: Xhosa boys still practice ancient initiation rites, Caucasian Afrikaners still own 80% of commercial farmland even though Caucasians represent only a small portion of the total population and almost all "non-white" Afrikaners are farmers. SA has the highest GDP on the continent, yet maintains the greatest disparity between rich and poor. Unemployment among blacks is 29%, whites, 5%. Soccer and rugby are the new "gods" and their players are demigods. The people worship and pay tribute to these gods in spectacular stadiums that seat 94,000 spectators. That's 15 times the population of Maquoketa in one "cathedral".

Next on my reading list: The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Steve read it last winter and liked it so much he bought me a copy. I've heard lots of good things about it. Think I'll start it today.