Imperfect Bliss
Summary from Goodreads
Reality TV— Jane Austen Style
Meet the Harcourts of Chevy Chase, Maryland. A respectable middle-class, middle age, mixed-race couple, Harold and Forsythia, has four eminently marriageable daughters—or so their mother believes. Forsythia named her girls after Windsor royals in the hopes that one day each would find her true prince. But princes are far from the mind of their second-born daughter, Elizabeth (AKA Bliss), who, in the aftermath of a messy divorce, has moved back home and thrown herself into earning her PhD. All that changes when a Bachelorette-style reality television show called The Virgin takes Bliss’s younger sister Diana as its star. Though she fights it at first, Bliss can’t help but be drawn into the romantic drama that ensues, forcing her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, her family, and herself.
As Bliss tries to rebuild her life, her routine is disrupted by the invasion of a reality TV crew led by the charming but irritating Dario Fuentes, who reminds her so much of her ex. How can she feel attracted by the producer of a show that objectifies women to such a degrading extent? Besides, there are other more desirable men in the world. Like Professor Jordan McIntosh, widower whose devotion to his late wife makes Bliss believe happy marriages do exist; or Wyatt Evers, the well read and ethical host of “The Virgin”. Appearances though, can be deceiving. Emulating Pride and Prejudice, Susan Fale-Hill plays with her characters creating a plethora of misleading signs.
Except for Victoria, Bliss’ family is quite unnerving, just like the “Bennets”. Forsythia, a royalist glamor seeker, don’t disappoint as the obnoxious mother. Harold is the uninvolved father who goes with the flow, masks his dislikes with irony, and hides in his study whenever life throws him a curve ball. Charlotte is the frivolous daughter and Diana, though beautiful and smart, is clearly the one most influenced by Forsythia’s deviated ideas, a certifiable gold-digger-attention-seeker.
The surreal reality TV setting envelopes the story with plenty of chaotic moments, and a handful of romantic ones, such as a stay in a medieval castle. Imperfect Bliss is light and amusing. It’s chick lit, and feels very much like watching a romantic comedy with a satirical touch. It won’t make you smarter, but it will keep you company on a rainy day.
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
To reread an author I love is always a pleasure, to reread Jorge Amado is a rediscovery. All pages are filled with love, ambition, fear, loyalty, passion, powerful feelings that dominate the story of Gabriela and Nacib, and all other characters in this book that holds me from beginning to end.
Every time I read Gabriela a different aspect stands out. As a teenager, I was struck by the sensuality overflowing from its pages; in my early twenties, I remember a feeling of revulsion against the violence practiced by the colonels in the lawless land; this time I was fascinated by the different ways the characters deal with changes, not only in Ilhéus, but in their own lives.
Mundinho is the newcomer who fights against the status quo, seeking his own personal changes. Colonel Bastos can no longer adjust to new times, and fights against the “progress” that comes at a gallop. Nacib changes for love. For love he changes his expectations of one day marrying a girl from a good family. Jorge Amado in his brilliant prose shows us the gradual transition Nacib suffers, pressed both by his attraction to Gabriela, and his jealousy. When he finally decides to marry her, he tries to transform her into the society girl he believed to be his ideal companion.
But Gabriela doesn’t change. She remains a girl who plays in the streets; a teenager with a strong will; a passionate woman, whose desires can’t be satisfied by one man only. Jorge Amado gives us reasons for Gabriela’s inability to adapt. He let us know a little more about her personal struggles in her childhood reminiscences. But as a reader, I exercise my right to see her as a woman of untamed nature who refuses to bow to social pressures, and leads her life according to her most innate impulses.
Rediscovering Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado (August/10/1912 – August/6/2001) is one of the most famous and translated Brazilian authors of all time. In Brazil many of his books are part of the reading curriculum from middle school all the way through college.
He was born in Itabuna, Bahia and moved to Rio de Janeiro in the thirties to study law. At that time the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro was a polarizing center for political debate and art. There, Jorge Amado developed his political ideology. He became a journalist, and a communist.
As a professional writer he focused on social injustices; his country’s folklore and politics; and the Brazilian people beliefs, traditions and sensuality. His works are amongst the most relevant in the modern Brazilian fiction, with 49 books all inspired by his national roots.
In 1945 he was elected a congressman for the Communist Party, and despite political pressures he authored the bill that guarantees religious freedom in Brazil. He became sensitive to the matter after testifying the persecution of African cults brought with the slaves from their continent, and seeing Protestants being robed by fanatics carrying crosses in Ceará. He worked hard to get his bill turned into law. He’s also authored the Brazilian copyrights bill. Because of his political views he lived in exile in Argentina and Uruguay (1941 – 1942), in Paris (1948 – 1950), and in Prague (1951 – 1952).
Despite calling himself a materialist he practiced Candomblé, a very popular African cult in Brazil favored by the inhabitants of Bahia, his home state.
Since 2008 the Brazilian publishing company, Companhia das Letras, part of the Penguin Group, has been reediting Jorge Amado’s works from his original manuscripts with the support of respected Brazilian intellectuals and writers.
I came to Brazil on vacation and was delighted to find Jorge Amado new editions easily available, as well as many events related to the 100th anniversary of his birth. I decided to reread his books starting with “Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
As a teenager I remember feeling quite impressed with the sensuality of the main character, now I’m more enthralled by the richness of interesting secondary characters, the setting, and the politics in the story. Jorge Amado is that rare writer that gets even more delighting to read as the years go by.
“In Europe, they call me master, but only walking through the streets of Salvador I feel at ease.” Jorge Amado
Why Do We Read?
I recently participated in the “Digital Publishing Virtual Summit,” a virtual conference, meaning a conference where you listen to the speakers through your computer speakers, and type your questions to be answered at the end, hopefully.
It was overall a very good experience, even though I didn’t quite agree with a few ideas I heard. One of them was the notion that people read to either escape or avoid pain. That concept baffled me. It may be partially truth, but I can’t agree that it’s universal. The speaker, Mr. Jim Edwards said, people read fiction to scape pain, and nonfiction to avoid pain.
The presenter goes on saying that when reading fiction we want to forget our reality. And we read nonfiction to make money, save money, save time, avoid effort, be successful, be popular, feel love, and find social success. Certainly I’ll read a book to learn a better way to do my job, or to help me get better organized, but I’d rather see it in a positive perspective.
I read for sheer pleasure.
I believe we read fiction for pleasure, and nonfiction to learn and to stay current. A recent research by Pew Internet, with 2,986 respondents age 16 and older, narrowed the main reasons why we read to four: pleasure; to keep up with current events; to research on specific topics that interest us; and for work or school.
| The basic reasons why people read
Americans cite a variety of motives for their reading, especially when it comes to long-form content like books or magazine articles. It is sometimes the case that different people cite different motives. Generally, better educated Americans who have gone to at least some college and better off Americans who live in households earning over $50,000 are more likely than the less educated and Americans living in poorer households to read for all the reasons we queried:
Men (58%) are more likely than women (53%) to say they read for work or school-related reasons. Those under age 65 are considerably more likely to cite this reason, compared with seniors. This, too, is partly tied to the fact that proportionally fewer senior citizens are in the workforce. And parents (68%) are more likely than non-parents (48%) to say they read for this reason. You can read more about this research clicking here. |
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1947 for "All The King's Men"
Considering nonfiction I found the data above quite explicit and satisfying, for fiction though I’ll stick with the words of Robert Penn Warren. In his essay for the “Saturday Evening Post Society” in 1986 “Why do we read fiction?” he says, “Why do we read fiction? The answer is simple. We read it because we like it. And we like it because fiction, as an image of life, stimulates and gratifies our interest in life. But whatever interests may be appealed to by fiction, the special and immediate interest that takes us to fiction is always our interest in a story.”
And he touches the very core of the pleasure I find in fiction when he says, “fiction, too, gives us that heightened awareness of life, with all the fresh, uninhibited opportunity to vent the rich emotional charge–tears, laughter, tenderness, sympathy, hate, love, and irony–that is stored up in us and short-circuited in the drowse of the accustomed. Furthermore, this heightened awareness can be more fully relished now, because what in actuality would be the threat of the problematic is here tamed to mere imagination, and because some kind of resolution of the problem is, owing to the very nature of fiction, promised.”
The Barnes and Noble Book Club Community Room posted a couple of years ago this really cool video called “Why Do We Read?” and I could relate to all the answers, and none mentioned escaping or avoiding pain.
The Swerve – How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
Review by Adriana Gomes
In April Stephen Greenblatt was honored with The Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “The Swerve – How the World Became Modern.”
In its citation, the Pulitzer board described “The Swerve” as “a provocative book arguing that an obscure work of philosophy, discovered nearly 600 years ago, changed the course of history by anticipating the science and sensibilities of today.”
“The Swerve” tells the story of an ancient poem, “On the Nature of Things,” written 2,000 years ago by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, and rediscovered in a library, possibly in a German monastery, in the winter of 1417, by the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini.
Poggio requests the manuscript to be copied, and then sends it to his friend and fellow humanist Niccolò Niccoli in Florence, Italy. He emphasizes its beauty, and Lucretius impeccable use of the Latin language; but he doesn’t duel on the poem Epicurean philosophical values. As the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its dogmas unquestioned during the Renaissance, publicly manifesting sympathy for the revolutionary ideas in On the Nature of Things was extremely risky.
As Greenblatt writes: no respectable citizen openly said, “The soul dies with the body. There is no judgment after death. The universe was not created for us by divine power, and the whole notion of afterlife is a superstitious fantasy.” Still, Lucretius influenced many artists, thinkers, and scientists with Epicurus extraordinary notions.
When talking about atoms Lucretius, who disliked technical language, doesn’t use the Greek philosophical term, but he states that everything is made of invisible particles, “Everything is formed of these seeds and, on dissolution, returns to them in the end. Immutable, indivisible and infinite in number, they are constantly in motion, clashing with one another, coming together to form new shapes, coming apart, recombining again, enduring.”
“The Swerve” argues that “On the Nature of Things“ changed the course of history by bringing back the Epicurean philosophy to light. The copying and translation of the book fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and influenced writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare, and even Thomas Jefferson.
I appreciated how Greenblatt, in writing nonfiction, tells a story with a flow I usually encounter in fiction. I found the book intriguing and stimulating. Two weeks ago if someone asked me what was my favorite book, I would have answered “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. Ask me today and I might say “The Swerve – How the World Became Modern“ by Stephen Greenblatt.
Unraveling
Unraveling
by Elizabeth Norris
synopsis by Giulia Gomes
Do you like thrillers? The ones that make you hold your breath and keep you guessing? The sci-fi novel Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris is filled with emotion, drama, and events that keep you on your toes.
Janelle Tenner is an average teen with a too many responsibilities. Her father, a FBI agent, is always gone, and her bipolar mother can’t even take care of herself. Adding to that, she must watch over her little brother. Her life is suddenly turned upside-down when Ben Michaels, a boy she never laid eyes on, brings her back to life after she is run over by a truck. What had he done? How did he do it? As she looks for answers, she’s mystified by one of her father’s cases: a mysterious disease whose victims are found melting like wax.
During her quest, she meets Ben’s friends who seem like foes. Later on, she finds out that Ben and his friends have a huge secret: they are from another dimensional reality. Her discovery leads to another: a countdown that will lead to a catastrophic event that will cause her and Ben’s realities to be destroyed. It’s a race against time to stop the countdown and save the world.
To conclude, this book is one that adults and young adults will enjoy, especially those who like fringe theories. It’s a book that you will not stop reading to the very end, for each chapter has a gripping hook and a foreshadowing ending. Were Janelle and Ben able to stop the countdown? There is only one way to find out…
Helping our kids read more
A lot has been said lately about boys not being as avid readers as girls in average, or about children – boys and girls – who used to read, loosing interest when they become teens. And although there are many things that can be done to make schools, especially high schools with their intense demand for classics, more reader friendly, as this article on post-gazette.com shows. It’s summer and I believe there is many things we as parents can do during this lazier of seasons to get our kids into the written word.
Summer means free time, and in reading the freedom to choose your books, instead of the obligatory reading to fulfill curricular demands. And even though we aren’t on vacation like our kids, we can set up the example.
Let’s start with the décor, spread magazines around the house. 
I’m not kidding; nothing makes my thirteen year old more interested in reading than finding a magazine opened, on a strategically chosen page with a cool photo, on top of the kitchen counter. And there are so many great choices, Ask, National Geographic Kids, Kids Discover, Click, Dig, Calliope, Cicada, Highlights, Odyssey, Muse, etc. Just choose a topic your kid might like, and make a couple of choices easily available. Check children magazines for a great variety of subscriptions. I chose this link in particular because it tells you the scope of the magazines, as well as their age range.
If your kid is already geared towards adult topics make sure to have not only general publication magazines available, but some literary ones as well. The journal newpages.com maintain a fantastic updated list of literary magazines organized in alphabetical order.
Nowadays many kids prefer to read on line, and the Internet offers amazing literary options, take a look at this post on the blog Chamber Four – Read More Books. You can leave your unattended laptop on the kitchen table opened on one of these fun sites. Make sure to read the article or story in case your child makes a comment. Even better, let your teen see you reading them.
If you are going for big exposure, an excellent addition to your family room, living room, or, again, the kitchen counter is a somewhat order-less pile of books. It must be modest, and it has to grow organically. Start with two books piled up and one turned down opened on a certain page, preferably where you last stopped reading it.
That’s the most important factor in this equation. You have to read as well. Children, and especially teens, don’t do as they’re told, but they do as they see. So make a point in being seen reading. Get caught up on action. When they ask you something in the middle of your reading linger and say, “Just a sec, I’m about to finish a page, or paragraph, or chapter,” and take your time. Then lower it with a disappointed look on your face, as if parting from reading bothers you, and say, “May you please be quick, Percy Jackson’s mom just told him who his real father is,” and stop, don’t say he’s Poseidon, no matter how tempted you are to share. Simply hear whatever they have to say and go back to reading. When you finish your reading time leave the opened book face down on the coffee table.
I understand that sometimes it’s hard to fit another activity in our busy schedules, but half an hour on weekends is quite squeezable.
Another excellent idea is to mention something exciting you read at a mealtime. Make sure to sound unpretentious, “There’s this kid on Unraveling that came from another dimension, that’s just odd,” and take another bite. Don’t raise your eyes for a moment, keep eating and move on to another subject. If, and only if they ask you might answer their questions very lightly. Curiosity holds great power.
If you are traveling with young readers, an e-reader takes up little space, just make sure to leave it unattended on top of your hotel bed when your’re in the room, and don’t leave the iPad filled with game apps by its side. When I travel I keep my husband’s iPad hidden and my Kindle, which I use exclusively for reading and taking notes, easily available. Certainly my daughters will ask for the iPad, but I can’t find it, silly me.
A very important aspect of all these ideas is to have your partner involved, both parents must play their parts. If your husband isn’t into books, maybe a sports magazine will interest him. If your wife doesn’t like reading Business Week, she might enjoy a romantic novel. Just get caught reading. It would be optimum if you could also read a Young Adult novel every once in a while. They cover all possible genres and can be surprisingly fun; you’ll certainly find one that will fit your taste.
The reality is that the majority of teens don’t read as they should. A study from The National Endowment for the Arts shows sad statistics, among their key findings:
Americans are reading less – teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years.
- Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.
- On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.
Americans are reading less well – reading scores continue to worsen, especially among teenagers and young males. By contrast, the average reading score of 9-year-olds has improved.
- Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.
- 2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.
- Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.
The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications – Advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages, whereas deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas.
- Nearly two-thirds of employers ranked reading comprehension “very important” for high school graduates. Yet 38 percent consider most high school graduates deficient in this basic skill.
- American 15-year-olds ranked fifteenth in average reading scores for 31 industrialized nations, behind Poland, Korea, France, and Canada, among others.
- Literary readers are more likely than non-readers to engage in positive civic and individual activities – such as volunteering, attending sports or cultural events, and exercising.
Good news are coming from another front though, a recent study from the Pew Internet, a project of the Pew Research Center shows that technology owners read more for all the four reasons analyzed, namely: pleasure, current events, topics of personal interest, and work or school.
I heard them and gave my teenage daughter an e-reader for her birthday. She’s been quite taken by it. Hopefully it will withstand the test of time.
Sisterly Love
Pearls from Claire
“Mom.”
“Hum?”
“I know exactly what I want to be when I grow up.”
“What?”
“I wanna be just like you mommy. I’ll cook delicious food for my family, and after dinner I’ll tell Julie to clean up while I play in the computer. And I won’t go to bed early. No, no, no! I’ll stay up playing in the computer until it’s really late at night. Just. Like. You.”
“That’s nice darling, but did you ask Julie, your big sister, if she’ll want to live with you?”
Homophones
I learned English as a child and although there aren’t many parallels between the language of Shakespeare and Portuguese, they both have homophones, and what tricky little things they are. From beach and its mean variation, to two or too or to, all of them are traps waiting to catch me. If for a distracted native speaker homophones can present some challenges, for a Brazilian they’re down right daunting. I mean, how big is a feat if it’s only a couple of feet? I could go on all day.
Writing in a second language can be challenging, but never boring.
Even worst for me though are words that aren’t even homophones, but their spells are different for only one letter. I’m the master of writing though instead of thought, and the word processor won’t help me with that. If I misspell and there aren’t any words just like my mistake, I’ll be fine, Word will get it for me, it won’t only tell me, “You’re wrong,” with its red underlining, but it will teach me the right spelling. Usually however I simply write something else, a word that exists, but with a meaning far from my intentions, like slime instead of slim.
My boasting older daughter, who is in eighth grade HONORS ENGLISH, loves to edit my work; every little misspelling is a comic relief for her. She stares at me and says, “Mom I love your writing, it’s so funny,” and most times she isn’t talking about the content, unfortunately.
Well, I didn’t submit this post to her candid scrutiny. I decided instead to exercise my right to make mistakes, so dear reader if you see something off, please let me know, I believe you are much nicer than my teenage daughter.