2 comments about Fillets of Plaice.

1. When his literary brother Lawerence Durrell (the Alexandra Quartet) compiled a book of stray writings he brought them together under the title "Spirit of Place" as they revolved around the mediterranean spirit. When the irrereverent younger brother Gerald decided to trawl his notes for a new book to fund his zoo in Jersey he jokingly suggested to Lawerence that he could call it "Fillets of Plaice", being a low caste version of his brothers book. The name stuck and this book contains some wonderful and evocative stories. Best of all I think are the two horror stories at the end. I never realised Gerald had such a dark side.



2. Well, I may have mangled the quote for this review's title but I am right about the rating of this book. This was such a good book that I actually felt a bit sad after turning the last page! Many of the encounters in this book of short stories shares the same wit, keen observation, and gentle spirit of My Family and Other Animals . . .then there are a few surprises. There are two chapters recalling incidents that must have been decidedly unpleasant and yet he managed to make them uproariously funny! I'd like to say more but it wouldn't be fair to go into too much detail.

No comments about The Roosevelts.

2 comments about Getting to Know William Shakespeare (Road Scholar, 1).

1. My whole family enjoyed Getting to Know William Shakespeare. We loved the music, the analysis of his plays, and the interesting facts about his life. The professors on the CD make Shakespeare very accessable to all of us with funny stories and interesting historical background. If you don't know anything about him, you will find this great to listen to. And if you have read his plays, you will also learn something about his craft. The CD is very entertaining. I highly recommend it.



2. This cd is a great way for families to make good use of downtime spent in cars. It combines biographical detail (kids will be fascinated by such everyday Elizabethan images as traitors' heads on spikes on London's Tower Bridge) with fascinating literary and cultural analysis (rap-weary parents will be intellectually intrigued). Quotations from premier academic authorities are interspersed with appropriate period music and short excerpts from the Bard himself. It flows like an NPR report, and you may find yourself sitting in the car to finish it even after you've reached your destination!

No comments about Dick Francis: A Racing Life.

No comments about A Picture Book of Eleanor Roosevelt (Picture Book Biography).

No comments about Letters (BBC Radio Collection).

5 comments about Captain Bligh's Portable Nightmare: From the Bounty to Safety... 4,162 Miles Across the Pacific in a Rowing Boat.

1. If you are going to write a defense of William Bligh, you are going to have to deal with what happened on "The Bounty". This book doesn't address that and this is a major problem with the book. This is not a story about a ship sunk by a storm or by a whale. It is a story about a Royal Navy captain whose crew committed mutiny and put him adrift in the Pacific. It seems to me if you are going to tell Bligh's story you just can't start at the point where he is lowered into the boat by the mutineers. Especially not when you are going to spend a lot of the book defending the man's character. I can only think that Mr. Toohey felt that people had such a cartoonish image of Bligh as some sort of sadistic beast that he needed to concentrate on Bligh's positive leadership qualities and navigational skills in bringing those loyal to him over 4,000 miles across the ocean to safety. But even here we have a problem, as some of the men who went with Bligh did not respect him and were openly rebellious. Their criticisms are made to seem petty and indeed they were. Bligh's second in command, John Fryer, clearly did not like Bligh and made false accusations that Bligh gave himself larger rations and overcharged the Royal Navy for supplies. But other men besides Fryer did not respect Bligh either. Since Toohey will go no further than to say that Bligh was not very flexible and was a stickler for regulations you really can't see what the problem was. The author asserts that Bligh was not a brute. He was a loving husband and father. He did not believe in flogging, which is rather remarkable for that period. So something is missing as the book loses its focus. Rather than being able to concentrate on the remarkable journey to safety we are always left wondering at what was behind the whole thing. In the epilogue Mr. Toohey explains that Bligh was later the victim of another mutiny when he was in command of the aptly named "Defiance" and on the "Director" his men voted to have him replaced! What was the problem with this man? The reason I am still giving this book 3 stars is that is well-written in the sense that it has a nice style and flows along smoothly. It is almost novelistic. The descriptions of Bligh's encounters with Pacific Islanders are interesting and exciting. But it is not enough to overcome the fundamental flaws of the book.



2. Faint praise, but I like my narrative history to be beautifully written, to tell me things that I never knew, and to open my mind to new ways of seeing the world. For my money, the five line description of Bligh's voyage that appears incidentally in Diana Muir's Bullough's Pond gives us all the essentials. Of course, Muir is in the midst of another story. For all his defense of Bligh and his undoubtedly virtuoso navigational skills, Toohey fails to convince that he was a great leader. The plain fact is that British captains almost routinely led sullen, ill-educated, ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-fed men on nearly unendurable journeys and got them home again without mutiny. Bligh's men rebelled twice. How great a captain can he have been?



3. While this book was nicely written and a quick read, I did not particularly enjoy it. While the story of Bligh and his men and their journey across the South Pacific is truly one of the most amazing stories of sea survival ever to occur, this book tooled thru so much of the journey so quickly that I never got the sense of its scope or its heroic nature. I also agree with comments of other reviewers that it did not convey Bligh's great leadership abilities well. In that regard the fcitionalized 'Men Against the Sea' (Nordhoff and Hall) did a much better job. If anything, this telling made me more understanding of the resentment of the men in the boat (as opposed to those who stayed behind after the mutiny) against Bligh, while the novel made it clear that the same qualites of control and rigor which resulted in the mutiny are also the major reasons that Bligh and his men survived the journey. I would heartily recommend the entire MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY trilogy for those who are interested in the Bounty story over this somewhat factual account.



4. This is simply a rewrite of what has already been published many times. William Bligh published a full account in 1792 with the full title, "A Voyage to the South Sea Undertaken by Command of His Majesty for the Purpose of Conveying the Bread-Fruit Tree to the West Indies in His Majesty's Ship the Bounty Commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh and an Account of the Mutiny on Board H.M.S. Bounty and the Subsequent Voyage of Part of the Crew in the Ship's Boat, from Tofoa, One of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch Settlement in the East Indies." That book was republished in 1961 with a shortened title, "The Mutiny on Board H.M.S. Bounty." I am sure that there are copies in various libraries and private collections. Nordhoff and Hall published a fictionalized version, and that seemed to lead to a spate of books in the 1930's about the life of Vice Admiral William Bligh. The story is well known, and there is little to add. Bligh's problems came mainly from inexperience coupled with his own brash way of addressing people. He took command of the Bounty at the age of 33, and it was his first command of a Royal Navy vessel. Prior to that he had been a ship's master, with a very short period as a lieutenant. He was on his own far from the fleet. His skill as a navigator saved the crew members in the ship's boat (although many died from illness after reaching Batavia, a well known fever port).



5. It's rare that I give 5 stars for a book review but this, in my opinion, has earned it. I'm a self-confessed Bounty-phile, sucking up all the literature that she has to offer and this was no exception.

   William Bligh must go down as one of the most maligned persons in history. This from a man who acted as second in command to Cook in his early 20's, became governor of Australia and, as this book explains, sailed over 4000 miles from memory in a 23 foot boat losing not a single man during the voyage.

   Toohey starts us with the happenings at Keakekua Bay, Hawaii the day Cook was murdered. This, according to Toohey, stayed with Bligh all his years and coloured his actions thereafter. Sections of the book contain dialogue between the men in the boat; this has to be guessed at obviously but Toohey makes a decent stab at it.

   This wil not take you long to read but will provide some valuable information on an oft-neglected area of the whole Bounty lore.

5 comments about Among Schoolchildren (Monaural).

1. Tracy Kidder captures the angst and the anger of the classroom in his book, "Among Schoolchildren," about the teaching-life of Mrs. Chris Zajac. Certainly those who criticize the public schools must read this book before they give up on schools and opt for vouchers for all.
   
   Mrs. Zajac has all the necessary qualities of a good teacher:
   1. She's empathetic, almost to a fault. I know she gives too many second chances to kids who try to disrupt her class, but she also got through to them all, even the ones who had to be removed.
   2. She's hard-working. She always brings home both the paper grading and the worry. It's hard to leave teacher feelings at the school door. Most teachers take them home as does Mrs. Zajac. Many of her great ideas develop while she broods at home over some kid's plight.
   3. She has a big heart, enough to mourn for kids who have their own hardships at home, enough to get angry at these same kids when they need it.
   
   Tracy Kidder's book captures all of it. Highly recommended to college education majors and to veteran teachers who need a jump start to recall why they got into teaching in the first place.



2. This book has been an incredible relief for me to read. In the midst of my master's training in education (for a career change), I have been bogged down in the textbook version of a classroom--which is hard to translate into a real classroom. This book made me more aware--and consequently, less scared--of the plight of the teacher. Kidder puts you right into the life of Chris Zajac, and allows you to see how a "good" teacher deals with the realities of teaching.
   
   With so much focus on "improving" education through standardized testing, it is enlightening to observe the inner workings of a teacher working in the real world, confronting the real issues of humanity that are uniquely bequested to teachers.
   
   A great book that gives you real respect for the profession.



3. I am using this book with my community college students who plan to be teachers. I have taught in public schools at the elementary, middle, and college level and I wish someone had suggested that I read this book long ago. Tracy Kidder really gets inside Mrs. Zajac's thoughts and feelings about the challenges elementary school teachers face every day in their classrooms. This gives a very realistic view of the profession for people who plan to become teachers!



4. Although most people have attended school for years or still do so now, not very many people understand what it is like to be a teacher. Among Schoolchildren is the story of a teacher, Mrs. Christine Zajac, and her fifth grade class. It clearly and accurately displays what the school year is like for a teacher. It tells us of Mrs. Zajac's thoughts and the joys and challenges that she encounters while teaching. The amount of effort she puts into teaching is amazing. Even when she is not at school she is thinking about "her children." One example of her dedication is when Mrs. Zajac is grading social studies tests late into the night. She evaluates each child after grading his or her test and plans what she needs to do next. She loves all of the children despite their faults. Mrs. Zajac picks out the good in each student. She even sees the soft side of a troublemaker, Clarence, when she reads the admirable writing he does in class.
   Although Among Schoolchildren is nonfiction, much of the book, especially the parts that take place in the classroom, reads more like a novel. This book follows Mrs. Zajac and her class for a year, and also includes background information that makes the book more interesting and understandable. In between the sections about teaching, there are descriptions of what the community is like and stories about Mrs. Zajac's childhood and life outside of school. The author, Tracy Kidder (House, The Soul of a New Machine), has once again written an outstanding book. Among Schoolchildren won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1989. The award, according to the Robert F. Kennedy memorial website, "celebrates the book which most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes, his concern for the poor and the powerless...[and] his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance."
   Among Schoolchildren includes some similar themes and values as To Kill a Mockingbird. Characters in both books demonstrate courage. In To Kill a Mockingbird, a lawyer, Atticus Finch, defines courage as "when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." Atticus demonstrates courage when he takes on the case where a black man is accused of raping a white woman and will be tried before a white jury in the 1930s. Atticus knows he has almost no chance of getting the black man acquitted, but he chooses to defend the man anyway. In Among Schoolchildren, Mrs. Zajac also demonstrates courage. She teaches in a poor school district where many of the children live in rough conditions. She knows that many of them will not take advantage of the education she is trying to give them and that there is not a lot of parental support for the children. Many of them probably will not be successful later in life, but even knowing this, she educates the children to the best of her ability, hoping that some of them will retain the values and basic knowledge she has taught them.
   This book is a great read for anyone in high school and older, especially someone who is thinking about becoming a teacher. Among Schoolchildren shows the importance of education and how difficult it is to teach some kids. This book also reveals how hard life is for some children and how little support they have from home. Most of these poor children don't show a lot of interest in school or don't want to work hard, but Mrs. Zajac does her best to instill curiosity in them and make learning fun.



5. Chris Zajac really angered me. If her methods weren't working, why didn't she try new ones? I don't find her very intelligent. Why did she wait so long to talk to Robert's mother or file a report about his pysically abusing himself? She wasn't angered enough or frustrated enough to do so since a look subdued him and because he wasn't hurting anybody else, only himself.
   
   She'd rather keep Clarence from getting the appropriate help for him in order to make herself feel like she's helping him. She gets off on helping. The quiet kids who don't demand her attention in a negative way are neglected. Thanks to Al, the principal, not her, Clarence got the help he needed. Al was the one who called for the evalulation of Clarence, although not with the intention to help Clarence, but to protect the school if the kid were to commit a crime with the consequence of the authorities coming to ask for records.
   
   Surprisingly she saw that the Science Fair is unfair. Why doesn't she consider helping the kids during school? They seem to like working on projects and even doing the research. Also surprising is that she hasn't figured out that the homework battle she will never win. If the parents aren't going to help with science fair they are not going to help with homework. I never did homework until 7th grade. I got C's and D's. My mother meant well by believing that school was school and home was home. (Now I have a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquistion and Teaching. I teach 5th grade.)
   
   Chris Zajac defines an dversarial relationship with her students. As I read over and over again how she put her face so close o the kids' who weren't doing their work or who were misbehaving, I expected a kid to spit at her or bite her. That's what she made me feel like doing.
   
   Good teachers dont have to be work- and worry-a-holics who bring their work and troubles home. They need to be creative enough to solve the children's problems.
   
   To defend the saintly Chris a little, she should have more support from the administration. There need to be proceedures for the problems in her class. Collegues need to observe each other's classes. The administration has to provide the teachers the methods and resources to be more creative problem solvers in the classroom.

5 comments about Secret Ceremonies: Diary of a Mormon.

1. I finished this book quickly - it was a page-turner for me. I found the descriptions of Mormon ritual, garments, and thought very interesting. I live just outside "Zion" (as they call their territory), and there are many Mormons here - I live adjacent to two Mormon families. I've found copies of The Book Of Mormon INSIDE my garage (stamped property of their library), and have often wondered just what their lives are like, especially the women. The book also clarifies the reasons for the Mormon attitude and way of dealing with "the rest of us".
   
   After reading the book, however, I found that I identified with much of it more because of the time-frame than because of religion. The attitudes Ms. Laake talked about extended way beyond the LDS Church. The idea that the man's the boss in HIS house, that women are "less" and are to be controlled, and that the sex act itself is the biggest sin of all (for women) were prevelent then, and still are in some ways. Those of us who grew up in those days will find a lot of the incidents in this book familiar, Mormon or not.
   
   I've known many Mormons, and this book explains much that I had questions about, but never got answers to. I was unaware that Ms. Laake had passed away - that makes me sad - but I hope she came to terms with all of her troubles and found some happiness and peace.



2. This was a very well written book. It gave me an insight I had never hoped to find. I was grateful to have found this book. My step brother joined the Mormon religion so he could marry his high school girlfriend. The day he married, my step mother stood on the steps of the Temple fuming b/c NONE of his family was allowed inside during the Mormon ceremony. As Catholics we were not privy to their secrets and esoteric hoo-ha. I knew why were standing out there on the steps. I had read Deborah Laake's book. I wasn't sorry that I wasn't inside. I wouldn't want to stand there watching my brother pretend to disembowel himself. It's sick. Early on he started talking about having his own planet in the Celestial Kingdom or some such nonsense. He turned into a snotty jackass with delusions of grandeur. It was all very frightening. I think Deborah Laake was incredibly brave to try and find a life beyond being just another sheep. Her book really spoke of her existential struggle. I think if her church had been the loving community it professes to be, she'd have been able to ask questions and find some peace. She was a gifted writer. I found her story humorous at times and painfully tragic at others. I'm just devastated to learn that she committed suicide. The church turned against her for asking questions. She was excommunicated...kicked her out of her life. The self serving smug attitude of the church is the most un Christian behavior I have ever witnessed. It's a cult by definition. I Hope that Deborah Laake found her peace.



3. I was sad to read that Deborah Laake died a few years after she wrote this and wondered if the thought of dying of cancer provoked her to suicide or if it was disappointment in the direction her life took and maybe a sense of the looming condemnation from "the church", a term I use loosely. Anyway, it IS a page-turner, a bit too explicit for my taste in some parts, and pretty revealing concerning the Temple ceremonies. For someone wanting a Mormon woman's point of view, this one is priceless.



4. "The mind is a dark genius - it can rationalize anything."
   -- Denis Waitley
   
   The book "Secret Ceremonies" makes for a fascinating case study - and not just the one that the author was aiming for.
   
   Ms. Laake didn't know that her mental illness would return or that she was developing breast cancer and that she would eventually take her own life (February 6, 2000) when she was putting the finishing touches on this book back in the early 1990's. No, it's not in the book but that's how her story ends. But to fully understand the end one must rewind the tape and view the beginning and middle of the story - and that's where this one gets really interesting because there's a "take away" for everyone in this book.
   
   To this listener (I listened to the audiobook) the overarching, recurring theme in Ms. Laake's story is denial. This is hardly surprising since in order to survive in a cult one must remain in a constant state of denial.
   
   Specifically, one must deny your core values, beliefs, feelings and perception in favor of the new reality provided by the binding system. The psychological term for this is "snapping". The refusal (or reluctance) to "snap" will not enable you to fully participate in, let alone succeed in the group. Based on the mountain of testimonies from ex-Mormons it's clear that this "double bind snap" is the order of the day in the LDS Church. (For a full dissertation on this read "The Pattern of The Double-Bind in Mormonism" by Marion Stricker)
   
   Never-the-less, it's fascinating to see how denial was so internalized that it dominated Ms. Laake's thinking long after she was out of the church. As Terry Greene Sterling, a former colleague at the Phoenix Times put it, "Laake liked to think of herself as a brutally honest journalist, and she was, except when she wrote about herself." she goes on to explain, " . . . shortly after her suicide, I realized she had blamed Mormonism and the men in her life for her mental illness, for the terrible dark spells that followed the giddy manic highs." And there lays the platinum "take away" of this intriguing book - how Deborah Laake systematically denies any responsibility for her behavior and the damaged life that resulted from it.
   
   For example, Terry Greene Sterling goes on to document how, "She wept that Mormon leaders would not allow her to eulogize her mother during an upcoming church funeral, wouldn't even let her sit in the front of the church with the family. Of course, she should have expected such a reaction after ripping into the Mormon church in 'Secret Ceremonies,' but she couldn't recognize the ugly logic . . . "
   
   Another example is how she was so expert at choosing romantic pursuits that were dysfunctional to point of being destructive. The data provided in the book would indicate that she had a pattern of impulsively first romanticizing and later villanizing the men in her life. Her courtships are counted here in months as are her marriages and affairs. Yet Ms. Laake never seems to consider the possibility that she didn't let enough time elapse to really get to know her love interests before she made serious, life impacting physical and romantic commitments to them. It never seems to occur to her that she was only positively emotionally invested in the relationship until a major commitment -- such as marriage or living together -- was made.
   
   In other words, she never got to know the "real" person behind the "dream lover" before she gave herself up. Then as soon as the real person emerged suddenly, other new, idealized relationships seemed far more interesting. (If the discerning reader is wondering if Ms. Laake was exhibiting the classic symptoms of a romance addict you're not alone)
   
   In a similar vein, Ms. Laake employs a mocking tone toward the Mormon/LDS Church but there's no indication in the book that she any pursued other, more mainstream belief systems or philosophies. She never attempted to figure out why the LDS Church is defined as a "cult" rather than a "denomination" or "sect". Frankly, I didn't sense any real spiritual hunger in Ms. Laake, just a general disdain for authority figures in general, male authority figures in particular under girded by an emotive attention seeking personality.
   
   This is reflected in how the devout (both genders) and the leaders in the book (overwhelmingly male) come off as naive idiots that she is somehow smarter and superior to despite her lack of practical and theological education as well as her limited life experience relative to theirs. This is classic narcissistic, ego-driven grandiosity that this reviewer found trying -- it's amusing when it's coming from an ignorant, inexperienced adolescent but grating coming from a 40-something adult.
   
   As if to put a spotlight on this type of "baby with the bath water" thinking, in her summation Ms. Laake rejects any form of systematic theology labeling it "God as defined by controllers" as if only HER experience and understanding of God is legitimate and she is immune from controlling, manipulative behavior due to her "victim" role - which ironically is the historic "career path" for emerging cult leaders. (see Walter Martin's classic "The Kingdom of the Cults" for a full exposition)
   
   So in the end the big, troubling question that this book raises isn't, "Is the Mormon/LDS Church a wacky, controlling, potentially dangerous cult?" there are any number of fine books that have answered that in detail to the affirmative.
   
   Rather the better question is, "Was Deborah Laake's mental illness a result of being traumatized by the Mormon/LDS Church or by other factors?" This, I believe, is the better question because it elevates this intriguing and riveting book past it's banal particulars to far more valuable universal questions. As another reviewer (in this case an Ex-Mormon man) put it so well,
   
   "I think any Mormon who grew up in the church (especially females) can relate in some way to her story. Most of us haven't ended up in mental institutions, due in part, because of the pressures the church and our LDS families place on us, but it isn't too difficult to see how that could possibly happen. . . . Non-members, as well as former or current LDS members, should find this book to be a very interesting autobiography. "
   
   Or as Elizabeth Browning said so well, "Always learn from experience - preferably someone else's" To me, this book is a marvelous example of where an unexamined, unenlightened, self-absorbed life will lead you. The Mormon/LDS Church in that light simply becomes a minor character in this great and wonderful play called, "Life".
   
   Like I said at the beginning, there's a "take away" for everyone in this fine book and I highly recommend it!
   
   Books that expand on the issues raised in this book and review:
   ================================================================
   The Pattern of The Double-Bind in Mormonism
   
   Twisted Scriptures: A Path to Freedom from Abusive Churches
   
   Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships
   
   Boundaries
   
   Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You
   
   Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis.
   
   Keeping the Faith: Guidance for Christian Women Facing Abuse
   
   Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, The, repack: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church
   
   Healing Spiritual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Experiences
   
   Toxic Churches: Restoration from Spiritual Abuse



5. This poor woman seemed to have psychological problems which made her life pretty miserable. What is worse is how her church treated her. Evidently the way the Mormon church dealt with here after her divorce is standard. I found it appalling. I found the church's actions manipulative, invasive, and improper. It seems she has come out of her ordeal as a confident, productive person for which I applaud her.

No comments about They Called Him Stonewall.