Earth's Children #2: The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel

Read: 19 June, 2010

Cast out from the only people she's ever known, Ayla heads north in the hopes of finding the people she was born to, the Others. But when she finds no one after weeks of travelling and she feels winter approaching, she makes a new home for herself in a sheltered valley.

Loneliness soon sets in and, after killing a mare and discovering the orphaned foal, she is inspired to adopt an animal for company - something that no human has ever done before. Whinny becomes her trusted companion and hunting partner, and the two are joined by Baby, a cave lion cub. Meanwhile, Jondalar sets off with his brother to take a journey, following the Great Mother River all the way to its end. The two brothers are attacked by a cave lion, and Jondalar is saved by Ayla's control over the animals.

Though not nearly as good as Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel's meticulously researched second novel is still fairly interesting. There's a lot to learn about the Ice Age and its inhabitants (both human and non).

Earth's Children #1: The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

Read: 17 April, 2010

By far the best in the Earth's Children series (I've now completed book 4), Clan of the Cave Bear is also the most content-dense. While the next three books will cover a fairly short piece of the saga each, mixed in with a whole lot of filler, Cave Bear tells a much larger chunk of the story.

A little girl named Ayla is orphaned when an earthquake takes her mother, but is adopted by Iza and Creb (medicine woman and Mog-ur, or shaman, of the Clan). The Clan is different from Ayla's people, a different branch of the human tree, and Ayla must learn to fit in with people who learn by unlocking ancestral memories, and who have clearly defined gender roles. But Ayla has been chosen by the Cave Lion, a powerful totem who can help her survive with her new family.

The story is an interesting one. It goes beyond mere culture clash and into the realm of interspecies exchange. The Clan are different, physically, in the way they learn and in the way they communicate, and Ayla is reminded of that difference at every turn. But unlike many a space traveller, she was orphaned as a very young child and has no memories of her own culture, no previous imprinting to give her confidence when she comes into conflict with Clan ways. Instead, she is a blank slate that must bend itself into culture it was not designed for.

It's a beautiful story with plenty of conflict and a good dose of love and hope. Ayla, though something of a Mary Sue, is still sufficiently endearing for me to root for her.

Earth's Children #4: The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel

Read: 23 May, 2011

Ayla and Jondalar continue on their journey back to Zelandonii lands, a journey that takes them just over a year. On the way, they revisit the Sharamudoi from The Valley of the Horses, meet a tribe that has enslaved its men, and have various other adventures.

For nearly half the book, Ayla and Jondalar are travelling alone. Rather than simply skip ahead to more interesting bits, Auel made the interesting choice of narrating two people walking for hundreds of miles. I'm not sure that I've ever read anything quite so boring. Perhaps sensing that "two people walk a really long distance" does not an interesting story make, Auel decided to splice in a sex scene every couple pages. They come in such rapid succession and are so gratuitous that even the most ardent romance novel fan couldn't help but feel some burn-out.

Indeed, the first 300 or so pages could have been cut out without losing any story. There are a couple interesting incidents, but these could easily have been strung together with far less padding in between.

As a result, it took my nearly two months to read the first half of Plains of Passage. Once I passed that hump, however, and our travellers started meeting people, I read the rest in a mere two weeks - leaving me ready for the next instalment. Like a junky, I just keep coming back...

The point of the novel, beyond simply getting Ayla back to Jondalar's people so we can deal with that drama, was for her to confront her past with the Clan and make sense of the relationship between Clan and Others. Like in The Mammoth Hunters, her heritage is outed a couple times and she must deal with the prejudice that brings. When the travellers meet the S'Armunai, they see what happens when Clan gender-specific roles are corrupted and brought into an Other society. Later, Ayla gets to actually meet a few members of the Clan (and a half-breed).

I very much enjoyed the interactions with the Clan, particularly the Clan encounter itself. I had a feeling that the book was moving toward a Clan encounter (even without cheating and looking at the map) and I was eagerly awaiting it. Of course, it didn't happen until nearly at the very end, but it was well worth it.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Read: 22 May, 2011

Fairly standard, as far as these types of novels go. The fallen woman is morally unimpeachable - getting the reader on her side and thinking that maybe, just maybe, one sexual mistake oughtn't condemn a woman forever - but she still has to die to satisfy Victorian bloodthirsty sensibilities.

Then again, we don't read Victorian novels when we want our plots to be ground breaking.

I enjoyed the juxtaposition between Angel Clare's sexual indiscretions to Tess's. As she says, they are truly the same, and yet he gets to live while she must die. But the point is still made. And, at least, Alec d'Urberville is suitably punished.

I was interested by the repetition of the word "mechanical" in descriptions of Tess. I'm not sure what it means, but it appeared frequently enough that it must mean something. I'm sure someone, somewhere, has written a dissertation on it.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Read: 18, May, 2011

In 1984, Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica, were murdered in their home in American Fork, Utah. Eighteen years later, Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah. In both cases, the crimes were committed by Mormon fundamentalists who believed in the doctrine of Celestial (plural) Marriage.

In Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Krakauer investigates these two crimes, splicing in the Mormon story and the events that lead to the schism between the Fundamentalist church with the more mainstream LDS church. He also takes a hard look at some of the Mormon scriptures that the Lafferty brothers and Elizabeth Smart's kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, used to justify their actions.

In particular, Krakauer condemns the idea of continuing revelation, saying that it makes it possible for individuals to justify any action as revealed commandment from God. With this idea firmly entrenched in Mormonism, it is almost impossible for the more mainstream leaders to rein in the crazies. In the background, throughout all the narratives, patriarchal polygamy looms.

The book is very strong in its narrative, but doesn't set out to make a point or place blame. As a result, Under the Banner of Heaven couldn't legitimately be called an anti-Mormon book. It also meant that there wasn't a good sense of scale - How many women are currently in polygamous relationships? How many children are being raised in these families and, potentially, being forced into marriages themselves? How often are crimes relating to Mormon polygamy committed?

Overall, I found it to be a very good read. Krakauer is a great storyteller and the stories themselves are interesting (albeit difficult to stomach). And, while Under the Banner of Heaven does give a fairly clear picture of the specific individuals and events covered, it's hard to extrapolate that into any kind of knowledge about Mormonism or patriarchal polygamy.

Most quotable line: "If you want to know the truth, I think people within the religion, people who live here in Colorado City, they're probably happier on the whole than people on the outside. But some things in life are more important than being happy - like being free to think for yourself."

Godless by Dan Barker

Read: 5 March, 2011

Godless has been on my reading list for a very long time, but I somehow never got around to it. Finally, bored with a long string of novels and wanting to read something a bit different, I took it out of the library.

I got about a quarter of the way through before I realized that I had to own a copy - a copy I could mark up and keep forever and ever and ever (and possibly hug, pet, and name George). Yes, the book is that good. So I ordered a copy and then started back at page one, highlighter in hand.

The book is part autobiography and part argument in favour of Atheism (or, mostly, against Christianity), written by a former Evangelical preacher. It's divided into four parts: part one describes Barker's life as a Christian and part four describes his life as an Atheist, with the two middle chunks giving his arguments for transitioning from one to the other. It's at once a deeply personal novel, the story of one man's deconversion and his experiences, while at the same time serving the same general anti-theist and pro-atheist purpose as other Gnu Atheist books.

Richard Dawkins wrote the forward to the book, which was something of a shame. As much as I loved The God Delusion, Dawkins was never really a Christian - at least not in the same way that Barker was - and his perspective is just too different. As a result, he came at religion hard in his four allotted pages. He did this in his general anger towards the "tyrant," filled with justified indignity, but lacking the personal experience and scriptural knowledge that Barker would follow with. I found that it didn't strike the right chord for the book, and it really didn't contribute anything.

As I said earlier, Part One describes life as an Evangelical (and the deconversion experience that follows). In this section, Barker describes his beliefs as a Christian, trying to recapture and convey the feelings and ideas from the awkward position of now finding them ridiculous. This awkwardness actually made the section an even more enjoyable read, as Barker peppers his descriptions of his Christian life with hilarious (although at times rather sad) commentary.

Part Two was a weak point in the book for me. Barker tackled some of the more common arguments for God put forward by theologians (the ontological argument, Pascal's Wager, etc). Unfortunately, this has the effect of taking these arguments seriously - something that no one over the age of about four should be doing (I mean, really: "We can imagine a god, therefore God exists"? "Everything requires a cause, therefore there must be an uncaused first cause"? Good grief!). I also found that some of Barker's counter-arguments didn't make much sense to me, lacking in some logical steps. That being said, I fully admit to the possibility that the arguments on both sides might simply be over my head.

This section did include a chapter, entitled "Dear Theologian" which was written as a first-person letter from God to theologians. While it suffered from the same defects as the rest of Part Two, I did find the approach to be rather unique and interesting in its playfulness. It was certainly a novel way to present some of the common Atheist complaints!

Part Three focused on Christianity, and this is where Barker really shines as a contribution to the Atheist movement! This whole section was incredibly quote-heavy, as Barker drew from his in-depth knowledge of the Bible to offer up contradictions, moral issues, etc. It was so much more grounded and scripture-based than what I've read from other Atheists and I managed to run straight through two highlighters.

And finally, Part Four returns to Barker's personal experiences as he describes life as an Atheist. This section was quite a bit less interesting than Part One, lacking the same self-deprecating humour. Much of it read like a laundry list of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's accomplishments, which I I found rather tiresome. The chapter "Life and Death Matters" returned to some much more interesting philosophizing, although I have to say that, being pregnant, I could have done without his story about Annie Laurie Gaylor suffering from eclampsia.

I've been pretty hard on Godless, and there were certainly large portions that I ended up skimming, but the book as a whole is well worth the read! I've said this a couple times now, but I found it so much more targeted than other Atheist books I've read - Barker is writing from a position of insider knowledge of Christianity, and he's coming in armed with quotes. It felt as though he already knew all the objections, and he could address them preemptively. Authors like Dawkins and Harris have been great from a high-level, general criticism of religion perspective, but Barker is far more of an authority on Christianity. I found this incredibly valuable and interesting.

Belly Laughs by Jenny McCarthy

Read: 4 March, 2011

I'm not a Jenny McCarthy fan. Most of my exposure to her has been through her anti-vaccination efforts, and I'm not really disposed to think favourably of someone who puts kids in danger like that - no matter how well-meaning they may be. But I had heard good things about her book, Belly Laughs. So when I saw it on the shelf at my midwife's office, I decided to purge myself of all negative feelings towards McCarthy and give her book a fair shake.

The first thing I want to say is that I only had about an hour to read it. I read pretty fast and it's a short book, but I definitely skimmed it - flipping ahead through chapters that interested me, etc. So anything I say is definitely going to be very "first impressions-y." This is not supposed to be a well-thought-out critique!

The point of the book is to reveal the gross and ugly side of pregnancy, the weird changes that are often glossed over. As I've said before, I think there's a lot of value to having this sort of discussion. Certainly for me, I found a lot of comfort in hearing about the really bad stuff because I felt like if I could wrap my head around that, nothing else will seem quite as bad.

As some Amazon reviews commented, Belly Laughs can get pretty crass. Again, this doesn't really bother me. I actually appreciate the "girl talk" tone McCarthy adopts. That being said, it was perhaps a little too much like a "girl talk" conversation, sometimes feeling as though she had written the whole thing in an afternoon. I think the book would have had a lot more value if, for example, each chapter had started with her personal experiences, and then followed up with some information (why it's happening, how to alleviate it, etc.). As it was, it might make pregnant women feel like they aren't so alone, but it won't do much more than that.

So I generally enjoyed the book. It was funny, it was rather interesting, but it had no real value. I would pity anyone who spent money on it, although a library check-out may be appropriate (actually, don't bother. Just sit down and read it right in the library. It's so short that you'll probably get through it and won't have to deal with the obligation of returning it on time!).

But there was one detail in the book that really bothered me - Jenny McCarthy apparently has a very negative body image. Worse, she seems to think that this is normal, or accurate. I suppose some of this may be due to where she lives and the type of career she's in, or perhaps to the fact that I live under a rock and have very little exposure to mass media, but I found it rather disturbing.

In one chapter, she's describing having sex with her then-husband, and how he couldn't possibly be turned on by her disgusting body! Personally, I don't think I've ever felt quite so sexy as I have while pregnant (and D certainly seems to enjoy the "beach ball," saying it's like I have an extra butt on the front - try scrubbing that image of marital bliss from your brain!). McCarthy describes with horror the discovery that she can no longer wear thongs (although she does discover how wonderfully comfortable regular underwear can be), and she berates herself for not "giving" her husband blow-jobs while she wasn't feeling up to having sex, as though sexual gratification were some kind of duty rather than a shared experience.

It made me sad to read - not just for McCarthy herself, but for the (perhaps correct) assumption that most of her readership will accept these sorts of things as perfectly normal.