This week's completed book is Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin. This was an excellent book, read with my on-line book group. A mom of adult children goes missing. The story goes back to her earlier life, the children as they grow, and back to the current time of adult children searching for their mom.
The characters are varied and deep, and the story is beautiful, almost poetic at times. Surprising things are revealed about the mom. It really makes the reader think about family relationships, especially the life of one's mom. Does it feel like "mom has always just been mom"? You may think differently after you read this book.
Currently I am reading My Name is Mary Sutter, another excellent book. I am really amazed at how strong and resolute women had to be when they felt ambitions beyond motherhood and home care back in the days of yore. Intellectually I know it took guts and fortitude. But reading how they had to rally against the day-to-day beating down of their ambitions, and still persevere, makes me even more proud of the strong shoulders on which I stand today. If it had not been for strong foremothers, I would not be where I am today, in a happy marriage of equals, in a career that pays me a decent wage and treats me with respect, and drawing a pension with good benefits, not to mention able to own property, vote, serve on a jury trial, and have my rights defended when/if I am wronged.
I'm 33% into My Name is Mary Sutter, so that's about all I know for now. I am going to predict that I will continue to love this book and will rate it highly.
I have loved the run of excellent books I've been reading lately. All winners! Next Monday I will deliver 20 free copies of Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, as part of the USA's first year participation in World Book Night. I loved that book (read it twice) and am excited to give away some free copies. Check back in a few days and I may report on my give-away experience.
2 comments:
Very nice post and no damned quilts.
After my mother died, I found photos of her taken right after she and my father were married, before I came along. It was odd. The woman in the photos was not my mother. They had been out for a walk in the woods and she was just dressed casually. She was attractive, sexy, vibrant, and happy. I never knew that woman. By the time I was old enough to understand such things, the woman in the photo had become Ma...something of a battle axe (her own description) that fought my father tooth and nail over his drinking. There was another photo of my father and mother on their wedding day. My mother wasn't gussied up as a bride, there wasn't money for "traditions" like that. She was just nicely dressed as was my father. They were happy. My heart pined for the people in that photo. I never knew them.
Regarding the careers of women, how many times do you read of women just a few decades ago that were denied positions or education because of their gender. Has the human race been so well off that we could deny half the population of their dreams and abilities? I did a post on Marie Curie. The road blocks that she suffered as a woman are simply amazing. It is telling to look at old photos of scientific conferences. She is the only woman in the photo.
I worry about the younger women. They seem to think that women's rights were handed out in the constitution. The right to vote is not yet 100 years old.
I put my copy of Zeitoun in the teacher lounge for someone else as I didn't like it... oh well...Have fun giving away the books!
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