AV Bible Believers Fellowship

I read this yesterday, for the second time:

I just finished The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. Wow.



I think I mentioned earlier I had started it. I took this book very personally. I read it at a perfect time in my life because it is about coming to terms with the past in middle age. It is about dealing with obsessions and attachments formed in childhood; ego, jealousy, and envy; facing sin and demons. It won the 1978 Booker Prize.

The author was a philosopher but not a Christian. While I plead to God for release from my tormenting obsessions and attachments, the best Iris Murdoch can offer is, "The past buries the past and must end in silence, but it can be a conscious silence that rests open-eyed. Perhaps this is the final forgiveness..." God offers me so much more hope than that.

I'm starting:

LINK REMOVED PER KG - INVALID URL

I'm really looking forward to it because I loved:

I must retract my statements in post #26. This has turned out to be a pretty good book after all:


At first, I was a little bit miffed because there's very little emphasis on the political activities behind the story, and I enjoy reading Turtledove's rendition of historical characters. But once I accepted that this was actually a war book, I got very involved.

Lynne, I think I've now read everything that Turtledove has written about WWII, except the two Pacific Theater books that Gary mentioned, and he never gets into the concentration camp stuff, or the atrocities. His characters mention them in passing, in whispers, but only as rumors, etc.

What amazes me in this book, as in all his books, is his even-handed depiction of the individuals on both sides. (Not Hitler or Stalin, but the soldiers and civilians.) He depicts good-hearted German soldiers and wicked German soldiers, as well as good-hearted and wicked English and Russian and French characters. All of these men, and the civilian characters he creates, are just individual people: he's excellent at this. (You got a taste of this in Ruled Brittania, with his sympathetic portrayal of the Spanish poet, amidst all the evil Spaniards.) In Hitler's War, one of the main sub-plots concerns a Jewish family living in Germany: the torn loyalties of the father, who served in WW I and wants to be a "good German," but can't; the teenagers who are alternately frightened and rebellious; etc. They're just very well drawn.

I'm not recommending this book to you, Lynne, because it is a war book; but it's a good example of his technique.

Boy, he's good.

(12-30-2009 07:42 PM)William Wrote: [ -> ]I must retract my statements in post #26. This has turned out to be a pretty good book after all:

At first, I was a little bit miffed because there's very little emphasis on the political activities behind the story, and I enjoy reading Turtledove's rendition of historical characters. But once I accepted that this was actually a war book, I got very involved.

Lynne, I think I've now read everything that Turtledove has written about WWII, except the two Pacific Theater books that Gary mentioned, and he never gets into the concentration camp stuff, or the atrocities. His characters mention them in passing, in whispers, but only as rumors, etc.

What amazes me in this book, as in all his books, is his even-handed depiction of the individuals on both sides. (Not Hitler or Stalin, but the soldiers and civilians.) He depicts good-hearted German soldiers and wicked German soldiers, as well as good-hearted and wicked English and Russian and French characters. All of these men, and the civilian characters he creates, are just individual people: he's excellent at this. (You got a taste of this in Ruled Brittania, with his sympathetic portrayal of the Spanish poet, amidst all the evil Spaniards.) In Hitler's War, one of the main sub-plots concerns a Jewish family living in Germany: the torn loyalties of the father, who served in WW I and wants to be a "good German," but can't; the teenagers who are alternately frightened and rebellious; etc. They're just very well drawn.

I'm not recommending this book to you, Lynne, because it is a war book; but it's a good example of his technique.

Boy, he's good.

I'm sure there is more Harry Turtledove in my future!

In the back of my copy of Ruled Britannia is an excerpt from In the Presence of Mine Enemies. It involves a character called Susanna. Is she a main character? Now I'm the first to admit I've always been a "girly" girl, and although I've enjoyed many books with men as main characters, I do like to read about women. God gave me a feminine mind. So what I'm really asking is: do any of his books feature female leads?

Lynne, are you going to read this one too? I just did a search on Kobo....

(12-30-2009 09:02 PM)Laura Wrote: [ -> ]Lynne, are you going to read this one too? I just did a search on Kobo....


,

I just saw that today! I don't know anything about it, but I'll be taking a close look because I love this author. What is Kobo?

(12-30-2009 09:16 PM)Lynne Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-30-2009 09:02 PM)Laura Wrote: [ -> ]Lynne, are you going to read this one too? I just did a search on Kobo....


,

I just saw that today! I don't know anything about it, but I'll be taking a close look because I love this author. What is Kobo?

It looks like an interesting book, actually.

Kobo used to be "Shortcovers;" it's one of the two main ebookstores I download (read: buy) from. I keep getting 25% off offers in my email which means I have to go browse the site.... you know how it is, LOL!

(12-30-2009 09:30 PM)Laura Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-30-2009 09:16 PM)Lynne Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-30-2009 09:02 PM)Laura Wrote: [ -> ]Lynne, are you going to read this one too? I just did a search on Kobo....


,

I just saw that today! I don't know anything about it, but I'll be taking a close look because I love this author. What is Kobo?

It looks like an interesting book, actually.

Kobo used to be "Shortcovers;" it's one of the two main ebookstores I download (read: buy) from. I keep getting 25% off offers in my email which means I have to go browse the site.... you know how it is, LOL!

Oh, I've got to check that out immediately. I've been purchasing ebooks from fictionwise and they've been having the sweetest sale, but it ends tomorrow.

(12-30-2009 08:19 PM)Lynne Wrote: [ -> ]I'm sure there is more Harry Turtledove in my future!

In the back of my copy of Ruled Britannia is an excerpt from In the Presence of Mine Enemies. It involves a character called Susanna. Is she a main character? Now I'm the first to admit I've always been a "girly" girl, and although I've enjoyed many books with men as main characters, I do like to read about women. God gave me a feminine mind. So what I'm really asking is: do any of his books feature female leads?

Susanna is a medieval scholar, and a Jew. There are other female characters that are equally important, including a ten year old girl, also a Jew. I can't say much more about their roles without giving away an important plot point. But the idea is that the Nazis, not the Soviets, won WWII on the eastern front, and now control all Eurasia. But they never did kill off all the Jews: and the plot involves how Jews survive. It's very good.

Turtledove has important female characters in all his books, but there are few "leads," male or female, as prominent as Shakespeare was. His cast of characters is usually bigger. In his masterpiece, The Guns of the South, one of the lead characters is a young prostitute who impersonates a man and serves in the Confederate army: she's based on an actual person, and is an absolutely crucial part of the book. In his Worldwar series, where the aliens invade during WWII, one of the most poignant characters is a little Chinese girl who is taken by the aliens, and raised, on their mother ship, as one of their own, as an "experiment." Since the series has five or six books, you follow her all the way up to adulthood.

Turtledove is good with female characters.