Anna Karenina: Part I

I could have seen this coming. I just finished Part I of Anna Karenina today. I thought I'd have plenty of time to read because I've taken two trips and spend a lot of time in transit. It turns out that it's really hard to read a monstrous paperback when there's a squirming infant in your lap. Also, I got waylaid by The Hunger Games trilogy (review coming ... someday).

Anyway, I'm taking the discussion questions from Christine at The Happily Ever After.

1.) "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

First of all, this is Russian literature. Are there any happy families? It's chilling to juxtapose this opening sentence with the six simple words on the opposing page of my copy: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." This cannot bode well.

I agree that there are many more ways to be dysfunctional than there are to be functional. However, different things make different people (and therefore different families) happy. I agree with Christine's assessment that Tolstoy overgeneralizes too much here. It does make for a memorable opening line, though.

2.) The story opens with the Oblonsky household in complete disarray as Dolly has discovered her husband, Prince Stepan "Stiva" Oblonsky had been having an affair with their young French governess. What are your first impressions of Stiva and Dolly? What do you think of the couple's quick reconciliation? Do you think Stiva got off the hook too easily?

Oh, Stiva. He's kind of lovably shallow. I wouldn't mind having a meal with him, but I certainly wouldn't want to be married to him. Dolly ... I had issues with how quickly she forgave him for his dalliance with the governess. I wanted to sit down with her with a nice cup of tea and give her a pep talk, tell her she was justifiably angry with him, encourage her to show some spine. (I guess it's good to be a 21st-century woman instead of a 19th-century woman.) But instead she chatted with Anna and she and Stiva experienced an inexplicably uncomplicated reconciliation. Stiva absolutely got off the hook too easily. Sure, he was genuinely remorseful, but he still had an affair. I was thoroughly puzzled by his attitude. It was like he hadn't given any thought to the consequences of pursuing the governess and so he was blindsided when the affair blew up in his face.

3.) Meanwhile, Oblonsky's childhood friend, the shy and awkward Konstantin Levin, "Kostya," arrives in Moscow from his country estate to propose to Dolly's youngest sister, Princess Katerina, "Kitty." What is your first impression of Levin and his friendship with Oblonsky?

Levin is my favorite character so far. Out of everyone we've met so far, he's the one I'd most want to be friends with myself. He seems like a genuinely good guy. He loves Kitty for who she is; he's certainly not playing with her like Vronsky. He has a complicated family life, but he's trying to mend his relationship with his estranged brother Nikolai. Oblonsky seems to approach his friendship with Levin the way he approaches everything else - casually, without recognizing the full significance of it. I do like that he appreciates Levin's love for his sister-in-law and genuinely wishes him the best.

4.) Princess Katerina is being courted by both Levin and Count Vronsky. What do you think of Kitty's decisions regarding these two men?

Kitty made the wrong decision and she knew it. She liked both Levin and Vronsky, but Vronsky was more charming and more infatuating. Plus he's a count. And her mother (who is totally Mrs. Bennett transported to Russia) was pressuring her to turn down Levin in favor of Vronsky. Levin is clearly the man to keep around for the long term. He'd make a faithful and devoted husband; Vronsky is a cad. Kitty only realizes the extent of her mistake when she sees Vronsky with Anna.

5.) What is your first impression of the title character, Anna Karenina? There is a strong magnetism between Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky from the first moment they meet. What is your first impression of these two characters?

I wanted to like Anna, and things started out well. She was nice to Vronsky's elderly mother on the train. She helped Stepan and Dolly mend their relationship. She was good with her nieces and nephews and obviously missed her little boy. But my stronger impression was her connection with Vronsky. Tolstoy writes of their encounter at the ball from Kitty's perspective, which had a lot to do with my negative reaction to it. I did feel like she swooped in and stole Vronsky from Kitty, even though he had no intention of asking her to marry him anyway. I feel sorry for Anna's husband. From the brief glimpse we got of him, he loves her but he's bland and dorky and utterly un-Jude-Law-ish. 

6.) What is your overall impression of the novel so far?

I'm enjoying it. It's interesting to read about imperial Russia right before the revolution, but I'm also interested in the characters.

Your Self-Confident Baby

Synopsis
The subtitle explains it perfectly: "How to encourage your child's natural abilities - from the very beginning"

My thoughts
I heard about this book from a friend who read it for a parenting class and described it as "liberating." I'd also recommend it - but with reservations.

Gerber was a founding director of Resources for Infant Educarers (not a typo), which I was not familiar with. Her philosophy emphasizes letting your baby do things his or her way. I do agree that kids are over-supervised and overstimulated. I needed to read this book because it helped me realize that I didn't need to be in my baby's face all the time. It's more than okay to put him on the floor with his toys. He needs to explore the world on his own. My job is to make sure he's safe, not to direct his every move. I'm intrigued by Gerber's insistence that even very small babies are capable of more than we give them credit for and do not need to be "babied."

Gerber favors simple toys and I agree with her. Her toy box is much more streamlined than mine is, but I've stayed away from things with batteries. I like colorful rattles that make fun noises and are interesting to look at and textured toys that my son can explore by grabbing and putting in his mouth.

I appreciate that Gerber explains the motives behind her recommendations and outlines what results you are likely to see not just immediately but years in the future. Because of this, it's a good book to read at any time during early childhood, not just infancy.

However, I do think kids need more limits than Gerber suggests. For example, she says you should ask your child's permission to do things like diapering and changing clothes. I think certain things are non-negotiable and it's okay to tell children what you expect and then expect them to do it. In short, only ask your child to do something if you are prepared for a negative answer; otherwise, tell them. I also had to laugh when I got to the part where she said that she doesn't approve of patting babies on the back to burp them because patting is a form of hitting. And unfortunately, her message is undermined by poor writing.

Bottom line
There are some extremely good points in this book and I've taken away some valuable tips. However, it is a smidge too hands-off for me.

Fine print
Your Self-Confident Baby, by Magda Gerber and and Allison Johnson
Genre: parenting
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

Touchpoints

Synopsis
Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton guides parents through all the major "touchpoints" of their child's first three years.

My thoughts
I'm considering buying this book. I'm also considering finding a new pediatrician. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with my pediatrician, but she's not T. Berry Brazelton. Which I suppose is not her fault.

The book is organized exceptionally well. The first sections are arranged chronologically. Brazelton starts out by describing his meetings with parents before the baby is even born and describing the baby's (and the parents') development over the first three years. I read the four-month chapter right before my baby's four-month appointment and it was a huge help.

There are also sections devoted to common issues - behavioral problems, separation anxiety, teething. These give you a good idea of why issues crop up and what you can do about them. I like Brazelton's approach. He often goes through multiple solutions for a problem and discusses their pros and cons. His advice is balanced and non-judgmental, which is a rarity in parenting books. It's a large part of what made me trust Brazelton's advice, and I like his conversational tone. He clearly knows what he's talking about, but he doesn't talk down to the reader. His advice is gentle but firm - for example, if you notice the signs of developmental delay, it's normal to hope you are mistaken and to wish your child would improve without intervention, but it's imperative to get help as soon as possible.

Brazelton excels when it comes to describing social and emotional development, not just physical development. Brazelton stresses that toddlers use their friends to test the limits of what's socially acceptable, it's totally normal for toddlers to make each other cry, and they'll figure it out themselves. (I'm sure I'll need to reread that it a couple years for reassurance.)

Brazelton also does a good job of interpreting events from a child's perspective. When describing croup, he lists the symptoms a parent will notice and acknowledges that it is alarming for a parent to watch a child struggle to breathe. But he also describes how scary it is for the child - and how much scarier it is if the parent panics.

He also recognizes the relationship between parent and child is full of both joyous events and frustrating power struggles. He writes with sympathy for both parent and child.

Bottom line
More valuable than the parenting books I actually own.

Fine print
Touchpoints, by T. Berry Brazelton
Genre: parenting
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

The Guns of August

Synopsis
An insightful account of the escalating tensions in Europe that led to the outbreak of World War I and the first fateful campaigns in the conflict.

My thoughts
Barbara Tuchman is in a class of her own. A history of the diplomatic failures that led to World War I could get bogged down in grim details and cumbersome trivialities, but Tuchman deftly navigates through the mess in less than 100 pages and then goes on to describe the battles leading up to the Marne. Her writing style is unparalleled, and she has a gift for weeding through the banalities of history and focusing on a few gems to tell a story. Tuchman obviously did a painstaking amount of research - combing through memoirs, diaries, newspapers, official reports, and other contemporary accounts - and she managed to whittle everything down into an engrossing history. This book is compulsively readable, but it's also about a very serious subject.

I never realized the extent of the sheer incompetence on all sides of the war. Europe's leading military minds considered war inevitable and they spent decades preparing for the conflict, yet when it came they were all unprepared and hampered by inflexibility. The Germans had a strict timeline and their insistence on sticking to it left them unable to improvise when unforeseen events arose. Personality conflicts between the French and British officers went so deep that they seriously undermined the war effort. Most tragic were the Russians. Tuchman is in her element describing their state of (un)preparedness:

Insofar as readiness for war was concerned, the regime was personified by its Minister for War, General Sukhomlinov, an artful, indolent, pleasure-loving, chubby little man in his sixties of whom his colleague, Foreign Minister Sazonov, said, "It was very difficult to make him work but to get him to tell the truth was well-nigh impossible." ... In 1913 he dismissed five instructors of the [Staff] College who persisted in preaching the vicious heresy of "fire tactics."

That's right, the Russian War Ministry was led by a man who didn't recognize the power of guns and cannons over bayonets.

One of the most chilling accounts in the book discusses the German Army's use of terrorism to cow the citizens of Belgium. The Germans cut through Belgium to get through France; they didn't want to do it, but it was the quickest way to get to France and then the Belgians had the gall to resist, which messed up their unforgiving timeline. In an effort to get the Belgians to behave, the Germans began trying various forms of terrorism, including burning cities and executing hostages. This did not have the intended effect; in fact, it inspired even more resistance. It's hardly the first time an invading army has resorted to terrorism, but it struck me as especially disturbing.

Bottom line
Read it, even if you have no interest in or knowledge of World War I.

Fine print
The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman
Genre: history
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

Fifty Shades of Grey

Overview
Naive goody-goody Anastasia Steele begins her post-college life as a sex slave to a powerful business tycoon.

My thoughts
Atrocious. That about sums up the whole book. Or at least the first 92 pages, which were all I managed (and I think I deserve some sort of medal for making it that far - either that or a slap upside the head for wasting even that much time on it).

First and foremost, I hated Ana. She was whiny, spineless, and clueless. Literally everything she did made me cringe. Ana is so inept at everything (simple things, such as walking and talking) that I found it incomprehensible that anyone would find her attractive. I want a protagonist I can root for in my escapist fantasy, but Ana is too weak. I also hated Christian Grey because of his staggeringly high creep quotient. This is supposed to be erotica, but there's nothing erotic or romantic about a man who pursues and then takes advantage of a vulnerable, barely legal girl (and let's be clear - she's supposed to be what, 21? 22? But her emotional maturity is vastly lower).

Oh, the writing was awful. It's so appalling it's distracting.

Bottom line
If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you? I figured that if everyone else was reading it, it must be good. I figured wrong.

Fine print
Fifty Shades of Grey, by E L James
Genre: erotic fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from a friend

Empress Orchid

Synopsis
Orchid is picked from obscurity and lifted into the elite world of the Forbidden City as one of the Emperor's wives. She could influence a nation - but if she crosses the wrong people she could end up worse than dead.

My thoughts
Historical fiction is hard. You have to transport the reader to a different time with unfamiliar customs, and it's challenging to gracefully overcome the reader's culture shock. There's a dearth of good Asian historical fiction in English. I haaaated Shogun (the Westerner swoops in, sweeps up the girl, and saves the day with his brilliance? Blech.) I didn't care for Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (neither the writing nor the story wowed me). I did love Memoirs of a Geisha, but I was in college when I read it and I'm afraid to reread it just in case I got caught up in the love story and the book actually isn't that great.

Last year I read Anchee Min's devastating novel of the Cultural Revolution, Wild Ginger. And then I read Jung Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which was all the more devastating because it was true. Wild Ginger didn't have the most original story or the most compelling writing, but I was eager to read Empress Orchid. It's been on my shelf for years (it was a Richard & Judy book pick in 2006 when I was hanging around England watching things like Richard & Judy for a few months). And I hate to say it, but now that I've read it ... it failed to bring one of the most tragic periods of Chinese history to life for me, largely because it failed to translate life in the Forbidden City in a natural way, which may be an impossible task anyway.

The subject matter is thrilling. In the late nineteenth century, the Qing Dynasty was crumbling, threatened from the outside by powerful foreign adversaries and crippled on the inside by domestic infighting and corruption. A woman stepped up to take the reins of leadership. She inspired fear and suspicion among her male contemporaries. Historians placed the blame for the eventual fall of the dynasty on her shoulders. She must have been a remarkable woman. Who else could have seized power and held it for four decades? But the novel brought me no closer to understanding who she was or how she did it.

Bottom line
This is a prequel to the real drama and tragedy in Orchid's life, but I don't feel the need to pick up the next book.

Fine print
Empress Orchid, by Anchee Min
Genre: historical fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book