This gallery contains 1 photos.
Today’s suggested topic for Armchair BEA (click on button at left to be taken to site) is writing about the best books of this year that we’ve read. However, since I’ve read only one book from 2011 this year, and … Continue reading
So continuing from yesterday where I counted my blessings through the prism of the physical life, mainly that I was glad to be alive, I now will count my blessings through the prism of the mental life. Yep, you guessed it, I’m glad I have a mind, especially considering that I had a late great-aunt who lost hers in her teens and never regained it. But seriously, even though that part about my late great-aunt is true, that for which I am thankful mentally is that I have a mind I can use to read books and watch movies, to distract myself from the yawning abyss.
So far this year, I’ve read 60 books and watched 64 movies. Right now I’m reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and next up on the movie front is Blood Diamond, which I’ve taken out of the library several times but never watched. Usually those are the best…for example, I remember taking this movie out several times and then finally getting to see it:
Out of the 60 books I’ve read this year, probably the one for which I’m most thankful to have read is Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese. Click through the link to read my review and see why. Meanwhile, out of the 64 movies I’ve seen so far this year, probably the one for which I’m most thankful to have watched is…argh, just one? really? ah, why did I do this to myself, okay, I’ll bite the bullet and say…
I don’t know about you, but Randy Newman gets me every time. Actually, it’s the perfect ending to a beloved animated series. I wouldn’t change a thing about it despite those three reviewers who gave it a rotten review on Rotten Tomatoes.
This weekend I hope to close the gap between books read and movies watched as I participate in Thankfully Reading 2010 this Friday through Sunday started by Jenn from Jenn’s Bookshelves (see previous link), Candace from Beth Fish Reads and Jen from Devourer of Books. My wife is working at her new job as a 9-1-1 dispatcher all weekend and I’m heading to my parents. I don’t have the books picked out yet, but I’m sure among them will be a few Charlie Chan mysteries by Earl Derr Biggers and a few No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books from Alexander McCall Smith. Beyond that, I have no idea.
So for what are you thankful mentally this year, including, but not limited to, books and movies?
Right now it’s neck and neck between the number of books I’ve read this year, 53, with the number of movies I’ve watched this year, 55. It looks like I’ll easily surpass last year’s numbers of 54 for books and 53 for movies. To see a list of the books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched, click here (with a link to my listography list of movies watched this year at the bottom of that page and trailers for all the movies on the listography list).
To learn how to order the book from Bancroft Book, click on the cover.
Among the best books I’ve read within the last few months have been Purple Jesus by Ron Cooper, which I reviewed last week and also coincidentally was released last week, Godric by Frederick Buechner and The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.
Far and away, though, my favorite book of this year (so far) was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Also extremely good was Memory by Donald E. Westlake, a novel from the 1960s that previously had been rejected by publishers but thankfully was published this year.
As for movies, from back in March, since the American version recently was released, I have to mention the original Swedish version, Let The Right One In:
(Note: Just playing the trailer now, with its creepy music, made my cat, who is sitting on my arm as I type this, jump up.)
Forget all other vampire movies. This one sets the bar high for all other vampire movies, period.
From September, I also have to mention this one:
because, well, it just rocks, period.
And last, but not least, I’ll throw in this one, which The Wife and I just watched the other night:
Fun for the whole family? You betcha. Plus some kick-ass graphics, to boot.
Click on cover to read first chapter
Title: Cutting for Stone
Author: Abraham Verghese
Publication Year: 2009
Genre: Fiction
Count for Year: 15
During a dinner last month with some friends from our church, two of them, who are in the medical professional, recommended Verghese’s first novel. They both gushed over how great a book it was and then at the end of the month Beastmomma in her Sunday Salon post mentioned how she was reading it also. Later, when I mentioned on Twitter that I was reading it, both Rebecca @ The Book Lady’s Blog and SuziQOregon @ Whimpulsive gushed over it also (click on links for their reviews).
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twin come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles — and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.
– from the back of the book
After hearing all the praise placed on this book, I thought, “Really? Is it really that good?” Those questions were answered just by reading the prologue which included passages like this:
Now in my fiftieth year, I venerate the sight of the abdomen or chest laid open. I’m ashamed of our human capacity to hurt and maim one another, to desecrate the body. Yet it allows me to see the cabalistic harmony of heart peeking out behind lung, of liver and spleen consulting each other under the dome of the diaphragm– these things leave me speechless. My fingers “run the bowel” looking for holes that a blade or bullet might have created, coil after glistening coil, twenty-three feet of it compacted into such a small space. The gut that has slithered past my fingers like this in the African night would by now reach the Cape of Good Hope, and I have yet to see the serpent’s head. But I do see the ordinary miracles under skin and rib and muscle, visions concealed from their owner. Is there a greater privilege on earth?
And this:
Some nights the crickets cry zaa-zee, zaa-zee, thousands of them drowning out the coughs and grunts of the hyenas in the hillsides. Suddenly, nature turns quiet. It is as if roll call is over and it is time now in the darkness to find your mate and retreat. In the ensuing vacuum of silence, I hear the high-pitched humming of the stars and I feel exultant, thankful for my insignificant place in the galaxy. It is at such times that I feel my indebtedness to Shiva.
To say, I was immediately hooked would be an understatement. I knew from such passages that this had the potential to be one of the best books I had ever read– and I’m glad to say that it lived up to that potential, thanks in great part to the incredible crafting of this novel by Verghese over several years. This, in short, is a masterpiece and deserves every award that it receives, including the 2010 Indies Choice Book Award for Adult Fiction, which will presented at Book Expo America 2010 in New York and the award for Fiction for books published in 2009 from the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association.
Like Rebecca in her review, I almost didn’t know where to begin to do justice to how great it is in such a small review like this, and even after taking my time to read the book over a few weeks, because I didn’t want to devour it in one sitting and wanted to absorb it and have it absorb me, I’m still somewhat at a loss how to do justice to its greatness. For me, truly the only way to do even partial justice is to give it my highest rating: 5 of 5, because well, in short, it’s that good– if not better than that. If I really were to do it justice, I’d give it a 6 out of 5.
No, don’t walk to get this one at your local bookstore or library. Run. Now.
5- Classic, must read
4- Worth owning a copy
3- Worth picking up at library
2- Worth skimming at the bookstore
1- Worth being a doorstop
If you have reviewed Cutting for Stone and would like your review to be listed here, add your link in the comments and I will add her as well.
FTC Disclosure (and plug for a local bookstore): I didn’t receive a copy of this book from the publisher, but purchased it at From My Shelf Bookstore in Wellsboro.
Posted in Books, Midweek Review, Mind
Tagged Abraham Verghese, book review, Books, Cutting for Stone
 |  |
 |  |
