People of the Book - Book Review

People of the Book
By Geraldine Brooks
Viking Penguin 2008
Author Website

I have been wanting to read this book for some time, and finally was able to borrow it from the library. I enjoyed it very much.


I love reading stories about books through time and the history of their travels - no matter if its fictional or real. Normally I dont read books about Jewish scrolls and manuscripts. but this book had an Australian as the lead character. Having grown up with Aussies as neighbours, I chose to read it.

As a lot of other reviews have said, there has obviously been a LOT of research done for this book. This is the story of the history of one jewish haggadah. A haggadah is a book of prayers usually said at the passover celebration. This haggadah had illustrations in it. Back in the 1400s when this haggadah was made, Jews did not allow illustrations in their books becasue making a graven image was against the Torah. (What we now call the 10 commandments).

Dr Hanna Heath is a manscript conservator. [If I had known that this job existed when I left school over 20 years ago, I would have gone to university to study how to do this]

Hanna's job is to repair and preserve the ancient books that still survive today. She has a Ph.D. Her mother has an MD and a Ph.D. Hanna's mother is a neurosurgeon. Hanna grew up with no father and every time she asked her mother who he was, her mother refused to answer.

In 1996 the faous Sarajevo Haggadah was finally permitted to be on display. It had last been seen in Sarajavo during the war (WW2). Noone knoew what happened to it, and finally after 50 years it has resurfaced.

Hanna was chosen for this job becasue she was an Australian, more or less neutral. She was not American, she was not German and she was not a Jew.

In 1996, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia were all in the middle of a civil war. Hanna flew to Sarajevo under the auspices of the UN and spent s few weeks studying and doing what she could to preserve the Haggadah.

There were clues to be found in the book - a small piece of a butterfly wing in the binding, a wine stained page with blood mixed in, and some salt crystals. Hana used all these to discover the history of the book, where it was made and where it had travelled to, before finally arriving in Sarajevo.

During this journey, Hanna's mother is involved in a car accident and is rushed to hospital. Hanna's mother finally tells Hanna who her father was. Her father died when her mother was 4 months pregnant with Hanna. The mother was a neurosurgeon and she allowed her lover to bleed to death, because she knew her lover would be blind if they saved his life. The father was an artist. He needed his eyes to paint. Not only that, he was a Russian Jew.

The story ends with the haggadah being stolen and a fake haggdah being installed in the mueseum. Hanna's career is ruined when she says it is fake, and noone believes her. Hanna goes home to Australia and finds a new job recording and preserving the aboriginal petroglyphs scattered through the Australian desert.

Hanna also changed her name from Heath to Sharansky (her father's name). Six years later Hanna finally gets closure and has her career restored when the real haggadah is once again returned to its rightful place in the Sarajevo Museum. Hanna also makes up with the muslim lover she had met in Sarajevo and who helped to ruin Hanna's career. He apologises, she forgives him and together they make one final discovery about the Haggadah.

I fashioned these pictures for Binyamin ben Netanal ha-Levi. Zahra bint Ibrahim ak-Tarek, known in Seville as al-Mora

I have just one complaint about this book. Ms Brooks has certainly done a lot of research regarding the history and lives of the jews in Europe after they were expelled from Spain in 1492. But there is ONE line in the book which she has NOT researched. She seems to have made no attempt to find out the truth for herself.

The line says this - I think also about the person whose skin is stretched across the lampshade.

It has been proven that the lampshdes made at Buchenwald Camp in WW2 were made of GOAT skin and NOT human skin.

In April 1947, Ilse Koch was brought before an American military tribunal in Dachau, where she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison....During the review process, her sentence was reduced to time served, or four years, and she was released in 1949 by General Lucius D. Clay who said that the lamp shades in her home had been made from goat skin.

Woodward and Bernstein - Life after Watergate - Book Review

Woodward and Bernstein - Life in the Shadow of Watergate
By Alicia Shepard
John Wiley and Sons 2007
Website

Did you ever wonder Whatever Happened To those two Washington reporters that brought down President Nixon? And no I dont mean Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. They are actors. They just portrayed the real reporters.


This book tells the story of what happened to Woodward and Bernstein before during and after Watergate.

Bernstein never really was able to keep up any decent career. During the watergate saga, the two men had written and published the book All the Presidents Men. This is the book on which Robert Redford based his hit movie of the same name.

Numerous times after the movie was rleased, whenever Carl Bernstein went to places like restaurants and said his name was Carl Bernstein, the journalist, he was frequently told that he was a liar. The real Bernstein was in All the Presidents Men.

Bernstein's personality meant that he got bored easily and kept jumping from story to story. He married (and divorced) Nora Ephron before she became famous as the writer of such movies as - Silkwood, When Harry met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You Got Mail. They have two sons (born between 1976 and 1980). Bernstein left the Washington Post and was later courted by ABC (I think) to do a daily TV show. Eventually Bernstein was fired from the TV show because he was not comfortable speaking with the guests or to the camera

Bob Woodward stayed at the Washington Post and used that as a jumping off point to write more books on Politics. They are all listed on Bob's website.

This book ends with the 2005 exposure of Deep Throat as being FBI senior employee Mark Felt. If you are interested in Watergate and want to know what happened next, then you have to read this book.


Bernstein and Woodward as played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in the 1976 movie All the President's Men









The REAL Bernstein and Woodward in 1974








The REAL Bernstein and Woodward in 2008

An Earthly Knight - Book Review

An Earthly Knight
by Janet McNaughton
Harper Collins 2003


Janet McNaughton is a Canadian author and has written a number of Young Adult books. This fictonal novel is also a YA book but I enjoyed it very much. Set in 1162, this is the story of Janet and her love for the fairy knight Tam Lin.


When Janet's father agrees to marry her off to William de Warenne, the brother of King Malcom of Scotland, Janet disagrees with the idea. William de Warenne is a brute, a rapist and an uncouth man. He thinks nothing of raping women and treating them like slaves and brood mares. Only good for breeding. Janet was raised to be somewhat more independent.

Janet flees her home to the forest, and ends up at Carter Hall, the ruins of the old LIN family manor house. There is a legend that says that the LIN family who used to own Carter Hall all died of food poisoning except for the youngest son and one stable boy. Those boys have never been seen since.

As a 14 year old, Tam Lin was seduced by the Fairy Queen and now lives in the Faery world. He desperately wants to return to the real world, but he cannot. Only one thing can save him. The love of a women. Janet and Tam (now aged 21) fall in love and eventually sleep together. Janet is 16 (an old maid in those times).

So when Janet is standing in the church at the betrothal ceremoney, she tells William, the priests and her father that she cannot marry William because she is with child by another. William wants to beat her black and blue. But she is saved by Eudes, Janet's brother, who tells them that William needs to punish himself as he has gotten at least two other young girls with child recently, and now they have NO future. William sulks at being found out, and then goes home. Janet is free to go to Tam Lin, but first she must rescue him from the Faery World.

This is a fictionalised version of the ballad of TAM LIN from Scotland. It comes from the Scottish Borders.

Now while I do have ancestors from Scotland, NONE of my ancestors came from the Borders region. My ancestors were Celtic and Gaelic from the Scottish Highlands, and in one line, may even be of Viking and Norse ancestry.

This was a very enjoyable read, and I was able to finish the book in just a few hours.

Chalked up - Book Review

Chalked Up
By Jennifer Sey
Morrow Books 2008
Jennifer's Blog

This is the true story of an elite Gymnast on the US national gymnastics team during the 1980's and how she eventually walked away to save her life.

For those of you who know me, Gymnastics has been my most favourite sport to watch since I first saw Nadia in 1976

Jennifer tells the story of dieting, binging, bulimia and what really happens in the world of gymnastics. This is a hard book to read, but at least now I know the truth of what really happens and how many mothers become pushy mothers without realising it.

One of the reason Jennifer Sey was not able to advance in her gymnastics career is that she was plagued with injuries. She suffered a broken leg at one event, and broke her ankle at another.

in 1986 Jennifer became the US national woman's gymastics champion, but the timing was all wrong. She would now be required to keep up her fitness levels for the next 2 years in order to qualify for the 1988 Olympics. Jennifer sadly was unable to do this.

Jennifer has now been married for a number of years and has 2 young sons. She lives in California and works for Levi Jeans in the marketing dept.

The Chase - Book Review

The Chase
By Clive Cussler
Berkeley Books 2007

I had to read this book judt to satify my curiosity. This is not a book from any one of Cussler's previous series. This is an entirely new book, but not necessarily different.

This book takes place in the year 1906, in and around San Francisco. other related events take place in Colorado, Utah and the western states. If you can remember your history, what big event took place in 1906?

There are two guys - the bad guy is called the Butcher Bandit and the good guy is called Issac Bell. Issac is a detective and he has spent the last 2 years tracking down the Butcher Bandit.

The Butcher Bandit robs banks and cold bloodedly kills everyone in the bank at the time he robs it and any other witnesses who can potentially ID or describe him.

Issac and his team of detctivs start asking questions and manage to find two people who did see what happenbed and who were not killed.

From there it was a long chase - literally - for Isaac to track down the bandit. Everything culminates down to he chase - a long chase by train from San Franciso on the day of the 1906 earthquake up to the remote parts of Montana whre the bandit planned to escape to Canada and live out his days free and rich.

Thw weather and the gography of Montana plays a part in preventing that from happening.

44 years later the train is dug up from its watery grave and it is finally confirmed that the Buthcer bandit died on that day and the money was still safe in the boxes.

I enjoyed this story very much - just as much as I do the Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin stories.

This story istold in exactly the same style as Cussler is well known for. He even introuduces two familiar names as bit players. This had me confused for a few minutes as I tried toi figure out why the names Cussler and Leigh Hunt were being used.

Finally I am free to read and post again

My accounting course has finally finished. I am definitely NOT a numbers person.

I still have just 2 more classes to go before I finally finish my diploma course. It seems to me that this year has gone by so fast. My next class ACCPAC. I have always done well with software packages so I dont think this will be too hard. My last class will be Advanced MS Applications.

Now I will finally have time to post some book reviews. I have still been reading over the last 4 weeks. Not as much as usual obviously, but now I can get back into posting reviews. Hopefully starting tomorrow - Saturday. The weather forecast says it will be cold and wet and raining all day. The perfect day to stay indoors and post.

Today (sort of as a reward for myself after the hard accounting course) my husband and I went to see the new movie - Angels and Demons, starring Tom Hanks and Ewen McGregor.

Too much homework and not enough free time

Apologies for the long silence and there being nothing new for the last 2 weeks.

My advanced accounting class is very difficult. And I have so much homework to do every night. I am so NOT a numbers person. I much prefer dealing with words.

Please bear with me for the next few months while I finish up my course. I am also having to start looking for a new job as well. So while the next 2 classes are relatively easy, I may not have much time to blog. as my cover letters and resumes will have to be done first every day.

My birthday has been and gone. For my birthday presents, I sometimes buy books, but I always going to the movies. It turns out that the month of MAY seems to be the traditional opening of the summer movies out of Hollywood.

Today my husband and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. We are both Star Trek fans of many years and this movie was very very good. It tells the story of the beginning of the friendship between Kirk and Spock.

Next week we will go and see the new Tom Hanks movie - Angels and Demons.

The following week we might go see the new Terminator movie and then in June we plan to see the new Transformers movie. It actually really helps to be a full time student and yet only be in class for half the day.