Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

So, yall may be surprised that I’m actually posting here again. After all, one gung-ho night of three posts in a row followed by over a week of nothing may have made the good folks at wordpress think I had just forever taken this web address from another Sandi who may be more sincere in her attempts at blogging. What they don’t know is that the day after I created this blog I got my wisdom taken out and that the few precious minutes I felt like doing something other than laying on the couch watching “How I Met Your Mother” “Two and a Half Men” and “My Fair Wedding” were to be spent doing something other than blogging.

I’m doing much better now, and despite all the meds, I did find time to finish Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho (yes, the author of  The Alchemist, no, I have not read The Alchemist…yet). I’ll be honest, I did struggle a little with whether or not I really wanted to publish a review of it on my blog as there are parts which can be quite–shall we say–graphic, more so than we expected. This was Coelho, quality literature, not a harlequin romance, so I expected a little more to be left to the imagination than was. Then again, it was published in 2003, so really, those may have been naive expectations. But when I saw it on the buy 2, get the 3rd free table at Barnes & Noble, it caught my interest, so here it goes.

To me, the book was somewhat of a secular version of Redeeeming Love, and not just because the main female character in each is a prostitute. I want to refrain from making too many parallels, as it has been almost two years (almost EXACTLY two years, actually) since I read RL and there are many details (including even the female lead’s name!) that I can’t remember. But I do remember that the point is that she is saved from her lifestyle first by the Christlike love of Michael Hosea and then, ultimately, by the love of Christ that enters her heart and gives her courage to escape again, as well as save a child from the life.

Maria of EM was not forced into the life in the same manner–this novel is not an account of human trafficking. While she was deceived by the businessman in Rio, her career would be more comparable to the famous call-girls such as Ashley Dupree than tragic accounts you would expect from a young girl being lured from Brazil to Europe. While she always had plans to return to Brazil rich from her success, she cannot really commit to these plans until she meets a famous young artist, and thus she is redeemed by love as well, although in this case it is love of self, realized through romantic love, as well as a strong sense of place that although she was flourishing in Switzerland, Brazil was truly where she belonged. While I will not give away the ending, it was happy, although it waits until the last few pages to truly resolve.

A note on the style: chapters tend to be very short, which is good if you only have short bits of time to read. (Although every once and a while a 10-pager will get you when you aren’t expecting it). Also most, though not all, chapters end with a diary entry from Maria, giving the novel an alternating 1st and 3rd person perspective. However, these diary entries, unlike in some other novels I have read, are actually necessary for both plot and character information–dont skip them.

Where is it now: Available! Let me know if you would like to read it, and I’ll be happy to loan it to you!

Up next: Humanitarian Jesus: Social Justice and the Cross by Christian Buckley and Ryan Dobson (those are some last names for you!). The first part is a theological exmaination of what the Bible says about serving in Jesus’ name (and not neglecting either serving or Jesus’ name), while the second half contains interviews with evangelical leaders who the authors believe are currently living out both the command to “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind,” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

John Shors, “Beside a Burning Sea”

I picked this book up at the bargain table at Books-A-Million, on a “Buy 2, get 1 free” special. It looked interesting, and more importantly, dealt somewhat with Japan. I felt I should read something about Japan before going there, though to be honest, I didn’t start reading until I was over halfway through my stay in Okinawa (I was already working on 3 other books, which I mainly finished on my various flights and airport stays, but on one day with some downtime i was able to pick up this one, which drew me in fast).

So if you read the back cover of the book, it looks like just a love story between an American nurse and a Japanese soldier, after they and a few other castaways from their hospital ship land on a deserted island after their ship is sunk in the South Pacific. (Who would sink a hospital ship? Just read the first chapter to find out–I promise you’ll be drawn in after that). While that is part of the book, it is certainly not all of it. There are three main relationships in the book, the  husband-wife pair of Captain Joshua and Isabelle, the growing romantic relationship of Annie (Isabelle’s sister), and Akira,  a Japanese professor-turned-soldier, and the father-son like relationship of African American shipmate Jake and a young Fijian stowaway named Ratu. In addition, the villain Roger is someone you would not expect to find in the American ranks in the Greatest Generation, but I guess every war has its Benedict Arnold. Be very careful reading the first chapter, however, or you may combine the characters of Joshua and Roger, a mistake you would eventually realize, but it may taint your opinion of Joshua for a while. My favorite of these relationships was probably Jake and Ratu, as I loved the way Jake talked and Ratu added an element of humor to an otherwise tense novel. If you have ever seen the movie Australia (which I would highly recommend as long as you have a big screen tv, a COMPLETELY free evening, and snacks), I pictured Ratu like the young boy in that movie.

Along that line, I still don’t know how well this movie would translate to the silver screen. On one hand, the book, while long, did contain a fair amount of description as compared to dialog, so it may not have to be cut much. However, for two reasons, I can see it being difficult to market in the same manner of the book. First, WWII seems to be fairly black and white in film, and I marketing a love story between an American nurse and a Japanese soldier may still be a fairly difficult sell, even though Akira was obviously not an afficionado of the Japanese emperor. This actually made me hesitate when picking up the book, though in retrospect, I am so glad I did. Additionally, I cannot think of an Asian-American actor of the same age range as Akira to play the role (too young to be played by Jackie Chan, too old to be played by Harry Shum Jr.–Mike Chang for all you Gleeks). No, Im not trying to pull the “all Asians are the same” stereotypes, I’m just saying, actors dont tend to have to be the same ethnicity of the characters played, but maybe they should at least look somewhat believable.

Since this is my 3rd blog post of the night, I may not be doing this review justice, but this is where I’m stopping with the actual review for the night. Some others may be longer, some shorter, who knows. I just hope you keep reading.

Where the book is now: Currently being lent to my high school AP Literature teacher.

Next on queue: Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho. No, I’m not reading it in its original language. Coelho is Brazilian; I speak Spanish, not Portugese.

Book Reviews

As I said in my earlier post, I plan on including some book reviews in this blog. In some ways, this is yet another attempt to keep me reading some outside of class books, but that may or may not happen, considering I’m taking an English class as well as a Senior Seminar course which involves writing a literary senior thesis in Spanish. These may not be newspaper (or even Amazon) worthy reviews, and the books I review may occasionally be what a more intellectual friend of mine refers to as “supermarket fiction”, but I can’t believe that I’m the only person who enjoys reading something a little less straining than Plato .

With these reviews, I plan on following somewhat of a format:

• The title and author of the book (duh!)
• How & why I came to read it (because I find that interesting for some reason)
• A review (of course)
• Where the book is now (because I love to share, so if the review sounds interesting to you, let me know and you can borrow it!)
• What I’m planning to read next (to motivate myself, and maybe one of yall would like to read along with me)

Thanks for putting up with these introductory posts so far, I should be able to start *real* posting soon!

Hello world!

Early in my high school career, I had a xanga page. This was back in the days before Facebook made social networking a social necessity, and as far as I can recall, it was my first real attempt at blogging. Soon after Facebook arrived, and I was (sometimes indiscriminately) using both notes and statuses to proclaim my feelings to the world. By sophomore year of college, I kept using facebook, but thought I would attempt a blog. This only turned out about three posts before I got sick of it. However, I am approaching a turning point in my life, and figure that because there may be more to write about soon, as well as the fact that I will likely be seeing many of the people I have spent the past few years with much less very soon, and maybe if I can get consistent with this blog, I can convince them to blog about their exciting experiences as well (this means you, roomie).

What will I be blogging about here? Some about the day to day, with some (hopefully) funny stories. Maybe some current events, along with book and movie reviews. And you better get ready for the glee reviews/overanalysis. (Just a warning, I support Quinn, Santana, and Brittany and cannot stand Rachel or Kurt).

Some of you who are reading this right now are probably hoping for a long, detailed post about my recent trip to Japan. While I had a great time, I do not think that one blog entry would do it justice. However, I would love to have a conversation with you about it, so just ask me sometime (I’m assuming if you’re reading this you know me–or are a potential employer net-stalking me, in which case, sure, lets talk Japan during my interview!) Had this blog been set up beforehand I could tell you all about running through Chicago airport, every cute thing Skybaby did, the handsome men all over base, my amazement about finding off-base clothing that actually fit me, and both the delicious food offbase and the comfort of having American Diet Coke available on-base. But that post would be way too long (Let’s face it, THIS blog post is getting a little long), so let’s just have a real conversation about it sometime.

I’m still getting used to this wordpress thing, so the formatting and all may be a little rough, but maybe I’ll be changing it up soon. Thanks for sticking with it so far!