Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese, 2009)

658 pages.

A good story.  Long, but well constructed.  All the pieces fit, including application of medical specialty.

Ghosh as a perfect person. Also Sister Mary Praise. And Matron.

Hema (and others) bringing across many things we saw in India (rangoli, mask, food).

Genet kind of an annoying character; her mother not stable.

Some idea of what it might have felt like to move from India to Aden and then to Ethiopia.

Gave a reader like me some feel of the uncertainty in unstable government situations (I of course have not had to deal with this).  We grew up familiar with Selassie, Mengistu.  And heard of Eritrea. Author speaks to Italian influence here - more than I would have expected.

I found especially striking the part where Marion lands in NYC for the first time.  The sensations of a new world - one could kind of imagine how this might feel. This was a favorite section. (Reminded me, though in the smallest way possible, of returning to that same airport in June 1975 after three weeks in Europe, though my surprise was mostly seeing (being reminded of) the hugeness of American automobiles and the width of American roads.)

Roman Catholic nuns had so many highly valuable, unselfish roles for a few centuries there.  Kind of sorry that went out of fashion.

Matron's idea of "Nurse Sense" - that made sense to me.  Applies in other professions as well.

Company K (William March, 1933)

(260 pages)

Quick read.  Broken into very short chapters, each presented as a reminiscence of an individual (fictional) soldier. Based upon the author's WWI experiences.

Looking at the "Introduction" after reading the book (always read these after!), I learned that this was one of the first books to depict war experiences as awful and too often futile episodes from the perspective of the typically low-ranking soldier.  We've now used to that sort of presentation, but apparently Company K was groundbreaking at its time. The Red Badge of Courage as a sort of precursor from Civil War days.

It amounts to horror. I don't have reason to doubt that this was pretty much how it felt. 

Sometimes prisoners were shot. Officers made bad decisions, perhaps to preserve pride, that cost grunt lives. French villagers - sometimes sympathetic. Soldiers being supportive of, or cruel to, one another.  Encounters with Germans who could have been friends. On it goes.

The cumulative effect is powerful; it catches up with the reader.  In that way it reminded me of Kolyma Stories (highly recommended, by the way) - short snippets that just keep hitting the reader and building in effect.  Not gratuitously. Just trying to bring home what was happening for those of us who fortunately weren't there (and perhaps dilute the effect of all the pro-war propaganda stuff we are hit with). 

Something else I liked: a number of the stories are from the perspective of soldiers back home after the armistice.  The betrothed who no longer wants to marry the soldier drastically changed by his experiences.  The brother who gets all the attention after a slight wound just before the armistice (the brother who saw years of terrible action doesn't get home until a year later and by then the home front folks have moved on).

Recommended.  Gift from PJr/Nedda.

The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954-55)

(1,032 pages)

Second time I've read this. Beautiful hardbound 50th anniversary edition with maps, etc., gift from Paul Jr. and Nedda.

Such a pleasure even if quite familiar with the story. Tolkien skill well-known and for good reason.

I had forgotten much of the detail of the final chapter so particularly enjoyed rereading that section.

All the sequences are quite wonderful but I think I best like the Shire scenes that begin and end the work.  Tolkien has a great touch with those small-scale interactions.