Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg

Once again, Elizabeth Berg has created a sensory experience that you immediately want to step into. Her protagonists are women who only develop their sense of self, resilience, and independence when they're forced to. You start to think, "I'm artistic, intuitive, and creative, too." The Year of Pleasures made you think of Anthropologie; Home Safe actually takes you there.



Helen discovers she has a gift for teaching writing. She overcomes mean stabs from the publishing world. She tries to anchor herself to her daughter who in turn feels smothered. She has begun the process of pecking her way out of the egg.





Her husband has left her her dream house in Mill Valley, California! She sees it, but questions where her home is really, in her new autonomous life. It seems the blue jay pecks away without disturbing a pretty strong egg.

Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg

Once again, Elizabeth Berg has created a sensory experience that you immediately want to step into. Her protagonists are women who only develop their sense of self, resilience, and independence when they're forced to. You start to think, "I'm artistic, intuitive, and creative, too." The Year of Pleasures made you think of Anthropologie; Home Safe actually takes you there.



Helen discovers she has a gift for teaching writing. She overcomes mean stabs from the publishing world. She tries to anchor herself to her daughter who in turn feels smothered. She has begun the process of pecking her way out of the egg.





Her husband has left her her dream house in Mill Valley, California! She sees it, but questions where her home is really, in her new autonomous life. It seems the blue jay pecks away without disturbing a pretty strong egg.

Bright Star

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; . . . "

wrote John Keats in "Endymion" at the age of 23. He described both the grandeur of nature and the despondency of gloomy days.



"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Beauty is once again the inspiration for Keats in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" written in 1819.




"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart, . . .
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, . . . "

Keats wrote "Bright Star" for his young love, Fanny Brawne. This is also the name and subject of the movie directed by Jane Campion. Living and loving life while desperately ill and poverty-stricken probably contributed to the depth of his writing and upheavals in his relationship with Fanny.





The movie bravely follows Keats to Italy and his subsequent death of tuberculosis in 1821. Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned while sailing a year later and is buried near Keats. You can still visit the studio of Keats in Rome at the top of the Spanish Steps.

Bright Star

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; . . . "

wrote John Keats in "Endymion" at the age of 23. He described both the grandeur of nature and the despondency of gloomy days.



"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Beauty is once again the inspiration for Keats in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" written in 1819.




"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart, . . .
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, . . . "

Keats wrote "Bright Star" for his young love, Fanny Brawne. This is also the name and subject of the movie directed by Jane Campion. Living and loving life while desperately ill and poverty-stricken probably contributed to the depth of his writing and upheavals in his relationship with Fanny.





The movie bravely follows Keats to Italy and his subsequent death of tuberculosis in 1821. Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned while sailing a year later and is buried near Keats. You can still visit the studio of Keats in Rome at the top of the Spanish Steps.

blissfully connecting

I hope all my blogger friends had a wonderful holiday season. Please accept my apologies for my unannounced leave of absence. I am happy to be in connection with you all again.

The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

The owl can sense love in all its forms: new love, sibling love, filial love, love of God, love of an endangered species, love of music, love of friends. The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks exemplifies them all, and what better occasion to celebrate them than Valentine's Day?


Seventeen-year-old Ronnie (played by Miley Cyrus in the upcoming movie) and her younger brother Jonah are leaving New York to spend the summer with their Dad (played by Greg Kinnear) in North Carolina near the beach. Their parents have been estranged for three years, and Dad Steve wants to reconnect. Ronnie rebels as her life is established in a totally different direction, and she doesn't want to disrupt it. She even objects to her father playing the piano, a love they once shared. Because of the way he interprets love, he walls the piano room up, a step closer to understanding.





When a nest of loggerhead sea turtle eggs is found on the beach behind their home, the common cause of watching and protecting them creates a bond that brings them all closer, including Ronnie's "southern" boyfriend (played by Liam Hemsworth).


One clue we have to Steve's big-heartedness is his reading the Bible. He quotes to Ronnie (at her request) Galations 5:22: "But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." "Life, he realized, was much like a song."

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

I enjoyed this book! The Swan Thieves is a luscious page-turner right to the very end of page 561.

When we first meet the protagonist Robert Oliver, he is a realist-yet-unreal painter in a psychiatric hospital for having acted out an obsession. Larger than life, Robert dominates a stage peopled by his psychiatrist Andrew Marlow, ex-wife Kate, ex-lover Mary, and vivid memories of those from another era.

Robert's obsessive passion is a nineteenth century French impressionist named Beatrice de Clerval. Chimera? Fantasy? Real? When Kate finds a drawing in his shirt pocket, "it is the sketch of a woman's face. She glanced up with recognition, her eyes luminous, her look serious and loving. . . It was the face of a woman in love." When Marlow discovers Beatrice's portrait at the Met, he says, "She was a real woman all right. But not a living one." Robert himself had said, "When you see a painting that was painted by someone who's been dead for a long time, you know without a doubt that the person really lived."

A theme slowly emerges, one that explains everything in the end. Marlow, one of the principal narrators, unveils the story to his father who remarks, "This man is doing penance. That's what you're describing, I think. He punishes his flesh and suppresses the longing for his soul to speak about its misery. He mortifies body and mind to atone for something. It seems to me that all those paintings are a part of his penance. Perhaps he is apologizing to her?" Marlow replies, "If he's apologizing to a hallucination, he's in worse shape than I've thought up to now." His father, a minister, thoughtfully states, "Faith is what is real to us."



We see history repeat itself. The metaphor of Zeus as a swan has functioned as a musical round down through the ages. Women fall in love and unexpectedly get pregnant. Women die in someone's arms. The "effets d'hiver" recur every year, and the colors and shapes of snow and ice are a revelation to artists anew. A psychological disorder repeats itself.

The beauty of The Swan Thieves is to be read and savored by all readers; to give away more here would be a travesty.

Brown Rice - heady and unhulled!

Good v. evil is perceived in different ways in three novels by Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and The Lost Symbol) and one by Anne Rice (Angel Time). Anne Rice has stepped up to the plate to take on this struggle and--as a woman--boldly bites into the apple. Dan Brown, a bit more cerebral, juxtaposes the polarity between reason and religion with the dark side of each.




The imagery from The Lost Symbol largely derives from Masonic symbols, such as the square, compass, and G for geometry/God shown above.




One of the climatic turns Robert Langdon's feverish trail takes is to the sub-basement of the U.S. Capitol. A Mason--at the time of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin--would meditate in a Chamber of Reflection such as this. (photo from Freemasonry: a history by Angel Millar.) ". . . cold, austere places in which a Mason can reflect on his own mortality. By meditating on the inevitability of death, a Mason gains a valuable perspective on the fleeting nature of life." (from The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.) This is a mystical world based on Ancient Mysteries, i.e. The Bible, displayed in symbols throughout Washington, DC, and a race against evil. Two lovely images are 1) the field of Noetic Science, that "the intention of the mind can create change in the phsyical universe," and 2) the pyramid without a tip is a "reminder that man's ascent to his full human potential was always a work in progress." ~Dan Brown




Anne Rice envisioned hordes of angels descending to earth in response to just as many prayers wafting up through the ages. Her hitman-cum-angel Toby O'Dare plays the lute, emotes to Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, and is soothed by the lush beauty of the Mission Inn in California. Her descriptions delight the senses: "But the interior of the restaurant was no less enticing, with its lower walls of bright blue tile, and the beige arches above artfully with twining green vines. The scored ceiling was painted like a blue sky with clouds and even tiny birds." Yes, he is prepared to go back to the Middle Ages to answer some of those soaring prayers.




Angel on cover of Angels and Demons




One of the Illuminati symbols in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons was fire. How could that represent evil?




The Sistine Chapel has soaring grandeur as well as buried secrets that threatened to bring down the Catholic Church in Angels and Demons.







In the Da Vinci Code, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as one of Christ's intimates.

The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

The owl can sense love in all its forms: new love, sibling love, filial love, love of God, love of an endangered species, love of music, love of friends. The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks exemplifies them all, and what better occasion to celebrate them than Valentine's Day?


Seventeen-year-old Ronnie (played by Miley Cyrus in the upcoming movie) and her younger brother Jonah are leaving New York to spend the summer with their Dad (played by Greg Kinnear) in North Carolina near the beach. Their parents have been estranged for three years, and Dad Steve wants to reconnect. Ronnie rebels as her life is established in a totally different direction, and she doesn't want to disrupt it. She even objects to her father playing the piano, a love they once shared. Because of the way he interprets love, he walls the piano room up, a step closer to understanding.





When a nest of loggerhead sea turtle eggs is found on the beach behind their home, the common cause of watching and protecting them creates a bond that brings them all closer, including Ronnie's "southern" boyfriend (played by Liam Hemsworth).


One clue we have to Steve's big-heartedness is his reading the Bible. He quotes to Ronnie (at her request) Galations 5:22: "But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." "Life, he realized, was much like a song."

The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

The next book up for review is The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks, now in its 20th week on The New York Times bestseller list. A Sea of Books (www.aseaofbooks.blogspot.com) is hosting a giveaway contest for three copies of this book from the Hachette Book Group. Be sure and sign up soon as the entry deadline is 2/10/10! Good luck!

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

I enjoyed this book! The Swan Thieves is a luscious page-turner right to the very end of page 561.

When we first meet the protagonist Robert Oliver, he is a realist-yet-unreal painter in a psychiatric hospital for having acted out an obsession. Larger than life, Robert dominates a stage peopled by his psychiatrist Andrew Marlow, ex-wife Kate, ex-lover Mary, and vivid memories of those from another era.

Robert's obsessive passion is a nineteenth century French impressionist named Beatrice de Clerval. Chimera? Fantasy? Real? When Kate finds a drawing in his shirt pocket, "it is the sketch of a woman's face. She glanced up with recognition, her eyes luminous, her look serious and loving. . . It was the face of a woman in love." When Marlow discovers Beatrice's portrait at the Met, he says, "She was a real woman all right. But not a living one." Robert himself had said, "When you see a painting that was painted by someone who's been dead for a long time, you know without a doubt that the person really lived."

A theme slowly emerges, one that explains everything in the end. Marlow, one of the principal narrators, unveils the story to his father who remarks, "This man is doing penance. That's what you're describing, I think. He punishes his flesh and suppresses the longing for his soul to speak about its misery. He mortifies body and mind to atone for something. It seems to me that all those paintings are a part of his penance. Perhaps he is apologizing to her?" Marlow replies, "If he's apologizing to a hallucination, he's in worse shape than I've thought up to now." His father, a minister, thoughtfully states, "Faith is what is real to us."



We see history repeat itself. The metaphor of Zeus as a swan has functioned as a musical round down through the ages. Women fall in love and unexpectedly get pregnant. Women die in someone's arms. The "effets d'hiver" recur every year, and the colors and shapes of snow and ice are a revelation to artists anew. A psychological disorder repeats itself.

The beauty of The Swan Thieves is to be read and savored by all readers; to give away more here would be a travesty.