Girl Detective

Some breaking news for those who like to bask in the sun. The Environmental Working Group has released its 2010 Sunscreen Guide. The not-so-good news? Nearly all commercial sunscreens contain ingredients the EWG says to avoid, including oxybenzone and vitamin A. There are only a few dozen the EWG recommends. You can search for their recommended sunscreens, or you can plug in the name of the sunscreen you’re using for you and your kids. Warning: the latter is likely to be worrying and discouraging. All of the ones I had in the house were there.

Is there cause for alarm? This piece, from the Huffington Post and with the advice of a dermatologist, says no. In spite of what alarmists may say or imply, if you’re going to be outside, properly applied sunscreen will help protect against skin cancer, so it’s better to use it than not. What’s safer than that? Staying out of the sun entirely, wearing protective clothes and headgear, or at least avoiding the peak hours.

Is there cause for concern? Yes. The FDA has not established guidelines for sunscreens, so there’s not regulation on dodgy ingredients. Further, there’s almost always conflicting information on what’s a good or bad ingredient.

What I did was throw away the old, badly rated sunscreens, then bought a tube each of two of the EWG’s recommended brands, Badger Unscented SPF 30 and Vanicream SPF 30. I got the Badger at my grocery co-op, and the Vanicream at Target, so neither involved a special trip.

And, for those still delusional that tanning beds are safer than the sun, a new study from the U of MN shows they increase the risk of cancer, even with the investigators looking at new types of tanning beds, which use a UV spectrum different from the sun and alleged to be safe. (The latter detail is from a scientist friend, though not included in the article.)

So, to sum up. No sun is safe sun in regard to skin cancer, though it is the best source of Vitamin D. Enjoy the sun in moderation. Be safe and smart about your choices. Use a safer sunscreen, and use it correctly. Reapply as needed. Stay out of the sun between 10 and 4. Wear a hat. Cover up.

I started using tanning beds when I was 17. I worked in a tanning salon for 9 months when I was 20. Then I had to see a dermatologist about a patch of skin; he cut it and several others out and found they were dysplastic–possibly pre-cancerous. He told me to never use a tanning bed or lay out again. Since then I’ve had more than a dozen patches of skin removed. Usually a patch has to be cut out twice. Once for the initial test, and again for complete removal. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is unpleasant and painful. I’ve been lucky–no melanoma. Yet.

Be careful out there.

I don’t know the exact date, but it was sometime in May 2000 that I started taking yoga classes. Since then, it has been the only type of exercise I have been able to continuously practice. I’d tried running, swimming, Jane Fonda, aerobics, in-line skates, etc.

Yoga worked, I think, because it was exercise, concentration, meditation and breathing to calm my monkey mind. Or rather, TRY to calm my monkey mind. I go to one or two classes a week, and hope to up it to two to three. Someday, I tell myself, I’ll have a home practice.

In spite of ten years, I still feel very much a beginner. There are some poses I still can’t do, like Crow and Handstand. But there are others I can, like Headstand, that I wasn’t able to for a long time. Also, I’ve learned the pose names both in English and many in Sanskrit, and know how to modify if I need to take a break in class.

Today I have an ambitious goal: bike to a harder class than I’m used to, and bike home. Not sure this is a good idea; not sure how it will go. But I think I’m going to try.

My 20 year college reunion is coming up, so I’ve been poking around in old boxes. I was surprised, then disturbed, then kind of gratified, to find a book list I kept in 1985. Here are the first five. Four of these things belong together, see if you can spot the one that doesn’t belong:

1. The Wanton by Rosemary Rogers
2. Desiree by Anne Marie Selinko (this one isn’t as trashy as it sounds. Really.)
3. Mindbend by Robin Cook
4. The Queen’s Confession by Victoria Holt
5. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Which one do you suppose was for AP English?

OK, here are a bunch more:

6. War and Peace by Tolstoy
7. Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo (in French, perhaps?)
8. Thinner by Stephen King
9. Heaven by V.C. Andrews
10. Lucky by Jackie Collins
11. The Fourth Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders
12. Rage by Stephen King
13. The Prince by Machiavelli
14. Sweet, Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers

I get literary whiplash just looking at this list. I am abashed by the trash.The good stuff is on there because it was assigned. BUT. Look how far I’ve come. (Abeit in 25 years. And wishing peace to my poor, hormonal 17yo self). I read Crime and Punishment last year BECAUSE I WANTED TO. My book list today is, I think, a richer place than my book list of 1985, just as I hope my inner life is richer than it was when I was 17. So, please, laugh at the preponderance of pulp and trashy romance. I am.

And then I’ll get back to A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. And on to Baroque Summer. But perhaps cramming in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest if I can. Just because something’s popular doesn’t mean it’s not good.

For my foodie friends, I just finished a piece on sugar and sugar alternatives at Simple Good and Tasty.

Sugar is enjoying a resurgence in popularity after years of being vilified for empty calories and its role in things like tooth decay, obesity and diabetes. As the negative effects of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have become better known, sugar’s profile has risen. Cane sugar, as opposed to cheaper beet sugar, has especially benefited from HFCS’s bad press; it is actually being touted as a healthful ingredient. Yet cane and beet sugars are highly processed, refined and provide no nutritional value. Other, less refined, sweeteners have some benefits that sugar doesn’t. Yet nearly all of them raise blood sugar, and have little nutritive value. So why bother?

Here’s what I learned/confirmed:

Honey can’t be organic. Maple syrup and honey are the only sweeteners local to MN. All sugars are bad for you, though some are better than others IN MODERATION. Almost all sugars/sweeteners, even if natural, are processed (except raw honey). And finally, I still prefer to bake with not-completely refined cane sugar for the best results. Oh, and Stevia kind of scares me.

June’s selection for the Books and Bars club is The Lost City of Z by New Yorker writer David Grann. Grann, like many before, him, became obsessed with the mysterious 1925 disappearance of Amazon explorer Percy W Fawcett:

…his name was known throughout the world. He was one of the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose. For nearly two decades, stories of his adventures had captivated the public’s imagination…

Grann’s story reads like fiction. Fawcett becomes obsessed with finding a lost civilization he’s named Z. He’s secretive about his trips, and on his last one disappears, along with his son and son’s friend. Interspersed with Fawcett’s story (and already knowing the broad strokes of the end of it) are the beginning of Grann’s–how he got involved in the story, and how it became so important he “had” to go to the Amazon to see for himself what might have happened. (In the rainy season, no less. I would have thought he’d learned something from all the tragic narratives.)

The details of early 20th century Amazonian expeditions are fascinating and harrowing. “These men must be crazy,” I thought, as did Grann, until he became so involved that he couldn’t, wouldn’t extract himself. An thumping good read of two men’s obsessions, with enough answers at the end to be satisfying enough.

This morning, the sun was shining, the humidity was down, so I walked with 4yo Guppy and his friend to the coffee shop, which is closing this Saturday, but will reopen with new owners in late June/early July. The breeze ruffled my hair as I walked with two little hands in mine. We waved and said hello when we saw R, our mail carrier. We chatted with a neighbor and her son who were going to look at the fire house, then waved at the fire fighters as a truck drove by.

In front of the shop, M, the owner, greeted the kids by name. I asked T, the barista, for my usual–a double short latte in their smallest for-here cup. I didn’t have to tell her what it was; she made it flawlessly and suggested a raspberry Italian soda for the kids. They so loved it they could barely sit still to drink it.

I thanked M for her shop, said it had probably saved my life–we moved to this neighborhood in the fall. It turned cold early and we knew few people. I was at home with a temperamental 1yo, so the walk to the coffee shop ensured I’d get outside and talk to an adult before my husband got home. That carried me till spring, when I took ECFE classes, joined a moms group, and met neighbors when they emerged from their houses.

The kids played pretend backgammon while I sipped my drink. On the walk home, we said hello to an older couple up the street, whose daughter in law is one of the current baristas, and one of the new owners. The husband asked us to wait then went to get a wooden top he’d made, and showed the kids how to use it. They were delighted, and so was I when the man urged us to have it. “You’ve walked by our house for years,” he said to me (it’s on the way to the coffee shop). “Enjoy.” We took it home, and that’s exactly what they did.

Until the bickering started. But then it was lunchtime, and time for preschool, and so we moved on through our day.

This is going to be quick, quick, quick because somehow the hour between 2 and 3 evaporated as it always does, and I need to meet the school bus in 10 minutes.

Moon is a moody, small sci-fi pic from last year that was praised highly somewhere to put it on my radar. In preparation for my upcoming folly, Baroque Summer, I’ve recently cut my library queue to the bare bones for dvds (taking off all those that I feel I “should” watch, like Sugar and Man Push Cart, and leaving on ones I really want to watch, like In the Loop and The September Issue.), and removed ALL books. But my husband G. Grod really wanted to see Moon, so not only did it stay in the queue but I watched it too. And, as so often happens, I’m glad I did.

Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell, the lone human inhabitant of a dark-side-of-the-moon mining station. He’s kept company by an A.I. machine named Gertie, voiced by Kevin Spacey. Sam is nearing the end of his 3-year contract and looks forward to his return to Earth to see his wife and young daughter. But Sam seems to be unraveling–seeing things that aren’t there. And when he goes out of the station, things start to get really weird. But good.

Rockwell, as usual, is fabulous in a challenging role. This is reminiscent of 2001, Solaris, and other sci fi films that are more about the psychology and mystery than they are about the effects. Intriguing and thought provoking.

I recently read and loved Big Machine by Victor LaValle, and was lucky enough to attend a Skype chat with him for Minneapolis’ Books and Bars book club. The video is at Mustache Robots, and is worth the ten minutes if you enjoyed the book.

from “In Praise of Prose” at Commentary Magazine:

In a literary age dominated by absurdists, genre benders, hysterical realists, and post-modern transgressives, Francine Prose quietly goes about her business within the great tradition of the novel, coming out every year or so with a new book that unravels human complexities by telling an interesting story about them. Although she has received far less critical attention and praise than other novelists of her generation (Marilynne Robinson, Richard Ford, Jane Smiley, or Richard Russo), and though she has never received the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, or even the Orange Prize for fiction by a woman, Francine Prose has produced a body of work that, taken as a whole, is without peer in contemporary American fiction.

I’ve now read three by Francine Prose, A Changed Man, Reading Like a Writer and Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife. All are excellent, and I plan on reading more as I’m able. She is erudite, but accessible, and her work makes me want to read and learn more. Is there higher praise?

Imagine Chevy Chase standing by a pool, clapping his hands, saying “This is crazy!” over and over. That’s kind of how I feel about putting this in writing. But as of this moment, I still want to read Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle trilogy this summer, which includes Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. I read and loved Crytonomicon, Snow Crash and Diamond Age, and am assured by my husband that the trilogy is worth it.

So, here’s the plan. The pace is about 30 pages a day, or 200+ a week to finish the whole trilogy over the summer. Anyone who’s crazy enough to think they’d like to join me can chime in with feedback in the comments.

June 1, 2010: begin reading Quicksilver. Stop just before “Aboard Minerva, Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts” on p. 217
June 7, 2010: discuss up to 217 QS. Read up to p. 430 “Saxony”
June 14, 2010: discuss up to 430 QS. Read up to p. 659 “London”
June 21, 2010: discuss up to 659 QS. Read through 927, end of Quicksilver.
June 28, 2010: discuss end and all of Quicksilver. Start The Confusion. Read up to p. 197 “Off Malta”.
July 5, 2010: discuss up to 197 TC. Read up to p. 412 “London”.
July 12, 2010: discuss up to 412 TC. Read up to p. 617 “Book 5″.
July 19, 2010: discuss up to 617 TC. Read through 815, end of The Confusion. (insert Neal Stephenson joke of your choice here)
July 26, 2010: discuss end and all of The Confusion. Start The System of the World. Read up to p. 225 “Cold Harbour”.
August 2, 2010: discuss up to 225 TSotW. Read up to p. 448 “Westminster Palace”.
August 9, 2010: discuss up to 448 TSotW. Read up to p. 667 “Library of Leicester House”.
August 16,2010: discuss up to 667 TSotW. Read through 892, end of The System of the World. Pat self on back, unless it’s injured from toting around huge tomes all summer.
August 23, 2010: discuss end of The System of the World and entire trilogy. Wax rhapsodic about all the short books you’ll be reading next.

Note: chapters often split in the middle of pages, so all chapter titles above are where I’ll stop, not what I’ll read through. Also, I believe the page count is good for both the hardcover and the trade paperback (it is for the copies of Quicksilver in our house. Yes, we own two.)

As I said for my 15/15/15 challenge, I’m not a seasoned pro at this online reading challenge thing. I have no logo and nothing fancy, and links and discussion will be from the comments section. But I’m open to ideas.

My friend A of New Century Reading and I have a semi-regular book swap going now. We lend each other books with overlong library queues, or, in the case of Susan Hill’s Howard’s End is on the Landing, ones that are otherwise not easily available.

I think it was at Pages Turned that I first read about this book, and knew I must read it, then was stunned to find it not at the library, as it’s not (yet) published in the US. I successfully fought down the “WANT IT NOW!” urge to buy it from some site I’ve forgotten the name of (probably for the best) that sells international books for only $25 and no shipping or something, and was thrilled to find that A. had a copy.

Hill is an English author. One day while looking in her shelves for a book she knew she owned, she instead found many unread books, and many more that she had formerly loved and wanted to re-read. Like I’ve done many times, she made a book vow. Unlike me, though, she kept it (or if she slipped, she didn’t admit it in the book.) Hers was to only read from her shelves for a year.

The journey through my own books involved giving up buying new ones, and that will seem a perverse act for someone who is both an author and a publisher…

I wanted to repossess my books, to explore what I had accumulated over a lifetime of reading, and to map this house of many volumes. There are enough here to divert, instruct, entertain, amaze, amuse, edify, improve, enrich me for far longer than a year and every one of them deserves to be taken down and dusted off, opened and read…

There is no doubt that of the thousands of new books published every year many are excellent and some will stand the test of time. A few will become classics. But I wanted to stand back and let the dust settle on everything new, while I set off on a journey through my books.
(p. 2, 3)

The book is both an autobiography of the author’s literary life, including numerous encounters with famous figures in literature. At times I found the name dropping tiresome. But the book overall so engaged me that, like a friend, I accepted it on its merits, which are many. Hill loosely chronicles her year and the books she reads. All of those she writes about are re-reads of favorites, like those of Iris Murdoch or Elizabeth Bowen, or a defense of oft-maligned former favorites, like those by Enid Blyton and Anthony Trollope. She didn’t write about reading any books from her shelves that were new-to-her, however long they’d been sitting.

Hill writes clearly and with affection, both of the books she admires and the people she’s known. Many of the authors she mentioned I knew, but many I didn’t. Reading this was like spending several afternoons in the company of a bookish, learned friend. It reminded me pleasantly of Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer. (Heavens, was that really almost four years ago?) The major downside to both of those, though? Now there are so many more authors I want to explore, beyond those already sitting on my shelves.

A companion book to Jane Gardam’s Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat returns to the characters of Edward Feathers, nicknamed Filth because of his success abroad (it’s an acronym for Failed in London Try Hong Kong) and his soon-to-be wife Elisabeth, or Betty.

Told mostly from Betty’s point of view, the book often veers into different storytelling styles, such as that of a play script, or into omniscient awareness. All this is handled with such authorial facility by Gardam, though, that it’s not intrusive, but impressive and entertaining.

Old Filth was mostly Edward’s story, and this one is largely Betty’s.

“Yes, I will,” the girl was saying in the shabby hotel in the back street, and street music playing against the racket of the mah-jong players on every open stone balcony. The overhead fan was limp and fly-spotted. On the beds were 1920s scarlet satin counterpanes with ugly yellow flowers done in stem stitch. They must have survived the war. Old wooden shutters clattered. There was the smell of the rotting lilies heaped in a yard below. Betty was alone, her friend Lizzie out somewhere, thank goodness. Betty would have hated not to be alone when she read Edward’s letter. What lovely handwriting. Rather a shame he’d used his Chambers writing paper. She wondered how many rough drafts he’d made first. Transcripts. He was wedded to transcripts. This was meant to be kept.

And she would. She’d keep it for ever. Their grandchildren would leave it the to a museum as a memento of the jolly old dead.

Eddie Feathers? Crikey! He does sound a bit quaint. (Would you consider our being married, Elisabeth?) Not exactly Romeo. More like Mr. Knightley, though Mr. Knightley had a question mark about him. Forty-ish and always off to London alone. Don’t tell me that Emma was his first. I’m wandering. I do rather wish Eddie wasn’t so perfect. But of course I’ll marry him. I can’t think of a reason not to.

She kissed the letter and put it down her shirt.

It takes many of the events from the previous book and adds dimension and further perspective on them, though it goes a bit beyond the ending of the first, which is interesting (and again, rather authorially daring), given the timeline of events.

As with Old Filth and the story collection in which he appeared, The People on Privilege Hill, I was delighted to enter this world and spend time with these rich, wonderful, deep characters again. I laughed and cried. I was both eager and reluctant to finish the book. And I look forward to reading more by Gardam. And many thanks to my friend Thalia for lending me Jane Gardam so many years ago, or I might not have read these books that I have so very much loved.

Goodbye, Solo is another film I borrowed from the library based on A.O. Scott’s recommendation. It’s directed by Rahmin Bahrani, who also did Chop Shop, which I watched earlier this year. This movie, like that one, is not a crowd pleaser. It’s a small, intense, unflinching laser-focused portrait of a growing relationship between Solo, an upbeat Senegalese cab driver, and William, a taciturn old man with an intriguing request. Set in Winston-Salem NC, it takes place mostly at night. The dark edges of the film add to its moody ambience. There is violence, sadness, but also joy and celebration, too.

This reminded me of Wendy and Lucy, another film that went deep into one individual’s life. It doesn’t move quickly, but it moves deliberately and though-provokingly. It’s lovely, human, true, and moving.

For more on these moody, intense, character-driven movies, see A.O. Scott’s NYT piece on the New New Reality in film, which I linked to here.

It occurred to me as I settled down on the basement couch to watch TV last night that I have two types of shows I watch: ones I look forward to and must watch ASAP, and ones that can linger on the Tivo. As time has grown more scarce, I’ve given up the “maybe it will get good again” or the “it’s pretty good, sometimes” shows.

Two shows I left behind this year and never looked back on were House and The Office.

Shows that I like but can postpone include How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, At the Movies and Top Chef Masters. I’m a little sad to note that both Project Runway and Top Chef original recipe are both in this category, too, as they used to be in the next one.

But the can’t-wait shows, the ones I know will be on Facebook and the internets within minutes of their ends? First and foremost, Breaking Bad, then in chrono order, Glee, Modern Family, Community, Parks & Rec, and Dr. Who.

How about you?

Renting 25th Hour, a Spike Lee film from 2002, was harder than I thought it would be. One of my favorite film critics, A.O. Scott of The New York Times and At the Movies, picked it as one of the top ten of last decade. (His original review is here.) Our library had only one copy and it took months to reach me. When it did, the dvd was so mauled that it was unplayable. When I returned it and reported its condition, the librarian hooked me up with an interlibrary loan, so I did finally get a copy last week.

Edward Norton is a drug dealer busted by the DEA, and this film takes place on the last day before he goes to prison. He has to find a home for his dog, meet up with his two childhood friends, played by Barry Pepper and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, say goodbye to his father, and continue to try and ignore the nagging question of whether it was his girlfriend, played by Rosario Dawson, who sold him out.

Filmed in 2002 NYC’s still-raw aftermath of 9/11, the city plays an important role. But the film centers on Norton, and though he’s an excellent actor, I never quite felt him in this role. I loved the music of the movie, the shots of the city, and many of the scenes, but the film never came together for me as a whole.

Dan Chaon’s 2009 novel Await Your Reply, was on several year-end best-of lists, including Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Publisher’s Weekly. Thus it took rather a while for it to work its way down the queue to me at the public library. At which point I tore through it in 3 days.

The novel is told in alternating chapters from three unconnected points of view: Ryan, a college dropout; Lucy, an orphaned 18yo from Ohio; and Miles, who has spent the majority of his adult life searching for his schizophrenic, brilliant, obsessed twin brother Hayden. Though it ranges as far afield as Africa and northern Canada, the book and its characters are decidedly midwestern US, where the characters were raised or are living: Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois. Early on, I flipped back to Chaon’s bio. His description of central Ohio, where I grew up, was so uncannily accurate I knew he had to have a connection there. Sure enough, he’s a professor at Oberlin College.

Each of the characters is struggling with identity, in both real-life and theoretical senses. Ryan, Miles and Lucy struggle to figure out who they are, especially in relation to others around them.

It pulled me in immediately, and kept me engaged all the way through:

We are on our way to the hospital, Ryan’s father says.
Listen to me, Son;
You are not going to bleed to death.

Ryan is still aware enough that his father’s words come in through the edges like sunlight on the borders of a window shade. His eyes are shut tight and his body is shaking and he is trying to hold up his left arm, to keep it elevated. We are on our way to the hospital, his father says, and Ryan’s teeth are chattering, he clenches and unclenches them, and a series of wavering colored lights–greens, indigos–plays along the surface of his closed eyelids.

On the sea beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan’s severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler.

It’s a thriller about identity theft in the information age. But it’s also excellently written, deeply characterized, well-plotted literary novel. This reminded me of Big Machine by Victor Lavalle, one of my favorite books from 2009, and Memento, the film by Christopher Nolan. Highly recommended.

On previous randomly (to them) designated important-to-me days, my boys, 4yo Guppy and 6yo Drake, have not really gotten on board the whole “be nice to Mom” thing. Night wakings, early risings, yelling, hitting, screaming and the occasional sickness have been the norm. Earlier this year on my birthday, that changed. And yesterday, Mothers Day (US) was similarly lovely.

The boys woke late-ish (about 7:30am), we had a family snuggle, then they brought me juice, coffee and pastry in bed. I read several chapters of my book, then we all got dressed and went to a Bull Run Coffee Shop and Rustica Bakery, then to Kitchen Window to purchase a mug that Guppy had picked out for me. (Love it!) Then to brunch at the Red Stag Supper Club, where the boys devoured the smelt fries. Later that afternoon, I went on my first long bike ride, the first one, too, that was riding for the enjoyment of riding, not to reach some destination. (Though I did figure it was time to turn around when I saw the Welcome to Fridley sign).

Supper that night was baked salmon wrapped in prosciutto, and salad with pears, cranberries and smoked almonds. THE BOYS ATE THIS! Or, most of it. But what a huge improvement over the olden days, when they would refuse anything mixed up (like a salad) or foreign (like fish and prosciutto).

All in all, a lovely day with a good mix of family time and quiet time.

It had to happen eventually, and after 2+ years it did. I’ve been cataloging my books read at Library Thing. I liked their site, interface and especially their widgets that allow me to have the last several books I’ve entered in my sidebar to the right, here.

But they only allow 200 books free, and apparently I squeaked in one over before they gently reminded me it’s time to pay the piper, um, the book site. Now, it’s only $10 per year. But there are other sites, notably Good Reads, that are free full stop.

Additionally, I’ve been keeping my books on Visual Library on Facebook, so could continue to do just that.

What say you, fellow biblio geeks? Pay Library Thing? Join Good Reads? Just do Visual Library? Do you like and have you used the LT widget on the left with the books?

I found myself in a bit of a pinch a few weeks ago. I’d instigated a 15 books in 15 days with 15 blogs challenge, but still had to read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese for my book group (and while it wasn’t exactly my pick, it had been one I’d suggested. So I was responsible for me having to read it.) I was lucky to be able to borrow it from a friend, as the library queue was ridiculous. But at 670 pages, and with the 15 challenge going to April 30 and my book group the first week of May, I was feeling a little pressed. Fortunately for me, it was a fast read, and a good one, too.

The story is narrated by Marion Stone, a twin born under curious circumstances in an Ethiopian hospital.

After eight months spent in the obscurity of our mother’s womb, my brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths at an elevation of eight thousand feet in the thin air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia.

He and his brother grow up learning third world medicine while the political climate shifts unpredictably and often violently. More of a summary than this might spoil it. This is a sprawling tale that crosses the world, with romance, betrayal, intrigue, and magical realism. It had elements of soap opera to it, and elements of 19th century coming-of-age epics, like Great Expectations. Often lovely, frequently sad, this isn’t a light read, but it is an involving, fast-moving and deeply satisfying one.

After I read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, I looked up reviews. I sometimes do this after I finish a book to try to better understand it. Nearly every review of Wolf Hall mentioned the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. Wolf Hall’s main character and Renaissance man was Thomas Cromwell, while Thomas More was something of a narrow-minded nuisance. The film, in contrast, presents More as the upstanding Renaissance man, and Cromwell as a grasping, ugly little man.

A Man for All Seasons won 6 Academy awards, including Best Picture, and Best Actor for Paul Scofield who played More. But it was the too-brief screen time of Orson Welles as the ailing Cardinal Wolsey and a silent Lynn Redgrave as the lovely Anne Boleyn, that made the bigger impression on me. The film was good, skillfully made and acted. But I wish it had been less earnest, and a little more fun.