Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Category: book review

  • Before I go by Catherine Cookson

    Before I GoBefore I Go by Catherine Cookson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    This is my first encounter with Mrs. Cookson in her writing. What a world of writing she immersed herself in out of the melee! The book is one of her post mortem work discovered by her estate with the other unpublished novel, and I can see Mrs. Cookson must have intended to have this memoir published after she’s long gone because of the self-evident title of “Before I go”. This book is filled with her innermost feelings towards her family – her mother whom she called “Our Kate” and her dearest husband Tom and the people who entered her life, such as Nan Smith, the various doctors who attended to her lifelong health frailty, and her faith as a doubting Catholic. As an illegitimate child of an unwed mother from a poverty-stricken family, Mrs. Cookson however did not yield herself to the the bare necessities of life as it demanded.

    Mrs. Cookson was a true example of a triumph of will and hope over experience and condition. Working as a manageress in a laundry, the author did not resign herself to the complacency of her social class. Instead, she raised herself above the hubbub of life and arrived as a fine writer who wrote about people whom the readers could relate to based upon her experiences. Also, her Catholic faith, which she had been fighting with reason to no avail, was the bedrock of her character and shaped the way she looked at the world around her. For it was her faith to which she held on in times of trouble and from which her compassion, pity, and forgiveness sprang.

    What I like about Mrs. Cookson is her feistiness and pride which distinguished her from her peers and people of similar social origins. But this does not mean that she became haughty and untouchable with her literary success; on the contrary, Mrs. Cookson still retained her charitable nature although she often lamented about it because of people’s appropriation of her compassion and pity gratuitously.

    The reader will be able to read the mind and heart of this fine and very human writer. It’s not about her lifelong health problems of nose-bleeding, 8 miscarriages, and a peripheral vision by advanced age; this memoir is about Mrs. Cookson’s resilient spirit that enabled her to rise above the planes of biological hindrance and societal prejudices.

  • Easy as Pie Crosswords by Stanley Newman

    Easy as Pie Crosswords: Really, Really Easy!: 72 Relaxing PuzzlesEasy as Pie Crosswords: Really, Really Easy!: 72 Relaxing Puzzles by Stanley Newman

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    I have always admired people who do crossword puzzles on newspaper as a pastime; unlike word searches in which your mission is to find right words and circle them, crosswords require your cognitive abilities to conjure up right words, plus a mastery of the English language, including knowledge of idioms and certain expressions endemic in the English speaking countries. So as an admirer whose English is but a second language, finding an easy crossword puzzle was necessary to partake in the craft. Hence this puzzle book came along: deliciously enjoyable and generously easy, this puzzle book is recommended to anyone who is a novice in this field of crosswords. Moreover, this puzzlebook is spiral-bound, so that you can flip back the pages easily and solve the puzzles comfortably. This will be a nice addition to your coffee table readings at your leisure time.

  • Daily Life in Victorian London by Lee Jackson

    Daily Life in Victorian London: An Extraordinary AnthologyDaily Life in Victorian London: An Extraordinary Anthology by Lee Jackson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    This book is a fruitful archive of personal diaries, newspaper/magazine articles, letters both official and private, and other historical records, all of which portray a glimpse of the everyday life of the Victorian Londoners – the poor, the middles class, and the middlings in between – minus the poshness of Downton Abbey. In this book, the reader will peep into many lives of different folks, kinds of job they had, the work conditions, and the places they went for recreations on holidays, and feel empathic towards their victorian kindred spirits. However, this is not a book of insalubrious living conditions for the proletariat, nor the litany of existential woes in living hard lives. In fact, reading this book is like reading a Charles Dickens’s story featuring an Oliver Twists, a Pip, a David Copperfield, and many others of interesting characters working for odd jobs . This book is about the humble but vibrant in Victorian London who were never the boring.

  • Through a Dog’s Eyes by Jennifer Arnold

    Through a Dog's EyesThrough a Dog’s Eyes by Jennifer Arnold

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    If you are a dog person, reading this book will make you become better understanding of your dog or just any dog in sight – in his perspective. This book is written with knowledge and heart by Jennifer Arnold, the Executive Director of Canine Assistants, a school for educating dogs to help people with disabilities, including epilepsy, paralysis of broken spinal cords, and others that prevent them from functioning their ordinary tasks of daily lives . The author specifically emphasizes on the word “education” of her dogs, not “training” because the student dogs are taught to respond to foreseeable/unforeseeable situations that require their immediate problem-solving skills for the safety of their human partners based upon the author’s belief on ethology, the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, by incorporating Operant Conditioning method to modify a behavior by reinforcement and
    punishment.

    What Ms. Arnold avers in the book actually corroborates what I have always believed to be true: (1) that dogs do have feelings without filtering them through the intellect, which can be found in the cerebral cortex of human. But because of this absence, dogs are artless in expressing their emotions toward us; (2) that dogs’ characteristics of being loyal and empathetic indicates that consciousness, the state of being awake and aware, enables them to do what’s in the best interest of others; (3) that in no way, is a concept of “alpha dog” in a human-canine relationship useful or even sensical; and; (4) that operant conditioning with positive reinforcement (rewarding with a treat)  and negative punishment (not giving it) works the best to reinforce intended behaviors.

    You will find a kindred spirit in this book filled with laughters by the wonder dogs at the Canine Assistants, tears by the pains of those who were and are in need of their canine assistants, heartaches by those fallen dogs because of misunderstanding on our human parts, but most of all, joy by understanding our fido friends in their own paws.

  • Letters of Note by Shaun Usher

    Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider AudienceLetters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    It was from “A Way with Words” a public radio show about the English language, including the origins of words, the usages, and good books that I came to know this lovely book. It’s a stupendous compendium of letters from the famous and the ordinary from the ancient to the modern with beautiful photo copies of the letters reproduced in the book. The letters span the whole range of human emotions from kindness, passion, love, joy to heartbreak, anger, disappointment, and longing as the contents of the letters reveal the writer’s’ innermost thoughts, feelings, and emotions through the vehicles of pen and paper.

    Reading each of the letters made me feel deeply touched by the universality of humanity and reflective of the human nature manifested in writing without prejudice on the grounds of appearances and social standings, which influence our perceptions of individuals. Readers can find lots of very interesting letters in this book. Of all the letters in the book, the following three letters resonate in my mind: (1) E. B. White’s letter to his gentleman acquaintance regarding the importance of having hope for humanity; (2) Anaïs Nin’s rebuking letter to a faceless collector of her co-authored “Erotica” for his demand of more prevalent racy contents; and (3) a nameless German woman’s letter to her husband asking him to take her back home from a dreadful mental hospital she was in. It was so heartbreaking to read her brief letter to her husband that I could feel her pain, fear, and sadness alone in the grim place… I commiserated with her….

    Mr. Usher in his foreword states that if the readers are inspired to put pen to paper by reading the letters in the book, his intention of compiling the book will be fulfilled and greatly appreciated. That’s a very noble intention and sublime aspiration in this digital age. This book is a lovely work of art which the readers will never tire of.

  • He was my chief by Christa Schroeder

    He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's SecretaryHe Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler’s Secretary by Christa Schroeder

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    I read this book out of curiosity to find out what Hitler was like behind the public facade when he was backstage with his personal staff. I had done some research on the subject myself, but other books of the interest seemed to be written to provoke spotlight publicity and sensationalism by those who professed to work for him on a personal level, as a chauffeur or a secretary, or a bodyguard. I am not questioning the validity of their work experience, personal integrity, or character but the intention of publicizing such experience as if it were an excuse for asking for a public pardon for having worked for the Fuhrer. One of such illustrative example is Traudl Junge’s well known memoir on her time as a Hitler’s secretary in which she keeps trying to tell readers that she wasn’t part of the evil reich.

    However, this book is relatively devoid of such grandiose content, pomposity of authenticity, and glorification of the fallen reich, which of course, the author could be unable to manifest anyway. Rather, Ms. Schroeder’s coldly objective narrative carries a certain tone of authority in recounting her work experience as senior personal secretary to Hitler who was so reliable and trusty that she was always available and ready to work on call even in the middle of night. Unlike her junior secretary Traudl who was a bit of a celebrity by appearing on as many interviews as possible while she was alive, Ms. Schroede rarely made public appearances and stayed out of limelight.

    If you want eye-catching episodes or Hitler’s personal secrets, this is not a book for you. As the title of the book says, Hitler was her chief, her boss by whom she was employed for her secretarial service. That Hitler was kind and understanding to his secretaries and some of his other attendants could be a revelation in this book. For the clarity of the contents and the author’s objective approach to the subject matter, this book is distinguished from other books of similar subject matter.

    Caveat: For some more information on Christa Schroeder, Wikipedia will provide readers  with a concise biography as linked herein. Hitler’s Senior Secretary