ROOTS

ROOTS by Alex Haley was read for the In Their Shoes Challenge and the Chunkster Challenge.

From the book flap:

"Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kente."

So begins ROOTS, one of the most important and influential books of our time. When originally published thirty years ago, it galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that had not been seen in this country since the pulication of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.

ROOTS has lost none of its emotional power and drama, and its message for today's and future generations is even more vital and relevant than it was thirty years ago.

When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley's grandmother used to tell him stories about their family - stories that went back to her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called "the African." She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the "Kamby Bolongy" and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America.

Still vividly remembering the stories after he grew up and became a writer, Haley began to search for documentation that might authenticate the narrative. It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of "the African" - Kunta Kinte - but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.

Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where is great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him - slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects - and one author.

I had seen the TV mini-series of ROOTS a long time ago. So when looking for a book for the In Their Shoes Challenge, this one jumped out at me. I enjoyed the mini-series and wanted to learn more about this family.

One thing I did learn that was unexpected was the fact that Alex Haley had been sued for plagiarism by Harold Courlander who wrote the book THE AFRICAN. Mr. Haley settled out of court and admitted that some parts of the book were taken from THE AFRICAN. This fact led me to question the book as a whole - was it to be considered fact or fiction? Mr. Haley answered that question:

"To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within ROOTS is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents. Those documents, along with the myriad textural details of what were contemporary indigenous lifestyles, cultural history, and such that give ROOTS flesh have come from years of intensive research in fifty-odd libraries, archives, and other repositories on three continents.

Since I wasn't around when most of the story occurred, by far most of the dialogue and most of the incidents are of necessity a novelized amalgam of what I know took place together with what any researching let me to plausibly feel took place."

So - a mixture of fact and fiction. Still a terrific book. Reading this, I could picture scenes from the mini-series. I could see LaVar Burton as the young Kunta Kinte in chains on the slave ship. John Amos as the older Kunte - now named Toby - and Madge Sinclair as Bell jumping the broom. Leslie Uggams as their daughter Kizzy, and Ben Vereen as the wonderful Chicken George.

My one complaint with this book was the fact that as the story moved from generation to generation, lives were just dropped. The story of Toby and Bell abruptly ended when the focus turned to Kizzy as she was sold to a new owner. Perhaps Mr. Haley couldn't find any documentation of what happened to them after that time, but it was a let-down after following Kunta Kinte for 546 pages. I was hoping to find out what life was like for them without their daughter.

I'm going to either rent or buy this mini-series on DVD along with the sequel "Roots: The Next Generation" which was based on the follow-up book by Mr. Haley.

BRAINIAC

BRAINIAC by Ken Jennings

From the book jacket:

One day back in 2003, Ken Jennings and his college buddy Earl did what hundreds of thousands of people had done before: they auditioned for Jeopardy! Two years, 75 games, 2,642 correct answers, and over $2.5 million in winnings later, Ken Jennings emerged as trivia's undisputed king. BRAINIAC traces his rise from anonymous computer programmer to nerd folk icon. But along the way, it also explores his newly conquered kingdom: the world of trivia itself.

Jennings had always been minutiae-mad, poring over almanacs and TV Guide listings at an age when most kids are still watching Elmo and putting beans up their nose. But trivia, he has found, is centuries older than his childhood obsession with it. Whisking us from the coffeehouses of seventeenth-century London to the Internet age, Jennings chronicles the ups and downs of the trivia fad: the quiz book explosion of the Jazz Age; the rise, fall, and rise again of TV quiz shows; the nostalgic campus trivia of the 1960s; and the 1980s, when Trivial Pursuit again made it fashionable to be a know-it-all.

Jennings also investigates the shadowy demimonde of today's trivia subculture, guiding us on a tour of trivia hotspots across America. He goes head-to-head with the blowhards and diehards of the college quiz-bowl circuit, the slightly soused faithful of the Boston put trivia scene, and the raucous participants in the annual Q&A marathon in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, "The World's Largest Trivia Contest." And, of course, he takes us behind the scenes of his improbable 75-game run on Jeopardy!

But above all, BRAINIAC is a love letter to the useless fact. What marsupial has fingerprints that are indistinguishable from human ones?* What planet has a crater on it named after Laura Ingalls Wilder?* What comedian had the misfortune to be born with the name Albert Einstein?* Jennings also ponders questions that are a little more philosophical: What separates trivia from meaningless facts? Is being good at trivia a mark of intelligence? And is trivia just a waste of time, or does it serve some not-so-trivial purpose after all?

Uproarious, silly, engaging, and erudite, this book is an irresistible celebration of nostalgia, curiosity, and nerdy obsession - in a word, trivia.

I love trivia. My daughters Susan and Donna wouldn't play Trivial Pursuit with me because I would always win. I used to watch Jeopardy! faithfully and could shout out the answers with the best of them. So reading this book was a given.

BRAINIAC was a fun book to read. It was interesting to learn the "history" of trivia. Mr. Jennings introduces us to Fred L. Worth who wrote THE COMPLETE UNABRIDGED SUPER TRIVIA ENCYCLOPEDIA and maintains an immense collection of little-known facts. We are taken to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, for a 54-hour marathon of trivia that is held each April. And we visit a pub in Boston where teams of trivia experts play for fun and glory.

Throughout each chapter, trivia questions are woven into the narrative, with the answers given at the end of the chapter. These are tough questions - but I was able to guess a few of them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Mr. Jennings is a funny guy with a droll sense of humor. For example, this quote from the book:

We met only minutes ago, and he's already told me that "Calcium ions are what make lobster antennae oscillate." I normally save that kind of thing for the second or third date.

Fun book!

*The koala bear, Venus, Albert Brooks

AMONG THE HEROES

AMONG THE HEROES: United Flight 93 & The Passengers & Crew Who Fought Back by Jere Longman.

From the book jacket:

On the evening of September 14, as the sun set over the flag-draped county courthouse in Somerset, Pennsylvania, fifteen hundred mourners gathered together as Governor Tom Ridge presided over a memorial to the passengers and crew of United Flight 93. In the hushed twilight, amid the toiling of bells, a candle was lit for each victim, and the flames were used to light smaller candles held by townspeople attending the service.

The hijackers had failed in their mission, Ridge said. They had not destroyed our spirit. They had rekindled it. By fighting back against the terrorists, the passengers and crew had undoubtedly saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. "They sacrificed themselves for others - the ultimate sacrifice. What appears to be a charred, smoldering hole in the ground," said the governor, "is truly and really a monument to heroism."

Of the four horrific hijackings on September 11, Flight 93, which crashed into a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, resonates as one of epic resistance. A number of passengers phoned relatives and others on the ground to tell them of the hijacking and what they planned to do about it. Their battle to take back the plane brought consolation to countless confused and grief-stricken Americans. At a time when the United States appeared defenseless against an unfamiliar foe, the gallant passengers and crew of Flight 93 provided for many Americans a measure of victory in the midst of unthinkable defeat. Together, they seemingly accomplished what all the security guards and soldiers, military pilots and government officials, could not - they thwarted the terrorists, sacrificing their own lives so that others might live.

The culmination of hundreds of interviews and months of investigation, AMONG THE HEROES is the definitive story of the courageous men and women aboard Flight 93, and of the day that forever changed the way Americans view the world and themselves.

I'm sure we've all read different stories about September 11. We've seen the pictures of the towers and the Pentagon over and over. We've seen pictures of some of the victims. We've heard some of their stories. I knew the aunt of one of the men killed in the towers, so I've read more about him.

When the first stories about this flight began to emerge, I wondered about the people on the other 3 flights. Why did these particular passengers fight back and not the others? Or did the others? We can't know what happened on the first 3 flights. Circumstances were different - this flight had fewer passengers, one less hijacker, probably a much less-experienced hijacker-pilot, information about the previous crashed flights, and more time to react.

In this book, Mr. Longman personalizes the passengers and crew of Flight 93. He tells their individual stories and the stories of the people they left behind. Phone calls from the plane are detailed. Also included are photos of all aboard, donated by their families. What's not included is an exact account of what happened on that flight.

No one knows for certain what transpired before the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. I'm sure everyone has heard "Let's roll" as said by Todd Beamer right before the end of the flight. We'll never know exactly what happened. Did the passengers get into the cockpit? Did they gain control of the plane? All we have are snippets of telephone calls, the transcript of the plane's cockpit voice recorder, and stories of witnesses to the crash itself. What we do know is that this plane was headed back to Washington, aimed at the Capitol Building or the White House, and that by the actions of these heroic people, many other lives were spared. EVERY passenger and crew member on this flight was a hero.

This was a difficult book to read. These people now have faces and voices and stories. They're not just "names" anymore. I can't begin to imagine what they must have been thinking and feeling aboard that plane. Mr. Longman deserves much credit for his work on this book.

PAULA DEEN: IT AIN'T ALL ABOUT THE COOKIN'

PAULA DEEN: IT AIN'T ALL ABOUT THE COOKIN' was a fun book to read. You can read my review here.

I don't think I've ever read a memoir that was so open and honest. Paula told just about everything about her life - mistakes and all. She sounds like a really nice, hardworking person who deserves all the good fortune she has earned.

The book includes recipes at the end of each chapter. And they sound so good. I'm definitely planning a trip to Savannah to go to her restaurant.

700 SUNDAYS

700 SUNDAYS by Billy Crystal was read for the Jewish Literature Challenge and the In Their Shoes Challenge.

From the book jacket:

One of America's most beloved entertainers takes us home. Billy Crystal opens the front door to a time in his life when he shared joy, love, music, and laughter with an eccentric family headed by the hardworking father who left them all too soon.

To support his family, Billy's father, Jack, worked two jobs and long hours and could only spare Sundays to spend with his loved ones. But these precious days would be in short supply - Jack's life was suddenly ended by a heart attack when Billy was just fifteen. 700 SUNDAYS refers to the sadly precise amount of time shared by a devoted father and his adoring son.

From the story of the Crystal family's proud connection to the New York jazz scene of the 40s and 50s ... to the hilarious living room performances that would sow the seeds of Billy's unparalleled career ... to the times of tragedy, heartbreak, and his mother's unending courage, 700 SUNDAYS celebrates the memories, the love, and all the other wonderful gifts parents can give a child.

Based on his Tony Award-winning play, 700 SUNDAYS is not the story of Billy Crystal's great career. It is a tribute to a family and the people who helped make him a man. Personal, poignant, and funny, it will have you laughing out loud and sometimes crying - with the realization that Billy's family is also yours.

I can't add anything to that. This book did make me laugh out loud - more than a couple times - and brought tears at others. The only thing that could have improved this book would have been to hear Billy read it himself.

LUCKY

LUCKY by Alice Sebold was read for the In Their Shoes Challenge.

From the back of the book:

In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

I wasn't thrilled with this book.

Her attack was terrible. Her treatment by so-called friends was less than friendly and supportive. The trial was a horrible experience for her. But for some reason I just couldn't work up a lot of sympathy for her. There was something - something I can't put my finger on - that made me not quite care. Maybe it was her lifestyle in the years following the attack. Drinking, drugs, casual sex. Perhaps that was her coping mechanism. Maybe I'm just too old and far removed from that era and mindset to understand.

I'm glad that she was able to move on with her life after this attack. I hope that writing this book was a way for her to put this all behind her.

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE BIKE

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE BIKE: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins was the first book read for the In Their Shoes Reading Challenge.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

Lance Armstrong does things in a big way. Other people write books about the long road back from cancer, or the physical and emotional trauma of infertility, or the experience of growing up without a father, or the determination it takes to win the most important bicycle race in the world. Armstrong lays claim to all of it, and the result is a pretty terrific book ... Armstrong's book is both inspiring and entertaining. He doesn't whine, doesn't sugarcoat the tough parts and doesn't forget to thank the good people who helped him most along the way.

That assessment just about says it all. He went through some rough times. By the time his testicular cancer was diagnosed at age 25, it had already spread to his lungs and brain. He was given less than a 40% chance of surviving. The book tells about his treatments and the effects of the chemotherapy on his body, and the toll it took on his emotional state.

Being a cancer survivor became the most important thing to him. More than being a championship cycler. Instead of giving up, as he had thought of doing, he went back to training and overcame many obstacles in his path. He won the 1999 Tour de France, then came back in 2000 and won again. The book ends at that point, but since then he has gone on to win the Tour a record 7 consecutive times. He has formed the Lance Armstrong Foundation which provides education and tools to help others survive cancer. Though now retired from racing, he is still an activist for cancer patients throughout the world.