Book Reviews for Ms. Anna

(no sailing here, sorry)

It’s Your Boat Too. By Suzanne Giesemann.
I have been only reading Cruising World magazines and this book for quite a while. It seems I have finally fallen in love with sailing and I want to gobble up every little piece of information on it.
Of course I was turned off by the title of this book. A book for woman sailors seems pretty un-feminist. But it is true, most women on boats don’t know anything more than working the galley or tying lines. Not knowing about your engine or even how to tie a bowline knot can be very dangerous if your sailing partner (husband, boyfriend, dad, etc) were to ever fall sick or become injured while sailing. Besides it truly is much more fun and rewarding if you know what you are doing.

So I truly fell in love with this book. It started off very good with statements like – “there is absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats” and “nautical arithmetic says that one boat plus one boat equals at least two cocktails and one potluck supper” and finally “attitude: the difference between ordeal and adventure”. Also one that I now use every time the boat breaks “it’s the nature of boats”. It truly is. Nothing is easy on a boat! But the book puts things in a very good perspective such as saying “your number one goal aboard your boat should always be to keep the people on the inside and the water on the outside”. Gosh I feel like this entire entry about the book will just be me quoting the book, because honestly the advice is so good and so concise that each phrase makes you go YEAH!

• Fear is an unnecessary waste of time. – especially on a boat but also in life.
• One of the best ways to keep from falling overboard is to maintain one hand for yourself and one for the boat. – this is how I lost my camera and made a fool of myself on a beautiful catamaran.
• Fear of looking bad can keep you from becoming completely engaged.
• Adventure as something enjoyable that involves participation and an element of risk.
• When you are new to boating, the learning curve goes almost straight up.
• Mother Nature will continually throw pop quizzes to keep you on your toes.
• Always keep a weather eye.
• Anchors know Murphy’s Law.
• Only by taking risks do we grow.

There are so many good quotes and ideas and references that come out of this book. But now that I am off the boat and on to lots of public transportation I finally once again have an opportunity to just read books.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. By Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters.
Even better than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is this book. I really enjoyed the Jane Austen part of this book. I was rather surprised. There was just so much plot. I never knew who was meant to end up together. Not to mention I was obsessed with the sea monster aspect, which in all honesty was worse portrayed than the zombies in the previous book. The Winters part of the book wasn’t fleshed out enough for me, but it was continually intriguing. For some reason after reading these two books I feel I might actually be interested in any Jane Austen, but I may be lying to myself. I very much identified with Elinor as well as Marianne, which usually doesn’t happen. These two girls are very different, yet they work off of each other incredibly well. I was in love with Colonel Brandon from day one, even with his face deformity.
The only problem I found with this book is that I became too enthralled and soon had missed my bus stop and was left in rural Dominican Republic, whoops. I never knew what was going on with the steam on Pestilent Isle, I was unsure of how the destruction of Sub-Marine Station Beta would occur, I though Willoughby and Marianne were a perfect match, etc. Overall I never really knew what would happen next, which is why I liked the book so much. I feel this was as much due to Mr. Winters as it was to Ms. Austen. There was so much confusion as to the various love triangles, I honestly didn’t know where the true love was actually meant to be.

• “… and would forever remember thereafter as the sound emitted by an orangutan when it is run through with a cutlass.” – this is exactly the sillyness that I love and that keeps this story insanely nail biting and intriguing.

Overall, I truly adore both of these adaptations of Jane Austen classics and usually I would quickly forward them to Ms. Schwindt, but I found a 14 year old girl here who loves Jane Austen (maybe almost as much as Anna) so she is getting this as a gift. If you are a fan of Jane Austen or of sillyness – read these books because it is just like a Jay-Z and Bittersweet Symphony mash-up, it holds on to the integrity of the original but adds a level of ridiculousness that just makes you smile. This book makes me smile. Well done Quirk Classics.

The Bell Jar. By Sylvia Plath.
From page one I identify with Esther. She is on the sidelines, the girl who sits in the corner and observes. She wants to see everything, be everything, but yet feels to be nothing. That’s me. Feeling that all of the amazing things you are doing are not quite up to snuff with everyone else, that you are wasting your opportunities and even the things you are good at are not good enough. Until chapter 11 I am sure that Ester and I are complete kindred spirits – then they send her to a psychiatrist. Shit. Of course, someone who I believe is just like me is, invariably, insane. But really, I have always known that I was a bit crazy – it comes from my family, we are all a bit crazy, so it truly makes sense that I do identify with someone who is crazy.

• “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story… I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” – this is the crisis of the early 20s, its all rainbows and sunshine because yes you do have no responsibilities and a billion opportunities, but these opportunities can be so overwhelming. Every step towards the future is a step out on that one particular branch. It’s scary.
• “The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from [married]. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a fourth of July rocket.” – a lovely metaphor for not being able to settle down and wanting it all.
• “And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat.”

She also is steadfast on her viewpoint of marriage, babies, and men; and these viewpoints happen to be very similar to my own. Other than between chapters 1 and 11, where I adore Ester and identify with her completely, the book is very, very well written. Her relationship with Buddy and knowing that this life with him is one she could have and should have, but in her heart knows she would really hate it. How she copes and recognizes the woman hater Marco. All of her life events are told with such color and vigor and elaborated on in beautiful metaphors.

Overall, the way she tells her story is very poetic (which makes sense because she is foremost a poet). She reads into everyday events that ring true in my mind. Unfortunately, when she goes insane she enters a world of electrotherapy and pain, one I can’t understand or really comprehend. As much as I enjoyed the beginning and her search for identity, it gets cut to short due to her incarceration into an asylum – but it is semi-biographical so I can’t really blame the author for this turn. Read until chapter 11 then stop.