The Diary of Adam and Eve

The Diary of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain is full of chuckles and wry satire. “Principles have no real force unless one is well fed” is the excuse Adam gives when eating the forbidden fruit that Eve offers. In the foreward, John Updike alludes to Twain’s earlier work Letters from the Earth in which Twain explored biblical themes, the book is made up of the letters written by fallen angel Satan to his friends still in heaven. I had forgotten about this book which I read in high school and remember it being a riot especially for any fans of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books or C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

The Diary of Adam and Eve will have you laughing out loud as Adam struggles to figure out just what exactly Eve is as she relentlessly pursues him day after day. This probably isn’t the book for you if you can’t appreciate some good Genesis bashing and other biblical re-interpretation. Twain’s humor truly shines in this tidy yet powerful volume.

reviewed by Jonas

Pirates

Pirates! by Celia Rees (unabridged audio book)

This is the time of wooden sailing ships mastered by wind and wave.
Here an ocean highway for transporting all manor of goods, with weeks or months of sea in-between stops, this was also a hunting ground for pirates.

Ever feel like escaping the world?  Just get away from your life as you know it?  Then try not to look back, except to watch for what or who may follow you.  This story is read by: Jennifer Wiltsie,  her voice suits the main character Nancy, who was born in a time when her world held no choice but to do what was expected of a girl her age.  

The author blends a tale with maritime history and open ocean pirating of merchant vessels of goods, and those that involved the slave trade.   I was intrigued by how a person could chose to be a pirate, if they did choose.  The story is fiction, but how often I used to think about the world of old, and what my life would have been like, had I been there.   From my history classes in school, there was never anything written about girls or women sailors aboard sailing ships, or as pirates.   The case was more a reality of girls and women being kidnapped, for ravish or ransom in the abundant slave trade of the times.   

I enjoyed this tale because I could relate how it feels to want to be free from the confines that gender and the yoke of responsibility sometimes imposes on the innocent young lives.   Nancy and Minerva the main characters of the story were able to break those confines by a simple change of clothes, and becoming what no-one expected a girl to become, a pirate.   They could roam the seas, casting for adventure and treasure.   They could be free to dream of any type of life they chose, not one that they were bound to by tradition, marrige or slavery.  

 I liked and lamented, over the realistic quality in the way some of the characters had to make decisions about which direction they would lead their life.  I didn’t want the story to end. 

Reviewed by: Deb Munsell