Always On by Brian Chen (2011) January 5, 2012

This is a book about the iPhone and how it has created an “anything-anywhere-anytime” future and locked us in to this new world.  Annie bought me this for Christmas, and the irony is that though I have an iPhone, I probably under-utilize its capacity more than any other owner.  Perhaps she wanted me to see what I’m missing—and clearly I’m missing plenty.  At times, the book almost made me want to download a few more apps (I have 5 or 6 on my phone and my kids have added 20 or 30 others for their use) so I can do more with my phone.  But by the end of the book I decided that I’ll leave my phone as it is for now: a device to call my family and check email, with the occasional foray into maps, restaurants, and vocabulary words.  I’m simply not an “always on” person, and though I’m clearly missing out on some information and opportunities, I’m also pretty content doing lots of other things besides checking a screen hundreds of times a day.  The book is mostly pro-iPhone, pro-Apple, and pro-technology (Chen used to work for Macworld and currently writes a Wired colum on Apple), but Chen does attempt to balance the scales with some of the drawbacks such as gaming addiction, self-obsession, and data overload.  Certainly he acknowledges the frightening path of privacy violation we seem to be headed down because after all, nothing is really free.  All those free apps and free sites with free data and free services are funded by ads, and ads make money when they’re personal to us–users of the free stuff.  And to get personal, they need personal information which many sites share and sometimes sell to third parties.  So Chen makes us aware of many ‘behind-the-scenes’ tricks companies are using—and constantly developing—to get information we’re not aware they’re getting.  At times, though, Chen’s research is a bit suspect.  For example, he cites a study by researches at Abilene Christian University which found that students who had more Facebook activity—more friends, more groups, and more wall posts—were more likely to stay in college than those students who were less connected to social networking sites. Of course, Abilene Christian also provides every student with an iPhone, so research results like this support their decision to enable every Abilene student to be “always on.”

 

This book is definitely interesting, and it covers a wealth of information: the iPhone and the other smart phones, vertical business strategies, liability, privacy, virtual worlds, concentration and multi-tasking, the “me” generation, the Amish, and a variety of other topics.  Near the end of the book, he offers an analogy that I like and I’ll use—”Attempting to generalize ‘the Internet’ as good or bad is like saying ‘food’ is good or bad.” Since I eat organic, healthy food and my kids prefer Pop Tarts, I get that analogy.  All food is not equal.  And all Internet use is not equal either.  I just hope  I their favorite sites are healthier than their favorite foods.  (non fiction)

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011) January 5, 2012

This is not a book about marriage, but it is a book about relationships.  It takes place in the 80′s where three twenty-something Brown graduates are trying to figure out what—and who—is important in their lives, and what their next step will be.  I suppose one could argue that they spend too much time pondering these big ideas and they should just jump into the job market and begin their life of responsibility without thinking so much about what really matters to them. On the other hand, one could also applaud them for truly trying to figure out what matters, what works, and what it all means.  We see the inner workings of Madeleine, the upper class girl who fights her privileged upbringing and seeks meaning through Victorian literature and the study of semiotics (while driving her new convertible).  And of Leonard Bankhead—whom she falls for—an intellectual, charismatic, manic-depressive struggling to keep his disease under control.  And finally, of Mitchell who reads Christian mysticism and floats off on a journey through Europe—to get Madeleine (whom he loves) off his mind—ending up working at the Home for Dying Destitutes in India and wondering what he actually believes about God and religion.  Perhaps I loved this book because it’s my era—college and beyond in the 80′s—but more than that, each character thinks, does, and says what so many of us did, might have thought, and maybe never said.  And the writing is fabulous: funny, witty, and thought-provoking.  In one scene, Mitchell reminisces about Detroit’s Greektown and his family upbringing there.  But now in his early 20′s, both Greektown and Mitchell have changed from his childhood days.  It’s now “a kitsch tourist destination” where Mitchell is “just another suburbanite, no more Greek than the artificial grapes hanging from the ceiling.” I remember driving to Greektown senior year in college and thinking how cool it was to be leaving Ann Arbor for a real Greek restaurant, not realizing how touristy the whole place was and how I was exactly the patron they counted on.

This novel immerses us in the intellectual world of literature and philosophy, the scientific world of brain chemistry and microbiology, and the religious world of Catholicism, Buddhism, and Atheism.  Great characters, great writing, and great ideas to ponder.  This is a fine book that I highly recommend. (fiction)

The Boy who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer (2009) January 5, 2012

The word ‘inspiring’ appeared in 7 of the first 8 reviews I read of this book, and while I certainly don’t disagree with that description, forgive me for not jumping on it and riding the wave all the way through my review.  Kamkawamba—along with author Bryan Mealer—tells the story of his childhood in Malawi and how he created a windmill to capture energy so that he could bring electricity to his family, and eventually to make his family’s life easier by pumping water to their house and to their crops.  That’s the gist of the story, and the first several pages bring us to the climax where Kamkwamba stands on the windmill tower poised and ready to light a bulb while much of his village watches.  It is a good and fascinating story, though not very well told.  After those first few pages, the  next hundred pages or so contain various disconnected tales from his childhood: the toys he made from scratch, the school he attended when he could, the Magic many believed in, the food they ate, the crops they grew, etc.  The stories offer background information, but probably more than we need for a book about building a windmill.  The middle of the book goes into heart-wrenching detail about the famine of 2000-2001 (the stomach churning details reminded me of What is the What and Kaffir Boy).  And the final third chronicles the windmill building and how that led to an invitation to an international TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, a private school, TV interviews, and eventually Dartmouth College.  The larger story is fascinating, but the writing feels sometimes disjointed and sometimes like a diary chronicling event after event.  Though all the information he includes is interesting in its own right, it feels rambling—as if he wasn’t sure which details were important to bring forth the story, so he included everything he could remember. Like most memoirs, the true story trumps the writing.  Still, it offers history, anthropology, sociology, politics, invention, and technology, so there is much to learn about in this book.  Not a great read, but definitely an important, intriguing, and yes, inspiring story.  (memoir)

Room by Emma Donoghue (2010) November 14, 2011

If you’re looking for a book to read on a plane—a page turner that might avert your attention from the crying baby in the seat behind you—then this might be a good choice.  It did keep me turning the page, but if I had something better to read, I think I would have put this down and picked up a another book.  This felt a lot like a really long sensational People Magazine article about a woman who is abducted and locked in a shed by a lunatic.  Though the author claims the story is not based on any particular real life incident, it feels a lot like the Elizabeth Smart case or the Jaycee Lee Dugard story–or a combination of the two.  The book is narrated by Jack, a child who just turned 5 and has not had contact with the world beyond this shed that he and his mom live in, other than nightly visits by their captor.  But they do have a TV, and Jack has ‘TV friends.”  So here’s the problem: the author writes from the perspective of a child who has never been in the real world, but the author is not a psychologist or social worker, and she hasn’t worked with victims of captivity.  I think she’s writing beyond what she knows.  For example, Jack often speaks in improper past tense despite his mother’s constant corrections (“I rided” and “I forgetted”), but a few months later, he’s watching his mother being interviewed for TV and he can recount the entire interview in adult words and thoughts.  His character is inconsistent, and the shift in perspective simply doesn’t work. As well, there are moments where believability is a real issue.  Spoiler alert: Honestly, would Old Nick assume Jack is dead and not even check to see if he’s breathing? I doubt it.

Still, the book did make me think.  As a mom, how would I raise my child in a 11 X 11 room?  How would I protect him? What would I choose to tell him and not tell him?  How would I keep him healthy and sane and entertained?  How would I find the patience and calm to not take my frustration and anger out on my child? I found all of those issues intriguing, especially after reading sections where Ma laid out a daily exercise plan, practiced excellent hygiene, and devised a plan to keep her son safe while she suffered night after night.

There are plenty of other books out there that are written much better than this, but my theory is that every book has something to teach, something to be learned or thought about.  And this book did make me think.  I’ll give it that much.  (fiction)

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2009) October 21, 2011

McCann’s writing is beautiful, often poetic (though at times a little too flowery) in this novel which is really a collection of vignettes loosely held together with the story of Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the World Trade Center Towers in August of 1972. But mostly they’re held together simply by the connection to New York City: the grit, the graffiti, the disparity between the projects and Park Avenue, and the contrast between feeling anonymous and feeling deeply connected. As well, each character represents a social or political aspect of the 70′s: Corrigan is rooted in his Catholic faith, and acting as a Liberation Theologian, he protects, defends, and befriends the poor and the prostitutes; his brother, Ciaran, tries to make sense of this obsessive commitment that is foreign to him; upper crust Claire is reeling from the shock of losing her son who died in non-combat duty in Vietnam; Joshua, her dead son was a brilliant techie working for the government on the frontlines of Internet invention when he was killed in Southeast Asia; Gloria, who lives in the projects, lost her son in Vietnam as well, but she and Claire form a tenuous bond over their loss.  And in a spider-webby sort of way, McCann spins the stories around and through each other until there’s enough to connect them.  What pulled me in more than the stories was the writing itself.  At one point, Claire’s  support group—all mothers who lost sons in the war—is taken aback at finding out she lives on the Upper East side.  Janet says Oh, we didn’t know you lived up there. Up there.  As if it were somewhere to climb.  As if they would have to ascend to it.  Ropes and helmets and carabiners (77). I love the way we feel the physical dizziness and discomfort of the money, the power, the status that only Claire possesses.  Yet, she remains as lost, unhappy, and even more alone than the rest of them.

McCann never mentions 9/11, but in many ways that’s what the book is about: life goes on no matter what.  Despite tragedy, disgrace, or disillusionment–hope remains.  And the world spins on.  It happened in the 70′s, it happened after 9/11, and it will keep happening.

 

This is a really good read. (fiction)

Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and a Teacher by William Zinsser (2009) September 19, 2011

Zinsser is the guru of nonfiction writing, and I use his advice all the time in my own classroom, especially excerpts from his most famous book, On Writing Well in which he expounds on clutter as the disease of American writing.  Simplify, simply, he advises.  And I try to follow his lead, cutting out needless words and making my point using clear language.  This book is Zinsser’s memoir on writing, describing his career as a writer, from his early days writing for The Herald Tribune to his many years as a freelance journalist to his years at Yale, and finally to his years devoted to  On Writing Well and its numerous editions. I especially loved his descriptions of the offices at the Herald Tribune with cigarette smoke wafting over furious fingers at typewriters.  The atmosphere seems dirty, messy, and loud, but Zinsser loved every minute of it, especially the spirited conversations around the coffee pot.  Much later, in his freelance years, he misses those crowded, cluttered offices that felt so alive. I also loved his description of teaching at Yale where he intended to offer his first nonfiction writing class to 15 students (thinking he might have to recruit a few) and ended up with over a hundred students clamoring to get in.  Then he had the luxury of reading their applications and deciding who to allow into the class.  Ah…if only we could all be so lucky.

 

Anyone who wants to write should read Zinsser’s advice—and follow it.  If half the memoirs on the market today were written by folks who followed his advice, most would be about 50% shorter than they are, and they wouldn’t lose a thing.  I hope this won’t be Zinsser’s last book.  (memoir).

The Red Skirt: Memoirs of an Ex Nun by Patricia O’Donnell-Gibson (2011) September 19, 2011

Lots of folks who grew up in catholic schools of the 50′s and 60′s will laugh, nod, and cringe through this memoir.  As a catholic school girl of the 70′s, I experienced little, if any, of what the author went through, but I know my older sisters would surely identify with much of it, beginning with First Communion, the sacred right of passage that Gibson describes as “pretty heady stuff for an eight-year-old” as she admits “I did believe—right down to my shiny white shoes—that Jesus–the same one who looked out from the picture of the Sacred heart—was coming into me; into my body and also to my soul.” Actually, I’m not sure it’s any different today, except that fewer kids are terrified of priests and nuns, so if they don’t believe their bodies are literally joined with the body of Jesus through a wafer, maybe they don’t feel condemned to purgatory for such outrageous thoughts.  She offers great stories of missionaries preaching about the poor pagan babies who will forever hang out in a place called Limbo after they die, stories about being forced to flatten her hair and lengthen her skirt, and stories about the nuns constantly reminding students that any talent they possessed came straight from God, not from natural ability or hard work.  The memoir follows Gibson’s years from grade school, through high school and her “calling” into the Dominican order, her years as a Postulant, then a Novice, then a teacher, and finally, her decision to walk away from her life as a nun.  The best, most vivid writing in the book comes in the chapters about teaching elementary students.  The writing becomes livelier and more detailed.  It’s beyond me how she can remember so much from so long ago.  Sometimes I can’t even describe a class of students that I taught five years ago.  Perhaps if I had been a better Catholic, God would have provided me with a better memory.  (memoir)

*Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (1990, 2009) August 24, 2011

I became a Krakauer fan over 20 years ago when I first encountered a few of his articles in Outside Magazine.  Since then, I’ve read Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, Under The Banner of Heaven, Where Men Win Glory, and now Eiger Dreams, his first book which is a collection of previously published articles about mountaineering.  I was ordering a new copy of Into Thin Air for my son when this book caught my eye.  Something of Krakauer that I hadn’t read? That I should read his first book after reading everything else he’s written (save Three Cups of Deceit which I’ve almost finished), is a bit out of order, but I think I gleaned more from the book this way.  I certainly wouldn’t have appreciated his prescience about climbing in the Himalayans had I not already read Into Thin Air.  In Eiger Dreams he writes about the growing pride and glory associated with successfully summiting the highest and most dangerous mountains.  Where so many mountaineers were once driven by personal challenge, too many (and this is in the mid 80′s) were beginning to put together such big, expensive, and high profile climbing parties that not succeeding became a public failure.  Thus, many were beginning to allow external pressure to cloud their judgement.  Not too many years after he wrote those words, the disasters mounted, on Everest in particular.  Yet even after writing Into Thin Air, he left the ‘I told you so’ attitude out of the book, something he clearly could have inserted, because indeed, he did tell us—years earlier—that disaster was imminent.  My favorite articles/chapters in Eiger Dreams are “The Burgess Boys,” “Gill,” and “The Devil’s Thumb.”  Even early in his career, Krakauer embedded such power in his writing that he captures us with every detail.  He has a knack for finding the most compelling stories, chronicling the most interesting, unique people, and writing about them with such accuracy and detail that his credibility is flawless.  It feels like a month—or more—of exhaustive research must go into each 20 page piece.  When his subject is himself rather than other climbers, as it is in “The Devil’s Thumb,” he manages to take us with him to the brink of disaster–the thunk of an ice pick into granite or  a 5 foot drop into a crevasse that easily could have been a thousand foot plummet—with a self-deprecating tone.  We get the crushing sensation of fear without dramatic hyperbole.  This is a great collection.  (nonfiction)

Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (2002) August 24, 2011

What I loved about Charming Billy, McDermott’s last novel (~ 1999) were the intricate details of specific scenes and characters.  After 10+ years, I can still see the funeral parlor.  Similarly, in Child of My Heart, McDermott zeros in on her main character’s every move.  The whole novel covers maybe a few weeks in the life of Theresa, a 15-year-old Long Island resident who is coveted by neighboring families for her pet-sitting and baby-sitting prowess. It seems that all children and pets are happiest under her charge.  McDermott kind of follows Theresa around with a zoom lens, allowing us to listen and watch her every move. She invites Daisy-Mae, her 8 year old waif-thin—and ill—cousin, to visit for the summer acting as a protective and guiding older sister, something Daisy-Mae has never experienced in her family of 8.  Together, they care for Flora, the toddler of an aging artist and his young—often absent—wife, several dogs and cats of wealthy Long-Islanders, and the neighboring children who are often hungry, dirty, and wanting in numerous ways.  In every situation, Theresa seems to know just what to do and say to soothe, calm, shelter, guide, persuade, and advise.  Almost too much.  She seems wise beyond her years, and cloyingly sweet,  yet precocious. She is sexually excited by the advances of Flora’s father, who is 70, yet standoff-ish at the same time.  What 15-year-old can calmly sing a two-year-old to sleep one minute and lose herself in the flutters of an old man’s touch on the back of her neck the next minute, acting as if it’s all very normal.  Clearly Theresa is no typical teenager, but in terms of character believability, I think McDermott stretches a little too far.  Still, there are multiple moments of pure beauty in her writing, in description and insight.  At one point, Theresa talks with Daisy-Mae who is missing her family, and Theresa explains that when you’re used to people, you can “miss them but not necessarily want to be with them. . . sort wishing you can “be in two places at once.  With them because you love them and you’re used to them, but also away from them so you can be just yourself” (88).  I think I feel that way a lot.  Probably everyone does.  I suppose I’d describe this as a coming-of-age story as Theresa slides into the world of adult experience, at the same time maintaining a world of innocence for Daisy and Flora.  Her ability to navigate both worlds without ever becoming rattled or overwhelmed, however, propels her well beyond her 15 years.  Probably beyond anyone at 15.  (fiction)

**The Dirty Life by Kristen Kimball (2010) August 15, 2011

This book swept me in much the same way that the author, Kristen Kimball, was swept into farming.  The Dirty Life is her story of morphing from  a free-lance writer living in Manhattan to an organic farmer in upstate New York all in less than a year.  She met her husband, Mark, a Pennsylvania farmer, when she was assigned to interview him, and within 24 hours she was hoeing broccoli and helping him slaughter a big.  Love came soon after, and soon after that, they were turning 500 acres of neglected land and outbuildings near lake Champlain into a farm of organic vegetables and fruits, pigs, cattle, chickens, cows, maple syrup, beans, and grains—using horse-power and no tractors.  The work she describes is utterly overwhelming, physically, emotionally, and mentally.  Yet, it’s the most rewarding thing she’s ever done.  Days sometimes start before 4 am and often don’t end until they collapse into bed at 9 or 10.  It’s dirty, scary, hard, and beautiful.  Their vision is to build a CSA that will feed 100 families a full diet—not just food to supplement the grocery store, but enough quantity and variety to replace the grocery store.  She wrote the book seven years after they began their venture, and it chronicles their first year.  But from the epilogue and what I’ve read of their current farm, they’ve succeeded and now have 150 members, several interns, and several teams of horses, plus a daughter.  This kind of farming  seems romantic and idyllic.  After all, I love harvesting tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, squash, and lettuce from our family garden.  But I do little actual work there.  And it’s about 20 x 100 feet.  The Kimballs have 500 acres.  But farming definitely isn’t idyllic or romantic most of the time—mostly it’s a to-do list 10 times longer than what could possibly get done and setbacks that are often out of your control.  But it’s important, earthy, good-for-the-world work too.  Kimball is an eloquent writer: she takes us right to the brink of every emergency, the sparkle of every celebration, and the hilarity of every laughable moment.  Her self-deprecating tone is refreshing for a memoir.  I have so many favorite passages dog-eared in the book that it’s hard to choose only a few, but here are two: a personal reflection  and a funny description.

“I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people.  I thought the physical world–the trades–was the place you ended up if you weren’t bright or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job.  Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law?  Apparently I did, though it amazes me now. . . There’s no better cure for snobbery than a good ass kicking” (111)  Later she writes, “Mark and I spent evenings poring over the seed catalogs that had arrived during the darkest week of winter, piling up next to the bed like farmer porn” (119).  I’ve read and re-read and read aloud so many passages because they cracked me up or they made me ponder priorities or they connected to The Grapes of Wrath, (my most recent read) or they made me realize just how much work and love goes into the food I eat.  This is a great, great book.  (memoir)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939,1992) August 1, 2011

I haven’t read this since high school, and I’m not even sure we read the whole thing back then.  What I remember most is watching the movie in the auditorium with the entire sophomore class and being dumbfounded by the dust bowl images.  If we actually read the book, I didn’t get much out of it (as I recall, the focus of sophomore English was learning to read the newspaper.   I think this was the late 70′s “New English” approach).  What surprised me the most in reading Grapes of Wrath today is how relevant this novel is to current economic times.  While we are not in a depression, we certainly live in a society of have and have-nots, a society of displaced people, and a society of fear: do what it takes to keep the status quo for the wealthy.  As I was finishing the book, the BBC ran a program on parallels between Steinbeck’s book and life today, interviewing middle class folks living on mattresses in a make-shift shelter after losing their jobs and Oklahoma cattle farmers struggling to keep their farms after suffering the worst drought since the 30′s and Arizona immigrants trying to feed their kids while risking deportation knowing that their decrepit living conditions are still better than those in Mexico.  Perhaps today’s economic crisis is the closest we’ve come to the Depression with the huge number of Americans seeking work due to downsizing, outsourcing, and technological advancement.  Steinbeck personifies the tractor as a monster eating up several families’ labor and the tractor driver as a sell out, one with no connection to the land.  Today, one computer can do the work of 10 or 100 or 1000 people, and it has no human connection to the office (or factory).  Today, jobs are outsourced to countries where people will work for lower wages just as the San Joaquin farmers attracted thousands of men to fill a few hundred jobs, thereby driving down wages.  And in both eras, agribusiness (think Monsanto and ConArga), with their government subsidies and huge crop-small margins model, put small, multi-crop farmers out of business. Yet, should we eschew technological advancement in favor of maintaining traditional methods?  Should we employ a million Bartleby-the-Scriveners instead of using a printing press or a computer?  Where do we draw the line between modernization that betters society and modernization that hinders it? Migrant workers needed organized labor for a fair wage.  Do we still need organized labor today?  Steinbeck’s issues didn’t end with the depression.  They continue to rage today.

That said, Steinbeck’s message is a bit overbearing at times.  Too often he makes the poor our to be perfect and the wealthy out to be evil.  In his effort to drive home his social criticism, he shoots himself in the foot a bit with his heavy-handed approach.  But perhaps he felt that was the only way to bring attention to this cause.  Perhaps without this book it would have taken that much longer for conditions to improve, for unions to organize, and for migrant workers to make enough money to feed their children.  A few images from this book will be forever implanted into my brain: fried dough for dinner; cherries and pears rotting on the ground because it’s more expensive to pick them than they’re worth; and the final scene with Rose of Sharon and the starving man in the barn. I wish there were fewer connections to the realities of today, but unfortunately the book is more relevant to 2011 than Steinbeck could ever have imagined.  (fiction)

**Incendiary by Chris Cleave (2005) July 14, 2011

I could not put this book down.  This is Cleave’s first book which he wrote several years before Little Bee, but after Little Bee’s success, Incendiary was republished in the US.  Cleave can create characters and get into their head in a way that few other modern authors can do.  The whole story is written in the form of a letter from  a female narrator (whose name is never revealed) to Osama bin Laden.  Her husband and child have been blown up in London at the Chelsea vs. Arsenals football match (a plot loosely based on a bombing in Spain.  The London Tube bombing happened just after he wrote the book), and the letter is essentially the aftermath of her life which spirals downward.  We forget the story is a letter to Osama because we are so entrenched in the events unfolding and the dialogue and emotion and the reality of it–and then every so often, she directly addresses him.  When the narrator is in the hospital getting treatment for her injuries after she has gone to the blown up stadium in search of her husband and four-year old son and was nearly trampled to death, she says: “They moved me to a bed by the window where there was day and night again and I could look out on the whole city.  The hospital I was in was Guy’s.  Maybe you know it Osama? Maybe you’ve studied just how to blow it up?” It’s like a sock in the gut each time she directly talks to him describing the way her small son burned to death holding Mr. Rabbit or the way her husband thought a good London pub should be busy and loud whereas Osama probably thinks a pub “ought to be firebombed and turned into a mosque.”  I absolutely feel like I’m in her head, living her grief, downing her Valium pills, looking at normal things like lamps and clothes and suddenly seeing them burst into flames.  Cleave’s writing is compelling and convincing and beautiful and harrowing.  About twice a page, I have to stop and reread because I cannot believe he can come up with such a perfect image.  It’s like reading poetry.  Most amazing, this is a male writing a female’s story.  He did that in Little Bee as well.  This is a phenomenal–and depressing–story that won all sorts of literary awards. (fiction)

*Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (2009) July 14, 2011

Krakauer’s latest book–Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman–is partially a story of Pat Tillman and partially a story of the war in Afghanistan and partially a story of heroes.  Krakauer exhaustively researched each aspect of the story: Tillman’s childhood, football career, love life, family values, and his character, as well as Afghanistan’s history, its political and social problems, the US involvement there, including Bush and Rumsfeld’s strategy (or lack thereof) and bumbling decisions on the part of military superiors and government officials. So it’s more than just a story of a pro football player who gives up a multi-million dollar contract to be a patriot and fight terrorism which is the story that most people are familiar with.  It’s much more complex than that.  Krakauer exposes much of the controversy behind the war as well as the controversy behind Tillman’s death by friendly fire and the propaganda surrounding his enlistment and his death.  Not surprisingly, nothing positive comes from Krakauer’s investigation, except Tillman’s commitment to help his country.  The book gets a bit bogged down in detail at times, but overall, it’s an interesting and exhaustive look into a country we know little about–not a bad way to learn about Afghanistan and the war, albeit from Krakauer’s liberal perspective (with which I happen to agree).  For history buffs, the analogy between Tillman and the Greek hero Achilles is an interesting aspect of the story.  Lots of parallels to the ancient Greeks, the hero and warrior culture, and tragic flaws that often lead to their demise. (nonfiction)

A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010) June 15, 2011

This is one bizarre book.  Calling it a novel is a bit of a stretch–it’s more like short stories loosely connected, a genre I’ve often embraced  (I love Nicole Krauss’s Great House and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, along with numerous other works of a similar style).  But this one just doesn’t work very well, probably because I didn’t care enough about most of the characters.  I think there are just too many, and just about the time we get enough information to care about someone, Egan is on to a new story or new character and/or a new time.  It’s hard enough to figure out how the characters’ lives relate to one another, but she further complicates those relationships by flashing backward and forward in time, switching point of view, and writing the story in multiple genres, causing the reader to focus too much on questions of who and when rather than why.  As writing guru William Zinsser warns, if you make your reader work to0 hard, he/she will soon give up. And that’s what I was tempted to do several times.  The plot (if we can call it that) revolves around the music industry, specifically the punk rock industry, spanning from the 80′s to the 2020′s; the cast of characters is loosely tied together by an 80′s band, the Conduits; and the overarching theme is the passage of time (goon–thus the title). Within this messy structure, however, there are some interesting characters and storylines–my favorites were Bennie and Stephanie’s life at the swanky country club and Lou’s African safari with his kids and his new girlfriend–as well as some interesting genres like Ally’s story told through her powerpoint slides.  And there are some great lines like Jules’s comment on modern day multi-tasking: “Everybody sounds stoned, because they’re e-mailing people the whole time they’re talking to you.”  So we get nuggets of great stuff throughout the book.  Egan is clearly talented, original, edgy, and creative—I just think she tried to do too much in one novel. (fiction)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986, 1998) June 15, 2011

Another book on my “to read” list for many years, The Handmaid’s Tale is unique in the dystopia genre.  While it is similar to 1984, Brave New World, and even the newer Delerium (a YA novel), it offers a slightly different twist focusing primarily on women’s rights and the role of women in society.  I’m always amazed when authors can accurately project where society is headed, and it seems that Atwood, in 1986, was onto many ideas: the Tea Party, evangelical Christianity, theocracy.  In this story, women are categorized into a few roles—the handmaids that are used to procreate with the Commanders, the Marthas that are used to keep younger women in line, the wives who are married to Commanders but have no real relationship with them, and some sort of slave class for women and others who are not useful to the society.  And how was this society brought about? By a religious takeover.  God wills it this way and viola! this is how we should run things.  A woman’s place is in the home; her role is to produce offspring; she is not to think, but to obey; society shall not inquire or read or discuss.  Those who don’t abide shall be killed and such killing shall be made public, and male Commanders shall maintain power and decision-making.  So it’s basically a theocracy, not far from Iran or Iraq under the Taliban or Sharia law.  And though a stretch, I wonder how far off it is from beliefs of some of the Tea Partiers or conservative Christians where “family values” probably means women who obey, procreate, pray, and don’t read or think too much.  It’s been 25 years since Atwood wrote this book.  I wonder if we’re closer to her fictional Gilead society than she thought we’d be. I can think of a few politicians who would love to turn our country into Gilead. (fiction)

*Anti Cancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD (2010) May 19, 2011

Okay, so the title probably doesn’t seem like a page turner, and to many people, it won’t be.  But it was for me.  I felt redeemed, I wanted to shout out loud, “I”m not crazy after all.”  Here we finally have a book written by a doctor that says cancer can be fought by more than just surgery, drugs, and radiation (aka: slash, poison, and burn).  It can also be fought with nutritious food, a calm mind, an exercised body, and a positive outlook.  These are all part of the “terrain” he describes throughout the book.  I never used the word “terrain,” prior to reading this, but I have spent the last 18 months feeding my body the most nutritious food I can make, practicing yoga, maintaining a stress-free and positive outlook, and exercising every day.  In short, doing everything in my power to keep my cancer from returning.  What makes this book different from all the other anti cancer books I’ve read in the last year and a half is that he argues for an integrative approach: conventional treatment plus natural treatment.  This gives him credibility with the medical community whereas many books that suggest his same natural approach also preach the evils of conventional treatment.  So I pursued my own integrative approach: I followed the prescribed treatment and supplemented with my self-prescribed natural treatment.  My natural approach was generally met with rolling eyes or quips of “I guess it can’t hurt you, but there’s no evidence to suggest it will help either.” Of course there isn’t, I thought, big pharma doesn’t fund studies of food.  So I laughed out loud when Servan-Schreiber says “it’s not financially feasible to invest  sums in demonstrating the usefulness of broccoli or green tea because they can’t be patented” (129).  Basically everything I learned from “quack” natural books is all in this book: we live in a toxic world; stress is harmful to our bodies; organic fruits and vegetables heal; commercially raised meat and dairy are bad; green tea, tumeric, and flaxseed are good; white flour and sugar are bad; yoga and meditation offer healing power; we can strengthen our bodies to help prevent cancer recurrence.  But this is no “quack” natural book.  It’s a well-researched, credible approach to integrative medicine by a doctor who is also a cancer survivor (and who did not believe in any of this until he was faced with cancer himself). I will remain forever grateful to the many brilliant doctors who have cared for me, but I will also remain faithful to my resolve that I can take an active role in my future health by practicing a natural, peaceful, and positive approach to life every day.  (non-fiction)

 

 

Addendum: David Servan-Schreiber died a few weeks ago, about 3 months after I read this book.  His death launched me into a tailspin for a few days.  He lived his advice—and his brain tumor came back a third time.  And it killed him.  Where does that leave me? I wondered.  I won’t pretend his fate doesn’t rattle my resolve each time I eat another salad and hope that the greens are giving me the power to fight any stray cancer cells that may lurk in my body.  But I also take comfort in knowing that he fought off cancer three times, and he lived almost 20 years beyond the discovery of his first tumor.  That thought continues to give me strength.

**The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010) May 19, 2011

I was captivated by this book from beginning to end, and I kept thinking that if I had read something like this in high school biology, I would have been a lot more fascinated by cells and their behavior.  This is the story of Henrietta Lacks, whose famous HeLa cells have transformed medicine, giving researchers an immortal cell line for use in labs around the world.  It’s also the story of Henrietta’s personal life and her family and the questions they ask regarding her cells.  And it’s the story of cell biology and genetics and ethics and biotech companies and patents and how we make sense of all these entities when they converge.  The questions Skloot raises are as pertinent today as they were in 1951 when Henrietta died of a virulent type of ovarian cancer.  Through ten years of research, Skloot manages to uncover the details of this story with objectivity. We see all sides of the issue: Henrietta’s family, her doctors, Johns Hopkins, the research labs, even the biotech and pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, she also brings out some very dark moments in the history of medicine and in the history of our country.  As well, we see the medical revolution Henrietta’s cells produced. But mostly we see the humans behind this revolution and the wide spectrum of behavior, from a doctor who entered into an agreement with a biotech company to commercially develop his patient’s cell line, to the researcher who graciously invited Henrietta’s adult children to his lab so they could finally view their mother’s famous cells under the microscope.  This non-fiction book is packed with science, medicine, and history, but it reads like a novel.  It’s fascinating.

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy (2010) May 15, 2011

Pat Conroy fell in love with words as a young boy the way that other boys fall in love with baseball or fire trucks.  He went on to write 10 books, and though I haven’t read his last few, I was a big fan for many years, and The Prince of Tides still ranks high on my list.  As readers, we’re dying to know who shaped the minds and the writing skills of those authors dear to us, and Pat Conroy delivers well in this non-fiction book.    Having read 5 of Conroy’s books, I thoroughly enjoyed this journey through his literary world which included not just the books that most influenced him but also the experiences and people (including his mother, a high school teacher, a cranky bookseller, and other authors) who played a significant role in his writing life.  And every time I read a book like this, I feel like I’ve read so little.  He references book after book after book that impacted him in some way, and I kept thinking about how many of them I haven’t read–and some I hadn’t even heard of. Yet he also hit on several that have been favorites of mine. His book offered me the following reminders: I want to reread Madame Bovary, I need to read Anna Karenina and War and Peace, I’d like my 12 year old daughter to read Gone with the Wind (Conroy’s life in the  South was shaped by it), I’d like to remember that “hurt is a great teacher, perhaps the greatest of all ” (160) and finally, I’d like my students and I to remember that “good writing is the hardest form of thinking.  It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear” (304).   (Non-fiction)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2007) April 30, 2011

After my daughter read this book, she repeatedly told me that I would love it–and I did.  It took a while, though, to pick it up, and by the time I did, she had read it one or two more times.  I think a part of me wasn’t sure I was ready for another Holocaust or WWII book. In the past year I’ve read Sarah’s Key, Night, and Unbroken.  Was I ready for more devastation, starvation, dehumanization?  Probably not, but since Annie often reads the books I recommend, I thought I should read what she so highly recommended.  What I loved about the book is that it offers so much more than the horrors of the Holocaust.  It’s about goodness as much as it’s about suffering.  We see a Jewish man grasping at a crust of bread on a death march to Auschwitz—but we also see young Liesel willing to sacrifice her own safety to offer that bread.  We see Max hiding in Liesel’s basement, fearful that any moment might be his last—but we also see Liesel’s adoration for him and her home made gifts that decorate his bed.  We see neighbors crammed together in a bomb shelter, fearing that each noise will bring utter destruction–but we also see one young girl brave enough to read aloud from one of her stolen books while they huddle together.  And we see Liesel losing her younger brother and her mother on the same day–but meeting her foster father, Hans Huberman, who calms her each night, reading to her at 2 am when her nightmares chase her awake. We see humanity and we see inhumanity, a constant reminder of the complexity of human behavior.  And we see death–the narrator of the story–who honors his victims, even as he removes their souls.  And on a personal note, Hans Huberman reminded me of Opi, my grandfather, who always had a book in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a mellow, soothing voice. This book is categorized as young adult, but that sells it short.  It’s accessible, so I hope teens will read it.  But it’s complex and original, so I hope adults will read it too.  Zusak certainly doesn’t minimize the brutality but he also doesn’t dwell on it.  I think he offers us the resilience and the human spirit that keeps us going no matter what life throws our way. (fiction)

*Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (2010) April 17, 2011

I was mesmerized by this story, reading most of it in a day on our way back from Colorado where I kept staring out the window of the airplane  trying to imagine Louie and the rest of the crew flying over the Pacific in their B-24 bomber.  Just as she did with Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand once again found a captivating subject and brought it to life after years of exhaustive research (filling 50 single spaced pages of end notes).  This time, instead of a race horse, it’s Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner in the mid 1930′s whose career was sidetracked by WWII where he became a hero in a new endeavor, one much harder than Olympic running: first as a B-24 bombardier and then as a record-setter surviving 46 days at sea in a raft (after a brutal crash), and finally as a POW under the most brutal Japanese prison commander.  This was a shocking, depressing, triumphant story, one that had me reeling from the opening page where Louie’s in a deflating raft, surrounded by sharks and diving into the water each time a Japanese bomber flies overhead strafing them with machine gun fire.  And it only gets much worse from that point on.  This is one of those stories where the events become so unbelievable that his story truly is stranger than fiction.  From the number of planes that went down in the Pacific (more bombers were lost on training exercises than in actual combat) to the number of POWs massacred in the “kill all” directive to the conditions of the POW camps, I just continued to stare at the book in disbelief.  And having recently read In Love and War about Jim Stockdale’s many years as a POW in Vietnam, I was amazed by the similarities: disease, starvation, solitary confinement, propaganda, and severe torture (in both cases, the Geneva Convention rules were absolutely ignored).  How these men maintained the strength—both mentally and physically—to survive is beyond comprehension.  Both knew that they had to hold onto one thing: their dignity.  And somehow, they did.  Thus, the title Unbroken.  (non-fiction)

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1983/1899) April 17, 2011

Yet another classic that I never read in high school or college, The Awakening has been sitting idly on my shelf at work for a few years now–ever since I vowed to read all the books that our AP Lit students read (at least the ones that I missed along the way).  My first thought: I can’t imagine high school boys reading this.  Surely it would be difficult enough to understand Edna Pontellier’s torment through a feminine lens, add to that, turn of the century social conventions and those boys must be thinking, huh? I found myself flip flopping back and forth between admiration and frustration.  If I could truly put myself in that time, I suppose I would feel both sympathy for her situation and respect for actions–I mean, she bought her own house and told her husband she was moving into it.  That’s bold–especially since by doing this, she was considered mad, delusional, in need of mental help.  But I also felt that her whining sounded a bit like the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, the bestselling memoir about a woman who complains a lot and must travel the world in order to “find herself.”  Edna’s “indescribable oppression” had a similar effect on me. I wanted to tell her to get over it, to remember that she had two healthy kids (taken care of by someone else through most of the book) and plenty of time to paint, read, swim, or eat bon bons.  And that lots of women don’t act on their secret passions (back then or now). I don’t know.  Perhaps that’s too harsh.  I’m not not very patient with whiny women–even those who lived in an era when women had little say and little power and had to wear ridiculously heavy, long skirts and high necked shirts.  I get that Edna felt trapped, that she did not want to be “owned” by her husband or her kids, that she suffered forbidden passion, and that she finally felt like “some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known” as she enters the water, naked on her final swim.  But I have to admit, I found the ending to Thelma and Louise a lot more convincing.  (fiction)

*In Love and War by Jim and Sybil Stockdale (1990/1984) March 31, 2011

This fascinating story, told in two voices, offers a first hand account of Jim and Sybil Stockdale’s eight year separation from the time he was shot down over North Vietnam during the war to the time he finally returned home after the war.  I’ve read a lot of Vietnam literature, but mostly from the perspective of marines on the ground/in the field.  This was an entirely new perspective.  First, we get a real account of the Gulf of Tonkin since Jim was one of the pilots sent out to defend the “atttack” on our carrier.  He saw no attack, only waves on the ocean.  But after that “attack” on an American naval ship, we were suddenly bombing North Vietnam and became mired in that war.  His plane was shot down during the early part of our involvement, and as such, he spent more time in as Prisoner of War than almost anyone else.  He details his many many torture sessions, solitary confinement, and interrogations as well as the incredibly sophisticated communication among American prisoners (using what amounts to current text-speak: abbreviations such as GBU-God Bless You).  Meanwhile, we also get Sybil’s side of the story, from the moment she’s told that he was shot down through her journey forming an advocacy group to represent spouses of POWs and MIAs.  Their group starts as a support group but quickly forms into a lobbying group that will not leave Congress or the President alone about the POW issue. At one point she leads her group to meet with the North Vietnamese government at the French Embassy.  She becomes an amazing organizer, speaker, and antagonizer to our government which frankly doesn’t have an answer or a plan for our POW’s.  This book is not an account of the war in terms of troops, battles, or philosophies; in fact, we get very little about what’s going on as the troop involvement escalates.  Instead, we get one man’s story of the torture he’s living while our government turns the other way and w we one woman’s story of trying to raise a family while advocating for her husband because no one in the  navy seems willing to do it for her.  (non-fiction)

**Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) by Amy Chua March 13, 2011

When an excerpt from this book was printed on the front page of the Weekend Journal, it started a fascination with (or repugnance of) Chinese parenting—along with a lot of fan mail and hate mail for Amy Chua.  The Journal article, however, led readers a bit astray.  It made her book seem like an argument for rigid, Chinese parenting, even coming off to many readers as ra “how-to” guide for parents who want math and music prodigies.  The book is actually a memoir about one mother’s struggle to instill Chinese values (hard work, discipline, fortitude, respect) in her kids, and discovering along the way that what works for one kid doesn’t always work for another (the second child,Lulu, rebels at 13).  Chua spends much of the book comparing Western parents (too easy on their kids) to Chinese parents (hard on their kids), often in a self-deprecating tone (which many readers missed in the Journal excerpt).  She’s both hilarious and serious, mocking herself for making Lulu practice her violin right after getting home from a 3 hour block of lessons at the music school (“nothing like getting a good jump on the next week!”) and then reading about violin techniques and listening to CD’s long after the girls are in bed.  But she also reminds us that kids really can do amazing things when they are pushed.  This, of course, is the part that makes many Western parents and kids crazy: they argue that kids should be able to choose what they want to do at whatever intensity they want to do it.  But Ms. Chua believes (and I agree with her) that most kids have no idea what they want to do until they’re much older, and they’re not likely to pick up a violin or piano or most other studies at age 14 if they’ve  never done it before.

 

I love Chua’s writing style–it’s conversational, sarcastic, funny, deadpan serious, and filled with entertaining anecdotes, some that made me laugh out loud (when Lulu calls her mom Lord Voldemort)  and some that made me want to cry (when Lulu screams “I HATE you and I HATE this family” while they’re having dinner in a Moscow restaurant). Whether readers agree or disagree with her methods, I think Chua has a lot to offer parents; namely, that we shouldn’t spend all our time building our children’s self esteem.  If we push them to accomplish great things, their self esteem will be just fine.  (memoir)

*The Girl who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow (2010) March 13, 2011

 

Rachel falls from the sky–she really does.  But she’s not an angel or a bird.  She’s a young,biracial girl who sails through the air from the top of a building to the ground below where she lands, along with her brother, her mom, and the baby still in her mom’s arms. Rachel is the lone survivor. No spoiler alert here because all of this happens within the first 15 pages.  What we don’t know is why they fall.  And that’s what the story is really about. When it opens, Rachel is living with her grandma, whose “body is a bullet. . .thick and short.”  She goes on to describe her Grandma as one who “looks something like pride.  Like a whistle about to blow.”  We get Rachel’s version of the story first, but not the whole story–because she’s trying to figure it out–and then we get the story from the voices of other characters: Jamie, who sees them fall; Roger, Rachel’s father; Nella, Rachel’s mother; and Laronne, Nella’s boss.  Together, they unravel a story of what happened and why, and through them, we watch each character make sense of the events and try to move forward.  It takes a while to understand the relationships and the time sequence (requiring me to reread sections several times), but as it comes together, I developed an increased appreciation for the four perspectives and the answers they each unveil.  Some may see it as disjointed–and it is–but I think the fractured telling of the story mirrors their journey, from Nella’s marriage to her death and from Rachel’s survival to her acceptance.  I don’t see the racial aspect as a strong motif–poverty and culture seem much more important.  The story can be tough to stomach at times, and it left me wondering where my empathy lies.

**Great House by Nicole Krauss (2010) February 26, 2011

I still think of the writing in History of Love, Krauss’s previous book, whenever I’m asked about beautiful prose.  And she’s done it again in Great House.  Though her novels are not short, they read like prose poetry–something few authors can pull off page after page for 300 pages.  I read countless sentences three or four times, thinking to myself she just nailed that description.  And then she’d do it again a paragraph later.  I might be able to conjure up one simile of her caliber–but it would probably take a year.  She writes: “After three nights of talking as we had not in many years, we arrived at the inevitable end.  Slowly, like a hot-air balloon drifting down and landing with a bump in the grass, our marriage of a decade expired.”  And later, in the voice of a different character: “I read without absorbing the meaning of the words.  I would flip back and begin again at the last place I remembered reading, but after a while the sentences would dissolve again and I would go back to skidding obliviously across the blank pages, like those insects you find on the surface of stagnant water.”

The novel is actually a collection of stories loosely woven together by an antique desk.  They don’t connect seemlessly–and at times I wondered how they connected at all–but I gave up trying to hunt for a direct link and simply enjoyed each one in its own right.  By the end, they come together enough to give it the feel of a novel, but don’t expect a tightly wrapped gift.  It’s not that neat and tidy.  But that’s okay because the characters are unique, the stories compelling, the writing beautiful.  And I have no doubt that with a second read, I’ll find more connections, more threads to offer a tighter weave than I noticed the first time around.

Mediterranean Summer by David Shalleck (2007) January 29, 2011

Can’t beat a book that combines sailing with cooking and takes place on the Mediterranean, from the French Riviera in the North to the island of Capri in the South.  The author, David Shalleck, is hired as the chef aboard Serenity a 100+ foot 1940′s era classic yacht, owned by an outrageously wealthy Italian couple whom he must please at every meal.  His challenge: never repeat a meal and use only the freshest local ingredients he can find for the three month sailing season.  So as readers we get to travel with him to local markets, fish mongers, patissieries, and latterie (cheese shops) from tiny villages to swanky cities as he plans his menus.  Some of his dicier moments: planning an onboard  party for over a hundred people during the Grand Prix in Monte Carlo for which he is to cook several courses (and find storage for all the food and drinks ); responding to “What are these green things?” when he served avacado slices at lunch one day; preparing a picnic for the ladies going ashore for the day with “simple foods” while keeping them cold all day without coolers.  While the lifestyle of the super rich got old after a while, the food preparation in the galley continued to entertain and inspire me.  A fun, relaxing read.  (non-fiction/memoir)

Journey of a Thousand Miles by Lang Lang (2008) January 17, 2011

Not too long ago,  I read (and gave to my students) one of Tom Friedman’s articles about American education and how we’re falling woefully behind other countries.  I’ve been a fan of his columns–and books–for a long time, but that article succinctly captured much of his philosophy into a single piece of writing that was easily accessible, even to my 9th graders.  Then, just this week, I finished Lang Lang’s book at the same time Amy Chua’s article on Chinese parenting hit the front page of the Wall Street Journal.  And so, I’m immersed in the East vs. West approach to parenting, to music, to education, to success.  There are no easy answers, but clearly the Eastern approach holds kids to a higher standard, an approach I support, though I certainly do not fit the mold of the Chinese parent.  Not that Lang Lang’s dad accurately represents Chinese parenting–he’s way over the top, even for the “Asian” approach.  But his story is fascinating–it made me laugh, cringe, smile, and hold my breath.  Sometimes simultaneously.  Lang Lang is an only child, a product of the one child per family law, and he was gifted at the piano from an early age.  He received his first piano before he was two, and he played it into the night.  But his success has at least as much to do with his own drive and his father’s demands as his innate genius ability. Eight and nine hours a day at the piano, by the age of 9, is beyond what most kids could withstand, physically or mentally.  He practices when their apartment is so cold he cannot sleep, he practices when he’s hungry and unable to afford a decent meal, he practices when his father or teacher berate him, and he practices as a way to relax.  It’s a complicated story showing his journey from a village in the north of China to the conservatory in Beijing to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia to his first paid concert to his lavish lifestyle today, where he is in demand in every city and with every major symphony.  His story is inspirational and it’s scary.  He shows us how much more we could all be achieving if only we put forth more effort, but he also shows us that his father crossed the line–more than once–in their effort to propel Lang Lang to be number one.  (non-fiction, memoir)

Still Alice by Lisa Genova (2007) January 5, 2011

This is not an uplifting book, but it’s an important book.  Written like a memoir in its candidness, it tells the story of Alice Howland, a psych professor at Harvard, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease at age 49, in the prime of her career.  It’s actually fiction, and Genova is a neuroscientist, so she brings a deep medical background to the story, but what makes it compelling is the way she creates such a believable character.  From what I’ve read, Genova effectively blends many symptoms into one story; by doing so,  she gives us real and accurate insight into the suffering behind this disease.  We see Alice lose her blackberry, her way home from work, and her temper.  She hallucinates, she wets her pants because she cannot figure out which door in her front hall leads to the bathroom, and she sits in the audience of her own lecture hall instead of delivering the lecture.  But she also laughs, forms a support group, holds on long enough to appreciate her newborn grandchildren, and reaches out to her youngest daughter with whom she has had a rocky relationship.  Alice lives with dignity, but along the way she suffers terribly.  Her story left me feeling more educated about this nasty disease, hopeful that more breakthroughs will offer a cure, and lucky to be of sound mind as I approach age 46.  (fiction)

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay (2007) December 29, 2010

Sarah’s Key is a good read and an important Holocaust story from a perspective I was not aware of: the French police rounding up Jews  and holding them in inhumane conditions at the Vel’ d’ Hiv’ in Paris before sending them off by train to concentration camps.  Most people, and most Parisians, picture German soldiers leading these round-ups, but in this case, it was the French taking their own French Jews to their deaths.  That part of the story is based on historical truth.  The fictional part is the story of young Sarah who tries to save her little brother by locking him in a cupboard in their bedroom in their Parisian apartment.  The apartment then becomes the connection between Sarah’s world and Julia’s, the writer whose in-law grandparents  moved into the apartment just days after Sarah’s family was taken away.  The book is written in two voices: third person narration describing Sarah’s life and fist person narration describing Julia’s.  I found this see sawing narration to be irritating, partly because each chapter is very short–just a few pages–and partly because the writing just isn’t that good, so neither character seems all that real.  And at only a few pages for each voice, there are 40-50 switches–that’s just too many.   Unlike Little Bee, a fabulous book also written in two voices, De Rosnay just doesn’t make her characters as compelling as the plot.  Still, it’s an important story and it’s worth reading, just not savoring.  (fiction)

**Little Bee by Chris Cleave (2008) December 29, 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve read a book this good (perhaps since Birds without Wings last September), and I read it a while ago, but even with my weak memory, I can still see Little Bee on the Nigerian beach with her sister and I can see Sarah’s finger chopped off and I can see Nkirura swaying back and forth on the tire swing.  The images, the reality, and the power of this story resonated for weeks.  I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it.   I picked up this book at a friend’s house and read the first two sentences: “Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl.  Everyone would be pleased to see me coming.”  That’s all I needed to buy the book.  And once I started reading, I found myself saying over and over how could he write this well?  How could he pull this off? This is a male author writing a story narrated by a Nigerian girl who learns the “Queen’s English” from reading and listening to the BBC in her cell of a detention center where she spent two years after hiding in the hold of a cargo ship from Africa to Britain.  The other narrator is Sarah, a British magazine editor who had the fortunate–or unfortunate–luck to run into Little Bee on a Nigerian Beach where local thugs were after her.  Little Bee spends the rest of the story running form the men who came for the oil under the ground where she lived.  So this is a story about power, violence, oil, asylum, guilt, grief, and love.  An excerpt from Little Bee’s narration: “Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl.  There was plenty of time for it.  We did not have hurry.  We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of that had been connected to our village yet. . .in that village we did not yet know was built on an oil field and would soon be fought over by men in a crazy hurry to drill down into the oil.  This is the trouble with all happiness–all of it built on top of something that men want (78).”  Aside from the last 50 pages (which almost seemed as if they were written by another author), this book is fabulous and frightening and important.  (fiction)

Lapham Rising by Roger Rosenblatt October 31, 2010

I  laughed out loud for about the first 50 pages of this book; then it got old.  Harry March (the narrator) is a recluse living on a tiny island in The Hamptons and trying to remain anchored to a simple life and home.  But since he’s in The Hamptons where no one lives simply, he rants about Lapham, his neighbor, who’s building a monstrously large house nearby.  Harry is pretty funny in his conversations with the Mexican construction workers that he befriends and with his talking dog who is the voice of reason.  This story–a witty satire on the rich and pretentious with their superficial and trivial lifestyle–is hilarous, but only for a while.  After those first 50 pages, I got the point.  Rosenblatt is an essayist, and a good one.  The book felt like it should be a long essay, not a novel.  For a limited time, the humor works, but once it gets repetitive, I skimmed to the end to find out what he actually did to the house he was plotting against.  So feel free to skim to the end–you don’t miss a whole lot in between.  (fiction)

Swimming to Antarctica by Lynn Cox October 31, 2010

I read this after I signed up for the Big Shoulders Swim in Chicago.  My swim was 2.5 k in 62 degree water.  Lynn Cox’s swims ranged from 26 miles in 62 degree water to 1 mile in 33 degree water.  So she basically made me feel like a wimp, but I still enjoyed her story.  She defies human capability in terms of temperature.  Most people die at temps far higher than what she can swim in, but somehow her body can do it.  The book opens when she’s about 10 or 12  swimming at an outdoor pool where the temperature is cold and a storm is blowing in.  All the other kids are shivering and turning blue, begging the coach to let them get out, but she begs him to let her stay in for another two hours.  Soon after that she joins a group that trains in the pacific, where the warm up swim is a mile or two and then the workout begins–all this in water that ranges from mid 50s to maybe mid 60s.  The book then chronicles her swims–from the English channel (twice) to the Amazon River to the Bering Sea and many places in between.  She set records in most of them, and in the case of the Bering Sea swim, she swam as a way of connecting with Russia during the Cold War.  For any swimmer or endurance athlete, hers is an inspirational story.  Plus, you learn a lot of geography along the way.

***Birds Without Wings by Louis De Bernieres (2004) September 3, 2010

I haven’t read a book this good in a very long time.  Ironically, it took me nearly a month to read it, though.  I think it’s because there’s so much to it.  The writing is beautiful, and though it’s fiction, the subject matter is dense with history and detail.  So, trying to soak up all the historical aspects of the story as well appreciating the prose (sometimes reading sentences several times), I sort of meandered through this one.  It’s essentially the story of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of modern Turkey, and having just returned from a trip to Greece and Turkey, I was fascinated by the details of this period in history.  I found myself constantly flashing back to our trip as so many of the cultural, historical, and religious details of the book are so evident today.  The story is told in several voices, most of them in first person from a number of different characters, and some of them by a third person narrator.  I’m always impressed with an author can pull off that many voices and make each compelling and believable.  We get a cast of characters–Christian and Muslim of Turkish, Greek, and Armenian descent–who once lived in harmony, but as the Ottoman Empire falls apart, the Turks get enmeshed in WWI, and Turkey fights for its independence under Ataturk’s leadership and modernization, the Christian Armenians and Greeks are kicked out.  In the opening chapter, Iskander the Potter tells us: We knew that our Christians were sometimes called “Greeks” although we often called them “dogs” or “infidels,” but in a manner that was a formality, or said with a smile, just as were their deprecatory terms for us.  They would call us “Turks” in order to insult us, at the time when we called ourselves “Ottomans” or “Osmanlis.”  Later on it turned out that we really are “Turks,” and we became proud of it, as one does of new boots that are uncomfortable at first, but then settle into the feet and look exceedingly smart.” (fiction).

*Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (2010) July 30, 2010

I”m not big on ghost stories, but I wasn’t too fond of time travel books either until I read Time Traveler’s Wife, Niffenegger’s first novel.  So if I liked that one, I figured she’d bring me into the paranormal world equally as convincingly.  And she did.  I actually loved most of this book.  I loved the queerness of the twins–so weird they were almost unbelievable, but certainly interesting.  I also loved Elspeth, especially as she gained strength and personality as a ghost.  I felt like I was in the room with all of them as Elspeth moved along the piano dust creating words to begin communication with the twins and Robert.  I loved Martin, with his over-the-top affliction of OCD.  And I loved watching the cat change from an ornery, distrustful wild creature into a loving kitty.  What I didn’t love the the last third or quarter of the book where too many twists and turns took the narrative from paranormal but believable to ridiculous and unbelievable.  Suddenly motives were unclear, actions were not in keeping with events, and emotions did not match situations.  Ugh.  I hate it when an author tries to do too much.  It would have made a fine novel without the last 100 pages.  Eloquent writing and memorable characters should not have been tangled in a plot too complex to properly manage.  (fiction)

**People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (2008) July 30, 2010

This was a lovely read, one of those books that you savor rather than try to fly through.  It’s the story of a Jewish haggadah, a religious text for the Passover Seder, that turns up in Sarajevo in 1996.  The main character, Hanna, an Australian book conservator is called upon to inspect the book, do some minor repair, and try to trace its history.  So with a few artifacts that she uncovers during her inspection–an insect wing, a single hair, a wine stain–she researches where the book might have been and in whose hands.  Thus the title: People of the book.  The book’s chapters alternate between the present, with Hanna tracing each clue she discovers, and the past, where the story leaps into scenes from the book’s history and the people who handled it: the Muslim librarian who sheltered the book from the Nazi’s, the bookbinder who sold the book’s silver clasps to pay for his medical treatment, the catholic priest whose signature saved it from the Inquisition, the Jewish girl–dressed as a boy–who painted its marvelous illustrations on the parchment, the scribe who bought the illustrations, wrote the Hebrew text and had the book beautifully bound as a gift to his niece.  From the 1400′s to the late 1900′s, we see the books’ journey through Seville, Tarragona, Venice, Vienna, Sarajevo, and Jerusalem.   Great writing, great story, and even some historical truth to parts of the narrative.  (fiction/historical fiction)

***My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918) July 30, 2010

Since My Antonia is one of my all-time favorites, I’ve already written a review of it, but having read it again this summer, I must write about it again because new things jump out at me each time I read this book.  First of all, I always read the Houghton Mifflin version because of the gorgeous picture on the front: the plow in the field of wheat and wild flowers with the sun setting behind it.  When I think of this story, that’s the image that stays in my head.  Because Antonia was the inspiration behind naming my daughter Annie (Brian agreed to Anne but not Antonia), it goes without saying that I admire this character above so many other literary greats.  She’s hard working, humble, energetic, positive, and above all, she seems to have no regrets.  She simply makes the most of every situation no matter how dire it is.  When her family first moves to the Nebraska prairie from Bohemia, they live in a cave and Antonia sleeps in a hole dug out of the wall. She plows fields, she grieves for her father who was never cut out for prairie life and takes his own life because of it, she’s deserted by her would-be husband leaving her single and pregnant, and she’s dirt poor through most of her life.  Yet she smiles, dances, laughs, grabs a picnic opportunity when she can, and seems to skate through the hard stuff.  By the end of the novel, she’s the mother of oodles of well behaved kids who adore her, and her eyes and her outlook seem brighter than ever.  It makes me realize how much more positive and gracious I could be.  And then there’s Cather’s beautiful writing.  Here she describes the mood after Pavel (of Peter and Pavel, the Russian guys) fell ill: “Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the log house, and to slap its wings there, warning human beings away” (35).  That’s the kind of description we all strive for.  (fiction)

Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther (1949) July 30, 2010

It’s beyond me why this book remains in so many English curriculums.  But before I criticize it, let me say what I find redeeming about it or why I think it remains a staple of so many classrooms.  Today, memoirs abound.  There is a memoir for every experience on the planet and thousands of memoirs about cancer: survival memoirs and death memoirs.  But in 1949, I imagine this was groundbreaking stuff.  No one wrote about dying and certainly no parent wrote about watching their child die–that was probably considered a private matter, not something to be shared with the general public.  So from that standpoint, this book is pretty amazing.  People were able to live through this horrific experience through the words of John Gunther as he and his wife watched their son fight but eventually lose his battle with brain cancer.  Gunther was brave to allow the world into their story, to not hide his grief behind closed doors.   On the other hand, this book is not well written.  It’s telly and flowery and overwrought.  Instead of simply telling the story and allowing the reader to get to know Johnny through his brave actions, Gunther consistently tells us what we should all think about Johnny.  He gushes on for over 20 pages in the foreword so that by the time the story begins, I’m already turned off.  So I’m not crazy about Gunther’s style and I think the book is much longer than it needs to be, but having spent the last year going through cancer treatment, I did find it fascinating that Johnny was the first to receive mustard gas (the precursor to chemo) at that particular hospital and that today’s radiation treatment was an archaic form of x-ray back then.  I’m not sure Johnny’s form of brain tumor is any more curable today, but I’m certainly thankful that our treatment is much easier to tolerate.  Still, if I wanted 9th graders to read a memoir about dying or about cancer, this is not the one I would choose. (memoir)

*The Odyssey by Homer (Fitzgerald translation) July 30, 2010

I’ll never forget when I was in high school and nearly every time I wanted to go out, my mom would tell me that going to a movie or to a football game or to a friend’s house was a waste of time and what I should really do is stay home and read The Odyssey.  No better way to turn a teenager off than that.  I don’t remember when I actually read it for the first time, but now that I teach 9th grade, I’ve read it several times, and now that Christopher is going into 9th grade, I wanted him to read it before school started.  I tried a different approach: I gave him a great audio translation of it (Odds Bodkin) which gave him the whole story in a myriad of cool voices.  It was spooky, scary, sexy, and exciting.  After that, I gave him the Fitzgerald translation and picked out a number of books for him to read–definitely not all of it, but maybe a third or a half.  I read it at the same time, and we talked about Odysseus’s courage, his manliness, and his wit, as well as Homer’s use of poetic devices and concrete imagery.  So easy to see those men hanging out of the cyclops’s mouth as he crunches his teeth around them or to hear the Sirens singing, trying desperately to lure Odysseus toward them as he struggles with his ropes and tells his men to stuff more wax in their ears.  I’ve been reading the Fitzgerald translation for a long time, but I was recently told to try the Fagels translation, so I think I’ll take a gander at that next read through. (fiction)

*The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952) July 30, 2010

This is the month of reading 9th grade honors English books with my son.  I figure if he reads them over the summer, it will take some pressure off the school year, so we started with Old Man and the Sea which he didn’t much like.  I, however, seem to like this book more each time I read it.  Hemingway’s prose is so simple, a nice contrast to the flowery writing we so often see today.  Yes, it’s 125 pages about a man catching a fish and then losing it to the sharks, probably not enough action for most 14 year old boys.  But it’s a beautiful story about courage and perseverance and patience and sacrifice and compassion.  If more people today handled their problems like the old man, we’d have fewer escalated conflicts.  If people stopped to think, to get into the minds of their adversaries, and to analyze the situation like the old man does, we’d probably have fewer wars, too.  George Bush could have learned a lot from the old man.  So could everyone who hits “send” on an email or a blog post too quickly.   (fiction)

*Ultra Marathon Man: Confessions of an all night runner by Dean Karnazes May 25, 2010

I picked this up from one of my students and started flipping through it for fun, but then I couldn’t put it down, so I asked to take it home, and I finished it in an evening.  It’s a quick read, and I quickly felt overwhelming guilt for all the times I whined during a 3 or 4 mile run.  This guy completes ultra marathons like the Western States 100 which stretches up and down mountains and a 135 mile run through Death Valley where temperatures run so high he has to run on the painted white line of the highway to keep his shoes from melting.  This is way over the top stuff.  But in addition to describing several of the most grueling physical challenges he’s faced, he also gives the history of his running career (cross country star by 8th grade) and his running hiatus (didn’t run from age 15 to 30).  He’s a quirky, super motivated, challenge-seeking individual.  He seemed ready to take on anything, and right now, that’s inspiring to me.  I”m not sure I’ll get beyond my usual 3 or 4 miles, but I think I”m willing to push a little harder since finishing this book.  (memoir)

Eden Springs by Laura Kasischke (2010) May 6, 2010

As a St. Joe resident, the House of David has always interested me, especially because I have vivid childhood memories of riding the train, going to the ice cream parlor and lingering in the frame shop.  I think those were the only things still open in the early 1970′s from this religious colony in Benton Harbor that peaked in the early 1900′s.  This book is sort of like a scrapbook with photos, excerpts from newspaper reports, quotes from members of the cult/colony, and a fictional story based on some historical facts.  It’s basically the tale of “King Ben” (Benjamin Purnell, the colony’s leader), the colony he built based on “paradise on earth,” and the many young women he coerced to sleep with him.  Eventually he made all of them get married before the press investigated his life too closely. It’s sort of fascinating to read about the families from all over the world that came to the colony to be part of this “paradise” that promised eternal life where the body would live forever in its “days of youth” upon the second coming of Christ.  (fiction)

***Animal Farm by George Orwell (1946) April 29, 2010

When I read Animal Farm a hundred years ago or so–I don’t remember what grade–I think I got the overall premise of revolution and dictatorship communism, but I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate Orwell’s message, and I certainly didn’t appreciate his writing.  I was so focused on understanding the book that I had neither the time nor the brainpower to digest his sentence style and imagery.  This time through, I tried to concentrate on how he brings the animals to life and how he creates their personalities.  The first paragraph in which he describes Mr. Jones locking the hen-houses and then lurching across the yard and kicking off his boots before drawing himself a beer is a model of descriptive writing–concise and powerful images that immediately characterize Mr. Jones as an irresponsible drunk who cares little for the well-being of his subjects.  That, in a nutshell, is what rebellions are made of.  Bottom line: if you haven’t read Animal Farm since junior high or high school, I urge you to pick it up and read it again.  You’ll find it a much more fascinating piece of literature, fable, and political commentary than you ever remembered.  (fiction)

Passing Strange by Martha Sandweiss (2009) April 6, 2010

The front cover blurb says, “A gilded age tale of love and deception across the color line,” but there was no real love story here, just a lot of suppositions.  I was intrigued by the story: Clarence King, a famous 19th century scientist known for surveying and mining the West, was a white man who passed as black and took a second identity of James Todd.  He lived a double life in New york: in one, he hobnobs with the president, politicians, and scientists in a powerful white world, and in the other, he marries a black woman, lives in a middle class Queens neighborhood, and raises 4 kids.  He keeps the two lives entirely separate.  So the idea of the book is pretty fascinating.  The problem is that it’s really a dry account of King’s journeys and offers virtually nothing of his private life.  Why?  Because there is little information about his life with Ada Copeland, and so Sandweiss fills pages and pages with phrases like “Ada might have” or “James and Ada could have” or “One might guess that they” and so on.  She has no idea how they met, how they lived, or what their relationship was like, so we get this very hazy picture of what might have been the case.  I got tired of reading about what might have or could have happened between them.  The only real information she had was about King’s professional life, but I got tired of reading about this, too.  King lived off his friend’s money, he spent as much time traveling and relaxing as working (which is why he was always broke), and he seemed a constant complainer.  Yet Sandweiss continues to quote others as saying how likeable, charming, and warm he was.  The problem is, we don’t ever see this.  The book is a classic example of telling rather than showing, so we never  get a true sense of either Clarence or Ada.  It’s also extremely repetitive.  She could have written the book in half the number of pages.  Better yet, this is a case where historical fiction would have made a much more compelling read than dry non-fiction.  (non-fiction)

Knockout by Suzanne Somers (2009) April 6, 2010

Yes, I read a book by Suzanne Somers–a little embarrassing, I admit, but she has some interesting things to say about cancer and alternative medicine.  This book is subtitled “Interviews with Doctors who are Curing Cancer and How to Prevent Getting it in the First Place” which intrigued me, but I couldn’t read it until I was nearly done with my treatment for breast cancer because I didn’t want to feel guilty for going with the conventional treatment of chemo and radiation.  She is 100% opposed to conventional medicine, believing only in alternative therapies, and in many cases she makes Western medical practice out to be rather evil.  I’m not there with her, but I do think conventional docs need to be much more aware of alternative, natural therapies, so I embraced her sections on integrative docs who believe in using conventional practice for curing cancer along with natural methods of boosting immune systems.  Lots of the info comes down to eating right, which isn’t too different from what Michael Pollen writes about, but the docs in this book also add a lot of supplements—way more than I take.  The irony is that each doc has a different protocol, so even within the alternative approach, the information is overwhelming and sometimes contradictory.  Still, she raises good questions; she brings to light the relationship between conventional medicine and pharma companies; she offers a number of excellent resources; and at the end of each interview, she offers a summary of each doctor’s advice.  This might be a good reference book or starting point for consulting with a naturopath or an integrative doctor. (non-fiction)

**Food Rules by Michael Pollan (2009) March 24, 2010

Okay, so I’m a bit of a Michael Pollen groupie and couldn’t stop myself from buying this book even though I have all of this others and this one really doesn’t add anything new.  What it does do, is simplify his message from previous books.   I’m pretty clear on his message (which he previously boiled down to 7 words: eat food, not too much, mostly plants), and I certainly didn’t need this book of 64 rules to know what I should eat, but I’m hopeful that if I leave it out on the kitchen table, my kids might read it and choose to follow at least some of the rules.  Maybe, just maybe, if they read it in his words, it will have a stronger impact than my own words which probably sound more like a nagging mother than the voice of common sense and reason.  His basic premise in this and other books is that most of our Western diet really isn’t food, but rather processed food-like substances, and that we need to start eating like our grandmothers did if we want to have a healthier life.  I still buy a few too many items that come in packages, but at least my grocery cart has a lot more produce in it than anything else.  A few of my favorite rules: #36 “Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.” #57 “Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does,” (in the future, I will quote these to my kids instead of telling them I won’t stop at the gas station for a snack and I won’t buy Fruit Loops), and finally # 39 “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself”  (the theory being that we won’t take the time to make junk food or sweets very often, so when we do, it’s okay to eat them: indulge in peach crisp and apple pie but not  Girl Scout cookies.  (non-fiction)

*I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou March 24, 2010

I read this for the first time about 15 or 20 years ago, and though it’s one of those books that everyone should read, it didn’t strike me as powerfully this time as it did when I read it back then.  I’m pretty sure I’ve read all of her books except her poetry collections, so maybe what I remember being struck by is more the journey of her life than any one particular book.  That said, I do like her matter of fact writing style–it’s not gushy or self deprecating like so many memoirs are.  But it also feels kind of choppy, meandering from one event to another without a whole lot of linear direction.  Some events seem very important to her identity and others not so much, but she doesn’t necessarily give more time or space in the book to one over another.  I’ll comment on two parts of the book that struck me the strongest.  One is when she describes waste vs. charity (my words, not hers).  Whites often gave clothing to blacks, but there was no sacrifice there—they simply didn’t want or need the clothes and it was a way to get rid of them.  But when blacks gave things to each other, it was a sign of true generosity and sacrifice because the items were “probably needed as desperately by the donor as the receiver.”  A second part of the book that stood out was when she writes about her post rape behavior and treatment.  For a few weeks, everyone tolerated her silence, but once the nurse said she was “healed,” she was supposed to be back on the sidewalk playing games as if nothing had happened—as if physical healing and psychological healing are the same thing.  Though published in 1969, there are definitely some timeless ideas and points of discussion in this book.  (memoir)

**The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry (2006 paperback) March 5, 2010

Oooh.  This is one of those books that requires a second read.  You get to the end and viola! you realize you missed a lot of clues along the way.  I had to read some discussions online to get all my questions answered, and now I’m in the process of rereading.  This is a mystery and a family story that takes place in Salem, Mass.  Towner Whitney, the main character and the narrator for much of the book, comes back to Salem when her great-aunt disappears.  In seeking the truth about Eva (the great-aunt), Towner also discovers much about her own past and her immediate family.  Since this is a mystery, I can’t include any spoilers, thus I can’t say too much about the story.  Trust me, it’s good.  Maybe a bit slow taking off, but once into it, I had a hard time putting it down.  Now that I know what happens, I’m sure the beginning would be more compelling the second time through.  (fiction)

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (2006 paperback) March 5, 2010

It’s rare for me to not finish a book, and I almost finished this one, but I couldn’t quite get to the end.   Gilbert writes about her unhappy marriage and a failed relationship following her divorce and then about her yearlong journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia as a way of finding herself and discovering what makes her happy.  Through all of this, I got the sense that she was a little too inward focused which drove me a bit nutty.  Sometimes the way  we approach a book or the level at which we appreciate a book has a lot to do with what’s going on in our own lives.  As I persevere through cancer treatments, I try to find the good in each day: the sun shining through my window, my children playing their instruments, the lake glimmering in the distance.  Reading about Gilbert’s depression and loneliness over and over made me want to tell her to appreciate the small things and stop complaining.  Then again, I have never suffered from depression, so perhaps I do not understand what she was going through and perhaps I’m being overly critical.  There are some well written passages throughout the book, but they seem to get lost amidst overwrought descriptions of bleakness juxtaposed with overwrought descriptions of abstinence (a few months without sex seems to be the ultimate sacrifice for her).  At a different time in a different life, I might better connect with Gilbert, but now was not my time.   (memoir)

*America America by Ethan Canin (2008, paperback) January 24, 2010

I was totally engaged in this book of political fiction.  And yet, upon reflection, many aspects of it seem mediocre in terms of the writing, particularly the character development.  Perhaps my engagement was more a result of interest in the time period (early 1970′s) and the political environment (Vietnam, Nixon, pre-Watergate, the campaign of ’72) than the compellingness of the storyline.  The main storyline seems to be that of Senator Henry Bonwiller’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in the /72 campaign, a campaign run by his friend Liam Metaray.  But then again Liam Metaray in many ways is also the main storyline, particularly his relationship with Corey Sifter, the narrator as Liam becomes much like a second father to Corey.  These two plotlines run parallel throughout the novel, which begins when Corey is an adult with grown children but shifts back to his teenage years.  The story then swings back and forth in time as events unfold.  I sort of liked the time shifts, though I sometimes got a bit tired of so many sections ending on a “cliffhanger” only to be picked up several chapters later.  Sort of like the weekly TV dramas when they do a two part series.  I liked the political arena of the novel–the beginnings of a campaign, the strategizing, the role of the newspapers and their reporters.  I don’t know how accurately it reflected how a campaign was run in 1971, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  Perhaps a political junkie would find numerous holes, but to my untrained eye, it was pretty entertaining.  The things that bothered me in the book were these: We are told over and over by Corey and Liam Metaray and others that Henry Bonwiller is a champion of the people, but we never really see this, so it’s not very convincing, which leaves his character a bit more stock than real.  Liam Metaray is well developed, but so good that he seems a bit unreal too.  Also, his devotion to Bonwiller is largely unexplained, and in many ways doesn’t seem to gel with his character, which makes it unconvincing.  Why would he go do so much for this guy? Then there’s the weird plot leap when we find out that Corey marries Clara, Liam Metaray’s daughter–the one he didn’t have a relationship with.  What happened to his relationship with Christian?  It was just dropped and suddenly we find out that this unnamed wife of the narrator is Clara and we never get any explanation for it.  Those are some aspects of character development that bugged me.  But I liked Corey’s parents and I loved Mr. McGowar and I like Corey as narrator.  I”m not sure about Trieste; she seemed sort of thrown in as a way for the narrator to bring us into the present.  But enough bashing.  I still really enjoyed the story, whipping through quite a long book in less than a week.  (political fiction)

**Lopsided by Meredith Norton (2008) January 11, 2010

Bean’s Book Review: I was not planning to read any memoirs about breast cancer while going through breast cancer treatment.  Reading all the research articles and books has been enough, but a friend of mine gave this to me and I decided to skim the first few pages.  And I was hooked.  She’s so damn funny, I just had to read on.  And right away, she has a different spin on things because she’s living in France but is misdiagnosed three times by French doctors, so there’s the whole French vs. American culture part of the story which is hilarious because her husband is French and he’s the one who insists she stay in the States for all of her treatment.  Without a doubt,  she must have been more scared than her story indicates, but she’s pretty upfront about her anger and the grim realities of chemo and its side effects.  Somehow she just manages to describe them without self-pity.  How, I’m not sure.  One question I often had while reading is when did she go through this?  The book came out in 2008, but it’s not clear when she actually went through treatment.  Once you’re a few or several years removed from the experience, I can see writing about it in such a humorous manner while still capturing the reality of the experience, but I have a hard time believing that she found it quite so funny as she was actually pushing through the everyday treatment.  Distance affords one the luxury of seeing the craziness, but at the time, I’m not sure one could actually never dwell on the grim possibility of death.  Still, her writing is exceptional and I find myself wondering about much of the same things she did such as why sugary snacks are offered during chemo when sugar is a cancer-feeder or why we have parties at the end of chemo celebrating that we “beat cancer” when we have no idea if the cancer is gone or why the side effects from chemo that are supposedly “rare” hit us full force.  This is an important and entertaining memoir for anyone to read, cancer victim or not.  (memoir)