**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)

*Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (2009) January 11, 2010

I’ve seen this book featured at nearly every bookstore but didn’t choose to read it until a friend bought it for me.  Lacking faith myself, I wasn’t sure I wanted to venture into this story.  But I’m glad I did because it’s neither preachy nor guilt-ridden.  It’s simply the story of two men: the Reb, an elderly Jewish rabbi who asks Mitch to deliver his eulogy when the time comes and Henry, a Christian minister who has redirected his life from drug dealing to sheltering the homeless in a run-down Detroit church and helping them find faith along with warmth.  Both men have a strong faith in God, but the message of the book isn’t so much that we all need that same faith but rather that we all need something.  We can all make our lives more fulfilling and more satisfying by connecting and reaching out–to friends, family, or God.  That through personal connection we will find something more than a promotion or an elevated status.  That we will make each day more meaningful.  It’s also the story of Mitch whose faith in God–or at least the role of religion in his life–has waned over the years.  I’m not sure he retrieves it through his experience with these two men, but he is surely changed in some way.  I wish I had the Reb’s or Henry’s faith in God, but in lieu of that I have strong faith in family, friends, and doing what’s good and right every day.  That gives me strength and makes each day meaningful for me and, I hope, for those around me.  (non-fiction/memoir)

**Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder (2009) December 23, 2009

Bean’s Book Review: If you’re looking for a story of perseverance, this is it.  Tracy Kidder writes the story of Deo, a survivor of civil war and genocide in Burundi and Rwanda who manages to arrive in the United States with a few hundred dollars in his pocket and no English.  Eventually he enrolls in Columbia University and then Dartmouth med school and finds his way back to Burundi to build a medical health clinic near his home town.  That makes it sound so simple, but the horrors he faced and survived make one wonder how a being can continue.  Divine intervention?  Incredible mental strength?  Fear?  The will to live?  Who knows what allows some to make it when so many others don’t.  But even after somehow escaping the genocide and getting on that plane, he had difficult years of living homeless in Central Park, delivering groceries for a pittance, squatting with druggies, and dealing with nightmares.  Still, he seeks out friendships and finds help from the Wolfs, a couple who takes him into their home and essentially becomes his foster parents.  While in med school he meets Paul Farmer, the subject of Kidder’s previous book Mountains Beyond Mountains, and becomes involved in Partners in Health, a global health organization providing prevention and treatment in many third world countries.  Partners in Health help Deo get his clinic started.  This is an inspiring, depressing, and important story.  A way to see the genocide through one person’s experience and a way to see how that experience can lead to so much good down the road.  (non-fiction).

* Tales from the Thousand and One Nights (Penguin Ed.) December 11, 2009

Book Review at Bean’s book blog:  We read this for our December book club and found that it was as much fun discussing the tales as it was comparing the translations.   The N.J. Dawood (Penguin) is a wonderful translation, far easier and more enjoyable than the classic Burton translation which feels stilted by comparison.  Because there are so many tales and so many versions, no two books contain exactly the same tales.  Though some tales date back to a Persian book of folk tales from the 900′s, many of the tales in this book come from the 1600-1800′s.  This book contains Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp and Sinbad and his Seven voyages, which has so many parallels to the Odyssey that clearly the original author either knew of Homer of knew the Odysseus story.   It also includes the Tale of the Hunchback which has many stories embedded into it much like the Canterbury Tales.  The famous  Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is not in this version but The Historic Fart is!  These stories are fun and bawdy and give us some historical and cultural context of the East: the Sultans must be honored, Allah is all-powerful,  sex is almost as important as Allah, and money/riches/jewels bring power and status.   This was a fun read that whisked me away to far off lands filled with magic and jinees, and Caliphs and monsters, and superheroes, and the everyday man.

* Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (2006) November 24, 2009

Book review: The narrator of this novel, Will Thomas, is in his 90′s and has spent most of his life living among the Cherokee.  Timeframe is about mid 1800′s, before, during, and after the Civil War as well as before, during, and after the Cherokee removal.  This is quite the saga.  Frazier’s writing is very detailed, and at times I loved the imagery, but sometimes I wanted the story to move on a bit more quickly.  I think I liked the first third of the novel best: Will’s teenage years when his family essentially sells him into the service of a trading post owner where he is required to work for 7 years.  He ends up buying the post, expanding his business to a string of posts and then  numerous other businesses and land and spending the rest of his life among the Cherokee as friend, leader, and lawyer.  He is essentially one of them but is never of them.  Threaded throughout the story, and what in some ways holds the narrative together, is Will’s relationship with Claire whom he meets at age 12 but cannot marry because he is white and she is part Cherokee.  While the story is fiction, I enjoyed its historical aspects, especially the relationship between the Cherokee Nation and America and the various lifestyles and prosperity (or lack thereof) among the Cherokee.  This is a good–but long–read.  (fiction)

*Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins (1993) November 5, 2009

Book Review: This is a memoir by a writer who leaves San Francisco for the countryside of Wales, a town called Hay-on-Wye, where there are 1500 residents and 40 bookstores.  Not a lot happens in the book; it’s more of a collection of observations.  The author and his wife and toddler son move into an apartment, they look for a house to buy, he writes, he contemplates the title of his upcoming book, and he works in a bookstore overhauling the American literature section.  But through all of this, he’s very funny as he comments on the residents of Wey, quirky bookstore owners, British real estate (and the way it’s sold), British game shows, British pubs, and of course, books.  One of the funniest sections is his description of book covers, which he muses about because he has no cover for his about-to-be published book.  He writes: If a book cover has raised lettering, metallic lettering, or raised metallic lettering, then it is telling the reader: Hello I am an easy-to read work on espionage, romance, a celebrity, and/or murder. To readers who do no care for such things, this lettering tells them: Hello, I am crap.  Such books can only use glossy paper for the jacket; Serious Books can use glossy finish as well, but it is only Serious Books that are allowed to use matte finish.  He goes on to discuss book size, color and author head shot position and how these also play into the educated versus uneducated reader. He ends this section with the following: Woe and alas to any who transgress these laws.  A number of reviewers railed against The Bridges of Madison County because is used the diminutive hardcover size and muted color scheme of, say, an Annie Dillard book–thus cruelly tricking readers of Serious Literature into buying crap.  His writing is excellent and his observations are unique and funny.  Take your time with this book and enjoy each description; focus on the writing, not the action.  (memoir)

*In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White (2009) October 23, 2009

Book Review: This is a somewhat bizarre, but good, memoir about a thirty-three year old man who spends a year in a federal prison for check kiting.  But the minimum security prison he’s assigned to is also home to the last “leper colony” in America, in Carville. Louisiana.  What ensues is a tale of his year in which he moved back and forth between the inmate side of the prison and the patient side of the prison, made up of just over a hundred people with Hansen’s disease (leprosy).  The patients are there by their own choosing, most having nowhere else to call home since they were once confined to this place as a way to quarantine them.  Most were brought against their will or the will of their families, and few know any other way of life, so they have chosen to stay and make Carville their home.  But it’s also home to federal inmates, and the two groups are not supposed to co-mingle, though at times they do, especially the author who spends his year trying to learn as much as he can about the myriad of patients, their histories, and the history of leprosy and the colony.  The story takes place in the early to mid 1990′s, so there’s actually 15 years or so between the time Neil White lived and reported on this and the time this memoir was published.  The personalities of the patients, particularly Ella and Harry, and the various inmates, like Doc and Link, are the most memorable, poignant, and entertaining aspects of the book.  Less so, is White’s self analysis about how and why he got himself into such a financial mess and thus into prison and how he’ll emerge to live a different life.  Still, this is a unique memoir–I certainly did not know we still had an active leprosarium in the United States in the 1990′s, much less one that shares its compound with federal prisoners.  (memoir)

**Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell (2009/1999) October 21, 2009

Book Review: I really enjoyed this book, written in diary form, by a 5th grade teacher who chronicles her first year in a Chicago public school.  Esme hides nothing: she tells us about the creepy principal, the mother who beats her child in front of her, the misbehaved boy who turns  his behavior around after being assigned to teach the class for one whole day, the mesmerized students who adore being read to, the crying episodes at the end of a frustrating day, the huge increase in student test scores, the successful visit by an author, the battle over using Madame Esme instead of Ms. Codell.  She experiences highs and lows and everything in between.  And she pulls it off with the very energy with which she teaches her class: lots of great imagery and a strong voice which pulls the reader right into her world.  Since I spent my first three years teaching in a Chicago public school as well, there was much I could intentify with in her narrative.  And though I currently teach in a middle class high school, her insights still offer much to me and to any teacher of any grade.  Above all, passion for teaching and learning will benefit students more than any mandated curriculum or state standards ever will.  I have always subscribed to that philosophy, and I hope I will always practice it.  (memoir)

* Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery (2009/2000) October 16, 2009

Book Review: This is far less a novel than The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and I’m not surprised that it wasn’t translated into English back in 2000 when it was published in France.  It was the brilliance of Hedgehog that brought such attention to Barbery’s writing and thus the translation of this earlier novel nine years after it was first published.  If I hadn’t read Hedgehog, I’m not sure I would have finished Gourmet Rhapsody because I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about its main character, Parisian food critic Pierre Arthens, to travel with him down memory lane as he reminisces about his life (as the book opens, we are told he will die in 48 hours).  The more interesting chapters are told not from his viewpoint, but from others, such as his wife, daughter, granddaughter, housekeeper, and his cat.  The cat’s chapter was my favorite.  One problem with the many narrators is that we have such little information about each one.  In some chapters, it’s not even clear who the narrator is, and just about the time we figure out who’s speaking and what relationship he/she has to Monsieur Arthens, the short chapter ends and we switch gears to someone else.  Having read Hedgehog, I already had some background as to Monsieur Arthens’ egotistical self, his devoted wife’s unconditional love despite the fact that she’s been ignored for years, his son’s love/hate relationship with him, and his daughter’s utter disgust.  It helped to know some of that, but if I had read this book first, it would have been more difficult to follow the narrators.  Still, there are some brilliant descriptions throughout as Arthens clomps along memory lane telling us about Japanese culture and raw food, Moroccan kesra from his childhood, a lunch of oysters, ham, asparagus, chicken and white wine near Omaha Beach (3 pages of details about this food), and his epiphany about buttered toast in which he wonders why the French only butter their bread after is has been toasted instead of before.  The book is full of little treasures once you get past trying to make it flow as a linear narrative with clearly established points of view.  (fiction)

** Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (2009) October 16, 2009

Book Review: I’m intrigued by the words “true-life novel” on the cover of this book.  I get that it’s a novel that’s based on Walls’s grandmother’s life, yet I’ve never actually seen an author proclaim a novel to be true-life.  New labels seem to emerge all the time.  Recently it was “creative non-fiction.”   Makes me ponder the idea of truth: is true-life novel more “true” than creative non-fiction or is it actually “less true” because it uses the word ‘novel.’  Well, at any rate, I liked the story.  Not nearly as outrageous as The Glass Castle, and more ‘matter of fact’ reporting than story-telling.  Wall’s grandmother, Lily Casey Smith,  grew up on a ranches in Texas and Arizona, she spent several years as a city girl in Chicago, she taught school in a number of tiny one-room school towns, for a few years she lived in early blossoming Phoenix, and finally, ended up in a tiny town of 13 families called Horse Mesa.  Her life was not an easy one, but with gumption, discipline, and a lot of hard work, she turned many of her experiences into milestones.  She had a happy second marriage and raised two kids.  Lily’s dad reminded me much of Wall’s dad whom we meet in The Glass Castle, and Lily seems clearly much like Walls (and she discloses that she and her grandmother were a lot alike whereas the middle generation–her mom–was quite different).  Often, the trouble I had with this likeness is that the book’s voice is Lily’s, but I couldn’t quite accept that it wasn’t Walls herself.  I’m not sure if that’s a result of getting to know her voice in Glass Castle or if it’s just that writing in first person from Lily’s point of view didn’t quite work.  Maybe it’s the writing, maybe it’s me.  Anyway, I like it.  I’m always fascinated by life on the prairie, range, ranch, the West–regardless of the actual land form, these stories take me in.   (fiction–but true life!)

* Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (2009) by Jamie Ford September 28, 2009

Book Review: I was drawn to this book by its cover–it’s beautiful.  The soft hues of orange, yellow and green sort of fade into each other and pour over the two children who stand under their umbrellas.  Unfortunately, the writing is not as beautiful.  I picked up and started the book several times before I read far enough and became engrossed enough to read it for pleasure rather than obligation (I purchased a hard cover on a whim).  I liked the subject: Japanese internment in the 1940′s and a cross cultural relationship between Chinese Henry and Japanese Keiko.  I also liked the subject of generational gaps. Henry’s father was a Chinese loyalist who could hardly communicate with his American-born son, and Henry is a traditional Chinese-American who often feels distant from his college-aged son.  The conflicts are interesting and real though they are often brought out in a clunky way, making them less believable on the page than they probably are in real life.  The relationship between young Henry and Keiko is sweet, but at times not quite believable either.  The end is a bit too neat and tidy.  On the other hand, I did reach a point where I wanted to pick up the book each night and transport myself to 1940′s  Seattle to be with them, to watch their lives unfold.  My favorite character?  Definitely Sheldon whom we first meet playing his saxophone on the street and who becomes a life-long friend of Henry’s.  (fiction)

*West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamin Ansary (2002) September 7, 2009

Ansary first wrote an email shortly after 9/11 because he was outraged and saddened by reports that the U.S. should “bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.”  Unable to talk about it, he instead sent an email to 30 or so of his friends offering his views about the terrorist attacks, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.  That email in turn went to their friends and so on.  Turns out, it was read by a million or more people.  From there, news agencies and TV programs picked up on it and Ansary spoke more.  Eventually, he wrote this book.  It’s fascinating in the first third, it drags through the middle, and it’s interesting near the end.  He probably goes into more detail than he needs to about his life and his family in Afghanistan because he seems to get away from the purpose of the book, but some of the details are really intriguing.  He begins by stating that there’s no real need to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age becasue the Soviets already did it.  Schools, hospitals, and infrastructure were leveled years ago and mostly stayed that way.  The country is one of the poorest in the world and the Taliban, a group he refers to as “ignorant psychotics” took over the country in 1997.  He says we can bomb all we want, but the Taliban will simply hide in the many caves, and bombing will only further destroy an already destroyed country (and waste a lot of bombs).  Possibly the most interesting part of the book was his reference to the Ghaznavid Empire which thrived in the early middle ages spanning from India to the Caspian Sea, covering all the area of Afghanistan and much more.  It was an empire of Turks, Arabs, and Persians that, according to the author, “rivaled the Italian Renaissance” with poetry, art, literature and the like.  But the great war hero Ghengis Khan came through and dumped the libraries into the river and tore up all the irrigation that had created the Helmand Valley breadbasket.  Apparently Ghengis Khan thought they should eat meat, not grain.  So we learn that this devastated country was once a place of greatness, its past now mired in poverty and rubble.  What a history lesson.  This book is worth reading simply for its glimpse into a life that most of know little about, a life and culture that is far removed from today’s Afghanistan.   Memoir.

* Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992) September 7, 2009

I wrote down the title of this book when I was reading a book called Great Books for High School Kids.  Yikes.  I can’t quite imagine teaching this to high school kids, but the teacher who wrote about it taught it in an elective women’s lit class.  She always had more students than desks and her students ranged from Ivy League bound to those struggling to finish high school.  Clearly she’s a brilliant teacher, and part of being a brilliant teacher is choosing materials that students will embrace and dig into.  So here’s  the story of Bone.  In chapter one we learn about her birth as a “bastard child” and by the end of the book she’s maybe in her early teens.  Her mom was 14 or 15 when she was born and a whopping 21 when she marries for the third time.  Bone’s younger sister has a different father–he’s somewhere in between Bone’s father and the man who enters their lives when Bone is 7 or so.  There’s some humor in the story–Bone’s uncles and aunts are an eccentric bunch, but mostly this is just a heartbreaking story that’s very hard to stomach.  In a nutshell, it’s a story of need, of sex, of drinking, of incest, of masturbation, of fear, of betrayal.  Some really tough and uncomfortable issues to bring up in a class discussion.  Then again, there’s a lot to learn here.  I admire the teacher who chose to start her year with this book.  But I’d have to follow it with something lighter, a lot less depressing.  Fiction.

** A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill (1994) September 7, 2009

Pete Hamill’s memoir/autobiography eloquently tells the story of a drinking culture.  It is set in New York, in a poor Irish immigrant neighborhood in the 1940′s.  Much of the story is similar to his bestselling novel Snow in August in that a boy comes of age in an environment that values ignorant thugs over curious students, corner bars over libraries, fighting over communicating.  With few sober, involved fathers, most boys grow up in a household led by a mother with too many children who ends up working a menial job just to put food on the table while the fathers spend their wages in the bar.  While I assumed that Snow in August was largely based on his own neighborhood and upbringing, after reading this memoir, it’s amazing just how closely one mirrors the other.  So the story moves through Hamill’s life from boyhood through adulthood and marriage; the constants in his life seem to be running away from who he is (or seeking sho he is?) and drinking in order to deal with it.  Though well educated and clearly bright, his use of alcohol as novacaine for life  is not much different than his father’s.  Hamill wanders the world wherever his writing career will take him whereas his father only wanders the neighborhood.  Still, they’re both wanderers who use alcohol to forget, pretend, hide.  As a young boy, he’s wildly into comics, and he has this fabulous line: “Comics taught me, and millions of other kids, that even the weakest human being could take a drink and be magically transformed into someone smarter, bigger, braver.  All you needed was the right drink” (10).  Wow.  What a commentary on the culture of alcohol or escapism or altered reality.  This is a great book.  (memoir/autobiography)

* Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani (2008) August 13, 2009

It took me a bit to get into this book because it takes some time to understand what it’s really about.  The plot is simple: Georgie, an 80 year old woman, is driving to the airport for lunch with the Queen of England (because they share the same birthday), but en route, she drives her car off the road into a ravine and lies there thinking about her life.  This is all apparent from the getgo.  The story meanders through her life–it’s really a series of stories as she recounts the relationships and events of her 80 some years that have shaped her.  It’s subtle.  I had to remind myself to leave behind the “find out what happens” reading mindset, and simply enjoy each story from her life as she recalls it.  Through her stories, we learn about her daughter the theater owner, her husband who was on his own by age 7, her mother and grandmother whose wisdom and common sense helped Georgie through so much, her grandfather whose Gray’s Anatomy book became a childhood friend, her grade school teacher who taught 8 grades at once, and various other people who had played a prominant role in her life.  Really, Georgie is trying to answer the question, “what has my life meant?  What has it been worth?”  As we read and enjoy her stories, we cannot help but wonder what our own reflections and stories might be.  If I ended up at the bottom of a ravine tonight and no one knew to look for me, what would I think about?  What would I celebrate?  What would I regret?  Who would I recall most as the people who have shaped me?    It leaves us much to think about.  (fiction)

***The Help by Kathryn Stockett (2009) August 11, 2009

Wow.  This story pulled my in by the 4th page when Aibileen, a maid for a white family in Jackson, Mississippi, describes her employer’s attitude toward her own child:  “Ever so often, I come to work and find her (Mae Mobley) bawling in her crib, Miss Leefolt busy on the sewing machine rolling her eyes like it’s a stray cat stuck in the screen door.”   Instantly I was transported to that 1960′s living room watching the mother ignore her daughter and waiting for the maid to attend to the child.  Aibileen is one of three narrators in this book about maids and their relationship (some good, others heart breaking) with their employers.  Aibileen is good natured, calm, and patient.  Minny, another narrator, is sassy and loud, but buckles under her husband’s knuckles.  The third narrator is Skeeter, the white college grad who decides to interview the maids and urge them to tell their stories for a potential book , becoming an outcast along the way.  All three narrators are interesting and well developed.  A few reviews I’ve read find too many characters one-dimensional, but I disagree–I think they’re all compelling and different.  The only aspect of the characterization I thought was lacking was Skeeter’s relationship with Stuart, the senator’s son.  It seemed a little shallow, but it was worth reading the pages about the relationship to read the parts that included Stuart’s father–he’s a hoot.

I know some folks find the story a bit stereotypical–and who am I to judge having grown up in the north without a maid–but come on, what on earth did these women do all day?  It’s hard to conceive of having full time cleaning and child care when these women didn’t work.  Yes, they raised money through their Junior League functions, but they played a lot of bridge, went to a lot of luncheons, and spent a lot of time shopping and gossipping.  Compared to my world where most of us work, raise kids, make dinner, grocery shop, volunteer, and maybe get a few hours of cleaning help every other week, it’s hard to imagine that life.  How does one feel fulfilled at the end of the day?

I absolutely loved diving into the lives of each narrator, and I marked several passages that I thought are so well written.  Here’s another passage narrated by Aibileen describing Mae Mobley and Miss Lefolt, Mae’s mother: “She (Mae Mobley) rather be setting out here with the help than in there watching her mama look anywhere but at her.  She like one a them baby chickens that get confused and follow the ducks around instead.”

Any author that can write a first book in three convincing voices gets high marks by me.  This is a great, fast, important read.  (fiction)

* Waterland by Graham Swift (1992) July 30, 2009

Complex and layered, this book is no easy read.  It’s a powerful story that forces you to concentrate, but it’s worth the effort.   Narrating in present day, Tom Crick tells the story of his family and his rural community in the Fens (the Eastern part of Britain), moving back and forth between time periods from the 1700′s to the late 1900′s where he is the local history teacher.  The audience of his narration is his high school students (though it’s also us, the readers), to whom he is teaching history by telling the story of their community and its people, along with the stories he supposed to be teaching, such as the French Revolution.  We find out about the early Fens settlers, the family of brewers, the constant drainage of the waterlogged Fens which turns out to be extremely fertile farmland due to the silt, we learn about the narrator’s childhood, the secrets he’s lived with, and ultimately about his current situation–he’s being fired, the history department is shutting down, and his wife tried to steal a baby.  But to explain his current predicament, he must go back, all the way back to the founding of their area.  Because to explain the events of the present, one must go back to the events which led to the present.  Thus, history.

Swift gets a bit wordy and dramatic– sometimes his ‘asides’ are pages long–but his descriptions of the Fens ecosystem are detailed enough to help me feel the dampness and hear the constant pumping of water to dry out the land.  It’s an area I knew little about, and I leave the novel with a new understanding of its climate and geography.  (fiction)

**What is the What by Dave Eggers (2007) July 27, 2009

I think I need to get out of Africa.  Actually, I’m a bit mesmerized by Africa, but in less than a month, I’ve read Cutting for Stone (which takes place in Ethiopia with lots of info on Eritrea) and Dreams from My Father (with a large section on Kenya) and now What is the What which tells the story of the lost boys of Sudan, including their many years in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps.   More so  than the previous two, this is a difficult read.  Pages upon pages of details about starvation, genocide, war, brutality, death.  At times, it’s very difficult to keep reading.  Yet, it’s such an important story.  While I was graduating from high school, attending college, working as a teacher, going to grad school, getting married, and beginning a family, two and a half million Sudanese people died in a civil war and four million people were displaced.  I knew of none of this–or perhaps I knew, but it in no way affected my life.  It’s embarrassing now, to read about the plight of this country and these people, and to think that my life continued happily along with little knowledge of what they were going through.  Since then, I’ve read and heard much more about the “Lost boys of Sudan,” and have become much better educated about the war and about what they endured in their 22 years of flight, refugee life, and resettlement in other countries, including the US.  Though this is a work of fiction, the narrator, Valentino Achak Deng, worked with Dave Eggers to bring this story to the public, and thus, much of it is true as far as the narrator can remember.  Since he had to take liberties with events that happened when he was a young boy of 6 or 7, he chose to call it fiction–which I respect–though clearly, he remained true to the actual events as best as he could remember or as they could be pieced together by other sources.  At times, it gets a bit long and drawn out, but perhaps that’s the very feeling we should all get from the narrative–that this was a life they endured for much too long. Their trek from Sudan to Ethiopia to Kenya is longer and more disturbing than I can possibly imagine.  The fact that it took place while I was living the college and 20′s lifestyle makes it seem even more impossible.   This is a must read.  And it’s important to find out what “the what ” refers to because that pertains to all of us.  I think we all wonder what ‘the what’ is.  Kind of like ‘the grass is always greener’ except that sometimes it isn’t.  (fiction/historical fiction)

*The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister (2009) July 27, 2009

I read this a few months ago and forgot to write my review.  Hmmm. . .what does that mean?  That is wasn’t a memorable book or that I was too busy to post my review?  Sometimes it’s good to put a few months in between reading and reviewing because it forces me to write about only that which really stuck with me.  So here it is.  Lillian, the main charcter, runs a restaurant, and on Monday nights she offes cooking school.  All the main characters are studetns in her school who are there for various reasons: loneliness, boredom, adventure seeking, late-in-life interest in cooking, romance through food, etc..  So we first meet Lillian, who, as a child, craved her mother’s attention so much that she turned to the kitchen to sway her mother away from books and other soul sapping activities.  Lillian finally truly reaches her mother through hot chocolate.  I thought that was cool.  And from there, Lillian learns that the kitchen is her thing.  As an adult, she then connects with others–and helps others figure out their own lives–through food.  Well, I’m a foodie, so I loved this aspect of the story.  Each chapter allows us to know another person or couple that has signed up for cooking classes, so we get a narrative and character development through food.  This isn’t Michael Pollen serious food study, but rather, light, fun food and people all in one.  A nice break from serious books, but also a peek into some wonderful cooking.  I enjoyed this, and especially enjoyed that I could read a chapter at a time and didn’t have to look up anything on Wikipedia like countries or political leaders or history–just a nice, light read.  Whew!  (fiction)

*Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009) July 7, 2009

I’ll start by quoting Erika Wagner who reviewed this book in the NY Times.  She says, “Verghese’s weakness is the weakness of a writer with too much heart: it’s clear he loves his characters and he just wants to cram in every last fact about them.”  And I agree.  There’s no question that this is a compelling story,  but at times, it just felt like too much–too much drama, too much heartache, too many side stories.  Told from Marion’s point of view, we are immersed in his character and his sometimes overwrought emotions.  It’s not so much what he feels, but rather what he says and how he says it.  A few times I wanted to slap him, tell him to buck up and get over Genet and get over his disappointment in his brother, Shiva (the more interesting character as far as I could tell).  But at other times, I sympathized with him.  The relationship between Marion and Shiva too often reminded me of Kiterunner, the death of their mother and abandonment by their father reminded me too much of Greek tragedy, and the ending reminded me too much of My Sister’s Keeper.  That said, there was lots that I did like about this book.  I was particularly fascinated by the Ethiopian and Eritrean history, the Italian influence, the emperors, the coups.  While I know it wasn’t all historically accurate, I still  found that I learned a great deal, and reading this forced me to look up information and fill in gaps.  I also really liked the medical aspect of the book (which is a good chunk of the text).  I’m not sure the detailed medical information helped much with the flow of the story–in fact, it probably interrupted it fairly often–but I loved gleaning so much information about surgery, gynecology, and internal medicine.  It showed how three facets of medicine are so  different and require vastly different personalities and skill sets.  Perhaps my avid interest stems from a dear friend and a niece who are planning to go into medicine; all I know is that I soaked up those aspects of the story, and I loved seeing the differences (and similarities) between practicing medicine in a third world country and practicing it in a top US hospital.  So for anyone who is interested in Ethiopia, medicine, or dramatic family sagas, you’ll like this book.  It’s long, but a good summer read.  (fiction)

**Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (2007) June 26, 2009

Despite looking at a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in various house books, I knew little  of his personal life other than the fact that his ideas were different and ahead of the times.  This work of historical fiction focuses on Wright’s relationship with his mistress of 7 years (and former client), Mamah Borthwick Cheney.  What a story and what a scandal they were!  Though she ultimately got a divorce from her husband (Wright didn’t until many years later), they made headlines for years.  The Chicago papers at that time (roughly 1907 – 1914) reminded me of the current National Enquirer, filled with yellow journalism.  Mamah essentially left her husband and children to live and travel with Wright and to pursue her own career interests, mainly translating the work of Ellen Keys, an early pioneer in the ‘Woman Movement’.  Mamah and Wright were truly soul mates and sacrificed many obligations and reputations to remain together, both abandoning kind and supportive spouses who made them feel ‘suffocated’.  I found myself oscillating back and forth between empathy and anger toward Mamah.  On the one hand, she had the courage to forge out on her own at a time in America when women had few rights or choices, but on the other hand, she simply walked out on her children, leaving her husband and sister to raise them and to explain their mother’s abandonment.  Ultimately she does begin to reconnect with them, but who knows if she could ever have been a real mother to them.  This is a fascinating story that pulled me into their world, and now I have a much keener interest in Wright’s work, especially Taliesin, Midway Gardens, and The Imperial Hotel in Japan, all of which come to life in the book.  (historical fiction)

***Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama (1995, 2005) June 26, 2009

This was a unique experience.  Reading Obama’s words on the page and then hearing him daily on the news was like living in two worlds.  It felt like I was getting his most private insights at the same time I was listening to his most public proclamations.  And since the book covers the years from his early childhood to law school and a bit beyond, it unfolds  so much of his past, leaving me with much greater insight into who he is today.  I love that he wrote the book long before the presidency because it feels so real and genuine, truly his own voice, not a ghost writer.  It felt so intimate that it was actually weird to read the most private thoughts of the most public individual.  Did he have any inclination back then that he might one day be president?  I mean he writes about being an angry black man, about drinking and smoking pot, and losing his temper and being confused, about understanding race and hating much of what he sees.  It’s all so raw, personal, exposed.  It shows the incredible journey he traveled, not just from middle class boy of a single mom to president, but of a person who for many years was not so confident or composed or articulate.  I think it’s easy to assume today that he’s always been the way we see him now, but that’s really not so, and it’s refreshing to see that he had to overcome a lot of internal obstacles to see a clear path to follow.  That he needed to make peace with his father’s absence, his African roots.  He needed to dig into his Indonesian years and his early years with his grandparents and his mother who gave him so much strength and support but who also pursued her own interests, sometimes on the other side of the world.

In addition to a compelling story, it’s just so well written.  Sentence after sentence stuck me: interesting language, images, sentence variety and flow.  A few examples–”At certain points the potholes yawned across the road’s entire width” or  “For Sale signs cropped up like dandelions under the summer sun.”  So much fun to read good writing! (memoir)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007) April 15, 2009

This book is bizarre.  I’m not even sure if I liked it or hated it–it’s that difficult to judge.  According to the title, it’s about Oscar Wao, a nerdy, overweight Dominican kid growing up in New Jersey.  But really, it’s about his mother, his sister, their grandparents, and the one relative who remains in the Dominican Republic.  Oscar seems rather secondary to their story.  This is one reason it was an easy book to put down in the first 75 pages–I just didn’t care that much about Oscar and his troubles.  But the narrative picked up and drew me in once it backtracked to the story of Oscar’s mother and her family living under the Trujillo dictatorship in the DR.  Here, I was enthralled.  Some readers are  bothered by the extensive footnotes on several of the pages, but I found them fascinating–sometimes more so than the narrative itself.  After reading Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies, a tragic and true story about Trujillo and his reign of fear, I found the middle section of this book to be the most compelling part of the story.  The characters seem more believable, the emotion more real, and the writing much more fluid.  In other sections, Diaz seems like he’s trying too hard.  For what, I’m not sure.  He throws the f-word and the n-word around so much that it’s simply tiresome after a short while.  Like he wants to be so raw, so different, so macho—but it comes off as immature and sophmoric.

Some things I liked: lots of literary references and lots of unique vocabulary words.  These are part of Oscar’s character–part of his nerdy ways.  Also part of Oscar’s character are the many references to pop culture, video games, and sci-fi novels and films.  I missed most of them–and it seems like he often used more than he needed–but many were interesting.  In addition to his overuse of foul language, Diaz also uses hundreds of spanish phrases, all untranslated.  Sort of like he wants to throw his own “Dominican-ness” in our faces.  For what purpose, I’m again not sure.  Seems to be part of his macho factor which comes out in both the main narrator and the author.  Sometimes, it’s hard to tell who’s narrating the story: Yunior, the on and off boyfriend of Oscar’s sister, or Diaz himself?

This is a creative, unique story told in many voices over many years with Dominican history and culture woven into the sometimes choppy narrative.  It’s interesting, but not brilliant.  How it won the Pulitzer Prize is beyond me.   (fiction)

*Finding Fish by Antwone Fisher (2001) April 11, 2009

One of my students read this memoir for her research project on foster care, and it really is a remarkable story of survival in a horrifying foster home.  Fisher tells his story through memory and excerpts from his case file over the 18 years that he was a ward of the state.  He spent most of those years in the home of the Pickett family where he was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused.  Yet he stayed with the family because the foster mother was able to convince the social workers that she was doing her job–taking him in and providing for him.  By the time his 13th social worker had suspiscions that all was not well in the Pickett home, he essentially had nowhere else to go.  So we learn about the system: too many unwanted kids, too few social workers, a revolving door of caseworkers who quit due to high stress and low pay, too many foster families that take in kids for the money and not because they care about kids, too few caring families available to accomodate all the kids who need a home, and too many teenagers having babies they cannot raise which results in too many wards of the state.  Fisher’s  story is horrifying, yet somehow he survives in this environment and goes on to write about it.  In the end, it’s the discipline of the Navy that sets his path for him–and he ends up educated and employed.  Through his job as a security guard in a Hollywood studio, his story is discovered, and ultimately he is paid to write the screenplay for the movie and the text for the memoir.  So Antwone Fisher’s story becomes a Denzel Washington film, but let us not forget how many other kids in the foster care system end up sick, corrupt, or dead.  This is a depressing book, but Fisher’s voice,  sense of humor, and positive attitude make it a story of strength and redemption.  (memoir)

**Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals (1994) April 11, 2009

This is another one of those “must reads” that I never read, and I have no idea why.  Typically it’s not taught in school, and though I’ve always heard of it, I never had a compelling reason to pick it up.  That will not be the case with my own kids–they will definitely read it.  Soon.  This is the story of the LIttle Rock nine, the nine students who first integrated Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957, three years after Brown vs. Board of Education.  I’ve read Southie Won’t Go, another non-fiction book which chronicles school integration, but somehow Warriors was more powerful.  Perhaps because it’s a memoir, one girl’s personal experience rather than the story of the riots in South Boston.

My ninth graders just finished a unit on courage and heroism, with The Odyssey as the central work of literature, but Warriors brings the concept of courage so much closer to home for our students.  This book–and these nine students–define courage in a way that is unfathomable to most of us.  The concept of bullying today hardly compares to the verbal and physical abuse these students suffered simply for being black in an intolerant, small-minded, prejudiced world.  And they faced it with fortitude and grace.  Melba held her head high and headed back day after day, even after the 101st soldiers completed their guard duty after a few months.  Can you imagine needing 52 planeloads of soldiers to protect nine students?  What does that tell us about the Little Rock community in 1957?  This story is an absolute necessity–for students today and in the future.  They must understand what it took to integrate schools and the courage these kids had to dig for simply to change the course of history.  If everyone read this, perhaps our current tolerance levels would grow.  Perhaps our racial, religious, ethnic, and sexual preference differences really wouldn’t matter, and we’d all treat each other with respect.  (memoir)

**Song Yet Sung by James McBride (2008) April 2, 2009

Wow.  Anyone who thinks they’ve read enough about slavery needs to read this book.  Difficult and heartwrenching at times, the story sucked me in and I could not put it down.  I was drawn in by the characters and the narrative from beginning to end.  What I love about this book–and what often isn’t the case in so many books about slavery–is that characters are so well developed that almost everyone has two sides.  This is not good vs. evil.  It’s good vs. sort of bad and mostly good vs. bad but excusable,  and good vs. bad but not completely bad.  Amber is good through and through.  Miss Kathleen seems mostly good, but she’s a slave owner.  Does that make her bad or a product of the culture?  Denwood is despicable at times but sympathetic nonetheless and better as the story unfolds.  Liz is simply compelling and unique.  Patty Cannon is evil.  McBride  (the author) runs the gamut, but what stands out is that each character brings us into the world they’re living.  We see slaves, slave owners, slave traders, slaves working the “gospel train,” free blacks helping and not helping, and black “natives” living in the bush, a part of neither world.  This is a complex story with a narrative that weaves and winds much like the landscape in which it’s set.  A great novel.  (fiction)

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1984/1924) April 2, 2009

I read this in college and didn’t much enjoy it then, so I thought I’d give it a second try (after all, it’s on many “must read” lists), and I may have enjoyed it slightly more this time around, though not by an overwhemling margin.  It’s slow, even painstaking at the beginning, and picks up around page 100.  At least by then we have a sense of the many characters (and a number of them we had no need to keep track of as they do not play any sort of major role in the narrative).  It clearly shows the bigotry and power of British colonialism and the complete disconnect between the colonial and local cultures.  I’m just not sure what makes it a great novel.  Surely other works of literature get the same idea across and perhaps in a more engaging way.  In the end, I was glad I reread it, but moreso because it compelled me to do some additional research on India and British colonialism.  I also found my timing to be ironic in that I’d let this novel rest for 25 years in between reads and when I read it this second time, I’d just seen Slumdog Millionaire.  Clearly different stories set in different times, yet connections remain, especially the Hindu/Muslim conflict that’s evident in the book (though subtle), and more evident in the movie.  I doubt I’ll reread Passage again, though I may rent the movie.  (fiction)

*The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (2006) March 8, 2009

I’m not a big mystery novel fan, but once I got into this book (I put it down a few times early on), I liked it and it flew.  The mystery centers around a best selling author and the woman who is writing her biography.  So books and writing play a big role in the story, which is part of what kept me so interested.  Most of the characters are compelling and complex and the twists in the story keep unraveling all the way to the end.  This is fairly light reading–fun and easy.  A secondary storyline about twins and their psychological and physical connection is pretty interesting.  It give the story another layer of substance, though the narrator’s own  obsession with her twin who died at birth gets a bit stale by the end.  Still, a good read, especially on a rainy day. (fiction)

*The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (2007) January 25, 2009

Based on his famous lecture as part of Carnegie Mellon’s Last Lecture series, Randy Pausch’s book expounds on the lessons he presented at that lecture.  I suppose this amounts to a  life lessons book or even a self help book, and though I found it to be a bit longer than necessary (I couldn’t skim it because I listened to it on tape), it was inspiring and interesting.  Dying of pancreatic cancer, he offers his readers the many lessons he lived by which allowed him to remain both positive and realistic through his illness, but he also offers those lessons he lived by long before he knew he had a terminal disease.  I’ve excerpted a few that I would like my students to hear (the importance of hand written thank you notes and the power of persistence, especially when applying to college or grad school), and I will keep many of the lessons in mind as I go about my life.  I’d like to think that I already live by a number of them.  A good read, even if you prefer to skim.  Better yet, just listen to the lecture on You Tube and get the condensed version.  Inspiring.  (non-fiction)

**Snow in August by Pete Hamill (1997) January 25, 2009

I read this soon after it first came out, and I recently reread it for book club.  I think I liked it even more this time than the first time, perhaps because since then I’ve done more reading about kabbalah, and about the history of the golum, and I’m more open to the mystical element of a story (the first time I read Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, I couldn’t get past the mysticism).  So the ending didn’t bother me the way it did the first time I read it.  As well, the first time I read this book, I wasn’t a parent, and this time I have a 13 year old boy, so that might have something to do with the fact that I loved the book even more the second time around.  I was absolutely pulled into Michael’srelationship with Rabbi Hirsch and his relationship with his mom; I was intrigued by his maturity and independence; and I was scared by his life in the neighborhood, not able to imagine my 13 year old dealing with such violence and such pressure to disclose nothing of the violence that surrounds him. This is a sweet, sad, and ultimately uplifting story steeped in the history of the Holocaust, New York street gangs, the immigrant experience, the color barrier in baseball, and so much more.  It’s a great way to learn history and tolerance through a work of fiction.  I hope my son will read it next.  (fiction)

**Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (1996) January 25, 2009

Much of what makes this book so compelling–besides the story–is Krakauer’s writing. First, he has a knack for finding the most compelling stories, and second, he writes about them beautifully and with meticulous research. There must be hundreds of stories of adventurers who perish in the wilderness, but this story is steeped in why. I’ve heard people say they don’t like that they know what happens to Chris McCandless before the book even opens, but I don’t think that’s the point. It’s why it happened–what lies behind the events and behind this person. That’s the fascinating part. Also, I appreciate that Krakauer puts his bias right out there. He identifies with McCandless, sees a bit of himself in this twenty something young man. So if we feel that Krakauer is a bit more sympathetic toward McCandless than others might be, we know why. And by putting his bias out there, we don’t have to wonder if Krakauer is being entirely fair and balanced (though mostly, I think he is).

I read this book shortly after it came out in 1996, but we rented the movie just a few weeks ago, and then I reread the book. Over ten years later, it still drew me in, and I was amazed at how the movie stayed so true to the book. (non-fiction)

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart January 25, 2009

If you like pianos as a main character in a book, you’ll love this memoir.  The basic storyline is that an American man living in Paris passes a piano shop each day while walking his kids to school and he becomes intrigued by the place.  Eventually he befriends the owner and after many visits where he learns about hundreds of pianos, he purchases one.  Readers will learnmore than they thought possible about pianos.  I used to play piano and my daughter plays, but really I know very little about the intricacies of pianos.  This memoir takes us into the  construction of pianos; the history of various companies  across the globe and through the centuries; techniques of learning, truly understanding, and playing piano; and into the lives of composers and their works.  If you’re not interested in music, it might be a bit much, though the back streets of Paris and Parisian culture add another element to the story.  This is a good book–perhaps a bit overly detailed–that offers a fascinating wealth of information.

***The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (2006) December 4, 2008

No, this is not a book about hedgehogs (well, metaphorically, it is); rather, it’s a book that combines philosophy, history, literature, art, and culture in an attempt to look at life through the lens of social class.  It’s both  hilarious and grave.  Set in modern day Paris, it is narrated by two characters: Madame Michel, an uneducated, poor, apartment building concierge who possesses great knowledge of all things aristocratic–art, music, literature, history.  But she hides it in an attempt to be seen–and remain in–her proper place at the bottom of the social ladder.  The other narrator is 12 year old Paloma Josse, the daughter of wealthy, educated Parisians.  She lives in the elegant apartment building, and she is appalled by most of what she sees: a materialistic sister, a highly educated depressed, superifical mother, a detached father.  About half way through the story, the two narrators meet, and their friendship is Palome’s saving grace and Madame Michel’s chance to connect with a young woman, something she has not done since parting with her own sister more than thirty years earlier.

Line after line, I just wanted to stop and reread, either for the wit, the image, or the commentary on life.  When we first meet Madame Michel, she refers to TV as “inane nonsense fit for the brain of a clam.”  Later Paloma describes French cuisine saying, “when it isn’t heavy, it’s as fussy as can be: you’re dying of hunger and before you are three stylized radishes and two scallops in a seaweed gelee served on pseudo-Zen plates by waiters who look as joyful as undertakers.”

On a more serious note, Paloma reminds us to “tell ourselves that it’s now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength.  Always remember there’s a retirement home waiting somewhere, and we have to surpass ourselves every day.” And near the end of the book Madame Michel tells us that “Poverty is a reaper: it harvests everything inside us that might have made us capable of social interaction with others, and leaves us empty, purged of feeling, so that we may endure all the darkness of the present day.”

I haven’t read a book this good in a long time.  The writing is beautiful.  The ideas, profound. And the characters snatch you into their world, making you laugh and cry as their story unfolds.  (fiction)

* The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton (2008) November 29, 2008

Light, good, and fun.  This is one of those books you want to pick up each night because it’s so relaxing to read, and if you’re an aspiring writer (or a writing teacher), it’s fun to watch a writing group evolve from casual conversations with a lot of superficial accolades to more serious dialogue about character believability and plot development.

Perhaps most interesting for me was the time period: much of the story takes place from the late 60′s through the mid 70′s, a time when my mom was raising me just as these women were raising their kids (though i’m the last of 6 children and most of these women are first time moms during this time, so they’d be about 10 years younger than my mom’s generation).

The story takes place in Palo Alto, CA when all the women are in their early 20s and most have babies–they meet for the first time in a park.  They are housewives, and they mostly define themselves through their husbands’ careers, degrees, and accomplishments.  But as they begin to write and talk, they discover their own interests which are often then developed in their writing.  Two elements I really liked were the references to history and literature.  As history unfolds–VIetnam protests, the women’s movement, astronauts on the moon, the first episode of Sesame Street–we see it through their eyes and the eyes of their young children.  And their conversations about writing often refer to classic novels and the styles in which they were written.  So we get some Fitzgerald, Plath, and Austen along with the mundane mommy issues like teaching kids to share and sending them off on their first day of school.

One of my favorite scenes takes place in the park when the first of the 5 sisters is ready to send a manuscript out to publishers.  They bring 5 typewriters and each sister produces a typed copy of the complete manuscript so it can be sent to 5 publishers at once.  Luckily, by the time the second woman is ready to send out a manuscript, their town has just purchased its first copy machine.  They can hardly imagine such convenience.  And in writing this short review,  I have already deleted or or changed nearly every sentence.

For a light novel about friendship, motherhood, setbacks, and family life in the 60′s and 70′s, there’s enough history, literature, and writing methodology to give it some depth.  (fiction)

Fat Envelope Frenzy by Joie Jager-Hyman November 4, 2008

If you’re going through the college admissions process, you might want to read this book–or not.  It profiles five students applying to predominantly Ivy Leage schools and chronicles their journey through the year-long process.  We meet Felix, the pianist from Pennsylvania; Nabil, the math whiz from Memphis; Andrew, the “I must keep my 4.0 GPA” from New Orleans; Lisa, the world class rhythmic gymnast from Chicago; and Marlene, the less than stellar one of the group, from New York.  They’re all high achievers, and they come from varied ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds, and they all seem to be great kids.  So why did they all annoy me by the end of the book?  Perhaps it’s that the author felt compelled to detail every nuance of their lives, particularly the aspects that make them Ivy League material, such that by the end I didn’t care about any of them.  Honestly, I don’t think it’s the kids, but the writing.  The book was about twice as long as it needed to be.  By the end, I just wanted to skim and see which schools they got into.

If you’re looking for advice on what to do or not to do in the college frenzy process, this is not the book you want.  Actually I’m not sure it’s the book you want for much of anything.  Ultimately, the message is to not get caught up in the college frenzy-but that’s exactly what the author makes you do as you read. (non-fiction)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1990, 1927) October 1, 2008

I read this book years ago and remembered loving it, but this time, I had to think quite a bit about what I loved.  Ultimately it came down to appreciating the book for what it is, and not what it is not.  It is not a story with a strong narrative.  It’s certainly not a page turner.  If you read for exciting plot lines, then this is not the book for you.  What it is, is a study in character.  It’s the story of Father Jean Latour, a French priest who is assigned to the territory of New Mexico in the mid 1800′s.  His job as a missionary is to grow the Catholic church in this new territory which is largely native Indians (warring with each other) and  Mexicans, some of whom are devoted Catholics and some of whom follow  tribal customs and traditional beliefs.  The story kind of meanders through his life, each chapter made up of little vignettes, stories of his adventures and travels and the people he meets.  Each story is its own, but they all sort of connect around his role and his commitment to the church.  Some stories offer a bit of action, but many others are more of a character study or a character sketch where not much happens, yet we gain new insight into who he is and what makes him tick.  Ultimately we cannot help but love him for his devotion to his work, for his patient and quiet demeanor, for his respect of the local customs, and for his integrity and honor.  He faces many challenges, both physical and mental, but he never gives up.  In his elderly years and at his death, we see this respect come back to him as he is visited by and prayed for by so many folks whom he ministered to over the years.  As he lies in his bed near death, he thinks over his life–the church he built, the persecution of the Navajo Indians, the end of black slavery, his friendship with Father Vaillant, his childhood years in France–and seems genuinely fulfilled.  If only we could all be so easily content and reflective.  (fiction)

Run by Ann Patchett (2007) August 25, 2008

This is only the second Ann Patchett book that I’ve read, but it reminded me a lot of her earlier best-seller, Bel Canto.  Not in the story, but in the structure.  Again, she covers only 24 hours in almost 300 pages, and again, I found myself questioning the believability of the story and thinking, okay get on with it. It’s good enough that I wanted to keep reading, but in the end, I thought it was just okay.  The characters have the potential to be interesting, but somehow I just didn’t care much about enough of them.  Maybe they were too underdeveloped or too predictable.  After a while, I felt that additional detail about each character was redundant, so that by the end, I didn’t feel like I knew them any better than I did at the half way point.  As well, the story seemed both too coincidental and too predictable and that bothered me.  But amidst all this, she has some beautifully written passages, some interesting mystical elements, and a unique thread that holds much of it together–a statue that seems to define family.  I wouldn’t run out to buy this one (though I did), but I wouldn’t dismiss it either.  (fiction)

*** In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (1994) August 25, 2008

This is a book I had always meant to read, but somehow never did so until now, and it’s just beautiful, even better than How the Garcia Sisters Lost Their Accents.  While this is a fictional story, it is based on  historical events: the 30 year dictatorship of Trujillo, the Dominican Republic’s most ruthless leader; the murder of the Mirabel sisters; Castro’s beginnings in Cuba; and the U.S.’s empty promises of help.  But mostly it’s about the sisters.  We watch them growing up, becoming involved in politics, getting married, having babies, struggling to make a living, and ultimately sacrificing their lives for their country.  The story begins in the present told from the point of view of the lone surviving sister who reflects back on her dead sisters, but the chapters then alternate narrators from one sister to another.  In this way, we feel as if we truly get to know each sister since we’re essentially reading her own words, her own thoughts on life and the world around them.  Much of the narrative is so beautifully written, I wanted to mark page after page of passages that I loved, but because I bought a first edition hardback, I couldn’t bring myself to fold them down.  I’ll have to reread and add post-its to the passages I want to excerpt.  (fiction)

** The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (2008) August 13, 2008

There is much to love about this book, but in the end, it brings a bit of frustration as well.  The story centers around Edgar, a mute boy, and his parents, dog breeders, and their life in rural upper Wisconsin.  So much in this novel is fresh and unique–Edgar’s character, the information and history about breeding, Edgar’s relationship with Henry, the Hamlet-ish element to the narrative.  And so much of the writing is beautiful and compelling, especially the many dog scenes where we feel like we’re right there with Edgar or Trudy and the dogs whether they’re in the runs, the whelping room, or the open fields.  Another unique element of the novel is the narrative voice, especially the way Wroblewski takes us into Almondine’s (Edgar’s own dog) head, giving us her point of view.  Sort of like a talking dog, but not exactly.  So why was I frustrated with a book I couldn’t put down, a book that has so many lovely elements to the story?  In the end, there were just so many gaps in the plotline.  Subplots were developed in detail and then dropped.  Characters, especially Claude, were not developed enough to warrant some of their actions, and too many things just didn’t seem to fit or felt unfinished.  The more I think about the book, the more questions I have and the more holes I discover.  It feels like it needed better editing to weed out unimportant details and to beef up other details that later become significant.  Yet, I loved it.  Isn’t that weird?

* Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979) July 30, 2008

This is an interesting book because it’s sort of sci-fi (time travel), but written as a fictional memoir.  The main character, a black woman living in the 1970′s, gets transported back to a plantation in the antebellum South.  She is called there by a young boy whom she eventually discovers is her great grandfather.  So the story flip flops back and forth between her life on the plantation and her life in modern day California.  She has little control over her travels.  It’s an interesting premise, almost like a unique type of slave narrative, though at times the story seems a bit predictable, not so much in terms of events, but in terms of her role in both locations.  Still, once into the story, I didn’t want to put it down, which always leads me to the conclusion that there was more to like than not like.  (fiction)

** The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (1997, 1951) July 30, 2008

I had read some of the stories in this collection years ago, but this is the first time I read the entire book (nearly at one sitting), and I only picked it up because my son was reading it (so I’ll add it to the young adult page).  The more I think about Bradbury’s stories, the more I’m amazed by his futuristic ideas and his vision of who we are.  We’ve recently been watching all the seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and there are so many parallels between that show and Bradbury’s stories, from the gadgets to holographic imaging to the moral lessons.  Clearly Star Trek was heavily influenced by Bradbury and perhaps other early sci fi writers.  This is a great collection of stories.  (science fiction/short story)

* The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (2007) July 29, 2008

Some might say that nothing happens in this novel, and in some ways that’s true.  The main character owns a small grocery store and much of the story revolves around the monotony of running that store.  He and his two best friends, all immigrants from African countries, spend much of their time at the store discussing politics, family background, life in America, and their various approaches to what we might term “work ethic.”  But really I think this is a book about how we are ultimately a product of our upbringing, and that we view the world and our place in it based on values and a lifestyle instilled in us at an early age.  One aspect of the book that I found particularly interesting was the political reference to various African countries and their current and past leaders, mostly military thugs who staged a coup and took control.  As I flip through a daily newspaper, I almost always come across the political and military quagmires to which he refers in the book.  (fiction)

** One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus (1999) July 29, 2008

I really liked this story, written as a diary, of a group of women traveling West for the purpose of marrying and thus mating with Native Americans in order to “breed the indian out of them.”  It’s apparently based on an idea that was once suggested (though never enacted) by some government officials as a way of ultimately taking care of the “Indian problem.”  That, of course, is not hard to believe as the British had the same idea in Australia and surely plenty of other governments have thought along the same lines.  At times, the diarly entries are a bit hard to believe, but perhaps that’s partially because a late 20th century man is writing from the  perspective of a late 19th century woman.  Then again, how could any of us, male or female, truly know what this experience was like?  I found the story really intriguing and the characters fresh and interesting–I felt like I was on that train going West with them. (fiction)

Nineteen Minutes and My Sister’s Keeper by Jody Piccoult July 29, 2008

If you’re looking for page turning, light reads, these might do the trick.  I like the way Piccoult brings out interesting issues that pull us into the story–school violence in Nineteen Minutes and sibling organ donation in My Sister’s Keeper–but her writing is inconsistent.  At times, it can be beautiful, but more often than not, it’s just okay.  Her forte is intriguing storylines.  She has an interesting spin on character develoment as well.  She takes the reader just to the point of frustration, thinking this character would never do this… and then she reveals an important detail that makes the character’s motive suddenly seem believable, even normal.  So now when I read her work, I’m sort of waiting for that shocking detail.  It makes her storylines exciting, but it also makes her writing a bit predictable.  Nevertheless, a good, fast read.  (fiction)

*** In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen (2008) July 28, 2008

Okay, I’ve definitely been on a food theme recently, and Michael Pollen continues to expose the worst in our country’s food regulations, food lobbies, and government control.  In this book he chronicles the changes in American eating habits and the ultimate control of the meat and dairy industry.  Basically we went from eating our mothers’ food to eating chemicals.  We’ve substituted food names for food make-up.  His motto: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.  We should all live by that.  And I’m trying! (non-fiction)