Mini reviews - The People Speak, ed. by H. Zinn, Cat Knit by Jacob Grant, and Writers and Lovers by Lily King

None of these books felt like they needed a page of their own but after writing the mini reviews, I find that I wrote more than expected about all of them. Sorry about that. Bit wordy. 

I'm not going to repeat all the subtitles on this book and just leave it big enough for you to read them. The People Speak, edited by Howard Zinn, is a slim book of readings that were dramatized by well-known people at a celebration of the anniversary of Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I have not yet read the original book but figured this was a way to dip into it and get an idea of how Zinn views history after A People's History of the United States was panned by our current president. 

Each reading has an introductory part and then a writing or speech from the book, which apparently uses primary source documents. Zinn takes the actual words of either the oppressed or the oppressor, giving the reader a clear viewpoint of how those who suffered did so because they had no voice. 

The most glaring and horrifying example, to me, was a letter by Christopher Columbus in which he describes the Arawak natives of Hispaniola as generous, well-built, handsome, and unfamiliar with weapons. His conclusion: "They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." He did more than that. He wiped them out entirely. 

Recommended especially if you want to get a taste of Zinn's way of viewing history without diving into the longer book. I'm looking forward to reading A People's History of the United States but I have quite a few other nonfiction titles ahead of it in the queue, so it was nice to at least get a peek at what I'll be getting into. 

Cat Knit by Jacob Grant is a picture book about a cat (Cat) with a human (Girl) who is into knitting. When Girl brings home a ball of yarn, Cat finds that it's a delightful toy and has a great time playing with it. Then, Girl takes it away and turns it into something entirely different: a sweater. 

Frustrated with the new shape of his old toy, Cat wriggles out of his sweater with the help of a branch. But, it's snowy and cold outside and once that sweater is off, Cat becomes aware of just how nicely it suited the purpose. He decides it's OK to be friends with Yarn in its new form.

Finally, Girl brings home several more colorful friends and the final image is one of Cat wearing not only his new sweater but a hat and booties. The expression on Cat's face is golden. 

Highly recommended - There are few words in Cat Knit and simple but expressive illustrations of the cat. I loved it and I'm glad I happened across this book and bought it on a whim. It'll be a fun one to read to the grandkids when I see them again. 

Writers and Lovers by Lily King is a book that I've been looking forward to reading since its release, mostly because I was so completely blown away by Euphoria. And, I liked it a lot but I didn't love it. Maybe my expectations were a little too high. 

It's 1997. Casey has had a crushing experience with a lover and lost her mother. She has been working on a novel for years. To support her writing habit, she's living in a moldy garage apartment that used to be a potting shed and working as a waitress in a fancy restaurant. Casey begins dating two different men but each comes with his own complications. 

I'm going to stop there. There are some other things going on, like the fact that Casey can't pay her bills even while living in a crappy little hovel, but I think it's worth saying what I liked and didn't like and leaving it at that. 

What I loved: Writers and Lovers could easily be used as a lesson in writing. While Casey is finishing her novel and then pitching it to an agent, you get a very good look at the craft of writing. I also liked the realism of the love triangle. It didn't feel manufactured. In fact, I was certain that Writers and Lovers is a fictionalized account of the author's own experience and when I looked her up, I found that I was likely correct. Maybe the countries she lived in were different but it sure seemed like there were some parallels. 

What I disliked: There were times I had no idea what she was talking about when Casey was at work — and I've been a waitress. I guess waiting tables isn't the same across different types of restaurant. There was also a picky detail about a health crisis Casey went through that ticked me off because it was just wrong; I've experienced it and that's not how it works. Again, I think she has likely had a similar experience but she just didn't look into how that particular thing would be handled. It's a little harder to write off mistakes when you've been through what's written wrong and know it would be pretty easy to find out the details. 

I read Writers and Lovers specifically to discuss it with an Instagram friend. She liked it a lot more than I did. We have both written fiction and appreciated the technical details about writing. When you write fiction, you will often hear that it's self-indulgent to write about writers; we'd both heard that advice. But, we agreed that she handled the characterization of a writer better than most and it didn't feel annoying in any way. The writing aspect was quite informative. 

Recommended, but not a favorite

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni

I'm the first to admit that the premise of The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell just sounds boring. Sam Hill is born with a condition called ocular albinism, which means his eyes are red. In school, he's given the nickname "Devil Boy" and even his friends call him Sam Hell instead of Hill, at times. In the present day, he's an eye doctor who wears colored contact lenses. The book goes back and forth between Sam's present and his past, where he constantly dealt with a bully and now has discovered that same bully has grown up to be a wife beater and a dangerous cop. Sam's unmarried but close with his female business partner, who was one of his childhood best friends. 

While Sam Hell is mostly about his childhood and how he became the man he is now, there's that touch of mystery in the future. Will Sam be able to help the wife of the man who used to torment him at school? Is he in danger, as well, now that the bully has come back into his life? Will Sam ever realize who he belongs with?  

Highly recommended - Seriously, the premise did not interest me at all. But, my friend Paula said, "I think you would like this, Nancy," and then my friend Eileen recommended it to me through Goodreads, so I decided if two friends thought I'd like it I should give it a go. And, sure enough, they had me pegged. I found The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell almost impossible to put down. I was completely immersed in Sam's life, his challenges, his friendships, and the romance that clearly needed to happen. 

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell does have its flaws. For example, not once did the author mention a sensitivity to light, which seems like a no-brainer. I looked it up and yes, ocular albinism should cause photophobia. I have gray eyes and am so sensitive to light that I wear sunglasses even when it's cloudy, sometimes in the rain. I turn down the light on my electronic devices, as well. So, that naturally jumped out at me. I also thought it was strange that he was still insecure about his eye color, even when he was wearing contact lenses, especially given the fact that he always had a nice circle of friends and plenty of support at home. But, the story was so captivating that I didn't care about its flaws and only felt like I was briefly pulled out of it, now and then. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell is definitely one of the most enjoyable books I've read in 2020. 

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Big Finish by Brooke Fossey

In The Big Finish, 88-year-old Duffy Sinclair lives in Centennial, an assisted living facility. Centennial is one of only two such homes in his area and the better of them by far. His roommate, Carl, is a man Duffy looks up to. Carl's a good person while Duffy has a history. But, when Carl's secret granddaughter, Josie, shows up and asks to stay at the nursing home with them, Duffy is flabbergasted. There were supposedly no secrets between him and Carl.

And, now Duffy's life has suddenly become much more complicated than making it to the right room for meal time or activities and catching the bus for an outing to Walmart. Now, he has to worry about the fact that a young lady wants to stay with them, breaking the rules. Duffy is determined not to be a rule-breaker because he doesn't want to end up at the other nursing home, a place where they care less about you and people go to die. One resident has already been kicked out of Centennial for a slight infraction and the new owner is remodeling her room, hoping to make more money from a future tenant.

When Duffy finds out Josie has a secret of her own, he offers to help. Duffy faced the same life-long challenge till a little over a decade ago and he knows the struggle. But, having Josie around is causing more trouble than even Duffy imagined. Will Duffy end up at the dreaded other home, Simmons, where people go to die? Will he be able to help Josie? And, will anyone be able to help her find her path?

Recommended - There is so much more to The Big Finish than I expected. Josie shows up with a black eye and no shoes so you know something is off. But, the more Duffy discovers about Josie, the more he becomes determined to help her and, maybe, in the process redeem himself. I don't want to give too much away because I liked slowly discovering what Josie's problem was and what was up with her, so I'm going to leave this review a bit on the vague side but I found The Big Finish immensely entertaining.

Duffy is a wise-cracking old curmudgeon but he has a bigger heart than he wants to admit. The friendships between Duffy and Carl, the residents and Josie, Anderson and Nora (both caregivers) and everyone are all wonderful. And, the ending is stirring and uplifting. A very entertaining, rollicking read about living life while you can. I did think the book started out a bit slowly but it's worth it to put up with the slower bits at the beginning. Eventually, as you get to know the characters and their dilemmas, it becomes more fun and there's even a little excitement at the end and a comedy of errors feel to what happens to Duffy throughout.

Many thanks to Berkley for the review copy!


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

A little background on the purchase of Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, up front. I started out reading a different novel about a black woman and her son whose father was white for Black History Month and then a friend who'd just read it said, "Read this instead," about Such a Fun Age. She didn't say that to me, personally; it was just a general announcement that she'd read both and one story was more authentic than the other, in her opinion, which she made on Facebook.

I was already reading the one she thought was the lesser and enjoying it but not far into it at the time of my friend Amy's post. She said the difference between the two was night and day, that the one written by a white woman didn't have the ring of authenticity but Such a Fun Age, by a black woman, does. I thought it would be fun to compare the two as Amy had, so I bought a copy of Such a Fun Age. I'm not mentioning the title of the other one because it eventually became a DNF and I can't find it to quote from. I figure I shouldn't pick on the author for no good reason if I can't point out the specific problem I had with it.

At any rate, I bought a copy of Such a Fun Age because I trust Amy. Then, about 1/3 of the way into the other book, there was a sentence that I found offensive and inaccurate about the son having both black and white genetics and mostly looking black but he didn't have to worry about his blackness because he lived this cushy middle-class life. That may have been disproven in the story, but by that point I was frustrated with the characters. They felt more like caricatures than well-rounded humans to me and I just couldn't buy into the storyline at all. It was frustrating me.

Finally, after about 5 days of reading for a little bit and then setting the book aside out of inattention, I decided to give up on it for good (I was a little more than halfway into it) and a few days later I started on Such a Fun Age, mostly out of curiosity due to Amy's thoughts but also because I saw Kiley Reid on Trevor Noah's show and she was utterly fascinating. She said she likes cringe-y scenes and I wanted to see if her book made me cringe.

On to the story . . .

Emira Tucker is 25, black, and has a bachelor's degree but she's a babysitter working for the very white and upper class Chamberlain family. She is aware that she should probably do something different; she's about to fall off her parents' insurance when she turns 26 and she's got skills. But, she's just not sure what she wants to do or how to go about it. She adores her little charge, Briar, who is precocious and a little hyper-sensitive. As much as she knows she should probably move on, she loves Briar as if she were her own and the idea of leaving her is unbearable. There's another child, a baby, but Briar's mom usually keeps the baby with her and ignores Briar.

Alix Chamberlain is a go-getter who is used to having everything her way. She married well and lives in a fabulous house but she's been thrown off-kilter by the family's move from New York City to Philadelphia. She misses her friends and her packed schedule. As an "influencer" she has built a huge following and she knows she can keep it up from her new home. But, the move has made her sluggish and she's so unsure about what her change of location will do to her brand that she's still pretending to work from New York. She has a book deal but that's going nowhere, as well. And, then her world is upended when her babysitter is accused of kidnapping Briar.

The inciting incident in this book happens when a window is broken in the Chamberlain home because Alix's newscaster husband said something that's been construed as offensive (he claims he didn't mean it the way it's being taken). Alix calls Emira, who is dressed for a party, and asks her to take Briar away from the house until the police have left. It's while Emira's out with Briar at a grocery store that someone accuses her of kidnapping the child. There, she also meets a man named Kelley, whom she begins to date, eventually. But, there's something weird about both the way Alix and Kelley treat Emira, like she's some sort of token they should be proud of.

Highly recommended - I love how realistic Such a Fun Age feels. The characters ring true to me in a way that makes me feel both uncomfortable and, at the same time, nod along at how much I can relate to various aspects I'd rather not relate to. I understand, for example, what it's like to be an adult who feels like you're not doing adulthood right, that you ought to be doing something else, earning better money, finding your place in the world. That unsettled feeling that Emira has . . . I don't have that anymore, but I remember it well. My plans were rocked off their foundation when I was quite young and it took me a very long time to figure things out.

There were brief moments that I wanted the story to move a little faster and I never did buy that the object thrown into the Chamberlains' window would have broken the window unless there was already some damage to the glass, but Such a Fun Age tackles some subtle acts of racism in a powerful way and it's just a good story. And, yes, it did make me squirm a time or two.

I think it's worth mentioning that while I bought Such a Fun Age with Black History Month in mind, I'd heard a lot about it and probably would have bought it eventually, regardless of the time of year. I also thought it would be a great book for discussion and may mention it to my F2F group leader when I return to meetings (which, I presume will be suspended till the pandemic is under control).


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

You Were There Too by Colleen Oakley

I planned to finish my 2019 reviews before barreling into 2020 but You Were There Too says it was released on the 7th (that's today as I write but will be yesterday when you read this) so I'm going to go ahead and review it and I'll continue to interject reviews of more recent reads if there's a genuine reason like "Fresh release!" or "I have to say something right now!"

You Were There Too is the story of Mia. Since high school she's occasionally had dreams that feature the same man. Sometimes they're good; often they're nightmares. In her everyday life, Mia is happily married to a surgeon named Harrison. Mia and Harrison have recently moved to a small town called Hope Springs from Philadelphia after Harrison lost a child in surgery and he felt like he needed a change. Mia is struggling with the move and her desire to have a baby, which keeps ending in miscarriage.

Then, one day something bizarre happens. Mia sees the man she's been dreaming about for so long. And then she's introduced to him. Oliver is the brother of a patient whose life Harrison saved, and she feels like she's known him forever. Eventually, Oliver admits that he's been dreaming of Mia, as well. But, what can it possibly mean? In their search for answers, Mia and Oliver become friends. Mia's very open about their friendship with Harrison, but at the same time she's developing a surprisingly deep and meaningful friendship with another man, fault lines have emerged in her loving marriage. Mia works hard at making it clear that she can't be with Oliver, and yet she can't deny to herself that she feels attracted to him.

What will become of the friendship? Will Oliver and Mia step over the friendship line and into romance? What about Harrison? Something is a little off about him but Mia can't put a finger on it and with the rift in their marriage growing, will she be able to help him? Will Mia and Oliver figure out what their dreams and nightmares mean? Or is something about to happen that can't be prevented?

Highly recommended - Ohmygosh, I loved this book. The author kept me guessing all the way through and I loved the way she handled the relationships, the confusion, the questions about marriage and what love can or cannot overcome. There's a shocking prologue at the beginning of the book so you know that Oliver's and Mia's dreams clearly are psychic in some way, but not who Mia is with when tragedy strikes.

This is actually the only book I've ever read that has attempted to address the concept of psychic dreaming and I loved it in part because I am an occasional psychic dreamer, myself. I could relate to Mia's obsession about what it all meant, although I've never heard of two people dreaming about each other and that's far from my experience. I have dreamed about things that happen before the news breaks. Not long ago, I started sharing stories of my psychic dreams (and a couple of what I call "waking visions" because I wasn't asleep when they occurred) with a friend and I realized there were so many of them that it would take a while to share them all with her.

As to meaning . . . I don't know that there is any meaning to those dreams that have come true for me, although a couple of them have felt like warnings. That's one of the questions in You Were There Too. Are Oliver and Mia being warned about something to come? If so, is there anything they can do to prevent something bad from happening? What about the dreams that are not nightmares but the opposite? Do they mean Mia should give up on her marriage and that she really belongs with Oliver? Why do Oliver and Mia both have this strange mix of dreams? It's a really intriguing set of questions and I loved this book so much that I will absolutely seek out more by Colleen Oakley.

I received a copy of You Were There Too from Berkley Books in exchange for an unbiased review. Many thanks! I'm excited to have found a new author who kept me riveted until the wee hours of the morning (although I didn't appreciate the way I felt the next day).

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

I've tried and failed to write a decent review of Commonwealth, so . . . next attempt, the old faithful self-interview.  I will be interviewed by an orange, for obvious reasons.

Orange: Hello. Orange you happy to see me?

Bookfool: Hahaha, groan.

O: I know it's bad. Let's start out with the concept. What is Commonwealth about?

BF:  It's about a family that is broken and blended and how the divorce, like a stone tossed in a pond, makes ripples that continue throughout the lives of those involved. It covers about 50 years.

O: What's happening when the book opens?

BF:  Bert Cousins, a lawyer, shows up at the home of the Keating family. The Keatings are celebrating the baptism of their second child and neither Fix or Beverly Keating actually knows Bert, although Fix Keating, a policeman, has seen Bert in passing at the courthouse.

O: Why is Bert crashing a baptism, of all things?

BF: As I recall, he's trying to escape from his own home. He has 3 children and another on the way. He isn't so hot at being present and the baptism is just an excuse, much like going to the office on the weekend when one really doesn't have urgent work to do.

O: And, what happens that sets the book in motion?

BF:  A stolen kiss that eventually leads to the divorces of the Keatings and Cousinses, and a marriage that results in their 6 children becoming family.

O: The description of the book makes it sound rather bland.

BF:  I thought that was interesting, actually, the fact that a novel about a family and the reverberations of a divorce sounds pretty unappealing, especially if you're a person who prefers a plot-driven novel over a character-driven one. But, I found Commonwealth absolutely captivating.

O: And, why do you think Commonwealth grabbed you?

BF:  Two reasons:
          1. Things happen.
          2. There's an honesty to the characterization and plotting.

O:  By "Things happen," you mean that there are plenty of interesting plot points?

BF: Yes. Very little is earth-shattering. But, there's one shocking event that has a continuing impact. Otherwise, it's . . . wow, it is really difficult to describe, even in interview form. The thing about this book that makes it wonderful, to me, is that the characters and situations have what I would call the ring of truth. They're all flawed in some way and very believable.

O: Was there anything you disliked about Commonwealth?

BF: Only one small thing: in the later years, Fix has terminal cancer and it's always difficult reading about characters who are dying of cancer, since that's how I lost my mother. But, I loved the fact that Fix is cheerful in his dying days. I also thought it was a little strange that some characters are shuffled off to the side. For example, Fix remarries after he and Beverly divorce but you really never get to know Marjorie. She's described from a distance. And, yet, that didn't seem to matter; in fact, that seemed like reality in its own way. Sometimes you just know of someone without actually ever meeting them and Marjorie just seemed like one of those people. You know she has been there for years and has been a stabilizing force but without getting to know her as an individual.

O: Bottom line?

BF:  Highly recommended. I loved Commonwealth. I liked the scenes, the way the characters felt like real people to me, the way the author made the mundane things like people standing around juicing oranges quite interesting. I particularly loved Franny. Of all the characters in the book, she seems to be the most central and I liked her the best. And, Fix. Maybe I was meant to like them. I liked what Franny did with the lobsters. I like the musings about life. I cannot wait to read more by Ann Patchett.

O: Well, then, I guess I'm done, here.

BF: I guess you are. Many thanks.

O: [rolls away and becomes a cat toy]

I received an advance reader copy of Commonwealth from HarperCollins and I'm jumping the gun a bit, reviewing ahead of release. It goes on sale September 13.


©2016 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar 
Copyright 2014
Harper - General fiction
Source: Sent by publisher

The Story Hour is about an unusual relationship between a psychologist named Maggie and her patient, Lakshmi. A young woman in a seemingly abusive and confining relationship, Indian immigrant Lakshmi attempts suicide in a moment of despair. Maggie is known for her ability to work with difficult patients and for her unorthodox methods. Only she can get Lakshmi to speak. After Lakshmi's release from the hospital, Maggie has the young woman follow up with appointments at her home office, free of charge. Lakshmi clearly needs a friend more than she needs therapy but Maggie believes she can maintain emotional distance.

In spite of Maggie's efforts to remain cool and distant, Lakshmi begins to think of Maggie as her friend while Maggie encourages Lakshmi's independence and doesn't correct Lakshmi for fear of setting her progress back. Meanwhile, as Lakshmi's relationship with her husband gradually improves, Maggie is in the midst of an affair, even though she knows better. She is aware that the affair would devastate her husband if he found out and that she couldn't have chosen a better man to marry. Yet she can't seem to stop seeing the other man. When Lakshmi reveals a dark secret that changes everything Maggie understands about her and Maggie pulls away from Lakshmi, disaster strikes for Maggie.  

I had no idea how difficult it would be to describe The Story Hour till I sat down to write. There are some complexities to the relationships, all around, but I don't want to give away too much. Suffice it to say, Lakshmi's life is not quite what it seems and Maggie's childhood figures into her inability to stop seeing the "other man".

The style of storytelling is also quite interesting. Umrigar has chosen to portray Maggie and Lakshmi in alternating chapters and it's easy to tell when you're in Lakshmi's point of view because her English is astoundingly bad. You get the impression that Lakshmi is uneducated, perhaps a bit simple, and that she was forced into marriage with a terrible man, but as Lakshmi reveals her past you find out she's actually quite clever. So, how and why did she end up in such a terrible marriage?

Maggie is equally perplexing. Although she's involved in an affair, her husband could not really be more perfect. He's supportive, loving, intelligent, successful. Why would a woman in such a happy marriage have an affair? Well, you'll have to read the book to understand. Maggie is much more difficult to relate to, although her story is more straightforward. Most psychologists (at least, the ones I know) are in the business because of their own challenges and their desire to help people in similar circumstances. The same is true of Maggie, but I think you could say the cracks in her past have been covered, not mended, and therein lies the secret to her weakness.

I found myself engrossed in The Story Hour from the beginning.  Lakshmi's poor English makes for strange reading, although she's easy enough to comprehend. My only complaint about the book would have to be the chapters that are narrated by a younger Lakshmi. Because the book is written in English, even when Lakshmi is young she's narrating in the English of her adulthood -- and yet, you know by the time you hear from young Lakshmi that she is, in fact, quite intelligent. So, there's a bit of a disconnect. Why is young Lakshmi narrating in broken English? Shouldn't it be an English translation of an intelligent young Indian's perspective? That's really a writing technicality. I think it I were the author, I would have ground to a halt at that point. The fact that she made a choice to keep Lakshmi's perspective clear by not altering her mode of speech (maybe to maintain flow) probably shows the maturity of Umrigar's writing. She writes with confidence and authority, even if you feel something is a tiny bit amiss.

Recommended - I loved this story, its nuances and the changes in the characters, for better or worse. Although Lakshmi's story eventually becomes clear before it's fully revealed, it's not predictable. I thought Umrigar did a bang-up job of slowly revealing both characters' histories and then turning everything on its head. While I didn't find the ending particularly satisfying, I enjoyed The Story Hour enough to feel like I could draw my own conclusions and close the book without feeling let down, so I definitely recommend it.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Minis - My Custom Van by Michael Ian Black, Atlas (poems) by Katrina Vandenberg, Rescue by Anita Shreve

This is quite a varied set of books. None of them were sent to me for review. One was a gift, one purchased and I won My Custom Van in a Twitter giveaway.

I had no idea who Michael Ian Black even was, when I won My Custom Van -- I just quickly looked him up and thought, "Yeah, I could stand a laugh," and signed up for the drawing. 

Five years passed before I got around to reading My Custom Van and I have mixed feelings about it, but I knew I was going to at least like it when I read the "Foreword by Abraham Lincoln." Essays include "One Day, I'm Going to Open a Scented Candle Shoppe,"which reads like a short story with a surprise twist ending and, "Hey, David Sedaris -- Why Don't You Just Go Ahead and Suck It?", an essay that is surprisingly complimentary to its subject. "Taco Party" reads like a story written by a high school kid trying to show off his coolness by peppering the description of his upcoming party with foul language. My favorite line: "You can't f***ing swim in guacamole!"  

Like a lot of comedians, he can end up in bad language, sex-laden, yucky territory and that makes it easier for me to foist upon the son who asked for it in 2009. It just feels like it's meant for the younger crowd. I did, however, accidentally laugh a few times, so . . . Recommended for those who don't mind off-color humor.

Atlas (Poems) by Katrina Vandenberg was a Christmas gift from my wonderful blog buddy Chris and reading about how to read poetry must have helped because the first time I picked it up, I couldn't get into it. The second time, I absolutely loved it. 

Vandenberg was in a long-term relationship with a man who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion during the days before blood was screened for HIV. He was a hemophiliac. She was a Fulbright fellow in the Netherlands. These two major events -- the loss of a partner to AIDS and time spent in Netherlands -- informed her poetry with images of blood and tulips. 

There were a few poems that made little question marks hang over my head, but for the most part I found Vandenberg's poetry lucid and raw, about love, pain and beauty. I had to look up at least one Dutch painting she mentioned (always fun to have an excuse to go a-googling) and appreciated the learning experience. I will definitely be watching for more by Vandenberg. Recommended to poetry lovers. 

Rescue by Anita Shreve was, like the two books above, a book that I happened across while working on organizing my personal library. I had just finished reading The Paramedics within a week of finding Rescue and it seemed a fitting follow-up, a contemporary fiction read about a paramedic, the love of his life, and the daughter he fears he may lose to her mother's addiction.

When Peter pulled Sheila from the wreckage of a car, he could smell the alcohol, so he knew it was crazy (and, definitely unethical) to get involved with her. But, there was something about her that drew him back, again and again, till they ended up married with a baby. 

In the present day, his daughter Rowan is floundering. She's always been happy and well-adjusted but now she's acting out. The knowledge that her mother was an alcoholic leads her to numb her own fears by drinking heavily, herself. Can Peter reach Rowan before it's too late?

I read a few reviews of Rescue because I was curious what people thought about the paramedic action scenes. The book is Peter's story, about how he loved and lost his wife and has carefully raised his daughter but then realizes he is losing her, too. Because Peter is the hero, there are quite a few scenes from his working life. I loved that. Having just read a history of early EMS, I enjoyed reading updated scenes to see how things have changed. But, many readers had a problem with the abundant use of rescue scenes. They were in it for the usual Shreve fare and found his work uninteresting. My only problem with Rescue was the fact that I thought there were a few too many life-threatening accidents involving his family and Sheila was an unlikable character. Otherwise, I found the book entertaining.

Recommended if you like reading EMS action scenes with a touch of family angst. Atypical for Shreve but well-researched. I didn't like Sheila but I did admire Peter as a human, if not his choice in women, and I cared about Rowan. 

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Landing Gear by Kate Pullinger

Landing Gear by Kate Pullinger
Copyright 2014
Touchstone - general fiction
Source: Simon & Schuster

Michael nodded. "But what if the planes never flew again? What if crossing the Atlantic suddenly became much more difficult? What if choosing London really did mean choosing it, once and for all?"

~p. 77

Harriet was sure that she herself was alive. The kitchen floor was still dirty--what more proof did she need?

~p. 134

Harriet had spent a large part of the past two years online--doing what, she was never quite sure, given the way time contracted on the internet.  She monitored news stories and had become fascinated with the way that certain stories started as tiny specks but then became huge sandstorms, like the way a young man immolating himself in Tunisia became the Arab Spring. 

~p. 155

Landing Gear is about a woman who wants more out of life, the husband she and her son seldom see because of his working hours, the teenage son who is ignored so thoroughly that he's falling deep into marijuana use and how their lives change when a Pakistani man, Yacub, falls from the landing gear of an airplane onto the hood of the mother Harriet's car.

There are several inciting incidents in Landing Gear and it bounces around in time a bit, so it can be confusing. But, one of those events is the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano that shut down air travel in Europe for 6 days in 2010. Another is Yakub's search for a job with decent pay. There is a young lady named Emily who is searching for her mother, Harriet's desperate ploy to improve her career, teenage Jack's search for friendship and meaning, Michael's confusion when he's stuck in New York and decides he will be more comfortable waiting out the travel delays in his native Canada.

All these threads eventually come together to lead to the creation of a wacky new family in which everyone is happier than they were before they went through the hardship that forced them together. This is actually one of my favorite types of books. I love stories in which a unique set of characters end up forming an unorthodox family unit. In this case, there is actually a core family to which other characters are eventually added, which is a little different than the typical "lonely people thrown into circumstances that unite them in a common bond" but it doesn't matter. What matters is that there is a set of characters who are all struggling and in some way their acquaintance makes life better for each of them.

The biggest problem I had with the book is the fact that the author begins the book by describing Yacub's fall from the sky and then backtracks to describe how the characters arrived at those various turning points that threw them together. It's massively confusing, at first. I kept flipping back and forth, trying to figure out when each of the events occurred. I loved the inciting events, though, because they were so unique. This is the first time I've read a book that described what it was like when the planes stopped flying in England and how it felt to be stranded due to a volcanic eruption. And, then there's the fact that much of the book takes place in London -- my favorite city and definitely one of my favorite book settings.

Highly recommended with a timeline confusion-factor warning - Quirky characters, unique events and a fun setting made this book a delight.  I was confused by the order of events in the same way the bouncing around in The Time Traveler's Wife baffled me. But, it's notable that you can be thrown for a loop by some aspect of a book like its timeline and still love a story. That's how I felt about The Time Traveler's Wife and it's also how I felt about Landing Gear. It was difficult figuring out the timeline but once I understood how everything fell together, I absolutely loved the story. I particularly recommend the book to readers who like a story about the creation of an unconventional family unit and to those who love a London setting.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A Single Breath by Lucy Clarke

During last week's miserable reading slump, I picked up A Single Breath by Lucy Clarke, a book that had just arrived from Touchstone and which was originally sent to me unsolicited (but did not arrive - a second copy then arrived at the wrong house at my request, so who knows . . . a dog might have dragged off the first to use as a toy; they do that in our old neighborhood).

A Single Breath is about Eva, a midwife who has been married to Jackson for a mere 8 months when Jackson is swept off an outcropping of rocks while fishing on the English coast. Deeply grieved, Eva decides to take some time off from her job in London and travel to Tasmania to meet Jackson's father and his estranged brother, Saul.  But, things don't go as expected. Jackson father Dirk is not welcoming and Saul is still angry about an incident that happened several years ago.

However, events conspire to keep Eva in Tasmania longer than expected and she ends up staying in a shack just down the bay from where Saul lives. As she gets to know Saul, the truth about Jackson slowly emerges and Eva realizes she really didn't know the man she married at all. Why did Jackson leave Tasmania? Did he really love Eva? Is he truly dead?

There are bits of writing by Jackson interspersed throughout and those both confuse the reader and add mystery to the story. If he's able to write, isn't he really alive?  Or are those little bits something that Jackson wrote before his untimely death in a letter that Eva will later discover?

There's a lot I think I shouldn't mention about A Single Breath because it's best to enjoy the slow reveal but I can tell you that I felt like this as I was reading:

Sucked into the mystery of what became of Jackson in A SINGLE BREATH by Lucy Clarke. Washed into the sea or not? Dying to know. #fridayreads
— Bookfoolery (@Bookfoolery) April 18, 2014

And, I loved the way Eva gradually got to know Saul as she stayed near him on an island off the coast of Tasmania, loved the way he taught her how to "free dive", checked on her when she was ill, even eventually brought her along to work.  Saul and Eva are likable characters. I did feel as if the story dragged on a little bit longer than necessary and what I expected occurred, all-around, but I enjoyed the reading and am grateful to Lucy Clarke for yanking me out of my book slump with A Single Breath.

Recommended - I particularly loved the characters, the setting, and the tug of mystery.  There were some repetitive tense-change errors and I did find the story predictable in many ways but none of the book's flaws were significant enough to spoil the reading. Love, love, love the setting. Reading A Single Breath will definitely make you want to hop a plane to Tasmania.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Swimming at Night by Lucy Clarke

Swimming at Night by Lucy Clarke
Copyright 2013
Touchstone Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) - fiction/general
372 pp.

I'm going to go uber-casual on this one and say up-front that it's a book about sisters . . . which I usually hate.  I've never had a great relationship with my sister (her choice).  We get along fine but the word "close" is just not happening.  However, my dud sister relationship really didn't bother me much in this case because I was totally sucked into the story pretty quickly.

Swimming at Night is told from alternating viewpoints.  As the book opens, Katie is receiving news that her sister Mia has committed suicide in Bali.  Mia's been touring the world with her good friend Finn for several months, but Bali wasn't on her agenda and Finn was no longer with Mia when she died. What happened on Mia's trip? Why was she in Bali and what led to her death?

Katie is convinced that Mia could not possibly have killed herself.  When she's given Mia's backpack, which contains her journal, Katie quits her job and follow's Mia's path, reading the entries as she follows in Mia's footsteps.  She never reads ahead, which was the one thing I couldn't buy into about Swimming at Night.  Your sister dies of a suspected suicide, you've got her journal and -- seriously? -- you don't sit right down and read it cover to cover to try to figure out what on earth happened?  I can't fathom not reading the journal immediately; that's the first thing I'd do.

Beyond that oddity, though, Swimming at Night is a story of betrayal and lies, love and friendship, facing fears and grief and learning what's important in life.  There's quite a bit of s*x but not the graphic variety. Although there were moments that I was pulled from the book due to a relationship that I couldn't relate to and the odd choice not to read ahead in the journal, I found Swimming at Night quite gripping and the ending perfect. The chapters alternate between Katie's viewpoint and Mia's, as events unfolded on Mia's journey.  I thought that the alternating chapters worked very well and the story was handled skillfully.

Highly recommended - Yeah, the ploy of having the main character choose not to immediately read her sister's journal to keep events mysterious is a bit of a stretch, but Swimming at Night is a good story that will make you want to grab a backpack and go explore the world.  The writing style is above average -- not brilliant and quote-worthy, but there's just something about the way the book unfolds that makes the pages fly.  I gave Swimming at Night a 4.5/5 at Goodreads because it grabbed me, held on and had a satisfying ending.  Love, love, love the changing settings.

My thanks to Jessica at Simon & Schuster for the review copy!

In other news -- and this is very important:

I got a new pair of flip-flops, today (Tuesday - yeah, I'm pre-posting, again).  They're white.  Kind of boring, actually, but they were cheap and had the kind of fabric thingy-that-goes-between-the-toes, which is crucial because everything else causes blisters.  Anyway, that's a relief, since we've already crept into the 80s and I discovered our new pebble-dash sidewalk and driveway are Really Freaking Painful to walk across barefoot.  And, I keep stepping on sweetgum balls on the deck.  Actually, I finally picked those up, but seriously . . . you don't want to step on those suckers.

Currently reading:

Poison by Bridget Zinn - Scratch that.  I stayed up late finishing this one.
Shadows and Strongholds by Elizabeth Chadwick

Loving both, so far.

No idea, but it must have been interesting:

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley

Oh, boy.  This one is going to be rough.  I think I'll let a coffee mug interview me.  Sound good?  I haven't been interviewed in a while.

WARNING:  I've tried to keep this interview as spoiler-free as possible, but if you want this book to be totally surprising or plan to read The Promise of Stardust right away, I'd advise you to skip down to the bottom line.  Sometimes I screw up and give things away, in spite of good intentions.  This part's probably not a spoiler:

Coffee Mug:  What is The Promise of Stardust about?

Bookfool:  The Promise of Stardust is about a moral dilemma -- to remove from life support or not?  When neurologist Matt Beaulieu is called to the emergency room after his wife Elle has fallen and hit her head, he knows immediately that she is never coming back; she is brain dead.  Elle's mother was obviously in terrible pain, even when comatose, as she lay slowly dying, and Elle has always made it clear to friends and family that she absolutely does not want to be kept alive in a comatose state.

BUT . . . Here's where it starts to get potentially spoilery.  Skip this bit if you're nervous that I'll say something I shouldn't!  I'll let you know when it's safe to come out from under the table.

CM:  Why does Matt choose to leave Elle on life support?  What's the dilemma?

BF:  Elle is pregnant; without pregnancy, there would be no question about how to proceed. Matt understands his wife's instructions but knowing, as a neurologist, that she is brain dead and can feel no pain, he feels that she would want to be kept alive to give her unborn child a chance.  She's had numerous miscarriages and one stillbirth.  The chances that her body will continue to function till delivery are stacked against the baby's survival.  And, yet, Elle desperately wanted a baby, so Matt believes it's important to attempt to keep her alive long enough to deliver.

CM:  So . . . okay.  Matt is the husband.  What's the problem?

BF:  Just about everyone disagrees with Matt.  His mother, her brother, Matt's family, Elle's former boyfriend . . . everyone but Elle's father.  And, Matt's mother takes legal action to have her removed from life support.  Matt's mother is in possession of Elle's advanced medical directive.  But, is it still valid?  Does Matt have any say in what happens to his unborn child?

CM:  What makes this book resonate with you, as a reader?

BF:  My father died of the latent effects of a head injury and was removed from life support.  I can relate to this kind of tragedy.

CM:  Whose side were you on?

BF:  I thought Elle would want to be kept alive, but only because of her unborn child and her lack of pain.  It does enter into the bounds of the whole "personhood" controversy, about which I have mixed feelings.

CM:  Are you going to tell us how the court case and/or dilemma was resolved?

BF:  Of course not!  You really have to read the book, yourself.  Even if you're a coffee mug, I suggest bringing tissues along to the reading of this book.

END WARNING!  It's safe to emerge from your closet, or whatever.  The rest is just my opinion.

CM:  The bottom line?

BF:  Highly recommended.  I loved The Promise of Stardust.  It is a thought-provoking book worth talking about.  The dilemma is obviously a controversial one in many ways, but . . . I wanted to talk to someone about it.  I think it would make a terrific book club read.

CM:  What book do you recommend reading in tandem with The Promise of Stardust if you're in the mood to generate a really noisy discussion?

BF:  When She Woke by Hillary Jordan would be a great book to discuss with The Promise of Stardust -- that is, if your reading group can handle controversy.  My group is very enthusiastic and sometimes they'll just holler right over each other.  I don't know what would happen with the abortion/life support topic, but I think it would be interesting to pair the two books for discussion.

CM:  Dude.

BF:  Sweet.

CM:  I have to go, now.  I have coffee duty.  But, speaking of mugs . . . shall I pose?

BF:  Another time, but thanks for the offer.  I think a photo of someone mugging for the camera sounds ideal:

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

More minis - The Folk Keeper by F. Billingsley, Poison Study by M. Snyder and The Garden of Happy Endings by B. O'Neal

Once again, these are mini reviews of books that came from my personal library.

The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley was my last book read in 2012.  After reading the neurotic cat humor book that I found somewhat less than humorous, I felt like I needed to quickly read something I loved to end my year.  I figured that The Folk Keeper was a good bet, since Chime by Franny Billingsley was one of my favorite books in 2011.  

The style in both books is very similar; both are fantasy and in both cases, Billingsley doles out clues slowly and sparingly so that it takes a while to figure out where you are and what's going on . . . but in a good way.  You know how sometimes it can be terribly frustrating to have an author keep too many secrets from you, but at other times it feels more like a mystery is slowly unfolding and it's more of an adventure?  The Folk Keeper was the latter.

I am so impressed with Franny Billingsley.  The Folk Keeper is a middle-reader about a girl masquerading as a boy to get the job of Folk Keeper -- a person who keeps the harmful Folk at bay.  Taken from the foundling home by a dying Lord, she is transported to a manor where she will continue her job as Folk Keeper in the cellar.  But, there are new dangers near the seaside and there is much that Corin/Corinna doesn't know about herself.  Scary and original enough to compete with a Gaiman, with a bit of magic and even a tiny touch of romance.

Highly recommended - a dark, mysterious, atmospheric book, beautifully written and deliciously creepy.  The Folk Keeper was the perfect read to end 2012 and would make an absolutely wonderful read for the annual R.I.P. Challenge.

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder is actually Kiddo's book.  I noticed Snyder has a more recent series and since Kiddo has read two of her series and enjoyed them, I bought him the two newer titles for Christmas then asked if I could read one.  Instead, Kiddo shoved Poison Study into my hands.  Here's what Isabel has to say about Poison Study:

1222222222222222222222

Obviously, she missed some key discussion points.  Poison Study is about Yelena, a woman who is reprieved from a death sentence for murder when there's an opening for the job of food taster to the Commander of Ixia.  Not only must Yelena take her chances with the potential for poisoning (because there is no escape), she must also keep her eyes out for the people who want to kill her for the murder she committed.  Plus, she's got a little bit of a magic problem -- a touch of magic in a place where magical ability alone is a death sentence -- and she's haunted by the ghost of the man she killed, a very nasty man who deserved to die.  Just so you know Yelena is a cool chick.

There were things I disliked about the world of Poison Study, but once I became accustomed to it I loved the story, even though I thought it bore some similarities to the only Snyder novels I've read: Inside Out and Outside In.  A super-tough heroine who sometimes doubts her own strengths and abilities and gets beat up quite a bit, plus a very evil bad guy and at least one character who is not what he or she seems were the common denominators I recognized.  Regardless, I loved Poison Study and actually had a little trouble switching gears when I picked up the next book.  Poison Study was my first read in 2013.

Highly recommended - A very entertaining read with numerous dilemmas, a touch of magic and an action-heavy plot.

The Garden of Happy Endings by Barbara O'Neal is a book I won in a drawing, last year, after a friend's gushy recommendation just happened to coincide with a blog drawing.

In The Garden of Happy Endings, minister Elsa's world is rocked when a young girl from her church is murdered.  Unable to help her church family through their grief because she is having her own crisis of faith, Elsa leaves Seattle to spend time with her sister, Tamsin, and her former fiancee, Joaquin (aka, "Father Jack") in Pueblo, Colorado.

In Pueblo, Elsa stays busy helping build a neighborhood garden and serving in Father Jack's soup kitchen while helping her sister through a crisis of her own.  There are a lot of personal crises in The Garden of Happy Endings, some really scary trouble with gang members, a few poignant moments with parishioners and a bit of a romance.

I liked The Garden of Happy Endings but I didn't love it and I can't quite put a finger on why. There was just something about the writing style that bothered me a bit, I suppose, or perhaps it was a little too predictable.  Regardless, The Garden of Happy Endings is an engrossing story that explores some deep topics and which contains a surprising amount of conflict of both the internal and external varieties -- stuff happens, in other words, and yet there is a nice balance of darkness and light.  While the book addresses God and faith, it's not a preachy book.

Recommended - A nice, light read about life, love and faith that is very difficult to put down. I'd recommend The Garden of Happy Endings for beach reading.

In other news:

• We went to Les Miserables for the second time, this weekend, and loved it just as much on the second viewing as the first.  I really, really need to read the book.  But, mostly I just walk past my copy and sigh.  
• I read about a study in which diet soda was implicated for causing higher incidences of depression in regular drinkers.  Huh.  In the same study, they found that regular coffee drinking reduces depression.  So, I bought a coffee maker.  I need all the help I can get. 
• I've photographed some recent arrivals but a "book box" has just arrived at my house, so I've got a few more to snap.  I'm in an online group that holds group swaps, you see.  We just pass a box around.  Each person removes a few books and replaces those removed with an equal or greater number of books -- usually ARCs, but not always.  Fun!
• Isabel got her shots recently.  She weighs 9.1 pounds.  That makes her the smallest cat I have ever been owned by.  I was wondering if Vans (she's a rescue and obviously not a breed but a distant relative of the long-haired Turkish Van) are unusually intelligent because she is also the smartest cat I've ever owned. So I read up a bit and, sure enough, she fits the description perfectly.  Vans love water, are very energetic explorers, play hard and sleep hard, are people cats and are fiercely intelligent.  One of Isabel's favorite games keeps me running to change her water frequently.  She likes to drop her dry cereal in the water bowl, just so she can fish it back out.  
•  It's cold and rainy, perfect reading weather. Happy Monday!

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

House of Earth by Woody Guthrie

I'm back!  First a review . . . 

One year.  And what is a year?  A Year is something that can be added on, but it can never be taken away.  Yes, added on, earmarked and tagged, counted in signs of dollars and cents, wrote down the income column and across the page with names, and photos can be taken of faces and clipped onto the papers, and the prints of the new baby's feet can be stamped on the papers of the birth, and the print of the thumb going back to work can be stamped onto the papers to say it is a good place to work.  And a year is work.  A year is that nervous craving to do your good job and draw down your good pay, and to join your good union.

And a year of work is three hundred and sixty-four, or five, or six days of the run, the hurry, the walking, the bouncing, and the jumping up and down, the arguments, fights, the liquor brawls, hangovers, headaches, and all.  Work takes in all climates, all things, all rooms, all furrows, all streets, all sidewalks, and all the shoes that tramp on them.  The whirl and roll of planets do not make a year a year, nor the breath of the trifling wind, changing from cold to hot, forming steam back into ice.  Oceans of waters that flow down from the tops of the Smokies and roll in the sea, they help some to make a year a year, but they don't make the year.

--from pp. 101-102 of House of Earth (Uncorrected Proof - some changes may be made to the final print version)

House of Earth by Woody Guthrie is a February 2013 release from Harper, so I jumped the gun a bit by reading it in December.  But I'm from Oklahoma, we claim Woody, and I was reading a book about the Dust Bowl at the time (although I didn't finish it) so I really, really wanted to read a novel set during the Dust Bowl.

As it turned out, I had a terrible time getting into House of Earth and, in fact, fell asleep reading it every day for about a week.  Had I not made it to the final section of the book (and I did consider abandoning House of Earth numerous times), I would have missed the best part.

In the beginning, Tike and Ella May Hamlin muse about their dream to buy a parcel of land on which to farm and build an adobe house, even while having sex -- for about 32 pages or so.  And, then pretty much all they talk about is the farm, their dreams, work that needs to be done and sex, sex, sex.  There is one point when Tike shouts at the house and you get the initial hint that this moment is not about the house alone but an expression of his frustration at being stuck in a dead-end cycle of poverty, living as a sharecropper and renting a falling-down house from a wealthy man who is not about to sell a workable piece of land and lose his regular income.  

I confess I may not have caught the meaning at that point, if not for the introductory notes, although eventually the symbolism is clarified.  At any rate, Ella May is happy, even though she's taken a major step down in the world by marrying Tike; and, later you'll find out why.

The first 2/3 or so of House of Earth is so buried in Tike's sexual urges and Ella May's cutesy responses that I found it difficult to see through to the purpose of the story.  But, in the final section a year has passed.  Ella May is bursting with child.  It's winter and Ella May is fiercely determined to make a new life for the family.  Now, sharecropping is no longer a tolerable inconvenience but a danger for her coming child, who will have to live with dust and wind coming through the walls.  That fine dust from ruined fields caused a kind of pneumonia that could kill.

During the final section of House of Earth, it seemed to me that all the symbolism buried earlier in the book went from fuzzy to overt and I could look back at the story and understand how the adobe house Tike wanted to build not only represented their dreams but the concept of self-sufficiency as a basic tenet of life that all people deserve to attain with hard work.

However, Tike was so very, very irritating that I gave the book an average rating at Goodreads, even though I felt like House of Earth was deeply meaningful, in the end.  The huge amount of sex talk was exhausting.  No wonder I kept falling asleep.  Maybe all that sex and sex talk was a parallel to the concept of the desire to give birth to the dream of owning their own home and land, growing things on it, etc.?  

At any rate, I was so startled by the clarity of the final section and how it pulled everything together that I considered giving the book a high rating on that basis alone. And, you can see from the quote above that House of Earth definitely had its moments. But, I decided in hindsight it would be crazy to highly recommend a book that fell into the sedative category till the final 40 pages.

3/5 - Recommended only to people who can tolerate lengthy sex scenes and appreciate symbolism.  Boring to me, till the final section, which pretty much knocked my socks off.  There is little about the Dust Bowl, itself; it is a setting -- maybe even an allegorical character, nature as the force of poverty, both unrelenting.  There's a lot of merit to House of Earth but too much that I detested about it.  One more fun quote:

". . . Ahhh. Ding bust this dad-ratted old dod-rotted radio to the south pole and back, anyhow!"

p. 110

In other news:

• I planned on staying on Holiday Blogging Break till Kiddo goes back to school but he still has a full two weeks before classes begin and my sidebar was getting a little on the heavy side with 11 books read since I wrapped up posting in 2012.  So, here I am.
• When Blogger forced the new interface on us (no, I still don't love it, although there are some features that are definite improvements) they narrowed the colors available for highlighting text.  I'd noticed that, but this is the first time I've gone looking for brown and realized there are no brown shades at all.  The color I used to highlight House of Earth is as brown as it gets, that nasty yellow ochre the darkest shade of yellow available.  Yeeeuck.
• I'm reading The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley (another February release, from WilliamMorrow) and I think it might be a good one for group discussion if you don't mind getting into controversial territory.  I'll likely finish that, tonight.  Can't seem to put it down.
• I've had no luck loading videos at YouTube, recently (I get an error message, every time) but I have a tremendously fun video of Isabel watching the Christmas train go round and round the tree, batting at it and occasionally going around the tree in the opposite direction to watch it coming toward her.  She was utterly fascinated with the train. Trust me, you'd love it.  
• I've bought and received a few books during my break (and have a big sack ready to donate).  I'll try to gather the new arrivals for a portrait, soon.  Usually, I have a specific shelf for incoming books but it's just become The Cookbook Shelf.  My husband has an affinity for Very Fat Cookbooks.  I shall have to adapt.

How is 2013 going for you, so far?

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Minis - The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories 2 by HitRecord, Aesop's Fables (illus. by Santore) & Underground by Murakami

These three mini reviews are the last book reviews I'll be doing for the year.  I may post once or twice more and then I'm going on holiday for a few weeks.  I'm already a little late walking away for Christmas season, as I usually do.  

I was extremely excited when I heard the second Tiny Book of Tiny Stories had been released, since the first version was so fun I read it repeatedly and foisted my favorite pages on the spouse.  

And, then I read the book and felt a little let-down. But, that was only my first impression.  There was so much wit and humor in the first Tiny Book of Tiny Stories that I expected the same.  The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories 2 is not quite as witty and a lot of the combined stories and illustrations are a little on the "bummer, this makes me a little sad" side.

However, on the second reading I started to discover my favorites and . . . you've got it . . . foisted them on the spouse.  I only share things I really love with Huzzybuns -- stories or illustrations that make me laugh, smile, or ponder.  And, there were plenty of stories and illustrations that made me smile, although they seemed fewer and farther between.

The difference between Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 of The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories?  Well, there are a couple differences.  In the first release, there was a great deal of work by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, aka "Regular Joe", and he's an extremely clever guy with a terrific sense of humor.  This time, he edited with "wirrow" but didn't contribute, otherwise.  I think wirrow simply has a different way of looking at things, a little more pensive and even sorrowful.  But, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories 2 is about twice as thick as The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories (the original).  So . . . there's plenty for everyone and I think it's another stocking-worthy book.  I love the mix of art and thought-provoking stories in both books and can't wait for the third and final release.  In fact, I hope they go beyond three publications. Highly recommended (although at first I was hesitant).

Aesop's Fables is illustrated by Charles Santore. Let's just stop right there because the words "illustrated by Charles Santore" are enough to make this gal put on the proverbial brakes.  Have you heard of Charles Santore or picked up a book he's illustrated?  If not, you are missing out on one heck of an eyeball feast.  Santore's illustrations are rendered with enviable skill and beauty, in this case with delightful expressions on the faces of various animals.

There are no humans in Santore's version of Aesop's Fables. Instead, Santore chose a selection of stories, rewrote them in his own words and illustrated with only animals as subjects.

I've always loved Aesop's Fables and have particular favorites.  My personal favorites are still the same, although one is not in Charles Santore's Aesop's Fables and Santore may have either introduced me to a few fables I missed or merely reminded me of their existence.  At any rate, there's not much you can do to screw up Aesop, apart from poorly rewriting the stories and I think he did a decent job, although a "moral" or two was worded differently from the way I learned them.

It's the illustrations that make Charles Santore's books shine and Aesop's Fables is no exception.  Highly recommended, especially for mothers or children who love to stare at the details of gorgeous illustrations.

Underground by Haruki Murakami is the one book I wouldn't advise you to rush out and buy for last-minute Christmas gifting, although Underground is a fascinating read.  It's just that reading about people gasping for breath and going blind is not particularly cheerful reading material.

Underground is Murakami's attempt to understand the Tokyo sarin attack that took place in 1995 by interviewing both people who were poisoned or close to a victim and some of the Aum cult members, none of whom were directly involved in the poisoning.  He also spends a little time evaluating what went wrong and how to avoid such disastrous results if they were to recur.

I knew very little about the sarin attack -- or, coordinated attacks, I should say.  The puncturing of bags full of sarin took place in a number of different trains.  Death and injury in the subway trains and various stations were due to a combination of ignorance (no knowledge of sarin's effects, in spite of a previous attack), very poor communication, the lack of preparation for large-scale disaster and the Japanese tendency to stick to routine in spite of some pretty dramatic signs of danger or illness.

Underground started out a little slowly for me.  I'm not sure what I expected, but in many cases the personal accounts were rather bland.  Relatively few of the victims were even willing to speak to Murakami because they didn't want to think about their experience, much less discuss it.  However, there are a few accounts that are incredibly moving, particular those of the brother of a woman who was still barely able to move or communicate when the book went to press (but remained stunningly cheerful), the young widow of a man who died and the young man's parents.  The section with interviews of people who belonged to Aum is fascinating for the look into the personalities and why people join such a group, as much as the machinations of cult life and the attack.

I thought it was particularly interesting to hear the thoughts of one woman who had lived in the U.S. for a year  She said if the same thing happened in America, people would have reacted with urgency and noise, speaking up about feeling ill and insisting on immediate action.  I can't argue with that.  I spent a lot of time imagining what the response would be like elsewhere before I got to her comment.

Highly recommended - An interesting view inside both the lives of people who were affected by the sarin attack and those who were involved in Aum (which I think the government of Japan eventually gave religious status and which apparently still exists under a new name and leader, although it has all the hallmarks of a cult).

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