Hungry for Good Books?

Festival of Faith and Writing

2012-02-14T07:54:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is the early registration deadline for one of my favorite events, The Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, held this year on April 19 - 21. I've attended this biennial festival five times and have heard Mary Karr, Salman Rushdie, Ernest Gaines, Michael Chabon, Elizabeth Strout, Yann Martel, and many other amazing writers speak. In addition to large lectures, the festival (and it really is more of a festival than a conference) features panel discussions, small groups, and much much more. This year the keynote speakers will be Gary Schmidt, Jonathan Safran Foer, Marilynne Robinson and Chimanada Ngozi Adichie. I'm also eagerly awaiting hearing Kate Braestrup, Mark Richard, Debra Dean, Luis Alberto Urrea, and several others.

Give yourself a Valentine and register today: http://festival.calvin.edu/festival-2012.

The early registration rate is $175 (until February 15, 2012), after that the rate is $195. This includes three full days and nights of concurrent events that will have your head spinning as you attempt to choose which ones to attend. They're almost all exceptional as is the spirit of the event.

House of Prayer No. 2 by Mark Richard

2012-01-16T10:19:00.006-06:00

House of Prayer No. 2 is as gothic and Southern as a memoir can get. I predict it'll sweep through book clubs like tornadoes twist through the south when it comes out in paper next month. Unlike the usual first person voice of most memoirs – Mark Richard tells his tale primarily in the second person imperative thus delivering his life in a series of jabs that punctuate the landscape like cherry bombs that kids might have tossed on dead-end gravel roads in the towns he called home. Richard’s voice makes this memoir gritty and real while underneath it’s tender and spiritual. Comparisons to Rick Bragg’s All Over But the Shoutin’ are inevitable but Mark Richard’s tale is peerless in its originality. His opening chapters read like a Biblical creation story because he’s showing his readers how the place where he began delivered him to where he is today.

When a book opens with: “Say you have a “special child.’ Which in the South means one between Down’s and dyslexic,” you know you’re encountering a unique voice. Then add sentences like: “Give the child a sandbox to play in, in which scorpions build nests. Let the mother cut the grass and run over rattlesnakes, shredding them all over the yard. Make the mother cry and miss her mother. Isolate her from the neighbors because she is poor and Catholic.” You will not only know Mark Richard, you will feel him deep in your bones. More from that first chapter:

Move the family to a tobacco county in Southside Virginia. It is the early sixties, and black families still get around on mule and wagon. Corn grows up to the backs of houses even in town. Crosses burn in yards of black families and Catholics. Crew cut the special child’s hair in the barbershop where all the talk is of niggers and nigger-lovers. Give the child the responsibility of another playmate, the neighbor two houses down, Dr. Jim. When Dr. Jim was the child’s age, Lee left his army at Appomattox. When Dr. Jim falls down between the corn rows he is always hoeing, the child must run for help. Sometimes the child just squats beside Dr. Jim sprawled in the corn and listens to Dr. Jim talking to the sun. Sometimes in the orange and grey dust when the world is empty, the child lies in the cold backyard grass and watches the thousand starlings swarm Dr. Jim’s chimneys, and the child feels like he is dying in an empty world.

Southern euphemisms sometimes label a child and keep him in his place but calling Mark Richard a “special child” doesn’t stop him. Clearly everyone in town considers him “special” both because of his deformed hips and because his oddness makes them think he's mentally challenged. Then Richard endures long periods of confinement at the Crippled Children’s Hospital in Richmond, VA, a place that he renders Dickensian. Yet as difficult as the hospital is, it might be better than home where his alcoholic father provides little support.

Richard’s early adult years find him dwelling in shacks, borrowed apartments and on a shrimp boat while hiding from himself. His occupations vary from house painter to private investigator until a short story a teacher submits on his behalf is published in the Atlantic and he begins his writing career and falls in love.

Just as Richard’s life seems to settle down with an offer to teach, he feels the call to ministry. This later leads him back to an unlikely spot for a man who now seems to have it all: The House of Prayer No. 2 Church where he and his mother are usually the only white worshipers. There he finds a place where his call turns into action. Along the way, Richard’s intimate view of his life is packed with staccato word pictures that will make any reader thankful that Mark Richard survived to tell his tale.

Summing it Up: Read this memoir to experience nothing like you’ve ever read before. Grab a blanket and a comfortable chair; you may not put this one down until you’ve devoured it in one fell swoop.

Rating: 5 stars Category: Non-Fiction, Gourmet, Grits, Soul Food, Book Club

Publication date: February 15, 2011 (Paperback: February 14, 2012)

Read an Excerpt: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/153828/house-of-prayer-no-2-by-mark-richard#excerpt

What Others are Saying:

Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/0221/House-of-Prayer-No.-2

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review/Bynum-t.html

The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/2011/05/june-book-club-house-of-prayer-no-2-1.html#ixzz1jdRc7OWp

Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704758904576188480264073952.html

Sarah Andrew Ohaver

2012-01-12T12:45:00.000-06:00

Today would have been my mother's 90th birthday. Sarah Andrew Ohaver showed me how to love reading and writing proving that such a love is caught not taught. She married on November 30, 1946. She was 4' 11 1/2" tall and weighed 87 pounds on her wedding day. She loved her family and friends with utter abandon. She's the reason I began writing my book lists. They started as lists of books for her to read during chemotherapy. After her friends asked for copies, I began making them public. Mom would be very happy to see others enjoying them. She loved mysteries and "good" fiction.

A Pocketful of Light by Jan Stafford Kellis

2012-01-07T08:43:00.001-06:00

A Pocketful of Light, 13 Days in the World’s First Tourist Destination, is a charming look at Jan Kellis’s Italian trip with her teenage daughter, Stephanie. I recommend it for anyone contemplating a European voyage with a teen or young adult offspring. Kellis’s attention to detail in her planning will help travelers anticipate and prepare for minor irritations. While it won’t replace a traditional guidebook, it might just make reluctant parents realize that such a trek is possible even without a substantial budget.

Starting in Venice, Kellis captures the reader with her honest reactions: “Immediately overwhelming. Chaotic, confusing, and, well, foreign. My first impressions of Venezia were compromised by one of my best assets, my self-confidence. . .” Here Kellis shows how so many of us, especially Americans, feel when we’re first in a new place then she guides us in ways to overcome our fears. Arranging to meet an old friend and her teenage daughter in Tuscany (the friend was a Norwegian foreign exchange student who lived with the Kellis family in the 1980s) adds to the excitement of the trip and will make readers think about ways to enliven a trip with a younger traveler.

When the duo meet Kate and Liam, a mother and son from Colorado, in Tuscany, they learn that they’ll both be in Sorrento at the same time setting up one of the joys of traveling – the chance encounters that can make a trip exceptional. Kellis also tells of the minor difficulties that can derail a trip, things like long bus rides, tired feet and ogling men but she tempers them with an openness that allows for humor and joy in the journey. Picking up sea glass on a Mediterranean beach and carrying it in her pockets led Kellis to note: “the sea glass emitted a comforting glow. I’m carrying a pocketful of light. . .”

Still carrying the reflected light, they cancel their last night in Sorrento so they can spend more time in Rome with their new friends thus illustrating that careful planning needn’t become a stranglehold. This portion of the book carries the reader along with the foursome as they enjoy the Spanish steps and delectable meals in each other’s company.

The book ends one year later when the Kellis family visits Kate and Liam in Denver and begins planning their next trip. It also includes useful appendices with lists and the trip budget.

Summing it Up: Read this book to decide if you might like to travel with your child and to enjoy tagging along with a typical American family as they share their journey.

Rating: 4 stars Category: Non-Fiction, Dessert, Super Nutrition

Publication date: July 18, 2011

Jan Stafford Kellis is also the author of Bookworms Anonymous, a book about a non-traditional book club in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Find information about her club and the books they’re reading at: http://www.bookwormsanonymous.com.

Author's website: http://www.jankellis.com

Read an excerpt: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jankellis

The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar

2012-01-05T10:45:00.000-06:00

The World We Found is the new novel from Thrity Umrigar, a talented writer, whose The Space Between Us is one of the best, literary novels of the past decade. Yet Umrigar also writes page-turning, popular fiction - novels that shed light on the changing culture of her native India through characters that could be our neighbors in Ann Arbor or the Cleveland suburbs.

The World We Found draws the reader in immediately with Laleh, a privileged wife and mother, breaking a tooth and finding it “an outward manifestation of the brokenness she’d felt ever since the phone call from Armaiti. An uncharacteristic acceptance descended upon Laleh, in contrast to the denial she had felt since Armaiti called with news about her cancer.” Armaiti, who has lived in the U.S. for years, has only six months to live so she wants to see her three best friends again. They were inseparable activists in college in the late 1970s. Lelah and Kavita, a successful architect, are still in contact but no one has heard from Nishta since she married their collegiate colleague, Iqbal, and disappeared from their lives. Lelah and Kavita track Nishta to a sheltered and impoverished Muslim enclave where she wears a burkha and is guarded by Iqbal’s fundamentalist family.

The world each of these women has found in the thirty years since their idealistic college days has changed drastically. Umrigar uses their different lives to reflect on the changes in India and the U.S. and to show that the world each of us finds is the one we must navigate. This novel soars above others in the genre when it shows how the Hindu-Muslim conflicts of the early 1990s changed the way people like Iqbal saw the world around them. It also foreshadows an airport scene where all it takes to solve a dilemma is today’s equivalent of yelling “Fire” in a crowded theatre and watching stereotypes come into play. That scene alone makes the book worth reading and clearly illustrates Umrigar’s title and premise that the world we find is the one we adapt to and use – sometimes without considering the consequences.

The World We Found will appeal to Elizabeth Berg and Anita Shreve fans in that it takes something that could happen to anyone and turns it on its side by showing it to the reader through multidimensional characters. It also provides secondary plots involving each of the main characters that add to making this novel different from the usual. Its careful turns of phrase and setting allow the reader to vicariously meet the women of Mumbai. Just as readers love historical fiction because it allows them to learn about history without having to read academic tomes, this novel will appeal to readers who want to know about modern-day Mumbai through getting to know its citizens.

Summing it Up: Read this to enjoy a page-turner that will transport you to Mumbai and its changing culture while enveloping you in the lives of women who could be your friends and neighbors if you got to know them.

Rating: 4 stars Category: Fiction, Grandma's Pot Roast, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: January 3, 2012

Author’s Website: http://www.umrigar.com/

Read an Excerpt: http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061938344

Reading Group Questions: http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=29280&isbn13=9780061938344&displayType=readingGuide

What Others are Saying:

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nina-sankovitch/discovering-the-world-we-_b_1181544.html

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/thrity-umrigar/world-we-found/

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-193834-4

2011 - My Favorite Novels that will Stick with You and that You’ll Beg Your Friends to Read - Grandma's Pot Roast Category

2011-12-30T14:30:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you want a novel that will grab you and stay with you – one like The Weird Sisters, my favorite in this category this year. These are the other savory selections in the Grandma’s Pot Roast category:

Anthill: a novel by E. O. Wilson – Wilson, a Pulitzer winning naturalist, penned this novel that’s similar to Jim, the Boy in its charming depiction of male adolescence. Part IV, The Anthill Chronicles, tells the story of three ant colonies in something I can only dub “narrative biology.” It feels like a sportscaster is giving the play-by-play of a baseball game but he’s describing tournaments between ants. It’s an adult novel but I think it could make any teenage boy or girl want to know about ecology and biology. Wow!

Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West - if you loved the movie Hoosiers you’ll adore this story of a high school basketball team. The characters are delightful. It’s a bit overdrawn but it’ll make you laugh, cheer, cry and you’ll think it was too short even at 560 pages. Buy it for your sons and husbands. Read the full review here.

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See - After Joy’s father’s suicide, she leaves college and flies to China. Joy’s mother, who’d left China 20 years previously, chases after her. It’s 1957, so Mao rules the country completely and both are caught in the famine and the Great Leap Forward. This is fine historical fiction that allows the characters and story to make history real. Read the full review here.

The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry features an enchanting young woman whose parents have just died unexpectedly and who copes with her grief by cooking. Her sister tries to manage her and her “condition” by defining what’s normal. This is a joy-filled book that shows the many dimensions of the Asperger spectrum. The food descriptions are delectable as are the characters. There’s a touch of believable magical realism as well in a book you’ll long remember.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh makes you think about what happens to foster children when they turn 18 by showing the life of Victoria who would be lost if she hadn’t learned about flowers and their special language. Her ability to sense what others need when she creates a floral arrangement is uncanny. This novel will take you down a path you never knew you wanted and needed to tread. It’ll make you call a friend to talk about why we have to love and nurture all children. It will also make you ponder what maternal love should and can be. It’d be perfect for book clubs.

Next to Love by Ellen Feldman is the story of three wives who remain in a small town while their husbands serve in World War II and of their lives after the war when everything changes. The writing is wonderful especially the first chapter. Babe works for Western Union so she’s the first to learn when one of “our boys” is lost or has died. If you loved The Postmistress you’ll really like this. Feldman paints such a true picture of each character that I see them in my mind’s eye and have already cast them for the movie I hope to see.

Safe from the Sea, by Peter Geye - Noah returns to the remote lake region north of Duluth when Olaf, his ill father, summons him. The novel also tells of Olaf’s survival of one of the most deadly Lake Superior shipwrecks. Lyrical prose highlights this tale of forgiveness, love and honoring the past. This is a book that men and women will both embrace.

The Soldier’s Wife by Margaret Leroy takes place on the Isle of Guernsey during World War II. It’s primarily a love story and a tale of the way war affects and changes all the lives it touches. Vivienne is a mother and a fighter. This novel evokes the food, the land, and the way they really lived. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society was everyone’s favorite book a few years ago and this is a worthy, yet entirely different, view of the island and its struggles during the war.

South of Superior by Ellen Airgood - Madeline leaves Chicago to live with two elderly sisters in a tiny town on the shores of Lake Superior. Great characters and community sing in this novel that’s similar to those of Richard Russo in the way it captures small town characters without making them caricatures. Read the full review here.

2011 - My Favorite “Gourmet” or Literary Novels

2011-12-29T08:46:00.001-06:00

2011 was a banner year for literary fiction. In addition to The Summer Book and The Art of Fielding, the following novels were my favorite "gourmet" reads.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka tells the stories of the “picture brides” who came from Japan to California in 1917. Told in the collective, the language is spectacularly evocative. It’s short and each word is absolutely perfect. The Greek chorus of the women’s voices both mesmerizes and entertains. This book has humor, pathos, and warmth. It was finalist for the National Book Award. Revisit her When the Emperor was Divine, too as it’s also phenomenal. Otsuka is a unique author as she manages to convey so much in so few words yet she never sacrifices quality for brevity.

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry may be the best portrait of a 20^th century woman ever and that a man captured her voice perfectly is amazing. He distills Christianity. You must slow down to ponder and appreciate the beauty and truth shown in a life well and carefully lived. Berry’s characterizations reminded me of Reynolds Prices’ Roxanna Slade. His chapter on Okinawa should be read by everyone as a meditation on war. This has been around for several years but I just read it.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry portrays the central figure in fictitious Port William, Kentucky, a river town where Berry sets his novels and explores the meaning of life and all its ramifications. Jayber Crow is the town barber, a simple man with a seminary education. He loves his community so much that he makes everyone in it better. They live through war, peace, love, forgiveness and sacrifice together. I wrote down quotes on almost every page. I started this soon after finishing Hannah Coulter as I didn’t want to leave the Port William community.

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks, only a writer with Banks’ skill could make me care about a social misfit who can’t join society because he’s on a sex offender list. “The Kid” is such an engaging character; I can’t let this go. It made me think about society’s underbelly and homelessness yet it also entertained me because he made the disparate cast seem completely human.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - I rarely enjoy fantasy outside of children’s literature and often find historical fiction novels contrived if they twist the story line to fit history yet this captivated me much as the Harry Potter novels did. Two young illusionists are pitted against each other in a magical fairy tale of a novel set primarily in London and the U.S. at the turn of the 20^th century. The magic clock and the other inventions sweep the reader into a luminous world but the fine character development makes the novel succeed as a strong narrative as well. The circus setting and characters reminded me of Water for Elephants.

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell is a true American novel with a girl who resembles Huck Finn, Annie Oakley and Hester Prynne in one unforgettable character living on the river near Kalamazoo, Michigan. It’s an American Odyssey and a page turner you won’t forget. Read the full review here.

Room by Emma Donoghue is a great read. It’s about a mother who does everything for her young son despite her harrowing circumstances. It’s told in his charming 5-year-old voice and you’ll love it. Don’t ask anything more, just read it. I promise you won’t be able to put it down. It’s on my list even though it came out in 2010 as I didn’t read it until this year.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett creates a special world in the Amazon and populates it with characters and adventures that will take your breath away. It’s her best and that’s saying something. The subtle growth of the main character is still under my skin as is one scene on the river that left me holding my breath until I finished it. Read the full review here.

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obrecht won the Orange Prize and it’s completely original in its evocation of the Balkan conflicts. It uses fables and allegories to tell a story filled with superstition. If it were a cake it’d have twenty layers and thus it demands a careful and concentrated reading.

The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott - The first chapter of this British novel is one of the hardest hitting and most gripping sections I’ve ever read. Henry is an “upright” man, one who followed the rules, built a company and made a family then because he couldn’t bend, his life spiraled out of his control. As I read, I felt like a bystander, intimately involved, yet unable to change the outcome. This is truly a unique read and one that would make for an exceptional discussion for book clubs.

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson is for all who left small towns in the 1960s and 70s. It humanizes the farm crisis and makes you ponder why people become who they are. It also shows how place and family influence development and captures an era beautifully. Thompson creates characters that we all know well and helps us see them better.

The Best of 2011!

2011-12-28T10:27:00.002-06:00

Here are my favorite books of the year.

Separate posts will follow with other favorites in each category.

2011 - My Favorite Novel of the Year
(even though it came out in 1972)

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson rescued me. It’s gentle prose, philosophies and humor spoke to me when I most needed it. If you liked The Elegance of the Hedgehog, you’ll like this. It made for a great book discussion. Much of it begs to be read aloud. It’s spare and evocative of the remote island in the Gulf of Finland where Sophia and her grandmother spend the summer. Readthe full review here.

2011 - My Favorite Non-Fiction Book of the Year

The Windward Shore by Jerry Dennis tells of a winter the acclaimed outdoor writer spent in different places along the shores of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Nothing prepared me for the deep connection it forged with me – a connection so strong that I spent two weeks avoiding reading the last chapter so the book would never end. The book is similar to Walden and The Sand Country Almanac. Yet, it’s entirely accessible and would be suitable for fishermen, motorcyclists or hunters as well as for natural history devotees. Read the full review here.

2011 - My Favorite “Debut” Novel of the Year

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach is a book you, your husband and your sons will love. Henry arrives at a small college on the shores of Lake Michigan to play baseball; perhaps to save the team with his fielding. He becomes the best until he makes on unforced error and everything changes. You’ll remember his captivating teammates long after flying through this big, heartfelt book. Don’t think that you have to know about or love baseball to enjoy this novel. Trying to live without ever making an error is certainly a metaphor for life not just for baseball. The characters in this connect with more than just baseball fans.

2011 - My Favorite Novel that will Stick With You and that You’ll Beg Your Friends to Read (GPR)

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown -Three sisters return home when their mother is ill. Their father is a Shakespeare professor and everything from their names to the way he talks to them mirrors the Bard. You’ll love being a part of their family and you’ll appreciate the subtle lessons the story tells. I underlined numerous passages that still resonate especially about the stories we tell ourselves. Read the full review here.

2011 – My Favorite Ironic Novel

The Leftovers by Tom Perotta tells of a “Rapture” type incident in which a portion of the earth’s population disappeared in an instant but with no understandable rhyme or reason as to who disappeared and who stayed. Three years later the leftovers, those left behind, are coping in unusual ways.

2011 – My Favorite Mystery of the Year

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny - Chief Inspector Gamache is the best multi-dimensional crime solver since Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley. He’s in Quebec City recovering from a case he didn’t solve in time when a murder caught up in the conflict between the French and English intervenes and he sends an aide to reopen a case in a small Quebec town. This novel shows that goodness can triumph over evil. I wish I’d begun with her Still Life as Bury Your Dead is the sixth in the series. Read the full review here.

2011 – My Favorite Suspense Novel

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier is so gothic and eerie that it almost feels like you’re inside a movie like Cape Fear or North by Northwest. It’s also eloquent, ethereal and elegiac. While it takes place in early 1960s North Carolina it seems more like the depression era. Luce is a wonderful character who’s taken guardianship of her twin niece and nephew whose stepfather killed their mother and who resemble frightening forest nymphs more than preschoolers. Bud, the evil stepfather, manages to get off and tracks them down in a series of actions that won’t let you sleep till it ends.

2011 – My Favorite Short Fiction (a tie)
– short stories and novellas

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad - the 80-year-old author worked in tribal areas and his voice captures those living in this hidden world where Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet and where the borders are blurred because tribal loyalties have always been stronger than nationalism. It’s told in inter-related sketches featuring a boy who bridges the Baluchistan tribal culture with the military, other tribes and other peoples. I think every person in Congress and the military should read this and so should we.

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon - these interrelated short stories depict the lives of those left behind on a Texas base when the men deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Her perspicacious writing forces us to bear witness to what we’ve asked them to do. It’s a must read even though it’s emotionally demanding. Read the full review here.

2011 - My Favorite Memoir of the Year

The Long Good-bye by Meghan O’Rourke - The climax hits early when the author’s mother dies and she learns how to grieve. She’s 34 and single and she’s one incredible writer. Her metaphors make the reader experience exactly what she feels. Anyone who’s lost a parent or anyone close will thank O’Rourke for writing this.

2011 – My Favorite Book for the Soul

Devotion by Dani Shapiro - Sad things happened in Shapiro’s life and she looked for ways to find meaning. Her simple explanations of living mindfully with purpose, of paying attention, and of believing in loving kindness resonate because she’s such a fine, fine writer. This is for everyone. If you loved Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup you’ll find the same hope-filled philosophy here. Carpe diem!

2011 - My Favorite Children’s Book for Anyone
Over Age 10

Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt is a book for teens and adults. It’s 1968 and Doug’s brother is in Viet Nam, his other brother is trouble and his pathetic father has lost his job so the family has to move. Doug discovers an Audubon folio in their new town and things begin to change. Read this to see what a difference determination and people who care can make. It’s perfect for book clubs of all ages. Read the full review here.

2011 - My Favorite Young Adult Novel

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys - 15-year-old Lina is studying for art school when the Soviets ship her family east from Lithuania to Siberia in 1941. Lina sends “art” messages to her father who’s taken away as they continue east. The determination and humor of the characters is formidable and their journey to the northern Arctic Circle is compelling and wrenching. This has become a best seller and award winner in Britain. There’re so many well-written novels about the holocaust, now we have one that makes Stalin’s atrocities real. Adult and teen book clubs should read it.

2011- My Favorite Picture Book

Press Here by Hervé Tullet is an adorable old-fashioned “interactive” book that will delight 3 to 7 year olds. It’s addictive. Press the dot and use your imagination. Adults find it irresistible too.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good read!

2011-12-23T17:05:00.001-06:00

Wishing you and yours a wonderful Christmas weekend and happy holidays filled with family, food and fabulous fiction (non-fiction, too). This seems to be the year for Christmas trees made of books. There are many wonderful ones to see. This one is from Media Tinker. Read how to make and light one like it here: http://www.mediatinker.com/blog/archives/010731.html.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

2011-12-19T07:31:00.001-06:00

When I woke up this morning and saw that Kim Jong-Il, the North Korean dictator had died, I was thankful that I had read Nothing to Envy a few months ago. I immediately understood why the dollar had risen and other currencies had fallen due to fears of instability in the region. I also realized that Kim’s death was entirely different than Muammar Gaddafi’s in Libya where changes engendered by the Arab spring uprisings with their “Ding dong, the witch is dead” aura were brought about primarily because young people there knew about the rest of the world and they wanted a piece of it. If you look at satellite photos of the region at night you’ll see an enormous black hole – it’s North Korea, land of no electricity. Nothing to Envy portrays this country where citizens who rarely have access to cell phones or satellite news worship Kim because his version of the facts is all they know. That any single person could have such a hold on a country seems unfathomable until you read Nothing to Envy. There you’ll learn of a country where malnourished school children praise Kim in songs asserting that they “have nothing to envy in this world.”

This is a quick post as I simply want those looking for last minute gifts to consider this book for anyone who wants to know more about the world and to make sure you read it soon yourself. On my annual list I noted that Nothing to Envy depicts the complexities of life in North Korea. Told through the stories of six North Koreans, it conveys unimaginable brutality. That most of North Korea spent the nineties literally in the dark without electricity, food, or medical care is sad but even sadder is that they were so brainwashed that they could watch children die of starvation and still believe what their government told them because they assumed that things were worse elsewhere. Within a four-year period North Korea’s entire frog population died because so many were killed as there was no other food. The resilience of the profiled six is uplifting so the book is not a depressing read.

That we know so little about a country that has the potential to do so much harm to our world is disheartening. That Barbara Demick was able to reach behind the curtain to expose it and make it personal is our gain. Nothing to Envy was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Summing it Up: Read this to understand North Korea and why its volatility is a threat to the world. Suggest it for your book club and get ready for an enlightening discussion.

Rating: 5 stars Category: Non-Fiction, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: December 29, 2009

Author’s Website: http://nothingtoenvy.com/about-barbara-demick/

Read an Excerpt: http://nothingtoenvy.com/nothing-to-envy-excerpt/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/14-non-fiction/756-nothing-to-envy-demick?start=3

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/barbara-demick/nothing-to-envy/#review

National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122282495

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/reviews/single/53567-nothing-to-envy-ordinary-lives-in-north-korea.html

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

2011-11-09T11:26:00.000-06:00

This is the sixth in the Chief Inspector Gamache series but it’s the first I’ve read. I began with Bury Your Dead because the reviews were so great (The American Library Association named it the best mystery of 2010.) but now I wish I’d started with, Still Life, the first in the series as I plan to read them all. The series and the quality of the writing remind me of Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley series and they've won many of the same awards.

In addition to a rip-roaring mystery and great characters, this tale makes the city of Quebec a character and has me pining to visit there this winter (and I don’t ever pine to visit a northern city in the winter). Penny depicts the unique history and beauty of the old walled city so beautifully that I can easily imagine myself sipping hot chocolate and eating croissants after a quick stroll.

Gamache is visiting his mentor in Quebec City to recover from an investigation that had dreadful consequences that are haunting him. He visits the English Literary and Historical Society where a crazed historian goes in search of the remains of Samuel de Champlain, Quebec’s founder. When a body is found in the Society’s basement the wide divide between the French and the English threatens to ignite the separatists. Meanwhile Gamache sends an aide to the village of Three Pines to take a second look at the circumstances behind a hermit’s murder. The book has three distinct story lines, the two murders and Gamache’s lament over his last case and Penny skillfully intertwines them to make the mystery a complex emotional ride.

Every character in this novel seems to leap from the page and bring to life the smoldering tensions in the city and in the seemingly peaceful village. The book will also educate readers about the feelings behind the separatist movement in Quebec and on the history of Quebec’s founding.

Penny says her books are inspired by two lines from a W.H. Auden poem: Goodness existed, that was the new knowledge/his terror had to blow itself quite out to let him see it. It’s rare that a novel shows us the inner terror that the characters suffer while reinforcing that goodness exists. Inspector Armand Gamache fights terror both within himself and within Quebec and he does it by searching for the goodness that exists

Summing it Up: Read this to fall in love with the characters, setting and language in this page-turning mystery. Start with Bury Your Dead or with Still Life, the first in the series.

Rating: 5 stars Category: Fiction, Mysteries and Thrillers, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: September 28, 2010

Author’s Website: http://www.louisepenny.com/

Listen to an Audio Excerpt: http://us.macmillan.com/buryyourdead/LouisePenny

Reading Group Questions: http://media.us.macmillan.com/rggguides/9780312377045RGG.pdf

What Others are Saying:

Booklist: http://www.booklistonline.com/Bury-Your-Dead-Louise-Penny/pid=4227786

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/louise-penny/bury-your-dead/#review

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-312-37704-5

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

2011-11-03T12:40:00.001-05:00

Madeleine Hanna, who graduates from Brown University on the day The Marriage Plot begins, had “become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.” She adored Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, George Eliot, and Dickens. Thus, classmate Mitchell Grammaticus is the perfect man for her. He adores her, he’s smart and her parents find him as ideal as Mr. Darcy. But Madeleine has fallen for the frightening Leonard Bankhead, a loner in her semiotics seminar.

Semiotics, the theory and study of signs and symbols, is the glue that holds this novel together. “Going to college in the moneymaking eighties lacked a certain radicalism. Semiotics was the first thing that smacked of revolution. It drew a line; it created an elect; it was sophisticated and Continental…if scanning Wordsworth was making you feel dowdy and ink-stained, there was another option… You could sign up for Semiotics 211 and find out what everyone else was talking about. “

What everyone else was talking about was looking behind things for their real meaning and not dwelling on what people did or even on what was realistic. In that context Madeleine could easily fall for Leonard because of who he was while ignoring his bizarre behavior.

Madeleine noted that “Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights.” Reading the second half of this novel after trudging through the weightiness and satire of the first few hundred pages is also like shedding a heavy burden. The latter sections dealing with the love triangle composed of Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell are a soaring song compared to the funeral dirge of the novel’s beginnings.

Mitchell’s struggles with his dream of serving the destitute and dying under Mother Teresa in Calcutta and his interest in Christian mysticism are both beautifully written and eminently readable. Leonard’s descent into mental illness that seemed overdrawn early in the novel, realizes a perfect symmetry with Madeleine’s efforts to save him. The novel‘s ending is one of the best I’ve ever read – I just wish it might have been a more entertaining journey to reach it.

Summing it Up: Read it to admire the writing and for the careful, Tolstoy-like manner in which the ending captures the wisdom contained throughout the novel.

Rating: 4 stars Category: Fiction, Gourmet, Book Club

Publication date: October 11, 2011

Author Interview: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/11/140949453/a-marriage-plot-full-of-intellectual-angst

Read an Excerpt: http://www.scribd.com/doc/66568654/The-Marriage-Plot-by-Jeffrey-Eugenides-EXCERPT

Reading Group Guide: http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780374203054&m_type=8&utm_source=rgg-module&utm_medium=textlink&utm_campaign=rgg-internal#rgg

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/fiction/jeffrey-eugenides-marriage-plot/#continue_reading_post

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/books/the-marriage-plot-by-jeffrey-eugenides-review.html?pagewanted=all

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-374-20305-4

The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis

2011-10-24T15:28:00.000-05:00

Midway through this spectacular rendering, Jerry Dennis states, “If I could I would seed these pages with beach stones, maple leaves, blue jay feathers, Petoskey stones, cherry pits, and arrowheads. Open the cover, and out would rush starlings and wood smoke and a cold wind off the lake.” Dennis does seed the book’s pages with all he mentions and so much more. Every time I opened the book, sights, smells, memories and new experiences rushed out to astonish me with their exacting suitability to the situations and places described. I have long been a fan of Dennis’s books and am something of an evangelist for his The Living Great Lakes so I expected to love this book but nothing prepared me for the deep connection it forged with me – a connection so strong that I spent two weeks avoiding reading the last chapter so the book would never end. But end it did and with a commandment to “Go forth.” I cannot imagine a more apt challenge and one that if they were among us that Thoreau and Aldo Leopold might have tossed. Yes, this book does compare to Walden and to The Sand Country Almanac. Yet, it’s entirely accessible and would make a suitable holiday gift for a fisherman, a motorcyclist or a hunter as well as those who love natural history.

Just one more example: “Many go to nature looking for a cure, but they rarely find it. . . Water and woods, the night sky, the dawn chorus of songbirds, a loping coyote – such things are not a cure, but a salve. . . They replenish us after the gorings of daily life. They provide relief from rude clerks and petty coworkers, from the relentless goosestep of fashion, from the piling-on of responsibilities, from the burden of having constantly to maintain oneself, stay in shape, make progress, be good, be mature, be an example to one’s children, and never just coast because if you’re not moving forward, your moving backward. In nature, temporarily, we can coast. It’s the appeal of canoes and sailboats, of lawn chairs and tree houses and walks on the beach. In nature we can catch our breath.” I’m tempted to pepper this review entirely with quotes as I have sticky-note flags on almost every page. I want to share them but even more I want you to open this book and feel the joy of holding the great lakes in your hand.

Jerry Dennis set out to present a true picture of the northern shores of Lake Michigan near where he lives and in the Upper Peninsula where he visited. He focused on the area in winter when it’s most exposed. He succeeded by painting a portrait of the land the coasts ignore, a place both remote and desolate yet within a few hours’ drive for millions of Midwesterners.

Read this book because it will make you slow down to appreciate the wonder of our lakes. Relish this book because the Glenn Wolff illustrations will transport you to the north woods. Buy this book because in addition to the descriptive passages, Dennis explains everything from avian botulism to snow, bird song, geology and more so simply that the most scientifically ignorant will understand. Savor this book because, quite simply, it depicts “Creation, right before our eyes.”

Summing it Up: Read this book for the meditations it offers, then allow it to penetrate so you appreciate the incredible gift the Great Lakes are to those of us lucky enough to be able to enjoy them.

Contact these stores for autographed copies:

McLean & Eakin, Petoskey, MI, http://www.mcleanandeakin.com/book/9780472118168

Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor, MI, http://www.nicolasbooks.com/book/9780472118168

Rating: 5 stars Category: Non-fiction, Gourmet, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: September 24, 2011, The University of Michigan Press

Author’s Website: http://www.jerrydennis.net/index.html

Read an Excerpt: http://www.jerrydennis.net/uploads/5/9/5/5/5955195/dennis_up_through_intro.pdf

What Others are Saying:

"Our country is lucky to have Jerry Dennis. A conservationist with the soul of a poet whose beat is Wild Michigan, Dennis is a kindred spirit of Aldo Leopold and Sigurd Olson. The Windward Shore---his newest effort---is a beautifully written and elegiac memoir of outdoor discovery. Highly recommended!"
---Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America

Ann Arbor Observer: http://arborweb.com/articles/jerry_dennis_full_article.html

Northern Express: http://npaper-wehaa.com/northernexpress/2011/10/03/s1/#?article=1401709

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

2011-08-06T16:56:00.001-05:00

If you’re a bettor, place your money on Once Upon a River for the National Book Award; it’s that good. On the first page Bonnie Jo Campbell clearly defines Margo Crane as an intrepid heroine. “When Margo swam, she swallowed minnows alive and felt the Stark River move inside her.” Her grandfather taught her to fish and trap and he appreciated that she could sit without speaking for hours in the prow of his boat. “He called her Sprite or River Nymph. Her cousins called her Nympho, though not usually within the old man’s hearing.”

Many are comparing Margo to Huck Finn and that’s accurate but Margo’s also an original defined by her actions yet resolute in remaining true to her convictions. Like her hero, Annie Oakley, she’s a great shooter and a survivor. She lives “outside” both literally and figuratively – outside on the river and outside convention as a young girl on her own without a home or an education. Her mother abandons her, her grandfather dies, and her uncle rapes her so when her father is killed in a vivid scene in which she uses her sharp-shooting skills to shoot off the top of her uncle’s penis, fifteen-year-old Margo feels compelled to escape to the aptly named Stark River outside Kalamazoo, Michigan,

Margo lives for the river and for shooting and preparing what she’s shot. “She’d be fine after that initial cut, after she turned the deer from a dead creature into meat. It had come as a surprise that killing was the easy part.” She's extraordinarily beautiful and is as attractive to males as the majestic deer she herself tracks. Her beauty makes her the ideal woman for many of the men she meets and even her absent mother sees her only as a vessel of her beauty and its ability to attract. Margo, though, learns to use her beauty and her skills to survive. When she needs cash she shoots muskrats with a shot through the eyeball carefully embedding the bullet into the brain to save the fur so she’ll get top dollar for it.

As Margo navigates her boat down the river she hooks up with Brian whose food and cabin provide the essentials she needs and the sex that comforts her. Brian claims her, calls her Maggie and tries to make her the person he needs. After his brother attacks her she moves across the river to a more upright gentleman: 28-year-old Michael, who has a real job, attends church and believes in doing the right thing. Michael calls her Margaret Louise and she lives comfortably with him until she does something so unconventional that she can no longer remain.

She next meets an Indian who never gives his name. “He had come to her for help, and she had helped him. She had fed him, and he had paid her for the food. Sex with him had been like nothing she had known, but if he had stayed any longer, they might have hurt each other.” Margo appears to be the victim in her encounters but each person she meets teaches her skills she needs to survive.

The novel portrays the consequences of living in a rough world when you have no protectors and become prey. It shows that the costs of living free without the protection of family or state are so high that anyone desiring total freedom in this world is doomed to pay for its consequences. Just when those consequences seem too dire, Margo meets Smoke who needs her as much as she needs him. Smoke and Margo accept each other as outsiders and Margo begins to grasp that survival may be more than just having food and shelter. Campbell intricately balances her themes of freedom, community, consequences, and living with the “sins of the fathers,” while portraying the natural world and the humans inhabiting it with absolute precision.

This novel is a page-turner so it demands two readings to appreciate the author’s incisive language especially her descriptions of the river and the natural world. I expect teenage girls to be reading and talking about Margo Crane for many years and I hope that school boards allow teachers to assign this book despite its depiction of a teenage girl who confuses sex for security. Once Upon a River begs to be read alongside The Scarlet Letter and what I wouldn’t give to hear teenagers compare Margo Crane to Hester Prynne.

Summing it Up: Read it first for the plucky heroine and her journey then return to it to savor the beautiful depictions of the natural world and the unforgettable characters. Force your book club to choose it as you’ll want to discuss it the minute you put it down.

Rating: 5 stars Category: Fiction, Gourmet, Book Club

Publication date: July, 2011

Author’s Website: http://www.bonniejocampbell.com/

Read an Excerpt: http://books.google.com/books?id=LgbCgcdKktUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

What Others are Saying:

Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/0726/Once-Upon-a-River-by-Bonnie-Jo-Campbell

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/once-upon-a-river-by-bonnie-jo-campbell-book-review.html?pagewanted=all

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-07989-0

Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/books-once-upon-a-river-by-bonnie-jo-campbell/2011/06/27/gHQAv3xozH_story.htm

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

2011-07-30T12:49:00.005-05:00

When I decided to write a blog, I read over 250 book review blogs and resolved to leave my personal life out of my reviews after reading far too little about books and much too much about cats and grandchildren. Having neither, I thought it’d be an easy resolution to keep but I’m breaking it because telling how profoundly The Summer Book touched me is impossible without explaining the turn my life took this spring.

After Heidi Durrow, whose book The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was my favorite book in 2010, recommended The Summer Book in a piece on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/21/133866201/three-books-to-rescue-nordic-lit-from-the-dark-side, I purchased it. I had just begun it on April 12 when I got a phone call that my husband was in a hospital in Arlington, VA, after having a significant stroke while on a business trip. As I packed to fly east, I tossed The Summer Book into my suitcase. A few nights later when I moved into a narrow chair bed next to my husband in the hospital, I began falling under its spell. This novel comforted me and made me smile just when I most needed it. This summer I’ve reread it in a happier time as my husband’s therapy leads him on the path to full recovery. Once again it swept me away, made me laugh out loud, and helped me ponder its wisdom.

Six-year-old Sophia and her impervious grandmother portray a world awakening to life and nature on a miniscule island in the farthest reaches of the Gulf of Finland in the late 1960s. Sophia’s mother has died and her grandmother quietly guides her to conquer her grief and gain confidence in a series of simple events. Any book about a girl as impish and unique as Pippi Longstocking, as bold and audacious as Tom Sawyer, and as insightfully witty as no one but herself would be enough to savor. But when you add a distinctive archipelago that I long to visit and a grandmother who builds a replica of a Venetian palace out of bark and twigs while smoking and wryly commenting on outrageous situations, you have a classic that American audiences will love if they’ll just give it a try. Told in a series of brief vignettes, the little treasure imparts sage philosophies that will appeal to those who enjoyed The Elegance of the Hedgehog as well as to those just wanting an enchanting story spare enough to allow room for imagination.

In a chapter that must be read aloud, Sophia, horrified by an earthworm she’s cut in half with a spade, learns that it’ll grow into two beings. To grasp the concept, Sophia writes a book about the process of growing separately. She dictates to her grandmother: “They realized that from now on life would be quite different, but they didn’t know how, that is, in what way.” Obviously that line spoke directly to my situation in the hospital but I now realize that, like everything else in this novel, it speaks to the entire human condition.

Our Book Club’s Discussion:

Over thirty people packed into the book store where our spirited book discussion began with the question: “Did The Summer Book comfort you or unsettle you?” It comforted the majority but some found the sparse language and the uncertainty of the grandmother’s fate unsettling. Others noted that the spare language enhanced the setting. One grandmother commented that she loved that the grandmother wasn’t a “Hallmark grandma” but a real person. As we read various sections aloud, laughter ensued along with vigorous debate about the many themes. All concurred that the book was great for discussion and should be read aloud almost in its entirety. We pondered whether “city folks” could appreciate the portrayals of living in nature or whether they’d seem too foreign. One woman revealed that she planned to read it every summer to see which themes resonated at the time.

Summing it Up: Make this your next book club selection and get ready for a dynamic discussion. Read it to enjoy Sophia’s witticisms, to visit to an enchanting island, and to allow it to impart its wisdom however and whenever you need it. This is truly the perfect summer book.

Rating: 5 stars Category: Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Soul Food, Book Club

Publication date: 1972, NYRB Classics reissue in 2008

About the author: Tove Jansson was most famous for her comic strips and books about Moomintroll, a hippo-like character. The Moomin family has spawned theme parks and an array of clothing and accessories in Finland and Japan where they rival Hello Kitty’s popularity. Visit these sites to learn more about this unique author: http://www.moomin.com/tove/ and http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tjansson.htm

What Others are Saying:

The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-summer-book-by-tove-jansson-540567.html

New York Review Books: http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-summer-book/

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

2011-07-28T10:09:00.005-05:00

Readers who love southern-fried characters suffering a heap of misery alongside precocious children who lead their elders into doing what’s right will devour this beach book. Fannie Flagg and Dorothea Benton Frank aficionados will fly through the pages while enjoying the humor and the fact that the “good” people triumph. I don’t happen to be one of those readers. I appreciate the author’s ability to describe the land cinematically. She’s a screenwriter who wrote The Man in the Moon and The Outsider and I like the dialogue that moves the book along but I wanted more fully developed characters. Other than Swan Lake (yes, that truly is the name of the child protagonist – and no, the reason she got the moniker isn’t explained), a Huck Finn of a 1950s girl, the characters all seem to be cardboard caricatures of good or evil Southerners.

Samuel Lake, a preacher who’s lost his pulpit due to speaking the truth, moves to the farm where his wife’s family is grieving a loss that should cause them to question themselves but seems only to make them want to preserve the past. Daughter Swan finds Blade, a neighbor boy who needs her help, as she avoids Blade’s “Old Testament” evil father. The sins of the fathers of both families hover over the action like a smothering fog that threatens an evil storm. If you like action, this book has it with rape, suicide, wife beatings, adultery, murder and even kitten killing.

Summing it Up: Read this if you like good-old Southern charm, engaging children and evil characters who get what’s coming to them. Skip it if you prefer more literary fiction.

Rating: 3 stars

Category: Fiction, Grits and Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Publication date: July 12, 2011

Read an excerpt: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/196784/the-homecoming-of-samuel-lake-by-jenny-wingfield/9780385344081/#excerpt

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fiction/jenny-wingfield/homecoming-samuel-lake/
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-34408-1
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2011-08-11-samuel-lake_n.htm

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

2011-06-25T07:39:00.000-05:00

Erik Larson’s newest historical saga transports readers to 1933 Berlin, an almost too-familiar time and place that Larson makes compelling by introducing an American family’s view of Hitler’s rise to power. Just as Larson’s Devil in the White City evoked the unreported evil surrounding 1890s Chicago, this account delves into a little known historical figure and his role in the unfolding drama leading to World War II. William Dodd was a quiet University of Chicago professor when Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, a position none of the usual ambassadorial suspects desired.

The unassuming Dodd took his wife, son and reckless daughter, Martha, with him to Berlin and Martha, an assistant literary editor of the Chicago Tribune, immediately ingratiated herself within Berlin society and with the burgeoning Nazi leadership. Her sexual liaisons and friendships offer a rare view of the increasing tensions as Americans and German Jews suffer brutal attacks without consequence. Martha’s naiveté and her father’s essential fair-minded approach afford readers a clear view of America’s isolationism and of the dilettante foreign service of the time. Larson also offers a clear, unvarnished portrait of American anti-Semitism and its ultimate cost.

The Dodds’ chatty correspondence with Carl Sandburg, Thornton Wilder and other historical figures was my favorite aspect of the book. Larson also captured my interest with his discerning depiction of the cut-throat tactics some American diplomats used including compromising diplomatic pouches in order to undermine Dodd’s position.

Summing it Up: Larson defines the term narrative nonfiction by offering simple stories of relationships that show rather than explain how Hitler and his band of miscreants assembled power so quickly. Read this historical account of the rise of Nazi Germany for its insight into why the world failed to see what Hitler was doing. Enjoy it for its almost gossip-column glimpses of Berlin society in 1933.

Rating: 4 stars

Category: Nonfiction, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: May, 2011

Author website: http://eriklarsonbooks.com/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/14-non-fiction/8375-in-the-garden-of-beasts-larson

Interview with NPR’s Terry Gross on Fresh Air: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/135922322/william-dodd-the-u-s-ambassador-in-hitlers-berlin

What Others are Saying:

Chicago Sun Times: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/books/5142857-421/review-in-the-garden-of-beasts-by-erik-larson.html

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/non-fiction/erik-larson/garden-beasts/#review

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/books/review/book-review-in-the-garden-of-beasts-by-erik-larson.html

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

2011-06-21T17:46:00.000-05:00

On a scale of one to five, this wonder deserves a ten. It’s both a swashbuckling adventure and a compelling metaphoric symphony. When word comes that Anders Eckman has died of a fever in a remote Amazon region Marina Singh, his pharmaceutical company lab partner, is dispatched to find his remains and it seems that a Jamesian journey to the “heart of darkness” is about to begin. Yet, this reader found it more like Dorothy’s trek through Oz especially with Marina’s former mentor, the elusive and mysterious Dr. Annick Swenson hidden behind the curtain of the Amazon jungle. Marina’s boss and lover, a man even she calls Mr. Fox, had sent Anders to bring back news of Dr. Swenson’s progress in developing a drug that would allow women to remain fertile their whole lives but the odd doctor remained uncommunicative and resistant to leaving her secreted village.

Patchett plots the action as if it were an elaborate mosaic with each piece precisely scribed to fit its neighbor. Marina arrives in the decaying city of Manaus, Brazil where she spends weeks trying to ingratiate herself with a slapstick cast including Milton, a major domo figure, who seems to have the entire country at his beck and call and the Bovanders, a fey couple who hold the key to locating Dr. Swenson.

When Marina finally begins her river journey, Easter, a deaf boy Dr. Swenson has rescued, pilots them literally and figuratively into the ever narrowing darkness of the Amazon. They arrive to find the Lakashi tribe carrying torches and ululating in welcome while Marina’s luggage and more importantly her malaria medicine and global phone go missing. Forced to dress as the tribal women and lacking any contact with the world, Marina quickly assimilates into the tribal village Dr. Swenson rules.

In a pivotal scene rivaling the best Indiana Jones movie, Marina, Easter, another native and a giant anaconda battle aboard a small pontoon boat. I hate snakes and have refused to read some fine books because of their presence but I was glued to the page during this mesmerizing skirmish. Soon after, Marina visits the area where the Lakashi women chew the bark of trees that allows them infinite fertility and protection from other diseases and she later performs a chilling operation that makes her seem indispensible to the village.

Meanwhile Marina forms a bond with Easter and begins to question the imperturbably caustic Dr. Swenson.. A raft of adventures awaits and builds to an unexpected yet thoroughly believable climax. The book has a perfect ending that brings the entire tale full circle and makes me want to read this adventure again to savor the intricate language and plotting. I flew through it completely captivated by the cast and sat in wonder as I contemplated whether Marina would ever be able to click her heels and return to Minnesota.

Summing it Up: State of Wonder is a wonder that will transport you to a grown-up “Land of Oz” where native dancers, miracle drugs, incredible dreams, and a jungle so thick and hot it makes you want to shower await you.   You’ll beg your book club to abandon their next selection so you can discuss it. If I could I’d adopt Easter, a character I’ll carry with me forever. I adored Patchett’s Bel Canto but this may just top it.

Rating: 5 stars

Category: Fiction, Gourmet, Book Club

Publication date: June 7, 2011

Author website: http://www.annpatchett.com/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=20650&isbn13=9780062049803&displayType=readingGuide

Interview with Diane Rehm: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-06-08/ann-patchett-state-wonder

What Others are Saying:
The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/state-of-wonder-by-ann-patchett-2293017.html

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fiction/ann-patchett/state-wonder/#review

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/books/state-of-wonder-by-ann-patchett-book-review.html

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-204980-3

Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/books-state-of-wonder/2011/05/30/AGQicRLH_story.html

South of Superior by Ellen Airgood

2011-06-15T14:08:00.004-05:00

Mining the Lake Superior shores of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Ellen Airgood creates McAllaster, a hamlet filled with eccentric characters similar to those found in Richard Russo’s forgotten mill towns. Airgood infuses an unlikely blend of rascals and saints with a spirit that seems to come only in remote locales. Madeline Stone, a Chicago waitress about to marry a professor and begin to live her dream of art school, abandons it all to move five hundred miles north to help care for Arbutus, an incapacitated woman she’s barely met. Elderly sisters Gladys and Arbutus are two of the most engaging women to populate a town since the novel Broken for You introduced a disparate cast that made the word community meaningful. Toss in a man with a dream, a mentally challenged uncle, a messed up single mother and her charming son and you’ll be ready to head north to meet this crew yourself.

The town is the true main character though as Madeline notes: “McAllaster was a kind of a tribe. This wasn’t cozy or nice. She sensed that it was an equation, that membership would exact a price: the loss of privacy, anonymity, certain freedoms she’d taken for granted in Chicago, maybe the loss of the right to selfishness. Everybody in the tribe didn’t love each other. They disagreed and gossiped and argued; they laid traps for each other and rejoiced when the trap was sprung; they relished placing blame wherever it would stick and took pleasure in one another’s mistakes. But when there was trouble, there was help.”

Airgood’s novel is predictable in the way that we want summer reads to be predictable. This predictability makes it flow as the characters behave as real, caring people do when they’re broke, hurt, or damaged yet still manage to do the right thing most of the time.

Small town life isn’t for sissies nor is surviving in northern Michigan’s harsh, economically impoverished areas but this novel depicts the troubles and the rewards of opening yourself to others regardless of where you live. I flat out fell in love with these characters and flew through this wonder of a novel determined to drive north to eat at the diner the author runs. Her interviews of several lifelong residents and what must be her keen ear as she serves those who eat at the diner surface in the dialogue that both sings and carries the plot.

Summing it Up: Take this feel-good book about a group of unforgettable characters to the shore of your favorite lake for a perfect summer escape.

Rating: 5 stars

Category: Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast

Publication date: June,9, 2011

Author website: http://ellenairgood.com

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews:
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fiction/ellen-airgood/south-superior/

Publishers Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59448-793-4

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

2011-06-03T17:18:00.003-05:00

Okay for Now is ostensibly a sequel to Schmidt’s delightful Wednesday Wars but it stands alone beautifully. Doug Swieteck’s Dad is such a jerk that he gives other jerks a bad name. He drinks, hits Doug and his brothers, and loses his job and the family’s home. Lucas, Doug’s oldest brother, troubled as a teen is now in Viet Nam. Brother Chris, a smart mouth, hangs out with the wrong crowd. Because of his incorrigible family, Doug is assumed to be a bad kid and he can’t make friends in the upstate New York mill town where they relocate.

Lacking friends and fearing home, Doug visits the town library and sees an Audubon folio open to an arctic tern. The vivid nature of the tern enthralls him and the librarian encourages Doug’s interest and teaches him to draw. Soon Doug learns the significance of the portfolio and that it’s being sold off bird by bird, page by page.

Home life worsens as Doug’s beloved Joe Pepitone memorabilia is taken from him, brother Chris is arrested and brother Lucas comes home from Viet Nam with significant injuries. All these problems pale when an insensitive gym teacher exposes Doug’s deepest secret. Doug’s friend Lil and a few adults recognize the fortitude, talent and intelligence that Doug possesses and they support him as he strives to save the Audubon folio and himself.

This book is humorous enough for the most jaded boys to love and it’s smart enough for well-read adults to savor. Even world-weary readers will shed a tear or two then cheer for Doug to overcome the obstacles facing him. Nothing should keep this from winning the Newbury Award as best children’s book this year. Book clubs that loved discussing The Book Thief or The Giver will want to add this to their lists.

Summing it Up: Buy this for boys ages ten to fourteen and make sure you read it yourself. It’s sure to be an award winner and a classic. The characters in this affirming novel will stay with you for a long time.

Rating: 5 stars

Category: Fiction, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Book Club

Publication date: April 5, 2011

Publisher’s website: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=1051989

What Others are Saying:

Chicago Tribune: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-12/entertainment/chi-okay-for-now-by-gary-d-schmidt-20110412_1_audubon-gary-schmidt-life-changing-moments

Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/0509/Okay-for-Now

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/books/review/childrens-books-okay-for-now-by-gary-d-schmidt.html

School Library Journal: http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2011/02/12/review-of-the-day-okay-for-now-by-gary-d-schmidt/

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

2011-06-02T06:03:00.002-05:00

Dreams of Joy promises to be one of the big books of the summer. Its fast pace will complement a day on the beach and its historical information will sate those wanting more.

This sequel to Shanghai Girls stands alone and surpasses the first installment. See's breakout book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan has long been a favorite of book clubs and historical fiction enthusiasts and Dreams of Joy should please them both. See’s latest novel enables readers to connect to those in the countryside during China's Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. An estimated 45 million people died in China during the famine of those years yet most of us know very little about that famine. Dreams of Joy allows us to see it through the eyes of Joy, a headstrong University of Chicago student, who believes that China will offer a utopian life and an escape from family problems.

Joy’s mother, Pearl, who grew up in Shanghai and was sold into marriage in Los Angeles in the 1930s, rushes to China to convince Joy to come home. See fashions the theme of maternal love throughout the novel in a manner that will have book club members clamoring to share their thoughts. Joy’s reconnection with her biological father, a famous artist, allows See to paint the countryside in colors that illustrate the profound changes wrought by the Mao regime. As Joy assists her father in teaching art to the peasants, the reader is able to “see” the land and the people in a new way. This device works to make the people and the land visible and it balances the emotional shading See uses to make her characters real.

Summing it Up: Read this to learn of a famine that didn’t need to occur and enjoy it for the depth of the character development. It will satisfy both book club members that love history and those wanting a page-turning story.

Rating: 5 stars

Category: Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Book Club

Publication date: May 31, 2011

Author website: http://www.lisasee.com/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/rc/2011/04/25/discussion-questions-for-lisa-sees-new-novel-dreams-of-joy

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fiction/lisa-see/dreams-joy/#review

Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/15/entertainment/la-ca-lisa-see-20110515

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4000-6712-1

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman

2011-05-22T10:01:00.003-05:00

This morning when I read in The Writer's Almana c that today is artist Mary Cassatt's birthday, my mind fondly recalled Harriet Scott Chessman's exquisite portrait of Cassatt and her sister Lydia. The small novel explores Cassatt's artistic development in vignettes aligned with paintings of her sister, her favorite model.

Ten years ago when I read the novel and used it in two of the book clubs I lead, I watched as it led many to escape the doldrums of the aftermath of 9-11 and enter the realistic world of the Cassatt family and their life in Paris in the late 1870s and 1880s. The novel would be worth reading simply to learn of Cassatt's complicated relationship with Edgar Degas and the other artists of the impressionist movement. It would also be enough just to learn about Lydia's life and her struggles with Bright's Disease. My book clubs had complex conversations about the role of women in history and about the continued lack of respect for women's art today.

The physical beauty of this small treasure makes it a book that begs to be purchased in hardcover and cherished. It also lures the reader into considering relationships and while it would be simple to point, click and purchase over the internet, I'd advise picking up the phone and calling or visiting an independent book store to have a conversation about why you want to order it in hardcover. If you don't have a relationship with a bookstore, click here to find my favorite store in Petoskey, Michigan or here to find an independent near your home.

Summing it Up: Read this gorgeous novel to fall into the life and times of Mary and Lydia Cassatt in Paris, to learn about impressionism and to explore what it meant to be a woman artist over 100 years ago.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Fiction, Gourmet, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: November, 2001

Author Website: http://www.harrietchessman.com/index.html

Reading Group Guide:
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/lydia_cassatt_reading1.asp

What Others are Saying:
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/04/books/a-voice-out-of-the-silence-imagining-the-other-cassatt.html
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-58322-272-0

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

2011-05-18T16:52:00.001-05:00

There are times when reading a Jodi Picoult novel feels like watching a Lifetime television movie. Picoult takes issues that are at the nexus of change and turns them into page-turners. Picoult’s books sell regardless of the subject because her devoted readers love engaging with her characters and escaping into the complete worlds she creates. This time Picoult tackles gay rights and embryo “custody.”

Most Americans today are certain in their beliefs about why people are gay, whether they should marry and whether the Bible condemns homosexuality. But most Americans rarely, if ever, talk with those who disagree with their beliefs. Picoult’s novel attempts to connect readers with gay and lesbian characters and with characters that consider them to be an abomination. In doing so, Picoult offers readers a chance to learn arguments about both sides of the question and thus provides a book tailor-made for spirited book club discussions.

This novel also breaks new ground as it includes a CD of songs that are “sung” in the voice of the main character, a music therapist. Picoult wrote the songs’ lyrics to correspond to the mood and voice of the chapters as they evolve. This allows readers to get to know the main character in a new way. It didn’t resonate with me but my guess is that many will enjoy it.

Zoe and Max Baxter have been trying to have children for years with no luck when Zoe has a miscarriage at her surprise baby shower - the shower she didn’t want to have. Melodramatic, you bet. Zoe and Max are not wealthy; all their money and emotions have gone into in vitro fertilization and Max is done with the emotional and financial toll. Zoe isn’t so they divorce. They agree so much about the terms and have so little that they don’t even hire a lawyer. Ay, there’s the rub – they never addressed what would happen to their remaining embryos. When Zoe falls in love, realizes she’s a lesbian and marries Vanessa, a counselor at her school, Vanessa offers to carry one of Zoe’s embryos. But Max, a recovering alcoholic who’s been helped by a pastor and has moved in with his wealthy, right-wing brother, has other ideas. Enter some larger than life lawyers and you have a page-turning court battle. Picoult avoids stereotyping the main characters by telling the story from each of their view points. With the wedding planner, a lawyer and some other minor characters the stereotyping diminishes the tale. Regardless, this is a sure fire way to get book clubs talking

Summing it Up: Read this book no matter what your beliefs are about gay rights. It’s a page-turner that will get many people talking.

Rating: 4 stars for stimulating a discussion and for immersing readers in worlds they may not know

Category: Fiction, Chinese Carryout, Book Club

Publication date: March 2, 2011

Author website: http://www.jodipicoult.com/

Read an Excerpt: http://www.jodipicoult.com/sing-you-home.html#excerpt

Book Discussion Questions: http://www.jodipicoult.com/sing-you-home.html#questions

What Others are Saying:

Chicago Sun-Times: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/books/4819214-421/review-sing-you-home-by-jodi-picoult.html

Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/15/entertainment/la-et-book-20110315

USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2011-03-01-picoultrev01_ST_N.htm

Cherries in Winter by Suzan Colón

2011-05-10T12:27:00.006-05:00

Cherries in Winter: My Family’s Recipe for Hope in Hard Times is the perfect antidote to worrying about today’s economy. Suzan Colón is no cockeyed optimist; she’s a realist who began cooking when she lost her job. She thought about what her Nana did during the depression and began turning lemons into lemon pie. Colón cooks up happiness along with soup, meatloaf, cookies, and other healthy yet inexpensive recipes.

This is a joy-filled journey to accepting what you have and not lamenting what might have been. Colón couldn’t have children but that didn’t stop her from handing down her family’s legacy to those lucky enough to read her book.

Summing it Up: Read this tasty memoir when you need an escape. It’s filled with joy, hope, recipes and truth.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Non-fiction, Dessert, Grandma’s Pot Roast

Publication date: November 3, 2009

Author Website: http://www.suzancolon.net/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_c/cherries_in_winter1.asp

What Others are Saying:
“The narrative has ample Working Girl spunk and shifts deftly if quickly among stories and decades and geographies.” —Publishers Weekly

"It is a testament both to her thriftiness and to her skills as an editor that Colón manages so effectively to combine cultural history, personal journey and recipes in such an economical package. A charming, wry and ultimately satisfying memoir of food, family and overcoming hard times." -Debra Ginsberg, Shelf Awareness

Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

2011-05-10T05:49:00.007-05:00

This imaginative story, set in 1964 London, begins when Esther Hammerhans, a librarian in the House of Commons, welcomes a new lodger. It’s Black Pat, as Mr. Chartwell prefers to be addressed, “a black dog,” a dark presence trying to enter Esther’s world. Esther finds him witty and charming but also annoying and smelly yet she may want him to stay. Black Pat’s a specter but he seems completely real to Esther. Meanwhile just before his retirement from Parliament, 89-year-old Winston Churchill awakens to Black Pat visiting his bedroom as he’s done for many years. Black Pat is the black dog of depression that’s hounded Churchill for much of his life. Esther, still grieving the loss of her young husband, is ripe for the seductive powers of depression in this original look at the grip depression holds on so many.

Esther’s friends recognize her grief and a new co-worker offers companionship and a silly sarcasm that awakens her but is that enough to stave off the black dog? Esther is called to Chartwell, Churchill’s home, to take dictation for his retirement speech. That it happens to be the anniversary of her husband’s death is a coincidence that works in author Hunt’s apt hands. Will Esther and Churchill help each other or will the black dog prevail?

This novel will make readers laugh out loud at the irony and clever bon-mots that the bête noire utters. Then within seconds, the careful layering of the descent and struggles the characters endure as they fight their depression will have readers close to tears. Rarely does such a singularly original novel have such charm and universal appeal. This tale is supremely engaging yet it will make readers ponder why some master darkness while others succumb to it. Readers that love language and dry, dry humor will find that the wittiness makes the darkness palatable. Black Pat’s ebullient character actually makes the mine field of depression captivating and he seems ripe for a movie version.

One question this book raises is whether people who suffer depression would want to read this and if they did could it help them. A lay person shouldn’t answer that question yet somehow the sensitivity of this novel makes it seem that it might be welcomed by those with depression or those hoping to understand them.

Summing it Up: Read this original and inspiring debut novel that shows the odd connection between Winston Churchill and a young librarian for the imaginative language, humor, and perceptive look at the world of depression.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Fiction, Sushi with Green Tea Sorbet, Book Club

Publication date: February 8, 2011

Read the First Chapter: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/excerpt-mr-chartwell-by-rebecca-hunt.html?_r=1

What Others are Saying:

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/23/mr-chartwell-rebecca-hunt-review

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fiction/rebecca-hunt/mr-chartwell/

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-mr-chartwell-by-rebecca-hunt.html
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/01/AR2011030106377.html

Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

2011-05-07T11:53:00.003-05:00

Lost in Shangri-La: the Epic True Story of a Plane Crash into the Stone Age is the page-turning true story of a 1945 accident in a remote New Guinea valley inhabited by natives thought to be cannibals. Upon the discovery of the valley, Col. Ray Elsmore, commander of the 322^nd Troup Carrier Wing of the U.S. Army Air Forces, led several fly-overs to show this valley, dubbed “Shangri-La,” to the men and women under his command. One such sortie ended in a crash leaving only three survivors. Using journals, logs and photographs from the survivors and rescuers, Zuckoff weaves a story that seems more like fiction than the accurate historical account that it is.

The book is at its best when telling of the three survivors and the grace and courage they exhibited just after the crash. Margaret Hastings, a 30-year-old WAC, whose burns and gangrene seemed unbearable, endured pain and hunger with kindness and humor. Her journal entries about the flight, the crash and the natives that befriended them vividly portray the incident. Kenneth Decker, a tech sergeant with a severe head injury, burns and gangrene, is a profile in courage and Lieutenant John McCollum provides the cool, strong, yet compassionate leadership that saves them. Adding to the flavor of the tale is Zuckoff’s even-handed depiction of the rescuers including heroic Filipino-American medics Doc Bulato and Rammy Ramirez that tenderly cared for Hastings and Decker’s injuries. Zuckoff also shows the natives as multi-dimensional not as the media and rescuers expected them to be.

Zuckoff carefully depicts the naiveté of the officers and pilots as they venture into enemy territory on a joy ride yet he never editorializes on their decisions. He explores American chutzpah with word pictures that demonstrate the views that were prevalent in 1945. The bonus epilogue offers an intriguing view into the lives of the natives, survivors and rescuers after the war. It also makes the reader ponder the sociological implications of the events.

Summing it Up: Read this book to learn about survival and a daring rescue in the jungles of New Guinea near the end of World War II. Enjoy the cinematic, yet realistic, portrayal of the men and women who crashed, those that saved them and the natives they got to know.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Non-Fiction, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: April 26, 2011

Author website: http://www.mitchellzuckoff.com/

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/non-fiction/mitchell-zuckoff/lost-shangri-la/#review

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/reviews/single/164663-lost-in-shangri-la-the-epic-true-story-of-a-plane-crash-into-the-stone-age.html

“’Lost in Shangri-La’ is a movie waiting to be made.” – BookPage.

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

2011-05-06T13:13:00.004-05:00

Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal is a charming and thought-provoking narrative about a 29-year-old and his travels around the world including his three-month stop in Nepal to volunteer in an orphanage. Grennan acknowledges that the orphanage stint was something that would impress girls and look good on his resumé. He never expected to fall in love with Nepal and a group of orphaned kids. When Grennan met seven children that had been stolen from their families by traffickers he vowed to find them safe and secure homes. His subsequent travels and his commitment to the children are commendable but the thing that makes his story sing is his joy in the journey. His brushes with kind strangers, parents that give up everything for their children, kidnapping, corruption, absurd regulations, and Maoist rebels that control vast areas paint a balanced portrait of Nepal as well.

Connor Grennan loves “his” kids and the joy and fun he has with them is contagious. The way the kids tackle him and play games with him illustrates that children are the same everywhere. Grennan’s treks to find the children’s families, his sacrifices and his always infectious optimism make this a book that both informs and delights.

Toss in a long distance romance after Grennan meets and instantly falls for a woman who makes a brief visit and his search to find his Christian faith while honoring and appreciating the Buddhists and Hindus in his midst and you have a whale of a story. A portion of the profits from the book go toward Next Generation Nepal (NGN) that Grennan founded to help reunite Nepalese orphans with their families.

Summing it Up: This book will inform and educate you about Nepal while making you smile. If you liked Three Cups of Tea, you’ll love this charming and caring view into the lives of children in the mountains of Nepal. This would also be the perfect book to interest teens in reading and in learning about the world. Even “reluctant reader” teenage boys would enjoy Grennan’s adventures.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Non-Fiction, Soul Food, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: January 25, 2011

Author website: http://conorgrennan.com/

Reading Group Guide: http://conorgrennan.com/little-princes/reading-guide/

What Others are Saying:

School Library Journal: http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/adult4teen/2011/01/24/little-princes/

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/bytopic/authors/interviews/article/45392-an-orphanage-in-nepal-pw-talks-with-connor-grennan.htm

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

2011-05-05T15:24:00.007-05:00

It would be almost impossible for anyone reading Siobhan Fallon’s gripping interrelated short stories to escape without asking what to do to respect, understand and support our military and their families in the suffering and life-altering experiences they bear for us. Bearing witness means experiencing the life of another then taking compassionate action. Fallon’s tales weave a tapestry so colorful and with such intricate detail that they force the reader to become a part of the Fort Hood, Texas community. The question the reader must ask after finishing this book thus becomes, “what should I do to support these men and women and their families.” When a work of fiction makes the reader feel compelled to mail copies to the Pentagon and to the President and Congress, it has hit the mark. Regardless of political leanings, everyone must read this book to understand just what we are asking our soldiers to bear in our name.

To use the word insightful to describe Fallon’s keen perception of both those who return from horror to those who lose the ones they love would be a gross understatement. Fallon’s stories are perspicacious, that is, they are both discerning and acutely perceptive. Fallon paints word pictures that are tight yet so vivid that they make the scenes glow in Technicolor. In the story “Gold Star,” Josie Schaeffer is driving around the commissary parking lot looking for a space. “She had forgotten it was payday.” That sentence foreshadows what’s to come when “Checking her watch again, she finally pulled into the empty Gold Star Family designated spot in front. She waited a moment, peering at herself in the mirror, composing her face into what she imagined an ordinary face looked like, tugging her mouth into a smile but then giving up. She knew the spouses walking by with their loaded carts were hesitating, trying not to stare into Josie’s window, trading lifted eyebrows with the other women passing.” This is the mark of an exceptional writer; she shows us who and what Josie is instead of telling us. Thus the reader enters the life of a Gold Star widow and begins to perceive what her world encompasses.

Fallon details the quotidian sounds of the ordinary on a military base – the thump of boots stomping and of “football games turned up too high” followed by the relative silence after massive units ship out. She presents the fears of the women left behind – not just fears of husbands that might be injured or killed but fears that they might find comfort in another woman’s arms. She inserts the reader into the trauma of the “lucky” ones who return looking like they haven’t been damaged. Fallon demonstrates the psychological toll of Iraq and Afghanistan with the impact that Tim O’Brien brought to the Viet Nam War in The Things They Carried. She forces the reader to look beyond the headlines yet she does it in such a sensitive and tender manner that it’s bearable. This book is not depressing; it is realistic and compassionate. It’s also something of a page-turner which seems like an oxymoron as the reader must ponder what’s read. But it’s so compelling that you simply can’t wait to see what happens next so thinking about what happens takes place as you put down the book. It haunts you as you brush your teeth and for months after whenever Afghanistan or Iraq flash by on your television screen.

It’s surprising that this is Fallon’s debut as she’s such a polished and wise writer. She’s used her experiences living at Fort Hood while her husband, an Army major, served two tours in Iraq and has translated them in to something universal that’s a gift to all readers.

Many book clubs don’t select short stories for discussion as they find it difficult to discuss a variety of plots. This collection of interrelated stories would be exceptional for book clubs as there are so many challenging topics to explore and as the stories are all related by place and by military service.

Summing it Up: Regardless of whether you ever read short stories, you must read this book. Yes, it’s sad; yes it’ll make you ponder things that aren’t easy but in the end you’ll be thankful that you shared this tender experience. This book will change you; it probably won’t change your political beliefs about war but it will change your feelings about those who serve to preserve your safety.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Fiction, Gourmet, Tapas, Book Club

Publication date: January 20, 2011

Author website: http://www.siobhanfallon.com/

What Others are Saying:

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/books/11book.html

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/reviews/single/60664-you-know-when-the-men-are-gone.html

Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/24/AR2011012405536.html

Caribou Island by David Vann

2011-03-28T19:07:00.009-05:00

Author David Vann conveys the elemental landscape of the Alaskan wilderness as a metaphor for recent retirees Irene and Gary and their unraveling marriage in his heartbreaking novel Caribou Island. If this were a meal, it would be a gourmet treasure, a palette of colors, textures and ingredients so unusual as to make the diner gasp at its unique nature. However, the hopelessness of the protagonists’ lives makes it almost impossible to take more than small bites of this tome. Irene’s headaches and melancholy are rendered to make the reader feel the pain and the depression as she experiences it. As a reader I found it arduous to dwell in Irene’s maladies when I wanted to scream at her to get away from her narcissist husband. Gary’s obsession with building a cabin without plans or elementary skills when he knew that Irene hated the island and its isolation was unpleasant to read and he seemed too insensitive to be real. Their daughter, Rhoda, sees her mother’s descent as a problem and she tries to help but she has her own demons. She’s lived with her wealthy boyfriend for a year and they have a future but Jim is exhibiting much of the same lack of empathy for her life as her father shows her mother. The minor characters add a Stephen King aspect to the novel contributing even more to the disquieting atmosphere. When visitor Monique seduces Jim, the writing sizzles and evokes a scene as visual as one by Tennessee Williams and with some of his same psychological intrigue.

Readers will need strong stomachs for dysfunction and misery to tolerate the despondency and enjoy the beauty of the writing. David Vann is clearly an adept novelist with breathtaking talent. This novel deserves five stars for the luminous writing but I can only grant it three for readability. Vann clearly prepares the reader for the stark conclusion and for the manner in which the sins of the past visit future generations but for me that still didn't make it easy enough to accept. Vann writes: "Those who couldn't fit anywhere else came here, and if they couldn't cling to anything here, they just fell off the edge." As a reader, I fell off the edge while reading this novel. Usually I’m grateful for a novel capturing me so fully but I just couldn’t swallow that much tragedy in one book.

Summing it up: Read this dark, morose novel about a dysfunctional couple who set off to build a cabin on a remote island in Alaska coupled with the story of the effect of their lives on their adult children for the writing but know that it’ll be disheartening.

Rating: 3 stars for readability/5 stars for the writing
Category: Fiction, Gourmet

Publication Date: January, 2011

What others are saying:

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/29/caribou-island-david-vann-review

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Canty-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/06/entertainment/la-ca-david-vann-20110206

The Paris Review: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/02/10/david-vann-on-%E2%80%98caribou-island%E2%80%99/

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-03-26T14:01:00.009-05:00

In Jacqueline Winspear's early novels, Maisie Dobbs was a perceptive, plucky and competent investigator sensitive to shell shock’s damage and the unseen aftereffects of war. In A Lesson in Secrets, set in 1932, Maisie seems to be juggling too many mysteries and relationships to do justice to all of them.

Maisie Dobbs, a truly unique character, first appeared in 2003 to much acclaim. In this the eighth entry in the series, Maisie’s boyfriend James is in Canada on business leaving her confused but with time for new endeavors. She has a new secretary with a mystery of her own. But the main thrust of the novel is Maisie’s acceptance of an undercover assignment overseen by both Scotland Yard and the Special Service that has her teaching at a Cambridge college devoted to promoting peace where some of the college’s non-British professors may be leaning toward the burgeoning Nazi party.

When the college’s controversial founder and a famed pacifist author of children’s books is murdered and his secretary disappears, Maisie tussles with the Secret Service as she tries to catch the murderer. The novel is at its best in describing the attraction of the Nazi Party to Britain’s upper classes. But too many subplots and unnecessary coincidences make the rushed ending less satisfying than the earlier titles.

Summing it up: Start with Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather then wend your way through all eight Maisie mysteries including A Lesson in Secrets. The last installment doesn’t live up to the early novels but it’s still an enjoyable escape.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Fiction, Chinese Carryout, Mysteries and Thrillers

Publication date: March 22, 2011

Author site: http://www.jacquelinewinspear.com/lesson-in-secrets.php

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fiction/jacqueline-winspear/lesson-secrets/

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-172767-2

Meet Einstein by Mariela Kleiner, illustrations by Viviana Garofoli

2011-03-25T16:02:00.006-05:00

Meet Einstein is a joy of a book for children ages 2 – 6. Its illustrations will enchant young children and they’ll wow their parents and teachers. Until I read this gem I hadn’t realized how much the preschool world needed an energetic book about light, gravity and the world of science. Viviana Garofoli’s bright illustrations make science colorful and exciting. When I opened the book the end papers captured me and I envisioned young children staring intently as they determined the use of each tool from the “rock pick: to break apart big rocks and make little rocks” to the “balance so I can test if one thing is heavier than another.”

Seeing Einstein discovering new things about gravity will enthrall preschoolers as they view a playground where children go down a slide and a girl hanging on a jungle gym loses her headband. If you need a gift for any young child, buy this book – they won’t have anything like it. And for parents there are clever facts and questions to ask so they can keep up with the kids. Donate a copy to your library and help encourage children to believe that science is cool and “maybe one day you will be a scientist too.”

Summing it up: I absolutely adore this ode to light, gravity and science that made me run in search of preschoolers so I could share its color-filled illustrations and excitement. Children will beg to read this charming concept book.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Peanut Butter and Jelly

Publication date: March 1, 2011

What Others are Saying:

ForeWord says: “it’s cool indeed.”

Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West

2011-01-30T17:03:00.005-06:00

If Hoosiers and Breaking Away are among your favorite movies and if you cheer for the underdog in the NCAA tournament, Blind Your Ponies is for you. Between 2001 and 2010, Stanley Gordon West hand sold over 40,000 copies of this formerly self-published 539-page novel out of the trunk of his car. Last year Chuck Adams, the editor of Water for Elephants, read it and grabbed the novel for Algonquin Books and it’s been flying off bookstore shelves all across America.

Reading this story is the closest thing to the Indiana high school basketball games I grew up seeing when entire towns shut down for tournament games. This tale, however, is set in the tiny town of Willow Creek, Montana where the boy’s basketball team hasn’t won a game in five years. Sam Pickett, the coach, has quit and his escape to this small town isn’t working out as he’d expected. When Peter, a true point guard, moves in with his irascible grandmother during his parents’ divorce and Olaf, a 6’11” Norwegian exchange student arrives, things begin to change. Sam returns to coach and lead these boys in a quest that he reminds them resembles that of Don Quixote. The team begins winning and the entire community begins to believe that they could just possibly win the state tournament. Once the townspeople begin believing in the team they also start believing in themselves.

This is the book to put in the hands of reluctant readers particularly teenage or young adult males that love basketball but think they don’t love reading. They’ll thrill at the detailed descriptions of passes, pick and rolls, and screens. Non-basketball fans may find the games too technical but they’ll still enjoy the redemptive story.

I imagine that it’d be almost impossible for an editor to tell a 78-year-old author who’s sold thousands of books without any help that the novel would be better if he’d tone down his overly florid descriptions and eliminate some of the contrived metaphors. But that’s just quibbling. The writing isn’t perfect and the book could be more concise but this guy isn’t Hemingway, he’s an old-fashioned storyteller. The humor is contagious and the characters seem like family in a book that will get story lovers through a long cold winter.

Summing it up: This old-fashioned yarn will appeal to basketball fans and those who love triumphant stories with quirky characters.

Rating: 4 stars
Category: Fiction, Grandma's Pot Roast

Publication date: January 18, 2011

What Others are Saying:

Booklist calls it “A fervent feel-good fairy tale of a novel.”

Publishers Weekly notes it as “An uplifting story about the triumph of human decency.”

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

2011-01-22T13:53:00.008-06:00

Three sisters, recalling the three witches in Macbeth, have returned to their small college hometown after learning that their absent-minded but brilliant mother has breast cancer. Their mother’s illness provides them with reasons to avoid uncomfortable truths awaiting them in the world outside fictional Barnwell, Ohio.

The novel’s first sentences tell the tale: “We came home because we were failures. We wouldn’t admit that, of course, not at first, not to ourselves, and certainly not to anyone else. We said we came home because our mother was ill, because we needed a break, a momentary pause before setting off for the Next Big Thing.” The novel's unusual first-person plural narrative voice establishes a distinct tone that allows the sisters to speak as a modern-day Greek chorus and gives the reader an immediate sense of belonging to the family.

Rose (Rosalind), the eldest, is a math professor at a large university in nearby Columbus who coordinates everyone else's well being while spurning her fiancé’s request to join him in England. Bean (Bianca), the dazzling but insecure middle sister, has been fired from her job in New York. Finally, the baby, Cordy (Cordelia), arrives malnourished and unwilling to admit that she’s pregnant. Their father, a professor, is so obsessed with Shakespeare that he speaks almost entirely in the words of the bard. This is a family that insults, banters, and communicates in sonnets and couplets. This device shouldn’t work; it should be tiring and overwrought, but Eleanor Brown seamlessly fashions it into an effortless view of the sisters as a family.

To read or not to read, that is the question. I highly recommend this novel for those who love books. It’s a love letter to the power of reading. It’s also a perceptive look at families and the values and characteristics that seemingly different members share. Even the minor characters are original and filled with wisdom. Father Aiden tells Bean, “We tell ourselves we are too fat, or too ugly, or too old, or too foolish. We tell ourselves these stories because they allow us to excuse our actions, and they allow us to pass off the responsibility for things we have done, maybe to something within our control, but anything other than the decisions we have made.” This novel introduces a bevy of intriguing characters whose stories illuminate our own foibles while granting readers a charming interlude and much to consider.

Summing it Up: Don’t miss this ode to the power of books, families, and to the joy in stepping from safety into real life. Select it for your book club and you'll have a discussion that leads itself.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Fiction, Grandma's Pot Roast, Book Club

Publication date: January 20, 2011

Author website: http://www.eleanor-brown.com/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_w/the_weird_sisters1.asp

What Others are Saying:

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/books/17book.html

Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/45164-no-eye-of-newt-here-pw-talks-with-eleanor-brown.html

ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12723018

USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-01-20-buzzplus20_ST_N.htm