LIT AND LIFE

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

"Then must you strive to be worthy of her love. Be brave and pure, fearless to the strong and humble to the weak; and so, whether this love prosper or no, you will have fitted yourself to be honored by a maiden's love, which is, in sooth, the highest guerdon which a true knight can hope for." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The White Company"

The old couple had come round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and love, who can change their winter into a gentle, Indian summer, have come as victors through the ordeal of life. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The Brown Hand"

"You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The White Company"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - who knew he was such a romantic!

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White The Birth of The "It" Girl and The Crime of the Century " by Paula Uruburu

2012-02-13T06:00:00.002-06:00

American Eve Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White The Birth of The "It" Girl & The Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu
400 pages
Published April 2009 by Penguin Books
Source: bought it after hearing about it on NPR

Florence Evelyn Nesbit was born into the upper middle class. Unfortunately, when her father died it was discovered that he had been quite a bad businessman who left his widow, daughter and son, Howard in dire circumstances. Mrs. Nesbit proved to be hopeless when it came time to provide her children. Before long the trio was shuffling from rundown boardinghouse to rundown boardinghouse until the day Evelyn is literally "discovered" on the street by an artist who wanted to paint her picture.

Soon the beautiful young girl was earning enough as a popular artist's model to support her family and they were lured to New York where Evelyn quickly became the muse of artists and photographer's alike. Her likeness appeared on sheet music, in advertisements and even in the paintings hung in churches.

When Evelyn's dreams took her to the stage, her life changed even more rapidly. Young and old, rich and poor - men began sending her love letters, flowers and begging for her time. She had very little interest in any of them, although her dear mama was more than willing to allow some of the wealthy, older gentlemen to fawn over her sixteen-year-old daughter.

Enter Stanford White, leading architect and notorious consumer of young girls. For months White showered Evelyn, her mother and her brother with his largess, moving them into better lodgings, paying for young Howard's education, and providing Evelyn with all manner of diversions. One horrible night, White finally showed his true colors; he drugged Evelyn and raped her. For some time afterward she shunned him but she had so loved him that before long she forgave him. The two began an affair that lasted until Evelyn began to suspect White of having other girls as well. She sought out the attention of Jack Barrymore (who would come to prominence as actor John Barrymore), initially to make White jealous but eventually she grew very fond of him. In fact, the two became engaged until Mama Nesbit and Stanford White stepped in to put an end to it.

The void left room for a third man who had had his eye on Evelyn for some time, Harry K. Thaw of Pittsburgh. Thaw was by turns an evangelical and a rounder with a brutal streak. He spent more than a year wining over Evelyn and convincing her to marry him which she finally did despite his having beaten and raped her on a trip to Europe.

Thaw had another obsession that would be the downfall of both himself and Evelyn - he abhorred Stanford White and was incessant in his belief that he must make White pay for his sinful ways. When he found out what White had done to Evelyn, he became more enraged than ever. When other methods proved inadequate, Thaw took matters into his own hands. One night, in front of hundreds of witnesses, Thaw shot White to death on the rooftop theater of White's own Madison Square Garden.

Thousands gathered daily as the trial of the century commenced. Crowds gathered on the streets below the so-called Bridge of Sighs, a walkway between the jail and the courthouse hoping to catch a glimpse of Thaw as he made his way to first one and then a second trial. Mother Thaw's vast resources managed to keep Harry out of jail but they couldn't keep him out of the insane asylum. Poor Evelyn was forced during both trials to testify as to what White had done to her and, although the public initially took pity on her, her life was never the same. At the age of twenty-one, the once rising star was a divorcee with a young son. She lived another sixty-five years but life was hard for the woman who had once been the face of a new century.

I was drawn to this book because Evelyn, Thaw and White were all characters in E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, a book I adored.

"To anyone familiar with E. L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, the name Evelyn Nesbit may evoke the mauve-tinted crucible of the sentimentality inclined and cynically named Gilded Age. To others, it may signify passion and perversion, murder and scandal, "love, hate, villainy, perfidy, and outraged innocence." The extinction of an era. And a red velvet swing."

I have always wondered about Evelyn Nesbit and when I heard about this book I knew it was one for me. Uruburu did not disappoint. The book is well-researched and works on many levels, as a fine piece of story telling, recounting of historical and a look a society as the country was caught between one way of live and another.

Sunday Salon - February 12

2012-02-12T00:58:00.002-06:00

Happy Sunday! It's been a good weekend here at Chez Shepp. Much has been accomplished, we've watched some good movies, got to spend some time with all five of us together, and The Big Guy and I once again had a marvelous evening with my parents watching the folk music duo, Neal and Leandra, perform. Today I'm planning on having lunch with Miss H, my sister and my niece.

We call ourselves Musketeers (it's a long story having to do with steak knives and the whole "all of one and one for all" thing) and whenever one of us needs a pick me up, we're there for each other. There is bound to be plenty of laughter and I'm once again reminded of why I live where I live. Would I love to be someplace where the temperatures never dip to 3 degrees below zero (this morning's temperature) and I never had to drive on icy roads? Absolutely! But when the various branches of my family came to this country, this is where they settled and this is where my family remains. There is nothing more important to me.

Speaking of the Musketeers, have any of you read Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers? I've only every read the abridged version of his The Count of Monte Cristo. I found that to be thoroughly entertaining so I might just have to pick up the tale of the Musketeers one of these days.

This week on the blog will be all about love, in its many incarnations. I've got two book reviews scheduled this week, American Eve and Rules of Civility, which both deal with different kinds of love to some extent, a Valentine's Day post showcasing an author it had never occurred to me to think of as romantic, and a Fairy Tale Fridays post about love. As for my reading, it's also going to deal with love. Right now I'm reading The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton and will follow that up with, I think, P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern.

I hope none of you get too wrapped up in the commercialization of the day and take some time this week to tell someone that you love them!

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Little Match Girl

2012-02-10T06:00:00.001-06:00

One of the fairy tales I loved best when I was young was Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl." Perhaps it's because I'm especially fond of Andersen on the whole, being of Danish descent. But I'm more inclined to believe that it's because the story is so sad and yet so filled with hope. Unlike so many fairy tales, while this one pulls no punches, there is nothing in the story that has to be sanitized for children. In fact, in reading our copy of The Little Match Girl, illustrated by Rachel Isadora and published in 1987, I found that I was reading exactly the same story as the one I had just read in my "grownup" collection of Andersen's tales. The story of "The Little Match Girl" was first published in 1845 and was intended by Andersen to be a moral lesson about the plight of Europe's poor.

On New Year's Eve, a poor girl is on the streets, barefooted, cold and hungry. No one is buying her matchsticks and she can't go home until she sells some or her father will beat her. Finally, she seeks solace in a sheltered corner and lights one of the match sticks to keep warm. Suddenly she is seeing visions of a roasted goose. When that match stick burns out, she quickly lights another and can feel the warmth of the fire she sees before her. In one vision she sees a shooting star. Her grandmother had told her that shooting stars mean a soul is going to heaven, and when she lights her next matchstick, she sees her grandmother. Quickly the girl lights the rest of her matchsticks because she so wanted her grandmother to remain with her. The grandmother grabbed the girl up in her arms and together the two ascended to heaven. In the morning, the body of the little girl was found in the corner, a smile on her face.

Lovely and touching, yes? I think so. Which is why I can't, for the life of me, explain how Rikki Ducornet took that story as inspiration for her story "Green Air" which appears in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. In her story, an unnamed woman (I assume it's a woman, she is locked in a drawer in a cedar chest the entire story so can it be a human), is married to a brute of a man who dreams of nothing but violent sex and abuses the woman. The only correlation I can see between this story and Andersen's tale is a note that the woman has a matchbox tucked in her pocket which she begins lighting, that and the idea of an abused person looking for an escape from an untenable life. At the end of this story, I had no idea what the heck had happened. Usually if I'm stumped with these stories, the author's notes at the end did nothing to enlighten me. It was the first tale I've read in the book that I didn't enjoy.

That wasn't the strangest thing I discovered as I researched the story of "The Little Mermaid." I had no idea that it had ever been made into a musical. I love musicals and I love this story but even I couldn't possibly see how you could take such a short story and stretch it that far (although I guess if you can turn Where The Wild Things Are into a feature film, anything is possible). Still, when I found this 1987 television adaptation of the movie on YouTube, I found myself irresistibly drawn to what I was certain would be nothing short of a train wreck of a movie. In that I was not disappointed. The music is awful, the story preposterous. Let's face it, if you're a movie starring Roger Daltry and Twiggy, there's not much hope for you. I'll give the little girl playing the match girl props - she did have a terrific voice. I wonder if she was ever able to recover from starring in this bomb?

Next, in honor of Valentine's Day, my focus will be on love in fairy tales.

Cat Thursday

2012-02-09T06:00:00.001-06:00

Cat Thursday is hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict. Thanks to my cousin, Kris, for once again providing me with a picture for Cat Thursday.

Across The Endless River by Thad Carhart

2012-02-08T06:00:00.001-06:00

Across The Endless River by Thad Carhart
320 pages
Published September 2009 by Knopf Doubleday
Source: the publisher

Across The Endless River is the story of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacagewea and a French fur trader. Baptiste (as he preferred to be called) went with the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean as an infant and grew up in two cultures. Through much of his life, Baptiste split time between the Mandan tribe his mother was a part of and St. Louis, where he got a traditional education and was cared for by his godfather, Captain Clark. Even as a young man, he became well known for his skill with languages (in addition to English and French, Baptiste was skilled in several Native American languages as well), knowledge of the western lands and people, and his ability to live in the wild. Because of these skills, Baptiste was introduced to Duke Paul of Wurttemburg (Germany) and asked to help the Duke collect Native American artifacts and native plants and animals. Impressed with the young man, the Duke asked Baptiste to accompany him back to Europe to help catalogue his acquisitions, prepare them for exhibition and write a book.

Baptiste spent the next five years in Europe, spending time in France and Germany, meeting people from all walks of life, working with the duke and his peers, attending balls, and falling in love. While he enjoyed the benefits of living with nobility and finding himself accepted by them, it was always clear to Baptiste that he was not one of them. Neither was he one of the servant class, a fact also made clear to him.

Across The Endless River is one of the first books I was offered for review when I began blogging. I accepted it because much of the early story was set in my part of the country and because I enjoy historical fiction. For some reason, once it arrived, though, it never seemed to call to me. In the past few months I've been accepting far fewer books for review in an effort to clear up my previous commitments and this one finally made its way into my hands.

There were parts of this book that very much impressed me. Carhart does a wonderful job of taking historical fact and mixing it with historical fiction and has a way with description that really made me see the places, people and things he was writing about. Ultimately, though, the book feel flat for me. Much of the first part of the book felt like a buildup to the second part but once Baptiste and the Duke arrived in Europe, it felt like very little was actually happening. The pair would flit from place to place and periodically Carhart would stop and spend a great deal of time writing about a particular scene but often these scenes didn't seem to contribute to building the story for me. Carhart touched on some topics I would have liked to see him spend more time with and I couldn't help but wonder if a different editor might have been able to keep the book on a track that would have worked better for me.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

2012-02-06T06:00:00.002-06:00

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
336 pages
Published January 2011 by Gallery Books
Source: the publisher

Bob and Sarah Nickerson are working hard to have it all - they and their three children live in the best neighborhood, they drive great cars, they have a home in the mountains. But it all comes at a price. Both work more than 60 hours a week leaving them little time with their children and even less time for each other.Sarah loves her job and is proud of the success she's had in it. Still...

When Sarah wakes up eight days after being in a terrible car accident, everything has changed. Diagnosed with a rare brain disorder called "Left Neglect," Sarah is unable to see and is unaware of anything on her left. She can't walk or dress herself because she doesn't even know she has a left leg or arm. She never finishes a meal because she doesn't see the left side of the plate. She can't read because she can't see the left side of the page or even the left side of the words.

"She has Left Neglect. It's a pretty common condition for patients who've suffered damage to the right-hemisphere, usually from a hemmorhage or stroke. Her brain isn't paying attention to anything on her left. "Left" doesn't exist to her."

After weeks in rehabilitation and intensive therapy, Sarah is sent home where she must continue to train herself to recognize that while she is missing the left of everything now, she may have been missing even more before her accident. Thanks to her condition, Sarah is able to rebuild her estranged relationship with her mother, reconnect with Bob and truly become the parent her children need.

In Left Neglected, Genova addresses a number of medical subjects and relationship concerns. You've heard me complain before about authors trying to tackle too many issues in one book. It rarely works for me and I often find books that do this to be preachy and teachy. Genova manages to avoid that trap for the most part. Other than the Left Neglect, the medical conditions that she introduces are common to many families and it doesn't feel like Genova has tried to work something into the story just because she has something to say. Any household with children and two working parents can identify with much of what Bob and Sarah go through, trying to balance family and career, figuring out whose turn it is to take the children to school.

Genova's characters feel real and her writing highlights the little moments as much as the major ones. Readers will be able to relate to Sarah throughout the book, but certainly more so after her accident as she struggles between doubt and hope for her recovery. The Nickerson family is so real that Genova has even managed, with all of the heavy topics in the book, to work in some humor, lightening the book and helping to make it feel true to life. When I finished this book, I was immediately ready to start Genova's first book, Still Alice. Not wanting to muddy my thoughts on this one, I've tabled that book for a bit. As much as I enjoyed this one, it won't be long before I read pick it up, though. I highly recommend Left Neglected.

Sunday Salon - February 5

2012-02-05T06:00:00.002-06:00

Welcome to the Snowman edition of the Sunday Salon! After getting no more than 8-9" total of snow all winter, we got that much snow overnight Friday and into Saturday. Not that nice light fluffy stuff that doesn't make good snowballs but is easy to scoop. Oh no, this was the kind where every scoopful felt like it weighed twenty pounds. Miss H does two of the neighbors' driveways and sidewalks and with that much snow The Big Guy and I felt like we should help her. Once we got through all of that, it was a day to play on the computer, watch movies and read, read, read. I'll tell you what, I'm hurting today but geared up to get the house cleaned and ready to have some people in to watch the Super Bowl. Go Giants (I have to say that; Miss H is a huge fan)!

I spent yesterday afternoon getting caught up on reviews. In almost three years of blogging, I've never been so far behind on reviews! It's nice to be ahead on posts for a change, though. This week I'll have reviews of Across The Endless River by Thad Carhart and Left Neglected by Lisa Genova. I updated my challenges and find that I'm off to a good start there for a change. Maybe I'll succeed at all of them this year!This week I'm reading Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. I've been looking forward to it for awhile, especially after finding it on so many bloggers "best of 2011" lists. What are you reading this week?

This week's highlight for The Big Guy and me will be a concert in Lincoln on Saturday night. Every year, Neal and Leandra (a folk music duo) come to either Omaha or Lincoln to perform and we've been going for years. We've never tired of hearing them and have been happy to introduce their music to many friends. Here's why:

What are you looking forward to this week?

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Mermaids

2012-02-04T13:17:00.003-06:00

It's been years since I read Hans Christian Andersen's original tale of The Mermaid (who, by the way, in my copy at least, wasn't little). The closest I've come to it in the past twenty years is repeated viewings of the Disney adaptation. Just after Christmas, though, I picked up a copy of Andersen's Fairy Tales and The Mermaid was the first tale in the book, making it the perfect place to start.

On her fifteenth birthday, the youngest daughter of the king of the mermen is at long last allowed to travel to the surface of the ocean. There she sees a ship with a handsome prince traveling on it and she is immediately smitten. As she watches him, a storm comes up and the prince is thrown into the sea. The mermaid saves the prince, depositing him on the beach where a young woman finds him. The prince, who had been unconscious for some time, awoke, believing this young woman had saved him.

The mermaid continued to travel to the surface to watch the prince from the distance. As her love for him grew, she became determined that she must be with him. She has also been told that humans, unlike merpeople, have souls, making them immortal. The mermaid had long yearned to have a soul and decided to visit a witch to see if her dreams might be made to come true. The witch assures the mermaid that she can be made human but she warns the mermaid that the pain of her tail separating intolegs will be excruciating and that the price of becoming human is the mermaid's voice. Furthermore, if the mermaid is unable to win the prince's heart and he marries another, then the mermaid will die and return to the sea as foam. Despite all of that, the mermaid agrees and the witch cuts out her tongue.

The mermaid swims to shore, drinks the potion and is found sometime later by the prince. He is enchanted by her beauty, as is the kingdom. But the prince cannot stop thinking of the young woman he believes saved his life. When she turns out to be the daughter of another king, and not a religious woman as he believed, he marries her. The mermaid is devastated and prepares to die. Just as that begins to happen, she is visited by the daughters of the air, who tell the mermaid that if she joins them and does good deeds for three hundred years then she will earn a soul. It's a price she is more than willing to pay.

Reading the original tale gave me a much greater appreciation for what Carolyn Turgeon has written in Mermaid. In it, she retained much of the original story, playing up the darkness that Andersen only hinted at. What struck me most about Andersen's tale was not the love story between the prince and the mermaid but the story about the mermaid's desire for an eternal soul, something that makes the story even more universal.

In My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (edited by Kate Bernheimer), Katherine Vaz has used the tale of the mermaid as the inspiration for her story "What the Conch Shell Sings, When The Body Is Gone." She was also influenced by the story of the real life Million-Dollar Mermaid, Annette Kellerman, a woman who performed self-styled ballet inside water-filled tanks.

Vaz tells the story of Meredith and Ray, a couple who started as friends and eventually married. By the time we meet them, however, Meredith and Ray are hardly talking. Meredith suspects, rightly, that Ray is having an affair. When she confronts him, she warns him that the other woman is only using Ray to promote her own career. The two divorce and Ray marries the other woman, only to find out that Meredith was right. Years later, when Ray is again divorced and Meredith finds herself battling breast cancer, the two find themselves together again, more in love than ever.

As I was reading this story, I didn't initially understand where the story of The Mermaid had played a part, beyond obvious references to the ocean plants and tank that Ray and Meredith had installed in their house to practice holding their breath under water. But as I read, I was able to see the influence. Ray allowed himself to be drawn from the woman he truly loved to marry the woman he thought was 'saving" him. As with the tale of The Mermaid, What The Conch Shell Sings is the story of a love triangle but also the story of eternal love.

As with all of the stories in My Mother She Killed Me, I very much enjoyed Vaz's explanation at the end of the story of how she came to write it. She had long been interested in the life of Annette Kellerman and even a walk through a perfume department in a store played a part in her story.

Next week, I'll be reading stories about The Little Match Girl, including the original tale and an adaptation from My Mother She Killed Me. I'll also be looking at how that one has been sanitized for children.

Mermaid: A Twist On The Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon

2012-02-02T23:40:00.000-06:00

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon
256 pages
Published March 2011 by Crown Publishing Group
Source: I bought this at the Omaha Lit Fest

In a convent, high on a mountain top, Princess Margrethe of the Northern Kingdom is being hidden from her kingdom's enemies. One cold morning, Margrethe is out walking in the gardens when she is startled to see a mermaid emerging from the sea with a nearly dead man in her arms, depositing him on the rocks, Margrethe is certain, even from as far away as she is that she can hear the mermaid calling to her to save the man. Margrethe rushes to the man, covering him with furs and then goes for help, risking her own life in the process. Hours later, after she recovers, she makes her way to the man and the two are instantly drawn to each other. When the man rushes away from the convent the following day, it is then that Margrethe realizes that he is Prince Christopher of the Southern Kingdom, sworn enemy to her people.

Margrethe's father, King Erik, rushes to her "rescue" and uses the situation to convince his kingdom to go to war with the Southern Kingdom. But Margrethe is sure that the mermaid brought the man to her for a reason and concocts a secret plot to unite the two kingdoms by marrying Christopher.

Lenia, the mermaid princess, who saved Christopher, also finds herself in love with this human. She has always longed to know more about humans and believes the stories her grandmother told her about humans living forever through their souls. Unable to shake the memory of Christopher from her mind, Lenia visits Sybil, a witch, who promises her that there's a way that Lenia can become human and join Christopher. The price is great and Lenia must convince Christopher to marry her or she will never have a soul and if he marries anther, she will die.

It's been a long time since I've read the original tale of the Little Mermaid, my comparison as I read being primarily with Disney's version of the classic fairy tale. As far as I could recall, there was much of Andersen's story retained in Turgeon's retelling, with the grittiness that is more authentic to classic fairy tales while retaining the magic that appeals to all ages (although this is definitely not a story to read to your children). The story could occasionally fall into sappiness and the characters a bit caricaturized (I know, I know it's not a word but you get my point). Overall the book was fun and I found I couldn't put it down. There was, of course, the twist spoken of in the title and plenty of others that kept me guessing as to which woman would win the hand of the handsome prince. Sometimes, happily ever after means someone has to suffer.

The End of The Affair by Graham Greene

2012-01-31T06:00:00.004-06:00

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
192 pages
First published in the U.S. in 1951 by Viking Press
Source: bought this one

"This is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah I can be trusted: I am writing against the bias because it is my professional pride to prefer the near-truth, even to the expression of my near-hate."

A year after the end of his life with Sarah Miles, Maurice Bendrix looks back at their relationship - the love, the hate, the jealousy, the others who played a part in their lives. Poor Maurice is a very unhappy man who doesn't seem to have ever been happy. His certainty of the end of his affair with Sarah and his jealousy of her husband, Henry, and any other men that may have come into her life, taint their time together.

And there you have it. The book is not long, but that's really all there is to write about the plot of the book. But it says so little about what the book is about. In under 200 pages, Greene explores an entire range of human emotions, creates characters readers will grow to thoroughly know (probably without liking any of them), and most surprisingly, for me, religion. I thought, going in, that this was strictly a love/hate story. That was, after all, what I had taken from having seen the movie. I had no idea that Greene was going to take the reader through the full range of human emotions when it came to God as well. Both Sarah and Maurice must come to terms with their belief (or lack thereof) in a higher being. A being, that, in the end, Maurice comes to be more jealous of than any man.

This is a book to make you think. If you are looking for something light, do not pick this one up just because it is thin - it is a much heavier book than it appears. Thanks to all of you who have recommended Greene to me in general, and this book in particular.

A Winter's Respite Read-A-Thon Wrap Up

2012-01-30T19:48:00.000-06:00

As I said yesterday, there just wasn't as much reading time this past week as I had hoped for. Thanks to a push last night, though, I did manage to finish a second book yesterday. All told I read for 15 hours for a total of 499 pages. I finished Across The Endless River by Thad Carhart and American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White The Birth of the "It" Girl And The Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu.

Charla of Book Talk with Charla won her choice of books in my mini-challenge for the readathon. She left me a couple of great words she found in her reading including "sesquipedalian" which means given to using long words or containing many syllables. Love it!

Sunday Salon - January 29

2012-01-29T10:23:00.001-06:00

I had such high hopes this week for getting a lot of reading done. After all, it's usually cold (and often snowy or icy) this time of year and my natural instinct is to burrow in to a corner of the sofa with a warm blanket and a good book. A week or so ago, it seemed like this was the perfect week to participate in a read-a-thon.

Then life, once again, intervened. Mini-me got an apartment was was able to move in this week which meant mom, of course, had to drop everything and help pack and move. Tuesday night the Omaha Bookworms met to discuss Nicole Krauss' The History of Love. Wednesday evening Mini-him came into town and announced to his astonished parents, as we cleaned up dinner, that we needed to clean ourselves up because we were headed downtown to see Craig Ferguson (of the Late, Late Show on CBS). Finally, it was The Big Guy's birthday yesterday which meant we had to celebrate that all weekend. So it was a fun week but not a good week to get a lot of reading done.

Still, I will have finished two books by the end of A Winter's Respite today and gotten a start on a third so I'm feeling good about the read-a-thon. Better yet, I'm feeling like I've gotten my reading mojo back, something I've been missing terribly in the past few months.

The History of Love, by the way, was a spectacular bust with the Omaha Bookworms. Three people didn't bother to finish it even and those that did had a hard time with the story line and no connection to the characters. I think I was the only one that found anything to like about it at all.

I've got reviews of The End of the Affair and Left Neglected coming up this week and I will, finally, return to Fairy Tale Fridays. This week, Hans Christian Andersen will be making an appearance. For some reason, one of the songs from Disney's Little Mermaid popped into my head which meant, of course, that I had to read the original story and at least one story inspired by it.

It also meant that I'll be starting Carolyn Turgeon's Mermaid today and will also pick a new nonfiction book, although I haven't decided on that one yet. What are you reading this week?

Cat Thursday

2012-01-26T06:00:00.002-06:00

Once again, even though I'm not a cat person, my family has provided me with the perfect picture for Cat Thursday. Cat Thursday is hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2012-01-25T06:00:00.003-06:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloots
Published July 2010 by Gale Group
Source: I bought this one

There are probably very few people left out there who don't know the story of Henrietta Lacks, either from having read the book or from having heard about the book on numerous news sources. For those of you who may have missed the hubbub surrounding this book, Henrietta Lacks was a poor, black, mother of five who died from cervical cancer in 1951. If that had been all there was to the story, no one except Henrietta's family would probably remember her; her grave is even unmarked.

But that is not all there is to Henrietta's story and her legacy, already sixty years in the making, continues to live on because one doctor at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore decided to take a sample of Henrietta's tumor to see if he could grow her cells. Doctors had been trying for years to grow human cells with very little success. So as the technician in the lab prepared the sample, she had little hope to see anything happen. She could not have been more wrong. By the next day, the number of cells in each sample container had doubled and they continued to double on an almost daily basis. Never before had doctors seen anything like it; to this day, nothing on the same scale has ever been replicated. The cells were soon being sent nationwide and, before long, worldwide. In the past sixty years, hundreds of diseases have been studies and hundreds of advances and treatments have been developed using Henrietta's cells. Along the way, many have made a lot of money because of the cells; Henrietta's family is not among them. Her family did not even know until years after her death that the cells had been taken. Once they found out, the emotional impact of her death became many times greater as the family struggled to come to terms with the facts.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is one of those books that came with extremely high expectations, almost always certain to leave me at least a little disappointed no matter how good the book is. This book was an exception; it is every bit as good as I was hoping. Skloot has crafted an amazing blend of human interest story and scientific lesson book. My heart broke for Henrietta as she died in agony and for her family as they lived in agony. By the time Skloot began looking into the story, the family had become so mistrustful of anyone asking about Henrietta that they refused to speak with her for months and months. Fortunately for us, Skloot refused to give up, eventually earning the trust of Henrietta's children. The book is exceptionally well-researched and Skloot has done a fine job of explaining the science behind the use of the cells in a way that makes sense to the layman. At the same time, she knows how to write a human story that will touch the heart.

The Omaha Bookworms are reading this for February and I can't wait to discuss it with them. In addition to the story itself, there is so much to discuss about the ethics of cell research, the way cells are procured, and the money that can be made by research on our cells by corporations and researchers. I highly recommend this book.

A Winter's Respite Read-A-Thon - Giveaway

2012-01-24T08:00:00.001-06:00

For those of you participating in A Winter's Respite Read-a-thon, here's a chance for you to add back to your TBR pile just as you thought you were whittling it down!

I'm a lover of new words (imagine how excited I was to pick up my slim copy of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair and find that it had more new-to-me words than most books twice a long!). So here's what I want from you: leave me a comment by the end of the read-a-thon on Sunday with at least two new-to-you words and their definitions. My brain will get a chance to work and you'll get a chance to win a new book. The winner will be drawn on Monday, January 30th and will have a choice of books. U.S. residents only (sorry!). Winner will be selected by random.org.

There are 3 books to choose from: One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson, Me Before You by JoJo Moyes, or Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. In your comment, please let me know which book you'd like if you are picked as the winner.

A Winter's Respite Read-A-Thon Kick Off

2012-01-24T06:00:00.006-06:00

Actually, I started reading for the Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon (hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict) yesterday but already had a review scheduled so held off until today to do my kick off post.

With no football to watch, I figured that there would be lots of reading time for me if I just decided to make it so. But Mini-me had other ideas; he is moving, starting yesterday, into an apartment a few miles from home. Which, of course, means that mom has had to help him back, help get things the guys need for the apartment, and help them move. All of which I love to do but all of which really cuts into my reading time!

I'm still bound and determined to finish at least two books this week, the two books that I started last week but which almost completely got set aside when I picked up Left Neglected by Lisa Genova to read at work and which I finished last night. I've got a good start on both of those so finishing them should be no problem. The bigger question will be what to start next and here's where I'm asking for your help. Which of these should I read after I finish Across The Endless River by Thad Carhart?

Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon

The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash

The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry

Hours read: 12

Pages read: 367

Books finished: 1

Scribbling the Cat: Travels With An African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

Scribbling The Cat; Travels with an African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller
249 Pages
Published 2004 by Penguin Books

A couple of months ago, I read and reviewed Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under The Tree Of Forgetfulness which I really enjoyed and knew my mom would as well. I passed that one along to her and it's been making the rounds since, a unanimous hit amongst every one who has read it. My mom enjoyed it so much that she asked for more books by Fuller for Christmas. Here is her review of Fuller's Scribbling The Cat.

"In Scribbling, Fuller again sets her book in Africa in what was Rhodesia but this time we learn very little of her life with her family. She visits her parents and we again are reacquainted with them but they are secondary to the story. While visiting her parents, Fuller meets and becomes fascinated with a white gentleman who has fought for many years as a soldier in the various wars that have been so prevalent in this region. She spends time with this retired soldier and discovers there is a story to be told.

She convinces K (a name she has chosen because she has been very careful to preserve identities and locations to protect her characters) to take a trip with her to trace his war travels and to meet some of his mates from these wars. She finds this very platonic; K who has become a born-again Christian falls in love with her and is sure God has sent her to be his wife. They set off in his truck and the story unfolds as they travel through Mozambique to help him save himself from the war horrors. They meet and spend time with some of his former soldier friends and the characters are delightfully described so you feel as if you have known them forever. These are rough, war-scarred men who have incredible stories to share. Fuller uses many of the African terms to add clarity and realism. Fortunately, she does provide a glossary with definitions.

Again Fuller uses her skills as a writer to describe the landscape, the people, and the poverty that all of these wars have caused. I finished the book with a feeling of dismay at what the white people have done to Africa but also with what the black leaders have done as they were thrust into or chose to have power.

In the end both Fuller and K have learned a lot about themselves and separate as protagonists. It was probably inevitable.

If learning more about Africa and what makes it what it is today is of interest to you, you will love this true story told with a few additions to help protect and to enliven. I highly recommend the book."

Thanks, Mom, for another great review!

Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge And I May Just Have Signed Up For Another Challenge - Oops!

2012-01-22T19:46:00.001-06:00

Why yes, yes I did completely fail at this challenge last year - my own challenge. So why am I posting about it? Because many of those who have participated in the past encouraged me to give it another try. So here we go again. I've made some changes (and by changes, I mean I've made it easier!) which I hope will make it more fun (fewer books needed to succeed, more movie adaptations can be substituted).

If you're not completely inundated with challenges already, we'd love to have you join us! To sign up, just leave a comment here.

This evening I made the terrible mistake of clicking on a post from Michelle of The True Book Addict where she highlighted all of the challenges she's participating in this year. Well of course I found another one I had to do - one that's right up my alley. It's Bex's (of An Armchair By The Sea) The Telling Tales Reading Challenge. And just why couldn't I pass it up? Because it's all about reading/watching fairytales, folktales and myths! Perfect, no?! Just remind me not to click on any more posts in Google Reader that have anything to do with challenges you've signed up for, please.

A Winter's Respite Read-A-Thon

2012-01-19T06:00:00.001-06:00

With all of the health complications we've had in my house already this year, I don't foresee us making any big plans for this month. Which means that I'll have plenty of reading time and should finally be able to succeed at a readathon. Michelle, of The True Book Addict, is once again sponsoring the A Winter's Respite Read-A-Thon from January 23rd through January 29th. As with all of Michelle's readathons, this one is relaxed and you can put in as many hours reading during this time as work for you. Novel, novellas, adult and YA books all count for this one.

I'm trying to decide if I want to just grab a varied stack of books or if I want to try to go with a theme for this readathon. Since I recently reorganized my bookshelves, I've been thinking of a lot of things I could do with themes so that might be kind of fun. Then again, I might just pick book choices that will all work for challenges to make sure I get a good start on those this year. Ah, the joy of having time to read again!

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

2012-01-18T20:37:00.000-06:00

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

272 pages

Published April 2006 by Norton, W.W. & Company

Source: bought this one!

I haven't used the publisher summary since shortly after I started blogging but I just can't find a way to sum this one up that won't just sound ridiculous. So here's what the publisher has to say about the book:

Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family.

Now, if you just read that, you'd think there were about four characters in this novel and you wouldn't at all understand why I couldn't wrap up this plot in a paragraph. The problem is, there are a lot more characters, many of whom play a part in what has happened to the book Leo wrote as a young man, many more who play a part in who he is as an old man and a number who interact with Alma and Leo. The book also moves back and forth in time and back and forth over the ocean. It did, to be honest, get a little confusing at time and even, in the end, I have to admit that I'm not altogether sure what happened.

All of which might make it sound like I didn't like this book much. Which was not the case at all. I really liked Krauss' writing style and found her characters to be unique and endearing. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of the time that I was reading the book imagining what the other members of my book club might be thinking of the book and thinking that I wasn't sure it was a book that most of them would enjoy. Which, of course, tempered my enthusiasm. The timing could have been better for this one as well; it's hard to really get the most out of a book you read while you're recovering from surgery. In the end, I wish I would have read this one at a different time and strictly for myself. Because with writing like this...

"The sensation almost knocked the breath out of m. A tingling feeling caught fire in my nerves and spread. The whole thing must have happened in less than thirty seconds. And yet. When it was over, I'd been initiated into the mystery that stands at the beginning of the end of childhood. It was years before I'd spent all the joy and pain born in me in that less than half a minute."

...it's a shame not to have given it my full attention.

The Western Lit Survival Kit by Sandra Newman

2012-01-16T06:00:00.002-06:00

The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics from Homer to Faulkner
by Sandra Newman
256 pages
Published January 2012 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

When this book arrived in the mail, it was immediately grabbed up by The Big Guy, a person who started working on a Master's degree in English Literature before he switched to a more useful degree in business. Now you've got to understand something about The Big Guy and books. He loves them, he really does but he only picks one up to read for short periods at a time and I thought he might never get this one finished in time for me to read it. And he didn't. So while he sits here next to me watching football, I'm going to have him dictate his review of this one.

In The Western Lit Survival Kit, Newman does what so many others have been unable to do, she makes reading the "books you really should read" sound like they just might be readable and possibly even fun. Newman takes the reader from Ancient Greece straight through to what she calls The Messy Twentieth. In the process, Newman educates the reader as to the most notable books and authors of each period, never forgetting to keep the reader entertained.

"Most of what you need to know about Greek lyric poets is Sappho...In a time when women were still acceptable birthday presents, Sappho's status was unprecedented."

Newman also gives a brief introduction to each time period and often compares that period to current times to make the reader better understand the atmosphere in which the authors were working. Perhaps the greatest asset of the book, for the reader trying to decide whether or not to tackle a particular work, are the graphs that Newman includes for each book that she references. Each book is graded on a scale of one to ten on three counts: importance, difficulty and fun. If you are, for example, looking to tackle something that's truly considered an important work and which you are willing to read regardless of difficulty or the fun it might offer, you might try John Milton's Paradise Lost. But if you'd like to pick up something that is both important and fun, then you could look to Shakespeare's Othello. Want something that's both important and fun but not as difficult as Othello? You might pick up Emily Dickinson's poems or Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And when you look up that last book, you can also find that Newman compared Twain to Jon Stewart and that Ernest Hemingway was often cited as saying that "all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn."

The Big Guy says that Newman is very bright, very witty and very educated. The reader should have at least a moderate level of literary education to catch all of Newman's witticisms. The information is presented in an entertaining way that gives the reader the key points that he/she needs to know about the book as well as giving an insider's perspective. Unlike so many books these days, The Big Guy says this is one book that is "as advertised." Neither of us keeps many books but he says that this one is a keeper as an excellent reference as each of us tries to work our way through the "books we really must read" and to help us decide which ones we really do want to tackle.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for allowing us to be on the tour for this exceptional book. and thanks to The Big Guy for sharing his thoughts!

For more opinions on this book, please check out the full tour. Sandra Newman is the author of several novels, a memoir and two other non-fiction works.

Sunday Salon - January 15

2012-01-15T17:52:00.000-06:00

Still on the mend this past week so I've been doing quite a bit of reading and quite a lot of time on the net but haven't managed to post anything since last Monday. One of these days, I'll get fully back on track. I've got a couple of reviews that will post this week (one for Nicole Krauss' The History of Love which the Omaha Bookworms will be discussing on Tuesday and one for a TLC Book Tour which The Big Guy is reviewing) and a couple for next week Now I just need to find the time to read some myths and fairy tales and I'll be good to go. Just after Christmas I picked up a couple of new books, a Hans Christian Anderson compilation and an edition of The Thousand and One Nights. I'm looking forward to sharing both of those with you.

This past week I had two books going at once, a fiction and non-fiction, and really enjoyed mixing that up so I'm trying it again this week. Yesterday I started American Eve by Paula Uruburu for my non-fiction and today I started Across The Endless River by Thad Carhart. Not only am I getting books read that are already on my shelves but American Eve satisfies my goal to read more non-fiction and Across The Endless River will work for the Historical Fiction challenge so I'm pretty pleased with myself.

I start my new job tomorrow and, just between you and me, one of the things I'm most looking forward to is lunch time. Not so much because I want to eat (although after three months of not having time for lunch, I'm looking forward to that meal again!), but because it will give me 45 minutes every day to read. Oh sure, I suppose I could use the time to socialize and get to know my new co-workers but you know I would much rather be reading!

What are you reading this week? Do you ever have multiple books going at once?

The March by E. L. Doctorow

2012-01-09T06:00:00.002-06:00

The March by E. L. Doctorow
384 pages
Published September 2005 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: purchased

In 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his sixty thousand troops have just marched into Georgia and burned Atlanta. Now they are making their way to the coast and then up into the Carolinas as Sherman attempts to finish off the Confederacy.

Along the way, the troops will pick up thousands of freed slaves and refugees and the march will become something much more than just a military maneuver, it will become a study in humanity...and inhumanity.

Emily Thompson's father succumbs to death just as Sherman's troops storm through her town. When she goes in search of the doctor, she finds, instead, Wrede Sartorius, Union surgeon. Emily is so taken by Sartorius' gentlemanly ways and handling of the surgery that she makes the decisions, as the troops pull out, to follow along and help with the wounded and dying.

Pearl, a freed slave and daughter of her master, is nearly white and captures the hearts of one Union soldier after another. In this way, she is not only kept safe but finds herself also at work in Wrede Sartorius's unit. Her sole goal is to deliver a letter to the family of the soldier who first saved her.

Wrede Sartorius, the doctor who at first appeared to be so kindhearted, is first and foremost, a physician interested in advancing science even when it means that one man will ride with the troops for days with a spike sticking from his head so that the doctor could observe the decline of the patient for himself.

Arly and Will are Southern soldiers who find themselves in prison together early on, only to be liberated when they promise to fight to save a city. But Arly is always looking for the way to save his own skin and the two almost immediately desert, finding themselves on the Union side of the line.

Doctorow has a way of telling a sweeping saga at an intimate level that is almost unparalleled in storytelling. In The March is also able to make the reader see both the good and the bad in the actions of both sides of the conflict. More than once, I found myself hoping that the Union soldiers would "get theirs." As I did with Doctorow's Ragtime, I learned a lot from this book because Doctorow is also incomparable at mixing historical figures and actions in his fiction.

My one complaint with this book was that I spent most of it expecting the same kind of drawing together of storylines that I had so enjoyed in Ragtime which did not happen. Instead, some of the stories wrapped up early, some of them just ended; only a couple wound their way through the entire book. Which is probably more realistic, just not what I was expecting. So many people have cited this book as one of their all-time favorites and my expectations were high. While this, the last book I read in 2011, was one of my favorite books of the year, it still did not come close to captivating me in the way that Ragtime did.

Sunday Salon - January 8

2012-01-07T20:41:00.000-06:00

A return to normal is on my horizon! I've accepted a new position which I'll be starting shortly and can't wait to have time to make meals, be with my family, read, blog...heck, I'm even looking forward to having time to clean again!

Of course, as everything as worked out for me in the past few months, first there had to be a hurdle to overcome. I ended up in the emergency room in the early hours of New Year's Eve and started the new year with not one but two surgeries in one week, one to have my gallbladder removed. What a terrible way to start the year but I'm looking forward to feeling better than I have in a long time! While I recover, I'm taking advantage of the time to read!

We don't go to many movies so I finally got around to watching Water For Elephants this past weekend which I really enjoyed. I felt like the movie makers had done a fine job of recreating the setting and mood of the book and retained enough of "old" Jacob's story to make you understand why he wanted to run away with the circus again.

The weekend before we had watched both of the last two Harry Potter movies. I've only read one of the books so I can't say whether or not the movies live up to the book but we all enjoyed the movies.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a hit with my family members who made it to the theater but the movie adaptation I'm looking forward to, We Need To Talk About Kevin, still hasn't made it here. It's one that I think I'll probably make a point to see in the theater.

Have you seen any of the movie adaptations of books that have been released recently, either in the theater or on DVD?

Where I Am Lead Astray From My Goal To Read From My Own Shelves

2012-01-06T14:41:00.000-06:00

I knew I shouldn't have done it but I did it anyway because I just can't help myself. I started looking at the publishers lists of books that are coming out in 2012. Do you remember when you were little and sometime in the fall the department store Christmas toy catalogs arrived in the mail? There were just so many marvelous toys in those catalogs and, even though you knew you wouldn't possible get them all, it was just so hard to narrow your own wish list down to the ones you most desired. It's like that for me every year (as I suspect it is with many of you) when I start looking forward to the coming year's new books. There are always the books by authors I love that must be added to the wish list. This year those include:

1. When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
2. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
3. Home by Toni Morrison
4. The Cove by Ron Rash
5. The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John
6. Smut by Alan Bennett
7. The New Republic by Lionel Shriver
8. The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar
9. The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker
10. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Then there are the books by authors I've been meaning to read so I'll have to add more of their books to my wish list:

1.Railsea by China Mieville
2. Broken Harbor by Tana French - this would mean I'd have to read the 1st three books in the series as well
3. Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Finally, there is a long list of books by new-to-me authors, a few of which are:

1. No One Is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel
2. Carry The One by Carol Anshaw
3. Behind The Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Book
4. Flatscreen by Adam Wilson
5. Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison
6. Waiting For Sunrise by William Boyd
7. The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

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Kicking Off The New Year With Some Challenges (Because I Just Can't Help Myself!)

2012-01-01T06:00:00.001-06:00

I know what you're thinking: "why does she keep signing up for challenges when every year she fails at so many of them or is racing at the end to try to finish them?" It's kind of like saying, every year on January 1st, I suppose, that I'm going to start exercising regularly this year. Every new year brings new hope - hope that I really will find a way to balance all of the things that I want to do, hope that I really will find the willpower to make myself do the things that are good for me, hope that, this year, everything will work out just the way it should. So, yes, yes I am signing up for a few challenges again this year but once again with the full knowledge that I will not beat myself up if I find, in November, that there is no way I'll get through everything.

First up, I'm once again joining the War Through The Generations Reading Challenge. This year's focus will be on World War I. I'm only going in to this one at the "Dip" level (1-3 books), largely because I'm going to try to read mostly from my own books for the challenge and I'm not sure how many books I have that have this war as a theme.

Here's one I actually succeeded at in 2011, the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Once again, I'm in at the Struggling Addiction level, which means that I'm shooting for ten historical fiction novels in 2012. In theory, this one should be a piece of cake for me given my love of history. We'll see!

My biggest challenge failure in 2011 was with my own Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge. Not only did I not read a single book for it, I completely failed to add a single post or review to the site the entire year. Surprisingly, there are still people interested in jumping on board and giving it another go in 2012. So, once again, I'm hosting the Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge. Must get that list out and see what movies/books I can knock out this year. Charles Dickens, you will not scare me off again!

Last, but certainly not least, is the Mount TBR Reading Challenge which I previously announced. Getting through the rest of the challenges will definitely help with this one. Maybe if I can do really well with this one, there will be enough room on my bookshelves to justify asking for books for Christmas in 2012!

That's it for me - for now at least! Unless you've found one that I really must join. What challenges are you joining this year?

Farewell and Good Riddance to 2011

2011-12-31T06:00:00.002-06:00

To say that 2011 has been a year I would not want to relive is a real understatement. It has been a very hard year for my family (although I must admit that it brought us even closer and served to remind us of how much we love each other) and it has ended with a professional quarter of the year that has turned my life upside down. On the first score, we are expecting nothing but good news in 2012 and on the second score, I'm hoping to have changed my work life soon to get a balance back in my life that includes having time for my family and doing the things I love (including blogging!).

My reading numbers were down considerably in 2011; I don't think that I'll hit 75 books read this year. I did succeed, to some extent, with the goals I set for my reading for the year. I managed to complete about half of my challenges this year but I largely blame my lack of success here on my inability to find the time to read for the past three months so I can live with that. I did read a lot more non-fiction this year and definitely increased the number of books set outside of the U.S. or written by non-U.S. authors (the fairy tale and myth reading certainly helped with this one!). Given that I had read almost no historical fiction in 2010, that was another goal I met in 2011 even though I only managed to read ten historical fiction novels.

I read a lot of books I liked a lot in 2011 but very few that I would say I truly loved. Surprisingly, the vast majority of the books I loved were written by men, certainly a change over previous years. My top books of 2011 were:

FICTION:
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Safe From The Sea by Peter Geye

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Shaffert

The March by E.L. Doctorow

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

NON-FICTION:
The Man In The Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal

Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

Instant City by Steve Inskeep

This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

For 2012, I'm hoping to get things turned around, reading wise. Some of my goals will remain the same, fewer challenges will be undertaken but mostly I hope to find more time for reading again in 2012. It brings a sense of calm to my life that has been sorely missing of late. And I miss getting to talk to all of you, so more time for blogging must be made in the coming year!

What was your favorite book in 2011? What are you looking forward to in 2012?

Wishing you all a very happy new year!

Fairy Tale Fridays - 2012 Fairy Tale Movies

2011-12-30T06:00:00.001-06:00

The number of websites devoted to fairy tales that I've found since starting Fairy Tale Fridays proves that I'm not alone in being fascinated with this particular form of story telling. The number of new books being published further confirms this. But, perhaps, the most telling indication that fairy tales are big right now are the movies based on fairy tales that have been released in the past couple of years with four new movies scheduled for release in 2012.

In June, JACK THE GIANT KILLER is scheduled for release. This take on the classic tale of the boy who climbed the beanstalk turns the tale into an action movie. There is not just one giant who must be confronted but an entire race of them who want to reclaim that land they claim was taken from them. Can't say that I'm looking forward to this one; it will likely appeal much more to young men than any other audience.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, also scheduled for release in June, sticks more closely to the original tale for much of the story but it, too, veers off into an action movie. When the huntsman sent to kill Snow White and bring her heart back to the wicked stepmother takes pity on her and spares her, in the movie version he then trains her to fight back against her stepmother with an army that includes eight dwarfs. Again, definitely a movie aimed more toward a younger audience, particularly those who have grown attached to actress Kristin Stewart (she of Twilight fame).

Hansel and Gretel will also come to the silver screen in 2012, this time fifteen years after their encounter with the crone in the candy house. In HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, Hansel and Gretel are now bounty hunters charged with killing witches who may have met their match when they are hired to kill an evil sorceress who's planning on killing all the children in a village. Sadly, this is another one I won't pay to see but I do appreciate that they have, at least, not messed with the original tale here.

THE BROTHERS GRIMM: SNOW WHITE will also be a new take on an old story, but one that I may just have to see. This one promises to include comedy (Nathan Lane is in the cast if that's any clue) and the costumes and settings look spectacular.

On the animated scene, look for BRAVE from Disney-Pixar (which draws from Scottish mythology more than fairy tales) and DOROTHY OF OZ. Although the Wizard of Oz stories aren't centuries-old tales, they are every bit fairy tales in their construction and this version may be just the thing to introduce younger audiences to the stories without being quite a scary as the Judy Garland movie version.

Grown up (and by this I mean very grown up) takes on fairy tales coming out in 2012 include Jane Campion's SLEEPING BEAUTY (only very loosely based on the fairy tale with the sleeping beauty being a prostitute) and PAN, a modern telling of the basic idea of J.M. Barrie's story where Hook is a detective in search of a serial killer who preys on children.

On the whole, I'm thrilled that these old stories continue to capture the imagination of the general public even if it means turning them into action films and I look forward to seeing what new ways fairy tales will be used in the coming year.

A Separate Country

2011-12-29T11:42:00.000-06:00

A Separate Country by Robert Hicks
432 pages
Published September 2009 by Grand Central Publishing
Source: I won it in a drawing

Eli Griffin has been left a task by a dying man, a man he had tried to kill years earlier. Major General John Bell Hood, late of the Confederate army, knows that he can make Griffin feel obliged to discharge an obligation to make up for that attempt and in his dying hours sets Griffin to a task that will bring him into contact with characters that could not populate any city except New Orleans.

John Hood left the war with an arm he could not use and a leg that had been amputated yet the wounds that most profoundly marked him were the wounds that couldn't be seen. Hood was bitter and conflicted about what he had done in his years in the army and deeply disappointed with the legacy that he had left. He spent much of the rest of his life writing a book attempting to set the record straight. On his death bed, however, he tells Griffin that he wants that book destroyed and a more recent accounting of his life published. This is the story of his life with Anna Marie Hennen, a New Orleans beauty who was inexplicably drawn to the shattered man, who gave birth to his eleven children and who introduced him to people who could only have lived in New Orleans.

Griffin is left to deal with these people as he attempts to retrieve the original book from from Confederate General Beauregarde and to find a killer who Hood says must approve the publication of the second book. Along the way Griffin is drawn more deeply into the world that Hood has inhabited since he first met Anna Marie, a world that includes the dwarf, Rintrah, a priest without a church, Father Mike, and the memory of a beloved man whose legacy seems to contradict what Griffin learns about him.

Hicks moves the story of Griffin's task back and forth between the writings that both Hood and Anna Marie have left and Griffin's own search for the truth in a way that keeps the story moving along and never seems to become confusing (as can so often happen when authors choose this method of story telling). The story moves back and forth in time, slowly revealing new surprises along the way. Hicks does a marvelous job of creating multi-layered characters - in even the most hardened characters there is a soft place reserved for loved ones and old hurts. The city of New Orleans comes alive in Hicks' hands as does the time period immediately following the American Civil War.

Unfortunately, the book fell flat for me in the end. The story became too complex and implausible for me and a character that was introduced late in the story and seemed to be somewhat pivotal was never fully explained to my satisfaction. Still I enjoyed the book overall and I would recommend it for lovers of historical fiction, particularly those who enjoy stories revolving around the American Civil War.

I read this book for the War Through The Generations Challenge.

Because I Haven't Finished A Book In A Week....

2011-12-15T23:50:00.000-06:00

I bring you bookish news instead. I am, finally finishing A Separate Country tonight and I have started April, 1865 all in an effort to reach my Civil War reading goal. But I will have to finish April, 1865 and another book still this month and, at the rate I'm going, that could be difficult. Although I do have the last week of the month off...maybe my family will give me the perfect gift of a week of uninterrupted reading for Chistmas!

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably noticed that I don't read a lot of mystery books (although I do enjoy them) and far fewer spy novels. I haven't read a single Bourne book nor any Tom Clancy. But years ago, I did pick up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and recall liking it quite a lot. I have no idea why I never picked up the next book in LeCarre's trilogy. I am, however, looking forward to seeing what Hollywood has done with George Smiley. Gary Oldman is a terrific actor but he's certainly not the person I pictured as I was reading the book.

Rachel, of A Home Between The Pages, has written about her top five books of 2011 for bookriot.com. I was happy to see Timothy Schaffert's The Little Coffins of Hope, one of my favorite books of 2011, on her list as well. The Omaha Bookworms are looking forward to reading it this spring and I'm wondering if I might be able to talk Shaffert into joining us when we discuss his book.

With the year coming to an end soon, have you been giving any thought to which books were your favorites this year? I've been remiss about updating my tab of favorite books of the year so I'm going to have to give this a little more thought than I had planned.

Any books on your wish list for the holidays? I have several I would like to have asked for but my family is under the crazy impression that I don't need any more books so they won't give me any. Will your family indulge your addiction?

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

2011-12-07T20:29:00.001-06:00

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
368 pages
Published January 2009 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: bought this one after hearing about it on NPR

I grew up with an unusual awareness of the American Civil War, particularly for someone who lives so far removed from the where the bulk of the action occurred. But then I lived in an unusual household. My father, an American History teacher, had a particular fondness for the American Civil War. That fondness meant that many of our summer vacation trips included stops at Civil War battlefields. I even took my dad's Civil War course when I was in high school; the number of people that died in this war was not news to me. Yet, when I heard about this book on NPR, it made me stop and think about that number more closely. Just how did both the North and the South deal with numbers of dead that large? And how did this war change the war American felt about death and the way the country dealt with their military dead?

Gilpin Faust breaks This Republic of Suffering into nine chapters, each exploring a different aspect of what was learned about dying from 1861-1865: Dying, Killing, Burying, Naming, Realizing, Believing and Doubting, Accounting, Numbering, and Surviving. In "Dying" she wrote:

"Sudden death represented a profound threat to fundamental assumption about the correct way to die, and its frequency on the battlefield comprised one of the most important ways that Civil War death departed from the "ordinary death" of the prewar period."

Prior to the war, the mostly Christian people of the United States believed in the "good death," a death surrounded by family which giving the dying person time to show their faith in God. Letters to the family of the deceased often mentioned how the dying had accepted God in their final moments or died well. The war also brought up a conflict between duty to God and duty to country that had to be resolved.

Killing on that scale had never been seen before, particularly when the combatants were very much alike. As one soldier said the killing demanded "the harder courage."

"..Civil War killing...required work --intellectual and psychological effort to address religious and emotional constraints, as well as adaptation to the ways this particular war's technologies, tactics, and logistics shaped the experience of combat."

The killing was not the only thing that required work on a scale never before seen. Dealing with the dead on the battlefield, traditionally the duty of the victor, often had to be postponed and matter of who was responsible was never entirely clear. Thousands of bodies were buried without identification or in remote places, thousands more were buried in mass burial pits. Industries sprung up: business to help find loved ones (both the missing and the dead), services to bring bodies home, coffin makers and embalmers. Not only did these people show up in droves after a battle but family members of those involved also flocked to the sites, hoping to find their loved ones (barring that, to bring home their bodies).

Eventually the nation had to come to terms with the reality of so many dead and wounded and it weighed heavily and the faith of many. Finally the government began to step up and acknowledge that the dead now belonged to the nation. The long and difficult job of identifying the dead and reburying them in national cemeteries went on for decades after the war ended. And during all of this time, the counting continued. There will never be a definite count on the number of men, women and children killed in the war, in combat, through accidents and illness, and through the deprivations that were a part of the war.

Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University, as penned a work that even the most widely-read of Civil War buffs can learn from. It literally took me months to read this one, there was only so much new information I could digest at a time. This Republic of Suffering is one of the best researched book I've ever read, although I sometimes felt that there may have been too much information, too many examples and details. Never the less, I highly recommend it for those with a strong interest in the American Civil War and those who have an interest in how wars impact entire nations.

Conversations and Cosmopolitans and a Giveaway

2011-11-30T06:00:00.001-06:00

Conversations and Cosmopolitans: Awkward Moments, Mixed Drinks, and How a Mother and Son Finally Shared Who They Really Are
by Robert Rave and Jane Rave
304 pages
Published November 2011 by St. Martin's Press
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

At twenty one, Robert Rave had recently had some big changes in his life - he'd recently graduated from college and had just moved to New York City from a small town in Indiana. But Robert had, evidently, decided that wasn't enough change for him. So he sat down and wrote a letter to his sensible, Midwestern parents, a long letter telling them that their youngest son was gay. Nervous about their reaction, Robert tried to answer all of the questions they might have in that letter. When it arrived at their house, Jane Rave was, understandably a little upset and called her husband to come to discuss it with him. His reaction? "At then end of the day, does it really matter? He's our son. He was before the letter. Why should it change now?"

Which was, in the end, pretty much the way Jane handled it as well. She had no problem with the idea that her son was gay, she didn't care what other people thought of him. Her main worry was that Robert would end up alone. Otherwise, she made it her mission to try to educate people about what being gay means, that it's just a part of her son's life, it does not define him. Every gay or lesbian person should be so lucky to have parents like Robert's.

The book is a series of stories of how a small-town Midwestern boy learned to live as a "out" gay man in the big city. Robert tells his stories, then Jane gives her thoughts and perspective on what Robert has written. There are chapters about Robert teaching Jane the lingo of the gay culture, Internet dating, therapists, and finding love. These are things the two discussed in their at least weekly telephone conversations as they became closer than ever.

Robert's stories have a very conversational appeal, although I did occasionally feel that they went on a bit longer and into more detail than they needed to. Jane's responses felt more thought out, the kind of advice you get from your mom when she's had time to carefully consider how she's going to discuss something with you. Even given that I sometimes had a hard time believing that these were Jane's initial thoughts when certain situations presented themselves, this lady is full of good advice. Her son is clearly aware that his mom is one smart, sensible woman who helped him become the person he is by opening up and showing him the person she really is.

"The best way to meet people is to simply be authentic," she said. I didn't realize the truth of this advice until years later, while sipping cosmos in the basement of an ultra-trendy Manhattan restaurant. She wasn't impressed by the restaurant, the food, the waitstaff, or the semi-celebrities. She was just here being herself and enjoying a night out with her son."

Robert and Jane clearly have the kind of relationship most parents and children would like to have. I appreciate them sharing their story with a sense of candor and fun. For other opinions on the book, check out the full TLC Book Tour. Follow Robert on Facebook to learn more about his other books. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour!

Thanks to the publisher, I have one copy of Conversations and Cosmopolitans to giveaway. To enter, you must be a U.S. resident; I'll draw the winner Sunday, December 4th. Please leave me the best advice your mom ever gave you and a way to get a hold of you. My favorite piece of advice will win!

Cat Thursday

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000-06:00

How to make some fun from all of those awful medical procedures! Cat Thursday is hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge

2011-11-28T06:00:00.001-06:00

Having failed at completing challenges year after year (including an epic failure of my own Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge this year), you would think I'd have learned not to sign up for reading challenges at all. But I always have such high hopes for my future reading!

Bev of My Reader's Block is hosting Mount TBR Reading Challenge in 2012, a challenge that seems to be right up my alley since one of the things I've been trying to do lately is read more of my own books. There are six levels, starting at 12 books and working all of the way up to 100+ books. I understand that the idea of these things is to challenge yourself but I'm getting tired of failing! So, even though I'm confident that I can reach the Mt. Ararat level (40 books), I'm going to sign up for the Mt. Vancouver level (25 books). That still leaves me plenty of room for review books, other challenges and book club selections. I've had enough stress in my life this year...2012 is all about finding balance and removing as much stress from my life as possible!

Sunday Salon - November 27

2011-11-27T06:00:00.001-06:00

For those of you who got to enjoy a long weekend, I hope you've enjoyed it. For those of you who had to work so that my family and I could shop for bargains (and, let's be honest, for the great fun we have when we all go off together to fight the crowds), thank you!

In Nebraska you never know what kind of weather to expect for Thanksgiving. There can be snow on the ground a bitter cold. That makes knowing how to dress for Black Friday a bit bothersome; you need a coat, hat and gloves outside but you certainly don't want them in the stores. Plus it puts a major damper on two of my family's annual Thanksgiving traditions. The field goal kicking competition never lasts as long and fewer of us are willing to go along just to be spectators. Also, the turkey trot (a treasure hunt for the grandchildren) must be done entirely inside.

But sometimes we get lucky and have one of those glorious fall days where there are enough spectators at the field goal competition to actually do the wave! One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories is of just such a day when my husband and I hosted Thanksgiving. All four of my grandparents were still with us and my grandfathers sat out on my deck playing cards. As much as I love my family in its current form, I never get through Thanksgiving without missing my grandparents!

We got lucky again this year and had a marvelous day which meant that it was nice enough day to also work in a lesson on Australian rules football. We were blessed to have with us this year a dear friend from Australia and her family who gamely participated in all of our American and family customs, including the turkey trot and field goal kicking. Wisely, they did pass on Black Friday shopping!

My uncle sent me this link to an article in the Chicago Tribune about why some of us have such a hard time giving up our physical books. I'm not necessarily one for the moldy smell (my allergies aren't wild about it for one thing) but I do feel my book in my hands. Although, I must admit that I'm thinking I may need a Nook Tablet so that I never have to worry about finding myself without a book as I was for two hours the other day when the locks on my work building malfunctioned and I had to sit in my car and advise employees as they arrived to go home until it was fixed. Such a waste of precious reading time!

Happy Thanksgiving *

2011-11-24T06:00:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers and to the soldiers who, like those pictured above, are serving in the armed forces away from their families.

*In keeping with my current reading about the U.S. Civil War, I'm bringing you some Thanksgiving images from that war.

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph Ellis

2011-11-23T06:00:00.001-06:00

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph Ellis
320 pages
Published: 2010 by Vintage Books
Source: my mom's copy was a gift from my dad

Guest Review From My Mom:

For some time I have said that the woman I most admire, without a doubt, had to be Abigail Adams. So it was with absolute delight that I opened my birthday present from my husband and found this small paperback book about my favorite lady and her family.

There have been many books written about the Adams. Separate books have been written for each of them; but, of course, both play prominently in the other’s book. My husband suggested that I might not find anything new in this book, but it was worth a try. And I did find new things–and new ways of interpreting things I already knew.

The author sets out to relate the 1200 letters that John and Abigail shared through their lives to the events that were going on in the country and the world. John could be a cantankerous man, but he had the foresight to realize how much history was being created, and he wanted to make sure others knew–perhaps because he was vain and wanted to be remembered most prominently. Thus he made copies and asked Abigail to make copies of all of the letters they wrote. In those days mail often was lost and stolen but the copies still exist.

    “The happiness of our family,” Abigail noted in 1788, “seems ever to have
    been so interwoven with the politics of our country as to be in a great degree
    dependent upon them.”

John and Abigail spent incredible amounts of time separated while John went off to forge independence, peace with England, treaties with the Dutch, and later to serve as both Vice President (a job he hated) and President of our young country. And through almost all of this, Abigail stayed behind raising the four children and running the farm, making huge decisions including inoculation for small pox. And they both wrote letters–lots and lots of letters.

Other Founding Fathers had good marriages and are well-remembered today. But none of them left a legacy as rich as the Adams with all of their letters. And Ellis does a masterful job of weaving the letters and history into delightful reading and understanding.

I came away even more fond of this “saucy” lady and her strength. She was a woman well ahead of her time. She was well read, educated, and extremely capable. And how she had to suffer while her husband and young son traveled the Atlantic and lived in Europe with no quick means of communication. She carried and lost a stillborn child alone while John did what he thought of as his duty in Philadelphia.

Ellis, a Pulitzer prize-winning author, quotes freely from these letters and has documented his work very thoroughly. At times you want to shake John and tell him to quit thinking of himself and then you see him through Abigail’s eyes and through what he is doing for the country. The book is well crafted, an easy read, and you do not have to know a lot of history to enjoy this little book. I believe you will come away as an Abigail fan after reading letters and notes from their courtship until they both have lived out their lives.

Thanks, Mom - another great review!

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

2011-11-21T06:00:00.012-06:00

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
272 pages
Published January 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: Bought this one

When Lillian was a little girl, her father left Lillian and her mother. Lillian's mother fell into books, spending day and night reading aloud, oblivious to everything around her. Lillian, in search of a way to bring her mother back, turned to food. She knew that if she made the right foods, she could bring her mother back to reality. When she discovered a little food shop operated by Abuelita, she discovered the true magic that the right kinds of food have.

Years later, Lillian owns her own restaurant. Once a month, on the nights that the restaurant is closed, Lillian opens her kitchen up for a cooking school, a place where she can show others what she has learned.

Tom has come to the lessons through a gift from his sister, a gift she gave him to help him deal with his grief. Antonia, a kitchen designer, is adjusting to life in America as she learns to show her customers how a kitchen can be much more than just a place to cook. Carl and Helen are a long-married couple working to rebuild their relationship. Young Chloe has lost what little confidence she had as her relationship with her boyfriend begins to fail. Claire is looking for something all her own, something that makes her more than just "the mom and wife." A computer wizard, Ian was sure he couldn't come to the class without knowing how to cook but learning how created more questions than answers. And Isabelle, who had years ago found an inner strength she had not known she had, is now dealing with the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Lillian will teach them all so much more than just how to cook. She'll teach them not just the essential ingredients in the kitchen but the essential ingredients in life. Along the way, they will bond in a way none of them would ever have thought possible.

I recently read Bauermeister's Joy For Beginners. This one is structured in a similar way; each of the characters is allowed their own chapter where they may or may not eventually interact with the other characters as Bauermeister explores their backstory. I liked it in Joy. I liked it even better in School where Bauermeister has interspersed the individual stories with the evenings in the school, bringing all of the characters together.

Of all of the books I've read about food the past few weeks, this is the one that most impressed me with it's ability to make the food it described come alive. Who would ever have thought a description of making white sauce could make me leave a book to go to the kitchen? Bauermeister has a unique way with words, bringing all of the reader's senses and memories a part of the book.

"...Lillian looked at the sauce, an untouched snowfield, its smell the feeling of quiet at the end of an illness, when the world is starting to feel gentle and welcoming again."

As with Joy, Bauermeister's has created a wide range of characters, some of which I connected with much more than others. Lillian's story touched my heart; Tom's story broke it, in no small part because of things that have happened in my life recently. Which, of course, is part of what makes one book affect people in so many different ways.

"For Lillian's mother, every part of a book was magic, but what she delighted in most were the words themselves. Lillian's mother collected exquisite phrases and complicated rhythms, descriptions that undulated across a page like cake batter pouring into a pan, read aloud to put the words in the air, where she could hear as well as see them."

Sunday Salon - November 20

2011-11-20T11:11:00.000-06:00

Yikes - what a week at work! I got almost nothing done at home all week and almost missed my book club meeting this month. I did make the decision early in the week that I would make time to read even if it meant nothing got done around the house so I managed to finish two books (you may notice that This Republic of Suffering is, at last, no longer on my sidebar). I'm so looking forward to the coming long weekend. Hope my family doesn't mind if I lock myself in my room with a pile of books and don't come out for a couple of days!

I steer clear of talking politics on the internet (doing so tends to cause problems!) but I did want to remark on the fact that a large number of writers have now lent their names to the Global Occupy Movement. So much of what we see of the movement on television might be called a "hippy" element. It's interesting to me to see so many educated, well-spoken people lending their "voices." I'm not sure what the end result will be of the movement but I do know that when Paris Hilton is more popular than Congress, it's probably time to take a hard look at the way our system operates, no matter what side you're on!

Utterly unrelated but I thought it was funny:

Ever felt like you were doing something equally as ridiculous? I'm thinking that I'll finally put up my Thanksgiving decorations today even though we're not having Thanksgiving here. With all I need to do, it seems kind of pointless but I just can't make myself put up Christmas decorations unless I've decorated for Thanksgiving first!

This week I've got my final Fall Feasting review. Trish of Love, Laughter and A Touch of Insanity asked if I was planning on doing Fall Feasting again next year and said she'd join me if I did. I was thinking of doing it again (I just have to remember that a year from now!) and I'd love to have people join me. There are still so many foody books left for me to read!

I've got a guest review from my mom up this week as well. Grateful for that - it's hard to fill a blog on a regular basis when you hardly have time to read a book, let alone write the review! This week I'll continue to read books related to the U.S. Civil War for the War Through The Generations challenge. Since a couple of them will also work for the Historical Fiction Challenge, I may well be able to complete two challenges soon.

Are you going to be able to fit any reading into this busy week or will your focus be on food, family, football and shopping? I'm going to try to make time for all five!

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Food Edition!

2011-11-17T23:49:00.000-06:00

There are almost as many fairy tales centered around food as there are fairy tales centered around magical creatures or horrible stepmothers. I recently read several tales related to food - just as with all other fairy tales, they run the gamut from obscure to beloved, very short to long, obvious moral to "what the heck was the point of that story?"

In The Sweet Porridge, once again a child is proven to be smarter than all of the adults around. A little girl and her mother are poor and hungry until a crone in the forest gives the girl a pot that will make sweet porridge just for asking. The girl and her mother never have to go hungry again. Then one day, when the girl is gone, the mother asks the pot to make porridge. Unfortunately, she doesn't know how to "turn it off." It keeps making porridge until all of the village is swimming in the stuff. Only one house remains. Thanks heavens there's a child in it that thinks to say "stop pot." Really, this didn't occur to any of the adults?!

A number of the tales had obvious religious overtones. In The Ear of Corn, there was once a time, when "God himself still walked the earth," where corn stalks bore ten times the number of ears of corn and the ears grew the full length of the stalk. Then one day, as a mother and daughter walked through a field, the daughter fell in the mud. The mother used a handful of the corn to clean the dress. God, seeing the woman using his gift in such an ungrateful way, vowed to allow no more corn to grow. Giving into prayers, though, he allowed enough corn to grow on the stalks to feed the birds.

Perhaps the most famous of all foody fairy tales is Hansel and Gretel, the story of two hungry children lured deep into the forest in search of food. Finding a house entirely made of candies. Lured in by the woman who lived there, the children soon found themselves held by the woman who planned to fatten them up to eat. Once again, the children outsmarted the adult, throwing her into her own oven. No mean stepmother in this one, though. This time it's the children's own mother who tries to rid herself of them. Sadly, Hansel and Gretel weren't able to push her in the oven as well. But at least they were able to return home with their arms filled with jewels and the family never went hungry again.

I'm wondering if my family would like me to read them a foody fairy tale as a Thanksgiving entertainment? Maybe after a few glasses of wine, we'll enjoy them as high comedy!

Mythology Mondays

2011-11-14T06:00:00.003-06:00

I've been reading all fall about food and I thought it was only fitting that when Mythology Mondays finally returned it would be to help wrap up Fall Feasting.

One can hardly talk about mythology and food without first talking about their apparent favorites: ambrosia and nectar. One can hardly imagine that the ambrosia referenced in mythology has any similarity to the salad pictured above. How in the world did a food that supposedly conferred immortality come to mean a fruit salad? I'm all for fruit, chopping it up and throwing different kinds together, and maybe even some kind of dressing. But I can hardly look at it and imagine it to be the food that Hera used to cleanse defilement from her body. Clearly this was not your ordinary ambrosia of grapes, apples and mandarin oranges!

Now nectar is, evidently, something we should all be having more of. The very roots of the word mean overcoming death. I'm not sure the Greeks had any idea how true that might be. Only recently have the antiseptic and antibacterial properties of honey, which is made from nectar, been discovered. Bacchus, god of wine, was probably your go-to guy if you were looking for the best nectar and in Norse mythology you'd find Odin and Saga enjoying the drink of immortality in golden cups.

There are rarely gods or goddesses that appear in mythology strictly as being in charge of food. More often there is a break down of the various parts of getting food to the table. For instance, the Greeks have Ceres, how is the goddess of the harvest. Ceres had several lessor gods who helped her get the harvest from the fields to those who would ready it for the table (Lactanus made the crops prosper and Insitor invoked at the sowing of the crops). Fornax was in charge of the food once it got to the oven, Molae was in charge of overseeing the grinding of the grain and Pomona was the goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards. In Latin mythology, the food was the charge of matrones who always appear in images in groups of three with one almost always holding a bowl of fruit.

I suppose it says a great deal about the state of the world that there are far more gods and godesses related to war, love and procreation than there are to food. Apparently, if they got the gods or goddesses to take care of the weather issues, they must have felt they were capable of handling the rest on their own. Perhaps they weren't so different from us after all.

Sunday Salon - November 13

2011-11-13T19:29:00.000-06:00

I do not know how some of you do it - how do you work 50-60 hours a week and still get anything accomplished outside of work? I just gave up this week and decided I deserved to spend what free time I had largely reading. The Big Guy has been great for the past month with having dinner on the table when I get home from work and I have managed to stay on top of the laundry. But I seriously need a self-cleaning house!

Attention to those of you in the New York City area:

What: November 17th - Unique PEN Reading and Reception

Who: PEN American Center/Westbeth - featuring Lev Grossman, Henry Chang, Michael Greenberg, Lev Grossman, Sabina Murray, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Stephen Stark, Kevin Holohan and Hal Foster

When: Thursday, November 17, 2011. 7 p.m.

Where: Westbeth, 155 Bank Street, NY, NY

Details: PEN American Center in conjunction with Westbeth will host a one-of-a-kind literary adventure. Guests are invited to hear from two of New York City’s hippest and most experienced book sellers about the runaway hits, the beloved secrets, and the must-reads of the 2011 fall season; then wander the halls of Westbeth to attend live readings by PEN World Voices Festival authors in the homes of Westbeth residents. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to explore the oldest and largest artist community located in the heart of bohemian West Village, at 155 Bank Street, repurposed by renowned architect Richard Meier into 383 living and working lofts. Tickets may be purchased at ovationtix.com.

What fun it would be to attend!

New books I've been thinking about:

Stephen King's 11/22/63 - This one does intrigue me but I'm wondering if King is able to pull it off. Will probably hold off on this one until I hear what other people think.

Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetary - I'm not sure any number of great reviews could convince me to read this one. Eco's The Name of the Rose is one of my all-time least favorite books ever. But the story does sound interesting...

Up This Week:

Fall Feasting is wrapping up. I didn't finish as many books as I wanted to and could certainly continue to read books about food through Thanksgiving but I'm ready for something different. This week I'm going to tie Mythology Monday and Fairy Tale Fridays into Fall Feasting and finish the Feast with my review of The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.

I'm going to spend the rest of the year working on books that I'd hoped to get to this year for challenges. First up is Robert Hick's A Separate Country and I'm also hoping to finish This Republic of Suffering at last. It's fascinating but I can only absorb so much at a time.

What are you reading this week?

My Life In France by Julia Child

2011-11-10T06:00:00.002-06:00

My Life In France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
352 pgs
Published: my edition published June 2009
Source: I bought this one

Julia McWilliams was over thirty years old when she met and fell in love with Paul Childs. She couldn't cook, she couldn't speak French and she wasn't much of a foodie. Yet two years after the couple married in 1946, Julia found herself moving to France. She quickly set out to remedy both her language and cooking shortcomings. She roamed the streets of Paris, learning the language, local customs, and, mostly importantly, the food.

"This is the kind of food I had fallen in love with; not trendy, souped-up fantasies, just something very good to eat. It was classic French cooking, where the ingredients have been carefully selected and beautifully and knowingly prepared."

Paul was a gourmand and Julia, now in love with the food of France herself, enrolled herself in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school so that she could learn to prepare the kind of foods they loved. Although she found herself out of place at the school, she learned quickly and soon became lifelong friends with her teacher. In 1951 Julia met Madame Simone Beck Fischbacher (Simca as she would forever after be known). Simca was every bit as enthusiastic about food as Julia. Simca and Louisette Bertholle had been working on a cookbook. The three began working together, operating a cooking school out of Julia's kitchen. Soon Louisette and Simca invited Julia to help them with their cookbook, particularly once they decided that the book needed to be written in such a way so that it appealed to the American audience. The rest, as they say, is history. The first cookbook took years to write and have published. Julia was a a perfectionist when it came to making sure that the recipes were correct, that they would produce good results every time and that they were written in such a way as to make them doable for any cook. It was that first book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, the caught the attention of a public television producer in Boston and earned Julia her own cooking show. Soon Julia found herself every bit as well known as her cookbook.

Julia and Simca would remain friends for the rest of their days and compile a second volume of Mastering. But the two had vastly different methods of choosing and testing recipes for the books and Julia's fame was a thorn in the side of Simca who, no doubt, felt that she deserved equal attention. Despite the fact that the Childs spent their time in France in a house on land the Fischbachers owned, the relationship was often strained.

Paul and Julia spent the last years of their lives in the U.S. where Julia filmed her television shows in her own kitchen, a kitchen that became so famous itself that, when Childs moved to California, it was moved to the Smithsonian.

I picked this one up as a companion to Julie and Julia after seeing the movie of the same name. One of the things I loved about the movie was the back and forth between the two women's lives. I was surprised, then, to find that a lot of what was shown in the movie in the Julia parts did not actually happen. Julia didn't try her hand at hatmaking before she took cooking lessons, she didn't stumble across Simca and Louisette in the dressing room at a party, and she and her sister weren't close. I found myself repeatedly distracted by comparing the book and the movie.

Paul and Julia Childs certainly led an interesting life and the book portrays a fascinating look at Europe post-World War II. I can understand why so many people have enjoyed this book but I had some problems with it. Childs seems to have been under the belief that her readers also know French, frequently referring to things only by their French name or including sentences in French. How do I grasp how wonderful your meal was if I have no idea what the name of the dish means? I sometimes felt the book grew repetitious and often more detailed than was necessary. I can't say that I liked Julia very much. She was quick to point out the flaws of friends and family alike but never seemed willing to acknowledge her own faults. Still, I admire her tenacity, her passion and her deep love for her husband.

Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer

2011-11-08T06:00:00.000-06:00

Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer
198 pages
Published The University of Arkansas Press October 2011
Source: TLC Book Tours and the publisher

Twelve-year-old Chess Morton lives in Rook, Arkansas, a speck of a town in the Black Bayou, with her widowed mother. Despite living deep in the south in the early 1940's, Chess lives her life largely oblivious to the world around her. Until her grandfather sells a piece of land that Chess inherited from her father to the U.S. Government. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government relocated thousands of Japanese Americans to camp throughout the U.S. Camp Nine, one of these camps, sprang from the land that had been Chess' and would serve to change her life.

Chess' mother offers to teach art lessons to the prisoners of Camp Nine, befriending many of the families, particularly the Matsuis. Although reluctant to have anything to do with the camp at first, Chess is soon fast friends with both of the Matsui boys. Her relationship with each of them will enrich and enlighten her but it will be many years later before David Matsui finally teaches Chess exactly what it was that she was protected from as she was growing up in the bayou.

This is one of those books that made me glad that I've always been willing to take a chance with books I've never heard of; thanks to TLC Book Tours for always bringing them to my attention. Schiffer's debut is lovely and charming in a way that is utterly unexpected given the very tough subjects that it tackles. She immerses her reader deep into the Mississippi delta and an area of open racism and brings to life the divide between black and white, rich and poor. Chess brings to mind an older Scout Finch as she comes to terms with the reality of the relationships between herself and those around her. Just as Scout came to view her father as a complete person, Chess comes to see her mother as someone more than just a mother.

"She never voiced her frustration about it to me, but I realize she could have picked up and left with me then, gone to another state, and fought him [Chess' grandfather]. But she understood that my place was on the plantation, whatever it might mean to her personal freedom. I wish I'd understood then all of the choices she made to preserve my interests over her own."

Readers will undoubtedly recall Jamie Ford's The Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet when reading Camp Nine, as both deal with the Japanese interment camps. But where Hotel dealt strictly with the situation from the Japanese point of view, Camp Nine details how the impact the camps may have had on the areas surrounding them as well as bringing to light life in these "camps."

Camp Nine would make a wonderful book club selection with much to discuss and a book to enjoy. For more opinions on this book, check out the full tour at TLC Book Tours.

Vivienne Schiffer

Sunday Salon - November 6

2011-11-06T06:00:00.004-06:00

November, already? How did that happen while I wasn't looking? It's been such an unusual and busy year for me and my reading time has really taken a hit. Heading into the holiday season, I'm going to have to accept that it's not going to get any better the rest of the year. That being said, I'm tossing in the towel on all challenges. I'm going to try to read some of the books that I'd planned for them but I'm giving myself permission to "fail" without guilt.

Now for that promised picture from last month's Omaha Bookworms meeting. Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA is third from the left. What fun we had talking with Mary Helen about her books, her family and even baseball. Hmm, now that we've seen how great it is to have an author in our midst, I wonder how Timothy Schaffert (also from Omaha) would feel about joining us to talk about The Little Coffins of Hope?

Added to my wish list this week: Catherine The Great by Robert K. Massie, Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, The Wandering Falcon by Ahmad Jamil, The Boy In The Suitcase by Lena Kaaberol and Agnete Friis, and James Madison by Richard Brookhiser. It's probably bad to add this many books at a time given how little I've been reading lately!

Fans of Sarah Jio's, The Violets of March, will be happy to know that she's got a new book, The Bungalow, coming out this December. Here's a little teaser for you:

I'm finishing Vivienne Schiffer's Camp Nine for a TLC Book Tour this week. Then I'm back to reading The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin, the Omaha Bookworms December selection. What are you reading this week? What books did you add to your wish list?

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

2011-11-03T23:38:00.000-05:00

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How A Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn
304 pages
Published September 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

When Kathleen Flinn returned to Seattle from studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the premier cooking school in the world, she had no idea what she was going to do with that education. Then a chance encounter in the grocery store set her on a mission to teach every day women how to cook for themselves and their families. Thus was born the Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Flinn invited a group of volunteers to weekly cooking lessons, learning everything from how to properly use a knife to how to cook all kinds of meet. Along the way the women learned to hone their taste buds, experiment with spices, and even to make bread. They gained confidence in their skills in the kitchen, learned how easy and fast it can be to make meals from scratch and discovered how much healthier it is to avoid prepackaged foods.

Following on the heels of Four Kitchens and Julie and Julia, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this book reinforced the ideas I had learned in those books. Even more surprising for me, was how much this book made me rethink the way I cook. I may not quite packaged foods altogether (c'mon, some of them taste so good!), but I'm certainly thinking about how I can do more from scratch using fewer canned and boxed goods. The book has wonderful recipes but the reason it will stay in my kitchen, where it will be handy, is for all of the helpful hints. I had no idea I should be cooking down my cream in my cream sauces.There were some industry-related revelations (for me, at least) in the book as well. Did you know that Hershey's used to the biggest manufacturer of pasta in the U.S.?

This is one of those books that I won't be lending, just recommending!

Instant City by Steve Inskeep

2011-11-01T00:02:00.000-05:00

Instant City: Life and Death In Karachi by Steve Inskeep
304 pages
Published October 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

On December 28, 2009 a bomb blew up on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan as Shia Muslims marched in their annual Ashura procession marking the death long ago of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Hussein. Who placed the bomb? Who set the fires that destroyed blocks of nearby buildings the same day? In most cities, this would be a day that would long be remembered for its violence. For Karachi, it has almost become par for the course.

Inskeep uses the events of this day to look at the larger problem that is the instability in the country of Pakistan, most visibly in Karachi, which Inskeep calls an "instant city." He defines "instant city" as "a metropolitan area that's grown since 1945 at a substantially higher rate than the population of the country in which it belongs." According to conservative estimates, Karachi has grown at least 30 times larger than it was in 1945, most of the grow occurring in the weeks following the partition of India into two countries, India and Pakistan.

Using December 28, 2009 as a way of exploring the greater problems plaguing Karachi and Pakistant, Inskeep introduces his readers to a number of people, past and present, those who influenced Pakistan as it grew following Partition and those who were present the day of the bombing. Historically Inskeep looks at the divide between the sects of Islam, the friction between India's majority Hindu population and Pakistan's majority Muslim population, and the rifts between ethnicities and classes.

When I was approached about this book, I jumped at the chance primarily because I so enjoy listening to Steve Inskeep on NPR. The fact that it deals with a part of the world that fascinates me and that it fits with my goal of reading more non-fiction this year sealed the deal. Inskeep does not disappoint. By using the one event to tie all of issues that plague Karachi together and by introducing so many people involved that day, Inskeep has developed this work of non-fiction into something resembling a mystery that pulls the reader through the book in search of answers. In his debut novel, Inskeep exhibits the same mix of journalism and storytelling that I appreciate in this radio work. In his skilled hands, Karachi comes alive.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour! For more thoughts on this book, check out the full tour.

Sunday Salon - October 30

2011-10-30T20:50:00.001-05:00

Happy 29th anniversary to my beloved Big Guy! This year has really served to remind us both of those vows we said before our family and friends all of those years ago. And how did we celebrate, you may ask? Last night we enjoyed dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant but today we have spent most of the day going our own ways - he to enjoy the beautiful fall colors and me to have Miss H's senior pictures taken. Here's what he saw today:

Thursday evening The Omaha Bookworms enjoyed a wonderful evening with Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA. Ms. Stefaniak stepped in and immediately became one of the gang, particularly when she mentioned to group that she was interested World Series game. When you let on to a group of women, half of whom have spent some time in St. Louis, that you're cheering for the Cardinals, you have made yourself a group of friends! We started by picking her brain about her writing process and ended by talking about the Ku Klux Klan--what a fantastic conversation! Pictures to come!

I've mentioned before that the Omaha Bookworms is a diverse group of women; we count among our members our own political activist. You have probably not heard of the Trans-Canada effort to build a pipeline through Nebraska but it really is something that everyone should be concerned about given that its planned route takes it directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest aquifers. That's gotten our former President of the League of Women Voters so riled up that she appeared in front of the state legislature in her Susan B. Anthony outfit, something she may regret having told a blogger! Here she is in action:

This evening we're enjoying some literary television. First we watched "Once Upon A Time" which I'm thoroughly enjoying (but The Big Guy says it feels like "Desperate Housewives" goes goth to him). Now we're watching "Case Histories" on PBS, a series based on Kate Atkinson's books about Jackson Brodie with this episode based on her book "When Will There Be Good News." We both quite liking this and wish we would have caught the first two episodes.

I'm finishing up Steve Inskeep's Instant City for a TLC Book Tour this week. I'll also have reviews of Julia Child's My Life In France and The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn. What's on your reading agenda this week?

Sunday Salon and Dewey's Readathon Wrap Up

2011-10-23T20:46:00.000-05:00

I've been reading and reading these food related books this month and it's starting to look like I'm going to end this month with a pile of food books still to be read - it has not been a good month for reading! I had hoped to really crank out some reading during the readathon but, well, I didn't. Still hoping to get a couple more read this week and then I'm going to focus on reads for challenges the rest of the year. It would be nice to get a couple of those completed!

Once again, despite my attempts to be more realistic, I didn't get nearly as much reading done during Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon as I had hoped to. Got up early to read for an hour before the official start but then I had to work, take Miss H in for her senior yearbook pic, and The Big Guy decided we really did need to go out to dinner. But, if I'm being honest, the thing that really kept me from getting any reading done was college sports. I had to cheer on my Huskers in both football and volleyball, of course, but then there were also Big 10 and Big 12 games that required my attention as well. Oh yeah, and a baseball game--go Cards!

To wrap up the readathon, it's time for the ending meme:

Which hour was most daunting for you? That would be Hour 18. I got more reading done after that but I almost called it a night at that point.
Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? I always think mysteries would make the best choices, even though that's never what I've lined up!
Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? No - it was great!
What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? I liked that some of the mini-challenges were shorter and easier to complete quickly without taking too much time away from reading.
How many books did you read? finished one and had started and read all of another one.
What were the names of the books you read? The Kitchen Counter Cooking School and My Life in France
Which book did you enjoy most? I enjoyed both of them.
Which did you enjoy least?
If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? Have some "canned" cheers prepared. Trish said to do it but I didn't get around to it. I liked leaving personal comments but I could have visited more often if I prepared some cheers.
How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? I'll definitely participate again and I'll certainly cheer again. I know how great it is to get those comments!

Dewey's Read-A-Thon Mini-Challenge: Hodge Podge

2011-10-22T20:34:00.000-05:00

Erin of Erin Reads has devised a mini-challenge for readathon participants called the Hodge Podge Challenge:

Here’s what you must do to participate in the Hodge-Podge Proposals Mini-Challenge. First, grab a pen and paper, open up a text file, or fire up your memory and list:

The first name of any character in the book you’re currently reading (or just finished)
The make or model of your current car, whichever you like better (if you don’t have a car, use one you’ve had or would like to have)
A job you think would be especially fascinating

For me that would be 1) Julia, 2) Honda Odyssey and 3) research assistant for historical works.

Now for the second part:
Numbers 1 and 2 become the first and last name of your new character, and 3 is his or her occupation. Now briefly pitch me a new series in the genre of your choice based on this hodge-podge character!

Here goes:

Julia Odyssey, research fellow for famed historical fiction author E.M. Kemble, loves her work, not just because she loves history but because she loves the routine of it all. But there's nothing routine about the day she discovers that her mentor and boss has gone missing. Has he met with an accident or is there something more sinister going on? While the police go about their search using their usual methods, Julia begins her search the only way she knows how...research into the past.

FINALLY - I actually made time for a mini-challenge!

Woo Hoo - It's Readathon Time Again!

2011-10-21T23:14:00.012-05:00

It's that time again - time for the fall edition of Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon. As usual, I've got my stack of books ready and I'll stop and pick up some snacks after work in the morning but this year I'm going into the event with a much more realistic attitude. I will not read 1000 pages or more, I will not finish 6 books, I will not read for 24 hours. But I will take advantage of the day as an excuse to read as much as I want. To avoid overloading bladers and emails, I'll add updates to this post throughout the readathon.

In my pile of books:
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn (to finish)
My Life In France by Julia Child
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Five Quarters of an Orange by Joanne Harris
Instant City by Steve Inskeep (for a TLC Book Tour)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

HOUR ONE: Got a jump start to I could read before I go to work for a few hours. Working to finish KITCHEN COUNTER COOKING SCHOOL.

HOUR EIGHT: I've gotten another hour of actual reading done and an hour of cheerleading done (my first time as a cheerleader - boy are there a lot of readers signed up to cheer for!).

HOUR TEN: Finished a book! THE KITCHEN COUNTER COOKING SCHOOL is one that was the perfect followup to FOUR KITCHENS and JULIE AND JULIA - it made a lot of references to things I learned about in the first two books. Next up: MY LIFE IN FRANCE...I think. Should get more reading done once the Husker game is over. I've made a pot of coffee so I'm golden for staying awake for at least 9 or 10 more hours.

HOUR 13: Lost some time when my hubby decided we absolutely had to go out to dinner. But I've picked up MY LIFE IN FRANCE now and am really enjoying it (although I am getting tired of all of the names!).

HOUR 17: Completely distracted by college sports this evening - my biggest problem every fall readathon! Did get a couple of hours worth of reading in and I'm heading off to do some cheerleading now. Still working on MY LIFE IN FRANCE.

HOURS READ:7
PAGES READ: 224 pages
BOOKS FINISHED: 1
TIME SPENT CHEERING: 2
MINI-CHALLENGES: 1

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

2011-10-17T23:04:00.000-05:00

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
359 pages
Published July 2009 by Little, Brown and Company
Source: the publisher - in fact, this was one of the first books ever offered to me for review

Julie Powell was pushing thirty, just moving into an even crappier apartment than the one she and her husband were living in and suffering through a series of temp jobs which are sucking her soul away. Enter Julia Childs - specifically Child's masterwork "Mastering The Art of French Cooking" (MtAoFC).

As a teenager, Powell (when she wasn't sneaking a peek at her parents' copy of The Joy of Sex) could frequently be found reading recipes from her mother's copy of MtAoFC so it was only logical that she would turn to it again for a source of inspiration when she found herself desperately in need of something to do to make herself not feel like a failure. With her husband's encouragement, Powell started a blog and the Julie/Julia Project was born. Powell set a goal to cook all 524 recipes in the book in 365 days. Along the way Powell had many great successes but just as many disasters. Her husband should probably be nominated for sainthood - the woman didn't get meals on the table until most people are headed for bed, her housekeeping (what there was of it to begin with) became so non-existent that she once discovered maggots in her kitchen, and she subjected her friends to all manner of food they would never have chosen to eat if they didn't love her.

After reading about the source of my copy of this book, you may have asked yourself why it took me so long to finally read this book. When I was offered this book, I was thrilled and had every intention of reading it immediately. Maybe I was put off by some reviews. Maybe because it was already everywhere. I'm not sure. Then when the movie came out, I was determined to read it first. Then after I'd seen the movie, I was determined to read it while the story was still fresh in my mind. Still I didn't get to it. It took a couple of new books sitting in my to-review pile to remind me that this one was still waiting for me.

I liked it, despite its flaws. Powell has a biting sense of humor and is just as willing to poke fun at herself as she is to poke fun at others. A complaint some have voiced is that Powell has a bit of a dirty mouth. I didn't notice it much (sounds like it's definitely more prominent in the blog). She does get a bit distracted at the end dropping names about the people who came to interview and film her and often got off topic in describing her friend's lives. I could have done without reading so often, too, about what a terrible housekeeper Powell was. Seriously, I don't care how busy working and cooking you are, there should never be maggots in your kitchen! Republicans be warned - Powell does not like you, a point she made repeatedly. But she is something of a voice for all of those who toil away in jobs where they are unappreciated, overworked, and underpaid. Maybe she could have whined a bit less about it but aren't we really all longing to find something to do with our lives that will fulfill us?

I loved the movie adaptation of this book which is also based on Julia Child's book, My Life In France, which is coming up soon for me. Powell may not have been able to end her book this way, but after all of this talk about wonderful food, I have to say it - bon appetit!

Sunday Salon - October 16

2011-10-16T14:02:00.000-05:00

Another week with very little reading done. So frustrating - not just because it means I'm not reading but also because it means I'm not finding enough time to relax. Got a promotion at work recently and it's going to mean more work hours, particularly for the next few weeks so I'm not sure when I'm going to find good chunks of reading time again. I'm going to have to get more organized so I have some "me" time every day. Everyone around me will be safer if I do!

Lucinda Riley's The Girl On The Cliff arrived in my mailbox this week unannounced. I'm never sure quite how to feel about books that arrive without my having requested them. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the ones I buy, read for book club, request, and do tours for as it is. But still...free books? Hard to argue with that. This one is historical fiction so that appeals to me. The blurb on the back makes it sound a bit reminiscent of Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden which I had mixed feelings about. I withhold judgement until I read it; who knows when that might be, though!

The Omaha Lit Fest was held this weekend. It's something I've been looking forward to since last year. Unfortunately, it's also something that was impacted by my increased work hours. I was only able to attend two sessions yesterday afternoon. Not surprisingly, they were both great - wonderful panel discussions by both authors I love and authors that are new to me. I was disappointed to learn that Rainbow Rowell's (Attachments) next book won't be released in the U.S. until next fall, despite that fact that she had in her possession a bound, uncorrected copy of it. It will come out in England in April. Wonder if I can get someone there to send me a copy? Got to introduce myself to Mary Helen Stefaniak (The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA) and talk about her upcoming visit with the Omaha Book Worms. Can't wait for that! Came away with three books: Timothy Shaffert's Devils In The Sugar Shop, Carolyn Turgeon's Mermaid and Jo Ann Mapes' Solomon's Way.

This week I'll finish Julie Powell's Julie and Julia and start Kathleen Flinn's Kitchen Counter Cooking School. Hopefully I'll also have time to get to Julia Child's My Life In France as well. What are you reading this week?

Table of Contents by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp

2011-10-14T21:20:00.003-05:00

Table of Contents: From Breakfast with Anita Diamant to Dessert with James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings, and Insights from Today's Bestselling Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp

304 pages
Published November 2010 by Adams Media
Source: the publisher

I like to think that I'm an alert reader, particularly since I began blogging, but I was surprised, when I picked up this book, by how often food appears in books. Perhaps, if you've read Lisa Genova's Still Alice, you'll recall the white chocolate challah pudding that Alice forgot how to make on Christmas Eve. Or maybe the crab and corn chowder that Lily makes in Barbara Delinsky's Not My Daugher or Dinah Kimble's green salad with salmon in Jennifer Haigh's Mrs. Kimble.

For Table of Contents, Gelman and Krupp spoke with fifty authors who have included food in some one in their writings and included recipes for more than 100 dishes found the author's books. This is not, however, just a cookbook. Each of the authors has also speaks about what inspires them, who and what has influenced them, what readers should know about them and answer the questions readers most often ask.

Doesn't that sound like just the thing for someone who loves to read and loves to cook? I read this book in one sitting, something that's rare for me (granted, it's not exactly heavy reading and there's a lot of white space!). I always enjoy learning what inspires authors; it's one of the things I most enjoy when the Omaha Bookworms get the chance to speak with authors. For example, Anita Diamont (The Red Tent) uses modern dance as an incentive to sit down and write, Amy Greene (Bloodroot) draws her inspiration from the Appalachian landscape, and when Garth Stein (The Art of Racing In The Rain) knows that when he starts hearing voices, it means that he's listening to a character that will appear in his next book.

Unlike Four Kitchens which I reviewed earlier this week, most of the recipes in Table of Contents use ingredients that are easy to find, perhaps already in your own kitchen, so this book will find a place in my recipe book collection. I am, in fact, making Jacquelyn Mitchard's Next Day Rice Pudding as I write this review.

If you'd like to get your hands on some of the recipes, or you're someone who gets all of their recipes from the internet, the authors have kindly written a blog that includes a lot of the recipes from the book. Gelman and Krupp are also the authors of The Book Club Cookbook and host a website by the same name. Here book clubs can recommend books to one another, find a list of authors who will meet with book clubs, and get some pairing ideas for food and books.

Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes

2011-10-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

Waiting For Robert Capa by Susana Fortes
208 pages
Published September 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Gerta Pohorylle and André Friedmann and are young Jewish refugees who arrive in Paris in 1935. Caught up in the scene that is Paris on the cusp of World War II, the two were first friends, then business partners and finally lovers. Friedmann taught Pohorylle the art of photography and she, in turn, remade him into Robert Capa, launching his career, and remade herself into Gerda Taro. She became one of the first female combat photographers and he became internationally known for his photograph, The Fallen Soldier. taken early during the Spanish Civil War.

Capa and Taro found themselves caught up in political movements in Paris as much because of what they stood against as because of what they stood for - they were both fiercely opposed to Facism. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, it was only logical that the pair would find themselves drawn to the country, throwing themselves as close to danger as was possible.

In her author notes, Fortes who is Spanish, stated that she's been drawn to the work of Capa for years. It was not 2008, when 127 undeveloped rolls of film that Capa, Taro, and their friend David Seymour had taken during the war, that Fortes decided it was time to write the story. Interestingly, I found the book to be much more Gerda's story.

Waiting For Robert Capa struggles to find it's voice. Sometimes, it's almost overly poetic as Fortes writes about the environment of Paris. Other times it reads much more as if it were a work of non-fiction, detailing movements in battles and dropping names of other well-known participants in the Paris and/or Spanish settings. For me, I far preferred when Fortes cut back on the descriptiveness and got to the meat of the story. It's a story I've been interested in for a couple of years and it felt as if Fortes and written fully-developed characters who may very well be much like the people on which they are based. I find myself even more interested in this pair whose relationship seems as if it truly were one with origins in the pages of a novel.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to read this one. For more opinions, please see the full list of reviews.

Four Kitchens: My Life Behind The Burner In New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv, and Paris by Lauren Shockey

2011-10-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

Four Kitchens: My Life Behind The Burner In New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv, and Paris by Lauren Shockey
352 pages
Published July 2011 by Grand Central Publishing
Source: the publisher

When she graduated from college with a perfectly serviceable four-year degree, Lauren Shockey discovered with a start that she really had no passion for working a nine-to-five job in a corporate environment. Instead, she told her parents, she wanted to go to culinary school. Not surprisingly, her parents encouraged her to get a job. But sitting in a office day after day only convinced Shockey that she needed to pursue her passion so off to culinary school she went. Upon leaving culinary school, Shockey knew that her education wasn't complete; she needed a job in a real kitchen so pursued a job as a stagiaire (STAH-zjee-air). A stage is "an apprenticeship offering hands on experience and familiarity with new techniques and cuisines." Shockey did her first stage in a small restaurant in France but quickly realized that it was not going to give her what she needed so she determined that she would spend the next year working in four different kitchens, in four different countries.

First stop, wd-50 in New York, owned by Wylie Dufresne who some of you may know from his guest judging appearances on Top Chef on Bravo. Dufresne is one of the masters of molecular gastronomy, a type of cooking which puts a lot of emphasis on technique, science and innovation. Day one, Shockey learned that she had not learned anything she needed to know about working in a restaurant while she was in culinary school and it was an uphill climb to earn respect from the nearly all-male staff. Next stop, La Verticale in Hanoi, Vietnam. Here the emphasis was entirely on flavor. Then is was on to Carmella Bistro in Tel Aviv, Israel. Shockey learned about foods that had been developed over centuries by pulling together foods from all of the cultures that have touched the region.Finally, Shockey found herself working Senderens in Paris, a Michelin 3-star restaurant, firmly rooted in the traditional foods of France.

If you were to look at the Barnes and Noble page for this book, you'd find lots of reviews highly recommending it, including Kirkus Reviews where I have frequently read reviews bashing books I've loved. Once again, Kirkus and I disagree. Shockey's journey made for a terrific idea for a book, and I appreciated that she included not just her experiences in each kitchen, but her experiences in each city/country as well. But in both the professional and personal aspects, I felt that she often went into much too much detail and was frequently repetitive. I lost track of the number of times, for example, that she talked about prepping crab in Paris and I believe I might be able to prep some of the food at wd-50 since I have detailed instruction on how certain foodstuffs must be cut. Considering that Shockey was going to be visiting four different kitchens, I was disappointed that she spent over 90 pages devoted to New York and wd-50. By the time that section was finally done, I was almost ready to abandon the book. I get it, I get it - working in a restaurant kitchen in New York is hard work and long hours for little if any pay, the climate can often be hostile, and at wd-50 there is a ridiculous amount of time and effort spent on things that may never be apparent to anyone not on the staff.

To be fair, I don't entirely blame Shockey. I think a much more vigorous editing would have helped tremendously. I didn't need to know the names of everyone she met along the way or the details of many of her evenings overseas but I very much enjoyed her explorations of cultures other than her own. I certainly had no idea how dull much of the work in a professional kitchen can be, nor that it remains a male-centric environment, nor that much of the staff works for nothing. I found it interesting to learn about the different mind-sets of the employees in the different countries as well, the different kinds of ingredients that other countries use in their cooking and the amount of work that goes into every dish on most menus. I was happy to see that, in the end, Shockey found that the most passionate chefs are those who are cooking in their own homes for people that they care about.

If you're willing to make special trips to grocery stores you don't usually frequent (or maybe you do), there are a lot of very interesting recipes in the book. Shockey has modified a lot of the recipes she worked with in the restaurants to fit the kind of cooking most of us do and the type of equipment most of us have. Most of them, I will warn you, are the kinds of recipes you'll save for the weekends or special occasions when cooking a meal is a day long event.

Sunday Salon - October 9

2011-10-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

What a crazy week I've had...again! Prefer not to have another one like it but, on the plus side, I've had something of my own reading marathon the past four days. I managed to finished the better part of one book and two more and I've gotten a good start on a fourth book. Now that does feel good!

My month of Fall Feasting will finally kick off this week with a reviews of Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey and Table of Contents by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. Next up for my foodie reading is (finally!) Julie Powell's Julie and Julia. I might just have to follow this one up with a girls' movie night. My sister, niece, daughter and I all went to see the movie in the theater and loved it. I'm thinking we'll kick the guys out, get some popcorn and candy, and create the fun.

This week I'll also be reviewing Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes for a TLC Book Tour. Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer; the story of Capa and his love, Gerta Taro, have interested me since I first learned about him a couple of years ago so I jumped at the chance to read this one.

Next weekend is the Omaha Lit Fest. I believe I've mentioned (a few hundred times) how impressed I was with last year's event. Needless to say I'm really looking forward to this year's event and getting a chance to introduce myself to Mary Helen Stefaniak (The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA). Ms. Stefaniak teaches at Creighton University, here in Omaha, and I'm so excited that she's agreed to meet with the Omaha Bookworms in person this month!

Next up for me this week is The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn. I'm hearing great things about this one so I'm really looking forward to it. What are you reading this week?

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine

2011-10-04T06:00:00.002-05:00

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
292 pages
Published February 2010 by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux
Source: bought this one for my mom for Christmas last year

If you are one of the three Weissman women, life has suddenly taken a dramatic left turn. When Betty's husband of fifty years, Joseph, announces that he wants a divorce, she suddenly finds herself needing a place to live. When her cousin Lou suggests he come stay in a cottage he owns in Westport, daughter Miranda (going through a professional crisis that has her funds all tied up, perhaps never to be seen again) suggests that she and her sister Anne also move into the cottage. Anne, a single mother, who is a librarian, balks at the idea but, as she always has, she eventually agrees. It's only for a short while, after all, until Joseph either comes to his senses and comes back to Betty or agrees to let her leave in the apartment. Besides, Anne knows that between them, Miranda and Betty will never be able to manage financially. Even with her constant admonitions, the pair have a hard time understanding that a new suit or a new kayak are not in their new budget.

When Miranda takes that new kayak out for the first time, she suddenly finds herself flipped upside down and in danger of being pulled out into the Atlantic. That is until she is rescued by the oh so very handsome Kit Maybank. Miranda is soon smitten, not just with Kit but also with his young son, Henry. Miranda's always one to fall fast and hard but this time Anne senses that Henry is the one Miranda is most in love with.

Anne, in the meantime, is spending all of her daydreams on author Frederick Barrows, a man she has had a brief fling with. A man who still seems to be interested but also a man who has made almost not attempt to contact Anne for the longest time. It seems that his grown children are not wild about the idea of his spending time with a librarian.

Betty is going through all of the phases of grief. Yes, grief. Betty insists that she is a widow despite that fact that she is spending a tremendous amount of time with lawyers trying to get the settlement her husband has promised her will be "very generous" but which he doesn't seem to be producing. To top it all off, Betty soon discovers that Joseph didn't just wake up one day and decide he was tired of being married to her. There's another woman who, as it turns out, is also Frederick Barrow's sister.

Throw in a parade of characters who congregate at Cousin Lou's house, including his annoying wife Rosalyn, and friend Roberts and you've got the makings for conflict, humor and misunderstanding.

Taking Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and dropping it squarely onto the East Coast of the United States, Schine does a fine job of re-imagining Austen's characters and story lines while making changes that make the story her own. Fan of Austen's novel will enjoy comparing the two works throughout the novel and watching the stories blend then go off their own ways. Here there is no half-brother taking the family home away from the Dashwoods; there is always the hope that Betty will be able to return to her own home. The daughters are older, and, theoretically, able to make their own way in live without the help of a good marriage. But that doesn't stop all three of the Weissmanns from hoping for a happily ever after that includes a good man.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, certainly owing, in no small part, to the fact that I love Austen's book. But I also relished Schine's observations about relationships.

"Over the years, Betty began to forget that she liked Joseph. The large breakfast seemed grotesque, the drink obsessive, the light super an affectation. This happened in their third decade together and lasted until their fourth. Then, Betty noticed, Joseph's routines somehow began to take on a comforting rhythm, like the heartbeat of a mother to a newborn baby. Betty was once again content, in love, even."

Come on, those of you who have been married this long, you have to admit that you've had thoughts like this yourself. The "oh my god, I'm stuck with this for the rest of my life" moments when you're not sure you can take it any longer.

Schine's central characters a well-rounded and the reader learns just enough about the supporting cast to make them interesting but not so much that it bogs down the plot. Perhaps my favorite parts of this book were not the ways in which it was like Austen's novel, but in the ways in which it took off on it's own. The Omaha Bookworms will be reading this one in December and I can't wait to discuss it with them and to see how the opinions might vary between those who have read both The Three Weissmanns of Westport and Sense and Sensibility and those who have only read this one. I'll keep you posted on how that discussion goes!

Sunday Salon - October 2

2011-10-02T00:37:00.000-05:00

As part of Banned Books Week this past week, BookBrowse.com offered these thoughts on reading:

9 Things That Happen When You Read

In a series of lectures, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk ruminated on what goes on in the mind of a person reading a novel. His thoughts are summarized by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. below. Do these match your experiences? The point about finishing a (great) novel and feeling that it had been written just for me particularly struck home - it maybe irrational but it's so true!

We observe the general scene and follow the narrative. Whether action-filled or more literary, we read all novels the same way: seeking out the meaning and main idea.
We transform words into images in our mind, completing the novel as our imaginations picture what the words are telling us.
Part of our mind wonders how much is real experience and how much is imagination. "A third dimension of reality slowly begins to emerge within us: the dimension of the complex world of the novel."
We wonder if the novel depicts reality as we know it. Is this scene realistic, could this actually happen?
We enjoy the precision of analogies, the power of narrative, the way sentences build upon one another, the music of the prose.
We make moral judgments about the characters' behavior, and about the novelist for his own moral judgments by way of the characters' actions and their consequences.
We feel successful when we understand the text, and we come to feel as though it was written just for us.
Our memory works hard to keep track of all the details, and in a well-constructed novel, everything connects to everything.
We search for the secret center of the novel, convinced that there is one. We hunt for it like a hunter searches for meaningful signs in the forest.

Yesterday kicked off two things; National Reading Group Month and my month for Fall Feasting, a month devoted to reading books about cooking and food. Oh sure, National Reading Group Month has all kinds of gatherings and famous authors but I'm not going to get to go to any them. So I'll be looking forward to reading and talking about food. I just got a new refrigerator and swapped out my deep freeze with the old refrigerator so I've really taken stock this weekend of the food I have on hand and my mind is racing with the possibilities. Can't wait for the books to give me the final inspiration to get in the kitchen and make some delicious meals.

What are you looking forward to reading?

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

2011-09-30T21:42:00.000-05:00

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
112 pages
Originally published in 1937, republished in 1993 by Penguin Group
Source: bought it

Of Mice And Men is the story of an unlikely friendship between two men, migrant workers who endlessly dream of a better life. George Milton and Lennie Small have traveled from job to job, always hoping to be able to earn enough money to buy a small piece of land.

George, wise and patient, dreams of being able to live off of the land, to work only for himself. Lennie, large, strong and mentally slow, dreams only of being able to care and pet a hutch of rabbits.
Lennie is a hard worker, but because of his slowness, his tendency to overly love things, and his reaction when he becomes frightened, the pair are constantly having to move on before they can get the money together to make their dream come true.

In Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie are starting work at a new place with high hopes once again. George does everything he can to try to keep things calm but there is trouble brewing at this ranch. A lonely, lovely wife and her very jealous husband, who also happens to be the boss, make George nervous from the beginning...with good reason.

Banned Books Week crept up on me stealthily, on all-fours and I couldn't figure out how I was going to squeeze in one more book in order to rebel against those who want to tell us what we can and cannot read. Then last Monday I was in that store I hate to shop in and there sat this little bit of banned wonder. I'm not sure why, but I've never read Of Mice and Men before, never even watched one of the movie versions. In the end, once again I found myself wondering why I had waited so long to read something that so many have spoken so highly of for so long.

When I was pulling up the publication information for this book, I saw this in a review:

"I was not very impressed by this book. The story was simple, the characters sympathetic and, but for a few exceptions, well drawn out, and the final twist of events was emotionaly impactive [sic]. But that's about all I can say that's good about this book."

Really? "The characters were sympathetic, the story was well drawn out and the final twist was emotionaly impactive" [sic]--and that's not enough to make a book good? No? Well, that's definitely not all I can say that's good about this book.

In only 112 pages, Steinbeck manages to craft a marvelously touching friendship, surround his lead characters with a fully drawn supporting cast, and build a feeling of tension all while creating a landscaping and settings that come to life.

"A far rush of wind sounded and a gust drove through the tops of the trees like a wave. The sycamore leaves turned up their silver sides, the brown, dry leaves on the ground scudded a few feet. And row on row of tiny wind waves flowed up the pool's green surface."

The reviewer I quoted above had a problem with the fact that most of the ambiance of the book comes at the beginning of each chapter after which Steinbeck focuses on the story itself. I hadn't even realized that was the case until I read this review; I was so taken with the both the descriptions of the settings and the story of the men on that ranch. It didn't matter to me than one took precedence over another at any one time.In researching this book, I found that Steinbeck had intentionally done this to make the book something that could be read as a novella or as a play. Which may account for why this book came alive for me.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

2011-09-28T00:27:00.000-05:00

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
338 pages
Published March 2011 by George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Source: bought it

In an unnamed Balkan country, Natalia and her best friend Zora, young doctors, are heading to an orphanage when Natalia learns of the mysterious death of her beloved grandfather. The mystery isn't so much that he died (Natalia has known for some time that he had cancer) but why he died where he died. As Natalia tries to make sense of what her grandfather was doing, she turns to the stories he told her as she was growing up when they made their weekly trips to visit the tigers at the zoo, stories of the deathless man. With mysteries surrounding her (who are the people digging in the vineyard behind the home she and Zora are staying in?), Natalia begins to piece together the greatest story of her grandfather's life, the story of the tiger's wife.

"Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger's wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life...One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again."

Obreht picked me right up out of my family room and dropped me into that unknown Balkans country; I could envision myself in the car as Natalia drove along the coast in search of the town where her grandfather died, I felt a bit of panic imagining myself in the isolated valley where Natalia's grandfather grew up. I was particularly enchanted by the stories of the deathless man and the tiger's wife and eagerly read on to learn more about these characters and how they tied in to Natalia's grandfather. I was equally interested in the story of Natalia, a girl who grew up living in a country first on the cusp of war, then at war but in a way that doesn't directly affect her and then, finally, when war came to her city. Through all of this, Obreht contemplates death at all ages.

"But children die how they have been living - in hope. They don't know what's happening so they expect nothing, they don't ask you to hold their hand - but you end up needing them to hold yours. With children, you're on your own."

The story introduces a tremendous number of characters, giving the readers the back story for many of them. This gives the reader a well-rounded vision of the characters but it can become confusing. I can't imagine reading this book over a long period of time without taking notes to keep track of everything.

The Tiger's Wife was the Omaha Bookworms' September selection. Usually we try to read the Pulitzer Prize winner, but after one of our members read (and hated) Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad, we opted to go with the Orange Prize winner instead. We usually try to time our reads so that those who use the library have plenty of advance time to secure a copy and those who buy the books can get it in paperback. Unfortunately, we made our decision too late to get library copies for some people and the book which is only available in hardcover until November which meant that most of our members either didn't get to the book at all or had only managed to get to part of it by the time we met. Those of us who had read the book enjoyed talking about it but it's pretty hard to talk about a book when so many people are still planning to finish it!

Sunday Salon - September 25

2011-09-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

Wait! Can this really be the last Sunday of September already? Goodness, I've all but lost the past few months! Of course, it shouldn't surprise me - fall did officially kick off this week although I've felt like it was fall since the first kick off of the football season.

My reading schedule for the fall is looking very clear - only a couple of reviews that are scheduled and I've already read my book club selection for October. I've got the food theme going on in October but I'm also going to be using the rest of the fall to work on books for challenges. I've got a couple I'm working on right now, The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine for the Sense and Sensibility Bicentenary Challenge and This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust for the War Through The Generations Reading Challenge.

Anyone else enjoy listening to Kurt Anderson's "Studio 360?" If you haven't yet discovered it, I heartily recommend seeking it out on your local public radio station. This week Anderson interviewed Lev Grossman about making the switch from literary fiction to magic-based fiction. I was unfamiliar with Grossman's work prior to The Magicians so it was interesting to hear him talk about how hard it was to begin writing in that genre. A few weeks ago, Anderson interviewed Jonathon Franzen as Freedom was getting ready to come out in paperback and Philippe Petit, whose tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center, was the centerpiece of Colum McCann's Let The Great World Spin.

Other books that I've been hearing about on the radio this week that have really piqued my interest are Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend, Michael Lewis' Moneyball, and Life Itself by Roger Ebert. What new books have you added to your wish list this week?

Kamala Nair And The Story Behind "The Girl In The Garden"

2011-09-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

When Kamala Nair approached me about reading and reviewing her debut novel, The Girl In The Garden, I was immediately interested based on two things: the book is mostly set in India and Nair's publisher calls the book a "dark grown up fairy tale." You know now much I love fairy tales!

But what really convinced me to make the time for this book was the story that Nair included in her pitch. One of my favorite things about talking with authors is learning about the inspiration behind the book and Nair's is as interesting as most books.

The story behind the novel:

"The idea for The Girl in the Garden came to me one night in the winter of 2004, during a trip to India. I had just completed my first term as a graduate student in the Creative Writing program at Trinity College Dublin and had flown to Kerala, along with my parents, to visit relatives.

As a child, I loved the novel The Secret Garden. Leaving behind the modern comforts of the West to enter the old-fashioned, culturally confusing world of my father’s village, full of strange new discoveries, I often felt like Mary at Misselthwaite Manor. The verdant jungles, wild and untended, were the perfect place for a curious child to uncover buried secrets.

We were staying in the rambling farmhouse where my father grew up and one evening after sunset, a group of us headed to the village temple. Unlike the bustling city where my mother’s family lived, my father’s childhood home seemed untouched by time. We had only a few flashlights to guide us through the dirt roads, which were surrounded by forests and blanketed in an impenetrable darkness.

Only able to see the few inches of ground directly in front of my feet, the rest of my senses were heightened, alive to the sounds and scents of deep India.

Like Rakhee, I slipped off my sandals when we arrived at the temple and winced at the sharp stones underfoot, while my family walked about with relative ease. The temple idols were bathed in the glow of flickering torches, while bells rang and sticks of incense burned. One of my cousins grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the swarm of worshippers and guiding me toward the remnants of a stone wall, with a vast green field just beyond, and an ancient-looking well at its center.

“People say that well is haunted by a yekshi,” whispered my cousin with a smirk, “A ghost.” She was in her late teens, too old to believe in such things, as was I, and while I knew that she was pointing it out more as a curiosity than as something to be feared, the moment was nonetheless arresting. I began to imagine that we were not two sensible adults standing at the edge of that wall, but children, still imbued with the innocence to believe in a world where ghosts and enchanted wells could exist.

I lay in bed that night, thinking about the field and the well, and I imagined into the picture a tree with branches covered in red flowers. I dreamed of two little girls huddling under the tree and the petals of the flowers showering down around them. I knew I wanted to write about that image, so I began to think about who those little girls were, how they got there, and why they were huddled under the tree.

The stirrings of a story growing in my mind caused me to see India in a new way. The village, the paddy fields, the Ayurvedic hospital that my grandfather had founded — they all became characters, as well as the house. My grandfather had built it shortly after he married my grandmother, and gradually expanded it to accommodate the nine children that would eventually be born within its walls. It always seemed to be a thriving center of life and activity, and even in my early visits there, I remembered cousins, uncles, and aunts flowing in and out, and my grandmother, the queen of the house, sweeping through the halls.

My grandmother had recently passed away, and this was the first time we had returned without her. Her absence was palpable. The house seemed to have degenerated. I noticed small changes—door hinges that creaked, treasured photographs destroyed by age and heat, peeling paint. Most of the farm animals had been sold and their stalls stood empty and overgrown with vines.

Thus began Rakhee’s journey."

The Girl In The Garden by Kamala Nair

2011-09-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

The Girl In The Garden by Kamala Nair
320 pages
Published June 2011 by Grand Central Publishing

As her wedding day draws near, Rakhee Singh leaves her fiance a long letter and her engagement ring and makes her way to India to come to terms with something she has been keeping secret from her fiance, something that has been causing Rakhee pain since the summer when she was ten years old.

That summer Rakhee's mother began receiving mysterious letters from India, letters that seemed to affect her parents' relationship, letters that seem to have convinced her mother not to take the pills that made her a happier person. As isolated and alone as Rakhee feels in small town Minnesota, she is not at all happy when her mother announces that the two of them will be traveling to India for the summer.

Once they arrived in India, however, Rakhee became completely absorbed in life in the small village where her mother's family has lived for generations. In Malanad, Rakhee's family, the Varmas are highly respected and live in the biggest house. Rakhee immediately noticed, however, that everything in the house appeared to be a little shabby and the hospital that her family owns was being operated by a man, Dev, Rakhee instinctively disliked.

The longer Rakhee was in Malanad, the more questions she had. What was going on with the hospital and what hold did Dev have over the family? Who was the "old family friend," Prem, who seems to be the only person who could make Rakhee's mother happy? Why did the family seem to blame Rakhee's mother for their problems? But most importantly, what is the secret of the forest behind the family's home? The cousins had been told that a rakshasi (a she-demon) lived and that only adults were allowed to go into the forest to make offerings. But Rakhee did not believe in things like she-demons and when she saw her mother and aunt go into the forest late one night she became determined to discover the truth for herself. When she did, everything changed.

Is it possible that there just is not a book set in India that I will not like? Once again, I have found myself utterly engrossed by a book set in this country. Library Journal calls The Girl In The Garden a cross between Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. Nair has clearly drawn inspiration from both but she has certainly crafted a work that is utterly her own (**tomorrow the story of the inspiration for this novel**).

"They were washing the clothes in the river, roughly and efficiently, then standing and slapping them dry on rocks. Each time they brought a piece of cloth down upon the rock it made a resilient thwack. It was almost a dance; the women in their stained, monochromatic saris, their prematurely graying hair pulled back into frazzled buns, crouching, washing, standing and beating, the rhythm of their movements imbued with a surprising grace."

India comes alive in Nair's hands; while I was reading, I completely forgot my own surroundings. Book clubs would find much to talk about with this book; the many ways Nair explores love alone would make for a lively discussion. Family relationships, guilt, shame, responsibility...all included as well.

Thrity Umrigar, author of The Space Between Us, calls The Girl In The Garden "an impressive debut." It certainly is.

me again by Keith Cronin

2011-09-19T06:00:00.002-05:00

me again by Keith Cronin
322 pages
Published August 2011 by Gale Cengage Learning
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

"I was born on a Tuesday morning. It was a difficult birth, because I was thirty-four years old."

Six years after slipping into a coma following a stroke, Jonathon Hooper miraculously wakes up. His body is atrophied and he can't remember much of anything or anyone from his past. Not the girlfriend who breaks up with him the first time she visits him, not the brother who seems to take a little too much pleasure in watching Jonathon suffer, not the parents who are so eager to have him remember his past. Not wanting to hurt anyone, though, Jonathon immediately decides it's best to let them think that even though he can't remember his previous life, he can remember them.

The only person who really seems to understand what Jonathon goes through in the next few months is Rebecca, a beautiful young woman who has also suffered a stroke and goes through rehabilitation in the same facility Jonathon starts out in. Neither Rebecca or Jonathon is the person they were before their strokes. In Jonathon's case, this soon proves to be a good thing; he was not a good person. But for Rebecca, it means that she is no longer than wife she once was, which puts a tremendous strain on her marriage.

Jonathon's mother works very hard to bring his memory back, pulling out photo album after photo album and having people his life stop by to visit. All of this seems to be moot until one afternoon Jonathon rounds a corner in the house to find the first familiar face he has seen. Once the door to memories has opened, it is only a matter of time before some of Jonathon's past comes back to him.

I can't recall my immediate thoughts when presented me again for review, but I'm quite sure that curiosity was the deciding factor in me agreeing to review this book because the words "stroke," "coma," and "humor" all appeared in the email. I had to see how Cronin could possibly make a book about stroke recovery humorous. Once again, an author has proved to me that a serious subject can be handled in a light way without making light of the subject. As soon as the staff in the hospital which has been housing Jonathon becomes aware he has awakened:

"Other voices joined in, overlapping each other in conversation, and the name Jesus came up repeatedly.

I formed my first conscious thought: I must be Jesus."

Ah, irreverence. This book and I are going to get along. Because, seriously, what would you think if you were Jonathon in this situation? And so the story goes; Cronin writes in a way that assured me that he knew what he was talking about when he described the experience of waking up from a coma, recovering from a stroke, and dealing with the aftermath of what the stroke has done. But doing it all with a sense of humor and irony.
" "Did you like that sherbet?"
"No, not particularly."
"Me neither." She leaned forward, her voice growing more insistent. "Now imagine everybody telling you that you used to just love orange sherbet. And that it's really important that you start loving it again."

"That's what my life is like right now. I don't like orange sherbet, but I used to. And now everybody want s me to like it again, and tells me that if I don't, I'm not the person I used to be. And not the kind of person they want to be with.""

There is a side story about that Cronin uses to demonstrate what a terrible person Jonathon used to be that Cronin uses in the end to solve a plot problem. This particular part of the book really didn't work for me. I did, however, think the way Cronin dealt with the relationship between Jonathon and his father was wonderfully real. Perhaps everything wrapped up a bit too neatly for my tastes but I liked the last line as much as I liked the first line.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, view the full tour schedule. To learn more about Keith Cronin, visit him online at his website, keithcronin.com, or on Facebook.

**Well, this is embarrassing! Even though I had the book right in front of me as I wrote this review, I repeatedly referred to the author as "Kevin" instead of "Keith." I blame a flashback to my years listening to REO Speedwagen. No wonder I couldn't find Cronin on Twitter!

Saying Goodbye To A Friend

2011-09-18T22:50:00.000-05:00

The act of reading a book is almost always a solitary experience. But, if you're lucky, you'll find a group of people who like to talk about books with. If you're even luckier, who'll find friends in that very same group. A lot of people scoff at book clubs. Some believe they are nothing more than an excuse to drink wine and gossip once a month. Some believe that the people in them take the books much too seriously and don't have any fun at all. I'm sure there are clubs that are like this.

Three years ago a friend invited me to join her book club. I love getting the chance to read books I might not otherwise read; I love having the chance to talk about the books with other people who have read them. Do we drink wine? Oh, yeah, we like our wine! Do we spend a lot of time talking about things other than books? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, we do. Which is how the Omaha Bookworms went from a diverse group of women to a circle of friends. Over the past year or so, we've had to say goodbye to a number of our friends as they have moved away from us. Today, though, five of us joined more than a hundred other people to say a final goodbye to one of our friends.

E was diagnosed four years ago with Stage 4 Inflammatory Breast Cancer. At the time she was told that, because she was young and in such great health otherwise, she had six months to two years left. That wasn't good enough for E. She began doing research. Already a healthy eater and advocate of organic foods, E amped it up. She found new methods of treatment, including an alternative to using scans which utilize radiation. E was a fierce competitor in every way so she would have fought Cancer with every ounce of her being no matter what. But E is the mother of three young girls, three girls with whom she was determined to spend more time.

I met E a little more than a year after she was first diagnosed with IBC. Her hair was just growing back from the first rounds of treatment, a beautiful curly steel grey. I didn't know then, though, who E was and what she was going through. Only after that first night did I find out. I couldn't believe it because I have never seen a healthier looking person. This past winter, E was able to join the Omaha Bookworms when we met to discuss her choice of book, Jane Gooddall's Harvest for Hope: A Guide To Mindful Eating and despite what she had been through in the past six months, she remained one of the healthiest looking women I have ever seen.

E was one of the fiercest, most courageous people I have ever met. Her spirit touched so many lives and she was an inspiration to all who knew her. E's favorite quote was "Attitude is Everything" and she had the most amazing attitude. Last year E said of her previous two years:

"Every minute of life is amazing when you didn’t think it was going to be there. Actually every minute in life is amazing. Sometimes we just don’t see it that way. Miracles are everywhere."

In the past year, E has been writing a blog. If you are interested in learning more about what E learned about living with and treating Inflammatory Breast Cancer, I encourage you to visit Rolling On The Edge Of Life.

Skipping A Beat by Sarah Pekkanen

2011-09-16T06:00:00.001-05:00

Skipping A Beat by Sarah Pekkanen
352 pages
Published February 2011 by Washington Square Press
Source: the author!

Michael and Julia seemed to have it all, the big house, the fancy cars, the bottomless bank account. From the time she and Michael first met in high school, they had been inseparable; Julia had assumed things would always be that way, even after the product Michael developed and the company he built took off. She was wrong.

"Now, when I mentally trace the trajectory of our relationship--and I've had plenty of time to do it, lots of silent evenings alone in our home--I realize there wasn't a sharp breaking point or single furious argument that set us on our current path."

Unhappy has she has become, Julia has learned to accept that this is the way life will be. Until the day Michael has a heart attack at work.

"Four minutes and eight seconds. That's how long my husband, Michael Dunhill was dead.

Four minutes and eight seconds. That how long it took for my husband to become a complete stranger to me."

When Michael is brought back to life, he is no longer the man driven to make more and more money, the man who used his money to belittle his own father and brothers, the man who was willing to overlook his own morals to save his company. Suddenly he wants to give it all away--the house, the cars, all of the money. There's nothing Julia can do about it, thanks to a prenuptial agreement that she convinced Michael to sign (because of her father's gambling problem). Michael wants to make things right and to rekindle the love that he and Julia have lost over the years.

"It was as if the old Michael had been replaced by a totally different man, one who wouldn't listen to reason. Everything that had driven him forward in life, all the goals he'd nurtured for decades, had somehow been erased the moment his heart stopped beating."

Now Sarah has to confront some terrible truths about herself. She has grown to enjoy the advantages that all of that money has given her and Michael isn't entirely to blame for what their marriage had become. When Michael asks Sarah to give him three weeks before she decides whether or not she'll leave him, she only agrees because she thinks she might yet be able to talk him out of giving everything away.

When I got an email from Sarah Pekkanen a couple of months ago, asking if I'd be interested in reviewing one of her books, I think she could probably hear the squee in my voice in my email response. I'd been looking forward to reading Skipping A Beat since I read Jen's review of it in February (Devourer of Books). Jen said "Books don’t often make me cry, other than the end of the 5th and 6th Harry Potter books. Skipping a Beat, though, made me sob. For 25 pages straight."

I must say I didn't sob. I didn't even cry. But I did become quite attached to Julia. I completely related to the way she felt, coming from the background she did, among the wealthy crowd in Washington D.C. As Pekkanen described Julia's discomfort, I imagined that it was exactly the way I would feel in the same situation. To be honest, I understood how upset Julia was with the idea of giving up all of the luxuries she had grown used to. She may have been able to recognize that she didn't really need such a large house that didn't even reflect her own tastes, but she certainly didn't want to give up those heated bathroom floors and the ability to shop where she wanted and when. So, although I didn't cry, Pekkanen made the breath catch in my throat and a feeling of sadness overcame me in the part of the book where I imagine Jen began sobbing.

There were parts of the book that felt somewhat forced for me and some of the plot devices felt too familiar. But there's no denying that Pekkanen knows how to craft characters that feel real, how to develop relationships, and how to tug at your heartstrings. I finally understand why so many readers love Pekkanen's books so much and I'm certain that I'll be reading more of her work.

Thanks, Sarah, for sharing your story with me!

BBAW - How Do You Do Community?

2011-09-14T23:40:00.000-05:00

Today's topic for BBAW is "How Do You Do Community?" This was a huge question for me when I first started. How do I become a part of this group of people who appear to be having so much fun? Fortunately, I had two people who gave me all kinds of wonderful tips, Mari of Bookworm With a View and Lisa of Books On The Brain.

The number one thing both of them told me was comment, comment, comment. I was game for that but one problem was finding new blogs to comment on, a way to expand the blogs I might want to visit on a regular basis. Enter blog rolls and comments already left on the blog. Any time I found a blog I liked, I figured there was a good chance I might like some of the blogs on their blog rolls or the blogs of the other people that comment there. Sure enough, my own blog roll continued to expand.

Lisa also recommended I look into challenges, memes and weekly posting topics. Clearly I've gotten a little carried away with the challenges but it has allowed me a way to meet a lot of other bloggers as did the memes. I wouldn't recommend doing them too often, but it is often easier for someone to interact with you through comments on a meme post than it is to interact on a book review. I tried the weekly things (like Mailbox Monday) but I've never really been able to stick with any one. It does, however, offer a great way to find new bloggers and make new friends.

One of my favorite ways to build community is to participate in the big blog events (like BBAW and Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon) and smaller events (such as any one of the smaller readathons or the blog hops). It's a great way to meet new people and find new blogs that interest me. I'm already looking forward to the fall edition of Dewey's Readathon. And when is that next Bloggiesta coming up?

I've been largely AWOL for the past few months from the blogging community. But this week is convincing me that I need to make more time for blogging. It does a body good!

BBAW - Getting To Know You

2011-09-13T12:00:00.001-05:00

Day two of Book Blogger Appreciation Week is all about shining the light on our fellow bloggers. For me, this meant getting a chance to know Erin, of Erin Reads, better. I'm already a huge fan of Erin's blog. She writes wonderful reviews and has a couple of things that are unique to her blog that are very cool. Please take a few minutes to get to know Erin and then head on over to her blog to see how great it is for yourself.

1. You have two unique features on Erin Reads: Reading Buddies and Classics Reclamation Project. Can you tell my readers a bit about each of them?

Both projects grew out of personal reading goals I really wanted to emphasize: reading with other people and reading more classics.

Reading Buddies grew out of my desire to read and discuss books with other people while tackling my ever-growing TBR list. Eight months in, it has taken two forms. Each month, I read a poll-selected book very informally with anyone who is interested. I post about each book twice, and participants are free to comment, post, and read whenever and however often they wish. I've also done some even less formal reads, where participants have discussed a book via email or on Goodreads without any concrete timeline. I love formal readalongs, but they tend to stress me out, so my goal with Reading Buddies was to create a relaxed environment in which to read together. I love knowing other people are reading the same thing I am but without the pressure of having to reach a certain point by a specific day, and reading with other people is such a rewarding experience.

The Classics Reclamation Project is my personal project to read more classics. Prior to 2010, when I started the project, the last time I had voluntarily read a classic was in high school. Being forced to read books for school left me with the feeling that such books were difficult and unenjoyable, and I spent a good ten years avoiding them. As I got into book blogging, though, I began to see more and more bloggers posting about good experiences they had with various classics, and I started to think that maybe I should give those books another chance. I started out always making sure I had a classic going, sharing my thoughts in a weekly post about whichever classic I was reading at the moment. At this point, I am no longer posting weekly, but I continue to make a conscious effort to include classics in my reading diet. It's working -- I'm much less frightened of classics than I used to be, have worked them into my regular reading diet, and have even enjoyed a few!

My Projects page (http://erinreads.com/projects/) has more information on both.

2. I see that one of your goals is to read books by Indian authors. Do you have any favorites?

That particular goal is new this year, so I haven't actually read enough books by any one author to choose favorites! I have encountered some excellent novels in pursuit of this goal, though. (I should note that I've included authors of Indian descent as well as Indian authors.) One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was my favorite book from last year. I also enjoyed The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri and Half Life by Roopa Farooki. I've been trying to read books set in India but not necessarily by Indian authors as well, and my favorite thus far has been E.M. Forster's The Hill of Devi, an account of his time spent in India during British rule. I have several others on my shelf that I hope to read soon: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (the current Reading Buddies selection), A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, to name just a few.

3. Do you have any literary crushes?

Only one, and that is Po in Kristin Cashore's magnificent young adult novel Graceling! I also have a bit of a voice crush on Humphrey Bower, an audiobook narrator with a glorious Australian accent.

4. What's your favorite part about blogging?

Definitely the community. I turned to blogging in earnest after moving away from my job at an independent bookstore last year, and it has taken the place of talking books with coworkers and customers. I love turning on my computer and instantly being able to read and write about books alongside so many kindred spirits I've never even met in person. My fellow bloggers and readers are overwhelmingly diverse, supportive, positive, and accepting, more so than any other community I've encountered, and they make book blogging an amazingly rewarding experience.

5. Like most bloggers, I see you've been a reader since you were little. What is the first book you remember reading that really stuck with you and why do you think it had such an impact?

I am notoriously bad at recalling early childhood memories, so this is an especially hard question! The first book I can honestly say I remember reading is probably Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. It's the first literary world I recall being completely swept up in, its characters and places so real and so fascinating to me, and I think that experience of losing myself in a book stuck with me. I don't necessarily read to escape, but I do love books that draw me in with the realness of their worlds.

Erin used to work in an independent book store. When she quite working there, she really missed talking books with other book lovers; blogging has allowed her to find another group of people to do that with. Her interest in Indian authors stems from the fact that her husband is Indian. She has recently returned from India; be sure to check out her post with pictures from that trip. What fun!

Thanks, Erin! I'm looking forward to having time to join you in Reading Buddies soon!

Just My Type: a book about fonts by Simon Garfield

2011-09-13T00:06:00.000-05:00

Just My Type: a book about fonts by Simon Garfield
356 pages
Published September 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

The front of Just My Type says that it is an international bestseller. Really? Don't get me wrong, I liked this book a lot. But I had no idea there were that many people that were interested in fonts. But then, until I read Just My Type, I had no idea that people actually had jobs creating fonts. Don't laugh. I know someone has to create them. It just never occurred to me that someone could actually make a living creating new fonts, let alone become well known (well, relatively speaking).

In Just My Type, Simon Garfield introduces readers to the creators of many of the most well known font creators, including both their personal and professional backgrounds. My favorite part of meeting these people was learning about their personal lives. Eric Gill, creator of Gill Sans? Kind of a creepy guy. John Baskerville, creator of the, oddly enough, Baskerville font? Before she married John, she was married to a man name Eaves who deserted her with five children. She was Baskerville's live-in housekeeper before she became so much more. But until Mr. Eaves died, she wasn't able to marry Baskerville. It was kind of a scandal at the time.

Garfield also gives the history of most fonts. The earliest fonts are over 500 years old but most of the fonts we use on a regular basis are no more than 100 years old, with many of them being under 50 years old. Of course, the advent of the personal computer and the development of word processors has really sparked a surge in the development of fonts.

How aware are you of fonts? I didn't really think I was, except when I'm choosing one for my own works. But after reading Just My Type I think you are more likely to be aware of the font if the wrong one has been used. You wouldn't want your physician to be using Comic Sans, for example, on his or her materials. It doesn't really say "I'm serious and you can trust me." You are likely to notice a change in font whenever a product makes a design change. The next time you see that your favorite product has changed the packaging, see if you notice the change in font.

You probably need to be something of a word or print junkie to really love Just My Type, but using a bit of humor, plenty of personal stories, and examples readers can really relate to, Garfield has crafted a book that will appeal to a wide audience.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For more opinions, visit the other sites on the tour.

Simon Garfield is the author of twelve acclaimed books of nonfiction. He lives in London and St. Ives, Cornwall, and currently has a soft spot for Requiem Fine Roman and HT Gelateria. For more information about Simon and his work, visit his website at www.simongarfield.com. Connect with Simon on Twitter.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week - Community

2011-09-12T00:34:00.000-05:00

Today marks the kickoff of the fourth annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week. For those of you who don't blog, particularly for those of you who don't blog about books, this week might go one of two ways for you. Perhaps you'll largely skip over most of the posts from your favorite bloggers. But maybe, just maybe, a little bug will bite you. You'll start to think "Wow, this is so much more than just writing about books. These people really have fun with this. Maybe I should give it a try." You'll be right. Blogging is about so much more than writing book reviews and we really are having fun. A huge part of the reason that blogging is so much fun is because of the wonderful sense of community that book bloggers have.

When I started blogging in May of 2009, I had no idea who might actually read my little blog. I hoped that my family might, I suspected that some of my book club friends might, and I was fairly sure that some of my friends from Goodreads would. But would anyone else every see my work? Imagine my surprise, on my second post (and I hadn't even written a book review yet), when I got an email notice that Mel of The Reading Life had left a comment on my blog. Someone I didn't even know and had never communicated with before had actually read something I had posted. My confidence soared.

One sentence, one little acknowledgement that I had written something that was interesting enough to respond to - sometimes that is all it takes to change a person's life. Mel did that for me. If that bug should just happen to bite you this week, if you should decide that maybe you'd like to jump in and join this community, know that there are people out here who will be more than happy to leave you that one sentence, who will become your first follower, who will be more than happy to mentor you along the way. Let us know you've joined us and this community will reach out and wrap its arms around you.

Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant

2011-09-09T07:51:00.000-05:00

Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant
243 pages
Published July 2010 by Norton, W.W. & Company, Inc.
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

An apology upfront to TLC Book Tours; this review was supposed to have been posted on Wednesday, September 7th. I've had limited access to a computer this week and did not get it done.

Three main characters, three story arcs, are the driving force of Joan Leegant's latest novel.

Yona Stern is a woman who had a falling out with her sister a decade ago. In an effort to try to make amends, Yona travels to Israel, out to one of the settlements where her sister, Dena, lives with her five children and militant husband. The Ben-Tzions are amongst the group of Israelis who believe that their country to should not concede any land to the Palestinians, a group which looks down at the U.S. and European efforts to try to make peace in the Middle East. The past decade has seen Yona punishing herself for her what she did to her sister and she is desperate to be able to stop.

Mark Greenglass is the son of two non-practicing Jews who has lost his way, once again. After a long period of abusing drugs with the woman he loved, years ago Greenglass found himself swept into a deep love of the Jewish faith. It saved him then, and he's been able to make quite a name for himself as a teacher and lecturer, but now he is having a crisis of faith. What is it that God has in mind of him? Will he be able to leave New York and go back to the life he has been living in Jerusalem?

Aaron Blinder is the son of a writer who has become famous for writing fictionalized accounts of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. His mother died of cancer and Aaron and his father have found themselves unable to relate to one another every since. Now Aaron has traveled to Israel and connected an ultra-militant group of Israelis bent on driving the Palestinians out of the land they believe belongs to the Jews. As part of this group, Aaron hopes to be able to tell a new story about the Jews, one his father could never hope to be a part of.

Three characters, three story arcs. All will converge when Aaron makes his move to make a name for himself.

Leegant's writing is beautiful; the country of Israel came alive for me as I was reading the book. The subject matter was utterly new to me, not being of the Jewish faith and not being familiar with the extremist movement in Israel, and this both worked for and against the book as I read. I'm always eager to learn something new in my reading but sometimes I felt like only someone of the Jewish faith could truly relate to this story. There was a lot going on in this book, a lot of characters to keep track of, and some of the characters lost some of their appeal to me along the way. It felt a bit like they got watered down in all that was going on. So it was a bit of an effort to get through the book. But when Leegant brought all of the story lines together, the book pulled me in and I had to keep reading to see how politics might affect these characters lives in ways that I would never have thought possible. Might an innocent bystander really get caught up in a crime and be convicted of being a part of the plot?

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour and, once again, opening my eyes to a part of life of which I was woefully unaware!

Fall Feasting

2011-09-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

For some reason as fall arrives every year, it seems that we are prone to start thinking more about "comfort" foods, the kinds of things that will help us put on that extra weight we used to need to help survive the cold winters. Sure we don't need it any more but our bodies just don't seem to have evolved far enough to figure that out yet.

Maybe that's why I suddenly found myself accepting not one but two new books about food for review. Sensing a theme (I'm quick that way), I realized that I have several other food related books waiting patiently on my shelves. So, while the rest of you are reading the scary books that are more commonly read this time of year, I'll be devoting the next few weeks to books about or featuring food. On the agenda:

Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kat Finn

Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
My Life In France by Julia Childs
Table of Contents by Judy Gelman & Vicki Levy Krupp
Sugar Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

With my other commitments, that should get me through the fall. But if you've got another book I absolutely must read that is food-related, please let me know what it is and why you love it!

Winner of "Safe From The Sea!"

2011-09-07T07:47:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Teri, winner of a copy of Peter Geye's Safe From The Sea! Teri has a beautiful blog, Quinceberry, that primarily explores her artistic side but also give the reader a great idea of what it's like to live in New York City.

Enjoy the book, Teri!

Coming Soon To A Bookstore Near You! And A Giveaway!

2011-09-01T06:00:00.003-05:00

In April I read and reviewed Peter Geye's debut novel Safe From The Sea (my review here). At that time I said:

"I thought perhaps if I waited some time after finishing this book to write this review, I could be more objective. I thought wrong. Weeks after finishing this book, the first word that pops into my mind to describe this book is "brilliant.""

Five months later, I still stand by that assessment. So I'm happy to be able to tell you that if you haven't already read it, on September 6th Unbridled Books will be releasing Safe From The Sea in trade paperback. And if you haven't already read it, run, do not walk, to your local bookstore. Because this is what happened to me when I read this book:

"I rarely cry when reading a book; I can't remember the last book that brought me to tears. This one did...twice. That despite my knowing well before the book was done what was going to happen."

To celebrate the book's paperback release, Unbridled is letting me giveaway a hardcover copy of the book to one lucky reader. To enter, just leave a comment with a way to contact you. Winner will be drawn on September 6th; U.S. residents only.

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

2011-08-30T22:05:00.000-05:00

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
304 pages
Published April 2011 by Europa Editions
Source: the publisher

When 17-year-old Sulfia Kalganowa tells her mother that she's pregnant and doesn't know who the father is, her mother, Rosa, doesn't jump to the usual conclusion that her daughter has been sleeping around. Instead, Rosa believes that Sulfia must have gotten pregnant by looking at a man. Is Rosa stupid? Not at all, Rosa just has such a low opinion of her daughter that doesn't think any man would have her. Even if her daughter happens to be a medical miracle, Rosa isn't going to allow her daughter to have this baby and bring shame to her own good name. Despite her best efforts, however, some months later, Aminat is born and Rosa is smitten, despite the child's tendency to cry all of the time. The little girl looks just like Rosa, after all, and isn't that a fortunate thing?

Beginning in 1978 Russia and for the next thirty years, Rosa will spend all of her time and energy "helping" Sulfia find a suitable husband, raising Aminat in the right way (something Sulfia clearly isn't capable of doing), and making sure she gets everything she deserves out of her own life.

Those of you who have read "Olive Kitteridge" will cringe when I tell you that Rosa Achemetowna makes Olive look like the mother of the year. She is, perhaps the most egotistical character ever brought to life on the page and one of the most conniving.

"I think it pleased Sergej to have such a graceful swan like me as his mother-in-law, especially given that he had married such an ugly duckling."

Far from finding Rosa so disagreeable that I didn't want to read another word about her, Bronsky pulled me into Rosa's world. Even after Rosa essentially sells her daughter to a pedophile, I still could not bring myself to hate her. In fact, by the end of the book, I even began to feel sorry for this woman who was so wrapped up in her own view of the world, that she couldn't see what was really happening around her, couldn't really see the people around her for who they were.

Bronsky's writing is crisp, yet detailed and she writes with a wit that makes a character like Rosa someone the reader will care about. I accepted this book as part of my continuing effort to widen my view of the world and I was not disappointed. Bronsky shows the reader what life was like in Russia in the 1980's and 90's for the average citizen and what it felt like for those who finally decided they needed to find another life for themselves in another country. Although the title of this book may give the impression that the book is a light read, Bronsky pulls together a number of serious themes, making it an excellent choice for book clubs.

Sunday Salon - August 28

2011-08-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

What a great weekend we've had here! Went out with friends Friday night and had friends and family in for a dinner party last night. Today we're off to my parents for another dinner party. As much fun as I've had, that's about enough socializing for this bookworm! I haven't gotten any reading done at all this weekend but I'm going to make good use of the car trip today for just that purpose. The Big Guy and Mini-Him have been working on my computer this weekend and have yet to get my pictures loaded back on, hence no Sunday Salon image. There may also be glitches I'm unaware of as of yet. Please let me know if you notice anything off or not working when you visit!

I came across this book in an email from Random House. Without knowing anything at all about the story, I'm anticipating Hooked by Catherine Greenman will be making waves amongst the parents of its intended audience. People who prefer their children not to read anything that smacks of the real world and almost certainly not going to want them to even pick up a book with a pregnant teen on the cover.

The Atlantic had an article this week, "Can A Bestselling Book Guarantee A Hit Movie?" The conclusion, after looking at two of the most recent movie adaptations, Kathryn Stockett's The Help and David Nicholl's One Day, is a resounding "no." The movie still needs to be good, it's as simple as that. Of course, if your protagonist is Harry Potter, then question is moot; the movie will be huge. And the latest Winnie-the-Pooh movie is also something of an exception to the rule. It has not done well at all at the theaters; shame on parents of young children for not making this one a hit. It's so hard to get Hollywood to make movies for children that are good. Hopefully the sales and rentals of the DVD version will be big enough to convince movie makers that a profit can be made with movies aimed at children.

Last night my sister was raving about a book she recently read, A Dog's Purpose, which will appear later this week when "Mama Shepp's Family Recommends.." returns. Also up this week, reviews of The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky and Skipping A Beat by Sarah Pekkanen both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. This week I'm reading Joan Leegant's Wherever You Go" for an upcoming TLC Book Tour. What are you reading this week?

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Dessert Version

2011-08-25T21:04:00.000-05:00

Once again, my plans for Fairy Tale Fridays were changed this week. I've been doing some reading of The Power of Myth but I was completely distracted when I was changing channels the other night and came across Bravo-TV's Top Chef: Just Desserts. And just what was the theme this week, my little pretties? You've got it--fairy tales! There are some great pictures on their site, which sadly would not allow me to save them, even though they say, big as day, that they belong to Bravo TV. Each of the teams had to make a centerpiece that showed what fairy tale inspired their desserts. For Goldilocks and The Three Bears, for example, one of the desserts was Baby Bear's Porridge, Hot Ranier Cherries, Basil Syrup and Cherry Sorbet. Who'd have guessed you could eat your fairy tales?!

Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

2011-08-23T07:44:00.000-05:00

Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
256 pages
Published August 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher & TLC Book Tours

How to summarize Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness? It is, at it's heart, the story of Alexandra Fuller's mother, Nicola who was born on the Scottish Isle of Skye but spent nearly all of her life in Africa. She certainly is the central character around whom all others orbit and a woman who lived her life so that she would have a biography worth telling. But Africa itself is the star of this book as Fuller chronicles her family's lives through a period when the entire continent was changing profoundly.

In Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness, Fuller has spent hours interviewing her parents, primarily on vacation in South Africa where they spend hours literally having cocktails under the Tree of Forgetfulness. Ironic, isn't it, that nothing is forgotten under that tree?

Nicola's childhood was both typically British (stiff upper lip, loyalty to blood, that kind of thing) and utterly unusual.

"I used to run away from our bungalow, which was on the edge of the estate, and go over to the main house and play in her [their landlord's] garden with my first best friend, Stephen Foster." Mum smiles at the memory. "Stephen and I used to take turns pushing each other on his tricycle. We wore matching romper suits. We had tea parties. We went everywhere together, hand in hand."
"Stephen was Zoe's son?" I guess.
Mum frowns. "No, no, no," she says. "Stephan wasn't her son. Stephan was her chimpanzee."
There is a small, appalled pause while I try - and fail - to imagine sending one of my toddlers off to play with a chimpanzee.
"Weren't your parents worried he would bite you?" I ask.
Mum give me a look as if I have just called Winnie the Pooh a pedophile, "Stephen? Bite me? Not at all, we were best friends. He was a very, very nice, very civilized chimpanzee. Anyway, my mother didn't worry about me too much. She knew I would always be all right because everywhere I went Topper came with me."
"And Topper was?"
"A dog my father rescued," Mum says."

That passage says so much about the way that Nicola was raised, the way that she raised her own children. No fenced yards or stranger danger for them and animals were, truly part of the family. Nicola and Fuller's father, Tim, met in Africa and only during a period of extreme poverty and sadness did they return to Britain. But there was something about the light of Africa, the air, the opportunity, that drew them back, even when it meant settling in Rhodesia at a time when that country had been cut off by Britain.

"We accepted the war as one of the prices that had to be paid for Our Freedom, although it was a funny sort of Freedom that didn't include being able to say what you wanted about the Rhodesian government or being able to write books that were critical of it. And for the majority of the country, Freedom did not include access to public restrooms, the sidewalks, the best schools and hospitals, decent farming land or the right to vote."

Do you know the line people mock about movies - "I laughed, I cried...?" That was this book for me. I read long passages of this book to my poor husband (why are those passages never as funny when you aren't actually reading the book?), laughing. Then there were places where my heart broke for the Fullers and other passages where I gasped in disbelief at the horrors of war. Fuller places her family squarely into the reality of Africa as native Africans begin fighting to take back their continent.

"War is Africa's perpetual ripe fruit. There is so much injustice to resolve, such desire for revenge in the blood of the people, such crippling corruption of power, such unseemly scramble for the natural resources. The wind of power shirts and there go the fruit again, tumbling toward the ground, each war more inventively terrible than the last."

I loved this book. Although it skipped around quite a bit and it could sometimes take a bit to settle yourself back into where you were at in time and how it related to what else you had read, I ultimately far preferred Fuller's style than if she had tried to tell the story of her family in a more linear way. I grew to understand, at least a bit, what it was about Africa, that drew Fuller's parents and grandparents back to the continent, even at great personal risk. And I fell in love with Nicola, a woman who, at first glance, would appear to be one of the most thoughtless mothers you've ever read about. Not cruel, really, just a product of her upbringing and life. But Fuller, herself, clearly loves her mother, a woman of whom she says "the broken, splendid, fierce mother I have."

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour! For other opinions about the book, check out the full tour for this book. To learn more about Fuller, check out her website, where you can also learn more about her first memoir, Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight, a book Nicola forever after referred to as that Awful Book.

Sunday Salon - August 21

2011-08-21T11:11:00.005-05:00

How can we possibly be nearly the end of August (and, therefore, the end of summer)? What a blur this summer has been! I feel like I haven't done much reading but I know by most people's standards, I've read quite a lot. I'd like to think that I'll get more read this fall. But those of you who know anything at all about me by now know that I'm going to spend quite a lot of the next few months in front of a television watching football. My beloved Cornhuskers will kick off their inaugural season in the Big 10 soon and every fall starts with high hopes for my Oakland Raiders. Perhaps I need to work in some football reading this fall.

We went to a wedding last night, the first of Mama Shepp's boys to get married. I can't believe my boys could possibly be grown up enough to be getting married although the youngest of them are all 22 by now, the same age I was when I got married. Still, all of "my boys" will forever be goofy high school kids, hanging out in my kitchen, forgetting that I'm a grownup and making me laugh so hard.

New York Press has a article about mom-and-pop bookstores this week. Much as I love knowing that I can walk into a Barnes & Noble and find almost any book I'm looking for, I love the idea of walking into an indie bookstore and finding a book I didn't even know I was looking for.

"There’s a word in Danish that doesn’t translate to English. Google Translate will tell you that “hygge” means “cozy” or “coziness,” but it really means much more than that. Hygge, pronounced “hue-gah,” is the happy, satisfied laziness you feel when it’s raining outside and you’re curled up on the couch. It’s the feeling of being at home—of being comfortable—that all humans crave.
Hygge is exactly the feeling you get in tiny bookshops that smell like paper and dust and feature leaning towers of good reads. And it’s the feeling on which the owners of those bookstores count to stay in business."

There's nothing but cleaning (and, of course, some reading) on my schedule this afternoon. It might just be a good day to head off to downtown Omaha and visit Jones Street Booksellers.

Happy 90th birthday to Winnie-The-Pooh today! He looks pretty good for 90, doesn't he?!

This week I'm finishing up "Cocktails Under The Tree of Forgetfulness" by Alexandra Fuller (loving this one!) and then I'm actually ahead of reading for my scheduled reviews. What to read next? What are you reading this week?

Fairy Tale Fridays - Fairy Tales Japanese Style

2011-08-19T19:38:00.001-05:00

This was meant to be a post about fairy tale princesses but the first thing I saw (well, after I sifted through hundreds of images of Disney princesses, little girls in princess costumes and some naughty princess costume shots) was a lovely Japanese book titled "Japanese Fairy Tales: Princess Splendor." My mind immediately changed tracks. "Princess Splendor" is more widely known as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.

There once lived a poor, elderly bamboo cutter and his wife; their great sadness was that they were never able to have children. Every day, the bamboo cutter, Taketori no Okina, went out to cut bamboo which he brought home and fashioned into items that he sold. One day when he was in the bamboo forest, a soft light began glowing from one of the bamboo stalks. When Taketori no Okina looked closely, he discovered, in a notch in the stalk, a very tiny girl, who glowed as if light by the moon. He took the girl home and he and his wife adopted the girl as their own. Everyday after that, when the bamboo cutter went off to work, he found gold and precious gems in the bamboo stalks and he and his family were soon wealthy.

The tiny girl. Kaguya-hime, blossomed into a fully-grown young lady whose beauty soon became known throughout the land. Soon suitors began appearing at the home but the girl had no interest in marrying. Five suitors came to beg for her hand and she set them all off on impossible tasks. None of them succeeded. When the Emperor of Japan, Mikado, heard of Kaguya-hime, he came to see her, fell in love with her and asked her to marry him only to be turned down. Kaguya-hime told the Emperor that she was not of his country so could not go to his palace.

That summer, whenever the moon was full, Kaguya-hime became depressed. When her worried parents questioned Kaguya-hime about her sadness, she finally told them that she was from the Moon and must return to her people there. As the time drew near for Kaguya-hime to leave, the Emperor sent an army to protect her from the Moon people.

But when the Moon people arrived, the guards were blinded by a strange light. Kaguya-hime announced that she must return to her home, despite her love for her parents and earthly friends. She wrote her parents and the Emperor a sad apology for leaving, gave her parents her own robe as a memento and entrusted the elixir of life to a guard to take to the Emperor. When a feather robe was placed on her shoulder, all of Kaguya-hime's sadness was forgotten and the heavenly group left for the Moon.

When he received the elixir, the Emperor said that he didn't want to live forever without Kaguya-hime. He sent a guard to the top of the mountain closest to the heavens to burn his message to her, along with the elixir of life, hoping that his message would reach her. Legend tells that the Japanese word for immortality became the name of the mountain...Mount Fuji.

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is still widely told today and has been adapted in many forms. It seems hard for me to believe that it wasn't an inspiration for Hans Christian Anderson's Thumbelina. It has been made into a film and an opera and both Sesame Street and Hello Kitty have included the story in special episodes. For manga fans, you may be familiar with the idea of Moon people from the book/television series Sailor Moon.

Once again, in looking into fairy tales, I've come across something new to me that has only piqued my interest in learning more. More Japanese fairy tales to come!

O Pioneers! and The Omaha Bookworms

2011-08-17T06:00:00.008-05:00

The Omaha Bookworms met last night to discuss Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and, let's be honest, talk about everything else going on in our lives. Since we're located in Nebraska, we've been talking for some time about reading a book by a Nebraska author. When it came time to choose our classic read for this year, I decided it was time to do just that.

"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

Cather's O Pioneers tells the story of Alexandra Bergson, whose family has immigrated to Nebraska from Sweden. After eleven years of hard work to reach the point where the family is debt free, John Bergson dies, leaving Alexandra in charge of the farm, her mother and her three younger brothers. John has chosen wisely; Alexandra has a keen mind when it comes to farming. By listening to others and being willing to go against the general consensus, Alexandra manages to tame the land and help the entire family to prosper.

As attuned as she is to the land, Alexandra is not nearly as attuned to her feelings or those around her. It will be years before she realizes that she is in love with long-time friend, Carl Linstrum and even longer before she becomes aware of the feelings her youngest brother, Emil, has developed for a married woman.

"Marie often wondered if there was anyone else who could look his thoughts to you as Emil could."

"It was like a sigh they had breathed together, almost sorrowful, as fi each were afraid of wakening something in the other."

The greatest love story of the book, however is Cather's love of and respect for the land.

"Winter has settled down over the Divide again, the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring."

O Pioneers! was a hit with the Bookworms. Cather's writing particularly impressed; all of those who had finished the book raved about Cather's use of language to describe the land and the people who settled it. For a book that we all agreed is an easy read, this book is full themes to discuss: alcoholism, religion, love, temptation, forgiveness and feminism.

Written in 1913, Cather had long since left Nebraska and moved to New York to be with her lover, Isabelle McClung. That fact alone might have something to do with this being the 83rd most frequently banned or challenged book. I enjoyed this one so much, I think I'm going to have to go back and re-read Cather's My Antonia which I had no appreciation for on first reading. Now I am absolutely enchanted by Cather's way with words.

Mythology Mondays - Joseph Campbell

2011-08-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

Every since I started thinking about doing Mythology Mondays, I've been wondering what happened to a particular book that my husband bought years ago. For a while I couldn't even remember the name of it. Finally I recalled that it was Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth. But where the heck was it? Finally this weekend I recalled that it was in a stack of books that's been the display vase for a lovely piece of pottery.

Joseph Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) is best known for his work in comparative mythology. In his monomyth concept, Campbell talked about the idea that "the whole of the human race could be seen as reciting a single story of great spiritual importance. Over time, the story evolved based on the culture in which it was being told, taking on different masks based on societal structures and necessities.

Campbell felt that myths served four purposes:

1. Metaphysical: awakening a sense of awe before the mystery of being.

2. Cosmological: explaining the shape of the universe.

3. Sociological: supporting the existing social order

4. Psychological: guide the individual through life.

Ouch, my head is already starting to hurt. Maybe I'm not going to be up to reading this book after all! Oh, but wait. This book is "with Bill Moyers," respected and beloved journalist. The entire book is a conversation between Moyers and Campbell. Surely Moyers will make Campbell explain his theories in such a way that I can understand what he's saying without having to work too hard. And just maybe I'll even be able to explain to you what I've read as I go along.

To be continued....

Sunday Salon - August 14

2011-08-14T06:00:00.003-05:00

It's been a bittersweet week. My baby had her last first day of school (college doesn't count, not really). As I contemplate the next few months, I foresee a lot of tears (mostly mine), a lot of fun (mostly hers), and a lot of firsts mixed in with a lot of lasts. I'm wondering how that might effect the kinds of books I'll be picking up.

Coming up soon is a guest review of Lev Grossman's latest, The Magician King, the sequel to his hugely popular The Magicians. Last Christmas we gave Mini-him's girlfriend The Magicians which she tore through. So it was only logical to give her the opportunity to read The Magician King since she'll be able to offer a review that can compare this one to her impressions of The Magicians.

Parry Gripp, who, I gather, is a regular YouTube contributor, is a huge fan of Grossman's. I'm all for anyone who wants to promote books!

I love the idea of finding new ways to display and store books and this idea for industrial pipe shelving certainly is unique. But am I alone in thinking that this doesn't look good for the books?

Coming up this week, the thoughts of the Omaha Bookworms on Willa Cather's O, Pioneers as well as the latest installments of Mythology Mondays and Fairy Tale Fridays. What are your reading plans for this week?

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Art

2011-08-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

One of the things I've enjoyed since I started Fairy Tale Fridays is looking for the artwork to include in my posts. I've stuck to the traditional drawings, largely because I wasn't finding a lot of more modern interpretations. Thanks to my niece, I've discovered a page on Stumble! that features minimalist artwork for fairy tales. I'm liking these almost as much as my beloved Arthur Rackham works.

Rackham's work is so traditional, so appropriate to the feel of the fairy tales, that it seems that it must be hundreds of years old as well. But Rackham (9/9/1867 - 9/6/1939) didn't even begin studying art until 1885 and the works for which he is famous were not created until after the turn of the century. By that time, Rackham had developed his own technique, explaining why his pieces are so instantly recognizable.

Other well-known fairy tale artists are Maxfield Parrish, Gustave Dore, and Edmund Dulac. While Dore's works are literally and figuratively darker, Parrish and Dulac's works are all about color.

But Lisa, you as, were there no women illustrators? Why, yes there were; thank you for asking. Among the better known female illustrators of fairy tales are Margaret Ely Webb, Jessie M. King (a Scotswoman whose work was influenced by the Art Nouveau movement), Helen Stratton, Jennie Harbour, and Anne Anderson (whose work was a bit more stylized).

Jessie Wilcox Smith is, perhaps, the most famous of the female fairy tale illustrators.Smith, a contemporary of Rackham's, was as well known for her magazine covers as she was for her children's book illustrations and her illustrations for Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1916) are housed in the Library of Congress.

You may notice, if you should happen to click on all of these links, that all of these artists are deceased. There appear to be almost no modern fairy tale works to be found, making me even more happy to have found that page on Stumble! but, once again, I'm left wanting more. Let the research continue!