Category: Books

Not an outstanding fiction month, but good enough.

The Title Wave Bookstore, had a screaming deal: a bag of books (or other media) for $10.00. As I had a $5.00 gift certificate from volunteering for the Summer Reading program, I followed Kelly’s lead and we made our way to the bookstore on a cold and rainy day. What I discovered? A lot of cookbooks! A lot of cookbooks that cost tons of money in the stores. I brought home a bunch and I will harvest the 3-5 recepies that appeal to me and then donate the books. What a deal!

When I go to Powells to purchase a classic, I’m always looking for the crappy paperback, of the $1.00 variety. Sadly, it seems that I need to employ a time machine to find that kind of book, as Powell’s current prices bottom out at about $4.00. Or $3.95, which I paid for the copy of Pride and Prejudice (pictured below) to take on the bike tour. I might have paid a little more just because the cover to this book is so incredibly lame I still giggle with delight looking at it.

I initially judged this edition to be published in the early-to-mid-80s due to the Regency Romance type cover and was surprised to find the edition to be published in 1994. Note that it assures me right on the cover that this edition is “complete and unabridged.” Um, yes, that is what I’m looking for.

It’s a tossup which is my favorite part. The tagline “Mom’s fishing for husbands–But the girls are hunting for love” is such a groaner and also not actually reflective of the story, as Matt exasperatedly pointed out before we were even halfway through our reading of the book.

Or perhaps I love most that Elizabeth Bennet, someone who in the novel does not yet have one and twenty years, is depicted as someone closer to my own current age cohort which is mid-to-late 30s. Quick, grab her Darcy, before middle age begins! Also, would Darcy have ever kissed her hand like that? I think not.

This edition, aside from meeting the high standard of delivering the complete and unabridged book, did contain an excellent introduction titled “The Life and Times of Jane Austin” which I found quite interesting and informative. So just one more reminder to never judge a book by its cover.

Sometimes, I amuse myself by searching the library catalogs subject headings. The minutia of these fascinate me. I first discovered their delight when reserving a season of the television show the Office, Season Two. Are you aware that one of the subject headings for the show is “Clerks–Pennsylvania–Scranton–Drama”? Another is “Office Politics–Pennsylvania–Scranton–Drama” But here’s where the electronic catalog is much more fun than the card catalog. By a single click, I can find out how many other titles have the same detailed subject matter. In the case of the above subject matters, there are five other titles–all seasons of the Office.

But let us follow a trail of subject headings and see where they lead us. I’ve just put on reserve Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1960 book You Learn by Living, which has the intriguing subject of “Conduct of life.” There are 797 other titles following in the subject heading from Las 3 preguntes: Quien soy? Adonde voy? Con quien? to Zig Zigler’s Life Lifters: Moments of Inspiration for Living Life Better. But going back to the subject heading, I see there are some other intriguing subjects nearby. First off, the catalog helpfully tells me there are 37 related subjects from “Benevolence” through “Folly” “Self-Interest” and “Reliability.” But there are also a host of different categories of “Conduct of Life” from 15 separate categories for African Americans (boys, children, teenagers, men, Mississippi, women, quotations, etc.) to “Conduct of Life, Celebrities United States” which is at the bottom of the page. Clicking to the next page would undoubtedly open up a whole world of “Conduct of Life” but we’ll continue our journey with “Conduct of Life Anecdotes” with 19 entries.

The entries in this contain a few Chicken Soup for the Soul books and two different titles about how John O’Hurley has learned about life from dogs. But we will click on the title: Artistic License: Three Centuries of Good Writing and Bad Behavior. This gives us three other subject headings, we’ll go with “Authors–American, Anecdotes.” This gives us three other titles, two of which have to do with animals: dogs and horses. Apparently a lot of American Authors write about animals. By clicking on Cold Noses, Warm Hearts: Beloved Dog Stories by Great Authors we will then find ourselves with new subject headings. I’m going to take a more general one, to try and get us out of this dog trail and so I will choose “Authors–Anecdotes” which gives me three more books.

This time I’ll follow the trail of It Takes a Certain Type to be a Writer which only gives me one new heading, which I must follow: “Authorship–Miscellenea” which sends me only one new book, Lucky Break: How I Became a Writer. From there I can follow “Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)” which seems to be a broader category and it is, with 137 entries.

From there I can scroll and click until I find a book that interests me enough to put it on hold. The Multnomah County Library system has many small branches and one big library. Growing up, I usually found books to read at the Boise Public Library by wandering the stacks and grabbing what looked good to me. Now that the stacks at my local branch are much smaller and our library’s hold system is so awesome, I tend to take recommendations from friends, newspapers and magazine and put them on hold. Scrolling through the subject headings is a new way for me to wander the stacks, at least virtually.

The month in which Patricia sabotages her plan to read many fewer books than she read in 2010.

Read

The Hour I First Believed

Wally Lamb

This is a massively long book which I found to be a very, very good read. It wandered onto an additional tangent there near the end. I could have done without the Quaker/Abolitionist/Prison Reformer character/tangential side plot, but I was willing to because Wally Lamb is excellent at writing characters I want to keep reading. This novel is sweeping in that it covers, Columbine, the fallout from Hurricane Katrina and prison reform as well as family secrets large and small. Could it possibly be a bit over written? Possibly yes. Did I compulsively read until the end despite this fact? Yes indeed. In another nine years when Lamb finishes his next novel, I will happily line up to read that one too. Or wait to come across it in the library, which is what I did with this one.

The Tempest

William Shakespeare

Oh crap, we’re seeing the Tempest tonight. That means I need to start and finish reading this play today. As usual, the Bard’s words failed to move me, but the play was quite delightful.

Lost & Found

Geneen Roth

Roth uses the loss of her fortune (thanks, Bernie Madeoff!) to examine how her relationship with money is similar to her relationship with food, as well as how family experiences with money contributed to her view of, and management of her money.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender

Aside from having the best title of the year (I sometimes randomly say it to myself for fun) this is a wonderfully written piece of magical realism. In my view, the best magical realism causes me to think, “what would my life be like if that happened to me?” and this book kept me pondering, in many different ways, after I finished it and I’m guessing I will continue to think of it on and off for years.

It’s also a my favorite kind of magical realism: somewhat impossible to make into a plausible film. That means I get to keep my own pictures in my head.

Red Hook Road

Ayelet Waldman

So Bildungsroman is a novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, but what is the term (and it must have a somewhat Germanic sounding name) for a novel that examines the thoughts and motivations of a family, or group of characters, usually after some major event has happened. English majors, help me out here.

This is my favorite kind of novel. I get to drop in on a family, see what’s going on, make judgements about their motivations, become attached to them and see how it all works out in approximately 500 pages or so. For a long time, I resisted reading Ayelet Waldmen because she’s married to my Amazing 21st Century Novelist/Essayist Boyfriend (Michael Chabon) and I was worried that reading her might mess up my relationship with him, but it turns out we can all happily exist together and I have another good author to catch up with.

The Postmistress

Sarah Blake

Sort of a second-tier, Lifetime Movie or Hallmark Channel-esque entry into WWII US based fiction. It wasn’t great, but I kept reading.

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

Read for Kenton Library Book Group

I really hated this novel for the fact that it was too violent and there was never any explanation or explorations as to why the characters were so violent. I felt like I was trapped in a Quentin Tarantino film. I kept reading, hoping for something–anything–that would make me like this book, and also because I was reading it for book group. I never found anything to like, but in the book group discussion I learned that the premise of this book was based on a historical incident, which was interesting. Also that there is a free e-book available for those who want to delve into the nuances of the story.

While I was reading the book, I was explaining to someone that I had a bookmark advertising the movie Jayne Eyre in my copy of Blood Meridian and her comment was, “You need a bookmark for that book. Every time you open it, there’s some sort of killing going on.”

I really enjoyed “The Road” and “All the Pretty Horses” but I was not a fan of this book.

Gardening Without Water

Charlotte Greeno

I was hoping this was a comprehensive sort of book about storing a lot of water including step-by-step instructions as to how to build such a system for myself. Alas, it wasn’t. It’s an English book, so some things don’t apply. Like she cut into her pipes to divert greywater into her shrubbery and observed that most pipes in England are on the outside of the house, so this is easy to do. Not so in America.

The Eyere Affair

Jasper Fforde

A quite delightful alternate-reality-English-special-forces-in-the-literary-sense book. I particularly enjoyed the Richard III as Rocky Horror Picture Show scene.

Freedom: A Novel

Jonathan Franzen

It looks like I didn’t read much this month. This was because Mary was very long, but also because I was doing that thing I said I wouldn’t do anymore where I’m reading several books at once. Most of them I finished right after the turn of the month, look for them in the July review. In the meantime, here’s how my June went.

Read
Mary
Janis Cooke Newman
Good lord, but this book was long. It was also mostly depressing, because Mary–as depicted by this author–was just never quite fulfilled. No one ever quite loved her enough and her interests did not mesh with her sphere of the time. I think today she would have been a beloved talk show host a la Rosie O’Donnell, but maybe with a bit more of an edge. The book was interesting, and full of detail, but I just didn’t enjoy it every much.

The Wilder Life
Wendy McClure
If you could rock a Laura Ingalls Wilder Pub Trivia Night (and why have I not seen one of those?) then you will love this book. Wendy McClure does what I want to do: she visits all of the LIW home sites, immerses herself in the books, reads criticism and history of Wilder’s life and stories and even makes butter. She is also quite funny. This is a humorous, breezy book for everyone who has read the books over and over. My preferred way: my mother read them to me, but once I could handle them on my own, I read the whole series every summer. Sometimes I would read them backwards and enjoy Mary’s miraculous return of sight.

The Brothers K
David James Duncan
Read for Kenton book club. (Although it was a re-read for me, I first read it in the late 90s)
“It’s got a lot of baseball, but it’s totally worth it!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that to someone reading this book. And there is a lot of baseball. And I know that not everyone is into baseball. But if you can just get through the baseball (and there is less of it as the book goes on) you will read one of my top 30 books of all time. It’s very long, yes. It’s meanders, yes. It’s is chock full of America’s Pastime that no one I know seems to like very much, yes. But if you keep reading, I bet you will like it as much as I did.

Anne of Green Gables
L.M. Montgomery
I started this series when I was about 14 and enjoyed them, though not enough to finish all six books. I think I petered out in book five. I decided summer is a good time to see if a re-read is a good idea and the answer is, “Yes ma’am!” This book is funny, not in a slap-sticky kind of way, but because Montgomery is so good at writing her characters so vividly. Anne, though mostly “very good” in that early-20th century children’s book character way, is not sickening in her goodness, she’s funny. I couldn’t get enough and will be continuing on with the series. Also, of note: this book uses big vocabulary for something that is a children’s book. A lot of words were SAT-type words, and I’m not sure today’s 12-year-old would know them. Clearly, children reading books circa 1900 would have done much better on the SATs than today’s youth.

Order of the Stick, Book 1
Rich Burlew
As mentioned every time I review a graphic novel, said genre isn’t my thing due to my skimming technique and the not looking at the pictures that provide a good portion of the action. However, Matt and I read this aloud during our Bike Trip, with each of us taking parts. Matt helpfully put his finger on the frames of the comic that have no words, so I was forced to look at them and comprehend. This worked well and I enjoyed the humor of this Dungeons and Dragons Adventure send up.

So this wasn’t a super exciting reading month, but in reviewing my reviews, I see that I didn’t push Suite Fraincaise hard enough. That was a fabulous read and will remain foremost in my mind for a long time. I spent too much time finishing off the House at Riverton. Don’t repeat my mistake.

Read
Tales From Outer Suburbia
Shaun Tan
Read for sporadic book club.
I renewed this several times before I got around to reading it, and I only got around to reading it because someone had it on hold and I couldn’t renew it any more. Then, of course, I read it in no time at all and thought it fabulous, and what the heck was I thinking, not reading it before this?

You’ve probably run across that weird kid growing up. Not the creepy weird one, or the socially awkward weird one, but the one who seems to be off in his or her own world. Maybe you talked once or twice to this weird kid and thought, “That person is a bit off, but damn, are they interesting.” These stories remind me of a weird kid world. Everything was incredibly familiar and just a bit off and very enjoyable.

This Green House
Joshua Piven
By the man who brought us the Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide, you can now count on him to help green your home. This is chock full of plenty of projects ranging from easy to hard. Two of my favorite were retrofitting your toilet so you could flush with greywater, and how to make your very own washing machine. It involves a Rubbermaid container, a (new) toilet plunger, a drill to make a hole and your own muscles to get the clothing clean. It’s genius! There were all sorts of fantastic gems in this book.

Poetry Daily
Diane Boller and other editors
One poem per day of the year (even including February 29) from the people who bring you a new poem every day.

The Man from Beijing
Henning Markell
On the one hand, I tore through this novel and put off daily chores so I could read more of it. So, super awesome. On the other hand, it was slow in parts, there were some pretty amazing coincidences that were never fully explained and I found the end dissatisfying. So, not so awesome. The books strengths are in its first two sections, after that its seemed like I was just reading to find out who dunnit.

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide
Pleasant & Martin
This book suffered greatly from the way in which the information was presented, which was too bad because there is a lot of good information in it. It seemed like every single page referred me to yet another page in the book. A few times of flipping from page 27 to page 188 to see what they are taking about seems acceptable, but after the first few times I think there’s an indication that your book is suffering from layout issues, or perhaps your information needs to be categorized in a different way.

Suite Francaise
Irene Nemirovsky
Read for Kenton Library book club.
I just searched for a list of titles for good books to read and rejected more than five out of hand because they were set in World War II and I’m tired of reading about Nazis. If you think the WWII novel genre has become stale and overdone, and you don’t read about Nazis either, I suggest that you make an exception for this book. Here’s why:

• The book was written by an author in 1942 and just recently published. Why is that? That’s one of the things that makes the book great.
• The writing in this book is superb, observing the flight of the citizens of Paris in the wake of the German invasion and also life in an occupied French village.
• The book is unfinished, only the first two parts out of a planned five.
• After you finish the book, you get to read notes the author made about the novel and also what happened to keep her from finishing the novel. That story, along with the unfinished story she wrote, provide a memorable one-two punch.

The 100 Thing Challenge
Dave Bruno
Dave Bruno and I got off on the wrong foot when, in his preface, he used his cat as an example of the disposable American lifestyle. It seemed that one of the family cats was killed by coyotes and when they brought home a new cat to replace the dead one, the other cat was angry for months. Bruno attributes this to the other cat realizing he was disposable, and easily replaceable.

I, however, chalk up this situation not as an indication that Americans have a over-consumption problem (we do) but to the fact that Dave Bruno is not a responsible pet owner. If he knew that coyotes were a problem (he did) and chose not to keep his cats out of harms way, I would say he is guilty of animal neglect and perhaps abuse. And I don’t blame that other cat for being mad, as clearly he was living with a family that didn’t care enough for him.

So, given that all that happened in the preface, it’s amazing I made it through any of the rest of the book. But I did, and despite Bruno’s lack of respect or responsibility for his cats, there were some good bits of knowledge to glean from this short book. He does a great job connecting things he had acquired with the fantasy future he developed in his head. Through his descriptions of the prowess of his pen collection (really!) and his master woodworker fantasy I realized that a goodly number of objects I’ve been holding on to are perhaps things that I hold on to because of who I want to be, not who I actually am, and will perhaps never be.

Also, for those of you thinking about reducing your possessions to only 100 things, but have no idea how that is even possible as just your bed has potentially 12 things (bed frame, box spring, mattress, mattress pad, fitted sheet, top sheet, blanket, comforter, pillow, pillow, pillowcase, pillowcase) know that Dave Bruno would count “bed” as one thing. In fact, “library” was one of his things, encompassing all his books. So he wasn’t super rigid. And also, because he has a wife and children and, according to his rules, shared items didn’t count, he didn’t count any plates, cups, utensils, pots, pans etc. on his list.

The House at Riverton
Kate Morton
So this is the kind of book to read when you are on a very long vacation and feeling very lazy and not really caring if what you are reading is super interesting. It’s got promise: good upstairs/downstairs scenes set in an English country house before WWI, a family tragedy, a very old narrator looking back across her life. But it is a very long book and the main character herself is a little slow to pick up on details like, for instance, who her father is.

It’s not a bad book, but its one of those that isn’t good enough to be truly enjoyable, and not bad enough to put down so I kept on grimly reading until the end.

The Ha-Ha
David Kirby
David Kirby’s poems are much too long and narrative for me to ever memorize, but I greatly enjoyed them. I enjoyed them so much that I rationed myself to one poem read per day. His form is somewhat rambling, and he manages to cleverly hit the humor and the passing pathos in nearly every one.

Started, did not finish
Outlander
Diana Gabaldon
I spent the early part of my adolescence reading the kind of romance novels depicting a very Fabio-like man on the cover. The romance part of it was a draw, of course, but I also liked the historical fiction settings.

Being a learned adult with access to historical fiction novels that don’t have Fabio-like men on the cover, I sometimes worry if the historical fiction book I’m reading that includes romance does not, in fact, fall into the Fabio cover category. I had that fear with this book and it was partially that fear which caused me to discard it.

It was also slow to start. We spent an agonizingly long time establishing that the main character was a WWII combat nurse who deeply loves her husband, but hasn’t spent much of her marriage with him, due to the war. After about 25 pages of this, I got the gist and also the drift that when she was plunged back into “back in the day” Scotland, the guy she meets she would feel very romantic feelings for, but I’m guessing there would be no sex. I read to the point she was thrown back in time, a bit more and decided to end the Fabio/not-Fabio conundrum and stop reading.

Balthazar’s Odyssey.
Amin Maalouf
This had an interesting plot (merchant goes on quest for rare book he accidentally sold) and was well written, though the prose was a bit dry. I’m blaming this on the translation. However, it was kind of slow and I wasn’t very attached to the story, so I put it down. If you are interested in 17th century end-of-the-world fiction this might be for you.

I felt like there was a ton of non-fiction this month and not much fiction, but it seems that is not the case.

Read
Kindle
Paulann Petersen
Petersen is Oregon’s current Poet Laureate and so I figured I should read up. I liked her site-specific poems written on her travels, specifically “Dawn” and “Navigation”

Note that 1) Kindle also happens to be the name of a reading device made by Amazon.com and 2)Paulann Petersen doesn’t have a big presence on Goodreads, so I was not able to find the book on the Goodreads site and publish this review.

How to Grow More Vegetables 7th Edition
John Jeavons
I bought the sixth edition when I bought my house in 2007 and my first garden flourished despite the thick clay soil. This edition clarifies the vast amounts of information in it by providing concise step-by-step procedures for many common intensive gardening tasks.

The Grow Biointensive method is a bit of a form of gardening for wonky people who like numbers, but I like the idea of creating a closed system, even if it means sacrificing good “vegetable” space to grow your own “browns” to be composted. I think this method is a good self-sufficient method and I like the focus on sustainability (grow your own compost, save your own seed, use your own muscles for the work) and the emphasis on continually building up the soil.

Anna and the French Kiss
Stephanie Perkins
Fun young adult novel about a girl sent off to spend her senior year at a boarding school in Paris, France where she mostly ignores the charms of the city and simultaneously pines for two unavailable boys. In other words, acts like a typical teenager. This was thicker than most YA books, which I found to be a plus.

My Name is Memory
Ann Brashares
First the bad: I had Elton John’s annoying treacle of a song “Daniel” in my head during the time, and for weeks after, I read this book. The main character’s name is Daniel, and the song just wouldn’t leave. In fact, there it is again. Sing along with me: Daniel my brother, you are older than me, do you still feel the pain, of the scars that won’t heal, your eyes had dies, but you see more than I, Dan-i-el you’re a star in the fact of the sky…

Also the ending was tremendously bad. As I was finishing the book I was very angry. Unlike the first 90% of the book which was gripping, it was entirely unbelievable and badly executed. It was as if the author had suddenly been taken prisoner by people who wanted a very specific ending and held the author at gunpoint until she wrote it. It may have also been a botched set up for a sequel or a series.

Those two things aside, this was an awesome book. I loved the premise (Daniel can remember all his lives staring in 500 AD and moving forward. He keeps encountering a woman named Sophie throughout history, and he can remember and recognize her, but she does not remember or recognize him) and the book itself was fascinating as it jumped around through time. Even only halfway through reading it, I recommended it to everyone I saw. One person took me up on my recommendation and read it within the week. “I have a bone to pick with you.” she said when she saw me next. She thought it was a horrible ending too. But we both liked everything up until that point and if you like random historical fiction, this is the book for you.

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Read for Kenton Library Book Group.
I thought I may have read this in the past. It turns out that I had read it, but in the abbreviated classics for children version where there was a picture on the left page and the text on the right.

This is a very sad book. In fact, I would argue that Shelley failed completely at writing a scary story and instead excelled at writing the saddest monster story ever. Still, it’s very easy to read, especially for something written in the early 1800s, and the book group connected it to a lot of modern issues. I found it interesting that there is not much description of the monster, even though most people in the USA, if asked to sketch Frankenstein, would draw a very similar picture. We can thank the movies for that.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
Hi-lar-i-ous! There is no reason why you shouldn’t read this book as it is smart, funny, short and has great illustrations. It’s an excellent narrative too, expertly crafted to kick you in the stomach in a few different times by someone who knows how to tell a story. For the white readers out there, it’s a good window into poverty and one picture of life on an Indian reservation, which is a rare picture in today’s literature, both adult and YA.

Cymbeline
Shakespeare
If someone today had written this story and submitted it for publication it would have been summarily rejected. I mean really! Shakespeare pulls all sort of “oh this just happened to happen at just the right moment” moments and the end was a massive coming together of several random ends. I will never forget in Act 5 when Posthumus falls asleep and is visited by his dead father, mother and even the god Jupiter. Really? Interestingly, that scene was done well in the production I saw, with no dialogue, Posthumus asleep on stage, Johnny Cash singing U2’s song “One” and various reunions happening on stage. Sometimes it is best to cut the Bard’s text.

The Last Uncle
Linda Pastan
I liked a lot of these poems, including the title poem (All my uncles have shuffled off center stage) and other poems that I made note of. Sadly, my review did not save when I last saved it and I don’t feel like recreating it. Thanks, blogger.

Slam
Nick Hornby
Hornby’s YA novel about a nice 16 year old boy who meets a nice 16 year old girl and they get to doing what some 16 year olds do. And then things happen. As always, Hornby’s astute observations of the life of the average man/boy/woman/girl are spot-on and at times, hilarious. This was a very enjoyable novel.

Why we get fat and what to do about it
G. Taubes
Taubes makes good arguments that some people get to a point where they cannot be of normal weight unless they give up carbohydrates. There’s a lot to digest (Hah!) in this short book, and one of the things I really liked was that the author opened by asking the reader to read the book with a questioning mind and, in more than one place, says what he believes to be true and what science points to, but clearly indicates that more research needs to be done.

Other sacred cows slaughtered along the way: weight management is simply a calories in/calories out exercise; obesity is a problem of the mind, not the body; eating read meat causes higher cholesterol; if you want to lose weight you need to exercise more; a high-fiber, low fat diet is heart healthy.

Those who would like more science or discussion of the above cows can also read the author’s book good calories/bad calories.

Started and did not finish:
I Think I Love You
Allison Pearson
I really was enjoying both main characters, but the feeling of foreboding was too much. I was getting too attached to the main character and was worried that trouble would befall her in the form of “mean girl” bullying and had to send it back. I could be convinced to pick it up again, if someone lets me know otherwise.

Twenties Girl
Sophie Kinsella
This was fluffy, and not what I was in the mood for.

The Complete Guide to Building Your Own Greenhouse
Baird
Line drawings and lots of verbal directions to build several kinds of greenhouses.

The Complete Guide to Greenhouses and Garden Projects
Black and Decker
Lavishly illustrated plans and pictures of not only several kinds of greenhouses, but also garden projects including the most beautiful compost bin I’ve ever seen.

Wow! Only two fiction books this month? What’s going on there?

Read
Twelve by Twelve
William Powers
Powers’ reaction to the twelve by twelve cabin upon first sight surprised me. He was disgusted by its tiny size, weirded out that someone might actually live there. This reaction from a NGO activist who had lived and worked in many developing countries? Was he living in palaces? (Apparently, we learn later, his housing was a bit fancy.) I’m all for living in a tiny space, so I had trouble with his trouble. Powers is a good writer, which is good because it makes his descriptions of life in the cabin interesting. The book can feel a bit navel gazing at times, but was otherwise interesting.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery
Read for Kenton Library Book Club, March 2011.
I loved this book. I have recommended it to several people and my description (A French concierge! Who is an intellectual! But hides it from people! And a very smart twelve year old girl! Who has decided that life is silly and that she will kill herself! It also has a lot of philosophy! It’s very awesome!) tends to give people that “sounds horrible, what is she thinking?” look in their eyes.

So my description won’t do it justice. But the book is very funny and I identified with both the characters throughout the book, and the book club was in agreement about this. Though some in my book club weren’t the raving fan I was, many enjoyed the novel more than some of the books we’ve read. A quick glance at Goodreads reviews shows a number of one star designations, so you might not like it. But I’m not interested in intellectual pursuits, philosophy or suicidal girls and I greatly loved this book. Or at least 19/20ths of it as I was not at all thrilled by the ending.

Bicycles: Love Poems
Nikki Giovanni
I came by Nikki Giovanni via the 2011 “Everybody Reads Selection” of the Multnomah County Library. The author of the selection, Wes Moore, has a sister named after Nikki Giovanni and I figured that was good enough reason to check her out. I found a lot of these poems a bit too “early relationship happy/sappy” for me and am interested in reading other poems by this author that are not specifically about love. My favorite poem was “Christmas Laughter” (which can be found by searching the title) which warmly reminded me of my shrinking family.

Sweetheart
Chelsea Cain
Book two of the Gretchen Lowell has much less torture, which I welcomed. It was another fun romp through Portland, Oregon with Archie Sheridan and Susan Ward.

The Arrival
Shaun Tan
Read for sporadic book club.
Beautifully illustrated and fantastical. Graphic Novels aren’t my genre, but I loved this.

The Last American Man
Elizabeth Gilbert
I think Elizabeth Gilbert’s talent shines in this book. She paints a portrait of a fascinating man who, as Matt so delicately put it, is “kind of an asshole.” Yet Gilbert supplies enough details about the man himself and his upbringing that I found myself rooting for Eustace Conway, even as I cringed at the way his complete inflexibility brought him a ton of success, but kept him from what he really wanted: a wife and family.

180 More Extraordinary Poems for Everyday
Billy Collins, ed.
Just what the title says it is, most of these meet my poetry requirement of “not too long.” However, my favorite was one of the longer poems in the book: David Kirby’s “A Cowardice of Husbands” which can be found right now by googling its title. Is it just me or does it feel wrong to be able to access the contents of the book and read it online? Shouldn’t we have to DO something to get our content?

Started and did not finish
A Separate Peace
John Knowles
Every time I took this book out in public someone noticed and made the comment, “Oh, I’ve read that book!” This book seems to have been part of high school curriculum across the nation. I however, have not read it, though I made it more than halfway through. I didn’t like the increasing sense of foreboding and I wasn’t a fan of either of the main characters, so I put this down. Interestingly, aside from the person who lent me the book, no one who had read it followed their statement of recognition with some form of “that was a great book!” so I think I’m in good company.

Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Annie Proulx
I just made time to read Brokeback Mountain which was lovely in its sadness.

Career Renegade: how to make a great living doing what you love.
Jonathan Fields
An impulse grab at the library that I dipped into. This is written by a guy who was a lawyer who liked personal training and quit his job to open a fancy gym where he made a lot of money. Then he sold that and managed to make a bunch of money from yoga. His theme seems to be “don’t think like everyone else, think big.” I wasn’t in the mood to think that big, so I gave the book back. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again when I’m feeling bigger.

The backyard homestead
Ed. Carleen Madigan
This is a good general overview. I really liked the schematics for what could be produced on varying lot sizes: standard backyard, quarter acre, half acre, full acre.

Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden
Gilbert L. Wilson
I looked at the pictures. This goes back on my to-read list.

Good YA books this month, a book club book finished and an atrocious add-on to a classic book.

Read
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
John Green & David Levithan
I found David Levithan’s depressed/unable-to-capitalize-words Will Grayson off putting and annoying at first, but warmed to him as the book went on. I completely loved John Green’s Will Grayson from the first page. John Green’s Will Grayson has the advantage of having one of the best larger-than-life sidekicks named Tiny Cooper whose antics had me snorting with laughter. There are some great memorable and moving moments within this book: observations about a girl you want to be in a relationship with; Will Grayson’s coming out to his mother; the tryouts for the musical Tiny Dancer: The The Life and Times of Tiny Cooper. The performance of the musical was funny too. The ending got a little too tie-it-up for me, but the middle of the book gave me that “squee” feeling of happiness.

The Other Wes Moore
Wes Moore
I figured the trajectory of the two Wes Moore’s stories before I started to read this book. One was a Rhodes Scholar etc. etc. etc. so he clearly had the stable-er home life and the loving-er family and on and on. The other is serving life in prison for a robbery/murder and he clearly had the less stable home life, inattentive family etc, etc. I knew there would be a clear line drawn and errors pointing, one to the life of the “good” Wes Moore and one to the life of the “bad” Wes Moore.

Once I started the book I realized I was wrong. This cognitive dissonance is, of course, the book’s success. If the path to the good Wes Moore life was that obvious, it never would have been published. My take away from this book is not to decide that an “if only” would have saved the life-in-prison Wes Moore. My take away is to look at every child, even the ones that seem to be on the “bad Wes Moore” path and expect of them that they finish school, procreate responsibly, find work that suits them and live a happy life. To expect less is to give in to the throwaway society we have created for a large subset of our children.

Mocking Jay
Suzanne Collins
This is a rip-roaring finale to the Hunger Games series. There is more strife, more fighting, more indecision, more propaganda, and an ending that is devastating and hopeful. Are you telling me you still haven’t started reading this series? What are you waiting for?

Why I Wake Early
Mary Oliver
I like Mary Oliver’s poems, but something was brought into focus while I was reading this book. I am a city girl. I was raised in a city (albeit a small one) by parents who were themselves raised in cities (also small ones.) We did not hike on the weekends, we camped sparingly. I rarely, if ever, wandered through any “wild” area. None of this is bad, but it did shape me. To this day I enjoy walking about my neighborhood more than driving to some wilderness to “hike.” Urban environments grow and change just as natural ones do.

So after reading poem after poem about birds and fields and puddles and what have you, I realized that something inside of me was crying out, “Where are the buildings? Where are the cars? Where are the other people?” I’m happy that Mary Oliver gets so much from her wilderness and I’m happy that so many people enjoy her poems she writes. I am also happy to realize that for me, Mary Oliver’s poems are best enjoyed in small doses.

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet
Colleen McCullough
The review I mentally wrote while halfway through this novel was much more scathing than the review I am writing now that I have finished the book. I enjoyed rejoining the Bennet family twenty years later, but I thought the characterizations of Mr. Darcy were too harsh and I found the main plot to be entirely preposterous. McCullough manages to tie things up rather neatly, even for Miss Caroline Bingly, but the fact that I sputtered through most of the story doesn’t really bode well for this book.

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares
Cohen & Levithan
Though this book did not pack the heat that Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist did, I enjoyed it just as much in different ways. The concept of the dares (which were very clever, in of themselves) was a lot of fun and seeing how Dash and Lily, two very opposite people, react to each other via paper was enjoyable and at times hilarious. Set at Christmas in New York City, this would be a fun book to read in early December, just to set a good Christmas Mood. Or to set an anti-Christmas mood, if you are more like Dash.

Started, but did not finish.
Ship Breaker
Paolo Bacigalupi
This won the Printz award this year and people have raved about it, but I have read many too many tense YA novels in the last three months. My nerves couldn’t deal with Nailer’s conundrum.