Category: Books

Some very good nonfiction this month that will probably appear on the end of year wrap up. Some okay fiction.

Read
Courageous Conversations about Race
Glenn E. Singleton.
Curtis Linton
Explains how to have conversations about race in a constructive and courageous way. I liked that the authors were very clear that conversations about race would be uncomfortable. They also discussed many of the ways people use to avoid talking about race. I entered this book a skeptic, but came out a convert.

Food Rules
Michael Pollen
A tiny book—I read it in the span of the bus ride beginning downtown and ending at my mother’s house 35 minutes later. I wouldn’t pay the $11.00 price for this book, but it was fun to get from the library and read.

Some of my favorite rules:

• Avoid foods you see advertised on television
• Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans
• It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car
• It’s not food if it’s called the same thing in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles.)
• Eat animals that have themselves eaten well.
• The whiter the bread, the sooner you will be dead.
• Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
• Be the kind of person who takes supplements—then skip the supplements.
• Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
• Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
• Have a glass of wine with dinner
• Pay more, eat less.
• …Eat less
• Stop eating before you are full.
• Eat when you are hungry, not when you are board.
• If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, you are not hungry.
• Eat slowly
• Drink your food and chew your drink.
• Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.
• Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds.
• Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper
• After lunch, sleep awhile, after dinner, walk a mile.
• Eat meals
• Limit your snacks to unprocessed snack food.
• Do all your eating at a table.
• Try not to eat alone
• Treat treats as treats.
• No snacks, no seconds, no sweets, except on days that begin with S.
• Leave something on your plate
• Cook.

Julius Caesar
Wm. Shakespeare
Much like Henry the IV parts I & II are not really about Henry IV, so Julius Caesar is not really about Julius Caesar.
Can we talk about race?
Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph. D.
A short book, based on a series of lectures, Tatum discusses her experience as an “integration baby” and the re-segregation of schools today. Many good tidbits in this book such as:
The ABC approach to creating affirming classrooms: Affirm identity, building community and cultivating leadership. Verna Ford’s mantra: “Think you can—work hard—get smart.” I’m looking forward to reading the author’s other book, “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”, but it is currently on hold at the library.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Dito Montel
This didn’t have the most coherent narrative, but I kept reading for the sheer joy of the voice. Dito Montel’s misadventures in the 90s make for some engaging reading. It also includes pictures, and Dito isn’t too hard on the eyes. Note that the movie and the book have absolutely nothing in common.

The Time Machine: Secret of the Knights.
Gasperini
I read this because Matt brought it home from the library. We both read these Choose Your Own Adventure stories as children. Like many things, it was much easier this time to make the correct jumps in time to solve the puzzle, but I still had to look at the hints.

My Sister’s Keeper
Jodi Picoult
Alert! For those of you who saw the movie first a warning that the book does not have the same ending! It seems as though it will, because the movie story follows the book story so closely, but it does not! Do not get caught like I did.

Overall, an engaging story, but one where my eye skipped over, I would guess, 10% of the words, those words having something to do with medical procedures. Medical procedures make me queasy.

The Teaching Gap: best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom
James W. Stigler & James Hiebert
A book that provided a lot of food for thought. It discusses the results of a world-wide study of eighth grade math teachers and the methods they use to educate their students. It shed light on the strange gap in education in the United States: the “professional” educators are not the people in the classrooms. “Researchers” supposedly know more about teaching than the people who teach every day. I’ve always been confused by this mindset and this book suggests a way that teachers could not only incrementally improve their teaching, but also be seen as the professionals they are.

Started but did not finish
Doing Simple Math in Your Head
W. J. Howard
I didn’t finish reading this book, but I purchased it. It shows simple ways of accomplishing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Ways that were obvious once I read about them, but which never occurred to me in the past. I used some of the tricks to develop a math program to “catch up” my future math students. Great book.

Moontrap
Don Berry
I was surprised at how much the narrative drew me in. Trask, the first book in the trilogy is on Oregon’s list of 150 books for Oregon’s Sesquicentennial. At the time of reading the library didn’t have a lending copy of book one. So I kept getting distracted by the fact that I hadn’t read the first book. But Berry’s writing style is incredibly modern. I kept flipping to the front of the book to see when the book was published. 1962? Really? After I read Trask, I will return to this book.

A goodly number of books this month, helped along by the day in bed reading on 1/1/10. This was a good month for reading and I suspect many of these books will appear at the end of 2010 book awards.

Read
Heart Sick
Chelsea Cain
“Gloriously Gruesome Suspense…” said the Staff Pick bookmark inserted in this book. Boy, does that hit the nail on the head. Still, I devoured it, gruesome though it was. How could I not? It’s written by the woman I think of as my “older sister” (a theoretical relationship similar to the one I have with my “movie boyfriend” Edward Norton) and the book is set firmly in actual, recognizable Portland.

The serial killer/murder mystery is not really my genre (aside from the book couple–Kenzie/Gennaro–I want to marry) and I suspect this story might be a tiny bit predictable. I had to skip entire pages of text because I don’t do torture. Still, aside from those things, how could I not love a book set in my born-again home town, with a main character subletting a condo not far from where I work and dialogue such as this:

“Archie will explain. He’s downstairs in the car. I couldn’t find a fucking place to park. Your neighborhood is awash with ambling Yuppies.”

Can I really refer to a gruesome, disturbing book as delightful? With my soft spot for Chelsea Cain, indeed I can.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: A writer’s life
Pamela Smith Hall
I undoubtedly know about this book because the author is a Portlander, but I would have found it anyway. I tend to read everything I come across that has to do with Wilder.

This was a very readable, accessible book that traces Wilder’s journey as a writer and seems specifically to have been written to discount the theories that some authors have put forth that Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane wrote the Little House Series.

I had discounted those theories already as they seemed to overlook the writing career Wilder had before she began her famous series. The book follows Wilder’s life chronologically, and, in her early years, compares and contrasts Wilder’s unpublished autobiographical manuscript Pioneer Girl with details in the Little House series. This in itself was interesting.

A teacher at my school was annoyed at her student teacher for labeling the Little House series as fiction. “They are autobiography!” she firmly stated. I kept quiet, and wondered just how they are shelved at the official library. I have read enough to know that her books are not the whole truth of her life. Hill does an excellent job of highlighting the changes Wilder made to her own story to establish the mythos of her family–her experiences, heightened by her story telling and shaped by her and her daughter’s editing, have become the pioneer experience for millions of people across the world.

The other point gleaned from this book is to have a tough hide if your own daughter is your editor. Wilder and Lane were close, but Lane rejected the life her mother chose–leaving it as soon as she could. Hill provides evidence, again and again, of a mother daughter relationship probably familiar to many. It is a relationship both close and strained, and Lane comes across as a ruthless editor, unsparing of her mother’s feelings.

Still, the two remained close throughout their lives and their work together provided a series that has probably done more than any other to shape my world view. The book provides a nice bibliography for me to plunder, and has me wondering why, aside from the unspeakable television series, the story of the Ingalls family has never been adapted for the silver screen. Also, is there a good biography of Rose Wilder Lane?

The Dawn of a To-Morrow
Francis Hodgson Burnett
I came across this book while moodily wandering the stacks and checked it out partially because I’d never read any adult fiction by Burnett, but primarily because it was incredibly short and I figured I could handle it.

Had I not started reading it at 1:23 am, I probably could have finished this in one sitting. This strikes me as something that originally was serialized in a magazine at the turn of the century. Unlike most books written before 1950 and written in dialect, this was an incredibly easy read.

People familiar with the Annotated Secret Garden will recognize Burnett’s life philosophy in this book. People familiar with Wayne Dyer’s beliefs will not find Burnett’s views much different than his.

Overall, a sweet story, and a nice way to begin the new year.

The Last Summer (of you and me)
Ann Brashares
I picked this book up at the library off a display featuring “Bildungsromans” which, a helpful sign explained to me was: “a novel about the early years of somebody’s life, exploring the development of his or her character and personality.” God, I love librarians. Who knew that my favorite type of book actually had a name? And such a fun one.

I was also interested in seeing how Brashares fared writing adult fiction. Sometimes the transition between Young Adult and Adult Fiction *ahem, Judy Blume, ahem* can be a rocky one. Her “Traveling Pants” were fabulous, could she maintain her winning streak in the harsh world of adult fiction?

I loved this book. Every once in awhile I come across a book where the author writes–so much better than I ever could–the feelings I have. This was one of those novels. I’ve been thinking of first loves now and again lately, and how heart breaking they always are. Even if they end in the best possible way, doesn’t every one look back at them with a sense of sadness? I think Curtis Sittenfeld hit the nail on the head in Amercian Wife when she wrote: “..her tone was reflective in that way that is inevitably sad, because the past is part sad.”

So this story of three people merging their past with their present was wonderful to submerge myself in. The tension, ache and slowly building tragedy were delightful. I saw what was going to happen and how it would end, and I didn’t care. It was the journey I enjoyed the most. What a beautiful way to spend a cold and rainy day. This is why I am a reader.

Started, but did not finish
Sexing the Cherry
Jeanette Winterson
A clerk at Krakow, a coffee shop, recommended this book to me. I liked the title, but that was a about it. I get what the author was doing, I just couldn’t stay focused on the story because of it.

Convictions
John Kroger
I expected to begin this book and then drift away from it early on and eventually take it back to the library. This is what happened, but not for the reasons I thought. This book is great! It is witty and interesting and easy to read, and a fascinating look at an area of law most of us non-lawyers probably barely think about. I highly recommend it. It is also a very long book and Kroger won an Oregon book award this year so people at the library requested it before I could finish it. I would like to someday, though. And you should read it too.

In 2009 these are the awards for:

The books this month seem to be more of “passing time” books than anything. Nothing groundbreaking here. Although, I did like Me & Orsen Wells. When is that movie coming out, anyway?

Read
Keeping Faith: a novel
Jodi Picoult
Engrossing story with dumb title, I quite enjoyed the twists and turns. It wasn’t high literature (even for my low standards) but it was a fun read.

Side note. In the author interview at the end of the novel Picoult mentions that she researches like crazy for books because she can’t stand to have errors. I found two, one of which was quite glaring: the grandmother character, who is in her 50s mentions that the War of the Worlds broadcast “scared her and her husband to death.” I find this to be amazing, because the novel is set in 1999. This puts the grandmother’s character as being born in the early to mid 40s. So, not only would the grandmother not have been married in 1938 when the broadcast was first aired, but she also woudn’t have even been alive. Also, there was a reference to a nail being put “in Jesus Christ’s side.” I found this to be off and three minutes of googling has indeed revealed that Jesus’ side was pierced by a spear. Geez oh Pete, for an author who is a stickler for accuracy, these should have been cleaned up early on.

The Last Blue Mile
Kim Ponders
I checked this out because this story of a female Air Force Academy Cadet does not intersect with my own life experiences in any way. The book provided a nice window into Air Force culture. Based on what I read, I’m glad for the window and will not be seeking a door into Air Force Culture any time soon.

A Model Summer
Paula Porizkova
The book that convinced me there is little actual glamor in modeling. How does a sheltered fifteen year old girl spending her summer working as a model in Paris fare? The answer is not surprising. As the quote on the back of the book says, the novel “bravely offers no easy answers.” Engrossing and disturbing.

Me & Orson Wells
Robert Kaplow
The “voice” in this novel is fun and fresh and the novel itself is a fun time capsule to 1930s Broadway and Orson Wells. I found out about halfway through that Zac Ephron will be playing the main character which didn’t match the picture in my head at all, but I look forward to seeing Orson Wells recreated for the screen and this book also inspired our next choice for the Shakespeare Project: Julius Caesar.

Sideways
Rex Pickett
I found this movie to be highly annoying–the main characters were incredibly juvenile and idiotic. Someone nicely summed up the movie as “Dumb and Dumber do Wine Country.” So why read the book? Though I hated the movie, the story and characters have stuck with me, and when I came across the novel on the library shelves I figured the book might provide a little more insight.

Indeed, I liked the book much better than the movie. The book had the advantage, as books do, of letting us into the minds of at least one of the men. This humanized him for me and softened my judgment. The story is well written, clips along, has some incredible passages and uses vocabulary that had me reaching for the dictionary several times. Don’t get me wrong, the men are still idiotic, but much more human. This would be a nice vacation read.

Unplugging Philco
Jim Knipfel
My initial reaction was enjoyment. This futuristic novel is set in New York City, where massive amounts of freedoms Americans enjoy today have voluntarily been given up due to “the Horribleness”–an incident that flattened Tupolo. This novel was clearly written to skewer the post-9/11 world we live in. However, as the story dragged on, the life Wally Philco lives left me sad. Near the middle of the book, things look like they would work out for him in some small way, but I realized I was about two chapters away from the end and this wasn’t going to end well. I put down the book for a few days, and eventually returned to find that, indeed, the ending was not what I was looking for. Not only that, I found it to be not believable. Two days later, I’m still thinking, “But wait. If the ending is true, then how did X work?” This is not a good sign for a book.

The Sinful Life of Lucy Burns
Elizabeth Leiknes
A slim novel, this initially had me tittering as I read along. But somewhere in the middle–which I guess would be about page 80–it bogged down and I lost interest. This was a clever premise, but not the best execution. I’m interested to see if Leiknes‘ next novel will be a bit better.

Started but did not finish
Braided Lives
Marge Piercy
It’s the 1950s and Marge Piercy’s main character doesn’t want a man to posses her. Hmmm. Good luck with that. Having just read her memoir, I can tell that large portions of this novel are inspired by her own life. It seemed like things were going to be grim, and so my attention waned. Also? Horrible 80’s-esque cover. So bad it is almost good.

Past Caring
Robert Goddard
I never really got to caring about the character, so I couldn’t move through to past caring. When I hit page fifty and I’m still wondering if I will start to be interested soon, it is time to put down the novel.

Our Lady of Greenwich Village
Dermot McEvoy
A manly novel, that takes the men in it too seriously. Pete Hamill writes better novels set in bars. This suffers from the book equivalent of the movie problem of “too many identical white guys in suits.” About the fifth time I asked myself, “Who is this person and why are they on the page right now?” I decided I really didn’t care and gave up.

Every year Steve Duin, columnist for the Oregonian holds a reading contest to see who can read the most pages during the year. The winner always reads some number that even I, a voracious reader, think insane. Like over 100,000. This year, I sent in my entry of 21,177 pages read which was 71 books. I sent this note along with with spreadsheet.

Dear Mr. Duin,

My page total isn’t anywhere near winning, but my goal this year was to actually get my entry to you. I’ve never been able to keep track of pages read on my own—that extra step of flipping to the back and seeing what the last pages was has always eluded me. In the back of my journals, I’ve kept track of “books read” since 1987, but in 2008, I began using Goodreads. At the end of last year I discovered I could export my list of books read and they listed page numbers. This year I just had to export, sum and save in Excel and voila! I finally enter the contest.

This was not the best fiction reading year. Around March I got annoyed at all the unsatisfying novels I was reading and just started re-reading things I liked. Hence the appearance of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer. Things picked up mid-summer and I devoured some books during my August vacation. I would say the most quietly delightful “what if” sort of novel was Abraham Lincoln: A Novel Life, by our own Tony Wolk. What if Abraham Lincoln showed up in 1950’s Illinois? My absolute favorite novel, if forced to choose, was Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife. Aside from being an engrossing story, the novel itself was a gentle reminder that the famous people I know (and judge) everything about, may in fact be media creations. Which reminds me, the other favorite novel I read the year—do your readers really actually stick to one? I can’t imagine—was Three Girls and their Brother by Theresa Rebeck. A commentary on the media culture in our country, the voices of each character are amazing. This book also wins the “don’t judge a book by its cover” award as its cover was hideous and not at all reflective of the novel.

Nonfiction-wise, it was a smashing year. I discovered permaculture theory and, thanks to the library, devoured many books on the topic. I have a tiny back yard, but I think I’m a farmer at heart, and due to the permaculture books I read, I am transforming my “land” into a more sustainable environment. The best non-fiction book I read was Urban Homestead, your guide to self-sufficient living in the city. Unlike 99% of the books I read, I finished my library copy, returned it and immediately bought my own copy. Reading the various tutorials on growing and foraging for food, making bread, cheese and preserves, all I could think was “these are my people.” What could be more fun than that?

Next year, I aim to not only enter my number of pages, but also write an essay. Until I retire (30 years hence) that seems to be my only hope for winning your contest.

Good reading,

Patricia

6/25/10 Note: I just looked at the contest results (published 2/1/10) and I got 34th! Not bad. But seriously, do those 100,000 plus pages people ever go outside?

Here is the list of books people chose as their favorites. (Published 2/1/10)

Here is the annual column about the reading contest. I, sadly, am not mentioned (Published 2/1/10)

For years I’ve been describing one of my favorite kind of books as listed above. Who knew that there was one word to say all that? Well, probably a lot of people. And, more importantly, librarians, who not only printed up a handy sign, but had a whole bunch of buildungsromans set out for us to check out. Thanks librarians! And also thanks to the clerks who probably fetched all the books!

I only read three books this month! Three! I started a bunch over Thanksgiving, though and so December will have more books. Also, alas, the books I read weren’t very good this month.

Read
Little Earthquakes
Jennifer Weiner
This suffers a bit from some of the characters being just a bit too much. The control freak was just a bit too controlling, the mother-in-law from hell was just a bit too hellish, the depressed one was too depressed. It distracted from the story. Though I probably won’t remember much about this book in five years, the characterizations of early motherhood were nicely done and I enjoyed the humor sprinkled throughout the book.

The Elements of Style
Wendy Wasserstein
Oh, how I detested this book. This was disappointing, as I enjoy Wasserstein’s plays, and was hoping that this book would recapture some of that magic. It didn’t. Stuffed full of entirely unlikeable, incredibly wealthy Manhattenites, who attempt to navigate their very privileged lives in a post-9/11 world. I could care less about them, their “problems” and their entirely vapid hopes. I only finished reading this novel because it was the only thing in the house and it was slightly more exciting than the back of soup cans. Not recommended.

Revive: How to overcome fatigue naturally
Jill Thomas
I attempt to combat my seemingly unending fatigue by reading this book and another one. This was the far superior version. Not surprisingly, I need to eat more vegetables and fruit as well as up my fiber intake in general and recommit to regular exercise. The inexplicable red font was a bit distracting, but other than that, the quiet helpful and succinct tone of this manual was just what the Naturopath ordered.

Started but did not finish
Honey in the Horn
H.L. Davis
Oh, how I want to be the type of reader who actually reads classic literature. This isn’t even very old. My Grandmother was in her 20’s when this won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s set in frontier Oregon, the narrative is a strong one. I just couldn’t force my lazy reading self to keep on keeping on. Alas. If you are made of sterner stuff than me, enjoy.

The Exhaustion Cure: up your energy from low to go in 21 days.
Laura Stack
This did not speak to me as much as Jill Thomas’ Revive, though people not familiar with Naturopathy might be more comfortable with it. Includes quizzes, but also a lot of product placement, which I ultimately found distracting.

Lapham Rising: a novel
Roger Rosenblatt
There’s good quirky (Wonderboys) and then there is a bit too quirky. This fits into the latter category. The sculpture of the ex-wife sitting at the kitchen table; the bazillionare’s mansion being built across the street with a device that air conditions the entire property; the skinny-dipping Realtor; the dog that actually speaks? It was just too much.

A nice balance of fiction and nonfiction this month. I should check and see what my usual ratio is.

Read
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living
Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew
A great book, not as friendly and chatty as “The Urban Homestead” but is required reading for anyone contemplating a gray water system. Also, good information about how to grow bugs, which your chickens (you do have chickens, don’t you? Yeah, me neither.) love to eat.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith
I read this first at the end of my junior year of high school, at the same time I was realizing I liked a boy. It turned out he liked me back and this book has always been linked in my mind with that boy ever since. In a year of somewhat “eh” fiction offerings, I was eager to read it again. I most wanted to get to the part where Francie is an older teenager, on the cusp of her first relationship. That part of the book loomed large in my mind and this time through I was surprised to find what a tiny section of the book it is.

The other surprising thing was how much of the story was lodged in my subconscious. I can’t tell you how many passages I read and thought, “Oh yes! That was in this book!” This is a great story, of course, how else would it be a classic novel? The writing sometimes can be a little Dick-and Jane-y, a bit pedantic. Due to the lack of italics, I also sometimes got confused as to if a character was talking or thinking. But I recommend this book because the story is such a wonderful one.

Freddie & Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody
Mike Davis
The book section of the Oregonian recommended this to me and I missed the fact that it was a graphic novel. As I’ve said before, I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, and reading this I realized why. There are no paragraphs. Each picture has a sentence or two, but then my eye has to move a great expanse across the page to the next sentence. It is too choppy for me and there isn’t enough description. I like description better than pictures.

But this book was okay. Davis and I are essentially the same age and I enjoyed his connecting Queen songs to various points in his live as well as following Wham!, his sister’s favorite group. In my opinion, the book should have ended long before it did, the final 20 pages felt very tacked on.

The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
I found this story very readable–it took me less than a weekend to finish it. Walls’ descriptions are clear and the portrait of her family life is very well painted. Aside from that, halfway through the book I found myself getting impatient. Just as Dan Brown engineers each two-page chapter to end in a “dum, dum, dum” cliff hanger, so I found that every vignette in this book ended in a way that seemed to be manufactured for the liberal middle-class reader to think some form of “oh, those poor children!” or “what irresponsible parents!” or “how did they ever survive?”

Reading the book, I am amazed that not only did Jeannette Walls escape the situation she was born to, but that of the four children, three because productive citizens. There is a lot to discuss upon finishing this book: nature vs. nurture; the role of citizens to interfere in family life; what choices make sense for parents to make for their children; how we treat children who come from different situations; which parent was more to blame. This would be a good reading group selection and I am surprised my edition did not include the reading group questions I find at the end of so many of the books I read.

The Cactus Eaters
Dan White
There isn’t much for me to say after finishing Dan White’s chronicle of hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. There were a few “read out loud” passages, especially describing nerds and drug use on pages 200-201, but I mostly found this book “fine.” I read it, I finished it, I judged him perhaps too harshly for his post-trail decline and that was that. I heard about this book through the Multnomah County Library’s blog An Embarrassment of Riches. Here is part of what Tama had to say:

So far it’s the funniest book of my still new summer reading season. I’ve forced friends and loved ones to listen to entire paragraphs. The other day I was laughing so hard it actually made my son pause Lego Star Wars II to ask if I was ok. I couldn’t wait to finish it yet I was sad when I did, and in my world that is the sign of an excellent book.

High praise indeed and the reason I put it on the list. However, while I found parts of the story amusing I don’t think I ever actually laughed out loud. Though there may have been a few snorts.

So, read it, don’t read it. It’s all the same to me.

Henry IV part II
William Shakespeare
Good god, but this was boring.

The Birth of Venus
Sarah Dunant
An intriguing premise (dead pious 16th c. nun discovered with large tattoo of snake on her body.) An interesting time (Florence during the end of Lorenzo de Medichi’s life and with a fiery catholic priest making trouble.) A girl who just wants to paint. How does she end up the pious nun? How does that tattoo get on her body? Read and discover!

Started but did not finish
Edible Forest Gardens Vol I
Dave Jacke
Very textbook-y,and I mean that in a nice way. I would have finished this, but it is very thorough, and others at the library are in line behind me. This is permaculture for the east coast of the United States, which works better for me than permaculture for Australia. I’ll reserve this again, and am contemplating buying it.

Some good fiction reading this month…

Read
Eat, Drink and Be From Mississippi
Nanci Kincaid
I grabbed this book because I had no fiction on hand and the train was coming. I was a bit leery, both because of the title (a bit too cute) and the way the author spelled her first name. Yes, I judge a book by its cover, it’s author’s name and its title, along with a host of other things. But 5o pages in, I was hooked and want to read everything Nanci Kincaid has ever written.

The synopsis of the book is a bit off. Don’t get impatient because you are pretty far in and the “troubled teenager” hasn’t shown up yet; he arrives in the second half of the book. The first half is a leisurely meander though Truley’s life, getting him from Mississippi to California and from high school student to successful entrepreneur. After that enjoyable setup we can make room for the troubled teenager.

Every once in awhile I get to read a book with delightful characters. Funny, interesting and flawed, I fall in love with them all. Add to that, the fact that Kincaid has some nice turns of phrase and you can take my recommendation that you sit yourself down with a nice book.

The Prophet of Yonwood
Jeanne DuPrau
The third book in the Ember series, this is billed as a prequel. I thought it failed on that front as the first 281 pages seemed to have no connection at all to the city of Ember, or the people of Sparks, for that matter. The story was interesting enough, but I kept wondering when I would find out how this connected to the previous books. If you are a reader similarly inclined, simply turn to page 182 and read “What happened after” first. Knowing the connection to the previous books, you can now begin the story at the beginning and read it on its own terms.

The Diamond of Darkhold
Jeanne DuPrau
After I finished The City of Ember, and before I realized there was an Ember series, I spent a few days wondering what, exactly the builders were thinking. Their whole setup seemed great for 200 years, but there seemed to be no plan for how the people of Ember would survive above ground without the collective knowledge of human history. I myself have a smattering of knowledge of how to grow food and consider myself handy, but I’m not sure if I could make it through a winter on my own, and I was raised on frontier novels with survivor tips disguised as plot points. The people of Ember had never seen a sunset, or experienced seasons, or even snow. What exactly were they supposed to do for food and shelter?

The first chapter of book four in the Ember series lets us know that the builders were thinking of how hard the emergence would be and explains that they decided to do something to give the people of Ember a head start–to make it easier on them. The builders put this mysterious something into a time-release vault for the people of Ember to find when they come above ground. After this setup, we are plunged (yay!) back to the village of Sparks where the former citizens of Ember and current citizens of Sparks are attempting to survive their first winter. We follow Lina and Doon as they find evidence of this thing that will make it easier on the Emberites. Being the Lina and Doon we know, of course they decide to solve this mystery on their own.

Now knowing the thing that the builders prepared, I have to say, “eh.” Sure, the item was helpful to the village of Sparks and allowed a great many things to happen, as we find out in the last chapter, but really. That’s what they thought of? A few books on creating food and shelter as well as natural medicines might have served the citizens a bit better.

That said, I enjoyed this seemingly last book in the Ember series. Like the first and second book, it was full of action and moral quandaries and Lina and Doon are great characters.

The Divorce Party
Laura Dave
Can you think of any circumstance in which it would be okay for your fiancee to neglect to mention that he has been married before? How about the fact that his family is worth half a billion dollars? Maggie, one of the two main characters in this novel discovers both of these things on the way to meet her fiancee’s parents for the first time. What’s worse, they are attending her future in-law’s Divorce Party.

I found this to be a nicely written novel with sympathetic characters and a few interesting plot twists. The last chapter in particular was a nice completion of a circle. At a brief 244 pages, this might be a nice vacation or rainy weekend read.

American Wife: a novel
Curtis Sittenfeld
I spent this weekend devouring this novel, and what a lovely way to pass a late-summer weekend. I heard Sittenfeld on Fresh Air when this book was first published and it was obvious to me that she was in love with her main character. This love comes through in the writing of this book, which I found added to my love of the book.

While many novels explore the compromises people make to remain with their married partner, most people won’t have to face the level of compromises that Alice Blackwell, the main character, makes over her the lifetime of her marriage to Charles Blackwell. The first third of the book explores Alice’s upbringing, and was where I fell in love with her too. She is a deeply sympathetic character.

The middle part of the novel–the troubles in the Blackwell’s marriage, was not as interesting to me, but if your attention starts to waver, stick it out. Because, what if you wanted to live your life essentially a private person, but your husband, who you deeply love, first runs for governer and then later runs for, and is elected, President of the United States of America? And then what if, early in his presidency a huge national tradegy occurs and your husband decides to start wars in two countries and eventually becomes one of the most hated sitting presidents in US History? How would you arrage your life?

Aside from being an entertaining story (the part where the Blackwell matriarch explains the reasons why Alice Blackwell needs to return to her alcoholic husband was a particularly fun few pages for me) this was a gentle reminder to remember that there are people behind the personas we see in the media. Also, Sittenfeld is a fabulous writer and I will be including several phrases and passages from this book in my quotes page. Highly recommended.

Sarah’s Quilt
Nancy E. Turner
Somewhat like a Michael Bay movie with it’s pretty much uninterrupted action scenes, this is the continuation of Sara Prine, the woman I first met in These is my words. Sara’s grammar is fine now, but she has a lot of problems, most of them stemming from the drought. As with the first book, about three-quarters of the way through I grew weary of all the hardship that come Mrs. Prine’s way. However, the force of her character kept me reading to the end. I’m taking a break from her for awhile, but I will return to read the next book in the series.

Food Not Lawns
H.C. Flores
This took me a long time to read, but it was worth it. Flores spends about one third of this book discussing how to build community, though there are suggestions/tips about permaculture, which she calls “paradise gardening.” A good solid recommendation for permaculture reading.

Started but did not finish

The Believers
Zoe Heller
I didn’t like the people peopling this book, so I dropped it before I even found out what the secret was.

Figures in Silk
Vanora Bennett
I started this, but it didn’t grab me and it is due tomorrow at the library. Back it goes.

The First Days of School
Harry K & Rosemary T. Wong
If I had unlimited time, I would dive into this again. However, my fiction slot has been taken up by Food Not Lawns for so long that I never even opened it. Perhaps when I get that first teaching job I will consult this.

Hope and Despair in the American City: Why there are no bad schools in Raleigh
Gerald Grant
I stopped reading this short, readable book before getting to the “hope” section. Reading about the decline of Syracuse just made me mad. Even though I haven’t finished it, this book will always be the book that opened my eyes to the fact that the mortgage subsidies most homeowners get add up to much more of a subsidy than welfare recipients get.

Ordinary Springs
Lenore Hart
You know how you think the book is going to unfold even when you are on page 20? You know how sometimes you read just to find out if you were right? This wasn’t one of those times. I couldn’t get into this.

The Solar Food Dryer: How to make and use your own high-performance, sun-powered food dryer.
Eban Fodor
A compact little book about how to do just what the title says. Fairly good instructions and it also include recipes. A bit of it is available on Google Books if you Google the title.

Did not even start

Troll: A love story.
Johanna Sinisalo
Perhaps it is the fact that this was translated from the Finnish that kept me from enjoying this novel with a great premise? I usually love books that are set in apparent modern times, but with just one or two fantasy elements. In this one, the fact that trolls exist wasn’t enough to keep me reading.