Review: Lonely by Emily White

Conditions like depression used to be talked about in whispers if at all. There was something shameful about being depressed. Surely it was just something the sufferer could cure him or herself if they put their minds to it. Now we know that this sort of thinking is wrong-headed for depression but we seem to have shifted the stigma to loneliness. And not only have we shifted the stigma but we are reluctant to name loneliness as a chronic condition needing recognition and treatment in some people. After all, we all get lonely, right? So it can't possibly be anything worth researching, spending time and money on understanding. This in-depth memoir by Emily White certainly proves otherwise.

White suffered chronic loneliness for years. She knew all of the platitudes about going out and meeting new people to combat the problem but she just couldn't. Being of an analytical mind, she threw herself into researching the problem of loneliness as a means to understand and perhaps finally combat the hell with which she was living. She found a paucity of information compared to other afflictions and discovered that loneliness was often conflated with depression. But she knew there was more to it and so kept digging. Her very thorough research weaves around, through, and beside her own story of isolation and lack of social connection. She candidly describes her own symptoms as she sank further and further into a state of chronic loneliness, how she compensated in her life, and how ashamed she was of naming her feelings, despite the fact of having watched her mother battle loneliness and therefore knowing she had a genetic predisposition for the condition. White examines the recent rise in loneliness, social factors that exacerbate the problem, and the long-term physical and emotional effects of being socially unconnected. In addition to published articles, she also interviewed volunteers who identified as lonely, using their reports to add weight to the scientific findings and echoing her own struggles.

The concept of chronic loneliness being so debilitating is new to me, more familiar as I am with situational loneliness (loneliness with a root cause in a certain situation like a move or divorce). I found White's struggle with loneliness and the fact that she chose to research it in depth as a partial coping mechanism to be incredibly interesting. The research she presents in the book is comprehensive but it often overwhelms the more personal aspect of the memoir. There was a lot to absorb in the book and that made the reading dense although White is good with words and presents scientific findings in an accessible manner. Although billed as a memoir, it is probably more properly belongs in the psychology or social science section than with the biographies and memoirs as it is heavier on the objective research than it is on memoir. But that's more a classification issue than anything else. Folks looking to read a straight memoir won't find that here but will instead find a book that goes a long way to try and bring this under-examined condition to light and to erase the stigma so prevalent around admitting to lonelinesss. It's not just a personal social problem, it's a debilitating ache that should be given more credence in the mental health profession and indeed society at large.

For more information about Emily White and the book, be sure to visit her website or her blog.



Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Lisa Verge Higgins

When you look at your own life, do you see the things that might be out of balance? Do you recognize when you lose a part of yourself that you should never have allowed to slip away? Can you see the past as it really was without romanticizing it? For friends Jo, Kate, and Sarah, the answers to these questions are a resounding "No" but they are going to be offered the chance to see their lives as their friend Rachel saw them and scariest of all, to change.

The novel opens with Kate, a married mother of three who is afraid of flying, standing in the doorway of an airplane ready to skydive for the very first time. She is terrified but this is Rachel's dying wish for her: to jump out of an airplane. Each of the three women have letters delivered to them after their bright, vibrant friend Rachel dies of cancer unexpectedly (unexpected in that she didn't tell her three friends she was dying). The letters challenge the women. They ruffle their worlds, sending shockwaves into lives all around them.

Kate used to be a risk-taker, spontaneous and fun. Now she's subsumed her personality in her marriage and her children. She's content enough but when she fulfills Rachel's directive to jump out of the plane, she finds that content is not enough and that she needs to experience the wild joy and blazing happiness she used to feel.

Jo is all career woman with no roots. She doesn't rely on anyone and doesn't want anyone to rely on her outside of her job. And yet Rachel chooses to make Jo her young daughter's guardian, trusting that Jo has a great store of love and understanding inside herself. She offers Jo not only her daughter but also a sense of connection.

Sarah has spent years working as a nurse in some of the most challenging spots in the world but she is unable to let go of one man in her past. Rachel's final request of Sarah? Find Dr. Colin O'Rourke and either make it work or let it go and move on, able to live a full life.

The novel is quite clearly chronicles the growth and "coming of age" (despite their ages) of each of the three women through the insight of their late friend. It is also a novel of connection and friendship between women. Jo, Kate, and Sarah are very different people who have maintained a close friendship despite their differences and their different paths in life and it is fitting that together they must weather the trials set out for them by Rachel since it was Rachel who originally brought them together. Each of the characters is well drawn and unique. I did have one quibble about them though: Jo's caricature as a career woman who immediately makes a muddle of her life once she has Grace is a bit stereotypical and over the top. And while I suspect that many people would at least try to honor a dear, dear friend's final request of them, Rachel's uncanny knowledge of exactly how each of her friends needs to grow as a person and what action will make that happen is the tiniest bit deus ex machina. Overall though, this is a nice friendship and growth story. Fans of women's fiction will appreciate the connections between the women and enjoy the reminder to live life to the fullest each and every moment.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

For me, I can't wait to read: Henrietta Sees It Through by Joyce Dennys. The book is being released by Bloomsbury on February 1, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: World War II is now in its third year and although nothing can dent the unwavering patriotism of Henrietta and her friends, everyone in the Devonshire village has their anxious moments. Henrietta takes up weeding and plays the triangle in the local orchestra to take her mind off things; the indomitable Lady B, now in her late seventies, partakes in endless fund-raising events to distract herself from thoughts of life without elastic; and Faith, the village flirt, finds herself in the charming company of American GIs. With the war nearing its end, hope seems to lie just around the corner, and as this spirited community muddles through, Lady B vows to make their friendships outlast the hardship that brought them together.

Joyce Dennys was born in 1893 in India. The Dennys family relocated to England in 1896. Dennys enjoyed drawing lessons throughout her schooling and later enrolled at Exeter Art School. As she got older, her drawing took a backseat to the domestic and social duties of a mother and doctor's wife and she became increasingly frustrated. She voiced her frustrations through the character of Henrietta, a heroine she created for an article for Sketch. These writings were later compiled to form Henrietta's War, first published in 1985.

Review: Breakfast With Buddha by Roland Merullo

One of my book clubs chooses the upcoming reads based on the recommendations of a varied collection of people (not all of whom are in the group). This being the case, someone either in the group or close to a group member obviously raved about this book to get it onto our schedule. I certainly wasn't fussed by the choice as the book has been resident on my to be read shelves for quite some time now. But over all, it was rather a disappointment, especially knowing it had the force of recommendation behind it and a delightfully different premise too. I was quite disappointed to miss the meeting where it was discussed if only to hear other perspectives on it.

Otto Ringling is a middle-aged, food-book editor, originally from North Dakota, who lives a happy and fairly fulfilled life with his long-time wife and their two cookie-cutter teenaged children. The book opens with Otto (aka Everyman) taking time off work to drive out to North Dakota with his sister Cecelia to make arrangements for the disposition of their parents' farm, said parents having died in a car accident some months previous. But when Otto gets to his eccentric and New Age-ish sister's home, she informs him that she is not going with him. Instead, she wants him to take her spiritual advisor, to whom she wants to give her portion of the farm, with him. Otto doesn't want to have this perfect stranger in maroon robes foisted on him and he certainly doesn't want to show this foreigner a piece of America, but with grave misgivings, he agrees. So starts not only Otto's road trip but also his spiritual awakening.

With thoughts of mortality and the meaning of life flitting into and out of his consciousness, Otto is, of course, ripe to open to Volya Rinpoche's teachings. Unfortunately, Rinpoche sounds like Robert Fulghum and all he learned in kindergarten, offering up easy platitudes about living life mindfully, in moderation, and without causing harm to others. Certainly there's nothing wrong with living life this way, and a lot to be said for following this path, but as a revelation designed to open Otto's formerly skeptical eyes, it just trickles and dribbles, a little trite and very self-evident.

While some of the scenes of the childlike Rinpoche delighting in the everyday are entertaining enough, I am still uncertain as to how Otto ended up agreeing to take the man with him. Not only that but I apparently missed the transition Otto made from wanting to get to North Dakota quickly in order to rejoin his own family after wrapping up his business to willingly extending the road trip and meandering through the midwest with a not Buddhist monk in tow (Rinpoche refutes Otto's charge of Buddhism, claiming that all religions are at root similar enough to be not worth differentiating). The character of Rinpoche was a bit annoying and the way that his ability to use English seemed to fade in and out was almost as if Merullo veered between not wanting his spoken language to be a caricature and forgetting that he had written a character who indeed spoke English as an inexact second (or eleventh) language.

The latter portion of this first person narrative (Otto narrates) is very much a spiritual awakening journey and less and less of the road trip journey, a fact that made me lose interest in the book almost entirely. The ending grabbed me back, though not in a good way. The ending to this book was one of the most dreadful I have read in a long time, an airy-fairy, feel-good ending that grated unbelievably. Perhaps I am not spiritually open enough, just plain unelightened, or languishing too far back on the path, but I didn't love this book despite having been so attracted initially to the quirky premise and having enjoyed Merullo's A Little Love Story previously. Others thoroughly enjoyed the philosophical nature of the book though so it could just be my own stubbornness that kept me from being receptive to this novel.

Review: Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow

Ragtime is called one of the best books of its time. It was apparently a trailblazer in terms of the way the novel has evolved. It is included on the lists of 1001 books that will make you a well read person. Obviously I missed something substantial here because it didn't impress me, draw me in, or engage me in any real sort of way. In actuality, I found it to be rather a mess. Then again, my critical facilities may be going haywire or, conversely, it could be an emperor has no clothes kind of situation here. I know which scenario I think it is. Draw your own conclusions.

This historical fiction novel is a pastiche. Ostensibly following several very different characters, Doctorow has woven real historical figures and actual events from the turn of the 20th century (right up until the eve of WWI) into his narrative. A plethora of characters is introduced and then seemingly dismissed in the early stages of the novel, only to reappear on the page later, making coincidental connections with each other. The almost vignette like narratives highlight the major ideas and enthusiasms of the time: Coalhouse Walker's quest for justice highlights rampant racism, Houdini's acts underline the public's fascination with death defying escapes and their interest in the occult, Father's trip to the North Pole emphasizes the way in which exploration still captured the imagination, the trial of Harry Thaw chronicles the birth of the celebrity culture through his actress wife Evelyn Nesbit's role in Stanford White's murder, the pow-wow between Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan showcases the rising industrialization and mechanisation of the time, and so on. Perhaps there's just entirely too much going on in the novel, too many characters, too many themes, and a superficiality to both.

The combination of fictional and real characters resulted in a short-shift approach to both and I found myself lacking sympathy for anyone. Late in the book when one character finally reappears, I just didn't care. And the coincidental intersections of the characters, real or imagined felt too contrived and intentional. This was, of course, a fascinating time period with so much nascent but I felt as if Doctorow had just missed the mark in depicting it. Having read it, I am that much closer to being "well-read" but I'm not any closer to understanding why.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I have decided to ditch the list of last year's books still needing reviews despite my continued intentions to write them eventually. I just can't stand the guilt! So from now on, the list will only show this year's reads, which makes everything seem positively reasonable. ;-) This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Breakfast With Buddha by Roland Merulllo
The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Lisa Verge Higgins
The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
Lonely by Emily White

Reviews posted this week:

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Breakfast With Buddha by Roland Merullo
The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Lisa Verge Higgins
The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

Monday Mailbox

Another lovely pair of books found their way into my grubby little hands this past week. This past week's mailbox arrival:

Crossing Borders by Michael Ferris came from the author (complete with wildly cool Austrian stamps) thanks to Dorothy from Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Tours.
Culled from the author's twelve years of living abroad, this book of ex-pat experience is right up my alley.

The Invisible Line by Daniel Sharfstein came from The Penguin Press thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
The stories of three families who over time and in different historical periods crossed the color lin from black to white, this sounds entirely fascinating, a great sociological read.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: The State of the Bookstore

I went to the bookstore yesterday. This is not a particularly surprising statement. It is a rather expensive statement but a common one for me nonetheless. My daughter had 4+ hours of dance rehearsal yesterday and I needed to kill time so I went to the Books-a-Million a few miles from the studio, a store I generally don't go to often because it is so far from home. I walked in yesterday and did my usual wandering browsing and was shocked to find that 10 minutes into my undirected meandering, I had exactly zero books for purchase in my possession. The concept was so unusual for me (usually I can rack up a book bill in the three digits in 10 minutes or less) that I actually stopped to examine the whys behind this odd phenomenon. What I decided?

1. I am coming ever closer to my goal of actually owning every book currently published and most of those out of print as well. Okay, really, I discovered that since the major spring lists have yet to be released, I do already own a large portion of the books that appeal to me that are also commonly in stock at the big box stores. I'm sure that I am missing some fantastic books not commonly found on the shelves at the aforementioned stores and I do specifically look for them when I visit small independent stores (which means I look forward to the dance competition later this spring in Asheville so I can visit the great stores there).

2. I used to find different books when I'd browse different bookstores ensuring that I could spread my book buying dollars around fairly evenly. Now the selections are much more homogeneous, even in stores not owned by the same parent company. Even the staff picks seem to be the same. I miss the delight of finding a little known gem tucked on a shelf which I could then go on to push on each and every person I know who reads even one book a year.

3. In line with the Simpson's episode where Marge goes to a bookstore for a reading and has to go up to the fourth floor to find books (the best episode ever, incidentally), bookstores are giving over larger amounts of floor space to non-book goods, leaving fewer shelves for their headlining merchandise. I am well aware that sideline items have a larger profit margin and help to keep bookstores solvent so I can't complain too much but I do miss wall to wall books (well, when not in my own house, which is indeed wall to wall books). Of course, I did eye those leather, stuffed monkey bookends a couple of times before finally deciding against them, but... In the same vein, there's a load of room devoted to e-readers (who knew that BaM was selling Nooks?!) and as a physical book afficianado, this makes me sad. I know it's the future and all, but I'll just wallow here in my Luddite sorrow for a moment.

4. I am developing fiscal responsibility in my old age. ::snort:: This doesn't even begin to hold up as once I put my mind to it yesterday, I spent more than a reasonable amount of money.

Is this the state of the bookstore right now? It seems to be according to my very unscientific observations. And that's a shame. But as mentioned in #4 above, I did manage to overcome everything holding me back and contribute my not insignificant skills toward keeping this one store solvent. Next week I'm sure I'll be at another store, incognito in my bookstore saving role as Super Book Buying Girl. I wonder if the role comes with a cape. After all, all of the retro superheroes have capes and certainly my ideal of a bookstore is rapidly becoming retro.

This is not really meant to be a paean to bookstores as a dying institution because I don't really think they are dying, just changing to suit the times and the technology and while I have no idea what they will ultimately look like, I know I will miss the way they once were (even as I browse and buy in their new incarnation). What about you? What are your bookstore feelings?

Review: Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands

Paris has long exerted a hold on the American imagination. It is the glamorous and enticing and haughty. It draws people, ex-pats and students and others, as practically no other city does. Many of our very best writers throughout the last century spent time in the city of light, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Stein, Miller, and many more. And their Parisian experience molded them and molded their writing.

In the collection of 32 essays, both previously published and original works, Rowlands has collected the Paris experiences of a new generation of writers who have lived in this most intriguing of cities. Their experiences are not all of a kind but their varied writings serve to create a rounded portrait of the multi-faceted city and its inhabitants. Tackling subjects as different as fashion, food, and their famed intolerance of the etranger (among other topics), all of the writers in this collection share their Parisian experience in ways such that anyone who has him or herself visited Paris will recognize truths and swim in their own memories, good and bad, of the fabled city.

As is generally the case, certain of the essays are more poignant or better written or simply more enticing to individual readers but overall, the collection is quite strong. It is diverse enough to cover many aspects of life in the city but also specific enough to draw a detailed view of the different arrondissements and the various people who inhabit them. It was fascinating to hop from essay to essay, dipping into life as a writer researching a book, as an African-American student frustrated by the fact of her Americanness defining her, as a homeless mother speaking of the cost to live in Paris and the need for a solution, as a witness to French parenting, and so on. Because of the nature of the book and the length of most of the essays, this was the perfect choice to read intermitently, in the car, at kid events, and the like. It was a small bit of escape in an otherwise mundane task.

Thanks to the lovely folks at Algonquin for sending me a copy to review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

For me, I can't wait to read: Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French. The book is being released by Doubleday on February 8, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: Glowing with dark humor, Stuckey-French's fabulously quirky second novel (after Mermaids on the Moon) spotlights a wild would-be killer: Marylou Ahearn, a 77-year-old retired teacher in Memphis, Tenn. She's obsessed with killing Dr. Wilson Spriggs, who gave pregnant Marylou a radioactive cocktail in 1953 during a secret government study. Helen, the daughter Marylou gave birth to, died in 1963 from cancer. Accompanied by her Welsh corgi, Buster, and as "Nancy Archer" (the heroine of the 1958 movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman), Marylou moves in 2006 to Tallahassee, Fla., where Wilson lives with his daughter, menopausal Caroline; her husband, Vic Witherspoon, who's contemplating an affair, and their children: 18-year-old Elvis-obsessed beauty Ava; 16-year-old science geek Otis, who's secretly building a nuclear breeder reactor; and overachieving, attention-deprived 13-year-old Suzi. As "Radioactive Lady," Nance creates mucho mischief for Wilson, but her revenge plans mutate after discovering the old doc has Alzheimer's, and dang it, she really likes his kinfolk.

Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

It is no secret that math has never been "my thing." My children regularly struggle through their math homework without asking me for help. They make disparaging comments about my lack of mathematical ability. What I don't think they understand is that for a very long time, I did quite well in math (geometry beat the confidence right out of me but that's a story for another time). It wasn't so much that I didn't "get" it, I just didn't love it. Numbers have always been quite far down on my list of enjoyable things to ponder. And yet this slight novel about a former math professor who, after suffering a traumatic brain injury, can only hold things in his memory for 80 minutes and the unschooled housekeeper who assumes the care of the man and the cleaning of his small cottage is incredibly fascinating both on the human (character) level and in terms of the math concepts the professor explains to the housekeeper and her small son.

The professor is a mathematical genius and a gifted teacher who lives alone in a small cottage on the grounds of his sister-in-law's house. After a car accident in 1975, he has been unable to retain anything in his memory for more than eighty minutes. The suits he wears flutter with pinned notes reminding him of important things in his life. The most important note, which he wakes to every morning, is that his memory only lasts eighty minutes. Many housekeepers have come and gone in his life until the unnamed housekeeper of the title. She must reintroduce herself to the professor every morning offering him numerical tidbits from her life (her birthdate, her phone number, etc.) to help ground him in the immutable, eternal solidity of numbers even while everything else in his life seems new and confusing on a daily basis.

As the housekeeper settles into her own routine, she introduces her ten year old son, nicknamed Root by the professor because of his head's resemblence to the square root sign, into the small cottage. Root's presence pleases and energizes the professor, who takes to teaching both the housekeeper and Root about the beauty he sees in numbers. He explains prime numbers, amicable numbers, and difficult equations. His explanations are elegant and interesting and strike a cord with the housekeeper, who pushes further on her own. The three of them listen to baseball games, the game a statistician's dream. The housekeeper, the professor, and Root form friendships based on mutual interests and genuine caring despite the professor's inability to remember the other two from day to day.

The story itself is quiet, gentle, and lovely. The writing is carefully meticulous and yet elegant in the way that a complicated mathematical proof would be distilled to its simplest rendering. The theme of time and the fleetingness of memory contrast nicely with the eternal strength of numbers and friendship. There are no pyrotechnics here, just the simple beauty of a well-written, enchanting story. Like the concept the professor explains to the housekeper one day, this novel is easily summed up as amicable.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I may not have read much this past week but I am practically current on reviewing this years' books so I am making progress. Now to sneak in a review from last year's books so my long list of books awaiting reviews shrinks! This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands

Reviews posted this week:

Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Georgia's Kitchen by Jenny Nelson
A Slender Thread by Katharine Davis
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Sex, Drugs, and Gelfilte Fish edited by Shana Leibman
Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jackie Lyden
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by Holly Robinson
Daughter of the Bride by Francesca Segre
Chronicles of a Midlife Crisis by Robyn Harding
Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle
Half Empty by David Rakoff
She's Gone Country by Jane Porter
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
Huck by Janet Elder
Out of the Shadows by Joanne Rendell
I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
Never Trust a Rogue by Olivia Drake
After the Fall by Kylie Ladd
Heart With Joy by Steve Cushman
The Lacemakers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri
The Known World by Edward Jones
Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
Web of Love by Mary Balogh
Pure Dead Frozen by Debi Gliori
The Best American Travel Writing 2009 edited by Simon Winchester
The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
The Forbidden Daughter by Shobhan Bantwal
The MacKenzies: Cole by Ana Leigh
Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Running the Books by Avi Steinberg
The Time in Between by David Bergen
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
The Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
Destiny Unleashed by Sherryl Woods
Grayson by Lynne Cox
While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Falling in Love Again by Cathy Maxwell
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Semper Cool by Barry Fixler
City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Waking Up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
One Season of Sunshine by Julia London
A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska
Shoes, Hair, Nails by Deborah Batterman
Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float by Sarah Schmelling
Eurydice Street by Sofka Zinovieff
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Monday Mailbox

Almost every day I ventured out to the mailbox I found at least one book waiting for me. What a wonderful way to combat the cabin fever imposed by several snow days in a row. This past week's mailbox arrival:

Someone Else's Garden by Dipika Rai came from Harper Perennial thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
Ever since visiting India, I have been fascinated by the literature of the country and this tale of a woman escaping a terrible husband and the tradition that would condemn her to endure him even if it kills her sounds wonderful.

Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands came from Algonquin.
A collection of essays by writers sharing their Parisian experience and the marvelous things that make the city so special, this looks completely delectable.

Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt came from Algonquin.
A car accident which leaves one woman dead and the other to pick up the pieces of her life and the life of the dead woman's husband and son. The intersections of love and grief exert a definite pull on my imagination.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow came from Algonquin.
A complicated look at race and identity, I've already read and enjoyed this one which is just being released in paperback.

Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli came from Harper Perennial thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours.
Bhutan is always called the happiest kingdom on the planet and ever since I read a book about it years ago, it has fascinated me so this memoir of a woman going there for six months to help set up a radio station sounds just up my alley.

Moonface by Angela Balcita came from Harper Perennial thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
A woman who needs a kidney after her body rejects her brother's turns to her boyfriend and this is the tale of their journey together. It sounds amazing, doesn't it?!

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Help picking your next book

You've just finished your current read and because you are an insatiable reader, you want to dive right into the next one. How do you go about picking your next book? Some people have complicated ways of choosing what they will read next. Some people delegate the choice to others, family members, strangers, bookstore or library staff. Some people stand and stare at their overloaded to be read shelves and let their mood dictate what they pull out next (I admit this is most frequently my method). Some people have elaborate review schedules (I fall under this category as well) and so pick up the next book on list. Some people have library due dates that dictate their next read. And still others have deadlines for reading challenges drive their reading choices. Most likely there are as many methods as there are readers out there. The one method I have never used, mostly because I hadn't considered it (or even heard of some of the sites) until recently, was to let a computer site choose my next read.

Do you know these book sites? There's Bookseer, What Should I Read Next, and Which Book just to name the three I have recently discovered. I'm sure there are more. So I have spent rather a lot of time on this overcast Sunday playing with the sites to see what kind of recommendations it came up with for me. Now I freely admit that I gravitate towards the books I already own on the lists each site generated but the last of the sites suggested so many books I had never heard of that I passed a quite enjoyable time learning about previously unknown books. I did notice that some of the generated suggestions were occasionally not related in any way to the book or books I typed in to help the site generate books for me. I suspect their connection is that someone somewhere loved both of them equally which of course is a tenuous connection at best given everyone's different reading taste. But the concept is cool and I'll definitely be back from time to time.

Am I going to let one of these sites dictate my next read right now? Well, I am still in the middle of several books and have quite a few more in line to be reviewed as well as a couple that will finish up reading challenges due to close soon so I'm not likely to need help in the near future. But I am definitely intrigued and might try it when my schedule loosens up a bit, or when I just feel like my own choices have gotten stale.

Would you use a site like this? Do they generate books that appeal to you? What's your favorite method of choosing your next book?

Review: Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell

I do love Angela Thirkell's work, her imagined county of Barsetshire and the residents thereof. This is one of the first books in the extensive series to be set during World War II and as such it captures the feel of the early days of the war, at least as it was seen from rural village England. In this installment of the story, Rose Birkett finally gets married to the relief of her family who figured they'd have the care of her selfishly flighty self forever. Other village girls take up wartime efforts, working in local hospitals and caring for evacuee children while settling into engagements with the men so soon to be leaving. There's no muss, no fuss about the courtships or indeed the characters themselves.

Thirkell is an ace at portraying the British stiff upper lip so evident in times of stress and she pokes fun at many of her characters, having them lament the lack of good patients at the hospital and thrill at the thought of catastrophic injuries. She presents the London children in all their dirt and coarseness but makes it evident that the ladies of the village have no intention of facing reality in their dealings with the urchins. As the series reader has come to expect, Thirkell's biting wit is just as evident in this war time novel as it is in previous novels. Her characters are a delight with whom to spend time and the reader is easily engrossed in their daily lives. Thirkell is, as always, a writer of domestic fiction par excellence. A reading experience to savour, I look forward to the rest of the series, especially since this book in particular ends with a terrible cloud hanging over it (and enough information to know the outcome despite its perceived ambiguity). If you're not yet reading Thirkell's delightful books, why ever not?

Review: Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi

I read the first Persepolis in an effort to overcome my dislike of graphic novels. And although my opinion of the genre didn't change, I decided to go ahead and read the second of these memoirs (mostly because I already had it waiting for me in the house). It also didn't change my opinion of graphic memoirs. I think I'm just not destined to like them much. It's not a snobbery thing. I appreciate how difficult it is to be succinct, draw aesthetically pleasing pictures, and manage to marry the two in such a way that they tell a complex and nuanced story. I just don't enjoy the result. A personal failing perhaps, but there you have it.

Persepolis 2 tells Satrapi's story from her early teens when she left a war torn Iran for Austria, through her unsettled and rootless life in Vienna as she faced culture shock, experienced racism, and rebelled against so much, to her eventual return to Iran and her family, her education once home, her marriage, and her eventual decision to leave Iran forever. As in the first book, the heavy, dark illustrations underline the bleakness of Satrapi's experiences. She endured much at an age long before anyone should be asked to shoulder such responsibility and the unsophisticated, simple artwork conveys that.

Her tale is a wrenching one but for me, the drawings detract from the sympathy I should have been feeling. And I couldn't shake the feeling that there was much left out, especially anything positive, at least in part because of the constraints of graphic novels. Overall, everything about the story felt detached to me. I know that both Persepolis and Persepolis 2 have earned much acclaim but they just didn't move me. Whether I would have appreciated the story told in a more traditional novel format I can't say, but I definitely think that graphic novels are not for me.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

For me, I can't wait to read: Unfamiliar Fishes by the always hilarious Sarah Vowell. The book is being released by Riverhead on March 22, 2011 (incidentally also my 40th birthday in case anyone wants to send me a present).

Amazon says this about the book: Recounting the brief, remarkable history of a unified and independent Hawaii, Vowell, a public radio star and bestselling author (The Wordy Shipmates), retraces the impact of New England missionaries who began arriving in the early 1800s to remake the island paradise into a version of New England. In her usual wry tone, Vowell brings out the ironies of their efforts: while the missionaries tried to prevent prostitution with seamen and the resulting deadly diseases, the natives believed it was the missionaries who would kill them: "they will pray us all to death." Along the way, and with the best of intentions, the missionaries eradicated an environmentally friendly, laid-back native culture (although the Hawaiians did have taboos against women sharing a table with men, upon penalty of death, and a reverence for "royal incest"). Freely admitting her own prejudices, Vowell gives contemporary relevance to the past as she weaves in, for instance, Obama's boyhood memories. Outrageous and wise-cracking, educational but never dry, this book is a thought-provoking and entertaining glimpse into the U.S.'s most unusual state and its unanticipated twists on the familiar story of Americanization.

Disney Half Marathon

No, there have not been posts missing about all my training for this half marathon that sounded like such a good idea last year when my sister convinced me to run it with her. What's been missing has been the training. And yet I am just crazy enough to decide that the fact that my longest run in the past six months was between 3 and 4 miles was no hindrance to running this race. The fact that I can count on my fingers the number of times I've gotten out on the road and actually run in the past six months also didn't dissuade me. I am nothing if not stupid stubborn. So this past Saturday, I slipped my winged shoes onto my completely un- and under-trained feet and headed out for 13.1 very long miles as if it was a walk in the park. (Well, given that it was at Disney and there was some walking involved, I guess it actually was a walk in in the park.)

On Friday morning, after seeing the kids off to school and making sure all arrangements to get them where they needed to be in my absence were in place, I checked to make sure I had my shoes, loaded up the rental car and headed out for my 8 hour drive to Disney. The drive was completely uneventful and quiet without the usual kid and canine chorus in the backseat although I did get a phone call from a friend telling me all my careful planning for kid activities went to hell in a handbasket since my daughter suffers from amnesia the minute I am farther than 10 miles away from her. Oh well!

I beat my sister to our hotel by about 10 minutes and got in the rather long registration line. When it was my turn to register, the woman behind the desk got a weird look on her face and disappeared with my license. Luckily the problem was that they were overbooked so they upgraded us to the Caribbean Beach Resort. Of course, given the run's early start time and our late-ish check in time, there was going to be no time to examine our upgraded amenities. We hopped back in our cars, drove to our new hotel, and checked in there.

We then immediately headed to the bus stop to catch a ride to the Expo to check in there. Neither S. nor I had trained the way we should have so S. was a little disconcerted when she saw our bus, thinking that it said R.I.P. as its destination. Would have been about right! (It actually said V.I.P.) We got to the Expo, registered for the race and wandered through the goods for a while before heading back to our room to spend some quality sisterly-bonding time together.

As soon as we got into the room, while I was still tossing things onto the table, S. was busily tearing a bed apart to check for bedbugs. Once she had declared it bug free, I immediately claimed the bed. Big sister status should count for something, right? She moved on to check the second bed as I climbed into the first one. As I was arranging the bedspread at the foot of the bed (she is skeeved out by bugs and I'm skeeved out by the idea of hotel bedspreads), I noticed that my blanket had hair on it. And not my hair. Almost woven into the weft of the blanket. I wailed about the foreign person hair on my blanket while S. just laughed and told me that it was karma since I'd stolen that bed from her in the first place. In the midst of us laughing about my disgusting, hairy blanket, mom called to check in on us. (I think she was more than a little nervous about us running the half, especially since we didn't lie and tell her we were in shape.) She was horrified by my hairy blanket tale and insisted I call housekeeping and get a new blanket. Meanwhile, S. was ever helpful and asked me if the hairs were pubes. (You'd never guess we weren't 12, would you?) Mom insisted that I could catch an STD from the icky blanket. S. and I howled with laughter and agreed that I was marinating in a stew of STD's right at that very moment. So I promised mom that I'd get the blanket swapped out and we hung up. Laughter before bed must be tiring because I fell asleep almost immediately.

We had set a wake-up call for 3:15am with the intention of being on the bus by 3:30 as the run started at 5:30. At 3:05, S. asked me if I wanted to sleep the last 10 minutes because she was awake and getting up. Yes, she was the sort of child who used to come into your room, pry open your eyelid, and ask if you were sleeping. Good to know very little has changed! Since I obviously wasn't going to get that last 10 minutes, I got up and crawled into my duds. We dragged ourselves out to the marathon bus (no longer R.I.P. buses) and got on. What was playing on the speaker system? The Bee Gees. Stayin' Alive. Seriously. I couldn't make this up if I tried!

We had agreed the night before that we weren't actually going to run together because I was in the corral ahead of S. plus she has this misconception that a 9-10 minute mile is *really* slow. I am under no illusions about just what slow really is. Slow, thy name is K. (who can pull off 9 minute miles only when properly trained and in shape). But not running together made it a little bit annoying that I hadn't brought along my iPod since I had been anticipating chatting throughout the run. I know, sick that I can contemplate 13.1 miles and chatting, but I did just admit I am all about slow so it's not really a very big feat. As it was time to move to the starting area, S. and I split up.

I have a slight issue with crowds so the 27,300 people at the race was a little much for me. To combat the willies, I pushed to the front of my corral so I'd have a little space. Unfortunately I ended up next to some people who had just met and were casually chatting about the race. The one guy mentioned the bus that collect the people who aren't keeping to the 16 minute mile pace. He was then asked if there were many people on the bus and who on earth could they be. His answer? Well, a lot of them are people who haven't trained for the race. It felt a like the universe was trying to bludgeon me over the head with my own stupidity. I scooted out of range of his very loud voice as I waited for the race to start.

I couldn't see the start line or the enormous screen while we waited for the race to start but I sure could hear the commentators as they interviewed people, talked to the amazing Achilles athletes, and introduced the live feed to Victory Base in Afghanistan where there was going to be a 1/2 marathon simultaneous with the Disney 1/2. Finally with a fireworks display, the first flight was off. 5 fireworks dsiplays later, my flight was off and I was heading into one of my most hair-brained ideas ever.


The Disney marathon is very well organized. Despite the insanely early hour of the start, there were Disney cast members stationed all over the course to cheer on those of us crazy enough to be running. There were folks in costume (and some in costume running the race too) and folks just wearing the Mickey and Minnie hands all giving up sleep to support us. Unlike my other half marathon (the one where I was in shape), I searched for and noted every last mile marker. Once I got past mile marker 3 still running, I was pretty pleased with myself. (It's always good to have low expectations for yourself; that way you can be assured of exceeding them.)

I valiantly plugged along, knowing that I was going pretty slowly. Between miles 1 and 2, I saw the first wheelchair athlete pass on his way back to the finish. I have to admit that I seriously wondered if he would be willing to let me hitch a ride back on his lap. I mean, he was clearly winning by a large margin as there were no other athletes close to him. He probably still would have won with my fat butt adding another level of challenge to his race. Another mile or less into the race, I saw the first elite runner zip past on his way back towards the finish. Someone running close to me shouted, "You're amazing" to him. Bless the employee or family member who shouted back in our direction, "You are too." I'm not sure I buy it, but it made me feel good all the same. A little farther on, I passed a woman holding up a sign that said "Sweat is Sexy." All I could think was that she'd never gotten a whiff of me because honey, in my world, sweat is only sexy from a distance; close up, it stinks.

Turning the corner to run up Main Street Disney was incredibly cool. Definitely the best part of the run in terms of scenery. The race is actually not in the parks themselves nearly as much as I had expected but given that I tend to be a look at the ground kind of runner, this was mostly okay (although the steep camber of two stretches of the race was incredibly rough). I noticed as I came to each mile marker that my mile pace was getting slower and slower. I walked through every water stop, sometimes taking both Powerade and water. My smallest toes on both feet started developing blisters at about mile 3 and each step was agony for a while until the nerve endings down there clearly just quit in the face of my utter intransigence in the face of their complaining.

At mile 8, my head beat out my body and I walked instead of running. I walked on and off from mile 8 to mile 12 depending on how loudly my muscles were complaining. When my lower intestine started rumbling ominously at mile 11, I picked up the pace for a while. At some point in there while I was walking, an older man (60's? 70's?) tapped me on the shoulder as he speed walked past me and asked if I was doing okay. When I nodded and smiled, he gave me a thumbs up and melted into the crowd in front of me. Not too much later, a woman about my age patted my shoulder and told me I was doing great. How incredibly pitiful must I have looked from behind to inspire two complete strangers to touch me and encourage me to keep going? I'm wondering if the fact that my hands swelled to look like I was wearing Mickey Mouse gloves inspired their concern? Or maybe it was because the back (and admittedly the front too under the race bib) of my shirt looked like I was entering a wet t-shirt contest? Obviously something about me screamed defeated at that point. Just before the last water stop, the muscles beside my knees started twitching uncontrollably, an incredibly odd feeling, so I downed yet another Powerade and forced myself into a run for the last stretch. I think I even sped up at the sight of the finish line because heaven knows I was just so pleased to be done. Knowing S. had smoked me and finished long ago, I collected water, medal, fruit, muffin, and diet Coke (you could eat for a week on what they give you at the end of a marathon) and wobbled off to find her at our "pre-arranged meeting place." She was standing there and I was sitting there and it took us both a while to realize that we were both there.

We shuffled over to the bus to the hotel and pulled ourselves on board. Since there were few seats left we split up. Some poor guy who had come to watch his brother run sat next to me and had to endure my funk cloud all the way back to the hotel. Once we got off the bus, I had to start excavating things from my running bra in order to unlock the rental car. It had seemed like a good storage spot that morning but when I pulled the wet and salty key out (after several other things including sports gels), it seemed like a less than good idea. S. started laughing about the next poor person to rent that particular car. From now on, I'm going to have to Lysol rental car keys before I touch them, all because I was gross. And you all will too now that I've planted the idea. You're welcome!

After a much needed shower, we got in our cars and drove to S.'s house where I promptly crawled into my nephew's bed and took a nap. I woke up with a massive headache and attacked it with drugs that had the added benefit of making my entire body feel close to human again. The following morning, I rolled out of bed and hit the road for the 8 1/2 hour drive home. I'm surprisingly not too stiff although the blisters on my feet still hurt. I am pretty certain that I won't agree to any more long distances without proper training but I'm thinking that these long races offer the perfect excuse to abandon the family guilt-free. Excuse me while I check my calendar to schedule the next one!

Oh, and yes, S. did smoke me. She ran the whole thing in 9:44 minute miles. Basically untrained. Brat.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I did a little reading and reviewing this week but the biggest portion of time was spent surrounding me running a half marathon. I had to drive 8 hours there, run the thing, drive to my sister's to nap, and then drive 8 1/2 hours back. Understandably, this meant my reading week was really 4 days instead of 7. So not badly done, that being the case. This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Forman Dew
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell

Reviews posted this week:

The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon
Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Forman Dew
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Georgia's Kitchen by Jenny Nelson
A Slender Thread by Katharine Davis
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Sex, Drugs, and Gelfilte Fish edited by Shana Leibman
Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jackie Lyden
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by Holly Robinson
Daughter of the Bride by Francesca Segre
Chronicles of a Midlife Crisis by Robyn Harding
Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle
Half Empty by David Rakoff
She's Gone Country by Jane Porter
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
Huck by Janet Elder
Out of the Shadows by Joanne Rendell
I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
Never Trust a Rogue by Olivia Drake
After the Fall by Kylie Ladd
Heart With Joy by Steve Cushman
The Lacemakers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri
The Known World by Edward Jones
Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
Web of Love by Mary Balogh
Pure Dead Frozen by Debi Gliori
The Best American Travel Writing 2009 edited by Simon Winchester
The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
The Forbidden Daughter by Shobhan Bantwal
The MacKenzies: Cole by Ana Leigh
Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Running the Books by Avi Steinberg
The Time in Between by David Bergen
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
The Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
Destiny Unleashed by Sherryl Woods
Grayson by Lynne Cox
While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Falling in Love Again by Cathy Maxwell
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Semper Cool by Barry Fixler
City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Waking Up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
One Season of Sunshine by Julia London
A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska
Shoes, Hair, Nails by Deborah Batterman
Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float by Sarah Schmelling
Eurydice Street by Sofka Zinovieff
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma
Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi

Monday Mailbox

Another wonderful pair of books arrived for me. I'm so incredibly spoiled! This past week's mailbox arrival:

Lonely by Emily White came from Harper Perennial thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
I don't know that I ever thought about loneliness as a mental health issue all on its own but am intrigued by this memoir of a woman who describes it thusly.

The Other Life by Ellen Meister came from Putnam thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
A book about the different lives you lead when you make different choices and the ability to move between the two lives? Well, I couldn't resist this premise.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Billed as a tale of love between two older people, the very properly English Major Pettigrew and the widowed Pakistani-English Mrs. Ali, who owns the local village shop, this marvelous debut novel is indeed a charming love story but it is very multi-dimensional, a delightful story of two people who find they have as many similarities as differences, a complicated look at the invidiousnesss of racism, even that unintentionally practiced, the cost of progress, and the conflicts of family. It is a modern tale of manners told with wit and brilliance.

Opening with Major Pettigrew hearing about his brother's death, we are introduced to the quiet, reserved, eminently traditional Major. As he and Mrs. Ali come to know each other better, the Major understands how little consideration he's given to this nice woman who has made her home in the same village he has for so many years. He must face his own culpability in keeping Mrs. Ali an outsider for so long, especially as he witnesses the deliberate unkindnesses and bigotry displayed by so many around him. He finds in Mrs. Ali a kindred spirit of the sort that his wife Nancy had been for him and he gradually welcomes her into his life and thence into his heart. As their friendship and mutual admiration grows, many other multi-faceted characters parade through the narrative.

The Major's son Roger is a colossal prat, completely self-involved and almost as grasping as the Major's sister-in-law and niece. Roger's fiancee, a loud American turns out to have hidden depths. Abdul Wahid, Mrs. Ali's nephew is dour and studious, a seeming stereotype who learns to bend. The villagers are a mixed batch, with some welcoming the increasing involvement between the Major and Mrs. Ali and others being horrified.

The Major desperately wants to reunite the gun his father left his late brother with his own gun, making them the matched set they once were. He feels an entitlement for it to be so but his desire also reflects his insistence on history and tradition. As he strives to rescue the gun from his brother's widow, who is most concerned with the money possible if the gun is sold, he faces, on a smaller, domestic scale, several issues swirling throughout the novel: the potential loss of heritage and misunderstood intentions.

I loved the characters here and appreciated their dry sarcasm. Although not strictly a humorous book, I did chuckle quite often as I read along. And I appreciated the oblique but completely clear manner of addressing obstacles and beliefs, both positive (stewardship and preservation) and negative (racism and self-absorption). The story was completely satisfying and I am pleased to say that I enjoyed the book as much as the buzz would suggest. A wonderful read.


For more information about Helen Simonson and the book, be sure to visit her website, her Facebook page, and her GoodReads page.



Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours for arranging the blog tour and getting me to finally read my copy of this wonderful book.

Review: Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Forman Dew

Normally I don't like to read books in a series out of order but I didn't know that Being Polite to Hitler was the final book in a trilogy. Thankfully that turned out not to matter and I am even rather pleased to know that I can revisit these characters when I so choose, even if I do already know their ultimate outcomes (and I suspect that I have the first two books somewhere deep on the tbr mountains already so it will be easy enough for me to do). Putting aside the trilogy order issue though, how could I possibly pass up a book so enticingly titled especially coupled with the cover image of a woman daintily sipping tea? It was just too appealing.

Taking place in the years following World War II, from the early 50's to the early 70's, the novel follows the Scofield clan through their everyday lives in small town Washburn, Ohio. Matriarch Agnes Scofield starts the novel coming to the conclusion that she is tired of teaching. It was only ever something she did out of obligation and now she wishes to be able to leave off. Whether she will have the courage and ability to change her life in the face of the mundane remains to be seen. The novel also follows Agnes' family in their daily struggles, financial, marital, and personal as well.

Althought it might seem as if there's not much going on in this quietly domestic novel, there is nothing going on in the way that there was nothing happening in Virginia Woolf's novels. There is a sense of the ordinary extraordinariness of daily life in a small town during the post war years. And like Woolf's, many of Dew's characters face that elegantly quiet desperation in which only the comfortable upper middle class can indulge. The characters peopling the pages of the novel are langorous and yet tightly wound too, a neat, tricky bit of writing that Dew pulls off admirably.

The hopscotching narrative functions as a window to peek in on various different Scofields and the state of the world as America comes of age after the war. Dew weaves historically significant events throughout the story. Some are intact and lengthy (Kenndy's assassination) while others are merely alluded to or briefly discussed by the characters (the Rosenbergs), their prominence in the storyline mirroring the importance of each event commensurate with their impact on the middle America of the time. This is a book filled with moments, everday moments, extraordinary moments, and even authorial moments. At one point, with a wink to her readers, Dew gives herself a tongue in cheek tip of the hat in the midst of an exposition.

Beautifully crafted, this is a quietly resonant novel. When Agnes' daughter-in-law Lavinia crossly accuses her husband Claytor of being willing to endure anything, willing to sit being polite to Hitler so as not to ruffle any feathers, the perfection of the title as a descriptor for the characters' lives is highlighted. And for those people who often find themselves bemoaning tepid endings, this book has one of the very best ending lines I have read, perfectly in keeping with the entire tone of everything that went on before. Lovers of literary fiction will find much to savor here and Woolf fans will rejoice in the understated homage to To the Lighthouse.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

I generally don't read anything that has a body or blood in it because I am prone to nightmares, coward that I am. So it is probably completely incongruous that I would cheerfully agree to read a book in which one of the first female lawyers in Britain is helping to defend a man accused of murdering his wife. I am nothing if not inconsistent. Then again, I am up writing this review in the wee hours of the night when I am usually asleep because the image of a pink shoe on a lady's foot poking out of the underbrush has crawled into my brain and horrified me beyond sleep. Tame stuff for afficianados of the scary and gory but disturbing and lasting for babies like me.

Six years after her brother's death in WWI, Londoner Evelyn Gifford opens the door to find a small boy the spitting image of her brother standing with his mother on the stoop. There is no doubt that the child is her brother James' son, conceived just before his death. The household has been in a sort of grieving stasis since the telegram announcing James' death six years ago and the presence of small Edmund and his mum Meredith is about about to change everything. And while Evelyn's family life is undergoing this major upheaval, she is struggling in her professional life and opening up to an opportunity in her personal life as well.

One of the first female lawyers in England, Evelyn is still in training and facing the almost inevitable prejudice of being a trailblazer. Her boss has relegated her to mostly unimportant (and non-paying) clients. When he is out of town, by default she is given the case of a poor mother, a bit too fond of drink, who is accused of having kidnapped her own child. Leah Marchant willingly surrendered her children to a charity home while she tried to get back on her feet but in so doing, she didn't fully understand the consequences of her actions or the potentially terrible complications. In fact, neither did most of society fully understand the possible fates for children like Leah Marchant's. A seemingly insignificant case, it blossoms out of control as Evelyn undertakes to reunite the mother with her children.

Meanwhile, she is also called on to assist at a spectacular murder trial where a former soldier is accused of having shot his new wife in the heart while out picnicking and then cold bloodedly heading to a pub for a few drinks. The evidence against Stephen Wheeler is overwhelming if circumstantial and Evelyn may be the only person who believes his innocence. And proving that innocence could be beyond her capabilities.

As I've already mentioned, the murder storyline left me sleepless over the two nights it took to read the book. This is not because it was difficult to figure out who the killer was though. As a matter of fact, it seemed to me to be glaringly obvious from the first. But as the novel is much more than the mystery, this seems less a handicap than it might.

The obstacles faced by women in the time between the two world wars, as they not only entered the workplace but entered in educated professions which had always been the sole province of men, were enormous. And add to that the lack of rights of women in general during this time and it becomes clear the sorts of odds a character like Evelyn faced. She should have been a wonderfully admirable character but I just couldn't warm to her. She was somehow more insipid than I had expected given her drive to become a lawyer despite general public sentiment. Perhaps this was intended to show her complexity and make her multi-dimensional but it left me without a character with whom to identify. As for Meredith, the mother of James' son and the character who stands as a foil to Evelyn, I didn't care for her either. She was flighty and cruel, fickle, inconsistent, and grasping and I suspect she was not meant to seem that way. Evelyn's budding lust for Nicholas, a man who represents everything she abhors, was a distraction given everything else going on in the novel but his very presence was necessary to the meat of the plot, making for an interesting conundrum: how to include him without the busyness of yet another plot thread.

Given the fact that the novel was certainly out of my comfort zone, I probably zeroed in on things that wouldn't have struck other readers quite as strongly. And as evidenced by my lack of sleep, the detail of the story is quite vivid. The touches of historical information, the reaction and prejudice against the first female lawyers, the shipping of children from English charity homes to Canada where they could be ill-used, the toll the war had on the survivors, both soldier and civilian, all of these were fascinating and woven into the novel well. I just couldn't make a connection with the characters that didn't leave me irritated and so my overall enjoyment was lessened. I do think, however, that mystery readers will enjoy the threads of the story that kept me awake and historical fiction readers will find interesting nuggets scattered throughout this post-WWI set novel.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma
The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette

Reviews posted this week:

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Georgia's Kitchen by Jenny Nelson
A Slender Thread by Katharine Davis
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Sex, Drugs, and Gelfilte Fish edited by Shana Leibman
Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jackie Lyden
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by Holly Robinson
Daughter of the Bride by Francesca Segre
Chronicles of a Midlife Crisis by Robyn Harding
Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle
Half Empty by David Rakoff
She's Gone Country by Jane Porter
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
Huck by Janet Elder
Out of the Shadows by Joanne Rendell
I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
Never Trust a Rogue by Olivia Drake
After the Fall by Kylie Ladd
Heart With Joy by Steve Cushman
The Lacemakers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri
The Known World by Edward Jones
Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
Web of Love by Mary Balogh
Pure Dead Frozen by Debi Gliori
The Best American Travel Writing 2009 edited by Simon Winchester
The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
The Forbidden Daughter by Shobhan Bantwal
The MacKenzies: Cole by Ana Leigh
Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Running the Books by Avi Steinberg
The Time in Between by David Bergen
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
The Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
Destiny Unleashed by Sherryl Woods
Grayson by Lynne Cox
While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Falling in Love Again by Cathy Maxwell
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Semper Cool by Barry Fixler
City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Waking Up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
One Season of Sunshine by Julia London
A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska
Shoes, Hair, Nails by Deborah Batterman
Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float by Sarah Schmelling
Eurydice Street by Sofka Zinovieff
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma
The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

Monday Mailbox

A new year and a new set of months of review books arriving. They look great of course, per usual. This past week's mailbox arrival:

Small Wars by Sadie Jones came from Harper Perennial thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
A seemingly peaceful posting to Cyprus turns that erupts into war, this story of the personal changes that brings about in Hal, a major in the British Army, and his wife Clara sounds like a captivating look at war, morality, and the ways in which they erode the people involved in them.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough by Ruth Pennebaker came from the author thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
Stories about three generations of women always catch my interest and this tale of family and the sandwich generation looks like it will be good for more than a few giggles.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Resolutions and musings

I probably should have posted a resolution post yesterday. Obviously I didn't. I should probably post one today, a day late. But I won't. I have very few resolutions for the coming year and only one that is pertinent to the whole wide world: I resolve to post reviews of all the books I read in 2010 that I didn't get around to posting about in 2010. And really that's more a function of my own anal retentive personality than any feeling for the beginning of the year. But I will eventually get to all those wonderful books I have yet to share with you aside from listing in my sidebar, interspersed, of course, with this year's books. With the year so shiny and new, I have managed to schedule myself into quite a few books already and that's without my usual late rush to join reading challenges so the first few months of the year should be interesting ones indeed! In addition to all the reading I'll be doing, I will likely have some tennis matches (although as it's the Polar Bear league, there are equally good chances that they will be frozen out) and I have a half marathon next weekend that is very likely to turn into a very long walk. I'm probably not likely to do any other really long runs this year but I'm hoping to be in shape enough to do a few shorter ones.

Since I didn't post a list of the bookish goodies under the Christmas tree for me yet, I will beg your indulgence now. From my loving husband, I unwrapped Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard and Delhi by Sam Miller as well as the ever popular B&N gift card so we can pretend for one month at least that I haven't spent a seriously obscene amount at the store. From my sister-in-law came World and Town by Gish Jen. From my sister and brother-in-law came Scent of the Missing by Susannah Charleson, Casting Off by Nicole Dickson, East Hope by Katharine Davis, and Leopard Rock by Tarras Wilding. And because I am always significantly out-presented by my children, I saved my Secret Santa gifts for Christmas day as well. For the Booklovers Secret Santa, from Liz of Consumed by Books, I received a wonderfully generous package including Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield, a Cadbury bar, a package of three small notebooks (perfect to keep in my car for jotting notes) and a CD of Liz's favorite Christmas music which is great and totally appropriate since I listen to Christmas music for a month ahead of time and love to add new renditions into my listening line-up! And from Steve or Sean (I am notoriously bad at reading other people's writing), I received the utterly enticing ARC of Late For Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi, which comes out this month. Pretty special bookish haul if I do say so myself!

As for this past week's reading adventures, I didn't have many since I came down with the hideous and unpleasant cold my niece and nephews so thoughtfully brought to Christmas. I did, however, spend time with Louisa May Alcott as she fell in love one summer, finished learning about the natural world around the Great Lakes (and indeed around me here in the South too), and followed along as one of Britain's first female lawyers learned her craft both in a kidnapping case and a murder trial.

And for right now? Well, it's a toss up between going back to my latest read or singing (dreadfully off key, I might add) with my daughter to her new Singstar Abba game (the boys seem to have darted off to their hidey holes at the merest mention of the 70's pop sensations for some reason).