Review: Love Potion Number 10 by Betsy Woodman

I read Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes last year. It left me with such a happy feeling that I was thrilled to discover that I would be able to return to the 1960s Indian hill station town of Hamara Nagar, the Jolly Grant House, Jana Bibi, Mr. Ganguly the parrot, and all of the delightful characters and places mentioned in the first novel. And this second novel in the proposed trilogy was just as charming as the first.

In this delightful installment, Jana Bibi has added dream interpretation to her fortune telling. Mr. Ganguly the parrot still assists in the fortune telling and thanks to his notoriety, he ends up the object of a kidnapping plot. A trio of Jana's wealthy friends buy the local hotel with plans to update and modernize it and Jana must carefully straddle her friendship with them and her desire and obligation to the town in keeping the hotel's character intact. In addition to these forces from outside the village, Abinath, of Abinath's Apothecary has created an elixir he's dubbed LPN10 or Love Potion Number 10 which just might, amazingly be what it claims to be. Jana works herself even more firmly into the fabric of Hamara Nagar here, dispensing gentle words of advice and helping her friends and inhabitants of the town to embrace the right future for them. This is another engaging novel from Woodman, complete with the same quirky characters and cheerful tone that pervaded the first one. It's a sweet and cozy treat of a read and if you haven't yet met Jana Bibi, pick up the first one and I promise you'll want to read this one too.

Thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this book for review.

You're a giraffe

So, that giraffe thing on Facebook. Have you done it? It's cute, right? And your profile picture is likely now a giraffe. So why would I bother to write about it? Well, because the whole thing has been bothering me. And not just because my answer was incorrect. (For those of you who do not want to read about the potential answers, click away now. I intend to mention all answers. You have been warned.) I am bothered by it because I was told I was over reacting to the whole thing after I said that after re-examining the riddle, both answers people argue for were incorrect. In actual fact, there is no correct answer to the thing the way it is written. (More on this later.) But far more than the supposed answer to the riddle itself was the suggestion that I was being ridiculous for caring about the way it was written. And that bothers me more than a little. Because that suggests that because this is being done in fun, we shouldn't care about precise language. And yes, an assumption like that is going to make me more than a little defensive. I happen to think that precise language is always important.

I think what grates for me about this acceptance of sloppiness is that so many of the same people who shrug it off and think (or even come out and say) I'm over reacting would get their knickers completely and totally in a knot if I used something sloppy from their field of expertise. If I posted a set of statistics which came from a badly designed study, I'd hear about it. If I quoted an article with sloppy science behind it, I'd hear about it. But because this is merely words, I shouldn't get so worked up about it. And really, Kristen, this is just for fun so let it go. Well, remember that photoshopped picture from Back to the Future with Oct. 21, 2013 displayed in the DeLorean? I posted that without checking it and immediately got a raft of comments that it was photoshopped. Even after I looked it up and posted a comment that I'd looked it up and yes, people saying it wasn't real were correct, I continued to get comments telling me that it wasn't real. I ended up deleting it. That picture was just in fun and yet quite a few people felt compelled to make sure that I knew it was altered. Heaven forbid you muck with a much beloved image from pop culture. But go ahead and tell me that I'm overreacting when I say that a riddle is poorly written.  Because good writing is not something we value enough to defend.  Not like a photoshopped movie still.

In the stream of Facebook comments that spawned this post, this was the statement that really set me off: "Writing an op ed to explain why the riddle is "wrong" seems rather over-defensive." Well, I am willing to admit I am pedantic so I'll say that I had actually commented that the riddle was poorly written and that my choice of those words was for a reason. But regardless, following this statement with a smiley face doesn't make it less of a smug tweak. I was answering someone else's direct question about whether I thought that my answer was correct and that the answer that the guy who thought this whole thing up wants was incorrect and why. In the spirit of not ruining the "fun" for others, I said that my answer was incorrect as well and offered to send my reasoning about both being incorrect in a private message. Since that person didn't take me up on the offer and then that subsequent comment has set me off, you all get to hear it instead.

First, the exact text of the riddle to which I responded, copied and pasted from the page:

I have had to change my profile to a giraffe. I tried to answer a riddle and got it wrong . Try the great giraffe challenge!The deal is I give you a riddle. You get it right you get to keep your profile pic. You get it wrong and you change your profile pic to a Giraffe for the next 3 days. MESSAGE ME ONLY SO YOU DONT GIVE OUT THE ANSWER.Here is the riddle: 3:00 am, the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors, It's your parents and they are there for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?Remember... message me only. If you get it right I'll post your name here. If you get it wrong change your profile picture to a giraffe for 3 days.

Let's take a look at this.  As written, you've awakened to an unexpected doorbell to find that your parents are here and want breakfast. Now there's a list of things you have in the house to eat or drink. Then comes the question. "What is the first thing you open?" Keep in mind that "is" in the question because it's very important, even more important to correctly answering the riddle than the definition of it was to former President Clinton. The guy who created the riddle wants the answer of "your eyes" but since he's already got you awake, that can't be it. I answered "the door" as did many others. But again, as you see the unexpected visitors are your parents and you know they want breakfast, that implies the door has already been opened unless you're crazy and peek out the window and conduct a conversation with them through a closed door.  Since most of us are not completely ludicrous, that is unlikely.  And so you are left with the list of consumables, none of which makes more sense than any other. But the present tense question (there's that "is") comes after your eyes and the door have already been opened and so the answer must, by logic, be in that list. And we all know it's not. I give you a very poorly written riddle. And as someone who cares about precise language and decent writing, I pointed it out. But I'm over-defensive and must be informed of such. (For what it's worth, over-defensive is the wrong accusation anyway as I admitted I said you open the door first and then backed down from that answer to say it was incorrect as well so I'm clearly not defending my initial answer.) Apparently, I am the party guest who came in and pushed over the cake because remember this is just for fun and 99% of us don't care about the writing as discovered in the 2013 study written by I. Couldntcareless examining people's high tolerance for accepting incorrect information.

You really want to know what I open first when the doorbell rings unexpectedly at 3am? My mouth. I roll over, eyes definitely still shut, and elbow my husband and tell him to check it out because I do not answer a ringing doorbell at 3am although it's most likely I'm already awake for reasons I won't go into (I still don't answer the door though). In any case, this whole thing doesn't make anyone a giraffe. Not the way it's written (not that any of us should care about that). You know what it does make us all, though? Sheep. And advertising and marketing departments in every industries are rejoicing in this renewed proof that they can twist a few words and we'll never notice or care. Kudos to the Giraffe Riddle guy for making it so visible. Yay! Now let's all change our profile pictures to sheep!

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.

 Havisham by Ronald Frame. The book is being released by Picador on November 5, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: IN THE TRADITION OF WIDE SARGASSO SEA, HAVISHAM IS THE ASTONISHING PRELUDE TO CHARLES DICKENS'S GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Before she became the immortal and haunting Miss Havisham of Great Expectations, she was Catherine, a young woman with all of her dreams ahead of her. Spry, imperious, she is the daughter of a wealthy brewer. But she is never far from the smell of hops and the arresting letters on the brewhouse wall—HAVISHAM—a reminder of all she owes to the family name and the family business.

Sent by her father to stay with the Chadwycks, Catherine discovers elegant pastimes to remove the taint of her family's new money. But for all her growing sophistication, Catherine is anything but worldly, and when a charismatic stranger pays her attention, everything—her heart, her future, the very Havisham name—is vulnerable.

In Havisham, Ronald Frame unfurls the psychological trauma that made young Catherine into Miss Havisham and cursed her to a life alone, roaming the halls of the mansion in the tatters of the dress she wore for the wedding she was never to have.

Review: Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

An updated version of Sense and Sensibility? Jane Austen's works are so iconic and so firmly entrenched in their times that it might be difficult to imagine a successful update that stays true to the original but that is in fact the charge that The Austen Project has given writers: to use the Austen originals as a base but then come up with their own take on the beloved novels. Joanna Trollope is the first of the well-known authors tapped for the project and she takes on a modern tribute to Sense and Sensibility.

For those who have read the original inspiration, Trollope's novel follows the plot of Austen's story almost exactly. Sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, with their free-spirited artistic mother and somewhat sullen school-aged younger sister have to leave their home, Norland Park, the estate of their late father's uncle, after their father dies and their half brother John and his grasping wife Fanny move in. They find a suitable cottage on the property of well-meaning, if slightly controlling, relatives and settle in to adjust to their new lives. And as in the original, Elinor is the eminently sensible sister while Marianne is the one who lives in the moment with little thought to a future grounded in reality. Elinor has had to give up her place at school where she's only a year away from qualifying as an architect and she is downcast at the silence she encounters after their move from Fanny's brother, Edward, with whom she is in love. The breathtakingly gorgeous Marianne, meanwhile, tumbles head over heels in love with the equally gorgeous Willoughby, thinking that the good Colonel Brandon is too old for her. And as in the original, her heart is destined to be broken and she is plunged into despair. As Marianne is blindly wallowing in her own unhappiness, Elinor is having to deal with the well-meaning relatives, the staggering selfishness and self-centeredness of her sister-in-law and brother, and face the idea that her beloved Edward is secretly engaged to the odious Lucy Steele, dealing her a blow to the heart she must keep to herself in order to support her sister and mother in their continued neediness and reluctance to live in the real world.

The bones of the story are very much what Austen wrote originally so those who are familiar with Austen's tale will encounter no surprises here. Trollope has added the use of modern technology and changed a few circumstances in the novel but not enough to materially change the storyline. And perhaps she should have changed things a bit more since society and what it will tolerate in people has changed so significantly from Austen's time. The type of characters Austen wrote still work in our modern day but some of the circumstances that drive the plot do not. Elinor still represses her own emotions in order to be the rock of reason for her less practically inclined mother. Marianne, still driven primarily by emotion, comes off as significantly more selfish than in the original because society no longer demands that women marry (or live on the sufferance and goodwill of family) so her decline after her humiliating rejection by Willoughby is rather over the top. And that very expanded array of social options for women makes it difficult to hew so closely to Austen's original and still come across as authentically modern. Trollope does a good job translating the emotional realism of Austen's novel to a modern setting; after all, we as emotional beings haven't changed much if at all since Austen's time and Trollope makes that clear in her portrayal of the very different Dashwood sisters, avaricious, social-climbing Fanny, the slyly obnoxious Lucy Steele, and the steel-cored, well-intentioned interference of Sir John Middleton in so many aspects of the Dashwoods' lives. An interesting combination, sometimes jarring, of social attitudes from the 18th century and technology from the 21st, Austen fans will want to read this and see how Elinor and Marianne have changed and stayed the same in their leap to the present.

For more information about Joanna Trollope and the book, check out her website or find her on Facebook. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Review: The Purchase by Linda Spalding

What happens when you are faced with betraying your principles and beliefs? Can it destroy your entire life? In Linda Spalding's The Purchase, her main character, Daniel, is a Quaker who mistakenly buys a slave after having his whole life already thrown into turmoil. But his purchase of another human being marks his life and all the future decisions in it like nothing else.

Opening with Daniel Dickinson, his new wife, and his five children leaving the Quaker settlement they call home after Daniel's shunning by the community for marrying his young servant after his wife's untimely death, the family leaves behind all that anchors them in life and sets out on a hard journey to a new home they must carve out of the western Virginia wilderness for themselves. That they are completely unequipped for this new life and will make mistake after mistake in this new place is immediately evident in the narrative. Daniel knows nothing about the woods around them; he is no farmer, and in fact seems fairly unskilled and uniformed about the hardships he's going to put his family and himself through. It is a fool's errand on which he has embarked and one that will spawn unrelenting misery and tragedy after tragedy. Daniel's poor choices are only compounded when he takes the only cash he has to a farm implement auction and instead of buying tools, ends up buying a slave named Onesimus, having to forfeit his favorite mare, a horse that was to help him establish his farm in order to pay for the slave he doesn't want. His intention of eventually earning enough money to buy back his horse and to free Onesimus, while morally righteous, is a plan even less well-conceived, given his general ineptitude for this harsh life, than his plan to move the family into the wilderness in the first place.

Unfolding slowly over a number of years, the narrative is told by a rotating cast of characters. It is hard to tell which character is intended to carry the story as just when the mind and motivation of the character narrating starts to come into focus, the novel changes perspective and moves on in time. Add to this the fact that none of the characters are particularly appealing, every last one of them accepts being a doormat at each turn, perhaps nurtured by patriarch Daniel's weak and frustrating passivity. He wants to hold onto his dearly held Quaker beliefs but instead of lending him a strength and stature, he becomes a pitiful mockery of a principled person, leading not only the other characters to be frustrated by him but also the reader as well. Certainly the life that the family leads is a hard, brutal, and uncivilized one but the tone of the entire novel is relentlessly grim and unbending. Daniel's flaws help to explain and justify his children's attraction and allure to violence at odds with his half-hearted teachings and make the resulting tragedies inevitable. But over all, the book does a good job showing the soul-destroying power of the frontier and the difficult life that anyone choosing to try and tame it would have faced. Historically the novel seems mostly accurate although one bit that was glaringly wrong to me and made me shake my fist at the sloppiness of the passage has a large green log being thrown onto a fire and immediately blazing with flame. This does not happen with green wood. Seasoned and aged? If the fire is hot enough to sustain a round log, sure. Green wood? Not a chance in this world. And while complaining about a detail like this might seem to be nitpicking, this is a time and a place where wood fires are vital to survival and so it's not an insignificant error. This is definitely not a novel for anyone looking for a story of redemption or hope and glimmers of humor or even contentment are completely missing as well. It is a depressing and downtrodden tale from first to last.

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 Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope
The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

Reviews posted this week:

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Partner Track by Helen Wan
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

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

The Purchase by Linda Spalding
Love Potion Number Ten by Betsy Woodman
Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt
Royal Bridesmaids by Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley, and Loretta Chase
Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The Innocents by Francesca Segal
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battles
The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope
The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden

Monday Mailbox

Coming home from a girls' weekend away, I was happily surprised by some completely delectable books. This week's mailbox arrivals:

The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson came from Rizzoli USA and France Book Tours for a blog tour.

Non-fiction about the beauty of solitude by an author who moved to the edge of a lake in Siberia to be alone with his books, thoughts, vodka, and his dogs. Aside from the fact that I think vodka tastes like lighter fluid, this hermetic six months sounds just like my kind of book (and makes me a little jealous).

The Pleasures of Autumn by Evie Hunter came from Penguin UK.

An erotic romance about a jewel thief and the investigator charged with stopping her, this might not be about diamonds (it's a ruby) but you can never go wrong with shiny, sparkly stuff.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan came from Picador as a contest win (it's signed!).

A mysterious and secret filled bookstore? How could a book lover not want to read this?

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan came from Picador as a contest win (it's signed!).

The backstory to the above book, I expect to be transported by that one and to need this one as well.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Book Dragon's Lair 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: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

I think I'll always have a soft spot in me for Thursday Next. When I picked up The Eyre Affair, I couldn't stop grinning as I read. And it was nothing if not way outside my usual genre of read.  Since then, I've been happily following along with the series at a leisurely pace, picking the subsequent books up when I wanted an escape into puns and word play, satire and literary creativity. And this one had all of that but somehow it fell a little short of the previous books. Maybe it was because there were so many disparate threads and so much reliance on the previous books that this one was somehow slightly less entertaining. And yet, because it was Thursday Next and the always creative Jasper Fforde, it was still a decent read and I will continue to look forward to the next Next.

In this installment of the series, it's been 14 years since the previous book and much has changed in Thursday's life. She and Landon are married and have children, including a sullen, slouchy teenaged son named Friday who is causing Thursday much grief and stress. He is not following the plan of his life as it is supposed to unfold and if he doesn't do as his future indicates, the Looming End of Time could, in fact, arrive. In addition to her worries about Friday's directionlessness, Thursday is having to live a double life. SpecOps was disbanded and so her job as a literary detective has morphed instead into a job as a carpet installer for Acme Carpets. Or this is what she's told Landon. While she does go on the occasional carpet installation job, she is still secretly policing the literary world and when it becomes clear that a serial killer is on the loose and knocking off famous characters all over Book World, she must get to the bottom of it. And Book World itself has gotten more complex now that there are the four previous Thursday Next novels as well, meaning there's the fictional Thursday Next who is the heroine of this novel and there are meta-fiction Thursdays from her previous novels and apprenticed to this Thursday in Book World. Add to all of this chaos the fact that the real world is facing a stupidity surplus, that reading rates are declining and there's talk of turning some classics into reality tv shows, tarted up and with more spectacular conflicts than as written to entice viewing audiences, there's a black market for illegal and highly dangerous cheese, and Goliath is back to their old tricks, wanting to access and monetize travel into the Book World and it's obvious that there's more than enough for the tangled and typically chaotic world of Thursday Next.

Although all of the unrelated plot threads do start to twist together, this is still a bit exhausting, perhaps because other characters have taken on large portions of the action and importance. Even minor characters from previous novels come back for cameos here, adding just that small bit too much to the otherwise genial mess and clutter. This definitely requires knowledge of the previous books since nothing is as it seems and the back story helps make things more understandable for the reader. Thursday is still the same wonderfully quirky, smart, kick-butt literary detective she's always been--and now she's even the Last Bastion of Common Sense (LBOCS) on the Council of Genres in Book World--and I did enjoy dipping back into her world again but I hope the next one is a little less mechanics driven and a little heavier on the literary fun.

Review: The Partner Track by Helen Wan

Sometimes the media reports on someone shattering a glass ceiling. The fact that they are reporting on it being broken just goes to prove that it does still in fact exist. Yes, some people can successfully break through. But those people are still so few and far between that they are newsworthy. In Helen Wan's debut novel, The Partner Track, she writes of one young Chinese-American woman, Ingrid Yung, who is poised to be that newsworthy figurehead, but at what cost?

Ingrid has worked hard, beyond hard, as an associate at the law firm of Parsons, Valentine, and Hunt. She's hung in there and lasted long past the time that most of her fellow class year mates have, her nose to the grindstone, sacrificing everything to her job and the shining promise of the partner track. And now she's poised to take the brass ring. This is the year she's up for partnership. She's been offered a plum role in a high profile, highly profitable corporate merger. With her quick intelligence and her unbeatable work ethic, a partnership should be in the bag. She knows what a partnership would mean to her parents and to the Chinese-American community but she's not sure how far she's willing to go to be the poster child for diversity, especially after a racist incident at the annual outing means the firm hires an outside expert to bolster its tarnished reputation and Ingrid is essentially told to cooperate with him as a condition of her potential partnership.

Wan herself was a lawyer and her experiences in the legal world obviously inform the novel greatly. She has done a good job capturing the "old boy network" that still exists, if after hours and behind closed doors, in many a venerable and prestigious firm. And her Ingrid is believable, worrying that she might be promoted not on her own merit but because she fills in two boxes at once on an Affirmative Action form but also being highly resentful that others might think the same thing. The way that some of the other characters who appear to be in Ingrid's corner turn on her and show their true selves is fairly horrifying but not unexpected given the fact that lip service to political correctness, especially given the firm's stated (if unenforced) position on tolerance, is expedient and forces those who hold repugnant views to hide them carefully. The pace of the narrative was generally good although it did get bogged down in the middle over the legal details of the case on which Ingrid was working. And while the case was interesting enough, it was really Ingrid and the people around her who pushed the book forward rather than the case. It did serve, though, to show how meticulous she was in her due diligence so that the ending of the story could be plausible on every level. Over all, this was an interesting look at ambition, duty, the latent racism no one wants to address or acknowledge, and the cost of achieving a dream.

Thanks to Staci from Wunderkind PR for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Both of my book clubs chose to read this latest work by Louise Erdrich this month.  It is both the 2012 National Book Award Winner and a 2013 WNBA Great Group Reads selection. I hadn't read anything by Erdrich in a very long time until this appeared on both schedules, not having been overly fond of her books in the past and despite the fact that many readers I respect very much have loved them. So I went into this with low expectations and was, for the most part, pleasantly surprised.

Told at a remove of many years by a now adult Joe, this is the story of the summer he was thirteen, when his whole world was shattered an remade innocence-free, full of disillusion, and far more adult than it ever should have been. It is the story of the summer his mother was brutally attacked, raped, and barely escaped with her life in a crime that rocked the very foundations of what Joe believes in, his understanding of the justice system, and the way that the world works. Joe's summer is supposed to be spent hanging out with his best friends Cappy, Zack, and Angus, talking about Star Trek and girls but when his mother returns home from work unexpectedly late one evening, covered in blood and drenched in gasoline, his summer takes on a far more menacing hue. His father, Bazil, is a tribal judge and he enlists Joe's help sorting through past cases on which he ruled, in order to try and find possible suspects in the attack. Meanwhile, Joe's mother, Geraldine who has been in charge of tribal enrollment and verifying Indian heritage, retreats into herself, maintaining a blank-eyed silence about all of it, claiming that she didn't know who her attacker was. Of more importance than the identity of her attacker, is the fact that she doesn't know exactly where the attack happened. It was at the Round House, a sacred building for the Ojibwa, but also a place where three different jurisdictions come together: tribal, state, and federal. Without knowing the exact location and because the attacker is non-Native, there can be no persecution of this heinous crime. But Joe is unable to let the inadequate justice system fail his mother and his people and he and his friends start digging into the evidence. They uncover even more than they had expected and set a plan in motion that will change them forever.

In this work, Erdrich addresses the inequalities still evidenced in the treatment of and justice offered to Native Americans. She includes long passages about the history of Native American rights and about the culture and heritage of the Ojibwa people. Some of these passages move the story along and others are diversions that can feel out of place in the tale Joe's telling. There are a plethora of characters in the story and most of them are very well fleshed out although a few of them seem to exist only to offer up long digressions out of the flow of the narrative. The narration itself, being told by the adult Joe, yet through his 13 year old eyes can be somewhat conflicted, sometimes offering observations that are out of character for a young teenager but not noted as being from his adult perspective so many years later.

The issues raised here are deep and troubling. On the surface, Erdrich is writing about the definition of family; loyalty, both filial and fraternal; the confluence and question of place; and a history that continues to reverberate terribly today.  But on a deeper level, she is also addressing the sacred and the profane, silence and stories, and most importantly the question of vengeance versus justice and the many permutations of injustice. She addresses the disenfranchising of women through not only Geraldine's (and Sonya's) inherent femaleness but doubly in Geraldine's case because she is Native American woman and so twice impotent. She captures the sad but inevitable change in a child's vision of his parents, moving Joe from the simple perception of his father and mother as strong and worthy to a disdain for their weakness and inadequacy and ultimately to a more realistic and better understanding of them as human beings with much more complexity to their characters than he had previously allowed. The pace of the narrative is slow and meandering and it is akin to watching a horror movie and wanting to tell the victim "don't go down there, don't open the door, get out while you still can." In other words, there's no question where Joe's desire for justice is going to take him. In the predictable aftermath though, the story takes a confusing and seemingly random twist which I still can't explain in terms of the themes of the story even though it was alluded to right from the very beginning of Joe's reminiscences. Accessibly written over all, this is a glimpse into a terrible truth of Native culture and all that informs it and if I found weaknesses in it, I still think that it contains the seeds of many varied discussions.

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.

The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan. The book is being released by Ecco on November 5, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement is a sweeping, evocative epic of two women’s intertwined fates and their search for identity, that moves from the lavish parlors of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village.

Spanning more than forty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement resurrects pivotal episodes in history: from the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, to the rise of the Republic, the explosive growth of lucrative foreign trade and anti-foreign sentiment, to the inner workings of courtesan houses and the lives of the foreign “Shanghailanders” living in the International Settlement, both erased by World War II.

A deeply evocative narrative about the profound connections between mothers and daughters, The Valley of Amazement returns readers to the compelling territory of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. With her characteristic insight and humor, she conjures a story of inherited trauma, desire and deception, and the power and stubbornness of love.

Review: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

I have a very conflicted relationship with food. I know that I eat for more than just sustenance. When we moved when I was in high school, I gained 30 pounds in 3 months. Was I growing? Possibly. But I clearly turned to food as comfort at that point in my life (and at other points subsequently). I was lucky though because I was a very active kid and that didn't dump me into the obese range. Now that I'm a lot older and not so active, I still have a complicated relationship with food (and it shows). Even knowing that I turn to the great white psychiatrist (aka my fridge) or the comforting closet (aka my pantry) when I shouldn't, I can't seem to break the cycle of poor food choices and looking for solace in food. So I was very curious to read Jami Attenberg's new novel, The Middlesteins, about a wife, mother, and grandmother who is eating herself to death and the ways in which her immediate family handles both her compulsive overeating and the reasons behind it.

Edie Middlestein is killing herself with food. She is morbidly obese and suffering from advanced, uncontrolled diabetes and arterial disease, and she's facing surgery. It is at this point that Richard, her husband of forty some years, walks out on her and files for divorce. And while food is the set up and the biggest force in Edie's life, this is really more a novel about connection, family, belonging, and the ways we cope with, or fail to cope with, life than it is about the obesity epidemic swallowing the country. Edie has always used food to dull her feelings, right back into childhood when her mother used food as a reward and a solace for her emotionally needy daughter. Her weight has varied over the years (chapters start with the number on the scale at that point in her life) and we can see how outside events have negatively and positively affected that number once she has internalized them.

Edie became a wife, a mother, a lawyer but not one of those things filled the void in her like food does. She and Richard have not had a happy marriage for a long time and the timing of his leaving is viewed by their children as completely selfish.  It alienates him from his family and friends but he can no longer sustain the life they have been leading. This leaves the care of Edie, in the aftermath of her surgery and her doctor's pronouncement that she will die if she doesn't curb her out of control appetite, to her children, riddled as they are with their own destructive tendencies and unhappy coping mechanisms. Middlestein son Benny smokes pot most evenings after his own teenaged twins are in bed. Benny's wife Rachelle obsessively tracks her own family's food and throws herself into planning an extravagant B'nai Mitzvah for the twins. Middlestein daughter Robin is an angry alcoholic who doesn't know how to maintain a healthy relationship. And it is these three adults, adrift in their own lives, publically competent but really only barely coping themselves, who suddenly feel a responsibility (and if truth be told, resentment as well) toward Edie and her health.

The novel is narrated by several of the characters, including a chorus of Edie and Richard's friends from synagogue, the people who are supposed to be Edie's tribe, and this gives the reader insight not only into others' feelings about Edie, her voracious eating, and Richard's defection from their house of recrimination and bitterness, but it also offers glimpses of their own stunted inability to love and to know how to live in this world. It is a grand view of everyone's dysfunction, which if not as personally destructive as Edie's gorging, is just as checked out of the deeper emotions of life. The emotional void and flat affect that looms over each of the characters makes this a tough, depressing, and even exhausting read. None of the characters was particularly connected, each refusing meaningful intervention in each others' lives, not just in the case of Edie, but really in all instances. Rife with unhappiness, Attenberg has offered no easy answers about either comfort food as a way to temporarily fill a hole nor about the way to embrace high emotion and ultimately to love. There are tiny glimmers of hope for the future in the text but they are overwhelmed by the more painful, lackluster lives of these characters who stand alone and isolated despite being a family. Well written and full of issues both personal and public, this might be uncomfortable to read but ultimately it is a great book club choice if you can stomach the bleakness of the tone.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke
Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reviews posted this week:

Happy Rock by Matthew Simmons
Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn

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

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
The Purchase by Linda Spalding
Love Potion Number Ten by Betsy Woodman
Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt
Royal Bridesmaids by Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley, and Loretta Chase
Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole
Thursday Next in First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The Innocents by Francesca Segal
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
The Partner Track by Helen Wan
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battles
The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Love Overdue by Pamela Morsi
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd

Sunday Salon: Backlogs and you get to vote

I have long since made peace with the fact that I will never conquer my tbr stack(s). My LibraryThing account currently numbers the unread books lurking around my house at 7939 although a good 36 of those are either read and as yet unreviewed or have a book mark in them and, in theory anyway, are in the process of being read. But all of a sudden (ok, let's be honest; it's not that suddenly) I have managed to develop an appalling backlog of books which I have read and not gotten around to reviewing. It's not because I didn't like them (although that is the case with some) or that I have nothing to say about them (I'm nothing if not overly wordy). It's just because I can't find the motivation to get started on the reviews. And yes, I understand the irony of managing to write this post but not a review but I never said I was logical. So I'm going to leave it up to all of you. What should I review next? Which of the books I've already read are you most interested in hearing my opinion about? And the nominees are:

(For those who can't see the titles, you can always cheat by looking in the sidebar under Books Read in 2013 and those without links are the ones I haven't tackled yet.)

My book travels this week have taken me to a small town Kansas library during the wheat harvest, to an Indian reservation where a 13 year old boy loses his innocence after his mother is attacked and raped, and with a NYC brownstone-owning widow who likes her privacy but who starts to get involved in her tenants' lives after a new resident moves in. Where did your reading take you this week?

Review: Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn

It must be difficult being famous. To be so surrounded by others for security and so tightly scheduled that you can't deviate from the usual and have no chance to do things on the spur of the moment could certainly become chafing, especially after years of living this way. It must be a bit like when you're young and you have to wait for mommy all the time before you could do the most intriguing things, simple things like crossing the street and other great adventures of that ilk. In William Kuhn's new novel, Mrs. Queen Takes the Train, Queen Elizabeth defies the strictures under which she's lived most of her life, leaves Buckingham Palace incognito, and takes a train north all because she wants to visit the moored Britannia, the decommissioned royal yacht where she once spent many happy hours. Her disappearance brings together very disparate members of her household in the effort to locate her and keep her safe without alerting the press and her subjects to her absence.

The Queen is having one of those days we all face, a day where she is vaguely down and can't decide what she wants to do with herself so she chooses to start with her horses, visiting the royal Mews and speaking with a stable hand, Rebecca, who notices that Her Majesty is not dressed for the weather and subsequently gives the Queen her own hoodie, emblazoned with a skull on the back. It is in this completely out of character clothing that the Queen is not recognized by some workers, giving her the idea that she could take a small trip to other spots that have given her pleasure long ago. And so she heads out without so much as a by your leave to anyone at the palace. Interspersed with the Queen's unusual peregrinations, are woven the stories of several of her staff, those who will form a tense and worried alliance as they set out to find HRH. These include Rebecca, the stable hand in the Mews whose hoodie the Queen is wearing on her walkabout and who, like some of her charges, is spooked by people and only at ease with animals; Rajiv, a clerk at a local cheese shop who has hired on occasionally for events at the Palace and who has snapped undercover photos of the Queen to later sell to the tabloids; the Queen's equerry Luke, who is a decorated young veteran still grappling with a terrible loss in the war; William, one of the butlers to the Queen, a man to whom his job is a calling and who takes immense pride in doing it well even if it means that his life outside his work is a lonely one; the Queen's dresser, Shirley, who followed her mother and grandmother into service at the palace and who harbors a real affection for the Queen, and Lady Anne, one of the Queen's ladies in waiting who accepts these opportunities at the palace in order to supplement her very meager widow's income and whose son has long been estranged from her.

The stories of each of these very different people come out in flashbacks and ruminations as the story progresses and they follow the Queen to Edinburgh, learning more about each other and delving beneath the surface impressions to the real core of the person beneath. And the Queen on her walkabout has the chance to interact with regular British people from all walks of life beyond the well-scripted engagements, openings, and events on her social calendar. She learns some uncomfortable truths about the monarchy and the vision of what it means to a modern day Britain, leading her to wonder if she can fit into the modern world, one of baffling computers and technology, or if she's as much a relic of times past as the royal train (now on the chopping block) and the Britannia (simply a tourist attraction). In addition to the question of the place of the monarchy in today's world, the varied people in the Queen's employ and those she encounters during her incognito journey highlight many other prevalent social issues as well: racism, gay rights and homophobia, poverty--genteel and otherwise, animal rights, etc. Kuhn has done a marvelous job weaving all of these together into a delightful and charming read without negating their import. There's a real depth of heart here in this lovely novel. Anglophiles will love it as much for the look into upper and working class realities as for the humanizing view of one of the world's longest reigning monarchs.

For more information about William Kuhn and the book, check out his website, find him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Karma Gone Bad by Jenny Feldon. The book is being released by Sourcebooks on November 5, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: In the tradition of Holy Cow and Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, a fascinating travel memoir of finding yourself in the India of rickshaws and rainy seasons.

Jenny was miserable, and it was all India's fault...until she realized it wasn't.

When Jenny's husband gets transferred to India for work, she looks forward to a new life filled with glamorous expat friends and exciting adventures. What she doesn't expect is endless bouts of food poisoning, buffalo in the streets, and crippling loneliness in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Ten thousand miles away from home, Jenny struggles to fight off depression and anger as her sense of self and her marriage begin to unravel. But after months of bitterness and takeout pizza, Jenny realizes what the universe has been trying to tell her all along: India doesn't need to change. She does. Equal parts frustration, absurdity, and revelation, this is the true story of a Starbucks-loving city girl finding beauty in the chaos and making her way in the land of karma.

Review: Happy Rock by Matthew Simmons

I have spent every summer of my entire life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This does not make me a native. But, after more than four decades, it does make me very familiar with the area and the people who live in it. I have known them and they have known me for decades so despite the fact that short stories are not my favorite format, I was very excited to find Matthew Simmons' collection of short stories set in my beloved UP. And having read glowing reviews of it, I was hoping to have a great book to recommend to my fellow Yooper readers. Unfortunately, this didn't happen.

Simmons has written a collection of tales about misfits and losers. His characters in most of the stories are grotesques. Some of the stories have fantastical premises and yet they still come off as merely sad and surreal. There is little or none of that which makes the Upper Peninsula and its inhabitants unique, no sense of people or place, instead the stories could be set anywhere people continue to live tiny, little, circumscribed lives in their parents' basements. Each of the main characters in his stories is alone, even when surrounded by others, and their lives are disappointing and unsatisfying to them and, frankly, to read about as well. Oftentimes there are some stories in each collection that outshine others. In this collection, they are all fairly equally strange, mildly disturbing, emotionally desolate, and reeking of pretentiously experimental MFA program writing. Now, in the interest of fairness, every other review I've read of this slight collection has been rapturous but I have to admit that I read it (while sitting in the UP no less) with my nose wrinkled as I looked about me and sighed in dismay at the difference between what I wanted to have in my hands and what I actually did have in my hands.

If you read it, may your experience be better.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn
The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands
Snapper by Brian Kimberling

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke

Reviews posted this week:

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Leaving Haven by Kathleen McCleary

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

Happy Rock by Matthews Simmons
The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
The Purchase by Linda Spalding
Love Potion Number Ten by Betsy Woodman
Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt
Royal Bridesmaids by Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley, and Loretta Chase
Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole
Thursday Next in First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The Innocents by Francesca Segal
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
The Partner Track by Helen Wan
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battles
Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn
The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands
Snapper by Brian Kimberling

Monday Mailbox

A few more goodies arrived here to join the shelves of phenomenal reads patiently waiting for me. This week's mailbox arrivals:

The Vintage Teacup Club by Vanessa Greene came from Berkley.

There's something enticing about elegant, vintage teacups, isn't there? A novel about three women sharing their flea market find of such a set promises to be enchanting.

Emerald Green by Kerstin Gier came as a belated birthday present for my daughter (they really need to ask me what release dates work best for me in terms of our family celebrations!).

My daughter loves this trilogy and she was counting down the days until the release. Squeals of joy were heard three states away when I handed this one to her.

The Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Pamela Mingle came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

How could you not want to know what happens to the prissy, uptight Mary Bennet once she has a chance to shine on her own merit? I am a sucker for anything Pride and Prejudice so I can't wait for this one.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Book Dragon's Lair 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: Life balance

It's been a bit of a crazy week, not that that's anything all that new but it highlights some of the difficulties I have in finding a balance that makes me happy and keeps everything in my life plugging along. I have three children living at home. I want to stay at least slightly active myself for health reasons. I need to find time to read and review my books. I volunteer for things I think are important and as a way to give back. And somehow, as much as all of these things are important, I still have a hard time finding a way to get everything in that I want to get in, making for some unnecessary stress.

My children are not young but they still need me, if for nothing else, then to shuttle them around to their activities. The oldest just got his license (a whole other layer of stress right there) but the younger two rely on me. And each of my children has exactly one sport and yet the only day I consistently don't have to drive multiple places for drop off and pick up is Friday evening. Add in the fact that some of the drives are an hour round trip and you can see how much of my evenings quickly slip away. As for my own activity, well, I play tennis anywhere from 1-3 times a week to try and stay at least a little fit but that season is wrapping up and I haven't run in about forever because I feel overwhelmed at the thought of it (although I walked a 5K yesterday with a friend who initially wanted to run it but then had surgery and so needed a slower, less bouncy pace, which worked for untrained me). Reading is an essential part of who I am and reviewing is a labor of love so while I always manage to do the first part of this unless I'm in a reading slump, the second doesn't always happen (and unfortunately very little reviewing has happened lately). Volunteering, well, I've taken on some big jobs this year with various organizations. I definitely think it's important to stay involved in my children's schools so I'm informed and since my children are at two different schools, I have a foot in the door at both of them, which can eat up vast chunks of time.

This week, I had driving duty (per usual) on Monday-Thursday evenings, I had a PTSO meeting at the high school, a tennis match (one was cancelled but not until after I'd arrived and we stood around debating for a while), one orthodontist appointment, two haircuts, a child subbing for another child on a day she normally doesn't work (this is not the driving child, mind you), a really fun soccer event, a 5K, and carting kids to the local amusement park to meet up with friends. This probably doesn't sound so bad but if I wrote down the hours involved, it would suddenly look appalling (I know this because I've done it). And really I'm not looking for sympathy. I think maybe I'm just looking for a nap (and a better way to preserve unscheduled time).

My reading time was more limited than usual but I still managed to take a train ride incognito with HRH the Queen of England, to uncover the truth about a fabled Spanish cheese, and watched as a Jewish woman abandoned by her husband comes into her own in the London art world. Thank heaven for reading allowing me to escape the prosaic everyday of my busy life! So where did your reading adventures take you this past week?

Review: Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battles

Have you ever wondered what goes on in a dog's brain? According to this short and completely entertaining book of "Classic Poetry by Dogs," quite a lot of erudite thoughts go through their heads. Of course, they do spend a lot of time rhapsodizing about stinky smells, flatulence, poo, and licking their hind ends, but then even the most poetic among them is still a dog. Many of the poems here are based on well known works and it was good fun to see if I could figure out which poems served as inspiration. Some of the poems are hilarious and others are sweet, some saucy and some poignant. All in all, a fun little book to dip into for dog lovers.

And then in honor of the clearly talented dogs in the book, I decided that my own dogs, being named Gatsby and Daisy, were very obviously literarily inclined as well. And so here are poems from my pack:

A lap,
A lap,
My kingdom for a lap.
And maybe a nap.
--Gatsby

Whose bowl this is I’m sure I know
So sad to see it empty though;
Bereft of kibble’s crunch and smell
Why must dinner come so slow?

Time moves slowly on hobbled feet.
But I wait and dream of meat
And hours to go before I eat,
And hours to go before I eat.

--Daisy

Thanks to the publisher for sending me the book for review and sincere apologies to William Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

Review: Leaving Haven by Kathleen McCleary

Best friends are there for each other no matter what. A best friend is the person you turn to when things are hard in your life, a pillar to support you. She's the family you've chosen rather than the family you've been born into. There's little or nothing you wouldn't do for your best friend. But there are things that can tear even best friends apart. There are still "no go" zones. In Kathleen McCleary's newest novel, Leaving Haven, a pair of best friends, closer than sisters, are irreparably broken by the unimaginable choices of one of the pair.

Opening with Georgia having just given birth to a baby boy, telling him she didn't think she was going to love him but that she does, and then abandoning him at the hospital, the novel immediately signals to the reader that there is something very, very amiss. It quickly jumps backwards in time to life before baby Haven. Georgia and Alice are best friends. They met when their 13 year old daughters were babies and they've been inseparable, if very different, friends ever since.  Georgia, a baker and cake designer, is creative, maternal, and spontaneous. Her husband John is a chef and he's impulsive and passionate. They have the one daughter, Liza, and have struggled for ten years through miscarriages and infertility trying to have another baby. Alice is calm and controlled, always meticulous, a planner. Her husband Duncan is unruffled, a workaholic, steady and dependable, and just the tiniest bit dull. They also have only the one daughter, Wren, and Alice doesn't want another child. But Alice sees how desperately Georgia does and she offers to donate her eggs to Georgia and John so that Georgia's long held dream of another baby can come true.

And miracle upon miracles, Georgia, thanks to Alice's donated egg, becomes pregnant. But with the pregnancy come complications and a betrayal so enormous they expose the cracks in Georgia and John's marriage as well as Alice and Duncan's marriage, and threaten to destroy Georgia and Alice's friendship forever. The middle section of the novel jumps around in time (sometimes a bit confusingly) and changes focus from Alice to Georgia in alternating chapters, making clear to the reader what they love about each other, the ways in which each desperately envies her dearest friend, and what drives each of them in her life. The changing character focus lays bare each woman's emotional needs, the state of her marriage, and the ways the past formed each of them and continues to influence their presents. But it is in the end, when the story's chronology returns to linear, where the emotional pitch is most focused, after an explosive discovery and Georgia walks away from her baby.

The plot twist that fuels the story is meant to be slowly revealed but it is fairly obvious right from the beginning and the catalyst that made it possible, teenaged Liza and Wren's relationship, seemed unlikely to have been handled as it was by Alice.  For such a large plot driver, there was actually very little made of the situation between the girls so their young instance of betrayal, which, in some ways, should have mirrored the larger betrayal between their mothers, didn't quite get there. Husbands Duncan and John are described mainly in relation to their wives and so never quite come completely, dimensionally to life. And the ending is just a bit too much, a bit too over the top and unbelievable. Despite these weaknesses, McCleary has imbued this sorrowful tale of a friendship's demise with all the shattered, raw emotion that such stakes call for.  She has drawn the all-encompassing waves of hurt surrounding all of the major characters and the devastating fall-out beautifully.  And no matter the ultimate outcome of the horrible, gaping rift between them, Georgia and Alice will always be together, embodied in the person of baby Haven, genetically Alice's son but nurtured or nine months by Georgia's body and whose name provides many levels of symbolism through the story. If the premise of the story is rather unlikely, still the emotional truth is spot on in this tale of friendship, betrayal, fidelity, trust, and shame.

For more information about Kathleen McCleary and the book, check out her website, find her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Chickens in the Road by Suzanne McMinn. The book is being released by Harper One on October 15, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: Suzanne McMinn, a former romance writer and founder of the popular blog chickensintheroad.com, shares the story of her search to lead a life of ordinary splendor in Chickens in the Road, her inspiring and funny memoir.

Craving a life that would connect her to the earth and her family roots, McMinn packed up her three kids, left her husband and her sterile suburban existence behind, and moved to rural West Virginia. Amid the rough landscape and beauty of this rural mountain country, she pursues a natural lifestyle filled with chickens, goats, sheep—and no pizza delivery.

With her new life comes an unexpected new love—"52," a man as beguiling and enigmatic as his nickname—a turbulent romance that reminds her that peace and fulfillment can be found in the wake of heartbreak. Coping with formidable challenges, including raising a trio of teenagers, milking stubborn cows, being snowed in with no heat, and making her own butter, McMinn realizes that she’s living a forty-something’s coming-of-age story.

As she dares to become self-reliant and embrace her independence, she reminds us that life is a bold adventure—if we’re willing to live it.

Chickens in the Road includes more than 20 recipes, craft projects, and McMinn’s photography, and features a special two-color design.

Review: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is the first book I've read by Adichie despite the fact that I have her others on my shelves. I have heard such raves about her work that it was almost as if I was afraid to read anything she wrote in case the actual works fell short. And this one, focused as it is on so many controversial issues present in our society today, was probably the one that appealed to me the least. And yet it turned out to be such a beautiful, thoughtful, and powerful novel that I am glad that I didn't just add it to my shelf and figure I'd get to it some future day like so many others.

Centered mainly on Ifemelu, a smart and attractive Nigerian woman, this is a story of incredible depth which addresses many hot-button, polemical topics. It is a novel about race and culture, immigration, lack of opportunity, both in America and in Nigeria, exoticism and otherness, women's place and value in the world, relationship, love, and politics to name just a few. It does not shy away from presenting the reality of both the marginalized and the successful; it skewers all sides, conservatives and liberals alike, for their beliefs and their unthinking acceptance of their side's rhetoric. It changes the conversation and brings a fascinating outside perspective to many long standing arguments.

Ifemelu is raised in Nigeria. Her family is well off and she has many opportunities open to her. She meets Obinze while in high school and the two of them seem to be soul mates. When political unrest causes upheaval at the universities, Ifemelu decides that she will finish her schooling in America, where her beloved aunt has gone. Obinze plans to follow her there but he is frustrated in his efforts and instead ends up in London, illegal and struggling. Ifemelu, meanwhile, goes to America and is shocked at the reality she finds. She struggles to adjust to this new culture with its unwritten and unacknowledged rules and to the laws that restrict her ability, as a foreign student, to support herself while she attends school. She sees firsthand inequalities and insurmountable stumbling blocks every way she turns. Even when she finds work as a nanny, she witnesses casual racism and the assumption that because she is African rather than African-American that she is exotic and intriguing and somehow more. She draws attention to the differences in the ways that African blacks and African-Americans are treated and the way that even well meaning liberals just don't "get it." As she navigates life in America, having relegated Obinze to her past, dating American men, starting a wildly successful blog called Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black, getting her green card, and having the luxury of choosing the extent to which she wants to integrate into American society and how much she wants to retain her own cultural identity, she never quite lets go of hope for Nigeria. And eventually she chooses to make her way back there, to a much changed country, and one she now views with very different eyes than she once did.

Obinze's story of his time in London, always yearning for Ifemelu and America, is told in chapters interspersed with the many chapters about Ifem's life. His is a terrible, distressing story, even moreso than her early years in America. Where Ifemelu overcame much of what she faced, happy-go-lucky, popular Obinze does not and he is ultimately deported back to Nigeria. In the end he thrives in his own country where he could not succeed elsewhere. And as his country changes, he adapts with it, fulfilling and even surpassing his early promise. But he still feels as if he is treading water, not knowing what is missing from his outwardly perfect life. It is, of course, the newly returned to Nigeria Ifemelu, opinionated and determined as ever.

Adichie has written an accessible novel that encourages readers to examine their own prejudices and beliefs but she has done so in a way to mitigate the discomfort of doing so enough that people won't automatically shut down in denial. She has not whitewashed life in America for immigrants, for people of color, or for the poor. But she has also acknowledged the imperfection of other places as well. Nigeria harbors prejudices, London harbors prejudices, America harbors prejudices; there is no prejudice free place here, instead there is almost an inherency of prejudice. Her writing is straightforward even if the solutions to the social ills she addresses are not. The chapters are non-chronological but not difficult to follow. Occasionally the non-linearity of the novel leads to some repetition and Ifemelu's blog posts, some of which are included in the narrative, often exactly mirror the plot. They do draw added attention to the issues that Ifemelu, and by extension Adichie, is highlighting but astute readers (and the assumption is that readers of literary fiction such as this are in fact astute readers) don't need the lack of subtlety in order to understand the point. But that's a minor quibble about a work that is masterfully done over all. Anyone who isn't afraid to confront troubling questions and bone deep assumptions will find much to consider here and will then need others to read it too so they can have the conversations it will inspire.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
The Fountain of St. James Court or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman by Sena Jeter Naslund
The Partner Track by Helen Wan
Leaving Haven by Kathleen McCleary
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battles

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke
The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti

Reviews posted this week:

An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao
The Fountain of St. James Court or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman by Sena Jeter Naslund

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

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Happy Rock by Matthews Simmons
The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
The Purchase by Linda Spalding
Love Potion Number Ten by Betsy Woodman
Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt
Royal Bridesmaids by Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley, and Loretta Chase
Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole
Thursday Next in First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Topsy by Michael Daly
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
The Group by Mary McCarthy
The Innocents by Francesca Segal
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe
The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville
Let Him Go by Larry Watson
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
Boleto by Alyson Hagy
House of Miracles by Ulrica Hume
Paperboy by Tony Macaulay
Silver by Andrew Motion
Faking It by Cora Carmack
The Partner Track by Helen Wan
Leaving Haven by Kathleen McCleary
The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule
Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battles

Monday Mailbox

After nothing last week, my mailbox had a handful of treasures again this week. This week's mailbox arrivals:

Throw the Damn Ball by R.D. Rosen, Harry Prichett, and Rob Battle came from Plume.

Short poems written by dogs, this looks hilarious.

Love and Other Scandals by Caroline Linden came from my own little self (sometimes it's good to be generous to yourself).

The main character reads a book about sinning and decides to do some of her own in this historical romance. Sounds delicious, doesn't it?

Under the Moon by Gabriele Wills came from my own little self.

The third in Wills' Muskoka trilogy, I ordered this one so I can revisit the characters and find out how their story finally ends.

Special Edition Harry Potter Paperback Box Set by J. K. Rowling came from my own little self.

Just because I love the new covers to the Harry Potter novels.

Mr. Putter and Tabby Dance the Dance by Cynthia Rylant came from my own little self.

If you haven't yet fallen in love with Mr. Putter and Tabby, like my daughter and I have, you should.

Fantasy Life by Matthew Berry came from my own little self.

My husband and oldest son play fantasy football together for some special father/son yelling bonding. This one is a Christmas gift to one or the other of them (I'll decide later based on their season long behavior).

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Book Dragon's Lair 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.