Review: Fork It Over by Alan Richman

This is a collection of columns previously written by Richman for GQ and other sources about his life as a professional eater and restaurant reviewer. The columns have been arranged into a menu of sorts: amuse-bouche, appetizers, palate cleanser, entrees, palate cleanser, sides, cheese, palate cleanser, wine, and gratuity. Richman is well written and funny and the columns pleased this readers palate. Of course, I do generally enjoy the literary equivalent of what we here sometimes call "food porn" but I think this is of interest to most people. It isn't too specialized or restaurant-centric so that only those who have eaten at the place in question will enjoy the associations Richman makes as he travels from the nostalgia of his mother's kitchen to the palate stirring pleasures of a gourmet meal. One of my favorite comedic bits in the book comes from one of the palate cleansers, Ten Commandments For Diners and headed "5. Pass on the Omelette Station." It reads: "You're on vacation, ready to splurge. That means the hotel's $39.95 Sunday buffet brunch. There's salmon, sushi, crab claws, shrimp, and eggs Benedict. You head straight for the omelette station, where a guy in a Hawaiian shirt who has never been to cooking school is making fluffy four-egg omelets with scallions, peppers, Bac'Os, and a grated cheese product. Nice going. You've just filled up on an egg dish that costs $3.99 at Denny's." After you stop giggling, you recognize that the man really is correct. (And I felt inordinately glad I hate eggs so I knew without doubt I've never fallen into that brunch pitfall.) Good fun, this was well worth the read.

Review: Jim the Boy by Tony Earley

Jim is a young boy, heading into his teenaged years, who lives with his mother and three uncles in a rural North Carolina town during the Great Depression. It is a gentle coming of age novel in a more innocent time. There are no major cataclysmic events driving the plot. It is just (as if it could be "just" anything) a lovely, almost nostalgic look at a family and a place. My bookclub chose this book on one member's recommendation and because it is set not far from where we all live and we were split on how we felt about it. I would liken it to the creek meandering through my backyard. Small and seemingly insignificant, it brings wonderful wildlife to our backdoor and offers a quiet, peaceful and contemplative place to escape the street out front. This book felt the same way to me. One of the reviews on the back cover compares it to a folk ballad and that strikes me as appropriate too. This very quietness or ballad like feel was problematic for some of the readers in our group. But I appreciated the poignancy that is rare nowadays and I look forward to the newly released sequel that will let me slip back into Jim's life and coming adulthood.

Review: The Lost Duke of Wyndham by Julia Quinn

When highwayman Jack Audley stops a coach to rob the occupants, he has little idea of how his life and that of everyone connected to the people in the carriage is going to change because he is robbing the Dowager Duchess of Wyndham and her companion, the impoverished gentlewoman, Grace Eversleigh. He is fascinated by Grace after the robbery and unreasonably bothered by the fact that the Dowager thinks he is the child of her much beloved middle son. He vows to leave the area without pursuing any of the things that are troubling him but he hasn't reckoned on the strength of will to be found in his presumptive grandmother, who has him kidnapped and brought to her. There he finds the intriguing and long-suffering Grace as well as the current Duke of Wyndham, who will lose his title if Jack's birth is proved to be legitimate. As the mystery of whether or not he is the actual Duke unfolds, Jack and Grace fall in love. A smaller subplot between Thomas, the current Duke of Wyndham, who stands to lose everything if Jack is proven legitimate, and Amelia, the woman he's been bethrothed to since childhood is left unresolved and is the focus of the second Wyndham book.

I generally like Julia Quinn's regency set romances and this was no exception. They are light and fun and good escapism. The obstacles her heros and heroines have to overcome to be together don't cross the line into the realm of the impossible and like Jack and Grace, in this book, they have good chemistry together. I do wish that the ubiquitous "immediate attraction" thing would fall by the wayside because I am skeptical of a touch from a stranger being burned into your consciousness but that's a fairly minor quibble here and one that, in any case, seems to be standard for the genre regardless of my personal preferences. Overall, exactly the read I wanted and was expecting here.

Review: Losing My Religion by William Lobdell

This is an honest, thoughtful, and fascinating memoir about Lobdell's struggles with religion. The book opens with an accounting of the ways in which his life is going wrong and a friend's quiet assurance that Lobdell needs to walk with God to find the peace he so desires. Taking this to heart, Lobdell starts going to church, eventually becoming born-again. Eager to share his newly minted faith, as he moves from the church that drew him back into the fold, to a Protestant church, and ultimately into RCIA classes to become a Catholic, journalist Lobdell decides that God has called him to write about religion so he pitches the idea to his bosses. Initially he doesn't get the job but eventually, his dream comes true and he starts writing about faith, and not just his Christian faith, in a way that few other journalists have attempted. But all is not well with Lobdell's faith as he starts uncovering the nasty side of organized religion. He was on the front lines as the pedophile priest scandal rocked the Catholic church and he examined in depth a rather seedy (but quite wealthy) televangelist who fleeces his congregation among other stories. And as Lobdell plunges farther into the stories, he starts to lose his belief in God. His journey into and out of faith took him years and I suspect that it isn't quite finished, as Lobdell himself says he's not entirely comfortable with his unbelief but which path the next leg of his journey will take remains to be seen. His writing on faith and its lack is respectful and thoughtful. And he has obviously spent much time reaching the conclusions he has but he never denigrates those around him who have managed to hold onto their faith in the face of what he says is overwhelming evidence that it is unfounded. His writing is direct and honest and his journey is definitely painful. But I for one am glad he allowed us to walk with him, even if I'm not certain I come to the same conclusions he does.

Review: How to Prepare for Your High-School Reunion and Other Midlife Musings by Susan Allen Toth

As I was (still) busily cataloguing my books on LibraryThing, I came across this one and pulled it out to dive into immediately. I can't really even say why. Perhaps it was the title combined with the knowledge that my 20th high school reunion is rapidly approaching. Add in that Toth lives almost in the shadow of my high school, in a city I've never been back to since I graduated, and that made it seem sort of ordained that I would stumble across it now. It is not all about high school reunions but instead is a collection of essays just musing about life in general. Some of the essays are a bit dated; ironically, many of the essays, written in Toth's middle-age, were indeed written when I was a high-schooler and therefore just a hop, skip, and jump away from her. But most of them are still pertinent, thoughtful writings on the minutia of everyday living. The essays are almost entirely domestically set or concerned--including one that takes on the pre-conceived view that domestic writing is worthless--so they come off as being about small subjects but for those of use who live those small subjects, they are satisfying indeed.

Review: Houston, We Have a Problema by Gwendolyn Zepeda

This fluffy bit of chick lit had a cute premise for a story: the main character has trouble making decisions in her life so she consults a fortune teller whenever she is at a crossroads. At least this is what the jacket copy promised. Unfortunately, since this is what interested me most about the book, this plot contrivance actually appeared fairly infrequently and without adding a single thing to the story. I think it actually detracted, as if the author suddenly realized she hadn't had Jessica visit the supposedly terribly important psychic so she dropped a scene in gratuitously. Other than this disappointment, the novel wasn't all bad. It was a pretty standard fluff book with a slight surprise ending but chick lit readers won't be surprised when I say that Jessica, our main character, learns a lot about herself and her prejudices, leading her to a happier, more fulfilled life both professionally and personally. A nice enough book to while away an afternoon with, it was ultimately merely the dreaded "okay."

Sunday Salon: Review: Lucky Girl by Mei-Ling Hopgood

Lucky Girl is a a memoir by Mei-Ling Hopgood, a Tawain born girl child who was given up to be adopted by an American couple living just outside of Detroit. This might not seem like such an unusual story but given that Hopgood was adopted in 1974, it is a story from the infancy of international adoptions. Not only was Hopgood among the first children adopted from outside the country, but her circumstances were incredibly unusual as well. As an adult, she was given the unique experience of not only reconnecting with her birth family, but being embraced as the lucky daughter adopted out and embraced again with open arms. The memoir itself talks of Hopgood's growing up as the oldest child (her parents later adopted two younger brothers from Korea as well) in the blue-collar Detroit suburb of Dearborn. She mentions but doesn't focus much on the fact that she and her parents were so obviously of different races and perhaps she didn't experience much racism at all, although she speaks of her desire to distance herself from anything Asian. As she scrolls through her memories of childhood and adolescence, she also writes of her almost unintentional discovery of the family she left behind, a family who didn't quite match her imaginings. Over time, and with the blessing of her parents, she visits and comes to know her birth family: the sisters who were not given away, the brother adopted in when no boy was born and lived, and the other sister who was given away as well. Hopgood was very blessed in the parents who adopted her, especially when she was coming to terms with being the "discarded" child trying to understand how her birth family could possibly make that decision. She must wrestle with not only trying to understand a decision that was decades old, but also with the understanding of who these biological family members were and are now. There has certainly been enough in her life that could make her uncomfortable in her own skin, but with the loving grounding of her atill somewhat awkwardly integrated family, it would seem, in the end that Hopgood has come to forgiveness and a peace about the lucky path her life traveled.

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir and the look at what an adopted child must feel when faced with the large and boisterous family Hopgood found. Having lived outside of Detroit myself, I was familiar with the landscape of her childhood and found the common ground there to give me just that extra bit of joy at the recognition of schools and places. I'm certain that Hopgood censored some of her feelings a bit out of courtesy towards family members but overall this was an interesting look into a very complicated situation that is probably going to become more common as today's international adoptees grow older. Recommended. My thanks to the lovely folks at Algonquin Books for the chance to read the Advanced Reader's Copy.

Review: The Viscount's Bride by Ann Elizabeth Cree

A Regency-set historical romance, this book is fairly substantially different than the back cover copy describes. I only mention this because I think other readers, like me, expect books to have more than a passing resemblance to their jacket copy and this one comes perilously close to nto doing so. It is also a sequel, although that is not noted on the book and a lack of knowledge of the previous story did leave me at a bit of a disadvantage, although as is the case with most romances written today, it stood alone well enough aside from a few references to backstory. This is the story of Chloe, who is visiting her late brother's wife and her new husband at teh same time Brandt, Lord Salcombe, her chief nemesis. She spends much of her time during the visit either sparring a little peevishly with Brandt or trying to determine if the local lord, who is a safe and friendly sort, is the man for her. When Chloe's guardian writes to tell her of his plans to marry her off to a disgusting, old reprobate, Chloe decides that the time has come to force Sir Preston's hand and she manages to find herself in a compromising situation with him, not that any sparks fly or that anything untoward happens. At this point a whole comedy of errors ensues, leading to Chloe's engagement not to Sir Preston but to Brandt, Lord Salcombe, who might turn out to be the perfect man for her in the end. The story is a light and fluffy bit of fleeting entertainment that didn't turn out to be terribly memorable as I had to flip back through the book in order to write this review. I didn't love the immature heroine who went from self-involved to consciously caring of others' feelings in the space of a paragraph and I wondered at the chemistry between the main characters. Not the best romance I've read but not the worst either.

Sunday Salon: Review: The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble

I like Margaret Drabble's work. I know next to nothing about Korean history. And I have a ridiculous fascination with royalty. So Drabble's The Red Queen easily caught my interest with only the barest minimum of jacket copy. Taking a fairly unknown, at least in the West, account written by a Crown Princess in eighteenth century Korea and weaving it into a novel, Drabble has written a completely engrossing story in three sections. The first section, narrated by the Crown Princess' ghost, tells the outline of her life. She married the Crown Prince as a child, long before his later mental illness became not only evident but increasingly dangerous and uncontrollable. She tells of her everyday life, sequestered in the palace, surrounded by political enemies and a few friends. Her account of a priviledged woman's life would be interesting enough without her marriage to the Crown Prince but the manueverings that his illness caused the court and his father the King to emply were also terribly interesting. The second section of the book, once the Western reader is conversant in the Crown Princess' life, focuses on Barbara Halliwell, an English academic travelling to South Korea for a conference, and the chosen "emissary" for the Crown Princess' story. Babs reads the princess' diary on her way to the conference and her interest is so piqued that she spends much of her down time (and a bit of the conference time as well) exploring the places connected to the princess. She is accompanied by a Korean doctor she meets and the pre-eminent speaker from her conference, with whom she embarks on a brief affair. The third section shows Babs after the conference is over and all the momentous events of it are long concluded and it details how the Crown Princess' story will be passed along into the future because it is a story that deserves to be told. There is a neat convention that strikes me as particularly Drabble-esque in this last part of the book but you'll have to read it yourself to see what it is. As always in Drabble's novels, the writing is precise and tight and very well done. The links between the three sections are strong and pull the reader along happily. I am thoroughly glad I took the time to read this one last month and recommend it to others who like depth and thoughtful reading in their lives.

Review: Cordero's Forced Bride by Kate Walker

Last review today, I promise!

I have to say it's been a long time since I read a series romance book but for some reason, I felt compelled to pick one up at the store and read it. I should have remembered why it had been so long. The only good thing I can say about this book is that it didn't suck up too much of my valuable reading time since it was so short and such a quick read. The premise is that Alexa's sister leaves her groom (and her father's business partner), Santos Cordero, at the altar. This is a terrible thing since it turns out that Alexa's father has embezzled money from his future son-in-law and the wedding present was for Cordero not to press charges, nevermind that the bride herself was a wedding present of sorts to Cordero (ie not a love match). Alexa, of course, doesn't know these circumstance and is horrified by Cordero's seeming lack of devastation by his unceremonious jilting. He, on the other hand, thinks she knows and vows she will be the one to pay her father's debts, in his bed. The two tumble into bed on after the mock reception. Hello, your sister was supposed to marry this man only a few short hours ago and you are so overcome with passion that you can't keep away? Obviously this plot twist bothered me but as ridiculous as the instantaneous lust storyline was, the writing in this was appalling. I've already posted my favorite line but rest assured there are other equally laughable bits in here. I also wonder at the lack of an editor. When Alexa flees Cordero and he ultimately follows her, he ends up leaving her home in a raging storm, bad enough to bring down a massive tree that crushes his car. And yet after the two of them traipse off in this fury of nature to prove to Alexa that he wasn't lying about not being able to leave, they are overcome by passion so dire that they must again immediately jump into the sack so Cordero carries her into her room, which is illuminated by the light of the moon. A storm so fierce trees are toppled has a moon shining brightly through it? Really? England's storms (and specifically Yorkshire) must be far different than those I've seen here in the US. Where, oh where, was Walker's editor and why was this not somehow altered or completely struck from the manuscript? ::sigh:: Obviously I won't be heading back into series romance again any time soon since this has cured me of the desire for quick, easy happy endings in the near future (not that I'll eschew all romance but the short serials will not darken my door again too soon).

Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

What a cool concept for a book: nesting stories like Russian babushka dolls. I read a later book of Mitchell's and thoroughly enjoyed it but was still leary of this one given that I already knew that Mitchell pushed the time period of at least one (turns out it was two) of his stories into the realm of the future and I am not often happy to follow where speculative fiction leads. But this was a marvelous book that managed to keep me engaged even through the sections about which I initially worried. Mitchell takes us through the centuries and around the world in his amazingly inter-linked story novel. We start in the 1850's in the tropics reading the diary of an upstanding American notary traveling home from an assignment. The diary ends abruptly mid-sentence as we jump to letters written to a friend by a penniless English composer in the Netherlands. We leave our composer mid-story to detail a young female detective in California looking into the suspicious deaths of several people in connection with a power plant funding corporate greed and carelessness. Our detective in mortal peril, we move onto a disheartening modern day England where a small publisher fleeing the thug brothers of his most famous author is committed to an assisted living home by his brother. Onward to a Korea set in the future where bio-engineering and corporate dissimulation have reached new terrifying highs. And thence to an island in the Pacific where the remnants of civilization, starting over after an unnamed catastrophic event has almost completely decimated the human race, we come to the apex of the story. Each story ties into the previous story in inventive ways and the arc of the story, especially as it gains momentum, running back through the earlier stories and telling the tales originally left untold, is masterful. This was well worth the time I spent and once I understood and accepted the form, it moved along swimmingly.

Review: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani

I ran across this book on one of my book group lists on the internet a couple of years ago but like so many books, I bought it and promptly stashed it into the masses to be read at some vague and later date. It can be quite hard to be rescued from this indignity as I forget about these books but this one is apparently a classic of Italian literature and appears on the list of books that could be read for the 1% Well Read Challenge so I headed to my stacks and pulled it out. The story, told from the perspective of a man looking back in time, tells of the Finzi-Contini family, a rich and somewhat reclusive Jewish family in Italy in the years leading up to World War II. The narrator is a young man, a Jew, who comes to be included in the inner sanctum of the Finzi-Continis, first befriending Alberto and Micol Finzi-Contini and then falling in love with the beautiful Micol. The story is an intricate one that balances the growing menace throughout Europe with the insular nature of the Finzi-Contini estate. The novel starts when the narrator is traveling with friends to Etruscan tombs. Their young daughter innocently sends him on a journey through memory to the time that he knew Alberto and Micol and their intriguing, eccentric family. This is not a lighthearted book, even though it details the narrator's growing love for Micol. The future looms too darkly over the Ferrarese Jews, including the Finzi-Contini family for all their seeming unconcern for Hitler and the suddenly enforced racial laws. There is a definite feeling of melancholy and dirge about the book and whether this is original or a function of the translation, it suits the storyline quite well. I won't say this is an easy book; it would be difficult if for no other reason than that we as readers know what inescapable fate is in store for these people but it is also a slow and ponderous book to read. There is much to appreciate but it has to be done slowly and with great deliberation.

Review: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

I've been sitting and stewing about this review for several weeks now because I have had a hard time deciding how to review a book that has so many plot twists that it resembles nothign so much as a DNA double helix. Obviously plot summary of any length would ruin the reading experience for the three people in the world yet to read this fascinating story of two Victorian era women who prove that appearances and even perceptions can be completely deceiving. I'm sure some other reviewer before me has labelled this a tour de force and it really is so I'll just echo their rather trite sentiment. I was happily accepting of the story that our first narrator, Sue, an abandonned child whose mother was hanged for thieving and who was subsequently raised and protected from the more sordid aspects of her situation by a loose gang of petty criminals, tells us. But this is a Rashomon of novels and nothing is as it seems, with each narrator building on previous accounts, and in some cases completely and totally turning what the reader knows to be true on its head. This could have been disconcerting except that Waters handles it well and never makes the reader think that she has thrown a twist in out of the blue. We are as surprised as some of the characters as they find out the truth of their lives and who they are, different in so many ways from their original perceptions of themselves. I wouldn't call this a thriller but it is definitely suspenseful, if only because you can't wait to see what's around the next bend or laying in wait for you on the next page. This will keep you up at night, racing to finish and find out all of it, even if you are generally an early to bed person.

Sunday Salon: Review: Firmin by Sam Savage

Although I was always turned off by animal stories (even those like Animal Farm or Watership Down that were allegories for our own or future society) as a younger reader, I couldn't resist asking for a review copy of a book that features a rat born in a bookstore. Basically, mention books in your jacket or marketing copy and you can reel me in hook, line and sinker. The good news is that this book did not disappoint. Firmin is born into a nest of shredded pages torn from Joyce's Ulysses. This, perhaps, makes it understandable that it is a bit of a struggle to get into the book initially. But persevere and the omnivorous reader is rewarded. Firmin tells of his life in books, both eating them and once he learns, in reading them. I definitely chuckled when our intrepid rat tastes toilet paper for the first time and discovers it to taste similarly to Emily Post's etiquette tomes. But Firmin is the book rat in all of us. His imagination, nutured by his reading, is writ large and oftentimes gets him into trouble. He sees the coming destruction of his neighborhood but prefers to stay oblivious, with his nose in a book. He is, in short, a furry scholar who can only shut out the real world for so long. And don't for one minute think he's limited to the highbrow. Oh no. He is also a connisseur of girlie movies, featuring women he calls his "Lovelies," shown at the local movie theater, which is also a treasure trove of food for a rat. Firmin is a funny and loveable character and the book is a small gem for eclectic readers.

On a non-content related point, I will say that the chunk missing from the cover and pages of the book (shaped to look as if Firmin was a giant rat and had taken a chomp of the book), was highly annoying. It was cute in the store (yes, this was one of those Advanced Reading Copies I never received because of my new address snafu and so bought myself to fulfill the review obligation), but it was hideous in practice. The chunk was exactly where I try to hold a book and made holding this one uncomfortable. So any publishers out there thinking of doing something like this, it's nice to look at novelties of this sort but not a good idea in practice, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Sunday Salon: Review: I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers edited by Faith Conlon and Gail Hudson

I found this one sitting in my stacks and added it to one of my challenge lists with the thinking that I have a child racing towards the teen years so I should start reading along and preparing myself. After reading this book, I can see a good reason to follow the adage "Ignorance is bliss." Yowza! I am not ready for some of the challenges in this book. Will I be ready in a year? Probably not. But I don't think I get to stop the train now. My own personal state of panic aside, this was an interesting read. Very few of the writers focused on the really big issues you see in the news so frequently: drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy, etc. Instead, they mostly confined themselves to the everyday irrationality of teenagers. They detailed frustrations, challenges, hormonal swings, and heartbreaks but the essays in here gave equal time to the overwhelming love the writers all felt (feel) for their teens, who amidst strife and chaos, are untying the apron strings and emerging from the chrysalis of childhood. I suspect that it's still hard to see exactly who the teens will be as adults, but these famous writer parents seem, for the most part, to be enjoying watching the transformation. The essays do run the gamit from humorous takes on the moodiness we all expect of teens to the pain of watching as your two oldest run away again. In the first essay, W. Bruce Cameron writes, "Congratulations! You are now the proud new owner of a teenage daughter. Please read this manual carefully, as it describes the maintenance of your new daughter and answers important questions about your warranty (which does NOT include the right to return the product to the factory for a full refund)." This essay stands in sharp contrast to Debra Gwartney's heartbreaking essay about her struggles with her daughters. Her essay details her attempt to change the situation after her daughters run away the first time but towards the end, she writes, "In the end, they had to go and keep going until they decided to return. I must have known that on some level, hard as it was to accept. When they left the second time, I didn't try to stop them."

Obviously, experiences with teenagers are as varied as the teenagers themselves and this book doesn't make any claims to be a parenting manual or even to dispense advice (except in the most flip and humorous of ways). It isn't designed to scare the pants off of parents (although some essays did have that effect on me) nor is it designed to fool them into a sense of complacency about the trials of living with teens (no chance of that!). It is merely an entertainment, filled with well-written and interesting essays about a time of life that no parent escapes. And on that level, it fulfills its purpose. As in most collections, there were essays I enjoyed far more than others. Some were better written than others. And as is often the case with specialized collections such as this, I'm not convinced of its universal appeal but for parents who can stomach reading about the teen years, this is a pretty decent choice. For my own part, after reading this, I have decided that "Dee Nile ain't just a river in Egypt, baby." If I ignore it hard enough, maybe I won't even notice the teen years as we plow through them here, right?!

Sunday Salon: Review: Amy's Answering Machine by Amy Borkowsky

Borkowsky is a comedian. Or at least she was when this book was written in 2001 (and the reason I give you the date is to orient you to the dominant technology of the time). Apparently one of the things she does/did in her act was to play tapes of her answering machine messages from her mother and then riff off of the over-protective messages. I have to hope that she is funnier doing stand-up than she is when writing this stuff down. Because this isn't funny. It's just dull. There is a good chance that her intonations and mannerisms made this a successful stage bit but it clearly loses in the translation to the page. Thank heavens this was short because had it been any longer than it was, I would have been sound asleep, head pressed to print, and drooling into the spine. I'm also hoping that the advent and proliferation of voice mail and the lack of taped evidence of her mother's over the top concerns means that we won't ever be subjected to another book of this stuff. Obviously not the way I wanted to start off my reading year and I recommend you don't bother with this either.