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.

Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott. The book is being released by Riverhead Hardcover on March 20, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: In Some Assembly Required, Anne Lamott enters a new and unexpected chapter of her own life: grandmotherhood.

Stunned to learn that her son, Sam, is about to become a father at nineteen, Lamott begins a journal about the first year of her grandson Jax's life.

In careful and often hilarious detail, Lamott and Sam-about whom she first wrote so movingly in Operating Instructions-struggle to balance their changing roles with the demands of college and work, as they both forge new relationships with Jax's mother, who has her own ideas about how to raise a child. Lamott writes about the complex feelings that Jax fosters in her, recalling her own experiences with Sam when she was a single mother. Over the course of the year, the rhythms of life, death, family, and friends unfold in surprising and joyful ways.

By turns poignant and funny, honest and touching, Some Assembly Required is the true story of how the birth of a baby changes a family-as this book will change everyone who reads it.

Review: The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

I've read a few books written entirely in dictionary entry format and thoroughly enjoyed them so was curious to read this one about love and relationship. Just what words can explain love, make it knowable to people beyond the two involved together? Written alphabetically, the story is not presented in a linear fashion and the main characters are not named. The assumption is that the lovers are a man and woman (a pregnancy is mentioned once although whether facetiously or not is debatable). There are other small clues scattered throughout the text about the realities of the relationship as it develops, endures, stumbles, and ultimately ends. Some of the words Levithan uses to describe the couple and their life together are mundane while others are emotional. And the definitions illustrating each word can be surprising, truthful, and clever.

The writing here is well done and smart but there's a distance in the narrative that makes it hard to connect viscerally with the tale being told, to share in the giddiness of new love or to share in the outrage of betrayed love or to experience any of the mountains or valleys between these two. The focus is entirely on the two unnamed characters together, not on history and so a complete picture of either of them never quite gells. And without a completeness in character portrayals, there can't be a completeness about their relationship either. A slight, quick read, this is very much a private rumination, thoughtful, and reflective but there's something missing, some part of the heart that would have elevated it from good to great.

Review: Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

When my bookclub chose to read Ender's Game for this month, it was the culmination of at least 3 1/2 years of lobbying by one member with back-up by a couple of us who had also read it before. Of course, once we had finally pushed it through as our sci-fi choice, I decided that I wans't going to re-read it even though I had thoroughly enjoyed it the first time around. Instead, I took the opportunity to read Ender's Shadow, the parallel novel to Ender's Game that I had long wanted to get around to reading.

Ender's Shadow tells the same story that Ender's Game tells instead telling the tale from Bean's perspective. Starting when Bean is a small boy starving in the streets of Amsterdam, the novel delves into Bean's background to explain what created the uber-intelligent child who is slated to be Ender's back-up, his lieutenant, in the final battle to save Earth from the Buggers. Bean's early life is one of deprivation and the fight for survival and the only thing that keeps Bean alive is his almost supernatural intelligence. He spends time observing and deducing and then impliments a plan designed to protect himself even though he is years younger than the rest of the street children. Discovered by a nun who is searching for children who might be fit for Battle School, Bean presents a challenge to her and as he is pushed forward to the school and to his inevitable meeting with Ender Wiggin, the good Sister goes on a quest to find Bean's origins. Interspersed with Bean's story are meetings amongst the adults in charge, the Sister, the Commander, teachers at Battle School, as they discuss this preternaturally smart child and his position in the upcoming battle and their understanding--or their lack thereof--of how his brain works.

Although it is not strictly necessary to have read Ender's Game to appreciate Ender's Shadow, having read the first in the series does make the parallel novel a richer read. And already knowing the story and the resolution does not detract from the enjoyment here either. Bean's perspective is wholly new, more clinical than Ender's, and ultimately more informed. He is perhaps not as easy a character to know and less sympathetic but for all that, the story is just as engaging the second time around. Card has managed to tell the same tale twice but still keep readers fascinated, not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. The writing is fairly simple and straightforward and the character and curiousity of Bean really drives the story forward, especially for those who already know the basic ins and outs of the plot. A great addition to the wonderful read that was Ender's Game.

Review: Fitzwilliam Darcy Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

I imagine that Jane Austen would be astounded at not only the continued popularity of her own Pride and Prejudice but also at the plethora of modern retellings of her perennially popular novel. Rigaud enters that fray here with her updated version positing Darcy as the lead guitarist of a wildly successful rock band called Slurry, with band mates Charles Bingley and Richard Fitzwilliam, and Elizabeth Bennet as the lead guitarist of the up and coming rock band Long Bourne Suffering chosen to tour with Slurry. Of course, sweet Jane Bennet and Charlotte Lucas are Elizabeth's bandmates.

The tale opens with a television interview giving the history of Slurry and their current troubles finding and keeping an opening act. After the interview, the story itself starts as Darcy, Charles, and Richard meet with manager Caroline Bingley to preview a new band to whom they plan to offer the opening act on the North American portion of their tour. That band is Long Bourne Suffering and it seems poised on the verge of making it big. Darcy does worry that the women of the band, Lizzy, Jane, and Charlotte, will do anything and everything in their power to get and keep the fame they'll be exposed to on Slurry's tour but he is realistic enough to know that they need an opening band and they need it now. So while he warns Charles away from the women, which Lizzy overhears, he swallows his misgivings and the two bands connect. As they practice and tour together, Jane and Charles fall for each other, Charlotte and Richard can't keep their hands off of each other, and Darcy and Lizzy irritate each other even as the sparks fly between them.

Despite the similarities though, this is no Pride and Prejudice. This is definitely an updating with sex, drugs, and rock and roll running rampant through the novel. I'm not really a Pride and Pejudice purist so this edgier take wouldn't have fazed me in the slightest if I hadn't found so many other problems with it. The framing technique (the story both opens and closes with televised interviews functioning as both prologue and epilogue) did nothing to draw the reader into the story. In fact, it made me want to put the book down again immediately. And while it provides the reader with enough history to jump into the story, there was a real deus ex machina feel to it.

Rigaud re-imagines several of the characters who gave real depth to the original. There is an almost complete absence of Lady Catherine, Caroline Bingley is nice, Anne de Bourgh is snotty, Charlotte Lucas isn't the practical girl who settles, and so on. Given her willingness to change the characters to suit her updated vision, Rigaud hews very closely to the plot points of the original, which turns out to be an awkward stretch. These misunderstandings and situations should not have been considered sacrosanct to the detriment of the current book and unfortunately this is the case.

The characters, including those whose basic characters she didn't change, came off as bland rather than dimensional. Their stilted dialogue (they only use contractions on rare occasions, which frankly draws even more attention to the general lack of them as one would expect in normal dialogue) is hard to read and there is a fair amount of dialogue in this tale. Most of the latter half of the book seems to be one sex scene after another (and it's never good when graphic sex scenes get repetitive and boring) rather than anything that pushes the plot forward, causing the narrative tension to flatline entirely. I was quite disappointed with the novel, even moreso since it came highly recommended and it had such potential. It's a bad sign when I am happy enough to return a copy to the friend to whom it belongs and I reminded her more than once last night to take it home. Not one of the better re-imaginings I've read.

Review: Spin by Catherine McKenzie

Reading about alcoholism and addiction can be depressing. It destroys people and lives. And for some reason, we as a society have a prurient interest in people, specifically celebrities, who cannot fight their personal demons without a bottle, a pill, a pipe, or a needle to help them. In Spin, McKenzie has tapped into both the heavy, serious topic of addiction and society's unhealthy obsession with celebrity but she's managed to do so in a lighter fashion that makes for a fun and entertaining read.

Kate Sandford is on the verge of turning thirty. She's barely making ends meet writing occasional articles about bands locally but when she lands an interview with The Line, her favorite national music magazine, she knows she's finally about to break into the big time. Unfortunately she goes out to celebrate her birthday the night before and turns up at the interview some combination of still drunk and hungover all at once. Not surprisingly, she does not get the job. Several weeks later, when she has determined that she must buckle down and be an adult, change the direction of her life and get a consistent job, even if it isn't one she'd like, she gets an unexpected call back from The Line. Having pegged her as having a drinking problem but being a good writer nevertheless, they want her to go undercover and enter a rehab program to collect info on a troubled star currently in treatment, Amber Sheppard, also known to the media as The Girl Next Door. The assignment is not with The Line, however. It is for its sister magazine, a successful gossip rag. If Kate can deliver the story, she'll be reconsidered for the job at The Line.

Determined not to blow her second chance, Kate agrees even as she worries how she's going to pull off pretending to be an alcoholic, without ever considering that she might in fact actually have a problem with alcohol. Rehab carries with it some big surprises for Kate as she struggles to understand the grip that alcohol has on her and the effect it has had on her life, her relationships, and her family. As she works through all of this (and the denial so common to addicts), she gets close to Amber. At first, she does it because she has to in order to write the story. But then she finds herself really liking Amber personally. How can she still write a story about her new friend's addiction battles and the private and personal things she's discovered about this young woman? With her dream job and a lot of money riding on the story, how can she not?

Kate is a funny, naive, struggling main character. In short, she's very human and her struggles to know herself and to learn honesty, not only with others in her life (how ironic given the enormous lie she is perpetuating simply by being in rehab for a story) but with herself as well, are authentic and real. While she may have many issues to address, they don't come off as navel-gazing and self-help inspired but are leavened with humor and comedic moments that lighten the tone of the entire book. Certainly fighting an addiction is dark and terrible stuff that can make for a hard and depressing read but that darkness is the polar opposite of what readers will find here. Adding a potential love interest for Kate and the ubiquitous toxic celebrity relationship with the "It" boy for "It" girl Amber lightens the mood still further and allows for some appealing plot twists.

While Kate is the main character, most of the secondary characters are entertaining as well and fleshed out enough to make it clear how they fit into's Kate's life. My biggest quibble with the novel is with how easy overcoming her urge to drink seems to be for Kate in the end, especially given her interior thoughts at the beginning of rehab. The ending of the story is never in doubt here and there are some plot threads given a bit of short shift but over all, the novel is a fun, appealing one that makes for a fast, light-feeling read even as it delivers some hard truths.


For more information about Catherine McKenzie and the book visit her webpage, her blog, 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 the book for review.

Monday Mailbox

Another collection of books that makes the question of "what should I read next" a more difficult one as they all beg to be read next! This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale by Lynda Rutledge came from Megan at Amy Einhorn Books.
The richest woman in a small Texas town decides to sell all of her worldy possessions, including priceless heirlooms for a pittance. How can this not be intriguing?!

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan came from Picador because I won their Facebook fan page giveway.
A tale of love told entirely as dictionary entries? I completely and totally love these unusual sorts of narrative when they are well done and Levithan should be able to pull this off.

The Receptionist by Janet Groth came from Algonquin Books.
A memoir written by a longtime New Yorker receptionist who dreamed of being a writer herself one day, the story of her time there and the literary lions she knew so well sounds completely fascinating.

A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez came from Algonquin Books.
A very personal work about Alvarez's relationships with her parents, her husband, and a Haitian boy she meets and to whom she makes the promise that she will attend his wedding, I believe this one will be a tour de force.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Metroreader 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.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This past week was a sort of lazy one for me. My to do list stayed as long as it started out. I read very little. I reviewed even less. I did manage to do more exercise than usual but that's about all (not a small feat though, I might add). So not much to report here. (I wrote this intro last week and it is sadly still true this week!) This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Fitzwilliam Darcy Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
Spin by Catherine McKenzie
The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

Reviews posted this week:

Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir
The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto

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

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Fitzwilliam Darcy Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

Review: Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto

There's a plethora of novels about the life and loves of young women but there's less available out there for older women. I don't know if it's a function of the audience wanting to read about the green and untried, if it's because that's what research shows will sell best, or because bildungsroman is the traditional narrative trope but there's a lot to be said for the stories of people who have some experience of life under their belt. Okimoto's lovely novel of love at a later age is one of these gentle books that tell the tale of such a couple of lives.

The novel opens with a summer storm blowing through Vashon Island, WA and retired children's librarian Maggie hearing something unusual in between generator noise and the gusting wind. It turns out to be her curmudgeonly neighbor's dog howling because his master is trapped under debris having suffered a small stroke. Maggie goes to his rescue and finds herself becoming more and more enmeshed in Walter's life, again. She and Walter, who is a famous, rather reclusive children's author, have a history together and it's not a pretty one.

Maggie is a good-hearted character who has found herself a place in the small, rather earthy community of Vashon Island and she is taking the summer, the first one of her retirement, to decide what she wants out of life. Taking care of Walter and his devoted mutt Bill Bailey are not in her plans. But she can't just abandon him to his solitude either. Meanwhile, Maggie's younger sister, a needy sort of person who is rarely without a man, is in the throes of another divorce from yet another wealthy husband and she has decided that she should be closer to her only family, arriving on Maggie's doorstep and selfishly (or perhaps just self-centeredly) adding to the caretaking burden Maggie is already under.

Walter, when he suffers his small stroke, is in the midst of another book, which Maggie, an inveterate snooper (she charmingly admits to her vices, small as they are) has started reading. She loves it but her snooping also tells her that it won't be easy for Walter to publish this novel because of the climate of children's publishing. And so Maggie steps up to help Walter keep momentum, to shepherd him through his charming tale. As she types his manuscript, she and Walter develop a relationship and face the history that they have together.

This is a tale of friendship and love, facing mortality and the worth of human connection. The characters are delightful, engaging, and fully formed and it is a pleasure to follow them as they discover not only their own worths but also the worth of others close to them. There are no big explosions here, just the drama of everyday living while aging but that makes for a surprisingly good and pleasing read. Second chances are the stuff of life as long as a person has the courage to keep living it and ultimately Maggie and Walter and all those around them show readers that simple courage.


For more information about Jean Davies Okimoto and the book visit her webpage. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

And don't forget to visit TLC's Book Club giveaway in the month of March where up to ten copies of this charming story will be up for grabs for your bookclub.

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

Review: The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy

Literature is filled with the horrific, the brave, and the heartbeaking stories of World War II. But it isn't often that the story being told is of a person and a family who spent years being compliant with and even lauding Hitler's vision of a new and improved Germany. In Sarah McCoy's fantastic novel, Elsie Schmidt and her family, the bakers of the title, are just these people and her portrayal of them takes the normal black and white morality and turns it into just about every permutation of grey possible. Life is not pure good versus pure evil, why should fiction be?

The novel opens with Reba Adams, a reporter in El Paso, Texas, trying to add more substance to her seasonal article about Christmas around the world by interviewing Elsie Schmidt, the owner of a popular German bakery in town. Reba is looking for something heartwarming and quotable but she finds Elsie reluctant to speak of Christmas in Germany where she was a teenager during the war. Elsie tells Reba that her memories of Christmas are not typical because of the war's deprivations and she is loathe to tell the full story of her last "crappy" Christmas in Germany before marrying an American soldier. Reba perseveres and when she discovers that her new friend Elsie had once been engaged to a Nazi officer, she is appalled, sharing her disbelief with her own fiance Riki, a strictly by the book Border Patrol agent who is starting to view his own job differently.

Reba's life, her reluctance to set a date with Riki, her desire for a bigger, better job in a more vibrant city, and her family baggage alternates with Elsie's wartime letters to her older sister, one of the chosen, young, Aryan women who were a part of the Lebensborn program and supposed to bear children for the Reich. The biggest portion of the narrative though, is that of Elsie's life during 1944 and 1945 when Germany is fighting a losing battle and its people were scrambling for survival. It was then that Elsie, after attending a Christmas party for Nazi officers, is engaged, albeit reluctantly, to Lieutenant Colonel Josef Hub. It is also that Christmas that a young Jewish boy, the gifted singer at the Christmas party, escapes from his escort back to the camps and begs Elsie to hide him in return for the favor he did her earlier in the evening. Suddenly this family who has given one daughter to the cause and who relies on their connection to the Nazis in order to keep their bakery afloat is harboring an escaped Jew although that is unbeknownst to all but Elsie.

The conflicts that Elsie and Reba feel in their heart of hearts, and in fact the creeping uncertainty that all of the major and minor characters come to feel about the policies under which they live and which they have vowed to uphold, are enormous and difficult. Elsie, despite her own initial Nazi sympathies, is a wonderful and sympathetic character and her ultimate Solomonic decision is the struggle you'd expect but completely in keeping with her character. Reba is a bit harder to understand although as her family history and the demons she's running from come out, this lessens. The historical portion of the novel is fascinating and the parallel between the Nazis and the immigration war is subtle. McCoy is not implying that the one is anywhere close to as reprehensible as the other but through her characters, she points out the moral ambiguity that surrounds any situation that might at first glance appear cut and dried. The book is well written and engaging and I found myself unable to put it down once I was fully invested in the story. Fans of historical fiction will enjoy this slightly different perspective while book club readers will find many topics to consider in their discussions.


For more information about Sarah McCoy and the book visit her webpage, her blog, 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 the book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

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

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeannette Winterson. The book is being released by Grove Press on March 6, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life’s work to find happiness. It's a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the Universe as Cosmic Dustbin.

It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she'd written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother.

Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded search for belonging—for love, identity, home, and a mother.

Review: Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir

I am pretty sure that conventional little ole me is not really the correct audience for this book. I mean, when I veer from the traditional, it's something like prefering to receive tulips over roses for Valentine's Day. It's not in living an open and polyamorous lifestyle or sharing intimacy with multiple partners on a constant basis and calling it sexual healing. Not only is it not up my alley, but I am more than a little sceptical about the movement as a whole. So this book, while eye-opening in many ways, was more than a galaxy outside of my own personal comfort zone.

Caroline Muir's memoir of sexual awakening opens as she is trapped in a stultifying marriage trying to be the mother she was not ready to be. She finds sex uninteresting and lackluster and so finds it odd that her husband is crushed by her infidelities. Escaping the staid suburban existence that she finds so suffocating, she starts on her quest to become a fully realized woman, marrying again (twice), and continually changing her life at each new stage, reinvention at its most extreme. Ultimately she meets Charles Muir, who becomes her beloved and introduces her to the practice of tantric sexual healing. The bulk of the memoir is focused on Muir's relationship, personal and professional, with Charles Muir, one of her husbands and co-author with her of a book that is apparently the seminal work on tantric sex.

She works through her own feelings of possessiveness about Charles and embraces the life of multiple sexual partners, the concept of healing someone through sex and touching, and the casual, contancy of sex that her husband advocates. Although the memoir is billed as a memoir of sexual awakening, it is quite overwhelmed by the descriptions of sex, both physically and emotionally, offering little else in the telling. Important people in Muir's life are introduced but only discussed in terms of their place in her bed or in helping her to heal (through sexual play and touching of course) and so they never become fully realized people in their own right.

Quite honestly, Muir comes off as not terribly comfortable with the lifestyle which she chose, only living it to please her beloved, who is not willing to give up other women even when Muir begs him (he's their teacher and healer, after all). This pattern of pleasing the man in her life was also the case with the men who came before Charles Muir so in this at least she seems not to have made any progress. She claims female empowerment but this claim just doesn't come through her story at all. And for as many sexual encounters as Muir details, the specifics are awfully similar in each case. There were countless times during sex, either with Charles or with one of the women they were healing, that the reader is informed that Muir soaked through 4 towels in her release of amritsa (female ejaculatory fluid). Her terminology for body parts is apparently grounded in the whole tantric movement but really just comes off as coy and strange; calling them a yoni and a lingam does not make them any less a vagina and a penis and makes it sound as if she's avoiding calling them what they are in an effort to minimize the fact that she and her then-husband are having copious amounts of unprotected sex with virtual strangers under the guise of teaching and healing.

Worse yet, when I set the book down, I had no desire to pick it back up again and read more about this fairly yawn-inducing alternative lifestyle. Writing the book may have given Muir insight into her own polyamorous sexuality and I hope she's living the contented, happy life she has been so obviously chasing all her life to the detriment of the connections she already had (most obviously with her daughter), but the journey as presented here left me cold.

Thanks to Meryl Zegarek Public Relations for sending me a copy of the book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This past week was a sort of lazy one for me. My to do list stayed as long as it started out. I read very little. I reviewed even less. I did manage to do more exercise than usual but that's about all (not a small feat though, I might add). So not much to report here. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir
The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins

Reviews posted this week:

Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

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

Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir
The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto

Monday Mailbox

A handful of books that make me quite happy. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Might-Have-Been by Joseph Schuster came from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Sometimes our lives hinge on a split second and I am attracted to this novel that captures regret and the trajectory a life takes after that defining moment.

Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick came from Algonquin Books.
A man wanders into a small village, finds work in the local butcher shop, and meets the townsfolk. There's something slightly sinister in the description of this tale of love gone wrong. Intriguing.

All Woman and Springtime by Brandon Jones came from Algonquin Books.
Dealing with the consecutive prisons of life in restrictive North Korea and then life in sexual slavery for two young women, the fact that this novel still sounds as if it will end on a hopeful note makes me very curious.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Metroreader 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.

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 Great Northern Express by Howard Frank Mosher. The book is being released by Crown on March 6, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: From bestselling, nationally celebrated author Howard Frank Mosher, a wildly funny and deeply personal account of his three-month, 20,000-mile sojourn to discover what he loved enough to live for.

Several months before novelist Howard Frank Mosher turned sixty-five, he learned that he had prostate cancer. Following forty-six intensive radiation treatments, Mosher set out alone in his twenty-year-old Chevy Celebrity on a monumental road trip and book tour across twenty-first-century America. From a chance meeting with an angry moose in northern New England to late-night walks on the wildest sides of America's largest cities, The Great Northern Express chronicles Mosher's escapades with an astonishing array of erudite bibliophiles, homeless hitchhikers, country crooners and strippers, and aspiring writers of all circumstances.

Full of high and low comedy and rollicking adventures, this is part travel memoir, part autobiography, and pure, anarchic fun. From coast to coast and border to border, this unforgettable adventure of a top-notch American writer demonstrates that, sometimes, in order to know who we truly are, we must turn the wheel towards home.

Review: Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

Harriet Baxter is a mostly homebound elderly woman cared for by a live-in companion and writing her obviously biased memoirs. From the perspective of 1933, she looks back on her time in 1880's Glasgow, Scotland as a close family friend of artist Ned Gillespie and the rest of the Gillespie clan. She is convinced that Ned has never gotten the fame he deserves as an artist and she's determined that she is going to be the one to illuminate his short and tragic career. But as Harriet details her growing involvement with the Gillespies during that fateful time, the initial faint air of her unreliability as a narrator deepens and grows.

Having briefly met Ned Gillespie at an exhibition in London, Harriet professes herself surprised to find his work displayed at the International Expo in Glasgow. And there the matter might have stayed if not for the fact that Harriet is fortuitously passing by as Elspeth Gillespie (Ned's mother) faints and swallows her dentures causing an airway obstruction. Harriet saves Elspeth's life and gains entry into the Gillespie family circle. She presents herself as helpful and caring and much appreciated by the family, weighing in on the issues facing them, Ned and Annie's eldest daughter Sibyl's deviant and disturbing mental state, Ned's sister Mabel's love life, the solution to his brother Kenneth's potentially embarrassing homosexuality, and so forth. She ingratiates herself into the family like a tick on a dog.

Alternating her past and the growing connection with the Gillespies is her present day, set in 1933, some 40 years on from the events she is so keen to record. And yet the events of the past seem to be creeping up on her and driving her present. It is in her present day narration that the real measure of Harriet as a character is fully realized. There is no prevarication, no hidden ulterior motive, just Harriet laid bare, explained in ways she wouldn't want an outsider observer to see. She is starting to be certain that Sarah, her carer, apparently the latest in a long line of home helpers, is malevolent and wishes her harm.

The tale is a well-written one, tense and just a little sinister beneath its facade of gentility and sweetly manufactured noblesse oblige. The plot rises from the domestic to the gripping, suspenseful, and chilling finale of Harriet's dealings with the Gillespies. Everything about the novel is atmospheric, tightly plotted, and minutely, meticulously wrought. The characters, all seen through Harriet's eyes, are barometers for the whole of the tale, well-rounded and dimensional only if they serve Harriet's story as such. Nevertheless, they are a compelling bunch, regardless of her self-serving portrayals, and the reader is drawn raptly into the Scottish Victorian art world and into the deviousness of the mystery. Question everything dear reader, and shiver a bit while you're at it.

For more information about Jane Harris and the book visit her webpage, 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 the book for review.

Review: Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

I was out in San Francisco with my husband and a friend and I saw Fernet Branca on the drinks memu. I asked the server about it and she admitted that she knew next to nothing about it, never having tasted it herself. I ordered it anyway, thinking of this book sitting on my shelves as I did so. My husband, even used to my quirks, was nonplussed by the fact that I was ordering an unknown drink based entirely on the title of a book I had not yet even read. To my mind, Fernet Branca tastes a little bit like cough syrup. So not exactly a drink I'll be ordering again any time soon. Luckily the book was significantly better than the drink and I would happily revisit Hamilton-Paterson's works again and again.

This novel is an hilarious send-up of those moving and starting over travel narrative memoirs where an ex-pat moves to an exotic (usually Mediterranean) locale, restores a marvelous home, gently mocks the eccentric natives, and cooks fabulous meals with fresh local produce. Gerald and Marta are ex-pat neighbors in a small Tuscan hill village but that is where the similarities to the typical travel narratives stop. Gerald is a bit of a fussy, curmudgeonly Englishman who ghostwrites memoirs for the rich and famous (and often dissipated). He has retreated to this out of the way place so that he can write in peace and quiet. Marta is a seemingly stodgy Slav from the former Soviet-block and just about everything about her offends Gerald's sensibilities. That she is also a composer working on the movie score for a famous director's film seems to him to be a fabrication of vast proportions. But as each others' closest neighbors, they cannot escape each other and must exist in an entertaining disharmony.

The narration alternates between Gerald and Marta so that the reader has the opportunity to see all of the comic misunderstandings and assumptions from both eccentric characters' perspectives. Gerald is certain he is a cook of the highest calibre and his inventive if positively ghastly dishes are all included with the text (and contain copious amounts of Fernet Branca, hence the title). Marta seems to egg the prissy, easily offended Gerald on, but she has her own quirks as well. The situations in the novel go from mundane to beyond far-fetched but by the time they get completely unbelievable, readers are already so entertained by the novel that they just laugh harder, thoroughly enjoying the ride. Witty, clever, delightfully sarcastic, and satirical this was a blast to read and I'm looking forward to the next one.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

My reading week was incredibly and somewhat oddly varied. Sometimes it seems like all the books I read are connected and other times it's like they have nothing in common besides the fact that they all contain words printed on pages and are bound. This past week was definitely the latter kind of week. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir

Reviews posted this week:

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall

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

None for this year. Look to the sidebar for previous years' books missing reviews if you must!

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

The Red Book by Deborah Copaken Kogan came from Voice.
I'd like to reproduce this cover on my own bookshelves! Four roommates from the class of '89 head for their 20th college reunion. You know that's going to be good.

Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott came from Riverhead Books.
I remember reading about Sam's first year in Operating Instructions. Hard to believe that that baby has his own baby now!

Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung came from Riverhead Books.
American girls and Korean folklore, I have always loved books that present the related issues of immigrant tales and identity.

Until the Next Time by Kevin Fox came from Algonquin Books.
A lost family connection and a journal from an uncle that might help explain a young man's own life, this one looks mysterious and intriguing in equal measure.

West of Here by Jonathan Evison came from Algonquin Books.
Newly out in paperback, I reviewed this one already here.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Metroreader 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: The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall

Despite having more than my fair share of children, I don't generally read a lot of children's literature. My kids' tastes and mine rarely gibe well and I buy enough books for myself that I decided I didn't need to be buying kid books for myself too. But if I think I can convince my kids to give them a try, they are fair game. And then there are some that I don't even care if the kids will read them or not because I just love them so much. The Mr. Putter and Tabby books are one such series (although even the teenaged girl will still coo happily when I bring a new one of those home) and this Penderwick series by Jane Birdsall is another.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette is the third in this completely delightful, charming, and nostalgic feeling series of books that started with the National Book Award winning The Penderwicks. It is the continuation of the summer adventures of the four Penderwick sisters, their absent-minded father, their gallumping dog Hound, and their friend Jeffrey. In this installment of the series, Rosalind goes off with a friend to the beach while the three younger Penderwicks head to Maine with Jeffrey and their Aunt Claire while their father is on his honeymoon in England. Sweet adventures abound as they make the acquaintance of their neighbor in the next cottage, Jane falls in love for the first time, and Batty learns to play the harmonica and some piano. Like the previous entries in the series, this is a heartwarming and lovely tale with characters it is impossible not to love. There's more of the old-fashioned feel of the other books as well, which is completely welcome after too many children's books written revolving around a moral instead of a good, solid tale. Great storytelling, fluid writing, likeable characters, and a continuing sense of fun will keep this series on my to buy list long after my children are too old to use as an excuse for acquiring it.

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.

Compulsively Mr. Darcy by Nina Benneton. The book is being released by Sourcebooks on February 1, 2012. Yes, today!!!

Amazon says this about the book: For anyone obsessed with Pride & Prejudice, it's Darcy and Elizabeth like you've never see them before!

This modern take introduces us to the wealthy philanthropist Fitzwilliam Darcy, a handsome and brooding bachelor who yearns for love but doubts any woman could handle his obsessive tendencies. Meanwhile, Dr. Elizabeth Bennet has her own intimacy issues that ensure her terrible luck with men.

When the two meet up in the emergency room after Darcy's best friend, Charles Bingley, gets into an accident, Elizabeth thinks the two men are a couple. As Darcy and Elizabeth unravel their misconceptions about each other, they have to decide just how far they're willing to go to accept each other's quirky ways...