Review: Street Gang by Michael Davis

Not much of a tv watcher as a child (at least as compared to my sister who would willingly watch the test pattern on Saturday mornings while waiting for the cartoons to start), I still logged quite a bit of time watching the marvelous and entertaining Sesame Street. As a college student, I was thrilled to find a program to download on my bright and shiny, new computer that made Oscar the Grouch pop up and sing "I Love Trash" each and every time you dumped something into your system trash can. I can't even begin to explain how often I created a blank document just to have something to throw away. I knew the world had lost a big soul when Jim Henson died (and a memorial to him found its way onto my dorm door). I watched Sesame Street with my own children. The Sesame Street puppets are a major part of my cultural history and so when I heard about this complete history of Sesame Street, I was thrilled. I even helped railroad my book club into reading it. So nothing could have been more disappointing than to find the book dry and dull and unwonderful.

Starting with the spark that eventually became the origin of Sesame Street, Davis traces the history of children's television in the 60's and the life stories of the major players in the development of the idea that became the Children's Television Workshop. Eventually he tackles the rise of the show itself, detailing the thinking behind the set design, the multi-cultural cast, and even the title of the show itself. There are political and business moves laid bare here and a quick skim through the post-Jim Henson Sesame Street.

Unfortunately, Davis' pre-show tracings consume well over 100 pages of the book and are packed to the brim with inconsequential minutia about other tv shows and the childhoods of the show's developers. It is almost as if he felt that leaving out any of his research would invalidate the time he spent on it. Instead, it made for a deadly boring read. There was little on the personal aspect of the show. None of the interesting tidbits that I hoped to learn. For instance, while mentioning that Oscar was orange in season one, he never tells the reader why a color change was made to this iconic puppet. He does cover some of the bigger strides made on the show, such as the emotional Farewell Mr. Hooper episode following actor Will Lee's death but he ignores other major parts, such as the use of famous guest hosts. The other big omission is that of more recent Sesame stuff. Once Jim Henson died, the book clicked into warp speed, racing toward the end with little commentary on the state of the Street these days and the innovations the CTW is playing with now.

There's very little of the quirky, human interest stuff that makes histories come alive. As a result, this history of Sesame Street takes on the droning tone of a textbook, detailing the uninteresting and missing out on those tidbits that would draw a reading audience, weaned on Sesame Street, in. Personally I would have loved information behind the development of the characters and the puppets. I know the show itself is a trail blazer and has had an immeasurable impact on children's educational programming but reading this "complete history" will make the reader think that it was a quaint idea of its time but something that is no longer relevant (and frankly uninteresting to read about). I just know there's a warm and wonderful Sesame Street story out there. This just didn't tell it.

Review: Cheap Cabernet by Cathie Beck

This is billed as a memoir about a friendship, the one of a kind friendship that so few people ever find in their lives but I'd argue that this is not what this is ultimately. Instead, it is a memoir about Cathie Beck, who overcame poverty and loneliness to raise her children, keep her self-respect, and ultimately came through to start a new life. Two narrative lines run through the memoir: that of Beck as a scared 21 year old mother of two whose husband has taken all their money and their car and taken off, permanently, and of Beck in her thirties after her children are launched into their own adult lives, looking for friendship and experiencing the rites of passage she missed on her trip through her twenties.

As a memoir about Beck, I think this was successful. As a memoir about friendship, I think it was less so. I didn't feel like we ever got a great sense of Cathie and Denise's friendship, jumping from them making a connection on the phone before the WOW (Women on the Way) meeting that Beck instituted in order to meet people to all of a sudden being so close they cut out the other women. Perhaps it is tough to verbalize the alchemy that makes a dear friendship but I just didn't feel as privy to what I had expected as I wanted to be. Denise was sort of a shadow throughout the book with her most salient feature being that she had MS. Being as unknowable to the reader as Denise was, that made it hard to believe that Cathie and Denise's was an enchanted, once in a lifetime friendship and certainly their eventual estrangement argues more for a friendship of a time and place, necessary for all that but not the thing that forever is made of.

Some of the transitions from Beck's life as a broke single mother to Beck as a woman wanting the friendship of other women are a bit choppy. But then again, life isn't seamless either. Those interested in the nature of friendship, starting over as an adult, and the demands of terminal illness will enjoy this book, even if these issues oftentimes are skated over a tad superficially.

Thanks to Hyperion Books for sending me a review copy of this book.

Review: A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova

Elena Gorokhova grew up in a Leningrad strangled by Communism. Her mother was a doctor and her dashing father died of tuberculosis when she was young. Her family owned a summer home farm but they were not high up cadre members and so they faced shortages and discrimination like so many others. Gorokhova herself was fascinated by the English language and attended a special school in order to become fluent, working first as a student tour guide and then in other prestigious jobs, ultimately marrying a foreigner and being allowed to emigrate to Texas with her husband.

Gorokhova's childhood was certainly materially different than a childhood here in the States at the same time and her spirit of endurance and perseverance shine through the book. At the same time, she is writing a paean to her mother and the strength of character that she obviously inherited from Galina. The narrative is sometimes episodic in nature as she skims over large swaths of time, occasionally only touching the surface of her feelings at the time or her impression of the feelings of the adults around her. As she is clearly writing this from the vantage point of many years on, it would certainly be acceptable for her to speculate on the adults' experience of Communism more than she does. Her schooling and experience with censorship, toeing the official doctrinal line is illuminating and makes the reader wonder how many others went along with obvious untruths and injustices out of expediency. Although there is an air of want and lack and bleakness, it is also obvious that Gorokhova was raised with much love, whatever the hardships of being raised under Communism. Her rebellion and desire to escape made her unique. Her English speaking ability threw her in the path of an opportunity to make good her escape. And so we have this interesting and very different memoir.

The episodic feel I mentioned above sometimes caused a choppiness to the book and the history of Gorokhova's family felt almost like a rote recitation devoid of emotion. But an interest in Soviet life will overcome the flatness and the pacing issues for the Russophile reader. As an affirmation that Communism, at least as embodied by the former Soviet Union, was hypocritical and ultimately unworkable, this stands out. As a coming of age in a place incredibly foreign to those of us in the west, this will resonate both with familiarity and strangeness. Over all, it was a decent read and I'd be curious to read more from people who grew up under the restrictive regime that so characterized Soviet Communism.

My thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this book.

Review: The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm

Fierce, emotional, and painful, this book is Romm's recounting of her mother's last three weeks before dying of breast cancer. Her mother was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer when Romm was only 19. She lived for nine more years. Nine short years. Nine not-nearly-enough years. But then she died, slowly, painfully, and too soon. Romm tells roughly not only of her mother's last three weeks but also the ways in which her mother's dying affected her. She was angry and selfish and bitter, raging against the universe and the hospice nurse and her mother's longtime friends and her father and herself.

This is not an easy book to read, despite its slight size. It is packed with incredible depth of emotion, such that sometimes the reader has to take a breather, the very thing that Romm could not do, could not afford to do, in the time of her mother's dying. And as much as this is the memoir of a woman dying, it is also very much the story of Robin Romm, the daughter losing her mother. It is peppered with memories and remembrances, because even before her mother is physically gone, she is no longer the mother Romm knew, instead floating on a sea of pain killers and barely conscious. Romm does not sugar-coat her feelings about the people surrounding her mother. She is oftentimes nasty and snipes at them, either on the page or in fact. She is selfish, not wanting to share her mother, wanting her to be present as long as she can. Throughout, it is clear that she is devastated and fighting no matter the cost. This book is raw, it is angry, it is philosophical, and it probably isn't for everyone. But it is well-written and intense and true too. The final twelve pages of the book, blank because loss never ends, are stark reminders of the hole left behind for Romm and her family, and really for all of us. And those readers who don't shy away from the pain depicted here will find a gem.

Review: Critical Care by Theresa Brown

Much has been written by and about doctors and their role in hospitals and patients' lives but very little has been written about nurses and the vital role they play. Most people in a hospital see far more of their nurses than they do of their doctors and yet so much focuses on the white-coated, stethoscope wearing MD. Brown remedies this with this memoir of her first year in nursing. Theresa Brown left her job as a college English professor to become an oncology nurse. For her, the jump was to do something more professionally meaningful and her decision to focus on oncology meant that her work was often carried out at the end stages of someone else's life.

The memoir tells of compelling patients and situations during her first year. She speaks of death and being available to her patients' families should they need her. She speaks of learning the commonplace language of the oncology ward. She invites the reader along as she learns the simple procedures she will have to do day in and day out. And she tackles the politics of hospitals, the difference in tone on wards and floors, the personalities of co-workers, good and bad. Her memoir is both personal and universal.

The set-up of the book has the feel of interconnected essays rather than an unbroken narrative but that works with the episodic nature of hospital work and the very different aspects that comprise a job like nursing. This is more a musing on her first year of nursing rather than an expose' of the hard, physical, dirty work that is often left to nurses. Brown mentions these distasteful things in passing but she doesn't go in for a lot of visceral description. Her writing is smooth and easily accessible, as one would expect from a former English professor, and the pages turn quickly. Anyone who has devoured doctors' memoirs will find a different but valuable corollary here in this book. Read it if you like non-fiction medical narratives or you've been touched by the kindness of a nurse or even if you've run across your own personal version of Nurse Ratched. You'll gain a little bit of insight and understanding of all of the above.

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

Review: Sunlight on the Lawn by Beverley Nichols

The final installment of Nichols' delightful Merry Hall trilogy, this is as charming and witty and thoroughly satisfying as the previous two books. It flows seamlessly from the other books, offering the reader yet more of Nichols' humor, eccentric neighbors, and blooming garden. Miss Emily and Our Rose have a nuclear style tiff; Nichols endeavors to build a mountain, moving it dirt pile by dirt pile from a local mountain onto his property; a massive balustrade is tumbled willy-nilly into the garden; and so much more happens here. I must admit I finished this book with a melancholy sadness wrapped around me, not only for knowing that I was finished with such a warmth inspiring series, but also to know what the forward tells me about Nichols' final years. So reader be warned, do not read the forward first. It properly belongs as an afterward when you are already mourning the end of your journeys to Merry Hall. As with the others, I highly recommend this book. Now excuse me while I scavenge around for more of Mr. Nichols' works.

Review: Crazy For the Storm by Norman Ollestad

This book has been getting scads of publicity and lots of raves recently. I read it before all the reviews came out and I'm still baffled by the over the top plaudits it has received because I thought it was a decent read but not an overwhelming wow. Is it thrilling? Yes. Will it keep you reading? Probably. But there was something missing in it for me.

The story of little Norman Ollestad's amazing survival after a plane crash that ultimately killed everyone else on board, including Norman's father, and left him stranded on a mountain during a terribly snow storm, this is also the story of the early years of Norman's life as his father pushed him to become a surfer and a skier who pushed the envelope. The memoir alternates chapters between the life he shared with his mother, her boyfriend, and his father and the hours, moments leading up to and after the crash as he fights for survival. As Norman has drawn his childhood (the crash happened when he was only 11), I felt only anger and annoyance towards his parents.

His mother seemed to put her abusive boyfriend ahead of her son and his father was more interested in creating a "boy wonder" who excelled at his father's chosen sports than about the emotional well-being of a young child. Ollestad's love for these flawed parents is there in the book but what really stood out for me was that he spent a lot of time unhappy or terrified or neglected when with either of his parents. Of course, ultimately, his father's child-rearing method (push said child hard and relentlessly until the child attempts whatever simply to avoid being called a coward) helped Norman muster up the strength to make it down the mountain to safety, knowing his father and the pilot were dead and after seeing his father's girlfriend slide to her death too. So perhaps I am being too harsh in judging the scenes Ollestad has chosen to write about here. But I do know that I would have been pretty darn resentful of my parents for their treatment of me had the book been mine, rather than his.

As far as the story itself goes, it is pretty thrilling, edge of your pants. The alternating chapters are written differently, evoking either the feeling of a descriptive and haphazard childhood or the short, stacato adreneline bursts of the crash and its aftermath. And sending the reader from one extreme of writing to another just with the turn of the page helped to amp up the thrill factor. It is a story that no one should have had to live but Ollestad's writing has captured some of the dislocation and terror that he must have felt coming down that mountain. And I appreciated the final chapter, detailing his return to the crash site and his own handling of his young son with fair reflections on his father's parenting of him. I felt there was something destructive, intense and controlling in the daredevil father he's captured in these pages, something that made his death at a relatively young age inevitable. But not liking many (all?) of the people who made up his early life, I had a hard time caring too much about their terrible fates, a failing that is even more callous given that these are not characters but real people. I don't know whether the fault for this lack of connection is in the writing or in me personally. Did I read on avidly, despite knowing the outcome of the crash before even opening the first page (it's given away on the cover)? Yes. Did I feel gutted and drained when I finished reading it? No, I just felt detached and relieved to be finished. Adventure junkies will likely thrive on the adreneline rush this book provides while the more sedentary (or cowardly like me) might find themselves dismayed by the interpersonal relationships as presented here and wish for a bit more than the book delivered.

Review: The Dogs Who Found Me by Ken Foster

Ken Foster rescues dogs. He not only takes them in to find them homes, but he takes them into his heart. With this book, he invites the reader into the stories of several of the dogs he's rescued, as well as some that he couldn't and who haunt him to this day. Weaving through the stories of the dogs that find Foster, is the story of his life with his own rescue dog, Brando, and then of sister rescue dog, Zephyr. Some of the stories of other dogs are incomplete feeling and I was struck by the sense that at times, Foster was working really hard to keep an emotional distance, perhaps so that he didn't end up adopting zillions of dogs himself. But I can hardly make that a complaint when I am incapable of going into pet stores that sell dogs without aching to bring them all home with me. This book will appeal to dog lovers, those whose animals sleep on the bed with them, curl up on the couch next to them, those whose animals are so confident in their owners' love they pester them with toys for hours at a time. It's a quick read, one that offers satisfying conclusions to most of the dogs' stories, and that reassures dog lovers that there are people like Foster out there, willing to take the abused, the abandonned, and the neglected into their hearts and their homes, even if it's just a way station on the road to their permanent home.

Sunday Salon: Review: Do-Over by Robin Hemley

Looking back at your life and many of the rites of passage in it, there are probably things you'd change. Things that didn't quite happen as planned, things that make you wince when you remember them, and things that you didn't do and wish you had in hindsight. And that's why the idea of Robin Hemley's Do-Over: In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments is so incredibly appealing. Most of us have experienced the "If only" or "I wish" and even the "I should have" when thinking back on different times in our lives. Hemley actually set out to "do-over" those things that niggled at him in that way.

Each chapter takes a certain event or period of time in his life that he wanted to revisit, not in the impossible task of replacing his memories with something different but to try and experience them in a different, positive way. There is a lot of humor in this book (imagine a 48 year old man re-doing kindergarten or going to the prom) but there's a lot of honest introspection too. Obviously Hemley's life wasn't completely consumed by these events as his adult life continued on even as he worked on his project. But being older certainly gave him a different perspective on each stage as he faced it. He was able to face the class bully with equanimity. He looked with amuseument on the stress of SAT preparation (something few if any high school juniors can do). And yet he learned a lot from re-experiencing these events, both about himself and about the world that his daughters live in now. Much of what he did gave him great insight into his own family and into his parenting, a truly valuable lesson. In initially not being able to let go of his own past mistakes or embarrassments, Hemley has crafted a witty, entertaining, and well-written memoir that was a delight to read. It also begs the question, what in your life would you like to do-over?

I currently have a giveaway going on for 5 copies of this book. To read the rules and enter, check out my Cinco de Mayo giveaway.

And unfortunately not Do-Over, but for a giveaway for my international readers, look at the International Giveaway for a chance to win one of two books.

New Challenge--Non-Fiction Five

I may be totally behind in blogging the books I've read for challenges, but that isn't going to slow me down from joining yet another challenge (or two). So in keeping with that, here's my entry into the Non-Fiction Five Challenge. Can't say I know everything I'll read for this one but since I can change my options at the drop of a hat (my kind of challenge!!!), I'm not going to worry about that. Tentatively I'll be reading Hamlet's Dresser by Bob Smith (memoir), Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes (history), The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann (memoir), Singular Intimacies by Danielle Ofri (memoir), and The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken by Laura Schenone (memoir).