Review: Into the Tangle of Friendship by Beth Kephart

How do you describe friendship? How do you put into words, without sounding trite or overly sentimental, the essence of what a friend is? Beth Kephart manages to do this terribly difficult thing in a lyrical meditation on the meaning of friendship, how it changes, who we befriend, and why it is important in our lives through her experiences of her own friendships and her observations of her son's and her husband's as well. This is not a funny chronicle of the things she and her friends have done. It is a more spiritual examination of the power of friendship. It is a thoughtful, ruminative writing on just how friendship changes and enriches our life, in small ways and large. As Kephart discovers, our friends help define us, even if they are only briefly a part of our lives. But they round us out and offer themselves to us and Kephart has captured the elusive beauty of this fact with her poetic and honest writing. This book, like the other book of hers that I read, is not a straightforward narrative, relying on the skillful weaving of a descriptive and flowing style to pull together the thread of her thoughts. Billed as a memoir, the chapters have the feel of interconnected essays as much as anything. I would have liked a little more meat to the book but overall, it was a soothing reading experience.

Review: One Vacant Chair by Joe Coomer

I discovered Joe Coomer's books years ago through another reading friend's recommendation. Then I chose one of his books for my summer book club last summer to help spread the word a bit farther. There's just something wonderful about the quirky characters he creates and the way in which he can tackle deep philosophical issues in the guise of a humorous, thinking novel that makes his work shine. One Vacant Chair is the latest I've read and thoroughly enjoyed.

This novel opens with the Hutton family gathering for the memorial service to bury their mother and grandmother. Edna, an unmarried school cafeteria worker and artist who paints portraits of chairs had taken care of her cantankerous, bedridden mother for twenty odd years. But Edna (and grandma) lived lives that would have surprised the rest of the family and after the reading of the will where grandma asked for her ashes to be scattered in Scotland, a place she'd never been, the details of their lives start to emerge. Sarah, Edna's niece, reeling from her husband's infidelity, offers to stay and help her aunt pull together all the lose ends involved in international travel for those who have never left home. She also has the chance to observe her aunt's artistic process and to get in touch her own artistic roots while in the presence of a wonderful artist, one who will be revered posthumously as small comments scattered throughout Sarah's telling of the story make clear. While living with Edna and then traveling with her to Scotland, Sarah learns the secrets, large and small, of her aunt's life and comes face to face with the delicate realities of living and dying.

On the surface, a quirky tale filled with unusual characters, Coomer has a knack for delving deeply into the things that drive our lives. Here the examination is not only of life and death as points on the same continuum but also of the place of family and love on our own personal time lines. With Sarah telling the story from the benefit of hindsight, the reader knows much of the territory that the narrative will cover but that doesn't make it dismissively predictable. Instead, it freights the conversations between Sarah and aunt Edna with more portents than perhaps would have been possible otherwise. And still there are major twists that are surprising in their deviation from the expected. As the two women travel through Scotland doling out ashes in the places they have chosen, they each struggle with the path their lives are on, trying to find the right thing for themselves in balance with those surrounding them. The book is never preachy and always accessible but it is full of the symbolic and the philosophical. It is beautifully presented and entertainingly drawn, well-written and appealing. You'll warm to the characters, ache with their indecision and weaknesses, and laugh with their eccentricities. You might even learn something about art and art process (I sure did). Readers looking for an unusual story will be richly rewarded with this one. It's a gem.

Spring Reading Thing Challenge

Every year, I jump on Katrina's bandwagon and participate in her Spring Reading Thing Challenge. It is one of my favorite kinds of challenges, a design-it-yourself. This year, as always, I am choosing to list the books that currently have bookmarks in them. My challenge is to finally get around to finishing these seemingly permanent bedside table residents. Because of this my list will not change for the duration of the challenge. It will be composed of only the books I am reading as of this morning. I might have one page left to read or 999. But they are all currently incomplete and therefore make my list. (Note: there is one notable exception to my inclusion of all incomplete books this year as I fully intend to take all year to read Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma and so it will not be on my challenge list intentionally.) Here's Katrina's explanation for the challenge in case my own version doesn't trip your trigger.

Essentially, Spring Reading Thing 2010 is a fun, low-pressure reading challenge open to anyone and everyone. It will take place March 20th-June 20th (which is, not-so-coincidentally, the spring of 2010).

To participate, here’s what you need to do:

• Create a list of some books you’d like to read or finish this spring.



• Feel free to set some additional reading goals (such as reading to your kids two hours per week, getting through your pile of magazines, etc.). This is completely optional.



• Write a blog post including the list of books you want to read and any additional goals you’ve set, and get ready to post it on your blog on March 20th.



• Visit my blog on March 20th to sign up. I’ll have a Mr. Linky set up that morning, so you can submit a link to your personal Spring Reading Thing post, and it will be added to the master list.



• Read! Work on your goals throughout Spring 2010.



• Report your results. Write another blog post in June to let everyone know how you did.



• Have fun! Visit other participants to see what they’re reading. Write reviews if you’re so inclined. But most of all, enjoy your spring reading.

So, without further ado, here's what the bedside table has spit up at me for my reading and finishing pleasure this spring:

1. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
2. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
3. Into the Tangle of Friendship by Beth Kephart
4. Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show by Frank Delaney
5. One Vacant Chair by Joe Coomer
6. Solar by Ian McEwan

Review: The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

Subtitled Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, this tells the story of Roosevelt's trip into South America to map an unknown Amazon tributary after his defeat for a third Presidency. Equal parts true life adventure story, biographical portrait of a larger than life politician, and South American history, this is a generally interesting, sometimes gripping story I had never heard before. I will admit that my knowledge of long dead presidents is fairly sketchy and generally limited at best to their major accomplishments (or failures) in office, but I did have some inkling of the adventure-junky aspect of Roosevelt's character. After all, which school child hasn't heard about the hunting trip that resulted in the naming of the teddy bear or about his African safaris or about his Rough Riders? But about the expedition down an uncharted tributary of the Amazon, nothing.

After his final defeat, Roosevelt obviously needed something to take his mind off the political failure and to test him physically, despite suffering from numerous ailments that would have kept a less determined man from the hardship and danger that faced him in the Amazonian jungle. The South American officer leading the expedition wanted to chart the course of the the River of Doubt. The museum naturalists accompanying the former president wanted to catalog new species of plant and animal. The Catholic father who had been the originator of the plan wanted a South American adventure. Kermit Roosevelt was along to make sure no ill came to his father. And the local men were there to paddle the inadequate log boats and do most of the hardest work of the journey. Like all good adventure stories, this has murder and hardship and ultimate survival only by the skin of the men's teeth. It has inadequate knowledge coupled with appalling risks and near starvation. And it has the larger than life figure of Theodore Roosevelt. Even with all of this, there are still times when Millard's narrative bogs down in details. The journey took far longer than anyone had anticipated and perhaps drawing the narrative out was intended to mimic the increasingly desperate slog down the river in a race against time but the end especially really dragged until the men emerge from the renamed Roosevelt River. Once the objective of conquering the river has been met, Millard speeds the narrative on, giving a quick overview of what happened to all the notable (or traceable) men of the party.

I didn't originally want to read this book when it was chosen by my bookclub but it certainly turned out to be more interesting that I had suspected. Ultimately I ended up liking it but I can see my friend's argument that it was dry. I will pass it along to my husband as he's a history buff for whom I suspect it will be a perfect read.

Review: The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit by Jill Conner Browne

I picked this up at the bookstore on a whim because I enjoyed the humor in the first few Sweet Potato Queen books. I expected to be easily sucked into this and find chuckles galore but that turned out to not be the case. Unfortunately, this tongue in cheek look at rearing children was not nearly as original or funny as I'd hoped. Perhaps I'm too far away from babyhood (although the title does not imply that the bulk of the book will be focused on infants and little tiny people, now does it? And heaven knows the older mine get, the closer they creep to teenaged life, the more rearing they require but I digress) or Conner Browne is far enough away herself (farther than I am actually as Bo Peep is older than my crew by a few years) that she is unaware of the books already out there on the market that say the same things this one does and also says them humorously (Vicki Iovine, anyone?) but I found myself almost bored reading this. I've not only been there, done that, I've already read the book too. It was a quick read and it did eventually touch on older children but since the bulk of the book focuses on the small fry, I can't really recommend this to anyone but perhaps the expectant mom or the new mom who can still find time to eke out a chapter or two once a year, anyone else, including new moms who read more widely than that, will feel like this is a rehashing with a few minorly entertaining anecdotes at most. (And yes, I know I am probably forfeiting any chance at ever being a Queen myself with these comments--although I still think the original book is pure comedy genius.)

Spring Reading Thing Challenge

If you've read this blog for any length of time (in addition to being cross-eyed from boredom) you know that I hop on the seasonal reading challenge bandwagons as a way to get myself back to the various unfinished books lurking around on my bedside table. So far it's been pretty effective for me so I was pleased to remember that spring means the advent of Katrina's Spring Reading Thing Challenge over at Callapidder Days. It's one of those lax and much appreciated by me design your own challenges. I wait to pick my books so I can see what titles still have bookmarks lurking in them on the first day. In that spirit, here's my list for this year's spring thing:

1. River of Doubt by Candice Millard
2. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
3. The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
4. The Sweet Potato Queen’s Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit by Jill Conner Browne

I know, I know. Only four books? That's positively restrained for me. But please note that The Far Pavilions is about a billion pages long and I am within the first 100 of that billion so it's really like reading many books rather than just one. And because I have a scad load of other books sitting here to read (including two review books with more on the way), these four will be challenge enough for me this spring.