Review: Sound Bites by Alex Kapranos

I don’t know the band that Alex Kapranos sings for (Franz Ferdinand?) so I definitely didn’t pick this up because of the celebrity connection. I picked it up because the idea of reading about international gastronomic adventures interested me. And while vignette-type chapters aren’t generally something I enjoy too much, I was willing to overlook them for kernels of goodness. Unfortunately this entire book is short and superficial and gave me no insight into how a band eats on tour, nor did it give a rounded out version of unfamiliar food or eating in unfamiliar places. Basically it was a set of jottings that failed to deliver on the promise it exuded on its back cover. And I’d be bitter about that but it took me about half a nanosecond to read it, it was so slight (okay, maybe a bit longer, but not much).

Review: A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka

A charming book that was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, this was really a delight to read. It is the story of two antagonistic sisters who band together to save their aging, and increasingly infirm and confused, father from marrying a grasping, bosom-y, bottle-blond Ukranian immigrant he’s only recently met at the Ukrainian Club. Nikolai is adamant that he wants to marry the blowsy Valentina, who is clearly only after him for his perceived money. Nikolai’s daughters, Vera and Nadia are horrified and embark on what starts out as a comedy of errors to make their father see the impossibility of this marriage. But the book turns darker as it becomes obvious that Valentina is not harmless, especially to Nikolai, and that she is quite cunning and capable of besting Vera and Nadia. But Lewycka is skilled in not making her character all black-hearted. She has made all of them believable and multi-faceted and very human. And as Nadia, our narrator travels through this impending marriage mess with her father, she learns more about her family history than she has ever really imagined. The story is really masterfully written. There is a light touch here that doesn’t hide the deeper issues but makes them less onerous for the reader to digest. As much as the ending was not a surprise, I am still looking forward to Lewycka’s next book and to the clever writing she displays here and hopefully carries over into her next effort.

Review: The Gathering by Anne Enright

Right off the bat, I have to say I hated this book. It was painful to have to read. But not am I anal retentive enough to have to finish everything I start, I also felt compelled to read all of it because it was chosen for one of my book clubs. I will also say that we were about evenly split on liking and loathing it. I thought it was overwrought and depressing. I didn’t like our narrator Veronica and didn’t feel that we got to know the rest of the very large Hegarty family at all. It took absolute yonks to understand Veronica’s attachment to her brother Liam (to the exclusion of the other siblings). And finally, the mix of Veronica’s legitimate childhood memories mixed poorly and uneasily with her imagined memories of her grandparents’ courtship (and sex life) and of her parents’ marriage (and sex life). I guess there really wasn’t a thing about the book that I enjoyed and while it was irresolutely dreary, I could have handled that without the stereotypical and flat characterization combined with clunky writing. I know this won the Booker Prize so perhaps I have no idea what I’m talking about but I think the judges were delusional. Nothing about this book sang.

Review: We Are Our Mothers' Daughters by Cokie Roberts

I am very behind on my book reviewing but have been writing a few up here and there so I hope to get at least a portion of them finished on here before we leave for the summer and then move houses. In any case, here's the first of my appalling backlog of reviews. Look for more in the coming days.

We Are Our Mothers' Daughters by Cokie Roberts
I think my mother gave me this book several years ago and I left it to languish on my pile because short essays on who women are/were really isn't high on my list of interesting reads. I prefer to read to escape into a world I can't imagine for myself. But I needed something that I could pick up and put down and I figured that this would fit the bill. As expected, I didn’t love reading this set of personal essays by journalist and news correspondent Roberts, but it was okay. She weaves personal stories in with historical people and events of interest to herself and some of them were, of course, more interesting than others as is usually the case with stories or essays. Overall the political tone of many was off-putting to me but this wasn’t nearly the painful reading experience I expected. Would I read more in this same vein? Only if given to me as a gift by someone I loved but in general I’d say no. The combination of essays and politics was not destined to ever be my cup of tea.

Kids and running

I had a race this weekend. It was my first ever 10K. They also had a kid's fun run in which my kids had originally showed an interest. Well, as time went on one at a time pulled out. Because I am a smart mom, I didn't sign any of them up for the run (it costs money, you know!). But about two days before the race, T., who is all of 6, told me that he wanted to run. By this time I couldn't for the life of me remember details of the kid's race so I told him it was a mile and I wasn't certain he can run that far. He offered to prove me wrong. So I laced up my running shoes and took him out for a mile jog enroute to my longer run for the day. He bobbed along in my wake for a while without talking, which was worrisome since this is a kid who even talks in his sleep. I asked him if he was okay or wanted to slow down and he assured me that he was fine. We continued along with his hair flopping up and down and his feet slapping at the pavement. Finally he broke his silence and asked me if a mile was very far. I agreed that is was far, especially for a little guy his age. Satisfied with that, he kept going up the nasty hill that was the end of the run for him. I watched him jog gratefully into the garage and then headed out on the rest of my run. When I got back, my hubby was in hysterics over drama-boy's comments about the run. First, he got back into the house and announced that he couldn't feel his legs. Then, when asked where mom was, his response was, "Still out there killing herself." He was still flopped on the couch when I heard all this. I didn't hear another word about the fun run even though he'd proved to me that he could indeed do it. And even worse, it turned out that the fun run was only a 1/4 mile, not a full mile. Mean, mean, mean me!

ARC Reading Challenge

I came across another challenge I need to participate in like I need a hole in my head. But I do have scads of ARC's (advanced reading copies) I should try to work out of my tbr piles. I started to collect all the titles but gave up when I realized that I have a shameful amount of them. I will say that generally when a publisher sends me something to review, I am very good about getting to it asap instead of letting it molder there (although not all the time). The bulk of my list is made up of arc's that arrived in my stacks as gifts from others or even leftover from my days of grad school teaching when we were given these things like they were free candy. I only went partly through my stacks but here's the list I found on a quick scan through the D's (with one or two I just knew I had in other spots);

A Delightful Compendium of Consolation by Burton Visotzky
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
A Southern Exposure by Alice Adams
Men May Come and Men May Go But I've Still Got My Little Pink Raincoat by Gigi Anders
Inappropriate Men by Stacey Ballis
Latitudes of Melt by Joan Clark
Everyday Matters by Nardi Reeder Campion
No Bones by Anna Burns
Burnt Bread and Chutney by Carmit Delman
The Way to Somewhere by Angie Day
The Inheritance by Annabel Dilke
I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto
White Man's Grave by Richard Dooley
Flight of the Swan by Rosario Ferre
The Snow Geese by William Fiennes
Having It and Eating It by Sabine Durrant
What's a Girl Gotta Do? by Sparkle Hayter

So the challenge (found here) requires me to read 4 of these between now and Sept. 21 because of the sheer volume of them that I currently have. I am only going to choose two and let the other two be up to fate or any blog readers I may have. (What am I up to now? Two of you besides my husband?) The two that I definitely think I should read are A Delightful Compendium of Consolation since that was indeed sent to me by the publisher and I haven't been timely about it at all and What's a Girl Gotta Do? because I remember getting it handed to me in grad school by one of Cosmo's book editors (plus Hayter writes mysteries and I am such not a mystery girl it's not funny so this would not only get it off my tbr pile, but potentially out of my house). Let me know if you have thoughts on the other two I should read from this list, which may or may not be added to at some later date.

I must be a dance mom

I am the least girly-girl person you could ever hope to meet (well, except for the purse fetish). I don't wear make-up. Doing my hair consists of brushing it when I get out of the shower and letting it air dry while I'm on my errands. If I want you to see my calves (which look pretty nice and muscular if I do say so myself), I wear shorts, not a skirt. I think high heels and most any fashionable shoe is an instrument of torture. Manicures and pedicures are not on my radar; actually I cut my nails the minute they start getting too long. I am really not girly.

So how on earth did I end up with a girly-girl whose great love in life is dancing? Genetics are a funny, funny thing. Suffice it to say my mother is thrilled to have girly granddaughters (my niece lives in her pink dresses and tiaras) since she suffered through years of two tomboy daughters herself. The problem with this whole skip a generation femininity thing though, is that as a mom, I am not very good at teaching or doing the things that make a girly-girl kid happy. This is never more evident than this time of year when I am in the midst of dance recital Hades.

But you can always teach an old dog new tricks, right? After 6 years of a dancing daughter, I can get R.'s lovely curly hair into a reasonably smooth, slicked back bun with no whispies. I am still frequently at a loss with the make-up but we've come up with our own ways of coping with that and at least I now know what eye primer is and how to use it (not on myself though, perish the thought!!!). So generally R. looks pretty put together and decent for her competitions and recital at this point. And while I still denigrate my ability to slap a ton of very dramatic stage make-up and falsh eyelashes that would make a street walker proud onto my 9 year old daughter I realized last night, that I am a real dance mom.

I told some of the younger moms who were worried about getting their small fry from pink tights to carmel tights quickly that the trick to that is to layer your tights (wear both pairs and just peel them off as needed to reveal the correct color underneath). I let another mom know that her idea of having her daughter run back to her in the dressing room for a quick change (one short 2-3 minute number between dances) was going to stress them all out more than necessary (and not work) so she should prepare her daughter for a backstage change. I did the eye make-up for another kid whose mom had to work and so couldn't make the show. I helped strip two kids backstage as they were doing quick changes (sometimes it takes 3-4 moms to get the kid from one elaborate costume to another in that short a period of time). I chaperoned 4 different dances. And through it all, I didn't even flinch once. We'll have to see how I do tonight and tomorrow night when R. has two quick changes herself but maybe there's hope for me as the mother of a girly-girl after all.