It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I've been gone for 6 weeks. First there was a little time in Florida for my daughter's dance competition and then 5 weeks enjoying myself at our family cottage up north. The beauty of the place is at least partly in that it is a place that requires old fashioned entertainment. We didn't even have a phone or electricity until the late 90's. We do now have both but that hasn't changed things too terribly much. Tv is still limited almost exclusively to videos since the three channels we do get (no cable) come in with varying degrees of snow on the screen. There is cellphone coverage if you walk to the very end of the dock, stand on your head and wrap your left leg around your right shoulder while leaning to the west. OK, not really but truly there is only sporadic cell phone coverage. And there certainly is no internet access back in our solitary little bay. What this means for my weeks away is loads of time to sink into reading, lots of books finished, and very few reviews written. But it is the place I love the most in the world so getting a littel behind (a lot) in reviewing is a small price to pay. Please try not to gasp, snicker, or otherwise show any reaction to the now enormous list of books awaiting review! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed these past several weeks are:

A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano
The Little Woman Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
French Lessons by Ellen Sussman
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas
Baby Don't Go by Susan Andersen
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Unsaid by Neil Abramson
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy
Harvest by Catherine Landis
The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji
The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
What Language Is by John McWhorter
The Rules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman
Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly
Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber
Let's Take the Long Road Home by Gail Caldwell
The Gap Year by Sarah Bird

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

Reviews posted this week:

A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano
French Lessons by Ellen Sussman
The Rules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman
Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly

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

West of Here by Jonathan Evison
Made For You and Me by Caitlin Shetterly
You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice
Twelve by Twelve by William Powers
Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum
The Wedding Cake War by Lynna Banning
Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom
Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan
The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache
When the Killing's Done by T.C. Boyle
The First Husband by Laura Dave
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt
Next by James Hynes
Spanish Holiday by Kate Cann
The Little Woman Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas
Baby Don't Go by Susan Andersen
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Unsaid by Neil Abramson
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy
Harvest by Catherine Landis
The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji
The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber
Let's Take the Long Road Home by Gail Caldwell
The Gap Year by Sarah Bird

Review: Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly

Married for only five years, Angelina and Frank have a loving and solid marriage. They work hard at their jobs and are close to friends and family. Their future looks to be one of happiness and contentment. But then Frank dies suddenly and Angelina, still quite a young woman, must go on without him. As if she hasn't suffered enough, immediately following Frank's death, she loses her job. In a coping strategy, she cooks up all the food in her home, despite having a plethora of casseroles and dishes galore from well meaning friends and neighbors after the funeral. Rather than waste the food, she delivers it to grateful folks around the neighborhood. And this isn't just any food, Angelina is a very accomplished amateur cook, a gourmet really. It is through her cooking that Angelina will find a way through her grief.

Not long after offering her creations to neighbors, Angelina finds one neighbor's bachelor brother on her doorstep offering to pay her to feed him breakfast and dinner 6 days a week. Basil is not the only one willing to pay for Angelina's tasty home-cooked concoctions. Soon she is cooking for a diverse group of men, trying new recipes out on them, figuring out what sorts of things each likes to eat, and finding her way back to a new sort of happiness. The bachelors span all ages and all offer Angelina their friendship and support (and empty stomachs to be filled) as she comes to terms with the Frank-shaped hole in her life.

O'Reilly has created a charming and sweet tale complete with recipes developed by wife Virginia. He has done a good job evoking the tightly knit community of South Philadelphia and captured the ethnic quirks of the Italians living there. Reading some of the descriptions, I was transported to my late grandmother's row home, enjoying the memories this triggered. The plot is fairly predictable in this gentle food-centered tale. Recipes are sprinkled throughout the chapters within the text itself, running the risk of pulling the reader out of the story, necessitating a re-immersion into the storyline after each one. It would probably have been stronger had the recipes simply followed each chapter rather than splitting them. But the premise of the book is a good one and the characters are all appealing. Not quite a stick to your ribs hearty lasagne of an offering, this is a fun and warming sort of book that will likely have you salivating at some point.

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

Review: Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

It can't be easy living in the shadow of a famous author parent, especially when deep down, you want nothing so much as to write too. Thirty-five year old Tom Violet has been writing a novel for years, a little afraid his work won't be as good as his father's. After all, Curtis Violet has won all the major literary prizes and has now finally won the Pulitzer for fiction. But Tom has more than just his fears about writing inadequacies to worry about. The novel opens with him in the bathroom bemoaning his flaccid penis while his wife patiently waits for him in their bed, his erectile dysfunction merely a symptom of a larger problem in their marriage. He loathes his work as a copywriter stuck in a soul-sucking corporate job in the midst of the financial meltdown. If Tom had ever grown-up, he might be having a midlife crisis, as it is, and despite his actual age, he's just coming of age into the messiness of life and wondering how he got to where he is now.

As Tom wrestles with the place in which he finds himself, he endears himself, in all his self-deprecating glory, to the reader. He is a bit of a jerk, needling a co-worker he hates at every opportunity and fantasizing about a young and beautiful colleague, but at heart, he is a good guy, wanting everything to come out right for others, even if he's a little afraid of that kind of success and happiness for himself. The secondary characters, his father Curtis, wife Anna, step-father Gary, daughter Allie, are all wonderful, quirky, and eminently human. Tom's overwhelming anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction with his life are very relatable for readers and his response to the setbacks he faces are perhaps the things we all wish we could do or say at one time or another. There's a magnificent dry humor at work throughout the novel and Norman has written an entertaining send-up of authors and the literary world through the person of Curtis Violet.

As the title suggests, this is a domestic-centered novel and it succeeds in all the ways that it does without the pyrotechnics of Hollywood. Refreshing, humorous, and appealing, Domestic Violets is a book that shows us our present, sends us up, and delivers the good feeling that is so hard to pull off without being too treacle. A quick and entertaining read, you'll leave its pages wishing you could meet the slightly bumbling, slightly snarky Tom Violet yourself.

For more information about Matthew Norman and the book visit his blog.

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

Review: The Rules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman

Plath, Hemingway, and Sexton among others. Clinical depression (and suicide) are often cozy bedfellows with creativity. Writers seem to be amazingly over-represented amongst the ranks of the depressed. Ned Zeman, a writer and editor for Vanity Fair, chronicles his own years fighting against this bleak and defeating disease in his memoir The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness.

Written after he pursued every treatment avenue possible: talk therapy, anti-depressents, hospitalization, and even ECT (electro-convusive therapy), Zeman tells of the high toll his illness took on his friends, relationships, and family. The ECT affected his memory, making him lose a great chunk of time, and leaving him an amnesiac. Something about his treatments, either the ECT or a reaction to the medications or some other unknown also triggered a lengthy manic episode where Zeman alienated his girlfriend and drove his friends to the brink with his behaviour. But he was one of the lucky ones, having people in his life stand by him throughout his long bout of depression and ultimately seeming to find the even keel he needed to break out of the debilitation that is chronic depression.

Zeman is honest about this period, not sugar coating his own flaws nor his ungrateful reactions to kindness and help. He obviously inspires great loyalty as a friend but the memoir starts too far into his life to explain this given his self-pitying portrayal of himself. The good news is that while he can be incredibly selfish, he is also quite humorous, allowing the reader to laugh despite the seriousness of his situation. The decision to write using a second person narrator was likely made in order to draw the reader closer into Zeman's experience, asking the reader to imagine him or herself directly into the book. A hard convention to pull off, here it is too jarring and pulls the reader out of the text instead. Where the book really sings is in Zeman's recounting of the biographical articles he wrote for Vanity Fair, covering the lives and deaths of unusual people. As he muses on his obsession over these people and looks at depression or bipolar disease as the driving force in their lives, he learns more about himself and the demons that surround him as well. The book was a quick read once I got past the narration and Zeman is humorously self-deprecating. His memoir is an interesting look at depression from the inside, written in an accessible, journalistic style.


For more information about Ned Zeman and the book visit Vanity Fair's profile on Zeman.

Thanks to Lisa 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.

For me, I can't wait to read: Maman's Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan. The book is being released by Algonquin on September 20, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: For Donia Bijan s family, food has been the language they use to tell their stories and to communicate their love. In 1978, when the Islamic revolution in Iran threatened their safety, they fled to California s Bay Area, where the familiar flavors of Bijan s mother s cooking formed a bridge to the life they left behind. Now, through the prism of food, award-winning chef Donia Bijan unwinds her own story, finding that at the heart of it all is her mother, whose love and support enabled Bijan to realize her dreams. From the Persian world of her youth to the American life she embraced as a teenager to her years at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris (studying under the infamous Madame Brassart) to apprenticeships in France s three-star kitchens and finally back to San Francisco, where she opened her own celebrated bistro, Bijan evokes a vibrant kaleidoscope of cultures and cuisines. And she shares thirty inspired recipes from her childhood (Saffron Yogurt Rice with Chicken and Eggplant and Orange Cardamom Cookies), her French training (Ratatouille with Black Olives and Fried Bread and Purple Plum Skillet Tart), and her cooking career (Roast Duck Legs with Dates and Warm Lentil Salad and Rose Petal Ice Cream). An exhilarating, heartfelt memoir, Maman s Homesick Pie is also a reminder of the women who encourage us to shine.

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.

For me, I can't wait to read: Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts by Claire LaZebnik. The book is being released by 5 Spot on September 1, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: Despite her name, Keats Sedlak is the sanest person in her large, nutty family of brilliant eccentrics. Her parents, both brainy academics, are barely capable of looking after themselves, let alone anyone else, and her two uber-intelligent siblings live on their own planets. At least she can count on one person in her life, her devoted boyfriend Tom. Down-to-earth and loving, he's the one thing that's kept Keats grounded for the last decade. But when Keats's mother makes a surprise announcement, the entire family is sent into a tailspin. For the first time, Keats can't pick up the pieces by herself. Now she must re-evaluate everything she's ever assumed about herself and her family - and make the biggest decision of her life.

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.

For me, I can't wait to read: 40 Love by Madeleine Wickham. The book is being released by Thomas Dunne Books on August 30, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: Both the author and reader win this game of literary tennis, a comedy of manners in which British first-novelist Wickham aces the shallow rich, displaying a wicked backhand along the way. At their country estate, Patrick Chance and his wife host a weekend tennis party of six (two couples, plus a widower and his daughter) that "comes to an unseemly end." Serving as a catalyst for the debacle, the unprincipled Patrick tries unsuccessfully to peddle a financial fund to the superwealthy Charles Mobyn, then cons Stephen Fairweather, a floundering doctoral student, into mortgaging his home to make the same investment. While the couples' children amuse themselves with pony rides and rehearsals for a play, the adults suffer a series of personal revelations and crises. These stem not only from Charles's self-serving schemes but from the unexpected arrival of Charles's ex-lover, Ella Harte, to whom Charles is still attracted, as well as from an unexpected financial threat. In this light, fast-paced novel, where the plot is sure, if occasionally predictable, and the characters are superficial, because that is their nature, Wickham deftly shows at every turn that matters may not be as they seem, but that one truth can be relied upon: money corrupts.