Review: Twelve by Twelve by William Powers

Our book club likes to read certain categories of books at least once a cycle. So when the non-fiction selection month was available, I jumped on it and chose this book. Not only was the premise fascinating to me, but it takes place in our state so I thought it would be perfect. Unfortunately, I think my choice earned the unanimous rotten tomato award for the year and I'd have to agree. There was so much promise left unfulfilled and that, combined with the fairly sanctimonious tone, was the kiss of death.

Powers, an ecological activist long worried about his own carbon footprint, hears of a doctor living in a 12x12 home completely off the grid. Intrigued by her lifestyle, he is offered the opportunity to move into her home during a time period when she is out west protesting and he jumps at the chance to live the life of a wildcrafter. But this leap is inauthentic at best, while musing on nature and this back to the earth lifestyle, Powers never embraces the life fully, falling back on his girlfriend's car, apartment, and the local wi-fi enabled cafe. He glorifies the tiny carbon footprint of living 12x12 and while his point that we should all do more to reduce our carbon consumption is valid, he also ignores the problems of living as Dr. Jackie has done. A major reason she's chosen her lifestyle is her disagreement with tax money being used for war. A legitimate ideological stance but neither she nor he addresses anything worthy that tax money is used for though, such as education. Opting out of taxes through living small means not supporting your local library or local schools, etc. And many of Power's neighbors during his sojourn in Jackie's home aren't truly living in 12x12 homes. Multiple 12x12 buildings to work around the taxation issue is just plain cheating.

And perhaps these issues wouldn't have been so off-putting had they been addressed in the text. Instead, Powers came across as sanctimonious, certain of his righteousness and superiority, and frankly just plain pedantic. The writing was overloaded with unrelated musings and recountings of his past experiences, including his past relationship which resulted in a daughter. Very little of this had any bearing on his living in a small 12x12 structure. Actually, very little of the book indeed, had much of an account of his daily living there. While this is not intended to be a how to guide (and nor did I expect such), including more of the realities and challenges of a life so different from what most of us generally live would have made for a more interesting read. Simply condemning technology for technology's sake left this reader bored and came off as rather disingenuous given Powers' continued reliance on the technology of which he approves but simply removed from Jackie's homesite.

We do need to be more mindful of our impact on the environment but this book ultimately didn't even detail the author's striving to be mindful. A disappointment all the way around.

Review: The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice

When you see white shells on a book cover, it is generally a pretty good indication that the book itself is a beach read. That is very definitely the case with Luanne Rice's latest, The Silver Boat.

Dar and her sisters are having to say goodbye to their family home on Martha's Vineyard after the long illness and eventual death of their mother. Dar is the only one remaining on the island, her sisters having built their lives and families elsewhere so she is perhaps the most affected by the hard decision to sell the family's house and land. As time winds down for the McCarthy daughters and the memories they have rooted in this home, Dar finds letters from her father to her mother. He had always maintained that his family had a royal land grant on the island and so he left to sail to Ireland in search of proof of his claim. Michael was always assumed lost at sea but something in the letters makes Dar believe that he could possibly have made it to Ireland and found the proof about which existence he was so adamant and so she heads off to investigate for herself.

While Dar takes the majority of the focus here, there is a veritable crush of other characters as well, all of whom seem to be suffering in some way. Both Delia and Rory, the other two sisters, are facing family dysfunction of grand proportions and Dar is a rather prickly, curmudgeonly, recovering alcoholic. Their friends on Martha's Vineyard are not terribly well-fleshed out and are unremittingly eccentric. Family drama this has in spades but it has too much going on and too little focus on the primary storyline to be terribly effective. It does, however, fulfill the promise of the cover: a superficially entertaining beach read albeit one that will stay in memory for a shorter time than the sand will stay in your beach bag.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this 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: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson. The book is being released by Grand Central Publishing on January 25, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past-and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.

Review: Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

My husband and I got certified to scuba dive this past spring and I absolutely love it but I have to say that I am incredibly grateful that I didn't read this book before we took our classes. Holy toledo! The bends are a magnitude of 100 times worse than I ever imagined. But being underwater is phenomenal. I don't know that I'd ever want to do deep wreck diving; I'm probably more than content to always be one of the thousands of recreational divers out there. I will never turn down the chance to read about the men and women who dive on the edge of the knife blade though, risking their very lives, especially if the account is as gripping as Kurson's non-fiction account of the discovery and eventual identification of the mystery German U-boat laying in 230 feet of water off the coast of New Jersey, where no U-boat should have been according to official war accounts.

Kurson follows the two divers who were most instrumental in the identification of the U-boat, two men who initially disliked each other but came to respect the driving force behind their different desires to dive the wreck, put a name to it, and to honor the sailors who were forever trapped in their watery grave. Kurson weaves dramatic tension throughout his narrative, even ratcheting it up as he presents the terrible tragedies of first Steve Feldman's death and then Chris and Chrissy Rouse's. He never minimizes the risks taken by all of the divers although his main focus remains on Vietnam vet John Chatterton, who ultimately pulled the spare parts box that would identify the wreck and Richie Kohler, who felt such a responsibility to the long dead sailors that he traveled to Germany to meet with their families.

Kurson does tend to neglect many of the other divers, especially those on the initial dives, mentioning their names briefly but without offering any suggestion of their impressions or contributions. However, his laser focus on Chatterton and Kohler makes for a tight and thrilling narrative that will keep readers, even those with zero knowledge of diving, on the edge of their seats. His descriptions of the dangers inherent in deep water diving, especially in the 90's, before nitrox mixes gained ascendency for such dives, are absolutely heart pounding. And he is spot on when detailing the swirling mess of sediment that contributes to zero visibility. Kurson does not shy away from graphic descriptions of the physical effects of the bends or from the vision of what a drowned body would look like after 5 months in the water and these descriptions will induce horror indeed but they reinforce the dangers and their potential results to which these wreck divers willingly and repeatedly expose themselves.

The book is not all diving though; it is also an historical mystery and Kurson takes the reader along as, much to the dismay of Chatterton and Kohler, each credible theory about the identity of the U-boat falls apart. As the wreck continued to withhold its secrets, the divers had to do archival research and in the process discovered that history as it is written is not always accurate and true. And as they waded through both the factual and the murky, they learn quite a bit about U-boats themselves. At the end of the narrative, as the quest for the boat's identity is coming to its conclusion, Kurson also draws a very credible picture of life on this particular U-boat as well as the lives of the lost crew members.

The writing is polished and the story exciting. I gulped the book down in a little over a day, pulled ever onward by the mystery and the persistence of these men. Dramatic and intense, this was a cracking good read. I just hope the image of what happens to your blood in extreme cases of the bends fades from my head before I have the chance to put a regulator in my mouth again.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Loads of good themed reading but not one review to show for it. I am hanging my head in shame! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Saved by the Sea by David Helvarg
The Marriage of the Sea by Jane Alison
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
Down the Nile by Rosemary Mahoney

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
The Wishmakers by Ali Sethi

Reviews posted this week:

Not a one. Shame on me!

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

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
Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley
The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories by Steve Almond
Withering Tights by Louise Rennison
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson
The Winters in Bloom by Lisa Tucker
The Embers by Hyatt Bass
Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitten
The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker
River House by Sarahlee Lawrence
The Sea Captain's Wife by Beth Powning
The Last River Child by Lori Ann Bloomfield
Saved by the Sea by David Helvarg
The Marriage of the Sea by Jane Alison
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
Down the Nile by Rosemary Mahoney

Memento mori

I hadn't thought about his name in years. But when I saw a facebook update from a mutual friend that he'd died, well, I've been thinking about him ever since. I really don't know anything about the man he became and so I can only grieve his death for the boy I knew, the one I had a serious crush on one year in high school, the one I kissed not once but twice, the boy who seemed far too cool and fearless to have a clue who I was (those two kisses notwithstanding). About his adult self, I only know the tiniest bits I just now gleaned from his Facebook page: that he has at least one daughter, that he owned a business, that his listed interests suggest that he was still fearless. But I really don't know about all of that. I remember the boy and I'm sorry that he is no longer in this world.

I wasn't your garden variety giddy high school girl giggling over every boy. I was a fairly even-keeled, straight arrow, teacher's pet kind of kid. I had my fair share of high school crushes, most (all?) of whom had no idea I had any interest in them at all. The funny thing is that I didn't have an interest in C. until one December when the junior class' annual "Kissing Elves" fundraiser happened. This is the sort of fundraiser that I'm sure would never be allowed now. Frankly I'm a little surprised that it was allowed then. In any case, the juniors sold messages to help finance the junior senoir prom. Each message had a recipient and a deliverer. The recipient had to kiss the deliverer in order to receive the message, hence the name kissing elves. So if you had a huge crush on someone, your friends would send you a kissing elf to be delivered by your crush. Yes, it was as mortifying as it sounds! But there were twists as well. Your friends could be truly diabolical and have the thing delivered by the "Monster Elf." I don't know what the school administration thought the Monster Elf was but in kid terms, it was known to be not just a chaste little smooch in exchange for your message, it was a full on kiss, tongue and all, delivered by an unknown (identity theoretically kept secret) person. At least that's what I was told it was (did I mention I was also very gullible?--although I've never been told that my interpretation was wrong even lo these many years later).

So that December of my freshman year, a friend told me she was going to send me a kissing elf and wanted to know who I wanted to have deliver it. I told her that I didn't want an elf under any circumstances. She threatened to send me a Monster Elf if I didn't give her a name. I didn't believe her. My friends were just as straight arrow as I was and I never would have had the guts to send a Monster Elf. Imagine my surprise when delivery week rolled around and she admitted that she had indeed sent me the Monster Elf. Once the panic subsided a bit, I had to find out who the Monster Elf was that year so I could avoid him as assiduously as possible. It was C. He was a year ahead of me and most likely didn't have a clue who I was even though we went to a very small school. Surely if I skulked through back hallways avoided common areas, I'd be safe, right? Nope. C. tracked me down right outside the lunchroom doors where a third of the school all stood waiting for lunch to start and planted a heck of a kiss on me. I don't think I have ever blushed harder to this day. I suspect that I blushed every time I saw him for the following year too. You'd be forgiven for thinking that I developed a crush on him because of that kiss but I didn't really. I think the crush came about because I had expended so much mental energy thinking about him (and the best ways to avoid that kiss). In any case, in the following year, I found myself trying to be wherever I thought he might be too.

It thrilled and horrified my little soul when he knocked on my car window after school one day when I was sitting in the ever so cool (NOT!) Student Driver car for a behind the wheel lesson. My instructor was not terribly impressed, I might add. After I got my license, I did convince a friend to drive with me past his house a few times in hopes that he was outside. He never was. I had a few brief conversations with him in school when a friend of mine started dating a friend of his. And the friend who had sent me the Monster Elf sent me one specifically from C. the following year. So he kissed me again. And that was really that. Nothing much of interest ever happened with my crush on C. It just sort of faded away. I admit that I did note where he ended up going to college even though by then I had a boyfriend, but my interest was just a small echo of that once consuming crush and after I noted it, I forgot until I saw it listed on his Facebook page.

I haven't thought about him in years, yes, but he held a small (strange) piece of my history, even if, as is most likely, he himself didn't remember one tiny bit of it. 41 is too young to die. RIP C. and may your family take comfort from their memories of you.

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: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. The book is being released by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux on October 11, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: It’s the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.

As Madeleine tries to understand why “it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France,” real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead––charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy––suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old “friend” Mitchell Grammaticus––who’s been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange––resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biologicy laboratory on Cape Cod, but can’t escape the secret responsible for Leonard’s seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.