Monday Mailbox

I didn't manage to get around to this one last week so I'm adding the sole book that came my way for the week prior to this post as well. This past week's mailbox arrival:

Table of Contents by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp came from the author.
Recipes and short vignettes from popular authors? I can hardly wait to dive into this one!

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry came from my Secret Santa along with hot cocoa, a bookmark, and cute notecards.
A 100 year old mental patient decides to write her autobiography but her doctor discovers a different, also compelling narrative in her commitment papers. Sounds fascinating to me.

Here, Home, Hope by Kaira Rouda came from the author and was a Facebook contest win.
A 39 year old woman who takes a look at her comfortable existence and decides she wants to reinvent her life, this one might hit a little close to home for me but the description makes it sound so charming I forgive the copy writer for mentioning the re-envisioning as a midlife crisis (says she who is about to hit her 40th birthday).

Playdate by Thelma Adams came from St. Martin's Press.
A skewering of modern suburban life, how could I resist this one? The obvious answer is that I couldn't.

West of Here by Jonathon Evison came from Algonquin.
A sprawling saga tying in 100 years around a dam from the original settlers who built it to their descendants who want to tear it down 100 years later, this novel has gotten raves and I can't wait to be a part of the conversation about it.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Library of Clean Reads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I didn't play along with this last week so this is two week's worth of stuff. This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

Lonely by Emily White
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breathrough by Ruth Pennebaker
Crossing Borders by Michael Ferris
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
I'm in No Mood for Love by Rachel Gibson
Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin


Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Someone Else's Garden by Dipika Rai

Reviews posted this week:

Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Breakfast With Buddha by Roland Merullo
The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Lisa Verge Higgins
The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern
Lonely by Emily White
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough by Ruth Pennebaker
Crossing Borders by Michael Ferris

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

The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
I'm in No Mood for Love by Rachel Gibson
Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Review: Crossing Borders by Michael Ferris

Michael Ferris grew up in Michigan but when he left home to go to school, he went farther than most 18 year olds. He went all the way to Austria in order to go to music school. This memoir tells of some of his experiences living abroad for 12 years now.

Ferris opens his memoir talking about his untraveled younger self and getting to Europe. Once he is there, many of his experiences revolve around cultural misunderstandings (both those made by him and those made by others) and culture shock. Meeting not only Austrians but also people from various other countries in Europe and Africa broadens his horizons and makes him more sensitive to the simple differences that we sometimes misinterpret negatively instead of realizing them for what they are: different expectations and actions dictated by our cultural beliefs, harmless but important to recognize in fostering understanding.

The memoir is very short and made up of not quite fully realized vignettes. Chapter transitions are choppy and I had to double check that I hadn't skipped pages several times as the jumps in time can be disconcerting and unexpected. When Ferris describes cultural traditions unfamiliar to Americans, his tone takes on that of a pedant, which was out of keeping with his more conversational tone elsewhere. And while this was a quick read, it strikes me more as the type of book that's lovely for his family to have but not polished or fleshed out enough for a larger audience. In all fairness, the reviewers at amazon disagree with me entirely and have seen something here that I clearly missed so by all means check their opinions out as well.

Thanks to the author and Pump Up Your Book Book Tours for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

Tamara Goodwin is a spoiled rotten, selfish, boy and clothing obsessed brat of a teenager. She's also just had her world rocked off its axis. Her father committed suicide and left a mountain of debts that mean she and her mother have to go live in the back of beyond with her Uncle Arthur and Aunt Rosaleen, whom Tamara has dubbed the Deliverance Duo. Cut off from her friends, shopping, her enormous house, and elaborate expectations, Tamara is determined not to make the best of things. Even worse, her mother is retreating into grief and sleep, leaving Tamara at the overbearing and obsessive mercy of Aunt Rosaleen.

In an effort to escape the claustrophobic feel of the house and her ever-watchful aunt, Tamara starts to explore the local castle's ruins (of much more recent vintage than she thinks), befriends a nun who lives nearby, meets some local teenagers, and flirts with the mobile library driver, on whose bus she discovers a blank book that starts to reveal to her, in her own handwriting no less, her own near future. The book is a diary and each entry is dated the day she is reading it but it is written as if it has already happened. What she does with this knowledge and the ways in which she is able (or not) to change the outcome drives the plot for the most part.

I found it incredibly hard to care about Tamara. She was such a snotty, whiny, mopey character and was fairly stagnant throughout the book, only gaining a little clarity about others at the extreme end of the book. Unfortunately, for me, that was too little too late. My good opinion once lost... The rising tension and slight gothic air made the book more interesting but many of the secrets Tamara discovered were so heavily foreshadowed (sign-posted?) that they were not a surprise when they were revealed taking away the impact they should have had. The actual book of tomorrow as a plot device sort of petered out only to reappear later and that felt more sloppy than intentional. Ultimately I was disappointed in the book, having expected something much different from the jacket copy but I suspect that Ahern's many fans will overlook the weaknesses here and thoroughly enjoy this slightly fantastical bit of chick lit.

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

Review: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough by Ruth Pennebaker

Joanie is nearly fifty, divorced and navigating the work world for the first time in years. Her fifteen year old daughter Caroline is surly, sarcastic, unappreciative, and dealing with all the terrible emotional baggage of being socially awkward in high school. Her ex-husband and his very young girlfriend are expecting a baby, yes the very same ex-husband who left her because he didn't want any commitments. And as if that wasn't enough to deal with, Joanie's mother Ivy has moved in with her now that the recession has depleted almost all of the careful savings she and her late husband had socked away. While Joanie wrestles with feeling like a dinosaur at the advertising agency where she's working and the stress of being a charter member of the sandwich generation, Ivy sinks into depression, feeling as if she's nothing but a burden on the daughter who she never loved quite as much as she loved her son, and Caroline suffers from unrequited love and the feeling of invisibility at school.

Narrated in turns by all three women, Pennebaker has captured three very different life stages with humor and understanding. Joanie, Ivy, and Caroline are facing monumental life changes and so they are perhaps having more than a little trouble focusing on anyone outside of themselves but they are all so interconnected that they must rub along together as best they can. Joanie still harbors anger at the fact that her brother was always the favored child, even now when he has not taken their mother in. Caroline is certain that her mother could never have any conception of how dismal her teenaged existence is so she is as uncommunicative as it is possible to be. Ivy knows that she has undervalued her daughter but can't help wishing that Joanie conformed more to what she, Ivy, wanted. The complex and tangled relationships between the characters show the exasperation, frustration, and (in some cases grudging) love between mothers and daughters, especially those forced by circumstance to live under the same small, too intimate roof.

Each of the characters comes off as a pitch perfect representative of her generation and stage in life. They seem like people we know in our everyday life or hear about from friends discussing their teenager's behaviour or their aging parent's gradual diminishment. Perhaps they are even us. Their myopic blindness about what is most vital in each others' lives is sad but Pennebaker has managed to temper that sadness and inability to see with great moments of humor. This is a quick, satisfying read and while I found the ending to be a bit abrupt, over all it was an entertaining book.

Enjoy the book trailer below:






For more information about Ruth Pennebaker and the book, be sure to visit her website.


Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the author 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: My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe. The book is being released by Bloomsbury on March 1, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: Former senior editor of the Paris Review, Howe recounts his stint as owner and beleaguered worker of a Brooklyn deli in this touching memoir. Howe and his wife, Gab, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decide to buy a deli for her parents as a gesture of goodwill for the sacrifices they have made. His mother-in-law, Kay, whom he describes as œthe Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers, is gung-ho from the start, and when a store is finally purchased in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn, she immediately takes charge. The work (including manipulating the devilish lottery machine) is more trying than Howe anticipated, not to mention dealing with the eccentric neighborhood characters who complain bitterly about any changes, from coffee prices to shelf rearrangements. Mostly working the night shift, Howe also maintains his position at the magazine. Both establishments are sinking ships: the deli hemorrhages money as bills pile up and revenue falters; the Review grows more disorganized, and subscribership plummets. Howe ably transforms what could have been a string of amusing vignettes about deli ownership into a humorous but heartfelt look into the complexities of family dynamics and the search for identity.

Review: Lonely by Emily White

Conditions like depression used to be talked about in whispers if at all. There was something shameful about being depressed. Surely it was just something the sufferer could cure him or herself if they put their minds to it. Now we know that this sort of thinking is wrong-headed for depression but we seem to have shifted the stigma to loneliness. And not only have we shifted the stigma but we are reluctant to name loneliness as a chronic condition needing recognition and treatment in some people. After all, we all get lonely, right? So it can't possibly be anything worth researching, spending time and money on understanding. This in-depth memoir by Emily White certainly proves otherwise.

White suffered chronic loneliness for years. She knew all of the platitudes about going out and meeting new people to combat the problem but she just couldn't. Being of an analytical mind, she threw herself into researching the problem of loneliness as a means to understand and perhaps finally combat the hell with which she was living. She found a paucity of information compared to other afflictions and discovered that loneliness was often conflated with depression. But she knew there was more to it and so kept digging. Her very thorough research weaves around, through, and beside her own story of isolation and lack of social connection. She candidly describes her own symptoms as she sank further and further into a state of chronic loneliness, how she compensated in her life, and how ashamed she was of naming her feelings, despite the fact of having watched her mother battle loneliness and therefore knowing she had a genetic predisposition for the condition. White examines the recent rise in loneliness, social factors that exacerbate the problem, and the long-term physical and emotional effects of being socially unconnected. In addition to published articles, she also interviewed volunteers who identified as lonely, using their reports to add weight to the scientific findings and echoing her own struggles.

The concept of chronic loneliness being so debilitating is new to me, more familiar as I am with situational loneliness (loneliness with a root cause in a certain situation like a move or divorce). I found White's struggle with loneliness and the fact that she chose to research it in depth as a partial coping mechanism to be incredibly interesting. The research she presents in the book is comprehensive but it often overwhelms the more personal aspect of the memoir. There was a lot to absorb in the book and that made the reading dense although White is good with words and presents scientific findings in an accessible manner. Although billed as a memoir, it is probably more properly belongs in the psychology or social science section than with the biographies and memoirs as it is heavier on the objective research than it is on memoir. But that's more a classification issue than anything else. Folks looking to read a straight memoir won't find that here but will instead find a book that goes a long way to try and bring this under-examined condition to light and to erase the stigma so prevalent around admitting to lonelinesss. It's not just a personal social problem, it's a debilitating ache that should be given more credence in the mental health profession and indeed society at large.

For more information about Emily White and the book, be sure to visit her website or her blog.



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