Category: Early Review

February Is…

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heartWhen you think of the month of February what do you think of? I think of Valentine’s Day and how much I hate the Hallmark Holiday. I think of how I survived another year being me…and how I can’t wait to be me for another year. I think of National History month, National Friendship month, National Theater Month, National Science month, and the birthdays of Jonathan Letham, Ross Thomas, Russell Hoban, and Ian Banks. Lots and lots of reading for the month of February. Unfortunately, all of this will have to be put on hold while I read other things. LibraryThing has me tied up with:

  • The Jerusalem Diet: Guided Imagery and the Personal Path to Weight Control by Judith Besserman and Emily Budick
  • Dancing to “Almendra”: A Novel by Mayra Montero
  • and a third book coming soon.

Here’s where I’ll try after I am done with those:

  • American Century – by Harord Evans
  • Defiant Hero – by Suzanne Brockmann
  • His Excellency – by Joseph Ellis
  • Bright Young Things – by Amanda Vail

I just found out that American Century is over 700 pages long and is a nemesis subject of mine: history. Ugh. So, I anticipate I won’t get to any of the others this February. Maybe next year!

Have You Found Her

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Erlbaum, Janice. Have You Found Her, A Memoir. New York: Villard Books, 2008.

I often say “I couldn’t put it down” to describe a page turner; a really good book. I just finished Janice Erlbaum’s Have You Found Her and I have to say first, it only took me six hours to read. Only six hours because not only was it a real page turner, but it was a too-good-to-stop page turner. It was a roller coaster of a read. Emotional and unpredictable. I felt every one of Janice’s highs and lows like they were happening to me.
To sum up the plot is to sell it short. To say it is the story of a woman’s journey through a relationship with a troubled homeless teen is to leave out the heartaches, the loves and hates, the hardness of being homeless, the despair of addictions. In addition to asking “what next?” from chapter to chapter the reader is also left asking “how is this possible?” Janice’s experiences are so fantastic and her feelings vibrate so strongly that every page is a live wire of tension. This is not your typical “soul searching” memoir for the author, her subject…or the reader.
I only found one discrepancy with the detail. Janice finds out her homeless friend has been discharged from a hospital back into the care of the shelter where Janice is a volunteer. Because if “rules” Janice must wait two days until her schedule volunteer day (Wednesday) before she can seek out the girl. Yet, when Janice arrives at the shelter she says she knows Sam was discharged on Wednesday when in fact, according to detail, it would have been a Monday (page 73). This is a small oversight in an otherwise fascinating and haunting story.

Red Zone Blues

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Escobar, Pepe. Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge. Ann Arbor: Nimble Books, L.L.C., 2007.

The following was what I posted on LibraryThing  a while ago. I forgot that it has a place here as well.

Red Zone Blues was like reading something by a politically focused Anthony Bourdain. Escabar’s language was gritty, sarcastic, and colorful. His opinions are not veiled in the least. The prologue seemed to be added just for shock value, something to get the reader revved up for more. Each subsequent chapter was short, like a stand-alone essay, written with sarcasm and thought-provoking observation. While the “essays” seemed disjointed, each was a mere glimpse into a certain time period of Iraq: a refugee’s visa troubles, a road-side arrest, the sniper infested society just to name a few. Each chapter was a quick and dirty peep show of the culture, the people and politics of Iraq. It left you wanting more, squirming all the while.

** This blog has the tag “RandomHouse” even though it is not a Random House publication. When I first started the Early Reviewer program I thought I would be reviewing titles only published through Random House (and thus created the tag). I needed a tag that would differentiate book reviews written for the Book Lust challenge from those written for the Early Reviewer program. **

The Guardians

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The GuardiansCastillo, Ana. The Guardians. New York: Random House, 2007.

I received this book as one of those Early Reviewer books from Librarything.
Four different first-person voices tell the story of The Guardian. Regina (middle-aged, sassy entreprenuer looking after her brother’s son, Gabo), Gabo (Regina’s nephew. Serious, religious, older than his 16 years, heaviest on the Spanish, started running with a tough crowd), Miguel (a teacher and activist, has a laid back way of looking at the world around him, sizes people up accurately, has an interest in Regina), El Abuelo Milton (Miguel’s grandfather. He is described as being blind but can see Regina clear enough to call her a Helen of Troy goddess), The voices are accurate for each character. True to the elderly, Milton is always thinking about the past, Miquel remembers his activism days, Gabo searches for religious expression, and Regina tries to hold everything together.

The premise of this story is these four characters join together to solve the mystery of Gabo’s missing father after he disappears while crossing the Mexican border. Intertwined in the plot are political statements about drugs, the environment, gangs, immigration; as well as humanitarian statements about culture, relationships, families and community.

I find it interesting that Regina & Gabo both mention how avocados are the only thing Regina can’t grow in her garden. They also both mention changing the dog’s name. It’s as if both are trying to make excuses for these things.

Literary references mentioned:

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez,
  • 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlinsky,
  • Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx,
  • The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and The Gambler by Dostoyevsky,
  • Das Kapital by Karl Marx,
  • The Jungle by Upton Sinclair,
  • The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela,
  • Things Fall Apart by Achebe, and
  • The Second Coming by Yeats.

I know I’m not supposed to quote the book until it’s been published, but I can’t help it. I identified with Regina the most because all my favorite quotes came from her. “Not knowing when you are being teased also comes from being alone for inordinate amounts of time” (p 49). “Not being elegant doesn’t mean you don’t have class” (p 138). “No dream is too big when you are that young” (208).

Pardon the Interruption

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I may have to put the Book Lust project on hold every now and then. Come to think of it, I’ll have to admend my BL “rules” as well. Here’s what happened. A few weeks ago LibraryThing sent me a private comment…they said they were looking for people to be involved in their Early Reviewers Program. 500 out of 215,981 members would be chosen to receive pre-publication copies of Random House titles as long as they post reviews on LibraryThing after reading them. We wouldn’t be paid for our reviews but we would get free books. How cool is that? I don’t get paid for the reviews I already write so what the hey? Sounds like fun only it will cut into my BookLust Challenge.
Today, I found out that I have been chosen to receive a book! Since there are 500 members and only 5 books to chose from, I was convinced I would be in the “sooner or LATER” group – as in “sooner or later you’ll get a book to review…but not right now.”

I’ve been told the RH book should be here within a week. That means As I Lay Dying and Aspects of the Novel will hang in the balance between unfinished and finished until the RH assignment is finished.