Tag: april

Don’t Eat This Book

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Spurlock, Morgan. Don’t Eat this Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005.

Reason read: April is National Food Month

If you know anything about Morgan Spurlock you know he is sarcastic, funny and extremely outspoken. I should also mention smart and fearless.When it comes to the evils of fast food Spurlock is all of those things times a hundred. Mention health issues related to morbid obesity and you can practically hear his frustration ooze out in every written word. Spurlock is the man who decided to eat nothing but fast food for thirty days and document his journey. His findings are not earth shattering. They shouldn’t even be surprising and yet they prompted the writing of Don’t Eat This Book. Quite clearly, Spurlock had much more to say on the subject. Within these pages he explores diets around the country, particularly in schools, hospitals and other institutions across the United States. He interviews lawmakers and key decisions makers in an attempt to investigate and reveal the culprits behind our nation’s growing health crisis.

Edited to add: Right after I posted this blog I received an email from LiveStrong with the subject, “What’s REALLY inside McDonald’s chicken McNuggets?” I kid you not.
Eye openers:

  1. At the time of Spurlock’s book he reported McDonald’s had bought Chipotle. What the what?!? Not exactly. McDonald’s initially invested in Chipotle but by 2006 (a year after Don’t Eat This Book was published) they had fully divested itself from the chain. Phew!
  2. You support Philip Morris whenever you buy Altoids, Kraft products, or Milk-Bone dog biscuits, just to name a few.

Author fact: As I mentioned before, Spurlock made a movie which I’m sure you have either seen or at least heard about called “Supersize Me!” – all about what happens when you eat nothing but McDonald’s food for thirty days. He won the Best Director prize at Sundance for his efforts.

Book trivia: There are a lot of “side bar” notes. During the listening of Don’t Eat This Book they sounded like interruptions.

Audio trivia: Spurlock reads his own book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Guilt-Inducing Books” (p 110).

Castle in the Backyard

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Draine, Betsy, and Michael Hinden. Castle in the Backyard: the Dream of a House in France. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) Web 7-30 April 2015.

Before my husband and I bought our house in 2009 we spent a lot of time watching first-time home-buying shows on HGTV and the DYI network. True, we were fascinated with the process but truthfully, we were more than a little scared we would look like idiots when it came our turn to make an offer someone couldn’t refuse. Realtor aside, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We had every reason to be afraid. Buying your first home is not a simple process by any stretch of the imagination even with the careful guidance of books and an expert real estate agent by your side. So, having said all that, I can only imagine what Draine and Hinden were feeling when they decided to buy a summer home in rural southern France. As a couple who got married later in life they didn’t have the opportunity to do a lot of those typical “first-time” things together, like buying a home (she moved into his). Castle in the Backyard is the romantic story of how one vacation turned into an adventure in buying French real estate. Draine and Hinden took almost a year and looked at 40 different properties before stumbling on the perfect “birdcage” of a home in Sarlat in the shadow of a castle, of course. Their retelling of the process is nothing less than perfect; dare I say cute? Even the sex (yes, there is sex) between them is sweetly implied. I loved the layers of humor (the Pepto Bismol was one of my favorites) and the seamless way Draine and Hinden took turns telling the tale.

As an aside, closing a house for the winter in Sarlat sounds not unlike closing a house on Monhegan. Lots of steps!
Biggest trivial take-aways: there is a “giant” Ikea near the Bordeaux airport, Sarlat was the foie-gras capital of France in 1995 and Draine and Hinden lived in “walnut country”.

Reason(s) read: First, there is the fact that April is a great time to visit France. Second, one of my favorite songs is “April in Paris” and my favorite version was sung by Billie Holiday (who was born on April 7th).

Author(s) fact: Draine and Hinden lived in the shadow of the castle for nearly 20 years. That must have been a beautiful time.

Book trivia: I read this an an e-book. I hope I didn’t miss out on much by not having the print and paper book in hand.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the oddly named chapter “So We/I Bought (or Built) a House In…” (p 211).

Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition

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Clark, Nancy. Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 5th Ed. Champaigne, IL: Human Kinetics, 2013.

Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook is jam-packed with all sorts of information, including eating disorders (anorexia & bulemia), which is something I didn’t encounter with other nutrition-for-athletes books I have read. While a great deal of the information is useful I also felt there was a great deal of repetition and common sense “fillers” that took up space (like her comment on plastic water bottles which has nothing to do with sports or nutrition, just her opinion). I enjoyed the clean and well organized chapters but didn’t try any of the recipes in the back. Although I initially borrowed this from a library, this is the kind of book I would buy to keep on my personal library shelves in order to refer back to it again and again.

Reason read: the Toronto Half Marathon is less than a week away. Talk about getting some last minute advice!

Book trivia: while most of the illustrations are interesting and well-meaning, some are downright goofy.

Literary Murder

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Gur, Batya. Literary Murder: a Critical Case. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993.

We first met Michael Ohayon in The Saturday Morning Murder. Since then he has been promoted to Superintendent and his new case is the violent death of a famous poet, lecturer, critic and literature professor from Hebrew University. Curiously, at the same time, albeit miles away, another murder has taken place and this victim is also a member of the same department at the same university. Very interesting. What makes this case so interesting is that Ohayon must wrestle with the complexities of literary criticism, intellectual integrity, and ethics in a world of competitive academia. Everyone at the university becomes a suspect when the motive is simple envy.

One of the things that trips me up about Gur’s writing is the sheer number of characters she puts in her books. While many are well developed interesting characters many more of them are only mentioned once and never again. For some reason I decided to list them all (in alphabetically order):

  • Adiel – scholar
  • Adina Lipkin – faculty secretary
  • Agnon – poet
  • Aldandari – police
  • Anatoly Ferber – poet
  • Andre Sakarov
  • Ariyeh Levy – Major General Jerusalem Subdistrict commander
  • Ariyeh Klein – Medieval poetry professor previously on sabbatical at Columbia
  • Avidan – department investigations officer
  • Avigdor  – head of criminal identification division
  • Avraham Kalitzky – professor
  • Azariya – deputy recovering from back surgery
  • Becky Pomerantz – Uzi’s mother
  • Bialik – poet
  • Boris Zinger – Russian
  • Dana – daughter of Henry Wolf
  • Danny Balilty – intelligence officer
  • Davidov – Host of Book World
  • Dita Fuchs – professor; had an affair with Tirosh
  • Dovik – works in personnel
  • Eli Bahar – police medical examiner
  • Emanuel Shorer – Michael’s predecessor
  • Emuna Yaron – daughter of Agnon
  • Gilly – police spokesman
  • Guy – diving instructor
  • Dr Henry Wolf
  • Helena Radovensky – parent of Tirosh
  • Hirsh – pathologist worked with Michael 8 years
  • Hrabal – poet
  • Iddo Dudai – young, poet, murder victim
  • Illan Muallem – Ofakim police
  • Jan Schasky – parent of Tirosh
  • Kalman Aharonovitz
  • Malka “Mali” Arditi – Klein’s mistress
  • Manfred Herbst – condemned to a leper’s hospital
  • Manny Ezra
  • Meir Shatz – historian
  • Menucha Tishkin – teacher
  • Marom – president of the college
  • Max Lowenthal – lawyer/professor
  • Maya – Michael Ohayon’s girlfriend
  • Michael Ohayon – inspector
  • Motti – diving instructor
  • Natan Zach – poet
  • Nathan Yaron
  • Nechama Leibowitz – professor
  • Nira – Michael’s ex-wife
  • Noa – Uzi’s second wife
  • Ofra Klein
  • Perla Lindborg – Swedish biologist
  • Pnina – Crime Identification Division; forensics
  • Rabbi Sharabi
  • Racheli Luria – third year psychology undergraduate; secretary’s assistant
  • Raffi Alfandan- police
  • Raffi Weizer – Agnon archives
  • Rina – comes to comfort Ruth
  • Ruchama Shai – Tuvia’s wife, had an affair with Shaul
  • Ruth Dudai – Iddo’s wife
  • Sara Amir – frumpy professor
  • Schlomo Ibn Gabriol – poet
  • Shmaya – reporter
  • Shatz – police
  • Shaul Tirosh/Pavel Schasky – lecturer, poet, ladies man, murder victim
  • Shaul – crime scene investigator; married 10 years
  • Shaul Tchernichowsky – poet
  • Shulamith Zellermaier – older, popular lit and folklore professor
  • Tali Shatz – daughter of proefessor who supervised Ohayon’s MA
  • Tsippi Lev-Ari (Goldgraber) – Aharonivitz’s assistant
  • Tuvia Shai – married to Ruchama; professor
  • Tzesha – Racheli’s aunt
  • Tzilla Bahar- Eli’s wife & pregnant
  • Tzipporah – coworker of Ruchama
  • Uzi Rimon – Michael’s childhood friend
  • Yaakov Gafni – Tirosh’s favorite painter
  • Yael Eisenstein – wife of Tirosh (divorced 6 months later) teaching assistant
  • Yehezkiel – poet
  • Yehuda Halevi – poet
  • Youzek – ex-father-in-law
  • Yuval Ohayon – son of Michael Ohayon
  • Zvika – photographer, crime scene investigator

I’m sure I missed a few people here and there, but you see what I mean. It’s not enough for a crime scene photographer to pop in and out of a scene. He, too, must have a name and a story.
Reason read: to continue the Michael Ohayon series started in March.

Author fact: This Ohayon mystery must have been particularly close to Gur’s heart for she was a literary professor in Jerusalem (as of 1993).

Book trivia: This is book #2 in Gur’s series about Inspector Michael Ohayon.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Crime is a Globetrotter: Israel” (p 61).

Two Gardeners

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Wilson, Emily Herring, ed. Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence: a Friendship in Letters. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.

Reason read: to celebrate spring (and somewhere in the world April is National Gardening Month although we had snow showers today). However, three different coworkers mentioned they worked on their gardens over the weekend so it must be true. I’m jealous! I ran 13 miles instead.

Two Gardeners is a delightful book about a friendship that just clicked from the very beginning. Emily Herring Wilson has compiled & edited the letters of Katharine White and Elizabeth Lawrence’s nineteen year correspondence (1958 – 1977) which started with a simple fan letter to Katharine from Elizabeth. Katharine White (married to E.B. White) wrote reviews about gardening catalogs and Elizabeth just happened to respond to one such seed catalog review. Their correspondence grew from strictly talking about gardening to the more personal as time went on. They grew comfortable enough to share details of illnesses (their own and of family) and the trials of growing older. A real friendship starts to bloom despite only being pen pals and meeting once. Yes, I meant that pun! I have to admit it was sad to read about their growing illnesses, especially Katharine’s because hers were more debilitating.
My only “dislike” and a minor one at that: there was a lot of name-dropping between Katharine and Elizabeth and most names had a footnote explaining the significance of each person. I found it curious that “Donna” didn’t have her own footnote. Donna, as in Hurricane Donna, of 1960. Also, relating to the footnotes: Wilson felt it necessary to correct either Katharine or Elizabeth when they made an error in their letters.
I’m sure I would cherish Two Gardeners more if I were half as passionate about gardening as Katharine and Elizabeth. Not all was lost on me, though. I would say Katharine gardened most like me, “I just put things out and let them take their chances” (p 29).
I don’t know what to make of this, but Katharine, in the beginning of their friendship, was always asking Elizabeth not to answer her letters. “Do not answer this!” (p 70).

Quotes I loved, “I suppose she though she was bound to love a fellow gardener” (p 14), and “I am always in debt to Mr. Saier because he sends things at odd times, and I wake up in the night and remember that I have owed him a quarter for three years” (p 20).

Author Editor fact: Emily Herring Wilson just looks like a gardener from her dust jacket cover.

Book trivia: Two Gardeners includes some great photographs of Katharine and Elizabeth as well as their homes and loved ones. There is even one of Katherine with Andy.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Gear Up for Gardening” (p 95). Note: both Katharine and Elizabeth published books on the subject of gardening. Pearl preferred to only mention Katharine’s.

Banana Berry Smoothies

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Larrew, Brekka Hervey. Banana Berry Smoothies and Other Breakfast Recipes (fun foods for cool cooks). Minneapolis, Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2008.

Reason read: always, always on the hunt for ways to make me & myself eat breakfast.

So. This turned out to be a cookbook for young adults. I say young “adult” because there are sharp knives, frying oil and a hot stove involved. Kids definitely need to be supervised while following the recipes if they are under the age of 8 or 9 years old. True to its title, the first recipe is a banana berry smoothie. It then moves on to other typical treats like muffins and pancakes. I thought the entire was well laid out and incredibly cute. It even had a little index. I liked the photographs of the tools needed for each recipe and the trivia facts were fun, too. Did you know Pancake Day is on Shrove Tuesday?

Author fact: Brekka is a stay-at-home mom.

Book trivia: even adults can use these recipes if they are anything like me and have trouble being inspired to eat breakfast!

New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition

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Fitzgerald, Matt. The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: a Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond “the Wall.” Boston: Da Capo Press, 2013.

Reason read: So. I have this little run of 13.1 miles in Toronto in less than two weeks. I’m just now thinking I should research nutrition for this jaunt.

As much as I love books that are designed to make me a better anything my eyes glaze over when the information becomes too out-of-my-league. Take, for example Fitzgerald’s recommendation that runners should know “basic” information: body weight and V02 max. I can jump on a scale and figure out BMI, weight, fat % and bone density… but V02 max? I’m a middle-aged housewife just looking for a little more information on nutrition for runners. Obviously, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition is for consumers who are much more hardcore about running than I am! But having said all that, there was a plethora of take-away information that I could (and probably will) use. Pre-race nutrition was especially helpful, as was the nutrition training plans and the chart of diet quality guidelines.

Author fact: Fitzgerald has written a few other books about running, nutrition and the like.

Book trivia: Kara Goucher, two-time Olympian, wrote the foreword for New Rules. Ryan Hall, also an Olympian, endorsed the book as well.

Royal Flash

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Fraser, George MacDonald. Royal Flash: From the Flashman Papers, 1842-3 and 1847. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1970.

Even though I didn’t remember the plot of Flashman, the first book in Fraser’s series, one detail came rushing back to me immediately when I started Royal Flash – Harry Flashman is definitely not short on ego. He’s the same despicable cad he was in the first book. Within the first few pages of Royal Flash he describes himself as handsome, beloved, admired, and respected. And, like the first few pages of Flashman he winds up in the bed of a beautiful woman almost immediately. But, having said all that, he’s still a coward, albeit a clever one at that. He says brazenly, “The world was my oyster, and if it wasn’t my sword that had opened it, no one was any the wiser” (p 4). This time Flashy has got himself in deep. As payback for an earlier embarrassment Harry is forced to pretend he is Prince Carl Gustaf while the real royalty gets over a bout of the clap. Only, here’s the twist: he takes over for Carl on the eve of his wedding and has to marry the Irma, the frosty Duchess of Strackenz. He is assured the marriage is not binding due to his different religious faith (and the fact he is already married). True to Fraser style, all is not as it seems and Flashman finds himself in one pickle after another.

Couldn’t help myself lines I like, “Royalty – I have Bersonin’s solemn word for it – never claw at their arses to assist thought” (p 113).

Reason read: George MacDonald Fraser was born in the month of April.

Book trivia: this is the second book in the Flashman series. I read Flashman a long time ago (Oct 20, 2009) and had to review my blog to remember what I read.

Author fact: I have heard it said that Harry Flashman is George MacDonald Fraser in disguise. A womanizing coward? Yikes.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93).

Measure of All Things

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Alder, Ken. The Measure of All Things: the Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World. Read by Byron Jennings. New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2002.

While the French Revolution raged around them, the Royal Academy of Sciences had a plan – to measure the circumference of the world and they knew just the two scientists (astronomers also known as savants) to do it. Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre was to head north from Paris while his partner, Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain headed south. [As an aside, when Alder referred to them as the north and south going astronomers I instantly thought of Dr. Seuss & his Sneetches. Yup, I’m a seven year old at heart.] What was supposed to be a year-long adventure turned into seven but the end result was the definition of the meter and the birth of the metric system. Part biographical, part scientific, part historical and part adventure Alder adds intrigue when he delves into a secret error that only Delambre and Mechain knew about. He goes on to question exactly what is an error and he speculates on the lives of the men who changed the course of weights and measures.

Reason read: April is National Math, Science and Technology month

Author fact: Alder is the author of a couple of other books but this is the only one on my list.

Book trivia: The Measure of All Things includes illustrations and photographs. My favorite photo is of the Rodez Cathedral

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Techno-Thrillers” (p 232).

Binding Spell

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Arthur, Elizabeth. Binding Spell. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Binding Spell is another one of those stories where you feel like you have been lifted out of your little life and plopped down in the middle of someone else’s. A lot of someone elses, really. Felicity, Indiana is a community full of interesting characters and Binding Spell has the occasional long rambling commentary on religion and the nuclear arms threat, especially when the Russians come to town. Let me back up. Meet the community of Felicity: Ryland Guthrie is a hypochondriac furniture salesman. His brother Peale has been the county sheriff for all of five months. Ryland was married to April (divorced five years) and they have a son, Clayton. Peale married Amanda but sometimes forgets she’s his wife. Bailey and Howell Bourne are brother and sister. They lost their parents in a car accident. Bailey is twenty years old and a witch in training and Howell is married to Charlene. Ada Esterhaczy is Hungarian and a self proclaimed witch. Maggie, a counselor at Powell College, is her granddaughter. She also dabbles in witchcraft. Billy Bob Watson is the maintenance man at Powell. He likes to try to run over students with his tractor. Mitch Ketchum is a down and out desperate farmer in danger of losing his farm. Murrary Anderson artificially inseminates horses and has just been dumped by his girlfriend, Rosie. Dr. Richard Minot is a professor at Howell and has the hots for Maggie. Ryland starts dating Maggie. Peale has a thing for Bailey. Ada just wants her dog to mate with Ryland’s so that she can breed puppies. Then there are is the weather. Did you get all of that? Now enter the two Russians, come to visit Powell College. Howell, Billy Bob and Mitch hatch a plan to kidnap the Russians in order to save their farms. Thinking Ada will hate the Russians due to her Hungarian heritage they bring the captives to her farm. Only Ada is too busy cooking up love potions to bind certain couples (human and animal)…and that’s when things go a little crazy.

Lines I liked, “She was less trouble than her pet cat” (p 39) and “Now, as the pain – which might, admittedly, have been caused by that ice water he had drunk down so rapidly, with some ice shards inadvertently included – poked him tenderly in the side, he could not decide whether it was pancreatic cancer or Maggie’s being late” (p 217).

Reason read: April is National Dog Month

Author fact: Arthur wrote a memoir, Island Sojourn that is not on my list.

Book trivia: Binding Spell is Arthur’s third novel but the only one I’m reading for the Challenge.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Great Dogs in Fiction” (p 105). Chance is my favorite of the dogs.

Southern Mail

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Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. Southern Mail. Translated by Curtis Cate. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1971.

Previously published as Courrier Sad, Southern Mail introduces us to love and loneliness. Bernis is a pilot caught in a tragic love affair. It complicates his entire psyche until he is in the air, delivering the mail. Flying is his true passion but it’s also where he feels the loneliest. Woven throughout the slim volume Saint-Exupery reveals a philosophical beauty about landscapes (lots of references to the ocean) as well as the people. But, much like Night Flight the emphasis is on the timely deliverance of the mail. Nowhere is that more apparent than at the very end of the story. While the plane had crashed and the pilot was lost they still managed to salvage the mail and it, if not the pilot, arrived on safely.

Quotes that had to be quoted, “Tonight, in a moment of fleeting rapture, she would seek out this weak shoulder and bury her face in this weak refuge, like some wild wounded creature preparing to die” (p 54-55), “Yet so cruel was his loneliness that he needed her terribly” (p 74), and “His heart would have melted from sadness and joy” (p 103).

Reason read: to continue the series started in March.

Author fact: Saint-Exupery died when he was 44 years old.

Book trivia: This is another short one – only 120 pages long.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Flying High Above the Clouds” (p 90).

Everything You Ever Wanted

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Lauren, Jillian. Everything You Ever Wanted: a Memoir. New York: Penguin, 2015.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing I occasionally review uncorrected proofs. This is my book for March/April.

It is safe to say I devoured Everything You Ever Wanted. In the midst of reading four other books I made time for Everything every single day. But, here’s the thing – her writing is so clear, so honest, so raw that I didn’t want to rush it. I wanted to savor every page, every sentence, every word (much like I did when I reviewed her earlier work, Pretty).
Lauren wrote Everything You Ever Wanted for her adopted son, Tariku; how she came to be his forever mom, his real mom. But, here’s the beautiful thing about this book – if you know anything about Jillian Lauren you know she has had a colorful past. She is a self proclaimed former addict and slut.  With her tattoos and rocker attitude she doesn’t look like the perfect candidate to adopt a child, much less one with special needs. But Everything You Ever Wanted doesn’t sugarcoat any of her experiences, past or present. It wasn’t enough to say, “hey – I have a rough history but here’s how I got beyond it.” No, she let her past struggles give her strength to deal with new ones. This is a great read for anyone who thinks they “blew it” earlier in life and can’t start over. Even the end of Everything You Ever Wanted has shafts of sunlit hope. Despite her sex & drugs former lifestyle, Lauren and her husband want to adopt for a second time to give Tariku a sibling. By now all the agencies know her story. SPOILER ALERT: she doesn’t tell you if they are successful, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying.

Confessional: it is so frustrating to review an uncorrected proof! There are so many great sentences I wanted to pull out of Everything You Ever Wanted if nothing more than to say, look at how beautiful this writing is!

Little Follies

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Kraft, Eric. Little Follies: the Personal History, Adventure, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy (So Far). New York: Crown Publishers, 1992.

Little Follies takes us back to Peter Leroy’s memories of childhood, growing up in the 50s. Each chapter was previously a short story and put together they pay homage to a classic American boyhood. There are nine novellas in all: My Mother Takes a Tumble, Do Clams Bite?, Life on the Bolotomy, The Static of the Spheres (my favorite), The Fox and the Clam, The Girl with the White Fur Muff, Take the Long Way Home, Call Me Larry and The Young Tars. Every story is so honest you get the sense there is a little (or a lot) of Eric Kraft’s own childhood in each one. I chose Static of the Spheres as my favorite because everything about it is so nostalgic and true. There’s grandpa, determined to build his grandson a shortwave radio. His tenacious ambition doesn’t allow him to give up even when the entire project is threatened by a flood in the basement. Then there’s the grandson, determined to love this radio, even when all the finished product produces is static.

Favorite line, “I knew that I was up to my knees in a disaster” (p 184).

Reason read: to continue the series started in February in honor of Kraft’s birth month.

Author fact: This is a few years old, but Bomb Magazine has a great interview with Kraft here.

Book trivia: Little Follies includes illustrations.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Eric Kraft: Too Good To Miss” (p 140).

Herzog

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Bellow, Saul. Herzog. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1964.

Moses Alkanan Herzog is a man experiencing a midlife crisis. His coping mechanism is to write letters in his head; if they make do it to paper, they are letters he most often does not mail. With each letter comes a flashback to a particular monumental time in Herzog’s memory. Most of his reminiscing centers on his two failed marriages and all the relationships to which he cannot commit. He is a well intentioned, extremely intelligent yet sad man. An example: sometime after the divorce from his second wife Herzog visits a friend and her husband on Martha’s Vineyard. Soon after arriving he realizes his friends are way too happy for his state of mind. He decides, moments after arriving, he he must leave immediately. Instead of facing his well-intentioned friends to explain the mistake, Herzog writes a note and slips away unnoticed. There is a singular self-satisfaction in the fact that he makes it back to New York City by 11pm. Herzog has a heart and deeply cares, despite the fact he is so misunderstood. When he suspects his daughter is being abused he travels to his ex-wife’s home to confront the abuser. His motives are good even though the end is not what he intended.

Confessional: I have this friend who passed away over a year ago. I don’t know why, but at times, Herzog reminded me of him. Maybe it was the multiple marriages and all the exotic relationships with women?

Favorite lines, “A person of irregular tendencies, he practiced the art of circling among random facts to swoop down on the essentials” (p 18), and “A free foot on a summer night eases the heart” (p 194). This last line totally made me think of my husband.

Reason read (April 20th – May 4th): Mr. Bellow passed away in April of 2005 and May is National Jewish American month. In this (rare) instance I am reading one book in two different months. It just worked out that way.

Author fact: Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize for literature.

Book trivia: Herzog won the National Book Award for fiction and was a New York Times best seller (also named top 100 of all “Time” by Time Magazine).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Jewish American Experience” (p 132).

Lotus Eaters

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Soli, Tatjana. The Lotus Eaters. Read by Kirsten Potter. Blackstone Audio, 2010.

In the year of 1975 North Vietnam is still pushing towards Saigon. It’s the end of the Vietnam war (or American war, depending on who you ask). The Lotus Eaters opens with the city’s demise being eminent and the panic to escape, mounting. Caught in this frenzy is Helen Adams, a seasoned American photojournalist, and her Vietnamese lover, Lihn. Stepping back in time, we learn that Helen is following in the footsteps of her soldier brother, killed in action earlier in the war. She has come to Vietnam to research his death and ultimately falls in love with the war.  As we follow Helen from her first arriving in Saigon, we witness her naivete and her desperate need to belong. Quickly, she attaches herself to Sam Darrow, a fellow photojournalist who has been around the block a few times. He is supposed to be a hard-nosed, loner of a photographer, but he and Helen soon develop a romantic relationship that defies logic and marriage vows. Sam’s assistant, Lihn complicates things when he too falls in love with Helen. In the midst of well-worn war, emerges a not-so obvious love triangle.
In other reviews I have read the complaint is Soli takes the story too far, drags it out too long. I disagree. Each phase of Helen’s time in Vietnam, as well as her time away, builds a layer of her personality and adds to the complexity of her emotions. I am of two minds about the beginning, though. Soli reveals upfront that Lihn is Helen’s lover and they are desperate to get out of Saigon. That information nagged at me throughout the rest of the telling because I knew it was coming. For example, I expected something to happen to Darrow because the shift in Helen’s relationship with Lihn. It was a matter of when this something would happen that kept me guessing.

Reason read: Saigon fell in the month of April. Confessional: this was a little longer than I anticipated so I listened to it a few days into May.

Author fact: The Lotus Eaters is Tatjana Soli’s first book.

Reader fact: Kirsten Potter graduated from Boston University.

Book trivia: The Lotus Eaters won the James Tait Black Prize in 2010.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Vietnam” (p 248). Duh.