Tag: book review

Appointment in Samarra

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appointment in samarraO’Hara John. Appointment in Samarra. New York: Vintage, 2003.

In honor of Pennsylvania becoming a state in the month of December Appointment in Samarra was my first novel pick. I was excited to see the introduction was written by John Updike. He is another author I have enjoyed over the years. Set in the 1930’s with a keen eye on society, O’Hara tells the story of Caroline & Julian English and their how their elite status is washed away with alcohol and attitude. In an instance the English couple go from being the toast of the town to the talk of trash.

“I love you more than a tongue can tell” (p 63).
“…their position in Gibbsville was just that certain and insecure…” (p 83).
“…she was too conscious of looking like the wrath of God to enjoy any of it” (p 121).
“The worst of that drive was that the sun glare on the snow made you smile before you were ready” (p 200).

As an aside: I don’t remember where I was when I learned that the Lenape Indians believed the turtle was the center of the universe. To this day, it remains the only thing I know about this particular tribe. It was interesting to see O’Hara mention the tribe in his historical ancestry of the English family.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Pennsylvania)” (p 30). 

Twelve Days of Christmas

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12 days of ChristmasKnight, Hilary. Hilary Knight’s Twelve Days of Christmas. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2001.

On the surface this book looks like your average kids’ book. Cute pictures and a storyline you can sing. We all know “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – it’s that silly song that involves milking cows, egg producing hens, and ladies dancing among other things. What makes this book special is what is going on behind the scenes. There’s a whole other story unfolding in the illustrations.  On the surface Bedelia the bear is trying to tell you what her true love gave to her during the twelve days of Christmas (Dec 25- Jan 6) and then there is Benjamin, for those twelve days straight, bringing her the goods. In the background there’s Reginald the raccoon. He lives in Bedelia’s basement for some strange reason, and if you are observant, you learn that he pines for the perfect girl. Throughout Benjamin’s trips to Bedelia’s door with various (odd) gifts, you see Reginald struggling with something of his own.
In the end (and I won’t ruin it for you), you will want to go back and look at all the illustrations just a little closer. Everything has a meaning – beyond Benjamin looking to woo Bedelia with twelve lords a~leaping (my favorite). Seriously. Check out the lords. They’ll crack you up.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and the chapter “Christmas Books for the Whole Family to Read” (p 55).

Father Christmas Letters

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Father ChristmasTolkien, J.R.R. The Father Christmas Letters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Pure magic. I loved every minute of this book! I have always loved J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination. From The Hobbit to The Two Towers I have always enjoyed submerging myself in his work. This book is something special. I think Nancy Pearl sums it up best in Book Lust “Tolkien wrote these letters for his children, beginning in 1920 and ending in 1939. Whimsical pictures complement the descriptions of Father Christmas’s life at the North Pole” (p 56). But, what Pearl doesn’t tell you is that Tolkien is posing as Father Christmas, and each letter (one for each year) is a continuation a story (involving a polar bear, elves and ) from the year before. The illustrations that accompany the letters are as captivating as the storyline. I can truly imagine being a child, caught up in waiting for the letter from Father Christmas.
The sobering thing about this book is that it ends the same year that World War II starts. Tolkien even makes mention of it on the last page “Half the world seems in the wrong place.” It seems like everyone needed to put aside childhood in 1939.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust  in the chapter “Christmas Books For The Whole Family To Read” (p 55).

Bill Bryson’s African Diary

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African DiaryBryson, Bill. Bill Bryson’s African Diary. New York, Broadway Books, 2002.

I added this to the December list when I read a review describing it as “short.” It’s much shorter than I thought – only 49 pages of “diary” and a few more pages of statistical information. So short that I was able to read it over a lunch break. I’m glad it was a quick read because I couldn’t put it down. I’m a sucker for charitable tactics, especially unique ones, and this book definitely qualifies. CARE International (a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting global poverty) funded Bill Bryson’s trip to Nairobi, Africa with the request that he write about his eight day adventure. Bryson is known for his travel literature, his humor, and his expressive way of describing life around him. He would certainly be able to describe the poverty, the landscape, and best of all, the people of Africa. Many reviewers called this book a charity puff-piece, a lengthy advertisement for the work of CARE, and were bitter about the $12 price tag. What they missed out on was the stunning photography, the wry humor and the painless way to do good (all royalties and profit from the sale of the book went to CARE International).
Speaking of humor, here are a few of my favorite lines: “…tireless commitment to mediocrity” (p 2), “you had to be really unlucky to be shot and stabbed” (p 4), “Kenyan Railways has something of a tradition of killing its passengers” (p 21) and, “Watamu was tranquil to the point of being comatose” (25). There are other funny moments: “flying toilets,” and flying for real, to name two.

For more information on CARE, International go here.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust and the chapter “Bill Bryson: Too Good to Miss” (p 36). This being my first introduction to Bryson I am looking forward to more.

Storm in Flanders

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Storm in FlandersGroom, Winston. A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914 – 1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.

I’m thinking I shouldn’t have picked this book up in the middle of my current state of mind. Don’t get me wrong, Groom’s history on World War I is impressive. Between the diary accounts, breathtaking pictures and easy language (he called someone a “military nut” and someone else “butt-headed”), this wasn’t a dry read. I know more about military warfare than ever before. For example, I learned WWI was Hitler’s introduction to war, paved the way for him, so to speak. The Germans were the first to introduce poison-gas (mustard gas) warfare; and I now know the meaning behind the poppy-like flowers veterans sell outside the grocery store. I always bought them and hung them in Gabriel without knowing why.
There is humor to Groom’s language: “While the Germans pondered their next move, there was a four-day lull in the fighting – if you can call taking thousands of casualties a day a “lull” (p 51) and “…Germans binged on a gluttony of pork until they were virtually wursted and brattened to their limits” (p 119).

Since Christmas is fast approaching I am drawn to the story Groom tells of Christmas 1914 when both sides put down their weapons and pretended to be friends for a day, exchanging gifts, singing carols, playing games and even laughing with one another. Yet, when the day was over they went back to killing one another.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251). Pearl points out that Groom writes with compassion for the soldiers and I couldn’t agree more. I think that compassion is what makes this book so interesting.

After the Plague

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After the plagueBoyle, T. Coraghessan. After the Plague and Other Stories. New York: Viking, 2001.

After finishing A Diary from Dixie, Band Land, and The Crossley Baby I still had time for a couple more “November” reads. The topics already covered for November were: the month the civil war ended, the month Montana became a state, national train month, and national adoption month. I chose After the Plague because I hadn’t recognized National Writers Month yet (and if there is time I’ll also recognize November as the month World War I ended and read Storm in Flanders). The only thing I won’t get around to is honoring Winston Churchill’s birthday (born in November).

So, onto After the Plague. This is a collection of sixteen short stories. Pearl calls them “Boyle’s best.” They hang open, unfinished and unresolved like a to-be-continued drama on television. Each story is like being dropped into the middle of a movie, watching for a scene or two, and then being ushered away before the conclusion. If you like to hang in the balance this collection of short stories is for you. Even stories within stories are left unfinished. Boyle shows off diversity in every story. Some will shock you, some will make you remember something from your own life, but all of them will be a pleasure to read.
Some favorite lines: “I started smoking two or three nights a week, then it was five or six nights a week, then it was everyday, all day, and why not?” (p 48), and “I just watched her, like some sort of tutelary spirit, watched her till she turned over and I could see the dreams invade her eyelids” (p 164).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Growing Writers” (p 107) and “Short Stories” (p 219). I love how Pearl describes Boyle’s work, “…nervy and disconcerting, and often very funny, leaving you uncomfortable with yourself and the world” (p 219). So true!

Diary From Dixie

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Diary from DixieChestnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949.

From the moment I started reading Mrs. Chestnut’s diary I felt I was in for gossip, gossip, gossip. While this is a great first hand account of life during the Civil War, I couldn’t get over how much of a name-dropping, political hob-nobbing, party-going Southerner she was! Another thing I noticed  was how humorous Mrs. Chestnut was! Here are a few of her more comical entries:

“There Mrs. Hunter told us a joke that made me sorry I had come” (p 8). But, she never does explain the joke was! Too bad!
“At camp meeting he got religion, handed round the hat, took the offering to the Lord down into the swamp to pray over it, untied his horse and fled with it, hat, contribution and all” (p 13).
“I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend my time now like a spider, spinning my own entrails, instead of reading as my habit in all my spare moments” (p 22). See, gossip, gossip!
“Every woman in the house is ready to rush into the Florence Nightingale business” (p 70). Good ole fashion jealousy, perhaps?

I think the only quote to get to me showed the attitudes of the time, “Women need maternity to bring out their best and true loveliness” (p 86). We’ve been here before.

All in all, Mary Chestnut’s diary was a delight to read. I fell in love with some of the language: flinders, rataplan, brickbat, and best of all, envenom. Love that word! Witty and humorous, it didn’t read like a history textbook. Instead, it gave texture to the sounds and sights and warmth to the personalities from the Civil War. More importantly, it gave a sense of what it was like to be a woman during that time.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and the chapter called “Civil War Nonfiction” (p 58).

Crossley Baby (with spoiler)

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Crossley BabyCarey, Jacqueline. The Crossley Baby. New York: Ballantine, 2003.

November is National Adoption Month. Out of everything I am currently reading, I thought this would be my favorite. I’m sorry to say I was a little disappointed. The Crossley Baby is the story of two sisters (Sunny & Jean) battling for their dead sister (Bridget)’s baby. Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be about. Instead, it’s more of a commentary on wealth (Jean has it, Sunny does not), parenting (Sunny is a mother of two, Jean is not) and manipulation (they both do it, for one reason or another). More time is spent setting up where Jean, Sunny and Bridget came from than the actual adoption process. More time is spent on describing the vast financial differences between Sunny and Jean than on their personalities. By the end of the book I didn’t know Jean or Sunny any better so I didn’t care who got the baby. I was completely indifferent to their struggle for baby Jade. Probably what bothered me most was the lack of real grief shown by either sister over the death of their elder sister. Crossley adds flickers of sadness, glimpses of sorrow, but for the most part Bridget’s death goes mostly unmourned. Possibly that is because they never got along. If there is one thing the three sisters did really well it was avoiding closeness.
In the end, Sunny wins custody. Everything points in the direction of Jean winning – money, power, people in her corner – while Sunny’s husband is filing for bankruptcy, old favors aren’t worth cashing in, and they have to sell their home. In a last minute surprise ending Jean withdraws her application for adoption and doesn’t contest the award going to Sunny. No one from Bridget’s life is there to put in a word edgewise.
Ironically enough, it was Bridget who was my favorite character because of this one line, “Bridget tasted her words before she spoke…” (p 112).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust and the very first chapter called “Adapting to Adoption” (p 1).

Bad Land: An American Romance

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Bad LandRaban, Jonathan. The Bad Land: an American Romance.

In honor of both the month Montana became a state and National Train Month I put Bad Land  on my list. It reads like a river. Some parts read like racing rapids while others slow to languid pools of near stillness. Then there are the waterfalls, where the language is cascading awe-inspiring. It was during these “waterfall” sections that I wanted to pack a bag and head west, just to see it for myself.

Raban helps you look at Montana from the point of view of the immigrant (emigrant), the artist, the ancestor, the traveler, the naturalist. Like standing back from a canvas to discover hidden colors. It’s a historical story, lyrically descriptive and informative. It’s a biography of the landscape as well as the people settled there at the turn of the century.
Favorite lines:”…mouth like a mailbox” (p 67).
“Mrs. Nemitz, scenting sarcasm, put his face on trial for a split second, but found it not guilty” (p 104).
“It’s exhilarating and scary, to lighten ship every so often, to kiss goodbye to the accumulated tonnage of ones life so far” (p 114)
“now the book is full of brittle ghosts” (p 136).

BookLust Twist: Mentioned twice in Book Lust. Once in the chapter called “Montana: In Big Sky Country” (p 156)…in which Pearl calls Bad Land  “the best book about Montana by a non-Montanan” (p 157); and “Riding the Rails: Railroad History” (p 201).

The Way Men Act

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Way Men ActLipman, Elinor. The Way Men Act. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.

 I had to laugh when I wrote out the title of this blog. Yet another one that could be misconstrued as something juicy and personal. I guess I could write a whole dissertation on the way men act towards me, but that wouldn’t be the book review that this is intended to be.

Elinor Lipman celebrates a birthday in October so it was only appropriate that I try to squeeze in a novel of hers in the last days of the dying month. I have met Lipman before (at a local conference) so it was no surprise to discover The Way Men Act takes place in “my” town. While thinly veiled as somewhere else it was easy to recognize the landmarks and quirks that make up where I live. I have to admit that made reading The Way Men Act a little difficult. The entire time I pictured real store fronts, real schools, real people.
All in all I breezed through this book because it was a simple read. The kind of chick lit you crawl in the bath with and can read in one soak. The plot isn’t complicated, only fun fun fun, the way chick lit is supposed to read. Lipman’s heroine, Melinda LeBlanc returns home to Harrow. She has mixed feelings about being back where she grew up as if being home implies she didn’t make it in the real world. She comes back (single at 30) to work in her cousin’s flower shop. Her job is sandwiched between two other come-home-again classmates from high school: Libby, a fashion designer with her own shop, and Dennis, a wiz at tying flies for fishing for his own shop. In addition to being hung up on being home, Melinda has issues with educational status (Harrow is a snobby college town and she only has a high school degree) and of course, men. The ending was predictable. Melinda is too talented to be working for someone else, and yes, she’s gets the guy.

Favorite line: “Could a man hate me that strenuously that the weight of it would flip itself over and come up again as love?” (p 49)
I flagged other lines only to realize it wasn’t the wording I admired so much. It was Melinda’s relationship with her mother. Every scene had me envious of their obvious closeness.

BookLust Twist: Mentioned twice in Book Lust once in the chapter “Elinor Lipman: Too Good To Miss (p 146), and “My Own Private Dui” (p 165).  The latter chapter begs an explanation: Pearl has her own classification system for her books and The Way Men Act falls under the category of “books I reread when I’m feeling blue” (p 166).

Bean Trees

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Bean TreesKingsolver, Barbara. The Bean Trees.New York: HarperPerennial, 1989. 

Barbara Kingsolver is my favorite author. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love the way she writes. The Bean Trees is on my Book Lust list and I’ve already read it hundreds of time. It’s the book I grab when I am in between other reads. It’s the book I reach for when I have a few minutes to kill while the rice bubbles on the stove. Given the chance to read it again just for Book Lust I am more than happy to jump at the chance.

Taylor Greer isn’t Taylor until she takes to the highway. Leaving her hometown of Kentucky to see something other than small town rumors and ruts she finds herself on the road, “adopting” a three year old American Indian girl on the way then finally landing in Tucson, Arizona.  Taylor is smart, witty and, for lack of a better word, feisty. She tells us her story with great observance to the spirit of humanity.

One of the things I love about Kingsolver’s work is the reoccurring themes: respect for nature described in gorgeous, vibrant detail, immigration and the political implications, the joys and struggles of motherhood (especially the single mother), the value of both belonging to a community and having independence. The Bean Trees is no different. All of these themes are carefully woven into the framework of the novel.

My favorite lines (okay some of them): “Whatever you want the most, it’s going to be the worst thing for you” (p 62).
“There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good” (p 10).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust’s first chapter called”Adapting to Adoption” (p 1). I have to admit I don’t agree with Pearl’s description of how Taylor “acquires” the American Indian child. Pearl says “When Taylor Greer leaves Kentucky for points west in order to escape the confines of small-town life, she finds an abandoned and abused Cherokee child left in her car…” (p 2). It actually went more like this: “Then she set this bundle down on the seat of my car. “Take this baby,” she said….”where do you want me to take it?” She looked back at the bar, and then looked at me. “Just take it.” I waited a minute, thinking that soon my mind would clear and I would understand what she was saying. It didn’t.” (The Bean Trees p 17). This is a poignant scene to me and it makes a big difference (to me) whether the child was left or handed over.

ps~ November is National Adoption month. I reread this just a tad early.

Song of Solomon

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Song of SolomonMorrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Plume, 1987.

Another must-read from the days in Maine. Although, I don’t remember reading it then. I don’t remember reading it, ever. Is that sad or what? This is a classic. Something everyone should read.

I don’t think I could summarize the plot adequately. Basically, it’s the story of Macon “Milkman” Dead III. He got the nickname Milkman from being breastfed by his mother way past infancy. But, this story goes beyond coming-of-age; it transcends stereotypical stories of racial strife and strained family relations. Yes, there is all of that. This is a story that has been described as tragic and magic in the same line. It may be a story about one man’s rise to adulthood, but it is told from many different points of view. We learn about Milkman’s ancestry and the culture of his time. Morrison weaves imagery and symbolism together so that everything important means something different. Family names are not just names. They come from religion, mistaken identity and social injustice. Family ties are tethered and severed through love and hate, peace and violence, poverty and wealth. One man’s perception is another man’s reality.

Quotes I liked: “I’m on the thin side of evil and trying not to break through” (p 21).
“He wouldn’t know what to feel until he knew what to think” (p 75).
“She was the third beer” (p 91).

BookLust Twist: Toni Morrison is mentioned twice in Book Lust. Song of Solomon is in the chapter “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade” (p 175) under the section 1970s. 

Turn of the Screw

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James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. New York: Dutton, 1963.Turn of the Screw

Even though October is more than half over I decided to read something scary for the rest of the month…in honor of Halloween and all that. Turn of the Screw seemed like the most obvious choice. A novella only 160 pages long, I knew it wouldn’t take too long to get through.
Written in 1898 and republished numerous times Turn of the Screw has also been  adapted for the stage, television and the big screen. Someone told me it was even mentioned in an episode of “Lost” (I wouldn’t know).  James’s technique is to tell the story within a frame – one story within another. We are first introduced to a man at a Christmas party telling a tale of a governess. From there we are in the story, told from the point of view of the governess. She has been hired to look after two small children after their parents are killed and they are sent to live on an uncle’s estate. Soon after the governess’s arrival she starts to notice strange occurrences, shadowy figures stalking the grounds. She learns they are former lovers and hired hands, back to supposedly recreate their relationship through the children.
While James uses words like “hideous”, “sinister”, “detestable”, and “dangerous”, there is great debate as to exactly what he is describing as so terrible. He refers to evil again and again, but his ghosts are not the usual specters. They only hint at danger rather than taking action and “attacking”. The other great debate is whether the governess is insane (or goes insane while at Bly). Because no one else really backs up her ghost sightings you have to wonder.

BookLust Twist: Mentioned several times in Book Lust. Once in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 113) and “Ghost Stories” (p 99). I would agree that The Turn of the Screw deserves ghost story status, but horror? Maybe I’m stuck in slasher movie mode where everything horrible has to end up in blood and gore.

Black Dog of Fate: a memoir

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Black Dog of FateBalakian, Peter. Black Dog of Fate: a memoir. New York: Random House, 1998.

I must have started this book four or five times. I don’t know what it was about the beginning. I’d pick it up, read for a few pages and put it down again, never getting beyond the first chapter. By the time I’d return to pick it back up I had forgotten what I had read and needed to start all over again. Page one. Finally, I took Black Dog of Fate home with me Columbus Day weekend and read it from start to finish. When I was finally able to devote the time and attention to it I couldn’t put it down.
There are very few books I try to push on other people. Very rarely do I try to tell people what I have read and how I feel about it, urging them to see for themselves. This story was different. From the moment I put it down I found myself struggling to put into words what had moved me so yet I needed to say something.

Here’s what I wrote within seconds of finishing it on Monhegan:
It’s the history you don’t commonly read about. It has the facts everyone would like to wish away; a genocide too horrible to imagine as real. The Armenian Massacre wasn’t a standard topic in my history class. As a rule I think we, as a society, want to sweep all and every horrific moment under our subconscious. This is a memoir about a boy’s growing knowledge and deeper understand of his heritage. True to adolescent ambivilance Balakian doesn’t understand the importance of his ancestry. In his youth all the stories his grandmother wanted to tell him were lost on him. It’s only after he is ready does his grandmother’s words mean anything to him. “I came to find out more about the arid Turkish plain when I picked up a book at a time when I was prepared to read it” (p 147).  

Other lines that struck me:
“…she would pass me the salty green nuts so we could celebrate with our teeth” (p 13). I think food is always the most appropriate way to celebrate.
“Hokee, soul. Hankids, rest. The soul’s rest: a memorial” (p 140).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “A Geography of Family and Place” (p 97).

Yellow Raft in Blue Water

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Yellow raft in blue waterDorris, Michael. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. New York: Warner Books, 1987.

This is high school to me. I remember being holed up somewhere reading this nonstop. Hot off the press, freshly published and oh so new I couldn’t put it down. I reread it and reread it until finally I could move on to other Michael Dorris creations, which somehow were never quite as good. Nothing compared to A Yellow Raft in Blue Water back then and it is still a faovrite to this day.

Someone described this book as an onion, reading it was like peeling back the layers of a story, and while that imagery is accurate enough, I like to think of Yellow Raft as a game of telephone. First, there is Rayona. She tells the story from her perspective. She is all of fifteen years old…at that difficult age where rebellion against your mother is the easiest thing to do. As she says, “when mom and I have conversations, they mostly involve subjects not personal to our lives” (p 26). She tells her story like it’s the honest truth. Then, there is Christine, her alcoholic mother, and her story. In the beginning you want to hate her for how seemingly unfair she had been to Rayona. But, learning about Christine’s heartbreak you realize Rayona’s reality is only her perception. The wires of communication have been crossed and in some cases, completely disconnected. Christine had her reasons for everything she did (and didn’t do). “I never had been good company for myself” says Christine (p 185). Finally, there is Ida, Christine’s mother. Her story is, by far, the most revealing and tragic. Everything you heard whispered from Rayona through Christina is trapped in the warped truth of Ida. All three women are stubborn, flawed by fate, and determined to make the best of life as they know it even if it means coming off as cruel to others. Being on the inside, privy to their hearts, makes you want to shake each one screaming, “talk to your daughter!”

Favorite lines:
“Ghosts were more lonesome than anything else. They watched the living through a thick plate of glass, a one-way mirror” (p176).
“A bath brought me peace, made me float free” (p340).

BookLust Twist: In both Book Lust and More Book Lust. In Book Lust Pearl mentions A Yellow Raft in Blue Water early; on page 23 in the chapter “American Indian Literature.” In the chapter “Men Chanelling Women” (p 166) in More Book Lust Pearl adds A Yellow Raft in Blue Water because Michael Dorris does an amazing job setting the voices of three very different women free.