What Happened in October, 2014

Reviews

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Ever since Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer, there has been an awful lot of Goldfinch bashing going on.  The prime complaints seem to fall into one of two categories, the first being that Tartt needed a more cutting editor, and the second being that Tartt's characters spent too much time talking about drugs.  I, on the other hand, am in the camp of The Goldfinch defenders, which I sort of didn't expect. 

The Goldfinch is a long book, at 771 pages, but that alone does not mean that Tartt needed a better editor.  I can't say that not a single word could be cut, but neither I could cite many examples of areas where I was bored.  For the most part, the parts where one could think that an editor was needed were times were Tartt was deliberately prolonging the story to show how time was dragging on for the main character, such as at the engagement cocktail party, or while he was alone in Amsterdam.  I loved every page, and wish for another hundred or two.  As for the drugs, if this was too much for you, please don't read Edward St. Aubyn. 

Lest you think that I entered into this book with rose colored glasses, I have never been Donna Tartt's biggest fan.  Time and time again, I tell people that if they liked Tartt's Secret History, they will love Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl, which is similar, but in my opinion, better.  I rarely even talk about Tartt's The Little Friend, as it was really not that great of a book, but for some reason, it is one of those books that sticks in my mind with images reappearing constantly.  In The Goldfinch, Tartt hits the mark, and earns her reputation.

The Goldfinch starts with Theo and his mother visiting a NYC museum exhibit of Dutch artists, where a girl with red hair catches Theo's eye.  Theo is drawn to the girl, who is at the museum with a man who appears to be her grandfather.  He follows them, when suddenly a bomb explodes, and Theo's life is forever changed.  Theo becomes an unwitting art thief, and spends the next 20 years  hiding his treasure.  Theo's mom is killed in the explosion, and as a result, he moves in with his wealthy friend, Andy, and his family.  As might be expected, Theo's deadbeat father reappears, and whisks him off to Las Vegas.  In Vegas, Theo meets a new friend, Boris, whose life is at least as dysfunctional as his own.

Theo is charmed in that he has amazing people in his life.  Boris, flawed as he may be, is just what Theo needs, right when he needs him, time and time again.  Hobie, who Theo meets while trying to figure out what certain things that happened at the museum meant, shapes Theo's life, and gives him all of the stability that he was missing. Andy and his family, the Barbours, give Theo the illusion of normalcy, while also giving him a place to belong, if he wants it.

I listened to The Goldfinch on audiobook.  It was read by David Pittu, who won two Audies for his performance.  He should have won even more - as many as were available.  There had to have been at least 30 characters, all of whom had distinctive voices and accents.  The voices for Hobie and Boris were my favorite.  Pittu made Hobie seem old, dignified, and somehow more affluent than the customers who shopped in his store.  He made Boris sound impulsive, risky, shady, and yet still trustworthy and loyal, all with a Russian/Austrailian/Ukranian accent. 

I loved The Goldfinch, and will happily read it again, hopefully in the near future.  I am adding it to my list of Favorites.  The Goldfinch was a NYT Notable book for 2013.

Challenges:  Audiobook Challenge

Tags:  Big Fat Books, Favorites, Pulitzer Winner, NYT Notables, Awesome Audio,

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is the story of an ex-pat experience, as told by a husband who felt that it was a complete success, and a wife who felt miserably out of place.  George and Sabine Harwood moved to Trinidad in 1956, just as the colonial rulers are losing power.  The new Prime Minister, Eric Williams, promised to change the country and free its true citizens from the control of outsiders.  George loves Trinidad, and loves the ex pat lifestyle, so much that he never wants to leave.  Sabine sees Trinidad with more weary eyes, and is hopeful that the people will find the leader who they are hoping for in Williams, even if he scares her with his anti-establishment promises.

There are a couple of stories that are going on in White Woman.  The first is that of a revolution, as seen through the eyes of an outsider.  Sabine, the only white person at the rallies supporting Williams, is hopeful for him and his followers, and would be more than happy to leave Trinidad to them.  When he gains power, and fails to make the changes that were promised, she sees him falling into the ways of the former rulers, and is disappointed that he is letting his people down, even if she was never an intended beneficiary.  While reading this, I couldn't help thinking about Kwame Kilpatrick.  As a person who lives near but not in Detroit, I was excited for Kilpatrick to be elected.  He was young and Detroit and whole metro area was ready for someone fresh to make a change.  Instead, the Detroiters who elected him were rewarded with scandal, corruption, and outright theft.  Like Sabine, I was on the outside, looking in, but hoping that the new leader would make a difference, even if the changes wouldn't directly help me.  Also like Sabine, I was disappointed and disillusioned with the results, even if a part of me knew that I was foolish to hope for more.

Another story that unfolds through out White Woman is that of people who catch each other's eye in a crowd, and never quite let go.  One day, while she is riding her bike, Sabine and Eric Williams lock eyes.  While they don't know each other, they feel a connection.  Over the next several years, they run into each other from time to time, and fall into conversations as if they have been speaking daily, saying things to each other that no one else would say.  While it could never happen in America, Roffey makes it seem completely reasonable that the Prime Minister of Trinidad would speak freely with a woman who he has only briefly met, but who looked really cute while riding her bike.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  British Stories

Yankee Broadcast Network by John F. Buckley and Martin Ott

Although I haven't done any Industry Requested Reviews in a couple of months, I still get requests every day.  One request that caught my attention was that of John Buckley and Martin Ott, who wanted me to review their book of poetry about television.  While they were really straight forward about what their book was, I guess that I was a little surprised that literally every poem related to television.  My fault - not theirs.  What disappointed me though was that while they think about television enough to want to write a book of poetry inspired by it, they seem to really hate it.

For most of us, television is a guilty pleasure, but for Buckley and Ott, the pleasure is all gone, leaving nothing but guilt, and a dash of disgust.  One of the things that caught my attention when deciding to accept the review request was their poem called "The Real Housewives of Wayne County."  Wayne County, in case you don't know, is the county where Detroit is located.  However, it's also the county where Grosse Pointe (remember "Grosse Pointe Blank" starring John Cusack?) is, which makes Wayne County an area where extreme wealth abuts complete poverty.  The poem that Buckley and Ott wrote relied only on the Detroit brand names and stereotypes, and missed the opportunity for a study in contrasts.  In fact, they could have renamed it with the name of any county, and inserted the names of products made in that county, instead of "Better Made" and paczki.

My favorite poem was "Burn'ded" which was obviously a satire of Ashton Kucher's show, "Punk'd".  In the Buckley and Ott version, there are many people playing ever escalating "pranks" ending with a home grown terrorist who eventually sees the episode in which he stars with his fellow inmates.

Yes, Yankee Broadcast Network was exactly what it promised it would be.  I just didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.

Tags:  Industry Requested Reviews

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group met to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  There were 8 of us who met, and only 4 had finished the book.  2 more were not quite finished, and the other two of us (I was in this group) never picked the book up.  At the beginning of the meeting, I would have said that of the people who read it, half liked it, and half didn't.  Unfortunately, after discussing various unlikely twists and coincidences, the people who had started off saying that they liked it changed sides.  I think I won't bother trying to pick this one up. 

We chose to discuss Sweetness because we are trying to read something from various genres, and this one was chosen as a mystery.  In December we will meet again to discuss The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which we have classified as science fiction.

The Typical Book Group met this month to discuss . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  We picked this book as our summer Big Fat Book (BFB) in June, and delayed meeting until October to discuss it.  Even with this delay, of the 9 people at book group, only 2 had finished the book.  There were 3 more of us who had started it and were in various stages of progress, but the rest didn't even give it a try.

I talked about . . .And Ladies in my August and September wrap ups.  Basically it is an 1100+ page book about a book group that formed in the late 1800s, and the course of the lives of the original members.  As I've mentioned, I frequently fall asleep after reading only a few pages.  The two groupers who finished the book said that somewhere around page 500, the story picked up so that they could easily read 50 pages at a time, and that they thought about the book all of the time when they weren't reading it.  I'm somewhere around page 700 now, and I am not experiencing that at all, but then again, I've been putting it down for 2 or 3 weeks at a time and coming back to it, instead of immersing myself in the story.  Maybe this month I'll stick with it until I'm done.

All told, the people who finished the book liked it, and thought that it was worth reading.  I did notice though that one of them only gave the book 3 GoodReads stars.  So, while I'm now expecting something worth finishing, maybe I won't expect it to be life changing.

Next month we'll read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.

In Other News

The Man Booker Prize was announced on October 14.  This year's winner was The Narrow Road to the Deep North  by Richard Flannigan.  Based on the Amazon reviews, this sounds like a really good book.  The main character is an Australian surgeon in a Japanese POW camp during World War II.  I'll be keeping my eyes open for more on this one.

November Preview

People, I am burnt out on blogging, and almost even dreading it.  So, I'm not making any promises about even doing a monthly summary for November.  But in case you are interested in what I am planning to read and listen to, here you go:

In Paper Form:
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Yes, I promise to finish this book in November.
Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, if I can get it, or Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen, if I can't.
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

On Audio Book:
1Q84 by Haruki Murikami
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

An Imperfect Life

Tom Rachman knows how to create a character.  His first book, The Imperfectionists, was a novel told through short stories of various people who work for or are devoted to a newspaper, The Paper.  Each character was related to the others in some way, but each was a fully developed person, with an interesting life away from The Paper.

His second book, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers is a character study of a woman named Matilda, including her childhood and the odd collection of people who raised her.  The action is set in 1988, when Matilda, who is also called Tooly, is 10 and living with Paul, in 1999 when she is 21 and living with Duncan and Humphrey, and in 2011, when she is an adult woman running a small book store in Wales.  Tooly has lived throughout the world with Paul, Sarah, Venn, Humphrey, and Duncan, but her relationships with all of these people are tangled, and never quite what they seem. 

Tooly sees Sarah as a glamorous if flighty woman, who is unreliable, but is also constantly popping up.  Venn is a worldly charmer who Tooly seeks to emulate and impress.  Humphrey is an old immigrant who Tooly feels she needs to take care of.  Ultimately, Tooly comes to understand who it is who can be counted on, and who will disappear when she needs them most. 

This is a book of bad decisions and painful regret.  It's a book of exploitation and opportunism.  But throughout it all, Tooly doesn't dwell on what she should have done or what others should have done for her, and instead is persistently moving forward in the best way that she can figure out.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers  is constantly shifting between the time periods, with chapters confusingly called things like "1988:  The End", which is the 4th chapter of the book, even though there are 7 more chapters that come later that are set in 1988, and another chapter called "1988:  The End."  If you can surrender to the confusion and just roll with it, a great story with memorable characters will unfold.  Based on the recent NYT review, my guess is that this one will make the list of Notables for 2014!

I requested and received a free electronic copy of this book from NetGalley.  Thanks to Jess Bonet of Random House for making it available to me.  Other than the book, no promises were made and no payments were received.

Next Up:  Next I am tackling We Are Water in paper form, in addition to audio.  My book group is meeting to discuss this one in just 2 days, and I'm only half way done! 

Life in the Snow Globe

The blurb on the back of The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham says that it is the story of Barrett, who sees a light which causes him to turn to religion, and of his brother Tyler, who uses drugs to try to enhance his creativity while he writes a song for his dying fiance.  While that it is accurate, it is such an oversimplification of The Snow Queen that it almost does the book a disservice. 

Barrett does in fact see a light, and attach significance to it.  He feels like the light is trying to tell him something, and he hopes that it is saying what he wants to hear.  Barrett lives with his brother, Tyler, and Tyler's fiance, Beth, in New York City in the early twenty-first century.  Beth owns a clothing/resale/hipster store in Brooklyn with her friend, Liz.  Barrett also works at the store.  Tyler is a bartender who is trying to break through as a music artist. The Snow Queen is the story of these four characters and their relationships, told primarily from the perspectives of Tyler and Barrett.  Beth is seriously ill, but the story somehow avoids being sentimental about her condition. Through the course of the novel, Tyler and Barrett accidentally find their best selves, while looking for something else.

There is a lot about The Snow Queen that reminded me of Cunningham's earlier novel, The Hours.  Both have New York as a setting, and feature a gay man and the women who love him.  In both stories the gay men cannot seem to part with their mother's upholstered furniture, and a character is drawn to high windows, from which he may or may not jump.  I listened to The Snow Queen on audiobook, and at the end of the story there was an interview with Michael Cunningham, in which the interviewer suggested that all of the characters from Cunningham's books seem like they could be friends with each other.  I found that observation to be dead on, and could easily see the characters from The Snow Queen popping over to visit with the characters from The Hours.

In a way, The Snow Queen is also a twenty-first century version of the musical, "Rent".  If the characters from "Rent" aged gracefully, they could have become Barrett, Tyler, and their friends.  Rent was also set in New York, and was the story of two boys in their early 20s and their friends trying to find their place.  Like Tyler, Roger from "Rent" believed that if he could just write one great song, everything would change.  Both Tyler and Roger also turn to drugs, and the woman that each loves faces death.  The stories also include meaningful gay relationships, and in both, New Year's Eve is a turning point.

The writing in The Snow Queen was incredible. I think that if I was reading the book in paper form rather than listening to it, I would have underlined tons of passages.  One thing that I really appreciated about this book is that it is the first that I can recall that was focused on the first decade of the twenty first century and set in New York, which did not mention 9/11.  It seems like 9/11 references have become compulsory and it was nice that while this story included lots of George W. bashing, Cunningham was able to resist the need to address the day itself.

The audiobook was narrated by Claire Danes, which I couldn't understand at first.  I couldn't figure out whose voice she was supposed to be.  I found myself wishing for Jeff Woodman or Wil Wheaton, as they seemed like obvious voices for hipsters like Tyler and Barrett.  I knew that they didn't choose Danes just because she was the most famous voice they could find, but then why?  I liked Danes best when she was talking for Liz, but Liz accounted for less than 10% of the speaking in the story, so they couldn't have chosen Danes for that reason.  Twice, characters referenced God as being a woman.  Could Danes have been intended to be the voice of God, or of Barrett's light, or of the Snow Queen?  By the end I knew that Danes was the right person for this role.  If Woodman or Wheaton had been reading, I wouldn't have ever been able to tell if Barrett or Tyler was speaking, since they said so much in a similar way.  Danes was simply the voice of the story.

I listened to this book at the request of Esther Bochner of Macmillan Audio.  I received a free copy of the audiobook, but other than that, no promises were made and no payments were received. 

This is another book down for the Audiobook Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Still Reading:  The Titans by John Jakes

Slowly Learning

 

Who's the Slow Learner:  A Chronicle of Inclusion and Exclusion is Sandra Assimotos McElwee's story of her son, Sean's progress from pre-k through twelfth grade.  Sean has Down Syndrome, and it was important to McElwee that his opportunities for an educational experience not be limited by a diagnosis.  As McElwee explains, Who's the Slow Learner is not a "how to" book, but a book about how she and her family did it.

McElwee lives in California, and her district's practice was to put all children with Down Syndrome into special classrooms.  McElwee wanted Sean to be fully included with his age appropriate classmates, and was very successful through 6th grade.  Once Sean hit 7th grade, his experience changed, not because of the fabled mean middle school kids, but because of adult bullies who were slow to learn just what Sean was capable of achieving.  My district is struggling with the issue of inclusion now as well, with some parents wanting their children to be fully included, and others preferring a more segregated setting.  Every child is different, and every district is different,  but the lessons that McElwee learned could be meaningful anywhere.

Each chapter covers a grade for Sean, and begins with his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) goals for that year.  Because the goals are supposed to tailored for each child, Sean's goals may provide some ideas for parents and districts, but are not something that can be cut and pasted into another child's IEP.  McElwee also provides verbatim copies of letters to and from district staff members, which were very fact specific, but provide good examples of how to effectively communicate your point, even if you are furious.  The rest of each chapter talks about Sean's experiences during that year. 

McElwee is Sean's biggest advocate, and she works hard to be sure that Sean is included in extracurricular activities as well as the classroom.  Sean is in plays, participates in choir, takes dance lessons, attends school dances, runs for student office, and manages the baseball team, all during his high school years.  When he can't participate in school activities for one reason or another, McElwee finds a group outside of school where he can be involved.  He even finds time to date a tv star, Becky from Glee.  This is California, remember.

The parent support group that I am involved with (www.FriendsofDifferentLearners.org) does a lot of the things that McElwee recommends, like having a buddy program, showing our teachers our appreciation, and working together with other parents of different learners.  I agree with McElwee that it is important for parents of different learners to be sure that the district knows them, and that they be involved with activities that parents of typical students are, such as the PTA.  One idea that I liked that McElwee suggested was a "Cool Club" for teenage different learners and those in their early 20s.  McElwee got 15 families together, and divided up the calendar.  Each family was in charge of coordinating an activity for the kids, for one weekend night, three times a year.  This could be mini golf, movies, a picnic, or whatever.  That way the kids always had something to do each weekend, like their typical peers. 

Although I don't have a child with Down Syndrome, I could still relate to McElwee's story.  Who's the Slow Learner is a must read for parents of children with Down Syndrome who are struggling with inclusion, and a should read for parents of children with autism or cognitive impairments who are facing the same challenges. 

Another idea for parents of different learners is to tackle this summer's reading list in audio form.   SYNC is a FREE summer program that gives away 2 audiobook downloads each week for the summer starting May 15 and ending August 14. SYNC audiobook titles are given away in pairs--a Young Adult title is paired with a related Classic or required Summer Reading title.  Check out the complete title list, including James Patterson's CONFESSIONS OF A MURDER SUSPECT and its pair partner, Agatha Christie's THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE.  Visit www.audiobooksync.com to sign up for title alerts by email.

I received a free copy of Who's the Slow Learner from McElwee, and agreed to review it.  Other than that, no promises were made, and no payments were received.

Next Up:  American Woman by Susan Choi

Still Listening To:  The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Handful of History

Charleston, in the early 1800s, was not a great place to live if you were a slave, or a slave owner's daughter with a conscience.  The story of The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, begins with said slave owner's daughter, Sarah, being given the gift of her very own slave, Hetty, for her 11th birthday.  Sarah immediately objects, but a slave is not the type of item that is easy to return.  Hetty was born to Sarah's family's household, and was named "Handful" by her mother, Charlotte, who is also a slave working for the family.

Sarah and Handful have a relationship that is different from Sarah's parents' relationships with their slaves.  While not treating Handful as an equal, Sarah is able to see her as a person.  In an instant that she knows she will come to regret, Sarah promises Charlotte that she will do whatever she can to help Handful become free.

In the beginning, the conditions for slaves in Sarah's family were not the worst imaginable, although the occasional misbehaving slave was whipped, and Handful was never allowed to meet her father because Charlotte was separated from him.  Sarah's father is a respected judge, and he seems sympathetic to Sarah's misgivings about slave ownership.  However, as the story continues, Sarah's family's fortunes take a turn for the worse, and life for the slaves becomes more brutal.

In protest of slavery, Sarah moves north and becomes a Quaker.  The Quakers were opposed to slavery.  At first this protest seems a little lame, as Sarah is not actually doing anything to end slavery or improve Handful's situation.  Soon, Sarah's sister, Nina, moves to Philadelphia to be with her, and together the two find their voices and fight for their cause.

While my summary might sound heavy, The Invention of Wings is a page turner.  Normally I read before I go to bed to relax myself, but this book got my adrenaline pumping and made it hard to sleep.  Anyone who liked The Help by Kathryn Stockett will like this book too.  However, where The Help was famously said to be purely fiction (Stockett was sued by her brother's maid who claimed she was the basis of the book), Wings is based on fact. 

Only because I have been helping my son study for this U.S. History exams this year, some of the characters' names were recognizable to me.  Charlotte has a child with Denmark Vesey, a man who was accused of trying to start a slave revolt.  Sarah lives for a time with Lucretia Mott, a famous abolitionist.  Sarah and Nina work with Theodore Weld, who also fought against slavery.  And I haven't told you Sarah and Nina's last name.  It's Grimke.  Sarah and Angelina Grimke were said to be the most famous and infamous women of the 1830s, fighting for equality for slaves and for women. 

The Invention of Wings is sure to be one of the best sellers of 2014.  It is an Oprah Book Club book, and I am reading it for my book group as well.  I was asked to review it in December, but foolishly, I passed.  Nevertheless, Annie Harris from Viking Penguin would never let me down, and she sent me this link to a book group kit that includes discussion points, and even a few recipes.  She also wanted me to remind you that Sue Monk Kidd will be discussing Wings with Oprah on April 13 at 11:00 am, on OWN.

Next Up:  Who's the Slow Learner:  A Chronicle of Inclusion and Exclusion by Sandra Assimotos McElwee

Still Listening to:  The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Deliberately Short

This is Not an Accident by April Wilder is a pretty great collection of short stories.  It starts with the title story, which actually reminded me a little of one of Malie Meloy's stories from Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It. This was not a great start, since Meloy's stories really didn't move me.  The next story, "The Butcher Shop", also had  familiar feel.  Then I realized that it was familiar because I had read it in McSweeney's 23, back in 2007, when Wilder published it there.  When I read the third story,  "We Were Champions", I felt like I had found a new very best friend.

Wilder is a very talented short story author.  "We Were Champions" is the story of a girl, living in the City of Wrigleyville, State of Chicago, having a pig roast during a Cubs game that she could hear but not see.  She had recently learned that her high school softball coach, who had gone to jail for molesting most of the team, had killed himself.  Meanwhile, her relationship with her current boyfriend is disintegrating before her eyes, one swing at a time.

"It's a Long Dang Life" is a story of lost and found love.  Laney, a grandmother, has reunited with her former boyfriend, who she believed was killed in Vietnam.  Recognizing his shortcomings, and her own failure at an earlier marriage, she refuses to marry him.  In what might or might not be mock despair, the boyfriend, Odd, takes her grandsons hostage in their backyard play house.  A part of him wants to force her to marry him, but another part realizes it's all just a game for the grandchildren.  He thinks.

In both of these stories, the woman is managing a relationship with a man who has a drinking problem.  The topics of codependency, enabling, and relationships slowly ending invade most of Wilder's stories.  "Three Men" is a story told in the format of a musical round.  You know how one side of the room begins singing "Make new friends, but keep the old" and then the other side starts with "Make new friends . . . " while the first side moves on to the next line?  Yeah, like that.  Wilder starts with the story of Jess' husband, an actuary who she calls "The Count".   From there, we move a little backward in time, while still moving forward, to the story of Jess' brother.  Then we go to Jess' father's story, to complete the round.  The effect is really interesting, in that it tells a full story, focusing separately on three different people, all from the perspective of one woman.

Another story, "Me, Me, Me" is about a woman who can't tell her feelings to her boyfriend, but instead writes them down in letters that she mails to herself.  This all seems innocent enough, until she starts refusing to go out, because the mailman is coming, and she needs to stay and see which letter will come to her in the mail that day.  I couldn't help to think that writing letters to oneself is not so different from blogging.  So to me, it didn't really seem all that strange, just a little sad.

The GoodReads reviews of This is Not an Accident were confusing to me.  Some people said that the stories were hilarious.  They were not.  Nor do I think they were intended to be.  Others said that the stories were too dark or difficult to understand.  I have to think that if the reader doesn't normally read either short stories or McSweeney's authors, they might not get Wilder.  However, if Lorrie Moore and Tobias Wolff are on your shelves, April Wilder will fit right in.  So many lines were precisely right, accurate, and true.  Wilder knows the subject of modern American relationships, and calls them like she sees them.

I reviewed this book at the request of Shannon Twomey of Viking Penguin Books.  I received a free copy of the book, but other than that, no payments were received, and no promises were made. 

Next Up:  Where'd You go Bernadette by Maria Semple

Still Listening to:  The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

The Get Away

Julia is a woman who needs to get away from her life.  Her husband has just committed suicide after being outed as "The Midwestern Bernie Madoff".  As a corporate officer, Julia will face some of the blame and possibly prison.  Suddenly, Adrian knocks at her door.  He offers her the opportunity to care for his aging mother in her home, a mansion in northern Minnesota.  Julia knows who Adrian's mother is because she is a famous author.  Julia also knows that this famous author died years ago. 

And so begins The Vanishing by Wendy Webb.  The story is set mostly in the mansion, known as Havenwood.  To get there, Julia has to surrender her cell phone, her credit cards, and anything that would allow anyone to trace her to her old life.  Figuring that this might not be so bad given her present circumstances, Julia agrees to give it a try.

Once at Havenwood, Julia immediately senses strange happenings.  It seems that people in pictures on the walls can speak, and sometimes she thinks that she is hallucinating scenes from the past.  She dismisses it a side effect of discontinuing her anti-depression medication, and the fact that she is in a really old, beautiful yet creepy house, caring for a woman who the world believes is dead.

This story has a lot in common with The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, where the narrator spends time with an aging author and eventually draws out the scariest tale yet, one that happens to be true.  It also is similar in many respects to Webb's earlier book, The Tale of Halcyon Crane, which was set in a haunted mansion on Mackinac Island.  However, The Vanishing has enough twists and turns to distinguish it from those other stories, and to keep the reader turning the pages.

There's something about The Tale of Halcyon Crane that seems to appeal to you.  Yes you.  Although it was never a best seller, my review of that book has been among my top 10 posts in terms of page views for at least the last year.  If you liked Halcyon or Thirteenth Tale, then grab The Vanishing and start reading.  Yes, some of it is predictable.  Yes, there are improbable plot twists.  As Webb says in her acknowledgements, she's "not trying to define a generation, right any great wrongs, or change the way you think about the world or your place in it.  [She] just want[s] to craft a good story that will delight you, entertain you, grab you and not let you go, and send some shivers up your spine along the way."  That she does.

I requested and received a free electronic copy of The Vanishing and agreed to review it.  Other than that, no promises were made and no payments were received.

Next Up:  The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie

Still Listening to:  Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn

My Perfect Guest

Last Wednesday, when The Typical Book Group got together for our annual book exchange, I offered the book groupers a chance to review Rachel Joyce's new book, Perfect.  My friend, Kim, decided to give it a try, and now she has become my first ever guest blogger.  Here is Kim's review of  Perfect:

Apparently, people with OCD want things to be perfect, because they believe that then nothing bad can happen.  As a result of Byron's obsession with the addition of two seconds to the yearly clock things go horribly wrong in the summer of 1972, in Rachel Joyce's book, Perfect.

To begin with things did not seem to be going well in Byron's household.  Especially not on the weekends when his father came home from the city.  Perhaps his father also suffers from the OCD, as shown by his insistence that his wife wear certain clothes, that nobody touch anything in his office and his excessive car washing.  I believed that he was just more worried about what people thought about him than that he was mentally ill, but perhaps I was wrong. 

Diana, Byron's mother, really let me down.  Besides being mostly (but not completely) controlled by her husband, she desperately loved her children, but could not fight her unhappiness with her life.  Depression medication did not work, and at times I thought that she might be an alcoholic.  Can you drink yourself to death without alcohol?  Can drowning permeate your body that much?  Why didn't Diana know that she was being taken advantage of?  It was obvious to her son.

We, the reader, were led to believe that the flash forwards to Jim were to James.  James, Byron's best friend, was odd, but I wasn't sure if he was mentally ill.  I was quick to judge James' mother and jump to conclusions.  Instead, his mother did better for him than Diana did for Byron.

The ending seemed a little "Silver Lining Playbook" to me.  I am not sure that love can cure OCD.  I would like to think so.  God bless Eileen and everyone at Jim's work for sticking with him.  Tears were in my eyes (at work) at the end.

To me this is what makes a book great: 
1.  Hooks me from the beginning
2.  I can't wait to read more of it and find out what happens
3.  Moves me (maybe to tears - maybe not) because I care about the characters so much

By that criteria, I guess that Perfect is great. In fact, I find myself frequently thinking back on it even days after I finished it.  Would I pick it as a book group book?  I went back and forth on this, mostly because I am known for reading too many mental illness books.  Why I think this would be a great book club book is because it would provide a lively discussion.  Besides, it is an enjoyable, complex, and surprising read.

Thanks, Kim!  Kim and I generally like the same books, so I think that I will have to read Perfect soon.   Full disclosure:  I was offered and accepted a free copy of Perfect, which I let Kim borrow.  No promises were made, no payments were received.  Perfect will be released on January 14, 2014.  Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Still Reading:  The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer.  I am really loving this book, but wish that I had more time to read it.

Still Listening to:  Winter of the World by Ken Follett

Virtually Real

In Upload by Mark McClelland, the main character, Raymond Quan, is a teenager living in a group home in 2060.  He has a job working for a wealthy 85 year old man, Nicholas Tate, who had made his money through insider trading tech stocks.  Tate, like many people, spends most of his time in a V Chamber, living in a virtual world of his own creation.  Some people, like Raymond's father, become so V addicted, that they can't live life in the real world.  Most people have a virtual presence, but still live a real world life, with a job and a family.

While exploring how to improve his own virtual world, something goes wrong, and Raymond is convinced that he could be charged with a serious real world crime.  We fast forward to 2069, and Raymond is working for a company working on an uploading project.  The company is attempting to upload a monkey into the virtual world.  The result would be that the monkey would die in the real world, but would live forever, and enjoy his life, if his brain was uploaded into the virtual world first.

McClelland drops the bombshells of Raymond's crime as though they were breadcrumbs.  He gives us details so shocking that you re-read to be sure that you have it right, and then he quickly moves on, as though those specifics are no big deal.  Soon, someone else is following the trail, and Raymond begins to consider whether he should upload his brain into the virtual world in order to escape a reality that is closing in fast.

Raymond is an odd, but well developed character.  He lacks social skills due to being raised in a group home and being so focused on his virtual world.  At his upload company, Raymond meets a woman and begins to fall in love, only to stumble on the intricacies of normal social interaction.  He tries to fill his virtual world with everything that he could possibly need in case he were ever to actually upload.  However he is so overconfident in his skills and naive that he overlooks the obvious.

Upload is a good book, exploring a really interesting concept.  If we could create a world and move into it, would it be better?  What would we forget?  What would we get sick of?  Do we need our bodies in order to live a fulfilling life?  If I was writing the story, I would have resolved a few of the issues differently, but McClelland also thought of things that I would never have considered.

I read Upload at the request of Mike at Sandpiper Publicity.  I received a free copy of the book, but other than that, no promises were made and no payments were received.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes technology focused sci-fi, and especially to any sci-fi lovers who live in Ann Arbor or attended U of M.  McClelland is a U of M graduate, and much of the story is set in the Ann Arbor area.

You might remember that last month I said that I might do two Industry Requested Reviews in November.  Instead, I did none.  I just missed finishing Upload in November (better late than never), and I never got a copy of Melt:  The Art of Macaroni and Cheese.  I'm probably better off without that one!  My next IRR will be Perfect by Rachel Joyce.  I'm taking a chance on this one.  Joyce also wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry which I just started listening to.   If I can't stand Harold, I might not be so anxious to jump into Perfect.

Next Up:  Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese.

Still Listening to:  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The Perfect Shot

A group of boys go into the woods.  One of them has a slingshot that he made himself.  The boys all think the slingshot is pretty great, but they doubt the boy, Will, when he claims to be able to hit a rook on a branch far away.  Somehow, he finds the perfect trajectory, and the bird falls.  The boys are thrilled!  While they don't know it, William Bellman's life has been changed forever.  And so begins Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield.

From that time on, death follows William everywhere.  His family members, his friends, his children, everyone he loves seems to be dying.  For some reason, the same person appears at all of their funerals.  William doesn't know who this stranger is, but he begins referring to him as "Black".  In a fit of grief induced madness, William decides to make a deal with Black, to try to keep his last daughter alive.  The problem is that once the deal is made, William is not quite sure what he agreed to do.

William spends the rest of his life trying to live up to his end of the commitment.  He creates a funeral department store, selling everything that a mourner could need.  He makes a fortune, but carefully saves a fair share for Black.  It is only when business declines that Bellman recognizes a familiar trajectory from his past.

I went into this one expecting a ghost story.  Perhaps this is because the full title is Bellman and Black:  A Ghost Story.  There wasn't anything in the story that sent tingles down my neck or made me wonder what was lurking behind my curtains late at night.  The ghost here (if there was one) was more like the Ghost of Christmas Past than like the ghost in The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  It's funny though, because when I reviewed Setterfield's last book, the best seller, Thirteenth Tale, I cautioned my readers that although it too was billed as a ghost story, it really wasn't.

What Bellman and Black is like, unexpectedly, is World Without End by Ken Follett.  Both stories begin with children in the woods being part of something that shapes the rest of their lives.  They both involve families struck down by the plague, a daughter who miraculously survives, and a revolutionary building project, with Merthin in World building a bridge and William in Bellman building his department store.  Merthin and William share the same business acumen, attention to detail and foresight.  But where the bad guy in World is an evil person in a position of  authority, that role in Bellman is played by Black.  The question of whether Black is evil or even if he is a person, is shimmering at the edge of every page.  If you liked World, you will tear through Bellman, which is only 336 pages, compared to World's 1,024.

There is more that I want to say about Bellman and Black, but I don't want to ruin it for you, so I will post those comments on my Spoilers Page, for you to read after reading the novel.  And you should read the novel.  It's certainly a good book, even if it isn't scary.  Bellman and Black will be released on November 5, 2013.

Full Disclosure:  I was offered and claimed a free electronic copy of this book from Net Galley.  No promises were made, no payments were received.

Next IRR:  I've noticed that the last five Industry Requested Reviews that I have done were for books by well known if not best selling authors.  While I do like doing those, I'm feeling like I'm missing out on the "unknowns" out there.  So, for next month, I have requested two books from lesser known authors, Melt:  The Art of Macaroni and Cheese by Stephanie Stiavetti, Garrett McCord and Michael Ruhlman, and Upload by Michael McClelland.  If I get them both, I'll review them both!  Stay tuned.

Next Up on Paper:  Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Still Listening to:  In the Woods by Tana French

Telling It Like It Is

So, if a white author wrote a book where in the very first chapter, a black character is cooking fried chicken, complaining about living in a bad neighborhood, and thinking about her granddaughter named "Noxema" who was taken from her daughter by social services, what are the chances that you would read the second chapter?  I'm guessing slim to none.  In fact, I would bet that the author would find herself on the Today Show trying to defend the "research" supporting her offensive characterization.  But in Who Asked You, where the first chapter includes just that character, the author doing the writing is the best selling African American author, Terry McMillan, who is known for telling relatable stories.  Personally, I was still a little put off by the stereotype, and wondered if McMillan still knows how "it is" for people not optioning their books for movie deals.  But I kept reading.

I'm not new to Terry McMillan.  I think that I read Waiting to Exhale first, like most of America did.  It must have been then that I learned that McMillan had grown up in my husband's hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, and that an earlier book, Mama, was set there.  While Mama does not portray Port Huron in such a way that would encourage endorsement by the Port Huron Chamber of Commerce, I read it anxiously, and passed it on to my mom.  McMillan's descriptions were so precise that I was pretty sure that if we followed the roads that she named and turned where she said, we could drive to all of the settings in the book, even though the characters were supposedly living in "Point Haven" instead of Port Huron.  My mom and I gave it a try, and while we couldn't find all of the locations, some directions were spot on.  When we turned on to my husband's grandmother's street, Strawberry Lane, where the mother in the novel cleaned houses, I think that my mom was a little disappointed to see ranches with walk out basements instead of the mansions McMillan described.  But despite the exaggerations, the descriptions were so true that I've always wondered if McMillan's own mom really did clean houses there, and if I may have known one of her employers. 

This tendency to stick closely to the truth of her own life is a McMillan signature. Whether or not her (now ex) husband was the inspiration for a character in How Stella Got Her Groove Back was a hot topic that resulted in litigation.  So this is why I was so surprised that McMillan seemed to be using racist stereotypes in Who Asked You.  I should have known better.

Who Asked You is primarily the story of Betty Jean.  She is living in what she calls a "ghetto", working as a maid in a hotel, and trying to take care of her husband who is bed ridden with something like dementia.  She has three adult children, one who feels he is too good for his community and has left, one who is addicted to drugs, and one who is in prison.  Early in the story, her daughter with the drug addiction asks Betty Jean to watch her two sons for the day, and never comes back. Suddenly Betty Jean is stretched in yet another direction, as she finds herself raising the young boys.  The story is told through the voices and perspectives of Betty Jean, her children, her grandchildren, her sisters, her neighbor, and a few other characters. 

Betty Jean could be a one dimensional stereotype, but she is not.  She is part of a family.  There is something about the family relationship that makes people feel free to express hurtful opinions and to say mean things that they really do think, but that they would never say to strangers. Through the story, Betty's family members grow and change, forcing each other to open their minds.  McMillan's message is clear:  Don't judge.  Even if you know you are right, and think that your family members would benefit from your opinions, be supportive.  You might think that you know your siblings or kids better than they know themselves, but you will never really know what they are going through, or what they don't want you to know.

At first I also thought it was a little hooky that the story started with 9/11 and ended with Obama's election.  Those events are huge in American history, but it seems like 9/11 especially is becoming an overused device for authors.  But again, this worked.  Thinking back, the entire country went through the changes that Betty's family faced during those years.  We all learned.  We all opened our minds.  The "great recession" came and hit us all, and we learned a lot about judging and being judged.  I'd like to think that we are better people now than we were before.  Who Asked You had such a positive ending that it made the journey of the book worthwhile.  It's an ending that I would like to believe in, even if it might be a little too good to be true.

I read Who Asked You at the request of Angela Messina of Viking/Penguin Publicity.  No promises were made, and no payments were received.

Next Up:  I am so late on getting my September Industry Requested Review out, that I'm going to rush right into the IRR for October.  So, my next book will be Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield.

Still Listening to:  In the Woods by Tana French.  This is a good one!

The Grass Might not be Greener

So, if you had to lose your only child, would it be better if "lose" was a euphemism, or if you actually lost your child?  That question is central to The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice.  In The Lemon Orchard, Julia moves to Malibu to house sit for her aunt and uncle who own a lemon orchard.  Julia's life has been in turmoil since her daughter and husband died in a car crash 5 years earlier, and she is ready for a change.  In the orchard, Julia meets Roberto, who was separated from his daughter in the desert when he was trying to illegally cross into the US from Mexico.

Although Julia has to live every day knowing that her daughter has died, she doesn't envy Roberto's uncertainty.  Anything could have happened to his daughter, Rosa.  She could have been abducted by a sex trafficker, she could have been eaten by coyotes, or she could have made it safely to the US, but not known how to find Roberto.  Julia is very sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants, and wants to help Roberto find out what happened.

The Lemon Orchard was a page turner, and a great summer book.  I hadn't read anything about Mexican immigrants before, and I enjoyed this introduction.  I would think that anyone who liked Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah would like this book as well. 

I read The Lemon Orchard at the request of Lindsay Prevette of Viking/Penguin books.  No promises were made, no payments were received.  One odd coincidence was that there was a character in this book named "Lion", and a character with the same name in the last book that I reviewed on request, My Education by Susan Choi.  According to the Social Security Baby Name Index, Lion has not made their list of the top 1000 baby names any time in the last 100 years, so it's sort of strange that I've read two books with characters by that name in the last two months.  I'm not sure what book I will read as my "industry requested review" in September, but if there is another Lion, I'll take that as a sign.  Of what, I have no idea.

Next Up:  At Last by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schein.  I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this one - hopefully it will improve quickly!

Half Time Update

I am now officially half way through listening to Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  This is the big fat book (BFB) that the Typical Book Group picked to read over the summer.  Right now, the characters are in The Great War, the Schlieffen Plan is failing, England is storming a German entrenchment, and the Lusitania has sunk, but the US has not yet entered the war.  The story is focused on a British earl and his sister, a Welsh family, two Russian brothers, a German who is in love with the earl's sister, and an American who is in love with the daughter of a Russian immigrant entrepreneur.

Follett has allowed the reader to see all of the angles of story of the beginning of World War I, without seeming to choose sides.  All of the key characters are questioning the reasons for the war, and the strategies of their respective countries.  For as much as I am learning about World War I, however, I have to say that the story is a little fluffier than I would have expected.  While I don't think that Follett has actually used the words "throbbing member", the sex scenes are of that caliber, and so far two hymens have been painfully broken.  I know this because those are almost exactly the words Follett used.  Hmm. 

Once I finish reading Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn, I am going to read Fall of Giants in addition to listening to it, which should get me through the second half a little faster than the first.  Not that I'm rushing.

Giveaway Update:  Each time that I give a book away through this blog, I also offer the winner the opportunity to write a review as a guest blogger.  I recently checked in with Mary who received a copy of  Glow by Jessica Maria Tuccelli, to see how she liked the book.  The news wasn't good.  Mary reported that in her 70 years of reading, she had finished all but a handful of books, but that she couldn't bring herself to finish Glow.  She found it confusing, and wasn't sure why it had received so many "glowing" reviews online.  Oh well.  Hopefully the more recent giveaway winners will have better experiences!

In Other News:  The Man Booker Prize Longlist is out.  The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, which is next on my TBR list, is on the Longlist, and so are a few others that look interesting.  I know it's only a matter of time until I read TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, and I've also read good things about A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.  How can I not want to read a book by someone named NoViolet Bulawayo, especially when it's called We Need New Names?  She certainly does not.  I'll wait for the Shortlist to come out in September to narrow down my choices.

Still Reading:  Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Reader, I Grew Up

Regina Gottlieb is a 21 year old college graduate who knows EVERYTHING!   She is just starting her graduate degree program, and has been listening to the gossip about a professor, Nicholas Brodeur.  Brodeur has a reputation for being sexist, which somehow makes him so irresistibly sexy that Regina signs up for his class even though she is totally unprepared for it.  Regina manages to catch Brodeur's attention, lands a job as his TA, and that's when things get a little out of hand.  I know what you're thinking and you're wrong.

My Education by Susan Choi is the story of Regina, and her self righteous quest for love.  As a 21 year old, she thinks that she understands life's complications and all of the choices that are available for responsible adults, like herself.  Unfortunately, the professor who she seduces is much older, and is at an entirely different place in life.  Regina can't, and really doesn't even try, to understand the differences between grad school responsibilities and real life. 

Choi is exploring a difficult issue through her characters.  Are you who you were when you were 21?  Should you be?  If you could go back, would you and should you?  Is there actually a way back?  Is young love, with its intense focus a truer love, or just a love that can only happen when one doesn't have much else to do?  At one point, Regina describes the dilemma, by saying that she feels grief not for a lost lover, "but for all my lost selves, which I liked to imagine were still somehow there, waiting for my return."

As mentioned in David Ulin's LA Times review of My Education, the book is divided into two parts: the 1995 young Regina in love, and the 2007 Regina who is wondering if she is in love or not. The two sections read completely differently, and I preferred the later section. In the first part, the focus on the affair is intense, like a story of young love should be. The 2007 section is hectic and fast paced, with stories of how and why the 1995 characters grew and, yes, changed.

While reading My Education, I kept my dictionary close at hand.  At first I thought that Regina was using big words as a way of being a pretentious grad student.  After looking up a few of those words, however, I realized that there are more precise words for things that I have tried to describe, and that Choi knows them all.  Each word that I had to look up was exactly fitting, and a word that I really should have known already.

My Education has echos of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen in the complicated love triangles.  The 9/11 scenes could have been cut from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, for being too brutal.  Foer's readers in 2005 were probably not ready for the honest story Choi's characters can retell 8 years later.  The love scenes were just slightly less explicit than those in Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, but the point of Choi's story wasn't the shock, but the differences between the lovers.  One could not wait to be older and wanted to play house, while the other only wanted to be 21 again, and able to run away.  If  you check out my Favorites page, you will realize that these are huge compliments, as The Corrections and Extremely Loud are on that list, as is another by Sarah Waters.  Additionally, My Education is blurbed on the back by Michael Cunningham and Jennifer Egan, both of whose names grace my page of Faves.

Some of the reviews that I have read claim that Regina is unlikeable.  I guess that what would say in response is that I don't have to like a train crash to know that I won't be able to look away.  I hope to see My Education on this year's NYT Notable Books list.  If it doesn't make the list, and Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld does, then I promise not to link that list to this blog.  Do you hear the sound of NYT editors scrambling to make me happy?  Me neither.  But in this case, I hope we agree.

GIVEAWAY!!  I read this book at the request of Catherine Boyd of Viking/Penguin Books, who sent me a free copy.  Other than that, no promises were made, and no payments were received.  If you think that you would like to win a copy of My Education, please submit a comment to this post, or email me at SoNotARunnerBlog@aol.com before July 13.  For your comment, tell me the age that you would go back to, if you could.  As a fair warning, if you think that you might be offended by lesbian sex scenes, this isn't the book for you.

LEGALESE: One entry per person, and there will be only one winner. Numbers will be assigned to each entrant, and the winner will be randomly picked by number. If you choose to comment as "Anonymous", please leave your first name at the end of your comment, so that you will know who you are when I announce the winner. The winner must then contact me via email with his or her U.S. mailing address (not a PO Box), within 7 days. If the first announced winner fails to respond within that time, the book with go to the second place winner, and so on and so forth. Got it? If you have questions please email me. Good luck!

My next "industry requested review" will be The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice.

Next Up:  Some Hope by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Flowers with Sense

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld is the story of Daisy, who prefers to be called Kate.  Daisy/Kate, and her twin sister, Violet, have what they call "senses" and what you and I would call "ESP".  Kate has worked to live a normal life and leave her senses behind.  She married a scientist, had children of her own, and basically just tries to blend in.  Suddenly, Violet has a premonition that there is going to be a season of earthquakes affecting the St. Louis area, where they both live.

In the interest of helping the public prepare, Violet takes her prediction to the evening news.  This mortifies Kate, and she hopes that people won't realize that Violet is her sister.  But nevertheless, Kate takes the prediction seriously, and waits for the quakes to arrive.

Kate is an incredibly unlikeable character.  She had a miserable childhood, with a mom who was suffering from depression and rarely left her bed.  She was bullied in high school when people found out about her senses, and hopes to never see anyone from her old school.  But then she insists on repeating her parents' mistakes.  She wants to raise her kids in St. Louis even though she hated it there, she names her daughter after a flower despite hating her own flowery name, and she is so uncomfortable with herself that she tries to keep secrets from her husband, Jeremy.  Jeremy, in contrast to Kate, is a portrait of a perfect husband.  He is incredibly patient and understanding, even if he can't believe that ESP is real. 

To be fair, Kate's frenemy, Courtney, is even less likeable than Kate, but that doesn't do much to make Kate look better.  Courtney makes a choice that is appalling to me, and Kate uses that choice as a springboard to her own bad decisions.

Sisterland had a weird tension going on through the story with a lot of foreshadowing that ultimately went nowhere.  In a less talented author, I would have thought that maybe she just lost track of all of her hints and didn't follow through.  I have to think that Sittenfeld did this on purpose to try to give the reader the experience that Kate and Violet lived with, where they were never sure if their premonitions would come to fruition, and if visions did come to be, if it would happen in the form that the twins foresaw.

Ultimately, I was disappointed in Sisterland.  I loved Sittenfeld's earlier book, American Wife, and anxiously requested Sisterland on NetGalley as soon as I saw it.  I'll be interested to read the reviews on this one when Sisterland comes out on June 25.  What I can say, though, is that while I didn't love the book, I can't stop thinking about it.

Full disclosure:  I received a free electronic copy of Sisterland, and agreed to review it.  No promises were made, and no payments were received.

My July Industry Requested Review is supposed to be The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice, and I planned to review My Education by Susan Choi in August.  Now that I've got them both in my hot little hands though, I may switch that order.  Both books will be available for giveaways, so stay tuned!

Next Up On Paper:  I'm going to read The Patrick Melrose Novels  by Edward St. Aubyn.  TPMN is a collection of four novels that St. Aubyn released separately between 1992 and 2006.  I am going to review them one at a time as I finish them, and hopefully still manage to get the full collection done, possibly including the 5th book that is not included in TPMN, by the end of the summer.

Still Listening to:  Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy.  OK fine.  I admit it.  I'm not hating this story, and I'm even liking it a little.

Honey Thief Winner Announced!

The winner of the The Honey Thief giveaway is Laurie!  Laurie's favorite recipe is Caramel Pecan Rolls, and if we are lucky, maybe she'll pass that recipe on to us.

Laurie, please email me with your mailing address at SoNotARunnerBlog@aol.com, so that The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman can be mailed to you. 

Laurie noted in her comment that she had a hard time commenting on the blog.  Remember that if you ever have a hard time commenting, you can always reach me and enter giveaways by emailing me at SoNotARunnerBlog@aol.com. 

Next month's Industry Requested Review will be Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld.  I loved American Wife by Sittenfeld, so I am excited to read this new one.

Still Reading:  The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Still Listening to:  Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

More Afghan Noodles, I Say!

The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman is a collection of folklore and remembered stories from Mazari's native country, Afghanistan.  Mazari is member of Afghanistan's third largest ethnic group, the Hazara, whose home base is the mountainous region of Hazarajat.  Most of the stories are from the second half of the 20th century, while Afghanistan was fighting the Russians, and later while it was at war with itself.

The stories are really great.  Most Americans know about Afghanistan only from the evening news.  The readers among us gobbled up Kahled Hosseini's books, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns which were set in Afghanistan and gave the reader a glimpse of  life with the Taliban, and life as a woman in Afghanistan.  The Honey Thief offers a different perspective, by focusing on the stories of one Afghan ethnic group, prior to the Taliban's rise to power. 

In addition to the stories, Mazari also includes a map in the front cover, so the reader doesn't have to go digging for an atlas to know where we are reading about.  Additionally, he includes a glossary at the end, where he defines the few words that he doesn't explain in the stories themselves. 

Mazari ends the stories with the tale of the Cookbook of the Master Poisoner of Mashad, which if carefully followed, was believed to keep the eater from being susceptible to poisoning.  From there, Mazari gives us his thoughts on cooking and eating, including his personal opinions on spices that are frequently used in Afghanistan. His recommendations are conversational and sort of make me like him even more.  For example, his entry on nutmeg reads:  "We use nutmeg with meat dishes, together with cumin and coriander.  Not too much nutmeg.  Don't be crazy." 

Saving the best for last, the book ends with traditional recipes from Hazarajat.  Before I read the stories, I was excited to see the recipes, just because I like books with recipes in general.  But since I've never eaten Afghan food, I wasn't really planning on trying them.  After reading the stories, the spice recommendations, and the recipes, I'm ready.  Of the 6 recipes that he includes, I want to try 4, and make the noodles from the 5th.  Like his spice notes, the recipes show Mazari's personality.  He makes comments like these, which I have taken from his noodle recipe: 

"First make the noodles with plain flour and salt and water.  What could be simpler? . . . .Wrap the three balls of dough in cloth . . . leave them alone for maybe half an hour.  Read a book, a good one, not a book about vampires or serial killers or anything like that.  A peaceful book. . . .Then take your knife with a sharp point and slice the dough into strips - and that's your noodles.  Thin strips, of course - I'm sure you know how wide a noodle should be. . . ."

But he also includes enough details that I feel like I could make these noodles.  This I get from an Afghan man, and not from a nice semi-Italian girl.   Huh.

Although I am (overly) enthusiastic about the recipes, I want to reiterate that The Honey Thief is a great book for anyone who would like to learn about the Afghan culture.  Remember a few weeks back when I talked about Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende?  The reason that I read that was that it was being used in my school district for a class that combines social studies and English for 9th through 12th graders.  The Honey Thief would be perfect for a class like that, where the reader is learning about a culture by reading its stories.  The recipes would make a nice extra credit opportunity.

So, now that I've convinced you to read The Honey Thief, the good news is that THIS IS A GIVEAWAY POST!  I read this book at the request of Jane Shim of Viking/Penguin Publicity.  No promises were made, no payment was received.  I'm keeping my copy, but Jane has also allowed me to make a copy available to one of you.  If you'd like to be the lucky winner, just comment on this post, or shoot me an email at SoNotARunnerBlog@aol.com, before May 26.  To make it easier, I'll give you a topic:  What is your favorite recipe?  You can comment about that, or anything else that you want.

LEGALESE: One entry per person. Numbers will be assigned to each entrant, and the winner will be randomly picked by number.   If you choose to comment as "Anonymous", please leave your first name, so that you will know who you are when I announce the winner. The winner must then contact me via email with his or her U.S. mailing address (not a PO Box), within 7 days. If the first announced winner fails to respond within that time, the book with go to the second place winner, and so on and so forth. Got it? If you have questions you can post those in the comments section too. Good luck!

Next Up On Paper:  Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Still Listening to:  Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Boy Band Drama

Several years ago, I read Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes, and I really liked it.  The best part about it for me was that the story was set in modern day Dublin.  Until I read that book, my idea of Dublin  involved maybe one or two stop lights, narrow cobble stone streets with walls on either side, and a friendly old man who could show me the way to the pub.  Sushi burst that bubble, and made me realize that Ireland really is in the twenty-first century, complete with office buildings, mortgages, and obviously, sushi. 

When Rebecca Lang of Viking and Penguin Books asked me to review Keyes' new book, The Mystery of Mercy Close I was excited to see what Keyes had been up to since I last read her.  I was a little concerned, however, to hear that Mercy Close was "a Walsh sister novel", since I didn't think that I had read any of the earlier Walsh sister books.  But, I dove right in nevertheless. 

Mercy Close is the story of Helen Walsh, a private detective working in Dublin.  Helen is hired by her ex-boyfriend, Jay Parker, to find a member of the boy band, The Laddz, who has gone missing just before the reunion tour is set to begin.  As you might expect, The Laddz are a little one dimensional.  There is the cute one, the gay one, the wacky one, the truly talented one, and the other one.  When our story begins, several years after their popularity peaked, the cute one has become the religious one, the gay one has gone straight, the wacky one, Wayne, is the one who is missing, the truly talented one has quit the band to find solo fame, and the other one is still just the other one.  Adding this second characteristic to each band member served to make them not two dimensional, but one dimensional in a different way.

A lot of the first half of the book is spent establishing the traits of the band members, and reminding the reader of the characteristics of each of Helen's sisters.  I found the sister side story completely unnecessary, and would have liked the story just as well if Helen was an only child. Helen is a quirky character.  Many pages are spent detailing the things that bother her, and the misfortunes that she has faced as a result of the Irish recession, rather than chasing the bad guys or looking for Wayne.

In the second half of the book, the story comes together, and Keyes' talent shows through.  We find that Helen is struggling with depression.  Her battle is really well written, with depression treated as a disease, like emphysema, and not something that one can get over with a pill and a call to a shrink.  As the deadline approaches, it is unclear whether Wacky-One-Wayne is missing, or trying to be lost.  There seem to be as many people who need Wayne to participate in the reunion tour as there are people who would profit if the shows were cancelled.  The suspense builds, and Keyes has us turning pages as quickly as we can. 

As always, with these "industry requested reviews", I received the book for free, but no other payment.  I promised to review the book, but did not promise a positive review.   My next industry requested review will be The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman.  I'll have an extra copy of that one to give away, so stay tuned!

Next Up:  Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Still Listening To:  The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

Glow Giveaway

I'm so sad that you missed my March Industry Requested Review.  April Fools!  There wasn't one.  I got so behind while I was reading The Savage Detectives that I didn't get around to starting The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes.  Anyhow . . . my slacking might be good news for you!  To help me catch up, I am going to give away a copy of Glow by Jessica Maria Tuccelli before I even read it.

Amazon describes Glow  like this:

In the autumn of 1941, Amelia J. McGee, a young woman of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish descent, and an outspoken pamphleteer for the NAACP, hastily sends her daughter, Ella, alone on a bus home to Georgia in the middle of the night—a desperate measure that proves calamitous when the child encounters two drifters and is left for dead on the side of the road.

Ella awakens in the homestead of Willie Mae Cotton, a wise root doctor and former slave, and her partner, Mary-Mary Freeborn, tucked deep in the Takatoka Forest. As Ella heals, the secrets of her lineage are revealed.

Shot through with Cherokee lore and hoodoo conjuring, Glow transports us from Washington, D.C., on the brink of World War II to the Blue Ridge frontier of 1836, from the parlors of antebellum manses to the plantation kitchens where girls are raised by women who stand in as mothers. As the land with all its promise and turmoil passes from one generation to the next, Ella's ancestral home turns from safe haven to mayhem and back again.

Jessica Maria Tuccelli reveals deep insight into individual acts that can transform a community, and the ties that bind people together across immeasurable hardships and distances. Illuminating the tragedy of human frailty, the vitality of friendship and hope, and the fiercest of all bonds—mother love—the voices of Glow transcend their history with grace and splendor.

If you would like to win this copy, which was made available by Audrey McGlinchy at Viking and Penguin Books Publicity, simply comment at the end of this post.  I'll give you an easy topic:  Were you fooled this April Fools?  A "yes" or a "no" is fine, but it might be fun to hear the details!  For those of you who are comment impaired, or just feel a little shy about commenting, you can email me at SoNotARunnerBlog@aol.com, with "Glow Giveaway" in the subject line, and I will enter you.

If you win the book, and would like to review it, I would be happy to post your review here, or to link to your review if you have your own blog.

LEGALEESE:  One entry per person.  Numbers will be assigned to each entrant, and winner will be randomly picked by number.  I will announce the winner when I post my next review.  I am tearing through What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, so I would enter sooner rather than later, if I were you!  If you choose to comment as "Anonymous", please leave your first name, so that you will know who you are when I announce the winner.  The winner must then contact me via email with his or her U.S. mailing address, within 7 days.  If the first announced winner fails to respond within that time, the book with go to the second place winner, and so on and so forth.  Got it?  If you have questions you can post those in the comments section too.  Good luck!

Still Reading:  What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Still Listening To:  The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James