What Happened in July 2014

 

Reviews:

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

Edmund De Waal is a famous twenty-first century potter (did you know that there was one?) who I first read about in this NYT article.  Although the article was intended to be about De Waal's new exhibit, the reporter talked enough about De Waal's family memoir, The Hare With Amber Eyes that I had to add it to my TBR list. 

What is amazing about Hare is that while it could have been the epitome of vanity publishing, instead it is a really great book, without bragging or pouting.  De Waal's family first made its fortune in Odessa through grain trading.  His great-great grandfather pushed the family into Europe, where they established banks in Paris and Vienna.  De Waal's great uncle was Charles Ephrussi, whose name was familiar to me, but for a while I didn't know why. Charles was the third son, and was able to avoid the family business and do things that were more interesting, like collect art.  He lived in Paris in the time of the Impressionists, and his collection included works by Pissaro, Monet, Renior, Cassatt, and Degas, all in one room of his home.  When De Waal discussed his uncle's relationship with Renoir, I knew why I knew Charles.  Charles Ephrussi is the man in the top hat in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party.  Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party is a book that I loved reading, and is on my list of books that I would like to re-read this year.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) I lent my copy to my friend, Kim, so I couldn't take a detour into fiction while reading Hare.

That's OK, because in Hare, the truth is better than the fiction could have been.   When Paris became obsessed with Japanese art in the 1800s, Charles jumped in, and amassed a collection of netsuke.  Netsuke are small, intricately carved objects, made sometimes from stone, ivory, or even wood.  Time passed, and the netsuke went out of style.  Charles sent his valuable collection to a nephew, De Waal's grandfather, as a wedding gift.  De Waal's grandfather went on to live in Vienna, where he ran the family owned bank.  According to De Waal, his grandfather's pre-World War II wealth, in today's dollars, was $400 million.  Unfortunately for the De Waal family, they were Jewish, and living in a Nazi state.  By the end of the war, most of the wealth was gone, but amazingly, the netsuke survived and passed through another generation, before landing in De Waal's capable hands.

While billed as the story of the netsuke, this is really a story of a family living in an incredible time.  It somehow doesn't read as a memoir, so much as a telling of historical events in a new and interesting light.  Definitely worth the read. 

Challenges: I love library books

Tags:  Memoir, Non-Fiction, WWII Civilian Stories, Paris

McSweeney's 44

McSweeney's is a quarterly something that generally includes short stories and articles, and was created by Dave Eggers.  I say that it is a quarterly "something" rather than magazine or journal or book, because it is really none of these.  Sometimes it comes with the stories loose in a box, sometimes it looks more like a magazine.  Usually, it looks a lot like novel, which is the case with 44.  The main contributors to 44 were Joe Meno, Rebecca Curtis, Tom Barbash, Jim Shepard, Stuart Dybek, and Wells Tower.  There was also a 82 page tribute to Lawrence (Ren) Weschler, to which many others contributed.

One of my favorite parts of 44 were the letters to the editor, which were all witty and quirky, and generally what one would expect from McSweeney's readers who are hoping to get published themselves. 

Jim Shepard wrote a particularly un-McSweeny-ish story that I liked called "The Ocean of Air", about the Montgolfier brothers who were the first to invent a hot air balloon safe for human travel.  I also liked Stuart Dybek's piece, "Happy Ending" which tells the story of a man, Gil, attending a party thrown by a mogul who claimed to be unhappy.  Gil shows the mogul how happy he is by inventing a scenario which would make his life much worse.  Another interesting story was "Birthday Girl" by Tom Barbash, where a driver who is possibly (almost surely) drunk hits a young girl, and then tries to make things right.

The story by Wells Tower, "The Dance Contest" is well written and interesting, but also strange.  It is about a man named Osmund Tower, the fictional father to Wells, who finds himself imprisoned in the luxury wing of the Theb Moob Mens' Prison in Thailand, due primarily to his naivete.  While he may be in the best possible part of the prison, it is a prison none the less.  The Captain in charge comes up with the idea of rewarding the prisoners with prizes, based on their performance in a dance contest, as judged by Internet viewers.  Cruel and unusual?  You decide.  What I didn't get about this piece is why Tower wanted to make it seem like his character was his father.  Why not just name him Tom Sutherland or Osmund Miller?

Although I, personally, didn't need such a long, funereal, tribute to Ren Weschler, he seems to be a person I should know more about.   I would recommend starting with the Errol Morris conversation with Weschler, and then skipping ahead to Jonathan Lethem's tribute.   If they leave you wanting more, 44 is well stocked.  As always, I finished McSweeney's feeling a little smarter (and maybe a little more smug) than when I started.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Keeping it Short, Historical Fiction, Non Fiction

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam is the third book in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy.  The first book, Oryx and Crake, focused on Jimmy, a guy in his early 20s who survived some sort of a plague, and wonders if he is the only human who made it.  He lives among people he calls "Crakers" because they were developed in a lab by his friend, Crake.  Much of that book was told through flashbacks about Crake and their shared love, Oryx.  The second book, The Year of the Flood, was told mostly by Toby and Ren.  They are members of a group, The God's Gardeners, who try to live in a more simple way among the corporations and criminals of the modern world.  MaddAddam again focuses on Toby, but this time the story is more about two other God's Gardeners, Zeb and Adam. 

MaddAddam takes place after the waterless flood of the plague, and begins right where The Year of the Flood ended.  Toby, Ren, Amanda and Jimmy are all in a confrontation with dangerous painballers, who are criminals who have fought to the death and survived.  Toby is happy to be reunited with her old crush, Zeb, and much of the book is Zeb telling about his life as a boy with his brother, Adam.  Adam and Zeb had to flee from their abusive but powerful father, the Rev.  Zeb found adventure slaying bears and impersonating big foot, while Adam went on to recruit like-minded people to become MaddAddams and God's Gardeners.

While MaddAddam brought resolution to the series, I found it a little lacking compared to the earlier two books.  Ren and Jimmy were marginalized and treated like children here, when they had much stronger roles in the earlier books.  At the end of the trilogy, I still don't know what the point of the MaddAddams was.  Was it just to be a  group of people gathering information about the bad things the corporations were doing?  The MaddAddamers don't seem to do anything, although they investigate a lot, and know a lot.  Also I'm totally lost about Adam.  Was he really into his Adam 1 God's Gardeners persona, or did he establish the God's Gardeners just as a front to hide corporate escapees and further the MaddAddam cause?  Much of the plot was also redundant, with Zeb telling his story to Toby, and then Toby telling the same story to the Crakers.

My favorite part of MaddAddam was the Crakers.  When Crake invented them, he intended them to be post-religion, and had no idea that they would come to worship him and Oryx as deities.  He also didn't anticipate Toby teaching one of them, Blackbeard, to read, or the creation of a Craker bible, the Book of Toby.  Atwell was also incredibly timely in describing how the religion of corporations can lead to the destruction of mankind.  In light of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, the world as she predicts it is all the more likely.  In MaddAddam, Adam and Zeb's dad was the leader of the Church of PetrOleum.  As he preaches, the "Petr" is from the apostle, Peter, and the "oleum" is because of all the references to oil in the Bible.  Clearly, God created oil for our use, and any government attempt to regulate the drilling or sale of oil is a violation of the religious beliefs of the Church.  Maybe, just maybe, we could learn from the mistakes that Atwood's characters make in the name of a self serving religious belief.

MaddAddam was a NYT Notable Book for 2013.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books and AudioBook

Tags:  NYT Notables, Sci-Fi-Ish, Questioning Religions

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

During the early days of  the siege of Sarajevo, in 1992, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera named Vedran Smailovic, played his cello in ruined buildings and at funerals which were frequently targeted by snipers.  In The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway takes Smailovic's story, and sets it to fiction.  In Galloway's Sarajevo, a young woman who calls herself Arrow is working as a sniper defending the city.  A man with a young family, Kenan, walks from one side of the city to the other in order to fill water bottles for himself and his neighbor.  An older man, Dragan, tries to get to the bakery where he works and where he knows bread is waiting for him.  Each of these characters faces the possibility at every intersection that he or she may be shot by a sniper or hit by a shell.  All of  them are eventually drawn to the cellist.

Sarajevo fell from being the host of the Olympics in 1984, to being a place where a person could expect to get shot while walking down the street just eight years later.  Galloway's characters face their new reality while not quite believing that it could be true.  Each of them refuses to be that person, living in that city.  They believe that if they can hold on to their integrity and standards, Sarajevo has hope of being restored.  Unfortunately the siege and the war waged on for years after this story ends, and after Smailovic left the city.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is the story of life in a war zone, where no one is coming to help.  It tries to be a story of hope, but the reader is left with the feeling that if Arrow, Kenan and Dragan aren't killed on one day, they may be the next.

There was some controversy about Galloway's use of Smailovic's actions in this book.  Galloway defends his story as being fictional but inspired by Smailovic's public acts.  Smailovic apparently was not told about the book before it was published and felt exploited by it.  However the story came to be told, it is worth knowing.  

Challenges:  Rewind, I Love Library Books, Audiobook

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group

The Neighborhood Book Group met in June to discuss This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.  I was a lame book-grouper, and had to leave after only half an hour to go play bunco instead.  Life in suburbia!  Luckily, this book group is all business, so I actually got to do some book discussing before I left.  With the movie coming out this fall, we talked a lot about the characters and the stars who will play them.  Although I love Tina Fey, I just can't see her as Judd's sister, Wendy.  Like 90% of the characters in this book (Am I underestimating?  Is it 100%?), Wendy is having an affair, and her life is just basically  sad.  Maybe Tina will make her situation seem less pathetic.  We also talked about who was the most dysfunctional.  This discussion could last hours.  Most of the group sided with the mom, Hillary, or the younger brother, Phillip.  And, this is where I left them, so I'm not sure where the conversation went from there. 

Next month they (we?) will discuss The Vacationers by Emma Straub.  I'm so bogged down in The Typical Book Group's summer BFB, that I don't think I'll have time to get to this one.

 The Typical Book Group

The Typical Book Group never meets in July, but in June we pick a Big Fat Book (BFB) to read all summer long.  This year we picked . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Talk about a BFB.  My copy is 1184 pages, and it's actually a little uncomfortable to hold. After two weeks of reading, I am only 200 pages in.  I'll have to pick up my pace if I'm ever going to make it through this!

Tags:  Book Group Reports, Big Fat Books

In Other News:

Local Libraries

Are these cute neighborhood libraries popping up near you? 

My friend, Debby's father-in-law installed one in his front yard.  There's another one in the park at the end of my street.  They are the cutest things.  The idea is, you can pick a book to take, and leave a book for someone else to read.  No sign out slips, no late fees.  It's the honor system at its best.  Debby's F-I-L lives in a bit of a hoity-toity neighborhood, but in an area where lots of people walk, so I think his library will get lots of action.  Doing my best to convert young future Republicans to a more reasonable party, I deposited a copy of The Believer, which is a book review magazine by the McSweeney's people, as well as a cookbook, and my copy of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.  In exchange, I took a copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which has been on my TBR list since it became a NYT Notable.  Score!

Winner, Winner, Goldfinch Dinner

Guess what?  I won a copy of The Goldfinch audiobook by Donna Tartt.  Remember way back when when I was giving away a copy?  No, I didn't enter and win my own contest.  Because The Goldfinch won two Audies, there were two copies to give away, and I entered the giveaway on Wholly Books.  And I won!  I can't wait to get it and start listening!

Loss of a Legend

On July 3, we lost Louis Zamperini.  The real story here is not that a 97 year old man died, because really, what more could we expect?  What is remarkable is that Zamperini was still alive.  Zamperini was a former Olympic athlete who was shot down over the Pacific during World War II, and then taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese.  His story is told in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which Angelina Jolie has turned into a soon to be released movie.  Here is a link to the NYT Obituary.

Man Bookered

On July 23, the Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced.  This was the first year that authors from everywhere around the world were eligible, rather than just authors from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.  So, with Americans now eligible, 5 made the list.  The only author who made it this year who I have read is Joshua Ferris, and the reviews of his recent book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour have been pretty mixed.  Some might have expected The Goldfinch, which already won the Pulitzer, to edge out a few of the lesser known picks.  However, it was no surprise that Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn didn't make the cut.  Lost for Words is a thinly veiled satire of the Man Booker Prize, and it would have been a shock if the Man Booker judges were thick skinned enough to select it.  The Shortlist will be announced on September 9.  My money is on David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, even though it hasn't been released or reviewed on this side of the pond yet.

Tags:  Man Booker Listed

August Preview:

In August, I hope to review the following books:

Audios

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - I'll only get started on this one - it's 32 hours!

Traditional or EBooks

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (IF I make it through Ladies)

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson  (OK - this will be a stretch!)

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

Makin' Bacon

After reading the first few pages of Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese, I couldn't sleep.  You see, Reese told me that I could make bagels.  In my house.  Without fancy bagel making stuff.  I began to imagine the possibilities.  But, who could I invite over for freshly made bagels, who would appreciate them, without thinking that I was insane for making them?  And that was what kept me up.  Who would properly appreciate my homemade bagels?

In fact, Reese told me that I could, and should, make all kinds of things that I had never considered making.  Like hot dog buns, and English muffins, and hot cocoa mix.  For each recipe, Reese told a little story about how and why she decided to try making the item, what the cost was to make the item versus the prices of various brands one can buy at the store, what the result was, and whether it was worth the hassle.  I came into this book thinking that it would be mostly about keeping me from eating preservatives, and saving money. Reese surprised me by recommending that I buy some items that lot of people commonly make, like Quaker instant oatmeal and Kozy Shack rice pudding.  If she couldn't make it better, or if she or her family preferred the store bought version, she said so.  Sometimes, her recipes cost more than buying the product from the store.  In some of those cases (margaritas, chocolate chip cookies) she still recommended making them.  In others, like French onion dip, she recommended buying.

There were so many things in this book that I had never thought about making, but now I'm ready to try.  These include the bagels and hot dog buns mentioned above, but also Cheez-its, Oreos, and ginger ale.  I love Oreos, but I stopped buying them once I heard a nutritionist speak about all of the secret ingredients that they include.  Reese's recipe includes butter, sugar, vanilla, chocolate chips, an egg, flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.  No secrets there.  She also recommends (strongly) that I make my own vanilla.  Who knew?  According to Reese, if I make my own I will pay $7.00 for 12 ounces, versus $53.00 if I bought 12 ounces in a store.

Admittedly, Reese is many steps ahead of me.  While she makes owning chickens and even goats sound like something that I am missing out on, I'm sure my neighbors aren't ready for that.  I'm not ready for curing my own meats or making cheese.  But, there are enough things that I want to try that my copy of the book is fatter than it should be, with just about every second corner turned down.

So, when it comes to Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, should you check it out of your library or buy it?  The book is marked $15.00.  If you go to Books A Million, you could probably use a coupon.  If you order it from Amazon you will pay $13.21.  If you also buy the Madagascar vanilla beans that she recommends for $18.95, you will be just shy of the $35.00 minimum for free shipping.  Maybe you should buy more beans.  In terms of hassle, there is virtually no hassle in buying from Amazon.  However, if you check the book out of the library, you are sure to find yourself photocopying half of the book, then losing the loose pages, and generally making a mess of things.  Better to buy the book, and help Reese justify her goat purchase.

Next up:  Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

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

An American in Paris

So, you might remember that when the new Books A Million store opened in my neighborhood, I rushed right in and bought The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz.  This book had been on my radar for a while, because I seem to be drawn to books written by cooking bloggers, like Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond, and My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss.  And this one is set in my favorite city, Paris.

I have to say, it wasn't quite what I expected.  David Lebovitz tells his tales about what it is like for an American to move to Paris.  Many of the stories are exactly what you would think - the shop keepers are surly, the stores have unpredictable hours - that kind of a thing.  But David Lebovitz is a cookbook author, who has written books about desserts, chocolate, and ice cream.  So when he promises a "sweet life in Paris", that's what I expected.  The thing is,  I think he told the truth and didn't sugar coat it, as much as he may have been inclined to do, and as much as his consumers may have hoped.

This book is full of recipes, which is one of the reasons that I bought it.  Generally, when a book has a lot of good recipes in it, it is sort of pointless for me to borrow it from the library, because I know that I'll buy it sooner or later anyway.  But there weren't a lot of corners that I turned down with the intention of trying them myself. 

Truth be told, I like his blog better.  Here is a link to it.  In his blog, when he discusses a new recipe, he tells the story of where he found the ingredients, or why he wanted to try it.  In his book, the recipes are sort of just things to put after the vignettes about his life.  For instance, there's the recipe for Chocolate Spice Bread, that immediately follows a discussion about whether it is better for a man who needs to be hairless "from belly to toe" for a surgery to shave or use a hair removal cream.  How could I eat that bread?

Given that I was unlikely to make many of the recipes, I was sort of regretting my decision to purchase this one.   Then we came to the end (as Joshua Ferris might say).  At the end of the book, Lebovitz, gives us two things that are pretty great.  The first is a resource list for where Americans can find French ingredients.  This is what was missing from My Berlin Kitchen, and I was so glad to find it here.  The second is the list of Lebovitz's favorite French addresses.  You should probably buy the book just for this.  He lists great restaurants, chocolate shops, hot chocolate stops, and department stores.  I trust him completely, and want to go to every place that he mentions.  If only I could go back to Paris now.

Next up:  Well, it's kind of a funny story. . . no, it's not all that funny actually.  I still haven't gotten Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt from my library, even though I am first on the list for both the audio and paper versions.  So, now I am listening to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet by David Mitchell, and tonight I'll start reading it on paper too.  That way, it doesn't matter if I get Wolves in audio or paper version.  I'll continue with Jacob DeZoet in one form, and start Wolves in the other.

Accidental and Untrue

If a mockumentary is a fake documentary, then is a mockuoir a deliberately fake memoir?  Let's agree that it is.  In that case, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is a mockuoir by Ron Currie, Jr.  What makes this a mockuoir instead of just a plain novel is that Currie names the main character after himself, Ron Currie, Jr., and portions of the story also happened in his life.  What makes it different from a memoir, especially in this era where we know that memoirs are frequently fully of falsehoods, is that the main character insists that every word is true, even though we know very well that it is not.  Currie isn't the first author to name characters after himself.  Jonathan Safran Foer named the main character after himself in Everything is Illuminated, and Orhan Pamuk has included characters with his own name in a few of his books, as examples.  But neither of those authors have insisted that their stories are true, when they are obviously fictional.  Thus, the mockuoir.

FLPM shifts between three main story lines.  The first of these is the story of the main character's father's death, which I believe is also the story of the author's father's death.  The second story line is about the main character's obsession with an unobtainable woman named Emma.  Portions of this story are also likely the true story of the author's lost love.  The third is not a story so much as the main character's (and probably, the author's) thoughts and concerns about the future of artificial intelligence, and whether it will mean the end to all mankind.

In FLPM, Ron moves to a Caribean island at the request of the girl who he hopes will be his girlfriend.  She stays behind in the mainland US, to remake her life after her divorce.  While Ron is living on the island, he finds fist fights and a substitute girlfriend.  One thing leads to another, and Ron accidentally fakes his own suicide.  Throughout all this, we are flashing back to Ron's father's last days, and various stages of his relationship with Emma.

Some of the reviews that I read about this book complained that it was not linear, and was hard to follow.  I would say that it is no less linear than Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  One thing that differentiated this book from any other that I have read is that there are page breaks at the end of each train of thought.  So, while this is a 340 page book, if it had "normal" page breaks, it would have probably only been about 250 pages.  These random page breaks gave the reader an easy out, where a person could quit reading at any point, rather than feeling like they should get to the end of the chapter.  Obviously, this was deliberate, and consistent with Ron's (the character's and the author's) feigned indifference as to whether anyone finishes the book.

The artificial intelligence storyline hinted at the Sonmi story in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, with ruminations on whether souls can be grown in mechanical creations.  In a more timely observation, Currie mentions Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic runner with two prosthetic legs, as an example of how "non organic enhancements" will change the future of sports.  I would think that now, with Pistorius in the news for killing his girlfriend, Currie would like to re-write this section, somehow making Pistorius into an example of artificial intelligence working against humans, even when the soul was (or should have been) naturally developed.

I read FLPM at the request of Shannon Twomey of Viking, Penguin Books.  She sent me a free copy of the book and asked me to review it.  No promises were made, no payments were received.  Next month I will be reviewing The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes as my "industry requested review".

Next Up:  The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. 

The Anti-Julia

This month, The Typical Book Group is reading My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss.  Luisa describes herself as someone with a US passport and Italian citizenship, who lives in Berlin.  In fact, she was living in West Berlin while the wall was still standing, when her parents divorced.  Her father, an American, moved back to Boston with Luisa, while her mom stayed in Germany.  Luisa became a person divided, shuttling between the US, Germany, and her mother's family in Italy.  So, she did what any reasonable person would do after graduating from college, and moved to Paris.

Luisa first became known to the world as a cooking blogger.  She has a blog still, called "TheWednesdayChef", which you can get to by clicking on those words.  Knowing her history, I was expecting MBK to be a sort of Julie and Julia meets Eat Pray Love.  In Julie and Julia, a young woman living in New York, Julia Powell, tries to cook every dish in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in a tiny kitchen in 2002, and she blogs about her results.  In Eat Pray Love, a young travel writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, tries to recover from her divorce by travelling to Italy, India, and Indonesia.  The Typical Book Group has read both of these memoirs, and MBK seemed like it might be the perfect combination of the two, with a woman traveling the world, and giving us recipes.

In the early pages of MBK, I was really hooked.  I know a young woman who is living in Paris now, and blogging about it at La Jeune Fille Au Pair.  When I read the chapter called "Depression Stew", I couldn't decide if I should photocopy and mail that chapter to The Young Au Pair right away (so she would get real mail!) or if I should wait to finish the book and mail her the whole thing.  But before I sent it, I would, of course, photocopy the delicious recipes, like the Omelette Confiture and the Tomato Sauce with Carrots and Onions.  I was even excited to give the Sour Cherry Quarkauflauf a try, since Luisa told me where I could find Quark.  But then, Luisa turned into The Anti-Julia.

In the 1950s and 60s, when Julia Child was writing her masterpiece, she had a problem.  She was living in Paris, and writing a cookbook for busy American women.  She wanted to be sure that the recipes that she included would work in the US and that her readers would be able to find her ingredients.  She also wanted to try to make French cooking simple, even fool proof, so that American women could feel confident giving it a try.  Enter Avis DeVoto.  Avis lived in America, and Julia could ask her about the availability of ingredients, differences in appliances, and the utensils and equipment that she should expect an American woman to own. 

I first realized that Luisa was not following in Julia's footsteps when I read the recipe for Poppy Seed Whiligig Buns.  In the introduction, Luisa assures me that "they're actually quite simple to make", but then she tells me, twice, that I should eat these buns the morning that they are made.  Well of course, right?  But then I read the recipe.  It requires me to let the dough rise for an hour, mix in some more ingredients then freeze it for an hour, let it rise for another 45 minutes, and then bake it for 30 minutes.  So, by my calculations, if I am going to eat these buns the same day that I make them, I either have to get up at 4 am, or eat breakfast for dinner.

I should have realized that Luisa had something up her sleeve when she insisted that I use a "spotlessly clean" bowl for the Quarkauflauf.  Spotlessly clean.  Why would she think that my bowls aren't spotlessly clean?  Are my bowls spotlessly clean?  How does one get a bowl spotlessly clean anyway?  And then she insisted (in several recipes) that I use organic lemons.  Not organic milk, not organic eggs, not organic berries, but the lemons must be organic.  Huh.  Has she had bad experiences with genetically modified citrus?

Then we come to the Elderflower Syrup.  When a recipe begins by telling me that the greatest challenge may be finding the main ingredient, and suggests that I should try looking "in the wild" in the Pacific Northwest or mid-Atlantic region, I can be pretty sure that I will never try that recipe.  Julia Child was so concerned that American women wouldn't be able to find the proper ingredients that she changed some of her recipes.  Luisa, on the other hand, tells us to go look outside.  In another state.  Really?  Once I find the elderflowers (20-25 large sprays), I should combine them with some other ingredients in my 5 quart earthenware crock.  Could I borrow yours?

While there are other examples that I could give of recipes with obscure ingredients, there are also lots that I want to try.  I will definitely make the Tomato Bread Soup, using Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread recipe, as Luisa recommends.  I also need to make the Meatballs in Tomato-Chipotle Sauce.  My husband is always anxious to go over to one of our neighbor's houses during football games, since she makes meatballs just for him.  Now I can compete!  Of course, my neighbor is in The Typical Book Group, so she read this one too, but maybe she'll get frustrated by the elderflowers, skip a few chapters, and miss it.  And finally, I can't wait to try the Apple Tart.  I've made The Pioneer Woman's version, which she calls a "flat apple pie", a bunch of times, but it's never turned out for me.  Hopefully Luisa has the trick.

As for the story, it is a good one, and I might have even read it without the recipes!  Luisa  lives an interesting life with her nontraditional family and her lost and found love life.  She also acts as an unofficial ambassador to Berlin, making it sound like we all should go, if only for the elderflowers.  I am adding a link to Luisa's blog to the column to the right, so we can check in and see what she is up to.  It looks good to me!

Next up:  Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Still Listening to:  Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

One to Read and One to Skip

A gazillion years ago, when I knew the name of my sister's blog (in fairness, maybe she just doesn't blog anymore?) she mentioned in said blog that she wanted to read I was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley.  Eventually, I stumbled upon the cake book at a used book sale and picked it up.  I have to say, it was really pretty great.

However, I was confused, from a Dewey Decimal stand point. Specifically, I thought that I was reading a book of short stories, which the author pretentiously decided to call "essays" instead, but when I looked up the book at my library, it was in non-fiction territory.  I recently read a collection of short stories by Tobias Wolff, so I double checked on my library's online catalog, and sure enough, that book was listed as  fiction.  It turns out that an essay is different from a short story in that an essay is supposed to be true.  So while Wolff may have been writing about himself, and calling it fiction, Crosley was admittedly writing about herself, which turned her short stories into essays.  And not memoirs, which are, apparently, longer essays.  So, I was Told There'd be Cake is not in the biography section, with the other memoirs.  However, for my purposes, because Crosley is writing about herself, and because my standards are somewhat lax, I'm calling this one a memoir.

Crosley's stories are mostly about her time as a college graduate trying to navigate NYC with undefined career goals.  She stumbles; she falls.  But she also writes really well, and her stories are worth reading.  It was refreshing to read mini-memoirs from someone who seems to genuinely like her family.  She is sort of a less materialistic Jen Lancaster, and Crosley doesn't try quite so hard to be funny, but is funny nonetheless.

On the other hand, I am not going any further with Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin.  F&F seemed like the perfect book for me.  I recently read and loved Winter's Tale by Helprin, so I knew I liked the author, and the characters of Freddy and Fredericka were said to be loose characterizations of Charles (Prince of Wales) and Diana, so what's not to like there?  Camilla was cast as Lady Boilinghot - really.  For the first 5 discs  that I listened to on CD, (there are 22 discs in all), I thought of it as a Monty Python-esque story, and tried to play along.  Having just finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, I had a soft spot for Monty Python movies, and followed the ridiculousness obediently.   But when Freddy found himself tarred and feathered (in the 1980s) and complained that his wife wouldn't play with his [tennis] balls, I questioned my commitment, and checked the GoodReads reviews.  They were mostly positive, with lots of people saying that the book got off to a slow start, but that it got better after a couple of hundred pages.  So, I gave the story 3 more discs.  The idea, where I left off, is that Freddy and Fredericka/Charles and Diana were dropped in New Jersey, naked except for furry bikinis, with the charge to conquer America for England, or to lose the claim to the throne.  They were portrayed as being clueless about how to speak American, and that is supposed to lead to hysterical antics.  Not for me.  I figure I have about 10 hours into that book so far, and that's enough.

That's two down for the Off the Shelf Challenge, and I'm counting Freddy and Fredericka  for the Support Your Library Challenge too, since I checked the discs out on CD.

Next up:  The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

Next up on CD:  The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Next Perspective

I read The Muslim Next Door - The Qur'an, the Media, and that Veil Thing by Sumbul Ali-Karamali with the hope of gaining some understanding of the Qur'an.  But, as I should have expected from the title, it is about much more than that.  Living in South East Michigan, I was probably not Ali-Karamali's target reader, as Muslims are already a part of my family's daily life.  In fact, when my daughter was in 4th grade, I brought in rice krispy treats for her birthday, thinking that I was doing well by avoiding both nuts and gluten.  But alas, the Muslim girls wouldn't eat them.  This was a new one for me!  It turns out, as Ali-Karamali mentions in her book, that marshmallows contain pork gelatin, and instead there are special Halal Krispy Treats made for Muslim children.

Although much of the book was an introduction to the lives of Muslims in America, I did learn a thing or two about the Qur'an and rules that most Muslims follow.  Specifically, I didn't realize that the Qur'an is as new as it is.  It was first compiled into a book in 650 A.D.  For its time, the Qur'an was actually quite progressive in treating women as equals in terms of issues like inheritance, when they would not inherit equally in England for centuries.  Additionally, the Qur'an is somewhat fluid, in that its interpretation changes with the time and culture.  I was also surprised that there are not central leaders, and that imams are just people who are able to lead prayers, not necessarily people trained in the meaning of the Qur'an.

In the wake of 9/11, the media and many commentators quoted sections of the Qur'an in support of the position that the Muslim religion is necessarily violent, and seeks to dominate others.  Ali-Karamali accurately responds by pointing out that lines of the Bible, taken out of context like the lines of the Qur'an quoted by these talking heads, are just as violent and domineering.  Ali Karamali's message is that Muslim Americans are just like us, and are outraged by extremists who act in the name of Islam but are actually defying the word of the Qur'an.  The Qur'an itself, as she explains, authorizes violence only in defense, and places a premium on maintaining peace and offering forgiveness.

I also hadn't realized how many of the issues that we may think of as being Islamic or Muslim are really culturally specific to the country.  For instance, there is nothing in the Qur'an that says that women can't drive, and Muslim women drive in most countries, just not Saudi Arabia.  The same is true of the veil.  Whether a woman wears a veil or not may have more to do with where she is living or where her family is from than with the words of the Qur'an.

If you are looking for an in depth study of the Qu'ran, this is probably not the book for you.  However, if you don't know any Muslims, and would like to hear the perspective of a Muslim American woman, you may enjoy this book.

One more down for the Support Your Library Challenge!

Next up:  I was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley

Still Listening to:  Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

Food for Thought

After reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I decided that while I was not yet ready to become a vegetarian, I was willing to commit to making more conscious decisions about the meat that I would eat.  This led me to buy a 1/4 cow.  Once we had eaten all of the steaks, I started looking for ideas of what to do with the cuts of meat that I had never heard of before.  Like cube steak.  This led me to The Pioneer Woman. 

The Pioneer Woman, aka Ree Drummond, hosts a great website full of recipes, like this one for Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich, which has cube steak as the main ingredient.  If you have not checked out her blog, seriously, click on the link above, and do it now.  What I like about her is that she talks in a friendly voice, and includes pictures of every single step, so that you cannot get anything wrong.  At least theoretically.  I found a few favorite recipes on her website, and check back to it from time to time.  In fact, you might notice that there is a link to her website at the bottom right hand side of this blog, so if you are ever wondering what Ree is up to, you can click to her through me.  Yeah, we're pretty tight.

After enjoying the Pioneer Woman's blog, I bought myself her cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks:  Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl for my husband to give me for Christmas.  I was thrilled that it was just like the blog, with lots of pictures of the food items, and of Ree's family.  The book had two disappointments for me though:  1) I tried making her flat apple pie, three times, and it always leaked and stuck to the pan; and 2)  my favorite of her recipes, spaghetti and meat balls, wasn't in the book.  The spaghetti problem was solved when my birthday rolled along, and my sister-in-law bought me Ree's second cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks:  Food from my Frontier, where she included the spaghetti recipe, but used rigatoni instead.  Still no luck on the apple pie.  But my sister-in-law also got me Ree's memoir, Pioneer Woman:  Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - - A Love Story.

In the meantime, Ree started doing a show on the cooking channel, which I DVRed, and sometimes watched.  I found that I liked Ree much better in writing than on TV.  She just seemed to have more personality in her blog than what came through on TV.  So, I put off reading the memoir, thinking that maybe I was over her.

Pioneer Woman:  Black Heels to Tractor Wheels is the story of Ree meeting and falling in love with her husband, who she calls "Marlboro Man".  I was sort of unimpressed with the premise - did I really want to read someone's true love story?  I mean, if it was William and Kate's, I'd read it for sure. And I have read Henry VIII and Anne's love story countless times.  But the love story of a contemporary blogger?  After the first 50 pages, I was hooked.  In fact, I'm thinking that the next time I'm really frustrated with my husband, I should sit down and write the story of how we met and fell in love.  If nothing else, it would probably help me to feel a little more forgiving.

One of my favorite characters in Ree's true story is her brother, Mike.  While she never says what it is about Mike that makes him a different learner, my guess is Down's Syndrome.  The story of Mike, and how he reacts to the changes in Ree's life, such as telling everyone in a mall that she is getting married, is hysterical.  There is a group home near my house with 5 developmentally disabled adult men living in it, and I could imagine each of them reacting to news of a sibling getting married in a similar way.  Begin the sibling of a different learner can be a tough row to hoe.   Ree gets flustered by Mike's demands and expectations, but loves Marlboro Man even more when she sees how well he treats her brother.  I don't recall any mentions of Mike in the cookbooks, but I think I will go back and check out some of her shows that I DVRed and never watched to see if he makes an appearance.

Another great thing about the book is that at the end, Ree includes the recipes for most of the meals that she mentions in the story. I liked that about the last book that I reviewed, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris too, so I've decided to add a new tag - "Recipes Included". 

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels ends just after Ree's first child is born.  I was expecting to hear more of the story of how she started blogging, why she decided to home school, and how she got so great at photography.  The point of the title, if not the book, was to illustrate what a huge change it was for Ree to move from her posh life in the suburbs to Marlboro Man's Ranch, but I can't imagine her any place else.  If a "Book 2" comes out, I will be sure to pick it up.

Next Up:  The Night In Question:  Stories by Tobias Wolff

Still Listening To:  The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart

The Friends Book Report - 5

The Friends Book Group met tonight to discuss The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and Following Atticus by Tom Ryan.  There were 6 of us there tonight, and 4 of us had read both books, while the other two were both half way through Edgar, and had not started Atticus. 

We generally only discuss one book at a time, but the last time we met, we couldn't decide on the next book, and decided to do these two, since they are both dog books, and since some of us had read one but not the other, but none of us had read both.

As with The Typical Book Group, we all loved Edgar.  It was hard to discuss while trying not to ruin it for the two who were still reading, but we agreed that Wroblewski is a fantastic writer.  We're hoping that he comes out with something new soon.

Atticus, on the other hand . . . well, we encouraged those who had not yet read it to skip it.  We felt that Tom seemed selfish and self centered, but wondered if anyone who is not self centered has ever written a memoir.

I had to leave early to study for an Algebra test (obviously not my own), so I'm not sure what we will be reading next.  When I left, the candidates were The Dogs of  Babel  by Carolyn Parkhurst, and Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.

Still Reading:  A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles.  I am not even a tenth of the way into this one yet, but it has got my attention!

Still Listening to:  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. 

Mommy Dearest

Ruth Reichl's book, Not Becoming my Mother is the story of Reichl finally figuring out who her mother was, by reading her mother's letters after her death.  It seems that Reichl had a goal of never becoming her own mother, and was surprised to find out that her mother wanted Reichl to avoid that fate as well. 

Reichl's mom was born in 1908, and lived in Tom Brocaw's "Greatest Generation".  What that meant for women was that they needed to work while there was a war going on, and they could not work when the war ended, without making their husbands look bad.  Reichl takes from this that her mom believed that "working is as necessary as breathing" and that her greatest wish was for her daughter to have a meaningful career.  I wonder if Reichl will still feel the same way when she is older and looking back on her own life.  There's the cliche that no one ever says on their deathbed that they wished that they had spent more time at the office, but if I had a job like Reichl's (she is a food critic in addition to being an author) I might spend too much time at work myself.

There's a lot of bitterness hiding in this book.  When I first bought it, I said that it looked "crazy short and gifty".  Crazy short, yes.  But I'm not sure to whom one would give this book as a gift. 

On the same note, I also started listening to Lit by Mary Karr.  For some reason, I picked up two memoirs, one in paper form and one in audio form, at the same time.  Both Reichl and Karr spend a great deal of time talking about their mothers.  But while the two authors were born only 7 years apart, Reichl seems to be able to look back on her mom's life with a hint of regret for all those years of judgment, while Karr still has a lot of  anger.  Of course Reichl's mom never threatened to kill her, like Karr's mom did, but happy families are all alike, right?

To be fair to Karr, I quit listening about a quarter of the way through the 3rd disc, and I think that there were 14 total.  To be fair to myself, there is no reason that I need to waste valuable hours listening to an angry person complain. 

Lit  was a NYT Notable Book in 2009, but I just don't have the energy or desire to hear the whole story.  I did enjoy hearing about Karr's insight into poetry that she gained from sharing poems with cognitively impaired (my words, she said "fairly functional retarded") women, and it was for that reason alone that I listened as long as I did.

In terms of the Challenges, that's 2 more down for the Off The Shelf Challenge, and one more down for the Support Your Library Challenge, since I checked Lit out in audio form from my library. 

Next up on Paper:  A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles.  Yep, this one has been on the top of my TBR list for a while, and I have even checked it out of the library, and returned it without opening.  This book is 968 pages, and the hardcover version, which I have, looks a lot like a dictionary.  We'll see how this one goes!

Next up on CD:  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. 

Rubber Duckie, You're The One

Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn is the story of a man, Hohn, trying to find rubber duckies.  I'm serious.  Except that, as Hohn patiently explains, they aren't really rubber and they aren't just duckies. 

In 1992, a container filled with cardboard boxes, filled with plastic bags, filled with plastic ducks, turtles, beavers and frogs, fell off of its container ship, and into the Pacific Ocean.  Because of the nature of the shipment, many of the 28,800 toys floated, and found their way to various American and Canadian shores.  Hohn interviewed people who had found the animals, who study the Pacific Garbage Patch(es), who monitor the ice in the Arctic, who ship containers, and who make plastic bath toys, and reported his findings in Moby-Duck.

Strange, isn't it, that a container of floating bath toys would be the one to fall off the container ship?  Not really.  According to Hohn, somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 containers fall overboard each and every year, filling the ocean with cell phones, computer monitors, shoes, bikes, and lots and lots of plastic.  In fact, Hohn says that 2,000 supertankers and container ships have actually sunk in the last 20 years due to weather alone, and that two undefined "large ships" sink every week.  Apparently this is not widely known because the companies that lose shipments don't want to get reputations as polluters, and the shipping industry is not well regulated.  The disposability of the lives of the primarily Filipino crew members is also mentioned.

Hohn believes that the way to minimize the ocean's pollution is not to organize beach clean ups, but to go straight to the source - the corporations that actually make the things that pollute the oceans.  He points out that many of the names of organizations that claim to be all about keeping the world clean are really deceptive, as many of these organizations, like "Keep America Beautiful" are actually created by big corporations that contribute to the pollution problem.  By creating ad campaigns, like the crying Indian campaign of the 1970s, these corporations try to shift the blame away from themselves and to individual litter bugs who they imply cause pollution by not disposing of unnecessary packaging appropriately.  Hohn also reveals that the crying Indian himself, Iron Eyes Cody, is actually not a Native American at all, but a Sicilian born "Espera Oscar De Corti". 

An example of this unnecessary packaging that had never crossed my mind before is the plastic bag which Subway puts around each and every sandwich that it makes.  When I buy one sandwich for each member of my family, I wind up with 5 plastic bags, because they put our 4 bagged sandwiches into a larger plastic bag, for my convenience, all of which I throw away 30 seconds later.  Why do I accept that?  I bring fabric shopping bags to the grocery store, but I never thought to bring them to Subway.  Jimmy John's and Potbelly don't use plastic bags.  Subway might try to redeem itself by sponsoring a "recycle your plastic" ad campaign, but really, wouldn't that problem be solved if they stopped using plastic, instead of shifting the blame to their customers for not recycling?

Hohn is also interested in our fascination with the "rubber duckie".  As mentioned above, they haven't really been rubber for years, but are made from cheap plastic.  Hohn credits Sesame Street, and specifically Ernie, with making the yellow duck (which doesn't exist in nature) a cultural icon.

All told, this is an interesting book, but I would have preferred if it was 100 pages shorter.  Hohn went on tangents, pursued each to its logical or illogical end, and reported his well researched findings.  The end notes in this book are especially interesting.  They are not citations to articles supporting his conclusions, as one might expect, but instead are Hohn's commentaries that were so tangential that you just know his editor insisted they be cut from the body of the book.  With about 50 pages left, Hohn explained how a ship that he was on broke ice by charging toward it, landing on it, and waiting for the ice to break under the weight of the boat.  This is exactly how Mark Helprin described a ship breaking ice in Winter's Tale, which was sitting on my nightstand staring at me while I trudged through the end of Moby-Duck.  Next to Winter's Tale, Hohn didn't have a chance, and I admit to skimming through after that point.

Moby-Duck was published in 2011, although Hohn seemed to do most if its research around 2007.  At that point, it had been 15 years since the container full of bath toys fell overboard, and they were still, occasionally, washing up.  My guess is that right now, Hohn is somewhere on the West Coast of the US, impatiently awaiting fresh arrivals.  According to this article, published today, the first debris from the April 7, 2011 Japanese Tsunami has just begun to arrive in the Gulf of Alaska. 

Next up:  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin!  Yep, I've been listening to it for a couple of weeks, and loving it, so now I am going to read too while I'm at home, so that I'm not tempted to drive around aimlessly (polluting the environment at $3.99 per gallon) in order to find out what happens next.

I Could Do That

Exhibit A

Following Atticus:  Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship by Tom Ryan, is the story of an overweight man and a miniature schnauzer (see Exhibit A) who hike all of the 4,000 foot peaks in the White Mountains of Maine and New Hampshire.  But that's not enough.  They had to try to hike them all twice, during the 90 day period that constitutes winter proper.

I had some problems with this book that I'm having a hard time explaining.  One issue that I had is that Tom kept saying that there was something unusual about a big guy like him, and a little guy like Atticus hiking these peaks.  However, even while he was telling me that it is normally more fit people who do these things, he made it sound like the hikes were pretty easy, and definitely something that I could do.  I'm not sure that is really the case.  I can't think of the words that Tom could have used to make the expeditions sound as challenging as I logically think that they must have been.  He sometimes talked about coming across young buff groups of men all in premium hiking gear, who may or may not be able to reach the peaks that he and Atticus reach.  That helped me a little, because I could picture those cocky guys, but still, it seemed like hiking a 4,000 foot peak was something that I could do, right now, if I was just there.

I had this same feeling when I read A Walk in the Woods:  Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson.  It seemed to me that I too could hike the trail.  I would do it in pieces, over a period of many years, so that I would always be hiking when it was warm out (and sunny, and free of bugs, and with lots of snacks), but I could do it.  Have I mentioned that I have never even gone camping before?  But surely I could hike the Appalachian Trail, and enjoy it.

My other problem with Atticus is that I really couldn't relate to Tom's desire to do all of the hiking in the winter, or to try to do all of the peaks twice.  Why isn't once enough?  Why not set attainable goals, at least the first time around, and then improve on them?  It seemed that Tom's preference for winter hiking had to do with him being less likely to see other people while he was out.  Tom took being anti-social to an extreme, which made me wonder, how sad would his life have been without Atticus? 

My friend, Ann, recommended Atticus  to me after she listened to it on CD.  She felt that the story was so much better when she heard Tom reading it himself.  There have been books that I have listened to the author read on CD, such as The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris,  and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, where I felt that the author reading it made all of the difference in the world.  In this case, however, I wish that Tom could have been more conversational.  I know that he was supposed to read the book to me, and that's what he did, and really, he did it as well as most of the actors who read stories for authors who won't read them themselves.  But there was a distance to his telling that I wish wasn't there.

Could it be that my complaints about Atticus are actually be compliments in disguise?  Could it mean that Tom is really a great and humble story teller, if he is able to tell the story of his journeys in a way that makes me think "Yeah, I could do that too.  I just don't want to right now"?  Could it mean that I really understand what Atticus meant to Tom if I can see him as sort of a jerk who I wouldn't want to hang out with, but as much happier guy because he has Atticus?  Maybe.  The Friends Book Group will be taking about this one next month, and I will look forward to hearing other points of view on Tom, Atticus, and their journeys.

One more down for the Support Your Library Challenge!

Next Up on CD:  Winter's Tale  by Mark Helprin

Still Reading:  March by Geraldine Brooks

Chicago Memoirs

Long time no blog!  I've been so busy getting ready for Christmas, that my heart just hasn't been into reading, let alone writing about reading.  Now that the gifts are unwrapped, but before the wrapping paper is thrown away, I'm back.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished listening to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.  I didn't immediately write about it, because although I was listening to it on CD, I also owned the book, and I realized that the book included an extra segment not read on the disc.  This segment is called Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, and is almost 50 pages long.  In this section, Dave attempts to make right anything that he got wrong in the first edition.  While most "memoir" writers would find this unnecessary given that half of their so-called memoirs are fiction, his efforts to make everything exactly correct make the reader feel closer to Dave and his brother, Toph.

Heartbreaking Work is the story of Dave Eggers raising Toph after their parents die of cancer within months of each other.  At the time that Dave became a quasi parent, he was 21, and his brother was 8.  Dave has another brother and a sister, both who are older than him, but for some reason, the family decided (against the terms of their parents' wills) that Dave would raise Toph.   The story in Heartbreaking Work starts with Dave caring for his mother while she dies, and then moves to California with all of the siblings after the parents are gone.  We flash and travel back to Lake Forest, IL, just outside of Chicago, where the family home was, and where Dave feels a need to return.

Dave is a pretty amazing faux father for Toph, despite his obvious and honestly reported flaws.  They cook tacos using spaghetti sauce, on purpose.  They run late for open houses at school.  Dave sleeps in each morning while Toph manages to get himself to school on a bike he can't pedal, and instead rides like a scooter.  But at the end of the day, they make it work.

In reading about Heartbreaking Work, I learned that Eggers is 12 days younger than me.  This is extremely disappointing.  I have read and appreciated other works that he has written and created, and would like to think of him as being much older than me, as an explanation for why my accomplishments are so lacking in comparison.  However, our small difference in age also helped me to appreciate the effort that he was making while raising Toph. When I was 21, my parents were paying my rent, and my time was spent working in the mall between classes and planning "progressive" drinking parties in my apartment complex.  I have no doubt that I would have raised Toph differently than Eggers,  but I can't say that I would have done better.

Meanwhile, back in the Hills of Beverly, I have been reading Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster.  Bitter is the story of Lancaster and her husband both losing their jobs, their standard of living, and their self respect, but then finding themselves again.  Lancaster and her husband were victims of the dot com bust, reminding me of the characters in The Cookbook Collector.  The first two thirds of the memoir is Lancaster going on and on about the things that she used to have, and scheming up ways to get them back.  The last third of the book is where she puts on her big girl panties and pulls her life back into shape.  In fact, that sounds just like something Lancaster would have said herself.  Lancaster has a sassy and funny way of telling a story.  She is also quick to point out her flaws, although she usually offsets them by naming 4 or 5 of her strengths for each weakness.

Lancaster's preferred Chicago neighborhood, where she once lived in her "dot com palace", is Bucktown.  When Lancaster is somehow lacking in adventures in her own life to relay, she reports on those around her, like her neighbors.  Coincidentally, my sister has just bought a house in Bucktown, where she'll be moving soon.  My fingers are crossed that Lancaster lives next door.  I feel like I know the neighbors who Lancaster wrote about in Bitter, and in her later book, Bright Lights, Big Ass, and it would be fun to read about my sister through the eyes of the self proclaimed "condescending, egomaniacal, self-centered, smart-ass" herself.

So what can Eggers and Lancaster have in common?  Probably a mutual loathing of each other, but other than that, I was surprised to find some coincidences.  Obviously, much of both memoirs takes place in Chicago.  Thematically, they both face challenges they never expected, and were unprepared to face.  Strangely, Dave auditions for "Real World San Francisco" and Jen watches a rerun of the show while she prepares for her wedding.  But really what Heartbreaking Work  and Bitter have in common is that they are each their author's first foray in memoir writing, and both authors hone their skills while telling great stories.

In other news:  Today's Christmas!  And my life is changing. . . my kids bought me a Kindle for Christmas, and my husband loaded The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides on it for my first e-reading adventure.  Although I am pretty much a book purist, and to be honest, a used or library book reader, I have to admit that there have been a couple of times this year when I have wished for a Kindle.  I have a feeling that I will take to it like a fish to water.  I also got a number of other books as gifts, including The London Train by Tessa Hadley, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, and three great cookbooks!  One of the cookbooks is The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond, which is absolutely amazing.  Her spaghetti and meatballs recipe is already one of my favorites, and I can't wait to cook more. There are tons of photos in the book, with the obvious food photos, but also lots of Drummond, her family, her animals and her friends.  I think this is just enough to get me to add her memoir, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels to my TBR list.

Next Up On Paper:  Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.  I requested this in audio form from Michigan's inter-library loan system 3 weeks ago, and still haven't received it.  I gave up and requested it in paper form, which I got in a week.  Hope it's worth the wait!

Next up on CD:  Empire Falls by Richard Russo