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!)

It's Literally a Cookbook

One day, not too long ago, I found myself in the unusual position of  being in my library, and not having anywhere that I had to hurry off to go.  I had time to browse the aisles, instead of just picking up my books from the hold shelf - something that I hadn't done in a long time.  And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but The Book Club Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp.  I checked it out, thinking that it couldn't possibly be what I hoped it was.  

Gelman and Krupp have compiled a book of recipes from best selling books.  Some of the recipes are for foods referenced in the books, some are recipes that Gelman and Krupp think the characters would make, and some are recipes given by the author or his or her family members.  Additionally, with each recipe, there is a summary of the book, and an interview with a book group that discussed the book.  The book groups usually mention what they served when the book was discussed, and how their meetings work. 

I had no idea that there were so many types of book groups!  Most of them have great ideas.  Some host formal dinners.  Some choose appropriate restaurants.  Some only read books set in other countries.  Some only read Pulitzer winners.  Some pick a book once a year that they think their husbands and partners would also want to read, and invite them.  Some (gasp!) actually have men in the groups, and are either couple groups, or just book groups where men are there too.

Before the night was through, I was online trying to order The Book Club Cookbook from Amazon.  Yes, it was a little old, but still, I wanted it.  Then it got even better!  The book that I checked out from my library was the first edition, from 2004.  Amazon had a new edition, from 2012, which included books that were released after the first edition was printed.  The Amazon review dated March 13, 2012 includes a complete list of all the recipes added to the new version, and all the recipes that were in the first edition, but were not included in the 2012 book. 

Here are the recipes that are included in the 2012 cookbook, for books that The Typical Book Group has read:

• Wild Mushrooms on Toast from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
• Almaz's Ethiopian Doro Wot  and Sister Mary Joseph's Praise Cari De Dal from Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Dorothy's Famous Christmas Toffee from Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
• Swedish Meatballs and Glogg from The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson
• Annie Barrow's Potato Peel Pie and Non-Occupied Potato Peel Pie from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society  by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• Demetrie's Chocolate Pie and Caramel Cake from The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Britta's Sabzi Challow with Lamb from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Post-Colonial Pie from Little Bee by Chris Cleve
• Pumpkin Soup from The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
• Indian Fry Bread from One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
• Jack's Sixth-Birthday Cake from Room by Emma Donoghue

There are a couple of books that I can think of where food was essential to the story.  For instance, I HATED the ending of The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer so much that I toyed with the idea of writing a book consisting only of alternate endings that would have been better.  But, despite my strong feelings, I still remember Carrie baking cherry pie, and how much all of her friends clamoured for it.  Now I have the recipe for the pie, if not for a better ending.   In Empire Falls by Richard Russo, the brother, David, moves back to town, and has ideas about how to attract a more upscale clientele by offering "good, cheap, ethnic food" in the honest feeling diner.  Gelman and Krupp provide a recipe for shrimp flautas, which David created as a special. 

There are lots of other recipes tying in with books that I have reviewed here, including Cocoa-Cinnamon Babka from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, Mojitos and Mango, Jicama and Corn Salad from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Jennifer Egan's Oatmeal Fudge Refrigerator Cookies from Jennifer Egan, the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad.  All told, there are recipes from 100 books, in this 486 page collection.  And now, what's your excuse?  Go Get It And Read.

Still Reading:  American Woman by Susan Choi

Still Listening to:  The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

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

Manson Part II

Like everyone else, as a teenager, I read Helter Skelter:  The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, and I thought I knew the whole story.  When Jeff Guinn's book, Manson:  The Life and Times of Charlie Manson came out 39 years after Bugliosi's, I wondered what more it could say.  I mean, it's not like new evidence has recently come to light.  But then the reviews started coming in, and it was clear that Guinn had found a good story to tell.

The subtitles of the two books tell a lot about the differences between the Bugliosi and Guinn Books.  Bugliosi's is the story of the Manson murders and the trials, as told by the lead prosecuting attorney, just 5 years after the Tate murders.  Guinn's book tells about Charles Manson's life, the formation of his "family", and yes, about the murders and trials.  I listened to Guinn's book in audio form, and can report that the murders occurred on disc 8 of 14 discs.  Guinn fully develops Manson's life from childhood, without trying to make the reader (or listener) feel sympathetic.  He is a reporter reporting, and he finds good information that Bugliosi either didn't know or didn't think was worth mentioning.

Bugliosi wrote his book just after the trial finished, from the perspective of the prosecutor's office.  Even if he tried to conduct interviews for his book rather than just relying on the prosecutor's file and trial record, would anyone have talked to him?  He still had connections to the prosecutor's office and the statute of limitations hadn't expired for even minor crimes that might have been mentioned. 

As Guinn explains, in Los Angeles in the 1970s, the culture of the law enforcement system was to ignore allegations against stars and the children of stars unless implicating them was unavoidable.  While Bugliosi mentioned Manson's relationship with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and Terry Melcher, who was Doris Day's son, he down played the friendships as tangential and just an interesting and scary fact of Manson's life.  Guinn spends much more time exploring Manson's friendships with Wilson, Melcher and other people involved with the music scene. After so many years had passed, Guinn seems to have been able to get more people talking about Manson and their own connections to him.  Unfortunately, Wilson and Melcher both died years before the book was released, so Guinn did not have their first hand accounts.  Guinn also writes about how Manson recruited his followers and why they stayed with him in much greater detail than Bugliosi did in his book.

Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson was a NYT Notable for 2013.  If you have any interest at all in Manson and his followers, this book is worth your time.  In terms of 2014 challenges,  I am counting this for both the Audiobook Challenge and the I Love Library Books Challenge.

In Other News:  I saw the movie based on Winter's Tale last night.  As you may know, the reviews have not been great, and I think I know why.  The movie focuses almost exclusively on Peter Lake, his relationship with Beverly Penn, and Pearly Soames' attempts to get revenge.  There are whole story lines that are not even mentioned.  No Praeger, no Hardesty, no Jackson Mead.  The only turn of the millennium character is Virginia and her daughter, Abby.  While my copy of Winter's Tale is 748 pages, it was as though the screen writers took 75 pages from the first part of the book, 25 pages from the second half, and called it "good enough".  For a lover of the book, it wasn't.  I did like the movie, but it seemed like just a cliff notes version of one part of the story, hitting me over the head with the battle between good and evil, and ignoring the rest.  What I didn't expect was that the movie would make me want to read the book again.  Like, now.  It's already on my "Redux" list of books that I want to re-read this year, and I am really looking forward to it sooner rather than later.

Next Up on CD:  The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Still Reading:  The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie

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

Unbelieveably True

So, if you were a publisher, and someone pitched you a novel about a boy who was smoking cigarettes at age 5, competing as an Olympic runner at 20, a World War II war hero before he was 30, and a downhill skier in his 90s, how fast would that manuscript hit your circular file?  My guess is immediately.  It just isn't believable.  But, in this case, it's true. 

Unbroken:  A World War II Story of  Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand is the biography of Louis Zamperini.  And yes, Louie did all of those things, and many, many more.  Louie first became famous when he was a part of the US Olympic team that went to Berlin in 1936.  Another member of that team who Louie befriended was Jesse Owens.  Although Louie didn't medal, he set a new American record. 

When World War II started, Louie considered himself lucky to get stationed in Hawaii.  He was a member of a B-24 flight crew that quickly gained recognition of one of the best crews in the air.    Since this is on the book's cover, I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that Louie's plane went down, and he and other members of the crew found themselves floating in the Pacific Ocean, battling sharks, starvation and enemy fighter planes.  What happens after that is just as unbelievable and amazing as Louie's life up to that point.

While I've read a lot about World War II, almost all of my reading has focused on the European part of the war or the Holocaust.  Only Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris addressed the Japanese.  When I read Scarlet Leaves, I thought that McMorris may have been mentioning some of the worst things that were supposed to have happened to prisoners in Japan.  Hillenbrand reported many more atrocities, and has the documentation to support her claims, giving credibility to her story and McMorris'.  In fact, McMorris sites Louie's autobiography as one of her sources.

There was so much that I learned about World War II that I somehow never knew before.  I never knew why Japan attacked Hawaii, seemingly out of the blue.  Hillenbrand explains that on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese also attacked other countries all throughout the Pacific, in an attempt to gain control of the Pacific, and if that went well, all of Asia.  I had no idea that 37% of American prisoners of war who were held in Japan died in captivity, compared to only 1% of those held in Germany.  And I was shocked to learn that the Japanese charged with war crimes were granted amnesty and released from prison less than 10 years after being sentenced, as part of an American political plan to make an ally of Japan.

This was the best biography that I have ever read.  Part of what made it so good was that all of the information is so detailed.  I've always heard that people who survive a war hate to talk about it, but in Louie's case, because he was famous going into the war, he was giving interviews before he even returned to the US.  Hillenbrand spent 7 years researching the book, and interviewed Louie 75 times.  Although there are footnotes throughout the paper version of the book, as an audio book listener, I appreciated not having those read to me.  For the most part, the footnotes are documenting sources, and not providing additional information, so I don't feel like I missed anything by not hearing them.  A good reason to read the book instead of listening, however, is that Hillenbrand includes tons of pictures in the paper version. 

If you have any interest at all in World War II, Unbroken is a Must Read.

One more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!

Next up on CD:  This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

Still Reading:  The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Paddle-through-the-City

In 2005, as a hurricane named "Katrina" was making its way to New Orleans, the Zeitouns were a little concerned.  They had weathered many hurricanes, and had found that most of the time the storms were not as bad as they were predicted to be.  Kathy and Abdulrahman owned a business and several properties in New Orleans.  Abdulrahman, who everyone called by his last name, Zeitoun, wanted to stay behind so that he could keep an eye on his properties and make sure that everything was OK.  His intention in remaining in the city to watch the properties was not to guard them  and shoot intruders, but just to repair roof holes and minimize damage.  Kathy took the kids, and headed inland.

Katrina hit, and while it was bad, the damage to the Zeitouns' home was minimal.  But then, after the water had receded, it returned.  Zeitoun quickly realized that there was a breach in the levy system, and that the water wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon.  Luckily, he had a canoe, which allowed him to paddle through his neighborhood, and help those who needed it.

The people of New Orleans were told to evacuate, but many did not.  Soon after the storm, the military, police officers from other cities, national guard soldiers, and people working for private security firms, like Blackwater, flocked to the city, to help.  Zeitoun was happy to see the help arrive, but learned that their perception of what they were there to do was far from what the city needed.  The soldiers and others had been fed stories of looting and chaos in New Orleans, and came in treating it like a war zone, rather than a city where elderly residents still needed rescue.

The conflict between Zeitoun and the security forces is central to this true story, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers.  What happened in the days following the hurricane, and how the residents of the city were treated is unbelievable.  The fear mongering and the reports of widespread crime, mixed with heavily armed outsiders, created the "wild west" atmosphere that the media blamed on the storm and the residents.  Everyone in New Orleans in the days following the storm was presumed guilty.  People were arrested while standing in their own homes, for looting those same homes.  All logic was suspended.

Eggers spent a lot of time discussing the Zeitouns' Muslim religion.  I wondered why he was concentrating on this aspect of their lives so much.  After the storm, that became clear.  In the atmosphere of fear, the security forces believed that Al Qaeda could be staging an attack through splinter cells.  It seems crazy now, that anyone would think that any terrorist cell would deliberately act in a swamped city with no electricity or running water, but at the time it was apparently a concern.  A Muslim in New Orleans after the storm raised a lot of suspicion.

There was so much that I learned about the aftermath of Katrina from Zeitoun.  I will mention a couple of the more troubling aspects on my spoilers page.  But really, don't read the spoilers if you are going to read the book.  Not knowing what was going to happen next was what made Zeitoun so intense.  Zeitoun was a NYT Notable Book for 2009.

If I were Dave Eggers, I would have told the story differently.  Eggers makes no apologies for making Zeitoun one family's story.  But at times, when we were hearing about Zeitoun's family in Syria, or Kathy's sibling squabbles, it felt like filler.  I would have told Zeitoun's story, but also mixed in the story of an older couple that stayed in the city and needed to be rescued, and of a police officer or national guard soldier from another state who came in to help.  This would have rounded out the story with different perspectives, but still could have reached the same conclusions.

That's one more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge.  10 more to go.  And, by the way, this is my 200th post on this blog.  Thanks for reading!

Next Up On CD:  I'm not sure.  I'm not going to have much chance to listen in the next week, so I'll put off that decision for now.

Still Reading:  Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr.

Historical Fact

I started listening to Cleopatra:  a Life by Stacy Schiff with some trepidation.  I knew I liked the subject, but I wasn't sure I could handle listening to a biography on audio book.  The first time I heard a footnote, I almost ejected the disc.  So that you understand where I am coming from, this is what a footnote sounds like in audio form:  "Footnote:  This is an example.  End of Footnote"

Part of me thought "It's Christmas time and I am crazy busy.  I should listen to something light and fluffy".  The rational part of me thought "It won't kill me to get some historical facts, since my brain is growing mushy with all this historical fiction."  The first part of me argued that I didn't need any more real history after 21 years of public school education.  The rational part of me laughed out loud at that one.  And so, I kept listening.

My previous knowledge of Cleopatra came from Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George, which is, of course, historical fiction.  When I read Memoirs, I felt really stupid, because I had no idea that Cleopatra had a child with Julius Caesar.  However, since all of my Caesar knowledge comes from Shakespeare instead of from history classes, and since Shakespeare kept his Caesar and his Cleopatra in separate stories, I would guess that I am not the only one who never made the connection.

I learned more about Cleopatra in Schiff's book, as should be expected.  One thing that surprised me was that in Cleopatra's time, the Sphinx had already been buried in sand for a thousand years.  Another was that Cleopatra lived just one generation before Jesus was born.  Cleopatra died in 30 BC, and Jesus was born sometime around 4 BC.  In fact, one of Cleopatra's most reliable biographers, Plutarch, was writing about Cleopatra at the same time that some of the New Testament gospels were being written.

Cleopatra: a Life is a very good biography.  It was a NYT Notable Book in 2010.   My library has picked it as a book group book for February.  It seems like an odd choice at first, but I could see how this particular biography would appeal to people who normally prefer fiction.  Schiff researched her subject thoroughly, and throughout the book, she tells the reader whose story she is relying on for certain facts, and why she determined that one author might be more reliable than another for specific issues.  I liked how Schiff said things like "Cleopatra probably did this" or "It is likely that this happened in this way"  without being stubbornly definitive.  History is, of course, written by the victors, and Cleopatra was ultimately a loser.  She should have been relegated to being a footnote herself, but her reputation was so intriguing that even her contemporary conquerors couldn't keep from writing about her. 

I, personally, preferred George's telling.  But then, why wouldn't I?  Since she was writing fiction, George could invent juicy dialogue, and be creative with any "facts" that true historians now question, such as the method of Cleopatra's death.  Schiff is a Pulitzer winning biographer (for her biography of Nabokov's wife, Vera), and she manages to tell a story full of historical facts and details in a way that is interesting, and almost conversational.  Given her unbiased treatment of Cleopatra, I would like to propose another subject for her - Jesus.  If anyone could take apart the propaganda and the edits that were made after the fact to get to something as close as is possible to what really happened, that person would be Schiff.  I for one would read it, footnotes and all.

One thing that the "light and fluffy" part of me found really funny about the audio book, was that the reader pronounced Caesar and Cleopatra's son's name, Caesarion, as "Cesarean".  I am sure that she pronounced his name correctly, but if I had been reading it, I would have contorted it in some way to sound less like the medical procedure.  With the reader's pronunciation, every time I heard his name, I wondered if he was still hanging out with his friends, Epidural and Episiotomy.  Yep.  I'm that easily distracted this time of the year.

Next up on CD:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison

Still Reading:  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

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

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.

Dyslexic Success

As a parent of a child who has dyslexia, I try to read a lot on the subject.  However, I have stopped buying every book about dyslexia that I see, as some are just not all that helpful.  As a result, I checked The Dyslexic Advantage:  Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain by Brock Eide out from my library on audio book.  By the time I had reached the 3rd of the 7 discs, I had ordered the book from Amazon.

My daughter has struggled with dyslexia for years.  We were very lucky to have her diagnosed when she was in first grade.  Most dyslexic students are not diagnosed until third or fourth grade.  Since that time, we have worked with tutors, tried to find the best accommodations for her in public school, and most recently, moved her to a private school for children with learning disabilities.  In fact, it was my frustration with one of her teachers in the public school that set me off on a rant and got me blogging.  So in a way, I have to thank dyslexia for leading me to blog!

My frustration was that no matter what we tried for my daughter, she would master a certain skill, and then later, would completely forget it.  As an example, in preschool she could easily count to 20.  In kindergarten, she consistently omitted the number 14, as though it never existed.  Same thing with simple words that don't sound out, and math facts.  She would know them all, so her teachers would move on, only to realize a month later that she had forgotten what she once knew.  For 3 years we had her tutored at a reputable dyslexia center in our area.  In the end, she really hadn't made that much progress.  The tutor, who was in charge of the center and the most qualified person there, said that she had never before had a student who would grasp a concept and then lose it.  In exasperation, I have taken to referring to that place as "The Center for the Mildly Dyslexic" which is unfair and mean spirited of me, but whatever.  I was led to believe that my daughter is the only dyslexic person like this, and that it is probably something other than dyslexia that is causing her to forget. 

Imagine my surprise when Brock Eide mentioned in one of the very first chapters that a common type of dyslexic learner is just like my daughter, and has a hard time holding onto the concepts that he or she has apparently mastered.  This was only one of the insights that Eide shared which I had never heard before. 

I sort of expected The Dyslexic Advantage to be a list of successful people, with the generalized encouragement that your child too could succeed in these areas.  It is far more than that.  Eide does look at successful people, and uses them as examples, but his emphasis is not on what they have accomplished, but on what caused them to think in a way that allowed them to find success.  Eide explains that there are many different ways that people who have dyslexia think (it's not all the same!), and classifies them based on the ways that they can learn and solve problems.  He identifies four brain variations common among people with dyslexia, and discusses the challenges and strengths of each. 

What The Dyslexic Advantage  is not is a users' manual for parents.  It clarifies that dyslexia is not a "one size fits all" affliction, and that each individual needs to be analyzed to see how they learn best.  Most of the people in Eide's examples did not find success until they were well out of high school, and still struggling with different learning techniques.  When they were finally able to figure out what worked right for them, the success followed.  However, this was generally after years of trial and error.  There is not a prescription here for parents to follow, other than that we should be open minded, encourage our children's strengths, and see if those strengths can be leveraged into a learning advantage.

One issue that I have debated with myself over the years is whether I am actually helping my daughter by getting her help.  When we look at lists of successful people who have dyslexia, the common theme is that they struggled during their school years, and eventually overcame their challenges.  I worry that by getting my daughter accommodations I may be weakening her, and not forcing her to face her challenges.  This is sort of "what doesn't kill her will make her stronger" thinking, and I have chosen to take the opposite approach.  Eide explains throughout the book that dyslexia really can be an advantage in allowing the "afflicted" person to think in a way that is not obvious to others.  This allows them to see things in a different light, or think outside the box, without even trying.  However, Eide strongly recommends accommodations, and does not see them as impairing the dyslexic advantages, but only of giving those advantages a way to surface.

All told, The Dyslexic Advantage should join Overcoming Dyslexia:  A New and Complete Science- Based Program for Reading Problems at any Level  by Sally Shaywitz and From Emotions to Advocacy:  The Special Education Survival Guide by Pete Wright as required reading for the parents of any child with dyslexia.

This is one more down for the Support Your Library Challenge - 20 to go.

Next up on CD:  Helen of Troy by Margaret George.  This is 30 hours on 25 CDs!  I will be saying that I'm still listening to this one for at least the next month.

Still Reading:  A Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker

Life After 40

A few years back, when my friend, Kim, turned 40, I bought her a copy of Julie and Julia by Julie Powell.  In that book, a girl living in New York, Julie, decides that she will spend a year cooking every recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the cookbook which made Julia Child famous.  Julie blogs about her culinary adventure, and eventually her blog became a book.  I thought this was a great book for me to give to Kim, because we had just finished editing a cookbook for our kids' elementary school.  After Kim read it, she passed it on to me, and thus began my relationship with Julia Child.

After reading Julie and Juila, I wanted more Julia, and read My Life In France by Juila herself.  MLIF (no, not "MILF") is Julia's story of not knowing what to do with her time while her husband, Paul, was stationed in France for his job, and taking up French cooking.  Julia loved French cooking so much, that she moved on to teaching cooking lessons with two of her friends.  The three of them then began writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  One thing that I love about Julia is that she didn't take her first French cooking class until she was in her late 30s, and she was well into her 40s when Mastering the Art was published and she really knew what she wanted to do with her life.

The movie, "Julie and Julia" came out a couple of years ago, and I have to say that it is great.  In fact, it is the only movie that I can think of that is actually better than the book.  The movie is a combination of the books, Julie and Julia and My Life in France, and is focused much more on Julia Child than Powell's original book.

When I went to Paris last year, I looked up Julia Child's apartment, which she called "the Rue de Loo", but which is actually at 81 Rue de L'Universite.  Here is a picture of me outside.  I also went to the cooking store which she loved and raved about in MLIF, E. Dehillerin, on Rue Coquilliere.  I had figured that E. Dehillerin would have been overwhelmed with tourists since the movie had been released, but when I went there, that seemed not to have been the case.  At first the staff was a little standoffish, and I was surprised, after talking with a salesperson, that he wanted to know about Detroit.  He asked about the music from Detroit, and I assumed that he was referencing the Motown songs.  Actually, he wanted to talk about the Techno music fests, which are apparently better known in Europe than they are in Beverly Hills, just 5 miles north of The D.

This brings us to As Always, Julia:  The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, as edited  by Joan Reardon.  MLIF tells the story of Julia's struggles with getting her cookbook published, and this is echoed in As Always.  As Always is not really a story at all, but a collection of letters exchanged between Julia and Avis.   Their relationship started when Avis' husband wrote an article about how inferior American knives were in the 1950s.  Julia read the article and wrote to its author, enclosing one of her favorite French knives.  Avis wrote Julia a thank you note, since her husband, Bernard, was too busy.  From there, Avis and Julia established a pen pal relationship that spanned the Atlantic.

Mastering the Art was intended by Julia to be a fool proof book allowing busy American wives to successfully cook French dishes which they probably thought were too difficult for them.  Julia painstakingly cooked and re-cooked every dish until she had the instructions just right.  The problem was that Julia was cooking in France, and writing a book for Americans.  Julia consulted with Avis regarding what ingredients may be hard to find, how cooking times may vary, and how certain instructions may be interpreted.  Without Avis, Mastering the Art would never have worked.  Without Avis' publishing connections, it probably would not have made it to print.

Frequently, while reading As Always, I drifted off to sleep.  Several times I told myself that if the book was so boring, I should quit reading it.  But it was not boring.  It was just so soothing to be reading letters between two strong women who established their relationship in paper and pen, that sometimes I did find myself startled awake with the book still in my hand.  As Always tells the stories of the election gossip of the 1950s, of the McCarthy hearings, and of the battles with Child's co-authors.  Details about recipes are worked out, including one of Child's most famous, scalloped potatoes.  But I did take the full three weeks of my library loan to read the book, which is unusually slow for me.

My mom gave me back MLIF, without finishing it.  To my dismay, she found it boring.  As Always, Julia, is not going to be the book for her either.  However, if you loved MLIF, and can't get enough Julia, then As Always is worth the read.

Next up:  Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

Almost Done Listening to:  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.  In fact, I have passed the part where the reader said "The End" and am now listening to the 12th and last disc which Eggers says one should only listen to if one does not have anything else available.  That is exactly my situation!  I tried to get Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami in book form at my library and was surprised to find a lead on it in CD form first.  My library doesn't own it in either form, so I had to order it.  I placed my order 4 days ago, but sometimes these things take a while, and I don't want to start something new while I wait.  I'm hoping Eggers makes this 12th disc last.

Finding Z

In 1925, a British explorer named Percy Fawcett, set out with his 21 year old son and his son's best friend in search of a city that he believed existed in the Amazon, which he called "Z".  Fawcett was a very experienced explorer, and had spent most of his life looking for evidence of a lost sophisticated culture in  the Amazon jungle.  While this was not his first trip, it was his last.  Many people made expeditions to the Amazon in the following decades in an attempt to find Fawcett.  There were rumors that he was alive but a captive of the Indians, and rumors that he had died, but that his son had lived and had fathered blond haired children in the rain forest.  Many of the people who tried to find Fawcett were never seen again themselves.

Over the years, the methods of exploring became more and more advanced, so that when David Grann set out on his own expedition to find out what had happened to Fawcett for his book, The Lost City of Z, he was able to go to a camping supply store in New York, and get everything he needed, no experience necessary.  The modern world has also made the Amazon more accessible by cutting down miles of the trees through which Fawcett trekked.  Grann got help in South America from guides and locals, once they were assured that he was only a journalist, and not an explorer.  This presents the obvious question  -  what exactly is the difference between a modern day journalist and an early 20th century explorer?  Both want to find out more and reap the notoriety and monetary rewards of their discoveries, right?

The Lost City of Z details all of Fawcett's Amazon expeditions, and to a lessor extent, their toll on himself and his family.  There were definitely pages of details that I could have skipped, and questions that could never be answered.  However, the last chapter makes it all worth while.  While Fawcett was exploring, the world wondered if there really was a Z,  or if Fawcett was crazy for looking for it.  In the end it seems that he might have found what he was looking for, but couldn't see that he had found it.

Next up on CD:  The Unnamed  by Joshua Ferris.  I've started listening to this one and was excited to hear that Ferris was reading it himself.  I've had good and bad experiences with authors doing their own reading, but Ferris' voice seems to fit this story.

Still Reading:  The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.  Seriously.