Memoir Review: I Sleep At Red Lights

I have read good reviews of I Sleep At Red Lights (St. Martin’s Press), a memoir by Bruce Stockler, in various places over the past several years, and it was on my very lengthy Want To Read list. I was finally inspired to get it out of the library after reading a recent review at another book blog that I enjoy. It was worth the wait.

The book’s subtitle is A True Story of Life After Triplets. Bruce and his wife Roni were leading a busy life in the New York City area with their three-year old son, Asher, when they found out that Roni was pregnant with triplets. The memoir takes us along on their journey from stunned disbelief through the pregnancy and the sleepless nights with three infants to the chaotic life they now lead with four young children. Through it all, Bruce’s writing is honest and warm and often laugh-out-loud funny (he worked as a comedy writer for Jay Leno at one point).

Here is a scene that I felt compelled to read aloud to my husband. Bruce is in the supermarket with the three now-toddlers in a wagon and Asher walking alongside:

I am examining a frozen turkey when I hear laughing.

Barak has stuck his hand into the organic chicken display and is tearing at the packages. I grab his hand and immobilize it, checking the chicken packs for damage. One plastic cover is ripped open, and the top packages are slick with chicken juice.

If over-fondled fruit presents a health problem, raw chicken juice might as well be Ebola virus floating up from freshly killed monkeys. “Don’t move your hand!” I say to Barak. I look around for a Food Emporium employee, a mom, a priest – anyone who might provide a wipe or paper towel.

What is the worst possible thing my son could do?

Barak tries to lick his chicken-juiced hand.

“Stop it!” I say. When I speak harshly or with impatience, Barak is the first to burst into tears, so I cringe for his reaction. Instead of crying, Barak cackles back at me. “Lickies, lickies!” he says, waggling his tongue. Barak laughs hysterically and gives me a grin of demonic pleasure, then proceeds to struggle his tongue toward his hand.

The supermarket scene continues for a whole chapter, with many more adventures before they finally exit the store. With triplets plus one, even the smallest outings turn into circus-like escapades.

In addition to relating stories of the triplets, Bruce also writes honestly about his marriage and the stresses of managing a suddenly large family. Roni works 100-hour weeks for a law firm in NY, so Bruce is the kids’ main caregiver. The conflicts they experience are of the type that any married couple with kids can relate to, though often magnified by the sheer size of their family.

While Bruce’s stories of their frenzied life with triplets are often very funny, he also writes with great affection about how much he loves his kids and what it means to be a parent:

But my time with the kids is pure playtime, an alternate universe from the worry-poisoned planet of adulthood. And this moment, with three kids goofily terrorizing me and another one smiling from the on-deck circle – approving the attack in progress by his troops – is better than I ever dreamed when I was in my twenties and searching for the meaning of life, which turned out to be a trick question.

Although I didn’t always agree with every detail of Bruce’s approach to parenting, I completely understood his love and affection for his family and his struggles with balancing his life. Any parent will enjoy and relate to Bruce’s memoir.

It's Monday, 5/4! What Are You Reading?

I missed posting last week because I was sick, but I had plenty of reading time while recovering! So, in the last two weeks, I've read:

• The Gate of Days by Guillaume Prevost, a middle-grade/teen time-travel adventure (I love time travel stories!). My son and I both enjoyed the first book in the series (The Book of Time), and this second one, but it ended in a cliff-hanger, so now we have to wait for book 3!
• Who Do You Think You Are?, a memoir by Alyse Myers about a rocky, complicated relationship with her mother. Although Myers' experiences growing up were very different than mine, I enjoyed her book and its in-depth exploration of the mother-daughter relationship.
• The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, a warm, captivating novel about a 10-year old girl named Lucky who lives in a town of 43 people in the California desert. It's easy to see why Patron's novel won the Newbery Award, and I'm currently enjoying the sequel novel, Lucky Breaks.

So, there will be lots of reviews of great books posted soon, both here and at my kids' book blog.

So, what are you reading this week?

Fiction Review: The Space Between Us

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (Harper Perennial) is an engaging novel where the setting is as rich and complex as the characters. I recently read it for one of my book groups, and everyone loved it (an unusual circumstance!).

The central theme of the novel is the relationship between the two main characters: Sera, an upper-middle-class Parsi woman in Bombay, and Bhima, who has been Sera’s servant for decades. The two women have a complex relationship, set against the backdrop of the strict class divisions of India. In some ways, they are close. Bhima knows more about Sera than anyone else and has helped her through some very difficult times. In return, Sera has loved and supported Bhima’s granddaughter (whom Bhima has raised), Maya, even paying for her tuition to attend college.

In other ways, though, their lives are starkly divided by their classes. Bhima lives in one of the Bombay slums made famous by the recent movie Slumdog Millionaire in horrifying conditions, sharing a communal bathroom and struggling to raise Maya so that she can have a better life than Bhima herself. She commutes daily from her tiny shack in the slums to Sera’s comfortable apartment.

Here, Bhima and Sera share their morning tea together, as they do every day:

"They are sitting in the dining room, sipping tea, Sera out of the blue-gray mug Dinaz bought for her from Cottage Industries, Bhima out of the stainless steel glass that is kept aside for her in the Dubash household. As usual, Sera sits on a chair at the table while Bhima squats on her haunches on the floor nearby. When Dinaz was younger, she used to prod her mother about the injustice of Bhima not being allowed to sit on the couch or a chair and having to use her own separate utensils, instead of the ones the rest of the family used. “You tell all your friends that Bhima is like a family member, that you couldn’t live without her,” the teenage Dinaz would rail. “And yet she’s not good enough to sit at the table with us. And you and Daddy are always talking about those high-caste Hindus burning Harijans and how wrong that is. But in your own house, you have these caste differences, too. What hypocrisy, Mummy.”

“Now Dinaz,” Sera would say mildly. “I think there’s a slight difference between burning a Harijan and not allowing Bhima to use our glasses.” "

One of the members of our book group grew up in India, in a household similar to Sera’s, and she told us that Umrigar’s depiction of daily life and of the intricate relationship between Sera and Bhima was very true to what she knew growing up. We had some wonderful discussions about the intricacies of India’s culture and classes as portrayed in the book, but this novel is so much more than a fascinating look at a different culture.

The Space Between Us delves into the history of each woman – her family, her husband, her children – in a way that makes you feel a part of their lives, despite the cultural differences. They’ve each known both joy and tragedy in their lives, and the reader can relate to these universal human experiences.

321 pages, Harper Perennial

Recorded Books

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 

It's Monday, 4/20! What Are You Reading?

OK, so it's actually Tuesday already, but yesterday was a little hectic.

Last week I read:

• I finished Skin Hunger (Book 1 in the new Resurrection of Magic series for teens) by Kathleen Duey. Wow, what an amazing book. My 14-year old son is reading it now.
• I read a wonderful memoir, I Sleep at Red Lights by Bruce Stockler. He's the father of triplets (plus another young son), and his memoir is funny and heart-warming.
• I've started another kids' book, a middle-grade time travel adventure, Gate of Days by Guillaume Prevost. I loved the first book in the series, The Book of Time.

Between sick days and going out of town, I haven't posted as many reviews as I'd like in the past few weeks, but I've had plenty of reading time and I plan to catch up this week, so look for new reviews both here and at my kids' book blog, Great Books for Kids and Teens.

What are YOU reading this week?

It's Monday, 4/13! What Are You Reading?

Well, I never did pick up that mediocre memoir again last week, The Women Who Raised Me by Victoria Rowell. I realized on Wednesday that I wouldn't be able to attend the book group on it anyway and was relieved to set it aside since I wasn't really enjoying it. It's very rare for me to not finish a book!

What I did read last week:

• The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar for my other book group. I loved this novel set in India, and so did everyone else in the book group. I've already passed it along to my mom. Full review to come later this week!
• Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey, the first book in a new middle-grade/teen fantasy series, A Resurrection of Magic. I'm almost finished with this book, and it's been great! My son is waiting to read it next. I'll review it soon on my Kids' Book Blog.

So, that's it for this week - two excellent novels. I have no idea what I'll start next - the piles on my bookshelf are towering!

What are YOU reading this week?

NPR Show on Liberia

For anyone who's read The House at Sugar Beach or who is interested in Liberia after reading my review of this fantastic memoir, Fresh Air on NPR is featuring an interview with Liberia's President, the first democratically elected president in Africa, Ellen Johnson. I'm listening live right now! You can use the above link to listen to the recorded interview.

It's Monday, 4/6! What Are You Reading?

Not much time to blog today. I realized this morning that I have a book group meeting TOMORROW that I had overlooked on my calendar, so I'm rushing to read the book, which I hadn't even started until today! I have another book group on Wednesday (they don't usually fall on the same week), so I've set that book aside for now. So, here's what I'm reading:

• I finished The House At Sugar Beach and posted a review - excellent memoir!
• I started another memoir for my Wednesday book group, The Women Who Raised Me by Victoria Rowell. I'm about a third of the way through it and disappointed so far, maybe because I just finished such a wonderful memoir before it?
• I set that one aside today and started The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar for my Tuesday book group. I'm loving it so far! It's a well-written novel about two women in India: one who's in the upper class and her servant who's worked for her family for decades. I was hooked right from the first pages.
• At bedtime, we're listening to the audio version of Scat by Carl Hiaasen with the kids. We're all big fans of Hiaasen's humorous environmental mysteries.

Better get back to my book!

What are YOU reading this week?

Memoir Review: The House At Sugar Beach

There are books that you read purely for fun and entertainment, and there are books that actually enrich your life. The House At Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper was definitely in the latter category for me. I finished the book last night and hungrily read every word of the Author’s Note, Acknowledgements, and Author’s Bio because I just didn’t want it to end. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Helene and her amazing family yet.

The House At Sugar Beach is actually two stories, interwoven. It’s the story of a girl’s childhood and evolution to adulthood, but it’s also the story of a country with a unique and fascinating past and a horrifying present.

Helene spent her first fourteen years living an idyllic and familiar kind of childhood at her family’s home in and near Monrovia, Liberia, in Africa. Helene’s story is a classic coming-of-age story, filled with normal childhood joys and fears, in a close, loving extended family. Some of Helene’s memories are ones every girl can relate to: days at the beach with her sisters, reading Nancy Drew books at night with a flashlight, and the typical adolescent angst surrounding her first crush.

Other memories are uniquely Liberian, like being afraid of rogues (robbers who come to your house at night) and neegees (mythical beings that can grab kids and pull them under the water while they’re swimming). Here she describes a local game her cousin taught her to play:

Tello was teaching me how to play knock-foot, a girls’ game where players hop on one foot and kick toward their opponents with the other foot. Knock-foot involved intricate maneuvers that need rhythm and balance. The Country People had thought it up. Knock-foot is sort of like rock, paper, scissors with feet. A good knock-foot session between two girls who know what they’re doing looks like dancing, with each girl bobbing, kicking, and clapping to a precise beat.

Liberia itself is like an extra character in the book, its unique history a backdrop to everything that happens in Helene’s life. Liberia, Africa’s first independent country, was established in the 1820’s by groups of free blacks from the United States. I was fascinated by this piece of history that I had never learned about in any of my Social Studies classes: in 1820, the American Colonization Society sent ships of freed black Americans back to Africa to establish a colony (which later became an independent state).

Helene describes how her distant ancestors continue to have a significant effect on her own life in the 20th century:

The chain started by those two men would eventually separate me from most black people in America, at the same time separating me from most black people in Africa. Their names were Elijah Johnson and Randolph Cooper. They were my great-great-great-great grandfathers. At the turn of the nineteenth century in pre-Civil War America, they both belonged to that nebulous class of freed-blacks-once-removed from southern plantations.

When presented the choice between America and Africa, they chose Africa. Because of that choice, I would not grow up, 150 years later, as an American black girl, weighed down by racial stereotypes of welfare queens. Nor would I have to deal with the burdens of a sub-Saharan African girl, with a life expectancy of about 40 years, yanked out of school at the age of eleven so I could fetch water and cook over a coal pot and bear babies barely younger than myself.

Instead, those two men handed down to me a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry upper class of Africa’s first independent country, Liberia.

I must admit I had never heard of Liberia’s history before, and its uniqueness captivated me. Later, when Helene is a teenager, 150-year old class struggles between native Liberians and the American descendants finally erupt, as the country provides another kind of backdrop for Helene’s story, that of a nation torn apart by war and violence.

Helene’s story – and Liberia’s – was enthralling from start to finish. Her memoir was entertaining, educational, and enriching. You can’t ask for more than that from a book, can you?

It's Monday (3/30)! What Are You Reading?

I was still sick most of last week, so I continued on my Pendragon kick from last week:

• I finished Pendragon Book 7: the Quillan Games by DJ MacHale. Great book - the series just gets better and better. I went to the used bookstore and requested Books 8 & 9, too!
  
• I hadn't had enough Pendragon yet, so I also read Pendragon Before the War: Book Two of the Travelers, created by DJ MacHale and written by Walter Sorrells. This was another prequel that provides background information on 3 Travelers. I've enjoyed the prequels very much and would recommend them to any Pendragon fan.
• I finally depleted all the Pendragon books in the house and went back to the book I started before I got sick: The House At Sugar Beach: In search of a lost African childhood by Helene Cooper. It's a memoir of an American journalist who grew up in Liberia, Africa. It's entertaining but also fascinating. I'll review it here when I finish is this week.
• Our family finished a fabulous read-aloud book last week: Alabama Moon by Watt Key. My husband's been reading it aloud to our sons before bed each night, and we all loved this book! It's the story of a 10-year old boy whose father has brought him up in the forest (he had some bad experiences in Vietnam and hated the government). When his Dad dies, young Moon is left on his own. It was an exciting, funny, heartwarming story. I'll review it later this week on my kids' book blog.

So that's it for last week - sorry I didn't post any new reviews, but I was just too sick...and reading mostly kids' books anyway! I did post a review of the Pendragon series on the kids' book blog.

What are YOU reading this week?

It's Monday, 3/23! What Are You Reading?

Best laid plans...

I ended up reading very different books last week than I'd planned on. You know how different kinds of books can fit different moods? Well, by Tuesday morning last week, I realized I was very sick (as were my two sons). Suddenly, the very good memoir I'd started on Sunday, The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper, just wasn't quite right for how I felt. When I don't feel well, I like to read something engaging but not too difficult or thought-provoking, something fast-paced and gripping that will suck me in and help me forget about how terrible I feel and all the stuff I should be doing. Adventure/fantasy books written for kids and teens are perfect for days like that.

So, I set down my memoir and picked up a new prequel just recently released from one of our family's favorite series, Pendragon by DJ McHale. Here's what I ended up reading:

• Pendragon Before the War: Book One of the Travelers, created by DJ McHale and written by Carla Jablonski - the first of three prequels just published for the popular series. That reminded me of how much I enjoyed the original series, so I picked up where I'd left off with...
• Pendragon Book Six: The Rivers of Zadaa by DJ McHale. I finished that book this morning - it was just as good as the first 5 in the series - and took another look at my memoir, but I was still not feeling well and so immersed in the world of Pendragon that I picked up the next book in the series...
• Pendragon Book 7: The Quillan Games by DJ McHale

So, not a lot of variety in my reading last week but a whole lot of fun and great escapism! This week, I'll be posting a review of the Pendragon books on my Great Books for Kids and Teens blog, as well as a review of the new prequel.

What are YOU reading this week?

Fiction Review: Plum Spooky

Nobody will ever confuse Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels with great literature, but if you’re looking for pure escapist fun in a book, you’ve come to the right place.

Plum Spooky is one of Evanovich’s Between-the-Numbers books, featuring bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. The main series is numbered – currently up to fourteen – and new books are usually released in the summer. My mother buys each one, passes them onto me, then I pass them onto my husband. We all find them very entertaining.

Stephanie is not really a very good bounty hunter, but she usually gets her man in the end, leaving behind a trail of destroyed cars and laughing police officers. Her latest escapade begins like this:

Sometimes you get up in the morning and you know it’s going to be one of those days. No toothpaste left in the tube, no toilet paper on the cardboard roll, hot water cuts out halfway through your shower, and someone’s left a monkey on your doorstep.

My name is Stephanie Plum, and I’m a bail bonds enforcement agent for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. I live in a one-bedroom, unremarkable apartment in a three-story brick box of a building on the outskirts of Trenton, New Jersey. Usually, I live alone with my hamster, Rex, but at eight-thirty this morning, my roommate list was enlarged to include Carl the Monkey. I opened my door to go to work, and there he was. Small brown monkey with long, curled tail, creepy little monkey fingers and toes, crazy, bright monkey eyes, and he was on a leash hooked to my doorknob. A note was attached to his collar.

And right away, you know you’re in for a classic Stephanie Plum novel. Besides the appeal of Stephanie’s every-woman character, Evanovich’s books are populated with funny, eccentric characters. The monkey is only the beginning. In this case, Stephanie is joined by gorgeous but spooky Diesel in trying to find missing physics geek Martin Munch, who has to buy his clothes in the kids’ department. As always, Stephanie is assisted by her sidekick, Lula, who works as a clerk in the bonds office:

Lula is a former ‘ho, and she’s only moderately altered her wardrobe to suit her new job. Lula somehow manages to perform the miracle of squeezing her plus-size body into petite-size clothes. Her hair was blond this week, her skin brown as always, her spandex tube dress was poison green, and her shoes were four-inch, spike-heeled, faux leopard Via Spigas. It came as no surprise that the monkey was staring at Lula. Everyone stared at Lula.

Before long, Stephanie and Lula are off and running, chasing after bail skips who shoot at them and pummel them with fruit, while trying to find Munch. Their investigation takes them deep into the New Jersey Pine Barrens where they encounter Sasquatch, the Easter Bunny, and a lot more monkeys.

Stephanie Plum novels are a great cure for a bad day, with exciting mysteries, fast-paced suspense, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Pure fluffy fun!

NOTE: Finger-Lickin' Fifteen is due for release on June 23.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Another blogger suggested a weekly reading list, and it sounds like a good idea, so here's my first one.

Last week, I finished:

• Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich (review will be posted this week)
• Things That Are by Andrew Clements
• Things Hoped For by Andrew Clements (both sequels to Things Not Seen - reviews to come on my Great Books for Kids and Teens blog)

I just started The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper, a memoir that my husband gave me for Christmas. It's very interesting so far.

And I hope to start an audio book this week, too: The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg, a classic kid's author.

So, what are YOU reading this week?

Fiction Review: Magic Street

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors. I didn’t think I liked science fiction much until I read his fabulous series that begins with the renowned Ender’s Game, which is also a favorite of my 14-year old son.

Card’s young adult novel Magic Street is very different from the Ender books but is still a worthwhile read for fantasy-lovers of any age. The central character of this unique urban fantasy is Mack Street, a boy who lives in an affluent African-American suburb of Los Angeles. Mack began his life in a very unusual way: he was found as a newborn in a plastic shopping bag, left in an empty field in the neighborhood where he would eventually grow up.

Another boy in the neighborhood, Ceese (short for Cecil), finds the baby and brings him to his next-door neighbor who is a nurse:

“What is it?” she said. “I got no time right now for – “
Seeing the baby changed her whole attitude. “Please God, let that not be yours.”
“Found it,” said Ceese. “Covered with ants up in that little valley on Cloverdale. Mama said take it to you.”
“Why? Does she think it’s mine?” said Miz Smitcher.
“No, ma’am,” said Ceese.
Miz Smitcher sighed. “Let’s get that baby to the hospital.”
Ceese made as if to hand the baby to her.
She recoiled. “I got to drive, boy! You got a baby seat in your pocket? No? Then you coming along to hold that child.”
Ceese didn’t argue. Seemed like once he picked that baby up, he couldn’t get nobody else to take it no matter what he said or did.

That’s the beginning of a unique bond between Ceese and Mack, who is adopted by Miz Smitcher and babysat each day by Ceese. They grow up like brothers, but when Mack starts to notice that his dreams have a strange sort of magical power, he keeps that to himself. As a young teen, Mack discovers an entryway to a magical world that only he can see, and his explorations lead him to discover things about himself. Ultimately, Mack finds himself at the center of an epic battle between good and evil.

Magic Street, like other Card books, is a suspenseful novel populated by memorable characters, but its urban setting in LA and Shakespeare-inspired fantasy set it apart. Card explains in his acknowledgments that he created this book especially for a friend who complained that there were too few African-American heroes in novels. While Card does create likeable and heroic characters in both Mack and Ceese, his black street-talk dialogue often seems artificial and silly, especially in the setting of a prosperous African-American community filled with professionals and middle to upper-class citizens. Despite this flaw, the book is a clever and compelling fantasy tale; both my teen son and I enjoyed it very much.

Fiction Review: The Reader

Most people know of The Reader as the movie for which Kate Winslet recently won a Best Actress Academy Award, but The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink, was a best-selling and award-winning novel in both Germany and the United States before it was made into a movie.

The novel opens with fifteen-year old Michael Berg, who gets sick on the way home from school and is helped by a 36-year old woman. Months later, when Michael goes back to thank the woman for her help, he finds he is attracted to her and can’t stop thinking of her. The woman, Hanna, notices his attraction to her, and the two begin to have a love affair that continues as Michael recovers his health and goes back to school.

They settle into a routine of meeting at her apartment, where they make love and he reads aloud to her. Despite their physical closeness and seeming love for each other, they remain emotionally distant in some ways, and Hanna’s words and actions are often mystifying to Michael.

Many years later, Michael sees Hanna again in a court, where he is an observing law student, and she is standing trial, accused of horrible crimes. Michael is fascinated by the ongoing trial, and once again mystified by Hanna’s behavior, as she seems unwilling to defend herself.

While the action of the novel is engrossing, the real meat of it lies in its exploration of emotional and moral complexities. Schlink explores issues of crime and punishment, of love and forgiveness, of guilt and absolution. The novel compares and contrasts Michael and Hanna’s past and present, with frequent foreshadowing and Michael’s ongoing emotional battles within himself, as indicated here in a passage that takes place during their affair:

Why does it make me so sad when I think back to that time? Is it yearning for past happiness – for I was happy in the weeks that followed, in which I really did work like a lunatic and passed the class, and we made love as if nothing else in the world mattered. Is it the knowledge of what came later, and that what came out afterwards had been there all along?
Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?

I enjoyed this book very much – both the interesting and suspenseful story as well as the intriguing moral questions posed. As with all moral issues, there are no easy answers – for either Michael or the reader – but shades of gray that are thought provoking. I wish that I had read this book with one of my book groups because it would be a very interesting one to discuss. And, yes, I do plan to see the movie now.

Fiction Review: A Dirty Job

Christopher Moore is known for writing funny and irreverent novels about strange topics, and A Dirty Job is no exception.

Charlie Asher is an average guy who loves his wife, Rachel, and is looking forward to the birth of his first child. Moore describes Charlie as a Beta Male: the sort of average, slightly neurotic, careful and steady guy who is always coming in second to the Alpha Males. Charlie owns and runs a second-hand store in San Francisco that his father left him. The story begins with the birth of his daughter, Sophie, and Charlie’s typical terrified Beta Male reaction as he drives the nurses crazy with his suspicion that Sophie was born with a tail because he’s sure he saw one on the sonogram:

“”You could have removed her tail in the delivery room, and we’d never know.” He didn’t know. He’d been asked to leave the delivery room, first by the ob-gyn and finally by Rachel. (“Him or me,” Rachel said. “One of us has to go.”)
In Rachel’s room, Charlie said: “If they removed her tail, I want it. She’ll want it when she gets older.”
“Sophie, your Papa isn’t really insane. He just hasn’t slept for a couple of days.”
“She’s looking at me,” Charlie said. “She’s looking at me like I blew her college money at the track and now she’s going to have to turn tricks to get her MBA.””

Soon, Charlie begins to notice strange things happening around him – giant ravens perched on buildings, eerie voices calling to him from the sewers, a strange man dressed in green that no one can see except Charlie, and people dying everywhere Charlie goes.

Charlie has been recruited for a new job he never wanted but can’t turn down: Death. Adventure and mayhem follow as Charlie tries to figure out exactly what his role is in this new job, while also bringing up and trying to protect Sophie.

Moore’s wacky sense of humor pervades the entire book, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that compel you to read sections out loud to whoever happens to be sitting near you. Best of all, A Dirty Job is populated with an unusual and very amusing cast of supporting characters, including the young Goth girl, Lily, who works in Charlie’s store; Charlie’s lesbian sister who is constantly borrowing his suits; and two older women – one from China and one from Russia – who help to take care of Sophie.

If sexual references and the “f” word offend you, you might want to steer clear of Moore’s book, but otherwise, A Dirty Job is a hilarious, silly, and oddly heart-warming book about the age-old battle of good versus evil, as fought by a Beta Male. I read this book for one of my book groups, and everyone enjoyed its light-hearted humor and original story (the people who listened to it said the audio version was great). After I finished it, my husband immediately started to read it because he had to find out what all my laughing was about!

Book Giveaway at J. Kaye's Blog

Another book blogger, J. Kaye, has recently posted a review of the book Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans. She is also giving away a copy of the book to one winner. Just leave a comment on her review to be entered in the give-away.

I used to live in New Orleans, and the city holds a special place in my heart (as it seems to for everyone who has ever lived there). The book sounds wonderful to me, and I definitely want to read it - even if I don't win the give-away. What a perfect book to read for this last week of Mardi Gras season!

P.S. Check out NOLA.com for full coverage of Mardi Gras and live web cams of the Mardi Gras parades this weekend through Tuesday!

Memoir Review: Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Anytime I have happened to come across Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s writing (often in her past columns in Parenting magazine while waiting in a doctor’s office), I have always ended up laughing out loud, so when I heard that she’d written a memoir, I knew I’d enjoy it.

“I was not abused, abandoned, or locked up as a child. My parents were not alcoholics, nor were they ever divorced or dead. We did not live in poverty, or in misery, or in an exotic country. I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything. If I indeed had a past life, I have no recollection of who I was.

I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not witnessed the extraordinary.

This is my story.”

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life is not an ordinary memoir; in fact, it’s quite unique. By her own admission at the start of her memoir, Amy writes in a “choppy, random, segue-free” style. Her memoir, as the title suggests, is written in the format of an encyclopedia, with alphabetical entries about…well, everything. From Anxious, Things That Make Me to Crossing Guard to Wordplays, Amy includes a bunch of random musings that add up to a fairly complete picture of who she is and what her life is like.

This sort of haphazard style might not appeal to everyone, but I really enjoyed her book. As I expected, Amy’s writing often made me laugh, and I enjoyed getting to know her. It probably helps that she and I have had similar lives – both born in 1965, both grew up in the suburbs in the 70’s with a younger sister named Beth, both now writers and mothers.

The memoir begins with an overview of American life in the early twenty-first century, including facts like the top CNN stories from 2000 – 2005, highest-rated TV shows, childhood rhymes, common slang, colors of the rainbow, and colors of the J. Crew catalog. You know right away that Amy has a unique and humorous way of looking at life.

As for her encyclopedia entries, they range from observations of the world around her to facts about herself and thoughts and feelings on a wide variety of subjects. I especially enjoyed her fascination with coincidences and wordplay. Some entries are a single line and some go on for pages. Many are accompanied by illustrations. A few of my favorites among the shorter entries:

“Amy Rosenthal:
My father-in-law informed me that my married name could produce these two anagrams: Hearty Salmon. Nasty Armhole. I cannot tell you how much I love that.

Bowling:
It would be difficult to convince me that leaning has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of my bowling.

Butterscotch:
I love butterscotch but rarely think to seek it out.”

As with the Butterscotch entry, I often found myself thinking, “Yes! Me, too!” as I read. As a bonus, this was the perfect book to read on a sick day, requiring little sustained concentration and producing plenty of laughs. I felt like I had made a new friend by the end of the book.

If you want to know more about Amy and her books (she has also written many children's books), visit her website. There are some wonderful videos there, as well, including her award-winning Kindness Thought Bubble.



 240 pages, Broadway Books

     

Great Books for Kids and Teens

I'm pleased to announce that I have just launched my new book review blog, especially for kids and teens: Great Books for Kids and Teens.

From now on, I'll post reviews of all kinds of books for kids, teens, and young adults (mostly for middle grades and up, but I'll include some for younger kids as well) at the new blog, and will use this blog for grown-up book reviews, though I may occasionally include a teen/YA book here if I think adults will like it, too.

So, take a look and let me know what you think! I plan to add new reviews at least once or twice a week, so check back often.

Memoir Review: Waiting for Snow in Havana

“The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me. That’s how it would always be from that day forward. Of course, that’s the way it had been all along. I just didn’t know it until that morning. Surprise upon surprise: some good, some evil, most somewhere in between. And always without my consent.”

That’s the beginning of Carlos Eire’s remarkable memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, a National Book Award winner. His story begins on January 1, 1959, when President Batista fled from Cuba and a new leader, Fidel Castro, was suddenly in charge. With plenty of flash-backs and flash-forwards, Eire writes of his childhood in Cuba, both before and after the revolution.

Although the historical context is critical to the story, the first part of the book focuses on Carlos’ childhood before the revolution: the memories of a little boy (he was eight in 1959) running around the neighborhood with his brother and friends. He shares stories of their adventures – stories much like those of any young boy – against the backdrop of a tropical paradise. There are tales of ultra-rich friends who live in mansions; stories of flying kites, swimming at the beach, and setting off firecrackers with his friends; and admissions of a terrible fear and loathing of the ever-present lizards.

In some ways, though, Carlos’ childhood was unusual. His father, a judge, firmly believed that he had been Louis XVI in a past life and that his wife was Marie Antionette. He is sometimes full of fun, taking the boys on exciting outings around Havana, and other times absent and uncaring, obsessed with his collection of arts and antiques.

While I enjoyed the tales of childhood joys and struggles, the book becomes much more fascinating as the revolution unfolds. Eire describes the changes that occur in his neighborhood, his school, and his country from a child’s perspective, sometimes flashing forward to relate to what happened from his adult point of view. Eventually, when it becomes apparent that Cuba is changing in dramatic and dangerous ways, Carlos’ mother makes arrangements for he and his brother to flee to the United States (it was easier for children to leave than adults). So, in 1962, eleven-year old Carlos sees Cuba for the last time from his airplane seat, leaving behind everything and everyone he knows, except for his brother.

We also learn, in bits and pieces, about what happened to Carlos and his brother after they arrived in the United States and how the author grew up to be the man he is today, but the focus of the book is on those first eleven years in Cuba, how they helped form his view of the world and of himself.

I enjoyed this book very much and passed it along to my husband, who’s reading it now. Not everyone in my book group liked it as much as I did, but we all agreed that we learned a lot, and we certainly had plenty to talk about during our discussion of the book. Some felt that the first part of the book was too much like any childhood memoir, but I happen to like childhood memoirs, so I enjoyed that, as well as the second half of the book. I learned a lot about Cuba and Castro’s revolution – I had no idea that 14,000 Cuban children had been airlifted out of Cuba to the United States at that time – but I also enjoyed the author’s reflections on how his boyhood shaped the adult he is now.

If you’re interested in learning more about Cuba’s revolution after reading this book, you might also enjoy the movie, The Lost City, set during the same time period.

Young Adult Review: Go Ask Alice

I must be the only the person on earth who was a teen in the 70's and never read Go Ask Alice, the anonymous account of a teen girl who becomes addicted to drugs, but it's true. I recently picked up the audio version of the famous book at the library and listened to it for the first time during several car trips.

I was stunned by the power and emotional impact of this story, as I suppose many people have responded to it since it was first published in 1971. So, I was equally stunned and sorely disappointed to discover that it is now widely assumed to be a work of fiction. I just finished reading a summary of Go Ask Alice on scopes.com, the go-to place on the web for debunking urban legends. I was crushed to find out that the book is not the real-life diary of a teen, as it is presented.

I do tend to be gullible in these sorts of things, mainly because I'm an optimist and idealist; I just want to believe that people are incapable of deception, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary! I tend to take things at face value.

However, while this particular deception is disappointing to me, it doesn't change my opinion of the book overall. I found much of the "diary" to be quite realistic, even reminiscent of my own high school journals, especially in the way that the narrator vacillated between cheerful optimism and dark despondency. Isn't that the essence of being a teen?

Perhaps the format I chose impacted my experience as well. Maybe the diary entries would have seemed less real if I were reading them rather than listening. The young narrator of the audio book did a great job expressing the highs and lows of the teen's high school life and her shame at her descent into drug addiction. When she talked, in a low monotone, about the horrible things that happened to her while she was high and living on the streets, my heart broke for her, and when she was back with her family and happily trying to put her life together, I cheered for her.

Despite its controversies and deception, Go Ask Alice remains a touching and disturbing portrait of how drug addiction can destroy the life of a smart, sweet young girl. Certainly, even if this account is fiction, the things that happen in the book do indeed happen to real people. I think all teens (and all parents) should read this book. It affected me deeply.

AUDIO: