Fiction Review: A Soft Place to Land

I had never heard of this author, Susan Rebecca White, before but picked up A Soft Place to Land on the Buy 1, get 1 Free table at Borders this summer because it sounded interesting.  I ended up enjoying it very much.

It's the story of two sisters and their relationship from childhood to adulthood.  When I started it, I worried it would be one of those idealized portraits of sisters, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was a well-rounded, realistic view of both the closeness of sisters and the conflicts that can tear them apart.

The novel begins with the two girls' parents being killed in a plane crash.  The sisters, who are four years' apart, deal with this disaster in very different ways.  Over the years, various circumstances and conflicts pull them apart.  Although they love each other, they often don't understand each other.  I thought the characters, dialogue, and situations were very real and sometimes reminded me of the complex relationship I have with my own sister.  Overall, it was an engrossing and enjoyable book.

352 pages, Touchstone Books

Banned Books Week

As usual, I'm a bit late on this since Banned Book Week officially ended yesterday, but it still feels like the same week to me until Monday arrives!

I just wanted to share a wonderful podcast called Books on the Nightstand.  I absolutely love this podcast all about books and listen to it every week while I'm cooking Sunday dinner.  I highly recommend the podcast in general and hope you'll check it out.  You can listen online, download it from their blog, or download it from iTunes.


But, for this week in particular, Books on the Nightstand did an excellent podcast on Banned Books Week (as usual I just listened to it while making Sunday dinner which is why I'm a bit late with this post!).  If you have any interest in banned books, you'll enjoy this wonderful podcast.

Better late than never, right?

Mini Review: The 19th Wife

My neighborhood book group read The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff for our 100th book and met at a restaurant last week to celebrate and discuss it. This is one of those books I never would have read if it wasn't for my book group, but I'm glad I did.

This novel is really two interwoven stories: the story of Brigham Young's so-called 19th wife who divorced him in the late 1800's and helped to outlaw polygamy and a modern murder mystery set in an isolated religious compound where polygamy is still practiced today.

The novel goes back and forth between the two stories and relies heavily on historical fact. In fact, about a quarter of the way through, I skipped ahead to the Afterword to read about how much of it was fact and how much was fiction. The historical context is fascinating (much more so than I expected) and the modern mystery is filled with unexpected twists. After I described the book to my husband, he started reading it himself!

This must be a hot topic because on the Today show last week, I saw an interview with a modern-day polygamist and his four wives who are starring in a new reality series on TLC, Sister Wives.

Mini Review: The Shipping News

Even though I don't have the time or energy to write full reviews here right now, I decided to post the mini reviews that I write on Goodreads for the adult books I read.  I post full reviews of kids' and teens' books at my other blog, Great Books for Kids and Teens.  So, my mini review of The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx:

I just finished this award-winning novel (it won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award) for one of my book groups. I saw the movie starring Kevin Spacey years ago and have wanted to read the book for a long time.

The author has a strange writing style, filled with odd little sentence fragments, but it grew on me after a while. It's a quirky novel, about a misfit man who's been through some terrible tragedies and moves to his ancestors' home in cold, barren Newfoundland with his two young daughters. Life there is challenging, but he slowly finds his way and feels like he belongs for the first time in his life. It's a warm, tender story, filled with unusual characters.

Book Title Meme

I saw this over at The Little Bookworm, and I loved it!

What To Do: Using only books you have read this year (2010), answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title. It’s a lot harder than you think!

(I limited my answers here to just the adult books I read this year so far - to see my answers for the kids' and teen/YA  books I've read, hop over to Great Books for Kids and Teens.  I found it was a lot harder with the adult titles!)

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?  Shutter Island (yikes, not really!)

Your favorite form of transportation: Sea Trails

Your best friend is: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

You and your friends are: Her Fearful Symmetry

What’s the weather like:  Mudbound

You fear:  The Sweet Hereafter

What is the best advice you have to give:  Let the Great World Spin

Thought for the day:  How To Be Sick

How I would like to die: The Soloist

My soul’s present condition:  Love Walked In

 

What I Read In August

I read some great books in August, so I thought I'd give you a quick summary.  I've linked to reviews, where I wrote one, or included my mini review from Goodreads.  And I finally figured out how to add my Goodreads links to my blog (I'm slow with this techie stuff!), so you can find that in the right-hand column. This month, I read and enjoyed:

Memoirs of a Geisha:
This book is a great example of why I love book groups so much. Of course, I read all the great reviews of this best-seller and heard friends recommend it, but it just didn't sound interesting to me. I finally read it this week for my library's book discussion, and I'm so glad I did! Within the first few pages, I was hooked.

This is one of those books that transports you to a faraway time and place. It is amazingly well-written (especially since the male author does such an incredible job of writing from the perspective of a girl and woman) and so compelling. Besides the intricate setting and descriptions of a culture far different than ours, I was fascinated by the moral complexities presented. The world of the geishas is one of contradictions - where orphans are basically sold into a form of slavery but also where prominent families may choose to train their daughters as geisha from a very early age. The geishas are thoroughly trained in the arts, respected, and even honored, yet they have almost no control over their own lives.

It's a fascinating, absorbing book. I can't believe I waited so long to read it!

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest:
I very much enjoyed this third and final book in Stieg Larsson's popular series. It was a bit slow at the start, with lots of details on Swedish politics and history, but I was pulled in right from the first page because I couldn't wait to find out what happened to my favorite characters.

This was a satisfying end to an excellent series!  

Elvis & Olive by Stephanie Watson, a sweet middle-grade novel about friendship.

First Light by Rebecca Stead, a middle-grade audio book set in Antarctica.

The Little Book:
I never know how to categorize books with a time-travel theme...I suppose the theme alone makes it science fiction, but that never seems to fit quite right in a book like this.

I really enjoyed this novel about a well-known rock star in 1988 who suddenly finds himself in 1897 Vienna. As with all great time travel stories, it is very thought-provoking, as the man encounters both famous people - like Sigmund Freud and Mark Twain - as well as his own family members as young adults. I find the questions these encounters provoke endlessly fascinating: Can he change the future? If he interferes with his own ancestors, could he affect his own modern life? And in this book...if you could alter history for the better, should you? What unforeseen effects could result?

In addition to these fascinating plot elements, the story's setting in turn-of-the-century Vienna is interesting - I had no idea this time and place had such a profound effect on so many aspects of our modern life.

All in all, a very satisfying read.

Boom! by Mark Haddon, a hilarious British middle-grade audio book.


And now it's September - hard to believe!  I hope you all had a great summer!

Authors Featured on NPR Today

NPR's Radio Times featured a book lover's double-header today! 

The first hour was devoted to a discussion of the phenomenon of Stieg Larsson's wildly popular trilogy, starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.   The guests were the editor of the American editions and a mystery/thriller columnist and blogger.  I enjoyed the show so much that I sat in my car in the shopping center parking lot for a half hour!

The second hour of Radio Times featured an interview with Anna Quindlen, author (most recently) of the novel Every Last One.  This was a rebroadcast, and I had heard most of it before, but it's an excellent show.

From the links I've included here you can either download a podcast or listen on your computer.

Nonfiction Review: How To Be Sick

Don’t be misled by the title of Toni Bernhard’s new book, How To Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers. It’s really about how to be well, mentally and emotionally, when your body is sick, but even that seems like too narrow a description for this wonderfully inspirational book.

Toni has the same chronic illness that I do, a serious immune system disorder with the silly name of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). Like me (and about 75% of the people with CFS), she was struck ill very suddenly, in the middle of an active and productive life. She begins her book by telling her story, but the majority of the slim volume focuses on explaining how some basic principles of Buddhism can be applied to the various challenges faced by someone who is chronically ill.

I found, however, that much of what Toni describes in her book could easily be applied to any person in any difficult circumstance. In fact, the very first thing she covers is the Buddhist concept of dukkha, which basically states that there are challenges to face in every life, that suffering is a normal part of life for everyone, and that acceptance of this fact can help to ease your suffering – not that the fact of your suffering will simply disappear (right now, there is no cure for CFS), but that you can do some things to ease the mental suffering that we all experience when things go wrong in our lives.

The concept of dukkha is just the beginning. Toni covers a wide range of topics including accepting pain, finding joy even in the midst of suffering, healing the mind by living in the present moment, learning to stop destructive thoughts, and much more. I like to include a quote when I review a book, but I’ve had a terrible time choosing one from Toni’s book because there is just so much here that I want to tell you about! There are dozens of dog-eared pages in my copy, and I want to share them all. Though an excerpt won’t do justice to Toni’s thorough explanations, here are a few phrases from one of my favorite chapters, Soothing the Body, Mind, and Heart:

Metta, loving kindness, is the act of well-wishing toward yourself and others. You settle on a set of phrases and then recite them silently, over and over. The phrases can be directed toward yourself, to others as a whole, or to particular people.

These are the phrases I settled on in the early 1990’s for my metta practice:

May I be peaceful.
May I have ease of well-being.
May I reach the end of suffering.
And be free.

There’s no magic in these four phrases. The cadence and meaning just work for me.

…The goal of metta practice is to cultivate loving-kindness in this fashion until it’s a mental state that arises effortlessly. At that point, you’ll find it increasingly natural to greet all living beings with kindness and friendliness.

With this chapter, as with many others, I found that Toni put into words concepts that I’ve discovered myself during my illness – recognizing that everyone has challenges in life, treating others with kindness, understanding that change is a part of life, and accepting what is out of my control. Her book provides concrete guidance on how to internalize concepts like these that can lead to more peace and happiness, even in a life clouded by chronic illness.

I devoured How To Be Sick, tagging pages, underlining key thoughts, and taking notes so that I could return to these fascinating teachings. At the end of the book, Toni includes a reference guide to help you pinpoint which concepts and practices will help for particular situations. I have already learned a lot, and I plan to refer back to this book often to try to bring more joy and tranquility to my own life.

How To Be Sick is a captivating book that will help to improve and enrich the life of anyone struggling with chronic illness, anyone who cares about someone who is chronically ill, or anyone at all who has experienced suffering in his or her life (hint: that would be all of us!).

195 pages, Wisdom Publications

For more information, visit Toni’s How To Be Sick website.

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

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

 

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:  
    

Or you can order How to Be Sick from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Nonfiction Review: Sea Trails

I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes by Pris Campbell, a unique book chronicling the author’s sailing trip down the east coast more than thirty years ago.  

Let me say upfront that I am not at all qualified to review a book of poetry.  I haven’t read much poetry since high school English classes and – if I’m completely honest – I often don’t really “get” poetry.  Despite this appalling lack of qualifications, I really enjoyed Pris’ book, which is a unique combination of original poetry, maps, photos, and excerpts from her ship’s log.

Like me, Pris has a disabling chronic illness called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), and we’ve become friends in the virtual online world of blogs.  So that’s how someone who reads so little poetry ended up reading Sea Trails.  And I’m so glad I did.

Pris’ collection tells a story – maybe that’s why I liked this book so much when more abstract poetry has failed to reach me.  It’s the story of a dual journey – of both the physical sailing trip  from Massachusetts to Florida (made long before CFS changed her life) and of an emotional journey where she and her sailing partner/lover grew further apart as the trip progressed.  Her poems often reflect both of these passages:

Fog

The sky is a woman

suppressing her tears.

I think that woman is me.

She describes the details of her sailing trip and her emotional state through her poems, some longer and some short, like this one:

Courage

Courage is docking a small boat

with the current shoving your keel

one way, wind pushing your hull

the other and knowing Superman

isn’t going to show up to help you.

In between  poems, maps, pictures, and ship’s logs fill in the story.  I felt like I was along on the boat with her.  I’ve been sailing a few times with my mom and her husband, on the boat they keep in Stonington, CT, mainly to Watch Hill and Block Island in Rhode Island.  I loved the parts of the book where Pris traveled to these same places I’m familiar with, but the rest of her journey was just as fascinating to me, both in terms of the sailing trip and her personal relationship.

Sea Trails is beautifully written, with informative prose and imaginative poetry that even a non-poetic person like me can appreciate.  I felt like I was along for the ride, enjoying the excitement of the wind in the sails.

92 pages, Lummox Press

 

Fiction Review: Roastbeef’s Promise

As I may have mentioned once or twice here before, I love road trips, and I love reading books about road trips.  Reading a road trip book while on a road trip vacation is bliss!  I recently enjoyed a new road trip novel, Roastbeef’s Promise by first-time novelist David Jerome, while traveling through eight states on our spring break trip to Lousiana and back.

Roastbeef’s Promise begins with an interesting and unusual premise.  A young man who is still known by his childhood nickname Roastbeef pledges to carry out his father’s dying wish to have his ashes scattered in all 48 contiguous states.  He leaves his parents’ deserted house shortly after his father’s funeral:

The night before I left on the trip, my high-school lacrosse buddies threw me a going-away party.  They bought a keg of beer and we played numerous drinking games on the kitchen table.  Mildly hungover the next morning, I loaded up the Hyundai that dad had purchased for me two years earlier in Washington at an embassy surplus sale.  The car had previously been owned by the African nation of Chad and driven by their diplomat’s errand boy.  The car still had diplomatic license plates, which allowed me to park anywhere I damn well pleased.  I strapped Dad’s urn containing three-fifths of his remains into the front passenger seat.  Before I pulled out of the driveway, I took a spoonful of the ashes and sprinkled them on the front lawn of the house I had shared with Dad for eight years.

“One down, forty-seven to go,” I said to myself, as I shaded in the state of Maryland on the map I carried to show the trip’s progress.

In his old car with little money and no cell phone, Roastbeef is not very well-prepared for such a lengthy journey, but he’s got a good attitude and a sense of adventure that will both come in handy.  His road trip has little in common with our annual cross-country vacations, but it’s an entertaining ride for the reader. 

Before the journey ends, Roastbeef has plenty of adventures and meets all sorts of interesting people.  He rides in a crop duster, witnesses the wedding of a very pregnant bride in Las Vegas, and pretends to be the boyfriend of a lesbian.  Some states he barely sets foot in and others he stays for an extended period, sometimes to work at (very) odd jobs to earn some money, once to recover from a punctured lung, and once to spend a little time in an Iowa prison.  He drives, takes buses, hitchhikes, and even rides a moped long distances.

Jerome writes with a healthy dose of humor and a taste for the absurd, and I often laughed out loud while reading this book.  In fact, Roastbeef’s Promise won a National Indie Excellence Award (NIEA) for Humor.  It’s a fun and amusing journey for the reader with a fascinating look at the wonderful variety of our great nation (though Roastbeef’s glimpse of some of the states is extremely limited).  It’s an enjoyable ride, even if you read it at home rather than on the road.

301 pages, Smack Books

NOTE:  Another of my favorite road trip novels is Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo, which entails an amusing cross-country journey which is both physical and spiritual.

 

Nonfiction Review: The Eden Diet

The Eden Diet by Dr. Rita Hancock is not actually a diet book at all. It’s more of a whole and healthy approach to eating and food for Christians who want to lose weight. I’m not actually the target market for this book, since I am not a practicing Christian nor have I ever had a weight problem (though I would like to lose 5 pounds), but I still found it to be informative and helpful.

Dr. Hancock approaches weight-loss from the unique perspective of being both a medical doctor who has studied obesity and nutrition as well as someone who herself grew up overweight, lost 75 pounds, and has kept that excess weight off for over 25 years. Her book is a distinctive blend of science, personal experience, and religion, equally referencing scientific studies and the Bible.

Her premises on weight loss are refreshingly compassionate and common sense: eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, reduce portion sizes, and use your spiritual base to help support your efforts. Here, she explains why she called her book The Eden Diet:

If we had lived in Eden, we would have eaten only when we were hungry, and we would have eaten less. Therefore, we would have automatically reached our ideal weight without trying.

Instead of food being the center of our universe, God would have been the center. We wouldn’t even have thought about food until we felt hungry. That’s right – we would have eaten primarily for sustenance and in response to our God-given internal hunger signals, not to escape boredom or to fill our emotional or spiritual voids.

And we would have eaten any food that was readily available without regard to whether it was good or bad for us. We wouldn’t have had consciences about such things.

With the Eden Diet, there are no bad foods, no difficult-to-maintain restrictions. Dr. Hancock describes how to retrain your body to recognize its natural hunger and fullness signals so that you can give up traditional restrictive dieting for good. She delves into underlying emotions and conditioning that may cause you to overeat, and explains in detail how Christian beliefs support this type of natural approach.

The Eden Diet is perfect for Christians who want to lose weight and live in a way that is consistent with their beliefs. It is especially relevant for people who have struggled with weight loss and with various diets for many years and will help them to finally say good-bye to unhealthy habits and yo-yo dieting. The Eden Diet Workbook is also available, to help readers apply the concepts of The Eden Diet to their own lives. You can learn more about the program, Dr. Hancock, and local support groups at The Eden Diet website.

(Full Disclosure: The author of The Eden Diet is one of my oldest and dearest friends. However, I would not write a review of her book unless I truly thought that it was worthwhile, since the purpose of this blog is to recommend good books. I was quite pleased to find that my wonderful friend’s best qualities – her intelligence, compassion, and sense of humor – come across beautifully in her book.)

224 pages, Zondervan Boooks

Goodreads

I'm still on hiatus from this blog, but I wanted to let you know that I am still tracking the books I read at Goodreads and would be happy to hook up with other book bloggers there. You can find my profile here.

I figured this is a way that I can still keep track of what I'm reading and maybe post a sentence or two, without taking the time to write a full review (time and energy are still in short supply for me). I just posted a short review at Goodreads of Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, if you'd like to hear what I thought of it:

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Time Traveler's Wife is one of my all-time favorite books, so I was very excited when I heard Audrey Niffenegger had written a second novel.I liked Her Fearful Symmetry and had no trouble finishing it, but I didn't love it the way I loved her first novel. I thought the characters in this book were all pretty strange - there was no one I could really relate to. It's saying something when the most normal character in a book is the one with a mental illness (Martin has severe OCD)! Many of the characters came across as apathetic and lacking in likable characteristics.The story was engaging and kept my interest, though it was different than what I expected. Her view of the afterlife was intriguing. Again, I can't help comparing this novel to The Time Traveler's Wife, which I found more believable and realistic somehow, even though it dealt with time traveling!I was fascinated, however, by the author's difference in approach and would like to hear what was behind it. Her first novel, set in Chicago (where the author currently lives), was 100% American. This novel, though it was published in the US, was written in British English, right down to the slang terms and spellings (I had to ask a UK friend what "digestives" are - they're cookies, oddly enough).So, overall I liked it but felt that it didn't come up to the standard set by The Time Traveler's Wife.

View all my reviews >>

Hope to see you there!

Fiction Review: Life on the Refrigerator Door

I know I just announced my leave of absence last week, but I had to write about the remarkable book I just finished. Thanks to Kim at Page After Page for her review and recommendation that led me to request this one from the library. When I decided to take a break from Book By Book, I told myself that I would still occasionally write a review if I came across something that really knocked my socks off…but I didn’t expect that to happen so soon!

Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers is a unique novel, to put it mildly. It’s told entirely in notes left between a mother and her 15-year old daughter. Mom is an obstetrician and a single mom, working odd hours and struggling to handle it all. Claire is busy with her own life, running to school, hanging out with friends, and feeling her way through a relationship with a new boyfriend.

Claire and her mom are often running in different directions, so they leave lots of notes for each other. Their notes run the gamut from the mundane details of everyday life – grocery lists, requests for money, scheduling difficulties – to expressing deep feelings to each other as they struggle with unforeseen challenges.

Claire-Bear,

I had to go. One of my patients delivered two and a half months early. January is a horrible month to have a preemie…

When’s your presentation? Isn’t it coming up soon?

Let’s do something tonight. I feel like I haven’t seen you for days.

Love you –

Mom

-Could you get some more apples?

Hi, Mom!

I can’t do tonight. I have to go to Emma’s to study. James is coming too and we’re all working on the presentation for tomorrow.

I made some pasta with a cheese sauce so there’s no milk left. I didn’t get apples yet.

Hope work was fun. How’s last night’s baby?

Claire

A novel told through notes on the fridge sounds like it would be light and superficial, but this book has a surprising depth of emotions. At one point, I was crying so hard I could hardly see the words on the page, but I wiped my eyes and kept reading. I finished the book in one afternoon but felt as if I had lived through their experiences with them. Life on the Refrigerator Door provides an extraordinary and unique look into the complex relationship between a mother and daughter. Thanks for the great recommendation, Kim!

220 pages, Harper (an imprint of HarperCollins)

Leave of Absence

I've written this post in my head more than a dozen times in the past few days, but that isn't making it any easier.

I've decided to take a leave of absence from Book By Book. This was a very difficult decision for me to make because I really enjoy this blog and the connections I've made with other book lovers here. I've been struggling the past few months with a prolonged flare-up of my chronic illness. At the same time, 2009 was a terrible year for freelance writers, with lots of magazines cutting back or even folding all together.

In taking a hard look at my goals for 2010, I've finally admitted that I'm overloaded right now, and I need to focus on two things: my health and my freelance writing. As much as I've enjoyed writing this blog, it has grown more than I expected and is not only time-consuming but is also non-paid writing.

I don't plan to disappear, though! I will still visit other book blogs, to satisfy my love of interacting with other book lovers and sharing what I've read. And I will still occasionally post a review or other bit of book news here - I just need to eliminate the daily commitment for the short term. I also plan to maintain my other book blog, Great Books for Kids and Teens, because that does fit in closely with one of my paid writing jobs. I hope to be able to resume Book By Book at some point in the future.

Thanks to all of my readers for your wonderful support and friendship. This isn't good-bye but just...See You Later!

Fiction Review: This is Where I Leave You

I absolutely loved Jonathan Tropper’s novel, The Book of Joe – and the TV show adapted from it, October Road – so I was excited to hear he had a new novel released, This Is Where I Leave You. I read it last fall (still catching up on that backlog of reviews!), and I was not disappointed. Though different from The Book of Joe, Tropper’s latest novel is engaging, thoughtful, and hysterically funny.

This Is Where I Leave You is about a dysfunctional family that comes together for a week to sit shiva for their father. This is how the oldest sister, Wendy, informs her brother (and main character), Judd, that their father has died:

“Dad’s dead,” Wendy says offhandedly, like it’s happened before, like it happens every day. It can be grating, this act of hers, to be utterly unfazed at all times, even in the face of tragedy. “He died two hours ago.”

“How’s Mom doing?”

“She’s Mom, you know? She wanted to know how much to tip the coroner.”

I have to smile, even as I chafe, as always, at our family’s patented inability to express emotion during watershed events. There is no occasion calling for sincerity that the Foxman family won’t quickly diminish or pervert through our own genetically engineered brand of irony and evasion. We banter, quip, and insult our way through birthdays, holidays, weddings, illnesses. Now Dad is dead and Wendy is cracking wise. It serves him right, since he was something of a pioneer at the forefront of emotional repression.

So, right away, you can see the set-up for this group of wise-cracking, distant siblings (there are four of them) to spend seven days together in their childhood home. But there’s more. Judd’s life is in turmoil right now. He recently caught his wife and his boss, a radio shock jock, having sex in his own bedroom and is now in the midst of a very painful and somewhat complicated divorce. Judd’s siblings all have their own issues and secrets, too.

Judd is a depressed but side-splittingly funny narrator with a dark sense of humor. Here, he describes his father’s last months:

…It took four months for him to die, three more than the oncologist had predicted. “Your dad’s a fighter,” they would say when we visited, which was a crock, because he’d already been soundly beaten. If he was at all aware, he had to be pissed at how long it was taking him to do something as simple as die. Dad didn’t believe in God, but he was a life-long member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can.

As you can see, Judd – and the rest of his family – are quite irreverent. If foul language or explicit sex scenes bother you, then you may want to skip this book. If not, then you’ll find the scene where Judd walks in on his wife and his boss very entertaining, as Judd sets it up here: “My marriage ended the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake.”

I laughed out loud all the way through this novel, but it also has a serious side, as Judd and his sister and brothers try to resolve their various problems and begin to come together, despite their expertise in remaining distant. Judd himself is struggling just to pull his life back together after his wife’s devastating betrayal. Tropper has a talent for portraying real-life relationships and problems with depth and humor. I enjoyed this novel very much and can’t wait for his next one!

For more information on Jonathan Tropper, you can visit his website.

You can hear an interview with Tropper about his novel at amazon's page (scroll down a bit) - he's working on a screenplay of it for Warner Brothers!

339 pages, Dutton (Penguin Group)

It's Monday 1/18! What Are You Reading?

I'm running a little late this morning because I had to cook breakfast for 8 ravenous boys (my younger son turned 12 last week). Wow, 12-year old boys can eat a LOT! Besides last night's sleep-over, we had two sets of house guests last week. Thankfully, things will now - finally - slow down a bit.

Still found time to read last week (while resting in between visitors!):

• I finished I Wanna Be Your Shoebox by Cristina Garcia, a warm and funny middle-grade novel that I really enjoyed. I posted a review at Great Books for Kids and Teens and some favorite quotes from the book at this week's Quote It Saturday.
• My book group book finally came in at the library, so I started The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I've heard so many great things about this book from other bloggers, and I'm really enjoying it. I was worried I might not finish in time for my Wednesday meeting, but the boys had both TV's occupied with video games last night, so my husband and I read for two hours instead of watching a movie. We should do that more often!
  
• I began listening to a classic teen/YA novel on audio by Madeleine L'Engle, Camilla. L'Engle was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid (I worshipped the Wrinkle in Time series!), but I've never read Camilla, so I'm enjoying it.

If you're interested in what the rest of my family is reading, check out Great Books for Kids and Teens.

Last week, I posted my list of Top Ten Books Read in 2009 and my list of Top Ten Kids/Teen Books Read in 2009 and a review of the wonderful nonfiction book, The Red Leather Diary.

What are YOU reading this week?

(What are you reading Mondays is sponsored by J. Kaye's Book Blog)

Quote It Sunday 1/17

I had to make a slight adjustment to this weekly feature since I never had a chance to write on Saturday (we've had house guests...and a birthday party coming up today), so this week it's Quote It Sunday! Thanks to That Chick That Reads for starting this feature.

I chose something a little different today, a quote (two actually) from a kids' book. Earlier this week, I read a wonderful middle-grade book, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox by Cristina Garcia (you can read my full review at my kids' book blog). The lead character, 13-year old Yumi, comes from a multi-cultural family and is dealing with lots of upsetting changes in her life, including the impending death of her beloved grandfather, Saul. Saul is from Brooklyn originally, though he lived in Japan for many years where he met Yumi's grandmother. Yumi spends a lot of time with Saul, listening with fascinati0n as he tells her his life story. I loved these passages between grandfather and granddaughter, so today's two quotes are excerpted from those discussions:

But change is inevitable, kid. No use trying to run from it or pretending to keep everything the same. It's a law of nature. Things die if they stand still too long. They get stagnant, like an old pond. That don't mean that everything will get better right away. But everything happens for a reason. In the long run, it usually turns out for the best.

And another:

...Listen up, Yumi girl, there's no use running away from your problems. 'Cause where are you gonna run to? There'll be up times and down times, and sometimes, looking back, they're the opposite of what you thought. Sometimes big changes force you to grow in ways you can't predict. But if you got a problem, look it straight in the eye and deal. That's good advice, kid. Take it. I wish I'd followed it myself. You can't return to the past, as much as you'd like to. Look at me: I couldn't go back to Japan, and when I finally returned New York, it didn't work out neither. You gotta keep looking forward, little one. Live in the present, take on the future. That's what I say.

Good advice, huh?

Hope you're enjoying a good weekend.

Nonfiction Review: The Red Leather Diary

My mother read The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel for a book group discussion and recommended it to me. I thoroughly enjoyed this very unique book that begins with its author, Koppel, finding an old diary in a pile of steamer trunks that had been discarded from her apartment building in New York City. That diary led Koppel on a journey of discovery.

The 5-year diary had once belonged to a young girl named Florence Wolfson who started it on her fourteenth birthday in 1929. Florence lived a rather privileged life, attending Wadleigh High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the city and spending her summers on Long Island and, later, in the Catskills. Florence was a remarkable young woman, mature beyond her years, who had started high school at age 11 and graduated at 15.

Koppel read the diary from cover to cover, then hired a private investigator to help her find Florence. Amazingly, they found her, alive and well, now 90 years old, and living in Connecticut and Florida. The two women met, and Koppel returned Florence’s diary to her. Florence answered Koppel’s questions and filled in more information about her life as a young woman of the 20’s and 30’s.

Koppel’s book is a combination of Florence’s original diary entries and additional details, some supplied by Florence and some gained through research, as in this excerpt:

A magnificent day – I still can’t get over the beauty of New York – at dusk.

Everywhere she looked there was a scene ripe with artistic possibility. Around her neck dangled her new Leica camera with a Zeiss lens from a brown leather strap. Florence snapped a photograph of a man in a Magritte hat scanning a store display, which she titled on the back, “Reflections,” for a competition she entered by mail. Off Fifth Avenue, streetcars buzzed diagonally across intersections on brass rails powered by live wires. Florence reached her arm out the trolley’s window to feel the breeze. Wires also transmitted phone calls, courtesy of New York City’s thousands of telephone girls, easy to flatter with a joke as they plugged in the right exchange. “Atwater 9-5332” reached the Wolfsons. At the Horn and Hardart Automat, sticking a nickel in a slot opened a little glass door for a slice of pie. Silver dolphin spouts poured hot coffee.

Young Florence’s boundless joy for life and love of the arts is evident in many of her exuberant diary entries, like this one:

Bought several books today and feel quite proud of my tiny library. Alice and her adventures in Wonderland are included – and why not! There’s so much to do – music, art, books, people – can one absorb it all?

The result is a fascinating and engaging portrait of that time period, from the perspective of this lively, enthusiastic young woman. Florence went to Hunter College in New York and enjoyed all that the city had to offer. She shares intimate details of her friendships, love affairs (with both boys and girls), hopes, and aspirations. Sprinkled throughout the book are captivating photos, many of them from Florence’s own collection, that help to complete the picture of a young woman’s life in 1930’s New York.

352 pages, Harper Perennial

Top Ten Books Read in 2009

TEN FOR TUESDAY

I'm finally getting around to making my best of 2009 list! This was a really great year for reading for me; it was hard to narrow my favorites down to just ten. These are all grown-up books. If you're also interested in books for kids, teens, and young adults, check out my Top Ten of 2009 List at Great Books for Kids and Teens.

So (drumroll, please), here are my Top Ten Books Read in 2009, in the order that I read them:

1. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
2. The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
3. The Girl She Used To Be by David Cristofano
4. Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo
5. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
6. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
7. The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells
8. The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent
9. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
10. Gumbo Tales: Finding My Way at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen

You can click through the links to read my full reviews.

What were your favorite books of 2009?

It’s Monday 1/11! What Are You Reading?

Still busy, busy, busy! My Dad and his wife are visiting, my son’s 12^th birthday is Wednesday, then my mom and her husband arrive on Friday. Fortunately, I still have books to provide a little downtime:

• I finished Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch, an enjoyable novel about an unhappy mom who suddenly finds herself seven years in her past with the chance to make different choices. Review to come soon.
• I’m now reading an excellent middle-grade novel, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox, by Cristina Garcia, about a thirteen year-old girl who is part Japanese, part Cuban, and part Russian Jew. It’s very well-written .
• I’m almost finished with the audio book, The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans. I don’t normally read or listen to holiday-themed books, but this one turned out to be pretty good – sort of a modern variation on the Scrooge story.

If you’re interested in kids’ books, check out what the rest of my family is reading at Great Books for Kids and Teens.

I’m making progress on my backlog of reviews. I posted two here last week, both books that I loved: The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder and Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table. I also posted a kids’ audio review at Great Books for Kids and Teens of Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman.

So, what are YOU reading this week?

What are you reading Mondays is sponsored by J. Kaye's Book Blog.