It's Monday 12/21! What Are You Reading?

Whew, what an exhausting, busy week I had last week! We spent this past weekend celebrating Christmas with my family in Connecticut, so last week was a flurry of preparations - buying and wrapping gifts, packing, and making my annual year-end DVD of family photos. Miraculously, I finished everything by Friday, and we spent an enjoyable weekend with my mom and her husband, my sister, brother-in-law, and my adorable niece and nephew.

Meanwhile, Delaware got a record-setting December snowfall (13 inches in our town). We're back home now and trying to dig out. I still need to finish my shopping today!

So, not a lot of time for reading last week (and no time at all for writing reviews!), but I did manage some enjoyable books:

• I finished The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel and really enjoyed its fascinating look into a young woman's life in NYC in the 1920's and 30's.
• I had trouble starting a new book because I was so distracted with so many things to do, so I chose a teen science fiction story that my son really loved: Spacer and Rat by Margaret Bechard. It's great so far and engaging enough to hold my attention during this busy season.
• On audio, I finished The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe. It's a fictional story set during the time of the Salem witch trials. It was good, though I couldn't help comparing it to The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (recently reviewed here) which was GREAT.
• In the spirit of the season, I started listening to The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans on audio, but I probably won't have time to finish it! I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but it's an interesting premise, about a greedy, selfish man who wakes up one morning and reads his own obituary in the newspaper (I suspect there's some redemption ahead).
  
• In the car on the way to and from CT, our family listened to Prism, a wonderful teen/YA science fiction audio that I listened to and reviewed earlier this year at Great Books for Kids and Teens. My husband and sons are enjoying it as much as I did!

Otherwise, we continued to read our favorite Christmas books at bedtime, and I really enjoyed reading them to my niece and nephew this weekend, too! I hope all of you enjoy the holidays with your families!

So, what are YOU reading this week?

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

It's Monday 12/14! What Are You Reading?

It's a bit late for my Monday posting. I'm not going to have much time for blogging for awhile - we have holiday celebrations in Connecticut, Delaware, and Oklahoma coming up. Plus, my sons and I were all sick all last week with a bad flare-up of our chronic illness, so I have so much to get done now! The boys went back to school today, but I'm still feeling pretty crummy.

Anyway, last week was a good reading week, though we also watched a LOT of movies!

• I finally finished Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey, with no further interruptions! This dark, compelling teen fantasy in The Resurrection of Magic trilogy (book 2) was just as good as the first one, and I can't wait for the third and final installment!
• I started The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel. My mother read it for a book group and recommended it. I've had this copy from the library sitting on my kitchen counter for over a month, so I'm glad I finally got to it. It's a fascinating real-life look into the life of a young woman in New York from 1929 - 1934.

I did manage to post a review last week of The Help by Kathryn Stockett, one of the best books I've read in the past five years - a great gift idea for any reader on your holiday list!

And on Great Books for Kids and Teens, I posted my family's Top Ten List of Christmas Picture Books. Check out our favorites and tell me about yours!

So, what are YOU reading this week?

Quote It Saturday 12/12

Time again for my favorite weekly feature, Quote It Saturday, started by That Chick That Reads. I've chosen a short quote for today, just because we've had a difficult week. My two sons and I all experienced a severe flare-up of our chronic illness this week. My younger son and I are doing better, but my older son is still flat on his back.

Today's quote is from Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, a novel based on facts about the life of a woman who was a long-time lover (and, some say, the soul mate) of Frank Lloyd Wright. As the novel begins, she is a young mother and wife who is frustrated and feeling smothered by her dull life:

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.
- Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

While I didn't necessarily agree with her actions in the novel, I could certainly relate to this particular sentiment.

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend!

Fiction Review: The Help

With The Help by Kathryn Stockett on so many Best of 2009 lists, I couldn’t wait to read it myself, so I was thrilled when my neighbor lent me her copy. I have to agree that The Help is one of the best books I’ve read this year; not only that, but it easily made it onto my own personal list of top ten novels of all-time. I loved this book and never wanted it to end.

The Help takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962 and is narrated by three different women.

Skeeter, a young white woman, has just returned home with a diploma from Ole Miss. She has dreams of becoming a writer, but all her mother wants is for her to meet a nice man and get married:

I drive my mama’s Cadillac fast on the gravel road, headed home. Patsy Cline can’t even be heard on the radio anymore, for all the rocks banging the side of the car. Mother would be furious, but I just drive faster. I can’t stop thinking about what Hilly said to me today at bridge club.

Hilly and Elizabeth and I have been best friends since Power Elementary. My favorite photograph is of the three of us sitting in the football stands in junior high, all jammed together, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. What makes the picture, though, is that the stands are completely empty around us. We sat close because we were close.

Aibileen is an older black woman, working as a maid for Skeeter’s best friend, Elizabeth:

Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.

But I ain’t never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottle like it’s a rotten turnip. Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. “What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I stop it?”

It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation.

And Minny is a friend of Aibileen’s. known for her amazing cooking skills and for her sassy mouth which often gets her in trouble:

Standing on that white lady’s back porch, I tell myself, Tuck it in, Minny. Tuck in whatever might fly out my mouth and tuck in my behind, too. Look like a maid who does what she is told. Truth is, I’m so nervous right now, I’d never backtalk again if it meant I’d get this job.

I yank my hose up from sagging around my feet – the trouble of all fat, short women around the world. Then I rehearse what to say, what to keep to myself. I go ahead and punch the bell.

Each of these three women is fascinating on her own, but their paths are destined to cross in ways that will change all of their lives forever. Things are changing in the world, even though Mississippi seems to be lagging behind. These three women come together to do something unbelievably brave, and perhaps foolish.

The stories of these women – and of the rest of the women in town, black and white – are all entwined together, creating a mosaic of a time when there were social lines that were not crossed. This novel is about those lines and about what happens when people dare to step outside of them. There are the hateful emotions between races that you might expect for the time – prejudice, fear, anger – but this book is also about the loving relationships between the black maids and the white children they cared for and raised. Stockett writes, in part, from her own experiences, growing up in Mississippi with a close relationship with her family’s own maid.

Stockett’s writing is vivid and real, pulling you into this captivating and volatile period of time and place. You come to care about the main characters, to hate others, and to feel as if you are living more within the story than within your own life for a short time. And it will be a short time because you will be unable to put this book down. I found myself carrying it around with me, stealing five minutes of reading time whenever I could. That, to me, is the mark of an extraordinary novel. The Help will stay with me for a long time.

For more information about the book and the author, check out Elizabeth Stockett’s website.

451 pages, Amy Einhorn Books (Putnam)

It's Monday 12/7! What Are You Reading?

Not a lot of reading time last week - too much other stuff to do this time of year! But what I did read I enjoyed...

• I finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and posted my review. I also posted a couple of extra quotes I liked from the book for my Quote It Saturday feature.
• With my book group reads behind me, I finally went back to the novel I've had to put down twice for book group books: Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey, Book 2 in The Resurrection of Magic series, a dark but engaging teen fantasy. Once again, it's excellent, and I think I'll actually get all the way through it this time!

My Top Ten List last week was a list of the top ten books I'd like to receive for Christmas. What's on your list this year?

So, what are YOU reading this week?

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

Quote It Saturday 12/5

Welcome to my favorite feature of the week, Quote It Saturday. Thanks to That Chick That Reads for starting it!

Since I just finished and reviewed Olive Kitteridge this week, it's fresh in my mind, so I thought I'd share a couple of other quotes from the book that I really liked. I mentioned in my review that parts of the book were a bit depressing, but these quotes feature a couple of the sections I referred to that emphasize joy and optimism instead. Both of these quotes really spoke to me and reflect my own feelings.

The first is about small moments of joy in life, as Olive recalls watching her son's soccer games when he was younger:

There was beauty to that autumn air, and the sweaty young bodies that had mud on their legs, strong young men who would throw themselves forward to have the ball smack against their foreheads; the cheering when a goal was scored, the goalie sinking to his knees. There were days - she could remember this - when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure.

Having spent many, many similar hours on soccer fields watching my own two sons play, I know just what she means.

Here, in another chapter, Jane and Bob Houlton, an older married couple, drive through town looking at Christmas lights on all the houses:

And she was happy right now, it was true. Jane Houlton, shifting slightly inside her nice black coat, was thinking that, after all, life was a gift - that one of those things about getting older was knowing that so many moments weren't just moments, they were gifts. And how nice, really, that people should celebrate with such earnestness this time of year. No matter what people's lives might hold (some of these houses they were passing would have to hold some woeful tribulations, Janie knew), still and all, people were compelled to celebrate because they knew somehow, in their different ways, that life was a thing to celebrate.

That one is particularly relevant at this time of year, don't you think?

Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

Fiction Review: Olive Kitteridge

For the past year, I’ve been hearing wonderful things about Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and I finally had the chance to read it this week for my neighborhood book group. Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge, and the book was at the top of many “best of” lists last year. Most of the women in my book group enjoyed this unique novel-like book. It is very well written, with a clever approach to telling Olive’s story.

The book – not exactly a novel – is written as a series of thirteen separate but interrelated short stories set in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine. Each story focuses on a different character or family in Crosby but somehow relates to the title character, Olive. In some of the stories, Olive is a major presence, as in the stories focusing on her husband and son. In other stories, Olive is barely there, perhaps just passing the main character at a restaurant. Through the eyes of the various townspeople, we learn more and more about Olive, as in this scene, where Bob and Jane Houlton have come to church for a holiday concert:

The church was slowly beginning to fill up. Olive Kitteridge walked in, tall and broad-shouldered in a navy-blue coat, her husband behind her. Henry Kitteridge touched his wife’s arm, indicating they take a seat in a pew nearby, but Olive shook her head and they sat instead two pews closer to the front of the church. “I don’t know how he can stand her,” Bob murmured to Jane.

They watched the Kitteridges settle into their pew, Olive shaking off her coat, than placing it back on her shoulders, Henry helping her. Olive Kitteridge had taught math at the school Jane had worked at; very seldom had the two women spoken at length. Olive had a way about her that was absolutely without apology, and Jane kept her distance. In response to Bob’s remark now, Jane merely shrugged.

Through each short story, we learn about its characters, about the community, and a bit more about Olive. The stories are roughly chronological, moving from when Olive and Henry are raising their teen son to the inevitable challenges of old age. Through it all, we see Olive (and the other characters) learn more about herself and about life. I enjoyed these insights, like this one:

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. People thought love would do it, and maybe it did.

Generally, I enjoyed this unique book, although it was a bit depressing at times. I understand first-hand that bad things happen in every life and part of life is dealing with these challenges, but I would have preferred a more upbeat view of life. The stories had moments of hope and optimism – and a nice ending – but there were also an awful lot of suicidal thoughts, infidelity, and yearnings for something different in this small community. All in all, though, Olive Kitteridge provides an interesting and well-written study of a small town and of human life, with all of its joys and despairs.

If you've already read Olive Kitteridge, you may enjoy this interview with both Elizabeth Strout and with the fictional Olive (but it does contain spoilers so best to save it until after you've read the book).

270 pages, Random House

Top Ten Books I Want For Christmas

TEN FOR TUESDAY

Although all of my Top Ten lists are very subjective, today's is even more random than usual. I have a running list in an Excel spreadsheet of 200 books that I want to read, added to whenever I hear about something that sounds good. I love to receive books - any books! - as gifts, so it's impossible to really choose only ten from this never-ending list. But, these are books that I had starred, books that really struck a chord with me for one reason or another. I'd be happy to find any of these under the tree on Christmas morning!

• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  
• The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (amazon’s best of 2008)
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (Time Traveler's Wife is one of my top ten books of all time)
  
• Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (I keep trying to convince my book group to read this one)
• Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch (because it sounds similar to my favorite book, Replay)
• Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee (memoir of girl raised in New Orleans, looking for birth parents - I love to read anything about New Orleans)
• Roastbeef’s Promise by David Jerome (a road trip novel, recommended by Mary at Bookfan, because I love road trips)
• Traveling with Pomengranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor (traveling plus mother-daughter memoir - what a combination!)
  
• Limbo by A. Manette Ansay (memoir by author with a mystery illness)

What books would you like to receive this holiday season?

It's Monday 11/30! What Are You Reading?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! We spent the last 5 days visiting my extended family in Rochester, NY. It was a hectic weekend, packed full of visits, but a lot of fun. It was wonderful to see everyone, and my sons had a blast playing with three different sets of cousins! Not a lot of time for reading, though...

• I finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and it's easy to see why this novel ended up on so many Best of 2009 lists. I could hardly set it down, and it's definitely on my own "Best of" list. An amazing novel about the relationships between white women in 1960's Mississippi and their black maids. If you've read this book, stop by Barney's Book Blog for an online discussion (it was actually yesterday, but I plan to stop by today to add my two cents!).
• I started a book for my neighborhood book group (which meets on Wednesday) - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It was hard to switch to a new book after finishing The Help, but I'm enjoying it so far. I still have a lot left to read in the next 3 days!
• I've been listening to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe on audio for the past couple of weeks. I'm enjoying it, though it's not as good as The Heretic's Daughter (both are about the Salem witch trials).

If you're interested in kids' and teen/YA books, check out my weekly update at Great Books for Kids and Teens. The boys didn't have a lot of time for reading this week, but we listened to lots of great audio books on the way to and from Rochester.

So, what are YOU reading this week?

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

It's Monday 11/23! What Are You Reading?

Another Monday morning. This week will be crazy busy, with just two days of school and traveling to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with family. Won't be much time for reading!

Last week was another good, though hectic, reading week:

• I finished The Art of Racing in the Rain for my book group and loved it! You can read my review and some additional favorite quotes from the book.
• Having fulfilled my book group reading, I resumed reading the excellent teen fantasy novel, Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey (book 2 in The Resurrection of Magic series). I was enjoying it when I realized (again - second week in a row!) that I was running out of time for two more book group books! So I had to once again set this book aside...I hope to finish it before 2010!
• I began reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett for the online book discussion next Sunday at Barney's Book Blog. I was hooked from the first page and have been carrying it around with me all weekend! It's just as amazing as I'd heard.
  

As soon as I finish The Help, I need to read Olive Kitteridge for my neighborhood book group - can't believe it's almost December already!

If you're interested in kids'/teen/YA books, you can find out what my family is reading this week at Great Books for Kids and Teens. Last week, I posted a review of Sent, book 2 of the exciting time travel series The Missing by Margaret Peterson Haddix. With our long drives this weekend, we'll be listening to some good audio books!

So, what are YOU reading this week?

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

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

Quote It Saturday 11/21

Thanks to That Chick That Reads for starting my favorite weekly meme, featuring a favorite quote (or two!).

This week's favorite quotes come from The Art of Racing in the Rain, a novel narrated by a dog that I finished and reviewed this week. This book really grew on me, and I especially enjoyed the philosophical musings of Enzo, the book's narrator, who yearns to be human:

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something I aspire to.

...I could have pulled him close to me, so close he could feel my breath on his skin, and I could have said to him, "This is just a crisis. A flash! A single match struck against the implacable darkness of time! You are the one who taught me to never give up. You taught me that new possibilities emerge for those who are prepared, for those who are ready. You have to believe!"

- Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

As you can see, Enzo is pretty wise. I'm so glad I read this wonderful book and wish I had Enzo by my side!

Fiction Review: The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is a unique novel because its narrator and main character is a dog. Yes, a dog. Now, let me say right up front that I’m not really a dog person, so I wondered when I started this book whether I’d be able to get into it. Not only did I get into it, but I really loved it and came to love its narrator, Enzo. Despite being a dog, he is very wise. Because he’s a dog, he has spent his entire life observing humans and he has some wonderful insights into us and the way we live our lives.

The book opens with Enzo explaining his limitations:

Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question. I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysyllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences. And that’s why I’m here now waiting for Denny to come home – he should be here soon – lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine.

Denny is Enzo’s owner - and best friend – and he’s a racecar driver (hence the title). Denny shares his passion with Enzo by watching racing on TV and videos with him, including in-car videos of his own races. Their lives change quite a bit when Eve enters the picture, then again when Eve and Denny have a child, Zoe, but Enzo adjusts and grows to love them both. Tragedy hits the family, compounded by a series of equally devastating events afterward.

Through it all, Enzo shares his unique perspective with the reader, based on what he sees and hears and on all that he’s learned through watching television. I especially liked Enzo’s philosophical musings, like this one:

I will never tire of watching tapes with Denny. He knows so much, and I have learned so much from him. He said nothing more to me; he continued watching his tapes. But my thoughts turned to what he had just taught me. Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

I told you he was wise. And that was actually a problem for a few people in my book group who felt the book was unrealistic and Enzo too intelligent. For the rest of us, we had no problem suspending belief for a while, accepting the premise, and going along for the exciting ride. I know nothing about either dogs or car racing, but I really enjoyed The Art of Racing in the Rain. I read far too late into the night, laughed out loud, and cried – all signs for me of a great book.

NOTE: Although I'm a big fan of audio books, this might be one that's better to read on paper. A few people in my book group were disappointed with the audio version and found it hard to follow.

321 pages, Harper Collins

Authors Provide Gift Ideas

I thought this was pretty cool - Penguin publishing company has posted a What To Give and What To Get feature on their website. Click on your favorite (Penguin) authors to read which books they loved this year and want to give as gifts as well as which books they'd like to receive. There are some big names included, like Geraldine Brooks, Sue Grafton, Nick Hornby, Sue Monk Kidd, and many more.

Besides getting some good gift ideas (for you and for your loved ones!), it's fun to read about what books professional writers liked best!

Top Ten Books That Disappointed Me

TEN FOR TUESDAY

Last week, I posted a list of the Top Ten Books I Enjoyed More Than I Expected, so it only seems fair to also post a list of books that surprised me in the other way, Top Ten Books That Disappointed Me.

Now, I want to be clear here - these aren't necessarily books that I hated. I rarely dislike a book so much that I don't finish it (though there are a couple of those on this list!). Rather, these are mostly books that I had high expectations for, books that I expected to LOVE and didn't. I know that some of these books are beloved by many people - in those cases, it's a matter of "it's not you, it's me." Reading books is a very personal experience, and no two people are affected in exactly the same way by a particular book.

So, without further ado, here is my list:

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck – all-time favorite of a close friend of mine; I liked it but didn’t love it – too depressing and almost no likeable characters.
• The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman – liked it OK, but I guess I’m not really into the magical/mysticism angle.
• The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch – loved the movie Iris and wanted to read one of her books; maybe I chose the wrong one.
• Manhunt by Janet Evanovich – big fan of her Stephanie Plum books but this romance had none of her usual humor, suspense, or cleverness.
• Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston – most of my book group hated it; I didn’t even finish it; characters were too passive.
• City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende – I’ve heard great things about her adult books and looked forward to this middle-grade adventure, but the characters seemed flat and the writing awkward and repetitive; maybe a poor translation?
• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert – everyone in my book group hated it; I couldn’t finish it; pointless and condescending.
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson – a well-loved author I wanted to love, but along with most of my book group, just found it too depressing, though we did have a good discussion.
• Live a Little by Kim Green – I found the main character’s actions despicable – she discovers her cancer diagnosis is a mistake and doesn’t tell her family!
• Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish – I loved the premise and wanted to love the book but, like everyone else in my book group, found it repetitive and a bit tiresome after awhile.

How about you? Are there any books that have disappointed you? Books that everyone loves that you just didn't like that much?

It's Monday 11/16! What Are You Reading?

I had a few false starts last week but also some reading successes:

• I finished Megan's Way by Melissa Foster. I know lots of people really loved this book, but it just didn't grab me.
• I started Sacred Scars, Book 2 in The Resurrection of Magic series by Kathleen Duey, a dark and compelling fantasy series that my teen son and I really like. Unfortunately, partway through, I remembered that one of my book groups meets this Wednesday and I hadn't read the book yet! So, as hard as it was, I had to set this book down and...
• I started The Art of Racing In the Rain by Garth Stein, a novel narrated by a dog (!) with surprising warmth and insight. It's very good so far.
• On audio, I gave up on Return to Sullivan's Island by Dorothea Benton Frank. I'm not a big fan of so-called Southern Fiction (how come there's no Northern Fiction?) in the first place, but I was trying to give it a fair chance. But when a ghost did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen in the start of the second CD, I'd had enough. Just not my kind of thing.
• In its place, I started The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe on audio. I've heard that The Heretic's Daughter, which I loved and reviewed here last week, is much better, but I'm so fascinated by the Salem witch trials now that I decided to give it a try.

If you're interested in kids' and teens' books, check out Great Books for Kids and Teens to see what my sons are reading this week.

Last week, I posted reviews of The Heretic's Daughter and Hush, Hush (teen/YA), as well as two Top Ten lists - Books I Enjoyed More Than I Expected and Favorite Childhood Books.

So, what are YOU reading this week?

(Thanks to J. Kaye's Book Blog for starting What Are You Reading Mondays!)

Quote It Saturday 11/14

Thanks to That Chick That Reads for starting my favorite weekly tradition, Quote It Saturday!

Today's quote is another one from 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe, one of my favorite memoirs, about a family from Brooklyn that takes their kids on a trip around the world. This series of quotes focuses on how quickly kids grow up, right before our eyes, and it really hits home for me:

So much information passes into obsolescence the moment an individual stands upright. It is like this throughout childhood, data gathered, then filed away, or discarded. This is how it is: you get comfortable, they spring something else on you. The twelve-year old kid, boy or girl, is a most perfect master, a king among kids, worldly in their world. They get so confident, they forget to duck when blindsided by adolescence.

...They would not be children long. The three of them walked around with expiration dates on their heads.

...Pressure, man. I can feel the tick of the clock. Soon the hair will sprout from under Billy's arms. Stubble will sully his smooth face. Who he is now will be found only on photographs and in addled memory. There is nothing to be done about it. When he complains, about not wanting to grow up, about wanting to stay his perfect twelve forever and ever, it is my job to tell him it is only in Never-Never Land that boys never get old.

...It was all so very familiar. The return of normalcy was fast approaching. Trip Time, that little rip in the continuum of Regular Time, was zipping shut.

- 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time, Mark Jacobson

I feel exactly this way about my two sons, especially my oldest, who is now 15 and shaving but still isn't sure he really wants to grow up. And that last line is one of my all-time favorites. Our family cherishes our summer road trips together. I love living in Trip Time,where it's just the four of us, living in the moment.

Hope you're enjoying the weekend!

Fiction review: Heretic’s Daughter

Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent is a powerful, haunting story that will stay with me forever. I recently read this novel, set during the Salem witch trials, for one of my book groups. Although some in the group found the book too depressing, most were moved and glad to have read the novel.

The author is descended from Martha Carrier, who was tried for witchcraft in Salem in 1692. She based the novel on the stories she’d heard growing up in her family, as well as plenty of research, and filled in the gaps with fiction. The result is a remarkable picture of daily life during that harsh time in our history, as well as the horrors of the witchcraft trials, imprisonments, and executions.

The novel opens with a letter from Sarah, Martha’s daughter, to her granddaughter, written in 1752:

…And now I have hit upon the heart of my letter. You cannot have grown to womanhood without hearing the embittered whispers of Salem Village, and of me and my parents. But in your love for me, you have never asked me to reveal the dread happenings of my youth. The name Salem even now causes grown men and women to blanch with fear. Do you know that a few months past, the councilmen of Essex County, Massachusetts, voted to change the name of the village to Danvers? It was a thing well done and done quietly, too, though I believe the memory of the Salem witch trials will last well beyond the few remaining living relics of that time.

As God in heaven knows, changing a name cannot change the history of a place. This history has for so long lived like a spider in my breast. The spider spins and spins, catching memories in its web, threatening to devour every final happiness. With this letter I hope to sweep away the terror and the sadness and to have my heart made pure again by God’s grace. That is truly the meaning of the word “Puritan.”

The rest of the novel is Sarah’s story, which begins when she is just nine years old, and her family moves to her grandmother’s house in Andover in an effort to escape a smallpox outbreak in their nearby town. They unwittingly bring smallpox with them, though, cementing their position in their new town as outsiders. Eventually, a group of young girls in nearby Salem (and in their own town) begin to accuse people of witchcraft, and Sarah’s family is swept up in the hysteria that results.

What happens next is as shocking as any other senseless massacre in world history, no less horrifying for its relatively small scope. My mother said that reading this book had, for her, a similar effect to visiting the Holocaust Museum. The morning after book group, just before Halloween, she and I saw a story on the Today show about Salem. The story was about all the fun things you could do if you visit Salem today, like going to a faux witchcraft trial and buying witch souvenirs. My mom has actually been to Salem and done these things, but she said that knowing the truth about what really happened there makes this celebratory atmosphere just appalling now.

Kent’s details of the imprisonment, punishment, and execution of innocent men, women, and children are haunting. As I read, I was astounded by the capacity of people to be so ignorant and cruel to their fellow human beings, but others in my book group immediately saw the parallels with plenty of more modern atrocities. Whatever your perspective, Kent’s writing paints a vivid picture and leaves a lasting effect. I highly recommend this compelling and important book.

368 pages, Back Bay Books

Top Ten Books I Enjoyed More Than I Expected

TEN FOR TUESDAY

Today's Top Ten list is a list of books that surprised me. These are books that I did not expect to like at all but read for one reason or another and ended up really enjoying them! I read these books based on recommendations from friends or family or, in many cases, because they were book group selections. This is what I like most about being in book groups - I end up reading (and enjoying) books that I never would have picked up otherwise.

So, here are the Top Ten Books That I Enjoyed More Than I Expected:

• March by Geraldine Brooks – before I read this, I didn’t think I liked historical fiction
• Ender’s Game and its sequels by Orson Scott Card – my first adult foray into science fiction, another genre I didn’t think I’d like
• Replay by Ken Grimwood – another science fiction book recommended by my husband which is now my favorite book of all-time
• Still Me by Christopher Reeve – I don’t normally enjoy celebrity memoirs but Reeve’s book was so inspiring!
• Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins (author of this year's hit The Hunger Games)– It sounded gross but my sons were interested. We ended up reading the entire series out loud and loving every single book!
  
• Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh – my neighbor lent it to me and I read it to be polite and ended up loving it and recommending it to my book group. Haigh is now one of my favorite authors.
  
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen – read for book group; the description just didn’t sound interesting, but I was glad to be proven wrong
• River of Doubt by Candice Millard – fascinating nonfiction account of Teddy Roosevelt’s trip up the Amazon River; read for book group
• The Lost Years by KristinaWandzilak and Constance Curry – honest & painful memoir by a mother-daughter about the daughter’s addiction to alcohol and drugs; read for book group
• The History of Love by Nicole Krauss – ironically, many in the book group did not like this book, but I had bought it and missed the meeting, so I decided to read it anyway and really liked it.

How about you? Are there any books that surprised you (in a good way)?

P.S. If you like Top ten lists, check out Ten for Tuesday at Great Books For Kids and Teens, where I listed the top ten books from my childhood.

It's Monday 11/9! What Are You Reading?

More sick days last week, but I think I'm on my way back finally. I seem to have caught the virus the rest of my family had a couple of weeks ago. I'm still dealing with congestion and a mild fever, but my energy is slowly coming back up. Thanks for all of the kind words and well wishes!

Last week:

• I read Sent by Margaret Haddix, book 2 of The Missing, her exciting time-travel series for middle-grade readers. My son and I love this series!
• I started Megan's Way by Melissa Foster, a review novel about a woman who is dying of cancer. I've had a hard time getting into this book - maybe because I haven't felt well or maybe because I so strongly disagreed with the main character's actions at the start of the book - but I'm sticking with it to see what happens.
• I started a new audio book, Return to Sullivan's Island by Dorothea Benton Frank. I didn't read Sullivan's Island, but I hope that doesn't matter. This seems to be more of a follow-up than a sequel. I received the audio for review, and it just caught my eye. Anyone else read this book or something else from this author?

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

I posted reviews last week of a wonderful memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and a great middle-grade mystery, The Mystery of the Third Lucretia.

So, what are YOU reading this week?

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

Quote It Saturday 11/7

My family is very important to me, and I love traveling and taking my kids to new places. One of my favorite memoirs combines these elements: 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe by Mark Jacobson. Mark is a writer who, along with his wife, scraped enough money together to take their kids on a no-frills trip around the world, both to show them world and to bring their family closer together, as their kids grew older. I filled many pages of my quotes journal with excerpts from this wonderful memoir. Today, I'd like to share some quotes from the book that perfectly mirror my own feelings about family and how travel brings families together:

What remained was us. Little us, nuclear us. For the moment, the entropy that inevitably flings things and people apart was suspended. The force field of our own making ruled the day, a most favorable kind of gravity. We were together. The will by which we created life in our family, this fleeting passage during which we lived under the same Brooklyn roof, rode in the same Toyota Camry station wagon, and got on the same airplane to go on this trip that had landed us, currently, in the city of the Hindu dead, remained in control. That's what this trip really was, a grand, somewhat nutty gesture, a tribute to the ephemera of our lives together. Even if everything went perfectly, in the middle-class way of thinking of things - them doing well, going off to college, getting really swell jobs, etc. - we'd never be as close as we'd been over the 16 years since Rae came on the scene, followed by her sister and brother. Arrows on the dartboard; for now we'd landed here.

...You had to get it while you could, put aside a million mixed feelings, because those moments were irretrievable. It had been a big, juicy chapter, this time of us being together, this invention of us. In no small way, we were all just passing through, tipping our hats like any Lone Ranger, here today and gone tomorrow. It was hard to say where we would go next. With the next lightning strike, it could be over. Sometimes, things just fell apart.

The deal was to horde the here and now. What was known only to us. The shared knowledge, the inside jokes.

Wow. I can relate so well to all that, even better now than when I first read it, as my older son is now 15 and quickly burning through high school. These passages ignite my own urge to travel, to enjoy these fleeting years together, just the four of us. It also makes me want to read this book again!

Thanks to Leslie at That Chick That Reads for starting Quote It Saturday, my favorite weekly theme.