Call the Midwife

Memoir by Jennifer Worth

I should start getting a commission from Amazon. Because right now, I say to you, if you have Christmas gifts left to buy for anyone who can read and has a heart beating in his or her chest, go buy this book. Ohmygosh.

Set in 1950's London, specifically the East End or Docklands, it's the story of an upper middle class young woman who becomes a midwife at a convent. She's not a nun, which is interesting, but a nurse and midwife who assists the nuns as they serve the impoverished women of the area. Nurse Jenny Lee, as she's known at the time of her memoir, is surprised to find herself in a convent when she arrives at the door of her new job, and even more surprised by the variety of life in Docklands. She tells her story with both a sense of history and immediacy, from looking back on the changes in health care and midwifery, to generalizing about the way of the world at the present time, to telling with compassion the circumstances of the individuals right in front of her, which are so amazing you almost wouldn't believe them to be true. Her voice has a combination of naivete and world weariness that gives a sense of what life as a young woman and the world was like just after World War II.

If you haven't heard and can't read the tiny print on the cover image, this story has become a series on BBC/PBS. I actually began watching the show before I started the book, but was told that the book is pretty much covered in the first season. I immediately stopped watching because I hate to spoil a good book, but I'm not sure if I did spoil it or not. I had the actors' voices and faces in my head instead of my own imaginings. On the other hand, I now can look forward to reliving the parts I already read and seeing new stories as I watch the rest of the show. It's like getting an unexpected sequel.

Also speaking of tiny print, the subtitle is "A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times." I think the reason this book so struck me is that this is life right now. It's the holidays, Christmas, the time of Christ's birth and families and supposedly joy joy joy. Yet it's so dark sometimes. Just reading any segment of news shows that the world is completely torn between darkness and light, desperately evil events like school shootings and heart-growing acts of love like football players befriending disabled students or people helping strangers buy their Christmas gifts. My life seems full of smaller versions of these ups and downs, too, with a beautiful but teething baby and the pleasure and loneliness of staying home with my children. It's comforting somehow to see this universal phenomenon mirrored in Jenny Lee's experiences with good people, bad people, poor people, generous people, birth, and death. Through the late nights and early mornings, the women she serves, and especially the nuns she serves alongside, she finds herself changing from scoffing at the faith of the nuns to yearning for their peace and love and eventually coming to her own faith. It's a good subtitle, and as nuanced as the story and its telling.

See? It's not just a story for women or BBC eggheads or whatever you might have thought. It's for all of us who need an excuse to smile and to cry and to gasp. Merry Christmas.

We Live in Water

Short Stories by Jess Walter

Does anyone really like short stories? I mean, besides grateful middle school students who are just glad they don't have to read a whole book. Everybody who I mentioned this book to so far has said, "Yeah, I don't really like short stories. They're just so________." Fill in the blank. For me, the blank is two things: short and dark. Wait, I'm criticizing short stories for being too short? That's a bit obvious. I should have known what I was getting myself into there. But what I mean is that they leave me unsatisfied. I just get into the characters, figure out the setting, and then bam, the story's over. I'm the opposite of middle school students in that regard, I guess. The other thing is that every short story that's been written for adults after about 1950 is required to be incredibly depressing. I think they're trying to be very real and human and all that but it's not my reality that there are no happy endings.

Jess Walter's book of stories doesn't change my mind about the genre one bit. He is, admittedly, a MASTERFUL writer. I am blown away by how simple his writing seems yet how incredibly well crafted, from the purity of the voices to the tightness of the pacing to the endings that manage to surprise every time. And YET. Every single story is about drugs, homelessness, crime, rape, dysfunction, or wait for it...zombie. Yes, there is even one zombie story and while it's a very smart zombie story, it's still about the one supernatural, not-real thing that terrifies me (thanks to a combination of the movie "28 Days Later," Halloween, and pregnancy hormones. I don't want to talk about it).

I do have to say that if Jess Walter was to read this blog, I think he would say that I missed the point. He'd say he was being intentional with all the druggie stories and even the zombie one, that he's showing the effect and character of the poverty and education problems in our culture and especially in Spokane, that he tried to elucidate that with a list of facts and anecdotes  (A LIST! I LOVED THAT PART!) he calls Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington. And I get it. I do. He humanizes a very deep cultural issue. I guess I just don't want my light reading to be about how society is failing. I get enough of that in my education books. So thanks, Mr. Walter. I'll read your next novel and skip the story collections.

Joy for Beginners

Novel by Erica Bauermeister

It's sweater weather, folks. We're in the season of socks all the time, tea and coffee morning and afternoon (decaf, most of it), fight with the seven year old to get her to wear a coat every day. I'm sipping a vanilla cappuccino right now courtesy of my Keurig. And for many of us, this weather ushers in a new kind of reading material. It's the opposite of beach reads but with the same effect, like an eggnog latte versus a Frappuccino or a hot buttered rum over a daiquiri. Wait a minute...okay, I'm back. All the drink metaphors made me have to go to the bathroom.

So anyway, this book has a certain heart-warming quotient to it, where it's not too serious but touches on real life issues and relationships among a group of women of various ages, that makes it seem comforting and familiar. The beginning has a woman who has just overcome cancer and is celebrating with the circle of friends who have borne her through the disease and treatments. They encourage her to take a whitewater rafting trip with her college-age daughter to celebrate her victory, so she announces a challenge for each of them to undertake in the next year. The ages and walks of the women vary and so do their challenges, which the reader learns only in each woman's chapter. The voice telling the story remains impartial and consistent, so it's not too much of a bounce around to hear so many different stories. They each commit themselves bravely to their task and grow as expected but without too much sappiness or gift wrapped perfect endings.

And yet. Probably because I read this on the heels of a masterpiece (Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter) or because I was surprised and delighted to stumble on this author's first book (The School of Essential Ingredients) there were parts of this one that fell a little flat for me. The descriptions are too neat and tidy and come off as sentimental and a little sappy. They remind me of so many of the personal memoirish blogs I read, or all the thankful Thanksgiving facebook posts going around right now. Sweet but somehow all sounding the same. The characters, too, were less rounded and more like caricatures than I hoped for. I also recognize that these are issues I'm having with revising my own beleaguered novel, so I'm reading too much with a critical writer's eye. This is a "quiet" story, as one agent described my manuscript, and I enjoyed it quietly, like a warm pair of socks.

Two parting thoughts (and a list to keep my soul happy):

1) Next on my bookshelf is Jess Walter's recent collection of short stories. I'm kind of hoping I don't like it, because I usually don't like short stories, but he knocked my warm socks off with his novel, so I have to give it a shot. Plus, it's overdue at the library and we know how crazy that makes me.

2) I am trying to fix the blog so you can comment (that would be so much fun! like a real book club, kinda sorta). So far I've tried Google's suggestions to no avail, so I'm going to ask my husband will take a look. My kids think he can fix anything.

Beautiful Ruins

Novel by Jess Walters

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. I love reading Washington State authors. It makes them seem like normal people (I could have driven by his house!) and pulls me up out of the murky depths of trying to get published and being rejected for the 67th time. Jess Walter did it and he's from Spokane! Maybe I can, too!

2. No one knows what literary or commercial fiction really is. Not me (see the post in which I attempted to pin it down and failed), not publishers, not NPR. Cause this cover looks like commercial fiction, but the book is billed as literary fiction, but it's such an engaging read that it blows most contemporary literary fiction away. See what I mean?

3. I like starting my blog with lists. I like anything with lists, actually. And this book ends with a list! Really! A list of happy endings for various characters, both the expected and the unexpected. I hope that didn't ruin it for you, but it makes me feel better to know that it's all going to turn out okay. Which is very commercial fiction-ish, by the way.

4. I'm using a lot of exclamation points today. Sorry, sorry about that. I'll restrain myself.

Okay, here's the book in a nutshell...nope, can't do it. There is no nutshelling this book. Jess Walter wrote a TRULY sweeping story. It goes from 1960s Italy where the young owner of a small hotel hosts and helps a young American actress working on the set of "Cleopatra," to modern day Hollywood where a producer's assistant and would-be screenwriter are having early life crises, to World War II Italy, to the post-grunge music scene in the UK, to 1970s theater in Seattle, and back again. Sweeping. I was halfway in before I'd met all the main characters. And all these characters and settings blend not in a mixed up strangers sort of way but a completely natural telling of their lives. Walter makes the extraordinary seem ordinary and vice versa. His language is beautifully simple.

In fact, I think that besides the likeable characters, interesting settings, and surprising plot, this is what makes this book so excellent. The simplest scene is beautiful and important in both the smallest and biggest ways. There is a scene where the hotelier and actress go for a walk to see an old WWII pillbox bunker. A German soldier has painted portraits on the inside. It's a momentary distraction for the characters but as a reader you can sort of kind of start to tell the importance of the moment. And then we come back to it again. And again. In small ways all, but that's his style. Small becomes big, like these types of scenes, and yet the huge things (scandal! pregnancy! drugs! again with the exclamation points!) just fall in line and don't seem huge at all until you step back and see them.

Walter is such an excellent writer that I would be inordinately jealous, except that he confesses in the interview at the back that it took him 15 years to write this story. As I told a friend, I wasn't even an adult 15 years ago, so I'm okay with it.

I think my feelings are clear here: read this book. Everyone can love it, despite the literary label. High school students will probably be asked to write papers on it in 15 or 20 years and they'll hate it then, of course. I've also heard that some "real" book clubs are discussing this book, so for those two groups I'll leave you with some literary analysis that you are welcome to steal: one of the unifying elements of the book is how very human we all are in our constant striving for success. At one point a group of the characters are travelling to Seattle on a quest with many different purposes, though each of them is looking for some kind of fulfillment. Walter compares them to the Scarecrow and Tinman, who discovered on THEIR quest that the things they sought, they had all along. As they fly into the Emerald City, Walter uses imagery from "The Wizard of Oz." That's genius.

And it still has a happy ending.

Gone Girl

Novel by Gillian Flynn

Always a little late to the party on these uber popular books, aren't I? I think I have oppositional defiance disorder (ODD, that's a thing, much to the chagrin of school teachers everywhere) when it comes to current "it" books. I purposefully don't want to read it BECAUSE it's the book that everyone else is reading. Until I do.

I think with these books I also tend to tune out what the book is really about, beyond the premise, which is obvious from the title here. A woman disappears, clearly, and as usual her husband is the main suspect. But what I didn't know is that it's told from two perspectives, his and hers, and the timelines are different, his being the present day, the current disappearance and investigation, and hers being past, how they met and their first five years of marriage. And what I really didn't know is how completely mental it is. Like, get under your skin creepy crazy. I heard it was DARK, but wow. These people are nutso.

I have to give credit to the author. She must have read a ton of psychology books and then dove really deep into her own marriage and every other marriage she had ever witnessed up close in order to give this gut check analysis of a life lived together. The characters are incredibly detailed and rounded and you learn more about them than you know about yourself or your own close ones, which is incredible writing, but remember, crazy. And it made me a little crazy reading it. How much do you really want to know about other people, really? Even your own spouse or other loved ones? This is kind of the point of the book, that knowing someone so well is touted as true love and makes you soul mates, but it's eventually kind of disappointing. Or worse.

There. I've done my best to describe the satisfying creepiness without giving away any of the many plot twists. By the way, I saw that a movie version is due out next year. I'm not sure I'll see it. I mean, I don't think I want it to count as one of "my" movies when my husband and I take turns choosing what to rent because it will be somewhat violent and full of cringe-worthy swearing. I'm more of a feel good movie kind of girl. On the other hand, maybe it will be one of the rare movies we both like equally. We'll see.

The Silver Star

Novel by Jeanette Walls

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I AM BACK IN THE GAME.

And by that I mean I like reading again. Apparently. It was so sad to me that I didn't enjoy most of the books I read this summer. What was that? Who was I? I'm going to chalk it up to pregnancy and forget it ever happened.

So I'm getting my mojo back and I LOVED this book. Jeanette Walls is the author of The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses, both of which I also loved but were memoirs (ok, HBH was sold as a true novel, but really it was her grandmother's story as told to her by relatives and then with dialogue added, so family memoir). This is Walls's first novel and it is stunning.

The premise is it's 1970 and two adolescent girls are temporarily abandoned by their loving but wild card mother, so they go across the country to live with a crotchedy old uncle in Virginia, encountering integration issues, the joy and strife of extended family, and one horrible encounter that changes their lives. The real story, though, is that Walls has experienced this kind of abandonment and mistreatment by adults and her voice shines through as the young narrator, twelve year old Bean. She's a character you just LOVE. She reminded me of the main characters in Sandra Kring's books How High The Moon and The Book of Bright Ideas. Those books have the same low level simmer created by innocent voices in turbulent times. You ache for the girls yet love their spunk. And I think this one is even a little darker due to Walls's real life experience with distrusting adults in authority. Read The Glass Castle and you'll see why.

I've been thinking about why I love the voice of Bean so much and I think it comes down to two things. First, she is truly elegant in her simplicity. She tells her story with just the right amount of fact, description, commentary, history, slang, and beauty. It's such a difficult balance to strike as a writer and I think Wall nailed it. Maybe writing in a younger voice gives her that opportunity, or having been a journalist helps her keep it simple, but I think it's masterful. Second, I love Bean just because I love Bean. She calls it like it is, holding her own with adults, both the well-intentioned bunglers and the true creepers. Bean tells one teacher, when reprimanded for not respecting her elders, that respect is earned by doing your job and none of the teachers are doing their job to protect kids from bullying. Zing. Love her.

So have you read the word "love" enough to get my message here? If not, here's another glimpse: I almost told my dad, who's on vacation with my mom, to order this on his Kindle for her to read RIGHT NOW. But I don't think they share books very well, since once on vacation they ripped one in half when one of them couldn't wait for the other to finish it. (I honestly don't remember which was which.) Not wanting that fate to befall my dad's Kindle, I didn't send that text. Let's hope they don't read this; they're still on vacation.

Inferno

Novel by Dan Brown

No, I didn't read Dante's Inferno. That is probably going to happen...never. With that kind of classic, if I wasn't assigned to read it in college then I am not going to choose to read it now. There are too many other good books out there. Sorry, dead Italians.

This kind of book is also an unusual choice for me, isn't it? I don't often find myself reading books by male national bestsellers. The James Patterson, Stephen King, Tom Clancy kind of action and thrillers don't really do it for me. I have enjoyed Grisham and Crichton in the past but it all starts to kind of sound the same after a while. Plus I'm just a snob about mainstream literature, admittedly a hypocritical one since I enjoy most of Oprah's book club selections.

The reason I like Dan Brown books, though, is the same reason I liked Ken Follett's medieval and World War II books; there's so much about art and history in them along with the mystery and suspense. This one takes place in Florence, Venice,and Istanbul and takes you through famous museums, cathedrals and other sites in a race against time to stop a madman from starting a new plague. It's fun to get caught up in the story line but I really need the added incentive of the European settings and the art and literature references, too. Snobbish, I know.

Actually, it's probably unfair to compare Brown and Follett because their writing is so different, in that Follett is a good writer and Dan Brown is just a guy with a good imagination. Really. He uses so much cliched characterization and completely clunky story advancing strategies. Professor Robert Langdon, his main character, always has a sweet little female side kick and frequently says to himself, "I remember when I was lecturing on this last year," which is his way of giving us back story. And all five books I've read by Brown have a similar twist at the end in who is really the bad guy and a connection to some kind of controversial issue (Jesus's wife? What?). They are imaginative in individual scope but very formulaic as a set.

Yet I've read FIVE of his books, so I can't complain too loudly. And I did stay up until the unheard of (for me) hour of eleven o'clock at night reading this book. So yeah, it's a good read.

In other good news, I just read that an absolute GLUT of my favorite authors have new books out: Ann Patchett, Anita Shreve (hers got to be all the same too so I've taken a break but am ready for more now), Amy Tann, Fanny Flagg...happy reading to me!

Two by Isabel Allende

So I eat a lot right now. Maybe always, but at this juncture in time, I am staying home from my teaching job for a semester with my two year old and two month old sons. The fridge is just so...there. I tried putting the chocolate in the freezer. It didn't work. I tried not buying sweets. I end up eating frosting from the way back of the fridge by the spoonful. Now I'm just chalking it up to post-partum and nursing and giving myself grace. I'll lose these last 18 baby pounds...later.

Which is maybe why, when I thought of writing about Isabel Allende, I started comparing her in my head to different foods. I love Isabel Allende. She is a go-to author for me, and after a streak of disappointing books, I needed something trustworthy, a sort of literary comfort food. Allende, though, is no meat loaf or macaroni. She is sweet and spicy, like those nuts people make for the holidays. She is a really great mole sauce, leaving you wondering how chocolate can go on top of chicken and not be weird. And for me, she's timeless, a good smelly cheese that just gets better the bluer it is. So when I needed a pick me up, I picked up an oldie that I've never read plus her newest and read them back to back,you know, like those peanut butter M and M's that you just can't walk away from.

City of the Beasts (young adult)

Has anyone even heard of this before? I'd seen it listed in the front pages of her other books, along with the other two novels in this trilogy, but never seen the cover or heard it discussed. I read somewhere that she wrote it after making up stories to tell her grandchildren aloud. Lucky kids. This is a completely fun, easy to read adventure story that still manages to serve up Allende's two signature dishes: magical realism and South American politics. She's a master at making me interested in the sociology and history of her country (in this case continent, since she's from Chile and this is set in Brazil). An American teenager, Alex, goes on an expedition to the Amazon with his travel writer grandmother. They are searching for a legendary beast, although others in their group have different motives. What they find is a bit of magic, a bit of political maneuvering, and a whole lot of growing up for Alex. I'd be interested to see what Alex learns about himself in the next novel in the series, and I may request it from the library when I've finished the stack on my nightstand. The adventure part of the story reminds me of Michael Crichton books and the fact that it's written for young adults makes it a super fast, fun read. If you have a young adult, I'd read it first or with her so that you can discuss some of the heavier themes of greed and cultural annihilation.

Maya's Notebook (adult novel)

If you haven't read any Allende before, I think this would be a great place to start. While still including her trademark magic realism and heavy literary passages, the plot and young characters make this the most contemporary and mainstream of any of her novels to date. She tells in first person the story of a young woman who goes really, really, really deep into defiance, depression, and drugs after the death of the grandfather who raised her. Simultaneous to the dive into the deep end, the girl is telling how her grandmother plucked her out of danger and shipped her off to a remote island in Chile to escape the consequences of her past year. It's beautifully woven together, making me jealous as a writer. Some of the language seems a little more awkward than usual, and I wonder if Allende had trouble getting into the soul of a younger character and using contemporary slang, or if the trouble was in the translation. Allende writes all her books in Spanish. Either way, it's not that noticeable compared to the fast pace of the plot and loveliness of the people and place.

After I'm calling it: the bad book slump is officially over! Oh no, did I just jinx myself?

The Orchardist

Novel by Amanda Coplin

Set in Wenatchee. A backdrop of intense information about orchards as a way of showing relationships and self scrutiny. Written by a Pacific Northwest resident. Somehow vaguely disappointing. These are the trends of my summer reading. It amazes me how all of the books I've read have had one or more of these descriptors in common and yet all be so different.

"The Orchardist" is carefully written and introspective and features a male orchardist in Wenatchee. Based on that description, I could be talking about "Apples and Oranges," the memoir of a brother and sister, except that this book is set in the early 1900's, not 2001. It was written by a woman raised in Wenatchee, so the scenery is eerily familiar, much like "He's Gone" was written by a Seattle resident and totally nailed the population and mood of the city.

And yet, I didn't love it. That has been true of every book I've read since...May, maybe? I can't even remembered the last book I recommended. Yet this one was so highly recommended to me. I'm beginning to think the common denominator here is me. I'm getting to be a much harder to please reader. Is it because I'm writing, and therefore reading more analytically? Not that the books are bad, but just that I'm not allowing myself to enjoy them but thinking like a writer instead. That could be really really really really really really bad. I'd better find something I like and soon.

The next few up are an Isabel Allende, which usually rates super high with me, and the book that started the show "Call the Midwife." If they made it into a TV show, it has to be great, right? We'll see.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

Novel by Jan-Philipp Sendker

(Translated from German by Kevin Wiliarty)

I have talked to several people lately who have either too many or too few books to read. It's an interesting question for die-hard readers: where do you get your books? You know my usual suspects: my mom's house, library book club selections, recommendations from friends and family or even students, occasionally reviews in magazines and newspapers. But what about when your usual sources provide either too many, or worse, too few titles? It's a nerve racking predicament for the kind of people who would rather read the personal ads than nothing at all. My people.

I find myself in between the two situations, which isn't to say that I have just the right amount of books, Goldilocks-style. I have had a big stack of books to look forward to all summer, and as I've worked my way through them, more have appeared in my hands or my mailbox. And yet...not of them have been just right. To my friend who asked for a recommendation yesterday, I had to say I haven't loved a book for months now. And I'm sorry to say that this title doesn't break that streak. No love for "The Art."

I admit that I can't remember where I heard about this book, but I must have requested it from the library because it came in one of those beautiful purple fabric envelopes in the mail. It's actually a few years old, written in 2002 and translated in 2006. A young woman in New York travels to Burma (I had to look up where that is--bad social studies teacher!) to find her father who disappeared a few years before. She meets a mysterious monkish stranger in a tea house who says he has been waiting for her for years and tells her the story of her father's life in Burma from birth to age 20, including the woman he loved and left there. The story is beautifully told, almost mystical, and has a tropical post-colonial intensity about it. Right up until the end, though, I found it a little...boring, Maybe my attention has just been harder to grasp and hold throughout my pregnancy and now with a newborn at home, but I just haven't been swept off my feet lately.

What I liked about the ending is the prospect of long lost families reunited. It's a theme that appeals to me deeply for some reason (I'm not adopted, at least I'm pretty sure of it, so I don't know why it grabs me). I've loved that about Kate Morton's books and it's one of the themes of my own manuscripts. I just need a little more plot-driven story, ooh, and maybe an English manor or some elements of mystery thrown in.

So dear reader friends, where do you get your book recommendations? And what can you recommend for me that fits the aforementioned qualifications? Please comment!

A Four-In-One

Before you get all super impressed with me that I am writing a blog post just three and a half weeks after having a baby, let me tell you three things:

1) I have the easiest kids ever. Sorry. It's true. (At least until they hit six; then they get mouthy.)
2) I really love writing of any kind, and this is way easier than working on a novel.
3) This one-sided conversation will be one of the longest adult convos I've had in about a month.

And if you weren't super impressed with me...maybe you should be just a tiny bit.

So here goes, four books worth of what's been rattling around in my head.

Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found

Memoir by Marie Brenner

I did a report on apples in elementary school. I learned about buds and branches and varieties and seasons, at a fourth grade level of understanding. This book is part continued apple research, part Psychology Today article, part family drama. The author is writing about her relationship with her brother after having been semi-estranged from him and then reuniting to help him as he fights cancer. They grew up in Texas, she lives in New York, and he lives in good old Wenatchee,Washington (my home town, FYI,  in case I have any readers who aren't related to me). For me this book was a little dichotomous. There are too many story lines as she jumps around in their family history, her time in their three homes and on trips together, and in her feelings about her strange brother. She's also fairly critical of Wenatchee, over-using the words "apple country" and emphasizing the cheesiness of the hotel wall paper and frumpiness of the women's clothing. Interesting story but not my favorite memoir by far.

The Island
Novel by Elin Hilderbrand

This is the book I was waiting for. Two months ago. This would have been PERFECT to read while on vacation at the lake. It was pure pulp. The characters are rich and skinny and they drink crisp cold white wines and their romances all work out, eventually. The story is simple: a fifty something mother takes her two twenty something daughters and her fifty something sister back to the remote island where they summered all their lives but haven't been in 15 years, hoping to reconnect after various personal tragedies. It's full of beautiful people with posh names and only semi-serious problems. I ate it up like the many bowls of ice cream I've consumed this summer. It's a total no brainer and boy, did I need that.

The Light Between Oceans

Novel by M.L. Stedman

I thought this was going to be a metaphorical light, and in many ways it is, but it's also an actual, physical light house. In Australia. Just after World War I. The lighthouse keeper and his wife steal a baby (no plot spoiler there, it says so on the back cover) when a rowboat washes up on their tiny island, containing the baby and a dead man. The story tells their sweet and heartbreaking background, and the sweet and heartbreaking aftermath of the baby stealing. It has beautiful imagery and an engaging plot, but I thought it was a little slow moving at times. I'm just glad it wasn't called "The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife." Enough with the wife stories.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar
Compilation of Advice Letters by Cheryl Strayed

I have to admit I only read about a third of this book. It's a collection of advice columns, which sounds horrible but is really kind of fantastic because of the author. Cheryl Strayed wrote "Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" which I discussed here. Strayed writes the advice column for therumpus.net, a website by writers, and she brings her own distinct flavor to her advice. She is both tender and hard, saying essentially "Sorry, sweetie, but you need to just do what you know you need to do" to most of the advice seekers. And she adds her own vignettes to most of her advice, making it real and poignant. So why didn't I finish reading it? Well, the stories of the advice seekers were just so sad. And also, it gets a little old, reading small segments of an online magazine over and over. It's why I don't like short stories--they're just too darn short.

Next up, I'm almost done with "The Art of Hearing Heartbeats" by Jan-Philipp Sendker. It's intense; in book karma, it makes up for my gobbling up a pulpy beach read and quitting on another book and reading "The Monster Returns" to my two year old five times in one night (true story).

The Sinners and the Sea: The Untold Story of Noah's Wife

Biblical historical fiction

by Rebecca Kanner

I think I've mentioned before that genres seem to be getting both more and less specific. Knowing an incremental amount about publishing now, I think it has to do with the success and marketing of certain books. Here's a perfect example. I'm not sure if this book really qualifies even as historical fiction. I mean, it's the story of Noah's wife and so technically, it centers on a historical event and attributes fictional thoughts, motives, and dialogue to historical characters, but it's not as clear cut as, say, Ken Follett's Century Trilogy with dates and names and battles and such. On the other hand, adding the tagline biblical historical fiction is kind of making up a genre. Admittedly, I am the one calling it that, not the publishers, but it seems fitting and descriptive in that this book is very much like The Red Tent and I think tries to capitalize on that success.

All that said, I think it's a cool premise. Take an unnamed woman in a biblical story and make a whole novel about her.

It was hard not to compare to The Red Tent as I read and I don't think this is even close in quality of writing or story, but it was still compelling. Partway through the book I stopped and re-read Genesis Chapter 6 through whatever, about Noah and the flood, and realized his wife truly gets very little mention, as do his sons' wives, even though without them the point of the ark would be moot. The fleshing out of these women seems important after reading the biblical narrative, and while I didn't LOVE the characters like in TRT they are admirable and realistic. The women, that is. The men kind of suck.

And the same goes for the expansion of the story of the ark and flood and just plain biblical times. What gets a few chapters in the Bible is told in hundreds of pages here, so it's much more...fleshy. The dramatic and horrific sins of the people, the overzealous righteousness of Noah, the supposed giants living in the land and legends of them, the every day rigors of living in a tent and killing your own goats for meat. It's all there, sometimes in expected and what seems to me realistic and sometimes in unexpectedly dark or crass or just plain crazy descriptions and anecdotes. I didn't bother to read Kanner's acknowledgements at the end so I don't know how much research she did for the book and how much is imagination. I don't really care. It's her book and she can tell it how she wants, but man was some of that stuff crazy, like cannibalism and drunk children and fields of dead people.

The other part that was hard to separate from my mind as I read is a more postmodern reading of the Old Testament, truly paying attention to how wrathfully God is described and how it was apparently His will to kill everyone on Earth (or in the Middle East, depending on how literal you are reading). It's not the God I know and it's hard to understand. I had to remind myself that this was a fictional retelling and I can't really know what happened and that my faith is not based on only Old Testament crazy but New Testament love and redemption. Cause otherwise...yikes.

He's Gone

Novel by Deb Caletti

Have you ever been in a waiting room at the dentist or in line at the grocery store or any other place you thought you'd just be quietly alone and the person next to you suddenly tells you more about him or herself than you expected to hear? It's an odd moment, and for me it depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel it's touchingly human and other times I feel a little violated. Didn't want to know about your surgery or why you're mad at your spouse, but thanks. 

That's my feelings about the narrator in this book.

When I first started reading, I liked how she seems so human, so clear on every day thoughts, like how you have to wash cereal bowls right away or they are the worst to scrape out later, and how drinking coffee alone in the morning is its own little a miracle.

Then the crazy came out.

Granted, the story is about a woman who wakes up to find her husband missing and has only hazy memories of coming home from a party the night before, so that's enough to make you feel crazy right along with her. But as she spends the rest of the book trying to find out what's happened to him, you get the story of their affair together, divorces from their first spouses, and rocky marriage since then, along with all her guilt and battered woman syndrome and self doubt. It's well written but intense. Not the easy read I thought it would be from the cover. I guess I should have read the title and back cover better. Or just not judge a book by its...you know.

Death Comes to Pemberley

Fan Fiction/Murder Mystery

by P.D. James

What do you think about fan fiction? I find that I'm usually a little dismayed. I read it because I want to re-enter a world that originally enchanted me, in this case Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Once I'm there, though, no matter how good the writing or how close to my original vision of the characters the story stays, it's not the same. Duh, you say. It's not the same writer so it can't be the same. And I might even have the same problem with some sequels that ARE by the same writer. But still. Something lacks.

I have to admit, I have read seven, count them, SEVEN, fan fiction follow ups to Pride and Prejudice. It's one of my top all time favorite books, mini series, movies, love stories. I partially named my daughter after Elizabeth Bennett and would probably name our next child after Fitzwilliam Darcy if my husband would let me. The first three books I read comprised a very stately, Austen-worthy series from the point of view of Mr. Darcy during the same time period (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman by Pamela Aiden) and then another three that were much bawdier and followed up the story after the marriage (Pride and Prejudice Continues by Linda Berdoli), the third of which I reviewed here. I have yet to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, although my husband enjoyed it. Zombies scare me. Anyway, my view of this book may be tempered by the others, which I think I enjoyed more because they were more about Darcy and Elizabeth. This one is a murder mystery, plain and simple, in Austen's language.

All that said, I still chose to read this one over the NINE library books I have on my shelf right now. I just love Austen. The most satisfying part in this story was the ending, after you find out who the murderer is, as Elizabeth and Darcy are consoling each other and wrapping it all up. It gives the ending that Austen shorted us in the original P and P, the "Why did you think that?" and "I'm sorry I was such a bugger, but I loved you almost all along" conversation. The rest is just a plain murder mystery in Regency wrappings.

The Third Son

Novel by Julie Wu

I'm glad I do this for free and don't really have to think of much to say about this book to reach a word quota and earn my money. Actually, the money would be nice. However, this book was boring and I'd have to dig pretty deep to find thoughts to share. Here's the minimum:

The cover is pretty. The title is catchy. The premise is good. Neglected third son of a Taiwanese government official meets pretty girl during World War II air raid and then struggles to find her again and make good in life. Specifically, he goes to school in America and struggles to succeed as a scientist of some kind that I still don't really understand.

I think what I didn't like was the writing style and lack of any plot other than what I already described. Basically, the blurb writer did an excellent job selling the book on the inside cover, but the attraction ended there for me. The main character is kind of whiny and never really learns to let go of wanting his parents' approval or to trust himself. And while I like learning about other cultures, I think the writer assumes the reader will know more than I do about Taiwanese culture, which is heavily influenced by both the Chinese and Japanese. And the science totally lost me. Sorry, Ms. Wu. I don't get it.

Two surprises, a best bet, and a "meh"

It's that time again! That's right...vacation binge reading synopsis time! I have to get down and dirty when writing about the books I read while on vacation because there are so many. Wait, I'm a teacher, so haven't I been on vacation for a month now? Yes, but I mean a family vacation, at a lake, with grandparents and aunts and uncles who share the parenting load so I can binge on books and snacks. This year, being hugely with child, I slept more and read less than usual, which means for once I was the overpacker instead of my husband, having brought nine books and only read four. Here they are, in the order read, with random thoughts attached. Do with them what you will.

I Feel Bad About My Neck, a memoir by Nora Ephron

How have I never read Ephron before? She is HILARIOUS. You know about my love affair with Anne Lamott--Ephron is easily as funny and even more irreverent and self deprecating. For the first few vignettes in this collection of random thoughts on being a woman, I thought maybe I was reading this too young, that I wasn't going to be invested enough in the jokes on neck wattles and face creams. But she also ranges back to her time as a young mother and a struggling writer, both of which I totally get, and taking it all together provides a delicious slice of a woman's life. Totally readable.

The Thirteenth Tale, a novel by Diane Setterfield

I admit, this is a re-read. I found it at my grandma's house and thought it would be a good vacation book. It's an enthralling literary suspense (no, that is not an oxymoron) that I picked up at random a few years ago from the library and I wasn't fully prepared for how good it was or what genre it was or even what era it was taking place in (still a little unsure about that, actually), so I was confused for a good portion of the beginning and needed a refresher. It also has a "Sixth Sense" sort of twist that makes you want to reread and watch for clues the second time around. Highly recommend. The setting of a cold Yorkshire winter was a little incongruous with lounging around a lake, but a good book should take you out of your life, right?

The Next Best Thing, a novel by Jennifer Weiner

She's going downhill. That could be the title of a Jennifer Weiner book, now that I think of it. Her first few were so poignant (while still being total fun and fluff) but now that she's branching away from the fat-single-girl schtick, I think she's losing some steam. This one is about a physically scarred young woman (ok, not so far from fat single girl) who is trying to make it as a screen writer in Hollywood. Maybe I just didn't care enough about the situation. Struggling writers I get but in Hollywood? Nah. I'd skip this beach read and take another one by Diane Setterfield any day. I should check and see if she's written any more...

The Soldier's Wife, historical fiction by Margaret Leroy

This was a surprisingly great book. Even though I am morally opposed to any more books being published with the word "wife" in the title, I chose this one because it's set during the German occupation of the British Channel Island of Guernsey in World War II. That's where the fantastic book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society takes place, which is a fabulous book of fictional letters and unexpected relationships. I wanted to go back to that world and this book did take me there, but with more melancholy than mirth (and a stupider title). Still, I would like to read more by Leroy and would have much more to say about this book if I hadn't prattled on so long already.

One of my favorite things about vacationing with my family is the book envy we all come away with. Since coming home I've started two books: another WWII novel from the library, this one set in Taiwan, and Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of advice letters by Cheryl Strayed which my cousin was reading at the lake. I also plan to steal The Orchardist  and Maya's Notebook due to watching my mother read them with such pleasure. Oh, the joys of looking forward to a good book.

The Lacemakers of Glenmara

Novel by Heather Barbieri

Just today, I had made up my mind 100% totally and completely to stop blogging for a while. For one thing, I'm reading so many books that you all are probably sick of me. For another, I'm hugely pregnant and tired and really should be working on submitting my novel to more agents. But then I sat down after an exhausting 15 minutes of yard work and realized that nothing really makes me happy right now (except sleeping children and massages) so I may as well blog. And now I'm happy, sitting here, writing. So there you go. Welcome to my crazy.

Back to the real topic. Who asked for light summer reading? This is it, folks. This is as light as it gets. Look at the cover: the kelly green, the doily, the undetermined source of fuzzy light in the background...it's an American finding herself in Ireland and all the sweet and sappy that can possibly entail. The main character, whose name I already forgot, goes to Ireland for a break after her mother dies and her boyfriend leaves her. Sounds a little like Wild now that I think of it, but this character is a wee bit tidier emotionally than Cheryl Strayed. She stops in a village, misses a bus, and stays to learn to make lace from the old(er) women of the village, who each have their own background and tragedies they are exorcising through crochet. And of course, since it's a light read, there is some falling in love. There are some real issues addressed, like a struggling economy and spouse abuse and the slow modernization of the Catholic church, but those are the subplots. Mostly it's like a glass of sweet tea, which I don't drink, or a Weight Watchers ice cream bar. Enjoy in moderation or your mouth will pucker eventually.

Interestingly, this writer is from Seattle and so are the authors of three of the books I got at the library today in preparation for a vacation. Go Washingtonians! Make a name for us so I can get published soon. And by the way, I refused to do the awkward pregnant lady dance at the new release and book club shelves at the library. Instead, I pulled up a chair.

84, Charing Cross Road

A true story in letters by Helene Hanff

Stop for a minute and think, just think, about how many books there are in the world, how many books have been written or compiled and published. Even for the well-read (which I am according to multiple facebook and Barnes & Noble polls, thank you very much), the amount of books any one person has read compared to the amount currently in print is like a speck of pollen compared to a mountain. Or a Hoo to Horton. Tiny. That's how I feel when I come across a book like this.

You've probably at least heard of this book, or the play or movie adapted from it, but I am apparently completely out of it. Or I only read what they told me to in college. In one way it's kind of sad, and frustrating, and in another way, hooray! Think of all the books I have yet to read! I just hope I find all the good ones. As usual, the book club section at my public library is helping me with this. While waiting for my stack of beach reads to appear in my mailbox, I took the kids to the library and entrusted the seven year old with the life of the two year old while I perused the book club shelves, standing far back so I could read the titles at the bottom since I can't bend down over my seven and a half months pregnant belly. I got some weird glances, but hey, I am definitely not the weirdest character at my library on any given day.

I picked this one because A) It is short so I could read it before the mail order ones came and B) It is light, so I could talk the seven year old into carrying it in her library bag while I wrangled the two year old into the car and C) It looks British. What I was assigned to read in college was mostly British so it's a comfort area for me.

After all that, lo and behold, when I got home, I discovered this gem! It's a collection of letters between Helene Hanff, a New York freelance writer, and Frank Doel, an employee at a London used book store, beginning with a book order and ending up a truly darling friendship, cemented by a love of books. Hanff also includes letters she received from Doel's wife and other employees at the store, giving a fairly good picture of their wonderful relationship of cat and mouse, American and Londoner, blatant humor and dry humor. At times the letters are laugh out loud funny, as Hanff writes in all capitals when she accuses Doel of sending bad books and he replies with formal, understated jabs. Other times you want to cry at the sheer humanity that the people in the correspondence, who don't even know each other, demonstrate in the post-war world of 1949 to 1969.

Some short thoughts on a short book (I read it in a day):

I now want more than ever to revisit London, as Hanff continuously plans but never does in Doel's lifetime. I was sad to read that the bookstore is no longer (the building's not even there apparently) but there is so much more to see and show my husband! I won't waste time on this next trip going to the stupid Millenium Dome because some boy I like is going there.

I do not ever want to watch the movie, which I read implies a romantic relationship between them.  Since Doel is married, I don't want that alleged infidelity to sully this dear slice of life. Also Anthony Hopkins plays him and I still see him as Hannibal Lector, not a nice man in a book shop.

I feel at once validated that I knew so many of the authors that Hanff requests from Doel, but since they're all British I feel embarrassed that I haven't read most of them, but since they're all really old I don't actually care that much in the end.

The Paris Wife

Novel (ish) by Paula McLain

Novelish? What does that mean? It means another "true novel," one written in novel form with plot and dialogue, but based on letters and journals by real life people. In this case, Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, are the real people. That sentence sounds false to me, though, because this book brings these real people to life more than they ever could have been in a historical account, and because Hadley becomes so much more than Hemingway's "first wife." That may be how history remembers her, but not so for anyone who reads this book.

I have to admit not knowing much about Hemingway or his writing. I know from literature classes that his writing was revolutionary in its simplicity and starkness and truth, and from pop culture movies that he was part of a hard-partying American artist community in the 1920's in Paris. I've only read a few of his stories, though, and none of his novels because I find his writing too sharp and dark. I guess it goes hand in hand with his depression/alcoholism and PTSD from World War I. Not for me, thanks.

The idea of this book, however, brings to life not just Hemingway but mostly his first wife, Hadley. They have similar upper middle class backgrounds in the United States but move to Paris for his writing career shortly after marrying. She keeps him grounded for a while, supporting his career and moving him toward the right decisions with friends and finances, but the very fact that she is his "first wife" tells us that eventually they divorce. There are three very short scenes from Hemingway's point of view that hint to us that it's his infidelity that drives the wedge, in addition to Hadley's own voice telling what she wished she'd known then and so on. You know from the beginning that this will have a sad ending.

What I wish I knew more is how much McLain's writing style mimics Hemingway's. Like I said, I haven't read very much by him and don't want to, mostly for the content. But this book seems to copy what I understand is his style in that it's very much to the point and journalistic, a simple retelling of events, while somehow also weaving a picture of the dazzling European scenes, the hectic and confusing post-war times, the conflicting emotions, the lavishness of their neighbors contrasted with the poverty that is their life. It's kind of remarkable.

I don't think I'll be reading Hemingway as a result of this book, though. I've had enough of him; he might be an amazing historical and literary figure but he's also a total ass. He makes his wife blame herself for his indiscretion and sucks up all the air and life around him. He WAS her life and I'm tired of thinking about him when I should be thinking about her. So there.

One thing I wonder is: how do they go on so many vacations even though they bemoan their poverty all the time? And hire a housekeeper and a nanny? Is it the place or the time or what? I wish I could have a nanny and vacation at the French Riviera. I wouldn't trade it for my non-cheating marriage, but still, sounds nice.

The Other

Novel by David Guterson

Dear book club friends: stop me now. Seriously. It's four days into my summer vacation and I need some light beachy reads or I may never be able to relax. I went from Wild to this, the story of two high school buddies from the late 1970's in Seattle who backpack together and talk exisentialism and Gnosticism. It's too much.

So now that you know how I really feel...this is actually a good book. I truly dislike very few books. I think I appreciate the work that an author put into them, and I like words that are put together well, and I just like to read. Period. It's hard for me to completely pan any book. David Guterson also wrote Snow Falling on Cedars, which is amazing, and East of the Mountains, which is fun to read (even though it's kind of dark in tone) because it's set in my home town of Wenatchee and the surrounding area. I like Guterson's style of rich but real description and deep characterization and his slow burning plots. But I think for me, this one came too close on the heels of another hiking book and too close to Crossing to Safety which shares this book's deep introspections on growing up and classism and loyalty and the nature of knowing others.

The bad news is I already started The Paris Wife, about Ernest Hemingway's first wife, so that doesn't promise to be much lighter. The good news is I have learned my lesson and will be ordering some Jennifer Weiner and young adult fiction books from the library pronto. I hope your summer reading is looking promising! Let me know if you have any great light reads to recommend.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Memoir by Cheryl Strayed

Don't be confused by the rugged looking boot on the cover. Even I, a committed couch traveler, hater of camping, lover of the idea of nature but not so much the bugs and dirt and other yucky stuff, even I enjoyed this book.

When given the book I looked at the sub-title and thought, "Ha. Me? A hiking book? This must be for my dad." And so it sat on my nightstand for probably a year, next to reference books about writing and three books I've started and just can't finish (Everything is Illuminated,  One Hundred Years of Solitude, Reading Lolita in Tehran: see my post about being a literary fraud), until it was THE LAST BOOK. This is a desperate state for me. I will read my daughter's Highlights magazines if there isn't any other option, so in this condition, I finally picked up Wild.

I found a pleasant surprise. While truly about her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (a mountain top trail from Mexico to Canada, which Strayed hikes for most of California and all of Oregon), it's also a completely cathartic experience for both writer and reader. Strayed goes on the hike because her mother dies, her siblings scatter, and her marriage dissolves within just a few years. She starts to veer off the path she imagined for her life and needs a new path to walk, so even though she's not an experienced hiker, she decides almost on a whim to do this thing. She encounters every expected but not truly imagined obstacle: bears, lack of water, losing five toenails, rain, snow, heat, and just plain pain. She also meets generous and loving strangers and real characters in unexpected ways and places. All the while Strayed journals and retells her experiences, memories of her mother, self abuse, and self love, hence the subtitle.

The remarkable transparency Strayed displays in her story reminds me of, my favorite, Anne Lamott, but also of Eat, Pray, Love. She simply doesn't back down from anything, both in the wilderness and in her self-exploration. It's endearing rather than off-putting, reminding me of how broken we all are, how close to the brink we could all be if we lost those people most dear to us, the ones who ground us and make us who we are. This seems to be a trend in both books and blogs, as I read Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Doyle and Rachel Held Evans admit over and over again that they don't know what they're doing as women, mothers, humans, but they are just putting it out there so that everyone else can admit the same thing. I can't hike the PCT (I would literally die) but I can be brave like all these women, Strayed included, and be a truth teller, admit that I would be even more of a mess than I am without this huge tribe that is holding me together. For Strayed, her tribe changes both on the trail and after, but she finds one, and find herself within it.

From the Kitchen of Half Truth

Novel by Maria Goodin

My daughter is officially a book gobbler. I told her the other day that buying books for her is a waste because she reads them so fast. But what did I do today but buy her two new ones at the book fair at her school (they were buy one get one free, what else could I do?)  And I am fully aware that her book gobbling ways are inherited straight from me, and I inherited it from my mother, and her mother as well. We should all be banned from Amazon and required to use only our library cards or the earth will soon be depleted of trees.

I read this book in three days. That's not a brag, more of a confession, since it means I really have no life outside of reading-writing-teaching-eating-parenting. Oh well. This is also an incredibly easy book to read. I don't really know why it's so gobble-able, actually. It's the writer's first novel and a tad awkward (though I should be careful not to judge, as I'm currently working on my slightly gangly first manuscript). It's also about an intense life event--a college student returns to her childhood home to take care of her dying mother and discovers her childhood was not really what her mother made it out to be. Despite those factors, it's just very readable, especially coming after the last literary giant I tackled (Crossing to Safety).

The dying mother is a self taught cook and both real food and food metaphor figure heavily in this story. It reminded me of The School of Essential Ingredients, which I previously blogged about, and Garden Spells, which I read recently and loved, but must have been during my blogging hiatus. There's a certain snappiness from School and a dreaminess from Garden Spells that are lacking in this book, but it gave me my other must-haves: set in another place (England), characters who grow and change, a happy ending. It also made me eat a lot. Don't count the number of ice cream sandwich wrappers in my garbage can.

Crossing to Safety

Novel by Wallace Stegner

Do you know the difference between literary and commercial fiction? This is how I understand it: literary means the writer isn't famous until they die. Literary means the books you're assigned in English class. Or if you're an English major or teacher, the books you're supposed to like.

That's this book. Maybe you are better informed than I am, but I had never heard of Wallace Stegner before I picked up this book. It was published 25 years ago, and was Stegner's last novel before his death, but he also wrote or compiled 27 other books and numerous short stories. Still doesn't ring a bell? Me either.

I did like this story: it's told from the perspective of 60-year-old author reminiscing on the most important friendship of his life. When he was a poor college professor with a pregnant wife and new to their college town in the 1930's, they were befriended by a very gregarious college professor and his pregnant wife. While there are many such parallels between the couples, the second couple are exorbitantly rich and that sets in motion some of the ups and downs of a friendship spanning multiple decades. Apparently it's somewhat autobiographical (although Stegner himself says all writing is somewhat autobiographical), and the fact that nothing hugely dramatic happens in the story (aside from illnesses and World War II) is commented on by the main character as what makes good, true literature. It's just a story of real people and the intricacies of relationships.

It was very much something that I may have been assigned to read in college. The figurative language is beautiful, the introspection excruciatingly detailed and realistic. The careful blending of perspective and timeline as the main character looks back on events of forty years earlier is masterful. I could write an essay on it. Maybe I just did. But still, I think I like a little more drama, some shockers, some plot twists. Water for Elephants takes place during the Great Depression and is told as a remembrance, but has a little more pizzazz. Maybe I'm just a commercial kind of girl now.

Evolving in Monkey Town

Memoir by Rachel Held Evans

What, another memoir? I know, I agree, I wanted to read a novel next but this one was on my nightstand and overdue at our public library (which is super awesome and doesn't charge late fees, but I try to be an upstanding citizen and return books on time. I'm a guilt monger that way).

The title of this book is weird, but clearly explained in the opening pages. Rachel Held Evans uses the controversial word "evolve" to describe her idea that Christianity and Christians do and must change. Rachel grew up in Dayton, Tennessee, site of the Scopes Monkey Trial which debated evolution versus creation. She uses her proximity to this historical event as a springboard to discuss her personal evolution from a non-questioning conservative Christian to a question-asking, don't-label-me follower of Jesus without all the trappings that the postmodern church has instilled. She calls it a crisis of faith, but to me it seems more like a coming of age.

And that is the basis of my main reaction to this book. Because Rachel grew up in the Bible Belt amongst very conservative Christians, the ideas that evolution may be right, that homosexuality may not be a sin, that Jesus represents social justice as well as salvation...those were all foreign to her. Questioning what she learned as a child does cause her to have a crisis of faith, because she believed theology was more important than actual relationship with God. I didn't have that problem. I'm not saying I'm more enlightened, just lucky, I guess, that I have a background of God-first, rules-second kind of Christianity. Having a feminist Christian mother probably helps. And while I have developed some ideals of my own that are different from most of my family (I vote mostly Democrat now--gasp!), I would call that growing up.

A small side note on this book is that she takes a trip to India, which she clearly says is to visit her missionary sister despite the vogueishness of such a trip. It reminded me that Anne Lamott describes a visit to India in the last book I read, which reminded me of Eat Pray Love. Aren't those kinds of trends interesting in literature? Maybe I need to take a soul-searching vacation to write about.

Now for some book club business-y items (don't tune out, it's good stuff):

The novel I just started reading looks kind of intense, so it'll likely be a while before I'm done. If so, just to keep you interested, I may be posting the first few pages of MY novel. That's right, the one I've been hinting at writing. I just went to a conference where other writers critiqued my first page and I want to get some more feedback after I make revisions. Be on the lookout!

Also, a question for those of you who buy books for children or teens: how do you determine what is appropriate content for them? I struggle to find books that are at the reading level of my voracious, book-gobbling seven-year-old but still not too mature for her sweet little mind. I also recently lent Water for Elephants to a 7th grader, feeling a little hesitant about the sex scenes and drinking, but she was the one who recommended The Night Circus to me. This is a new issue for me, one I am feeling my way through, and I would appreciate any signposts you can put up for me. Thanks.

Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son

Memoir by Anne Lamott

First, prepare for gushing. Second, I am six and a half months pregnant (ok, six and a quarter--it's hot here and I need something to feel good about) so the timing of this book is apt. Third, you should know that Anne Lamott will be the first author I credit when I become a famous writer myself.

Now that you know those things, oh my goodness, I love this book. I love almost everything Annie writes (that's what she calls herself so I'm only taking small liberties). My favorites are her memoirs because they are refreshingly real and honest. This one, as the subtitle clearly explains, is on becoming a grandma. It's kind of a sequel to her book Operating Instructions in which she journals about becoming a mother when she was single, broke, and newly sober. I loved that one too. Now she's 55 and a her son, who is young, broke, and recently separated from his girlfriend, finds out he's going to be a father. They go through the year together, the four of them, Anne, Sam (the dad), Amy (the mom), and Jax (the baby), plus a rotating cast of hilarious and wonderful family and friends. They make my enormous extended family look small (and normal).

If you're thinking this has been done before, this blogging about baby thing, then you don't know Annie. She finds humor and irony and despair and joy all in the same poop anecdote. She turns diapers into major life lessons. She loves Jesus but says the f word. She's a hoot. Here's proof:

Top Five Quotes that Made Me Laugh or Cry or Say "Me Too!"

Amy and Sam despair at my underwear...they do not think I can ever get a boyfriend with underpants at like these.

The single most radical thing I know...is that I get to take care of myself. Of course, Sam and Amy get to take care of themselves, too; so this is not so great.

He seems to be in a workshop on the concepts of In and Out and Off. All the books on the shelves, Off. All the pony figurines in the box, Out. Then In.

Some people who shall remain nameless tricked me into loving them and ruined my life.

Sam called to say that Jax had held his bottle by himself for the first time. He's nearly ready for a paper route.

Does that not say it all? Anne Lamott is so wonderfully tongue in cheek, self deprecating, and reverently irreverent that she makes me want to stalk her.

The Night Circus

Novel by Erin Morgenstern

This book is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Admittedly, I read it too quickly. I always do. And I skipped ahead to the ending when I was about halfway through. I usually do that, too. But it's more than those reader-errors that make it tantalizingly confusing.

The storyline jumps around in time, not like in a Kate Morton book with multiple narrators and time periods, but like The Time Traveler's Wife, where it's all about one story and one set of characters but shows their lives at different times. You really must read the chapter titles.

No wonder my middle school student, who recommended it to me, is having a hard time understanding it.

Put off? Wait--the good side of the mystery, the tantalizing part, is still to come.

Also mysterious to me are the descriptions of the circus tents. See, this is about a circus that performs only at night, doesn't announce where it is going next, and is actually run by two dueling magicians who eventually fall in love (no plot spoilers there--it's all on the back cover). So the circus tents sometimes contain amazing but expected circus acts, and sometimes reveal mystical experiences like a wishing tree lit with candles or bottles of scents from your dreams or a vertical maze leading into the sky. And it's real magic, very Harry Potter-esque. Oh, and it's all in black and white and gray, often looking like ice or snow or white fire or pages torn from books or folded paper. The descriptions alone are mind boggling. I can see why it's being made into a movie--it'll be a visual masterpiece. As a book it's hard for me to picture sometimes.

The book also constantly reminded me of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. There are obvious Shakespeare references, to Prospero the Enchanter and Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. It also reminded me a little of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked this Way Comes (which in itself is a reference to Shakespeare). And I've already mentioned The Time Traveler's Wife and Harry Potter. But there's more to it than that--it just seems very familiar and yet elusive at the same time. Like the mazes and illusions and charms in the book itself. It just turns in on itself constantly.

Yet I liked it. I was drawn into the mystery, I liked the right characters and hated the right characters (don't you just despise when there's no one worth loving or hating in a book?). It was a little slow in the middle but the end galloped along like a gryphon on the enchanted carousel. And all along the way it gives you a spine tingling sense of something...something...well, watch the book trailer at the bottom of Erin Morgenstern's website and you'll see what I mean.

The Casual Vacancy

Novel by JK Rowling

See that image to the right? See how the picture of the author is firmly attached the image of the book?

That says it all.

If JK Rowling hadn't written this book, it would have gotten nowhere.

Like many Harry Potter fans, I was curious to see what her next book, especially an adult novel, would be like. And I tried hard not to judge it by the standards of Harry Potter. It's a totally different genre and audience, after all. But I saw quickly that even without comparing it unfairly to the genius world of Hogwarts, just by comparing it to other normal adult books I happen to like...I Hate This Book.

The title refers to the central plot, a forced election for an empty seat on a small town council in rural England, caused by the death of one of the town of Pagford's leading citizens, Barry Fairbrother. His last name is no coincidence--he's the only likable character in the book and that's probably because he's dead for all but a few pages, so he has no time to screw things up. Unlike his two best friends, his opponents on the town council, a woman secretly in love with him, and the teenage children of these adults, who all go out of their way to be inattentive, rude, or even cruel to the people they are supposed to love. The way the families treat each other is worse than the way the men running against each other for town council do. The plot is rife with back stabbing and sabotage, of both the election and their personal lives.

It's also completely about us versus them, teenagers versus adults, rich versus poor, liberal versus conservative. And as polarized as our nation is right now, I could have just logged on to Facebook to read that kind of vitriol.

And really, that's my main complaint: mean people. There's also lots of swearing, physical abuse, drug abuse, sex abuse, food abuse, suicide...not topics I enjoy reading about in such profound amounts. The few reviews I read that defended the book seemed to imply that some people are too squeamish and need to get over the swearing and get to the story. I can understand that; sometimes vivid characterization and realistic plots beg for a few swear words. Again, that's not my issue. I just don't like the characterization or plot. It's mean. It's depressing.

Bottom line: read if you're completely curious, which will be my motivation when I finally read Fifty Shades of Grey. But expect to be bummed out. And DON'T by any means let your Harry Potter fan kids read it. Just read a few pages and you'll see what I mean.

The Forgotten Garden

Novel by Kate Morton

Kate Morton is emerging as one of my favorite writers. I have read three by her now: The Distant Hours, The House at Riverton and now this one. I also heard she has a new book out, The Secret Keeper. AND, I saw something online about this book becoming a movie, but nothing confirming.

I think what I like about Morton is her consistency. Her plots may seem a little bit the same: families in England go back generations to discover family secrets of love and betrayal. Specifically in this one, a young woman in Australia inherits a cottage on the Cornish coast of England and travels there to find out why her grandmother was put on a boat to Australia as a young child, essentially abandoned. The plots never fail to have a twist at the end, despite heavy foreshadowing that makes you think you have it figured out. If you remember, I complained about the foreshadowing in the last one, but it was a touch lighter here.

When I read now, I am often thinking as a writer as well as a reader. I think the plots help me lose myself in the story, but what pulls me back into my own head here is the description. I think Morton has a failing I see in my students: overuse of the thesaurus. There are times when she uses a sort of high-falutin' word when a simpler one would have done. I mean, titivating? perspicacious? Maybe I'm just grumping because I had to look those words up, but I also doubt the character's actual use of those words. I want to see the scene through the character's eyes, not the writer's, or I lose focus. Also, she often applies these types of words to long descriptions of the scenery. Granted, I need help picturing the Cornish coast, and a British antipodean garden (had to look that one up, too), but there's only so much of that I want to read.

I guess my question here is: how much description is too much? As a reader, I often skip paragraphs of description to get to the meaty plot parts. But I appreciate a well-turned phrase that really puts you in the scene, too. What do you think? How much setting description do you like?