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).