334 (2013 #18). Still Alice

by Lisa Genova

My online book discussion group chose this book, and I'm so glad they did.  The Alice of the title is Alice Howland, a 50-year-old respected psychology professor at Harvard, with a fellow-professor husband, John, and three adult children.  She's busy with her career (teaching, research, and speaking engagements) and in good shape from her frequent running.  She starts having small moments of forgetfulness, and on a run one day momentarily forgets the way home.  She shrugs it off as early menopause, but as the symptoms worsen and she seeks medical help, she learns their cause:  early-onset Alzheimer's.

In the next two years, Alice's condition rapidly deteriorates.  The sad part is, because of her background, Alice knows what's going on.  She participates in a trial for a new medication, and makes some decisions on her own about her career.  Her illness has a genetic component, and it's interesting to read why her children do (or don't) decide to get tested.  Her husband reacts in ways that are understandable in some aspects and puzzling in others.  Reading this book is both sobering and heartbreaking.

Author Lisa Genova has a degree in neuroscience from Harvard herself, bringing insight to the story from Alice’s point of view.  Genova initially self-published the book as she was told its appeal would be limited; ultimately the book reached the top ten in sales.  The book has been endorsed by the National Alzheimer's Association, and is accurate in portraying the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment options, and eventual outcome (currently) of early onset Alzheimer's.  Makes me want to donate to help find a cure for this disease. 

We had an excellent discussion of this book online, and I think it would be good for book clubs who can stomach the topic.  Highly recommended.

© Amanda Pape - 2013

[This book was borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

333 (2013 #17). Another Piece of My Heart

by Jane Green

At 37, Andi finally meets the perfect man.  Ethan is divorced with two daughters, teenager Emily and pre-teen Sophia, and has custody of them most of the time.  Andi has always wanted to be a mother and loves having an instant family.  Emily, though, is not so thrilled about her father's remarriage, and creates challenges for this blended family.

I won enough copies of Another Piece of My Heart to distribute to my book club, and we discussed it at our last meeting.   This isn't the type of book our group typically chooses - we tend to gravitate towards literary fiction, historical fiction and narrative nonfiction.  However, members felt that even though it read "like a soap opera in the beginning," most of us "actually liked it by the end."  In fact, one member thanked me for introducing her to a new author - she's since read two other books by Jane Green!  She said she felt this book "covered every facet of society," from divorce to stepparenting and blended families, to alcoholism and drug abuse.

One member felt aspects of the story were "very lifelike," even Emily's behavior.  Ethan was "sort of a wimp," with Emily "taking advantage of him," and Andi was "really trying."  Another said she was "frustrated with the relationships" between the characters, and felt the family's two gay neighbors were "more like counselors."  Another felt there was a "convenient plot twist" involving Emily, and yet another that the "ending was a little unbelievable."

One member described the book as "kinda Nora Roberts-y" at first, but "not chick-lit - more serious issues, similar to Jodi Picoult."  We all agreed with the latter similarity.  We also agreed that there could be another book with these characters - Sophia in particular is a little too perfect and will probably suffer some angst as she gets older.

It was interesting to learn that Green has personal experience with blended families (although this book is NOT her own story!).  Green noted in an interview that once a parent remarries, it destroys "the fantasy that the biological parents will reconcile," and takes "more of that parent away from a child who has already experienced serious loss."  That's certainly the case with Emily, whose birth mother is an alcoholic at the beginning of the book.

Part One of the book is called "Andi" and is written in third person from her viewpoint.  Parts Two and Three, "Family" and "Parents" respectively, include chapters with Emily's viewpoint in first person.  In the same interview, Green said, "The book took off for me once I took my editor's suggestion and started writing in Emily's voice — it gave me such understanding and empathy for her character. If anything, I think I ended up preferring Emily to Andi, which I hadn't expected at all."  I didn't prefer either character, finding them both whiny and selfish, but I did have a little more sympathy for teenager Emily rather than the supposedly-adult Andi.

One member who couldn't attend our discussion wrote the following, which rather sums up our feelings:

It was "fluffier" than books I prefer but there was much reality to the situation. Step families have problems more often than not. Fortunately not always as serious as the issues portrayed in the book.

Thanks for signing us up for this. I enjoy reading books from time to time that are not necessarily ones I would choose. 

We used a few of the ReadingGroupGuide.com's discussion questions and shared some personal experiences with divorce, parenting, and blended families.  We enjoyed the opportunity to read a genre we might not normally choose, and thank Bookreporter.com for the chance to do so!

As for me - while this isn't normally a book I'd choose either, I enjoyed Jane Green's writing.  I'm willing to read another of her books - and I will be, as I won yet another in a contest!

© Amanda Pape - 2013

[Would you like to get free copies of Another Piece of My Heart for your book club to discuss?  I have a number I can send one lucky group, if you and members of your group will agree to post comments or feedback about the book and/or their discussion on one or more of the following:

• Jane Green’s Facebook page 
• Your personal Facebook page, Twitter account or blog. 

You also need to agree to pass the books on to others for free, or donate them to a library or other charitable group.

E-mail me at chick_a_deedd at yahoo dot com and tell me the number of members in your book club.  First group to respond with the number that matches the quantity of books I have wins, and I will send the books to you for free by media mail rate.  Contest open only to residents of the USA.]

332 (2013 #16). The Kite Runner

written and read by Khaled Hosseini

I first read this book in 2005, for a book club discussion.  Recently, I decided to listen to the audio version of this powerful story.  Khalad Hosseini does an excellent job reading his own work, and it's wonderful to have a reader who knows exactly how to pronounce the Farsi and Dari words he sprinkles in the novel.

Set in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1975-76, 1981, and August 2001; and in Fremont, California, from 1981 through December 2001, this novel has as its backdrop the tumultuous recent history of Afghanistan - the overthrow of the monarchy, the invasion of the Soviets, the takeover by the Taliban, and 9/11.

The main character is Amir, son of a wealthy man in Kabul he calls Baba.  When the book begins in December 2001, Amir is 38, and he is remembering what happened that previous summer, when an old family friend calls from Pakistan.  The book then flashes back to Kabul in 1975, when Amir is twelve years old.  His main companion is a boy a year younger than him, Hassan, the son of his father's servant Ali.  Ali and Hassan are Hazaras, an ethnic group looked down upon by other ethnic groups in Afghanistan.  Amir and Hassan compete together in kite-fighting competitions, and Hassan is Amir's kite runner - the one who tracks down the kites they cut down and brings them back as trophies.  One day in the winter of 1975, something happens while Hassan is running a kite that changes things forever.

Besides providing fascinating insights into life in Afghanistan and for Afghan refugees in America during this period, The Kite Runner is also an exploration of betrayal and "a way to be good again," of the relationships between fathers and sons, and of the meaning of friendship.  Highly recommended.

The graphic novel version (pictured at left), illustrated by Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo, doesn't have the depth of the original novel, but would be another good way (besides the audiobook) to introduce this worthwhile book to a reluctant reader.

© Amanda Pape - 2013

[The audiobook, a print copy for reference, and the graphic novel version of the story were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

331 (2013 #15). A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith,
read by Anna Fields 

This classic coming-of-age story was the selection of my local book club for March.  I'm a little surprised I never read it before.

The main character is Mary Frances "Francie" Nolan, born in December, 1901, of Irish and Austrian second-generation immigrant parents, Johnny and Katie Rommely Nolan.  Johnny has a drinking problem and trouble holding a job, so Katie is the primary breadwinner, cleaning apartments to earn free rent.  The family (which also includes younger brother Cornelius, known as Neeley) lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York.

The story covers a period from 1900, when Johnny and Katie meet, to the fall of 1918.  The book was originally written as a memoir (author Elisabeth "Betty" Wehner Smith Jones Finch was born on the same date as her protagonist, but five years earlier).  It was "reconfigured as fiction at the request of an editor at its publishing house," according to Anna Quindlen in her foreword to the 2005 print edition (pictured below).  Francie is Betty, and it is pretty clear that the Ben Blake in the book is Betty's first husband, George Smith.

I really enjoyed learning about life for poor working-class people in this part of Brooklyn in the early 20th century.  There are references to neat old stuff like spats (page 392) and a sulky (page 483) and a photostatic copy in 1917 (page 414) that I had to look up. The family manages to get by on very little money, but as the children get older and begin to work, their situation improves a bit.
   

The tree of the title is an invasive species common in vacant lots in New York City.  As it regrows and sprouts even when cut back, it is a metaphor for the family's ability to overcome adversity.  Another theme is the need for education to make this happen.

There is a lot of humor in this book.  I especially loved Katie's illiterate older sister Sissy, with her numerous husbands and lovers (all of whom she calls "John," ironically funny), who manages to stay positive about life despite experiencing ten stillbirths.

However, I didn't care much for the unfriendly librarian who never looked at Francie (pages 24 and 486), who gives a bad name to my profession, nor for the story of  Little Tilly and her brother Gussie (chapter 29).

The book is not without controversy.  There's an undercurrent of criticism of the Catholic Church. Katie's sister Evy takes "her children out of the Catholic Sunday School and putting them in the Episcopal Sunday School," because "She had gotten it into her head that the Protestants were more refined than the Catholics" (page 67).  When Francie is born, Katie's mother encourages her to read to Francie every night from the Protestant Bible, because "the Protestant Bible contains more of the loveliness of the greatest story on this earth and beyond it" (page 83), which I find odd, because the Protestant Bible is just a subset of the Catholic Bible.

There was also a remark on page 113 that "Most Brooklyn Germans had a habit of calling everyone who annoyed them a Jew," which I found interesting given that this novel was published in 1943.

The audiobook is narrated by the incomparable Anna Fields, who manages to make all the characters sound a little different from each other.  The 2005 print version, besides Quindlen's forward, has a section at the end with the author's biography and other information about her and her works. 

Smith's daughter states in an article here that her mother "wrote interchangeably between narrative and drama....The forerunner of 'Tree' is an early three-act play called Becomes a Woman.  The character of Francie was developed in a play called Francie Nolan.  Chapter 33 of 'Tree' first appeared in a one-act play dated 1940 called Fun After Supper."  Smith studied at Yale Drama School and was involved with the Living Newspaper unit of the WPA's Federal Theater Project.

If you haven't already read this work, I'd definitely recommend that you do so.

© Amanda Pape - 2013

[The audiobook, and a print copy for reference, were both borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

330 (2013 #14). The World's Strongest Librarian

by Josh Hanagarne

The title of this book certainly caught my eye when perusing my choices in the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program last month.  I'm a librarian, this book is by and about a [former] librarian, what's not to like?

Subtitled, "A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family," it's about a 6'7" (whoa, an inch taller than my son!) Mormon librarian who suffers from Tourette Syndrome, and lifts weights and participates in strongman events in an effort to control it.  Josh Hanagarne has been blogging under his book's title since April 2009.

So what did I really like about this book (besides the title and cover art)?  I got a kick out of the table of contents, where each chapter uses the Dewey Decimal Classification system (used in most public libraries) to give you some idea of what the chapter is about. The Dewey numbers and descriptions were repeated at the beginning of each chapter.

Most of the chapters, as well as the introduction, begin with a vignette of an experience Josh had in his former work as a public librarian, mostly in Salt Lake City.  He relates some of the weird encounters so typical for big-city public librarians, who deal with the homeless, the mentally ill, and unsupervised (or poorly supervised) children on a daily basis.   I have the utmost respect for my public library colleagues (I worked in a large suburban system for over six years as a paraprofessional, but have been in an academic library since getting my degree).  I'm all for more exposure of the issues public librarian deal with routinely.

I also liked Josh's honesty about his struggles with Tourette's, as well as his wavering Mormon faith.  I learned a lot I didn't know about Tourette's, as well as about the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).   It was especially interesting to read about the whole mission process for young Mormons.  I could certainly understand his frustrations with the LDS church, especially after his negative experiences trying to adopt under their Family Services program.  I liked the "power of family" part of his book, reading about how supportive his parents and siblings and wife and in-laws were and are, and how his mother in particular promoted his love of reading and libraries.

I also liked how Josh paid attention to what was happening with his Tourette's and tried out some non-drug ways to attempt to control it.  I could see in general how the weightlifting helped.  I couldn't completely follow what he was learning from Adam, but I definitely respected his trying new things.

The one part of the book that I didn't like was on page 203 of my advance reader edition.  Josh has some not-so-nice things to say about his library school, which I also attended, although he didn't start until after I graduated.  Now granted, I'll be among the first to admit my mostly-online program was not perfect.  Some classes and instructors were terrible, but some were quite good.  The program, like ALL the other online or mostly-online programs out there, has grown too big and churns out more librarians than there are jobs for them, and not inexpensively either.

The thing is, you need this master's degree to get a (higher-paying) librarian job in most libraries (most definitely in most academic ones), and Josh fast-tracked through the program in one year.  He was kind enough to respond to my e-mail about my concerns about his criticisms, and he said, "if I were doing it again I'd need to try a different school."  I don't think he'd have any different results in another mostly-online program, and I don't think he could have done a program that usually takes 18 months to two years in only one year (and continued to work full-time in a library) in a program that was mostly face-to-face.

It's a tradeoff.  Because of that, I feel he was a little too harsh with his criticism of our library school, particularly with an instructor who might have just been having a bad day herself.   (He did tell me the incident in question made it into the final book; I had e-mailed to ask because I did not want to criticize something that might no longer be there.)

So the bottom line:  I would most definitely recommend this memoir to anyone with Tourette Syndrome or a loved one with Tourette's, or anyone who wants an inspiring story on how to deal with any disability or medical disorder. 

© Amanda Pape - 2013

[I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviwers program.  It will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

329 (2013 #13). Lessons in French

by Hilary Reyl

Thank goodness this book had short chapters, as reading just one or two of them each night put me to sleep.

Unfortunately, there were 61 such chapters (337 pages in all), and if I hadn't needed to write a review of the book, I never would have finished it. 

Set in Paris in 1989, the protagonist, Katie, a 20-something who actually spent time in France growing up while her father was dying, goes to work for a famous American photographer, Lydia Schell.  A Yale art graduate, Katie thinks working for Lydia will somehow help her make connections and pursue her dream of painting.  Instead, Katie performs all sorts of menial tasks for Lydia and her dysfunctional family.  It takes Katie a LONG time to come to her senses and learn anything about herself from this process.

I found nothing likeable in this book.  Katie is a wimp.  Lydia is overbearing and duplicitous.  Her husband, Clarence, and children, Portia and Joshua, are just as bad.  Katie's boyfriend Olivier (formerly Portia's) and friends Claudia, Bastien, and Christie, are vapid.  Even her cousin Etienne only seems to be in the story to highlight the growing awareness of AIDS in that era.  The book is full of name-dropping, as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Umberto Eco, and Salmon Rushdie all seem to be friends of Lydia.

Paris itself is a major character in this story, as descriptions of the city and its food abound.  Like Kate, author Hilary Reyl lived in France as a child and took a job in Paris after college.  She has a doctorate in French literature, is married to a Frenchman, and even has a French agent.  She herself describes the book as a "love letter to Paris."  Unfortunately, if you've never been to Paris, nor are particularly fond of things French, the book may hold little appeal for you.  That was the case for me.  The liberal use of untranslated French phrases did not help.

The description of the novel sounded far more interesting than the book turned out to be.  I was intrigued by Lydia being a photographer, but that was a very small part of the story.  I also think the final cover art (besides being rather ugly) is a little misleading.  The black strip with numbers on the left implies that it is a contact print from a roll of film (still used in 1989!), but it would have been more accurate to use multiple images as in a REAL contact sheet, given the multiple numbers in the black strip.

I'd recommend this book only to someone who loves Paris or France, and then only hesitantly.

© Amanda Pape - 2013

[I received this advance reader's edition through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.  It will be passed on to someone else - who preferably loves Paris or France - to enjoy.]

328 (2013 #12). The Giver

by Lois Lowry,
read by Ron Rifkin

This 1994 Newbery Medalist has become a classic - one of the most popular Newbery winners, and one that is frequently challenged in schools and libraries, for reasons ranging from “contains graphic themes,” and  “contains blasphemous ideas and content,” to “depicts ideas and actions that are inappropriate for young readers,” and “inappropriate for [elementary] grade level.”

In a nutshell:  Main character Jonas learns his utopian world is really dystopian.

In his community, everyone lives a regimented life.  Birth mothers produce children for other families, which created by matching compatible men and women.  Medication is taken to eliminate sexual desire.  Old people, babies that don't thrive, and other misfits are "released." No one - except Jonas, and he only a little - sees color.  And twelve-year-olds - which is what Jonas is about to be - are given "Assignments," matched to a career or more menial job best suited to their abilities and temperament.

Jonas is selected to be his community's next Receiver of Memory.  All memories of past events and sensations have gone to one person - and he is now the Giver (who can also see color), and will pass these on to Jonas.

In a 2004 interview, author Lois Lowry said she got the idea for The Giver when visiting her parents in a nursing home. Her father was still in good physical health, but his memory was failing. Her mother was physically ill, but her memory was intact.

"I would travel home with that in my mind, and I began to think a lot about the concept of memory. When it was time for me to begin a new book, I began to create in my mind a place and a group of people who had somehow found the capacity to control memory," Lowry said.

Many other events in her life influenced the plot, and Lowry talks about them in her Newbery acceptance speech.  I found interesting that the old man on the cover of my audiobook and print copy is actually a photo Lowry took of artist Carl Nelson when she wrote an article about him in 1979.  She described him as a man whose "capacity for seeing color goes far beyond" others - and he later became blind.

Some people don't like the book's ambiguous ending, but I'm fine with it.  I think it fits perfectly with the whole theme of memory.  For those who don't like it, though, Lowry has since written three companion books (I've read one, Gathering Blue), the latest published just last year.

Broadway, movie, and television actor Ron Rifkin was okay as the audiobook narrator, better voicing male characters than female.  The background instrumental music played to emphasize important scenes was often too loud and distracting.


© Amanda Pape - 2013

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.  A paperback copy for reference was obtained secondhand.  It is signed by the author, "with love to those who read - remember - and GIVE," and dated 1994, so I'll be hanging on to it.]