Bookin' It

260 (2012 #5). Heart and Soul

2012-01-29T14:38:00.058-06:00

by Kadir Nelson

Subtitled "The Story of America and African Americans," this illustrated book of a little over 100 pages is an informational overview of American history told from the viewpoint of a fictional African American grandmother, whose own grandfather was a slave.

In a note at the end, author/illustrator Kadir Nelson said, "I knew I could not convey the whole story in a hundred pages, so I felt the most natural and concise way to tell the tale would be through the recollections of a narrator whose family history was very closely tied to the American story." Nelson built real ancestors into the story, such as his Seminole great-great-grandmother.

The illustrations in this book are full-page or double-page paintings, and they are gorgeous. Nelson served as the model for many of the people in his illustrations.

Its length and amount of text, combined with its reading level (6th to 8th grade on various systems), make this book more suitable for upper elementary and middle school children. It's not a picture book; it's divided into short chapters. A timeline, bibliography, and index round out the book.

This book was honored with two 2012 Coretta Scott King Book Awards, the Author Award and an Illustrator Honor. Nelson won these same two awards in 2009 for We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball. He won another Illustrator Honor in 2004, and was the Illustrator Award winner in 2007 and 2005.

© Amanda Pape - 2012

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

259 (2012 #4). Burning Bright

2012-01-28T11:08:00.000-06:00

by Tracy Chevalier,
read by Jill Tanner

I've read a couple of Chevalier's other works, and was looking forward to this one, as the blurbs on the dust jacket indicated that poet William Blake was a character, and I was hoping to learn more about him.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case - Blake (and his wife) are only minor characters in this book. I only learned a little about his idiosyncrasies and quirks, and it seemed odd that he would discuss philosophy with a couple of uneducated children (the main characters) and they in turn would quote his poetry.

The novel covers the period from March 1792 to July 1793, when Blake was a printer and relief etcher (a technique he invented; something I did not know) in the Lambeth section of London. The Kelleway family from Dorset moves in next door, lured to London by the promise of work by circus owner Philip Astley (another historical figure in the book). Not too far away is the streetwise Butterfield family. Their youngest teenage children, Jem and Maggie respectively, become friends and are the main characters in this book.

The strength of the book is Chevalier's rendering of life in late Georgian-era London and Dorset (I was pleased to learn Jem's hometown of Piddletrenthide was real), especially harsh realities of life in the city. Little details like the making of Dorset buttons and Windsor chairs added to the atmosphere.

Perhaps more familiarity with Blake's work would have helped me get more out of this novel. I recognized his famous poem "The Tiger" (the title of the book comes from the first line), but missed some of the themes about opposites (Maggie representing Blake's Songs of Experience and Jem his Songs of Innocence) and symmetry.

British actress Jill Tanner's reading kept me going through the plodding plot. She was excellent at creating different voices and appropriate accents for the characters, and even sang some of the bawdy pub songs, adding to the period feel of the book. The audiobook does not include the acknowledgments at the end of the print book, where Chevalier lists her sources.

© Amanda Pape - 2012

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library. A print copy for reference was borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

258 (2012 #3). The Union Quilters

2012-01-25T21:56:00.002-06:00

by Jennifer Chiaverini

This was an engrossing piece of historical fiction set in Pennsylvania from 1861 - 1868. It continues with many of the characters from The Runaway Quilt and shows the impact and effects of the Civil War on the men and women of the (fictional) Watersford community (which I always picture as being a little bit like Slippery Rock).

Chiaverini did quite a bit of research for this book, as evidenced by the bibliography in her acknowledgments at the front of the book. She aptly demonstrates what life was like for the men who went to war (and those who didn't), the women at home (and in the community), and the free Blacks in Pennsylvania. It's particularly appropriate with publication during the first year of the Civil War bicentennial.

The plot is compelling and the characters are intriguing. Jonathan and Gerda were particularly interesting, obviously intelligent people, but not so wise in matters of the heart and tact, for continuing to carry a torch for the other despite Jonathan's marriage to another.

The book itself is beautiful, with a gorgeous cover that includes a white quilted background, lovely printed fabrics, an appliqué star, and a period photograph of women of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts sewing an oversized flag for the soldiers during the Civil War. The endpapers have pictures of some of the quilt blocks described in the text.

This was an easy but fascinating read. It stands alone and it's not necessary to read other books in the Elm Creek Quilts series first (although one who's already read The Runaway Quilt will be able to make connections with this book). As someone who has read some of the books in this series, I now want to read The Lost Quilter, which begins in 1859 immediately following the events chronicled in Gerda's memoir in The Runaway Quilt, and parallels The Union Quilters.

© Amanda Pape - 2012

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

257 (2012 #2). The Lady of the Rivers

2012-01-23T21:35:00.000-06:00

by Philippa Gregory

This is the third book in the "Cousins' War" series, but is actually a prequel to the other two books, The White Queen and The Red Queen. It's about Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the mother of the White Queen, Elizabeth, the wife of England's King Edward IV. While researching for that book, Philippa Gregory discovered that little information was available about Jacquetta. Gregory compiled her findings about Jacquetta into an essay that was combined with essays on Elizabeth and on Margaret Beaufort (the Red Queen) by other historians in a nonfiction book called The Women of the Cousins' War, published earlier in 2011. Unfortunately, Gregory only refers to this book in her author's note, rather than clarifying what is and isn't true in her novel, so I'm making some guesses in this review.

The Lady of the Rivers is historical fiction, not history, and that's pretty evident right from the start, where Gregory has her protagonist meeting Joan of Arc. It's plausible, but there's no proof. In an interview, Gregory said, "I discovered that the man who arrested Joan of Arc and released her to her death at the hands of the English was Jacquetta's uncle. At the time of Joan's arrest, we don't know where Jacquetta was living, but she may well have been staying at her uncle's château. We have sound historical accounts of the women of Jacquetta's family befriending Joan; Jacquetta's aunt and great-aunt were named by Joan at her trial."

Probably the most interesting character in the book is Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI, as she evolves from young bride to determined ruler. In her research, Gregory apparently determined that Margaret and Jacquetta were friends. I did enjoy the romance between Jacquetta and her second husband, Richard Woodville, the first Earl Rivers. I think the fact that they had (at least) 14 children showed that was real!

This book sets the stage for the later accusations of witchcraft against Jacquetta by showing her - reluctantly - reading tarot cards with Joan and Margaret, and scrying for her first husband John, Duke of Bedford (who Gregory says practiced alchemy and did not consummate the marriage with Margaret, and died two years after this marriage). As in The White Queen, Gregory also continues with the supposed family connection to water goddess Melusine. I did find that and some needless repetition of characters' titles (which one would not do in a real conversation) to be rather annoying.

While not as good as some of Gregory's other works, I did enjoy this book, and learned a lot about the background of The Wars of the Roses. Although the author's note was lacking on historical background (guess we are meant to read The Women of the Cousins' War), the book's map, family trees, and three-page bibliography helps.

© Amanda Pape - 2012

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

256 (2012 #1). Hurricane Story

2012-01-22T13:49:00.000-06:00

by Jennifer Shaw

Fine-art photographer Jennifer Shaw was nine months pregnant and living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina approached. She and her husband and pets evacuated and her son was born the next day in Alabama, the day the storm destroyed her city. They spent two months and 6000 miles on the road before returning home.

In 46 photographs, with single-sentence captions, Shaw tells the story of their experience. Shaw used a Holga camera, which explains the vignetting, blur, and soft focus of the square-format photos. The Holga is considered a toy camera (a simple, inexpensive film camera), and it's fitting that the subjects of the photographs are dolls, toys, and other small models that Shaw has used to tell her story, a graphic-novel memoir. It's very evocative, and very different from viewing "real" images of the devastation and aftermath.

The hardbound book, by Broken Levee Books, an imprint of Chin Music Press in Seattle, is absolutely gorgeous. The cover is real cloth and has a lovely sheen to it. The back endpapers feature a map of Shaw's journey, and the back cover has the tiny footprints of her then-newborn son. At a list price of $18, it's a bargain for a coffee table book - yet small enough to fit on an end table.

© Amanda Pape - 2012

[This book was obtained through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It will be passed on to a young fine-art photographer who works with film and should enjoy it.]

255 (2011 #60). In the Garden of Beasts

2011-12-26T16:51:00.109-06:00

by Erik Larson,
read by Stephen Hoye

This is Larson's most recent book, subtitled "Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin." The American family is that of University of Chicago history professor William Edward Dodd, ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937 as the Nazis came to power.

Larson typically has two storylines going on in his books, and this one follows that pattern by covering this time period from the viewpoints of both Dodd and his daughter, Martha Eccles Dodd, who was 24 when she arrived in Germany with her parents and brother.

Martha in particular was an interesting character. Previously married and with affairs with Carl Sandburg and Thomas Wolfe behind her, she was prepared to have a good time in Germany. She had relationships with German officers and French and Russian diplomats. Initially impressed with the Nazis, she grew disillusioned with them, but was later considered to be a Communist sympathizer.

Dodd was not President Roosevelt's first choice for ambassador. Dodd's lack of wealth and insistence on living within his salary, combined with his focus on time to work on his Old South history, resulted in his concerns about the Nazis being ignored back in the United States.

Larson's narrative nonfiction is based on Ambassador Dodd's Diary, edited by Martha and her brother Bill, and Martha's memoir, Through Embassy Eyes. According to Larson's afterword, "Neither work is wholly trustworthy; both must be treated with care and used only in conjunction with other, corroborative sources. Martha's memoir...contains interesting omissions....However, documents among Martha's papers in the Library of Congress...include her detailed and never-published accounts...and correspondence" (page 370).

Similarly, there are questions whether Dodd's diary "is truly a diary as conventionally understood or rather a compendium of his writings pieced together in diary form by Martha and Bill....In my research at the Library of Congress, I found one leather-bound diary full of entries for the year 1932....[and] oblique references to a more comprehensive and confidential diary....after having read Martha's memoir, her Udet novel [Sowing the Wind, 1945], and her papers, and after reading thousands of pages of Ambassador Dodd's correspondence, telegrams, and reports, I can offer one of those intangible observations that comes only after long exposure to a given body of material, and that is that Dodd's published diary sounds like Dodd, feels authentic, and expresses sentiments that are in perfect accord with his letters to [President] Roosevelt, [then Secretarty of State Cordell] Hull, and others" (page 371).

Stephen Hoye's reading is adequate. I borrowed a print copy of the book from public library to see photos of Dodd and his family (there were a few). The endpapers had maps in the back and front respectively of 1933 Berlin, and an enlargement of the Tiergarten (German for "animal garden" - or "garden of beasts") area, which were quite helpful. There was also a large (about 80 pages) "Sources and Acknowledgements" section that not in the audiobook, including seven pages of commentary by Larson (part of which should have been in the audiobook), plus extensive notes, bibliography, and an index.

I liked this book least of the four Larson books I have read, but I would still recommend it, particularly to those interested in the rise of Nazism.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

254 (2011 #59). Thunderstruck

2011-12-25T18:04:00.002-06:00

by Erik Larson,
read by Bob Balaban

Similar to Larson's The Devil in the White City, this book tells two stories (however, the time periods are not always parallel) that are connected, although in this case the connection doesn't occur until near the end.

Part of the book focuses on Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor who shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy," despite a lack of formal training in science. Marconi is not especially likable, but one must admire his persistence (his experimentation method is primarily trial and error) and his business acumen - he sure knew how to take advantage of his competition!

The other part of the book is the true-crime narrative of Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American homeopathic doctor accused of killing his overbearing, unfaithful American wife, aspiring actress Corrinne "Cora" Turner, born Kunigunde Mackamotski, stage name "Belle Elmore," in London in 1910. Crippen fled the country with his young British secretary and lover, Ethel Le Neve. How they were caught is where the two stories intersect.

There's still some controversy today (much of it arising after the book was published in 2006) on whether or not Crippen was guilty - and just how innocent Le Neve really was. I also found it remarkable that a technology being developed just a little over 100 years ago - wireless telegraphy - is virtually obsolete today.

Actor Bob Balaban has a nice voice, but his reading is flat and somewhat halting, with pauses in unusual places. The hardbound book includes (as usual for Larson), extensive end notes and bibliography, an index, a few photographs (not enough in my opinion), and endpaper maps of 1902 London and the north Atlantic area, showing the locations of Marconi's early telegraphy stations.

This was an interesting book - not quite as good as The Devil in the White City, or even (in my opinion, since I was particularly interested in the subject) Isaac's Storm, but still worth a read. Larson has a penchant for including every detail he uncovers in his research in his books, even putting them in his end notes "for no better reason than that I could not bear to expel them" (page 399) when they had to be cut from the narrative. So be forewarned.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[ The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my public library. I also purchased a print copy of the book.]

253 (2011 #58). The Night Circus

2011-12-23T23:29:00.002-06:00

by Erin Morgenstern

This debut novel is part fantasy, part romance. Two narratives occurring over different time periods eventually intersect at the end. The setting is the mysterious Night Circus (Le Cirque des Reves, the Circus of Dreams), with black-and-white striped tents that appear suddenly and are gone the same way, and is only open at nighttime. Everything inside the circus is done in black and white and silver and shades of gray, with a few spots of red provided by the reveurs, the circus fans who follow it from town to town and wear that color as a badge.

In one storyline, which begins in 1873, Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair are trained from youth as illusionists/magicians by their mentors, respectively, Celia's father Hector (aka Prospero the Enchanter), and the mysterious "man in the grey suit" known only as Alexander H., who plucks Marco out of an orphanage. Hector and Alexander are in an unspecified contest, and unknown to each other at first, Celia and Marco are the competitors. The circus is designed to be their venue, with Celia working from within as a performing illusionist, and Marco from without as the assistant to the circus' owner, the eccentric Chandresh Christophe Lefevre. Other unusual characters are involved with the circus' development, and they all benefit (and suffer) from the circus' seeming ability to prolong their lives.

Celia and Marco eventually learn they are opponents and fall in love. This was not surprising to me; I can see how one would be attracted to the competitor in such an intellectual contest.. Many of the fantastic attractions of the circus - the Ice Garden, the Wishing Tree, the Labyrinth - are things they make for each other, or in collaboration. Ultimately, though, this game of their mentors in which they are pawns turns sinister.

The second story begins in 1897 and involves two children born the day the circus first opens, the red-headed Murray twins (children of the lion tamer), Penelope and Winston, nicknamed Poppet and Widget, and a young circus fan named Bailey Alden Clarke. The two stories come together in 1902, when Poppet, Widget, and Bailey are all sixteen.

Drawbacks of this book include a weak, thin plot; mysterious but flat, underdeveloped characters, and problems with the writing. Most of the book is written in awkward third person present tense, with frequent inserts in second person present tense describing the circus. There are also some anachronisms, the most glaring one being the nickname "Widget" - the first known use of that word was not until 1926.

The competition is never really explained and doesn't appear to have any rules or limits, other than the fact that it's a duel, and one competitor will not survive. I found Celia interesting and likable, as well as the twins and widgets, but Marco was a boor, and most of the other characters were enigmas.

The strength of the book was the setting - the night circus - and the gorgeous, imaginative, vibrant imagery Morgenstern used to describe it. There was something ephemeral about these descriptions that kept me going with this book even when the plot and characters couldn't carry it.

The book also has a gorgeous cover and design. The black background on the cover is shiny, the tents and hand are embossed, and the scroll work around the tents is holographic.The end papers are striped like the circus tents.

The book has received a lot of hype, and I'm not quite sure why. The author is young and describes herself as an artist. I think the publishers were seduced by the thought of someone of the Harry Potter generation writing a fantasy involving magic, and the book was published with very little editing. I enjoyed the book, but it's not one that I would re-read. But then, I also didn't re-read any of the Potter books and only saw the first movie, so perhaps I'm not the right audience for this book.

While I only give it three stars (and that only because I loved the descriptions of the circus), other readers would give it five of five, and still others (those who strongly need their books to be plot- and/or character-driven) would not even give it one star. For all those reasons, I'd recommend borrowing this book from the library (as I did) rather than buying it. If you like it enough to re-read it, then buy a copy.

text © Amanda Pape - 2011

[This book was borrowed from and returned to my local public library. Photos are from the author's website.]

252 (2011 #57). The Heretic's Daughter

2011-11-26T23:18:00.001-06:00

by Kathleen Kent,
read by Mare Winningham

Dallas resident Kathleen Kent grew up hearing many legends about her maternal grandmother back nine generations, Martha Allen Carrier - one of the nineteen people hung during the famous Salem witch trials of 1692. Kent spent five years researching the trials and writing this book In it, she takes the point of view of Martha's daughter Sarah, writing to her own granddaughter in 1752.

The story begins in December 1690, when Sarah is nine, with her family moving from Billerica, Massachusetts, to nearby Andover, to live with Martha's mother. The family has a troubled past, and brings smallpox with them, which doesn't endear them to their new neighbors. Sarah and her younger sister Hannah are sent to live with her mother's sister's family, Roger and Mary Toothaker, back in Billerica. At first, life with the Toothakers and her cousin Margaret seems idyllic to Sarah, especially after she returns home after the epidemic. In time though, Sarah grows to appreciate her parents more, particularly as she learns the not-so-nice truth about her uncle Roger.

In May 1692, Roger and Martha are among those arrested for witchcraft, and Margaret and Mary are arrested to break Roger. Sarah's father, Thomas Carrier, probably would have been arrested too, if everyone wasn't afraid of him - he is seven feet tall and rumored to be the executioner of Charles I back in England. Having some warning before she is arrested, Martha tells Sarah that she and her siblings should tell the judges what they want to hear in order to save themselves, but that "someone must speak for the truth of things" (page 178) - and that will be Martha. She also makes Sarah promise to protect a red book where Martha has written the family's history, which they bury in a field.

Ultimately Sarah and her brothers are arrested, but even those who "confess" are thrown into prison. The harsh realities of prison life are contrasted with the difficulties of everyday living in colonial Massachusetts before the trials. Kent does an excellent job depicting this dreariness and despair, as well as Sarah's growing realization of the love and strength of her parents.

Kent's novel gives weight to some theories (also discussed in Marc Aronson's Witch-Hunt) that the accusations of witchcraft were often made due to disputes over land and other property. For example, the Toothaker's son Allen thinks he should have inherited his grandmother's property, and so testifies against Martha. Kent incorporates the transcripts of the testimonies of Martha's accusers, who are characters in the novel with whom Martha (and sometimes Sarah) clashed.

This was an outstanding book that I highly recommend, especially to any one interested in the Salem witch trials. Actress Mare Winningham is a good choice as the audiobook reader, accurately reflecting Sarah's changing emotions as she matures and undergoes experiences no 11-year-old should have.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library. A paperback copy of the book for reference was borrowed and returned through interlibrary loan.]

249-251 (2011 #s 54-56). Three Kid/Teen Books About The Salem Witch Trials

2011-11-23T12:50:00.056-06:00

After reading the fictional The Heretic's Daughter for my local book club, I felt I needed some more background information on the Salem witch trials before our discussion. I forgot to check my university library for books before leaving for the weekend, so I checked my local public library instead. I found three books on the topic, one in the juvenile section, and the other two in the young adult section.

The Devil in Salem Village, by Laurel Van Der Linde, is a short (72 pages) overview of the trials aimed at grades 4 to 6. Early chapters on witchcraft and life in Salem provide background for the trials. The straightforward narrative makes few interpretations and conclusions, and is enhanced by quotations from transcripts of the trials as well as interesting illustrations. A chronology, suggested further reading, bibliography, and index wind up the book.

Figures of the Salem Witch Trials, by Stuart A. Kallen, is a collective biography of key figures from this event, aimed at middle school and high school students. After a foreword and introduction, there are five chapters, each 14 to 17 pages long, about accused witches Tituba and Rebecca Nurse, accusing pastors Samuel Parris and Cotton Mather, and Judge Samuel Sewell. Many illustrations, including maps and photographs, highlight the text. Endnotes, a chronology, two annotated bibliographies, and an index complete the 112-page book.

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials, by Sibert Award winner Marc Aronson, is definitely aimed at teens. Aronson presents many different interpretations of the events, drawing on a variety of sources, which he details in extensive endnotes with comments. There's also an epilogue comparing many of these sources, along with an appendix focusing on Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. A timeline, bibliography, and index round out this well researched 272-page book, and Aronson provides a 44-page study guide on his website.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

248 (2011 #53). Sleeping Better Together

2011-11-14T22:34:00.002-06:00

by Gerhard Klosch

Despite its title, this book isn't about sex! Rather, it's a summary of sleep research, particularly as it pertains to sharing a bed with someone else. There's even a chapter about children and pets in the bed.

I found lots of interesting facts about sleep in this book. The second chapter, on the cultural history of sleep, was fascinating! Other chapters address sleep in general (the first, introductory chapter), individual sleep patterns and problems, sleep behavior and ritual (also intriguing), and problems that stem from couples sleeping together. Each of these chapters ends with a summary section called "What Does This Mean in Terms of Sleeping Better Together?" which includes tips or suggestions for improving your sleep situation.

In the conclusion of the book, the authors address the "taboo" subject of separate beds (or bedrooms) for couples. It was interesting to learn that a 2003 British survey of more than 1,000 couples showed 28% of those over age 60 slept in separate beds and/or rooms, while nearly half of couples over 70 did so. This trend is seen in other countries, too, including the United States. It seems that eventually the need for a good night's sleep outweighs social norms.

This book has an extensive bibliography, a resource list, and index. This slim volume (178 pages) was originally published in 2008 in German. The English translation is good, but I do have to wonder about new research in this area between the 2008 and 2011 publication dates.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This book was obtained through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It will be passed on to someone else to learn from and enjoy.]

247 (2011 #52). Madame Tussaud

2011-11-12T16:22:00.000-06:00

by Michelle Moran

This is historical fiction about the woman behind the famous wax museums in London and throughout the world. I did not remember that she had been around during the French Revolution, and made wax models of many of the important people from before and during that time.

The heroine doesn't become Madame Tussaud until nearly the end of the book. She was born Anna Maria Grosholtz to a Swiss mother, but was called Marie in France. She's 27 when the book begins in 1788 in Paris, assisting her "uncle" (her mother's lover, according to this book), the Swiss doctor and wax modeler Philippe Curtius, in creating and exhibiting wax figures of famous people of the time.

In many respects, the book is more about its subtitle, "A Novel of the French Revolution," than about Tussaud. There's really not a lot of primary source material available about the latter: "Tussaud's 1838 autobiography" (PW Annex Reviews, August 21, 2006), and "a handful of legal documents, a few letters circa 1802–1804, contemporary publicity material and newspaper clippings" (Kathleen Byrne in Globe and Mail, November 18, 2006, page D9), according to reviews of Kate Berridge's Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax (which I plan to read), one of Michelle Moran's sources for her novel. Pamela Pilbeam, author of Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxwork (another book I'd like to read), said Tussaud's "ghosted 'memoirs' claimed that she spent eighteen years at the royal court in Versailles before 1789 and also that in 1794 she was in the same prison as Josephine, Napoleon's future wife. There is not a shred of evidence for either claim" (History Today, September 2006, page 63).

Moran clearly shows Marie's business bent, so I would question any claims the show-woman makes in her own autobiography. Nevertheless, those claims make a great story and a wonderful basis for this novel. I appreciated the map of 1789 Paris and the list of the cast of characters at the beginning of the book,as well as the glossary of French terms at the end. The "After the Revolution" section at the end tells what happened to many of the characters. However, some - such as Marie's love interest, Henri Charles, supposed brother of the scientist and balloonist Jacques Charles - are fictional, and it would have been nice if Moran's historical notes at the end had made that clear.

I enjoyed seeing the French Revolution from yet another viewpoint, having read Sena Jeter Naslund's fictionalized biography of Marie Antoinette, Abundance, and Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey (on which Naslund’s book is based). Moran certainly brings out all the grisly details of the Reign of Terror.

The style of this book, with chapters headed by a date (or dates), reminded me of one of my favorite books, Désirée, by Annemarie Selinko (which begins in France at the same time this book ends, following Napoleon's rise and fall from power). It was an easy read, and I look forward to reading Moran's historical fiction set in ancient Egypt: Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

246 (2011 #51). The Coldest Winter

2011-11-01T23:00:00.001-05:00

by David Halberstam

I bought this book (subtitled America and the Korean War) as a gift for my father - he is a Korean War veteran (Air Force) and wanted to read it. He passed it on to me when he was finished.

The Coldest Winter focuses on what led up to the Korean War and how it began (in late June, 1950), and the terrible winter of 1950-51, when the arrogant General Douglas MacArthur insists on a drive all the way to the north Korean border with China, with devastating results. MacArthur, along with his toady underling Ned Almond, and a few other officers, come off very badly in this book (as does Chairman Mao).

Halberstam, a journalist in Saigon during the Vietnam War, is best known for his book on that conflict, The Best and the Brightest. Some of his more liberal leanings are obvious in this book. However, its strength is in the innumerable interviews he did for this book, mostly of the men who did the actual fighting, and not just the generals and politicians trying to run the show. This made the narrative, despite its 657 pages, quite readable.

One passage (on page 533) really stood out for me:

That was one of the great mysteries of combat, the process of going from green, scared soldiers to tough, grizzled, combat-ready (but still scared) veterans. Some men, a small percentage, never made it...They were incapable of or unwilling to bread out of their civilian selves. Most men, however, whether they liked it or not, went through that transformation. They might regret it when they came home, and it might be a part of their lives they never wanted to revisit, but they did it. This had become their universe, and it was a small and brutal one, cut off from all the things they had been taught growing up. Most important of all, it was a universe without choice. No one entirely understood the odd process--perhaps the most primal on earth--that turned ordinary, peace-loving, law-abiding civilians into very good fighting men; or one of its great sub-mysteries--how quickly it could take place.

If you are looking for a history with lots of details on all of the battles in the Korean War, this is not the book for you. As already mentioned, it focuses on the period from June 1950 to April 1951, and virtually ignores the last two years of the war. There are many maps in the book, most with military symbols explained by Halberstam at the beginning of the book (along with a glossary of military terms). I appreciated these even if I did not always understand them. There was plenty of battle description in the book for me, enough to make me further ponder the wisdom of war. Halberstam used more abbreviations in the book than I would like, although those who read a lot of military history probably don't need explanations.

I know very little about the Korean War before reading this book. I definitely understand a lot more about how it began, and how its ending led to the Vietnam War (and later conflicts in Third World countries). I would like to read another book about the Korean War, particularly one that focuses on the contributions of the Air Force to the effort. Halberstam provides an extensive bibliography, so I imagine I can find a suitable source.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I borrowed the book from and will be returning it to my father, a Korean War veteran.]

245 (2011 #50). Snakewoman of Little Egypt

2011-10-28T23:59:00.003-05:00

by Robert Hellenga,
read by Coleen Marlo

The intriguing title of this book caught my eye, as well as the blurb describing it. Anthropology professor Jackson is going through a midlife crisis while recovering from Lyme disease, trying to decide if he should go back to his African fieldwork site with the Mbuti tribe (and try to find the pygmy woman he impregnated and the daughter they had); or get married and stay in his comfortable academic life at the (fictional) private central Illinois Thomas Ford University. That life includes an affair with another former girlfriend, creative writing professor Claire, now married to an Episcopal minister. His chapters are told in the third person.

Jackson lives a pretty cushy life, thanks to inheriting land with a home from his anthropologist mentor Claude, and renting the garage apartment to university custodian Warren in exchange for the latter serving as handyman. When Warren dies, he gets Jackson to promise to look out for his niece Willa Fern when she gets out of the nearby prison. She's been serving six years for shooting her preacher husband Earl when he forces her to put her hand in a box of rattlesnakes as a test of her fidelity. Jackson and Claire pick up Willa Fern when she is released, and she announces her name is now Sunny. She moves into the garage apartment and offers to take over the caretaking job. Sunny tells her story in first person.

Sunny got the "Snakewoman" nickname is prison when she captured a rattler in the dining area. She's from the Little Egypt part of southern Illinois. She married Earl, pastor of the snake-handling Pentecostal Church of the Burning Bush with Signs Following, at age 16. Now 35, she had a lot of time to think in prison and decides she wants to remake herself. Warren left her $80,000 and his truck, and got her into the university. She throws herself into her new life of learning with gusto, and it IS fun to share her excitement about her studies, although there is a little too much detail about her courses (French, biology, fiction writing, Great Books) and various interests (herpetological research (naturally), French cooking, and playing the timpani). Hellenga is a professor at Knox College in central Illinois (the model for Thomas Ford?), and the descriptions of the campus, classes, and student life feel very real.

Not surprisingly, Jackson and Sunny become lovers. Earl tracks Sunny down, and Jackson convinces Earl to agree to the divorce Sunny wants (with a clever bit of religion), and then decides that Earl's church will be his next anthropological study. Jackson has a reputation for "going native," and that eventually leads to trouble...

I don't want to give the whole story away, so I'll leave it at that. Part of the ending was unexpected, yet satisfying and realistic when you thought back to the beginning of the book. I did find some of the characters' behaviors and motivations (or lack thereof) puzzling. I really liked the character of Sunny, and could identify with her desire for a fresh start and her self-proclaimed joie de vivre (which she amusingly mispronounces as "joey de viver" at first). However, she said she didn't want or need a man, yet one of the first things she does is snoop through Jackson's house looking for evidence of another woman. Claire steps away from her affair with Jackson, and she and Sunny become very good friends, which surprised me. Earl is oddly friendly to Jackson, but is crazy and menacing too. Jackson is the strangest of all. WHY he would continue to have contact with the threatening ex-husband (Earl's beliefs won't permit him to marry again) of the woman Jackson supposedly loves is beyond me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book.

This book won the 2011 Audie Award for Literary Fiction, and some other reviews out there question why. I think it's because actress Coleen Marlo did a fabulous job creating different voices for the four main characters (Sunny, Jackson, Earl, and Claire). Sunny has just enough of a county accent to be believable; Earl's is more of a caricature, but fits his charismatic yet backward character. Claire sounds as sophisticated as she is, while Jackson is (usually) calm and reasoned. Marlo's reading of the book piqued my interest and made me want to continue the story, even when Hellenga bogged it down with TOO much research and details about squirrels, timpani, the Garden of Eden, deer butchering, yoga, the Mbuti, and other minutiae. Marlo's ability to create suspense and get the listener through all the (unnecessary) details is worthy of an award.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library. I also received a print copy of the book from the publisher to review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. The print copy will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

244 (2011 #49). Those Who Save Us

2011-10-22T23:58:00.004-05:00

by Jenna Blum,
read by Suzanne Toren

This was a most excellent book! It's about a mother, Anna, and her daughter, Trudy, and set in their birthplace of Weimar, Germany in 1939-45, and in Minnesota in 1993 and 1996-97.

Motherless 19-year-old Anna Brandt falls in love with Max Stern, a Jewish doctor, and hides him in her home. They conceive a child (Trudy) before Anna's Nazi-toady father discovers Max and turns him in to the Gestapo. When he discovers her pregnancy, he turns her out, too, and she becomes the apprentice to the local baker, Mathilde Staudt. Frau Staudt is a member of the Resistance and delivers bread to the prisoners at the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp, where Max is. Anna makes some of the deliveries and witnesses atrocities at the camps' quarry. Mathilde is caught and shot on a delivery run, and when an SS officer comes to the bakery, Anna saves herself and Trudy by becoming his mistress.

In 1993, Anna's husband and Trudy's adoptive father, Jack Schlemmer, dies at their farmhouse in rural Minnesota. Trudy is now a divorced, childless professor of German history at a university in the Twin Cities. Three years later, Anna is hurt in a fire at the farmhouse, and Trudy puts her in a nursing home in her hometown. The only thing Trudy brings from the farmhouse is a picture of Anna, the SS officer, and herself as a little girl. Anna does not like to talk about her past and has never told Trudy who her father is - so of course Trudy assumes the worst. She's teaching a class on "Women's Roles in Nazi Germany," and starts a project to interview non-Jewish German immigrants about their activities during World War II.

The book alternates between Anna and Trudie in Germany during World War II, and Anna and Trudy in Minnesota in 1996-97. It's a war story, a mother-daughter story, and a survival story. Between Anna's story and the stories of people Trudy interviews (including an angry Jew), the reader/listener sees/hears the horrors experienced by both the Jews and many German non-Jews, both those who confronted the Gestapo and those too frightened to do so.

Author Jenna Blum is of Jewish (father) and German (mother) heritage, and also interviewed Jewish survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation in the Twin Cities in the mid-1990s. Blum has written about the novel's backstory at her informative website.

I thought the author did a wonderful job presenting another take on the usual World War II story. She's also written a compelling story of what shame and guilt can do to a person and to those they love. Trudy's romance in the latter part of the book doesn't ring true to me, and some reviewers have criticized the ending as being a little too neat, but I think both were necessary for Trudy to heal and move on. The author provides some interesting perspectives about this in a Q&A on her website (see points 7, 6, 5, 4, and 2).

Actress Suzanne Toren's reading of the book is excellent; she handle the German words and German accents beautifully. The only quibble I have was with her giving Anna the same old-woman heavily-accented-English voice of the aged 1997 Anna in 1945 when she first comes to the United States with Jack. Trudy is still a little girl with a little-girl voice; Toren could have used the same voice as she did for 1945 Anna in Germany.

Because I listened to the audio, I did not notice the lack of quotation marks around dialogue in the book, but I don't think that would have bothered me. I highly recommend this book.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook and a hardbound print copy were both borrowed and returned through interlibrary loan.]

243 (2011 #48). The Devil in the White City

2011-10-10T22:44:00.002-05:00

by Erik Larson,
read by Scott Brick

Subtitled "Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America," this book was fascinating! It's the story of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (aka the World's Columbian Exposition), from its conception (in a competition in 1890) and construction, through its duration and demise (mostly, in a fire in 1894).

The White City, so called because of the stucco-coated temporary buildings spray-painted (the first such use of that technology) white, plus the first large-scale use of AC lights at night for illumination, was a magical place designed by some of the leading building and landscape architects of the day (Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmstead, Louis Sullivan, and others). Multiple problems besieged the project, and it was interesting to read how they were overcome. Burnham is the focal point of the story, but I also thought Olmstead was intriguing.

Competing with the memory of the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, Chicago came up with its answer to the Eiffel Tower of that fair: the Ferris Wheel. The Chicago Fair had many other innovations as well, and despite the Panic and Depression of 1893, managed to make some money.

Intertwined with the story of the Fair is a darker story of the Devil of the title, perhaps the first serial killer in the country, Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes. Con man Holmes took advantage of the nearness of the Fair and its power to draw many single women to Chicago to set up his nearby "hotel" complete with dissection tables, gas chambers, and crematorium. Especially interesting is the post-Fair story of the relentless work by Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer to find Holmes' victims and piece together their fate and connections.

Narrator Scott Brick's voice is rich and melodious, but his constant mispronunciation of the village of Wilmette (it's will-met, NOT will-meet) drove me CRAZY, especially since I have ancestors and relatives from that community! It probably wasn't Brick's fault, but it made it easy to make the switch to another audiobook I needed to listen to for next month's local book club meeting, and finish reading a print copy of this book instead.

That was probably just as well, because Larson notes in a forward, "Anything between quotation marks comes from a letter, memoir, or other written document." That distinction is not clear in an audiobook, although it is obvious this is a work of nonfiction, and Larson makes it known in his 29 pages of end notes when he is speculating. The bibliography is five pages long, and there is also a 13-page index of proper names. I only wish there could have been a few more photographs and maps in this 390-page story.

Perhaps because my Chicago-area ancestors were living in the city and its northern suburbs during the 1890s, I could really relate to this book - just as I could to Larson's earlier book, Isaac's Storm, about the 1900 Galveston hurricane. I have his Thunderstruck sitting on one of my bookshelves, and it's just moved up the TBR list.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

242 (2011 #47). Keeping Faith

2011-09-30T22:19:00.000-05:00

by Jodi Picoult

I read this for an online book discussion. While I have enjoyed the other three Picoult novels I have read, I did not like this one.

The Faith of the title is a seven-year-old girl whose parents divorce after she and her mother catch her father with a naked woman in the bathroom. Not long after, Faith starts seeing God (a female who she calls her Guard), miracles happen in her presence, and she develops stigmata.

Word gets around and suddenly there's a media circus around Faith and her mother Mariah, who has custody. A tele-atheist named Ian hears about Faith and decides to prove she's a fake. Instead, he falls for Mariah, and she for him.

Meanwhile, Faith's father Colin decides to sue for custody and uses Mariah's previous suicide attempt (after finding him in bed with an earlier woman) and subsequent hospitalization (she was involuntarily committed by him) as the basis for a Munchausen by Proxy accusation. When the case goes to trial, Faith is in the hospital, dying......But of course, it all ends well.

I disliked nearly all of the characters in this book, including Faith, and found them unbelievable. Why would two agnostic parents (one brought up Jewish) name their daughter Faith? It does make for a clever book title, though. Faith is a cipher. While she might be making up her visions of God, the stigmata are real. I felt some sympathy for Mariah, particularly with the way the despicable Colin used her nervous breakdown against her, but also felt she was a wimp. Ian was totally unlikeable and the romance was completely unrealistic, as was the behavior of the guardian ad litem Kenzie. I can't recommend this disappointing book.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

241 (2011 #46). Falling Together

2011-09-29T23:11:00.002-05:00

by Marisa de los Santos

This book was...okay. It's the story of three college friends, Pen, Cat (I found these cutesy nicknames for Penelope and Catalina annoying), and Will. The reader learns how they meet and some of what they did in college, and also that about four years after graduation, their friendship falls apart.

Most of the story is told from the point of view of Pen, a single mother who appears to be working as a book/author promoter, with a five-year-old daughter born after an affair with a married man. There is a peripheral story including this man and his wife that doesn't really go anywhere. Will is an author of children's books who has a bit of a temper. Cat was an enigma, not appearing (except in flashbacks) until nearly the end of the book. I liked Pen and Will and even (to some extent) Jason, but I found I did not like Cat.

Pen and Will get e-mails from Cat begging them to come to their ten-year college reunion. They do, but Cat's not there. Her husband, Jason - who treated Cat badly on their first date in college - enlists their help in finding her. The end, I thought, was rather predictable.

The book jumps around a lot in time, which made it hard to follow at times and disrupted its flow. I found this book quite easy to put down, and it took me a long time to finish reading its 358 pages.

Some of the writing in the book is quite lovely, especially about Pen's lingering grief over the death of her father. At other times, the writing is frustrating, with too many long parenthetical phrases, and too much redundancy. This was an advance reader edition, so perhaps that will be corrected in the final version (due October 4). It does have some worthwhile things to say about friendship and love.

Other reviews I've read indicate that the author's previous two books were rather good, so I would give her works another chance. I don't think I would recommend starting with this one. Pretty cover, though.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This advance reader edition was sent to me by the publisher. It will be passed on to someone else to appreciate.]

240 (2011 #45). A Visit From the Goon Squad

2011-08-28T21:48:00.003-05:00

by Jennifer Egan,
read by Roxana Ortega

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year. While the author, Jennifer Egan, describes it as a novel, it's really a series of linked short stories. Characters in one story will pop up in one or more later stories, set earlier or later in time (even somewhere into the 2020s). The two main characters are Sasha, a kleptomaniac, and her one-time boss, Bennie Salazar, a music company executive.

So what's the book about? I'd have to say it's about time - how it ages and changes us, but so incrementally that sometimes you don't notice the changes until a significant amount of time has passed. Most characters in this book appear at two or more different ages, and the effects of the passage of time are noticeable. I particularly liked Egan's stories that were set in the future, with "handsets" that sound a lot like the smartphones already addicting so many people. Time is the "goon" in the stories. Parts of the book are funny, parts are borderline unbelievable, and a lot of it is sad.

Actress Roxana Ortega does a nice job reading this audiobook, managing to create some uniqueness for each character. She's especially good as the breathless starlet Kitty. But the book doesn't entirely succeed in audio format.

Alison Blake's "slide journal" Great Rock and Roll Pauses (essentially a Powerpoint) from chapter 12 is available as a PDF file on disc 7, but only in black-and-white. Ortega gives Alison a slight lisp to make her sound younger, and the "slide show" effect is created with what sounds like an old-style slide projector changing slides. I wish the audiobook could have incorporated snippets from the music referred to in this chapter, but I supposed there were copyright issues. It all works OK, but without the music, this was one case where I would have preferred a print book. However, ALL of the graph data from the last few slides (out of 75 total!) was tedious to listen to, and would have been the same if read.

And what IS it with characters mimicking author David Foster Wallace in books today? In this case it's Jules Jones, a celebrity journalist, in a chapter attempting to explain an attempted rape. I have to admit, it was fun, in each chapter, to recognize a character perhaps briefly mentioned in an earlier chapter, and also see a minor character from the current chapter then star in his/her own chapter later on.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

239 (2011 #44). The Marriage Plot

2011-08-27T19:43:00.002-05:00

by Jeffrey Eugenides

A few weeks ago I viewed a free live webinar called "Book Club Buzzing" sponsored by Booklist, and the Macmillan representative on the panel offered to send advance reader's copies of Jeffrey Eugenides' new book to anyone who asked. I read and enjoyed his Middlesex five years ago (I wasn't writing reviews back then, but I gave it five stars), so I asked for a copy.

I'm probably not the right person to review it. Maybe an English major, or someone with a stronger literary background, would have "gotten" the numerous references to literary history and theory. Maybe a fan of Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters would have better appreciated the underlying reference to the conventional storyline of a love triangle.

Madeleine Hanna is the single woman in the triangle, and - surprise! - she is an English major who loves Victorian novels! The two men vying for her attention are Leonard Bankhead, the charismatic biology/philosophy double major she meets in her final-semester "semiotics" (another one I had to look up) class, and Mitchell Grammaticus, the religious studies major she met her first year. The novel starts on the day of their graduation from Brown in 1982, but flashes back through their college years to give us the backstory.

I found Madeleine to be boring, weak, and wishy-washy. The two men were much more interesting. Mitchell's pursuit of religious enlightenment is intriguing, but Leonard's battle with bipolar disorder is much more so. I could feel the pain of both living with this diagnosis, and dealing with someone you care for having this diagnosis. Leonard's efforts to wean himself off medication are especially heart-wrenching.

Supposedly Leonard is modeled after David Foster Wallace, an author I'm not familiar with (so yet another allusion I didn't get), and some have said Mitchell is based on Eugenides himself.

Although set in the early 1980s, the story has a timeless quality to it and could have just as easily been set today. While I wasn't the best audience for this book, I'm sure there are others out there who will love it.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This advance reader edition will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

238 (2011 #43). The Postmistress

2011-08-23T21:52:00.005-05:00

by Sarah Blake,
read by Orlagh Cassidy

I listened to this audiobook for my local book club's discussion this month. I have mixed feelings about it.

The postmistress of the title (really a postmaster, even when female, according to post office regulations of the time AND the "postmistress" herself) is Iris James, a 40-year-old spinster in the fictional Cape Cod town of Franklin, Massachusetts. (In an interview, author Sarah Blake admitted that "it never occurred to her to check" to see if there was a real town of that name. There is, and it's far from the Cape.) The story starts in September 1940 and runs through September 1941.

The other two main characters are Emma Fitch, newly wed to Franklin's young doctor Will Fitch, who feels he is battling his father's bad reputation, and Frankie Bard, a war correspondent with CBS Radio in London during the Blitz (Edward Murrow is a minor character in this book). Iris and Emma and Will and others in Franklin listen to Frankie's broadcasts.

The book begins awkwardly, with Iris visiting a doctor in the city to get a certificate verifying her virginity. She has her eye set on Harry Vale, the town's mechanic, who's obsessed with the possibility of German U-boats attacking the coast. Meanwhile, Will loses a patient in childbirth, and feels it's his fault. Inspired by Frankie's broadcasts, he volunteers to serve as a doctor in London, leaving (unknown to them both, pregnant) Emma behind. Before he goes, he leaves Iris a letter to be delivered to Emma in case he dies overseas.

Frankie's storyline is far more interesting. She spends an evening with anti-aircraft gunners manning their post, another with people in the shelter, and reports on it all to the folks back home. She certainly made the Blitz come alive for me! But Frankie is looking for "THE story" of the war, and asks to be sent into Germany and France to travel with (nearly all Jewish) refugees as they attempt to escape German-occupied territories.

This is the most harrowing, heartbreaking part of the book. Frankie takes a "portable disk recorder" (which, the author admits in an end note, was not readily available until 1944) and records the voices of the people she rides with - often just their names, where they are from, and where they are going. She sees what happens to some of them, and is left wondering what happened to many others.

The ending is very sad, parts of the plot are contrived (undelivered letters and unrealistic coincidences), and character development, beyond Frankie, is weak. But I would still recommend the book, because the prose is lovely and well written, and Blake has a deeper message about war. Part of the message is, "pay attention." And part of the message is, "How do you bear (in both senses of the word) the news?" (page 326)

As Blake elaborates in this second end note (unfortunately not on the audiobook, which is otherwise perfectly voiced by actress Orlagh Cassidy, particularly well suited to Frankie), on pages 326-326,

I wanted to write a war story that did not take place on the battlefield, but showed us around the edges of a war photograph or news report into the moments just after or just before what we read or see or hear....It's about the lies we tell others to protect them, and about the lies we tell ourselves in order not to acknowledge what we can't bear: that we are alive...while bombs are falling, and refugees are crammed into camps, and the news comes toward us every hour of the day. And what, in the end, do we do?

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library. I purchased a hardbound print copy from the Hood County Friends of the Library sale.]

237 (2011 #42). Readicide

2011-08-15T23:00:00.003-05:00

by Kelly Gallagher

This book is required reading for the children's literature course at my university, so I decided I'd better read it. English teacher Kelly Gallagher packs a lot into 150 pages (including a thorough index and references).

Subtitled "How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It," the book covers exactly that in five chapters.

Gallagher spends the first part of the book talking about how high-stakes, shallow testing has led to "teaching to the test" and reading programs that dull the desire to read for many students. While there's not a lot teachers can do to end these testing programs, Gallagher does offer some good advice on ways to end "the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools." (p. 2)

Gallagher has taught high school for 23 years, so most of his strategies are aimed at that age group, although many can be adopted for all ages. Some of his recommendations include:

providing time for recreational reading in the school day;
"augment books with authentic, real-world text" (p. 46), such as assigning an "article of the week" for students to annotate;
surround kids with interesting books (I would add to do this in the library as well as in the classroom);
assign high-interest books and/or self-selected recreational reading for summer reading;
for self-selected books, have students do "one-pager" reflections (templates for a number of these are in Appendix C);
avoid over-teaching books with too much chopping up and analysis, or emphasis on the trivial (as the Accelerated Reader program does); but
avoid under-teaching books by providing too little framing for complex texts (assigning classics for summer reading is a good example of this).

This was an excellent, thought-provoking book, and I'm glad it's required reading at my university for future teachers.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

236 (2011 #41). Moon Over Manifest

2011-08-13T14:24:00.002-05:00

by Clare Vanderpool,
read by Justine Eyre
with Cassandra Campbell and Kirby Heyborne

This book was most deserving of the 2011 Newbery Medal. With dual narrative lines set in 1917-1918 and 1936, it's the story of a small town in Kansas called Manifest (modeled after the real town of Frontenac, where author Clare Vanderpool's grandparents grew up).

In her Newbery acceptance speech, Vanderpool stated, "I knew I wanted to write a story about place and about home from the perspective of a young girl who didn’t have a home." (*42) She later added,

"I came across a quote from Moby Dick. 'It is not down in any map; true places never are.' That’s when the wheels began turning. What is a true place? What would a true place be for someone who had never lived anywhere for more than a few weeks or months at a time? What if it was a young girl during the Depression? A young girl named Abilene Tucker." (*44)

Twelve-year-old Abilene is sent in late May, 1936, to the town of Manifest by her drifter father Gideon, the closest place to a home in her father's stories. She's supposed to stay with a preacher named Shady. She arrives just in time for the last day of school, where she meets Ruthanne and Lettie, her playmates for the summer. She also meets Miss Sadie, a Hungarian woman who runs a "divining parlor."

Throughout the book, Miss Sadie tells Abilene a story about Manifest in 1917-1918, that mysteriously ties in items from a cigar box Abilene found hidden in Shady's home. The cigar box also contains letters from 1918 from Ned Gillen, a boy adopted by the local hardware store owner from the orphan train. Ned wrote the letters back to a boy named Jinx, after he helped Ned join the army (underage) to fight in World War I. Both Jinx and Ned (and Shady and a few other local people still alive in 1936, such as Hattie Mae and Sister Redempta) are in Miss Sadie's stories.

On the audiobook, actress Justine Eyre voices both Abilene in the first person in 1936, and the third-person 1917-1918 stories of Miss Sadie. Besides these alternating narratives, there are also excerpts from Ned's letters (voiced by Kirby Heyborne) and from "Hattie Mae's News Auxiliary," a column in the local newspaper in both 1917-1918 and in 1936 (read by Cassandra Campbell).

It all works together to create a novel with an intriguing plot, compelling characters, and a lot of heart and soul. And Vanderpool does an excellent job in creating her setting, not only in time and place, but also in the details of historical events and community life. I could feel the heat of the hot, dry summer, but I also felt the excitement of the bootlegging shenanigans, the immigrants' fear of the Klan and the mine owner, and the dread and sadness brought by Spanish influenza.

According to Vanderpool,

"Moon Over Manifest is about home and community, but in many ways it became a story about storytelling and the transformative power of story in our lives....Abilene would call this a universal—this need for story....And of all the places for her to end up in her drifting: Manifest, Kansas, the stopping point for immigrants and refugees from around the world. Displaced people just like her. People with stories of their own but whose stories become hers.... Through the people of Manifest, Abilene experiences the power in a story." (*44-45)

So does the reader.

This book has an 800 Lexile score and measures at grade 5.3 reading level on Accelerated Reader, with an interest level of grades 4-8. The main characters are 12 (Abilene and her girlfriends) and 13 (Jinx), at the upper end of that grade range. With the mystery subplot and Jinx's cons, I think the story would appeal to both boys and girls. An author's note at the end addresses what's real and what's not in the book, and suggests further reading. There are plenty of opportunities to tie this book in with lessons on social studies, English language arts, and even science.

(*Vanderpool, Clare. "Newbery Acceptance Speech," The Horn Book Magazine, Volume 87, Issue 4, July-August 2011, pages 39-45.)

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This audiobook and a hardbound copy of the book were borrowed from and returned to the Dick Smith Library at Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas, where I also accessed Vanderpool' speech through the EBSCO Academic Search Complete database.]

235 (2011 #40). The Ringer

2011-07-30T22:15:00.001-05:00

This book has an interesting premise. Ed O'Fallon is just a Denver cop doing his job. In the confusion of a no-knock drug raid at the wrong address, he kills a Mexican immigrant, Salvador, estranged from his wife and family. Ed's sons, Jesse and E. J., play on an elite baseball team. Salvador's son Ray, using his Mexican-American mother Patricia Maestas' maiden name, is a hot pitcher on another team in the league. He ultimately winds up as a "ringer" (a person who is highly proficient at a particular skill or sport and is brought in to supplement a team or group of people) on Ed's boys' team, the city champions, in the state tournament. Gradually all these people realize who the others are.

The story is told from the points of view of Ed and Patricia. Ed begins to doubt himself and is frustrated by the mandatory administrative leave. Patricia has her own feelings of guilt, wondering if the separation she wanted (that she learns may have been unwarranted) might have led to Salvador's death. She is pressured by her mother and Latino activists to sue the city of Denver. All these themes and storylines are skillfully woven together.

The author does a masterful job making the reader understand and care about BOTH of these people and their families. I loved the little touches, like Ed's trying to control his normal overenthusiastic coaching style while working with his young daughter Polly's T-ball team, his wife Claire always knowing where his misplaced items are, and Patricia's daughter Mia carrying around her John Elway doll, dubbed "El Johnway." This made the characters more ordinary yet believable.

This book was a Top 100 semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in 2008. You don't have to be a baseball or sports fan (I'm not) to understand or like this book (I did).

Author Jenny Shank grew up in Denver. In the acknowledgments, the author indicates that this book was inspired by the shooting of Ismael Mena, a real-life botched no-knock drug raid death in Denver in 1999. She's written numerous other pieces, including this review of Half-Broke Horses, but this is her first book. Well-written and well-paced, I'd definitely read another book by her.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I received an advance reader edition of this book from the publisher, Permanent Press, in exchange for a fair review. It will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

234 (2011 #39). The Whiskey Rebels

2011-07-24T17:26:00.001-05:00

by David Liss,
read by Christopher Lane

This is historical fiction set in Philadelphia, New York City, and western Pennsylvania, mostly in early 1792, but with flashbacks to the summer of 1781.

The book has two plots that ultimately intertwine in 1792. Ethan Saunders tells his story, all set in 1792. He is a former Revolutionary War spy who was accused of treason and lives a wasted life after - until he is contacted by the woman he loves, Cynthia Fleet Pearson, the daughter of his former spying partner, when she is in trouble.

The other story is told by Joan Claybrook Maycott, who is a young woman in 1781, beautiful yet capable, planning to write the great American novel. She meets and marries Andrew Maycott, who trades his then-worthless war pension for land on the frontier in western Pennsylvania. The two of them go through all sorts of horrors on the way to and in the frontier, and Andrew ultimately becomes a talented whiskey distiller.

The historical events behind the story are the financial Panic of 1792, and the whiskey excise tax that ultimately led to the Whiskey Rebellion insurrections in 1794. Liss has built an exciting historical thriller that invents an incident leading to the former and tied to the latter. While Ethan and Joan are fictional, the book is full of real historical figures such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr, and lesser-known-but-no-less-real people like William Duer, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and James and Maria Reynolds. As with all good historical fiction, I've been inspired to learn more about these real people and events.

Liss makes all his characters interesting, even minor ones (who aren't real), such as Ethan's associates Lavien and Leonidas, and Joan's ally Skye. It was interesting that as the book went on, I found Ethan becoming more likeable, and Joan less so. Ethan's character flaws became more understandable as I learned more about his background, and his wit was entertaining. Joan's character flaws became more visible as the book went on, yet I could understand and somewhat sympathize with her motives, and she was a strong, intelligent female, particularly unusual for that time period. Joan's story has an epilogue in 1804, but not Ethan's, which makes me think we could see another book featuring him.

Actor Christopher Lane reads the audiobook. He is wonderful as Ethan, and creates a unique voice for every male character in the book. Unfortunately, the women (not as many, fortunately) more or less sound the same. Since the book is written in the first person from both Ethan's and Joan's viewpoints, I think Brilliance Audio should have found a female to read Joan's chapters (and provide her voice and that of other female characters throughout the book). I think it would have made a more compelling audiobook. In the plus column, though, Brilliance did provide music to signal the beginning and ends of discs (as well as a separate voice providing disc numbers), and repeated the last few sentences from the end of a disc at the beginning of the next.

I liked this book enough that I will seek out other works by David Liss to read.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This audiobook and a hardbound edition were borrowed through interlibrary loan.]

233 (2011 #38). Hector and the Secrets of Love

2011-07-23T21:35:00.002-05:00

by Francois Lelord,
read by James Clamp

This was an interesting little novel, about a psychiatrist named Hector who is hired by a big drug company to find a missing professor doing research for them. The professor is studying the chemistry of love and creates a potion that can cause deep desire and attachment.

Hector's adventures take him to Southeast Asia (where author Francois Lelord now lives - there are other parallels between his real life and this story). There he is torn between a waitress he meets named Vayla, and his love back home, Clara (who works for the drug company). While jetting and scurrying around, Hector ponders and writes about the five components of heartache, as well as coming up with 27 aphorisms about love that he calls "seedlings."

While the plot was a bit unbelievable, this modern parable does have some things to say about love, and has a vague (plot-wise) yet satisfying (message-wise) conclusion. It was especially interesting to learn some of the neurotransmitters of love and sex - particularly that dopamine is tied in with desire, while oxytocin promotes attachment.

British voice-over talent James Clamp read the French Lelord's (a psychiatrist in real life, and perhaps the model for psychiatrist Francois in the) book. Clamp's delivery is choppy, but I understand the book is written in short chapters, so that may be fitting. He also pronounces Vayla as "Viola," and it wasn't until I read some other reviews that I knew the latter spelling was incorrect.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I received this audiobook through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It will be donated to my university library.]

232 (2011 #37). The Daughter of Time

2011-06-28T14:30:00.003-05:00

by Josephine Tey,
read by Derek Jacobi

I was helping my son pack up his stuff at college about a month ago, and, lacking suitcase space, this was one of the few books he decided to keep. He said it was good and he thought I might like it. My university library owns the audiobook, so it seemed like a good time to listen.

Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant is stuck in the hospital (after being injured in the previous book in the series), so he uses his free time to evaluate 500-year-old evidence in one of the most intriguing mysteries in history-- who really murdered (or had murdered) the "Princes in the Tower," the sons and heirs of Edward IV? Was it really their uncle, Richard III, or was it their brother-in-law, Henry VII? (Or were they even murdered?) Grant gets friends, hospital staff, and acquaintances, including an American researcher at the British Museum (the "B. M.") to help him in his quest to find preferably-primary sources, and uses critical thinking, logic and reasoning to come to his conclusions. Keep in mind, though, that Grant's conclusions aren't necessarily the truth, either--no one knows what really happened.

My son was a history major, and I believe the reason he read the book was that it illustrates the premise that history is written by the victors, and how certain versions of events come to be widely accepted as the truth, despite a lack of evidence. The title is from a quote by Francis Bacon: "Truth is rightly named the daughter of time, not of authority." Josephine Tey (a pen name, along with Gordon Daviot, for Scottish author Elizabeth Mackintosh) also touches on some other historical myths, such as the story of the 1910 Tonypandy Riot (I love that word Tonypandy!).

I was already familiar with the Princes in the Tower in fiction, from Philippa Gregory's The White Queen, about their mother, Elizabeth Woodville. I love historical fiction, partly because it encourages me to read some nonfiction about the same era or event. I found that to be true of this book as well, once again borrowing Alison Weir's The Princes in the Tower to check for more facts. Although The Daughter of Time is not strictly speaking a historical mystery, it has made me interested in that subgenre.

Well-known British actor Derek Jacobi spoke a little too fast for the audiobook, and employed outlandish accents (not in the text) for many characters, particularly female ones. Both the audiobook and a paperback version have helpful family tree charts for the major characters.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I borrowed the audiobook from my university library and the paperback from my son.]

231 (2011 #36): Salt: A World History

2011-06-27T00:01:00.003-05:00

by Mark Kurlansky

My former book club in the Seattle area was supposed to read and discuss this book this year, which is why it was on my list. I'm not sure if they actually did. I know I can't recommend it to my current book club. I'm afraid most of them would fall asleep.

The subtitle is a misnomer. The book is not really a history of salt, but rather a collection of historical anecdotes. They ARE interesting, and the choppiness of the 449-page book actually made it easier to read. (There are also a 13-page bibliography and 18-page index, but no end notes.) I did find, though, that it was a good book to read at bedtime. The book often DID put me to sleep, and it took me over a month to read it.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I borrowed this book from my university library.]

230 (2011 #35). The Story of Charlotte's Web

2011-06-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

by Michael Sims

I picked up the advance reading copy of this book, scheduled to be released June 7, at the Texas Library Association meeting in Austin in April. It's a biography of E. B. White, author of the children's classic and 1953 Newbery Honor Book, Charlotte's Web.

The first two parts (approximately the first half) of the book document White's life pre-Charlotte, from his birth in 1899 through his purchase in 1933 of the farm in Maine where he wrote his books. Part one is called "Elwyn" (White's given first name) and takes us through his early years at his family's home in Mount Vernon (where Elwyn spent many hours caring for and observing animals in the stable), until he left for Cornell in 1917.

There, he picked up the nickname of "Andy," the title of part two. It was interesting to learn that White was one of the first writers (in 1925) of The New Yorker magazine, and that he met his wife, Katherine Sergeant Angell, there, as well as James Thurber (with whom he wrote a book). The New Yorker was a staple in my parents' reading and my own, growing up.

Roughly the last half of the book is in part three, entitled "Charlotte." It covers the years from 1933 on, including the publication of his first children's book, Stuart Little. It was interesting to read how White became interested in spiders, and the immense amount of research he did to learn about them and make Charlotte realistic. As Sims says in his introduction (pages 3-4):

So perhaps it isn't surprising to learn that, while composing his most popular book, E. B. White was obeying a cherished maxim: Write about what you know. He knew his characters from the barns and stables where he spent much of his childhood and adulthood....His return to a barn in adulthood ignited smoldering memories of the stable in his childhood home...By creating a fictional hybrid of the most enchanted settings from both childhood and adulthood, White..."discovered, quite by accident," he explained, "that reality and fantasy make good bedfellows."

Author Michael Sims covers the years after the publication of Charlotte's Web in October 1952 (through White's death in 1985) in a single short chapter. (I had not really made the connection until then that he was the White of Strunk & White, published in 1959.) Clearly, the emphasis of Sims' book is on White's masterpiece, and the life events that contributed to its creation.

Sims did extensive research (documented in 27 pages of end notes and an eight-page bibliography), including White's papers at Cornell University, White's alma mater. It's clear Sims admired his subject. However, I feel the word "eccentric" in the subtitle, "E. B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic," is rather misleading. I did not find White to be eccentric at all. Very shy, yes; quiet, low-key, perhaps, but not really odd or strange.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I received an advance reader's edition from the publisher. It will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

229 (2011 #34). Joy for Beginners

2011-06-02T00:01:00.002-05:00

by Erica Bauermeister

Cancer-survivor Kate and her six best friends have gathered to celebrate her recovery. Kate agrees to accept a challenge to go whitewater rafting (something she fears) with her daughter--IF each of her friends will accept a challenge of Kate's choosing.

So recently-divorced bookseller Caroline is assigned to clear out her ex-husband's books. Sara, a mother of twins plus one, must take a trip - alone. Single potter Daria must learn to bake bread (which puts her with Sara's brother Henry, who is a baker). Her older sister Marion, a journalist and soon to be a grandmother, has to get a tattoo - which leads to writing the fiction she's always wanted to try. Young widow Hadley must take care of the overgrown garden that isolates her. Ava, a perfumer in Los Angeles whose memories of her own mother's fight with cancer made it hard for her to be there for Kate, has to do the breast cancer fund-raising walk.

Each woman has her own chapter (where we learn why each was assigned the particular challenge, and how they meet it), which makes this an easy read, perfect for summer (the book will be released June 9). I especially enjoyed the evocative Seattle setting, as (resident) Bauermeister's descriptions reminded me of my home for 21 years. I found something to relate to with nearly all of the characters' experiences. Here's an example from Marion's chapter (page 185):

She had never felt the simple urgency of time more than in the past few years, as her ovaries creaked into silence...She had understood that something was ceasing within her and, more important, would never start again. The cold reality of it had struck her, as if, perched on the crest of a roller coaster, the rest of the ride was suddenly, irreversibly clear. On the way up, the vista had been infinite, the time to look about sometimes agonizingly long; now there was only the certain and dispassionate knowledge that there was one set of rails on which to travel, the ending immutable and about to begin. It didn't matter that the rest of the trip might take twenty, even thirty years to complete; the angle of the ride had changed.

Erica Bauermeister's writing takes advantage of all the senses, just as her characters' occupations do. It's lovely. I'd now like to read her other novel, The School of Essential Ingredients. I'd definitely recommend this one.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This uncorrected proof was received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

228 (2011 #33). Dreams of Joy

2011-05-31T00:04:00.000-05:00

by Lisa See

This eagerly-anticipated sequel to Shanghai Girls is being released today. It's not absolutely necessary to read the prequel before reading this book, but it's helpful, as it continues the story where Shanghai Girls left off.

Dreams of Joy begins in August 1957, when nineteen-year-old Chinese-American Joy Louie has just learned that the woman she thought was her mother (Pearl) is really her aunt, and her Aunt May is really her mother. The man she thought was her father has just committed suicide (which Joy thinks is her fault), and her real father, Z. G. Li, is an artist in Red China. Angry, naive, and rebellious, she decides to leave Los Angeles' Chinatown to find her father in Shanghai. Pearl follows. The story, covering the next three years and the Great Leap Forward, is told in alternating chapters by Pearl and Joy. Joy's initial idealism in a rural commune followed by growing horror and disillusionment with famine and corruption contrasts well with Pearl's nostalgia in Shanghai followed by practicality and resourcefulness in saving her daughter.

Some of the things that Joy says and does and that happen to her are unrealistic (getting into China and finding her father as easily as she does, and meeting Chairman Mao, for instance). At times I wanted to throttle her, because she made so many poor choices, but of course that was necessary for the plot. It was riveting and I couldn't put the book down. Joy does mature, thankfully. The book's strengths are See's thorough research that brings this sorry period in Chinese history to life (I have to wonder if they'll let her into the country again), and her portrayal of motherhood and sisterhood.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I received an advance reader's edition from the publisher. It will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

227 (2011 #32). Leaving Van Gogh

2011-05-30T17:39:00.000-05:00

by Carol Wallace

Fascinating historical fiction about the last two months of the life of Vincent Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, from the viewpoint of the intriguing physician keeping an eye on him at the time, Paul Gachet. Author Carol Wallace paints a portrait of Gachet as almost as tormented as his patient, implying that Gachet felt he did not do enough to alleviate the suffering of his wife Blanche before her death - and did not want to make the same mistake with Vincent.

Wallace was inspired to write the novel from research she did for her master's thesis in art history on another artist (French printmaker Charles Meryon) who was also treated by Gachet, a doctor interested in both art (he was an amateur painter and friend to many Impressionists) and mental illness (he did serve at an asylum in 1855 and wrote his thesis on melancholy).

I had to borrow a book from my university library with Van Gogh's paintings, as Wallace's beautifully written and detailed descriptions made me want to see their inspirations for myself. I'm also planning to read two books I've long owned, Irving Stone's Van Gogh biographical novel Lust for Life, as well as Dear Theo, his compilation of Vincent's letters to his brother (which are now available online along with other letters to, from, and about Van Gogh).

Those letters provided most of the source material for the Van Goghs in Wallace's book. Her afterword indicates that "Dr. Gachet left a much less distinct trail. His son, Paul, is his principal historian, and Paul's reliability is often questioned....His goal at all times is to promote the importance of his father to Van Gogh, Cezanne, and the other painters he knew." (pages 262-263)

The lovely cover features self-portrait sketches done by Van Gogh as well as a background from his 1890 Branch of an Almond Tree in Blossom.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This hardbound copy received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program will be donated to my university library.]

226 (2011 #31). The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2011-05-18T00:01:00.003-05:00

by Rebecca Skloot,
read by Cassandra Campbell with Bahni Turpin

In 1951, cancer cells were biopsied from the cervix of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman undergoing treatment at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. While Henrietta died from the cancer later that year, her cells live on today, are known as HeLa, and are used in scientific research.

Author Rebecca Skloot spent ten years researching and writing this book. She used a "braided narrative"* structure where she interwove three main narratives, moving back and forth in time:

Henrietta's background, life and death;
the history of the HeLa cell line in science, cell culture, and research, leading to medical breakthroughs while also raising ethical questions; and
the story of Henrietta's survivors and descendants, especially her daughter Deborah, and how they came to grips with what happened to their mother's cells, which they did not learn about for two decades.

It's easy to follow because each chapter includes in its title the range of years it covers.

There are also a couple other storylines, too:

the author's own journey in the writing of the book (in the seven-page prologue and beyond, as Skloot ended up becoming a character in the Lacks' family's story as she tried to earn their trust), and
issues of biomedical ethics as related to human tissues (primarily raised in a 14-page afterword).

Skloot used primary sources and numerous interviews to tell Henrietta's story. There's not a lot to it, because she died so young (age 31). She also did a good job with the story of HeLa (making it understandable to laypersons), her own story (as much as it was necessary to the family storyline), and the ethics afterword. She presents the stories fairly, allowing the reader to draw one's own conclusions.

Even without the afterword, 21 pages of end notes, and an eleven-page index, the book comes in at 300+ pages. The braided narrative ends with chapter 28, but there are ten more chapters with nearly 100 pages after that, all about Henrietta's relatives, mostly about Deborah, with whom Skloot bonded. The Lacks family does not come off well, in my opinion, even with (or perhaps because of) Skloot's objectivity. It's kind of like watching a train wreck. This was the least interesting part of the book for me.

Some of the most interesting aspects of this book are how Skloot wrote it. In an interview with Goodreads in November 2010, Skloot gave some examples of other braided narratives:

When I was working on this book, I knew I wanted a braided structure, to twine three narratives together, so I spent a lot of time reading fiction—not nonfiction!—that had this kind of build. A Home at the End of the World, The Hours [both by Michael Cunningham], and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich—but actually, the most influential to my own story was one that you might find a bit surprising: Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe. I also watched movies that were set up like this, like Hurricane with Denzel Washington. The important thing to any of the books or movies I looked at was that they jump around quickly in time. That was the most important thing, I finally realized—because if Henrietta's story is told in a purely linear manner, the reader is completely lost as to why modern events relate back to what happened to her by the end.

She also used a system of color-coded index cards to help her organize and interweave her three main narratives.

Cassandra Campbell and Bahni Turpin (who reads some first-person passages by Deborah) do an excellent job voicing this book, just as they did in The Help.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook and a hardbound copy were borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

225 (2011 #30). Ma's in the Kitchen: You'll Know When It's Done!

2011-05-15T20:04:00.001-05:00

by Carl Randall McQueary & May Nelson Paulissen, Ph. D.

I picked up this book at my university library to see if it had a copy of the photo I used in a post on my family history blog*. Subtitled "The Recipes and History of Governor Miriam A. Ferguson, First Woman Governor of Texas," it's essentially a cookbook.

The first 81 pages are a brief biography interspersed with numerous family and other historical photographs, as well as short recipes (or references to the page numbers of longer ones) that tie in with "Ma"'s life story. This is followed by 90 pages of recipes and 20 pages of household "helpful hints" from Miriam's collection of cookbooks, which her grandson donated to the Bell County (Miriam's home) Museum in Belton, when McQueary was its initial executive director in 1991. "Many were handwritten," he writes, "and even after thirty years, they still smelled of flour and Adams vanilla extract." [p. xvi]

Her collection spans the years from 1899, when she and Jim [also a Texas governor, 1915-1917] were married, until the time of her death in 1961....The recipes are unchanged, with the exception of some reformatting in order to make them more easily prepared by today's cooks. The titles for the recipes are largely Mrs. Ferguson's; those not titled have been given names appropriate to the time when they were first used. [p. ix]

A lot of it is good old-fashioned comfort food, designed to make you full and happy. Most of the recipes also have brief anecdotes about Miriam, her family, and her life as well. The book ends with four pages of quotes (from 1925, during her first term), a two-page bibliography, and an index to the recipes.

[*The photo wasn't in this book, but was in the authors' other book on Miriam Amanda Ferguson, for whom I was named.]

© Amanda Pape - 2011

224 (2011 #29). Anne Frank - graphic biography

2011-05-14T00:01:00.004-05:00

by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

A biography of the famous Holocaust diarist in graphic-novel format, this book provides additional background and context on Anne Frank's family and historical events of the time. I've read a lot of Anne Frank books and I learned a lot from this one, perhaps because the authors had access to many materials at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which commissioned this project. The format makes this important story accessible and inviting to an audience that might not otherwise read the diary or other accounts of Frank's life.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I received a free paperback copy of this book from the publisher. It has been donated to the collection of my university library.]

222 & 223 (2011 #27 & #28). More Picture Books

2011-05-13T19:11:00.001-05:00

I picked up an advance reader's edition of 2003 Caldecott Medalist Eric Rohmann's Bone Dog at the recent Texas Library Association meeting. It will be available for sale on July 19. It's the story of how a little boy's recently-deceased dog comes back to help him when he runs into some problems on Halloween night. It appears to use the same media as the Caldecott-winning My Friend Rabbit, hand-colored relief prints.

This book would be a good Halloween read-aloud IF you know your audience. My 82-year-old dad volunteers at his local public school, reading to kindergarten, and he said he would be hesitant to read the book to the group since he didn't know how some students might react to the dog's death, and how others would react to skeletons. The teacher or the parents can make a better call.

Higher! Higher! was written and illustrated by Leslie Patricelli. It's about a little girl on a swing and what she sees in her imagination as she goes higher and higher. Hand-lettered with simple, child-like drawings.in bright acrylics; some pages have no words, others only one or two. Nevertheless, there's a lot going on in the pictures for a child to talk about. It was a 2009 Boston Globe - Horn Book Picture Book Honor Book. Patricelli mostly does board books featuring a bald baby, and says she got the idea for this book from pushing her own two-year-old daughter on a swing.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The advanced reader edition of Bone Dog will be passed on to someone else to enjoy. Higher! Higher! was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

221 (2011 #26). South of Superior

2011-05-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

by Ellen Airgood

Madeline Stone's adoptive mother passes away, and she is at loose ends in Chicago. She's tired of waitressing but doesn't want to marry her rich fiance. So she heads five hundred miles north, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the south shore of Lake Superior, to care for the aging sister of her dead blood grandfather's lady friend.

Set in the mythical town of McAllaster (modeled after the author's real home of Grand Marais), the novel does an excellent job with setting and the minor characters. I've been to some similar small towns west of Marquette (which is also on Lake Superior and aabout 100 miles west of Grand Marais), with similar scenery and stubborn, quirky, mostly Scandinavian-descended folks living a hard life. The two sisters, Gladys and Arbutus, also seemed realistic.

It was Madeline and her story (and that of Paul, owner of a pizza parlor in McAllaster) which did not ring true for me. I found it a little hard to believe that Madeline would give up her old life so readily to go live with people who, initially, were strangers, not even blood kin. Her reopening of the hotel seems far-fetched, and the epilogue rather abrupt, though somewhat predictable.

After reading about the author, I had to wonder if she modeled Madeline somewhat on herself. Ellen Airgood fell in love with the owner of Grand Marais' local diner while on a camping trip with her sister, and married him six months later. I wonder if that might have made a more interesting story for Madeline instead.

There's a page on the author's website with photographs that inspired the book. The hotel and houses remind me of those I saw near Marquette. Particularly intriguing are the postcard and old photographs that inspired her. I read an uncorrected proof, but I hope these images can be incorporated into the published version.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I read an advanced reader edition sent to me by the publisher. It will be passed on to someone else to enjoy.]

220 (2011 #25). Finding Family

2011-04-25T23:19:00.002-05:00

by Tonya Bolden

Recently, at the Texas Library Association conference in Austin, I met award-winning children's and young adult author Tonya Bolden. Her publisher, Bloomsbury, had hardcover copies of her latest book, Finding Family, for sale for $5, and the price and the beautiful cover caught my eye. Now I have a signed copy of the book for my library as well.

Set in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1905, Finding Family is the story of twelve-year-old orphan Delana Hannibal, who lives with her well-off grandfather and his widowed sister, Aunt Tilley. Tilley props photos of family members around the room and tells Delana stories about them.

The problem is, the stories aren't always true, as Delana learns after Tilley's death, when an exiled cousin appears in Delana's room and begins to tell Delana about the parents she's never known.

I'm interested in genealogy, family history, and old photographs and postcards, and this book incorporates all of them into historical fiction (which I also love). Bolden built the story around 30 images from her collection of antique photographs and postcards, dating from the 1870s to the early 1900s. Bolden imagined stories for each person in the photographs, making each a member of Delana's family tree (which is charted in the back of the book). Bolden also worked a real 1881 lithograph and a real 1891 local event into the story, as well as various figures from African-American history. It was also interesting to read about the lives of upper/middle class African-Americans in West Virginia at the time.

The book is recommended for ages 8-12, grades 3-6. Accelerated Reader puts the reading level at grade 4.3, so this seems appropriate. There's an excellent teacher's guide at the publisher's website, that incorporates English language arts, social studies, the arts, photography, and genealogy.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This book has been donated to my university library.]

219 (2011 #24). The Wave

2011-04-24T21:24:00.002-05:00

by Susan Casey,
read by Kirsten Potter

The description on the back of the audiobook was misleading. It gives the impression that the book will give equal weight to the science of big waves and the surfers of big waves, but that was not how it actually worked out in the book. The subtitle, "In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean" IS pretty accurate, though. Author Susan Casey, now editor in chief of O: The Oprah Magazine, is talking about the surfers, not the waves!

In particular, there's a lot of focus on legendary extreme surfer Laird Hamilton. It turns out that Casey paid the big wave celebrity to put her "in the middle of his dangerously and logistically complex undertaking,” according to a May 2007 New York Times article.

Casey writes wells and I loved her evocative language, but I got tired of the endless emphasis on and worship of the surfers.

Here's an example of the great imagery in her writing, from page 287, describing

...an area where a jagged lava formation created a dramatic surf break, spray geysering into the air....A wave would sweep beneath the Jet Ski with the silky power of a baseball pitcher's perfect slider; when it connected with these rocks, all of its energy was blasted skyward. Sun glinted through the fifty-foot curtain of water, casting a scrim of tiny diamonds. At the edges, circular rainbows called glories shimmered like haloes.

The lovely writing, and the silky voice of actress Kirsten Potter, the narrator, kept me listening. I was fascinated by the experiences of the seafarers and of scientists on research ships, as well as by the surfers--at the beginning. By the end of the book, though, I had to question the sanity of pursuing such a dangerous sport that appears to have little redeeming value. When one considers that climate change and bigger waves mean more storms, floods, destruction, and death, celebrating "the big ones" makes little sense to me.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

218 (2011 #23). Half Broke Horses

2011-04-23T22:47:00.002-05:00

written and read by Jeannette Walls

This is a prequel of sorts to Walls' memoir, The Glass Castle. Half Broke Horses is the story of Walls' grandmother, Lily Casey Smith (1901-1967), who in Glass Castle is perhaps the only source of stability in young Jeannette's life.

In an author's note at the end of the book, Walls reveals that she'd originally intended to write about her [eccentric] mother's childhood, but her mother convinced her to write about Lily instead. Walls resisted, as her grandmother died when she was eight and "most of what I knew about her came secondhand" (page 271). She could confirm much of what her mother and others told her (including in books about two ancestors), Walls says she wrote the book "in the first person because I wanted to capture Lily's distinctive voice, which I clearly recall" (page 272). However, in a Publishers Weekly interview, Walls said,

she didn't feel honest calling the book nonfiction. "Once you start assuming or plugging up holes, jumping to conclusions, it's no longer pure. Once it's no longer completely nonfiction, then it becomes fiction.” So Half Broke Horses' subtitle is A True-Life Novel. Walls' hope for the book is that it inspires readers to examine their own family histories.

The rollicking tale begins with Lily saving her two younger siblings from a flash flood on the Salt Draw near Toyah, Texas, where Lily was born in a dugout in 1901. Lily lives an exciting life in some of the most remote parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona - but also in the big city of Chicago in the Roaring 20s. She helps her father train horses, teaches in remote schools, works as a maid and marries a bigamist, sells moonshine during Prohibition, learns to fly a plane, and manages a huge ranch with her Mormon-raised second husband, Jim Smith

Lily's life is fascinating, and the descriptions of the places she lives in and goes to are detailed. Along the way, daughter Rosemary is born and grows up (the book ends with Rosemary's marriage to Rex Walls and the birth of Jeannette in 1960), and the reader gets some clues as to why Rosemary turns out the way she does in The Glass Castle.

Walls reads her own book for the audio version. While she's not a polished narrator, I found her quite believable voicing her own grandmother. While a Dorothea Lange Depression-era photograph is used on the cover of both the hardbound and audio versions (after various iterations), the hardbound has actual photographs of Lily and her family inside. While I love Lange's work, I don't think this particular photo fits the story - I would have rather seen some sort of collage of all the real photos of Lily and family.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook and a print copy were borrowed from and returned to my university library and my local public county library respectively.]

217 (2011 #22). Home Safe

2011-04-22T22:42:00.003-05:00

by Elizabeth Berg

I can see why a preview of this book was put in copies of Berg's The Year of Pleasures. There's a lot of similarities. Like Betta in the latter, main character Helen Ames is a writer (though suffering from writer's block) and a widow (though for almost a year, rather than just a month or so), and is similar in age (59 rather than 55). She's dealing with aging parents and a 27-year-old daughter, Tessa (upon whom she's too dependent), and then she learns that her late husband Dan withdrew almost all of their nest egg before his sudden death. Now worried about money, especially with her writer's block, she reluctantly agrees to teach a writer's workshop.

Helen was overly dependent on Dan, who at their first meeting “made her laugh…it had put them on the fast track for being comfortable with each other. As they were, ever after. Always comfortable in a way that Dan described as home safe.” (page 95) Helen works through some of her grief and dependencies in the story, and learns a lot about what makes "home safe."

The mystery about what Dan did with the money is resolved pretty quickly, but I won't spoil it here. Suffice to say it generates more suspense about what Helen is going to do with the results - which I loved! Parts of the plot (and Helen's and Tessa's characters) were a bit unbelievable or irritating, but I found Helen's relationship with her parents, as well as the writer's workshop (as I've participated in something similar myself), to be very realistic. In the acknowledgments, Berg says her daughter "planted the seed for this novel. When I was complaining that I felt like I couldn't write, she said, 'Why don't you write about that?'" (page 260)

Also, I think the cover art for this book is fabulous! That, and the treehouse (page 129)!

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

216 (2011 #21). The Year of Pleasures

2011-04-21T23:15:00.004-05:00

by Elizabeth Berg

I've had a "complementary copy" (without the cover pictured) of this book sitting around for some time, and decided to read it after completing Berg's The Art of Mending for an online book discussion. My copy of the latter had a preview of The Year of Pleasures, which sounded much more interesting than The Art of Mending was.

After children's book author Betta Nolan's beloved husband John dies of cancer when they are both age 55, she decides to continue with his plans for them and sells their home in Boston, driving west until she finds a promising town about 50 miles south of Chicago, and buys a Victorian house. Betta and John were wrapped up in each other, and Betta is lonely after his death. She reconnects with her old college roommates and makes friends with some of the quirky residents of her new home town. When she tells one of her old roommates that she thinks she's entitled to a year of grief, the friend responds (pages 157-158):

"How about a year of pleasures, instead?...So many people who lose someone think that they need to behave in a prescribed way. Of course you're hurting! But what if you determined to find one thing every day that you...make happen...purposefully doing one thing that brings you happiness every single day, in a very conscious way. It builds up the arsenal...And the days turn into years. And the years turn into a lifetime."

That was the message John was trying to give her, too - perhaps still doing so with a series of cryptic notes on slips of paper he left in a wrapped cigar box a neighbor delivered after his death. Betta puts the papers in a Chinese chest that they "had always loved best of anything we owned...Sometimes we'd hidden things in there to be found later as surprises, either to ourselves or to each other." (page 31) Later she remembers what "green bowl" on one slip of paper means, and realizes about the other slips of paper, "Those that I had been unable to decipher, at least not then. But here was the glory: We were not done with each other yet." (page 32)

The book starts strong with passages like these, with beautiful writing and excellent descriptions. I could even buy into Betta's situation initially, which many reviewers found unrealistic (selling her Boston home for nearly two million and easily finding the perfect house in the perfect town, not to mention her apparently perfect marriage). Unfortunately it fell apart for me in the last quarter of the 206-page book. The plot becomes very unrealistic, and there are a number of minor characters who are not well-developed (especially the 20-somethings Matthew, Melanie, and especially Jovani, all of whose interactions with Betta make absolutely no sense). Still, the book has a lot to say about dealing with grief, small pleasures, seizing the moment, and making the most of the time we are given.

Once again, this book had a preview of another of Berg's books in it, Home Safe, and the preview intrigued me enough to read that book as well. Stay tuned.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[A complementary copy of this book was sent to me by the publisher, and it will be passed on to someone else to read and enjoy.]

215 (2011 #20). The Falls

2011-03-29T23:57:00.002-05:00

by Joyce Carol Oates,
read by Anna Fields

This book was much better than I thought it was going to be. It's set in Niagara Falls, New York, in the 1950s and early 1960s, with the story of Ariah Littrell Erskine and Dirk Burnaby, then jumps ahead 15 years to the late 1970s and continues the story of Ariah and her three children.

It starts a little oddly. Ariah is on her honeymoon in June 1950 at the Falls, but her husband Gilbert leaps to his death in the falls after their first night. It's hinted that this future minister is a closet homosexual, but Ariah doesn't know that and keeps vigil for a week until his body surfaces. Accompanying her is local lawyer and playboy Burnaby, who inexplicably falls in love with this strange music teacher.

They are soon married, and the second part of the book covers the next 12 years, through the birth of three children, even bringing the in-laws on both sides into the story. Then Burnaby takes on the legal case that is a mythical precursor to the real Love Canal case of the late 1970s. Burnaby angers a lot of the local ruling class with his pro-bono work, and is run off the road and over the falls to his death (again, the reader knows this, but not his wife and children).

I thought the third part of the book was most interesting. Set in 1977 and 1978, we read what happens to Ariah and her children Chandler, Royall, and Juliet. Ariah never speaks of Dirk, feeling he betrayed her by taking the Love Canal case (and, she thinks, perhaps with Nina Olshaker, the "woman in black" who asked him to take it on). The children, though, gradually learn the truth about their father.

I felt the character development of Ariah, Dirk, Chandler, Royall, and Juliet was especially good. At the beginning of the book I felt sympathy for Ariah and suspicion of Dirk; by the end I was exasperated with Ariah and sympathetic with Dirk, and found all three children interesting. Anna Fields' reading for the audiobook only added to the character development, as she was able to create a unique "voice" for each character, major and minor, and was equally good with men as with women. I felt the book was well-written, the only off-note being son Royall's unrealistic encounter with the "woman in black" in 1977.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

214 (2011 #19). A Chance to Make History

2011-03-26T21:23:00.004-05:00

by Wendy Kopp,
with Steven Farr,
read by Kate Mulligan

Wendy Kopp is the founder of Teach for America, a non-profit that "aims to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting the nation's most promising future leaders to teach for two or more years in low-income communities." This book was written in the organization's 20th anniversary year and she talks a lot about "transformational education" (page 9) to "change children's academic and life trajectories" (page 10) from the path that might normally be predicted from their socioeconomic status.

Kopp and Farr, Teach for America's chief knowledge officer, provide numerous examples of successful teachers and schools as well as of some school districts (particularly New Orleans and Washington, DC) that are improving. I particularly liked the fourth chapter on "silver bullets and silver scapegoats" that, respectively, are often seen as panaceas, or blamed if outcomes are not good (the subtitle of the book is "what works and what doesn't in providing an excellent education for all." ). They conclude with chapters on increasing the pace of this transformational change, and how Teach for America is making that happen. The book definitely made me want to learn more about Teach for America.

Kate Mulligan does a fine job reading the audiobook. However, the nature of the material makes it difficult to listen while trying to do something else, like driving. I found I often had to replay sections to comprehend them, which I don't need to do with fiction or nonfiction with a strong narrative line (biography and history). Furthermore, the hardbound copy includes ten pages of endnotes with links to various research studies and other data, not available in the audiobook

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I received the audiobook from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and borrowed and returned a hardbound copy of the book from my university library. The audiobook will also be donated to this library.]

213 (2011 #18). The Dissemblers

2011-03-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

by Liza Campbell

Young artist Ivy Wilkes admires famous artist Georgia O'Keeffe and "was born on the day she died," (March 6, 1986), so Ivy is in her early twenties and just out of art school when the events in this book take place. Young and stupid.

Ivy moves to Santa Fe to be nearer her muse, even getting a job in the gift shop of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Unfortunately, all she's inspired to do in her art is imitate O'Keeffe's works - which she does quite well. Her "friends," upstairs neighbors Maya and Jake, and Jake's cousin Omar, notice. Maya convinces Ivy to let her sell her O'Keeffe imitations as originals - forgeries. This sets off a chain of lies and deceit among all the characters, with expected - and unexpected - consequences.

This was an interesting book. Debut author and New Mexico native Liza Campbell is quite good at describing the landscape and climate and climate of her home state, as well as the details of O'Keeffe's works. The latter made me want to learn more about O'Keeffe and her oeuvre.

The story itself, though, did not grab me. I couldn't care about any of the characters, even Ivy, the narrator. I guess I have no sympathy for people who know they are doing something wrong, yet try to rationalize it. I would be willing to read another book by Campbell, though, because she writes quite well.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This advance reader edition was sent to me by the publisher, and will be passed on to someone else to read and enjoy.]

212 (2011 #17). The Art of Mending

2011-03-19T21:45:00.002-05:00

by Elizabeth Berg

I read this book for an online book discussion - I'm not sure if I would have selected it to read otherwise. It's kind of an odd book; it did leave me feeling wanting.

Laura, the narrator, heads to the annual reunion of her family of origin with her husband and kids. While there, her younger sister Caroline wants to talk with her and their brother Steve about abuse "of a very specific kind" (not sexual) that she remembers experiencing growing up. More family drama ensues. As Laura remembers things about their childhood, it becomes clear that Caroline was mistreated by their mother, but what's not clear is why (and the ultimate explanation is not very plausible, in my opinion).

I had a tough time with this book. I found it rather depressing and a little boring. I couldn't develop much sympathy or empathy for any of the characters. Even the author seems to feel that way. In an interview at the end of my paperback edition, she acknowledges various weaknesses in the book and says,

One of the problems with this book is that because the abuse didn't happen to me, I had to circle around and imagine what someone who had endured that would feel like. If you look at the reader reviews on Amazon.com, a lot of people had a problem with this book. I think this book got a short shrift. I don't think it's my best book by any means, but I think there's more there than some people want to or were able to see....

If you're going to create an unsympathetic narrator, you're going to get into trouble. I guess it was important for me to write this story, having created other characters that people really did like. I don't know why this character emerged the way that she did. The narrator is hard to like - but then, everybody in the novel is. I guess, in the end, it represents reality. One of the things that make this novel so complicated is that none of the characters are innocent. To make them unlikeable drives home that point. Or maybe since I've not experienced abuse, there was a necessary distance between me and the characters that made them seem unsympathetic....But whether you like the characters or not, I believe the novel makes you think about a lot of things.

Indeed, in our discussion, some in the group could identify with the dysfunction in Laura's family, and a couple were interested in a sequel.

In the interview, Berg goes on the say that this book, her thirteenth novel, was not easy for her to write, and when asked about the fourteenth, she says, "There is some sort of shift occurring in me creatively, and I don't know what it is yet. I have a contract to fulfill, and I think I will never do that again because there is too much of the good-girl, Catholic fourth-grader in me. I need my playfulness back." Sounds like Ms. Berg may be a victim of her own success.

I did enjoy Berg's expressive writing, especially Laura's descriptions of quilting (she's a professional) and of the "art of mending" (page 14):

As for mending, I think it's good to take the time to fix something rather than throw it away. It's an antidote to wastefulness and to the need for immediate gratification. You get to see a whole process through, beginning to end, nothing abstract about it. You'll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there's an art to mending: If you're careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the thing, because it is testimony to its worth.

That of course also expresses the theme of the book - family relationships are worth repairing. The back of the book had a preview to Berg's A Year of Pleasures, which I found much more interesting than this book.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

211 (2011 #16). Hotel on the the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

2011-03-13T13:46:00.003-05:00

by Jamie Ford,
read by Feodor Chin

This was a wonderful love story, read first by my old book club back in the Seattle area, and last month by my local book club. It's set in Seattle, in 1942 and 1986.

Henry Lee is a 56-year-old recent widower in the latter year, when the story begins, passing by the Panama Hotel in Seattle when the hotel's new owner displays items found in the basement. One of them is a colorful Japanese bamboo parasol that triggers memories for Henry.

In 1942, first-generation Chinese-American Henry is the only non-white at (fictional) Rainier Elementary in Seattle, forced to work in the kitchen at lunch and clean after school. He is soon joined by second-generation Japanese-American Keiko Okabe, and they become fast friends, despite Henry's inability to introduce her to or even tell his parents, staunch Chinese nationalists, about her. Henry's father makes him wear an "I Am Chinese" button everywhere he goes, so he won't be confused with the enemy Japanese.

Later Keiko and her family and all those living in Nihonmachi, Seattle's Japantown, are forced to leave and taken to the temporary "Camp Harmony" at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, south of Seattle. Before they go, many families leave their belongings in the basement of the Panama Hotel, then owned by Japanese.

The cook at Rainier, Mrs. Beatty, becomes part of the staff helping to feed the internees at Camp Harmony, and she brings Henry along as her helper on Saturdays. Not surprisingly, he's able to meet with Keiko there. After Keiko and her family are transferred to the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho, Henry and his older jazz-sax-playing black friend Sheldon travel there so Henry can visit, and Henry and Keiko agree to correspond.

As the war goes on, though, Keiko's letters stop coming. Eventually Henry moves on with his life, going back to China to finish his schooling, and marrying a Chinese-American girl. He never quite forgets Keiko though.

I love the plot and the ending--it's a wonderful tale with themes of lost love, hope, and reconciliation with one's past. I love the way author Jamie Ford built in real people and places (like jazz great Oscar Holden and Bud's Jazz Records in Pioneer Square), and made me feel like I was back in Seattle (I lived there for 21 years, including 1986).

As historical fiction, though, this book does not succeed, because of many inaccuracies. The first of these appear on page 4 of the hardcover first edition (and are in the audiobook). The text states that Marty, Henry's son, was "dealing with his mother's death through an online support group," and in the same paragraph, Ethel, Henry's wife, "was interred with...Bruce Lee and his own son, Brandon." The latter is impossible as Brandon Lee did not die until 1993. The former is improbable: very few people had access to online support groups in 1986.

Other reviewers have pointed out problems with World War II accuracy and translation of the Japanese phrase "Oai deki te ureshii desu" that are important to the plot. These may seem trivial, except that the publisher has developed a teacher's guide for the book. While it appears the author has done his homework on the internment camps and aspects of Seattle life in 1942, the other inaccuracies would make me question the veracity of that research, and thus hesitant to use this book in a classroom setting - at least not without a discussion of the book's problems BEFORE the book is read.

Another problem is the age of Henry and Keiko in 1942. Although children in that era, and particularly from those cultures, tended to be more mature than children of the same age today, I still found the thoughts, feelings, perspectives, and relationship of Henry and Keiko to be unrealistic for twelve-year-olds. I ran readability tests on an excerpt from the book and it measured out at a seventh- to tenth-grade reading level. However, for the reasons mentioned above (and the length of the book, 285 pages), if I were to use it in a classroom, it would be with the older end of that grade range. Would such students find this story about twelve-year-olds enjoyable and believable? I think Ford could have made these characters a little older (maybe 14) and still maintained their idealism and innocence (especially for 1942).

While I can't recommend the book for classroom use (unless as described above), I can recommend it as an enjoyable read, and one that will make you think and want to learn more about this sad episode in American history. It was a good choice for both book clubs as it generated a lot of discussion about the internments as well as the historical inaccuracies. Actor Feodor Chin does a fabulous job narrating the audiobook and handling the accents.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library. A hardbound copy of the book for reference was borrowed and returned through interlibrary loan.]

210 (2011 #15). Ending Elder Abuse

2011-03-06T16:48:00.002-06:00

I requested this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program based on the following description:

Ending Elder Abuse: A Family Guide is a vital tool to increase the odds of obtaining a satisfactory long-term care facility experience for your elderly relatives who can no longer live on their own.

My parents are both 82 and while they are both presently healthy, I want to be prepared if they need a long-term care facility in the future. This book didn't quite meet my expectations.

Only 144 pages long, the first 46 pages are about the author's personal experience with the abuse of her mother at a long-term care facility, and the aftermath, which led to her advocacy. The next four chapters, whose titles each begin with "Attention, Please," address those advocacy issues.

It wasn't until page 75 that the book addressed "Evaluating Your Elder's Care" and outlined five steps for determining what should be done when you realize the older person may need more care. The following chapter, on "Coping with the Dirty Dozen," addresses twelve common caregiver issues.

The final chapter gives some real-world examples of how "one person can make a difference" in elder abuse advocacy. This is followed by ten short appendices, a resource list, recommended reading, and more about the authors. Appendix D on "Evaluating and Choosing a Long-Term Care Facility" is probably the most useful for me.

An adequate book, but not really what I was looking for.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This book was provided by the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It will be donated to the local public library nonprofit Friends group for their book sale.]

209 (2011 #14). Dreaming in English

2011-02-26T23:11:00.001-06:00

by Laura Fitzgerald

This light, chick-lit beach read is a sequel to Veil of Roses, although it's not necessary to have read that book before this one. In the first book, 27-year-old Tamila Soroush comes to the United States from Iran to visit her sister - and get married. When none of the Iranian-American suitors work out and she's about to go back to Iran with her tourist visa expiring, the all-American Starbucks barista she's fallen in love with, slightly-older too-good-to-be-true Ike Hanson, joins her going-away party in Vegas and marries her.

Dreaming in English (which has a beautiful albeit unrelated-to-the-story cover) continues their tale, as Tami deals with Ike's family's misgivings (especially his mother's), Ike's beautiful ex-girlfriend, their efforts to start their own coffee shop, her sister's difficult pregnancy, her own lack of confidence, and ultimately the oh-so-villianous immigration system. Of course the ending is happy.

This book felt sappy to me and I had problems with it on a lot of levels. Tami (and her friend Eva) and Ike were incredibly immature for people their ages. The story is mostly told in first person from Tami's viewpoint, in rather good present-tense English, with clashed with the idea that she is still struggling with the language. I was bothered by the notion that Tami came to the United States intending to flout the immigration system, and yet the immigration officials are painted as being in the wrong for being suspicious of her "true love" with Ike.

Give me a break. I really can't recommend this book.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This book was provided by the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It will be donated to the local public library nonprofit Friends group for their book sale.]

208 (2011 #13). Bridge to Terabithia

2011-02-06T23:07:00.001-06:00

by Katherine Paterson,
read by Robert Sean Leonard

This classic, dealing with themes of death, friendship, and imagination, won the (well-deserved) Newbery Medal in 1978. Ten-year-old Jesse Aarons befriends the new girl at school, his next-door neighbor Leslie Burke. They deal with a school bully and their families (Jesse's family is rural, poor and rather uneducated; Leslie's parents are wealthy writers escaping the big nearby city of Washington, DC, and trying to live the simple life. Both of them desire parental and adult love and approval). Jesse and Leslie create an imaginary world they call Terabithia* near the creek in the woods behind their homes. Then there is a tragic accident.

At the end of the audiobook, Michael Conroy with HarperAudio interviews Katherine Paterson and her son David, sometime in 2006. Katherine explains that "when [David] was seven and eight years old, his best friend was a girl named Lisa Hill, and the summer they were both eight, Lisa was struck and killed by lightning." Katherine said she wrote the book "to try to make sense out of a tragedy that didn’t make sense."

"I figured that David had a right to say whether or not he wanted the book published, because although he was not actually Jesse Aarons, all of his buddies at school would think he was... So I read it to him before I sent it even to my editor, and the only thing he said when I finished was...'I wanted it to be dedicated to me and Lisa,' so that’s why the book is dedicated to both of them." In a 2007 interview, David says there are "a lot of similarities" between him and Jesse, including being "in love with his music teacher" (the guitar-playing Miss Edmunds in the book).

The songs Miss Edmunds sings with the kids, and Leslie's no-TV, call-me-by-my-first-name parents are among the few clues that the book is set in the 1970s; otherwise the setting feels rather timeless. Katherine continues in the HarperAudio interview, "There’s some quality in this particular book … that opens itself up for people to bring their own lives to it in a very powerful way so that the story becomes their story, and I have people write to me, long long long letters, explaining how this book is their book and how it is their life that I am telling about. But that’s the reader’s response, it’s not something the writer can consciously do. It’s a magical thing when it happens, but it doesn’t always happen."

I think this is because nearly everyone grew up with a Terabithia, an imaginary world to play in. David said, "One thing that I found so amazing is everyone remembered Terabithia, but they all remembered it differently. The gift that her book gives the reader is she allows them to imagine, she guides them to their own imagination. But the funny thing is, people remember this so vividly, and ... Terabithia takes place in just a very small amount of the book – I believe it’s 12 to 14 pages – and yet, that’s what people remember. They remember these wonderful, wonderful experiences that Jess and Leslie went through, whereas most of it they made up in their own minds.” Katherine said, “Terabithia is the creation of the reader, not the writer."

The book is also a classic because it's about a child dealing with the death of another child, his friend. In the same HarperAudio interview, Katherine states, “Everyone will have to go through death, their own and the death of those they love, ... and a book in which a child dies is sort of a rehearsal for that. We hope the child will not have to go through it as early as David did, but it gives them a chance to go through those emotions vicariously." On her website, she adds that "though I was not fully aware of it, [I wrote it] to help me face my own death," which I think adds to the book's appeal to adults.

David pointed out, “I think that one reason the book has been so resoundingly successful throughout the years is that it was, when it first came out, one of the first books to really address... the death of a child, and the death of a friendship, and it still resonates today because it introduces the concept at a young age for young readers, which is also why it’s banned a lot of places, because adults don’t feel that children can handle issues such as this." Katherine added, “I even had a letter from someone who said death is not age appropriate for a ten-year-old. No, it’s not, but it happens.”

Indeed, in a 2002 interview, Paterson notes that the book has been challenged for more than being "not age appropriate" in discussing death. "Initially, it was challenged because it deals with a boy who lives in rural Virginia, and he uses the word 'Lord' a lot, and it's not in prayer." (Katherine taught for a year in a rural Virginia school, and on her website, she notes that "Jess and his father talk like the people I knew who lived in that area. I believe it is my responsibility to create characters who are real, not models of good behavior. If Jess and his dad are to be real, they must speak and act like real people. I have a lot of respect for my readers. I do not expect them to imitate my characters, simply to care about them and understand them.")

"Then there are more complicated reasons. The children build an imaginary kingdom, and there was the feeling that I was promoting the religion of secular humanism, and then New Age religion." Additionally, Jesse's family only goes to church at Easter, although the Bible "s'bout the only book we got around our place" (page 109). Leslie's never been to church before, and there's an amusing yet thought-provoking scene after she accompanies Jesse's family at Easter. I imagine this scene is likely to offend some fundamentalist/conservative Christians.

Actor Robert Sean Leonard (best known for playing Dr. Wilson on the TV show House) does a fine job narrating the audiobook. All in all, this is a wonderful book for about age 10 and up, and I highly recommend it.

*On her website, Katherine explains, "I thought I'd made up "Terabithia." I realized when the book was nearly done, that there is an island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis called Terebinthia. I'm sure I borrowed that unconsciously, but, then, so would Leslie who loved the Chronicles of Narnia. And, by the way, Lewis got Terebinthia from the Biblical terebinth tree, so it wasn't original with him either."

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

207 (2011 #12). Expiration Date

2011-02-05T23:55:00.001-06:00

by Sherril Jaffe

I REALLY liked this book. For one thing, I LOVE the cover! Click on it to see a larger version and read what's on the baby's bottom.

The blurb for this novel really intrigued me. Protagonist Flora has a dream at age 35 that a heavenly court has set her expiration date - the date of her death - for 25 years later, the year she turns 60. Fast-forward 24 years, to 2004, and Flora wonders if the dream might come true. Thing is, her mother Muriel was present at the heavenly court with other family members who have since passed on - and Muriel is very much alive at age 86. Perhaps this means Flora's dream won't become a reality just yet.

This may sound like a morbid subject for a book, but it's not. The book is quite funny and very thought-provoking.

The story moves back and forth between Flora and Muriel. Muriel is recently widowed and trying to adjust, trying to decide what needs to change (where she lives?) and what can change, now that she is not tied down at home caring for her invalid husband. She hates (fears?) being alone and lonely. Flora has a good life, a loving rabbi husband with whom she shares an interest in Zen Buddhism, great sex and heartfelt discussions. Her concerns about her dream come across more as the natural fears and concerns about death (that increase as we age), rather than as some morbid preoccupation.

Muriel and Flora are both extremely likable characters. At age 53 myself, with an 82-year-old mother, I could really relate to this book. I can only hope to be as truly alive as these two women are at their respective ages. There's much to think about here, in living one's life to the fullest.

This is a book that I will encourage my friends to read, and will re-read periodically myself.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This advanced reader edition was sent to me by the publisher and will be passed on to someone else.]

206 (2011 #11). Round Robin

2011-02-03T17:01:00.000-06:00

by Jennifer Chiaverini,
read by Christina Moore

This was the second book in the Elm Creek Quilt series (which fortunately, after the first book, doesn't really need to be read in order). The Elm Creek Quilters - Sarah, Diane, Agnes, Judy, Bonnie, and Gwen - decide to make a "Round Robin" quilt for their friend and mentor Sylvia, owner of Elm Creek Manor. Agnes volunteers to make the central square, and the other quilters take turns adding a border. The borders end up relating to some crisis going on in each of their lives - Sarah's frustrations with her critical mother, Diane fighting for her son's right to skateboard, Bonnie's husband's infidelity, Judy's contact with the family she didn't know she had, and Gwen's realization that daughter Summer, another Elm Creek Quilter, is grown up and can make her own decisions about her life. And Sylvia rediscovers love in her life and faces a health crisis.

The stories will touch on many readers' personal experiences. I was sympathetic to most of the characters, except philandering husband Craig, and Carol, Sarah's mother, who comes across as self-absorbed. Narrator Christina Moore as usual does a fabulous job bringing the characters to life.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This audiobook and a hardbound copy of the book for reference were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

205 (2011 #10). Lafayette and the American Revolution

2011-02-02T22:07:00.001-06:00

by Russell Freedman

This 88-page biography was named a 2011 Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book. The Medal "is awarded annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published in English during the preceding year" by the American Library Association.

It's a very readable account of the life of the Marquis de Lafayette, illustrated with mostly-period paintings, drawings, and documents (but unfortunately, no maps). As the title indicates, Freedman focuses mainly on Lafayette's involvement with the American Revolution, but also addresses his early life and his later involvement with the French Revolution. Freedman ends the book with a time line, source notes, selected bibliography (with commentary), picture credits, and index. The book made me want to learn even more about Lafayette (and especially his wife Adrienne, who sounds particularly intriguing). It's an outstanding addition to Freedman's fine repertoire of biography and history.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

203-204 (2011 #8-9). Two Award-Winning Beginner Readers

2011-02-01T23:46:00.004-06:00

When the American Library Association announced its annual Youth Media Awards on January 10, 2011, I went to my local public library and checked out the winners and honor books they had. The following are two of the three books that won Geisel Award designations. The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award is given annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the "most distinguished American book for beginning readers."

Bink & Gollie took the top honor in 2011. Written by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, and illustrated by animator Tony Fucile, this 81-page, three-chapter book was also named one of the ten Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2010 by The New York Times. Tiny Bink and tall Gollie are friends who sometimes disagree (pages 20-21):

"The problem with Gollie," said Bink, "is that it's either Gollie's way or the highway."..."The problem with Bink," said Gollie, "is her unwillingness to compromise."

Fucile's comic-like illustrations remind me of Calvin and Hobbes and are very engaging. The stories - not so much. I'm also a little surprised that this book won the Geisel. Gollie in particular uses big words (as in the example above) and complex sentence structure that would be hard for beginning readers to handle independently.

A better choice for the award, in my opinion, would have been one of the Honor Books, written and illustrated by Grace Lin, Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same! Ling and Ting are identical twins who, while wearing (adorable!) matching dresses, display their individuality in other ways. This 44-page book has six very short, humorous, interrelated chapters. The twins' heritage is highlighted in the chapters about chopsticks and making Chinese dumplings. Lin's bold-colored paintings are eye-popping. Lin went to a lot of effort to make the vocabulary and sentence structure appropriate for beginning readers, who should be able to read this book on their own. There's even a 14-page educator's guide and paper dolls available!

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[These books were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

200-202 (2011 #5-7). Three Award-Winning Picture Books

2011-02-01T19:37:00.000-06:00

The Randolph Caldecott Medal, which "honors the illustrator of the year's most distinguished American picture book for children," went to A Sick Day for Amos McGee, illustrated by Erin E. Stead, and written by her husband Philip C. Stead. This was Erin's first foray into book illustration. She used "woodblock printing techniques and pencil" with, in her words, "subtle color and specifically for this book limited palettes," to illustrate this sweet fantasy of a zookeeper and his animal friends. The soft but detailed drawings are reminiscent of children's book illustrations from my own childhood in the 1960s. This book was named one of the ten best illustrated children's books for 2010 by the New York Times. It's a bedtime story appropriate for younger children.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards "honor African American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults that communicate the African American experience." One Illustrator Honor Book was named in 2011, Jimi Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix, illustrated by Javaka Steptoe (daughter of John Steptoe), and written by Gary Golio. The narrative stops before Hendrix' untimely death, but an afterword and author's note address some of those issues. There are also a number of websites and books listed about substance abuse as well as about Hendrix, and a selected discography of music and video by and about him. Steptoe used mixed media, including paint, collage, and silkscreen, and in an illustrator's note, says,

I thought about guitars--their sound, their vibrations, their look and feel--so I used plywood...I thought about how Jimi saw the world and how that differed from other people's views, so I painted Jimi one way and his surroundings another way. I thought about the depth and texture of his music, so I layered and used bright colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple--rainbow colors.

The subject matter and complex illustrations make this book more appropriate for older children. It would appeal to reluctant readers and could be tied into art and music curricula.

The Schneider Family Book Awards "honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences." The 2011 award for children ages 0 to 10 went to The Pirate of Kindergarten, written by George Ella Lyon and illustrated by Lynne Avril. In this simple yet empathetic story, the main character, Ginny, suffers from double vision, remedied with "exercises, glasses, and for a while, a patch." She becomes a "Kindergarten Pirate." The genius of this book is the combination of Lyon's descriptive text and Avril's chalk pastel, mixed with acrylic medium, and colored pencil drawings that let the reader see what Ginny sees - two of everything. The only wish I have for this book would be for a brief afterword that explains more about double vision (diplopia), patching (used to treat other eye problems too), and author Lyon's "own experience" on which the book is based. The book is obviously appropriate for kindergarten, but would work for children slightly older and younger as well. This was my favorite of these three books.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[These books were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

199 (2011 #4). On Gold Mountain

2011-01-31T23:49:00.001-06:00

by Lisa See

This was Lisa See's first book back in 1995, back when she'd been the West Coast correspondent for Publisher's Weekly for twelve years and wasn't known as the novelist she is today.

Subtitled "The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family," it's an account of the See family history, starting with her great-great-grandfather, Fong Dun Shung. He left China for the Gold Mountain - the United States - in 1866, working on the transcontinental railroad as a herbalist, and returned to China five years later a rich man. Meanwhile, his son Fong See comes to America looking for his dad, starts selling crotchless underwear to brothels, and ends up marrying a Caucasian woman. Lisa's grandfather and father also married Caucasians, making Lisa only 1/8 Chinese, with red hair and freckles.

Fong See becomes a very successful merchant in Chinatown in Los Angeles, lives to around 100, and has four wives (some concurrently, three married to him in China and one of those brought back to America) and twelve children. Lisa tells the stories of all of them, Fong See's brother and his three wives and twelve children, the family her great aunt marries into, and the families of her Caucasian ancestors as well. The result is a warts-and-all saga of a family that is also representative of the entire Chinese-American immigrant experience. It's especially interesting to read how they got around the various laws designed to discourage their immigration and living in the United States.

There is an extensive list of sources (including interviews with nearly 100 relatives and others), broken down by chapter, but unfortunately no index. There are also maps and a rough family tree at the beginning of the book. I found myself referring to the latter often to figure out who was connected, and how. See has also included black-and-white photographs of many of the people and places discussed in her book. Her five years of research are obvious, and it's understandable after reading this book why her historical fiction (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Shanghai Girls, Peony in Love) is so good. I admire See for writing her family's history - I hope I can do the same some day.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

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

198 (2011 #3). Turtle in Paradise

2011-01-30T23:59:00.096-06:00

by Jennifer L. Holm,
read by Becca Battoe

This book was just named a 2011 Newbery Honor book. Turtle is an eleven-year-old girl whose single mother Sadiebelle has just been hired as a live-in housekeeper by a woman who doesn't like children. It's June 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, and Turtle is sent from New Jersey to her mother's hometown on Key West, Florida, to live with her maternal aunt Minnie, uncle Vernon, and three boy cousins she's never met.

Turtle and the "Diaper Gang" - her cousins and their playmates, who run a babysittting service and have nicknames like Beans and Pork Chop - have a mostly typical Keys summer, catching sponges, and eating alligator pears (avocados) and ice cream with unusual flavors like sour sop. There's also the excitement of pirate treasure and a hurricane.

It's also a story of family-- not only Turtle's relationships with her aunt and cousins, but with the grandmother she didn't know she had, as well as her mother. There's a fitting quote on page 17:

Folks have always told me that I look like Mama. Our eyes are different, though. I think the color of a person's eyes says a lot about them. Mama has soft blue eyes and all she sees are kittens and roses. My eyes are gray as soot, and I see things for what they are.

Indeed, Turtle's trusting mother is often taken advantage of by men. Turtle's father is someone on the island who didn't marry her mother, and Turtle wonders during the summer just who that might be.

In an author's note at the end of the book, Holm explains that the book was inspired by her great-grandmother "who emigrated with her family from the Bahamas to Key West in the late 1800s." (Holm's other Newbery Honor books, Our Only May Amelia and Penny from Heaven, were similarly inspired by her great aunt and by her Italian-American family respectively.) This results in a real slice-of-life novel that accurately portrays some of the unique aspects of being a "Conch" (pronounced "konk"), a native or resident of the Florida Keys. An example is cut-ups, a sort-of BYO-fruit salad, described on page 85 as follows:

After we finish swimming, we have a cut-up. A cut-up is something these Conch kids do every chance they get. Each kid brings whatever they can find lying around or hanging on a tree–sugar apple, banana, mango, pineapple, alligator pear, guava, cooed potatoes, and even raw onions. They cut it all up and season it with Old Sour which is made from key lime juice, salt and hot peppers. Then they pass it around with a fork, and everyone takes a bite. It’s the strangest fruit salad I’ve ever had, but it’s tasty.

Holm includes relevant photos in the author's note, which is followed by a list of resources and web sites.

On the audiobook, actress Becca Battoe's youthful voice is perfect for Turtle, who tells her own story. While I think the cover of the book and audiobook is very pretty, it might be off-putting to boys--which would be a shame, since Turtle is quite the tomboy and not at all a typical girl (she hates babies and can't stand Shirley Temple, but loves comic strips like Terry and the Pirates). I think this book would appeal to kids around Turtle's age (11).

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library. A hardbound copy for reference was borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

197 (2011 #2). Stranger Here Below

2011-01-29T22:57:00.000-06:00

by Joyce Hinnefeld

Stranger Here Below is an unusual book that centers on five women: Amazing Grace "Maze" Jansen and Mary Elizabeth "M. E." Cox, roommates at Berea College in Kentucky in the early 1960s; their mothers Visitor "Vista" Combs Jansen and Sarah Henry Cox, and Shaker Sister Georgia, Georginea Fenley Ward, a former professor at Berea, now living at nearby Pleasant Hill.

Hinnefeld's narrative moves from character to character, back in forth in time (spanning 1872 to 1968) and location (mostly Kentucky but some in Chicago and New York and even Paris). It can be a little hard to follow at times, but the table of contents helps. Racial issues of the eras (M.E. and Sarah are black, as was Georginea's boyfriend) and resistance to the Vietnam War play a part in the story. Music is important, too: the classics M. E. plays on the piano, the dances Maze attends, the old hymns both girls sing together and with Georgia. The book's title comes from an old hymn, "The Pilgirm's Song," in The Southern Harmony by William Walker.

Mostly, though, it's the story of the interrelationships of these five women. Maze and M. E. in particular are very well developed. Hinnefeld's writing is descriptive and evocative.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[I won a hardbound copy of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, with the expectation that I would write a review which is also published on their site. The book will be donated to the library.]

196 (2011 #1). Corporation Sole

2011-01-23T20:46:00.000-06:00

by Edward R. Kantowicz

From the title, this sounds like it might be a legal treatise, but it's not. The subtitle is "Cardinal Mundelein and Chicago Catholicism," and it's really a biography of the former and history of the latter during the years George Mundelein served as archbishop of that archdiocese (February 1916 - October 1939).

I borrowed this book in the midst of research I was doing on a great-grandfather, because he is mentioned on two pages. I ended up reading the entire book, because it was so interesting and easy to read. Of particular note was a chapter called "Ethnic Tangle," describing the fascinating mix of typical "territorial" parishes organized on a geographic basis, and the existence at that time of numerous "national" parishes for non-English-speaking ethnic groups. For example, in one Chicago South Side neighborhood "roughly two miles long by a mile and a half wide, four territorial parishes staked out the corners of the neighborhood and served the English-speaking (largely Irish) Catholics. But this compact neighborhood also contained three Polish, two Italian, one Lithuanian, one Croatian, one Bohemian, and one German church as well."

I was especially grateful for the author's 47 pages of endnotes (after 241 pages of text), which led me to additional resources about my great-grandfather. There's also a seven-page index, a number of tables and maps, and a chronology.

© Amanda Pape - 2011

[This book was borrowed through interlibrary loan and has been returned.]

195 (2010 #60). Daughter of Fortune

2010-12-31T19:57:00.060-06:00

by Isabel Allende
read by Blair Brown

This was a re-read of my Washington book club's selection from 2001-2002. This time I listened to the audiobook, read by actress Blair Brown (who narrates all of Allende's audiobooks quite well). Eliza Sommers, the main character, is left as an infant on the doorstep of the wealthy English Sommers family, spinster Rose and her unmarried brother Jeremy, in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1832. She later falls in love with Joaquin Andieta, a clerk in Jeremy's business, and follows him after he leaves Chile for the California Gold Rush in 1849.

She stows away on a ship whose Chinese cook is Tao Chi'en, who also happens to be a doctor who saves her life and becomes her best friend. When they reach California, Joaquin doesn't know Eliza was coming, of course, so in the rest of the book she's trying to catch up with him. She disguises herself as a boy and pretends to be Joaquin's brother, Elias. In her quest she meets many interesting characters, even spending some time with a traveling brothel.

The book moves rather slowly at first, as Allende develops her characters, and ends rather abruptly. Portrait in Sepia is a sort of sequel that answers some of the questions this ending leaves us. I thought it was interesting that Allende implies that Andieta might have become the infamous Joaquin Murieta - who inspired the character of Zorro. Allende later gave her interpretation of the Zorro legend in her 2005 fictional biography Zorro.

Allende is Chilean by birth and now lives in California, and uses her knowledge of the history of both places to advantage here. The character development is excellent; I really cared about Eliza and especially Tao Chi'en (and missed him when he wasn't with Eliza). While many don't think this book is as good as some of Allende's others, such as The House of the Spirits, I enjoyed it enough to read it twice.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

194 (2010 #59). The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

2010-12-31T10:35:00.005-06:00

by Alexander McCall Smith,
read by Lisette Lecat

I listened to this book back in June for an online book discussion. I'd heard a lot about this series, but I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this book.

In Botswana in south Africa, Mma (pronounced "mah" and meaning mother or Mrs. in Setswana, the language of Botswana) Precious Ramotswe decides she wants to be a detective. She mostly takes on smaller cases, such as ones involving a con man pretending to be a long-lost father, twin doctors (one degreed, one not), cheating husbands, and a stolen Mercedes, solving them with hunches, intuition, creativity, and common sense. The cases are realistic and could be boring, but the author uses humor to carry the plot along. The vignette structure and slow, easy-going pace of the novel made it easy to pick up and put down the book as needed.

I liked Mma Ramotswe and could relate to her. She's described as "traditionally built," she suffered from an awful first husband and was reluctant to try again, she's resourceful both in her private life and in her business, she tries to help others but stands up for herself. She is fiercely independent and practical. She is also very honest but believes lies are sometimes justified. She doesn't like people who are bullies or otherwise abuse their positions and/or power. She is also quite fearless--except when it comes to snakes. The tension she has with traditional African society is very believable, maybe one of the most believable elements of the book. (You don't have to love, or even approve of, everything in your society in order to love the society as a whole.) I liked her independence, and her values. She has a unique voice which carried the novel well.

The one "big" case that provides the overall tension in the book concerns a boy kidnapped by a witch doctor. However, I found this story to be the weakest and least believable in the book. Also jarring was a personal decision Precious makes at the end of the book, that seems out of character for her. I didn't like this book well enough to be compelled to read the rest of the series, yet I would choose another Precious book over many other series books if I needed a quick, easy read.

Alexander McCall Smith is a white Scotsman who is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now Zimbabwe, taught law at the University of Botswana, and written a book on criminal law in Botswana. Narrator Lisette Lecat is a native of South Africa, who lived in Spain, France, and England where she worked as an actress, voiceover artist, journalist and translator. She now lives in the USA, narrates audiobooks and writes plays. She is especially good at characterization and accents in this book, and gave me a good feel for the south African setting.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

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

193 (2010 #58). Ignatius Rising

2010-12-31T06:15:00.005-06:00

by Rene Pol Nevils & Deborah George Hardy

Subtitled "The Life of John Kennedy Toole," I read this book to learn more about the author of A Confederacy of Dunces. The authors have produced a thorough biography of John Kennedy Toole, with 24 photographs and reproductions of a cartoon by Toole and numerous letters to or from him or his narcissistic mother, Thelma, as well as correspondence by others.

One can see some parallels between Toole and Ignatius J. Reilly, the main character of his book. It's rathereerie how Toole became more like Ignatius, after writing the book in the early 60s, before his suicide in 1969 at age 32. The authors speculate that Toole may have been a closet homosexual, and imply this, plus financial difficulties, plus the rejection of his book, may have led to mental illness. His overbearing mother (whose perseverance in getting his book published posthumously was both annoying and admirable) and weak father probably didn't help.

The most fascinating part of the book are the letters between Toole and Robert Gottlieb of Simon and Schuster, the first (and only) publisher where Toole submitted his manuscript. In a long letter to Gottlieb after the latter's initial rejection (with encouragement) of the book, Toole says (on page 138), "The book is not autobiography; neither is it altogether invention. . . . I am not in the book; I've never pretended to be. But I am writing about things that I know, and in recounting these, it's difficult not to feel them."

Based on the seven pages of "Notes on Sources" at the end of their book, it appears Nevils and Hardy did a lot of research. The numerous interviews they did as well as the photographs and correspondence included in the book help bring Toole to life. I would have liked to see a somewhat more scholarly approach, with footnotes/endnotes (to better see where and how the authors draw some of their conclusions), a bibliography, an index, and a table of contents.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

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

192 (2010 #57). A Confederacy of Dunces

2010-12-31T00:01:00.010-06:00

by John Kennedy Toole,
read by Barrett Whitener

I chose this audiobook because my book club back in Washington was reading and discussing the book. I'd heard the backstory - the book was rejected by publishers, the author committed suicide in 1939 at age 32, and his mother pushed relentlessly to get the book published, which happened in 1980, and it then won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.

Set in New Orleans in an undefined time period (probably the early 1960s, when Toole wrote the book), the story revolves around the amusing adventures of 30-year-old Ignatius Jacques Reilly, who is overeducated and underemployed, as he tries to find (and keep) a job (but work as little as possible). One gets a feel for what Ignatius is like from the first two paragraph in the book:

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D. H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noted, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly. The hunting cap prevented head colds. The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free locomotion. Their pleats and nooks contained pockets of warm, stale air that soothed Ignatius. The plaid flannel shirt made a jacket unnecessary while the muffler guarded exposed Reilly skin between earflap and collar. The outfit was acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life.

Read by professional audiobook narrator and public speaking instructor Barrett Whitener, it comes to life with the distinct voices he creates for each of the memorable characters. Among them are Ignatius' sort-of girlfriend Myrna "the minx" Minkoff; his widowed mother Irene, her friend Santa Battaglia and the latter's nephew Patrolman Mancuso (who tries to arrest Ignatius at the beginning of the book), and her suiter Claude Robicheaux; Gus Levy, his wife, and the employees of Levy Pants, the elderly Miss Trixie and Gonzalez the office manager (Miss Trixie always calls him Gomez); and the employees of the Night of Joy nightclub, the evil owner Lana Lee, Darlene the stripper, and most especially, Burma Jones, the black janitor. Whitener is especially outstanding with Jones' jive vernacular and Ignatius' bass bellowing.

The book is full of funny subplots that all tie together at the end in an unexpected way. Recommended.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and a hardbound copy for reference were borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

191 (2010 #56). Amos Fortune: Free Man

2010-12-28T00:39:00.004-06:00

by Elizabeth Yates,
read by Ray Childs

This book won the Newbery Medal in 1951. Mistakenly classified as nonfiction, it is really a biographical novel or, more accurately, historical fiction. Amos Fortune (c. 1710 - 1801) was a real person, but very little is known of his life.

Indeed, in an interview in The Writer in March 1998, author Elizabeth Yates said she was inspired "when I was standing by the stone that marked the grave of Amos Fortune in the old cemetery in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Reading the eloquent though brief words about a man whose life spanned from Africa in 1715 to America in 1801, I wanted to know more, to find the story within those lines."

About all that was available was Fortune's homestead (now private property), a beaker purchased by the local church with a bequest from his will, and some documents at the Jaffrey Public Library, such as his will (written and signed in 1801), some receipts (for loans, medical services, and purchases, including those that bought the freedom of two wives), two letters of apprenticeship of young men to Amos the tanner, and an unsigned letter of manumission for Amos, written by Ichabod Richardson in 1763. Yates adds another owner and another wife for Amos, as well as a king father and lame sister in Africa, but there is no evidence for any of these.

This book wasn't thrilling, but it wasn't boring either. It provided insights into life in colonial New England. Descriptions of the processes of bark tanning and the vendue of the poor were particularly interesting - the latter was something I'd never heard of before. The audiobook narrator Ray Childs' bass was perfect for Amos Fortune, but not so good for the female voices.

This book has received a lot of criticism, particularly since the early 1970s, for being racist and/or white-supremacist, primarily because Amos is so accepting of his situation. You can read more about this in my post on the book at the Newbery Project. I agree with critics who feel that books with other viewpoints about slavery should be presented along with this book. Suggestions include Paula Fox's The Slave Dancer, (a Newbery winner in 1974), The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Christopher Paul Curtis' Elijah of Buxton (a Newbery Honor Book in 2008), and Julius Lester's To Be A Slave (a Newbery Honor Book in 1969).

In the same 1998 interview mentioned above, Yates tells of a question from a group of fourth-graders:

"Have you ever regretted anything you've written?" came the next question. Again, I sent my mind back over the years and their books. The answer was at hand, and it was No, for I have had a rule with myself that nothing ever leaves my desk unless it is the best I can do at the time with the material I have. Then I go back to Amos Fortune as an example.

The idea that took hold of me as I stood by that stone in the old churchyard and that became the book Amos Fortune, Free Man was written in 1949 and published a year later. All the pertinent, reliable material that I could find went into the book and became the story. It could not be a biography but an account of a man's life, with facts assured and some imaginative forays based on the temper of the times. The research, the writing, was done long before the Civil Rights upheavals of the 60's. I might today write a very different story, but that was then.

It would be quite interesting to read a different version of Amos Fortune's story, one that might address some of the concerns of the critics.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and a hardbound copy for reference were borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

190 (2010 #55). A Cup of Friendship

2010-12-28T00:31:00.014-06:00

by Deborah Rodriguez

This is Rodriguez' second book, her first of fiction and the first without a co-writer. I listened to her memoir, Kabul Beauty School, about three years ago, and found A Cup of Friendship to be very similar.

As with the memoir, I wasn't terribly impressed with this book. In the acknowledgments, Rodriguez describes herself as "a storyteller first, a writer only later." I'm not sure that she's truly made that transition yet. While the stories in this book are chick-lit/gossip-girl/soap-opera interesting, the character development is weak, the plot is thin and somewhat predictable, and switching narrating viewpoints frequently doesn't help. The characters are stereotypes and the dialogue in particular feels forced. While the setting descriptions are good and one gets a feeling for the culture of Kabul and Afghanistan, it still felt very much like the superficial view of an outsider.

The main character is Sunny, an American ex-pat in Kabul who has opened a coffee shop (just as Rodriguez did). She has various friends and employees, American, British, and Afghan, most with their own stories. The women are all strong and unconventional, with behavior that does not always seem appropriate for a country in as much turmoil as Afghanistan. Particularly annoying was Candace, the rich American who leaves her diplomat husband for an affair with a (predictably terrorist) Afghan. She throws money and sweet talk around to get her way, but is too clueless to figure out what is going on with her lover.

I felt the title was contrived, perhaps even to draw recognition from the success of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea (which I also wasn't too crazy about). The book was a light, easy read, but even with the attempts to shed light on the problems of Afghan women today, great literature it's not.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[I won this advance reader edition from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, with the expectation that I would write a review which is also published on their site. The book will be passed on to someone else to read and hopefully review.]

189 (2010 #54). The Lady in the Tower

2010-12-28T00:30:00.042-06:00

by Alison Weir,
read by Judith Boyd

I picked up this book at the local public library because I've enjoyed Alison Weir's other forays into fiction. It turns out this book had been misclassified by the library as fiction - it's really a partial biography - but I found it pretty easy to follow even in audiobook format.

Subtitled "The Fall of Anne Boleyn," the book concentrates on that four-month period at the end of her life in 1536. In her preface, Weir states that the book "is based largely on original sources, and that the conclusions in it are my own, sometimes reached objectively after reading the various theories" of what led to Anne's fall. Weir notes that she "questioned all my preconceptions and assumptions, and sometimes had to revise them, which of course exposes errors in my own previous books," (two on Henry VIII that discussed Anne at length).

British actress Judith Boyd does a wonderful job making Weir's well-written nonfiction prose even more lively and interesting. Nevertheless, I'd recommend a print copy of the book in addition to or instead of the audiobook, to have access to Weir's preface, the many illustrations (most color plates), genealogical tables, and her notes on (and evaluations of) some of her sources, as well as a select bibliography, complete end notes and references, and the index.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and hardbound copy were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

188 (2010 #53). The Great Migration: Journey to the North

2010-12-28T00:29:00.001-06:00

by Eloise Greenfield;
illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist

This picture book of poetry is about the movement of African Americans out of the South between 1915 and 1929. Author and poet Eloise Greenfield, who experienced the Great Migration as a baby in 1929, tells the story in five parts of free-verse poems ranging from few lines to a few pages each. Jan Spivey Gilchrist uses mixed media collages to illustrate the poems, incorporating historic newspaper clippings and old photographs into her original drawings and paintings.

The jacket describes the book as being for ages 3-8. However, I feel the book is more appropriate for a slightly older age group, perhaps 5-10, particularly as free verse as well as some of the illustrations are rather complex. A short bibliography at the end of the book extends its range to even older students.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This hardbound book was received from the publisher (Amistad, a division of HarperCollins) for review as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It will be donated to the Curriculum Collection at the Dick Smith Library of Tarleton State University.]

187 (2010 #52). Remarkable Creatures

2010-12-14T00:01:00.003-06:00

by Tracy Chevalier,
read by Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons

I think I've discovered a new historical fiction novelist that I'm going to love. I read Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring some time ago (must re-read that), so when I saw this audiobook on the shelf at the local public library, I had to give it a try.

Chevalier has built a novel around the unlikely friendship of two real people, Mary Anning (1799-1847) and Elizabeth Philpot (1779-1857), both fossil hunters at Lyme Regis in England at the turn of the 19th century. I'd heard of Anning, thanks to a children's book, but not of Philpot. These fascinating women, particularly Anning, discovered many of the fossils that other scientists took credit for. It was interesting to read how their contributions to science were discounted simply because of their sex. There are also insights into the growing controversy between science and religion that fossil discoveries set off.

Charlotte Parry reads Mary with a Cockney accent, reflecting Anning's lower class origins, while Lyons is the proper and cultured Elizabeth. The print version of the book ends with some historical notes, as does the audiobook, but also adds acknowledgments and suggested further reading,

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and hardbound copy were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

186 (2010 #51). The Runaway Quilt

2010-12-13T11:50:00.001-06:00

by Jennifer Chiaverini,
read by Christina Moore

Yet another book in the Elm Creek Quilts series, this one was rather interesting, as it explored the fascinating question of whether or not stationmasters of the Underground Railroad used quilts to signal to fugitive slaves. In an author's note at the end of the book, Chiaverini says,

The debate about the role of quilts as signals on the Underground Railroad is ongoing [the book was published in 2002], with the oral tradition often at odds with documented historical fact. In this novel, I have tried to remain faithful to the historical record while also presenting a plausible explanation for the evolution of the legend.

Since Chiaverini's book, it appears the argument has tilted more towards the side of legend than truth; nevertheless, it makes a good basis for the story, and the narrative is compelling enough. Sylvia Bergstrom Compson finds three quilts and a memoir written by her great grandfather's spinster sister, Gerda Bergstrom, in the attic of Elm Creek Manor. The memoir tells of the founding of the farm in 1856 and how Gerda, brother Hans, and his wife Anneke eventually become involved in the Underground Railroad movement, taking in a pregnant runaway slave, Joanna, before the Civil War.

The story was exciting and kept me turning the pages. Of course Sylvia couldn't read Gerda's memoir straight through in one sitting and get all the answers, as that would have destroyed the novel, although reading it straight through at once is certainly what I would have done.

This book also poses some questions for genealogists about how you might react to surprising and perhaps unwelcome information about your ancestors.

Chiaverini has since written two books with characters from this novel. The Lost Quilter takes up the story of Joanna, while The Union Quilters (to be published in February 2011) continues the tale of the Bergstrom ancestors and others in their Pennsylvania community during the Civil War. More for me to listen to or read sometime.

Christina Moore, as usual, does a great job with the narration, providing recognizable variations in voice for different characters. Recommended as an easy but intriguing "read."

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and hardbound copy were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

185 (2010 #50). On Agate Hill

2010-11-29T23:25:00.005-06:00

by Lee Smith,
read by Danielle Ferland, Kate Forbes, Katie Firth, Linda Stephens, Ed Sala, and Tom Stechschulte

This book was the November selection for my local book club. It's historical fiction, set in the South, covering a post-Civil War period running from May1872 to July 1927. The book centers on Molly Petree, an orphan who is thirteen years old when the book begins. Much of the story is told from Molly's viewpoint, in the form of her diary and letters she writes to a childhood friend, Mary White. Other narrators of Molly's story include a favorite teacher, Agnes Rutherford; Agnes' sister, the mean schoolmistress Mariah Snow; B.J. Jarvis, Molly's husband's cousin; and Simon Black, Molly's benefactor. Most of these also speak through letters and journal entries, but B.J.'s tale is told in court testimony.

Tying these narrators together is a 2006 ditzy student named Tuscany Miller, who has supposedly found these documents at Agate Hill plantation, which her (weird) family has purchased to turn into a bed-and-breakfast. Tuscany is hoping that turning in all the stuff she finds will satisfy her "documentary studies program" thesis requirements. As if. This stupid storyline is thankfully brief and completely unnecessary.

Molly's story is interesting for the glimpses it gives into life in the South in the mid-1870s on a struggling plantation in North Carolina and at an all-girls school in Virginia, as well as in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in the years following, and ultimately back to the ruined plantation in the early 1900s. Smith's acknowledgments at the end of the book list an impressive bibliography and other readings.

Unfortunately, I did not find Molly or most of the people around her to be particularly likable characters (the exception being Agnes). There was too much unnecessary detail about her childhood (and not enough about the events of that time that really mattered), and I found the premise of a thirteen-year-old recording such detail in a diary to be unrealistic. I had a hard time getting through this first third of the book.

The book gets a little better after that, although Mariah's actions are puzzling, and Molly makes a number of poor choices and is beset with tragedy. If I'd had to read the book in print, I'm not sure I would have been able to finish it. The audiobook made it much easier, with six voices: Danielle Ferland (Tuscany Miller), Kate Forbes (Molly Petree), Katie Firth (Agnes Rutherford), Linda Stephens (Mariah Snow), Ed Sala (BJ Jarvis), and Tom Stechschulte (Simon Black). Forbes, Firth, and Stephens are particularly good, with the first two having just the right amount of Southern accent, and Stephens effectively conveying the instability of Mariah. Ferland is perfect at the ditzy Tuscany.

Each of the 15 discs begins and ends with folk music by Alice Gerrard, whose song "Agate Hill" inspired Lee Smith to write the novel. Smith wrote the words to the ballad "Molly and the Traveling Man," which Gerrard set to music. While I liked the instrumentals, I did not particularly care for Gerrard's singing voice.

All in all, I'm glad I read this book, but I'm not sure I'd want to read any more of Lee Smith's works.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and a print copy of the book were borrowed and returned through interlibrary loan.]

184 (2010 #49). The Red Queen

2010-11-27T21:28:00.001-06:00

by Philippa Gregory,
read by Bianca Amato and Graeme Malcolm

This is the second book in the Cousins War series, and is about Margaret Beaufort, from spring 1453, when Margaret is ten, to August 1485, when her son Henry VII won the Battle of Bosworth Field to become King of England. Margaret is the heiress of the House of Lancaster, whose emblem was the red rose; thus the title. The book is about Margaret's efforts to put her son on the throne and become Queen Mother at least.

Gregory paints a picture of a zealously pious woman who is not above sin when it is to her or her son's advantage--and who manages to justify whatever she does as "God's will." The book opens with an amusing scene of Margaret dreaming she is Joan of Arc, and there are many references to that saint throughout the book. She also looks forward to signing her name as "Margaret R.," Margaret Regina, regina being the Latin word for queen.

Margaret often refers (usually with disdain) to commoner Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV of the House of York (the white roses). It's interesting to compare Margaret's perception of Elizabeth with the presentation of the latter in The White Queen, and vice versa - see how Margaret is presented in this book as compared to Elizabeth's perception of her in the other book.

Most of the story is told in first-person by Margaret, voiced by British actress and audiobook veteran Bianca Amato, who gives Margaret the right air of haughtiness. Scottish actor Graeme Malcolm reads the third-person accounts of battle scenes.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and hardbound copy were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

183 (2010 #48). Sarah's Key

2010-11-26T11:33:00.001-06:00

by Tatiana de Rosnay

I decided to read this book because it made the Top Ten Discussion Books list of Reading Group Guides, and it was the only book on the list I hadn't read. I think it's over-hyped.

The title character is Sarah Starzynski, who is ten years old in 1942. Her Jewish family is living in Paris, and they are arrested along with many others in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. This sorry piece of little-known French history is researched by Julia Jarmond Tézac in 2002, for the 60th anniversary of the Roundup. Julia is an American living in Paris, writing for an English language magazine there, and married to a Frenchman. Her magazine assigns her to write about the Roundup. In the process, she learns about a connection between Sarah and her French family.

The first half of the book alternates between 1942 and the horrors of Sarah's story, and Julia in 2002 learning about the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup and its aftermath . This part of the book is riveting. But then, halfway through the book, Sarah mostly disappears, and the story becomes almost all Julia. The parts where she is researching what happened to Sarah are fine, but the rest of Julia's life is a soap opera, and it detracts from Sarah's story. The ending is a little trite.

I would still recommend the book, because once again, I've learned through historical fiction more about an incident in history that I knew little (in this case, nothing) about. However, I wish the author had continued to intertwine Sarah's and Julia's stories, showing rather than telling us what happened to Sarah after 1942, and left out the "chick lit" parts of Julia's life. The paperback copy of the book I read had an excellent section with historical perspective and other recommended reading.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

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

182 (2010 #47). To Account for Murder

2010-11-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

by William C. Whitbeck

This bound galley was sent to me by the publisher, Permanent Press. The author is, as of this writing, a judge on the Michigan State Court of Appeals, who, according to Ron Dzwonkowski of the January 10, 2010, Detroit Free Press, "asked that publication of his novel be delayed until mid-November because he's up for re-election this year and didn't want it to be a factor in his campaign. He said there will be just minimal promotion of the book, standard for a new, unknown author in tight economic times."

The book is based on a true story, that of Michigan State Senator Warren Hooper, who was shot in January 1945 shortly before he was going to implicate others with a grand jury. While two members of the infamous Purple Gang were convicted of conspiring to kill Hooper, no one was ever convicted for pulling the trigger.

Whitbeck has fictionalized this story and come up with a murderer. The main character is Charlie Cahill, a lawyer who lost an arm in World War II, telling the story to his child Frankie in 1996, looking back 50+ years to late 1945 and early 1946, highlighting the corruption of the criminals, lawyers, judges, and elected officials alike. I'm not much for true crime or murder mysteries, but this book held my interest. The only problem I had was keeping track of all the characters, many of who had last names beginning with the letter S. One of those is Hubbell Street, the murder prosecutor, modeled on the real-life Michigan corruption special prosecutor and later-governor Kim Sigler.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This advanced reader edition was sent to me by the publisher and will be passed on to someone else.]

181 (2010 #46). Peony in Love

2010-10-30T22:11:00.002-05:00

by Lisa See,
read by Jodi Long

I've had the paperback copy of this book sitting on my bookshelves for over two years, but it wasn't until I needed a short (it's abridged) audiobook to listen to between two month's book club selections that I decided to pick this one up.

Turned out to be a good selection for October, too. An online group in whose discussions I often participate usually tries to pick something appropriate (horror or supernatural or both) for this month, and this book would have fit the bill, for the title character spends more than half of it as a "hungry ghost."

Set in 17th century China, almost-sixteen Peony is obsessed with The Peony Pavilion, an opera where the female protagonist, a lovesick girl, dies but is brought back to life by her lover. Soon Peony finds her life paralleling that of the opera. What makes this book really interesting is the way Lisa See incorporates the true story of "The Three Wives Commentary" on the opera (the first books written and published by women anywhere in the world) as the framework for her narrative. An author's note provides the details.

Besides the fascinating research behind it, this historical fantasy also has a lot to say about love - romantic love and mother love- and contains some beautiful poetry:

In spring, moved to passion; in autumn, only regret.

The trees are bare.
In the distance, the honks of mourning geese.
If only my tears of blood could dye red the blossoms of the plum tree.
But I will never make it to spring.
My heart is empty and my life has no value anymore.
Each moment a thousand tears.

The audiobook was an author-approved abridged version read by Asian-American actress Jodi Long. A very slight lisp became endearing in the voice of Peony, and her renditions of other, particularly older, Chinese women were quite amusing. I'm looking forward to "re-reading" my paperback copy sometime for all the little details the abridgment left out.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my local public library. My paperback copy of the book was sent to me by the Random House Readers' Circle after registering my book club with them.]

180 (2010 #45). The Story of Our Club

2010-10-23T20:38:00.000-05:00

by Felix B. Streyckmans

After posting a photo in my family history blog of my dad and his two older siblings at Dairymen's Country Club in Wisconsin, I decided to learn a little more about this place that has such good memories for my dad, his siblings, and some of my cousins.

I found this book via WorldCat and requested it through interlibrary loan. Subtitled "An Interpretive History of Dairymen's Country Club, Boulder Junction, Wisconsin," the 79-page book is just that. The history covers the purchase of the original acreage in December 1925, to 1968. It also addresses the club's efforts to preserve trees, fish, and other wildlife. It includes some black-and-white photographs, which brought back many memories for my father, as well as some good maps. You can read more about what I learned here.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This book was borrowed from and returned to another library via interlibrary loan.]

179 (2010 #44). The Girls with the Grandmother Faces

2010-10-22T23:59:00.001-05:00

by Frances Weaver

Subtitled "A Celebration of Life's Potential for Those over 55," this book was the selection for my local book club this month. I had a little trouble relating to the book, because, unlike the author, I'm (a) not over 55, (b) not widowed or single, and (c) not as well off (the author was the widow of a surgeon and is able to maintain two homes in different parts of the country, and travel extensively). In fact, the book was self-published, which tells you something right there.

Nevertheless, this book engendered a good discussion among the members of the club (12 present at the last meeting) who had read the book. At 53, I was the youngest there, so I mostly kept quiet and listened. Many of our members found inspiration in Frances Weaver's advice or confirmation for their own choices to live life to its fullest. We all agreed that we liked the two photographs (on the cover of the edition pictured and others, on the frontispiece in other editions) of the author and her three sisters as little girls and in the same pose as mature women.

I do agree with the author that "boredom is ninety-nine percent self-inflicted," and results from being "too tired or too lonely to get out of the house." I wish I could get that message across to my partner, age 69 and retired for almost 18 years now. Hmmm....if the book wasn't an interlibrary loan, I'd give it to him to read!

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This book was borrowed from and returned to another library via interlibrary loan.]

178 (2010 #43). The White Queen

2010-10-16T22:26:00.002-05:00

by Philippa Gregory,
read by Susan Lyons

Prolific historical fiction writer Gregory has started a new series called "The Cousins' War," about the Plantagenets and set during the Wars of the Roses. The White Queen here is commoner Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of Edward IV of the House of York (the white roses). Elizabeth is supposedly a descendant of water goddess Melusina through her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg/Burgundy, and the two of them do a little cursing and conjuring throughout the book to fulfill the accusations of witchcraft. The story covers the period from when Elizabeth first meets and marries Edward in spring 1464, to April 1485, two years after his death.

As is the case with all of Gregory's historical fiction (I read all six books set in the Tudor era), the book is based mostly in fact, with Gregory speculating where the historical record is missing or unclear. She comes up with an interesting theory concerning the Princes in the Tower (Elizabeth and Edward's two sons held prisoner by Edward's brother Richard III). I did not know a lot about this era in English history, so once again Gregory's books have had the positive effect of interesting me enough to read other sources (many are listed in the bibliography in the print version) to learn more.

However, the book does suffer from wordiness - it could be shorter by about 100 of its 408 pages with the elimination of unnecessary repetitions. Gregory is also plagued by the overuse of certain words - it seemed like every chapter was full of "She nods." "He shrugs." This repetition is especially annoying in the audiobook, although Australian actress Susan Lyons does an excellent job as Elizabeth, who narrates most of the story. The audiobook includes Gregory's afterword explaining what is real and what is fiction, but lacks the bibliography, map, and pedigree chart in the print version.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook and hardbound copy were borrowed from and returned to my local public library.]

Books I Could Not Finish

2010-10-09T23:17:00.000-05:00

With less than three months left in this year, here are three books I started in 2010 and did/will not finish:

The Wishing Trees by John Shors - I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Ian takes his ten-year-old daughter Mattie on a trip to various Asian countries to honor the wish of his dead wife, Kate. I gave this book a good 100+ pages but just could not go on. Too sad and sappy and repetitive (visit country, meet some unfortunates, help them, deal with grief). Ian's Australian accent got to be annoying.

How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu - I was sent this book from the publisher. I'm more than halfway through it (read 184 pages), but it just does not grab me. The four main characters are Jonas, his Ethiopian immigrant parents Mariam and Yosef, and Jonas' wife Angela. There are also four intertwined stories: Jonas' and Angela's rocky relationship, Yosef's exodus to America; Yosef's and Mariam's road trip through the Midwest; and Jonas' present-day retracing of that trip. I found them hard to follow, especially with Jonas' frequent stretching of the truth. It got to the point where I did not want to try any more.

Into the Path of Gods by Kathleen Cunningham Guler - I obtained this book directly from the author in a LibraryThing Member Giveaway. She had 150 copies to give away of this older book, which should have told me something right there. The description, "a blend of Dark Age Britain’s history, its Celtic roots and the Arthurian legend," led me to believe it might interest me. I've picked it up and read a bit numerous times since receiving it last December, and have read well over half the book, but it has long stretches where nothing happens. The book is also full of spelling and grammar errors, and words that are invented or used improperly, as well as historical inaccuracies. The premise of the book (almost a prequel to Arthurian legends) is good, and I like the inclusion of a pronunciation guide and map at the beginning, but it wasn't enough to make up for the poor writing and plodding plot.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[The Wishing Trees and Into the Path of Gods have been given to the local Friends of the Library for their book sale. How to Read the Air, as it is an advance copy, will be passed on to someone else.]

177 (2010 #42). The Aloha Quilt

2010-10-05T21:36:00.003-05:00

by Jennifer Chiaverini,
read by Christina Moore

This is book number 16 in the Elm Creek Quilts series, many of which I've read (and a few I've reviewed). This one, obviously, is set in Hawaii. Bonnie, one of the founders of Elm Creek Quilt Camp, has been invited by her best friend Claire to come to Hawaii to help set up a quilt camp there. Bonnie, having recently experienced the failure of both her quilt store and her marriage in Pennsylvania, agrees to come for six months as a consultant to help Claire get the quilt camp going.

There is some fascinating information about Hawaiian-style quilting, and the quilt made by Hawaiian Queen Lili‘uokalani during her imprisonment at 'Iolani Palace in Honolulu. Most of the story takes place on Maui, particularly in Lahaina, so some of the sights in and around there are woven into the narrative. I appreciate this after going to Hawaii in May and visiting some of the places mentioned in the story.

Sometimes Bonnie is rather intolerant in the story, particularly when it comes to Claire's mistakes. However, I had a LOT of empathy for Bonnie when it came to her soon-to-be-ex-husband Craig. His behavior reminded me of my own ex-husband, and one phone conversation the two of them had left me shaking and angry; it was SO real for me. I wanted to keep listening the audiobook, beyond the 45-minute stretches of my commute, just to find out what happens in that situation. There are also a couple of unresolved scenarios by the end of this book that I'm sure will be addressed in future books in this series.

So far I've enjoyed all of the Elm Creek Quilts novels I've read or listened to - Christina Moore does an outstanding job giving each character a little different nuance with her voice.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

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

176 (2010 #41). The Swan Thieves

2010-09-20T00:01:00.003-05:00

by Elizabeth Kostova,
read by Treat Williams, Anne Heche, Erin Cottrell, Sarah Zimmerman and John Lee

I picked up this audiobook for the library's collection because it got a lot of good press, due to Kostova's breakout hit The Historian (which is sitting on my TBR pile, languishing due to its size and subject matter of vampires). As an audiobook, The Swan Thieves is quite good--as a story, only so-so.

A famous painter named Robert Oliver lunges with a knife at a painting of Leda by the (fictional) Gilbert Thomas at a museum, and is institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital staffed by Andrew Marlow (voiced by Williams), who paints for pleasure. Oliver won't speak, so Marlow resorts to some rather unconventional measures to figure out what is going on - including talking with Robert's ex-wife (Kate, voiced by Heche) and ex-mistress (Mary, voiced by Cottrell), both painters, and traveling to Paris. Robert is obsessed by a woman who turns out to be a (fictional) French Impressionist painter named Beatrice (voiced by Zimmerman) who worked briefly in the 1890s, mentored by her uncle-by-marriage Olivier (voiced by Lee). The modern story (set around 2000) is interspersed with letters exchanged by Beatrice and Olivier and the events in their lives a hundred-plus years earlier.

This book was odd but fascinating. Marlow doesn't behave like any psychiatrist I know (don't want to give away too many spoilers here). The detail about the techniques of art and painting and Impressionism are very interesting, but drag the story down, slowing the plot and adding way more detail than is necessary. Kate talks for a while about her life with Robert and is quite compelling, but then disappears from the story. Mary gives us a little too much information about her life. In many ways, Beatrice and Olivier were the most alluring characters, despite the fake-French accents used by their readers that are rather grating after a while.

I'm not sure if I would have been able to finish this book if I'd been reading the 564-page print version. The audio version, with its variety of voices, kept my interest up through 17 discs. Part of the mystery at the heart of the story was easy to guess, but part of it surprised me, and a medical reason for Robert's becoming obsessed was never made clear. The book begins and ends with a puzzling reference to another painter who is apparently Alfred Sisley, but the canvas he's creating, although similar to one of his works, is also fictional. All in all, this was a good read, but not one I could recommend highly.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]

175 (2010 #40). Near Occasion of Sin

2010-08-27T22:05:00.004-05:00

by Judy Delton

This was another book that caught my eye while manually going through all the PZ7s (fiction) at my university library, looking for picture books and award-winning chapter books I had not already added to our LibraryThing account. I liked the old photo album feel of this wrap-around dust jacket, and the title--a phrase from the Catholic Act of Contrition in use when I was a child--hit home.

This was the only young adult novel by children's author Judy Delton, and I suspect it is somewhat autobiographical, at least for her childhood and youth. Delton was born in 1931, like the main character of this book, Tess, who attends Catholic school (including an all-girls high school and college, as did Delton) and later teaches at one - as did Delton.

Having been brought up Catholic myself, I could relate to some of this book--learning the catechism, First Communion and fasting, going to Confession every week (my least favorite part of Catholicism) and having to make up sins to tell the priest. However, when Tess marries a pen pal she barely knows to avoid being an old maid and "the near occasion of sin" (i.e. the temptation to give in to his pushing for sex), I could not relate. Her husband, Duane, is a mentally-abusive alcoholic (and sexaholic) who has trouble holding down a job and makes obscene phone calls to Tess' friends. I cheered when the pregnant Tess (and of course, according to Duane, being pregnant is Tess' fault) leaves Duane near the end of book and moves back in with her parents. The book ends abruptly with the birth of her daughter and no resolution on what happens to them or to Duane. Makes me wonder if Delton was planning a sequel, but poor sales of this book (published in 1984) squashed those plans.

In an interview with Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Delton said, "In the seventies, there was a lot of popular interest in tracing people's origins, so I decided to write about growing up Catholic in the forties....Because my characters are mostly me, emotionally, they usually go through what I do." (Delton wrote a lot of series books, including her humorous Kitty series on a girl growing up Catholic in the 30s and 40s). A note on the back inside of this book jacket says that in "1971...she found herself the sole support of her four children," implying that her own marriage ended in widowhood or divorce (I do hope her husband was not as awful as Duane).

Tess is more of a contemporary of my mother, as all the action takes place before 1952, and I grew up Catholic mostly post-Vatican II. Despite 12 years of Catholic schooling, I'm a somewhat-lapsed Catholic now, and I had difficulty relating to Tess' obsession with sin. Even with a proliferation of abstinent single young Christians today (who are marrying at what are, to me, appallingly young ages), I don't think this book would be of interest to most young adults nowadays.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

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

174 (2010 #39). Search for the Shadowman

2010-08-27T00:53:00.009-05:00

by Joan Lowery Nixon

I've been working on a project at my university where I am slowly but surely adding books in our children's collection to a LibraryThing database (which makes my job helping 120+ students in the children's literature class this fall that much easier). I came across this one a couple days ago and it caught my eye.

Four-time Edgar Award winner and "half-Texan" Nixon set this mystery for 8-12 year-olds in Texas, and incorporates a historical event and genealogy to boot. Seventh-grader Andy Thomas has to do a family history project for school. His family and that of his best friend J.J. have lived in the (real) town of Hermosa, Texas, for generations, and Andy discovers a black sheep among his ancestors. Talking about this Cole Joseph Bonner upsets and embarrasses Andy's great aunt, particularly around J.J's great-grandmother, but Andy persists in trying to find out just what happened with "Coley Joe."

I loved how Andy uses a box of memorabilia in his great aunt's attic (including a family bible, an old photograph, and an heirloom), e-mail and genealogy bulletin boards (the book was published in 1996), library research (including asking the librarian for help--hooray!), and visits to the local cemetery to help solve the mystery. The Salt War is the real event that provides a setting for part of the story.

I can totally see this book being used for interdisciplinary studies in a 4th to 7th grade classroom, particularly for Texas history required in those two grades. It could also be used by a parent to spark a child's interest in genealogy and/or family history (there's a Bonner family tree at the beginning of the book) and ways to research them. There are also some nice lessons about friendship and respect for elders in the book as well.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

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

173 (2010 #38). The Gendarme

2010-08-23T00:01:00.003-05:00

by Mark T. Mustian

I had to show the wrap-around cover of this book, because it's so gorgeous, and it illustrates something about one of the main characters (look at her eyes). This was an advanced reader edition received from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, so I'm not sure if the hardbound edition to be published September 2 will look the same.

This book is set in both 1990 and 1915. The main character and narrator, Turkish-American Emmett Conn (formerly Ahmet Khan), was born in 1898, and in the latter-day setting, is suffering from a brain tumor. This may explain the vivid dreams he has about 1915 and his time as a guard (a gendarme) during the deportation by forced marches of Armenians from Turkey. His eye is caught by a beautiful deportee who herself has unusual eyes, one dark, one light. He pulls her away from another guard about to rape her one night and is going to rape her himself, but instead ends up becoming her protector. Her name is Araxie.

The story moves back and forth from 1915 to 1990, with Emmett dealing with his family and his medical issues in the later year, while periodically flashing back to 1915, remembering things that he apparently has repressed about Araxie and the events of the time. His narration also provides some fill-in on his life between those two periods.

This book sheds light on the Armenian Genocide, a holocaust that to this day is illegal to speak of in Turkey, and something that many people know nothing about. Out of the 2000 deportees Conn/Kahn is escorting, only 65 actually make it to their destination in Aleppo, Syria. The author retraced one deportation route as part of his research. Mustian also does a fine job illuminating what happens in a state mental hospital, where Emmett is confined after he chokes one of his caregivers, thinking he is someone from his past.

Although the initial premise is a little hard to believe (Ahmet was in a supervisory position over other gendarmes at the age of 17?), and the ending is somewhat vague, I would still recommend this book. The story is compelling.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[I won this advance reader edition from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, with the expectation that I would write a review which is also published on their site. The book will be passed on to someone else to read and hopefully review.]

172 (2010 #37). Shanghai Girls

2010-08-20T22:17:00.007-05:00

by Lisa See

Historical fiction set in Shanghai, China, and California from 1937 to 1957; Lisa See has brought this story of Chinese-American immigrants to life. The narrator, Pearl, age 21, and her younger sister May are "beautiful girls" in Shanghai, "the Paris of Asia," in the 1930s, living a relatively modern life dressing in gorgeous clothes and posing for photographs and paintings used in calendars and other advertisements. The girls live the good life, each thinking that their parents favor the other, as their father has become wealthy in the rickshaw business. Unfortunately, he gambles it all away and sells the girls as brides to Chinese emigrants now in America.

The girls spend one night with their new husbands and are supposed to travel to Hong Kong to meet them later. They deliberately miss their boat and become trapped when the Japanese invade Shanghai. They undergo hardships getting out of China, at Angel Island dealing with the repercussions of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and living in Los Angeles' Chinatown over the next 20 years, into the Second Red Scare.

See has woven these and numerous other historical events and situations (such as paper sons), real places (like China City) and people into the novel, and the research is the novel's strength. So too is the portrayal of sisterhood and the loyalties and jealousies it generates. May gives birth to a daughter (not by her husband) while interred at Angel Island, and Pearl (who did consummate her marriage) agrees to pretend Joy is hers. The book's weakness is its ending - it obviously signals a sequel to come.

I think this book would be a great one for a discussion. I'd expect different opinions on which sister is "better" (my vote is for Pearl, perhaps because I'm also the older sister). The American history and experiences of Chinese immigrants described in the book would also generate a lot of interest.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[I purchased this hardbound copy for $5 at the Hood County, Texas, Friends of the Library book sale, and will be donating it to my university's collection.]

171 (2010 #36). The Angel's Game

2010-08-16T00:01:00.004-05:00

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I was excited to receive this book from a friend, because I had so enjoyed Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. Zafon says when he started working on the latter,

I started toying around with the idea of creating a fictional universe that would be articulated through four interconnected stories in which we would meet some of the same characters at different times in their lives, and see them from different perspectives where many plots and subplots would tie around in knots for the reader to untie. It sounds somewhat pretentious, but my idea was to add a twist to the story and provide the reader with what I hoped would be a stimulating and playful reading experience. Since these books were, in part, about the world of literature, books, reading and language, I thought it would be interesting to use the different novels to explore those themes through different angles and to add new layers to the meaning of the stories.

At first I thought this could be done in one book, but soon I realized it would make Shadow of the Wind a monster novel, and in many ways, destroy the structure I was trying to design for it. I realized I would have to write four different novels. They would be stand-alone stories that could be read in any order. I saw them as a Chinese box of stories with four doors of entry, a labyrinth of fictions that could be explored in many directions, entirely or in parts, and that could provide the reader with an additional layer of enjoyment and play. These novels would have a central axis, the idea of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, set against the backdrop of a highly stylized, gothic and mysterious Barcelona. Since each novel was going to be complex and difficult to write, I decided to take one at a time and see how the experiment evolved on its own in an organic way.

It all sounds very complicated, but it is not. At the end of the day, these are just stories that share a universe, a tone and some central themes and characters. ...One of the fun things about this process was it allowed me to give each book a different personality. Thus, if Shadow of the Wind is the nice, good girl in the family, The Angel’s Game would be the wicked gothic stepsister. [emphasis mine]

That's kind of my feeling in a nutshell. While I found Shadow of the Wind sad but ultimately uplifting, The Angel's Game was confusing and relentlessly dark. The Angel's Game has the earlier setting, just after the first World War. Shadow's protagonist Daniel Sempere's parents are characters in this book, and some other Shadow people make an appearance here. Unfortunately, Fermin or someone equally funny to provide some levity is not among them.

David Martin is the main character here, a writer who sees his former idol get credit for Martin's novel and then wind up with the girl of his dreams as well. Martin is then hired by the mysterious Andreas Corelli to write a book to "create a religion." What follows though is danger and a number of murders, most pointing to Martin. Has he made a deal with the devil?

I didn't really like this book, except for Zafon's descriptions of Barcelona. But, for that alone, I'll be willing to give the next book in this series a try.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[Image of the book's cover under the book jacket is used under a Creative Commons license Some rights reserved by ai.dan]

[I received this book as a gift with no obligation to read or review it.]

170 (2010 #35). Into the Wild

2010-08-12T22:14:00.008-05:00

by Jon Krakauer

This is the (mostly) true story of Christopher McCandless, who spent 100+ days trying to live off the land in a remote part of Alaska and ended up dying of starvation in August 1992 at age 24. I say mostly true because Krakauer does do some speculating on exactly what caused McCandless' death.

Krakauer starts his book with the hitchhiking Chris being let off at the Stampede Trail near Denali National Park at the end of April 1992. He next writes about the discovery of Chris' body a little over four months later in an old bus that was hauled down the trail in 1961 to serve as housing for road construction workers. He then looks at Chris' early life, and his cross-country travels after graduating from college in 1990 (and some of the interesting people he met along the way). Krakauer uses Chris' own journal entries to detail his days in Alaska, with little more than a rifle, knife, and ten pounds of rice to survive on. He also talks about the effect of Chris' death on his family, friends and acquaintances.

In addition, Krakauer compares McCandless to others who challenged the wilderness, such as Everett Reuss, who went missing in the Utah desert in 1934 at age 20, and the author himself on a rather risky solo climb. He tries to show that the urge to challenge oneself against nature is fairly common.

Krakauer presents arguments that McCandless took unnecessary and even foolish risks, but also postulates that he died from mistakenly eating poisonous or moldy seeds. Krakauer states, on page 194, that "If true, it means that McCandless wasn't quite as reckless or incompetent as he has been made out to be." There's a lot of controversy about this theory. Many feel Krakauer is an apologist for McCandless, while others admire what Chris was trying to do. In any case, Krakauer's book is well-written and engaging, and I'd love to read more by him.

I read this for my local book club's meeting this month, which unfortunately I'm going to have to miss. I think this book will make for a good discussion. In general, I feel Chris lacked common sense and made foolish mistakes, especially going into the wilderness so unprepared. On the other hand, I have a son who is the same age as Chris (and can be just as arrogant at times), and looking back at myself at age 22-24, I also engaged in a lot of risky behaviors. Thinking about that, I have a lot more sympathy for McCandless.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This book was borrowed from my university library and has been returned.]

169 (2010 #34). The Women

2010-08-07T17:36:00.008-05:00

by T. Coraghessan Boyle,
read by Grover Gardner

I listened to this audiobook because I've become fascinated with architect Frank Lloyd Wright after reading Loving Frank about a year ago. This book, also historical fiction/fictionalized biography, purportedly deals with all four of the main women in Wright's life, his three wives and his infamous mistress.

The book is narrated by a fictional Japanese apprentice named Tadashi Sato, who introduces each of the three parts of the book with a long narrative of his experiences with Wright in the 1930s and 1940s. I'm not quite sure why Boyle decided to do this (especially since Sato's words are supposedly translated by his Irish-American grandson-in-law, futher muddying the waters). It may be because Wright admired all things Japanese, being an avid collector of Japanese prints and other artwork (to the detriment of paying other bills). It may be because Boyle liked referring to Wright as "Wrieto-san." I thought that term was a little far-fetched, until I saw in Wright's autobiography that many Japanese apparently referred to him that way.

The three parts of the book deal with Wright's women in reverse chronological order. Part I concerns Olgivanna, the Montenegrin dancer 30 years his junior who was his third wife. Part II is about Miriam, the morphine-addicted Southern belle who was his second wife. Part III centers on Mamah, Wright's mistress and soulmate, after first touching on Kitty, his first wife of 20 years and mother of six of his children. It's likely Boyle organized his book this way so it could end with the climatic events of Mamah's murder.

That event, and Mamah herself, are covered better in Loving Frank, the publication of which resulted in the release of Boyle's book being held back, although it was completed in 2007. Between part I and Tadashi's introductions (all set during the time Wright was married to her), the reader learns a lot about Olgivanna. I felt Kitty was shorted in the book; I was left wanting to know more about her and her relationship with Wright.

Miriam dominates the book, appearing in all three parts (significantly, only at the very end of part III--which is also the end of the book). She's so over-the-top that it's easy to understand why Boyle lets her reign. I'd heard little of this woman before so it was a treat to read about her.

At first, award-winning narrator Grover Gardner didn't seem to be the right voice for this audiobook, particularly as it concerns so many women and a Japanese protagonist as well. However, I grew to like his "sandpaper and velvet" voice for the old-time radio-announcer feel it gave to this novel that is mostly set in the early 20th century. Boyle's flowery prose and frequent use of footnotes at times make the story hard to follow, particularly in audio format. But Wright and his women were so interesting that I had no trouble making it though this 15-disc set.

A couple interesting facts: Boyle lives in a 1909 Montecito, California, home designed by Wright for George C. Stewart, that is also known as "Butterfly Woods," and readily admits its influence. Also, Wright's son John Lloyd Wright, also an architect, was the inventor of Lincoln Logs in 1918. There's also a really cool trailer for this book on the author's website.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This audiobook was borrowed from my university library and has been returned.]

168 (2010 #33). How To Survive A Natural Disaster

2010-08-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

by Margaret Hawkins

This 199-page novel is a good character study of a dysfunctional family and their odd neighbor. The story is told through the voices of six of them: May, an adoptee who chooses not to speak until age seven (and therefore everyone thinks she is developmentally disabled); her spoiled and self-centered older half-sister, April; her worrywart mother, Roxane; her philandering artist father, Craig; their three-legged dog, Mr. Cosmo (yes, a dog); and agoraphobic next-door-neighbor Phoebe.

The chapters alternate between these different narrators. A few are quite short - only one sentence each. Others are much longer and often have the narrator self-analyzing and sharing secrets. A surprise climax leads to a not-completely-believable happy ending. Despite the seriousness of the "natural disaster," I found this book to be rather droll. I'd recommend this book for those who like dark humor.

© Amanda Pape - 2010

[This advance reader edition was sent to me by The Permanent Press and will be passed on to someone else to read and hopefully review.]