Category: Books

I felt like there was a ton of non-fiction this month and not much fiction, but it seems that is not the case.

Read
Kindle
Paulann Petersen
Petersen is Oregon’s current Poet Laureate and so I figured I should read up. I liked her site-specific poems written on her travels, specifically “Dawn” and “Navigation”

Note that 1) Kindle also happens to be the name of a reading device made by Amazon.com and 2)Paulann Petersen doesn’t have a big presence on Goodreads, so I was not able to find the book on the Goodreads site and publish this review.

How to Grow More Vegetables 7th Edition
John Jeavons
I bought the sixth edition when I bought my house in 2007 and my first garden flourished despite the thick clay soil. This edition clarifies the vast amounts of information in it by providing concise step-by-step procedures for many common intensive gardening tasks.

The Grow Biointensive method is a bit of a form of gardening for wonky people who like numbers, but I like the idea of creating a closed system, even if it means sacrificing good “vegetable” space to grow your own “browns” to be composted. I think this method is a good self-sufficient method and I like the focus on sustainability (grow your own compost, save your own seed, use your own muscles for the work) and the emphasis on continually building up the soil.

Anna and the French Kiss
Stephanie Perkins
Fun young adult novel about a girl sent off to spend her senior year at a boarding school in Paris, France where she mostly ignores the charms of the city and simultaneously pines for two unavailable boys. In other words, acts like a typical teenager. This was thicker than most YA books, which I found to be a plus.

My Name is Memory
Ann Brashares
First the bad: I had Elton John’s annoying treacle of a song “Daniel” in my head during the time, and for weeks after, I read this book. The main character’s name is Daniel, and the song just wouldn’t leave. In fact, there it is again. Sing along with me: Daniel my brother, you are older than me, do you still feel the pain, of the scars that won’t heal, your eyes had dies, but you see more than I, Dan-i-el you’re a star in the fact of the sky…

Also the ending was tremendously bad. As I was finishing the book I was very angry. Unlike the first 90% of the book which was gripping, it was entirely unbelievable and badly executed. It was as if the author had suddenly been taken prisoner by people who wanted a very specific ending and held the author at gunpoint until she wrote it. It may have also been a botched set up for a sequel or a series.

Those two things aside, this was an awesome book. I loved the premise (Daniel can remember all his lives staring in 500 AD and moving forward. He keeps encountering a woman named Sophie throughout history, and he can remember and recognize her, but she does not remember or recognize him) and the book itself was fascinating as it jumped around through time. Even only halfway through reading it, I recommended it to everyone I saw. One person took me up on my recommendation and read it within the week. “I have a bone to pick with you.” she said when she saw me next. She thought it was a horrible ending too. But we both liked everything up until that point and if you like random historical fiction, this is the book for you.

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Read for Kenton Library Book Group.
I thought I may have read this in the past. It turns out that I had read it, but in the abbreviated classics for children version where there was a picture on the left page and the text on the right.

This is a very sad book. In fact, I would argue that Shelley failed completely at writing a scary story and instead excelled at writing the saddest monster story ever. Still, it’s very easy to read, especially for something written in the early 1800s, and the book group connected it to a lot of modern issues. I found it interesting that there is not much description of the monster, even though most people in the USA, if asked to sketch Frankenstein, would draw a very similar picture. We can thank the movies for that.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
Hi-lar-i-ous! There is no reason why you shouldn’t read this book as it is smart, funny, short and has great illustrations. It’s an excellent narrative too, expertly crafted to kick you in the stomach in a few different times by someone who knows how to tell a story. For the white readers out there, it’s a good window into poverty and one picture of life on an Indian reservation, which is a rare picture in today’s literature, both adult and YA.

Cymbeline
Shakespeare
If someone today had written this story and submitted it for publication it would have been summarily rejected. I mean really! Shakespeare pulls all sort of “oh this just happened to happen at just the right moment” moments and the end was a massive coming together of several random ends. I will never forget in Act 5 when Posthumus falls asleep and is visited by his dead father, mother and even the god Jupiter. Really? Interestingly, that scene was done well in the production I saw, with no dialogue, Posthumus asleep on stage, Johnny Cash singing U2’s song “One” and various reunions happening on stage. Sometimes it is best to cut the Bard’s text.

The Last Uncle
Linda Pastan
I liked a lot of these poems, including the title poem (All my uncles have shuffled off center stage) and other poems that I made note of. Sadly, my review did not save when I last saved it and I don’t feel like recreating it. Thanks, blogger.

Slam
Nick Hornby
Hornby’s YA novel about a nice 16 year old boy who meets a nice 16 year old girl and they get to doing what some 16 year olds do. And then things happen. As always, Hornby’s astute observations of the life of the average man/boy/woman/girl are spot-on and at times, hilarious. This was a very enjoyable novel.

Why we get fat and what to do about it
G. Taubes
Taubes makes good arguments that some people get to a point where they cannot be of normal weight unless they give up carbohydrates. There’s a lot to digest (Hah!) in this short book, and one of the things I really liked was that the author opened by asking the reader to read the book with a questioning mind and, in more than one place, says what he believes to be true and what science points to, but clearly indicates that more research needs to be done.

Other sacred cows slaughtered along the way: weight management is simply a calories in/calories out exercise; obesity is a problem of the mind, not the body; eating read meat causes higher cholesterol; if you want to lose weight you need to exercise more; a high-fiber, low fat diet is heart healthy.

Those who would like more science or discussion of the above cows can also read the author’s book good calories/bad calories.

Started and did not finish:
I Think I Love You
Allison Pearson
I really was enjoying both main characters, but the feeling of foreboding was too much. I was getting too attached to the main character and was worried that trouble would befall her in the form of “mean girl” bullying and had to send it back. I could be convinced to pick it up again, if someone lets me know otherwise.

Twenties Girl
Sophie Kinsella
This was fluffy, and not what I was in the mood for.

The Complete Guide to Building Your Own Greenhouse
Baird
Line drawings and lots of verbal directions to build several kinds of greenhouses.

The Complete Guide to Greenhouses and Garden Projects
Black and Decker
Lavishly illustrated plans and pictures of not only several kinds of greenhouses, but also garden projects including the most beautiful compost bin I’ve ever seen.

Wow! Only two fiction books this month? What’s going on there?

Read
Twelve by Twelve
William Powers
Powers’ reaction to the twelve by twelve cabin upon first sight surprised me. He was disgusted by its tiny size, weirded out that someone might actually live there. This reaction from a NGO activist who had lived and worked in many developing countries? Was he living in palaces? (Apparently, we learn later, his housing was a bit fancy.) I’m all for living in a tiny space, so I had trouble with his trouble. Powers is a good writer, which is good because it makes his descriptions of life in the cabin interesting. The book can feel a bit navel gazing at times, but was otherwise interesting.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery
Read for Kenton Library Book Club, March 2011.
I loved this book. I have recommended it to several people and my description (A French concierge! Who is an intellectual! But hides it from people! And a very smart twelve year old girl! Who has decided that life is silly and that she will kill herself! It also has a lot of philosophy! It’s very awesome!) tends to give people that “sounds horrible, what is she thinking?” look in their eyes.

So my description won’t do it justice. But the book is very funny and I identified with both the characters throughout the book, and the book club was in agreement about this. Though some in my book club weren’t the raving fan I was, many enjoyed the novel more than some of the books we’ve read. A quick glance at Goodreads reviews shows a number of one star designations, so you might not like it. But I’m not interested in intellectual pursuits, philosophy or suicidal girls and I greatly loved this book. Or at least 19/20ths of it as I was not at all thrilled by the ending.

Bicycles: Love Poems
Nikki Giovanni
I came by Nikki Giovanni via the 2011 “Everybody Reads Selection” of the Multnomah County Library. The author of the selection, Wes Moore, has a sister named after Nikki Giovanni and I figured that was good enough reason to check her out. I found a lot of these poems a bit too “early relationship happy/sappy” for me and am interested in reading other poems by this author that are not specifically about love. My favorite poem was “Christmas Laughter” (which can be found by searching the title) which warmly reminded me of my shrinking family.

Sweetheart
Chelsea Cain
Book two of the Gretchen Lowell has much less torture, which I welcomed. It was another fun romp through Portland, Oregon with Archie Sheridan and Susan Ward.

The Arrival
Shaun Tan
Read for sporadic book club.
Beautifully illustrated and fantastical. Graphic Novels aren’t my genre, but I loved this.

The Last American Man
Elizabeth Gilbert
I think Elizabeth Gilbert’s talent shines in this book. She paints a portrait of a fascinating man who, as Matt so delicately put it, is “kind of an asshole.” Yet Gilbert supplies enough details about the man himself and his upbringing that I found myself rooting for Eustace Conway, even as I cringed at the way his complete inflexibility brought him a ton of success, but kept him from what he really wanted: a wife and family.

180 More Extraordinary Poems for Everyday
Billy Collins, ed.
Just what the title says it is, most of these meet my poetry requirement of “not too long.” However, my favorite was one of the longer poems in the book: David Kirby’s “A Cowardice of Husbands” which can be found right now by googling its title. Is it just me or does it feel wrong to be able to access the contents of the book and read it online? Shouldn’t we have to DO something to get our content?

Started and did not finish
A Separate Peace
John Knowles
Every time I took this book out in public someone noticed and made the comment, “Oh, I’ve read that book!” This book seems to have been part of high school curriculum across the nation. I however, have not read it, though I made it more than halfway through. I didn’t like the increasing sense of foreboding and I wasn’t a fan of either of the main characters, so I put this down. Interestingly, aside from the person who lent me the book, no one who had read it followed their statement of recognition with some form of “that was a great book!” so I think I’m in good company.

Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Annie Proulx
I just made time to read Brokeback Mountain which was lovely in its sadness.

Career Renegade: how to make a great living doing what you love.
Jonathan Fields
An impulse grab at the library that I dipped into. This is written by a guy who was a lawyer who liked personal training and quit his job to open a fancy gym where he made a lot of money. Then he sold that and managed to make a bunch of money from yoga. His theme seems to be “don’t think like everyone else, think big.” I wasn’t in the mood to think that big, so I gave the book back. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again when I’m feeling bigger.

The backyard homestead
Ed. Carleen Madigan
This is a good general overview. I really liked the schematics for what could be produced on varying lot sizes: standard backyard, quarter acre, half acre, full acre.

Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden
Gilbert L. Wilson
I looked at the pictures. This goes back on my to-read list.

Good YA books this month, a book club book finished and an atrocious add-on to a classic book.

Read
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
John Green & David Levithan
I found David Levithan’s depressed/unable-to-capitalize-words Will Grayson off putting and annoying at first, but warmed to him as the book went on. I completely loved John Green’s Will Grayson from the first page. John Green’s Will Grayson has the advantage of having one of the best larger-than-life sidekicks named Tiny Cooper whose antics had me snorting with laughter. There are some great memorable and moving moments within this book: observations about a girl you want to be in a relationship with; Will Grayson’s coming out to his mother; the tryouts for the musical Tiny Dancer: The The Life and Times of Tiny Cooper. The performance of the musical was funny too. The ending got a little too tie-it-up for me, but the middle of the book gave me that “squee” feeling of happiness.

The Other Wes Moore
Wes Moore
I figured the trajectory of the two Wes Moore’s stories before I started to read this book. One was a Rhodes Scholar etc. etc. etc. so he clearly had the stable-er home life and the loving-er family and on and on. The other is serving life in prison for a robbery/murder and he clearly had the less stable home life, inattentive family etc, etc. I knew there would be a clear line drawn and errors pointing, one to the life of the “good” Wes Moore and one to the life of the “bad” Wes Moore.

Once I started the book I realized I was wrong. This cognitive dissonance is, of course, the book’s success. If the path to the good Wes Moore life was that obvious, it never would have been published. My take away from this book is not to decide that an “if only” would have saved the life-in-prison Wes Moore. My take away is to look at every child, even the ones that seem to be on the “bad Wes Moore” path and expect of them that they finish school, procreate responsibly, find work that suits them and live a happy life. To expect less is to give in to the throwaway society we have created for a large subset of our children.

Mocking Jay
Suzanne Collins
This is a rip-roaring finale to the Hunger Games series. There is more strife, more fighting, more indecision, more propaganda, and an ending that is devastating and hopeful. Are you telling me you still haven’t started reading this series? What are you waiting for?

Why I Wake Early
Mary Oliver
I like Mary Oliver’s poems, but something was brought into focus while I was reading this book. I am a city girl. I was raised in a city (albeit a small one) by parents who were themselves raised in cities (also small ones.) We did not hike on the weekends, we camped sparingly. I rarely, if ever, wandered through any “wild” area. None of this is bad, but it did shape me. To this day I enjoy walking about my neighborhood more than driving to some wilderness to “hike.” Urban environments grow and change just as natural ones do.

So after reading poem after poem about birds and fields and puddles and what have you, I realized that something inside of me was crying out, “Where are the buildings? Where are the cars? Where are the other people?” I’m happy that Mary Oliver gets so much from her wilderness and I’m happy that so many people enjoy her poems she writes. I am also happy to realize that for me, Mary Oliver’s poems are best enjoyed in small doses.

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet
Colleen McCullough
The review I mentally wrote while halfway through this novel was much more scathing than the review I am writing now that I have finished the book. I enjoyed rejoining the Bennet family twenty years later, but I thought the characterizations of Mr. Darcy were too harsh and I found the main plot to be entirely preposterous. McCullough manages to tie things up rather neatly, even for Miss Caroline Bingly, but the fact that I sputtered through most of the story doesn’t really bode well for this book.

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares
Cohen & Levithan
Though this book did not pack the heat that Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist did, I enjoyed it just as much in different ways. The concept of the dares (which were very clever, in of themselves) was a lot of fun and seeing how Dash and Lily, two very opposite people, react to each other via paper was enjoyable and at times hilarious. Set at Christmas in New York City, this would be a fun book to read in early December, just to set a good Christmas Mood. Or to set an anti-Christmas mood, if you are more like Dash.

Started, but did not finish.
Ship Breaker
Paolo Bacigalupi
This won the Printz award this year and people have raved about it, but I have read many too many tense YA novels in the last three months. My nerves couldn’t deal with Nailer’s conundrum.

My pledge to read about 70 books and no more is not going to work if I keep finding excellent young adult fiction. Young adult fiction these days is well written, interesting and tends to come in series. I can also read it even faster than “normal” books. Do you want to read more good books without putting in more effort than you do slogging through “grown up” books? Check out some of today’s excellent YA authors. Your local children/youth librarian will be happy to point you in a direction. Or you can try some of the books below.

Finished
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Shakespeare
Yep. Read it. Yep. Enjoyed it more as a play. Yep. That’s how it is going to be with this project.

Incarceron
Catherine Fisher
Read for Mock Printz Workshop.

This book contains a great concept: that the prison is alive. This was my second most enjoyed Mock Printz book, though my sentiments were not shared by very many of the workshop participants. Aside from the interesting premise, I also liked that the entire book kept the main characters apart, while still building tension. The ending I did not like as it was clearly a set up for a sequel. My rule is that if there is going to be a series/sequel, it should be a happy surprise, not clearly obvious by the last page of the book.

Ines of My Soul
Isabel Allende
I did not like this book very much and only finished it because it was a book group book. My problems were twofold: First, the conquistadors were incredibly awful people and the book was very violent in disturbing ways that made my want to stop reading. Secondly, I find Allende’s prose rather dense, so I couldn’t just skim though it.

I did enjoy the main character and the fate of a minor character. As I journeyed along the bloody road with Ines, I gradually grew desensitized to the violence. It was much like the movie Fargo. Once I got to the wood chipper scene in that movie I laughed.

In the book group discussion, parallels were drawn between Allende and the main character.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safer Foer
If Dave Eggers handn’t already stolen the description for his novel, I would say this book is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. After finishing this–the second time through for me–I just sat for awhile, holding the book in my hands. For such a quick and funny read, this is a weighty tome. But while the subject matter gives me “heavy boots” my love for the character can’t help but buoy me.

4th Period English
Judith Arcana
I tripped across this chapbook of poetry while browsing through the library catalog and I picked it for its title. Who wouldn’t? This was a fabulous book of poems from the point of view of people in a multicultural English class. The voices were very different, and held forth on their opinions in a delightful fashion.

The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
I’m always looking for superhero stories that happen to have girls as the main superhero and I’m happy to report that this book provided me with one. And not just a run-of-the-mill “Green Hornet” type superhero, Katness Everdeen is kind of a Batman of her world. But a Batman with less angst and more questioning And no money. I guess that would make her like a young Spiderman. But without the super powers. Whatever. She’s great. This book has 300 holds at the library even though it was published over two years ago and I can see why. It’s got a great distopian setting, a scrappy main character, several moral quandaries, two love interests and a writing style that kept me reading. It’s one of those books where you better set aside some time to read it because you may be neglecting your chores once you begin.

The Spell Book of Listen Taylor
Jaclyn Moriarty
For most of this book, I was confused as to what was going on. I followed the story well, but couldn’t see why the characters were doing what they were doing. After about 50 pages, I gave up trying to figure it out and just sat back and enjoyed what was going on. There are nice sketches of adults in relationships making bad choices and how it affects the children around them. Also, a compelling portrait of a girl isolated by her former friends. In that way, I found this more adult than Moriarty’s other Young Adult books. Everything is knit together at the end, but I was left with a perplexed feeling. It all seems to have turned out okay, but was it really okay?

Also, this book is funny, as in snort-on-public-transportation, or suddenly-let-out-a-shriek-of-laughter type of funny.

Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins
The second book in the Hunger Games series, I read this one faster than the first one. We rejoin our heroine to find that what saved her in the last book has multiplied her problems in this one. Excellent commentary on media packaging as well as exploration of impossible situations. One thing I like about Collins is that I am always surprised as to what happens. More than once in this book I thought, “Huh. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Started, but did not finish
Tales of the Madmen Underground
This came highly recommended from two people, but I couldn’t get past the mother of the main character hording cats. So back it went.

It’s the annual “Best Books” Awards.

People, I read a lot of book in 2010. And, looking over the awards, I see that I read a lot of really good books this year. So this post is a bit long. You may want to make yourself a cup of tea and settle in.

The awards committee has met and has recognized the following:

I read 97 books this year. Next year, if all goes according to plan, this list will be shorter because one of my goals is to read fewer books. I’m aiming for about 70 or so.

A lucky 13 books read this month, due mostly to Mock-Printz reading. Though the Ashbury/Brookfield novels (Feeling Sorry for Celia, The Year of Secret Assignments, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie & The Ghosts of Ashbury Hall) also took up a good bit of my time. Once I got going with that series, I just couldn’t stop. Overall, it was a very good month for reading.

Read
The Year of Secret Assignments
Jaclyn Moriarty
Delightful! The pen pal exercise continues another year with a trio of best friends from Ashbury. They happen to end up with boy pen pals from Brookfield and the games begin. This book had me blurting out a chuckle now and then and nicely captures young love.

The main characters also casually drink without consequence. I’ve not really encountered that before in YA books. I grew up in the “drink and drive once and lose an arm” and “have sex once and get pregnant” era of YA storytelling. I think their drinking, which is supported by their parents, is very true-to-life, but it was still odd for me to encounter.

The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie
Jaclyn Moriarty
I may be over identifying a tad, but I think Bindy Mackenzie is perhaps the most lively character in a book I’ve read this year and I fell completely in love with her. She is smart as a whip and entirely clueless as to why her actions anger and annoy people. The teacher in me kept thinking, “Oh Bindy! How could you?” while the straight-laced high school me hearkened back to my own slightly alienating teenage choices. She wants to help, but her helping comes from the wrong place, like when she first sends notes to some of her classmates telling them they are certain poison animals. Her intent is to be mean to them and show them what they really are. I’m sure her meanness went right over their head. Later, to make amends, she writes notes recasting those same classmates as more noble animals, which also went right over their heads.

Through her diaries, transcriptions and various reports we see what shaped Bindy and the various forces acting around her for this difficult year. There is a mystery, but it isn’t the best part. The best part is watching Bindy navigate through her year. Characters from the previous two books appear, which is quite fun.

As Easy as Falling off the Face of the Earth
Lynne Rae Perkins
Read for Mock Printz.

This author, so the book cover tells me, is also an illustrator, and her prose is very painterly in its descriptions like this one about a car windshield: “The sediment of dirt deposited evenly across the windshield, punctuated by the dried fluff of unfortunate insects, glowed incandescent in the sunlight. It was like trying to see through dandelion fluff.”

I found that I spent a lot of time suspending disbelief during the story which was quite distracting. I was on board (hah!) with him getting left behind by the train and walking to town, but after that it all seemed a bit convenient for the narrative. Still, the author introduces a lot of interesting people along the journey, sort of like meeting all those Texans in No Country for Old Men. So I didn’t love this book, but after I suspended disbelief, I enjoyed the journey.

Spies of Mississippi
Rick Bowers
Read for Mock Printz.

A very brief history of a dark time in US History. The book traces the creation and activities of a state-sponsored agency created to spy on and defeat any integration or Civil Rights efforts in the state of Mississippi. I was about halfway through when the facts of the book suddenly hit me. Wow! The state of Mississippi set up and recruited spies as well as investigated people who had not committed any crime. They then attempted to discredit these people in any way possible. Holy Crap! The fact that some of the people who worked for the commission are still living makes it even more remarkable.

The book is perfect for young adult readers, hitting on the horrors of the Jim Crow/Civil Rights era without being too graphic. For example, it describes in pretty clear detail the beating that a civil rights worker received, but when discussing the murders of the three civil rights workers it only mentions the burned out car and the fact their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam. It does not go into details of how they were killed.

The Ghosts of Ashbury Hall
Jaclyn Moriarty
Like the three before it, a funny and gripping account of a year at Ashbury. The narrative structure is stretched a little thin with this book, but it is still enjoyable. This time two new students arrive at Ashbury. They are quite mysterious. Also, there also might be a ghost haunting the school. Characters from previous books have returned and it is good to check in with them. I really love the Lydia character and I wouldn’t mind reading another book about her college experience.

Fever Crumb
Philip Reeve
Read for Mock Printz.

Set in a steampunk-inspired future London this follows the journey of Fever Crumb, an orphan found and raised by the order of Engineers. They have raised her in their rational ways, so she is not your ordinary fourteen year old.

The writing was great in that I could see future London quite clearly and follow along as Fever makes her way from the orderly world of the Engineers into the household of an “archeologist.” Her rational responses to the children in the household were amusing and I was quite delighted to see that in this future the word “blog” has emerged as a swear word.

Overall, a well done “finding ones identity” sort of novel with a lot of fun details thrown in.

Revolver
Marcus Sedgwick
Read for Mock-Printz

Solid tale set during gold rush times in the Arctic Circle. I didn’t love it, but would recommend it to an outdoorsy, possibly reluctant, fourteen year old reader.

True Grit
Charles Portis
Fabulous narration and dialogue that qualifies as “a hoot.” One of the better teenaged female characters I’ve read in ages.

Finnikin of the Rock
Marlena Marchetta
I really loved the journey these characters went on and got wrapped up in their world. Excellent strong female character.

100 Essential Modern Poems by Women
Parisi & Weston
I thought I wanted more information about the authors of the poems I read, but this book has a few pages of information and only two or three poems. It would be great to have a summary paragraph or two and then more poems, or even the current amount of biographical information and then many more poems. Overall, a nice list.

The Prince of Thieves
Chuck Hogan
I prefer to read the book and then watch the movie, but sometimes when watching a movie my favorite title credit will flash onto the screen: Based on a the book ABC by 123. “There’s a book?” I always silently exclaim. If I like the movie–and sometimes if I don’t like the movie, (ahem Sideways)–I’ll seek out the book.

I expected to like the movie the Town in a “wow, this is a really bad movie but I like it” sort of way. However, it turned out to be quite gripping and I really did like it. The book was even better. As the main character in the movie, Ben Affleck seems to have it all together: robbing the banks, romancing the kidnapped teller, keeping his bank robber friends in line, attending the AA meetings. However, the book’s main character is much more doubtful and flawed. It’s much more of an examination of character flaws through the recovering alcoholic lens than I expected. There were also some great descriptive passages, one of which I meant to excerpt here but forgot and returned the book. Like the movie, my expectations for the book were low and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

They Called Themselves the KKK
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Looking for a short, concise history of Reconstruction Era and the birth of the KKK? This is your book. It’s well written and chock full of great primary source material. If there could be a book like this on every historical subject I would read a lot more non-fiction history.

The Resilient Gardener
Carol Deppe
Clear instructions of how to grow and preserve staple crops such as beans, corn, squash, potatoes and eggs. Deppe spends almost as much time explaining how to keep and cook what is grown as she does explaining how to grow it. She lives in Corvallis, so Oregon readers have an advantage here. Overall, a great book which I will probably purchase.

Started but did not finish
I finished everything I started this month.

I fell off my “one book at a time” pledge this month for a few reasons. One is that I’ve begun to read the ten books I need to read for the Mock Printz workshop which is happening in January. I am feeling various emotions about them, mostly having to do with ambivalence. At the same time, I have discovered a fabulous new YA series by Jaclyn Moriarty that I’ve been tearing through. Plus, other interesting books (eeeeeee! Moonlight Mile!!!!!!) have been arriving in my life. So I find myself putting down the required reading for the book candy.

Also, what’s up with Mississippi/the south? The Help is set in Mississippi as is Spies from Mississippi, which I started this month and finished in December. I also read Jubilee which is set in Georgia and Alabama. Plus I started reading Radical Equations, which is about math and civil rights. There’s some sort of southern zeitgeist going on right now, I just can’t for the life of me figure out why.

Read
Jubilee
Margaret Walker
I read this for the library book group and it was a great selection. Initially, I wasn’t that into it and assigned myself to read two chapters per night, which would have me finishing right before the book discussion. It took me a bit to warm up to Vyry, the slave who is the main character. Eventually though, I got caught up in the book and raced ahead of my reading schedule.

I haven’t read a slave narrative in years. They seem to have fallen out of fashion, though I’m not sure why. There’s plenty of drama and pathos in the slave-to-freedom transition. At any rate, if you are looking for a good book, slave narrative or no, grab this book. It probably won’t have any holds at your library as it was published in 1966.

The Help
Kathryn Stockett
I greatly enjoyed this novel, but had to take breaks from it, due to the injustice of the character’s situations. Well written, with a nice tension building throughout the book, I recommend this to anyone interested in the Jim Crow to Civil Rights Era in Mississippi.

Moonlight Mile
Dennis Lehane
This seems to be shorter then any of the other Kenzie/Gennaro books and much more set in the present day. However, some of us will take any opportunity to drop in on these two Boston P.I.s, so this was a treat. The mystery is woven through with a lot of class commentary and is not as labyrinth as others in the series, but I still enjoyed it. A quick read, and I was particularly satisfied with decisions made by the main characters at the end of the book.

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors
Francisco X. Stork
Read this for the 2010 Mock Printz, spoilers are included.

Moderately enjoyable while reading, very enjoyable upon reflection. Both boys in the story are well drawn, the “dying of cancer one” is not too angelic, the “angry young man” is nuanced in his anger, so does not become a caricature of himself. I did find that the various threads of the story seemed to be dropped abruptly and then picked up again, which was distracting, but in a minor way. Also done well was a subtle commentary on class and race and parts of the book were funny, which always helps during the chemotherapy vomiting scenes and other times. I enjoyed the dance between two guys who both want the girl. The orphanage seemed rather idyllic, do such places exist? The big confrontation scene was tense, but also partially unbelievable. As was the “one sip of one drink and I can die” malady. I think as an adolescent, I would have accepted all three at face value. The way the minor characters were written was very good. They are all clear pictures in my mind, especially Juan. The stepfather was the worst, very “random jerk lawyer.”

Feeling Sorry for Celia
Jaclyn Moriarty
Great book of the “letters back and forth genre.” I especially like the “disparaging voices of the conscious” represented as letters from various societies and association, such as the “Cold Hard Truth Association” and the “Association of Teenagers.” While I think it is rare for teenagers to write actual letters today, making this a bit unbelievable, the plot device introduced to get the main characters started on their letters and friendship was quite believable. I especially enjoyed Elizabeth’s mother’s notes to her daughter which managed to combine commentary about life, work, instructions for dinner, concern and humor all in short paragraphs.

The Lost Art of Real Cooking
Ken Albala & Rosanna Nafziger
Aside from having hard-to-spell last name, Ken and Rosanna have in common their interest in food. Food created by hand without a lot of fuss (or with some fuss) that tastes good. The recipes, written in paragraph style, look very delicious, and the writing is sparkling. Take this paragraph:

Turks invade Hungary, and the stage is violently set for the remarkable collision of flaky layered pastry (nee phyllo) and apples. Five hundred years later, Julie Andrews is singing about brown paper packages and warm apple strudel, under threat of yet another invasion–the Germans. Such a violent past for something so delightful.

This book is currently very popular at the library and thus I won’t get to spend as much time with it as I would like. I think I will concentrate on their sourdough bread section, return the book, request it again and when it arrives, incorporate something else.

Nothing
Janne Teller
Read this for the 2010 Mock Printz, spoilers are included.

Hated this book. HATED IT! I think this might mean to be a fable or allegory or something like that, but I found it very unlikable. First off, a seventh grader climbs into a tree because he decides nothing has meaning. He throws plums at his classmates and shouts his new-found beliefs. I can see this happening for an hour or two, or even a day, but that kid stays up there yelling for months. Does he climb down at night? Where does he go to the bathroom?

His classmates, instead of ignoring him, decide to prove him wrong. So they start collecting things with meaning. First they ask the townspeople to give up something meaningful and collect quite a pile. Then they begin to give up their own meaningful things in turn. What starts out as sacrificing really cute sandals grows by degree until the Muslim child gives up his prayer mat and is severely beaten by his parents, a pious child steals a large statue of Jesus from the church, a girl gives up her virginity, the children dig up a dead baby brother from a church yard and, just when you think it can’t get any worse, they kill a dog. At that point, I had to skip ahead five pages so I could bypass the dog killing.

Their pile of meaning is found out, pronounced art, bought by the MoMa for 3.5 million dollars, the children turn on each other, end up beating the plum-throwing, life-has-no-meaning child to death and burning down the sawmill that houses the pile of meaning. The whole thing is a nihilistic mess and I can only be glad that it was a short book and I have now finished reading it.

Remember to wave
Kaia Sand
The delightful 80+ year old volunteer at school gave this book to me because she thought I would “get it.” It’s a good poetic examination of the internment of the Portland-area Japanese during WWII, the flooding of Vanport and also the drowning of Celilo Falls. The Expo center, where the Japanese were houses, and the site of Vanport are very near my house and I enjoyed how Sand linked the present day Max stops to the history of the area.

Started but did not finish
Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project
Robert P. Moses
Civil rights pioneer wrote this book illustrating his journey from civil rights activist to math activist. He sees the disinterest in math education as creating a new generation of “sharecroppers” and has founded the Algebra Project to combat this.

The book spends a lot of time in Mississippi talking about Moses’ civil rights days. I was looking for more information about the Algebra Project and lost interest in the book. I might pick it up again later.

A conspiracy of kings
Megan Whalen Turner
Read for 2010 Mock Printz, spoilers are included

This was very readable for the first half as I followed the sorry, pampered prince from his soft cocoon through his kidnapping and enslavement. His escape from slavery was quite dramatic too. But then the narrative shifted and all these people came on the scene and everyone seemed to know each other and I was very, very confused before I figured out that this must be a series book. Indeed, it’s number four in the series. I’ve stopped reading, because the whole thing is boring to me at this point, a bunch of people talking about times they had that I haven’t also experienced while also seeming to very slowly plot things. However, I will read the first book, which I’ve been told is awesome, and see if I can work my way back to this one.

Healing Power: Ten Steps to Pain Management and Spiritual Evolution
Philip Shapiro, M.D.
I got this book because its author was featured in the Oregonian as a psychiatrist who works with chronic homeless people. His book sounded interesting and I was wondering if I could use some of his steps to help manage the psoriasis that has taken up residence on my body. The chapters are short and the writing style is abrupt. There are questions at the end of every chapter which would be good for discussion. I did not finish this book because all of my reading tasks overwhelmed me and it needed to go back to the library. I may read it again.

My account at the library says that Moonlight Mile, the long awaited next book in the Kenzie/Gennaro series is waiting for me at the library. The library which opens at guess what time? I shall walk over there now.

Indeed, here I am standing outside the library waiting for it to open.

I check my books on hold and find: nothing. Well, one book that I requested is there, but it is not Moonlight Mile. Puzzled, I recheck my account and find that [insert tremendous disappointment and crestfallen nature here] I have jumped the gun. In my excitement I have read the screen wrong and Moonlight Mile, while on its way, is not waiting for me at this moment.

I return to the hold shelf, grab my other hold, sigh, check it out, turn to go and that is when something stops me. I decide to check out the Lucky Day cart to see if they have anything good. I almost don’t do this, because I’ve got a long reading list for the Mock Printz workshop as well as a tremendously boring Library book group book to read as well as a sporadic book group book to read and who has time for something on the Lucky Day cart?

You will never guess what was there.

Eeeeeeeee! I’ve got about four hours until it’s time to leave for the Harry Potter party and I will be doing only one thing.

Dennis Lehane’s new book (of which I am #7 of 192 holds on 42 copies) has moved from “On Order” to “In Process”

So exciting! I wonder if there is a chance it will come over Thanksgiving Break?