Books read in September

Some good fiction reading this month…

Read
Eat, Drink and Be From Mississippi
Nanci Kincaid
I grabbed this book because I had no fiction on hand and the train was coming. I was a bit leery, both because of the title (a bit too cute) and the way the author spelled her first name. Yes, I judge a book by its cover, it’s author’s name and its title, along with a host of other things. But 5o pages in, I was hooked and want to read everything Nanci Kincaid has ever written.

The synopsis of the book is a bit off. Don’t get impatient because you are pretty far in and the “troubled teenager” hasn’t shown up yet; he arrives in the second half of the book. The first half is a leisurely meander though Truley’s life, getting him from Mississippi to California and from high school student to successful entrepreneur. After that enjoyable setup we can make room for the troubled teenager.

Every once in awhile I get to read a book with delightful characters. Funny, interesting and flawed, I fall in love with them all. Add to that, the fact that Kincaid has some nice turns of phrase and you can take my recommendation that you sit yourself down with a nice book.

The Prophet of Yonwood
Jeanne DuPrau
The third book in the Ember series, this is billed as a prequel. I thought it failed on that front as the first 281 pages seemed to have no connection at all to the city of Ember, or the people of Sparks, for that matter. The story was interesting enough, but I kept wondering when I would find out how this connected to the previous books. If you are a reader similarly inclined, simply turn to page 182 and read “What happened after” first. Knowing the connection to the previous books, you can now begin the story at the beginning and read it on its own terms.

The Diamond of Darkhold
Jeanne DuPrau
After I finished The City of Ember, and before I realized there was an Ember series, I spent a few days wondering what, exactly the builders were thinking. Their whole setup seemed great for 200 years, but there seemed to be no plan for how the people of Ember would survive above ground without the collective knowledge of human history. I myself have a smattering of knowledge of how to grow food and consider myself handy, but I’m not sure if I could make it through a winter on my own, and I was raised on frontier novels with survivor tips disguised as plot points. The people of Ember had never seen a sunset, or experienced seasons, or even snow. What exactly were they supposed to do for food and shelter?

The first chapter of book four in the Ember series lets us know that the builders were thinking of how hard the emergence would be and explains that they decided to do something to give the people of Ember a head start–to make it easier on them. The builders put this mysterious something into a time-release vault for the people of Ember to find when they come above ground. After this setup, we are plunged (yay!) back to the village of Sparks where the former citizens of Ember and current citizens of Sparks are attempting to survive their first winter. We follow Lina and Doon as they find evidence of this thing that will make it easier on the Emberites. Being the Lina and Doon we know, of course they decide to solve this mystery on their own.

Now knowing the thing that the builders prepared, I have to say, “eh.” Sure, the item was helpful to the village of Sparks and allowed a great many things to happen, as we find out in the last chapter, but really. That’s what they thought of? A few books on creating food and shelter as well as natural medicines might have served the citizens a bit better.

That said, I enjoyed this seemingly last book in the Ember series. Like the first and second book, it was full of action and moral quandaries and Lina and Doon are great characters.

The Divorce Party
Laura Dave
Can you think of any circumstance in which it would be okay for your fiancee to neglect to mention that he has been married before? How about the fact that his family is worth half a billion dollars? Maggie, one of the two main characters in this novel discovers both of these things on the way to meet her fiancee’s parents for the first time. What’s worse, they are attending her future in-law’s Divorce Party.

I found this to be a nicely written novel with sympathetic characters and a few interesting plot twists. The last chapter in particular was a nice completion of a circle. At a brief 244 pages, this might be a nice vacation or rainy weekend read.

American Wife: a novel
Curtis Sittenfeld
I spent this weekend devouring this novel, and what a lovely way to pass a late-summer weekend. I heard Sittenfeld on Fresh Air when this book was first published and it was obvious to me that she was in love with her main character. This love comes through in the writing of this book, which I found added to my love of the book.

While many novels explore the compromises people make to remain with their married partner, most people won’t have to face the level of compromises that Alice Blackwell, the main character, makes over her the lifetime of her marriage to Charles Blackwell. The first third of the book explores Alice’s upbringing, and was where I fell in love with her too. She is a deeply sympathetic character.

The middle part of the novel–the troubles in the Blackwell’s marriage, was not as interesting to me, but if your attention starts to waver, stick it out. Because, what if you wanted to live your life essentially a private person, but your husband, who you deeply love, first runs for governer and then later runs for, and is elected, President of the United States of America? And then what if, early in his presidency a huge national tradegy occurs and your husband decides to start wars in two countries and eventually becomes one of the most hated sitting presidents in US History? How would you arrage your life?

Aside from being an entertaining story (the part where the Blackwell matriarch explains the reasons why Alice Blackwell needs to return to her alcoholic husband was a particularly fun few pages for me) this was a gentle reminder to remember that there are people behind the personas we see in the media. Also, Sittenfeld is a fabulous writer and I will be including several phrases and passages from this book in my quotes page. Highly recommended.

Sarah’s Quilt
Nancy E. Turner
Somewhat like a Michael Bay movie with it’s pretty much uninterrupted action scenes, this is the continuation of Sara Prine, the woman I first met in These is my words. Sara’s grammar is fine now, but she has a lot of problems, most of them stemming from the drought. As with the first book, about three-quarters of the way through I grew weary of all the hardship that come Mrs. Prine’s way. However, the force of her character kept me reading to the end. I’m taking a break from her for awhile, but I will return to read the next book in the series.

Food Not Lawns
H.C. Flores
This took me a long time to read, but it was worth it. Flores spends about one third of this book discussing how to build community, though there are suggestions/tips about permaculture, which she calls “paradise gardening.” A good solid recommendation for permaculture reading.

Started but did not finish

The Believers
Zoe Heller
I didn’t like the people peopling this book, so I dropped it before I even found out what the secret was.

Figures in Silk
Vanora Bennett
I started this, but it didn’t grab me and it is due tomorrow at the library. Back it goes.

The First Days of School
Harry K & Rosemary T. Wong
If I had unlimited time, I would dive into this again. However, my fiction slot has been taken up by Food Not Lawns for so long that I never even opened it. Perhaps when I get that first teaching job I will consult this.

Hope and Despair in the American City: Why there are no bad schools in Raleigh
Gerald Grant
I stopped reading this short, readable book before getting to the “hope” section. Reading about the decline of Syracuse just made me mad. Even though I haven’t finished it, this book will always be the book that opened my eyes to the fact that the mortgage subsidies most homeowners get add up to much more of a subsidy than welfare recipients get.

Ordinary Springs
Lenore Hart
You know how you think the book is going to unfold even when you are on page 20? You know how sometimes you read just to find out if you were right? This wasn’t one of those times. I couldn’t get into this.

The Solar Food Dryer: How to make and use your own high-performance, sun-powered food dryer.
Eban Fodor
A compact little book about how to do just what the title says. Fairly good instructions and it also include recipes. A bit of it is available on Google Books if you Google the title.

Did not even start

Troll: A love story.
Johanna Sinisalo
Perhaps it is the fact that this was translated from the Finnish that kept me from enjoying this novel with a great premise? I usually love books that are set in apparent modern times, but with just one or two fantasy elements. In this one, the fact that trolls exist wasn’t enough to keep me reading.

Poems and why you should memorize them. I’m not the only one.

Before we discuss September’s Poem, here are some excerpts from a delightful article about memorizing poetry.  These observations of Jim Holt are things I’ve found to be true in my short time memorizing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/books/review/Holt-t.html

Got Poetry?
By JIM HOLT
Published: April 2, 2009

The process of memorizing a poem is fairly mechanical at first. You cling to the meter and rhyme scheme (if there is one), declaiming the lines in a sort of sing-songy way without worrying too much about what they mean. But then something organic starts to happen. Mere memorization gives way to performance. You begin to feel the tension between the abstract meter of the poem — the “duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA” of iambic pentameter, say — and the rhythms arising from the actual sense of the words. (Part of the genius of Yeats or Pope is the way they intensify meaning by bucking against the meter.) It’s a physical feeling, and it’s a deeply pleasurable one. You can get something like it by reading the poem out loud off the page, but the sensation is far more powerful when the words come from within. (The act of reading tends to spoil physical pleasure.) It’s the difference between sight-reading a Beethoven piano sonata and playing it from memory — doing the latter, you somehow feel you come closer to channeling the composer’s emotions. And with poetry you don’t need a piano.

Nor, as I have found, will memorizing poetry make you more popular. Rather the reverse. No one wants to hear you declaim it. Almost no one, anyway. I do have one friend, a Wall Street bond-trader, who can’t get enough of my recitations. He takes me to the Grand Havana Cigar Club, high above Midtown Manhattan, and sits rapt as I intone, “The unpurged images of day recede. . . .” He calls to one of the stunningly pretty waitresses. “Come over here and listen to my friend recite this Yeats poem.” Oh dear.

I hope that I have at least dispelled three myths.

Myth No. 1: Poetry is painful to memorize. It is not at all painful. Just do a line or two a day.

Myth No. 2: There isn’t enough room in your memory to store a lot of poetry. Bad analogy. Memory is a muscle, not a quart jar.

Myth No. 3: Everyone needs an iPod. You do not need an iPod. Memorize poetry instead.

Jim Holt

Three sentence movie reviews–Julie & Julia

My guess is that the critics who gave mediocre reviews to this movie are either 1) people who have never had any doubt about what they would “do” with their lives or 2) people who hate food or 3)men. As a person who has read not only both books the movie was based on, but also–while working a dreary secretary job–the entire Julie/Julia Project blog, I thought this movie was a spot on depiction of not only the casting about for some sort of meaning in daily life and also the transformative power of coulpledom. That this movie also had great sets, clothing and a host of actresses who were normal looking was an even bigger bonus–Enjoy!

Bechdel score. Two women: yes! Who talk to each other: yes! About something besides a man: Yes! Amazing!

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2009/julie_and_julia_ver2.html

Three sentence movie reviews–Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

I’m not interested in football or the plight of 1960s all-male ivy league school sports programs. I am a fan of a well told story. This movie was one and you should watch it.

Bechdel score. Two women: ha ha ha ha ha ha.

poster from:  http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Beats-Yale-29-29-Poster/dp/B001XVAB0O

Books Read in August

I’m having the hardest time coming up with the summary for this month’s reading.  So you can just read for yourself.
Read
Skeletons at the Feast
Chris Bohjalian
I enjoy Bohjalian’s books because every time he manages to come though with a good, solid story that I have trouble putting down. His descriptions are vivid enough that I remember scenes years later and he also is quite prolific.

Take a Prussian aristocratic sugar beet farming family, a Scottish POW, a Jewish man hiding undercover as a German soldier and female concentration camp prisoner. Follow all of them as they flee west to escape the invading Russian army.

This book doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war, so at times it can be graphic. Overall, probably one of the better books I’ve read this year.

Dating Big Bird
Laura Zigman
I have no desire to have children and thus, was at a disadvantage with this book. The main character is obsessed with having a child. The fact that she is in a relationship with a man who wants no children, and shows no signs of changing that view, is one of the conundrums of the plot.

I couldn’t relate to the main character. I found the story annoying. I found the writing style in which the author repeatedly uses:
Many very short.
Sentences like this.
Over and over.
Again.
to be very distracting. The plot point at the end of the book, which is the catalyst for change in the protagonist’s life, I found to be entirely unbelievable. Why not just have her win the lottery? And the last chapter? Total cop-out.

There was nothing redeeming about this book and only an incredibly lazy day got me to finish this book. I was too lazy to start a new one. Not recommended.

The Permaculture Way: practical steps to creating a self-sustaining world
Graham Bell
The author does start with the world view of permaculture, spending the first third of the book discussing people and capital and discovering your own skills. Part two begins with your home and moves outwards. There is also discussion about gardening, orchards, agriculture and aquaculture as well as good lists of plants and their uses in the back.

Three Girls and Their Brother
Theresa Rebeck
When this arrived at the library for me I had a moment of puzzlement as to why I would have requested this particular novel. The cover is a bit off-putting. But two paragraphs in, I was hooked. Goodreads tells me I heard about this book from Deborah. Thank goodness she is my friend on Goodreads. Now I’m curious as to what she had to say about it, but I’m going to write my review before I read hers.

The voices in this story make this book. Particularly, the voice of the brother, Phillip, aged fifteen, who begins our adventure. Listen to this quote, where Phillip is meeting a famous middle-aged movie star for the first time. Polly is his 17 year-old sister.

“…looking like Henry the Eighth with one arm stretched out along the back of the banquette and the other arm around Polly, his hand discreetly stuck down the back of her pants. It was spooky, really; he looked just like he looks in the movies, where he’s always waving a giant weapon, and he looked really short. That’s something I never considered, when I thought about meeting movie stars. Usually, when you see them? They’re like four stories tall, on some giant movie screen somewhere. But when you meet them in person? They’re actually just sort of people-sized. Which makes the whole experience kind of surreal, if you haven’t thought about things like that ahead of time. Plus, if the guy has his hand down your sister’s pants, he looks significantly less like a movie star, and more like your average asshole.”

I could read an entire book with just Phillip talking, but we leave him soon after his three sisters become “it” girls–just three more girls famous at first for their red hair and their beauty, then later famous for being famous. After we hear Phillip’s view, then each of the sisters tells us a little more of the story, from their point of view. What happens to the four of them is fascinating, funny and shocking. I couldn’t help thinking of real-life “it” girls and wondering how many of them had similar experiences.

I would love to live in a society where sensible adults never let young people be pimped out to the the media like this, but in this book, it is the adults who do the dealing of flesh–and reap the rewards each time the girls are sold.

ps. A book with La Aura as a main character? Also something I would read. Please Ms. Rebeck, please?

Abraham Lincoln: a novel life
Tony Wolk
I enjoyed the premise of this book: What if Abraham Lincoln was suddenly transported from February 1865 to Easter Sunday 1955? Written by a Portland State University professor, it wasn’t a book I had to finish, but it kept me reading. I especially enjoyed reading the notes on historical figures at the end of the book.

Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
Michael Pollan
I love Michael Pollan’s writing, but one of the things I love about it was the very thing that made this book so hard to finish. Pollan’s writing style is dense and thoughtful. This can be a good thing when one is in the mood to read a dense and thoughtful text, but sometimes his observations can go on. I would have been better off owning this book, so I could pick it up and put it down intermittently over a large amount of time. However, I requested it from the library which meant my time with it was quite short. I had to set reading goals to get through it, which I hated, because as far as I’m concerned prose this well written should be savored. So, a rare call to all to purchase this book, not to get it from the library.

Everyone Worth Knowing
Lauren Weisberger
One wonders, (at least I do) upon reading this book if Lauren Weisberger is the secret consumer of romance novels that her main character is. This book is, despite the striking cover, hip New York setting and rampant name dropping, essentially just that: a romance novel. Someone should explore when books cross over the “romance novel line.” This doesn’t have the bodice ripper cover, but all the elements were there. Entirely predictable, this was not a bad way to spend a summer afternoon, but not much more than that.

The People of Sparks
Jeanne DuPrau
I enjoyed this book even more than The City of Ember, mostly due to the fact that there isn’t a movie version to have seen first, as there was with Ember. Once again, DuPrau tackles tough issues in an entirely readable way. As I read further into the book, I wondered what her views on illegal immigration might be; this story would be a good springboard for discussing that contemporary issue with teenagers. Recommended.

Started but did not finish
Painting Ruby Tuesday
Jane Yardley
This book had promise, set both in the 60s in England and present day New York/London, but the amount of characters and the density of the text was a bit overwhelming for my summer reading, vacation mind.

Must Love Dogs: a Novel
Claire Cook.
I gave up on this. If I had to finish it, I could, but it suffered from the movie being such a true adaptation of the book. Had I not seen the film version, I would read to the end to find out what happened. Since I saw the movie, I have a good idea how this book ends and thus, am not really interested in it.

Edible Estates: attack on the front lawn
Fritz Haeg, Diana Balmori & others
This book had some good ideas in it and the essays I read were interesting. Not interesting enough to read them all, but still. The pictures are good.

The Best Apples to Buy and Grow
Beth Hanson, ed.
I checked this out as part of the “build a Belgian fence” project that is still in the planning stage. But I have decided to narrow my apple choices down a bit before diving into this book.

Apples for the 21st Century
Warren Manhart
This book has several contributors. Once I realized that one of them was Glen Andresen, who taught a “Growing Fruit” class I attended last winter, I just read his entries. This book was also part of the “build a Belgian fence” project that is still in the planning stages.

Little House on the Prairie
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Darn it, the library has over ten copies of this book that is half a century old. And people keep requesting it. So back it goes.

Did not even start
Watering Systems for Lawn and Garden: a do it yourself guide
R. Dodge Woodson

Permaculture Plants: a selection
Nugent & Boniface

Grafting and Budding: a practical guide for fruit and nut plants and ornamental
W. J. Lewis & D. McE. Alexander
I’ll look into this book later.

75 remarkable fruits for your garden
Jack Staub

Handbook of Edible Weeds
James A. Duke

Poem for August: not Casey at the Bat.

Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer was the original choice for the month. I enjoyed the story, and thought it appropriate for August. I had more than two weeks off from work which would give me ample time to memorize. We were “go” on this plan.

Then I started to actually attempt to memorize it. The problems began. This month, I learned that if I am going to spend a month committing a poem to memory, it better be one I like. The more time I spent with this poem, the less I liked it.

First of all, it has way too many names.

From the first stanza:
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

From the third stanza:
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,

I knew ahead of time that those names would cause me trouble in the far future. “Was it Barrows who died at first? Cooney? Who died first?” I could hear my future self wondering.

Secondly, the more time I spent with this poem the less enchanted I grew with the writing. Last month, memorizing The New Colossus gave me a greater love of the poem. By committing the words to memory, the jerky motion of the poem on paper smoothed right out. Not so for this poem. Four stanzas in, I realized this poem’s choices of words were not something I loved. The rhyme scheme really reaches in places too:

The second stanza
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that –
We’d put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.

I was initially confused about who exactly the straggling few were. Because the first stanza discusses the lineup, I thought that the straggling few were players coming to bat. But eventually it became clear to me that it was the fans who were getting up and wandering off.

AND. I found Thayer’s use of the word “and” a bit too much:

Fourth stanza:
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

And appears four times in this stanza. It was too much for me. Ernest, could you have rewritten this a bit?

After slogging through those four stanzas we get to one I really like, as I feel it nicely captures a turning point in the game:

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

That is as far as I got with this poem. The other problem was the more than two weeks off. I had not realized it, but I do most of my memorizing on the commute to or from work. On days I take the Max I work on a few lines while walking to the Max stop, on days I ride my bike I’ve got 25 good minutes of memorizing time. With all the time off from work, there was no built in time to commit poetry to memory.

Mid-month I gave up on Casey. Instead, I substituted an Emily Dickinson poem that I had recently encountered:

This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies
And lads and girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls;

This passive place a summer’s nimble mansion,
Where bloom and bees
Fulfilled their oriental circuit,
Then ceased like these.

This poem was committed to memory happily.

A tragic day for my favorite pair of sandals

I bought these sandals when I was preparing to go to Hungary and Romania in 2005. I love them. They have cute swirly designs on them, they look fashionable, I can walk for miles in them, they give me an extra inch or two in height. They are the perfect sandal. Today, they did what they have been threatening to do for months now, split open in the back. I love them too much to discard them outright, so I will take them to the cobbler to see if miracles can be worked. But I’m not very optimistic. It may be time for us to part ways.