What I'm reading this week (10/28/19)

Last week I finished:

I haven't yet read J. Ryan Stradal's first book, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, but when his new book came out this summer, I was intrigued. Waiting for my many audiobook holds to come in, with nary a one showing up on time, I went to the library in search of something to listen to in the meantime. The first audiobook I ran into was The Lager Queen of Minnesota, so I quickly checked it out before someone realized it should have been on the "Too Good to Miss" shelf or something. While I don't drink, and I've never even tasted beer, I still found the story charming and good. This is the story of family: two sisters who haven't spoken for decades, one of them a beermaker whose made her fortune; the other, a poor widow raising a granddaughter by herself; and the grown granddaughter who becomes a brewer herself. I fell in love with Edith, the grandmother who is known far and wide for her award-winning pies which she makes for nursing home residents. She talks like every Wisconsinite woman of a certain age I've ever known (my mother included), and the language is terribly witty to anyone who grew up around Minnesota. While I sometimes felt the story meandered a little too much, and I while I didn't enjoy some of the language, I liked the story and thought the audio version was very good. There are difficult parts, but it ends well, and it ends up being a feel-good story. My rating: 3 stars.

The next four reviews are for books read for Cybils award judging and represent my opinions. My reviews do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other panelists.

Some time ago I read Steve Sheinkin's Bomb (read my review here) which was a National Book Award Finalist and a Newbery Honor book. It was quite well done. So I was excited to see his newest book, Born to Fly on the Cybils list of nonfiction books. This is the true story of the 1929 Air Derby, where a group of women aviators flew across the country, each hoping to have the shortest time. This was the first race of its kind for women. Among the flyers was Amelia Earhart, the only name I was familiar with before I read the book. I enjoyed this book a great deal. It was fascinating. And while it made it clear these women were taking the lead for all aviatrices, they were also setting a course for all women who were finding their place just nine years after winning the vote and a decade before World War II. Piloting in 1929 was an uncertain business at best. In almost every race of this kind, there were tragedies, and yes, fatalities. This race was no different. Added to that, there is the strong suspicion of sabotage, though this claim was never proved one way or the other. My only quibble with the book is that it covered so many women, I had trouble keeping them all straight. Still, though this one is for children, I highly recommend it to grownups. It's that good. My rating: 4 stars.

In 1919, the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed giving all US citizens the right to vote regardless of sex. Though four states allowed women to vote prior to this, this amendment brought to fruition the work of Susan B. Anthony and other suffragettes who had given their lives to the cause. In Susan B. Anthony: The Making of America, we learn about Anthony's early days as a Quaker, her impassioned work on behalf of the black vote and women's suffrage, her arrest when she voted (prior to the 19th amendment's passage), and her later years. She worked for women's rights up until almost the end of her life. She was brazen, brash, and outspoken, making enemies but also attracting generations of women to the work and tirelessly working for reform in other areas both civil and domestic where men had power and women did not. I don't think I've ever read a biography of Susan B. Anthony, and I'm glad I did. I could have done without the veiled implication at the very end of the book what pointed out that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the election to a man as if the results were another form of gender discrimination instead of a biproduct of the electoral college. Also, I question any person who wishes to give rights to some by saying they are better than others as Anthony and Stanton did when saying women were better, smarter, and more moral than men. Isn't that the same argument that kept black men and women enslaved based on race and inferior genetics? I was disappointed to read this, but perhaps it was hyperbole and not heartfelt belief. Overall a good biography of an important woman. My rating: 3.5 stars.

I have to admit, I was not looking forward to reading a children's book about digestion, but I'm here to tell you that not all kids books about digestion are created equal. Your Amazing Digestion from Mouth through Intestine, was a wonderful romp through the body, and, he-hem, outside of the body. And the best part is that it was done in rhyme! I'm a sucker for a well-rhymed quatrain, and Dr. Joanne Settle does as well with poetry as she does making bodily processes understandable to children. She also answers children's questions regarding swallowing gum and passing gas and, shall we say, sick expulsions. The illustrations throughout are cute and diverse, and I picked up a number of fun facts. For instance, an elephant, though he expels 26 gallons of urine at a time, takes the same time to do it--21 seconds--as a human or a dog. Perhaps only I find this fascinating, but there you go. I really enjoyed reading this book and I will be adding her other books to my TBR. My rating: 4 stars.

I love birds. The variations in size and shape and color and function, the beauty and absurdity. Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple's new book Fly with Me covers everything a book about birds should: eggs, nests, beaks, bones, wings, feathers. It also talks about the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, state birds, bird song, migration, bird records, and birdwatching. There are original poems by the authors throughout, stories and folklore, and beautiful photographs. I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in birds. My rating: 4 stars.

Last year, I enjoyed reading Vern Yip's Design Wise (see my review here), so when Yip came out with a follow-up book this summer, Vern Yip's Vacation at Home, I added it to my list. This one wasn't as much fun for me as his previous book, perhaps because of the narrowed focus. While having a home that feels like a vacation sounds appealing, I don't think that's the kind of home I want. My travel experience consists entirely of hotels, and I've been in very few hotels that are warm and inviting. Clean, yes. Minimalist, yes. Gracious, yes. But not vibrant and meaningfully dressed. In Yip's previous book I liked looking at the pictures more than reading the book; this book ended up being the opposite. I found the vacation-at-home homes to be cold and sterile. And Yip is very, very opinionated about all aspects of decorating and housekeeping. I don't go to decorating books to be scolded about how often I change my sheets or how often to empty the dishwasher (which I don't have, thank you very much). So, this one, though beautiful, didn't really do it for me. I think I was not the intended audience. My rating: 3 stars.

I have dozens of poetry books that I've read once (most of them back in the 1990s) and haven't picked up since. So this month I decided to pick two very different volumes and give them a re-read. I chose Without by Donald Hall and Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni. Without is a collection of poems that detail his wife, Jane Kenyon's, also a poet, battle with cancer and subsequent death. My friend went to a reading by Hall when this book came out, and she said it was heartbreaking the way he came out on the stage and stopped dead in front of a large photograph of Jane. I've carried that image forward as if I was there that night. The poems are wonderful, if sad. Hall did what many of us would find impossible to do, detail our dearest love's passing on paper. It's a striking collection, worthy of a read. If you want to know how to write about death so that the raw emotion survives without sentimentality, this is the collection to go to. I'm glad I returned to it all these years later. My rating: 4 stars.

     Nikki Giovanni's collection, also about love, is something quite different from Hall's. Giovanni's poems are sensual, sexual, and witty, by turns fluffy and forceful. A black poet, Giovanni is a good juxtaposition to Hall, a white New Englander. Her poems are rhythmic and jazzy and feel like music. Not all are about romantic love, and she dedicates the book to Tupac Shakur. A fine collection. My rating: 3.5 stars.

This week I'll be reading:

From school desegregation to Charles Darwin (in graphic novel form) to child poverty to moles, this week I'll be reading about a little bit of everything.

My current audiobook:

I've wanted to read this for some time, and it's worth the wait so far.

What I'm reading this week (10/21/19)

I'm on Readcation the first part of this week, and I'll be reading pretty much nothing but children's nonfiction. Hopefully I'll be back next week with a lot of reviews.

Last week I finished:

Earlier this year I tried to read Tracy Chevalier's At the Edge of the Orchard, but I just couldn't finish it due to subject matter. But I did find that I enjoyed Chevalier's writing style, and, upon further research, many of her plots. So I decided to try her most famous novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring. I remember when it came out years and years ago, and it was everywhere. I think I avoided it because of that. But I'm glad I finally, finally got around to it, because I loved it. Although I normally don't like books set before the mid-1800s or so, this one, set in the mid 1600s, didn't feel unrelatable. It's a quiet story, in which the life of the model for Dutch painter Vermeer's famous Girl with a Pearl Earring is imagined. In the novel, which doesn't seem was based on reality, Griet, Vermeer's maid, is secretly asked to help him in his studio, cleaning and grinding and creating his paint for him, and then one day, she's asked to model for him. I enjoyed the way the story was told and how real the characters seemed. It deals with the push and pull and jealousies of work dynamics which haven't changed much in 300 years. I listened to this one on audio, which was good, but I wonder if I would have liked it even more had I read it. I enjoyed it very much, and I can see myself returning to it. It's a short book, and definitely work a try if you haven't read this gem. My rating: 4 stars.

The following review is for a book read for Cybils award judging and represents my opinions. My review does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other panelists.

I now officially know more about the Lego company than most anyone you'll meet and all because of a little book called From an Idea to Lego. For the middle grade set, this book not only gives the history of the Danish company, it also explains how the interlocking bricks are made, and the business philosophy behind the system of play that is Lego. It also details the ups and downs of the company--the factory burned to the ground three times, weathered the Great Depression, and came back from near bankruptcy just a few years ago to become the world's largest toy manufacturer. The book also defines key business terms in a kid-friendly way. I learned so much from this book, and I loved every minute of it. Although Lego* wasn't something I grew up with (I had no idea how long they've been around), now I want to get a set just to be charmed by the magic. My rating: 4 stars.

*"Lego" is both singular and plural.

I'm currently reading:

I'm loving this one.

My evening reads:

I'm having a blast learning about all kinds of things in children's books. Currently, I'm learning about birds and human digestion. I don't even know what's next. My non-children's books have been nearly abandoned (except for the Vern Yip book, which is due back to the library soon, so I'm hoping to finish it this week).

My current audiobook:

Unlike my children's book holds, my audiobook holds just were not coming in this week, so I had to scramble to find something to fill the gap. I totally lucked out finding this one available.

What I'm reading this week (10/14/19)

Last week I finished:

I haven't read a Judy Blume book since Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret in about fourth grade. I knew she had a couple of recent adult books, but I'd kind of forgotten about them until In the Unlikely Event came across my desk at work. My interest was piqued, and I started reading it right away. This is the story, based on actual events, of how three commercial plane crashes in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the 1950s changed the lives of family, friends, and strangers. There are a lot of characters in this one (there's a helpful guide up front), and the action moves from person to person, though the narration remains third person omniscient throughout. I enjoyed this book immensely. It was my reading sweet spot. I love historical fiction with great characters, and this one had that in spades. The writing and plotting were swift, and it really kept me reading. I highly recommend this one to all. My rating: 5 stars.

I believe A Spool of Blue Thread is my third Anne Tyler read, and it's definitely my favorite. It has the quirky characters that Back When We Were Grownups (see my review here) and Clock Dance (see my review here) have, but it also has a depth of plot and characters that they lack. This is the story of the Whitshank family, present day and past; their oddities, quirks, and foibles; and their house, built by the patriarch's father. Several times, I thought ah, so this is what the book is about only to find as I kept listening that it was just a subplot. I'm not a fan of that kind of uncertainty in a book. But although I found the structure of the book a little sloppy, overall, I enjoyed listening to it a lot. Tyler does have a way with quirky characters, and while her books don't tend to be as serious as I generally prefer, I do find them fun. And I found this one even more fun than past reads. My rating: 4 stars.

The next three reviews are for books read for Cybils award judging and represent my opinions. My reviews do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other panelists.

My first middle-grade Cybils read was Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge. This is the young reader's edition of Never Caught : The Washington's Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. In the late 1700s, one of George and Martha Washington's 200 slaves, Ona Judge, walked out of the president's home never to return. Although she was located living as a free woman in Philadelphia, she could not be persuaded to return, and nothing much was done to capture her and return her to the Washingtons. It's not quite the harrowing story I expected. I have major quibbles with this book. First, it would seem the only source document the author has to tell Ona's story is a newspaper article she was interviewed for in her later life. In it, she does not describe the escape or years since in detail, nor is she even able to tell which year it happened, only that she does not regret her choice even in light of the poverty she suffered as a free black woman. There are primary source documents in the form of letters sent to and from President Washington, to tell his side of the story. Which leads to my main quibble: there is much editorializing in this book. Due to its lack of material, it should have been written as a fiction book. Throughout, the author tells her readers again and again how evil slavery is, how wrong the Washingtons were, how mistreated slaves were, how immoral it was to buy and own slaves. (Who today doesn't agree?) It was so heavy-handed I cringed and so full of personal opinion it cannot honestly be called nonfiction. Unless, of course, the standards are lower for children's nonfiction, but I sincerely hope they aren't. This one falls into the category of books that commits the cardinal sin of historians: you cannot judge the past using the criteria of today. It's intellectually dishonest. A much more interesting take of this material for this grade level would have been the question Was Washington a bad man because he owned slaves or a good man in spite of owning slaves? Overall, although I was interested in the story, and I learned a few things I did not know about the years leading up to the Civil War, I found the writing mediocre and the nonadherence to the definition of nonfiction troublesome. My rating: 2.5 stars.

David Macaulay's Crossing on Time: Steam Engines, Fast Ships, and a Journey to the New World is a bonanza of information of the history of steam ships, how they work, and how they're built. Inspired by his own trip as a child crossing the Atlantic on the SS United States in the late 1950s, Macaulay examines the history of steam ships, explains the inner workings, and provides numerous drawings of ships from the 1800s to the mid-1900s. This history leads up to the ship that carried Macaulay and his family to America in 1957. There is a gigantic fold-out cross-section of the SS United States in the middle of the book, and boy is it something. I spent time pouring over it just like a little kid. It was fascinating. Although some of the more technical parts of the book (there's a lot of time spent on pistons and whatnot), were a little less interesting to me, I still think an older child (it's categorized on Amazon as being for grades 5-9) will be able to follow the descriptions. I found this one fascinating, and for a kid interested in ships, I think this book would be a hit. I was impressed. My rating: 4 stars.

I'm sure I haven't read a biography of Emily Dickinson since I was a kid, so I was excited to find Becoming Emily: The Life of Emily Dickinson on my list of Cybils reads. This book expertly takes us through Emily's life, describing her family, whom she was very close to all her life; her home; her school years; and her hermitlike ways as her desire to spend more and more time writing poetry deepened. By today's standards, her life was a small one. Added to the restrictions of the day on unmarried women, she often found herself homebound by her own illnesses and in caretaking for her parents and sister during their illnesses. I was interested to find she was a big fan of Jane Eyre and also the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I was also fascinated to find that upon her death her sister hired her husband's mistress to prepare manuscripts of Dickinson's poems for publication (something Dickinson was never interested in during her life), but then a war broke out over the poems, some being kept by the family, and some by the mistress. It's stunning that the poems ever saw publication, all things considered. This book is categorized for grade level 5-7, but I would have thought it was for a much older audience (cover illustrations aside). I liked this one, and although it wasn't flashy (Emily, after all, wasn't flashy) I learned a lot. My rating: 4 stars.

 

Today I'll begin:

 

I'm kind of excited for this one.

My evening reads:

 

 

The poetry is sliding in order to get through as many children's books as possible before they're due back to the library. The decorating book is surprisingly slow going. And learning about wildebeests? Not so much my thing.

My current audiobook:

 

Only, what, 20 years late?

What I'm reading this week (10/7/19)

Last week I finished:

I'm always looking for a new mystery series, so I finally decided to try the first book in Millennium series by Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In this book, a journalist who is going to jail for libel is asked to solve the 30-some-year-old murder of a young heiress. What he discovers along the way is disturbing. I have to assume I am not the target audience for this one, although I am unsure who the target audience would be. This series is beloved by many, and perhaps the subsequent books are different, but I found this one too graphic and disturbing. It was also too long by at least a third. There is a secondary plot of international business fraud (or something) that I never did understand and just suffered through at the beginning and end of the book. It's smart writing, good plotting, and the characters, though rather unlovable, are well-drawn. I liked the mystery: how did a young woman disappear into thin air on an island that, at the time of her disappearance, was inaccessible to the outside world? I did not like the graphic sex scenes, the scenes of torture and sadomasochism, and the strong tendency of characters to exact revenge. It was all a little too dark and nasty for my enjoyment. If you like gritty crime stories, this will likely fill the bill for you, though. My rating: 3 stars. 

I cannot tell you the last time I asked a person for advice. I google things all the time to learn how to cook a pork tenderloin in the slow cooker or to double check the definition of sadomasochism (see above), but I'm not one to go in search of human advice. I believe the answers to our problems are within us, because we're all equal parts of divine intelligence--the only kind of intelligence there is. But I know there are a lot of folks who want other people to give them advice. Enter "Dear Sugar." Dear Sugar was (is?) an advice column written by Cheryl Strayed (author of Wild). And a collection of her columns was compiled into Tiny Beautiful Things. She practices what one might call "radical empathy." As someone who recently added a book titled Against Empathy to her TBR, I'm not sure I should have even picked this one up, but this has been on my list of books to read for so long, I decided to knock it off on audio. I know this book is something a lot of people love. I imagine it (and the advice column) has brought comfort and clarity to many. I appreciate that. I just found it disturbing on so many levels. I'll try to articulate that with compassion. Strayed seems to operate under the belief that we are all broken. While I understand this very popular view, I refuse to go through life believing I or anyone I meet is broken. If you look for brokenness, you'll find brokenness, and then you'll never see anything else. Get thee behind me, brokenness. I was also disturbed by the sheer number of people, especially twenty-somethings, but many mature people as well, were willing to give their power of decision-making and the direction of their lives over to a complete stranger. I was also disturbed in general by the kind of things people are sharing with that stranger. The book was full of sexual relationship issues, infidelity, unending grief and the ole gay vs. fundamentalist Christian trope. I found the book exhausting and the situations unbelievable. Sugar (Strayed) answered each question with a lengthy autobiographical essay peppered with terms of endearment (a favorite being "Sweet pea"). She's a master at having a story for every issue she addresses in a letter, and she's lived a lot of life and seen a lot of dis-ease, most of it hard, abusive, and addictive. Perhaps I'm not "broken" enough to appreciate this, but I tend to believe that you will live what you give into. Has my life been touched by infidelity, addiction, grief, alcoholism, poverty? Yes. Is it my choice to let those things own me, or take up residence in my head or heart, or be the undercurrents of my life story? Yes. Lastly, if you are a Christian, you will likely find a fair amount of this advice disturbing. She takes swipes at Christianity and, of course, Republicans (at one point she said she'd rather be sodomized by a lawn flamingo than vote for a Republican), so this book was only meant for half of the country's population. And it was definitely meant for a secular audience. It's not the advice I would have given, but it wasn't necessarily bad, either. (A note on the audio: It was narrated by Strayed, who read the questions and responses in a "poet's voice" [you know, the halting, emphatic voice young poets use when reading their work?], and when she got to her terms of endearment, they sounded faked and staged, like it was her schtick. I would have preferred a different narrator.) My rating: 3.5 stars.

Growing up, family dinner (we called it supper) was a nightly occurrence. We had no idea there were families who didn't eat together each night. What's more, it never really occurred to my brothers and me to have food preferences. There were a couple of things each of us didn't particularly care for, but we still ate it when it was served. Apparently, this is not the norm. Or at least it's not the norm nowadays. Jenny Rosenstrach, author of Dinner: A Love Story, which takes its name from her popular food blog, addresses family dinner head on, especially family dinner with young children. She believes in the nightly family dinner, but shoots for most family members eating mostly the same meal most nights. She also suggests feeding small children (babies and toddlers) their own dinners separate from the parents, which I find a little wacky for my Midwestern sensibilities, but then, we've established that my childhood family dinner experiences may not be average. She offers lots of ways to get children to try foods they say they don't like. One approach to family dining I find kind of genius (once I get past my "wait, who's the adult and why isn't she in charge?" headshaking), is the deconstructed meal, whereby your pasta-hating child can still have certain elements of the family meal while being allowed to ignore a"no-go" food like pasta or eggs or chicken. That way, at least the adult-who-is-in-charge can at least avoid having to make a different meal for each child. This is a re-read for me, and I really enjoy the book as a whole. There are a lot of straight-forward recipes that I have yet to try but really should. And the book, half memoir and half cookbook is beautifully written. I stopped following Rosenstrach's blog a number of years ago out of a frustration with her politics (what ever happened to no politics at the family table?) and her location blindness. She seems to have no awareness that there are folks out here who aren't living her same East Coast life. Still, the recipes are good. My rating: 4 stars.

I've found a new favorite book of poetry for the year. Marie Howe's The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, published in 2009, is one of my favorites of 2019. I've enjoyed her work for a long time (some books more than others), and this is a book very much like her What the Living Do, domestic and everyday, which is the kind of poetry I enjoy most. If you're looking for a short book of contemporary and approachable poetry that will surprise you more with its subtlety than its experimentation, give this one a try. My rating: 4 stars.  

This week I'll finish:

 

I've been taking my time with this one. I kind of don't want it to end.

My evening reads:

 

I have a lot of children's literature to read, so I'd better finish one or both of the poetry books this week.

My next audiobook:

 

I could go for a little Anne Tyler after a couple of heavy audios.

October 2019 reading list

October, November, and December are going to be interesting reading months here. I've agreed to be a judge for an online children's book award (more on that later), so I'm unsure how many "adult" books I'll be reading. I chose 14 books I plan to read, but the whole thing is subject to change.

Fiction 

 

Memoir & Nonfiction

 

Poetry