Children's Book Review - The Dark, Lemony Snicket

The Dark

 

Lemony Snicket, Jon Klassen (Ill.)

Category: Children’s Picture Book

Synopsis: Laszlo is afraid of the dark—until the dark introduces itself.

Rating: *** (3-star scale)

Comments:

Okay. The book is creepy. But the dark is creepy. And I think the author is probably a little creepy. So you can forgive it. Can kids forgive it? I don’t know. If they’re afraid of the dark, probably not.

Still, although the book was creepy, it was also oddly gentle. The text wasn’t creepy except in how spare it was.

I was afraid of the dark as a child. Would this book have cured me? No, not even close, but I can definitely enjoy the book as an adult.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

I think so.

You might also enjoy:

Creepy Carrots!

Children's Book Review - Creepy Carrots!, Aaron Reynolds, Peter Brown (Ill.)

Thought I'd share a picture book review in honor of Halloween. (Look for another one tomorrow.)

Creepy Carrots!

 

Aaron Reynolds, Peter Brown (Ill)

Category: Children’s Picture Book

Synopsis: Every time Jasper Rabbit passes the carrots in Crackenhopper Field, he munches on some. But is it his imagination or have the carrots started to follow him?

Rating: *** (3-star scale)

Comments:

A good book for Halloween season. I read this one with my grandson, and he called the ending before I did. (I won’t spoil it here.)

I’m not normally a fan of “thriller” children’s books, but this one ended well enough that I enjoyed it. The pictures are mostly black, gray, and orange, and there’s an ominous suspenseful feeling throughout. I think little boys, especially, will enjoy this one.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

Yes. If they have no problem with a slightly scary plot.

You might also enjoy:

The Dark, Lemony Snicket

Book Review - Help, Thanks, Wow, Anne Lamott

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

 

Anne Lamott

Category: Nonfiction: Faith

Synopsis: Lamott discusses her three go-to prayers.

Date finished: 27 September 2013

Rating: ***½

Comments:

God bless Anne Lamott. I love her dearly. Even when I disagree with her. And even when she spews venomous hatred at the Bush administration and anyone else right of center (or perhaps, right of far left).

A personal story. I’ve spent time with Anne Lamott. I introduced her at a reading she did as a part of my college’s Forum and Artist Series in the spring of 1998. Her Traveling Mercies was about to be released. We stood backstage, waiting for our cue, and she was infinitely more nervous than I was. She showed me pictures of her son, Sam (who is now a father), and gave me a mint. (I still have the wrapper.) She sat down and signed each and every book I brought with me, and she obligingly inscribed my program from that night, “Bird by Bird…Anne Lamott.” A year or so later I went to a reading she gave in the Twin Cities area, and she remembered me and my name. This graciousness is how authors create life-long fans. Because I’ve since read every (non-fiction) book she’s released—including those full of aforementioned venomous spews.

So, I feel like Anne and I have some history. I’ve read about her faith evolving over the years. And mine has evolved in another direction.

This book is full of Anne’s sense of humor and neurosis. She passes on wisdom and wisecracks from her friends of various faith backgrounds. It’s a short book that focuses on petitionary prayer (Help), prayer of thanksgiving (Thanks), and prayers of awe (Wow), plus thoughts on Amen.

Is it as good as her full-length books on faith? In my opinion, no. There was something missing here.

Did I agree with what she posited about prayer? Not always, but my faith is not mainstream.

What I know is this: we pray from where we are. Anne’s treatise is not my treatise. And that’s fine. You take what you can from a book like this. And I thank Anne for writing it.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

Might be a nice gift book for a struggling friend.

You might also enjoy:

Any of Lamott’s other books on faith:
Traveling Mercies
Plan B
Grace (Eventually)

and the companion book to this one (out Oct. 29):
Stitches

Book Review - My Life in France, Julia Child

My Life in France

 

Julia Child

Category: Nonfiction: Memoir: Food & Cooking; France; Celebrities

Synopsis: Famous television chef Julia Child recounts her life in France.

Date finished: 26 September 2013

Rating: ***½

Comments:

I've always wondered why would you write a biography when a memoir has already been written? This book is my case in point. I read Dearie, the biography of Julia Child, back in March. I’m convinced it ruined me for My Life in France. It was thicker, covering Julia Child’s life before France and more of her life after France, but basically? Same book. So this felt like a re-read. And not even a very fascinating one.

My second beef about this book is that Julia Child didn’t write it. Her nephew interviewed her and wrote the book. This is revealed to us as early as the introductory pages, so I, skeptic that I am, spent the whole book guarded. Did Julia really say that? Was that an embellishment? Did Prud’Homme project there? I just wasn’t convinced this was Julia’s book.

The good news is the cynic in me that read Dearie against the grain is now satisfied that it’s probably a very faithful biography. It squares up nicely with this book.

I have very little to say about the book itself. Frankly, I think I might be Julia-ed out for a while. This is my third Julia book this year, and I have two more on the TBR shelf. But I think I’ll take a break.

And I think I should have read this book first.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

 I could go either way.

You might also enjoy:

Dearie, Bob Spitz
Julia’s Cats, Patricia Barey & Therese Burson
Julie & Julia, Julie Powell

Book Review - Maddie on Things, Theron Humphrey

Maddie on Things: A Super Serious Project about Dogs and Physics

 

Theron Humphrey

Category: Photography: Dogs; Projects & Adventures

Synopsis: Humphrey takes a photo of his coonhound Maddie in each of the 50 states.

Date finished: 25 September 2013

Rating: ****½

Comments:

I am of two minds with this one.

First off, I love, love, LOVE the photos of Maddie. I love that you get a sense of Maddie’s nature. I love the odd perches and positions she poses in. I love the way the photos are taken. I love the processing and the square presentation.

Got it? I love these photos.

My beef is with the short introductory comments. They were bewildering to me. I read the intro twice and I still don’t have a clue what the book is about. Here’s the deal: Humphrey isn’t a writer and he wasn’t edited (I found two mistakes on one into page alone). And here’s thing two: I don’t think Humphrey really knows what the book is about either.

He could have omitted the intro, and this would have just been a great book of dog photography. But he didn’t. So, I will try to give you a synopsis here. Humphrey was growing disillusioned with corporate photography (no, I don’t know what that is, either). He wanted to do something real. So he chucked his well-paying, secure job and decided to drive around the country—through every state—and meet a person every day. He adopted Maddie to have a companion on his trip. Along the way, he discovered that Maddie’s talent was perching in precarious positions exactly as she is placed. So, we end up with a book of photos of Maddie. Wait, you say, what happened with the whole meeting people and feeling real project? How’d that pan out? Your guess is as good as mine, buddy. I’m telling you, I read the intro twice.

Had the intro made sense, this would have been a five-star book all day long.

So, in short, buy this book, love the photos, but skip the introduction. 

Would you recommend this to a friend?

Yes, but skip the introductory comments.

You might also enjoy:

Dancers among Us, Jordan Matter

Book Review - The Hungry Ear, Kevin Young (Ed.)

The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink

 

Kevin Young (Ed)

 

Category: Poetry: Food

Synopsis: An anthology of 150+ contemporary poems about food and drink.

Date finished: 18 September 2013     

Rating: ****½

Comments:

My best and most vivid memories involve food:

     My mother turning the kitchen upside down twice a year to make 20 dozen doughnuts for the

     church bake sales. Her doughnuts were always priced higher than the others.

     Making lefse with my Norwegian grandmother.

     The first thing I ever cooked by myself: potato soup with egg dumplings from a church cookbook

     because my mother never made soup. I was 13.

     Going through my grandmother’s refrigerator with my aunt after Grandma passed away in 2004.

     We found a bag of chopped nuts in there from 1982.

     My father teaching me to spell “mayonnaise.”

     My brothers getting jars of pickles for Christmas because they were so hard to buy for.

     Eating baked French fries out of an oval serving bowl off of upended boxes when my husband and

     I were moving into our first apartment together.

     The way my mother had hard and fast rules about meat and vegetable paring. Carrots with

     beef, corn with pork, peas with chicken and fish, squash with meatloaf. Every time. She never

     varied.

We all have these memories. They’re part of what makes us who we are.

I can’t think of a better topic for a poetry anthology than food. (I’d say bees come in a close second, though. Poets do love to write about bees.)

Kevin Young did a phenomenal job of collecting a smorgasbord (sorry, couldn’t help it) of food-related poems. But what blew me away was the organization of the poems. They were arranged with the skill of a surgeon. (That’s a bad metaphor, let me try again.) They were arranged like a tailor’s tiny hand stitches. Each following the last, each leading to the next, nothing out of order. It was a marvel.

You’ll see some usual suspects, like William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say,” but you’ll find many, many more you’ve never read by poets you have. It’s an accessible volume, which is what I always hope for but don’t always get.

I cannot recommend this collection highly enough. The poets included are exceptional. And the poems were mouthwatering. A true meal for the ear.

My favorite poems about food that were not included:

Song, Robert Hass

The Feast, Robert Hass
The Catsup Bottle, Ogden Nash
Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts, Mark Halliday
Bone Handled Fork, Ted Kooser
After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries A New Recipe For Hamburger Hot Dish, Leo Dangel
The Iceberg Theory, Gerald Lochlin

Would you recommend this to a friend?

Absolutely!

Top Ten Tuesday (Forced Reads)

This week’s Topic: Top Ten Books I Was Forced to Read

 

These are all books I had to read for school. I’ve listed these in order of how painful they were to read.

Top Ten Most Painful Forced Reads

1. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

2. The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane

3. The Aeneid, Virgil

4. The Iliad, Homer

5. The Odyssey, Homer

6. The Stranger, Albert Camus

7. Macbeth, William Shakespeare

8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare

9. Hamlet, William Shakespeare

10. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

 

Top Ten Not-So-Bad Forced Reads

1. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

2. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

3. Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

4. In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway

5. Dubliners, James Joyce

6. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

7. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

9. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck