What I read in March 2020

Forgive the long silence, folks. I can't explain it. Although the last few weeks have been exceptional, I don't think that's really why I haven't posted. I think I'm feeling blog burnout and review fatigue. But I have read some wonderful books this month that I wanted to share.

But first, a few words about what life looks like these days. Wisconsin is under a "safer at home" order (basically, shelter in place), and my household is taking it seriously. We leave the house once every two weeks to stock up on groceries for us and for our son's family, but otherwise, we don't leave the house. We're both blessed with jobs that we can do from home, and not a day goes by we don't thank God for that. But frankly, other than working from home and not eating out at all, our lives haven't changed much. We never go too far from home and we are careful budgeters of our time. And to tell the truth, we're not very social people; we're happiest at home, together. So while the whole world is going crazy over the woes of social distancing, I'm having a wonderful Introvert's Holiday. Not only do I not want to go out, I'm not allowed to. It's wonderful. Anyone else out there who feels the same?

My main issue with all the closures has been the lack of audiobooks. I stopped by the public library on March 17 to pick up my audio holds, as I had a hunch they'd be closing indefinitely (they announced the decision after they'd closed, presumably to limit contact), so I stocked up. Or at least I thought I did. I finished my last audiobook on April 1. I have not been able to get Overdrive to work, and their website is sort of useless for troubleshooting, and Audible isn't a feasible option for someone who listens to as many audiobooks each month as I do, so I resorted to buying audiobooks on CD (my preferred method of listening) from Amazon. I figured we're saving a lot of money these days, why not stroke the economy a bit with an online purchase. What can I say, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Inywho...

So, just like the last couple of months, I'll write full reviews for my favorite books read this month and shorter reviews for the others.

I'm a big fan of Rick Bragg. One of the biggest books of the 1990s was his All Over But the Shoutin', a beautiful, tough memoir about growing up poor in the South with an alcoholic father who frequently abandoned his family leaving his wife to take care of their three boys by picking cotton. Bragg is a natural storyteller and beautiful writer, and he's frequently funny as heck. His newest book, The Best Cook in the World, continues the wonderful stories he told about his mother and family in his first book. Although poor, this family, going back several generations, were serious about cooking. Their food was southern and simple, and his mother insists that it be done right. She has opinions and rules for all things culinary, and if you disagree or do it differently, you're a philistines. Or worse. This book, clocking in at just under 500 pages, is part memoir, part biography of his mother, and part cookbook, and it was all my favorite things. Bragg tells his family history with stories and recipes (recipes are stories, he posits), and the instructional portion of the recipes are peppered with his mother's explanations, or, in most cases, lack of explanations. When asked how long to bake something, she might say, "Until it's done!" Bragg will prod a bit, "Yes, but can you give an approximate time?" "Well how would I know how their oven works?! Bake it til it's done!" This is a wonderful, wonderful book, and I enjoyed every minute of reading it. What struck me most about the recipes were the short, simple ingredient lists. All told, the recipes in the book used only the following ingredients: pork, potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, bologna, bacon fat, mayo, flour, salt, pepper, and the occasional brick of government cheese. It's amazing the things you can whip up with only those ingredients. If you enjoy food memoirs, you'll want to read this one. It's wonderful. My rating: 5 stars.

Sometimes you find books at just the right time. Chalk The Great Halifax Explosion up as one of those. This was one of the audio books I picked up before the public library closed, and I enjoyed it immeasurably. The telling of the true World War I-era tragedy of the explosion of a ship carrying 3,000 tons of explosive material exploding in the Halifax harbor, vaporizing the ship in less than a second and killing 11,000. It was the largest explosion the world had ever seen, surpassed only by the atom bombs of World War II. This is a fascinating story well-told. I enjoyed it more than Erik Larson's Dead Wake, which is similar in subject matter. The audio was very good, too. What struck me about this book, especially at this point in human history, was how everyone came together after this terrible tragedy. It's what we're seeing play out this month all around the world, people coming together to lend aid and uplift spirits. If you're looking for a true story of tragedy with a lot of heart, I don't think you'll be disappointed. My rating: 4 stars.

I was lucky to have my audio hold on The Splendid and the Vile come up just before the library closed down. Like The Great Halifax Explosion, it was a great book to be reading while the world seems to be reeling. This is the story of Winston Churchill and Londoners' weathering of the aerial bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II. It too, felt familiar, as waves of bombs fell on London in the book, waves of panic and infection fell over the world in real time. A couple of things struck me about this book. First, and this strikes me about every book about the Homefront, whether American or English, during World War II, was how naturally and seamlessly people came together. There are a few times in recent human history where folks have united like this: the World Wars, 9/11 in America, and, I think, this pandemic belief we are currently in the grips of. Second, I was struck by how much "wooing" Churchill did of President Roosevelt. England needed America to turn the tide of the war or the world might very well be lost to the ideals of Nazism. It was a desperate time, but Americans weren't terribly interested in entering another world war. They very much wanted to sit this one out. In general, I enjoy Erik Larson's books, though I do enjoy some more than others (he-hem), but this one is near the top of the list. It told about one small slice of English history, and it did it well. I recommend it highly. My rating: 4 stars.

I was a little surprised, and dare I say, disappointed, in the latest (fifth) installment in the Kopp Sisters series. In Kopp Sisters on the March, Constance, Norma, and Fleurette, are off to a National Service School, a military-style training school for women in the days leading up World War I. The school was meant to train young women for nursing, seamstress work, typing, and other female-oriented tasks associated with war. My disappointment with the book lies in the fact that the Kopp sisters were secondary to a new character, Beulah Binford, a young woman (based on the real Beulah Binford) trying to work her way out of a disgraced life. I could have done with less Beulah and more Constance. Still, I enjoyed the book, and I look forward to the sixth book, coming out this fall. My rating: 4 stars.

 

I finally read the seventh and last book in the Clementine series, Completely Clementine. It was a wonderful as the others, but it sure was sad to see the series end. In this one, Clementine has to say good-bye to third grade, but she has trouble saying good-bye. Also, she's giving her father the silent treatment because he ate meat, and the two must navigate issues of convictions and free will. And lastly, Clementine's mother is ready to (finally) give birth to Clementine's little brother or sister. Will if be a dud? A good ending to a great series. Now, to begin again. My rating: 4 stars.  

 

I found A Bookshop in Berlin almost entirely forgettable. It's the true story of a Jewish Polish woman who owns a bookshop in Berlin and must escape the Nazis. The story just didn't seem unique, and perhaps it was too humbly written to be very interesting to me. I feel crass saying so, but it just didn't grab me. My rating: 3 stars. 

 

National Parks of the U.S.A. is a very pretty children's guide to the National Parks. There are 58 National Parks in America, in all regions of the country, and containing all manner of wildlife, fauna, and geographical features. The book does a good job showcasing as much of this diversity as it can. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it would show only 21 of the parks in detail, and I was kind of hoping for the whole ball of wax. The parks chosen for inclusion weren't necessarily the ones I was most interested in learning about. Still, a lovely, informative book that your little traveler or scientist would enjoy. My rating: 4 stars.

 

 

Years ago I read Myron Uhlberg's Hands of My Father, Uhlberg's memoir of growing up hearing with two deaf parents. It was wonderful. The Sound of Silence is the children's version of that book. It, too, was wonderful. He talks about the difficulties of being the young interpreter for his father between the hearing and deaf worlds. My rating: 4 stars.

 

 

I've never watched Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs, but I know him from his appearances on news programs. I've always enjoyed his outlook on life and his voice (remember the Ford commercials?)--plus I think he's kind of cute. So I decided to try his new book The Way I Heard It on audio, since he narrates it. If you are familiar with Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story from radio, you'll have a good idea of what these stories are like. I enjoyed this book a great deal. Between the stories (which are available in podcast form on his website), he gives short personal stories which I enjoyed even more. This was very good on audio. My rating: 4 stars.

I love books about food and I love books about the United States, and The United Tastes of America combines the two beautifully. This is a children's cookbook that gives relevant food facts for each of the 50 states and U.S. territories plus one representative recipe and a full-page photo of the finished dish. The recipes were not terribly simple--no easier than what I might make for supper (no peanut butter smeared on celery in this book), and there were a number of things that I would like to try. Nothing was terribly weird nor absurdly easy, and turning the page to discover which recipe was chosen for each state was fun. It was often something unexpected. I learned a lot with this one, and I enjoyed every page. This was one of the best children's books I've read this year. My rating: 4 stars.

 

 

I've been wanting to read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind for quite awhile now, and since my library has the audio edition of the young reader's version, I decided to give that a try. I was sort of disappointed with the book, and I'm not sure why. I can't remember now what it was that bothered me. It's a great story, and he talks frankly about the everyday poverty of his Malawian village, Kamkwamba's substandard education (since the family often could not afford it), and the near-starvation the area suffered due to drought. Through it all, Kamkwamba taught himself advanced scientific principles so that he could build a windmill to produce water and create electricity for his village. It seems such a basic thing--something most countries moved beyond decades ago--could we not get this information to countries like Malawi instead of waiting for one 12-year-old boy to teach himself how to do it from a discarded textbook? It seems appalling, doesn't it? My rating: 4 stars.

 

The Mitford Scandal, the third in the Mitford Murders series, was much like the two that came before it. This one, though, covers more years (it seemed like too many, perhaps the author is trying to fast-forward a little to get to World War II quicker?) I don't find these books great literature, and I could stop reading the series at any time, but they are kind of fun. The Mitford sisters were quite the set, and I think we're getting to where their more outrageous antics will become more prominent in the books. A fun jaunt, but nothing great. My rating: 3 stars.

 

The Miracle at Speedy Motors, the ninth in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, was as satisfying as all the others. It's hard to write reviews of books that are far into a series, so I'm not going to give a plot summary. They always sound a little uninteresting anyway. If you read these, you'll want to read them in order, and the plots are sort of secondary to the overall feel of the series anyway. But as long as Alexander McCall Smith keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them. My rating: 4 stars.

 

I made a decision to stop reading Donald Trump Jr.'s Triggered when I was quite far in. One of my goals this year was to "turn off the news when it devolved into something other than news," and this book did. I was disappointed in how snarky and button-pushing it was. I don't have a problem with political books that pander a bit to their base, but this was just a little too much pandering. And, as a part of Don Jr.'s base who isn't fond of the snark, I was turned off. I started it to blow off some political steam, but my steam was blown off by the second chapter. I prefer a fairer approach.

~

Well, it only took me a month and a half to finish these reviews! And I'm already reading some wonderful books in April. Hopefully I can get a post up about them soon

What I'm reading this week (10/23/17)

I'm home on "readcation" through Wednesday, but I still wanted to post an update of what I finished last week. Hold on to your seats, this is a long one.

The seventh book in Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, Killing England, is a good as all the others. This is the story of the Revolutionary War, and if, like me, you haven't really studied that since grade school, it's a great refresher. We learn about General George Washington and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, Benedict Arnold, King George III, and all the other key players in the war and the writing of the Declaration of Independence. There were several things that I'd long forgotten or I don't remember learning at all--that we enlisted the help of the French, for instance. And the book is full of historical facts that you just don't get from others books. George Washington was 6'2"! "Cannon" is both singular and plural. The lieutenant is named such because he serves "in lieu of" his superior (duh, how did I never put two and two together?). I enjoyed the parts of the book that talked about the founding fathers, but the parts that gave the blow-by-blow of the actual fighting wasn't my cup of tea. Reading this during the NFL kneeling-during-the-national-anthem controversy, I was struck again that if we only knew the sacrifices made by those imperfect men and women who went before us, we would find our national pride and come together. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence, every commander in the rebel army, every public person who called themselves a patriot was facing sure death should the war be won by England. If that doesn't give one pause, nothing will. I would recommend the books in this series to anyone interested in approachable historical nonfiction where you can learn a lot about the past without a moment of boredom. My rating: 4 stars.

Another wonderfully patriotic book that I finally got around to last week was Sully, the true story of Captain Sully Sullenberger landing flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January of 2015. It's so hard for me to find books that are instructive and truly uplifting, that show a man or women with the values we used to hold dear: integrity, steadiness, moral integrity. If you're looking for the same kind of book, pick up Sully. I listened to the audio version, and the narrator was fabulous; it also included a postscript narrated by Sully himself which is very well done, too. The flight lasted only about five minutes, and the time the plane's engines were disabled by bird strikes until the time it landed safely on the Hudson, with all 155 people on board safe and sound, was only 208 seconds. The amount of information gathering and processing and clear-sighted decision-making required of a man to make a landing as un-routine as a water landing, to do it with the stress of knowing the fate of 154 people is in your hands, the fear of making the wrong decision, of recrimination, it boggles the mind. And after the safe landing and quick evacuation of the plane, there was still the winter temperatures and icy water to worry about until boats could rescue them all. I found the book fascinating. It's mostly memoir and good background on commercial flying and aviation in general. It did feel that it was stalling, trying to fill pages until it got to the main event, but I enjoyed every word and thought so much, I didn't mind at all. I would have gladly read twice as much, because I just liked Sully so much. One thing that differed greatly from the movie of the same name starring Tom Hanks is that the book didn't touch on the investigation at all. Although there obviously was one, I guess using that as the backdrop for the movie was Hollywood's way of injecting more drama into the situation. Needless to say, I recommend this one to anyone. It would be a great book for teen boys because of its strong male role model. My rating: 5 stars.

I resisted Kathryn Smith's The Gatekeeper for quite awhile before buying my copy. I feel that I've read so many books about President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, his presidency, and the people he surrounded himself with. But I think I always knew I'd cave, because I just can't seem to resist the siren call of an historical biography, especially if a president is involved. The Gatekeeper is the biography of Missy LeHand, FDR's secretary from the time he was Governor of New York to his last years in the White House. Smith seems to equate LeHand's job to that of the present-day chief of staff, though I find that hard to believe and unsubstantiated by anything Smith wrote about her position. She didn't seem to be an advisor, and though she had policy opinions and voiced them discretely, I have never read that she was considered a cabinet member (which I believe the chief of staff is). At any rate, LeHand was very important to Roosevelt and was beloved by all. Single all her life, she lived in the White House with the Roosevelts, and although there have been rumors over the years that LeHand was one of the women Roosevelt had an affair with--a claim made by one of FDR's own sons--there seems to be no evidence of romantic involvement. She loved him deeply and believed in him wholeheartedly, and he signed his letters to her "Father". By all accounts, the Roosevelts' marriage was very troubled, with both parties having affairs with other women, so the fact that Miss LeHand made her way to her boss's bedroom in her nightgown at night could probably be taken with a grain of salt. At any rate, I found this to be a very readable account, not gossipy nor terribly one-sided. If you've read other books about the Roosevelts, though, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, or watched Ken Burn's wonderful The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, nothing here will be new to you. My rating: 4 stars.

I absolutely adored Tsh Oxenreider's At Home in the World released earlier this year, and I've also been loving her The Simple Show podcast, so I was very excited to read her previous book Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World. But you guys, this one bombed for me. I think that Oxenreider has matured much as a writer and person, and I think there's a big change in her approach between Blue Bike (published in 2014) and At Home in the World. I think she was trying so hard with this book, and although she kept saying she wasn't judging those who didn't live like her, the book did feel judge-y and preachy. I think she was still trying to convince herself of the life she wanted to dive into while writing this book, and perhaps it should have been kept to herself instead of being shared with us. In the book, Oxenreider, whose family is inordinately fond of travel and living abroad (and thinks yours should be too), examines the different facets of her life--finances, food, travel, education, entertainment, etc.--and decides what living intentionally means to her and her family of five in each category. I felt like all the ideas never came together. She talked on and on about how her family was going to do X, but in the end, we never really knew how doing X worked out for the family came. In other cases, she talked about how her family had put things into effect in retrospect (time gets very confusing in this book; it's hard to keep track of which year and which country the family is in). It's possible part of the problem I had is that I live in a family of two. I don't have three little kids whose food and education I need to worry about, and whose world view I need to mold. (On the other hand, a family of two needs to make most of the same decisions, so the information should have translated.) I just felt the whole book was kind of amateurish, which I really hate to say since I have come to really respect Oxenreider's honest voice. I would say if you're interested in eating locally and organically, if you're interested in homeschooling, if you think traveling and living abroad is one of the most important experiences you can give your children and family, this book is a good fit for you. I had no objections to anything she said, just maybe her approach. I would definitely recommend her new book about an extended world travel trip with her husband and three young children, though. I think it was much more mature in its approach and tone. My rating: 2.5 stars.  

Marie Howe is a poet I discovered in the late 1990s (maybe 1998?) when I ran onto her poem "What the Living Do" and decided it was one of the best poems I'd ever read. (Read it here.) But since her collection of the same name, I haven't read anything by her. So when her newest book, Magdelene, came into the library, I decided to read it. This is where I freely admit that there is a lot of poetry out there that I don't get. Just like everyone else, I struggle with poetry sometimes, and I struggled with Magdelene. But the thing is, I didn't struggle with the poems in Magdelene, I struggled with the concept behind the book. This is supposed to be a collection of poems that "imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscape." Okay, I understand that. But I kept wanting to ask "why?" Why not just present the poems as straightforward poems of a contemporary woman? What does Mary Magdelene have to do with it? And frankly, why Mary Magdelene? None of the poems seemed to be particularly tied to the Magdelene. This is one I'd have to discuss with someone who spends more time in poetry than I do. I enjoyed the poems, but the larger message, and I'm sure there is one, was lost on me. My rating: 2.5 stars.

I've written several reviews of the Calpurnia Tate books, including the two full-length middle grade readers and the now three shorter chapter books. Although the longer books are my favorite of the two sets by far, I do enjoy the chapter books as well. The first was about a skunk, the second about sheep, and this, Who Gives a Hoot?, is about an owl. I might have enjoyed this the most of the three. The illustrations in these books are beautiful, and you learn bits and pieces about the natural sciences right along with Calpurnia. Calpurnia is a little girl at the turn of the last century who lives in Texas with her parents, six brothers, and her grandfather, a crusty old scientist who takes Calpurnia under his wing. She wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, but she gets resistance from her mother who believes she should forsake her tomboy ways and be a proper young girl. The books are very well done. They're engaging, informative, and fun. I recommend them all. My rating: 3.5 stars.

You know that if it's a book of dog photography, I'm all in. Years ago I owned a book of William Wegman's dog photos of his Weimaraners dressed as people and posed in interesting ways, and I loved it, so when I saw a retrospective of his work was coming out, I bought it as soon as it was released. There's a very confusing essay in the beginning of the book that I'm still trying to figure out. I'm not sure if it was ironic or serious. But after that, it's just one great dog portrait after another. Many of the titles are funny or puns. And the dogs are so human that after you see too many you kind of lose perspective and ask these are dogs, right? Right. It would be easy for work of this kind to slide from art into kitsch, and I suppose sometimes it does, but there's an underlying seriousness that fascinates me. Each portrait is so well composed, you can see the thought (the art) behind the fun shots. I really enjoyed this collection. It would be perfect for any dog lover on your Christmas list. My rating: 4 stars.

Last week I began:

After finishing Notes from a Blue Bike, I kind of missed not having a Kindle book in progress, so I decided to finally tick Funny in Farsi off my reading list. It's the memoir of Iranian girl fresh to America, and it's funny and smart. I'm loving it so far.

This week I'll be reading:

On readcation I'll be double-fisting it with The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Love That Boy.

My audiobook

The Sound of Gravel is a book I'd been waffling over for a few weeks, but when it came up as a Kindle deal, I bought a copy, and then decided since it deals with dark themes, maybe it would be better on audio where I could skip through the unsavory parts. It's heartbreaking, but then, I've read a whole stack of books about folks escaping fundamentalist Mormon sects, and they're all heartbreaking.

What I'm reading this week (5/29/17)

Well, it's the end of the month, and one reading list is coming to a close while another begins. I finished five books over the last week (the three-day weekend certainly helped). Here's what I finished last week:

While I was reading Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve earlier this month, the chapter on clichés in modern literature really resonated with me. It struck me that they might be one of the biggest problems I have with contemporary fiction. Being so tuned into clichés in writing by that book, though, nearly ruined my listening experience with the fourth in Jan Karon's Mitford series, Out to Canaan. I don't know that it is worse than any of the other books in the series, but it seemed like nearly every paragraph or conversation between characters contained at least one cliché. It was driving me nuts. I felt bad that I was reading something so riddled with formula and platitudes. Until. One morning while listening I realized that clichés are one of the things I like about the Mitford books. I grew up in a very small town (pop. 419) like Mitford, and I'm here to tell you, folks in small town talk in clichés. Not necessarily because they're uneducated, but often because that's part of the shared culture of a small place. I've noticed that in a small town, people often see big ideas different and distill them to their essences. They ignore nuance and skip directly to a logical conclusion. That's what happened in Mitford, and that's what happened in my hometown. I was able to enjoy Out to Canaan quite a bit after I stopped listening for the clichés and looking for the wisdom behind them. In this novel, Father Tim announces his retirement 18 months hence, his wife Cynthia is working on another Violet the cat book for children, and the town is looking at a lot of possible change including a nasty mayoral election. I liked this one, and I recommend the series to anyone looking for fiction without sex, drugs, infidelity, and drama, and with a heavy dose of faith and old-fashioned values. My rating: 4 stars.

I come from a long line of flower-obsessed women--on both sides of the family. My mother's mother grew African violets with blooms the size of silver dollars. She could coax most anything to grow in her red, sandy soil. My great-grandmother was known for her gladiolas (her name as Gladys, Glady for short, so that makes sense). Her daughter, my grandmother, would rather spend her time mucking in her garden than anywhere else on earth. My mother has the bug, too. From these women, I inherited a great deal of plant knowledge which includes identifying a plant I've never seen before. It's a spooky blessing. I guess some things are just born into you and locked away until you're walking through a plant nursery. But while I enjoy flowers, I don't really enjoy gardening. Keeping flowerbeds weeded is the bane of my existence. I love looking at flowers and learning about gardening, but I don't want the work that comes with them. Enter Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden. This fabulous book breaks down how to grown dozens of common varieties of flowers (e.g. irises, chrysanthemums, dahlias, etc. etc.). The author takes you through her huge cutting gardens season by season, telling you what to plant when, how to get more blooms, when to cut flowers for arranging, and lots more. Each season chapter is broken down into chapters on the flowers flourishing during that season, and there are loads of photos of different varieties of each flower. The information is comprehensive but not overwhelming. The tone is friendly and helpful. And the photos are to die for. I loved this book. And I'm going to order a copy for my mother, who I know will love it too. My rating: 5 stars.

I love memoirs. And I especially love travel memoirs. I'll read about anyone's trip anywhere. Armchair traveling is one of my favorite bonuses of reading. So in early April, when I kept seeing At Home in the World pop up on other author's blogs and in their Instagram photos, I decided to pick up a copy. I'm so glad I did. This a wonderful book. The author and her husband, Americas who met in Kosovo, decide to take their three young children (ages 9, 7, and 4, I believe) on a nearly yearlong journey around the world. They stop in China, Australia, several African countries, Turkey, Italy, Germany, France, England, just to name a few destinations. They carry everything they need in a backpack each, stay in real homes, visit with expat friends, and see some of the great wonders of the world. The book isn't exactly what I've come to expect from travel memoirs. They often focus heavily on where they went and what they saw, but this book focuses more on how the places felt. Throughout the book, the author talks about the equal longing in her for both adventure and for home. When she's traveling, she wants to be home; when she's home, she imagines herself halfway around the world. It was an interesting frame for the story of their year abroad. I noticed time and again that wherever they were, they tried to make it a home. Not to say they resisted the culture they found themselves in, they did, after all, choose to be there. But the family did look for the stability of home in places like Beijing and Nairobi. This made the book much more real than other travel books I've read. At first I was disillusioned because it focused so much less on the cities and sites than I'm used to from these books, but I finally got over this preconceived notion and was able to enjoy floating along with them. I recommend this book highly. My rating: 4 stars.

Encyclopedia Of an Ordinary Life is one of my favorite books on the planet. There, how's that for an opening line of a nonbiased review? I read it for the first time in 2005, shortly after it came out, and returning to it now was so familiar and, just, wonderful. I love the way Amy Krouse Rosenthal's mind works. I love that her books have such unconventional narrative styles. I love how she collects coincidences and everyday experiences and displays the baubles of her mind in such a fresh, openhanded way. Her books have a very generous spirit, fun, self-aware, and superficial yet deep. They're just so wonderful. And this is the one that started it all for me. It's Amy's memoir written as encyclopedia entries. It's a fun book to dip into and out of. It's so witty, and I defy you to read it and be unable to do two things: (1) share at least one quote or anecdote from it, and (2) want to write your own encyclopedia memoir. My all-time favorite moment: when she describes how her brother, who grew up with three sisters, was a grownup before he realized he didn't need to wrap the bath towel around his chest. If you haven't read this book, pick up a copy. You're in for a treat. My rating: 5 stars.

I also finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Very much like her previous little book on feminism, We Should All Be Feminists, this was a long essay explaining how to raise a feminist daughter in Africa. I'm a little confused by the popularity of these books. There's nothing here I didn't encounter in my high school sociology class in the early 1990s. (And that was in a tiny Wisconsin town.) Her suggestions are so pat and simple, things like reject the notion that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, be a role model of what you want her to learn, etc. Some suggestions are just plain questionable: teach her that sex is good and never immoral. Never does spirituality enter the picture; how does a woman live a whole life without taking care of her spiritual needs? Perhaps this book and its predecessor are intended for the African audience, as the examples of gross patriarchal overreach are all African, and apparently Africa has not progressed past 19th century American culture when it comes to issues of gender and equality between them. I just find these books much to simple and uninteresting for the American woman. My rating: 2.5 stars.

 

 

 

This week I'm reading:

My audiobook:

 

 

What I read in February

Well, another month and no weekly posts. I have every intention of getting back to that format, but it just didn't happen this month. I am, however, enjoying reading more than I have for the last few months, so maybe the unintended hiatus has worked for me. I feel like I'm reading more books that deeply satisfy me. It's wonderful.

I finished 13 books in February, and I'll give full reviews to the four that I enjoyed most. I'll review the others with shorter reviews. If I don't do this, I just won't catch up.

I was interested in reading American Dirt when I read about it on Christmas break back in December--long before all the controversy erupted. I have to say I don't really understand the controversy other than that it's identity politics at work, and that almost never makes sense. To weigh in, I don't believe the publishing industry is deliberately trying to squash brown voices by not publishing their books. The publishing industry exists at least as much to make money as it does to produce quality literature (and the cynic in me would say "more so"). It's a business, and if folks are clambering for something, they'll publish it. I also don't think Oprah, the author, nor anyone who reads the book is a racist. For goodness sake, let's spread love and make the positive argument for our fellow human beings. I believe what the author writes in the back of her book, that she spent five years researching and writing this book, and although she did not make the journey to America via the Beast, she is compassionate toward those who do. Also, there is the obvious statement that must be made: if we only published and read books by people who experienced everything in them firsthand, we'd have no Steinbeck, Hemingway, or even Austen. That's a ridiculous criteria. All of that said, I liked the book. It was a gripping depiction of a mother and her young son's journey to America, outrunning a drug lord who has murdered 16 members of their family and wants to murder them too. There was not much brutality, if that was a concern of yours. The author did a pretty good job of hiding her pro-illegal immigration bias, at least giving passing acknowledgement to the fact that what they were about to do was illegal. I found the characters very believable. I finished the book with a more compassionate view of those who have to make this difficult journey and the difficult choice to live a life of subterfuge in a country not their own. It did not change my firmly held beliefs about illegal immigration, however. This one is well worth your time. It was written in a tone I can only call "immediate" which nailed the frantic mood of the mother and son as they make their way to "El Norte." My rating: 4 stars.

While making my way through 1,000 Books to Read before You Die (I'm up to the Ms now), I came upon an entry for Shirley Jackson's Life among the Savages, which will likely be one of my favorites of the year. Jackson is best known for her dark stories, but this is a fictionalized memoir of her life with her husband and four young children (two are born in the course of the book) in a full, rambling house in the 1940s or so. It's very, very funny and full of charm. The children really come to life on the page, and Jackson has a way of writing about seemingly insignificant domesticities in a smart and engaging way. I enjoyed this book so much. I have a feeling 1,000 Books to Read... is just full of these gems--books you've never heard of that are just wonderful. I highly recommend this one. Also, when I went back to re-read the entry for the book in 1,000 Books to Read..., I discovered that Jackson penned a sequel. I ask you, is there anything more satisfying than finding out a book you love has a sequel? My rating: 5 stars.

Messenger of Truth is the fourth in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mystery series. In the series, which begins in post-Great War Britain, Maisie Dobbs runs a private investigation agency and solves murder cases. But Maisie is no ordinary British detective. She is trained in psychology and uses what she learned to get closer to the truth than the blokes at Scotland Yard can with their traditional methods. These books are smart, and they read more like literature with a mystery thrown in than a plain mystery story. I love how they're written and I love how we get to know the main characters (Maisie; her assistant, Billy; and her father, especially) throughout the series but also really get to know and understand the principal characters in the mystery plot as well. These are slowly plotted, and the attention and time paid to details and setup is thorough. And...this was my favorite in the series yet. I loved this book so much. In it, Maisie is asked to determine whether the artist Nick Bassington-Hope's fall to his death from scaffolding he was using to hang his latest, and secret, exhibit was an accident, or whether he was pushed to his death. Nick's work is a brazen, searing look at the brutality of World War I, and it upsets as well as compels people. Secondary plots include a smuggling ring, the heartrending sickness of Billy's young daughter, as well as frank discussion of the haves and the have nots during Great Britain's Depression, contemporaneous with America's. Also, Maisie is living on her own for the first time, and we see her curled up in her chilly apartment, eating tinned soup and reading novels in the evenings. I found this one so satisfying. It was cozy and exciting and had a depth of feeling for large topics that was very meaningful to me. It also feels as though Maisie is at a personal crossroads of sorts, and I can't wait for the next book in the series. My rating: 5 stars.

Three years ago, I read Bret Baier's Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission (my review here), and I was disappointed by it. It didn't grab me, and I found it dry and uninteresting. Because of that, I skipped the second book in the series, Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, though I'm a big fan of President Reagan and this point in history. But something made me try the third in the series, Three Days at the Brink, FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II. In this one, we learn about the three days in November 1943 in which allies Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin secretly met for the first time to discuss a strategy for winning World War II. Called the Tehran Conference, it's where Operation Overlord was discussed, including the storming of the beaches of Normandy. This was a fantastic book. I listened to it on audio, narrated by the author, whose voice I've long enjoyed on television. I knew much of the facts of the book by heart from the numerous other history books I've read about FDR and World War II, and there wasn't a lot here that was new to me, but there is something to be said for the comforting feeling of an old story you know well being retold. FDR and World War II stories are as familiar to me as scripture, and it often felt that way listening to the story unfold. My mind could automatically fill in the next part. It was oddly comforting. Not everyone, I know, will have this personal reaction to the book, but I don't think it will catch many as staid or boring. Baier paints good portraits of the three principal players: FDR's charm and charisma, Churchill's gruffness and warmth, and Salin's distrustful, circumspect demeanor. He examines how Roosevelt often sides with Stalin to garner good faith, alienating Churchill in the process; Stalin's landgrab at the end of the war and the Cold War that followed; and Roosevelt's death. It's all here in a very readable and sometimes colorful retelling. I really liked this one, and if you're looking for a good, concise explanation of this time in history, I can't recommend it enough. My rating: 5 stars.

This month I also read:

During CYBILs judging last fall, I discovered Rachel Poliquin's Moles (my review here) which I just loved. That made me want to read all of Poliquin's Superpower Field Guides, which led me to Beavers. This was just as wonderful as Moles, and I learned a lot about the little chainsaws of the forest. Specifically, I learned that beavers' front teeth are orange. How could I have never learned this wonderful fact? I wondered it they were maybe orange-ish until I was making my way through our local antique shop which is home to lots of taxidermy pieces, and I found myself face-to-face with a stuffed beaver's incisors. Their color? A definite orange. My rating: 4 stars.

 

I love memoirs by people who are masters at what they do. Trailblazers, geniuses, experts, prodigies, I love learning about what makes them tick. I've always thought Elton John was a musical master. He wrote and recorded a slew of wonderful songs, and I'd always respected him. After reading (listening, actually) his memoir, Me, however, I have less respect for the man. Like a lot of artists of his era, there was a lot of drug use going on, and we learn every nasty detail of it. We also learn every nasty detail of his homosexual sex life and his drama queen (he'd call himself that; it's not my term) hysteria. He seems a man who took a long time to grow up, if indeed, he has, but the book was very honest, which I respect. It was also well written as far as celebrity memoirs go. But, if you don't want all the details, it might be best to skip it. If you do decide to tackle it, though, do it on audio. The audio performance, and there's no other word for it, was magnificent. It should win an award. My rating: 3 stars.

 

I'm not sure how Beneath the Tamarind Tree came to my attention, but I admit the cover really caught my eye. This is the story of the 276 girls abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria in 2014. I'm sure you remember the story from that time, and the #BringBackOurGirls movement it ignited, but like me perhaps you wondered whatever became of the girls. This is the rest of the story, or what can be told of it. Some of the girls, I believe, never came home. The author, Isha Sesay, is a CNN reporter who followed this story, and when some of the girls came home, she was there to tell the world their story. But by that point no one was interested anymore. I had trouble with this book. First, it was not at all clear to me why the girls were stolen. We heard reports of them being sold into sex slavery, but that doesn't seem to be the case overall. Also, I'm not clear on the fact that any abuse took place. Of course, stealing a young woman away from her home is criminal, it would seem the darker crimes we all assumed happened (rape, torture, death) perhaps didn't. It seemed the worst that happened were they were moved a lot, pressured to become Muslims, and were malnourished. So what was the point of taking them then? My main issue with the book was the judgmental attitude of the author about the world's response. Assertions were made over and over that if these girls were white the world would care and they'd be rescued. It there were rich..., if they were American.... Yes, had they been American, they would have been rescued, because America has the might and priorities to do so. But to assert that it's America's or Britain's or France's responsibility to rescue Nigerian girls when their own government repeatedly lied about the situation and did almost nothing to find the girls, and then castigate those countries because they didn't, is grossly unfair. So, what you have here is another good story made political by the journalist reporting it. It's a pity, because we were all wondering what became of the girls. My rating: 3 stars.

 

I remember enjoying the movie Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House staring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The book had an entry in 1,000 Books to Read before You Die so I thought I'd give it a try. (First of all, a shout out to my university library that is slow to weed its collection. Because of that, many of these old gems are readily available--and no wait lists.) This one, however entertaining, didn't do it for me. This is the story of Mr. Blandings and his wife who decide to buy a country home, but end up tearing down the home they buy to build a new one. It details the ups and downs (mostly downs) of every facet of the building process including procuring financing, digging a well, having plans drawn, and choosing paint colors. It's farcical, and yet, very true to life from what we see on HGTV these days. What didn't work for me about this one is the negative tone. I have a good sense of humor, and I like dry humor, but this was just too adverse and discouraging for my taste. Mr. and Mrs. Blandings don't get along well, and they go after each other, and Mr. Blandings picks fights with everyone, though we're meant to think of his as the downtrodden victim. All in all, had Mr. Blandings been a more pitiable character, this would have worked much better. My rating: 3 stars.

 

The Postal Confessions is Max Garland's first book of poetry and one of my favorites to return to. As Max was my college poetry workshop professor, and was the poet laurate of Wisconsin, I'm biased. This book is full of charming, approachable, nostalgic poems with a little humor thrown in. A true treasure. My rating: 4 stars.

 

I did not know when I bought The Guest Book nor when I committed to listening to it months later that I was about to read a story of white privilege. Had I known, I would not had started it per my 2020 reading goal to avoid books about outrage. It's a shame, too, because it is beautifully written and the characters are fleshed. It took a long time to get preachy, but when it did, I felt duped and betrayed. With a subtler hand, it could have been great. A note on the audio: it's pretty terrible, likely the muddiest audiobook I've ever listened to, so you might want to read this in paper. My rating: 3 stars.

 

 

I was looking forward to reading Africa, Amazing Africa ridiculously much. To learn a little bit about each African country sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me for exactly that reason: there wasn't room enough to write more than a little about each country, just one page each, and most of that was artwork. Also, there was something that bothered me that's hard to put into words, so I'll try to illustrate it. When I say Rwanda what do you think of? What about Somalia? What about Sudan? Genocide, pirates, war. But the book talked about things such as how much people in this country like soccer. Fine, I guess, for kids, but it seemed, and I struggle for the word...disingenuous? whitewashed? It made me uncomfortable. I know there would be a general reluctance to discuss genocide in a children's book, but I know plenty that do discuss such topics, and don't we need to? Those do forget the past are doomed to repeat it. I don't know, but I was dissatisfied. My rating: 2 stars. 

 

I just don't know what to say about A Passage to India at all. It's something I'd been meaning to read for a long time, so finally picked up the audio version, which was good. But what did I think of it? I really don't know. What was it about? I don't really know that either. I think it's meant to be a portrait of India in the 1920s, several decades before they gain their independence from England. It's also meant to be, I think, an exploration of the Indian and British cultures and people and where they clash and the misunderstandings that come about. Beyond this, I don't really know what to tell you. I'd like to discuss this one with others who have read it to determine if it really is a meandering story of confused cultures or something deeper. Perhaps, being 100 years old, it's lost a bit of its potency. I really don't know. I think I could come to really like the book, though, if I knew. My rating: 3 stars.  

 

Erick Larson's work is a bit hit or miss with me. I loved The Devil in the White City (my review here), but Dead Wake, which everyone seems to love, left me cold. Thunderstuck has been waiting for me on my bookshelf for a long time, and this month when I was looking for some good nonfiction on audio, I decided to try it. It was quite wonderful, definitely more on a par with The Devil in the White City than Dead Wake, in fact, very similar in tone, writing, and plot. This is the simultaneous stories of Marconi developing his radio telegraph system and the death of opera hopeful Charlotte Bell. It was fast-paced and interesting, but I didn't feel the two stories came together in a perfectly satisfying way. Still, if you liked The Devil..., do give this one a read. My rating: 4 stars.

 

 

What I'm reading this week (5/14/18)

 

Last week I finished

I'd seen it everywhere, and I'm a memoir junkie, so I just had to pick up a copy of Educated by Tara Westover. You've probably seen this one around, but there is never much information about it. All I knew going in was it was the memoir of a woman who grew up without formal education in a family of survivalists in rural Idaho and who later went on to college. I believe it is the author's wish to keep the fact that her family were fundamentalist Mormons on the down low. I had not seen that mentioned anywhere where the book was discussed, but it's essentially what the book is about. I suppose there is a fear of prejudice against fundamentalist (and mainstream, for that matter) Mormons when you read about this woman's horrific childhood, but I really wish the reader would have been given more credit for being able to suss out what's a traditional Mormon belief and what's been twisted to the point that a family lives by extremes. Because this family was living the violent, paranoid extreme end of a traditional belief. There is so much violence, some person and person, but most just careless accidents, it's almost hard to believe all of that could happen to one family. Not until Westover is in college at Brigham Young University does she realize her father was mentally ill, if not manic depressive or schizophrenic, and that accounted for many of the revelations he turned into law in the Westover home. This is a sad, troubling book. It never lets up. I've read scores of books about young women escaping fundamentalist Mormon families (usually of the polygamous Warren Jeffs variety, though), and this is very similar. Its one main difference is how well-written it is. Though Westover had zero education when she took the ACT and started college, she caught up very quickly. With less than 100 pages left, I wasn't sure I'd finish the book without feeling like I was missing the redemption that would make it all worth the horrifying experience. Luckily, it all came together, though it didn't necessarily end happily. Overall, I think the underlying themes here are: families have a strong pull, whether for goof or bad, and education is not necessarily just about learning about the world and how we live in it, but it's also about how the world lives in us, how education shows us ourselves. I've never read a book that showed that as explicitly. Bottom line, if you can stomach to grim story and the violence and the mental instability, it's a worthwhile read. My rating: 4.5 stars.

For decades historians have hypothesized that Eleanor Roosevelt had a long-term lesbian affair with a journalist named Lorena Hickok. Hickok spent many of FDR's twelve years in office living in the White House, which was not altogether unusual as the Roosevelts generally kept the spare rooms in the White House full of family and friends. I've never read a book by a historian that definitively confirms the affair--Doris Kearns Goodwin did not in No Ordinary Time, and Ken Burns did not in his documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. I've always been on their side unwilling to confirm the lesbian infidelity without hard proof, though others are more willing to rule with emotion or probability. The Roosevelt children themselves were not in agreement about which of the "known" affairs their parents were said to have had actually happened. The letters between the two women do seem like love letters--if read a certain way, and scandal certainly sells these days. So, I was kind of disheartened to see Amy Bloom had written a fictional history of the affair from the point of view of Lorena Hickok called White Houses. I avoided the book for months thinking it distasteful to imagine what does on in other women's bedrooms, especially a First Lady's. But then--and I'm kind of ashamed of this--curiosity got the better of me. I'm infinitely interested in how a story or book is put together, and I wanted to know how this unconfirmed romance would be treated, so I picked up a copy. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the book as a whole. The writing was engaging, and the voice and persona of Hick (Lorena Hickok) felt "right." Many reviews I've read complained about the lack of plot, but that is never something that bothers me. And here, I don't think plot was Bloom's point. I think her main concern was showing the relationship of a long in love "mature" couple. And it excelled at that. I did feel that the interplay, and specifically the dialogue, between Hick and Eleanor was odd, stilted, coded. It was oddly unnatural. In all, I was pleased with the book, though I do think Bloom is a little too sure about who was carrying on with whom, especially when it came to Missy LeHand and FDR. LeHand's biographer, Kathryn Smith, determined that there was no evidence of an affair, no matter the outward appearance of their relationship. (See my review of Smith 's book here.) My rating: 4 stars.

I needed to find an audiobook to swap in for one that was not going to be in when I needed it. On the new audiobook shelf, I found Code Girls and snapped it up. I love reading about World War II and adore books that are about any one tiny aspect of American history. I also love learning about things I know very little about. So, win, win, win, win. Code Girls is the story of the female code breakers during World War II. These women were mostly recruited from the best colleges to learn how to decipher coded enemy communications. The information gathered from these messages was essential to naval and ground commanders in planning their strategic operations. Because a majority of the able-bodied men were involved in the fighting in the European or Pacific theatres, women were given the chance to pick up the slack. And they did it marvelously. There was a time when I'd have read anything about women throughout American history. As my world view has changed over the years, however, I have cooled in my love of rah-rah women's history books. This book is a good example of why. I find it intellectually dishonest, or at the very least, ignorant, to make determinations of racism or sexism using today's standards against yesteryear's events. All of the instances of "sexism" put forth in this book drove me crazy. If the accusations were viewed in context--the 1940s were nearly 80 years ago!--the things we would view as sexist now were not sexist then. Take pay disparity, for instance. In the 1940s, very few women worked, and men's wages provided for their families. When scores of single women with no dependents went to work for the war effort, they were sometimes paid less than their male counterparts, in part, because they did not have dependents at home to pay for. This is a perfectly reasonable practice--for the time. Today, of course, many families are headed by women, and a disparity of pay for the same work with identical qualifications is unforgivable. But to use today's standard to judge yesterday's events is dishonest, and that's my main beef with this book. There weren't a lot of instances, but there were enough to make me lose trust in the author's ability to set forth an unvarnished truth, so I felt the need to listen to the book against the grain. My perspective was this: women had only had the right to vote for 20 years when they were given the opportunity to step into a man's job and do work that was instrumental in bringing the war to an end and bringing their brothers, boyfriends, and husbands home. Had Mundy stuck to this positive message, I think it would have been a stronger book. Still, a good book, and a good audio version. My rating: 3 stars.

Last week I began

I L-O-V-E love Clementine. Period.

This week I continue with

I'm working my way through Pretty in Plaid, and I'm feeling that it's maybe too long.

I'm loving The Read-Aloud Family and Devotions.

My next audiobook

My hold for Endurance has finally come in, so I'd better listen to it quickly so the next holdee can have it. I've been looking forward to this for a long time.