The Inside Cover

"Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer

2010-12-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Like author Jonathan Safran Foer, I have flip-flopped for years with the idea of being vegetarian. I've always thought of myself as not committed enough to make the effort to look at the contents of all of my food to figure out whether I'm able to eat it. I am also really uncomfortable with making other people change their menu for me, so I usually just eat whatever is prepared. I've never ever thought of myself as a vegetarian, but I do go through phases where I'm disgusted with the idea of meat. When I picked up "Eating Animals" it was only because it sounded interesting, but after reading it I feel more compelled to stop eating meat than ever before.

Yes, there is much discussion of the suffering of animals in here, but Foer also talks about the environmental effects as well as the possibilities for widespread infections caused by the conditions of factory farming. These two factors are what have really compelled me to question whether eating meat is really worth the effects it is having on our world.

Foer also discusses the conscientious farmers and slaughterhouses that make eating meat seem like a viable option. Unfortunately, these "old school" farmers are being put out of business in droves by the giant factory farming operations. This alone makes this book worthwhile reading because it explains how eating locally and knowing where your food comes from can help to make informed decision about the meat we do choose to eat.

While this book gets a little tedious toward the end, I found it a good and interesting read. I was especially impressed with the first chapter of the book in which Foer explains his reasons for looking into this subject in the first place and talks about his own struggles with the decision to become a vegetarian over the years. The discussion about why we eat some animals (cows, pigs, fish, etc.) and not others (dogs, cats, etc.) was something that really stuck with me. If you've ever considered becoming a vegetarian, but weren't sure why, this book may help you with that decision or push you over the edge to finally doing it.

Best,

Becca

Room by Emma Donoghue

2010-09-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of Emma Donoghue's "Room," released today from Little Brown. While I thought the book was on fast forward at some points, I never tired of the genuine voice of little 5-year-old Jack, the book's narrator and main character. We hear Jack's thoughts as he discovers the truth about his first five years of life, which have been spent locked in a room with his mother. Room and the things in it are all he has ever known.

I'd love to go on about all of the amazing details of this book, but I fear that I will give away too much if I go into the plot of the book. For me part of the joy of reading this novel was that I had no idea what it was about when I received it as my first installment from The Nervous Breakdown's book club (sign up here). Partway through the book I started to read one of the descriptions of the book online and had to stop before finishing the first sentence because it gave away one of the things that had kept me curious through the first chapter (how and when his mother got put in Room), so I want to be careful about what I say here.

All I can say is that this was one of the best books I've read in a very, very long time. The author has perfectly pictured the innocence of youth and how the world of a toddler can be shattered by the realities of the outside world. Jack's voice comes across as genuine and I was fascinated throughout by his interpretations of the world, given that I had the knowledge that the games he and his mother were playing (games like Scream and Keypad) were more than just games. I highly recommend reading this one.

Shout-out to The Nervous Breakdown

2009-12-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

I know it's been a long time since I've written, mostly because books are too expensive for me to buy here. I've actually just begun a project to start a "library" for international travelers at one of my local cafes here because I'm so desperate for some new reading material. In the meantime though, I've been really enjoying the pieces on the new and improved site of The Nervous Breakdown.

I know I talk about this site a lot. I do so partly because I'm one of the writers for the site, but mostly because there are a ton of great writers over there. If you haven't checked it out before, I highly recommend you do so. They just revamped the site last month and added a ton of new features, including a FICTION section. It's a great way to discover new and emerging authors.

Also, if you hate reading long essays online, you can check out the books by The Nervous Breakdown writers here. Some of them look really incredible and I can't wait to get home so I can order a bunch of them.

You can also read my reviews of a couple of the books: All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison, Pop Salvation by Lance Reynald, Sic by Brin Friesen, Totally Killer by Greg Olear, and Banned For Life by D.R. Haney.

Enjoy!

Discovering Rumi

2009-10-27T04:45:00.000-07:00

The closest bookstore to my house here only has a couple of shelves of English literature in it, so my choices have been rather limited. I haven't had much time for reading anyway, but there are days when I go in and browse the books, hopeful that I'll find a hidden treasure. Mostly, the books are classic literature, like Oliver Twist, Little Women, or War and Peace; or the latest top sellers (the Twilight series). I was leaning toward buying Oliver Twist the last time I was in the bookstore, but then a section of Turkish lit translated into English caught my eye. For some reason I was drawn to Selected Poems by Rumi. I thumbed through the book and some of the prose popped out at me, so it was settled, I had to have it.

I've never been a fan of poetry. I've always thought it was too complicated to understand and I've never been willing to look for deeper meanings and such. I know it's a narrow view, but everyone can't like everything, you know? Even so, I've really enjoyed reading Rumi. He's inspired me. I went out and bought a sketchbook and some colored pencils, then I wrote some of my favorite passages on different pages and began drawing scenes to accompany the prose. I'd love to paint something wonderful that will remind me of these poems when I return to the United States.

After having read quite a bit of this book, I've come to the conclusion that maybe one needs to be in a certain mindset when approaching poetry. I think that is the reason I've been more open to it at this point in my life than I had been previously. If you haven't read Rumi, I highly recommend it. He was full of insight.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

You kiss a beautiful mouth,
and a key turns the lock of your fear.

****

Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

****
Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.

****

Enough Words

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it's in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear throughthe hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.

Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?

Totally Killer by Greg Olear

2009-09-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

I finished Totally Killer, Greg Olear's debut novel, just in time for the semester to start here so now I won't be distracted from my school work. It was definitely good company for me on my bus rides to and from school in the past few weeks though, so I'm going to miss it.

Part murder mystery, part conspiracy, this book, which will be released Tomorrow (September 29), tells the story of how Taylor Schmidt came to be deceased at the tender age of 23 (Not a spoiler! We learn this in the first pages of the book). The narrator, Todd Lander, does all he can to take us back to New York in 1991, the fateful year of Taylor's death.

From talking about what life was like before the Internet (There was a time before the Internet?!), to Todd's sad attempt to win Taylor's love by making her a mixed tape, this book will take you back to the early 90's the way Bret Easton Ellis takes you back to the early 80's in Less Than Zero. It's funny because I never really think of anything really defining the 90's, not in the way that pop music, fluorescent clothing, and awesome hair defined the 80's, but Olear has really captured what the decade had to offer. I especially liked the talk of the economic downturn at the time and what the "slacker" culture really meant. It really got me thinking.

As for the story, I really liked Taylor Schmidt's character, if only because I felt like I really could relate to her (at least in the beginning of the book). I thought some of the book was predictable, but the ending threw me off, which I liked. I felt like I was really wrapped up in the conspiracy by the end, the same way Todd would have felt if he were a real person. I love that about conspiracy fiction. The author (or, more often, filmmaker) spends so much time building up this world and getting you to really buy into and then BAM! nothing is what it seems and you begin to question everything you've just read. I thought Olear did a great job of that.

This was a good read set in a time period I don't really think much about, even though it was the time when most of my growing up happened, so it was a refreshing read. It's obvious Olear did a lot of research on the 90's (or he has a unhealthy attachment to those years). I thought the book was fun to read and I loved the title's play on words (even if I did have the saying "Totally killer, dude" stuck in my head for days). Definitely a good one to check out if you're looking for a quick, fun read.

New Releases

2009-09-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

I just got notified that Sue Monk Kidd has a new book out: Traveling With Pomegranates, A Mother-Daughter Story. I'm bummed that I won't be able to read it until I get back to the states, but I figured some of you out there might be interested. It was released on September 8, so it's in stores now.

Also, fellow The Nervous Breakdown writer, Greg Olear, has a book coming out on October 1. I'll be reviewing the book, Totally Killer, in a few days (just as soon as I finish reading it!). Until then, feel free to check out all of the nice things Amazon has to say about the book.

Oh, and I wanted to mention that I'm sorry if you've had trouble finding my blog as of late. Somehow Istanbul ruined my URL so I've had to switch back to a blogspot address. I'm going through the Interwebs today to try to find all of my links and change the URL. Fun stuff, let me tell you.

'Tis by Frank McCourt

2009-09-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

After struggling through the first half of My Life in France by Julia Child, I finally put it down for good and picked up 'Tis by Frank McCourt, which I couldn't resist buying while in Dublin. 'Tis is the continuation of the story begun in Angela's Ashes, taking off right where Angela's Ashes ended - with McCourt landing in America to begin his new adventure in the Land of Opportunity.

While Angela's Ashes focused a great deal on the overwhelming poverty of the McCourt family, 'Tis instead focuses on the differences McCourt notices between Ireland and America. In addition, there are a great many stories about the mistakes he makes in his early days and his constant yearning for Something Better. We see him struggle through many menial jobs, many with humorous stories to accompany them, and eventually he makes it to college and his Something Better - even though he isn't sure it was worth it once he's got it.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book for two reasons. First, McCourt has a great sense of humor about the way things went for him and how things have turned out. His stories will make you cry with laughter at some points because these are all stories that would have made someone say at the time: "You'll laugh about this later. You may not think so now, but you'll laugh."

Secondly, I really bonded with McCourt's character. Here I am, reading this book in my first days in Istanbul, noticing all the differences between my new home and the United States, while reading about how McCourt went through the same thing even though he was moving to a country that supposedly speaks the same language. There are a number of times he comments on the different uses of words between American English and Irish English. But it wasn't only the moving abroad point that got to me. I find myself questioning the purpose of my education and what I'm really going to do with my future, much in the same way that the young McCourt did in this memoir.

McCourt is a true story teller and he'll make you laugh. Also, he fills in some of the background information that you'll need if you haven't read Angela's Ashes, so it's not absolutely necessary to read it before picking up 'Tis (but I highly recommend it!). Definitely a book to be picked up.

Side Note: I saw at the end of the book that Frank McCourt's brother Malachy has his own book, A Monk Swimming, which was co-authored by Frank and deals with Malachy's struggles with alcoholism and his years as a playboy and actor in New York City. I think I'll be picking it up as soon as I can find an English Bookstore here.

Travel Reading

2009-08-25T03:57:00.000-07:00

When I'm on vacation, I really like to read books about the places I'll be visiting. Right now one of my best friends and I are backpacking through Europe, which means tons of time on trains and lots of time for reading.

I read Night by Elie Wiesel on our way through Germany. It made the trip to Berlin a lot more meaningful because we were there for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall and saw lots of exhibits about WWII, the Holocaust and the end of the Cold War. The book is a very short, quick read, but a story that really gets to you. Wiesel, who lived in Auschwitz for a number of years toward the end of WWII, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his literary works, which raised awareness about the horrors of the Holocaust. Night is the story of his journey from ghetto to concentration camp to liberation. Definitely worth reading.

I was a little sad about my choice though because I think far too much literature about Germany focuses on WWII. I know it's something that we all shouldn't forget, but I really wish I could read something uplifting about Germany, especially because the country has become so much more than that period in time. Germany is by far one of my most favorite countries to visit, but I think there are still a lot of negative connotations associated with it. Does anyone out there have any great recommendations for a book with the setting in Germany that's not about WWII or the Holocaust? I'd love to hear about it if you have.

The second book I finished on this trip was Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. This book has been on my reading list for years, but I could never get past the first pages. But, with a trip to Ireland on my itinerary, I zipped through it in a matter of days. McCourt's Pulitzer Prize winning memoir details his early childhood and teenage years in Limerick, Ireland, where his family lived in poverty. McCourt is able to detail the horrendous living conditions of his childhood with a sense of humor that makes you almost want to laugh at the absurdity of the situation if only it weren't so tragic. Although this book describes a less than desirable existance in Ireland, it did make me want to go to Ireland immediately. The descriptions of the place and the people were vivid and colorful. And, of course, the accented dialogues throughout the book made me want to hear the accent for myself asap. I'm really looking forward to my trip there and will hopefully find a copy of 'Tis, the sequel to Angela's Ashes, while I'm there.

Will write again when I have Internet access.

-Becca

Interview with author Brin Friesen

2009-08-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

After reading Sic, the debut novel by Brin Friesen, I had a couple of questions for the author, which he kindly (and promptly!) answered. Below you will find my interview with him. You can also find a review of his book here and more of his writing here.

First, I'm curious about the name of the book. How did you come up with it and what does it mean?

The name of the book referred to the idea of Jasper Finch telling his story, an admittedly disturbing one, and knowing most adults don't have any clue what their kids are doing (despite their own childhoods) and most likely would blame anybody who told/exposed the truth about it. Galileo and Rosa Parks weren't thanked for their efforts in revealing the truth about an ugly situation: they were thrown in jail. With the subject matter of school shootings looming over this story, the aftermath nearly always leads to the knee jerk reaction of blame and attribution of fault. However, the profile of a school shooter is that there is no profile for a school shooter. There's poetry in that fact. My protagonist is willing to tell his story but he doesn't want to be blamed for the telling the truth.

And yet, not too many people know what "sic" even refers to, so it was probably a lousy choice. They assume I'm talking about calling for a dog to attack someone. Sic is about fault. Blame. If you talk about troubled kids you blame long before anyone attempts understanding. All the killings at schools and universities are called "senseless" at one point or another. Any rudimentary examination of the facts and invariably they immediately start making a whole lot of sense. They only way they don't is through cognitive dissonance and negligence.

You mentioned in one of your TNB posts that the first part of the book is based on a similar experience you had in elementary school. Did you stay friends with your Norman Apple afterward? And, how did the fight effect your later school years?

I was lured out to watch a fight and swarmed once I was out there by everyone in attendance to one degree or another. I did patch things up with the real Norman Apple. I think the fight served me the way any traumatic event serves an artist: they're unable to cope with their given reality and find the necessity to create for themselves a new one. Fiction has to make sense where real life doesn't. So you're obliged to make the details in the story something which for yourself and the reader can have more traction than real life. The impetuous for this is of course an attempt to rewrite your own history. I gave myself a fictional first kiss on the same day as the worst day of my real life. The details of the story have in many ways overtaken the real details of my life. Which is good, because that was an ugly space to occupy. People often forget that the three most popular kids authors for kids are Roald Dahl, Lewis Carrol, and JD Salinger. The three most banned books FOR kids are by Roald Dahl, Lewis Carrol, and JD Salinger. Innocence isn't Disney. It's complicated.

How much of the book is autobiographical? Please tell me there was no real-life Fresa.

There was indeed a Fresa; though I took from another incident that actually happened and combined the person with the event that killed him. The curbing happened while I was in 8th grade and the perpetrators were never found while 100's of kids knew exactly who they were. It was a scary time. The real life Fresa went on to become a paramedic, which seems entirely appropriate. A great deal of the book is autobiographical, however I used an extensive amount of composites. Once I had my finger on the pulse of the story much of it wrote itself.

What inspired you to write a book like this? Did you set out to write a book that focused so much on the state of mind of a bullied teenager?

High school is very attractive to me as subject matter since most people who leave it spend a tremendous amount of energy either clinging to or running from who they felt they were perceived to be during that time in their lives. I'm interested in a time where the events that mark people mark them for life. First kiss, first beating, heartbreak, etc.

That's where I started with this story: give a kid his worst day and best day on the *same* day.

Bullying was obviously a major theme also, but also examining bullying not just from the main bullies but those complicit and rooting it on. The German's were fairly recently allowed to join in on the VE Day celebration which was very interesting when they expressed the argument that they were "liberated too" from Hitler. Finally the legacy of what happened during WWII will be Hitler bullied everyone into it. The real lesson, in my view, is how regular, decent, law abiding, family loving people were persuaded of the legitimacy of genocide. In schools suicide is one the major leading causes of mortality, especially among boys. And naturally it's an under reported statistic also. Newspapers print murder stories but not suicides.

In a society that holds the "pureness" and "innocence" of children above all else, I don't have a sense that society even *likes* kids. They can be tried as an adult for a crime but can't vote. They can be legally assaulted.

Growing up the kid of a child protection lawyer a lot of this stuff has been discussed at length.

How did things end up with your Marie? Or are they still in the happenings?

Ten years later she contacted me about whether or not I became a writer and asked if I'd written anything. I said yes. She asked what it was about. I said, YOU. She read it in a night and flew from Scotland to move with me the week after that. I'm not going to spoil the ending. I
think without ever having a meaningful conversation with the real girl I didn't come up with such a misguided stand-in. But I never wrote the book to find her. It just ended up that I did.

Lastly, can you tell me a little more about And/Or Press?

And/Or Press was started by my friend Dan Starling. D.R Haney's book Banned For Life is the latest book with the And/Or stamp of approval. We're both crazy about D.R Haney.

(I'm crazy about D.R. Haney too!)

Again, to read more by Brin Friesen (or D.R. Haney), you can visit www.thenervousbreakdown.com. And, no, I don't get paid to promote the website (nor to write for it), I just love the authors and their stories there.

Best to you all,

Becca

Sorrow Wood by Raymond L. Atkins

2009-08-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Sorrow Wood is kind of a difficult book to explain. The book centers on the lives of Reva and Wendell Blackmon, documenting much of their life together. The two live in Sand Valley, Alabama, where Wendell is the town sheriff and Reva is the local judge. Throughout the book we are transferred from the present time (1985) back to previous times in the Blackmon's lives, as well as into their past lives (as seen in Reva's dreams). Mostly, the book is the story of their current life together, their difficult childhoods, and how they eventually came to be together. In the midst of learning about the destined love of the Blackmons, there is also a murder committed in Sand Valley with Wendell Blackmon trying to track down the murderer.

I really loved reading the stories of the two main characters. Much of the book takes place during the World War II era, with Wendell Blackmon serving in the Navy at the time. Raymond L. Atkins did a wonderful job of re-creating the feeling of duty many Americans felt at that time, as well as showing the sacrifice that many people made. There were also scenes from the Korean and Vietnam Wars in the book as we moved through the decades.

As with his debut novel, Atkins has created a cast of colorful characters with his latest novel. I really enjoyed his choices of words and the overall love story found in the book. I found the second epilogue to be a little bit over the top, but I think it was probably the quickest way to wrap up one of the storylines found throughout the book.

Movies Based on Books

2009-08-05T14:43:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, this is a common complaint among those of us who read, but I'm going to bring it up anyway. I just saw Angels & Demons in theater and I just couldn't believe the number of things they changed while making the movie. I realize that some of it was to make the story flow better, but, even major things were changed (like having Cardinal Baggia live). I also recently saw the new Harry Potter movie and I was just really not impressed by it. However, it has been quite some times since I read that book so I wasn't able to pinpoint the major changes they made while turning the book into a movie.

I know I can't expect the movie to be the same as the book, but why am I always so disappointed by the big screen version of books I loved? It really, really makes me not want to go see The Time Traveler's Wife or My Sister's Keeper. I just know they'll let me down. I mean, honestly, how could they possibly make The Time Traveler's Wife into a movie and keep the major story line the same? Has anyone seen these new ones? What did you think?

Sic By Brin Friesen

2009-07-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

Brin Friesen's debut novel, Sic, is a harsh look at the reality of the bullying that takes place in schools everywhere. Through the eyes of younger Jasper Finch, one of the bullied, we see the complete desperation and anxiety some children face when going to school each day where they are forced to interact with their tormentors. While I'd like to think that bullying doesn't ever get as far as it did in this book, I'm sure it really does. Otherwise we wouldn't have school shootings and teen suicide, both of which are addressed in this novel.

Friesen's book really made me think, but it was incredibly uncomfortable to read. First, because I was one of the mean girls in elementary school so it pained me to read about the girls (and boys) like me who relentlessly taunted the less popular children. Back then I thought it was hilarious, but now when I think about my behavior between ages 10 and 12 I feel terrible. At one point in the book, Finch is kicked in the shins by one of the mean girls and I literally cringed because I cannot even count the number of times I kicked little boys in the shins back in elementary school.

Later, the book became easier for me to read because I understood Finch's anxiety upon entering high school. Right before I began middle school my family moved to a new town. And then moved again just before my high school years, so I know longer had the luxury of being one of the mean girls. I didn't fit in and did my best to be invisible during those years. Unfortunately for Finch, he wasn't able to be invisible because he moved up to high school with the same people who had beat him up and hated him in elementary school.

This book is very "Lord of the Flies," only worse, because it's all happening in a place where children are expected to feel safe and are under the eye of protecting adults. It's definitely worth reading and will really make you think, but it will also make you cringe and squirm. Some of the fight scenes are particularly brutal and reading about children talking so much about sex was hard for me to read. I want to believe all children are innocent and pure, but I know that's just not the case. As I've mentioned, this book made me think back to my own childhood - many times - and no matter how much I tried to debunk it, saying children don't do this or children don't do that, I knew, from my own experience, that this really was how (some) children act. I think often children are worse than adults when it comes to fowl language and talking about sex, and that really comes through in this novel.

I don't recommend this book if you're looking for something light and cheery. This is definitely not a pick-me-up type book. It feels like it is at one point toward the end, when you're cheering for Jasper Finch and you'll think, "Yes! Let's end on a high note! I knew this was leading to a happy ending!" But then, just as with real life, Jasper (and the reader) are only able to revel in the glory for a short time before the joy of it fades and we're plunged back into reality. The last section of the book makes the other two parts worth reading, so definitely keep going even if it feels a little slow in the middle. You won't regret it.

Sunday Salon: Surprise Delivery

2009-07-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

I stopped by my apartment yesterday to get the last of my things and start cleaning for the next tenants and was surprised to find a book on my back porch. It was a delivery from Medallion Press. They shipped me a copy of Sorrow Wood, the new book by Raymond L. Atkins that will be released on August 1.

I'm so super excited about this book because I really liked Atkins' first book, The Front Porch Prophet, which I reviewed here. The good news too is that I've got a plane ride coming up this Friday so I'll have a great opportunity to read it!

Here's the plot blurb from Amazon:

When the charred body of a promiscuous, self-proclaimed witch is discovered at a farm called Sorrow Wood, nearly everyone in the sleepy town of Sand Valley, Alabama, is drawn into the case. As the murder probe continues, a multitude of secrets are revealed, including one that leads back to the rock castle home of Wendell Blackmon, Sand Valley's police chief, and his beloved wife Reva. The town's inhabitants ruminate on the true meaning of commitment, love, death, hope, and loss as they delve deeper into questions such as Who was this woman? Where did she come from? and What did her presence mean to Wendell, Reva, and the townspeople of Sand Valley?

Review to come soon!

Interview with D.R. Haney on The Nervous Breakdown

2009-07-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

So, I was planning on doing an interview with D.R. Haney, author of Banned for Life, which I reviewed here, but I've been super busy with packing for Istanbul and moving out of my apartment so I haven't had time. THEN, today I looked on The Nervous Breakdown and there's a fab interview with him and one of the other TNB authors, so I thought I'd just post a link here for any of you who are interested. I think the interview will give you more insight about the book. And, really, who doesn't love reading interviews with authors?

ALSO, D.R. Haney will be doing a reading in L.A. this weekend. If you're in town, you should check it out. Here's the details:

Date: July 25, 2009, 8:00PM

Venue: Stories

Location: 1716 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA

Description:D. R. Haney will read from his recently-published novel about punk rock, "Banned for Life," along with other guests, including singer-songwriter Tif Sigfrids, who'll charm and disarm with dainty song.

Free book direct from the author

2009-07-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

I just heard about Stephen Elliott's lending library experiment over at The Nervous Breakdown. He's sending out free copies of his book, The Adderall Diaries, to readers, so long as they commit to send the book on to the next reader on the list once they've finished reading their copy. Sounds like a great idea to me. It's even available to people outside of the U.S. as long as you're willing to pay the postage. For more information, you can check out his website or read about the book and read an interview with the author here.

Pop Box Contest!

2009-07-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

Lance Reynald, author of Pop Salvation, is putting on a contest in which you can win a box filled with books and goodies related to pop culture. All you have to do is get your photo taken in one of those old school photo booths, scan the photo strip into the computer and email it along with a short description of where you were and what you were doing when the photos were taken. Examples can be found here. More information about the contest can be found here. And, to see what's going into the box, follow Lance Reynald on Twitter.

Contest ends August 1, so get to it!

Just Arrived: Sic by Brin Friesen

2009-07-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

So, I just finished reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, but I decided not to review it because I figure pretty much everyone on the planet (except me, until now) has already read it and/or seen the movie, yes? I really liked the book though and finished it in only two days despite its length (almost 700 pages!). I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, even though I know it won't be nearly as good as the book (they never are!). Plus, Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon just doesn't do it for me, but whatever. I'm not a casting director, am I?

Instead, I wanted to introduce you all to my next book, which is Sic by Brin Friesen. I wasn't able to find the book on Amazon, but you can get information about ordering it here. The book is a debut novel published by and/or press in 2006. As with many of my recent books, I first heard about this one on The Nervous Breakdown, when Friesen put up a post giving the background of the novel, which is "about the the young boy, Jasper Finch, and his vicious junior high school years." Friesen's post gives a more detailed account of what the book is about, saying the book is based on a particularly horrible day he had in junior high where he was jumped by several boys. However, the lead up to that awful day is a story of love and longing, which only came full-circle for the author once he was an adult. Having read several of Friesen's posts on The Nervous Breakdown, I'm really looking forward to digging into his book.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

2009-07-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

In California, Steinbeck is required reading throughout high school so most people my age have already read his greatest works, but somehow I was never assigned East of Eden in my high school years. I have to say that I'm grateful I wasn't assigned it then because I don't think I would have appreciated the beauty of this book. The first Steinbeck book I ever read was Of Mice and Men in the 9th grade and it almost turned me off of reading Steinbeck altogether. Had it not been for me picking up The Grapes of Wrath on a whim a few years back I probably would have written him off completely. But I fell in love with John Steinbeck when I read The Grapes of Wrath and last week when I finished East of Eden, I fell in love with him all over again.

As with many of Steinbeck's books, East of Eden takes place in California's Central Valley, with the second half of the book taking place almost entirely in Salinas. The book follows three generations of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons. The Hamiltons are Steinbeck's own ancestors and he even makes a couple of appearances in the book which I thought was interesting. However, for the most part the book focuses on Adam Trask, who begins his life in Connecticut, joins the military when the U.S. was exterminating Native Americans and eventually moves West to start a family with his beautiful wife who has a hidden sinister side.

Throughout the book, Steinbeck explores the human ability to choose to be good or evil. The story of Cain and Abel is a recurring theme throughout the book and really got me to think about the nature versus nurture argument. There is a cast of colorful characters throughout the book and, as always, whether he's describing something beautiful or something awful, Steinbeck creates a vivid picture for the reader. Steinbeck is said to have thought of East of Eden as his greatest work, and I have to say that I agree. His natural talent for storytelling really comes across in this book. I know it's a long one (695 pages!) but it's well worth the time.

Author Groupie: Meeting Lance Reynald

2009-07-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

I went to San Francisco to see Lance Reynald read from his book, Pop Salvation, on Thursday evening. (That's me with the short hair and big earrings). There were only a few of us in the audience, which made it cool because we were all able to ask questions from the author and had more time to talk to him than if there had been a hundred people waiting to get a signature. I was a little bit starstruck though. I got all nervous and fidgety for some reason. This seems to happen to me whenever I meet authors I've talked to online. I don't know why. Does this happen to any of you?

Check it out

2009-07-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hey there, I just wanted to direct you to a fab interview with Lance Reynald, author of Pop Salvation, which I reviewed here. He was interviewed at LitPark today, so hop on over and take a look.

Also, just a reminder that Lance Reynald will be doing a reading tomorrow evening at Books, Inc. in the Castro (San Francisco). Details:

Thursday, July 09, 2009
Location: Books Inc. in the Castro, 2275 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
Phone: 415-864-6777

Giveaway (aka FREE stuff!)

2009-07-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

I know how much I love free stuff and I'm pretty sure the rest of you love free stuff too, yes? SO, I wanted to let you know that there's a big giveaway going on here to celebrate the release (July 1) of A Democracy of Ghosts by John Griswald. The contest only goes until July 10, so get on over there and send them your details.

Also, here's some info about A Democracy of Ghosts from Amazon:

A DEMOCRACY OF GHOSTS is the love story of four couples, set against the backdrop of the Herrin Massacre of 1922. This clash of miners and strikebreakers in Bloody Williamson County, in Southern Illinois, resulted in the deaths of 21 men -- 19 of them the "scabs" tortured and murdered by average men, women, and even children in what was once the most radical community in America. John Griswold has drawn from contemporary eyewitnesses and news accounts, an ethnography of the area, histories, and his own grandfather's letters to create the lives of four fictional couples whose ambitions, self-doubts, and social and sexual jealousies contribute to this great American violence that still echoes down through time.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

2009-07-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

I've never really understood why people are so into The Godfather movies, until now. I've actually only seen bits and pieces of the movies, but I always found them boring and difficult to understand, but the book is nothing like that. Mario Puzo really created a wondeful tale when he put together this book. I love that the book isn't all linear either. It's almost like vignettes, albeit long vignettes, stringing you along until you have an aha moment and know what's going to happen next.

I really loved the character of Michael Corleone (and who doesn't?). It was interesting to see his transformation take place throughout the book. Santino's character is also much more sympathetic in the book than he was in the movies, although the movie (what I've seen so far) really follows the book very closely.

One thing I really liked about this book was that it wasn't nearly as violent as I had expected. The scenes gruesome scenes are actually pretty much glossed over, mentioned only as a side note in most cases. I think it was done as a way to show that, even though the bloody parts of the mafia are what get the press, murder and revenge aren't what the mob is really all about. Puzo does a great job of explaining the legitimate businesses of the mob, along with explaining their involvement in gambling rings and other more seedy business operations. In addition, he really helps the reader to understand the inner workings of the mob and the society they have created for themselves. I found it a very interesting and informative read and I couldn't put it down.

If you've ever wondered why they say "go to the mattresses," pick up this book. It will all make sense by the time you're through.

Other reviews of this book can be found here:
Books I done read

Pop Salvation by Lance Reynald

2009-07-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have so many things to say about Pop Salvation that I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll start by saying how much I loved it. Based on the back cover, I wasn't sure how interesting this book would be, so it really took me aback once I really got into it. The first few pages start off a little bit slow, but within about 15 pages, you can't help but fall in love with little Caleb Watson and then you won't be able to put the book down until it's finished.

Pop Salvation is a book about the self-discovery of Caleb Watson, who moves to a new town at age 11 and is never really accepted by the other children in his school. Throughout the book he struggles to find an identity that fits him, discovering the wonders of art, Andy Warhol and The Rocky Horror Picture Show along the way. The book is set in the early 80's at the height of Warhol's popularity and his work in The Factory. Caleb adopts Warhol's philosophy into his own life and even begins dressing like the famed artist.

But the most exciting parts of the book are the times Caleb spends with his friends, creating their own art and interacting in a world where everyone is accepted. Caleb and his few friends are all part of a group of outcasts who struggle throughout the book to come to terms with their sexual identity, having been labeled as "different" from very early on. I'm assuming the marketers who put together the blurb on the back of the book left out this part of the story in order to draw in a larger audience, as I'm sure there are people who would be put off by a book about teenagers struggling with whether they are gay or straight, but I found this to be the most extraordinary and wonderful part of the book.

The first half of the book reads almost like a love letter from Caleb to his friends, Aaron and Sonia. The tenderness he has for them radiates off the page in a way that makes you want to stop time and let it last forever. At a certain point I knew things were going to take a turn for the worst and I almost put the book down so I wouldn't have to break out of the lovely dreamworld I'd been living in, but, of course, I couldn't stop myself from seeing where author Lance Reynald would lead me. I don't want to give away too much of the book so I'll just say that I found this book to be one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful books I've ever read. You'll definitely cry, so bring some tissues with you when you read it.

For anyone in Portland or Northern California, Lance Reynald will be doing readings next week. From the events' websites:

Monday, July 06, 2009 07:30 PM

Powell's Books on Hawthorne, Portland, OR

Hailed as "marvelously endearing and insightful" by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Lance Reynald's debut novel Pop Salvation (Harper Perennial) spins together pop art and burgeoning sexuality in a fresh story about learning to trust yourself and the people you love.

Thursday, July 09, 2009
Location: Books Inc. in the Castro, 2275 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
Phone: 415-864-6777

Banned For Life LIVE!

2009-07-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention in my review that Banned for Life author, D.R. Haney, will be appearing in Los Angeles later this month, so if you're in town, you should go! Here's the details:

Date: July 25, 2009, 8:00PM
Venue: Stories
Location: 1716 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
Description:
D. R. Haney will read from his recently-published novel about punk rock, "Banned for Life," along with other guests, including singer-songwriter Tif Sigfrids, who'll charm and disarm with dainty song.

Banned For Life by D.R. Haney

2009-06-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

I just finished Banned for Life, the debut novel by D.R. Haney, which was released in May. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. However, I feel like I need to make a disclaimer here because I know many of you are sensitive about profanity in books and this one has A LOT. You don't even get through the first line without encountering the f-word (best first line of a book ever, by the way). Personally, I wasn't offended by the language in the book. I thought it added a genuine voice to the character, much as I felt toward the profanity used in Lush Life by Richard Price. But, I felt like I needed to give you all a warning, just in case.

So, about the book. Banned for Life is told by the main character, Jason, who came of age listening to punk and getting involved in several punk bands with his best friend, Peewee. Both were inspired by the legendary Jim Cassady, lead singer of Rule of Thumb. The book is written as if Jason is telling us the story as it all happened. I really enjoyed this way of writing because it felt like I was having a conversation with the main character - as if I was sitting there listening to him tell me his story.

The book starts off with Jason as an adult, telling us about how punk eventually led him to Los Angeles and into the filmmaking industry. He's fairly unsuccessful, as many are in this industry. Then he meets a girl and his life takes a bunch of twists and turns because of her. He ends up seeking out his old hero, Jim Cassady, who had all but disappeared from the map until Jason's girlfriend helps find him.

At this point we learn why and how Cassady really effected Jason's life. We learn all about what happened to Jason during his punk years: how he started hanging out with Peewee, how they started their first band, how that first band broke up, and how he ended up in L.A. I thought this was by far the best part of the book.

And then it gets back to the Cassady part, which got a little weird in parts and bothered me a lot once I got to the end of the book because there was no real resolve with the Cassady character. From one point of view, I wanted there to be some resolve because this is fiction and you can do that with fiction. On the other hand, it was being told as if it was real life and there isn't always a nice little bow tied on everything in real life, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be in this case. It was just a little weird to spend so much time on this character to only have it just end the way it did.

In the same way, I had difficulty with the ending of the book. I don't want to give it away for those of you who will go out and read it, but it ended a little too shiny happy for me. I was actually relieved for some happiness at the end of the book after all the downer stuff that happened in the middle part, but at the same time I felt it was a little too neat. It's funny because Jason runs away from all of his problems by moving away when things go wrong and I fault him for that even though that's pretty much exactly what I'm doing by moving to Istanbul. At first I felt like the ending was unbelievable but then I realized that it's exactly what some people do (it's what I'm doing!).

Anyway, there's also this whole side story with Jason and his girlfriend, who is actually married, which, of course, causes a ton of drama throughout the book. What I found funny about this whole thing was how long it took Jason to realize that maybe the husband was actually a good guy and that the girl was just stringing them both along this whole time. It's interesting how the people IN affairs can never see their role in it.

There's a lot of good stuff in this book - some commentary on the homogenization of society, an inside look at the underground punk scene, and some great descriptions of both New York City and Los Angeles. There are also some really great descriptions in general. Haney is able to create some great visuals with his words. For example, here's one of the early descriptions of Peewee:

"At fifteen he'd soaked up more knowledge than most people twice and three times his age, and he'd ramble through it in breathless monologues, veering from subject to subject like a house-trapped sparrow trying to find an open window: it's here, it's there, it's in the kitchen, it's in the attic now."

I love that he creates a sense of how Peewee talks by using that sparrow. Somehow it really made sense to me.

OK then, if any of you have read this one, I'd love to hear your opinions on it. And, I hope I didn't give away too much of the plot.

Next up is Pop Salvation by Lance Reynald, which was just released on June 23.

Two New Books Coming My Way

2009-06-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I won a Twitter contest held by Lance Reynald, which got me a free copy of his new book Pop Salvation, which will be released June 23 (Tuesday!). I was hoping to see Reynald on his book tour as well, but it looks like he only has two stops, so winning his book was a good consolation prize. If you haven't heard of Pop Salvation, here's a little blurb about it from the HarperCollins website:

Caleb Watson is not like the other children at his Washington, D.C., private school. Having skipped a grade—and being younger and smaller than the rest of the boys—he finds that his Southern accent and sensitive, reserved nature set him even further apart. Caleb simply does not belong.
But on a field trip to the art museum, Caleb discovers his hero—his icon—when he is exposed to the art of Andy Warhol. In the beauty of the things that don't fit, in the art and philosophy of Pop plus the glorious camp of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its creatures of the night, Caleb will find sanctuary, transforming himself and the eccentric friends he meets along the way into his own little version of Warhol's Factory.

I love the idea of finding yourself through art. I can't wait to read it.

Also, I have been given the opportunity to receive an advanced copy of Greg Olear's book, Totally Killer, which will be coming out on October 1. The only descriptions of the book I have to offer are this quote from Jonathan Evison, author of All About Lulu: "Olear has created a veritable almanac of the '90s. TOTALLY KILLER is, well, totally killer. You'll laugh. You'll cringe. You'll weep. You may even find yourself humming Whitney Houston." And this one-sentence description from GoodReads: "Conspiracy theory and pop culture collide in 1991 New York in this dazzling and dark debut from Greg Olear."

Olear is one funny guy though so I expect that his book will rock my socks (and hopefully yours!). I'll be sure to post more information when the book arrives. And, of course, a review will be coming. I plan to take Totally Killer with me on the road to Istanbul and share it with you all closer to the release date, along with an interview with Mr. Olear. Super exciting.

I'm really excited to be getting more debut novels to review. I really want to start reading more books by lesser-known authors. I guess I feel like the biggies get enough attention from the "real" media. I don't know, what do you think?

Just In: The Godfather

2009-06-17T17:14:00.001-07:00

I'm so super excited because one of my friends gave me his copy of The Godfather last night. I've been wanting to read this book ever since Raych reviewed it over at Books I Done Read. And, here, I have to admit that I've never actually seen The Godfather movies. Those, along with Shawshank Redemption, and Gone With the Wind, and Goonies, and just about every other classic film that everyone is supposed to have seen by age 28. Never seen them.

I never was very interested in The Godfather even, to be honest. But that was before I found out it was originally a BOOK! What?! Yeah, it was written by Mario Puzo (awesome name, yes?!). So anyway, I'm totally stoked. I've got to finish up Banned for Life first (which rocks, by the way - but watch out if you're the profanity police), but then I'm starting directly on The Godfather. I cannot wait!

Choosing Travel Guides

2009-06-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

How do you choose travel guides? I've always been a big fan of the Eyewitness Travel Guides by DK Publishing. I like all the glossy pictures because they make me want to go see it for myself. And, to be honest, it helps me to be sure that I'm where I'm supposed to be when I get there. However, as I've been preparing to move to Istanbul (read about the whys and whens here), I've found that the Fodor's travel guide has been much more useful. I don't know if it's old age, or the fact that I actually need to know this information that has made me prefer a book bogged down with words and facts instead of pictures.

I've bought both the Fodor's Turkey travel guide as well as the Eyewitness Istanbul guide, but the Eyewitness one makes me feel like I have A.D.D. I can't concentrate on the words and find myself skipping through the book and only stopping to read the captions on pictures that catch my eye. The Fodor's seems much more informative, has plenty of tips, and gives readers the opportunity to send in their own opinions after they've been to the suggested places. I love anything that gives real people's opinions, especially when it comes to travel.

I've also been reading a Let's Go travel guide about Europe, which I have found to be quite helpful, yet brief. Granted, it's trying to cover some 24 countries in one book (1124 pages!) so brief is a good thing, but I feel like if it were the only knowledge I had of those places then I'd miss out on a lot. With the abundance of travel guides available out there, I find it difficult to know which ones to choose or trust, so I often end up picking them at random, which is why I'm curious about what you all think of the travel guide industry. What do yo do? Do you always buy the same brand? Do you even use travel guides at all? How do you go about choosing the best guide for your vacation?

Summer Reading!

2009-06-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm officially back. School is now over and all I have to do right now is work and prepare for my move to Istanbul. I've already begun packing up my apartment, which began with packing up, giving away, and selling most of my books. The only books that have been spared from being stuck in storage for the next 9 months are language books, travel books and books that I think I'll have time to read before I leave (or while I'm there). So here's a little peak at the books I plan to read in the coming months:

First up is "Banned for Life," a debut novel by D.R. Haney that was released in May. I first heard about this book from reading this wonderful post by Haney on The Nervous Breakdown and I immediately fell in love with his writing. I received my copy of the book yesterday and cannot wait to begin reading it. Here's a little blurb about the book from Amazon:

For almost two decades, rumors have swirled around Jim Cassady, the quasi-legendary punk-rock frontman who disappeared without a trace shortly after his girlfriend’s apparent suicide. Though largely written off as dead, some claim to have had brushes with Cassady, now said to be homeless and bumming change on the streets of his native Los Angeles. Intrigued, Jason Maddox, a would-be filmmaker and Cassady fan, decides to investigate. But the man he eventually finds and befriends is damaged in ways he could never have imagined, and Jason’s own life begins to unravel as he tries to save the hapless Jim Cassady from himself.
A mystery wrapped in a love letter to overlooked American rebels, “Banned for Life” has already amassed a cult following in L.A.’s underground music scene, where D. R. Haney has long been a fixture.

Next up are a couple of books that I really should have read by now, but haven't because I've been inundated with grad school work. I mean, really, who hasn't read "The Memory Keeper's Daughter," and "The Year of Living Biblically" yet? Oh, me. So I'm going to finally get these two out of my TBR pile.

I'm also looking forward to finally reading "Radiant Days," a novel by yet another TNB author, Michael A. Fitzgerald. From Amazon: "FitzGerald's quiet debut centers on Anthony, a Gen X-er slacking away at a meaningless but remunerative Web producer job in dot-com–boom San Francisco. Anthony's life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Hungarian bartender Gisela at a local watering hole. Beautifully irresistible (and entirely untrustworthy) in the manner of all foreign femme fatales, Gisela quickly persuades him to travel with her to Hungary, supposedly so that she can be reunited with her missing son. In Budapest, the two meet jaded British war correspondent Marsh, a Graham Greene–like character who becomes the third leg in a rapidly evolving love triangle."

Next up is "C hasing the sea" by Tom Bissell, a book that I've owned for about five years and still haven't gotten around to reading. I picked up the book after reading an article by Bissell on the same subject. It's a fascinating story about an inland sea in Central Asia that all but disappeared because the rivers feeding into and out of it were overused for irrigation and what-not by surrounding cities. He travels to the now-abandoned fishing villages that surrounded the sea and discovers now-exposed shipwrecks. He also explains the ramifications of the drying up of the sea. It really does sound fascinating so I can't explain why it's taken me so long to get to it. But I'm really going to read it now that I'll be traveling to that part of the world.

Another book that's been biding its time for awhile on my shelf is "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck. I don't know how this never got assigned to me while I was in high school, but somehow I never read it. Steinbeck is one of my most favorite authors of all time, so I'm certain I'll enjoy this one.

A couple of others that made the list are "Say you're one of them," "Godless," and "Measure of the Heart."

The rest will be waiting for me when I get back from Turkey. By then, I'm sure I'll have added many a must-read to my pile.

How about you? What are the books you're looking forward to reading this summer?

Meeting Dooce

2009-04-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

I've been bogged down with not-so-fun reading lately, but I'm still the biggest author groupie ever. I went to see Richard Price speak last month and saw Heather Armstrong last night. I didn't write about the Richard Price event because I actually slept through almost the entire thing. Some author's just aren't great at reading their own books aloud. His books are amazing though, so I highly recommend them. I'm reading Clockers right now by him.

But last night I got to meet Heather Armstrong, which was awesome. If you've never heard of Heather Armstrong, I highly recommend you check out her blog. I've been following her on Twitter for about six months and have been reading her blog for about a year. I love her voice and her point of view on so many things. Plus, she's pretty hilarious (in my book anyway). The best thing about going to see her though was that a bunch of my girlfriends actually wanted to come along. Most of the time they have no idea who the authors are that I go to see so they're not interested, but this time they were actually the ones who asked me to go to a book signing. As always, it was a treat to meet an author and Dooce was great at reading her own stuff. She's just as funny in person, but way taller than I expected. Seeing her come out was a bit of a shock to me, especially considering I'm only 5'1". I'm always shocked by tall people.

Anyway, Dooce's book, It Sucked and then I Cried, is out now. It's a story about her first pregnancy and the postpartum depression that followed. One of my friends has read quite a bit of the book already and says she's enjoying it so far. I'm going to be borrowing hers when she's finished so it may be awhile before you get a real review of it from me. Until then, feel free to check it out on Amazon.

Oh, also, my friends and I could not get over this sign posted at Books Inc., where the book signing was. Apparently they have a huge problem with cults in Mountain View (aka Yuppieville), Calif.

More book reviews to come soon, I promise!

Lush Life by Richard Price

2009-02-25T22:09:00.000-08:00

I picked up Lush Life by Richard Price last week because it was the monthly selection for my public library's book club. It was the first time I had ever heard of Price, who is famous for writing Clockers, the screenplay The Color of Money, and for his work on the TV show The Wire.

This books is about the robbery and shooting in the Lower Eastside of New York City. We follow two detectives as they pursue one wrong lead that leaves them without any suspects for a couple of weeks. We see how it affects the police officers, the family of the victim, and the shooter.

It's not really a mystery novel because we know from the beginning who all of the players are, and you can pretty much guess who the shooter is from the background information Price gives us in the opening chapters of the book. The story is more about the characters and how cops work an investigation than about trying to figure out who did it. I'm a cop show junky though, so I really enjoyed this book. It was actually the first real "crime" novel I've ever read. I've read a lot of John Grisham's books, but I think of those as being more about lawyers than about cops. Does that make sense? Anyway, if you like Law & Order, I think you'd like this book. It was like reading the script of one of my favorite cops shows. Price does a wonderful job of creating the scene and making you understand where his characters are coming from.

There were mixed reviews at the book club meeting, with people being pretty divided over either loving it or hating it. I was obviously one of those who liked reading it. I felt like Price really knew his subject and did a wonderful job of creating memorable dialogue between his characters. I'm looking forward to reading Clockers next. The woman who runs the book club said she like it even better than Lush Life.

Also, on a side note, I know some of you worry about profanity in books. I didn't really notice it so much, but some of the women at the book club were really put off by the swearing in the book. I thought it helped to build credibility of the story. We're supposed to believe these are criminals talking, so I just don't think it would have been believable if they were replacing swear words with stand-ins like "freakin'" and what-not. Just thought I'd give you the heads up.

Oh, two last things: First, Richard Price will be here in Sacramento on March 12 at the Crest Theatre. I will definitely be there to author stalk him if anyone wants to join me. Secondly, I wanted to link you to The New York Times article about Lush Life from last year, in case you'd like a more in-depth look at the book.

Holy Contests Batman!

2009-02-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard (which, how could you not have?), Lisa over at Books on the Brain is holding a ton of giveaways on her blog to celebrate her 100,000th hit! So, if you love free books (and who doesn't), then hop on over there and show Lisa a little love.

The future of publishing

2009-02-03T01:04:00.000-08:00

Many of us who care about the publishing industry have already read hundreds of stories about authors who finally got book deals because they decided to self-publish and managed to become online successes. I think it's fascinating though that some authors have such faith in their work that they self-publish. I'm beginning to wonder if the publishing business model is changing to reject more manuscripts in the hope that the author will self-publish so the publishing houses can measure the book's success before investing in it. It's an interesting development in the publishing world. Anyway, I thought you all might be interested in this story in Time Magazine about this very topic.

Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

2009-02-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Although it has taken me forever to get through The Audacity of Hope, I really did enjoy it. Obama's perspective on the future of the United States is very optimistic in this book, especially in comparison to his first book, Dreams of my Father. Obama approaches a number of issues, including health care, race relations, and the Supreme Court. If you're at all interested in politics, I'd suggest reading this book, but be warned that much of it was discussed throughout the campaign. I think the reason it took me so long to get through this book was because I read it after the campaign and had already heard much of what Obama has to say. Still, it was nice to have a longer version of his goals and some clarification on what we can expect from our new president.

Also, for those of you who have a hard time reading nonfiction or political books, a friend of mine told me that the audio version of this book is actually read by Barack Obama and is wonderful. I think if I were to do it again, I'd probably get the audio version myself.

Feeling better

2009-01-21T04:13:00.001-08:00

My boyfriend finally moved out last week and finished getting his things out on Sunday. I was really sad to see him go, but am already feeling better now that he's actually gone and I can start to heal my heart a bit. I also switched rooms with my roommate to give myself a new perspective as well. The room is smaller, but there are no memories of Tony here. Plus, now I have my bookcase in my bedroom, which is not only comforting, but will hopefully give me motivation to start reading that full shelf of TBR books. Thanks to all of you for your kind words. It really is wonderful to have a community full of people who can offer advice and love when it's needed.

I start a new job in the morning and school starts next week, so I'll be busy, but it will hopefully help take my mind off things enough that I'll want a good book to help me escape.

Best,

Becca

How do you stay motivated to read?

2009-01-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

I'm super excited because one of my best friends just loaned me her copy of Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I've already read this book, but I loved it to pieces and need something to read right now that I know I'm going to enjoy. Funny thing is that I almost never re-read books. The last book that I read more than once was Matilda. I read that thing over and over and over when I was in grade school. Roald Dahl was my most favorite author in the world at that time.

Anyway, I still haven't finished Audacity of Hope, nor have I begun any interesting or fun books. My live-in boyfriend of three years broke up with me between my birthday (Dec. 21) and Christmas Eve and is in the process of moving out right now. I know there are much worse things that can happen, but I can't help being depressed about it. Hopefully once all of his things are out of the house I'll be feeling more like myself and be interested in reading/blogging again. I'm sorry I've been so flakey lately on here, but I hope you'll understand and still stop by once I'm up and running again.

Maybe some of you have suggestions of some good books that I could read right now? Or some suggestions on how to stay motivated to get through my TBR pile while I'm stressed/depressed? Do any of you ever just NOT feel like reading? This is the first time this has happened to me. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts and suggestions.

Winners!

2009-01-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

OK, I just chose the winners for the most recent giveaway using Random.org....and the winners are:

Drey won Funny in Farsi
Alyce wins Long Walk to Freedom (audiobook)
and Avalonne83 wins The Last Days of Krypton

Thanks everyone for participating!

Winners can send your mailing address to bexadler at yahoo dot com.

More Giveaways!

2008-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

OK, so still no reading on my part recently. I'm having a pretty tough time right now and can't concentrate, BUT as a consolation prize you get more giveaways! Yay for you, right?

Here are the books I'm giving away:

Audio book of Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Signed, paperback copy of Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas (my review of this book is here).

Pocket paperback of The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson (my review here).

If you're interested in any of these just leave a comment below telling me which book you'd like. If you would like to be entered for all of them you can do that too. Contest closes at Midnight on New Year's Eve. Best of luck to you all!

Where I've been

2008-12-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

I know it's been quiet around here lately and I apologize. I didn't realize how hectic the holiday season was going to be for me and I haven't had much time to read lately, which explains why there haven't been many blogs as of late. I also haven't been able to keep up with any other blogs like I normally would, but this week is finals week at school, so I'll be finished up for a couple of weeks, which will hopefully get me back on track and back to blogging. I'll try to get some books read and some reviews posted during my five week break from school. It'll be such a relief to finally get some leisure reading in.

I hope you all are doing well and have a happy holiday season!

Up High in the Trees Winner!

2008-12-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

Using Random.org I selected AMBER as the winner of Up High in the Trees by Kiara Brinkman. Thanks so much to all of you who entered.

Sunday Salon: Book club date moved

2008-11-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

I feel terrible because I didn't get a chance to read the book club selection for this month. I was scheduled to post the review today, but with Thanksgiving and end of the semester projects due, I just haven't had time. I also started reading Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama last week, thinking I could read it simultaneously with The Tortilla Curtain, but I got too drawn into Obama's book and always choose to pick it up instead. I know, big mistake, right?

Anyway, I'm going to New York next weekend and plan to read the book on the plane rides there and back, so I should be posting on December 10 instead. I hope those of you who have read the book will stop by to leave your thoughts, or links to your own reviews.

The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose

2008-11-29T13:59:00.000-08:00

I read The Reincarnationist last week so I could send it out as soon as I announced the winners. This was another quick and easy read that kept me in suspense throughout, however, I didn't like it quite as much as The Memorist. Overall I really liked the book but I just had a couple of problems with it.

First, the book is called The Reincarnationist, who is identified in The Memorist as Malachai Samuels, however Mr. Samuels is a VERY minor chracter throughout this book. I think the title is misleading because The Reincarnationist has nothing to do with this book. Maybe The Memory Stones or something else that at least hinted at what the book was about would have worked better for me.

Another thing that bothered me about this book was that a third story line was introduced at about Chapter 22. I was reading and enjoying Josh Ryder's flashes to the past when suddenly there's some girl Rachel having flashbacks in New York. I had to stop reading and flip through the chapters wondering if I had missed something somewhere. Her role comes into play later and it all ends up making sense, but I really needed her to be brought into the story much earlier for the book to flow better for me. That, or the author should have made some connections early on.

Anyway, enough negativity. Other than these couple of issues I really did enjoy the book. The flashbacks in this book are to Rome in 391 A.D., which is pretty awesome to read about. I thought it was interesting to gain a little perspective on how pagan religions were destroyed by the emperor at the time to make way for Christianity. It's obvious that M.J. Rose has done a lot of research about the time periods, as well as reincarnation. If you like thriller/mystery books and are interested in reincarnation, this will definitely be an interesting book for you. Just don't expect to learn much about The Reincarnationist until you get to The Memorist.

M.J. Rose Winners!

2008-11-24T19:58:00.000-08:00

OK, so since some people got more than one entry for posting about this giveaway, I did this by listing you by number and then using Random.org to generate a sequence. The top five entries won books, with the first number chosen winning the grand prize, the second and third places getting The Memorist, and the last two getting The Reincarnationist. Here's the results:

GRAND PRIZE (a copy of each book): Literary Feline
Copies of The Memorist: Serena and Carol's Notebook
Copies of The Reincarnationist: Judi and Carolyn.

I don't have all of your e-mails, so if you don't hear from me then please e-mail me at bexadler(at)yahoo(dot)com with your mailing address and I'll get the books out to you! Thanks everyone for participating!

Is it Karma?

2008-11-21T13:09:00.000-08:00

It seems that all the giveaways I've been hosting lately are paying off on the Karma scale because I just won five books from Book-Blog.com and Hatchette books! I'm so super excited for these books:

Up High In the Trees by Kiara Brinkman

2008-11-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't know much about Up High in the Trees when I ordered it from Amazon, nor when I began reading it. I chose the book because I had read posts by Kiara Brinkman on The Nervous Breakdown a while back and remembered liking them. When I heard she had a book out I ordered it purely based on that. So I was delighted to find that I actually liked the book.

Up High in the Trees isn't a typical novel. It's told in vignettes from the viewpoint of 8-year-old Sebastian Lane, whose mother has just died. Because I hadn't read the cover of the book, I first thought Sebby was autistic. He takes note of a lot of colors and intricate details of spaces. He also likes to sit under tables, in closets or curl up in small, dark places. It isn't until a few chapters in that we learn this is a coping reaction to his mother's death (this isn't a spoiler! The cover talks about his mother's death). Sebby learns to cope in other ways and even begins making new friends as the book moves forward. At the same time his dad has some type of breakdown and Sebby and his older brother and sister have to fend for themselves for awhile.

This book was particularly interesting to me because it takes place in the fall and covers an election year (1992, when Bill Clinton was first elected). I read the Halloween scene on Halloween and the election part near the election so it made it seem that much more real. Anyway, I don't feel like I've really done a great job of explaining this book. I enjoyed this novel because it was so different than other books I've read this year, mostly because the voice throughout is that of an 8-year-old, which makes it pretty unique. I enjoyed being in the mind of an 8-year-old for a couple of days. I think Brinkman did a great job of conveying how confused a child can be about something as tragic as a death, especially when everyone tries to help the child by keeping things from him/her. This book shows how a child might use their imagination to make up a different reality when the facts are lacking in his life.

If you're interested in reading this book, I'll be giving away my copy. It was already used when I bought it so it has a little wear, but it's still FREE. And who doesn't love free, right? So leave a comment below and I'll pick a winner Dec. 1. Also, don't forget to enter my M.J. Rose giveaway.

Interview with M.J. Rose and a Giveaway!

2008-11-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Today, as part of her TLC Blog Tour, M.J. Rose is here with some more insight to her newest novel, The Memorist, which I reviewed on Tuesday. In this interview we learn more about where Rose came up with the ideas for her novel, some of her own experiences in Vienna and how she came to be so interested in reincarnation. But first, a little about the author:

You may have heard about M.J. Rose through her first adventures in the publishing industry. Rose self-published her first novel, Lip Service, late in 1998 after several traditional publishers turned it down. Editors had loved it, but didn't know how to position it or market it since it didn't fit into any one genre.

Frustrated, but curious and convinced that there was a readership for her work, she set up a web site where readers could download her book for $9.95 and began to seriously market the novel on the Internet.

After selling over 2500 copies (in both electronic and trade paper format) Lip Service became the first e-book and the first self-published novel chosen by the LiteraryGuild/Doubleday Book Club as well as being the first e-book to go on to be published by a mainstream New York publishing house.

Today, she is the international bestselling author of 10 novels; Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex, The Venus Fix, The Reincarnationist, and The Memorist.

Rose has appeared on The Today Show, Fox News, The Jim Lehrer NewsHour, and features on her have appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers in the U.S. and abroad, including USAToday, Stern, L'Official, Poets and Writers and Publishers Weekly. And now she's here today:

You noted at the end of The Memorist that you have spent time in Vienna and that the underground ruins really do exist – Did you get a chance to explore some of the abandoned city below the surface?

Yes I did, it’s an amazing thing to see.

What first interested you in reincarnation and binaural beats?

When I was three years old, I told my great grandfather things about his childhood in Russia that there was simply no way I could have known. He became convinced I was a reincarnation of someone in his past. And over time, after more incidents, my mother – a very sane and logical woman -- also came to believe it.

Reincarnation was an idea I grew up with that my mom and I talked about and researched together.

For years, I wanted to write a novel about someone like my mother – who was sane and logical – who started out skeptical but came to believe in reincarnation. But I was afraid if I did people would think I was a “woo woo weirdo”.

I tried to start the first book in this series ten years ago after my mother died but I was too close to the subject and missed her too much to be able to explore it objectively. Every once in a while the idea would start to pester me again but I still stayed away from it.

Then a few years ago on the exact anniversary of my mom’s death my niece, who was a toddler at the time, said some very curious things to me about my mother and I – things she really couldn’t have known -- and the pestering became an obsession.

That’s when I sat down and started in earnest to write The Reincarnationist – which was published in September '07 and is out now in paperback and is the first book in the series. But they don’t have to be read in order.

As for binaural beats- I came across them in my research I did in 2005 when I was searching out information for the first novel in this series.

Throughout the book there are quotes from famous people like Carl Jung, Tolstoy, and Goethe regarding reincarnation. Were you surprised to find that so many influential people throughout history believed in reincarnation?

Yes and it was one of the things that really helped make me decide to tackle these books on this complicated and amazing subject.

Are you a fan of Beethoven, or was he just used because of the location and his interest in this type of research?

Here’s a short essay I wrote about the inspiration for this book that explains all that…

Once upon a time, my husband and I went to Vienna on a vacation and fell in love. Not with each other - we'd already done that - but with the city.

Growing up in Manhattan you don't bump in to history on every street corner - mostly you're bumping into other people or great shopping or eating experiences. In New York you have to go out of your way to find eighteenth century history but it’s still alive on every block in Vienna. There’s so much of it you are literally breathing it in. Arts and sciences have flourished here for centuries and whatever your passion you can visit museums, monuments and memorials to art, music, architecture, literature philosophy and psychology.

And visit them we did including making visits to homes of many famous people who’d once lived there and since my husband is a musician the trip turned out to be what I now jokingly call our Beethoven pilgrimage.

There are several of the great composer's residences in the city proper and its environs and we visited every one of them as well as churches, cafes and music halls he frequented. We walked the streets he walked following the routes he took and spent one day wandering the woods he wandered during the summers he spent in Baden, a spa town an hour out of the city.

But it was in the Heligenstadt house that the idea for my novel, The Memorist was born.

The house at Probusgasse 6 is in a neighborhood called Heligenstadt at the bottom of the Kahlemberg, which in Beethoven’s time was outside the city and filled with vineyards that are still growing there. And it was here at the end of the summer of 1802 that the 31-year-old Beethoven wrote the heart-wrenching Testament to his two brothers documenting his anguish at the onset of his terrible deafness.

The upstairs of this small apartment is open to the public and we walked through the ordinary rooms where he lived. Wandering over to the window I looked down at a simple courtyard where there was a single tree growing.

I stared at the gnarled, twisted trunk and the rich healthy verdant green leaves and realized that Beethoven must have once stood there and looked down at that same tree. Suddenly the composer’s ghost was standing there with me looking out the window.

Later I told my husband what I had been thinking and he said: “You’re going to write about that aren’t you?” Until that moment I hadn’t thought about it but after he said it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

At home I read several biographies about Beethoven and in one discovered the great composer had been fascinated with Eastern philosophy, which includes a strong belief in reincarnation. His own notebooks contain quotes a number of passages from Bhagavad-Gita. As well as a quote from William Jones that was included in his Hymn to Narayena, We know this only, that we nothing know.

And with that piece of information the idea at the heart of my tenth novel revealed itself.

The Memorist is not about Ludwig Van Beethoven although he does play a small part in it. Rather it’s a suspense novel about a woman on a search for her own ghosts but it was Beethoven’s spirit that inspired the book and his everlasting gifts to us are at the heart of the mystery I attempted to unravel.

Is there going to be a third book in this series?

There is and I’m writing it now.

(Looks like Rose is going to leave us in suspense, but rumor has it the third book will have more details about FBI Agent Lucien Glass, who was one of my favorite characters in this book. Yay!)

Was it difficult to keep all of the timelines straight in this book? How did you manage them and the characters from each time period?

It’s a bit tricky to keep it all straight but I write a first draft and then go back and do a timeline outline and then do a second draft fixing all the dates and making it all consistent.

How long did you spend researching the Indus Valley and Viennese history before writing this book?

I have been researching the whole subject of reincarnation for many years and have read over 50 books – I did an additional 3 months of research before I started this book and then while I was writing the first draft kept doing more research.

I’m also curious about the references to Judaism and Kabbalah. Did you have to research this or is it something you have studied throughout your life?

I’m Jewish but knew nothing about the Kabbalah until I stared doing the research for this book.

One of my readers was also wondering about online marketing for books. She asks: What are some of the biggest mistakes inexperienced writers can make on the web while they're promoting their work? Is it possible to rectify them, or do mistakes follow us forever and ever?

I teach an online marketing class once a year that is of great help to writers starting out or those already out. It will be taught in Jan 2009 - more at this link.

And the biggest mistake is to spend your entire marketing budget on a website. The second biggest is to think you don’t need to do anything - that your publisher will do it all. At Authorbuzz.com we help authors do affordable marketing - and since we work with all the major publishers - authors can feel confident about working with us.

Also, do you have any easy tips for authors starting out who have decided to self-publish?

I’m sorry, I don’t. And unless it’s very niche marketed non-fiction I don’t recommend self-publishing at all. I think it’s a big mistake to self-publish fiction. I’ve written a lot about that online and you can read about why here.

On your Website you mention that The Secret Garden was the first book to get you thinking about writing. Are there other books that have influenced you along the way? And what are you currently into reading? Some favorites?

I hate to do these lists because I always leave too many books out. Here are some of my favorite authors: Paul Auster, Anne Rice, Robert Goddard, Michael Connelly, Arthur Phillips, Lisa Tucker, Douglas Clegg, Ruth Rendell, Sophie Kinsella, Alice Hoffman, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Steve Berry, Jeffery Deaver… and I’ve been influenced by: John O’Hara, Ayn Rand, Daphne DuMaurier, and John Gardner.

I’m reading Buddha by Deepak Chopra right now.

M.J. Rose, is the international bestselling author of 10 novels; Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex, The Venus Fix, The Reincarnationist, and The Memorist. Rose is also the co-author with Angela Adair Hoy of How to Publish and Promote Online, and with Doug Clegg of Buzz Your Book. She is a founding member and board member of International Thriller Writers and the founder of the first marketing company for authors: AuthorBuzz.com. She runs two popular blogs; Buzz, Balls & Hype and Backstory.

And now for the giveaway! MIRA Books has been kind enough to send me extra copies to give away to FIVE lucky readers! Two winners will each receive a paperback copy of The Reincarnationist. Two winners will receive The Memorist. And the Grand Prize winner will receive both books in the series.* So here's how to enter:

1. For one entry you can leave a comment below answering the question: If you were a historian/archaeologist/anthropologist, what place and time would you most like to learn more about?

2. For an extra entry you can post about this giveaway on your blog OR if you don't have a blog you can send an e-mail about the giveaway to five friends. Leave a comment here letting me know you did this.

Also, feel free to leave comments about the interview and the book itself. I'd love to hear what you all think about the themes in this book.

Thanks so much for reading! And be sure to leave your comment by 11:59 p.m. on November 23. I'll be drawing winners on November 24.

*Sorry to do this to you international readers, but I'm super poor right now so this giveaway is only open to the U.S. and Canada.

Also, check out some of the other upcoming TLC Tours for more chances to win The Memorist:

Monday, November 17th: Booking Mama

Tuesday, November 18th: Books I Done Read

Wednesday, November 19th: Diary of an Eccentric

Thursday, November 20th: MommyPie

Monday, November 24th: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Friday, November 28th: Frequency of Silence

Check out TLC tours for the entire list.

The Memorist by M.J. Rose

2008-11-10T22:27:00.001-08:00

When I first received my copy of The Memorist I was a bit freaked out that I wouldn't finish it in time for my interview with M.J. Rose because the book looks so thick. But all of that worrying was for nothing because I really enjoyed the book and finished it all in one day.

M.J. Rose's The Memorist is the second in The Reincarnationist series, but don't be distraught if you haven't yet read The Reincarnationist. I didn't read it before starting The Memorist and I didn't feel lost at all. I don't know which characters were used in the first book because they were all so thoroughly fleshed out in The Memorist.

I don't want to give too much away about the plot because The Memorist is a mystery book, but I'll tell you a little about it so you can get an idea of whether it's book you'd be interested in reading. Most of the book is set in Vienna as the main character, Meer Logan, pieces together parts of her past lives and her current life thanks to the discovery of a gaming box she'd been haunted by since she was a child. The emergence of the box makes her begin questioning her firmly held beliefs that the box was somehow lodged in her memory from an early childhood experience, even though her father had been trying to convince her for years that they were memories from a past life. The past life we're then introduced to is one in which Meer (who in 1814 was Margaux) befriended Beethoven in an attempt to steal a valuable relic she planned to sell in order to mount a rescue for her husband who had been lost in India uncovering ancient ruins.

There are a couple of other side plots that I don't really want to go into because I'm afraid of being one of those spoilers, so I'm just going to say you should read the book so you can find out. If you like books about the Free Masons or uncovering lost treasures, I think you'll enjoy this book. The story is wonderfully woven and the pace stays exciting throughout. Plus, you'll be inspired to listen to Beethoven and wish for an opportunity to travel to Vienna...at least I am anyway.

P.S. I'll be giving away three copies each of The Memorist and The Reincarnationist at the end of this month. Check back Thursday, when I'll be posting an interview with author M.J. Rose, for details!

Questions for M.J. Rose?

2008-11-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

In my post about the upcoming interview with M.J. Rose, I received a comment from Lauri Shaw who had a question for the author, and I thought it might be fun to see if any of the rest of you had questions. SO if you have any questions about the book, the writer, or the writing process, feel free to leave your questions below (by Sunday evening) and I'll include them in the interview questions I send over to her.

Thanks so much!

Giveaway Coming!

2008-11-05T09:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon I received a box full of books to giveaway to you lovely readers. Super exciting, yes? I'll have three copies each of The Memoris t and The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose available for a giveaway that will begin on Nov. 13 when M.J. Rose stops by my blog for a little chit-chat. I'll be posting my reviews of the books the day prior to give you all a little reminder, but I'm super excited to be a part of Rose's blog tour and I can't wait to get started on these books. Oh, and to get you excited too, here's a little preview of what The Memorist is about:

International bestseller M.J. Rose has written a gripping and unforgettable novel about a woman paralyzed by the past, a man robbed of his future, and a centuries old secret. The dreads are back. As a child, Meer Logan was haunted by memories of another time and place, always accompanied by the faint strains of elusive music.

Now the past has reached out again in the form of a strange letter that sets her on a journey to Vienna to unlock the mystery of who she once was. With each step, she comes closer to remembering connections between a clandestine reincarnationist society, a lost flute linked to Ludwig van Beethoven, and David Yalom, a journalist who understands all too well how the past affects the future. David knows loss first hand--terrorism is a reality that cost him his family. He's seen every solution promised by security experts around the world--and he's seen every solution fail. Now, in a concert hall in Vienna, he plans to force the world to understand the cost of those failures in a single, violent act. Because those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...

November's Book: The Tortilla Curtain

2008-11-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Diane and Beastmomma for your suggestions for this month's book club selection. I'd never heard of The Tortilla Curtain, which was suggested by Diane from Bibliophile By the Sea, so I decided we should all give it a try. I love book clubs because they get me to read books I may not have otherwise picked up. There wasn't much about this book on Amazon, so I took this description from the Penguin.com Website:

In this explosive and timely novel, T. Coraghessan Boyle explores an issue that is at the forefront of the political arena. He confronts the controversy over illegal immigration head-on, illuminating through a poignant, gripping story the people on both sides of the issue, the haves and the have-nots.

In Southern California's Topanga Canyon, two couples live in close proximity and yet are worlds apart. High atop a hill overlooking the canyon, nature writer Delaney Mossbacher and his wife, real estate agent Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher, reside in an exclusive, secluded housing development with their son, Jordan. The Mossbachers are agnostic liberals with a passion for recycling and fitness. Camped out in a ravine at the bottom of the canyon are Cándido and América Rincón, a Mexican couple who have crossed the border illegally. On the edge of starvation, they search desperately for work in the hope of moving into an apartment before their baby is born. They cling to their vision of the American dream, which, no matter how hard they try to achieve it, manages to elude their grasp at every turn.

A chance, violent encounter brings together Delaney and Cándido, instigating a chain of events that eventually culminates in a harrowing confrontation. The novel shifts back and forth between the two couples, giving voice to each of the four main characters as their lives become inextricably intertwined and their worlds collide. The Rincóns' search for the American dream, and the Mossbachers' attempts to protect it, comprise the heart of the story. In scenes that are alternately comic, frightening, and satirical, but always all "too real," Boyle confronts not only immigration but social consciousness, environmental awareness, crime, and unemployment in a tale that raises the curtain on the dark side of the American dream.

I'll post some discussion questions on Nov. 30. This sounds like a really interesting book and I think it will spark some interesting conversations. I can't wait!

November Book Club Selection

2008-11-02T23:08:00.001-08:00

Does anybody have any suggestions for what we should read this month?

Book Club Discussion: Gregory Maguire's Wicked Series

2008-10-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

This month I selected Wicked by Gregory Maguire for the online book club because I've wanted to read it for years and I thought it fit well in the month of Halloween. My only disappointment with this book is that I never read it sooner! I had put off reading the book because I was a little irked that Maguire took someone else's story (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum) and repurposed it for his own novel. I've always been one of those people who thinks it's unimaginative to take someone else's work and rewrite it, but that has all changed with Wicked.

Maguire weaves a wonderful tale of Elphaba Thropp, the woman many of us know as The Wicked Witch of the West, and the land of Oz from the time before the infamous Wizard arrives to Elphaba's untimely death at the hands of the unforgettable Dorothy. As Elphaba grows up we see her transforming into somewhat of a political activist. Upon entering college she is immediately drawn to helping Animals who have just been subjected to new laws limiting their rights and taking away their ability to be gainfully employed in anything besides manual labor. For her actions to aid the Animals she is considered a threat to the Wizard. Not to mention the fact that her sister, the ruler of Munchkinland, has seceded from the greater country of Oz, showing growing discontent of the Wizard's rule among the people of Oz.

And there is so much more. There's magic and talking Animals (animals don't talk, Animals do) as one would expect. Many of the mysteries of Oz are fleshed out and made very real. And we see another side to the story of the Wizard of Oz. The book was definitely a grown-up's fairy tale, but I thought it was wonderfully well written.

I also read Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men after finishing Wicked because I just had to know what happened (seriously, it's like Harry Potter for adults). However, I didn't like Son of a Witch quite as well as Wicked because it moved a bit too slow until it got to the end. I did enjoy it though and the ending made my heart smile in a big way. A Lion Among Men was even slower than Son of a Witch and left me wanting more. Liir (the son of Elphaba) was completely left out of the story with no accounting of him or his family, which I suppose was done in order to leave space for another book in the series, but I was still disappointed by it. In regard to A Lion Among Men, I almost felt like Maguire had a deadline and so decided to throw something together. And I was hugely disappointed that the Lion turned out to be such an opportunistic creep - and after Elphaba saved him as a cub! Have any of you read these sequels? What did you think? Am I being too harsh here?

Also, I want to know what you all thought of Wicked! I tried to keep my review short because I really want to know what you all though. Who were your favorite characters? What did you think of Elphaba? How about her sister? Did you think the author left any unanswered questions at the end?

Wicked was also reviewed by:
Beastmomma

Oh, and before I forget: I selected the winner for my copy of Janeology by Karen Harrington! I selected the winner using the list randomizer on random.org and got: REBEKAH E. Rebekah if you can send your mailing address to bexadler at yahoo dot com, I'll send the book out to you. Thanks to everyone who entered and check back in a few days because I'll be holding another giveaway then.

Giveaway Remnders and Moleskine Alternatives Contest!

2008-10-27T11:42:00.001-07:00

First, I want to post a reminder that I'm giving away a copy of Janeology later this week, enter here by Oct. 30 for your chance to win.

Second, Trish gave a rave review of The Likeness on her blog and she's giving away a copy so don't forget to enter. I don't know when the deadline is though so you better do it soon just to be safe!

Lastly, blackcover.net is hosting a contest for free Picadilly notebooks. Each winner gets three little black notebooks (similar to the more expensive Moleskine notebooks you've probably seen around). Check out the site if this is something that interests you.

Live Chat tonight with Water for Elephants Author

2008-10-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

Tonight bestselling author Sara Gruen is doing a live online chat to discuss Water for Elephants on Gather.com. I thought some of you might be interested in joining in on that since it was one of our book club selections earlier this year. It might be fun for those of you who have been wanting to read the book, but haven't. Here's the information if you want to check it out:

WHEN: Wednesday, October 22, 8:00pm - 9:00pm ET
WHERE: The Gather Books Essential
COST: Free!

Also, you can check out my review of Water for Elephants here.

Why the Wind Blows by Matthys Levy

2008-10-18T12:21:00.001-07:00

Why the Wind Blows was the first book I received as a review copy when I started this blog and I have to apologize here for taking so long to get to it. This book is really interesting, although it reads more like a textbook than I had expected. I think, in fact, it may have been designed for use in a physical geography class - a purpose for which I think it would be well suited.

Levy gives a lot of explanation about how weather patterns are formed, as well as the history behind weather tracking. From Magellan to the Titanic, he covers a great deal of history and offers many stories to break up the scientific explanations for weather, which I found to be refreshing. He also describes how hurricanes and tornadoes are formed and gives in-depth graphics to help explain both. I think the best thing about this book is that there are so many graphics to help explain what the author is talking about. I'm not very science minded so the illustrations really helped me out.

The one thing I didn't like about this book was the sub-title "A history of weather and Global Warming." The "Global Warming" on the cover is large enough that I had focused on that thinking it would be the basis of the book, but really Global Warming isn't even addressed until the 9th chapter and then it's not really talked about in-depth until we get to Chapter 14. Somehow, when I signed on to read this I had thought it would be more of a journalistic book about global warming and its causes, but it turned out to be more scientific (but not in a bad way!). Just different than what I had expected, which is probably why it took me so long to finally sit down and read it.

Having taken a couple of physical geography and life science classes, I already knew a lot of the things covered in this book, but, as I said, this book would be ideal for a life science or physical geography class because of its easy-to-understand explanations, charts and illustrations.

Interview with Karen Harrington and a giveaway

2008-10-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

I'd like to introduce you all to Karen Harrington, author of Janeology, which I reviewed earlier this week. Harrington is a Texas native who has been writing fiction for more than twenty years. Her writing has received honors from the Hemingway Short Story Festival, the Texas Film Institute Screenplay Contest and the Writers’ Digest National Script Contest. A graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, she has worked as a speechwriter and editor for major corporations and non-profit organizations.

She authored and published There’s a Dog in the Doorway, a children’s book created expressly for the Dr. Laura Schlessinger Foundation’s “My Stuff Bags.” My Stuff bags go to children in need who must leave their home due to abuse, neglect or abandonment.

She lives in Plano, Texas, with her husband and two children.

Harrington has kindly taken the time to answer some questions for this post:

How did you keep track of all of the branches of Jane’s family tree?

I used my genealogy software to create a realistic pedigree chart for Jane’s family. I referred back to it several times to ensure I was keeping my dates and places correct along the way. The chart can be found on my website, too, and my publisher is considering including it in the paperback version.

Why did you decide to tell this story from the husband’s point of view?

I chose Tom’s point of view because he could ask all the questions about his spouse that I would have if I were in his shoes. He was/is the person most interested in finding out the answers to all the “why” questions. So it seemed logical to follow his journey. Plus, I was initially undecided if the spouses of women who kill are responsible in some way for the death of their children. So I wanted to follow that path to its end until I was satisfied I had at least uncovered a few answers. I think I did.

Why add a clairvoyant to the mix?

That’s an interesting question. The short answer is that this character was the vehicle to time-travel into the past. Antiques have long provided intrigue for me. I look at them and think “What if this piece could talk? What if it could tell me what scenes it had witnessed?” So, I developed the idea of a person with retrocognition to give those family heirlooms and photos a voice. I wanted you, the reader, to have the experience of looking at a photo and leaping right into the moment the camera took the picture. Enter, Mariah the clairvoyant.

What inspired you to write this story?

Initially, I wanted to write a story about a woman from the perspective of her genealogy and explore all the dark traits she may or may not have inherited. My father and I share a passion for our own family genealogy. Growing up, I was surrounded by his research and a lot of family photos of relatives I never knew. I developed an early curiosity about who they were and the possibilities of genetic inheritance. Then, there were far too many Texas news headlines about mothers who kill. When I had my first daughter, those stories really kept me up at night. And when a question keeps you up at night, that’s when you know you are going to write about it. So, the two ideas of genealogy and a troubled mother merged. Voila – Janeology!

I really liked the idea that objects are what keep us connected to our past. How did that part of the story evolve?

As I mentioned before, so many family pictures of my grandparents and great-grandparents surrounded me during my childhood. We also had a lot of well-preserved antiques passed down through the generations. So I was always curious about the origins of these heirlooms. For instance, the trunk and the necklace featured in the book (both shown on my website) are both family heirlooms passed down from my great-grandfather to my father and now to me.

What’s been the biggest challenge to you as a writer?

Managing the whole landscape of a story as it expands. It gets a bit unwieldy as it enlarges and you must constantly stay on top of it, making sure your facts are correct and that you are consistent. For me, working on the same piece every single day, even if it’s just to tweak one paragraph, over several months is the only way to stay in the story.

I’m also curious about the publishing house you chose. How did you find Kunati? And what was it like working with an independent publishing house?

I have to smile here when you say “the publishing house you chose.” It’s fortunate to be published at all when you consider the number of writers out there. So if your dog had his own publishing house and offered me a contract, I would have jumped at it. That said, my relationship with Kunati began by way of the typical submission process. I sent out my manuscript to dozens of agents and publishers and was thrilled that Kunati selected me; particularly, after I saw the types of bold stories they embrace. Plus, I think my experience with an independent publisher like Kunati has been great because of the level of communication exchanged from the editors and publishers directly to the authors. I’m not sure if the lines of communication are that open to the authors of larger houses. The best thing about my Kunati experience has been learning from the other talented authors on its roster.

Are there any other Karen Harrington books in the works?

Why, yes! I just got my next manuscript back from my freelance editor and I’m working on revisions now. I’m hopeful it’ll be at my publisher in January. (Unless, of course, your dog would like to have a look.)

Lastly, I’d like to know what you like to read. What are the three books you think everyone needs to read at least once in their life?

I think everyone should take on Homer’s Odyssey at least once. There are so many offshoots of this story in modern literature that reading Homer will make one’s reading experience richer.

The same is true for Shakespeare. If I had to pick a couple, I’d say take on Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.

And third, I think every writer should get a healthy dose of Hemingway to learn lean prose and Elmore Leonard to learn dialogue. Any books from these authors are terrific.

And what are you currently reading?

Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty.

And now for the giveaway. One lucky reader will receive my copy of Janeology by doing the following:

1. Leave a comment here saying why you'd like to read this book.

2. You can earn a second entry by posting about this giveaway on your blog.

The deadline for entering is October 30th.

For more information about the author or the book, you can visit Karen Harrington's website, which includes a pedigree chart for the characters in her book. Also, below is back-of-the-book description of Janeology.

Tom Nelson is struggling after the death of his son at the hands of his wife Jane. While Jane sits in a Texas mental hospital for her part in the crime, prosecutors turn their focus to Tom. They believe Tom should have known Jane was on the cusp of a breakdown and protected his children from her illness. As a result, he is charged with “failure to protect.” Enter attorney, Dave Frontella, who employs a radical defense strategy – one that lays the blame at the feet of Jane’s nature and nurture. To gather evidence about Jane’s forbears, Frontella hires a woman with the power of retrocognition – the ability to use a person’s belongings to re-create their past. An unforgettable journey through the troubled minds and souls of Jane's ancestors, spanning decades and continents, this debut novel deftly illustrates the ways nature and nurture weave the fabric of one woman's life, and renders a portrait of one man left in its tragic wake.

Book Club Announcements: New Release and Read Wicked for FREE

2008-10-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

So, thanks to The Book Pirate, I learned that our book of the month has a new sequel being released today so if you've already read Wicked and Son of a Witch, you really have no excuses not to participate this month. Actually, I should say especially if you've read these books because I know you won't be able to resist getting the next in the series if you've already read the others. I started reading Wicked on Friday night and then shirked all of my real responsibilities in order to continue reading. I'm almost finished but have been forced to put it down because I have so many upcoming deadlines (I bribe myself by saying if I get one assigment completed I can read one chapter before starting the next). This is Harry Potter for me all over again.

Erm, sorry to go off on a tangent. I just wanted to point you all toward A Lion Among Men, the latest release by Gregory Maguire. I also wanted to let you know that if you're super poor like me and you somehow can't find someone to borrow this book from you can read Wicked for free by going here.

Janeology by Karen Harrington

2008-10-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much time for extra reading lately, but once I opened this book I had to make time. Janeology by Karen Harrington is a book that draws you in from the first page and you can't stop reading until you know what happens. The story follows Tom Nelson through a thorny criminal trial in which he is accused of having not paid attention to the signs of post-partum depression in his wife that led her to commit infanticide, killing their two-year-old son and nearly drowning his twin, two-year-old Sarah.

While Tom is still reeling from the death of his son, and young Sarah is confused about losing her twin and her mother, the state of Texas is looking for someone to blame for the deaths since the mother is found to be mentally ill at trial and is sentenced to a mental institution. As the story unfolds, Tom's attorney takes an unorthodox defense of his client, saying Tom's wife, Jane, was pre-disposed to this life because of her genes. They then go through the lives of past generations from Jane's family, with the help of a clairvoyant, and discover the unsavory details of her genealogy.

While the clairvoyant may be a bit of a stretch for some readers it actually seemed to be just a quick way for Harrington to get this story out. It wouldh ave been far less effective to have Tom and his lawyer digging through old newspaper articles for the entirety of the book as they unearth the details of Jane's family. The story moves at a quick pace, with each chapter leading into the next and making it impossible to put down.

I thought this was an interesting look at a subject that seems to be in the news more and more these days (very Jodi Piccoult-esque), as well as at how blame gets pushed around in the legal system. There was also an interesting underlying theme of how objects in our lives can keep us connected to pasts and memories we may wish to forget. And it will get you wondering how much of you is made up of your ancestors.

This book was also published by Kunati, and independent book publisher, so if you're interested in debut authors an independent booksellers you might check them out.

Also, you can watch a trailer for the book at Karen Harrington's site.

This book was also reviewed at:
Mysterious Reviews
Musings of a Bookish Kitty
Books on the Brain
Booking Mama
Bold Blue Adventure
Maw Books Blog

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America

2008-10-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

In her memoir, Funny in Farsi, author Firoozeh Dumas uses humor and candor to introduce her family to readers and describe the language and cultural difficulties that come with moving to a new country. Originally from Iran, Dumas moved to the United States at age seven. It was 1972, a time before many Americans had ever heard of Iran, giving the author a much different experience in her first years in California than perhaps is felt by Middle Easterners immigrating to the United States today.

Leaving politics out of her essays for the most part, Dumas is able to endear her family and her culture to readers. She also is able to help us see how the political climate in the Middle East has effected immigrants and American attitudes toward them.

Dumas also has a refreshing look at things I take for granted as both a Californian and an American. The essays from her younger years are filled with a child's sense of wonder and discovery, as well as mischievousness. For instance, when Dumas loses track of her family in Disneyland, she goes to the Lost and Found and waits for her parents to figure out that's where they should go to look for her. When they arrive she realizes her father will do just about anything for her because he's so glad to have not lost her forever, which she uses to her advantage to get all the goodies and balloons her penny-pinching father normally wouldn't allow.

I thought her descriptions of cultural differences were also very well done. At one point she describes her father's love of visiting Costco on "sample day" because of all of the free food he can get. Her father also insists on trying all of the latest boxed or frozen foods (despite the belly aches they get from it) because they are so different from what they would find in Iran.

Culture becomes a theme throughout the book as she grows older, spends time in France and eventually marries a Frenchman. As always, I loved reading about someone else's time in Paris. It always makes me feel better about my own experience because it confirms my belief that I'm not the only person ever to have a difficult time with Parisians.

All in all I really enjoyed this book. Dumas' writing style is fun and quick, and her descriptions of her family's quirks will take you back to your own teenage years.

For those of you in Sacramento, Dumas will be appearing at Sacramento State University on Wednesday, October 15th, at 7 p.m. for a discussion and book signing.

Also, she now has a second collection of essays out, entitled Laughing Without an Accent, if you're interested.

October Book Club Selection: Wicked

2008-10-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this for a few days but life got too hectic there for awhile and I let it slip. This month I'd like to finally read Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I borrowed this book ages ago from one of my friends and still haven't gotten around to it. I thought it would be a good book for October too since it's about a witch. I don't like scary books too much so this is about as close as I could get to a Halloween theme. If you've already read this book, but want to participate, how about considering the sequel?

From Publisher's Weekly:

Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who tends the dying and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz.

Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans, talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkinlanders, dwarves and various tribes.

The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel; his holy book is an ancient manuscript of magic that was clairvoyantly located by Madam Blavatsky 40 years earlier. Much of the narrative concerns Elphaba's troubled youth (she is raised by a giddy alcoholic mother and a hermitlike minister father who transmits to her his habits of loathing and self-hatred) and with her student years.

Dorothy appears only near novel's end, as her house crash-lands on Elphaba's sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, in an accident that sets Elphaba on the trail of the girl from Kansas, as well as the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion, and her fabulous new shoes. Maguire combines puckish humor and bracing pessimism in this fantastical meditation on good and evil, God and free will, which should, despite being far removed in spirit from the Baum books, captivate devotees of fantasy.

As always, the book club discussion will be held on the last day of the month (October 31). Hope to see you all there!

Book Club Discussion: House & Home

2008-09-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

First, I wanted to let you all know that after your encouragement I decided to go to my public library book club and I still enjoyed the discussion. Not only that, but I also was given a copy of the book by one of the other members so I won't have to check it out at the library again! Now hopefully I'll really find the time to read it, especially considering how many people there actually really liked the book.

Now, onto our own book club discussion here. This month we read House & Home by Kathleen McCleary (check out my interview with her here) Personally, I really enjoyed this book. At first I was uncertain as to whether I'd like it because it sounded a little far-fetched to me. I also got the feeling I wasn't going to like Ellen because, from the description, she seemed like an impetuous child - burning down her house because somebody else had bought it outright? Puh-lease! BUT I loved this book. I got through it quickly and what I found was that, despite the cover's description, the book was about much more than Ellen and her house.

House & Home is about learning to distinguish between what makes a house and what makes a home. The two words conjure up very different meanings in my mind, and I was glad that Ellen was finally able to see that what made her house a happy place was not necessarily the things that filled it, but the people.

I thought the characters in this book were really well developed and I loved every one of them. Sam was one of my favorites, despite his flaws (probably because he reminds me so much of my own beau). Some of Ellen's complaints about him really caught me off guard because I have had so many of those complaints myself.

I also found that I really connected with Ellen on a different level, in that she reminded me of my own mother in some of the passages. As a child I moved often, and I have to say I reacted much like her children. I threw huge tantrums every time we moved and would hold it against my parents for months afterward. Here is one passage that I highlighted in the text:

"And then Ellen simply refusted to move again. After years of putting off having children, and working endless hours to get her decorating business up and running in one town after another, she was done. She wanted to buy a house and paint the walls red, not some neutral rental color. She watned to get pregnant and have babies. She wanted to plant bulbs and know she'd be there in the spring to watch them bloom. She wanted to make friends and reminisce over shared memories that went back more than twelve months."

I think this one passage so encapsulates that desire, after years of moving, to stay put, to have some roots. I know I've felt this way as recently as March when I moved back to Sacramento from Paris. I absolutely had every intention of settling down here, finally. And I still dream of owning my own house and knowing it will be a place I can always come back to.

This book was very relatable in many ways. It's more than a story of a house - it's the story of a family. I really want that to come across in my review because I feel that some people may avoid this book as I did at first, thinking it was too far-fetched.

For those of you who read the book, I have a couple of questions in the hopes to get a conversation started:

What did you think of the book?

Who was your favorite character in the book? Who did you relate to most and why?

Have you ever felt this way about a move or a house?

Were you surprised by all of the turns this book took?

If this book was made into a movie, who would be your choice to play Ellen? And who would play her hunky husband, Sam? (I stole this question from Displaced Beachbums, hope you don't mind!)

Oh, and I almost forgot: We have a winner! I chose the winner of the House & Home giveaway using Random.org and it chose kamewh! Congratulations! Send your mailing address to bexadler (at) yahoo (dot) com and I'll get it out to you right away!

For other reviews of this book visit:
A Lifetime of Books
It's All About Books
Books on the Brain
Booking Mama

Banned Books Week

2008-09-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the double post today. I'd meant to post this yesterday (it's been on my calendar for months!), but I got caught up doing work instead. Who works on a Saturday, right? Apparently, me.

Anyway, I just wanted to send out a friendly little reminder that it's banned books week this week, so stop by your local library and give those banned books a little love. And, if you need a list of banned or challenged books you can stop by the list I made for the challenge I'll be hosting next year. Or, of course, you can stop by the American Library Association's site. I can't take on much extra reading these days so for me, I think I'd like to re-read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The last time I cracked that book open was in 4th Grade!

Giveaway Reminder!

2008-09-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't received many entries yet for the giveaway of the book House & Home by Kathleen McCleary. I thought this might be because it was at the end of the post so maybe some of you missed it. I also wanted to put a reminder up since tomorrow (Sept. 29) is the last day to enter, so if you'd a chance to win a free copy of this book, please go here and leave a comment. Thanks!

I am a bad, bad book club member

2008-09-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

So, as you know, I've been attending my public library's book club meetings over the past few months. I've really enjoyed the discussions and have been making the books for these meetings my top reading priority so I can participate. But this month I was a slacker. Not really a slacker so much as I couldn't force myself to read the book, which is Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Relin.

See, the thing is last year I read Leaving Microsoft to Save the World by John Wood. And, well, after looking at the cover of Three Cups of Tea I decided that the two books are pretty much the same book. And after that I read this review by Lisa over at Books on the Brain and I became even more convinced that I'd have to gouge my own eyes out to save myself the pain of reading this book. So I didn't read it. I did check it out from the library in a mock attempt to get into the book. But it just sat on my nightstand until it was due back.

This really is getting to a point, and that point is this: Should I still go to the book club meeting even though I didn't read the book? Or should I skip out on it?

Sitting Down with Kathleen McCleary, author of House & Home

2008-09-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today I am happy to host an interview with Kathleen McCleary, author of House & Home, as part of her blog tour put together by TLC Book Tours.

Kathleen McCleary has worked for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, USA Weekend, Good Housekeeping, More, Health, Martha Stewart Living, and Ladies Home Journal. She was a columnist for several years for HGTV.com. A 2004 job opportunity for her husband brought her reluctantly back to Virginia (which is a beautiful and friendly state that had nothing to do with her discontent other than the fact that it wasn't Oregon). The move sparked the idea for a novel, and she spent almost three years writing House & Home, while also working as a freelance writer and as a barista at the local, independently owned coffee shop in her town.

House & Home is "the story of a woman who loves her house so much that she'll do just about anything to keep it." And it's the book selected this month for our online book club, which will take place next week. I finished the book quite quickly and was surprised by how much I really enjoyed reading it. I hope some of you have already read the book. If not, perhaps this interview will peak your interest. Enjoy!

What was your inspiration for this book?

In 2004, I moved from Oregon to Virginia and had to sell the house we’d owned for 12 years. It was harder for me to give up the house than I could have imagined. I thought, “What if someone literally couldn’t give up a house?”

When you moved from Oregon to the East Coast did you face some of the same emotions as the main character, Ellen Flanagan?

Of course. Uprooting my kids from the only home they’d ever known was really, really hard. And I loved my house, in part because we had a close-knit neighborhood with many friends, and because so much of my kids’ childhoods were lived out in that house.

One of my favorite parts of this book was reading the children’s reactions to the move, especially Sara. When I was younger my family moved a lot and I have to admit I was a lot like Sara in that I fought tooth and nail to convince my parents not to move – every time. How did your children react to the big move when it happened?

My oldest, who was ten at the time, was completely opposed to the move, and of course her resistance was a knife in my heart. She even knocked down the “For Sale” sign on a couple of occasions! My youngest, who was seven then, was more accepting. I moved several times as a kid and just hated it, so the fact that I had to move my kids was very difficult. I think all kids hate to move. I got the idea for the little “I’ll be back notes” that Sara left around the house from taking a tour of the White House in D.C. The guide said that one of Eisenhower’s grandchildren had hidden little notes around the White House before his grandfather left office.

Why did you decide to set the book in Oregon, rather than your new hometown?

My heart—and my head—were still firmly entrenched in Oregon for quite a while after I moved. In many ways, the book is a love letter to Oregon. Writing it was also a way to help me process my feelings about the move.

In the book, Ellen says to Jordan Boyce, “This is the West Coast. You’re not supposed to ask what college someone went to here.” This is one of my favorite quotes in the book, not only because Ellen had the guts to say it, but also because it’s a difference I often notice when I meet East Coasters. Did you find it difficult to get used to this when you moved to the East Coast? What were some of the other differences you noticed between the East and West Coast?

I experienced real culture shock when I moved east, although I had lived in the East before and grew up in the Midwest. The pace on the East Coast is much quicker, for one thing. People drive faster, walk faster, even talk faster! I’m still not used to it. There’s also much more focus on what college you went to, or what college your kids want to get in to, even when they’re in middle school. People also always want to know what you DO and where you work. There’s a lot to love about the East, but I’ll always be an Oregonian and plan to return to Oregon full time one day.

Could you see any other way for Ellen to resolve her issues with her house and husband aside from the house burning down?

Sure. Ellen could have taken the time to really clarify her priorities before she rushed into selling the house and then regretting it. She might have decided she wanted to divorce Sam but also sell part of her business to keep the house. Or she might have decided she and Sam needed to reevaluate the way they worked together as parents and marriage partners, but still stayed together. I think Ellen, because she was so hyper-competent, really enabled Sam in some ways, contributed to his less responsible side. The fact that she finally had had enough did force Sam to mature. It also helped Ellen to let go.

How long was this book in your head before you put it down on paper?

It was a slow process that developed over several months. I finally wrote the first paragraph, then just let it simmer for a while. I kept thinking about it, so then I wrote a little more, and then it started to unfold.

Why the title House & Home? What’s the difference between a House and a Home?

I originally called the book simply “House.” My agent, Ann Rittenberg, came up with the title “House & Home,” which is perfect. A house, as Ellen comes to find out, really is just a house. It’s a vessel. A home is what’s inside the vessel—the lives that are lived there, the people who live them, how they care for one another.

What is your favorite part of your home and why?

It’s my living room and dining room, which open into each other. The rooms both have huge, multi-paned windows that let in sun all afternoon, and they’re where we spend the majority of our time together as a family—eating meals, doing homework, practicing guitar, folding laundry, reading, talking, entertaining friends. It all happens in those two rooms.

Do you have any other books in the works?

Yes! I’m currently hard at work on my second novel. It’s about a woman who gets so overwhelmed by what she perceives as the negative cultural influences affecting her school-age children that she decides to move them to a remote island off the coast of Washington state to live without shopping malls, cell phones, or traffic lights for a year. The novel follows Susannah Delaney’s quest to create a meaningful life for herself and her three children; her relationship with her husband, Matt, which has grown increasingly strained as they clash over how to best raise the kids; her confusion over a haunting love affair from her past; and finally the changes that take place during the family’s time on Sounder Island, which turns out not at all as Susannah expected.

P.S. I'm giving away my copy of House & Home since I've already finished it. If you'd like to win a copy of this book, please leave a comment below telling me why you'd like to read this book. The winner will be chosen on Sept. 30, so please enter by midnight on Sept. 29!

P.P.S. If you don't want to be entered in the giveaway, you can still leave a comment below ;-)

Drowning in a sea of jargon

2008-09-19T09:38:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it's been almost a week since my last post! Grad school has completely taken over all of my reading time. I'm reading super boring books about learning/teaching methods and how to write research papers. There are only two books that I'm actually somewhat enjoying. One is about linguistics and the other is about teaching grammar. The biggest problem with all of these books is that they're so jargony. I don't understand half the words in them and end up running to my dictionary every five seconds - and even then I don't get it. This is why, today I invested in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Now, instead of the generic definition of the words, I'll get the English Language Professional's definition. Hopefully it will help. Otherwise I'm going to spend this whole semester with my mind boggled.

A sampling of the stuff I'll be looking up constantly this semester:

Subsumption theory, equilibration, syntax, allophone, phoneme, copular verb, interlanguage, metalanguage...the list goes on.

Also, I'm pretty sure these linguist types have made up many a-word, like systematicity. Really?

No wonder it's so difficult to learn English. I've been speaking it my whole life and I feel like I'm in a foreign country now that I'm studying the language itself.

Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi

2008-09-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

There have been countless times where I've read a book and commented that the ending ruined the book for me. I seldom finish a book and say that the ending made the book, but that was the case with Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, Chicken with Plums.

This book is about her uncle, Nasser Ali Khan, a well known tar (a Persian instrument similar to a guitar) player whose tar is broken by his constantly nagging and belittling wife. He sets out in search of a new tar, but finds that he can no longer play. Without his music he decides to just lie down and wait to die, which takes eight days to happen. We then follow him through the last eight days of his life and in doing so we learn about the life he had before his final moments.

The book was a bit slow moving and as I was reading it I kept asking myself what was really going on. I didn't understand why he was giving up on life instead of going out to look for another tar. And I kept asking myself why this was worthy of a book, but when I got to the end I finally understood. I actually had one of those "Aha" moments when I got to the last few pages of the book and I was glad I had stuck it through. This is a sad little story, but it's fairly quick to read and gives more insight into Persian culture. If you're looking for more by Marjane Satrapi, I'd recommend it.

Interview with author Raymond L. Atkins

2008-09-12T01:56:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I recently reviewed The Front Porch Prophet, written by Raymond L. Atkins. This was a book I really enjoyed and the author intrigued me, so I contacted Mr. Atkins and asked him to participate in an interview, to which he kindly agreed. First, a little about Mr. Atkins:

The author lives in Rome, Georgia, with his wife. They live in a 110-year-old house that they have restored themselves, and they have four grown children who drop by from time to time. Raymond has had a variety of occupations during the past thirty-five years, but now that the children are grown, he is pursuing his lifelong ambition of being a novelist and writer. His hobbies include reading, travel, and working on the house.

And now, on to the interview...

One of my favorite parts of this book was the names of the characters (including the cars). I loved the nicknames and double names scattered throughout the story. How did you come up with these names?

I spent my adolescent and young adult life in a small Southern town much like Sequoyah, and as anyone who has ever lived in that type of environment will attest, a great deal of time and effort generally goes into the naming of objects and people. It is the rare individual who does not have a nickname—mine was Old Great Longhair—usually based on some physical trait or habit. Thus my childhood was scattered with Rabbits, Squirrels, Gillas, Maggots, and the like, and I had a large selection of potential names to choose from when it came time to write the book. Additionally, it has always been a fairly common Southern practice to utilize the first and middle names. Thus you hear of Jim Bob, Joe Frank, Johnny Mack, John Robert, Natalie Ann, Mary Jean, and the like. Finally, in the culture of my youth, the naming of vehicles was common, as well. Some of the more memorable handles that still easily come to mind include The Green Hornet, The Chrysler from Hell, and the Love Mobile.

In the same vein, I'm curious about A.J. and Maggie's children's names, who were named after famous authors. Were the specific authors chosen because they are your preferred names in literature, or were they chosen at random? And, how did this idea occur to you?

I am not quite sure when I decided to name the children after famous authors, but I do recall that the decision was made fairly early in the drafting process. An acquaintance of mine had named a child after a rock star, and while I was not tempted to do that in the story, I think it must have been a short segue from that point to the introduction of the famous writers’ brigade. The actual authors were chosen based on novels I have enjoyed over the years.

I get a feeling you were a bit of a prankster like A.J. Were you a dad who told outrageous stories to explain simple phenomena to your children? If I'm right about this one, what's one of the famous Tall Tales of Dad from your house?

I have to admit that my children learned early in their lives not to take too much of what their father said as the gospel truth. The Wizard of Oz episode where the world turned to color before their very eyes was one I had great fun with. (Note from Becca: This is explained in the book, so read it to find out what The Wizard of Oz episode is!)

Why The Front Porch Prophet as the title of this book?

A long time ago, I wrote a very bad poem with that name. When I showed this sonnet to my wife, her advice was to “lose the poem, but hold onto that title.” As for why I decided to use the title for this book, Eugene physically resembles what I imagine an Old Testament prophet must have looked like, and some of his letters and meanderings do indeed prove to be prophetic. I have a mental picture of him on his front porch, holding forth—prophesying—on whatever comes to his mind.

On the inside cover there's mention of "a dead guy with his feet in a camp stove," but I don't remember that in the book. Was this something that was edited out? Or was I not reading carefully enough?

Estelle Chastain’s deceased husband, Parm, had a great many extras adorning his gravesite. One of these was an eternal flame (that was only lit briefly twice per year) made from the guts of a camp stove. (Oooooh! So, it was just me after all...)

Did you travel to Sequoyah, GA, to prepare for this book? How much of this town is true to life?

Sequoyah is a fictional locale that has some resemblances to every small Southern town. Rural Southern life is a distinct culture, and commonalities can be found between most of the communities.

What do you like most about living in the South? Have you ever lived elsewhere?

As I said in the book, I am a plowboy by conscious choice, not dumb luck. I was raised in a military family and lived a great many places in my childhood, but I have lived in the South since I was fourteen. I like the slower pace and the gentility of the life, although a little more of this lifestyle seems to slip away as each year passes.

What was your favorite part about writing this book?

Writing a novel is a great deal of work, but I enjoy each step of the process. It is quite exciting to be able to create a world, and then to have that world behave according to your own master plan. I suppose that my favorite part is when I re-read the previous day’s work—which I do every writing day as a prelude to beginning again—and discover that yesterday’s work accomplished what I wanted it to.

And why didn't you write sooner?!

My wife and I met while working in a cotton mill, and we married at age nineteen. We spent the next six years putting each other through college and the 25 years after that having and raising four children. So I guess you could say that life happened, which it will tend to do. And even though I always held the dream of writing close to my heart during those busy years, the time was just not available.

Lastly, can you tell us a bit about your next book and when it's scheduled to be released? Is it already completed?

My next book—Sorrow Wood—is completed and scheduled for release by Medallion Press in August of 2009. As with The Front Porch Prophet, it will be released in hardcover. Here are the cover notes for the story:

Reva Blackmon is a reluctant probate judge in the small town of Sand Valley, Alabama. She lives in a Rock Castle with turrets and a moat thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, and she walks on one leg thanks to a drunken railroad engineer on the Southern Pacific. She sings Wednesdays and Sundays in the choir at the Methodist Church and believes in reincarnation the rest of the time. Her husband, Wendell, is the love of her life, and if she is to be believed, he has been her soul mate for many lifetimes, stretching back down the corridors of time.

Wendell Blackmon is the disgruntled policeman in this same small town. He rides herd on an unlikely collection of reprobates, rogues with names such as Deadhand Riley, Gilla Newman, Otter Price, and Blossom Hogan. Law enforcement in this venue consists of breaking up dog fights, investigating alien abductions, extinguishing truck fires, and spending endless hours riding the roads of Sand Valley. Unlike his wife, Wendell does not believe in reincarnation. Nor does he believe in Methodism, Buddhism, or Santa Claus. But he does believe in Reva, and that belief has been sufficient to his needs over their many years together.

But the routines of Sand Valley are about to change. A burned body has been discovered at a local farm named Sorrow Wood. The deceased is a promiscuous self-proclaimed witch with a checkered past. Wendell investigates the crime, and the list of suspects includes his deputy, the entire family of the richest man in town, and nearly everyone else who knew the departed. As the probe continues, a multitude of secrets are revealed, including one that reaches from the deep past all the way to the Rock Castle. Who was this woman who met her end at Sorrow Wood? Where did she come from, what were the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death, and what did her presence mean to Wendell, Reva, and the remainder of the inhabitants of Sand Valley?

Thanks so much for the interview, Raymond! Have any of you read this book yet? What did you think of it?

I've been tagged...

2008-09-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was tagged by Sophisticated Dorkiness (whose blog you should totally check out by the way) to do this meme about how blogging has changed me (for better or worse). I hope you all don't mind a little break from all of my super long (as of late) reviews. First, the rules:

1. Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.
2. Link back to the person who tagged you (and leave a comment on his/her blog after you do the tag).
3. Link back to this parent post.
4. Tag a few friends or five, or none at all (and inform them about it).
5. Post these rules— or just have fun breaking them.

Now, for my response.

How blogging has affected me? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. My book blog has encouraged me to read much more than I otherwise would have, in addition to getting me to read a wider variety of books.

2. Unfortunately, it has grown my TBR pile to well over 200 books. I don't think I'll get through all of the books I want to read within this lifetime (especially if I keep getting more in the mail each week!).

3. Blogging, in general, has allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family with whom I may have otherwise lost contact. It has also given me a great outlet for all of the stuff floating through my mind on a daily basis.

4. And it has given me a terrible, terrible addiction that also helps feed my need to procrastinate. Bad, bad blogging!

5. Lastly, it has allowed me to "meet" a huge community of people with the same interests as me (which of course has lead to my Google Reader being jam-packed all day every day...).

OK, so now I have to tag people (hopefully people who haven't already been tagged before). So let's see, how about beastmomma, Laura, and CJ.

The Last Days of Krypton

2008-09-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm normally not a sci-fi reader. In fact, the only sci-fi I've ever read was the Ender's Game series and the Hitchhiker's series, both of which I read and adored in high school. I have otherwise never been interested in the genre. Somehow, even though I loved these other two series, I thought I couldn't get into sci-fi books. Plus, I thought they were way too technical for me. I don't know anything about warp drives and whatnot. BUT Kevin J. Anderson was able to draw me in with his latest book, The Last Days of Krypton, which was just released in paperback on August 28.

I may not be a sci-fi fan, but I am a HUGE Superman follower. I've watched all the TV Series and seen the movies - and Superman comics are the only ones I've ever collected. See, my geek side is coming out now. So when I heard there was a book coming out that finally put all of the pieces of Krypton together, I jumped at the chance to read it. And I wasn't disappointed, although I guess I'm easier to please than some of the reviewers on Amazon. The hard thing for any book that backtracks on an already in place mythology with a huge following is that it will have critics who thought it should have come together differently. Many fans will already have a picture in their minds of what happened and if it doesn't add up then, well, they just won't like it regardless of how well done it is.

With Superman this may have been slightly easier to avoid because the mythology regarding Krypton has been so scattered over the years. Readers have seen several potential causes for the end of Krypton, including the sun going supernova, major geological pressure causing the world to explode and civil war breaking out causing Kryptonians to destroy themselves. The awesome thing is that Anderson addresses all of these in his book. It's obvious the author did his research and tried to include everything in the plot line.

In The Last Days of Krypton, we follow the last year or so of the history of Krypton, home planet of Superman (Kal-El, Clark Kent). It is told from the perspectives of many of the main characters - Jor-El (Kal-El's dad), Zor-El, Zod and Aethyr to name but a few. We learn of the great war in Krypton's past, which gives us the reasoning behind their world's fear of space travel and connecting with alien species. We discover how Jor-El came across the spaceship in which he eventually sends Kal-El to Earth. And we learn the origins of the green Kryptonite. We also have questions answered about the phantom zone and General Zod, which is huge if you're a Superman fan.

I, for one, have been confused about a lot of these things for a long time and was happy to have these questions addressed in such a gripping book. While I enjoyed most of the book, I thought the part about General Zod's takeover of the Kryptonian government was a little long, but it was also suspenseful and kept me reading. And I was thoroughly confused by Aethyr's turn-around. She starts of hating the authority of Krypton and researching its past. She is non-conformist to say the least, but then becomes an adamant Zod follower, even as he leads Krypton to near destruction. Somehow, I didn't get this abrupt change. Being non-conformist doesn't necessarily mean you'd want one person to take over the whole country and be OK with them killing off anyone who disagrees. Other than those two things though, I thought the book was well done. And the cover rocks (it's a hologram!).

Oh, and if you're unfamiliar with Superman lore, don't feel like you couldn't pick up this book. Anderson does a much better job of explaining each character's role than I have done here. Plus, there's a list of characters in the front of the book, along with a description of who they are in relation to each other, in case you get lost. I don't think you'll get lost though. The book follows a fairly linear timeline, introducing characters as you go along as with any other book.

Some recommended reading about Darfur

2008-09-08T10:40:00.001-07:00

Even though I just started grad school last week, I've made a commitment to also read some books about Darfur for Natasha's effort to raise money for aid in that area. For each book I read and review, she will be donating one dollar to the cause. This of course is in addition to the many other ways she is raising money this month, including writing her own blogs, counting each comment she receives and encouraging her readers to donate a penny for every page she reads this month. This may all sound like small amounts, but with the number of readers she has, and the number of pages I know she reads in a month, this can really add up to a decent sum of money.

Today I picked up four books from my public library about Darfur. I thought I'd share them with you, in case you're interested in the cause but aren't sure where to start. Perhaps a brief summary of the books I'm planning to read will help you to find one you'd enjoy.

First on my list is The Devil Came on Horseback: bearing witness to the genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace. This book was on my list anyway, but after reading Natasha's review of it yesterday, I've moved it up the stacks. I highly recommend checking out her post on it and watching the videos she included. If you don't have time for that though, here's a brief description of the book:

Where is the horror? Where is the outrage, asks Brian Steidle, bewildered by the lack of international response to what is clearly the genocide of Darfur's black population. As an ex-marine and member of the African Union's monitoring team, he witnesses firsthand the government of Sudan's attempt to systematically eliminate all but the Arab population. Echoing Steidle's personal narrative, Jeff Cummings's voice moves from naïve hope that something can be accomplished to anger at the senseless slaughter and surprise at its political complexity. Deeply frustrated at the inaction and even indifference of the rest of the world, his contract up, Steidle grabs his laptop, his notebooks, his camera, and heads for home, hoping to alert the public and awaken its moribund conscience.

Next up is The Translator: A tribesman's memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari. From the cover:

I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me.

The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.

The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world–an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. Using his high school knowledge of languages as his weapon–while others around him were taking up arms–Daoud Hari has helped inform the world about Darfur.

Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, grew up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan. As a child he saw colorful weddings, raced his camels across the desert, and played games in the moonlight after his work was done. In 2003, this traditional life was shattered when helicopter gunships appeared over Darfur’s villages, followed by Sudanese-government-backed militia groups attacking on horseback, raping and murdering citizens and burning villages. Ancient hatreds and greed for natural resources had collided, and the conflagration spread.

Though Hari’s village was attacked and destroyedhis family decimated and dispersed, he himself escaped. Roaming the battlefield deserts on camels, he and a group of his friends helped survivors find food, water, and the way to safety. When international aid groups and reporters arrived, Hari offered his services as a translator and guide. In doing so, he risked his life again and again, for the government of Sudan had outlawed journalists in the region, and death was the punishment for those who aided the “foreign spies.” And then, inevitably, his luck ran out and he was captured. . . .

The Translator tells the remarkable story of a man who came face-to-face with genocide– time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people.

I've also checked out Not on our Watch by Don Cheadle. I was surprised to see that this book had been written by a celebrity, but after reading the Publisher's Weekly review of it I think I understand a little bit better. Here is the description from Publisher's Weekly:

Over the past five years, youth groups, religious organizations, politicians and individuals have responded to the crisis in Sudan in increased numbers. This book is a guide for these already involved, as well as those who are interested in taking action, or speaking out against the mass killings that continue to occur in the country's Darfur region.

Coauthored by Cheadle, actor and star of the film Hotel Rwanda, and Prendergast, senior adviser of the International Crisis Group, the book is a pastiche of practical information, instructions, memoir and history. As a handbook for budding activists, it's informative and, at times, inspiring. The combination of charts, lists and first-person accounts create a simple and reasonable path to action. But as a source for information about the conflict in Sudan, the book falters.

The history is neither clear nor succinct, and there is not much of it. Furthermore, although Cheadle and Prendergast's personal anecdotes are entertaining, they overshadow the few anecdotes about the Sudanese living through the crisis. The book's most interesting moment, besides the useful advice on how to get involved, is its delving into the government's excuses for inaction.

And, lastly, I've checked out Darfur: A Short History of a Long War by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal. Hopefully this one won't read like a textbook. I mainly checked it out because I think it's important to know a bit of the history behind the current conflict. I think it will help me to be not only more informed, but possibly will help me to understand better how this crisis came about.

A brief description from Amazon: "Darfur traces the origins, organization and ideology of the infamous Janjawiid and other rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. It also analyzes the confused responses of the Sudanese government and African Union. This thoroughly updated edition also features a powerful analysis of how the conflict has been received in the international community and the varied attempts at peacekeeping."

OK then, I hope this helps and I'll be sure to post my reviews as I finish the books. I doubt I'll finish them all this month though (sorry Natasha!), but I do plan to get through them.

The Front Porch Prophet by Raymond L. Atkins

2008-09-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

The Front Porch Prophet is a debut novel by Raymond L. Atkins about a fictional small town in Georgia. The story is told through its main character, A.J. Longstreet, and opens with the tale of how he came to know Eugene Purdue, his childhood best friend who is now dying of cancer. Eugene and A.J. had a tumultuous relationship in recent years, nearly ending their friendship after a drunken argument three years ago. But A.J. runs into Eugene's ex-wife and is told Eugene wants to see him up at the cabin, which is really just a jumble of pieces (including an old school bus Eugene and A.J. stole in their wild high school days). Not one to hold a grudge, A.J. decides to go and while there finds out about Eugene's cancer (and Eugene's expectation that A.J. will help him die before the pain gets too bad).

While the premise of this book may sound a little heavy, Atkins is able to add some levity to the situation and give us a well-rounded view of A.J.'s life and friendship with Eugene. We also learn about many secrets in their past and we meet a whole cast of lovable Southern characters. I would recommend this book solely for its ability to poke fun at Southern living while also endearing us to such a life.

As the book moves forward we watch Eugene's quick deterioration due to his illness and we see his life go full circle. We're introduced to Johnny Mack, Termite, Brickhead, Wormy and Hoghead - some of the colorfully named characters in the book (with colorful lives as well). Atkins is a natural storyteller, making the scenes unfold with wonderful descriptions and well placed humor.

I'm not certain this would be a book for everyone, but I quite enjoyed reading it. It has been awhile since I've read a book that so fully captured my attention that I wasn't able to put it down until the end. For that alone, I give this book my star of approval. And I'm looking forward to Atkins' next book, which is due out next year.

Read another review of this book at:
Literarily
Book Zombie

September Selection: House & Home by Kathleen McCleary

2008-09-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

This month I've chosen House & Home by Kathleen McCleary for our book club selection. This is a book you'll be hearing a lot about this month in the book blogging community because McCleary is doing a blog tour, which started yesterday at the Hooked on Houses blog. There you can read an interview with Kathleen McCleary and watch a trailer for the book. The best part is that McCleary will be stopping here at my blog as well! She'll be here to talk to you all on September 24, which will hopefully have given you enough time to have read some of the book and leave some questions of your own for the author.

Here is a description of the book from its inside cover:

Ellen Flanagan has two precious girls to raise, a cozy neighborhood coffee shop to run, terrific friends, and a sexy husband. She adores her house, a yellow Cape Cod filled with quirky antiques, beloved nooks and dents, and a million memories. But now, at forty-four, she's about to lose it all.

After eighteen roller-coaster years of marriage, Ellen's husband, Sam--who's charismatic, spontaneous, and utterly irresponsible--has disappointed her in more ways than she can live with, and they're getting divorced. Her daughters are miserable about losing their daddy. Worst of all, the house that Ellen loves with all her heart must now be sold.

Ellen's life is further complicated by a lovely and unexpected relationship with the husband of the shrewish, social-climbing woman who has purchased the house. Add to that the confusion over how she really feels about her almost-ex-husband, and you have the makings of a delicious novel about what matters most in the end . . .

Set in the gorgeous surroundings of Portland, Oregon, Kathleen McCleary's funny, poignant, curl-up-and-read debut strikes a deep emotional chord and explores the very notion of what makes a house a home.

As always, we will be discussing the book on the last day of the month, September 30 this month. For more information about the book feel free to visit McCleary's Web site.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2008-09-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who answered the discussion questions either in the comments or on your own blog. I'm not really sure how to get more participation with the online book club, especially since so many of you belong to real-life book clubs and have tons of personal reading challenges going on, but I'm enjoying the experiment nonetheless. It gives me a deadline for at least one book per month, which helps me with my year-long goal of reading one book per week.

This month's book, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, was my first-ever graphic novel. I'm not sure I'd like to read just anything as a graphic novel, but I thought it worked well for this book. Satrapi deals with some heavy subjects in this memoir, which includes a great deal of information about Iranian history over the past thirty years, and I think the illustrations really helped to enhance the telling of those stories. It also made for easy and quick reading. Although Satrapi covers a lot of material in this book, it doesn't take long to get through it because she doesn't have to painstakingly describe the anguish on someone's face, or the horrors of torture. Instead she's able to show us how specific comments or incidents directly affected her and her family.

I think this is an important book for Americans to read, especially as we march toward (most likely) war with Iran. I think understanding something about Iran's history and culture will help us to relate better to the Iranian people, rather than demonizing them as could be the case.

The one thing I disliked about Persepolis was the abrupt ending. She leaves us hanging with some pretty major questions about her future and her family left unanswered. I realize there are four books in this series though, so I'm sure they'll be answered eventually...and now I have to read them to find out what happens!

While the illustrations are minimalist in nature, they do their job in helping to give life to the story at hand. Since this is my first graphic novel I don't have much to compare it to, but I'd recommend it all the same.

My one regret in reading this book was that I didn't wait until I had the money to purchase the French version. I thought it would be a good personal challenge to attempt reading this in its original French form. Perhaps I'll have that opportunity with the sequels.

Other thoughts on this book can be found on:
Beastmomma's blog
Plus, le blog
Reading Room

P.S. The book for September is going to be House & Home by Kathleen McCleary. I'll be posting more information about the book and author tomorrow. Just wanted to give you a little sneak peak.

Book Club Discussion: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2008-08-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

As you know, this month we read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a graphic memoir about her childhood in war-torn Iran. However, this month I'm going to try something a little different to see if we can get more participation in the comment section. Today I'm going to post a couple of questions to see what you all thought of the book and you can feel free to ask your own questions as well. Then tomorrow I'll post my review of the book. So, here goes:

What did you think of the book?

Were you surprised by the ending? Were you hoping for more?

If you saw the movie, how did it compare to the book?

What do you think of Satrapi's decision to write this book as a graphic novel?

How much did you know about the history of Iran before going into this book?

What did you think of the illustrations? Were they what you had expected?

Do you plan to read the sequels? Also, do you think you'll read other graphic novels?

What were your favorite parts of the book? What surprised you most?

Feel free to answer only a couple or all of these questions. The idea here is to get you thinking and talking about the book. I want to know what you thought and felt as you read this book. Also, please let me know if you've already reviewed this book so I can link to it in tomorrow's post.

Thanks!

Reading for Awareness: Maw's Books Challenge

2008-08-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

One of my most favorite book bloggers, just became even more dear to me. Natasha over at Maw's Books has been reading a lot of nonfiction lately about major social issues lately, one of which is the genocide happening right now in Darfur. Those of you who have been reading my personal blog for the past few years know that this is an issue I've personally been following for some time. It's also something I think is very important and that is not being addressed well enough within the main stream media. I commend Natasha for her ongoing efforts to learn about this issue and bring it to people's attention. And I love that she's not just talking about (as I often do), she's doing something to help.

Natasha has dedicated her book blog (which is quite a popular one) to reading and blogging about Darfur for the entire month of September as a way to raise money for the many aid organizations working to help the Sudanese displaced by this war. For each person who posts about her, she's giving a small donation to the cause. In addition, she's asking her readers to commit to making donations in the form of one penny per page she reads during the month of September, or 50 cents per blog she writes. In addition, she's going to be encouraging her readers (that's me!) to read and review books about the crisis in Sudan - and for each one, she'll be donating $1 to the cause. This is by far my most favorite part of her month-long project. I love that Natasha isn't expecting her readers to just take her word for it. Instead she's encouraging us to get involved and educate ourselves on this issue. And by doing so, I think more of us will be motivated to give, not only our money, but our time to the cause.

Please check over at Maw's Books Blog for more information. You can also click here to see a list of books Natasha has recommended to get yourself informed about Darfur. And best of luck to you Natasha! I can't wait to see how much money you raise!

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

2008-08-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

I've read a couple of Sedaris' books and I think When You Are Engulfed In Flames is now one of my favorites (previously, it was Naked). As always, it's a collection of essays about the author's life, but this time I finally got why he selected these specific stories in this order. In some of his other books I haven't understood how the different stories were connected, but in this one it somehow made sense. Perhaps this was because I read them in a more spaced out period. Most of his books I read straight through, but this one really took me about a month. I would read one essay and then come back to the book a few days later. That's the one plus to reading essay-style books: You don't have to worry about losing the momentum of the story if you put it down for a few days.

While I had read a number of poor reviews of this book and I think that may have been part of the reason it took me so long to get through it, I personally enjoyed the book. I envy Sedaris his ability to find humor in everyday interactions with people. I particularly liked the last section of the book when he described his stay in Japan. His accounts of the Japanese people were not cliche and I felt he was able to really give a glimpse of what life would be like there.

Toward the end he describes a scene that unfolds one day when he's riding the train with his boyfriend, Hugh. A Japanese couple is riding with their young child, who insists on standing up to look out the window. The mother removes the child's shoes and places a towel on the seat where the child will stand. The child proceeds to leave handprints and smears all over the window as it looks at the scenery. But rather than leaving the window all smeared up at the end of the ride, the mother cleans the window before leaving, puts the child's shoes back on and folds up the towel. It's this respect for other people that I think Sedaris conveyed well in his stories about Japan.

And, of course, I'm always a sucker for his stories about Paris and Normandy. I love that Sedaris doesn't sugarcoat his experiences in France the way many authors do. He acknowledges the Parisians' disdain toward him and his accented French. His realistic stories of living in Paris give readers a taste of what it would be like to be an expat. And I love that Hugh is often in these stories. He's one of my favorite characters to show up in Sedaris' books.

If you're a Sedaris fan, you've likely already read this book. If you haven't picked up one of his books before I'd suggest this one or Naked. I enjoyed them both.

Jumble Pie: Yours For Free

2008-08-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

Over on Melanie Lynne Hauser's site she's giving away free downloads of her new book Jumble Pie. I downloaded it yesterday and it only took a few minutes. I'm not sure how I feel about reading 347 pages on my computer, but it will be something new at least.

Melanie Lynn Hauser is the author of Confessions of Super Mom and Super Mom Saves the World. Her newest book, Jumble Pie, was actually the first book she wrote, but she was unable to get it published at the time. She's still hoping to publish it someday, but in the meantime she's giving it away for free here.

From her site: "JUMBLE PIE is the story of the elusive nature of friendship, sometimes clinging, other times liberating; a story for any woman who has ever lied to her best friend just to make her feel better - and who has been brave enough to tell the truth, even when it hurts. And of course, it's a story about the remarkable healing power of pie."

Matrimony Winner!

2008-08-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

The drawing for a signed paperback copy of Matrimony by Joshua Henkin is now closed. The winner was selected using random.org's list randomizer. And the winner is windycindy! Congratulations! If you'd please e-mail me (bexadler at yahoo dot com) your mailing address, I can get it to Mr. Henkin and have the book sent to you.

Matrimony was released today in paperback with this new fancy cover. For more information about Matrimony you can check out Joshua Henkin's Web site here, read an interview between him and I here or read my review of the book here.

Matrimony Giveaway Reminder!

2008-08-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to remind you all that tomorrow is the release date for the paperback edition of Matrimony by Joshua Henkin, which means it's also the day I'll be giving away a signed paperback copy of the book! So be sure you've left a comment here for your chance to win.

Good luck!

Reminders and a new book

2008-08-22T03:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I began reading The Front Porch Prophet by Raymond L. Atkins. Although normally I wait to finish a book before I begin raving about it, I thought I'd mention it here because I'm really liking it. The book is a debut novel and was released on July 1 of this year. I'm not too far into the book, but I can already tell that Mr. Atkins has that wonderful storytelling gene. The book is also based in the South, which I love. I don't have too much experience with the South personally, but I love books based there. There's something about southern life that feels really homey to me.

From the inside cover:

What do a trigger-happy bootlegger with pancreatic cancer, an alcoholic helicopter pilot who is afraid to fly, and a dead guy with his feet in a camp stove have in common?

What are the similarities between a fire department that cannot put out fires, a policeman who has a historic cabin fall on him from out of the sky, and an entire family dedicated to a variety of deceased authors?

Where can you find a war hero named Termite with a long knife stuck in his liver, a cook named Hoghead who makes the world’s worst coffee, and a supervisor named Pillsbury who nearly gets hung by his employees?

Sequoyah, Georgia is the answer to all three questions. They arise from the relationship between A. J. Longstreet and his best friend since childhood, Eugene Purdue. After a parting of ways due to Eugene’s inability to accept the constraints of adulthood, he reenters A.J.’s life with terminal cancer and the dilemma of executing a mercy killing when the time arrives.

Take this gripping journey to Sequoyah, Georgia and witness A.J.’s battle with mortality, euthanasia, and his adventure back to the past and people who made him what he is - and helps him make the decision that will alter his life forever.

And here's a little about Raymond L. Atkins (this makes my heart smile too):

Raymond L. Atkins resides in Rome, Georgia, with his wife. They live in a 110-year-old house that they have restored themselves, and they have four grown children who drop by from time to time. Raymond has had a variety of occupations during the past thirty-five years, but now that the children are grown, he is pursuing his lifelong ambition of being a novelist and writer.

His hobbies include reading, travel, and working on the house. His stories have been published in Christmas Stories from Georgia, The Lavendar Mountain Anthology, The Blood and Fire Review, and The Old Red Kimono.

Anyway, if you haven't heard of this book, you can check it out on Amazon. Or hop on over to Raymond L. Atkins' Web site. The book was also reviewed by Shana over at Literarily. And read the prologue to the book here (This is what hooked me).

Also, I have a little bit of housecleaning to do. First, there are only five days left to enter for a chance to win a signed paperback copy of Matrimony by Joshua Henkin. To enter go here and leave a comment.

And I wanted to remind you all that we'll be discussing Persepolis at the end of this month. If you've already read the book, please leave a comment linking to your review so I can include it in my review on Aug. 31.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

2008-08-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Today I met with the public library book club for the last installment of the Banned Book Series they were putting on. This month we read Beloved by Toni Morrison. While I thought the book was beautifully written and heartbreaking to read, I could definitely see why parents would challenge this book as part of school curricula.

Even as an adult I found the mistreatment of humans to be chilling and difficult to get through. That and the mention of bestiality and a couple of scenes with sexual abuse were shocking. However, I feel the reason I was so uncomfortable with these scenes as they played out in the book was that these stories were taken from a very real history of slavery in the United States. Today it's unimaginable, but it was a reality for many people only 150 years ago in this country.

Toni Morrison got the idea for writing Beloved when she came across the true story of an escaped slave who killed her own daughter to keep her from being taken back into slavery. She wrote briefly about the woman at first, but was then encouraged to build upon that story. And from that came Beloved.

Beloved is the tale of Sethe, an escaped slave who is haunted by the memory of her baby girl. Sethe escaped while pregnant with her fourth child, and shortly after birth her owner shows up with the Sheriff to take her back. But before he is able to lay a hand on her, she gathers her four children in the barn and attempts to kill them all in an effort to save them from a life of slavery. She is only successful in killing her third child, whose tombstone reads nothing more than "Beloved" because Sethe couldn't afford to have a real inscription etched into the rock.

As the book proceeds we are taken back through time to see what led Sethe to escape. We also meet up with others from her past and we watch as her youngest daughter, the one she birthed during her escape to freedom, grow up in a world where freedom no longer exists but continues to haunt those who lived through it and the Civil War. And we also see the incarnation of Beloved come back to haunt Sethe.

This book is one I find fairly difficult to explain well. I thought it was beautifully written and it was an interesting story that kept my attention throughout. I particularly liked the time period because it shows the transition caused by the Civil War. It was a time where people saw a lot of change and for many it must have been a difficult thing to deal with. I think this book conveyed that predicament well. I also appreciated Morrison's decision to show that not all white people were cruel toward slaves during that time period.

I thought I'd share one of my favorite passages from the book as well, just so you can get a taste of the writing. This excerpt is found on page 89, just after the birth of Sethe's fourth child, Denver, which she birthed during her escape to freedom:

Spores of bluefren growing in the hollows along the riverbank float toward the water in silver-blue lines hard to see unless you are in or near them, lying right at the river's edge when the sunshots are low and drained. Often they are mistook for insects - but they are seeds in which the whole generation sleeps confident of a future. And for a moment it is easy to believe each one has one - will become all of what is contained in the spore: will live out its days as planned. This moment of certainty lasts no longer than that; longer, perhaps, than the spore itself.

This book can be difficult to understand at times. In fact, many people at the book club meeting said they didn't finish it because they found it too confusing. I, too, found it confusing at first, but if you persevere Morrison explains things more fully. And it's definitely worth the read.

Check out other book bloggers posts about this book:
Desert Rose

Giving up after 13 dates

2008-08-13T14:03:00.001-07:00

My computer is finally "fixed" (in quotation marks because they actually replaced my hard drive, they didn't fix it, but I'm not going to complain too loudly), but now I don't have anything to review. What?! Nothing to review? you ask. Well, it's because I got mired in a book and refused to move on until I finished it. Unfortunately, two weeks later and unable to renew it at the library because I've already renewed it three times, I'm still not finished.

The book, Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox, was recommended to me by a friend so I really wanted to like it. And I really did like the premise of the book. I LOVE travel essays and I've always, always, always wanted to take a trip around the world. The problem wasn't even that it was about finding Mr. Right (OK, maybe a little. What can I say, I'm a cynic), it was that I didn't connect with Ms. Cox. In the beginning I thought she was super funny and I liked that she didn't completely disregard all of her accomplishments in her career and in life just because she didn't have a man to stand by her side.

But as the story went on I found myself just being really annoyed with her. She wasn't whiny or anything. I mean, I can't really put my finger on it. I just didn't like her. Maybe it was just because I was jealous that she has the means to travel around the world looking for her Soul Mate (which seriously, by about Chapter 3 I was ready to strangle her for using Soul Mate - even if she believes we have more than one - and Mr. Right repeatedly). And perhaps a little because I didn't think of the idea first. I mean what better way to get a trip around the world paid for than to come up with a way to turn it into a book?

Anyway, if you don't hate women who are looking for love, you might like this book. She puts in tons of facts about the places she visits and even interviews some really interesting people and has some funny dating experiences. But I just cannot get through the book. Sorry I didn't like it Layla. I really tried though.

Huh, I guess I had a review in me after all.

Also, I want to give a shout out to my roommate Brian. I've been been reading his new blog and I pretty much love it for the way he captures (in photos) the spirit of my hometown and the California coast. He's a photographer and does tons of fun outdoors stuff that he documents with words and beautiful snapshots. So, check it out.

More Giveaways!?

2008-08-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

I kind of feel like this blog has turned into giveaway central. I figured you all wouldn't mind though since you're the beneficiaries, right?

So, first off I wanted to announce that Matrimony by Joshua Henkin is being released in paperback on August 26. And to celebrate, he's offered to give away a signed copy to one lucky reader of my blog! All you have to do is leave a comment here saying you're interested in reading the book. And, for additional chances to win, you can write a post linking to this blog. Just be sure to leave the link here so I know to give you a second entry. The drawing will be held August 26, the day the book is released in paperback.

For those of you who haven't heard about Henkin's book, you can check out his Web site here, read an interview between him and I here or read my review of the book here.

Secondly, I'd like to promote another blog's giveaway. Literarily is giving away a copy of First Daughter by Eric Van Lustbader. If you're interested, head over there and leave her a comment.

August Book Club Selection

2008-08-07T01:16:00.000-07:00

With everything else going on, I completely forgot to announce the book club selection for August! Sorry about that. Hopefully you'll still have time to pick up a copy and enjoy the book before the end of the month.

This month I've chosen Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi based on the recommendation from beastmomma. I've heard a lot of great things about this book. I've also never read a graphic novel, so I thought this would be a great way to launch myself into a new genre of books. Hopefully it will be a fun experience for those of you who have also been putting off picking up graphic novels. Also, if you don't want to spend money on this book, be aware that it IS available at public libraries. I requested my copy a couple of days ago and it's already in!

OK then, here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about the book:

Satrapi's autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of totalitarianism is taking over.

Satrapi's art is minimal and stark yet often charming and humorous as it depicts the madness around her. She idolizes those who were imprisoned by the Shah, fascinated by their tales of torture, and bonds with her Uncle Anoosh, only to see the new regime imprison and eventually kill him. Thanks to the Iran-Iraq war, neighbors' homes are bombed, playmates are killed and parties are forbidden. Satrapi's parents, who once lived in luxury despite their politics, struggle to educate their daughter. Her father briefly considers fleeing to America, only to realize the price would be too great. "I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?" he asks his wife.

Iron Maiden, Nikes and Michael Jackson become precious symbols of freedom, and eventually Satrapi's rebellious streak puts her in danger, as even educated women are threatened with beatings for improper attire. Despite the grimness, Satrapi never lapses into sensationalism or sentimentality. Skillfully presenting a child's view of war and her own shifting ideals, she also shows quotidian life in Tehran and her family's pride and love for their country despite the tumultuous times. Powerfully understated, this work joins other memoirs-Spiegelman's Maus and Sacco's Safe Area Goradze-that use comics to make the unthinkable familiar.

I hope you all enjoy it and I look forward to hearing what you have to say at the end of the month!

A quicky for The Zookeeper's Wife

2008-08-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

My computer is still broken. It's the saddest thing EVER. I've lost all of my music and photos, but was able to recover my work files (thank goodness!). I'm just waiting on a new hard drive to arrive in the mail before I can start using my less-than-a-year-old computer again. On the plus side, I've gotten tons of work done this week without the Internet here to distract me. I don't want this little blog of mine to die though, so I wanted to at least post something to say, "Hello."

SO last week I read The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman. Before picking up this book from the library, I didn't really know what it was about, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was the true story of a zookeeper and his wife living in Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland in WWII.

Prior to reading this book I didn't have much knowledge about Poland and Warsaw during World War II. Of course I'd heard of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Uprising, but I didn't actually have any context to go with it. In Ackerman's book, she gives us a history lesson along with a beautiful story about how a couple and their young son saved hundreds of Jews during the five years their country was occupied. The zookeeper and his wife use the zoo (now void of animals and partially used as a sort of storage depot for German weapons) to hide Jews right under the Germans' noses. The couple also seeks to find ways to make the zoo profitable during wartime, first turning it into a pig farm, then later using it for public vegetable gardens.

While I really enjoyed this book and read through it quickly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been written as a historical novel (similar to Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks). I understand the author's desire to stick to the facts, but I think a novel-type telling would have given me more attachment to the characters. I didn't like constantly being reminded that this was a story based on research the author did (i.e. passages that read, "At this point Jan may have... or perhaps he...). I think the story would have been just as compelling if the author took ownership of the story by writing it in the first person and filling in the blanks where her research was lacking.

Regardless, this is a wonderful book and a fascinating story. Each time I read an account of World War II I'm reminded of the strength of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Many, many people during that time risked their lives to help others for no other reason than that it was morally right. To me that's a worthy lesson in humanity.

Contest Winners!

2008-08-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday. My laptop has had a major breakdown and won't be back up for the foreseeable future. Note to self: Apple computers may look super sleek and be super popular, but they live up to the reputation PC users have given them. I haven't even owned the laptop a year and I already have to have the hard drive replaced? SO not OK with me.

Anyway, what you're really here for is to see who our winners are, so let's get down to business:

When you are engulfed in flames goes to icedream.

A short history of nearly everything goes to Shana.

and The Richest Season goes to Amanda.

Please email (bexadler at yahoo dot com) me with you mailing addresses so I can get these books out asap.

If you didn't happen to win this one, be advised there will be more giveaways to come. AND Jocelyn at Book Finds is giving away a copy of Sisters of Misery. So head on over and check that one out.

Reviews and book club announcements will be soon to follow, but I'm sleepy right now and borrowing this computer so I don't want to take too much time.

Book Club Discussion: All About Lulu

2008-07-31T12:05:00.000-07:00

Up for discussion this month is All About Lulu, the newly-released debut novel by Jonathan Evison. In the early pages of the book we follow Will through the death of his mother and his father's subsequent remarriage to his grief counselor, Willow. His new stepmother also brings with him the attractive-in-her-own-way Louise (nickname: Lulu). Will, with his abnormally low voice for a 9-year-old, had stopped speaking after his mother's death, and it is only through Lulu that he rediscovers his voice.

Lulu and Will forge a seemingly unbreakable friendship and eventually become pseudo-girlfriend and boyfriend. They develop their own secret language and depend on each other almost completely for friendship and understanding. That is until Lulu leaves for cheerleading camp the summer before they begin high school. Will is distraught that he won't have Lulu with him for a full month, and this turns to complete devastation when Lulu returns completely changed. She no longer responds to their secret language. She locks herself away in her room most days. And, worst of all, she acts as though Will is invisible.

Throughout the rest of the book Will seeks to figure out what caused this change in Lulu. What happened while she was away? He spends years obsessed with her (and I have to admit it got a little creepy after awhile), but finally begins putting his life together. He gets his dream job as a radio announcer and even starts his own hot dog stand business with his Russian-immigrant landlord. Everything is running smooth until the last few chapters when he learns of events in Lulu's life and is pulled back into her orbit and finally learns what it was that pushed her away from him all those years ago.

I really enjoyed this book, if only because of its loveably oddball cast of characters. First, there's Will's father and twin brothers who are all body builders. Evison takes the term "meathead" literally with these three, making light of the fact that they eat meat for just about every meal. Will, a vegetarian, laments several times that he thinks his dad believes the world is made of meat.

Then we have his Russian-immigrant neighbor, his ghost cat (Frank), and his philosophy teacher, who I particularly love because he enabled Evison to use his Sweats to Pants Ratio, of which I've always been a huge fan:

I'm developing something I call the sweats to pants ratio (SPR), by which success is measured relative to the days one spends in formal versus casual attire (formal being anything with pockets). By this measure, seven days a week in sweats is the pinnacle of success. I'm at about five-to-two right now. Pretty damn succesful.

So, what did you think of this one?

This month, in the hopes of getting more participation, I thought I'd ask some direct questions as well. Here goes:

1. Were you able to discern the secret before the end of the book?
2. What was your favorite part of the book?
3. Who were your favorite characters?
4. What did you think of Will's obsession with Lulu? Did you find it realistic?

Also, you can get a book club reading guide for this book at Jonathan Evison's site.

Oh, one last thing: Tomorrow I will be announcing the book for next month, but I haven't selected anything yet. So if you have a suggestion, leave it below. And don't forget to enter to win one of three lovely books here. Tomorrow's the last day to enter!

Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

2008-07-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

I just finished Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think by Brian Wansink. I picked this one up because it was suggested reading at the end of In Defense of Food. Michael Pollan actually discusses a couple of Wansink's studies in his book and that's what really got me interested in reading Mindless Eating.

Wansink is a food psychologist (who knew this occupation even existed?!), and does tons of studies at Cornell about what we eat and why. One of my favorite studies he talks about is the bottomless soup bowl study, in which half the diners in a restaurant were given automatically refilling bowls (the bowls refilled from the bottom in such a way that diners were ignorant of the trick). People with auto-refill bowls ate 73 percent more soup than those with non-refillable bowls. The study showed that Americans base their eating behavior on outside cues - that is to say we stop eating when our bowl (plate, bag, etc.) is empty, rather than stopping when we feel full.

Wansink goes on to describe several other studies he has performed - studies that show how we react to labels, at what age we stop recognizing when we're full, what stops us from snacking throughout the day - and then he tells us how we can avoid or curb those cues to stop us from eating more than we should. He explains that diets often don't work because we're trying to make major changes, but if you just try to cut out 100 or 200 calories a day, you'll lose between 10 and 20 pounds in a year without even realizing it.

Some of his suggestions include drinking from tall skinny glasses instead of short fat glasses (unless you're drinking water). His basis for this recommendation comes from this optical illusion:

The lines are actually the same size, but for some reason our minds don't see it this way. If we have a tall, skinny glass, we will almost always pour less into it because it looks like more, whereas with a short, fat glass, we pour more because it looks like less. You can easily cut out calories this way. Similarly, using a smaller plate will make you feel fuller while eating less. This is based on another optical illusion:

Here, both blue dots are the same size, but our brain thinks the one surrounded by small dots is bigger because of what it's compared to. This translates to plates in that you'll feel like you ate much more food if it's taking up a bigger amount of the plate, even if it's the same amount of food. It's strange to think that we can trick our brains in this way, but Wansink has proven it time and again with his studies.

Even if you're not particularly interested in losing weight, this is an interesting book. I thought it was fascinating to learn about all of the behaviors we have unknowingly picked up in regard to food. Also, I'd love to know how Wansink comes up with all of these great ideas for studies.

For more information you can check out his Web site here (there's even a mindless meter where you can test your skills as a mindful eater), and I found an interview with him here.

This book has also been reviewed on:
Living to Read

It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh

2008-07-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

I recently moved, which is a great time to get rid of stuff I don't need. I normally spend weeks before and after moving taking stuff to charities and dropping off recycling. This move was a bit easier because my boyfriend and I had thrown away just about everything we owned before we moved to Paris last year ... or so we'd thought. When we picked up our boxes from storage and our many relatives who had been holding things for us, we realized we had kept much more than we'd thought. After unpacking the bulk of the boxes I found that I still had about seven boxes that I'd just stacked in my closet because I didn't know what to do with their contents. That's where It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life With Less Stuff by Peter Walsh came in handy.

In the beginning of this book it feels a little bit too self-helpy. The first two chapters are all about our relationship to stuff and why we keep it, along with information about how your life could be different if you were to clean up your act. I was almost prepared to chuck the book at this point, but then he got into the real meat of why I checked this book out from the library. Walsh first has you make a plan (room function chart) of what you want each room of your house to look like and what you want the room to be used for. Then he goes through each room of the house and helps you decide what to keep and what to get rid of by using the same three easy steps:

*Refer to your Room Function Chart and have everyone sign on.
*Establish zones for the different activities that take place in this space.
*Remove what doesn't belong.

He first helps you deal with the general clutter and garbage that accumulates in the houses of many hoarders, then he eases you into getting rid of the clutter you're tied to emotionally. He has you ask yourself why you're holding onto these items and helps you think of ways to display the items and give them a place of honor in your home, rather than allowing them to accumulate dust in the corner of the garage. If they aren't valuabe enough to display, they should be gotten thrown out or given to someone who will value the item.

Walsh's tone throughout the book is very conversational and makes it easy to get through. And after completing my own purge, I can see how the self-helpy part in the beginning was really necessary. There's no point in reading a book like this if you aren't going to be serious about making changes in your life. I come from a long line of hoarders (my parents have two storage sheds, a basement and a garage filled with boxes of stuff that won't fit inside their home) so I understand how difficult it can be to let go of things. It took a long time for me to break the habit myself, but I can honestly say that life is much better with less stuff and more space. As Walsh says:

My job may be all about organization and decluttering, but I cannot say enough times that it is not about the "stuff." I have been in more cluttered homes than I can count, and the one factor I see in every single situation is people whose lives hinge on what they own instead of who they are. These people have lost their way. They no longer own their stuff - their stuff owns them. I am convinced that this is more the norm than the exception in this country. At some point, we started to believe that the more we own, the better off we are. In times past and in other cultures, people believe that the worst thing that can happen is for someone to be possessed, to have a demon exercise power over you. Isn't that what being inundated with possessions is - being possessed?

I'd love to give this book to my parents if I thought it would actually help. Unfortunately it would just add to their overabundance of clutter. My siblings and I have been trying for years to help them declutter, but every time we come back for a visit there's just more stuff to go through. Peter Walsh has an amazing job - one I'd love to have. How did he get into this line of work anyway? It must feel amazing to help so many people to get out from under the weight of their possessions. Personally speaking, it has been one of the most freeing things I've ever done. And I'm glad to finally be almost to the end of that journey.

Speaking of Banned Books...

2008-07-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

This is a pre-challenge announcement. I'm going to be hosting a Banned Books Challenge starting January 2009 (I don't think anyone else has one of these, but please let me know if you've heard of something like it. I don't want to step on any toes around here). The goal will be to read 12 banned books by the end of next year. I have already put together a site here, which includes a list of banned books, although I have yet to make buttons and a sign up sheet. This is really just to get you interested.

I know everybody signs up for tons of challenges at the beginning of the year so I thought if I put mine out there early then more people would have it in their minds to participate. This will be my first time hosting a challenge so I hope to get some good participation. I'll post about this again as it gets closer, I just wanted to let you all know it was going to be available. I'm super excited for it!

P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment here for a chance to win one of three books!

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

2008-07-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Lolita was the second book selected by my public library for their book club's Banned Books Series. I have to admit I had no idea what this book was about when I started reading it. I had read that it's one of the world's "most beautiful love stories." And I knew it was a bit illicit because of Reading Lolita in Tehran (another book I still have to read). But I had no idea it was about a pedophile who essentially kidnaps his stepdaughter and keeps her under his thumb until she's old enough and smart enough to figure out how to escape.

As I began reading this book I fully understood why some people had asked that this book be banned. After all, it kind of reads like a how-to book on pedophilia. But when the subject came up at book club, I found myself defending the book, saying that if someone read this book and thought it condoned their own behavior or it "inspired" them to do something of this sort, well they were likely to have done it anyway. I said this because I saw the reactions of the others who had read this book and all of us, whether we thought the writing was beautiful or the story interesting, were disgusted with the main character and judged him accordingly. This book isn't going to turn anybody into a pedophile who doesn't already entertain such thoughts.

The book itself is beautifully written. In the first part when Humbert Humbert is falling in love with Lolita, I was quite taken by his descriptions of her ... until I remembered that he was talking about a 12-year-old girl. I also really enjoyed the French phrases sprinkled throughout the book. I felt like each one was a little French quiz for me, especially because he offers no translation like many books do today. His descriptions of living in France and going to the Mediterranean made me think of my own time there, which is always a fun thing.

Aside from all of that though the book is really interesting and it raises a lot of questions about love and family. It also shows the inner workings (albeit fictional) of a truly deranged person and how one is able to justify what he is doing despite all evidence that it is wrong. I also thought it was quite interesting - and fitting - that Humbert Humbert often befriended other sexual deviants. I think that is probably true of that type of person in the real world.

This book drags a little in the middle and it was not an easy book to read because there are many historical and literary references throughout the text, along with the aforementioned untranslated French phrases (some Latin and German as well), so I highly recommend getting the annotated version. I didn't know there was an annotated version until I went to the book club meeting and now I feel like I need to read it all over again so I can get the inside jokes that some of the others understood better than I did.

The Purge Continues...

2008-07-21T09:30:00.001-07:00

First, I'd like to announce the winner of last week's giveaway of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Random.org's list generator selected Janel as our winner. Sorry Janel, I don't have your email, so you'll have to contact me: bexadler at yahoo dot com.

For the rest of you, don't despair, there are still more books to win! This week I have three more books to giveaway.

On August 1, I will pick three winners.

The first place winner will receive a signed copy (but it's JUST his signature) of David Sedaris' new book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames.

Second place receives my ARC copy of The Richest Season by Maryann McFadden, which I reviewed here.

Third place gets my copy (paperback) of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

I promise reviews are coming one of these days. I'm in the midst of reading four different books, but for some reason I am completely unable to finish any of them. I have no attention span these days...

OK then, don't forget to leave a comment by August 1!

P.S. Planet Books is also holding a giveaway, so jump on over there for more chances to get free books!

The Purge Begins!

2008-07-16T18:02:00.001-07:00

I feel like I've been ignoring my blogging duties lately and I apologize. I've been super busy unpacking, sorting and throwing things out, along with planting a garden, watering it and begging the little plants not to die. But I haven't disappeared. Next week things should be back to normal. I'm hoping to finish up a few books in the next couple of days so I have something to review on here. And don't forget about book club in two weeks! (In case you forgot, we're reading All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison, review to come shortly.)

In the meantime, I've decided to start purging my bookshelf. I've only got one lonely little bookshelf in my new apartment and no space on it for all of my library books and TBR books so out the old ones go. This is lucky news for YOU because it means I'll be hosting more giveaways, starting today with A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. I know most of you have probably already read it, but if you somehow missed that train, you now have the perfect opportunity to hop on board. I'll be posting some more books in a couple of days. I'm not at the apartment right now so don't have the other titles on hand.

If you'd like to win a copy of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, leave a comment here by Midnight July 20. I'll be picking a winner Monday morning.

A book to help me declutter

2008-07-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

I went to the library today to pick up my holds and was really excited to find It's All Too Much: An easy plan for living a richer life with less stuff by Peter Walsh. I put this book on hold about a month and a half ago, but I'm glad it came right now. It's rather serendipitous actually, as my boyfriend and I are just now beginning to unpack into our new apartment. I began the work yesterday and realized that we have way more stuff than we thought. See, a year ago he and I moved to Paris thinking we were going to be staying a couple of years, so we gave away pretty much everything we own aside from books and clothes ... and somehow a couple of boxes filled with random stuff. I began going through these boxes and managed to put away some books and office supplies that had made their way into them, but then I gave up and just dumped them together into a small box, figuring we can sort through it later. Hopefully this book will give me the courage to do just that!

More book giveaways!

2008-07-08T04:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not giving any books away at the moment so I thought I'd tell you about a couple people who are!

Over at Hey Lady! Watcha Readin'?, Trish is giving away 14 books from Hachette Book Group. All you have to do to enter is leave her a comment and you could be the owner of 14 shiny new books!

Also, at Bookroomreview's there is a giveaway for Stephanie Meyer's new book The Host as well as Mrs. Perfect by Jane porter. Hop on over there to leave a comment too and best of luck!

P.S. Keep checking back here for more giveaways. I'll be giving away some more books pretty soon.

Fifteen Minutes of Shame by Lisa Daily

2008-07-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

This month for my real-life book club, we read Fifteen Minutes of Shame by Lisa Daily. I chose the book for us because it's a fun summer read so I was hoping more people would read it, and also because the publisher sent swag bags for everyone in my book club. Nothing like bribery to get me to read a book. The book wasn't free though. I checked it out from the library.

For those of you who haven't heard of Lisa Daily, she's a dating specialist and the founder of the Dreamgirl Academy, in which she teaches women to be their best selves so they can be better catches and find better men. She wrote the nonfiction dating guide book Stop Getting Dumped! which eventually became a bestseller. Fifteen Minutes of Shame is her first novel.

The book opens with Darby spotting her husband at a gas station down the street even though he's supposed to be on a business trip in Atlanta. From there we follow Darby through all of the freak-out modes any woman would go through if they find out they've been lied to about something that has sure signs of an affair. In the end her freak out appears to have been a big mistake. Everything seems to be in order, so she heads off on her previously-scheduled book tour...only to find out on the Today show that her husband has filed for divorce. Dating expert Darby Vaughn has just been broken up with on national television. In essence, the terribly public divorce ruins her carreer (albeit momentarily) and she is left depending on her girlfriends to help her figure out what went wrong as she navigates through the sea of divorce and strives to get custody of her stepchildren.

All in all, I really liked this book. It was a fun easy read and I loved that it didn't make "finding a man" the main point of the story. Most chick lit books irritate me because the women in them all seem to think they have no life, no matter how successful and powerful they are, if they don't have a man. In this book, we see Darby take the humiliation of a nationally televised breakup and work her way out of it within weeks. She shows strength of character and realizes that maybe all the advice she's been giving over the years (never take back a cheater, etc.) aren't quite as easy to follow when it's your own relationship on the line. The one part of the book that I didn't really buy into was her wanting to get the kids back because she loved them so much. There were a lot of touching moments with the kids in the beginning, but once they are gone with their dad and his ex-wife it seems like they're just thrown in haphazardly.

So, overall, I'd recommend this book. It's a great beach read and doesn't take too much concentration. And it had the added benefit of not making me feel completely vapid and empty after I read it.

A Couple of Quickies

2008-07-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

OK, I've got a couple of non-reviewed books staring me down. For a number of reasons, I didn't feel I could do a full review on any of these so I'm clumping them together in little mini reviews for you.

First up is 1984 by George Orwell. I feel like I'm the last person on Earth (or at least the last person in America) to have read this book. I think most people are assigned it in high school. Somehow this has been on my list of books for several years and I'm finally just now getting around to it. Since most people have already read this book, I don't feel like I have to say much. Let's see, if you've ever wondered where the term Big Brother came from and haven't figured it out yet, read this book.

I'm kind of glad I waited until I was an adult to read this one because I think I caught a lot more than I would have if I'd read it when I was younger. Orwell has done a wonderful job of constructing a totalitarian world that makes the sane people feel insane for noticing the government's constant hand in the daily lives of its people. Our world may not be as dreary, but we certainly have the televisions telling us what to think and how to behave on a constant basis. This book will make you wonder where we're headed...

Oh, interesting side note: I never knew George Orwell was a pseudonym. His real name was Eric Arthur Blair. How crazy is that?

Other reviews of 1984:
Beastmomma
Books Love Me

OK, next up is Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. I read this book because my boyfriend's mom gave me her copy after she'd finished and I knew it would be a quick read. I personally was not a fan of this book. Not only was it typical chick lit, but the heroine of the story is sleeping with her best friend's fiance. Granted, her best friend isn't super great, but still. I don't know how you can get a heroine out of a situation like this one. In addition, I didn't feel like the main character, Rachel, grew as a person by the end of the story. I kept waiting for her to finally speak up for herself or call out her best friend on her bad behavior, but she never does. *SPOILER COMING* Even in the end when Rachel finds out her best friend had been cheating on her fiance the whole time with the guy she's supposed to have been dating, Rachel still feels bad and let's her best friend freak out at her without saying anything. This book just left me feeling empty and hating the way some women let their friends (and the rest of the world) treat them. I don't plan to pick up another Emily Giffen book anytime soon.

My last mini review is of Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. It was a book I really enjoyed, but that I didn't think I could do justice with in a book review. Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot did a way better review, so I suggest you hop on over there and take a look at what she had to say about this one. As for me, I wish Adams was still alive so he could update this book.

Last Chance to See was written in 1990 and is about an around-the-world trip Adams took with a zooligist in search of critically endangered species. We are introduced to the white rhino, of which there were only 22 left when Adams visited, the Komodo Dragon, several species of endangered birds and a the baiji dolphin (which I'm fairly certain became extinct a couple years ago when the Yangtze, it's only known habitat, was dammed by China)

Adams uses his well-known humor to add some lightness to this heavy subject. His writing reminds me much of Bill Bryson, and made me wonder if he was one of Bryson's early influences. The book was well written and an intriguing subject. Despite its being nearly 20 years old, I think this is still a great book and important to read for those of us who are concerned about the environment and our effects on it.

More info about Last Chance to See:
A Year of Books (check this one out for updates on the animals in the book)

Things Mean A Lot (check this one out for a great review)

Another Chance to See (a blog about what's being done for these animals today)