This mass market paperback edition staring me down from the circular rack at the library was too much to resist; I grabbed it and dropped it into the stroller's bottom basket, hardly breaking my stride toward the check out counters. As I've mentioned before, a lot of my library reads are chosen by virtue of being displayed between the front door and the elevators that we board in order to get up to the second floor where the children's collection is housed. And I've read a couple of Davidson's books before; her mystery series starring Goldy Schulz, caterer and chef and amateur private eye, makes up for what it lacks in editing with the recipe pages setting out how to create the meals and treats that play supporting characters to Goldy as she puzzles out the whodunnit in each story.
Look, I'm no literary snob (see the newly added tag for this post--my need to read sometimes feels more like some sort of wonky addiction than a noble pursuit of enlightenment) but Davidson's books leave me feeling sort of breathless. Not breathless-the magnifigence takes my breath away, but breathless-hamster trapped on the exercise wheel. Even though the books are not terribly short (336 pages in the mass market edition), it feels as if Goldy's adventures are being crammed down to fit in between the covers. Rather than slow down to try and digest every tidbit of information, I rely on my old friend, skimming, to speed up until something new happens.
Will I read more of Davidson's books? Sure. The real question after reading one is which recipe, if any, I'll try first. From Tough Cookie, it's a toss up between and Snowboarders' Pork Tenderloin and Marmalade Mogul Muffins. Yum.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff
I read quite a bit of children's and young adult literature because they keep those books where I hang out at the library. I have two strategies for finding my own reading material outside of the juvenile section. One is to grab whatever new arrival catches my eye as we walk in the main entrance. The other is to use the internet library catalog to decide on my book ahead of our visit then at the library challenge, enlist the help of my young associates in finding the shelf with the right letters or numbers, collect my book, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Patricia Reilly Giff writes the Kids of the Polk Street School series, which I've never been inclined to pick up (I haven't sunk to reading juvenile series books quite yet, although I do enjoy an occasional Hank the Cowdog). Pictures of Hollis Woods is a beautiful book about a girl looking for a family.
Close on the heels of The Wanderer, it almost seemed as if Hollis Woods was another verision of the same story. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that perhaps there is a universal anxiety that rises up in children around the fourth or fifth grade about their place in a family, about losing a parent or a sibling, about how they know they are loved.
After I had my first son, I realized that I have learned so much about how to love from books. I always felt loved as a child, but my parents didn't discuss relationships very much. We didn't talk about how we treated each other or how we felt about each other, we just, for the most part, did what we were supposed to do and assumed the love was or would be there. It was through reading that I discovered all of the invisible elements of loving another person. It was through reading that I experienced empathy and got my first glimpses of how to practice it on my own.
And that understanding of love is one of the reasons I feel so lucky to have been hard-wired to be a reader. To live in the world without loving someone else--resounding gong or clanging cymbal indeed.
Patricia Reilly Giff writes the Kids of the Polk Street School series, which I've never been inclined to pick up (I haven't sunk to reading juvenile series books quite yet, although I do enjoy an occasional Hank the Cowdog). Pictures of Hollis Woods is a beautiful book about a girl looking for a family.
Close on the heels of The Wanderer, it almost seemed as if Hollis Woods was another verision of the same story. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that perhaps there is a universal anxiety that rises up in children around the fourth or fifth grade about their place in a family, about losing a parent or a sibling, about how they know they are loved.
After I had my first son, I realized that I have learned so much about how to love from books. I always felt loved as a child, but my parents didn't discuss relationships very much. We didn't talk about how we treated each other or how we felt about each other, we just, for the most part, did what we were supposed to do and assumed the love was or would be there. It was through reading that I discovered all of the invisible elements of loving another person. It was through reading that I experienced empathy and got my first glimpses of how to practice it on my own.
And that understanding of love is one of the reasons I feel so lucky to have been hard-wired to be a reader. To live in the world without loving someone else--resounding gong or clanging cymbal indeed.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Wanderer by Sharon Creech
I wish Sharon Creech was my aunt. Or my next door neighbor or my piano teacher. I don't need to be her intimate friend or anything, but I would like to be invited into her house so that I could look around at her books and the pictures on her walls and the objects on her shelves and get an every-so-often glimpse of life through her eyes.
The Wanderer is a YA novel about Sophie, a young girl who is driven to go to sea with three of her uncles and two of her cousins. They are going to sail from the United States to England to visit her Bompie, who is in failing health. (Bompie is Grandpa--Creech's use of the pet-name only intensifies my longing to know her, maybe to get a look at her shoe collection after I've seen the living room.)
The book is told from two points of view, first Sophie's and then her young cousin Cody's, as they write about their grand adventure in their respective journals. At first, Cody's entries were just pages to get through to return to Sophie, but then something happens. Cody tells missing pieces of Sophie's story; a story that he himself does not completely know.
I read another of Creech's novels , Bloomability, a few years ago. As I read the parts of The Wanderer told by Cody, I thought of Bloomability and what I liked so much about it. In The Wanderer, Creech gives Cody so much empathy for the other characters--she lets the reader look at the main characters through the lens of another character--and tints the chosen lens with such love and goodwill and wonder towards humanity that it buttresses my faith in the human race.
I am going to read this lovely story to my oldest son when his current read aloud ends. I hope books like The Wanderer help to keep his heart tender as he navigates his childhood and beyond.
The Wanderer is a YA novel about Sophie, a young girl who is driven to go to sea with three of her uncles and two of her cousins. They are going to sail from the United States to England to visit her Bompie, who is in failing health. (Bompie is Grandpa--Creech's use of the pet-name only intensifies my longing to know her, maybe to get a look at her shoe collection after I've seen the living room.)
The book is told from two points of view, first Sophie's and then her young cousin Cody's, as they write about their grand adventure in their respective journals. At first, Cody's entries were just pages to get through to return to Sophie, but then something happens. Cody tells missing pieces of Sophie's story; a story that he himself does not completely know.
I read another of Creech's novels , Bloomability, a few years ago. As I read the parts of The Wanderer told by Cody, I thought of Bloomability and what I liked so much about it. In The Wanderer, Creech gives Cody so much empathy for the other characters--she lets the reader look at the main characters through the lens of another character--and tints the chosen lens with such love and goodwill and wonder towards humanity that it buttresses my faith in the human race.
I am going to read this lovely story to my oldest son when his current read aloud ends. I hope books like The Wanderer help to keep his heart tender as he navigates his childhood and beyond.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner (#22)
I am now sad because I've read all of Weiner's novels. A collection of short stories will be released in stores September 5th, but it's anyone's guess when our local library will get ahold of a copy.
Weiner's stories get to me, even though I find myself wanting to discredit them for being such chick-lit reading. Sure, they're chick-lit, but they are bona-fide stories. I can't help but compare them to some books held out as fine literature (Wuthering Heights, I'm looking at you) where the story is so unappealing that I find myself placing small wagers as to how long I can keep my eyes moving across the page (three more lines, I get a coffee...three more pages, I get M&Ms with the coffee...). Take away my Good Reader card if you must, but I enjoy a book where something happens and the something that happens makes me think about my own life.
I like reading about women who are perceptive about their own lives and who are working damn hard to remind themselves that they are not broken. Let's be honest here, who doesn't have to give themselves the occasional stern talking-to in order to get out of bed and get on with the Job of Life. It's easy to shut down, to disconnect, to live in your own head to the point that your own head doesn't make any sense anymore. Weiner's heroines take risks with themselves, holding out hope that the Job of Life might, if faced bravely and with enough feigned aplomb, yield up to us a few Moments of Joy or Knowledge or Love.
So, despite the blue and pink covers featuring legs or ankles only, I think Weiner's books are worth reading because they remind us just how much story there is in our lives. Story that may be valuable only to ourselves, or story that may be shared with friends, family, or ultimately readers in many languages. Story that makes us who we are or who we want to be.
Weiner's stories get to me, even though I find myself wanting to discredit them for being such chick-lit reading. Sure, they're chick-lit, but they are bona-fide stories. I can't help but compare them to some books held out as fine literature (Wuthering Heights, I'm looking at you) where the story is so unappealing that I find myself placing small wagers as to how long I can keep my eyes moving across the page (three more lines, I get a coffee...three more pages, I get M&Ms with the coffee...). Take away my Good Reader card if you must, but I enjoy a book where something happens and the something that happens makes me think about my own life.
I like reading about women who are perceptive about their own lives and who are working damn hard to remind themselves that they are not broken. Let's be honest here, who doesn't have to give themselves the occasional stern talking-to in order to get out of bed and get on with the Job of Life. It's easy to shut down, to disconnect, to live in your own head to the point that your own head doesn't make any sense anymore. Weiner's heroines take risks with themselves, holding out hope that the Job of Life might, if faced bravely and with enough feigned aplomb, yield up to us a few Moments of Joy or Knowledge or Love.
So, despite the blue and pink covers featuring legs or ankles only, I think Weiner's books are worth reading because they remind us just how much story there is in our lives. Story that may be valuable only to ourselves, or story that may be shared with friends, family, or ultimately readers in many languages. Story that makes us who we are or who we want to be.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
I know I promised that I was going to finish Wuthering Heights as my personal summer reading challenge, and I'm reading it, really, I am. The more I read, the more I remember why I quit reading it all those other times. I cannot think of less likable characters than Cathy and Heathcliff. Simply can't think of any. As I was slogging through Cathy's marriage to Linton and Heathcliff's anguish about it, I kept thinking, "these two don't deserve to be happy." And I gather that they don't become so (well, Cathy's already dead, which is about where I've always quit reading. I don't know yet what becomes of Heathcliff).
But beyond that, I finished Angle of Repose a day or two ago. This book was a "Read Cheyenne" pick or some city-wide reading rah-rah like that cooked up by the local Barnes and Noble to sell mass market titles. As I was looking at it and paying for it, two different people in the store mentioned that the language Stegner uses is just so beautiful. This did not give me much encouragement as to the quality of the story. In fact it raised my suspicions that "beautiful language" might be code for "boring."
The beginning was a bit boring. But I got absorbed in the story of a fictional marriage that a fictional character is writing, using correspondence, newspaper clippings, and historical events, all fictional as well. The main character, confined to a wheelchair, is delving into the story of his grandparents marriage during the late half of the nineteenth century. The man and woman are not a perfect match, but start out promisingly enough. As they come up against numerous obstacles trying to make a living in the US western frontier, they have more difficulty fulfilling the promises of their marriage contract.
Although I think the ending was not as strong as the rest of the story, I left the story thinking about what can be forgiven between two people who are making a life together. Stenger's narrator juxtaposes his grandparents' marriage of the late 1800s with two relationships in1970, his own marriage in which his wife left him as he became sicker, and the free-love non-marriage of a young woman who works as his secretary. Although the two latter are clearly in trouble, the narrator makes inferences and connects events until he shows that perhaps the former was not as placid as it seemed.
Another thing I liked about this book was its westward expansion setting. Like the Little House books, this book set up problems of surviving in a wild place and then showed how people solved them. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.
Overall, a fine way to spend a few days, engrossed with characters who are young, pretty much in love, and poised to accomplish great things. As they slide toward their angle of repose, their story raised questions for me about what to expect and what to demand of myself and my life.
But beyond that, I finished Angle of Repose a day or two ago. This book was a "Read Cheyenne" pick or some city-wide reading rah-rah like that cooked up by the local Barnes and Noble to sell mass market titles. As I was looking at it and paying for it, two different people in the store mentioned that the language Stegner uses is just so beautiful. This did not give me much encouragement as to the quality of the story. In fact it raised my suspicions that "beautiful language" might be code for "boring."
The beginning was a bit boring. But I got absorbed in the story of a fictional marriage that a fictional character is writing, using correspondence, newspaper clippings, and historical events, all fictional as well. The main character, confined to a wheelchair, is delving into the story of his grandparents marriage during the late half of the nineteenth century. The man and woman are not a perfect match, but start out promisingly enough. As they come up against numerous obstacles trying to make a living in the US western frontier, they have more difficulty fulfilling the promises of their marriage contract.
Although I think the ending was not as strong as the rest of the story, I left the story thinking about what can be forgiven between two people who are making a life together. Stenger's narrator juxtaposes his grandparents' marriage of the late 1800s with two relationships in1970, his own marriage in which his wife left him as he became sicker, and the free-love non-marriage of a young woman who works as his secretary. Although the two latter are clearly in trouble, the narrator makes inferences and connects events until he shows that perhaps the former was not as placid as it seemed.
Another thing I liked about this book was its westward expansion setting. Like the Little House books, this book set up problems of surviving in a wild place and then showed how people solved them. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.
Overall, a fine way to spend a few days, engrossed with characters who are young, pretty much in love, and poised to accomplish great things. As they slide toward their angle of repose, their story raised questions for me about what to expect and what to demand of myself and my life.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Now With Titles
Some books I've read since June 29th (date of last post)
Let me catch my breath here. My passion against this book got the best of me.
So, since I can't remember what the heck I've read, I guess I can't count them in my tally. That'll show her, myself says to myself. I've tallied up 20 based on the posts I've made here, including the two above. With five months left in the year, I know I can read 30 books. Whether I can read 30 books, clean the house, harvest the garden, cook the dinners, wash the clothing, and mow the lawn remains to be seen. But, yeah, probably I can.
So here goes.
- Goodnight Nobody---Jennifer Weiner
- Never Let Me Go---Kazuo Ishiguro
- Some more that I can't remember right now. Clearly, they left a big impression
Let me catch my breath here. My passion against this book got the best of me.
So, since I can't remember what the heck I've read, I guess I can't count them in my tally. That'll show her, myself says to myself. I've tallied up 20 based on the posts I've made here, including the two above. With five months left in the year, I know I can read 30 books. Whether I can read 30 books, clean the house, harvest the garden, cook the dinners, wash the clothing, and mow the lawn remains to be seen. But, yeah, probably I can.
So here goes.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Little Earthquakes
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Date Finished: 6/28/06
I didn't write about it, but I also read Good in Bed during this early summertime and really liked both novels. I won't weigh in on whether Weiner is writing chick lit and so should be dismissed, but I will say that these books probably won't be on any English major's required reading list in the next 20 years.
But, they are fun. And they are books as opposed to daytime television. A funny (to me) aside here: when I first discovered this here Internet, in late 1994, the first thing I sought out were mailing lists and bulletin boards discussing Days of Our Lives. I know, shameful. A couple of months ago, I had retreated to the basement while the kids were napping and flipped over to NBC to see what the residents of Salem were up to. The answer, and the universal appeal of soap operas (or "so poppers" as I first understood the phrase), is pretty much the same things they were up to fifteen years ago when I watched during my lunch hour my senior year of high school. Of course I would never abuse the Internet for such low brow purposes these days; instead I read blogs. (insert pointed silence here)
What was I talking about? Oh, right. Weiner. She's a good writer. I like her stories. Her books won't change my life, but they will give me a nice diversion and, frankly, I'm okay with that.
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Date Finished: 6/28/06
I didn't write about it, but I also read Good in Bed during this early summertime and really liked both novels. I won't weigh in on whether Weiner is writing chick lit and so should be dismissed, but I will say that these books probably won't be on any English major's required reading list in the next 20 years.
But, they are fun. And they are books as opposed to daytime television. A funny (to me) aside here: when I first discovered this here Internet, in late 1994, the first thing I sought out were mailing lists and bulletin boards discussing Days of Our Lives. I know, shameful. A couple of months ago, I had retreated to the basement while the kids were napping and flipped over to NBC to see what the residents of Salem were up to. The answer, and the universal appeal of soap operas (or "so poppers" as I first understood the phrase), is pretty much the same things they were up to fifteen years ago when I watched during my lunch hour my senior year of high school. Of course I would never abuse the Internet for such low brow purposes these days; instead I read blogs. (insert pointed silence here)
What was I talking about? Oh, right. Weiner. She's a good writer. I like her stories. Her books won't change my life, but they will give me a nice diversion and, frankly, I'm okay with that.
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