tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37626386367745703042024-03-13T15:21:12.579-04:00A Reading OdysseyEvent updates, book reviews, and assorted book-related thoughts from the staff (and guests!) of the <a href="http://odysseybks.com">Odyssey Bookshop</a>, a locally- and family- owned/operated independent bookshop in the agricultural and sometimes weird Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.The Odyssey Bookshophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02069437996395186455noreply@blogger.comBlogger379125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-82153943830825853092013-04-14T16:00:00.001-04:002013-04-14T16:00:20.237-04:00Three Mini Book Reviews<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Frances &amp; Bernard</span></b> by Carlene Bauer. Has a letter ever changed <i>your</i> life? When Frances and Bernard meet at an artists’ colony, they are not quite certain what to make of each other, but one letter changes everything. Bernard’s first letter to Frances leads to a deep and intense friendship. Not-so-loosely based on Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, Frances and Bernard navigate the tricky waters of publishing, romance, religion, and mental illness in this hauntingly beautiful story. If you enjoy the works of Marilynne Robinson or <i>84 Charing Cross Road</i>, or if you appreciate the bittersweet aspects of life, give this one a spin. </span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OtsiYAoN_K0/UWQL-FQcJtI/AAAAAAAAGGw/_Cy4FiVux4w/s1600/the+mothers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: black;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OtsiYAoN_K0/UWQL-FQcJtI/AAAAAAAAGGw/_Cy4FiVux4w/s200/the+mothers.jpg" width="132" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Mothers</span></b> by Jennifer Gilmore. I had to remind myself several times while reading this book that it’s a novel and not a memoir—that’s how realistic and heartbreaking it feels. After years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, Jesse and Ramon desperately want to adopt a child, but they never could have imagined the difficulties lying in wait for them in the process, not least of which is determining how willing they’d be to adopt a child born with Down’s syndrome, fetal alcohol, blindness, deafness, spina bifida, or any combination thereof. This is an emotional and compelling read.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dn_33aZw5Lc/UWQMHo_G1SI/AAAAAAAAGG4/5iITK6cmYbs/s1600/the+dinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: black;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dn_33aZw5Lc/UWQMHo_G1SI/AAAAAAAAGG4/5iITK6cmYbs/s200/the+dinner.jpg" width="131" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Dinner</span></b> by Herman Koch. What starts off as a rather Bourgeois novel quickly takes a darker turn and descends into the realm of menace, both underhanded and overt. Clearly there is more to our unnamed, mild-mannered narrator than first meets the eye, and as he learns more about his son’s new and disturbing hobby, the reader learns more about him. The further this insidious father-son story unfolded, the faster I was compelled to turn the pages. This book is a bestseller in Europe and recently translated for Engl</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">ish-speaking audiences. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></span></span></div>
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As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-39973362897051669612013-03-13T10:47:00.000-04:002013-03-13T10:47:56.003-04:00Book Review: A Tale for the TIme Being by Ruth Ozeki<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For
my job, I receive books every day with an editor's letter tucked
inside, exhorting the 101 reasons why I should read that particular
book. (Why, yes, I do love my job. Thanks for asking.) But what I do <i>not</i>
receive every day is a book with letters from ten different editors
around the world, exhorting the 1,001 reasons why I should love this
book, and that's the first thing that made me sit up and take notice
about Ruth Ozeki's new novel, <i>A Tale for the Time Being</i>. The ARC
that Viking sent out included notes from editors in the US, UK, Canada,
Spain, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Australia, Greece, and the Netherlands. I
had not read Ozeki before, but I thought, "A-ha, clearly this is a book
to be reckoned with."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
I was right. Mostly I just want to heap superlatives on this book, but
I'll try to tell you a bit about what the book is about, though that
will be tricky. Like the quantum physics that infuse (infuses? Is the
word "physics" singular or plural?) the story, it's a book that alters
as one reads and observes. Because a summary would be too complicated,
I'm going to borrow the publisher's own marketing blurb here:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span id="freeText11357035470664448017" style="font-size: small;">In Tokyo,
sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching
loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all,
Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a
Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only
solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span id="freeText11357035470664448017" style="font-size: small;">Across the Pacific, we
meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a
collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly
debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its
contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her
unknown fate, and forward into her own future.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nao
has become one of my favorite narrators in literature. She is very
much in the vein of Midori from Haruki Murakami's novel, <i>Norwegian Wood</i>,
which is to say she's bubbly, bright, and annoying-but-endearing. Her
father is suicidal, and the cruelties she endures at the hands of her
classmates (shockingly, with the tacit permission of her teacher) make
every American YA novel about bullying look like a bonny good time. It's
no wonder that she wants to follow in her father's footsteps and try to
end it all. Yet she has this wonderfully indomitable spirit and sense
of humor that juxtaposes in a fascinating way with her avowed fate.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Jiko,
Nao's great-grandmother, is also a terrific character. Though there are
some secrets she has guarded all of her life, she serves mostly as
Nao's sole source of stability and as such, she guides her in the way
of Zen Buddhism. Nothing Nao says or does can offend or surprise her,
despite Nao's best efforts.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">With the character of Ruth, Ozeki starts to break down fiction's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall" target="_blank">fourth wall</a>.
Character Ruth splits her time between New York and an isolated island
in the Pacific northwest, just like Author Ruth. Character Ruth is a
practicing Buddhist novelist, just like Author Ruth. And the
similarities go on.... Ruth (the character) is something of a Japanese
scholar trying to defeat a bad case of writer's block<span style="font-size: small;">, </span>so
her obsession with Nao's found diary becomes a way for her to sublimate
her anxiety. Her husband is a quantum physics-quoting botanist, so
there's that, too.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Top
all of that off with the fact that Nao's diary excerpts as they appear
in the book are amply footnoted for the benefit of a non-Japanese
audience, and that the footnotes are attributed to Ruth--but is it
Character Ruth or Author Ruth? It's hard to tell sometimes, and that's
the whole point, I think.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
love the opening lines to Nao's first section. They put me a little bit
in mind of the Emily Dickinson poem, "I'm Nobody!Who Are You": </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. </span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me,
and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right
now I am sitting in a French maid cafe in Akiba Electricity Town,
listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which
is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in
my future. And if you're reading this, then maybe by now you're
wondering about me, too (p. 4).</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
also love this: "I don't mind thinking of the world without me because
I'm unexceptional, but I hate the idea of the world without old Jiko.
She's totally unique and special, like the last Galapagos tortoise or
some other ancient animal hobbling around on the scorched earth, who is
the only one left of its kind. But please don't get me going on the
topic of species extinction because it's totally depressing and I'll
have to commit suicide right this second" (25).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And this bit about Nao's time living with Jiko at the temple:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">They
bowed and thanked the toilet and offered a prayer to save all beings.
That one is kind of hilarious and goes like this: As I go for a dump/I
pray with all beings/that we can remove all filth and destroy/ the
poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness. </span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">At
first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with
people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and
saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I'd
flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, "Thanks, toilet," and it felt
pretty natural. I mean, it's the kind of things that's okay to do if
you're in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you'd better not try
it in your junior high school washroom, because if your classmates catch
you bowing and thanking the toilet they'll try to drown you in it. I
explained this to Jiko, and she agreed it wasn't such a good idea, but
that it was okay just to feel grateful sometimes, even if you don't say
anything (167).</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That
gives you a pretty good flavor for Nao's narrative sections, equal
parts earnestness and impishness. There is so much that is extraordinary
about this book, but I fear I'm not doing it justice. I think I will
close with the blurb that I wrote up for Publisher's Weekly Galley Talk,
as sometimes it's easier to say more with fewer words:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Zen philosophy and quantum physics blend
seamlessly in Ozeki’s brilliant new work of metafiction, where sometimes it’s
difficult to distinguish between the author’s attempts to build up and break
down the fourth wall. Or as Jiko, the wise and wizened Buddhist nun from the
book might say, “to raise or to raze, they are the same.” Jiko’s calm,
hard-earned acceptance of contradictions contrasts brilliantly with the life of
her great-granddaughter, Nao, a bullied schoolgirl with a suicidal father,
adrift in a sea of emotions she is incapable of navigating. When Ruth, on the
opposite side of the Pacific, discovers Nao’s diary among the post-tsunami
flotsam and jetsam, she becomes obsessed with Jiko’s and Nao’s stories—to the
point where she’s convinced that solving the diary’s puzzles will ease her
restlessness and dissolve her writer’s block.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve rarely encountered a novel that has made me think about our world
quite as much as this one has, where distance and time are mutable depending on
the observer, and what is a reader if not the ultimate observer? Ozeki’s novel
feels, impossibly, both timeless and utterly of our time, but I suspect that
might be the hand of Jiko guiding me. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Ruth Ozeki will read at Odyssey Bookshop tonight, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, at 7:00 pm. We hope to see you there! It is also our March selection for our signed <a href="http://odysseybks.com/first-editions-club" target="_blank">First Editions Club</a>. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></span></span></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-16929254412353974452013-02-06T15:47:00.000-05:002013-02-06T15:47:00.399-05:00Book Review: After Visiting Friends by Michael Haines<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zb_ndMrPc-I/UMIeBCxabXI/AAAAAAAAEoY/bEseUiwS884/s1600/photo%2843%29.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zb_ndMrPc-I/UMIeBCxabXI/AAAAAAAAEoY/bEseUiwS884/s1600/photo%2843%29.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(It's not your eyes--the photo on the cover is intentionally blurry)</td></tr>
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Another friend in bookselling recently made a comment on her <a href="http://www.bookdwarf.com/?p=2865" target="_blank">blog</a>
that there are just too many memoirs being published. I tend to agree.
She also went on to note that there are certainly exceptions to this
rule. Again, I tend to agree. The problem with most memoirs is that the
authors either don't have a good enough story to tell or they're not
skilled enough to tell it well. And don't even get me started on
celebrity memoirs (Steve Martin's <i>Born Standing Up</i> being an exception to any rule. That man is a genius.).<br />
<br />
So when I first saw the bound galley of Michael Hainey's <i>After Seeing Friends</i>,
I was inclined to dismiss it. Unknown author. Nondescript title. I
almost put it in the communal staff kitchen where all of the other
unwanted galleys go, but then I saw who sent it to me: Wendy Sheanin,
the adult marketing director at Simon &amp; Schuster, whose tastes I
trust. And she'd tucked a handwritten note inside of the first page.
I'm a sucker for a handwritten note. And <i>then</i> I see an envelope
hand-addressed to me tucked into the middle of the book. Turns out that
unknown-to-me Mr. Hainey is the deputy editor at GQ magazine and he's
written me a note by hand on his letterpress stationery (I'm also a
sucker for letterpress anything).<br />
<br />
Naturally, <i>After Seeing Friends</i>
made it into my tote to take home at the end of the day. Luckily for
me, Mr. Hainey is possessed of a writing gift AND an interesting story
to tell. By the end of the first chapter I had dog-eared about half a
dozen pages. That pattern continued throughout the book. The GoodReads
summary begins: "Michael Hainey had just
turned six when his uncle knocked on his family’s back door one morning
with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael’s father, was found alone near
his car on Chicago’s North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack."<br />
<br />
But
was that the entire truth? Various obituaries in the city mention that
the elder Hainey had died "after visiting friends," but who were these
friends, and why didn't they attend the funeral? It is only when Michael
has attained his father's age when he died that he decides to bring his
full investigative journalism skills to bear to inquire into the
circumstances surrounding his father's death. In Michael Hainey's search
for what really happened the night his father died, it's not the
25-year-old cold trail so much as the stymying efforts of his father's
former friends and colleagues that nearly prevent the story coming to
full light.<br />
<br />
Hainey travels from New York to the midwest
and back so many times that I lost count, tracking down leads not only
in Chicagoland, but in Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, and many points in
between. Along the way, the reader gets a front-row show to the golden
age of Chicagoland journalism: old school, hard core, and with a code of
honor that makes the Mafia look like they're merely playing at it.<br />
<br />
Eventually
Hainey does get the information he's after, and his main reward is that
in losing his lifelong idea of what his father was, he is lucky enough
as an adult to truly know his mother; the facade she maintains for her
children's sake finally crumbles. For me, though, the real turning point
of the story is when he reconnects with his cousin and older brother,
and then later attends what would have been his father's 50th high
school reunion, where he comes to know his father and where he himself
fits within the generations of Hainey family. While Hainey's is a very
specific and intimate story, there's an element of the universal
permeating his quest: how can we know ourselves if we don't know where
we come from? How can we know ourselves if we don't consider our impact
on the next generation?<br />
<br />
<span class="readable reviewText"><span id="freeTextreview462380095">If you are interested in the nature of memory and how it intertwines with history, do yourself a favor and read this book. </span></span><br />
<br />
Some of the passages I enjoyed:<br />
<br />
On
visiting his grandmother in the nursing home: "I gave her a chocolate
cream. She raises it to her mouth. A tongue emerges, takes the candy.
Like a tortoise I saw at the zoo. She bites, almost in slow motion,
chews so slowly I swear I can feel her tasting it ."<br />
<br />
A
description of Chicagoland as America's meat processing capital: "This
was the land of Swift, the kingdom of Armour. It was the beauty of the
Industrial Revolution's assembly line turned inside out. Chicago as the
disassembly line. Chicago--how fast and how efficiently as creature
could be reduced. Rendered. Broken down."<br />
<br />
A terrible
truth, laid bare, when he and his brother are told about their father's
death: "In that moment I think only one thing: how excited I am. Because
my whole life up until then, my bother has never cried. Whenever I have
cried, he's always teased me, told me I was a baby. I point at him and
start to laugh and I say, 'Cry-baby! Cry-baby!' "<br />
<br />
"So
often I wonder--Do all brothers end up at Kitty Hawk? Flipping a coin to
write history. One will fly. The other stands slack-jawed with awe.
Maybe chasing his brother. The wind in his face now. The wind that lifts
his brother."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-12148343790349589672013-02-04T15:46:00.000-05:002013-02-04T15:46:00.169-05:00Book Review: You Before Me by Jojo Moyes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Jojo Moyes' new novel <i>Me Before You</i> should come with a warning: do NOT pick this book up unless
you have a box of tissues by your side and several hours to spare.
Because once you start reading it, you're not going to want to put it
down, and once you do put it down, you're going to be a soggy, wet mess.
Believe me, my cat Murray was quite concerned with my state of mind.
Then again, anything that interrupts the administering of chin scratches
concerns him.<br />
<br />
Up until the motorcycle accident that
made him a quadriplegic, Will Traynor was both a go-getter and a
player--wealthy, handsome, charismatic, and a thill-seeker to boot.
Lou, on the other hand, is from an economically challenged working
class family--bright enough to have gained university admittance, but
required to join the workforce to help her family pay the rent when her
sister gets pregnant and her father gets laid off. When the cafe where
she's been working as a waitress for the last several years closes, she
desperately accepts a six-month contact taking care of Will. Will and
Lou couldn't be more different on the surface, so when they form an
uneasy alliance that grows into the truest friendship either has ever
known, nobody is more surprised than they are.<br />
<br />
The
catch, and of course there's a catch, is that Will and his mother are
keeping a secret from Lou, and when she discovers what it is, she reacts
with her characteristic passion, matched only by her pigheadedness.
But might Will's
secret haunt Lou to the point she makes the biggest mistake of her life?<br />
<br />
Let
me clear: this is not a book with complicated twists and turns that
will keep the reader guessing. If you pick this book up to read, you
will have a fair idea of the story-arc before you're even fifty pages
into it, as it's the story itself that pulls you in; but the class
issues, the family relationships, and the importance of
having somebody to believe in you when you no longer believe in yourself
give this book a heft that matches its heart.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-40925314070172620842013-01-29T15:42:00.001-05:002013-01-29T15:42:32.472-05:00Book Review: Home Is a Roof Over a Pig<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I find that most memoirs fall into one of two
categories: a good story told by an okay writer, or an okay story
told by a good writer, and Aminta Arrington's book falls into the former
category. <i>Home is a Roof Over a Pig</i> is her family's story of
adopting a baby girl, whom they name Grace Amelie, from China and then
moving there with their three small children in an attempt to give Grace
a connection to her birth country. They also want their other two
children to grow up with a wider world view than the typical American
child's, as well as to give Grace's siblings a chance to know Grace's
homeland and create a way for all of the children to share both American
<i>and</i> Chinese identities.<br />
<br />
Arrington's narrative
style is mostly a conversational one and it serves her story well
enough, though it does verge into the land of repetition on a regular
basis. It's when she tries to be more "writerly," for lack of a better
word, that the writing really sticks out, but not in a good way. The
chapters are more episodic rather than a linear narrative, and
occasionally she jumps forward or backward in her timelines. That's
okay, though, because her story is so interesting and unusual that I'd
forgive the writing great deal more.<br />
<br />
Aminta's husband
Chris decides to retire from the military, giving them both a chance to
re-invent their lives. They can choose anywhere in the world to start
over, and as Chris is facile with many languages and Aminta has always
been interested in international relations, they know that the US is not
where they want to be. When Chris's older sons from a previous
relationship move beyond their teens and their daughter Katherine is a
baby, they decide to adopt a sister for her from China. During the
adoption process, Aminta unexpectedly gets pregnant again with their
son, Andrew, and soon the couple have three children under the age of
three. <br />
<br />
Now that Grace is a part of their family,
deciding they should pick China as the place to raise their children is
the easy part. The hard part is finding job placement for two adults
with three small children, but in time a regional university in Shandong
province called Taishan Medical College find teaching spots for Chris
and Aminta, together with a tiny two-bedroom apartment in family
housing. Though there are many frustrating moments when they doubt their
decision to move to rural China, overall the family adapts fairly well
to their new country, with the children adjusting in varying degrees and
at varying speeds. Soon they become entrenched in their neighborhood
and in their teaching and church communities.<br />
<br />
The title
of the book comes from the Chinese character for "home," which Aminta
learns is esentially the pictogram for 'roof' combined with the word for
"pig," and that pig-farming was one of the earliest non-nomadic
occupations for the ancient Chinese. Thus, if you had a roof over a
pig, you stayed put there and it was your home. Learning tidbits about
language like this is what made the book so fascinating for me. Like
most Americans, I am not fluent in any language beyond my own, despite
my own interest in language, dabbling in French, Spanish, and even Latin
during high school and college, and taking an introductory course to
linguistics in graduate school. I may have no facility with it, but
language has always interested me; learning a bit about a language whose
characters are conceptual meanings rather than based on letters that
combine into phonemes to create words was endlessly fascinating.<br />
<br />
Beyond
the language lessons, I especially enjoyed Arrington's stories about
the young people taking her English classes--the cultural divides that
become smaller and smaller as the book goes on, such as politics or the
importance of family and maintaining cultural traditions, but also those
that grow even wider, such as feminism, their respective views on
Tibet, and the importance of independent thinking. Learning to
understand (and respect) a worldview that is radically different from
your own may be difficult, but both teacher and student know that it's
essential to try, even, <i>or perhaps especially</i>, if you do not agree with it.<br />
<br />
I'd
recommend this book for people who are casually interested in China,
international adoption, travel memoirs, memoirs about parenting or
teaching, or simple readers looking for an unusual perspective.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a><br />
<br /></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-15983304197973715792012-11-21T13:17:00.000-05:002012-11-21T13:17:50.913-05:00Cookbook: Sweet & Easy VeganChronicle Books has a great blog<a href="http://www.chroniclebooks.com/blog/" target="_blank"> (check it out if you haven't)</a>. I loved their post on <i>Sweet & Easy Vegan </i>and tried two recipes from the book, both breakfast cookies.<br />
<img border="0" height="218" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LMIyzwALNpY/UKRFOFIkD4I/AAAAAAAABpc/L8MG7IubSAw/s1600/blog_vegan1.jpg" width="320" /><br />
The first recipe was for Maple-Peanut Breakfast Cookies. I substituted
the flour with a gluten-free mix so that my boyfriend could try them.
We're both peanut butter lovers and the cookies were a great breakfast. Author Robin Asbell
recommends storing the cookies in an air-tight container in the
refrigerator. Despite my doubts, the cookies were crispy straight from
the fridge and I didn't even warm them up before eating. They made a
quick and easy breakfast (for the 2 days they lasted!).<br />
<img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o390vmh1k8o/UKRFPO6ThJI/AAAAAAAABpk/CbBNOanaCzQ/s1600/blog_vegan2.jpg" width="320" /><br />
The second recipe was for Coconut Mango Breakfast Cookies. Due to the
almond butter, they have protein, add the oats and the mango, and you
have a pretty balanced breakfast. These, too, were good straight from
the fridge, though I like them better warm. As good as these are, they
are more expensive to make (due to the coconut and dried mango).
However, I do hope to make them again. <br />
<img border="0" height="301" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UqwYdh_i-ys/UKRFQI2AUlI/AAAAAAAABps/k3G8SfmFTcI/s1600/blog_vegan3.jpg" width="320" /><br />
Robin uses sweeteners such as honey, maple syrup, and agave, so though
the recipes are sweet, they're not too sweet and avoid granular sugar.
There are a host of bookmarks marking recipes I'd like to try and after
these two, I'm certain they'll be superb.
<br />
<br />
-MarikaThe Odyssey Bookshophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02069437996395186455noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-73777211743678913152012-09-19T17:06:00.001-04:002012-09-19T17:08:15.393-04:00Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been a follower for a long time (and by "long" I guess I mean about two years or so) of Jen Campbell's <a href="http://jen-campbell.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">This Is Not the Six Word Novel</a> blog. She's a poet, writer and antiquarian bookseller in the UK, and earlier this year she published a book called <i>Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops</i>. Since bookish people love reading about bookish things, the idea spread across the pond and soon there was an open call for American and Canadian booksellers to submit some of their bizarre encounters with customers. Overlook published it just this last week, and they were kind enough to send me a complimentary copy of the book.<br />
<br />
Jen's original contributions comprise most of the US edition, but it's interspersed throughout with new scenarios from the New World, including two out of the three that I submitted. One of them was entirely too long to print, but it remains one of my most frequently read blog posts (read it <a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/2010/12/which-came-first-abcs-or-shakespeare.html" target="_blank">here</a> if you're interested). Here's the more interesting of the two they included:<br />
<br />
Customer: Do you sell swimming goggles?<br />
Me: No, I'm afraid we do not.<br />
Customer: And you call yourself a full service bookstore?<br />
Me: ...<br />
<br />
I kid you not. Now, it's true that we've branched out a good bit, particularly over the last five years, and we sell quite a few non-book items. Some are more of the usual non-book like journals, stationery, and calendars, but we also carry toys, boardgames and locally- or regionally-made crafts. Still, asking for swimming goggles seemed a little, well, weird.<br />
<br />
Here's a call I took last week from a customer on the phone. I've submitted it for the next installment of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores:<br />
<br />
Customer: Yes, hello, do you sell drumsticks?<br />
Me: Umm...do you mean the kind you eat or the kind you play drums with?<br />
Customer: The kind you play drums with. Does that mean you sell them?<br />
Me: No, actually we don't carry either one, but I was curious which variety you thought a <i>bookstore </i>might sell. Try the music shop just up the road.<br />
<br />
This is a very funny book, and if you've ever worked retail then I'm sure you'll find yourself nodding along to more than one of these bizarre scenarios. It's a nice little package, and at only $15 for the hardcover, it makes a great impulse purchase or gift. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-11010587605779390482012-08-23T17:21:00.001-04:002012-08-23T17:21:05.315-04:00The Odyssey on the Air: Books, Books, Books on WAMC.org<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We love NPR, and we particularly love WAMC, the Albany, NY, NPR affiliate because they love indie booksellers. Every week they invite independent booksellers to join them on the air during the morning Roundtable show, and this week it was our turn.<br />
<br />
Emily represented the Odyssey this Tuesday to talk about her favorite fiction books:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QKB7jDWjATM/UDaeI0JXj9I/AAAAAAAADNs/Stry37sOwwY/s1600/dog+stars.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QKB7jDWjATM/UDaeI0JXj9I/AAAAAAAADNs/Stry37sOwwY/s1600/dog+stars.gif" /></a><b>The Dog Stars </b>by Peter Heller: <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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over, Cormac McCarthy—there’s a new post-apocalyptic gig in town!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this rugged country,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the few surviving people untouched by the
deadly virus must make test the limits of their humanity in order to stay
alive. Hig relies on his dog Jasper, his old Cessna, and an uneasy alliance
with a former special-ops guy named Bangley to make his way in this brave, new
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The language in this novel is
riveting, and the innovative style of the first person narration is carried off
amazingly well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This book packs both a
literary and an emotional wallop—I swear that I laughed, was moved to tears,
and had an adrenaline rush, all on a regular basis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dark, poetic, and deeply beautiful. I can’t recommend this one
enough. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">(click <a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/2012/08/book-review-dog-stars-by-peter-heller.html" target="_blank">here</a> to read Emily's complete review) Peter Heller will be at the Odyssey on September 28 for a reading, so please give us a call or email us to let us know whether to expect you!</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8aoGap4ka9o/UDaeWkiuPLI/AAAAAAAADN0/kcOlTS_7dCM/s1600/unlikely+pilgrimage.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8aoGap4ka9o/UDaeWkiuPLI/AAAAAAAADN0/kcOlTS_7dCM/s1600/unlikely+pilgrimage.gif" /></a></div>
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</xml><![endif]--><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unlikely Pilgrimage of
Harold Fry</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> by Rachel Joyce. Believe me,
this book will absolutely sneak up on you unawares! What starts off as a sweet
story, peopled with quirky characters, quickly turns into a poignant study of
human nature, where the peculiarity is matched only by its whimsy. Dotted with
charming British humor and sparkling with spontaneity this is a book you will
mull over long after closing its pages. I recommend to anyone who
enjoys a well-crafted novel, but especially for fans of <i>The Guernsey
Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, </i>or <i>The
Tower, the Zoo, or the Tortoise.</i> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">(click<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/2012/06/book-review-unlikely-pilgrimage-of.html" target="_blank"> here</a> to read Emily's full review) </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_yC3DgauaSA/UDaefNErD7I/AAAAAAAADN8/fmiZjLKJqIo/s1600/me+who+dove.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_yC3DgauaSA/UDaefNErD7I/AAAAAAAADN8/fmiZjLKJqIo/s1600/me+who+dove.gif" /></a></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><b>Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World</b> by Sabina Berman -- This is a great read from a renowned Mexican poet and playwright featuring an autistic savant immersed in the world of fish. Reminiscent of both Temple Grandin and <i>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">(click <a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/2012/08/book-review-me-who-dove-into-heart-of.html" target="_blank">here</a> to read Emily's full review)</span><br />
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Light Between Oceans</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> by M L Stedman.
Stolen baby or adopted child? So much depends on perspective in this fine
debut novel of love, loss, selfishness, and sacrifice. When Janus Island
lighthouse keepers Tom and Isabel decide to care for a shipwrecked infant as if
she were their own without reporting their find, life is idyllic for this
family of three...until they discover that baby Lucy’s mother is still alive on
the mainland. The adults in this no-win scenario put their own moral
justifications for their actions above Lucy’s best interest, but the problem
here is that any compass of moral relativism lacks one True North. Even
(or, perhaps, especially) non-parents like me will understand the choices the
adults made in this riptide of a novel that sweeps characters and readers alike
into cross-currents of sympathy and sorrow. Stedman is a fine stylist and an
outrageously good story teller. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">(click <a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/2012/01/book-preview-light-between-oceans-by-m.html" target="_blank">here</a> to read Emily's full review)</span></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-83515899649151970172012-08-17T10:00:00.000-04:002012-08-17T10:00:06.399-04:00Book Review: Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Maggie
Hope, born in England but raised in America, returns to her homeland to
settle the estate of a grandmother she doesn't remember, where she must
oversee the sale of her grandmother's house in order to fulfill the
terms of the will. In the meantime, things are heating up all over
Europe, Hitler is cutting a wide and lethal swathe across the
continent, and not enough folks are raising their voice in protest.<br />
<br />
Determined
to stay on in London, despite having to give up her PhD program in
MIT's mathematics department, Maggie makes friends and takes in
roommates to cover her cost of living while looking for work. She
reluctantly takes a position as a secretary at Number 10 Downing Street,
knowing that her intellect could be better used as a codebreaker in the
War Department rather than typing up the prime minister's memos.<br />
<br />
There
are two important people in Maggie's life who are not what they seem,
and in a race against time, she must crack a German code hidden in plain
sight and uncover their true selves before one of them is killed and
the other one puts the entire city of London in peril. <br />
<br />
I
tremendously enjoyed this paperback original, which is the start of a
new mystery series. This book is fun and frothy, offering a little bit
of everything: an evocative wartime setting, secret identities, gender
politics, light romance, lots of gin drinking, a narrowly-avoided
assassination, and a brilliant and saucy heroine. Don't pick this one
up if you're looking for something substantial, but if you like historical fiction or if you
prefer you mysteries to be decidedly soft-boiled, give this book a spin.
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>
As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-38655278068509151552012-08-13T09:00:00.000-04:002012-08-13T09:00:10.034-04:00Book Review: The Dogs Stars by Peter Heller<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
I'm about six weeks removed from my reading of this book, and
already it is as a distant memory for me, but I couldn't let the pub
date come and go without saying something about Peter Heller's <i>The Dog Stars</i>.<br />
<br />
This
is the best book of the 20 or so that I read on vacation this year.
What's more, it may be the best book I've read this year. What's even
more, it just may be the best book I'll read in <i>any</i> year.<br />
<br />
If
you're reading this blog, you've probably already heard something about
this book already--either because you're a customer and you've
already heard me raving about it, or because you're a book person and
you've heard the buzz surrounding this novel. Which means what you
probably know is that it's another post-apocalyptic vision of the world.
What you probably <i>don't</i> know is that it is also a beautiful one. <br />
<br />
This
may be a debut novel, but Peter Heller is no stranger when it comes to
writing prose. I don't think it's possible to produce a book like this
one first time out of the gate. His background in travel and adventure
writing becomes clear once you settle into <i>Dog Stars</i>, but it's
the prose itself that sets this book apart: strong, experimental,
truncated, but with a stream-of-consciousness aspect to it. <br />
<br />
This
is the story of Hig, a one percenter. Except in this case, he's one
percent of the surviving population after a terrible flu has wiped out
most of the population, and a mysterious blood disease has wiped out
most of the flu survivors. He lives in a state of uneasy alliance with
military-hardened Bangley, a "Survivor with a capital S," at a small,
abandoned municipal airport. With Hig's Cessna and a dog named Jasper,
they create a perimeter than can be defended and protected against the
marauding, near-feral almost-humans who occasionally cross their paths.<br />
<br />
It's
an uneasy alliance, but a successful one, until one day Hig hears
another voice on the Cessna's radio, broadcasting from a place well
beyond his gas tank's point of no return, and it's that voice that
starts to haunt Hig's waking and dreaming moments: are there other
pockets of other people out there like him, people who have maintained
their humanity, but more importantly, their hope?<br />
<br />
I
won't say more than that, other than the rest of the book is dedicated
to that search, but also to the preservation of that hope. Reading this
book is a singularly satisfying experience, and one that drew me in
deeply and was slow to let me go. I laughed and I cried, and my pulse
was pounding, often within the same chapter, and my husband tells me
that all it took was watching me read the book to make him want to, too:
he could hear my sniffles and my laughs, he observed all of my
white-knuckled moments, my dog-eared pages, my deep sighs, and my blank
looks when I stared, unseeing, out at the point where the ocean meets
the horizon when the book became too much to take in. <br />
<br />
Believe me when I say this book is a helluva read.<br />
<br />
I'll
conclude with a few excerpted passages and then the book trailer (sorry
for the poor formatting--I don't know how to make it smaller). I read
this book in ARC form, but it was published this week by Knopf.
Seriously, will you please just read this?<br />
<br />
"Bangley
never drank because it was part of his Code. I'm not sure if he thought
of himself as a soldier or even a warrior, but he was a Survivor with a
capital S. All the other, what he had been in the rigors of his youth, I
think he thought of as training for something more elemental and more
pure. He had been waiting for the End all his life. If he drank before
he didn't drink now he didn't do anything that wasn't aimed at
surviving. I think if he somehow died of something that he didn't deem a
legitimate Natural Cause, and if he had a moment of reflection before
the dark, he would be less disappointed with his life being over than
with losing the game. With not taking care of the details. With being
outsmarted by death, or worse, some other holocaust hardened mendicant
(70)."<br />
<br />
"I could almost imagine that it was before, that
Jasper and I were off somewhere on an extended sojourn and would come
back one day soon, that all would come back to me, that we were not
living in the wake of disaster. Had not lost everything but our
lives....It caught me sometimes: that this was okay. Just this. That
simple beauty was still bearable barely, and that if I lived moment to
moment, garden to stove to the simple act of flying, I could have peace
(67)."<br />
<br />
"Jasper used to be able to jump up into the
cockpit now he can't. In the fourth year we had an argument. i took out
the front passenger seat for weight and cargo and put down a flannel
sleeping bag with a pattern of a man shooting a pheasant over and over,
his dog on three legs, pointing out in front...I carried him. Lay him on
the pattern of the man and the dog.<br />
<br />
You and me in another life I tell him....<br />
<br />
He's getting old. I don't count the years. I don't multiply by seven.<br />
<br />
They
breed dogs for everything else, even diving for fish, why didn't they
breed them to live longer, to live as long as a man (23, 24, 25)."<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
Peter Heller's <i>The Dog Stars</i> is a selection for the Odyssey Bookshop's signed <a href="http://www.odysseybks.com/first-editions-club-faq" target="_blank">First Editions Club</a>. He'll be reading at our store on Friday, September 28, and we couldn't be more excited! <br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-47346453591190074962012-07-26T08:45:00.000-04:002012-07-26T08:45:00.842-04:00Chris Bohjalian's The Sandcastle Girls<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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While the emotional content of this book is trademark Bohjalian, the writer takes on a new depth and historical perspective in <i>Sandcastle Girls </i>that
is not usually present in his more formulaic novels. Unsurprising,
since this novel is the first that delves into his own history. <br />
<br />
The
little I knew about Turkish-Armenian relations came from working at a
used bookstore, where a customer of mine bought up everything he could
on Armenia. Occasionally he would toss out historical facts but
eventually I learned it was a topic he didn't want to fully engage in,
so it was fascinating to read this book as a first attempt to fill in
some of the historical blanks. <br />
<br />
(Incidentally, this is
the third novel of genocide I've read this year: Rwandan, Cambodian,
and now this one, which I guess means my taste run to the dark side, at
least when it comes to historical fiction. It also happens to be the
fourth novel in a row that I've picked up that features a
Muslim/Christian conflict, so it's interesting to me to see these
unconscious reading patterns of mine.)<br />
<br />
The novel has
two main time frames. One is a contemporary, middle-aged first person
narrator named Laura living in NY who investigates her Armenian roots
and reminisces about her childhood. The other is a third person
narration that begins in Aleppo, Syria, in 1915, mostly following
Laura's paternal grandparents Armen, an Armenian engineer who has
survived the Turks' first onslaught against his people, and Elizabeth, a
Bostonian blueblood who has traveled to Syria with her father to give
aid and succour to the refugees. Occasionally the narration darts over
to Nevart, a widowed refugee, and to Hatoun, an orphan who has witnessed
such unspeakable atrocities against her family that she has become
practically mute herself, as well as other, more minor characters. <br />
<br />
War
casualties are awful things and this novel's World War I setting proves
no exception, but it's particularly difficult to read of the crimes
perpetuated by the Ottoman Empire against some of its own civilians, and
the twisted logic and false rhetoric they use to justify their actions
is simply appalling. <br />
<br />
I can't possibly pretend to know or
understand the centuries-old history between the Turks and the
Armenians, or how the Ottoman Empire selected the Armenians for
extermination over all of the other peoples under its sway. But there is
a portion of this novel presented as fact, and if it's true, then it's
utterly galling, and I will excerpt some of it here:<br />
<br />
"If
you visit Ankara or Istanbul today, you will find streets and school
named after Talat Pasha ["the real visionary" behind the Armenian
genocide]....In other words, the nation that found Talat Pasha guilty of
attempting to wipe out a race of people later named concourses after
him. <br />
How is that possible? Because, to much of the
nation--though, thankfully, not all--that genocide never happened. Even
now, labelilng the slaughter of 1915 "genocide" can land a Turkish
citizen in jail and get a Turkish Armenian journalist killed (179)."<br />
<br />
If
that is true (and Bohjalian did not footnote it or document it, so I
don't know), then it really blows my mind. It's impossible to imagine
the German citizens of today wanting to glorify Adolf Hitler in a
parallel manner, renaming any of the schools or thoroughfares for him.
How is it possible that the citizens of Turkey are, as a nation, able to
do so?<br />
<br />
Chris was at the Odyssey last night to do a reading and presentation from <i>The Sandcastle Girls</i>, and he's as fine a speaker as any who have passed through this store. If you missed it, let us know and we can reserve a signed copy for you!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily </a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-78596554929422600422012-07-25T08:30:00.000-04:002012-07-25T08:30:04.842-04:00Book Review: The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's Emerald Torrington's birthday and she's planning a lovely party
for herself, her family, and some intimate friends, when nearby tragedy
strikes: there's been a railway accident and Emerald's home, Sterne,
must give shelter to a couple dozen of the third-class carriage
survivors, as it's the closest country estate, and "needs must," as they
say. Meanwhile, her one-armed stepfather has driven to town to try to
save the estate, the neighboring tenant farmer may or may not be wooing
her, her surly and spoiled brother has made an inappropriate friend, one
of the maids has called in sick, and her younger sister is gripped with
the urge to sketch her pony in charcoal on her nursery wall, <i>in situ</i>. What could possibly go awry?<br />
<br />
This book started off with a bang: think <i>Downton Abbey</i>
with an overlay of more overt humor, reminiscent of P. G. Wodehouse.
Or, if you prefer your pop cultural references to take a more cinematic
turn, the whole story reminded me much of the wayside travelers in the
movie <i>Clue</i>, the ones who happen upon the great house seeking
shelter from the dark &amp; stormy night. Then things take a
decidedly strange turn, and (<b>spoiler alert--highlight the next line with your cursor to make it easily readable)</b><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #45818e;"></span><span style="color: #fff2cc;"> </span> <span style="color: #fff2cc;">lo, it turns out that my instincts that screamed ZOMBIE! were not entirely off.</span> That's all I'm saying now, because nothing else I've read about the
book prepared me for that aspect of it, and heaven forbid that I ruin
t<span style="background-color: white;"></span>hings for another reader. <br />
<span><span style="background-color: black;"></span></span><br />
It is funny, and it is
bizarre, and by the time you come to the end, like any good English
period drama, nobody is saying what they mean, much less acknowledging
all of the things that went bump in the night. <br />
<br />
Here's a
fairly representative humourous scene from the beginning of the book,
where Emerald's mother and the housekeeper are discussing one of their
dinner guests. I'm sure you can guess which one is the self-serving and
generally useless mother and which is the servant from the dialogue:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
'Oh, I see. A <i>scientist.</i>" This last was said in tones of dreary condemnation.<br />
'With red hair.'<br />
'Lord, yes. And a squint.'<br />
'That's the fellow -- <i>spectacles</i>.'<br />
'Hardly his fault.'<br />
'You
might say that, Florence, but although many may need them, only a
certain type of person wears them. I prefer a passionate, squinting man
than one who corrects his sight with wiry little spectacles and is in
command of himself.'</blockquote>
Indeed!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a> </div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-9794892555749712892012-07-24T12:00:00.000-04:002012-07-24T12:00:00.552-04:00An amazing read: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I first heard of Rachel Joyce's debut novel a few months ago--folks on
Goodreads were talking it up, and so was my Random House sales rep.
Then, in early June at BEA, it had earned one of the coveted spots
on the Editors' Book Buzz panel, where I was lucky enough to snag a copy
of it. I had a hunch that it would make its way into my suitcase for
vacation reading, and test-driving the first chapter proved that hunch
correct. As it turns out, it provided me one of the most enjoyable
vacation reads I've ever had!<br />
<br />
Over breakfast one day, recently retired pub man Harold Fry receives a
letter informing him that his old friend and colleague, Queenie
Hennessey, is dying of cancer. He struggles to write a response, without
knowing quite what to say, and he walks out of the house to post it at
the closest letterbox. The thing is, when he reaches it, he thinks he
can come up with a better response, so he keeps walking to the next
letterbox. Then the next one. Then the next one. Once he recovers from
his reverie, of what to write, he realizes he's walked out of the
village.<br />
<br />
Stopping at a petrol station, a chance encounter with a young employee
there convinces him that really, the best way to do this thing is to
deliver the message to Queenie in person, no matter that Harold isn't a
walker, he's not in very good shape or wearing appropriate shoes for the
endeavor, that Queenie is over 500 miles away, or that Harold's wife,
Maureen, might have something to say about his decision. Instead of
turning homeward to retrieve suitable items for such a journey (oh, you
know, things like maps, water, his mobile, and a sense of direction), he
calls his wife from the station to announce his intentions and heads
out in a direction that he hopes is northerly.<br />
<br />
Along his journey, Harold finds support and succor in the unlikeliest
of people, and before long his pilgrimage attracts nationwide attention
and more than a few hangers-on. As he learns to just keep putting one
foot in front of the other, no matter what the terrain or the state of
his poor, blistered appendages, he has plenty of time to meditate on his
life, his marriage, his son, his friendship with Queenie, and how he's
mostly made a muck of things. At home, Maureen undergoes similar bouts
of introspection, and discovers, much to her surprise, that one by one,
she has gradually revoked a lifetime of recriminations towards Harold.<br />
<br />
This is a book that has so many funny things on the surface that it
might be easy to miss the emotional depth and universal human insights
that it provides. While I definitely laughed out loud while reading of
the hapless Harold's exploits, more than once was I moved to tears by
the wave of humanity that Joyce readily taps into. Most of the reviews
I've read of this book compare it to <i>Major Pettigrew's Last Stand,</i> and while I can see that to a certain degree, I think the more appropriate comp is <i>The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise</i>,
where the whimsy of that peculiar ensemble of characters is matched
only by the poignancy the story ultimately delivers. I also love that
it's a book whose main characters are all of retirement age: there seem
so few really good books who feature that demographic that it always
stands out when I encounter it. <br />
<br />
To say more would spoil the sense of anticipation that I'd want any
reader to have when embarking on this novel, so instead I'll just share a
few passages that resonated with me as I read. But please: do yourself
a favor and find a copy of this book to read asap! The book releases in the US today, and you can come by the store to pick one up, or call/email/visit our website to order one.<br />
<br />
"The kindness of the woman with food came back to him, and that of
Martina. They had offered him comfort and shelter, even when he was
afraid of taking them, and in accepting he had learned something new. It
was as much of a gift to receive as it was to give, requiring as it did
both courage and humility."<br />
<br />
"He wished the man would honor the true meanings of words, instead of using them as ammunition."<br />
<br />
"He wished no one had mentioned religion. He didn't object to other
people believing in God, but it was like being in a place where everyone
knew a set of rules and he didn't. After all, he had tried it once and
found no relief. And now the two kind ladies were talking about
Buddhists and world peace and he was nothing to do with those things. He
was a retired man who had set out with a letter."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily </a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-46972279134098437152012-07-08T17:31:00.002-04:002012-07-08T17:31:48.507-04:00Book Review: Chris Cleave's Gold<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Do you love<i> Little Bee?</i> Literary fiction? Watching the Olympics? Then boy, oh, boy--have I got a book for you! Chris Cleave returns to the bookworld with another fantastic novel. <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">Gold</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;"> is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They've loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: </span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?</i></span><br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I thought the writing in Gold is his best so far--I've got so many dog-eared pages and I shared so many passages out loud with my husband and my extended family that my ARC is starting to look a little ragged. I had the chance to meet Chris Cleave at dinner at Winter Institute in New Orleans, back in January of this year. He is one of the sweetest and most delightful writers I've ever met. And he also happens to write children better than just about any author I can think of--his character Sophie, a little girl battling with leukemia, will absolutely break your heart in this book!<br />
<br />
Here are some of the passages I marked:<br />
<br />
On watching her competitor on television: "Kate hated the way her body still readied itself to race like this, the way a widow's exhausted heart must still leap at a photo of her dead lover."<br />
<br />
On a sick child's trying to read the mood of her mother in a Star Wars costume: "This was the thing with Stormtroopers: they only showed the multipurpose expression molded into the face plates of their helmets--a hard-wearing, wipe-clean semimournful expression equally appropriate for learning that one's souffle, or one's empire, had fallen."<br />
<br />
On describing a falling out between friends: "In the weeks that followed, Zoe had been incandescent with remorse. That was how it had seemed to Kate--that her friend had actually flickered with a pale and anxious light that sought to expel the shadows cast by her behavior."<br />
<br />
On the nature of time in a modern world: "Time had been restructured like bad debt. The long languid hour had been atomized. Manifestos were shrunk to memes and speeches were pressed into sound bites [sic]..."<br />
<br />
If you would like to meet Chris Cleave in person, please come to the Odyssey on Tuesday night, 10 July, at 7:00 pm for a reading from <i>Gold</i>, followed by a booksigning. For full details, please click <a href="http://www.odysseybks.com/event/chris-cleave-gold" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>
</div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-800402507053116982012-06-13T09:02:00.000-04:002012-06-13T09:02:00.529-04:00Book Review: Beautiful Ruins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am so excited to tell you about a book that debuted this week! Jess Walter's new book, Beautiful Ruins, is well-beloved by many Odyssey staffers, and in fact he will be at the store later this month to do a reading and sign books for our <a href="http://www.odysseybks.com/first-edition-club" target="_blank">First Editions Club</a>. <br />
<br />
I
read this book so long ago now that I'm not sure I can give it a
coherent review, so maybe I'll just say nice things about it instead. I
plucked it from a tall pile of teetering ARCs back in January, when it
still felt like winter might be in front of us and I was craving
something to take me away. In those terms, <i>Beautiful Ruins</i> by <a href="http://www.jesswalter.com/" target="_blank">Jess Walter</a> is <i>much</i> better than Calgon. <br />
<br />
As
it turns out, there was no winter in front of us after all, but that
doesn't mean I didn't deeply appreciate the sojourns in warm, sunny
coastal Italy. I have to say, I loved this book against all odds: I <strike>loathe</strike> am not a fan of using multiple narrators to tell a story; it's done entirely too often and <i>rarely</i>
done well. Walter not only uses multiple narrators, he also uses
multiple timelines and multiple media in this novel. We get 1960s
Italy, 1980s UK, and contemporary Hollywood; a decrepit hotelier, skeazy
film producer, Hollywood starlet, frustrated assistant, ambitious
playwright, and a no-count musician; straightforward third-person
narratives interspersed with excerpts from a screenplay (<i>Donner!</i> I kid you not), a rejected memoir, and an autobiographical 3-act play. The catch is that he does it inventively and seamlessly and in a way that evokes a fresh sense of story, and not in a way that is lazy or gimmicky. <br />
<br />
Gosh,
where do I even begin? Given all of those disparate elements, it's
almost impossible to summarize this novel, and almost as difficult for
me to believe that I loved it, but love it I did. The unlikely pairings
of multiple narrative styles with multiple timelines works brilliantly
and I salute Walter for it. I would even go so far as to say that he
has set the bar impossibly high for other authors follow. The jacket
design is perfect for this book, with the inviting image of a
Portofino-like town mingled with a retro-looking typeface. Once I
picked up this book, I could hardly tear myself away from it, so much
did I long to immerse myself in this world. I'm almost sad that I've
read it already and don't have it to look forward to, because this book
would make the <i>perfect</i> summer read. <br />
<br />
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Weren't movies his generation's faith anyway</i>--its
true religion? Wasn't the theater our temple, the one place we enter
separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same
experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught
ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects
with a billion sermons--but the same movie showed in every mall in the
country. And we all saw it...flickering pictures stitched in our minds
that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that became our
shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined
our values. What was that but religion (21)? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The
first impression one gets of Michael Deane is of a man constructed of
wax, or perhaps prematurely embalmed. After all these years, it may be
impossible to trace the sequence of facials, spa treatments, mud baths,
cosmetic procedures, lifts and staples, collagen implants, outpatient
touchups, tannings, Botox injections, cyst and growth removals, and
stem-cell facial injections that have caused a seventy-two-year old man
to have the face of a nine-year-old Filipino girl (93). </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But
aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and
the search for intelligent life in the cosmos--we know what's out there.
It's what <i>isn't </i>that truly compels us. Technology may have
shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short card rides and regional jet
lags--four states and twelve-hundred miles traversed in an
afternoon--but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway,
so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like
this, the hope of the serendipitous savant--sail for Asia and stumble on
America--and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you
had the thing you sought all along (284). </blockquote>
So if
you're looking for a fantastically-good summer read that will whisk you
away from your daily grind, or if you're interested in the structure of
fiction and how authors play around with it, do yourself a favor and
check out <i>Beautiful Ruins</i>. The author, whom I got to meet in
Boston a couple of months ago at a Harper dinner, is also a real
sweetheart of a fella. Thank goodness I met him then because I'll miss his reading later this month when I'm away on vacation. But trust me on this one--this is a book you're going to want to read, written by an author you're going to want to meet.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a><br />
<br /></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-44229552398508353372012-05-11T08:26:00.000-04:002012-05-11T08:26:22.369-04:00Book Review: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SgAcxzJ21Io/T6xlfBtQTSI/AAAAAAAACW4/JhHxnxeusEk/s1600/billy+lynn" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SgAcxzJ21Io/T6xlfBtQTSI/AAAAAAAACW4/JhHxnxeusEk/s320/billy+lynn" width="211" /></a></div>
Book Summary: <i>Told over the course of a single day--specifically Thanksgiving Day at Texas Stadium, as the Dallas Cowboys take the field--<b>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</b>
is the story of Bravo Squad, eight survivors of a ferocious firefight
with Iraqi insurgents, whose bravery and and valor have made them
national heroes. In the final hours of their Pentagon-sponsored "Victory
Tour," Bravo's Silver Star-winning hero, nineteen-year-old Billy Lynn,
will confront hard truths about love and death, family and friendship,
war and politics, duty and honor</i>. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is one of the best books I've read all year, and one that I'd say is a real contender for 2013's round of major literary awards. The writing is terrific, and I feel that in addition to being a fresh and edgy book, this may be an <i>important</i> one. So far it's the only one I've read coming out of the Iraq War
that subsumes itself in neither action sequences nor in an overwrought
family or romantic drama. Instead it seems to be just as much about the
concept of war itself as the politics behind it and how America feels
about it. (Though given the book takes place mostly in Texas,
especially Dallas, we're not really given a look at the dissenters'
side of things.) </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Billy
Lynn is a fascinating character, a boy thrust into the army (in lieu of
doing hard time) after taking a crowbar to his sister's ex-fiance's car
for gallant but misguided reasons. He's a thoughtful young man, fully
aware that the labels of "hero" mean nothing when one's actions are
guided neither by bravery nor fear, but are simply reactionary to any given
situation, including Bravo's famous firefight with the Iraqi insurgents:
one day you're the hero and the next day you're cowering under your
humvee and refusing to come out. His thoughts are never far away from
his imminent return to Iraq, nor from his buddy, Shroom, who died the
day Billy was labeled a hero.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ben
Fountain's novel is also the first book coming out of the Iraq War (that
I've read, at least) that seems willing to say that war is, more than
anything else, a commercial enterprise. It's difficult not to draw
these parallels about the US's involvement in Iraq with, say, the Dallas
Cowboys franchise and the oil-steeped politics of the state in which
the book is largely set, or the larger-than-life characters we meet,
such as the Dallas Cowboys' owner or the man who spends the book
negotiating a movie deal for Bravo. War as commercially motivated
enterprise, not a political one, isn't a new concept per se, but it goes
a long way in increasing this particular reader's distaste for it,
because if it's <i>really not</i> about oil, <i>really not</i> about protecting our interests, and <i>really not</i> about freeing a people from their dictator's rule, then it's <i>really not</i> something I can ever understand, or wish to, for that matter. What's more, Fountain seems to be suggesting that, despite whether they're for or against the Iraq War, that most Americans only monitor it from the comfort of their living sofas, and thus we have an enterprise reduced to entertainment television.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Karl
Marlantes blurbs this book, and he's not a writer whose opinion I take
lightly, especially when it comes to the topic of war. He calls it "the
<i>Catch-22</i> of the Iraq war," and with a comment like that, I'm not
sure that there's anything more to add. I'll just conclude with some
passages that resonated with me as I read it:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"So they lost Shroom and Lake, <i>only two</i>
a numbers man might say, but given that each Bravo has missed death by a
margin of inches, the casualty rate could just as easily be 100
percent. The freaking <i>randomness</i> is what wears on you, the
difference between life, death, and the horrible injury sometimes as
slight as stooping to tie your bootlace on the way to chow, choosing the
third shitter in line instead of the fourth, turning your head to the
left instead of the right. Random. How that shit does work on your mind
(26-27)."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Those
people [movie studios, producers, etc], the kind of bubble they live
in? It's a major tragedy in their lives if their Asian manicurist takes
the day off. For those people to be passing judgment on the validity of
your experience is just wrong, it goes beyond wrong, it's ethics porn.
They aren't capable of fathoming what you guys did (57)."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I love this moment between Billy and his sister Kathryn, re: their father:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
" 'He's an asshole,' Kathryn said. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To which Billy: 'You just now figured that out?' </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
'Shut up. What I mean is he <i>likes</i> being an asshole, he <i>enjoys</i> it. Some people you get the feeling that can't help it? But he works at it. He's what you'd call a <i>proactive</i> asshole' (75)."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Billy with his nephew on leave:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Based
on his highly limited experience with small children, Billy had always
regarded the pre-K set as creatures on the level of not-very-interesting
pets, thus he was unprepared for the phenomenal variety of his little
nephew's play. Whatever came to hand, the kid devised some form of
interaction with it. Flowers, pet and sniff. Dirt, dig. Cyclone fence,
rattle and climb. Squirrels, harass with feebly launched sticks. 'Why?'
he kept asking in his sweetly belling voice, as pure as marbles swirled
around a crystal pail. Why? Why? Why? And Billy answering every question
to the best of his ability, as if anything less would disrespect the
deep and maybe even divine force that drove his little nephew toward
universal knowledge...So is this what they mean by <i>the sanctity of life</i>?
A soft groan escaped Billy when he thought about that, the war revealed
in this fresh and grusome light. Oh. Ugh. Divine spark, image of God,
suffer the little children and all that--there's real power when words
attach to actual things. Made him want to sit right down and weep, as
powerful as that. He got it, yes he did, and when he came home for good
he'd have to meditate on this, but for now it was best to <i>compartmentalize</i>, as they said, or even better not to mentalize at all (82-83)."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The
reader never gets the full picture of exactly what happens to earn the
Bravo Squad their Victory Tour back home, but here is one of Billy's
ruminations on it: "All your soldier life you dream of such a moment and
every Joe with a weapon got a piece of it, a perfect storm of massing
fire and how those beebs blew apart, hair, teeth, eyes, hands, tender
melon heads, exploding soup-stews of shattered chests, sights not to be
believed and never forgotten and your mind simply will not leave it
alone. Oh my people. Mercy was not a selection, period. Only later did
the concept of mercy even occur to Billy, and then only in the context
of its absence in that place, a foreclosing of options that reached so
far back in history that quite possibly mercy had not been an option
there since before all those on the battlefield were born (125)."</div>
<br />
Read this book. Seriously, just read it. And if you don't want to take my word for it, check out this superlative review from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/books/billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-by-ben-fountain.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> earlier this week. <br />
<br />
<i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i> is the Odyssey Bookshop's May selection for its <a href="http://www.odysseybks.com/first-edition-club" target="_blank">First Editions Club</a>. Ben Fountain will be reading at the store tonight, May 11, at 7:00 pm. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-68895792529757892352012-05-10T11:46:00.001-04:002012-05-10T11:46:49.322-04:00Book Review: Comeback Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I just love the publication story of <i>Comeback Love</i>
by Peter Golden. I was talking with John Muse, my sales rep from
Simon &amp; Schuster a couple of weeks ago about this book, which he
"discovered" as a self-published book from the <a href="http://bookhouse.indiebound.com/" target="_blank">Book House</a>
in Albany. They're a wonderful indie bookstore with their own Espresso Book Machine and they offer publication possibilities for local authors. John was so impressed with the book that he pitched it to
his own company, who eventually bought the rights to it, and Washington
Square Press published it about one month ago. I love publishing success stories like that, and when I personally know any of the players involved it makes it even better. <br />
<br />
Gordon
and Glenna had an amazing love affair at the close of the 1960s, but
their relationship was no match for Gordon's financial insecurities and
Glenna's personal ones. The political verve that marked those years
also marked the beginning of the end of their love, with Vietnam pinning
them in on one side and Glenna's illegal abortion activities hemming
them in on the other. Still, Glenna and Gordon never forgot each other,
but when decades later Gordon decides to look her up again, the
temptation to settle back into the same old patterns is strong.<br />
<br />
I
thought this was a very readable and pleasant story of first love and
love renewed. I'm almost exactly midway between the ages the characters
are at the beginning and at the end of the novel, and it was
interesting to me to feel similar levels of sympathy toward the younger
and older selves of the couple. I wouldn't exactly say that this book changed my life, but
it did encourage my mind to wander paths of nostalgia while I was
reading. It even prompted me to dream about my own first love (cheers, M, wherever you are!), which I suppose is a testament the story and the power of memory.<br />
<br />
This would make a good book club discussion book, particularly if the readers are closer in age to the older Gordon and Glenna.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily </a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-53084936135542444012012-05-09T16:51:00.000-04:002012-05-09T16:51:00.206-04:00Picture books starring dogsWe've received a number of picture books about dogs this spring. I don't know why, but they're all fun (or funny). Here are some highlights:<br />
<b><i><b><i><br /></i></b></i></b><br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4JJORvoXoVM/T6Gc_NQCt6I/AAAAAAAACKw/5sq2p57z558/s1600/odd+dog.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4JJORvoXoVM/T6Gc_NQCt6I/AAAAAAAACKw/5sq2p57z558/s1600/odd+dog.gif" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--rjXTqwIKKA/T6GdEZ1jNBI/AAAAAAAACLI/2TYlE4H6sVY/s1600/lucyrescued.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--rjXTqwIKKA/T6GdEZ1jNBI/AAAAAAAACLI/2TYlE4H6sVY/s1600/lucyrescued.gif" /></a><b><i><b><i><br /></i></b></i></b><br />
<b><i>Lucy Rescued</i></b> by Harriet Ziefert illustrated by Barroux<br />
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<i><b>Odd Dog</b></i> by Claudia Boldt<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kgkfps9irpw/T6GdBUxmRKI/AAAAAAAACK4/KhMXbkXUA3M/s1600/ladybuggirl+and+bingo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kgkfps9irpw/T6GdBUxmRKI/AAAAAAAACK4/KhMXbkXUA3M/s1600/ladybuggirl+and+bingo.gif" /></a><i><b>Ladybug Girl and Bingo</b></i> by David Soman and Jacky Davis (there's also an adorable Bingo plush!)<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DdormU0EjRE/T6GdCw4G4MI/AAAAAAAACLA/ZnUhPdk4l8Y/s1600/lucky+and+squash.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DdormU0EjRE/T6GdCw4G4MI/AAAAAAAACLA/ZnUhPdk4l8Y/s1600/lucky+and+squash.gif" /></a><i><b></b></i><br />
<i><b><i><b><br /></b></i></b></i><br />
<i><b>Lucky and Squash </b></i>by Jeanne Birdsall, illustrated by Jane Dyer<br />
This book is a collaboration between a local author and illustrator (both based in Northampton). The starring roles are played by Jeanne's and Jane's dogs- who are best friends in real life!<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ffp9EdWgVrk/T6GdI8xYCJI/AAAAAAAACLY/A2X5keXXsV8/s1600/zorrogetsanoutfit.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ffp9EdWgVrk/T6GdI8xYCJI/AAAAAAAACLY/A2X5keXXsV8/s1600/zorrogetsanoutfit.gif" /></a><i><b></b></i><br />
<i><b><i><b><br /></b></i></b></i><br />
<i><b>Zorro Gets and Outfit</b></i> by Carter Goodrich<br />
Nieves and I loved the first book starring Zorro and Mister Bud. Their antics are hysterical- especially when Zorro gets a superhero costume!<br />
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<i><b>Silly Doggy</b></i> by Adam Stower</div>
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This book isn't quite about a dog...but the protagonist certainly thinks the pet she's found is a dog!The Odyssey Bookshophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02069437996395186455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-37133075434413329652012-05-07T09:08:00.002-04:002012-05-07T09:08:58.885-04:00Book Review: Heading Out to Wonderful<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EkHjC3QG1ao/T6fI1tXz3ZI/AAAAAAAACWY/6cuNcooCTnc/s1600/heading+out+to+wonderful" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EkHjC3QG1ao/T6fI1tXz3ZI/AAAAAAAACWY/6cuNcooCTnc/s200/heading+out+to+wonderful" width="137" /></a></div>
I admit up front that I was not a huge fan of Robert Goolrick's previous novel <i>The Reliable Wife</i>, so I was a little reluctant to pick up his new one called <i>Heading Out to Wonderful</i>.
Luckily I had a little prompting from Craig "Call me Peaches" Popelars
at Algonquin, who told me that he thought I'd love it. As usual, he was
right. Damn his eyes.<br />
<br />
If you read enough books or watch
enough movies, after a while you develop certain expectations built
into certain plot points. Thus, in chapter one when a mysterious drifter
rolls into a small Southern town with nothing but his truck and two
suitcases, and when those two suitcases are filled with nothing but cash
and a set of the sharpest butcher knives anyone has ever seen, you <i>know</i> that by the last chapter there's no way that everything can end well. Just a fact of fictional life.<br />
<br />
That's
essentially what happens in Goolrick's book, but he does stand certain
of the reader's expectations on their heads, and that's what makes for
an intense but heartfelt read. You know <i>something</i> bad is going
to happen, but it's not precisely clear at first just what path the
badness is going to take: will somebody end up butchered &amp;
barbecued, a la <i>Fried Green Tomatoes</i>? Will the evil spring from
the handsome stranger, or will it be exacted upon him by the small,
xenophobic town? Is the handsome stranger's intense relationship with
the young boy more insidious than it appears on the surface or is it
completely innocent?<br />
<br />
Add in a curious five year-old
narrator, a small town full of busybodies, a racial divide, old time
religion, a near-death resuscitation, and a man who's so rich and so
mean, he has to buy himself a pretty young mountain girl for a wife, and
you've got the makings of a pretty great story. <br />
<br />
The
opening paragraphs are some of the best meditations on memory that I
have ever read. The book is narrated by Sam, who is an old man looking
back on what happened when the drifter came to town and his family took
him in:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The thing is, all
memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are
things that actually, certifiably happened, things where you can
pinpoint the day, the hour, and the minute. When you think about it,
though, those things mostly seem to happen to other people.<br />
<br />
This
story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I'm going
to tell it to you. It's a true story, as much as six decades of
remembering and telling can allow it to be true. Time changes things,
and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing
clear as a bell...while other things, big things even, come completely
disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things
seem more real than some of the big things....I'm not young any more,
so sometimes I can't tell what things are the things I remember and what
things are just things that other people told me They tell me things I
did, and a lot of them I don't remember, but most people around here
aren't liars, so I just go on and believe them, until it seems that I
actually do remember the things they say.</blockquote>
<br />
This
is not exactly a Southern gothic tale, though it has elements of that. Mostly it's the story of quiet people after the war, who are on
the cusp of modernity and who know their simple, seemingly charmed way of life
won't last forever. It's the story of otherwise good people who choose
to let evil into their hearts, and the blinding love of a small boy for a
man he calls Beebo, who instinctively knows something about protection
but is too innocent to understand what happens around him. I <i>highly </i>recommend it. I've already passed my reading copy on to my husband and he's barely spoken to me since--that's how involved he is with it. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a><br />
<br /></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-19229191859563490822012-05-02T11:10:00.001-04:002012-05-02T11:12:26.723-04:00Kids Gardening BooksIt's time to go outside and dig in the dirt. Most kids are good at digging. As a kid I definitely dug a monster trap and a moat around the playhouse. But now it's time to dig in the garden. There are many beautiful gardening books for adults, but what about your little helper? Here are some beautiful and educational children's books about gardening.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">For the very little ones:</span><br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-isLP4Po5uS4/T6FL7afomFI/AAAAAAAACJ8/_pv4OBzMfuo/s1600/countinginthegarden.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-isLP4Po5uS4/T6FL7afomFI/AAAAAAAACJ8/_pv4OBzMfuo/s1600/countinginthegarden.gif" /></a><i><b>Counting in the Garden</b></i> written by Emily Hruby, illustrated by Patrick Hruby<br />
This board book has over 50 pages (making it very long for a board book) and features colorful, graphic illustrations. One little boy counts the living things he finds growing in his garden, from thistles that grew by accident to strawberries to earthworms.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j7aXaLpV0cM/T6FL9Jvuo8I/AAAAAAAACKE/C6--yLF3XP0/s1600/inthegarden.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j7aXaLpV0cM/T6FL9Jvuo8I/AAAAAAAACKE/C6--yLF3XP0/s1600/inthegarden.gif" /></a><br />
<b><i>In the Garden</i></b> written by Elizabeth Spurr, illustrated by Manelle Oliphant<br />
In this board book, one child shovels, hoes, weeds, plants seeds, waters, and waits for things to grow. If you want to introduce a child to the work that must happen to have a beautiful garden, this is the book for you.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">A little classic: </span><br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VONrUHbs8CA/T6FL6DpluVI/AAAAAAAACJ0/yIdmt7vfcks/s1600/carrottseed.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VONrUHbs8CA/T6FL6DpluVI/AAAAAAAACJ0/yIdmt7vfcks/s1600/carrottseed.gif" /></a><i><b>The Carrot Seed</b></i> written by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Crockett Johnson<br />
A little boy plants a seed. He waters and weeds and waits. Everyone tells him that nothing will grow, but the boy knows better...<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;">For slightly older children:</span><br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jsDFr9x6jhE/T6FL_hKY16I/AAAAAAAACKM/z20ZoOhDKTo/s1600/isabellasgarden.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jsDFr9x6jhE/T6FL_hKY16I/AAAAAAAACKM/z20ZoOhDKTo/s1600/isabellasgarden.gif" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xOQkB3LbX1Q/T6FMAhIrAGI/AAAAAAAACKU/R8B1z5HTQd4/s1600/ourschoolgarden.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xOQkB3LbX1Q/T6FMAhIrAGI/AAAAAAAACKU/R8B1z5HTQd4/s1600/ourschoolgarden.gif" /></a><i><b>Our School Garden </b></i>written by Rick Swann, illustrated by Christy Hale<br />
Poems and interesting facts all centered around a school garden.<br />
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<i><b>Isabella's Garden </b></i>written by Glenda Millard, illustrated by Rebecca Cool<br />
A remixed "This is the House the Jack Built" with bright illustrations.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XO4SCuhMH7w/T6FMCpVR8RI/AAAAAAAACKc/5vWnsmLi7aI/s1600/plantalittleseed.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XO4SCuhMH7w/T6FMCpVR8RI/AAAAAAAACKc/5vWnsmLi7aI/s1600/plantalittleseed.gif" /></a><b><i>Plant a Little Seed</i></b><br />
by Bonnie Christensen<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w9k_U-tF9H4/T6FMEui3GwI/AAAAAAAACKk/sj4eEn5ZzmU/s1600/secretsofthegarden.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w9k_U-tF9H4/T6FMEui3GwI/AAAAAAAACKk/sj4eEn5ZzmU/s1600/secretsofthegarden.gif" /></a><span style="color: #274e13;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Marika's favorite:</span><br />
<b><i>Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and Food Webs in Our Backyard</i></b> written by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeild, illustrated by Priscilla Lamont<br />
Not just the story of two children and their family garden, this book also contains information about composting, leaf identification, food chains, food webs (and how to draw your own), examples of herbivore and carnivore bugs, and much more. The additional information is presented by the two chickens that live in the garden. This information is printed in a different font, so you can choose to read the children's story or all the extras, depending on the age of your audience. Perfect for classrooms, families with multiple kids, or homeschoolers, this is a book that will serve a child well as he or she grows.<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Do you have any gardening favorites you'd like to share?</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>-Marika</b></span>The Odyssey Bookshophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02069437996395186455noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-9365153772411826592012-04-25T18:45:00.002-04:002012-04-25T18:52:11.733-04:00World Book Night: Before and After<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If you're reading this blog post, there's a good chance you've already heard from us, or another bookseller, or another bookish source, about <a href="http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/" target="_blank">World Book Night</a>. Just in case you're new to this bandwagon, here's a short recap: It started in the UK last year as a means of increasing awareness and enthusiasm for literature. This year it hit our American shores and a big ol' committee chose 30 titles with widespread appeal for teens and adults and then printed up a bazillion of them for readers to give away FOR FREE. <br />
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Yes, you read that correctly. <b>Free</b> books to give away to people who do not identify themselves as readers. Some book givers went to non-profits, prisons, or after school programs, while others selected a street corner in their hometown and let the people come to them. It all happened on Monday, 23 April, which happens to be the birthday of Cervantes and the birthday and deathday of Shakespeare!<br />
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On Saturday we hosted a reception for the 25 book givers who selected The Odyssey Bookshop as their distribution center, and we asked the ever-lovely Carlene to cater the reception for us. She pulled out all the stops, creating four different pastries, one of which even dates back to Shakespearean times, and we all enjoyed her warm-weather version of high tea with an iced raspberry zinger lemon tea and sprigs of fresh mint!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dJIMPNLlWE4/T5h-CHSpZFI/AAAAAAAACSU/gqeEETaQmxg/s1600/treats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dJIMPNLlWE4/T5h-CHSpZFI/AAAAAAAACSU/gqeEETaQmxg/s320/treats.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carlene's amazing treats!</td></tr>
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I signed up as a book giver the morning I first heard about World Book Night, and I selected a YA novel called <i>Wintergirls</i> by Laurie Halse Anderson as my title to share with others. Like all of Anderson's books, it's a powerful and sensitively told story that realistically depicts teen situations without ever talking down to them. For my location, I chose <a href="http://www.girlsincholyoke.org/" target="_blank">Girls, Inc</a>.of Holyoke, MA, where my part-time co-worker, Sarah, works as her day job. She and I both signed up to give books away to their teen program, and Odyssey co-owner Joan Grenier also went with me to share one of her favorite books. When we asked for a show of hands for how many of the girls in the room loved reading, only a few went up, but there were lots of squeals of excitement when we actually started distributing the books to the girls. I even overheard a small group of them trying to decide which book they were all going to start that night so that they could read it together. Now <i>that</i> is what World Book Night is all about!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Girls Inc.</td></tr>
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<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-82402050035103053162012-04-17T11:03:00.003-04:002012-04-17T11:03:54.756-04:00Holy Pulitzer, Batman!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yesterday was an important day in American letters. You see, it was the day the Pulitzer Prizes were announced. For everything <i>except</i> fiction, that is. You know, the division that more readers care about than any other. No biggie.<br />
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What's the deal, Pulitzer Committee People? While the official word is that the committee couldn't reach consensus, the rumors started flying right away yesterday that the committee didn't think any book was worthy of the prize. That's not the kind of elitist publicity anybody wants. (And of course, by "anybody" I mean me...and readers & booksellers who agree with me.)<br />
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Seriously, though. What gives? I understand that it's hard to reach consensus when three (and I probably ought not to get started on why there were only three titles short listed) books are so vastly different. But yoo-hoo, Pulitzer Committee People? You're the ones who created the short list to begin with. The decision was only as difficult as you made it for yourselves. I imagine there's also a lot of pressure to make the "right" decision as literary tastemakers, establishing one book above all others as being worthy of our posterity.<br />
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Which, in my view, is all the more reason to actually make a decision. Nobody else in the real world can get by with just withholding the award when the decision-making process is too preciously difficult. Why can they?<br />
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I don't happen to agree with the three finalists that the committee picked, but that's neither here nor there. I would have preferred to see Teju Cole's <i>Open City</i> win this prize, as to my mind, it was the finest book "dealing with American life" published last year.<br />
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What about you? What are your thoughts on the omission this year for the fiction prize? What do you wish would have won?<br />
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<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-47418460939871773422012-04-03T12:26:00.001-04:002012-04-03T12:26:41.923-04:00Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So, this is Tuesday, which means Day-of-Awesome-Book-Releases, and today I want to mention a book that both Marika and I have read. It's called <i>Grave Mercy</i>, written by Robin LaFevers, which is the first book in the <i>His Fair Assassin</i> series. Marika was lucky enough to get a manuscript direct from the publisher, while I had to content myself with a plain bound galley given away at the New England Independent Booksellers Association last fall. No matter, because the tagline is so groovy that I knew that I would have to read it right away: <i>Why be the sheep when you can be the wolf?</i> Why, indeed.<br />
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It's a rollicking good read, set in 15th century Brittany. Ismae, marked from birth as the devil's child, passes from the hands of an abusive father to those of an abusive husband without so much as a by-your-leave, but a mysterious person comes to her rescue that eventually leads to convent of St. Mortain, one of the old gods of yore. There Ismae learns the dark arts and becomes assassin and handmaiden to Death himself. Yeah, that's right. Did I mention the part where I said it was rollicking? And outrageously fun? And sinfully distracting from any real world problems you might be experiencing?<br />
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But you know the best part? <a href="http://readingofquality.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Marika</a> read the manuscript so early and liked the book so much that her blurb is featured on the back of the dust jacket! She says, "A romance full of intrigue, poison, and ultimately finding one's way, <i>His Fair Assassin</i> will be a trilogy readers of all ages will gobble up."<br />
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Because the Odyssey loves this book so much the publisher, Houghton Mifflin, has given us t-shirts and buttons to give away to everybody who purchases a copy of <i>Grave Mercy</i>, while supplies last. The red tees and the white buttons both feature the tagline, <i>Why be the sheep when you can be the wolf</i>?<br />
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<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-25603195068152545452012-03-09T10:00:00.000-05:002012-03-09T11:07:41.526-05:00Not Your Father's Nonfiction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Here are a pair of brand-new nonfiction books that I've read recently and recommend; I mostly read fiction, and when I do delve into the nonfiction world it's usually of the narrative variety, but these two are outside my usual reading realm. That being said, they were both absolutely fascinating!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: black; font-variant: small-caps;">The Lifespan of a Fact</span></b></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"> by John D’Agata and Jim
Fingal. This book is endlessly
fascinating! I had no idea until I read <i>The Lifespan of a Fact </i>exactly
what happens behind the scenes of any responsibly published nonfiction
piece. This book was born out of an article by John D'Agata that had a few too many factual inaccuracies to get published by mainstream periodicals. Enter <i>Believer</i> magazine, who was willing to publish the article as long as they could determine where facts left off and fiction began. They put their staff fact checker Jim Fingal on the job, and some years later, the article was finally published. Now Norton has published this wonderful behind-the-scenes book, with D'Agata's article intact, printed in black, and surrounded by the fact checking correspondence, much of which is printed in maroon. It’s clear to me after reading this book that the unnamed fact checkers are
the unsung heroes of the publishing world, no matter where we draw the line
between journalism and creative nonfiction, and I’ll never take them for
granted again. Take a look at this book that is both intriguing to read and a beauty to behold. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: black; font-variant: small-caps;">The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us
Human</span></b></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"> by
Jonathan Gottschall. I was surprised upon picking up this book to see how
much our lives are defined by story: there are the expected books of course,
but also tv, movies, jokes, commercials, lies, gathering ‘round the water
cooler, and even sports events; really, the list goes on. Gottschall
delves into the fascinating evolutionary, cultural, biological, and even
neurological reasons why our species is defined by our storytelling, both
communal and individual. This is by far the most compelling non-narrative
nonfiction I’ve read in simply ages, and what’s more, it should be required reading
for every single reader and writer out there. This book will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in a few short weeks, but it's available for pre-order now through our <a href="http://www.odysseybks,com/" target="_blank">website</a> or by calling the store. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: small;">~<a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><b>Emily</b></a></span></div>
</div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3762638636774570304.post-58357760081655983332012-03-06T13:34:00.000-05:002012-03-06T13:34:06.650-05:00Terrific Tuesday: Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We've been madly busy updating our new website and selling Rachel Maddow tickets (hurry--they're almost sold out!), but I couldn't let one of my favorite spring books go unremarked on the blog today.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Wow. Amazing. Stupendous. Beautiful. Heartbreaking. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Okay, is that enough of a review for debut novel <i>The Song of Achilles</i>, by classics scholar Madeline Miller? Because I feel that anything else I say about it won't do it justice. It's astonishing. The writing is marvelous. The characters, like Athena from her father's head, leap fully-formed from their pages. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">All right, I'll at least <i>try</i> to tell you what this book is all about. In Miller's words, from the back of the advance reading copy I read: "I had always been especially moved by Achilles, and his desperate grief over the loss of his companion Patroclus. But who was Patroclus? I searched the ancient texts for every mention of his name and discovered an amazing man: exile and outcast, loyal and self-sacrificing, compassionate in a world where compassion was in short supply. I had not thought <i>The Iliad</i> had a love story; I was wrong."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><i>Song of Achilles</i>, then, is the story of Achilles and Patroclus, narrated by the latter. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">It's a love story and a war story, and these twin narratives weave in and around each other to the point that they're impossible to separate. This is like no book I've read before! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">I never would have thought that there was any book that could both keep me up all hours to finish it AND send me straight to the bookstore to purchase a copy of <i>The Iliad</i> to read back-to-back with it. This book is beautifully imagined and written. Clearly the Greek classics are NOT dead, not with Madeline Miller at the helm. Brava! </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">On a completely random sidenote: the character of Odysseus is *exactly* like what Remus Lupin would have been like, had he been sorted into Slytherin. So yes, Odysseus is the amalgamation of my favorite two DADA teachers!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">I raved about this book to my husband, which piqued his interest. Then I <s>forced</s> suggested that he read it on vacation last week. He did and he was a bloody mess about it. The story engaged him to the point that he was distant over dinner conversation. And forget about talking to him in the wake of the conclusion--he was a weeping shell of a man* over breakfast that morning! I trust I don't really give anything away when I remind readers that Greek stories are usually tragic or comic, and that this one ain't comic, and we know what happens in tragedies. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Now I'm off to go read Homer and his many epithets.... </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Madeline Miller will be at the Odyssey on Wednesday, March 21, at 7:00pm. We hope to see you there!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />*not that there's anything wrong with being a weeping shell of a man, or the fact that it was pretty much hard to differentiate that morning from any other day, given that weeping is actually a distinguishing feature of my gentle-souled DH. Hey--that's not a bad epithet, come to think of it!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://asthecrowefliesandreads.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">~Emily</a></span></div>
</div>As the Crowe Flies and Readshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12110661562901480120noreply@blogger.com0