Three Mini Book Reviews

Frances & Bernard by Carlene Bauer. Has a letter ever changed your 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 84 Charing Cross Road, or if you appreciate the bittersweet aspects of life, give this one a spin. 

The Mothers 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.

The Dinner 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 English-speaking audiences. 

~Emily

Book Review: A Tale for the TIme Being by Ruth Ozeki

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 not 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, A Tale for the Time Being. 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."

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:

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.

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.

Nao has become one of my favorite narrators in literature.  She is very much in the vein of Midori from Haruki Murakami's novel, Norwegian Wood, 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.

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.

With the character of Ruth, Ozeki starts to break down fiction's fourth wall. 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, 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.

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.

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":

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.

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).

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).

And this bit about Nao's time living with Jiko at the temple:

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.

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).

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:

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.  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. 

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 First Editions Club.

~Emily

Book Review: After Visiting Friends by Michael Haines

(It's not your eyes--the photo on the cover is intentionally blurry)

Another friend in bookselling recently made a comment on her blog 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 Born Standing Up being an exception to any rule. That man is a genius.).

So when I first saw the bound galley of Michael Hainey's After Seeing Friends, 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 & 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 then 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).

Naturally, After Seeing Friends 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."

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.

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.

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?

If you are interested in the nature of memory and how it intertwines with history, do yourself a favor and read this book. 

Some of the passages I enjoyed:

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 ."

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."

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!' "

"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."

~Emily

Book Review: You Before Me by Jojo Moyes

Jojo Moyes' new novel Me Before You 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.

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.

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?

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.

Book Review: Home Is a Roof Over a Pig

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.  Home is a Roof Over a Pig 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 and Chinese identities.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, or perhaps especially, if you do not agree with it.

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.

~Emily

Cookbook: Sweet & Easy Vegan

Chronicle Books has a great blog (check it out if you haven't). I loved their post on Sweet & Easy Vegan and tried two recipes from the book, both breakfast cookies.

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!).

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.

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. 

-Marika

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores

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 This Is Not the Six Word Novel blog. She's a poet, writer and antiquarian bookseller in the UK, and earlier this year she published a book called Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. 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.

 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 here if you're interested). Here's the more interesting of the two they included:

     Customer: Do you sell swimming goggles?
     Me: No, I'm afraid we do not.
     Customer: And you call yourself a full service bookstore?
     Me: ...

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.

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:

    Customer: Yes, hello, do you sell drumsticks?
    Me: Umm...do you mean the kind you eat or the kind you play drums with?
    Customer: The kind you play drums with.  Does that mean you sell them?
    Me: No, actually we don't carry either one, but I was curious which variety you thought a bookstore might sell.  Try the music shop just up the road.

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.

~Emily

The Odyssey on the Air: Books, Books, Books on WAMC.org

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.

Emily represented the Odyssey this Tuesday to talk about her favorite fiction books:

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller: Move over, Cormac McCarthy—there’s a new post-apocalyptic gig in town!  In this rugged country,  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.  The language in this novel is riveting, and the innovative style of the first person narration is carried off amazingly well.  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.  Dark, poetic, and deeply beautiful. I can’t recommend this one enough. 
(click here 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!

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry 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 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, or The Tower, the Zoo, or the Tortoise. 
(click here to read Emily's full review) 

Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World 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 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. 
(click here to read Emily's full review)

The Light Between Oceans 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. 
(click here to read Emily's full review)

Book Review: Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal

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.

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.

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.

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.

~Emily

Book Review: The Dogs Stars by Peter Heller

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 The Dog Stars.

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 any year.

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 don't know is that it is also a beautiful one.

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 Dog Stars, but it's the prose itself that sets this book apart: strong, experimental, truncated, but with a stream-of-consciousness aspect to it.

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.

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?

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.

Believe me when I say this book is a helluva read.

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?

"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)."

"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)."

"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.

You and me in another life I tell him....

He's getting old. I don't count the years. I don't multiply by seven.

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)."

Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is a selection for the Odyssey Bookshop's signed First Editions Club.  He'll be reading at our store on Friday, September 28, and we couldn't be more excited!

~Emily

Chris Bohjalian's The Sandcastle Girls

While the emotional content of this book is trademark Bohjalian, the writer takes on a new depth and historical perspective in Sandcastle Girls that is not usually present in his more formulaic novels. Unsurprising, since this novel is the first that delves into his own history.

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. 

(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.)

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.

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.

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:

"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.
   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)."

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?

Chris was at the Odyssey last night to do a reading and presentation from The Sandcastle Girls, 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!

~Emily

Book Review: The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

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, in situ. What could possibly go awry?

This book started off with a bang: think Downton Abbey 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 Clue, the ones who happen upon the great house seeking shelter from the dark & stormy night. Then things take a decidedly strange turn, and (spoiler alert--highlight the next line with your cursor to make it easily readable)   lo, it turns out that my instincts that screamed ZOMBIE! were not entirely off.  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 things for another reader. 

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.

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:

'Oh, I see. A scientist." This last was said in tones of dreary condemnation.
'With red hair.'
'Lord, yes. And a squint.'
'That's the fellow -- spectacles.'
'Hardly his fault.'
'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.'

Indeed!

~Emily

An amazing read: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, and while I can see that to a certain degree, I think the more appropriate comp is The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise, 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.

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.

"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."

"He wished the man would honor the true meanings of words, instead of using them as ammunition."

"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."

~Emily

Book Review: Chris Cleave's Gold

Do you love Little Bee?  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. Gold 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: 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 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!

Here are some of the passages I marked:

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."

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."

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."

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]..."

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 Gold, followed by a booksigning.  For full details, please click here.

~Emily

Book Review: Beautiful Ruins

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 First Editions Club. 

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, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is much better than Calgon. 

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 loathe am not a fan of using multiple narrators to tell a story; it's done entirely too often and rarely 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 (Donner! 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.

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 perfect summer read.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

Weren't movies his generation's faith anyway--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)?

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).

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 isn't 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).

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 Beautiful Ruins.   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.

~Emily

Book Review: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Book Summary: Told over the course of a single day--specifically Thanksgiving Day at Texas Stadium, as the Dallas Cowboys take the field--Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk 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.

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 important 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.) 

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.

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 really not about oil, really not about protecting our interests, and really not about freeing a people from their dictator's rule, then it's really not 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.

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 Catch-22 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:

"So they lost Shroom and Lake, only two 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 randomness 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)."

"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)."

I love this moment between Billy and his sister Kathryn, re: their father:

" 'He's an asshole,' Kathryn said. 

To which Billy: 'You just now figured that out?' 

'Shut up. What I mean is he likes being an asshole, he enjoys it. Some people you get the feeling that can't help it? But he works at it. He's what you'd call a proactive asshole' (75)."

Billy with his nephew on leave:

"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 the sanctity of life? 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 compartmentalize, as they said, or even better not to mentalize at all (82-83)."

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)."

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 The New York Times earlier this week.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is the Odyssey Bookshop's May selection for its First Editions Club. Ben Fountain will be reading at the store tonight, May 11, at 7:00 pm. 

~Emily

Book Review: Comeback Love

I just love the publication story of  Comeback Love by Peter Golden.  I was talking with John Muse, my sales rep from Simon & Schuster a couple of weeks ago about this book, which he "discovered" as a self-published book from the Book House 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.

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.

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.

This would make a good book club discussion book, particularly if the readers are closer in age to the older Gordon and Glenna.

~Emily

Picture books starring dogs

We'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:




Lucy Rescued by Harriet Ziefert illustrated by Barroux






Odd Dog by Claudia Boldt




Ladybug Girl and Bingo by David Soman and Jacky Davis (there's also an adorable Bingo plush!)


















Lucky and Squash by Jeanne Birdsall, illustrated by Jane Dyer
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!












Zorro Gets and Outfit by Carter Goodrich
Nieves and I loved the first book starring Zorro and Mister Bud. Their antics are hysterical- especially when Zorro gets a superhero costume!

Silly Doggy by Adam Stower

This book isn't quite about a dog...but the protagonist certainly thinks the pet she's found is a dog!