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: 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

Kids Gardening Books

It'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.

For the very little ones:
Counting in the Garden written by Emily Hruby, illustrated by Patrick Hruby
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.


In the Garden written by Elizabeth Spurr, illustrated by Manelle Oliphant
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.


A little classic: 
The Carrot Seed written by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Crockett Johnson
A little boy plants a seed. He waters and weeds and waits. Everyone tells him that nothing will grow, but the boy knows better...











For slightly older children:
Our School Garden written by Rick Swann, illustrated by Christy Hale
Poems and interesting facts all centered around a school garden.

Isabella's Garden written by Glenda Millard, illustrated by Rebecca Cool
A remixed "This is the House the Jack Built" with bright illustrations.

Plant a Little Seed
by Bonnie Christensen










Marika's favorite:
Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and Food Webs in Our Backyard written by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeild, illustrated by Priscilla Lamont
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.


Do you have any gardening favorites you'd like to share?
-Marika

Not Your Father's Nonfiction

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!

The Lifespan of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal.  This book is endlessly fascinating!  I had no idea until I read The Lifespan of a Fact 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 Believer 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. 

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human 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 website or by calling the store. 

~Emily

Situations Matter

A few months ago I had picked up an advance reader's copy of Situations Matter by Sam Sommers, meant to write a blog post about it and then got entirely too busy. Now that it's been published and is in the store, I've remembered how long I've been meaning to write about it and made some time to finally get it done.

The author, Sam Sommers, is a psychology professor at Tufts who specializes in examining how situations change us and our decision making. He argues that many of our assumptions about human nature are wrong, and can be explained by a closer look at the situations around various actions. Whether we're aware of it or not, all sorts of things can change how we act, from standing in a crowd to being the only person of your ethnic background in the room.

The chapter examining our assumptions about innate gender differences is fascinating, especially when he takes on the controversial statements made by former Harvard president Larry Summers on math and science ability in women. The way researchers have been able to erase or exacerbate the "gender gap" in math just by changing the circumstances of the test made sure I will never look at claims of innate ability in any subject the same way again.

I think this book does a great job of explaining the power of context, which goes a long way to assist us in our understanding of ourselves and others. While not a self-help book, there are many things in this book that can help you use knowledge of situations for your own benefit. For example, I'm in a band that plays at various places throughout Western and Central Massachusetts, and some crowds just aren't into the music as much as they are their beverages. After reading about the man who makes a living pretending to be a normal fan cheering like crazy at sporting events, I make sure to have a few friends in the audience that will dance, sing along, and help get the party going. The tip jar definitely shows the difference!

Dreaming of a Better World

I thought that on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day it was appropriate for me to blog about one of the most exciting books I've read recently, Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America. This book is a collection of writings by a whole lot of people who have done some amazing things, and have great ideas on how to improve the world we all live in. (Full disclosure time: I also work at National Priorities Project. NPP was founded by Greg Speeter, who wrote one of the chapters, so I am 1/62nd biased. I won't review his chapter but I will say I think it's great!)

I think it's pretty safe to say that most people have concerns about the way we are living. If you've ever found yourself wondering if living in a democracy should be about more than voting and shopping, or what can be done to make sure all children get equal educational opportunities, read this book. The chapters cover such a wide range of topics that everyone is sure to find something they are passionate within these pages. The best feature of this book is that almost all of the chapters not only inform about widespread problems, but offer suggestions of things all of us can do about them.

Some of these tips can have staggering benefits. For example, switching just the five most used lightbulbs in your home with compact fluorescent bulbs can save you about $90 a year, and 662 pounds of coal worth of energy. Changing to independent news sources may not have that same quantifiable dollar figure, but will certainly help you get a different perspective on the world. I thought that "Key Steps for a Healthy Nation" was one of the most memorable segments of the book, with the statistic that 40% of premature deaths in the United States are due to personal behavior patterns. However, on the very next page it details the four healthy habits that can cut risk of diabetes by 93%, heart attack by 81%, and stroke by 50%.

While you could sit down and read it in one go, I think it's set up perfectly to keep handy for reading in small increments over a long period of time. Keep this book on hand for all those nights where you've got 15 minutes before dinner comes out of the oven. Instead of checking your email or Facebook again, flip to a new chapter and get ready to be inspired! 

When I saw this book for the first time, it reminded me of one of favorite textbooks from college, which was a collection of essays about environmental issues. However, the interior could not be more different. Instead of a bunch of essays with the occasional black and white chart of rising temperatures, this book is colorful, appealing, and beautifully designed from cover to cover. I've had a great time reading this book, and I hope you enjoy it too! -Sheila

I'll give you such a pinch!

The last book I read was Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It, by Don Peck. Like most things being written about the current state of the economy, it's a bit depressing, but fascinating and important. The book opens up with a look back at other economic downturns in American history. I enjoyed the fact that when trying to put the Great Recession into a historical context Peck spent time not only on the Great Depression, but also on the Panic of 1893 and the stagflation of the 1970's. (I tend to think we could stand to see more comparisons to 1893 in the press, I would've bought this book out if only for that section!)

Since my other job is at a federal budget research group, I find myself surrounded with statistics detailing exactly how bad our economy is on a daily basis. While the statistics Peck points out are terrifying, I was more interested in the stuff I don't see every day, which was the psychological effects of recession and unemployment. Taking a look at what recession does to people's values explains a lot about some trends we see in politics today, with people more interested in immigration issues and less willing to have government money go to programs that help the poor. In a way it's almost comforting to step back and think about this trend of people becoming more self-interested as part of the normal life cycle of a recession.

The other part of the book I found fascinating was when he took a look at what effect the recession has had (and will have) on different age groups. I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I had a bit of a rude awakening when reading the section on my age group, those just out of college. I was reading about the ways the recession has changed the way "millennials" think, and of course believing that the downturn hadn't significantly changed my thoughts on my future career. Of course I realized that I was in deep denial and now value job security over my past plans of moving to another city and making a brand new start. I'm not sure if you'll have the same sort of revelation while reading Pinched, but it definitely prompted some soul-searching on my end.

It's not too long, so it doesn't go as far into depth as some subjects deserve, but the book probably would be unbearably long if it did. If you're looking for more about how exactly the Great Recession came to be, I would suggest 13 Bankers. Anyways, if you're looking for a nice overview of our economic situation, this is it. Enjoy!

-Sheila

Book Review: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

May I confess something?  I only picked this book up last month for three reasons: (1) it was published by Algonquin, one of my favorite publishing houses, and (2) it looked short enough for me to read while on the train to BEA, thus bumping my monthly reading up by one notch, and (3) it's non fiction, and I like to make sure I read at least one nonfiction book each month.  So yeah, basically I was reading this book to make my stats look better.  I'm a little bit ashamed because it was *really* good, and despite all of my cunning, I did not finish it in the month of May, so it's going towards my June stats anyway.  Since June is the month I take my summer vacation, it's the last month in the year in which my reading stats need any boosting whatsoever.  So I reckon it just serves me right.

Anyway, this delightful bit of nonfiction by Elisabeth Tova Bailey was far more interesting than I bargained for.  On a vacation in Italy, the author encounters a virulent strain of influenza that wreaks havoc on her body and her immune system.  Very soon after returning home she becomes bedridden, then hospitalized.  Somehow her mitochondria become compromised (I'm sure I'm not the only reader who envisioned Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door at this point) and she needs to move out of her farmhouse and into a studio apartment where she needs extensive daily care, if not quite round-the-clock care.  

It's at this point in her life that a friend brings her a snail she found when rambling in the woods, and against all odds, this snail becomes Bailey's constant companion.  She follows its movements avidly and researches with just as much gusto what the proper care and feeding of a snail might entail.  I was surprised just how engaging this narrative would be--just as surprised, in fact, as I was about how interesting these molluscs, these gastropods (from the Latin for mouth-foot) could be. 

As Bailey learns to deal with her circumscribed life, she observes this single snail, eventually  creating a terrarium for it.  The snail is frequently her only diversion in the long hours of daylight she spends alone, and at night she devotes countless hours to imagining its inner life.  Each chapter is punctuated with excerpts from naturalists like E. O. Wilson, and poets like Elizabeth Bishop, who were all fascinated by the common snail.  Along the way I learned a lot of natural history, such as found on page 87: 

"Three and a half billion years ago, when life on earth began, the snail and I shared a common ancestor, some kind of simple worm that over time evolved into two animal groups.  The protostomes, which in the embryotic stage develop a mouth first and then an anus, branched off into gastropods...And the Deuterostomes, which develop the same characteristics, though somewhat embarrassingly in reverse order, anus first and then a mouth, branched off into mammals, including Homo sapiens."

Other interesting facts I gleaned include the new development in colonoscopies, which mimics the movement of the snail to increase the patient's comfort, to develop a  small robot that "can travel snail-like through the mucus-coated intestines of humans."  And did you know that snails have over 2,500 teeth?  (Tell me you didn't know-this was the first fact in the book that completely astonished me!)  Yes, they have 80 or more rows of teeth with 33 teeth per row.  With that many teeth, it's no wonder how Bailey came up with the title of this book!

And yet sometimes the narrative would take a poignant turn.  It's easy to forget that Bailey was an invalid during the course of this book, unable to leave her bed even to walk to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water.  It's a wonder she didn't become more melancholy that she did.  One of her thoughts that rather pierced my heart: 

There is a certain depth of illness that is piercing in its isolation; the only rule of existence is uncertainty, and the only movement is the passage of time.  One cannot bear to live through another loss of function, and sometimes friends and family cannot bear to watch.  An unspoken, unbridgeable divide may widen.  Even if you are still who you were, you cannot actually fully be who you are.  Sometimes the people you know well withdraw, and then even the person you know as yourself begins to change (131).

If that is not a clear reason for despair, I do not know what is, and yet I never got the feeling that Bailey despaired of much.  Her fortitude, derived almost entirely from the snail, according to this narrative, is something to behold.  Clearly there is far more to this book than I initially imagined.   I would encourage anyone with an interest in good, literary narrative non-fiction to take a look at it, too.

NB: The publisher sent me a finished hardcover copy of this book last year when it was published, but I am just now getting around to reading it. As of this writing I do not know when it is slated for a paperback release. 

~Emily Crowe

A fascinating, disturbing read...

Proportionately, I don't read a lot of nonfiction each year. Maybe one work of nonfiction for every 10-15 works of fiction. But boy howdy, every now and again I really hit the jackpot with a book that entertains, educates, and enthalls, and most recently it was with Hal Herzog's forthcoming book from HarperCollins, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat.

Herzog uses this book to explore the ambiguous moral complexities (or would that be complex moral ambiguities?) of the relationships people have with animals. What are we to make of the fact that in 1933, the Nazi party signed into legislation the world's most comprehensive animal protection laws? Why do so many people denounce cockfighting but think nothing of popping back a few fast food chicken nuggets made from hens whose lives are undoubtedly worse than the gamecocks'? How is US Congress able to not recognize certain breeds of mice and rats as animals in the Animal Welfare Act, enacted in 1966 and still in place today? Herzog's book leaves more questions than answers in this book that is endlessly fascinating, describing in surprising detail the ambivalence and ambiguities and complications we feel towards the animals we love, hate, and eat.

He devotes an entire chapter to the "comparative ethics of fighting chickens versus eating them." Herzog argues that fighting cocks live the life of Riley compared to the "Dante-esque living conditions" of the COBB 500, a chicken modified by Tyson Chicken for its disproportionate breast meat. He certainly convinced this reader (with help from Michael Pollan and Eric Schloss) that there are real evils in the mass production (read: torture) of chickens for the fast food industry that far outstrip the evils of cockfighting, and not just because of the sheer numbers. So when he turns the discussion to issues of class and race, it becomes even more thought-provoking: "Why then is it legal for us to kill nine billion broiler chickens every year, but cockfighting can get you hard time in the federal penitentiary?" After all, "factory-farmed chickens are exempt from virtually all federal animal welfare statutes INCLUDING the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958" [emphasis mine]. Cockfighting in the US is mostly the domain of rural working class whites or urban working class people of color, so Herzog suggests that "society is much more likely to criminalize forms of animal abuse that involves minorities and the poor than animal cruelties that affect the wealthy." According to him, over 5,000 horses died at racetracks in the US in the years 2003-2008, and yet polls show that most Americans are not in favor of banning horse racing. He concludes, rather succinctly, "like cockfighting, horse racing represents a confluence of gambling and suffering. But unlike cockfighting, thoroughbreds are the hobby of the rich."

There are dozens of other chapters, each of them fascinating and disturbing by turn, and I'd go so far as to recommend it to almost every category of mature reader I know. As a bookseller, I'm not sure I can think of higher praise.

~Emily Crowe