Books

Books I’ve read recently…..

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett {I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I read the jacket of a book by Ann Patchett, my first inclination is to not read the book.  The setting and plot never sound appealing to me.  But her books are a favorite of my book club, so I keep cracking them open, thinking I am not going to like them.  That is never the case! Quite the opposite, really; I always get lost in her characters and in the journey she beckons me to accompany them on. I don’t know why I continue to resist and then continue to be surprised when I find I can’t put her books down. It’s a crazy cycle!  I unexpectedly loved Bel Canto, Run, and then this one. She is one of the rare authors I read while simultaneously tending to my children, literally walking around my house with my nose in a book!  This particular novel is about a pharmacologist who is sent to the remote Amazon to find out more details on the recent, mysterious death there of her lab partner. She gets attached to the village, the tribe, and her old mentor, who is conducting some pretty zany research.  Patchett’s real talent is for slowly and subtly weaving in detailed descriptions of everything.  She doesn’t lay it all out at once, but keeps you glued to the pages for more. She is, thankfully, very un-Steinbeck that way. If you are looking to escape, as I was when I read this during our power outage after our crazy snowstorm, this novel will surely take you far, far away.}

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins {I find it fitting that I am writing this while on a train with moonlight gliding in through my window.  As the car gently sways on the track beneath me, I can sort of imagine Katniss Everdeen on her Victory Tour through the districts after the Hunger Games.  Thankfully, the only similarity is that I am riding a train. I finished the series last night, at long last.  I really think they are a very smart collection of books. They reach a wide audience because of the themes: sacrifice, pride, survival, love, friendship, family, power, manipulation, nature…a list of things that most can find more than one with which to connect.  I love when an author creates a new civilization, with new rules, new borders. I especially love that this particular setting is sort of a post-apocalyptic North America. It’s unsettling because it forces the reader to put the book aside and have in mind that one day things may not be the way we have always known them to be.  I reminds me that rarely do we ponder the future-future.  My strong desire to see what would become of Panem, along with my desire for Katniss to end up with Peeta, kept me turning pages. Crazy twists. Sickening twists.  I just love being on my toes with a novel!  My friend Wendy recently sent me an article about how kids read such dark, heavy material now, and whether this was a point of concern.  I think it’s the world we live in.  Kids are watching “Survivor” every week with their parents. We get off on the discomfort of watching another’s adrenaline rise, wondering what they will do.  So kids these days – everyone, really – can easily relate to the psychology behind the people of this fictional Panem, tuned in to these horrific reality shows where they go a step past “Survivor” and battle til the death. I think Suzanne Collins makes a very timely, cautionary parallel between our reality tv and their Hunger Games, and between our pillaging of the earth and their living in that wasteland. If you haven’t caved yet and read this series….it’s time.}

Alphabet Weekends: Love on the Road from A to Z by Elizabeth Noble {Ahh.  LOL on nearly every page!  If you love some Brit-Lit, this is for you.  It was sweet, funny, silly, and romantic.  It was also kind of sad at times.  It took me about 50 pages to really get into it (so not as good as those by Sophie Kinsella), but once I did, I was hooked.  It’s about a 30-something girl whose big relationship with a dirtbag has ended, and her best male friend from growing up proposes that he is the one for her.  To convince her and to help her forget the ex, he suggests they spend the next 26 weekends together, doing things according to the letters of the alphabet in order to really get to know one another as adults. He picks the activity one weekend, she picks the next, etc., and they surprise each other.  Some examples were “kids,” “Paris,” “absailing” (new word for me!), “hotel,” you get the picture.  The story also zeros in on her parents’ relationship and his brothers’ relationship, but I’m still not too sure how effective that was.  Anyway, it was a fun, fun, fun light read!}

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards (who wrote The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, if that helps!) {I was hooked on this book from the first page.  Don’t you love it when that sort of magic happens?  It tantalized me with a “that-was-the-night-Haley’s Comet-came-and-things-changed-forever” sort of gist.  The story takes place in the finger lakes region of New York in a fictional town called “Lake of Dreams” in present day.  It’s about a young woman who comes home to said-town for a visit after years in Asia working as a hydrologist and running from her father’s mysterious and sudden death just before she left for college.  Her family has a funny trait that sometimes gets passed down, which is the ability to pick locks.  Kind of a reach, but entertaining!  Anyway, she finds that a window seat in the house she grew up in, that’s been in her family for years, has a lock and a compartment she’d never noticed.  Inside, she finds letters and papers dating back to suffragette times and a family member she’d never learned about. This all leads her on a quest through local churches, historical societies, and museums as the shroud is lifted and a family secret is exposed.  I loved it! A lot was told through letters, allowing the reader insight into the long-dead characters through their voices.  I learned so much about the suffragist movement and am now appalled that we don’t learn more about it in our history classes.  The way those brave women were treated and shunned by their families and communities is just inexcusable. The one flaw, I’d say, was that the pacing was just a tad slow for my eagerness, and I did find myself skipping ahead at points.  A bad habit!  This was a really satisfying read and I totally recommend it!}

Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult {It took me about half of the book before I really was invested, I must admit.  This book wasn’t written with quite the same sophistication as Picoult’s more recent novels (it was published in 1993), but it still pulls you along through someone’s gut-wrenching “bad thing” in life.  This time, it’s about a woman who marries young, was abandoned by her mother at the age of five, and can’t seem to see that she is so much more than those two facts. She loses herself in her marriage and leaves when her son is just 3 months old.  The story follows both her journey and her husband’s.  Picoult, as her readers know, has a bit of a formula to her writing, and it is certainly present here.  You know that it will kind of work out, but it won’t be a solid happy ending.  You know that something really awful will happen to tie it all up at the end.  And all that is present.  I, for one, struggled a lot with this novel because her descriptions of the first months of motherhood were just a little too close to home.  Clearly, she knew what she was writing about!}

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins {I will gladly shout to the world, “I am a fan of The Hunger Games!” I loved the first book.  It was such a crazy idea of a futuristic society that Collins thought up, and the Games were the icing on the cake.  Though I am only 2/3 through the series, I can say I am hooked.  As in Harry-Potter-hooked.  I love the smidge of teenage angst the main character, Katniss, feels.  I love her fellow tribute in the Games, Peeta.  I love how it is a true page-turner, escapist type of book.  And I love that the series is being turned into films.  This book spanned a much greater time period than the first, and it really skipped over something on which I thought more time would be spent, but Collins again succeeds in painting a vibrant picture of a world out of control and a country on the brink of revolution, just looking for a leader. There were so many twists in the latter half.  Mmm.  Delicious. No wonder all my students can’t get enough!}

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford {This was such a sweet, eye-opening story.  To me, it felt a bit more in the waters of young adult literature, as it was a coming-of-age story without too many complexities.  I should note that the main characters are 13. It has a “Wonder Years” feel to it, but with a greater sense of urgency. It was just a lovely read.  I didn’t feel rushed – as evidenced by the fact that it was a book club pick from my dear friend Chris, and I wasn’t finished by book club…again! It is the story of Henry, a Chinese-American, and Keiko, a Japanese American, and their doomed puppy love (anyone ever experience a first love that wasn’t doomed?).  It is set in Seattle’s International District during World War Two.  Henry’s father hates the Japanese, but Henry, on the other hand, sees things through the eyes of love.  When Keiko’s family goes to two internment camps – first at the site of the Puyallup Fairgrounds, then to Idaho – Henry risks everything to follow his heart.    The story is told from the past and also from the present, with the two time periods meeting near the end.  The grown Henry has a cloud over his head for much of his adult life, until he starts opening up to his son, telling him, “…sometimes in life there are no second chances.   You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.” I loved the heart-breaking practicality of that statement. I also loved that this story took place a stone’s throw away from where I live.  I learned so much about the history of downtown Seattle.  Sadly, I also got quite an education on the Japanese Internment in our state. I say “sadly” because I never even knew about this part of American history until I saw “Snow Falling on Cedars” years ago.  Can you believe it?  I graduated from high school in the 1990′s, and it still wasn’t part of Washington State History class.  In college, again, nada.  No mention of it.  That is an abomination if ever there was one.  I would bet I’m not alone in this, though.  I will absolutely view the Puyallup Fair through new eyes when I take my family this fall.}

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels – A Love Story by Ree Drummond {My, my.  I laughed so hard at this book that I nearly wet myself!  It was a total page turner, like it is when you’re reading a good, juicy letter from a girlfriend.  I love The Pioneer Woman, or P-Dub, as she calls herself. I read her blog daily, and she writes with such wonderful voice that I just am dying to be her new best friend.  While her website is about just about everything in her life – life on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, homeschooling her 4 kids, her outfits, her hair, her photography, her dog, her cooking….the list is long!- the book focuses on how she met her husband.  She was a mid-twenties girl who had just left LA and moved back home to Oklahoma.  He was a rancher who lived twenty miles from a grocery store.  They met in a bar.  He took four months to call her.  She became a woman who never thought twice about cowboys to one who couldn’t forget his Wrangler-wearing behind.  The story is about a life that was fixin’ to zig, but instead…zagged.  Don’t most of us know the feeling?  I mean, I was addicted to GAP-clad young men, and then I married a man mostly on the hippie side of life from The Evergreen State College, you know? Life offers us interesting choices! She describes taking cows’ temperatures and her surprise honeymoon pregnancy.  It’s all relatable and genuine, which I love!  It left me wanting to visit her on the ranch, but, until I win one of her free trips there, I will have to go buy her cookbook and her children’s book next!  Totally recommend.  As Ree says, “Like, totally.”}

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte {Yes, it is about 500 pages long.  Yes, it’s pretty old.  Yes, it’s a “classic” novel.  Yes, most of you were required to read it at some point in your schooling and likely pretended that you did, but really you read the Cliff’s Notes.  Well, in your face!, because I read the entire damn thing.  I use “damn” endearingly here, fyi.  This was the unabridged version, and I really loved every page.  What?!  Seriously.  Like, totally.  I mean, I say to this novel, “You had me at hello.”  This sums it up right here, folks: I would be dead tired and it would be time to turn out the light and I would have just finished a chapter….but, instead of closing the book after inserting my Marilyn Monroe bookmark…I’d start reading ahead.  I just couldn’t wait to find out what she would do next.  Okay, I was also awaiting the juicy parts with Mr. Rochester.  Whatever.  I would love to know how I made it through my entire education as an English-head with no one ever assigning this book to moi! Part of my Mother’s Day gift was getting to sit alone in my big leather chair while the chaos of two little girls romping around with their daddy swirled around me, yet I was oblivious as I finished reading the last 100 pages.  Ahhh…what a feeling of accomplishment.  Plus, now I know what the heck everyone is talking about when they make references to the book or the main character, and, as a high school English teacher by morning, that means a lot.}

Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses by Seattle native Claire Dederer {FAAAAHHHHBULOUS!  I totally loved this book. It was a book club pick, and when my friend Carie suggested it, I was skeptical, I admit.  I wondered how a memoir linking one’s life to some yoga poses would entertain me or connect to my life (not a yogi), but it totally did…and it really wasn’t all about yoga!  For me, I got a lot about motherhood out of it.  And I can so relate to that!  It also is about “moms who leave,” to an extent.  I’ve seen that, too, and this really offered me a lot of insight into the thinking that goes on behind those kinds of decisions and, dare I say?, some compassion toward these women who just can’t take it anymore.  I totally recommend this.  And if you are lucky and live nearby, she’s doing book signings at libraries and bookstores right now! I haven’t done this in a while, but I actually was moved to dog-ear my pal’s copy because I just really dug a few key passages: When I needed information, I went to the source: novels.  That’s where they keep the feelings. {that’s what I’ve been trying to say for years!} and this one: Being with a three-year-old is like constantly being in the middle of a very bad breakup.  Irrational tirades and operatic flights of rage are tempered with appeasing manipulation. {uh, check! yes!} and on the subject of the moms who do things like have an affair they really don’t necessarily want to have in order to get out of their marriages and find themselves: When the first thing no longer works, you have to get away from it somehow.  You need something to set you free.  And everyone knows that in order to leave a marriage, in order to change a family, you need a disaster.  Not the kind of disaster that just falls from nowhere onto your head, like a cartoon Acme anvil.  Not a huge disaster, maybe more of a mini-disaster.  The kind of disaster you have to build with your own two hands.  (Like you have to do everything else in this goddamn family.) You have to blow up the palace where you’re the queen. {Heavy stuff.} And, on a more light-hearted note, I loved this simile saying the vanilla scent of a ponderosa pine is as sweetly sexy as a straight-A student at the prom.  {Guess who was a straight-A student?  That’s why I like that one!}. And so a big thank you goes out to my buddy Carie for choosing a book club selection that I honestly loved through and through.}

How to Sew A Button…and Other Nifty Things your Grandmother Knew by Erin Bried (this seemed like it was meant for a girl just starting out, not a thirtysomething with a family like myself.  However…you know what I took away from it?  I was not sewing on buttons correctly, all these years!!  So I guess the title held true for me, but the rest…meh.  But I would’ve loved it if I were a decade younger.)

Divining Womenby Kaye Gibbons (the 3rd book of hers I’ve read.  I love them!  They are very Southern.)