SmallWorld Reads

The Sunday Salon: My Ever-Growing TBR List (2012 Update)

2012-01-22T12:34:00.002-05:00

In 2011 I added 42 books to my TBR list and marked off 24—exactly the same number as in 2010. I've adjusted my 2011 list for 2012 by marking off those books I read last year.

If you've reviewed any of these books on your blog, feel free to post a comment with the link and I'll add it to my list.
*Indicates books added in 2012

A Country Doctor’s Casebook by R. MacDonald
Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg.
Aprons on a Clothesline by T. DePree
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
~~An Atlas of Impossible Longing~~ by Anuradha Roy (read and reviewed here 1/12)
Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead: The Frank Meeink Story as Told by Jody M. Roy, Ph.D. (reviewed at Musings of a Bookish Kitty)
Barefoot in Baghdad by Manal M. Omar (reviewed at Bookworm's Dinner)
Before the Storm by Diane Chamberlain
Behind the Burqa by Sulima and Hala (reviewed by Semicolon)
Bless Your Heart, Tramp by Celia Rivenbark
Blood Hollow by W. Krueger
Blood of Flowers by A. Amirrezvani
Blood Work by M Connelly
Book of a Thousand Days by S. Hale (reviewed on Semicolon and Maw Books)
Book of Lost Things by J. Connelly
Bootletter’s Daughter by M. Maron
Born on a Blue Day by D. Tammet (reviewed on Sam’s Book Blog)
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Capote
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (Reviewed at Bookworm's Dinner)
Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eye Ward
Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry
Commoner by J.B. Schwarz
Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
The Dawning of the Day: A Jerusalem Tale by Haim Sabato
Dear Enemy by Jack Cavanagh
Death’s Acre by William M. Bass
Departed, The by K. Mackel
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
Dinner with a Perfect Stranger by D. Gregory
Dough: A Memoir by Mort Zachter (reviewed by Lisa at 5 Minutes for Books)
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen (Reviewed at S. Krishna's Books)
Executioner's Song by Mailer
Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad by Waris Darie (reviewed at Maw Books)
Far to Go by Alison Pick (Reviewed by Kristina at The Book Keeper)
Family Nobody Wanted by Doss
Fatal Vision by J. McGinnis
Father, Mother, God: My Journey Out of Christian Science by Lucia Greenhouse
First Wife by Emily Barr (recommended by Fleur Fisher)
Flowers by D. Gilb
Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (reviewed at Redlady's Reading Room)
Fortune Cookie Chronicles by J. Lee
Franklin and Lucy by Joseph Persico
Gentle Rain by Deborah Smith (reviewed by Leah at Good Reads)
Ghost Map by S. Jackson
Ghost Writer, The by J. Harwood
The Girls by Lori Lansens
Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton
God Is the Gospel by J. Piper
Gods and Kings series by Lynn Austin
Hava: The Story of Eve by Tosca Lee (added 1/09; reviewed by My Friend Amy)
Heaven by R. Alcorn
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (reviewed by Gautami at Reading Room)
High House, The by James Stoddard
Hiroshima by John Hershey
Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan C. Bartoletti (reviewed by Natasha at Maw Books)
Hot Zone by R. Preston (reviewed by Semicolon)
How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen (mentioned by The Magic Lasso)
Human Cargo by C. Moorehead
Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan (reviewed at These Words)
I Am Scout by Charles J. Shields (reviewed by Becky)
In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason
Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas
Ishmael by E. Southwark
Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron (reviewed at Rachel Held Evans)
Keeping the House by E. Baker
Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones (reviewed by Bookeywookey)
Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger (reviewed at Thoughts of Joy)
Last Storyteller by D. Noble
Leave it to Claire by T. Bateman
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan (reviewed by Literary Feline)
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (reviewed at Lesa's Book Critiques)
Left To Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza (reviewed at Maw Books and Just a Reading Fool)
Liar’s Diary by P. Francis (reviewed by Semicolon)
Life Among Savages by Shirley Jackson (reviewed at Dwell in Possibility)
Life Is So Good by R. Glaubman
Little Altars Everywhere by R. Wells
Living End by L. Samson
Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison
A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka (reviewed at The Lost Entwife)
Lost Children of Wilder by N. Bernstein
Loving Frank by N. Horan
Mad Girls in Love by M. West
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Man without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
Many Sleepless Nights by Lee Gutkind
Mariner's Compass by E. Fowler
Mercy Falls by WK Krueger
Minding the South by J. Reed
Moloka’I by A. Brennert
Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway (Reviewed at The Bluestocking Society)
Murder in the Name of Honor by Rana Husseini (Reviewed at Reading Through Life)
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (Reviewed by Reading to Know)
Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian
The Ninth Wife by Amy Stolls
Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler
Not without My Daughter by B. Mahmoody
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
~~Only True Genius in the Family~~ by Jennie Nash (read and reviewed here 1/12)
Other Boleyn Girl, The by P Gregory
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
Papua New Guinea: Notes from a Spinning Planet by M. Carlson (reviewed by Clean Reads)
Perfect Example by John Porcellino (reviewed at The Hidden Side of the Leaf)
Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin (reviewed at Reader Buzz)
Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon (reviewed at Missy's Book Nook)
Proof of Heaven by Mary Curran Hackett
Property by Valerie Martin (reviewed by The Magic Lasso)
Quaker Summer by Lisa Samson
Quilter’s Apprentice by J. Chiaverini
Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Refuge on Crescent Hill by Melanie Dobson (Reviewed at Reading to Know)
Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen
Rises the Night by C. Gleason
River Wife, The by James Agee
~~Room~~ by Emma Donoghue (read and reviewed here 1/12)
Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Schwartz (reviewed on Shelf Life)
Rumspringa by Shactman
Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins (reviewed by Just a Reading Fool)
Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore (recommended by Stray Thoughts)
Saving Levi Left to Die by Lisa Bently
Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins (Reviewed by Word Lily)
A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay
Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian (Reviewed at In the Pages)
Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks by Greg Bottoms (Reviewed by Sage)
Seven Loves by Trueblood
She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy (reviewed at Polishing Mud Balls)
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf (reviewed at Maw Books)
Some Girls by Jillian Lauren (reviewed by Book Club Classics)
Song of the Cuckoo Bird by Amulya Malladi
Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan
Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture by Donna Partow
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Stillwater by William Weld
Stoner by John Williams (suggested by JoAnn at Every Day Matters)
The Story of a Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump by Sandra Hempel
Summer Crossing by Truman Capote (reviewed by CaribousMom)
Summerland by M. Cabon
Sweet Potato Queen by J. Browne
Teahouse Fire, The by Ellis Avery
Stones Cry Out by M Szymusiak
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (recommended at Musings)
There Are No Children Here by A. Kotlowitz
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (reviewed at Gautami's Reading Room)
This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li
The Threadbare Heart by Jenny Nash (reviewed at Maw Books)
Three Cups of Tea by G. Mortenson
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres
Time Between by Mary Duenas
To My Senses by A. Weis (reviewed by J. Kaye)
Tomorrow, the River by D. Gray
Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by D. Hari (reviewed by CaribousMom and Maw Books)
Trauma and Ghost Town by P. McGrath
Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera
Uprising by Margaret Haddix (reviewed by Semicolon)
Undress me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman (reviewed by Book Zombie)
Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Well and the Mine, The by Gin Phillips (reviewed by Semicolon)
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
What I Though I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen
What Is What by D. Eggers (reviewed at Maw Books)
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
What Peace There May Be by Susanna Brarlow
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Reviewed at Big A, Little A)
When I Lay My Isaac Down by C. Kent
Wherever you Go by Joan Leegant (reviewed by Bibliophiliac)
Whistling in the Dark by L. Kagen
Who Killed My Daughter by Lois Duncan (Reviewed at Nonfiction Lover)
Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
Winter Seeking by V. Wright
Winter Walk by L. Cox
Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (recommended at Rebecca Reads)
Women of the Silk by G. Tsuriyama
Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs (reviewed by Andi Lit)
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

Book Review: An Atlas of Impossible Longing

2012-01-20T15:32:00.005-05:00

For awhile, I was longing for the end of An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy. Please understand: I began reading it in the car on my way to my uncle's funeral. I read it in bits and pieces in the hotel room and on the way back to Tennessee. I fell asleep, exhausted from the trip, after only reading a page or two each night. And then, midway through, I realized that I needed to re-read the novel I was teaching for British Literature (A Christmas Carol) and quickly read Emma Donoghue's Room, which was due at the library.

So the first half went kind of slow. It probably has much more to do with my state of mind and circumstances than with the book itself. But it took me a long, long time to get into the book. I thought the author's approach was difficult to navigate. I couldn't figure out what was going on and where it was happening. There were lots of characters. Just when I figured out who was who, the next section started. By the final section, I had all the characters figured out, and most of them had died or moved on anyway.

The novel starts in India with the patriarch of the family, who chooses country life to that of the big city, and ends with the story of his granddaughter and the orphan boy with whom she was raised. I loved their stories; the preceding ones, not so much. Roy is a wonderful writer. Her images are full and palpable. The smells and sights of India are beautifully captured. I just couldn't quite connect with the characters in the first two sections. Things happened very slowly and then too quickly. But the third section felt just right.

Other novels set in India —or India and America— that I've reviewed here are:
Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Of the six, Cutting for Stone is my absolute favorite, followed by The Secret Daughter and Unaccustomed Earth (although this collection of stories centers on the struggles of Bengali immigrants and their children in America).

Book Review: Room

2012-01-16T18:47:00.002-05:00

It's the one on everyone's Top 10 lists from 2011: Room by Emma Donoghue. I put it on our list of possibilities for book club for 2012, and I got a unanimous "NO WAY!" from my friends. Who wants to read a book about a kidnapped woman and her son, who are living in an 11X11 room and visited nightly by "Old Nick"?

It sounds horribly creepy, I must admit. But I read it anyway. If everyone is loving this, there must be a reason! So. I could not put the book down. It as absolutely riveting. The story is narrated by Jack, the five-year-old boy who was born in Room. His mother has been a captive for 7 years, since she was kidnapped as a college student. Jack is perfectly happy in Room; it's the only world he has ever known. In fact, he thinks it is the world. But for Ma, it is exactly what it is: a prison.

Ma knows that, for Jack's sake, things have to change. And that's all I will say about the plot.

Was the book disturbing? Absolutely, particularly in the second half. We don't see much of Old Nick, so don't let that part scare you off. But the thought of a woman and her child being captive for 7 years in the midst of a busy neighborhood, in a time in our world when sex trafficking is at an all-time high—that is terrifying.

But I am glad I read it. I think it was good that this was knocked off our book club's list. All of my friends except one would have tossed it out quickly; we tend to be a squeamish bunch. We like happy books, and Room is not one of them. Redeeming, yes; but happy, no.

But if you don't meet Jack and Ma, you're missing on two wonderful, strong, courageous characters and an unforgettable, powerful, yes—positively gripping story.

Book Review: The Only True Genius in the Family

2012-01-13T15:12:00.004-05:00

I love the title of this book because sometimes I feel like my family is filled with geniuses, and I have often wondered, if we were ranked, where I would fall on the scale. Isn't that strange? My fourth brother said that if he were ever to write a book it would be called Between James, which would be about life sandwiched between two geniuses: my father James and my brother James.

This is the basic premise of Jennie Nash's The Only True Genius in the Family: what does it mean to be a genius? Claire has lived under the shadow of her photographer-father's famous genius for her whole life. When he dies, her daughter—who he considered a genius as well— is given the job of taking his photographs and making a retrospective of his life. As the estate is settled, Claire spirals into depression, losing her own creative vision. She is a food photographer who seems to lack the fire of creativity that burn in her father and daughter.

According to her father, genius skips a generation. Claire feels terribly slighted and jealous of her daughter. She yearns to be named a genius, to even see some evidence that her father thought her talented. By talking with various people in his life and searching through his negatives, she eventually comes to terms with her relationship with her family and her daughter and also comes to some self-realization.

Claire sounds a little whiny and self-absorbed from my description, but I really felt for her. As a child she was cast aside by her father, left to be raised by her brokenhearted mom while her dad pursued his art. As a mother, she is again cast aside by her daughter as she seeks her art. And yet Claire feels certain that she, too, has a piece of genius that needs to be recognized. I really enjoyed this book, even though I can't fathom the kind of money that Claire and her family have. They're always flying places and live in a beach house in southern California. But it was a great vacation read.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

2011: The Year in Books (The Sunday Salon)

2011-12-31T08:39:00.008-05:00

In 2011 I read and reviewed 42 books here on SmallWorld Reads, and probably read a total of 10 others (juvenile fiction read aloud to my kids and/or books re-read for British Lit). This is down a few from my previous years. (See my other Best of the Years posts.) I have no excuses, other than that I fall asleep more easily than I used to. And so without further adieu, here are my lists.

Book Review: The Midwife's Confession

2011-12-31T08:31:00.003-05:00

Diane Chamberlain’s The Midwife’s Confession was nearly impossible for me to put down—the perfect kind of book for Christmas vacation. The novel takes the reader on a wild ride of revelations in the lives of three long-time friends. Emerson, Tara, and Noelle have been a tight-knit trio for 20 years and think they know everything about each other. But Noelle’s suicide shocks her two best friends. Turns out Noelle led a secret life, filled with skeletons and betrayals. In their search to discover why Noelle killed herself, Tara and Emerson uncover most—but not all—of Noelle’s secrets.

The story unfolds through the perspectives of several characters both in flashback and in present day: Emerson, Tara, Noelle, and others. Noelle is the least knowable of the characters, veiled to the reader in the same way she is veiled to her friends. We never find out some of Noelle’s story, which did bother me. I like things all neatly tied together in the end. But all the other components come together fairly well, and a good twist or two provide a couple of satisfactory “a-ha” moments. I also appreciated that Chamberlian did not go where I thought she was headed a few times.

This is my second Diane Chamberlain book (I read The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes earlier this year), and I will definitely be reading more. Like CeeCee Wilkes, The Midwife’s Confession is filled with implausible events, but I didn’t care. I liked the stories so well that I allowed myself to believe them.

Book Review: When We Were Orphans

2011-12-30T10:20:00.003-05:00

When We Were Orphans is my third Kazuo Ishiguro novel and definitely my least favorite. The Remains of the Day (my review here) was beautiful both in its simplicity and its complexity, and Never Let Me Go was absolutely fascinating. I felt a little lost, though, in When We Were Orphans. Honestly, I felt like Ishiguro is so much smarter than me that I just wasn’t quite getting it. I say this because I think it is important to give huge credit to Ishiguro for being an amazing writer and to admit that sometimes I just miss things as a reader. Or maybe I don't want to work as hard as I need to in order to fully appreciate such a masterful writer.

Christopher Banks is an orphan. He spent his first nine years in Shanghai, where his father worked for a British trading company in the opium business. When his parents disappear within days of each other, Christopher is sent to England. He never quite fits in at his school, but ultimately he becomes a world-famous detective. He enjoys his fame and is terrible proud of his career, especially in that he can show up his former classmates with his success. His ultimate wish is to solve the mystery of his parents’ disappearance. Are they dead or have they been kidnapped? He heads back to Shanghai to figure out what really went on in his fuzzy childhood.

Along the way he meets Sarah Hemmings, a society girl who is also an orphan. Her goal appears to be to marry someone rich and famous, and Christopher can’t seem to believe that she would actually love him, a misfit, even though he is a well-respected detective. Ultimately she invites him to run away with her, but he feels compelled to figure out what happened to his parents.

I didn’t exactly connect with the story, but I think the lack of connecting with Christopher is purposeful. He is emotionally detached in many ways, having left a secure life with his mother to being an outsider, alone in the world. I think that I could read a review of the book on someone else’s blog and hit myself on the head saying, “OH! So THAT’S what was going on!!” I think I would have liked this book a lot more in my 20s, when my mind was less filled with my own reality and more able to delve into the labyrinth of a novel like When We Were Orphans.

Book Review: The Bride's House

2011-12-26T09:34:00.002-05:00

I love Sandra Dallas. I think I have ready every one of her novels, and The Bride's House is one of my favorites. (Tallgrass still holds that spot.) Dallas knows how to create likeable characters and stories that just work out right.

In The Bride's House Dallas tells the stories of three generations of women, starting in 1880 with 17-year-old Nealie. Like many of her novels, this one is set in a Colorado mining community. Life can be rough in these mining towns, and often all the East Coast societal codes are ignored. Nealie falls in love and gets pregnant soon after arriving in town, but the father runs away quickly when he finds out. Or so she thinks.

A young man who is deeply in love with her agrees to marry her anyway, and her life begins in a beautiful new house in the center of town—what becomes known as the Bride's House. The first section of the book is devoted to Nealie's story, the middle to her daughter Pearl's, and the last one wraps them all together with her granddaughter Susan's own story. Casting his generous and benevolent but possessive shadow over all of them is Charlie Dumas, Nealie's husband-to-the-rescue, and his lock-box filled with family secrets.

I loved this book. Dallas captures a particular time in American history, fills it with breathing characters, and tells a story that is perfectly satisfying.

The Sunday Salon: Holiday Reading

2011-12-18T08:00:00.004-05:00

Look at that lovely stack of books! I am planning on lots and lots of luxurious reading time during the next few weeks, until our activities start again in January. I was incredibly lucky at the library yesterday, finding 9 books on my TBR list actually available!

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass (our January book club book)
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
At Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy
The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash
The Ninth Wife by Amy Stolls
The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas

So far this year I've read 40 books (yikes--that is really low for me!), and 21 of them have been from my TBR list. And I've added something like 45 books to my list. I usually manage to get several books read during the holidays, but 9 will be challenging!

I started with the Sandra Dallas book. What's on your holiday reading list?

Book Review: Purple Hibiscus

2011-12-17T08:03:00.004-05:00

I am absolutely astounded by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun (my 2008 review here). I read the latter a few of years ago and was blown away, and Purple Hibiscus was just as powerful. Adichie is a phenomenal storyteller and a lyrical writer—my absolute favorite combination. Here there is no stilted dialogue, no stiff, trite characters.

Set in Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus is the story of Kambili and JaJa, seemingly privileged children of a rich and powerful man. But there Papa has a dark side. While he treats the community generously, he is religious fanatic and punishes any family member who appears to be backsliding. His wife and children live in constant fear of the next beating; his father and sister live impoverished, barely able to eat, because he won't give them money without an implicit agreement that they will live according to his belief system.

At 15 and 17, Kambili and JaJa are reluctantly allowed to spend a week with their aunt and cousins. For the first time, they are exposed to what family life could really be like. Kambili is socially handicapped ("Is there something wrong with her?" asks her teenaged cousin), petrified of saying the wrong thing or of displeasing her father. She is certain that her Papa will know if she does anything that is unauthorized by him (he sends a schedule along with them to follow). I love how Kambili focuses on her relatives' laughter. The whole concept of laughter and conversation about anything other than religion is completely foreign to her, but she desperately wants to take part in this new life.

The short visit to their aunt's house is a turning point in the lives of Kambili and Jaja, and their life gets much more difficult as a result—but they also gain hope. They know that there is a life outside of their father's compound and people who love them without condition.

This book is difficult to read because of the horrible abuse, but it is so well worth it. I wish Adichie had more novels for me to devour, but I will be reading her book of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck.

Linked up with the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon

Book Review: Backseat Saints

2011-12-07T08:41:00.003-05:00

I've had Backseat Saints on my TBR list for quite awhile, so it jumped out at me as I was browsing the library stacks. But I hesitated, thinking "Didn't I not really like the last Joshilyn Jackson book I read?" Actually, I remembered being faintly irritated with the last one I read.

But I checked it out anyway and spent a few days or a week in the crazy world of Rose Mae Lolley, abandoned by her mother and abused by men. I noticed that the reviewers on amazon.com give this book 5 stars over and over again, so obviously there is something wrong with me. I just could not appreciate this novel. It was too snappy for me. I couldn't believe the character of Rose Mae Lolley—she didn't make any sense to me. Oh, I know. That was probably the point of the book in some way, but it just didn't all come together for me.

And I've got a name thing going on again with this book, as I did with The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Rose Mae goes between that name (her given) and Ro (her current). In other words, in the past she is Rose Mae, and in the present she is Ro. Except sometimes she is Ro with Rose Mae trying to get through to the surface. So when she tries to shoot her husband, is she Ro or Rose Mae? I understand what the author was trying to do (bad girl self vs. good girl self); it just didn't work for me. Something was missing—some vital connection. Maybe, for me, the disconnect was in the writing.

Here's the thing: I am a poet. I love books that love and caress the art of writing, that can blow me away with a combination of words or make me ache with something indescribable. I tend toward loving books that are quieter and more thoughtful. Backseat Saints deals with a terrible subject—spousal abuse—and the abuse scenes are very well written. But something didn't connect for me between the powerful abuse scenes and Ro Grandee's snappy comebacks. I guess I wanted her to think more. I couldn't feel her enough.

This isn't a rousing endorsement of the book. Maybe you will like it, but there was too much going on in it for me. A mother who shows back up as a fortune teller in an airport, various saints who appear suddently in the middle of the book, sweet old boyfriends who turn out to be abusers as well, and a whole lot of make-up sex. Too much going on, too fast-paced, too much disconnection. But again, I am apparently the only person in the reading world who doesn't think this is an amazing book. So read it for yourself. The end.

The Sunday Salon: November in Review

2011-12-04T08:01:00.002-05:00

Books Read in November
(click for reviews)

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (part ghost story, part tale of decaying estates of England)
Away by Amy Bloom (based on the legend of the woman who walked to Russia)
Saving Cee-Cee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman (motherless girl rescued by her relatives and friends)
Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

Best Book of the Month
Hmmmm. None of them were phenomenal, but I enjoyed the first three. Backseat Saints, not so much.

Guest Review
My Dad read and reviewed Shadows Walking by Douglass Skopp as part of the book's virtual tour.

Read Alouds (with 10-year-old)
Born in the Year of Courage by Emily Crofford
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
Wherever you Go by Joan Leegant (reviewed by Bibliophiliac)

Currently Reading
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

Book Club News
Our book club had its first weekend retreat. We had a blast! We also picked upcoming books for the next several months. Not surprisingly, all of my book choices were rejected because they sounded too depressing. Instead, we have a couple of mysteries, a memoir, and a humorous one. I've been reassured that we can read a depressing book after the winter months. Our upcoming books are:

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
The Sex Lives of Cannibals
She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb (I've read this one and LOVE it)
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

We also went to see The Help together. I read the book a year ago and loved the movie. Those who had just read the book were disappointed that so much was left out but enjoyed the movie. Fortunately, I don't remember details from a year ago!

Book Review: The Little Stranger

2011-11-30T22:19:00.002-05:00

I've had Sarah Waters on my radar for awhile, so I picked up The Little Stranger on the to-be-shelved stacks at the library. So...this book actually gave me shivers. I was even scared when I awoke in the middle of the night and had to walk down our hallway to the bathroom. C-r-e-e-p-y!

The Little Stranger is a ghost story, although I didn't really know this when I began reading it. That's probably good, because I wouldn't normally willingly pick up a gothic ghost story novel! The story centers on Dr. Faraday and his obsession with Hundreds Hall, where his mother was once a servant, and its strange inhabitants, the Ayres family. Hundreds Hall is a decaying house, once the center of a great estate, where strange things begin to happen. The brother goes crazy, the mother unhinged, and Faraday and the sister, Caroline, engage in a strange dance. Faraday is insistent that the family keep Hundreds Hall intact, in spite of its obvious haunting.

This reminded me somewhat of Diana Satterfield's The Thirteenth Tale. And although I liked Satterfield's novel much better, this one was extremely engaging, providing just enough shivers, excellent writing, and memorable characters. I definitely recommend this and will keep Sarah Waters on my TBR radar.

Book Review: Away

2011-11-26T08:44:00.003-05:00

I picked up this book by Amy Bloom on the to-be-shelved stacks at the library solely because of the book cover. Yes, I know the adage. In this case, I nearly tossed the book aside after the first 50 pages. It was so disturbing.

But I kept reading, and I'm glad I did. This isn't a book I'll throw at my book club and demand they read it. They don't, as a whole, like wading through tragic, depressing novels to get to the happy ending.

And Away is disturbing, depressing, and tragic. Lillian is a Russian Jew who witnessed the slaughter of her entire family, lost her three-year-old daughter, and then made her way to America alone in the 1920s. She does what she can to survive, including becoming the mistress of a Yiddish theatre director and his actor son. When a cousin arrives from Russia and informs Lillian that her daughter, Sophie, is actually alive, Lillian is determined to head to Siberia to find her.

Lillian is a focused, determined young mother on a quest, and she'll do anything to find her daughter. Traveling by train, boat, horse, and foot from New York City, she ultimately ends up traveling alone in the Alaskan wilderness, hoping to cross into Siberia. Along the way she meets an array of people, from exceptionally kind to exceptionally perverse.

One of my very favorite parts of the novel—and I absolutely loved this—is that Amy Bloom ties up all the loose ends of the cast of characters when they step out of the story. When Lillian leaves the director and his son back in New York, Bloom tells the reader what happens to them. When she parts ways with the prostitute in Seattle, Bloom follows through, in just a few paragraphs, with the rest of the prostitute's life. I loved that.

Away is loosely based on Lillian Alling, a woman who attempted to walk from New York City to Russia in 1927. The book is sexually explicit, disturbing, and terribly tragic—but at the end, I am glad that I continued reading. Without Bloom's device of following the futures of the characters, I'm not sure I would have been so satisfied. But I absolutely love closure, and she does it so very well.

Book Review: Saving Cee-Cee Honeycutt

2011-11-23T11:54:00.004-05:00

In Beth Hoffma's debut novel, Cee-Cee Honeycutt spends her first 12 years in cold Ohio with an unstable, unhappy, and ultimately crazy mother who lives completely in the past, reliving her days as the Vidalia Queen in Savannah. Cee-Cee, a social outcast, is known in the small town as the crazy lady's daughter. Her father rarely makes an appearance, and when he does, her mother is even more miserable.

When her mother is killed in a car accident, Cee-Cee's great-aunt Tootie rescues her, much to the relief of Cee-Cee's cold and detached father. Cee-Cee is introduced to Savannah, Georgia, a world that is completely different from the only one she has ever known. A typical cast of quirky southern chick lit characters become Cee-Cee's circle of friends: the black housekeeper, the exotic neighbor, the rich snob, and, of course, Aunt Tootie.

I liked this book. It has moments of fluff and predictability, but I actually really loved Cee-Cee, Aunt Tootie, and Oletta, the housekeeper. The stereotypical neighbors were fine for a little diversion and levity, but the saving of Cee-Cee story was really sweet and well done. This is one of those perfect reads for between heavier (or depressing, as my book club friends insist) novels.

Book Review: Shadows Walking

2011-11-10T06:49:00.006-05:00

When I received Shadows Walking in the mail to review, I knew immediately that this is one that my Dad would be much more qualified to review. My father is a voracious reader and a historian. And as a World War II veteran, my father was there—he has seen those shadows walking. He was extremely moved by Shadows Walking, read it thoroughly once and skimmed it another time. And here is what he has to say:

"...out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow... " Macbeth

When the world was still young and bright and innocent, two twelve-year-old boys solemnly performed the blood brother ritual. Johann pricked Philip’s finger, Philip cut Johan’s; they mixed their blood and swore eternal friendship. Johann is gentile, Philip Jewish. In 1914, their schooling complete, Johann, Philip and all their school class enlist in the Wehrmacht and go off to World War I.

Forty years later, Germany is a shambles. Millions upon millions of Germans are dead, Russians in their millions; Frenchmen, Britons, Italians, even Americans. Six million Jews have been murdered; like so many others, Philip is dead at Auschwitz.

In Nuremburg’s Palace of Justice, Johann is a janitor watching the trials of The Doctors—the German physicians who led the medical atrocities of the Nazis in the name of “science." What happened to those golden days before WW1? How did the horrors of Hitler’s Nazism capture the German nation? How could the Holocaust erupt and then overcome Deutschland?

Historian Douglas Skopp uses Johann Brenner, the gentile boy from Bavaria to approach these questions. How did Hitler’s Nazism capture Germany? How did Hitler’s Nazism capture Johann Brenner? How did the Holocaust engulf the Jews of all Europe? Ask Johann Brenner how he contributed to Holocaust!

Perhaps for Johann Brenner, it began in Munich in 1923. Waiting to have a beer with Philip, Johann chances on a street preacher, haranguing a little crowd of ragged veterans. The haranger is a short, nondescript little man, sporting a ridiculous mustache and a shrill, penetrating voice. But this little man speaks eloquently of the times— hard times, and all the fault of die Juden!

—Why did we lost the war? Die Juden!
—Why Versailles? Die Juden!
—Who keeps Germany from her destiny? Die Juden! Die Juden! Juden! Die Juden!

Germany was a fertile soil in 1923, a soil waiting to be planted with all the hatred, the venom that Adolph Hitler could spew. But Hitler was persuasive, if illogical – Johann (and Germany) are seduced. Hitler’s theme of der Volk and “blood purity” of course formed the basic rationale for the removals – removals of Jews and gypsies, homosexuals and mentally ill and handicapped, and, later, of Poles and Russians and other inferiors.

Hitler is not the only seducer. For Johann, a "great” physician, Brandt, reinforces Johann’s disquiet and his growing contempt for Jews and other undesirables. Brandt is part of the driving force that leads to Holocaust.

Johann is not corrupted in one fell swoop; his corruption is gradual, so gradual that he cannot see his entrapment. He participates in compulsory sterilization procedures, framed in the concept of eugenics and for the good of the Volk. Eventually we find Johann working in Auschwitz, carrying out medical “research.” His particular specialty was castrations – mass castrations to produce docile slaves who could not reproduce and so spoil the sacred blood of the Volk.

We pity Johann as he carries out his assault on humanity, we pity him because he is not able to see the depth of evil to which he is contributing. Only when his boyhood friend, his blood brother Philip the Jew arrives at Auschwitz via cattle car does Johann begin to recognize his own evil.

Johann finds shadows walking in Munich – men with no present, no future. Men from the trenches, men who will always be soldiers, old soldiers, shadows walking in the past.

And the question for the reader lurks at the end: what evil lies in all of us just below the surface?

***
Many thanks to my Dad, Dr. James Cummins, for taking the time to read and thoughtfully review Shadows Walking. The book is on a virtual tour for the month of November. Be sure to visit these other blogs for more reviews!

Monday, November 7th
Review at Impressions in Ink

Monday, November 14th
Review at A Bookish Affair

Thursday, November 17th
Review at The Book Garden

Monday, November 21st
Author Interview at A Bookish Affair

Thursday, November 24th
Review at Confessions of a Book Hoarder

Monday, November 28th
Author Guest Post at Confessions of a Book Hoarder

The Sunday Salon: October in Review

2011-10-30T07:00:00.003-04:00

Books Read in October (click for reviews)
One Second After by William Forstchen
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Best Book of the Month
The Kitchen House. Oh my goodness! Loved it!

Read Alouds
The Phantom Tollbooth

Currently Reading
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
Proof of Heaven by Mary Curran Hackett
The Time Between by Mary Duenas
A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (recommended at Rebecca Reads)
The First Wife by Emily Barr (recommended by Fleur Fisher)
The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian
A Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Top 3 Most Visited Reviews This Month on SmallWorld Reads
Frankenstein
The Great Gilly Hopkins
Snowflower and the Secret Fan

Book Review: One Second After

2011-10-29T08:32:00.003-04:00

One Second After by William Forstchen is our November book club choice. This is not a book I would normally pick out to read, and that's just one of the many things I love about book club.

This novel is set in Black Mountain, NC, not too far from where I live. The main character is a history professor and retired military man with two daughters. One afternoon they notice a strange silence and discover that the cars on the interstate aren't moving. Eventually they discover that absolutely no electrical devices are working. The professor soon figures out that a nuclear bomb contained an electromagnetic pulse that destroyed anything electrical. I wasn't terribly interested in all that, but I'm sure some readers would find that discussion fascinating.

The rest of the novel focuses on how a town survives when it's thrust back hundreds of years. I really appreciated how Forstchen tackled the town bit by bit: what happens in the nursing homes, to people who rely on medicines, to the mentally unstable. How parents starve themselves so their children can have a bit of food. How inevitably, bands of terrorists form and roam the countryside, killing for food.

The writing itself was aggravating but I managed to get through it as a plot read. Way too much dreadfully forced, cheesy dialogue. Stiff action. Bad editing. But again, it was a great plot read. It doesn't hold a candle to Stephen King's The Stand or Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but it was interesting.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Book Review: The Kitchen House

2011-10-15T09:39:00.002-04:00

Oh my goodness. Have you read Kathleen Grissom's The Kitchen House? If not, go quickly and buy it, borrow it, or take it off your TBR pile. I wish I had another book guaranteed this good to anticipate!

The Kitchen House is the story of Lavinia, a little Irish immigrant orphan who becomes an indentured servant on a Virginia plantation, and the family that raises her—and the family that owns her. What Lavinia doesn't understand is that she is white and her adopted family is the property of the master: the slaves of the big house.

As she grows into womanhood, she is forced to acknowledge that she is a white girl, and her family is black. What she refuses to deny, however, is that they are, indeed, her family. She has to learn to carefully straddle the two worlds, to protect those she loves, and to simply survive a brutal introduction into adulthood.

I know. It sounds like a "been there, done that" kind of novel. The plot line I've given merely scratches the surface. There is nothing sentimental or trite about this novel. Grissom is a master storyteller. Told from the perspectives of both Lavinia as well as Belle, her adoptive mother who is the master's illegitimate daughter, the novel is fast-paced, beautifully written, and absolutely compelling.

In an interview, author Grissom hints that she may be writing more on some of the characters in this novel. I can only hope!

Linked up on Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

The Sunday Salon: September in Review

2011-10-08T21:48:00.005-04:00

Books Read in September (click for my reviews)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

(Pretty sure that is an all time low for my monthly reading. Yikes!!)

Special Event
I got to hear Amy Greene, author of the fabulous Bloodroot, read at our local college! She was so wonderful and inspiring. I can hardly wait for her next book!

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry
Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eye Ward

Read Aloud to 10-Year-Old
The Master Puppeteer
The Indian in the Cupboard

Currently Reading
One Second After by William Forstchen

Top 3 Most Visited Reviews This Month on SmallWorld Reads
Frankenstein
Snowflower and the Secret Fan
Children's Books on Slavery

Book Review: Song of the Lark

2011-10-08T08:37:00.002-04:00

My son, now in his sophomore year in college, switched his major to English literature in the middle of his freshman year. I never imagined the burst of joy I would feel when I heard those beautiful words, "I think I'm going to change my major." It isn't that I didn't approve of his former major (entertainment industry), it's just that he is the quintessential English major.

All that to say: when I quizzed him on his favorite book all year, he named Willa Cather's Song of the Lark without hesitation. I am proud to say that I introduced my son to Willa Cather with My Antonia, which I actually didn't read until a few years ago. Oh my goodness. How I adored that book! I have no idea how Willa Cather escaped me all of my years as an English major.

But I had never even heard of Song of the Lark until my son had to read it for a class. I grabbed it from his bookshelf a few weeks ago when I discovered I had nothing to read. Notice I said "a few weeks ago." I was in one of those fall-asleep-after-3-pages kind of months. But that has no reflection on the book.

I loved it. This is the story of a little immigrant girl with a very big voice in a tiny town in Colorado. Everyone in Moonstone knows that Thea is different. It is no surprise when an inheritance from an admirer allows her to go to Chicago to study music. Ultimately she becomes a great opera singer, but not without tremendous sacrifice. This is the portrait of the artist as a young woman and more: the classic struggle of the artist with herself, with society, with the people who love her.

Cather's prose is phenomenal. This is one of those books in which I wanted to keep underlining passages and turning down page corners. Such moments of profundity! Such perfectly poetic descriptions! I am quite sure that Cather is severely neglected in the study of American literature. I don't understand why she is left out of the traditional canon. In my experience students respond enthusiastically to My Antonia, and I suspect Song of the Lark—with its themes of coming of age, search for identity, and struggle of the artist— would also widely appeal to students.

And adults, of course. I loved this novel, not as much as My Antonia, but tremendously. I noticed that there is a PBS movie of Song of the Lark. Sadly, neither Netflix nor our local public library carries it.

Book Review: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

2011-09-24T06:59:00.004-04:00

Barbara Ehrenreich— highly educated, financially comfortable— goes undercover to see what life would be like as a minimum-wage worker in America. How can someone survive on $6-7/hour?

Ehrenreich, a journalist by trade, spent a month in each of three locations—Florida, Maine, and Minnesota— as a waitress, hotel housekeeper, maid, and Walmart worker. (She did not inform her co-workers or bosses of her "real" life until her last day at each place of employment.) Her goal was to live like her co-workers (although with the benefit of three important tools: a car, a laptop, and $1000 in start-up funds).

Her life quickly became extraordinarily difficult. Affordable housing in all cases turned out to be barely habitable trailers, hotel rooms, tiny apartments. Her jobs were emotionally demeaning and physically hard. I'm sure that it was terribly hard for her that people didn't recognize her intelligence, although she never says this. I get the feeling that she often wanted to cry out, "You can't treat me like this: I have a PhD!"

Or maybe I'm projecting. I've worked minimum wage jobs as a college graduate. I've been that waitress in a polyester uniform, silently fuming because the boss was treating me like everyone else. Did he not recognize my ability to write A+ papers?

Yes, we are the privileged middle class, and the truth is, that while Ehrenreich's book is interesting and enlightening, she can't possibly present a picture of minimum-wage America with three short months in just three random cities. She needed to add in issues of health-care (when she got a rash from her work as a maid, she called her personal dermatologist and got a prescription) and family (as a single woman, she didn't have to face issues of childcare, etc.). She needed to give up her life for a year, not just a few months, and stay in one place—without a car and an emergency fund.

Ehrenreich tries, though, to present to her readers, presumably the privileged middle class, the life of millions of minimum-wage workers across America. It's hard. It's unthinkable to many of us that one could spend one's entire life working a couple of different jobs, 60-70 hours/week, on $7 an hour. Most people I know have worked in minimum-wage jobs at some point in their lives, but we all knew that we are working there temporarily—until we were done with college or graduate school, for the most part. Even working in those jobs for a set amount of time—with that light at the end of the tunnel—can be terribly depressing and demoralizing.

The author is condescending at times and often downright snarky, but I still think this is an important read. She doesn't offer any solutions, but she does raise a lot of questions and shed light on the plight of the poor.

The Sunday Salon: August in Review

2011-09-10T21:22:00.007-04:00

Books Read in August (Click on title for reviews)
Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich (totally forgot to review this one): dark and disturbing
Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore (Southern chick lit)
The German Woman by Paul Griner (WW2 lit)
The Judas Field by Howard Bahr (dark and gritty Civil War lit)
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain (great story)
The Queen's Daughter by Susan Coventry. (historical fiction, medieval)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (excellent journey into how minimum-wage America survives)

Favorite Book of the Month
Two very different books, but I loved them both: The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes and Nickel and Dimed.

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
Before the Storm by Diane Chamberlain
The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain
Father, Mother, God: My Journey Out of Christian Science by Lucia Greenhouse
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

Read Aloud to 10 Year Old
Island of the Blue Dolphins

Currently Reading
Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

Top 3 Most Visited Reviews This Month on SmallWorld Reads
Frankenstein
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Murder on the Orient Express

Book Review: The German Woman

2011-09-05T09:50:00.003-04:00

Kate Zweig is Paul Griner's The German Woman: British by birth, German by marriage. The novel opens in WWI in Prussia at a field hospital that is about to be obliterated. Kate is a nurse and her husband, Horst, a doctor. They escape to Germany, where their lives become sheer misery, filled with terror, hunger, pain and drudgery.

Griner leaves Kate and Horst in Germany and moves into London in WWII. Claus is an American filmmaker living in London, now a reluctant British spy. His story is confusing, told in muddled bits and pieces that reflect his own confusion about his true identity. Born of an Irish father and German mother, he can't figure out to whom he owes his loyalty.

Then Claus meets Kate, who is by now a woman in her mid-40s, who has recently fled Germany to escape the Nazis. We discover, again in bits and pieces, what happened to Kate and Horst in the years between wars. Claus and Kate embark on a romance that is a refuge for both of them in the midst of their war lives. Claus struggles constantly with his role as a spy and with his desire to have his latest film accepted; Kate continues to work as a nurse, which consists mostly of providing medical assistance to civilians caught in the London bombings. They keep secret from each other portions of their pasts, doling out bits and pieces like shards of the broken city all around them.

Eventually, Claus implodes, egged on by his supervisor. Trained as a spy, he becomes suspicious of everyone, including Kate. But Griner keeps the reader guessing too, wondering if Claus is right about Kate—is she a German spy, or just a woman wounded by war?

Griner is a fantastic writer. The images in the novel are powerful and memorable: a splotch of red raspberries against the gray ash, a piano played to soothe starvation, a pig lounging in the sun. I didn't exactly understand all the espionage jargon. I couldn't quite grasp what, exactly, Claus was doing; but that is my own ignorance on war espionage. I was frustrated at times with not being able to understand this large part of the novel, but the story of Claus and Kate was compelling enough to keep reading even without understanding a lot of the historical context.

(Thanks to Bookworm's Dinner for the original recommendation. Other World War II era novels reviewed here.)

Book Review: Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen

2011-08-25T09:14:00.003-04:00

Yes, it is exactly what the title sounds like: Southern chick lit. And I’m okay with that, especially after reading a heavy duty book like The Judas Field. Who doesn’t need a little bit of contemporary southern melodrama after an intense, grizzly book about the Civil War?

Susan Gregg Gilmore's Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen is an old story. The preacher’s daughter can’t wait to get out of her tiny home town. Catherine Grace and her sister lost their mother to a drowning accident when they were little girls, and she has always missed her mother terribly. Her father was a great dad, and her next-door neighbor filled lots of motherly jobs, but there is still an emptiness.

As soon as the Catherine Grace graduates from high school, she moves away to the big city of Atlanta. Her boyfriend back home moves on, but she has no intention of ever returning, so that’s OK.

Eventually, things happen that force her to return to her tiny hometown.

Yes, you’ve probably heard that same story line before, but all stories are based on the same basic themes, right? I liked this one. It was fun, a little sappy, and a little surprising.

If you need a great light read, especially after something that takes a lot of concentration, this is a great choice.