Before I Go to Sleep Presents Worst-Nightmare Scenario in Literary Thriller Format

S.J. Watson's debut novel Before I Go to Sleep had been on my to-read list for months, ever since its release last summer. Several blogs I follow urged their readers to pick up the new thriller, and I fully intended to do so. Last week, in browsing my (small, but extraordinarily well-stocked) local library, I came across a copy -- not even on the "New Books" shelf, but already shelved with all the other fiction books.

I literally came home and -- taking a break to go out to dinner -- did not stop until I'd read the entire book. In one night. Although I love to read, it's rare that I ever do that anymore. During the school year, I'm teaching and planning and grading. I also just got married and became a stepmom. And from November until February, I spent loads of time with my brother and his family -- they live in Africa, and were here on an early furlough for my wedding. So all that adds up to not a lot of reading time -- or, at least, not hours of reading time in a row.

Before I Go to Sleep practically forces reading like that, though. Told in daily journal entries over a month's time, amnesiac Christine Lucas relates the details of her days. The things that happen, the events she miraculously remembers (sometimes). After an accident, Christine has been without memory for an untold period of time. Each day she wakes up surprised to find herself living in a middle-age body beside a man she (moments later) learns is her husband. Christine is capable of neither short-term memory during the day, nor long-term memory for previous events. She relies solely on her husband, Ben, and neuropsychologist Dr. Nash.

The journal begins when Dr. Nash suggests Christine begin logging her memories and the day's events in a notebook. When she re-reads her entries each morning, she is able to come to some kind of terms with the life she is living. Additionally, Dr. Nash's hope is that the notebook will eventually help Christine improve.

Although a book about someone living with such extreme memory loss would be interesting in and of itself, author S.J. Watson pushes the envelope and takes his literary novel to another level with the inclusion of thriller elements. One day, in reading through her journal, Christine finds the words: "Don't trust Ben," penned in the front in her handwriting. No further explanation is given, and so each day Christine must find herself weighing the possibility that it was written in her memory-loss-induced paranoia or that she can't, in fact, trust the one person on whom she relies.

Reviews of this debut novel abound on the internet. If you need further coaxing to read this amazing novel, here are some other reviews from my blog reader feed:

Book Addiction
nomadreader
Book Hooked Blog
S. Krishna's Books
Linus's Blanket
Jen's Book Thoughts
Purple Sage and Scorpions
Jenn's Bookshelves

Before I Go to Sleep is S.J. Watson's first novel. My only hope is that he's hard at work at his home in England on a second novel of the same caliber. Read an excerpt of the novel here.

Reading in the Classroom: Read Across America & Dr. Seuss's Birthday

We've been busy in the classroom this week (as every week, especially as the state-standardized tests loom in the late spring). Today, however, we took a little break.

Today's lesson plan was inspired by three events:

• NEA's Read Across America event, which you can read more about here
• Dr. Seuss's birthday, which is today
• The Lorax film releases today

In order to celebrate, I planned a lesson entirely around these three events. We began by reading Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, which until preparing for this lesson I hadn't ever read. Although the book still encompasses the colorful illustrations and made-up language of other Seuss books, the theme is very much an ageless one. In fact, while children would understand the "love the trees" message of the book, older students can explore deeper truths exposed regarding pollution and industry.

After reading this aptly-called cautionary tale, we discussed the domino-like chain of causes-and-effects in the book. First, the Once-ler arrives. Then, after seeing the truffula trees, he cuts one down. After cutting one down, he creates a thneed. He sells the thneed, which makes him greedy for more sales. He cuts more truffula trees in order to make more thneeds, eventually building a factory. The factory leads to a depletion in truffula trees, which then leads to the extinction of the animals living in the forest. Basically, the entire book lends itself to one long chain of causes-and-effects. 

We then switched gears and talked poetry. We are making a "Poetree," you see. A tree full of poetry -- "to speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues." We talked about the haiku as a poetry form, and I shared some haiku from the book If Not for the Cat. Then, my students wrote haiku poems inspired by The Lorax. We'll hang these outside on the wall on our "Poetree" next week!

We had short classes because of the storms moving through our area today (school dismissed at 12:30), so only my homeroom got to participate in my last activity. We made truffula tree bookmarks by finger-knitting them. The kids had a lot of fun, and now they have bookmarks for all those Accelerated Reader books they're reading!

Finger Knit Truffula Tree Bookmarks

My activities were inspired by the Family Literacy Bag: The Lorax by ReadingRockets.org and by Random House's SchoolTube video teaching readers to finger knit a truffula tree.

Maisie Dobbs Introduces a Strong Female P.I. and Post-World-War-I England

I am a reader of series. I love the knowledge that one book is followed by another and another, all about a character I have come to know and love. Because I am not usually a fan of historical fiction, I resisted giving in to the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. As oft is the case, I was wrong.

Beloved female investigator Maisie Dobbs has detected her way through eight novels, with a ninth being released in March. I picked up a copy of the first book at my favorite used book store during my honeymoon in January, but I just started reading it two days ago. Two days ago, and I finished it last night -- in less than 24 hours!

Turns out, I do not dislike historical fiction as much as I thought. In fact, when it comes to Maisie Dobbs, I don't dislike historical fiction at all.

The series begins in 1929 England, as main character Maisie Dobbs opens her first investigative office in a less-than-ideal area of town. Her first case seems to be an open-and-shut one, but it leads -- as many things do -- to a more complicated situation.

Winspear expertly weaves Maisie's present with her past. In this first novel in the series, she takes readers all the way back to Maisie's childhood and relates her story from her father's tiny home to benefactor Lady Rowan's large estate to Cambridge University's Girton College. An important part of Maisie's history is also revealed in her work as a Red Cross nurse in France during World War I.

The first novel in particular (and perhaps the entire series, based solely on back-of-book descriptions) is set in the late 1920s, yet is also tied to the Great War and its long-lasting effects. As Maisie's war story unfolds, Winspear delves into some deeper themes that are still relevant today.

Coming up next month is March is Maisie Month, with a tour from TLC Book Tours, which I will be participating in. I'll be reviewing the seventh book in the series, The Mapping of Love and Death. Up until then, I plan on catching up on all the books in the series! The second and third books are in my possession at the moment, and I've already started the second one.

For more about Jacqueline Winspear, visit her website, check out the dates for her upcoming book tour, and visit her Maisie Dobbs blog.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table Shows Ruth Reichl's Life as a Complicated Series of Meals

Although most people wouldn't think twice about a food critic's background, Ruth Reichl's life is the stuff that makes for interesting reading. Much more than a foodie memoir, Reichl's look at her early life from childhood to her first job as a food writer wears many hats.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table is a biography of a poor little rich girl, one who was sent off to boarding school and sailed off to Europe. It is also the story of a hippie living freely in the 1970s, shocking society with her blindness to skin color and normal conventions. It is the story of a child dealing with a parent with mental illness. It is the story of a girl learning to cook first at home (disastrous), then at her father's first wife's mother's house (yes, you read that convoluted relationship correctly). It is also the story of a food writer in the making.

While Reichl came from some degree of wealth, her tone is never pretentious. Instead, she writes candidly about her life in New York City and about her mother's madness, which colored every day of her life. She forgoes some of the privilege she enjoyed as a child in order to escape for periods of time: to the University of Michigan for college, to Europe as a newlywed, to Berkeley as a commune-living chef. 

Reichl's relationship with food is a constant in her life, from the molded hors d'oeuvres her mother serves at parties to the wine she tastes in Europe on a buying trip with her local wine seller. Food is more than just food to Reichl; instead, it is a part of her life she can control, one that she can depend on. It is perhaps the thing she relies on the most, the ability of food to please and to comfort as long as one uses fresh ingredients and treats them well.

Often foodie memoirs are not noted for their literary merit, but Reichl manages to both write about her life and food and to do it extremely well. The pages of Tender at the Bone are sprinkled with well-tested recipes, but Reichl's true ability is in her impeccable word choice, her ability to write prose about food and make it sound like poetry. 

THE SWALLOW'S PORK AND TOMATILLO STEW

1/4 c vegetable oil

8 cloves garlic, peeled

2 lbs lean pork, cut in cubes

Salt

Pepper

1 bottle dark beer

12 oz orange juice

1 lb tomatillos, quartered

1 lb Roma tomatoes, peeled and chopped

2 large onions, coarsely chopped

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

2 jalapeno peppers, chopped

1 14-oz can black beans

Juice of 1 lime

1 c sour cream

          Heat oil in large casserole. Add garlic cloves. Add pork, in batches so as not to crowd, and brown on all sides. Remove pork as the pieces get brown and add salt and pepper.

          Meanwhile, put beer and OJ in another pot. Add tomatillos and tomatoes, bring to a boil, lower heat, and cooke about 20min or until tomatillos are soft. Set aside.

          When all pork is browned, pour off all but about a tablespoon of the oil in the pan. Add coarsely chopped onions and cook about 8min, or until soft. Stir, scraping up bits of meat. Add chopped cilantro and pepper and salt to taste.

          Put pork pack into pan. Add tomatillo mixture and chopped jalapenos. Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover partially and cook about 2 hours.

          Taste for seasoning. Add black beans and cook 10min more.

          Stir lime juice into sour cream.

          Serve chili with rice, with sour-cream/lime juice mixture on side as a topping.

-- Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (p.230)

To learn more about Reichl, visit her website, read her blog, or follow her on Twitter.

This post is part of the Beth Fish Reads weekly series, Weekend Cooking. BFR describes Weekend Cooking as a place for "anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs." To read more food-related posts from the past week, visit this week's Weekend Cooking post.

Catch Me Delivers Thrills from Lisa Gardner

D.D. Warren has been through some serious changes in her personal life recently. She delivered a healthy baby boy, Jack, ten weeks ago. Just before that, she moved in with her love interest and fellow police officer, Alex. A visit from her not-so-amicable parents is almost enough to send the Boston homicide detective over the edge.

Before she loses it, thriller writer Lisa Gardner sends some saving grace her way: two complicated cases, perfect distractions for her stress at home. D.D. dives headlong into the first case, the shooting death of a convicted pedophile, out after time behind bars. When the case is linked to another similar death, D.D.'s squad finds themselves investigating a rogue citizen bent on ridding Boston of its child molestors. It's not exactly a case anyone particularly wants to solve. However, always the homicide investigator no matter the victim, D.D. and her team are putting as many hours into this case as they would any other.

As D.D. leaves the scene of one of the murders, she runs into a second case. This time she isn't quite so gung-ho, as the crime hasn't actually happened. Rather, a girl wants D.D. to investigate her own own murder -- which she claims will take place in a few days. Although intrigued, it isn't exactly what D.D. does -- solve crimes that haven't yet occurred. She can't quite decide if the girl's crazy or scared, but something tells her the answer is scared. And so, despite her misgivings, D.D. listens to her story and begins a tentative investigation.

Lisa Gardner always tells an excellent story, but she is particularly adept at doing so in Catch Me. She gives readers both the story of the detectives, but also the background for the cases. Catch Me begins two decades ago, with the story of an abused child. With several flashbacks, Gardner fleshes out the present storyline with details from the past.

Additionally, for the first time Gardner really examines D.D.'s character with some depth. As aforementioned, her parents arrive from Florida and play roles in several scenes. Although D.D. has detected her way through half a dozen novels, little time has been spent developing her character. Longtime readers of the series will recall detective Bobby Dodge from the first few books, a character who changed and grew as the series developed. Although his character doesn't appear in Catch Me, Gardner does the same thing with D.D.'s character, allowing her to grow and mature in this latest novel.

If you want to go back and read the D.D. Warren series in order, visit Lisa Gardner's website, or glance back through my previous reviews:

Alone (2005)
Hide (2007)
The Neighbor (2009)
Live to Tell (2010)
Love You More (2011) -- I've never reviewed this? What? Okay, will solve this soon! It's fantastic.
"The 7th Month" (2012)

Gardner is also the author of the FBI Profiler series (whose characters make brief cameos Catch Me), as well as three standalone novels. As far as mystery/thrillers go, you really can't find anyone better than Lisa Gardner. The audio versions of all of her books are amazing, but the print versions are excellent, too!

"This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage" Details Ann Patchett's Success (and Failure) in Love

Valentine's Day posts should be about love, and today's post is. Well, it is and it isn't. Back in December, Audible.com offered a free download to its listeners: an essay on marriage by acclaimed author Ann Patchett. At the urging of friends and family, Patchett wrote down the story of her marriage -- a happy one, by all accounts.

She begins, however, with several unhappy marriages: her grandparents', her parents', and finally, her own first marriage.

"Tell the story of your marriage," my young friend Niki says to me. "Write down how it is you have a happy marriage." But the story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale, the German kind, unsweetened by Disney. (Patchett, "This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage")

As a result of her family history, Patchett had no background in making marriage work. She saw her mother choose poorly time and again, and make decisions to follow men cross-country from California to Patchett's hometown of Nashville.

Although she describes her stepfather as a father-figure to her to this day, Patchett holds nothing back when relating the drawbacks of her mother's marriage to him. She and her sister had to exist within the walls of this second marriage, she says, while his kids only visited on summer breaks and holidays. She isn't sure still which group of kids had it better. They had no permanent father in their lives back in California, but she and her sister had to live in that marriage.

After a disastrous first marriage to a man she never really loved, Patchett swore off marriage. It was not for her, she decided. And yet, here she is -- in present day, married to a man with whom she is thrilled to spend her life. How did she manage to get from point A to point B? In this extraordinary essay, Patchett reveals what love means to her, and why after many years she decided to give marriage a go again -- and why it's the best decision she's ever made.

"This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage" is an essay not to be missed, especially on this, the (albeit consumer-market-driven) holiday of love. In fact, it is the perfect thing to listen to on a day like today, when society tells us love is roses and expensive chocolate. The love Patchett describes has nothing to do with those things, and everything to do with choosing to become a better person through your partner.

To get this essay to listen to today -- or any day -- (for free!) click here.

"The 7th Month" Shows D.D. Warren Detecting During Pregnancy

Before her latest thriller starring Boston detective D.D. Warren hit shelves, author Lisa Gardner released a short piece that detailed some of the time between her last book, Love You More, and her new novel Catch Me. At the end of Love You More, D.D. discovered she was pregnant. This news was unexpected and somewhat shocking to the detective. After all, she hadn't originally planned to be a parent at all, much less in the near future.

E-novella "The 7th Month" reveals D.D. in her seventh month of pregnancy, still on the job (albeit behind a desk). When a movie producer enters the police station looking for a police consultant for a film shooting in a local cemetery, D.D. jumps at the chance to get out from behind her desk. The movie's current retired-police consultant hasn't shown up for work in a day or two, and filming must go on.

Readers of Gardner's previous books shouldn't find it unbelievable that once on set, D.D. begins to unravel a mystery. Although little would be gained from reading this short piece as a standalone, for fans of the series, it's a perfect taste of the detective, on-the-job and with child. Fans won't want to miss this glimpse of life between the novels before diving into Catch Me. And the piece isn't so short that it isn't worth the $1.99 price tag. I estimated it to be about 40-45 pages long, the perfect length for short fiction.

Look for my review of Catch Me within the next day or two!