In not-really-book-related news, but in education-related news, Smithsonian Magazine published an article in its September issue that explores the Finnish education system. With all of the problems inherent in the current American system -- not the teachers, mind you, but the system -- we could all stand to take a few pointers from a culture and an education system that does whatever it can to "prepare kids for life."
Finland's is a public school system that rates at the top of international standardized tests, yet it refuses to place importance on standardized tests. When asked what Finnish educators thought about the U.S.'s ongoing efforts to increase student learning by raising test standards and forcing teacher evaluations to be measured in large part on those test scores, "Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience, said, 'I think, in fact, teachers [in Finland] would tear off their shirts. If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.'"
If only American lawmakers and government officials would take the time to read articles like this one, and to explore education systems that work, perhaps things would turn around. Until then, well, we American educators do our best.
Salon posted an article this week about new bibliophile website Booklamp.org, which professes to be the "Pandora for books." The basic idea is that you type in a book you enjoyed; it pops out a list of books with similar "DNA" (their term). The difference between Booklamp and other sites that offer suggestions (Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing, etc.) is that the suggestions are computer-generated rather than user-generated.
I was impressed with their recommendations, but had two issues. First, they didn't have a lot of the books I attempted to enter. Even recent bestsellers like Ann Patchett's State of Wonder failed to be in their library. (Actually, they had no titles by Patchett listed.) Second, the site often recommended other books by the same author. Um... yes. If I like one book by an author, chances are good I'll like another; and I don't even need a website to tell me that! However, if you are a reader, it's a fun site to play around with. And in the future, it may add more titles and become "smarter" in its recommendations.
Nigella Lawson's library
All over Twitter and the vast interweb this week were links to this blog post highlighting celebrities' home libraries. Of special interest to me were Diane Keaton's warm and inviting library complete with wall quote and television chef Nigella Lawson's piled-to-the-ceiling, stuffed-to-the-gills library. I need a home with a library. Need.
Image of D.C. earthquake damage, via famousdc.com
The Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy posted a list of earthquake books this week after the East Coast suffered an earthquake that was felt from Georgia to New York City. I suppose they were trying to lend some support for a natural disaster they know all too well. West Coast reddit users, on the other hand, sympathized by posting and reposting images of the "devastation."
Speaking of literary connections to natural disasters, book bloggers, publishers, and readers up and down the East Coast posted books related to hurricanes on Twitter, as Hurricane Irene threatened to come ashore in the Carolinas. Check out the Twitter hashtag #stormreads for suggestions.
Last week President Obama went on vacation to Martha's Vineyard, with an annual stop at the local bookstore there. The New Yorker's Book Bench posted a list of his picks for summer reading. Among the titles were Daniel Woodrell's The Bayou Trilogy and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
Patterson
With many booksellers closing, who's making money off books? Forbes says several authors are doing quite well, even (or maybe especially) in this new age of ebooks. Topping the list are Stephenie Meyer, Stephen King, Janet Evanovich, and James Patterson.
It's going to be a fun weekend around here, folks! I am headed to a Titans' football game Saturday night, and then to more fun on Sunday. A trip to Trader Joe's will probably be thrown in there somewhere. As for reading, I'm currently getting wrapped up in Dorothea Benton Frank's Folly Beach, still listening to Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, and will be soon starting several titles for review: Jeffrey Archer's latest Only Time Will Tell, a newly-hyped novel by Ernest Cline called Ready Player One, and Dancing With Mrs. Dalloway by Celia Blue Johnson.
Many years ago (high school, perhaps?) I started reading Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. The first nine or ten books were some of the most enjoyable reads I can recall. I loved Stephanie and her zany cast of characters: Grandma Mazur with her funeral home social life, her parents with their oddities, sidekick and former prostitute Lula with her leopard print spandex.
Evanovich novels at their prime held the promise of hilarious dialogue mixed with serious chases between Stephanie and the bail runs she was trailing. Although Evanovich offered many over-the-top scenes involving blown up cars and clumsy attempted captures, there was always a gritty and genuine danger present. That danger drove the plot forward and elevated what would otherwise be simplistic silliness to a new level of entertaining genius.
But with the last several Plum series novels, something seemed lost. Rather than caring about the characters, I felt they fell flat in each new book. They retained their initial charming qualities, but something was lacking. Once-funny bounty hunter antics just seemed staged and ridiculous.
Until Smokin' Seventeen. With Evanovich's latest bestseller, Stephanie Plum is back. The ongoing love triangle between Stephanie, police officer Joe Morelli, and private security systems owner Ranger is somehow fresh and new -- no matter how many times we've been there, done that. Grandma Mazur, Lula, and even bonds office manager Connie all seemed to have a newfound spunk in their step for this latest installment.
Evanovich once again brings a plot that will have readers biting their fingernails, waiting to see where the next body will end up -- and whose it will be. Stephanie and Lula fight their way through crime with the help of Cluck-in-a-Bucket fried chicken and -- of course -- lots and lots of donuts.
Smokin' Seventeen ends in typical old-school Evanovich fashion: a cliffhanger. But all is well, as the next book in the series, Explosive Eighteen, is set to release before the end of the year. Rather than feeling kind of blah about this one, I'll probably be pre-ordering so that it arrives as soon as is humanly possible. Perhaps Evanovich is back on top of her game, with two books releasing within six months of one another. USA Today called it a "double Plum year," in their rave review of Smokin' Seventeen.
Heigl & Shepherd on set, via MovieInsider.com
Janet Evanovich is the author of both the Alex Barnaby series and the "Full" series (co-authored with Charlotte Hughes) in addition to her Plum novels. The first novel in the series, One for the Money, has been adapted for the big screen. The film, due to release in January from Lionsgate, will star Katherine Heigl as Stephanie and Sherri Shepherd as Lula. For more from Evanovich, visit her website for tons of contests and other fun stuff.
Have you ever thought about what he or she would say if your dog could speak to you? In the novel I Thought You Were Dead, author Pete Nelson examines this question from a realistic perspective. That being said, the novel is difficult to believe in the beginning. I mean, a dog is an important character in the novel -- and she speaks!
When I initially began reading Nelson's novel, I laughed out loud in disbelief. "This dog is talking like a person!" I told my family. "I can't take this seriously!" I enjoyed Carolyn Parkhurst's novel The Dogs of Babel, in which a grieving husband researches methods to make his dog to speak so that she tell him about his wife's last minutes. Parkhurst goes into scientific detail, describing not only voice therapy and technology, but also horrible experimental surgeries that humans have tried in vain to make canines communicate in our language.
But I Thought You Were Dead is another tale entirely. From the beginning, main character Paul's dog Stella speaks freely and frequently. She greets him at the door, as a roommate or wife would. She inquires about his day. And -- of course not being able to understand the intricacies of time and space according to human standards -- she always thinks he is dead when he has been gone. Obviously intelligent in some ways, Stella remains blissfully naive (as we think of dogs being) to the ways of the world. This makes for some interesting conversations between dog and owner, as Paul often has to stop and explain parts of his stories.
At some point a few dozen pages in, I was able to accept Stella's voice and begin to focus on the novel rather than on this oddity of a writing convention. Paul is an excellent, loveable, and sympathetic character. As a writer of "... for Moron" books (think "... for Dummies"), divorced, and for the most part solitary, Paul doesn't have much going for him. He has a sort-of girlfriend, who is also seeing someone else. And he has drinking at his neighborhood bar, the kind of place where "everybody knows your name" [cue Cheers theme].
Suffice it to say, other than Stella, Paul lives an ultimately unsatisfying life. Then his father suffers a stroke and he is forced to spend his time shuttling between his current home and his childhood home, a place where he feels inadequate and overshadowed by his siblings. His father, unable to communicate, begins instant-messaging Paul simple "yes" and "no" answers. Eventually, this dwindles away into one-way conversations in which Paul spills his guts to his father via the internet. Through this tentative bond with his father, and with no small help from Stella, Paul gradually begins to find his way once again.
I Thought You Were Dead is not a plot-heavy novel. Although there are external conflicts (Paul vs. his brother, Paul's wishes vs. girlfriend Tamsen's wishes), most of the conflict in the story takes place within Paul himself. It is not truly a story for the sake of story, but rather a character growth story in which you will be rooting for the main character the entire time. It is a coming-of-age in middle-age story, in which Paul stops looking for satisfaction outside himself and realizes self-confidence is worth more than any outside approval.
Pete Nelson is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, as well as dozens of short pieces of nonfiction that have appeared in publications such as Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and Rolling Stone.I Thought You Were Deadis his first work to be published through Algonquin Books. In addition to writing, he is also a musician.
Let the gushing commence. Somehow or another, before this novel I had never read a book by Patti Callahan Henry. As a lover of southern lit, especially southern lit written by women, I'm not sure how she slipped under my radar. She did -- but no more.
Coming Up for Air was released last week, and I don't know how it stacks up against Henry's other novels (having not read them yet). But comparing it to books I've read, it was phenomenal. In the last year, I've read a lot of books I liked, and several that I loved. I looked back at my Goodreads list, and I found no more than five books I rated with five stars since January. Many with three and four; only a handful with five. Among those were The Hunger Games, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, State of Wonder, and I Thought You Were Dead. Now Coming Up for Airmakes the five-star ranks, as well.
Some novels seem trite, full of oft-used, worn-out phrases that simply don't resonate with readers. Patti Callahan Henry writes with such beauty that it feels as though she is inventing new phrases -- writing immense human truths, and expressing them in new ways.
Coming Up for Air is in many ways a character study. Although other characters float through the novel's pages, main character and narrator Ellie Calvin dominates Henry's latest work. She can be described by many terms: artist, mother, daughter, wife, friend. However, Coming Up for Air isn't the story of Ellie as any of those things. Instead, it is the simple story of Ellie as she embarks upon a journey full of self-discovery and possibly an answer to the age-old question about the meaning of life.
After the death of her mother, Ellie struggles to regain her footing in the life she has lived for so long. Through a request by an old friend to research her mother's historical contributions for an Atlanta History Museum exhibit, Ellie examines herself, as well as her mother. Her journey takes her out of the city rush of Atlanta and to Bayside, a quaint beachside community on the Alabama shore. Her best friend's mother Birdie -- also her mother's best friend -- lives year-round in Bayside at the family's Summer House, and she welcomes Ellie with open arms.
Ellie's story is the story of so many women -- a lifelong love for her mother coupled with a lifelong struggle against her; a comfortableness in the life she lives even as a nagging dissatisfaction persists; a need to protect her college-age daughter while also let her go; a husband who never quite erupts into actual violence but whose subtle abuse causes suffering nonetheless; a downplay of her talents and interests in the arts in favor of more acceptable charity committees and household tasks.
Henry manages to write a novel about all of these things and none of these things, all at once. For Coming Up for Air is not a novel about a particular issue, but about how all of these things culminate in one person's life. She does so with great skill, skill that I can't properly convey without sharing some lines with you:
Ellie, on the intricacies and intimacies of marriage: "There were swaths of dark land within [my husband] that only I have seen, and I can't explain them to anyone who has viewed only the beautiful landscape. We all have a cavern and an abyss inside" (68).
Sadie (Ellie's best friend) on the idiocy of love: "Funny how we get confused about what's love and what's freakish control" (70).
Ellie on her daughter: "Lil -- Lilly Eddington Calvin -- is the most open portion of my heart; she is the most creative piece of my soul" (73).
Ellie on life-changing choices: "The choices we make when we're broken are sometimes the most awful of all our choices" (142).
Ellie on want versus love: "There was a difference between not wanting to lose someone and loving someone" (188).
Ellie on her mother's death: "Sadie and I had just left Mother's grave, where fresh dirt still surrounded the outside rim of the rectangle where she was buried. I couldn't seem to add facts -- she was dead plus she was in a coffin plus she was buried here -- to equal anything I fully understood" (221).
Ellie on heartbreak: "I saw that heartbreak can come to define your whole life. It can become who you are instead of something that happened to you" (239).
One of the best scenes in the novel is the scene from which the title takes its name. Her first night in Bayside, Ellie is able to witness a Mobile Bay jubilee, in which thousands of fish, shrimp, and crab rush to the water's surface. Residents flock to the shore to rake in the seafood bounty that results. Supposedly only a documented phenomenon in the Mobile Bay and in Tokyo Bay in Japan, Ellie understands the jubilee in a metaphorical sense: "'All they're trying to do is come up for air,' [Ellie] said. 'Poor things, they're in a panic'" (81). In folklore, a jubilee is "an omen of [a] new beginning, of a fresh start. . . . something to do with letting go and with forgiveness, too" (82). Fitting, as Ellie has come in search of exactly that.
Henry also had me looking up jazz singer Melody Gardot on YouTube. Gardot's music factors into the novel in pivotal scenes. Here is Gardot's song, "Love Me Like a River Does," mentioned by name in the book:
Deciding on a topic for this week's SFB post was a no-brainer. On Friday, I got some amazing news via Twitter:
I won! For the second year in a row, I managed to snag one of the SFB Twitter contest prizes. This year, as you can see from the image above, I won by guessing author Chris Bohjalian. All week, @SoFestofBooks posted clues about the author.
First, a very general clue for Monday:
Bohjalian has long written for newspapers and magazines, which eventually evolved into a career as a novelist. According to his website, he and his wife moved to Vermont from New York City after a cab-napping (their cabbie decided to go on a joyride with them in tow) and subsequently getting caught in the cross-fire of a crack house raid. Once safely ensconced in a rural small town, Bohjalian "began chronicling life in [Lincoln, Vermont] in a wide variety of non-fiction magazine essays and in his weekly newspaper column."
Bohjalian has written a weekly column for the Burlington Free Press for more than fifteen years. You can read "Idyll Banter" on the newspaper's website. Many of the essays were published in a book of the same name.
Clue number two came on Tuesday:
Although you might initially think of Bohjalian's most famous novel Midwives, he actually had a previous novel that was made into a movie first. Past the Bleachers was indeed made into a Sandlot-like movie. I found the trailer on VideoDetective.com. MacGyver is in it!
Wednesday's clue was the kicker for me:
I knew that Bohjalian's Midwives was an Oprah's Book Club pick in 1998. If you've never read it, you really must. The novel was also made into a television movie, this time on Lifetime. Sissy Spacek starred in the film, a role for which she won both a Satellite and a SAG award. I guessed the answer, but they continue to post clues through Friday for the contest.
And finally, the easiest clue of all came on Friday:
Bohjalian's The Night Strangers will release the week before the Festival. So, yes. I will be trying to cram it in before the Festival begins. It's already been getting rave reviews from all over the place.
Chris Bohjalian is the author of fourteen novels. You can follow him on Twitter, on Facebook, or on his blog, which is also called Idyll Banter. He will be at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville this October.
To begin this week, an essay from my (relatively) new find, The Millions: Author Steve Himmerdiscusses the connection between book availability and readers being made. The first lines should grab you:
"One recent morning, my almost four year old daughter started crying out of the blue. I asked her what was wrong, and she wailed, 'I don’t have a library card!' So with a proud paternal bibliophile’s heart swollen in my chest, I strapped her into her car seat and we set off for the library in search of a library card and — at her request — in search of Tintin books like those I’d told her were my favorite stories at the library when I was young."
From The Atlantic this week, a gripping piece by musician Rhett Miller, who began keeping a diary on September 11, 2001. "About That Day" is a personal narrative that speaks from the heart, and is especially poignant as we near the ten-year anniversary of 9/11.
Also in honor of that day, Salon has posted a list of nonfiction books to be released this fall related to 9/11. They call it a list of "books to enlighten, and help us remember" (via The Book Bench).
Summer is quickly coming to a close. I know this better than most, as my summer break ended this week with the start of a new school year. NPR's Three Books... series speaks to a need to extend summer reading just a little bit longer. Their new piece "Three Travel Logs for Your Summer Staycation" offers three books that will take you across America, to the island of Kiribati, and to Australia.
Book News is short this week with good reason. Most of my time and energy has been poured into getting lesson plans and my classroom ready for my students in morning and evening, and then teaching during the day.
I started listening to Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad via Audible, and I have to say: it's every bit as good as everyone says it is. If you've been putting off reading it because (like me) you hate to pick up a book simply because it's been hyped, throw that aside! From what I've read (heard) so far, it's worthy of all the praise it has received. I'm also about to begin Patti Callahan Henry's new book, Coming Up for Air.
Have a fabulous, lazy end-of-summer weekend and happy reading!
It's been a good reading month. Actually, it's been a good reading summer. Although I have had a couple of not-so-hot, just-couldn't-finish books, overall I've found lots of winners. Among those winners have been a couple of books that captured my heart. I told you about one -- Summer Rental -- yesterday, and today I have another: Wendy Delsol's first adult fiction title, The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls.
Call me crazy, but there's just something about the title. Something that says, "This is going to be a good one." I'm also a sucker for (good) women's fiction. Not "chick lit," but true women's fiction. Books written by women with true-to-life female characters. Books that also manage to include a bit of women's history: where women have come from and the strides we've made. As the old (admittedly un-PC) Virginia Slims ad says: "You've come a long way, baby."
Delsol's The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls is both an entertaining novel in its own right and a commentary on the progress of the status of women in the United States over the last fifty years. Although the novel is set in present day, Delsol offers glimpses of the past through flashback scenes that show insight into the lives of women in the 1950s and 1960s.
The novel tells the story of the McCloud family, three generations of women living under the same roof. In its beginning, the family home was a commune of sorts. In the middle of the twentieth century, the home changed to a place for unwed mothers (thus the title of the book). The term "wayward" was eventually dropped, and by the 1970s there was little need for such places. By then, unwed mothers often had their babies at home and lived as single parents with less stigma attached.
Ruby, the family matriarch, first came to the Home as an unwed mother herself. She later married the Home's owner and gave birth to two daughters. When the novel opens, their daughter Jill currently lives in the family home with her daughter Fee and runs a bed-and-breakfast out of the former Girls' Home. Three generations under one roof means an inordinate amount of drama entails. Add to the mix Jill's long-gone sister Jocelyn, returned for a funeral, and it's a real recipe for disaster. And an excellent premise for a good book.
Also returning to their small Iowa town is Jill's former flame, Keith. His family and the McClouds have a long history together, managing to remain entwined from generation to generation. All of the action takes place over the course of one week (save the flashback scenes), lending an urgency to all of the secret-telling and emotional discoveries.
Wendy Delsol is the author of the fantasy YA novel Stork and its sequel Frost, which will be released in October. You can visit her on the web, on her blog, and on Twitter.
Three now thirty-something childhood friends rent an Outer Banks beach house for a month. The premise could be cliche, the same tired old told-a-million-times story of friends pulled apart, then pushed back together by life gone wrong.
But Ellis, Julia, and Dorie -- the three female friends in Mary Kay Andrews' new novel Summer Rental -- manage to defy the odds. The trio actually reminds me of my own circle of friends, and coincidentally, we are planning a September trip to the beach... for our thirtieth birthdays. That's right -- the big 3-0. We all have birthdays within two months of one another, and we thought it necessary to celebrate this year in a larger-than-normal way.
But back to Summer Rental. Andrews is in rare form in this novel, as she combines the best of both her previous kinds of novels -- the mysteries (under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck) and the chick lit (under the pen name Mary Kay Andrews). Ellis, Julia, and Dorie all have mid-life troubles of one sort or another. One is getting divorced, another recently laid off, and yet another facing important life decisions.
The trip to Nags Head, North Carolina, comes at a pivotal time in all their lives -- and a time when all three desperately need a break. But Andrews turns away from a high school reunion-like theme; these women have been friends through good times and bad together -- they never lost touch, even though life has taken them different places. So rather than rehashing the last few years, this trip gives them time to reconnect with and rebuild one another.
Oh, and they get involved in a side-plot of an entirely different kind (this would be where the mystery comes in). Enter a fourth woman, the mysterious Maryn. She has fled from something bad -- really bad -- back in New Jersey. Maryn is on the run with no where to turn and no where to hide. Ellis, Julia, and Dorie provide the perfect cover -- at least until her past starts to catch up with her.
Andrews also includes several love angles in the novel. It's crucial that you allow them to develop on their own, so I won't spoil them for you here. Suffice it to to say this novel was satisfying in every way. I listened to the audio version via Audible for iPod, and voice actor Isabel Keating does an excellent job of bringing each individual character to life.
I highly recommend that you read (or listen to) Summer Rental as an end-of-summer treat. Then go back and read her Callahan Garrity mystery series, as well as the southern belle books she's written as Mary Kay Andrews. My favorites are her books set in Savannah and neighboring Tybee Island, a short series starring best friends BeBe Loudermilk and Eloise "Weezie" Foley. (Really, aren't their names enough to make you want to read these books?)
Mary Kay Andrews' Breeze Inn Cottage on Tybee Island
Maddie Chilton is a career-driven wunderkind for the hottest PR firm in Miami when her life in the fast lane comes to a grinding halt. She's shown the door at BZB, and just that quickly everything important in her life is pulled out from under her. Long divorced, with two grown sons living lives of their own, Maddie is feeling somewhat displaced by her sudden unemployment.
Best friend Nina saves the day by sending Maddie on a trip far from Miami's beaches -- as far north as it gets in the United States, all the way to Maine. Maddie, rarely having been above the Mason-Dixon line, has no idea what to expect from her trek north. Upon arriving at Wilson's Fishing Camp, Maddie discovers just how spoiled she was in Miami -- and how ill-equipped she is to deal with "roughing it."
Maddie hasn't been fishing since some unpleasant experiences involving her ex-husband drinking beer and trying to drive a boat at the same time. Now, on this so-called retreat, she is expected to learn how to fish -- and to enjoy it!
Author Tracy Ann Lord peppers Good Catchwith a bevy of unusual characters who populate Wilson's Fishing Camp and give the story life. There's Wayne, the king of inappropriate comments and leering glances who serves as handyman for the camp. There's also Flo, the grumpy cook who demands that camp guests adhere to a strict mealtime schedule, or risk not eating. Even the mess hall waitress Linda has her oddities -- multiple personalities, for one thing.
But Maddie also meets Cal, the fishing guide-cum-owner of Wilson's. He likes to skinny dip at dawn, save ladies in distress, and generally do all manner of manly things, all of which make him mysteriously attractive to Maddie. But where do you draw the line between mysterious and just downright close-mouthed? Perhaps Cal has a few too many skeletons in his closet to make him a good match for Maddie.
Good Catch is a romantic, lighthearted summer novel. Lord makes her characters interesting enough that the slightly-predictable plot can be forgiven. I'm not often a reader of romance novels, but Good Catch is just the right mix of funny and romance. Lord had me wanting to visit the beautiful Maine setting for myself -- and mix up a few of the recipes she includes at the end!
Tracy Ann Lord is working on writing more books about her beloved Maine. You can follow her at her blog Camp Tracy, where she shares things like recipes for Blueberry Cornbread.
Every year that it has staked out its tents on legislative plaza, since the first "Celebration of the Written Word" in 1989, the Southern Festival of Books has received assistance from the Metro Nashville Arts Commission. This year, however, the commission's books snapped shut.
The rationale charts a tortuous trail through the grants guidelines. But the bottom line is that the fest — a free event that draws people from all over the state and beyond to Nashville — will receive no support from its host city this year.
Scene reporter Christine Kreyling spoke with both Humanities Tennessee president Robert Meacham and MNAC executive director Jennifer Cole, who said that "'the guidelines clearly state that no organization is guaranteed funding from year to year, so past awards are irrelevant.'"
While this may be true, it's hard not to find fault with MNAC's refusal to grant funds for SFB. After all, the Festival -- which offers free admission -- draws thousands to the Nashville area, where Festival attendees rent hotel rooms and dine out at Nashville's restaurants.
Point being? Nashville undoubtedly receives revenue from the Festival. The Metro Nashville Arts Commission's choice to not support the Festival this year shows poor judgement and may have repercussions in years to come.
After all, while Legislative Plaza was being renovated several years ago, Humanities Tennessee successfully held the Festival in Memphis. President Meacham told Kreyling that during that two-year span, they "'of course didn't apply'" for the grant money. With the lack of support from the Nashville community, and prior success elsewhere, it's possible SFB could feasibly change cities.
I, for one, would hate to see that happen. SFB is one of the last literary arts strongholds that Nashville has to offer, after the closing of most of its independent bookstores and also of its Borders chain branch. Hopefully, next year will see a renewed commitment to the Festival and a return of MNAC grant funds. Until then, be sure to show your support and donate if you visit the Festival this year!
Also, Humanities Tennessee and Nashville's Yazoo Brewing Company will kick-off fundraising for the Festival with an event at Yazoo. Beer, Books, & Banter will take place on September 6th, with tickets $20 per person. Festival authors will be on hand for conversation, and the first 100 patrons will receive a commemorative glass. For more information, visit the Festival website.
Bookstore window broken in London riots, via Reuters
Other than the economic crisis plaguing our country, the most newsworthy event from the past week is undoubtedly the riots in London. British bookseller Simon Armstrong posted a list of five books that help explain why these riots occurred. Of course, the news tells us that the rioting happened in the wake of a citizen death at the hands of police officers -- a single event that incited the people.
Armstrong's take on the situation, via carefully chosen books, is that "there have been many warnings in literature by writers and thinkers who have been aware of, and to some extent predicted, the likelihood of the events of the past few days." He goes on to say that "all the ingredients that have coalesced to become an insurrection have clearly been fermenting in policy and society for decades," as evidenced by these books:
This week the reading community was up in arms over a reddit post that showed an image from one of those ubiquitous Facebook pages people create and then 'like' -- by the hundreds of thousands. This particular one was titled "I Hate Reading," and it has been 'liked' by almost half a million people:
Let's hope lots of schoolkids clicked to look cool, and this isn't really an accurate measure of how our country feels about literature. Galleycat discussed other FB pages with similar anti-book themes. As a middle school reading teacher and lifelong book lover, this makes my heart hurt! Surely all those people don't dislike reading that much... do they?
In film adaptation book news, the movie version of Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help debuted in theaters this week -- on Wednesday to be exact. Why Wednesday? Perhaps to beat the weekend crowd and increase this week's box office numbers? I have heard only good things so far. I can't imagine it will be anything less than stellar, although I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. I loved the audio version of this book, and one of the voice actors plays in the film. What do you think? Have you seen it? Will you?
Although The Help has been a commercial success, both the novel and the film have their fair share of critics. A piece in The Atlantic this week denounced the film as "downplay[ing] the ugliness of Jim Crow and fixat[ing] on the goodness of its white protagonist." I must disagree. Although it may be done in a "feel-good" manner (according to the article's author), I think Stockett's novel highlights just how wrong Jim Crow laws were, how pervasive they were in the south, and the fact that not everyone agreed with them. Did you feel the film or book was somehow less than honest, or that it glossed over serious issues?
In more fun books news (and who doesn't like fun news?!), YouTube user The Station released a video clip of what Twilight would look like as a video game -- if it had been published in the 1980s. It would have been an 8-bit Nintendo game, a la Zelda, right? Even non-Twilight fans can appreciate the extreme fun-ness that is this video:
In one last piece of (slightly) fluffy book news, Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog announced that Bravo's Andy Cohen will release a memoir next summer. As I'm a sucker for a celebrity memoir, I'm sure I'll be reading it. After all, I am kind of a gigantic Real Housewives fan -- and as I'm sure you are all aware, he's the mastermind behind the series (not to mention the host of each season's cat-fight-fest of a wrap-up show).
Although I'm a week or so behind, I love to share fabulous literary Twitter hashtags when they occur. Last week I brought you news of the #bookswithalettermissing hashtag. This week, a link to @RandomHouse's hashtag of the moment: #undateableinlit, in which Twitter users everywhere listed their favorite undateable literary characters. Fun browsing, and you can add your own! It's even spawned a quiz that tests your literary knowledge, using clues from the Tweets.
I've been busy this week getting ready for school, which starts Monday! My classroom library almost doubled, as I inherited books from a colleague who moved this summer. I've been trying to think of a better system to use for lending books to my students, and Knock Knock's Personal Library Kit (via Galleycat) might be just the thing. Isn't it adorable? I've also been thinking about using the "scan book" option on my Samsung Galaxy tablet to catalogue the books into a "Classroom Books" shelf on Goodreads. What do you think? A true reflection of my over-the-top OCD?
I finished only one book this week, Lisa Gardner's Love You More on audio (and I had been listening to it for almost a month, so I'm not sure that counts). I am still reading Tracy Ann Lord's Good Catch. It's nice, light entertaining reading after working each day on my classroom and then my house (trying to get it in order before next week!). I'm currently listening to Mary Kay Andrews' latest novel Summer Rental on audio, and it is absolutely as delightful as the rest of her books. Have a fabulous weekend, and happy reading!
Julia Reed had a decades-long love affair with the city of New Orleans, long before she met her real-life love there later in life. The House on First Street is a love story aboutReed's affection for the The Crescent City, from its decadent food to strong drinks to jazz music.
Reed grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, a few hundred miles up the river from New Orleans. In the book she recalls the New Orleans of her childhood as a place people went for long weekends, business trips, and celebrations.
Initially moving to the city as part of a writing assignment as a journalist, Reed first lives in a rundown apartment in the French Quarter. She then moves to a slightly-less-run-down part of a house just off Bourbon Street which she fills with antiques. She lives the happy life of a New Orleanian -- a life full of long lunches and dinner parties -- until she meets her husband to be.
Marrying in their forties, Reed and her husband have enough of their lives behind them that they can afford to purchase their dream home: a home in New Orlean's Garden District. The House on First Street is named for that house, a place Reed sees as both grand and as an enormous money pit. From the very beginning, renovations begin to go horribly wrong and their move-in date moves back again and again.
Then, just after they've moved in (and only to the upper-level rooms) -- and in the midst of a dinner party to celebrate -- New Orleans gets word that Hurricane Katrina is on its way. Forced to evacuate, first to her parents' house in Greenville, then to a family member's home back in Louisiana, Reed and her husband learn to appreciate their blessings.
Other people in Reed's New Orleans life don't fare quite so well, and she tells their tales with frankness and empathy. Although Reed can be slightly off-putting with her name-dropping and her love for luxury items, she seems to have a heart of gold when it comes to those she loves. In other words, being her friend is always a good thing -- for she will go to great lengths to help those she loves, and others.
Countless times during her stay back in Greenville, she makes the trek to New Orleans with her car filled with food from restaurants back home -- which she delivers to National Guardsmen and other workers feeling displaced as they try to bring order to her beloved city.
The house from the book's title does become the center of the novel once again, but as part of a larger, whole-city revitalization. Reed talks about the reopening of her favorite restaurants as much as the final construction on her home. While some might be disappointed that the book is not a strict renovation tale, as the title suggests, I absolutely adored this book.
I met Julia Reed at the Southern Festival of Books several years ago. She whipped up some of her fabulous food at the cooking tent, along with a (strong) milk punch laced heavily with whiskey. She talked ninety-miles a minute about her love for New Orleans, which in turn resulted in my loving her (and apparently, talking about her every year on the blog, as I did both in my discussion of SFB two years ago and again last year). New Orleans is, after all, my favorite city on earth.
My dad worked there for a couple of years when I was in high school, and I've visited many times since just for fun. My friends and I took a girls-only trip to the great city in 2005 (that's me in purple):
Eating at one of New Orlean's many courtyard restaurants
Friendship and food abounds in the novel The Recipe Club from authors Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel. Written in a series of letters, the novel takes readers on the journey of a friendship as it unfolds through several decades.
Val and Lilly have been friends since childhood, often apart but always together in spirit and in the letters they write one another. Until, that is, a falling out in their college years causes a lengthy rift in their relationship.
After the death of a parent, the two begin tentatively writing letters again -- this time in the form of emails. In fits and starts Val and Lilly begin trying to mend the break in their friendship, which takes readers back to the early years and finally to the event that caused their not speaking for decades.
I loved the examination of women's friendship that the novel offered, as well as the recipes included. Israel and Garfinkel chose perfect names for the recipes exchanged through the years, from Lovelorn Lasagna to Forgiveness Tapenade. I found it difficult initially to keep Val and Lilly separate in my mind; because of the format of the book -- written entirely in letters and recipes -- the characters sometimes blended into one another.
It was also difficult at first to understand why the pair wrote letters via mail, even when they were living in the same town and ostensibly could see one another frequently. Then, however, I remembered my own childhood -- not so long ago. During summer vacations and other times, I, too, wrote letters to school friends. In this age of Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, letter-writing seems foreign to us.
Towards the end of the novel, the point of view switches from first-person via letters and email to third-person omniscient. The change was disconcerting when it first occurred, but eventually worked for the novel. The climax and ending were more effective written in traditional prose than they would have been written in letters and emails. The switch caused the ending scenes to have an immediacy and urgency letters would have lacked.
I read The Recipe Club while in Africa, and I ended up leaving a copy of the novel for my sister-in-law to read and use for its recipes. In a fit of book-lover-induced dementia, I had bought two copies of this novel in two separate trips to McKay's Used Books. I still have a hardback version for myself (so that I can try out the recipes, too), and now Holly has one, as well. I highly recommend this book -- it was the perfect combination of a good story and an excellent cookbook for later use.
When I packed my bags for Africa, I (of course) had a huge stack of books ready to include. But when traveling to Africa to visit family, there are things you have to do. Things like go to Trader Joe's and purchase lots of goodies for your brother and sister-in-law who only ever get to shop in markets in rural Africa. Then things like this have to fit into your suitcase:
So, as a result of my Trader Joe's trip (and also some things I bought for the cutest little nephew in the world), I had much less room for books. (The amount of clothes I packed had absolutely nothing to do with it, obviously!)
While traveling, I finished every paperback book I had with me within a week. I had audio books and I had e-books, but sometimes those are just not what you want. If you're me, you simply want a book you can hold in your hand. Holly pulled out some titles for me to look through, and I found several nonfiction titles that sounded interesting.
The basic premise of the book is to explore trends -- how they get started and take off at rocket speed. Gladwell also discusses (minimally, I would argue) how to use this knowledge to enact positive change. Gladwell includes dozens of interesting stories about popular trends in The Tipping Point: crime taking a dive in New York City, Sesame Street, teen smoking.
"[I]deas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us."
"Think, for a moment, about an epidemic of measles in a kindergarten class. One child brings in the virus. It spreads to every other child in the class in a matter of days. And then, within a week or so, it completely dies out and none of the children will ever get measles again. That's typical behavior for epidemics: they can blow up and then die out really quickly, and even the smallest change -- like one child with a virus -- can get them started."
"As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect. And when there isn't -- when crime drops dramatically in New York for no apparent reason, or when a movie made on a shoestring budget ends up making hundreds of millions of dollars -- we're surprised. I'm saying, don't be surprised. This is the way social epidemics work."
The reason The Tipping Point works is because Gladwell is such a well-informed, yet enormously easy-to-read, writer. He presents new, interesting ideas in a clear manner. He makes strong arguments, but reasonable ones -- ideas backed by research.
Julie at Book Hooked Blog recently wrote a post about her dismay over nonfiction without citations, and Gladwell does his topic justice. Included at the end of the book is an extensive array of citations, the references Gladwell used in researching the book. Its inclusion causes the reader to trust Gladwell's statements.
The only gripe I have with The Tipping Point is Gladwell's claim that it is a self-help book, a book that people can put into practice in their lives. In my opinion, it is an interesting examination of social trends, even an eye-opening one. But I don't feel that Gladwell gives enough instruction to back up this claim:
"One of the things I'd like to do is to show people how to start 'positive' epidemics of their own. . . . I also take a pressing social issue, teenage smoking, and break it down and analyze what an epidemic approach to solving that problem would look like. The point is that by the end of the book I think the reader will have a clear idea of what starting an epidemic actually takes."
I would like for him to teach me how to do that, especially as a middle school educator. I would love to think that there was a formula or a pattern I could use to affect my students positively. I just didn't see any clear instructions in this book; I saw fabulous, interesting ideas. But not instruction. Perhaps that's something to look forward to in future Gladwell books.
Malcolm Gladwell is also the author of Blink (which is on my to-read list now) and Outliers(which I read and loved even more than The Tipping Point). He has also written many a column for The New Yorker, the archives of which are available here.
is not a plot-heavy novel. Although there are external conflicts (Paul vs. his brother, Paul's wishes vs. girlfriend Tamsen's wishes), most of the conflict in the story takes place within Paul himself. It is not truly a story for the sake of story, but rather a character growth story in which you will be rooting for the main character the entire time. It is a coming-of-age in middle-age story, in which Paul stops looking for satisfaction outside himself and realizes self-confidence is worth more than any outside approval.
-- manage to defy the odds. The trio actually reminds me of my own circle of friends, and coincidentally, we are planning a September trip to the beach... for our thirtieth birthdays. That's right -- the big 3-0. We all have birthdays within two months of one another, and we thought it necessary to celebrate this year in a larger-than-normal way.
) and the chick lit (under the pen name 
