Portland top city for book lovers!

Not that it's a surprise, but livability.com just named Portland, Oregon as #1 in its Top 10 Cities for Book Lovers! Portland has 139 bookstores, arguably the most per capita in the nation (I've seen a few competing statistics). We also have the largest new and used bookstore in the world, the almighty Powell's City of Books.

Powell's



Our local bookstore, Annie Bloom's



It's a little more manageable than Powell's, and equally as fun for browsing

Then there's the Multnomah County Library, which has the second-highest circulation rate in the country, second only to the New York Public Library. According to this news release, "For the ninth year in a row, Multnomah County Library patrons have checked out and renewed more items than patrons of any other U.S. library serving fewer than one million residents. With a population of about 735,000, that’s an average of about 31 items checked out or renewed for every man, woman, and child in Multnomah County."

The historic Central Library downtown

Sheer coincidence that this English major/writer-editor/book lover was born and bred in Portland (well, actually, a suburb)...I think not!

Faith: A family torn in half by the Catholic church

Faith: A Novel, by Jennifer Haigh
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Sheila McGann, a lapsed Catholic daughter, returns to Boston to try to figure out what has happened to her fractured family. Her beloved older brother, Art, has been accused in the Boston archdiocese priest sex abuse scandal. Her younger brother, Mike, is convinced he's guilty, while her mother is in denial and her father is too far gone as an alcoholic to understand what is going on.

Faith is one of those books in which you do not necessarily identify with any of the characters, but you care what will happen to them. We know very little about Sheila, the narrator, except for the fact that she's a damaged soul and unable to form long-lasting attachments. She describes her entire family as detached and undemonstrative, perhaps because of her angry drunk dad and her detached, bitter, and stubbornly Catholic mother. None of these characters lead fulfilled, happy lives, and they are unable to reach out to embrace one another in their deep sadness and grief.

I am not a Catholic but am married to one. This book is soaked in the traditions and culture of the old American Catholic church. In that culture, priests were (are?) not to be questioned...they were to be revered.

Faith has all the complications I expect in a great book. None of the characters are inherently good or bad, and the truth is far more complex than one would expect. Haigh does an excellent job of peeling back layer by layer of Sheila's complicated family structure and exposing the grave weaknesses and loneliness inherent in the whole idea of Catholic priestly celibacy...and the underbelly of the Catholic church, which has continued to ignore the devastating acts done in its name.

The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook: Not-so-Chick Lit

The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook, by Matt Dunn
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I don't know why I did it...read this book, that is. It caught my eye at the library, and I was interested in the British setting (Brighton) and a supposedly "chick lit" type of story written by a man. As I've said before, I don't like the term "chick lit," because I find that title denigrating to novels written by and for women. However, it is a certain type of genre, and this novel fits into that category. My husband says I should call it "dick lit." I like it. :)

Here's the plot in a nutshell:

• Nice, overweight-and-out-of-shape, and somewhat clueless doormat Edward's girlfriend of 10 years, Jane, moves out and leaves behind a note saying she's off to Tibet for 3 months.
• Edward determines to reinvent himself during the time Jane is away. He's assisted by his ethics-lacking, philandering, and shallow friend Dan...who is really not very nice to Edward (or other people). 
• In addition to makeovers to his wardrobe, flat, car, and lifestyle, he starts working out with a cute, peppy trainer named Sam (female).
• Edward works for an IT recruiting firm, and his boss sleeps with her clients to get new business and treats him like crap. Really? Talk about a stereotype of a successful businesswoman. We're not all like Anna Wintour.
• Of course, we don't ever really understand why in fact Edward wants Jane back or why he is friends with Dan.

You can guess where this story goes. It wasn't horrific, but when I dove into my next book (Faith by Jennifer Haigh, which I'm almost finished with), I realized how much I wasted my time on this one.

South of Broad: Sadly, overwritten

South of Broad, by Pat Conroy
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I have enjoyed some of Conroy's previous novels (The Prince of Tides and Beach Music), so I was looking forward to reading South of Broad. Conroy can tell a sweeping saga and draw the reader in, and this story was no different from his other books.

It's the story of Leopold King (known as "the toad" by his friends--isn't that kind of them?), who finds his 9-year-old brother dead in the bathtub when he is only 8 years old. This tragedy shapes his life from then on. One day in late summer, right before he is to start his senior year in high school, he discovers that his ultra-serious and severe school principal/Joyce scholar mother used to be a nun. He also meets a motley crew of friends, including Charleston snobs Molly, Chad, and Fraser; mountain hillbillies Niles and Starla (yes, a novel with both of the names Niles and Fraser!); tragic figures Trevor and Sheba Poe; and African-American heroes Ike and Betty (who integrate the high school all too easily).

Where do I start with what was wrong with this novel? First of all, the writing--terribly overwritten. I didn't find the characters to be believable at all, and furthermore I couldn't understand their attraction to each other. In spite of the length of the novel, some of the characters fell flat because we don't really get to know them very well. Others are too purely evil or malicious. Some of them I flat out did not like and could not understand what anyone else saw in them (i.e., Chad). Conroy has several of this group of friends marry each other, but I wasn't convinced that most of them really loved each other (with the exception of Ike and Betty). Potentially difficult situations were glossed over (such as the integration of the South Carolina high school and the toxic racism of the late 1960s).

Conroy seemed to pull in every possible salacious and shocking plot element he could think of. Some reviewers have commented that it was a much lower-quality repeat of the Prince of Tides.

In addition, I found a number of editorial errors, one of them a quite surprising timing mistake in the first chapter (first it's 3:00 p.m. in one chapter, and then it's lunch time during the next chapter...on the same day). The book needed an editor with a heavier hand...especially to fix a lot of the unbelievable dialogue...not to mention the lack of chemistry between the characters. (For God's sake, why on earth did Molly stay with Chad??? At one point, she is furious when he discovers he's having another affair...and then suddenly she doesn't care any more??? Really? And why did Leo stay with Starla?)

However, I agree with writer Chris Bohjalian's review in the Washington Post:

"I should note that even though I felt stage-managed by Conroy's heavy hand, I still turned the pages with relish. Conroy is an immensely gifted stylist, and there are passages in the novel that are lush and beautiful and precise. No one can describe a tide or a sunset with his lyricism and exactitude."

Conroy makes the city of Charleston come to life, and he describes the terror of experiencing a hurricane. At times, he gets close to describing what it's like to have friends for life. Too bad I didn't like or believe in half of the characters.

I expected so much more from a talented author. Let's hope the next one will be better.

That Day in September: 9/11 up close and personal

That Day in September, by Artie Van Why
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Artie Van Why worked right across from the twin towers on that fateful day in 2001. This book is his personal account of September 11 and its aftermath on his life.

Written in a very simple style and self published, the book describes Artie's life in New York (how he ended up there and got discouraged while pursuing his dream to be an actor). He worked in a law firm's word processing center across from the World Trade Center, and on the morning of 9/11 he heard a horrifically loud boom above him. When he and his coworkers rushed out into the street, they saw people falling through the skies.

Van Why's personal account of his love for the World Trade Center and its surrounds, and the description of how the events of 9/11 affected his psyche, is touching and very personal. He speaks about going to an AA meeting at noon on that day and feeling so comforted and at home with others who had experienced similar trauma.

September 11 served as a wake-up call for Van Why. He realized that life is too short to work in an unrewarding job, coasting through life. He writes of how he tenses each time he hears an airplane overhead...or a siren.

I always think of 9/11 when I'm at the airport, particularly when I'm being dropped off by my family for a business trip. I was on my way out of town that morning and first learned about 9/11 in the airport lounge, as everyone was glued to the television overhead. Now when I fly away from my family, I always think of those people on United Flight 93, whose goodbyes to their loved ones were their last ones forever.

Artie Van Why now lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and works at a small theater. He moved to be closer to his parents. Take a look at this BBC News article to read an excerpt of the book--and view a slide show with Artie's memories. He found that writing about his experiences--and speaking about them live in a play--helped him process his profound, painful feelings and memories.

*Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to facilitate my review.

State of Wonder: A female Heart of Darkness

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Ann Patchett's latest novel begins in Minnesota and travels to the jungles of Brazil, where a naive and emotionally stifled researcher, Marina Singh, hopes to discover what happened to her research partner, Anders Eckman. The pharmaceutical company Marina and Anders work for, Vogel, is funding the research of a new fertility drug in the Amazonian jungle led by her medical school mentor, the brilliant and chilly Dr. Annick Swenson.

Marina and Vogel CEO (and Marina's lover) "Mr. Fox" receive a sketchy aerogram from Swenson, informing them almost as an afterthought that Anders has died in the jungle. Mr. Fox asks Marina to go to Brazil to find out what is going on with the drug development (since Dr. Swenson is nearly completely incommunicado) and Karen, Anders' wife, wants her to find out how Anders died--if indeed he really is dead.

When Marina arrives in Manaus, Brazil, she must get past the Bovenders--the couple who live in Dr. Swenson's apartment while she's in the jungle. No one knows how to get to the research station, deep in the heart of the jungle, where Dr. Swenson is studying the Lakashi tribe--whose women bear children into their 70s.

With the exception of Easter, Winston, Rodrigo, and a few tribal members, this book focuses on the antics of the foreigners. I'm not sure whether leaving out the Brazilians' perspectives and personalities was intended. It would have been nice to have understood the Lakashi more, but perhaps this is another point of the book: even though Dr. Swenson had been living among them for years, she still viewed them with a sense of privilege and distance, just as the reader is forced to view them.

Marina constantly makes questionable decisions (such as packing her very expensive, irreplaceable phone in her checked luggage, only to lose it) and it's difficult to understand her alliances. Why on earth is she attracted to the boring Mr. Fox? And does she have any friends or anyone else who will miss her while she is gone? It would appear not. Why was she concerned about taking the others down the river but not be concerned about her beloved Easter (the native child)? I found her difficult to relate to and understand, although sympathetic at the same time. She's haunted by a traumatic experience in her medical training and feelings of abandonment, made only worse by the anti-malarial drug Lariam. (It made me feel fortunate that I took Lariam in my 20s a few times with no ill effects!)

Perhaps that's Patchett's best talent as a writer: her main characters are multidimensional and full of layered depths, although the lesser character development can suffer (for example, Mr. Fox). Even though Annick Swenson can be heartless and emotionally cold and possessing highly questionable ethics, she was a fascinating character. Ultimately she attempts to sacrifice her own health for what she believes is greater good in the world. This is a book pondering ethics and colonialism, just like the Heart of Darkness.

The book passed one of my biggest tests: I thought about it while lying in bed at night and I got up early to finish it. It stuck with me. Well done, Ms. Patchett.

Touching the Void: Surviving the Unsurvivable

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I started reading this book at Holden Village in July and didn't get back into it until last week (I had to get it out of the library in Portland). Mike went to prep school with Joe Simpson in England (although Simpson's a few years older than him), so I've often thought about reading this book before it called to me from the Holden Village library.

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, climbed a mountain peak in the Andes--the 21,000-foot Siula Grande. While ascending, Joe broke his leg...which can be an immediate death sentence for mountain climbers. However, Simon risked his own life to lower Joe 3,000 feet down the mountain while Joe kept digging "belays" into the mountain, allowing Simon to stretch out the rope once more. When the rope did not go slack (allowing him to affix a new hitch), Simon had no idea what was going on. He had no choice but to cut the rope, knowing that by doing so Joe would die. If he hadn't cut the rope, they both would have died on the mountain. When the rope was cut, Joe fell into a very deep crevasse.

The amazing piece is that Joe did not die--in fact, he survived. Over the ensuing three days, somehow he was able to crawl out of the crevasse and all the way down the mountain, and then 6 miles to base camp, just before Simon left to return to civilization. Joe writes about the deep loneliness, exhaustion, and terror that beset him on the mountain. He did not give up when most people would have. Not only did he survive with a horribly broken and painful leg, but he also did not have food and water for several days. The only thing that kept him going was a voice in his head--prompting him to keep moving and surviving.

Meanwhile, Simon was being tormented with guilt, even at the same time as he realized he had no choice in the matter. Joe writes from Simon's perspective as well (in italics), giving us a more complete picture of what was happening in both men's minds.

I woke up at night thinking about this book--it will stick with me for a very long time. It's clear that Joe is a mountain climber first and a writer second, because I often had difficulties following the technical descriptions of climbing and picturing everything in my mind. I didn't discover the glossary in the back until I was 1/3 of the way into the book. But even the glossary couldn't really help me understand fully.

Joe includes an afterword in the edition I read. He writes about returning to Siula Grande to film the documentary and experiencing post-traumatic stress (previously he had not even believed in its existence). It's the second book I've read recently where a British person discounts the value of psychotherapy--thinking it to be an American whim. When he calls the National Health Service to make an appointment with a therapist (realizing he needed to deal with his PTSD), he doesn't receive a call back until six months later. At that point, he's too disgusted to go forward with it. Instead, he realizes the healing, therapeutic power of telling one's story...and that's how he works through the stress and the trauma. At least he did come to realize the importance of working through it and the downsides of the British stiff upper lip.

He also writes about traumatic emotions and terror traveling hard-wired neural pathways in the brain...that's why what we think will be an easy task or experience can bring up all sorts of PTSD effects if we've experienced a trauma. I've experienced this phenomenon a few times myself.

Next I plan to watch the documentary, and I'm sure it will help me have a better understanding of what exactly happened to Joe and Simon on the mountain. Joe Simpson wrote this book partly to defend Simon Yates' actions on the mountain. From the very beginning, he understood that Simon made the only decision he could have at the time. He's truly grateful to him for doing everything he could to save him--most other climbers would have left him on the mountain without even trying to save him.

A therapist friend of mine used to show this movie to the boys he counseled: they were sex offenders in treatment. It was chosen as a testament to the power of the human spirit and the ability to conquer seemingly impossible odds.

After You: Grief times two

After You by Julie Buxbaum
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Ellie Lerner's best friend, Lucy, is murdered in broad daylight--in front of her 8-year-old daughter--in an upscale Notting Hill neighborhood. Ellie flies to London to be with her goddaughter Sophie and help Lucy's husband pick up the pieces of their lives.

While she's grieving the loss of her close childhood friend, she's still mourning her son Oliver, who died in utero at eight months gestation. Ellie's difficulty in moving past her deep-seated grief has put her marriage at risk. While she's escaping her own commitments back in Boston, her husband wants her to return home, but she just can't.

To comfort themselves, Ellie and Lucy escape into Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Sophie is an unusually bright, too-blunt-for-her-peer-group child, and she has endured more than any child should. I had to chuckle while reading her father's response to Ellie's suggestion that Sophie go to a therapist (because of bed wetting and nightmares)...reflecting the prevailing opinion that therapy is too American and completely unnecessary for the stiff-upper-lip British. Sophie returns to school a scant few days after watching her mother be murdered, because the headmistress convinces her father that "she should get right back into the swing of things. Routine, structure, and all that. Good for kids. She said that breaking from that will shake Sophie up even more."

Through the process of mourning Lucy (and discovering that Lucy was keeping at least a few deep dark secrets from her and she didn't know her as well as she thought), Ellie realizes that she hasn't fully mourned for Oliver. Instead she's been trying to escape her own feelings of loss.

Buxbaum effectively and sensitively handled the issues of grief, including the different ways people grieve (and not to assume that someone is not grieving just because they grieve in a different way from you). One thing I realized about the characters, though: I would not have liked Lucy. She came across as shallow, unfeeling, and snobby. The most egregious thing she did was after Ellie lost her baby: her first response was to tell Ellie she could always have another one. Perhaps she was stunned and didn't know how to react. But after the losses I have experienced in my own pregnancies, I cannot imagine being able to move beyond that kind of completely insensitive comment. Although Ellie was upset about the comment, she didn't seem to think it was quite as horrible as I did.

I'm always attracted to stories about Americans in England or vice versa, so I enjoyed this book overall. Buxbaum lives in London and has done an excellent job representing the British culture through American eyes.

Unbroken, a great book according to my husband!

Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand

I haven't read it yet, but my husband just finished this book and loved it. You can read his review here.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons: Women can survive more than they think

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, by Lorna Landvik
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

As my book club selection for August, I wasn't too sure what to expect. I've read Landvik before and enjoyed her books, but I believe this one was my favorite yet. She typically sets her stories in Minnesota, like this one.

Kari, Faith, Slip, Merit, and Audrey are housewives in small-town Minnesota in the 1960s. They live on Freesia Court and start a book club (fairly unusual back then). Through the years, they share their heartaches, secrets, and intimacies in the ways that only women can.

Through 40 years, the Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (a name coined after Merit's abusive husband angrily demanded she stop being in the group) each battle their own personal demons. Faith harbors the secret of her dysfunctional childhood and sense of abandonment and is convinced no one will love her if they know the real her. Audrey loves sex and food and lives largely, although her husband enjoys sex with other women as well as her. Daughter of a straitlaced minister, Merit ends up with a perfect-on-the-outside doctor husband who begins verbally abusing her and soon starts in physically. Slip, the impassioned activist, loves her family just as much as she loves peace and justice and gradually convinces the other women not to accept sexism without a fight. And Kari, the widowed and oldest member of the group, happily becomes a mother but can tell no one where she got her baby.

Beginning in the 1960s when home life was much more traditional, and moving into the 1990s when people began opening up their minds and their lives, the book charts the separate pathways of these close friends. In addition to these fiercely strong, loving women, Landvik includes portraits of several wonderful men--some of which you don't expect at first to be so likable.

As we discussed at our own book group meeting last night, for a story about books, Landvik didn't really let us into the book discussions very much. Each chapter was headed by a book club selection and why it was chosen, but beyond a few mentions in the text, we didn't really get to hear much of what the angry housewives thought or said about it. She could have woven the texts into these women's lives more effectively.

In addition, some of the supplemental characters (children and husbands) are well shaped while others are one dimensional and rarely described. Clearly, the angry housewives are the primary characters of this novel. The most heartbreaking scene to me was when one of the sons told his mother that he felt that no one loved him. Even though she knew deep down that he was gay, she could not reach out to connect with her son--she just wanted the whole situation to go away, and if she avoided it, she thought she could make it so. She chose to close the door on her own son because she was too afraid to face facts.

Even with the criticisms we had of the book, we all enjoyed it and give it a strong recommendation.

Reading flash mob: love it!

Bitter Bitch: Fear of Flying revisited

Bitter Bitch by Maria Sveland
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Bitter Bitch is billed as "the international bestseller that has shocked Europe"; however, the only thing particularly shocking was the title, which caused all sorts of commentary from my family (especially when my husband showed it to my visiting mother-in-law and sister-in-law!). Apparently the literal translation from the Swedish is even more schocking: "Bitter Cunt"!

Sarah, mom of a toddler, has just turned 30 and is feeling like a bitter bitch. She flies to Tenerife (in the Canary Islands) for a week's vacation and reads Erica Jong's feminist classic, Fear of Flying, while she's away. However, she finds herself longing for quiet and uninterrupted sleep rather than the classic "zipless f--k."

Sveland examines the state of modern woman- and motherhood and peels back the facade that women can easily have it all. Although Sarah loves her husband Johan, she also has great unresolved hostility towards him. Having experienced horribly sexist men in television journalism and other areas of her life, Sarah reflects that "Refusing to admit your own part in oppression is an incredibly smart power strategy, since oppression is made invisible by diminishing it." Not only does this lack of awareness exist in men, but it also exists in the privileged--both men and women.

After Sarah is unable to nurse her baby Sigge successfully, she develops a life-threatening breast infection. Johan chooses to take Sigge home instead of having them both stay in the hospital with Sarah, an action that Sarah views as betrayal. (Having experienced the extreme bonding connection that exists between mother and newborn, I can completely relate to this feeling.) Their marriage is damaged as a result of this and the fact that Johan is gone for weeks at a time (because of his job) while Sarah is caring for newborn Sigge. She feels exhausted and completely alone, even though she loves her child passionately.

Sarah struggles with the fact that women still bear the burden in marriage: they do most of the housework and the child care. "I really do not think there is much difference between becoming a mother during the 1970s or in the twenty-first century. In the beginning you are just as alone with your child as most mothers have been for centuries...it is sad, but becoming a mother seems to be one of the most difficult undertakings when it comes to equality."

When the couple goes to married marriage counselors, they tell Sarah that achieving equality in a marriage is impossible. Both Sarah and Johan storm out in disgust. But in fact, Johan's paternity leave (more common in Sweden) was what saved their marriage. "That's when he understood what it meant to take full responsibility as a father. Men should take longer parental leave than women, since women have a biological head start because they have carried and given birth to their children. Men need more time to get the innate experience."

She talks in detail about the great guilt work-outside-the-home mothers feel when they leave their children in day care (or take off for a weekend or week away). Fathers tend not to experience that same amount of guilt. Why is that? She concludes that women should be more self-serving: "The one who demands the most gets the most." For example, who is most likely to be doing the cleanup at a party? The women (especially with older generations). Sarah feels guilty when she doesn't jump up to help the other women, but the men don't seem to feel guilty at all. Why is that?

She also laments the fact that women are rarely able to relax or feel completely safe out in public. They can never escape the potential for men to harass them. (I discussed this very topic with friends at Holden Village late one night.) "I strongly doubt that men can comprehend the discomfort or ferar involved in having to deal with it. I wonder how this really affects women, deep down."

Sarah was raised with a doormat mother and a verbally abusive, alcoholic father, so she didn't have a lot of faith in marriage. Lest you conclude that Sarah is anti-men, though, she waxes lyrical about how much she loves men who peel oranges in public, bring packed lunches to work, bike or walk to work, and dance.

Reading this book, it made me realize how lucky I am to be in a marriage of relative equality. I nursed my sons constantly (and through the night) for many years, and then my husband took over the late night wakefulness after they stopped nursing. He is a stay-at-home dad and does the cooking during the week. I call him our "household manager," because of course he does much more than looking after the kids and cooking. We still fall back into gender stereotyped roles when it comes to some responsibilities: he takes out the garbage, mows the lawn, and deals with the car maintenance, while I am responsible for all of the gift and clothing buying and storing the kids clothes over various seasons. We both grocery shop. But he writes the thank you cards. I let him drive much of the time because he likes to, and I'd rather be reading. I'm the breadwinner but he still has a career and associated goals. I hope someday I can work less and he can get paid for the work he does (writing). We make decisions together.

I feel that we have achieved as close to equality as I can imagine in our marriage. So thankfully, even though I feel that Sveland's observations about marriage and parenting are completely sound, I am not a bitter bitch myself. I must say that it's refreshing to read a feminist novel given all of the anti-feminist backlash out there in popular society. Here's Maria Sveland on feminism and marriage.

I'm not sure what I think about the ending...it depends on whether you are cynical or optimistic. As an optimist myself, I'd like to think that Sarah found some comfort and peace with her life. I'm glad that Sveland wrote this important book, and I have no doubt that many women would be able to relate very closely to this story.

Julie & Julia: Skip the book...see the movie

Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell
2 out of 5 stars

It feels like I have been reading this book forever, and I'm so glad to be done with it. I loved Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child in the movie and liked Amy Adams enough to get through the Julie Powell bits. Stanley Tucci, another one of my favorites, played Julia's husband, Paul.

I'm all over one-year experiment memoirs, but I'd stayed away from this one because of the mixed reviews. But when this book was in my book group's "Yankee Swap" Christmas book exchange, I stole it from my sweet friend Caley. I took it to Holden Village with me last week, and halfway through I picked up another book (Touching the Void) in the Holden library because I needed a break from Julie Powell's incessant whining.

I'm not sure what her original blog was like, because it's virtually impossible to navigate through. I'm curious whether she actually chronicled her progress through the 536 recipes in 365 days, because in the book she writes about only perhaps 60 (?) of them, which is pretty strange since that's what the book is supposedly about. The recipes she does cover are mostly nothing I'd ever want to eat (many involve offal, brains, veal, or lamb). I wanted to know more about the actual cooking process of all of these recipes, not about Powell's tortured work life, strange friends, extremely squishy integrity, and pathetic house cleaning habits.

I definitely could have done without the maggots scene. The thought of her cooking all that fancy food in a filthy, maggot-breeding kitchen is enough to make me vomit. Her poor (dysfunctional) friends--they must have had the same feeling when they read her book and realized they had eaten the products of that kitchen.

Powell's husband, Eric, is faithfully devoted and long suffering. It didn't help me like Powell's personality knowing she cheated on her husband for 2 years and wrote all about it in her subsequent book, Cleaving. She's narcissistic and shallow and shares way too much information, even for a blog or memoir. I agree with her on some fronts (politics being one) and disagree on many others (she calls the World War II memorial in Washington "mind-bogglingly hideous"--but I liked it!).

Speaking of mind boggling, I question how Powell could hold down a mind-numbing bureaucratic job and cook 536 complicated and expensive recipes in one year's time, without gobs of vacation time and a hefty loan. It's hard to tell if she cheated--all we have to go on is her claim that she couldn't think of not finishing her project in one year's time. But who's to say she didn't skip half of the recipes?

One thing I'd like to know is how a notoriously fussy eater (she had never eaten an egg, for God's sake, before starting the project) was able to get past her food foibles and eat all sorts of bizarre ingredients (such as beef marrow and calf's feet). She does not address how she conquered her food issues, but she does mention she gained a lot of weight during that year. She relished eating innards and also in butchering, slicing, and killing (lobsters).

Powell is crushed to learn that Julia Child was not impressed with her project. After reading this book, I do not blame Julia Child one bit. Perhaps if Powell were more likable and spent more time focusing on the cooking and less on the drama in her life, Julia Child would have been entranced and intrigued by her blog.

At the end of the book, Powell claims that the project rescued her. When Julia Child died, she wrote, "I have no claim over the woman at all, unless it's the claim one who has nearly drowned has over the person who pulled her out of the ocean." If this is true, though, why did she start an affair with another man a few years later because she was filled with self-loathing or some other ridiculous reason? Julie & Julia is full of soppy adoration for her husband Eric (except when he's having a "Blanche" day or gets in her way when she is having a tantrum). What happened to lead her to not only have an affair and have a quickie with a stranger, but to rub her husband's nose in it?

Throughout Julie & Julia, Powell scatters made-up vignettes about Julia Child and her husband Paul. They seemed out of place and only made me want to read Julia Child's My Year in France to learn the real story. Julia Child was a fascinating, dynamic woman who loved life and her husband with a passion. Julie Powell, not so much.

Operation Bonnet: Dabbling into the Amish

Operation Bonnet, by Kimberly Stuart

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I picked this book up at the library, and it didn't have very many reviews on goodreads or amazon, but the Amish storyline made me think it was worth the risk.

Nellie Monroe is a bit of an odd duck--she is naive but bright and spunky and doesn't fit in very well in her small Ohio town. Her parents are inattentive and wealthy, and the two people most important to her are her step-grandmother Nona and her best friend, Matt. She also desperately wants to be a private investigator.

So when a former Amish man, Amos, asks her to find out whether his long-lost love, Katie, is going to marry another man, Nellie jumps at the chance to go undercover. She sneaks her way into an Amish family's good graces through a bit of falsehood, and finds a way to bring the star-crossed lovers together.

In the meantime, Nona's fading and Nellie doesn't want to admit it, and Matt views Nellie as more than a friend, but she's too dense to see it.

I liked Stuart's funny writing style, although some of the characters were caricatures or not fully developed (such as her school nemesis, Misty--what was the purpose of her?). We also do not really get to know Matt very well. Kimberly Stuart is actually a "Christian" author, as I discovered toward the end when she threw God in several times. Even though I'm a Christian, I steer clear from so-called "Christian" books, music, and the like. It wasn't too extreme, but it definitely kept the book from being a secular selection. At other times I felt like it was a little preachy, such as when Matt kept telling Nellie that "guys need a break." It felt like a way of suggesting that Nellie's strong, independent personality might be keeping guys away and that women should be more acquiesent to men.

But all in all, I enjoyed this book but probably will not read any more of this author's novels. If you are interested in the Amish or in different cultures, you might like it. 

Letters to My Daughter: Bite-size wisdom from Maya Angelou

Letters to My Daughter, by Maya Angelou
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars


Maya Angelou is a poetic prophet, and this book contains nuggets of her wisdom. At first I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to relate, since I do not have any daughters myself. However, Angelou has one son and no daughters. Her daughter is metaphorical.

I enjoyed reading about some of her experiences and reflections (she is very opinionated!), but the one thing that bugged me was the glaring run-on sentences. Surely this book was edited? Perhaps it was meant to be stream of consciousness, but I found it to be distracting.

It did really feel like Angelou had taken her dear daughter out for dinner and was sharing her sage thoughts about life.

Take It Like a Mom: I have better uses for my time

Take It Like a Mom, by Stephanie Stiles
My rating: 1 out of 5 stars

After reading The Midwife's Confession all the way to the end so recently (and feeling disappointed), I decided to give up on Take It Like a Mom on page 59.

I was surprised to learn that Stephanie Stiles is a professor, because this book was very disappointing. It rings "chick lit" loud and clear. Former lawyer turned stay-at-home mom who is completely klutzy and clueless, but with a heart of gold. She gets into drama with her fellow stay-at-home moms, all of whom seem to be fighting a lack of fulfillment because of their life choices but channel their pent-up energy into their children.

She was shallow and the plot was just as shallow. By the time I reached the first day of the (cooperative) preschool (to which she did not have to register in advance--in whose world???), and she heaps scorn on the kid who is wearing a velvet cape on the playground and whose mom does not shave her legs...I was done. My kid could very well be the one wearing the cape on the playground.

My time is better spent on a good book.

The Midwife's Confession: I can't believe I read the whole thing

The Midwife's Confession, by Diane Chamberlain
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Every once in awhile I start reading a book, and I think "meh...this is not really hooking me," but I continue carrying on. In this case, I had found this book on the library shelves and thought it sounded interesting enough. I always look books up on Goodreads if I find them that way, and this book's reviews were overwhelmingly positive. However, both Goodreads and Amazon had only 30 reviews or so, and for all I know, they could have all been written by the author's friends!

I didn't notice until I was almost finished that a Harlequin publishing house, Mira, published this book.  I have never read a Harlequin book--and even though this is not your typical Harlequin romance--the writing rang similar. Formulaic and lifeless. The author had written many other books and I'd never heard of any of them--both of those should have been dead giveaways.

The Midwife's Confession is not particularly well written. Chamberlain uses the passive voice constantly, and I found her characters to be shallow and one dimensional. I found the plot appealing (before I started reading): two friends try to discover why their other dear friend commits suicide...but it fell flat. Not only were the plot elements predictable, but they were highly unbelievable as well.

The characters annoyed me, and Noelle (the woman who kills herself) came across as difficult to fathom, even though Chamberlain has several chapters written in her perspective.

Speaking of perspective, that jumps around from chapter to chapter, from character to character and first person to third person. Why did Grace hate her mother with such passion? Is that typical of teenage girls?
Then it was all wrapped up way too nicely in the end.

I should have quit this book when I saw where it was headed. I do not recommend this--it was a waste of my time. Kind of like eating potato chips while watching a bad made-for-TV movie and pondering why you did that.

Now onto Maya Angelou--at least I know the writing will be lyrical and lovely!

House made for books

Check out this house in Japan with walls of bookshelves. So cool! I've always wanted walls of bookshelves...but of course, I try to circulate my books nowadays and I use the library a lot.

This is more my style though...

Or this:

Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame, and Floundering

Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame, and Floundering, by Meredith Baxter
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

First of all, very clever name. Meredith Baxter, star of TV movies and the classic family sitcom, "Family Ties," writes about her lack of mothering, three troubled marriages, parenting, drug use and alcoholism, bout with breast cancer, and eventually, her coming out as a lesbian.

"Family Ties" last three years were when I lived in Japan. I remember my parents or friends taping a bunch of the American TV shows I liked and sending me videotapes--they were priceless. "Family Ties" was one of the shows I relished on those videotapes.

I've always enjoyed Baxter's acting, and I was surprised along with many others when she quietly announced that she was in relationship with a woman...although I suppose the fact that her three marriages were unsuccesful could have been a clue.

Baxter never went to college so when she was with her second husband, David Baxter, who constantly verbally and emotionally abused her (and sometimes physically assaulted her, too), she always felt "less than." It took a lot of courage for her to finally declare that she'd had enough. I think that verbal and emotional abuse is even harder for women to walk away from sometimes than physical abuse. In her case, she had five children to consider as well.

Those expecting a full book of stories about "Family Ties" will be disappointed, as she covers that period in just a chapter or so. She fondly mentions Michael Gross (who played the dad), who became one of her closest friends and one of the first people she told about the abuse. I first heard about this book when I happened on an Oprah clip with Baxter, and Michael Gross appeared as a surprise guest. It was clear that they have great love and affection for one another.

She doesn't go into great detail about most of her costars (in fact she doesn't even mention Justine Bateman, causing me to wonder), so readers who are expecting a celebrity gossip rag will be disappointed.

It's not high literature, but it was an interesting read, with ultimately, a happy ending.

The Gilded Chamber: another female biblical story, reimagined

The Gilded Chamber: A Novel about Queen Esther, by Rebecca Kohn

3 out of 5 stars

I wouldn't have picked this up so soon after rereading The Red Tent, but my 8-year-old son was in a play about Queen Esther this week and I had a business trip, so Queen Esther it was.

Kohn's writing was not nearly as strong as Anita Diamant's, but I did have some similar issues about perspective. The novel was told in the first person, but Esther seemed to be omnipresent. It was interesting and disturbing to read about harem life and the subjugated roles that women led in this era.

One thing I had a hard time swallowing was Esther's undying devotion to Mordechai, and after she realized that King Xerxes was a weak tyrant, she still had the hots for him. Being a woman who has never been attracted to bad boys, I found this to be implausible.

The women (in particular, Esther) were much more vividly described than the men, many of whom were one dimensional. This might reflect the severe division between men and women, and the lack of personal connection they had. (Everyone in the kingdom was forbidden to approach the king without being called, including his wife.)

Some of the descriptions of Esther's clothing got to be a bit tiresome, and the writing seemed melodramatic at times. However, I found it to be another interesting story about another woman in the bible (and a Jewish hero).