Merry Christmas!

Snowed In!

With 13-16 inches of snow in Portland so far, no sign of melting, and another storm expected today, this could be The Year Without Christmas! Well, no. Of course Christmas will be here tomorrow, no matter what. But this could be the first of my 42 Christmases not spent with my family. As much as they are clamoring for us to drive across the mountains to Bend, the thought of driving 200 miles with tire chains seems like a pioneer-level adventure that I am just not up for. All I can imagine is throwing a chain somewhere on Mt. Hood and -- off on the shoulder in a sleet storm -- trying to jerry-rig something out of bungee cords and Christmas ribbon. To distract myself from the idea of my mother weeping over her empty Christmas nest -- or, in truth, drinking martinis and eating oysters Rockefeller without me -- I have been playing with my blog. I have a couple of ideas for organizing and rearranging things. For one, I think I have figured out how to have an alphabetized directory of past reviews over on the right side. Right now, I have every book review listed, but that is getting too long, and will just get longer. I think I can make a series of alphabet letter links that will lead to a list of books sorted by title. Using that same system, I also plan to have a list on the right side of my annual reading lists. Not necessarily of interest to anyone but myself, I have kept track of the books I read, in order, each year for the last five years or so. I am going to make a list of links that will lead to each year's book list. I can use these lists to keep track of when I read what. We will see how it goes. But I think I will have a couple more snowy days to play around with all these changes. And to celebrate Christmas, of course. Although it won't really be Christmas without oysters Rockefeller. Or my mother.

1 Day Until Christmas

Author of the Day: John Updike

John Updike was prolific. In addition to the 26 novels listed below, he wrote at least 30 books of short stories, poetry, essays, and criticism. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award twice, and in 2008, the editors of Literary Review magazine awarded him the dubious honor of Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction lifetime achievement award.

Having read several of Updike's novels, I can understand the impetus for that last award. A lot of what I know and think about sex came from Updike, but sometimes he can be just too much.

In chronological order, with those I have read in red, and those on my TBR shelf in blue, Updike's novels are:

(1959) The Poorhouse Fair

(1960) Rabbit, Run

(1963) The Centaur (reviewed here)

(1965) Of the Farm

(1968) Couples

(1970) Bech, a Book (reviewed here)

(1971) Rabbit Redux

(1975) A Month of Sundays (reviewed here)

(1977) Marry Me

(1978) The Coup

(1981) Rabbit Is Rich

(1982) Bech Is Back

(1984) The Witches of Eastwick

(1986) Roger's Version

(1988) S.

(1990) Rabbit At Rest

(1992) Memories of the Ford Administration

(1994) Brazil

(1996) In the Beauty of the Lilies

(1997) Toward the End of Time

(1998) Bech at Bay

(2000) Gertrude and Claudius

(2002) Seek My Face

(2004) Villages

(2006) Terrorist

(2008) The Widows of Eastwick

NOTE

Last updated December 29, 2018.

2 Days Until Christmas

List of the Day: Pulitzer Prize (Redux)

This Snow Day has given me an opportunity to go back and fix some glitches in earlier posts. I have redone my Pulitzer Prize Winners list so that all the links work correctly. With a new year looming, my book lists are clamoring for attention. Maybe 2009 will be the year I focus on finishing the books on the Pulitzer list, although there are other lists that are ticking my fancy more, or that I am closer to finishing so am antsy to turn to. We'll see how the next year of reading unfolds. Many of the Pulitzer winners that I have not read yet are the older ones that are hard to find. Perhaps a good 2009 goal would be to read the ones already on my TBR shelf (those in red) and acquire some of the others for future reading. These are the Pulitzer winners that I have yet to read: 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson 1925: So Big by Edna Ferber 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge 1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes 1933: The Store by T. S. Stribling 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau 1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday 1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones 2006: March by Geraldine Brooks 2007: The Road by Cormack McCarthy 2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

3 Days Until Christmas

A Series of Unfortunate Presents

"A Series of Unfortunate Presents" was the funny title of an email message from my dear friend Cynthia this afternoon. Being a Lemony Snicket fan, I laughed even before I read the message. But the message itself also made me giggle -- Cynthia just can't win for losing this Christmas, between bad weather and present preemption. It's just an example of the mischief a blog can cause. But I promise that I would have been gracious about receiving a book I already own and did not like all that much . . . Here's what Cynthia sent:

So, long story short, this week I ran into a software roadblock – software that I need for my hopefully fabulous 2008 presents! My new software won’t be here until early this week (that is, if the UPS plane lands at the airport and the UPS truck can skate to my house!) So, I decided in the meantime I would send part of your present since part of it is holiday related. I had your pretty Christmas box wrapped and ready to go, but decided at the last minute to jump online and check your Rose City Reader blog to make sure you hadn’t already posted the vintage postcard I had used for a gift enclosure (see below.) Of course, the first thing that popped up on your blog was your review of the Sedaris book which also contained a review of Holiday on Ice which then had me laughing out loud (see why below!) I promptly ripped open the package to remove the book. But then I decided this called for a picture and a post. Criminy Christmas!!

4 Days Until Christmas

Review of the Day: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Several years ago, my introduction to David Sedaris was reading Holidays on Ice in a six-hour binge. While I found the first few essays hilarious, I was tired of the whole thing by the time I finished. I went on what I thought would be a life-time David Sedaris sabbatical.

Luckily for me and my reading resolutions, two years ago I picked up a copy of the audio version of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim when there were otherwise slim pickings at my library. Listening to Sedaris read his own stories made all the difference. There were several that I found to be laugh-out-loud funny, and I was disappointed to come to the last one. Hearing the inflections and the voices the way Sedaris intended them to sound was the key.

I have since listened to every audio version of Sedaris's books that I can find, including his latest, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and my overall favorite, Me Talk Pretty One Day. I eat them up like candy, and while some pieces are better than others, I pretty much enjoy them all.

By far, my very favorite Sedaris essay is one in Dress Your Family called "Six to Eight Black Men" about (unlikely as it might seem from the title) Christmas traditions in Holland. We have made it a Christmas tradition in my house to listen to this piece while lounging around the tree on Christmas Eve. It's enough to make us laugh until we snort hot buttered rum out our noses. Hmmmm . . . maybe it is time for me to revisit Holidays on Ice.

5 Days Until Christmas

6 Days Until Christmas

Review: So Many Books, So Little Time

Sara Nelson had a great idea for a book lover’s book: She would spend one year (2002) reading a book a week and writing about it, compiling her efforts in So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading.

Although she started off with a list of 26 or so books that she wanted to read, there was not a lot of rhyme to her reason.  She did not have a definitive list like Pulitzer Prize Winners, or Books I Meant to Read in College But Never Did, or anything like that.  She ended up choosing the books each week in a pretty spontaneous fashion.

Likewise, she did not have a formula for how she wanted to write about the books.  She did not want to simply write reviews of the books she read.  She wanted to write about each book’s connection to her personal life, such as what was going on in her life that made her chose a particular book, personal views that made her react to a book in a certain way, or memories a book conjured.

In keeping with her theme, I considered my own personal connections with So Many Books as well as the books Nelson read.  As she described, I decided I would try “matching up the reading experience with the personal one and watching where they intersect – or don’t.”  There were a lot of intersections.  Following Nelson’s bibliophile footsteps led me through familiar territory.  For example, she and I share an aversion to over-hyped books (White Teeth and Everything is Illuminated are two we both avoided), we both think Philip Roth is the cat’s pajamas, and we had the exact same reaction to Anthony Bourdain when we read Kitchen Confidential (hard crush followed by exasperation and a desire to break up – although he and I have since reconciled over The Nasty Bits).

And there several places where are reading paths did not cross.  Unlike Nelson, I very rarely abandon a book once I start it.  I can think of only two – A Frolic of His Own and some V.I. Warshawski mystery.  Nelson seems to favor contemporary novels and does not share my taste for nineteenth century books (although it is hard to tell from just one year of reading).  Nor does she share my compulsion for prize winners and “must read” lists.

But the biggest personal jolt I got from So Many Books was realizing that Nelson is living the life I, as an English Lit major back in the ‘80s, had planned for myself.  She lives in New York – in Greenwich Village no less – where she works for a magazine and writes books.  She married an interesting man at a reasonable age and has one child.  That is pretty much what I had in mind for myself until, a month before college graduation, my life took a turn for the old-fashioned when I fell in love with a local newspaper reporter and stayed in Portland, where we married at what now seems the ridiculous age of 23.  Of course, had I gone to New York, my life would have been different, but not better.  I would not have gone to law school, so I would not now have a profession I find enormously satisfying, I would not have met and (after taking a marital Mulligan) married my adored husband, and on and on.  It’s not like I sit around pondering what my life would have been like had I followed my original post-college plans, but reading Nelson’s book really stirred up some memories and a few what-might-have-been fantasies. Which was what Nelson hoped would happen. She wanted to write about how books “get to” her personally.  Hers certainly got to me.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

7 Days Until Christmas

Internet Review of Books

The December issue of the Internet Review of Books is up now. My review of Scratch Beginnings is in it. And my short review of Islands of Divine Music is posted in the Worth Mentioning section. A double whammy for me.

8 Days Until Christmas

Christmas Lists II: Books I Recommend Giving

Lots of books end up under my Christmas tree. This is list of books I think would make good gifts this year (not that anyone on my list is necessarily going to get them, just in case knowing eyes are reading this): At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries by Estelle Ellis (for bibliophiles in general and especially those building or fantasising about a home library); Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology, edited by Matt Love (a collection of essays celebrating 150 years of the Beaver State; for Oregonians in fact or spirit); The House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler (history of America's foremost wine dynasty; for wine drinking business types, especially those keen on Napa Valley); Love Among the Chickens by P.G. Wodehouse (his first novel; an ideal introduction for Wodehouse newbies, but also good for fans because, not being part of one of his popular series, it is unlikely they've read this one); The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World* by Guillaume de Laubier (pure biblio-porn; for those less interested in the practicalities of "living with" books); Nothing to Lose by Lee Child (the latest in the Jack Reacher series; for all the Reacher Creatures on your list); and The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (my favorite read of 2008; for anyone who loves a well-written, totally engrossing yarn). * I particularly like this book because one of the libraries featured (including the picture on the back cover) is in the school in Metten, Bavaria where my cousins attended.

9 Days Until Christmas

Christmas Lists I: Books I Would Like to Receive

Were Santa to read my blog today, he would learn that I would like the following books for Christmas: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (because I am always in the mood to snuggle in with a long, highly imaginary novel in cold January and this one would count towards my goal of reading a book by every winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature); The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones (because I really enjoyed another novel of hers, Lost in Translation); Plants and Their Application to Ornament by Eugène Grasset (because I saw it at Paper Source and it is beautiful); Plum Sauce by Richard Usborne (because it is a companion guide to the books of P.G. Wodehouse and I plan to immerse myself in those in 2009); and Pork & Sons by Stéphane Reynaud (because it is an homage to the One Magical Animal); and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (because it is on Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels list and I want to read it before I see the movie).

10 Days Until Christmas

11 Days Until Christmas

Favorite Bookstores for Christmas Shopping

Books are my favorite Christmas presents, both for giving and getting. For me, the best part of Christmas day is lounging in front of the tree after all the fuss is over, stacking up the books, and flipping through each one, imagining the fun of reading them all. Add a crackling fire and a hot buttered rum, and I am in Christmas heaven. This year, the books I am giving as gifts came from three places: 1) Amazon: I am a big amazon.com shopper because it is convenient, inexpensive, and they ship for free. But I am not a good on-line browser, so I use amazon to buy specific books for specific people. Hubby's Christmas books came from amazon, because he gave me a list of what he wanted. 2) Powell's: One of the very best things about living in Portland is Powell's. So every Christmas I make at least a couple of visits to the City of Books. I go there to browse for books for local friends for whom I do not have a particular book in mind. I got a present for my boss from Powell's. 3) Second Hand Prose: The Friends of the Oregon City Public Library runs my favorite used bookstore, Second Hand Prose (in the Oregon City Antique Mall). I was there to day and very excited to find that they have doubled the space and the inventory. They meet all my requirements for used books: good selection, especially of literary fiction; excellent, clean condition and mostly donated, not ex-library editions; and low prices, with most hardbacks at $2 and most paperbacks at $1. Immediate family members are getting books from S.H.P. because I think they would like a big stack of books to read through the winter. Now I must get to wrapping!

12 Days Until Christmas

Review of the Day: Scratch Beginnings

Fresh out of college, Adam Shepard set out with $25, a sleeping bag, and the clothes on his back to prove that the American Dream is alive and well. Shepard was concerned by the pessimistic attitude of many of his friends – an attitude he thought was fostered by the popular but gloomy Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, both by Barbara Ehrenreich.

He wanted to learn for himself whether it is still possible to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Using the same “undercover” approach as Ehrenreich, Shepard got off the train in Charleston with his meager possessions and a down-and-out cover story that did not involve a college degree. He also had the goal of obtaining a car, a place to live with furniture, $2,500 in savings, and career-advancing opportunities (either through school or business) by the end of one year. Scratch Beginnings chronicles this adventure from Shepard’s first night in a homeless shelter, through job searches, setbacks, conflict, and accomplishment.

There is no denying that this is an adventure tale. Yes, Shepherd addresses weighty issues, but he is not a sociologist and his book is not a policy polemic. This is the story of one young man’s year spent building a decent life from scratch. His hands-on approach to experiencing and then explaining things for himself brings to mind bygone explorers or early journalists like Mark Twain. It would be easy to pick on Shepard’s premise and poke holes in his arguments. But Shepard is quick to acknowledge this his is just one man’s story, not a comprehensive analysis of poverty in America. And he admits that his experience was made easier because he was not encumbered by children, addiction, or mental illness.

To fault the book for not providing scholarly economic analysis is to intentionally ignore its value and deny its charm. In fact, Shepard’s few attempts to address larger policy issues are the weak spots in the book. The book is not political – Shepard goes out of his way to disavow any particular political affiliation or ideology. But his lack of political clarity shows in the fuzzy thinking apparent in his few policy suggestions. A couple of his ideas – like why raising the minimum wage will not help poor people – show some original thought. But others, such as, “Affordable housing needs additional support from both the legislative and executive branches at the federal and state level” are political pablum, demonstrating neither insight nor innovation.

Fortunately, Shepard keeps his policy suggests to a minimum. He concentrates on explaining the personal lessons he learned from finding and keeping a difficult job as a house mover, making the most of difficult living accommodations, and denying himself easy and immediate pleasures in order to save his money and energy for a better future. These lessons range from the amusing (“Broccoli Au Gratin” is the best flavor of Rice-A-Roni and a one dollar box is enough for two meals) to the avuncular:

We adjust. That’s what we do. We seize the opportunities that are given to us, and we adjust to make up for what is kept from us. In some cases, . . . we don’t have a choice. We embrace change or we fight it off. In the end, they say, change makes us stronger. Even if we deny the change and retreat back to the norm, the experience has helped us to grow and understand what is on the other side, and it has given us the freedom to make more informed decisions in the future

The appeal of all Shepard’s lessons is that he culled them from his own experience; he did not learn them on a theoretical level from a college seminar or a self-help book, he lived them. He accepted advice from other men at the shelter about how to look for work and get a job. He learned the skills of house moving from the men he worked with. There were times when Shepard’s credulity and open-eyed wonder show him to still be a little wet behind the ears, but that is a big part of the appeal of his book – these life-lessons seem fresh coming from him because they were fresh to him.

In the end, Shepard learned from observing the people around him just how difficult life can be, what a difference culture and upbringing can make in a person’s life, and that personal responsibility is the key to achieving goals. As he explained:

All the while, we have to be more focused, keeping our eye on what we really want to do with our lives: move up. Or not. We’re either on a mission or keeping our flight grounded. Either way, we are the pilots.

Scratch Beginnings is exuberant and refreshing, especially when Shepard sticks with describing his own experiences and impressions. Shepard’s was a brash experiment and its very undertaking proves his premise: the American Dream is still kicking.

OTHER REVIEWS

Book Psmith
Internet Review of Books

If you would like your review to be listed here, please leave a comment with your link and I will add it.

13 Days Until Christmas

More on The English Major

The IRB published my review of The English Major by Jim Harrison on the IRB blog. Sort of a teaser for the full length review (by another reviewer) they are going to run in the January issue.

14 Days Until Christmas

Book Notes: The Emperor's Children

Hmmmmmm . . . . I am about halfway through The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud and what had been a dawning recognition is now glaring in my mind: This book is a re-written, Americanized version of Iris Murdoch's 1970-ish novel, A Fairly Honourable Defeat. At first, I noted that the pompous patriarch character was writing a major book on philosophy, just like the patriarch in AFHD. Then the the sinister, manipulative character struck me as being just like the Bad Guy in Murdoch's novel. After that, many other parallels fell into place: two gay couples struggling with an unequal relationship, two floundering college dropouts, two stalwart matrons, etc. This must be intentional. The parallels are too close. Messud even calls one of the characters Julius, like the evil manipulator in AFHD. I am going to have to Google this and try to learn the back story.

15 Days Until Christmas

Book Notes: Scratch Beginnings

I finished reading one friend's book, Creating a Class by Mitch Stevens, but before I took the time to write a review (which I will because I was fascinated by his thesis), I got sucked into Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shepard. Shepard wrote this book about his "experiment" with the American Dream. Put off by the pessimism of his college friends, he set off with $25 cash and the clothes he wore and gave himself a year to become a contributing member of society, with a car, a place to live, cash in the bank, and the prospects for advancing his career. I was so taken with Shepard's brash adventure and his exuberant book that I am writing a longer than usual review and plan to submit it to The Internet Review of Books for its January edition. Now back to drafting a review of Mitch's book.

16 Days Until Christmas

Anthony Burgess List Revisited

I overhauled my Anthony Burgess list. It was one of my earliest posts -- made when I did not know what I was doing. Now all the links should work.


This is the list of Burgess's favorite 99 novels published in English between 1939 and 1989. He wrote a book called, aptly enough, 99 Novels: The Best in English since 1939, compiling his list and explaining his choices. I have not read Burgess's book yet, but based on those novels from his list that I have read so far, I find his choices to be excellent reads.

This is one list that I want to make an effort to finish.

17 Days Until Christmas

Cookbook of the Day: The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook

American foodies owe a debt of gratitude to Alice Waters. She is the patron saint of California cooking, or new American cooking, or whatever you want to call it. She’s the one who gave us goat cheese croutons, roasted beets, mache, and so many other now-ubiquitous dishes. “Former Chez Panisse chef” is just as much a brand name as the brand named meats and produce she serves at her restaurant.

For those reasons, I actually read The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook cover to cover, the way one reads an MFK Fisher book – to get an understanding of the cook’s philosophy as well as recipes. Both women write in a formal style and have strong ideas about ingredients, preparation, presentation, and consumption. Unfortunately, Water’s writing is more spare, perhaps as befits a patron saint, and lacks the pithy humor that leavens Fisher’s books. Reading her prose is more like learning a lesson than being entertained.

Which may be why this book struck me as an essential book for someone who wanted to learn to be a restaurant chef, but not particularly useful for someone cooking at home. Most of the menus require some final preparation of the next dish after the preceding one has been served – possible in a restaurant, but not much fun at a dinner party if the cook wants to eat with the guests.

The individual dishes are also complicated or labor-intensive, causing me to often think as I read, “I’d eat that if someone made it for me.” Waters is particularly fond of leg of lamb, lobsters, and quail and her recipes for these show the difficulty in preparing them at home. First, most of the lamb recipes call for spit-roasting the leg of lamb. She even explains how to build a spit. In my spit-deficient kitchen, those recipes are not possible.

Second, while I find a steamed lobster to be a wonderful treat on a special occasion, Waters takes the fun out of it with instructions to semi-cook a lobster, then remove the meat and make a fumet with the shells – a process involving roasting the shells, making the broth, putting the shells in a blender, then straining the whole thing through a fine sieve – then finish cooking the lobster. Whew!

Finally, quail do not usually show up on my dinner table, but if they did, I do not think I’d have the dedication to follow Walter’s recipes. In most of her quail recipes she gives similar instructions: “Marinate the quail in a cool place overnight . . . turning the quail four to five times during this time.” No little boney bird is worth losing a night of sleep.

Reading this Menu Cookbook made me want to spring for dinner at Chez Panisse, but it did not make me want to don an apron and start cooking.

18 Days Until Christmas

Book Notes: Light in August

I enjoyed Light in August much more than As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, both which I had read in college. I did not know if that is because Light in August is the more accessible of these three Faulkner novels, or if I am just a better reader than I was 20 years ago. So I reread The Sound and the Fury this year (see here) to make an adult comparison. It is a masterpiece, that's for sure. But my personal preference is still for Light in August.

19 Days Until Christmas

It is Saturday, after all.

20 Days Until Christmas

Review of the Day: Whitethorn Woods

Instead of her usual saga, Maeve Binchy presents Whitethorn Woods as a collection of paired short stories sandwiched between sections of unifying narrative. The stories all involve people somehow connected with the Irish town of Rossmore and St. Anne’s Well located in the nearby Whitethorn Woods. Pilgrims visit the well and its shrine to ask St. Anne (the mother of the Virgin Mary) for help in all sorts of matters, but particularly regarding marriage and children.

Each story is told in two parts, from the perspective of two different narrators. The characters in all the stories are intertwined – sometimes substantially, sometimes only tangentially. Lengthy sections at the beginning, middle, and end involve the local priest and his family and tie the book together, as does the debate over building a by-pass through the Woods and tearing down the shrine.

Like Binchy’s other books, this is not a thrill-a-minute page turner. But the characters are well-formed and their stories are deftly told. A good read.

More Poetry

Poetry is in the air. Last week I was trumpeting my friend Kirsten's poetry Writers' Dojo; this week I am congratulating my friend Cat Wood (not her real name, but who am I to blow her cover?) for winning Third Place in the haiku division of the Sante Fe Reporter's "Santa Fe Writes '08" contest. The description itself is poetry.

21 Days Until Christmas

Review: In Hovering Flight

The characters in Joyce Hinnefeld’s first novel, In Hovering Flight, fall into two teams that could be called “the Artists” and “the Suits.” The Artists include the heroine, Addie Sturmer Kavanagh, an avid birder, artist, and environmental activist; her husband Tom, a literature-loving ornithology professor; their daughter Scarlet, a poet; Addie’s two best friends; and various supporters, fans, and hangers-on. The Suits include Addie’s archenemy, a big-shot land developer; corporations; Republican Senators; publishers; college administrators; and the like.

All these characters come into play, directly or through recollection, as Addie’s loved ones gather to mourn her recent death and consider her dying wishes, some of which are unorthodox or even illegal.

Hinnefeld’s writing is elegant and she tells an emotionally complex, multi-layered tale. The problem is that the Artists are all good and the Suits are all bad. Sure, there is some variation and even tension among the Artists themselves. There is the acknowledgement that Addie’s “moral superiority” puts off her loved ones; that some of her ardor may stem from untreated depression rather than healthy concern; and that her fellow activists may be too extreme. But the Artists are fundamentally right in their interests and outlook. The Suits (none fleshed out as characters) range from evil fiends to buffoons. There is absolutely no question about which team we are expected to root for.

Just as the issues are clear to Hinnefeld, team membership is as well. There is no crossover, except as object lessons. For example, the scientific side of Tom’s profession and character is shown in poor contrast to Tom as a writer, musician, and lover of bird songs. Likewise, although Scarlet’s first love Bobby suffers adolescent tragedy, it is his involvement with corporate America that brings him close to death – both slowly with alcohol and quickly with an office in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Bobby is redeemed only when he abandons the world of the Suits and returns to the Artists’ fold.

Hinnefeld means well, that is clear. In Hovering Flight is an earnest novel dealing with heavy subjects (cancer, death, environmental degradation, art, infidelity, autism, motherhood, and suicide, for instance). But Hinnefeld offers no sugar to help the medicine go down. The book is devoid of any humor: there are no jokes, quips, or even wry observations. The book takes itself too seriously and comes across as the same sort of smug, self-righteous lecture Addie herself was wont to give.

OTHER REVIEWS

Internet Review of Books
Fresh Ink Books

(Please leave a comment with a link if you would like your review posted here.)

Christmas Idea of the Day: Blog Advent Calendar

A new picture posted every day to count down the days to Christmas.

Blog Changes

Time to spiff up the blog. Gone is the list of "Books on my iPod" because it was taking up space but was not particularly significant. In its place is a list of links to "My Book Reviews" to make it easier to find reviews. Also, I am in the process of changing links so that they open in a new page. The idea is to make it easier to look at other pages, but get back to Rose City Reader. This is a work in progress, but it will get done eventually. Finally, I got rid of a couple of extra gadgets that did not work well or mean much.

Christmas Wishes of the Day

Christmas Thought of the Day

Thanksgiving is the gateway to Christmas, so my favorite time of the year has now officially started! Time for some thematic blogging.

Of course, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is a long-standing tradition. I have it and his other "Christmas Stories" ready to go on my iPod, since I am in a Dickens mood lately.

But now I am going to add The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford to my holiday reading list, thanks to a great review by Ruth Douillette over on the Internet Review of Books. Standiford has written a mini-biography of Dickens, focusing on the circumstances surrounding Dickens's self-publication of A Christmas Carol. Sounds great!

Review: The Magnificent Ambersons

The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkinton's 1919 Pulitzer Prize winner, is one of those books that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I was afraid it was going to be heavy and dull, and it certainly wasn't. Still, it was not a favorite of mine.

It moved right along through the story of the demise of the once-prominent Amberson family and the growth of their Midwestern town into an industrial city. However, it moved along at such a clip, and with so little thematic subtlety, that it seemed like a book for young adults.

I'm not saying that Tarkington should have handled his themes with the heavy hand of Henry James, but a little of Edith Wharton's nuance or F. Scott Fitzgerald's precision would have added depth to the tale.

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Gobble! Gobble!

Writers' Dojo

A message from my dear friend Kirsten Rian, who is an artist, poet, musician, and all-around wonderful person:

Hi poetry lovers. Wanted to let you know about a new project I’m really excited about. Writers' Dojo is an online literary journal of which I was asked to be the poetry editor. Published by some astoundingly creative and soulful folks, I feel very, very lucky to be part of it all. has been a lot of focus and work on the part of our team and we are now up and running. Still in beta mode and still with a few kinks to work out, the publication was launched at Wordstock. Here’s my latest blog. You can also see the fiction, non fiction, and poetry sections of the site.

Some amazing writers and voices in the nw literary community have been mobilized around this project. Feels good to have it up and available to the world! Happy thanksgiving to you all.

K

Notes re West With the Night

West With the Night is Beryl Markham's compelling memoir of growing up in British East Africa. She is best known for flying solo from England to North America and she ends her book with this story. But the rest is about running wild on her father's farm as a child, learning to hunt and having lion-centered adventures; becoming a professional horse trainer at 17; and her life as a bush pilot in Africa between the wars. The audio version was particularly enjoyable. According to ListOfBests, I am now finished with 11% of the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century.

Review of the Day: The Islands of Divine Music

 

The Islands of Divine Music is delightful find. This first novel by John Addiego tells the multi-generational tale of the Verbicaro family from their immigration to America through the turbulent highlights of the 20th Century.

The Verbicaro family grows out of the rubble of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, with all the vitality and tumult of their adopted city. After the first generation starts a demolition company, the second generation gets in on the ground floor of the WWII Bay Area building boom.

The family business provides a structure for the family as well as the narrative of the book. That family structure is badly damaged by the Vietnam War, leading to a final adventure that tests the faith and love of the third generation of Verbicaros.

The book is dense with historic and family details, but is still as emotionally effervescent and essentially joyful as the extended family it portrays.

Book Frustration! Friends Can Help

In anticipation of a pre-Thanksgiving house move, I packed all 800+ books on my TBR shelves and took them to the new house. Now our move is delayed until January because renovations are taking longer than planned (which we should have planned), so I do not have access to the books I want to read. I am not entirely without TBR books, because I have all those that have come to the house since I packed the shelves. I've been to a couple of library book sales, received a few review copies from publishers and LibraryThing, and even gathered a handful of books by author friends. So I have books to read. But I usually like books to mellow on the shelves for a while, waiting to read one until it percolates up to the top of my consciousness for one reason or other. I feel trapped and rushed having to read the books available from this relatively small pool. I think I will concentrate on Books by Friends. That is a short list and I can finish them by the end of the year: Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites by Mitchell Stevens: Mitch is a sociology professor at NYU (at least until January when he moves to Stanford) who has written a insider's guide to elite college admissions. I am about halfway through this book and find it fascinating. The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen's Guide by Sally Pipes: Sally is the President of Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank in San Francisco, and author of Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health-Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer. Water the Bamboo by Greg Bell: Greg is a former lawyer, now a "speaker, trainer and facilitator" who works with companies and organizations to improve relationships and communication. His book is subtitled "21 Strategies for Extraordinary Results in Your Profession or Team."

Review: Wide Sargasso Sea

I am perfectly ambivalent about Wide Sargasso Sea. Every reaction I had to the book is balanced by its opposite reaction:

• The moody, languid prose captured the tropical setting: I longed for a more direct narrative. 
• The switches in perspective deepened the relationships among the characters: it was frustratingly difficult to track who was saying what and when they were saying it. 
• The themes of madness, alcoholism, cruelty, and love were fascinating: the characters were all horrible and it was awful to watch them destroy themselves and each other. 
• The connection between the heroine and the insane wife in Jane Eyre is an inspired literary device; the tie-in with Jane Eyre is a manipulative gimmick. 

See what I mean? Everything I like about the book, I dislike about the book. Equipoise. But it made it to both the Modern Library and Radcliffe lists of best novels of the 20th century, so the half of me that disliked the book is at least pleased to have accomplished two tasks.

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Review: Little Green Men

After the famous host of a Sunday morning talk show, and Washington uber-insider, is abducted (twice) by space aliens, he becomes the pariah of the Beltway but the celebrity leader of three million UFO believers.

This set up in the hands of America's funniest political satirist is sure to be entertaining. And it is. Little Green Men is fun and funny and goes down like a bomb pop on the first hot day of summer.

My only problem with Buckley's books is that they are never as good as the first one I read. That is, I think that whichever one someone reads first will be that person's favorite, because it is so surprising to read a clever, really funny, contemporary satirical novel. The first one sticks with you. So, for me, while I find all his books to be entertaining, none will compare with Thank You for Smoking, which made me laugh out loud from cover to cover.

As a side note, it will be interesting to see if Buckley's literary star rises or falls after the kerfuffle caused by his (rather lukewarm) endorsement of Obama. He enjoyed a following among right-wingers because of his famously conservative last name and willingness to shatter some progressive icons in his books. But he may now have gotten the attention of some liberal readers.

Hmmmmmm . . . perhaps there was a method to his madness?