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Unraveling Family Secrets in The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye PenelopeSeptember 16, 2026Katy K.-
© Katy Kramp and alibrarymama.com, 2004-2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Katy Kramp and alibrarymama.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
How Doctors Think
How Doctors Think by Jerome GroopmanDoctors think fast. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are scarily wrong. And the methods that doctors who make correct diagnoses even in tricky cases are not the methods that medical students are taught to use. Groopman writes as both doctor and patient, pulling apart cases of the best and worst medical thinking both to help doctors improve their own thinking and to help patients give better information to their doctors and know when to ask for something else. The examples were fascinating, and fortunately nearly all with happy endings. My biggest quibble was that I wanted it to do a better job of pulling out specific steps and questions for both doctors and patients. The chapters were organized around medical specialties rather than specific errors or strengths in thinking, leaving the pulling together for the individual reader. Still, it was useful and interesting for anyone who deals with doctors, and those interested in puzzling medical cases for their own sake will find this fascinating.
The Flirt
Here’s some sweet summer fun:
The Flirt by Kathleen Tessaro Imagine yourself finding that the spark has gone out of your marriage. You’d like to get things going again, but since part of the problem is that you’re not feeling amorous, either, you’re not sure where to start. If you are a man in London, enter the hired flirt, a “professional massager of the female ego”, who will conduct a chaste yet thrilling flirtation with your wife. She’ll start being excited about herself, and you’ll start being excited about her. On the other hand, if you are a woman in a similar position, you could visit Bordello, and have the proprietress make seductive yet subtle custom lingerie, such that you won’t look like you’re trying at all, but your husband will nevertheless find you irresistible.
These are the two businesses that we are introduced to at the beginning of this book, along with a mélange of characters. There’s Hughie, an out-of-work actor, applying for the job of professional flirt, and his love of the moment, Leticia Vane, proprietress of Bordello. Hughie’s running up a tab at the local café, where Rose, a young single mother, is the waitress. Sam, a regular there and a plumber is called to fix a problem at Bordello. Rose interviews for a household job at the home of Olivia, a rich and sad American, but Olivia takes her for an up-and-coming artist instead. Jonathan works for Olivia’s wife Arnaud, a tennis ball billionaire. Not only is Arnaud an impossible boss, but Jonathan’s wife Amy is pregnant for the fourth time and both of them are wondering what happened to their dream of domestic bliss. The interlocking characters and plot lines rise like beaten egg whites to make a delightful meringue of a book, filled with comic situations and bittersweet chocolate reflections on the messiness of love and the fleeting nature of romance.
Gorgeously Green
Gorgeously Green by Sophie Uliano Going green is increasingly fashionable, with books aimed at every possible demographic. This book is aimed at the shopping fashionista who isn’t sure that regular products are really all that bad and certainly isn’t going to risk looking dowdy to benefit the earth. I myself am pretty fashion challenged, passionate about being environmental, and have neither the money or the patience for a lot of shopping. But hey, the cover was cute, so I thought I’d give it a try. Uliano, a yoga instructor, is really trying to make being green easier, spiritual, and more fun. The tone is chatty, talking about her own successes and shortcomings, and the book includes frequent references to fun quizzes and prizes available on the associated website. Her advice includes thoughts on the usual yucky chemicals and processes, along with which warrant throwing away the product and which are safe enough to finish before being replaced; chatty product advice; some easy yoga and meditations, as well as recipes for beauty products and fast but tasty food. Each chapter focuses on a different area of life, and concludes with a menu of five action steps, from which you are supposed to choose one. I am getting sick of people saying that G Diapers, where you dump the gel in the toilet, stir with considerable force and several flushes, and wash the cloth cover, are so much easier than cloth diapers that modern cloth diaper options don’t even need to be mentioned. Everyone I’ve talked to that’s tried both says that cloth is a lot easier, yet every book I read on the subject lately assumes without trying that the opposite is true. Anyway, mini-rant aside, this is a fine book for those just getting started being green, especially those to whom the term “Gorgeously Green Girl” sounds appealing.
The Friday Night Knitting Club
This one has been on the bestseller list for a while. I resisted reading it. Probably because the ladies were going to be dealing with depressing stuff and because it was a bestseller? So much for knowing my own tastes. Once again, my colleague S. put it on hold for me. And once I opened it, I had a really hard time putting it down.
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs Georgia Walker was young, single and pregnant when an older lady suggested that she use her knitting to make a living for herself. Now, her daughter Dakota is 12 and Georgia is the proprietress of a thriving New York City knitting store, Walker and Daughter, which is also staffed by the elderly and widowed Anita. As our story opens, a group of women wanting companionship and help with their knitting coalesces into the Friday Night Knitting Club. Our cast includes Georgia’s old friend from publishing, K.C., who is always starting but never finishing big projects; Lucie, a single and out of work television producer; Georgia’s daughter Dakota, who provides baked goodies; and Darwin, a women’s studies grad student bent on proving that knitters are submitting themselves to the patriarchy. The plot thickens further for Georgia as Dakota’s father James, missing since the pregnancy was discovered, turns up. Her old best friend from high school, now a rich society lady, also comes in to commission a hand-knit ball gown. The story switches between all of the major characters, as they all work through their own struggles and learn to rely on each other. It’s classic strong female friendship stuff, with some Wisdom from the Grandmothers (and a random priest) thrown in. It’s all about the characters and the relationships, and is already being promoted for book clubs. Did I mention that I read during rare knitting opportunities?
New Graphic Novels
I got back from vacation and found piles of graphic novels on my desk:
ALIAS 2 vols
Daredevil: Hell to Pay
DMZ 4 vols
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall
GLOBAL FREQUENCY 2 vols
Jack of Fables vol 2
LOCAS IN LOVE
LOCAS VOL 3
LOVE & ROCKETS VOL 1-15 (and I think I’ll hold off on any more Love and Rockets and Locas until I know they circ… those Hernandez brothers seem to come out with about 3 of these a month.)
M by John Muth
POWERS VOL 1-11
RISING STARS VOL 1-5
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
TEZUKA’S BUDDHA VOL 1-5
TRICKED
Elijah of Buxton
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis Christopher Paul Curtis, native of Flint, Michigan, is the king of taking a serious topic and telling a funny children’s story about it. In Bud, Not Buddy, for example, he tells the story of a black, motherless boy hitchhiking across Michigan during the Depression. If you were looking for a cheerful story, you might just turn the other way after reading that description. And you would be very wrong. It is a book to make you laugh out loud, even though the tough realities of the Depression are still there. Yes, it won the Newbery, and it deserved it.
But here we’re talking about Elijah of Buxton. Elijah is the first free-born child in the town of Buxton, Ontario, a refuge for runaway slaves. Elijah is a mischievous boy who tells the stories of his pranks in colloquial language. I expect I’ll want to listen to it soon, too, as the narration style would make for a great listening book with the right reader. The anecdotes, filled with the colorful characters and details of life in the town, build slowly in intensity. Then, the details that seemed unconnected come together, as Elijah finds himself crossing the border to the United States in pursuit of a thief who has stolen the funds meant to buy the freedom of an entire family. Still, the story is funny through most of the book, moving, captivating. I was left in awe of Christopher Paul Curtis once again.
In Defense of Food
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan After Michael Pollan wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he apparently got a lot of questions from confused readers about what they should actually eat. This is his answer: no recipes, but a lot of research and thoughts. He starts with his basic philosophy, shown on the cover: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Then he goes through it all. First, a detailed critique of the American food philosophy that he calls nutritionism, which is basically the idea that we can break food down into its basic components, figure out what we need, and feed ourselves based on those ideas. We’ve been trying this for over a hundred years now, defining new things as good or bad, but it hasn’t worked. The more we try, the unhealthier we get as a nation. Humans have been proven to thrive on any number of diets, he says, but the modern Western processed food diet is not one of them. Pollan argues that it’s time to stop eating nutrients and start eating cuisines, real food proven by tradition. In this section, he also talks about the work of Weston A. Price and other nutritional theorists of the 1930s whose research – pointing as it did towards organic farming and traditional food preparation – fell into disfavor in the 1940s when chemical farming and industrial food came into fashion. As a counter to nutritionism, Pollan suggests that we eat food that doesn’t come with health claims and that our grandmothers or great-grandmothers would recognize as food, both in its finished form and in the ingredient list. All in all, I have read nearly all of his advice other places, but rarely with such engaging presentation. This is a good choice if you’re fascinated with the topic, like me, or if you haven’t been reading the newer thinking on nutrition and want a good place to start.
Pirates and Parenting
A while back, I mentioned that I was doing a pirate picture book bibliography. I’m feeling a little too lazy to post everything up here, but it’s here – Not Too Scary Pirate Books.
Did I say that Mr. FP would never stop listening to Snack Time? Ha ha! Well, he’s probably still listening to it in ’s car, but in my car, we are now listening to Peg Leg Tango by Captain Bogg and Salty I’m now hearing “I am a pirate in this world” and “There’s a pirate party shakin’ on the ship!” around the house. Their web sites all seem to be down, but there are a few copies of their two more recent albums (this one included) left on Amazon. This is pirate fun for all ages.
A little more about tantrums: The parenting book I last reviewed, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline was recommended by a friend, who heard about it in her Raising Your Spirited Child class. I’ve a couple friends now who took that class, and both have noted remarkable increase in harmony and cooperation since then. Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka is on my reading list. Last week I heard from another friend with a four-year-old that reading just the first two chapters of her more recent book, Kids, Parents and Power Struggles: Winning for a Lifetime took tantrums from ten to fourteen down to two a day. I’ll have to interloan it to get hold of it, but I didn’t want to deprive any of y’all that might be in need of such assistance until then. Also still on my parenting to-read list is How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, who also wrote Siblings without Rivalry, which I reviewed a while back.
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