Seasonal Reads

Posted on March 17, 2006 by Katy K.

Here are two seasonal reading items. The first is for Lent, a time for reflection and thinking about faith. The second is for National Poetry Month, which is April, but I have to read ahead to have time to get the reviews up. I have to say that both of these topics are tricky for me. I consider myself a Christian, but find a lot of thinking on the topic grating and narrow-minded and sometimes downright creepy. Poetry, too, I like in theory, but often have trouble getting into. In fact, I gave up on the first poetry book I tried for this review. However, both of these books are excellent, highly enjoyable and easy to get into, even if they aren’t your usual genre.

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott In this collection of highly personal essays, Lamott explores what it means to be a Christian who believes in peace, love, and caring for the poor in an America involved in an unjust war in Iraq and on the poor. There’s also a number of thoughts on parenting a teenage boy. Although the attitude on politics and religion is much the same at my own church, seeing a published author who differs so from the vocal right-wing Christians is highly reassuring. Lamott’s writing is simply masterful. Like tupelo, she is able to write about a depressing topic in a way that is still laugh-out-loud funny. Her honesty in talking about the difficulty of living up to her own ideals – as in the essay “Loving the President: Day Two” – is both laudable and deeply touching. She’s reached that magical place where feelings are so personal as to be profoundly universal. This isn’t hair-splitting theology, and it’s not just for Christians. Read it.

The Trouble with Poetry and other poems by Billy Collins Do you know who the current Poet Laureate of the United States is? I don’t, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised that I didn’t know that Billy Collins used to be, a couple of years ago. Anyway, after reading this book, I think he deserved it. The poems are lovely to listen to (at least inside my head), small reflections on the oddities of life that are beautiful without requiring a lot of effort to understand. Which I think might be considered good poetry, but is not the kind of thing that I have energy for. My favorite poem, I think, was “The Lanyard”, where he reflects on a lanyard he made for his mother in summer camp, naively considering that the small gift would repay the work she had done for him. “Here are thousands of meals, she said/ and here is clothing and a good education. /And here is your lanyard, I replied,/which I made with a little help from a counselor.”

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boy books

Posted on March 15, 2006 by Katy K.

Full Service by Will Weaver It’s the summer of ’65. Paul Sutton, a farm boy from a small Minnesota town, takes a job at the local Shell station at his mother’s urging. She wants him to see more of the world than their tightly-knit religious community. Though he initially does it just to please her, there is a lot going on in the world, and it all goes through the gas station. There are the swarms of tourists going to the lakes, the hippies whose bus breaks down and the townfolk who scorn them, the secret high school lovers who make Paul their go-between, and the workers from Paul’s church, who warn him against losing the faith. Like a summer vacation itself, the novel starts out slowly, builds in intensity as the heat rises, then cools as the tourists go home again. Though it feels a tad slow for the teenage boy audience for which it’s presumably intended, Paul’s coming-of-age is authentic and compelling.

Magic Street by Orson Scott Card So the story behind the story is that a black friend of Card’s challenged him to write a fantasy novel with an African-American hero. Not just a sidekick – a real hero. Not a comfortable task for a very white author, but Card does an admirable job. Only two people in the comfortable black middle-class neighborhood of Baldwin Hills know where Mack Street came from – and the woman who got pregnant and gave birth to him all in the same day isn’t one of them. He grows up going in and out of all the houses in Baldwin Hills, firmly part of the community. He’s mostly happy, except that he can see people’s deepest dreams – and when they come true, it always hurts them. A girl who dreams of being a fish wakes up inside her parents’ waterbed, and is permanently brain-damaged by the time she’s found. Eventually Mack Street finds out that he is the center of a centuries-old conflict between immortals, and must decide whose side he’s on before everyone’s dreams start coming true. It’s good solid modern fantasy.

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Mother Nature

Posted on February 25, 2006 by Katy K.

Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy My loyal readers (such as I may have) will perhaps not be surprised to learn that this book is a wonderful book, a fabulous book, the most important book that I’ve read in a very long time. This book, my friends, is a serious scientific look at motherhood by a scientist who is also a mother. As such, it is crammed with so much good information that I can only describe part of it to you here. Hrdy is a primatologist trained in anthropology and evolutionary theory, and she looks seriously at motherhood across time and across species, comparing what is actually known about mothers with what has been said about mothers by mostly male scientists over the past couple of hundred years. Perhaps not surprisingly, her conclusions are quite different.

Putting “motherguilt” into perspective, she shows that mothers have always had to make tradeoffs between their own survival and that of their children – and that primates of all species rely on child care from other members of their group. She talks about family planning in primates, traditional cultures, and early modern Europe. Fertility used to come years after sexual desire, I learned, giving girls a chance to fool around before they had any chance of becoming mothers. In early modern Europe, the consequence of increased nutrition without the resources to care for children on the one hand or birth control on the other was millions of babies being left in foundling homes, the vast majority of whom ultimately died. Hrdy gives the most rational argument on abortion that I have ever seen, effectively explaining how both positions are rooted in behaviors millions of years old. She talks about the conflicts between what mothers, fathers, and children want and need, and the compromises that we make between them. Where feminists have tended to ignore research into evolutionary and attachment theory as inherently sexist, Hrdy separates the facts from previous cultural bias, and talks about how to pay attention to the needs of both your children and your career.

If you are a mother, or a father, or are planning to become one, I highly recommend this book. , this most definitely means you! The only sad part of this recommendation is that it is lengthy and dense, so that unless you are a Dedicated Reader or accustomed to reading scholarly writing, it will take you a while to get through it. Still even if (dare I suggest it) you don’t make it through the whole book, you will be rewarded by reading however much of it you do read, wherever you start, since it is stuffed full of interesting and obscure knowledge about mothers of all species and all times. Your world will never be quite the same.

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Shopping and Geekitude

Posted on February 8, 2006 by Katy K.

Why We Buy by Paco Underhill I’d been hearing about this book for a long time, and finally got around to reading it. In a book meant to appeal both to store owners and shoppers, Underhill talks about the science behind setting up a store to sell more. My first cynical thought on picking up the book was that I could learn how to avoid the wily ways of the retailer, but Underhill makes a good case for his discipline helping both sides. Knowing how to place things so that people will find them and be comfortable browsing them makes things both more comfortable for the shopper and more profitable for the retailer. After all, whom does it help if you can’t find what you came in for and walk away frustrated? Underhill has put serious research into his claims, trailing shoppers unawares and tracking all aspects of what and why people buy.

By the end of the first chapter, I had turned off my cynical shopper mode and started in on eager librarian mode. After all, I, too, am in the business of selling, just without the profit motive. We could learn a lot from his thoughts on how long signs can be depending on where they’re placed and how to go about finding where best to put them. In fact, the whole science dovetails nicely with a side of my education that I loved but which I haven’t been able to use much so far – the Human Computer Interaction part. OK, so there’s not so much computer interaction here, but knowing how to watch people, then analyzing where they had difficulties and how to fix them – it transfers very nicely. Thinking of ways to apply this to my library fills me with geeky joy, even though I’m not high enough on the ladder to be likely to have much effect. Already my first attempt has been thwarted – right when you come in the door to my library, there is a TV monitor which displays fairly wordy ads for library activities. I suggested that, since Underhill says that people don’t want to slow down to read a sign when they’re first coming in the door, that we should turn it around to face the people waiting in line to check out there books. My boss thought it was a fabulous idea, and we turned it around right away. The receptionist, who came in two days later, thought the carpet cleaners had done it and had it turned back. Even after explaining the theory to her, she couldn’t be talked out of her horror at people coming in the door being faced with the back of the monitor. So it goes.

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Light and Dark

Posted on February 3, 2006 by Katy K.

My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan In Keenan’s third offering featuring former lover Phillip and Gilbert and their best pal Claire, the action is fast, furious, and hilarious. (No, I haven’t read the first two, either, but I might look them up.) Phillip is crushed over the failure of his and Claire’s latest play in New York. Gilbert is in L.A. visiting his mother and her new husband, a famous movie producer. Faster that you can say “transcontinental flight”, Gilbert is pulling strings to get Phillip, Claire and himself a job screenwriting a schmaltzy World War II flick for a renowned action producer. Now, as long as no one with any background in film history finds the sample script Gilbert turned in, they’ll be off to a promising new career. When closeted male action star Stephen Donato turns out to be involved, Phillip offers to spy on Stephen’s aunt Lilly and help with her memoir-writing, in a desperate bid both to keep the script-writing job and gain Stephen’s favor. Keeping Gilbert from getting them into any more trouble gets even harder when Gilbert’s blackmailing ex-wife, Moira, turns up. Phillip’s narrative is full of snappy cultural references and self-deprecating humor, and the action doesn’t let up in this hilarious comic caper.

Buddha Boy by Kathe Koja Justin is an ordinary boy in an ordinary high school, a high school with a strict social hierarchy violently enforced by those on the top. Justin keeps his place in the middle mostly by staying under the radar with his friends Jakob and Megan. Then a new boy comes – Michael, who calls himself Jinsen. With his shaved head, hand-me-downs, and begging bowl, he immediately draws attention to himself. At first, Justin avoids the freak along with everyone else. Then he finds himself drawn towards Jinsen by a shared interest in art. This unfortunately only serves to make Jinsen a bigger target for the bullies of the school – but what does a bully do when a victim refuses to play along? The characters and the cruelty are familiar, but Koja does a spectacular job of telling a story that is realistic without being preachy, saccharine, or devoid of hope. Jinsen’s character manages never to cross the fine line over which sanctimoniousness and unbelievability lie. Justin, too, grows a healthy amount of spine over the course of the book. The story is especially well suited to the audio production, where it is read by a full cast, bringing the teen voices even more fully to life.

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Gifts part III

Posted on January 16, 2006 by Katy K.

As a librarian, I am bound to respect all genres and to tell you that I will help you find whatever book it is that you want to read next. As a gift-giver, however, romance is a challenge: most romances are designed to be read only once, while I like to give books that can be enjoyed again and again. So, in choosing one for the previously mentioned Oldest Niece, we cheated, and gave her our favorite Sarah Zettel. It’s published by Harlequin, which makes it a romance, but there’s a whole lot going on outside of the romance than is typical for romances, and she doesn’t really follow the strict romance formula.

For Camelot’s Honor by Sarah Zettel This second book in Zettel’s Camelot series starts off a whole lot darker than the last one, as we begin with Elen being called off to Faerie and coming back to find that her home has been attacked and much of her family slaughtered. Her family holding is the entry point to Wales, attacked because they didn’t refuse to listen to Arthur’s ambassadors. As she rides off to Caerlyon to find help, she meets with a disguised Morgaine. Morgaine offers Elen power and training if she will follow her. As punishment for her refusal, Elen’s heart is put into a falcon, and both she and the falcon are given to Urien, the very man who slaughtered her family. Although she must obey whoever owns the falcon, Elen manages to send a dream to Merlin, asking for help. Geraint, who was one of the ambassadors, rides off with his brother Agravain to rescue her… and this is only the very beginning of the story.

Continue reading →

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Gifts Two

Posted on January 10, 2006 by Katy K.

Now, remembering all the books that I read, I proceed onwards:

Last year, I found out that our youngest teen niece read Sunshine, Robin McKinley’s first adult novel, a vampire book, which had been rejected by her twenty-year-old sister because it isn’t a romance. Well! Ignoring the slight irritation that the niece for whom it was intended wouldn’t even try it – this year, the oldest niece got a romance and the youngest got this, a very hot new vampire book for teens.
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer Seventeen-year-old Bella Swann leaves sunny Phoenix to allow her mother to travel with her new husband, and moves in with her father in a tiny town in Oregon. Shy, not too popular back in Phoenix, she’s surprised when she’s suddenly the most popular girl in class. She finds herself falling for Edward, one of the mysterious Cullens, who stick to themselves and are shunned by the rest of the school. Though we know from the back cover what Edward is, it takes Bella a while to figure it out – by which time, she and Edward are trysting over cafeteria lunches. He says he’s dangerous, and though she knows it’s true, the attraction is too strong for her to leave. Though Edward has sworn to eat only animals, attraction and hunger must be kept in careful balance, and his vampire family is slow to believe he’ll leave her alive. The romance is compelling, and gets mixed in with suspense as Bella is stalked by a truly evil vampire near the end. This book will fulfill your gothiest fantasies and make you believe in the romance of the Lonely Ones.

Sucker for romance that I am, I was pulled right into the story and read the whole 400+ page book in about two days. I loved the development of Edward and Bella’s relationship, and the dark vampires mixed in with high school (wait – haven’t we seen that before?) I was highly amused, reading the author’s bio, to note that she is almost certainly Mormon – how many good Mormon girls out there write vampire romances? And it manages to stay squeaky clean, even as it builds up impressive steaminess. I was not quite convinced by the kidnapping, and I wish that Meyers hadn’t played so loose with so many vampire traditions. Her vampires don’t burn in sunlight; they sparkle. Towards the end, our heroine, who willing put her life in danger to save her parents, starts begging her vampire lover to change her, and this irritated the heck out of me. Seventeen is way too young to be making that kind of decision! amnachaidh points out, rightly, that the teen readers for whom this is intended will have no such qualms, and that I really shouldn’t expect differently from a vampire romance. And I would have liked to hear more about the Native American tribe of werewolves that are the vampire’s sworn enemies. Still, I enjoyed the book, and Niece 4 said she was really excited about reading it.

In the middle of my holiday book cramming, what should I find on the hold shelf, but the lovely tupelo’s latest book. It’s good enough for two people to read in less than two weeks.

Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City by Anne Soffee This memoir takes place before Snake Hips. As Soffee graduates from college with an English major, she decides to put it to work in Los Angeles making a name for herself as a gonzo journalist of hair metal. With neither job prospects nor a place to stay, Soffee heads out from Virginia in search of her destiny. Now, I know next to nothing about hair metal, and the dark bars she frequents in pursuit of bands are far outside of my experience and (to be perfectly honest) interest. (In fact, were it not for the fact that I adore tupelo, and how much I loved Snake Hips, I would probably never have picked up the book.) It turns out that, as Soffee has given up a future of wrapping gift baskets in the mall for her new life, hair metal is on the decline. Though she finds some unpaid jobs at first, they become harder and harder to come by. Depressed and spending most of her time in bars, Soffee falls into alcoholism and prescription drug abuse. It sounds like we have the making of a book that is Not for Me, between the depressing real life issues and the music that I don’t listen to. Except that Soffee is so wonderfully wry with her writing that she made me laugh at all of her mishaps, and sigh with her over the coolness of meeting stars that I had never heard of before.

Mission: Organization by Jody Garlock This book I requested for a display and ended up taking home with me. I don’t think the organizational advice is anything really outstanding, but the step-by-step summaries of episodes of the shows are very nice. It’s nice home decorating porn for a former HGTV junkie like me.

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Gifts – Part One

Posted on January 9, 2006 by Katy K.

It’s been quite a while since I found the time to post. I’m feeling terribly behind, and also that I’ve forgotten one of the books I read. Hopefully not, and if it was something fabulous that you all really need to hear about – then hopefully, I’ll remember it to tell you about it. Anyway, I now find that I don’t have time to write up even the books I remember I read.

Every year, we buy books for the nieces and (usually) nephews for Christmas. I pick out books for them based on reviews, and then try to gobble them up between buying and gifting, to make sure they fit the recipient. This year, alas, I only got through two of them, but as Eric had read one and I had read another book by the same author for the fourth – well, we hope they work out.

We actually accidentally bought two books for this niece, but I was so charmed by this one that I returned the other one unread, even though it is the latest Traveling Pants book.
Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci Meet Victoria Denton, aka Egg, cinephile and senior in high school in Hollywood. She has always felt isolated and different from everyone else. Her head is shaved bare in honor of Egg, the main character from Terminal Earth, her favorite movie, but she’s sure that no boy would ask her out even if she did have hair. Then she meets Max, who forces her to take a new look at herself. How much of her isolation has she caused herself, and could there be life worth paying attention to outside of the movies? Egg’s journey is filled with real high school angst, plus the fun details of a teen living in Hollywood. Boy Proof is a teen girl coming-of-age novel, but Egg is such an appealing and convincing geek that I would recommend it to geeks of both sexes and all ages.

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Snow Stories

Posted on December 17, 2005 by Katy K.

You may wonder at my long silence, or you may think that I have been too busy with holiday preparations and a baby to read of late. And while I have indeed been busy, I have yet been diligent in seeking out yummy books for my friends and myself. My latest effort, as seen below, was well over 900 pages and thus took me nearly the entire three-week lending period to read.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon The saga of Jamie and Claire Fraser continues with this sixth book. As the story picks up, Jamie and Claire are living in their house on Fraser’s Ridge in North Carolina, with their daughter Brianna, her husband Roger, and their son Jemmie. They are all transplants, Jamie from the Highlands and Claire, Brianna and Roger from the twentieth century. The year is now 1773, and the Revolutionary War is brewing. In the back of their minds, too, is the newspaper clipping that sent Brianna back, saying that Claire and Jamie Fraser were killed when their house burned down. Claire and Jamie have always had a powerful romantic relationship, and in this book, Brianna and Roger’s marriage also comes into its own. Gabaldon manages to capture amazingly well the small details of eighteenth century life and the human relationships. The war comes into being in the small chaos and conflicts of local politics, the outcome known for certain only by our heroes. They are not permitted to watch from the sidelines, but suffer from multiple kidnappings, murders and robberies – a genuine roller-coaster ride before their invention. Since the genre-spanning series was first published as a romance because that was the best-selling of all possible genres, Gabaldon keeps romance clichés firmly in mind – at one point the kidnapped Brianna thinks that if this were a romance novel, she would lower herself out of the window with the sheet, except that the window is barred and they didn’t leave her a sheet.

If you haven’t read any Gabaldon yet, I’d recommend starting with the first in the series, Outlander. And don’t be scared by the length of the books or the series – we’re mostly following our characters and the progression of history here, not the progress of the One True Ring, so if you just want a taste, you can stop after the first one. On the other hand, since becoming a librarian, I’ve become the queen of reading only the first book of popular series, and I’ve read the whole series voraciously. If you’ve been following the series, too, you won’t want to miss this one.

Romance! Action! Intrigue! Sex! Humor! Men in kilts! What are you waiting for?

And a brief mention of three fun books for children, which I picked up based on starred reviews in Booklist.

Once Upon a Time, the End: Asleep in 60 Seconds by Geoffrey Kloske. Illustrated by Barry Britt Once upon a time, a tired father was reading to his child, who wouldn’t go to sleep without “one more story”. So as time went on, the father started cutting bits out of the stories to make them shorter, so his child would go to sleep and he could go to bed himself. Goldilocks decides that her bed is more comfortable after all, Sleeping Beauty wakes up refreshed, and the fallen Goliath looks like he’s sleeping. This one made all the staff in the break room giggle when I read bits of it aloud.

Winter Friends by Mary Quattlebaum. Illustrated by Hiroe Nakata This one (and the last one) In this series of linked poems, we follow a little girl on her journey through a snowy day trying to find the owner of a lost mitten. I’m not usually much for poetry, but the imagery here is just delightful – dawn comes up in a pink bathrobe and striped pajamas, and Mama’s whistle is “a kiss that sings”. Even Mr. Froggie Pants enjoyed the sound play of the words. The luminous watercolors tie the story together beautifully.

Three French Hens by Margie Palatini. Illustrated by Richard Egielski Three French hens are sent as a Christmas gift from a cat to her lover Phillippe Reynard. But the package goes astray; they find themselves in New York and track down one Phil Fox. He’s alone and hungry and ready to dine on the three fat chickens on his doorstep – until they give him a Queer Eye-style makeover. Since dinner is now impossible, he invites them to join his Christmas celebration, only to find out that their holiday is Hannukah.

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Bear Daughter

Posted on November 25, 2005 by Katy K.

Bear Daughter by Judith Berman Here we have an absolutely beautiful fantasy book. It’s based in Northwest Native American spirituality, which is new and different for my fantasy reading. Cloud wakes up one morning in front of her mother’s house and finds that she is a girl, when she distinctly recalls being a bear the day before. No one knows how she became a girl, and they all seem to think that she should be able to call her mask and turn herself back into a bear. In the meantime, it turns out that her stepfather Rumble killed her father and brothers and wants Cloud dead, too, while her mother only has the courage for the occasional clandestine meeting. Cloud is not very good at following the rules of being a girl which her aunt teaches her, especially about eating only small amounts neatly. Still, she is determined to be an ordinary girl until Rumble tries to kill both her and her aunts, and she sets off alone in a canoe to find someone who can help. Not only are Rumble and his evil wizard Bone after her, but the ghosts of her little brothers haunt her dreams, begging her to help them. Refreshingly, although she does meet people who will help her in her quest, it isn’t apparent from the very beginning what she will have to do and how she will do it. She journeys across many islands and in and out of the Spirit Lands. In the end, her quest to free her brothers helps her to realize who she is and where she belongs. It may be a standard quest-cum-coming-of-age story, but the beautiful setting, nicely twisty plot and appealing characters lift it out of the ordinary. It was compelling enough for me to devote extra time to reading, and now, several days later, I am still heartbroken that I’m done with it.

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