Sometimes, Christian fiction can be a little disappointing. If it isn’t too preachy, it’s too nice, not well-written or the characters are just not realistic. That isn’t the case with Just Between You and Me by Jenny B. Jones.
This Christian novel, which is a “Women of Faith Fiction” book, is refreshing in its honesty and in its depiction of a fairly new Christian, Maggie Montgomery, as she deals with real-life struggles. Maggie reluctantly travels back to her childhood home, where old memories haunt her and new problems await her. And these are really tough struggles—her sister’s drug addiction and the subsequent abandonment of her daughter, Maggie’s strained relationship with her father, and the memories of her mother’s death years earlier.
What surprised me most about the book was how witty it is. Maggie has to deal with all the awful things she did to other people in the town when she was in high school, but she deals with it with a sense of humor. She begins a relationship with a man, Connor, she did mean things to way back when and I love the bantering back and forth between them.
Maggie also has to build a relationship with her tough 10-year-old niece, Riley, and finds that she needs to be the stability that the girl has lacked for her whole life. But, it isn’t easy; through it all, Maggie has doubts and frustrations while she fights for the faith in God that she so desperately needs.
In an effort to get my 13 year old daughter to read the Twilight books (“They are too mainstream”) I told her that I would read Crank if she read Twilight. She jumped at the chance to make my life miserable and immediately sat down with Twilight. She is now a card-carrying member of Team Edward.
Written by Ellen Hopkins and published in October of 2004, Crank is the story of Kristina and her relationship with “the monster,” and apt name for crystal meth, or crank. Kristina introduces the reader to her terrifying alter-ego Bree, a personality she invents to take the blame for her bad choices and lack of judgment. Kristina was a loving daughter and model student from a middle class family who had the world at her feet. She went to visit her deadbeat father for just one short week and met a sweet-talking Lothario who introduced her to the monster, and instantly, Bree was born. Her lightening-quick descent in to addiction and criminal behavior is both heartbreaking and terrifying.
Kristina’s story is not sugar coated. Based on the author’s struggle with her own daughter’s addiction, it is edgy and stark. The story is told from Kristina’s point of view, which gives it an authenticity that young adults are drawn to; there is something very compelling about a young girl desperate for love and attention and what she is willing to do to get it. Parts of it are difficult to read and shocking. I found myself hoping that these things aren’t really going on with young adults ill-equipped to deal with the avalanche of emotions that bury them in their angst-ridden teen years. Unfortunately, this is the real deal.
I was originally apprehensive when my daughter brought home a book called Crank at 12 years old. When asked what it was about, she said, “It’s about a girl who gets addicted to crank and starts stealing and gets raped and stuff. Oh, and it’s written in poems and stuff.” For me, this was a challenge; it is 544 pages and written in prose. The visually appealing way the author shapes her words on the page creates a very quick cadence. You can almost physically feel Kristina’s painful desperation to “feed the monster.” The more desperate she is, the faster and more urgent the verse.
This book has become a cultural phenomenon and is an unfortunate sign of the times; it has a huge following even now, almost five years after its original publication date. The book has a Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(novel), a page of questions on Ask.com http://www.ask.com/questions-about/Crank-by-Ellen-Hopkins and various fan websites http://www.librarything.com/work/189755. According to my daughter, young people read it over and over again. The writing style is quick and modern and it is a very fast read, which helps keeps the short attention span of younger readers.
It turned out to be a pretty good bargain I made with my daughter. She is reading Breaking Dawn and I am just about to start Glass, the sequel to Crank. Crank should be read by every parent of a child about to become a young adult, by every parent who thinks it would never happen to them, not to their child.
This is a dark retelling of the Cinderella story. Instead of featuring a kindly fairy-godmother, and a coach made from a pumpkin, and footmen who are mice, there is the kind of fairy usually featured in fairy tales: one who demands a high price for granting wishes.
Ash, the Cinderella figure, has known a fairy, Sidhean, since the time that her mother died. He has refused to grant her wishes to return her mother to life, or take her to fairy land, where she believes she will find her mother living.
As she grows older, and accepts the death of her mother, she has other wishes, and Sidhean agrees to grant two of them: that she can participate in the King’s hunt, to which she has been invited by the King’s huntress, Kaisa, who she has become friends with when they have met in the woods a number of times; and the traditional Cinderella wish that she can attend the King’s ball.
The price she agrees to for these wishes is very high. It is at the ball when she realizes that she the price to which she has agreed is too high, leaving two futures hanging in the balance. Whether she can renegotiate with Sidhean is a chancy question.
This book is highly recommended for teens who enjoy fantasy, and for all readers who enjoy reading fairy tale variations.
Research funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, and the American Heart Association has concluded the following: Obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the brains of lean individuals. Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years. That’s a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases that attack the brain,” said Thompson. “But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s, if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control.” More than 300 million worldwide are now classified as obese, according to the World Health Organization. Another billion are overweight. The main cause, experts say: bad diet, including an increased reliance on highly processed foods. Obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. Read the full story at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090825/sc_livescience/obesepeoplehaveseverebraindegeneration
Give your children a head start by learning healthy habits now! Don’t wait until there is already a health issue, don’t sit there until there is already a weight problem. We must teach our children good habits now, before these issues come up. It’s the least we can do as parents. However, if you already have a child with a weight problem…get on the ball. It’s never to late to make healthy changes. Let Mini and Me: Learing Healthy Habits help get you and your family on the way to a healthy and fun lifestyle. As a community, as parents, we can help each other make these changes. We need healthy kids for a healthy future!
For quite a few months now there has been a buzz about the book, The Shack. I became further intrigued when I learned that the author of the book was going to be one of the speakers at a conference I take my junior highers to in the fall. I had heard things like, “it’s complete heresy,” but I also heard things like, “it can really change your perspective on your faith.” So I decided I would take a break from my reading of non-fiction and go fiction and pick The Shack. And let me begin by saying that, yes, it is fiction.
I don’t want to share a WHOLE lot because if you haven’t read it, I would encourage you to, and I don’t want to give everything away. If you haven’t read it, you are correct in saying that the author brings “human” form to God which is a black woman for most of the book, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who, if I remember correctly has Asian characteristics. Now I know you might be saying, “WHOA! Giving human form to the trinity, how dare they!” But let me ask you to give it a chance. The whole reason this is done is because a very traumatic experience happens to Mack, the main character, and so he is invited to “The Shack” for a weekend by a note signed “Papa” which is what he calls God. Through the weekend Papa, Sarayu (the Holy Spirit), and Jesus all talk to Mack and converse with him about his life, why he believes certain things, how his life has tainted his perception of God, how he has thrown God into a box with all the theology and church (as an institution), among other things. They go deeper and deeper with him, eventually healing the hurt that has been weighing so heavily on his shoulders (The Great Sadness). It really is a beautiful picture of healing, restoration, reconciliation, and life when viewed as a whole. There was one part where Jesus it talking with Mack about “Christianity” and the “church” and how Jesus doesn’t “do” religion, he’s more about relationships. He never formed institutions, that’s now what he’s about. I was reading this on the plane on the way back from Texas and almost gave a loud “YES!” when this was being discussed in the book. There were many other theological discussions that took place, a lot of which challenged me and I agreed with some, disagreed with some others, but mostly agreed actually.
I mentioned I was reading this on the plane on the way back from Texas and a man sitting across the row from me noticed I was reading it, and I had noticed he was reading his Bible. When he asked what I thought of the book I thought it was safe to engage him in conversation about it. He told me he was an evangelist and proceeded to ask me why I was reading the book, if I claimed to be born again, how I knew I was going to heaven, among some other questions. I’m not going to lie, it was a rather awkward conversation because I could tell he was rather conservative and I was trying not to pass judgements, but I was hoping he was a not a “Bull Horn” kind of guy. I asked him if he had interest in reading The Shack and he said probably not because he had all the truth and understanding of God he needed in his Bible. I couldn’t say I disagreed with that, but then again, The Shack is non-fiction and all it is really doing is creating a parable. I didn’t really want to get into all of that with him and I was so close to finishing the book that the conversation sort of had an awkward ending and I got back to reading. But I hope that you don’t look at this book a heresy and blasphemy, but rather look at it as a parable. As far as Christian non-fiction goes, this is an excellent read. I don’t mean to knock the others like Left Behind, but at least this has some correct theology in it, and it even gives human form to God as a black woman. I encourage you to read it, regardless of what others may have negatively said about it and form your own opinion on it.
Richelle Mead Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, Book 1)
Penguin (US: 16th August 2007; CA: 21st August 2007; AU: 31st January 2008; UK: 26th May 2009) Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Living vampire princess Lissa Dragomir and her dhampir guardian-in-training Rose Hathaway escaped from St. Vladimir’s Academy. But they’ve been captured and brought back to the boarding school, where their studies continue but rumours abound. More dangerous, however, are the notes and dead animals left for Moroi royal Lissa.
Vampire Academy is that rare gem – original, bold, complex and utterly memorable. It doesn’t shy away from talk of sex or mental illness, and it makes me wish St. Vladimir was real, so I could find out more. I don’t rate many books 5 stars, but this one gets ‘em. In mere words it doesn’t sound like much, but everything about the novel is so well done, and I absolutely adore it. Yes, believe the hype, and I don’t say that often. It’s completely understandable why this is a series to fangirl over, and I totally plan to glom the following three novels soon.
The Demon King and I is told in the first person by Gillian Caruthers, one of four Caruthers sister who are the Guardians to the portals between Earth and other worlds where the stuff of myth and nightmares live. The split personality of Gillian’s life makes it hard to buy the basic premise, a famous, much photographed, rich girl as a sword wielding, demon butt kicking heroine. In addition, Gillian comes across as a terminally shallow heroine with superhuman strength and world class fighting skills. The plot itself is somewhat standard – evil magic, end-of-the-world, complete with traitors and kidnapped family member, etc. If you need a primer on high end designer clothing and shoes, this is your book. Designer names are dropped faster than red herrings in a mystery. For some reason Gillian is really obsessed with appearances – to the point where her most burning question of the demon king when he shows up unexpectedly in her office to tell of a serious dark magic infecting the portals, is to ask where he got his suit! ARGH!!!!!!!!!
The story opens when Gillian returns to her condo in Sao Paolo, Brazil unexpectedly early from a trip to the family compound in Houston to find her artist boyfriend having sex with her gallery manager. The emotional wound has all the depth of a paper cut, but she follows up by firing the woman and replacing her at the gallery opening that night is a scene worth of a high school cheerleader prom queen in a snit. Then she uses her gift to teleport home to Houston and ends up getting called to do some work as a Guardian and the goes to the Demon homeworld to meet yet another new king – something that happens often there. Arath is not the usual demon king, he’s a genuine hottie. He’s also a mage of some power and a healer, a startling combination for a demon. Gillian is very surprised to find that in addition to perfect English and very human good looks, Arath also wants the portals between their worlds closed, something Gillian favors. The reason shocks her – his mother was human and her own father barred her from returning to be with her 2 sons and she died of a broken heart on Earth while her sons and their father suffered her loss. Gillian knows something he doesn’t; his mother Juilet is really very much alive and believes both her sons dead. She’s Gillian’s aunt.
The closing of the portal doesn’t work though and a dear friend of Gillian’s is killed, the Vatican Treasury is robbed by demons and Gillian is nearly poisoned. It’s the healing ability of the demon king that saves her and he’s the one to bring her home. Her mother, a mage, is there when she wakes and does the usual “the universe has shifted’ in the typical vague way. When confronted about Arath and lie of his mother Juliet’s death while Juliet believes her sons, Arath and Throe, dead, all she gets is, “It’s complicated.” That’s the point at which I would never have allowed even my own mother to walk away, but instead of pushing, Gillian lets it slide and doesn’t tell her Aunt Juliet the truth. Letting things slide is all too typical of this book and it’s annoying. It’s as if Gillian and her sisters aren’t able to think independently, just within the confines of duty, never questioning decisions. They might was be sophisticated machines, because they sure don’t think much.
As this is the first book of a series, much of the story has yet to unfold. There’s plenty of action and finally a very lame rational behind her parents handling of Arath and his brother and what they did to her aunt. Personally, I came close to outright hating Gillian’s mother. I certainly despised her and nearly choked on the lame justification for what was done. Gillian does confess her attraction to Arath – big whup.
The Demon King and I is entertaining in the way of all lightweight, chick-lit novels. The first person style used here is common to the chick-lit genre as is the lack of compelling love story of any kind, just an unrealized attraction between a male and female. The writing is the hallmark very breezy, chatty, me-me-me-me style that makes for easy, rather mindless reading that often drives me crazy. Plenty of action keeps the story moving, so it’s easy to forget that no one is demanding answers from the powers that be about the real questions – what’s really happening and why and how come no one bothers to explain till AFTER it’s all over? Gillian might kick ass, but she isn’t exactly an introspective, deep thinker, just a classic self-adsorbed chick-lit heroine with fighting skills. She never seriously questions anything her mother does - mom always does ‘the right thing’ and despite her age still seeks Mom’s approval and fears her disappointment. This is very insecure behavior that just doesn’t jive with a person who has been trained from birth to shoulder the burden of a Guardian. The chick-lit style just doesn’t lend itself to the kind of rewarding story telling the plot needs.
Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE a woman with style who kicks butt. Angelina Santiago in Here Kitty, Kitty certainly fits that description, but she also was a much deeper character for all that the book was laugh out loud funny. Personally, I would have liked this a bit more if Gillian had a lot more backbone with mom, and thought about things rather than just fighting. Arath was actually a deeper person than the shallow Gillian and better rounded. Her sisters are largely window dressing for most of the book and her brother more a handy plot device, though he has got a distinctive personality. The Demon King and I is a good beach read if you like chick-lit books.
Strawberry Fields, by Marina Lewycka. Penguin Books (2008), 294 pages
I loved this book. But before I remark on anything else, I really need to share my thoughts on the stunningly dreadful and inappropriate U.S. cover. (The book was originally published in England with the title Two Caravans.) First of all, few men are likely to pick up this girly cover, with its silly flowered border and delicate little illustration of strawberries, complete with a little white flower curling up away from the stem. I have nothing against illustrations of strawberries in general (though this one reminds me of an advertisement in a chichi gardening catalog), but I’m sad on behalf of all the men whom I believe would really enjoy this book. Unless someone is nearby to convince him that the cover does not reflect the story in the slightest, what man will buy this? And he will be missing out on a boyish adventure story including meandering road trips punctuated with violence, a bizarre gangster, crude humor, and intelligent political satire.
Clearly, the publisher wanted this book, the author’s second, to exactly match the cover of her first book, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (also excellent). Same flowers lining the border, same line illustration of fruit (apples this time). But while the Tractors cover is not great, it at least makes some sense—the flowers speak to the showy, colorful, froufrou Ukrainian divorcee. But there was no good reason to carry the design over to Lewycka’s next book, which is radically different. Why does this penchant exist for making all of an author’s books match precisely, even when they have little in common?
Since the characters leave the strawberry field just a quarter of the way through the story, I’m not sure that Strawberry Fields was a good departure from the original title anyway, but since that’s what was chosen, I will say that the Canadian version of the cover is excellent and matches the spirit of the story. Had I known about their cover I would definitely have purchased it instead; hopefully this review will steer potential Strawberry readers to the Canadian version and a more pleasurable reading experience.
Moving along to what the book is about…it’s essentially a comedic look at the lives of migrant workers in England. The workers are from everywhere: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Malawi, and other troubled countries. They have come to England looking for a better life, but find nothing but trouble in every conceivable form. Their adventures become increasingly over the top, but that was sort of the point and I didn’t mind.
Throughout this book, the narrative point of view changes countless times, but the author is so skilled that the result is seamless—never confusing or annoying in the slightest. And she succeeds in being incredibly funny the entire time, regardless of who is speaking:
EXCERPT: Yola “Sitting on the step of the women’s trailer, painting her toenails fuchsia pink, petite, voluptuous Yola watches the Dumpling’s Land Rover pull in through the gate at the bottom of the field, and the new arrival clamber down out of the passenger seat. Really, she cannot for the life of her understand why they have sent this two-zloty pudding of a girl, when what is clearly needed is another man—preferably someone mature, but with his own hair and nice legs and a calm nature—who will not only pick faster, but will bring a pleasant sexual harmony to their small community, whereas anyone can see that this little miss is going to set the fox among the chickens, and that all the men will be vying for her favors and not paying attention to what they are really here for, namely, the picking of strawberries.”
Emanuel “Dear Sister, Thank you for the money you sent for with its help I have now journeyed from Zomba to Lilongwe and so on via Nairobi into England. Being needful of money I came into the way of strawberry picking and I am staying in a trailer with three mzungus in Kent. I am striving with all my might to improve my English but this English tongue is like a coilsome and slippery serpent and I am always trying to remember the lessons of Sister Benedicta and her harsh staff of chastisement.”
Vitaly “‘Vitaly, tell Ciocia what it is you do.’ ‘Recruitment consultant. Cutting edge dynamic employment solution consultant with advance flexible capacity for meets all your organizational staffing need…. You only have to learn some words in English. And of course contacts. The main thing is to have contacts…. You will be contributing to the dynamic resurgence of the poultry industry in the British Isles.’”
Dog “I am dog I am happy dog I run I piss I sniff I have my men they go to piss in the wood man piss has good smell this man’s piss smells of moss and meat and herbs this is good I sniff this man’s piss smells of garlic and love hormones this is also good but love hormones are too strong I sniff this man’s piss smells too sour but his feet smell good I sniff in this wood are other man smells vomit man-smoke wheelie oil I sniff no dog smells I will make my dog smell here I run I piss I am happy dog I am dog.”
I found the most fascinating segment of the book to be the character Vitaly’s description of Moldova’s 1992 war over language, when Transdniestria, a tiny region to the east, seceded from Moldova over the issue of whether the country’s language should be Cyrillic or Roman. “Two thousand lives lost, his oldest brother’s among them, hundreds of homes burned out, theirs among them, over how a language should be written.”
Marnia Robinson, author of Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow, has been busy! She’s writing guest blogs for Psychology Today and Intent.com, and we received a surprise phonecall from an editor at Huffington Post the other day asking for an introduction! It seems that everyone wants to know: What is the key to a healthy sexual relationship? Some search their whole lives for the answer. Lucky for you, as long as you have six and a half minutes to spare, you can glean life-changing relationship information. Check out Robinson’s View From the Bay interview below for exclusive tips and a sneak peek into the coveted Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships.
If you ever wondered what your dog is really thinking.. if you ever wanted to get inside the head of the family pet.. this may be the book for you. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is a tragic and touching family drama told through the eyes of the family dog.
Enzo is an elderly lab nearing the end of his days looking back on his life with his master Denny, a semi-pro racecar driver. He has been a faithful and loving companion to his people: Denny, his wife Eve and daughter Zoe.
Enzo, stuffed into a doggie shell but practically human, occasionally gets annoyed by his frustrating lack of speech. Instead he relies on big gestures to communicate- barking, peeing on the floor, etc. Denny usually knows what point he’s trying to get across. He almost always guesses correctly.
And Enzo’s voice isn’t very dog-like, but I guess that’s because he watches TV all day. This makes him a pretty well educated pooch. From watching a documentary about evolution he is convinced he will come back to this world as a human after he dies. A human with speech! And thumbs!! He is ready. Bring it on!
The story is really more about Enzo’s people than it is about dogs. Denny falls in love, marries, has a daughter. The little family suffers through a huge medical drama and loss, and Enzo, the faithful companion, is there for all of it.
The only issue I had with The Art of Racing in the Rain is a small one- dogs are smart, but they can’t go everywhere, so how can a dog narrator know what goes on in a courtroom? Or a hospital? But I forgave that small problem, suspended reality, and enjoyed the story.
This is a sweet book; at times comic but also sad. Wonderful and very readable. Unputdownable (I read the bulk of it in one sitting). I enjoyed getting a dog’s perspective on human life, love and family. I shed a couple of tears, and laughed out loud. It’s like that- happy/sad, funny/serious. It’s the most human dog book I’ve ever read, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Highly recommended.
I reviewed this book as part of Jennifer’s Dog Days of Summer.
Greensmith has written a series of short stories that involve Austen’s characters, sometimes simultaneous to the Austen work, and sometimes some time after its conclusion. The narrators range from the daughter of Anne and Frederick to Mrs. Bennet; the subject matters range from a nighttime discussion with the Fates to a study of human character through “color” readings. These nine stories offer glimpses into the Austen world in a quick, sweeping way. Though they can be read one right after the other, this reader enjoyed some time to reflect on what Greensmith had done with each work before plowing into the next.
In at least two of the tales, Greensmith cleverly leads the reader to certain assumptions about who the characters being described actually are or about what will happen to them, only to turn those assumptions on their pretty little heads within the span of a few pages. We are taught through this device, for instance, that Anne Elliot’s adherence to Lady Russell’s advice might not have been so foolish as we often believe through the example of Mrs. Price, who had no Lady Russell to advise her. We’re also cleverly led to sympathize with Mrs. Bennet’s plight as a not-so-smart woman who knows she isn’t (don’t we often assume that the not-so-smart aren’t aware of it, so it’s not as bad as we’d imagine?) and even envies Lizzy’s intelligence and Mr. Bennet’s attention to it.
Greensmith’s stories often take characters through pain and insecurity, but they conclude with peace, and hope, and even sometimes happiness. It’s important to keep that in mind as we go to dark places with our heroines and heroes. Greensmith asks us to contemplate:
1) What if a Mrs. Danvers-like character were the housekeeper at Thorton Lacey? Though at first, I was a bit put off by the idea, the parallels began to assert themselves (Mary Crawford as Rebecca, Fanny as the unnamed heroine, Edmund—the slightly older man who has little idea what his wife is suffering—as Max DeWinter).
2) What if Jane Bennet really had fallen in love long before Charles Bingley came around? What if Gideon were the reason her heart wasn’t, as Mr. Darcy observes, likely to be easily touched?
3) What if Darcy never came back to Longbourn to assess Elizabeth’s feelings towards him, so she married Colonel Fitzwilliam instead? This story confused me a good deal at the beginning (probably because many of the characters are new to us and because Greensmith actually changed what I knew about the characters in Austen’s work), but it also brings new meaning to the expression “delayed gratification.”
Given the length of these stories, you won’t need much delay to get the gratification each provides.
Author K. Lippi brings us the epic tale of Awakening, a world where vampires, demons, werewolves and other supernatural creatures exist. A California girl named Emilia Miani just returned from visiting her father in Japan. Her life is turned upside down when she meets the mysterious stranger, Shin Kurosaki. He is her guardian angel, a Japanese demon assigned to her by one of her ancestors over 500 years ago.
She learns that she has mystical powers of her own, and also a dark destiny. Her grandfather was a death angel just like her. He was hired by God. Emilia is his only heir. She is forced to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps.
A fallen death angel, Markus is stealing the souls of innocent children. He is set on becoming a new god. Emilia and Shin try to destroy his evil plans, while she starts to have feeling for her guardian.
This book is cleverly written at times. The characters are deeply explored, and I felt everything the main character goes through. The backstory was a bit too much. It could have been saved for the sequel. Yes, there will be sequel because of the ‘to be continued’ at the ending. A little cliché if you ask me. Overall it was a fun read. If you love reading supernatural, good vs. evil tales, then you’ll love Awakening.
Recently, I’ve been really interested in other people’s blogs related to writing and/or YA. In my next couple of my own blogs, I’d like to share them with you if you don’t already know them:
The Debutantes
http://community.livejournal.com/debut2009
This is a group of debut middle-grade and YA authors whose books will release this year. I enjoyed reading the summaries of their books. Here are the ones that I plan on picking up:
“Lipstick Apology” by Jennifer Jabaley. Razorbill.
Emily’s world falls apart when her parents die in a plane crash. To add to it, her mother had written the words “Emily please forgive me” in lipstick across the tray table. Emily must figure out what it means while also starting her new life.
“As You Wish” by Jackson Pearce. HarperTeen. Viola summons a young jinn out of his world and grants her three wishes. She deals with romantic complexities and the high school social scene.
“Shadowed Summer” by Saundra Mitchell. Delacorte.
One summer a boy disappears and no one knows what happened to him, though everyone has a theory. Ten years later, fourteen-year-old Rhame is determined to find out the truth.
“The Espressologist” by Kristina Springer. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Seventeen-year-old Jane can match-make couples based on their favorite coffee drinks (what she calls Espressology). A local coffee shop uses her as a promotion and sales go crazy. But during an interview with local media Jane is faced with a dilemma—choose her own love or her business.
“Twenty Boy Summer” by Sarah Ockler. Little, Brown. Anna is going on a vacation and agrees with her friend to meet one boy everyday. What her friend doesn’t know is that Anna is holding secrets about what happened between her and her friend’s older brother last year before he died.
“Hate List” by Jennifer Brown. Little, Brown. Valerie’s boyfriend opens fire on his school. Valerie is hurt trying to save someone else, but is later implicated because she helped her boyfriend write a “hate list.” Now with her senior year in front of her, she must move on and work through the tragedy.
the book “assesses both the character and the fate of environmental politics”, say the authors. written by two authors with background in australian environmentalism, the book gives a global perspective on the actors involved in environmental policy-making, the political systems in which such policy-making takes place, and how the interactions between actors and structures can shape the outcomes. it is a good starting point in thinking about environmental policy-making. much appreciated is the openness to the global South environmentalism, the attention paid to the differences between environmentalism in the minority and majority worlds. and the heads-up on how environmentalism in the majority world is shaping global environmentalism.
in the initial chapers, which present various political systems and institutional settings in which environmental politics is made, as well as define important concepts for environmental action, i stumbled upon this little comment–a common idea, that the poor have a more harmful impact on the environment (as they are more interested in basic survival, linked to the idea than environmentalism is a middle-class concern); doyle and mceahern offer a simple dismissal of this argument, which seems to have been embraced by major international groups working on poverty and environmental protection–it seems crucial to delink these two, otherwise, if we accept this automatic link, it appears inevitable that the poor must embrace the same path of development and growth of the global north to eventually reach environmental care; when, in fact, many societies and groups defined as “poor” live in better harmony with the environment than the global north
IMF 1993: “Poverty and the environment are linked in that the poor are more likely to resort to to activities than can degrade the environment”. a similar argument made in 1990 in the United Nations Human Development Report.
Doyle and MaEahern (45): there are two key problems with this line of argument. first, all poor people are regarded in a homogenous fashion, rather than existing in vastly different types of poverty with different relationships to their environments. second, many western environmental security theorists fail to weigh up the costs of advanced industrialism on a global scale, and issues of overconsumption in the minority world.
a description of various reactions (mostly governmental but also from other types of policy-makers) to environmental concerns: denial (skeptics of climate change, for example, or those who warn that growth would be threatened by interventionism to protect the environment); just green rhetorics, not matched in action at any level (Thatcher); sustainable development (since the Brundtland report 1990)–to be noted, say Doyle and McEahern, that sustainable development is not a radical environmental or green concept, since it accepts the prime need for economic growth and the dominance of human welfare over the needs of the environment (53); eco-radical theories proposing paradigmatic change (deep ecologists challenging anthropocentrism, social ecologists challenging hierarchies, eco-socialists challenging capitalism, eco post-modernists challenging modernity, eco-feminists challenging patriarchy).
after evaluating the various attitudes of governing actors towards environmentalism, and then going through various ideologies incorporating environmental concerns, the authors move on to a study of social movements, which they declare to be the birthplace of environmentalism (84). saying that the defining feature of social movements is their non-institutional nature, the authors decide to include NGOs in their study of social movements as a borderline case between institutional and non-institutional politics: the NGOs have legitimized themselves through the adoption of constitutions, setting rules of conduct and defining organizational goals. “Such NGOs are as formal as non-institutional politics gets.” (85) And their definition of social movements: a term used to refer to the form in which new combinations of people inject themselves into politics and challenge dominant ideas and a given constellation of power. (85) the features of new social movements, why are they new? because they address a new set of dominant ideas and another constellation of power; but, more importantly, because their radicalism is heightened by their awareness of what happened before, that radical movements ended up being incorporated and their issues and passions tamed; AND because of their structure, which overrides barriers and borders like class, religion, established political parties…their identity and structure is constituted through ongoing debate and interaction (the dynamic structure of new social movements); new social movements as defined by Doherty (2006): participants hold a common identity which is not simply based on ideas; they use extensive network ties to take common action and exchange ideas; they are involved in public protest which can be combined with counter-cultural lifestyles; they challenge some feature of the dominantcultural code or social and political values, going beyond mere policy changes. NOT ALL ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS ARE NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS.
Doyle and McEahern use the notion of PALIMPSEST (something having many layers and aspects beneath the surface) to describe social movements, made up of a dynamic combination of individuals, networks, informal groups and formal organizations)–other authors have taken the network aspect to the fore and described sm as networks of individuals, groups and organizations; the emphasis is on the amorphous structure, which keeps evolving and altering in time; and on the variation of policy goals and ideologies, united in a movement; the authors seem to be keen on a vision of SM described by them as recent among European theories on SM which states that it is the networks which determine the symbolic identity of the movements, rather than the opposite, the ideology determining the clustering of activists into networks (Melucci, Donati, Della Porta, Diani). a criciticm of the focus on NGOs, which is a result of a bias in favor of organizational theory in social sciences; in fact, NGOs are just one of the many components of SM, even though sometimes they are more visible than other elements.
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doyle and mceahern divide the environmentalists worldwide into three mega-trends: post-materialist, post-industrialist, and post-colonialist. i shall try to see where my RO and BG (and perhaps, more generally, eastern european) environmentalists fit? the post-materialist is often related to the rich, white, western world, related to inglehart writings based on the maslow pyramid of needs: basic needs are met, it’s time for higher concerns for the planet and so on…; post-industrialist refers to a larger criticism of modernity, both as capitalism and as state socialism, a criticism of growth-driven development, human-centered, at the expense of the environment; finally, post-colonialism they associate with the global South (or the majority world, their preferred terminology), framed more in terms of marxism and structuralist analysis, which still emphasizes a pretty well defined class struggle between the haves and the have-nots and focuses on recuperating the env for the locality, taking it from the hands of the rish, often foreign owners of capital–this trend, acc to the authors, resembles older social movements (labour movement) more than NSM. which of these defines best the EE environmentalists?
a paragraph describing the environmentalists in US East Coast (as opposed to West Coast, which is more conservationist, wildlife oriented) seems to depict well enough, unwittingly, the EE environmentalists: on the east coast, with such a high population density, it has been impossible to escape from the human element in ecology. consequently, air- and water-quality issues are rated highly (surveys like Eurobarometer in Ro and BG indicate concern for air and water polution as some of the most important among env concerns, sometimes above climate change in general). radical, systemic change is rarely proposed by the movement, dominated as it is by powerful NGOs. nature is construed in a limited, instrumental fashion, not unlike in the view of governmental bureaucrats and corporate think-tanks with which they often work. the env crisis is not really seen like a crisis but like a challenge for better management. env problems, in this sense, are seen as efficiency optimization projects played out in the marketplace (99)-
postmaterialist focus on conservation and, more recently, on city polution, is considered as characteristic of US
in Western Europe, there has been this trend, the conservationists, but since the 60s the postindustrialists came to the fore, with more systemic criticism, combining postmaterialism with new left-derived analysis of power–> can this mixture emerge in EE? the famous German Greens tenets of participatory democracy, social equity, non-violence, and ecology
my own impression is that the environmentalists in EE resemble the depiction of the US ones, not challening growth and capitalism, and trying to rely mostly on institutional forms of influencing policy-making, also keeping the anthropocentric focus, though there are some strong conservation groups as well, for which this plays out differently. however, EE societies are far from being well-off, and, additionally, they have started to be exposed to the issue of raising inequalities as a result of capitalism functioning for two decades; some activists argue for protection of communities and local lifestyles against foreign corporations and development schemes of the govt which are not seen to benefit the locals, often poor. this offers ground for a more systemic criticism, but the eastern hatred for the left makes any kind of anti-capitalist rhetoric still tabu. the grounds for such a criticism exist though. see a recent report of bbc newsnight on mega-farms built by british in the ukraine, taking advantage of large areas of land left uncultivated, and exploiting the potential of the world food shortage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8218104.stm opposition to this is easily fit into a nationalistic frame, but this can be again reframed in terms of protecting the local against foreign corporations interests.
the historical background of EE environmentalists also makes them prone to a more systemic criticism, postindustrial type: they emerged in the 80s, in reponse to the industrial practices of Communist Parties and the environmental and heath hazards they produced; they turned out to be useful tools in the transition to market economy though, but are reemerging, and the new ties with global environmentalists and their own history prove the best grounds for a postindustrial criticism of modern growth-focused strategies.
Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. Toronto: Penguin, 2007.
Two women; one motherless and a bastard child of a rich man, the other loved by her educated father but invisible to her mother, will soon find a commonality neither of them could have imagined.
Heartbreakingly beautiful, Hosseini will move you to tears with his clear description of a war torn country through the eyes of two women. Indescribably absorbing and powerful, A Thousand Splendid Suns is an unforgettable read.
Setterfield, Diane. The Thirteenth Tale. N.p.: Anchor, 2007.
When Margaret Lea receives a letter from renowned author Vida Winter, she is flabbergasted. Not only has she met the author, she has never even read any of her novels. Strictly a fan of “the classics,” Margaret never attempted to read any contemporary fiction at all. Soon though, Margaret realizes that it is not fiction behind the reason Vida Winter sent for her, but fact. Illusive descriptions of Vida Winters life have been gathered by many reporters over the years, but it is Lea that Winters chooses to write the truth of her past – proving that sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.
The Thirteenth Tale is aptly described as a love letter to reading. Vivid descriptions bring the landscape of England to life. One can almost feel the wind lashing the rain into the windows as the mists settle in over the moors. Setterfield’s characters are realistically human, deeply flawed, but with the ability to love. Page after page of relishing mystery, suspenseful plot, and enough foreshadowing to keep you guessing, The Thirteenth Tale is a book above many.
*SPOILER ALERT* This post contains spoilers. Don’t read it if you like to be surprised.
I just finished reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffeneggen. It was the longest I’ve spent reading a book this summer (about two and a half weeks), but for good reason. Personal reasons, but also because the jumping around confused me and kept me from wanting to pick it back up again. But I persevered and read about two hundred pages in the last three days. I’m glad I finished it.
The premise of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is the following: 6-year-old girl (Clare) meets 41-year-old time traveling man (Henry). Over the years of Clare’s childhood, she discovers that she will one day marry this man. She meets him at various intervals in time, sometimes not for weeks, months, and at the longest, two years. Essentially, she is the one waiting for him while he is always off meeting her at various points in her own life. Henry time travels involuntarily and always arrives naked. Henry meets Clare for the first time in the present when he is 28; Clare is 20. It is when he is older that he time travels to visit Clare in her childhood. Henry and Clare marry when they are 30 and 22, respectively. Henry and Clare spend the rest of their married years dealing with him disappearing and her waiting for him to come back. Several miscarriages happen and Henry is informed that his time traveling is a “chrono-displaced disease.” Basically, there is something wrong with his DNA that is causing him to time travel (yeah, right). Genetic testing is done and time traveling mice are created, but there is no known cure to keep Henry in the present. Eventually, after six (my God) miscarriages, Henry and Clare finally give birth to baby Alba. At Henry’s distaste, Alba is gifted with this disease and will time travel sometime around the age of 7 or 8. In the end, Henry dies at the age of 43 when he is shot by his father-in-law in a hunting accident while he is time traveling to the meadow by Clare’s house when she is only 13. Alba is able to time travel to see her father in the past, but Clare has to wait 50 years before she sees Henry again, who time travels to her when she’s 82 and he’s 43. He leaves Clare a letter, informing her of this occasion, so that she’ll be waiting for him. Always waiting.
I could have gone into a lot more of the plot, but I didn’t want to confuse anybody. Besides, wasn’t that little synopsis confusing enough? This novel is a case of everything connecting by the end of the story and the whole thing makes sense in the end. It jumps around a lot and I was constantly having to go back to remember where in time it was. If you are thinking “Back to the Future” type of story, you are very wrong. If you remember, in Back to the Future, the characters that came from the future weren’t allowed to interact with themselves in the past due to a space-time continuum that would screw up future events. Yeah, that doesn’t apply to this story. Henry is constantly conversing with himself in whatever present he’s in. He’s also interacting with Clare, making babies with her while she’s with older Henry. It was all very mind boggling, to say the least.
Overall, I enjoyed the book very much. It was a great love story of how two people can work through many challenges and still be concerned and crazy for each other. A major criticism I have is how reserved Clare was throughout a lot of the book. I felt like her feelings weren’t portrayed as much as Henry’s and that she was just labeled as the “waiting wife.” From what I’ve seen from the trailer for the movie, Clare is very outspoken and doesn’t necessarily love the life that she’s living. I didn’t get that from the book at all. She was just, “Oh, Henry’s gone. I’m a little worried. Where is he? … Oh, there he is!” She did speak out a few times about how she’s always waiting around for him. Oh, and there was the one chapter where she expressed that she actually enjoyed her alone time and that she would go out and do things without leaving Henry a note saying where she was. Her reasoning was, “I don’t know where he went, so why does he have to know where I went?” Hmmmm, yeah.
This is a long book and there is a lot to it. I would recommend it if you have a lot of time on your hands. I would not suggest taking more than a couple of weeks to read it because you’ll forget what happened in different periods of time and then you’ll just be confused. If you like the concept of a love story lasting over time and if you’re okay with picturing Henry as Eric Bana (especially naked!), then you must read it! I would definitely put it in my top ten list of books.
Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, by Christopher Buckley. Twelve (2009), 251 pages.
Buckley’s memoir about his famous father and socialite mother tends to engender either appreciation (for a witty, interesting story about losing one’s parents) or scathing condemnation (for a cruel and heartless portrayal of a much-loved couple.) Which side the reader falls down upon depends for the most part on whether or not one was an admirer of William F. Buckley’s show Firing Line, or his magazine National Review.
Though I was a fan of neither (being too young to have any kind of political opinion at that time) I did grow up hearing my own parents say “William F. Buckley” with such awe and reverence that the name has always been linked in my mind with both a God-like intellectual infallibility and the holder of the keys to the one true faith—the American Conservative Movement.
Since I, as an adult, am as far from conservative as is possible however, my political sensibilities were in no danger of being offended by Christopher Buckley’s book. I was free to enjoy it for what I believe it was meant to be—a memoir of an only child dealing with the suffering and death of his parents. Many reviewers have criticized Christopher for revealing to the public his father’s excessive drinking, ritalin use, and general egomaniacal behavior, but I appreciated seeing that there was in fact, a regular human being behind the political ideologue.
Losing Mum and Pup is unlikely to appeal to anyone looking for insight or information into William F. Buckley’s political thinking, but for those interested in parental loss, or memoirs in general, Christopher Buckley’s book is sure to be appreciated.
EXCERPT:
“He had at this point in his flying career exactly one and a half hours of cockpit time. He had never soloed. So he and his friend flew to Boston, the friend doing the flying, which left Pup at Boston Airport all alone and now having to get the plane back to New Haven. I was a licensed pilot in my youth, and I simply shudder to relate the rest of this story.
Pup revs up the Ercoupe for the return flight and takes off, at which point he notices that, gee, it’s getting kind of dark. He’s neglected to factor in last night’s switch from daylight savings to eastern standard time. This being way before GPS, he navigates back toward New Haven in the gloaming by descending to one hundred feet and following the train tracks. This somewhat basic mode of navigation begins to fail him when it turns pitch black. The situation now seriously deteriorating, he makes out—thank God—the beacon of the New London airport. He manages to set the plane down there. He then hitchhikes back to New Haven and goes straight to the Fence Club bar to steady his nerves and share his exploits.”
Hawke, David Freeman. Those Tremendous Mountains: the Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1980.
Confession time: I thought I would be bored to hell and back by this book. History was never my strong point, even if I was supposed to relate to it. Ancestry or not, I couldn’t relate to anything historical. Those Tremendous Mountains was a different story. I was really amazed by how much I enjoyed it. To say that I loved every page wouldn’t be far off the mark. Hawke blends the diaries, notes and sketches of Captains Meriweather Lewis and William Clark with his own narrative to create a lively and creative account of the famous duo’s expedition. It is not a dry retelling of the trials and tribulations of traversing daunting mountain ranges. It is a portrait of desire, courage, friendship and loyalty. Thanks to a very specific and detailed charge by Thomas Jefferson to count every tree, flower, river, animal, and weather condition along the journey and both Lewis and Clark’s insatiable desire and curiosity to discover the world around them they documented thousands of species never seen before, making their expedition that much more famous than those gone who had before them. Their curiosity for every new plant and animal they encountered gave them a wealth of information to send back to the President. Hawke also carefully portrays Lewis and Clark as humanitarians with a keen sense of diplomacy when dealing with the Native American tribes they encountered. Knowing they would need help crossing the Rockies Lewis and Clark made sure to have plenty of gifts for the natives. Bartering for the things they needed came easier with a show a respect rather than force.
Probably my favorite parts in the book were the displays of friendship between Lewis and Clark. While President Jefferson continuously called it Lewis’ expedition, Lewis insisted Clark was his equal and it was their expedition. Even after Jefferson downgraded Clark’s rank from captain to second lieutenant Lewis the men on the expedition “never learned of his true rank and always called him Captain” (p 51). Probably my favorite lines comes at the end: “By then the trust between them was complete and remained so to the end” (p 248).
BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust n the chapter called ” Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).
Finished it last night. So depressing*. I hadn’t read anything about it before except knew John Hinckley and Mark Chapman were fans. My summary written at 3am: “Am amazing study of someone who feels crap all the time.”
While checking how to spell Hinckley, I just found this post that says serial killers have great taste in literature. Dunno if I’ll read Stranger in a Strange Land.
I didn’t realise Holden had ended up in an institution at the end – I just thought they had a psychoanalyst at his next school. And that he just “got sick” as a temporary thing. A bit disappointing.
Fave bits:
“Boy, I really fouled that up. I should’ve at least made it for cocktails or something.”
“People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet.” [NB: subjunctive.]
“And you could tell his date wasn’t even interested in the goddam game, but she was even funnier-looking than he was, so I guess she had to listen. Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.”
“Which always kills me. I’m always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you’ to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”
“If you think I was dying to see him again, you’re crazy.”
“Newsreels. Christ Almighty. There’s always a dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee riding a goddam bicycle with pants on.”
“You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart. I’m not kidding.”
“… I’d meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we’d get married. She’d come to live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she’d have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else.”
“I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around.”
*Not as depressing as The Game by Neil Strauss, though it’s a great read.
This is a biographical series written by John Piper. He is a gifted servant of the Lord. Whenever I read his books, the purpose for which he has written his books is accomplished. His purpose, as stated in the end of his books, is ” to fan the flame of your passion for God and spread that passion to others.” So, to fulfill that second part of that purpose, I am blogging the review of this series!
The series title is borrowed from an analogy that was mentioned by the incoming bishop of Alexanderia, Eraclius (A.D. 430), on the occasion of St. Augustine’s farewell from the same office. He quipped – “The cricket chirps, the swan is silent” referring to himself as the cricket and the silentAugustine as the swan. John Piper contends that Augustine and the other swans (his term for other great saints of Church History) are not silent and have us much to teach through their lives. This is what this series tries to achieve. Piper provides brief biographical sketches and draws inspirational lessons from the lives of these saints.
There are 5 books in the series. I have read 3 of them and am half way through the 4th; but could not resist writing the review for them all.
The first book is Legacy of Sovereign Joy. It traces the lives of probably the 3 most important saints in Church History – Augustine, Luther and Calvin. John Piper explores how the doctrine of God’s sovereign election in salvation empowered them to live the kind of godly lives that they lived.
For Augustine it was the sovereign joy of God which helped him come out of his fruitless joys of sensual lusts. It made Augustine a valiant defender of God’s saving electing grace in his battle with heretics who clamoured for man’s free will. For Luther, his sacred study of the external Word – the Bible – helped him discover the “gate to paradise” – the imputed righteousness of Christ by faith. This was the expression of God’s sovereign grace in Luther’s life which made him the spokesperson of the doctrine that the Bible is only means of God’s revelation. For Calvin, the word of God was self-authenticating. God opened his blind eyes to witness the majesty of God contained in the sacred scripture and that made the sacred scripture indeed sacred and divine – another expression of God’s grace enabling Calvin to be the passionate advocate and example of expository preaching. Piper then draws many lessons from the lives of these saints which are very pertinent to the 21st Century Church.
The second book is The Hidden Smile of God. It focusses on the life of John Bunyan (The author of Pilgrims Progress), William Cooper(John Newton’s hymn partner) and David Breinard(role-model missionary) and how God used the sufferings of these saints to touch the lives of others.
The third book is Contending for Our All which is based on the life of Athnasius (the saint who fought for the doctrine of the trinity), John Owen (the Puritan par excellence) and J Gresham Machen (an important figure in the 20th Century Christian Academia). The other 2 books, although I have not read fully, are also very well written.
There is a general apathy in our churches to Church History. It can spell great disaster for us by opening the flood-gates of same-old heresies which the past saints so valiantly battled. This biograpical series goes a long way in helping us come out of our predicament and in equipping us to fight the battles ahead.
[All the books are available in pdf in John Piper's ministry website]
The Way the Crow Flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald. HarperCollins (2003), 820 pages.
This book perfectly displays what I mean when I write that an author has flawlessly captured the child’s voice in his or her writing. The eight-year-old narrator in The Way the Crow Flies is true to life in every way and I was enthralled with her voice from page one:
“In the back seat, Madeleine leans her head against the window frame, lulled by the vibrations. Her older brother is occupied with baseball cards, her parents are up front enjoying ‘the beautiful scenery.’ This is an ideal time to begin her movie. She hums ‘Moon River’ and imagines that the audience can just see her profile, hair blowing back in the wind. They see what she sees out the window, the countryside, off to see the world, and they wonder where it is she is off to and what life will bring, there’s such a lot of world to see. They wonder, who is this dark-haired girl with the pixie cut and the wistful expression? An orphan? An only child with a dead mother and a kind father? Being sent from her boarding school to spend the summer at the country house of mysterious relatives who live next to a mansion where lives a girl a little older than herself who rides horses and wears red dungarees?…
Mimi turns and looks back at Madeleine with the are-you-going-to-throw-up? expression. It makes her have to throw up. Her eyes water. She puts her face to the open window and drinks in the fresh air. Wills herself not to think of anything sickening. Like the time a girl threw up in kindergarten and it hit the floor with a splash, don’t think about that. Mike has retreated as far as possible to his side of the seat. Madeleine turns carefully and focuses on the back of dad’s head. That’s better.”
I was delighted that this is such a lengthy book. For 600 pages—quite an impressive feat, really—I never once tired of this little girl and her thoughts on growing up in the 1960s, on an Air Force base in Canada, with the Cold War a constant presence in the background. The last 200 pages, however, when Madeleine is an adult, disappointed me. On the one hand, we needed to move forward in time for very important reasons having to do with a murder and family secrets kept hidden for twenty years. There are heart-racing elements to the plot that I could see were about to become illuminated, and this excited me greatly. On the other hand, adult Madeleine is just not as relatable as her childhood self. Her dialogue does not sounds believable to me any more, and I didn’t find the writing satisfying anymore either, perhaps because it’s a bit chick-lit-ish:
“‘I’m seeing someone,’ she says.
Nina listens.
‘I’m um…happy. Isn’t that weird?’
Nina smiles.
‘I feel like part of me is awake and that part’s really happy. But it has to drag around this other part. This dead weight like an unconscious patient. It’s me. My eyes are closed, I’m in this blue hospital gown.’ She crinkles her face.”
I think the book would have been greatly improved by cutting the last 200 pages by at least half, leaving out much of adult Madeleine’s romantic relationships and general angst. I also found certain events at the end somewhat difficult to believe. This was all rather frustrating, because the first 600 pages are so very faultless.
Nonetheless, the book is unforgettable and I definitely recommend it. I particularly appreciated learning about a group of people I had never before heard of—the Acadians. I found myself researching the history of the Acadians on the computer the moment I finished the book…it’s always a pleasure when a novel has this effect.
This review first appeared in June, 2005
By Donna Long
Something’s Not Quite Right. By Guy Billout. Godine, 32 pp., $14.95, paperback. Ages: 4 and up.
By Janice Harayda
Something’s Not Quite Right is a more sophisticated and intellectual French cousin of all those spot-the-difference books that require you to find minor variations in side-by-side pictures. Each page of this oversized picture book asks you to figure out what’s wrong with a painting by Guy Billout, an illustrator whose elegantly spare work has appeared in The New Yorker.
Some of Billout’s surreal images show biological impossibilities or incongruities that 5- or 6-year-olds could spot easily — a zebra with stripes that form a bull’s eye, a pigeon with landing gear for feet, a butterfly perched on a lever that lifts a building off its foundation. Other paintings show visual paradoxes that children might have trouble understanding without adult help, such a snowball apparently fired by a war-memorial cannon (which might have come instead from an unseen hand). And all the pictures have titles that, in some cases, add to their ambiguity: What are we to make of the painting called “Writer’s Block,” which shows a human figure standing behind a railing on top of an overflowing dam? Does the scene represent wish fulfillment? Or perhaps an inability to tap the wellsprings of inspiration just out of reach?
The varied levels of meaning and complexity make Something’s Not Quite Right more challenging than most spot-the-difference books and add to its intergenerational appeal. This is the rare picture book that on a rainy day at the beach might interest not just the young children for whom it is intended but their older brothers and sisters and the grandparents who could identify for both groups some of the famous sites on its pages, including the Flatiron Building in New York and the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.
Best line/picture: Some of Billout’s images can be read metaphorically. They include a picture of a World War II tank crossing a field of sunflowers without appearing to harm them. You can read the flowers as a metaphor for France or the French spirit uncrushed by the war.
Worst line/picture: The dust jacket of the hardcover edition says that a picture shows “a Boeing 747 about to touch down without landing gear.” If you hadn’t read that, you might imagine that the plane was taking off and had lifted its landing gear.
Published: October 2002 (hardcover), May 2004 (paperback).
Furthermore: Billout was born in France and lives in New York. He has posted some images from Something’s Not Quite Right, unlabeled as such, on www.guybillout.com. He wrote the The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea (Creative Editions, 2007).
I don’t like clutter. I open my mail over the recycle bin, organize my closet by color, rotate the stock on my pantry shelves. I’m not obsessive about it, I promise. I just find life easier when there’s a place for everything and every thing is in its place. There are a few exceptions to this rule in our house – one of them being the top of the refrigerator. At any given time there may be all sorts of whatnot up there…including stacks of books for review. How perfectly ironic that this one should get lost in one of those stacks. A Perfect Mess by Lisa Harper is a title I should have read, reviewed and posted last month. The subtitle makes it even better: “Why You Don’t Have to Worry About Being Good Enough for God”. Does that statement do your heart as much good as it does mine?
Maybe, like me, you were brought up in a culture that dictated what a Christian did or did not do. And perhaps the message that your still-wondering ears heard was that the “do” and “don’t” list greatly influenced your acceptability in God’s eyes. A Perfect Mess is the study of 13 Psalms that will open your mind to the truth of God’s absolutely unconditional love and acceptance of His children. Before you think, “another stale Old Testament Bible study, just what I need” let me assure that this is no stuffy, boring book. Lisa Harper’s writing is hilarious one minute, heart-wrenching the next. I so loved the humor in this book. Any woman who refers to goats as “cute, moveable yard art” has earned a place on my must-read list from now on. But the book isn’t just funny, it is filled with knowledge, wisdom and I’m guessing a few “Aha” moments for every reader.
I remember laughing at a commercial years ago where a polished-looking business woman admitted that she’d used nail polish to fix her pantyhose and her hem was held together by scotch tape. No matter how much pressure we feel to look or act a certain way, God sees what’s underneath. And He loves who He sees.
So, yeah…I keep a pretty clean house. Really, you can drop in anytime and things will seem to be in order. Just please don’t look under the bathroom sink.
To learn more about A Perfect Mess or to purchase a copy, visit this link or simply click on the photo below: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307457882&ref=externallink_wbp_aperfectmess_sec_0526_01
To WIN a free copy of this book, leave a comment below! Winner will be chosen at random from all comments left betwen 08/21/09 and 08/31/09. Good luck!
Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, by Sam Savage. Coffee House Press (2006), 148 pages.
This little novella is light on plot, but the writing is so lovely a story-line hardly matters. It’s hard to believe this is Savage’s first published work. He has the kind of voice that appears to be effortless—as if he is one of those mythical writers who sits down and types the whole thing out in its final form, with no revisions necessary.
Firmin is about a rat who lives in Boston’s Scollay Square above a bookstore. The bookstore, as well as the entire Square, is soon to be demolished for an urban renewal project. That’s pretty much all there is to say about the plot. It is Firmin’s passion for books (he learned to read while chewing on the pages) that really drives the story. One could say Firmin is about rats, or urban destruction, or despair, or hope, but it is really a love letter to readers and bookstores and most of all to the books that have changed our lives.
EXCERPT:
“Like many things that start as small, illicit pleasures, paper chewing soon became a habit, with its own imperative, and then an addiction, a mortal hunger whose satisfaction was so delightful that I would often hesitate to pounce on the first free tit. I would instead stand there chewing until the wad in my mouth had softened to a delectable paste that I could mash against the roof of my mouth or mold into interesting shapes with my tongue and safely swallow. Unfortunately, the chewed paper left a sticky coating on my mouth and tongue that lasted for hours and caused me to smack my lips in a truly unpleasant manner.”
The King’s Equal
By KATHERINE PATERSON
(New York, Harper Collins, 1992, 64 pp., hardback, $24.50)
At first, ‘The King’s Equal’ seems like just another fairy tale adaptation from some classic about a prince who must fulfill his good father’s dying wish before he can ascend to the throne. We’ve heard it before. Some quest, beautiful maiden, father’s blessing, lovely and prosperous kingdom.
But instead of a fantastic quest, Paterson’s King asks this of his son:
‘…You will not wear my crown until the day you marry a woman who is your equal in beauty and intelligence and wealth.’
If Prince Raphael had been a humbler man, he might have found this request relieving. But he is angry, and calls it a
‘…curse! Where shall I find a princess who is equal to me in every way?’
He puts the request out of his mind and proceeds to ruin the kingdom and its subjects for his own personal gain. However, he may not have the crown until he finds the ‘King’s Equal.’ Yet to his frustration, he cannot find a wife who satisfies him in every way, and bodies of officials and women alike pile up in jail because of it. One day, a beautiful stranger named Rosamond appears. She strikes the prince with her beauty, intelligence, and wealth. She quoth:
‘Perhaps you are poorer than I, for there is nothing I desire that I do not already possess.’
Rosamond is actually the daughter of a poor mountain woodsman, who has been aided and encouraged through the kindness of a safe and magical Wolf. Even though Raphael accepts her as his ‘equal,’ she declares that he may not marry her unless he spends a year in that same cottage where she resided, in the company of three goats and the Wolf. He spends the year working and is slowly humbled, to the point where he begins to think himself quite unworthy of Rosamond, but returns within the year as promised. But now he walks away, dejected, but she calls him back, smiling. She takes his hand, and needless to say, they wed, and the kingdom is restored.
KP’s points of departure in this story are so important! They are what make the story special! First, the King does not ask for a show of glory, but a show of humility. In order to be raised up to the heights, he must descend. He does this socially, as a goatherder, and very much in terms of his view of himself, from pride to disgust at his shameful character. But the process of hard work, and seeing himself truly, puts him through finally makes him fit to be a King. So the story is titled the King’s Equal in a double sense – Rosamund as a ‘king’s’ literal equal, and Raphael, finally worthy to call himself the equal of an ideal King. Rosamund is far from vapid and Raphael far, far from glorious.
Katherine Paterson is one of those storytellers who makes me marvel and how she can create a character in so few words and sentences, and still make them intensely personal. She takes a story and makes it unavoidable, she has a special touch of resolving a story so that there’s that feeling in your chest that everything is satisfying and deep and right… do you know what I mean?
The War Against the Weak Edwin Black, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. 550pgs, index, end notes.
Most Americans have not heard of Francis Galton. They do not know that he discovered fingerprints, was the distant cousin of Charles Darwin, and was obsessed with counting and organizing everything he came across. He also invented eugenics.
What is eugenics? It is the mostly forgotten attempt to improve the human race. It sounds like a noble goal. After all, who can be against improvement? Don’t we improve animal and plant strains. Its a process has produced much good. What is wrong with that?
If all we were talking about was an improvement in cows and corn we would let Mr. Galton’s invention be forgotten. But the eugenics movement didn’t confine itself to farm husbandry. The movement spread, metastasized would be a better term, using the principles of heredity to try to engineer a super race. Galton’s ideas would be the basis of a movement that he would protest against. Galton wanted to increase the population of the upper 10% and leave the rest alone. Being an evolutionist he figured the worst of mankind would die of by itself. He did.
The goal of the movement as it was practiced in America was to eradicate the worst 10% of the human population. This would ensure improvement of the rest of the mankind. That was the dream. The reality was the nightmare.
Originating in England with Galton, the movement did not ever catch on there but instead spread to America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the Progressive Era. The movement caught on with racial bigots. It seemed so easy to divide up the human race into subordinate racial divisions and then classify the divisions into the desirable and undesirable categories. Who gets to make the distinctions, and who decides which is the most acceptable race? The politicians influenced by the self-certified experts appointed the bureaucrats who passed judgment on the helpless. These bureaucrats deciding, often on little evidence, into which category each person should be place. In areas of great racial segregation the consequences of being in a less esteemed class could be serious. But politics influenced everything. In Virginia when the eugenics laws were being drafted, the prominent families that traced their lineage back to the Indians objected to classifying the Indians as inferior. An exception was made.
The underlying arrogance was that those who decide who is desirable always classified themselves as desirable. No big surprise. But as Black shows, the matter of race (the eugenicists had trouble deciding who was what) was not the only issue. What were considered inherited diseases were a major factor in the eugenics movement. Listed as hereditary were such diseases as drunkenness, pauperism, and prostitution.
Huge efforts, funded by the Carnegie and the Rockefeller foundations, were made to trace ancestry. Questionnaires were used to determine such characteristics as loyalty, honesty, faithfulness, and sobriety in addition to physical characteristics. All of this information was filed at the eugenics movement’s headquarters in Cold Spring Harbor, NY. The information would remain in storage for decades, ignored because it was useless.
The quackery is now evident to us, but at the time there were only a few voices raising the protest. Black lists some, such as H.L Mencken, and an the author of a pseudonymous booklet that used the principal eugenicists’ own words against them. While there was incisive criticism by the opponents, it was not enough to sway the politicians from enacting laws permitting compulsory sterilization and laws prohibiting miscegenation.
The Supreme Court would later overturn the miscegenation laws, but the sterilization laws were upheld by no less a light the Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote for the majority (8-1) in the case of Bell vs. Buck that “three generation of imbeciles is enough.” Justice Holmes’ comments did not apply to those on the Supreme Court who voted with him.
The Buck case was a setup from the beginning. Its purpose was to get a favorable court ruling concerning forced sterilization. Carrie Buck was the daughter of a woman who was confined to a state hospital for the unfit because she said that she was a prostitute. Carrie was removed from her custody by an administrative court judge who had her place in his home so his wife could use her as free domestic help and rent her out to other families.
Carrie gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Vivian, who was declared abnormal by a bogus expert. The expert testified that there was something wrong with the infant. Just what was never stated. That assertion was enough for the court to rule that Carrie should be sterilized. The court arranged for her court appointed lawyer, an arrant eugenicist, to appeal. The whole process was a sham. (Such is administrative law, but that is another essay.)
Once the Supreme Court ruled, thousands of men and women were forcibly sterilized, some without their even knowing that it had been done.
The most controversial aspect of eugenics was euthanasia. There were vocal advocates of euthanasia in the U.S., but there was little practice, only a few very ill babies were left alone to die, and this without legal cover. Germany would make up for the lack.
As bad as eugenics was in the U.S., it reached the malignant state in Germany. Hitler adopted it with alacrity. Eugenics would provide the science he needed to proceed with his racial program. The eugenic ideal race was Nordic, exactly what Hitler needed. No thought was given to how this Nordic standard became to be the ideal, nor was any thought given as to how the Nordic race became distinct from the rest of mankind. The irony of the Nazi eugenics is that Germany was allied with the Japanese, who were regarded as an inferior group, yet at war with the British, a group deemed to be superior.
There is the even greater irony of the war crimes trials. Here Germans were judged by Americans for eugenic practices that the Americans inspired. (The additional irony is that “crimes against humanity” is an undefined law; it was created ex post facto, illegal under the American constitution; all the eugenic acts performed by the Nazis were legal under German law; and, most amazingly, the biggest criminals of all, the Russians, were allowed to be judges. For more, see Victor’s Justice. It is well known that the war started when Germany invaded Poland. It is also well known but ignored that when Germany invade Poland from the west, Russia invaded Poland from the east. Why did England and France declare war on Germany but not Russia? For more, see Buchanan’s controversial book, Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War.)
Black’s documentation is extensive. Much of his research was probably done when he was working on his previous book about IBM and the Nazis. It turns out that the IBM company sold the Germans computer equipment that enabled the Nazis to quickly sort out who had the most Aryan blood. Black says that the only records that he could not get access to were those of IBM. The company would not grant any access to him.
Black ends his book with a chapter of speculation on the future of genetics. Genetics is not the same thing as eugenics, but it is an development from the remains of the eugenics movement. With the advances in genetics what is the future? There is already widespread gender specific abortion (causing a huge imbalance in the population in China) as well as talk of designer babies. While the eugenics movement is gone from memory, it is not as dead as its victims.
Hunting the Hidden Dimension Tuesday, August 18 at 8 pm
Mysteriously beautiful fractals are shaking up the world of mathematics and deepening our understanding of nature
I watched this and it was pretty cool, all about math, geometry, fractals and fractal art. The geometry scientist named Mandelbrot discovered ways of using repeating and developing patterns in math equations to create images. The images reflect the equation and also become surprisingly beautiful works of art.
In a previous post about the a 1960’s to ’70’s photo collection I had mentioned the beautiful art used throughout the book. It turns out much of it was based on fractal images. These were big in the 1970’s and have become part of our shared image culture. That was cool, but we’re just getting started.
You know that one of my favorite authors is Terry Pratchett and the show reminded me of one of his books, Interesting Times. The main character is a failed wizard named Rhincewind who gets into all kinds of misadventures and has perfected the solution to dealing bad situations; run. Run fast, run hard, and never look back. Interesting Times isn’t the first book that Rhincewind occupies but in this one he’s in the Discworld equivalent of China, running from Imperial guards and trying to keep his intestines coiled inside his own abdomen. Pratchett uses lots of ideas from fractal math, including the Mandelbrot butterfly. The what? The Mandelbrot butter…it’s like this.
If it’s true that a coastline cannot be measured accurately because of the fractal length of the actual shore, dividing into ever smaller units until infinity, then the same could be true of a butterfly’s wings. Now, if a butterfly has wings that are of an infinite size, due to fractal measurements and the theories of Professor Mandelbrot, what would be the effect of the weather when the butterfly flutters its wings? Could said butterfly create a hurricane-force wind by this fluttering action?
Yes, it could, if it lives in Discworld and is anywhere near Rhincewind. Find out how Rincewind manages to save the day, the people of the Counterweight Continent, and far more importantly – (at least according to Rhincewind) -himself.
Look for Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett, published by Harper, and available online and at any Borders. If you haven’t read anything by Sir Pratchett yet, run, drive, or skate to the nearest bookseller and treat yourself to one of the funniest and smartest writers alive today. Really, go now.
Love Smart was one of 10 finalists in the 2007 Delete Key Awards contest, which recognizes the year’s worst writing in books. Dr. Phil lost to Danielle Steel (grand-prize winner), Mitch Albom (first runner-up) and Claire Messud (second runner-up). This review appeared in February 2007.
Love Smart: Find the One You Want – Fix the One You Got. By Dr. Phil McGraw. Free Press, 283 pp., $15, paperback.
By Janice Harayda
Help me, please, with the math in Dr. Phil McGraw’s relationship guide for women. First the talk-show host says that to attract a worthy man, you need to feel confident enough to take your “fair share of time in most conversations – 50 percent in a twosome, 33 percent in a threesome, and so forth.” Then he says that when you’re dating: “Self-disclosure should be used only 25 percent of the time. The other 75 percent should be listening.” So which is it? Should you be talking 50 percent of the time or 25 percent?
I have no idea, because McGraw doesn’t say how he got those figures, and his book is full of mush like this. Love Smart is one of those self-help guides that has LOTS OF LARGE TYPE. It also has exclamation points! More than two dozen in the first seven pages! That doesn’t count the one in the first paragraph of the acknowledgments! But I’ll say this for McGraw: He is equally patronizing to women and men. He reduces them both 1950s stereotypes given a 21st-century gloss with advice on Internet dating and quotes from celebrities like Dave Barry and Rita Rudner.
Much of his advice retools the kind of messages Bridget Jones got from her mother. First, stop being so picky. Of course, McGraw doesn’t use that word. He urges you to settle for “Mr. 80 Percent.” Then forget what you may have heard from other experts about how there are more differences between any one man and woman than between the sexes as a whole.
“I’ve got news for you: Men and women are different,” McGraw says. A lot of men have a “caveman” mentality that requires a “bag’em, tag’em, bring’em home” approach. This method includes more of the kind of advice your mother – or maybe grandmother – gave you. McGraw doesn’t come right out and say you should “save yourself for your husband.” But he does suggest you hold sex “in reserve” until a man has made “the ultimate commitment”: “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” It doesn’t seem to have occurred to McGraw that some women might not appreciate being compared to cows.
The most bizarre section of Love Smart consists of its list of the “top 31 places” to meet men. No. 1 and 2 on the list are “your church or temple” and “batting cages.” You might meet men at those batting cages. But the U.S. Congregational Life Survey found that the typical American churchgoer is a 50-year old married female. So what are the criteria here? Sheer numbers of the other sex? Or compatibility with your values? The list makes no more sense than most of the other material in Love Smart. Earlier in the book, McGraw begins an account of a disagreement with his wife by saying, “Now I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box …” Why didn’t somebody tell Oprah?
Best line: The comedian Rita Rudner says, “To attract men I wear a perfume called New Car Interior.” Love Smart also has some zingers that women have used to insult men, such as, “He has delusions of adequacy.”
Worst line: McGraw never uses one cliché when he can use three or four, as in: “Now it seems time to step up and close the deal, get ‘the fish in the boat,’ walk down the aisle, tie the knot … you want to get to the next level.”
Editor: Dominick Anfuso
Published: December 2006
To read more about the Delete Key Awards, click on the “Delete Key Awards” tag at the top of this post or the “Delete Key Awards” category at right. To read more about the creator of the awards, click on “About Janice Harayda.”
I was lucky enough to spend a week staying in the south of France with family. Here’s what I read while I was there:
The Search for the Dice Man by Luke Rhineheart – This has been on my list ever since I read The Dice Man. The Dice Man was really good: I liked the writing style, the plot was good and the characters were intriguing. The Search for the Dice Man, while retaining an enjoyable writing style, was otherwise not good: the plot didn’t seem to hang together and the characters (partly because of the terrible plot) didn’t seem meaningful or fixed in their attributes. This was an enjoyable book with a few good scenes in it (most notably at the very beginning and the very end) but if I were to choose again, I wouldn’t bother reading it.
Incompetence by Rob Grant – This is a ‘mystery’ but more of a comedy about a world where incompetence is no longer a barrier. Our hero, who is by turns Harry Salt, Harry Tequile and Cardrew Vascular, travels across Europe to follow the clues his friend has left him and struggles with pilots with vertigo, trains that don’t stop at stations and more. This book was hilarious – thoroughly recommended.
America Unchained by Dave Gorman – This is yet another travel book. In this one, Dave Gorman attempts to travel across America from coast to coast without giving any money to The Man (i.e. without shopping at any chain stores). For me, the key to this genre of book is the narrator, and Dave Gorman was brilliant. I’ll definitely be reading more by him.
God is Dead by Ron Currie – The premise of the book is in the title: having taken on the body of a young woman in the Sudan, God has died. This is a series of short stories about the world left behind, including an interview with one of the dogs who ate part of His body and the story of a man whose job is to stop people worshipping their own children because they have nothing to do on Sundays. The first few stories were good, but in general, I found the collection lacking and dull.
To impress the popular girls on a high school trip to London, klutzy Callie buys real Prada heels. But trying them on, she trips…conks her head…and wakes up in the year 1815!
There Callie meets Emily, who takes her in, mistaking her for a long-lost friend. As she spends time with Emily’s family, Callie warms to them—particularly to Emily’s cousin Alex, a hottie and a duke, if a tad arrogant.
But can Callie save Emily from a dire engagement, and win Alex’s heart, before her time in the past is up?
More Cabot than Ibbotson, Prada and Prejudice is a high-concept romantic comedy about finding friendship and love in the past in order to have happiness in the present.
I was feeling down the day I read Prada and Prejudice but thirty pages later, I had a big grin on my face. Prada and Prejudice kept me entertained throughout and cheered me up with it’s hilarious dialogues. Callie is witty, brainy and likable. I can completely understand her feelings, tripping and waking up in the middle of nowhere.
Alex is a dashing, enigmatic and perplexing character. On one hand, he can be quite hot but on the other, he is an arrogant jerk. Despite everything, I still found him drool-worthy.
The ending was perfect. It may be kind of ambiguous but it’s the best ending for this book.
Overall, Prada and Prejudice is a delightful, funny and entertaining read and I would like to say congrats to Mandy Hubbard after spending so much time on this novel– it’s finally out! I recommend P&P if you are looking for a fun book to read. It will keep you laughing the whole time!
Can a Swedish librarian find happiness with a man who owns a manure-spreader, or is he just shoveling — ?
Benny & Shrimp. By Katarina Mazetti. Translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. Penguin / Pam Dorman. 221 pp., $14, paperback.
By Janice Harayda
This frothy romantic comedy is a Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with Swedish meatballs. Benny Söderström is an unmarried dairy farmer who owns a manure-spreader and boasts, “If you’ve read one book, you’ve read them all, and I read one last year!” Desirée Wallin is a widowed librarian who likes modernist furniture and talking about the literary theories of Jacques Lacan. The two lovelorn Swedes, both in early middle-age, meet at a cemetery where Benny visits his mother’s grave and Desirée her husband’s. And if you can’t see where this novel is going by the end of the first chapter, you’re probably still shocked that Julia Roberts got together with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.
But like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Benny & Shrimp makes use of an interesting narrative device: Katarina Mazetti tells her story not in letters but in chapters narrated antiphonally by Benny and “Shrimp,” the farmer’s nickname for Desirée. And Mazetti invests her tale with enough wit and vitality to offset some of the contrivances of her plot. Benny might refer to Rigoletto as “that fatso with the sword” after Shrimp tries to couth him up by giving him opera tickets. But you have to admire an unmarried man who, when he opens his refrigerator, has the integrity to admit the truth: “There were things in there that probably could have walked out on their own.”
Best line: “You could lobotomize him with the power saw and nobody would notice the difference.”
Worst line: It’s hard to imagine a Swedish farmer saying, even in translation, “Blimey” and “not bloody likely!”
Published: August 2008
Reading group guide: Penguin has posted discussion questions that include comments by Mazetti.
Caveat lector: This book was based on an advance reader’s edition. Some material in the finished book may differ.
Furthermore: Mazetti is a Swedish radio producer and author of books for children and adults. Benny & Shrimp was a bestseller and inspired a movie in Sweden. And yes, this novel about people who meet in a cemetery was translated by “Sarah Death.”
