Current Suggested Reads

Fiction

Everything Beautiful Began After, Simon Van Booy

While in Athens, Rebecca--young, beautiful and lost--finds a confidant in George, a translator whose closest friends are Aristophanes and Jack Daniels, but their blossoming relationship becomes complicated when they meet Henry, a happy-go-lucky archaeologist who changes their lives forever.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not truly free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood

Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds--everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels...consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, The Edible Woman is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

Driftless, David Rhodes

David Rhodes's long-awaited new novel turns an unblinking eye on an array of eccentric characters and situations. The setting is Words, Wisconsin, an anonymous town of only a few hundred people. But under its sleepy surface, life rages. Cora and Graham guard their dairy farm, and family, from the wicked schemes of their milk co-op. Lifelong paraplegic Olivia suddenly starts to walk, only to find herself crippled by her fury toward her sister and caretaker, Violet. Recently retired Rusty finds a cougar living in his haymow, dredging up haunting childhood memories. Winifred becomes pastor of the Friends church and stumbles on enlightenment in a very unlikely place. And Julia Montgomery, both private and gregarious, instigates a series of events that threatens the town's solitude and doggedly suspicious ways. Driftless finds the author's powers undiminished in this unforgettable story that evokes a small-town America previously unmapped, and the damaged denizens who must make their way through it.

Kim, Rudyard Kipling

Kim ... is the story of Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who spends his childhood as a vagabond in Lahore. With an old Tibetan lama, the 'Little Friend of all the World' travels through India, enthralled by the 'roaring whirl' of the landscape and cities of richly coloured bazaars and immense diversity of people. He eventually discovers his true identity and joins the 'Great Game', becoming a secret agent in the service of the British government. "Filled with lyrical, exotic prose and nostalgia for Kipling's native India, Kim is widely acknowledged as the author's greatest novel and a key element in his winning the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is the tale of an orphaned sahib and the burdensome fate that awaits him when he is unwittingly dragged into the Great Game of Imperialism. During his many adventures, he befriends an old Tibetan lama who transforms his life. As Pankaj Mishra asserts in his Introduction, "To read the novel now is to notice the melancholy wisdom that accompanies the native boy's journey through a broad and open road to the narrow duties of the white man's world: how the deeper Buddhist idea of the illusion of the self, of time and space, makes bearable for him the anguish of abandoning his childhood

Non-fiction

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Richard Wright's devastating autobiography of his childhood and youth in the Jim Crow South His training by his elders was strict and harsh to prepare him for the "white world" which would be cruel. Their resentment of those trying to escape the common misery made his future seem hopeless. It was necessary to grow up restrained and submissive in southern white society and to endure torment and abuse. Wright tells of his mental and emotional struggle to educate himself, which gave him a glimpse of life's possibilities and which led him to his triumphant decision to leave the South behind while still a teenager to live in Chicago and fulfill himself by becoming a writer.

Whose Art Is It? Jane Kramer

Originally appearing in The New Yorker in December, 1992, this journalistic essay is an account of the furor provoked by white artist John Ahearn's sculptures of residents of New York City's South Bronx. Kramer's article, which prompted charges of racism and stereotyping, explores with sympathy, wit, and circumspection the charged subjects of multiculturalism and political correctness.

Algonquin Attempts Growth with YA

I thought it was appropriate to report after our group review of Water for Elephants that the publisher that made its mark with Sara Gruen's books, is now looking to continue growth with a YA list.

Read more at PW.

Trip Sheets, Ellen Hawley

Ellen Hawley’s Trip Sheets initially intrigued me because it was supposed to be a very personal story from the mind of a taxi driver. And, in the beginning of the book, Hawley explains exactly this intrigue mentioning how lonely and long the days of a taxi driver can be. However, the story never seems to appropriately explore this mind. Yes, the story is all told from driver Cath’s point of view, but rather than resting and exploring feelings, Cath seems to plod through the story giving each event equal attention before deciding that one event is the culmination of all the others. Even the last scenes of the story seem to hold little significance for this role.

The story is of a Minnesota taxi driver, Cath, who is working her way through young adulthood and coming out. It is the story of a woman learning to negotiate her romantic relationships personally and eventually with family. However, the book reads more like a resume than emotional or revelatory accounts of this journey. Cath goes from one relationship to the next, and at first her lack of emotion makes sense. But then Cath does find her soul mate, and the reader thinks finally, I will see Cath at her most vulnerable. You won’t. Cath’s soul mate is divorced and a single mother. Her soul mate insists that Cath introduce her to family when Cath’s father is on his death bed. Yet, amidst this obvious recipe for heart wrenching and challenging feelings, Cath continues to tell her story with her unnatural sensibility leaving any reader frustrated and bored.

This was a pretty disappointing story to be on display at the Minneapolis Central Library. 

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

Jeannette, we appreciate your story, but I guess we were hoping for a bit more from The Glass Castle. Aren’t we tough reviewers? Certainly your story offers more than enough to discuss. However, the clubbin’ friends wanted more of that discussion from you!

Reviews seem to be the same from around the town. When I first started reading, two women stopped me on the bus: “Oh, The Glass Castle? You only need to read the first few chapters, they just keep moving from nothing town to another.” Having finished, I will mention that the two women were wrong. The family stops moving around, but things do not stabilize for Jeannette or her siblings. I think really my bus mates were hinting that the book never adequately highlights conflicting emotions or thoughts from the author. Not that it needs to. If I were Jeannette, I would probably want to write my book similarly. Plop out the story, and I will let you decide how I should feel about this because though I have had a lifetime to figure it out, I still have no idea.

I would never ask Jeannette to write more than what she has, because the story is valid as it is. However, the story still leaves readers without any of the probable and varied emotions and thoughts from the author and her siblings.

Consensus says that this book is a necessary read but maybe not the most satisfying book to challenge preconceived ideas in an exciting or surprising way.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

I am sure there are sufficient reviews of The Bell Jar anywhere someone decides to stick his nose. However, it deserves an entry here, perhaps not an intentional review, both because of the reaction the Franklin branch librarian gave me upon check out and because, despite that reaction, I loved this book.

I have wanted to read The Bell Jar for quite some time now simply because of a friend’s personal relationship with the book. So my second review of the book from the librarian: “Get ready. This is depressing,” wasn’t necessarily shocking, but it did question whether I would be able to finish.

Plath’s story follows a successful academic college girl to New York City to a prize winning job with a top fashion magazine as a Junior Editor. On the surface the book is about her descent into an all-consuming depression, which Plath describes as being enclosed in a bell jar: “black and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.” While absolutely the book is about this depression, I did not find the book depressing, as the librarian forewarned. Maybe my opinion is skewed because I have just returned from a pretty negative year working in publishing in an east coast city, but I see Plath’s story as a comfortable and friendly way to discuss difficult and painful periods of a person’s life. Despite the subject matter, the prose is light, jovial and unassuming. This is not a depressing story, but this is an important story. And since it is easy to read, I recommend it especially to any young person, just trying to make his future.

Food themed book club books??

In reading a bit about Wine and War after my last entry, I have come across a number of delectable titles that we may need to add to a specially themed list of possible book club books. So here inuagurates the food book list:

The Passionate Epicure, Marcel Rouff
In the classic French novel The Passionate Epicure, Marcel Rouff introduces Dodin-Bouffant, a character based loosely on Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an infamous bachelor and epicure dedicated to the high arts: the art of food and the art of love. This edition contains a Preface by Lawrence Durrell and a new Introduction by Jeffrey Steingarten, the food critic for Vogue magazine and author of the bestselling book The Man Who Ate Everything.

The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
The food critic for Vogue conducts his readers on a mouth-watering and outrageously funny survey of practically everything that anyone anywhere has ever called "dinner."

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story.

Crescent, Diana Abu-Jaber
When a handsome professor of Arabic literature and Iraqi exile enters her life, single, 39-year-old Sirine, a passionate cook in a Lebanese restaurant, finds herself falling in love and, in the process, starts questioning her identify as an Arab-American.

The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood
Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds--everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels...consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, The Edible Woman is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

Consider the Oyster, M.F.K. Fisher

(Author of The Art of Eating also recommended but at 600 pages, I kept off of our list. Translated The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, not available at all from the public library, but I'd be willing to read this one as well.)

M.F.K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our "poet of the appetites," here pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods---the oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel--and of the pearls sometimes found therein--Fisher describes her mother's joy at encountering oyster loaf in a girls' dorm in he 1890's, recalls her own initiation into the "strange cold succulence" of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers. Plumbing the "dreadful but exciting" life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose.

Summaries were used from the Hennepin County Library catalog, "Food in Fiction" from the Multnomah County Library and Random House Publishing.

Wine and War, Don and Petie Kladstrup

My mother gave me a copy of Wine and War after I returned home from a summer teaching English in France in 2007. I had stayed at Chateau d’Azé, Saone-et-Loire in the Burgandy region of France, which is now rented out to the company, Nacel, running the camp. Azé is outside of Mâcon, famous for decent, and relatively inexpensive, white and red wines (look for Maison Louis Jadot, Mâcon Villages, for a taste of a white). I do not know much about wine, nor do I always enjoy drinking wine, but the stories in Don and Petie Kladstrup’s Wine and War were very real to me, some of them akin to the stories the Chateau d’Azé property manager shared with our group of counselors about the very buildings, grounds and vineyards we slept and taught within.

The Kladstrup’s write about how France saved their greatest treasure of wine during World War II, Nazi occupation, but they also tell stories of families, across borders, struggling to follow a moral path and to save each other. The book is certainly filled with fascinating and wonderfully powerful stories about winegrowers burying wine in gardens or building fake walls within caves (wine storage building, some winegrowers also buried wine in les grottes (caves in English) as well). It is also about a certain pride of people, who deceived Nazi leaders demanding wine, labeling poor quality bottles of wine with expensive, high demand labels. It is about the French soldiers who laughed and celebrated the deception while discovering the bad wine at the Eagle’s Nest, one of Hitler’s personal properties. Within these stories of French deception, readers will discover far more powerful accounts of soldiers, mothers, neighbors and children from many countries and backgrounds.

If you are like me, and have never felt much excitement about wine, this book will inspire you to raise a glass and learn more. It is also my inspiration for recommending Hidden in Plainview, a book about deception and ordinary lives involved with the underground railroad, as a possible book club read.