State of Wonder and Before I Go To Sleep

The best thrillers sometimes turn out to be the ones that aren't even billed as such. To be able, at the end of a book, gasp with surprise, is a rare pleasure. That gasp was the difference between Ann Patchett's State of Wonder and Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson.
The blurbs on Watson's book referred to it as "Memento on meth" and it was reminiscent of Memento. Christine wakes up every morning with no memory and has to quickly learn who to trust. A daily phone call from her doctor tells her where to find her journal, where she writes down what she pieces together (and what she also has to read every day) about her life. It is a fast paced if generally unbelievable book. It didn't take me long to figure out the real story, although in the end there were a lot of unanswered questions. Still, it was entertaining!
State of Wonder reminded me of Bel Canto-- many unrelated characters thrown together, forced to interact and with the outcome a surprise. Marina Singh is sent to the Amazon by the pharmaceutical company she works for to get an update from her med school mentor, Dr. Swenson, on the latter's research and to find out more about the mysterious death of her colleague. Marina becomes enthralled with the Amazon tribe she lives with, Dr. Swenson's research, and Dr. Swenson's "adopted" son Easter. The final Amazon scene is exciting as any Indiana Jones movie and my jaw dropped.
3 stars for the Watson book and 5 stars for the Patchett.

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet

Ballet was a huge part of my life up until high school. I learned grace, discipline and French. I made friends I still have. After reading a review of Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans I knew I had to read the book, even though it is 600+ pages.
Ms. Homans traces ballet and dance from the 18th century through contemporary times as a party of larger world history. Ballet was important pre and post French Revolution and some of the greatest celebrities were defectors from the USSR (remember Baryshnikov in Sex and the City?). She reminds us that ballet stars influenced culture and although we might think it elite and esoteric today, there have been times when dancers and choreographers risked their lives for it. This volume is well edited, with facts and pictures. Dance is also ephemeral: of the hundreds of ballets Balanchine choreographed, for example, only a handful are remembered.
Ms. Homans ends the tome believing that ballet is dying. She argues there are no true stars and it doesn't have the same influence as in the past. But I disagree. Last night I sat on the Esplanade and listened to the Landmarks Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky, with members of the Boston Ballet dancing parts of The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. And there was a crowd of people with me. And what about shows like, Dancing with the Stars? And the Zumba craze? Maybe not ballet, but people love dance and I'm not ready to give up on it.
This book took me months to read, but it was worth it. 5/5 netflix stars.

Super Sad True Love Story

If you've ever felt like your phone is not up to speed, this book is for you.
If you've ever left a note, or been left a note, about replacing toilet paper, this book is for you.
If you've ever been the bottom of the totem pole at work, this book is for you.
If you've ever called someone, or been called, a "tuna brain", this book is for you.
If you've ever had a best friend that lives far away and you miss and email everyday, this book is for you.
If you are an older sister, this book is for you.
If you are Jewish, this book is for you.
If you are Korean, this book is for you.
If you are neither Jewish nor Korean, this book is for you.
If you are a sad sack, this book is for you.
If you spent time in Italy, this book is for you.
If you are willing to snort from laughing, on the bus, this book is for you.
If you read one book this year, this book is for you.
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.
5/5 netflix stars

Swamplandia!

Summer's here, which means vacation time. So I'm taking a vacation from reading books based in the midwest and heading straight to Florida. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell is everything its title implies. Like the Binewski family in Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, the Bigtree "tribe" live on the edge of society and earn a living being themselves. They live on one of Florida's 10,000 islands and runs a tourist show of alligator wrestling. Aside from the thousands of "mainlander" tourists, the kids only interact with each other and are blissfully unaware of life on the mainland. Kiwi is the oldest and has dreams of attending Harvard. Dreamy Ossie communes with and runs away with a ghost, leaving the youngest, Ava, to fend for herself.

Russell's Florida swamplands have Weed Witches instead of bagladies, long abandoned dredgeboats are homes to marriage inclined ghosts from the 1930s and dank canals lead to the Underworld. Each of the children live on the brink of reality and they compellingly pull us along a journey of questionable danger. Susan Orlean nearly forgets her journalistic bias in favor of seeing a rare orchid in The Orchid Thief, so why wouldn't the reader think the Bird Man a contemporary Charon?

Ms. Russell's novel is a fascinating read-- equally creepy, mysterious and funny (Kiwi's jobs and interactions with fellow "new hires" in competitor World of Darkness are worth the cover price) and Ava's love for her family is priceless. 5/5 netflix stars.

Great House

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was not my favorite so I was pleasantly surprised by how moving her third novel, Great House, was.  In Great House, a large desk is the centerpiece both of the houses it occupies and the lives it touches. As an adult, I haven't had any furniture I care about-- I could get rid of it all and wouldn't miss it. But this desk represented a nostalgia for all who posessed it: nostalgia for a pre-Holocaust home in Budpest, nostalgia for a poet disappeared under Pinochet, the hope of another book written at it. Krauss weaves together disparate lives in different parts of the world, giving the book a kind of mystery as I kept reading to see how they would all connect together.

As in The History of Love, Krauss uses a bit of dialogue tic (which is what I disliked) but it is minor and I think her overall writing is improved. I look forward to her next books.

5 out of 5 netflix stars

My Antonia and The Bean Trees

The midwest might be considered the breadbasket of America, but my sister and I knew midwestern foods from the following categories: vegetables were from a can, and usually casseroled with the help of cream of mushroom soup. Salad would be based on jello not lettuce, and would be sprinkled throughout with marshmallows or mandarin oranges, not peppers or croutons.  By late January the snow piles had reached 5 feet and taller and I had a nostalgic hunger for not just banana pudding and Old El Paso tacos, but tales of survival in the midwest when survival meant more than shoveling the front sidewalk.

I'd read My Antonia by Willa Cather in high school and remembered loving it, although the story had faded in my memory.  In the last quarter of the 19th century Antonia arrived in Nebraska farmland with her family from Bohemia. Not farmers by trade, they struggled through the first winter, with Antonia easily doing the farm work of any boy her age and aided in English lessons by Virginia transplant Jim, a boy a few years her junior.

A century later Taylor was making her own journey out west in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees.  For Taylor, survival meant escaping her native Kentucky without getting pregnant, but when her car breaks down in Oklahoma and she's given a catatonic little girl, she names her Turtle and takes her with her to her ultimate stopping point of Tuscon, acknowledging the irony.

Jim is the narrator in My Antonia, but the women are it's heroines. He admires their strength and beauty-- these are women who have to work to earn a living. For some that means prospecting for gold, opening a successful dress shop or raising a family to work the farm. He defends them the anti-immigrant bias of the day and even years later when he's a successful Harvard trained attorney, is humbled by their success.

To rescue herself, Taylor jumps into motherhood, rescuing Turtle, but also rescues Estevan and Esperanza, immigrant refugees from Latin America and Lou Ann, a woman who becomes her roommate and confidante and needs Taylor as much as Taylor needs her.

Five stars for both books, which satiated my hunger for the midwest while I was holed away in a terrible New England winter...even if I did have to indulge in some 7 layer dip and Snickers salad.

Zeitoun and The Lacuna

If Dave Eggers wrote the original Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he's followed it up as an adult with even more heartbreaking works: What is the What a few years ago and Zeitoun in the past year or so.  It might be too soon for some to read a non-fiction account of a family's post-Katrina life in New Orleans.  If that family is Muslim, it might put anyone over the edge.  After sitting on my shelf for a year, I picked it up only because it's the current book club pick. I didn't know if I was ready to cry through the entire story.
The cover is an illustration, but could be any number of photographs that came out the days following the hurricane and levee breaks...a man in a canoe, gliding through the streets.  The man is Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian immigrant who owns a contracting business along with his wife, Kathy.  Eggers writes about their lives in a journalistic fashion.  He fills in the day-to-day life of a hard working father of five with brief backgrounds of Zeitoun's life in Syria and Kathy's life as a younger woman in New Orleans (including her decision to convert to Islam).  Kathy and Zeitoun watched the weather reports leading up to Katrina's attack on the gulf coast much as we all did, but most of us didn't have to decide weather or not to evacuate and most of us didn't have to come home to houses completely inundated.  Even fewer of us chose to stay in New Orleans, as Zeitoun did, witnessing trapped neighbors, looting, interrogations by the law and the lawless.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver is a different account of so called law in the guise of public safety but 50 years earlier.  It's a fictional account of William Harrison, an American who grew up in Mexico and ended up working for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as a kind of jack of all trades-- sometimes plaster mixer, sometimes cook, sometimes confidante to Mrs. Kahlo.  Frida has become such an iconoclast that it was hard to believe her conversations with Harrison.  I had trouble seeing where Kingsolver was going at times-- why so much background on Harrison's mother? It was a 600+ page book and at times I felt like I wouldn't make it through.  But then there was a turning point.  When Kingsolver devoted the second half of the book to Harrison as popular author and quiet bachelor in a small Southern town, the story became compelling.  Kahlo and and Rivera are too big to compete with and Harrison deserves to stand on his own, and he does.  In a short time we learn that he is targeted as a Communist, quotes from his fiction are attributed to him, out of context, and no matter what, the US government will bring him down.  Kingsolver is a bit heavy handed in her allusions to current government control and persecution (read Zeitoun) but Harrison is a complete and sympathetic character. I felt the same helplessness with Harrison as I did with Zeitoun.
These may not be the best reads for conspiracy theorists...or maybe they're the best reads for all of us. 5 and 4 stars respectively.

The Lonely Polygamist

The absolute worst job I ever had was the summer after my sophomore year of college, the summer I turned 21.  I lived with my family in suburban Seattle, and made minimum wage working in the school age "classroom" of a daycare.  There were more than 20 kids who ranged in age from 7-12 and the other provider who worked with me had just as much experience working with kids as I did, which is to say, none.  Not only did we have no curriculum, but these were the worst behaved kids I had ever interacted with.  Their moods ranged from ennui to rage and of course the best ones never got our attention.  It takes a lot for me to lose my temper with kids, but they tried me and more than once I had to leave the room and cry in the kitchen.  And for two days that summer I lost my voice completely, although I had no other physical signs that would lead to that; I simply could not talk, scream, reason, beg anymore.

Russell was one of the worst kids.  Although it amazes me that by age 8 a kid can be branded as "bad", Russell was just that.  He would yell, destroy the classroom and fight with other kids.  Only once did my heart warm to him; he was looking for a lunch box he'd brought and was frantic.  I asked him what was in it that was so important and he looked at me with tearful eyes and replied, "treats!"  It reminded me that he was just a kid and really did have simple desires.
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall is the story of Golden, his four wives and two dozen children and the landscape of Nevada.  Rusty is one of the children, a 12 year old who is branded a terror by his own family.  Of course he terrorizes his brothers and sisters for attention and wishes for nothing more than a hug from his mom-- his own version of a lunchbox filled with treats.  He meets and befriends June, a loner who makes firecrackers and is building a bomb shelter.  June recognizes Rusty as a younger version of himself and as such, realizes there's really no place for him in this offshoot of the Mormon church.  The reader recognizes that those who do fit in are those fled from previous lives with even fewer options.
Mr. Udall crafts this story (and reading it, you realize he is a master storyteller) through the eyes of Golden, who is pulled in so many directions he just cannot make any decisions, Rusty, who is doomed from conception and Trish, the 4th wife whose grief over a stillborn baby never lets her integrate with the other wives.  I was amazed I could empathize with a man with 4 wives and dozens of children, or a plural wife or a 12 year old boy.  But they were all just looking for connections, which ironically couldn't be found.  I hadn't thought about Russell in years, but realize that he must be around 18 now.  I wonder if he turned out okay.  I kind of doubt it.
I have to look through what I've read this year, but I think this the best book of the year.  5/5 netflix stars.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

It's unusual for a book to get the same kind of pre-release press that a movie does.  Books don't have a limited theatre engagement and they rarely, if ever, spawn a merchendising frenzy (unless they are Twilight and/or books made into movies).  But every year there's a couple that stand out, usually because they are big name authors or because the author has taken so long to write something new. Because a book takes more time to read than it takes to watch a movie, I usually feel pretty smug after reading the current "it" book (like Netherland, or, A Gate At The Stairs). Since Freedom hadn't been released yet, I was stuck reading A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan.

Reading the reviews I knew that Egan had taken her time to deliver a near multi-media event-- layers of time, voices and even a penultimate chapter in PowerPoint (surprisingly effective).  Sure, the book was just challenging enough, but it also read really quickly, not unlike the power punk songs Benny and his friends played at the beginning of the book.  Egan took stock stereotypes (drug addled wannabe musicians and the groupies that follow them) and turned them inside out, revealing parents, children and even countries making them become real people.  If we can't identify with Sasha as a messed up runaway, maybe we empathize with her as a mother of two kids who lost her best friend in college and never got over it.

I hope A Visit from the Goon Squad is more than a flash in the pan--it, and Ms. Egan- -deserve to be read and respected. 5/5 netflix stars.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Think you have nothing in common with Mennonites? Think again.  Did you ever bring weird lunch to school? Did you ever wear ill fitting/out of style clothes? Were you ever forbidden (even if it was for the best) to participate in a school play? Has your mom ever tried to fix you up with your cousin? Despite all that, do you still love your parents? Rhoda Janzen's memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was like Eat, Pray, Love, but the food is borscht, the praying happens in her family's Mennonite community in California and the love...is her family.

After her heart is broken by her husband leaving her for a man he found on gay.com and her body crushed the same week in a car accident, Ms. Janzen returns home to recuperate and write.  She weaves hilarious and poignant stories from her childhood alongside stories of her more recent past (now over 15 year marriage) and her parents' past.  She reminisces with her sister and finds herself at odds with her brothers. But despite having broken with the traditional ways of the Mennonite, she holds no bitterness.  We're allowed to laugh not at her family, but with them, and that makes all the difference.

This memoir gets 5/5 netflix stars in part because I'm easy with the stars but mostly because it was a wonderful read and made me want to shove it in the hands of several friends right away.

Forever

A few weeks ago NPR ran a story from their Guilty Pleasures series.  The book is Forever... by Judy Blume.  J. Courtney Sullivan recalls reading "the dirty parts" of books with her girls' book club in elementary school, which in turn reminded me of my own furtive reading of romance novels (only the historical ones!) in middle school.  A few friends and I would exchange books, usually in brown paper bags, at the movies.  I would curl up under my covers and read the books and then hide them under my pillow afraid of my mom finding them (looking back, I'm sure the least of her worries was having an adolescent daughter reading romance novels on the sly).  So like Ms. Sullivan, I decided to give this banned book a go.  I checked it out from the library (thanks, Boston, for being generally progressive) and curled up under the covers to read it.  I loved it.  It's written simply but honestly, and Katherine and Michael talk through EVERYTHING. Katherine talks frankly with her mom, and her grandma, an attorney and Planned Parenthood advocate, acts as her confidante.   Who wouldn't want their daughter to read this book? In fact, it might be a good idea for couples of all ages to read this book.

netflix stars: 5/5

The Show I'll Never Forget and The Girl Who Played With Fire

When I moved to Boston in 1996, I was thrilled with all the shows I could see-- musicians and bands that wouldn't come anywhere near Wichita regularly played in Boston and Providence.  I could see The Violent Femmes, or The Lemonheads, or the Mighty, Mighty, Bosstones!

Once we were old enough to drive, my friends and I would see any show that came through The Cotillion and would venture to Kansas City and Tulsa as well.

The Show I'll Never Forget edited by Sean Manning is collection of writers who recall, obviously, the show they'll never forget. Some are first concerts and some are just really iconic concerts (Woodstock).  Some read like braggarts (so, yeah, I saw Hendrix...) and some are extremely personal (a high school benefit concert for an ill student).  The shows run the gamut from Patti Smith to Nirvana, from Nina Simone to the Beastie Boys.  In some cases, I would be just as mesmorized to see the writer (Jennifer Egan, Chuck Klosterman) as the concert (The Stones, Miles Davis, James Brown!).  I was disappointed by only a few essays- by and large each writer evoked a time and place (watching a Red Sox game with The Pogues at Fenway).

Two shows came to mind for the Show I'll Never Forget.  For my 18th birthday my mom got me four tickets to see The Cranberries in Kansas City.  When I look at the pictures from that trip, I remember how excited myself and my three friends were and also think what a great mom I have. She drove us to KC and took us to an early dinner, then waited in the parking lot during the whole show while we were inside (well, outside).  I know concerts are about smoking pot, but we were good kids, and since it was my 18th birthday I did two things: I bought a legal pack of cigarettes and I registered to vote at the Rock the Vote tent (the voting stuck, the smoking didn't).

The second show I really remember was seeing Pavement in 1997.  I'd just finished my first year of college and my friend Caron and cousin Jenny came into Boston and we saw them at the Roxy.  We were SO EXCITED!!  I remember Jenny had to use a fake id to get in, because she wasn't 18 yet and I remember the opening band sucked (Shudder to Think) and I remember just being thrilled that they played everything I wanted to hear.  We could see them pretty close and I was just in love.

 

I read the 2nd book in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy-- The Girl Who Played with Fire.  You're either going to read this book or you're not (or you already have) and it's no use giving details.  Needless to say it was captivating and I can't wait to read the third and final book.

 

netflix stars: 4/5 and 5/5

Lit

I had a recent foray into reading my old journals and found them beyond cringe-worthy.  So I'm pretty much amazed by writers who can squeeze more than one memoir out and even more amazed when those memoirs are not completely filled with self hate.  Mary Karr had a childhood made picture perfect for memoir writing: sometimes absent and flighty mother, poor and drunk father, small town in Texas. 

Lit could best be described as Drink, Pray, Love, with Ms. Karr describing hitting rock bottom after the birth of her son, finding support from various AA chapters and sober friends and ultimately having enough love for her parents, husband and son to not just continue living and writing, but to do so with grace.

I've been trying to write this for weeks and there's no way I can do it justice; Lit isn't preachy, it isn't predictable and it is, in short, inspiring. Lit was Trail of Crumbs without the blame and Crazy Love with more self confidence.

5/5 netflix stars.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Kindle is finally making its way into the mainstream-- it's almost as common to see one as to see professional women reading the New Yorker on the 39 bus at 8 am.  I'll admit I'm one of those people who likes the feel of a real book in my hands but I'm also easily swayed by new technology.  Before my recent trip to Turkey, wanting to make sure I wouldn't ever run out of reading material, I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPhone and purchased The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. 

It turns out I was busy enough in Turkey that I didn't have time to read, but a few lazy days rolled around last week and I decided to give it a try.  In short, I'm hooked.  Partly on the app but mostly on the book.  Larsson creates two mysteries; one a case of a disappeared girl from a closed island decades earlier and one a corporate scandal.  Mikael and Lisbeth, our hero and heroine respectively, team up in an effort part Clue and part Nancy Drew, but with enough adult thrill to remind you that you aren't actually on summer break...even if you do waste an entire sunny weekend day inside reading, just like you did when you were 12. 5 netflix stars

Little Bee

There are more than 16 million refugees worldwide, and about 8 million of those have had books written about them.  Okay, that's a callous exageration but when Little Bee by Chris Cleave was picked for my book club, I wasn't sure I could read another book about an elite white person helping a disenfranchised black person. Certainly there is hope in books like Strength in What Remains and What Is The What; the protagonists end up with a better quality life thanks to helpful strangers.  But I found these stories to be the exception, not the rule. When so many middle class Americans are struggling, I just found these one in a million (or, one in 16 million) cases of illegal immigrants getting college educations, etc. unbelievable.

So imagine my surprise when Little Bee turned out to exactly what I needed to wipe the cynical smirk off my face. First and foremost, it's the most compelling book I've read in a long while.  A real page turner. Cleave can craft a sentence that is humorous while maintaining humility. Second, his characters are flawed, which makes them overall more believable. Little Bee has serious flaws as do her white patrons, Andrew and Sarah.

This book is enough worth reading that I don't want to spoil it with many plot details.

5/5 netflix stars

Let The Great World Spin

I've written about some of my favorite and least favorite post-9/11 books and I'll admit it's hard to imagine writing a book about New York City that doesn't reference that defining generational moment.  But Colum McCann has done just that.  In Let The Great World Spin, McCann depicts the Twin Towers as the sturdy backdrop for 1974 New York City that was itself spinning out of control.

New York is a city of immigrants, so it is fitting that the opening chapters refer to the Corrigan brothers from Ireland.  The younger brother, known simply as Corrigan, is a heavy drinker but lives his life in service to others.  He prefers living with the down and out so his older brother is less than surprised to find him in America surrounded by a family of hookers in the Bronx. Claire and Lara are mid-west transplants, both living in New York, but very different universes; Claire mourns the death of her son, killed in Vietnam, while Lara mourns her own life, lost to drugs and alcohol.  Gloria meets Claire through a small group of mother's who have lost their sons and Claire's husband, Solomon, is the judge who sentences Tilly, one of the prostitutes befriended by Corrigan.

Each of these people could carry the book on their own and for awhile it's unclear if or how they are all connected.  And then McCann introduces Philippe Petit, a high wire artist who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in August of 1974.  Petit momentarily takes our minds off the every day.  As he performs, Gloria imagines he's her son, come back one more time, and Solomon gives thanks for being able to sentence the frivolous and Lara is relieved not to see the details of an auto accident in the paper.  Yet his walk unites all the characters.

From that moment and for a generation, the Twin Towers were powerful: Petit and millions of other's balanced, survived and even thrived.

Netflix stars: 5/5

Also recommended, Man on Wire, the documentary about Petit's famous walk.

A Short History of Women

Everyone loves hearing stories about their grandparents.  They lived difficult lives (World Wars, the Depression), astonishing lives (world travel when Europe was quaint and affordable), had love lives (meeting by post, starting farms in desolate lands).  Our grandmas came of age when women didn't have a lot of rights.  My own grandma was born just one year after women gained the right to vote.  During WWII she worked as a riveter and later joined my grandfather running a furniture store.  A few decades earlier women were making huge strides.  My sister read a book about Trudy Ederle, the first women to swim the English Channel.  Coco Before Chanel is the story of Coco Chanel and how she became stylish and famous by pure grit and determination.
But not all women created worldwide impacts.  Kate Walbert's novel A Short History of Women tells of four generations of women who try to make a difference, but just as easily are forgotten.  Dorothy Townsend is a 19th century suffragette who dies during a hunger strike.  Her children are sent away and their children barely know the sacrifice she made.  Her daughter Evelyn is an accomplished chemist, but is taught during a time when women are told to keep their work private, lest men find out and get jealous.  Her niece Dorothy resists authority late in life by taking photos at an off-limits military base-- only to have her own daughter apologize in shame. 
Ms. Townsend's novel reminded me of the loneliness of The Hours.  These were stories about women trying to Do Something, even if it came at a cost. We know our grandmas, and we know Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Indira Gandhi, Virginia Woolf and Hillary.  But this book reminded me of all the unrecognized women who made/make sacrifices.  When there is an election and I vote, I know it's because of them that I can.
5/5 netflix stars

The Help and Strength in What Remains

The Revolutions of 1989 were by and large bloodless; the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions of other Eastern Bloc countries resulted in the end of Communism and peaceful transfer of power. Twenty years before that Dr. Martin Luther King epitomized the non-violent struggle for civil rights.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett describes the stories of three women: one privileged white woman who along with two African American maids work together to tell the stories of behind the scenes lives, and in the process create a non-violent revolution in Jackson, Mississippi.  Each woman makes personal sacrifices for the greater good-- even though at the time they have no idea what that good will be.  Ms. Stockett tells the story of The Help in three viewpoints-- Skeeter's, Aibileen's and Minny's.  Each woman has a personal impetus to enact change, but what's amazing is how the three of them come to work together.
The revolutions of 1989 were not all peaceful. Tianamen Square took place that summer.  Likewise, 1994 brought about revolutions too. The very violent kind.  Extreme poverty for the majority and extreme wealth for the minority set the catalyst for the ethic genocides in Burundi and Rwanda.  Tracy Kidder relays Deo's story in Strength in What Remains.  Similar to What is the What, Deo miraculously flees Burundi and lands in New York with $200, no place to live and barely understanding a word of English.  Within five years he's enrolled at Columbia and soon after that, Dartmouth Medical School.  Mr. Kidder relays Deo's story in a series of viewpoints also.  He writes as a journalist, telling Deo's history as Deo remembers it.  Then he tells the history of the country, so the reader can better understand how events took a turn from the worse, and finally, he tells his story: how he met Deo and his impressions of him and his relationship to him and their return together to Burundi.  Mr. Kidder's document seemed a more complete story than What is the What.
In The Help, Skeeter is amazed that Aibileen is such a voracious reader, and that other maids who work for her friends have gone to college and aspire to send their children to college.  Many of white women Skeeter is friends with cannot see past the color and occupation of their maids.  But what surprised me was that Deo's story in New York was similar.  He'd come from being an intern at a hospital in Burundi to being a grocery delivery boy who made $15 a week in New York.  Just as the family Aibileen works for dehumanizes her by not even allowing her to use a bathroom in the house, Deo's employer literally pokes him with a stick to make him work.
Both books are good reminders that revolutions are, and should be, dynamic and constant.  I give both 5/5 netflix stars.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen

"She makes cookies with Leslie Fretwell!"

"I think her prom date was Billy Bozalis, Lisa's little brother."

Above, just a few of the excited emails between my mother and me regarding Molly Wizenberg's delightful book, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table.

Of the four cities I've lived in, Molly writes about the two which we overlap-- Oklahoma City and Seattle. And being a third generation Oklahoman, I eagerly picked apart the clues to places and faces she referenced. She writes about running through the yards at the Oklahoma Art Museum's summer jazz concerts (which caused me to call my mom squealing, since I did that too!) and her references to school prompted me to contact my Oklahoma friends, and sure enough, she attended the same school as me! (Although she must have been at least a year behind me).

She also writes about never feeling quite comfortable in Oklahoma and packing her bags at 18, nary a plan to move back. Sounded familiar.

I had my doubts before starting this book. Sometimes bloggers are good at blogging but not so good at writing (and vice versa). It's two different mediums. And sometimes memoris devolve into rants. Would Molly's witty posts about food translate to a book format? Indeed, yes. The book was a narrative and memoir of sorts, detailing her life leading up to her father's death, and her life since. She moved and started blogging just after, so Burg's death was a key point in her life in many ways. Each chapter is a short story about her life and then includes an accessible recipe-- perhaps macaroons or cookies her mom makes, or perhaps the chocolate cake she serves at her wedding. She includes recipes like Chana Masala introduced to her by her now husband, Brandon and salads shared with friends.

Her stories are bittersweet, honest, funny. A rare combination. If, like me, you don't actually know Molly, but feel like you do or feel like you want to, there's a recipe for that: read, relax, enjoy.

5/5 netflix stars (I'm either really loving or really hating books these days).

Twilight And Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I'd bet that, over the past 10 years, 33% of all passengers on commercial flights read a Harry Potter book on the plane. Even with increased fees to check luggage and decreased space to bring luggage on board, at least half a dozen people are carrying a 600+ page hardback book authored by J.K. Rowling. In the past five years, I bet that 89% of all 11-19 year female passengers on planes read the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and 47% of 19+ women read the series. My calculations are based on personal, if not scientific, experience. Two weeks ago, on my way to my summer vacation, I was a statistic.
Twilight had been making the rounds at the office and in order to participate in water cooler talk, I needed to read it. Also my director brought it in to me and told me to report back the next day on what page I was on. I saved it for my cross country flight and nearly finished it. I assume most people know the basic plot of Twilight: handsome vampire meets average 17 year old girl in a sleepy Pacific Northwest town and dangerous hijinks ensue when they aren't gazing adoringly into each other's eyes. It was a quick read, full of magic, but for all of Edward's perfection, a lingering, nagging thought...why do men need more excuses to not fully commit? Okay, he's a vampire, but really, get it together.
Meanwhile, I'd saved my copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to read right before the movie opened. Somehow the opening came as a surprise and I wasn't prepared. This weekend, having few firm plans, I dusted off my copy and delved in, pausing only to go to the farmer's market and feed the cats. I'll give away no plots here, but will say that Rowling's writing seems to mature right along with Harry, Ron, Hermione and the other Hogwarts students. I feel like I've really come to know these characters and, ironically, although they are witches and wizards, Rowling seems to represent actual teenagers better than Meyer does.
I have one more weekend trip this summer and am debating whether to finish up the Potter series or move on to Book 2 of the Twilight series. Either way, I'll be in good company on the plane.
Netflix stars: 3/5 for Twilight, 5/5 for Harry Potter