All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I love to pick a book to read by the light the Christmas tree on my iPad during the holidays, and this year I was intrigued by all of the accolades All the Light We Cannot See was receiving - finalist for the National Book Award, New York Times #1 bestseller, Indie Next Pick and the list goes on.  I had read enough to know it is a WWII story of a young boy and a young girl who are united by the power of radio.  Historic fiction isn't at the top of my lists of reading interests, but after reading a little bit about Anthony Doerr and discovering that he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, I knew I had to read this book.  Doerr's prose is beautiful poetry!  He weaves a compelling connection between his alternate narrators - Marie-Laure who lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History and a German orphan named Werner who is snatched up by Hitler's Youth for his aptitude for science.  Although the book is very long - 544 pages - the chapters are relatively short and the jumping back and forth between narrators and time periods make it an unbelievably quick book.  I was fully satisfied by the novel and it was the rare sort that made me interested in doing more research into the ancient walled city of Saint Malo, the seizure of French art during the German invasion and the history of radio.  Doerr explains his various inspirations for the novel in this short video.  

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar

Just before Christmas, I was having a nostalgic craving for a good old-fashioned Christmas shopping experience at a local book store.  Problem is - there aren't any anymore.  So we ventured to Mac's Backs Books on Coventry , which is a little out of the way, but one of the only authentic bookstores of miles around.  We milled around, lingered, lifted books off the shelf and read a few pages.  That is how I found The Story Hour by local author Thrity Umrigar.  Turns out Umrigar received an M.A. From Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in English from Kent State University.  I read the cover flap and decided to continue my abstinence from book buying and get it from the library - digital loan.  

The Story Hour is a novel in two voices.  The narration alternates between an Maggie, an African-American psychologist married to a professor and her client Lakshimi, a younger Indian woman from a small village who helps her husband run his Indian grocery.  Laksmimi has attempted suicide, which precipitates her relationship with Maggie, who she meets in the hospital following her botched attempt. A relationship develops between the two woman and, through various plot twists and turns, their lives become irrevocably intertwined. 

I enjoyed the book enough to say I would recommend it.  Both women are terribly flawed and vulnerable, which is why their stories seem so true.  

counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

A full page add for counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan in the Sunday New York Times Book Review a few weeks back intrigued me enough to order the book from the library. When I got the the deaths of the main character's adoptive parents at the end of the first short chapter, I knew I was hooked.

Willow Chance is a science-obsessed misfit/oddball/lone wolf/weirdo/genius. If all of those character descriptions are accurate, then she fits into 5 of the 7 classifications of students seen by Dell Duke, her school counselor who is himself a counselor's nightmare. Through Duke, Willow has met lone wolf Quanh-ha and his sister Mai Nguyen, who are Vietnamese. Since Willow was adopted from Vietnam, she connects with these two as "persons of color" like herself. But when she insists that they will be willing to take her into their family upon the deaths of her parents, the greater themes of the book - family, acceptance, grief and recovery - begin to surface.


This book is labeled a YA novel, appropriate for upper elementary grades of gifted students who are often, themselves, intelligent oddballs. (Willow has been treated skeptically by teachers at her new school because no one has ever finished the state proficiency test in 17 minutes before.). She is a protagonist readers will fall in love with, laugh will, and cry with. She reminds me of Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl - one of my all time favorite characters!

Even if you don't normally read YA literature, Willow's story will charm you. I see a movie on the horizon - read it soon!

2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas by Maria-Helene Bertino

What a little gem of a book!   Marie-Helene Bertino‘s first novel is told in a fresh new voice, worth listening to. At the center of the story is The Cat’s Pajamas, a fictional blues club in Philadelphia, where the story unfolds over a single Christmas Eve day and night. The chapters are titled by the hours of the day, and its events are narrated, sometimes a few different ways, in chronological order, with some intermittent flashbacks to provide some back story. The characters are a motley crew – a principle, a teacher, a young student, a jazz club owner, a cook, a couple of lovers and a couple of sorry sorts. Bertino’ conceit of the jazz riff works splendidly and the experience of the novel was music to this reader’s ears.

California by Edan Lepucki

Edan Lepucki’s California made its way to my radar when Stephen Colbert urged viewers to buy it amidst his Amazon vs. Hachette rant . Apparently, California was recommended to Colbert by one of my long time favorite author, Sherman Alexie, so the late night plug was something to take seriously. A bit of research about the author turned up the information that Edan Lepucki is a graduate of Oberlin College, just down the road, so we headed out the next day to Oberlin, Ohio on a book search! Certainly her book would be available in Oberlin, hopefully at our favorite spot to book browse – MindFair Books inside the Ben Franklin Store on College Street. No California there. Disappointed we were having to head to the Oberlin College bookstore, which is a Barnes and Noble affiliate, we found the most informed looking employee and asked for the book. He had never heard of it, never heard of the author and was unaware that she was returning to campus to read from California in November!
Now we were on a mission! We drove the the big brother Barnes and Noble store at Crocker Park and there is was. Feeling like a traitor, I bought it. At least I didn’t order it from Amazon.
The novel is another post-apocalyptic dystopian tale. Cal and Frida have fled what remains of LA for bare existence in a wilderness hideaway. Frida is still mourning the death of her brother, Micah, who appears to have given his life fighting the remains of civilization. Without giving too much info, the story is two parts Cormac McCarthy’s The Road mixed with one part Hunger Games. I think high school students would enjoy it well enough.

Finally, a week or so after I finished the book, I found the bookstore I would have liked to have purchased it in when we were visiting Ithaca, NY. Shout out to Buffalo Street Books for their anti-Amazon display!

I am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum

A funny title for a just-plain-fun in the sun summer read. When I started reading this light hearted romantic comedy, I wasn’t sure I would finish it. Richard, an English artist, has cheated on his perfect French lawyer wife. He has sold the only painting that has the power to keep them together. I didn’t see myself developing sympathy for either of them.

And then the book got funny! And I had some time on the beach with this, my only beach book. Courtney Maum is ablogger and humor columnist. She lived in France, where half of the novel takes place. This is her first novel, and it follows a pretty predictable story arch. I can see it being a beautifully funny film, and I would go see it in a heartbeat, because I did end up feeling for Richard. His foibles made for a perfectly funny summer beach read – and an especially ironic beach photo.

We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride

I am a bit of a sucker for any book with an Emily Dickinson epigraph. The title of McBride’s debut novel comes from these lines,
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies –
which aptly introduce this novel in four voices. Set in Las Vegas, the story is narrated by Avis, Luis, Bashkim and Roberta. They all have separate and complicated lives that converge when an act of violence propels them into the same conflict arena. According to the author’s note, the plot was reimagined from an unbelievably sad headline news story. I’m not a fan of this sort of literary conceit. However, McBride’s theme is genuine and is summed up by Avis in one of her later sections with these lines – “It all matters. . . . What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed.”

This is not the book review I am supposed to be writing. I am four book reviews behind, but I just finished reading The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry this morning and I feel compelled to share it right away as an offering of advice to all my reader friends – and especially my English teacher friends – who know at this point in the summer, you can’t waste your beach/hammock/porch swing time with a bad book. In other words, this is the last good book you may have time for before you have to surrender yourself to the damnable “summer reading” you should be doing.

The book is a love song to reading – especially short stories – and book stores. It is also a literal love story and a bit of a mystery. I am not going to spoil anything, beyond saying the baby in a basket reading a book on the cover is already a spoiler that I didn’t even notice until well into my digital IBook edition. A. J. Fikry owns and operates Island Books on fictitious Alice Island, where a sign hangs over the door that says “No Man is an Island; Every Book is a World.” And he is the sort of red wine drinking curmudgeon I fall in love with inside of the first chapter.

The gimmick of the novel that may have annoyed me much more if it wasn’t so darned literary is that each chapter is introduced with Fikry’s brief review of a well known short story that will figure into that chapter somehow. You learn that Fikry has the highest respect for the short story as a genre. At one point in the novel he slips a list of short stories to read under the door of his daughter who is having trouble writing a short story for a school contest. (This list would be a good course syllabus for any high school writing class.) In a later chapter you get to read her short story! None of this bookish “product placement” bothered me because I was so charmed by the story itself.

And it is an Ice Cream Cone of a summer story, perfect for a day like today, when I have allowed myself a sort of vacation day in Athens, Ohio. Because I want to have this book in hand to share with friends, I broke my No New Books promise and bought a copy at Little Professor, in part to celebrate the fact that Athens still has a reliable bookstore! And I am writing this review outside of The Donkey with David, drinking an iced coffee that I am not even mad dripped all over my best white shorts. Because I wanted you to read this review and then this book, I am typing frantically with 23% charge on my Ipad. Summer is short! Life is long, but not long enough to waste on the wrong books. Read this one – you deserve a treat.

Want Not by Jonathan Miles

Dave Eggers’ jacket blurb drew me to this gem of a book sitting on the shelf of our local library. Jonathan Miles’ literary dumpster dive into the world of anti-materialist, anti-capitalist, post-consumer dystopia reads like the third installment following Eggers Hologram for a King and The Circle, both not so thinly veiled critiques of the consequences of living in a semi-virtual, techno-saturated society. The characters in Want Not inhabit literal and metaphorical dumpsters overflowing with debris from Hologram’s failed capitalism and live beyond the reach of the Google/Amazon/Facebook virtual world of The Circle.

Want Not follows a handful of separate characters whose stories do not intersect until the last section. Each chapter reads like an independent short story. Talmadge and Micah are squatters in Manhattan who dumpster dive for food. Elwin Cross, Jr. is an overweight linguistics professor who is attempting to cope with his failed marriage and failing father who lives at an Alzheimer’s facility. Suburbanite Sarah, who became a widow on September 11th, has recently remarried, complicating the life of her daughter, Alexis. Each character regards waste differently.

I enjoyed the book so much, I convinced David to read it. I responded to the satiric humor and David its semi-tragic grotesqueness. Miles crafts long, detailed sentences and paragraphs which mimic Craigslist Yardsale ads, while at the same time imagining the lives of those who post them. We both agree, it makes you think for a second about what happens after you toss that black Hefty bag to the curb.

The Cold Song by Linn Ullman

Traveling to Honduras with Dr. Seuss

Last week, I travelled with my daughter and 16 others to serve some of the poorest school children in Honduras through a Cleveland, Ohio based organization called Hope for Honduran Children. Lovingly run by Karen and John Godt, Hope for Honduran Children sponsors more than a half dozen service trips throughout the year. Since my daughter had gone on one of these trips as a high school senior, she convinced me my teaching life would be changed forever if I came along on a trip with her this spring. And she was very, very right! An average day of the eight day trip was spent visiting a remote mountain school in the morning and spending time with the boys who live at Flor Azul in Neuvo Paraiso In the afternoons.  Each person in our group came to Honduras prepared to teach a lesson or share a craft. Of course, I wanted to combine literature with a craft that the children would enjoy.  Before we left, I zeroed in on Dr. Seuss, and after scouring Amazon for options, I found an a English/Spanish version of The Cat in the Hat to take along. A little bit of time spent on Pinterest and I located a template for making large red and white striped hats.  Card stock was printed, red stripes were traced, blue head bands were precut and red duct tape was packed in my carry on!

Karen suggested I save my activity for the day we were to visit Neguara, a remote mountain  village several hours east of Tegucigalpa.  Hope for Honduran Children takes every one of its service groups to visit this school, unless there has been recent rain, which makes the steep, rocky road to the school impassible.  We had a very long, bumpy bus ride and in addition to bringing lessons for the children, we had suitcases full of donated clothing, oatmeal, pasta, children’s vitamins and CANDY!

We were told the teacher at this school walks more than an hour each way from his home to the school.  Although he was offered a teaching job nearer to his home, he continues the daily walk to Neguara because if he didn’t teach there, he says no one else would.  And what a fine teacher!  He had the children lined up and ready to greet us as we got off the bus – smallest to tallest with boys on one side and girls on the other.  It brought tears to my eyes.

The children hugged each of us and then hurried into their school, taking their seats to wait for the lessons to start. I paired up with my daughter’s friend Sammie, who is minoring in Spanish in college, to read the book first in Spanish and then in English.

They listened with intent, and enjoyed when I passed the pictures around and acted it out a bit for them.
Reading Cat in the Hat – Neguara video

The book is really quite long for the attention span of a small child, especially when it is being read twice. We decided to cut it short and move quickly on to the craft.
They loved making the hats, and with some assistance, we soon had a room full of Cats in Hats!


Video – Showing off Hats
It was a moving sight to see the whole school posing for a picture in their hats, and I was so tempted to leave the book behind as a donation, but my daughter had promised we had more kids to share Dr. Seuss with at Neuvo Paraiso. These boys go to school each morning and the return to the complex of buildings where they live, sleep and eat their meals. We had several afternoons to spend with them, playing games, making beautiful silk screened logo shirt thanks to the donations of an artist on our trip, and reading The Cat in the Hat. I was tickled to see 14, 15 and 16 year old boys working through the English text – sometimes laughing at the story and practicing their pronunciation in rhyme!
Video – Group Reading
Video of Christopher
Our very last day was spent with boys who live together at Casa Noble in Santa  Lucia.  They are mostly older boys – some attend classes at the university.  Their English is pretty good but The Cat in the Hat still presented a challenge.
Video – Alex Reading
One of my lasting memories of the week will always be of the group of us – moms, kids, new Honduran family members – huddled on the couch taking turns reading together with the a English speakers reading Spanish and vice versa.
Video – Group Read featuring Jimmy
I ended up leaving the book at Casa Noble. I explained to them that the Dr. Seuss was commissioned by his publisher to write a primer using 225 “new reader” sight words. Ironically, I had come to Honduras with almost no words in my word bank. My teaching life was enriched forever by watching the story magically draw its own audience. That Cat in the Hat brings “Good fun that is funny” even when his name is El Gato Ensombrerato.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Word Exchange by Alena Raedon

Rarely do a close a book I just finished and begin my review, but this dystopian account of the Word Flu that sweeps American in 2016 infected me with a (hopefully false) sense that my time to write this  may be short.  I put my iPad and iPhone down.  I must write and let the words speak for themselves.  

In some obvious ways, Alena Graedon's premise is not unique.  Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story and recently Egger's The Circle, have carried variations of the same warning - words and the stories we use them to tell - make us human.  Mostly, it brought to mind Chris Van Allsburg's The Wretched Stone.  Graedon wraps her narrative in an entirely fresh and mildly gimmicky format.  Following epigraphs by Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carrol and Jorge Luis Borges, the table of contents show chapters titled every letter of the alphabet and divided into three sections - Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis.  The main narrator, Anana Johnson daughter of Douglas Johnson, is given the coded nickname Alice (think Through the Looking Glass)  before her father disappears from his job while racing to finish NADEL (North American Dictionary of the English Language).  The secondary narrator, Bart, (think Melville's Bartleby) tells his portion of the story through journal entries he writes as he tries to stave off the infection.

The first two or three chapters had me doubting the infectious pull of the narrative, but I was quickly hooked.  The pace is fast, the characters and the devices on which they depend are contemporary, and the suggested techniques for reversing their damage are music to any English teacher's ears - Cessation of contact with meaningless data, Reading, Conversation and Composition Therapy.  Part mystery, part love letter to language, the back flap of the cover describes it as "a cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a meditation on the high cultural costs of digital technology".  I would suggest this as the perfect summer read - preferably on a beach with no cell service.

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book by Diane Muldrow

For Mother’s Day I purchased 5 of these and gave them to some of the finest mothers I know! I only wish I had thought of this idea first! Muldrow pairs illustrations from some of the best loved Little Golden Books with a litany of life instructions. Like this -

Each illustrations is labeled with the title of the book, year of publication and illustrator’s name. For more of a sneak peek, here is a link to the Pinterest page for the book When I got the books, I flipped through the pages with a nostalgic smile on my face. Of course the pictures struck a deep chord. I LOVED the Pokey Little Puppy! Each of the ladies I gave a book to thought it had been written just for her. This book makes a great gift and serves as a special reminder of life’s simple lessons. Following all of the lovely suggestions is the refrain – “And if you do, your life will be golden.”

Congratulations by the Way by George Saunders

Graduation season is upon us again, and a tiny part of me misses sharing in the exuberance and optimism of graduating seniors. The last several years, I would leave my seniors with a reading of protagonist Blue Vermeer’s fictitious commencement address from Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, in which she advises her classmates to “Live like a Goldfish”. If I were teaching today, I would be excited to use this slender new book, Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness by George Saunders. Saunders is an acclaimed author – one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the world, a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow – best known for his numerous short story collections. This new book contains the text of his 2013 Syracuse University commencement address, which is not the usual patronizing sort, but more of a humble recognition that most of his regrets in life have to do with “failures of kindness.” Since it came out in April, this book has been getting quite a bit of attention – from Brainpickings to Salon. This short video includes an excerpt from the book about a girl Sauders knew in school who he wishes now he had shown more kindness. The speech is endearing and the book would make the perfect graduation gift!

Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen

I was really excited to pick up this new foodie novel from the library.  I enjoy reading fiction and watching movies set in restaurants, and with Michelle Wildgen's background in food writing, I thought it would be a great book.  Instead, I found myself skimming chapters and skipping ahead.  On the positive side, the food writing is pretty great.  Her descriptions of dishes are mouthwateringly delicious and I could picture the inside of the restaurants from her visual descriptions.  But the plot is luke warm. Two brothers who are restaurant partners are challenged when the third brother decides to open a new restaurant across town.  There is an undercurrent of sibling rivalry, a few forbidden romance scenes, and day-to-day patter of restaurant business stress.  I kept waiting for something big to happen, and it did not.  I would say Bread and Butter is an appropriate title.  It was certainly no Lamb's neck with Jerulasem artichokes, broccoli rate and gremolata, even if that is the new restaurant's signature dish.  

The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

I did not read The Silver Lining Play Book by Matthew Quick, but loved the quirky movie characters enough to order this new novel from the library after reading a little bit about it.  The first chapter is  a letter to Richard Gere written by  thirty-eight year old protagonist Bartholomew Neil, and I almost quit when I paged ahead and realized that all of the chapters are written as letters to Richard Gere.  But I stuck with Bartholomew because something sweet and innocent and troubled about him reminded me of the protagonist Christopher in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Bartholomew is trying to heal following the loss of his mother, who he cared for, from cancer.  Following her death, the priest who has been visiting the family for years moves in, complicating Bartholomew's life, which has already been complicated enough by the grief counseling sessions he has to attend.  At counseling he meets "F-bombing" Max, the brother of the Girlibrarian that Bartholomew has already fallen for.  The novel ends with a zany road trip and an awkward, fragile sense of closure for all of the characters.  The layers of Catholicism, Jungian psychology, philosophy of Dalai Lama, fear of alien invasion and feline worship make for a much smarter book than I anticipated.  In the end, Bartholomew's mother's advice, that we must believe in the good luck of right now, rings true.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

This is our book club selection for April, and I think there will be plenty to talk about.  I was glad that I knew nothing about the novel when I began it, and maybe even a little glad that - once again - I had accidentally ordered a large print edition with a different cover from the one above from the library.  So, I hadn't noticed the chimpanzee hanging from the tree.  I hate to spoil things!  Suffice it to say, Fowler's novel is about separate family members attempting to heal from a great loss.  The protagonist and narrator, Rosemary, is in college in the opening chapter of the novel when she promises the reader that she is beginning at the middle of the story.  She flashes back to her early life with her "sister" was taken away without explanation when Rosemary was six years old, and the time shortly afterward, when her brother disappears.  Her father is a psychology professor, and the passages of the novel that deal with Noam Chomsky, the psychology of happiness and solipsism make it a very smart book, indeed.  One passage I bookmarked would be enough to keep a book club going all night - "And so we constantly infer someone else's intentions, thoughts, knowledge, lack of knowledge, doubts, desires, beliefs, guesses, promises, preferences, purposes and many, many more things in order to behave as social creatures in the world."  I didn't love the book, but it kept me thinking.

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

I received a digital review copy of this fascinating novel and will admit to being unable to put it down for about a week.  The opening line is, “Nobody ever warned me about mirrors so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy.” Boy Novak is a teenager who has just fled from her abusive father when the narrative opens.  She lands in a small Massachusetts town where she meets and eventually marries a widower named Arturo who has a daughter named Snow.  Didn’t take much for THIS intelligent reader to assume that a character named Bird would be forthcoming.  Sure enough, Bird is the name that Boy gives to the daughter she and Arturo have.  But the novel is much, much more complex than this simple synopsis suggests.  It is full of magical realism details and borrow heavily from fairy tales, especially Snow White.  It tackles race and what qualified as “passing” in the late fifties and early sixties.  It unmasks gender issues.  Helen Oyeyemi is gifted, and this complex novel left me wanting to have a reading buddy to dissect its hall of mirrors with as soon as I put the book down.

The Rosie Project by Graeme C. Simsion

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a review of the quirkiest and most refreshing love story I have fallen for in a while. Don Tillman is a genetics professor with autistic behaviors that have made it difficult for him to find a mate. He has developed The Wife Project, a multi-page questionnaire which should help those like him to filter out incompatible companions – ones who drink, smoke, show up late, mess the place up and bring chaos into calm spaces. Along comes Rosie Jarman, a disorganized bartender full of flaws who is searching for her biological father. Rosie and Don should be oil and water but she is able to switch his focus from finding a wife to finding her father, which results in The Father Project. One thing leads to another in this mad-cap, love-affirming novel. Simsion is an Australian author and I first saw this book on display in England where I learned that it was first written as a screenplay and the movie is set to film next year. You can even take the online quiz to see whether you are a Rosie or a Don. I was lucky enough to get an advance readers copy and I have already given it away. Give yourself a Valentine’s Day reading gift – it will delight!

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is a book I chose to read on my iPad this winter because its glowing screen can be read against the sparkly backdrop of the the Christmas tree in the corner of the room with no other lights on – if I get up the read when everyone else is asleep. A perfect book for a long winter’s night – 832 pages. Even the title suggests illumination.
The Luminaries is a saga – a story told and repeatedly retold by the myriad characters who lives criss-cross in the 19th century gold rush mining town of Hokitika, in New Zealand. One stormy night, a newcomer named Walter Moody stumbles into the first hotel he sees after suffering through a mind-jarring sea voyage that may have even caused him to see a ghost. Inside the warm hotel, he begins to overhear the secret conversations of 12 men who have come together on that particular night to unravel the secret that joins them. The reader learns a hermit is dead, a whore has overdosed, a young man and a significant fortune is missing and – the resolution to this tale is very, very far away.
The opening chapters of the book are ridiculously long – 40 pages plus. I almost gave up within the first 100 pages. Each chapter begins with a sort of old school italics chapter abstract. Skimming ahead to read a few of these, I quickly realized each of the twelve players would be recounting his own version of the mystery before any plot resolution got underway. I knew before beginning the book that that would be the case. I had read – and agree with the New York Times review that asserts, “It’s a lot of fun, like doing a Charlotte Brontë-themed crossword puzzle while playing chess and Dance Dance Revolution on a Bongo Board. Some readers will delight in the challenge, others may despair.” That, and the fact that the cover of the book, and the zodiac graphics between sections of the book, suggest that the phases of the moon and astrological shifts are Catton’s clever framework for the novel. Let’s just say – that was too much of a challenge for me. Although the chapters get shorter as the book wears on (the final chapters are each just a page), I was eager to see it end. I should have heeded my own promise not to get mixed up in books that require a character chart inside the front cover.
But I pressed on for a number of reasons, and in the end was glad that I did. One – I had read Catton’s first novel, The Rehearsal in 2010 and enjoyed it very much. Two – Eleanor Catton is just 28 years old, the winner of the Man Booker Prize and a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. And three – when we were in England this fall, the coolest bookstore we visited , Daunt Books, had a full window display of The Luminaries.

In the end, the luminary construct of the novel was too confusing for me and somehow the literary quilt of the novel was a bit too heavy for comfort. But for a long winter’s night, Catton is an old school story teller and formidable young writer very worthy of your time.

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The Best Bookshop in England and a Review of Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

Before we travel, I always research the best independent bookstores in the areas we will be visiting. I figured that the Cotswolds in England would be so dotted with charming little book shops that it would be difficult to see them all. All of my research seemed to point me in the direction of Jaffe and Neale Bookshop and Cafe in charming Chipping Norton. We had no difficulty finding the place, as cafe tables sat in front of the building where large Books are my Bag banners hung in the front windows. The bookstore felt homey, with many nooks for reading throughout and even some comfy chairs scattered around. I would have gladly spent all day there, but we had an agenda for the day that involved visiting the nearby Hook Norton brewery in time for lunch.

I had been reading Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a perfectly appropriate novel to read while driving around the British countryside. I saw Joyce’s new novel, Perfect, on a shelf and carried it over to the cashier to ask if this new book lived up to the delight of Harold Fry. The woman I spoke with assured me that it did, but after I explained that I was an American on vacation who really did NOT need another book in her suitcase – that if I bought a book in England at all, I could only buy one – she took it as a challenge and recommended that perhaps I should consider Diane Setterfield’s Bellman and Black instead.

Now I was tempted. A signed copy of a book not yet available in the U.S. was worth considering, so I took the two novels to one of those inviting book nooks for comparison and consideration. I was zeroing in on a choice when I noticed that my husband was engaged in a conversation with a gentleman who he was leading my way. Alerted by his wife at the cashier’s station, Patrick Neale wondered if David was with the American woman who could only buy one book in the UK. He was personally interested in the choice I was about to make since, in addition to being the proprietor of the shop, he is the current president of the British Booksellers Association – and a fascinating person to talk with about books.

David and I chatted with him about his shop and recommended some of our favorite bookstores in American. We told him about our experiences as English teachers, how we were in England for the wedding of a former student, and our favorite books in general. When he finally got around to recommending my one book for purchase, he picked up a copy of Julian Barnes’ Levels of Life. I knew Barnes from his slim novel The Sense of an Ending , which I had read and reviewed in 2012. Neale described the novel as one with no single word out of place. He was suggesting Barnes new book – which was also thankfully slim for my suitcase.
Levels of Life is a three part memoir of sorts that begins with a section about hot air ballooning, moves into a consideration of the nuances of historical photography, and finishes with Barnes own grief suffered at the loss of his wife in from a brain tumor in 2008. It is a difficult book to recommend to friends because the last section sounds like it would be so depressing. However, the overarching premise of all three parts is “You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.” I was personally delighted to find mention of Dame Ellen Terry in the second section, which describes photographs of actress Sarah Bernhardt taken by the 19th-century photographer and inventor Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (later known simply as Nadar). Terry was Bernhardt’s acting contemporary and the subject of my undergraduate Independent Study thesis at The College of Wooster. The book’s pacing and its weaving of historical details and naturalistic descriptions reminded me of Annie Dillard and Terry Tempest Williams – two of my favorite essayists. In the end, it is life affirming rather than deflating. The metaphor of the hot air balloon and the precariousness of its flight carries the reader to consider many levels of living and loving. I put off reading the book – and writing this review – because I knew the experience would be difficult to describe for my readers. One day in my life several things were put together – the coincidence of finding the perfect Brisith bookstore, meeting the most charming British bookseller and being handed a deeply moving book that will resonate with me for as long as my photographs of my matchless vacation with my husband remain – and my reading life was changed.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My favorite book of the year!  Amazon's Book of the Year!  One of the New York Times five top works of fiction for 2013!  What else to I have to say to get you to put this book at the top of your Christmas list.  

Thirteen year old Theo Decker and his mother have just finished admiring The Goldfinch, a legendary painting by Carel Fabritius, in a New York art museum when a bomb blast rocks the building.  Theo's mother is killed, and although Theo escapes, he does so with two items that will change his life forever - an heirloom ring given to him by the dying grandfather of a girl who had caught Theo's eye AND the Fabritius painting.   The rest of the novel follows Theo through repeated moves and losses, friendships and relationships, adventures and drug-induced skirmishes.  There is something in this book for everyone.  

I agree with Stephen King, who likened the scope of the narrative to Dickens when he reviewed the book for the New York Times .  He also called it the sort of book that comes along only a few times per decade.  Such is the pattern of Donna Tartt.  I first read The Little Friend in 2002, when I received it as a Christmas gift from my, then, new husband David.  He gave me the book and an Amish rocker that Christmas, and I sat in the rocker and rarely left it until I finished the book.  I went back and read her earlier novel, The Secret History, so I guess that puts me among the Tartt fans who have been waiting over a decade for her next work.  Tartt labors over her story telling, immersing herself in writing, rarely granting interviews and never apologizing for the time that passes between masterpieces.  

I decided not to wait for the book from the library, and downloaded the Kindle version to my iPad and also ordered the Audible audio book so could enjoy listening to the book while I walked and while I worked in the sewing room.  It helped to get me through the nearly 800 pages more quickly, because once I got in to the narrative, I wanted to stay in.  In fact, although it is one of those rare books that I didn't want to finish reading, I pressed through til the end, staying up late on the night before Thanksgiving.  And as soon as I finished the book, I wanted to start re-reading.  The last several pages struck me as a love song to art, in all its forms, and were so lovely that it would do a disservice to the whole book to quote anything out of context.  

I LOVED THIS BOOK!  Final comment.  You be the judge.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Before our road trip through England, I searched for the perfect book to take along on the iPad. I wanted a book set in England that would compliment our travel route and Harold Fry was the perfect companion. At the beginning of the novel, Harold receives a note from a woman named Queenie, a brewery co-worker from his distant past. She has dictated her note to a worker at the hospice where she has presumably gone to die. Harold writes back and tells his insecure and cloying wife that he is walking to the post office with his note. But when he gets there, he decides to walk to the next post office, and then the next – believing somehow that his walking is keeping Queenie alive. His unlikely pilgrimage becomes a sort of “Forrest Gump” mission, where he is joined by other unlikely pilgrims. As we motored along on the wrong side of the road through the English countryside, we passed towns that I had seen through Harold’s eyes already on the trip. Harold Fry’s story was touching, life affirming and perfect for this trip.

(See my next review for Rachel Joyce’s Perfect)