Another Cool Independent Bookstore

Glad to have found Park Road Books today. Although I walked in saying I didn't need any more books, the great recommendations of Sally Brewster had me walking out with three new ones to add to the to-be-read pile.

Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran

Pomegranate Soup: A Novel
- book #3 in the Irish Book Challenge - was a delightful read for a snow day in February. Appropriately described on the cover as reminiscent of Chocolat and Under the Tuscan Sun, the book tells the story of the Aminpour sisters, who have fled Iran and opened the Babylon Cafe in Ballinacroagh Ireland. Each chapter of the novel begins with a recipe that figures into the plot of the chapter somehow. At first I thought the book was going to be a fluffed up romance, but the emotional baggage that the sisters have brought along with them makes the book more complex, weaving in the history of the Iranian Revolution. I am tempted to try a recipe or two - especially fessenjoon - a chicken, walnut, pomegranate dish. Also, one of the characters climbs Croagh Patrick in the novel, as did the author, who is married to Irish American.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Skippy Dies: A Novel
- Book #2 of my Irish book challenge - was worth every minute of the time it took to read the 661 pages of Skippy Dies. I would loosely describe it as Harry Potter meets Animal House meets Dead Poet's Society. The setting is Dublin's Seabrook College for boys, and the title delivers it's promise early when 14 year old Daniel "Skippy" Juster dies on the floor of Ed's Doughnut Shop during a doughnut eating contest with his pudgy science-geek roommate, Ruprecht Van Doren. The book, which is sometimes sold under three separate covers, flashes back through the first two books, Hopeland and Heartland, to give readers the background into Skippy's demise - which includes drug-dealers, deluded and corrupt educators and young hormone-racing love. The final section, Ghostland, finds teenages trying to deal with the loss of a friend and sort out the mysteries of death. But the absolute joy of this entertaining story was the literary richness that it offers as well. Robert Graves, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost and some engaging history lessons mingle with some beautifully written passages about the redeeming qualities of story-telling to make this a book I won't stop talking about for a long time!

The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins

So as a way to spice up my already over-active reading goals, I have decided to take Laura Miller's suggestion and enter into a reading challenge for 2011. Since we have been talking about making a trip to Ireland, I chose the Irish Reading Challenge and decided on The Outside Boy: A Novel
as my first read because my cousin Martha had been trying to get me to read this book last summer. What a great novel to begin with. Set in Ireland in 1959, it is the story of 12 year old Christy Hurley's quest to determine the real story of his mother's life. He has been told by his father that his mother died giving birth to him - that they only shared 7 minutes on this earth. The story is sweet and engaging but also very informative as I knew nothing about the Pavee culture. Reading this novel led me to research these nomadic Irish travelers who are largely tinkers and constitute 0.5 percent of Ireland's population today.

Deadline

I have long been a Chris Crutcher fan and bought this book when it came out back on 2009 but hadn't gotten around to reading it until now, when I have to decide which novel to use with my Junior students 2nd semester. This book has everything that high school kids would love, and is a pretty quick and easy read. The premise is a bit far-fetched. Ben Wolf discovers that he has leukemia just before the start of his senior year and decides to tell no one. He spends his year going after the affections of a hotttie girl, trying his hand at football, befriending the local drunk and arguing with his history teacher. The book touches on pretty strong issues - sexual abuse, pedophilia, drinking and drug abuse. I'm going to recommend it to students but not teach it this year. It is a great high school book.

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

David gave me this book for Christmas and Paul Auster is a great writer, but the story was so-so and I found myself putting it down more often than picking it up. Two stars.

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

Luckily, a Christmas break lunch visit with Salvatore Scibona reminded me that I had purchased Lord of Misrule the day after it won the National Book Award. On a strong recommendation from Salvatore, I started the book on December 27 and read it as much as I could over the remainder of the Christmas break week - stealing time from family visits and getting out of bed to read after everyone else was asleep. Although I didn't think that a book about horse racing would appeal to me at all, the beauty of Jaimy Gordon's prose made the subject matter secondary. Her vernacular was a quirky as the names of her minor characters - Deucey Gifford, Medicine Ed, Kiddstuff, Suitcase Smithers, Two-Tie, and Joe Dale Bigge. I had to read slowly to isolate plot details from West Virginia dialect of stall conversations and metaphoric descriptions. I would describe it as something like the Cannery Row of horse racing. A lovely Christmas present to myself was carving out the time to read this beautiful book.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

My second ibook was a Christmas break comic treat that allowed me to read early in the a.m. by the light of the Christmas tree with my backlit iPad screen. Quite a luxury. I loved the crazy complications that 4 wives and 28 children brought to Golden Richard's life. This book reminds me a bit of a John Irving novel, with plot details that evoke wry laughter.

False Friend by Myla Goldberg

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Room by Emma Donahue

I can't say enough about how heartbreaking and lovely this book is.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Much anticipated and worth the wait.

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart is the new American satirist. I plan to use sections of this crazy, funny, cautionary novel opposite Brave New World in AP English this winter. It is a super entertaining and pretty spot-on depiction of modern relationships, politics, economic disaster and obsession with technology.

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

A wedding night tragedy opens this novel which follows the lives of the family members of the bride and groom through the next four summers. For some reason, none of the characters really won my sincere support. Waldman is the wife of novelist Michael Chabon.

Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes

Wow! This one may win the prize for the book that kept me up the latest on a summer night turning pages to find out how Vanderbes' Thanksgiving day tragedy would finally end. The Olson family has plenty of issues - unmarried daughter Ginny's recently adopted, mute Indian child, son Douglas's strained relationship with his wife Denise, and the unspoken wounds in the marriage of the parents, Eleanor (the perfectionist) and Gavin (the Vietnam war-scarred quiet man). Mix in a malfunctioning oven, two angry teenager burglars, and a heavy serving of mayhem with dessert and you have a shockingly violent novel that somehow also had me snickering.

The New England Vacation Blog

Our Vacation Blog
Just back from 2 weeks and 2,700 miles of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, including visits to several Robert Frost sites and a search through Cornish, New Hampshire for evidence of the late great J.D. Salinger.

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman

I wanted this novel to have more connection to cookbooks and less concern with dot-com-computer-tech-post-9/11. Half of the storyline is about one of two sisters - Emily who is the CEO of a start up silicon valley company and Jess who works for an eccentric used book collector. Goodman tries to do too much and I would much rather have had the book focus on Jess's storyline - especially with the lovely cover which is what initially caught my eye.

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

Our August book club selection was this fictionalization of the biography of Jeanette Walls' maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. I am a big fan of Walls' memoir The Glass Castle, and for readers who wondered, as I did, how her parents could have ever become such risk-takers, this novel, at least, fills in the details on her mother's side. Rose Mary, Jeanette's mother, was raised by a renegade horse-breaker, school teacher, no-nonsense ranch wife. We listened to this book on audio tape driving home from Vermont and Jeanette Wall's own reading made it even more enjoyable. I'm looking forward to talking about the book with my daughter who is about to finish The Glass Castle as part of her summer reading for Honor English 11.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

After swearing off buying any new books this summer, the cover of this novel sold me, but the interrelated chapters detailing the lives of musicians and spanning several decades made it a difficult novel to follow. The biggest surprise of the novel was the Powerpoint presentation style of one of the last chapters. The novel is clever, the portrayal of aging rock stars is entertaining and the satiric wit is sharp.

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

I enjoyed Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know so much that I was thrilled to score a copy of this novel to review. Although I felt pretty creeped-out by the story of a middle-aged woman who is contacted from prison by the man who she sent there decades before, I turned the pages of this novel pretty quickly to see how the story would unfold. Protagonist Eliza Benedict is busy mothering her own young children when she receives a disturbing message from Walter Bowman, a man who is facing execution for molesting and murdering young women, as well as holding young Eliza hostage back in her teens. Flashbacks propel this psychological thriller.

The Lovers by Vendela Vida

This was one of my favorite books of the summer, perhaps because of the lovely descriptions of the coastline in Turkey where the main character, Yvonne, goes to try to recapture some of her honeymoon memories following the death of her husband. Although is begins as a story about travel, it quickly becomes a psychological character study and then abruptly turns into an examination of redemption after an accidental death helps Yvonne to reckon with her relationship with her own child. Vida is married to Dave Eggers, and as a literary couple, they are the ones to watch in the next decades.

One Day by David Nicholls

This novel follows the relationship of Dexter and Emma, beginning on the day they graduate from college in 1988 through 20 years of bad jobs, missed opportunities and love loss. Each chapter is set on July 15th of the next year, and their on and off again courtship made for an easy, entertaining summer read.

The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst

If you are looking for a book to read on the beach or plane tomorrow, pick up this literary mystery. Fictitious author Octavia Frost is on her way to drop off a manuscript at her publisher's office when she sees the television news story about her rock-star son being taken in as a suspect in his girlfriend's murder. The novel is enhanced by samples of Frost's own fiction - endings and alternate endings of her novels between the chapters that advance the storyline of the murder investigation. Apparently, Octavia has a hard time selecting the right ending for her books - no so for Parkhurst.

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

A high school music teacher is caught having an affair with a student. I wish I thought that was a novel idea. What made this book interesting to me was the character of the saxaphone teacher who functions as a manipulative force in the coming together of several student's lives. I was reminded of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Eleanor Catton's prose makes this read worth your time.