Gift books cater to everyone

So I'm flipping through Chronicle's various catalogs during lunch, and I found myself giggling out loud throughout the gift book catalog.
You got your basic diaries, your diaries with a twist (one line a day for moms), your diaries for pot smokers (the rather obvious title is How High Am I? A Journal)... no, I'm not kidding... then you've got your stationary sets, flash cards, office stress management boxed sets (including a stress ball wrapped in plastic - but I gotta tell you, that shrink wrap always puts me on edge!) and the Doodle Diet, which is not a book but a "set" of 40 (disposable) placemats so you can doodle, of course. Rather than eat, I presume.

Safe to say if you need to buy a gift for anyone this year, there's a gift book for that - and most are under $20.

Moo and Monkeys Speaking in Complete Sentences

To answer my titular question it's Moo, by Jane Smiley. I like it, with its setting geographically removed enough from my own midwest-college-town so that I don't feel like the author is making fun of me and my neighbors specifically :)

Once I've finished Moo, I won't read more of Smiley's work right away. She's good - especially at character development, and she offers up lots of characters! - but her sentences run on a bit and her plots move too slowly for my liking. I find it's too easy to put down the book, and when I do, I'm less than eager to pick it up again.

Something I picked up when I put down Moo was a Discover Magazine article about several researchers who have apparently proven that Campbells monkeys (and many other species) have syntax. (Speaking of run on sentences!)

So maybe worrying about grammar isn't uniquely human after all.

Blinded by the Story

Here's my definition of a gifted writer: he tells a story without letting the words get in the way.

That's especially important when the story is as fantastic as  The Blind Side. Yeh, yeh, it's the new Sandra Bullock movie. You know what I'm going to say: read the book before you see the movie.

Neither is disappointing, but trust me, the book offers a depth that can only make the movie more enjoyable.

Can't read it? At least listen to the in-depth interview (heard on NPR last week) with author Michael Lewis, here.

PS - if you love baseball, pick up a copy of Lewis's Moneyball while you're at the library/bookstore/website.  You'll be glad you did!
PPS - I Beat the Odds is the story Micheal Ohr tells of his own life.

A Thousand Acres of Heartache

A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley - Random House (c) 1991

Do the holidays bring out the squabbles (or worse) in your family? I bet A Thousand Acres will make you feel better, if only in comparison to the Cooks and the Smiths.
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I'll admit I took my time through the pages of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. The characters share so little joy (a few jolly games of monopoly, some delightful flirting among adults, and two brief sexual encounters) that I nearly quit.

Now I'm darned glad to say I finished it. Not just because I'm done, and not just because it's one more notch on my reading lipstick case.* I'm glad I read it because it moved me. And frankly, I can be a bit lazy about reading stuff like that.

Novels that touch me, make me squirm, make me think, make me feel - they're too few and far between, I'm afraid.

And in this exercise of reading something I didn't really want to read, I have learned. Don't worry, I'm not going to wax eloquently about delving into the human condition; I'm not that deep. Rather, what I want to say is that it's good for a reader to have friends.

A friend introduced me to Barbara Kingsolver many years ago, and I was hooked. Barbara makes me think, feel, and sometimes squirm, but just a little. She doesn't really make me blanch, shake my beliefs to the core, or even snort in exasperation at her characters and their lives. She's a fabulous writer and a word wrangler I admire, but she doesn't draw blood. Ms. Smiley got her hooks in me, and changed me a bit while she dragged me through those acres on a New York family farm.

Ouch.
Thanks.

For those still-tender marks, I have to thank Kara. Kara recommended the book very highly and in such an enthusiastic but vague way that I (erroneously) assumed the book was full of sunshine and goodness. After all, she piped up with her recommendation as I was ballyhooing two feel-good books, Wesley the Owl and The Guernsey Literary and Sweet Potato Peel Pie Society. So I just assumed A Thousand Acres would make me feel good, too.

About a month after she loaned it to me, Kara asked what I thought. Not very cheerful, is it? I replied. Oh no, she said. But it's a good book. I trust Kara, and felt obligated to finish it. But I complained. "I like happy endings. Does it have a happy ending?"

"Oh no. But it's a good book." There it was again, that nagging sense of obligation - mixed with a little bit of dread. (No happy ending?!)

Well, Kara was right; it's a good book. And I'm very grateful to good friends like that, who will give you a little push into uncomfortable territory.

Yesterday I loaned the book to another friend. At first, I tried Kara's approach. "It's a good book," I said, then felt compelled to add, "but it's not the happiest story."

"That's OK," she said. "As long as it moves me. That's what I like."

Well, humph. Maybe Allison should start a reading blog.





*if you got that reference you too must be a closet Pat Benatar fan :)

Informative & Fun Picture Book

(Holiday shoppers, hear this!)

What Do You Do With A Tail Like This? is one of those rare picture books that features fascinating facts and engaging but realistic pictures - it's both readable and fun, and educational too.

"Instant classic" may be a bit heavy-handed, but well worth the $16 list price.

I heard that

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, first published in 1999, could have been written yesterday, or tomorrow. Note to parents: the date-rape thing? get over it. Your girl child really ought to read this.

Even quite-uptight Common Sense Media rated it "age appropriate" for 13 and up. Of course there was that one "iffy" scene because a teacher makes an anti-immigration speech.

(Ohmygoodness!)
(#GetOverIt)

Read on...

Finally, I Know Why "Mockingbird" Sings

I don't know how I escaped high school, let alone two college honors classes in English lit, without reading To Kill a Mockingbird, but I'm sorry. Sort of. Reading Mockingbird any time in one's life is probably good for a person; reading it in middle age sort of keeps one's perspective on track.

Of course as much as I love reading, I'm plagued with writer's reading disease, symptoms of which include losing touch with a story here and there while I puzzle over the author's process, construction, possible disagreements with an editor or publisher, and so on.

Because of that, I suspect I enjoyed Lee's "forward" more than most people; I've lost count of how many times I re-read it. In February 1993, Lee wrote:

Please spare Mockingbird an Introduction. As a reader I loathe Introductions. To novels, I associate Introductions with long-gone authors and works that are being brought back into print after decades of interment. Although Mockingbird will be 33 this year, it has never been out of print and I am still alive, though very quiet. Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. The only good thing about Introdutions is that in some case they delay the dose to come. Mockingbird still says what it has to say; it has managed to survive the years without preamble.

Well, with apologies to Ms. Lee, that was a hell of an introduction. How could anyone NOT turn the page and commence with To Kill a Mockingbird after that?

So I did. And while I didn't need any (further) introduction, I did re-read the first chapter after finishing the book. It wrapped everything up more neatly for me.

Anyway, if you never read To Kill a Mockingbird, I suggest that you do. Next stop - to the library to borrow the movie, which I also somehow missed thus far...


Interesting -
- that this was the second of my 'favorite books of the year' that featured Charles Lamb rather prominently. (The first being The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.) In addition to Lee's charming non-introduction, Mockingbird is prefaced by Lamb's quote, "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."


Recommended reading -
I found the National Endowment for the Arts' biography of Harper Lee very interesting, as well as a shorter one at Teenreads.com). Because Mockingbird is Lee's only published novel, it's almost all we have. Though I intend to find those articles...