Category Archives: Authors K-O

Goodbye, Madeleine

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I saw a line item in someone’s LiveJournal this morning that Madeleine L’Engle had died. Publishers Weekly had a couple of lines about it on their website today, with a comment that they only got the information at deadline, and would have a longer piece next week, and that’s all very well and good, but I needed to write something of my own.

I’ve never met Madeleine L’Engle, but her book A Wrinkle in Time was my first entry into science fiction and fantasy reading. I’d already been a fan of Star Trek and Space 1999 when someone handed my eight-year-old self a black book, no dust cover, no pictures, and sent me into the quilt covered bed in her guest room, and said, “Read this.”

The “someone” in question was a friend of my mother’s. I don’t remember her name, but she and her Latin American husband used to fuss over me and feed me carob drops, and on this night, she and my mother were involved in a project and a long conversation. There as a lightning storm outside the window, a bowl of grainy home-made vanilla ice cream nearby, and a really soft quilt, and I didn’t so much read the book as fall into it and never quite come out again.

I was hooked.

Over the years, L’Engle’s work has floated into and out of my life, with one of her novels dropping into my lap every so often, just when I needed it most. When my grandmother died, her Crosswicks Journals helped me process it. When I was adjusting to being back in California, married, and working for my mother Certain Women was my companion. On a cold night in January, I toasted my toes, cuddled my dog, and read her two novels about pianists and St. John’s Cathedral, and when I began my explorations into the Episcopal church a couple of years ago, it was a work of hers that was part of my reading.

Authors, through their words, touch so many lives so deeply, that we readers often feel as if we know them, when we don’t. It’s not the same sort of “knowing” as with a favorite actor or musician, but a closer one, at once more intellectual and more emotional. We see their thoughts, in the lines and dots that make up printed letters, you see. And we see into their hearts.

While I suspect Madeleine L’Engle and I might have disagreed on some fundamental social issues, I also think we’d have found things to talk about, and I KNOW she was a woman with a good heart.

I met her works as a child, and I continued to keep them as part of my library as I grew up. I think it’s marvelous that her stories are so timeless.

She will be missed.

Edited to add: The New York Times article about her is here, and it’s good, though it persists in referring to her as a “children’s author.”

Five for Friday: Back to School

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I haven’t been in school for years – almost decades – but in honor of most students being back at school by now, my list this week is books that involve school.

  1. Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet’s entire plot involves the reactions of her schoolmates to her spy notebook, after all. Plus, I always wanted to go to a school where being in the play involved being an onion.
  2. A Live Coal in the Sea, by Madeleine L’Engle: Technically this is a sequel to a much earlier novel, Camilla, but it stands on its own as well. Most of the action takes place in and around a university campus.
  3. The Anne of Green Gables series, by Lucy Maud Montgomery: While it’s true that not all of the wonderful stories about Anne’s life in and around Avonlea involve school, education was a prime motivator in Anne’s life. From student, to teacher, to wife and mother, Anne Shirley progressed through life surrounded by books and words.
  4. Mythology 101, Higher Mythology, Mythology Abroad, and Advanced Mythology, by Jody Lynn Nye: a delightful light fantasy series about a group of elves living in the sub basement of a university library, and the human students who interact with them.
  5. The President’s Daughter, White House Autumn, and Long Live the Queen, by Ellen Emerson White: Well-written, if slightly dated based on characters’ television choices, series about the teenage daughter of the first female president of the United States. There’s apparently a fourth book coming out next month, and while these are YA, I plan to read it anyway.

A Writer’s Paris: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul

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Quote:

There are always reasons not to write. They appear as wantonly as toadstools after the rain. Entertaining those reasons even for a split second is the path to uncreativity. Write, even if you have a twinge, a doubt, a fear, a block, a noisy neighbor, a sick cat, thirteen unpublished stories, and a painful boil. Write, even if you aren’t sure. Come to Paris, even if you don’t speak French.

Why I Chose This Book:
The small mustard covered volume was staring at me from an end cap full of France-themed books, mostly novels (and I did pick up two of them) but this book as well. It’s designed to look like a moleskine notebook, with a two-inch-wide paper band its only real decoration. I liked the title, it seemed to speak to me.

About the Book:
A Writer’s Paris is part guide book and part writing guide, using the rhythm and flow of the City of Light as a source of inspiration, as much as a recommended place to spend a month writing. The author is a writing coach/life coach kind of person, and has written many works that encourage readers to pursue their creative urges. The particular book is gentle when it needs to be, firmer when it must be, and completely entwined with the seduction that is Paris.

Much of it was common-sense reminders that we all, as writers, need to hear: write every day, make the time, skip tv and write, don’t talk about it, just do it, etc. A good portion of it, however, recommended various neighborhoods in Paris, told you to visit the Louvre, yes, but remember that you were there to write, and even to stop passers-by and ask, “Which of these two things would you rather read a novel about?” then offer two things, to help choose one of the topics in your head. (The improviser part of my personality finds this exercise really appealing.)

Do I recommend this book?
Yes, absolutely. If you are a writer, or think you want to be, you need to read this. If you are involved in any other creative pursuit, you might also benefit from it.

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

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by Christopher Moore

I borrowed this book, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, from one of my ComedySportz troupemates, without quite knowing what I was getting into. What I found was an hilarious trip that had plane crashes, hard luck stories, and off-kilter romance. If Clive Cussler wrote chick lit, this would be it.

The main character, Tuck, is a pilot for a company that is clearly supposed to be Mary Kay cosmetics, right down to pervasive use of the color pink. He crashes the plane, gets sent to a tropical island that is loosely affiliated with the Federated States of Micronesia, meets a male drag queen prostitute and a talking bat, and ends up involved with a doctor and his wife, who has taken on the role of the Sky Priestess for a tribe of natives who have become a cargo cult.

At times poignant, sad, funny, exciting, action-packed, horrifying, and romantic, sometimes all at once this book is a must read for anyone who has ever thought that chick-lit needs more gunfights.

Sunshine

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Sunshine by Robin McKinley

First, I don’t usually take ten days to finish a book – any book – and admittedly, I finished this a couple days ago, but it was our anniversary, and then I was jazzed from workshop so I couldn’t focus. But, it did take me longer than usual to finish Sunshine, and I’m not sure why. Something about the book lulled me into a weird moody place where I just couldn’t zip through the words the way I usually do. I think it was that Robin McKinley did such a great job of setting the scene, and letting us see the characters.

In any case, I picked up Sunshine because I couldn’t resist the notion of a vampire novel with that name, and I generally like vampire novels. This one was wonderfully rich in detail – set in an alternative present in which police forces have supernatural ops forces to guard against the Others – weres, demons, and vampires.

Lest this sound at all like the worlds of Tanya Huff, Laurell K. Hamilton, or the BuffyVerse, let me assure you that McKinley’s supernatural “now” is much grittier, much creepier, and much darker, with the backstory of Voodoo Wars and the knowledge that humanity is losing its war against the Others.

Brightening up the darkness, is Sunshine, a plucky baker and dessert pusher at the local coffee bar. She has a slightly crazy family, a tattooed bike-riding boyfriend, and a great apartment, and then she drives out to the lake cottage her family once owned, and is kidnapped – not fed upon – by vampires, and thrown into a cell with another vampire, Constantine, who is chained in the corner opposite hers.

To tell more would destroy the plot. While it does have predictable elements – Sunshine and Constantine eventually team up and escape and there are inevitable repercussions – the story never seems old or stale, and while it is complete in and of itself, it feels like the beginning of a series.

If anything, I’d have liked to see more of Constantine – he’s very present in the entire novel but doesn’t have much page count – and a little more of Sunshine and Mel.

Also, recipes for the desserts would be cool. But maybe that’s just my inner chocoholic talking.

Venus Envy

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Venus Envy by Shannon McKelden

Venus may be a goddess on Mt. Olympus, but she’s been sentenced to play fairy godmother to the lovelorn until Zeus decides she’s learned whatever lesson he might intend. Rachel Greer, bank employee and frequen dater of loser men, is Venus’s latest mission – and it’s not an easy one. Rachel’s relationship history has bruised her so badly that even when a hunky firefighter is practically stalking her (in a good way, honest!) she keeps avoiding him.

McKelden’s characters are quirky and funny, and this novel is a feel-good read that reminds us what the best chick-lit is all about.

Bitsy’s Bait & BBQ

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Bitsy's Bait & BBQBitsy’s Bait & BBQ

When Kate Dodson bought Bitsy’s B&B on ebay, she thought she was buying a bed and breakfast in the Ozarks. Well, the Ozarks part was right, but Kate, her sister Emma, and her young son soon find themselves running a bait shop and barbecue restaurant, where their cooking is so bad, their speciality becomes all you can eat toast.

There’s romance, of course, in the form of Kate’s ex-husband who lets his rich mother rule his life, but really just wants Kate back, and there’s also a cast of locals to add color.

This is a fast read, good for a slow afternoon in the sunshine, with a glass of cold sweet tea, and author Pamela Morsi does an excellent job of making the setting seem familiar enough that it could be the lakeside town you drove through last summer.

Carpe Demon

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 Carpe DemonCarpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom

I picked up Carpe Demon while on a lengthy visit to a local Half Price Books with my husband and brother-in-law, and read half of it while we were there, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I ordered it from Amazon.com along with its sequel.

I was hooked at first by the tag line, about how the protagonist, Kate, was something like an adult (as in grown up, not as in XXX) version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but while the whole “California girl fights demons” think does make their stories seem similar, Kate is not not at all like Buffy. For one thing, Kate has a husband, two children, one of whom is a teenager, and a minivan. As well, her demon hunting doesn’t seem to be mystical calling, as much as a choice made when she was largely choiceless.

Still, the snappy dialogue, humor-laced action sequences, and fast-paced plot made this book an enjoyable and entertaining read, and I’m currently in the middle of the sequel.

Bitter is the New Black

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Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

Originally reviewed 13 April 2006.

I’ve read Jen Lancaster’s blog for years, so I was eagerly awaiting her first book, “Bitter is the New Black,” and after reading it (in fits and snatches over the last week) I can say I was not disappointed.

If you’ve ever been faced with the choice between re-doing your roots or paying the electric bill, if you’ve ever found yourself committing couch envy, if you’ve ever been between jobs and unable to support yourself in the lifestyle you’d become accustomed to, this book is for you.

Jen makes no apologies for her snarky, funny, manner of living, and while some of her choices aren’t the same I would make, reading about her fall and subsequent struggle to rise again made me nod my head (at times), laugh out loud (a lot), or cry real tears.

If you liked The Devil Wears Prada, if you enjoyed The Nanny Diaries, you will LOVE Bitter is the New Black.

The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America: Books: Patricia Klindienst

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The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America: Books: Patricia Klindienst

Poignant and relevant, Patricia Klindienst’s first book is a collection of essays, portraits of different immigrant gardeners and how they have retained their unique cultures through seed and soil, while blending into American society at the same time. The book takes us from Connecticut to California, from the Low Country to land-locked New Mexico, introducing us to vibrant individuals whose passion for the earth is only rivaled by the author’s own.

Herself a master gardener, Klindienst’s voice is much more akin to Studs Terkel as she shares these stories, and while there is an undertone of politics, and the importance of sustainable food use, it is the humanity that shines in this book.

The only flaw is a lack of photographs – gardens are meant to be seen, after all – and one wonders if a coffee-table style presentation might not have been more effective.

The trade paperback edition of The Earth Knows My Name will be released in April, 2007.