Booking through Thursday: Long and Short of It

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Yet again, I am dreadfully late at responding to BTT.

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On Thursday, May 27th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Which do you prefer? Short stories? Or full-length novels?

In my world, having nothing to read is just as bad as not taking vitamins. I need to have a book or two near the tub, the toilet, and the bed, as well as various other places in the house, so asking me to choose between novels and short stories is difficult. If it’s well written, I like it.

After further thought, however, I decided that while I like short stories in small doses, I much prefer novels, because they give me the time to really submerge myself in a story, and breathe in a completely different world for a while. Short stories entertain me, but they never really give me the satisfaction I need.

Review: Prairie Tale

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Prairie Tale
Prairie Tale: a Memoir
Melissa Gilbert
Gallery, 384 pages
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I’ve been a fan of Melissa Gilbert ever since the first episode of “Little House of the Prairie” first aired, but I hadn’t realized she’d published her memoir until I saw it for sale among the souvenirs of “Little House on the Prairie: the Musical” several weeks ago. I ended up buying the trade paperback version, and reading it in one night.

In Prairie Tale Gilbert starts with her childhood as a kid in pigtails going to commercial auditions, and walks us through the grittiest details of her life until now. She speaks wryly about her nervousness about the kissing scenes and love scenes with Dean Butler, who played Almanzo on the show, and candidly about her first serious relationship, with Rob Lowe. She shares her dreams, and also shares her struggle with the loss of Michael Landon, and her deeper struggles with both self esteem and alcohol. If she’d been using Lipovox, she’d have written about that too, no doubt.
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In the end, this book does what a good memoir should: it makes us feel as if we’ve had a long chat with someone we once wished we could be friends with.

Goes well with strong coffee and a slice of corn bread.

Review: The God of the Hive

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The God of the Hive
The God of the Hive
Laurie R. King
Bantam, 368 pages
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I’ve been a fan of Laurie R. King’s series about Mary Russell and her older husband, the legendary Sherlock Holmes, since the first book hit the stores, so of course, I had to have the latest adventure the very second it came out. When The God of the Hive arrived, however, I put it aside, planning to savor it while on vacation. Instead, I read all the paperbacks I’d brought with me, so that I could leave them for my mother, and didn’t read this novel until I got home.

One of the things I love about this series is the level of detail King includes. While she doesn’t have to know what passed for the best acne treatment in Holmesian London, she does have to know where one can find certain kinds of stationery, or where a bolthole might be located.

In this book, which is a direct sequel to the previous installment, The Language of Bees, Russell and Holmes are still separated by the requirements of their current case – Holmes fleeing with his injured long-lost son, and meets up with a Scottish doctor, who ends up being a fabulous addition to the existing cast of characters. Mary, on the other hand, has the aeroplane pilot, and Holmes’ half-Chinese granddaughter to contend with, though she, too, hooks up with a helper who turns out to be quite beneficial to all concerned.

There isn’t much detection in this novel – there is character and there’s plot, but it’s basically a chase scene interrupted by action.

The good news, however, is that it’s still, undeniably King’s work, which is always incredibly compelling reading.

Review: The House on First Street

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The House on First Street
The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story
by Julia Reed
Harper Perennial, 224 pages
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Julia Reed’s The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story may be her memoir of the renovation of the home she buys (across the street from Anne Rice’s old place) with her husband, after many years of living in tiny, funky New Orleans rentals, and not quite cutting ties with New York, but it’s also a love story about old houses and old cities, and the magic that both offer, if you only know how to feel it.

While this book, with it’s comical (to those of us who are merely reading about it) and familiar (to any of us have gone through it) tales of slow, less-than-adequate contractors, dusty floors, paint disasters, plumbing woes and the search for the perfect appliances, fixtures (everything from the most charming door knob for an inside door, to debates about porcelain – should they use Toto toilets or some other brand?), rugs, and furniture is essentially about the relatively common practice of restoring a vintage home, it’s also a first-hand account of the aftermath of Katrina.

The hurricane struck, you see, just two weeks after Reed and her husband had finally moved into the House on First Street. They were lucky – they lost an expensive tree, and had some minor exterior damage – but their neighborhood didn’t flood. Nevertheless, Reed was in position to be in the city sooner than most of the other residents, and while she shares humorous anecdotes about buying barbecue for an entire platoon of National Guards, underlying the wry tone is the poignance of a woman who just wants to go home.

Booking Through Thursday: Bedside

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I never answered last week’s Booking Through Thursday, so am doing so now, to get it in under the wire:

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On Thursday, May 27th, Booking through Thursday asked:

What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

My book collection is rather eclectic. I have books that I’ve had since childhood, books that I kept that still have notices reminding me when I could sell textbooks back to the bookstore for cash, and books that I bought and never read.

My to-be-read pile lives in a combination of piles on my nightstand and books still in Barnes and Noble bags, waiting for me. I am embarrassed to admit that I bought a second copy of Three Cups of Tea a few weeks ago, forgetting that I already had a copy in my TBR queue.

Tonight, sparked by this question, I went through the stacks, and listed, in no particular order the books that I have yet to read. Or the bulk of them, anyway. There are others, because sometimes something appeals to me in the moment and then by the time I get to it my mood has changed. It’s not a problem though, because eventually everything does get read.

But anyway, the list:

  • Barefoot, by Elin Hilderbrand – IN PROGRESS
  • Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland
  • Ground Up, by Michael Idov
  • The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, by Syrie James
  • Acedia & Me, by Kathleen Norris
  • Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
  • Touchstone, by Laurie R. King
  • Muse and Reverie, by Charles de Lint
  • Changes, by Jim Butcher
  • Hope in a Jar, by Beth Harbison
  • Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard
  • The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks
  • The House on Oyster Creek, by Heidi Jon Schmidt
  • The Blue Bistro, by Elin Hilderbrand

So, what’s on YOUR list?

RetroReading: These Happy Golden Years

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These Happy Golden Years
These Happy Golden Years
Laura Ingalls Wilder
HarperCollins, 304 pages
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Two weeks ago, my husband and I went to see Little House on the Prairie: the Musical which was based on the last five of the nine “Little House” books that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her pioneer girl childhood. I’ve been a fan of the books since dirt, and on a trip to that part of the country earlier this year, had, while killing time, discovered this wonderful website Beyond Little House, which was hosting on their blog a read-along of The Long Winter. I didn’t participate, but I read along, falling in love once more with a world where no one wrote nuphedragen reviews, or bought Canadian viagra over the internet, or had cell phones glued to their hands, or, or or…

After the musical, I wanted to go back and read the final book, because I was so pleased that the play had used Laura’s actual words in the proposal scene, and I spent a happy couple of hours revisiting both her childhood, and my own.

I was never a pioneer girl, though I did have braids and a sunbonnet (my mother made it for me) when I was young, but I know what it is to have restless feet, or a restless mind.

Review: Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

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Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven
Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven
by Susan Jane Gilman
Grand Central Publishing, 320 Pages
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I read almost all of Susan Jane Gilman’s travel epic while sitting in the Mexicana Elite lounge in Mexico City about ten days ago, and on the plane trip home. I had a few hours to kill between connections, and the only other book I had left after vacation was a hardcover – not easy to read on the plane – so I began reading the novel while curled up in a lovely recliner, being served glasses of Mexican Coca Cola, and chatting (at intervals) with various Mexican businessmen – I was the only woman in the room, and every time one of them moved, they offered to get me something. I felt very popular, but there was nothing sexual in it, just sincere graciousness.

It’s interesting reading a travelogue while traveling yourself. This book, about the author’s backpacking trip through the People’s Republic of China after her college graduation, about “ten minutes after” Westerners were allowed into the country had that “out of the world” quality that really good romances do, but it’s not at all romantic (well, bits of it are), it’s more nitty-gritty psychodrama, for Suzie (as she was known then) develops a cold that slowly builds to pneumonia almost immediately after leaving Hong Kong, and Claire becomes convinced she’s an International Spy with Serious Enemies – really convinced.

While this book is a memoir, it reads like an epic novel – adventure, fear, great escapes, and true friends in unexpected places, all show up. In fact, about the only thing not mentioned is where you can buy off-label extenze, and that’s only because it had yet to be invented.

Read this book. Then take a long hot bath.

Goes well with Chinese takeout and steaming hot tea. Or banana chocolate chip pancakes.

Review: Addition, by Toni Jordan

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Addition
Addition
by Toni Jordan
Polebridge Press (Harper San Francisco), 272 pages
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You’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, I know, but it was the cover of Toni Jordan’s novel Addition that hooked me, with its pretty rows of brightly colored objects. Then I read the back, and thought, “Hmm. This is interesting.”

Protagonist Grace Lisa Vandenburg has been “counting things” since she was a young girl, and by “counting things” I don’t mean “inventorying pool filters,” but that she’s high-functioning OCD. High functioning in that as long as she sticks to a routine, she can leave her apartment and do things. . . to a point. Her routine is pretty specific though – she goes so far as to remove two eggs from every carton because she has to have TEN not TWELVE, and she steals a banana from a guy at the grocery store because she miscounted and is already in line.

When the same guy is at her table at the cafe where she goes every day for a slice of orange cake and a hot chocolate, Grace has to break out of the comfort of counting. The two fall into a quirky relationship, and the Boy even gets her to try therapy again. But her niece, and closest confidant isn’t thrilled with well-adjusted Grace, preferring a blend of the original version and the one that has been through therapy.

Toni Jordan’s characters are delightfully quirky, and her glimpse into the mind of someone with OCD is both interesting and enlightening. The novel is paced a little slow, at first, but then it gets better, and the end is satisfying, but let’s be clear: this is summer reading at it’s best.

Goes well with: A slice of orange cake and hot chocolate, obviously.

Review: The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

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The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder
by Rebecca Wells
Harper, 416 pages
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I don’t remember when I was first introduced to Rebecca Wells’ work, though I know I read The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood years before there was ever a movie. Maybe even decades. It should, therefore come as no surprise that as soon as I first saw her latest book The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, I had to buy it. What is surprising, is that I never saw the hardcover when it came out a year ago, so my first introduction to this new world was when I saw the trade paperback on the “new in paperback” table at Barnes and Nobel a couple of months ago.

I started the book before I left for Mexico, then set it aside to finish there, because I wanted to really savor it, and because I knew my mother would like to read it. Actually, I left her three of the five novels I brought with me. The hardcover I brought home, and am reading now, and the fourth paperback I read in the airport, and on the plane on the way home, finishing the last few pages before I went to bed. But, I digress…

Like Wells’ other work, Calla Lily’s story is set in Louisiana, and features strong women characters, but Calla’s story is nothing like the Ya-Yas, petite or original.

Calla grows up with parents who are completely in love with each other, and love her and her brothers just as strongly. Together, her parents teach dance lessons, and run a sort of open dance studio on weekends. Her father is a musician, sometimes, and her mother also owns the single chair “Crowning Glory Beauty Porch.” Calla inherits from her mother a love of the moon, and the ability to be a catalyst for healing when she does hair. If that latter concept sounds far-fetched, consider how much better most of us feel when we have a really good shampoo girl at the salon, or an amazing new cut, or change our hair color in just the right way.

Early in the story, Calla’s mother develops breast cancer, and dies, and her father shows himself to the be sort of quietly supportive, fiercely devoted parent that deserves every gift from the redenvelope father's day guide, and then some, but he also retreats into what is essentially a background character. The rest of the novel is Calla’s and we trace her journey from high school in her small town, to New Orleans in the early 1970’s where she goes to beauty school and becomes fast friends with Ricky, the best stylist and salon owner in town, and his partner, Steve (which combination of names seems ripped right out of that Steel Magnolias line about “all gay men have track lighting and all gay men are named Mark, Rick, or Steve”). She falls in love, marries, loses her love, and generally has the kind of touched-by-luck-and-love-and-magic life that can only be found in novels written by Southern authors.

Because this is essentially the autobiography of a fictional character, it’s difficult to give an adequate synopsis, but the book is enjoyable, with several laugh-out-loud (no, seriously, for real) moments.

Goes well with sweet tea and gumbo.

Review: Angelology

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Angelology
Angelology
by Danielle Trussoni
Viking, 464 Pages
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When my friend Deb told me she was reading a book called Angelology, and that I had to read it, too, I was skeptical. I mean, it sounded like some funky new age treatise, and secretly, I was worried about what chemicals might be misfiring in her brain. Then she began to describe the plot, and even before she gave me the book, I was hooked.

Imagine a world where angels walk beside us, not as mystical guardians but as immortal (or as near to it as makes little difference) preter-natural beings with huge mafia-esque family businesses. Oh, they’re not ‘out’ or anything – but they exist nevertheless – at least in the reality Trussoni has created.

Enter Sister Evangeline, orphan, nun, restless soul. She’s been assigned to work in the convent library, and one day while she’s doing just that, she intercepts a letter asking for proof of a connection between her convent’s former Mother Superior and Abigail Rockefeller, yes, the Abigail Rockefeller.

That letter sparks a romp through art, literature and history that even Dan Brown would be humbled by, replete with mystery, intrigue, faith, science, and maybe even a little magic.

To describe the plot more would be to ruin it. Suffice to say Angelology is a gripping paranormal mystery/thriller of epic proportions.

Goes well with a slice of angel food cake, fresh strawberries, and a perfect cappuccino.