Book #35: Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century

Title: Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century


Author: Mike Dash


I must admit, I skimmed this book more than read it. It claims to be nonfiction that reads like fiction. But to me, this story of police corruption read more like, well, nonfiction. And coming from me, you probably know that's no high compliment. If you want nonfiction that reads like fiction, stick with Erik Larson.


--originally published 7/30/07

Book #34: I Feel Bad About my Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman


Author: Nora Ephron


When I was a kid, I read all of the Anne of Green Gables books over a few weeks. When I started out, Anne was twelve years old, and just a few days later, she was the mother of teenagers. When I finished the last book, I cried and cried. Not because the book was sad, but because I felt like Anne had gone through her whole life span in what, for me, was just a few weeks.


Earlier this summer, I read Nora Ephron's Heartburn. In the novel, based very closely on the demise of her marriage to Carl Bernstein, she's a thirty-something woman about to give birth to her second child. In I Feel Bad About My Neck, she's a sixty-something woman whose children are all grown up, musing on botox and exercise and how often she should wash her hair.


Reading I Feel Bad About my Neck gave me the same feeling as I had when reading all of the Anne books so many years ago. In Heartburn, Ephron is my contemporary. In I Feel Bad About my Neck, she's my mother. She's funnier than my mother, but still, she's my mom's contemporary, not mine. I wouldn't call this "thoughts on being a woman" but rather, "thoughts on being a woman of a certain age." Still, she's riotously funny, and the book reads like a breeze.


--originally published 7/29/07

Book #32: On Chesil Beach

Title: On Chesil Beach


Author: Ian McEwan


Speaking of virgins on the wedding night (see my previous post), in Ian McEwan's new novella, On Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence are recent university graduates who find themselves on the afternoon of their wedding at an English seaside hotel. Thousands of generations of cultural history prepare us for what should, inevitably happen next-- the great deflowering. However, Florence, for all her love for Edward, is terrified, and, quite frankly, revolted at the prospect of having sex for the first time.


For several novels now, Ian McEwan has been one of my favorite modern authors. Atonement would probably be found on my top-ten list, and Eddie and I both devoured Saturday. In On Chesil Beach, he does a great job creating characters and through a series of flashbacks, taking us through Florence and Edward's courtship up to the point that they sit on the bed in their hotel room, trying to summon up the courage to take their relationship to the next level (notice the Bachelor allusion there?).


Anyway, I loved the insight into the characters, especially Florence's character. A few months ago I read a novel (one of the book club novels, can't remember the title) that criticized McEwan for not creating believable female characters. I think Florence is a believable character. An ex-family member, in fact, reminds me a lot of her. But I'm glad to say, that even if a woman waits until her wedding night to get busy, most women do not feel the same sense of visceral revulsion that Florence does. At least not in my vast experience with the subject.





--originally published 7/29/07

Book #33: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Title: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life


Author: Barbara Kingsolver


I think that reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has cured me of my recent obsession with food-related literature (either that or I started eating again after my diet ended and real food took the place of just reading about food). Whatever the reason, Kingsolver simultaneously inspired me and made me feel like a total loser.


In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Kingsolver (along with her husband and older daughter) recounts the year that she and her family resolved to live off the land. For one year, they (with relatively small exception) consumed no food that originated more than 100 miles from their homes. Sometimes that meant that they ate a lot of asparagus and in the summer, they were overwhelmed by zucchini.


Kingsolver's book really made me think about the food I consume. I try to buy produce that comes from Texas, but at Target, where I do most of my grocery shopping, virtually all of the vegetables, including the green onions and the bell peppers, come shrinkwrapped from afar (the pepper I ate yesterday came from Canada!?!?). But I rarely think about whether the food I eat is in season. I do recognize that strawberries in June are cheaper and tastier than berries bought in January, but that doesn't mean that I don't buy berries in January.



But Kingsolver really knows how to lay on the guilt. Thick. She tells the story of how her daughter had a friend visiting and when they were at the grocery store the friend wanted a bunch of bananas. Instead of buying the bananas, Kingsolver explained to the girl the cost to the environment (in terms of jet fuel and transportation) of the bananas. Talk about laying it on!


Anyway, I appreciated Kingsolver's book. I'm looking into subscribing to a CSA. I'll try to hit the farmer's market more often. But I'm still eating my bananas. I guess that here in the tropics, bananas are local anyway.


--originally published 7/29/07

Book #31: Fear of Flying

Title: Fear of Flying


Author: Erica Jong


Isadora Wing, a writer who is about to enter the fourth decade of her life, attends a conference in Vienna with her psychiatrist husband. She meets another man (also a psychiatrist). She has sex with that man. She and the new guy leave her husband to go on a consciousness-raising journey throughout Europe, and Isadora has to decide whether or not she will return to her husband when the journey ends.


In my life as a reader, I've heard a lot about Fear of Flying. I've heard that it was a seminal work for many reasons-- that it allowed female characters more sexual freedom (could Carrie Bradshaw exist without Isadora Wing paving the way a generation earlier?), that allowed a reader to accept a delightfully screwed up protagonist (could Becky Bloomwood exist without Isadora Wing paving the way a generation earlier?).


Fear of Flying was loads of fun. And, for a buttoned-up girl who was a virgin on her wedding night, quite an education for me. I did get tired of all of the psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo of the conference after a while, but doesn't it always seem like the people who put the most stock in psychoanalysis are the ones who are the most screwed up? Are they screwed up to start with and the psychoanalysis helps or does the psychoanalysis actually screw them up? With these bed hopping psychiatrists and psychologists, it's very hard to say. Yeah, Isadora's screwed up, but she makes being screwed up seem sort of fun.


--originally published 7/29/07

Book #30: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Title: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly


Author: Anthony Bourdain


Anthony Bourdain, chef at Les Halles (a French bistro) in New York City, has worked in the business for more than half of his hard-lived life. As a result, he knows the ins and outs of the New York culinary scene like no one else. Reading Kitchen Confidential is a little bit like reading Star magazine, but instead of the exploits of Britney and LiLo, Bourdain gives us the dirt on the city's chefs.


But since the only thing I like better than a bubble bath and a night with a dampening Star magazine is a good memoir, Bourdain doesn't fail to deliver that either. He gives us a warts-and-all portrayal of his own rise and fall and rebirth as a chef in the city. He made me excited about roasted chicken, eager to try out sushi, and even convinced me to sharpen my knives. I also put several of his other books on my to-read list (including his kitchen-based murder mysteries, one of which was based on his real-life experience working in a kitchen owned by mobsters).


--originally published 7/29/07

Book #29: Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Cooking

Title: Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Cooking


Authors: Jane and Michael Stern


Continuing with my self-designed American Studies seminar course on books dealing with American eating habits, I felt like I couldn't ignore Jane and Michael Stern, who I grew to love when I lived in Minnesota and regularly listened to Lynn Rosetto Kasper's program, The Splendid Table, every Saturday on NPR (I still miss my NPR!). Anyway, Jane and Michael have been traveling around the US since the early 1970s, just after they both finished graduate school at Yale, in search of the best places to eat across the country.


For me, someone who looks for the next McDonalds on the interstate as soon as the tummies in my minivan start rumbling (on account of my picky eating children and the predictibility of food served at the golden arches, not due to my own preferences for McDonalds french fries), it was fun to read about people who'd never stray into a McD's on the road. In some ways, it made me nostalgic for a time when I'm able to travel the country at a leisurely pace, without having to take into consideration breaks for nursing, potty training toddlers, zoos, or carsick preschoolers (is it still nostalgia if you've never experienced that condition?).


Anyway, I read Two for the Road shortly before my mom and I took my four kids on a trip to Nashville (15 hours from home), Memphis (3 1/2 hours from Nashville), St. Louis (5 hours from Memphis), back to Nashville (5 1/2 hours from St. Louis) and back home. Yep, that's 44 hours in the car, over seven days, with four children ages seven and under, and two adults, one of whom (not me) spent more than half of the trip on crutches. When we were driving through Texarkana, TX on day 7 of the trip, we passed Bryce's Cafeteria, one of the locations the Sterns raved over. We considered stopping. But guess where we ate instead? Yep-- we shared some Happy Meals with Ronald. Good times.


--originally published 7/29/07

Book #28: The Thousand Splendid Suns

Title: The Thousand Splendid Suns


Author: Khaled Hosseini


If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've probably heard me wax rhapsodic about Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner (usually in conjunction with how people in my book group are always too squeamish to read it). Anyway, I had really, really high expectations for The Thousand Splendid Suns. I've been waiting to read it ever since I saw Hosseini give a talk on Book TV two years ago, in which he talked about how he was writing a new novel about Afghan women.


So I had unrealistically high expectations when it came to reading The Thousand Splendid Suns.


And I'm pleased to say, that those expectations were met. Exceeded even. Yes, as Eddie pointed out, the first fifty pages of the novel were pretty slow. And yes, it's hard for those of us who live easy lives in America to fathom the kind of suffering that Hosseini's Afghan women go through. But even if most people don't suffer to the degree that Laila and Mariam do (and I hope they don't), very few people have the gift with words that Hosseini does.


I read the book in a 24-hour span. I usually only do that with fluffy Harlan Coben or Shopaholic novels. But I totally immersed myself in Laila and Mariam's world, and emerged, sobbing, the next day.


If you haven't read it yet, and it's on your list-- don't wait. I got this book from the library, and I'm still planning to buy it in hardcover-- it's just one of those books that I want to have in my personal collection.


--originally published 7/29/07

Book #27: Absurdistan

Title: Absurdistan


Author: Gary Shteyngart


Ok, this book is weird. I mean, really weird. It's about the morbidly obese son of a Russian mafioso, living in New York with his Latina girlfriend, who gets stuck in Eastern Europe after his dad kills some high-ranking diplomat (or something, it's been awhile since I read the book). Anyway, Mischa pines for his lover and tries to find a way out of St. Petersburg, eventually ending up in the fictional post-soviet state of Absurdistan, where he becomes a government official after the existing government gets overthrown. Throughout the book, he sings bad rap songs, sends dirty emails to his girlfriend, and samples the delights of all females (including his stepmother) and cuisines available to him.


It was a fun read, but seriously, such a weird ride. I love the visual imagery of a huge white Russian dude rapping, though.


--originally published 7/29/07

Summer break

When I was in college, I spent a summer in French-speaking Belgium, where I learned that basically all of Francophone Europe takes a month of summer off from work to sit on the beach and bake. I know I haven't been around all that much in the last month, but I am taking July as my French-inspired month-long break from blogging. I'm leaving on Tuesday for a week-long zoo tour, and we'll be back for just a couple of days before going to Utah for a 10-day trip. By the time I get back and crawl out from underneath the laundry, July will be mostly done. And when July is over, there will only be 26 days of summer left until I can send the kids back to school. I may survive this summer in Texas, after all.

--originally published 7/1/07