Not Another Mom

Too many books!

2011-03-22T21:04:00.002-05:00

I used to be a monoreader--one book at a time. At some point I abandoned this strategy. I think that I kept getting bogged down in award winners and found myself reading very little for long stretches of time. Now I normally have several books going at once, but lately things have gotten a little out of hand.

I am currently reading:
1.) Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy -- a memoir of the author's recovery from having a malignant tumor (and half her jaw) removed at the age of 9.
2.) Animal Farm by George Orwell -- do I really need to say? The story of what happens when some communist pigs convince the other animals that they can run the farm without evil humans. Somehow I've never read this before.
3.) The Sea by John Banville -- An old man living by the sea remembers vacationing by the sea. Sort of. It won the Booker prize and thus far confirms my suspicion that Booker prize = boring.
4.) The Know-It-All by A. J. Jacobs -- A man writes about his attempt to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica in its entirety. It's best in small doses, much like an encyclopedia.
5.) The Complete Guide to Women's Running by Runner's World magazine -- um, or something to that effect. Too sore and lazy to go downstairs and get it right now.
6.) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling -- Not sure this should count since I am reading it aloud to my son every night.
7.) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling -- I couldn't resist the urge to (re)read ahead of my reading with my son.

And I think that's it. Too much? I try to read a piece of each book every day. Which reminds me that I need to read The Sea now. It's not that it's bad. It's just slooooow, and it's just not working for me.

Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

2011-01-26T17:39:00.006-06:00

First line: "Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did."

A few years ago I read and enjoyed Jeannette Walls' childhood memoir, The Glass Castle, so when I saw that she had written a novel of her grandmother's childhood, I was intrigued. Last week I read it. I liked it, but not as much as The Glass Castle. I'm not sure if it was because it was less horrifying or if it was because the authorial voice seemed less real. After reading the book I was not surprised to learn that Walls had tried to write it initially in the third person. It felt like a story someone told about somebody else, and that's what it is.

Raised in west Texas and the New Mexico desert, Lily Casey Smith, Walls' grandmother, was a strong, spirited woman. She suffered a lot of setbacks in life (a theme throughout the book), but never let them get her down--the story of her first husband is a good example. Ultimately she ends up remarrying and working with her husband on a ranch in Arizona, having more setbacks, and settling in a remote town in Arizona.

The book dragged for me a little in the middle and picked up a bit with the appearance of Rosemary, Walls's mother who played such a large role in The Glass Castle. I felt like major episodes in history like the Great Depression and WWII were largely glossed over. Perhaps because they were no match for Lily Smith and her spunkiness?

Anyway for me the book was entertaining and worth reading, but was helped by my prior knowledge of the family from the previous book. I got The Glass Castle from the library again the other day and reread parts of it. It's funny to see Lily Smith getting in yelling matches with Rex Walls, but it feels like a disconnect almost. A little more yelling before the wedding might have been good.

Four stars.

A New Year?

2011-01-24T16:41:00.006-06:00

I mean to post more often (by which I mean ever), but it never happens. Now a full calendar year (and a half) has passed since my last post.

I am going to try to post weekly and worry less about my reviews. I let myself get hung up on whether I thought my reviews are good enough. If I'm being honest, I've always had a hard time articulating what I did or didn't like about a book. I remember wishing when I was younger that book reports could be more like "Solid Gold": I liked it. It had a good beat. You could dance to it. The end.

2010 in review:

I didn't keep track of everything I've read. If I had to guess I'd say it was only about 50 books, give or take 20. How's that for being precise?

My favorite book that I read last year was Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. I picked this one up at the library on a whim and just adored it: the tone, the characters (even the annoying son), the stuffy Britishness of it all.

Other notable reads: the Percy Jackson series helped me rediscover my love of Greek mythology, Serena by Ron Rash made me want to reread Shakespeare even as I hated every character in it (including the sympathetic ones), and well, I don't remember anything else. Isn't that sad?

So far this year I have read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (loved it!), Little Bee by Chris Cleave (didn't quite work for me), This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness by Laura Munson (dragged, but I admire her moxy), Coraline by Neil Gaiman (not sure what to think), The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly (hated it!). I am currently reading My Antonia by Willa Cather and The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs, both of which I am enjoying immensely.

If I'm feeling energetic later this week perhaps I will try to put into words how much I hated The Tea Rose. It just irritated me that much. Note to self: If someone recommends a YA book by an author, read the YA book, not an adult book, or skip it altogether.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2009-04-05T12:12:00.002-05:00

I forgot a book last time. I also read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak last month. I am in the minority of not caring for the Death as Narrator device, but it did allow the author to insert some background exposition in a new and different way.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is about a young girl Liesel Meminger living in the fictional town of Molchen, Germany, during WWII.
I don't want to do a big plot summary right now because I am trying to get caught up. The book is YA. It is well-written. I liked Liesel and cheered for her. I liked the way her relationships with Rudy Steiner and Max Vandenburg were handled and the relationship between her and her foster father Hans Hubermann. Oh, and Rosa, I loved her too. Basically the characters and relationships are top-notch. Just Death didn't quite work for me, but in the end I got over it and enjoyed the book. I did not love the way the story ended, but I know others loved the ending or at least the narration at the ending.
4 stars.

A moral imperative

2009-04-02T15:27:00.007-05:00

I've decided that it is imperative that I make some kind of blog post. Do you know that blog "Everyday I Write the Book Blog" (um, I should link, but I'm lazy!)? Well, I think I should rename mine "Everyday I Think about Writing the Book Blog".

In order to get the ball rolling, I thought maybe I'd take it easy and just list the pathetically few books that I have read thus far this year.

1. You on a Diet by Dr. Michael F. Roizen and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz. I borrowed this from my dad's wife over Christmas. This book might have been good if it didn't sound so much like what a diet book would sound like if it were written by Dr. Phil. And yes, I know he wrote one, and no, I haven't read it. I can imagine and cringe. 3 stars.

2. The Fireman's Wife by Jack Riggs. I got this through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. It didn't appeal to me. Although it captured the scenery wonderfully (Carolina low country and the mountains), I could not stand the characters or well anything else about it. I think the writing might have been okay. At least I don't remember it being awful. 2.5 stars.

3. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. Wow, I never noticed the word everything in the title before. I think that makes me like the book a little less. Anyway, I finally got around to reading this memoir. Elizabeth Gilbert has a spiritual crisis after going through a divorce and a tough breakup, so she decides to spend a year abroad. Sometimes I like her, and other times I think she is whiny. 3 stars.

4. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. This was for my book group. I was sorry that I missed this book group because I think that this book could have made for a good discussion. I wasn't sure what the author wanted us to think about Hanna. Obviously her illiteracy can't really be her excuse, and pride seemed too simplistic. 3 stars.

5. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. No, I am not going to cut up my credit cards, but I do think Ramsey gives a lot of sensible advice. Don't expect the book to teach you how to budget. It focuses more on learning not to overspend and pay off debt so that you can build wealth later. Fully funded emergency fund here we come! 4 stars because a lot of it didn't apply to us.

6. The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle. Better than I expected given the subject matter--boy who is sexually abused by his parents and used in child porn is taken in by his classmate's family. For the most part it felt honest and not overly sentimental. I know some had it on their best lists from last year. It won't make mine, but I don't feel the need to toss the book in the trash either. 3.5 stars.

7. Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni. Another LT Early Review book. A fascinating memoir about an Iranian-American journalist living in Iran during Ahmadinejad's presidency. She meets a nice Iranian man, falls in love, gets pregnant, then has to scramble to get married in a hurry to avoid an encounter with the morality police. In addition to her own story, Moaveni discusses the pieces she is writing for the American media, which give the book a broader view than the standard memoir. I had not read her previous book, Lipstick Jungle, and do not think it negatively impacted my reading. 4 stars.

8. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows. Another book group book. I really liked this. It is quaintly charming. I imagine reading it was a bit like reading Izzy Bickerstaff's columns: a light touch on a serious subject. The letter format was a different way to tackle multiple viewpoints in a book while preserving the central character. 4.5 stars.

9. 84, Charring Cross Road by Helene Hanff. I saw this book frequently mentioned as a close cousin of Guernsey. It is a collection of correspondence between the author, a struggling New York writer, and the employees of a small London bookstore from 1949 to 1969. Rather than trudge through New York only to find inadequate copies of the books she desires, Hanff orders them from a British used book dealer, who doesn't always deliver to her satisfaction. This book is so short that everyone should just read it. You will have a hard time finding someone who uses all caps so effectively. 5 stars.

And that brings me to the present. Now I just have to sweep away the cobwebs and fix my sidebars.

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

2008-11-21T10:16:00.005-06:00

Breaking Dawn

Stephenie Meyer

2008

754 pp.

First line: "I've had more than my fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn't something you ever really got used to."

This is the fourth and final (?) book of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Like the other books in the series, I found this book compulsively readable. I also found it frequently exasperating and sometimes slow. Like in the other books the plot seemed to move in circles in the beginning and middle before making a mad dash to the end. This book was not an exception.

I don't want to say too much about the plot. I read a spoiler several months ago, and even though the thing that was spoiled happens relatively early in the novel it was still upsetting to me that I knew it going in. Edward and Bella follow through with their agreement from the previous books. Their actions have a surprising consequence, and the rest of the book deals with that and its aftermath.

I recommend this book to fans of the series. I know a lot of people have disliked it. For me it is the weakest book of the series, but it didn't seem to me like such a great drop off in quality that people who enjoyed previous books should avoid it. I think this book deals with some more mature themes, and it is not necessarily appropriate for the same age group as say the first book.

Overall I give it 2.5 stars.

Driving with Dead People by Monica Holloway

2008-11-11T13:30:00.005-06:00

Driving with Dead People

Monica Holloway

2007

336 pp.

First line: "It changed everything: a school picture printed on the front page of the Elk Grove Courier, the newspaper my father was reading."

Holloway's memoir recounts her difficult childhood in smalltown Ohio. The one bright spot appears to be her friendship with the town mortician's daughter. As she grows up she enters into a string of bad relationships and she asks herself why. It is her sister's breakdown that ultimately reveals the truth about her family and allows her to start her own recovery.

I did not care for this book. Somehow I had got it into my head that it would be funny; the title seems ironically humorous. I had read a review that compared it favorably to The Glass Castle. Even in the beginning it seems like it could be funny. It's not funny. It's harrowing. The Glass Castle is harrowing at times, but still manages to be funny. It seemed like this book tried to be funny sometimes, but didn't quite succeed. For me anyway.

I also didn't care for the way some of the portions that dealt with her sister were handled. The change in point-of-view felt false to me. It's her memoir, and I wanted to from her.

I give this book 2.5 stars. It has 5 stars on amazon and bn.com though, so maybe it's just me.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

2008-10-20T12:27:00.005-05:00

Cry, the Beloved Country

Alan Paton

1948

312 pp.

First line: "There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills."

Isn't that just a great first line? I love it, and I think it is a great example of the prose style of this book. Paton had a great voice. This was a wonderful book. The powerful story was supplemented with these great bursts of lyrical exposition that helped to describe the setting and set the scene. I got this book in a big box of Oprah books, most of which I have passed on without reading. I am really glad I read this one.

One of the passages from which the book gets its title:

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the velt with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much." (p.111)

Great description of what can drive a person to apathy and one of my favorite passages:

"There are many sides to this difficult problem. And people persist in dicussing soil-erosion, and tribal decay, and lack of schools, and crime, as though they were all parts of the matter. If you think long enough about it, you will be brought to consider republics, and bilingualism, and immigration, and Palestine, and God knows what. So in a way it is best not to think about it at all." (p.224)

Overall, a 5-star book. Probably my favorite of the year or close to it. I think this is my third book about South Africa this year. The others were Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward and July's People by Nadine Gordimer.

Austenland by Shannon Hale

2008-10-14T10:47:00.004-05:00

Austenland
Shannon Hale
2006
194 pp.

First line: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirty-something woman in possession of a satisfying career and fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little, and Jane Hayes, pretty enough and clever enough, was certainly thought to have little to distress her."

Plot synopsis: Jane Hayes is a single New Yorker with a disastrous love life. After all, what man can measure up to Mr. Darcy? When her aunt dies and leaves her a trip to an exclusive Austen-based resort, Jane decides to go and try to get Mr. Darcy out of her system once and for all. There she finds herself immersed in Austen's England, which is not quite how she imagined it.

I really cannot find too much to say about this one. It was a cute, fun, read, just as good chick lit should be. It managed to be both predictable and unpredictable at the same time. While not as good as Austen, I recommend it for chick lit readers that also enjoy her work. I am not sure how much fun it would be for someone who was unfamiliar with Jane Austen's work.

Best line: "Jane announced to the empty room, 'If you're listening, Big Brother, I refuse to be Fanny Price.'"

I give it 3.75 stars. For chick lit this is high praise from me. Don't miss the dedication page.

Weekly Geeks #21

2008-10-12T14:47:00.056-05:00

I've decided to start doing Weekly Geeks hosted by Dewey over at The Hidden Side of the Leaf.

This week Dewey listed 100 first lines and asked everyone to identify only the ones for which they are 100% sure (no cheating with google!). You can copy from other people's lists once you think you've gotten all the ones that you can.

Unsolved lines:

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.”

34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner.

35. It was like so, but wasn’t.

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled.

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in.

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa’s antipodal ant annexation.

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded.

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.

57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.

60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

70. Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson.

73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World.

80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man.

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl’s underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self.

93. Psychics can see the color of time it’s blue.

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen.

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1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (thanks, Brad, by way of softdrink!)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
7. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce (thanks, Eva!)
8. 1984 by George Orwell
9. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
10. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
11. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Tom Sawyer
13. The Trial by Franz Kafka
14. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
15. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (thanks, Maree!)
16. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
17. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
18. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (thanks, Nymeth, by way of Maree!)
19. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (thanks, Susan!)
20. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
21. Ulysses by James Joyce
22. Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (thanks, softdrink!)
23. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
24. City of Glass by Paul Auster (thanks, bookzombie!)
25. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
26. Beloved by Toni Morrison
27. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
28. The Stranger by Albert Camus
29. Waiting by Ha Jin
30. Neuromancer by William Gibson (thanks, Jessi!)
31. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (thanks, Megan!)
32. The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (thanks, Mary, Penryn's friend!
37. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
38. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (thanks, icedream and Penryn!)
39. Paradise by Toni Morrison (thanks, Yasmin!)
40. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
43. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (thanks, Amanda, by way of Shelly!)
44. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
45. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (thanks, Susan!)
47. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
48. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
50. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
51. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
53. Fahrenheit-451 by Ray Bradbury
54. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (thanks, bookzombie!)
56. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
58. Middlemarch by George Eliot
59. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
61. The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maughm (thanks, Tammy!)
62. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (thanks, Valerie, by way of softdrink!)
64. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
65. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
66. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (thanks, Eva!)
67. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
68. The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace (thanks, Lenore, by way of Joanne!)
69. Herzog by Saul Bellow
71. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (thanks, melydia!)
74. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (thanks, Susan!)
75. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (thanks, Susan!)
76. The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley (thanks, Lethe!)
77. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (thanks, Susan!)
78. The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (thanks, Katherine!)
79. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (thanks, maree!)
81. Crash by J. G. Ballard (thanks, Susan!)
82. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (thanks, softdrink!)
83. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (thanks, softdrink!)
85. Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (thanks, bookzombie!)
87. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
88. Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (thanks, Yasmin!)
89. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (thanks, caite, by way of softdrink!)
90. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (thanks, Susan!)
92. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (thanks, Lana, by way of Megan!)
94. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
96. Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood (thanks, Susan!)
97. Orlando: a Biography by Virginia Woolf (thanks, dreamybee!)
98. Changing Places by David Lodge (thanks, penryn!)
99. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
100. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (thanks, icedream!)

Booking Through Thursday

2008-10-09T21:52:00.002-05:00

I have never done this before, but these questions looked kind of fun.

What was the last book you bought?

I bought Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin and Austenland by Shannon Hale at a library bookstore last week for a game on paperbackswap.

Name a book you have read MORE than once.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?

See above.

How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews
Reviews and recommendations usually.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?

I prefer Fiction, but I have been trying to read more Non-Fiction in the last year.

What’s more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?
I agree with everyone that has said that both are important.

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)
Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird or Boo Radley

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. I cannot seem to make myself want to read it, so it just sits there and gathers dust.

What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it?
I am almost done with Austenland by Shannon Hale. Before that it was Kabul Beauty School which I finished on Tuesday.

Have you ever given up on a book half way in?

Ialmost always finish books, but one that I absolutely could not finish was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I made it through 500 pages. The man can definitely do his research.

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez

2008-10-09T10:01:00.006-05:00

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

Deborah Rodriguez with Kristin Ohlson

2006

270 pp.

First line: "The women arrive at the salon just before eight in the morning."

Synopsis: A Michigan woman becomes a volunteer with CFAF and travels to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. After her stint with CFAF is over, Rodriguez returns to work at the Kabul Beauty School.

I am having a hard time writing this review. It appears that much of what Rodriguez describes may not have happened as she describes it. As I was reading the book, certain parts felt off to me, so when I was done I had to go see what I could find on the internet. I don't want to get into a discussion of memoir and truth and all that, but I did want to mention it. Read about the questions that surround the book here and here.

Questions notwithstanding, the book provides an interesting glimpse into Afghan society and the lives of Afghan women living in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. I admire the courage and spirit of Debbie Rodriguez and all the volunteers who have worked to make a diference in Afghanistan. The dishy, beauty-salon-gossip feel of the book makes it fun to read, and I think that makes it a great book for anyone wanting to learn more about Afghanistan, but not wanting anything too heavy. Think of it as sort of The Secret Lives of Kabul Beauty School Wives.

I give this book 4 stars.

Edited to add: I do think the whole memoir thing is interesting. I know that I could never write a memoir because I don't remember things people say or details of an event, but I accept that my memory works differently than other people's. With the excepion of the first section about her friend's wedding and the very last few pages of the book, I was completely hooked and LOVED the book. The story is wonderfully told.

Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

2008-10-07T10:33:00.006-05:00

Love the One You're With
Emily Giffin

2008

342 pp.

First line: "It happened exactly one hundred days after I married Andy, almost to the minute of our half-past-three-o'clock ceremony."

Plot synopsis: Ellen's marriage to Andy is perfect, or so she thinks until a chance encounter with an ex causes her to wonder whether she made the right choice. And she wonders and wonders and wonders some more. Oh, and then, no wait, that's about it.

This was my first Emily Giffin book. I bought it for a pbs game and decided to read it because I feel like I need to read more new(ish) releases. It is chick lit, but it wasn't particularly funny in the way that chick lit often is (humorous situations, etc.), and the heroine didn't speak quite as much as though she were the Wit of the West as is typical for the genre.

I didn't hate the book, but I didn't love it. I was interested in how it resolved itself, not because I really cared what Ellen decided, but because I wanted to know how the author was going to resolve the situation she'd created. Would a chick lit book advocate staying in a relationship because it was calm and comfortable? I guess if you want to know the answer, you need to read the book. I think the idea would have worked better for me in a shorter format.

Two and a half stars.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

2008-10-03T22:41:00.008-05:00

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
1884
277 pp.

First line: "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter."

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I don't know if I had read this book before. I know it wasn't assigned in school, but I thought I had read it. Parts of it seemed familiar, but doesn't everyone know the general storyline?

Plot synopsis: To escape from his abusive drunken lout of a father, Huck fakes his own murder and rafts down the river, stopping on a small island just down river from town, where he runs into Jim, an escaped slave. The two form an unlikely partnership and when Huck gets wind of people coming for Jim, the two slip off down the river.

This book took me longer than I expected to read. It is written in Huck's voice, and Twain does a great job maintaining the voice throughout the novel. It makes the novel read slower.

I'm really not sure what to say about this book that hasn't been written. What really stood out for me is the character of Huck as wrestles with social customs and morals and his desire to emulate his friend and also become his own person and his attempt to reconcile his friendship with Jim with his sense of rightness. Huck is a great character. Throughout the novel he attributes his "bad" behavior--helping a slave escape-- to his questionable upbringing. He tries to feel bad about what he has done and is doing, but can't seem to muster it:

"They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd 'a' done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now. Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck." (p.95)

I give it 4.5 stars. Now I don't have to renounce my English degree. I've read Twain.

My Best of 2008

2008-10-02T13:53:00.006-05:00

In a fit of anal retentiveness I went through and added publication dates to all the books that I read this year that are listed in the sidebar. Although I don't participate in Weekly Geeks (yet), I enjoy looking at everyone's lists of their favorites from this year. I discovered that I have only read 4 books that were published this year. That seems a tad pathetic. I also noticed that the oldest book that I have read so far this year was published in 1981, beating out a Sue Grafton book by just one year. That seems tragically sad to me. No offense to Sue Grafton fans intended.

In order to rememdy this situation, I intend to read at least 2 books from 2008 in each of the next 3 months, which will bring me to a slightly more respectable total of 10. I also will try to read at least one classic, Huck Finn not included.

Anyway, that said, the best book published in 2008 that I have read so far this year is The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson. It was a good, quick read with interesting characters. The second best was probably Corpse Pose by Diana Killian, a cute cozy mystery. I am not a fan of cozy mysteries, so this is more a testament to how little I liked the other two books than anything else.

a cool contest

2008-10-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

Devourer of Books, another book blogger, is hosting a really cool contest. In honor of her 100th book review earlier this week, she is giving away a bunch of really great books. To enter the contest or just help her celebrate, go here.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

2008-10-01T10:27:00.000-05:00

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood

460 pp.

1996

First line: "Out of the gravel there are red peonies growing."

Background: On July 23, 1843, Mr. Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper/mistress Nancy Montgomery were murdered. The accused were fellow-servants Grace Marks and James McDermott. McDermott was hung for his part in the crimes. Marks was sentenced to death also, but her sentence was commuted to life.

Plot synopsis: In the novel, Dr. Simon Jordan, a young doctor from New England, is invited by a group of interested persons to interview Grace at Kingston Penitentiary in Canada to further a petition for her release. Grace claims to have no recollection of the murders, and Dr. Jordan hopes that by unlocking her memory he will make a name for himself in psychiatry and be able to raise the funds needed to open his own asylum. Simultaneously the story of Grace's childhood and early service and Dr. Jordan's stay in Kingston, the novel inches closer and closer to Grace's account of the fateful day. Is Grace a cold blooded murderess? Is she crazy? Is she innocent?

This is my third Atwood novel; I've also read some of her short stories. Atwood creates a very nuanced story. In addition to the main narrative, Atwood uses letters and dreams and excerpts from other accounts of the murders to enhance the story. My personal favorite is a ballad that is titled like a news report, and is an account of the murders and trial and events leading up to it. Here is an excerpt:

Grace Marks she stood up in the dock,
And she denied it all.
I did not see her strangled,
I did not hear him fall.

He forced me to accompany him,
He said if I did tell,
That with one shot of his trusty gun,
He's send me straight to H__l.

The novel is a sort of quilt, something Grace expresses a great deal of interest in. Grace includes descriptions of quilts that people owned in her narrative, discusses her favorite quilt patterns, and is often working on a quilt while talking to Dr. Jordan. Grace mentions that some quilts look different depending on whether you focus on the light or dark squares. The novel is like that.

Going back to the novel to write this review I noticed something in the first chapter that didn't seem to mesh with what I'd remembered from later in the book. I can't quite account for it and find myself rethinking everything I thought about Grace. Where before I was focusing on the light pieces, now I can see the dark (or vice versa)

More than being about Grace's guilt and sanity however (and why are these the options? who decides?), Atwood has written a clever commentary on the status of women and servants in the time and the roles available to them.

I give this book 4.25 stars. I don't know that I really want to get into advanced fractions, but that's what it is.

slut's wool

2008-09-26T12:36:00.000-05:00

I ended up putting The Book Thief aside for the time being, and I am reading Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood before I have to send it to a new home through pbs. I do not juggle reading multiple books at a time well.

"Slut's wool" is the accumulated fluff of dust that can be found under beds or in corners of rooms that have not been cleaned in a while. Nice, huh? I think it is a reflection of the fact that slut originally referred to a woman of poor grooming habits rather than a women of poor moral habits.

The term appears in Alias Grace on page 218: "There were rolls of slut's wool under there [the bed], enough for a whole sheep, and you could see it hadn't been swept out for a long time." Atwood really knows her way around a phrase.

The Year So Far and other random bits

2008-09-25T10:59:00.001-05:00

On pbs, there is a thread where some of us have been keeping track of our favorite books that we read each month. Here are my selections for this year:

January - A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
February - The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
March - The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
April - Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
May - Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
June - The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
July - The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
August - The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
September - ???

I hesitate to put anything down for September yet because while I liked both Gilead and The Historian, I didn't love them.

For the year, my favorite is probably Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill, but The Plot Against America and The Pirate's Daughter are both strong contenders.

I spent too much time yesterday updating my LibraryThing catalog. I can also be found on Shelfari although my account there is not as up-to-date.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2008-09-23T10:42:00.000-05:00

Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
247 pp.

First line: "I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I say, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old."

I don't think that I have fully processed this novel, so I don't want to say too much about it. I loved the beginning. I love the narrator's voice. My grandfathers both passed away before I was born, but I imagined reading the book was a bit like sitting down with one of them.

Gilead is written as a letter from Reverend John Ames to his young son. They live in a small town in Iowa in 1956. Ames is a third generation preacher. He met his wife late in life. He is writing because he has a heart condition and is not expected to live much longer, and he wants to tell his son a little bit about himself and his life. In trying to make an account of himself, he ends up spending a lot of time discussing the nature of faith , grace, and salvation and worrying over his godson, John Ames Boughton (Jack), who has returned home for a visit after a long time away.

The amount of anxiety he expends on Jack seems out of place and leaves the reader asking why. Is this what he wants to leave his son? The Jack question occupies such a central spot in his mind during the days of his writing that it replaces whatever other narrative legacy he might have left for his son.

I am not sure how I feel about this novel. It is the kind of book that invites (requires?) rereading. I look forward to reading Robinson's next novel, Home, in which she revisits Jack and his family and reveals more of his story.

Favorite passage from the book:

"In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that
really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untransversable, and utterly vast spaces between us." (p. 197)

Recommended for those who like meditative fiction.

I give it 4 stars.

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

2008-09-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

The Deep End of the Ocean

Jacquelyn Mitchard

464 pp.

This book is pretty old, so I'm not going to spend much time on it. My mom's group's book group met and discussed this book last week. I was not going to read it because I saw most of the movie several years ago, and I didn't care for the subject matter or the Lifetime movie feel that the movie possessed. Then the guilt set in. I am one of the core members of our book group and we've had lagging attendance lately, so I felt obligated to attempt to read the book and attend.

I read it in one day. I felt sick most of the time because it is gut-wrenching. I have two kids, both boys. I know that a few moments of inattention can lead to tragedy and that inattention happens. This is an Oprah book, so the subject matter is dark, and when you are done reading you might need counseling. I went to kickboxing class.

For those who are unfamiliar with the book or movie, it is the story of Beth whose 3-year-old son Ben is kidnapped while she is checking into a hotel for her high school reunion. The kidnapping happens almost right away, and the rest of the novel follows Beth and her family (her son Vincent has his own POV chapters interspersed) as the minutes turn into months and years. I don't want to spoil anything, but let's just say there is a break in the case after 9 years and the novel follows the aftermath of that as well.

I really did not care for this book. I don't like the Lifetime movie feel that it had. It felt like too much for me. I probably will not read anything else by this author. I do enjoy her pieces about parenting boys in Wondertime magazine though.

I give this book 3 stars because although it isn't my cup of tea, I can't say it was terribly written.

2nds Challenge

2008-09-21T14:30:00.001-05:00

I'm thinking about joining the 2nds challenge, but first I want to see what books I have that would qualify. The challenge is to read a second book by an author that you have only read once.

1. Saturday or On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (I read Atonement)
2. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (I read The Remains of the Day)
3. Light on Snow by Anita Shreve (I read The Pilot's Wife -- is this really the only Shreve I've read??)
4. Sepulchre by Kate Mosse (I read Labyrinth)
5. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (I read The Interpreter of Maladies)
6. Consequences by Penelope Lively (I read The Photograph)
7. Peony in Love by Lisa See (I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan)
8. Company by Max Barry (I read Jennifer Government)
9. The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb (I read Julia's Chocolates)
10. The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory (I read The Other Boleyn Girl)
11. Malinche by Laura Esquivel (I read Like Water for Chocolate)
12. My Antonia by Willa Cather (I read O Pioneers!)
13. Riding Lessons by Sara Gruen (I read Water for Elephants)
14. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (I read Charming Billy)
15. Hotel World by Ali Smith (I read The Accidental)
16. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (I read The Eyre Affair)
17. The Bean Trees or Prodigal Summer or Animals Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (I read The Poisonwood Bible)
18. Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith (I read The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

19. Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

20. The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

Currently reading

2008-09-17T12:56:00.000-05:00

I am currently reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I normally do not read more than 1 book at a time, but I got a request for Gilead on pbs shortly after I started The Book Thief. This is my third attempt to read Gilead. I always enjoy it at the beginning, but tire of it quickly.

I have heard so many good things about The Book Thief, but so far I'm just not in love with it. I don't care for Death as a narrator, but hopefully he'll grow on me.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

2008-09-16T14:50:00.001-05:00

The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova
642 pp.

First line: "The story that follows is one I never intended to commit to paper."

Main characters: the narrator (unnamed), her father Paul, Helen Rossi, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, Dracula.

First, let me say that I am not a natural book reviewer. While I love reading books, writing about them is very awkward for me. Why I love (or loath) a book is not something that I find easy to explain. I really want to get better at it though, which is part of why I started this blog.

In the opening pages of The Historian a 16 yr old American girl living in Amsterdam finds a strange book and packet of letters in her father's study. When she confronts her father about them, he begins to tell her the story of how the book and letters came to be in his possession and of his desperate search across Eastern Europe for his mentor and the grave of Dracula. His experience was so terrifying that he will only share a piece of it at a time. As he unfolds his story both father and daughter get drawn into the mystery of Dracula.

I enjoyed the book. Kostova does a good job building suspense, although people hoping to be scared will be disappointed. Kostova also does a great job describing the novel's different settings and the prevailing temperament of the different locales. You really get a strong sense of history and place when reading the novel. I thought that the characters were very one-sided. You get a sense of the character as a historian and in relation to each other, but not much beyond that. This serves to draw you into their search more and contributes to a sort of claustrophobia or obsession.

I recommend this book to fans of modern gothic novels that are not put off by length or bookishness.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Whoops!

2008-09-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

I really really want to be a book blogger, but apparently I suck at it. *sigh*

Right now I am reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I have only read about 50 pages so far, but I am enjoying it. I find the length a little daunting however. Can she really keep things interesting for that long? I guess I will find out.

The last book I finished was The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. I'm sure that almost everyone compares this book to The Shop on Blossom Street, but at the risk of being redundant, let me say that I prefered this one, but I didn't love either. This is like Shop's more literary cousin, but I hate when you can see plot twists coming from 5 miles away. Bah!

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

2008-04-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

From back cover:
"We have all heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the honely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty . . and what curses accompanied Cinderella's looks?
Set against the backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household--and the treacherous truth of her former life.
Far more than a mere fairy tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understand, reminding us that deception can be unearthed--and love unveiled--in the most unexpected of places."
I thought this book was good, but not great. I definitely preferred it to Wicked. I approached it as a historical novel rather than as a reimagining of the Cinderella story. While I am not opposed to retelling old stories, Maguire has a way of forcing the story into another shape that is very unappealing to me.

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

2007-09-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

Delia Hopkins searches for missing persons for a living. She does not know that she herself is a missing person, kidnapped by her father Andrew 28 years ago, until one night the police come to their quiet home in New Hampshire to arrest him and extradite him to Arizona to face trial. Delia, her daughter Sophie, her alcoholic fiance Eric, and her best friend Fitz all travel to Arizona to meet the past.

Main characters: Delia Hopkins/Bethany Matthews, Andrew Hopkins/Charles Matthews her father, Sophie her daughter, Eric Talcott her fiance/daughter's father/father's lawyer, Fitz her best friend, Greta her bloodhound, Emma Wasserstein the prosecutor, Victor Vasquez her mother's husband, Elisa Matthews Vazquez her mother, Ruthann Native American neighbor in Arizona.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

2007-09-20T22:36:00.000-05:00

The story that inspired Moby Dick. Rather than the story of the pursuit of the whale though, it is the story of what transpires after the whale sinks the ship though. Very well written. I kept telling myself that I wasn't going to read anymore (the subject matter was too disturbing), but in the end I kept coming back. It's amazing that there were 8 survivors. Based on accounts by survivors, including Thomas Nickerson and Owen Chase, the first mate.

Slacker...

2007-09-14T23:39:00.000-05:00

Since my last post, I have finished Sula and have read Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, The Birth House by Ami McKay, Hello Gorgeous by MaryJanice Davidson, and Dry by Augusten Burroughs.

Breathing Lessons is the story of a married couple, Maggie and Ira Moran, who take a day trip to attend the funeral of Maggie's friend Serena's husband. The trip begins with Maggie pulling into traffic without looking (when leaving the repair shop) and getting sideswiped and ends with them bringing their ex-daughter-in-law Fiona and their granddaughter Leroy (yes, she's a girl) home with them under somewhat false pretenses in the hope that Fiona and Jesse will get back together. Maggie is a meddler, and Ira is stoic to a fault. All in all a delightful story that was at times laugh at loud funny and a great look at what a marriage really looks like.

Outlander is the story of Claire Randall, a post-WWII British war nurse, who accidentally travels back in time while visiting a stone circle in Scotland. There she meets a colorful array of Scots including James Frazier, who becomes her husband even though she already has one in the twentieth century. She also encounters the cruel Jonathan Randall (great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of her husband Frank) and the uncles of Jamie, Colum and Dougal. I found parts of the book over the top (particularly toward the end) but overall thought it was an enjoyable read. A bit too long.

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare an apprentice midwife in a small Canadian coastal community during WWI and her struggle against the encroaching field of obstetrics and its medicalization of the birth experience. McKay expertly weaves together a first person narrative with journal entries, newspaper clippings, and letters. A surprisingly good book. I found it sympathetic without being preachy.

More on the other books at another time...

Currently (re)reading... Sula by Toni Morrison

2007-08-24T20:52:00.000-05:00

Being a loser, I recently traded this book on a bookswap site and immediately felt trader's remorse and had to check it out from the library and re-read it.

Random thoughts:
I like this passage: "Each time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear."
She wore a clothespin to bed to pull her nose?!?
What kind of mother doesn't like her daughter? I felt so bad for Sula...
What did Shad mean when he told Sula, "Always. Always."?

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

2007-08-23T11:22:00.000-05:00

The story of a ten-year-old girl Annemarie Johansen and her Jewish best friend Ellen Rosen in German-occupied Denmark during WWII. Winner of the 1990 Newberry Medal. Read as part of juvenile lit reading project.

I enjoyed this book, but it was strange reading a juvenile book after so many years. (One more complicated than Curious George or Sandra Boynton anyway!) I thought it was a well-told story with lots of opportunity for discussion. An easier itroduction to the Holocaust than Anne Frank.

Key characters: Annemarie, Ellen, Kirsti (Annemarie's 5-year-old sister), Inge Johansen (mother), Papa, Sophie Rosen (Ellen's mother), Mr. Rosen, Henrik (Annemarie's uncle, a member of the Danish Resistance), Peter (her dead sister Lise's fiance and a member of the Resistance).

The Poisonwood Bible

2007-08-22T22:24:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. This was an Oprah book, so why the heck did I not read it until now? Well, quite frankly it scared me. It's long, it has the word Bible in the title, it's about missionaries... And well, being an Oprah book is not exactly a great distinction.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. Key characters: Nathan, Orleana, Rachel, Leah, Adah, Ruth May, Anatole. Completed on: August 19, 2007. Title comes from character's collection of Bibles with typographical errors that change the meaning of the text and refers to Nathan's weekly proclamation that "Tata Jesus is bangala", which the way he says it translates to "Jesus is poisonwood."