Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I completely spaced the ‘I’m taking a break’ post I was going to do on Thursday morning, because I was too busy getting ready to drive to Idaho with the kiddos and my nephew to surprise my dad for his 77th birthday celebration.  (Technically his birthday is today, but we took advantage of the Monday holiday.)  The trip went well–it sounded like the weather would make the trip there AND back dicey, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared it would be–and both my parents were happily surprised.  Hooray!  We got back on Monday evening, but I’d slept too poorly Sunday night (thanks to my soon-to-be-4-year-old!) to string coherent sentences together, and so here we are.

While we were at my parents’ house, I skimmed through a few books for the girlies on the treadmill AND read one of the graphic novels that’s been sitting in a pile in my room.   The skimmed books have migrated to the shelves in those girlies’ bedroom, but they pounced on the graphic novel shortly after I finished it, which means that Hereville:  How Mirka Caught a Fish is ready to go back to the library.  I’m a little sad about that, though; it brought a fantastic trilogy to an end, and who wants good things to end?  In Mirka’s 3rd adventure, Barry Deutsch not only nails another adventure story with Orthodox Jewish humor and flavor, he also takes a deeper look at the relationships in Mirka’s family, making for a conclusion even more satisfying than I expected.  (Also more chaotic.)  I’ve heard variations on tales of a wishing fish, but this is most definitely my favorite.  Don’t miss out on Mirka!

That pretty much sums up Julia Stuart right there, folks.  I finished The Pigeon Pie Mystery on Sunday, and I possibly enjoyed it as much as The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise.  Pigeon Pie is perhaps easier to summarize–Mink (an actual Indian princess, albeit one born and raised in England) loses her father, moves into a grace-and-favour residence (just google it, really), finds her maid accused of murdering a neighbor, and sets out to clear her name by investigating her quirky, suddenly all-very-suspicious neighbors–but from Mink’s adventures buying mourning clothes to her eventual discovery of the truth, Stuart’s wit and writing style are a continual delight.  Possibly if you mixed one of Agatha Christie’s lighter novels with “My Cousin Vinny” or “Legally Blonde,” threw in a touch of Jane Austen and Tolkien…I don’t know.  Some styles defy description; all I can tell you is that at this point, I would read an instruction manual if Julia Stuart wrote it.  Go get something by her–anything, really–and read it today!

We ate at my in-laws’ tonight, and since there is only one January birthday in Utah, I figured a supplemental dessert wouldn’t hurt, right?  (Okay, I just like dessert.  But still!)  I wanted something we could make as a family activity, and so I went to Mel’s Kitchen Cafe (one of my favorite cooking blogs) to find this recipe for Brookies.  (Because why have brownies OR chocolate chip cookies when you could have both?!)  I made the doughs, my hubby made them into balls with the kiddos and smushed the balls together while I chopped veggies for soup, and several pans later, we had a lovely pile of chocolaty, buttery circles of goodness to share.  These would be labor intensive to make alone, but they’re perfect if you’ve got a small posse of elementary schoolers eager to help–and oh, they’re lovely!  They will definitely be happening again.

This week I (finally) managed to finish one of the books that I started before the holidays and then ended up leaving by the wayside, because, well, the holidays.  (The Christmas stuff is still not all put away, but I’m trying!)  I received a copy of Sam Maggs’ Wonder Women:  25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History almost, well–2 1/2 years ago.

Ouch.  Kids just slow down certain aspects of your life, you know?

Anyway.  Clearly, this review is LONG overdue, especially since the folks at Quirk Books were kind enough to send me an ARC.  Without further ado, then…

THE GOOD:  Okay, these were seriously fascinating stories.  What kills me is that at 39, I’d only heard of 4 of the 25 before I started the book–and I love history. Which means that the majority of these stories aren’t known the way they should be, so kudos to Sam Maggs for bringing them to our attention.  She also gives us brief paragraphs on more women for each category, making this a book packed with stories that need to be told.  The sections are long enough to give a sense of each story but short enough so as not to feel overwhelming for teens who may not be big nonfiction fans (I certainly wasn’t at that age!).  I wanted more, but again, I’m 39, and I quite enjoy nonfiction at this point in my life.

THE NOT-AS-GOOD-FOR-ME:  I noted multiple reviewers complaining about Maggs’ tone, and I will say that I was a bit tired of it by the end.  I’m not a teen and my oldest is 12, so she may have been spot-on for her intended audience–I wouldn’t know.  Its specific sort of slangy, modern chattiness narrows its appeal a bit, though.

THE LESS-THAN-IDEAL-OVERALL:  In the first few sections, Maggs went out of her way to cast relevant male characters in the worst possible light.  That seemed to ease up as the book progressed, but it weakened the effect a bit.  (It’s true that nonfiction slanted in the opposite direction for, well, centuries, but I’d rather see a problem rectified than the pendulum swing out in the other direction.)  Maggs also went out of her way to point out any nontraditional lifestyle choices made by the women in question, and at some point, their sexuality is not only not relevant, but mentioning it falls into the old trap of focusing on different information when describing women than when describing men.

THE VERDICT:  This is not a book written for adults that appeals to teens, but a book written for teens (or possibly those just past their teens).  The stories in it, however, are stories that need to be told, whatever the age of their audience; I’m interested to see what else Sam Maggs has to offer.

Since I didn’t post on the 7th (again, due to technical difficulties rather than “I spaced it”!), you get a freebie–especially since it’s one that will be eagerly devoured by my older girls as soon as I hand it off to them.  Last night I finished Barry Deutsch’s Hereville:  How Mirka Met a Meteorite, the second installment in a series that really ought to be more well known than it is.  (Seriously.  It’s got adventure, it’s about a minority culture, and it has a troll who can do impressive things with yarn.  Who could ask for anything more?)  In it, Mirka retrieves her sword from the troll only to end up contending with a meteorite (who happens to be her doppelganger) for control over her own life.  There are monsters, thrown rocks, and eye-rolling siblings.  There are poor choices, technicalities, and a brief visit with the moon.  If you don’t want to read this book, well–WHY NOT?

I checked Nidhi Chanani’s Pashmina out of the library mostly for my graphic novel obsessed 9-year-old, although I imagine my oldest will also enjoy it; being the mom I am, however, I kept it in my room until I’d read it first.  (To clarify:  occasionally I intentionally preview for appropriateness of content, often I preview to see if it will appeal and/or be worth reading, and ALWAYS I abide by the ‘if I want it first, I get it first’ rule.  That’s just how I roll.)  I was actually going to review it on the 7th, but my admin screen wouldn’t load, so here we are.

First of all, the strengths.  Both the story and the characters were likable for me; I was pretty aggravated at Pri’s mom’s reticence about her father for a while, but when the truth comes out, I couldn’t actually come up with a lot of ideas for what she should have done instead.  (Parenting is just plain hard.)  I also liked the marriage of universally relatable themes with a culture relatively unknown to me.  The art was engaging, and the color choices added to my perception of the story.

As for the weaknesses?  More than one of the conflicts introduced were dropped rather abruptly, and the transitions sometimes felt stilted; also, taken as a group, the themes of the book don’t point definitively to one age group.  Much of it seems geared more toward the middle grades, but between the relationship Pri’s aunt and uncle have with each other and the reason her mother won’t talk about her father, I foresee some serious conversations with my 9-year-old.  (The one about unwed teenage pregnancy is the one I’m least looking forward to.)

And the verdict?  It’s worth reading, and I think middle graders will love it.  If you’re a parent, be prepared to talk about the themes with your kiddos.  In the meantime, I enjoyed it enough to go see if Chanani has any other books out there, so Goodreads, here I come!

Last night I finished listening to Eli Brown’s Cinnamon and Gunpowder, which my sister highly recommended.  I’ve spent quite some time trying to come up with comparisons that will give you a sense of the plot; my best effort goes something like this.  IF you crossed “The King and I” with “Pirates of the Caribbean”, added elements of  “Star Wars” and Robin Hood, threw in a bit of Joan Aiken’s Nightbirds on Nantucket and something of the character of Fantine from Les Miserables,  and then aired the resulting story on the Food Network, you might end up with something like Eli Brown’s second novel.  It’s a bit odd, a bit bloody, sometimes poignant, and sprinkled with food porn.  What begins as a tale of a captured cook forced to prepare lavish Sunday dinners for an infamous female pirate captain becomes a David vs. Goliath sort of clash, and it surprised, delighted, and moved me.  If you like history, food, or the clashing of two polar opposites, don’t miss this one!

You know that review I’ve mentioned more than once, the one I’ve been putting off because I haven’t had the emotional energy for it?  Well, it’s time.  I finished Antonio Iturbe’s The Librarian of Auschwitz on the 24th of November, but the holidays were already overwhelming me by then, and I was working to finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the year; the review just got postponed, and postponed again, until–well, here we are.  Much of the intensity of the reading/listening experience has faded, partly with time and partly because I’ve read another novel about WWII and its aftermath since then, but not so much that I can’t tell you honestly how amazing it was.  I don’t read a great deal of fiction about the Holocaust–fiction seems a consistent second choice with so many actual narratives available–but Librarian was based on a true story, and it felt authentic.

It also held me spellbound.

I received a copy for review months ago, but the size had been intimidating me; my current stage in life spares me only so much focus and time.  When I found that it was available on audio I jumped at the chance to listen to it (while skimming my print copy at odd moments to ensure I wasn’t missing anything!), and I found a bonus–an afterward that wasn’t in my uncorrected proof but that made the entire book that much more compelling.  (I’m honestly pondering buying a copy just for that afterward.)  If you have any interest in the Holocaust–if you’re passionate about books and what they make of us–even if you’re just looking for something fascinating to read–do yourself a favor.  Get yourself a copy of this book–audio, print, whatever works for you in the here and now–and join Dita on her journey from Prague, to Terezin, to Auschwitz, to Bergen-Belsen, and back again to Prague and beyond.  Hers is a journey no one should miss.

So I missed the 29th, because there was craziness, and then there’s been more craziness, and now it’s New Years Eve with its own brand of craziness.  Goodnight to everybody, and I’ll see you next year!

I hope all of you were as blessed as we were this Christmas–with family, with warmth and comfort, and with the Savior’s love.  There is more family to come as the new year approaches, but for now, I get to review for you the book I finished listening to while wrapping presents on Christmas Eve.  Jessica Shattuck’s The Women in the Castle sounded like exactly the sort of book that appeals to me–fellow widows of German resistance fighters gathering in a crumbling down castle to support each other and face life in postwar Germany–and I was quite excited when Britt offered me her extra copy.  Upon reading it, however, I found that the book is a good deal more complicated than that.  It both was and wasn’t my sort of book.

The back of it quotes the NY Times–“Moving…A plot that surprises and devastates”–and the USA Today–“The Women in the Castle stands tall among the literature that reveals new truths about one of history’s most tragic eras”; both of those blurbs strike me as accurate.  The blurb on the front, however, caught my eye first.  The author of a recent bestseller (The Nest) is quoted there as saying “A joy to read, this is a beautiful and important book.”  I looked at that a number of times during the course of the novel, and while I’m not going to quibble with ‘beautiful’ and ‘important’ as adjectives–it’s certainly beautifully written, as well as being the kind of thought provoking that can’t help but be enlightening in its way–nothing about this book struck me as a joy to read.  Compelling, yes, powerful, yes, but a joy?  Seriously?

As I read it, I couldn’t help but think of a memoir called We Were Not Alone:  How an LDS Family Survived World War II Berlin.  I suppose I had wanted Shattuck’s book to contain those same themes of trying to be true to one’s conscience in an unconscionable world–and being blessed for it.  Instead, it spotlighted differing German views of the war, the Nazis, and a people’s moral responsibility, embodied in three very different women whose bond was not at all what I wanted it to be.  I wanted them to build relationships based on trust that would sustain them in postwar life, but that did not feel like the point at all.  Shattuck, to her credit, does an excellent job of showing me why that was–I imagine what she describes was painfully real for many, many people–but I’ve always loved stories about healing and overcoming, and that wasn’t quite the vibe here.  Surviving, yes–in different kinds of ways–but what true healing and overcoming there was didn’t happen when (or how) I was expecting it to.  I find myself thinking of The Kite Runner, which was beautiful and painful and, at the very end, cautiously hopeful, but no more than that.  I respect the level of thought The Women in the Castle inspired in me, but it was an emotionally difficult rather than an emotionally satisfying read.  Whether or not you ought to read it depends entirely, then, on what you’re looking for.*

*I ended this sentence this way because it’s exactly how I wanted it to sound; in the interest of full disclosure, however, I still struggle to look at the preposition ending a 3-paragraph post.  It works, but it hurts.