Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

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by Michael Pollan, illustrated by Maira Kalman
ages: adult
First sentence: “Eating in our time has gotten complicated — needlessly so, in my opinion.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I suppose this is kind of an unusual pick for me, since I’ve been on board with Michael Pollan’s philosophy (more or less) for years now. And so, in many ways, this little “eater’s manual” is kind of superfluous, at least for me.

But, since I picked it for my in-person book group (I’d wanted to pick Kitchen Counter Cooking School, but the library only has one copy, and I needed something more accessible), I figured I needed to read it.

And while I don’t think I learned anything new, this lovely illustrated, slim book was simply a joy to read. Pollan’s taken his whole philosophy and boiled it down to seven words — Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants — and has 83 rules to help you follow that philosophy. In other words: he makes the complicated and long Omnivore’s Dilemma accessible for, well, ordinary people.

Which means that I hope people will read it, and we can have some good discussion. Because there are some good ideas in this book.

Oh, and as as aside: my favorite rule? I have three: #22, It’s Not Food if It Arrived Through the Window of Your Car; #57, If You’re Not Hungry Enough to Eat an Apple, Then You’re Probably Not Hungry; and #76, Place a Boquet of Flowers on the Table and Everything Will Taste Twice as Good.

Worth reading.

Cold Fury

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by T. M. Goeglin
ages: 13+
First sentence: “My name is Sarah Jane Rispoli”
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All 16-year-old Sarah Jane wants to do is box, hang with her family, and muse about her lack of a love life. However, that is not what the cards have in store for her. See: she’s running for her life. Her 16th birthday turned into a horror film disaster, and she’s got a steel suitcase, a .45, and a notebook between her and certain death. The question is: how on earth can she pull it off?

It’s a great premise: a girl Alex Rider crossed with the Corleone family. There’s a LOT of promise in this, and if boys can get past the girl glaring darts at them on the cover, they’ll like it too. All of which holds a lot of promise.

But my biggest problem with this book was that it took more than 100 pages for the story to get started. While there were hints that something bad has happened: from the outset, you know about the gun and the suitcase, but you have to get the whole history first. You have to establish that she’s a boxer, that her family has mob ties, and that her life is in danger. I understand that, I really do. But did it need to take 100 pages?

But, after those 100 pages, the story really picks up. There’s intrigue, intensity, a hint of romance (but only the briefest mentions; Sarah Jane is running for her life, after all), and, well, action. And, even though there’s a sequel, it resolves quite nicely.

All of which made me like this one better in the end than when I started. I just don’t know how many are going to want to wade through the 100 pages to get to the good bits.

Audiobook: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

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by Helen Simonson
read by  Peter Altschuler
ages: adult
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

A while back a woman came into the store looking for some Georgette Heyer books. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any in the store (shame on us), so I started hunting around for some read-alikes. She’d read all the obvious ones (Jane Austin), we were lacking in Shannon Hale as well, and then I stumbled upon this one. I remembered, somewhat vaguely, that it was British and that it had gotten some good buzz, and so I recommended it to her. She bought it, and I crossed my fingers that it would work.

And then, I chided myself: if I recommended it to someone who liked Georgette Heyer (which I do), why wouldn’t I like it? So, I picked up the audio book to listen to while I putter around town sans kids.

The bottom line? It was a grand suggestion for someone who loved Georgette Heyer: at turns funny and sweet; very, very British; and with a lovely wedding at the end. I adored listening to it.

I do have to admit, also up front, that I adored it because Peter Altschuler is a brilliant narrator. All the right voices, all the right inflection (Roger was a Twit! I kept shouting at him. I’m sure the other drivers thought I was insane.), all the right emphasis in the right places, so I got the humor and I understood the conflict and I loved (absolutely adored) the Major.

For the five of us who live under a rock, the  basic story is one of Major Ernest Pettigrew, widower, whose brother has just died. He’s a bit at a loss the  day of, and so when Mrs. Jasmina Ali (widow), comes to collect for the paperboy, he just kind of falls into a friendship with her. He soon discovers that 1) she’s wonderful and 2) it doesn’t matter, to him, that she’s Pakistani, though it seems to matter a lot to the villagers of Edgecombe St. Mary. It’s a domestic drama: the things that happen are ordinary things. Antique guns are involved, as are American developers, and lots and lots of cultural tension. Through it all, the Major is impeccably honorable and quite British, but somehow, all comes right in the end (though there’s a bit of a tense scene wherein Islam does not come off well, and I thought was quite unnecessary), with the Major and Mrs. Ali following their hearts.

I didn’t realize that it was a modern setting, but for the most part, it all worked. The characters are really what drive this story: from the not-meaning-to-be-racist-and-yet-are village ladies; to the twit of a son Roger; to his American fiance, Sandy (I liked her too); to the orthodox, yet conflicted, nephew of Mrs. Ali, all are intriguing and complex. Very few (maybe the bumbling vicar, and the loud, obnoxious American developer) are straight-up caricatures, something which I appreciated.

A delightful way to spend a few hours.

Every Day

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by David Levithan
ages: 14+
First sentence: “I wake up.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

A wakes up every morning in someone else’s body. He has been doing this all his life: every day, a different body, a different life, and only for one day. After sixteen years of this, he’s gotten pretty good at going in, not interfering, and getting out.

And then he meets Rhiannon.

He landed in the body of her boyfriend, and truly didn’t mean to fall in love with her. But, he felt this connection and even though he didn’t want to, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But how to do this? How, if he isn’t the same person day after day, can he convince Rhiannon that he not only loves her, but get her to love him back?

It’s a delicate dance, one that goes through days and bodies and passions and questions. One that not only allows the reader to get to know A as a person, but peek into a wide variety of other lives. And one that Levithan does marvelously.

As I was reading, I thought that it reads much like a John Green book: philosophical and introspective, with always the possibility of being pretentious. (Though I appreciated much of the musings, like how 98% of the human experience is the same and it’s the 2% that we’re always fighting over.) But, Levithan never allows A or Rhiannon or the story to cross over into annoying territory: everything fit together just right, to not only tell a beautiful love story, but a beautiful human one.

And the end? The end was both absolutely perfect and completely heartbreaking. There were moments when I wondered where Levithan was going with the story, how he was going to end it, and whether or not it would work, but I shouldn’t have worried. It made complete sense not only within the confines of the structure, but in a grander sense.

This book has everything: it will entertain you, it will make you think, and perhaps, most of all, it will make you believe in the ultimate goodness of humanity.

Unspoken

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by Sarah Rees Brennan
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Every town in England has a story.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Kami has an imaginary friend.  She has had him in her head, talking to her, keeping her company for as long as she can remember. She’s learned not to talk about him, because people in her small English Village, Sorry-in-the-Vale, tend to think she’s a bit crazy, but he’s there and she’s learned to live with it.

Not for one moment did she ever think that 1) he was really real and 2) he’d show up in her village.

Kami is also an aspiring investigative reporter, something which won me over immediately. I loved her spunk and her gumption, and her Nancy Drew/Veronica Mars/His Girl Friday determination to get to the bottom of the story. Because in Sorry-in-the-Vale there are a LOT of secrets that no one is willing to tell.

To be honest, that kind of bugged me for a lot of the book: the fact that Brennan hinted at secrets, and hinted at secrets, and hinted at secrets, but the reader was as CLUELESS to understanding them as Kami was. I wanted more information, but it wasn’t enough of an annoyance to make me throw the book across the room. No, what kept me reading was the witty writing — the balance between humor, romance, and suspense — and the characters. I adored the girls: Kami, of course, but also her friends Holly and Angela. And the guys weren’t that bad either.

And when the secrets were finally revealed, I understood why Brennan approached it the way she did. She has a way of keeping me engaged, turning pages, until her satisfying-yet-frustratingly-open conclusion.

I can’t wait for the next one!

Doing the Cybils Happy Dance

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I’ve been a part of the Cybils since the beginning (so, I was just nominating for the first two years, but that counts. Right?) and I’ve always longed to be a part of the panels where my heart truly lies: judging science fiction and fantasy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve ADORED the years I got to do middle grade fiction, but this year, my happy dance chance came:

Round 1 – MG
Anamaria Anderson
Books Together
@bookstogether
Sherry Early
Semicolon
@semicolonblog
Sondra Eklund
Sonderbooks 
@Sonderbooks
Melissa Fox
Book Nut
@book_nut
Jessalynn Gale
Garish & Tweed 
@jessmonster
Charlotte Taylor
Charlotte’s Library
@charlotteslib
Cheryl Vanatti
Reading Rumpus
@Tasses

Round 2 – MG
Hayley Beale
From the Children’s Room 
Kristen Evey
Bookends (& Beginnings) 
@kristenevey
Rosemary Kiladitis
More Coffee, Please 
@roesolo
Gina Ruiz
AmoXcalli
@ginaruiz
Amelia Yunker
Challenging the Bookworm

SO excited. As a (yet another) reminder: nominations open October 1. I can’t wait to see what you throw at us!

In Honor of My Birthday

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And because I’m this much today:

I give you a list of five of my guilty pleasures. Because if you can’t enjoy them on your birthday, when can you?

Or as Stephen Fry put it: “The kind of pleasures I’m talking about are things that fly in the face of the Protestant work ethic, things that fly in the face of bourgeois convention, and things that even fly in the face of one’s own self image.”

#1 Pit Bull

I blame Zumba, because his music often features prominently, but I’ve found — contrary to all my former musical tastes — that I really like his stuff. A lot.

(On a side note, Lady Gaga has also grown on me…)

#2 The Nerdist Podcasts
Out of all of these, this is the least unexpected. Yes, I am a nerd and I do have a thing for celebrity interviews. However, these are a lot more foul — or, rather, the host Chris Hardwick, is — than I generally like. But they’re also funny and smart, and really great background writing noise. I know I shouldn’t like them, but I do.

#3 This cookbook

I brought it home from work, and M said, “You are gong to make us all fat.” I don’t care. It’s heavenly. Lindsay Landis was brilliant: cookie dough in stuff?? How can you resist? See that cake in the corner? It’s what I made for myself for my birthday. Yum.

#4 Superhero movies

Actually, I should just say “blow-’em-up” movies (you know: the ones that are more explosions than plot), because while I consider myself somewhat of a pacifist, I get great pleasure in watching things blow up in implausible ways. Like that scene in Dark Knight where the semi truck completely flips over and explodes? Impossible, but I was giddy.

Also, this movie rocked:

#5 The Richard Castle books

No, they’re not good literature. No, they’re not even “real” books by a real author. And no, I will never pay money to own these. (Disney/ABC doesn’t need my money. Really.) But honestly? I love them, and yeah, I will read this one, sooner rather than later:

And there you have it.

What are some of your guilty pleasures?

What Came From the Stars

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by Gary D. Schmidt
ages: 11+
First sentence: “So the Valorim came to know that their last days were upon them.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC pile at my place of employment.

Tommy is not a happy camper. His mother died recently, and his whole family (father, sister, him) are struggling to cope. It doesn’t help that his father is getting pressure from a local real estate agent to sell so she can develop Huge Seaside Condos. And it REALLY doesn’t help that he’s in seventh grade, turning 12, and his grandmother gave him the LAMEST present: an Ace Robotroid Adventure LUNCHBOX.

Except, after lunch, his whole world changes: he finds a chain in the lunchbox, puts it on, and becomes, well, greater than he was.

See, the chain holds all the art from the Valorim, a race that’s being conquered by the evil Lord Mondim and the O’Mondim in a world far away. They put all their knowledge in the chain and threw it out into space (at the speed of thought; I did wonder, initially, how all this was supposed to happen, since things don’t travel through space terribly fast, but Schmidt did account for it later in the book), and hoped for the best.  And Tommy was the best that he found.

I should stop here and say that I agree with Jen: the realistic parts of this book work great. Schmidt knows how to write boys in a way that’s both real and vulnerable. Tommy’s dealing with some heavy issues here, guilt and survival and worry, and Schmidt makes it all come alive. He’s got some good friends, he’s doing okay on the surface, but he’s struggling.

But, at least for much of the book, the fantasy element didn’t work for me. I appreciated the difference in tone between the Valorim and the realistic parts of the book (I also found it to be an interesting choice to se the Valorim parts in italics, which set it apart even more), but I kept coming back to the feeling that funny languages and epic histories does not a fantasy make. See: Tommy put on the chain and immediately began spouting weird words, and having new talents, and he never even questioned it. Never sat back and said, “Where the heck did this come from?” or “Why on earth do I know that?” And that really bothered me. I wanted some sort of internal struggle with Tommy, some way of him trying to figure out what was going on, trying to grasp at understanding of a situation that was so far outside of his realm of understanding, but I got none of that.

I could brush it off as it being an upper middle grade book, but I don’t really believe that; Schmidt is a better writer than that. No, I’m chalking this up to a lack of understanding of how fantasy works (though, I suppose, if you pin me down, I’m not quite sure how it works, either). It’s a good idea, and I do have to admit that by the end it was bothering me less; there’s some adventure, and a bit of a battle, and a very  sweet ending which almost made up for the initial bristle.

I just wish it could have been more than it was.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Palace of Stone

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by Shannon Hale
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Miri woke to the insistent bleat of a goat.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Princess Academy

It’s a bit after the events of Princess Academy (six months, maybe?), and Miri has received a letter from the princess-to-be, Britta. Not only is she inviting all the former princess academy members down to Asland, the capitol city of their country, but she is offering Miri a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go to Queen’s Castle, the foremost school in the country.

Of course the girls from Mt. Eskel take the opportunity.

And, of course, things aren’t as wonderful in the lowlands as those up in Mt. Eskel have wanted to believe. There’s poverty, there’s corruption, there’s a revolution brewing, and Miri finds herself in the midst of it all.

I read this one without picking up Princess Academy first (no time!), and honestly, it worked for me.  Hale is a fabulous story teller, and her worlds are always well-developed and intricate. And she managed to give me enough reminders of the first one sprinkled throughout this book that I remembered what I needed to remember, without being heavy-handed.

Hale also explores some interesting ideas: the pull between forces, the choice between two goods, and the inevitable love triangle (the end decision of this one C would love, because she’s always choosing the safe, nice boy, and the girls never end up with the “right” one, in her opinion). There are politics and tough questions, and traitors (though she really didn’t do enough with Gummonth, in my opinion; I wanted him to be more like Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings), and enough conflict to keep me interested through the end.

Miri, of course is a strong, quiet heroine, thinking and questioning and trying to do what she feels is right. And even though I felt Princess Academy was quite fine the way it was, I’m glad for this sequel; it allowed me to revisit a world that I remember loving, and reacquaint myself with characters I can’t help but be fond of.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.) 

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

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by Christopher Healy
ages: 8+
First sentence: “Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

So, you think you know your fairy tales. How the same guy — Prince Charming (which is an adjective really, not a name) — manages to rescue Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty AND Snow White? How is that possible?

Well, what if they were actually four guys: Frederic, Gustav, Liam, and Duncan. And they feel like they kind of got the short shrift in those stories. Maybe, just maybe, things aren’t exactly everything the stories said they were.

And, what would happen if Frederic (who really is quite afraid of the outdoors), and Gustav (who has impulse problems), Liam (whose ego could be taken down a notch or two) and Duncan (who’s just plain, well, unusual) stumble upon each other, and upon a sinister plot to take over all of their kingdoms, and just happen to figure out a way to stop it?

I’m not sure I’d call this book hilarious — no milk was ever snorted through my nose, a good benchmark, I think — but it was definitely amusing. From the chapter titles, all of which begin “Prince Charming…” (my favorite? “Prince Charming Walks into a Bar”. Sounds like a joke waiting to happen), to the silliness of the princes to the fact that it all just kinda sorta works out in the end, it was enough to keep a smile pasted on my face.

My only qualm: I have no idea if boys — the target audience, given the look of the Brave Guys on the cover — are going to want to read a silly book about fairy tale princes being lame until they learn not to be. Much like Adam Rex’s Cold Cereal, I am afraid this is a book without much of an audience. Which is too bad, because it’s really a delight.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)