Eat, Love Pray and The Caliph's House

Eat Love Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert is one woman's quest to find peace after a divorce. After jumping from divorce into a love affair that didn't work Elizabeth decided to take a year off and try to fulfill some of her dreams. The first third of her year was spent in Italy because she had always wanted to learn Italian. The second was spent in India with a guru and the third in Bali with a medicine man as her guide. The book worked for me because of her ability to realistically describe her despair and later on, her enthusiasm, with just a dash of humor, when learning about spirituality

The Caliph's House: A Year In Casablanca by Shah is a humorous look at the Moroccan people and culture from an outsider's perspective. Shah does a great job at presenting the humor and affection for the culture when describing disastrous moments (of which there were many) as well as the every day details about his new home. I love these kind of books where expatriate are offered advice by a series of well intentioned but ultimately baffling local residents.

The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time : The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan is the heartbreaking story of those who settled the Great Plains only to find themselves in the middle of an eight year drought, not to mention the Depression. Egan highlights the endurance and fighting spirit of these settlers but also tells of those who were broken by disaster after disaster due to the unceasing dust storms.

Egan also points out that government push to turn the Great Plains into farmland caused erosion on a grand scale and it was only with the efforts of FDR's Soil Conservation Service returned the land and prevents another national crisis. At the end of the book he also points out some of the current practices that are depleting our natural resources and could potentially cause another ecological disaster in the future.

Seeing and Sunstoke

Jesse Kellerman, son of mystery author's Fay and Jonathan Kellerman, has written an interesting mystery novel. One reviewer said that this novel is "too literary" to be a mystery. Sunstroke is enjoyable but not on my top ten list.

Seeing by Jose Saramago will require a bit of a time investment, not because of the length of the book but because of the attention you will need to get through this book. This novel focuses on the effect on elected officials that occurs when a large percentage of the ballots turned in are blank. None of the characters have names and considering the similar personalities of the different officials it is difficult to keep them all straight. Added to that is the fact that it is difficult to relate to any of the characters (unless you happen to be a politician).

White Ghost Girls and The Memory Artists

White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenaway is a haunting story about two sisters growing up in Hong Kong. This is another book that I am still thinking about. The younger sister is the narrator and so we see the older sister's actions through a bit of a filter. It has me thinking about the details that were left out that would explain why the older sister acted the way she did. In addition, this author has a poetic way with words. Every once in a while I would stop and reread a sentence or paragraph not for content but because of the way the words flowed on the page.

The Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore is one of those books that has been growing on me the longer I read it. Noel Burun has a condition called synaesthesia which causes him to attach colors to events from his past and part of the story is told from his point of view. (By the way, I looked up this condition and it does exist.) His mother has Alzheimers and part of the story is told from her point of view not to mention the points of view of other "unusual" characters that are also represented. This is another book for the more experimental reader.

Updated Reading List

Here is the newly updated reading list for my Notable Book Council project. Let me know what you like or didn't like.

Abel, Jessica La Perdida
Anaya, Rudolfo The Man Who Could Fly and Other Stories
Auster, Paul The Brooklyn Follies
Baker, Kevin Striver's Row
Barich, Bill A Fine Place to Daydream
Barnes, Julian Arthur & George
Barry, Max Company
Barton, Emily Brookland
Bechdel, Alison Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Ben Jelloun, Tahar The Last Friend
Bennett, Alan Tales Untold
Berkowitz, Edward Something Happened
Berthon, Simon Warlords
Branch, Taylor At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68
Broad, William The Oracle: The Lost Secrets And Hidden Messages Of Ancient Delphi
Brown, Frederick Flaubert: A Biography
Bruinius, Harry Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity
Burt, Stephen Parallel Play
Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story
Carr, Cynthia Our Town
Cartwright, Justin The Promise of Happiness
Century, Douglas Barney Ross
Chatterjee, English, August
Cheney, Annie Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains
Chu, Miyoko Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds
Cohen Rich Sweet and Low: A Family Story
Cuoto, Mia A Sleepwalking Land
Davis, Kathryn The Thin Place
Davis-Gardner, Angela Plum Wine
De Los Santos, Marisa Love Walked In
Dean, Debra The Madonnas of Leningrad
Desai, Kiran Inheritance of Loss
Doig, Ivan The Whistling Season
Donoghue, Emma Touchy Subjects: Stories
D'Orso, Michael Eagle Blue
D'Souza, Tony Whiteman
Dunant, Sarah In The Company Of The Courtesan
Eberstadt, Fernanda Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies
Egan, Timothy Worst Hard Time
Eisenberg, Deborah The Twilight of the Superheroes
Ferguson, Craig Between the Bridge and the River
Flannery, Tim The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing
Fried, Daisy My Brother is Getting Arrested Again
Fugard, Lisa Skinner's Drift
Gaddis, John Lewis The Cold War: A New History
Ghosh, Amitav Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Time
Gibbons, Ann The First Human
Gifford, Barry The Stars Above Verazcruz
Gilbert, Elizabeth Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy
Glass, Julia The Whole World Over
Gluck, Louise Averno: Poems
Godwin, Gail Queen of the Underworld
Godwin, Gail The Making Of A Writer: The Journals Of Gail Godwin 1961 - 1963
Goodman, Allegra Intuition
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life
Gorenberg, Gershom The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977
Greenaway, Alice White Ghost Girls
Grunwald, Michael The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise
Grushin, Olga The Dream Life of Sukhanov
Hammad, Suheir Zataar Diva
Handler, Daniel Adverbs
Henderson, William Haywood Augusta Locke
Henriquez, Cristina Come Together, Fall Apart
Hirshfield, Jane After
Homes, A. M. This Book Will Save Your Life
Horn, Dara The World to Come
Hyland, M. J. Carry Me Down
Junger, Sebastian A Death in Belmont
Kanipe, Jeff Chasing Hubble's Shadows
Karr, Mary Sinners Welcome
Kellerman, Jesse Sunstroke
Kindred, Dave Sound and Fury
King, Ross The Judgment of Paris
Kinzer, Stephen Overthrow:America's Century of Regime Change
Klinkenborg, Verlyn Timothy or Notes of an Abject Reptile
Kurlansky, Mark The Big Oyster
Laird, Nick Utterly Monkey
Lansens, Lori Girls’
Leavitt, David The Man Who Knew Too Much
Lindquist, Ulla-Carin Rowing Without Oars
Liss, David The Ethical Assassin
Lloyd, Seth Programming the Universe
Makine, Andrei The Woman Who Waited
Mariniss, David Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero
Masters, Alexander Stuart: A Life Backwards
McInerney, Jay The Good Life
McMahon, Darrin Happiness: A History
McPhee, Martha L'America
Mda, Zakes The Whale Caller
Meek, James The People's Act of Love
Migol, Agi Look There: Selected Poems
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green
Moore, Jeffrey The Memory Artists
Morgan, Ted My Battle Against Algiers
Mullane, Mike Riding Rockets
Nazario, Sonia Enrique's Journey
Nemirovsky, Irene Suite Francaise
Nielsen, Francis Witness Of St. Ansgar's
Nielsen, John Condor
Nunez, Elizabeth Prospero's Daughter
Nunez, Sigrid The Last of Her Kind
Owen, Maureen Erosion's Pull
Parry, Richard In the Time of Madness
Pearce, Fred When the Rivers Run Dry: Water the Defining Crisis of the 21st Century
Perlman, Eliot The Reasons I Won't Be Coming
Philbrick, Nathaniel Mayflower
Pierre, D.B.C. Ludmila's Broken English
Pollan, Michael The Omnivore's Dilemma
Puchner, Eric Music Through the Floor
Rust, Elissa Minor The Prisoner Pear: Stories …
Saramago, Jose Seeing
Saunders, George In Persuasion Nation
Sawyer, Kathy The Rock from Mars
Schama,Simon Rough Crossings: Britain the Slaves, and the American Revolution
Seife, Charles Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from our Brains to Black Holes
Shah, Tahir The Caliph's House
Slavitt, David William Henry Harrison and Other Poems
Smith, Ali The Accidental
Smith, Janna Malamud My Father is a Book
Soyinka, Wole You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir
Spiotta, Dana Eat the Document
Stargardt, Nicholas Witnesses Of War: Children's Lives Under The Nazis
Stewart, Matthew The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
Tallis, Frank A Death in Vienna
Tayman, John The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
Thane, Pat The Long History of Old Age
Tiffany, Carrie Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
Toure Never Drank the Kool-Aid: Essays
Trussoni, Danielle Falling Through The Earth
Tussing, Justin The Best People in the World
Tyler, Anne Digging to America
Umrigar, Thirty The Space Between Us
Updike, John Terrorist
Vincent, Norah Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again
Vitebsky, Piers The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Waters, Sarah Night Watch
White, Richard D. Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long
Whitehead, Colson Apex Hides the Hurt
Winter, Michael The Big Why
Wolitzer, Hilma Doctor's Daughter

A Family Daughter and The Weather Makers

This week I read A Family Daughter : A Novel by Maile Meloy and The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery. While I appreciated the spare clean storytelling style of Maile Meloy I wasn't wowed by the novel. After I put it down I didn't think about it again but that could have been because of the next book I picked up.

I ended up getting so worked up about The Weather Makers that I ran around telling co-workers, fellow commuters and complete strangers that we are bad bad people who are killing the planet with CO2 emissions. I ended up going to websites to do check out the latest research and looked up ways that I could make my house more environmentally friendly. This was a clearly written and easy to read (although alarming) book and I wish that everyone would read it and become advocates for the environment not to mention agents of change.

Utterly Monkey, Apex Hides The Hurt and Sound and Fury

Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird is a Irish import . A dark comedic crime novel that was entertaining and quirky but didn't have the impact on me that some of my other novels have. I enjoyed it immensely but it is not one that will stay on my final list.

Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead is a book that had a clever idea but didn't quite pull it off. Featuring a town with an identity crisis a consultant is brought in to rebrand it could have been an interesting commentary on modern society but instead drifted along aimlessly. It failed to keep my attention and took me far longer to read than it should have because I kept putting it down and wandering off.

Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship by Dave Kindred is an engrossing look at the friendship between Mohammad Ali and Howard Cossell. This work follows the highs and inevitable lows of both careers and beautifully highlights the biographer's affection for each of these remarkable and difficult personalities. It also illustrated how each interaction benefited their careers creating a symbiotic relationship. I really enjoyed this a great deal.

The Brooklyn Follies and Brookland

In the post I promised for last week I had meant to talk about Brookland by Emily Barton and The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. It is a little late and I now have four more to talk about but I will give quick impressions of each of these and hopefully before next week I will have time to talk about the newest reads.

Brookland is a historical novel set in 18th-century Brooklyn. The Winship family raises a trio of unusual daughters who take over the gin mill and control their destinies in a way that was unique for the times. The eldest gambles the family business in order to build a bridge between New York and Brooklyn. Her vision causes stresses within the family. This was one of those quiet, epic novels that ends with a dramatic conclusion.

The Brooklyn Follies is by Auster. While not my favorite author I can appreciate his writing skills but I find his characters pretentious and wordy.

The Twilight of Superheroes and In The Company Of The Courtesan

Other books read last weekend include:

The Twilight Of The Superheroes: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg, a short story collection that explores today's American society. She has a pretty bleak view of modern life and I was struck by the hopelessness and cynical the stories are. The story that stood out for me was Like It Or Not, in which a middle aged divorcee takes a short trip with an Italian count. The shifting perspectives show that instead of a romantic story she is still coming to terms with her lost marriage while the count is lusting after a teenaged girl on vacation. Each story illustrates the ultimate aloneness of each individual, living completely separate lives from those around them.

In The Company Of The Courtesan by Sarah Dunant is a straightforward piece of historical fiction detailing the life of a midget and his employer, a beautiful and successful courtesan in Rome. After the Lutherans take over Rome, they flee to Venice to start over. As they struggle to rebuild their lives a blind healer becomes a frequent visitor with tragic results. This novel is also based on historical events and the glimpse into the life of a courtesan is fascinating. This probably won't stay on my best list (although you never know about these things) but I did enjoy reading it.

The People's Act Of Love

One of the books I read over the weekend was The People's Act Of Love by James Meeks. He has immersed himself in the history of Russia and writes about little known religious sects called castrates, Siberian prison escapees taking along their "cow" for food (also known as a newbie convict) and assorted other oddities. As I was reading this I took this to be a slightly altered or dreamlike view of reality and was startled to learn that these incidents were taken from real historical events. Having said that, there is a morose otherworldliness about this book that is appealing and very Russian in tone.

My Reading List

Today I thought I would give you the first three months worth of committee recommended reading. After reading a number of books some of these may drop off the reading list as new book treasures are found.


Abidi, Azhar - Passarola Rising
Auster, Paul - The Brooklyn Follies
Baker, Kevin - Striver's Row
Barnes, Julian - Arthur & George
Barry, Max - Company
Barton, Emily - Brookland
Branch, Taylor - At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68
Bruinius, Harry - Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity
Burt, Stephen - Parallel Play
Cartwright, Justin - The Promise of Happiness
Century, Douglas - Barney Ross
Clarke, Cheryl - The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005
Davis, Kathryn - The Thin Place
De Los Santos, Marisa - Love Walked In
Dean, Debra - The Madonnas of Leningrad
Desai, Kiran - Inheritance of Loss
Doig, Ivan - The Whistling Season
Dunant, Sarah - In The Company Of The Courtesan
Eberstadt, Fernanda - Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies
Egan, Timothy - Worst Hard Time
Eisenberg, Deborah - The Twilight of the Superheroes
Flannery, Tim - The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing
Fugard, Lisa - Skinner's Drift
Gaddis, John Lewis - The Cold War: A New History
Ghosh, Amitav - Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Time
Gibbons, Kaye - The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster
Gilbert, Elizabeth - Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy
Godwin, Gail - Queen of the Underworld
Goodman, Allegra - Intuition
Gordimer, Nadine - Get a Life
Grunwald, Michael - The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise
Grushin, Olga - The Dream Life of Sukhanov
Gunning, Sally - The Widow's War
Hammad, Suheir - Zataar Diva
Hirshfield, Jane - After
Horn, Dara - The World to Come
Hyland, M. J. - Carry me Down
Karr, Mary - Sinners Welcome
Kellerman, Jesse - Sunstroke
Kindred, Dave - Sound and Fury
King, Ross - The Judgment of Paris
Klinkenborg, Verlyn - Timothy or Notes of an Abject Reptile
Kurlansky, Mark - The Big Oyster
Laird, Nick - Utterly Monkey
Leavitt, David - The Man Who Knew Too Much
Liss, David - The Ethical Assassin
Makine, Andrei - The Woman Who Waited
McGahan, Andrew - White Earth
McInerney, Jay - The Good Life
McMahon, Darrin - Happiness: A History
Mda, Zakes - The Whale Caller
Meek, James - The People's Act of Love
Meloy, Maile - A Family Daughter
Merritt, William - A Fool's Gold
Migol, Agi - Look There: Selected Poems
Mitchell, David - Black Swan Green
Morgan, Ted - My Battle Against Algiers
Nazario, Sonia - Enrique's Journey
Nielsen, John - Condor
Nunez, Elizabeth - Prospero's Daughter
Nunez, Sigrid - The Last of Her Kind
Parry, Richard - In the Time of Madness
Perlman, Eliot - The Reasons I Won't Be Coming
Puchner, Eric - Music Through the Floor
Rust, Elissa Minor - The Prisoner Pear: Stories …
Sawyer, Kathy - The Rock from Mars
Seife, Charles - Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from our Brains to Black Holes
Sherrill, Martha - The Ruins of California
Smith, Ali - The Accidental
Spiotta, Dana - Eat the Document
Stargardt, Nicholas - Witnesses Of War: Children's Lives Under The Nazis
Stewart, Matthew - The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
Tayman, John - The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
Thane, Pat - The Long History of Old Age
Toure - Never Drank the Kool-Aid: Essays
Trussoni, Danielle - Falling Through The Earth
Tussing, Justin - The Best People in the World
Umrigar, Thirty - The Space Between Us
Vincent, Norah - Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again
Vitebsky, Piers - The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Waters, Sarah - Night Watch
Whitehead, Colson - Apex Hides the Hurt
Williams, Saul - The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip Hop
Winter, Michael - The Big Why
Wright, Stephen - The Amalgamation Polka

Getting Started

I have always had a passion for books so it seems inevitable that I would end up as a librarian. (Ironically, the profession doesn't allow time to read during work hours.) This year however I was honored with a two year appointment to the American Library Association CODES Notable Books Council. "The Notable Books Council of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division American Library Association (ALA), compiles a list of books selected for their significant contribution to the expansion of knowledge and for the pleasure they can provide to adult readers."

What this means for me is that I will have the sheer joy of immersing myself in books for the next 2 years. I will read as many of the hundreds of titles of note (and perhaps a few not-so-great titles) and spend time twice a year in all day meetings to discuss, debate and defend our favorites. At the end of the year we will come away with 25 books that are the best of the best. This is my attempt to keep track of the year's reading and to let friends and readers see what gets considered and how I am progressing. Of course, there is no way for anyone to read everything on the list but I will do my best.

So far the committee has identified 85 titles that have been published in the past three months that have received excellent reviews or book "buzz". As we work our way through the ever expanding list, books will appear and will also drop off. So far I have worked my way through 7 titles.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Skinner's Drift by Lisa Fugard
The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis
The Widow's War by Sally Gunning
Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg
The Girls by Lori Lansens

All of these were interesting books that will appeal to wildly different types of readers. Arthur and George is a fictionalized account of a period of time in the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and one of my current favorites. The Amalgamation Polka and The Thin Place will appeal to the more experimental readers among us.

For those who like natural history Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile chronicle the life of a noted naturalist from the perspective of Timothy the turtle. If you decide to read this one please note the inclusion of a glossary at the end of the book. I didn't see it until halfway through the book and struggled with some of the more specialized or outdated terms. The general consenus was that turtles don't have much to say.