The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs

That's what history seems like to me now. There are hundreds of threads connecting everybody in all sorts of ways, both expected and unexpected. It's like a spiderweb (which, by the way, spiders sometimes eat when they're done with them).

 A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All; One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

A wonderful, funny, interesting book about a man who decided to read the entire Encyclopeadia Britannica from a-ak to zyweic. Tucked into all the random and trivial knowledge is a study on the interconnectedness of humanity and the universe we share. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!

Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine


After reading this book, I have a strange urge to buy a few goats.



While I loved Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and found it to be an inspiring book, Kingsolver's world was a little more orderly than my world will EVER be. Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living seemed to be a little more my speed. Experiments, well-intentioned and well planned, don't always work out the way they are intended. Coyotes and hawks feast on flocks of chickens, vegetable oil powered engines don't always start on the first 10 tries and rattlesnakes find shelter in solar powered water pumps. Fine's memoir is funny. You'll learn some stuff. You might be inspired to make a difference in your own carbon footprint. You'll definitely laugh. You even might want to buy a goat.

Two books this time. I'm on one of those reading binges where I feel like Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka's factory. Fat kid on a cupcake as my boys would say, but they're not very nice sometimes. Lots of books in the hopper. Keep an eye out. I'll try to have the boys come up with nicer illustrations. Not promising anything. That said, here goes:

Saved by Jack Falla

It's a novel about professional hockey. Is there such a genre for men like "chick-lit" is for women? Testosterature? Guy-lit? Nevertheless, if there is such a genre, this book fits the bill.


Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Devastatingly sad. If even one third of this is an accurate portrayal of this group (FLDS -- Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), then I'm horrified that more hasn't been done to stop the cycles of abuse.

The 19th Wife: A Novel by David Ebershoff


Fascinating venn diagram of the history of the Mormon faith, a gay love story and a crime thriller. I must admit that I skimmed through some of the slower parts, written in the voices of Ann Eliza Webb and of Brigham Young.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the People Who Raised Them by Amy Dickinson

All I can say at this point, having just finished this lovely, lovely book, is that I do not want to return it to the library. I may steal it. I really won't steal it. I may just keep renewing it over and over again just so I can visit Freeville for a little while longer.

Eve: A Novel of the First Woman by Elissa Elliott

Biblical bodice ripper? Hmmmm . . .

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible by A.J. Jacobs

so far . . . . funny!!! all that and a biblical mandate to drink more alcohol!! who could ask for anything more?

Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm by David M. Masumoto

Brilliant.

So much comes down to choosing this path or that, and the selection we make disturbs or gratifies people whose decisions are already made because they would have us tamp down the dirt behind them, because they don't want to be swallowed up.
~~Prescription for a Superior Existence by Josh Emmons

Prescription for a Superior Existence is a sci-fi type novel about a gluttonous, addictive, power hungry man named Jack Smith who gets abducted by and sucked into a cult like group named PASE, or Prescription for A Superior Existence. I don't have much to say about the book, but the above quote, found on the last page of the novel, gave me much to think about. Why is it that the choices the people in our lives make, even the ones that do not effect us in the slightest, have such weight on our psyches? Really, why should it matter what school my neighbor chooses for her child or if my friend from the gym chooses Mac or PC? Do we care because we want our own decisions to be validated or are we that self-involved to think that we should have influence over the decisions made by those around us?

From bookmobiles on camels to bookmobiles at Buckingham Palace, it's amazing the places books can take you. My latest suggestion is a lovely little book called An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. This novella is the story of what happens when a British queen (never identified) stumbles upon a bookmobile on the grounds of her palace whilst walking her corgi dogs. She happens inside, meets a kitchen page who is an avid reader of novels by gay authors and has her entire world turned upside down. Really, this is a delightful book about the transformative power of the written word, both as it is read and as it is written. Funny, in a BBC drama sort of way, I highly recommend this book.

Funny how everything is connected, isn't it? I posted yesterday about Anne Rice and her vampire novels and, more recently, her historical fiction works about the life of Jesus the Christ. In the USA TODAY magazine that comes with my sunday paper, there was a little blurb about Rice in the "Who's News" section. It was posed as a sort of "Where are they now?" piece. Rice's vampire novels were discussed briefly, then her conversion to Christianity was mentioned and here is what Rice had to say about her conversion from atheist to Christ follower and it's impact on her literary work: "My present focus has to be on my novels about the life of Jesus Christ, and I do not want to revisit the realm of my earlier books". I just thought it was funny to blog about something a bit out of the current trend and then to have the same subject show up in mainstream media the next day. Fun!

When I was in high school, I loved Anne Rice's novels. All the gothic vampires and thinly veiled erotica was so much out of my everyday existence that I felt so dangerous, so exotic reading her words. I read as many of the books as I could find in the Cambrian branch of the San Jose Public Library and then forgot about them. Fast forward twenty-ish years and I find new Anne Rice novels on the shelves of the library, this time the Willow Glen branch (I moved). Imagine my surprise when I started reading the first one, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and found that Rice had chosen to follow Jesus and was now dedicating this stage of her writing career to researching and writing historical fiction about Jesus the Christ. Huh. I read "Out of Egypt" which followed Jesus as a young child, leaving his Egyptian refuge and moving back to Nazareth. Not a bad piece of fiction, engaging and made me think for a bit about the humanness of Jesus of Nazareth. I'm pretty comfortable with the whole fully God thing, but the fully man part is something we don't cover so much in the Bible. I've always wondered what Jesus was like as a person. Who the funniest disciple was and if Mary every lost her temper with him when he reached that sassy 5 year old stage. The second book, Christ the Lord: Road to Cana, finds Jesus as an adult man who is under immense pressure from his family and village to get married. It's unseemly for a man his age to remain single. The narrative follows Jesus to the Jordan River, where he is baptized by his cousin John, into the wilderness for an amazing take on what the times of temptation could have looked like and finally, onto Cana where he performs his first miracle and thus begins his public ministry. Again, I say this is an interesting piece of fiction and is worth the read, no matter your stand on Jesus as Son of God, because Rice makes Jesus the main character, pretty darn interesting.

I've done it. I've found the missing link, the holy grail, area 51. I have found a book by Chris Bohjolian that has a male protagonist! Over and over in book club and in conversations with reading friends, we marvel over how Bohjolian writes so seamlessly in the female voice and how, very rarely, uses characters masculine as his protagonists. Enter The Law of Similars and it's main voice, Leland. Granted, Leland is a single dad, a prosecutor for the state attorney's office in Vermont (suprise! another novel set in Vermont!) who wears suspenders that button onto his slacks, but still it's a male voice!

This book is another alternative medicine vs. western medicine story that Bohjolian seems to be drawn to, this time focusing on homeopathy. There are accidents and questionable behaviors. There are secrets and sex. There are copious descriptions of small town Vermont. It's not a bad read. I would certainly recommend it.

The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris is the sequel to her novel, Chocolat, which was a lovely tale of fear, love, identity and chocolate. The movie version also starred the delicious Johnny Depp. Chocolate and Johnny Depp, a lovely combination. The sequel was a good story too. Harris continues on with the theme of identity, delving into the world of identity theft, while weaving in still more love and more chocolate. Unlike the first novel, in which the magic is largely divined through chocolate, in this story it is much more out in the open with spells cast and secret symbols drawn. Harris introduces Aztec and Mayan mythology, both of which have strong ties to chocolate, to her domestic magic. Clever. Worth a read if you enjoyed the first novel.

My favorite dialogue from The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton is this speech by Mr. Abasi, a Kenyan librarian who is charged with helping an American librarian, Fi Sweeny, administrate the camel bookmobile project. This is Abasi's response to the project:

"The facts you have in front of you --- the number of patrons reached, the titles of the most popular books, the cost per patron--- do very little to reflect the human costs of bringing a library on the backs of camels to people like this. These people live hard lives by ancient values, and they're proud of htat. They've developed a philosophy to deal with drought and death. When we arrive from the outside and insist that they learn to read --- books that, as it turns out, are mostly about very different places and concerns --- we confuse them. Possibly even undermine them. I think Miss Sweeny will tell you that their young are as sharp as any. And their elders may be wiser. Compared with them, after all, we of the settled, literate society have a kind of inflexibility. So your project raises question. Do they want to be part of what you call the 'larger world'? And whom should be teaching whom?" (Hamilton, 294-95)

I've been thinking a lot about arrogance these days. I wonder if we've become so arrrogant that we've lost the ability to honor and learn from other cultures, even those we perceive as backward or behind, for fear of falling behind ourselves. Whom should be teaching whom? I suppose the answer is everyone.

This week's speed read selection is Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein. In this effort, Klein chronicles her experience as an overweight child and teenager. Klein is brutally frank about the way her family, friends and peers treat her. It was a heartbreaking book to read and made me think twice about how quick I am to judge those whose appearance is counter to what I consider healthy or beautiful or appropriate. This book is a quick read that will not be quick to leave your memory.

I have always enjoyed lace. The Gunne Sax dresses that were popular when I was in jr. high always had more lace trim than was probably tasteful around the cuffs and necklines and bodices and that made me love them all the more. My dream wedding gowns, whose pictures I cut out of bridal magazines and pasted into "When I Get Married" scrapbooks inevitably had full skirts made entirely of lace. I loved ballet costumes and christening gowns, purely on lace value alone. The only major problem I have with lace is that I am a complete klutz and no matter how careful I am, I will step on a hem or put my finger through some trim and put a hole right through the most fragile part of the fabric. Drats. Then what usually happens is that the lace slowly starts to fray. First, the threads are slow in loosening and coming out of their carefully constructed patterns, but they pick up speed and soon I am left with a partial design surrounded by jagged edges and loose threads. What started out as something beautiful or interesting becomes a big old mess.

That is sort of how I felt about the book The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. It's the story of Towner Whitney and her family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace. This story is filled with twists and turns as complicated as the lace that serves as its motif. It has family secrets, romance, violence, witchcraft, religious zealots, mental illness and a garden. The whole time reading it I kept thinking "Oh, I'm sure this event will lead to something. I should remember it." By the end of the novel, I had all these threads I was hanging onto, trying to weave them all into a picture or pattern. The problem I found was that many of the threads had no place in the finished product and left me with a tangley mess. It was a nice effort and I could see where Barry wanted to go with it, but I think that maybe, like the Gunne Sax dresses of my youth, she put on a little too much trim.

It seems as if I have hit a dry spell, folks. I wander up and down the aisles of the library and nothing jumps off the shelf at me, begging to be read. I found out this week that one of my favorite independent bookstores is closing in June. The idea of spending money at a big box bookstore makes me feel more than a little sad. What's going on? How can I not have anything to read?

My Latest Checkout List from the Library

No real thoughts on any of these. None of them were amazing and none of the stunk. I may change my mind later, after letting them sit for a while. If that changes, I'll be sure to let you know. Any one of these books is worth reading:

1. The James Boys: A Novel Account of Four Desperate Brothers by Richard Liebmann-Smith
2. Rosewater and Soda Bread: A Novel by Marsha Mehran
3. Lord, Save Us From Your Followers: Why is the Gospel of Love Dividing America? by Dan Merchant
4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrow


If I had to choose one to suggest, I would say that The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society would have to be my pick. It's a novel in the form of letters set in Post World War II England. A sweet novel for certain. This book made me a bit wistful for the days of real written correspondence. I am not so sure I dig the whole e-mail, texting, Facebook status thing, even though I am an active participant. A nicely worded note still holds a lot of weight with me. Back to the library tomorrow. I am seriously jonesing for some good reads.

Lita gets the thanks for this one and a hearty, vodka soaked thanks at that! On the decidedly utilitarian, often unshaded playground of our elementary school, Lita handed me "Mother On Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting" and am I ever glad she did. Sandra Tsing Loh, author and performance artist (as well as NPR commentator) wrote this book as a shout against the insanity of her own search for a school for the elder of her two daughters. She calls this "the year I exploded into flames." This book is hysterical and convicting without being preachy or elitist. I was worried about reading this book, as every time I read a book about parenting, I inevitably feel guilty that I am not doing enough or have done something wrong or just don't care enough. Parenting books usually suck if you have a low self-esteem to start with. I'm sure there are some of you who love them. If you are that person, we probably should not hang out. Sandra Tsing Loh, however, is invited.

I often have guilt,especially in the circles I tend to unintentionally end up in, because my children attend public school. The guilt is self-induced I am sure, but the "pity eyebrows" (oh you know the ones, where the well meaning parochial school mother raises her eyebrows and wrinkles her nose in an "Oh dear, it's so nice that your son goes to the local high school. Do they give him his own 'will work for food' sign with his diploma?") certainly don't help. It gets on my nerves from time to time. I love my public schools. No, they aren't as shiny as some of the private schools. No, our football field isn't maintained by an army of NFL retirees who just want to give back. No, we don't have field trips to the Great Wall of China or Science Camp on the Space Station. But what I do have is a great school filled with great people and great teachers who love children. I have a school where my kids can be a part of their local community and of their world, learning that making a difference doesn't mean having the most money to throw at what ever needs fixing. I have a community of parents who love their children, just like I do, and want what every caring parent wants: for their children, and for everyone else's, to grow up healthy, safe and happy. All kids deserve that.