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Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities
Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause
When All the World Was Young: A Memoir
The best memoirs leave one wanting more. This is one of those. A lovely, incisively observed life. Holland is amusing without being silly, nostalgic without being treacly.A telling excerpt:"Several years ago a well-heeled friend said to me, 'I was brought up to believe you must never, ever dip into capital. Weren't you?' 'No,' I said, 'I was brought up to believe you must never, ever cross a picket line.' and we gazed at each other across the chasm."I adored this book. Holland struck all the right notes.
Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories
Holland's unabashedly nostalgic look backwards draws some deeply flawed conclusions. Many of her eulogies were for things that, 10 years later, turned out not to be dead after all, and that made for some decidedly odd reading. I expected more amusement than I actually got from this one. It read like one of those stereotypical conversations with one's grandparents, with about as much logical consistency. There were chapters of sweetness, however, and that bumps my rating up a star.
Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me
This book was wonderful. Lewis writes for all the women with a girl on one arm, a boy on the other and a 7 layer cake on the counter. She takes big bites and savors them, and lives to write about it. A former sex-worker who has a delicious way with words, Lewis has given us a book that is part memoir, part advice column, and part scrumptious cookbook. She embraces her humanity in a beautiful way, and celebrates all manner of decadent things. Sex-positive but interestingly judgmental of the clients she used to service- understandable, from the descriptions. It's also fascinating to see how compartmentalized her sex life was when she was working in the trade. Well-written, funny, loving and wry. It'll make you hungry for more.Not for the faint of heart or those who eschew Anglo-Saxon terms for genitalia.
The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1)
I enjoyed Tigana so much, it made sense for me to dip into Kay's back catalog. I may have gone too far back. This book was really, really busy what with the 12 intersecting plot lines, the 27 classes of people, the 14 gods (numbers approximate, but overwhelming) and the odd shape-changer. The language is high-flown and portentous all out of proportion with the fairly stale plots. I understand that in the second book, Arthur and Lance are brought into the world, and one of the existing characters morphs into Gwen, as if things weren't tangled up enough already.I stuck it through till the end because the seeds of the writer Kay grew into are interesting to watch germinate, but I won't be reading the other two books of this trilogy. I was interested enough to look up the plot summary on Wikipedia, but I was not interested in giving any more of my life to this group of gods, mages and men.The best part, for me, was the Ivor/Tabor/Levon/Dave storyline. It was strong and clean and fresh but hearkened back to several ancient civilizations. I wish the whole book had been like that.
Unshelved Volume 6: Frequently Asked Questions
I love this comic which I generally read online. What's not to like about a strip set in a library? This collection didn't disappoint. I laughed and giggled my way all the way through it. I especially liked the hand-drawn strips and the book review panels. If you're a book geek you might like this.
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
I picked this up because I've been following a serious weightlifting regime for about a year, and minding my calories semi-obsessively for about as long, but I've got 20 extra pounds clinging to me like grim death.So this book seemed targeted directly at me, and I read it with interest. I am always up for a field trip to the outskirts of accepted wisdom. Taubes, who appears to have impressive scientific credentials, here offers a pretty compelling rejection of the calories in/calories out method of weight control, in favor of a diet closer to what early hominids enjoyed. The Clan of the Cave Bear diet, if you will. I'm not entirely convinced by all his points, but it's worth further investigation. I was impressed by his evolutionary bent. His elaboration on some studies done on ground squirrels, who add half again their normal weight in fat each fall- even if they are on severely limited rations made me think, "Oh, right. Of course, otherwise one bad summer would have wiped out all the ground squirrels forever." His forays into the chemical reactions happening in my very own fat cells were educational. There's, ahem, a lot of food for thought here. I wish I liked meat better, then I'd be more willing to try this. It's well worth reading, if you have any interest at all in the subject. Though I'm not recommending it for Lisa V. ;-)
Dandelion Wine
Lustrous. Brilliant. Achingly nostalgic. Magically real. I love this book with my whole heart, though I do tend to weep my way through several chapters. Bradbury's fictionalized memoir captures the Summer of 1928 so deliciously that it's as if I too was a twelve-year-old boy that year. I've read it countless times, and every time it's new. Every single time, there's something I failed to consider before, or something I was unable to understand that now comes into crystalline focus.What is there to say about this book that doesn't come out as the senseless babbling of the infatuated? I've heard people dismiss it as sentimental, and I categorically deny that it's sentimental in the sickly sweet conventional way. It's nostalgic, certainly, and Bradbury casts his eye backwards through an evanescent golden glow. I much prefer this soft warm glow to the flayed flesh one is apt to stumble over in the litanies of betrayal currently passing for memoir. Bradbury's playful language is a delight and a treasure. The narration on this audio is tip-top. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude
What an odd little book this is! Pollack is one of the ironically detached McSweeney's era writers, and it's really something to watch him struggle with his hipness and try to express some deep spiritual awakening. Ultimately, the ironic hipster dude gets the upper hand, and one's left wondering about what the transformation from stoner non-yoga guy to stoner yoga guy actually felt like. There aren't many clues here, just the evidence that his life is drastically different at the end, and not just because he can bend in new ways. He is still stoned all the time, which state of mind was so lovingly dwelt upon it made me a little nostalgic for the wildly baked days of my youth. 2.5 stars, I think.
The Joy of Drinking
I picked this up at the library because it looked cute. It was hilarious. Holland's authorial tone is wry and wonderful. The book is sort of an overview of alcohol's history, but Holland dips and lingers in a wholly whimsical fashion, and ends with directions for building a still, which item has been on my darling's wish list since I've known him.It gets progressively funnier as it moves forward in time. I enjoyed it mightily, and can't resist sharing a snippet about the new beer snobs that made me guffaw:"Former beer joints gone classy offer beer tastings in little sample glasses for the educated palate. [...] Its customers are quite, quite different from sweaty Joe Six-Pack with his canned Budweiser. They're discriminating experts of an entirely different social class with an entirely different agenda.Of course drinking, old-fashioned drinking, is still unwholesome, still bad for the body if not the actual soul, but fortunately, what they're doing isn't drinking at all. They aren't drinkers. They're connoisseurs and critics, priests of ritual, sniffers and tasters, discerning scholars scowling thoughtfully into their glass. Fun has nothing to do with it and they never break into song."
The Wrinkle in Time Quintet Boxed Set (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, An Acceptable Time)
This book is packed to the gills with what some of L'Engle's Goodreads fans are calling scorflam, which is short for "that stuff L'Engle does that would be grounds for hurling the book across the room in the hands of any other author but since it's L'Engle, one rises above the impulse." I got close, more than once, to not rising above the book-hurling impulse while re-reading this book for the first time since it was new.The premise that a modern adolescent can move through time is intriguing if not particularly novel. The idea that ancient Native culture was informed and enlightened by a great Druidic healer who crossed the Atlantic in a canoe is novel if not particularly plausible. The introduction of the moody Zachary Gray, who like his Uncle Dorian, does not age in the normal manner is neither novel nor plausible. Also he's a puling, whining shadow of his complicated self here.My favorite character is Louise the Larger. You know, because the snake has all the lines? All the lines that make sense, anyway. This book is an unfocused jumble of interesting notions and heartwarming anecdotes about love and how Jesus is timeless. Give it a miss. Even though it's L'Engle. I know, I know. But it's not good L'Engle. Just re-read Wrinkle instead. And yes, 2 stars = 1 too many. But it's L'Engle.
Plain Kate
This book started a little slow for me, it seemed as if it was going to be ANOTHER one of those magical Gypsy Witch girl books and I mentally rolled my eyes at least once. But then it got very, very dark and very strange. I like dark and strange, and it's done well here. It's a first novel, and there are places where that shows, but it's very well-crafted overall. I thought there was a lot of passion around certain plot points, and the afterword confirmed that. Avoiding spoilers, vagueness ahead: I think that particular aspect of the plot is incredibly well done given the background. It could not have been easy to write. On the other hand, the cat was an unmitigated delight. Except for that one part. Some of his lines had me howling. I want to read Bow's memoir. I want to read Bow's next book. And the book she writes after that. Then I'll read this one again.
Job - A Comedy Of Justice
I'd forgotten how thoroughly unlikeable the protagonist of this book is. Ick. I also had a hard time understanding what caused him to fall in love with Marga, and even more, WTF did Marga see in him?It's an interesting meditation on religious fundamentalism, but ultimately it strikes me as a little too facile. It was written near the end of Heinlein's career and it feels a little as if it were done by rote. There are several recycled bits from earlier works, including the obligatory reference to consensual parent/child sex. The dialogue is a bit stiff- RAH was very stingy with his contractions, and I think that makes for awkward sounding conversations.The Farnsworth family were far and away my favorite characters. I liked the steampunky elements of the first several chapters. In the end, though, I couldn't get past my distaste for Alex. This one's not going back on the shelf. 2.5 stars.
My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization
I couldn't get past the buzz-word laden intro. Painfully new age (rhymes with sewage) and too, too.
Troubling a Star: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 5
It's a book by Madeleine L'Engle. How bad could that be? Well, um, actually? Pretty bad. Spectacularly, teeth-grindingly bad. The plot's clunky. No, the plot's been recycled so many times that one can faintly see all the other stories below, like a palimpsest. The characters, many of whom we are supposed to know, are not themselves. None of the Austins are recognizable. Even worse, a major character is introduced as a long-time patient of Dr. Austin's, as well as Adam Eddington's beloved aunt- how did those salient facts never get mentioned before? That's just sloppy.The whole book feels cobbled together, half-assed, phoned in. Even the drugs don't get L'Engle all riled up this time, it's more ho-hum, drugs, yeah, whatever. The bad guys are silly, the good guys are equally silly. The character development is nearly absent in the secondary characters. It was difficult to read this, especially hard on the heels of the magnificent A Ring of Endless Light. I don't recommend it, not even for Austin completists.
The Nickel-Plated Beauty
This is a real romp of a book. Take a large family of kids, confusion over what a Wish Book can do, and a problem solvable by working together and sucking up some discomfort, mix together with some mistakes and stumbles and you get a lot of fun between two covers.Historical details are well-researched, characters are multi-dimensional, and the storyline is engaging.
A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4
Departing from my formulaic L'Engle review here to say this book is one of my all-time favorites. There's so much going on, and so much grave and serious beauty, that if there are clunky bits, I never saw them.I also never noticed, until this read, that L'Engle was a fan of Saint-Exupéry's flying books- one of which, Wind, Sand and Stars, is one of my desert island books. I think I was too caught up in the Vicky/Zachary drama to notice the pilot talking at the airport.I love the last bit at the hospital, where Binnie/Robin dies and Vicky goes into a fugue state, I think it captures the moment exceptionally well. Having been in a similar situation, without a pod of dolphins to bring me back after, I recognised the bleakness and the darkness.The casual erudition of all the adolescent characters in ML'E's works is a little bit laughable - but as a bright kid, I found hope there. So I can't mock too much since I drew so much comfort in thinking that there were other serious, thinking kids somewhere. If only fictional ones.I love this book, with its unflinching attention to death and decay. I love its deep and dazzling darkness, its solemnity and sanctity. I love, of course, the conviction at the root of it that every life matters, every breath counts. And, yes, I love Zachary with his grandstanding and his deathwish, his inability to adjust to his own adolescence, his helpless attraction to the Austins and their loving lifestyle, and his knee-jerk denying of said attraction. Adam is easy to love in the same way the Austins are easy to love, and the Rodneys. Zachary is not so easy to love, but L'Engle wants us to see that he's worthy of loving, just as worthy as the rest- in fact, she goes out of her way to make that point, I think.This is one of my favorite of all L'Engle's works, and probably the one I've read the most. And I think the only book I ever stole. Now, in the spirit of L'Engle's honesty and transparency, I will confess that I told my childhood library I lost this book in 1981 and paid for the losing of it. It was never lost, it's right here. I could have bought my own copy from a bookstore, but this is the one with the magic in it.
 - Madeleine L'Engle)