Send for a child of two!

OK, so the book reviews are not caught up here, so here's something lazier on my part. But I think it's hilarious.

Robert at 101 Books has been asking his 2-year-old son to tell him what a book is about, based on its cover.*

For example, for the classic cover of The Great Gatsby**, the little guy said, "This book is about singing. It's about singing 'Barbara Ann.' Those are the lights, and there are lions in those lights." 

And there are lots more, and it's hella entertaining. Makes me wish there were a nearby 2-year-old I could consult on such things.  

Head on over to 101 Books and check it out.   

*Interestingly, I spent yesterday at a readers' advisory event at which one of the speakers talked about doing this same thing, only with a librarian's eye. Much less funny than the 2-year-old's view, but oh so much more practical.

**Currently The.Most.Popular.Book.in.America. I wonder why...? 

This stuff ain't for sissies

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown

OK, raise your hand if you’ve seen Brene Brown’s viral TED talks.

TED Talk the First (that's it, just above there) 

TED Talk the Second 

Yeah, I've seen 'em, too. (After two people from completely different realms of my life mentioned her within the same week, I decided that was an indication I should check this stuff out. And I gotta tell you: it was at the perfect moment. [And I gotta tell you: there's probably not an imperfect moment to hear these ideas.])

If you’re intrigued by Brown's research about how we need to be vulnerable in order to really fully live our lives, then this book is just the ticket. 

I found it fascinating, inspiring, terrifying, and eye-opening. (Why terrifying? Because vulnerability is not for the weak of heart, people!)

Here’s the other thing to know about Brown: she’s a great storyteller. So even though, yes, she’s an academic researcher, she puts the soul back into the data.

There are so many good ideas packed into this book, it’s hard to isolate them. But here’s what I carried away:

Vulnerability shows strength, not weakness.

If we numb the pain, we also numb the joy.

And guys, that’s all I’m gonna say. This book has life-changing capacities. ’nuff said. 

Crashing into something amazing

Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See by Robert Kurson

Ever read a book and then you just can’t stop thinking about it afterward? This is one of those.

I mean, who knew how important our brain is, when it comes to our ability to see? (Guys, it’s hella important.)

Here’s the story: Mike May was blinded at age 3 in a chemical accident. His mom decided her son was going to have a normal life, so she expected him to do everything his siblings did—so the guy grew up riding a bike and crashing all over the place. Dude grew up to become a downhill skiing world record holder.

So… here he is, living his mostly wonderful adult life, when a doctor tells him there’s a chance he could see. Since May’s life was fine as it was, and the surgery and treatment carried risks, it wasn’t as obvious a choice as a person might think. 

But in the end, he popped for it. Here it is in his words:

“‘I didn’t do it to see… I did it to see what seeing was.’” (p. 292)

So now comes the really fascinating part.

Turns out, May could recognize some things, but struggled mightily to tell his sons’ faces apart. Because his brain didn’t have the opportunity to make all kinds of connections by seeing when he was young, his brain still didn’t know how to do some seriously important things, like facial recognition.

Since he’s a can-do guy (to an extreme), he set about memorizing clues that would help him distinguish men from women, and flashlights from saws. (Does this sound exhausting? Um… yeah.) This part actually made my heart ache with admiration for his determination to Do.This.Thing.

So: there's the story itself, and there's the way it's presented. And both are stellar. Kurson's writing style is nothing but pleasant. There were moments I'd pause to admire the way a paragraph was put together. 

And, happily, the book is masterfully and wonderfully illustrated, which helps a person understand all kinds of things: how optical illusions depend on our brains having learned certain visual cues, and also why kittens raised in the dark who weren’t allowed to walk didn’t develop the ability to see. This last part is amazing, guys. Here’s May again: “‘I think exploration is everything. I think that’s why I never grew up feeling like I couldn’t see.’” (p. 263)

By the end of the book, it’d been quite a journey, and I nearly wept. Not what I expected when I started reading this story, but it turns out it was full of remarkable surprises. 

Crooked? I'll say...

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

OK, so imagine being on house arrest and in solitary confinement, without ever having been arrested. This is more or less the life Larry Ott is leading, two decades after he first was suspected of murdering a girl who disappeared after their first date. The guy lives in a tiny Mississippi town, in the house where he grew up, and he’s universally shunned. He’s more caged than the chickens he keeps.

Man, that is sad (unless, of course, he actually did that crime).

So the book starts right off with something horrible happening to Larry. (Right in the beginning, so I didn’t spoil anything, guys!)

And the newest constable in town is Silas “32” Jones, who used to be Larry’s secret friend when they were kids. (Secret, because Larry is white, and Silas is black. And even in the 1970s in their Mississippi town, this was not OK.)

Meanwhile, another young woman has vanished, so all eyes are on “Scary Larry.”

So, unfinished business from the past rears its head, and finally, finally! the truth (and I mean lots of it) begins to emerge.

I’d call this book a pageturner, except that I listened to the (amazing) audiobook. So maybe we can call it a don’t-want-to-leave-the-car audiobook. But it’s not that this is a super fast-paced story; it’s that you just really want to find out how this whole thing is going to unfold. And it is not disappointing.

A great choice for a book discussion. 

Also: hereby endorsed by three librarians. I only read it after one librarian thanked another for mentioning it.  

I scream, you scream...

The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick

Hey, remember when someone stole The Scream?*

Yeah, me, too.

The thing I didn’t know until quite recently—when I was scouting books for a special book club—was that the story of its recovery had been documented in its very own book. And this is a ripping good yarn, people.

First: we know the painting was recovered, so there’s a happy ending to this story.

Second: therefore, the good guys win. 

And the chief good guy in this book is the larger-than-life British/American Charley Hill of Scotland Yard. He was my favorite part of the book, because that guy is interesting. He appears to equally adore studying up on the art itself and putting himself into harm’s way in the company of thugs who might kill him. That’s not particularly normal. (And guys? “Normal” = boring, at least when it comes to people in books. [In real life, though… “Normal” = a remarkably wonderful thing, methinks.]

So here’s what’s great about this book: The author has a very pleasant writing style, journalistic in tone. (I adore that.) And the story rips right along, starting with a fairly simple break-in involving a ladder into a museum window, followed by the shockingly audacious move of sliding The Scream down the ladder to make the getaway.

Now, this book does that thing that some people really like, while others snarl, “Why didn’t he just make this an article?” Because here’s what: There are several stories of other art thefts blended in to the book. And I really liked that. (Though, for people who just want the story of The Scream, this is not an asset.) So you get to learn about other famous art heists—and marvel at how easily many of the thieves made off with priceless paintings.

For an art dolt like me, it was revelatory.

So…this is one of those books that has enough going on—art, crime, police investigations, the dark underbelly of society, a bit of international intrigue—that there’s probably something here that will appeal to lots of readers. Though I’m no fan of true crime, and my art expertise is laughable, this book just plain delighted me.

It's also the sort of book that prompts book clubbers to refer to it at random moments after having read it. This just may be one of the measures of a very fine book. Glad I read it!

*It’s happened twice in recent years: 1994 and 2004. This book’s about the 1994 episode.

Still a prince

Guys, The Little Prince has his 70th birthday today. Or at least the 70th anniversary of the publication of his book. 

It inspired me to yank my two copies from the shelf to gaze upon them fondly. (Someone did some rearranging of the shelves a while back*, so I had to actually think about where each copy was located. I guessed right [what a genius shelving system!] but it took a bit of thought first.) 

So, yeah: I've got a copy in English and another in Spanish. The original French is well beyond me, I'm sad to say. (Actually, that's kind of OK. I'd rather know Spanish.)

And this whole thing just causes me to do some sighing-of-happiness-yet-sadness, thinking of this book and its author. 

One of the happiest reading experiences of my adult life was when I read Saint-Exupery: A Biography by Stacy Schiff. That woman can biographize with the best of them, I'm telling you. 

And then there was the news of the discovery of Saint-Ex's P-38, which took place 61 years and 1 day after the publication of The Little Prince. (Cripe, people: he was only 44 when he died.) Makes me sad. Yet glad that he was found after all those years. But still: sad. 

It's just a frenzy of bittersweetness, this book. It's just the way it is.


* Yeah, that was me. 

That's where the tall corn grows

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson

OK, so audiobooks have many fine attributes: someone’s reading you a story just like when you were little; you can listen while driving/gardening/cleaning the house/exercising; and when it’s done right, the reader’s intonations add a whole new layer to the reading experience.

My quarrel with audiobooks has everything to do with blogging. When I’m reading a book-book (as I like to refer to those archaic things with hard or soft covers and actual pages), I jot down on the bookmark (a measly scrap of paper) the page numbers where there’s something I really liked. With an audiobook, this just ain’t feasible, people.

So if I want to capture a perfect quote, I’m reduced to checking out the book-book of the audiobook and flipping pages in a rather agitated and annoyed fashion, searching for the something I heard that completely cracked me up or pleased me beyond measure.

So, to a great extent, I’m here reduced to speaking vaguely about why this audiobook is truly entertaining.

Well, first off: it’s written (and read aloud) by Bill Bryson, so if you’re Brysonite, you’ll be happy.

And the guy grew up in Des Moines, about which he writes with such fondness that I like him even more than I did before—because poor Iowa doesn’t get much respect generally, and certainly not in the printed word. But here’s Bryson: “Iowa’s main preoccupations have always been farming and being friendly, both of which we do better than almost anyone else, if I say so myself.”  (p. 172)  Amen, brother.

actual Jell-O recipe from the 1974 church cookbook my very own mom edited;
only one of  *many* such recipes

And this true statement: “Iowa has always been proudly middling in all its affairs… We were slightly wealthier, a whole lot more law-abiding, and more literate and better educated than the national average, and ate more Jell-O (a lot more—in fact, to be completely honest, we ate all of it), but otherwise have never been too showy at all.” (p. 171)

Bryson grew up in the weird and wonderful 1950s, and he skewers postwar American society, even as he gazes warmly upon it. He had a paper route, where he was terrorized by neighbors’ dogs; he also was terrorized by neighborhood bullies; he skipped school with shocking regularity; his dad would eat his midnight snack in the buff; and his mom once sent him to school in Capri pants.

This is one of those childhood memoirs that’s funny and entertaining and not at all horrid (we’re looking at you, A Child Called “It”). Bryson’s childhood was refreshingly normal, and the only reason it’s book-worthy is that Bryson’s the one writing the book. And this fact alone makes it beyond worthy. 

Unruly pilot

Fate Is the Hunter by Ernest Gann

Lucky? Yes. Yes, I am.

Case in point: My flight instructor, from my flying days when I was but a girl, recently invited me to go flying. Hadn’t seen the man in over 15 years, and here, just when my life could use something truly good, he invited me to fly an airplane again. 

moments before my second take-off,
which again would involve uncontrolled laughter

Seriously: lucky.

And I gotta tell you: that guy is brave. He put that airplane in my hands, and man, was I rusty. The few skills that came back… reemerged slowly.* I had us flailing all over the Iowa skies, laughing like a goon, and he didn’t even appear concerned. Nerves of steel, those pilots.

And that’s what this book is about (the nerves, not the laughing goon).

We had done some talking of books when we were on the ground, and he said this book gives a really good sense of what it’s like to fly on a crew. (He’s doing the airline thing these days.) And I’m all about the workplace memoir, especially when an insider has vouched for its veracity, so I scribbled down the title and placed a hold at my first opportunity.

The fascinating thing about this book is that it was published in 1961, but it still feels fresh today. Granted, the aircraft and the methods are archaic (Yikes! At one point, they’re plotting bearing fixes!) but the human dynamic rings true, and that’s the important part of the book, anyway, in my opinion.

And Gann’s narrative voice is easy and clever, and altogether a delight to read.

(Brief pause while we marvel at the fact that some people who do their day job admirably also can write books!)

So this book is full of male jocularity (all the airline pilots were male in those days [sad shake of the head]), and it’s enormously fun to read. It really does give a sense of the camaraderie of a crew—those that get along well, and those that are a bit less well-suited for each other.

And there are some funny moments here, too. During Gann’s time as a military pilot, he and the others got sent to some far reaches of the north Atlantic. Here’s their introduction to the base:

“Boyd took my hand as if we had flown to the moon and said, ‘Welcome to White Pigeon.’

And at once I was returned in thought to a more tranquil period when I had served briefly as his co-pilot. We had found ourselves flying a plane chartered from our line by a political team junketing around the United States. Our passengers displayed a constant and abnormal interest in their exact location—information we seldom had ready at hand. And so we would assume a solemn mien and point out a town, or village—any one visible would do—and we would say, ‘That is White Pigeon.’”  (p. 177)

I’d heard of this book for years, and I never would’ve picked it up if it hadn’t been for the personal recommendation I received. Again, all I can say is: Lucky.

*Yeah, just before releasing the brakes and hitting the throttle at the threshold of the runway, I thought to ask, “What’s the rotate speed on this baby?” 

Rejuvenation?

(photo credit: shellac's photostream, flickr)

Here’s the update from Non-reading Central…

I think things are looking up.

Here are the promising signs:

1. I’ve hit my stride in the new book club book, and I’m yearning to return to it.

2. I’ve begun listening to an audiobook (fiction, even!—Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin) that’s completely holding my attention.

3. I’ve checked out a few books lately to dip into to learn some facts.

4. I’m doing a genre study, and I’ve just started a graphic novel, which I’m not at all into (as a format), yet I’m committed to finishing it on time.

So here’s the thing: I’m being careful with myself, because I don’t want to over-stress this fresh little shoot. 

All I can say is...

OMG