Warbreaker.

This book, by Brandon Sanderson, (who, incidentally has been chosen to finish up Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series) is superb. It is a well-imagined, well-crafted world. He pulls us into it very artfully, explaining some of the basic concepts we need to understand the natural laws of that world). Unfortunately, there is a little spoiler on the back cover, which, fortunately, I didn't read until afterwards.

It has not one, but two heroines, who start to blossom at the beginning of the book, and really grow into their characters and become really strong women. Its refreshing to see such well-written women who are strong, not vapid, but who are trying to find their footings in strange circumstances. There are gods, men, evil men, plots within plots, and Sanderson gently leads us down the garden path...

I found it a truly enjoyable novel, in the best tradition of a fantasy novel, as it has all the elements of a traditional one, but combined in unexpected ways.... he even includes a magic sword!

The Bitter and the Sweet.

Its Not That I'm Bitter by Gina Barreca.

This was interesting and humorous. I'm not usually a person who laughs out loud at books, but I did at this one at various points. In some ways, it really does describe the life of a modern woman, of the pitfalls and inconsistencies of modern life. She had me nodding in agreement when she asked where Carrie Fisher is... where are the spunky female movie heroines? Its true... Leia gave as good as she got, and more so, in the Star Wars movies... her mother? Got pregnant and died. (disclaimer here, I have never seen the 'prequels', never wanted to, but even I know that Anakin's mom was a wimp in the movie, let alone Padme Amidala...) You are preaching to the choir here, Gina... we haven't really had a good, spunky female heroine since Star Wars. Even in TV land. She also addresses the myth of Prince Charming, who "marries Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and for all we know he's also knocked up Mother Goose." (30) And, hey, we all have a little 'crazy astronaut lady' in us...

Its a book that rings true, about the "I'm not bitter, but COME ON..." pitfalls of daily life as a modern feminist woman...

The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz.

Some parts of this book ring so true... you do get dressed, in Paris, to take out the recycling/trash. Some things ring less true for me, but that may be because I'm a French speaker, so hadn't run into that particular issue, ever. I'm also not a gay man (surprise!), but on the whole, it was a tres amusant petit livre. With some wonderful looking recipes... Its a funny little memoir of an American in Paris, and his culture shock.

Two Biographies...

each alike in integrity, setting a scene in wildly different locales, yet both resonated with me.

First comes Love, then comes Malaria by Eve Brown-Waite.

This was a fantastic book. A real-life love story and adventure, which I did not want to end. It had a bit of a rough start, which did initially put me off the book a little... the beginning felt a little too superficial somehow, and while I understand that this was for contrast with the later portions, it could have been achieved a little more smoothly. The book does recover quickly from a shaky first chapter and plunges you into the story of her experiences, first in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, and then in Uganda. I just really enjoyed reading about the people, places, and experiences she had. Some of them evoked my own childhood in Egypt.

Not Becoming My Motherby Ruth Reichl.

Reichl takes an unusual tack in this book about her mother... she talks, proudly of not becoming her mother, but of becoming what her mother wanted her to be. She talks about this in the context of her mother's own life and experiences and thwarted desires...

The 'G' Books...self-help or hindrance?

Two books, both with G in the title, and both self-help, of a sort.

The first, the 'G-free diet' by Elisabeth Hasselbeck can be summed up in one word, shallow. It just felt shallow, and only had a few sources. She does give some good tips, buried in the rubble, but it just seemed to be about her life with gluten. Now granted, the thing that REALLY annoyed me about the book was the chapter about going gluten-free (I cannot type G-free, her little catchphrase, its just too, too blond, perky, sorority for me) for weight loss. EXCUSE ME? Going gluten-free did not help me lose weight. And really, if you find going gluten-free has an advantage to your health, maybe its because you really have a wheat allergy or celiac. She does have some tips on sharing a kitchen with non-celiacs, but I find that to be a little unrealistic, and she may have real problems once her kids become teenagers. I just found the book a little flighty. (Can't you tell?)

I do think its good that gluten-free is getting more notice, but I just wish this had been a slightly more serious book, which had left out the chapter on gluten-free and weight loss. I don't think most gluten-free people find weight loss to happen gluten-free, since most gluten-free products are sugar and white rice, and your gut does start absorbing more nutrients as it heals. She does make a good point about finding good substitutes when you start, having a gluten-free bagel, or a gluten-free cereal, instead of saying "oh just have a salad". While salads are always options when dining out, it can become tiresome.

It just felt very self-absorbed, even though she does have some well-laid-out chapters, and does have a clear list of wheats/glutenous food to avoid. And she has a nice little card in the back to take to restaurants and such. Although I WISH the card did not have 'G-free' in large letters on the top, but included the words 'gluten' somewhere on the card. My only other real issue with the book is that all the resources have websites. No phone numbers. There are still people in this day and age who do not go online. And she only has six books in the resources. One of which belongs to the doctor who wrote the foreword praising the book.

Its not a bad book, don't get me wrong. But I would not use it as the sole guide to going gluten-free, or trying to live with a gluten-free person. And I freely admit, if you hadn't guessed already, that I am not crazy about the words "G-free".

The other book I picked up was called "Getting Naked Again: Dating, Romance, Sex and Love When You've Been Divorced, Widowed, Dumped, or Distracted" by Judith Sills, PhD. I didn't even get through this book. I picked it up because I thought it might have good tips to get back into the dating world (not that I was ever really 'in' the dating world, so to speak...its always something I've had a hard time with). Its aimed mainly at the older woman of my mother's age, mid-sixties up, who have been with a partner or have had a family for many years, and who have more of a persona built around being 'in a relationship'. It really isn't as broad as the title implies, so while it might be excellent for someone of a different generation, it wasn't good for me.

Unrelated in any way..

other than that I read one right after the other...

The Importance of Being Kennedy, by Laurie Graham. This just struck me as being one of 'those' books, that might be entertaining. Its based on the facts of the Kennedy children and lives, but just lightly fictionalized as seen through the eyes of the nanny who raised them. It was fascinating to see the older children, and the children who were not talked about, and the things that were unspoken. The author did a good job of putting in little 'future nudges' (aka foreshadowing), where you read it and you knew what it was referring to. It was a light book that hung together well. It had a point of view and a direction, and you learned something from reading it.

Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo. I wanted to really like this book. I liked the premise, and I liked elements of it, but I felt that the author took the easy way out in some ways. She almost just flipped slavery on its head, so to speak, without working in more socio-economic factors somehow. It was almost to see if she could do it... and it almost worked, but not quite, because I kept feeling like the heroine was a black slave instead of a white one. I wish she had done something more creative with the geography as well... instead of just flipping the map a little. She just didn't go far enough with the concept, somehow. Because she had some wonderful elements in it, and some wonderful characterizations with the blacks being the masters and the whites being subordinate... I liked it, but I felt it could have been better, deeper, more powerful.

The Cooked and the Raw.

So the latest buzz in the cooking blogs of the world (apart from the movie Julie and Julia, which just oogs me out a little, somehow...a fictionalized account of an interesting book, but fictionalized, taking liberties with people's LIVES) was about Richard Wrangtham's Catching Fire.

This book isn't scholarly, per se, but it isn't run-of-the-mill either. It does have an interesting premise, which makes a certain amount of sense, that we evolved from apelike creatures to humans because of cooking our food. That cooking foods neutralized toxins, and released more energy. And the author makes some compelling arguments towards that, backed up by physical facts and the fossil record. But then he diminishes his arguments by having other agendas. He has a chapter in which he demolishes the Raw Foodists, and he ends with making a claim that the current obesity crisis is due to, basically, overprocessed food. I did find the book interesting, don't get me wrong, but I also found that it was skewed and slanted towards the author's argument... Personally, I feel it could have definitely been a strong factor, but that our evolution was triggered by many things. I kept thinking, during one chapter, "You know, there's a way we could prove this, if anyone wanted to try it". Try feeding modern apes a diet of cooked food. Have a control group that is fed the same things, uncooked...

I just think its a little too simplistic to say that cooked food, and cooked food alone, resulted in Homo Erectus. We feed our pets cooked foods, and we don't have our dogs walking on their hind legs...(in fact, dogs do better on a raw food diet, by all accounts)...if any vets are reading this, does anyone know if dogs/cats have developed larger brains or differences in their digestive tracts in the past 50/100 years? The dogs/cats do uphold the hidden agenda, that modern eating habits are making us fat...since we have a lot of tubby pets eating canned food.

Anyway, I just feel that this book could have used a more critical reader and a stronger editor. I kept stopping and muttering to myself while reading this...and my college anthropology was 18 years ago! (eeek!)

It was interesting to compare and contrast this to reading Nina Planck's "Real Food", in which she espouses things like drinking raw milk, red meat, as well as fruits and veggies and butter... this book does make some interesting points, and she also uses some of the same anthropological examples to prove some of her points as does Wrangtham. I suppose this proves that nutritional data can be made to say anything you want...

But her point is, essentially, that "Industrial Food" has caused our obesity/current societal ill-health. She makes some very good points, interspersed with her own experiences, about the nutritional value of 'real food'. She does not actually endorse eating everything raw, that was just my pun in the title, but she does drink raw milk. She drinks milk from pastured cows, and gives a history of milk drinking, that also explains the history of why milk became pasteurized in this country. She also tells you what to look for if you want to drink raw milk, and how to do it safely.

She backs up her claims with a lot of research, of tables, of facts. She gives good, better, best options in terms of food, and goes into detail on why a diet more similar to what your grandparents ate is a good thing.

Charming, I'm sure

So, I've read a few books that have *really* charmed me this last year. Just wonderful, sweet, enthralling, enrapturing books.

I'm finishing up "The Help". This is powerful as well as charming, funny, written in several voices (which can be very hard to pull off, see my review of Eve, which did not pull it off). Its a tribute to strong, affirming women, and to the power of womanhood, basically. I think this one is the sleeper hit of the summer. Its difficult to describe in a few easy sentences because just giving a few sentences to this book would almost oversimplify and cheapen the book. Its set in the South, in the 1950s and 60s, and was written as a tribute, in some way, to the woman who raised the author. Its a story of anger, frustration, self-worth, and empowerment. My friend Mary-Anne was talking some months ago about how difficult it is for some authors to write in an authentic 'voice' for race. This succeeds. Its not just a story of civil rights, though, its a story about prejudice on all levels, and alienation, acceptance, and self-worth.


Kissing Games of the World is another sleeper novel, which most people would never pick up, in part for the title. Again, its not something easy to describe in a few sentences, but it again is a story of growth, love, acceptance and empowerment. My boss read it and she loved it. While at first glance it seems to be a typical romance plot, it is so much more. And is just compellingly written. I just loved it.

Nothing But a Smile is another captivating book about an unlikely, unexpected romance. Set in 1944 it is also a discussion of independence, equality, censorship, all kinds of issues, clothed in an enrapturing book. Again, its not something most people would take out or buy, based on both the title and cover, but it is about so much more than pinup art. Its a story of an era, of changing times, and of finding talent. Of fulfillment...

I'm sure you've seen the movie, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day. The book is so much better, so much more complex and just completely, utterly charming. I took the book out and just devoured it overnight. And the characters are still people you see today, on the street. Maybe not the exact circumstances, but still, its light-hearted without being marshmallow fluff. Its well-crafted, well-written....

The Guernsey Literary and potato peel pie society, or, as its referred to by most library patrons, the book with the potato pie in the title. This is a book written in another manner that can be hard to pull off...letters. An epistolary (have I impressed you yet?) book is, I've found, one of the harder forms for authors to get right, to convey the story without faltering. This works, and works well. You really get to know the characters, the situations, and get a flavor for the novel. All through the letters, from different characters, with different plots and subplots (just like life!). Its not perfectly written, and there is a subtle change in flavor in the two sections (One of the authors died , so perhaps the book was finished by the other?), but all in all, a good book (and very popular).