The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch – Book Review

Jan 032012

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome and One Man’s Quest to be a Better Husband by David Finch
Published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

When your wife bursts into tears – unhappy tears – as you’re celebrating your third wedding anniversary, it typically means your marriage isn’t going well. After that, plus another two years of resentment and lack of communication, David Finch is surprised when his wife lovingly wraps her arms around him, and suggests he come down and join her in her office in the basement when he is finished with his evening routine. Once down there, she begins to give him a quiz, a quiz which seems to describe him perfectly. It isn’t until she is finished that she reveals that this quiz is an online diagnostic for Asperger Syndrome, which David fairly conclusively seems to have. Instead of being a blow, however, this news seems inspiring to David: it isn’t that he’s just a bad husband and father, his brain functions a different way than the brains of most of the people around him, which hinders his understanding of those people. Although David can’t simply take a pill for his Asperger Syndrome to mitigate it, as he can for his ADD, but he can begin to change his habits, based on an understanding of how his brain chemistry differs from that of the people around him. It is from this, and his quest to finally become a better husband and father that the Journal of Best Practices is born.

The Journal of Best Practices is a fascinating book, not least because of how honest and self-deprecating Finch is. He is remarkably open about his own foibles and shortcomings. The steps he takes to overcome them are often humorous and always interesting. This is not a traditional, chronological memoir, but an anecdote-based series of experiences and attempts to overcome obstacles.

Really, Finch’s method of self-improvement for the good of his relationships is one that could be successful for anyone, whether you have Asperger Sydrome or not. His desire to be the person his family needs him to be is inspiring, and his story has wide appeal, whether you are interested in marriage, Asperger Syndrome, or whether you just wish your husband would would help get the kids ready in the morning once in awhile.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, at the GLIBA trade show.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Maman’s Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan – Book Review

Dec 052011

Maman’s Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen by Donia Bijan
Published by Algonquin Books, an imprint of Workman Pub

From the publisher:

For Donia Bijan’s family, food has been the language they use to tell their stories and to communicate their love. In 1978, when the Islamic revolution in Iran threatened their safety, they fled to California’s Bay Area, where the familiar flavors of Bijan’s mother’s cooking formed a bridge to the life they left behind. Now, through the prism of food, award-winning chef Donia Bijan unwinds her own story, finding that at the heart of it all is her mother, whose love and support enabled Bijan to realize her dreams.

I was expecting Bijan’s memoir to focus more directly on her mother based on the title. There was definitely a strong thread about her parents and their life in Iran and attempts to adjust to life in America. However, more than anything, Maman’s Homesick Pie is about Bijan herself, how she came to create her unique blend of Persian, American, and French food.

Despite Maman’s Homesick Pie not being what I expected, it was still a lovely, heartfelt memoir. It is a slim tome, so Bijan does not always go into great depth of detail about people, places, or events, but what she does write is so evocative, that the sparseness of some of the details doesn’t really matter.

Foodies and those who love stories about identity will greatly enjoy Maman’s Homesick Pie.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher for BOOK CLUB.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Orchard by Theresa Weir – Audiobook Review

Nov 182011

The Orchard by Theresa Weir, narrated by Ellen Archer
Published in audio by Hachette Audio, published in print by TK

Synopsis:

Theresa Weir had a tough life as a child, and things didn’t really become any easier when she married Adrian Curtis and joined him on his family’s apple farm. Derided as an outsider – particularly by Adrian’s mother – Theresa must struggle to find her place in this world, even as she has significant reservations about the use of pesticides.

Thoughts on the story:

The Orchard had a bit of a slow start, mostly because of the slightly odd timeline. The book is nearly half over before Adrian and Theresa wed, even though they know each other for only a few months before marrying (this portion includes a lot of flashbacks to Theresa’s childhood, which are edifying, but perhaps not enough to justify drawing this part out so much). The second half of the book comprises the entire rest of Theresa and Adrian’s life together, which gives some events a rushed feel. Suddenly, the couple has two children, next thing you know, Theresa is writing a book, and then is a published author. Still, despite what is an initially puzzling timeline, Weir has created a story with power and heart. Both a very personal memoir, and an exploration of the place of pesticides in farming.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Ellen Archer did a wonderful job conveying Weir’s life. For my full audio review, please see my Audiofile Magazine review.

soundbytes picture Overall:

A moving book, very well narrated. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Print*
Indiebound: Print*
Audible.com

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Audiofile.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn – Book Review

Oct 122011

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
Published by Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin

Please also see the additional post with the giveaway and knife skills video.

Kathleen Flinn is a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, but she wasn’t really doing anything much with her training. Sure, she wrote a book about her experience there, but since then? Yeah, not much for some time. Not until the Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

It all started with a trip to the grocery store. Compelled by something she herself couldn’t quite explain, Kathleen approached a perfect stranger and began asking her about the piles and piles of boxes in her shopping cart, things that approximated, but didn’t approach, real food. When she discovered that the woman simply had no idea how to actually cook for herself the relatively easy dishes the boxes allegedly contained, an idea began to take root.

With more research, it became clear to Flinn that we have, as a nation, lost much of our cooking literacy. As she points out, when speaking on some friends’ radio show:

“Recipe writers don’t use certain words anymore, like braise. Instead, they write, ‘Cover and simmer in the oven,’ because people don’t know what braise means.” – p. 43

This loss of literacy has roughly corresponded with our growing obesity epidemic, and the two do seem to be connected.

Several studies back up (Jamie Oliver)’s assertions that the less a person cooks real food, the more they rely on processed or convenience foods, whether at home or in the fast-food line, and the more weight-related health problems they experience. -p. 36

This situation, Kathleen decided, was something that needed to change, even if only one person at a time. With help from fellow chefs, she chose nine women who wanted to change their eating and cooking habits and brought them to a basic kitchen and cooking class, covering not only specific methods of food preparation, but things like knife skills as well.

If far too many of your meals come from a box, a bag, or a drive-through line and you wish they didn’t, this is the book for you. Flinn has a way of talking about cooking and food that is at once magical and realistic. Her instructions are clear and concise, and there is something new to learn on nearly every page. As a result, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School is hugely inspiring, making real home-cooking seem like something attainable. The best thing is, Flinn seems to truly believe in the abilities of not only everyone in her class, but everyone reading her book.

There have been books before that have inspired me to want to change my eating habits; most notably, anything by Michael Pollan. These tend to be only very short-term changes, however, because while they often have concrete ideas of what to change, they fail to impart the tools for how to do it. That is where The Kitchen Counter Cooking School really excels. This is decidedly not a cookbook, but you will find a number of clear recipes, many of which I have already made within a week of reading the book. Although I may need to do rereads for further inspiration – The Kitchen Counter Cooking School has definitely earned a place in my permanent collection – I can see this as being the one that really sticks.

For the aspiring home cook, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School provides both something to aspire to, and the tools to reach it. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos – Audiobook Review

Sep 232011

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos, narrated by Jack Gantos
Published in audio by Macmillan Audio, published in print by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (BYR), both imprints of Macmillan

Synopsis:

Growing up can be difficult, especially when you live in an exceedingly quirky town called Norvelt that was originally founded by Eleanor Roosevelt that consists mostly of elderly people. It is even harder when you’re Jack Gantos and you’re grounded for the summer thanks to conflicting directions from your mom who loves Norvelt and your father who hates it. It looks like it might be a boring summer for Jack, until he is apprenticed to the town’s arthritic obit writer and medical examiner. Suddenly, being grounded has never been so interesting.

Thoughts on the story:

Quirkiness abounds! Gantos seems to have a great love for the absurd, but at times while listening, I felt that the goal was absurdity for its own sake, which I did not find particularly endearing. In fact, I was nearly halfway into Dead End in Norvelt before I determined that I would, indeed, continue through to the end and not simply abandon the book. Eventually, though, the town of Norvelt and its inhabitants grew on me and, by the end, I was even a bit sad that the book had ended.

One interesting thing about Dead End in Norvelt is the way it blends events from Gantos’s own life with those that occurred only in his imagination. I often wondered exactly where that line was.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Like the story, Gantos’s narration took some time to grow on me. He came across initially as a somewhat less funny David Sedaris. In general, though, I do think he was the best person to tell his own story, as he was able to perfectly give voice to some of the oddness contained therein.

soundbytes picture Overall:

Although I am not overly enthusiastic about Dead End in Norvelt, I do think it is worth picking up if the synopsis interests you, or if you are in the mood for a quirky listen.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

Source: .
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden – Book Review

Sep 222011

Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins

Before the call came, Gerry Hadden had every intention of becoming a Buddhist monk, but then his phone rang, and he was offered the position of NPR’s Latin American correspondent, a position he simply could not turn down. Never the Hope Itself is the story of Hadden’s time reporting on Latin America: from Haiti’s election, to drug trafficking in Colombia, to illegal immigration.

In Never the Hope Itself, Hadden mixes both personal and professional memoir. Unfortunately the proportion of life and work seems somewhat off. Hadden’s life in his home in Mexico is not as well developed as it might have been, causing those sections to feel oddly unfinished and lacking. This ends up not being a huge detriment to the memoir, however, because the really fascinating part of Hadden’s story is what he saw as an NPR correspondent in Haiti and Latin America.

Hadden excels at bringing to life everything he saw during his employment, including the perils of emigrating from Central America through Mexico to the United States. What American readers will likely find most shocking, however, is the reaction Hadden observed to 9/11. Certainly Hadden seems to have found it shocking:

For the next several days the Mexican newspapers were filled with op-eds and commentaries on how justice, albeit tragic justice, had been served. On how naive the Americans were for not seeing it coming. On how sad it was that people had died, but what did the Big Bully Up North expect after pushing the entire planet around since time immemorial? -p. 136

“The United States has been screwing over Latin America for centuries,” Guadalupe told me…. “The American government was behind it,” said Walter, Guadalupe’s husband, “and the American government responds to Wall Street. It’s all interconnected…. Many more Argentines died during our seven years of U.S.-supported military juntas than Americans on September 11. There is a lot of anger still. A lot of unhealed wounds.” -p. 137-138

These statements will be seen by many as very provocative, but they are particularly interesting in the context of everything Hadden saw, and it is worth reading Never the Hope Itself to at least begin understand where they were coming from.

All this being said, the section on 9/11 is a relatively minor one in the context of the book and certainly isn’t the main thrust of Never the Hope Itself. Hadden’s time in Latin America is fascinating and instructive and is a great starting point for those interested in learning about the recent history of the region.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source:.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

An Accidental Mother by Katherine Anne Kindred – Book Review

Sep 082011

An Accidental Mother by Katherine Anne Kindred
Published by Unbridled Books

Kate Kindred was content with her childless life, fulfilled by her job and her dog. Still, she was perfectly happy to help out her boyfriend, Jim, with the logistics of raising his children, particularly his two-year-old son Michael, of whom he had custody. As Kate’s relationship with Jim progressed, her relationship with Michael – and to a lesser extent, his half-sister Elizabeth who lived primarily with her mother – progressed as well. Kate, Jim, and Michael spent six years living together as an unofficial family, and over time Michael began referring to Kate as his mother, and Kate felt for him a mother’s love, even asking Jim if she could formally adopt him. Eventually, the thing that mattered most in the world for Kate was that Jim promised to never deny her access to Michael, no matter what happened between them. Until he changed his mind.

An Accidental Mother is Kindred’s love letter to the boy who is her son, even if their kinship is neither biological nor legal. She leads the reader gradually through her relationship with Michael and Elizabeth, how they grew closer as they lived together and continued to capture each other’s hearts. The reader can tell just how genuine Kindred’s feelings of parenthood are, because every few chapters there is a collection of cute and memorable moments with the kids – the sort of things those without children complain about seeing too much on the Facebook walls of their friends who are parents.

A very short book, An Accidental Mother is also an extremely compelling and heartbreaking book. In addition, it raises the question of what exactly makes someone a parent. If you live with a child for six years, care for him when he is sick, get up with him when he has a nightmare, help him with his homework – and all of these things out of love, not the obligation of a job – are you not his parent?

Highly recommended

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz – Audiobook Review

Sep 062011

A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz, narrated by Sean Pratt
Published in audio by Penguin Audio, published in print by Penguin Press

Deresiewicz was recently interviewed on the podcast I cohost, What’s Old is New

Synopsis:

When Bill Deresiewicz was in graduate school, he knew exactly the authors he wanted to study, including among them some of the manlier men of literature in the 20th century. Jane Austen was nowhere on his list of authors that intrigued him. In fact, when he was finally assigned one of her works, Emma, for class he was annoyed just thinking of the girly drivel he was going to have to read. And then something happened.

After complaining about the minutia-laden novel for nearly half the book, Deresiewicz had a revelation when Emma behaved cattily towards her friends and neighbors:

By creating a heroine who felt exactly as I did, and who behaved precisely as I would have in her situation, she was showing me my own ugly face…. Austen, I realized, had not been writing about everyday things because she couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. She had been writing about them because she wanted to show how important they really are. All that trivia hadn’t been marking time until she got to the point. It was the point. Austen wasn’t silly and superficial; she was much, much smarter – and much wiser – than I could have imagined. -p. 12 (Emma)

This realization changed Deresiewicz’s life in more ways than one. First, it transformed his interactions with friends and family:

There was one more thing about my life that had to change, now that I’d read Emma: my relationships with the people around me. Once I started to see myself for the first time, I started seeing them for the first time, too. I began to notice and care about what they might be experiencing, and they began to develop the depth and richness of literary characters. -p. 36-37 (Emma)

Perhaps more importantly, though, this experience with the transformative power of Jane Austen’s work led Deresiewicz into a life-long love affair with Austen that would teach him what it really meant to be a human being.

Thoughts on the story:

Part memoir, part literary criticism, and part Austen biography, A Jane Austen Education is an absolutely wonderful little book. Particularly impressive was the balance Deresiewicz struck while explaining the revelations Jane Austen brought him. It is not uncommon in this sort of memoir for either the events/books or the lessons to feel shoehorned in. This was simply not the case in A Jane Austen Education. Every lesson seemed to be authentically in tune with what was happening in Deresiewicz’s life at the time.

In addition to outlining the lessons learned, A Jane Austen Education also serves to educate the reader about Austen and her work. A number of biographical details are included in order to ground Austen’s oeuvre in her reality. Also offered was a scholar’s understanding of Austen’s work, including a comparison of Austen and her great detractor Charlotte Bronte that I myself found revelatory in understanding why I enjoy Jane Austen and couldn’t really stand Jane Eyre:

In Pride and Prejudice, reason triumphs over feeling and will. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s own typically Romantic coming-of-age story, emotion and ego overcome all obstacles. Those of us who chose Pride and Prejudice couldn’t imagine how you could stand to read anything as immature and overwrought as Jane Eyre. Those who chose Jane Eyre couldn’t believe that you would subject your students to something as stuffy and insipid as Pride and Prejudice. -p. 70 (P&P)

Thoughts on the audio production:

Sean Pratt did a fabulous job narrating what at times was a really very personal memoir. Like all of the best memoir narrators, he became Deresiewicz for the duration of the audiobook, to the point where I was momentarily taken aback when I spoke to Deresiewicz for What’s Old is New and he sounded different than the voice who had relayed his story to me

For a more completely review of this as an audiobook, please see my review for Audiofile Magazine.

Overall:

Highly recommended in either print or audio for fans of Jane Austen, or anyone who is interested in the power of literature to shape lives.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Print*
Indiebound: Print*
Audible.com

Source: Audiofile Magazine.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch – Book Review

Jul 072011

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of HarperCollins

When Nina Sankovitch’s sister died of a quickly killing cancer at the age of 46, Nina was heartbroken. Unable to figure out how life without Anne-Marie could even continue to go on, Nina was in a serious funk; certainly she was still functioning, but the day-to-day living was largely without joy, and the reality of grief was wearing Nina down, bit by bit. Finally, Nina realized she had to do something to take back her life, not to forget Anne-Marie, but to make peace with her passing, to escape the grief. It was then that she decided on a year of reading.

Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape, but reading to escape. –p. 20

And so Nina decided that her job, for one year of her own life, would be simply to read. She was going to read one book per day, and begin every morning by writing a review of the previous day’s book on her website, ReadAllDay.org. Along the way, she began to be revived by her time with books, a passion which she and Anne-Marie had always shared.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is an absolutely lovely account of the healing power of literature, of the power that books new and old have to speak to our lives today. That said, it had the potential to go very wrong, a book about all the books one person read in a year could easily be banal, a series of “and then I read… and it was….” Sankovitch managed to take the books she read and the lessons learned from them, though, and weave them together with the year of her life as well as some family history to create a cohesive and compelling narrative with many quotable lines about the power inherent in books.

Similarly risky was the structuring of the narrative with Anne-Marie’s death at the beginning. The reader does not know either Nina or Anne-Marie when their story starts, and so the grief of Anne-Marie’s passing could have fallen flat, been simply an uncomfortable truth. Instead, Nina draws the reader immediately into her family and her own feelings, to the point where you would be better off not starting this book in a public place (I nearly cried in Chipotle).

A story of individual growth and rediscovery, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair manages to avoid the trap of becoming maudlin and ridiculous as so many in that genre fall into, and instead has a note of universality for readers. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher for an episode of What’s Old is New.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Bossypants by Tina Fey – Audiobook Review

Jun 062011

Bossypants by Tina Fey, narrated by Tina Fey
Published in audio by Hachette Audio, published in print by Reagan Arthur Books, both imprints of Hachette

If you posted an audiobook review today, Monday June 6th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

Synopsis:

Tina Fey is a smart, funny woman, a working mother. Before she was famous for her work on SNL – particularly playing Sarah Palin – she was a member of Second City and, before that, a young girl who had a lot of gay friends in summer theater.

In Bossypants, Fey touches on motherhood, feminism, working at SNL and 30 Rock, and her life growing up.

Thoughts on the story:

If you are expecting a deep treatise on feminism or working motherhood, you might be disappointed by Bossypants. Except I highly doubt you can stay disappointed for very long. Fey might not spend an inordinate amount of time or depth on any one topic, but every section of the book is rife with her trademark wit, and she hits every note beautifully, nary a joke falls flat.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Tina Fey is hilarious narrating her own life. For someone with the comic timing and delivery that she has, narrating your own memoir is an absolute must. Honestly, I simply can’t imagine any other narrator doing justice to Fey’s unique voice. The audio did mean missing the immediacy of seeing the pictures of Fey growing up, but Hachette included a pdf of all of the pictures along with the audiobook and Tina Fey references them so the listener knows when to when to check them out, or at least remembers the context when it is convenient to open the document. And huge plus for the audiobook? The fact that they were able to get the license to include the audio of the SNL skit where Tina Fey first played Sarah Palin. That alone makes it worth listening to.

Overall

Fey’s writing is sharp and smart enough that I imagine Bossypants must work quite well in print, but for the added emotion and humor of Tina narrating her own work, I must strongly recommend experiencing Bossypants in audio.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

Source: library.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries

Devourer of Books

The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch – Book Review

Maman’s Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan – Book Review

The Orchard by Theresa Weir – Audiobook Review

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn – Book Review

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos – Audiobook Review

Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden – Book Review

An Accidental Mother by Katherine Anne Kindred – Book Review

A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz – Audiobook Review

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch – Book Review

Bossypants by Tina Fey – Audiobook Review

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