Book Review: New Stories from the South, 2005

For the past many years, Randy buys this year's edition of New Stories from the South for my birthday. I love southern fiction. There is just nothing like it. I love what Jill McCorkle has to say in her introduction to this collection:

Pain, sorrow, grief--isn't that what we really want to see, to experience and learn from? Who wants to read a story where everything is perfect and nothing whatsoever happens? It would be like an endless pile of those holiday brag letters where no one tells of the year's misfortunes and losses but only of brilliance and success and good times. Who wants to read such? Give me something that will break my heart. Make me ache. Make me laugh and weep simultaneously. Make me feel and care. That is what a story should do, and oftentimes a story is as much about what has come before as the situation at hand. There is history and nostalgia. There are regrets and losses. There are joys that in hindsight take on a different level of pain. Read a story that really works and you will find that dark taproot.

These are good stories. Nothing stands out as terribly memorable, but good, solid stories. I was sad when I came to the end and look forward to next year's installment.

Book Review: 2 By Dan Brown

Dan Brown's Deception Point and Digital Fortress are both great plot reads. I can't remember which is which now by the titles, but I think Deception Point was slightly better than Digital Fortress. They aren't deep and the dailogue is tiresome, but they are great reads for those weeks when you don't want anything more than plot.

Book Review: Eats, Shoots and Leaves

How could I not love an author whose rallying cry is "Sticklers unite!"? For I am a grammar stickler, and Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss just makes me feel so happy!

I love this introduction to the chapter "The Seventh Sense":
"Either this will ring bells for you, or it won't. A printed banner has appeared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. 'Come inside,' it says, 'for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's.'
"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but just don't bother to go any further. For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word 'Book's' with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated."

Obviously, to read a book subtitled "The Zero Approach to Punctuation," one would have to be somewhat of a grammar freak. And although I have tuned it down tremendously in the past couple of decades, the truth is that I used to find it almost impossible NOT to correct one's grammar.I used to get such incredible joy from my editorial days! How I LOVED to make those copy editor's marks.

And grammar classes in high school and college! I can't even express the pure joy in diagramming a sentence. (I am REALLY coming out of the closet now!) The satisfaction in a sentence well-diagrammed must be akin to the feeling a mathematician has at solving a big fat equation. It's all so strange, I know. It's what Lynee Truss calls "The Seventh Sense." She writes, "No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggresively instructed to 'get a life'...Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions."

I loved this book. It simply made me really happy. And I am so looking forward to getting out my red pen for RICK LANEY, our support group's next newsletter editor! Knowing Rick, he will take it upon himself as a personal challenge to present the newsletter needing absolutely no editing....

Book Review: Life of Pi

I did it! I did it! I finished Life of Pi! This book was sloooooow going for the first 75 pages. I was so close to putting it down. For about a week I read 3 or 4 pages a night and thought "Why am I reading this book?" But there was something intriguing about it. Nevertheless, when my friend Leigh (who does not have a blog but who SPIES on me by reading my blog) confessed to me that, not only did she not finish the book but that she completely despised the 1/3 that she did read....I decided: I will give this book one more night. (I should say here that I dragged this opinion out of Leigh! I MADE her tell me what she thought of the book.)

But like I said, there was something intriguing about the character, a 14-year-old Indian (as in India) boy who, along with his family, is emigrating to Canada. What kept me reading the first third of the book (his life in India) was this interesting twist: he is a devout Hindu, a devout Catholic, and a devout Muslim. There is a funny scene when he is walking with his parents and looks up to see his three religious mentors coming toward them. Each greets the family and tells his parents what a devout son they have. "He is an excellent Muslim," says one. "He is a dedicated Hindu" says another. "He is a devout Christian," says the Catholic priest. The religious leaders all look in surprise at each other and begin fighting over Pi, as all assumed that Pi was dedicated to only their own religion.

So eventually Pi and his family and several large animals (his father was a zookeeper) are sailing to Canada and the boat sinks. Pi finds himself on a life boat with a nasty hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangatan, and a Bengal tiger, Richard Parker. Several gruesome scenes result in only Pi and Richard Parker remaining. The rest of the book narrates their survival. As I said, the book took me a week to get into, but one I did--it was well worth it. It was a fascinating story.

So yesterday in my essay writing class, I used the name "Richard Parker" as a name for a character. It was the first name that came to my mind. One 13-year-old boy looked at it and said, "Richard Parker! He's the tiger from 'Life of Pi'!" Who knew? I realized then that, indeed, this would be suitable for my 12-year-old to read.

Book Review: The Songcatcher

I love Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachain series. These books, including The Songcatcher, paint an amazing portrait of life in the Appalachains. Each book can stand on its own. Many of the same characters pop in and out of the books, but each books is written to be read by itself. My husband actually discovered Sharyn McCrumb when we lived in Iowa. He was looking for books on the Appalachain Trail and found her book She Walks These Hills. My Dad, voracious and insatiable reader that he is, picked it up off the bookshelf and plowed through it. He said it was absolutely enthralling. Of course I immediately read it--and it was amazing. All of McCrumb's books in this genre (she also has a detective series that I'm not crazy about) weave an "old" story in with a current one. Lots of good history. Anyway, I highly recommend starting with She Walks These Hills and reading all of them. Perhaps the books are more poignant to me because I live in this area, but I think they would have a wide appeal.

Book Review: Even Now

My mother is a voracious reader. Best of all she loves books like Karen Kingsbury's Even Now. I love her for that. For my own taste, Kingsbury is too formulaic and predictable. Yes, I did get teary-eyed a time or two, the goal of a sentimental, inspirational author. If you need an extremely light read with a happy ending, Kingsbury is a good choice.

Book Review: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

My friend Patti recommended this book by Alexander McCall Smith (at my library it is under the "Ms" on the shelves for McCall), and then I saw the series listed on loads of "Books I Read in 2005" lists. I loved it! On the surface it is the life of Precious Ramatswe, a private detective in Botswana, and snippets of her cases. But the meat of this book (and the whole series, I hope) is the fascinating life of the people of Botswana. I have to say, too, that McCall Smith is a lyric and often simply profound writer. I re-read some of his lines over and over just for the sheer pleasure. Like this one: "His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people."