72-Hour HoldBebe Moore Campbell I’m going to try dispensing with the clips from Amazon and writing my own summaries, starting now. But before that, from the cover: Trina is eighteen and suffers from bi-polar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and violent. Frightened by her own child, Keri searches for help, quickly learning that the mental health community can only offer her a seventy-two hour hold. After these three days Trina is off on her own […]
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A quick note on labels
It finally dawned on me that posts inspired by things I’ve read on other blogs fall into the category of “reading” too, even though I had thought that label would just be used for book reviews. I’m now using it in connection with a new “found on other blogs” label for my ramblings in response to my readings on the ‘net. Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog […]
Just finished: “Garlic and Sapphires”
Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichlfrom Amazon.com: Fans of Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples know that Ruth Reichl is a wonderful memoirist–a funny, poignant, and candid storyteller whose books contain a happy mix of memories, recipes, and personal revelations. What they might not fully appreciate is that Reichl is an absolute marvel when it comes to writing about food–she can describe a dish in such satisfying detail that it becomes unnecessary for […]
Vacation reading
The title is a minor fib – this catch-up post includes one book I didn’t get to write about before I went out of town last week (but that’s a separate post). Family History, Dani Shapirofrom Amazon.com: In Family History, Dani Shapiro has written such a nail biter of a plot that it’s easy to overlook just how good–and how literary–a novel this really is. Narrator Rachel Jensen is a housewife and art restorer married […]
Just finished: “Julie and Julia”
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, Julie Powell (paperback)original hardcover title: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchenfrom Amazon.com: From Publishers WeeklyPowell became an Internet celebrity with her 2004 blog chronicling her yearlong odyssey of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A frustrated secretary in New York City, Powell embarked on “the Julie/Julia project” to find a sense of direction, and both the […]
A change is coming
If I’m going to try to get in the habit of updating this blog regularly, I need to start posting more often, and shorter, so I need to stop doing my “reading” posts in a monthly-update format. Effective with my next one, when I finish Julie and Julia, each book review will get a post of its very own. Then I won’t be playing catch-up all the time. And I’m going on the record with […]
April’s reading so far…
Waiting, Ha JinFrom Amazon.com: From Publishers WeeklyJin’s quiet but absorbing second novel (after In the Pond) captures the poignant dilemma of an ordinary man who misses the best opportunities in his life simply by trying to do his duty as defined first by his traditional Chinese parents and later by the Communist Party. Reflecting the changes in Chinese communism from the ’60s to the ’80s, the novel focuses on Lin Kong, a military doctor who […]
Not really “Marching” on…
March 2007 Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Ayelet WaldmanFrom Amazon.com: From Publishers Weekly How a five-year-old manages to make the adults in his life hew to the love he holds for them is the sweet treat in this honest, brutal, bitterly funny slice of life. When Emelia’s day-old daughter, Isabel, succumbs to SIDS, her own life stalls. She can’t work; she can’t sleep; Central Park, once her personal secret garden, now is a minefield of […]
Back to the Beginning – January/February 2007
The year started off with a pretty high level of reading activity – taking vacation days for the first week of January gave me the opportunity to get my reading going at quite a pace! January 2007Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, Melanie RehakFrom the Amazon.com product page: From Publishers Weekly The intrepid Nancy Drew has given girls a sense of their own power since she was born, Athena-like, from the […]
The past is fading fast – or, some notes on Fall 2006 reading
I’m not sure how much I remember about some of these now, so the notes may not be too long. November 2006To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (for Book Club)Summary from the Amazon.com page: Amazon.com Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus–three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual […]
