Friday Finds (July 31)

What great books have you added to your wish list this week? Share your Friday Finds at Should Be Reading.


Here are the books that made it onto my wish list this week:

Gayle at Everyday I Write the Book mentioned The Favorites by Mary Yukari Waters on her blog. I love the cover!

The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston was reviewed by Nymeth at things mean a lot.

Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers edited by Judy Blume (a review)

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a big fan of short stories; however, they can make great “palate cleansers” between courses of full-length books and I enjoy anthologies as they are a good way to discover new writers. This particular anthology, Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers edited and with an introduction by Judy Blume, also supports a good cause: sales of the book benefit the National Coalition Against Censorship and the collection was obviously put together to raise awareness of this issue. Judy Blume’s introductory essay was a bit of an eye-opener for me: in it she details her battle with the censors (which was going on when I first read her in my teens in the 80s), including the fact that she caved in to editorial pressure and changed a passage in her novel Tiger Eyes. She also pays tribute to a few of the folks in the trenches, including several teachers who fought against the censors at great personal cost.

As might be expected, all 12 contributors to this book are YA authors, only 3 of which were already familiar to me (Norma Klein, Norma Fox Mazer and Paul Zindel). Three of the stories stood out, although I did enjoy the other nine (they just weren’t as memorable). My favourite was “The Beast Is in the Labyrinth” by Walter Dean Myers, a moving story about a brother and sister from Harlem who escape where they come from in very different ways. The other two were notable only because I disliked them so much: “Love and Centipedes” by Paul Zindel and “Lie, No Lie” by Chris Lynch. Zindel has never appealed to me: I didn’t like his writing when I first encountered it as a teen and 20+ years later I still don’t. This offering is a grim story of cruelty to animals and revenge that lacks subtlety or humour. Lynch’s story about two very different boys starts off promisingly enough (I love this quote: “He provides me with the whoosh that makes the drag-ass parts of living more worth it; and I provide him with the vacuum of experience that allows him to still feel any whoosh at all”) but soon devolves into a disturbing tale of manipulation and nonconsensual gay sex. (And it somehow feels wrong to dislike these two stories so much when they’ve been published in an anthology against censorship—as if by doing so I’m colluding with the censors, even though that’s obviously not my intention!)

Despite my reservations, overall this book is a good read made all the more interesting because each story is followed by a brief one- or two-page commentary on censorship by the author.

For other reviews, visit these sites:
Children’s BookPage • Open Mind, Insert Book • Reading Rants! • Teenreads.com

You can also read Judy Blume’s introduction to this book on her website.

Finally, head over to this site for an interview with Blume:
Children’s Literature

Thank you to Aerin at In Search for Giants for sending me this book.

Bathtub times two...

Here again are two copycat covers: Open House by Elizabeth Berg and The Chrome Suite by Sandra Birdsell. Although the designs on the sides of these two bathtubs are different (and the second has a towel draped over it), it’s definitely the same bathtub (and the wall behind it is the same too).

Teaser Tuesday (July 28)

Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event.

My modified rules are as follows:

Grab your current read. Pick two or three “teaser” sentences more or less at random from the book, anywhere on the page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your teaser from… that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given! (Please avoid spoilers!) (Read the official Teaser Tuesday rules.)

My teaser:

“More than the prospect of icy water, Maddy shrank at the thought of getting naked. With a backward glance to check for voyeurs, she quickly shucked her plaid Ship’n Shore blouse and stern unnecessary bra; stepped, tripping out of her pedal pushers. She was slim-chested and hairy and bony-kneed, she would die of mortification” (p. 38).

This is from Conscience Point by Erica Abeel.

Mailbox Monday (July 27)

I received two books in the mail this week: Conscience Point by Erica Abeel (from the author) and A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve (courtesy of Hachette). Some of you may remember that I wasn’t a fan of Shreve’s last book Testimony (my review), but I usually love her books, so I’m hoping that was just a one-off.

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Marcia’s blog, The Printed Page.

Friday Finds (July 24)

What great books have you added to your wish list this week? Share your Friday Finds at Should Be Reading.


Here are the books that made it onto my wish list this week:

Bronwyn at A Certain Bent Appeal drew my attention to this review of Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships and Broken Hearts edited by Michael Taeckens. OK, this may not be the best summer reading material, but it still sounds good!

I spotted Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool by Hannah Friedman in a Shelf Awareness newsletter. If her wacky songs are anything to go by, this should be a fun read.

Sassy Brit at Alternative-Read.com mentioned Half-Truths & White Lies by Jane Davis in her Friday Finds post last week.

Finally, Tara at Books and Cooks reviewed Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey, which, contrary to what you might think based on the cover, is not chick lit but rather “the story of a group of women who corresponded with one another via a secret magazine from 1935 until 1990.” It sounds fascinating! This book was also reviewed by Karen at Cornflower.

Parasols and umbrellas...

First the parasols: The Forgotten Island by Sasha Troyan and If You Lived Here by Dana Sachs—I think I like the colours of the first cover better, but the cropping and title are better on the second cover.

Next the umbrellas: At first view, these two books—Queen of a Rainy Country by Linda Pastan and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford—don’t look anything alike, but the umbrellas themselves are very similar... What do you think? Do they qualify as “similar covers”?

Wondrous Words Wednesday (July 22)

Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog hosts this weekly meme in which she asks us to share new words we’ve come across in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun.

All my words this week are from Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter.

Pescatarian – “The pescatarians were shoving ceviche into their faces” (p. 138).

According to Merriam-Webster, a pescatarian (or pescetarian) is “one whose diet includes fish but no meat.” The funny thing is that I’m a pescatarian and I didn’t even know it! (Since I started eating fish again, I’ve always just called myself a vegetarian-who-eats-fish, not realizing there was a more specific term.) According to Wikipedia, pescetarian is a portmanteau of the Italian word pesce (meaning fish) and vegetarian.

Metate – “But I didn’t have a metate, the traditional stone grinder that Native Americans used, and I wasn’t about to destroy my electric coffee grinder” (p. 140).

Since the author explains what this is, I thought I’d provide a picture of one (courtesy of Wikipedia).

Brix – “‘The brix is at twenty-six,’ he said, referring to the sugar levels, and smiled” (p. 142).

According to Wikipedia, brix is a “measurement of the dissolved sugar-to-water mass ratio of a liquid. . . . [It] is primarily used in fruit juice, wine making and the sugar industry.”

Cathepsin – “If we had let the ducks rest for twenty-four hours, according to McGee, enzymes called cathepsins would have broken down the bound filaments, making the meat tender” (p. 158).

As the author mentions, cathepsins are “proteases: proteins that break apart other proteins, found in many types of cells, including those of other animals.” (See this Wikipedia definition for more details.)

Traducer – “In her book Framing the Black Panthers, historian Jane Rhodes describes on of these cartoons, which had the caption: ‘A Pig is an ill-natured beast who has no respect for law and order, a foul traducer who’s usually found masquerading as a victim of an unprovoked attack’” (p. 197).

A traducer is one who “speaks ill of; misrepresents.”* (And Rhodes is referring to cops, not farm animals!)

Eminent domain – “Then came BART, which used eminent domain to raze hundreds of homes and businesses” (p. 198).

According to Wikipedia, eminent domain is “is the inherent power of the state to seize a citizen’s private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen’s rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent.” (This is an American term; in Canada, it is simply known as expropriation.)

Prolifacy – “‘There were strength of character, ruggedness, prolifacy and the ability to put on pounds of pork on forage and concentrated feed’” (p. 202).

I couldn’t find a definition for prolifacy anywhere; Google suggested I was looking for prolificacy instead which means “great fertility,” according to the Wiktionary. I suspect these two words are synonyms. Does anybody else know for sure?

This book also introduced me to a bunch of plants I’d never heard of: penstemon, pellitory, chayote, perilla, cardoon and piri-piri (another name for African birdseye peppers).

What new words have you discovered lately? Share your Wondrous Words on Kathy’s blog.

*Unless otherwise noted, all definitions are from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004).

Giveaway of The Impostor’s Daughter: A True Memoir by Laurie Sandell

As I mentioned yesterday, Hachette has generously offered to send copies of The Impostor’s Daughter: A True Memoir by Laurie Sandell to five of my readers. The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only (no P.O. boxes). I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Friday, August 7.

For one entry, post a comment here. Please be sure to provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

For another entry, post a comment on my review. (I loved this book!) If you’ve already done so, that counts too!

For another five entries, become a follower of my blog or subscribe to my blog through Google Reader (or equivalent). If you are already a follower or subscriber, let me know and you will still get the five extra entries. (Please do not comment that you are a follower five times! I will tabulate each person’s entries separately.)

Best of luck!

Teaser Tuesday (July 21)

Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event.

My modified rules are as follows:

Grab your current read. Pick two or three “teaser” sentences more or less at random from the book, anywhere on the page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your teaser from… that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given! (Please avoid spoilers!) (Read the official Teaser Tuesday rules.)

My teaser:

“When the pigs discovered, at the bottom of the trough, the lopsided cake we had dredged from the Yummy House Bakery, they let out peals of delight louder than the squealing brakes of a municipal bus. They bit each other’s ears in order to get a bigger share of the cake” (p. 196).

This is from Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter.

And the winners are...

Congratulations to Jake Lsewhere, who won a copy of The Etruscan by Linda Lappin, and teabird, who won a copy of Katherine’s Wish by the same author! Please send me your addresses and I will pass them on to the author.

Thank you to Linda Lappin for providing the books for this giveaway and thank you to all of you who entered! I will announce my next giveaway tomorrow, so be sure to come back!

1. Jake Lsewhere
2. teabird

Timestamp: 2009-07-20 23:12:30 UTC

Review: The Impostor’s Daughter: A True Memoir by Laurie Sandell

The Impostor’s Daughter: A True Memoir by Laurie Sandell is a graphic memoir chronicling the author’s journey out of the maze of her family’s myths. The family’s main mythmaker is Sandell’s dad, a larger-than-life man who claims, among other things, to have written position papers for Kissinger, to be a friend of the pope and to have been awarded a Purple Heart in Vietnam. I don’t have much experience reading graphic novels or memoirs, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one. One of the blurbs on the back of the book warns: “Don’t pick up The Impostor’s Daughter if you have an urgent looming deadline. You’ll start reading and then keep reading till you reach the last page . . .” Of course, I didn’t listen to A.J. Jacobs: I peeked at the book the day I received it and was instantly hooked. When I finished it several hours later, I realized that most of the afternoon had gone by—luckily, I didn’t have any urgent deadlines! I started reading it again that evening, savouring it more slowly over the next couple of days and paying more attention, on my second read, to Sandell’s delightful art. Despite her unorthodox childhood, her “unsavory experiences” (her words) in her twenties and her glamorous job interviewing Hollywood celebrities, Sandell comes across as very down-to-earth—someone I could relate to. By turns funny and heartbreaking, her memoir is both engrossing and inspiring. I loved the fact that she incorporated several drawings she had done as a child into the narrative and also included a “group photo” of all the Hollywood stars she’d interviewed. I highly recommend this wonderful memoir.

Check out Sandell’s website for examples of her art, but don’t read the article she wrote about her dad for Esquire before reading this memoir unless you’re OK with major spoilers.

Recommended review: Life... with Books (because it’s a graphic review!)

Other reviews:

At Home with Books • Bookfoolery and Babble • BookNAround • Books and Cooks • Chick with Books • English Major’s Narrative • Foreign Circus Library • I’m Booking It • Lindy Reads and Reviews • Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity • nomadreader • Nonsuch Book • Sophisticated Dorkiness • things mean a lot

Hachette has generously agreed to sponsor a giveaway of five copies of this book on my blog! Come back tomorrow for all the details.

Thank you to Hachette for sending me this book to review.

Friday Finds (July 17)

What great books have you added to your wish list this week? Share your Friday Finds at Should Be Reading.


I’ve added so many books to my wish list this week that I’ve decided to save a few for next week! Here, then, are some of the books that made it onto my wish list this week:

Looking After Pigeon by Maud Carol Markson was featured in a guest post at 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started.

Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad by Firoozeh Dumas was reviewed by Mona Lisa at Feminist Review.

Alyce at At Home with Books mentioned Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg in her Friday Finds post last week.

Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater was reviewed by Jenny at Shelf Love.

Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude by Amy Bloom was reviewed by Eva at A Striped Armchair.

I mentioned an interview with poet Peter Levitt in my review of The Local News by Miriam Gershow last Friday, but forgot to include his book, Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom, in last week’s Friday Finds...

While I was looking up Levitt’s book on Amazon, I came across Visual Chronicles: The No Fear Guide to Creating Art Journals, Creative Manifestos and Altered Books by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, which looks super fun!

Finally, Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry by Sage Cohen was reviewed by Ali at Worducopia.

Woman in red coat times two

Here are two more exact matches: The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum and A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin. I’m not sure I like the added image bubbles on the second cover!

Thank you to Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books for pointing out these lookalikes!

Wondrous Words Wednesday (July 15)

Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog hosts this weekly meme in which she asks us to share new words we’ve come across in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun.

All my words this week are from The Condition by Jennifer Haigh (which is not a tough read, despite what these words make it sound like!).

Apoptosis – “Manning was a leader in the hot new field of apoptosis; he’d been an early proponent of the theory that, under specific conditions, cells committed suicide . . .” (p. 46).

Apoptosis means “the death of cells which occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism’s growth or development.”*

Oncogeneticist/oncogene – “He was a traditional oncogeneticist; he’d made his reputation by discovering a specific oncogene, XNR, and its role in tumor-cell signaling” (p. 46).

I had a hard time finding a definition for oncogeneticist (or at least a definition that made sense to me!). However, according to WordNet, an oncogene is “a gene that disposes normal cells to change into cancerous tumor cells.” I presume an oncogeneticist is a geneticist who studies oncogenes...

Picayune – “Hanging over his shoulder, she had instructed him endlessly: so persnickety, so picayune, that he had lost his temper” (p. 89).

This is another one of those words I feel I should know (I’ve certainly come across it before), but I wasn’t sure of its definition. Picayune means “contemptible, petty, insignificant.”

Nulliparous – “No, because Turner females are nulliparous” (p. 164).

According to Wikipedia, nulliparous means “that has not given birth.”

Cichlid – “A school of bright cichlids engulfed them” (p. 202).

A cichlid is “any tropical freshwater fish of the family Cichlidae, especially the kind kept in aquariums.” According to Wikipedia, “there are at least 1300 scientifically described species [in the Cichlidae family], making it one of the largest vertebrate families.” Tilapia is a cichlid.

Dinoflagellate – “The water was speckled with dinoflagellates, tiny particles of iridescent green” (p. 205).

A dinoflagellate is “a unicellular aquatic organism with two flagella, of a group variously classes as algae and protozoa.” Of course, I then had to look up flagellum (plural: flagella), which is “a long lash-like appendage found especially on microscopic organisms.”

Comorbidity – “And there is comorbidity with ADHD” (p. 232).

According to Wikipedia, comorbidity means “the presence of one or more disorders (or diseases) in addition to a primary disease or disorder.”

Onion snow – “. . . far, far away from Gatwick, where an onion snow was falling on his mean little house” (p. 260).

According to Dictionary.com, onion snow is “a snowfall in late spring; the last snow of the season.” This is a term used mostly in Pennsylvania, apparently.

What new words have you discovered lately? Share your Wondrous Words on Kathy’s blog.

*Unless otherwise noted, all definitions are from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004).

Teaser Tuesday (July 14)

Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event.

My modified rules are as follows:

Grab your current read. Pick two or three “teaser” sentences more or less at random from the book, anywhere on the page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your teaser from… that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given! (Please avoid spoilers!) (Read the official Teaser Tuesday rules.)

My teaser:


“Paulette blinked. She was often blindsided by how acerbic her sister could be, how in the middle of a pleasant conversation Martine could deliver a zinger that stopped her cold: the backhanded compliment, the ripe apple with the razor inside” (p. 5).

This is from The Condition by Jennifer Haigh.

Mailbox Monday (July 13)

I received two books in the mail this week, both giveaway wins: The Host by Stephenie Meyer, which I won from Dar at Peeking Between the Pages (courtesy of Hachette) and The Condition by Jennifer Haigh, which I won from Gayle at Everyday I Write the Book (courtesy of Harper Collins). I wasn’t a big fan of Twilight (I gave up on the series after the first book), but I’m looking forward to reading The Host. However, I think The Condition might just be a perfect summer read!

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Marcia’s blog, The Printed Page.

The Local News by Miriam Gershow (a review)

The Local News by Miriam Gershow is the story of 15-year-old Lydia Pasternak whose older brother Danny has disappeared. While Danny was athletic and popular (and not particularly bright), Lydia is smart and most definitely not popular, at least not until Danny disappears. I started this book with some trepidation: for one thing, I was feeling a bit tired of the “missing person” plot; for another, I had read Tara’s review at Books and Cooks, which she concluded by saying: “So, The Local News was not really for me, but if you’re interested in the story it’s certainly well done.” Although I wasn’t that interested in the setup, in the end I’m very glad I read the book because it’s less about Danny’s disappearance than it is about Lydia’s experience of high school.

More specifically, Gershow perfectly captures the crazy changeable nature of high school where it is possible, from one day to the next, to go from superfreak to member of the in-crowd and where friendships are sometime dictated more by circumstance and proximity than by shared interests or genuine connection. Only very occasionally did I feel like Gershow missed the mark, as, for example, when Lydia has this thought: “This grandiose treatment, the stuff of only the most ambitious and helpful of suicide ideations, only elevated the situation to the realm of [the] surreal” (p. 272). Although this was presumably supposed to be the thought of adult rather than teenage Lydia, the language used completely pulled me out of this fairly intense moment.

Now here’s the weird part. I read the end of this book in a teashop after our next-to-last blogger meet-up. A song came on that made me jump up and ask the waitress what it was. It turned out she’d started playing the soundtrack to the movie Le peuple migrateur (Winged Migration in English)—and so the whole soundtrack played in the background as I finished the book.* As I listened and read, I had the weirdest sensation, as if a space had opened up in my chest from throat to heart. And I felt like I knew Lydia from the inside out: I became her. I recently read an interview with poet Peter Levitt, who said: “There is no experience of ‘writer’ and ‘writing’ as distinct or separate entities, no subject and object. That duality collapses and there is just the activity itself.” Something similar happened to me in that teashop: there was no me separate from the story I was reading. In a guest post at Everyday I Write the Book, Gershow said, “Over and over, I try to write my way back into that experience [of high school] and out the other side of it.” For the me that briefly became Lydia, I think she succeeded.

*Needless to say, I listened to “To Be by Your Side” by Nick Cave, the first song on this soundtrack, over and over as I wrote this review.

Read other reviews of this book at these blogs:
Age 30+ ... A Lifetime of Books • a lovely shore breeze • Becky’s Book Reviews • Book Club Classics • Bookopolis • Books and Cooks • books i done read • Books on the Brain • Boston Bibliophile • Caribousmom • Constance Reader • Every Day I Write the Book • Lit and Life • Stephanie’s Written Word

For interviews with the author, visit these blogs:
Becky’s Book Reviews • Manic Mommies Book Club • Paper Fort • Worducopia

For guest posts by the author, visit these blogs:
Books on the Brain • Caribousmom • Every Day I Write the Book

Thank you to Spiegel & Grau for sending me this book to review.


This is the ninth book I review for the New Authors Challenge.

Friday Finds (July 10)

What great books have you added to your wish list this week? Share your Friday Finds at Should Be Reading.


Here are the books that made it onto my wish list this week:

I mentioned Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice in a “similar covers” post, but had no idea what the novel was about until I read her guest post at 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started. Jacquelyn Mitchard called it a “fresh, free-rein novel about mothers’ secrets and children’s sorrows,” which sounds great to me! (I’m a sucker for books about secrets.)

Rebecca at Lost in Books writes a great series called “Take Me Away,” in which she features books that focus on a specific country or culture. A couple of weeks ago, she did Kenya, which is when I came across Desire by Lindsay Ahl—“a dense, dreamlike novel,” according to author Susann Cokal.

I’m not sure where I first saw Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones, but the title alone was enough to pique my interest!

I spotted Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor on the Fantastic Fiction site. Although I didn’t enjoy The Mermaid Chair or The Dance of the Dissident Daughter as much as The Secret Life of Bees, I still want to read this one.

Rebecca Walker was recently interviewed at Feminist Review, which is where I heard about One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk about Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (which Walker edited). Although this book is saddled with a mouthful of a title and an uninspired cover, it sounds fascinating. You can also read a review of it at In These Times.

Finally, Rose City Reader mentioned The Ice Chorus by Sarah Stonich in her Mailbox Monday post this week.