Similar Covers: Two Faces

I have six similar covers for you this week (for five different books), all of which feature two cropped faces, close together. The books are:

• House Rules: A Memoir by Rachel Sontag
• Alva and Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City by Edward Carey
• The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Short Stories edited by Emma Donoghue*
• Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
• Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters

I included both covers of House Rules in part for the sake of symmetry, but also because I feel like the mood of each cover is very different, despite the fact that both use the same image. (I much prefer the black-and-white version.)

Interestingly enough, after I’d prepared this post last week, I noticed that Jacket Whys had featured six other covers similar to these in a post called “Skin.”

*I’m hoping to meet Emma Donoghue at BEA later today when she will be signing copies of her latest book, Room.

Brogan’s Review: A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiorni

I’m at Book Expo America in New York City all this week, but here’s another review from my sister Brogan:

I picked up A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiorni for possibly selfish reasons. Because I’m pregnant and thus purchasing (mostly second-hand, but nevertheless purchasing) an entire wardrobe for the very short-term usage of a few months’ wear, I have been feeling vaguely self-indulgent lately. So when I saw this book I thought it might provide me with specific reasons not to purchase Chinese goods—things I no doubt already know but wouldn’t mind being reminded of—ranging from China’s human rights record to worker safety abuses to the relative environmental costs of transporting goods halfway around the world for the use of North American consumers. I even thought Bongiorni might give me a few tips as to how best to do this, not referencing individual companies, but just providing a sort of feel-good sense of the advantages of buying from smaller shops, engaging local merchants in conversation and so on. However, I have to say my primary reaction to this book was disappointment, eventually bleeding into downright annoyance.

Bongiorni is a business journalist, who decides one Christmas holiday to boycott all Chinese goods for a year. She has two small children—aged one and four—and her partner Kevin is also brought on board. Strangely, although at various times she reaches for the reasons she is doing this, she never actually endorses any, other than it being “an experiment” “to see if it can be done,” along with some vague statements about globalization.

Because her boycott has no ideological roots, buying items made anywhere-but-China is deemed acceptable. It is not clear to me why she’s so excited about Cambodian pants or children’s trinkets made in Thailand—how different are the stories of those countries compared to the Chinese one in terms of worker exploitation and loss of local (American) jobs? In addition, she’s so scared of offending people by her boycott that she actively eliminates opportunities to talk about it to other people, thus defeating the point, ultimately, of a boycott, which is to effect change through widespread consumer reaction. And she’s constantly reassuring herself that when the year is over she can go back to buying whatever she wants, which again seems completely self-defeating.

Without enough of a reason for a boycott, Bongiorni struggles to stick with it, and it becomes difficult to sympathize with her long whines and self-pitying tirades about how she can’t find the presents her kids really want. On the other hand, for anyone not that sympathetic to such an idea in the first place, one wonders why they would even be interested in reading about such a silly exercise. Bongiorni tries to be funny but at the expense of any real depth, which ultimately makes her appear self-indulgent, even as she is attempting to do something decidedly un-self-indulgent, namely sacrifice convenience in an attempt to explore a non-mainstream approach to shopping. Because there is so little intention behind her boycott, the whole idea comes off as being about her.

Bongiorni does mention a couple of interesting things, like that items made in the USA (or other countries) often have Chinese component parts, and that in some cases the manufacturers can no longer get those component parts from anywhere else. She also makes interesting connections with people from a variety of demographic backgrounds who support the idea of boycotting Chinese goods.

However, what drove me right around the bend was her approach to parenting, which seemed to focus on buying her kids toys as her primary way of relating to them. She feels an incredible amount of guilt at not buying her son (the four-year-old) every Chinese-made trinket he desires, and bribes him—her words—with Danish-made Lego to assuage his tears when they come into conflict over it in the store. She actually discusses the question of whether she is causing him to “suffer” by not indulging his every plastic Chinese craving. In a world where children suffer so many real ills, it feels offensive to have this consumerist attitude broadcast with so little thought.

What seems particularly strange is that Bongiorno consistently confuses China-the-country with China-the-people and China-the-economic-superpower. She traces an oral history of a Chinese ancestor in her family, and then claims she feels like she’s disowning this part of herself by boycotting Chinese-made items. She also says “the idea of swearing off Chinese products forever feels like holding a perpetual grudge against 1.3 billion people” (p. 215)—which is clearly a misunderstanding of the purposes and dynamics of a boycott.

It’s possible that I’m humourless—but I really don’t think so. In fact, I really wanted to like this book. I would even say that if Bongiorno had sat down and taken the time to write this book with heart and intellectual rigour, she could have written a good book. I had the distinct impression that she was more intelligent than she let herself appear, out of a sense of hesitation to be seen as too political or serious, which possibly explains my level of aggravation with this book. I’d say give this one a miss.
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Other reviews:

Devourer of Books • Duffbert’s Random Musings • Lost Laowai • Lotus Reads • Ruby Red Books • The Novel Word • Written in the Stars

Interview with the author: The Great American Apparel Diet
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Mailbox Monday (May 24)

I received two books in the mail this past week: my sister Brogan sent me a copy of Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids edited by Lynne Van Luven (I’m childless by choice), and Harper Collins sent me a limited and signed first edition of The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry for a group read with The Next Best Book Club on Goodreads. I loved Barry’s first book, The Lace Reader (read my review), so I’m looking forward to reading this one soon. I also bought myself Careless in Red by Elizabeth George to read on the train to New York City, but then started it last week—and I’m nearly half way through! (Luckily it’s a brick, so I still have about 300 pages to go.) I’m glad I’m enjoying it after all the negative things I heard about her previous book, What Came Before He Shot Her (which I own but decided to skip for now).

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

And the Winners Are...

Congratulations to Bhumi, who won a copy of The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow (read my review). Many thanks to TLC Book Tours and Penguin USA for sponsoring this giveaway.

The winners of My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff are:

1. Rebecca Graham
   
2. Johnny
3. Kristen at BookNAround
   
4. Little Tesoro
5. MoziEsmé
6. Jena at Muse Books
   
7. Marilu
8. MarionG
9. Natalie W at The Book Inn
   
10. Stephanie at Open Mind, Insert Book

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to everyone who entered this giveaway, especially those who shared your period stories! Many thanks to Penguin USA for sponsoring this generous giveaway.

Guest Post and Giveaway: Frances Moore Lappé, Author of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want

I’m thrilled to be able to offer you this guest post by Frances Moore Lappé, author of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want (read my review).
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None of us gets up in the morning vowing, “Today, I’m going to make sure another child starves.” And no one turns off the alarm asking, “How do I heat the planet?”

But that’s exactly what we’re doing.

So what could be powerful enough to have us creating a world not one of us would ever choose?

Ideas! Human beings, uniquely, see through a mental map. It determines, literally, what we can see, what we believe our own nature to be and therefore what is possible.

Now that’s okay, if our framing lens serves life. But I believe we’re alive in an era in which the dominant mental map, going global, is destroying life… creating a downward spiral that’s brought us to this crazy place: Where solutions abound yet we’re convinced we’re powerless to bring them to life!

And what’s at the center of this spiral of powerlessness?

Lack. The belief that there’s not enough of anything. Not enough goods—energy, food or parking spots in Boston. And not enough goodness, for at heart we humans are just “selfish little shoppers.” Once believing this about ourselves, of course we believe we can’t come together to solve problems. You know… democracy? We’re too flawed. Best turn over our fate to an automatic law to sort out outcomes for us—the “magic of the market,” Reagan called it.

Markets are great. But unfortunately for us we’ve fallen for one peculiar version of a market, one driven by a single rule—highest return to existing wealth, corporate chiefs and shareholders. But wait! Didn’t we all play Monopoly?

At the end of the night one person (in my home, my brother!) had all the best property while I couldn’t even afford Baltic Avenue. That’s not too bad in a game—at least I got to go to bed at the end of the night. But in real life? Not so good. We end up with what in 2005 Citigroup glowingly named plutonomy… where the top one percent of U.S. households has as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

And the bad news doesn’t stop there. Tightly held financial power morphs into political power. For every single law maker there are two dozen lobbyists, mostly serving corporate interests working the halls of Congress.

FDR warned us: “[T]he liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism…” That was 1938. And here we are.

Starting with the false premise of scarcity of both goods and goodness, we end up actually manifesting lack—as now half of American children depend on food stamps at some point in their childhood. And we end up with the ultimate oxymoron: “privately held government.”

So, from the premise of lack, we’ve deprived ourselves of the very tool we need to make a planetary turn toward life: true, Living Democracy. To break free, we must ditch the sweet notion “seeing is believing.” For our species, it’s the opposite: Believing is seeing. So the challenge? To believe in a world actually aligned with our real nature.

Its premise is… possibility.

And that starts with embracing all of who we are—the good, the bad and the very ugly. To align with all of our nature, we can identify the conditions that bring out the worst; and, by flipping them, create the conditions proven to bring out the best. And it’s happening—as real, Living Democracy is emerging.

My argument here is that we live in an era where the dominant mental map is life destroying. What can we as individuals do to create a frame that it is life supporting? What are the conditions shown to bring out the worst in us? And how do we create the opposite to bring out the best, to create a world we really want?
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GIVEAWAY DETAILS

The Small Planet Institute has offered to send a signed copy of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want to one 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, June 21.

To enter the giveaway:

Answer one of Ms. Lappé’s questions at the end of her post OR tell me why you want to read this book.

If you are a follower or subscriber, please let me know and I will give you another entry.

Please be sure to provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries that fail to answer one of the questions or that don’t provide a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

Good luck!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.

Similar Covers: Boats

Here are nine books with similar covers:

• Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey by Bill Roorbach
• Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World by Linda Breen Pierce
• Bark, Skin and Cedar: Exploring the Canoe in the Canadian Experience by James Raffan
• The Secret River by Kate Grenville
• To All Appearances a Lady by Marilyn Bowering
• The Keening by A. LaFaye
• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
• The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
• The Puzzle Bark Tree by Stephanie Gertler

I think Choosing Simplicity and Bark, Skin and Cedar are using the same cover image, but I’m not sure. I like all these covers (though not all the title fonts), but my faves are The Secret River, To All Appearances a Lady (though the title doesn’t sound like it goes with the cover) and The Puzzle Bark Tree. I just realized, though, that in many cases, it looks like the boat is superimposed on the water, as opposed to actually in it (if that makes sense). What do you think?

Review: Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want by Frances Moore Lappé

Up until recently, I had never read any of Frances Moore Lappé’s books, but she had nevertheless had a profound impact on my life: the connection she made between factory farming and world hunger in Diet for a Small Planet was influential in my decision to become a vegetarian nearly 20 years ago. So I was very excited when a publicist at The Small Planet Institute contacted me about reviewing Lappé’s latest book: Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want.

Getting a Grip 2 opens with a very good question: “Why are we as societies creating a world that we as individuals abhor?” (p. 3). Lappé answers this question by examining the assumptions we make about human nature—assumptions that we use to explain the state of our world. Her basic argument is that the real crisis we are facing today is not hunger or environmental degradation, but rather “our own feelings of powerlessness to manifest the solutions already in front of our noses” (p. 32). These feelings come from a false assumption: that there aren’t enough goods to meet our needs or “goodness” inside us to create something better. Lappé argues that in fact the opposite is true: there are plenty of goods and goodness. Unfortunately, however, we act on our ideas of scarcity and create the very thing we believe in so strongly. (In other words, our belief in scarcity is a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

This idea of scarcity versus abundance is not new to me, although I’ve only ever thought of it at an individual rather than a societal level. I’m aware that my own belief in scarcity—that there isn’t enough to go around, be it food, love, time or good fortune—can make me ungenerous, fearful and untrusting, and that my behaviour as a result reinforces my belief, in a vicious cycle. At the same time, it’s true that I have assumed that in order for the world to change, I, as a person who lives in the West, would have to give things up. I have also held on, at some level, to the idea that our flawed democratic system is still better than the alternatives out there. But Lappé has made me rethink these assumptions by redefining democracy: what we have now is what she calls Thin Democracy—elected government plus a market economy (where profit is the highest good); what we need is Living Democracy, democracy as a way of life, which means “infusing the power of citizens’ voices and values into every part of our public lives” (p. 58). In case you think this is naive or utopian, Lappé presents compelling scientific evidence to back up her claim that humans are “good enough”; she also provides many powerful examples of Living Democracy at work.

One of my favourite chapters in this book is entitled “When Fear Means Go.” As a person who often feels fearful, I found this chapter particularly inspiring. Lappé says:

We can learn to reinterpret fear not as a verdict but as a signal. . . . Maybe [our body’s fear sensations] are not telling us that we’re off track but that we are precisely where we should be—at our growth edge. We can see fear as pure energy, a tool we can work with. (p. 166)

This idea resonated with me: I have been in that place of knowing I must speak because my heart was beating wildly—and the words are there, just waiting to spill out of my mouth. Unfortunately, more often when I’m afraid, I feel blank, without words, too terrified of rejection or ridicule to risk opening my mouth only to have incoherent thoughts pour out. Lappé’s “Seven Ways to Rethink Fear” reminded me that “every time we act, even with fear, we make room for others to do the same. Courage is contagious” (p. 176).
 
Getting a Grip 2 is an important book, a book that bridges the gap between individual and social change, between living joyfully and changing the world. What Lappé is calling for is a movement, a paradigm shift (although she doesn’t use that term). As she puts it:

No physical obstacle is stopping us. Nothing. The barrier is in our heads. We are creating this world gone mad, not because we’re compelled to by some deep flaws in our nature and not because Nature itself is stingy and unforgiving, but because of ideas we hold. (p. xv)

This book has made me look at the world differently—now the challenge is putting Lappé’s ideas into practice in my own life.

Visit the Getting a Grip website for more information about this book and the Living Democracy movement.

Come back later this week to read a guest post by Frances Moore Lappé and enter a giveaway for a signed copy of this book!

Thank you to The Small Planet Institute for sending me this book to review.
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Other reviews: Ethio Quest News • Green Book Reviews

Excerpt of the book: The Progressive Reader
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My BEA Schedule + Reminders & Announcements

It’s becoming pretty clear that I’m not going to finish all the things on my miles-long to-do list before I leave in a week to go to BEA and Book Blogger Con, but I’m trying not to panic (especially since many of them are work-related). I’m also still in the process of figuring out all the things I want to do and see while I’m in New York City (not to mention what I should wear!). So far, my BEA/BBC schedule is as follows:

Monday:

• Eleven-hour train journey to NYC with Linda, Cindy, Tina and Donna (+ Donna’s hubby)
  

Tuesday:

• The Strand + touristy things + dinner with Montreal book bloggers
  

Wednesday:

• 9:30-10:30 AM: Brunonia Barry signing The Map of True Places (Table 13)
• 10-11 AM: Justin Cronin signing The Passage (Table 8)
• 12-12:45 PM: Maria V. Snyder signing Inside Out (Booth 3922)
  
• 4-5 PM: Emma Donoghue signing Room (Booth 3750)
• 7-9 PM: A Celebration of Book Bloggers – Harper Collins (Algonquin Hotel)

Thursday:

• 9:30-10:30 AM: Kathleen Kent signing The Wolves of Andover (Table 26)
• 10:30-11:30 AM: Delia Sherman signing Interfictions 2 (Table 1)
• 11 AM – 12 PM: Jonathan Kaplan signing Urban Mindfulness (Table 9)
  
• 12-2 PM: Author Lunch hosted by Patton Oswalt
• 3-3:30 PM: Jennifer McMahon signing Dismantled (Table 20)
• 3-4 PM: Debbie Stoller signing Stitch & Bitch books (Table 1)
• 4-6 PM: Book Blogger Convention Reception

Friday:

• Book Blogger Convention all day

Saturday:

• Eleven-hour train journey home

I’m for sure attending anything in bold on Wednesday and Thursday; the others (on those days) are tentative. I haven’t included any of the conference sessions in my schedule yet—I wasn’t that excited about any of them, but I should look through the schedule again. I’m also looking forward to meeting some of you there! What are your must-attend events?
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If you’re not attending BEA this year, you might be interested in participating in Armchair BEA, which I first heard about on Florinda’s blog, The 3 R’s Blog: Reading, ’Riting, and Randomness.
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Don’t forget that today is the last day to enter my two current giveaways. Click on the images below to enter each giveaway:

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Finally, I will be posting my review of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want by Frances Moore Lappé tomorrow, along with a guest post by the author and giveaway later this week, so be sure to come back for that!

Similar Covers: More Braids

Here are a couple more covers that look very similar: The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow and Waiting by Ha Jin. It feels unfair to compare them, since the first image is such poor quality, but Waiting definitely has a better cover in my opinion!

Waiting also has another cover, which reminded me of the cover of Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson. What do you think?

If I crop out the braids and blow them up, this is what they look like side by side:

This is the second time I’ve posted about similar covers that feature braids.

More Book Loot: Another Not So Mailbox Monday (May 10)

I can’t resist a library book sale, so I went to another one this past week. Although the selection was disappointing, I still came home with six books (and only spent $5)!

Here are their covers:

The books are:

1. Coming into Eighty by May Sarton
2. The Family Tree by Carol Cadwalladr
3. Letters from Maine by May Sarton
4. Lost Gospels by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
5. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen
6. Threshold: Six Women, Six Poets edited by Rona Murray

Four of these books are poetry books (the four outer ones), which they were selling for 50 cents each. (How could I resist?) Are you a book sale junkie too?

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

Similar Covers: More Butterflies (Jar Optional)

I recently came across the cover for Original Sins: A Novel of Slavery and Freedom by Peg Kingman and right away the butterfly looked familiar. I’m pretty sure it’s the same butterfly that appears on the cover of The Sister by Poppy Adams. What do you think?

I also had a small collection of covers featuring butterflies in jars: The End of Alice by A.M. Homes, The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman and Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon. I love all three of these covers, but especially the last one—there’s something about the blurriness that really appeals to me.

I’ve posted about similar butterfly covers before, as have Alea at Pop Culture Junkie, Kay at The Infinite Shelf (whose post featured two of the same covers as above!) and, more recently, Jacket Whys.

Edited to add:
I found another blog post about similar butterfly covers (in jars!) at Euro Crime that features a book with a familiar cover image: Life Sentences by Laura Lippman, which I added above. It’s my new favourite cover of the lot!

Review: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

One day, while sitting on a bus, Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany of sorts: she was, as she put it, “in danger of wasting [her] life.” This moment made her realize two things: she wasn’t as happy as she could be and her life wasn’t going to change unless she did something about it. Thus was born the idea behind The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin, Rubin designed a Resolutions Chart and decided to tackle a different subject every month for a year. She also came up with a list of Twelve Commandments and a goofier list of what she calls the Secrets of Adulthood.

I’ve struggled with reviewing this book for quite a while now because, quite simply, it wasn’t what I expected. I thought it was going to be more of a memoir and less of a self-help book. And I’m having trouble deciding whether my disappointment with the book stems mainly from the fact that it didn’t meet my expectations or whether Rubin’s approach weakened the impact of the book regardless of my expectations. (But maybe that distinction is moot, and I should just quit waffling and tell you what I thought...)

One of Rubin’s Commandments and one of her Secrets of Adulthood really hit home for me (and they are complementary concepts). Her first commandment is “Be Gretchen” (or be yourself), which is self-evident perhaps and yet sometimes so easy to forget. (An aside to give you an idea of where I’m coming from: When I was in high school, my mother’s best friend gave me a poster for my birthday that said: “I may not be perfectly wise, perfectly witty or perfectly wonderful, but I’m always perfectly me.” I dutifully tacked the poster to my wall but felt taunted daily by its message. As a “brainy” and socially awkward teen—and still sometimes to this day—I often felt like I didn’t know who “me” was, and I certainly didn’t feel I had the level of acceptance I needed to be “perfectly me.”) The variation on this theme that’s one of Rubin’s Secrets of Adulthood is “What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you—and vice versa.” Again, this seems obvious and yet as an introvert, I often forget this piece of wisdom and think there’s something wrong with me when I dread the party that supposed to be so much fun or would rather spend hours in a second-hand bookstore instead of hanging out in the pub.

Much of Rubin’s research on happiness is fascinating and her advice is pretty spot-on; this book did get me thinking about ways I can work towards my own happiness (and was in part the inspiration behind my 40/40 Challenge). However, I felt frustrated with how self-conscious The Happiness Project is: it always felt like Rubin was too aware of her readers; her stories seemed too pat, too constructed somehow. I wanted her to dig deeper and get messier, to share more. I was annoyed that she quoted so extensively from people’s comments on her blog (some of the quotes are pages long) instead of including more details about her struggles to follow through with her happiness project. I guess in the end I didn’t identify with her enough: it seemed like the distance she had to travel from status quo to happy (or happier) was too short—and too easy—for her approach to apply to my own life.

Thank you to Harper Collins for sending me this book to review.
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Other reviews:

5 Minutes for Mom • A Patchwork of Books • A Reader’s Respite • Ariel Gore • A Striped Armchair (scroll down for review) • Bibliophile by the Sea • Chew & Digest Books • Communicatrix • Erin Reads • Hope Is the Word • Lesa’s Book Critiques • Living Artfully • Pop Culture Junkie • Ruly • S. Krishna’s Books • Sophisticated Dorkiness • The Book Chick • unclutterer
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