Dinner With Lisa by R. L. Prendergast

Dinner With Lisa by R. L. Prendergast
Published October 2011 by Dekko Publishling
Source: this copy courtesy of the publisher & Premier Virtual Author Book Tours


After the death of his wife, Joseph Gaston boards a train with his four children and heads across Canada to Philibuster, Alberta where he hopes to make a better life for his family during the Great Depression. Joseph has a letter promising a job, a few dollars and a brother and sister-in-law who have offered to help.

Things get off to a rocky start when Joseph angers the chief of police by helping a hobo hopping off the train in Philibuster and then reports for his new job only to be told the position has already been filled. While his boys seem to flourish and his daughters become deeply attached to his sister-in-law, Joseph has a much harder time of it. The pressure of providing food and shelter for his family while maintaining his integrity, staying clear of the chief of police, and come to terms with his growing feelings for a Beth Hoogaboom, a woman who doesn't entirely fit in herself, weighs heavily on Joseph until one night he finally snaps.

Prendergast can certainly write - his description of a Black Blizzard is terrifying, I was certain I could navigate Philibuster's streets and recognize the landmarks clearly, and his portrayal of the life of the men and women left destitute and hopeless was heartbreaking. I cheered for Joseph and his family, I adored Beth Hoogaboom, I laughed at the antics of Joseph's brother, Henri and his friend, Raven.

Prendergast has clearly done his research and Dinner With Lisa makes the reader draw parallels between the time period the book covers and the present day.

"As foreigners in a country where anyone not of British descent was deemed second-class, most Italian men could only find jobs in the most strenuous and poorest paying work situations."

I couldn't help but think of the lives of Mexican immigrants as I read this. And here, in what I think may be an actual piece of radio transcript, the reader can't help but think of the current world crisis:

"...this world crisis would be brought to a swift conclusion if the world's leaders had the courage to say to their countries, "We have lived beyond our means too long, and must have the boldness to pursue such actions as might prove painful in the short term but will be to everyone's benefit in the long."

I like a book that makes me think and you can clearly see that this one did. For the most part, Prendergast managed to do make these statements without coming off as preachy.

I'm was torn on what I wanted to say about this one. So torn that I've actually been scouring the internet to see what others thought of it - something I never do once I've started a book and before I'm done with my own review. In my searching, I found a site with an author's note detailing Prendergast's inspirations for writing this book and it became clear to me why I was having problems with this book. After his last book, Prendergast thought he was done with writing, but the stories his parents and aunts and uncles had told about growing up were stuck in his head, begging for an outlet. His great-uncle's stories about World War I, his father's stories about life on a dairy farm and his mother's stories about a neighborhood corner store all found their way into Dinner With Lisa. The problem with writing a novel this way is that it can be difficult to pull all of those tales together into a cohesive story. In Dinner With Lisa I felt like Prendergast has simply tried to do too much, there were too many distractions. As he tried to flesh out secondary characters with full backgrounds, Prendergast kept pulling me away from the Gaston family and the struggle of the common man during this terrible time and those were the stories I really wanted to read, the stories I really wanted to get caught up in.

Thanks to Teddy and Premier Virtual Author Blog Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions of this book and to learn more about  Prendergast's work, check out Premier's website.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
352 pages
Published July 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

On New Year's Eve 1937, secretarial pool member Katey Kontent (emphasis on the second syllable) and roommate Evelyn "Eve" Ross are celebrating at small jazz club when they chance to meet a young man, Tinker Grey, who sits down next to them. The three become fast friends even as the two young ladies each try to stake their own claim on the young banker. They show him the everyday places of New York while he takes them to the finer places. But a tragic event will change the course of all of their lives.

In the coming year, Katey finds herself moving from the secretarial pool into the offices of Conde Nast and moving between the haunts of the working class and upper echelons of New York society as friendships and beliefs are tested.

This book arrived in the mail unrequested and I set it aside to fulfill other obligations. Then life interrupted just as praise for this book began to fill the blogoverse. Praise, as it turns out, which was richly deserved. As I read Rules of Civility the word "smart" kept coming to mind. Publisher's Weekly compared Towles' writing to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like Fitzgerald, Towles has utterly captured his setting and its denizens. He has glamorized the life of the wealthy while not glamorizing the wealthy. All of his characters are fully developed - the rich are not just elitists; the working class are not all filled with jealousy and ambition.

What really made me love this book, however, was Towles' crisp, witty writing style. I will forewarn readers, though, that Towles does not use quotation marks for dialogue which can be confusing at times.

"As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion--whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment--if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me" 

When I finished this book, I finally looked at the author information on the back flap. I was first and foremost surprised to discover that this is Towles' first novel. One can only hope that he's busily at work on another. Then there's that pronoun I just used - "he." I don't suppose I'm very often impressed with how well a female writer has captured a male character, not having any personal basis in determining whether or not it rings true. But I'm often surprised when a male author writes female characters so well as Towles' has done in this book. Here Towles has created a character in Kate that I wanted to get to know, who I could imagine spending time with, something that always endears a book to me.

I highly recommend this book for men and women. It would make a good book club selection with characters and character choices that are sure to generate discussion as much as the writing would.

Mermaid: A Twist On The Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon
256 pages
Published March 2011 by Crown Publishing Group
Source: I bought this at the Omaha Lit Fest

In a convent, high on a mountain top, Princess Margrethe of the Northern Kingdom is being hidden from her kingdom's enemies. One cold morning, Margrethe is out walking in the gardens when she is startled to see a mermaid emerging from the sea with a nearly dead man in her arms, depositing him on the rocks, Margrethe is certain, even from as far away as she is  that she can hear the mermaid calling to her to save the man. Margrethe rushes to the man, covering him with furs and then goes for help, risking her own life in the process. Hours later, after she recovers, she makes her way to the man and the two are instantly drawn to each other. When the man rushes away from the convent the following day, it is then that Margrethe realizes that he is Prince Christopher of the Southern Kingdom, sworn enemy to her people.

Margrethe's father, King Erik, rushes to her "rescue" and uses the situation to convince his kingdom to go to war with the Southern Kingdom. But Margrethe is sure that the mermaid brought the man to her for  a reason and concocts a secret plot to unite the two kingdoms by marrying Christopher.

Lenia, the mermaid princess, who saved Christopher, also finds herself in love with this human. She has always longed to know more about humans and believes the stories her grandmother told her about humans living forever through their souls. Unable to shake the memory of Christopher from her mind, Lenia visits Sybil, a witch, who promises her that there's a way that Lenia can become human and join Christopher. The price is great and Lenia must convince Christopher to marry her or she will never have a soul and if he marries anther, she will die.

It's been a long time since I've read the original tale of the Little Mermaid, my comparison as I read being primarily with Disney's version of the classic fairy tale. As far as I could recall, there was much of Andersen's story retained in Turgeon's retelling, with the grittiness that is more authentic to classic fairy tales while retaining the magic that appeals to all ages (although this is definitely not a story to read to your children). The story could occasionally fall into sappiness and the characters a bit caricaturized (I know, I know it's not a word but you get my point).  Overall the book was fun and I found I couldn't put it down. There was, of course, the twist spoken of in the title and plenty of others that kept me guessing as to which woman would win the hand of the handsome prince. Sometimes, happily ever after means someone has to suffer.

The End of The Affair by Graham Greene

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
192 pages
First published in the U.S. in 1951 by Viking Press
Source: bought this one

"This is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah I can be trusted: I am writing against the bias because it is my professional pride to prefer the near-truth, even to the expression of my near-hate."

A year after the end of his life with Sarah Miles, Maurice Bendrix looks back at their relationship - the love, the hate, the jealousy, the others who played a part in their lives. Poor Maurice is a very unhappy man who doesn't seem to have ever been happy. His certainty of the end of his affair with Sarah and his jealousy of her husband, Henry, and any other men that may have come into her life, taint their time together.

And there you have it. The book is not long, but that's really all there is to write about the plot of the book. But it says so little about what the book is about. In under 200 pages, Greene explores an entire range of human emotions, creates characters readers will grow to thoroughly know (probably without liking any of them), and most surprisingly, for me, religion. I thought, going in, that this was strictly a love/hate story. That was, after all, what I had taken from having seen the movie. I had no idea that Greene was going to take the reader through the full range of human emotions when it came to God as well. Both Sarah and Maurice must come to terms with their belief (or lack thereof) in a higher being. A being, that, in the end, Maurice comes to be more jealous of than any man.

This is a book to make you think. If you are looking for something light, do not pick this one up just because it is thin - it is a much heavier book than it appears. Thanks to all of you who have recommended Greene to me in general, and this book in particular.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

272 pages

Published April 2006 by Norton, W.W. & Company

Source: bought this one!

I haven't used the publisher summary since shortly after I started blogging but I just can't find a way to sum this one up that won't just sound ridiculous. So here's what the publisher has to say about the book:

Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family.

Now, if you just read that, you'd think there were about four characters in this novel and you wouldn't at all understand why I couldn't wrap up this plot in a paragraph. The problem is, there are a lot more characters, many of whom play a part in what has happened to the book Leo wrote as a young man, many more who play a part in who he is as an old man and a number who interact with Alma and Leo. The book also moves back and forth in time and back and forth over the ocean. It did, to be honest, get a little confusing at time and even, in the end, I have to admit that I'm not altogether sure what happened. 

All of which might make it sound like I didn't like this book much. Which was not the case at all. I really liked Krauss' writing style and found her characters to be unique and endearing. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of the time that I was reading the book imagining what the other members of my book club might be thinking of the book and thinking that I wasn't sure it was a book that most of them would enjoy. Which, of course, tempered my enthusiasm. The timing could have been better for this one as well; it's hard to really get the most out of a book you read while you're recovering from surgery. In the end, I wish I would have read this one at a different time and strictly for myself. Because with writing like this...

"The sensation almost knocked the breath out of m. A tingling feeling caught fire in my nerves and spread. The whole thing must have happened in less than thirty seconds. And yet. When it was over, I'd been initiated into the mystery that stands at the beginning of the end of childhood. It was years before I'd spent all the joy and pain born in me in that less than half a minute."

...it's a shame not to have given it my full attention.

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
112 pages
Originally published in 1937, republished in 1993 by Penguin Group
Source: bought it

Of Mice And Men is the story of an unlikely friendship between two men, migrant workers who endlessly dream of a better life. George Milton and Lennie Small have traveled from job to job, always hoping to be able to earn enough money to buy a small piece of land.

George, wise and patient, dreams of being able to live off of the land, to work only for himself. Lennie, large, strong and mentally slow, dreams only of being able to care and pet a hutch of rabbits.
Lennie is a hard worker, but because of his slowness, his tendency to overly love things, and his reaction when he becomes frightened, the pair are constantly having to move on before they can get the money together to make their dream come true.

In Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie are starting work at a new place with high hopes once again. George does everything he can to try to keep things calm but there is trouble brewing at this ranch. A lonely, lovely wife and her very jealous husband, who also happens to be the boss, make George nervous from the beginning...with good reason.

Banned Books Week crept up on me stealthily, on all-fours and I couldn't figure out how I was going to squeeze in one more book in order to rebel against those who want to tell us what we can and cannot read. Then last Monday I was in that store I hate to shop in and there sat this little bit of banned wonder. I'm not sure why, but I've never read Of Mice and Men before, never even watched one of the movie versions. In the end, once again I found myself wondering why I had waited so long to read something that so many have spoken so highly of for so long.

When I was pulling up the publication information for this book, I saw this in a review:

"I was not very impressed by this book. The story was simple, the characters sympathetic and, but for a few exceptions, well drawn out, and the final twist of events was emotionaly impactive [sic]. But that's about all I can say that's good about this book."

Really? "The characters were sympathetic, the story was well drawn out and the final twist was emotionaly impactive" [sic]--and that's not enough to make a book good? No? Well, that's definitely not all I can say that's good about this book.

In only 112 pages, Steinbeck manages to craft a marvelously touching friendship, surround his lead characters with a fully drawn supporting cast, and build a feeling of tension all while creating a landscaping and settings that come to life.

"A far rush of wind sounded and a gust drove through the tops of the trees like a wave. The sycamore leaves turned up their silver sides, the brown, dry leaves on the ground scudded a few feet. And row on row of tiny wind waves flowed up the pool's green surface."

The reviewer I quoted above had a problem with the fact that most of the ambiance of the book comes at the beginning of each chapter after which Steinbeck focuses on the story itself. I hadn't even realized that was the case until I read this review; I was so taken with the both the descriptions of the settings and the story of the men on that ranch. It didn't matter to me than one took precedence over another at any one time.In researching this book, I found that Steinbeck had intentionally done this to make the book something that could be read as a novella or as a play. Which may account for why this book came alive for me.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
338 pages
Published March 2011 by George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Source: bought it

In an unnamed Balkan country, Natalia and her best friend Zora, young doctors, are heading to an orphanage when Natalia learns of the mysterious death of her beloved grandfather. The mystery isn't so much that he died (Natalia has known for some time that he had cancer) but why he died where he died. As Natalia tries to make sense of what her grandfather was doing, she turns to the stories he told her as she was growing up when they made their weekly trips to visit the tigers at the zoo, stories of the deathless man. With mysteries surrounding her (who are the people digging in the vineyard behind the home she and Zora are staying in?), Natalia begins to piece together the greatest story of her grandfather's life, the story of the tiger's wife.

"Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger's wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life...One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again."

Obreht picked me right up out of my family room and dropped me into that unknown Balkans country; I could envision myself in the car as Natalia drove along the coast in search of the town where her grandfather died, I felt a bit of panic imagining myself in the isolated valley where Natalia's grandfather grew up. I was particularly enchanted by the stories of the deathless man and the tiger's wife and eagerly read on to learn more about these characters and how they tied in to Natalia's grandfather. I was equally interested in the story of Natalia, a girl who grew up living in a country first on the cusp of war, then at war but in a way that doesn't directly affect her and then, finally, when war came to her city. Through all of this, Obreht contemplates death at all ages.

"But children die how they have been living - in hope. They don't know what's happening so they expect nothing, they don't ask you to hold their hand - but you end up needing them to hold yours. With children, you're on your own."

The story introduces a tremendous number of characters, giving the readers the back story for many of them. This gives the reader a well-rounded vision of the characters but it can become confusing. I can't imagine reading this book over a long period of time without taking notes to keep track of everything.

The Tiger's Wife was the Omaha Bookworms' September selection. Usually we try to read the Pulitzer Prize winner, but after one of our members read (and hated) Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad, we opted to go with the Orange Prize winner instead. We usually try to time our reads so that those who use the library have plenty of advance time to secure a copy and those who buy the books can get it in paperback. Unfortunately, we made our decision too late to get library copies for some people and the book which is only available in hardcover until November which meant that most of our members either didn't get to the book at all or had only managed to get to part of it by the time we met. Those of us who had read the book enjoyed talking about it but it's pretty hard to talk about a book when so many people are still planning to finish it!

The Girl In The Garden by Kamala Nair

The Girl In The Garden by Kamala Nair
320 pages
Published June 2011 by Grand Central Publishing

As her wedding day draws near, Rakhee Singh leaves her fiance a long letter and her engagement ring and makes her way to India to come to terms with something she has been keeping secret from her fiance, something that has been causing Rakhee pain since the summer when she was ten years old.

That summer Rakhee's mother began receiving mysterious letters from India, letters that seemed to affect her parents' relationship, letters that seem to have convinced her mother not to take the pills that made her a happier person. As isolated and alone as Rakhee feels in small town Minnesota, she is not at all happy when her mother announces that the two of them will be traveling to India for the summer.

Once they arrived in India, however, Rakhee became completely absorbed in life in the small village where her mother's family has lived for generations. In Malanad, Rakhee's family, the Varmas are highly respected and live in the biggest house. Rakhee immediately noticed, however, that everything in the house appeared to be a little shabby and the hospital that her family owns was being operated by a man, Dev, Rakhee instinctively disliked.

The longer Rakhee was in Malanad, the more questions she had. What was  going on with the hospital and what hold did Dev have over the family? Who was the "old family friend," Prem, who seems to be the only person who could make Rakhee's mother happy? Why did the family seem to blame Rakhee's mother for their problems?  But most importantly, what is the secret of the forest behind the family's home? The cousins had been told that a rakshasi (a she-demon) lived and that only adults were allowed to go into the forest to make offerings. But Rakhee did not believe in things like she-demons and when she saw her mother and aunt go into the forest late one night she became determined to discover the truth for herself. When she did, everything changed.

Is it possible that there just is not a book set in India that I will not like? Once again, I have found myself utterly engrossed by a book set in this country. Library Journal calls The Girl In The Garden a cross between Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. Nair has clearly drawn inspiration from both but she has certainly crafted a work that is utterly her own (**tomorrow the story of the inspiration for this novel**).

"They were washing the clothes in the river, roughly and efficiently, then standing and slapping them dry on rocks. Each time they brought a piece of cloth down upon the rock it made a resilient thwack. It was almost a dance; the women in their stained, monochromatic saris, their prematurely graying hair pulled back into frazzled buns, crouching, washing, standing and beating, the rhythm of their movements imbued with a surprising grace."

India comes alive in Nair's hands; while I was reading, I completely forgot my own surroundings. Book clubs would find much to talk about with this book; the many ways Nair explores love alone would make for a lively discussion. Family relationships, guilt, shame, responsibility...all included as well.

Thrity Umrigar, author of The Space Between Us, calls The Girl In The Garden "an impressive debut." It certainly is.

me again by Keith Cronin

me again by Keith Cronin
322 pages
Published August 2011 by Gale Cengage Learning
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

"I was born on a Tuesday morning. It was a difficult birth, because I was thirty-four years old."

Six years after slipping into a coma following a stroke, Jonathon Hooper miraculously wakes up. His body is atrophied and he can't remember much of anything or anyone from his past. Not the girlfriend who breaks up with him the first time she visits him, not the brother who seems to take a little too much pleasure in watching Jonathon suffer, not the parents who are so eager to have him remember his past. Not wanting to hurt anyone, though, Jonathon immediately decides it's best to let them think that even though he can't remember his previous life, he can remember them.

The only person who really seems to understand what Jonathon goes through in the next few months is Rebecca, a beautiful young woman who has also suffered a stroke and goes through rehabilitation in the same facility Jonathon starts out in. Neither Rebecca or Jonathon is the person they were before their strokes. In Jonathon's case, this soon proves to be a good thing; he was not a good person. But for Rebecca, it means that she is no longer than wife she once was, which puts a tremendous strain on her marriage.

Jonathon's mother works very hard to bring his memory back, pulling out photo album after photo album and having people his life stop by to visit. All of this seems to be moot until one afternoon Jonathon rounds a corner in the house to find the first familiar face he has seen. Once the door to memories has opened, it is only a matter of time before some of Jonathon's past comes back to him.

I can't recall my immediate thoughts when presented me again for review, but I'm quite sure that curiosity was the deciding factor in me agreeing to review this book because the words "stroke," "coma," and "humor" all appeared in the email. I had to see how Cronin could possibly make a book about stroke recovery humorous. Once again, an author has proved to me that a serious subject can be handled in a light way without making light of the subject. As soon as the staff in the hospital which has been housing Jonathon becomes aware he has awakened:

"Other voices joined in, overlapping each other in conversation, and the name Jesus came up repeatedly.

I formed my first conscious thought: I must be Jesus."

 Ah, irreverence. This book and I are going to get along. Because, seriously, what would you think if you were Jonathon in this situation? And so the story goes; Cronin writes in a way that assured me that he knew what he was talking about when he described the experience of waking up from a coma, recovering from a stroke, and dealing with the aftermath of what the stroke has done. But doing it all with a sense of humor and irony.
" "Did you like that sherbet?"
"No, not particularly."
"Me neither." She leaned forward, her voice growing more insistent. "Now imagine everybody telling you that you used to just love orange sherbet. And that it's really important that you start loving it again."

"That's what my life is like right now. I don't like orange sherbet, but I used to. And now everybody want s me to like it again, and tells me that if I don't, I'm not the person I used to be. And not the kind of person they want to be with.""

There is a side story about that Cronin uses to demonstrate what a terrible person Jonathon used to be that Cronin uses in the end to solve a plot problem. This particular part of the book really didn't work for me. I did, however, think the way Cronin dealt with the relationship between Jonathon and his father was wonderfully real. Perhaps everything wrapped up a bit too neatly for my tastes but I liked the last line as much as I liked the first line.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, view the full tour schedule. To learn more about Keith Cronin, visit him online at his website, keithcronin.com, or on Facebook.

**Well, this is embarrassing! Even though I had the book right in front of me as I wrote this review, I repeatedly referred to the author as "Kevin" instead of "Keith." I blame a flashback to my years listening to REO Speedwagen. No wonder I couldn't find Cronin on Twitter!

Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant

Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant
243 pages
Published July 2010 by Norton, W.W. & Company, Inc.
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

An apology upfront to TLC Book Tours; this review was supposed to have been posted on Wednesday, September 7th. I've had limited access to a computer this week and did not get it done.

Three main characters, three story arcs, are the driving force of Joan Leegant's latest novel.

Yona Stern is a woman who had a falling out with her sister a decade ago. In an effort to try to make amends, Yona travels to Israel, out to one of the settlements where her sister, Dena, lives with her five children and militant husband. The Ben-Tzions are amongst the group of Israelis who believe that their country to should not concede any land to the Palestinians, a group which looks down at the U.S. and European efforts to try to make peace in the Middle East. The past decade has seen Yona punishing herself for her what she did to her sister and she is desperate to be able to stop.

Mark Greenglass is the son of two non-practicing Jews who has lost his way, once again. After a long period of abusing drugs with the woman he loved, years ago Greenglass found himself swept into a deep love of the Jewish faith. It saved him then, and he's been able to make quite a name for himself as a teacher and lecturer, but now he is having a crisis of faith. What is it that God has in mind of him? Will he be able to leave New York and go back to the life he has been living in Jerusalem?

Aaron Blinder is the son of a writer who has become famous for writing fictionalized accounts of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. His mother died of cancer and Aaron and his father have found themselves unable to relate to one another every since. Now Aaron has traveled to Israel and connected an ultra-militant group of Israelis bent on driving the Palestinians out of the land they believe belongs to the Jews. As part of this group, Aaron hopes to be able to tell a new story about the Jews, one his father could never hope to be a part of.

Three characters, three story arcs. All will converge when Aaron makes his move to make a name for himself.

Leegant's writing is beautiful; the country of Israel came alive for me as I was reading the book. The subject matter was utterly new to me, not being of the Jewish faith and not being familiar with the extremist movement in Israel, and this both worked for and against the book as I read. I'm always eager to learn something new in my reading but sometimes I felt like only someone of the Jewish faith could truly relate to this story. There was a lot going on in this book, a lot of characters to keep track of, and some of the characters lost some of their appeal to me along the way. It felt a bit like they got watered down in all that was going on. So it was a bit of an effort to get through the book. But when Leegant brought all of the story lines together, the book pulled me in and I had to keep reading to see how politics might affect these characters lives in ways that I would never have thought possible. Might an innocent bystander really get caught up in a crime and be convicted of being a part of the plot?

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour and, once again, opening my eyes to a part of life of which I was woefully unaware!

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
304 pages
Published April 2011 by Europa Editions
Source: the publisher

When 17-year-old Sulfia Kalganowa tells her mother that she's pregnant and doesn't know who the father is, her mother, Rosa, doesn't jump to the usual conclusion that her daughter has been sleeping around. Instead, Rosa believes that Sulfia must have gotten pregnant by looking at a man. Is Rosa stupid? Not at all, Rosa just has such a low opinion of her daughter that doesn't think any man would have her. Even if her daughter happens to be a medical miracle, Rosa isn't going to allow her daughter to have this baby and bring shame to her own good name. Despite her best efforts, however, some months later, Aminat is born and Rosa is smitten, despite the child's tendency to cry all of the time. The little girl looks just like Rosa, after all, and isn't that a fortunate thing?

Beginning in 1978 Russia and for the next thirty years, Rosa will spend all of her time and energy "helping" Sulfia find a suitable husband, raising Aminat in the right way (something Sulfia clearly isn't capable of doing), and making sure she gets everything she deserves out of her own life.

Those of you who have read "Olive Kitteridge" will cringe when I tell you that Rosa Achemetowna makes Olive look like the mother of the year. She is, perhaps the most egotistical character ever brought to life on the page and one of the most conniving.

"I think it pleased Sergej to have such a graceful swan like me as his mother-in-law, especially given that he had married such an ugly duckling."

Far from finding Rosa so disagreeable that I didn't want to read another word about her, Bronsky pulled me into Rosa's world. Even after Rosa essentially sells her daughter to a pedophile, I still could not bring myself to hate her. In fact, by the end of the book, I even began to feel sorry for this woman who was so wrapped up in her own view of the world, that she couldn't see what was really happening around her, couldn't really see the people around her for who they were.

Bronsky's writing is crisp, yet detailed and she writes with a wit that makes a character like Rosa someone the reader will care about. I accepted this book as part of my continuing effort to widen my view of the world and I was not disappointed. Bronsky shows the reader what life was like in Russia in the 1980's and 90's for the average citizen and what it felt like for those who finally decided they needed to find another life for themselves in another country. Although the title of this book may give the impression that the book is a light read, Bronsky pulls together a number of serious themes, making it an excellent choice for book clubs.

O Pioneers! and The Omaha Bookworms

The Omaha Bookworms met last night to discuss Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and, let's be honest, talk about everything else going on in our lives. Since we're located in Nebraska, we've been talking for some time about reading a book by a Nebraska author. When it came time to choose our classic read for this year, I decided it was time to do just that.

"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

Cather's O Pioneers tells the story of Alexandra Bergson, whose family has immigrated to Nebraska from Sweden. After eleven years of hard work to reach the point where the family is debt free, John Bergson dies, leaving Alexandra in charge of the farm, her mother and her three younger brothers. John has chosen wisely; Alexandra has a keen mind when it comes to farming. By listening to others and being willing to go against the general consensus, Alexandra manages to tame the land and help the entire family to prosper.

As attuned as she is to the land, Alexandra is not nearly as attuned to her feelings or those around her. It will be years before she realizes that she is in love with long-time friend, Carl Linstrum and even longer before she becomes aware of the feelings her youngest brother, Emil, has developed for a married woman.

"Marie often wondered if there was anyone else who could look his thoughts to you as Emil could."

"It was like a sigh they had breathed together, almost sorrowful, as fi each were afraid of wakening something in the other."

The greatest love story of the book, however is Cather's love of and respect for the land.

"Winter has settled down over the Divide again, the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring."

O Pioneers! was a hit with the Bookworms. Cather's writing particularly impressed; all of those who had finished the book raved about Cather's use of language to describe the land and the people who settled it. For a book that we all agreed is an easy read, this book is full themes to discuss: alcoholism, religion, love, temptation, forgiveness and feminism.

Written in 1913, Cather had long since left Nebraska and moved to New York to be with her lover, Isabelle McClung. That fact alone might have something to do with this being the 83rd most frequently banned or challenged book. I enjoyed this one so much, I think I'm going to have to go back and re-read Cather's My Antonia which I had no appreciation for on first reading. Now I am absolutely enchanted by Cather's way with words.

Exposure by Therese Fowler

Exposure by Therese Fowler
384 pages
Published May 2011
Source: the publisher

Eighteen-year-old Anthony Winter and seventeen-year-old Amelia Wilkes are in love and looking forward to a future together. The plan for the two high-school seniors, stars of the high school drama department, is to study theater in New York with Broadway as their ultimate goal.  Life should be perfect, shouldn't it?

There's just one problem - Amelia's father. Harlan Wilkes is a self-made man who rose from humble beginnings to own a string of high-end automotive dealerships. He's given Amelia every advantage in life and he's not about to stand by and watch her throw it all away. Up until recently, Amelia has always done everything Harlan expected of her without question. But Amelia knows that Harlan won't approved of her college plans and he certainly won't approve of Anthony (son of the art teacher in the private school the kids attend, Anthony for free because of his mother). So she' s hidden both her plans and her relationship from her father.

Then one day Amelia and Anthony's world comes crashing down on their heads when Harlan finds some naked pictures of Anthony on Amelia's computer. Having no idea that the two are in a relationship, Harlan jumps to the conclusion that Anthony is some kind of pervert and calls the police. Nothing, not even the truth, will prevent Harlan from punishing Anthony and an eager district attorney is more than willing to help even if it means ruining lives.

Over and over again, the characters in Exposure wonder why the law is choosing to make an example of two young people when so many other young people are doing the same thing. And that's just what I was wondering as well; would any local authority so aggressively go after a teenager for naked pictures on his girlfriend's computer? Maybe. In the right small town. If you had the right person, looking to climb the political ladder. Then I began to wonder, would a school full of young people really turn on a young man for sending those pictures as did the young people in this book? Undoubtedly some would. I couldn't help but think, though, that even more wouldn't think of it as any big deal. Even more, I began to wonder if the legal maneuverings in this book would/could really happen. And I began to wonder what I would do if the same thing happened to my son. How would I react? How would I find the wherewithal to pay for all of the legal fees? Clearly, Exposure got me thinking.

In the end, though, it was all just a bit too much for me. Everything that could go wrong, did; every conceivable charge that might be drummed up, was. There was just so much young love angst. And the ending just did not work for me. As the mother of a teenagers, Exposure reinforced my belief that all of these wonderful electronic devices can be dangerous in the hands of young people whose hormones are in overdrive. Even if I didn't necessarily believe that a person would be charged with all of the counts that came up in the book, I have to admit that it made me worry. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go have another talk with my kids.

Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz

Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz
304 pages
Published July 2011 by Random House Publishing House
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

First, a confession: I have not finished this book. I completely forgot about my tour date for this one and only just started the book a couple of days ago. That being said, I will, very likely finish it later today because Schwartz has completely sucked me into the story.

A dozen years ago Dwight Arno, killed a young boy in a hit-and-run car accident. After a prison term, his life as a lawyer, husband and father was over and he escaped across the country to California where he became the manager of a sporting goods store, keeping his past hidden from everyone in his new life. As the blurb on the book says he has "started over without exactly moving on." What he has done and the hurt it caused everyone in his life is never far from his mind.

Then one evening Dwight returns home from work to find Sam, his 22-year-old estranged son, sitting in his living room. Sam has fled home after getting in a bar fight in which he hit a guy with a baseball bat. Granted, he was assaulted first. But Sam is horrified to realize just how good it felt to release all of that anger. Wanting to escape, Sam has fled to the last place anyone would think to look for him, the home of the father he hasn't seen in ten years.

As Dwight and Sam come to know each other again and face their own natures, they also impact the women in their lives: ex-wife, lovers, mother.

Told in alternating points of view between many of the characters in the book and in both first- (Dwight) and third-person (all of the other characters), this book moves along rapidly. As it did when I read his The Commoner, Schwartz's beautiful writing is making me want to slow down and savor the book while the story itself is compelling me forward.

"And so it goes; the duffel switching hand to hand, the mind clear but seeing backward, the angled sun anointing him like a troubled pilgrim who's journeyed to the far edge of the continent in search of a blessing that he doesn't believe in but can't stop looking for."

I can't wait to see where Schwartz will ultimately take these characters who have come to life with such great emotional depth.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour!  I'm eager now to read Reservation Road, the book that precedes this one in which readers are introduced to Dwight Arno. Learn more about Schwartz on his website or check out his Facebook page.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
262 pages
Published March 2010 Simon & Schuster Adult
Source: bought this one to read with the Omaha Bookworms

In Enniscorthy, Ireland in post World War II, jobs are tough to come by so when Eilis Lacey is offered a part-time job at a local shop she can't turn down the opportunity despite the fact that neither her mother nor her sister approve of the owner. Not long afterward, Eilis' beloved sister, Rose, tells Eilis and her mother that she has invited a Father Flood to tea. Father Flood is originally from Enniscorthy but is currently living in the U.S. His purpose in coming to tea is to invite Eilis to come to Brooklyn; he will sponsor her and has already lined up a job and housing. As she sits there listening to the good father, Eilis realizes that both her mother and sister are being unusually quiet and it comes to her that it's really already been decided that she will be going to America.

After a horrible journey across rough seas, Eilis arrives in America to begin her new life and soon settles into a routine that is, well, routine and a little boring. Despite living in Brooklyn in a very exciting time, Eilis lives a very insular life. She goes to work, she goes to night school, she spends what little free time she has almost exclusively at the boarding house. And in all of those places, Eilis makes almost no effort to befriend anyone. She can't seem to find the place where she fits in and the things that happen around her seem to affect her very little. Perhaps the only thing that she is at all aware of is all of the discrimination rampant in the ethnically diverse borough.

Finally Eilis meets a nice Italian boy and discovers first love and finally becomes more a part of America. Then a terrible tragedy takes her back to Ireland. Once there, Eilis begins to feel the draw of a real home, unsure whether she will ever return to America.

I read this book with the Omaha Bookworms for our May selection after it was recommended by one of our members (Mari of Bookworm With A View). Mari loved it, in no small part because it evoked memories of stories she had heard from her grandparents who were Irish immigrants who settled in Brooklyn at about the same time. Only half of the ladies had actually finished the book so it was hard to talk too much about the book but even those who had only gotten part way through the book were really enjoying it.

Time moves at quite a pace in Brooklyn; Toibin bypasses long periods of time between episode and vignettes. Toibin compares his writing style to Ernest Hemingway with good cause; he knows how to tell a story with just what is necessary to tell the story perfectly. Nothing showy or lush about Brooklyn. All of the emotion is just under the surface and yet it is palpable and the characters are believable and realistic. This book was twice short-listed for the Mann Booker Prize and now I know why.

Safe From The Sea by Peter Geye

Safe From The Sea by Peter Geye
256 pages
Published September 2010 by Unbridled Books
Source: the publisher

When Noah Torr's father, Olaf, calls and tells Noah that he could use some help, that he's sick, Noah immediately goes to him. For most of us this would be the obvious thing to do but for Noah it's not that easy. Noah and Olaf have been estranged for years and Noah and his wife, Natalie, have been struggling to conceive a baby for years. Even knowing that it could cost him his marriage, Noah makes the decision to go to Minnesota.

Noah grew up with a father who spent his life on ships on the Great Lakes. He was often gone, he was more often distant. When Noah arrives at his father's cabin and finds him terminally ill, he understands that it's time to learn why his father became the man who abandoned his family.

I thought perhaps if I waited some time after finishing this book to write this review, I could be more objective. I thought wrong. Weeks after finishing this book, the first word that pops into my mind to describe this book is "brilliant." Setting the book on the cold shores of Lake Superior, a setting he knows well, Geye deftly makes the atmosphere inside Olaf's cabin mirror the atmosphere outside of it. Before he arrives at his father's cabin, Noah visits a maritime museum, in particular the room featuring artifacts from a ship wreck his father survived. The sadness and grief associated with that wreck permeate the relationship between Olaf and Noah as well. Both of the men have carried the scars of that wreck for more than 30 years. Olaf knew that he would ever after only be known as one of only three men to survive the wreck. The survivor's guilt Olaf felt drove him to drink, leaving Noah to grow up without his father even when he wasn't on the lakes. One reviewer called the dialogue between Noah and Olaf "stagnant" and said that it "slowed the plot." I found it very realistic and felt that the conversation between the men was the plot of the story.

I rarely cry when reading a book; I can't remember the last book that brought me to tears. This one did...twice. That despite my knowing well before the book was done what was going to happen. The ending may have been a bit tidier than I would have preferred but it worked for me. My husband also read the book and was less satisfied with the ending but very much enjoyed the book as well.

Geye and Unbridled Books have put in my hands a book that I would highly recommend to readers of either sex and almost any age. A most impressive debut.

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
288 pages
Published April 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

In a small town in New Jersey, new drama teacher at the high school has announced that this year's play will be "Lysistrata*," a play in which one Greek woman incites the rest to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers until the end the Pelopponesian War. Almost immediately a spell begins to settle over the women of Stellar Plains. Young and old, they begin to lose all interest in intimacy. The slightest touch has them pulling away.

It happens to Robby and Dory Lang, admired and beloved English teachers at the high school. Married for fifteen years, everyone assumes that Dory and Robby have the perfect marriage.

"It might have gone on like this for a long, long time. It might never have changed. They might have remained one of those miracle couples who never stop, never quit, and whom everyone regards in head-shaking awe. They might have stayed at an impressive pitch, sexually, even after so much time had gone by."

Then one night, Robby put a hand on Dory's shoulder and she felt a blast of cold air, a blast that was the spell, a spell that left her feeling disgusted by Robby's touch. And so it went throughout the town.

"Starting that night, and continuing for quite a while afterward, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped and the windows shook like crazy in their frames, and all over that town, you could hear the word "no."

The spell came over Bev Cutler, a woman who's been pulling back from her husband for some time but is still surprised to be so repulsed by him. It settles on Ruth Winik, the girls' P.E. teacher who previously had been so attracted to her husband that she had given up a period of lesbianism to be with him. It even comes over Leanne Bannerjee who pulls away from not one but three lovers and Willa Lang who has only recently fallen in love for the first time and begun discovering sex. The more the women pull away, the more frustrated and distant the men become.

I went into this book completely unaware of what it was about; I knew Wolitzer's name and that the book was about relationships. I wasn't sure where the book was going for a while, if it was just going to be a book about Robby and Dory or something more. But as the spell spread and Wolitzer explored how such a thing might effect society, the story definitely picked up for me. I didn't really connect with any of the characters, perhaps because there were so many of them, although there were things about many of the couples that struck home. The idea of magical realism in a story doesn't always well for me and this book was no exception; I might have enjoyed the book more if Wolitzer had found a different way to make her point. Despite the fact that the major theme of the book is intimacy, there is nothing particularly graphic in the novel and this one might make an interesting book club selection.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour. For more reviews, check out these blogs. To learn more about Wolitzer and her books, check out her website. To read an excerpt of the book, follow this link.

* "Lysistrata": a play by Aristophanes in which Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual favors from their husbands to force them to negotiate peace after the Pelopponisian War has dragged on for over twenty years. The women's actions start a new war...the battle between the sexes. The play, a comedy, helped usher in a new era for the comedic theater and includes explicit obscenities and double entendre.

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert
272 pages
Published April 2011 by Unbridled Books
Source: the publisher

Essie Myles is an octagenarian, writing obituaries for the newspaper that her grandson, Doc, is running, the same newspaper that Essie's father started. Between them, they've been raising Doc's niece, Tiffany, since her mother ran off with her lover seven years ago.

The small Nebraska town they live in has been struggling for years, fighting to remain a real town and not an homage to the past, a past that never really existed, as had happened to other nearby towns.

"The grocery store was now a museum, the post office a gallery of Western art, the haberdashery a concert hall due to its quirky acoustics. For years the bountiful Myrtle Kingsley Fitch [a long deceased author who had lived in the town] Foundation had been saving that dying rural town by killing it, inch by inch, and casting it in amber"

 Then the  publisher of a hugely popular children's book series asks Doc to be one of a group of small presses that will be printing the final installment of the series in an effort to keep the story secret. The buzz is akin to that of the Harry Potter books but the books themselves felt to me much more like the Series of Unfortunate Events books.

Real change comes to the town, however, when one of the employees of the press, Daisy, reports that her daughter has been abducted by an aerial photographer who's been spending time at her farm. A daughter who, as it turns out, may or may not have existed. Daisy confides the details to Doc and his stories in the paper soon attract other media, curiosity seekers and even some who will soon form a cult called Lenorians (a term coined by Tiff after the girl, Lenore). Doc, Essie and Tiff all find themselves caught up in the drama even as they deal with the return of Tiff's mom.

There's a lot going on in this book, but Schaffert does a marvelous job of blending all of the elements in a non-linear style with humor and empathy. The characters are at once quirky yet very real; in Essie, in particular, Schaffert has created a character who will stay with the reader. His writing is wonderfully descriptive; clearly this is a man who enjoys the intricacies of language. He is also appears to be a man who believes that not all technology is a good thing, as seen in this passage from Essie:

"I still used a manual typewriter (a 1853 Underwood portable, in a robin's-egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn't quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and need those keys to sometimes catch so I can reach in and untangle them, turning my fingertips inky."

Schaffert has summed up my resistance to ereaders and my ambivalence about audio books in this passage:

"Tiff needed the words on the page to become the voice in her head, her own voice, or an approximation of it, and she need the paper and the sound of the scratch of her chapped fingertips against it as she fiddled with each page, ever ready to turn it."

Schaffert is the driving force of the Omaha Lit Fest and I've been looking forward to reading this book since I heard him talking about it last fall. My anticipation was only heightened when I learned that Unbridled Books was the book's publisher. Regular readers know how much I love Unbridled Books! So I went into this book with high expectations and I'm very happy to be able to say that not only was I not disappointed, I was delighted to find this book is bound to remain one of my favorite books of the year.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
288 pages
Published February 2009 by Simon and Schuster Adult
Source: bought it for the Omaha Bookworms March read

After two years in a British detention center for immigrants, Little Bee is finally being released along with three other refugees.  Each of the girls is carrying a plastic bag with all of their worldly belongings in them.  For one of the girls, the bag is empty, in another there are pineapple rings, in a third there is a mass of official documents.  In Little Bee's there is a business card and a driver's license belonging to Andrew O'Rourke.

 "The African girl they locked up in the immigration detention center, poor child, she never really escaped. In my soul she is still locked up in there, forever, under the fluorescent lights, curled up on the green linoleum floor with her knees tucked up under her chin. And this woman they released from the immigration detention center, this creature that I am, she is a new breed of human. There is nothing natural about me. I was born - no, I was reborn - in captivity."

 Ten days later, Little Bee rings the door bell at the O'Rourke home, stunning Sarah O'Rourke. Andrew and Sarah had first met Little Bee on a beach in Nigeria while they were on a vacation but neither of them had ever expected to see Little Bee again.  All three of them have never forgotten what happened that day.

Have you ever seen the movie "The Crying Game?" Toward the end of that movie there was a major revelation that entirely changed everything. The makers of the movie asked that viewers of the movie not let the secret out and people were astonishingly good about not reveling the secret. This publishers of this book have made a similar request of readers and in the spirit of not spoiling the book for anyone, I'm going not going to give anything more of the plot away. Although I don't think the twist in Little Bee that has been so well guarded is quite as shocking, there are actually a number of surprises in this book.

The book is written in alternating first-person narratives by both Little Bee and Sarah and both women bare their souls to the reader. Cleave does a marvelous job of capturing both voices. Occasionally I felt that the book dragged a bit on both sides of the story and I found myself not much liking Sarah, but then I'm sure that Cleave did not intend for his readers to like her. Little Bee's narratives were full of wonderful observations about society that really caught my attention.

"Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet."

I have often thought that all the things we think people in remote villages need are just the things that start causing problems for the villagers.

I've been wanted to read Little Bee since it first came out but finally got to it because the Omaha Bookworms chose it for our March read. In the same paragraph as the above quote, three of us had marked this passage as an example of Cleave's lovely writing.

"I sat in between the roots of my limba tree and I laughed while I watched Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro. The tether of the swing was very long, so it took a long time for her to travel from one end of its swing to the other. It never looked like it was in a rush, that swing. I used to watch it all day long and I never realized that I was watching a pendulum counting down the last seasons of peace in my village."

Little Bee was recommended to me by a number of people as an excellent book club read and they were so right. Several of the ladies had not finished the book yet but all were eager to discuss what they had read and all enjoyed the book. Little Bee is not a light nor an easy read but it is a book well worth reading.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
336 pages
Published April 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Lincoln is not happy in his job as the night shift IT guy at the newspaper. There's not nearly enough work for him to do and one of his official duties is to monitor the company's email filtering system, making sure that employees are not using the computers for personal purposes or using certain language. Lincoln is living in a rut outside of his job as well. He's spent most of the last ten years in college, earning two Master's degrees and living with his mother.  His sister is at him constantly to move on from the broken heart he suffered his freshman year of college that started his downward spiral, but Lincoln just doesn't it in him to develop a plan for the future.

"Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can't plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don't happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy?"

Beth and Jennifer are friends who also work at the newspaper. They know their emails are monitored but they just don't seem to care. When emails between the pair start popping up in the filter that Lincoln is reading, he finds himself drawn into their worlds, their friendship. Jennifer tells Beth about her anxiety about having children and Beth tells Jennifer about the problems in her relationship with her boyfriend, a local rock musician. They talk about their mothers, their jobs, their appearance...everything.

Soon Lincoln realizes that he's fallen in love with Beth.Then Beth starts talking about a cute guy in the building. "My Cute Guy" she calls him. Then one day, as he's reading an email between the women, Lincoln realizes that he is Beth's cute guy. But there's no way Lincoln can possibly approach Beth. No way he can explain how he knows so much about her. No way he can explain why he's been to see her boyfriend's band perform so often. But somehow, all of this has finally caused Lincoln to start taking the tiny steps he needs to take to move on with his life.

Rowell uses an unusual style in this novel. The narrative switches between a third-person point of view when we're looking at Lincoln's side of the story while switching to an epistolary (email version) style for the conversations between Beth and Jennifer.  This did take some getting used to but given the premise that we're introduced to Beth and Jennifer because of their email dispatches, it seemed appropriate to continue in the vein. Rowell creates likable characters and it was enjoyable to watch each of the three leads slowly grow over the course of the year-long span of the book. 

One of my favorite characters in the book was the city itself.  My city. It's always fun to read a book set in the place where you live, particularly when it's written by a person that knows that place, who refers to places that are familiar. The story starts in August of 1999 and, in addition to bringing the hype of Y2K back to mind, Rowell revisits events and places of note in the city at the time including a concert venue that has now been torn down to make room for a Wal-Mart and the fight to save the last Cinemarama theater in the country.

Having read Rowell's column in our local paper for years, I had an idea what style her writing might take in a novel, what I hoped to find in a novel written by Rowell. I was not disappointed. Her style is light and humorous, as in this exchange between Beth and Jennifer:

"<> It wasn't much of a story: I went to get some M&M'S from the break room today, and ended up in line behind the publisher at the snack machine. I was sure he would choose a conservative and traditional snack--perhaps mixed nuts or a great American Hershey's bar--but, no, he went right for the Salsa Verde Doritos.

<> This is at odds with everything I thought I understood about our editorial policy.

<> I know. How can someone who eats Salsa Verde Doritos so vehemently oppose gay marriage?

<> And affirmative action.

<> And traffic roundabouts."

Rowell is no slouch at writing heartwarming and heartbreaking as in this conversation between Lincoln and his high school sweetheart, Sam, who he followed to California for college and who is pulling away from him:

""You're reminding them that I'm other," she said. "That I'm a freshman, that I'm not from around here. I need them to look at me and see my role. To see my talent and nothing else. You're reminding them that I have this cloying Heartland backstory.:

"What cloying?" he asked.

"The adoring-Germanic-farm-boy thing."

"I'm not a farm boy."

"To them, you are," she said.""

This quote is just for my family. It's not meant to be funny, and I always love when authors use words that are out of the ordinary, but I laughed out loud when I read it because of a conversation my family had years ago:

"The Village Inn had reached its 3:00 A.M. nadir when Lincoln got up to leave."

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour; it was a pleasure to see what Rowell is capable of when she's got a full novel in which to play. For other, perhaps less biased reviews, check out what the rest of the reviewers on the tour think of this freshman effort.