Scribbling the Cat: Travels With An African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller

Scribbling The Cat; Travels with an African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller
249 Pages
Published 2004 by Penguin Books

A couple of months ago, I read and reviewed Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under The Tree Of Forgetfulness which I really enjoyed and knew my mom would as well. I passed that one along to her and it's been making the rounds since, a unanimous hit amongst every one who has read it. My mom enjoyed it so much that she asked for more books by Fuller for Christmas. Here is her review of Fuller's Scribbling The Cat.

"In Scribbling, Fuller again sets her book in Africa in what was Rhodesia but this time we learn very little of her life with her family.  She visits her parents and we again are reacquainted with them but they are secondary to the story.  While visiting her parents, Fuller meets and becomes fascinated with a white gentleman who has fought for many years as a soldier in the various wars that have been so prevalent in this region.  She spends time with this retired soldier and discovers there is a story to be told.

She convinces K (a name she has chosen because she has been very careful to preserve identities and locations to protect her characters) to take a trip with her to trace his war travels and to meet some of his mates from these wars.  She finds this very platonic; K who has become a born-again Christian falls in love with her and is sure God has sent her to be his wife.  They set off in his truck and the story unfolds as they travel through Mozambique to help him save himself from the war horrors.  They meet and spend time with some of his former soldier friends and the characters are delightfully described so you feel as if you have known them forever.  These are rough, war-scarred men who have incredible stories to share.  Fuller uses many of the African terms to add clarity and realism.  Fortunately, she does provide a glossary with definitions.

Again Fuller uses her skills as a writer to describe the landscape, the people, and the poverty that all of these wars have caused.  I finished the book with a feeling of dismay at what the white people have done to Africa but also with what the black leaders have done as they were thrust into or chose to have power. 

In the end both Fuller and K have learned a lot about themselves and separate as protagonists.  It was probably inevitable.

If learning more about Africa and what makes it what it is today is of interest to you, you will love this true story told with a few additions to help protect and to enliven.  I highly recommend the book."

Thanks, Mom, for another great review!

Conversations and Cosmopolitans by Robert Rave and Jane Rave and a Giveaway

Conversations and Cosmopolitans: Awkward Moments, Mixed Drinks, and How a Mother and Son Finally Shared Who They Really Are 
by Robert Rave and Jane Rave
304 pages
Published November 2011 by St. Martin's Press
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

At twenty one, Robert Rave had recently had some big changes in his life - he'd recently graduated from college and had just moved to New York City from a small town in Indiana. But Robert had, evidently, decided that wasn't enough change for him. So he sat down and wrote a letter to his sensible, Midwestern parents, a long letter telling them that their youngest son was gay. Nervous about their reaction, Robert tried to answer all of the questions they might have in that letter. When it arrived at their house, Jane Rave was, understandably a little upset and called her husband to come to discuss it with him. His reaction? "At then end of the day, does it really matter? He's our son. He was before the letter. Why should it change now?"

Which was, in the end, pretty much the way Jane handled it as well. She had no problem with the idea that her son was gay, she didn't care what other people thought of him. Her main worry was that Robert would end up alone. Otherwise, she made it her mission to try to educate people about what being gay means, that it's just a part of her son's life, it does not define him. Every gay or lesbian person should be so lucky to have parents like Robert's.

The book is a series of stories of how a small-town Midwestern boy learned to live as a "out" gay man in the big city. Robert tells his stories, then Jane gives her thoughts and perspective on what Robert has written. There are chapters about Robert teaching Jane the lingo of the gay culture, Internet dating, therapists, and finding love. These are things the two discussed in their at least weekly telephone conversations as they became closer than ever.

Robert's stories have a very conversational appeal, although I did occasionally feel that they went on a bit longer and into more detail than they needed to. Jane's responses felt more thought out, the kind of advice you get from your mom when she's had time to carefully consider how she's going to discuss something with you. Even given that I sometimes had a hard time believing that these were Jane's initial thoughts when certain situations presented themselves, this lady is full of good advice. Her son is clearly aware that his mom is one smart, sensible woman who helped him become the person he is by opening up and showing him the person she really is.

"The best way to meet people is to simply be authentic," she said. I didn't realize the truth of this advice until years later, while sipping cosmos in the basement of an ultra-trendy Manhattan restaurant. She wasn't impressed by the restaurant, the food, the waitstaff, or the semi-celebrities. She was just here being herself and enjoying a night out with her son."

Robert and Jane clearly have the kind of relationship most parents and children would like to have. I appreciate them sharing their story with a sense of candor and fun. For other opinions on the book, check out the full TLC Book Tour. Follow Robert on Facebook to learn more about his other books. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour!

Thanks to the publisher, I have one copy of Conversations and Cosmopolitans to giveaway. To enter, you must be a U.S. resident; I'll draw the winner Sunday, December 4th. Please leave me the best advice your mom ever gave you and a way to get a hold of you. My favorite piece of advice will win!

My Life In France by Julia Child

My Life In France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
352 pgs
Published: my edition published June 2009
Source: I bought this one

Julia McWilliams was over thirty years old when she met and fell in love with Paul Childs. She couldn't cook, she couldn't speak French and she wasn't much of a foodie. Yet two years after the couple married in 1946, Julia found herself moving to France. She quickly set out to remedy both her language and cooking shortcomings. She roamed the streets of Paris, learning the language, local customs, and, mostly importantly, the food.

"This is the kind of food I had fallen in love with; not trendy, souped-up fantasies, just something very good to eat. It was classic French cooking, where the ingredients have been carefully selected and beautifully and knowingly prepared."

Paul was a gourmand and Julia, now in love with the food of France herself, enrolled herself in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school so that she could learn to prepare the kind of foods they loved. Although she found herself out of place at the school, she learned quickly and soon became lifelong friends with her teacher. In 1951 Julia met Madame Simone Beck Fischbacher (Simca as she would forever after be known). Simca was every bit as enthusiastic about food as Julia. Simca and Louisette Bertholle had been working on a cookbook. The three began working together, operating a cooking school out of Julia's kitchen. Soon Louisette and Simca invited Julia to help them with their cookbook, particularly once they decided that the book needed to be written in such a way so that it appealed to the American audience. The rest, as they say, is history. The first cookbook took years to write and have published. Julia was a a perfectionist when it came to making sure that the recipes were correct, that they would produce good results every time and that they were written in such a way as to make them doable for any cook. It was that first book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, the caught the attention of a public television producer in Boston and earned Julia her own cooking show. Soon Julia found herself every bit as well known as her cookbook.

Julia and Simca would remain friends for the rest of their days and compile a second volume of Mastering. But the two had vastly different methods of choosing and testing recipes for the books and Julia's fame was a thorn in the side of Simca who, no doubt, felt that she deserved equal attention. Despite the fact that the Childs spent their time in France in a house on land the Fischbachers owned, the relationship was often strained.

Paul and Julia spent the last years of their lives in the U.S. where Julia filmed her television shows in her own kitchen, a kitchen that became so famous itself that, when Childs moved to California, it was moved to the Smithsonian.

I picked this one up as a companion to Julie and Julia after seeing the movie of the same name. One of the things I loved about the movie was the back and forth between the two women's lives. I was surprised, then, to find that a lot of what was shown in the movie in the Julia parts did not actually happen. Julia didn't try her hand at hatmaking before she took cooking lessons, she didn't stumble across Simca and Louisette in the dressing room at a party, and she and her sister weren't close. I found myself repeatedly distracted by comparing the book and the movie.

Paul and Julia Childs certainly led an interesting life and the book portrays a fascinating look at Europe post-World War II. I can understand why so many people have enjoyed this book but I had some problems with it. Childs seems to have been under the belief that her readers also know French, frequently referring to things only by their French name or including sentences in French. How do I grasp how wonderful your meal was if I have no idea what the name of the dish means? I sometimes felt the book grew repetitious and often more detailed than was necessary. I can't say that I liked Julia very much. She was quick to point out the flaws of friends and family alike but never seemed willing to acknowledge her own faults. Still, I admire her tenacity, her passion and her deep love for her husband.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How A Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn
304 pages
Published September 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

When Kathleen Flinn returned to Seattle from studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the premier cooking school in the world, she had no idea what she was going to do with that education. Then a chance encounter in the grocery store set her on a mission to teach every day women how to cook for themselves and their families. Thus was born the Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Flinn invited a group of volunteers to weekly cooking lessons, learning everything from how to properly use a knife to how to cook all kinds of meet. Along the way the women learned to hone their taste buds, experiment with spices, and even to make bread. They gained confidence in their skills in the kitchen, learned how easy and fast it can be to make meals from scratch and discovered how much healthier it is to avoid prepackaged foods.

Following on the heels of Four Kitchens and Julie and Julia, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this book reinforced the ideas I had learned in those books. Even more surprising for me, was how much this book made me rethink the way I cook. I may not quite packaged foods altogether (c'mon, some of them taste so good!), but I'm certainly thinking about how I can do more from scratch using fewer canned and boxed goods. The book has wonderful recipes but the reason it will stay in my kitchen, where it will be handy, is for all of the helpful hints. I had no idea I should be cooking down my cream in my cream sauces.There were some industry-related revelations (for me, at least) in the book as well. Did you know that Hershey's used to the biggest manufacturer of pasta in the U.S.?

This is one of those books that I won't be lending, just recommending!

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
359 pages
Published July 2009 by Little, Brown and Company
Source: the publisher - in fact, this was one of the first books ever offered to me for review

Julie Powell was pushing thirty, just moving into an even crappier apartment than the one she and her husband were living in and suffering through a series of temp jobs which are sucking her soul away. Enter Julia Childs - specifically Child's masterwork "Mastering The Art of French Cooking"  (MtAoFC).

As a teenager, Powell (when she wasn't sneaking a peek at her parents' copy of The Joy of Sex) could frequently be found reading recipes from her mother's copy of MtAoFC so it was only logical that she would turn to it again for a source of inspiration when she found herself desperately in need of something to do to make herself not feel like a failure. With her husband's encouragement, Powell started a blog and the Julie/Julia Project was born. Powell set a goal to cook all 524 recipes in the book in 365 days. Along the way Powell had many great successes but just as many disasters. Her husband should probably be nominated for sainthood - the woman didn't get meals on the table until most people are headed for bed, her housekeeping (what there was of it to begin with) became so non-existent that she once discovered maggots in her kitchen, and she subjected her friends to all manner of food they would never have chosen to eat if they didn't love her.

After reading about the source of my copy of this book, you may have asked yourself why it took me so long to finally read this book. When I was offered this book, I was thrilled and had every intention of reading it immediately. Maybe I was put off by some reviews. Maybe because it was already everywhere. I'm not sure. Then when the movie came out, I was determined to read it first. Then after I'd seen the movie, I was determined to read it while the story was still fresh in my mind. Still I didn't get to it. It took a couple of new books sitting in my to-review pile to remind me that this one was still waiting for me.

I liked it, despite its flaws. Powell has a biting sense of humor and is just as willing to poke fun at herself as she is to poke fun at others. A complaint some have voiced is that Powell has a bit of a dirty mouth. I didn't notice it much (sounds like it's definitely more prominent in the blog). She does get a bit distracted at the end dropping names about the people who came to interview and film her and often got off topic in describing her friend's lives. I could have done without reading so often, too, about what a terrible housekeeper Powell was. Seriously, I don't care how busy working and cooking you are, there should never be maggots in your kitchen! Republicans be warned - Powell does not like you, a point she made repeatedly. But she is something of a voice for all of those who toil away in jobs where they are unappreciated, overworked, and underpaid. Maybe she could have whined a bit less about it but aren't we really all longing to find something to do with our lives that will fulfill us?

I loved the movie adaptation of this book which is also based on Julia Child's book, My Life In France, which is coming up soon for me. Powell may not have been able to end her book this way, but after all of this talk about wonderful food, I have to say it - bon appetit!

Four Kitchens: My Life Behind The Burner In New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv, and Paris by Lauren Shockey

Four Kitchens: My Life Behind The Burner In New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv, and Paris by Lauren Shockey
352 pages
Published July 2011 by Grand Central Publishing
Source: the publisher

When she graduated from college with a perfectly serviceable four-year degree, Lauren Shockey discovered with a start that she really had no passion for working a nine-to-five job in a corporate environment. Instead, she told her parents, she wanted to go to culinary school. Not surprisingly, her parents encouraged her to get a job. But sitting in a office day after day only convinced Shockey that she needed to pursue her passion so off to culinary school she went. Upon leaving culinary school, Shockey knew that her education wasn't complete; she needed a job in a real kitchen so pursued a job as a stagiaire (STAH-zjee-air). A stage is "an apprenticeship offering hands on experience and familiarity with new techniques and cuisines." Shockey did her first stage in a small restaurant in France but quickly realized that it was not going to give her what she needed so she determined that she would spend the next year working in four different kitchens, in four different countries.

First stop, wd-50 in New York, owned by Wylie Dufresne who some of you may know from his guest judging appearances on Top Chef on Bravo. Dufresne is one of the masters of molecular gastronomy, a type of cooking which puts a lot of emphasis on technique, science and innovation. Day one, Shockey learned that she had not learned anything she needed to know about working in a restaurant while she was in culinary school and it was an uphill climb to earn respect from the nearly all-male staff. Next stop, La Verticale in Hanoi, Vietnam. Here the emphasis was entirely on flavor. Then is was on to Carmella Bistro in Tel Aviv, Israel. Shockey learned about foods that had been developed over centuries by pulling together foods from all of the cultures that have touched the region.Finally, Shockey found herself working Senderens in Paris, a Michelin 3-star restaurant, firmly rooted in the traditional foods of France.

If you were to look at the Barnes and Noble page for this book, you'd find lots of reviews highly recommending  it, including Kirkus Reviews where I have frequently read reviews bashing books I've loved.  Once again, Kirkus and I disagree. Shockey's journey made for a terrific idea for a book, and I appreciated that she included not just her experiences in each kitchen, but her experiences in each city/country as well. But in both the professional and personal aspects, I felt that she often went into much too much detail and was frequently repetitive. I lost track of the number of times, for example, that she talked about prepping crab in Paris and I believe I might be able to prep some of the food at wd-50 since I have detailed instruction on how certain foodstuffs must be cut. Considering that Shockey was going to be visiting four different kitchens, I was disappointed that she spent over 90 pages devoted to New York and wd-50. By the time that section was finally done, I was almost ready to abandon the book. I get it, I get it - working in a restaurant kitchen in New York is hard work and long hours for little if any pay, the climate can often be hostile, and at wd-50 there is a ridiculous amount of time and effort spent on things that may never be apparent to anyone not on the staff.

To be fair, I don't entirely blame Shockey. I think a much more vigorous editing would have helped tremendously. I didn't need to know the names of everyone she met along the way or the details of many of her evenings overseas but I very much enjoyed her explorations of cultures other than her own. I certainly had no idea how dull much of the work in a professional kitchen can be, nor that it remains a male-centric environment, nor that much of the staff works for nothing. I found it interesting to learn about the different mind-sets of the employees in the different countries as well, the different kinds of ingredients that other countries use in their cooking and the amount of work that goes into every dish on most menus. I was happy to see that, in the end, Shockey found that the most passionate chefs are those who are cooking in their own homes for people that they care about.

If you're willing to make special trips to grocery stores you don't usually frequent (or maybe you do), there are a lot of very interesting recipes in the book. Shockey has modified a lot of the recipes she worked with in the restaurants to fit the kind of cooking most of us do and the type of equipment most of us have. Most of them, I will warn you, are the kinds of recipes you'll save for the weekends or special occasions when cooking a meal is a day long event.

Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness  by Alexandra Fuller
256 pages
Published August 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher & TLC Book Tours

How to summarize Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness? It is, at it's heart, the story of Alexandra Fuller's mother, Nicola who was born on the Scottish Isle of Skye but spent nearly all of her life in Africa. She certainly is the central character around whom all others orbit and a woman who lived her life so that she would have a biography worth telling. But Africa itself is the star of this book as Fuller chronicles her family's lives through a period when the entire continent was changing profoundly.

In Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness, Fuller has spent hours interviewing her parents, primarily on vacation in South Africa where they spend hours literally having cocktails under the Tree of Forgetfulness. Ironic, isn't it, that nothing is forgotten under that tree?

Nicola's childhood was both typically British (stiff upper lip, loyalty to blood, that kind of thing) and utterly unusual.

"I used to run away from our bungalow, which was on the edge of the estate, and go over to the main house and play in her [their landlord's] garden with my first best friend, Stephen Foster." Mum smiles at the memory. "Stephen and I used to take turns pushing each other on his tricycle. We wore matching romper suits. We had tea parties. We went everywhere together, hand in hand."
"Stephen was Zoe's son?" I guess.
Mum frowns. "No, no, no," she says. "Stephan wasn't her son. Stephan was her chimpanzee."
There is a small, appalled pause while I try - and fail - to imagine sending one of my toddlers off to play with a chimpanzee.
"Weren't your parents worried he would bite you?" I ask.
Mum give me a look as if I have just called Winnie the Pooh a pedophile, "Stephen? Bite me? Not at all, we were best friends. He was a very, very nice, very civilized chimpanzee. Anyway, my mother didn't worry about me too much. She knew I would always be all right because everywhere I went Topper came with me."
"And Topper was?"
"A dog my father rescued," Mum says."

That passage says so much about the way that Nicola was raised, the way that she raised her own children. No fenced yards or stranger danger for them and animals were, truly part of the family. Nicola and Fuller's father, Tim, met in Africa and only during a period of extreme poverty and sadness did they return to Britain. But there was something about the light of Africa, the air, the opportunity, that drew them back, even when it meant settling in Rhodesia at a time when that country had been cut off by Britain.

"We accepted the war as one of the prices that had to be paid for Our Freedom, although it was a funny sort of Freedom that didn't include being able to say what you wanted about the Rhodesian government or being able to write books that were critical of it. And for the majority of the country, Freedom did not include access to public restrooms, the sidewalks, the best schools and hospitals, decent farming land or the right to vote."

Do you know the line people mock about movies - "I laughed, I cried...?" That was this book for me. I read long passages of this book to my poor husband (why are those passages never as funny when you aren't actually reading the book?), laughing. Then there were places where my heart broke for the Fullers and other passages where I gasped in disbelief at the horrors of war. Fuller places her family squarely into the reality of Africa as native Africans begin fighting to take back their continent.

"War is Africa's perpetual ripe fruit. There is so much injustice to resolve, such desire for revenge in the blood of the people, such crippling corruption of power, such unseemly scramble for the natural resources. The wind of power shirts and there go the fruit again, tumbling toward the ground, each war more inventively terrible than the last."

I loved this book. Although it skipped around quite a bit and it could sometimes take a bit to settle yourself back into where you were at in time and how it related to what else you had read, I ultimately far preferred Fuller's style than if she had tried to tell the story of her family in a more linear way. I grew to understand, at least a bit, what it was about Africa, that drew Fuller's parents and grandparents back to the continent, even at great personal risk. And I fell in love with Nicola, a woman who, at first glance, would appear to be one of the most thoughtless mothers you've ever read about. Not cruel, really, just a product of her upbringing and life. But Fuller, herself, clearly loves her mother, a woman of whom she says "the broken, splendid, fierce mother I have."

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour! For other opinions about the book, check out the full tour for this book. To learn more about Fuller, check out her website, where you can also learn more about her first memoir, Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight, a book Nicola forever after referred to as that Awful Book.

Persepolis and the Omaha Bookworms

Persepolis: The Story Of A Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
160 pages
Published June 2004 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: I bought this to read with the Omaha Bookworms

Satrapi was ten years old when, in 1979, Iran began to experience a period of revolution against the then-Shah. Persepolis chronicles the revolution through the eyes of a young girl in graphic novel form. Satrapi, whose parents initially demonstrated in favor of the overthrow of the Shah, chronicles life as her parents go from hopeful to fearful, as she herself experiences ever changing feelings about her country, and as the country becomes a more and more dangerous place to live.

Linda recommended this one to the Bookworms and I thought it would make a perfect summer read since it would be a quick read being a graphic novel. It was indeed a quick read but only partially because it was a graphic novel. The truth is that I would have read this book in one night even if it had been twice as long. Satrapi does a marvelous job of, literally, illustrating the full range of emotions Satrapi and her family went through from the start of the revolution until the day her parents put her on an airplane bound for Austria. Her family didn't shy away from telling her the truth of what was happening and Satrapi doesn't shy away from showing her readers the full horror of living through that time in Iran. She skillfully balances that with a moving portrait of what it was like to be a citizen of Iran during the revolution and war with Iraq.

All of the Bookworms really liked Persepolis and several of us are planning on reading Satrapi's followup. Well, done, Linda! Not only did you pick a book that I really enjoyed but you found that book that has changed my mind about graphic novels.

Guest Review of "Nerd Do Well" by Simon Pegg

Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy's Journey To Becoming A Big Kid
by Simon Pegg
368 pages
Published June 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Summary from the publisher:

The unique life story of one of the most talented and inventive comedians, star of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Star Trek.
Zombies in North London, death cults in the West Country, the engineering deck of the Enterprise: actor, comedian, writer and self-proclaimed supergeek Simon Pegg has been ploughing some bizarre furrows in recent times. Having landed on the U.S. movie scene in the surprise cult hit Shaun of the Dead, his enduring appeal and rise to movie star with a dedicated following has been mercurial, meteoric, megatronic, but mostly just plain great.
From his childhood (and subsequently adult) obsession with science fiction, his enduring friendship with Nick Frost, and his forays into stand-up comedy which began with his regular Monday morning slot in front of his twelve-year-old classmates, Simon has always had a severe and dangerous case of the funnies.
Whether recounting his experience working as a lifeguard at the city pool, going to Comic-Con for the first time and confessing to Carrie Fisher that he used to kiss her picture every night before he went to sleep, or meeting and working with heroes that include Peter Jackson, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino, Pegg offers a hilarious look at the journey to becoming an international superstar, dotted with a cast of memorable characters, and you're rooting for him all the way.

When the lovely ladies at TLC Book Tours first approached me about the book, I immediately knew it was something that any of the males in my house would enjoy. My husband grabbed the book the minute it came in the mail, so he'll be your guest reviewer for this one!

Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg pretty much sums it up as Simon is a Star Wars and Zombie movie junkie from way back. Having been a science fiction fan from way back as a wee lad of six or seven in Iowa sneaking up out of bed to join my much older brother and his friends, I can relate.  I loved the old Twilight Zone, Star Trek shows as well as Stephen King books, especially in his early days, so we have a similar mind set, although I didn't share the infatuation with zombies.  That being said I loved Simon's "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," both excellent violent comedies that tickled my dark sense of humor.

One of the things I did not know was Simon's extensive experience in stand up comedy, comedy writing and working on some of the British shows that evidently were more of a hit over there or that I just plain missed here.  Something I will need to go search out.  Simon also has a great love for the dramatic arts and was exposed early and often in his family and I applaud him in his relentless pursuit of  his acting career knowing the ups and downs of the business.  

Being an autobiography it probably will appeal to a certain crowd and. as my lovely wife mentioned, more of a male crowd due to Simon's interests and style, but it was fun and interesting.  Despite his not rising to the pinnacle of the British education system with their various caste levels, Simon has a great command of the English language and a lively and witty writing style.  I can see why he has been doing television comedy writing as well as stand up. 

So if you are a bit is a Star Wars fan, like zombie movies, or are a fan of Simon's movies, this should be an enjoyable read.  I need to go out and see "Paul" that is still in the cheap theater and should be out on DVD soon. 

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour and to my husband for his review. I'm sure this book will be in one of my sons' hands soon! For more reviews of the book, check out the full tour. Follow Simon on Twitter at http://twitter.com/simonpegg.

Thoughts Without Cigarettes by Oscar Hijuelos

Thoughts Without Cigarettes by Oscar Hijuelos
384 pages
Published June 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Oscar Hijuelos has entranced readers with the characters in his books, mostly notably in his Pulitzer-prize winning effort The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (in 1992 it was made into a movie starring Armand Assante and Antonio Bandaras). In Thoughts Without Cigarettes, Hijuelos doesn't need to create great characters, he only needs to tell us about the ones he grew up with.

Born in New York City, Hijuelos is a second-generation Cuban-American, grew up in the 1950's in a neighborhood that was culturally diverse. When Oscar was only four, Magdalena Hijuelos took her two sons home to Cuba for an extended stay. While there, Oscar contracted a disease that resulted in nephritis and a year-long stay in a ward for similarly ill persons. As best he can recall, Oscar's father never visited him there. Although his mother did visit, she was not allowed to touch him and the more he was exposed to the English language during his stay, the less he understood of the Spanish that his mother spoke, creating a barrier between the two they were never able to overcame.

When he returned home, Oscar was smothered by his parents, particularly his mother. He was not allowed to play outside and was on a very restricted diet (in a home where rich foods where a part of the daily diet) for years after his release from the hospital. When he was finally allowed to go to school, he found himself playing catch up with the other students. Dealing with his alcoholic father, and suffering through his parents' high voltage marriage, made life at home difficult at best. All of which contributed to Oscar spending the rest of his life trying to discover his place in the world.


Interestingly, writing was not on Hijuelos' radar as he grew up; being a musician was first desire, but if that didn't work out, his plan was to be a teacher. Teachers along the way, however, recognized that Hiuelos had a gift and encouraged him to write. A chance encounter with the author William Burroughs (Naked Lunch) further convinced Hijuelos that writing might just be his thing.

Certainly Hijuelos lived an interesting life and paints a vivid portrait of New York City, his home life and his family.

"Inside the bowels of the subway he would go, with its dirty platforms and penny Chiclets and five-cent Hershey bar dispensers on the columns, and board his train downtown and eventually over to Grand Central, the seats in those days still often covered in lacquered cane."

Perhaps it was reading back-to-back non-fiction works (something I never do). Perhaps it was the feeling I couldn't shake that someone had shaken up Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and thrown in some Cuban spice. Perhaps it was the fact that early in the book, Hijuelos repeated guessed at what might have happened or what might have been said (obviously, he would have been too young or not directly involved in certain conversations to be able to say things with sureness). "Possibly" and "I can only suppose" only work for me, even in a memoir where exact details are not necessarily required, when the possibilities or suppositions have some basis in reality. For whatever reason, even though I enjoyed Thoughts Without Cigarettes, it didn't really flow for me, feeling more like something I had to read, rather than something I wanted to read. Which is a shame, because Hijuelos really is a marvelous writer.

"Yet, while he [Hijuelos' father] offered me affection, that cubano, a union man and hotel cook of simple tastes and longings, he never really taught me anything at all, not how to dress (though he could be quite dapper), not to dance the mambo or rumba (at which he, like my mother, had excelled), nor, among so many other things, even how to drive a car (he, raised on farms, which horses, never would learn). And when it came to something as important as restoring that which had been taken from me, a sense of just who I was, I doubt that, as with my mother, it hardly occurred to him that something inside of me was missing, an element of personality in need of repair. Earthly in his needs and desires, he just didn't think that way."

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions on this book, check out the other stops on the tour.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
304 pages
Published January 2006 by Simon and Schuster
Source: borrowed from a friend

Jeannette Walls, father, though brilliant and charismatic, was also an alcoholic who found it impossible to hold down a job.  Her mother was an artistic personality, who appears to have suffered from bipolar disorder and who had not the least compunction about supporting her family despite being educated as a teacher.  And yet these two people thought it would be a good idea to have children.

When she was only three years old, Jeanette set herself on fire cooking hot dogs while her mother was painting a picture in the next room. It was par for the course in the Walls' household.  Rex and Rosemary Walls were so wrapped up in their own dreams that they often couldn't be bothered to take care of their children's needs or supervise them in any way.  They used the excuse that they were helping their children to become self-sufficient and Rosemary believed that children shouldn't be "burdened with too many rules and regulations."

Remarkably, in some ways they were also very good parents in the children's younger years.  Rex taught them about physics, geology, and astronomy and made them believe in chasing your dreams.  Rosemary taught them art, reading and an appreciation for nature.  When Jeannette was young she became afraid one night that there was some sort of creature in her bedroom. Rex not only didn't try to tell her that her fears were not legitimate, he gave her the ability to fight them.  And, to some extent, the children bought into the idea that they were always on a great adventure, even when it meant they had to pull up stakes and leave town with nothing more than what would fit in their car.

But as the children got older they began to realize how much harder their life was than it needed to be.  They started to question why their father should spend grocery money on alcohol and pie-in-the-sky schemes and why their mother should spend her days writing novels instead of working when they could not afford to heat their homes.  When Jeannette was just nine, Rosemary's mother died leaving them money, a furnished home and land in Texas.  Somehow Rex and Jeannette managed to squander it all and soon they were involving their children in bank scams and shop lifting.

Eventually, the family was forced to head to West Virginia and the family that Rex had worked so hard to avoid for so many years.  With good reason.  Everyone in it was also an alcoholic and some of them were even pedophiles.  Things had been bad in California and Arizona; they were much worse in West Virginia.  The family became the laughingstock of the town, there was more often not no heat or electricity. The house leaked, it was falling apart and the children had to dig through the garbage after the other children had eaten at school to have food for lunch. When the children found a diamond ring on their property, Rosemary kept it for herself instead of selling it to pay bills or buy food.  When Rex needed he cash, he once used Jeannette as bait while he hustled a man, essentially pimping out his daughter.

No wonder then that all four of the children left home before they were out of high school.  Their parents followed them to New York where they continued to inflict emotional pain on their children.  When Jeannette was a grown adult, she discovered that what she had assumed was worthless land in Texas was actually quite valuable and that her mother had been holding out on them during all those years of poverty.

"All those years in Welch with no food, no coal, no plumbing and Mom had been sitting on land worth a million dollars? Had all those years...been a caprice inflicted on us by Mom?"

It became harder and harder to read this book as it went on. As a person whose life has revolved around her children for more than 20 years, it is unfathomable to me that any two people could be so selfish, even given their demons. Walls does a marvelous job of portraying her parents as something more than just people who deprived their children for years; she has worked hard to find the motives behind their actions (or just as often inaction).  Rex was very proud of what his children became and he and Rosemary deserve their share of credit for the successes the their children have had.  They would certainly not be the people they are today had they been raised in any other way.  They are all bright, hardworking, contributing members of society despite having not had that example set for them.

"One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree.  I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house.  I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight.

Mom frowned at me.  "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said.  "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that give it it's beauty."

The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks

The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R Saks
352 pages
Published October 2007 by Hyperion
Source: a book club friend

When Elyn Saks was eight years old, she began having night terrors and developed obsessive compulsions.  That alone would have been a frightening development.  Then one day she was walking home from school and thought that the houses were sending her messages.  Even so, this was nothing compared to what would eventually happen.  After completing her Bachelor's degree at Vanderbilt, Saks went to Oxford to study.  It was there that things went from very bad to absolutely terrifying.  She began hearing voices in her head and having suicidal thoughts.  She was hospitalized and spent years in therapy, including an extra year after she was done at Oxford just because she was unable/unready to leave therapy.

After all of that, Saks did not really think she was ill.  She sincerely believed that everyone had these voices in their heads, these thoughts, but that they were better able to control them.  And with the right therapy, she believed that she, too, should be able to control the thoughts.  Even after she had another psychotic break while attending Yale Law School, one that initiated her into the horrifying world of inpatient "care" for psychiatric patients in the United States, Saks continued to believe that she should be able to fight these thoughts.

"To be weak is to fail; to let down your guard is to surrender; and to give up is to dismiss the power of your own will."

Saks battled taking medication for her symptoms, sometimes with disastrous consequences, for years.  Given the side effects and long-term effects, it's hard not to understand why she would be so adamant.  But the result was that she frequently found herself on a roller coaster of psychosis and often at odds with her doctors.  Further, Saks had been in therapy for years before she finally received the diagnosis that she had been fighting--schizophrenia.

"Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on.  At first, the day is bright enough, the sky is clear; the sunlight warms your shoulders.  But soon, you notice a haze beginning to gather around you, and the air feels not quite so warm.  After a while, the sun is a dim lightbulb behind a heavy cloth. The horizon has vanished into a gray mist, and you feel a thick dampness in your lungs as you stand, cold and wet, in the afternoon dark."

Despite this enormous obstacle, the numerous setbacks, the therapy, the medication, Saks managed to earn numerous degrees, become a tenured professor and finally find the love of her life.  What Saks has been able to accomplish is impressive, particularly in light of her diagnosis.

If you follow me on Twitter, you got pretty used to reading tweets from me saying how much this book was scaring me.  Of all of the things that worry a mother, I long ago added the fear that one day one of my kids would develop schizophrenia.  It was my boys I was most worried about; statistically, schizophrenia is more common in males. So for all of these years, I've been sure that I could finally relax about this concern once Mini-me made it through his early twenties (most males develop schizophrenia in their late teens/early twenties).  When I was handed this book, the idea that a woman had suffered so profoundly made me rethink my worries.  Clearly I was going to need to add my daughter to my concern about this disorder.

Then I discovered that Saks had begun having unusual symptoms as a young child.  Well, good then, none of my children suffered from any thing like this.  They're safe, right?  Wrong.  Saks, in addition to suffering from this disorder, has studied it extensively and shares what she's learned.  One of those things is that symptoms we may overlook, particularly in teens, may actually be early warning signs--bouts of depression, inability to focus.  Also, for females, the onset of full-blown schizophrenia might not manifest until the late twenties.  So now I find that I have another 15 years to worry.

Reading about what Saks has been through is heartbreaking, frightening and, eventually uplifting.  She is incredibly detailed in describing her episodes, treatment and inner thoughts which is insightful but I must admit that at a certain point, I began to feel like it might have been too much detail.  As bad as her episodes were, they began to blend in my mind and started to lose some of their emotional punch.  Saks does a lot of writing but her writing is primarily articles for law magazines and books about the mental disorders and diseases. It leaves the book lacking emotional depth, particularly later in the book.  I learned a great deal but readers should know going in that this is every bit as much a lesson about the disorder and treatment as it is a story of Saks' own battle.

Was God On Vacation? by Jack van der Geest - Guest Review

Thanks to my Dad for another great guest review!  The very interesting thing about this book was that it was a gift for my father from my niece who is dating Jack van der Geest's grandson.  He was telling my dad about his grandfather, which of course piqued his interest.  When he mentioned that his grandfather had written a book, my Dad knew he wanted to read more.  

Was God On Vacation?                             

by Jack van der Geest

van der Geest Publishing and Distribution Co.                               

Rapid City, SD

ISBN 0-9649615-2-0                                                          

                                                                                                       

            Mr. van der Geest took the title for his book from a question he heard posed by one of his fellow prisoners in the notorious German concentration camp, Buchenwald, during WWII.  Starved, beaten, dehumanized, and near death, the prisoner wondered aloud about the divinity whose watchful eye he had always believed was on him.  How could such horror be allowed to happen to him and all those others?

            We don’t know if that unnamed sufferer survived, but van der Geest himself eventually was one of the handful of people known to have accomplished the almost impossible feat of escaping that hell-hole.  He did it by feigning death at roll call one morning. The guards removed his emaciated body from the wooden shelving on which prisoners slept, and tossed it on a pile of corpses.  He lay there amongst the dead for eleven hours, waiting for whatever opportunity might some along and be possible for a man wasted away to less than a hundred pounds.  When that moment came, he managed to kill a guard, put on his uniform, commandeer a truck, drive out the gate, and eventually make his way across the border into occupied France.

            But that’s only one of the harrowing experiences set out in this autobiography.  Van der Geest tells of how it came about that a young gentile in the Netherlands fell into the clutches of the Nazis in the first place.  After his escape, he worked for a while with the French underground and then with the same activity in his native country.  His fluency in several languages landed him a spot in the US military, which led him into the 101st Airborne, parachuting into Normandy on D-Day, and being in Bastogne as the Battle of the Bulge raged around that besieged town.

            There’s much more, but van der Geest and his ghost writer are spare stylists so the book is rather small (180 pages) and it wouldn’t behoove a reviewer to tell the whole story and spoil it for any potential reader.  Suffice it to say, this was one of the most remarkable and praiseworthy life stories I’ve encountered in years of reading autobiographies and biographies.  Tribute to that life was given in 2009 when the State of South Dakota and Rapid City (where he lived for his last 55 years) held “Jack van der Geest Day” marking the 66th anniversary of his escape from Buchenwald.  After his death, two days following that special distinction, the South Dakota State Senate issued a resolution honoring him. 

            If your curiosity has been piqued and you’d like more on the man, go to the Internet and www.jackvendergeest.com,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3pyvSAPSEA (which will lead you into clips of an interview with van der Geest), or

www.facebook.com/pages/Jack-van-der-Geest/108193522542209. 

           

Khrushchev Remembers by Nikita Khrushchev

Khrushchev Remembers by Nikita Khrushchev
Published 1970 by Little, Brown and Company

Library Of Congress Catalog Card No. 70-144137

            618 pages, including appendices

 In 1964, the Presidium of the USSR and the Communist Party Central Committee ousted Nikita Khrushchev from leadership of the nation and the party.  He might have expected he’d be tried and shot, as had been the fate of thousands of  prominent people.  Instead, however, he was pensioned off and exiled to his home in Moscow and his dacha in the country.  He lived the remaining seven years of his life, in typical Soviet fashion, as a “nonperson,” omitted from the records and the histories, and was watched over by security guards.  In 1966 he began to write his memoirs.  The new leaders disapproved of his take on them and on the dramatic events of his life, but a copy was smuggled out to the West and published under the title KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS.

As is understandable with anyone writing about his own life, Khrushchev omitted, glossed over, or simply lied as it suited him in portraying himself as he wanted history to see him.  The reader can’t simply accept something as true because he says it.  Nevertheless, in reading this book I learned much about the first half of the twentieth century and had a chance to consider things from the point of view of someone I was taught to regard as the nasty and deceitful enemy in my youth.  Here are some of the things I found most interesting:

 1.  Khrushchev’s real dedication to an ideology that, from our side, seemed specious: “The way I looked at it, if someone carried a Party card and was a true Communist, then he was my brother --- he was really more than that.  We were bound together by the invisible threads of our shared belief in the lofty struggle.  The building of Communism was something almost sacred to me.”  The book contains enough similar comments to persuade me that, as is true with Americans and capitalism, he simply didn’t see --- or want to see --- any flaws in his system, and truly believed it was the best thing for the working people and the future.

  2.   His almost matter-of-fact way of relating some of the millions of murders committed under the orders of Stalin or some of his henchmen: 

- “The chief of the [Moscow office of the NKVD] was Comrade Redens.  He was Stalin’s brother-in-law, a Pole by nationality.  He was a good comrade and had been a member of the Party since 1914.  Stalin later had him shot.”  

- “Take Rykov for example.  He became Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars after Lenin’s death.  He was a man of merit in the eyes of the Party and a worthy representative of Soviet Power.  Yet he was shot.”   

-  “Where is this Lomov now?  I knew him well.  I met him frequently when I was working in the Donbass after the Civil War.  He was put in charge of coal output in the Ukraine....  He was much respected in the Party as a man with a Party record going back to the days of the pre-Revolutionary underground.  But still you want to know where this Lomov is?  The answer is --- shot.”  

-  “In those days it was easy enough to get rid of someone you didn’t like.  All you had to do was submit a report denouncing him as an enemy of the people; the local Party organization would glance at your report, beat its breast in righteous indignation, and have the man taken care of.”    He relates a story of one man who saved his own life only by being quickly clever.  He had just spoken at a party meeting somewhere.  A woman in the audience stood, pointed at him, and shouted “I’ve never met this man who just spoke but I can tell by looking in his eyes that he’s a enemy of the people.”  That probably would have been enough to doom the fellow had he not been sharp enough to turn the tense moment to laughter with the rejoinder “I’ve never met that woman who just spoke.....but I can tell by looking in her eyes that she’s a whore.”

However, when his account gets to the years in which Nikita Khrushchev himself has risen to a powerful position, he treats this matter with much more sensitivity because now it was he himself who sometimes crossed Stalin and had reason to be frightened for his own life.  And he never makes any reference at all to the numerous killings he ordered when he was given the task of putting the Ukraine back on its feet after the devastation brought to it by WWII.  Though he admired Stalin for many things, he lays the blame for mass murder on Stalin and on his henchmen, chiefly Lavrenty Beria (whom, you might remember, Khrushchev and the other men involved in the so-called “collective leadership” after Stalin’s death feared so much that they quickly ordered arrested and disposed of).

    3.  His reporting on WWII, the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Wall, the Korean War, the Cold War, Viet Nam, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis as seen from a very different perspective than my own.  For example, he says his decision to put Soviet missiles in Cuba  in 1962 had two purposes.   One was to deter the U.S. from following up the Bay Of Pigs invasion with a better planned, better equipped, and more successful effort against his little ally in the Caribbean.  The other was to restore some balance in the mutually-assured-destruction standoff, given that we already had missiles in Germany, Italy, Iran, and Turkey that were aimed at the USSR.  We’d have scoffed at that explanation back in the years when we were conditioned to believe that any conflict between us and the USSR was simply caused by a wicked Communist effort to conquer and enslave us.  And that’s certainly not the motivation attributed to him by our leaders then!

   4.  His evaluation of American leaders.  For instance, he dismisses Truman as worthless.  He says Eisenhower was sincere, but cites things he was aware of that convinced him the general was a mediocre military leader and a none-too-bright President.  He says Nixon was shrewd, but didn’t like him.  Kennedy he rather admired.

Nikita Khrushchev led a remarkable life during remarkable times. Being clever enough, brutal enough, deceitful enough, and lucky enough to have survived wars and purges when millions around him were dying, and eventually rising to leadership over the whole vast Soviet empire, was an extraordinary accomplishment, especially for a man born a peasant and without a background of more than a few years of formal education.  This book is not an easy read, but I found it fascinating.

Edward Crankshaw, who was a correspondent for The Observer, assembled and organized what were written as separate reminiscences of separate events and also provided an introduction, commentary, and notes for the book.  He didn’t see it as his role to debate with Khrushchev, point by point, but he does provide enough information that those as poorly informed as I found I was can see and understand instances in which the author was being forgetful or misleading.  There are also appendices that provide helpful information on important men and on Soviet terminology.  He also provides many photographs of Khrushchev and of the people of whom he wrote.  I found all that very helpful.

Thanks to my dad for another great guest review!

"Half Broke Horses" by Jeanette Walls

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls
Published October 2009 by Simon & Schuster
Source: I bought this one to read with the Omaha Bookworms

Lily Casey Smith was Jeanette Walls grandmother and this is her story, largely based on the stories Walls heard from and about her grandmother.  But because her grandmother died when Walls was only seven, much of Walls has also had to fill in many of the details so the subtitle of this book is "A True Life Novel."

Lily is a character in every sense of the word.  We first are introduced to Lily at an age when today's children would be in their first year of education.  Instead Lily is working with her father to break horses on the family's ranch.  Her mother is entirely ill-equipped to deal with life on the frontier in turn-of-the-last century Texas.  She must often be revived with smelling salts due largely to the fact that she insists on lacing herself up so tightly; she also flat refused to do most chores.

Because of one of her father's never ending schemes, Lily's family was only able to send her to school for one semester but it was enough to convince Lily that she wanted to be a school teacher. When she was only fifteen, knowing that her brother would inherit the ranch and having passed a test that enabled her to teach, Lily left the ranch for a teaching job with nothing but her horse and a few provisions.  Twenty eight days later, she finally arrived.

"I became known as Lily Casey, the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race-winning schoolmarm of Coconimo County and it wasn't half bad to be in a place where no one had a problem with a woman having a moniker like that."

Lily lived the rest of her days with the same spunk and courage.  She learned drive early and fly a plane, she raced horses, peddled bootleg liquor from under her son's crib to make ends meet, and worked harder than most men ever have.  She also brooked no excuses, stood for no prejudice, and expected her own children to work every bit as hard as Lily and their father did.

"The problem with half-broke horses like these was that no one took the time to train them.  Cowboys who could ride anything caught them and ran them on fear, spurring and quirting them too hard, taking pride in staying on no matter how desperately they bucked and fishtailed."

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, Lily never was able to break Walls' mother, Rosemary.  The result was chronicled in Wall's memoir The Glass Castle.  I haven't read that book but I've heard enough about it to be surprised early on in this one that a woman like Lily could have raised a woman like Rosemary.  But as the book went on, I began to see how it might have happened.  Lily was hard on everyone and thought nothing of doling out a good beating, even with her students.  She once beat Rosemary so severely that even Lily felt she had gone too far.  Once she also involved Rosemary in spying on her own father when Lily was trying to determine if her husband was cheating on her.

This book grabbed my attention from the beginning as Walls explained how Lily and her siblings had survived a flash flood.  But as the book went on, I began to tire of the stories. That was in part because I started to lose some of the admiration I had for Lily as she began to make decisions that I questioned. But mostly it felt like Walls was working too hard to convince me that her grandmother was a tough old bird, capable to adjusting and surviving anything.  Things also began to seem repetitive.  In fact, Walls frequently had her grandmother referring to her first husband, always as "my crumb-bum first husband."

Was it worth reading?  Definitely.  Lily Smith lead an amazing life and the book certainly made for an interesting discussion with the rest of my book club.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
368 pages
Published 1996
Source: I own it

Malachy McCourt had barely arrived in America before he met Angela Sheehan.  Soon she was pregnant and the two were "convinced" that they should marry by Angela's cousins.  Cousins who ever after told her what a terrible man her husband was.  They were right; Malachy McCourt was an alcoholic who was never able to keep a job for more than three weeks and frequently drank his entire pay for a week before he went home.  This was the life that Frank was born into.  Within a couple of years he was joined by brothers Malachy, Oliver, and Eugene and sister Margaret, the apple of her father's eye.  For Margaret, their father stopped drinking and had she lived who knows how the McCourt family's life might have changed.  But she didn't; Malachy started drinking more than ever and Angela sank into a deep depression.  Eventually her cousins convinced the family to return to Ireland, where things went from very bad to much, much worse.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all.  It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while.  Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

A miserable childhood it was.  There were more children born and more children died.  McCourt's father continued his drinking ways, forcing the family to rely for years almost exclusively on the assistance of various agencies (in his defense, it played hugely against him that he was from the North living in Limerick). There was rarely much more to eat than bread and often not enough coal to boil water for tea.  Frank suffered from typhoid fever and the worst case of conjunctivitis that I've ever heard of.  During his three month confinement with the typhoid, he spent most of his time alone in a ward of the hospital where there were no other patients and his mother was not even allowed to visit.  His life at home was so bad, that when he was finally able to return home he found himself longing for the quiet, the warmth and the cleanliness of the hospital.

"I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland."

With the second World War going on, many of the Irish father's went to London and began sending home money to the other families on the lane,  When Malachy goes to London, the McCourts finally think their luck has changed.  But not one dime ever arrives from England.  Not only that, but with Malachy gone, the family was no longer eligible for the assistance they had relied on for years.  Now the family become more and more reliant on a family that didn't want to help and a church that kept turning its back on them.

"This is my mother, begging.  This is worse than the dole, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Dispensary.  It's the worst kind of shame, almost as bad as begging on the streets where the tinkers hold up their scabby children, Give us a penny for the poor child, mister, the poor child is hungry, missus."

I cannot imagine how any of the McCourt children survived this life.  Yet survive Frank and three of his brothers did.  Frank decided at fourteen to quit school, despite a passion for learning, to become a telegram boy, a job that not only helped his family survive but also allowed him to begin saving money for his eventual escape back to  America. 

Oh Frank McCourt, how I love this book!  I read it the year it won the Pulitzer and it earned a hard to earn spot on my permanent bookshelf.  Which means that, theoretically, I will someday re-read a book.  But I have a hard time ever making myself do that.  How could a book that's sitting on that shelf ever live up to my memory of it?  This one did.

This time I was struck by the fact that McCourt frequently repeated things.  Where I might have thought on the first read that this was done to effectively emphasize his points, this time I did find it excessive.  Still that was the only fault I found with the book.  McCourt spares no one in this book, finding fault with both of his parents, his larger family, the government, and the Catholic church.  But while the book can frequently feel angry, it is more often filled with humor and compassion.  McCourt brings his story to life: the malodor of the outhouse that's shared by the block but right next to the McCourt's house, the sting of the fleas, the misery of living in a house where for six months of the year, the family was forced to live on the second floor due to the flooding on the first floor.  McCourt is a master of the English language and writing in dialect.  I actually responded to my husband one night while reading this with an Irish accent.  Back on the shelf this book will go.  Someday I know I will read it again.

Everything I Never Wanted To Be: a memoir of alcoholism and addiction, faith and family, hope and humor

"Everything I Never Wanted To Be: a memoir of alcoholism and addiction, faith and family, hope and humor" by Dina Kucera
218 pages
Published October 2010 by Dream of Things
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Dina Kucera is the granddaughter of an alcoholic, the daughter of and alcoholic and an addict and herself an alcoholic and addict.  Is it any wonder then that all three of Kucera's daughters also because addicts?  This is the true story of Kucera's family that also includes her husband and sometimes his twin, her mother who suffers from Parkinson's disease and her grandson who has cerebral palsy.


When I was first offered this book, I knew that if it were a work of fiction I would say that the author was trying to do too much.  But you literally cannot make some of this stuff up.  Like the fact that Kucera is a stand-up comic.  Can you even imagine someone who has had this kind of life finding anything to laugh about?  Kucera does bring some of that humor to the book but most of the time she is brutally honest.  She makes no excuses and does not try to back away from taking her share of the blame for what happened to her daughters.  When Kucera was married to her youngest daughter's father, she started to become a mean drunk who picked fights night after night.

"I would scream things like that all night.  I know now the damage it caused to all three of our girls.  I wish I could erase it, but I can't.  I was a lunatic.  The girls started getting into trouble, and I would stagger to their rooms and slur my warnings about how alcohol problems run in our family.  Of course, this didn't include me because I went to work every day and I waited until seven thirty to drink...And they didn't take my advice.  They were teenagers, and they were drinking and using drugs regularly - just like their parents."

It clearly breaks Kucera's heart to think of all that her daughters have suffered through, but it is the experiences of her youngest, Carly, that seem to have been the hardest for her to deal with.  Maybe because Carly started using drugs even younger than her sisters.  Maybe it was because Kucera had to face the fact that she had failed yet another daughter.  Maybe it was just because it had reached the point where it was all too much to bear.

"Carly is nineteen now and has not been to school since she was thirteen.  She has never worked or had a driver's license or had anything or done anything that other people do.  She didn't smoke pot in junior high school and progress to other drugs as she got older.  She smoked pot one day and it seems like she was smoking heroin the next.  There is a slang term for smoking heroin: Chasing the dragon.  That's when Carly began circling the drain.  And because she was so young, it unfolded in front of our eyes as we watched in horror."

The book hops back and forth in time, which could be confusing, and in tense, which didn't really work for me.  Kucera tells "stories" in the book and these are in italics which I didn't understand the need for.  But Kucera pulled me into her family's story and it is a story I will not soon forget.  I defy you to read this book without becoming emotional--horrified, weepy-eyed, and, in the end, hopeful.  Hopeful that this family, who have been through so much, are finally on the road to a happier life.

To learn more about Kucera, visit her website, which including a reader's guide for book clubs and advice on what to do if you think your child is using drugs.  For a full listing of other reviews of this book, visit TLC Book Tours.