Life: It Goes On - July 14

Good morning from sunny, hot Omaha. At least our mornings and evenings have been cool enough to enjoy breakfasts and evenings on the patio. There has been much reading on the patio this past week. I've posted, on Twitter and Facebook, pictures of what I'm reading and my cocktail of choice that evening. As a joke, I suggested that I should start a feature on the blog showing beverage and book pairings.

It's been a quiet week here at Chez Shep - we had absolutely nothing on the calendar. I did pick up a free ticket the other day to the U.S. Senior Open from the company I work for so The Big Guy enjoyed spending the day watching some great golf Thursday. Friday night there was a free blues concert downtown and last night we got together with friends and enjoyed dinner at a dive restaurant on the riverside. So relaxing!

Here's What I'm:

Listening To: I'm still listening to Henning Mankell's The Man From Beijing. I'm hoping to finish it this week. Next up, I think, will be Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher.

Watching: Under The Dome but I'm about to give up on it. I know there are changes that need to be made with adaptations and I know that King has approved the changes. But the changes have, for me, fundamentally changed the story.

Reading: I started The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau and will go straight from it into her The Chalice for an upcoming TLC Book Tours review. Philippa Gregory fans, this one's for you!

Making: Peppermint iced tea with the peppermint I'm growing in my herb wagon. So refreshing!

Our artist, bike-riding crazy-fun niece!

Planning: Dinner tonight with my niece who is coming into town to go to a concert with Mini-me. I love that my 21-year-old son and his 36-year-old cousin want to hang out together! She's getting ready to move to California so we're glad to get to see her before she takes off. Now I just have to figure out a gluten-free menu, something I've never worked around before. Any suggestions?

Grateful for: Air conditioning - this girl does not handle the heat well right now.

Loving: Fresh produce straight from my gardens. Banana peppers, cherry tomatoes, rhubarb, herbs - I can hardly keep up already with these.

Thinking: Summer should last longer. I love the longer days, the lazier pace (this is what happens when your kids are all grown up!), and the lighter eating.

Looking forward to:Book club this week - we get to Skype with our friend who has just returned from a trip to Africa. I'm thinking we won't talk very much about the book, though, which is a shame because we read Amor Towle's Rules of Civility which is such a good book.

Lit: Best Books For Book Club Discussions

I've been a member of the Omaha Bookworms for more than four years now and during that time I've learned a thing or two about what makes a good selection for book clubs. Well, at least what makes a good selection for the Bookworms. Nearly all of the books we read now have been read and recommended by one of our members to make sure the book is "discussion worthy." Can you tell that we've had experience with books that weren't?!

Here's what we've learned:

1. It's not necessary for everyone to like the book. In fact, some of our best discussions have happened when there were widely differing opinions about the book. None of the Bookworms loved this book and I can't tell you how much we disliked Frank Lloyd Wright by the time we got done. But...it did make us talk!

2. Happily ever after endings aren't necessarily the best choices. Books with endings that leave the reader wondering also make for a lot of opinions as to what might have happened.

3. It helps if the readers can relate to the characters. This doesn't necessarily mean they like the character or share a lot in common with the character. Olive Kitteredge was no one's favorite person but she was a wife and mother as most of us were and we all had opinions about the kind of wife and mother she was.

Ami McKay's The Birth House was full of characters we could relate to with most of us being mothers and all of us being women. Probably the best discussion we have ever had - we talked about the story, the characters, the ways we were able to relate the book to our own lives.

4. Books should be "doable." We meet monthly so we choose books between 300-400 pages. Everyone is busy and even this is pushing it for some of our members.

5. No fluff, no formulas. There's just not enough to talk about in these books. This isn't to say that, for example, chick lit is out of the mix. It just needs to be chick lit with something deeper to think about. Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon is definitely chick lit but with something different that provided plenty to talk about. What happens when that married man actually does leave his wife?

6. Variety. Having the same conversation month after month can get dull. Every year we read a classic, an award winner, and a nonfiction title. This also helps to ensure that we're reading books that appeal to every member at some point in the year. One of best discussions ever was last year's discussion of Laura Hildenbrand's Unbroken.

7. Choose books with issues that don't have cut and dried answers.The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks addresses a lot of issues, many of them without clear cut answers, most notably the use of human medical waste for research.

8. Learn something new. Choose books from other parts of the world. Mahbod Seraji's Rooftops of Tehran not only taught us about another culture and its history but it also highlighted how much we have in common with people all over the world.

Finally, be willing to take chances with books and come to meetings with ideas about discussion topics. It's not enough just to ask "did you like the book?" Think about character interactions, settings, decisions made, how you might have responded in similar circumstances.

Some other books that have generated good discussions for us were:

The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley
The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (the Bookworms have actually read this one twice!)
What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen


Are you a member of a book club? If so, what books have made for the best discussions with your group? Do you have any suggestions for books or for picking a book?

The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
Published December 2003
Source: I have two copies, print and audio. I have no recollection of where the print copy came from. If I borrowed it from you, please let me know so I can return it! The audio copy I bought.
Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld and Terry Donnelly

Publisher's Summary:
A set of bewitching medieval tapestries hangs today in a protected chamber in Paris. They appear to portray a woman's seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown - until now.

Paris, 1490. A shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arrogant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the house - mother and daughter, servant and lady-in-waiting - before taking his designs north to the Brussels workshop where the tapestries are to be woven.

There, master-weaver Georges de la Chapelle risks everything he has on finishing the tapestries - his finest, most intricate work - on time for his exacting French client. Ill-prepared for temptation and seduction, he and his family are consumed by the project and by their dealings with the full-blooded painter from Paris." The results change all their lives - lives that have been captured in the tapestries, for those who know where to look.

My Thoughts: 
As she did with The Girl With The Pearl Earring, Chevalier builds a story around a masterpiece about which not much is known, in this case a series of tapestries showing the seduction of a unicorn. The artist and weaver of the tapestries is unknown giving Chevalier free rein to build a story around the creation of the six works. Using more than a half dozen narrators, Chevelier moves her story forward in a more complex way than I've seen used before. The two narrators did a marvelous job with this big job, creating unique voices for each character.

Chevalier is nothing if not thorough in her research. I swear I could weave a tapestry...and that's my biggest quibble with this book. I'm certainly interested in learning about the process but I definitely don't want to feel like I'm capable of handling a loom by the end of a book.

Given Chevalier's skill, I'm certain that I'll be reading more of her work. The woman is a master at recreating a time and place.

The Hunt For Hitler's Warship by Patrick Bishop - Guest Review

The Hunt for Hitler's Warship by Patrick Bishop
Published: April 2013 by Regnery History
Source: our copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours

This is a guest review by my husband who is every bit as apt to pick up non-fiction as fiction but who will not abide a dull book. He has no time for them. Thanks, Big Guy, for this review!

Publisher's Summary:
Winston Churchill called “the Beast.” It was said to be unsinkable. More than thirty military operations failed to destroy it. Eliminating the Tirpitz, Hitler’s mightiest warship, a 52,000-ton behemoth, became an Allied obsession.

In The Hunt for Hitler’s Warship, Patrick Bishop tells the epic story of the two men who would not rest until theTirpitz lay at the bottom of the sea. In November of 1944, with the threat to Russian supply lines increasing and Allied forces needing reinforcements in the Pacific, a raid as audacious as any Royal Air Force operation of the war was launched, under the command of one of Briain’s greatest but least-known war heroes, Wig Commander Willie Tait.

Bishop draws on decades of experience as a foreign war correspondent to paint a vivid picture of this historic clash of the Royal Air Force’s Davids versus Hitler’s Goliath of naval engineering. Readers will not be able to put down this account of one of World War II’s most dramatic showdowns.

 

The Big Guy's Thoughts:

As I have a bit of interest in WWII and especially the German machine that Hitler built and  heroic ways the Allied team was able to score a victory in Europe, this book was of interest from the outset.  I had heard of the Bismark, but did not know much about it's sister boat the Tirpitz. 

The story was well told in that it provided what you need to know in technical detail about the boat and other airplanes, subs and ships involved without the level of detail that becomes boring.  It sites the many attempted missions on the Tirpitz and the various groups of merchant ships and protective vessels coming across the Atlantic to help arm the Soviets.  You are also able to get a taste of Churchill's resolve when it came to neutralizing this vessel and defeating Hitler in general.

Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz

Part of the reason the Tirpitz is not as much of a household name as the Bismark is because after the sinking of the Bismark (quickly outlined in the early part of this book), Hitler was pretty protective of her. 

As I discovered it was used as more of a 'large club' at the ready in the hands of the Germans causing US and Britain to tread carefully in delivering goods to the Soviet Union and use a great deal of resources to protect the shipments and to protect our own warships, that could have been used in other theaters of the war. 

I also did not know how much the Soviet Union was unappreciative of the Allied support when the American and British put so many lives on the line and lost thousands to help arm them against Hitler's Eastern push. 

Again, the book reads reasonably light for the history of a fairly specific part of WWII, but it encompasses many interesting aspects of the war on both sides.  A very enjoyable read for anyone liking history especially that of WWII. 

 

Life It Goes On - July 7

When this four-day weekend stretched out before me I had all kinds of glorious plans...and now it's Sunday and I can't figure out how it went by so quickly without me getting a fraction done of what I wanted to do. Of course, I never seem to remember, when I'm planning, that there will be other people with ideas about what we'll do. Or that you can't really do a readathon effectively while at the same time tackling a major home project.


We had a very nice Fourth of July, celebrating with my family at our house and enjoying the amazing fireworks show that one of my neighbors puts on. It's just this side of professional grade and we don't have to fight any traffic. Mini-me and his grandpa enjoyed their annual chance to blow things up, my mom brought homemade ice cream and my sister and I laughed until we cried...it was a good evening.

I never could capture a good shot!

Here's What I'm:

Listening To: The Talking Heads station on Pandora. Loving this one! On books, I'm still listening to Henning Mankell's The Man From Beijing and really enjoying it. Already I'm thinking I'll be picking up more by Mankell.

Watching: Catching up with A&E's Longmire and also watching CBS's Under The Dome. I'm trying to make myself get over all of the changes they've made. Since those changes are okay with Stephen King, I suppose they should be okay with me but I'm not sure it's giving me the same sense of connection to the characters and tension of the book.

Reading: I used the Summer Lovin' Read-a-thon as my excuse to spend a lot of time with my Nook this week. I devoted myself to getting through Under The Dome and spent nearly all day Friday reading, finishing it up on Saturday. Today I'm starting Allison Lynn's The Exiles for a TLC Book Tour.

Making: Red Velvet cake for the Fourth (because of course we need ice cream and cake!) and we also grilled portabello mushrooms for the first, but not the last, time. We've been eating a lot of salads this past week - The Big Guy came home with a giant bag of lettuce from the farmer's market last weekend.

Planning: On tackling the paper monster on my desk today. My basket seems to be the dumping ground for everyone.

Grateful for: The chance to be home to eat breakfast on the patio the past few days. The mornings have been beautiful and the guys and I have enjoyed spending an hour or so out there every day.

Loving: The new slipcover that The Big Guy got for our family room sofa. But don't tell him that. I really didn't think I liked the color or style when it arrived but once it was on, it really works. Except that now I need new throw pillows. Oh darn, I'll have to go shopping.

Thinking: This parenting thing never gets any easier, only different.

Looking forward to: Hearing all about the climb to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro my friend Mari and her husband just made. I've been enjoying watching their progress on Track My Tour but can't wait to talk to her about it when she returns to the States!

What are you looking forward to this week?

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
Published: February 1999 by MTV Books
Source: I read my daughter's copy of the book

Publisher's Summary:
Charlie is a freshman.

And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.

Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

wallflower: 
a : a person who from shyness or unpopularity remains on the sidelines of a social activity (as a dance)
b : a shy or reserved person  

My Thoughts:
Fifteen-year-old Charlie is just beginning his freshman year of high school, a month after the suicide of his best friend, when he begins writing letters to an anonymous person, one he doesn't really know. Charlie is an extremely intelligent but extremely troubled young man who appears to suffer from schizophrenia, although that is never stated. Charlie is not close to his parents, brother or sister although he would like to be; they don't seem to understand him. When two seniors befriend Charlie and a teacher takes a special interest in him, Charlie is encouraged to begin experiencing life.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower is extremely popular with young people for having the courage to address very heavy subjects (molestation, sex, drug and alcohol use, rape) through the eyes of a teenager. By addressing these issue through an emotionally naive Charlie, Chobsky is able to look at these issues from a teenagers point of view in an unusual light. While Charlie observes things, he doesn't, as his friend Patrick says of him at one point "understand things."

This slim novel attempts to deal with a great many subjects, perhaps too many. And, to be honest, sometimes Charlie's voice really got on my nerves; it very often felt like he was much younger. Still, my heart often ached for Charlie and his friends. I understand why so many people love this book. It speaks to young people in a way that few books do, about subjects so many people try to shield them from when they are, every day, surrounded by them.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Happy Fourth of July to all of my readers from the United States! 

Today is the day we celebrate the birth of our nation, our independence from Great Britain. We call it a revolution. That's not what they call it in Great Britain. Looking back nearly 240 years, we tend to have a glorified image of a united people who rise up against a repressive evil empire.

As we watch the uprisings across the Middle East, let's not be too quick to judge either those in power or those revolting. Those living in the colonies were  not united in their dislike of the British and revolutionaries were certainly not all saints nor were their motives all pure. Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill is an excellent resource for learning more about this time in our history. 

Still...

I'm glad the founding fathers and those who agreed with them pushed on despite the risk and the cost. For all of it's flaws, I still believe in the democratic system of government. I'm grateful that a group of people came together to create, as Abraham Lincoln noted almost one hundred years later, a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."