Posts Tagged ‘Bookmobile’
Written by Cathie H on 30 August 2010
“Face it: I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory. I just don’t seem to have the hang of things somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.”
If you are familiar with Anne Tyler’s wonderful books, you know they are peopled with eccentric characters who are somehow at odds with the world that most people know. She draws you into their sideways lives and makes you care about them. She uncovers their hurts and vulnerabilities, their missed opportunities and damaged relationships. But ultimately she demonstrates how love and joy and hope can emerge from the simplest and most ordinary circumstances.
Liam Pennywell is sixty-one years old and has just been “downsized” from his job as a teacher to fifth graders at a private boys’ school. He didn’t like his job very much anyway. It certainly wasn’t what he had set out to do with his life, so he sees this as an opportunity to turn a page; to begin a new chapter. He decides to simplify. He gets rid of most of his furniture, throws away his junk and leaves his old house in Baltimore to move to a new apartment building out in the county near the Beltway. The day of his move something happens that causes him to end up in the ER followed by several days in the hospital. He has no idea what happened to him, no memory of the experience, even after others tell him about it. His obsession to recover that memory leads him to new and interesting places; even to old memories that he didn’t know he had. As he looks back into his past at the failures and the disappointments in his life, he begins to see other things as well. It is a pleasure to take the journey with him as he rediscovers the joys of being connected to his past as well as to all the people and experiences that make up his present.
This book is typical Anne Tyler. I am always amazed at the feelings she can evoke through these quirky characters that inhabit her stories. At first glance they seem to be so different from people that I know, but before the book is finished I realize that she has painted a vivid picture of people and experiences and emotions that we all have had. Noah’s Compass is no exception and I think it is a real treat to read.
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Written by Anonymous on 18 August 2010
“I gotta go, she said, walking away and getting into her car. She had her eyes fixed on the road as she drove away, and didn’t see me wave. Sydney Blake did not come home that night. Or the next night. Or the night after that. “
Her dad, Tim Blake, sells cars in Milford, Connecticut. His ex-wife has moved in with another man, a rich car dealer with several cars on his lot whose registrations might not hold up to close scrutiny. At 17, Sydney is staying with her dad for the summer. She never returned from work that day and her dad fears the worst. Syd had gotten herself hired at the front desk of the Just Inn Time hotel. As Tim retraces his daughter’s steps, he discovers that no one at the hotel has ever heard of her! This dad is no Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson trying to find/save his daughter. He’s just an ordinary guy caught in extraordinary circumstances, making plenty of mistakes, but never giving up. Because of the many plot twists, I hesitate to mention any details so as not to give anything away. It’s a simple, good ol’ page-turning thriller.
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Written by Cathie H on 09 August 2010
by Alexander McCall Smith
The summer will soon be over. You have read mysteries, novels of romance and intrigue. You have even read some fine literature and literary fiction. Now perhaps you are ready for a change of pace. And that is what you will get if you pick up The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom. This is actually a trilogy of short comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Yes, he is the author of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency (reviewed here earlier in the summer), but there is little similarity in the two series. The common element is McCall Smith’s keen eye for human behavior; the kindnesses, foibles, and eccentricities. Beyond that these two series have little in common.
The books that make up the trilogy are Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. These books relate the story of Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld and his colleagues at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, Germany; Professor Doctor Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer and Professor Doctor Doctor (honoris causa) Florianus Prinzel. The three men are colleagues, friends, and rivals as they all attempt to make names for themselves in the world of academia. Their competition sometimes has hilarious consequences.
Consider the time that Professor Doctor von Igelfeld was invited to lecture at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Upon his arrival he was greeted by a faculty member who proceeded to give him an extensive tour of a hog farm and a chicken farm. He was curious about why the conversation always turned to animals. But he decided that this was some American custom, and he wanted to be sure to give proper respect to his host. He arrived at the lecture hall later in the day prepared to speak on his favorite subject, Portuguese irregular verbs and to sign copies of his successful book on the topic. Imagine his surprise when he learned at the last moment that the intended speaker was not the distinguished German professor of philology, Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld but Professor Igelfold, distinguished Dean of Veterinary Medicine at Munster.
“We’re so honored to have you here in Fayetteville”, said the man. “We understand that you are the world authority on the sausage dog…”
Von Igelfeld stared at him in horror. Sausage dogs! He was expected to talk about sausage dogs, a subject on which he knew absolutely nothing. It was a nightmare; like one of those dreams where you imagine that you are about to take the lead part in a Greek play or where you are sitting down to write an examination in advanced calculus. But he was awake, and it was really happening,
One misadventure follows another as the good professor travels the globe visiting universities in India, Columbia, Ireland, Italy, and the United States always with good intentions mixed with a bit of pride and pretension. It is very funny reading.
The three books that make up this trilogy are filled with wit, warmth, and tremendous insight into the human desire for friendship, love, and respect. Treat yourself. You are sure to enjoy what our author refers to as A Professor von Igelfeld Entertainment.
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Written by Anonymous on 03 August 2010
Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) is a very proper English widower who enjoys a properly brewed cup of tea. He leads a quiet life in Edgecombe St Mary, a village of thatched cottages and garden gates and thick lawns of clover clumps that were “evidence of the country always pressing in close, quietly sabotaging anyone who tried to manicure nature into suburban submission.”
Regarded as a permanent foreigner, Mrs. Jasmina Ali is the Pakistani shopkeeper who blends special teas for the Major in her Supersaver SuperMart. Many a local lady proudly spoke of “our dear Pakistani friends at the shop as proof that Edgecombe St. Mary was a utopia of multicultural understanding.” You’ll soon sense it is certainly no such utopia! Conflict abounds in this small village. To the dismay of the Major, there’s the annual club dance with historically dubious themes that often ignore an adherence to decorum. There’s a local Lord about to sell off his land to an American that will alter the village landscape. There’s a pair of matched Churchill shotguns given to the Major’s father by the Maharajah himself that needs to be reunited and passed down. (These handmade, well-oiled shotguns are as significant as any character in the book.) There’s a clash of culture and religion. There’s an old lady with a stabbing knitting needle. And there’s Major Pettigrew’s son, the dealmaker, who puts his father on speakerphone because his chiropractor doesn’t want him holding the phone under his chin and his barber doesn’t want him to use a headset that would encourage oily buildup and miniaturization of his follicles. Yeah, that kind of son.
At one point Mrs. Ali states, “One begins to accept, at a certain age, that one has already made all the friends to which one is entitled. One becomes used to them as a static set.” Unexpectedly, the Major and Mrs. Ali embark on a friendship, established at first by a love of literature and a shared grief from the loss of their spouses. Then it blossoms into something much more, taking everyone by surprise, including themselves. There are no vampires here, just a warm, intelligent modern- day love story.
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Written by Anonymous on 26 July 2010
Great Aunt Tootie. Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper. Oletta Jones. Violene Hobbs. Gertrude Odel. Sapphire, Miz Obee, and Flossy. They all had a hand in Saving CeeCee Honeycutt in the summer of 1967. In Willoughby, Ohio, Cecelia Rose Honeycutt’s momma was regarded as nothing more than the tiara-totin’, lipstick-smeared 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen from Georgia who often paraded down the sidewalks in a rustle of taffeta, blowing kisses. “With a neighbor like Momma, who needed TV?”
When 12 year old CeeCee is left to fend for herself, Tallulah Caldwell—great Aunt Tootie—whisks her away to Savannah, Georgia into a world of eccentricity. There she encounters the sugary, buttery sweetness of cinnamon rolls, the beaten biscuits, the magnolia blossoms, the camellia bush that’s fond of Mozart, the widow who suffers a severe head injury caused by a garden slug, Matilda the spider, the neighbor who takes baths in a moss –stained, claw-footed bathtub set on a slab of marble in the backyard, and the flying petit fours. (You will not want to miss the slug incident and the Polaroid photos taken shortly thereafter! Well, the flying petit fours are a hoot also.)
For those of you who agree with Aunt Lu who told CeeCee, “There’s nothing better than having a good girlfriend,” this book is for you. After a heart to heart chat with a distraught CeeCee, the wise Oletta rises to her feet and said, “So c’mon, lots of nice ladies is waitin’ for you.” Open this book and enter Aunt Tootie’s delightful, perfumed world so you can meet them yourself.
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Written by Cathie H on 19 July 2010
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” This statement made by Ernest Hemingway to a friend became the inspiration for the title of a book which is in itself a moveable feast, a book which will carry you into the past, to Paris long ago. A Moveable Feast is Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of his life in that beautiful city in the 1920s. Hemingway lived and worked there when he was very young and very much in love with his wife, Hadley. He worked as a journalist for a while, but then he took the leap, quit his job and began to write full time. He loved Paris, and considered it to be the best place in the world to write.
The book is a collection of some of his most vivid memories. He writes about Gertrude Stein who held a salon in her apartment for young artists. Many familiar names take on life when you read about Hemingway’s acquaintance with James Joyce, his aversion to Ford Madox Ford, his great friendship with Ezra Pound, and his tender compassion for the tragic Scott Fitzgerald.
The writing is typical Hemingway, tight, concise, never an extraneous word. It is sometimes funny and lighthearted, sometimes grave and sad. Some of his most poignant writing describes his turbulent relationship with Fitzgerald: “If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find out soon enough.”
I first read A Moveable Feast in the late sixties. I was captivated by the picture that Hemingway created. There was Paris, home to painters and poets, musicians and writers of stories. There were the gardens and the cafes, the wine, and too much drinking of it. Recently I was prompted to pick this book up again and discovered the Restored Edition. There are differences of opinion about the two editions, but in the newer one much of the heavy posthumous editing has been removed. Making use of the author’s original manuscripts, the editors have been able to give new life to Hemingway’s story.
Knowing what we know now about Ernest Hemingway’s life and death, it is sad to read his memories of his early years when he was often happy and his life held so much promise. But it is really a fascinating portrait of a lost time and place, and it is a pleasure to read. According to his son, Patrick Hemingway, the last words that the author ever wrote as a professional writer are “the true foreword to A Moveable Feast”: “This book contains material from the remises of my memory and of my heart. Even if the one has been tampered with and the other does not exist.”
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Written by Anonymous on 12 July 2010
Juliet Ashton doesn’t want to be Izzy Bickerstaff any more. As a journalist, she SO wants to find a new subject to write about. Little did she know that issue would resolve itself, beginning with the arrival of a letter from a stranger, Mr. Dawsey Adams, a native of the island of Guernsey.
(If you have forgotten some of your history as I had, Guernsey Island lies off the coasts of England and France and was brutally occupied by the Nazis from 1940 to 1945. With short notice, 17,000 of the 40,000 people who lived there evacuated to the United Kingdom. Of those, there were 4000 who were just children sent to live with strangers. Although The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is fiction, it is based on the factual German occupation of those islands and I was so fascinated by the subject that I Googled to learn more after I finished the book.)
After the war, there were no bookstores on the island and Mr. Dawsey Adams wrote to Juliet in London..…whose name and address he found written on the flyleaf of an old book he had..…to ask her if she could suggest the name of a bookstore in London where he might send for some particular books. His mention of an odd sounding book club made her so curious as to write back immediately. Thus began the correspondence which is the form this narrative takes. For the longest time I didn’t want to read this book because of that particular style … simply a series of letters… but delightfully fascinating letters indeed and the perfect form for this tale. That book club referred to by Mr. Adams, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, was conceived because of a roast pig and a hastily invented alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans. Refreshments became part of the society meetings because ” Will Thisbee wasn’t going to go to any meetings unless there were eats! Since there was scant butter, less flour, and no sugar to spare on Guernsey then, Will concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust. Will’s recipes are usually dubious, but this one became a favorite”
You will be as fascinated as Juliet is by the tales told in the letters of these charming and eccentric Guernsey characters who successfully thwarted their German invaders.
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Written by Cathie H on 30 June 2010
“Laguna? The lagoon?
No, lacuna. He said it means a different thing from lagoon. Not a cave exactly but an opening, like a mouth that swallows things. He opened his mouth to show. It goes into the belly of the world.”
Take this opportunity to be swallowed up by the world that Barbara Kingsolver has created in The Lacuna. It is a world peopled with colorful and fascinating, sometimes maddening characters.
Harrison Shepherd has always lived in two worlds, never quite belonging to either. He is the son of a gray American bureaucrat father and a fiery, beautiful Mexican mother. When the story opens, Harrison’s parents have gone their separate ways. He and his mother Salome are living in Isla Pixol, Mexico, a jungle island, with a man named Enrique. He is just one of many rich men on whom Salome pins her hopes for a life of luxury and excitement. They spend a year there and Harrison falls in love with the water, spending his days swimming, diving and exploring the mysteries of the sea. He is befriended by the gifted cook who teaches him the secrets of preparing Mexican delicacies, including his specialty, pan dulce. Thus begins the saga in which Harrison himself, by means of journals and letters opens up to us a fascinating segment of history. Through his eyes we meet the artist Diego Rivera and his exotic wife Frida Kahlo. We get a glimpse of Leon Trotsky in exile in Mexico. We view the ancient Aztecs and their contribution to Mexican art and culture. We are carried along just as Harrison is from Mexico into the United States at just the right time to glimpse the anti-Communist fervor of the late 40s and early 50s. There are lots of twists and turns as Harrison rides the wave of history and is inevitably drawn into its current.
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Written by Anonymous on 28 June 2010
Hieronymus Bosch is hands -down my favorite literary detective.. …not to be confused with the 15th century artist with whom you’d need to be a detective yourself to figure out his bewildering paintings…but 20th century LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Michael Connelly has written about 21 novels and most of them feature Harry Bosch, a cop who catches killers. The Concrete Blonde is the 3rd in the series, but my first one to read. I immediately acquired the first 2 to begin at the beginning. Each Harry Bosch book stands alone as a novel, but reading them in succession gives you the fuller picture of the man who is often at odds with those in authority.
In The Concrete Blonde, Bosch is involved in a wrongful death civil suit for killing “The Dollmaker,” a man he believed to be responsible for brutally murdering 11 women. The problem is….during the trial he receives a letter from the serial killer describing the location of another victim, a blonde entombed in concrete. Since Norman Church was killed by Bosch 4 years ago, then he must have killed an innocent man, right? Whodunit indeed??!
The story combines courtroom drama and the police investigation into the new murder. Since this particular Harry Bosch book was written about 16 years ago, the detectives are still using typewriters and stopping to use pay phones. No matter. Whatever decade he is working in , he’s a man on a mission to “speak for the dead.”
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Written by Anonymous on 20 June 2010
If you’ve been perusing the summer selections of the Pineknot Farm bookmobile looking for a good book to read, you might have ignored the one set in Georgia at the turn of last century, disregarded the one set in contemporary Botswana, Africa or skipped the one regarding the charming, English countryside veterinarian prior to WW2. However, you really don’t want to pass over this next selection. David Baldacci usually writes books filled with intrigue and suspense, but not so with Wish You Well. It’s 1940 and Louisa Mae Cardinal’s 12 year old life has changed forever in a single, terrifying moment. Lou and her little brother Oz are transported from New York City to the mountains of Virginia to live with their beloved father’s grandmother. They’ll encounter strong, remarkable folk on that mountain such as red headed Jimmy Skinner –otherwise known as Diamond because his head is that hard, Cotton Longfellow, Hell No, and Miss Louisa. “Nearest phone on down the mountain in Tremont….Don’t have that electricity thing neither, but I hear they right fine.” There’s a struggle for justice and survival and the stalwart, great-grandmother, Miss Louisa, is just the right woman to help them with it. Really, you want to read this one.
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