I Am Malala: the Girl who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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As Malala was riding the bus home from school in the remote valley of Swat in northern Pakistan talking to her girlfriends, the Taliban stopped the bus and shot several students including Malala at point blank range.  After many surgeries and with the help of her courageous family and the support of thousands of caring individuals around the world, Malala, made a miraculous recovery.  As a champion of education for all girls she spoke before the United Nations at the age of sixteen and later became the youngest nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.  This book is truly inspirational and will make you realize that one person can make the world a better place.

“Riveting…. Co-written with Christina Lamb, a veteran British journalist who has an evident passion for Pakistan and can render its complicated history with pristine clarity, this is a book that should be read not only for its vivid drama but for its urgent message about the untapped power of girls…. It is difficult to imagine a chronicle of a war more moving, apart from perhaps the diary of Anne Frank. With the essential difference that we lost that girl, and by some miracle, we still have this one.” (Marie Arana, Washington Post)

“For a teenage girl in a distant corner of the globe to spark life into this movement-against overwhelming odds-is truly extraordinary. The world must not allow Malala’s message to die.” (Dallas Morning News)

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Longbourn by Jo Baker

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Fiction, Historical Fiction

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This new book is set in the same world as Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice, but the author re-imagines the story from the servants’ perspective, particularly the lives of a young maid and footman who fall in love. Fans of Pride and Prejudice will appreciate all the allusions, but even if you’ve never read it, Longbourn works on its own as thoughtful, well-written historical fiction.

“Longbourn is a really special book, and not only because its author writes like an angel. . . . There are some wildly sad and romantic moments; I was sobbing by the end. . . . Beautiful.” —Wendy Holden, Daily Mail (London)

“A triumph: a splendid tribute to Austen’s original but, more importantly, a joy in its own right, a novel that contrives both to provoke the intellect and, ultimately, to stop the heart.” —The Guardian (London)

“A New York Times Book Review Notable Book, a Seattle Times Best Title, a Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction Book, a Miami Herald Favorite Book, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year”

*Starred Review* Elizabeth and Darcy take a backseat in this engrossing Austen homage, which focuses on the lives of the servants of Longbourn rather than the Bennet family. Baker’s (The Undertow, 2012) novel finds Sarah, the Bennets’ young, pretty housemaid, yearning for something more than washing soiled dresses and undergarments. The arrival of a handsome new footman, James Smith, creates quite a stir as he’s hired after a heated discussion between Mrs. Hill, the cook and head of the servants, and Mr. Bennet. Sarah isn’t sure what to make of the enigmatic new member of the household staff, but she’s soon distracted by the Bingleys’ charismatic footman, Ptolemy, who takes an interest in Sarah and regales her with his dreams of opening up a tobacco shop. Baker vividly evokes the lives of the lower classes in nineteenth-century England, from trips in the rain to distant shops to the struggles of an infantryman in the Napoleonic Wars. She takes a few liberties with Austen’s characters—Wickham’s behavior takes on a more sinister aspect here—but mostly Austen’s novel serves as a backdrop for the compelling stories of the characters who keep the Bennet household running. –Kristine Huntley for Booklist

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My Accidental Jihad: a Love Story by Krista Bremer

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

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I just finished a good 2014 memoir about an American woman who falls in love, marries, and raises a family with a Libyan man.  I found it interesting to read about their cross-cultural marriage and how they blended their beliefs and traditions together. I was also touched by how the relationship challenged Bremer’s ideas on feminism and spirituality. Sometimes your life turns out very different from what you imagined it would be!

“My Accidental Jihad is a bold piece of writing (and thinking) by an incredibly brave woman.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Signature of All Things

“Told with rare honesty, My Accidental Jihad is the story of Krista Bremer’s lifelong quest for insight and understanding, a search that leads her out of the Pacific surf to journalism school in North Carolina and through the complex challenges and unexpected joys of a cross-cultural marriage and family. This book is a powerfully personal account of the courage and hard work necessary to open one’s heart and keep it that way.” —Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements

“A moving, lyrical memoir about how an American essayist fell in love with a Libyan-born Muslim man and learned to embrace the life she made with him. Sun associate publisher Bremer was a wayward former California surfer girl just starting to build her life in North Carolina when she met Ismail. He was 15 years older than she and different from her in almost every possible way. Yet his gentle simplicity made her feel as though she could “finally exhale…and [open] up to [herself]” in ways she had not been able to with anyone else.  When she unexpectedly became pregnant not long after they met, she faced a difficult choice: terminate the pregnancy and continue her pursuit of a promising career in journalism or keep the baby and accept Ismail’s heartfelt offer of marriage. Unable to resist the mysterious allure of the future she “never intended—or even knew how much [she] wanted,” Bremer chose to “stitch [their] mismatched lives together to make a family.” Among the many challenges she encountered was coming to terms with Ismail’s loving but traditionalist family in Tripoli. To them, she was a woman “weighed down by so much individualism, impatience, and desire.” Yet through her visits with them, she also learned to temper the Western individualism she came to realize had been the source of the “creeping despair that comes from doggedly chasing the elusive dream that women can be everything at once.” As she gradually came to accept a different way of living—and eventually, worshipping—in middle-class America, Bremer grew to appreciate Ismail, her extended family and the struggle they brought into her life more than she even imagined possible. A sweet and rewarding journey of a book.”  From Kirkus Reviews

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The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel Jones Brown

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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Yes, we have rowers in our family and have spent the last 29 years volunteering at the Head of the Charles in Boston where the elite compete. So what a surprise it was to learn that rowing started on the West coast at the University of Washington and the rowers themselves were from working class families in the depths of the Great Depression.  While this is a thrilling read for anyone in the rowing world, the author has uncovered a piece of American history that had fallen under the radar.  Any reader will enjoy this stirring story of the underdogs who find the resolve in themselves to pull together.  This is non-fiction that reads like fiction.  Enjoy!

“A triumph of great writing matched with a magnificent story. Daniel James Brown strokes the keyboard like a master oarsman, blending power and grace to propel readers toward a heart-pounding finish. In Joe Rantz and his crewmates, Brown has rediscovered true American heroes who remind us that pulling together is the surest path to glory.”
– Mitchell Zuckoff, author of Lost in Shangri-La and Frozen in Time

 “I really can’t rave enough about this book.  Daniel James Brown has not only captured the hearts and souls of the University of Washington rowers who raced in the 1936 Olympics, he has conjured up an era of history.  Brown’s evocation of Seattle in the Depression years is dazzling, his limning of character, especially the hardscrabble hero Joe Rantz, is novelistic, his narration of the boat races and the sinister-exalted atmosphere of Berlin in 1936 is cinematic. I read the last fifty pages with white knuckles, and the last twenty-five with tears in my eyes. History, sports, human interest, weather, suspense, design, physics, oppression and inspiration — The Boats in the Boat has it all and Brown does full justice to his terrific material.  This is Chariots of Fire with oars.”–David Laskin, author of The Children’s Blizzard  and  The Long Way Home

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Tales of a Female Nomad : Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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One of my favorite books that led to so many wonderful discussions with friends over the years has been this one.  Could I be as courageous and fearless on my own in the world?  Here is a woman who has reached middle age, has raised her family, and sold her possessions.  “I move throughout the world without a plan, guided by instinct, connecting through trust, and constantly watching for serendipitous opportunities.” (from the preface) . And she does this over several continents living comfortably in some as well as minimally in others. She trusts her fellow human being even without a common language, financial resources, or someone else at the end of the phone in case of emergency.  Tales of a Female Nomad is the story of Rita Golden Gelman, an ordinary woman who is living an extraordinary existence.  Could you travel in the world Rita Gelman-style?

“An exuberant homage to wanderlust.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Gelman doesn’t just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the people’s lives. This is an amazing travelogue.” —Booklist

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The Big Tiny: a Built-It-Myself Memoir by Dee Williams

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

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This memoir is the story of how the author downsized her life after experiencing a heart attack at the age of 41.  She traded her large home with a mortgage for a tiny house that she built herself, one that she can clean in 10 minutes.  This book is full of warmth and humor.  If you liked Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, try The Big Tiny.

“Visitors to [Dee Williams’] property may be forgiven for thinking someone had taken up residence in a beautifully built pine-and-cedar toolshed out back….[an] affecting memoir…she writes in The Big Tiny of finding a centeredness and peace in her little house, of being less fearful, more alive. Some of the best passages are when she describes the sensory experience of being inside: smelling raw cedar and knotty pine; listening to the weather.”—Steven Kurutz, The New York Times

“Even those who are contemplating downsizing may not be familiar with the DIY tiny-urban-house movement Williams describes. Imagine a floor space smaller than an average-size living-room rug with an external peak elevation of less than 10 feet and an open-space “ceiling” height of less than seven feet. Now picture a sleeping loft above the 84 square feet below. That’s it. The entire house. Williams explains that she was driven by a need to build a home and to be at home “in the world and in my body” after awakening in a hospital following a cardiac incident that caused her to reevaluate and change her life. “Feeling like a woman learning to swim,” Williams recounts studying DIY manuals as bedtime reading, and learning, hands-on, the finer points of using the correct tools to build a floor frame and much more as she undertakes securing prefabricated walls to the trailer-skeleton. She calls on friends for help with hoisting walls. Here Williams has built an engaging and inspiring how-to/memoir that goes beyond the DIY perspective.” –Whitney Scott for Booklist

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The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

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I found myself recommending this favorite book to a patron the other day after a conversation about siblings.  Tension travels from page to page as two brothers working the family farm in northern Canada virtually despise the other and his ways.  Each day one taunts the other, cries wolf, plans pranks, needles relentlessly.   We all probably have experienced all-in-good-fun-go-suddenly-wrong… in seconds.  Siblings never let you forget ….ever.  Crow Lake is also an excellent read.   My name is already on the Holds list for her new book coming out this summer!

“Lawson’s gifts are enormous, especially her ability to write a literary work in a popular style. Her dialogue has perfect pitch, yet I’ve never read anyone better at articulating silence. Best of all, Lawson creates the most quotable images in Canadian literature.” —Toronto Star

 “[Lawson] returns to several of the themes that marked her brilliantly successful first novel, Crow Lake. . . . Lawson’s cornucopia of novelistic gifts, even more bounteously on display in her second book, includes handsome, satisfying sentences, vivid descriptions of physical work and landscape and an almost fiendish efficiency in building the feeling that something very bad is about to happen.” —National Post

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The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

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This work of historical fiction is set in Charleston, South Carolina during the mid-1800’s and inspired by the life of Sarah Grimke.  Sarah broke away from their wealthy and slave-owning family and became an abolitionist and feminist in Philadelphia.  The book is also the story of Handful, a slave owned by the Grimke family.  The author alternates the voices of Sarah and Handful to show how the aspirations and dreams of each woman were limited and thwarted by the restrictions of society and slavery but how each was able to find fulfillment and redemption.

“Alternating between Sarah’s and Handful’s contrasting perspectives on their oddly conjoined worlds allows Kidd to generate unstoppable narrative momentum as she explores the troubled terrain that lies between white and black women in a slaveholding society. . ..the novel’s language can be as exhilarating as its powerful story. . .by humanizing these formidable women, The Invention of Wings furthers our essential understanding of what has happened among us as Americans – and why it still matters.”—Margaret Wrinkle, The Washington Post

“Masterful. . .in short, provocative chapters we step into the lives of these amazingly brave and stalwart women. . .Wings is a story about empowering women to change the world. . .with historical bedrock as her foundation for a compelling narrative, Kidd serves up a remarkable novel about finding your voice.” —Carol Memmott, The Chicago Tribune

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The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis by Thomas Goetz

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

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The fascinating history of tuberculosis, the world’s most deadly disease, and the unexpected encounter of two men, Dr. Robert Koch, a noted German physician and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an English physician and author. Doyle, intrigued by Koch’s scientific methods returned to England after visiting Koch in Berlin and was inspired to flesh out the character of Sherlock Holmes and to face a tragic event in his own life.

 “The Remedy is a rare, thrilling achievement: a book that helps us understand the roots of transformative ideas that simultaneously manages to tell a story worthy of a 19th-century novel, full of surprising links, rivalries, and intellectual triumph.”—Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map
 
From Booklist:
“Tuberculosis has been around a long time. And the number of deaths attributable to TB makes it the most lethal contagious disease in human history. In 1882, German scientist Robert Koch identified its cause, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a slow-growing but hardy bacteria. He also devised many laboratory and research innovations, including his famous set of Koch’s postulates. Koch’s professional rival was Louis Pasteur. Another celebrated contemporary, author Arthur Conan Doyle, admired, critiqued, and in some ways mirrored Koch. Doyle and Koch began their careers as country doctors but aspired to be much more. Each valued attention to detail. Both were sleuths. Koch was a medical detective. Doyle was the creator of Sherlock Holmes, fiction’s most famous detective. Both flirted with fraud. For Doyle, it was superstition and spiritualism. For Koch, it was tuberculin, a bogus cure for TB. Goetz, a science writer and past executive editor of WIRED, brings together biography and scientific history, personal ambition and discovery, and a deadly infectious disease in a captivating tale.” –Tony Miksanek
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The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

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When the waiting list for Kathryn Stockett’s The Help was in the eight hundreds plus and those who read it wanted more of the same, it was easy to point them to the Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd or to this one, which I liked the very most.  Sometimes unspeakable horror resides not just on the other side of town.

“The most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill A Mockingbird….A story about knowing and not knowing, The Queen of Palmyra is finally a testament to the ultimate power of truth and knowledge, language and love.” (Lee Smith, author of ON AGATE HILL)

“Divert your reader and, and then “clobber” them, advised Flannery O’Connor. In this bold and brilliant book, Minrose Gwin diverts us with the affecting voice of a child and then clobbers us with the ugly truths of our collective past. I can almost hear O’Connor cheering.” (Sharon Oard Warner, author of Deep in the Heart)

“Florence’s abusive father sells burial insurance to black folks who can hardly afford it, and her beleaguered mother drinks as she bakes and sells cakes to shore up the family’s precarious finances. Amid the oppressive heat of summer in 1963 in the small town of Millwood, the neglected Florence is constantly shuttled between her grandparents and their longtime black maid, Zenie, with whom she meets Zenie’s niece, college student Eva Greene. When Eva begins selling burial insurance to pay for her education, simmering racial tensions erupt, and Florence becomes a witness to unspeakable crimes. First-novelist Gwin employs an offbeat, stream-of-consciousness style in this atmospheric depiction of racial hatred in the Deep South.” –Joanne Wilkinson (Booklist)

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