Sunday Salon: The Flu Edition

Sorry for the unexpected silence this week. Influenza has hit my house HARD. On Tuesday, it took me down. Then on Wednesday, West came down with a raging ear infection. It was then I learned that your child will be moved to the top of the triage list at urgent care if he is yelling in pain continuously in the waiting room. Thursday, Travis came down with the flu. Luckily, he got up early and made it to urgent care before Winter Storm Q hit. Then Friday Neve went down. Luckily, we have super-awesome neighbors who came and shoveled the 12 inches of snow off our driveway so I could take Neve to the doctor to get Tamiflu. As of today, Cash is the man of the house. The rest of us still feel like crapola. I’ve been reading but I haven’t had the energy to write any reviews. I’m going to try to get some written today in between coughing fits.

Then tonight I will be glued to the Oscar Red Carpet pre-show on E! and then to the award ceremony itself. I can’t wait – it’s one of my favorite nights of the year! Who do you think will win Best Picture? I want Les Miserables to win but I have a feeling that Argo will take the prize.

I hope you are all staying healthy out there!

P.S. – I started a Facebook fan page for Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine. Just click on the Facebook button in the column on the right side of this post to go to the page and like it!

Book Review: Henry’s Freedom Box

Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 2007
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review has spoilers but since it’s a 40-page picture book, you will find out the ending of the book within 10 minutes of starting to read it anyway!

Henry’s Freedom Box is the true story of Henry “Box” Brown, a man who escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom.

While written for young children, this book doesn’t sugar coat how horrible slavery was. The very first page tells us that Henry doesn’t know when his birthday is because slaves weren’t allowed to know their birthdays. However, it did make me uncomfortable I read, “Henry’s master had been good to Henry and his family,” because I don’t think you can really be good to someone if you are that person’s “master”.

The master dies and leaves Henry to his son. Henry marries another slave and has three children. The most horrible part of the book is when the master’s son sells Henry’s wife and children. Henry runs to the center of town just as his wife and children are being driven away. At this point in the story, my six year old was almost crying.

The story ends somewhat happily. Henry makes it to freedom but he never finds his wife and kids. After I finished reading it to him, my six year old told me he was afraid he was going to have nightmares because Henry never found his family. It’s a conundrum – I want my kids to learn the history of this country but at the same time, I want to shield them from all bad things. They need to learn this stuff sometime though – I can’t keep them in a bubble forever!

Kadir Nelson’s illustrations are fabulous, especially the paintings of Henry as a young boy. The pain and sadness in Henry’s eyes is heartbreaking. This was a tough story but it was also amazing. I can’t imagine stuffing myself into a box for over 24 hours. The perseverance of Henry “Box” Brown is truly remarkable.

Book Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Release Date: January 11, 2010
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.

Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.

I thought The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was a wonderful portrayal of the identity crisis a lot of young bi-racial people face. When Rachel arrives in Portland to live with her grandmother, she hasn’t been around many other black people. She actually doesn’t even realize that because she appears black, people will think she is black and expect her to act like the black people in her community do. She doesn’t fit in with the black kids at her school because of how she acts and she doesn’t fit in with the white kids because of how she looks. Even her good friend Jesse, an open-minded white boy, doesn’t understand. When someone drives by and yells the n-word at Rachel, he brushes it off, saying, “Don’t mind them.” As if that’s all that needed to be said.

The book starts when Rachel is eleven and goes through her teen years. Ms. Durrow does a great job of matching Rachel’s inner monologue to the age that she is in the story. As Rachel matures, so does the way she thinks to herself about her place in the world. The book switches back and forth between first person narration by Rachel to third person narration from the point of view of several other characters. I liked the way this made the story come together. Even though it’s primarily Rachel’s story, we get to delve in the minds of the other characters and find out their motivations and dreams.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was chosen by Barbara Kingsolver as the winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. It is truly deserving of such an award.

Heidi W. Durrow is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School.  Originally from Portland, Oregon, Heidi has worked as a corporate litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and as a Life Skills trainer to professional athletes of the National Football League and National Basketball Association. She is a host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat; and a founder and producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, an annual free public event, that celebrates stories of the Mixed experience.  She is an occasional essay contributor to National Public Radio.  She is also a sought-after public speaker who has spoken at Brown, Exeter, Yale Law School and many other universities nationwide and has also spoken at popular festivals, conferences and high schools on creativity, women’s empowerment, and multicultural and multiracial issues.  She has been featured as an expert on multiracial and multicultural issues and identity by the NBC Nightly News, the New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC, Ebony Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.  She is an occasional contributor to National Public Radio.
Buy this book at:
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Blerg

I’ve caught the crud that has been going around. I don’t think it’s the flu but it has made me very tired and slowed my brain. I don’t think I’ll be able to post until I feel better, which will hopefully be soon. I hope you all are staying healthy!

Reading Through Black History Month

February is Black History Month in the United States and Canada. When I was searching around the Internet for Black History Month reading lists, I noticed that the vast majority of them were for children. I definitely want my children’s library at home to include books by and about African Americans but what about my own library? Do I make enough of an effort to read young adult and adult books written by African Americans? Probably not. Today, I’m going to list the books I have read and/or reviewed that are by African American authors since I started keeping track of my reading in 2008. This is more for my own curiosity than anything else. I love making lists!

Then throughout the month of February, I will be reviewing new (to me) books by black authors. I’ll include some children’s books as well. Of course, I will also continue to make an effort to seek out authors of color throughout the rest of the year too! Maybe by next year, I’ll have read enough to put together my own adult reading list for Black History Month 2014.

Young Adult Fiction

Modelland by Tyra Banks
Copper Sun by Sharon Draper

Adult Fiction

A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvette Edwards
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Basketball Jones by E. Lynn Harris
Being Lara by Lola Jaye
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosely
Rebel Yell by Alice Randall
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Memoir

Moonwalk by Michael Jackson
The Color of Water by James McBride
The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

Non-Fiction

“Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?” by Beverly Daniel Tatum

That’s 14 books out of the 468 books I have on my Goodreads “read” shelf. Only 3%! This is why I want to use my blog to bring awareness to books by black authors – they just aren’t getting promoted through traditional outlets like white authors are. It takes some research to even find what books are out there. For me anyway. If you have a good website, blog or something else that is a good resource for discovering books by people of color, please let me know. I’ll do a future post sharing those resources.

Book Review: Here I Go Again

Here I Go Again by Jen Lancaster
Publisher: NAL Hardcover
Release Date: January 29, 2013
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Twenty years after ruling the halls of her suburban Chicago high school, Lissy Ryder doesn’t understand why her glory days ended. Back then, she was worshipped…beloved…feared. Present day, not so much. She’s been pink-slipped from her high-paying job, dumped by her husband and kicked out of her condo. Now, at thirty-seven, she’s struggling to start a business out of her parents’ garage and sleeping under the hair-band posters in her old bedroom.

Lissy finally realizes karma is the only bitch bigger than she was. Her present is miserable because of her past. But it’s not like she can go back in time and change who she was…or can she?

Have you ever wondered how your life would be changed if you made different decisions in high school? Lissy Ryder is about to find out. Here I Go Again is an early 90s twist on It’s A Wonderful Life. What would the world be like if Lissy Ryder wasn’t a mean girl?

I thought this book was so much fun! Lissy is a great character – she’s so self-absorbed, I just wanted to strangle her but at the same time I thought she was really funny. I was surprised by the way her classmates present day lives changed after she went back to high school – it wasn’t what I expected at all. My only quibble with the time travel is that when Lissy came back to the present after going back to high school, she didn’t remember the past twenty years. It seems like a shame to change the path of your life but not get to remember the journey of getting to your new reality. Perhaps Deva will give her a potion that will allow her to do that. That would be a great sequel!

Fans of 80s and 90s pop culture will appreciate all the glam rock and grunge rock references. It was like a trip down memory lane for me since I’m the same age as Lissy. Because of the title, the Whitesnake song, Here I Go Again was in my head pretty much the entire time I was reading it.

Jen is primarily known for her hilarious memoirs (Bitter is the New Black, Such a Pretty Fat). This is her second novel and I think she’s really coming into her own as a fiction writer. I can’t wait to see what her next fiction offering is like. (Jen has traded her trademark footnotes for parenthetical phrases so there shouldn’t be any trouble reading Here I Go Again on an e-reader.)

Buy this book at:
Amazon

Other Jen Lancaster books I’ve reviewed:
Such a Pretty Fat
Pretty In Plaid
My Fair Lazy
If You Were Here

(I received a copy of Here I Go Again courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)

Giveaway: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

In honor of today’s release of the paperback edition of Quiet, I am pleased to be able to offer a copy of the paperback edition to one of my readers with a United States mailing address. Just fill out the form below before the giveaway closes on February 4, 2013 at 11:59 pm CST.

This is my original review of the hardcover edition of Quiet. The giveaway entry form is at the end of this post.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Publisher: Crown
Release Date: January 24, 2012
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain explores the differences between introverts and extroverts and how the Extrovert Ideal has taken over in America. As an introvert myself, I found a great deal of validation in reading this book. For example, in the first part Cain writes about introverts in the workplace and how teamwork and open office floor plans instead of cubicles usually lead to less productivity and creativity. As someone who always hated group projects in school and the corporate world, that was just what I wanted to hear. Luckily, I left the corporate world a couple of years before open office floor plans came into vogue.

Part two of the book dealt with the biology of being either an introvert or extrovert. Cain makes generalizations about how introverts and extroverts behave and I couldn’t help focusing on the ways in which I don’t conform to her stereotypical introvert. No one does completely I’m sure but generalizations had to be made for the sake of conciseness. It was interesting to learn about how the brain actually responds to various situations differently in introverts versus extroverts.

In part three of the book, Cain discusses Asian Americans which are a theoretically introverted people. While I have no doubt that Cain did a lot of research for the whole book, including this part, I’m uncomfortable when generalizations are made about an entire race or ethnic group. Since I’m not Asian American and I haven’t done any of my own research, I can’t say how accurate Cain’s assumptions about them actually are.

Part four is about how to function in society as an introvert, including how to fake being an extrovert when necessary. Cain also offers advice on how an extroverted parent should deal with an introverted child. I would have also appreciated tips on how an introverted parent should parent an extroverted child. One, possibly two, of my children are extroverts and my husband is also an introvert like me so we could definitely use some help with that.

Overall, I really liked this book and I think other introverts will too. Extroverts should read this book as well to better understand their introverted friends and colleagues. This is a book for everyone.

Book Review: The Stonecutter

The Stonecutter by Camilla Läckberg
Narrator: David Thorn
Length: 17 hours
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Release Date: May 9, 2012
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

The remote resort town of Fjällbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman’s net. But this was no accidental drowning . Not only was there no seawater found in the girl’s lungs – the autopsy yielded far more sinister findings.

Local detective Patrik Hedstrom has just become a father. It’s his grim task to discover who could be behind the murder of a child both he and his partner Erica knew well. Little Sara Florin’s family history could provide the key, but how do you probe into the past of a family who has just suffered the consummate tragedy? What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjällbacka, spanning generations, encompassing a mysterious fire, thwarted ambitions, and pitting neighbor against neighbor, threatening to rip aside Fjällbacka’s idyllic facade, perhaps forever.

The Stonecutter is the third book in the Patrik Hedstrom mystery/thriller series by Camilla Läckberg. I haven’t read the previous two books but I don’t think there are any spoilers for them in this review.

Listening to the audio book was great fun. David Thorn, the narrator, had a very dramatic British accent complete with rolling “R”s. It was really interesting hearing all of the Swedish people and place names correctly pronounced because they usually sound nothing like they are spelled. For instance, Patrik is pronounced “POOR-trig”.

The character development in this book is outstanding. This book has an ensemble cast and Läckberg has given each character as much attention as if they were all main characters, with each character having a detailed back-story. Because of this, I was continually going back and forth on who I thought killed Sara and was second guessing myself until the very end. It was great. I was worried that with so many characters with unfamiliar (to me) names, that I would have a hard time keeping track of them on audio since I couldn’t flip back and forth like with a paper book. However, the names were all different sounding enough that I didn’t have any problems.

In addition to the main present day plot of Sara’s murder, there is a subplot about a stonecutter that starts in the 1920s. It’s apparent that it will somehow tie into the present day story but it’s not revealed until late in the book. It was really a second mystery trying to figure out how it would eventually be weaved in to the primary story and I was surprised by how it did.

Even though I haven’t read the first two books in this series, I didn’t have any trouble jumping right in. It doesn’t quite stand alone because one of the subplots ends in a cliffhanger that is no doubt the focus of the fourth book. The mystery of Sara’s murder is solved in this book though.

From what I’ve read, Camilla Läckberg is immensely popular in Sweden and after reading The Stonecutter, I can see why. I highly recommend this book, especially for fans of Nordic crime novels.

Buy this book at:
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(I received this audio book courtesy of the Solid Gold Reviewers program at Audio Jukebox.)

Book Review: Original Sin

Original Sin by Beth McMullen
Publisher: Hyperion
Release Date: July 12, 2011
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

After falling in love and making a quick exit from her nine-year career in the USAWMD (United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction), ex-spy Sally Sin does her best to become Lucy Hamilton, a stay-at-home mom in San Francisco. No one, not even her adoring husband Will, knows about her secret agent escapades—chasing no-good masterminds through perilous jungles, escaping evil assassins, and playing dangerous games of cat and mouse with her old nemesis, Ian Blackford, a notorious and dashing illegal arms dealer.

In her new life as Lucy Hamilton, she squeezes inside forts crafted from couch cushions by her three-year-old son Theo, makes organic applesauce, and frequents the zoo. But sometimes her well-honed spy reflexes refuse to lay low. She can’t help breaking into her own house to check on the babysitter or stop herself from tossing the yoga instructor who gets on her nerves. And when Ian Blackford, who is supposed to be dead, once again starts causing trouble for the USAWMD, the agency becomes desperate to get Sally back on the job.

How can Sally or Lucy or whatever her name is save the planet while at the same time keeping her own family’s world from spinning out of control?

The author definitely nailed what it can be like to be a stay-at-home mom to a toddler. I liked that Sally thought it was sometimes harder than being a spy – I feel validated! Sally didn’t seem like she was a particularly good spy in the examples she recounts yet supposedly she was one of the best. The agency she works for doesn’t seem that on top of things either. That makes for some slapstick comedy type situations for Sally.

I actually thought her husband was a kind of a jerk even though he was supposed to be the love of her life. I was rooting for her leave her husband and get together with the bad guy, which is probably not what the author intended.

There are a lot of flashbacks within flashbacks that were sometimes confusing to me, especially when I would come back to the book after taking a break from reading. The story was not as suspenseful as I thought it would be but it was interesting and funny.

Buy this book at (only $1.99 on Kindle right now):
Amazon Powell’s Books

Book Review: Love, Ellen

Love, Ellen A Mother/Daughter Journey by Betty Degeneres
Publisher: Rob Weisbach Books, an imprint of HarperCollins
Release Date: 1999
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

“Mom, I’m gay.” With three little words, gay sons and daughters can change their parents’ lives forever. Twenty years ago, during a walk on a Mississippi beach, Ellen DeGeneres spoke those simple, powerful words to her mother. That emotional moment eventually brought mother and daughter closer than ever, but it was not without a struggle. In Love, Ellen, Betty DeGeneres tells her story: the complicated path to acceptance and the deepening of her friendship with her daughter, the media’s scrutiny of their family life, and the painful and often inspiring stories she’s heard on the road as the first nongay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign’s National Coming Out Project.

I picked this book up after I heard country singer Chely Wright mention it when she appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She said this book was a great support to her in coming out as a lesbian. I love Ellen and her mom Betty so I knew I had to read this book.

Love, Ellen was about more than just Ellen and Betty’s relationship. It’s really a memoir of Betty’s whole life. Luckily, she has had an interesting life. After she divorced Ellen’s father, she married a man she refers to only as “B” who was abusive to both her and Ellen. Of course, there is a lot about Ellen’s life in here too. Betty quotes letters Ellen wrote to her through the years and she writes in detail about the period in Ellen’s life when she decided to come out publicly as a lesbian. If you are a fan of Ellen’s brother Vance DeGeneres you should know that there is a little bit about him in the book but it’s definitely more about Ellen and Betty.

This book was written when Ellen and Anne Heche were still together and Anne was still masquerading as someone not completely bonkers (in my opinion). I cringed a little every time Betty referred to Anne as her other daughter. However, that’s just one more way in which Betty is completely supportive of Ellen – she welcomed Ellen’s partner with open arms right from the beginning of their relationship.

Betty DeGeneres is an inspiring example of a woman who loves her children unconditionally. Betty isn’t perfect and she knows that. She writes about her mistakes as well as her successes in life. This is a wonderful book for pretty much everyone – Ellen fans, Betty fans, LGBT people and allies.

Buy this book at:
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