What I'm Reading Now-The Hairdresser of Harare

The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu--First, a thank you to the author and to The African Books Collective for sending me a copy of this book, and, secondly, an apology to the author for taking so long to get to this review. I actually finished reading this about three weeks ago, but then I never got around to reviewing it. I kept putting it off and putting it off because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about it. Finally, I had read so much other stuff recently, that I couldn't really remember any of the finer points, so decided that I needed to re-read it...so I did.

I enjoyed the book both times, so that was good. Although there was plenty of foreshadowing of bad things to come, there wasn't any hard-core suspense, but I was always interested to see how everything was going to play out for the main characters. Vimbai is the star hairdresser at Mrs. Khumalo's salon, so when Dumisani, a charming, good looking young man, walks into the salon and quickly outshines her, her world is turned upside down. She has lost all her leverage as the salon's big draw, but business picks up so much because of Dumisani that everyone is benefitting from his being there. The fact that he is so likeable makes it even harder to resent him. Eventually, Dumi ends up becoming Vimbai's tenant, they become friends, and everything seems to be rolling along great. Vimbai realizes that she is attracted to Dumi but she is extremely guarded because of her past. Dumi introduces Vimbai to his family, who are crazy about her, but he has some secrets of his own.

I don't feel like I can talk a whole lot about the things that I found interesting about this book without spoiling it; although, for me, the spoiler-y stuff was no surprise at all and, in fact, I suspect it is part of the draw of the book...

OK, so non-spoiler-y stuff first: This story takes place in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. It took me a while to date the story-at first I thought it might be set in the '60s or '70s--a man walks into a salon to try to do a woman's job, and people are slightly scandalized.  There is some talk about AIDS and condom use, so maybe the '80s or '90s? Eventually there were references to cell phones and even Sex and the City. So, while I'm still not sure exactly when this story is set, it's a fairly modern tale. Just goes to show how one's preconceived notions of "modernity" can get in the way!

I've never read anything set in Zimbabwe before, and if you had asked me, I couldn't have really told you anything about it until the author started talking about the currency. The characters carry around bricks of cash, and even then it can be hard to come by what they need. Bartering and trading are much more effective. Oh, yeeeaaah. I do remember hearing something about Zimbabwean currency. At one point in the story, the Minister's husband comes into the salon and talks to Dumi about setting up a spa day for his wife a couple of months down the road. Dumi is happy to do it but tells the Minister's husband, "We'll have to charge you on the day because anything you give us now will be worthless by then." Wow--I never realized that things were so bad that it wasn't even worth being paid today for a service being done tomorrow (well, a couple months from tomorrow, but still...). Apparently things are changing, but there's still a problem with currency in Zimbabwe. Anyway, getting this peek into modern-day Harare was interesting, and I'm glad to have read it.

SPOILER-Y STUFF TO FOLLOW!

OK, spoiler-y stuff: So, as you may or may not have guessed, Dumi, the charming, good-looking male hairdresser with a secret, is gay. Chalk this up to stereotypes, but to me this was pretty obviously the Big Secret of this book from the very beginning, but Vimbai is completely shocked when she finds out. To be fair, Dumi does lead her on a bit, but her reaction to this discovery was another reality check for me about how my assumptions about modern-day attitudes are based on a pretty insulated view of the world. I was shocked by the fact that Vimbai didn't even suspect that Dumi might be gay, and the results of her discovery--both her inner dialogue and her physical actions--were heartbreaking. As much as I like to think that we are making progress in this country, sometimes I watch TV and have to wonder if there aren't a lot of Americans who would still react the same way as Vimbai.

There is a part in the book where Dumi and Vimbai attend a service at Vimbai's church and the pastor talks about morality and how "You must be on the lookout for homosexuals and sexual deviants. Perverts shall burn. How can a man and another man sleep together? God mad Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve." (Really?? Ugh. Cheeseball as hell, but I guess people fall for that stuff.) It becomes clear that although Vimbai may not have spent a lot of time considering her stance on homosexuals (because how likely are you, really, to run into one of these creatures of myth and legend in the real world??), when faced with one in her presence, her innate response is that they are bad and wrong. After a cooling-off period, she does realize that perhaps her initial response was brash--after all, Dumi has been kind to her and her daughter; in fact, homosexual tendencies aside, he seems like an incredibly decent human being. Of course, this consideration comes a little too late for Dumi. The results of Vimbai's initial anger are already irreversible.  The fact that she comes to regret her choices leaves one hopeful, but sad nonetheless. Vimbai seems to be a good, considerate person as well, perhaps a little bit self-centered, but then again, aren't we all sometimes?  So her reaction to Dumi is that much more painful.

So, while this book is mostly an easy read about the romantic complications of a single-mother hairdresser in Harare, it does bring up some serious issues. It makes the reader question his or her own beliefs and examine the basis of those beliefs. At the same time, it doesn't come across preachy or judgmental. Vimbai's reactions, although harsh and ultimately harmful, are understandable from the point of view of a scorned lover, orientation aside.

Have you read The Hairdresser of Harare? If you have, I'd be happy to add a link to your review. I'd also love to hear your thoughts below!
 

What I'm Reading Now-The Submission

The Submission: A Novel by Amy Waldman--When I reviewed That Day in September, the lovely Wendy mentioned this book as a candidate for a good companion read. I hadn't heard anything about it before that, even though it has garnered quite a bit of acclaim, but I was definitely intrigued. Well, it took a few months, but it did finally make its way to the top of my reading list.

I didn't LOVE this book, but I did find it interesting; and by the time I was done reading I was definitely curious about how closely this fictional novel mirrored the actual events surrounding the design selection for a September 11 memorial. A quick look at The National September 11 Memorial and Museum web site leads me to believe that the general memorial competition and selection process described in the book was probably pretty accurate. In 2003, thousands of designers submitted plans, and a Memorial Jury was in charge of making the final design selection. The book adds a twist though: the winning submission was designed by a Muslim, and, as you can imagine, here is where the trouble begins.

Now, maybe that part happened in real life too and we just never heard about it. If so, then the real-life jury was better at sweeping things under the carpet than the jury in this book. Either that, or they made contingency plans ahead of time for just such an occasion...which brings up the question, what is the proper contingency plan for something like this?

What if a Muslim wins a design competition for a memorial honoring all the people who were killed by Muslim terrorists? Should Muslims have been excluded from the competition? Well, of course not, you couldn't come right out and say that, even two years after the September 11 attacks. Besides, certainly some Muslims lost their lives in those attacks, and their families are surely mourning just as much as anyone else's. What if the designer won't answer any questions about his design, a design that has what some people consider Islamic elements? What if his design is really a memorial to the brave terrorists who died that day? What if it isn't? What if it's just a beautiful design that evoked a sense of healing in the one family member who served on the jury? Should he have to answer questions like this when the same design could have been submitted by a non-Muslim without anyone questioning its "real" meaning?

These questions and more are explored in this book, and it makes for a thought-provoking read. Unfortunately, I also found it extremely frustrating. Many of the characters seemed very one-sided, almost like caricatures; I kept thinking, Is the author trying to annoy the hell out of me with these characters? What idiots! Who acts like this? but then I realized that so many of the people we see in the media act exactly like this. It's the extreme radio shock jocks who will say anything to incite debate, the reporters who will run any story no matter how ill-gotten the information and no matter the potential consequences, the people who will fight based on personal belief, no matter what the actual facts might be, the conspiracy theorists. So, then the frustrating thing started to be that, yeah, this is probably exactly how this would go down.

I have to say that I couldn't come up with a decisive answer after reading this book. As annoyed as I was with a lot of the characters in this book, I could also understand where many of them were coming from. I know that today, not having lost anyone in the September 11 attacks, I would say that, absolutely, the winning design should be the winning design, regardless of who designed it. I can't however say that I wouldn't have felt differently if I had lost someone in that attack. I'd like to say that I would still be able to maintain an objective, all-Americans-deserve-the-same-chance attitude, but I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if I would have been overcome by my own fears and anger, especially a mere two years out.

So, even though I didn't LOVE this book, I still think it's a worthy read. I'd also recommend checking out the book's web site. I went there looking for more information about the inspiration for this story, and I kept getting frustrated. It took me a liiiitle longer than it should have to realize that you can click on all the pictures that come up on the home page, so let me save you some frustration: you can click on all the pictures that come up on the home page.

What I'm Reading Now-Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (part II)

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets--In my last post we watched this video

and I told you about my shudder-inducing incentive to post a review about a book I didn't finish reading a year ago. By the time I got done with that, the post had already gotten a bit lengthy, and I figured no one would stick around for the review, so I thought I'd give you all a break and put the review in a separate post.

So, back to the book: First of all, fungi, mushrooms, mycelium...what's the difference? Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, and mycelium is the network of filaments that connect fungi (you can see an example at 00:55 in the video above).  Secondly, the book is dense, and it is not all easy reading.  There is a lot of really fascinating stuff in it about all the things that mycelium does, but it's also full of a lot of scientific jargon.  I didn't even get through half of the book, and I have three pages of notes from my reading.  The first page is mostly me just trying to keep my vocabulary straight, and the rest is all interesting facts or things that I want to know more about or questions that I came up with while reading. To me, that's often the sign of a good read.

Stamets talks about mycelium's ability to transfer nutrients between plants to help keep balance in an ecosystem, its water purification abilities and how it can help build good soil in no-till farming situations. Fungi has medicinal properties and potential as a natural pesticide against things like carpenter ants, fire ants, and many crop pests. Along with oil spills, there is good evidence that fungi might also be able to reclaim environments compromised by radiation and heavy metals. (This part left me with a lot of questions. The mushrooms seem to sequester and concentrate the undesireable material (for this reason, it's important to know where your mushrooms are coming from--just outside of Chernobyl or Fukushima? Mmmm...you might want to pass), but then what? Are the harmful materials somehow metabolized over several generations, or is the area always just full of toxic mushrooms? Stamets suggests harvesting the mushrooms and disposing of them at toxic waste sites, but then we're still left with the toxic sites.) Questions aside, the possibilities seem almost endless, and I think that Hawaii is a place that could benefit greatly from some of the solutions set forth by Stamets.       

Stamets' book is also a how-to guide for growing and using mushrooms.  This was mostly the part of the book that I didn't get to, so I can't really say much about it, but, just from flipping through it, it seems pretty exhaustive. 

I highly recommend this book. In my notes, I wrote that I thought this would be a good companion read to The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen (which I reviewed in 2008) and The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart (which I read and then didn't review last April). 

I'm a huge fan of all the cool things that nature does. It has figured out solutions to things that we have been struggling with for years.  Fungi is one of those cool solutions, and it's neat to see how entwined it is with the rest of the natural world. If, like me, you think nature is cool, you might also enjoy these TED talks:

Eben Bayer: Are mushrooms the new plastic?

Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

Janine Benyus shares nature's designs

   

  

What I'm Reading Now-Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (part I)

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets--Okay, so I have to start out with a couple disclaimers: 1) I started this book about a year ago and never finished it, BUT I've been dying to talk about it since I finished had to turn it back in to the library. I even went so far as to buy my own copy since the library only has three copies and the wait list for it was always ridiculous...but I never got around to picking it back up. The point is, don't let the fact that I didn't finish it make you think it's not worth picking up. It totally is! 2) This post is all mostly lead-up to the actual book review which is in a separate post. So if you just want to skip all the interesting weirdness that is this post, be my guest, but I think you'll be missing out.

So, why have I finally decided to talk about this book? Well, mostly because of the pile of ants that were swarming my hair clip on my bathroom counter tonight. "Eh?" you say? Oh, sorry, "Ew," you say? Well, yeah. This has actually happened a few times over the last several years now. The first time was when we owned an ice cream store and I thought perhaps I had accidentally gotten some ice cream on my hair clip while I was hunched up on the top shelf of our walk-in cooler trying to de-ice the back of our condenser unit with a blow torch. (Yeah, that happened...frequently.) Aaaanyway, the ant swarms continue to this day even though we sold the store several years ago, so I have discarded the ice-cream-on-my-hair-clip theory and moved toward the theory that the ants are mining the rubber that makes up the grippy surface on the inside of the hair clips because it's petroleum-based. Obvs.

*crickets*

OK, first, watch this TED talk by the author, Paul Stamets. This is what made me seek out the book in the first place. I know it's 18 minutes, but it's an interesting 18 minutes. Mushrooms can do amazing things! (If you really don't want to sit through all 18 minutes, then skip ahead to 7:32 and watch until 9:40). That was the part that intrigued me the most and made me want to learn more.

OK, so you saw how the mushrooms ate up the oil, right? You may also know that ants are somewhat famous for being fungi farmers.  So, what I'm thinking is that the ants have figured out that there is this petroleum-based product that they can harvest and use to grow some kind of fungus. Makes sense, right? By the way, they don't only go after my hair clips. I've also seen them tear up surgical tubing and various types of seals on containers. It doesn't happen slowly over time either; it's not like I have to shake a pile of ants off my hair clips every time I go to use them. (Ick!) They (my hair clips) will exist on my bathroom counter or my nightstand, in my purse or on the desk next to my keyboard, in and out of my hair, unmolested for months, maybe even years, and then one day, BOOM! Hair-clip-shaped pile of ants! The only thing I can figure is that the rubber breaks down to a certain point where it suddenly becomes the perfect fungus-starter and the ants move in to take advantage. 

So: Ants mining rubber to grow fungus. That wasn't in the book (at least not in the parts that I read), and I think I might be onto something here. Maybe Paul Stamets will do some studies on this and get back to me! 

OK, so feel free to take a break here, or move on to part II, wherein I actually talk a little bit about the book. 

What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition, Part II/The Valentine's Day Edition

Even though this is part of my Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition series, Flower Confidential gets its own post because apparently my exercise in creativity and brevity is on hiatus.

Flower Confidential:  The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers by Amy Stewart-I just love looking at this book!  Isn't it pretty?  I wish the theme had been continued inside; instead we just get a few boring black and white photos and some line drawings, but, being a plant person, I still feel like it's a fascinating look at the cut-flower industry. Given the sparse visuals, plant people will appreciate Stewart's descriptions of flowers, like this bit about her first impressions of Terra Nigra's gerbera daisies.  As I stood with him and looked out across several dozen rows of sunny orange gerberas in bloom, I thought that I'd probably never seen so much exuberance in one place.  This is not a flower with nuance.  It radiates pure, uncomplicated happiness.  You have to love it, although I can see how a person could get cynical enough to be irritated by its unwavering good cheer.  I know some florists who are sick of gerberas, bored with their endlessly sunny dispositions and their utter lack of mystery or depth, but not me.  A single gerbera on my desk makes me smile every time I look at it.  I'm grateful to it for that.


I don't know if this book would have quite the same appeal for someone who isn't a plant person, but I think the information is interesting enough to appeal to most people on some level; it's operationally interesting.  For instance, did you know that the cut-flower market was hit hard during WWII because so many of the California growers were Japanese Americans who were rounded up and sent to internment camps.  Many had no choice but to simply abandon their land and their crops.  Bill Sakai, whose grandfather started growing roses in the Richmond area in 1927, remembers how the war hurt their business, which was primarily run by Bill's father and brothers at that time.  "We left it in the hands of some German employees," he told me, without a trace of irony in his voice.  "We were fortunate that we had someone we could trust so that we'd have a nursery to come back to."  (p. 74)    

I feel like this is a pretty timely post, given that Valentine's Day is just around the corner.  Do you have any idea what that bouquet of flowers that you're thinking about picking up at the grocery store or ordering for your loved one went through prior to arriving at its final destination? Amy Stewart traveled all over the planet to give her readers a better understanding of the hybridizing, the growing, the selecting, the auctioning, and the shipping involved in getting cut flowers from the field to your home or, more impressively, into the hands of your loved ones on Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.  Did you know that the Miami airport, where 88% of our cut flowers enter the country, usually sees about ten to twelve flights from Columbia a day, but that around Valentine's Day it might be as many as forty?  The problem is those planes are full of one-way flowers, not round-trip passengers, and they usually return home empty.  How do you cover that cost?  Jack up the price of flowers on Valentine's Day.  Ahhh, so that explains it (or at least part of it)!       

Stewart also talks about the role of oraganically-grown flowers in this industry-is it possible to mass produce perfect blossoms without all the pesticides and fungicides that have traditionally been used and at what cost? All I'm going to say about that is if you've ever thought it would be romantic to woo your loved one in a bathtub filled with rose petals, you might want to rethink that particular seduction after you read about what most roses go through prior to arriving in that beautiful, pest-free, disease-free, blemish-free bouquet.  You'll either skip the rose petals or don a Hazmat suit prior to submersion.  (Pssst, Hazmat suit=not sexy).  Speaking of organics, I'm going to do a little shilling for Organic Bouquet here because A) I have ordered their products in the past and received good feedback from the recipients, B) I  feel like I could handle their products without fearing for the life of my unborn children, and C) Have you seen their Extraordinary Roses?  Yeah, they're kinda pricey ($259.99/dozen), but aren't they cool??  

On the other hand, if value is what you're looking for, you might consider a box of 150 stems for $349.99 from FiftyFlowers.com, an on-line flower wholesales.  To put it another way, that's 12.5 dozen flowers for $12/dozen.  Get a few friends to pitch in, and you've got yourself one heck of a deal.  I've never had any dealings with FiftyFlowers.com (and I'm not sure where they fall on the "organic" scale), but they seem to be embracing the idea of bulk flower sales, as is Costco, someplace you probably never seriously considered for your floral needs (even bridal).  At $100 for 75 stems of Rainforest Alliance Certified long-stem pink roses, you might consider taking a second look though.  


Well, I seem to have strayed from my book review, but that's part of why I liked this book.  I learned a lot and it made me curious to know more.  I love that!


Please note that all prices referenced here are current as of posting.  If you are considering ordering from any of the companies I mentioned, please be sure to double check their product pricing and find out about their shipping prices and policies.  I am not affiliated with any of the above companies, but, as stated, I have ordered from Organic Bouquet before and been very happy with the results, so I'm happy to send you their way. 

What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition, Part I

In an effort to cross some things off my aging to-do list, here is a wrap-up of my 2010 reading.  At some point, it all just got away from me.  I am going to try to keep this short and sweet, so here goes a giant exercise in brevity and creativity.

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 1) by James Dashner-A boy wakes up in an elevator that dumps him out into a maze.  There are lots of other boys there.  Nobody remembers anything before the maze.  *Gasp*  A girl appears!  What does it all mean?  Don't go out into the maze after dark or you'll likely be killed by giant armored amoeba-y things.  Action ensues.  I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads, but I might downgrade it to 3.  Not sure if I'm interested in the follow-up.

The Sweetheart Season by Karen Joy Fowler-I picked this up because my favorite author, Mary Doria Russell, lists it on her  "Recommendations" page; and, by golly, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me!  It's about a women's wartime baseball (softball?) league.  The problem with that is that it immediately makes me think of A League of Their Own, which this was nothing like.  Not that that's a bad thing in and of itself but I went into it expecting it to be something it wasn't.  I think this is one that I need to reread, this time with no expectations.  Although I didn't walk away loving this, I did take copious notes on things that I liked within it, so...that's gotta count for something, right?  Give it a read, just don't expect it to be very much about baseball.

The Ask and the Answer:  Chaos Walking:  Book Two by Patrick Ness-Still dark and depressing, but not quite as bad as The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Don't get me wrong, it's still dark, just in a different way. It's been a while since I read this, but if I remember correctly, there might have been a tiny bit of hope at the end of this one.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller-This is another book that I was inspired to read after I found it on Mary Doria Russell's list of recommendations.  And now I am going to cut and paste from my Goodreads review: Although I didn't love this book from beginning to end, the ending affected me deeply and in a way that I totally did not expect, and that's what pushed it from 4 stars to 5 for me...even though I knew how the book was going to end since I read Norman Spinrad's Introduction in the 1975 Gregg Press edition. Thanks a lot for the giant spolier, Norman! (Note to writers: If you are ever asked to write an Introduction for a book, please don't include any version of, "the book ends with [insert final climactic event here:]..."  I'm just sayin'.)...I originally checked this out from the library. Time was up, but I knew I wanted to keep reading it and that I would want to refer to it later, so I returned my giant spoiler-filled copy to the library and bought a new copy. What do you know-I opened it up to find a new (spoiler-free) Introduction by Mary Doria Russell! [Which shouldn't have been a surprise, seeing as how she mentions it on her web site, but I guess I forgot about that part].  I enjoyed the book on its own merits, but I can also definitely see where it influenced her book, The Sparrow, which, I admit, makes me love it just a little bit more.  One more note:  There is a lot of latin in this book, and I finally went on line and found a study guide from Washington State University that turned out to be most helpful.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese-Ann has raved about this again and again on Books on the Nightstand (in 6 different podcasts and one blog post (the link takes you to a page where you can search for podcasts and posts by book title, but I can only get the two most recent podcasts to play-you might have to get the others from iTunes if you want to listen to them)), so I finally picked it up.  Again, from my Goodreads review:  Great depth of story here and I loved all the medical detail-enough to be fascinating but not so much as to lose the average reader. Also, when I started reading, I didn't realize that part of this story revolves around live-donor liver transplants. My husband's side of the family went through this process, all except the actual transplant itself-at the last minute it was determined that the vasculature of the intended donor did not line up with the recipient's and the surgery had to be called off. (In the end, a cadavar donor was found, and hubby's family is doing well and we are all very grateful.) With this family history, the story resonated for me in a way that I hadn't been expecting when I picked up this book about twin boys living in Ethiopia. A lilve-donor liver transplant is not something that most people have any familiarity with at all, so to randomly run across it in a work of fiction was kind of cool. 

The Magicians by Lev Grossman-Part Harry Potter, part Chronicles of Narnia, but then it finally gets its own legs under it and goes off in a darker direction.  Thanks to Jeanne's review at Necromancy Never Pays for finally convincing me to read it.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks-This is a fictionalized account of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Jewish manuscript from the 1300s, that was thought to have been destroyed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Thanks to the brave efforts of the director of the National Museum, the Haggadah was safe, contrary to rumors that it had been destroyed or sold for arms.  The Haggadah faced a similar threat in the '40s when the Nazis came looking for it; again, it was saved, this time by the director and the curator of the National Museaum, both of whom risked their lives to save it.  People of the Book traces the Haggadah's history through various stories of narrow escape all the way back to its creation.  I started reading this on my Kindle months (years?) ago, and I finally picked it back up on the plane, on the way home from our trip to France, which included a side trip to Venice.  Turns out that part of this book takes place in Venice during the 1600s!  Imagine how psyched I was to recognize the places in this story that would have meant nothing to me one week earlier!  Heather J. gave the audio version a rave review, along with a better plot summary.

What I'm Reading Now-Soulless

Soulless by Gail Carriger-I first heard about this book from Jennie at Biblio File, and I'm going to suggest you go there to read her review because A) I agree with everything she said, B) I think she probably did a better job of it than I would and C) I'm SOOO behind on my reviews right now.  I need to wrap this up quickly and move on!

I will give you a couple quick snippets to give you an idea of why I liked this book.  Okay, so Alexia Tarabotti is a young lady without a soul in Victorian London.  Also traipsing about London are vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and supernatural creatures of that sort.  They have been completely integrated into London society-think "True Blood" but with more respect from the general public.

At a party one evening Alexia has a run in with a vampire who doesn't play at all by the standard rules of society.  He just attacks her.  Without even asking!  As a result this unfortunate being meets his demise.

The creature stood stock-still, a look of intense surprise on his handsome face.  Then he fell backward onto the much-abused plate of treacle tart, flopping in a limp-overcooked-asparagus kind of way.  His alabaster face turned a yellowish gray, as though he were afflicted with the jaundice, and he went still.  Alexia's books called this end of the vampire life cycle dissanimation.  Alexia, who thought the action astoundingly similar to a soufflé going flat, decided at that moment to call it the Grand Collapse.  

I love that she is cool enough immediately after a vampire attack to not only objectively observe and analyze the vampire death process but to give it a name that is just more fun to say.  As part of the ensuing investigation by alpha werewolf, Lord Maccon, and his second, Professor Lyall:

Alexia interjected, "He seemed perfectly sane to me--aside from the attacking part, of course.  He was able to carry on a decent conversation.  He even tried to charm me.  Must have been quite a young vampire.  And"--she paused dramatically, lowered her voice, and said in sepulchral tones--"he had a fang-lisp."


Professor Lyall looked shocked and blinked largely at her through the asymmetrical lenses; among vampires, lisping was the height of vulgarity.

Although Professor Lyall is a werewolf, he is not a beast.  He is quite aware of the delicate sensibilities of those around him.

While the population of the greater London area, in specific, and the British Isle, in general, had learned well enough to accept werewolves on principle, to be faced with one engaging in the act of conversion was an entirely different matter.  Professor Lyall considered himself rather good at the change--elegant and graceful despite the pain.  Youngsters of the pack were prone to excessive writhing and spinal gyrations and sometimes a whimper or two.  Professor Lyall simply melted smoothly from one form to the next.  But the change was, at its root, not natural.  Mind you, there was no glow, no mist, no magic about it.  Skin, bone, and fur simply rearranged itself, but that was usually enough to give most daylight folk a large dose of the screaming heebie-jeebies.  Screaming being the operative word.


Finally, there is Lord Akeldama, a very old, very gossipy vampire with a flair for fashion, whom I couldn't help but picture as Austin Scarlett, ("Project Runway," Season 1 contestant and designer of beautiful clothes).  I don't have any quotes for him, I just enjoyed the idea of Austin Scarlett running around Victorian London as a vampire.

I have the next book in the series, Changeless, on hold at my local library, and I'm very excited because the last time I checked (which was about a week ago), they didn't even have it yet.  So, yay!  Maybe by this time next year I will have read it and reviewed it.  
 

Chronicle Books Haul-idays Give Away!

Chronicle Books is asking readers to create a wish list of books worth up to $500, and one lucky winner will win all the books on that list!  Blogger bonus:  Anyone who comments on the winning blogger's wish list will also be eligible to win those same books!  So, if you'd like to create your own wish list, visit Chronicle Books Haul-idays page to enter.  If you'd like a chance to win the books I've listed below, please leave a comment here.  If you're not crazy about my list you can visit the Chronicle Books site for a list of other bloggers who have submitted wish lists, and you can comment on any or all of their  wish lists for a chance to win their books as well.  Better hurry though, the contest only runs through December 10th.  Whew!  Got all that?

Here's my wish list:

Fiction:

Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock 

Sabine's Notebook by Nick Bantock 

The Golden Mean by Nick Bantock 

The Gryphon by Nick Bantock 

Alexandria by Nick Bantock 

Bitten:  Dark Erotic Stories by Susie Bright

Dante's Divine Comedy (Boxed Set) by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Deluxe Heirloom Edition by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:  Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith

Non-fiction:
Extreme Encounters:  How It Feels to Be Drowned in Quicksand, Shredded by Piranhas, Swept Up in a Tornado, and Dozens of Other Unpleasant Experiences by Greg Emmanuel
New Orleans Stories: Great Writers on the City edited by John Miller
San Francisco Stories: Great Writers on the City edited by John Miller
SURFER Magazine:  50 Years Edited by Sam George
This is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work edited by Kathy Kiernan and Retha Powers
A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson
Squeaky Green: The Method Guide to Detoxing Your Home by Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan

Children's:
Day & Night by Teddy Newton
Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance by Keith Graves

Photography:
The Life & Love of Trees text by Lewis Blackwell
Bloom a Day: A Fortune-Telling Birthday Book photographs by Ron van Dongen

What I'm Reading Now-Little Bee

Little Bee: A Novel by Chris Cleave-If you're aware of this book, then you're probably aware of the mystique surrounding it.  Maybe mystique is too strong, a word, but the author or publisher or somebody essentially decided to part with the standard practice of telling readers what the book is about; instead, they decided to say:


We don't want to tell you WHAT HAPPENS in this book.
It is a truly SPECIAL STORY and we dont' want to spoil it.
[...]
Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it.  When you do, please don't tell them what happens.  The magic is in how the story unfolds.

Was Don Draper involved in this?  Because, I have to say, I kind of think this is marketing genius, not to  mention just a little bit ballsy.  I mean, you have to be pretty sure you have a good product if you're going to go with the word-of-mouth marketing ploy, especially with a book.  It seems to have paid off-I've heard nothing but good things, and I did manage to go this long without knowing what the book is actually about, so who am I to part with tradition at this point?

I won't tell you what the book is about, but I will share with you a few parts that I liked.  Early on, Little Bee gives a great example of how different the same language can be between two speakers.

I am only alive at all because I learned the Queen's English.  Maybe you are thinking, that isn't so hard.  After all, English is the official language of my country, Nigeria.  Yes, but the trouble is that back home we speak it so much better than you.  To talk the Queen's English, I had to forget all the best tricks of my mother tongue.  For example, the Queen could never say, There was plenty wahala, that girl done use her bottom power to engage my number one son and anyone could see she would end in the bad bush.  Instead the Queen must say, My late daughter-in-law used her feminine charms to become engaged to my heir, and one might have foreseen that it wouldn't end well.  It is all a little sad, don't you think?  Learning the Queen's English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toenails, the morning after a dance.
 
I love her view of her language, and this example made me laugh because it reminded me a lot of the pidgin that is spoken here.  I liked Little Bee's view on a lot of things.

On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars.  I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress?  I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly.  That is what the scar makers want us to think.  But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them.  We must see all scars as beauty.  Okay?  This will be our secret.  Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying.  A scar means, I survived.

Obviously, Little Bee is referring to scars resulting from violence, but this made me think of the scars left behind by things like cancer, scars that people might try to hide because they think they are ugly or embarrassing and my hope is that everyone with such a scar can adopt Little Bee's philosophy on beauty and strength.

One of Little Bee's habits is to figure out how she would kill herself in any given location.  This sounds morose, but she has her reasons, and I had to laugh at some of her solutions.

One day [they] gave all of us a copy of a book called LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.  It explains the history of your country and how to fit in.  I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth).  

I had to read the following passage a couple of times before I finally read it correctly.

Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl.  There was plenty of time for it.  We did not have hurry.   

I kept thinking that there had been a typo and it was supposed to be, We did not have to hurry or perhaps, We did not hurry.  The addition or subtraction of just one tiny word makes such a huge difference, and I think it's this kind of nuance throughout the book that makes it so successful.

So, overall, I'm on board with everyone else who read and loved this book...but with one caveat.  Little Bee's story is entwined with a woman named Sarah, and for me their story worked well.  The problem for me came anytime the men in Sarah's life entered the picture.  I don't know if Sarah's one of those people who is just attracted to complete losers or if these men were simply caught up in situations for which they found themselves unprepared, and as a result didn't act as well as they could have, but I found their handling of certain situations to be not only distasteful but just downright unbelievable at times.  I suppose that both men could be said to be representative of certain failings in society, and maybe that was the author's intent, but they both just made me want to throw the book at a wall a few times.  Gah

I don't know if Heather J.'s was the first review I saw for this book, but, according to my notes, it does seem to be the one that finally made me get off the fence and decide that I wanted to read this book.  So, thanks Heather!

Other reviews (Warning:  The more you read, the more you are going to know about this story!):

Trish at Hey Lady!  Whatcha Readin'? gives a few more details about the story here.
Florinda at The Three R's Blog was not impressed by the withholding of information about this book.  How do you feel?
Raych at books i done read had some mixed feelings but mostly loved it.
According to Books on the Nightstand listeners and readers, Little Bee was one of the top books of 2009.
In a guest post at My Friend Amy, Mary Sharratt thinks that Little Bee would have been considered women's fiction and thus not taken as seriously had it been written by a woman.  Interesting.  Is she right?
Sheila at Book Journey read this for her book club.  Although the club as a whole didn't love the book, Sheila says, "While it was not the book I thought I was going to be reading, it was the book I was meant to read." You gotta love it when that happens!
Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza says, "There is nothing like a book such as this to point out to me my incredible naivety."  Indeed.  

I'm sure there are plenty of other reviews out there.  If you've reviewed this book, let me know and I'll add a link to your review.

What I'm Reading Now - Zan-Gah series

When Bonnie from Earthshaker Books contacted me to ask if I'd be interested in reviewing Zan-Gah:  A Prehistoric Adventure and it's sequel, Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country, by Allan Richard Shickman  I was excited, but a little hesitant.  Prehistoric books about a young man's coming of age aren't quite my normal fare.  I've been reading a fair share of young adult literature lately, but these books are aimed at a slightly younger audience and seemed kind of like boys' books.  Would I like them?  Would I be able to give an objective opinion?  I promised Bonnie I'd do my best.  Besides, this was a good opportunity to read something a little bit different.

When the signed copies (!) of my books arrived I was relieved to see that they were both fairly short-around 150 pages each.  I figured I would be able to get through them pretty quickly, even if I didn't like them.  One thing that immediately caught my attention was the cover of Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country.  I knew a lot of bloggers would be excited to see a cover that hasn't been white-washed.* As I was reading both books, I assumed that they took place in Africa. I say that only because there were lions in the stories, and as far as I knew, lions=Africa.  There were mammoths too though, and a little bit of internet research tells me that, based on the wildlife, these stories could have taken place in many different locations.  While reading about Zan-Gah's adventures, I was reminded not only of Africa, but of Australia, Venezuela and even New Zealand as well. The boy on the cover has a sort of undefined (to me anyway) native look to him that would allow him to fit in any number of exotic locations.

So, what did I think about the books themselves?  I have to admit, I'm having a hard time deciding how I feel about these.  I didn't love them, but I wouldn't not recommend them either.  I think part of the problem I'm having is trying to figure out if  these would appeal to a younger audience or not.  Zan-Gah goes a lot of places, meets a lot of people, and has a lot of adventures.  Unfortunately, I didn't feel like most of his adventures were that exciting; but I don't know if that's because I'm reading them from an adult perspective or if they really just aren't that exciting.  Would a young boy, imagining himself in Zan-Gah's world, be more excited about Zan-Gah's battles with lions and warring tribes, his solo quest to find and rescue his missing twin brother, his invention of new weapons and surviving in the wilderness?  I don't know.  Maybe.

In Zan-Gah:  A Prehistoric Adventure, Zan-Gah is a young man who earns the respect of his tribe and neighboring tribes when he faces a man-eating lion in battle.  This proves to be a pivotal moment for Zan-Gah as much of his future success in life will be aided by the respect he has earned in battle.  Given that this is such a pivotal moment in this young man's life (not to mention a face-to-face encounter with a lion) I was a bit disappointed with the hunt itself.  This was an event that required a huge coordination by several tribes over many miles and it was all over and done with by page 14.  Not that it needed to be extremely drawn-out and gory, but I feel like it went from "The tribes were spread out over 15 miles, searching for their enemy" to "and then the beast was upon them!" in no time with no real build up in between.

I have to also admit that I couldn't help but compare these books to the Earth's Children books (Clan of the Cave Bear, etc.), so perhaps that was part of the problem as well.  I felt like I had read about some of Zan-Gah's adventures before, not to mention the fact that a lion hunt in any of the Earth's Children's books would have been as long as one of the Zan-Gah books all by itself-certainly nothing that could be expected to hold a child's attention.  So, here again, perhaps I'm suffering from a bout of adult-reader syndrome.

I have to say that I think most of my quibbles are minor ones.  I felt like there was some inconsistency with the narration during the first couple of chapters.  It went from putting you in the middle of the action, right along with Zan-Gah, to being a little history text-book-ish, but that seemed to resolve itself fairly quickly.

Also, I don't know how historically accurate the books are.  I don't mean I doubt the author's accuracy, I just mean I honestly don't know how much is based on historical evidence and how much is just story.  For example, at one point, the toughness of the men of the time is indicated by talking about how a chopped off finger would hardly be noticed.  Maybe this is the case-certainly these were no times for wimps!-but would gangrene have been cause for concern over a lost finger?  Again, I don't know, but these are things that I thought about while reading.  I wish the author would have included some kind of an afterword or addendum about what sort of research he did or where his ideas came from.  Not only would this be interesting, but I think it would be a good opportunity to encourage kids to do their own research on far-away places or different cultures.

Despite these minor issues, I think both books have a lot to offer.  The publisher's web site includes a section for teachers that talks about the books' usefulness in the classroom, and I would agree with this completely (although the section refers specifically to the first book, I think this would apply to both books).  There are great opportunities for learning about different climates and the life forms that inhabit them.  Zan-Gah travels through deserts, caves, fertile areas, and salt flats all the while experiencing the different geographies, plants, and animals that go along with all of these.

Although the female characters in these books are fairly minor, they are mostly strong and respected in one way or another.  Also respected is any attempt at conflict resolution that does not result in war.  Without being preachy, the author manages to convey that war and violence are hardly ever the best answer.  There are also interesting tribes like the wasp people who live in hive-like structures and the red people who paint themselves to blend into their desert surroundings.  I don't know if these are based on any actual tribes or just products of the author's imagination, but, again, I can see how this could translate into a fun exercise for kids, a way to imagine how a person or a culture could adapt to different environments.

The second book, Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country, opens with some additional information about Zan-Gah's twin brother, Dael.  His disappearance, which was a mystery in the first book, is explained and there is a quick but thorough recap of the previous book.

Overall, I enjoyed Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country better, but I had a hard time with Dael's character.  When he goes missing, he is a kind, care-free, fun-loving boy.  Now he is a mean, misogynistic, hurtful individual full of anger and spite for his twin brother, whom he once loved dearly.  This schism between the brothers causes friction within the tribe as Zan-Gah tries to lead them to a prosperous and peaceful life in a new location, the beautiful country once occupied by an enemy tribe.  This beautiful country also lies near an active volcano, a volcano whose fury and explosive behavior resonates with Dael who comes to see the volcano as his god.  Dael is clearly traumatized by whatever happened during his missing years, and there doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do except wait for him to work through it and suffer the consequences of his rage in the meantime.  I felt like the author was trying to say that everyone has to work through his own demons in his own way and that it's OK to be traumatized by traumatic events and that kids might not always know how to talk about those events, so acting out may be their only way to deal with their feelings.  These are all fine points, but it was extremely frustrating to read about, and I'm not sure how I feel about the final resolution.

I was also frustrated by the women's roles in this book at first.  At the end of the previous book, the women had gained a place of respect and authority; but by the beginning of the second book, that all seemed to have disappeared.  What happened?  I'm not sure, but by the end of the book, I felt better about their roles again.  One other note about the characters in this book:  There is one character that I believe is meant to be gay.  While it's never explicitly stated, he is clearly different from the rest of the crowd, and at one point he does say that he "could never love or marry any woman".  Although he does endure a bit of abuse from Dael and his followers (who doesn't in this book?), he is ultimately loved and appreciated for who he is, a kind, intelligent, creative person and a loyal friend.

So...all in all, even though these books weren't necessarily my cup of tea, I would certainly recommend them for young readers.  I think they provide ample opportunities for learning both in the classroom and at home.  Not only do they offer good opportunities to introduce new factual information but they also  provide adults with plenty of situations to ask a child, "What would you do in this situation?"

Zan-Gah:  A Prehistoric Adventure was awarded an Eric Hoffer Award in 2008 for Excellence in Independent Publication, was a finalist for Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award for YA Fiction in 2007, and both books were recently inducted as Gold Recipients of the Mom's Choice Awards® for YA Series.

If you are interested in finding out more about Zan-Gah, you can read the first chapter on line.  Visit the Earthshaker Books website and click on Sample Chapter.

If you or someone you know would be interested in reading these books, please leave me a comment by September 15th, and I will do a drawing for the set.  I would love to hear how parents and children might respond to these books.  

A big thank you to Bonnie at Earthshaker Books for sending me these free copies!

*White-washing is the practice of putting a white character on the cover of a book, even if the image has nothing to do with the main character(s) in the book.

What I'm Reading Now-I am the Messenger

Before I get started I just wanted to say thanks to all the people who stopped by and left comments while I was gone.  As promised, I was thirlled to see them all sitting there, waiting to be read, when I got back home.  I have lots of things to tell you about-paragliding, camping, redwoods, weird bugs, nice people, Yosemite-but it's taking me a while to get back into the blogging swing of things.  So, for now, business as usual with a book review.

I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak-Based on my recent love of Zusak's The Book Thief, I decided to pick up this earlier work of his.  I can't say that I loved it, but I did find it entertaining.  Apparently The Children's Book Council of Australia felt a little bit more strongly about it than I did.  They recognized it as their 2003 Book of the Year for Older Readers (published as The Messenger).

After 19-year-old Ed Kennedy, underage cab driver, thwarts a bank robbery, he begins receiving mysterious messages in the mail.  His job is to decode the meanings and deliver the messages to the intended recipients.  The trick is figuring out who the recipients are and what messages they are supposed to receive.

Ed has some curteous thugs on his back to keep him moving forward with his mission, a dog whose stench keeps most people at bay, and, of course, an unrequited love for his co-worker and good friend, Audrey.

To give you a feel for Ed, here's what he has to say on his dog, The Doorman:

He's happy when the sun throws warmth on him through the flyscreen door.  He's happy to sleep there and move on a forward slant when I try to shut the wooden door at night.  At times like that, I love the hell out of that dog.  I love the hell out of him anyway.  But Christ, he stinks.


I suppose he'll die soon.  I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react.  He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself.  Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur.  I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him.  I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard.  For now, though, he's okay.  I can see him breathing.  He just smells like he's dead.

And on Audrey:

It comes gushing out, with words like spilled milk.  "And I wish it was me with you and not that other guy.  I wish it was my own skin touching with yours..."


And there you have it.


Stupidity in its purest form.


"Oh, Ed." Audrey looks away.  "Oh, Ed."


Our feet dangle.


I watch them, and I watch the jeans on Audrey's legs.


We only sit there now.


Audrey and me.


And discomfort.


Squeezed in, between us.


She soon says, "You're my best friend, Ed."


"I know."


You can kill a man with those words.


No gun.


No bullets.


Just words and a girl.

I liked Ed.  I can see how readers might think he's a little too dramatic, a little too earnest at times, but then isn't that kind of a part of being nineteen?

This was a vacation read for me, and I think it worked out well.  There was enough story that it was fun to curl up and read before falling asleep at night, but it didn't require my serious, undivided attention. Each message that Ed has to deliver more or less gets its own chapter or two; some overlap into others, but overall it's easy to find a good stopping point and easy to pick back up later.  Also, if you're like me and start to worry the minute you see a beloved pet introduced, especially one that's seventeen-years-old, don't worry.  The Doorman makes it through the book.  

What I'm Reading Now-Foundling (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One)

I will be away from civilization for a while, so I have scheduled a few posts to go up while I'm gone. Please feel free to leave comments, but just know that I probably won't be able to read or respond for a while. So, please don't feel like your comments are being ignored-I will be super excited to read them when I finally get to them!


Foundling (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One) by D.M. Cornish-The Dark reviewed this book and its sequel, Lamplighter, back in January, and I was intrigued. This isn't quite up my alley as far as normal reading material, but it sounded original and entertaining. I don't think I was quite as enamored with it as The Dark, but I did like it enough that I will probably pick up the next volume. To be fair, The Dark is a monster, and it's probably exciting to be a monster and find books with other monsters in them-there don't seem to be that many of them out there these days. It's always nice when you can relate to something in a book.

As you may have guessed, the story takes place in a land that is inhabited by people as well as monsters. Monsters are generally not well regarded, and even though not all monsters are bad, anybody who is a monster sympathizer had better keep those feelings to himself. Rossamünd is a foundling, an orphan, who has grown up hearing exciting tales about people who have done battle with monsters and lived to tell about it. Of course, every child thinks how exciting it would be to live such a life while most adults know that the best thing to do is to keep your head down and hope you never come face to face with such a creature.

After seeing many of his childhood companions grow up and leave the orphanage for work with outside employers, Rossamünd is finally hired as a lamplighter. This seems like a terribly boring job, and he's a bit disappointed, but he takes it in stride and his guardians at the orphanage make sure that he is sent out into the world with the best preparations they can give him, including potions for dealing with monsters. Rossamünd leaves the orphanage to report for duty, but things don't go quite as planned and he is off on an adventure, finding himself in unexpected situations with unexpected companions. Oh, and there are monsters along the way!

One thing that I liked about this book was the fact that Rossamünd was an honest child. It seems like so many characters, especially children, get caught up in telling lies. Usually it's not due to any ill intent-they get scared or confused and try to figure out the right thing to say-but it always complicates things, and, for me, it's frustrating to watch. It's not that Rossamünd's perfect-he does consider not telling the truth on several occasions, but usually he can't think of anything else to say, so he just says what's true. And it's fine! Things work out for him. The truth doesn't cause everyone to hate him and the world doesn't end and life goes on. He is also compassionate, intelligent and someone who can get things done.  I think if you're a parent and looking for a young literary hero for your child, you could do a lot worse than Rossamünd.

Like any good story imaginative enough to include monsters and magical potions, this book has a language of its own, not enough to make reading difficult, but a few words that exist only in the world of monster blood tattoos. Each chapter begins with a definition, and there is a 100-plus-page Explicarium ("Being a Glossary of Terms & Explanations Including Appendices") at the back of the book. Some of my favorite definitions:

sthenicon (noun) a simple wooden box with leather straps and buckles that fasten it to the wearer's head, covering the mouth, nose and eyes. Inside it are various small organs--folded up nasal membranes and complicated bundles of optic nerves--that let the wearer smell tiny, hidden or far-off smells, and see into shadows, in the dark or a great distance away. Used mostly by leers; if a sthenicon is worn for too long, the organs within can grow up into the wearer's nose. If this happens, removing it can be difficult and very painful.

Cool, right? I mean, kind of gross, but cool. And what, you might be wondering, is a leer?

Leers are a creepy lot trained in seeing small and otherwise missed detail, remembering faces, following scents and trails, spying, shadowing and all such prying arts and the use of the sthenicon and olfactologue. They soak their eyes over a period of months in special potives collectively called washes or opthasaums, which irreparably change the colors of the eyes and permanently alter the abilities of their sight.

threwd (noun) threwd is the sensation of watchfulness and awareness of the land or waters about you. Though no one is certain, the most popular theory is that the land itself is strangely sentient, intelligent and aware, and resents the intrusions and misuses of humankind. Paltry threwd, the mildest kind, can make a person feel uneasy, as if under unfriendly observation. The worst kind of threwd--pernicious threwd--can drive a person completely mad with unfounded terrors and dark paranoias.

I have to say, I think I'm actually more enthusiastic about this book now, after having written about it, than I was when I started this review.  What do you think? Is this something you would normally read? If not, is it something you would consider?