Thursday, December 1, 2011

Non-fiction—My Top 10 of 2011

These non-fiction books taught me history, science, self-reliance, optimism, and recovery.

1. Ghost Wave by Chris Dixon

2. Life Itself by Richard Ebert

3. Basketball Junkie by Chris Herren

4. The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers

5. Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi

6. Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

7. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand

8. A Box of Darkness by Sally Ryder Brady

9. A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

10. Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku

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BOOK LOOK: THAT'S NOT A FEELING

Dan Josefson has created a dystopian school amid the traditional world of private schools. "That's Not a Feeling" takes place at Roaring Orchards, a boarding school for troubled kids. In an otherwise idyllic setting, Roaring Orchards, the school, is purgatory.

There is no real curriculum. There is no real adult around. The students are put into levels and different punishments on a whim. The cast of characters is wide, each with a highly unusual, negative trait.

The main character, Benjamin, was tricked into coming to the school on what he thought was a visit. Then his parents disappear, and he's stuck. He befriends Tidbit, a girl who seems to understand his own sense of disillusionment with the world and can play the words right into a teacher's face with a straight expression.

Although this is kind of a black comedy, with the various character names (Pudding for one) and constant teasing and psychobabble, Josefson looks closely at the use of drug therapies and self-esteem building programs that aren't working.

Truly, this is a book that lays it out plainly but in a comic way: don't mess with other people's brains and quit trying to get them to indulge in telling their secrets to strangers.

HEFT by Liz Moore

Liz Moore's novel, "Heft," is a portrait of the loneliness of being different. For Arthur Opp, loneliness comes in the form of his 550 pound body, which he does not take outside. He orders in his food. He no longer goes upstairs. He surrounds himself with food and believes he is somewhat happy.

For Kel Keller, the teenager, the loneliness comes from his new school. He'd rather be in Yonkers, but his mother has moved them to a better neighborhood. Unfortunately, she doesn't fit in that swanky neighborhood, so she buries her sorrows in alcohol and depression. Kel must keep his family together even though he's only seventeen. He is the parent; she is the child. Kel is a good athlete and does have friends, but he feels out of their league financially. It makes him mad and sad.

There is a connection among these three people. The book shifts narrators. Each chapter explores a possible opening of the dark place in which one of them lives. Because they are human, they often make the wrong choices.

The ending of the book is somewhat abrupt, but then, it is also an interesting tease.

This book is unique and sees quite clearly into the burdens we all carry, whether they be in the heart or in the poundage.

Whole Latte Life

Joanne DeMaio's Whole Latte Life is a book is filled with moments of realization, thoughtfulness, and big pictures where the right stars align. I loved visiting a world in full color, not in fifty shades of erotica gray.

But there's DeMaio's story too, one that is timeless and suspenseful. Two women go to New York to celebrate their 40th birthdays. Sara Beth runs out on her friend, leaving a note "not to worry" (as if that would be possible.) Rachel goes crazy with worry, dashing up and down the busy streets, finding a police officer, filling out a report. Her friend, lost in some cosmic dream, has ruined their big weekend and possibly much more.

DeMaio brings in the families of both women without resorting to stereotypes. Sara Beth has a hard-working husband, who resents taking time off to watch the kids. Rachel is a widow, but there could be a romance in her future.

Sara Beth's breakdown seems to have started with her mother's sudden death. Still, the self-involved Sara Beth is not very sympathetic as she indulges her whims. leaving her family to cope without her. And she jeopardizes the friendship she has held as her anchor by mistreating Rachel.

Rachel goes about her life, wondering how she will fall in love again. It can't be as simple as it seems when the right man shows up. She keeps thinking of problems instead of simple joys. Her fears ramp up the suspense.

DeMaio has written a lovely book. I recommend it highly, mostly to women, who are looking for romance in their reading without platitudes or TMI.

The Elementals

Usually, I am not likely to choose fantasy, paranormal books even though that's what my readers answered in a poll as the number one genre. I loved The Elementals by Francesca Lia Block, but I wouldn't try to write one myself. I'll just put her other 20 books in my TBR pile!

This story of a Cal Berkeley student gave me a good head start with the setting since I love Northern California. Berkeley is an entity unto itself. Add to that a freshman who just can't fit it, who feels "odd one out," with the roommate from Hell, and you've got plenty of conflict.

Ariel (her parents are English teachers) wanders through her freshman year. Her mind won't focus on her studies even though at first she gets A's and the attention of a helpful class lecturer. She has the social problem, which she cannot solve. Her roommate is self-centered, but honest. She suggests that Ariel get a life. Ariel also lost her best friend who disappeared on a trip up to Cal the previous year. She spends a lot of time and heartache looking for Jeni. She spends a lot of time at night, alone, in weird places. Scary.

Instead of finding sympathy in her search, she meets hostility. She also meets a mysterious man, a grad student, John Graves. John seems to like her as much as she likes him. He does have some weird friends, but they accept her too. Before Ariel knows what to think about her feelings for John, she goes home to LA. Her mother has cancer. Her mother needs her. She is torn in two directions.

The interactions of John, his friends, and the constant search for the missing Jeni move the novel rapidly to a startling, creepy conclusion.

High praise for Ms. Block for this thriller. And I thought I didn't like paranormal? I'm about to put the rest of her 20 books on my wish list!

Book Look: Daughters of Buxton

Buxton, Iowa, is not a tourist town. Because its livelihood was based on coal mining, at least in 1902, the reader can expect to meet characters with strong wills and strong family ties, people not afraid of hard, dirty work. Interestingly, the town became home to a variety of people of different ethnicities. Some reporters began to call Buxton "The Black Utopia."

Lucinda Vanderberg is the protagonist. As a nurse for the company, Lucinda is expected to keep levels of hygiene up among the neighborhoods and prevent epidemics. She is unafraid to walk into shanties of crying children and overwhelmed mothers. She has home remedies that can be used as well as a satchel of new medicines. She is happy to be on her own, making her way. She seems to stand for the Women's Movement of the early 1900s.

The plot of the novel highlights a chance meeting that turns into unexpected love. Lucinda feels a new awareness of race and the pressures to conform. Author Katherine Bundy brings the reader along with scenes of period detail and budding romance as well as threatening actions.

This is a book I won't soon forget. I felt enriched by the experiences of one small town and the history of its people.

DARE ME

Meg Abbott knows how to create mean girls. Her take on cheerleaders in Dare Me is a love story, a hate story, and an inside look at the Queen Bee society of high school.

Coach comes to replace an old, safe, lumpy cheerleader coach.
Captain Beth and her lieutenant, Addy, think they'll still run the show and that Coach will cave in and slink away.

But Addy falls in love with Coach's methods: run until you barf, make your pyramid a single living organism, and get your body into shape. No more chocolate, no more chips.

Beth rebels. Beth is a psychopath. She has a bad home life (alluded to but not revealed). She controls the cheerleaders through threats and her charisma. Beth is NOT afraid of coach. Beth is not afraid of lying her way back into power.

Coach makes some stupid moves in her personal life and as a professional working with teens.

The result is a crackling, suspenseful book that drives through to the ultimate showdown.

A terrific, chilling look at this culture (OMG, the language of these girls). I'm going to buy Abbott's previous novels, all of them. This ranks right up there with Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

DARE ME

Meg Abbott knows how to create mean girls. Her take on cheerleaders is in Dare Me is a love story, a hate story, and an inside look at the Queen Bee society of high school.

Coach comes to replace an old, safe, lumpy cheerleader coach.
Captain Beth and her lieutenant, Addy, think they'll still run the show and that Coach will cave in and slink away.

But Addy falls in love with Coach's methods: run until you barf, make your pyramid a single living organism, and get your body into shape. No more chocolate, no more chips.

Beth rebels. Beth is a psychopath. She has a bad home life (alluded to but not revealed). She controls the cheerleaders through threats and her charisma. Beth is NOT afraid of coach. Beth is not afraid of lying her way back into power.

Coach makes some stupid moves in her personal life and as a professional working with teens.

The result is a crackling, suspenseful book that drives through to the ultimate showdown.

A terrific, chilling look at this culture (OMG, the language of these girls). I'm going to buy Abbott's previous novels, all of them. This ranks right up there with Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

Book Look: Hemingway's Girl

Wow! Superior historical fiction. Hemingway, Key West, the hurricane and the vet workers.

I liked The Paris Wife, and now I love Hemingway's Girl. Erika Robuck approaches Hemingway through an independent and fearless heroine, Mariella Bennet. Mariella is a servant in the Hemingway household in Key West.

Mr. Hemingway, Papa, is known for his wandering eye. He can't keep his hands off a pretty girl. But Mariella has no intention of becoming another of his cast-off girls. She doesn't always get along with Pauline, his second wife, who can see her husband's desire for Mariella. But she is quick to tell Papa that she has big plans for herself, and those plans do not include becoming a mistress to him.

The atmosphere of Key West, mostly undeveloped in the 1930s, the work of the vets on the highway through the mangrove swamps, and the lure of fishing the beautiful waters take the reader on a virtual vacation.

Robuck uses the setting, from the dive bars to the fantastical islands like Bimini, to develop both character and plot.

The ending compounds a series of events that draw together the character arc of Robuck's Marielle. I noticed a few anachronisms in this historical novel, but for me, the whole outweighed these insignificant intrusions.

Book Look: An Echo Through the Snow

Word Nerd suspended through July giveaways!

I'm a sucker for most dog books, from "Must Love Dogs" to "The Art of Racking in the Rain." I worried that I wouldn't handle this book well, knowing it begins with the rescue of an abused guard dog.

Early on, the main character, Rosalie MacKenzie works through the situation with Smokey quickly, taking him from a chained up guard dog, barely fed and treated with disrespect, to her own, much-loved dog.

Rosalie has a habit of getting fired for her bad attitude. She gets involved with the wrong men. She is sullen and nervous. Having lost her mother at a young age, she raised herself when her father, Arlan, went into alcohol-fueled grief. Once she has Smokey to care for, Rosalie's life expands.

She enjoys solitude, beading dresses in the native tradition, an art she learned as a child. She would rather bead than go out drinking with the few choices for friends in her town.

She is taken on as a helper to Jan and Dave, who train dog teams. They are as dedicated to their dogs as most people are to their children. Because Rosalie has a way with dogs, reading their body language comes naturally to her. Jan And Dave will not give up in their quest to get Rosalie to work for them. Although she feels pressured to keep stepping up her skills and responsibilities at their kennel, the couple does not waiver in their respect for her. She is given a team to train.

Rosalie's adventures in the snow with old dogs, young dogs, bad weather, and spills may shake her courage, but she keeps on going.

Through them she meets the town vet. He too sees something special in Rosalie when she's with animals. He too pushes her to consider a life beyond her little village of dead ends on Lake Superior, to think beyond settling for whatever man might show interest in her.

The plot line involving a love story is a little thin, but it's nothing to make you stop reading.

Woven into the story of Rosalie is the story of the native peoples of Chukchi. Their knowledge of the woods and their respect for life go together in a religious symmetry. They are not, however, especially kind to one another, to their wives, to their children. When the Stalinist Russians overtake their villages, the people are ruthlessly killed, taken to work camps, and split up as families. The story of Jeaantaa, her Guardian dogs, and the brothers Tariem and Uptek, brings in the history of the native people and the use of dogs with dog sleds.

The setting is a character here. From the wild lands around Lake Superior through the pine forests and frozen lake across the Bering Sea to a peninsula of Siberia, Thalasinos uses the setting show the hardships of life in the far reaches of North America/Asia and the resilience of people who are there permanently. It is not quite the vacationland the summer tourists, oooh and ah over. They come to shoot an animal or take in more fish than they can eat and promptly leave.

Thalasinos examines environmental damage. She is unafraid to voice despair about the impact of foreign regimes on native cultures. Above all, she introduces the life of dog teams with astute attention to detail all the while telling a story of a young girl saved from a life of low expectations. This is a book full of lessons and stunning moments of beauty in a forbidding climate.

Book Look: Close to Shore

Detailed, scientific, sociological look at society in 1916. I am finding this VERY interesting. Love the shark chapters most so far.

I had a review written that disappeared into cyberspace.

Capuzzo gives us the history behind Benchley's "Jaws," as well as the habits/life cycle of sharks.
It's interesting that people didn't believe sharks were dangerous to man until the 1916 attacks--at least in America along the Eastern shore.

Another fascinating part of the book is the sociological commentary on the sport of swimming in the ocean. I knew that the Romantics prized swimming (Lord Byron swam the Dardenelles), but assumed everybody swam. Capuzzo takes us from the sheltered "bathing wagons" of modesty for women to the scandalous baring of ANKLES to the new swimming costumes that freed the arms.

An educational summer read as long as it doesn't give you a new phobia about SHARKS off the coast of all beaches.

Book Look: In the Shadow of the Banyan;

^{A tragic tale of the Cambodian diaspora, told with grace.

This seems to be my summer to read about the horrors of revolutionaries and genocide.

In the Shadow of the Banyon, which I won as a Goodreads giveaway, tells the story of one family's "re-education" and relocation when Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge.

The book is narrated by Vatti, the daughter of a prince. Because of their high status, they fear the most from the Revolutionary army.

Ratner takes us from the chaos of the emptying of Phnom Penh, using clear images and sounds. When the family settles into one destination, the worst seems to be over. But the Revolutionary Guards want to make sure no one is comfortable. The family is moved again and again. They are ultimately separated from one another by force and by death.

Throughout the journey, Natti tries to hold on to the power of words, her father having been a poet and a storyteller. She wants to believe that there will be a world beyond this world of pain.

In the Shadow of the Banyan teaches, shares, mystifies, and colorizes a world most of us know only through brief news footage. There are occasional problems with the voice of the narrator and some nomenclature, but this is still an amazing journey of hope.}

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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Non-fiction—My Top 10 of 2011

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