One Dog Night

Well, it could've been worse. I was expecting to wake-up to negative twenty or so. While negative five is cold, it's not too awful, especially since there's not much wind.

Having said that, I'm taking the day off! I just finished my breakfast, which I ate while perusing a beautiful cookbook (Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again). Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the house was perfectly quiet . I sat quietly, sipping my coffee, gazing out the French doors to our backyard, so beautiful with all the fresh white snow.

I could really get used to this.

First Line Meme (2009)

I heard about this meme from Nan, who got it from Kate, who got it from Melanie. The details are as follows:

Once again, this fun meme is great for the end of the year. Take the first line of each month's post over the past year and see what it tells you about your blogging year.

Let's see where it takes us, shall we?

January: Health enough to make work a pleasure, (from a poem)

February: I recently learned that Elizabeth Berg has just completed another novel, due out on April 28th. (book review for The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted)

March:


My 2004 MiniCooper (with only 30K miles!) (from Wordless Wednesday, although you'll note I wasn't at a loss for words!)

April: I've heard very good things about Morton's debut novel, The House at Riverton, but haven't yet had a chance to give it a read. (book review for The Forgotten Garden)

May: I generally don't read a lot of nonfiction, but I sure do love memoirs, so I was happy to accept a review copy of The Midwife. (book review for The Midwife)

June: Yes, I'm still here!

July: My dear friend Nan wrote about this book two years ago and I was immediately intrigued. (book review for Still Life with Chickens)

August: Mailbox Monday is the place for bloggers to share the books that arrived in their homes last week. (weekly meme)

September: I set a new endcap at work this week. (Post-Apocalyptic books)

October: I sure don't hear much about Joyce Maynard in the blogging world. (book review for Labor Day)

November: March 14, 1882 We have the beginning of a house put up. (Teaser Tuesday meme)

December: Have I really been listening to this album for 20 years? (album "review" for George Winston's December)

I think Nan's results were much more interesting, as her blog is not just about books, but cooking, gardening, her animals, music, poetry and quotes. Mine tends to focus mostly on books.

I took the liberty to modify the rules a bit. Since I usually start my blog entries with the book details and a publisher's blurb, I chose my first sentence for this meme.

Good Intentions

I had good, no, great intentions of spending the weekend writing my final book review for 2009. I wanted to begin putting together my year-end summary of the books I read and loved. And those I loathed. I planned to spend several hours on the the couch, huddled beneath a warm quilt, lost in Jacob's story in Water For Elephants. But as it goes, my weekend To Do list was a mile long.

There was laundry. Lots of laundry.

And two hours of ironing. (Thank goodness I can iron and watch a dvd at the same time.)

And three weeks of recycling to dispose of.

And two bathrooms to clean.

And menu planning. (Yes. A New Year's resolution.)

And vacuuming. I love my Annie-Dog, but the hair. Oh, the hair.

But, I made time to do the things I love.

I bought flowers.


When it's cold and gray and gloomy, there's just nothing quite like a bouquet of yellow daisies. They make me smile. Thank you, Pam, for the inspiration.

I picked up my camera and took a stroll around my house. I miss taking pictures and am toying with the idea of getting back into Aminus3.

The sun was shining.

:: Inside






:: And out




I danced to Pink Martini... and James Taylor... and Mary Chapin Carpenter, while baking bread.

I called my mom and wrote to my dad and thought of my girls.

I walked for an hour on the treadmill, laughing as I read through several months' of Pioneer Woman's archives. (That woman is a hilarious writer and one helluva photographer!)

I fed my Annie-dog chicken scraps and a piece of bacon. (Shhh, don't tell Rod.)

I fed my husband stew and homemade bread.




And, I realized this is what's important.

Living in the moment. Finding time to do the things I love. Letting go of the desire to do it all now.

It doesn't all have to be written down Right. This. Minute. Publishers Weekly isn't waiting for my reviews. Bookmarks magazine isn't calling for my opinion on the latest best seller.

But, my family is here. Right now.

Balance.

Simplify.

Laugh.

Relax.


To the New Year.

Cheers.

A Year in Review (in Photos)

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Baby, It's cold Outside (Elf)

I know Christmas is over, but I love this clip!

Current temp: Negative 4
Today's high: 2
More snow on the way.

I may spend the entire day reading on the couch!

Books Read in 2010

You may click on highlighted titles to read a review:

1. Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

2. Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo

3. Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin

4. Mudbound by Hilary Jordan

5. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

6. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

7. Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories by Simon Van Booy

8. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (audio)

9. Impatient with Desire by Gabrielle Burton

10. The Delights of Reading: Quotes, Notes & Anecdotes by Otto L. Bettmann

11. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

12. Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

13 & 14. Lift by Kelly Corrigan

15. The Empty House by Rosamunde Pilcher

16. Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

17. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

18. Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy

19. Faithful Place by Tana French

20. Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

21. Ashes by Kathryn Lasky

22. The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg

23. Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

24. Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

25. Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

26. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

27. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (not reviewed)

28. Horns by Joe Hill

29. Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor

30. Damaged by Alex Kava

31. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

32. World Without End by Ken Follett

33. The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

34. Messenger of Truth by Jaqueline Winspear

35. La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith

36. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

37. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future by Michael J. Fox

38. Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons

39. Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

40. I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

41. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson

42. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

43. Room by Emma Donoghue

44. Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

45. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

46. Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel

47. Plain Kate by Erin Bow

48. Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

49. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

50. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron

51. Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger

52. Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

Torch

Torch by Cheryl Strayed
Fiction
2005 Mariner Books
Finished 12/6/09
Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)




Product Description

"Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!” That’s the advice Teresa Rae Wood gives the listeners of her popular local radio show, Modern Pioneers, and she has taken it to heart in her own life. She fled a bad marriage, escaping to Midden, Minnesota (pop. 408), where she fell in love with a carpenter who became a loving stepfather to her children, Claire and Joshua. Now Claire is away at college, Joshua is laboring through his senior year of high school, and Teresa and Bruce are working to make ends meet. Despite their struggles, their love for each other binds them as a family. Then they receive the devastating news that Teresa has cancer and at thirty-eight may have less than one year to live. Those she will leave behind face something previously unimaginable -- a future without her.

In Torch, the award-winning writer Cheryl Strayed creates from one family's shattering experience a novel infused with tenderness, compassion, and beauty.

In her debut novel, Strayed's depiction of death and grief are brutally honest and painfully real. I was a bit surprised by some of the actions by Bruce, Claire and Joshua after Teresa's death, but I've learned over the years that there is no logical pattern to one's grief. It really is true that we all grieve in our own fashion and there is no right or wrong way to find passage through the pain and loss of a loved one.

This is not your typical mother/wife/best friend-dies-of-cancer-sob-story (a la Beaches or Terms of Endearment). Torch is a sad book, yet it's neither manipulative nor sentimental. The writing is beautiful and Strayed was able to hold my interest in spite of my irritation with several turn of events and poor choices made by all three main characters. I was satisfied with the final outcome, and while I probably won't re-read the novel, I can't say I wouldn't recommend it. I'm just not sure to whom.

While perusing the reviews on Amazon, I came upon a particularly lovely review. It was only after reading the post that I noticed the reviewer's name -- one of my favorite authors!

To be honest, I almost didn't read this novel because I thought it would be too sad to bear. As it turns out, I was half-right: it was too sad, it was breathtakingly sad, but I could not bear to stop reading it. On its face, the plot is simple: a husband, son, and a daughter stumble, brokenhearted, toward the moment of Teresa Rae Wood's death and then spin, brokenhearted, away from that moment, out into their separate lives and separate griefs. But there is nothing simple about Strayed's achievement, which is to render moot concepts like plot. The amazing truth is that, while I read this book, I never for a single second thought to myself, "This is a story. These are characters." I thought instead, from the first page, "This is a world. These are people." And they are people I needed to stick by through every brutal second of Teresa Rae Wood's dying and all the brutal, beautiful, dislocated, intensely intimate days and months that follow her dying. In their frank efforts to survive awful loss, Bruce, Claire, and Josh cling to some people, push others away, behave badly, nobly, selfishly, gorgeously, and they don't so much emerge from grief, as they manage to forge lives in which grief can coexist with hope and continuing. I'm so glad I read this book. (Marisa de los Santos)

Nice endorsement from an author who has also written about death and grief.

About the Author

CHERYL STRAYED's award-winning stories and essays have appeared in more than a dozen magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, Allure, Elle, and Nerve. Widely anthologized, her creative nonfiction has been selected twice for The Best American Essays, and Joyce Carol Oates singled her out for the opening piece in The Best New American Voices 2003. In its review of the anthology Women Who Eat: A New Generation on the Glory of Food, Publishers Weekly highlighted her tale of learning to make the perfect pudding for a tapioca-loving man. Raised in Minnesota, Strayed has worked as a political organizer for women's advocacy groups and was an outreach worker at a sexual violence center in Minneapolis. She holds an MFA from the Syracuse University Graduate Creative Writing Program.

Then She Found Me

Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman
Fiction
1990 Washington Square Press
Finished 12/10/09
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)






Product Description

April Epner teaches high school Latin, wears flannel jumpers, and is used to having her evenings free. Bernice Graverman brandishes designer labels, favors toad-sized earrings, and hosts her own tacky TV talk show: Bernice G! For thirty-six years Bernice has followed the life of the daughter she gave up for adoption. Now she's ready to be a mom. And she's hurtling straight for April's quiet little life....

Meh.

When I saw the cover art on a new edition of this novel, I noticed it had been made into a movie, starring Bette Midler (Bernice) and Helen Hunt (April), with supporting roles going to Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. Anxious to read the book before renting the dvd, I went home and found the copy I had picked up several years ago (probably after reading The Inn at Lake Devine). I should've have just rented the movie. The book was mediocre at best. Bernice's character was extremely annoying and the storyline dull and unmemorable. It's been almost a full month since I finished the book and I have only a vague recollection of what it was all about. This is definitely one to either borrow from the library or skip all together. However, I'm a big fan of Hunt and Firth and I still plan to see the film. How bad could it be?

Oh, The Weather Outside Was Frightful...

Not exactly the footwear I was planning to wear today!
And, yes, they're ugly, but they keep my feet warm and dry.

Ski jump anyone?

This doesn't show how high the drifts really are.
I had just returned from walking Annie-Dog and was too worn out to walk all over the neighborhood with my camera.
And, of course, she doesn't like it when I bring it along.
I tell you, that dog is really weird about cameras.
And gas ovens.
And coffee bean grinders.

My poor little car.
She's not going anywhere for awhile.

I'll Be Home For Christmas...

Another historic blizzard...along with ice !!

"Snowfall will start out light across the western Plains, northern Plains, and upper Midwest early Wednesday. Later Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night the storm will gain considerable strength and ample moisture will be pulled in from the Gulf.

Increasing winds later Wednesday and Wednesday night could create blizzard conditions from southwest Kansas into western and central Nebraska. Considerable blowing and drifting snow will likely make roads and interstates impassable.

Freezing rain and sleet are likely across central Kansas, southeastern Nebraska, Iowa, and part of northern Illinois Wednesday. Some ice and sleet accumulation is likely, especially across Nebraska and Kansas. By later afternoon, freezing rain should change to rain in southern Iowa and parts of northern Illinois.

On Thursday the storm continues to pummel the Plains with blizzard conditions and heavy snow, the Mississippi Valley with heavy snow and blizzard conditions north and rain and possibly severe thunderstorms south, and an icy mix of sleet and snow in the middle.

Snow will continue across the Upper Midwest on Friday, along with strong winds."

~ Weather.com

So.

Instead of this:

Sanibel Island
Song of the Sea

(photo courtesy of Destination360)

We have this to look forward to:




Oh, well.

Let's look on the bright side, shall we?

The fridge is stocked.

I don't have to decide which books to pack.

I don't have to stress out about which bathing suit fits.

We don't have to pay premium prices on our rental car.

I can actually get our Christmas cards written before the end of the year (although, I was planning to write my letters while sitting on the beach, listening to the gentle sound of the waves lapping against the shore. Sigh.)

I don't have to have a panic attack about the reliability of the de-icing machines at Eppley Airfield in Omaha.

I don't have to worry about our pipes freezing while we're gone.

I do, however, have to listen to my brother give me all kinds of grief about the gorgeous weather in San Diego.

Annie, on the other hand, was hoping to be left home alone!

Looks like she even had her sleeping arrangements all laid out!

Holly's Inbox

Holly's Inbox by Holly Denham
Fiction - Epistolary
2009 Sourcebooks Casablanca
Finished on 11/29/09
Rating: 2.5/5 (Fair)
Received book from author




Product Description:

Dear Holly, Are you sure you know what you're getting into...?

It's Holly Denham's first day as a receptionist at a busy corporate bank, and frankly, it's obvious she can't quite keep up.

Take a peek at her email and you'll see why: what with her crazy friends, dysfunctional family, and gossipy go-workers, Holly's inbox is a daily source of drama. Laughter, friendship, and romantic interludes keep her going, until one day, Holly's secret past begins to catch up with her...

Written entirely in emails, this compulsively readable UK smash hit will keep you laughing and turning the pages all the way to its surprising and deeply satisfying ending.

I began reading Holly's Inbox back in October during Dewey's 24 Hour Read-A-Thon. I thought it would be the perfect book to dive into between Joe Hill's short stories and Jeanne Laskas' memoir. As it turned out, I found myself getting a little antsy and bored with this brain-candy of a read. I went back to it a few days later and read it on and off during November. I love epistolary works and found the emails easy to follow, but the story got a bit tiresome and I found I needed to take a break and read something a little meatier. I enjoy the occasional chicklit novel, but maybe 665 pages is overkill. As others have mentioned, the s*xual content became an annoyance and distraction and I feel the book could have been just as entertaining without some of the coarse s*xual references.

Joy, Bookfool, and Bermudaonion have all written glowing reviews of this book. I hope you'll pop over to their blogs and see what they have to say about Holly's Inbox. I'm obviously in the minority and feel badly since the author, Bill Surie, was so kind to send me a copy of his book.

About the Author

Holly Denham is the pen name for Bill Surie the owner of a placement service for receptionists and secretaries in London. He started the Holly's Inbox website as a place to serialize his first novel. The website became an overnight sensation and his second novel is now in the works.

Dear Santa...

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl
by Ree Drummond

This is all I want for Christmas. I've sold at least a dozen copies at work this past week. I think I should get one, too, don't you? I promise I'll share recipes on my food blog. No, really. It's still an active blog. Sort of. ;)

20th Century Ghosts

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Fiction - Horror (short stories)
2007 William Morrow
Finished 11/29/09
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)





Product Description

Imogene is young, beautiful, kisses like a movie star, and knows everything about every film ever made. She’s also dead, the legendary ghost of the Rosebud theater, and one afternoon in 1945, a boy named Alec Sheldon will have an unforgettable encounter with her... in the dark...

Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with a head full of big ideas and a gift for getting his ass kicked. It’s hard to make friends when you’re the only inflatable boy in town...

Francis is unhappy. Francis is picked on. Francis doesn’t have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that’s behind him now. Francis is an eight-foot tall locust, and all of Calliphora, Nevada will shudder to hear him sing...

John Finney is in trouble. The kidnapper locked him in a basement, a place stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. With him, in his subterranean cell, is an antique phone, long since disconnected... but it rings at night, anyway, with calls from the dead...

Eric is a twentysomething burnout, who just lost a girlfriend and a job. Once, though, he was the Red Bolt, and with his home-made cape he could fly. Now the cape is back in his hands, and Eric’s future is looking up... and up...

Nolan Lerner is guilty. His past is a thing choked with secrets, blood – and sunflowers. Only Nolan can tell the story of what really happened one summer in 1977, when his younger brother, an idiot savant named Morris, built a vast cardboard fort, with secret doors inside, doors leading into other worlds...

Like Morris Lerner’s impossible cardboard fortress, 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS is big enough to get lost in, a maze filled with exits into a vast country of the surreal. Showcasing an assortment of dazzling ideas, GHOSTS is irresistible, addictive fun.

I haven't read many short story collections (Alice Munro and Eudora Welty are the only two authors who come to mind), but I've always said I don't care for short stories. Those that I've read all seem to blend together and are quickly forgotten. I also dislike the feeling of finally getting to know the characters and their situations, only to have the story end abruptly. But Joe Hill has converted me, at least as far as his short fiction is concerned. I loved everything about 20th Century Ghosts! I savored each and every story over the course of 6 weeks (perhaps that's the key!) and found myself thinking about the characters and plots long after closing the book. I especially liked that the stories weren't all super scary and that some were a bit reminiscent of The Twilight Zone, without freaking me out so much that I had to sleep with a light on.

Until I became a blogger, I never used to read book reviews. I still don't read published reviews in newspapers or magazines, but obviously as a blogger, I do read reviews by my peers. "A masterful storyteller" has become the ubiquitous descriptor for authors of broad abilities. I am guilty of littering my reviews with this cliche myself. And yet, Joe Hill truly is a master of his craft. Much like a camp counselor sitting around a campfire with a bunch of scared little kids, he sets the scene, establishes the characters and ever so slowly and gently leads his audience down a path full of twists and turns and dark shadows, never losing them along the way, and often times pushing them faster and faster toward their ultimate destination and climax. No detail is wasted. No line of dialogue unnecessary. Each sentence a polished gem.

I think the basis for my enjoyment of this collection was that each story was so utterly unique. There were some that were creepy and surreal and others that were very subtle--even tender and sweet. I can glance through the table of contents and remember each and every story. I can remember which ones made my heart race and which made me shudder. This is one of those books I'll enjoy picking up again in years to come, if only to re-read one or two stories at a time. And now that I've come to realize that this is a genre I do enjoy, I'll have to give Hill's father's short story collections a chance. I hear he's also pretty talented. ;) Any recommendations?

Further praise from a fellow blogger:

Bookfool writes: 20th Century Ghosts is an anthology of short stories and they are wildly disparate--some literary, some magical, two with ghosts, at least one so scary I had to set the book down for a few days. While there were a few that left me with the feeling, "What was the point of that?", the vast majority were engrossing and it was the moments of truth, the powerfully straightforward language, the absolute believability of his characters and the stunning creativity that set Hill's writing apart. There is seldom a feeling of stepping outside the pages--that "Oops, he lost me," moment when the reader realizes s/he has lost the ability to suspend disbelief. In fact, I kept having to remind myself, "It's not real; it's just fiction." That is a pretty strong recommendation, in and of itself.

I can hardly wait to get my paws on Joe Hill's up-and-coming new release, Horns, due out on February 16th. From what I've read, it's even better than his debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box. Oh, boy!

Book Give-Away Winner!

Yikes! I almost forgot about the book give-away I was hosting. I was going to announce the winner on my daughter's birthday (December 10th), but the time got away from me. So, instead, I'll announce it on my birthday... today!

And the lucky winner of Erin Noteboom's The Mongoose Diaries is....

DEBBIE of readerbuzz!

I'll be in touch to get your snail-mail address, Debbie. Hope you enjoy the book as much as I did. Thanks for joining in on the fun.