Anglophiles - this is for you!

A month or so ago, I was lucky enough to get an advance copy at a much-anticipated book through Shelf Awareness. Random House and Indie Next List sponsored the giveaway last fall. The book was The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson who wrote the much-loved Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.  Her new book will be available to the rest of you in March. 

If you liked Major Pettigrew, you will thoroughly enjoy The Summer Before the War. Simonson paints a vivid picture of life in East Sussex England just before (and during) World War I.  As main character Beatrice arrives at the start of the novel as the new Latin teacher at the local school, we immediately fall in love with this forward thinking and independent young woman. The other characters in the village are just as clearly drawn as we read on and get involved as the villagers band together in the war effort. Simonson’s humor and insight make this novel a very enjoyable read. If you like Downton Abbey and Major Pettigrew, you will thoroughly enjoy this book!

Still Tired of Waiting

I know I have already written a blog post here with a similar title, but Langston Hughes' words come to mind yet again as I finish reading the slim book, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It feels false to write a review of a book about the black experience when I am clearly not able to understand that world view at all.  I am a privileged white woman living in the urban South. I have no familiarity with the world that Coates describes in this book which is framed as a letter to his teenaged son. But yet, but yet, I urge everyone to read it. Read it more than once.  This book, winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015, parted the veil a bit more for me.

Between the World and Me is not a hopeful book. Coates doesn't say that we can make things better in this racist America - "this terrible and beautiful world." But he examines his journey and the reality of growing up black in America and explains these truths to his son and to his readers. He forces all of us to take a hard and difficult look at the systemic racism of America. Coates says, "I am writing to you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help, that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store. And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect." 

Coates tells about growing up where "fear ruled everything around me" on the streets of Baltimore and beginning to "dimly perceive the great barrier between the world and me."  He writes about his college years at the Mecca, Howard University, where he saw the "dark energy of all African peoples" in the Yard and where he began to immerse himself in research and writing about the expanding black power he experienced there. Some of his strongest writing is about his college friend Prince Jones who was killed by a police officer in 2000. Years later he interviews Dr. Mable Jones, his mother, a radiologist who raised her children to have a better life with an excellent private school education and privilege. But the dream didn't hold when her son was killed mistakingly and his murder was not punished. 

Coates tell his son that he doesn't think the hurt that Dr. Jones and the parents of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner experienced will go away. "I do not believe we can stop [the Dreamers], because they must ultimately stop themselves." He writes throughout the book about the Dream and the Dreamers - the "perfect houses with nice lawns…treehouses, Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake."

But Coates, a journalist and correspondent for The Atlantic,  does urge his son to struggle. "Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom…Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers (the white American dream). Hope for them. Pray for them if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversation."  Coates' book is the story of his life and a story of the future for his son and a look at the reality of the black experience in America. Toni Morrison calls it "required reading." I have to agree with her. We must see the world for what it is - a "terrible and beautiful"place.

Fill Your Home With Books This New Year

I always knew it was alright to fill my home with books, but now that fact has been confirmed. I recently read in the New York Times that just the presence of books in the home can make children smarter. In  fact,  having physical objects like stacks of CDs, crates of records, shelves of books, and tables of magazines and newspapers are a real boon for children's emotional development.

The most convincing study was published in the sociology journal, Social Forces, in 2014. Researchers measured the impact of the size of home libraries on the reading level of fifteeen-year-old students across 42 nations, controlling for wealth, parents' education and occupations, gender and the country's GNP. They found that after GNP, the quantity of books in one's home was the most important predictor of reading performance. This does not include digital books of any sort - just physical books. The researchers said: "The implications are clear: owning books in your home is one of the best things you can do for your children academically." Just seeing books on the shelves in their home helps children develop an understanding of the world and what the life of the mind includes, according to this study.

The New York Times article goes on to say that parents are models for their children when they see their father poring over the newspaper in the morning or their mother quietly reading a book in the evening. In my home, we get three actual newspapers delivered to our home each morning and we have stacks of books siting everywhere. I always felt slightly guilty about the clutter, but now I will embrace the chaos of reading material in my home for the intelligence it passively imparts. This article said that physical artifacts rather than file names on a device force one to "examine each object slowly." Furthermore, "seeing a parent's dog-earned book is a sign of a mind at work and of the personal significance of that volume."

I hope that in this new year, you will resolve to add to your book and music collection by buying actual books and CDs. It's important to surround yourself with those physical artifacts. The New York Times says so. And so do I. Happy reading in 2016!

The story of a marriage plus a woman's life

Dear readers, I have had a busy fall with teaching and writing and reading and travel. In fact, it's been so fun-filled that I haven't stopped to reflect on the books I've read.  I need to share a list at some point, but here are two books I've enjoyed recently. Both by young women and both intriguing in different ways.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Happy reading!

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (library) was one of the best books I've read in a long time (and I've read some great books this fall). Masterfully written, the novel tells the story of a marriage from two points of view - first the husband's and then the wife's.   

"Marriage is made of lies. Kind ones, mostly. Omissions. If you give voice to the things you think every day about your spouse, you'd crush them to paste," one character says. Mathilde was a good wife to Lotto. They were a golden couple. He was a well-known playwright and she was his beautiful wife.  But, of course, that was just the surface.  A life and a marriage consists many layers.  This book exposes all of them with many twists, secrets and surprises. And sometimes the secrets are what keep a marriage strong.

The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits (library) is hard to describe. It's a diary, a chronicle of everyday life of a wife, mother and writer. The entries are not chronological but the events do build on each other. The book is playful, mundane at times and philosophical at others. Julavits starts each entry with "Today I…" "Today I received a text from a woman I have never met" and "Today I went to the doctor for a physical" and "Today I gossiped with a new friend about the illness of a woman we scarcely know." Today we marched in our town's Fourth of July parade" and " Today I tried to console my son."  Julavits makes unexpected connections and mediates on time and much more.  Each entry is really an essay that is so interesting that you want to read the next one. Try it and see what you think.

Old People Have Sex, Too

Okay now that I have your attention…let me tell you how much I loved Kent Haruf's latest and last book, Our Souls at Night (public library). This beautifully written short novel shimmered with its simplicity and grace. Neighbors find companionship and love in their later years in Haruf's fictional town of Holt, Colorado. Addie and Louis, both 70, have known each other casually for many years and their spouses have been dead for many more years, but they don't really know each other's stories.  The book opens as Addie knocks on Louis' door one evening and makes a proposition. She doesn't sleep well and yearns for a man next to her in bed, not for sex (she says she is long past that desire) but just to talk to as she goes to sleep. Louis mulls it over briefly but goes over to her home and her king-sized bed the next evening.  Their life stories unfold and their daily life becomes richer and fuller as told in Haruf's simple prose.  He was such a skillful writer that he manages to make the most ordinary tasks shine with beauty. I listened to this book and loved the narrator's voice. I teared up at times and felt tense when things got tough for Addie and Louis. The ending is tender and authentic, but I won't say more here. But let me assure you that the book is not about sex. But I do like stories about older couples with the wisdom of the years.


This book should prompt you to read more of Haruf, if you haven't already. He gets in a mention of his most popular novel, Plainsong, as Addie and Louis are considering going to see a play in Denver from a script written from Haruf's 2014 novel, Benediction (which really was made into a play and performed in Denver as the last of the Holt trilogy).  Louis said the story in Plainsong of two Holt farmers taking in a pregnant girl didn't ring true to him.  Addie replies, "People can do the unexpected." She goes on to say, "We're no more improbable than the story of two old cattle ranchers." And that is really the theme of the book: as my former minister at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church always said in his benediction, "Expect the unexpected - anticipate miracles - and know through God all things are possible." These two may not believe in God. They don't believe in church anyway. But both of them, through Addie's gentle guidance, grow to believe in grace and the small miracles that make up every day life. People can do the unexpected. It's a perfect last book, and Haruf's quiet voice will be sorely missed. 

Avoid The Shore

 As those of you who read this blog know, it's rare that I meet a book I don't like. And I don't think I've ever given a book a negative review on this blog, but since I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, I need to give it an honest review. 

First let me say, that there are things to admire about The Shore by Sara Taylor. The characters are complex and the dialogue keeps the action moving along. It's ambitious book of interconnected stories with different voices in each chapter. Taylor has a knack for capturing a character's unique voice and period of time. The female characters are strongly portrayed. She has kindly printed a family tree of these two related families in the front of the book.  The setting of the small islands (The Shore) just off the Chesapeake Bay is a constant strong character threading through this debut novel.  So you can see, I appreciated this young writer's mastery of her skills. I was actually in awe of her talent, but the story was just too harsh for me. Normally (you can see other reviews where I demonstrate this), I appreciate novels that shine a light on a dim situation. I don't require a happy ending in my fiction. But this was just too desolate.  Many its all the bad news I've been hearing lately - murders, refugees, children suffering - but this book was just dismal. I need a glimmer of redemption in my novels. I found little here.  I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Visit Your Local Library

Dear friends,
When possible, visit your local library or independent bookseller, PLEASE, not Amazon books. After reading the recent article about Amazon in the New York Times, I want to encourage my readers here on Words+Ideas to make every effort to check out my recommendations at their local library or purchase from the nearest independent bookseller.  The way employees are treated at Amazon is just frightening.  In future, I will change my links to books I recommend on this site to the excellent WorldCat link which shows you the nearest library to find the book, just as Maria Popova does on her excellent site, Brain Pickings. At times, I will still use my Kindle (I love reading in the dark with my Paperwhite Kindle) and occasionally order from Amazon for convenience's sake. I'm not perfect, but I do try to do the right thing. So I am urging you all to try to keep libraries and booksellers alive while supporting your habit. Thank you.
From,
Your favorite book blogger