Review: Serving Victoria by Kate Hubbard

The opening chapters of Serving Victoria are a total slog. Hubbard seems unable to choose between too much background and too little. The reader skips between eras with abandon, as Hubbard references different points in Victoria's life without warning. By the time Serving Victoria rolls into the middle chapters the reader has adapted and is engrossed. Courtiers in Victoria's world had to deal with a mercurial and self centered monarch who saw herself as steadily benevolent. Court life was tedious at best, with those called into service treating it as a holy obligation meant to strengthen their spirit. Duty overrides the narrative as Victoria's servants find themselves in roles their station in life hasn't prepared them for. Her middle class members have an advantage here, as service to the queen conferred benefits to them they might not have otherwise achieved.

Seen through the prism of limited writings from a selection of her staff, Victoria emerges as a complex woman lacking self awareness. She seems fortunate in her support system and almost willfully obtuse in her daily life. Hubbard is forced to leave some questions for a true biographer of the queen while she illuminates what being by Victoria's side entailed. While the reader emerges with a clear picture of the almost suburban isolation of Victoria's world, one occasionally wishes for further insight. Why, after Albert's death, did Victoria so enjoy the drunken disrespect of the Brown brothers? Was it a personal fetish? A rejection of the rigid morality she demanded from others? Alternating between complimentary and condemning, this look at Victoria through the eyes of those serving her is ultimately a look at the business of monarchy. Victoria, for all her freedoms, is as imprisoned as her court.

I found Serving Victoria a rewarding read at the close. The disconnect between her true self and her public image informs the delicate dance still required of the British Monarchy today. Her rejection of her successor (the Prince couldn't win with his parents) and favoring of her daughter is played out in her shuffle of favored ministers. Victoria's court is one where those in waiting do just that for hour upon stultifying hour, dolls in a game of house with far reaching consequences.  I ended with a deeper appreciation for both Alberts and a respect for Victoria's attempts to bridge her idealized world with her actual one. No one in Serving Victoria seems truly happy save (perhaps) the Browns. Respect is a far easier emotion to grant than love or satisfaction.

Review: She Left Me The Gun by Emma Brockes

I want you to read this book. It's going to win a basket of awards. It's the memoir of the year, for certain. I don't care who writes a memoir this year, Brockes has the top spot sewn up. There are some second half issues and the author occasionally loses her way but it doesn't matter. Because this book is everything. She Left Me The Gun is about the complexity of the mother / daughter relationship. It's about clashes of culture and class. It's about the inability to have cross generational understanding until one of the parties has gone. The questions come too late, the understanding of what we didn't know part of the hole left in the leaving.

Brockes and her mother speak different languages. They come from different countries, homes, classes and times. The thing that holds them together is the parent child bond, something Brockes mother has had to create from whole cloth. I found She Left Me The Gun compelling because Brockes is very clear eyed about her own reactions. She sees where she resisted when her mother would allude to her life. She sees the involuntary judgements she makes on her distant family as she meets them. Brockes is aware that she has not lived the experiences they have, that she is unknowingly shaped by them but apart from them.  There is a passage midway through the book between Brockes and a friend that I think (by it's inclusion) sums her self awareness up.

"Fascists under our bonnet," I say to Pooly. 

"Yeah," she says. "Be grateful you're not the black one."

By the time the third biker pulls over we are so numb to the situation that when he takes his helmet off and turns out to be a woman, with long blonde hair and a weather beaten face, the relief hardly registers. - Emma Brockes

Brockes gets many of the small details right. She understands that she cannot, on a fundamental level, understand. The rules of her world don't apply to those of her mother or her mother's siblings. In the same way that she was a British daughter of a South African woman so too is she the protected child of an unprotected parent. Some gulfs of experience cannot be filled, they can only be bridged. Ultimately, Brockes is writing a letter of love and respect to her mother and in so doing she offers a unique insight to what it is like to be successfully raised by an abuse survivor. Too many memoirs focus solely on  unbroken cycles while the world itself offers far more possibility. 

Review: Relish by Lucy Knisley

Every book I read this month earned my undying dislike except Relish. I didn't love Relish, but it cleared the bar and for that I salute it. Other people in my life raved about Relish so probably it is way better than I think. I loved the cover. Crisp, clean, graphic, it sets the tone perfectly for these light vignettes from the author's childhood. There are some hyperbolic pull quotes from Big Industry Types hanging out on a clean prairie-esque design. This cover is how you sell me a book.

The interior is as lovely as the exterior. Knisley uses space well. Her art is clean and thoughtful, inviting the reader to linger and appreciate instead of rushing off to the next panel. As an illustrator, she's top notch. I felt the same way looking at one of her pages that I felt reading Herge as a child. (Knisley inspires hyperbolic pull quotes from sporadic bloggers as well.) It's a lovely book.

Content is where I started to fight my Relish love. I appreciated so much (So! Much!) the opportunity to read a coming of age graphic novel that didn't harbor dark secrets or sudden trauma. Knisley beautiful captures the mood of her youth both in the visual representation and her recollection of how things feel when you are at the mercy of people older than you. Each section is themed around a food memory, with an appropriate recipe or cooking tip ending the section. This never feels gimmicky or forced. (It is also unlikely I will ever prepare one. They are more visual than hunger inspiring.) Focused on herself or her mother Knisley tells a strong story. She idolizes her mother. She sees herself in her mother. The changes in their lives that bewildered her at the time added value in the end. When talking about these choices Knisley is on solid ground.

What weakened Relish for me was the inclusion of her father. As a reader, he felt unconnected and out of place to the narrative. Apparently Knisley's parents are Somebody in the food world. Being unfamiliar with them I didn't have the added thrill that might come with peeking behind an idol's curtain. Knisley's depiction of her father reads like an author pulling her punches. I gained little understanding of him as a person or of Knisley's role as his daughter. Relish might have been the stronger for leaving him to another volume. (I also vehemently disagreed with the author's defense of tube dough crescent rolls in a chapter about European croissants, but that's a rant for another day.)

Review: Finding Florida by T.D. Allman

Spoiler Alert: I'm a Floridian.

I picked up an advance copy of Finding Florida planning to hate read it. Instead I fell completely in love. I fell so in love that I've been struggling with how to properly convey that love to you without imitating Gollum and the Ring. If I ruled the world, people would be unable to have an opinion on Florida without having read Finding Florida. We'd pass it out with our free samples of orange juice, take copies door to door with the Yellow Pages. Pundits speaking in election years would have to first read a sample passage from the book before continuing to weigh in on whatever issue of the day Florida was allegedly causing. And then, as a nation, we'd take a good long look at what we've done.

 Here's the thing. Everyone writes about Florida. Everyone knows what Florida is, be it a punchline or a destination. If you have enough cash, Florida is Mar-a-Lago. If you don't, Florida is Trayvon Martin. If you want to prove a point (any point, really) you can use Florida as the example and people will assume you're right. No one ever tells the truth in or about Florida. This is a place where reality twists to the will of the speaker and that frustrates the hell out of the natives. Especially if the speaker is from the New York corridor. T.D. Allman tells the truth. He actually found Florida and wrapped it in a book for you. This is a clear eyed, race neutral history of the Sunshine State. Therefore, Finding Florida may strike some as an incendiary book with an agenda. I would argue that it is impossible to really understand Florida and not be angry. Take our snakes. The milk snake is harmless. It's identical cousin the coral snake will kill you. Schoolchildren are taught rhymes to tell the difference. (My school used "Red on black, friend of Jack. Red on yellow kills a fellow." They also dumped a bag of snakes on the table to make sure we remembered it.)  Florida is a coral snake repeatedly packaged as a milk snake. Don't blame T.D. Allman for getting the facts in proper order.

Florida was never purchased. It was not ceded by Spain. Florida was conquered by repeat covert military actions on tenuous premises. Florida was home to interracial towns which were repeatedly cleared for white settlement. Massacres were common and frequent. Free blacks were enslaved on the pretext that their ancestors had been slaves. Florida is America's spoil of a long and bloody war based on race and profit. The fight for Florida was a fight to expand slavery. A mixed community could not be tolerated as a border to the slaveholding south.

"Starting when he was still Billy Powell, Osceola drew his wives and friends from all racial groups. People of Indian, black—and white—descent fought under his command in every battle. They kept fighting even when betraying the blacks among them would have saved them much suffering and, in many cases, saved their lives. Osceola’s brutal mistreatment, as Congressman Giddings put it, demonstrated “the intimate relation which this war bore to slavery.” General Jesup was even more blunt about it. It was, he pointed out, a war to protect and expand slavery, “a Negro and not an Indian war.” Finding Florida, Page 186

T.D. Allman captures the essential problem of Florida. Billy Powell becomes Osceola. Our history, as it actually happens, is continually rewritten into a narrative that serves forces outside our borders. Without knowing who we really were we cannot understand who we are. Finding Florida is about the framework of political corruption that began our state and still rules it today. It is about the unending ability of people who have failed elsewhere to reinvent themselves, rise to the highest levels, and fail again. 

"When people are unwilling or unable to come to terms with reality, a politics based on unreality becomes necessary to sustain what the Florida scholar Eugene Lyon describes as the “utopia of

mutual hopes.” - Finding Florida, Page 454

"Only in Flori-duh!" is something a Floridian hears often. Failed by our schools, failed by our government, we are a people with a mutual hope that consistently eludes us. We want to be the state we know in our bones we can be. The problem is that too many of us want too many versions of that state. A thousand versions imagined in our own image consistently at war with each other, consistently in denial of our shared history. To the other 49 states we are inexplicable, bewildering and backwards. To ourselves, we are a scapegoat for national failures. Finding Florida proves we're both right.

Review: I'd Like To Apologize To Every Teacher I Ever Had By Tony Danza

First, the title. This thing is Fiona Apple long. I'd Like To Apologize To Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year As A Rookie Teacher At Northeast High. That's like, 19 words. Let's just call it My Bad and move on. You know, the way one of Danza's students tells him her name and he thinks "Oh, I'll just call her Nick." (But Black Nick cause we already have White Nick.) My Bad is kind of awesome. It sidesteps most of the Rich Man Teaching pitfalls to deliver a straightforward look at what standardized testing has done to American's teachers and students. Of course Danza's students need more resources, better home lives and a more supportive system. But Danza doesn't condescend. When he encourages his kids to grab the opportunities they do have he never comes off as above them. Danza speaks to the students and the reader directly, as an imperfect man in an imperfect world.

In doing so he does the teaching memoir a great service. People who would never read a book about schools (unless it had recently been made into an uplifting Oscar film) will read My Bad because Tony Danza wrote it. His celebrity will illustrate that the grades given your child's school are not an indication of the passion or performances within it. His writing style is open and engaging. While nothing in the book is particularly surprising, the journey is pleasant. Danza admits that he struggled greatly with 20% of the average teacher workload and far more resources. He illustrates how the tasks we are asking our teachers to perform are impossible. As well, he doesn't fall for the One Teacher Who Cares myth that many teaching memoirs do. He recognizes that the teachers care. It is our society that does not.

My Bad is imperfect, like the subject it covers. Danza is a product of his times. While he works to keep race out of the book there are times he slips. Faced with a racist parent he blames "the culture" of the other children. A student on a downward slide demonstrates her unhappiness through the "extreme hairstyles" of an afro or cornrows. His good old days are of a certain tiny slice of American life. These things appear to be based more in ignorance than bias, as Danza otherwise presents himself as an open and rational man. Danza admits his imperfections to the reader, often harsher on himself than we would be. As a result he comes across as sincere and charismatic. Working in the story of a failed reality series (the excuse for his year at Northeast) Danza is desperate not to fail his students. He certainly doesn't fail the reader. My Bad is well worth checking out.

Review: The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz

To be completely honest, I can't really call this a review. Perhaps I should have labeled it a strong recommendation. What would I say? As a protagonist the legislative bodies of America frequently act in odds with the nation's self interest. I find it unlikely that such actions would occur. Insanely rich people are completely fine with breaking the economic core of the nation, rendering them unsympathetic.  Voters are locked in an abusive relationship through a lack of choices and a powerful desire to self harm.

Actually, that review would probably rock. Alas, it remains unwritten.

With The Price of Inequality Stiglitz lays out some pretty tedious economic theory in an accessible and popular way. You might think you understand why our economy is bleeding jobs while your bank account gets thinner but you really don't. Unless you do, I don't want to prejudge you. However I am not a Nobel Prize winning economist and therefore found Stiglitz made several outstandingly infuriating points. What we do about it, that's a different story. Step one, admit you have a problem.

We are so screwed.

I'd like to pretend that I've been spending my time reading books like this one. Or genre fiction, or comic books. To be truthful I've spent the slump evaluating various iPad games. VelociRapture vs Monsters Ate My Condo? I'm your girl.  Things are looking up though, since I switched from the K3 back to the Land of Sony Readers my reading has gone up dramatically.

Review: Yes Chef by Marcus Samuelsson

From the exceptional cover design to the last page, I loved almost everything about Yes, Chef. I loved it's honesty, I loved it's style, I loved the unique life it describes. Holding me back from outright glee were some minor construction problems and Samuelsson himself. He is such a complicated man. I have so much compassion for him yet his honesty also leads me to impatience. There is a myth that one can have everything in life. The thing about everything is that you can't have it all at once. In Samuelsson's case he has had the work ethic, the family support, the drive, the charisma, the intelligence - but he is an absolutely (spoiler alert!) horrible father. Yet his honesty makes him the most charming failure of parenting I've read about in a long time. At the same time he ignores his own child, Samuelsson mentors others. He has a strong desire to bring African Americans into the world of fine dining. He believes in diversifying the upcoming kitchen crews and showcasing Harlem as the convergence of color and culture it has always been. He is a a fascinating person to read about.

With all the honesty Samuelsson eloquently brings to his life story, he has a blind spot. This is a man who feels safest in the kitchen, who has a flight response to emotional damage. Samuelsson has emotions I don't think he's even labeled yet. For all he has overcome, there is much lying in wait for him. What to make of such a conflicted individual? While sponsoring scholarships for relatives in his native Ethiopia and working with the youth of Harlem, Samuelsson also abandons his only child. How will she read this book, as an adult? What will she make of his revelations? Inside is a portrait of a young man who was plucked from impossible odds to land in a safe and loving home. Fortunate enough to find a calling when his first dream died, he applied a single minded focus to achieving it. But this man who is so clear in the dynamics of a kitchen family is adrift in his own. His love for his child is clear, his conflict obvious. But both are presented in terms of himself, and only himself. He didn't want to be "that guy" who fathered an out of wedlock child, so he kept her a professional secret. His career had to come first, but if it had derailed (he claims) then he would have been present in her life. He paid his child support diligently (after his parents insisted) but never called, never wrote. He discussed her life with her mother, but not with her. There were no gifts. Until she was 14, her father was not accessible in any way. When she confronts him, he says he just didn't know how to find the words, how to make the time, what to do. So he didn't.  He is proud she has seen him as a success, proud he was able to introduce her to Kanye West, ready to take responsibility now and face her anger because he prides himself on being able to take the heat. The heat is over. His daughter is a young woman. At the end of the book he lists all of the things he has to be thankful for. It's a list both personal and professional. It's not brief. It doesn't contain his child.*

In the first 2/3 of the book Samuelsson's story is linear and focused. He knows who he was and why he made the moves he did. He talks with love and insight about his family and himself. In the last 1/3 of the book Samuelsson founders. His unresolved emotional conflicts are exposed. The book jumps about in time and becomes less concise. While powerful, it is obvious that these are parts of his life that are in progress, still being weighed and cataloged. Unable to ask if his own parents abandoned him, unable to face what abandoning his daughter really meant, Samuelsson leaves a document of explanation for her if she is able to see it. When his birth mother was dying she used the last of her strength to seek medical attention for her children. His father was in parts unknown. A man can be great without being famous. A man can be great without being perfect. Marcus Samuelsson is a great man who has (and will) impact many lives in positive and meaningful ways. Yes, Chef is completely worth reading. I say go ahead and pre-order it.

*I read this book in ARC form. I hope she's added before publication.

Review: Paris In Love by Eloisa James

Paris In Love is going to be a tough review for me to write.

First, there's cancer. I hate cancer. I hate cancer so much I don't even like Cancer Memoirs, the exceptional Mom's Cancer aside. In the beginning chapter we discover that Eloisa James has been diagnosed with cancer a short two months after losing her mother to the disease. Furthermore, she herself adores cancer memoirs and has Inspirational Friends with cancer. Look, I gave at the cancer office (more than once) in all sorts of ways. I have Opinions about Cancer and Parenting Post Cancer or With Cancer and all of that. I can't help but bring a giant boxcar of baggage to any cancer book and that is one of the reasons I don't read them.

Secondly, there's Facebook. (I don't dislike Facebook as much as cancer. Given a choice between eradicating Facebook and eradicating cancer I would totally choose to end cancer. Most days.) Paris In Love is not  a wholly original work. James has retooled her Facebook entries into quick snippets of experience assembled into chapters and interspersed with a few multi page transitions. Wait, you might be asking, if I buy this book I'm essentially getting a curated version of the author's Facebook wall? Yes. You are.

Thirdly, my class issues are triggered. Like Eloisa James, I was not raised in anything like affluence. Like Eloisa James I can travel Europe pretty much at will now and I could also live as an expatriate if I so desired. I think this is the sort of thing that must be acknowledged as it is a deeply abnormal life. Most of America cannot sell their home, live without strong financial concerns in Paris for a year, then return to purchase a property in New York City. (Actually, I can't purchase a property in New York City. Fiscal advantage James.) That's pretty 5% at the bare minimum. The sheer lack of logistics in Paris In Love throws this into sharp focus. Due to the snippet nature of it's telling, there are no practicalities. Nothing on how to find the Paris apartment or acquire the proper paperwork. I wasn't looking for a How To Guide, but some nod to the intricacies would have been welcome. After all, she includes several pages of her favorite shops at the end.

Once I got past judging Paris In Love for what it wasn't, I got around to judging it for what it was. James does not value stability in the same way I do. To me, taking tweenage children (who have recently lost their grandmother then had their mother threatened by the same disease) to a country where they do not speak the language and will almost certainly struggle in the schools is unthinkable. Military obligations aside, the tweenage years are not generally served by upheaval. With the snippet style of recollection, the family life comes across as the things they saw, the things they ate, the homeless they encountered, and the meetings with teachers. While the children eventually adapt, they do so just in time to relocate once again. (I am sure their trilingual abilities will serve them in life, I am sure the breadth of experience they have gained will only benefit. Void where prohibited by law, etc.)

James' way with descriptions and eye for interesting detail save the book from complete tedium. While she makes no revelations about her self or life on the bigger scale her observations of lunch remain compelling enough to keep the pages turning. Paris In Love could be summed up with "I felt lost. I ran away. The hairdressers didn't understand me. The kids were confused. I calmed down. I came back." But I see Paris In Love speaking strongly to a different reader, a reader who wants to sit and dream on a rainy day about a different life. A reader who wonders what it would be like to just toss her cares aside for a year and reinvent herself in another place, without losing the things she loves in her current place. As a wistful daydream Paris In Love works well. I'm just not a daydream kind of girl.

Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Warning: this is not an actual review.

In the event of an actual review, I would bitch about the content with supporting details. I might praise or gush over another aspect, again with supporting details. With a bestseller of this magnitude I'd probably not bother mentioning it at all unless I loved it more than it's mother.

Instead I offer you these facts. I picked Bossypants up in hardcover. It's in softcover now. I still haven't finished it. (We're not talking War & Peace here.) Unlike James Joyce, Fey uses punctuation with reasonable skill. The edition I have is in my native language. There is no reason for Bossypants to languish unfinished but it's content. I just don't care to read another page. I have given it several college tries (whatever that is, I think it involves beer kegs and vomit) yet failed. Parts of Fey's book strike me as classist. Parts of Fey's book struck me as racist. Precious little of it struck me as interesting or amusing. I've always enjoyed Tina Fey. I expected to enjoy Bossypants enough to preorder it. This is a book that one can judge by the cover. I thought the cover was odd, not as amusing as it intended and off putting. For me (and possibly me alone) the contents were the same. I'm giving up and sending it to the bin. If you were considering Bossypants I suggest your local library. Chances are good they've had a few copies donated.

Review: The Autobiography by Elisabeth Sladen

This is a far better book than it needed to be. Isn't that the hallmark of Elisabeth Sladen's career? Without her careful attention, would Sarah Jane Smith have been the icon she became? Of course, Sladen was far more than just Sarah Jane Smith. She was a wife, a mother, a theater actress and a woman with a serious work ethic. In that order.

Sladen preserves her private life in what is largely a career memoir, but when she does dip into her personal situation it is to illustrate a career moment. Given a choice between her family or herself, Sladen chooses her family. It answers the question of why she wasn't a larger star in her post Doctor Who years and it also answers how she and her husband were able to manage a two actor marriage. Elisabeth Sladen, for all her career regrets, lived a life that placed the personal above the professional. I respect her even more for putting her humanity above her ambition.

The Autobiography is so clearly in Sladen's voice that the fan in me felt the loss all over again when I closed the book. Even when telling of her frustrations and personal conflicts Sladen looked for a brighter side of things. The joke is always on her, the buck always stops at her desk. She is not one to ignore professional conflict, neither is she one to belittle the person with whom she conflicted. Sladen follows every bitter memory with a tasty one. The result is the reader feeling as though they have spent an afternoon with her, hearing her actor tales firsthand. Sladen reveals that she, like many of us, thought Eccleston ended his Doctor Who run too soon. Perhaps he was the wiser man, as one who has watched several leave the role Sladen knew that the drop from star to mortal is stunning. The show is the star and the actors merely participants.

I don't know how a reader who is not a fan of Doctor Who would respond to this book. Although Sladen discusses her early days and her post Who days it is largely a story of her days as Sarah Jane Smith. Sladen understands where her core fans reside and she meets them there. From her frustration with the BBC's failure to properly monetize in America to her appreciation for Whovian loyalty, Sladen knows the audience for this book. When she began, she had no idea she was ill. I wonder if she would have changed it? Would the sharp feelings be further muted? Perhaps it is for the best that Sladen set the manuscript in a drawer, forgotten, and let her family decide to bring it to market. As the book ends and the afterword begins, Elisabeth Sladen (like Sarah Jane Smith) is looking forward to her next adventure. Neither of them will be forgotten.

Review: Shatner Rules by William Shatner and Chris Regan

What do you say about William Shatner that hasn't already been said? Revered or reviled, Lionized or devoured, he is an American institution (all while being Canadian). At a certain point I wondered what Shatner would say about himself. (Disclosure; I've read books by Nichelle Nichols, Jimmy Doohan and George Takei.) I approached Shatner Rules wondering if Shatner is a deeply misunderstood man or a raging egomanic with an improper understanding of his talents.

The answer is yes.

 He's sort of a less destructive Charlie Sheen. When he yells winning, you get the idea that it requires others to be losing. After going after (almost) all of his former costars for various reasons (they were not the stars, they are fame whores, etc etc) he then claims all their hard feelings are born from their own imaginations. He's apologized for any imagined slights (as opposed, I imagine to the ones in the book) and moved on. Why do they still feel so angry? If I loved the guy and he talked about me the way he does his ex costars I'd have to rethink it.

There's a lot of that who-could-possibly-know faux innocence to Shatner. He invites Henry Rollins to the same event as Rush Limbaugh and expects everyone to make nice. (Why would there be a problem there?)  Rollins handles it with incredible grace, but the fact that Shatner never gave it a thought shows a lot about his personality. Discussing the absolute brilliant cover of Common People he did with Joe Jackson, Shatner takes several swipes at Joe. While ending with an acknowledgement of Jackson's utter genius, he leads with a ton of negativity in front of the praise. I imagine this is just how Shatner operates. It's not the most effective way to make friends.

So. Does Shatner think he is a brilliantly underrated performer who does not deserve the mocking he's graciously borne over the years? Absolutely. He is not entirely wrong. Shatner has a serious work ethic that demands the best he can offer from himself and others. Shatner has created multiple memorable characters in a career where people are lucky to produce one. He delivers what he is hired for, no matter what that might be. Shatner is a pro. His musical attempts are often better then he has been credited for. They are not, however, even close to his own assessment of them. The contradiction of William Shatner is that both sides are right. He is a charismatic and professional talent. He is also far from innocent of the various charges lain at his feet. In the end, Shatner Rules is an illuminating look at both sides of the man, the side he prefers to see and the side he unwittingly reveals. I am absolutely a fan.

Review: Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley

Love this cover. I think I was almost 2/3 of the way done before I really looked at the little cupcake decoration. It's clean, it's eye catching, it relates to the contents. I have no complaints at all on this one. The book is great too.

While I expected to dislike Don't Kill The Birthday Girl I loved it so much I should marry it. I live in in area where fake food allergies are common and yet I am all too familiar with real food allergies. If I throw a party I know at least two children will arrive with special instructions and an EpiPen but six more will have mothers standing by to explain their allergies as the so called allergic children graze openly on forbidden foods. Sandra Beasley finds this as infuriating as I do. Describing food dislikes or sensitivities as allergies endangers the truly allergic. Sandra Beasley is one of those so endangered.

Almost completely free of self pity, Beasley intersperses important information about the recognition and rise of true food allergies with anecdotal tales of life as a fragile child. With the impatience of anyone restricted, she longs to be normal. Sandra would rather eat what you're eating than draw attention to a myriad number of ingredients that can kill her. She doesn't feel a little queasy or get a headache after encountering an allergen - she goes to the hospital. Addressing the facts of food allergies calmly (that peanut allergy is not an airborne danger but touching someone with a hand that touched peanuts could be serious) Beasley offers insight into the current wave of food fear. Often amusing, at times frustrating, her goal to lead as normal a life as possible makes a great memoir.

Review: Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House by Meghan Daum

I've had this one kicking around for awhile. I share the same disease as Meghan Daum, that of house envy. (There is nothing wrong with my home.) Since I was a child I've looked at other houses and thought "If I lived there I would be happier." It's led me to move across the country, across town, down the street. At this moment I can tell you three places I'd rather live and the prices on each, but I won't be moving again. (It's a property tax thing, I can't afford to move even if I downsized.) I understood what Daum's book would be about just from the title. So why didn't I finish it in a timely manner?

Life would be perfect if this was a slightly different book. While I totally identified with both her wanderlust and her desire to invent herself into a person she isn't, there wasn't much past that point to hold me. I read the first third quickly, then set the book down for months. Something brought it to mind and I sought it out again only to stop before finishing it. Today, while going through some notes, I realized I'd never completed the book and found it, bookmark intact. I had stopped six pages from the end. That's not a great sign. While I enjoyed the time I spent with Meghan, we weren't meant to be together.

It's interesting, there was a lot of buzz for the hardcover release (which had what I think was a terrible cover) and not as much for the greatly (visually) improved paperback. The Kindle version uses the hardcover image. In classic Agency fashion, the going rate (if not list price) for the paperback is lower than the Kindle version. (Way to kill those impulse buys, guys!) So perhaps my preference in cover design is completely off the market. Granted, the paperback cover is a little Mod, a little Retro, but the original cover was very Christian Inspiration to me, which the the book could not be further from. I wonder how the book feels? Does it cover shop and think it's sales would be everything if it only had a gatefold?

Books I Cast Aside: Erik Larson And David King

I have read far too many WW2 books. I know about Hitler's dog, Hitler's niece, Churchill's second cousin twice removed and the American position on all of it. I've read things I can never remove from my brain (blocked the title out, white cover, Ukraine, lost village memoir, highly recommended except for ever sleeping again) and things that made me roll my eyes. I get obsessive about certain time periods and WW2 appears to be one. It probably has something to do with the epic death toll on all sides of my family. Anyway. I'm a sucker for a WW2 book. I'm also a sucker for books that contrast different realities. Erik Larson set the benchmark for this style of non-fiction with The Devil In The White City. Now I wish he hadn't.

Too many books since then seem to be walking the same ground in a different field. I currently have a ten book nonfiction backlog due to the bottleneck created by two such books. Despite both of them dealing with WW2, I am moving on. They've kept me from other books for far too long. David King's Death In The City of Light would be an exceptional book if he edited half of it out. It's daily life in occupied France, it's a serial killer preying on desperate Jewish refugees, it's a police procedural, it's an exhaustive look at an investigation. Unfortunately it's also about Camus, Sartre, Picasso and their crowd. It's just too much. Our party people add nothing to the narrative and it's exhaustive detail is not well served by the breaks the reader takes to discover Simone was moody. I want to finish this book so much that I just started skipping all the sections with the artists. It was still overloaded. King has a fantastic book in here, but it's not the one that went to press. People with more patience for info dumps and backtracking expository will adore it. I'm shelving it for that rainy day where excessive ruminations appeal.

The other log in my book jam is Erik Larson himself. A look at the society and diplomacy around pre Pearl Harbor Germany? Well hell yea! Except it's boring. Don't get the wrong, the political stuff is interesting, the man on the street stuff is interesting, but the subtext of Martha Dodd is troubling. Every attempt is made to portray her fairly and sympathetically. Which is sort of a problem. She would be all over TMZ if she were alive today. A woman who parties with the German government, considers dating Hitler and goes on to end her days as an expatriate? Wanted in America for spying on behalf of the Soviets, not wanted by the Soviets, she let her high ideals (such as they were) lead her to a fairly unpleasant life. Judgement was never Martha's strong suit be it politics or men. If I had approached this book as a look at Martha, perhaps I would enjoy it more. If I hadn't tried to read it at the same time as Death In The City of Light I might be raving about it now.  It too is being shelved for a rainy day where I feel more tolerant of her foibles, less annoyed at her willful indulgences. After all, this is probably seconds away from becoming a Tom Hanks film.

Review: Record Collecting For Girls by Courtney E. Smith

I feel bad about this review and I haven't even written it yet.  Let's preface everything by saying I hope between the time I write this (May) and the book's release (September) the publisher seriously reconsiders both the marketing and the cover copy. Record Collecting For Girls absolutely fails to deliver what it promises.

On the positive side, the design is fantastic. Arresting, visually assertive, all around excellent cover work. As well, the first chapter is fantastic. While reading it I was planning who to buy the book for at Christmas, who'd talk with me about it first. It was the proverbial hit single of a dog album. The rest of Record Collecting For Girls took me from irritation to rage and then to resigned disillusionment. The cover promises "Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd One Album At A Time," It also vows "Gives Readers Tips For Curating A Real Record Collection." That bit is a complete joke. Smith doesn't believe in record collections, she believes in Hype Machine and extra hard drives and pirating singles instead of evaluating albums. Her records and CDs have been boxed for years, by book's end she is discarding them. This is not a girl's guide to a broad appreciation of music, it's a long recitation of the romantic failings in Smith's life and what she chose to listen to while she got over them. Let's go chapter by chapter.

• Record Collecting For Girls will sell a lot of copies as a Kindle sample. It's funny, focused, and correct in stating music conversation is dominated by the male perspective. Someone should take this chapter and write the book it belongs in.
• Top Five Lists does feel like a springboard to a real conversation about music as Smith explains how (to hold her own with boys) she came to her cutting edge choices of Elvis Costello, REM, Sleater-Kinney, Stevie Nicks and Fiona Apple. Here, among all these (white) critical darlings, you start to realize that you're going to Epcot instead of on a World Tour. (Fiona, Stevie, not your fault.)
• Where Have All The Girl Bands Gone? Mixing a small bit of info about the Go-Go's with an assertion that The Bangles were underrated Smith takes a drive by at Phil Spector's influence and name drops some early punk and post Lilith Fair without really exploring much of it. Sex sells. Unless you're the Dixie Chicks.
• My Scrobble, Myself. How to see what boys like to listen to and evaluate what you're listening to. 
• Making Out With Romeo And Juliet. How to decide what to play while trying to get laid, by a boy, and how to impress that boy (never a girl I guess) with your fine taste in music without scaring him off with your mad taste in music and a little bit about how soundtracks are compiled. Plus, boys (not girls) and making out. 
• Guilty Pleasures. Smith feels if you don't have a guilty pleasure you're pompous or boring. She likes the Pussycat Dolls. She thinks you should like what you like unless it's the Black Eyed Peas and then you shouldn't. 
• The Smiths Syndrome. Where to start? Pick a band, then refuse to ever date anyone who likes that band because they are all the same. To back this up, (Why are we still talking about dating? When do we really talk about music, it's evolution, or crafting a course of personal study?) she declares that all avid Smiths fans are mommy's boys obsessed with serial killers. Wow. That's so offensive and wrong I'm not sure how to articulate it. As an avid Smiths fan (by her criteria) and one of Moz (although I am currently boycotting him)  as well I must say I can't agree. Nor do the male Smiths fans I know discuss serial killers, concern themselves with serial killers or wear pompadours. And yes, we do travel long distances to see Moz. Hey, that's her world, she can live there. Nothing to me. 
• Give It To Me For Free shows Smith claiming that free music sells music. While I agree with that assertion, it's hard to take it seriously amid her repeated urgings that we get all our music from Hype Machine.
• Are We Breaking Up? Smith has music she likes to listen to when boys dump her or she dumps boys. She'd give up on boys but she still wants someone to pay half her bills. (No, really.) This chapter caused my partner to say "If this is how women discuss music it's amazing Joan Jett can stand to be a lesbian."
• The Next Madonna holds Madonna up as awesome. For all her flashing of her indie music creds and bragging on the width of her musical knowledge, Smith spends all her time in the top of the pops. Is Britney the next Madonna? Is Gaga? Why is Madonna herself? Let's talk about these three white girls a lot. I suppose the many women who worked in music during Madonna's career can never matter as much as Madonna. Let's just move on.
• Music Blogs Are Just Dadaist Conversation. Smith feels people are inadequate when they write about music. (The jokes write themselves here.) You should find some blogs and download lots of free music to see what you like. Maybe even set up an RSS feed to amass more music than you can practically listen to. (Waiting for the bit about buying music to show back up, but it doesn't.) All free and semi legal, she says. While I am not against music blogs (I use plenty) it's a bit both sides of the mouth, her position on paying for your tunes. Don't archive records or CDs, amass free tracks - and then what? Buy legal copies of the mp3s? 
• Our Song, Your Song, My Song is a way to talk MORE about dating. Having established in the intro that a problem with women breaking into music is their quality being viewed through the lens of male attraction, we now view our music as it relates to attraction. (That's deep, huh?) How do you know if it's your song? What if it was already their song? Let's talk even more about the authors love life, because this book isn't really about music and how to love it, explore it, understand it - this book is about the author and boys. 
• The Death of the Record Collection - Oh yes she does.
• Adventures in Second Live shows Smith doesn't just use RSS feeds, MTV freebies and the like - she also enjoys hard to find sections of online gaming. Because it's hard to find, it's awesome. 
• Rock'N'Roll Consorts. At first I thought Smith had tired of talking about her own sex life and was moving on the sex life of others, but really she wanted to talk more about hers. First we talk about how ick groupies are (never mind she is mostly judging a woman from the 1960's who experiences a culture and state of mind that Smith shows no real interest in exploring) and how kinda ick wives are and how no one should ever get involved with men (or girls?) in rock because they all suck and will do you wrong like this rock guy did her. 
• Beatles VS. Stones is based on someone having told her that girls who like the Stones will bang you. It's like the black guy in the bar telling you he only dates white women because they (insert offensive assumption here) but Smith runs with it, explores it, talks at length about how the Stones and Beatles being at odds were just marketing ploys (you don't say) and the Stones are icky because they are too old to perform those songs and should just retire and stop trying to make money. Ageism on parade, but I think the Stones fans won't be bothered.
• Down The Music K-Hole! This is it! We're going to discover how to expand our musical preferences! How to move from one genre to another! How to discover new sounds! What types of things might.... oh wait, we're just going to say "go to a web site and hit some buttons and listen to some stuff and mostly just listen to Prince cause I think he's awesome." Except we're going to do it with Choose Your Own Adventure stylings (or automated customer service phone menus).
• Acknowledgements - This book was a dream and so many people helped her make it. This I totally believe. 

I am sure Smith is a lovely women. If I had approached this as "My Years At MTV" or "The Guys I Dated And The Music We Listened To" I am certain my reading experience would have been different. Perhaps not totally different, but different all the same. Instead, I was expecting a conversation about music, how to love it, how to evaluate it, what to do to expand yourself, how to build your tastes, and I got an awful lot about how Smith can't find a nice boy to open a joint account with. I can't say either of us are better for the experience and I regret my negativity. If it's any consolation, this is the measured and mild version of my disappointment.

Review: My Father At 100 by Ron Reagan

I love this book. Flat out love it.

Let's get the politics out of the way first. I was not a fan of Reagan as a President. I think a large part of our failing economic situation today is a direct result of his True Believers perpetuation of ill conceived faith based economic policies. When he talked about his America I wanted to drag him to my America for a session of Compare And Contrast. This made my interest in reading My Father At 100 pretty darn low. (On the other hand, I respect the hell out of Ron Reagan. Your father is the most revered conservative icon since ever and you've consistently got the fortitude to calmly say "Well, I don't agree.") Back to my point - the cover of this book does not say Portrait Of An Icon it says My Father At 100. I've never respected the former president more than I did at the close of Ron's ruminations on his father's life.

Partly a biographical sketch, partly an examination of the father and son dynamic, partly a love letter, My Father At 100 isn't shy about saying "Well, I don't agree." Ron leaves the myth making behind yet - through his detailed examinations of his father's flaws - the strengths are exposed. Reagan was a diplomatic man. He did not encourage the level of hostility his worshippers have embraced. He was a man with a vision and the determination to see it through, even if that vision was hopelessly rose colored. Reagan was a man who strove to overcome his own limitations through hard work. If 99% of success is just showing up prepared, his move into politics becomes less surprising.

Ron explores his father's childhood, Ron Sr's troubled relationship with his own father and their strong family values. The picture that emerges is of an imperfect man that I simply didn't agree with. Ron's father being an iconic American is secondary to the man that Ron reveals, a man I might have liked to sit and talk with about things not related to Communism or Economic Policy. Ron Jr and Sr could not have been farther apart. Born of different generations, inclined toward different politics, one a cynic and the other a pie in the sky idealist, the two men are held together by a core honesty, a willingness to speak their minds. My Father At 100 was truly a rewarding read.

Review: Boozehound by Jason Wilson

Y'all may be aware that I'm southern. Not Southern, capital S which involves the misguided use of battle flags and excessively short denim cutoffs. (Oh hush. It was the 80's. What happened in the 80's stays in the 80's.) Being southern and having Southern family members, I grew up around a fair bit of drinking. For a time, I drank myself. Now the other half of my people (See? Only the southern talk like that.) are Yanks. Prohibitionist Yanks. Writers of famous screeds on the evils of devil rum and it's sister the demon of drink. (That stuff is hilarious, actually).

Therefore, the first thing to hit me on reading Boozehound was how lacking in shame it all was. This guy, this Jason Wilson, he just travels around trying drinks? Hasn't he been arrested for disorderly a lot? No? How does that work? And these people in these other countries - they have drinks together at dinner as a family? And this is a happy memory? It was a strange land indeed. I want to throw my arm around Boozehound's shoulder and scream in it's ear how much I love it. Half my beer is probably going to end up on Boozehound's jacket, but that's ok. We're likely at a Hold Steady concert and everyone is wearing some beer at the end of those nights. Boozehound is part memoir, part travel diary, part instruction manual and all love. Jason Wilson loves his booze, from the obscure to the common (but not so much the vodka) and all points in between. He wants you to love it too, to have the chance to sample the sort of things our forefathers sampled before our forefathers became Methodist ministers. He is to spirits what Alice Waters is to fresh food, an advocate and a lover. Maybe we'll call it the Slow Drink movement.

Wilson would like you to stop judging a drink by it's radioactive qualities (looking at you TGIF) and start thinking about how it tastes, what it reminds you of, how it enhances your life. He is not so interested in waking up smashed (although a few Lady Gaga tunes on the Karaoke are fine by him). Reading the history of some fine alcohols made me realize how little I knew about them and how what I drunk in high school hardly compares to what my grandfather sat down with after work. (My grandmother was partial to a creme de menthe.) From talking about booze's actual medicinal qualities (slight as they may be now) to the evolution of overpriced fruity vodkas, Wilson held my interest. I couldn't read Boozehound in one sitting, anymore than I could knock back a bottle of Boone's Farm these days. There is just too much content in Boozehound. It needs to be taken a chapter at a time as the mood strikes. I can't say I'm going to resume imbibing (I want to keep that S a lower case one) but I found myself wishing I knew a friend with a well stocked bar at the end of every chapter.

• Warning: contains recipes. May induce drinking in all readers. The surgeon general probably frowns on this. Not for use by those under age or trying to hold onto lower case status.

Review: Composed by Rosanne Cash

It's interesting - in trying to write a love letter to her father  with Good Stuff Jennifer Grant ended up making the reader think less of them both. Rosanne Cash takes a different path. In Composed Cash is at pains to be honest, about herself, about her father, about her conflicted feelings.  Her fearless style reminds me of a lyric by Simple Kid.

"Buddy, it's as simple as that / When you see past all of the crap." 


Rosanne Cash absolutely sees past the crap. While completely unfamiliar with her musical work, I left the book interested in exploring it. She's a likeable narrator, a woman you'd want to spend a day hanging out with. Her memoir is not a linear or exhaustive work. She focuses on brief periods of her life and her feelings about them before turning the light to a completely different time. She does not exploit a life made for exploitation, reserving what she should and illuminating what she wants. I respect her all the more for protecting her children from a blow by blow account of her relationships. I respect her for confessing her frustrations as a parent and as a child. What emerges from Composed is a portrait of a woman finding herself while multiple lives pull at her. The life she's set her feet on suits her, the city she's chosen to live in is a good one for maintaing perspective. Her parents emerge as people sometimes overwhelmed by their circumstances yet leaving their children a legacy of love. Not an easy achievement, and one that requires the child to meet them more than halfway.

For me the most resonant passage is during a trip to Ireland. Rosanne happens to meet a living link to her father in the form of a shopkeeper. I have had those moments, I have had a letter from a woman who played in the street a hundred years ago with my lost family member. She had pictures too. It's an amazing and inexplicable experience to find yourself somewhere you didn't really plan to be only to find your family waiting for you. Truly a memoir rather than an autobiography, Composed is out in paperback next month and it's worth spending some time with.

Review: Good Stuff by Jennifer Grant

I don't do a lot of editing on reviews. My style (obviously) is to go with my gut reaction, give it a pass over for spelling and grammar, then walk away. I am not the carefully crafted multiple draft reviewer. Therefore, reviewing Good Stuff is difficult. I feel so much compassion for Jennifer Grant the person. She has not put out a book. She has put out the version of her father she wishes the world would cosign. How do you review someone else's reality?

Good Stuff is the way Jennifer would like to recall her childhood and her father. Bad Stuff is anything not in that very, very narrow track. Grant's style reads as if she is talking to herself and you are permitted to listen in. She repeats herself, she jumps around in time, she reflects with oblique comments of a word or two. It's a very stylized approach and not a fully successful one. Her dislike for breaching her privacy is obvious and yet she has written a book to be sold to the public. Her dislike for the public's less respectful questions is also obvious, and again, she has written a book to be sold to the public. It is an absolute case of having her cake and eating it. While deliberately choosing not to explore her father's past or put the events of her life in context Grant raises more questions than she answers. Her father appears obsessed with her, it seems to go a bit beyond the average. He creates an archive of personal effects, complete with a bank vault style safe to store them in. He tells his young daughter that she is "his type" and as she grows older marries a young woman with a bit more than a passing resemblance to her. He's controlling, although Jennifer sees him otherwise. She cannot wear makeup in her teens, he prefers the silent treatment to conversation, imperfection is for others. There is a lot to sort through but it is left unexamined.

Grant doesn't explore the complexity of her father's personality, his past or the ten year custody battle for her person. She delivers a love letter to the concept of her father she has built in her mind, a concept she has every right to hold, but which a reader will find implausible and confusing. Any 'why' the reader may have is shied away from by the daughter. I question if Grant was ready to write a true memoir of her experiences. There is a lot of hero worship and no true introspection. Readers wanting a peek inside the gates, a reinforcement of the Grant image will be satisfied with Good Stuff. Readers wanting a true memoir balancing adult understanding with childhood impressions will come away thinking less of both Grants than they did at the start of the book.

The Grants adored each other and adored their privacy. I am not sure what purpose Good Stuff serves. It may have helped Grant to write it, it may be useful to children of much older parents who wish to compare experiences, perhaps it will be treasured by Grant's son Cary, but Good Stuff doesn't offer much to most who would read it.

Review: Homemade Soda by Andrew Schloss

You know how some things once known cannot be unknown? That's how I feel about the ingredients for Cola and various Root Beers. Thinking about drinking Kitchen Bouquet Browning Liquid makes my rejection of commercial soda all the more sincere. I'm a changed woman. (Ok, on vacation I am totally going to relapse. Let's be honest.) Homemade Soda sometimes gave me that feeling you get watching an evening news report on food standards for your child's chicken nugget versus Fido's pet food.

Sure, it's called 7-Root Beer, but actual roots? Carrots and parsnips and licorice? I think I'll go back to Grapefruit Soda, it tastes like a Fresca without the artificial kick in the finish. Strawberry Pineapple Soda is ridiculously easy to make the syrup for. Homemade Soda has the right combination of accessible and outrageous. I like a cookbook that blends things I can make tonight with things I'll never make but tell myself I'll try next weekend, or maybe the one after but certainly by the end of the month...

Graphically, the book is beautiful. The font and layout has a strong early seventies feel which is an emotional heyday for me and soda. Schloss gives clear and careful instructions for a variety of methods, from a simple mix with seltzer to using a siphon or fermenting your own concoctions. I think this is the next foodie craze - can you imagine throwing a party where all the mixers or soft drinks were made in your own kitchen? Go ahead and cater the main course, everyone will still talk about your mad kitchen skills the next day. Especially if you mix up a batch of Blazing Inferno Chile water. Homemade Soda is comprehensive, fun and beautifully designed. I'm going to be using it as a gift book this year, as I continue my crusade against waste by urging everyone to give up commercially bottled beverages.