Sunday Salon: Seven things you probably didn’t know about V

I’m having the kind of week where I feel like I don’t have anything to say so there’s been a lack of posts. Instead of telling you what I’m reading, or thinking about reading, or books that I’m thinking about buying, I decided I would rather just write about something else.

1. I have a girl-crush on Kit from Books are my Boyfriends. If you haven’t started following BAMB, you definitely need to. She is one the funniest bloggers around. I can count on her to give me a migraine from laughing so hard after almost every post that she writes. If you don’t believe me, read this hilarious review of Moondogsthat Kit wrote.
2. I can’t imagine myself living anywhere else but in Southern California but I love fall and winter with a passion. I would love it if it rained nine months out of the year instead of the two-three months of rain we barely get. I don’t have a sinus problem or anything, but there’s nothing better than a winter meal when it’s cold and rainy outside. If I could I would wear a sweater and my Uggs every day.
3. I will be a jeans-tshirt-sneakers-girl until the day I die. I love love love fashion so I follow blogs like The Sartorialist and Simply Lovely since I’m on a single mother/college student budget. When it’s too cold to wear jeans and a t-shirt, you would probably find me in a sweater and boots.
4. Being insanely interested in everything around me makes it really hard to figure out what my purpose in life is (besides being a mother).
5. As a teenager, I dreamt of being the next John Steinbeck. But you know, female and black.
6. I had hair down to the middle of my back as a teenager but cut it all off so guys would quit giving me attention. It worked. I’ve been wearing my hair super short (probably just an inch long) for the past decade. I would love to have long hair again but I’m too lazy to let it grow out.
7. I don’t know how to drive (yet). I’m 28, live in a place that can probably be called Freeway Country but I still don’t drive. I’m hoping to change that this summer.

So that’s seven things you probably did know about me. Feel free to tell me something about you that I don’t know.

It’s Monday. What are you reading?

It’s Monday. What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila over at Book Journey.  Every week bloggers share the books they’ve read the week before and what they plan on reading this week.

Last week  I read:

• The Chicken Thief by Beatrice Rodriguez
• Akata Witch by Nnede Okorafor
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe (Vol. 5) by Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (Vol. 6) by Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems by Billy Collins

I think my favorite book of the week was Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe. I started reading the series a little more than a week ago and finished it within days. It’s a great series that’s full of laughs.  This week I have a ton of books to read because I have several that need to be returned to the library next week. Luckily I have plenty of time to read them all. Here’s this week’s stack:

• Sugar in My Bowl: Real women write about real sex edited by Erica Jong (ARC)
• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (ARC)
• Neil Flambé and the Marco Polo Murders by Kevin Sylvester. I rarely read mysteries but once I saw the cover of this, I couldn’t pass it up.
• Exclusive Love: A Memoir by Johanna Adorján
• Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos
• The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
• The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans
• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (read-along)

That’s nine books in nine days. It’s a lot but I think it’s doable if I restrict my online time. We’ll see how it goes. What are you reading this week?

Sunday Salon: Mini-reviews: Stitches, Horoscopes for the Dead, and The Violets of March

I have a confession to make: I read faster than I review. So I have a stack of books sitting on my desk, just waiting to be reviewed. I rather read than write so I’m posting mini-reviews to assuage some of the blogger guilt that I’m feeling.

Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems

Billy Collins

128 pages

April 5, 2011

Publisher: Random House

Source: Library

I picked up Horoscopes for the Dead for several reasons: a) I’m a judge in the poetry selection of the Indie Lit Awards, b) I enjoy poetry, and c) who can ever get enough of Billy Collins? Sadly this newest volume disappoints. Though several of the poems featured are memorable, many weren’t. I even skimmed a few towards the end. I don’t expect every poem Collins writes to be another “Litany” or “Forgetfulness” but damn; I don’t expect every poem he writes to be published either. If you’re someone who doesn’t read poetry often, I would say this book may not be for you though it’s still accessible. If you’re a fan of Collins (I still am), I think you could still enjoy the gems this volume holds. One of my favorite poems in Horoscopes for the Dead was Feedback:

The woman who wrote from Phoenix

after my reading there

to tell me they were still talking about it

just wrote again

to tell me that they had stopped.

The Violets of March

Sarah Jio

304 pages

April 26, 2011

Publisher: Penguin

Source: Publisher

I read The Violets of March last month and I’m still at a loss of what to say about it. The gist: I loved it. The main character is Emily, a writer whose life is a mess: her last book sold millions and now she has a chronic case of writer’s block plus she’s getting a divorce. On a whim, she decides to visit her great-aunt on Bainbridge Island in Washington. While there she discovers a sixty-year-old diary of a woman named Esther whose own life at the time of the diary’s writing was getting even messier than Emily’s by the minute. Emily has no idea who Esther is or what happens to her. The result is a mystery that twists and turns, leaving the reader guessing all the way until the end. I didn’t want this book to end. If you’re looking for a great read this summer, you can’t go wrong with The Violets of March.

Stitches: A Memoir

David Small

329 pages

September 8, 2009

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.

Source: Personal Library

I have a tug-of-war relationship with this book. I bought when it was first published in 2009 because the author happens to be one of my favorite children’s book illustrators. I devoured this graphic memoir of Small’s childhood in 1950s Detroit. The author’s father was a radiologist, his mother a stay-at-home mom. His family was a family of silence and secrets. David and his brother had no idea what their parents were ever thinking. The author was a sickly child at a time when the medical profession thought that radiation could cure sinus problems. As a teenager David ended up with a huge cancerous mass on his vocal cords and the resulting surgery rendered him speechless for years. David was an outsider in a family filled with outsiders who acted as though they fit in with the world around them.

So the tug-of-war relationship with this book started the first time I read it. There was so much hype around this book that I had huge expectations and the book disappointed a little. After the first reading I gave this book to my library and ended up buying it back from them because I couldn’t bear for someone else to buy it. What? Yes, I know. It sounds weird but that’s the truth. I read Stitches again for the third time earlier this month and I’ve come to see how good this memoir is. Small’s black-and-white drawings are sparse but powerful. The drawings and words come together to convey this perfect story about childhood and loss, psychological damage and family dysfunction. It’s a pretty perfect graphic novel.

The book trailer of Stitches

Summer reading and looking ahead

Summer is almost here by Leland

Yesterday was the last day of the semester and I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I love the excitement of a new semester with teachers that I usually haven’t had before on classes that I’ve been waiting to take. But the end of a semester brings its own share of excitement: the stacks of books that I can read without interruptions.  For the next four weeks I can read as much as I want while the kids are still in school. After that I can still read a lot but not as much since the kids will be home with me most of the summer.  So I feel a little (just a little) pressure to make every second of this time count.

Last night I started reading Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write about Real Sex edited by Erica Jong (June 2011). It’s a collection of essays , short stories, and even a comic from a variety of writers and artists about sex and love and everything that comes along with it. Note: This is not romance. Romance is talked about in the book but don’t think of romance novels or anything of the sort when you think about Sugar in My Bowl. Some of the authors featured in the collection include Rebecca Walker, Eve Ensler, and Julie Klam.  So far the writing is smart and funny. I love Jong’s introduction and how she admitted that most of the authors featured wouldn’t agree to be a part of the collection until their partners said yes. It made me think: would a male writer asked his partner if it was okay to be in a collection about sex?

Review copies

I’m also reading The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey. The novel is about an English couple who have spent decades in Trinidad and their marriage in the midst of the country’s political unrest. It appeared on the Orange Prize for Fiction’s longlist along with Rosie Allison’s The Very Thought of You (July 2011). The Very Thought of You has been on my reading list since the beginning of the year when  Jill from The Magic Lasso shared an article about the book. Set during WWII the book is about a young girl, Anna, who’s  sent to the Yorkshire countryside to live with a childless couple. Anna ends up being a witness to an affair and the consequences of it. The book has received mixed reviews but I can’t wait to read it. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt is a book that I’ve read only positive things about. I don’t read westerns but if this book is half as good as the hype surrounding it and the cover, I know that I’m going to enjoy it.

From my tbr shelves and lists

I love reading stories by and about women so I’m looking forward to The Secret Lives of Bab Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin, Tillie Olsen’s classic short story collection Tell Me a Riddle, and The Girl who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow.

Read-alongs

Have you noticed that some of the best read-alongs are hosted during the summer?Allie over at A Literary Odyssey is hosting a read-along of The Iliad while the lovely Belleza is asking others to join her as she reads Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad that starts May 23rd, which is just a few days away. Atwood is an author that I’m pretty intimdated to read so I think The Penelopiad would be a great start. Of course there’s also my read-along  of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns which will be going on throughout June. There’s also the Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston) read-along over at Feminist Classics. It seems like this is a book that everyone read in high school – except me. I plan on changing that.

And last but not least, what would a summer be like without re-reading a few favorite books? I first read Beloved by Toni Morrisonduring last year’s Christmas break and it was easily the best book of 2010. I can’t wait to read it all over again along with American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I plan on giving it a dual reading once again: in print and audio. Every time I even think about this book, I wonder if I should change my major back to anthropology.

So that’s a few books that I’m looking forward to reading over my summer break. What books are you looking forward to tackling this summer?

Review: Book Lust To Go by Nancy Pearl

Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers

Nancy Pearl

301 pages

Pub Year: 2010

Publisher: Sasquatch Books

Source: Library

I am not an enthusiastic traveler. Let me lay my cards on the table, clear the air, call a spade a spade, and make something perfectly clear. I am barely a traveler at all. . . 

After reading the first two books in Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust series, I have to say that Book Lust  to Go is a great addition. I picked this book up because I’m trying to move out of my reading comfort zone and would love some recommendations. I have a tendency to mostly read books set in the United States and written in English. I want to read more books translated from other languages, books written by authors of color, and/or set in someplace other than the United States. So far this year I’m doing pretty well with my goal but there’s always room for improvement.

In Book Lust to Go Pearl breaks down her recommendations by countries, American cities, and even modes of traveling. This is a great way to skim some sections, read deeper into others, or just go straight to the country you’re interested in reading more about.

I found books that other bloggers have already recommended to me like Mischa Berlinki’s Fieldwork, books that I was already aware of like the graphic novel The Photographer by Emmanuel Guibert, and books I didn’t know existed like Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame. Pearl includes books of most genres so now matter what your reading tastes are like, you should be able to find something that you want to read. The great thing about this book is that there’s an index in the back of authors’ names, titles, and countries. The bad thing about this book is that you’ll probably end up adding one hundred titles, if not more, to your tbr list.  When I finished reading this book, here’s what it looked like:

I ran out of post-its! This book was due back at my library days ago but I have so many titles to write down, that I’m late returning it. So if you want to expand your tbr list, you can’t go wrong reading any of the books in the Book Lust series. Highly recommended.

Review: House Arrest by Ellen Meeropol

House Arrest

Ellen Meeropol

201 pages

Pub. Date: Feb. 1, 2011

Publisher: Red Hen Press

Source: Library

I tried to get out of the assignment. Prenatal visits to a prisoner? Okay, house arrest, same difference. I couldn’t believe that I was supposed to take care of a woman whose child died in a cult ritual. What kind of mother could get so involved in an oddball religion that she’d let her baby freeze to death? And what kind of name was Pippa?

Don’t get me wrong. Every patient deserves expert and compassionate care. Even the most despicable criminal. I learned that in nursing school and I believe it, really. Still, this assignment gave me the creeps.

Emily Klein is a home-care nurse assigned to Pippa Glenning, a twenty-something woman who belongs to a cult that worships the Egyptian goddess Isis.  Pippa’s on house arrest while other members are in jail after her daughter and another toddler die during a worship ceremony. At first it seems like the two women are so different but in fact Emily and Pippa are very alike- running away from their past in hopes of never having to face it. Though the two are strangers to each other Pippa is hoping that Emily will help her escape for a few hours to be a part of the next Solstice ceremony. There’s a lot at stake for Emily if she helps – the loss of her nursing license, her job, family, and the chance of possible prison time. But for some unknown reason, Emily is considering helping Pippa.

At just over 200 pages Meeropol packs a lot into this story of two women. There’s the Klan that haunts Pippa’s childhood, the activist parents of Emily’s past that almost killed a man, the politics behind Pippa’s house arrest and the way the local government deals with the crimes against this cult, a niece with spina bifida and much more. With so much going on in the story you think there would be times that the story would become overdramatic. Instead readers get this absorbing story told in a plain straightforward way.

One of my complaints about this story deals with the main character, Emily. As a child her father was sent to prison for burning down a building. Unknowingly there was a janitor inside who was badly burned and almost lost his life. Emily’s mother was the mastermind behind it but her husband took the full blame. Years later both die – one from guilt and the other from the prison’s lack of medical care. On the island that Emily grew up on, she was an outcast. There weren’t many people-children and adult alike-who would let her forget that her father was in prison. Fast forward to the present and Emily was this woman who could be so immature and naive at times.  When her grandfather dies and she needs to go back to the island of her childhood, she’s pouting almost the whole time. This doesn’t seem like the same woman who’s willing to help someone break the law. When she finally makes her decision on whether or not to help Pippa break the law, I couldn’t figure out what helped her to make her decision.

Even with its faults, I think this is a book I would recommend to others. If you have a few free hours and looking for quick but absorbing read, you couldn’t go wrong with House Arrest.

Sunday Salon: Happy Mother’s Day

Now That I Am Forever with Child

How the days went

while you were blooming within me

I remember each upon each-

the swelling changed planes of my body

and how you first fluttered, then jumped

and I thought it was my heart.

How the days wound down

and the turning of winter

I recall, with you growing heavy

against the wind. I thought

now her hands

are formed, and her hair

has started to curl

now he teeth are done

now she sneezes.

Then the seed opened

I bore you one morning just before spring.

My head rang like a fiery piston

my legs were towers between which

A new world was passing.

Since then

I can only distinguish

one thread within running hours

You, flowing through selves

toward You.

Audre Lorde

Weekend Cooking: The Library Loot Edition

Today I’m combining two of my favorite memes together: Weekend Cooking and Library Loot to share a few cooking-related books that I recently checked out from the library. Both books were on the “new books” shelf at the library and I hurried to grab them just in case someone else decided to!

Crazy about Cookies

Krystina Castella

Sterling Publishing

304 pages

Don’t you just love this cover! My daughter and I have been going back and forth searching through the book’s 300 recipes to figure out which cookie to make first. I’m torn between the Sugar-Free Carob Oatmeal Clusters or Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies while my daughter is thinking about Explosion Cookies which are cookies that look like comic book captions. If you ever see this book at your library or bookstore, at the very least just glance through it. The pictures are beautiful.

Ugly Pie

Written by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by Heather Solomon

Harcourt Children’s Books

32 pages

I love picture books that feature food and Ugly Pie is no exception. Ol’ Bear has a craving for ugly pie but has only one ingredient. So he goes around his neighborhood to see has anyone else made the pie that he’s craving. When he sees that his neighbor has made everything but ugly pie, Ol’ Bear knows it’s time to make it himself. It’s a really cute book. The bonus is that it includes the recipe for ugly pie which is an apple pie with red raisins and walnuts. My family doesn’t really eat pie but I’m still going to give the recipe a try.

Have you read any food-related books lately? What does your library loot look like?

Announcing. . . a summer read-along

A few weeks ago after reading how Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, Doret (The Happy Nappy Bookseller) and I decided that it was time to host a read-along for this sweeping work of non-fiction.

The publisher’s description:

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land.

The book has also been named New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year, won the Indie Lit Awards non-fiction award, and the National Book Critics Award for non-fiction.

Since The Warmth of Other Suns is more than 600 pages long, we decided that we’ll host the read-along in the summer. The book is huge but unlike most non-fiction it reads like a novel.

The schedule:

• The read-along starts Wednesday, June 1^st
• Halfway-mark post on Wednesday, June 15^th
• Wrap-up on Thursday, June 30^th

So what do you think? Would you like to join us for this summer read-along? If you’re in, let me know in the comments below.

Sunday Salon: The Best of April

Today is the start of a new month and sadly the last day of spring break for me. This past week has been so relaxing. I read as much as I wanted without worrying (or even thinking) about homework. It was such a change in my usual schedule that I think I’m going to try my best to keep up the same speed.

In April I read a total of forty-three books, mostly children’s books and graphic novels. Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston stood out among the pile of books that I read. I definitely need to re-read it before I could even think about writing out my thoughts. Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin is a book I raved about over and over again this month. I’m happy to hear that several bloggers have added it to their tbr list or decided to buy it. Stephanie Perkins’s YA hit Anna and the French Kiss about a young teenage girl’s year away from home in French was such a great read. The main character was smart, funny and just a great character.  Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones won’t be in bookstores until the end of this month but it’s a book I’m recommending now after reading it a few weeks ago. It’s the story of John Witherspoon, a man married to two women. The second family is a secret to almost everyone who knows John. Told from the perspective of his “secret” daughter, it’s a wonderful but shocking story about everyday people, family secrets, and the real meaning of love.

For May I would love to read more off of my tbr pile since every book that I loved last month came from there. This is my last month of school until the end of June and I am excited!  I’m trying to do as much of my work as fast as I can to get it all over with. Summer vacation can’t get here soon enough!

Now I’m off to curl up with a cup of coffee and one of the many books on my nightstand. What are you reading today? Was there any books that you read in April that stood out from the rest?