Sunday Salon: Where I Went This Week

This was not a big reading week for me, as I spent most of it out in the woods. I attended a writing workshop at the North Cascades Institute this week, and spent most of it on the Institutes's campus in North Cascades National Park. I'm not sure my words will adequately convey how sublime the scenery is, so I've posted some pictures below. Suffice to say, it was beautiful. The Institute is located in the Cascades, on Diablo Lake. I was surrounded by mountains, trees, and the most amazing lake I've ever seen. The lake's water is a deep, intense turquoise, created, I'm told, by an organism that grows in glacial water. I'm not really the outdoorsy type, but I'm thrilled I got to see the lake and spend some time there. I'm also glad to be home in the comfort of my own bed.

Travel aside, this week I finished a new ARC that I just received: Something Like Beautiful by asha bandele. The book is bandele's memoir of family and depression. It tells the story of how she overcame depression in prose that's beautiful and straightforward at the same time. My review will follow on here, but given that the book isn't going to be published until February 2009, I may write it and hold on to it for awhile.

And now, what's everyone's been anticipating, here are more pictures:

Review: The Lost Continent

Bill Bryson created a name for himself as a travel writer with Notes from a Small Island, his tale of road travel around England. In The Lost Continent Bryson does the same for the United States as he did for England. Notes from a Small Island: part humor, part travelogue, narrates Bryson's road trip across the United States and back again. Reminiscing about the automobile vacations of his youth, Bryson gets in his car and drives in search of small-town America. Bryson's trip lacks strict itinerary, and with frequent stops in small towns across the country, it is certainly a meandering trip. The narrative is written in classic Bryson style, with frequent diversions to explain the origin of many of life's oddities, and with constant sideline commentary. As is usually the case with Bryson, the narrative is illuminating, amusing, and shows Bryson's sense of adventure. It was a pleasure to read. Yes, Bryson is frequently critical, but it's important to note that he's an equal-opportunity offender. Wherever he goes he brings his decidedly sarcastic wit, but he also balances criticism with admiration. This is not a book with a weighty message about humanity or morality, but it is a fun read to pick up and put down at leisure. The ability to dive in and out is one of the beautiful things about this book; one can enjoy it and put it aside at will, and it takes little time to become reengaged in Bryson's prose.

Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Harper Perennial, 1990) ISBN: 0060920084

Review: Wife in the North

I was lucky enough to get this book from Librarything's early reviewer program, and I'm thrilled I did. This book is journalist Judith O'Reilly's account of her family's move from London to the Northumberland countryside. A devoted city girl, O'Reilly is married to a Northumberland man who dreams of going back, so she decided to grant his wish; she agreed to move north for two years. But for O'Reilly life in the north is hardly a dream. She misses her London life, lacks close friends in her new home, and finds that everything, from her neighbors's dress to local pastimes is a world apart from what she knew in London. Culture-shocked, O'Reilly begins writing a blog about her experiences. Those blog entries comprise this book. I'd never read a book comprised of blog entries, but I found that the format worked surprisingly well. Blog entries give the reader a sense that he or she is jumping into the middle of someone else's life, much more so than just about any other format could. And the reader does get a sense of the ins and outs of O'Reilly's life. We read about her relationship with her husband, her son's troubles at school, and O'Reilly's deepest fears about being a good parent. Lest this sound like too much of a downer, I assure you it is not. O'Reilly is humorous, and she's willing to bare her soul on her blog in a pleasantly self-deprecating fashion. Her story is interesting, and I couldn't wait to get to the end to see what they would decide to do at the end of two years (she won't tell you until the epilogue!) Ultimately, this book combines some of the best features of the memoir and the travel narrative, as O'Reilly clearly approaches Northumberland as an outsider, and it's interesting to see how she interprets her experience through the lens of place. The book offers an intimate picture of a family and a marriage, and shows the ways in which people define home. When I got to the epilogue the final decision was what I had anticipated, and it's interesting that O'Reilly's words illustrate the direction the family is headed, even if she could not see so at the time she was writing the blog. Overall, a very enjoyable read.

Judith O'Reilly, Wife in the North, (Public Affairs, 2008) ISBN: 158648639X

Sunday Salon: The Challenge Bug

I have recently discovered the joy of reading challenges, and I've discovered that there are many, many more of them in the book blogger community than I'd ever thought. It all started with me signing up for a few reading challenges on Librarything. I started with the 50 Book Challenge: read fifty books in a calender year. The 50 book challenge was my gateway drug. I then joined the 888 Challenge: read eight books in each of eight categories. This was quickly followed by the Dewey Decimal Challenge and its cousin, the Library of Congress Classification challenge. These are more long-term projects that involve reading something from each number of the Dewey Decimal System, and each category in the LC catalog. As I've gotten more into blogging and visiting other people's blogs, I've discovered that there are loads of reading challenges out there. I've decided to join several more. This week I joined the RIP III challenge, hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings. This is the perfect seasonal challenge. It involves reading a certain number (you choose, 1, 2, or 4) of scary books between now and Halloween. I've joined the Book around the States Challenge, reading a book set in each state of the union plus DC. I've also got myself in line to join The Second Canadian Book Challenge: read thirteen books by Canadian authors by next July. I've also just discovered and plan to join up with 342,745 Ways to Herd Cats. This challenge requires every participant to compile a list of ten books they love. These lists are compiled into one giant reading list and every participant then reads four books that are new to them. There's a great long and eclectic list from which to choose. I've got several more challenges in the hopper too. I'd join all of them today, except I need to blog about each of them and five posts in a day by yours truly is a little bit much. You'll see much more blogging about reading challenges in the coming weeks. So, how about you? Are you involved in reading challenges? Which are your favorites? Want to pimp a challenge you're hosting? That's cool too; I'm always looking for new ones!

My Challenges: RIP III

Another challenge I've just joined is the Halloween-spirited RIP challenge, that's Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge to you. This challenge focuses on mysterious, scary, gloomy, suspense ridden books: pretty much everything that speaks to the tenor of the Halloween season. There are several different versions, depending on how many books one wants to read. I've chosen Peril the First, in which I'll read four spooky books between now and Halloween.

Part of the fun of this challenge is putting together the list of potential reads. Every participant decides on a pool of books from which he or she will draw. Links to all of the pools are posted on the challenge website.

I've more or less put my pool together, here it is:

Jess Walter- The Zero

Carol Goodman- The Drowning Tree

Carol Goodman- The Lake of Dead Languages

Joyce Carol Oates- Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque

Joyce Carol Oates- Wild Nights!

Joyce Carol Oates- Bellefleur

Joyce Carol Oates- The Female of the Species

Peter Straub- The Hellfire Club

Patrick Suskind- Perfume

Ruth Rendell- The Crocodile Bird

Ruth Rendell- Vanity Dies Hard

Pam Lewis- Speak Softly, She Can Hear

Karen Novak- Five Mile House

Christine Wicker- Lily Dale

Marilyn Johnson- The Dead Beat

Agatha Christie- Peril at End House

Agatha Christie- Curtain

Agatha Christie- The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Agatha Christie- And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie- Easy to Kill

Agatha Christie- The Murder at Hazelmoor

Agatha Christie- Evil under the Sun

Patrick McGrath- Asylum

Frank De Felitta- Audrey Rose

So, a combination of fiction and non-fiction, everything from murder mysteries, to psychological horror, to non-fiction books about morbid topics- like a town that talks to the dead. I'm deliciously excited. I could have added more to the list, but decided that this was more than enough- I do only have to pick four, after all.

Interested in joining this challenge? Just click on any of the challenge images, and they'll take you there. Just looking for some great seasonal reads? Click on the pictures- you'll find the list of pools. There's loads of choices. And many thanks to Carl, who's hosting the challenge and made these kick-butt icons.

Review: The Insomniac's Best Friend

Being an insomnia sufferer, I've been intrigued by this book ever since I saw it in the UK. It was the cover, and its clever drawing, that first attracted me. Having now acquired and read a copy of the book (mostly in the wee hours of the morning when I can't sleep) I have to say I've been disappointed. Brown has set out to write a book that tries to be many things: a memoir, a catalog of remedies, a discussion of theories of sleeplessness. As so often happens in these cases, the book doesn't really manage to do any of the above tremendously well. It provides a little of all of the above, but most remain unsatisfying. Brown herself is an insomnia sufferer, and thus, she speaks from experience. She is not afraid to give her personal evaluation of products and methods, noting what worked for her and what did not, but she is also always careful to note that what worked for her is not necessarily going to be the best for others. That said, it is important to recognize that Brown's approach is decidedly pro-complementary therapies, and she has little use for sleeping pills. Introducing the reader to new complementary therapies that he or she might not have yet considered is likely the book's most significant contribution, and Brown has taken great care to provide a comprehensive appendix of remedies, specialists, and resources for insomniacs. What I found most difficult to accept about this book, however, is that one of Brown's main contentions is that one of the best things an insomniac can do is to release their anxiety about not sleeping. To a point, that is certainly correct. It's hard to sleep when one is anxious about not sleeping. But Brown seems to take this notion a step further, suggesting that if people give themselves permission to not try to live up to an 8 hours/night standard, this will help alleviate much of their mental anguish. But insomniacs aren't upset or anxious about not sleeping because they're not living up to a stated ideal. Rather, people know just how miserable they'll be the next day if they don't get a certain amount of sleep, and giving oneself permission to not sleep is not going to help that. In sum, people who are looking for new alternative and non-Western approaches to dealing with insomnia will find a good catalogue of remedies here. Those who want to consider drug therapies along with complementary treatments may be better served elsewhere.

Lynda Brown, The Insomniac's Best Friend (Thorsons, 2004) ISBN: 0007163851

My Challenges

Reading challenges are a significant and fun part of the book world, and the book blogger world in particular. I've managed to enroll myself in a series of challenges since getting more involved in the book talk world, and I'm going to highlight some of them over the next couple of weeks. Today I'm starting with my very first challenge, the one that got me interested in reading challenges generally. That's the 50 Book Challenge that I found on Librarything. The principle is very simple: read fifty books over the course of a year. I started with it last year, and I was unsuccessful. It seems strange to me know, but I didn't have a whole lot of reading time last year. This year I'm doing much better. I'm up to thirty-five books thus far, so I should surely make it. Other people are doing larger challenges: 75 or 100 books, but I'll aim for fifty first. If I reach that goal this year, I may go for more.


In honor of that challenge, today I'm reviewing one of the books I read for that challenge: Floating in My Mother's Palm by Ursula Hegi.

This is a short novel that in many ways reads more like a collection of essays. It's a series of short vignettes about the people who live in a small German town in the 1950s. The narrator is a teenage girl, born just after WWII, and much of the novel deals with the consequences of war for the various townspeople. This is a town populated by a truly eclectic cast of characters. Hegi does an excellent job of delving deep into and developing each of her characters and their relationships to one another. This is the same town that was the focus of Hegi's novel Stones from the River, which is set in the same town in the interwar period and WWII. Some of the characters appear also in Stones, some do not, and they don't necessarily occupy the same places in each book. Trudi Montag, the central character in Stones from the River is far less sympathetic and far less interesting in this book; here she appears to be little more than the town gossip. From publication dates it appears that Hegi wrote this book before she wrote Stones from the River, though I read them in the opposite order. The characters and life of the town are far more fully developed in Stones, though character development is still clearly Hegi's forte, even in this book. For those interested in Hegi's work, I recommend reading Stones first. Had I not had the background I did from Stones, I think I would have found this book less interesting.

Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River (Vintage, 1990) ISBN: 0679731156