Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The Forgotten Garden has been compared to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden; even author Kate Morton writes veiled references to it in her book. If you expect that quality of narrative and characters you will be disappointed. However if you are looking for the perfect summer read that will whisper “make a glass of ice tea and take me outside for half an hour” this is the book for you.

The story has a charm that takes one from page to page effortlessly. The lives of Nell, Cassandra and Eliza weave around you as their stories unfold in three different time periods.

Morton also wrote some interesting male characters in Linus and Nathaniel and it is a shame that she didn’t allow them to play a more pivotal role in the story line especially as it drew to an end. Linus in particular would have made the conclusion more affective. Instead the ending was predictable and the last few pages insipid but you are so engaged by that point you suffer through the harlequin style dialogue between Christian and Cassandra. I get the romance but Christian was not crucial to the plot that we have been following for over 500 pages.

A woman’s search to find her real family, fascinating fairy tales and a walled garden at the end of a maze all play a key role in everyone’s lives. Underneath all this is the question “How is home defined?” It is the place where we are born? The house that we return to at the end of the day?  Is it being with family or that certain someone? Will one unexpectedly discover home while travelling?  As the book illustrates we know when we have found home, but we don’t know where or even how it may come into our lives.

Kate Morton talks about her book.

With Your Biscotti & Coffee

1 – An Interesting Woman:  Maria Gunnoe
When you fight a big company, a town and a way of life the danger to one’s self and your family is real. Maria Gunnoe took on the big coal industry in Appalachia. Coal Country Crusade by Tamara Jones/More Magazine  

2 - Nine of the most amazing bookstores in the world  from The Huffington Post

3 - American Theatre Wing
An in depth look at what is playing on and off Broadway and behind the scenes.

When it comes to my choice of television shows this season I seem to be experiencing some symptoms of having a multiple personality.

Love The Good Wife for all the right reasons; from the story lines, the clothes, to its strong female characters and if that isn’t enough I watch just to see how Christine Baranski can punctuate the end of a sentence with her expressive eyebrows.

Stepping back in time I confess to enjoying the very lusty and bloody Spartacus: Blood & Sand. Step aside Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) the Emmy goes to John Hannah as Batiatus. This role takes him from supportive roles to carrying the majority of scenes and story line and he does that exceptionally well. In my defense for having this 18A rated show on my list it was a lusty and bloodied time……….wasn’t it?

Tom Hanks & Steven Spielberg have another classic with The Pacific. Done with the same finesse and attention to every detail as Band of Brothers, this is a great series. When the camera puts you right on the battle field you want to turn away but you cannot because if those young men can face the death and agony so can we.

In between these TV shows I am trying to read AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book; many reviews call it absorbing, I’ll let you know. So far it is a bit hard to get into. I will say that some basic knowledge of Edwardian England and an interest in the same is a prerequisite for reading this book. Thank goodness I have all those Masterpiece Theater shows behind me!

With Your Biscotti & Coffee

This week I am bringing you a film site, a book and some perspective on reality TV.

1) The Auteurs, an online movie theater and gathering place for film lovers

http://www.theauteurs.com/dashboard

2) What’s Right with Reality TV by James Poniewozik

I was first going to skim this article because I thought it would be just about the reality shows but he went deeper; touching on generational and social changes which proved interesting.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1963739,00.html

3) This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson

For all the closet librarians out there or info junkies like me this book looks perfect.

http://www.thisbookisoverdue.com/This_Book_Is_Overdue/Stop_Here_First.html

Check out the Librarian Blogs page.

Recently the New York Times asked “How do you decide to get rid of a book.” The answers from six authors and one book store owner are worth reading if you too are the ‘ I would rather read than have sex, what bestsellers are on sale this week, I want to die in my favorite book store’  kind of person.

Which books we get rid of goes to the root of what type of readers we are. I read fiction and biographies to relax and for the escapism into a different life and someone else’s reality. If I don’t like it I pass it on or take it to the second hand book store. I am not snobbish about my library; hardback, trade paperback or written in the margins from a garage sale if I enjoyed reading it….it stays.

As a business coach business books get rotated quickly as they have to be current. There are of course the classics that all entrepreneurs should read such as: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber or the timeless Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich

The majority of life self-help books are overly clichéd and devoid of any genuine long term life solutions, unless it is exceptionally thorough I don’t buy much of the self-improvement genre. This criterion makes it easy to maintain a manageable selection.

While I have a minimalist attitude when to clutter in general, obviously this doesn’t seen to apply when it comes to books.There are piles in the living room and dining room, my office shelves are full and what does the top of my beautiful antique bedside table look like any way? I’ll just put a basket underneath to catch the spill off and stop it from groaning.

I can definitely relate to Joshua Ferris sentiments in his last line of the NY Times piece “………..I leave and come back, and the books I find there tell me I’m home.”

I must also confess that while I will not read about what famous people are wearing, eating or where they vacation; I am curious about what books they are reading. So Lesley Jane Seymour , Al Gore,  Rahm Emanuel, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Michaëlle Jean, Angela Merkel what are you taking to bed?

Put succinctly I had a love/hate relationship with Julie Powell’s book Julie & Julia.  Unlike some of her critics I do applaud Powell’s leap from the world of blogging into that of a published author. Many of her detractors have made it all about the food but that wasn’t why she embarked on 524 Recipes in 365 days; Jennie Yabroff in her Newsweek article Stop Hating Julie Powell, Please covers this well.

What Ms. Powell did need was someone to remind her that when people stop reading your words for free and start laying down money for your book, you then have an obligation to give them a reasonably professional product and that is where she just doesn’t deliver. Some of her word choices and phrasing were barely at a high school grammar 101 level. Attempts to be avant guard through drawing on sexual encounters (hers and those of her friends), a preoccupation with her own body odors and the ad nauseum descriptions about the grunge and filth of her apartment were imitations of twenty-something writers who had gone before her and who have done it so much better.

When she isn’t trying so hard and returns to the realness of her life the book improves. I enjoyed reading about the bona fide world of Julie Powell. This is also where she stops being a blogger and remembers that she is an author as her prose takes us through the drudgery of her day job, her escalating enthusiasm for cooking, to her growing obsession with completing the project Mastering the Art of French Cooking  and even her feelings for Julia Child.

It was a stark contrast indeed that while reading Julie & Julia I came across a piece of work by Elizabeth McCracken.  After years and years and years of reading it is not often that one can still stumble on an author who really draws you in,  This Does Not Have to Be a Secret from her book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination does just that.

She has a wonderful style that never slips into some of the slickness that so many writers do. She writes about life events and emotions with a refreshing clarity and where I really felt a connection was her sense of humor; the dwarves of grief that she refers to will forever have a place in my imagination  and I will definitely be ordering one of her books for my winter reading

Authors such as Elizabeth McCracken provide a quality source of reading pleasure, and while pop culture figures such as Julie Powell may stretch their 15 minutes of fame into 30; I for one won’t be finding the time to read any more of her books.

For many of us the book that we choose to read at any given time is determined by any number of factors.

It could be seasonal. Summer is the time for the blended and frothy type of book. In the spring and fall I tend to be restless so I like the story to take place somewhere other than North America. Winter is for those big cozy works of historical fiction and memoirs

Then we check our mood, do I need to find myself or lose myself?

Finally, there is the time of day; business books and research are great for day time but by the evening I want something with which to as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot might say “turn off the little grey cells”.

Age doesn’t really enter into the equation; think of the number of adults reading Harry Potter.

So here we are the summer of ‘09. My Amazon book wish list is pages long and I have groaning piles of yet to be read books, newspaper business sections, Time, Vogue, Marie Claire, O and More magazines in the living room, office and bedroom.

I have just finished My Sister’s Keeper which was no great feat; it is to literature what The Young and the Restless is to PBS. I will say though that the ending was unexpected. Next on my pureed summer book diet is Julie & Julia which led me to Julie Powell’s blog What Could Happen.

In the way of a little brain fiber I am reading three business books that have been recommended to me -

“Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing” Peter Gloor

“Tribes” Seth Godin

“Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work”
Marilee G. Adams Ph.D.

I cannot end this post on books without mentioning the one literary genre for all seasons and that is a good murder mystery. This past week coincidentally I was exchanging emails with mystery writer Roberta Isleib, who is currently on the other end of  the equation in that she is spending her summer putting the finishing touches on a new book.

No matter what the month is, all that you need to truly enjoy a mystery is a comfortable chair, no one home, a dark night, some fog rolling in, the sound of dogs howling over the moors ……………

It is difficult these days not to see Elizabeth Edwards when we turn on the television. The interviewer is  reading an excerpt from her book “Resilience” with that tone of voice reserved for the sick person in hospital, asking gently worded questions and providing the viewer with a soapy interview.

I know she is the victim of an extra marital affair and I know that she is ill with breast cancer. I cannot nor do not judge how she handles these things. In these matters my affiliation is firmly with the ‘what goes on behind closed doors’ party.

What is perturbing is why she supported and campaigned for John Edwards to be President of the United States after he told her about the affair. Why, in spite of this knowledge did she sally forth, endorsing her husband as the right man for the job. Why did she cast herself as the loyal wife in the tableau of the wholesome American family?

By making the decision to submit herself and her family to this renewed public scrutiny, she should be accountable for that period in time. As Roger Simons asks in his article “Did Elizabeth Edwards want to get into the White House as badly as John Edwards did?”

I counter that with this question “Is Elizabeth Edwards again using the American public this time to garner book sales?”

Caryl Rivers in her Huffington Post article writes that she should be allowed to tell her story, to “have her say”. Funny that she has so much to say now but the truth was oddly silent during the ‘08 Presidential campaign.

We read to know that we are not alone – C.S. Lewis

Like many I was slightly put off by the title “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” . I decided to buy the book anyway (it was on sale) and from the first page I was captivated. For me it blended all the right ingredients; an interesting time in history, fascinating characters and a well paced story line.

I have noticed that other reviews whether they like the book or not, make little mention of the galvanizing event in the book and that was the occupation of Guernsey by the Germans and what life was subsequently like for the island’s occupants. Even Juliet the main character would have seemed amiss in any world other than the post-war England of 1946. The correspondence that she sets in motion could take you from charmed to horrified in the matter of a few sentences. There is nothing sensationalizing about how this is done and that is what makes the book a fascinating read.

I will echo some reviews in saying that it had the bones of a modern day classic but there were some weak areas in the second half that took it back into the ordinary. I have recently learnt that Mary Ann Shaffer died in February of 2008. Whether the introduction of the second author, Annie Barrows or Mary Ann’s health had something to do with the shift in the writing style I could not say.

The book does not rely on grandiose scenes or bombastic characters (except for Mark who does embody the impatience of the social changes to come)  and that is why Hollywood should never touch it.  I do see a Masterpiece Theatre style of production; one that would do justice to the book’s core elements of healing, the beauty of individuality and the allure of the unpretentious.

NB: While we are speaking of television productions that do credit to the original books be sure to catch HBO’s #1 Ladies Detective Agency based on Alexander McCall Smith’s books.

It all started when I decided that each month this year, I would put up a photograph of a different city on the home page of TimeFinders Online Magazine.  January’s edition featured New York. Then HARO (Help A Reporter Out) wrote about  Nightshift NYC (book~blog~events). A fascinating look at a city that never sleeps and the people who work from sunset to sunrise.

Unlimited Magazine has an excerpt from the book and what seems for many of us a down the rabbit hole lifestyle. Until I read that I had never really thought about how hard it must be to function in a world that predominately revolves around a 9-5 way of life.