A Good American: a book review

I wanted A Good American by Alex George to be a good book. I really did. 

I wanted beautifully stark prose ala Willa Cather's My Antonia, which I use as my standard for novels set in the Midwest. I wanted funny, yet truthful, glimpses into the intricacies of everyday life (like L.M. Montgomery does so well in her Anne books) of a German immigrant family in Missouri. I wanted a novel that held its own among other recent historical fiction releases such as The Help or The Chaperone.

You can't always get what you want. 

The story holds incredible potential. George tackles an epic story of a German couple, Frederick and Jette Meisenheimer, forced to leave Hanover after Jette's parents disapprove of their relationship.  They take the first boat to America, which lands them in New Orleans. From there, they head north to Missouri where they fall in with a German immigrant community. The book follows the story of Meisenheimers for three generations, documenting numerous tragedies, a bit of everyday life, and the changing times. 

George is an attorney by trade, and he breaks the very first rule of fiction writing - show, don't tell - over and over again. He overuses narration and skimps on dialogue.The most important scenes are summarized rather than shown. The result is cardboard cutouts of characters. George is so busy telling you what the characters are like, that the reader never gets a chance to form a personal connection with them.  

For all the people that George thanks in the acknowledgement section of the book for helping him with the novel, it seems like at one of those early readers could have casually suggested that George try writing the book using active voice rather than dull, dull, dull passive voice, thus saving him from the introverted wrath of English majors the world over. I knew I might be in semantic hell with this book as soon as I read this sentence on the book's inside flap: "It’s where his German grandparents—Frederick and Jette—found themselves after journeying across the turbulent Atlantic, fording the flood-swollen Mississippi, and being brought to a sudden halt by the broken water of the pregnant Jette." Couldn't we just say "Jette's water broke?"    
 
I know I'm all down on the prose of this book, but really, the book is quite readable and probably even more readable if you don't give a fig about sentence structure. It's an interesting story, poorly told. There's just no sparkle in George's storytelling, nothing that allows the story to leap off the pages into your own imagination. Unfortunately,  A Good American missed the long, hard edits it needed to make it a stand out piece of Americana literature.  

You can find more information and join the discussions about A Good American over at the BlogHer Book Club.

 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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The Willpower Instinct: a book review

I've always thought that I have a fair amount of willpower. And according to Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct, that probably means I don't have much.

Although I'm a non-addict and my struggles with weight have been few (and totally limited to a couple porky semesters early on in college), I really should exercise more, I have a terrible time getting up when I want to in the morning, I have a love affair with marshmallows, and we all know about my best frenemy - procrastination.

But then, who doesn't have a good handful of personal willpower challenges?

McGonigal knows that willpower challenges plague all of us. That's why a couple years back, she started teaching course on willpower as part of Stanford's Continuing Studies program. The course was a smash hit and this book picks up its cues from the course . . . i.e, McGonigal teaches her course over 10 weeks; the book is divided into 10 chapters.

And how lucky we all are to be able to take the course, even if we're thousands of miles away from McGonigal's lecture hall. This book gathers together the many scientific studies about willpower and presents their findings in an interesting and conversational manner that makes clear what these studies tell us about the decisions we make every day. McGonigal's conversational tone can almost trick you into thinking she's talking only to you and she possesses a wicked sense of humor.

While the book is labeled as a self-help book, you won't find any big claims or even definite answers in this book. Instead, McGonigal points to proven ways that people can increase their willpower (hint: think exercise, yoga, and taking time to truly relax). She goes to great lengths to explain the inner workings of our brain and how instincts picked up back in our hunter gather days continually undermine our own logic today. (Come on evolution, keep up!)

I really enjoyed this book. It's funny, honest, and fascinating. In the pages of The Willpower Instinct I found permission to let go of some the guilt I hold when I don't live up to my own expectations (turns out that guilt just makes it harder for me to succeed the next go-round) and also learned how to pay better attention to the thoughts that run through my mind before I opt for an instant reward rather instead of continuing to strive towards a long term goal. If you've ever wondered why your mind can often be your own worst enemy, this book's a fast read that's well worth the time. 

You can find more information and discussions about The Willpower Instinct over at the BlogHer book club.

 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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My Life Map: a book review

As a rule, I'm not really sure self-help books are meant for Midwesterners.Yeah, we have doubts and worries and anxieties about life and our role in it during our brief time in this world just like every other person on this planet, but why on Earth would we want to talk, or even think about such things? That seems awfully personal, awfully emotional and maybe even a little selfish. We forge our way through life armed with independence, an emotional hardhat and adherence to the motto: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Around here we believe in hard work, not naval gazing.

So when a copy of Kate and David Marshall's latest self-help journal, My Life Map: A Journal to Help You Shape Your Future, arrived on my doorstep, I assumed I needed it like a hole in my head. Part of me wondered if the book had arrived at the exact wrong time in my life (since I'd just made a commitment to a new work contract which basically guarantees that things will stay pretty much the same around here for the next two years), while a larger (and more cynical) part of me wondered if this might be a waste of time.


My Life Map engages the reader in a series of introspective questions. The questions are simple, but that doesn't mean they're easy to answer. (I mean, you try to name the top three responsibilities in your present life!)  The reader is then asked to boil their answers down to the most important points and plot those points out on a life map so that your entire life - past, present and future - is laid out in front of you on a single page. The entire book centers on the idea that if you're going to get somewhere in life, you have to know where you're going. 

 The book has a very loose format. It's not designed with the intent that you start out with the first exercise and continue through the journal in a linear fashion until you've completed every single exercise. Instead, Kate and David encourage readers to do any exercises they find helpful, but to skip over any seemingly irrelevant ones. As a result, I did the whole life map exercise, but skipped the 10-year subject map where you're asked to plot out the next ten years of your life in six areas: family, friends, learning, work, service and playing. You don't even have to fill out the pages in the book. If you prefer to do the exercises on your computer, you can download a toolkit from the Marshalls' website with all the forms you'll need to complete the book's exercises.

Despite my initial apprehension, I was surprised by how challenging I found the exercise questions and how helpful it was to have my hopes and goals for the future lined up next to my past and present accomplishments so that I could identify trends in my own life (and personality) and have a better idea of how the future might actually play out. If you need to gather your thoughts about the big picture of your life, this is a great book which will challenge your assumptions and cause you to carefully observe the trends and motivation in your life

Sure, it's naval gazing.

But how can we expect our external life to make sense if our internal life is a confusing tangle of mixed emotions and unacknowledged fears, desires, and motivations? If we want to live our lives clearly and intentionally, both a little navel gazing and a lot of hard work are in order.

You can find more information and discussions about My Life Map over at the BlogHer book club.



Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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Book Withdrawal

I may have a teensy weensy, itty bitty case of book withdrawal.

Sadly (happily?), I finished up A Discovery of Witches on Friday evening. After spending most of the week cruising through the book at about 100 pages a night, it was a bit of a let down.

Maybe it was a little more than a let down. I've had a difficult time fully extracting myself from the book's world of witches, vampires, daemons, and mysterious misplaced magical manuscripts ever since I closed the book cover for a final time. I'm a little embarrassed to admit just how much I loved a book in which vampires played such a critical role. (Yes, vampires. *blush*)

Back in the day (aka: high school), I read many a fantasy novel.  I loved Jane Yolen, Terry Goodkind, Tamora Pierce, and so many others. But then I went to college and there just aren't that many good fantasy books in the English major's canon, you know. It's been a long time sine I delved into a book that was so overtly fantastical and I was glad to find it so easy to get whisked off into another magical world, especially in a book that I picked up on a whim.

Author Deborah Harkness, who's a history professor, does a wonderful job of weaving scientific and historical facts into the tale to move the plot forward. She also has a knack for choosing wonderfully interesting settings (at least for this Anglophile.)

But don't get me wrong. The book's far from perfect. It starts off mighty slowly. The main character, Diana, is a historian of science and reluctant witch, researching in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Now I know that research can have it's interesting bits, at least if you yourself are the researcher. But reading about a fictional character doing research is not exactly fast-paced excitement. A fair amount of the first 70 or so pages read something like this: "I got up and went to the library. I got some books. I read the books. Then I went home." Wash, rinse, repeat. *yawn*

But then Diana discovers a magic manuscript. And then she bumps into vampire. Then the entire magical community starts to gang up on Diana.Oh, and there's a love story involving star-crossed lovers unfolding too . . . .

Harkness may have left a few too many details in her final manuscript (Really, if you must describe clothing in your writing, at least be vague enough so that the reader can draw their own conclusions about what the character's wearing.  I mean - what the heck is a blue sweater with a funnel shaped neckline?! I don't even know.) but I did find myself genuinely caring about the characters. In fact, I may have gotten a little too attached to them. I spent most yesterday suffering from  "where's the sequel already" ennui.

That's right: ennui.

Now simply no other book will do. I must find out what happens to Matthew and Diana.

That nonfiction book I'm halfway through about eating habits of immigrants living in a tenement building on New York City's Lower East Side? Sure it's interesting to read about the Jewish practice of raising and slaughtering geese for a little while. But my goodness, that sort of reading is awfully real. Where are the vampires, I ask you? Where are castles and fortresses and bad guys?

So this morning, I did what any slightly possessed bookworm does when in the throws of such book-induced angst. I went to Amazon and ordered the next book in the series.

Am I setting myself up for disappointment? Oh yeah. (The online reviews of this second book aren't great.) Still, I have a feeling once the book's in my hands, I'll be able to shut up my inner critic and enjoy this book as much as I loved the first one.
.
Please Super Saver shipping be kind to me. Don't be too putzy, mm-kay? 

What have you been reading lately?
 

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The Chaperone: a book review

During the summer months, when I sit down with a book or movie, I want a good escape. After my daily dealings with modern humankind's peculiarities, I don't want my entertainment to mimic everyday reality; I want to go far, far away. A set of different worlds is best (here's looking at you Game of Thrones), but I'll settle for a different time period too. With Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone, I did the latter.

Set in the early 1920s, main character Cora is a 36-year-old Wichita housewife who makes the unexpected decision to accompany 15-year-old Louise Brooks on a summer trip to New York City, where Louise is enrolled in the prestigious Denishawn dance school. Cora's fussy, old-fashioned morals come in direct conflict with Louise's loose flapper lifestyle. By the end of the summer, Cora has found (mostly unsatisfying) answers to her questions about her concealed past and Louise has been accepted into the Denishawn dance troupe, successfully launching her career in dance and film. While I'd never heard of Louise Brooks before, she actually was a real Hollywood silent film star . . . the book's historical fiction.

If you read the back cover of the book, you're lead to believe the book deals mostly with that fateful summer for Louise and Cora. What I didn't realize was that the book basically chronicles Cora's life in its entirety.  After spending much of her childhood and young adult life trying to conform to stuffy Midwestern standards, Cora's trip to New York prompts her to listen closely to her heart. She ends up living an entirely unconventional life, advocating for things as taboo at the time as birth control. While the ending dragged a bit (Cora lives forever) and at times Moriarty pushes the tale to the very limits of believability, I always found Cora's character so interesting and engaging that I was more than willing to suspend disbelief for a while . . . just for her. 

I tend to give hyped up fiction the side-eye (USA Today called The Chaperone its Hot Fiction Pick of the Summer) and after a very slow first chapter, I wondered if my cynicism wasn't somewhat accurate. But as Moriarty delved deeper into Cora's mysterious childhood, I found my fascination with the plot growing and growing, until I was dealing with a full-out pageturner. Perhaps Moriarty resolves some of the fascinating plot devices too early in the book for The Chaperone to really grip readers until the very last page, but I still found this a lovely and satisfying summer escape.

You can join the discussion about The Chaperone over at the Blogher Book Club.

 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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Where She Went: a book review

I love me some young adult literature. Many of my most favorite books - Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Anne of Green Gables - are technically young adult books. Maybe I should feel embarrassed to identify most with books that are supposedly beneath my maturity level, but in my opinion, a good book transcends the section it's relegated to in a bookstore or library.

But Gayle Forman's Where She Went won't be doing any "section transcending" any time soon. Even though the book's main characters are in their early 20s, this is one young adult novel that screams "tween!" As I read the first few pages, I felt as though I'd entered a time warp. Surely, I must be reading this during the commercial break of MTV's TRL with Carson Daly. (Ooo, did I just date myself?)

The book's timeline covers only a single day in the life of characters Adam (front man for an extremely successful rock band) and Mia (a Julliard-trained cellist), but a number of flashbacks are used to expand the reader's understanding of the situation. Years ago, Mia and Adam were high school sweethearts in Portland, OR, but after a traumatic car crash killed Mia's entire immediate family and left her with severe injuries, Mia headed off to Julliard, then unceremoniously dumping Adam. Now, Adam is spending a final day in New York City before starting a world tour with his somewhat estranged band mates and Mia just happens to be playing a show at Carnegie Hall. (Cue the "dun, dun, dun" music.)

Where She Went is a sequel to If I Stay and perhaps I felt Adam and Mia characters were rather two-dimension because I never read the original "Adam and Mia" book and didn't know the full back story. Both characters are so talented and successful that I couldn't help but feel that their story wasn't relevant to me. Beside, the whole book is just so damn "angst-y." Okay, I'll admit it: this young adult book made me feel old.

But don't think I didn't enjoy my trip down to teenage memory lane. I mean, who doesn't enjoy a melodramatic teen romance every now and then? Where She Went is also one fast read: perfect to throw in your bag to read during everyday lulls like bus rides, waiting rooms, and airport terminals.

You can find more information and discussions about Where She Went over at the BlogHer book club. 
 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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You Have No Idea: a book review

I consider myself a fairly prolific reader. As an English major, I've read a considerable amount of the "classics" and I'll read just about any genre (fiction or non) as long as the story has a strong human interest angle. But when You Have No Idea, a biography of Vanessa Williams, with contributions from mom Helen and ghostwritten by Irene Zutell, arrived on my doorstep (literally - the UPS man dropped it off), I realized I've never read a celebrity biography or a ghostwritten book.

And of all the celebrity biographies to land in my lap, one on Vanessa Williams?

While I certainly recognized the name, I truly had no idea about her life. (Q: Didn't she sing that Pocahontas song? A: Yes, yes she did.) I never watched Ugly Betty and her real success on the Billboard chart came in the early 90s, when I was too young to be paying much attention to the top 40.

Don't expect lush, detailed descriptions in You Have No Idea. The book's writing is bare bones. Thoughts aren't always completely finished because, I'm assuming, Zutell just didn't have enough information from her interviews with Vanessa to write more than a sentence on certain topics.

Clunky narration aside, I found myself fascinated by Vanessa's life. (It's always interesting to find out what makes successful people tick, no?) The eldest child of a hard working, double income family, Vanessa grew up as a member of one of just two black families in her New York hometown. Her entire family was gifted musically and Vanessa's childhood goal was to mimic Meryl Streep's career path and become a Broadway star. But Vanessa's success took on a life of its own. A Miss America crown, a nude photos scandal, and babies were just a few of the curveballs thrown at her.

I found I could admire many things about Vanessa's life. I admired her down-to-earth upbringing.(Although, obviously Helen didn't do a great job with the birds and bee talk, since both of Vanessa's now-defunct marriages involved an unexpected bun in the oven.) I admired her ability to stick with her dreams, even as she juggled motherhood. (She's the mother of four.) But Vanessa isn't completely immune from acting like a slightly out of touch celebrity. When you read about her "necessary" home renovations, you'll have a good chuckle and eye roll.

The book is narrated almost completely from Vanessa's point of view, with brief interjections from Helen here and there. Helen's contributions lend a certain gossipy touch to the entire book that at times feel distracting and extraneous, but are often humorous and down to earth. Helen's own story of rising above an unhappy childhood is compelling enough that I almost wished the narrative had been split into two books: one for Helen and one for Vanessa.

Will I be picking up another celebrity biography any time soon? Probably not. But this was a fun, fluffy read that I really rather enjoyed.

Have you ever read a celebrity biography? You can learn more about You Have No Idea over at the BlogHer book club.

 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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Book Review: Some Assembly Required

I've been a fan of Anne Lamott's since I first read her well-known writer handbook - Bird by Bird -- ten years ago. Since then, I've read one of Lamott's novels (Blue Shoe) and all of her faith memoirs. Her writing is cheeky, sincere and a little neurotic . . . aka, right up my alley.

But one book of Lamott's that I've avoided is her Operating Instructions, a memoir of her first year of motherhood. While I know mothers are wonderful, important creatures, I thought I'd hold out on Operating Instructions until amusing anecdotes about breastfeeding don't go straight over my head.

So why did I pick up the "sequel" to Operating Instructions - a memoir about Lamott's first grandchild, entitled Some Assembly Required? Well, for one thing, my mom loaned me her copy so I didn't have to track down a copy of my own. For another, I thought the book might have present a baby/adult relationship that I might relate with more than a motherhood memoir. (I mean, I love me some good baby time, but only as an objective third party.)  And lastly, don't we all have a teensy bit of morbid fascination about teen pregnancy?

That's right, Lamott's son Sam became a father at age 19.  Baby mama, Amy, was 20 when Lamott's grandson, Jax, was born in July 2009. Written in diary format, Some Assembly Required, follows Jax's first full year of life. The pages are filled with observations of Jax's development and growth, stories of Amy and Sam's tenuous (and failing) relationship and plenty of poopy diaper anecdotes.

While I'm sure the diary format worked well for Operating Instructions - you know, where Lamott was with her son Sam nearly every hour of every day -- the distance between grandma and baby seemed a little too great at times to make this intimate writing style really work. After all, Lamott really is just a third party (albeit, a very subjective one) in this baby's life and when she takes off for India in the middle of the book and then Europe towards the book's conclusion, the reader's left hanging, wondering "wasn't this book supposed to be about a baby?!?"

The book is less a journal of Jax's first year and more journal of Lamott's neuroses about Jax's parents during Jax's first year. Lamott does have a habit of dragging her clearly unhappy childhood, which she always manages to reference in a veil of ambiguity, into everything she writes and this memoir is no exception. As for her sobriety - that gets mentioned about once every page turn. For readers familiar with Lamott's previous works, Some Assembly Required will feel as though Lamott is processing the same ol' problems all over again, just a little less successfully this go-around.

Although the cover claims to be written with Sam Lamott (which I read in between the lines to mean "so struggling young adult Sam gets some royalty checks" but what do I know) the book is written almost completely from Lamott's point of view. I'd assumed that Lamott and Sam would alternate chapters or something, but the book contains only the following from Sam: an introduction, an essay, and occasional "interviews" with Sam about Jax's latest feats. Oh yeah, and there's the odd email from Amy included in the pages too. It's a veritable literary scrapbook of Jax's first year. 

Moral of the story: It's not Lamott's strongest work, the pieces never quite match up, but it is a tender book about learning to let go of controlling other people's lives and letting people make their own mistakes so that they might learn from them.

 

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Book Review: Born Wicked

As a teenager, even before the sweeping Harry Potter phenomenon, I always gravitated toward fantasy literature. As a result, the book shelf in my childhood bedroom is stuffed full of tomes by Tamara Pierce, Patricia Wrede, Jane Yolen, and, of course, J.K. Rowling. If it has witches, wizards, and dragons in it, I'm all over it.
   
So I was pretty excited when my copy of Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood, arrived.

This debut young adult novel follows the tumultuous journey of 16-year-old protagonist, Cate Cahill, to adulthood. Since her mother's death, Cate's taken on the responsibility of mothering her two younger sisters, a task that would be difficult even if the three weren't witches. The family lives in New England at the turn of the 20th century, but for some, yet to be explained reason, the Cahills' world is drastically different than the world historically was at that time. New England is ruled by a heavy-handed religious authority, the Brotherhood. When young women reach age 17, they must either marry or join the female religious order, the Sisterhood. Being a witch in this world means imprisonment . . . or worse.

This first book of the Cahill Witch Chronicles (a trilogy) holds all the elements you might expect in a YA fantasy novel. There's a prophecy, danger, a love triangle, and an overbearing governess. The dialogue moves along at a snappy pace and although I felt that Spotswood was guilty of holding back a little too much "illuminating" information in the book's beginning, despite the ambiguous start, I did come to like the main characters quite a bit.  

One of the most confusing things about the book to me was why the book is set in a drastically altered "real world." India and Dubai are mentioned in the book, but it's clear that New England is cut off from the rest of the United States, if there even is a United States in Cate's world. New London (Connecticut?) is the commerce hub in the books, rather than Boston, which seems like the obvious choice. I'm sure Spotswood has her reasons, but it's not explained at all in the first book and unless she plans to turn the books into a deep and remarkable commentary on world politics, I'd have preferred she'd set the story in a whole new made-up world. Some of the most compelling arguments I've heard again communism and racism were set in novels with completely imagined realities.

Born Wicked certainly doesn't have the depth of say, Philip Pullman's Golden Compass books and I'm not sure it will have the broad appeal of the Twilight series. (Although, having never read the Twilight books, I can say for sure.) But it's a rollicking quick read with loveable characters and I'll probably pick up the next books to see just how things end up for Cate and Co, especially since this first book ended on a cliffhanger.

And when I say cliffhanger, I mean cliffhanger. 

You can join in the conversation about Born Wicked over at the BlogHer Book Club.






Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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The Rules of Inheritance: a book review

I never know how I'll feel about memoirs. It's a tricky genre. How much do you tell in order to make your story compelling and real to your readers? What do you hold back for the sake of others included in the memoir? When do you cross the line of being too self-centered to craft effective and accessible prose?

I'll admit, when I sat down with The Rules of Inheritance, a memoir of writer, grief therapist, and blogger Claire Bidwell Smith's experience with losing both of her parents had a young age, I had my doubts about how well Claire and I were going to get along over the course of the nearly 300-page memoir. In a book with a theme of excessive drinking, references to smoking at seemingly ever page turn, and oh so stereotypical "rebellious teen" shoplifting incidences, I wasn't sure Claire and I had anything in common.

Of course, Claire always was a little different from her peers. Her mother was 40 when she born; her father was 57. When Claire's fourteen years old, both of her parents are diagnosed with cancer within weeks of each other. Her mother dies during her first semester of college and her father passes when she is in her early 20s. The Rules of Inheritance is a fractured look at the events leading up to and proceeding the death of her parents -- bad boyfriends, the aforementioned excessive drinking, walking away from a big fancy magazine job, a European trip with her elderly father -- and how all those experiences came to shape her as a wife, mother, writer, and therapist today.

Although my experiences are far removed from Claire's, she has a knack for telling the truth and her capability to convey the cores of her feelings and experiences made her story feel meaningful and relevant to me. By the end, I found myself really caring about Claire; she had become a real, fully-formed person in my mind, not some hazy "real person character" stuck in the pages of a book. The fact that I can read her blog or follow her Twitter feed only reinforces that feeling.

The narrative is laid out in five sections, each section named for a stage in Kubler's famous stages of grief. It's been stated many times in recent years that humans don't move through the stages of grief in linear manner and so the book is not laid out in a linear manner.  In the first chapter, she's a college freshmen; in the next, a high school freshmen; in the next, a 20 something with her first "real" job; and so on. As a reader, that lack of linearity is initially frustrating. We want a clear trajectory from point A and point B. But Claire knows only too well that life is dissonant and unexpected and I think her decision to challenge readers with a nonlinear layout is a good one. Linear or not, that story comes together as clear memoir of living with grief and pain while becoming the person you want to be.

Interested in hearing what others are saying about The Rules of Inheritance? You can join in the conversation over at the BlogHer Book Club. 

 
Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book, however all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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The Feast Nearby

I did it. I bought and read another book about owning chickens. Andy better watch out because a chicken coop is totally going up in the backyard, sooner or later.

I think Amazon recommended The Feat Nearby to me a while back; probably late last summer when I was busy searching It's the memoir of an out of work food editor (and as a pretty loyal reader of Fine Cooking and Cooking Light, I'm all over that) who moves to her small cabin in southwest Michigan to reorganize her life. With her poodle and parrot as her companions, she lives frugally, but focused on eating locally.  

While Mather's essays, which follow a full year of life in her 650 square ft. cabin (where the nearest stoplight is *gasp!* eight miles away. . .  cynical Ada feels the need to point out that she lives 53-ish miles from the nearest stoplight) are written in lovely prose, the essays are just that: essays. This is no how-to book, this is a chance to wax poetic on chickens, raspberry jam, and the single life.

One thing I was disappointed by was the lack of concrete detail about how exactly she got by on a $40 a week food budget. And frankly, $40 a week for food . . . for one person? As someone who capped her weekly food budget at $30 immediately after college, I'm just not that impressed. Despite what we're lead to believe, it is not that hard to both eat cheaply and well, just buy lots of dried goods - lentils, rice, pasta and peanut butter are your friend - and make sure you eat everything (i.e. produce) before it goes bad. Now, if Mather was living on $40 a week, full stop, then we'd truly have a "hold the presses" sort of thing going on. Hrumph! 

What was I saying?

Right, details. . .

While, I fully enjoyed the book for what it was, with a tagline like "how I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally," I wanted some details. I didn't just want to hear in passing that you set up some strawberry preserves for fresh produce swapping system with your neighbor.

She talks a lot about carefully planning her yearly food supply (which included canning 50 pints of diced tomatoes!), but never gives many specifics. Call me crazy, but I want to see an appendix with information about exact amounts you canned, dehydrated, froze, etc. to get yourself through 12 months.

At the end of the essay she includes a set of recipes related to the essay's topics. We've tried out a couple of the recipes and they are yummy.  I made the lamb and apricot tagine to use up the leg of lamb I picked up on sale after Easter last year and just the other night I followed her directions for stuffing a squash. They're both winners and they make me anxious to try out her other recipes. That said, her directions for yogurt proved disappointing, but then I'm just not sure you're supposed to make yogurt when it's -3F outside. So I'm stalking up that failure to me and not her.

If you're looking for a homey, comforting read (the woman knits, how can you not love her?) for long winter evenings, this is a great choice . . . especially if you have a penchant for reading cooking magazines anyway.


 
Full disclosure: I did not pay for this book because my fabulous brother gave me a B&N gift certificate for Christmas. (Score!) The opinions expressed in this review are my own and I received no compensation for this review. 

P.S. Happy Groundhog's Day! 6 more weeks of winter where you are? We *always* have six more weeks of winter after February 2, so this day's a total cop-out in northern Minnesota. 

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Why Women Need Fat: a book review

Queen was right. Fat bottomed girls really do make the rockin' world go 'round.

At least, that's the claim Drs. William D. Lassek and Steven J. C. Gaulin lay out in their new book, Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever. The book grew out of Lassek and Gaulin's anthropology study on why men prefer women with an hourglass figure. (Like all things evolutionary, it boils down to babies.)

Through the study's research, the authors noticed that women started to lose their hourglass figures when Americans began increasing their  consumption of vegetable-based (or omega-6) fats in 1950s. Vegetable oil is cheap and used in many of our processed foods. At the same time, we've been reducing our consumption of the fat we really need, omega-3 fat which comes from animal based fats such as butter and lard. While omega-3 fat is stored in our hips and legs until it's needed during pregnancy, omega-6 fat tends to go to our waists, Gaulin and Lassek say. 

With its catchy title, it's tempting to use this book as an excuse for seconds of dessert. But as much as American women should likely be increasing their omega 3 fat intake, the authors state that an increase of omega 3 fat needs to met with a decrease in omega 6 fats, especially corn and soybean oils.

The book doesn't offer a quick fix diet. In fact, the authors claim that dieting as it's practiced in the U.S., with attempts to drop significant portions of weight in a relatively brief period of time, is destined to fail. Instead, Lassek and Gaulin outline a compelling, easy to read argument for permanently changing our eating to center around whole foods. By moving away from processed foods and bad fats, they say, over time (we're talking years here) you'll shed unnecessary. One the things I most enjoyed about the book was how articulately it encouraged women to look at their weight in a more thoughtful way.

As long time member of "Team Butter," this book confirmed many of my suspicions - that the best thing you can do for your body is ditch the diets, make a permanent change to your eating habits, and keep real food on the table. 

You can join "Team Butter" yourself over at the BlogHer Book Club. Here's to a healthy lifestyle that's surprisingly delicious!



Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book, however all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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