Facing the Wind by Julie Salamon

This is the story of a murder, a club for mothers of handicapped children, and a love story.

From the back cover:

Bob Rowe and his wife Mary worked hard to build their American dream. A suburban home, barbecues in the summer, and a fast track corporate job made their life look ideal to outsiders. Yet they faced one of the most difficult challenges for a couple: their son Christopher was born severely handicapped and disabled. As a family, they managed to navigate through the tough times by being hands-on parents. Their efforts were emboldened by a group of extraordinary women - all of whom also had disabled children - who acted as a support system for one another.

Then, one day, Bob killed first the three children and then Mary.

I found this book gave me real insight into a state of mind that could lead someone to kill his family "out of love." It also made "temporary insanity" something more than a legal plea.

I find it strange that not one reviewer was struck by what surely must have been the effects on Rowe of his driven nature and his harridan, carping mother. From a young age, Rowe was determined to be successful in his career, to achieve middle-class status, and have a storybook home and family. With perseverance and focus, he achieved his goals. He must have been a breakdown waiting to happen even before the trauma of dealing with one sick child and one severely handicapped child began to pile on more pressure. Adding public role model and a job crisis not of his own making to the stew, it could only have been a matter of time, And, unfortunately, it was.


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Bones Would Rain From the Sky by Suzanne Clothier

Well, lookee here: Books and dogs.

An old Turkish proverb says that if a dog's prayers were answered, bones would rain from the sky. Subtitled Deepening Our Relationships With Dogs, Clothier expects that if we pay more attention to our furred friends, we can interpret their feelings and emotional states, achieving our training ends more easily and with the cooperation of our dogs.

Clothier, although she never calls herself that, is truly a dog whisperer. She can intuit a dog's logic and state of mind and form fast friendships sooner than we can say, "Fetch"!

Since I hardly know my own mind (something that she points out in the book) nor is my life my animals (besides umpteen dogs, Clothier and her husband farm cattle, goats, chickens, pigs and other critters), it is unlikely that I will be a star pupil. Still, I found the book useful.

The first half and the last quarter are mostly an account of Clothier's philosophy; Bones is not meant to train the trainer. The middle section, though, does have fairly concrete examples of some of her experiences with "aggressive" dogs. Between the examples and the philosophy, she gives the ordinary owner something to strive for. And she can be very amusing.

I would recommend that anyone with a dog read this, preferably before you are, again, seized with the urge to shout or, worse, hit. Not only will your dog make more sense to you, you will make much more sense to your dog.

The Best American Sports Writing (2004), Ed. Richard Ben Cramer & Glenn Stout

The best sports writing is generally not about the game, but about the people, the challenge, the struggle against inside and outside forces, the context, and occasionally, the great play, Great American Sports Writing has it all.

I'm game to go for the next one.

The Society of S by Susan Hubbard

Arielle Montero never knew her mother. She disappeared shortly after Ari was born and never returned to the house in New York. Ari is home schooled and rarely ever is allowed to leave her house. Shortly after she makes friends with the housekeepers daughter, she begins to notice how different she is from others and how different is her household. Her face is always blurred in pictures and in one taken of her father, he doesn't show up at all. She begins to suspect her father is a vampire. After her best friend, Kathleen, is savagely murdered, she demands that her father tell her why they are different and where is her mother. He doesn't know where her mother is and yes, he is a vampire. Is Ari a vampire also? What happens when a mortal and a vampire have a child together?

This is an amazing book. I did not expect to be this good!

Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert

A young man is missing and an old friend of Gabriel Blackstone calls in a favor. “Frankie” Whittington asks Gabriel to help her husband find his missing son, Robbie. Gabriel has a talent few others have, remote vision. He can enter someone’s mind, see what they see, hear what they hear, and experience what they experience. Using his talent, he discovers that the young man is dead and has most likely been killed by one of two very extraordinary sisters, Morrighan and Minnaloushe Monk. Hacking into their computer, he reads a diary. He also discovers that one of the sisters has his same ability, only she is much stronger. He falls in love with the writer of the diary. He fears the sister with remote vision. Which sister is which?

This was a really good book. I was almost not able to put it down once I started reading it.

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein, writer & film maker & Paula Bernstein, freelance writer, is both an interesting and provocative memoir. These twins, separated as infants and raised in different homes, were unaware of each other's existence as were their adoptive families until their mid-thirties when Elyse contacts the prestigious Jewish adoption agency Louise Wise Services, that handled her initial placement, in an attempt to find her biological mother. The news is stunning to both women and while Elyse is eager for this reunion, Paula is unsettled and ambivalent about having her life turned upside down just when everything was going so well. Hearing of their similarities is engaging, as is the idea of meeting your doppelgänger but what is really fascinating and never quite resolved is how and why this separation happened to both of these women and to other twins placed by the same agency. We learn that Dr. Viola Bernard a psychiatric consultant for the agency believed that it was best for twins to be reared apart, a lone voice in the psychiatric literature of the time. We also learn that Dr. Peter Neubauer a prominent psychoanalyst and director of the Freud archives at the time, took advantage of this belief and conducted a 'twins study' funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health. If twins and triplets were going to be separated, then this study would follow their development, all the while without full disclosure to the prospective adoptive families. Elyse and Paula and other affected twins, did make an unsuccessful attempt to view their records from this study, which now belong to the Yale archives and will remain sealed until the year 2066. While none of this was strictly illegal at the time, the monstrous scientific license these doctors took with both the children's and the adoptive families lives is in my opinion unconscionable.
Note: this review is based on the Advance Reader's Edition of the memoir.

Mary Jones

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight by Marc Weingarten

I suspect this book will only be of interest to those familiar with the work of Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Gay Talese and other writers who first appeared as part of the New Journalism. The book follows the rise of these and other NJ stars and the magazines that recognised and fostered them: Esquire, New York, Harper's and Rolling Stone.

Early practitioners of the art didn't necessarily adhere to today's standards of verifiable truth (although many did). Thus, I discovered, Michael Herr's Dispatches, the book about Vietnam, contained composite characters and, worse, invented ones. So a passage about a dying soldier telling Herr to "Be careful, Mister. Please be careful," instead of making me weep makes me think, "Oh, come off it, Herr!"

Gail Sheehy spent months investigating the world of prostitutes in Manhattan and then rolled them all into a dramatic blend for a five-part series in New York. That used to be called "fiction.".

But while I was losing respect for Herr and Sheehy, I was gaining it for Norman Mailer, Thompson and . . . well, it's not possible for me to think more highly of Wolfe.

Today we have John Berendt rearranging events and timelines and conflating characters in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. an entertaining read, but once you know part of it is made up, how can you trust any of it? Defended by its practitioners as striving for a "higher truth," true journalists call it "making stuff up." And when you're busted, you get fired from the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Honest descendants of the New Journalism, inheritors of the story form variously called "narrative journalism," "literary journalism" or "creative journalism" insist upon verifiable fact. When they wander into speculative territory, they have footnotes to explain how they got there and back. Think of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, John Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Wolfe's The Right Stuff as well as Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and War Hospital by Sheri Fink, MD.

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight reads as though Weingarten was learning the history as he wrote. Observations he made in the beginning of the book about the legitimacy of the form as reportage had me grinding me teeth, but by the end I felt he had it right.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I loved this Book! Ms. Russell manages to combine Jesuits, interstellar travel, child prostitution, artificial intelligence and soul searching in an extraordinary combination that left me feeling as if I knew most of these character intimately. I was not only enthralled with these people, I wished I could meet them! The novel moves between the year 2016 when this odd assortment of people meet, become friends and prepare for an other worldly journey and 2060 where we learn the results of this mission to Rakhat. As unlikely as this all seems, it is a wonderful coalescence of adventure, mystery, spirituality and friendship!
I was supposed to review The Children of God the sequel to this, but I figured I would post this first. I also read her Thread of Grace, a very different type of writing than this but equally wonderful.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Arthur & George is an masterful novel based on the true story of two fascinating people and actual events that occurred in Britan. It is hard to describe this book without being a plot spoiler! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes investigates a criminal case, that appears to be a gross miscarriage of justice, centering around George Edalji. George is the somewhat naive son of a Parsee vicar of a small English church and a Scottish mother. George has no friends, he is shy, quiet and reserved, and is quite a study in contrast to the ever popular Arthur. Barnes unveils the history of these two characters in short staccato bursts, revealing each character's boyhood, development and eventual occupation, until finally their lives overlap. It is not only a story of victimization, it is a story of love, loss and what it means to be different - even if you don't believe you are - in an often cruel world. Surprisingly, it was George I admired more, when all was said and done. His quiet stoicism is often the metal which gets us all through life. Arthur & George is a great read, although the beginning chapters were making me slightly dizzy from the machine gun pace of developing their characters, eventually it slows down and becomes so engrossing that you have to continue to turn each page. I highly recommend it. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Julian Barnes is a great storyteller, I will be adding his other works to my wishlist.


abe books author interview: http://www.abebooks.co.uk/docs/authors-corner/julian-barnes.shtml
Julian Barnes other books include, Flaubert's Parrot and England, England, both of which have also been nominated for the Booker Prize.


Mary Jones
aka tobiejonzarelli
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Cupcake

by Rachel Cohn

Defiantly not a book on cooking! Let's join our heroine CC as she embarks on the road to adult hood. Fresh from high school CC decides to chase her dreams and move to Manhattan to live with her brother. Only problem is that it is harder to let go of her first love then she imagined. CC learns that life isn't what you dream it to be but what you make it to be. Along the way she discovers her true family in life and what it means to truly be yourself.

I will admit at first I wasn't very enthusiastic about reading this book. The first couple chapters were very hard to follow because the main character, CC was very adolescent in her views and vocabulary, almost like the writer was trying too hard to make her seem like a 18 year old. As the pages turn and you learned more of the characters it became clearer that the writing was not forced but intentional in order for you to see CC's growth as a person and how she was maturing in thought and personality; which made the book more rich and enjoyable.

I enjoyed the odd characters like Max and Mold; whom I would imagine to be actual people living in a town like New York. I couldn't help become attached to the characters and feel the love, happiness and sadness as life took it's hold on all of them. The book ended well and I got a good happy feeling out of my experiences with it. So I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes "journey of life" stories.

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Tesse
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PS... I know this wasn't on my list but I couldn't find my other book I listed as a choice so I just grabbed this one off my pile. I will find the original book and read it too.. :)

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

by Ariel Levy

This book is amazing... I think the author summed it up when she said:

"This is not a book about the sex industry; it is a book about what we have decided the sex industry means....how we held it up, cleaned it off, and distorted it." (Ariel Levy, excerpt from book page 198)

What is feminism to you? How does it equate to our existence as a woman? Why do we strive so hard to be "manly" in our daily activities? How did sexuality become feminism? When did Porn Stars become the Cool Role Models? Why are our kids driven to look sexually "hot", when half of them don't know what sex is all about?

All these questions are looked at in this witty book written by Ariel Levy. She takes the reader inside behind the scenes to talk to the people who are putting out the images we are all striving to be like. You get a view into the inner sanctums of playboy, girls gone wild, CAKE, old school feminist,Strippers, Porn Stars, Teenagers, Lesbians and much much more. If you think you know feminism and how it equates into a woman's sexuality or just curious about it all, this book is a must read for you.


I have to admit, I have never been stopped and asked by so many strangers "what is that book about" as I have been with this one. It is guaranteed to cause a sensation just from the cover alone. I loved the witty tone it had as the author explained some of the really absurd norms we have these days. I found each chapter a pleasure to read and Ariel posed a tons of questions which set me to pondering the reason behind all the madness these days. One question she did not really address is "why is this happening". We see a big jump from conservative feminism to raunchy feminism; she show a great picture of what it was and what it is now but no history on the between time; how we changed over to what it is. I enjoyed the section she had on the teenage girls and was pleased to see a section from a boys perspective. What the male interviewee said made a lot of sense. As I read the statements from the women who were interviewed I couldn't help but wonder why they needed to be so "manly" in their behaviors, why do they feel they need this trade off. I found the book to be a very informative book and will recommend it to many of my friends.

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Tesse
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The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman

John Tayman, has marvelously succeeded in this sweeping history of the exiles of Molokai. It bears tragic witness to the banishment of the victims of Hansen's disease to a hostile isolated island beginning in 1866 with twelve men and women and one stowaway child and continuing for over a century. Along the way we are confronted with legislative debates such as, "Is it a crime to be afflicted with leprosy?" and although the necessary answer is no, it is a disease, in actual fact these people were treated as criminals. They were rounded up and forcibly exiled. The pages are littered with historical figures and events revealed in both their humanity and their inhumanity. We find Robert Louis Stephenson, Jack London, Mark Twain, and even more recently a skittish John Wayne . We witness Pearl Harbor, and the establishment of Hawaii as the the fiftieth state.
While we do find the posthumous saints such as Father Damien Joseph De Veuster who by one account dug over 1300 graves, and we also find much cruelty. The account of the Dying Den, bears witness to a man being dumped from a wheelbarrow to the threshold of this hell in order to, "spare the sensibilities of the other hospital inmates."
Probably the most succinct description of the history of this disease, "leprosy itself [is] a rich source of ironies, populated ... "with rogues and vagabonds, saints, and martyrs.""
Although this is not a casual read it is worth the time, this lesson must be re-learned and not repeated.


Mary Jones
aka tobiejonzarelli
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