Kate's Point of View

My Week in Books

This week I jumped into two books with little information about them. The first was a book club selection and the entirety of the information I’d learned beforehand was, “it’s about jazz.” The second book made a list of YA books to watch out for on Buzzfeed, from which I added a lot of books to my To Read list and hoped for the best.- – –

Madeleine Altimari is the clear star of 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino. While there are other interesting story lines related to hers, Bertino does a great job of developing a spunky character in Madeleine. She’s a driven little girl of nine who frequently turns to the instructional notecards left behind by her recently deceased mother and who grades herself (literally) on daily exercises to help with a future singing career. She has a mouth like a sailor and few friends, aside from the family friends working to care for Madeleine while her father loses himself in the despair over his wife’s death.

A favorite excerpt:

Madeleine prefers to spend this and every recess alone, singing scales under her breath, walking laps up and down the parking lot. Madeleine has no friends. Not because she contains a tender grace fifth graders detect and loathe. Not because she has a natural ability that points her starward, though she does. Madeleine has no friends because she is a jerk.

That had me laughing when I read it the first time, when I read it aloud to my husband and again while typing it here.

Later in the book, Madeleine reacts to her principal over an injustice regarding carmel apples, head lice and expulsion by yelling, “This is f—ing bullish–.” Were the character a boy, I don’t think that would have caused a reaction from me. But for some reason, that language coming out of a little girl’s mouth slayed me.

I don’t quite know how to properly sum up the plot of 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas and not give anything away. I can say this: Bertino has a quirky writing style that’s not quite linear but still beautiful. A few times I found myself paying extra attention to the time stamps at the beginning of each chapter just to make sure I knew where I was. For me, having to take that brief, extra moment, helped me slow down and appreciate that book a little more, rather than just fly through the story.

I enjoyed this and look forward to reading peoples’ thoughts about it in the From Left to Write book group and hearing from my friends at my regular book club next month – the book was a selection for both.

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Buzzfeed lists might not be the most reliable source of book recommendations, or anything else, but they’ve been doing me pretty right in terms of young adult reading selections.

The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wonder is about two good friends, Hannah and Zoe. They’ve been friends since kindergarten and have each other’s back during the trials of high school. Where Hannah is goal-oriented, cares very much about her grades and her future, Zoe is a free spirit who’s demons appear in the form of bipolar disorder. While Zoe has spent much of their friendship guiding Hannah through the social intricacies of  popularity (or lack thereof) and supporting her through parental implosion, Wunder focuses this story on a period when Zoe especially needs the support of her friend.

I read this book during an afternoon at the pool and liked it but can’t say I loved it. I appreciated seeing books about mental illness targeted at young people, to help start a conversation about the diseases and reduce stigma. That said, I’d like to think the books offer some implicit guidance on how to handle mental illness. Maybe it’s just learning how to be there for a friend, knowing when medical support is needed to when to go to an adult, but literature can play a powerful role in teaching people, through the power of story, how to approach serious situations. Looking to The Museum of Intangible Things for guidance on mental health would be to the detriment of everyone. As an example of friendship, however, it is well done.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

My Week In BooksThere’s certain parts of WWII history that I know from reading so many novels and history books set in the time period. America’s active participation in World War II occurred after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. If Winston Churchill had gotten his way, American forces would have joined the fighting about 11 months prior. American sentiment about World War II was greatly influenced by World War I, influential isolationists like Charles Lindbergh and the idea that the United States could support the allied forces through things like the Lend-Lease bill. Not one used to being told no, Churchill kept at Franklin Delano Roosevelt, trying to persuade him to help support the British.

All of the above is history I’ve heard dozens of times. James MacManus, in his novel Sleep in Peace Tonight, introduced me to a new element in the decision about whether the United States would or would not join World War II. He got me interested in learning more about a topic I thought I was done with. He taught me about Harry Hopkins.

Hopkins was a good friend and trusted adviser of FDR. His opinion carried so much weight with FDR that it led to tension between FDR and his cabinet members. Hopkins opinion was sought on many matters and he lived in the White House with frequent access to the President. When FDR needed more information about the fighting in Europe, and England specifically, he sent Hopkins on a fact-finding mission.

Hopkins’ time in London was full of meetings, seeing first-hand how the war was affecting the British and spending massive amounts of time with Churchill. Through the meetings with Hopkins, MacManus presents Churchill as someone who works crazy hours, eats, drinks and smokes cigars endlessly and makes good use of time by holding some meetings even while he is in the bathtub. Hopkins gradually finds himself growing close to Churchill, London and its citizens, leading him to see the need for American intervention in the war. He finds himself stuck in the middle of two of the most powerful men in the world.

By focusing on Hopkins, Sleep In Peace Tonight offers a slightly different story about well-known history. By translating this history into a novel, he makes it easier to digest. Throughout Sleep In Peace Tonight, there is a storyline about a romance. It’s a major portion of the plot and does help to move keep the story progressing, but it was, for me, much less interesting than the basic facts about Hopkins.

For people interested in war history, American history or WWII, this books is an easy read highlighting an angle that doesn’t get much attention. It’s well worth the time investment to get to know Harry Hopkins.

Sleep In Peace Tonight by James MacManus is available in October 2014. I received a copy of this book as a Goodreads First Read.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Over the last week (and a half), I’d read three books. Although unrelated, they do carry the common theme of love. In one, the author examines the love life of young man and his propensity for churning through women at a rapid rate. In the next, there is a mystery surrounding a “lady of the night” and her interactions with men, both those rooted in business and rooted in love. The final one focuses on a family unit and how the love changes when challenged by a third party and past mistakes.I added The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman to my reading list long ago, attracted by the bright cover as well as the ringing endorsements of reviews.  When I finished the book, I was pleased just be finished. To be able to set it aside and not look back. (This post aside.) When I logged the book into Goodreads, my quickly typed assessment summed up all of my feelings in one sentence. “This book is sort of like every bad stereotype I have about upperclass, east coast, Ivy League school attending, supposed liberals rolled into one character.” I have nothing further I can add.

The dauntingly thick The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton turned out to be a lovely palate cleanser. The 800-page novel spans a relatively short period of time but is told from the perspective of many different characters, all of whom play a part in a mysterious series of event taking place in a small town in New Zealand during the gold rush. Catton does a brilliant job of letting the style of the narrator determine the length of each portion of the novel. This means that the first half, or so, of the book is made up of very long descriptions as different men try to present themselves in the most favorable light to their peers. After the groundwork of the case is laid out, the narrator changes to an objective third-person perspective and suddenly the chapters shorten and the storyline quickens.

I’m looking forward to passing this novel on to my father and hearing his take. He enjoys historical fiction, which I think is a good but not entirely accurate description of The Luminaries. It’s more like a great mystery novel that builds on the style of great historical adventures.

Never Mind Miss Fox: A Novel by Olivia Glazebrook is a book I won as a Goodreads First Read. The central characters are Clive, his wife Martha and their daughter Eliza, as well as a family friend, Eliot. No character really comes out looking altogether good, with the exception of Eliza, whose behavior fitting of a child. The others might behave as children, but since they are not… it’s harder to excuse.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

In a few days I leave for a conference followed by a couple days off work. I am so looking forward to the break! I think my book choices illustrate my need for a vacation. They have me in Spain, doing time travel, Nepal, Montana and England. It’s been a lovely series of trips, though!For my book club we read The Vacationers by Emma Strobe. I struggle to really assess this book because it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Rather, I would say it was real in such a way that I found parts of it a little painful. The Posts go on a family vacation in Mallorca, Spain, along with two friends. All of the politics of normal family and friend gatherings are there. Unspoken jealousies, dislikes that sit just below the surface and the tension that comes with a lot of family who no longer live together all in one house. The Posts experience a few more dramatic dramas, but, honestly, they didn’t seem that far-fetched. I definitely enjoyed The Vacationers and will be passing it on to family and friends, but I definitely didn’t walk away from it feeling lighter or happier.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell was much anticipated after the success of Eleanor and Park, which I loved. I was not let down! Rowell has a gift for making her female characters seem … normal. Normal in such a way that you can easily imagine meeting them or being friends with them. They aren’t perfect in action or looks. In an interview with NPR, Rowell said, “In my mind, every single female character I’ve written is plus-size. I enjoy stories about thin women — I read them frequently. I enjoy them, I root for those characters, but I always feel like there are enough of them out there and there are enough of them in the spotlight.” Something about this approach is just refreshing.

In Landline, Georgie McCool (really) and her husband Neal work through the demands on their time that come with a busy job and family. Things aren’t looking good, but then Georgie discovers a magic phone that offers opportunities to fix past mistakes.

This was a great, easy-to-read book. For the beach, for the plane, for the pool. Read it.

Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan chronicles Grennan’s time volunteering in Nepal. In a not-so-subtle attempt to avoid doing real research for an upcoming trip to Nepal, I’ve been seeking out novels about the country. My first attempt wasn’t too positive, but I did so much better this time! Grennan doesn’t make the country seem glamorous – anything but, really – but he is so clearly in love with the place. When he paints the picture, it’s done with tenderness and respect so that you (me!) just want to see it for yourself.

Grennan went to Nepal with the intention of volunteering for three months and ended up being tied to the place for much longer. He started work at a children’s home, assuming that the kids were all orphans. In fact, during the recent civil war, they had been taken from their families and abandoned far away in Kathmandu.  He decided to try and reunite the children with their families. Grennan described getting to villages with directions like “Walk for five days in that direction. There is no path.”

The journeys, both the actual journeys through the country and that of Grennan from tourist to active citizen, make for a wonderful read.

I won Montana in A Minor by Elaine Russell from Goodreads in their First Reads program. I enjoyed the book, but it doesn’t really fall into the genre of teen lit that I get into, so it’s hard for me to go into much detail. For young teen girls looking for a romance novel, or for parents seeking an innocent romance novel for their daughters, this is a good one.

I also won Cocoa at Midnight: The true story of my life as a housekeeper (Lives of Servants) by Tom Quinn from Goodreads. Similar to the drama between the classes that happens in Downton Abbey, Cocoa at Midnight details the life of Kathleen Clifford, born in England in 1909. She is employed in the service industry up into the 1970s, in a way I wasn’t aware still existed so recently. Clifford works her way up from the kitchen to head housekeeper and shares the adventures she experiences along the way. For people who like Downton Abbey, this is a very easy read that will feel familiar and comfortable.

 

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

I was listening to David Huntsberger talk on a podcast about Hatchet (Brian’s Saga, #1) by Gary Paulsen and saying how it was required reading for lots of people in school. I’d never even heard of it! The way he described it, though, sounded very much like My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, which I still love. I had to check it out.So the thing about reading a book targeted at children grades 6 to 8 is that they tend to be pretty quick reads. The words are shorter but the type is bigger, the sentences run shorter and the plots (usually) are a little easier to grasp. In Hatchet, the plane thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is taking to visit his father in Canada crashes after the pilot dies. What follows is Brian’s story of survival.

In terms of a living-on-your-own-in-the-wilderness story, I prefer My Side of the Mountain, but I think it’s because I was of the right age when I read it. The plane crash aspect of Hatchet? Terrifying and such a good read.

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On a recent online list of teen dystopian novels, I saw The Giver by Lois Lowry. I know the author because of her Anastasia Krupnik books, which are sort of chic-lit for the tween set. (At least in my memory…) The Giver is definitely science fiction, dystopian drama and completely different from any Anastasia Krupnik books. I read the book, loved it and was telling my brother and sister-in-law about the book and they were all, “Oh yeah, that was required reading in school.” What? So in the last two weeks, I’ve read two books that were required reading for people. I’m thinking I may need to dig up some reading lists for schools and work my way through them.

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In preparation for an upcoming trip to Nepal (!), I ordered a few novels set in that country. I realized in the first few pages that Little Sisters by Stuart Perrin is about child sex trafficking and maybe wouldn’t be the best introduction to the scenic side of Nepal. The story was interesting, written in much the style of a romance novel (sexy passion between characters, macho men who can fight for their women, out-of-place-in-the=story steamy sex). I would have preferred a slightly de-sexed book, but I do feel more informed about the child sex trafficking occurring in Nepal and India.

I will not be lending this book to my travel companions for that trip.

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I read The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy in December of 2012 and absolutely loved it. I found it laugh-out-loud funny and immediately warmed to the characters. This past Christmas my mother gave me a copy of The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son which really delves into the personal life of Conroy in a much more explicit way than some of his other novels. In The Death of Santini, Conroy says that all of his books are really based on this family, thinly disguised. All of this is important back story.

I decided to read The Prince of Tides, also by Conroy. As soon as I started I was able to spot some of Conroy’s family members he’d described in The Death of Santini. It was very disturbing! Add to that an accidental spoiler by Wonder Boy, and this book just wasn’t for me. I wish I had read it earlier, because I think I would have really liked it had I been less informed.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.