The Memory Keeper's Daugher by Kim Edwards

This is one of those books I have consistently taken off the shelf at Borders and then put back. I couldn't commit to it. But when my friend Lisa gave it to me for free I figured, why not?

I can't really describe what made me put it back on the shelf for the past year or so. I've done the same thing with Water for Elephants. I even really liked the cover! I am more than half way through and while it's an ok book, it's not keeping me awake at night with anticipation.

It does, however, give an ethical dilemma that is an interesting topic for conversation. Here's a little synopsis: A doctor and his wife are pregnant in the mid 1960s. She births a healthy son and then follows a tiny daughter with Downs syndrome. The doctor gives the baby girl to the nurse, a woman named Caroline, to bring it to an institution as he doesn't believe she will live very long. He lies to his wife saying the baby girl dies. Caroline can't let herself leave the infant at the home and instead raises her herself. So the book follows the lives of each family with each child.

Throughout the entire book Norah, the doctor's wife, grieves for the lost daughter. I sort of want to slap her and tell her to get over it and pay attention to her husband and son. Does that sound really cold of me? Well, I don't care. She needs to have some therapy or something to deal with it. She's so pathetic for most of the book that I want to literally take her shoulders and shake her.

I have learned a bit about children with Downs and how their parents had to fight to let them in the public school system. My mother worked with a Downs syndrome boy for 7 years one-on-one in the public school system here. He grew up to live in a group home and have a part time job at the local grocery store. People in the 1960s and 70s didn't expect anything from children with this disease...we have come far as a society in our acceptance of them -- though probably not far enough.

Anyway. I'm not done yet so maybe my opinion will change. Maybe not.

New Book

The book I had been waiting for finally was returned to the public library. FINALLY! "The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao" has been keeping me good company lately. I look forward to ending the day with it in bed with my dog.

I was a little confused at first -- because it seems that every chapter of the book is written in a different voice, and it's not always apparent who that voice is at first. Later on I realize it's his college roommate, Yunior, who is the narrator most of the time -- but not until the middle of the book. But once you get past it and just listen to the story it doesn't matter too much. I may even have to read Junot Diaz's other book "Drown" when I'm done. I love finding new authors to book-stalk!

I have not read a lot of fiction out of the Caribbean, where half of this book is set, so it's really interesting to learn about the history of the Dominican Republic -- things I didn't learn while growing up in New England believe it or not.

Díaz’s novel also has a wild, capacious spirit, making it feel much larger than it is. Within its relatively compact span, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” contains an unruly multitude of styles and genres. The tale of Oscar’s coming-of-age is in some ways the book’s thinnest layer, a young-adult melodrama draped over a multigenerational immigrant family chronicle that dabbles in tropical magic realism, punk-rock feminism, hip-hop machismo, post-postmodern pyrotechnics and enough polymorphous multiculturalism to fill up an Introduction to Cultural Studies syllabus. -- from The New York Times book review

I'm half way through and I know that Oscar dies in the end and I am so rooting for him that I'm afraid when it happens I'll be devastated. I'll let you know how he goes...

The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel

I finally finished The Red Leather Diary. I had to! It was due back at the library and someone else had put it in on hold.

To be honest I'm not sure why it took me so long. It just wasn't a book that I couldn't put down. I thought the most interesting part of the book was the story on how Koppel found the diary and then found the diarist, Florence. Florence's life seemed untouchable. Growing up in the 1920s and 30s in a household where she wanted for nothing materialistically. She definitely was an interesting person but I got the feeling that I wouldn't have been friends with her had I been one of her peers. I didn't form any sort of emotional bond with Florence and I think that was the great downfall. Not Koppel's fault -- the book was well written. I just didn't really like Florence the character.

The next book on my list is In the Land of Invisible Women by Quanta A. Ahmed.

a complex world readers will find fascinating and at times repugnant. After being denied a visa to remain in the U.S., British-born Ahmed, a Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, takes advantage of an opportunity, before 9/11, to practice medicine in Saudi Arabia. She discovers her new environment is defined by schizophrenic contrasts that create an absurd clamorous clash of modern and medieval. - From Publishers Weekly

I'm looking forward to it. I have it on hold at the library. Once I sink my teeth into it I'll let you know how it tastes.

Red Leather Diary

Last night I finished reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and I think I am going to request the movie from Netflix. I'm usually disappointed in the movie version of a good book but I'll give it a try.

I was anxious to finish because I picked up a new book from the library yesterday, Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel. I read the first few chapters and put the book down in sheer jealousy.

I am jealous of Koppel. I'm jealous she graduated from Barnard, that she lived on the Upper West Side, that she writes for the New York Times, that she's in her early 20s, that she got the opportunity to rifle through dozens of steamer trunks from the early 1900s on her very sidewalk, and, most of all, that she got ahold of this amazing diary and wrote a book about it.

I'm not going to lie -- I threw myself a little pity party for awhile thinking, "That should be ME! I want to find something so special! I want a plethora of steamer trunks to rifle through!"

I'll get over it. I'm already intrigued by the story and Koppel's writing style. The book, which already seems to have a life of it's own, is being turned into a movie. Check it all out here.

Modern day Anna Karenina

I am slightly obsessed with my new book, What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, and I'm convinced that if I hadn't bought myself a new 32" plasma television for Christmas and had a new disk of The Office to watch I'd be done with the book by now.

I read Anna Karenina a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. And this book -- a modern day Anna Karenina set in New York City -- is making me like the original even more. I may have to re-read it once I'm done with Reyn's incarnation.

If you're looking for a new book to read check this one out. It was just published in August, 2008, so there aren't any paperbacks yet in circulation but it's worth it to put it on hold at your local library.

Factory Girls by Leslie Chang

So I finished Factory Girls yesterday. I was on a mission as I have another book from the library sitting on my night stand, beckoning me.

While I really liked Factory Girls I found the two narratives of the book didn't meld together into a cohesive unit. While the book was, in fact, about China's young migrant worker women, Chang also talked at length about her own ancestors in China and her families escape from the Cultural Revolution. I thought the book could have done without so much of Chang's families past as it had extremely loose ties to the main focus of the book. It was odd to read about Min's factory hopping to better her situation and then switch to reading about how Chang's grandfather was murdered by Communists at the Fushun Mine. Not enough of a parallel to read smoothly.

In any case, I appreciated the time Chang took to really get to know the young women she wrote about. She obviously went to great lengths to keep in touch with them and even visited one of their home villages. I can see why this book made the New York Times list of the top 100 books of 2008. It is expertly reported and well written.

Check out an excerpt from the book via NPR here.

Put this one on your "to read" list. Next up: What Happened to Anna K.: A Novel.

Dogs are amazing

A friend of mine took her dog Benny (pictured at left) to the emergency vet hospital near her home in Walnut Creek, California, a few days ago when Benny's legs became paralyzed. The little pooch slipped some discs and had to have surgery, leaving his owner about $10,000 in debt. Yowch. But she did what she had to do to help her furry companion. That's true love.

Whenever I hear about someone who goes above and beyond for their pet I always think about this amazing book: Merle's Door by journalist Ted Kerasote. A friend suggested the book to me and once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. I've suggested it to all the dog lovers in my life. The book actually made me want to live in Wyoming, which is pretty amazing for a city girl at heart. It also made me appreciate my dog more...which is also hard for me to imagine.

If you are looking for a holiday gift for a dog lover, this is it. Here's a synopsis of the story:

Merle and Ted found each other in the Utah desert. Merle was about ten months old, surviving on his own, and looking for a human to hang his heart on. Ted was forty-one, liked to write about animals, and had been searching for a pup whom he could shape into a companion. The training went both ways. Ted showed Merle how to live around wildlife, and Merle reshaped Ted's ideas about the complexity of a dog's mind, showing him how a dog's intelligence could be expanded by allowing it to make more of its own decisions.

Acting as Merle's translator, and using Merle's life and lessons as a door into the world of dogs, Ted takes us on the journey they shared. He explores why the dog-human bond is so intense and how people and dogs communicate so readily with each other. He also uses the latest wolf research—showing that wolves treat maturing pups as partners rather than as subordinates—to explain how sharing leadership with your dog, rather than being its alpha, can help to create a healthier, more self-reliant, and better-socialized companion.

Funny, fascinating, and tender, Merle's Door is a moving love story that reveals how the partnership between dogs and humans can become far more than we have imagined.

New Book

I did a little too much holiday partying and not enough reading this weekend but I did pick up this book from the public library and I can't wait to sink my eyes into it.

I found it on the New York Times list of the 100 top books of 2008. This is from the New Yorker:

China is in the midst of history's largest human migration, a hundred and thirty million of its citizens having left their home villages in search of urban employment. Chang, an American of Chinese descent, explores the migrant experience and the burden of being Chinese through the lives of several young women in the industrial city of Dongguan. Their Sisyphean attempts at self-reinvention are both entertaining and poignant; the most ambitious of them achieves modest success selling dubious health products, before falling under the spell of an American raw-food guru. In her diary, she reminds herself, "We can be ordinary but we must not be vulgar." Chang's fine prose and her keen sense of detail more than compensate for the occasional digression, and her book is an intimate portrait of a strange and hidden landscape, a universe of relentless motion.

Last Night at the Lobster

I just finished reading Last Night at the Lobster by Steward O'Nan. I picked it up off the shelf at the public library. I judge books by their cover. This one looked interesting. And since I had just finished the really long Barry Parris book on Audrey Hepburn, this skinny book was appealing. I finished it over the Thanksgiving holiday.

It was about Manny, the manager of the Red Lobster in suburban Connecticut. The restaurant was closing and the book chronicled the last day and night the place was open. I have often thought about writing a book about food service, as I worked in bars and restaurants in Baltimore and Boston throughout college. But I could never wrap my head around a central idea. This book had a central idea but not much character development. In fact, after reading the whole thing the only picture I had of Manny was that he was Hispanic and overweight.

It wasn't a particularly fascinating book, and I probably wouldn't have understood it if I didn't have a background in waitressing. But it did reinvigorate my idea of writing about my own experiences. It was a fast read and that was exactly what I was looking for.