City of Thieves

I finished City of Thieves over the weekend, and I loved it. Like I mentioned before, author David Benioff, wrote The 25th Hour and was the screenwriter for Wolverine. City of Thieves is actually a novel based on the events of a week in the life of his Russian grandfather when he was 17 years old.

In the midst of WWII as the Germans are closing in on Leningrad and several other Russian cities, Lev is taken prisoner by the Soviets for breaking curfew and stealing. To keep his life, he must find a dozen eggs for the colonel, with the help of fellow prisoner Koyla. The story follows the two boys (they’re so young, I can’t call them men) as they make their way across enemy lines to find eggs.

I loved the book for its different look at the war. I don’t believe I’ve ever read about it from the Russian side. The people were starving and wasting away. They couldn’t find bread, let alone anything else good to eat. So, obviously, eggs were nearly impossible to come by. The book is full of action, Koyla is a welcome comic relief, and the boys’ relationship grows more over five days than they probably ever expected. While it’s quite sexually explicit – they are boys, so what else would be on their minds, even in the middle of war? – you can glide over that if necessary.

I thought the book was extremely well written, engaging, quick, realistic and actually sweet in some parts. And to know that it might be based in a lot of truth makes it that much better. Here’s a quote that doesn’t give too much away, but offers a glimpse at the adventure these boys went on:

The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. German corpses fell from the sky; cannibals sold sausage links made from ground human in the Haymarket; apartment blocs collapsed to the ground; dogs became bombs; frozen soldiers became signposts; a partisan with half a face stood swaying in the snow, staring sad-eyed at his killers. I had no food in my belly, no fat on my bones, and no energy to reflect on this parade of atrocities. I just kept moving, hoping to find another half slice of bread for myself and a dozen eggs for the colonel’s daughter.

Best Picture, 10 nominations

I know this isn't book related, but I'd love to get some opinions. The Academy has announced that starting for 2009, 10 films will compete for the Best Picture Oscar. With only one winner.

I can see what they're doing. Several times there's been uproar over films absent from the Academy's top category (The Dark Knight, for example, as well as numerous noteworthy comedies that never make the cut. For some reason Best = Drama.). So, increase the number of nominees, and people/studios will be happier, right? After all, it's just an honor to be nominated.

With that in mind, sure, 10 noms sounds like a great idea. However, I stumble on the fact that there will still only be five slots for best director, actor and actress (supporting, screenplay, song, etc.). Does that seem fair? Particularly in the director category? How can you claim a film is one of the best, yet its director is not. (Granted, this still happens with just five slots. Directors get left off all the time. That doesn't mean it makes sense to me.) And, if a wider range/number of films can be up for the honor, why not the actors who starred in them? But then, it would be pretty ridiculous to make every category 10 nominations long, wouldn't it?

My quick opinion: Leave well enough alone. Your thoughts?

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

I've known for years that Danica McKellar, aka Winnie Cooper, love of Kevin Arnold, on The Wonder Years, was more than just a pretty face. She studied math a UCLA and she's written two books, Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail and Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss.

When I first heard about her cutesy titled, but brilliant-idea books, I thought how cool it would've been if those were around when I was learning math. Here's a gorgeous, semi-famous woman who actually likes math and is taking the time to explain it in a fun, girly way. It's just what seventh/eighth-grade girls need.

Kiss My Math was the latest book on the counter in the kitchen at work and I snatched it up. I don't plan on reading it cover to cover any time soon, but I don't doubt I'll pull it out at different points in time when I need a little pre-Algebra refresher. Just flipping through it and seeing an x-y axis, negative numbers and integrals made me break out in a bit of a sweat. But the cursive and handwritten fonts, fun preteen quizzes and cute chapter titles make it all seem a little less scary.

McKellar's hit on something here - a child star who's successful, smart and with it, go figure - and I hope she writes a few more books, too. Maybe take on Calculus? Because that crap's hard.

And, for a little nostalgia - a Winnie/Kevin montage:

Fortune Cookie Chronicles Fun Facts

As promised, though a day late, here are some cool tidbits I learned from this book.

1. There are 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. More than McDonald's, Burger King and KFC combined. I like what the author says: Think about how many times you eat apple pie. Then think about how many times you eat Chinese. What do you think is more American?

2. A Chinese restaurant in Virginia had to install bulletproof glass around one of its tables - it's where both Bushes liked to eat while President.

3. During the Gold Rush, thousands of Chinese flooded into the West. Americans used the way they ate to help persecute and discriminate against them: "Real Men Couldn't Live on Rice Alone."

4. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed between 1882 and 1902, was the only law in the history of the U.S. to exclude a group by race and ethnicity. When the jobs and opportunities for them disappeared, the Chinese enterprised and opened laundromats and restaurants.

5. There's an interesting chapter in the book about how "chop suey" was actually one big joke started in the early 1900s. However, Americans loved it and women would try their hardest to make it themselves at home. Soon Chinese dishes could be found in The Joy of Cooking.

6. Because the Chinese (in China) love parts of food that Americans don't (i.e. chicken feet, pigs ears, etc.), these American leftovers are some of our biggest exports to China.

7. Approximately 300,000 Fujianese (from Fuzhou, a southeastern region in China) have come to the U.S. in the past 20 years. If the immigrant paid to be smuggled in, the going rate this decade is some $70,000. I like this quote (and it's why I will now think differently when I go to my local Chinese restaurant):

"There is a fairly good chance that the Chinese restaurant worker who cooked your roast pork fried rice, or the woman who took your order on the phone, or the deliveryman who showed up at your door paid tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of doing so."

8. Because it contains vegetables, busy moms across the country choose Chinese over other takeout options because it's considered more healthy.

9. While this isn't Chinese related, I learned that the nascent restaurant industry boomed after the French Revolution, which is why our vocab is filled with words like "hors d'oeuvres" and "menu."

I'm nearly done with the book. At the end of the book, Lee is traveilng around the world, from Brazil to Vancouver to Korea, trying to find the "greatest" Chinese restaurant in the world. Must be rough, huh?

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

In 2005, more than 100 people won some sort of money through the Powerball lottery. This was an unprecedented amount of winners, sucking up a majority of the Powerball's reserves. How did this happen? Nearly every winner found their numbers from a fortune cookie. This led Jennifer Lee on a search for the history of the fortune cookie and the story behind Chinese food in America.

I've found this book pretty interesting throughout. Lee travels all over the world in search of the origins of the fortune cookie (hint: not China), and she travels all over the world looking for the best Chinese food. Chinese people pay tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into America just to work in Chinese restaurants - the only place they can work and not have to learn English. Chinese restaurants have exploded in this country, and they change hands between families often. Not only do you learn about the food, but you learn a little bit about Chinese history as well. If you're interested in that, I recommend the book. Just be warned: it'll make you hungry. And even more so, it'll make you look at your favorite Chinese place differently.

Tomorrow I'll post some fun facts that I learned throughout the book. I won't give anything major away, but some of the facts are just too amazing or cool not to share.

Can't Say No to Free Books

I work in a magazine publishing house. With an office full of editors, we tend to receive complimentary copies of new books or unedited copies of soon-to-be published books for review. Unfortunately, if I receive any free books in the mail, they're not necessarily on subject matter I'm all that interested in - especially for leisure. But fellow editors in other departments do receive novels from time to time, and every so often the counter in the kitchen will have a pile of books sitting there for the taking. Again, some aren't interesting at all, but sometimes, if you come across the pile first, you can get lucky. Last week, I think I got lucky:

I'm Sorry You Feel that Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog, by Diana Joseph. I actually read a good review of this book in Entertainment Weekly a few months back, so I recognized the cover and the title as a book I was interested in reading at one point. Synopsis:

Meet the men in Diana Joseph's life: "The boy," Diana's fourteen-year-old son, who supports the NRA and dreams of living in a house with wall-to-wall carpeting; Diana's father, who's called her on the telephone twice, ever, and who sat her down when she was twelve to caution her against becoming a slut (she didn't listen); Diana's brothers, or, as her father calls them, "the two assholes"; Diana's ex-husband, a lumberjack with three ex-wives, yet he's still the first one she calls when she's in a jam; and Diana's common-law husband, Al, an English professor who's been mistakenly called mentally challenged. Ostensibly organized around the various men in Diana's life, this is really a memoir about what it's like to be a modern, smart woman making her way in the world.

Believe Me, by Nina Killham. I've never heard of this book, but I read the back cover and it sounded interesting enough to try (since it's free). Synopsis:

In the tradition of Jodi Picoult—a fresh, smart, and deeply moving novel about the power of faith, love, and family. Thirteen-year-old Nic Delano has a lot of questions. Like why does he have a babysitter at his age-and where did she get such long legs? But mostly, what exactly is the meaning of life? His mother, Lucy, an astrophysicist and atheist, has always encouraged Nic to ask questions. But lately she doesn't like the answers he's getting. Nic has been hanging out with a group of devout Christians and is starting to embrace the Bible—and a very different view of the heavens. But when unexpected tragedy strikes, Nic and Lucy's beliefs are truly to put to the test. And they need each other now more than ever. But will a mother and her son be able to find a common ground where faith meets understanding and love is, ultimately, what endures?

City of Thieves, by David Benioff. I picked up this book, very unsure about it, but when I saw it was written by the man who wrote The 25th Hour (and adapted his book into Spike Lee's screenplay) as well as wrote the screenplay for The Kite Runner, well, frankly, that's a talented man. Synopsis:

During the Nazis' brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

Has anyone read any of these? When, if ever, do you come across free books?

House of Happy Endings, Finale

I finished House of Happy Endings over the weekend and I'm on the fence. The book mainly focused on Leslie's father's depression and how it affected the rest of the family. At certain points she was just relaying information from her father's medical records. Other times the story felt repetitive: he's depressed, he collapsed, he's addicted to barbiturates, they have no money, he can't get out of his own father's shadow...Repeat. In this case, the story could be a little boring.

However, I do think the book can be considered an interesting case study in depression. The book demonstrates that while depression may be an individual's disease, the disease does not affect only the individual. Leslie, her brothers and her mother woke up each day not knowing what to expect. Would dad get out of bed today? Would he spend their nonexistent money on a new car? Would they need an ambulance? With most everything they did they had to consider the father's mental health and well-being. The fact that the children grew up a bit different than other children, or the fact that by the time she was 50 years old the mother was at her wit's end, is no surprise - and actually quite sad.

So, if what the book accomplishes is to get readers to look at depression differently and understand it's OK to ask for help (because life is too short), then I think it's met its purpose.

New Moon Trailer

How very exciting:



The special effects look so much better already. My heart broke as Edward said goodbye, and I got goosebumps at Jake's transformation. Woo!

My Summer Reading Recommendations

Now is the time that newspapers, bookstores and bloggers make up their lists of summer reading recommendations. Why should I be any different? (I did a mini version of this last year, too.) I took some time to go over my blog archives, search out other lists and peruse the Web to try and find what I would recommend as good summer reads. As with anything, it all comes down to taste, but I tried to pick from different genres, books of different lengths and stories of great variety.

Even so, what makes good summer reading for me may not be good summer reading for someone else. When I think of being on my deck, with a glass of ice tea and a book, I want to be reading a story that’s engaging—I mean really engaging. I don’t want for one second to question why I’m reading it. I want to feel the sun on my shoulders and be comfortable, but in the end I want to lose myself and forget where I am. In most cases, for me, this means the book will be a novel or memoir, it will be of digestible size (no 1,000-page epics) and it will centralize around characters I care about.

I’m going to refrain from listing Twilight and Harry Potter. Not because I don’t consider them “summer reads.” They are the epitome of summer reading—you fall in love with the characters, you can’t put the books down and you can read them in a day, if you want. But, I think they’re obvious choices, so I left them off. Here are some books/authors/categories I suggest, in no particular order.

Classics
As I was brainstorming for this list, I remembered two very wonderful classics that I love. The Great Gatsby and Little Women. I think I actually read these two books a bit later in life than most people, but I devoured them. While I’ve only read The Great Gatsby once, I’ve read Little Women at least three times. Both stories take you back in time and tell of the adventures of two very different groups of people. I think almost any woman/girl would fall in love with the March sisters, as well as have fun imagining a life in the roaring '20s with the likes of Gatsby. Now I want to read them again!

School Ties
There are plenty of books that center around kids in school—prep school, college life, public high school, etc.—so I’m sure there are many more where these came from. Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld (who’s gotten more press recently for American Wife), is about a 14-year-old girl who attends a prep school on scholarship. The story follows her through her time there, and discusses the cliques, the fun, the heartache and so on. While it was sad and lonely in parts, the book was a really good read.

Journalist Alexander Robbins wrote two highly engaging nonfiction works that I read and enjoyed very much: Pledged, about the secret lives of sorority girls, and The Overachievers, about those academic all-stars who nearly drown in their fight for perfection. Robbins set herself right down in the middle of these cultures and learned from the students themselves. The things she writes can be shocking, but you’ll also find yourself nodding in agreement—either because you lived it too, or you know someone who did.

I also enjoyed The Rule of Four, a story about college friends at Princeton who discover a great mystery and find themselves in great danger. It’s kind of The Da Vinci Code for the Ivy League-student set. While some of the mythology and subject matter of their studies was a bit over my head, that didn’t take away from the fun.

Go-to Authors
For fun, sweet, quirky characters in fun, sweet, quirky stories—many of which are set in fictional Minnesota towns—Minnesota author Lorna Landvik delivers nearly every time. While her most recent works haven’t been my favorites, I would recommend Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons and The Tall Pine Polka to any fellow (female) novel reader. Another go-to author, who I’ve mentioned several times on this blog, is Jodi Picoult. She might be obvious in the same way Twilight and Harry Potter are, and while, again, her latest books haven’t been my favorites, she nails it with My Sister’s Keeper, The Tenth Circle and Nineteen Minutes.

Choose Your Own Adventure
Heather McElhatton’s Pretty Little Mistakes is a ton of fun. It’s engaging, hilarious, something different and such a fast read, as you can set it down after each mini adventure if you like. Like my first review says, this is a book for adults, but it’s as fun as those CYOA books from when you were a kid.

Other books I’ve reviewed on this blog that could make for great summer reading: The Way Life Should Be, The Writing Class, The Thirteenth Tale, The Abstinence Teacher, and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.

So, what about you? Any summer reading suggestions that fall into these categories or others? Since summer is here, I’d love to get a few more on my list of must-read books.

House of Happy Endings

I'm reading Leslie Garis' memoir about her life with famous writers for grandparents and parents. I've just finished Part I, which has been mostly backstory and the lead up to Leslie's father's mental illness. While the book isn't overly engaging, it's interesting for the most part. I hope it will get more engaging as we get into the meat of the story. Here's the publisher's synopsis:

Howard Garis, creator of the famed Uncle Wiggily series, along with his wife, Lilian, were phenomenally productive writers of popular children’s series—including The Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift—from the turn of the century to the 1950s. In a large, romantic house in Amherst, Massachusetts, Leslie Garis, her two brothers, and their parents and grandparents aimed to live a life that mirrored the idyllic world the elder Garises created nonstop. But inside The Dell—where Robert Frost often sat in conversation over sherry, and stories appeared to spring from the very air—all was not right. Roger Garis’s inability to match his parents’ success in his own work as playwright, novelist, and magazine writer led to his conviction that he was a failure as father, husband, and son, and eventually deepened into mental illness characterized by raging mood swings, drug abuse, and bouts of debilitating and destructive depression. House of Happy Endings is Leslie Garis’s mesmerizing, tender, and harrowing account of coming of age in a wildly imaginative, loving, but fatally wounded family.

Question of the Day

I read this question over at Pop Culture Junkie, so I had to steal it and answer it on my blog, too.

Book Gluttony! Are your eyes bigger than your book belly? Do you have a habit of buying up books far quicker than you could possibly read them? Have you had to curb your book buying habits until you can catch up with yourself? Or are you a controlled buyer, only purchasing books when you have run out of things to read?

In the last few years I've developed a nice system. Over the course of the year, I fill my Amazon Wish List with books that I want. I only receive birthday/Christmas presents from two sets of parents and my husband, but all I ask from them are books off my list. This past holiday/birthday season, I received a total of 17 new books. It's now May and I still haven't read them all.

This doesn't mean that I don't buy books myself, however it's usually only ones that I can't wait for and want to own: i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, It Sucked and Then I Cried, etc. So in the first five months of 2009, I think I've only purchased two books. I'm proud of that. I also have borrowed several books, which is a great way to read and save money. And once my holiday books run out, I'm going to check out the library in our new city. (We've lived here for a year, but I haven't made it to the library down the road yet.) Bills are increasing and money's getting tight, so I'm going to try my hardest to not buy too many new books for the rest of 2009. While that might mean the pickings will be slim and this blog will review quite a few more "chick lit" books (they seem to always be in great supply at the library), it's probably the best idea in the end.

So, what about you?

Those Who Save Us

* Updated May 18, see below

I'm nearly done with Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum. A novel, Those Who Save Us takes place in two different eras. It follows Anna, a 20-something German Aryan during WWII, and her young daughter Trudie as they try to survive the fallout of war. In other chapters the book follows 50-something Trudy (spelled with a 'y' in her chapters, which is interesting), a University of Minnesota professor who begins work on a "German Project": interviewing Germans who were alive during WWII to find out how they feel about what they lived through. Anna is also in the "Trudy chapters," but is then an old woman with very little to say.

You know right from the start what Trudy's problem is going to be. Her mother won't talk to her about the past, and Trudy has no idea who her father actually is. Was it the SS soldier who came around weekly for more than two years while Trudie and her mother lived alone in a small German town? Was it the American soldier who brought them to America? Or was it someone else? I laughed when Trudy's ex-husband points out that her "German Project" is her version of "therapy." Touché.

My feelings about the book change as I read it. Of course it's heartbreaking to hear the stories of the Jews and the Germans (who, while not put in concentration camps, were also starving and poor and in danger most of the time), but I think it's also an important part of history that can't really be talked about enough and should never be forgotten. However, it's disgusting and disturbing to read about Anna's relationship with the SS officer. It makes me shudder, so those chapters don't make for the most entertaining reading. But again, their relationship probably wasn't unique at that time, so maybe it's important to know about. Anna's feelings toward the officer are also very interesting; there's repulsion there, but also curiosity.

The adult Trudy frustrates me. You can tell she's a very conflicted person and often contradicts herself. Why does she want to be so alone all the time? Why is she so cold toward other people? But maybe that's what makes for a good character? The fact that she has many dimensions that bring out this reaction in me probably makes her pretty lifelike?

I'm about 100 pages from the end, and I think I can see where things are going - What relationships will form, what relationships will falther. But I think I'm still going to have some questions in the end - loose ends that won't be tied up. Sometimes I like books that leave certain things up to the reader, but when they evoke such an emotional/physical response (good or bad) like this book, it's nice when things wrap up nicely (again, whether good or bad - doesn't matter to me). (The other thing that's jarring about this book is the author never uses quotation marks. All the dialogue is in paragraph form and if you don't read carefully, you might not know what's "thought" and what's "said.")

If you're interested in WWII and enjoy historic-type novels, this is a good example of one. While it's not "happy," it's well-written, engaging and a page-turner. You just might not fall in love with the characters.

* Update, May 18. I finished the book over the weekend and while most loose ends were wrapped up, I thought they were done so rather easily and abruptly. Trudy learns the truth for which she's searching, but it seems unrealistic to the story and a bit predictable for the reader. Overall, the book was interesting and digestible, but the hang ups I talk about keep me from loving it.

Me & Emma

My friend CMS borrowed this book to me last week. She enjoyed it and she thought I might too. Me & Emma is about a pair of sisters who live with a emotionally shaken mother and an abusive stepfather. The story follows just a short period of time in the lives of this family, though there are flashbacks to the time Emma and Caroline (the narrator) spent with their father, who passed away. The parts about the abuse are quite difficult to read - how can anyone do those things to women and children? - but there are also many sweet moments of imagination and hope. Kids are pretty resilient, which is probably a good thing. The book has a bit of a twist at the end, so that was fun, too. If you're looking for a quick read about a rough-and-tumble Southern family, I'd recommend it. Here's the synopsis:

In many ways, Carrie Parker is like any other eight-year-old—playing make-believe, dreading school, dreaming of faraway places.

But even her imagination can't shut out the realities of her impoverished North Carolina home or help her protect her younger sister, Emma.

As the big sister, Carrie is determined to do anything to keep Emma safe from a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather, Richard—abuse their momma can't seem to see, let alone stop.

But after the sisters' plan to run away from home unravels, their world takes a shocking turn—and one shattering moment ultimately reveals a truth that leaves everyone reeling.

A Cop's Life

A person I'm close to is going to school to become a police officer. On a recommendation from someone who also has a friend/family member who is a cop, I just finished A Cop's Life by Randy Sutton. Sutton is a Sergeant with the Las Vegas PD, and has also appeared in a couple movies and TV shows like COPS and America's Most Wanted.

The book is a compilation of vignettes from Sutton's time as a police officer. Each chapter could be its own mini episode of COPS or the "law" part of Law & Order. As with any reality TV show or memoir-type book, some editing goes in to it to keep it exciting. Nearly all his stories involve homicide, suicide, armed robbery - all the scary things police officers deal with throughout their career. There are only a few references to the boredom, the paper work or the sweet stories that every-day cops would tell you is how they spend a majority of their days. Fortunately, I realize this about the book, and I know how pretty low-crime our metro area is (especially compared to Las Vegas), or else the book could really scare me.

I also think Sutton - at least I hope so - may be a minority in the police world. He talks a bit about living alone, not being able to hold a relationship due to work, thinking about suicide (police officers have twice the death rate of civilians because of suicide risk) because of all the things he's seen and held on to, etc. I'm willing to bet that while many experiences probably stick with and turn the stomachs of police officers out there, a majority of them can function in their civilian lives and can maintain healthy relationships with their friends and families.

So, unless you're a huge cop drama fan or simply just curious, I don't know if everyone needs to read this book. If you've read other real-life cop stories that you'd recommend, please let me know. I think I'm going to next look into True Blue, The Funniest Cop Stories Ever, and Blue Blood. It's always good to get more than one perspective.

Firefly Lane

Firefly Lane is one of those girlfriend stories we've all read a hundred times: Two friends who are opposites but stay bffs all their lives through heartbreak, fights, love, marriage and tragedy. (See: Best Friends, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Summer Sisters, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan...and these are just the ones I've read that I can remember...) These stories are filled with cliches (chapters titled after hit songs of the decade) and can be quite predictable (will a man come between them? Of course.). But, I keep reading them for some reason, right? In the end, they're entertaining and fun, much like a season of Sex and the City, and are usually very quick reads.

Firefly Lane follows Tully and Kate from age 14 to their mid-40s. The story keeps to the formula. Tully is a wild child while Kate is more reserved and idealistic. Why these two girls, and then women, would stay friends through the years is really beyond me, but they do. The book alternates rather well between the characters' perspectives, though I feel the author tried to fit a few too many years into the book. Several years get glossed over and the story can feel a touch disjointed. The story is definitely overdramatic, but some real issues are discussed, too. I cared more about Kate than I did Tully, but that could be because my own personality falls on the same side as Kate. All in all, a good story and a quick read.

What other books about best friends have you read? Do you see a similar formula in those stories?