My Life in France

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme is a terrific read for your quarter (or one third) life crisis. At age 36, Julia Child moved to France with her new husband Paul, speaking no French and newly retired from the O.S.S.. In looking for a way to occupy her time, she turned her new found love of French cuisine into first a hobby, then a job teaching cooking and then a career, publishing cooking books, staring in her first PBS series and becoming Julia Child, cooking celebrity. Refeshingly, Julia doesn't hesitate to say what she thinks, she remains unrepentingly critical of her father through out the book, and recounts her differences with Simone Beck, one of her co-authors on Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book was written shortly before her death with the assistance of her nephew, Alex Prud'Homme and I was shocked it wasn't on any of the best of the year book lists.

While I Was Gone

Yesterday was not only my birthday, but also the birthday of Oprah Winfrey. Today's recommendation, While I Was Gone by Sue Miller, was one of Oprah's Book Club selections. When a man from her bohemian past returns, Jo Becker must relive the summer one of her housemates was brutally murdered. The return of Eli causes Jo to rethink her marriage and the events of her past. I liked this book for the nostalgia of Jo's earlier life and the suspense of the unfolding events, as well as the questions it raised as Jo must make a fateful decision at the end.

As an aside, in college my boss/friend Tiffany and I once had one of those 2 a.m. "what am I going to do with the rest of my life"conversations (profound, as all late night dorm, I mean residence hall, conversations ultimately are) where we decided that I should be Oprah when I grew up. But not everyday Oprah hosting Tom Cruise jumping on the couch and depressing abuse victims. No, I was going to be Oprah one day a month, on book club days (and also paydays, of course). I would have interesting discussions about books with the author and other people who loved books. Granted, I'd never seen a book club episode in its entirety, but in my version the discussions would be smart and lively and I would have lots of witty and articulate things to say beyond "I really liked it". Most of all, though, I would be able to tell other people what they should read and have them actually listen. Now, through this blog, I guess my Oprah dreams are fulfilled. Except the audience of this blog is probably about 3 people. And they are probably far less likely to read, or at least buy, the books I recommend. And no stickers (Shuttsie, can we work on getting stickers?). But hey, it's a start.

Coming of Age In Mississippi

First of all, Happy Birthday to my co-blogger! Today's book is a call back to our days as undergrad American Studies majors, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody. This memoir, written before the memoir craze, tells the of the author's childhood and in the 40's and 50's and her participation in the civil rights movement. She is unflinchingly honest about how facing racism shapes not just the events of her life but also her personality. This book woke me out a deep sleep, and actually made me want to take action. Unfortunatly I was several decades too late for Freedom Summer, but hopefully the effect of this book has remained with me, at least a little bit.

Feast of Love

I adored this book by Charles Baxter which explores the many aspects of love in a very unusual form. The narrator, Charlie Baxter, comes upon his neighbor, Bradley, one insomniac night. Bradley advises Charlie that he should be writing a book about love and offers to send people his way to tell their stories. Charlie meets Bradley and his ex-wives; Chloe, one of Bradley's employees and her boyfriend Oscar; and Bradley's academic neighbors, the Ginsbergs, among others. Along the way the characters tell their stories of love in its many forms, comment upon other characters' versions of events, and even advise Charlie. I was especially affected by the stories of Chloe and Oscar's passionate love and the sad parental love story of the Ginsbergs and their son.

On a Pale Horse

I first read this book, On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, when I was in high school at the recommendation of my friend Beth, who LOVED Piers Anthony and my high school boyfriend, Jacob, who said this series was the only good stuff by Piers Anthony. I don't think these are the only good books he's written, but they are the best, and this one is the best of the best, by far. The premise is --what if Death were a job? The book opens a magically enhanced version of our world, with Zane alone and in despair, trying to kill himself. However as he sees a corporal version of death approach him (think hood, skull, scythe) he panics and turns the gun on him, killing Death instead of himself. By doing this he assumes the office of death. Zane tries to fight this, refusing to reap souls, but eventally embraces his role (sort of), sorting through the souls of those who fall somewhere in the middle of good and bad. His pale horse, Mortis, changes from a steed to a car at the flip of a button and he has a computerized system to help him in his work. There is an entire series, called the Incarnations of Immortality, which include time, nature, fate, war, and good and evil.

NBCC Nominations Are Out

The National Book Critics Circle announced its 2006 finalists last week. The NBCC will be profiling one book each day on its blog. I've only managed to read two books on the list, Fun Home (recommended in the post above) and Stuart: A Life Backwards. My book club is reading The Road for next month, too. I don't usually make my reading choices based on awards, but I do look at the nominees and shortlists for any unknown gem I might have missed out on. Here are the list of nominees:

Nonfiction:
Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso)
Anne Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade (Penguin Press)
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press)
Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (Ecco)
Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury)

Fiction
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf)
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic)
Dave Eggers, What is the What (McSweeney’s)
Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (Knopf)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)

Memoir/Autobiography
Donald Antrim, The Afterlife (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (Houghton Mifflin)
Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards (Delacorte)
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (HarperCollins)
Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Poetry
Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again. (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory. (Margie/Intuit House)
Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971) (Archipelego Books)
Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
W.D. Snodgrass, Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions)

Criticism
Bruce Bawer: While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the WestFrom Within (Doubleday)
Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard)
Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon(Viking)
Lia Purpura, On Looking: Essays (Sarabande Books)
Lawrence Wechsler, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences(McSweeney's)

Biography
Debby Applegate: The Most Famous Man in Amerca: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday)
Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (Simon& Schuster)
Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography (Little, Brown)
Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St.Martin's Press)
Jason Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins)

Which of these have you read? Do awards influence your reading choices?

Fun Home

I haven't read many graphic novels, but a review of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel drew me in and I'm glad it did. This was probably the best book I read all last year. The fun home of the title is the funeral parlor where Bechdel grew up with her mother and closeted father. The book follows Alison's coming of age touching on her coming out and her father's suicide, among other subjects. I think my mild aversion to graphic novels has been the somewhat choppy nature of the writing due to it being broken up in panels. Bechdel's writing flows beautifully from one panel to the next and the gorgeous drawings enhance the story. I particularly loved the interplay between father and daughter about their love of books. Inspired by Bechdel, I will definitely try other graphic novels in the future. What is your favorite graphic novel?