Books

Last week one of my sons was sick. Not terribly sick, but what he has was contagious and he got ordered to stay home all week. So I stayed home with him for a day and a half. And I finally, finally got some books finished. My Currently Reading list is down to five!I finished: You, Maybe by Rachel Vail; The Bully Book by Eric Kahn Gale (review coming tomorrow); Fat Kid Rules the World by KL Going (review on Wednesday) and The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (which I reviewed last week after I finished it). I also checked the first season of Deadwood out from my public library and am very caught up in that. I tried watching it when it was first on but the swearing and dirtiness kind of got to me. I got over it and am now loving it!Right now I am reading The House of the Scorpion, one I have been wanting to read forever. It is completely engrossing!What are you reading today?

The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr Lucy Beck-Moreau was considered one of the top concert pianists.  Now at age 16, she has abruptly left the concert circuit and doesn’t play the piano at all.  Instead she is attending school just like any other teenager, doing homework, and listening to her younger brother Gus practice his piano pieces.  When Gus’ aging piano teacher dies, she is replaced by Will, a young teacher who was once himself a child pianist and recommends plenty of time away from the piano for Gus, including once forbidden video games and TV.  As Will balances out Gus’ life, Lucy is drawn to him.  Will is older and sophisticated and interested in Lucy herself as both a pianist and a person.  This is the story of Lucy’s triumph over grief and loss and her struggle to play music on her own terms and for her own reasons. Zarr has beautifully captured a family of wealth and talent without lingering overlong on those details.  It is Lucy who is the center of the novel, which is told in third person but specifically from Lucy’s view.  This gives the book a necessary distance so that readers can view Lucy from a small space and recognize the mistakes that she is making and repeating.  Lucy is a wonder of a flawed protagonist, filled with talent yet drawn into destructive situations of her own making, one feels an affinity to her and yet pushed away as well. It is this strength of the central character that lifts this novel above others covering similar subjects.  The writing here is strong and clear, and the story flows with a natural feel that allows Lucy to veer dangerously close to disasters that make the reading that much more exciting.  Along the way, a dysfunctional family is on display, showing readers how Lucy came to be the way that she is, and also showing hope for what is possible. A true mix of hope, music and tenacity, this book is beautifully composed and harmonious with lingering crescendos.  Appropriate for ages 14-17. Reviewed from library copy. Filed under: Book Reviews, Teen Tagged: families, music, pianists, self esteem

… Anecdotal Evidence: `Comfortably Settled in an Arm-Chair, Reading'. In America at least, the Puritans are always with us.

I don't normally stamp my foot when business decisions are made in the online world because I understand moves and changes happen in Corporate America and it is what it is. However, maybe I'm just not technologically savvy enough to figure this recent issue out.What I Like to DoMany other book reviewers prefer to include links in their posts to other bloggers who have reviewed the same book. It's an opportunity for online networking, advertisement to fellow readers, etc., and I like doing it because I like it when other bloggers link back to me, etc.The IssueOne of the many things I appreciated about Google Reader was the ability to search the blogs I follow for specific keywords. It easily filtered to those blogs that reviewed the same book and I could quickly link to that specific review in my post so other readers could visit those sites.I have connected to both Feedly and Bloglovin in anticipation of the big demise of Google Reader in July to see which I preferred to work with, but I am stumped with both... whenever I click in the search fields to only search the blogs I follow, I instead get results of every blog with that keyword on either Feedly or Bloglovin, respectively.The Big QuestionDo you know how to do it and I'm just confused?? Would love any insight you have.

To put a word so violent as Executioner next to a muzak-soundtrack-inducing subtitle like Love Stories, on a cover sporting a cutesy, heart-shaped tiger’s tail is exactly the sort of unsettling experience you can expect from Rajesh Parameswaran’s uniquely original debut story collection. Animals take control of their narratives in a third of the nine stories here: in “The Infamous Bengal Ming,” a tiger newly smitten with his zookeeper unintentionally becomes a gory killer than a gentle lover; in “Elephants in Captivity (Part One),” a captive pachyderm’s hurriedly penned (trunked?) memoir is presented in translation from its original “Englaphant,” with more footnoted annotations than original text; in “On the Banks of Table River (Planet Lucina, Andromeda Galaxy, AD 2319),” the vicious mating rituals of oversized insects with each other, as well as humans, are revealed in churning detail. While love among different species might be less than compatible, cavorting with one’s own kind is also no guarantee of ‘happily ever after.’ In the eponymous “I Am an Executioner,” the titular protagonist works desperately to start a relationship with his shocked new wife In “Demons,” a wife’s deathly wish towards her overbearing husband shockingly comes true – and then what is she to do? In “Narrative of an Agent 97-4702,” spouses can only share lives of half-truths and repeated deceptions. When love morphs into power-play, tragedy inevitably ensues, from a failing computer salesman posing as a medical doctor in “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan,” to a railway employee marrying up in “Four Rajeshes,” to a production designer’s desire to claim directorial control in “Bibhutibhushan Mallik’s Final Storyboard.” Parameswaran’s imagination makes startling twists and manages to achieve unanticipated feats of bizarre fancy. A little shock to our jaded systems can only be a good thing – uncomfortable laughter, sudden squeamishness, unrestrained gasps all included! Readers: Adult Published: 2012 Filed under: ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, .Short Stories, Indian American Tagged: Anthology, BookDragon, Family, I Am an Executioner, Lina Patel, Love, Neil Shah, Pets/Animals, Rajesh Parameswaran

Peace, by artist Wendy Anderson Halperin is a visual and poetic meditation on the subject of peace. The book is dedicated to our senses, and that dedication sets the tone for the book – peace is real, and it can be sensed with our whole bodies and expressed with our words, actions, and thoughts. There is a very short text which can be read aloud, along with quotes from famous peacemakers spread throughout, and panels of illustrations depicting scenes of peace. Halperin chooses quotes from people like Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Anne Frank. I like that many of the quotes focused on the small ways we can work toward peace: “When people talk, listen completely” (Ernest Hemingway); and “Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace” (Buddha). The many illustrations, too, while wide in scope (they depict children and nature around the world), also depict small scenes of peace. Some of the images contrast to illustrate the concept. For example, one scene shows a grandmother washing dishes while her granddaughter lounges on the couch. A few pages later, we see the same grandmother washing the dishes with her granddaughter at her side helping her. Another scene depicts an elderly man boarding a bus as everyone continues to read their paper. Later on in the book, we see that a child has risen from his seat and offered it to the man. We also see children reading in tree houses, planting vegetables, sharing meals with their families, and quietly observing a heron. The book is one to read and look at over and over again. It may spark discussions about kindness, friendship, stewardship of the earth, and about standing against all those things that destroy peace – like anger, apathy, ignorance, and jealousy. I can see this making a soothing bedtime book for all ages, and while it would be difficult to read the book aloud to a classroom (too many small details), it would make a good book for small groups to read and discuss in the classroom. Posted by: Parry

Before his death of natural causes in 2008, Henry Gustave Molaison had the world’s most famous brain. At 27, Molaison permanently lost the ability to form new memories, which led to him spending the rest of his life in “thirty-second loops of awareness.” In the LRB, Mike Jay reviews a new book on Molaison, Permanent Present Tense. Related posts: He Was Water: Kenyon Grads Remember David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech Did Wallace's speech resonate on the hot Ohio morning when... Reasons to Remember Her Name At Slate, William Brennan looks at the oeuvre of Shirley Jackson,... When This You See, Remember Me Getting rid of the clothing of someone who has died...

Last week, my news stream was buzzing with the news Kristin Cashore’s bestselling YA book Graceling is the latest novel to have film rights acquired by a studio. Over at Harlequin TEEN, a few of our books may be hitting a theatre near you — film rights for Julie Kagawa’s Blood of Eden series (starting with The Immortal Rules) were sold, and Universal picked up the rights to Julie ‘s next fantasy series, too! Of course there are a TON of paranormal and fantasy books that have been acquired by studios and production companies for movies. Which of these potential book-to-film adaptations looking forward to seeing on the big screen? Feel free to add your own picks and share other options in the comments, too! Take Our Poll

… Joan Acocella: Dante in Translation and in Dan Brown’s “Inferno” : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

An interview with the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka on the legacy of the “father of African literature,” Chinua Achebe, and why he wishes that Achebe had not written his last book. Pete Seeger’s proposal for gender-neutral language, from a 1974 letter to Ms. magazine. Ireland’s newest postage stamp has an entire short story printed on it. “Certainly Jewishness lurks in the hinterland of the novel, and anti-Semitism in a number of its nooks and crannies.” Mark Ford on a new reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Beautiful and innovative reading rooms from around the world. “Thomas Sawyer, Missouri. Experience: Neutral” Literary characters’ Couch-surfing references, by Jason Edward Harrington, at McSweeney’s....read more