American Housewives: Stories by Helen Ellis (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"I fix myself a hot chocolate because it is a gateway drug to reading."

I don't usually read a lot of short story collections, but I kept hearing about this one and it sounded interesting.  The stories usually entertaining and were filled with irony and humor.  Most of the  featured "housewives" were a bit overkill, but they did the trick and had me laughing more than a few times.  I also enjoyed the focus on literary and publishing themes.  Some of my favorite stories included "Hello! Welcome to Book Club," "How to Be a Patron of the Arts" and "My Novel is Brought You to By the Good People at Tampax."  

The Bartender's Tale by Ivan Doig (audio)

★★★★★

I have to admit that it if wasn't for book club the month I probably never would have picked up this book.  This isn't normally the type of book I usually read.  I wasn't expecting to love it (or even like it all that much), but love it I did and it consumed my thoughts for the last couple of weeks.  Even when I wasn't reading it, I would find myself constantly thinking about the characters as I went through my day.  This is the kind of book that stays with you long after you turn the last page.  It was the tenth book in the author's Two Medicine Country series (none of which I have read), but the author provided enough background that wasn't lost starting towards the end of the series.

The Bartender's Tale is the story of a bartender and his son and the small town image where days went by a little bit slower and everything seemed a just a little less complicated.  The narrator is an older man named Rusty taking place sometime in the present.  He takes us back to the year of 1960 when he was twelve years old living with his father, Tom, as he ran Medicine Lodge, a small-town bar in Montana's Two Medicine Country.  Rusty's mother took off when he was a baby and, after spending his first six years with relatives in Arizona, he came to live with his father.  They live a simple life of having tomato soup for breakfast and fishing on Sundays.  Tom runs the bar while Rusty spends his time in the backroom reading and making paper airplane models.  But, this summer things are about to get a little more interesting.  The diner down the street gets new owners and their daughter, Zoey, becomes Rusty's new "partner in crime."  And then Proxy, a dance from Tom's past, shows up with her daughter Frances and everything Rusty thought he knew about his past is about to change.

This book was wonderful in every possible way.  I loved the description of small-town life in the 1930s.  The imagery and mood was spot-on and the author was able to capture it perfectly.  I loved the relationships between the characters.  Specifically between Rusty and his father, but also between Rusty and Zoey.  Rusty and Tom had such a unique relationship since there was not mother-figure involved.  Tom's love and concern for his son comes though on every page, even though he didn't always know how to handle a situation.  Even though Rusty was young, Tom confided in him and I could feel their mutual respect for one another.  They grew up with only each other and figuring things out as the came and as a team.  The dialogue was quirky and real and the audio version made this even more so.  I also loved the portal of the Rusty's age.  Looking back, twelve seems so young, but it's such as unique age where you feel like you own the world and are, at the same time, starting to see the world differently for the first time.  I so enjoyed Rusty's twelve-year-old perspective on the storyline, even though he was telling the story as an adult.  

The ending wasn't sad, but I found myself bawling after it was over.  I can only count on my hand the number of books that have made me cry.  It was a perfect way to end the story, but I grew to love these characters so much and wanted nothing more than to keep reading about their lives and dreams and interactions with each other.  I was sad to learn that the author had pasted away in April of last year, but I will definitely be reading more of his books in the future - especially the ten other Two Medicine Country novels.

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

★★★★★

This is the story of a little girl and her best friend, her dog.  They do everything together and one day, the girl decides that she is going to make “the most magnificent thing.”  Her dog becomes her assistant, plans are made, and everything seems to fall into place.  After a lot of hard work, she the “thing” is finally finished!  But there’s a problem.  It just doesn’t look right to her.  Or seem to work right.  And it certainly isn’t magnificent.  The girl and her dog go to work again and again, but nothing she makes works.  There is a lot of anger.  And frustration.  And a walk.  And then she realizes that maybe all of her hard work isn’t a disaster after all. 

This is a lovely book with a wonderful message.  It shows something that nearly all young children  - and adults - can relate to: trying and trying and never getting something right.  Things don’t always work out as planned.  But that’s ok.  And it’s ok not to be perfect all the time.  What’s important is the creativity and the process that goes into completing a project.  A concept that I can definitely relate to and a valuable lesson for children of all ages.

The girl’s emotions were realistically portrayed in the story - and her dog was adorable.  The writing was simple and had a perfect pace throughout the book.  I loved the unique illustrations and how the girl and her dog stood out on each black-and-white lined or blue page.

Thank you to Netgalley, Kids Can Press, and Ashley Spires.

After Alice by Gregory Maguire (audio)

★★★

"As for dreams, they are powered by urgent desire, even if that desire is only to escape the quotidian."

I never know how I'm going to feel about a Gregory Maguire book.  Wicked is one of my all-time favorite books and I also really enjoyed the fourth book in the Wicked series, Out of Oz.  I really struggled to get through Son of a Witch (book #2) and A Lion Among Men (book #3) and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - the only other Maguire book I've read - was good, but not great.  

(There were all read before my review-writing days, so no links...)

I have a lot of admiration for the author and his amazing storytelling abilities and imagination, but I had a hard time getting into this book.  Since the title is After Alice, I guess I was expecting the book to be what happened after Alice went down the rabbit hole and returned from Wonderland.  But instead, it told the story of Ada - Alice's best friend who went after Alice and ended up in Wonderland herself.  Much of the story also focused on Ada's sister Lydia and the town looking for Alice and Ada in Oxford in the 1860s.  This was interesting and gave a lot of insight to the original story by Lewis Carroll, but I still struggled through the book.  It was a little too complicated and I found it hard to focus on what was going on.  I'm sure that is a lot more to the story that meets the eye, but I couldn't figure out what it was.  What I loved about Wicked was the extreme detail of the people and culture of OZ and I felt that this book just didn't have that kind of depth to it.

I don't remember when I read Alice and Wonderland, but I must have been before I started keeping track of the book I read in 2004.  I remember being older - maybe 12 or 13, but I found some parts hard to understand and I was easily distracted while reading it (something that usually doesn't happen to me...)  I liked the story, but it was a little too "out there" for my tastes at the time.  I hoping to go back and re-read it one of these days, so maybe I will have a different perspective reading it as an adult.  

I have a ton of respect for Gregory Maguire and I will continue reading his books, but After Alice was not one of my favorites of his.  I'm sure this will appear to hard-core Maguire fans, but it defiantly isn't for everyone.

Every Fifteen Minutes by Lisa Scottoline

★★★★

"I've read that one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, and if you ask me, the other twenty-three of you should be worried."

This is the first novel that I have read by best-selling author Lisa Scottoline.  Dr. Eric Parish is the Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at a hospital.  He has always had his life under control, but recently things are beginning to fall apart.  Eric is in the middle of a divorce and a custody battle for his seven-year-old daughter, he was accused of sexual harrassment at work, and he is worried about his new patient, seventeen year old Max.  He is being targeted by a dangerous sociopath - and all of these things may just be related.  This was an engaging thriller.  It was a bit too unrealistic and everything came together in too neat of a bow at end end, but I generally enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading more by this author.  It was a good change from what I normally read and I did not see the ending coming - at all.

The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman

★★★★ 1/2

" 'I'll pretend to be who they want me to be.' He grinned then, and she saw his youth. 'But it won't work. In the end I'll have to disappoint someone.  Either them, or myself.' "

I have been looking forward to reading this book since it was released back in August.  I have read two of Alice Hoffman's books: The Dovekeepers (which I LOVED) and The Museum of Extraordinary Things (which I didn't really like all that much).  I was so hoping to love this book and am so glad it was as good as I thought it would be.

This is the story of Rachel Pomie Petit Pizzarro  - the mother of Camille Pissarro, an artist and one of the main leaders of Impressionism.  Living on the small and private island of St. Thomas, Rachel dreams of leaving her life behind and traveling faraway to Paris.  Rachel is a difficult child and rarely gets along with mother and her only salvation is her spending time with her father in his library and her friendship with Justine, the maid's daughter.  Her parents are Jewish in the refugee community and she too must be an example.  There are strict rules to live by and Rachel struggles to follow them.  She sacrifices everything for her family when she agrees to marry a widower with three children to save her father's business.  When he passes away, Rachel finds love for the first time but her love is condemned because goes against the strict practises of her religion and her community.  Over next several decades her children and grandchildren suffer the consequences of their parents decisions. 

Alice Hoffman is a wonderful storyteller who is able to get into the very depth of the reader's emotion.  There are several sub-stories in the novel as well that are connected to Rachel's story that emphasis the idea of the generation gap.  The author was spot-on with her portrayal of the complex relationships between parents and their children.  I was so hoping that Rachel would be more accepting of her own children considering what she went to in order to marry the man she loves, but these situations are not always as simple as they seem.  This is a historical novel, but many of the story's issues can still be scene in the world today.  We are not fully accepted by our parents (for one reason or another), but then we do not give this same acceptance to our children.  We want the very best for our children, but sometimes our idea of what is "best" is not what our children want or need. 

I felt like the middle dragged a bit, but other than that, I can not say enough good things about this wonderful book from an amazing author.  A very powerful and important novel and one that will stay with me for a very, very long time.

Our Favorite Easter Board Books of 2016

Isabelle and I - now almost 14 months old - have busy reading all sorts of Easter books together. Here is a list of some of our favorite Easter board books that we have read this year:

#7 Ollie's Easter Egg by Olivier Dunrea
Ollie's friends are all dying Easter eggs and he comes up with a plan on how to get them.  After going through a range of pre-school type feelings, Ollie comes up with a plan to have the best Easter egg hunt they've ever had.

#6 Easter Parade: Funny Faces by Roger Priddy
We loved reading this super simple and cute Easter book!  Isabelle spend almost an hour with her Grandma Carla entertained by the "googly-eyes" and eye holes.  Each page features a different Easter animals with big and bright illustrations.  Plus the sheep's name was "Belle" - to that's always a plus for us!

#5 Happy Easter Mouse! by Laura Joffe Numeroff
From the creator of the popular If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" series comes this wonderful board book in which Mouse tries to find out who is leaving the Easter eggs all over his house. Each page features different colored eggs and readers can help Mouse find and count the eggs.

#4 Llama Llama Easter Egg by Anna Dewdney
Just like the popular Llama Llama picture books, the board books by the same author introduce babies and toddlers to simple concepts with simple phrases and cute illustrations.  In this book, Llama Llama and his friend find all sorts of Easter treats to put in their baskets.

#3 Duck & Goose Here Comes the Easter Bunny by Tad Hills
In this fun and colorful board book, Duck & Goose are in a search for the Easter bunny.  Filled with will lots of laughter and, of course, Easter eggs!

#2 Here Comes Easter! by Caroline Jayne Church
One of our favorite books to read this Easter!!  This is a super cute and simple story about a little girl going on an Easter egg hunt.  The pictures are bright and colorful and there is a "touch and feel" part on every page.  Little can have fun looking for the Easter eggs and counting them as well!

#1 Owen's Marshmallow Chick by Kevin Henkes
This book features Owen (from the Mouse books) as he opens his Easter basket and discovers all sorts of candy and a toy chick.  The story is cute and simple and the famous "fuzzy yellow blanket" also makes an appearance.  We are looking for forward to read the other four books in the series as well!


Let us know some of your favorites - we are always looking for suggestions!  Happy Easter!!!