Antigone Books

This is a book of 8 linked short stories, each featuring Beatrice Hempel. Whether Ms. Hempel is shepherding her 7th grade students on a field trip, remembering her early rebellious interest in a particular DJ’s radio show, or bumping into a former student after leaving the teaching profession, she is a thoroughly engaging character full of doubt, wonder, humor, and heart. Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum has an eye for detail and everyday moments that coalesce and resonate in unexpected ways.

“…the emotional undercurrents in this sharp take on coming-of-age and growing up will move you.” –Publishers Weekly

This is a picture book aimed at children. It includes a wonderful range of facts and fun about several fruits and vegetables (and fungi). The photographs are strikingly unusual (Magritte-like), as are the quirky details selected for inclusion, creating a book that ultimately appeals to everyone. I never knew, for example, that mushrooms are an excellent source of colorful dyes for fabrics, or that one type of citrus fruit seed (say a lemon seed) can grow into a tree that bears almost any of the other citrus fruits (say grapefruit), or that every part of a tomato plant, except for the fruit, is extremely poisonous. (The books states that "Eating just one leaf can kill a grown human.") You'll have to read the book to find out more...

At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God, she says, "It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.'" --The New Yorker

Humans were clearly designed to eat all manner of meats, vegetables, fruits, and grains. But, as Michael Pollan points out, America's farmers have succeeded so wildly that today's fundamental agricultural issue has become how to deal sensibly with overproduction. The result of this surfeit of grain is behemoth corn processors, who have commoditized the Aztecs' sacred grain and developed ways to separate corn into products wholly removed from its original kernels. This excess food and Americans' wealth and rapid-paced lifestyles now yield supersized portions of less-than-nutritious eatables.

Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.

Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans.

Pollan contrasts the technologically driven life on an Iowa corn farm's feedlots with the thriving organic farm movement supplying retailers such as Whole Foods. Pollan also addresses issues of vegetarianism and flesh eating, hunting for game, and foraging for mushrooms. Throughout, he takes care to consider all sides of issues, and he avoids jingoistic answers.

This is a fun and informative travel memoir!

Ayun Halliday has a great sense of humor which time after time comes in handy during her travels. Her book, in fact, convinces me that it might be a necessary character trait in order to backpack on a low budget with a roughly planned itinerary. Not only did her sense of humor get her through some tense, painful and frustrating situations, but her descriptions of them made me laugh out loud, often. I was happy to have her as my guide through such places as Romania, Paris, Kashmir, Vietnam and Scotland.

Her last essay has a regretful edge. She takes a trip with her husband and almost one-year-old, excitedly planning to take part in a Glasgow performance workshop, only to end up whiling away the hours entertaining her child and basically missing the whole workshop experience.

I have complete faith that Ayun will find a way to have the whole family travelling on a shoestring budget in no time.

Paul and Roz Mellow are enthusiastically in love -- so much so that in 1975 they write a how-to sex book, Pleasuring, that features illustrations of them in every imaginable position. The book becomes a runaway bestseller. When their four children find the book and read it together, they're forever traumatized, in ways both serious and comedic. Flash forward 30 years: Paul and Roz are long divorced and remarried, and Paul, in particular, remains bitter; the grown children fumble through their lives on the eve of the publisher's reissue of the sex classic.

What is interesting is how having parents that are famous for an explicit sex book (think Joy of Sex) changes them all in such different ways. This is a fascinating look at how sex, love, divorce, and marriage can effect the same members of a family in such a variety of ways.

Melissa Bank's new book is character-driven and, lucky for the reader, she is quite adept at creating a wide range of intriguing characters. It opens with the protagonist, Sophie Applebaum, at 12 and ends when she is well into her 30's. Though this is clearly Sophie's story, it is a pleasure to witness the ease with which Banks portrays Sophie's parents, brothers and grandmothers--and with as much depth and precision as Sophie herself.

Sophie is an unmotivated student who eventually stumbles into a career in publishing (she quickly learns that she loves to read books, but nothing more) and then advertising, with no particular interest or driving force propelling her. This is especially glaring since she's sandwiched between one brother who is immensely creative and charismatic (in fact she clearly gets her first job solely because her brother had dated the interviewer) and the other who is a child prodigy who becomes a doctor. Sophie has an accurate moment of self-reflection when she muses that she has never had a "calling." Even so, I found her endearing and often unexpectedly insightful. She is honest, a good friend, sister and daughter. She is ready to take an art class, to read a whole collection of Billy Collins poetry in one sitting and, most of all, to fall in love.

I agree with the reviewers who suggest that this is a short story collection more than a straightforwardly traditional novel. For the most part, each chapter can stand on it's own, and some of them have, in fact, been previously published as stand-on-their-own pieces. Because of this, there are some clunky moments and I was surprised that the extraneous details hadn't been edited.

Sometimes I felt like I was left hanging. As the book progresses, each chapter pivots around a particular boyfriend of Sophie's. A chapter would end innocently and then the next chapter would pick up five years later, no mention of how the relationship had unraveled. Often there were enough clues to fill in the blanks, but occasionally I felt cheated.

Despite a few flaws, this is a captivating, poignant and funny book!