Like the Unhoneymooners, Almost Sisters is a work of fiction that has me questioning everything I thought I knew about my taste in books. Generally, my preferences run to non-fiction and historical fiction, with a bit of mystery writing and a dash of the classics. Almost Sisters is decidedly none of these - it even has, horror of horrors, more fantasy Con and gaming references than I could shake a stick at - and yet I really, really enjoyed it. It ended before I was ready, and I wondered if Joshilyn Jackson had set it up for a sequel.
Leia Birch Briggs is 38, single, and famous in the world of comic book illustrators, where she is one of the best. Almost Sisters opens with her discovering that, after a few too many tequilas at one recent ComicCon, she is also pregnant by a Batman whose features she can only vaguely recall. He was black, though, of that she is certain, which means she'll have to tell her conservative, southern family that not only is she pregnant with a stranger's child, but the baby will be biracial.
Her plan to share the news goes awry when her stepsister's marriage implodes on the same day that her 90-year-old grandmother's Lewy body dementia becomes very, very public to mroe or less the entire town of Birchville, Alabama. Leia's grandmother is Birchie, and she is the reigning Birch, the last Birch residing in the town her forebear's founded. The combination of events sends Leia directly to Birchville in the company of her 13-year-old niece, Lavender, where together they must convince Birchie and her equally elderly BFF to decamp for assisted living.
And then mayhem ensues. Lavender meddles in Leia's life. Leia meddles in Lavender's life (and by extension that of her stepsister and brother-in-law). And Birchie and Wattie share secrets they will stop at nothing to keep. The skeletons in the closet aren't all metaphorical.
Five stars.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind
I have said before that I aspire to be David Quammen when I grow up. Despite the fact that Monster of God was not my favorite Quammen book, I still feel that way. As ever, Quammen combines world travels, science, and an unabashed loved for the English language . His language is rich - ovoid, sessile, extirpated, such terms pepper his chapters and enrich his readers. So, too, does his ability to mine centuries of thought and literature for relevant themes, incorporating Beowulf into a section on Romanian bears and passages from the Bible as he discourses on the lions.
Monster of God sees Quammen travel the globe looking for human-nature interactions between homo sapiens and the largest remaining top-of-the-food-chain predators on earth. Those range from the salt water crocodiles of northern Australia to the lions of India and the Amur tigers of the Russian far east. In each stop, Quammen takes the time to understand the history, the biology, the cultural imperatives, and the end game. Here's a hint, the end game doesn't look good, certainly not for these Alpha animals, and not particularly for the homo sapiens, either. His approach is thoughtful and thorough, and he leaves his readers with more questions than answers, always a hallmark of good writing, IMO. (In this sense I was reminded of the eminently fascinating, but equally depressing Chesapeake Requiem.)
At times, Monster of God hues wordy. I didn't go back and check the number of pages compared to other works (Song of the Dodo, Spillover, Boilerplate Rhino), but it felt longer to me. That said, anyone who appreciates really good writing should appreciate this work -- all the more so if travel or science feature among the reader's passions.
Four stars.
Monster of God sees Quammen travel the globe looking for human-nature interactions between homo sapiens and the largest remaining top-of-the-food-chain predators on earth. Those range from the salt water crocodiles of northern Australia to the lions of India and the Amur tigers of the Russian far east. In each stop, Quammen takes the time to understand the history, the biology, the cultural imperatives, and the end game. Here's a hint, the end game doesn't look good, certainly not for these Alpha animals, and not particularly for the homo sapiens, either. His approach is thoughtful and thorough, and he leaves his readers with more questions than answers, always a hallmark of good writing, IMO. (In this sense I was reminded of the eminently fascinating, but equally depressing Chesapeake Requiem.)
At times, Monster of God hues wordy. I didn't go back and check the number of pages compared to other works (Song of the Dodo, Spillover, Boilerplate Rhino), but it felt longer to me. That said, anyone who appreciates really good writing should appreciate this work -- all the more so if travel or science feature among the reader's passions.
Four stars.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters interested me initially for its setting, India, as I'm continuing in my quest to read books with a variety of characters and stories.
So. The three Shergill sisters - eldest Rajni, a school principal in London; middle sister Jezmeen, an aspiring actress who has flitted from one bit role to another; and youngest Shirina who has recently married a wealthy Australian Sikh and decamped to Melbourne - are forced to make a pilgrimage to India to spread their mother's ashes. The pilgrimage has been planned almost to the moment, with the goal of bringing together three very different women. Unfortunately, the timing could not be worse, with all three women embarking on the trip in the midst of her own personal crisis.
Too, their mother's death has been fraught; the circumstances around her final days have divided the sisters as never before. Balli Kaur Jaswal has also taken pains to slowly unravel the secret and mysteries of their childhood, most critically the previous trip that then-16-year-old Rajni took to India with her mother, and which resulted in her mother never being able to return to India again.
At it's heart, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is about the bonds between family and the idea that even in families, there's much more below the surface than meets the eye. I enjoyed this story and Jaswal's writing. I sometimes felt the story lines were a bit too dragged out - I did tire of the hints, some subtle, some direct, about the previous debacle in India as well as Shirina's crisis. The story is excellent, but the story telling occasionally left something to be desired.
Three-and-a-half stars.
So. The three Shergill sisters - eldest Rajni, a school principal in London; middle sister Jezmeen, an aspiring actress who has flitted from one bit role to another; and youngest Shirina who has recently married a wealthy Australian Sikh and decamped to Melbourne - are forced to make a pilgrimage to India to spread their mother's ashes. The pilgrimage has been planned almost to the moment, with the goal of bringing together three very different women. Unfortunately, the timing could not be worse, with all three women embarking on the trip in the midst of her own personal crisis.
Too, their mother's death has been fraught; the circumstances around her final days have divided the sisters as never before. Balli Kaur Jaswal has also taken pains to slowly unravel the secret and mysteries of their childhood, most critically the previous trip that then-16-year-old Rajni took to India with her mother, and which resulted in her mother never being able to return to India again.
At it's heart, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is about the bonds between family and the idea that even in families, there's much more below the surface than meets the eye. I enjoyed this story and Jaswal's writing. I sometimes felt the story lines were a bit too dragged out - I did tire of the hints, some subtle, some direct, about the previous debacle in India as well as Shirina's crisis. The story is excellent, but the story telling occasionally left something to be desired.
Three-and-a-half stars.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
The Unhoneymooners
The Unhoneymooners is the quintessential beach read. I am somewhat embarrassed by how quickly I read it and how much I enjoyed it; by my normal metrics, it shouldn't have even been on my radar.
Christina Lauren's premise is absurd: all of the guests, members of the wedding party, and - gasp - bride (Ami) and groom (Dane) become immediately and violently ill from the shellfish buffet at a the reception. All, that is, except the bride's twin sister, Olive, who is deathly allergic to seafood, the the groom's older brother, Ethan, who has a complete and total aversion to all buffets. He also has a complete and total aversion to Olive, who is equally (un)enamored of Ethan. But, suddenly, there's a fully-paid and non-refundable honeymoon to Maui up for grabs and neither Olive nor Ethan is about to let the other have all the fun. Also, Ami and Dane won the trip, and it must be taken as a honeymoon.
So, drama. Lots and lots of drama. I won't go as far as the quote on the cover and declare this book "downright hilarious," but it was an incredibly fun read, a statement I make despite the fact that it was totally predictable and also that I found a few of the plot elements more than a little far-fetched. (I've been on lots of snorkel trips. Lots. I've never once seen anyone attempt to change from their swimsuit to their clothes while still on the boat. But I digress.)
Four stars.
Christina Lauren's premise is absurd: all of the guests, members of the wedding party, and - gasp - bride (Ami) and groom (Dane) become immediately and violently ill from the shellfish buffet at a the reception. All, that is, except the bride's twin sister, Olive, who is deathly allergic to seafood, the the groom's older brother, Ethan, who has a complete and total aversion to all buffets. He also has a complete and total aversion to Olive, who is equally (un)enamored of Ethan. But, suddenly, there's a fully-paid and non-refundable honeymoon to Maui up for grabs and neither Olive nor Ethan is about to let the other have all the fun. Also, Ami and Dane won the trip, and it must be taken as a honeymoon.
So, drama. Lots and lots of drama. I won't go as far as the quote on the cover and declare this book "downright hilarious," but it was an incredibly fun read, a statement I make despite the fact that it was totally predictable and also that I found a few of the plot elements more than a little far-fetched. (I've been on lots of snorkel trips. Lots. I've never once seen anyone attempt to change from their swimsuit to their clothes while still on the boat. But I digress.)
Four stars.
Sunday, August 11, 2019
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
97 Orchard simultaneously provides insight into the immigrant experience, eating habits and the evolution of American cuisine (particularly the ways in which ethnic foods first began to influence it), and life in New York circa 1900. Each of these topics could be its own volume, and in the case of, say The Long Way Home or The Food of a Younger Land, this premise has been proven. Yet Jane Ziegelman tackles the challenge deftly, incorporating these aspects like ingredients into a finely mixed dough.
In crafting her narrative, Ziegelman examines the lives and cuisines of five families who lived in the tenement apartments at 97 Orchard Street. First came the German Glockners, with their sauerkraut and heavy stews. The Glockners are an ideal starting point because Mr. Glockner actually built and owned the building and were the first to inhabit their apartment, moving into 97 Orchard Street in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. (Mr. Glockner's draft card, Ziegelman informs her reader, indicated he was a tailor.) The Glockners were followed by the Irish Moores, whose ethnic foods included little more than the potatoes that had failed them at home and oatcakes. The Irish immigration was largely comprised of teenagers, we learn, and following the brutal policies of the English, the ancient and rich food traditions of the Emerald Isle had been whittled down to potatoes. The Irish was generally happy to adopt and adapt the foods of their new land.
Due to their strict food laws, the Jewish immigrants were much less malleable, and Ziegelman then looks at how the Gumpertz family - German Jews - and the Rogarshevsky family, from Lithuania, lived and ate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Matzoh, kugel, knish, and carp featured heavily, although immigrants of all religions consumed significant amounts of cabbage, potatoes, and root vegetables. I was personally taken with the history of Jewish poultry farming inside the tenements themselves. While the language of the day was not, well, sensitive, I could certainly understand the horror of the journalists, social workers, and reformers who encountered the sights, sounds, and smells that accompanied this practice.
Last but not least, Ziegelman introduces the Baldizzis, Sicilians who immigrated illegally (he as a stowaway, she on a doctored passport) in the early-1920s. The Italians, Ziegelman notes, understood better than any other group that they were not wanted in America, and that they were here to do the hard and dirty jobs (digging subway tunnels, erecting skycrapers, building roads) that the natives did not want. Sound familiar? They bore their lot stoically - In questa vita si fa uva - but their food was their comfort, and the Italians were the least interested in adopting or adapting the foods of the new country. Italian grocers imported pastas, tomato sauces, and olive oils that not only tasted like home, but came from home. Americans were suspicious. Pretty much no one in 1925 would have believed that spaghetti and meatballs would one day be as quintessentially American as apple pie. (Pie, I learned, is pretty much the one truly American dish. Americans were known almost universally as "pie eaters" to wave after wave of immigrants.)
Through the decades, Ziegelman describes the evolution of the city's geographical and political landscape evolves, the food, and the perception of various immigrant groups (German in 1900 = model immigrant; German in 1914 = terror of the Hun). I enjoyed the tour, if you will immensely.
Five stars.
In crafting her narrative, Ziegelman examines the lives and cuisines of five families who lived in the tenement apartments at 97 Orchard Street. First came the German Glockners, with their sauerkraut and heavy stews. The Glockners are an ideal starting point because Mr. Glockner actually built and owned the building and were the first to inhabit their apartment, moving into 97 Orchard Street in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. (Mr. Glockner's draft card, Ziegelman informs her reader, indicated he was a tailor.) The Glockners were followed by the Irish Moores, whose ethnic foods included little more than the potatoes that had failed them at home and oatcakes. The Irish immigration was largely comprised of teenagers, we learn, and following the brutal policies of the English, the ancient and rich food traditions of the Emerald Isle had been whittled down to potatoes. The Irish was generally happy to adopt and adapt the foods of their new land.
Due to their strict food laws, the Jewish immigrants were much less malleable, and Ziegelman then looks at how the Gumpertz family - German Jews - and the Rogarshevsky family, from Lithuania, lived and ate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Matzoh, kugel, knish, and carp featured heavily, although immigrants of all religions consumed significant amounts of cabbage, potatoes, and root vegetables. I was personally taken with the history of Jewish poultry farming inside the tenements themselves. While the language of the day was not, well, sensitive, I could certainly understand the horror of the journalists, social workers, and reformers who encountered the sights, sounds, and smells that accompanied this practice.
Last but not least, Ziegelman introduces the Baldizzis, Sicilians who immigrated illegally (he as a stowaway, she on a doctored passport) in the early-1920s. The Italians, Ziegelman notes, understood better than any other group that they were not wanted in America, and that they were here to do the hard and dirty jobs (digging subway tunnels, erecting skycrapers, building roads) that the natives did not want. Sound familiar? They bore their lot stoically - In questa vita si fa uva - but their food was their comfort, and the Italians were the least interested in adopting or adapting the foods of the new country. Italian grocers imported pastas, tomato sauces, and olive oils that not only tasted like home, but came from home. Americans were suspicious. Pretty much no one in 1925 would have believed that spaghetti and meatballs would one day be as quintessentially American as apple pie. (Pie, I learned, is pretty much the one truly American dish. Americans were known almost universally as "pie eaters" to wave after wave of immigrants.)
Through the decades, Ziegelman describes the evolution of the city's geographical and political landscape evolves, the food, and the perception of various immigrant groups (German in 1900 = model immigrant; German in 1914 = terror of the Hun). I enjoyed the tour, if you will immensely.
Five stars.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
In 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake struck Alaska. The ground shook for 5 full minutes, seemingly solid ground turned to jelly, and the subsequent tidal wave swept away an entire village. The earthquake also put paid to the debate over continental drift and led to the current understanding of how tectonic plates interact. Henry Fountain discusses all of this in The Great Quake, which primarily reads as a fascinating scientific narrative, which only rarely delves so deeply into the hard science as to be too dense for the average reader. (In this way, it's more accessible than Earthquake Storms, which was also interesting, but frequently far too in the weeds for my liking!)
The Great Quake also serves as a travelogue of sorts, providing a detailed glimpse of life in and around Prince William Sound, the wild beauty and savage wilderness, particularly in the years immediately after statehood. A reader interested in the evolution of the lands and life in the past half century would be well served to follow Fountain's work with Mark Adams's Tip of the Iceberg.
Fountain's work feels especially timely given that the quake occurred 50-plus years ago: he has spent considerable time with survivors of the quake, as well as George Plafker, the geologist whose work ultimately shaped the current science of earthquakes, plate tectonics, continental drift, and all the other larger forces originating in the core of the blue marble we all call home. Plafker is now 90.
Five stars.
The Great Quake also serves as a travelogue of sorts, providing a detailed glimpse of life in and around Prince William Sound, the wild beauty and savage wilderness, particularly in the years immediately after statehood. A reader interested in the evolution of the lands and life in the past half century would be well served to follow Fountain's work with Mark Adams's Tip of the Iceberg.
Fountain's work feels especially timely given that the quake occurred 50-plus years ago: he has spent considerable time with survivors of the quake, as well as George Plafker, the geologist whose work ultimately shaped the current science of earthquakes, plate tectonics, continental drift, and all the other larger forces originating in the core of the blue marble we all call home. Plafker is now 90.
Five stars.
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