Singing Songs, by Meg Tilly (1994)
Meg Tilly has written a depressing, child's-eye-view book with extremely short sentences ("I'd never been vaccinated before. None of us had. Except Mama. She was vaccinated. And Daddy, too.") and pitiful situations that are difficult to understand even with an adult's perspective. A child tells us in a bright-eyed and enthusiastic manner about her half-starved discovery that dog food tastes good, and about the time she got hot grease in her eye and her screaming caused her to lose house privileges and have to live in the woodshed for a week, which turned out to be fun, yay!, except that her older brother molested her. Then she tells us in an ordinary, no-big-deal tone about the time her 8-year-old sister was allowed to stay up with the grown-ups and ended up wearing make-up and lingerie, with her hair hacked off and glued to her underarms and privates. And about how each of the male members of her family, from brothers all the way to grandfather, sexually abused her.
Let's say for a moment that we believe that fiction should expose "real truths," and that we think that should include even the nastiest, filthiest truths we can find, exposed for no other reasons than for profit and so we can say we've written a book. The book STILL sucks. It's lame, it's badly written by someone who is barely an actress and certainly not a writer, and it is nothing but a long list of muck and despair.
Henry in Love, by Marian Thurm (1990)
This is a story about a man named Henry who marries a woman named Kate. Henry is 68; Kate is 28. They have a baby together, and shortly thereafter, much sooner than they had expected, Henry hits an icy patch of old age and goes down. I liked this book; I didn't like Henry, but I liked his story. Henry is the kind of man I feel attracted to and repelled by: energetic and talkative, his own biggest fan, a show-off, wears past depressions as if they were badges of honor, feels proud of the way he intentionally makes people feel uncomfortable. Alone he is someone I would make any excuse to get away from; with Kate, he makes half of a smart, witty couple. The dialogue is unusually good, the characters believable, the situations unusual but realistic, the ending sad but satisfying.
Compatibility Test: Give it 30 pages. If you still don't like it, you don't have to read any more.
Nursery Style: Creating Beautiful Rooms for Children, by Annie Sloan and Felicity Bryan (1989)
I have mixed feelings. On one hand, what beautiful rooms. On the other hand, are we talking about children? Do they seriously need Victorian bedrooms with restored antique bassinets? I couldn't see in the photograph where they would keep the big plastic diaper pail. Reading this book I had the feeling that it was written for women pregnant with their first children. There were some terrible text-picture clashes, such as when the text advises adamantly against using floor-length curtains, yet on two pages preceding and one page immediately following, the rooms have floor-length curtains. Oh, all right, I'll call off my dogs: this was still a book I found interesting and useful. I don't sew, but there were patterns for things like traveling-basket liners, blankies, and hooded towels, so that you could make your own coordinating nursery items if you couldn't find ones you liked in the stores. The most helpful parts of the book to me were the two-page spreads following each section. The spreads featured fabric and wallpaper swatches, and stencils or dolls or lace or wood cut-outs or quilts as appropriate to the style. Each was an easy way to sum up the look just described, and I could envision bringing them with me to the store to make tricky decisions about decor. You can place bets that I will never be decorating a child's room with antique circular swooping-veiled bassinets, but I liked looking at the colors and the patterns and finding out what things I liked with what other things. However, I sprained my gimme-a-break muscle over all the importance given to the topic of nursery decor; it was as serious and solemn as a book on comparative religion. Maybe you should just look at the pretty pictures.
Compatibility Test: Clearly you have to find the subject of nursery decor interesting, and it helps if you find it deserving of reverence.
One Big Happy Family, by Irene Tiersten (1982)
If you choose to try this book, you'll want to have scrap paper nearby for the first 33 pages. See, the main character is cheating on her husband with a man who is cheating on his wife, so there are the first four characters. Then this main character writes a story about a woman who is having an affair who writes a story about a woman who is having an affair: two more names from the story within a story; four more from the story within a story within a story. It can get a little difficult to keep track. Then there's the added problem of the main story skipping around so much: when we begin, she's left her husband already; a little later, she hasn't even met the man she's going to leave him for; later still, she hasn't left yet but is planning on it.
When we are given a time line that moves consistently forward, and a single set of characters, we find that the story is about blame, blame, blame, blame, blame. She made me feel unattractive. He made me feel unappreciated. He held me back from things I wanted to do. She nagged me. She made me feel stupid for loving her. She never told me she didn't like green. Oh, blah, blah, blah. I don't mind a story about adultery and divorces; what I do mind is having to hear each character justify to himself or herself his or her reasons for leaving.
That doesn't make it a bad book, however: Irene Tiersten has captured the refrain from the song sung by everyone bitter about a relationship gone wrong. I found the bitterness and resentments and fighting tiresome, but nevertheless I remained interested in the book right to the end. Don't wait for justice, however: the lies and accusations and the unfairness hold to the very end.
Compatibility Test: If you don't know many people who've ended a relationship with bad feelings, you may find this fresh and interesting.
Hanging Up, by Delia Ephron (1995)
This book is great, just great. I read the whole thing without once rolling my eyes or feeling critical. Perhaps one or two times my eyes strayed ceilingward, but that's not half bad. I started reading it on a Thursday morning; Friday morning I didn't have to go to work, and I kept thinking I'd do errands or baking or bill-paying, but instead I was drawn back to the book. It isn't that it's so suspenseful, because it isn't; it's that it's one of those rare finds: a good read. I liked the characters, I liked the plot, I liked everyone's names, I liked the author's photo. I couldn't identify with the main character's phone obsession, since the sound of a ringing phone makes me hide in the closet, but what a great story. Basic plot: three sisters, all very different but still close, constantly on the phone to one another, deal with their father's increasing senility. Plot spans about 40 years.
Compatibility Test: Oh, come on, give it a try. We're talking about the woman who wrote How To Eat Like a Child.
The Christmas Mouse, by Miss Read (1973)
Miss Read is an author who came highly recommended, so I checked out two of her books even though normally I might not have been drawn to them. Perhaps you remember being a little kid and reading Little Women, or The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, or any of the Little House books. Remember that feeling of being engrossed in a good story that didn't make you feel scared or sick or angry? Here's another series of books for that category. These would be good books to read when you're alone in the house at nighttime, or when you've just had a big confrontation and you don't want to think about it. Calming and sweet, the Miss Read books will put things back in perspective for you. The Christmas Mouse is about a household of two widowed women, mother and daughter, and the daughter's two daughters---and, as it happens, a mouse. This would be a good book to read every year around Christmas time.
Compatibility Test: Or did you read Christopher Pike and Roald Dahl when you were little?
Village Affairs, by Miss Read (1978)
I'm not going to take the space to review every single Miss Read book, but I wanted to emphasize how good they are. There are so few good storybooks for adults. Prim, loving, soothing, tranquil Miss Read will spin you a tale to make you feel better. Village Affairs is about Miss Read herself, telling how she nearly lost her post as teacher of a small village school. When you get to know her, you'll want to go live next door to her.
Compatibility Test: Try one Miss Read book, any Miss Read book, and see what you think.
Dance Real Slow, by Michael Grant Jaffe (1996)
There's something heartwarming about single-fatherhood, and single-fatherhood is what Dance Real Slow is about. Warm fuzzies, however, are not enough to keep the book interesting.
The dialogue, especially between the father Gordon and the love-interest Zoe, is unrealistic, more like what you'd expect from a high-school student or a romance novelist. The too-soon sex scene is jarring and unnecessary. Subsequent encounters are shallow: Zoe's character is never fully developed, and Gordon is developed only in his father role, so it's difficult to know enough about them to believe in them as a couple.
I noticed the dad had a remarkable amount of undisturbed free time without his son. I don't expect the book to give a blow-by-blow description of every minute of his day (e.g., "I helped Calvin go potty. I pulled his pants back up and noticed they were muddy so I changed them. We were on our last roll of toilet paper so I put it on the list."), but how likely is it that we'll feel empathy for a man who's a well-paid lawyer with several loving, motherly women willing to take care of his son at a moment's notice? His interactions with 4-year-old Calvin are brief and interesting, very little of the minute-by-minute child-rearing struggle. Gordon has sex with Zoe on the bathroom floor with the door open, and Calvin politely waits until the cigarettes are lit before interrupting. Please.
The ending was dramatic but then fell flat, leaving things with an unsatisfied, unresolved feeling.
The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking, by Brother Rick Curry, S.J. (1995)
What is it about these religious men that leads them towards bread? I thought my heart belonged exclusively to Brother Peter Reinhart (see review of his bread book in January 1998 reviews), but I think I have room for Brother Rick Curry's book, too. Not so much Brother Curry himself, whom I like somewhat less than Brother Reinhart---but his book rocks. Far more recipes than Brother Reinhart's, but with less concentration on, well, method and metaphor. I especially recommend the Olive Bread on page 122, which makes toast that will change your religion. If you make the Brother's Bread on page 154, I recommend reducing the salt a little---I don't know if it's a typo or if the bread is supposed to be that salty, but I was thirsty for days.
Compatibility Test: Brother Juniper's Bread Book was a good first step. If you're ready to make more kinds of bread, move on to this one.
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, by Allan Gurganus (1989)
My friend Andrea recommended this book to me, and boy, did Andrea ever know what she was talking about. This is the sort of book that I'm legally required to refer to as "an epic," or at least, "a novel of epic proportions." It's 718 pages long, and I can't believe the author packed so many stories into so few pages. You read and read and read, and you think you must have read all there is to know---and you look up and see you've only read 120 pages, and realize the author has just begun to scrape the very upper layer of all he wants to tell you. The narrator of the book is 99-year-old Lucy, telling her story to a young girl with a tape recorder. The young girl has begged the interview because Lucy has the distinction of being the oldest living widow of a confederate soldier. Lucy cheated, however, by marrying a 50-year-old veteran---enlisted at the age of 13 and only 15 when the war ended---when she was only 15. Yes, he's 35 years older, get used to feeling a little weird about that. It's been 84 years since the honeymoon, and Lucy has collected an awful lot of stories, and I mean "awful" in both ways. In fact, it's hard to come down on one side or the other on any of these stories: do you love them, or can't you bear to read another word? This book is an emotional experience, I'll say that much. This book sneaks your history to you in a spoonful of sugar: you'll learn a lot about the Civil War from the southern perspective, but you won't be having flashbacks to boring high school history classes. The author is a master of suspense, letting you in on each secret slowly but surely, so that you know exactly what's going to happen but still hope that maybe it won't. Something distinctive about this book, I think, is that the dialect is not only not intrusive or fakey, but in fact helps you to get deeper into the book, makes you feel more involved, makes it seem more real. So, too, the occasional asides to the young girl with the tape recorder: in other books, this sort of thing can yank you away from the story and remind you that you're reading; in this one, you may become aware that you're reading, but you feel as if you're reading a transcript of what that tape recorder stored. Neither of these two devices seem like devices. The book is so eerily believable, you may find yourself wondering, as I did, whether it really is a transcript.
Compatibility Test: You need to be emotionally strong to read this book. Read the first story, "Fight Song," to judge whether you can handle it. Choking up is fine; deep depression means forget it.
The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, & Bronwen Godfrey (1994)
I don't want to be too hard on this book, but I need to start with a summary: it's a great book, and I want it nowhere near me. I read it like a novel, cover to cover, and I've never seen such an interesting collection of bread recipes: so nutritious, with such an eye for using the purest, best ingredients; so broad in scope, using things like beans and yogurt and soy grits (soy what?). Every recipe is coddled and loved, each has a story behind it, and the authors are clearly tried-and-true experts on every single thing that could happen to make the bread go wrong or right. This said, would you take the book back to the library for me on your way to the store? Because I can't bear the sight of it. Recently I've started baking a loaf or two myself, motivated by Brother Reinhart (see review in January 1998 reviews) and Brother Curry (see review, above), and this book made me feel like my efforts were not only fledgling but wing-clipped. By the end of the book I felt like giving up on my newly developing skill and heading to the grocery store for a loaf of Wonder Bread. Brief flashes of interest and motivation were squashed because each part of each recipe was an entirely unfamiliar concept: "boil the soy beans over an open fire made with oak twigs you've stripped the bark from and then use the broth to make a nourishing vegetarian gravy for your.....". I couldn't handle it. This is not a book about baking bread, this is a book about making a serious lifestyle change. If you start out like me, making bread out of flour you buy at the store (what do you mean, grind it myself?) and feeling pretty proud of yourself, please don't kill that poor baby bird of your motivation by trying to plunge into The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. I have an idea: let's all play at baking bread with Brother Curry and Brother Reinhart, and in a few years I'll meet you back here and we'll try our hands at Garbanzo Rice Bread.
Compatibility Test: Were you laughing at my innocence when I reviewed those earlier bread books? You may be ready for Laurel Dearest.
Like People In History, by Felice Picano (1995)
The informal subtitle of this book is "A Gay American Epic," and if you're already feeling uncomfortable don't even read the review, let alone the book. I liked it, but I recognize that this is controversial stuff. Other reviewers seem to have gone way beyond what I would have said about it: one called it "the gay Gone With the Wind," and another said that "Anyone who cares about this country and its recent history should read it---now." Let's not get carried away here. It's a good read, and it may bring home for you a little of the devastation caused by AIDS if your life hasn't been touched by it already; it may also make you feel a little less unfamiliar with the gay lifestyle and thus a little less nervous about it if you were nervous before; but let's not go around calling it the greatest epic tale of our time until "our time" has had a little time to think it over. It's a good story, and it seems even more profound because it covers relatively new ground. "New" should not be confused with "great." I don't see any reason why you should rush right out and read it, unless the topic interests you. If it does, I can recommend this book as a good read, albeit one filled with adult situations and subject matter on, as I said before, a controversial topic. I can't say if the characters are realistic or not, but they seemed heavy on the camp. Did you see the movie The Bird Cage? Torch Song Trilogy? Similar stuff.
Compatibility Test: Does the topic interest you?
Cautionary Tales for Women, by Julian Fane (1989)
Pompous, conceited old windbag tells women in patronizing tones why everything is their own stupid fault.
Compatibility Test: Do you drink beer, use poor grammar, and refer to women conversationally as "bitches"? Are you a big dumb jerk who tells jokes that feature the c-word? This book is outrageous.
Couplehood, by Paul Reiser (1994)
I like Paul Reiser's sense of humor. Since this book is essentially a transcript of his act, of course I liked it. If it has a fault---and I'm only saying "if"---it's that it's not entirely about couples. I think he had about 100 pages of comedy routine about couples, and then he padded it with 100 pages of things that are only technically couple-related. I can picture him sitting at his desk, thinking, okay, I need something about couples; couples, couples, couples; got it! couples go to the beach. So then there's a page about suntan lotion, and a page about the ocean, and a page about the way sand gets into everything. I think that's cheating, but I also think it's funny---so I can forgive, though with a slightly reproachful tilt to my eyebrows.
Compatibility Test: You've got to like Paul Reiser.
The New York Public Library Desk Reference, by The New York Public Library
I don't often issue imperial commands, so I hope you'll be obedient when I do so now. You must own this book, and I'm not fooling around here. A dictionary and a thesaurus are useful tools, but The New York Public Library Desk Reference is oxygen. I can't possibly tell you everything that is in this book, so I want you to go to a bookstore and open up this book randomly and see if you aren't sucked in. I'll open it for you in a few places right now and see what we find:
1) a glossary of common computer terms
2) a Fahrenheit / Celsius chart, including rough estimates (i.e., 20 degrees C. is a mild spring day)
3) a list of chemical additives and their effects
4) information on preparing a resume
5) a list of zip codes
6) the standard sizes of floor tiles, bathtubs, appliances, siding, etc.
7) bartender's guide
8) The Monroe Doctrine
9) sample forms for a living will, a promissory note, a seasonal lease agreement for a furnished country / seashore house, etc.
I'm panting. You should be halfway to the bookstore. A hint, by the way, for when you're purchasing it: I see nothing wrong with going to one of those bargain bookstores and buying an old edition for a small fraction of the original daunting price. Some information, such as addresses and phone numbers, may be outdated, but much of it, such as The Monroe Doctrine, are unlikely to change.
Compatibility Test: Oh, please.