Every day SHE WRITES the book

November 13, 2009 | Books

Look! Books by women!

I went to Bookadee, my local bookstore, today. I was inspired by Gloria Feldt, who planned to buy 13 books on Friday the 13th for the She Writes Call to Action. Kamy Wicoff, founder and CEO of She Writes, put out a call to action to protest Publishers Weekly all-male Top 10 of its “Best Books of 2009 List.”

So I bought 11 books today and two others just recently, Zillah’s Gift by Lois West Duffy and Bellbina, Queen of Weed Park by Laura Juszczyk, which brings me to 13 on Friday the 13th.

• Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder
• Bed of Roses by Nora Roberts
• Dewey, There’s a Cat in the Library! by Vicki Myron
• Finger Lickin’ Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
• Goldilicious by Victoria Kann
• The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
• Rogue Angel Eternal Journey by Alex Archer
• Rogue Angel Footprints by Alex Archer
• 3 Willows by Ann Brashares
• While I’m Falling by Laura Moriarty
• The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Thank you, Tora, for all your help!

Here are some books I read in 2009 and before.

• The Shriver Report by Maria Shriver
• The Bookseller of Kabul by Ã…sne Seierstad
• Entwined Lives by Nancy L. Segal
• The Girls by Lori Lansens
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• Growing Up Country by Carol Bodensteiner
• Identical Strangers by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein
• Indivisible by Two by Nancy L. Segal
• Involuntary Joy by Joy M. Newcom, an author from my new hometown in Iowa
• Iowa Curiosities by Dan Coffey and Eric Jones with Berit Thorkelson
• Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
• Patriotic Grace by Peggy Noonan
• A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown
• Rumors of our Progress have been Greatly Exaggerated by Carolyn B. Maloney
• The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama
• Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman
• You’re Amazing! by Claire Mysko

Books: The Night Listener

November 8, 2009 | Books

I just finished reading The Night Listener: A Novel by Armistead Maupin. I feel sort of like a chump after reading it but not as gullible as Gabriel Noone (and, one might guess — Maupin). No, I felt chumpy because if I’d heard the true story, I’d forgotten it. The book is almost 10 years old. Gah. (It’s got a “bargain priced” sticker on it so who knows when or where I got it.) I know who Maupin is, but I’d never read any of his work. I’m not sure why I chose to read it now, but it’s the second book almost in a row to make me think, gee, are *all* the people in Wisconsin crazy? Which made me hesitate when I saw this book yesterday:

Except for the Oprah sticker on front, it looked terribly inviting. What I read on the book jacket made it sound like a wonderful story … except the thing about Wisconsin. Nah, I thought. I think I need to stop with the crazy cheeseheads for a while. But then the bookstore owner unintentionally talked me into it by telling me how much she liked it. So, I’ll read it soon.

In the meantime, I’m reading this.

I got to meet the author yesterday. More on that when I’m done reading.

But … back to Maupin. He’s such a helpless romantic, and that annoys me. But I can mostly forgive that because of his stories (especially the bejewelled elephants) and the way he tells them. His Gabriel Noone wanted to get the story right. And he did. Just not in the way he intended.

Books: The Girl who Played with Fire

November 3, 2009 | Books,Stieg Larsson

I just finished reading The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. Oh, my. That was fantastic. Most delightful was a bombshell near the end. I love it when an author can surprise me like that. I read his first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and enjoyed it. (I’ve heard the Swedish film is awesome. I’d love to watch it but don’t want to pay $50 for it. Hmm. Maybe I can put it on my Christmas wish list from Norway?) After the second book? I can’t wait for the third and final book, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. It’s due to be published May 25, 2010.

Books: The Family

October 29, 2009 | Books

I just finished reading The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet. It wasn’t as scary as it was hyped, what with the blurb from Barbara Ehrenreich: “Sharlet’s book is one of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read — just don’t read it alone at night!” Sharlet’s portrait at the beginning of the book shows only half his face. The rest is hidden in shadow. A wee bit over the top. I couldn’t help wondering how he gained such access. But, all in all … interesting read.

Books: A Reliable Wife

October 28, 2009 | Books

I just finished reading A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. He had me on the second page with this: “Nothing says hell has to be fire, thought Ralph Truitt, standing in his sober clothes on the platform of the tiny train station in the frozen middle of frozen nowhere. Hell could be like this. It could be darker every minute. It could be cold enough to sear the skin from your bones.”

Someone who wrote those words had to have spent at least one winter in the great, cold North. When explaining to a friend recently about winter in the North, I said, “Norway winters are much different than Iowa winters, but each is its own special version of hell. Norway is the land of the midnight sun in summer, which means NO sun in the winter. Incredibly depressing. We lived on the west coast, which is right on the fjords and near the Atlantic, which meant TONS of snow. Until June. Iowa doesn’t get as much snow, but the wind whips up some mountainous drifts, and it’s bitterly cold. The kind of cold you can’t be in too long before your ears pop right off.”

I bought his book at the recently opened local bookstore that has a shelf of “local” authors and books. Goolrick’s book is about Wisconsin, and I bought it more for that (and the pretty cover … whoever designed the cover obviously read the book, and … wow) than the author. I wasn’t familiar with him. I took the book home and stashed it on my to-read pile.

In the meantime, seemingly everyone was talking about the arrest of Roman Polanski and all that surrounded that decades-old crime. I read this article, Polanski’s Victim And Me, posted on The Daily Beast. What a powerful article, I thought. Then I looked at the author. Hmm. There was something familiar about his name. I turned and looked at my shelf. I had his book sitting there. Wow. There must be more to this book than I originally thought.

Goolrick seemed somewhat surprised at the … humanity … of the North / Midwest. It didn’t really surprise me, but I grew up here. He kept me interested all the way through, and he surprised the hell out of me at a key turning point. I honestly didn’t see it coming. What, for all intents and purposes, should be a tragic commentary on the human condition is actually a testament to the strength and sheer stubbornness of some human beings.

Such things happen.

Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book

September 1, 2009 | Books,Iowa

Well, not really. But I know where to find it now. We just got a bookstore in town. Yay!

Books: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

August 10, 2009 | Books

I just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It took a while to get going, but once it did, it was great. I might just have to read the other two books to the trilogy.

Books: Iowa books & authors

August 6, 2009 | Books,Iowa

As promised, here’s a list of Iowa books and authors.

Memoirs

• The Desert Pilgrim by Mary Swander, Iowa’s 2009 Poet Laureate
• Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Bret Witter with Vicki Myron
• Eat, Drink & Be Merry by Merry Corbin
• A Good Day’s Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression by Dwight W. Hoover
• Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl by Carol Bodensteiner
• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
• Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
• Man Killed by Pheasant: And Other Kinships by John Price
• Mrs. Steffy: Our Mother, the Morticianby Doris C. Steffy
• Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph by C. Vivian Stringer, who led the Hawkeyes women’s basketball team to the 1993 Final Four and the first coach in NCAA women’s history to bring three teams to the Final Four. She is now head coach of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team and a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
• Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart, who is in her 80s and living in California. She tells the story of spending the summer of 1945 in New York and working at Tiffany’s with her friend and classmate at the University of Iowa.

Novels

• Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson, who teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Iowa City. She has written several other books, including Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Housekeeping. She also wrote two non-fiction books, Mother Country and The Death of Adam. Home is a companion piece to Gilead and a variation of the prodigal-son parable. The son, Jack Boughton, returns in 1957 to Gilead, Iowa, where his story unfolds.
• Lassiter Hill by Daniel Dundon, who is a former reporter and editor for the Waterloo Courier and the Cedar Rapids Gazette. He now lives in Jacksonville, Fla. Lassiter Hill is a novel inspired by an Iowa murder case.
• The River Road (American Fiction) by Tricia Currans-Sheehan, who grew up on a farm along the Des Moines River. She now lives in Sioux City and teaches at Briar Cliff University. The River Road is the sequel to her first book, The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors.

Places

• Denison, Iowa: Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town by Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. Maharidge lived in Denison for a year to record daily details of a small town in Iowa. Maharidge and Williamson, both Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, have collaborated on books before.
• Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People (American Land & Life)by David S. Faldet, a professor of English at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He grew up in the Decorah area and is in the fifth generation of his family living in the river basin.
• The Oxford Project by Stephen G. Bloom and photographer and artist Peter Feldstein. Bloom also wrote Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America. Feldstein took photographs of 670 residents of Oxford (population 676) in 1984. He did it again 20 years later and asked Bloom to interview people. Everyone has a story, he said. Both teach at the University of Iowa.
• Prairie City, Iowa: Three seasons at home by Douglas Bauer, a journalist who returned to his hometown after leaving it as a teen-ager. He wrote several other books, including the novel Book of Famous Iowans.

True crime

• Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland (Bur Oak Book) by Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf

Books: Growing up Country

August 5, 2009 | Books

I met Carol Bodensteiner in April, and I recently read her book, Growing up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl.

What a treat! Bodensteiner is a wonderful storyteller. She shows readers what she saw as a girl growing up on a farm in Iowa in the 1950s — from learning how to drive a tractor to the meaning of making a promise and keeping your word. Even if you didn’t grow up on a farm, this is a great coming-of-age story.

Books: Nineteen Minutes

March 31, 2008 | Books

I just read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult … in about 19 minutes. OK. It was more like a day and 19 minutes. Anyone else?