the little bird book review

Well, kids, I suppose this is it. After over two years of book-reviewing, I think I am actually, officially, regretfully calling it quits. You may have noticed the long gaps between posts growing steadily longer over the last few months and, while I assure you that I’ve still been reading plenty, if you could see my desk you’d see a corresponding pile of books-to-be-reviewed growing steadily larger and larger.

The pressure is getting to me, I admit.

At this point in my life (husband about to graduate, baby on the way, life on the brink of change), my plate is just so darn full that, like it or not, some things have been bumped right off the edge of that plate almost without my noticing. In this particular case, I prefer to be proactive and so I’ll delicately scoot this one off the plate myself, in the hopes that it might land gracefully, someplace soft.

Thanks to all you folks who have read and commented and picked up a book or two at my recommendation over the course of the last few years. It’s been a pleasure writing for you, and of course I plan to leave the site up so that you browse the many, many reviews housed here at your leisure.

My other blog will also remain active so feel free to drop by, though I must warn you that in a matter of months it’s almost certain to be a) overrun by baby photos, or b) left to quietly collect dust for at least a little while as I try my best to get the hang of that “new mother” routine.

Thanks again for everything. You’ll be missed.

Dear readers, I apologize, for I owe you so many reviews and I have fallen so far behind in my posting.

To make up for lost time (and reviews) I’ll skip right to one of the best on my “To Be Reviewed” list and give you Ian McEwan’s ON CHESIL BEACH.

By now you must know that I love Ian McEwan* and that any book of his has a special place on my bookshelves, but, that said, I will treat this book to the fairest review I can manage, unencumbered by gushing praise for his writing, his characters, his perfect and powerful word choice - I will try my best to remain unbiased.

ON CHESIL BEACH is both beautiful and awkward, as it follows a newly married couple to Chesil Beach, where they celebrate their wedding night. The story itself is simple, but deftly layered with tension, and McEwan creates characters so three-dimensional that they seem to breath from within the pages. The access he allows the readers to their thoughts and motives stops just shy of voyeurism and instead allows for a deep, long look at other people, in a way we are rarely allowed in real life.

If there is one issue I take with McEwan, though, it’s the fact that his stories never end well. Without giving much away, I will say that I was completely absorbed in the story, rapt, until the last quarter of the book, when the tightly knit narrative strings began to loosen and then, suddenly, fall away.

I wanted so badly for things to end differently, and the lack of conclusion left me very nearly irritated, because I know what McEwan is capable of and this, unless I missed something crucial, cannot be it.

ON CHESIL BEACH is good regardless, and I suspect that some readers will appreciate the ending much more than I did. Probably, it’s a matter of preference.

RATING: 4

*Reviews of Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam, The Innocent and Saturday are all available in the index.

When Fast Food Nation was first released, I was in my first year of college. Friends who had recently turned vegetarian lobbed passages from Schlosser at me in misguided attempts to scandalize me into quitting meat completely; several of my classes featured excerpts from Nation on the recommended reading list; in one nonfiction writing workshop, we examined the opening paragraph to chapter 6, “On the Range,” stripped it down to its bare bones and used Schlosser’s sentence structure and scene-building techniques to write opening paragraphs of our own.

Perhaps it was the sudden abundance of Fast Food Nation quotes at a point in my life when I was immersed in books of all shapes and persuasions that allowed me to think that I had, somehow, read the book in its entirety. Whatever my reasoning, five years passed before I caught on to the fact that I was boasting (as I often am) half-formed opinions based on half-earned knowledge. I finally picked up a copy of my own and dug in.

What I presumed to be a rant against the American diet turned out to be a study of the vast damage done by the fast food industry to nearly every aspect of American culture. From what I had read, I assumed that Schlosser’s book focused primarily on the effects of the fast food industry on the American diet, but I was startled to learn that Schlosser aims for a much higher mark: in illustrating not merely how fast food companies have changed our diet but also our lifestyle, Schlosser examines the roll of fast food in today’s car culture, marketing strategies, food production industries, corporations and attitude toward the rest of the world.

Schlosser is thorough in his research and approach, if not entirely unbiased. At points it became clear to me how the reader ought to feel about the information presented and certain people, when interviewed, were painted in shades that seem intended to sway the reader’s opinion. These brief moments where Schlosser’s opinions broke through made me slightly wary, but otherwise I couldn’t complain - the man puts up a solid argument and closes with a few chapters that sound (considering the context) downright optimistic.

If corporations can do this much damage in less than a century, Schlosser theorizes, surely we - the consumers, the ones with the true power - can go a long way in another, better direction, can’t we? But of course, he says it better than I do. You really ought to hear it from him.

RATING: 4

By now, you ought to know how much I love Annie Proulx. HEART SONGS, an early collection of her short fiction, holds eleven small reminders of just how much I love her and of exactly why I do.

Centered in Chopping County, New England, Proulx constructs several different lives, telling stories of events large and small that mark the rural community of Chopping County as a changing one: the transition from a community of families who have owned their property for generations to a county bought up in bits and pieces by rich vacationers and investors stands at the core of the stories, as the characters find their homes being broken up beneath their feet and redistributed to strangers. This is most poignant in “Electric Arrows” and “Negatives,” though the theme insinuates itself through the rest of the stories as well.

I am constantly impressed by Proulx - the strength of her writing never wavers, and her characters are always solid, complete. It seems incredible that her writing could become sharper and more refined, but it’s obvious in her later works that it has, which is wholly admirable. Accordian Crimes and Close Range still stand as my favorites, though Proulx’s ranking as one of my favorite authors has been reinforced, yet again, by the stories in Heart Songs.

RATING: 4

Ruth Reichl, a renowned restaurant critic, writes COMFORT ME WITH APPLES as a sort of memoir-by-meal, documenting her life through the meals she ate at critical points of her thirties and forties. APPLES is actually a sequel to Tender at the Bone, which I have not read, and opens with her decision to begin a career as a restaurant critic, closing at each chapter with a recipe that somehow encapsulates the trips taken or losses suffered or loves gained in the previous pages.

I enjoyed that format - it gave the impression that Reichl was driven into the kitchen at every suspenseful between-chapter pause, and, as each chapter was prone to open within a day or year or five years of the preceding one, it offered a nice little rest before leaping into whatever came next.

The recipes themselves looked delicious, and Reichl’s descriptions of meals and the mishaps surrounding them is lively and alert. Her reports of each course are vivid enough to make me hungry and satisfying enough to leave me weirdly full, but most of the actual memoir made me, well, sleepy - or frustrated.

I suspect that some of this had to do with the fact that, much as I loved her as a narrator, I had difficulty sympathizing with Reichl. Some of her choices and, therefore, the fallout from those choices, are fairly foreign to me and, though they served as a large portion of the plot, I had a hard time relating to them. But the food? She definitely made me feel that.

I did actually try out one of the recipes - the mushroom soup - because it just looked so darn delicious, but I was disappointed to discover that it was more “cream of mushroom” than “mushroom” (why the 2 c. half-and-half to 1 c. beef stock didn’t tip me off, I’ve no idea).

I was further disappointed to discover that I don’t really care for “cream of mushroom” soup. I think I’ll try the soup again later and even out the cream-stock ratio, because the flavor of the soup (onions and butter! mushrooms! yum!) was great. It was just too rich.

Some of the other recipes looked fabulous as well: egg and noodle pasta, Swiss pumpkin, sweet potato pie? They absolutely look worth a try.

RATING: 3

Just so we’re all clear, upfront, I found this book through Oprah magazine.

I know. I’m sorry.

Oprah ran an article that featured two of Schneider’s recipes with three variations apiece, and I was intrigued, particularly by the Bittersweet Black Pepper Brownie Cake, so I snagged our office’s complimentary copy of O and went home to give it a try.

The cake was delicious.

So I branched out and tackled some of the variations - chocolate wonder cookies, chocolate planets - before embarking on the second recipe, Pasta with a Fried Egg and Parmigiano, which is now a staple in our evening repertoire. Eventually I made it through all the recipes in my photo-copied (and by now very wrinkled and stained) article, so I entreated my mother-in-law to buy me a copy of THE IMPROVISATIONAL COOK for Christmas.

She did. In the past year, I’ve put more miles on this book than on any other cookbook I own (Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking comes in at a close second) and have yet to come across a recipe that didn’t absolutely rock. The best part of Schneider’s book? The structure. Here is how it works.

Each chapter revolves around a master recipe, which she breaks down into its essential elements, explaining why certain flavors make the dish what it is and which flavors can be varied to provide a never-ending palette of possibilities. So, you might have a recipe for Potatoes with White Wine, Thyme and Olives that branches out into Root Vegetables with White Wine and Rosemary, Lemon-Infused Potatoes with Thyme, Parsnips with Roasted Sesame Oil and Cilantro and so on. Every chapter is like a crash-course in cooking, and Schneider’s knack for, yes, improvising suits me to a T, since I have mentioned before that I am utterly incapable of following recipes.

Some of my favorites? The Parmesan Cream soup, the potatoes and white wine (mentioned above), Home Fries, ethereal brown sugar cookies (I’ve tried nearly every variation and am particularly hooked on the Earl Grey Tea Cookies), Rustic Root Vegetable Stew, Balsalmic Caramel and more. Oh, there are tons I haven’t even tried yet and flipping through this book looking at titles makes me hungry.

RATING: 5

When I heard that Joan Didion had written a new book, I was delighted. When I heard what it was about (her grief after losing her husband suddenly), I was even more delighted, for I did not see how a great subject like grief and loss could possibly go wrong in such great hands as Didion’s.

I was not disappointed.

It is a habit of mine to wait, however, before reading a much-anticipated new release by a favorite author, and I do not know why. Sometimes I’m merely waiting for the book to be released in paperback; other times, I purchase the book and then leave it on a shelf, for months or years - to age, I suppose, like cheese or wine - before deciding that the time is perfectly ripe for reading.

For example, I still have not read Ian McEwan’s new novel, though it has been noted in this blog (several times) how much I adore McEwan’s books.

That said, it took me a full year to purchase THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, and another few months of unobstructed ownership to finally pick the book up and turn back the cover. Within the first few pages, I began to cry.

How could I not? Didion’s rendering of her husband’s death sent my heart racing, my pulse beating wildly as hers must have done as she rode the elevator down to the ambulance, stunned, and though the book releases the reader, mercifully, from such a rapid pace after the first few segments, it never quite relents.

(My husband, hearing me sniffle, annouced that I was, in fact, “a glutton for punishment.” Possibly this is true - any book worth its salt makes me cry, either from joy, relief or anguish, and so it ought to be, I think. I tend to seek these books out, and I read MAGICAL THINKING immediately after Doris Lessing’s The Sweetest Lesson, which did make me spontaneously burst into tears right before I was called to sound check for a show.)

I enjoy reading an author’s work with a sense of chronology, comparing their earlier work with the later, and MAGICAL THINKING certainly measures up to the high standard set by Didion’s earlier books, such as Slouching Toward Bethlehem or Play It As It Lays. Her voice is clearly more mature, more seasoned (perhaps more this year than last) and her hand more practiced, and this shows in MAGICAL THINKING. It is a slender, beautiful book, as much about endurance as it is about sorrow.

RATING: 5

Even if THE LIVING was about some other town, I would still love it. The fact that Dillard spends hundreds of pages on this town, my town - the town where I’ve spent my entire life, save three years when I was very small - and draws such simple and extraordinary tales from the bay, the islands, the mountains and all the characters contained therein, fills me with a sort of joy, for it is one thing to read a well-written story about a perfectly-described place and feel as though you’re there and it is quite another to read a well-written story and actually be there.

When Dillard describes a notable Pacific Northwestern sunset, I can look out my window and see one (at 4:00 in the afternoon); when she mentions the blue islands and bright water of Bellingham Bay, I know just which islands and just what water she means, because I’ve been looking at them (and sketching them and visiting them and writing poems about them) for most of my life.

Infatuation with the place I live aside, THE LIVING is a gorgeous and devastating portrait of the evolution of a town, as Dillard follows the introduction of homesteaders into a bare, beautiful landscape and, through two generations of the same family, illustrates the building of a town from the ground up. Her characters are thought-out, complete, and her prose is - as several of my college professors never hesititated to point out - perfect.

The only issue I could take with the book was the sudden drop in the pace as the first half moved into the second half: while the first half spanned years and leapt from family to family, the second half slowed down and focused on only a handful of characters, drawing out over pages a single season in which little of obvious interest happened. It was subtle, true, but slow.

All that aside, THE LIVING is fascinating. Also of interest is the fact that, according to my dad, it was a book of Annie Dillard’s, with her wild descriptions, that enticed my family out here in the first place - and this is a fact for which I’m thankful.

RATING: 5

You know what? I’ll just come out with it: I thought this book was stupid. I apologize for the harsh judgement, but the characters struck me as overwrought and nearly everyone had a penchant for finding themselves in unbelievable situations: professing their hitherto undetectable at (but, of course, undying) love for other characters, or unleashing extravagant back stories on the reader, involving deceased husbands, foreign countries and illegitimate children, etc. Also, I never did figure out was Jackson’s dilemma was.

There was no discernible dilemma.

In this context, I must explain my strange relationship with Iris Murdoch. I was introduced to her by the same person who introduced me to such fine, now-favorite authors as Wallace Stegner, Ian McEwan and Vladamir Nabakov, and so I jumped gleefully in, beginning with The Book and the Brotherhood, which sadly, for some of the reasons mentioned in the opening paragraph, I did not care for.

Shortly afterward, free copies of both JACKSON and Under the Net found their way into my possession, so I gave Murdoch a second chance with Under the Net - and I loved it. Her wit was sharp and unflagging, the story ridiculous but believable (and un-fraught with love triangles! Oh, joy!), her narrator hilarious and prone to brilliant insights, and every single sentence a work of art.

I loved it. And so I jumped into JACKSON’S DILEMMA expecting more of that sort of story - only to be disappointed when yet another character began to stare, dismally, out their bedroom window, pining for a love that up to that point you, the reader, did not even know existed. Bah.

I hear The Philosopher’s Pupil is really good, so I think I’ll give Murdoch one more shot, but if that doesn’t pan out, I quit.

RATING: 2

Lately I’ve had the good fortune to stumble across several wonderful books almost at random. THE SWEETEST DREAM was just such a find: while book-shopping, I happened upon Henderson’s sizeable Doris Lessing section and, spurred on by the knowledge that Lessing was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, I peeked at the first page in the store before purchasing a copy. I then hurried home to finish the book I was currently reading, in order to continue Lessing’s novel.

DREAM follows an eclectic family through London circa 1960 onward, focusing primarily on the large house varying branches of the family (and assorted friends of the family) share. It’s a vast, beautiful book, and I recommend it highly, particularly for the last half, which brought me to tears several times. I will definately be visiting that sizeable Lessing section again soon, I just know it.

RATING: 5