Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Best Bookish Memories

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Best Bookish Memories

So what are my favorite memories of book-related experiences? Other than just reading lots of them, you mean?

I can break them down into a few different categories. First, encounters with authors:

1) Meeting Mary Doria Russell. Mary Doria Russell is the author of one of my very favorite books, The Sparrow, as well as four other excellent novels. I’ve been a fan for years, and when I saw on her website that she’d be speaking at a local high school, I emailed to ask whether the event was open to the public. The answer? No, but she’d arranged for me to attend as her guest. The event itself was terrific — the entire student body of the all-girls Catholic school had read The Sparrow as their summer reading, and I was both amazed and touched by the maturity of the students and their thoughtful approach to a book with difficult subject matter. Mary Doria Russell was charming, funny, and extremely intelligent, and I was delighted to have some time before the event to chat with her one-on-one. As a follow-up, my book group chose her most recent novel, Doc, for our December book, and we were able to spend an hour on the phone with Mary. Simply delightful.

2) Christopher Moore’s Fool – On Stage! (2010) Author Christopher Moore narrated this stage reading of excerpts from his novel Fool (a retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear). Actors from San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater took on various roles from the novels, and each scene was played out first as Shakespeare wrote it, then as reimagined in the crazy, uproarious world of Christopher Moore’s mind. Simply one of the best events I’ve ever attended.

3) Gail Carriger at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. Gail Carriger has to be one of the most gracious authors I’ve encountered. I’ve been to several of her author appearances, but last year’s event at Borderlands celebrating the release of Timeless was really memorable. The crowd wasn’t huge, but it was certainly enthusiastic, and Gail answered questions for as long as people kept asking them, then signed lots of books, answered individual questions, posed for pictures, and was just an all-around lovely (and stylish!) person. Sadly, I’ll be missing Gail Carriger’s appearance in SF tomorrow for her launch of Etiquette & Espionage, although I do plan to read the book as soon as it lands in my hot little hands.

3) Getting an email from Diana Gabaldon. I love, love, love Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. But after reading the first book, I was a bit confused by certain logistics: Wait, was so-and-so in the room when this happened? And where was X? How did Y finally escape? That sort of thing. Well, after getting as far as I could on my own, I used the “contact” function on the author’s website to submit my questions, and got a really friendly and informative email in reply, which not only answered my questions but did so without making me feel like a total dummy.

4) Amber Benson’s book signing. Tara from Buffy, you guys! Did you know she’s an author?? She did a reading a few years ago at a local bookstore. I arrived a little early to browse… and met Amber browsing as well! She was friendly and funny, perfectly willing to pose for pictures, and then did a really cute talk and reading. I didn’t end up loving the book itself, but it was definitely one of the most fun book events I’ve attended.

Next, big book releases:

5) Attending a midnight release party for Breaking Dawn. Okay, I’m not a huge Twilight fan, but I did read and enjoy the books at the time. In fact, I first came across the books while on vacation, having never heard of them previously, and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized that I’d stumbled into a huge phenomenon. Luckily for me, Breaking Dawn was released about a month later, and I went to a crazy, big release party at the now defunct Borders. It was chaos, but pure, happy chaos, with manic fans milling about and squawking with excitement until the actual book sale at midnight. There was a fun, welcoming vibe, a sense of “we’re all in this together”… and it was a good excuse to spend a couple of hours wandering around a bookstore.

6) Reading the final Harry Potter book. The intensity of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was just indescribable. Waiting for the book delivery, shutting myself away from the world (and my family), shunning all newspapers, TV, and internet until I’d finished the book. I scrupulously avoided anything that could be a source of spoilers and was, I’m sure, terribly nasty to anyone who tried to interrupt my reading. Reading along as the books were published was a true joy, and the anticipation while waiting for book 7 was excruciating… but I loved it all.

Book-related goings-on:

7) Attending the annual Big Book Sale sponsored by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. A four-day book sale, with something like 500,000 used books to choose from, all $5 or less! I look forward to this event every year, and always come home with armloads and bagfuls of books. Interesting and weird finds, lovely editions, a chance to mingle with fellow book-lovers — fun, fun, fun!

And in the personal life/nostalgia category:

8) Stealing from my older sister. My sister is four years older than I am, and at any given stage of our lives, I always wanted to read her books instead of mine. Sometimes she’d lend them to me willingly, sometimes I’d have to sneak a bit. So perhaps I can credit sibling rivalry with my childhood-long habit of reading “up” instead of sticking with my own grade-level reading materials. Strongest memory? Borrowing (with permission!) my sister’s copy of Little Women — and then having her snatch it back after a nasty argument about something or other. Being one to hold a grudge, she never did let me have the book again, and it was a couple of years before I finally picked up my own copy from the library and finished the damn book.

9) Learning about sex and puberty from Judy Blume. I attended a sleepaway camp for many summers of my youth, and Judy Blume’s books got passed around from hand to hand until the covers were falling off, especially Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever. In the more rambunctious teen years, we moved on to racier material (Fear of Flying by Erica Jong was one such title), but there was a certain lovely cameraderie that grew out of our shared reading experiences each summer. (I wrote a little tribute to Judy Blume a few months ago; you can read it here.)

10) My bookish romance. I’ve written about this before (here, if you’re interested), but one of the things that made me fall in love with my husband was the day that he told me about a book he’d loved years earlier and I realized that perhaps I’d found a kindred spirit. Finding the book itself was one of the most exciting discoveries for me at a Big Book Sale.

And that’s my list! I’m sure there are so many more I could come up with — but this is a top 10 list, not a top 100 list! What are your most memorable book-related experiences? Do tell!

4Feb2013

The Monday agenda 2/4/2013

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

Happy Monday! Looking back and looking forward…

From last week:

The Round House by Louise Erdrich: Done! A beautiful book that I can’t get out of my mind. My review is here.

I received an ARC of Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield. Very moving story. My review is here.

Finally, I managed to crack open Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan while the rest of the world was busy watching the Super Bowl.

And this week’s new agenda:

I’ve read about 50 pages of Nick and Norah, and I can’t say I’m won over yet. Perhaps it’ll just take a bit more time; I’ve read and loved these authors’ other two collaborations, so I still have high hopes for this one.

I can’t wait to get my hands on Etiquette & Espionage, the first book in Gail Carriger’s new Finishing School series. It’s due to arrive on Tuesday, and I’ll be diving in the second it arrives.

I plan to devote some time to reading the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan.

If I manage to find time for anything else, I’ll most likely start Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, which has been at the top of my to-read pile for two weeks now, although I’d also like to check out more of Sophie Littlefield’s books.

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

3Feb2013

Book Review: Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

In December 1941, 14-year-old Lucy Takeda is the cherished daughter of a well-to-do Japanese-American couple living in Los Angeles. Lucy’s father is a successful businessman. Her mother is an enigmatic beauty who turns heads whenever she walks down the street. Lucy lives a happy life with close friends, a good school, and a bright future, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor spells the end of life as she once knew it.

Before long, Lucy’s father is dead of a heart attack, and she and her mother, as well as all of their friends and neighbors, are forced from their homes as a result of President Roosevelt’s executive order of 1942, which designated the entire Pacific coast as an exclusion zone and forced thousands of Japanese-Americans into internment camps. Lucy and her mother Miyako are sent to Manzanar, the roughly built camp in the Sierra foothills of California, where they are assigned a flimsy wooden barrack in which to live and where their world becomes restricted to one square mile crammed full of their fellow internees.

Compounding the difficulty for Lucy is her mother’s instability. While in today’s world, Miyako might have been treated and medicated, at Manzanar in those times, Miyako was simply viewed as difficult or unlikeable, rather than having her bipolar disorder recognized or accommodated. Miyako’s beauty, however, does not go unnoticed, and she is soon the recipient of unwelcome but unavoidable attention from the powerful men who run the camp. Events soon spiral out of control, and despite their efforts to protect one another, Lucy and Miyako’s time at Manzanar can only end in tragedy for both.

Garden of Stones is a story within a story, framed by events in 1978 in which Lucy’s daughter Patty seeks answers when Lucy’s long-secret past resurfaces unexpectedly. As Patty starts to dig through clues and finally gets her mother to open up, we see the events from the 1940s from Lucy’s perspective, providing an interesting contrast between Lucy’s outlook as a teen and as a middle-aged adult. Lucy’s life has not been easy, and although she has raised Patty to the best of her ability, by keeping her past a secret she has kept her daughter from ever truly knowing who she is and what she’s experienced.

I found myself quite moved by the tragedy of Lucy’s story, in which we witness a life shattered by war and prejudice, a young girl who had everything she cherished ripped away from her, and yet who somehow manages to survive into adulthood and provide a safe and loving home for her child. Garden of Stones presents two very different mother-daughter relationships, and poses some interesting questions: What does it mean for a mother to protect her daughter? Are extreme measures justifiable if taken out of love? Is pain inflicted out of love preferable to pain inflicted through cruelty? How does one survive after enduring loss after loss?

Author Sophie Littlefield explores this shameful chapter from America’s past with an unflinching eye. We see the devastation from Lucy’s perspective, as a child born and raised in the United States, who speaks not a word of Japanese, is suddenly branded as “other”. We witness the terror of the Japanese-American community in the days following Pearl Harbor, as families frantically burn any Japanese goods or relics in their homes so as not to be seen as sympathizers — or worse, as spies or conspirators. We see friends and neighbors close their doors, turn their backs, and otherwise abandon the people they’d lived alongside, as the Japanese-Americans are forced to sell off their belongings for a pittance before being exiled to the internment camps.

But the larger, historical context is not the only source of sorrow and terror in Lucy’s life, and it is her more personal story that truly gives Garden of Stones its emotional richness. Despite the hardships and privations at Manzanar, Lucy seeks out happiness and friendship, but the circumstances of camp life and her mother’s role in Manzanar serve again and again to bring Lucy pain and suffering.

While some of the more dramatic events of the story are fairly well signaled ahead of time, there are several very surprising turns of events that made me go back through the book and reread certain passages with a fresh eye. I found the Manzanar timeline much more compelling than the 1970s storyline, and yet Patty’s exploration of the past served as a very effective means of slowing unearthing the secrets of Lucy’s life and understanding how these secrets continue having an impact even into the next generation.

Sophie Littlefield has crafted a well-written, emotionally intense tale, full of rich detail and with several well-placed, shocking plot twists. Garden of Stones is a moving story of love between mothers and daughters, of the search for meaning despite the cruelties inflicted during a hard life, and of the many different roads toward hope and survival.

Review copy courtesy of Harlequin via Netgalley

2Feb2013

Book Review: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Main character Joe is 13 years old the summer that his life changes forever. Joe is the devoted, mostly well-behaved son of two loving parents, growing up on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. His father is a judge in the tribal legal system; his mother works in the all-important tribal registry office, handling the complex web of rights and obligations that are tied into a person’s genealogy and ancestry.

At the start of that fateful summer in 1988, Joe’s mother is brutally attacked and raped. Joe’s secure home and safe world is turned upside down, as the hunt for the rapist and the quest for justice consume the family. Ultimately, however, it is the tangled mess of legalities stemming from early tribal treaties and the creation of the reservations that determines the outcome of the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrator. Different laws apply to different jurisdictions, and the case ends up resting on the question of where the attack took place. Was it reservation land? State land? Federal land? Unless the jurisdiction can be determined, there can be no legal process, and so even though the identity and whereabouts of the rapist are pretty quickly determined, it is not at all clear that the man can or will be tried for the crime.

Those are the bare bones of the plot. At a deeper level, The Round House is a meditation on so much more. Some of the most compelling aspects of this book include:

– The sense of family and community present among the people living on the reservation. Joe’s immediate family is small, but his extended family is huge. Everyone is a cousin or an in-law; everyone plays a role in the lives of others. The support and connection is palpable. There is no hiding here — wherever Joe goes, he is known and welcome.

– The depth of the friendships among the boys in this story. Joe’s friends are his brothers. They have adventures, they get up to mischief together — but they have each others’ backs and their bond is one of love and dedication. The relationships among these boys are quite lovely to read about.

– The outrage over the crime that was committed. I think we are all too used to the awful stigma that still attaches itself to rape survivors in our society, but that sense of shame is completely absent here. Joe’s mother suffers deeply, but her suffering is from fear of her attacker and what he may yet do, to her and to others. What is clear here is that Geraldine was the victim of a violent crime, and she is supported by her community without question and without stinting. The house overflows with casseroles; Joe is looked after by not just his aunt and uncle but by everyone. No one hesitates to ask Joe how his mother is or to offers words of kindness. It’s a refreshing attitude that condemns the attacker without in any way blaming or belittling the woman who was attacked.

– The linking of traditional beliefs to the modern occurences. The elders in the family are respected and honored. Joe’s centenarian grandfather tells tales of buffalo women and evil spirits, but these are not just ancient myths — various facets of the stories come into play in the search for justice for Geraldine.

– The reminder that what may seem to many as an unfortunate chapter in US history is still having an impact on real people’s lives to this day. The daily frustrations of living with the outcomes of the tribal treaties is a very real part of the characters’ experiences. An incredibly powerful scene takes place about 2/3 of the way into the book, as Joe asks his father why he bothers — why does he continue trying cases in the tribal courts when nothing seems to make a difference? In response, Joe’s father pulls an old, moldy casserole from the back of the fridge where it had been forgotten, dumps it onto the table, and then begins to pile utensils and kitchen implements on top of it:

That’s it, he said.

I must have looked scared. I was scared. His behavior was that of a madman.

That’s what, Dad? I carefully said. The way you’d address a person in delirium.

He rubbed his sparse gray whiskers.

That’s Indian Law.

I nodded and looked at the edifice of knives and silverware on top of the sagging casserole.

Okay, Dad.

He pointed to the bottom of the composition and lifted his eyebrows at me.

Uh, rotten decisions?

Joe’s father goes on to explain how he and his fellow judges, in case after case, are attempting to overcome the poor foundations of their legal system by creating strong decisions on top of these, hoping to some day create a stronger framework for laws that support their people’s lives. It’s a lovely scene, showing in few words both the depths of the problems facing the tribe and the strength of the connection between Joe and his father.

The plot of The Round House swirls around the traumatic events of that particular summer, but in many ways the story is a coming-of-age tale with the universal characteristics of a boy’s emergence into manhood. Through the attack and its aftermath, Joe for the first time sees his parents as vulnerable. He starts to realize that they have inner lives, fears and hopes, apart from him, and that they can’t always protect themselves or him from the harsher realities of life. Joe and his close friends are on the cusp of their teen years, developing sexually, exploring the boundaries of freedom, reveling in their small conquests and steps toward independence. Much of the climax of the story has to do with Joe, with the assistance of his friends, taking affirmative steps on his own toward what he feels must be done. Joe has gone from the protected child of the family to a young man who wants to be the protector, and while he may stumble along the way, it is this significant summer that propels him forward into the kind of man he will grow up to be.

It’s easy to see why The Round House won the National Book Award in 2012. This beautifully written, powerful story of family and friendship, crime and justice, tradition and history is filled with memorable, well-drawn characters, dramatic plotting, and moral conundrums. There’s a lot to think over, and I’m still mulling through the events and implications of the various plot turns.

The Round House is not light reading, but it’s certainly worthwhile. I recommend it highly, and look forward to exploring more of Louise Erdrich’s work.

1Feb2013

Flashback Friday: Farewell To Manzanar

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

It’s time, once again, for Flashback Friday…

Flashback Friday is a chance to dig deep in the darkest nooks of our bookshelves and pull out the good stuff from way back. As a reader, a blogger, and a consumer, I tend to focus on new, new, new… but what about the old favorites, the hidden gems? On Flashback Fridays, I want to hit the pause button for a moment and concentrate on older books that are deserving of attention.

If you’d like to join in, here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

Other than that, the sky’s the limit! Join me, please, and let us all know: what are the books you’ve read that you always rave about? What books from your past do you wish EVERYONE would read? Pick something from five years ago, or go all the way back to the Canterbury Tales if you want. It’s Flashback Friday time!

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Farewell To Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston

(published 1973)

One of my new acquisitions this week is Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield, a new novel set in the Manzanar internment camp in which thousands of Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II. I’m very excited to be starting Garden of Stones, but in thinking about this book and this era in American history, I was reminded immediately of the classic memoir Farewell To Manzanar, which I first read in high school and remember to this day.

From Goodreads:

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp–with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the nation’s #1 hit: “Don’t Fence Me In.”

Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family’s attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention . . . and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.

Farewell to Manzanar shocked me when I originally read it. As a young teen, it was almost impossible to believe that the events depicted actually happened in the United States. I understand that this book is now included in many schools’ required reading assignments, and I hope that continues to be the case for some time to come. As a personal glimpse into a disturbing chapter of history and as a finely-written story of one family’s struggles, Farewell to Manzanar is a modern classic that shouldn’t be forgotten.

… And I think I’ve just convinced myself to re-read this book.

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers, and share the wealth. It’s time to dust off our old favorites and get them back into circulation!

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join in the Flashback Friday bloghop, post about a book you love on your blog, and share your link below. Don’t have a blog post to share? Then share your favorite oldie-but-goodie in the comments section. Jump in!