Flashback Friday: Ice Bound

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited 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:

Ice Bound by Dr. Jerri Nielsen

(published 2000)

From Goodreads:

During the winter of 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, the only physician on a staff of forty-one people, discovered a lump in her breast. Consulting via satellite e-mail with doctors in the United States, she was forced to perform a biopsy and treat herself with chemotherapy in order to ensure that she could survive until conditions permitted her rescue. She was eventually rescued by the Air National Guard. Dr. Jerri Nielsen’s story of her transforming experiences is a thrilling adventure and moving drama. Since the publication of Ice Bound in hardcover in January 2000, Dr. Nielsen has inspired people throughout the country, met hundreds of fans, received numerous awards including Irish American of the Year, which was presented to her by Hillary Clinton, as well as tremendous praise from the media.

I don’t generally read a lot of non-fiction, but I’m always thrilled to encounter a memoir that transports me into another place or another life. Ice Bound is just such a book. I’m sure many people are familiar with Dr. Jerri Nielsen’s incredible story, which received a great deal of media attention as it was actually happening. In Ice Bound, the author writes about her personal struggles and challenges with honesty and humor. But it’s not just her battle with cancer that makes this book such a remarkable read. In Ice Bound, Dr. Nielsen also invites us into the little-known world of “wintering over” at the South Pole, describing with great detail and heaping doses of humanity just what it means to spend months in isolation in Antarctica, what kind of people sign up for this unique experience, and what it takes to get through it all.

Sadly, Dr. Nielsen passed away in 2009. If you enjoy reading about strong women who make a difference, I encourage you to give Ice Bound a try.

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join the Flashback Friday fun, write a blog post about a book you love (please mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the Flashback Friday host!) 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!

23May2013

Flashback Friday: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris

(published 1987)

From Goodreads:

Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.

Telling one story through three sets of eyes, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water moves backward chronologically through the generations of a family to reveal their secrets, their hopes, their pain, and their disappointments. It’s a beautifully written tale, heavy at times but worth the emotional investment. Read it for the portrait of a family; read it for yet another painful lesson on the Native American experience and how its history echoes until today.

16May2013

Flashback Friday: The Handmaid’s Tale

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

(published 1985)

From Goodreads:

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…

Back before “dystopian” was a fiction genre (as in the enthusiastic exclamation I came across recently: “I ♥ dystopians!!”), Margaret Atwood wrote this chilling look at a remade United States, in which religion is now law and women are subjugated into the Biblical roles that the men in charge deem appropriate. With no monetary, legal, or political power, Offred is stripped of everything she once had, including a name of her own, and forced into servitude as a vessel for producing offspring.

The Handmaid’s Tale is an unforgettable look at life in a totalitarian society, in which individual rights no longer exist — including the right to one’s own body and one’s own family. It’s a frightening cautionary tale as well as a powerful piece of speculative fiction, written in Margaret Atwood’s always spectacular literary voice.

My Wishlist Wednesday book this week was the author’s upcoming book, MaddAddam, due out in September of this year. Margaret Atwood’s fiction is always different, always beautifully written, and always powerful. What are your favorite Atwood novels? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

9May2013

Flashback Friday: Heart-Shaped Box

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

(published 2007)

From Goodreads:

Aging, self-absorbed rock star Judas Coyne has a thing for the macabre — his collection includes sketches from infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a trepanned skull from the 16th century, a used hangman’s noose, Aleister Crowley’s childhood chessboard, etc. — so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it.

The black, heart-shaped box that Coyne receives in the mail not only contains the suit of a dead man but also his vengeance-obsessed spirit. The ghost, it turns out, is the stepfather of a young groupie who committed suicide after the 54-year-old Coyne callously used her up and threw her away. Now, determined to kill Coyne and anyone who aids him, the merciless ghost of Craddock McDermott begins his assault on the rocker’s sanity.

I’ve just started reading Joe Hill’s new release, NOS4A2, so when it was time to pick a Flashback Friday book for this week, I couldn’t resist revisiting the author’s first novel, Heart-Shaped Box. What you need to know: A) Joe Hill can write, and B) Joe Hill can write seriously scary stuff. Heart-Shaped Box is a practically perfect horror novel, with a seriously terrifying bad guy and an unbelievably tense build-up to a crackling end.

I generally consider myself unflappable when it comes to what I read: Whatever it is, I’ll still sleep perfectly well at night, thank you very much. Heart-Shaped Box was definitely an exception to that rule for me. Leave the lights on for this one.

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!

3May2013

Flashback Friday: Smoke and Mirrors

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

(published 1998)

From Goodreads:

In the deft hands of Neil Gaiman, magic is no mere illusion… and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman’s first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders — a place where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift store, where assassins advertise their services in the Yellow Pages under “Pest Control,” and where a frightened young boy must barter for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks. Explore a new reality — obscured by smoke and darkness, yet brilliantly tangible — in this extraordinary collection of short works by a master prestidigitator. It will dazzle your senses, touch your heart, and haunt your dreams.

I know I’ve said about a thousand times that I just don’t do short stories. Smoke and Mirrors is one of my happy exceptions. This collection includes pieces short and long, creepy and mysterious, and just about all are genius. In my humble opinion. My very favorites are Nicholas Was, a one-page story that will guarantee that you never think about Christmas in quite the same way, Snow, Glass, Apples, the most disturbing version of the Snow White story that I’ve ever read, and The Wedding Present, which is actually a wonderful story embedded in the book’s introduction.

Really, you can’t go wrong with any of the stories in this superb collection. And coming from a person who just does not get into short stories, that’s saying a lot!

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!

25Apr2013

Flashback Friday: The Basil and Josephine Stories

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Basil and Josephine Stories

The Basil and Josephine Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Stories first written from 1928 – 1931; collection published 1962)

From Goodreads:

Fourteen of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best-loved and most beguiling stories, together in a single volume In 1928, while struggling with his novel Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald began writing a series of stories about Basil Duke Lee, a fictionalized version of his younger self. Drawing on his childhood and adolescent experiences, Fitzgerald wrote nine tales that were published in the Saturday Evening Post about his life from the time he was an eleven-year-old boy living in Buffalo, New York, until he entered Princeton University in 1913. Then from 1930 to 1931, with Tender Is the Night still unfinished, Fitzgerald wrote five more stories (also published in the Post) that centered around Josephine Perry, Basil’s female counterpart. Although Fitzgerald intended to combine the fourteen Basil Lee and Josephine Perry stories into a single work, he never succeeded in doing so in his lifetime. Here, The Basil and Josephine Stories brings together in one volume the complete set, resulting in one of Fitzgerald’s most charming and evocative works.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is certainly having a moment, isn’t he? Between the soon-to-be-released movie extravaganza of The Great Gatsby and the newly published Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, there’s an absolute Fitzgerald revival going on right now. Which got me to thinking… Yes, I read The Great Gatsby in high school, just like everyone else. I also, at various times, read This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, and Tender Is the Night. But the Fitzgerald work that has really stuck with me over the years is the collection of stories found here in The Basil and Josephine Stories. These stories, focusing on two young, privileged characters and their pursuits and struggles, beautifully convey a time and a society that continue to fascinate. This is one story collection that I don’t mind reading, over and over again.

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join the Flashback Friday fun, write a blog post about a book you love 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!

12Apr2013

Flashback Friday: Brazzaville Beach

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Brazzaville Beach

Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd

(published 1990)

From Goodreads:

In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . .

Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.

I remember exactly where I was when I read this book about six or seven years ago: on a family vacation, hiding away in an air-conditioned room, shushing everyone who dared talk to me (how rude!), and basically refusing to go act like a social creature while I still had pages left in this engrossing book. Interestingly, what I can recall most vividly about the plot of the book is not the human drama, but the animal drama. The chimpanzees at the heart of the scientific research in Brazzaville Beach are fascinating, and while the people parts were great too, it’s the chimp saga that has really stuck with me.

I’m surprised, actually, that I haven’t read more by William Boyd, despite friends who love his works and have highly recommended other of his books to me. Clearly, this is a situation I must correct! Meanwhile, I definitely recommend this book for its evocative African settings and its hard look at human — and animal — behavior.

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!

4Apr2013

Flashback Friday: Replay

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Replay by Ken Grimwood (published 1987)

From Goodreads:

Jeff Winston was 43 and trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job, waiting for that time when he could be truly happy, when he died.

And when he woke and he was 18 again, with all his memories of the next 25 years intact. He could live his life again, avoiding the mistakes, making money from his knowledge of the future, seeking happiness.

Until he dies at 43 and wakes up back in college again…

And from Amazon:

Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn’t know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again — in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle — each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: “What if you could live your life over again?”

I loved this book. I’m always intrigued by a good time-twisting tale, and this one is a doozy. Given the opportunity to essentially live your life again, knowing everything you’ve already done the first time around and how it all worked out, what would you change? And would changing things make them better? Or just set you off on a completely different path?

I featured Replay in a “timey-wimey” blog post about six months ago, which you can see here. This books ranks up at the top of the list of terrific time-related weirdness in books. Check it out!

(Note: The Amazon synopsis above actually has it a bit wrong, but I’m not going to go into specifics. Read the book — then let’s talk!)

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!

22Mar2013

Flashback Friday: Into the Forest

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Into The Forest by Jean Hegland (published 1996)

From Goodreads:

Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.

Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society’s fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found. The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other.

Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America.

Forget the glut of dystopian fiction currently being published — Into the Forest is the collapse of social structure done right. This story about sisterhood and survival is tense, dramatic, suspenseful, scary, and incredibly moving. The sisters’ relationship is dynamic, full of love and hate, and is ultimately the girls’ key to finding a future in a world that has fallen apart. I read this book years ago, but it has absolutely stuck with me.

Plus, this is the book that made me realize how ill-prepared I am for any sort of disaster on the epic-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it scale. For starters, I need to gain some knowledge about edible and medicinal plants, learn how to forage in the forest, gain some basic proficiency in self-defense, and start training for endurance running. As it stands right now, if the zombies show up, I’m toast.

Note: There are no zombies in Into the Forest — that was an irrelevant aside. What is relevant is that this is a terrific, unforgettable book. Check it out.

And an apology in advance from your humble Bookshelf Fantasies blogger: Flashback Friday will be taking a week off next week due to family travel plans. Join us on Friday, April 5th for the next Flashback Friday!

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!

14Mar2013

Flashback Friday: It’s an All-Clone Two-fer!

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. 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

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin (published 1976)

Joshua Son of None by Nancy Freedman (published 1973)

It’s a cloning two-fer! What was going on in the American psyche in the 1970s that made the topic of cloning both so fascinating and so frightening?

The Boys From Brazil is a very scary story about a secret plot to clone Hitler. Joshua Son of None is a not-quite-as-scary story about efforts to clone a Kennedy-esque US President. Both present cloning at a time when it was a new and hypothetical possibility, something out of science fiction dreams that only recently contained the first inklings of real, feasible scientific accomplishment. Both books address the role of upbringing and environment in human development: Is it enough to carry a certain genetic code in order to achieve the desired results, or does the cloned person’s entire life need to be recreated in order to give the genetic inheritance a chance to come to fruition?

When these two books were written, of course all of this was far-distant and purely speculative. Now, given our 21st century advances in genetic engineering and reproductive technologies, the science, at least, is possible, although the nature versus nurture debate remains. I would imagine that both books, while startling for their time, might seem a little less so now, although the central question remains: If we have the science to clone a great man, should we? And if the science exists to clone a monster, what could anyone do to stop it?

I remember being quite fascinated by both of these books when I first encountered them. I’d love to know how they’d strike a new reader today — scary or silly? If you’ve read these books and have any thoughts about them, share a comment!

So, what’s your favorite blast from the past? Leave a tip for your fellow booklovers!