Book Review: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

A few weeks ago I read Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. I had to read Poisonwood Bible for my freshman English class at ISU, and I enjoyed Kingsolver's prose then, although the book wasn't my favorite. This book also had quite nice prose, but overall I enjoyed it much more than Poisonwood Bible.

Both of the books use the technique of switching the narrative voice in each chapter to a different main character in the book. Prodigal Summer has 3 main narrative voices, a middle-aged woman who lives a solitary life as a Park Service/Forest Ranger/wildlife biologist in a National Forest in the mountain, an elderly farmer who's mission in life is to develop a blight-resistant American Chestnut by multiple back-crosses with resistant Chinese Chestnuts, and a young, widowed, entomologist-turned-farm wife.

The book shows an interesting intersection between modern science, rural Kentucky farm life, and the current environmental ethos. The story telling is excellent, and although I would say that Kingsolver definitely lets her perspective and opinions show through the book, she does not go to the extent of demonizing the other viewpoints, but rather portrays them sympathetically and honestly.

Overall, I would highly recommend the book, if for no other reason than the beautiful word pictures of nature and wildlife that Kingsolver weaves throughout the book.

Book Review: Auralia's Colors

I just finished reading 2 books - 2 very different books. One was Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet. The other was The Little Lady Agency by Hester Browne.

Auralia's Colors is a fantasy/sci-fi genre book. It wasn't a difficult read, and I got through it pretty fast. The book is the first of a 4 book series, but it doesn't spend a lot of time setting up the scene and explaining every detail about the fictitious world in which it is set. There is enough detail to keep the reader from becoming confused but not so much as to get bogged down.

There are 4 Great Houses in the land, and this book focuses on House Abascar. A now-gone queen had decided that all the color in the House should belong to the crown and everyone else must only own or wear neutrals. Auralia is found as a baby in the river, and grows up in the outcasts' village beyond the city walls. She is found to have a gift of making objects and incorporating color. This causes some tension, needless to say. Anyway, I'm doing very poorly at exciting everyone about this book. But it is incredibly good and thought-provoking. So read it!

The Little Lady Agency is essentially a chick-lit book. In other words, it is a light, fun, relaxing read and isn't a very thought-provoking type book. It is set in England, so you can amuse yourself while reading by imagining all the lovely British accents. Melissa Romney-Jones finds herself without a job and decides to start an agency to help single men with their wardrobes, etiquette, and gift shopping for female relatives. As you can imagine, much hilarity and unlikely situations ensue. A fun read, but not for the "serious" book reader.

Unread Books

Below is a list of the 100 or so books most often marked as "unread" on Library Thing. How many of them have you read?

BLUE: Books I've read
GOLD: Books I've read as school assignments
GREEN: Books I will likely read in the future
RED: Books I started to read, but never finished

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
Emma
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
Angels and Demons
1984
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum

I received this book for Christmas from Steven's family. It is every bit as scrumptious as I thought it would be. I'm only sad that my schedule will not allow my to start trying out recipes for a couple more weeks.

I've been making basic breads for quite a number of years, so I'm definitely comfortable with the yeast aspect of bread making. However, the idea of making starters and sponges and using some of the more artisan techniques and ingredients has always been a little scary. What I really appreciate about this book is that it includes a lot more than just recipes...it also covers the science behind why certain techniques work or why different types of flour are better or worse for each type of bread. I remember doing some things with types of flour in my Food Processing class at ISU. (For those of you who remember, this was the absolutely HATED class that had ridiculously long, boring labs...largely watching huge vats of various things boil for hours on end.) Anyway, I think that the information in this book is presented much more accessibly than the class, with a good balance of the Science of bread making with the Art of bread making. Duh...if it wasn't, no one would buy the book.

I have 10 recipes marked in the book to try, starting with the Rich and Creamy Ginger Scones. I'll keep you updated as I have the opportunity to test the recipes...and maybe I'll even torture you with pictures!

The Rising Tide

I randomly decided to read The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara this weekend. Here's my review, for what it's worth.

A gripping novel of WWII, it covers primarily the battles and personalities that shaped the North African front from spring 1942 - fall 1943 after the Allied invasion of Italy. The historical events are accurate in essentials and details, while the characters are fleshed out from both the historical records and Shaara's pen. The reader, becoming immersed in the engrossing battle descriptions and character interactions is likely to forget they are absorbing a history lesson at the same time.

This book opened my eyes to three new perspectives on WWII. American history education, when it even progresses to cover WWII, leaves a student knowing little more than Pearl Harbor, Normandy, concentration camps, and the use of the A-bomb. All important, of course, but somewhat limited in scope.

First, this book is set primarily in North Africa, a theater of the war that I don't remember being mentioned (except in Raiders of the Lost Ark). Nonetheless, the events there were key to the Allied invasion of Europe.

Second, the book showed the humanity and place of the officers and commanders of the German armies. I think that too often the American perspective lumps the entire German army and people with the insanity of Hitler and the atrocities of the concentration camps.

Third, we are always presented with the picture of the Allies (England, France, U.S., et al) united against the Germans. Apparently, French politics were even murkier 60 years ago than they are now. In fact, American forces had to fight off the French when landing in N. Africa. Only after they saw the Americans winning did they finally decide to join our side. With Allies like that...

Anyway, this book is a good read, and I highly recommend it.