Book Club Reading – Peaceful Reader

Mailbox Monday on a Wednesday

My mailbox is generally crammed full of bills, catalogs and flyers. This week I’ve had a lot of books show up. Thought I should share my loot.

1. Soup Day by Melissa Iwai. Won this. From the author. Whoop, Whoop. Signed by the author to Groovy Girl. Wonderful gem of collecting ingredients and cooking with mama.

2. Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke (May 2012) ARC. From Little, Brown and Company. Thanks Zoe. (Inkheart (the book, not the movie) tops my favorite book list.

3. The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart (April 2012) ARC. From Little, Brown and Company. Thanks also Zoe!

4. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan and The BFG by Roald Dahl both from Paperback Book Swap. I need to give out some higher level chapter books to some students and this was an easy (free) way to collect a few to donate.

5. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jaime Ford. Purchased from Alibris for February book club, I’ve already read it but wanted to reread. Library copies were all out. Gee, I wonder who had them all?!

6. Learning by Doing by Richard DuFour. Used purchase from Amazon vendor. Want to read this for school purposes. Probably won’t get to really read it until summer.

Happy reading!

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

It begins:

The town of Blackwell, Massachusetts, changed it’s name in 1786. It had been called Bearsville when it was first founded in 1750, but it quickly became apparent that a name such as that did little to encourage new settlers. True, there were nearly as many black bears in the woods then as there were pine trees, but there were also more eel in the river than there were ferns sprouting on the banks. You could stick your hand into the murky green shallows and catch half a dozen of the creatures without using bait. If you ventured in waist-high you’d be surrounded in moments. Yet no one considered calling the village Eelsville…(1)

and so begins the reader’s journey into this small village in the woods. The bears, the eels and the weather all play into the theme of man vs. nature. The book is filled with short, connected stories about the town’s inhabitants; some of the events are linked and some are not but they all take place in Blackwell and they all demonstrate how small towns emerged all across this nation.

Hallie and William Brady lead the first expedition out of Boston with several other adventurous families and Hallie quickly becomes their champion. William turns out to be a worthless salesman. Each story goes forth often reminding us of a previous story by some note or wisp of gossip about the crazy town founders.

I found each story delightful-Hoffman’s writing is vivid and descriptive and each character human. There is a magically element with mermaids,, a garden graveyard, and one or two ghosts creeping about the riverbanks but nothing every small town doesn’t already have!

Alice Hoffman makes it on to my favorite author list! We read this for our November book club choice and it was not everyone’s favorite but other’s put it up there with Stockett’s The Help. Happy Reading!

Other thoughts:

The Halifax Reader
Just Joywriting
Smallgood Hearth

November Reading Recap and a few mini-reviews!

Teenage Boy exclaimed the other day: “This year is going by so fast!” and I agree. December is just around the corner. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving spent in Deephaven, MN with my younger brother and his family. The weather was gorgeous and the food was spectacular! My brother has emerged as quite an eclectic chef and we had a non-traditional meal with King Salmon as the main course. The salmon was caught in Lake Superior this past summer by my 9-year-old nephew! A truly amazing feat and he was all smiles as we ooh’ed and aaah’ed over his tasty fish.

My reading in November was quirky:

Bright Young Things by Anna Godberson (my shelf): Ugh. So wanted this to be as good as The Luxe series. It was not.

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman (library): This deserves a much longer review but suffice it to say I loved Hoffman’s writing and will search for more of her prose.

Spellbound (The 2nd book of Elsewhere) by Jacqueline West (library): I loved this little series-perfectly creepy with a strong young female heroine. I reviewed it here.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own making by Catherynne M. Valente (library): I waxed poetically about this book here after just a few chapters. The book stayed consistently superb. The vocabulary alone puts it in a category all its own. I had to look words up. Such a treat. The author’s website offers a preview of the book. Go on click and check it out!

Organizing the Disorganized Child by Martin L. Kutscher and Marcella Moran (new purchase): Trying to help my Groovy Girl out a little here-this is filled with many great tools like this clock.

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (my shelf): I don’t love it as much as The Lightning Thief but it is a good adventure with mixed race siblings. I love learning about ancient Egypt. I’ve had this on my shelf since it was first published-glad to be finally crossing it off my list. The same nephew that was responsible for bringing in the salmon was a little disgusted with me-he’s read ALL of Riordan’s books-some more than once! He was all like “well, have your read The Son of Neptune??” Ahh, not yet.

What have you been reading??
Happy December.

The Little Stranger; A Novel by Sarah Waters

My book club picked this for its February read. It’s a big book at 463 pages for such a short month but it took me less than a week to read it and for me, that’s pretty good. It kept my interest and I rather enjoyed the lengthy English descriptions but I was left wanting. Waters purposely never ties up the ends, which left me shaking my head.

The Little Stranger is a detailed story about an old house, Hundreds Hall, and the Ayres family that lives within. Our narrator, Dr. Faraday, the son of a former nursemaid at the house, is called out to the house to examine a young maid and begins a relationship with the family members; Mrs. Ayres, her daughter, Caroline and her son, Roderick. He’s a country doctor who grew up in the village and visiting the house as an invited guest and doctor is a bit of thrill for him, even though the house has not weathered well. Something about the family (and the house) intriuges him and he continues his visits to have tea, treating Roddie’s war injuried leg and helping them through one catastrophe after another. The house is driving the family members mad in one way or another and Dr. Faraday is like this outsider who has a front row seat to the show.

This is where it gets a bit tricky. Several incidents are described, leading readers to believe that the old mansion is haunted or cursed, which was creepy and exciting but never explained-just left me on the edge. I wanted some loose ends tied up. Part of the intrigue was that the house tormented each family member in a different way. For Roderick, it played on his insecurities as a landowner/gentleman farmer. For Mrs. Ayres, the mystery “ghost” was Susan, the young daughter she had lost before Caroline and Roderick were born. As for Caroline’s haunt-I leave it a” mystery”-because that one left me more well, mystified than the others. You’ll have to read it for yourselves and post back to share your own explanations.
And Dr. Faraday has some odd pull to the house which did make me wonder once or twice if he was somehow involved. Why does the house never bother him?

Tomorrow night is our book club meeting and I look forward to discussing this story with everyone. I sometimes try and bring a food item to match with the book. Last month I brought Baking Soda Biscuits to share for The Widow of the South discussion but this book they don’t dwell on food much-they do drink a lot of tea and cakes but that didn’t seem as fun to me. I purchased a copy of this from Alibris (a bargain @ $4.00)…just because the library copies were checked out (probably by other members of my bookclub) and PBS didn’t have it listed. The book now resides on my husband’s side of the bed. Creepy and mysterious is right up his alley.

Did I like the book? Yes.
Was I creeped out? Yes, making it tough to read at bedtime.
I disliked the ending. My only issue.
What I enjoyed? The characters and the historical aspect.
Learning more about the class system in England kept me riveted:

Here’s a quote:

The story ran on, Caroline and Roderick prompting more of it; they spoke to each other rather than to me, and, shut out of the game, I looked from mother to daughter to son and finally caught the likenesses between them, not just the similarities of feature-the long limbs, the high-set eyes-but the almost clannish little tricks of gesture and speech. And I felt a flicker of impatience with them-the faintest stirring of a dark dislike-and my pleasure in the lovely room was slightly spoiled. Perhaps it was the peasant blood in me, rising. But Hundreds Hall has been made and maintained, I thought, by the very people they were laughing at now. (25)

Sarah Waters website

Other interesting thoughts on the book:
Wordsmithonia’s review
A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore…
Things mean a lot…

Have you read other books by Sarah Waters? I did enjoy her style.

Bookclub Discussion

Some of us started discussing our pick for November, My Abandonment by Peter Rock even before we’d filled our plates (the food was delicious) or accepted a glass of wine from the hosts. This is what happens when a book is well-written but controversial. What was the author’s purpose for leaving us dangling so much? Had Caroline been kidnapped or was she this man’s daughter? After his death why does she continue to live on the fringe of society? We tossed the questions around, snapping answers back and forth but with no real answers-we just all had our own opinions. Some never once thought about a kidnapping scenario and one couldn’t stand the father character, even though she believed he was the real father. If she had been kidnapped, why didn’t the social service agency who worked so hard to get them settled on the farm, ever come up with this evidence? Why is Elizabeth Smart thanked in the back of the book? I love when a book brings out so much passion!!

If you’ve read this book I am interested to know your thoughts. My idea is that Peter Rock purposely leaves us dangling and questioning their relationship. I’ve searched other blog posts about the book but didn’t find any further insight. I’ve moved on to Elizabeth C. Bunce’s A Curse Dark as Gold, which is good but thankfully, is not as thought-provoking.

Here is a great video of Peter Rock describing his inspiration for the story:

Franklin vs. Hulk Hogan

Today I had one of those fantastic moments when the planets align perfectly and rays of sunlight filter right into a child’s brain! This epiphany occured during a second grade class checkout time and I had oodles of students pawing through the “wrastling” biographies. Several students really wanted to check them out but I went through the five finger rule and they discovered they really could not read these biographies.

One of the young students then went to the paperback area and came back with a Superhero comic book. He went to check it out and my amazing volunteer asked him about being able to read this comic. He said something to her and she brought him to me out in the stacks so he could repeat what he had said. This is what he said: “Well, I can’t really read because nobody’s ever taught me. I wanna read but I just can’t! [in a almost ‘near-tears’ voice] We both smiled at him and I said “Well then you have come to the right place!” and promptly showed him the easy reader section of our library. It took about two tries before I found one that he liked but when we did he read the first page so proudly! He was so happily excited to see they were books with chapters and he could read the whole page. He left with his class, smiling, and hugging his book.

     Now I know there are two schools of thought on this and many are scratching their heads going, but why do they have to be able to read a book to check it out? By second grade they should be able to practice their reading skills, we think. I know it can be wonderful to just have a book to look through but that doesn’t work through the week and it doesn’t give them a true feeling of success that comes from actually reading the book-even if it is a Franklin book instead of a Hulk Hogan biography. The proof is in the smile.  What do you think?

     I’m glad Franklin took Hulk Hogan down and for me, the bigger question is Why do I have to even have “wrastling” books in the library? And that is a whole nother post because when I first came to this school they were a mainstay of every check out but not so much anymore-except suddenly for this one class!

Lasagna

Fall is definetely peeking around the corner and my recipes are changing as the temperatures drop. My daughter and I generally go to our local farmer’s market every Saturday morning. Sometimes I have a general idea of what I’m want/need but today we just wandered. I wanted a basket of groundcherries but felt too stingy to pay the $4.25 they were asking. I used to pick them up for free from my grandmother’s garden and I love them but if I bought that little basket I would have to make a pie and I already had a lot on my plate for today.

We did buy a beautiful pumpkin to put at our fairy tale door-it seemed like the right time since we both had to wear our fleeces to the market and leaves swirled around us as we shopped. My daugher wants me to eventually to turn it into a pumpkin pie. I just let her be excited about the seeds we will scoop from the insides and didn’t get into how pies come from a smaller pumpkin.

I did do some serious cooking though as I had an beautiful eggplant staring me down from last week’s FM. I don’t like to leave fresh, delicious produce sit in our veggie basket for that long but we’ve had a busy week and well, there sat the eggplant. I looked through a few of my trusty recipe books for something different but didn’t find anything that stole my heart and begged to be cooked so I went back to my trusty eggplant standby-which seemed like it was calling my name anyway! I’ve made this recipe for the first time like 9 years ago and probably make it 5-6 times a year. If you ever were to come and visit-this is probably the recipe I would cook for you. This recipe demonstrates my love of cooking, which sits just an 1/2 inch behind my love of reading.

Shop Indie Bookstores“>The Healthy Kitchen; Recipes for a better body, life and spirit written by Andrew Weil, M.D. and Rosie Daley hold within its pages this trusted recipe which I share with you tonight. Once again the five of us around the table left happy and full. This book is so well-loved there is a break in the spine, right about where this recipe is listed!
Vegetable Lasagna

Marinara Sauce

1 cup chopped onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup chopped carrots
3 T. olive oil
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
16 blanched plum tomatoes or 28 ozs canned peeled whole toms.
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
1 T. honey
1/2 tsp. salt (to taste)
1 T. Italian Seasoning

Eggplant
I med. eggplant, sliced length-wise 1/2 inch thick
salt, to taste
less than 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
2 T. olive oil

Spinach
2 bunches washed, de-stemmed spinach
5 ozs goat cheese or ricotta
1 T. olive oil
1/2 cup chopped white onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 T. chopped fresh basil

Lasagna

12 sheets oven-ready lasagna noodles
1 cup purified water
1 1/2 cups mozzarella, shredded
10 kalamata olives, pitted and halved

     Make the marinara sauce first: Saute the onion, garlic, and carrots in olive oil in a medium saucepan over low heat for 3 minutes. Add the red wine, oregano, and basil, and cook for an additional 5 minutes until the wine is reduced by half. Add the tomatoes, mushrooms, honey, salt and Italian Seasoning and continue to cook until the mushrooms become limp, about 15 minutes.
Preheat the broiler.
     Broil the eggplant: Brush both sides of the eggplant with olive oil, salt, little bit of cayenne and lay on a baking pan. Broil for 3 minutes on middle rack under the broiler until it turns brown. Remove from oven and let cool.
Prepare the spinach: Steam the spinach for 1 minute in a pot filled with 1/2 cup purified water. Remove from heat and let cool.
     Squeeze the spinach, using clean hands, to remove excess water. Put softened goat cheese or ricotta in a medium bowl. Add the cooked spinach and mix together thoroughly with a fork. Put the olive oil, onions and sliced garlic in a small saute pan over low heat. Saute for 2 minutes until the onions turn light golden brown. Remove from heat and cool. Add it to softened cheese and spinach mixture. Add the pepper and the fresh basil and mix together.
     Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Assemble lasagna: Cover bottom of 13 X 9 inch baking dish with 1/2 cup of tomato sauce. Lay 4 sheets of the oven-ready noodles on top. Spoon the spinach filling over noodles and spread it around. Lay 4 more sheets of noodles on top of spinach. Lay eggplant slices length-wise over the noodles. Sprinkle the mozzarella on top. Pour 1 cup of marinara sauce over the cheese. Lay another 4 sheets of noodles over the sauce. Slowly pour the water over the lasagna noodles. Pour the remaining marinara sauce on top. Sprinkle the top with remaining mozzarella cheese and olives. Cover with foil and cook for 1/2 hours in the oven. When it is completely cooked, remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes-or longer, it lets everything set and juices to absorb. Cut into squares and eat.

Okay, I know it sounds like a lot of steps-and it is, but so well-worth it. What’s funny is the recipe actually includes a white sauce, which I have made exactly once and none of us thought it added to the flavor thus making it not worth the time to make it. If anybody is a white sauce fan, let me know and I will email the recipe to you. I have tweaked this recipe quite a bit over the years but I’ve given you the true recipe.

I love eggplants-they have such a intense color! This recipe is perfect on a just-about-fall-table, as a potluck dish, or as a I-love-you family treat. What about you? Did you shop at your local farmer’s market? Did you cook with any vegetables today?? What was it? This post is part of Beth Fish Reads for Weekend Cooking. Head there to read an excellent cookbook review as well as a list of other Weekend Cooking participants. I hope you might try this delicious eggpland dish-just to try something different. There is something so wonderful about making this from start to finish; all from scratch.

Shop Indie Bookstores

Burning Question

Picture courtesy of Pamela Villars website

Last night I had a blook club meeting. We didn’t have a reading selection we just met to discuss our summer reading. I brought a huge stack to share. Somewhere in the middle of everyone sharing their book love someone brought up this crazy idea of reading the last page, sentence or word of a book. The thought was that if you are enjoying the book why not take just a tiny peek at the ending…

There was an audible gasp from some of us there. and then the fence came up. It seems some people really do read the last little bit, whether its the last word, sentence or page. Several of our book club members owned up to peeking on purpose!! And they weren’t ashamed to admit it. The reasons ranged from wanting to see if the book was worth finishing, or to see if a character makes it to the end to even one answer (I read just the last word-it reflects the rest of the book).

So I have to ask…how many of you take a little peek at the last page of a book?? Do you read the ending often or just once in awhile? I’m so curious about this as I don’t read ahead or look at the ending. Which side of the fence are you on??

The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Art of Racing in the Rain

A novel by Garth Stein

2008, HarperCollins

This book has been resting on my tbr pile for about a year. My book club will be discussing it in January so I thought I should pick it up and get it read. As with many good things I don’t know what took me so long. I really enjoyed Mr Stein’s style of writing and look forward to reading his other books.

The unique twist about this one is its point-of-view-from the dog-entirely from the dog, which makes for a different sort of plot. This is not Marley and Me by Josh Grogan, which is about a dog and a-laugh-a-minute read. Enzo is not a bumbling spastic dog-he has his moments-but he is far more introspective than many dogs or humans for that matter. I believe in the dog world there are dogs similar to Enzo’s energy, who have it all figured out. Our current sweet dog, Tarah is not an Enzo. Our last dog, Taylor was an Enzo-she was an amazing listening dog and helped me through many trials in my life. I digress though but this book brings up so much of the idea of a dog’s humanity. I don’t know whether Garth Stein even has a dog but if not, he has spent a fair amount of time talking through Enzo.

Enzo, a lab-terrier mix and his owner, Denny, live together in an apartment in Seattle. Denny, an auto-parts technician during the day, spends his evening and weekends pursuing his dream of race car driving. Denny meets Eve and they fall in love, get married and Eve learns to share Denny with Enzo. Eventually, they have Zoe and life would be complete except generally, with the good there is bad lurking. Eve has brain cancer and Enzo can smell it. Through all the ups and downs of life a dog is there as Enzo is, helping his owner brave the storm. The story of Denny, with tragedies swirled in is the story of life, because like we say in my family “stuff happens!”

My thoughts: I loved the easy manner of the dog giving us his take on life, his and Denny’s. While not overly didactic there are moments of rare insight from Enzo such as this great paragraph when Enzo is extolling the virtues of how watching television has broadened his doggie horizons:

“They talk a lot about Darwin; pretty much every educational channel has some kind of show about evolution at some point, and it’s usually really well though out and researched. However, I don’t understand why people insist on pitting the concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can’t they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid place that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What’s wrong with that idea?” p 18, The art of racing in the rain

Enzo’s thoughtful ramblings are just one of the many reasons I loved reading this book.

Garth Stein’s website-click here.

Highly Recommended-Adult

4.5/5 peaceful stars

Read more blog posts about this great book-

Reading for the Joy of It

Yoga, dogs and chocolate

Caribousmom

Teaser Tuesday

TEASER TUESDAYS, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Should Be Reading asks you to:

Grab your current read.

Let the book fall open to a random page

Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book
                                                       recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
                                                       Please avoid spoilers!

My teasers:

“Them German soldiers was as hungry as we was-with bloated bellies and no body warmth from food.

Well, I was tired to death of boiled potatoes and turnips, and I would have soon turned up my toes and died, when the Vega came into our port.”

p. 146 The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows