Once More Unto the Beach, Dear Friends

Morning rainbow (double!) on Barnes Bay  

As usual, I woke up early on our first morning on Anguilla.  DH was still slumbering peacefully and The Kid looked dead to the world.

Therefore, my mission was to head out to Geraud's to pick up breakfast and bring it back to Caribella. Anybody who has visited Geraud's, only to discover that her favorite pastries have sold out, knows how important it is to arrive early!   I got there around 6:30 am and had my pick of pastries, but I took a moment to check out the new items that they're carrying, such as cookies and pies and brownies. 

Coconut cream pie AND rum baba in one case?
My personal idea of heaven.

Back at Caribella, DH was awake and reading on the porch, so we sipped our coffees and enjoyed the beauty of the day while waiting for Ava to join us.  The light was really gorgeous, so I made a quick video, too.  

I just love this photo.  For multiple reasons.

Before long, Ava wanted to go down to the beach.  The loves to skip rocks, and she entertained herself for hours over the course of our vacation doing just that.  Sorry, all you folks visiting Barnes Bay in the upcoming weeks.  We located and promptly skipped every possible piece of flattened rock or coral in the vicinity, even some roof tiles that must have blown loose in the last storm. We walked up and down the length of Barnes, from our swimming cove to Viceroy and back to our place, astonished over the changed landscape. We were rewarded for our efforts with some beautiful rainbows.

If you look carefully, you can see one of our skipping stones in action 

Large swathes of the beach were perfect for shelling

Even better than a pot o' gold

Eventually we went back inside to pack our beach bags. Our destination for the day: Rendezvous Bay, with a short stop first at Limin' Boutique to lighten our purses. Ken and Renée very warmly welcomed us back and were great involving Ava in the conversation, too.  I made some photos and we all made a purchase or two, and then Renée charmed and surprised us by inviting Ava to choose one of their goat milk soaps as a birthday present.  Those are some mighty fine folks at Limin', I must say.

These tea towels are new and I was sorely tempted
 to buy one. But I went with a necklace instead.

And so onward to Rendezvous, once more unto the breach beach.  We optimistically tried accessing The Place via the regular entrance, which was still flooded (about which, more anon), so we went the long way 'round and entered via the Rendezvous Road near Blowing Point. I had never seen this place before, but I bet it was a great place to stay, back in the day.  

Dave and Mo welcomed us back enthusiastically, thus demonstrating to Ava even more reasons why we love Anguilla.  We were only the second group of people to arrive, so the three of us settled in on one of the couches and read for a while until it was time for lunch.  (Well, Ava read for a while and then set up shop as the resident Stone Skipper for an hour.)

Before we went up for lunch, we had a lovely surprise: Daffy and Mr Daffy from one of the Anguilla travel forums stopped by and introduced themselves.  I was hoping that our paths would cross, and we passed the time discussing, naturally, our mutual love for Anguilla.  Since Daffy was one of the first handful of people who helped me decide to visit Anguilla in the first place, it was a true honor. They couldn't stay long, as it was their last full day on the island and had plans to be at Shoal Bay, but it was great to see them for a little while.  

The totally shabby view from our lunch table

After that, we walked up to the restaurant portion for lunch, where we shared the coconut shrimp as an appetizer and ordered the calamari, the spring rolls, and the mahi mahi sandwich for our meals.  Some Tings and a bottled water rounded everything off nicely, but I have no photos of food to share. Mostly because we hoovered all of it into our mouths almost immediately.

During lunch, I got up to make a phone call to Anguilla Watersports to rent a couple of stand-up paddleboards, as Carrie from Veya had recommended them to me. They will deliver the paddleboards anywhere on the island for you, and you can find their advertised rates on their website.  We arranged for them to meet us at The Place at 1:30, but that time came and went.  Around 2:00, a very handsome young man named Miguel walked up to us and explained that he had been down by the Anguilla Great House waiting for us since he couldn't get past the flooded salt pond. Mishap #1.

Miscommunication, it turns out.  Miguel has only been on the island for one month, and he didn't know that there was a different way to access The Place. No problem, we said, and we walked down the beach with him to get the paddleboards and our brief introduction in how to use them. Then comes Mishap #2: there's only one working paddle.  Miguel is terribly apologetic, but again, no worries on our part.  He says he can leave and return with another paddle in 20 minutes, and he's as good as his word.  What's more, to compensate for the hassle, he offers to give us an extra hour with our boards.  It's obviously great when everything goes perfectly from the start, but I've always said that a true measure of any business is how they handle a situation when things go wrong, so I was very pleased with the outcome despite the hiccups. 

Ava, triumphant

Ava is quite an athlete, so I figured she'd have no problem learning how to do this whole stand-up paddle boarding (SUP) thing.  I was less sure of how I would take to it, but I gave it the ol' college try.  To my surprise, it took Ava quite a few tries to find her balance, but in the end she was handling her board well. Me, on the other hand?  Well, I was able to get the SU part okay, but not the P.  Every time I tried to paddle from a standing position, I lost my balance and dropped to my knees.  Because do you know how hard it is to get back ON the paddleboard from the water?  Pretty darn hard.  But going from kneeling to standing and back again was easy enough. So I'm pretty much the queen of kneel-down paddleboarding (KDP.  It's a new sport. Look it up.)

We wanted to take our boards down closer to The Place, where the water was calmer and not having to paddle into the wind so much, so we swam our boards down there instead.  Once we were there, it was much easier to stay upright.  I still couldn't paddle from a standing position, but that's okay.  I converted my board to a kayak and became the reigning queen of Sit Down Paddleboarding (SDP), which is even easier than KDP.

At 4:30, it was time for us to settle up and pay the bill because The Place was hosting a private party that night.  That was fine, as Ava was exhausted from her time in the sun and I didn't mind heading home to shower off and enjoy a sunset cocktail. Ava promptly fell asleep after her shower, so we woke her up about 5 minutes before heading off to what would be her favorite dinner of the trip: Dolce Vita.

Après sunset at Caribella

Until our first trip to Dolce Vita in 2013, DH and I never would have thought we'd love eating Italian food in the Caribbean.  Don't get me wrong -- I love Italian food, but it always has seemed a tad heavy for eating in the tropics. Ava, on the other hand, practically worships pasta, so we knew from the start that we'd take her there for dinner.  Little did we know that it would be a life changing experience for her...

Because I was too tired on my *actual* birthday to do much celebrating drinking, I declared Saturday night to be my birthday instead.  I love the mojitos at Dolce Vita -- so much fresh mint, so much lime juice, so much perfection -- and began briskly consuming them.  That explains why I only have pictures of our food and not of the restaurant or of us. The bread (which they get from Le Bon Pain in Island Harbour) is excellent, as is the accompanying olive oil & balsamico. 

We started off with salads.  DH and I split the arugula & pear salad with bleu cheese, as usual, while Ava enjoyed her full size Caesar:

Ava already loves lasagna, so she needed no encouragement to order it once she heard it was a Dolce Vita specialty.  DH did the same, while I opted for the shrimp fra diavolo.  We all loved our selections, and Ava made us look good by polishing off not only her entire entrée, but finishing the last third of DH's lasagna and my pasta.  SUP (or KDP, or SDP) can make for a mighty appetite.  

The famous lasagna

My shrimp fra diavolo

The best thing, hands, down, was listening to Ava's continuous rhapsodies over her lasagna. "This must be what doing drugs feels like" and "This is my heaven," and my favorite, "If I were to die after eating this, I'd be okay with that." 

Yeah, it was a pretty excellent evening. For once, we were too stuffed for dessert, and to be honest, none of them really appealed to me anyway. (It was all very chocolate-heavy.)  Abbi stopped by to wish us a happy birthday and to extend a special welcome to Ava.  He's always been so very gracious, every time we're there.  

After dinner, we popped into the little gift shop next door, since I'd never been in there before.  Bijoux, I think the name is?  It always looks so glamorous from the outside, but neither Ava nor I was drawn to their offerings.  But still, it's pretty on the outside and I'm a sucker for colored light. 

Stay tuned for another terrible day at the beach, with no fun and no good food...

Minithon Failure! Sort Of!

Today's Mini Readathon is brought to you by Tika at Reading the Bricks. It's her fourth semi-annual readathon, and the theme here is...MINI. Tiny.  Keepin' it small, including our snacks, our level of effort, and our reading time.  The only thing outsized about this is our devotion. And possibly our laziness.

In other words, this is my kind of readathon and these are my people.

I usually spend some time shopping for the all-important snacks, but by the time I knew about this 'thon, I had just gotten back from a mini-vacation (heh, it's like I was psychically anticipating it) and was hard at work.  I had no time to shop and will thus forage for my mini snacks. Looks like I can create a peanut butter theme to my mini snacks, courtesy of the gluten-free pb cookies my friend Liz made for me yesterday, some pb & banana frozen yogurt, and some peanut buttery Butterfinger minis.  Not too bad for a few minutes' worth of scrounging in the pantry. And hey --  peanut butter = protein!

For my reading, however, I intend to tackle the forthcoming collection of short stories from Charles Baxter, There's Something I Want You To Do. Short stories are obviously mini novels.

If I need something else to mix it up, I may dip into the last of the Pippi books that I had left over from the last mini readathon (a-ha! Continuity!).  It's a book for children, aka mini readers, and I haven't read it since I was myself a mini-reader. Obviously this is not the edition I read as a child, but the mini-reader in me still snorts, because fährt/fart jokes will never grow old.

Fährt.  Tee hee. 

At first I was a little distraught that I wouldn't be able to participate in the mini-thon for its duration since I already had some plans today, not all of which could be changed.  But then I realized that my very participation in this 'thon was going to be mini, so BAM.  I'm fulfilling the challenges of this mini readathon on a meta level.  In other words, I can 'thon with the best of 'em.

How 'bout you?  How will you be honoring the mini in your reading today?

Anguilla, or There And Back Again

Recently my husband and I took one of our grandchildren to Anguilla for a short, four-night trip.  We take the kids in the family on a special trip once they become teenagers.  It gives us a chance to know them outside the hustle & bustle of the larger family and share with them places that are special to us. Ava was the perfect candidate to take to Anguilla because she's a young person who can entertain herself and because, well, there's no delicate way to put this: the kid can eat.

Up at 4:00am to catch the airport shuttle, we were pretty bleary-eyed and subdued for our two flights to get to St Maarten. For the first time ever, we flew USAir via Charlotte, and because our incoming flight was delayed a bit, we really had to hustle to get to our connecting flight, which was boarding when we arrived at the gate. We had paid a bit extra to sit in the front rows of economy because we knew the connection might be tight, but unlike the commensurate seats on American, I was disappointed to note that these did not have extra legroom.

The rep from Anguilla Air Services met us before we went through immigration in St Maarten to provide us the transfer boarding passes.  NB: they do not use immigration cards any longer in St Maarten, but they do require you to show your boarding pass upon entering.  We only had one to show and we got fussed at a little.  Oops.

Ava loved the small plane

We did have the wonderful experience of landing on St Maarten, going through security, and immediately boarding our connecting flight. Pleasant change from last time, when we were delayed more than an hour while waiting for other passengers.  Before we knew it, we were up in the air and landing again at our favorite spot in the world: Anguilla.

Our plane's shadow over the beautiful water 

Anguilla in the distance

Ronnie Bryan left our rental car in the airport lot, and before long, we were zipping down the road, with Ava exclaiming at regular intervals along the way.  It was hot and we knew dinner wouldn't be for a few more hours, so we stopped to visit Pamela at Sea Spray for a quick smoothie before heading to Caribella.  Ava declared hers to be the best smoothie she'd ever had.  Promising to visit once more when we had more time to chat, we hurried off to the west end.

When we arrived at Caribella, the entire staff was hard at work trying to clean things up from the hurricane and other recent storms.  While our unit was certainly comfortable enough, it wasn't looking its best in some places, particularly out on the balcony where much of the newly-applied paint had been stripped off by an unexpectedly vigorous storm.

Ava and I immediately changed into bathing suits and walked down to our usual swimming cove at the west end of Barnes Bay, but it was a far cry from the serene spot I'd left behind in July. The entire face of that part of the beach had radically changed and now the water was churning around.  Once we were in the water, it wasn't so bad, but between the increased waves and the sand erosion, it was a little tricky entering (and exiting) among the exposed rocks!  In the meantime, DH had gone to Best Buy to pick up some essentials: water, sunscreen, bug spray, gin, and Ting.

Panoramic sunset show from our balcony

Mango's, where we usually eat on our first night, hadn't yet opened for the season, so wanting something easy, I tried to make a reservation at Picante via their website.  However, I never got a confirmation back, so we ended up at Jacala, which ended up being a perfect choice. Because we were traveling with a younger companion and because the Anguillan sunset was an hour earlier than what we're used to in June, we had dinner reservations around 6:30 each night and thus were almost always the first diners to arrive in each restaurant.

Interior of Jacala at night

Which suited us fine, thank you very much.  We had the undivided attention of gracious waitstaff and we could take all the time we wanted to consider the menu and enjoy our cocktails/mocktails. I love rum punch, but only when it's not too sweet.  The very idea of putting amaretto and/or cinnamon in a rum punch makes me want to gag, frankly. Which is why I always inquire with the staff how the rum punch is in any establishment before ordering one.  If they're coy about the contents, I flatly state that I don't like sweet rum punches that are served with cinnamon or amaretto and see where that gets me. The one at Jacala was still too sweet, but I asked for extra lime juice and that did the trick. It was very pretty, though:

My rum punch

In the meantime, our server brought over an amuse bouche of asparagus soup with a crispy wonton.  I thought it was pretty good, Ava didn't care for it much, and DH thought it was jusssssst right, so he finished hers, too.

The evening was beautiful, with just the right amount of breeze coming in to keep everything comfortable. Fighting off exhaustion, we managed to do some damage to our food nonetheless. DH opted for the cucumber soup with spicy tomato sorbet (possibly my favorite soup, anywhere in the world) and a steak (pretty uncharacteristic of him), Ava had a lobster soup and the fettucine, while I settled on the grilled crayfish, no starter.

With the exception of DH's steak, it was all wonderful.  His steak was completely pedestrian and a little overcooked, but that chilled cucumber soup makes up for a world of other ills, as far as I'm concerned.  Not to mention that we all loved the asparagus that came with the steak.  We're trying to figure out how it came out the way it did.  Parcooked then flash-fried, maybe?

Ava got off to a slow start with her lobster soup as her palate adjusted to the new flavors, but before long, every last drop was gone.  She also handily polished off the fettucine and helped me with my crayfish. Seriously, this kid could eat us right into the poor house on this island.

My crayfish were delicious, simply grilled and served with a choice of a lemon butter or a garlic butter sauce.  Not being willing to choose, I asked if I could have a bit of each sauce.  The accompanying rice was also good, which surprised me.  I can take or leave plain rice, but this was flavorful and a little nutty.

That night at Jacala it was technically my birthday, but even if it hadn't been, I would have selected the rum baba with banana sorbet anyway.  I'd been dreaming of that dessert ever since I read about it on the Savannah Gallery blog that Frank writes.  It was absolutely incredible, and that night I proved definitively that you can have your cake and drink it, too!

Yum!  Happy birthday to me!

Ava's pièce de résistance was some kind of chocolate-upon-chocolate concoction called the Jacala cake. One bite was enough for me, but she managed to polish the rest off on her own, including the yummy caramel sauce on the plate.

All in all, a wonderful start to our trip.  We were sufficiently tired from our travels that when we got back home to Caribella at 9:00, we promptly retired to bed.  It rained a bit in the night, and that, combined with the noise of the Barnes Bay waves crashing on the exposed rock, made for perfect sleeping and dreaming conditions.

Book Review: How to be both by Ali Smith

 I'm away for a few days, so I've written a book review and scheduled it to post while I'm in Anguilla.

Ali Smith's new novel, How to be both [sic], is unlike anything I've ever read.  It's a bit metafiction, yes, but it also is self-referential and self-reflective to an extent I've never seen.

Let me explain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up:

This book was a finalist for the Booker Prize and it's getting lots of attention because of the way it's being published.  There are two narratives in the novel, and half of the books are published with one narrative first, while the remaining books have been produced with the other narrative first.

The "Camera" narrative (one story has a surveillance camera icon at the beginning) is a contemporary story of a teenage girl whose mum has died. In the midst of narrating her present grief, she has constant asides in which she reminisces about the past when her mum was still alive, particularly a trip to Italy where her mum expounds on the genius of a certain fifteenth century artist.

The "Eye" narrative (whose icon is a pair of eyes on a stem, like opera glasses), is that of the fifteenth century artist who has been transported to our time, but who, amidst his present voyeurism, is recounting the story of how his first mural was painted.

Interesting, eh? It's a little gimmicky, but it gets the point across.  I was told a couple of months ago by my Random House sales rep that the order in which one reads the two halves makes a difference in how one sees the book, and glancing through various reviews on Goodreads confirms that. Most people seem to be more drawn to the story they read first. I happened to read the contemporary story about the teenage girl first, and that ended up being the story that resonated more with me.

The thing is, the two narratives of the book do form two halves of the whole, which might seem self-evident, but they're also a bit like the twin strands of DNA: they're doubling back on the other, and layering over the other, and informing the other.  The question of the titular act of being "both" can be open to interpretation, and the answers are pretty wide ranging: how to be past AND present (or present and future, or past and future), how to be male AND female, how to be life AND art, how to be fragmented AND whole, how to grieve AND love, how to create AND destroy. I suspect that every reader will bring her own existential pairings to the text.

To say more about the plot would almost be pointless, as the ideas and Heraclitean pairings are what is important in this novel.  This book definitely isn't for everybody, but if you are drawn to unconventionality, or if you like a little pop-philosophy in your fiction, take this book out for a spin. I think you'll find much to think about if you do.

NB: This book is already available for purchase elsewhere in the world, but it goes on sale on December 2, 2014, in the US from Pantheon, a division of Random House.  I read an advance readers copy that was provided at my request by the publisher. 

Bookish Things: Vacation Reading, Shorter Edition

Lately I've been counting down the days until my next island vacation, and now it's quite imminent. My husband and I usually travel to the Caribbean over his October fall break because (1) it's when he can get the time off from teaching and (2) it's super-low season and therefore more affordable. The empty beaches are just an accompanying perk.  This year, however, we've mixed it up in a couple of ways.  Last year, too many of our favorite restaurants in Anguilla were closed during October, so when we found really reasonable airfare for travel in November, we decided to sacrifice a fifth night on the island that an October stay would have afforded us and booked for four nights in November instead.

(And did I mention that this year I will be celebrating my birthday in Anguilla?  That also might have had a factor in our decision to travel in November!)

In addition to a change of calendar, we're bringing along a travel companion this time around: our about-to-be-14-years-old granddaughter.  We've begun a tradition of taking our grandchildren on a special trip with us when they're teenagers, and now it's Ava's turn.  Her older sisters and cousins have visited New Orleans, Vieques, Tortola, and St. John with us, and all of those places were well-suited to their various travel styles.  We knew that, like her sister Kate before her, Ava would appreciate Anguilla because she's the kind of laid-back kid who can create her own entertainment AND she loves to eat.  Restaurant prices being what they are on Anguilla, she very well may eat us into the poorhouse, but introducing her to our favorite spots on our favorite island will be worth it.

Anybody who knows me knows that second only to planning my actual vacation, planning my vacation reading is my favorite activity. I spent a couple of very happy hours over the past weekend test driving potential vacation books, and the photo above shows the ones that have made the cut.  I do realize that taking six physical books on a trip that only last four nights is verging on the ridiculous, so I will probably take three of these and rely on my e-reader for the rest.  Running out of books on vacation ranks right up there with other nightmares such as appearing naked in school. Since I will probably need more than one book for each long day of travel, and one book for every day that I'm there, this is a very real fear.

The ones that I know for sure I'll take the physical editions are The Martian, since I can't get a free e-book download (because it's already published), and just about everybody I know has already raved about it, and The Book of Strange New Things, for the same two reasons.  It's curious to me that both of them feature space travel, a topic I wouldn't necessarily claim as holding much interest for me. It's also curious to me that both books are written by men, as the overwhelming number of books that I read are written by women.

That leaves:

The Half Brother by Holly LeCraw -- the first 50 pages are well written and it's a prep school setting.  Pretty much my jam.

Get In Trouble by Kelly Link -- she's supposed to be a literary and creepy writer.  The first story I read hints at more promising things to come.

Leaving Before the Rains Come by Alexandra Fuller.  I loved both of her previous memoirs.  Books set in Africa (in her case, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Kenya) are also my jam, but this one is set in Montana. So I'm torn.

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby.  Because Nick Hornby.

They're all advance reading copies, all to be published in January or February of 2015, and I'm looking forward to all of them. But what do you think, Gentle Reader?  Do you have opinions about any of the above books? Which ones should earn a spot in my travel bag?

Book Review: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

I'm feeling a little whiny today -- in the "writing books reviews is hard" kind of way -- but it's a good coping/procrastination mechanism for me.  It's been over three weeks since I last posted a book review, and the longer I go in between those posts, the more difficult it is for me to sit myself down and talk about a book.  I often wonder why that is, since I'm obviously comfortable working with books and talking to customers every single day about them as a means of supporting myself.  Part of it results from finding so many other things to do with my time on my precious days off, but let's be perfectly clear: most of it is the result of laziness and an utter lack of self-discipline.

So, I'm going to ease back into book reviewing with a book that I liked, but whose content has become a little vague because I read it five months ago on the train ride home from BEA in May. I'll preface it by saying that while I've read a handful of Jodi Picoult's novels over the years, I've never self-identified as a particular fan of hers.  She is, I think, a good storyteller but overall is a bit too commercial to dovetail more than occasionally with my own reading preferences. The first book of hers that I've ever read was My Sister's Keeper, and until now, that one was probably my favorite, despite my serious dislike of the book's ending.

With the publication of Leaving Time, Picoult has changed publishers, and therefore editors, and I think that, combined with the fact that her new book revolves largely around elephants, has created a new reading experience for me.  Picoult never has been, and perhaps never will be, a writer of literary fiction, but she has an easy style that moves the story along without getting in the way of itself.

A psychic, a private investigator, and a teenage girl walk into a mental hospital...

...it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but this scenario actually plays a crucial role in Leaving Time. Jenna is said teenager who has retained the services of a psychic named Serenity Jones and a private investigator named Virgil Stanhope, both of whom are down & out, to help find her mother, Alice.  Alice disappeared one night after a traumatic accident in the elephant sanctuary where she worked, leaving her husband so mentally unbalanced that Jenna is left to be raised by her grandmother. This trio of unlikely comrades combs through Alice's journal and her papers on elephant research as a means of tracing her current whereabouts.

Along the way, the reader is treated to astonishing situations of elephant empathy, grief, and memory. Picoult's research for this book is amazing, and when I was invited to an author dinner with her a few months ago, she regaled our table with stories, including many that didn't make it into the book.  I have always loved elephants, and no doubt that is partly why this book resonated with me in a way that none of her previous books have.  But I'd also suggest that incorporating animal empathy into her novel gives it an emotional heft that is lacking in her previous books.

I mean, really. Look at that little tyke go.  

Picoult uses her trademark multiple narrative storytelling here, mostly to good effect, and there are the usual twists and turns along the way.  I anticipated many of the minor ones, and if I had been as enthralled with the human elements as much as I was to the elephant ones, I might have anticipated the major reveal at the end, but I did not.  I think it's pretty clear that if you already love Jodi Picoult, this book will renew your love for her, but if you've never read her, I think this book's depths may pleasantly surprise you. I admit that it took a goodly amount of suspending my disbelief to accept some of the plot at face value -- count me among the population who is skeptical about psychics, for example -- but in the end, my enthusiasm for All Things Pachyderm completely overruled my feelings for everything else.

It is my earnest hope that that this novel will do for captive elephants what the shocking documentary, Blackfish, has done for captive dolphins & whales around the world.  It is perhaps naïve of me to think so, but Picoult's readership is so large, and so international, that they could easily effect a social change in the way elephants are treated around the world. I hope that it becomes true. In the meantime, she educates her readers about the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, the only place in the US (and maybe the world? I'm not sure) where circus and zoo elephants can be rehabilitated (or can retire to), and for now, at least, this book has moved me to make donations to help sustain them.  Fuck zoos and circuses, and don't even get me started on poachers and the Asian markets that keep said poachers employed.  For them, my sentiment is more like, poke out their eyes and skull fuck them.  Not that I have strong feelings about these things.

The cute factor here -- I just can't even.

National Book Award Fiction Finalists: My Thoughts

While I'm an avid reader and a reasonably good bookseller, I've never claimed to have my finger on the pulse of the book award circuit.  So I was as surprised as anybody when I discovered that for the first time since I've started paying attention to these things, I have read, or at least read in, all five of the finalists for the fiction award.

Of them, I only have completed two: Emily St John Mandel's excellent break-out novel, Station Eleven and the Marilynne Robinson's literary masterpiece, Lila. But just because I didn't finish reading the other three doesn't mean that I didn't like them.  On the contrary, I very much liked what I read of them.  One of the things about being a bookseller that might seem strange to a civilian, is that in addition to reading the things I like, I also have an obligation to read widely, beyond my personal preferences, so that I can better serve my customers.

I also am one of the four readers for my bookstore's signed First Editions Club, where we select one work of literary fiction each month and send signed copies to our club members. For this part of my job, I have to read the first 50-75 pages of an additional 6-8 books each month (on average), all on my own time outside of work.  For obvious reasons, I cannot finish them all, so even when I like a book, if I have a coworker who has finished it, I'm less inclined to spend more of my time to complete it. Why? Because now I have a secondary repository of book knowledge to rely on: I can recommend a book to a customer when I know that Nancy (or Hannah or whomever) has loved it and why she has loved it.

(On a slightly braggadocian note, of the five NBA books on the short lit, our First Editions Club committee picked three of them.  And if we'd had our way with getting signed copies of another one, there would have been a fourth, but the author either wasn't touring or wasn't in the US when we wanted to pick the book. Go, us!)

So, with all of that being said, here are my thoughts on the National Book Award finalists for fiction in 2014:

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine is wonderful, telling a very quiet story of older woman living in Beirut who has translated one book per year from the world literary canon into Arabic.  I read about half of this book and very reluctantly put it down. Not only does the author paint a vivid portrait of the cultural importance of Beirut, along with its devastations during the wars, but we get the importance of translation itself, along with its intricate give and take.

I read the first 100 pages or so of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, which is set during World War II. I've noticed tons of reviews of this book popping up since it was published in April of this year, and two of my coworkers read it and loved it, so I felt less guilty putting this one down than I otherwise would have.

Short story collections don't often go head to head with novels for the major literary awards, but Phil Klay's debut collection, Redeployment, is handily able to take on the powerhouses.  As the title suggests, these are soldiers' stories, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I read the first two of them and they were extremely well done, and though ultimately this was not the book for me, I'm happy I bought a signed, first edition of it when I visited Nashville earlier this year.

I've been reading Emily St John Mandel's books since she first published Last Night in Montreal in 2009. I'm thrilled for her that her hopeful post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven, is getting the critical acclaim that indie booksellers have been giving her for years.  I think this book ties with the Anthony Doerr for having the most widespread appeal to general readers. I would put either book into the hands of almost any fiction reader.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson concludes her trilogy set in the small town Gilead, Iowa, of yesteryear.  Like the Alameddine, it's a quiet story, largely the imagined inner life of the title character. I also happen to think that Lila ties with An Unnecessary Woman for being the most literary of the finalists, and thus if I had to make a prediction for the winner, it would be one of these two.

NB: Edited to add this -- It doesn't hurt that Marilynne Robinson is basically the winningest American novelist, ever.  For her last four books published (3 novels, one nonfiction), she has won six major literary awards: PEN/Hemingway, the Pulitzer (2x), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Orange Prize. That's not counting the lesser-known awards, or the major awards she was a finalist for but for which she didn't win.  Dayum.

Yet Another Bookish Quiz/Meme. How Refreshing!

Because I'm trying to find some quick & easy blog posts, and because it's been over two weeks since I've written a review and I'm not quite ready to wade back into that miasma yet, here's a fun questionnaire. Or quiz. Or book meme.  Call it what you will. I found it via Alley at What Red Read, who found it via Sarah at Sarah Says Read, whom I also follow but apparently missed.

1. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

2. The Last Dragon Slayer by Jasper Fforde

3. This one is kinda tough, as beyond the Curious George books, I can't recall a main character by that name. I suppose that claiming that Pride & Prejudice as being about George Wickham is a bit of a stretch, eh? Okay, then, I'll go with the newest book in the series, Curious George Visits the (a?) Bookstore, which we obviously have on display in my bookstore.

4. Luckily I recently wrote my "What I read in October" post, so I quickly remembered How to be both [sic] by Ali Smith. Otherwise I'm sure my head would have been stuck on Alley's response of Zadie Smith.

5. The Rosie Project  by Graeme Simsion was one of my favorite books last year. (Even though Alley and Sarah both answered this one, I feel I can rightfully claim it.)

6. The Three Junes by Julia Glass.  Okay, had to use the ol' mental Rolodex on this one so that I could avoid what Alley and Sarah said.

7. Ummm...not sure about the knife answer.  Does Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife have an image of a knife on the cover? What about that nonfiction book from a year or so ago that was a history of the table fork?  Can't remember its title. Guess I fail on this one.

8. I read Jojo Moyes's book, One Plus One, earlier this year.  Can I get double points for that one to make up for my lack of knife answers?

9. I reckon I'll go with The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, which is his memoir about growing up in Des Moines, Iowa.  He called himself The Thunderbolt Kid as a child. (I had to work a Bryson book in there somehow!)

10.  I guess that #10 is a gimme. I'll choose the film I most want to see this fall: The Imitation Game is the nonfiction book that the new Benedict Cumberbatch movie is based on -- Alan Turing and the Enigma Code.

I read so much (not to mention am surrounded by books every day at work) that the only one of these questions that was remotely challenging was the one about the knife on the cover.  And even so, I was really compelled to cheat.  Like looking up the real title and the cover of the fork book to see if there was a knife on the cover. How about you?  Have you done this quiz?  Which answer(s) did you find most challenging?