New Orleans: Second Breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day

Sunrise over the rooftops: the view from our room

New Orleans is a not a city for dieters.  Nor is it a destination for picky eaters.  There is great food--seriously great food--in abundance, but it's usually the type of food that requires the hoisting of oneself from the table afterwards.

Because my friends's friend stayed in town an extra night just to meet up with us, the least we could do was meet up with her for first breakfast on Saturday morning. She didn't want to go to Cafe Du Monde (quel horreur!), so we walked to her hotel in the Central Business District instead.  We had no idea until we walked in that it was one of John Besh's restaurants: Luke.  Naturally we made much of the "I am your father" and other Star Wars jokes. We even saw the man himself walk through a couple of times--I wouldn't have figured that he would be on premises.

Knowing that I had to pace myself for our second breakfast at Commander's Palace, I ordered a short stack of pancakes with pecan honey butter, which were quite good. The coffee was French press and also quite good, and we all enjoyed ourselves very much.

Before long, it was time to say goodbye to Kathleen and hie ourselves back to Canal Street to catch the streetcar (please do not call it a trolley) to the Garden District. Because we were not born yesterday, we knew right where to catch it--at Carondelet, before it turns and heads back on St. Charles.  We all three easily grabbed seats, but by the time we made our first stop on St. Charles, the car filled up and the people remaining in the queue had to keep on waiting.  Suckers!  The ride took about 20 minutes and Commander's is about two blocks from the street car stop on St. Charles.

AW on the streetcar

Commander's Palace is quite the institution in New Orleans.  They serve up a three-course brunch in high style, and there's a wandering jazz trio that moves from dining room to dining room, taking requests.  It's great fun.

From the moment we arrived, it was a fabulous experience.  Warm welcomes all around as soon as our feet crossed the threshold. We were lucky enough to get seated in the Garden Room, which is fun because you get to walk through the kitchens to get there, because there's a live tree growing in the room up through the ceiling, and because it's glassed in and overlooking the courtyard, which was lovely that time of year.

The second breakfast of champions: double fisting with milk punch and a Crescent City Cooler

Clearly the best first course for second breakfast is a cocktail.  I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  I LOVE being in a city where it's not at all ridiculous to spend more money on booze than on food at breakfast. Or even second breakfast.

Carla with her cocktail

AW with her Strawberry Flip

It was very difficult deciding what to order (take a look at their sample online menu and see for yourself), but I ended up starting with the Oyster & Absinthe Dome, which is a creamy concoction with bacon, artichokes, and tarragon-infused cream, topped by a flaky pastry shell.

Oyster & Absinthe Dome

It is not, however, the most accommodating place to eat if you are vegetarian, as my friend AW is. They offered only one vegetarian option for the entree on the brunch menu: Red Velvet pancakes.  But since those would also be followed by a dessert course, AW wasn't so interested in essentially eating dessert twice.  The only minor mar in the whole process was when she asked our server if the crab & vegetable frittata could be made without the crab. Instead of saying "yes, of course we can do that," he said he had to phone the chef and ask permission.  It surprised me quite a bit that a restaurant of that calibre and that kind of national standing would not empower its serving staff to make such accommodations.  And frankly it surprised me that there wasn't a non-dessert-like vegetarian option for the entree on their menu. In a city that relies heavily on tourism and where the number of vegetarians is on the rise pretty much all over, it is almost inconceivable.

My [mumble] Benedict 

The kitchen finally responded with an All Clear to the veggie frittata request, so we recommenced with our enjoyment of the day. I cannot remember the name of what I ordered, but it was a Creole take on Eggs Benedict, with crayfish, "debris," and a spicy sauce. As I recall, and with the photographic evidence above, I think it was served on a bread that more closely resembled a biscuit than an English muffin.  It was excellent, but I only managed to eat about half of it. And no, I did not bite the tail and suck the head.  Thanks for asking.

You can see a little bit of the tree through the glass behind them.

In fact, by that time, were all questioning our collective delusion in thinking that a first breakfast was a good idea, but we had to power through the dessert course. Which, frankly, is worth waiting for, not to mention worth a little gastrointestinal distress. But dessert is my raison d'être, or at least one of them, and these were a couple of  pieces des resistances.

It was strawberry season in Louisiana during our visit, and I had forgotten just how plump, sweet, and lush those berries are.  Plus, we wanted to be mindful of our heavy meal, so we ordered two servings of strawberry shortcake for dessert to accompany the bread pudding soufflé.  Honestly, have you ever heard a phrase more enticing than bread pudding soufflé?

Bread Pudding Soufflé with milk punch

When it's delivered to the table, the server breaks the top and pours into it many heaping spoonfuls of hard sauce.  It was pretty divine, I have to say. The only thing that could possibly improve it would be the introduction of a second round of cocktails. AW and Carla ordered milk punches while I ordered a shot of rum: XO Ron Zacapa, neat, with a side of ice and some lime.

I'm not sure which surprised us more: the size of the bill or our difficulty standing up after the meal. We were, of course, expecting a large bill, and despite the fact that one of our drinks cost $25, we didn't come close to spending more money on alcohol than on food.  Well, that gives me something to aim for next time.  I won't say what the total was, but we decided that it was the perfect amount, because the  tip came to $42, which is the perfect and most important number, as any Douglas Adams fan knows.  Clearly the hand of fate had intervened over second breakfast, or maybe that was just my third cocktail talking.

Inside the small gallery that houses Garden District Book Shop

On our way back to the streetcar stop, we paused at Garden District Book Shop, as I cannot pass up a bookstore.  And despite the fact that I get a substantial employee discount at my own store, I cannot not buy a book when I walk into another bookstore.  Thus I walked out with a nice little hardcover edition of a Eudora Welty book.

Once we walked back up to St. Charles, we were a little dismayed to realize that all of the streetcars heading towards the Quarter were full--practically overflowing--and thus not stopping to pick up any more passengers. Guess we're the suckers now.  We waited about 30 minutes before calling a cab to get back to our hotel, where we changed clothes to head back out the Quarter for more exploration.  About which, more anon, as this post is long enough and we've only covered first and second breakfast...

Just a random street scene

New Orleans: As the Crowe Flies (and Eats! and Drinks!)

St Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square, New Orleans

Oh, New Orleans.  The Big Easy.  The Crescent City. The City That Care Forgot.  The Land of Dreamy Scenes.  Or just plain Nawlins.  However you like to call it, it's one of my favorite places on earth to visit.  It's one of the last American cities to retain an intrinsic feel that transcends the unfortunate homogeny that is the hallmark of most of our country.

It's also a helluva great place to go for celebrating a special occasion, which is just what my two best friends from high school and college did a couple of weekends ago.  We have all recently celebrated a milestone birthday, so we decided to meet in New Orleans to celebrate in style. What we didn't realize during the planning stages of the trip was that our travels were over Easter weekend, a particularly festive time in the Quarter, which explains the dearth of hotel rooms and high airfares.  I flew in from the east coast and arrived a few hours before they did, as they had the more leisurely train journey from Memphis. Our room at Prince Conti hotel wasn't quite ready (I arrived more than three hours ahead of check-in), but I was happy to walk around and amuse myself until they were ready to receive me.  And since they upgraded us to a suite, I was in an even better mood.

What could be finer? A book, a beverage, and a table that is a window on the world.

I walked around for about an hour to orient myself and discovered that our location on Conti Street, between Bourbon and Daupine, was excellent. After enjoying various street musician performances, I wandered into a quiet cafe (almost impossible to find!) to enjoy a light sandwich and iced coffee.

Exterior of the Prince Conti

After a couple of hours, I wandered back to the hotel and the room was ready, so I went up to unpack and wait for my friends. The suite wasn't at all luxurious (in fact, in many ways it was on the shabby side), but it offered us a good deal more space than the room we'd originally booked, so I was quite happy with it.  As it turns out, it came in handy multiple times to have a separate sitting room.

Our sitting room.  I believe the ceiling beams are original to the building.

Our bedroom: two queen beds. Yes, that is a fireplace on the far end.

Once Carla and AW arrived, we had a jolly time catching up before heading off to meet one of their friends for dinner.  Their friend Kathleen was already in town for something else, so it was a treat to meet up with her for the evening. Kathleen has a terrible shellfish allergy and AW is a vegetarian, so we settled on the Italian fare of Irene's, a 20 minute walk away.

Eclectic decor of Irene's

Unfortunately, Irene's does not take reservations, so we showed up at the unfashionable hour of 5:30 pm for a table since three of us had been awake and traveling since about 4:00 that morning. There was already a line forming at the door when we showed up--I'd estimate that about 30 people were in front of us in the queue.

Behold: the grail-like splendor of my bourbon sidecar

Our server was a live one but quite patient at that, answering our detailed questions about the menu and the specials.  Clearly my first order of business was to order a cocktail--one that sounded so good that AW followed suit: bourbon sidecar, served up, with a twist. It was certainly good, but slightly too sweet.  Rimming the glass with salt AND sugar would be a fantastic remedy for that.

I highly recommend matching your cocktail to your jewelry. 

I ordered one of the fish dishes, and it was quite good.  Perhaps not quite as good as the restaurant's Zagat rating had led me to expect, but all perfectly good.  With an additional glass of wine, plus a share of dessert, my total came to about $45, before the gratuity.

Our pre-cocktail photo

My fish amandine meuniere.

After dinner, the four of us walked the Quarter and met up with Patrick, our friend from college who hails from New Orleans.  He was in town for the holiday weekend, so after his Good Friday service, he drove down and met us near St. Louis cathedral, where we were busy making snapshots of Touchdown Jesus:

By day: much less interesting

By night

Touchdown Jesus in all of his ghostly splendor

We then proceeded to spend the next half hour taking approximately a bazillion photos to make sure we got every possible permutation of our group of five people.  With and without flash, of course.

Look: you can see our auras. Or perhaps our souls.  I'm not sure.

After that we wandered around the Quarter, listening to the street musicians (I don't recall hearing so many in the last 4-5 trips I've made to the city--maybe it was for the holiday weekend?), window browsing the gorgeous galleries on Rue Royale, and poking into the few shops that were still open.

A kora player. His sign says African Bass Harp but he seemed gratified when I asked with great confusion, "That's not a kora? It sure looks like a kora."

A chandelier in a lighting store on Royale

An art gallery

Love this bulldog, mascot of one of the boutiques we walked into.

All in all it was a great start to a terrific weekend.  We all went back to our sitting room to chat about this & that and to make that very important decision: where to go for first breakfast on Saturday before our second breakfast (we're very Hobbit-like) at Commander's Palace.  About which, more anon...

I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world the Quarter.

Three Mini Book Reviews

My blog has been on the dormant side recently, but my reading has not.  Here are three mini reviews of books that I've read that are recently (or soon to be) published, and by "mini reviews," I essentially mean that these are the small shelf tags that accompany these books in my bookstore. 

Frances & Bernard by Carlene Bauer. Has a letter ever changed your life?  When Frances and Bernard meet at an artists’ colony, they are not quite certain what to make of each other, but one letter changes everything. Bernard’s first letter to Frances leads to a deep and intense friendship. Not-so-loosely based on Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, Frances and Bernard navigate the tricky waters of publishing, romance, religion, and mental illness in this hauntingly beautiful story. If you enjoy the works of Marilynne Robinson or 84 Charing Cross Road, or if you appreciate the bittersweet aspects of life, give this one a spin. 

The Mothers by Jennifer Gilmore. I had to remind myself several times while reading this book that it’s a novel and not a memoir—that’s how realistic and heartbreaking it feels. After years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, Jesse and Ramon desperately want to adopt a child, but they never could have imagined the difficulties lying in wait for them in the process, not least of which is determining how willing they’d be to adopt a child born with Down’s syndrome, fetal alcohol, blindness, deafness, spina bifida, or any combination thereof. This is an emotional and compelling read.

The Dinner by Herman Koch.  What starts off as a rather Bourgeois novel quickly takes a darker turn and descends into the realm of menace, both underhanded and overt.  Clearly there is more to our unnamed, mild-mannered narrator than first meets the eye, and as he learns more about his son’s new and disturbing hobby, the reader learns more about him.  The further this insidious father-son story unfolded, the faster I was compelled to turn the pages.  This book is a bestseller in Europe and recently translated for English-speaking audiences. 

Last Month in Review: March 2013

Lawd, I can't believe that it's been over two weeks since my last blogpost.  That just goes to show how crazy it's been at work recently and how much fun I recently had in New Orleans (about which, more anon, if by "anon" I mean tomorrow. which I do.).  I also have a new computer now, so I have no more excuses for not blogging.

On the other hand, I've been spending a lot of time brooding about the new Amazon purchase of Goodreads and deciding whether to close my account or to keep it but with heavily abbreviated usage.  In other words, I'm engaged in the time-honored battle of weighing my principles against my inherent laziness.  Those of you who know me best can probably guess which way I'll choose, but for the record, I say Boooo, Amazon!

March was a pretty good reading month for me, thanks largely to some excellent fan fiction.  In chronological order, I give you:

1. Maddie On Things: A Super Serious Project About Dogs and Physics by Theron Humphrey.  This book doesn't really count, as it has very little text, but it's a book that I love.  It's one of those books I'm glad I didn't actually spend money on (no, I didn't steal it--it was free) but am so happy that I own it 'cause I can turn to any random page and count on a smile.  Also, I met both the author and Maddie the Dog at Winter Institute in Kansas City. That dog is pretty amazing--just take a look at some of the photographs and you'll see what I mean.  Yay, rescue dogs!

2. If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan.  This is Algonquin's first YA book, coming out in the fall.  Deals with the oh-so-light topic of homosexuality and transgenderism in Iran. Review here.

3. You Are One of Them by Eliott Holt.  Terrific debut that is a dual coming of age novel set during the Cold War.  Review to come.

4. Three Junes by Julia Glass.  Audio book.  Review here.  I really loved this book.

5. The Promise of Stardust  by Priscille Sibley. Review here.

6. Dupont Circle by Paul Kafka-Gibbons.  This was a re-read of a book I read a good ten years ago.  Most of it held up well, and it's gratifying to see how far our country has come on the gay marriage issue since its publication.

7, 8, 9, 10. Underwater Light, Coda to an Epilogue: Twenty Years Later Or, the Kids are All Right,  If You've a Ready Mind, and Quality of Mercy by Mistful/Maya.  These are all Harry Potter fanfics and they're all novella or novel length.  Seriously, one of them was over 800 manuscript pages long.  So I'm totally counting them.  I love these.  If you can get access to them (they're no longer supposed to be available on the internet), I heartily recommend them.

11. The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy. Oh, Booy!  This is really good.  I hope to write a review one of these days.

12. Flat Water Tuesday by Ron Irwin.  This was another audio book.   Solid story, solid audio narrator.  This is a sports-triumph boarding school novel somewhat akin to A Separate Peace and Dead Poets Society. (Do not believe the comps that say it is like The Art of Fielding.  It is not, for that is as simplistic as saying that Moby-Dick and the Master and Commander series are similar because they both involve sailing.) Interestingly, this was the second book I read this year that featured a female coxswain.  I also had my eyes & ears glaze over with some of the row-speak, which is why I probably would have preferred reading this book instead of listening, as it's much easier to skim a book than a CD.

So what about y'all?  What was your favorite book in March?  Did you read any of the same books I read, and if so, what is your verdict?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Readalong: Better Late Than Pregnant

Okay, so I've been lurking for these last four weeks 'cause work has been busy and I've had to travel to Kansas City and interview candidates for a job opening at my store. Oh, and also my computer died, which means it's hard to budge my husband off of his computer, which he uses for work, just because I want to look up Snape gifs.

All of which basically adds up to my sadness at being unable to participate in Alice's HP Readalong. But because I don't want to be the only kid not playing in the sandbox this week, I'm joining in for a belated post covering both GoF and some of the greatest HP fanfiction you've never read.

If we're going to get technical about it, I haven't read GoF for this post. I last read it a few years ago and last listened to it about two years ago, so the finer points aren't exactly fresh in my mind. Thus I will just say two things:

(1) I cried buckets the first time I read about Harry & Voldemort's duel and then I was emotionally wrung out to the point where I couldn't enjoy my visit with my then-partner.  Too bad, as he was living in Louisville for the semester and I only got to see him once every 4-5 weeks.  

(2) I read a first printing of the book, where there is a tremendous editing gaffe in the end, where James emerges from the end of Harry's wand before Lily does.  I was torn between indignation for such a terrible gaffe and wanting to believe that it held important textual significance. 

What about y'all?  Any of you read a first printing, either US or UK or Canadian or Australian? And did it totally mess you up to see Lily and James emerge in the wrong order?

Oh, wait, I have to say a third thing.

(3) Snape. Can you imagine the kind of bravery it must have taken him to go back to Voldemort two hours later, and what kind of torture he must have endured to prove to Voldemort that he wasn't the Death Eaters who had left him forever?  It makes me shiver just thinking about it, and not just because I read fan fiction. He had to have known he was facing death and that only tremendous luck and occlumency could save him. And poor Dumbledore, to know that he was asking that of Snape. I like to think that when Snape returned from his meeting with the newly-recreated Voldemort that Dumbledore did some extra dumblin'. I know I sure would have. 

Anyway...on to the fanfiction discussion.  Harry Potter fanfiction has existed almost as long as Harry Potter, but it really exploded between the releases of books four and five, a period of time known as the "three year summer." That's when I discovered fanfiction for the first time, and may I just say that in my world there has never been a better procrastination tool than reading HP fanfiction.

My very favorite pairing is Hermione/Snape.  Now, don't get all ewwwww on me. Fanfiction is about being open to the unexpected. The very best Hermione/Snape stories, IMO, are the ones penned by Anna on Witchfics: She has written a trilogy that surpasses all other fanfic I've read, with really good writing (much better writing than JKR's, actually), great plotting, and some pretty fabulous lemony bits. ("Lemony bits" is fanfiction speak for smut. Don't ask me why. Google it for yourself.)

There's also the great site dedicated solely to Snape/Hermione fic called Ashwinder.  The site ranges in quality from the terrible to the sublime, but one really fun one is called His Draught of Delicate Poison, written by Subversa, playing off the Marriage Law meme and loosely based on the wonderful Georgette Heyer novel, The Grand Sophy. It's funny and plot-filled and with some fun original characters, but not especially lemony. More like lemon-scented.

My second favorite pairing is Harry/Draco. Yeah, I've got a Slytherin thing, for sure. The very best Draco/Harry fics are no longer available on the internet.  They were penned by a woman named Maya, who is actually Sarah Rees Brennan, and once Rees Brennan published her first real book, she pulled  all of her fanfic from the interwebs. She made it available for a one time download, which I availed myself of, but my computer has since died and those stories are now irretrievable.  I would pay good money to get my hands on them again.  Seriously.  Contact me if you have these stories and I will make it worth your while.

Then there are those stories that, overall, are too wordy or meandering to be good in their entirety, but which have wholly interesting bits that I go back and read occasionally.  One of them features Harry/Snape and it's called The Mirror of Maybe by Midnight Blue--this writer created the concept of wizarding tattoos and Life Ink, and the scenes where Harry is getting inked, and later when he shares  his tattoos with Snape, are great.  Harry is also a tremendously good DADA teacher in this story.

Guess that's about it for now.  So, yeah, back to GoF:

Just kidding.  I meant back to Snape. And by that, I mean I'm finished here.  My husband needs his computer back. 

Book Review: If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

Consider this:

1. Homosexuality is illegal in Iran.
2. Gender reassignment surgery is paid for by the government in Iran.
3. Sahar and Nasrin are two girls who live in Iran.
4. They are also in love with each other.

Leave it to Algonquin, one of my favorite literary presses, to launch their new line of books for younger readers with a novel like If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan.  Nothing like a nice, safe, book that is sure to be a crowd pleaser, right?  No, in fact I salute Algonquin for picking a book like this; it's not often that we see so many layers of non-traditional protagonists in one book: Sahar is not white, nor is she is heterosexual, nor of a Judeo-Christian heritage.

Sahar narrates the story from a first person, present tense point of view.  She and Nasrin are in love and have been since they were little girls. They sneak kisses and caresses behind closed doors until the terrible day that Sahar learns that Nasrin's parents have arranged her marriage to a suitable man. Lucky for Sahar, she can confide the burden of her secrets to her cousin Ali, himself a mover & shaker in the underground gay community, and he introduces her to Parveen, who has undergone gender reassignment surgery.

 From the moment Sahar meets Parveen, her driving thought is to follow in her footsteps so that she can marry Nasrin, and like many teens, she is completely heedless of the consequences that might follow such an action. All she can think about is Nasrin and not being separated from her; it never crosses her mind that Nasrin might not continue to love her in a man's body, much less than being in love with somebody at the age of 17 isn't a good enough reason to undergo such a medically and psychologically intense process.

Alas, Nasrin never seemed worth it to me. In the same breath that Sahar tells the reader how much she loves Nasrin, she inevitably shares a story that demonstrates how shallow, self-involved, and unconcerned with academic achievements Nasrin is.  I never was able to understand what it was about Nasrin that made Sahar want to forsake her life as she knew it for this other girl, other than her beauty and popularity. Maybe that's the author slyly playing with the idea of teen love, hinting that it can only ever be in the eyes of the beholder? Perhaps, but that would imply a level of sophistication that is otherwise not present in the novel.

There are some interesting minor characters here, including her cousin Ali, but also Nasrin's betrothed (who pops up later in a twist I admit I didn't see coming) and a pair of prostitutes who pose as a mother/daughter team. I would have very much enjoyed seeing more of all of these characters, as I cetainly found them more compelling than Nasrin, and even, occasionally, Sahar. The book is fairly slight--it's a small trim size with generous margins and fewer than 250 pages--so it's a shame that it wasn't fleshed out a little better.

Though I greatly admire the author for tackling difficult issues, I wish she would have developed them more. While these issues are certainly worthy of a teen or adult novel, the handling of said issues feels more like a middle grade novel--lacking the depth and nuance that I have come to expect from finer young adult writers. The first person, present tense (or the present pernicious, as my friend Rob calls it) does not do the book any favors, either.  It is the least sophisticated POV, in my opinion, and a 3rd person narrative could have done wonders for allowing the author to show more from Nasrin's perspective rather than simply to tell the reader certain things, which is how the novel plays out.

Still, I applaud Sara Farizan and Algonquin for producing a novel that is sure to make some young readers think about their world in a new way, including many things they take for granted, and I look forward to more of Farizan's work.  If she reacher her potential and creates novels as substantive as her topics are, she will certainly be a force to be reckoned with.

NB: I read an ARC of the book that I picked up at Winter Institute. Algonquin Young Readers will launch its new line with this YA novel at the end of August of this year. 

Audio Book Review: Three Junes by Julia Glass

It's amazing to me the difference between reading a book and listening to that book. A good reader can elevate a not-so-great book, while a poor reader can make a great book seem tedious. In this specific case, I'm not sure I can explain the difference between my two experiences with Julia Glass's National Book Award-winning Three Junes, as both the book and the reader are good, but I suspect it's all down to two things: I am a more discerning reader now than I was ten years ago when the book was published, and books resonate more strongly at certain times than others.

My memory may be a bit faulty, but when I first read this book, I apparently never read the jacket copy, as I recall expecting this book to be about multiple women named June.  It's not.  Here's the lowdown, courtesy of the publisher:

In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage.  

Six years later, again in June, Paul's death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses.  

Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her. 

My first impression after listening to the first few tracks of the audio was, "Why the hell is the book being narrated in a Scottish accent?" I'd forgotten that family in question was Scottish, but it still surprised me that the non-dialogue parts were read in the accent.  It took a little getting used to, and on at least one occasion it required listening to certain words or phrases more than once to understand them. To wit: when Paul is visiting Greece, somebody starts talking to him about the "dunkies," or so I thought.  I had no idea what dunkies were, and it was only later in context that I realized that the character was actually talking about donkeys.

I'm ashamed to say that I could not identify how real the narrator's accent is, but he switched back & forth with relative ease between American and Scottish accents (to be honest, they all sounded a little bit faked to me. Faked well, but faked). There were only a few muddied passages where the dialogue switched quickly between characters and the narrative and it was difficult to distinguish who was speaking because the accents became conflated.  John Keating really did a great job of reading this audio, and there were times when it was his storytelling, rather than the story itself, that moved me to tears, although of course sometimes it was both.

My favorite section of the book was Fenno's, though I also really liked the first section that focused on his father, while the last section left me feeling mostly lukewarm. I think it's an interesting choice on any writer's part to impart more knowledge to the reader than to the characters, and I think that's what frustrated me most about the last section. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, in terms of what unfolded between Fenno and Fern, but it never happened.

While I remember liking this book when I first read it (I'd given it a 3* rating on Goodreads, for example), I kind of fell in love with the book while listening to it.  There are some seriously gorgeous passages that for whatever reason didn't jump out at me the first time I read it--of course, I can't quote them here because I was driving while listening to the book this time around. This is a mighty fine novel and I'm so glad that I decided to buy it on audio when I saw it at my local record store for $5.  I've since upped my Goodreads rating to 4*, and if I had liked the last section as much as I liked the first two, it might even have earned 5*.

What about you?  Have you had different reactions to the same book when reading it in different formats or when encountering it at different times in your life? 

Book Review: The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley

When I first heard about this novel several months ago when I was deciding which new winter '13 fiction titles my store should carry, I thought the promise sounded interesting: Elle falls off a ladder and hits her head, causing severe brain trauma, so her devastated husband, Matt, has to make the call to take her off life support.  But wait! Blood work shows that Elle is, in fact, pregnant, so Matt decides to keep Elle on life support until the baby can be born. But wait, part deux! Elle's mother-in-law produces a piece of paper saying dating from two decades ago that says she is Elle's health care proxy, and that she is going to take Elle off life support (acto her advanced health directive), because Elle's wishes should outweigh everything else. Mother is thus pitted against son in this modern medical feud.

Sounds intriguing, no?

Well, if you're a savvier reader than I am, then you will have already anticipated the immediate direction the book takes once the conflict between Matt and his mother arises. I, however, was entirely too naive to anticipate the political melee that broke out, with the militant pro-lifers backing Matt's position and vilifying his mother.  Matt's attorney agrees to take the case because he is eager to set precedent in this arena, heavily hinting that he would love to be one of those people credited with overturning Roe v. Wade.

I almost stopped reading at that point, as I wasn't at all interested in spending the next several hours of my free time immersed in the vitriol that marks this issue, and I certainly didn't want to immerse myself among characters who want to defeat one of the single biggest victories in the women's movement.  No, indeed! Then I had second thoughts; I didn't really know how the book would end, so I decided to stick with it. I had a good idea that the book wouldn't be for me, but I also thought that it was a book I could probably sell and therefore finishing the book would not equate to time wasted.

My biggest issue with the story, and one that I thought was a pretty gaping hole in the plot, was Matt's general disinterest in the unborn child.  He never really gives any indication that he wants to keep Elle alive so that he can be a father to that child, or that so he can still have a tie to Elle after she dies.  He mostly wants to keep Elle on life support because she was desperate to have a child--desperate to the point of being willing to risk her health in order to carry one to term after several miscarriages. Matt is a neurology surgeon and he never indicates that he is the type of person who would be willing to put his life on hold in order to raise a child by himself.  What's more, the hospital didn't realize Elle was pregnant when she arrived via ambulance, so she was pumped full of meds, then put on general anesthesia in a surgical last-ditch attempt to save her.  Goodness only knows how the trauma and the drugs would impact the fetus.

So yeah, I never quite bought into the fact that Matt wanted to be a parent to this baby that, in all likelihood, would be born with all kinds of health issues, if it even lived to term at all.  And since he was perfectly prepared to take Elle off life support before discovering her pregnancy, it was a pretty big sticking point in my being able to read the book at face value.

Looking beyond Matt, though, there were some real complications on both sides of the story, and everybody who knew Elle wants to have their say.  Each family member draws lines: Elle's dad takes Matt's side, Elle's brother sides with Matt's mom. Even Elle's old lover from college shows up with an advance directive that is several years old, from when he and Elle were working for NASA in Texas: this is key, because Texas state law overrides a woman's right to be removed from life support if she is pregnant. It's a big brouhaha all over.

This definitely wasn't the book for me, but I have a pretty good idea the kinds of readers who would: those who love Jodi Picoult, Kristin Hannah, Nicholas Sparks and other issue-driven romances. I will say that I appreciated the author's choice to tell the book from a single point of view (Matt's, via a first person narrative) rather than resort to Picoult's style of using different narrators (and, ugh, different typefaces for each one). I've not read a ton of books by Picoult, Hannah, or Sparks, so this may be grossly generalizing, but I also felt that Sibley's book was slightly more nuanced than those works.  I know several family members, friends, and/or customers who will like this book, I feel.

NB: William Morrow published this book as a paperback original in February of this year. I read an ARE provided to me at my request from my sales rep.

Book Revew: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

For my job, I receive books every day with an editor's letter tucked inside, exhorting the 101 reasons why I should read that particular book.  (Why, yes, I do love my job. Thanks for asking.)  But what I do not receive every day is a book with letters from ten different editors around the world, exhorting the 1,001 reasons why I should love this book, and that's the first thing that made me sit up and take notice about Ruth Ozeki's new novel, A Tale for the Time Being. The ARC that Viking sent out included notes from editors in the US, UK, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Australia, Greece, and the Netherlands. I had not read Ozeki before, but I thought, "A-ha, clearly this is a book to be reckoned with."

And I was right.  Mostly I just want to heap superlatives on this book, but I'll try to tell you a bit about what the book is about, though that will be tricky.  Like the quantum physics that infuse (infuses? Is the word "physics" singular or plural?) the story, it's a book that alters as one reads and observes. Because a summary would be too complicated, I'm going to borrow the publisher's own marketing blurb here:

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Nao has become one of my favorite narrators in literature.  She is very much in the vein of Midori from Haruki Murakami's novel, Norwegian Wood, which is to say she's bubbly, bright, and annoying-but-endearing. Her father is suicidal, and the cruelties she endures at the hands of her classmates (shockingly, with the tacit permission of her teacher) make every American YA novel about bullying look like a bonny good time. It's no wonder that she wants to follow in her father's footsteps and try to end it all.  Yet she has this wonderfully indomitable spirit and sense of humor that juxtaposes in a fascinating way with her avowed fate.

Jiko, Nao's great-grandmother, is also a terrific character. Though there are some secrets she has guarded all of her life, she serves mostly as Nao's sole source of stability and as such, she guides her in the way of  Zen Buddhism. Nothing Nao says or does can offend or surprise her, despite Nao's best efforts.

With the character of Ruth, Ozeki starts to break down fiction's fourth wall. Character Ruth splits her time between New York and an isolated island in the Pacific northwest, just like Author Ruth. Character Ruth is a practicing Buddhist novelist, just like Author Ruth. And the similarities go on.... Ruth (the character) is something of a Japanese scholar trying to defeat a bad case of writer's block, so her obsession with Nao's found diary becomes a way for her to sublimate her anxiety. Her husband is a quantum physics-quoting botanist, so there's that, too.

Top all of that off with the fact that Nao's diary excerpts as they appear in the book are amply footnoted for the benefit of a non-Japanese audience, and that the footnotes are attributed to Ruth--but is it Character Ruth or Author Ruth? It's hard to tell sometimes, and that's the whole point, I think.

I love the opening lines to Nao's first section. They put me a little bit in mind of the Emily Dickinson poem, "I'm Nobody!Who Are You":

My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.

A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid cafe in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you're reading this, then maybe by now you're wondering about me, too (p. 4).

I also love this: "I don't mind thinking of the world without me because I'm unexceptional, but I hate the idea of the world without old Jiko. She's totally unique and special, like the last Galapagos tortoise or some other ancient animal hobbling around on the scorched earth, who is the only one left of its kind. But please don't get me going on the topic of species extinction because it's totally depressing and I'll have to commit suicide right this second" (25).

And this bit about Nao's time living with Jiko at the temple:

They bowed and thanked the toilet and offered a prayer to save all beings. That one is kind of hilarious and goes like this: As I go for a dump/I pray with all beings/that we can remove all filth and destroy/ the poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness.

At first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I'd flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, "Thanks, toilet," and it felt pretty natural. I mean, it's the kind of things that's okay to do if you're in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you'd better not try it in your junior high school washroom, because if your classmates catch you bowing and thanking the toilet they'll try to drown you in it. I explained this to Jiko, and she agreed it wasn't such a good idea, but that it was okay just to feel grateful sometimes, even if you don't say anything (167).

That gives you a pretty good flavor for Nao's narrative sections, equal parts earnestness and impishness. There is so much that is extraordinary about this book, but I fear I'm not doing it justice.  I think I will close with the blurb that I wrote up for Publisher's Weekly Galley Talk, as sometimes it's easier to say more with fewer words:

Zen philosophy and quantum physics blend seamlessly in Ozeki’s brilliant new work of metafiction, where sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between the author’s attempts to build up and break down the fourth wall. Or as Jiko, the wise and wizened Buddhist nun from the book might say, “to raise or to raze, they are the same.” Jiko’s calm, hard-earned acceptance of contradictions contrasts brilliantly with the life of her great-granddaughter, Nao, a bullied schoolgirl with a suicidal father, adrift in a sea of emotions she is incapable of navigating. When Ruth, on the opposite side of the Pacific, discovers Nao’s diary among the post-tsunami flotsam and jetsam, she becomes obsessed with Jiko’s and Nao’s stories—to the point where she’s convinced that solving the diary’s puzzles will ease her restlessness and dissolve her writer’s block.  I’ve rarely encountered a novel that has made me think about our world quite as much as this one has, where distance and time are mutable depending on the observer, and what is a reader if not the ultimate observer? Ozeki’s novel feels, impossibly, both timeless and utterly of our time, but I suspect that might be the hand of Jiko guiding me. 

NB: I read an advance reading copy of this book, provided to me by my sales rep, which Viking publishes on March 13, 2013.