Into the Beautiful North Book Review

  

BOOK REVIEW

Into The Beautiful North is initially set in the village of Tres Camarones in Mexico. Nayeli, who works at The Fallen Hand Taco Shop & Internet Cafe, dreams of travelling to the United States and riding in an elevator like one of those she’s seen in the movies. No major highway runs through Tres Camarones, there is no local police station, no radio or television station, no harbor, no supermarket, and even the high school is in another city — according to the official highway guide, her village doesn’t even exist! Along with the owner of the cafe, Tacho, Nayeli yearns for London, Madrid, Paris and especially New York. Often at night she dreams that she lives:

“in a big white house, surrounded by trees and fountains. There was snow on the distant mountain range. Her horses were white, and the swans in her lake floated serenely as the maids served her. She had English muffins with strawberry jam on a silver tray. She spoke perfect English. She wore a long gown and ate ice cream when she was done with the muffins. Her husband, Johnny Depp, had gold teeth, black eyeliner, and waist-length hair. “Tomorrow,” he said with a metallic grin, “we will go to Kankekee.”

There were, however, advantages to living in Tres Camarones, like crabbing:

“Crabbing was like going to heaven. A whole day immersed in the clean lagoon, with barrels of ice full of soda and beer, the thatched-roofed huts in the sand swinging with hammocks, the big pots boiling crabs to be eaten on stiff fried tortillas. There was nothing better than crabbing.”

Nayeli sees that in the crab basket “the armored creatures wrestled one another, and when one seemed about to climb out of the basket and make its escape, the others could grab it and haul it back down into the endless battle,” and Nayeli felt that was exactly what was happening to her and her friends, staying in Mexico, especially in Tres Camarones where most of the the men had left the village and there were no women who were pregnant. But when Mexican bandits and drug lords start to infiltrate the village and take away people’s homes, Nayeli and her friends decide to go to America and bring back men to protect their village as soldiers. They feel like they’re on a mission from God, just like Los Hermanos Blues, The Blues Brothers (since at least at their cinema, run by just one man, they saw many movies), and they would take a side-trip to Kankekee to find Nayeli’s father, who had left suddenly and inexplicably many years ago.

So Tacho, Nayeli, and Nayeli’s two girlfriends, Yolo and Vampi (the latter so-called because she dressed in Goth clothing) set out on a bus to America. The poverty and difficulty they see along the way makes their tiny village look like Eden! They get caught at the border as illegals (where Tacho is also mistaken as a terrorist from the Middle East) and are constantly eluding robbers and con-men. But they do finally cross the border in an unusual manner and end up in San Diego, wher they can begin their mission in America (Los Yunaites).

Read about the adventures of Nayeli and her friends in Into The Beautiful North as Nayeli and Tacho see snow for the first time and in America they see “Ravens, hawks, eagles. Deer beside the road. Evergreens look over the cottonwoods and alleys and ranges of mountains with vivid snowscaps on their points marching to infinity.  The sky was fractured in great blocks of cloud – chunks of white, blue, orange, violet.  Nayeli gasped.  She began to cry upon sight of it.”  But what happens in America is entirely different than they expect!  This book is exceedingly colorfully written with life constantly pushing its way out of the surrounding chaos and decay, like a green sprout rising up out of a crack in the sidewalk or roses in the desert.  A very unique book! 

  

REVIEWED BY:

Christina Zawadiwsky is Ukrainian-American, born in New York City, has a degree in Fine Arts, and is a poet, artist, journalist and TV producer. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Award, two Wisconsin Arts Boards Awards, a Co-Ordinating Council of Literary Magazines Writer’s Award, and an Art Futures Award, among other honors. She was the originator and producer of “Where The Waters Meet”, a local TV series created to facilitate the voices of artists of all genres in the media, for which she won two national and twenty local awards, including a Commitment to Community Television Award. She is also a contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology, the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, and has published four books of poetry.

 

Chicken Soup For the Soul: Power Moms Book Review

   

THEMES

REVIEW
 

I had read other Chicken Soup for the Soul books in years past and felt particularly inspired by them, so I was eager to read Power Moms – and I wasn’t disappointed! However, the nature of my joy was other than I expected – part of me feared that I’d have to read about Super Moms who could do everything and more, unlike us mere mortals, but instead what I found were vignettes, intellectually bite-sized stories and poems of as many different types as there are moms (and all of them more than human!) that one could read between dealing with one child and another!

There are just so many divergent themes, including:  a mother seeing her daughter through a tempestuous and rebellious teenhood until she drives her back from camp and they encouter wild deer and the girl tells her mother she loves her (A Trip To Healing, by Jennifer Mallin); a young boy who sees his mother struggling to do the laundry and the ironing as her cheeks redden in the heat who puts a box on the washing machine encouraging other members of the family to tip her (Mom’s Tip Money, by Diane Dean White); and a treatise on intuition by the mother of Britney Spears (A Mother’s Intuition, by Lynne Spears).

In this book there are no medals awarded, or consciences totally resolved, about whether a mom should not work and stay at home, or work full-time using day care or a nanny for the children, or work from home while also raising her children. Each woman makes her own choice, what’s right for her and only her, and some even find their choices difficult, but then:

A lot of selfish reasons to just up and disappear;

But I can’t imagine all the love I’d miss if I were

Anywhere but here;

Anywhere but here.

Anywhere But Here, poem by Karen Fisher

One stay-at-home mother slacks off from her computer work to watch her two-year-old daughter sprinkling fairy dust around the room and expounds: “I just want to take her and hug her and drown her in kisses.

But while she is full of magic, I am cursed with a headset and laptop that keep my fingers typing” when she has to respond to the special bell that indicates someone is sending her a work-related IM message (Mama Esta Trabajando, by Cristina T. Lopez). Another mom realizes that her son is truly separate from her when he’s body-slammed by a playmate and doesn’t cry or get angry (as she would) but just laughs instead! (He May Be My Boy, But He’s His Own Person, by Patti Woods). Yet another mother offers some sage advice: “Staying at home is about creativity and cleverness because there is less income for things like decorating, landscaping and chic ensembles.” (Hearth Smart, by Janeen Lewis).

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms is tremendously successful because it is such a large compendium of varied stories: 101, to be exact! None is longer than a few pages so you don’t have to worry about losing your place or remembering what’s happened in case you have to run off to a sudden spill, an important pet chore or an emotional child emergency! The book is also helpfully divided into ten chapters on subects like The Daily Grind, Pink Slips, Dividends and Working From Home.

I remember magical summer nights when I was a child when the sky was so filled with large stars that you felt as if you could almost reach up and touch them, and all the mom writers in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms are just like those stars, shining brightly and hugely, each with her own special story to tell.

 

 

REVIEWED BY:

 Reviewed by Christina Zawadiwsky

Christina Zawadiwsky is Ukrainian-American, born in New York City, has a degree in Fine Arts, and is a poet, artist, journalist and TV producer. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Award, two Wisconsin Arts Boards Awards, a Co-Ordinating Council of Literary Magazines Writer’s Award, and an Art Futures Award, among other honors. She was the originator and producer of “Where The Waters Meet”, a local TV series created to facilitate the voices of artists of all genres in the media, for which she won two national and twenty local awards, including a Commitment to Community Television Award. She is also a contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology, the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, and has published four books of poetry.

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti Book Review

THEMES

REVIEW

Giulia Melucci always feels compelled to cook for her new boyfriends, because “good food is the best complement I can think of to the many pleasures love offers.” When the relationship ends, she cooks for herself, to mend her broken heart! Either way, cuisine seems to be a staple in her life that helps her get through everything.

An autobiographical and humorous book that includes many recipes, it is easy to identify with Giulia’s search for a mate. She dates bon vivants, depressed intellectuals, writers, composers, Croatian translators and many other eccentrics and bohemians. She finds all of them inspirational – cooking-wise – but in the end impossible as life partners.

Giulia writes with an intelligent and colorful sense of detail that makes you feel as if you are there in various settings partaking of a meal with her and her current boyfriend. Because of her publicist’s work for Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly and other literate periodicals, her life is “charmed” with book parties and famous authors, and we can imagine attending these galas ourselves and then coming home and cooking, where the familiarity absorbs any rarity we may have just experienced. She lives to eat elegantly and is always searching for a man who feels the same way. When dates are less abundant she hangs out with her best friend Ginia, making forays into New York City’s vast ethnic restaurant scene.

Giulia’s book is also filled with the recipes of others (her aunt’s, her boyfriend’s mom’s, and those acquired from new people she meets) as she assures us that you don’t need incredible cookery to make fine food, just very good ingredients and a heating source. Cooking is “a way to make sense out of (my) internal chaos. There is logic and order to cooking. What you put into it has everything to do with what you get out of it.”

All of Giulia’s dating stories are intriguing. She writes with a compelling immediacy, as if you are one of her confidants who’s just learning about a new amour and being asked to help her analyze him.  The only problem with this very personal (cook) book is that reading it will leave you perpetually hungry!

Reviewed by Christina Zawadiwsky

Christina Zawadiwsky is Ukrainian-American, born in New York City, has a degree in Fine Arts, and is a poet, artist, journalist and TV producer. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Award, two Wisconsin Arts Boards Awards, a Co-Ordinating Council of Literary Magazines Writer’s Award, and an Art Futures Award, among other honors. She was the originator and producer of “Where The Waters Meet”, a local TV series created to facilitate the voices of artists of all genres in the media, for which she won two national and twenty local awards, including a Commitment to Community Television Award. She is also a contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology, the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, and has published four books of poetry.

Dear Wally Lamb: A Review

Dear Wally,

“She’s Come Undone” is one of my favorite books ever. The character of Dolores Price spoke to me. I rarely re-read books, but this is one I read every year and I always come away with something new. I couldn’t believe you were able to get inside the head of an abused, lonely and overweight girl as a man. Your next novel was a masterpiece also. I have to admit I had high expectations after waiting eight long years for your new novel and on some levels you didn’t disappoint. Your words still flow like over the pages like hot lava. I was immediately caught up in the story of this couple and the tragedy you placed them in. The aftermath of consequences made me think and be thankful that I haven’t experienced such horrors. But then you veered off from Maureen and you lost me. The scope of the story and the research it must have taken was admirable, but I started to feel as if I was just wading through the rest of the story just wanting it to end to find out what would happen to Maureen. I did tear up and felt the pain of the women that Maureen was around ( I don’t want to give it away). I knew from your real life experience that you have been around those inspiring stories and probably some of those were real. I was shocked towards the end and even a bit angry, but I slowly realized that I did like the way you ended it. You are an incredible writer and one of my favorites and I would still recommend this book. It just could have been a bit shorter and a little more focused. Thank you for your gift you share with us and please don’t wait so long to write another book. Also, would you consider going back to a woman as the main character again? Thank you

Your Biggest Fan,

Tracy from Bookroom Reviews

You can read the first chapter here and purchase the book at Amazon here.

Book Review:Somebody Else’s Daughter

In the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts a group of families is connected through the prestigious Pioneer prep school. Into this community enters Nate Gallagher, a teacher and struggling writer haunted by the daughter he gave up for adoption years ago. The girl, Willa—now a teenager and one of Nate’s students—lives with her adoptive parents, Joe and Candace, who have nurtured her with their affection and prosperity. When Willa wins a community service internship and begins working at a local women’s shelter, her friendship with a troubled prostitute raises questions about her own biological past. Despite her parent’s love and care, Willa can’t shake her feelings of confusion and abandonment, and Joe and Candace are too preoccupied with their crumbling marriage to realize her unhappiness. Read more.

Visit Elizabeth’s website here, read an excerpt of the book here, and check out the Somebody Else’s Daughter’s website here.  Visit TLC Book Tours here.

MY REVIEW

Somebody Else’s Daughter is a novel of psychological suspense in which a private adoption’s dark consequences play out years later, at an elite prep school in the Berkshires. It follows the lives of three families, whose tragedies, flaws, and pasts interconnect. The novel powerfully starts out with a drugged out couple and their newborn. As the mom is dying, they agree to give her up for adoption to give her a better life. The novel then skips years later when that baby is now a beautiful girl named Willa. Her biological father has come back to work as a teacher in her prep school to secretly see how she has turned out. Elizabeth Brundage is a talented writer, who has written a complex character study. We meet one character and just as I feel I am connecting to them, she switches to another character’s perspective. Eventually, she comes back to them, but it is in a slow build that reminded me of Little Children by Tom Perrotta. Don’t get me wrong, Somebody Else’s Daughter isn’t as good as Little Children, but Brundage’s way with words and ability to capture so many complex issues is reminiscent of Perrotta. I also didn’t feel a connection to any one character, which may have been her point. These are deeply scarred and flawed characters. This is not a quick read, but the shocking conclusion is satisfying. I look forward to more from Brundage.

The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters Book Review and Giveaway!

SYNOPSIS

When the four young Gabaldón sisters lost their mother, it was Fermina, the old Pueblo caretaker living in their house, who held them together with her love and protection. Upon her death, she promised the girls they would each receive a special gift, selected just for them. And as time passed, what she bestowed—hands that can heal, a skill for spinning stories, the ability to incite laughter, and the power to curse others—emerged bringing both blessings and tragedy. Now, twenty years later, unsure of whether the woman who had loved them so was a fairy godmother or a witch, the sisters delve into the patched and woven history of their family. Here shadowed secrets wait patiently to be released into the light…to show the gifted Gabaldón sisters not only who their guardian really was, but the truth about themselves.

THEMES IN THE BOOK

CLICK ON THE BOOK COVER OF THE GIFTED GABALDON SISTERS TO READ MY REVIEW AND SEE WHAT GRADE I GAVE IT!  I JUST HAPPEN TO HAVE TWO COPIES TO GIVE AWAY AND YOU CAN GO TO MY CONTEST PAGE TO ENTER.  I THINK THIS IS ONE YOU WILL LOVE!  THANKS AND GOOD LUCK!

Book Review and Giveaway: The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex

 

Publisher: Santa Fe Writer’s Project

Pub. Date: September 2008

250pp

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

Nonfiction is the new black comedy in this hilarious collection of award-winning literary essays written by the infamous Pagan Kennedy. In the title piece, Alex Comfort, author of The Joy of Sex, reinvents himself as a sex guru in California and hatches a plan to destroy monogamy forever. In the stories that follow, a retired chemist finds a way to turn a wasteland into paradise, an aspiring tyrant tries to become the emperor of America, and an artist rigs himself up to a “brain machine” made from parts he bought at Radio Shack. All of the essays—most of which have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe Magazine—document the stories of visionaries bent on remaking the world, for better or for worse.

CLICK ON THE BOOK COVER TO READ MY REVIEW.  IF THIS SOUNDS LIKE A BOOK YOU WOULD LIKE, I HAVE AN EXTRA COPY FROM THE SANTA FE WRITER’S PROJECT TO SHARE!  ALL YOU NEED TO DO TO ENTER IS LEAVE ME A COMMENT AND I WILL DRAW A WINNER ON OCTOBER 14TH.  US AND CANADA ONLY PLEASE.

Book Review: The Lost Diary of Don Juan

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group

Pub. Date: July 2008

322pp

http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

It was a time of discovery and decadence, when life became a gamble and the gold that poured endlessly into the port of Sevilla devalued money, marriage, and love itself. In the midst of these treacherous times, Juan Tenorio is born and then abandoned in the barn of a convent. Raised secretly by the nuns, he learns to love and worship all women and wants nothing more than to be a priest, until he falls in love with one of the sisters. When their affair is discovered, Juan leaves the Church forever. He is soon recruited to be a spy by the powerful Marquis de la Mota, who teaches him to become the world’s greatest libertine and seducer of women. But when he crosses swords with the most powerful man in the Empire, Don Juan must escape the murderous fury of the Inquisitor who battles all forms of debauchery, deviance, and heresy.

It is after knowing countless women that he is convinced by the Marquis to keep a diary, and it is here within its pages that Don Juan reveals his greatest adventures and the Arts of Passion he mastered. But what finally compels him to confess everything and risk losing his life, livelihood, and honor is the most perilous adventure of all — the irresistible fall into the madness of love with the only woman who could ever make him forget all others.

THEMES IN THIS BOOK

CLICK ON THE BOOK COVER OF THE LOST DIARY OF DON JUAN TO READ MY REVIEW AND SEE WHAT GRADE I GAVE IT!  MAKE SURE YOU CHECK BACK ON FRIDAY FOR A GUEST POST FROM THE AUTHOR DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS AND A GIVEAWAY!

Matrimony by Joshua Henkin Book Review and Giveaway

Publisher: Random House Inc

Pub. Date: August 2008

304pp

www.joshuahenkin.com

www.randomhouse.com

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

From the moment he was born, Julian Wainwright has lived a life of Waspy privilege. The son of a Yale-educated investment banker, he grew up in a huge apartment on Sutton Place, high above the East River, and attended a tony Manhattan private school. Yet, more than anything, he wants to get out–out from under his parents’ influence, off to Graymont College, in western Massachusetts, where he hopes to become a writer.

When he arrives, in the fall of 1986, Julian meets Carter Heinz, a scholarship student from California with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship. Carter’s mother, desperate to save money for his college education, used to buy him reversible clothing, figuring she was getting two items for the price of one. Now, spending time with Julian, Carter seethes with resentment. He swears he will grow up to be wealthy–wealthier, even, than Julian himself.

Then, one day, flipping through the college facebook, Julian and Carter see a photo of Mia Mendelsohn. Mia from Montreal, they call her. Beautiful, Jewish, the daughter of a physics professor at McGill, Mia is–Julian and Carter agree–dreamy, urbane, stylish, refined.

But Julian gets to Mia first, meeting her by chance in the college laundry room. Soon they begin a love affair that–spurred on by family tragedy–will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next ten years. Then Carter reappears, working for an Internet company in California, and he throws everyone’s life into turmoil: Julian’s, Mia’s, his own.

Starting at the height of the Reagan era andending in the new millennium, Matrimony is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality. What happens when people marry younger than they’d expected? Can love endure the passing of time?

THEMES IN THIS BOOK

CLICK ON THE BOOK COVER OF MATRIMONY TO READ MY REVIEW!  JOSHUA HAS GENEROUSLY OFFERED TO SEND ONE COPY OF HIS BOOK THAT IS NOW OUT IN PAPERBACK.  YOU CAN GO TO MY CONTEST PAGE TO ENTER.  THANK YOU SO MUCH JOSH FOR ALL OF YOUR AMAZING SUPPORT TO BOOK BLOGGERS!  Check out the author’s website here. Discussion questions can be found here or downloaded here: matrimony_reading_group_guide.  You can also download this essay (henkin-book-group-essay) that Joshua Henkin wrote that originally appeared here.   Joshua talks about his book here.

Book Review and Giveaway: The Professors’ Wives’ Club

 

• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
• Pub. Date: September 2008
• 352pp
• www.joannerendell.com
• www.penguingroupusa.com

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

Nestled among Manhattan University’s faculty housing, there is a garden where four women will meet—each with a scandalous secret that could upset their lives, destroy their families, and rock the prestigious university to its very core.

With its maple trees, iron gate, and fence laced with honeysuckle, Manhattan U’s garden offers faculty wives Mary, Sofia, Ashleigh, and Hannah much needed refuge from their problems. But as Mary’s husband, the power-hungry dean, plans to demolish their beloved garden, these four women will discover a surprising secret about a lost Edgar Allan Poe manuscript—and realize they must find the courage to stand up for their passions, dreams, and desires.

THEMES IN THIS BOOK

CLICK ON THE BOOK COVER OF THE PROFESSORS’ WIVES’ CLUB TO READ MY REVIEW AND SEE WHAT GRADE I GAVE IT!  JOANNE HAS GENEROUSLY OFFERED TO GIVE AWAY FIVE COPIES OF HER BOOK!  CLICK HERE TO GO TO MY CONTEST PAGE TO ENTER AND GOOD LUCK!

 

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