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books

Hungry by Sheila and Lisa Himmel

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I’m not a big memoir reader. I like my non-fiction very factual and often technical, and anecdotes really aren’t my cup of tea, which is why authors like Malcolm Gladwell always end up disappointing me. But when I had a patron call and ask to put a hold on Hungry by Sheila and Lisa Himmel, I read the description and was intrigued. So I put myself on that hold list too.

Hungry is the true account of a battle with an eating disorder, told in a manner different from every other one you’ve read. Sheila Himmel is a food critic for a major newspaper in the San Jose, California area, and Lisa is a recent college graduate. Sheila begins the book by talking about the differences in the births and childhoods of her son, the first born, and her daughter Lisa, who was quite the opposite of her son. At the same time, she chronicles her experiences climbing the ranks in her own career as a journalist. I found her depictions of motherhood and her stories about getting from the bottom of the writing barrel to climing to such a fun, well-revered position through nothing but her hard work and determination.

As Sheila reflects on these issues, Lisa chronicles her obsession with eating and food, describing the events that led her to becoming not only anorexic, but an exercise addict and eventual bulemic. She grew up a bit chubby, but as she entered middle and high school, she began spiraling out of control. Going to college — as her mother writes — was her opportunity to grow up and become strong over this need to be hungry all the time (and what I found fascinating was that this wasn’t always about being skinny but about being hungry and the control issues therein). But when she got to college, she found herself a disaster. An eventual recovery occurs, but spirals out of control her senior year of college, culminating in treatments, both traditional and non-traditional.

I really appreciated a book on this topic that explored the impact of mental illness on more than just the individual. Sheila is an advocate for mental health in this particular title, and I think that her unique position as a food critic just made it more relatable (these things can happen to anyone because it’s a mental illness).

Another strength of this book is that it’s not about being resolute. Lisa is in her mid twenties and still figuring things out. The last couple of chapters in the book are reflections of what people struggling with eating issues and those struggling with knowing and being close to someone with disordered eating can consider as options for proceeding. None are radical but they are rational.

That said, one of the weaknesses was that I felt there was almost too much Sheila in the book and too little Lisa. For a bit, Sheila does dote on a bit much about why she chose to attend Berkeley rather than Santa Cruz for college, but I think that this will be an interesting title for this pair to revisit in 10 or 20 years when Lisa comes into her own as an adult.

So, for my aversion to most memoirs, I’d say this was definitely worth the investment of time. It’s a fairly quick read and it doesn’t dwell too much into the stuff we’ve all read before (it’s definitely not as graphic as say, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls) and I do think it treds some new ground. The Himmels are not well-to-doers, and in fact, this is an issue they talk about a bit. They’re down to earth and human, something hard for me to find in many books of the ilk.

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

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You probably read her memoir, The Glass Castle, and now Jeanette Walls is back with a fictionalized story about her grandmother Lily. Lily is a hard, rowdy woman who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted in a time that these activities weren’t seen as lady-like nor appropriate.

The story follows as she grows up in west Texas and then moves on to Arizona to teach — without her 8th grade education. When Lily gets fired thanks to the end of the war, she chooses to move to Chicago and start a life there. But when she married a two-timing louse, she relocates again, back to her wild ways in the desert southwest.

She eventually marries a stable man and has a couple of children, but she’ll never be broke of her wild ways, and the rest of the story tells of other adventures she and her family have.

Half Broke Horses is told in short vignettes, with each chapter being just a page or two long. It’s very episodic, though for the first 2/3 of the book, there is a great flow between the stories. I felt like the last 1/3 of the book, however, fell completely apart as Wells tried to wrap up the entire adulthood of Lily in fewer pages than she had spent describing her childhood. Within four pages, she’d gone from having young children to fighting with a teenage daughter to Wells being born. Too much too quickly for me.

I wasn’t a big fan of this book. I felt like the fictionalization really made the story boring. Wells had a fantastic concept and the character of Lily was interesting, but by fictionalizing the story, it was devoid of any emotion. Additionally, the episodic nature further disjointed the story in a way that I found Lily nothing more than an interesting character — I never had feelings for her one way or another, but rather just went with her.

I didn’t get quite the sense of how wild a character she was, either. I felt like the book was billed as much more of a wild west girl who really broke horses and bucked the tradition, but it seemed to me by fictionalizing the story, it just fell really, really flat. I’ve read more interesting fiction with more interesting female characters who did this. I would have loved this a lot more if this were more biographical.

Like The Glass Castle, I felt distanced from the book. As a reader, I never got fully absorbed in either story, and the more I think about it, I believe it’s Walls’s style. She builds a wall around her story that as a reader, I don’t like. For other readers, this works well because the subjects are real and therefore not always easily accessible or relatable.

I suspect this might get picked up as a film down the road: it’s episodic and fitting to cinematic molding; it’s Jeanette Walls who has proven to be popular; and the story IS interesting. I feel like the help it could get with an artistic director will elevate it and make it more engaging and realistic.

I wonder how hard this story would have been to make biographical, rather than fictional. Walls states in an end note that her original intent was to write about her mother, but her mother insisted that her mother, Lily, was the real interesting one. I wonder how much of the decision to fictionalize came from the publisher, rather than her original intent? Or if it was her intent to do it all along, how much came from her worry to be seen as another James Frey or similar memoirist accused of making it all up?

I believe readers know not everything in a biography or memoir is going to be 100% true (how can it be?). I sure hope it wasn’t done this way to convenience the reader from thinking — there is a good story here, but I just had a hard time connecting and reveling in it knowing that it never could be fully realized as a fictional novel.

Lips Touch, Laini Taylor w/ Jim Di Bartolo

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I’m going to do something I haven’t done before: I’m reviewing this title without finishing it.

Lips Touch by Laini Taylor and with illustrator Jim Di Bartolo is one of the nominees for this year’s National Book Award. I’m going to go out on a limb and say — even without reading the other two nominees just yet — that this is going to be the winner.

Why?

This book is fantastic, it is beautiful, and it is a book worthy of such an accolade. Although this definitely strikes me as a book that would speak in that way to an awards committee, this is also a book with high appeal, though it’s definitely going to appeal most to those who love fantasy, mythology, or fairy tale worlds and older teens. That’s not to say it’s got a lot of questionable content that wouldn’t be appropriate for younger teens but more because it is written in a very sophisticated manner with dense language. And the allusions and depth Taylor has is going to be most appreciated by those with a little reading and literary currency.

Lips Touch is a series of three short stories that revolve around kissing. They’re wildly different but are related through that common theme. Each story is preceded by a few pages of fantastic illustration by Di Bartolo which tell the story graphically. The art uses red, black, and grey to set the tone and the colors are throughout the book, as titles, page numbers, and chapter titles are red themselves. The extra money that the publisher spent on the color was well spent and as a reader, I just loved the beautiful book itself. Sorry Kindle users, but you will miss out on a piece of art.

The first story is an exploration of Christina Rosetti’s famous poem “Goblin Market.” This a poem that, like Taylor, I’ve been fascinated with for a long time. Kizzy, the main character in the story, is one of those girls who wishes she had the boys interested in her like others in her class do. She never will, of course, because she’s not that attractive and well, she has a very, very weird family.

That is, of course, until a new boy comes to town and rouses the goblins. Will they ruin her or him? Will they ever get to experience a true kiss or will they become victims of the goblins out to haunt Kizzy?

Taylor’s second story is a story about a curse placed upon a baby. Based heavily in mythology — and I believe this is Middle Eastern mythos — Taylor crafts a story where the Devil can kill at will, but it is through the promise to a woman with power to travel between life on earth and Hell that he chooses no longer to kill children. That is, if this child who will be given the most beautiful voice on earth never utters a word. When a solider sees the cursed individual upon her late teen years, and she falls deeply in love, will she break the curse? Will she break it for love?

And the third story, admittedly, I did not get through. This is a story that relies a lot on world building and development and will definitely appeal to fantasy readers. This is not my genre and because I was so enamored with her first two tales, I did not want to read through the third knowing that I could not appreciate nor evaluate it well. The preceding art I did enjoy but knew from that and the short summary following the illustrations that it wouldn’t be for me.

Lips Touch was so enjoyable, so different, and so memorable. I first heard of this book from a webinar I attended wherein David Levithan raved about the book but had a heck of a time finding it anywhere. I wanted to purchase it for my library when I first learned of it but could not locate it through my vendor. A few trips to a number of big chains proved fruitless, as well, both before and after the NBA nomination announcement. So, if you’re interested in reading it and can’t find it easily, don’t be surprised. I did land a copy through Amazon.

This is a literary work. It is based deeply in language and imagery, and it alludes to many myths, legends, and other literature. This will not have wide appeal, but I think that any reader can appreciate at least one story in here. If for no other reason, pick up Lips Touch for incredible language use and for the unique use of visual story telling.

I’m pretty okay taking the risk in saying this will be the winner this year — I suspect that Claudette Colvin and Charles and Emma are going to be great reads, but this book has so much more to it than the text and for a fiction title just glows differently.

What I’m reading, Twitter style

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…to be fair, it’s more like a few of what I’ve read and a few of what I’m reading.


Crank: On audio – Kristina’s deep decent into meth use. Powerful & terrifying yet gripping listen. Will turn anyone off to thought of using drugs.


Feed: All in society born with feeds telling them how to live, act, buy. Feeds get hacked. Who will survive? May make you cry. BEST AUDIOBOOK EVER.

Someone Named Eva: World War II story. Czech-born Milada taken to reprogramming camp & adopted to German family. Becomes Eve. Terrifying based-on-truth story.

An Off Year: What happens when you turn around and decide not to go to college? A lot of nothing, in this case. Book about nothing but still interesting.

A Great and Terrible Beauty: Slow moving with little action and not yet compelling enough to begin my 4th audio disc. Seems like so many other books & not that exciting.

Her Fearful Symmetry: No candle to author’s prior works. Poor editing & writing style. Story of twins & too much happenstance. Can’t tell story on chances alone.

Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook by Martha Hall Foose

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I love food. It’s a borderline obsessive thing. I like to eat, I like to go out to new restaurants, I love to cook. At the reference desk, I always have various food blogs open in the background. I’m always making something new and bringing it in… and of course, I’m always on the hunt for good cookbooks. Faithful readers have seen evidence of this obsession in earlier cookbook reviews.

Martha Hall Foose won a James Beard award in the American Cookery category for her book Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook. And I completely understand why, and I’ve only just made one recipe!

Cornbread Crusted White Chili – and yes, it’s as good as it sounds.
Here is the outer cheesy cornbread crust – inside, there was an amazing white chili with tomatillos, chicken, and hominy, but my friend and I devoured it before I remembered to take a picture. Whoops.

I read this cookbook like a novel. Foose throws us into the slow Mississippi Delta world that she loves so much. Every recipe has a history; we meet characters like Aunt Mary Stigler Thompson – a woman who declares none of the entrants in the mayonnaise making competition are “as good as my own”; Mrs. Ethel Wright Mohamed, a woman who stitched hundreds of tea towels to remember her beloved late husband; and M. Taylor Bowen Ricketts who cooked black-eyed peas just as well as she painted. Foose’s notes section with cooking instructions are just as charming as the histories that grace every recipe.

Oh, and the food. Huge color photographs adorn nearly every page of complex, beautiful, mouth-watering Southern food. From curried sweet potato soup with pork rind croutons to banana puddings served in a mason jar to field peas with snaps… I was hungry every time I picked up this book. I took my time with Screen Doors and Sweet Tea – in fact, I took so long that it’s now over-due. I had to quickly photocopy all of the recipes I want to try and return it to the library. I know I’m not the only one who’s actually cooked from this book – at the front, I found a post-it note from another patron who had meticulously written out each recipe that she tried.

Southern cooking is not fast, nor is it easy. Many recipes require hours of prep work, and I know that I don’t have a lot of time for this kind of cooking during my hectic work week. But for special occasions, I will definitely make a caramel cake. Or the greens with cornbread croutons. Or overnight dinner rolls.

Oh, it’s time to start planning the next dinner with Foose. And I’m adding this book to my Christmas wish list. I foresee running out of shelf space at this rate.