The Moon Sisters

Title: The Moon Sisters

Author:  Therese Walsh

Publication Information:  Crown Publishers, Crown Publishing Group, Random House Inc. 2014. 320 pages.
ISBN: 0307461602 / 978-0307461605

Book Source:  I received this book through the GoodReads First Reads program free of cost in exchange for an honest review. The book arrived as a paperback uncorrected proof.

Favorite Quote:  "People give a lot of fancy reasons for the things they do, but I've found it always comes downs to one of two things ... They're getting something for doing it, or they're avoiding something by doing it. Pleasure, or pain."

The Moon Sisters is story a about siblings - the love and the hate and the rivalry between siblings. It is also a story about the parent-child relationship - how that can impact a person their whole lives through and how that can be completely different for two siblings.

Olivia and Jazz Moon are two sisters living in a small rural town. Their mother has passed away. The question of whether it was a suicide or an accident is something they both deal with in their own way.

Jazz is the older one, the practical one, and the one who feels that she never had her mother's love.

Olivia is the younger one and the one who had the close bond with her mother. She suffers from synesthesia, a neurological condition in which stimuli to one sense trigger a response through the other senses. Olivia has the "ability to taste words and see sounds and smell a person on the sun."

A third piece of the story is Beth, Jazz and Olivia's mother. Her story is revealed through the eyes of her daughters and through a stack of letters that Jazz finds hidden in her mother's room. Letters that Beth writes her estranged father.

This is also the story of a journey - a physical one and an emotional one. Beth was a writer and told Olivia stories of the bogs and the ghosts and the lights. After her death, the nearly blind Olivia decides to take the trip to the bog for her mother. Jazz is forced to go along to protect and care for her. Along the way, the encounter and travel with train hoppers - people illegally hopping on board freight trains and living a traveling lifestyle.

The books tells the story in the alternating voices of Jazz and Olivia interspersed with Beth's letters. The book begins strongly, slowly building the characters and slowly revealing the relationships between them. The alternating narrators work in this book because the readers does get to see both perspectives and feel both their emotions.

By the middle of the book, however, it really slows down and seems a little repetitive in the emotions it conveys. Jazz had an unhappy relationship with her mother; Olivia was close to her mother. Jazz is practical and sensible; Olivia is impulsive. The characters surrounding them are caring but gruff and with their own secrets.

Toward the end, the book does bring the characters and all the emotions to a closing - not an unexpected one but satisfying nevertheless. So good to begin, a little slow in the middle, and a satisfying ending.

I Always Loved You

Title: I Always Loved You
(2QSYERBQUQKB)

Author:  Robin Oliveira

Publication Information:  Viking Adult. 2014. 352 pages.
ISBN:  0670017191 / 978-0670017195

Book Source:  I received this book as a publisher's galley through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Favorite Quote:  "Art does not arise from a well of imaginary skill, obtained by dint of native ability. The sublime is a result of discipline. Art is earned by hard work, by the study of form by obsessive revision. And only then are you set free. Only then can you see."

I Always Loved You is the story of the relationship between Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt - a relationship that lasted over 40 years and ended with his death in 1917. Was it love? Was it friendship? Was it admiration? Was it a mentorship? Was it a complicated combination of all of those things?

Please also see the reviews for The Painted Girls, which is the story involving one of Edgar Degas's models and Hare With Amber Eyes, a nonfiction account touching on those who admired and collected art.

Mary Cassatt was an American woman who came to Paris in the 1860s to pursue her art. At that time, "success" on the European art scene was determined in large part by whether or not the artist was invited by the Paris Salon to exhibit. The organizers of the Salon judged and selected the artwork based on their definitions of what constituted "good" art.

The Impressionist movement was in its infancy at that time and typically did not meet the Salon's approval. The Salon did not approve of their departure from tradition and their avant-garde work. Thus, a group of Impressionists held their own exhibition during the 1870s and 1880s. This group included Edgar Degas, Monet, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, others, and eventually Mary Cassatt. It is in this environment that Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt meet.

This book brings to life this world and gives the reader a peak at the people who are now considered the masters of their field.

Many people have studied their relationship and attempted to reconstruct what it meant. People have written dissertations on it. The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC is curating a joint exhibition of their work later this year. The exhibition will focus on how each influenced the other's work.

Unfortunately, most of the correspondence between the two has been lost; some of it destroyed by Mary Cassatt before her death. Nobody knows the exact nature of their relationship. Yet, this book brings it to life in a vivid and engrossing story through description and dialogue:

"You are to me what no other creature is. We are the same mind, Mary. We are the same soul, occupying two different bodies."
"We are not," she said.
"You are the only woman I can tolerate in the world."
"That is not praise."
"Why would I flatter you? I respect you too much."
"This is how you show your respect?"

The book tells of their friendships, of their struggles, of their loves, and of the history behind the creation of some of the greatest Impressionist art pieces in the world. It speaks to the question, "Whether there was room for love in two lives already consumed by passion of another sort."

A beautifully written story of what the history of this time was and what the relationship between the two might have been.

The Bargain from the Bazaar

Title: The Bargain from the Bazaar

Author:  Haroon K. Ullah

Publication Information:  PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group. 2014. 240 pages.
ISBN:  1610391667 / 978-1610391665

Book Source:  I received this book through the GoodReads First Reads program free of cost in exchange for an honest review. The book arrived as a paperback advance reading copy.

Favorite Quote:  "It was what Pakistanis seemed to do best, coming back from the brink time and time again. Through tragedy and catastrophe, wars and floods, assassinations and police crackdowns, weak and corrupt leadership. the people of Pakistan knew only that they must keep marching on toward a better future."

The Bargain from the Bazaar is the story of a country in turmoil told through the story of one family.  Awais Reza is a shopkeeper in the thriving bazaar (market) of Anarkali in Lahore, Pakistan. Anarkali is the oldest surviving market in Lahore and one of the largest and oldest in South Asia.

Awais Reza has survived "Partition" in which Pakistan was created. He has survived being a soldier in a war, being a prisoner of war, and walking a long and treacherous journey home from war. He is now a shopkeeper looking to a brighter future with his wife and his three sons - Salman, Daniyal, and Kamran.

Then comes the Russian war in Afghanistan. Then comes American participation into that war. Then come the refugees into Pakistan. Then comes 9/11 and its worldwide repercussions. Then comes even more terrorism. This comes into an environment where economic instability, poverty, and corruption already run rampant.

Admist this chaos are people - ordinary people like the Reza family - attempting to live their lives. They face the pull of economic tough times, the lack of opportunity, the respect for traditional values, the rise of modernism, and the countering rise of extremism.

In this book, the three sons come to represent three routes the people of Pakistan are taking to move forward. Salman is the traditionalist, helping his father in the family business, upholding his values of honesty and family, and his responsibility as an older brother. Daniyal is the extremist, turning to a twisted view of religion, incorrectly convinced that the view he is being taught is the truth and that that is the only way. Kamran is the modernist, going to law school on a scholarship with the belief that education and working within the system is the way to change the future.

Daniyal's choices put the entire family at risk. One person's bad decisions call the entire family's choices into question and puts them all in jeopardy. Fortunately, the system works enough to isolate his decisions from those of his family. Most realize that the extreme choices of a few do not represent the views of the many. That represents hope for this family, this community, and this country.

This book does an excellent job of providing a story that goes behind the headlines that Pakistan seems to be in so often these days. This is the story of a family struggling in extreme circumstances. This is parents worrying for this children, especially when the children make catastrophic choices. This is young people trying to carve a life in different ways from the hand that they have been dealt.

Things are not black and white. Communities and countries are not good or evil in their entirety. They are made of individuals - who make good and bad choices. In that, this story makes it personal - behind any headlines are so many stories like this one if we but take the time to understand.

Alice in tumblr-Land

Title: Alice in tumblr-Land

Author:  Tim Manley

Publication Information:  Penguin Group. 2013. 265 pages.
ISBN:  014312479X / 978-0143124795

Book Source:  I read this book because it reminded me of the Politically Correct Bedtime Stories series of books, which were very funny to read as an adult and to read with kids.

Favorite Quote:  “When we look back, we simplify, we forget the sloughs and doubts and backward motions, and see only the shining curve of the story we told ourselves in order to keep ourselves alive and hopeful, that bright curve that led us on to the future. The radiant way.”

WARNING:  This book is most definitely not for children.

The jacket of this book describes it as "more than one hundred fairly tales, illustrated and reimagined for today." What I expected was a retelling of familiar stories using the format and language of today's media - tumblr, Facebook, tweets, Instagram, and more. Unfortunately, this book is not quite that.

Tumblr is a social network and short form blogging platform. It allows users to create text and multimedia posts on private or public blogs. That, as the title suggests, is what the book does. Each set of two pages includes one illustration and some text. The books goes back and forth between different characters - Peter Pan, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and Pinocchio to name a few.

Unfortunately, the naming of the characters is about all this book has in common with the original fairy tales. The book does not retell the stories. It merely uses the names of the characters and creates "posts" about all kinds of very adult topics. Topics like doping in athletics, sexual preferences, sexting, depression, Internet addiction, and other topics of similar seriousness. Timely topics, but definitely not the stuff of fairy tales.

The illustrations done in a sepia monochrome are interesting. Some of the posts are funny. For the most part though, it's not the book for me.

Less Doing, More Living

Title: Less Doing, More Living

Author:  Ari Meisel

Publication Information:  Tarcher/Penguin, Penguin Group LLC. 2014. 124 pages.
ISBN:  0399168524 / 978-0399168529

Book Source:  I received this book through a publisher's giveaway free of cost in exchange for an honest review. The book arrived as a paperback uncorrected proof.

Favorite Quote:  "The ides of Less Doing is to reclaim your time and - more importantly - your mind, so you can do the things you want to do. Even little bits of time are important. It all adds up."

The concept of Less Doing began as a set of productivity hacks and has led to the development of TED talks, online courses, and a coaching framework to help individuals and companies make the most of out of their time.

The author defines the keys to less doing as optimizing, automating, and outsourcing. The book goes through different tenets for each element and presents listings and descriptions of many tools that can be used in the process. The tools range from apps for your computer and electronic devices to virtual assistants to online shopping.

This is a small and a short book. The physical book itself is about a seven inch square, and it is only 124 pages. That makes it a very quick read. It has a detailed table of contents and a cumulative list of resources presented by topic at the end. This leads to the books being a usable tool.

The usefulness of the advice and the tools will vary from person to person depending on you particular situation. A reader may or may not agree with the paradigm presented. It really does not matter. This book has done the work of searching out useful tools for different productivity problems. That gives it its value regardless of whether or not you agree with the author's philosophy. So, use the book as a reference. Incorporate into your life what works for you and leave the rest.

The Pure Gold Baby

Title: The Pure Gold Baby

Author:  Margaret Drabble

Publication Information:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2013. 304 pages.
ISBN:  0544158903 / 978-0544158900

Book Source:  I read this book because of the intriguing title and description.

Favorite Quote:  “When we look back, we simplify, we forget the sloughs and doubts and backward motions, and see only the shining curve of the story we told ourselves in order to keep ourselves alive and hopeful, that bright curve that led us on to the future. The radiant way.”

Jess is a rising anthropologist in 1960s London. An affair with a married professor leaves Jess pregnant and her life forever changed. Anna is her "pure gold" baby, with "pure gold" being a euphemism for special needs. Anna has a lovely, happy, golden personality. Yet, her needs soon become the center of Jess's world.

What's really odd about this book is that the narrator is not Jess and not Anna. This book is written as a first person narrative through the eyes of one of Jess's friends - another mother she meets in a playgroup for Anna. I am still puzzled by this choice as it creates a distance from the story. It becomes more of a lecture through life.

The book also jumps over huge parts of Anna's life - from playgroup to when she is seven to when she is eleven and placed in a residential facility. The fact that the book wanders off on tangents also adds to this disjointed feel. The narrators speaks about changes over time to their neighborhood, about the definition and treatment of special needs at the time, about Jess's time in Africa, about anthropology, and about many other things. Many of these discussions are repeated several times during the book.

I wandered through the book, skimming through the tangents and the repetitive parts. I walked away confused and with a feeling that I missed the point.

Giada's Feel Good Food

Title: Giada's Feel Good Food

Author:  Giada de Laurentiis

Publication Information:  Clarkson Potter/Publishers, Crown Publishing Group, Random House Inc. 2013. 256 pages.

Book Source:  I received this book through a publisher's giveaway free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Favorite Quote:  "I have adopted a balanced way of cooking, eating, and living that works for me and my family. This didn't happen overnight, or by sitting down and scribbling a bunch of rules to follow, but rather over time, by tuning in to my body and what makes me run the smoothest and tuning out what doesn't.”

Giada's Feel Good Food is the seventh cookbook authored by Emmy Award winning Food Network star Giada de Laurentiis. This book is intended to be broader than a cookbook; it includes tips from Giada about diet, exercise, and other self-care routines. Interesting and more personal, as seems to be her brand.

The book is organized into sections around meals - breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. The only exception is that juices/smoothies and desserts have their own section.

Pros:

• The start of each section includes a list of the recipes in that section.
• The book also includes a detailed index which is helpful.
• The physical book is a good size - not so large as to be unwieldy, not so small as to crowd the recipes.
• The book lays flat when opened - important to me because I lay out the recipe on the counter and constantly refer back as I follow the recipe.
• Each recipe is concisely presented on a page.
• The setup of each page is consistent and easy to read - a sidebar has the ingredient list with nutritional  information underneath; the main text has the instruction laid out in short paragraphs
• The ingredient list for each recipe is clearly marked and easy to read.
• The ingredients for the recipes seems to be things readily available to the home cook.
• Each recipe include nutritional information.
• Each recipe includes tags to indicate if its is vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, and/or dairy free.
• The book has color illustrations.

Cons:

• Not every recipe includes a picture.
• The instructions for each recipe are preceded by an introductory personal note - interesting if I am reading the book, completely unnecessary for the recipe.
• Several pictures of Giada appear throughout the book. I understand the reason for them, but I could do without them.

Overall, a usable cookbook with practical recipes and a good addition to my cookbook collection.