Erin's Book #37: Shopgirl by Steve Martin

He's a comic legend. He plays the banjo. He writes. Is there anything Steve Martin can't do?

I'd always been curious about Shopgirl and was pleasantly surprised by it. Although it's a much sexier book than I expected, Martin can really write. With some celebrities/actors/singers/etc that try to write, it's clear that they're only published because of who they are. Not the case here.

The main character is Mirabelle, a lonely twenty-something artist who is quite content to work the glove department at Neiman's. Ray Porter is a fifty-year-old millionaire who splits his time between Seattle and LA, where Mirabelle lives. Recently divorced, Ray courts younger women while also looking for "the One." Mirabelle becomes the object of his admiration, though the two want very different things. Meanwhile, in the background is Jeremy, a young slacker Mirabelle went on a couple mediocre dates with.

Martin is delightfully clever and astute (I read aloud to my boyfriend several passages I particularly enjoyed). He writes a female perspective really well. I felt the end came rather abruptly, though the conclusion was natural. All in all, a very entertaining light read.

Erin's Book #36: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

After seeing the trailer for the film adaptation several months ago, I was intrigued by Never Let Me Go, but didn't realize it was a book until Blythe wrote about it. Her post convinced me it was worth reading, so when I found it at a sale for $1, it was a no brainer.

It's difficult to write about the story without giving anything away. The only thing that's immediately apparent is that Hailsham, the boarding school that the three main characters (Kathy, who narrates, Ruth, her best friend, and Tommy, Ruth's boyfriend) attend is somehow out of the ordinary. The specific hows are revealed slowly throughout the story. Ishiguro is a master of drawing you in and intriguing you, though his reveals are natural. He drops enough hints to let you come up with theories and never presents information like it's shocking; instead, it's almost casual, because the narrator assumes you already know. In a way, that makes the truth even more haunting.

It's also very hard to put this book down. Ishiguro has all sorts of tricks to keep you reading, like ending most chapters with things like, "That's why what happened in the Square was so surprising" and "What Ruth said that day in the cemetery changed everything." (Note: those aren't actual examples, but they give you an idea). It takes great discipline not to keep reading to find out what happens.

Engrossing, creepy, and beautifully written, I highly recommend Never Let Me Go.

Erin's Book #35: Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

I had always heard of this book, but never had any particular desire to read it until I found it in the dollar bin at a bookstore. I breezed through it in less than a day and really enjoyed it.

Tita is a young girl madly in love with Pedro, but her ridiculously, horribly mean and tyrannical mother forbids her to marry, clinging stubbornly to the family tradition of the youngest daughter caring for the mother until her death. So Pedro marries Tita's sister, Rosaura, in an attempt to be near Tita. Their love endures births, deaths, moves, and more.

It's an interesting format - broken up in monthly installations, with each chapter beginning with a recipe. Food figures heavily into the story as Tita is the primary cook for their ranch and expresses her emotions through her food. It's also her path to Pedro.

With touches of magic realism, the book explores this dysfunctional Mexican family and the boundless love of Tita and Pedro. I think I'll rent the movie next.

Erin's Book #34: Shelter Me by Juliette Fay

Much like V and Red Hook Road, Shelter Me represents a great fear: Janie, mother of 2 (4-year-old Dylan and baby Carly), loses her beloved husband Robby in a bicycle accident. Shelter Me follows her first year as a widow as she gets closer to people she barely knew and even disliked prior to the accident. She leans heavily on her crazy, overbearing aunt, her nosy neighbor, her understanding priest, and eventually the hunky contractor her husband hired to build her a porch before he died. She has no shortage of romantic interests, if she can find it in herself to move on.

It is a testament to Fay's writing that Janie, a self-proclaimed angry, bitchy, and sometimes downright mean woman, remains endearing and intensely likable. Most of the time, she is holding on only for the sake of her young children. Janie and Robby had a truly happy, wonderful marriage, which makes his absence that much more painful.

As a reader, I shared the character's sentiments - wanting her to move on, yet feeling guilty for that desire. As the shattered family moves through the year, celebrating birthdays and holidays without Robby, the hole he left gradually feels like less of a blow. Fay's writing is so vivid that I found myself responding to the book in ways I haven't in some time, feeling incredibly caught up in the story. A beautiful book I highly recommend.

Pam's Book 43: Faithful Place

I have to admit that since the beginning of the school year, this blog has been pushed to the back burner as life has been just a little busy. I haven't had a whole lot of time for reading, and when I do, I don't seem to have the time or energy to write about it. I read (and blogged about) Tana French's second book, The Likeness, a couple months ago. I loved it. Faithful Place, in typical Tana French style, stars a peripheral character from her previous book, so I already knew Frank Mackey a little and was happy to see him return.

When Frank was a young man, he and his girlfriend Rosie planned to run away together from Ireland to England, get married, and get cool jobs. Not many people escape the tenement Faithful Place, but they were going to do it. Only Rosie never showed, and Frank has been fighting pain and confusion in the 22 years since. Now, all this time later, Rosie's suitcase shows up, then a dead body that could possibly be Rosie's.

The perceptive reader can puzzle out what's happened before the end, but it's not a disappointment. This book is at least as much about familial and neighborhood relationships as it is about the mysterious disappearance of Rosie Daly. French is a genius at capturing atmosphere; in this case, working class urban Ireland. Frank got out of Faithful Place, stayed out for 22 years, but the values and morays learned as a child are buried deep, not gone. The language is spot on. (I had intended to include some quotations in this post, but I had to return the book to the library before I got a chance to write this.) I've been avoiding French's first book because I've heard the ending is less than satisfactory, but I guess I'll just have to suck it up and read it sooner rather than later...

Erin's Book #33: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

I've wanted to read this book since seeing (and being very impressed with) Michael Pollan in Food, Inc. He's written several books on nutrition and the food industry, but this one seemed like a great one to start with. I plan on reading them all eventually.

There are so many conflicting reports on healthy eating that it's very difficult to know what's right. I can't be certain that Pollan's approach is right, but it makes a lot of sense to me. His basic assumption is that we shouldn't be trusting scientists and nutritionists to create our food. They take something natural that people have been eating for hundreds or thousands of years and take stuff out of it that they think is bad and add stuff back in that they think is good. Why should we trust them over nature? Especially when one of the first processed foods of this sort, margarine, initially was loaded with trans fat. And we all know how that turned out.

In Defense of Food launches a pretty scathing attack on the food industry. It's full of terrifying and disturbing statistics, such as:

• A child born in the year 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes.
  
• Bread, which can be made using flour, yeast, water, and a pinch of salt often contains 40+ ingredients.
• There are 17,000 new food products introduced each year

Much like our healthcare system, which treats illness instead of preventing it, the food industry does the same. Diabetes is becoming such a prevalant problem that instead of trying to prevent it, which would fundamentally change the Western diet as we know it, we create ways to make patients live longer. The slew of diet-related health problems we face in this country means a heap of new products to treat them.

Yes, Pollan's a bit cynical. But it seems hard not to be. It's completely outrageous the lack of control we have over our food. The typical Midwestern farm used to grow over a dozen species of crops and animals. Now it grows two - corn and soybeans. If you hadn't heard, they are in EVERYTHING.

Where Pollan differs from other stuff I've read is on the subject of "health" foods and low-fat foods. This goes back to his basic supposition. Scientists are removing fat, and often with it nutritious benefits, and then adding in a bunch of crap to account for it. And since the study of nutrition reduces foods to the nutrients they contain rather than the foods as a whole, we really don't know much. It may seem like this vitamin or that antioxidant are the key to healthy living, but it could be the other nutrients they interact with.

And while organic food contains more nutrients than industrialized food (not to mention the obvious benefit of the lack of pesticides), much of our organic food is now coming from China, thus traveling farther than our industrialized food!

But there is hope. Pollan suggests utilizing farmer's markets and CSA (community-supported agriculture) for as much food as you can. Beyond that, he's created a set of rules:

• Eat Food. In other words, avoid the food-like products that populate the grocery shelves. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid food products that make health claims. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and avoid the middle.
  
• Eat mostly plants. Especially leaves. You are what you eat eats too (the diet of the animals we eat has a bearing on the nutritional quality of the food itself, from meat to milk to eggs. Most animals now live on grain, instead of the grass they're born to eat. Buy pastured eggs and grass fed beef). Eat well-grown food from healthy soils (this means organic but don't overlook the small farms that are organic but not certified so). Eat wild foods when you can. Be the kind of person who takes supplements (There's a lot of research that suggests supplements don't do much unless you're old, but people that take them tend to be healthier). Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet (We don't know what specific ingredient or combination of nutrients make traditional, non-Western diets work. They just do). Have a glass of wine with dinner (Hooray!).
  
• Pay more, eat less (We spend less money on food than most cultures and eat more of it). Eat meals (Don't snack all day. Eat real meals. With your family). Do all your eating at a table. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does. Try not to eat alone. Consult your gut (Americans rely on external cues to stop eating - e.g. the plate is empty. The French stop eating when they're full. How novel! Use smaller plates). Eat slowly. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden (Change your relationship to food. Understand it better).

This may be a massive post, but I've only skimmed the surface. This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend you read it.

Erin's Book #32: Ape House by Sara Gruen

Ape House is by Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen. Since Elephants was one of my favorite books this year, I was excited when Ape House was released.

Though it doesn't quite compare to Elephants, I really enjoyed this book. Isabel Duncan is a researcher at a language lab for great apes, working closely with a group of bonobos who have learned to communicate with humans. They can understand spoken English and talk back in ASL. John Thigpen is a struggling reporter whose story on the bonobos is hijacked by a competing reporter. After a terrible event ends the lab's work, the bonobos are sold. Isabel, who considers the apes her closest family, sets off to uncover the truth and find the bonobos, while John reclaims the story to prove himself as a writer.

Much like Elephants, Ape House is meticulously researched. Though I probably wouldn't have picked this book up based only on the subject matter, that ended up being what I most liked. I appreciated the characters and the curious (though sometimes a little too serendipitous) turn of events, but the apes were the real draw. I had no idea that this kind of work was being done and how smart and human-like bonobos are. Their relationship with Isabel, and with each other, was truly touching. I'm currently reading In Defense of Food as well, and though that one's due back to the library this week, I found myself gravitating toward Ape House more and more.