Tiger's Wife; Tea Obreht - Winner!

Sweet Virginia Breeze

Congratulations!

 (please email me shipping info)

A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True; Brigid Pasulka

Title: A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True
Author: Brigid Pasulka
Publication Year: 2010
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Edition: eBook

Source: purchase

Date Completed: 3/16/2011
Setting: Poland
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Recommend: Yes

World War II is looming, and a young man nicknamed Pigeon, from a place called Half-Village, falls in love with the most beautiful girl of the mountain village. Pigeon knows a bit about women, growing up with eight sisters of his own. To prove his sincere intentions about the beautiful, Anielica Hetmanski, he offers to transform her family's hut-like home into something beautiful. Pigeon is said to have  “golden hands” and is an extremely talented craftsman. As a result, his accomplishments and sincerity win his way into Anielica's heart, and the couple falls in love. When war arrives, their marriage plans are delayed, and they eventually leave their life in Half-Village for the promise of a new and better life in Kraków.

Nearly fifty years later, their granddaughter, Beata, (Baba Yaga) follows in the footsteps of her grandparents, leaving the Village for a better life in Krakow.  There, in the new Poland, she lives with acidic, yet funny aunt Irena and her flashy cousin Magda. She discovers that Kraków is caught somewhere in between its future and its past.

A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True, spans three generations, and gives the reader a good sense of the German and Soviet oppression.  From the beginning, the story alternates between the grandparents life in old Poland during WWII and the years that followed, and their grandaughter, Beata's life in new Poland - Krakow in the mid 1990s.  Both stories are good in their own way, but I was more drawn to the almost fairy tale like feel of the Anielica and Pigeon story, and life in old Poland.

The story was sad and even tragic at times, but I was amazed at the many times the author was able to make me laugh or at least smile throughout this novel. The characters were genuine and their struggles were realistic. I connected with the characters early on, and felt like they could have been family members from generations, now long gone. Ms Pasulka, a debut author has real talent. The way the two stories were woven together, was seamless and the love story aspect of this novel was quite touching as well.  This is a novel that should appeal to many readers.

Pinkalicious; Victoria Kann and Elizabeth Kann

Title: Pinkalicious
Author: Victoria Kann and Elizabeth Kann
Publication Year: 2006 (English) 2011 (Spanish Ed)
Publisher: Harper Collins
Edition: Hardcover
Source: sent by Publisher
Date Completed: 3/14/2011
Setting: n/a
Rating: 5/5 stars
Recommend: Yes

I was first introduced to the delightful Pinkalious earlier this year when I read and reviewed Silverlicious.  On March 1, 2011, Pinkalicious which debuted in English in 2006, was released in Spanish.  I was lucky enough to get a copy from the publisher.

If you are not familiar with Pinkalicious, she is a sweet little girl who adores the color pink; it's simply her favorite color. She and he mom make pink cupcakes one rainy day, and Pinkalicious ate pink cupcakes all day long! When she woke up the next morning, her face and hands were all pink, and her belly the color of a sunset. Even a bath would not wash away all the pink.

Her mother takes her to the doctor who says that she has an acute case of "pinkititis". He tells her to avoid pink food, and to eat just green "yuck" food for a while.  The birds and bees chased her thinking she was a flower, and her brother Peter was "green with envy over her pinkness".  She pretends to eat all pf her green foods but sneaks a pink cupcake instead, and her skin began to change to a dreadful color "red".  So finally she listens to the doctor and eats and drinks only "green": peas, cucumbers, relish, tea, and before long she was no longer red or pink.

What a terrific book to kick off a sweet series. A darling book with great illustrations, that will make you and your little one giggle with delight.  This book and series should appeal to little girls, and fans of the color pink everywhere.  How great to have it now available in Spanish. Purplicious, and Goldilicious are also books in this series. Give them a try!

Wordless Wednesday - Spring is almost Here

(5 days to Spring and finally some patches of grass, albeit brown grass)

Waiting on Wednesday ~ The First Day of the Rest of My Life; Cathy Lamb

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating! Want to participate? Post your own WOW entry on your blog, and leave your link at Breaking the Spine. This week's pick is an author I've enjoyed in the past. Her 2010 novel Such a Pretty Face, was one I liked a lot. Here is some info about her summer of 2011 book: 

The First Day of the Rest of Her Life; Cathy Lamb

(Summer - 2011)

The Gunshot Anniversary is coming up. Those six gunshots have echoed throughout my entire life. They grabbed everyone’s attention in the courthouse pretty darn quick, too. Bang, bang, bang! There was the expected cacophony of panic with people screaming and diving to the floor, attorneys scattering, the jury ducking, reporters squawking, photographers scrambling for a photo, and the Sheriff barreling towards the gunman. Or, more properly should I say, the gunwoman. The gunwoman was my momma. Marie Elise O’Shea was a well dressed shooter. She wore her light pink dress with embroidered white daisies circling the trim, matching cotton candy pink heels, red lipstick, liquid black liner that tilted up at the corners, and a yellow ribbon holding back her thick black hair. “Yellow means there’s still hope in this pickled, wrinkled, warped world, sugar,” she’d told me. “Yellow means there’s a new tomorrow scootin’ around the corner, you just wait.”

Mailbox Monday ~ March 14th

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that that arrived during the previous week.  Created by Marcia @ The Printed Page, for the month of March, the host is: Laura of I'm Booking It.

My mailbox was embarrassingly stuffed this week. I hope you had a fun week too!

Here's what arrived:

• When Tito Loved Clara; Jon Michaud (Algonquin) - Michaud, the head librarian at the New Yorker, writes well at the sentence level, but unconvincing characters and soap-operatic plot twists mar his debut about a resilient Dominican-American woman. Clara Lugo lives with her husband, Thomas, and their son, Guillermo, in the New Jersey suburbs and desperately wants another child, but can't conceive. Thomas, meanwhile, laid off from his job six months earlier, has lost his confidence. Clara's 16-year-old niece, Deysie, who has recently moved in with the Lugos, turns out to be pregnant by Clara's sister's ex-con boyfriend. Then Clara's old high school boyfriend, Tito Moreno, reappears. When Clara and Tito, who has failed to move on after their brief tryst 15 years earlier, try to resolve some unfinished personal business, hurtful revelations promise to change the course of both their lives. Despite Clara's complicated family drama, Tito's unhealthy obsession with Clara, and a subplot with the seedy ex-con, the story fails to garner any emotional weight. 
• What You See in the Dark; Manuel Munoz (Algonquin) - In 1959, the Director (i.e., Alfred Hitchcock) arrives in Bakersfield, Calif., to film Psycho, along with the Actress (i.e., Janet Leigh), who's struggling to get a handle on the character she will portray. Providing counterpoint to the events surrounding the making of the iconic Hollywood film, including the search for a motel to serve as the exterior of the Bates Motel, is the story of locals Dan Watson and Teresa Garza, whose doomed love affair ends in murder. The author brilliantly presents the Actress's inner thoughts, while he handles the violence with a subtlety worthy of Hitchcock himself. The lyrical prose and sensitive portrayal of the crime's ripple effect in the small community elevate this far beyond the typical noir. 10-city author tour.
• Attachments; Rainbow Rowell - (Dutton) - In sweet, silly, and incredibly long digital missives, best newsroom pals Beth and Jennifer trade gossip over their romances—Beth with her marriage-phobic boyfriend, Chris, and Jennifer with her baby-mania-stricken husband, Mitch. What they don't know is that the newly hired computer guy, Lincoln, an Internet security officer charged with weeding out all things unnecessary or pornographic, is reading their messages. But lonely Lincoln lets the gals slide on their inappropriate office mail and gets hooked on their soapy dalliances, falling head over heels for the unlucky-in-love Beth. Debut novelist and real-life newspaper columnist Rowell has the smarts for this You've Got Mail–like tale of missed connections, but what doesn't work so well is the firewall between the traditional narrative reserved for Lincoln's emergence from shy guy to Beth's guy, and heroines who are confined to the e-epistolary format. Despite the structural problems, there's enough heart and humor to save these likable characters from the recycle bin.
• The Source of All Things; Tracy Ross (Free Press) -
  
  Journalist and contributing Backpacker magazine editor Ross uses the outdoors to guide her powerful memoir detailing the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather. The germ of her story—which Ross first published in her magazine in 2009—recounts not only the abuse itself but also Ross's unusual resolution to forgive her stepfather, after confronting him (on tape) about the details of the molestation. It began during a family camping trip when Ross's stepfather, Donnie Lee, tucked her in and touched her for the first time when she was eight. Until she was 14 and reported the abuse to a friend who called the police, Lee would often come into Ross's room at night in their Twin Falls, Idaho, house, even though her mother was right down the hall. Though the abuse is a defining moment in her life, it is not the sole focus of her book. She details her love for the natural world—a passion first cultivated by Lee—with stints in New Mexico, Alaska, and Colorado. But it's the return to Redfish Lake with Lee, 30 years after the abuse began there, that is the soul of this compelling story.
• A Hard Death; Jonathan Hayes - (Harper Collins) - Disgraced forensic pathologist Dr. Edward Jenner hoped that a move to Florida would be a distraction from the serial killer horrors in Precious Blood, but in Hayes's solid sequel, the medical examiner finds himself embroiled in another life and death investigation. Barely eking out a living as Port Fontaine's temporary pathologist, Jenner is shocked when one of his first cases in the sleepy coastal town is the murder of his former mentor and Port Fontaine's regular medical examiner, Dr. Martin Roburn, whose body shows signs of torture. When Jenner is alerted to the decomposing bodies of four migrant workers deep in a swamp, he suspects their deaths are tied to Roburn. Jenner, along with a local detective, starts putting the pieces together to connect Port Fontaine's richest men, the booming migrant population, and the lucrative drug trade. Though Hayes flirts with a few genre clichés, Jenner emerges as a sufficiently flawed yet empathetic hero.
• My New American Life; Francine Prose - (Harper Collins) - The story of a good-hearted immigrant doubles as a snapshot of America during Bush II's second term in Prose's uneven latest. Lula is a 26-year-old Albanian working an undemanding au pair gig in New Jersey. Her employer, Stanley, is a forlorn Wall Street exec recently abandoned by his mentally disturbed wife. He asks only that Lula see to the simple needs of his son, Zeke, a disaffected high school senior. Soon, Stanley and one of his friends, a high-profile immigration lawyer, are taken with the tale-telling, mildly exotic Lula (who speaks English flawlessly) and get to work on securing her citizenship. Lula's gig is cushy if dull, a condition relieved when three Albanian criminals, led by the charming Alvo, arrive at Stanley's house with a quiet demand that Lula harbor a (Chekhovian) gun for them. Prose seeks to show America through the fresh eyes of an outsider with a deeply ingrained, comic pessimism born of life under dictatorship, yet also capable of exuberant optimism, and the results, like Lula, are agreeable enough but not terribly profound.

• The King's Grace; Anne Easter Smith (Simon and Schuster) - a complex exploration of a turbulent period of English history, taking on one of its biggest mysteries: the fate of princes Edward and Richard, locked up in the Tower by Richard III. Protagonist Grace Plantagenet is the illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and had been confidant to his family—including her imprisoned half-brothers Edward and Richard. After Richard III is killed and the princes disappear, a man named Perkin Warbeck appears to challenge Henry VII, claiming to be the presumed dead Prince Richard. Determined to discover the truth of Warbeck's claim, Grace throws herself into the politics of the court, knowing that if Warbeck is Prince Richard, it could be drastic for Grace's family—especially for her half-sister Elizabeth of York, now Henry's queen. Examined through the eyes of a minor historical figure, Smith introduces readers to 15th-century political intrigue with thought, courage and honesty. Though her major historical figures (especially Henry VII) get the broad-brush treatment, Smith is careful to make Grace and her world detailed and engaging.
• Mothers and Daughters; Rae Meadows (Henry Holt) - Meadows (Calling Out) lightly explores the interplay between mothers and daughters in this thin intergenerational drama. Sam, a 30-something new mom, tries to meet the needs of her daughter and maintain her own identity while dealing with the recent death of her mother, Iris. We meet Iris just before her death as she invites Sam home to help her prepare for her demise. Then there's Violet, Iris's mother, who at the age of 11 roamed the streets of New York, until her poverty-stricken mother put her on an orphan train to the Midwest. Violet's story is the best told, with details of her New York life and her experiences on the orphan train easily stealing the show from the more staid and familiar contemporary plot. Generational differences in opportunities, attitudes, and expectations are patly played out, but there's little attention paid to anything deeper than the surface ways the women affect each others' lives. Meadows writes decent prose, but the story doesn't dig deep enough.
• Iron House; John Hart (Shelf Awareness/Thomas Dunne Books)
• Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle; Ann Ross (Viking) - At the start of Ross's slow-moving 12th Miss Julia mystery set in Abbotsville, N.C. (after 2010's Miss Julia Renews Her Vows), Miss Julia's stepson, Lloyd, a student in Miss Petty's social studies class, breathlessly tells Julia, "They found a body in Miss Petty's outhouse" (actually, the teacher's toolshed). Embezzler and ex-con Richard Stroud appears to have died of natural causes while spying on his former business partner, Thurlow Jones. Miss Julia never recovered the money Richard once stole from her, and Richard had again been forging checks on her account. In one exciting development in an otherwise placid plot, Hazel Marie Pickens gives birth to twins during a blizzard attended by, among others, Miss Julia, home health care professional Etta Mae Wiggins, and Lloyd, whose dad was Miss Julia's late two-timing husband, Wesley Lloyd Springer. The sweet down-home humor only partly redeems a thin and far-fetched mystery. 5-city author tour.
• The Anti-Romantic Child; Priscilla Gilman - (Harper Collins) - The daughter of literary agent Lynn Nesbit and the late theater drama critic Richard Gilman crafts a beautifully sinuous and intensely literary celebration of the exceptional, unconventional child. Her son, Benjamin, was born when she and her academic husband, Richard, were in graduate school at Yale, where she was still working on her dissertation on the Romantic English poet William Wordsworth. As "Benj" grew older and failed to hit the usual milestones of children his age, exhibiting brilliant but "odd" behavior such as an obsession with numbers, aversion to physical affection, fastidiousness, inability to feed himself, and echolalia, Gilman realized these were "uncontrollable manifestations of a disorder," namely hyperlexia. Falsely reassured by their well-intentioned pediatrician, the couple finally sought professional therapists, and after they relocated to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where both got teaching jobs at Vassar, Benj made marvelous progress in school. Throughout her narrative, Gilman extracts from many of Wordsworth's poems, which comment on innocence and loss and gave Gilman tremendous succor during Benjamin's early development, making for both charming and studious reading. Her thoughtful memoir involves the breakup of her marriage, rejection of an academic career, and move to New York City to work in her mother's literary agency as much as it delves lyrically into the rare, complex mind of the unusual child.
• Touchstone Summer 2011 Reading Group Sourcebook

I also purchased a book for my Kindle: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore;  Benjamin Hale - Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: From the first page of Benjamin Hale's exquisite novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, Hale’s linguistic talent locks the reader into their seat and sends them ticking up the roller coaster ride of Bruno Littlemore’s life. An unlikely narrator, Bruno is a chimpanzee trying to become a man--a process he sees as “equal parts enlightenment and imprinting your brain with taboos.” Bruno acquires a fervent love of language--and of primatologist Lydia Littlemore, with whom he develops a deep (and, yes, sexual) relationship until she falls ill. Comic relief comes in the form of Leon, a boisterous subway thespian, who introduces Bruno to the stage shortly before a murderous transgression results in Bruno’s return to captivity. With Bruno Littlemore, Hale has crafted a truly original narrator, holding a mirror on humanity with a razor-like precision that makes this stunning novel one readers will want to discuss the minute they turn the last page.

The Weird Sisters; Eleanor Brown

 

Title: The Weird Sisters

Author: Eleanor Brown
Publication Year: 2011
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Edition: audio book
Reader: Kirsten Potter (very good)

Source: Library 

Date Completed: 3/11/2011
Setting: Ohio
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Recommend: no

After reading many rave reviews of this book, I decided to try it for myself; unfortunately, I was not as impressed.

The Weird Sisters are Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean), and Cordelia (Cordy) Andreas. Their father is emotionally distant and obsessed with Shakespeare, even insuring his daughters were named after women from Shakespeare's plays. When the going gets tough, Shakespeare becomes even more important to him.  He teaches at the university in Ohio. The family still lives in the home where the sisters were raised.  When the mother finds out she has breast cancer, the sisters return home, supposedly to support and care for her through her surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. However, the women also have their own issues, and reasons for returning to their small hometown.

Each of the sisters bugged me in some way. Bianca was so self-involved, manipulative and annoying throughout most of the story; a constant complainer. Her need to project some sort of an image even caused her to embezzle from her employer.  Cordelia was a free spirit who dropped out of college and traveled from place to place, and had a number of men in her life.  Rose, is controlling. She was the responsible one who took it upon herself to be the caregiver, and even as a child seemed to take on more of a mother-role to the family. She sacrifices her own dreams as a result. Without going into details, throughout the novel things happen, and through a process of self discovery the sisters change, and the support of family is what helps them through all their life struggles.

There is a lot going on in the story: cancer, pregnancy, embezzlement, love and much dysfunction. What I did not like about this story was constant quotes from Shakespeare; it really got on my nerves after a while.  I also thought the writing fell flat at times, parts of the story were conveniently contrived, and the ending seemed too rushed (although I was anxious for the book to end). I found the writing style, first person plural, a style rarely used, was tough to get use to but it was clever and effective conveying the viewpoint of all of the sisters. I truly understand I am in the minority here, but this is one book that I will not be encouraging others to read.