Just Another Statistic

You think that the day will never come--the day when an iconic New England retailer files for bankruptcy and the going out of business sale begins. And that day comes. Then you think, well, they will need me around a little longer as things wind down. Then you find out you should have just stopped thinking as you have the inevitable meeting with your boss where he "with regret" tells you that your services are no longer needed.

After brushing off the damage to your ego and psyche and making those first necessary steps to become another statistic in the unemployment numbers, you're back to thinking. You've been working since 1960 when you made $.10 an hour at the local public library, and now you have a chance to do whatever you want to do all day--and that isn't so bad.

Another chapter begins....

The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal

The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal

Life, love, and history in a small New Mexico town. There were tiny glimmers of the author as Samuels/Ruth Wind, but not enough to push this one to the top of the list. I keep reading this author because when she hits it, you can't ask for more.

Rating: 3.5/5 (Fiction Scale)

The Untamed Bride by Stephanie Laurens

The Untamed Bride by Stephanie Laurens

The Untamed Bride was the January selection for our B&N Romance Readers group and got a thumbs up from all members. Both hero and heroine were believable characters, and the plot could easily have been an NCIS episode 1820's style. Book 2 of the Black Cobra Quartet has been selected as the March read for the group when we will find out if the series holds up or falls into the different characters/same story category.

Rating: 3.5/5 (Romance Scale)

Better Late Than Never...

The whole camera to computer thing boggles my mind...in all honesty, the camera boggles my mind. I never have it when I need it; when I do have it, I can't push the various buttons fast enough to get the picture I want. Point and shoot? I don't think so. Anyway, here are the boys wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Prime Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Prime Time is the first in the Charlotte McNally series by Hank Phillippi Ryan, a Boston investigative television reporter. Coincidentally, Charlotte is a 40-something investigative TV reporter for "Channel 3" in Boston; and in Charlotte’s character, Ryan has struck a perfect balance between a too-smart-for-her-own-good and too-ditsy-to-be-believable crime solving protagonist.

Product Description from Amazon
In the cutthroat world of television journalism, seasoned reporter Charlotte McNally knows that she'd better pull out all the stops or kiss her job goodbye. But it's her life that might be on the line when she learns that an innocent-looking e-mail offer resulted in murder, mayhem and a multimillion-dollar fraud ring. All too soon her investigation leads her straight to Josh Gelston, who is a little too helpful and a lot too handsome. Charlie might have a nose for news, but men are a whole other matter. Now she has to decide whether she can trust Josh…before she ends up as the next lead story.

An opening that pulls you right nto Charlotte’s story:
Between the hot flashes, the hangover and all the spam on my computer, there’s no way I’ll get anything done before eight o’clock this morning. I came in early to get ahead, and already I’m behind.

Describing a co-worker:
Her real name is Margaret Isobel DeRosiers Green, but on the radio she’s Maysie Green, sports reporter extraordinaire. She can hold her own in any locker room, and amazingly for the news biz, doesn’t possess a backstabbing bone in her body. She doesn’t care if the glass is half-full or half-empty—she looks forward to the fun of drinking the rest of it, and then the fun of filling it up again.

The Universe IMs:
I put the mirror back on its pushpin holder, and give it a conspiratorial wink. “Wish me luck, magic mirror on the wall,” I implore. It falls and crashes to the floor, scattering jagged shards of glass all over the rug. Ha-ha. Breaking news. The universe now has instant messaging.

Prime Time was a great first in the series, and I’m looking forward to the next two installments: Face Time and Air Time.

Finished: September 6, 2009
Rating: 4 (Mystery Scale)
Pages: 288
Publisher: Mira
Copyright: 2009
Format: Kindle

Dune Road by Jane Green

Having read The Beach House by Jane Green last summer, I was eagerly looking forward to Dune Road. While it did have some interesting characters and plot lines (one of which could have been fleshed out a little more successfully), Dune Road didn’t live up to my expectations.

Publishers Weekly
In the latest inviting summer read from bestseller Green (The Beach House), divorced mom Kit Hargrove learns about family, love, and the price of secrets while rediscovering passion for life and her small Connecticut beach town. As the off-season begins, Kit is still recovering from the breakup of her marriage (to solicitous but work-obsessed Adam), working for famously reclusive author Robert McClore, and practicing yoga with her new friend Tracy. Upheaval soon arrives in the form of a mysterious new boyfriend and a long-lost sister, as well as a scandalous secret regarding Kit's much-desired employer. Green's newest has all the right elements for a sun-baked afternoon of reading: sandy locales, hints of sex and scandal, and lots of strong female characters. With three main plots, however, Green tries to pack in too much story, ultimately shortchanging her characters and her readers.

Edie on her colorful house (haven’t we all passed by one of these and wondered???):
“I’m Edie,” she said. “I live next door in the purple house.” Tory caught Buckley’s eye and suppressed a grin—they had been wondering who lived in the bright purple eyesore next door. “And before you ask, no, I won’t paint it. I love the color purple and you’ll get used to it.”

I agree with Publishers Weekly. Kit’s story was strong enough to stand on its own without distracting me by giving equal plot weight to what should have been background stories. But then, perhaps I’m just miffed that I totally missed an obvious twist which, when revealed, made me wonder, “Why?”

Finished on September 5, 2009
Rating: 3.5 (Fiction Scale)
Pages: 341
Publisher: Viking
Copyright: 2009
Format: Hardcover
Dedication: For Heidi With blessings and love

Filling in the Gap

About a year ago, the company I work for closed its brick and mortar home office. Many of my co-workers were dispersed into little used corners of store locations. Because of the nature of the work I do, I ended up in a little used room in my home where I happily set up my office. The plus is the commute is easy--the only traffic back-up is the cat stretched out in her morning sunny spot which just happens to be between my "office" and the coffee pot in the kitchen. The downside is that there is no commute--no official separation between the work day computer time and personal computer time. Thus, the huge gaps in posting on Owl's Feathers and lack of consistency in posting about what I have read. So, in summary...

Over the past few months, I've read several good stories--Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani; The Diary by Eileen Goudge; The Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook; Water, Stone Heart by Will North; Summer House by Nancy Thayer; Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry. Several mysteries caught my reading attention: Bleeding Hearts by Susan Witting Albert; Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon by Nancy Atherton; A Spoonful of Poison by M. C. Beaton. There was even a Danielle Steele (One Day at a Time) thrown in for good measure. All of these were good and rated 3.5's or 4's on my subjective reading scales.

I also went on a Robyn Carr binge and read the last four of her Virgin River books: Whispering Rock, Second Chance Pass, Temptation Ridge, and Paradise Valley. All good romances with the requisite too-good-t0-be-true men, predictable predicaments, and the guaranteed from page one Happily Ever After endings.

There were a few standouts on which I hope to write individual posts in due time: The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister; Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton; The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand; Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg.

So while I haven't been posting, I have been reading...and working. Now I'm thinking that a late afternoon walk around the block might just be the perfect commute substitute!

That Old Cape Magic

Much like memories of Cape Cod, Richard Russo’s That Old Cape Magic played with my mind as I travelled up and down Routes 6/6A and 28 with Jack Griffin. There’s something about the Cape that can do that. Are these the bright, cloudless days with hydrangeas a color of blue that can’t be described or the gray, misty days with everything hidden in rolling fog banks? Were the vacations there as happy and carefree as I remember them?

Book Description from Amazon
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that’s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He’d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they’d moved into an old house full of character; and they’d started a family. Check, check and check.

But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura’s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin’s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?

That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.

Passages
On happiness (real or perceived): …he’d tried but failed to keep his parents out. Right from the start (of the story, of his marriage), despite his best efforts, they’d managed to insinuate themselves. When Joy suggested they honeymoon on the Maine coast, Griffin convinced her that what they needed was a dose of the old Cape magic, that weakest of marital spells. In Truro they’d made plans for a life based on what they foolishly thought were their own terms, Joy articulating what she wanted, Griffin, tellingly, what he didn’t want (a marriage that even remotely resembled his partnes’, as if this negative were a nifty substitute for an unimagined positive). Even as he rejected their values, he’d allowed many of their bedrock assumptions—that happiness was a place you could visit but never own, for instance—to burrow deep.

Cape Cod vs. Coastal Maine: The rugged maine coastline was stunning, Griffin had to admit, the light so pure it almost hurt. He couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if his parents had fallen in love with this part of the world instead of the Cape. Certainly it would have been more affordable, but that begged an obvious question: would they really have wanted something they could afford? After all, much of the Cape’s allure was its shimmering elusiveness, the magical way it receded before them year after year, the stuff of dreams. Coastal Maine, by contrast, seemed not just real but battered by reality. Where Cape Cod somehow managed to vie the impression that July lasted all year, Maine reminded you, even in lush late spring, of its long, harsh winters, of snowdrifts that rotted baseboards and splintered latticework, of relentless winds that howled in the eaves and scoured the paint, leaving gutters rusted white with salt.

The perfect Christmas tree: Griffin came to understand that the perfect Christmas tree was a lot like the perfect house on the Cape, first because it didn’t exist in the real world, and second because all the imperfect trees fell into two categories. The first was the all-too-familiar Wouldn’t have It As a Gift, and the second applied to just one tree: Well, I Guess It’ll Have to Do.

Predictability: Late middle age, he [Griffin] was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming.

Being Plumb: …he became aware of an unfamiliar but extremely pleasurable feeling. How to describe it? Plumb. He was feeling plumb. Okay, may not completely, but no more than half bubble off. Plum some. As good as could be expected. He wondered if plumb might be another word for happy.

I struggled through parts of That Old Cape Magic I thought tedious. In retrospect, I realized that my reading of Griffin’s travels needed to be tedious while waiting patiently for him to sort everything out—the ties of parents, in-laws, friends, and career. In the end, it’s not the perfect Christmas tree, the perfect vacation destination, or perfection itself. It’s a "moment of grace" that comes unexpectly and demands that you sieze it.

Finished on August 14, 2009

Rating: 4/5 (Fiction Scale)

Pages: 261

Publisher: Knopf

Copyright: 2009

Format: Hardcover

Dedication: For Barbara, always

*****

While reading That Old Cape Magic, I spent a day with the GrandDogs. Louie (while he has learned to be very quiet) does not yet differentiate between good things to chew on vs. bad things to chew on. As Groucho Marx said, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

No, Really, Where Are We?

Local Knowledge by Liza Gyllenhaal had it all. A cover that sang out to me with its inviting blue bench on a weathered shingled porch; a back cover blurb offering up a novel about “three friends who are haunted by the tragic mistakes of their past—and who are heading into a future that may have no place for them;” and an opening paragraph that invited you into the story. By page 67, I had met the three friends, each character flatter than the other, and tried to place in my mind a setting that belied its opening description as a “beautiful part of the world.”

Knowing that I shouldn’t judge the characters on first impressions, I might have stuck with Local Knowledge; however, it was the setting that was upsetting. Many of us are tracking where our reading travels take us this year, and I never have been a reader who quibbles with every deviation from the geography of a place in a book. If I’m enjoying the journey, the liberties an author might take with what streets intersect or where a particular restaurant is never bother me. With Local Knowledge, however, I just couldn’t get my bearings. Local Knowledge emphasizes, well, local knowledge (a Paxton Mountain Road versus a Paxton Hill Road) but left me as a reader with no grounding in setting. Characters hail from Manhattan and are looking for a weekend house in the country. Western Connecticut? Western Massachusetts? North and east of New York City? I had finally decided on the last given the many references to “upstate” and the reference to the movie theater in Albany. Then I was knocked off these bearings with reference to one of the main characters (in his teenage years in the middle 80s) eschewing the obligatory “backward-facing Red Sox cap.” Well, there went CT and NY and there I was—reader in search of a setting.

I left my bookmark at page 67. Maybe when I’ve whittled down the TBR hills a bit I’ll grab a compass and revisit Maddie Alden and friends to see if I can regain my bearings and agree with all of the five-star ratings this book has received.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

The cover flap of Little Bee by Chris Cleave reads
We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this: This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again—the story starts there…

Indeed.
My husband does not drive; therefore, I am always happy when I have to drop him off where there’s bookstore and cup of coffee nearby. Such was my happiness on Saturday, February 21, and I had almost an hour to spend in Barnes & Noble. On my way in, a cover caught my eye: Bright, almost neon organge with two heads in silhouette, and the title in an old script type style. I picked it up, ordered my coffee, and started reading…and stopped just long enough to pay for the book, pick up my husband, and head home to finish the book that same day.

Page 1; we hear Little BeeMost days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming. Maybe I would visit with you for the weekend and then suddenly, because I am fickle like that, I would visit with the man from the corner shop instead—but you would not be sad because you would be eating a cinnamon bun, or drinking a cold Coca-Cola from the can, and you would never think of me again. We would be happy like lovers who met on holiday and forgot each other’s names.

A pound coin can go wherever it thinks it will be safest. It can cross deserts and oceans and leave the sound of gunfire and the bitter smell of burning thatch behind. When it feels warm and secure, it will turn around and smile at you, the way my big sister Nkiruka used to smile at the men in our village in the short summer after she was a girl but before she was really a woman, and certainly before the evening my mother took her to a quiet place for a serious talk.

Of course a pound coin can be serious too. It can disguise itself as power, or property, and there is nothing more serious when you are a girl who has neither. You must try to catch the pound, and trap it in your pocket, so that it cannot reach a safe country unless it takes you with it. But a pound has all the tricks of a sorcerer. When persued I have seen it shed its tail like a lizard so that you are left holding only pence. And when you finally go to seize it, the British pound can perform the greatest magic of all, and this is to transform itself into not one, but two, identical green American dollar bills. Your fingers will close on empty air, I am telling you.

How I would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is call, globalization. A girl like me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can lep the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western Civilization, my good man, and make it snappy.

Globalization, immigration detention centers, Nigerian oil deposits—political realities in the abstract made real in the story that unfolds with dignity through the voices of Little Bee, a teenager from a small Nigerian village, and Sarah O’Rourke, editor of a high style British women’s magazine.

Little Bee“Take it from me,” she says at the outset, “a scar does not form from dying. A scar means, I survived.”

Started & Finished on February 21, 2009
Rating: 5/5 (Fiction Scale)
Pages: 266
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2008
Format: Hardcover

Dedication: For Joseph

Epigraph: Britain is proud of its tradition of providing a safe haven for people fleeting [sic] persecution and conflict. –from Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship (UK Home Office, 2005)

April 20, 2009: Les has just posted a wonderful review of Little Bee!

June 20, 2010:  Kristen at BookNAround posted a less enthusiastic review here!