5 comments about It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive.

1. My daughter sent me Evan's book and it opened my eyes. Everyone can relate to his anger, joy and depression as he fights for life, success and happiness. There were times during the read that I wanted to shake him but in the end, I rejoiced for him.



2. Evan's brutal honesty helped me understand other survivors that I know including my daughter. I cried and laughed and was angry and even talked back to him as I read his story. Evan's story is a must read.



3. After reading Time On Fire - one of the most compelling books I've ever read - simply couldn't wait for a sequel. Evan's accounts of his life are so openly honest & human, without succumbing to piousness.
   It's Only Temporary follows along in the same vein, updating Evan's incredible journey to present day. He's glimpsed the fires of hell & come back to the "everyday" - neither simple or easy.
   Can't wait for next book.
   Read Time On Fire first.



4. I almost never write book reviews, but this book was so bad I felt the need to tell everyone not to waste their time reading it. The only thing I got out of this is that Evan Handler is an arrogant, self-centered person, who seems to want to share details of his boring sex life. Worse yet, he can't write.



5. I only knew Evan Handler from Sex and the City. I heard him interviewed and he was talking about his book, he was so funny and entertaining that I ordered his book. Loved it and know my Sister-in-law is loving it too! I would read any of his books!

5 comments about Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS.

1. Most of us of a "certain age" have read at least a few major histories of World War II or about the Third Reich that would more properly be considered overviews. I have certainly read my share and more. Black Edelweiss is a more personal tale which takes the reader into the author's Waffen-SS unit and is written in such a way that one can imagine himself part of the scene.
   Black Edelweiss is a gripping tale of obscure battles fought both in the remote backwaters of Finland and Karelia but also on the Western Front as Allied forces overwhelmed Germany. It is a tale of courage, idealism, loyalty, betrayal, and often super-human endurance. It is also the tale of one man's journey from being an idealistic recruit in the elite forces of his homeland to POW status where he is confronted with the reality of the enormity of his country's crimes.
   Author Johann Voss intersperses stories of his service and his subsequent captivity with more personal stories of his family and his social milieu in such a way so that anyone who has ever served his country can identify with him on a basic human level. As for his membership in the SS, most fair-minded people understand that most members of that organization joined for the prestige of serving their country in an elite unit, not to commit war crimes.
   Those hungry for the gritty details of history will be most satisfied after reading Black Edelweiss. It is an important addition to the edifice of our knowledge about World War II.



2. The withdrawal of German SS troops from Finland to Denmark, when the Finns ended their resistance to Soviet pressure, is fairly well known. The impossibly short timetable the Germans were given to withdraw, Finnish attacks on withdrawing German forces, and the long retreat to northern Norway are not so well known. The author describes "his" campaign from the viewpoint of a well-trained, highly-motivated, teenage soldier who walked and fought all the way as a member of an SS mountain division. Later, as a prisoner of war, he was never identified as a member of, and so escaped the harsh treatment reserved for, the Waffen SS. Surprisingly, he became a clerk for an American war crimes tribunal member at Nuremberg. The author examines in this book the question of Waffen-SS war-crimes guilt, and so, justifiably from his position of relative innocence, joins an emerging genre that seems to attempt to rehabilitate the Waffen SS. Interestingly, he pursued a career at law, post war. This book suggests a separate legal and moral niche for the Waffen SS who were indeed "just soldiers, too", which, at Nuremberg, was judged not to be the case.



3. The author tells a rather disappointing story abouth when he was a humble and simplistic soldier, proud of the "good branch of SS", despite hiding it during captivity for obvious reasons and ignoring his father's advice not to join the SS for the "things they are doing here". Another German soldier that "didn't know anything"... Impressive is that the author insisted that war was "Europe fighting against bolshevism", ignoring all the nations invaded by Germany and validating that thought with the fact that non-Germans from invaded countries were joining SS for obscure reasons...



4. This book is the memoir of a young German who in 1943 at the age of seventeen volunteered for the "Waffen-SS" (the military SS which was distinct from the political SS that ran the concentration camps) and subsequently served in the SS Mountain Infantry Regiment 11. He saw combat first at the Karelian front in Northern Finland against Soviet Russia and later at the Western front against the Americans and their allies. The memoir is the honest and accurate account of a brave soldier who sincerely albeit erroneously believed that he was fighting for a just and noble cause. It deals as much with the struggle between opposing armies which took place on the battle field as with the struggle between supposed duty and nagging doubt which took place in the author's mind.
   
   I can attest to the honesty and accuracy of the author's account because I too was a German soldier and had similar experiences which I reported in my book "A Mind in Prison" (Potomac Books, Washington D.C., 2000). I also fought in Finland though not in Karelia but north of it directly at the Arctic Ocean. Having been equally inexperienced and idealistic as the author of "Black Edelweiss," I volunteered for military service in 1939 at the age of eighteen and went through the same struggle of the mind between supposed duty and doubt.
   
   While reading "Black Edelweiss" I sometimes had the feeling that the author described my own experience. It was the same enemy, the same fight, the same landscape, the same cold, the same makeshift bunkers, the same insufficient rations, the same exhaustion, the same endless winter-night, and the same northern lights. Maybe the author experienced even harder fighting than I did, because the Waffen-SS was an elite corps which was always deployed where the fighting was the hardest. Nevertheless, I know how it was, and I have no doubt that the author is telling the truth.
   
   When Finland surrendered in September 1944, the German troops in Finland began a long retreat to Norway, avoiding neutral Sweden. The author's SS-unit marched from the area East of Rovaniemy (the capital of Lapland) to the area of Tromsoe in Northern Norway and from there to a sea-port where they could embark on a troop transporter to Germany where they were urgently needed. My military unit took the northernmost route from Kirkenes to Hammerfest where we embarked on a troop transporter which took us to Narvik. Both operations
   were exceedingly exhausting marches through the Artic night.
   
   Whereas my unit remained in Narvik till the end of the war, the author's unit was moved to the Western front which in early 1945 was already within Germany's borders. There they offered the last resistance to an enemy which was far superior in terms of numbers and material. They fought as bravely as usual but after heavy losses finally surrendered, landing the author in an American prisoner of war camp.
   
   The book is well written and documented with rare photos from the war in the Arctic. Since the author wrote his book immediately after the war while still being a prisoner of war, while I wrote my book more than fifty years later, the author does not completely come to terms with his fight for a criminal regime and with the hardships of a prisoner of war stemming from the collective accusations against the SS as a whole, whereas I had the advantage of having gained a soothing distance from the tragedy of WWII. But this difference diminishes neither his book nor mine. Each in its own way is a testimony before the court of history about brave young men who thought that they were doing their patriotic duty while in reality they were serving evil. The reader be the judge.



5. This book is excellent and far better than The Forgotten Soldier. The account is believable and in great detail, written sooner by the author than most memoirs are.

5 comments about That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story.

1. I have devoured each of De Blasi's other books and I think about them often. She captivated me with her style of writing and her passion. This latest book just did not grab hold of me in the same way. It's written in lovely style but I just don't care about the ones written about as much as I have in the other offerings. I guess I like to hear about Marlena, her husband and their interactions with locals in each of the places they have lived.



2. Excellent story I had read it from the local library and purchased it for a friend's birthday. I also recommend author's other titles, A thousand Days in Venice and a Thousand Days in Tuscany. For anyone who loves Italy as much as I do, Both of my paternal grandparents were born there.



3. Marlena De Blasi has had the most amazing life, and is a wonderful writer. As an Italophile I loved every word that she ever wrote. And this is the latest one that I have read. My head is spinning and I am planning another trip to Italy. Perhaps to Sicily. It is truly a fairy tale. You must read it!!!!!



4. This author can write! Her descriptions of people, environments, food and relationship are first class.
   
   Unlike the first three books that were memoirs of her travels and life with her husband, A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and The Lady in the Palazzo, this book is really Tosca Brazzi's story as told to Marlena.
   
   De Blasi descriptions of simple, everyday things are strong, such as: Unskilled, unshy hands pounded scales on the piano." I could hear the music and see that person working the keys.
   
   What an interesting story de Blasi tells because of her chance meeting with a woman, now in her mid 60s, while traveling with her husband, Italian born Fernando. Tosca, the nine-year-old daughter of a peasant under the last prince in Sicily, was given to the prince by her father in trade for a stallion. She was educated along with the prince's young children and as she grew, became their teacher. A priest who knew her in the beginning described her as having "splendid arrogance."
   
   At 18, Tosca became the mistress of Leo, the prince, now 36. When Leo disappeared mysteriously because his work for the people went against the local mafia, Tosco became an heiress. She carries on his work of modernizing some of culture. Sicily is like a major character in the book and we learn about many aspects of life there.
   
   The story today is of Tosca's role in helping women who are alone--many who come to the beautiful Villa Donnafugata (house of fleeing women) to live, and maybe to die.
   
   If you love good writing that is descriptive to the finest detail, read this book. In the first chapter she describes the ceiling of the dining room in the Villa: "Fragment of frescoed gods and goddesses--plump flanked and rolling eyes--hurtle across the high crumbling walls, giving chase up onto the great vault of the ceiling."
   
   The author has been a journalist, restaurant critic, and cookbook author. She took a trip to Italy, and there experienced a whirlwind love affair with a man and with Venice, inspiring her to write _A Thousand Days in Venice.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: Not a memoir of de Blasi's life, but of Tosca's, however this is a good read you'll enjoy.



5. That Summer in Sicily is the fourth Marlena de Blasi book I have read. When I picked up the first one, A Thousand Days in Venice, I didn't take to it right away. I am a Texan who writes exactly the way I speak, and I am irritated by flowery prose. However, I am also a sensualist, in love with taste, aroma, color, texture and sound. These elements--these things that define a particular place--come alive for me in these books.
   
   Unlike her previous three memoirs, this story is not really about American Marlena and her Venetian husband. It is an almost unbelievable love story, a story about what it means to be Sicilian. As with most other adventures in her life, this one began with a writing assignment. Marlena was asked by a scholarly magazine to write a seminal piece on the interior regions of Sicily. Several people had already turned the job down, and soon she discovered why. Despite a meticulously drawn route and prearranged interview appointments, she was met at every turn with "misanthropic silences, closed doors and epic heat." Eventually she gave up.
   
   Marlena's husband had come along for the ride, and before wending their way down from the mountains, they decided to take a day or two to recover. Finally, a policeman responded to their numerous inquiries for a place to stay. "There is a woman called Tosca. Her place is Villa Donnafugata (house of fleeing woman), although there's no sign to tell you so."
   
   When they entered the gates they found what looked like a castle with sweeping gardens. In fact, it was nothing more than a hunting lodge, once belonging to the last Anjou prince in Sicily. Everywhere, they passed groups of women in long black dresses, laughing and singing as they went about their daily chores. A beautiful woman dressed in jodphurs and boots approached them. "I'm Tosca Brozzi. We'll be sitting down at one. I'll let you know later if there's room for you to stay."
   
   From one of the other women there, Marlena learned that Tosca had inherited the villa from the prince, whose ward she once was. Bit by bit, she had restored the place. For more than thirty years she had lived there with an assortment of villagers who had found themselves alone, and in need of other people. This sort of communal life helped them to stay well, to stay young. Babies were born there, some people died there. "We are all related by affection," they said. "We are part of one another's history. We are Sicilian." They grew and prepared their own food, cared for the animals and for each other. Though there was much work to be done, it seemed to be merely a diversion to fill the hours between meals. "We eat often and well here, signora," Marlena was told. It was a society she never would have believed could exist.
   
   "We never decide to stay but simply get caught up in the imperishable rituals and rhythms of the villa," wrote Marlena. One day Don Cosimo, a seventy-six year old priest, approached Marlena. He told her that he'd been the household's resident cleric and the prince's chauffeur when, fifty-six years previously, the prince had taken Tosca to live with him in the palace, a few hours drive from the lodge. "She was, even then, of that splendid arrogance. Leo claimed her when, I think, she was nine. Her beauty was already fearsome," he recalled. It was a common enough feudal custom, this sanctioned purloining of the children of one's peasants. Most people believed that the prince had requested Tosca. However, it was Tosca's father who'd offered her to the prince, in exchange for a stallion he coveted. And so Tosca was schooled by a French governess with the prince's daughters, tamed, formed, refined.
   
   Later, it was Tosca who approached Marlena. "I'd like to tell you a story, Chou," she said. "Oh, I don't mean right now, of course. But soon. It's a long story, you see... It might take a few days. A week... I want to try out my story on someone from another place. I want to tell it to you, leave it with you, I guess, knowing that you'll go away." And so it began, the unfolding of a saga that spanned decades. It is a story that explores the ravages of war, poverty, the origins of the Cosa Nostra, the responsibilities of wealth and privilege, the cost of defying rigid traditions, the meaning of love, and finding one's true place in the world. It is also a story of miracles.
   
   by Becky Lane
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   reviewing books by, for, and about women

5 comments about Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return.

1. This sequel to Persepolis was just as powerful as the original, detailing Marjane's difficulties as an immigrant in a new country. Her life in Austria gets off to a rough start as she ends up boarding at a Catholic school where she knows no one. When she finally finds friends, she ends up taking drugs, and at one point lives on the street as a homeless person. After hitting rock bottom, she returns to Iran only to find out that she doesn't fit in there anymore.
   
   I liked Persepolis 2, and found her story of life as a teenager in Austria and Iran to be fascinating. I have to say that I did prefer Persepolis over the sequel, because the sweet innocence and crazy hijinx of the younger Marjane was enchanting and heartbreaking at the same time. As far as the skill of the art and storytelling, it completely lived up to the first book.



2. Graphic novel comes of age. This is the first novel I have seen by a writer trained as a graphic artist. It is wonderful!



3. I loved Persepolis, so when I realized there was a Persepolis 2, I quickly bought a used copy from Amazon. When I received it, I was very disappointed to learn that I had already read it! Although my first book was entitled Persepolis, it contained both stories. Check your copy of Persepolis before you buy the sequel; you may have read it!



4. The first novel in this series succeeded because its childlike graphics and gee-whiz storytelling matched perfectly with this subject matter. We could imagine the infant/child author telling her story in exactly these terms.
   This sequel fails because the issues of growing up and dealing with the disillusionment with one's own culture are much more subtle. The story and the graphics remind us constantly of the nuances that are left out, of the issues of women's rights and humanity that are sentimentalized, of the real conflicts that this child/woman is undergoing that are completely unexplored.
   There are a few quibbles to be explored: the view of vienna is odd and the little vignette of the narrator peeing standing up seems forced. But most importantly, the mismatch between the story and the way in which it is told ends up making for a read that turns boring quickly.



5. I call myself a history buff but in reality I really only know American history with a little knowledge of King Henry VIII. I was 18 when Iranian crisis started. This book gave me a better insight to the overall issues behind this area than any other reading I had done, which I admit is not vast. The difference here was this book laid things out in such an engaging way I was totally engrossed. The author was both straight foward and insightful, along with quite humorous.

5 comments about A Tale of Love and Darkness.

1. This review was published in The Australian, August 16, 2008. Greg Sheridan is the Foreign Editor.
   [...]
   Memoirs are made of this
   
   OPINION: Greg Sheridan | August 16, 2008
   
   A FEW years ago I experienced a severe addiction to travel literature.
   
   With the contemporary serious novel in such a mess, travel writing, like biography, offers many of the traditional pleasures of the novel: story, character, good dialogue, development, resolution. But I can't say I discovered any great literature there, much as I enjoyed Bill Bryson's wit and Paul Theroux's misanthropy.
   
   Now I am immersed in a frenetic bout of memoir reading and here the story is different.
   
   When Tom Wolfe was promoting the new journalism, which has been with us several decades now, his essential insight was to bring the techniques of the novelist to bear on journalism: exploring the subjective elements of a story, the characters' inner lives and interior monologues, with the advantage that the events had actually happened.
   
   A novelist's memoir can achieve this supremely. A Tale of Love and Darkness is the childhood memoir of Amos Oz, Israel's greatest novelist and surely soon a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
   
   This is an incomparably good book. Perhaps it is the best book I have read. It tells of growing up in Jerusalem in the 1930s and '40s. Oz conceives life as one part comedy, one part tragedy, one part humdrum, quotidian concreteness, and if you are Jewish, the chance always of utter disaster.
   
   His life proceeds against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the birth of Israel. Oz is an only child and his life is also shaped by the suicide of his mother when he is 12. This colossal roadblock dominates and shapes the book and yet does not distort the loving portrait of his father, a frustrated academic, out of his depth and at his wits' end with his wife's melancholy.
   
   Oz's technical accomplishments in this book are dazzling. He writes of his grandfather:
   
   It was not easy for him to go out. Grandma had a highly developed, super-sensitive radar screen on which she kept track of us all: at any given moment she could check the inventory, to know precisely where each of us was, Lonia at his desk in the National Library on the fourth floor of the Terra Sancta Building, Zussya at Cafe Atara, Fania sitting in the B'nai B'rith Library, Amos playing with his best friend Eliyahu next door at Mr Friedmann the engineer's, in the first building on the right. Only at the edge of her screen, behind the extinguished galaxy, in the corner from which her son Zyuzya, Zyuzinka, with Malka and little Daniel, whom she had never seen or washed, were supposed to flicker back at her, all she could see by day or night was a terrifying black hole.
   
   This passage is instructive. First, there is a lovely metaphor for domestic life. How many grandmas have their perfect family radar screens? Then, everyone is mentioned by name. There is the accumulation of small details of location that give the passage life. But suddenly, at the end, the shocking reality of the Holocaust explodes this domestic tableau, as it does intermittently throughout these beautiful memories.
   
   Almost every page of this book contains an observation or metaphor so striking you cannot let it go, or rather it will not let you go. Oz writes: "Both my parents had come to Jerusalem straight from the 19th century."
   
   The contrast, indeed conflict, of east European Jews trying to recreate an idealised Europe, one free of anti-Semitism, in the hot, dusty climate of Israel, surrounded by hostile Arabs, is mined by Oz as much for comedy as tragedy. And there is endless comic delight in the crazy clash of expectation with reality. For bookish, intellectual, urban Jews such as Oz and his family, the kibbutz pioneers were a new kind of Jew. Oz mocks his own earnest idealisation of kibbutz pioneers, yet somehow affirms it as well:
   
   Tough, warm-hearted, though of course silent and thoughtful, young men and strapping, straightforward young women ... I pictured these pioneers as strong, serious, self-contained people, capable of sitting around in a circle and singing songs of heart-rending longing, or songs of mockery, or songs of outrageous lust ... (people) who could ride wild horses or wide-tracked tractors, who spoke Arabic, who knew every cave and wadi, who had a way with pistols and hand grenades, yet read poetry and philosophy.
   
   Oz is free of self-pity. Instead there is a generous human solidarity and understanding for everyone. But there are passages of aching melancholy and pain. The night the UN votes to establish Israel is the happiest night imaginable. Though it too is tinged with fear, as the Jews of Jerusalem are always in dread of a second holocaust. But the recognition of the Zionist dream is a fulfilment of generations' desires.
   
   In all his life, Oz never sees his father weep, except that night. The father crawls into bed beside young Amos and tousles his hair:
   
   Then he told me in a whisper what some hooligans did to him and his brother David in Odessa and what some gentile boys did to him at his Polish school in Vilna, and the girls joined in too, and the next day, when his father, Grandpa Alexander, came to the school to register a complaint, the bullies refused to return the torn trousers but attacked his father, Grandpa, in front of his eyes, forced him down on to the paving stones and removed his trousers too in the middle of the playground, and the girls laughed and made dirty jokes, saying that the Jews were all so-and-sos, while the teachers watched and said nothing.
   
   Now, the father tells Amos, people may bully you, but not because you are a Jew: "Not that. Never again. From tonight that's finished here. For ever." Most of the book is not political in that sense. It's full of jokes, though its genius is to blend comedy and tragedy. Oz recounts how as a kid he talked all the time, but that was fine because everyone in Jerusalem talked all the time. A professor tells Oz that the odds of there being an afterlife, as there is no conclusive evidence either way, are 50-50. For a central European Jew in the generation of Hitler, those chances of survival are not at all bad.
   
   When a great novelist writes a memoir with all the technique of the novel at its best, you get a superior art form. If I could recommend just one book to tell you something about the human condition, this would be it.



2. Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness is a memoir of his life and the life of his family up until the time of his mother's suicide at the age of 38 in the early 1950s. Oz's mother's suicide, never treated fictionally in his other work (as far as I can recall) is treated here with great care and thoroughness: there is anger, guilt, shame, sadness, loss, a sense of regret, and penetrating understanding. Without a doubt the book is strongest when Oz discusses his mother and her family. His mother, brought up on a romantic, Hebrew education in Rovno, was not ready for the tawdriness of life in Palestine, "the rough terrain of everyday life, diapers, husbands, migraines, queues, smells of moth balls and kitchen sinks." The story of his mother's mental decline and suicide is also the story of the convergence and divergences of Jewish life in the 20th century; the outline of the gap between the real and the ideal of the Zionist dream. That said, A Tale of Love and Darkness is generally overwritten. There is much useless repetition here which drags down the trajectory of the memoir. I do not recommend this work as the first work of Amos Oz to be read, but the last. It makes for an instructive book end with Where the Jackal's Howl and Other Stories on the other side.



3. This is a beautiful and moving memoir from a sensitive and humanistic writer of great skill and style. The reader will feel that he or she is personally experiencing growing up with the author in the most modest and simple circumstances, in the young State of Israel, from before statehood and into its early years, getting to know as friends and neighbors some of its intellectual leaders who were the writer's family members and friends. The book is a sheer delight, and highly recommended.



4. This mixture of biography with the history of the birth and growth of Israel is a wonderful, warm , and poignant tale--well worth one's time.



5. This memoir by the Israeli novelist Amoz Oz is a fascinating depiction of both European and Israeli Jews. Although the author was born in Israel, his parents and relatives were all European Jews displaced by the events leading up to World War II.The graphic depiction of what anti-semitism does to an individual explains the need for a Jewish state more fully than any essay could, and the history of the first war against the Jews by the Arabs, aided openly by the British army which then controlled Palestine, and which started the very evening in November, 1947 of the U.N. vote to establish a Jewish homeland, not, as I previously thought, in May, 1948, when the state of Israel was officially declared, lends credence to the unfortunate belief that the Arabs will never accept the state of Israel. This makes the book sound incredibly sad, and of course it is in one sense. But in another, by creating the milieu of these early settlers in Jerusalem and their intellectual strengths and interests, and also the new Jew of the kibbutz, to which Oz went after the death of his mother and his father's remarriage, and where he lived and wrote for 30 years, the book turns out to be the best one I have read about this frantic period of Jewish history.

1 comments about Tales From the Dad Side CD.

1. I just finished a long ride from Tennessee to New Jersey and listened to Steve Doocy's book "Tales from the Dad side". As a son, father and husband Steve's book touched me in so many ways that when I finished it I felt satisfied. So many of his chapters were so spot on it felt like I had written this book. The chapters on sex made me laugh the most because my mom educated me the same way. I took my brother to give me the real information. You have to read or listen to know what I mean. I would recommend this to any father who could use a good laugh and to any wife looking to buy her man a book that he will really read and enjoy

5 comments about Grayson.

1. This short novel transported me, and I read it straight through without stopping. It is a sweet and moving story that reminds us how fragile and delicate our relationship with the natural world is. I've given this book as a gift many times, and everyone I've recommended it to has enjoyed it immensely.



2. Reading "Grayson" is ....like Ms. Cox's 'Swimming to Antarctica" so wordy and stretched that the reader may give up before finishing. I did finish Grayson because I wanted to know the ending. I had even thought, when first reading, that I would give this book to my daughter who teaches Reading to fifth graders. But....I decided against it for the reason that I know they would love the first but really get bogged down before the final page. It's a great story but could have been condensed into perhaps 10 pages.



3. The book grayson, a true life story of a then seventeen year old woman who encounters a baby gray whale in the Pacific near Long Beach, is a story that is poetically and so beautifully told it will linger, I guarantee, in the mind of the reader for a long time, if not forever. This book, about interspecies communication is so beautifully written that I have nothing but admiration for the writer and her exquisite sensitivity. It is a story that is deeply philosophical in nature as the writer describes metaphorically her maintenance of personal positivity and her own soul desire to communicate with this whale and its lost mother. Can we communicate non verbally, with each other, with other species? Read this book and ponder deeply. I recommend this and hope you love it as much as I did and do!



4. Grayson, by Lynne Cox is a wonderful concise book with lots to say. There are three different story threads running through it. The smaller thread is about a girl athlete with lots of will and determination, and the second is a nature story about the sea animals in southern California and the third thread is the most moving. It is an inspirational story about a girl tiring to help a young baby whale finds its mother. It is a story for all ages. I'm 38 and I loved it, bought one for my 1st edition collection, and I bought another for my younger ten-year-old sister.



5. While listening to this tale as an audiobook, I was surprised to be sitting at the edge of my recliner! For a very simple premise, Lynne Cox crafted a plot with a lot of excitement.
   
   I was touched by the sense of communion between the human swimmer and the baby whale, each of them vulnerable and exposed.
   
   The communication and intelligence of the whales in this story, plus a mega-pod of dophins, made me think of the line, "Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!" the title of Douglas Adams' fourth book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. (Where Wonko the scientist posits that dolphins were the actual creators of planet Earth.)
   
   I now own Grayson in an audio format and as a hardcover book, and I consider it a treasure.

No comments about Soccer Dad: A Father, a Son, and a Magic Season.

5 comments about Paris to the Moon.

1. I love Paris and I love reading books about experiences in Paris. Granted, the authors view is from quite a privileged standpoint. However, he does struggle with the every day mundane problems that make this book a good read. It is a different from the Peter Mayle books, since he does not really offer any new insights into the life of the french, but I think it is absolutely worth it if you haven't been to Paris for a while and just want to escape to it in your own mind.



2. I sipped this book much like one sips a glass of champagne. I began reading it the last week of May, and it took me until early this morning to complete it. Allow me to explain.
   
   Gopnik is a columnist for The New Yorker, which means that his style can be...well, a bit thick. His prose is often syrupy like pouring thick molasses from a jar. It's best enjoyed in small bites. I would often read only a chapter at a time to digest what I'd read: in-depth descriptions of French bureaucracy, a sit-in at the brasserie Balzar, and other complicated scenarios that required contemplation. Another problem, if you can deign to call it such, is that Gopnik failed to define certain French terms to the reader who might not be familiar with the French language.
   
   Perhaps the most enjoyable portions of the book are when Gopnik writes about his family, in particular his son Luke. Luke is an interesting character because he isn't quite American but neither is he quite French. He's held in limbo because of his expat parents. Curiously, Luke seemed to me more adult than child at times. In particular, his expressions are uniquely European. For instance, when he has a crush on a fellow schoolgirl, he says, "She's quite a dish!" What a way to describe someone, especially coming from a child of four or five!
   
   Gopnik really doesn't write much about his wife, Martha. We know that she played a large part in the decision to move from New York City to Paris, but she actually plays a minor role in his book and is mentioned surprisingly infrequently.
   
   Overall, it was an interesting piece about French culture if a bit difficult to read at times. I do think it would have been easier to read if I was a regular reader of his column at the time the family resided in Paris. And perhaps the average reader couldn't relate to just moving to Paris in a whim. But because I moved to a city on just such a whim, I felt a kinship with Gopnik and his family. It is his appreciation and attempts to understand the culture he suddenly became immersed in that caused me to continue to turn the pages.



3. This is a book for francophiles. It might be a good resource on French culture and attitudes if you will be spending an extended time traveling or working in France. But if you are looking for good literature, skip it.
   
   Should have known by just opening the cover - the first SENTENCE in the book has 9 (count 'em - NINE) commas in it. The prose is self-centered, self-conscious, and self-congratulatory.
   
   You are regaled by sentences like this one: "The lucidity of Parisian empiricism was bought at the price of the grandiosity of Parisian abstraction, and you couldn't have one without the other".
   
   Gopnik is the sort of author who thinks when he breaks a fingernail, it's significant and we need to know. You get an entire chapter devoted to a bedtime story he made up for his son, end to end.
   
   The author needs to get over himself, and the editor needs to go back to flipping burgers. Spend your valuable leisure hours reading something else!



4. PARIS TO THE MOON is a collection of essays by a NEW YORKER writer. Gopnik and his wife moved to Paris in 1995. When a young teen, he visited Paris in 1773. After the couple's child was born in 1994 they endeavored to fulfill Adam's desire to live in Paris while their son was still portable. The romance of Paris became the author's subject for his NEW YORKER pieces. There was no big story in France. There was a lot of peace amd prosperity in the world and a lot animosity directed toward the United States. When Adam Gopnik thinks of Paris he thinks of his wife Martha and his son Luke.
   
   French politicians engage in ostentatious displays of detachment. The Parisian government has a clutch of domaine prive apartments. In reality, most apartments in Paris are not available to rent in a market sense. It seems that one of the politicians lodged his entire family in various domaine prive apartments. French life in general is chock full of entitlements. North African immigrants, though, have no entree. The French elites have now decided that the cure for hidden deals is transparency. Gopnik describes a strike. France is a centralized country and anything that mainly affects Paris is a national event. French people deal with an event by pretending it isn't happening. (Picasso and Sartre pretended the Germans didn't occupy Paris.)
   
   The writer's son Luke enjoys the Luxembourg Gardens, even in November. Trying to join an American-style gym, the author discovers that the rhetoric, the cult of sport is absent in France. Talking about the bureaucracy takes the place of talking about sport. In France there is no retirement anxiety. People don't link the notion of stopping to work with stopping to live as people do in the U.S. It is believed that what France needs is its own Bill Gates. It has a philosopher, Habermas, who contends that the basis for the state is the human love of arguing.
   
   The French have been obsessed with Vichy for more than twenty-five years. Thus, they did not finally confront their past during Papon's trial in Bordeaux. Explanation turns first on romanticism, next on ideological rigor, and finally on the futility of explanation. In 1997 there was an incident at the Eiffel Tower. The French draw their identity from their jobs, the Americans from what they buy. Adam Gobnik decides that couture is romantic cartoon. Yves St. Laurent is still the favorite in 1997 of the Socialists in the government. He uses opera arias to show his clothes. The new Bibliotheque Nationale, a Mitterand grand project, is, according to Gopnik, in the totalitarian Luxe style. Other transformations of cultural sites have been undertaken at the Louvre and the Bastille Opera. Jazz, loved by the French, and Impressionism, loved by the Americans, confirm the simple physical basis of powerful emotion.
   
   Alice Waters is in Paris at some point during the writer's stay. He offers to cook dinner for her and is nervous. Her ends up cooking lamb for seven hours where four would have been appropriate. It seems that the purpose of the visit of Alice Waters to Paris is to determine the feasibility of opening a restaurant at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs at the Louvre. She has reconciled utopian politics with aristocratic cooking. The crucial unit of French social life is the cohort. Members of the cohort inhabit neutral places such as parks and cafes.
   
   The couple's daughter Olivia is born in Paris. Since Paris is beautiful, but France is not a life, the family returns to America. The book is both amusing and instructive.



5. An interesting collection of essays about family life in Paris. Gopnik's erudite, interesting descriptions of the City of Light will delight Francophiles, although his writing is fairly pretentious and pedantic at times. Nevertheless, this book is still a worthwhile read.

5 comments about When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put.

1. Vivian Swift has led an interesting, nomadic life. After living in 23 different places in 20 years, she decided to stay put in a small village on Long Island Sound. When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put is so much more than her journal for a year of "staying put." This is one of those books that is hard to categorize or describe. Yes, it is a journal, but it also tells of Vivian's past (she's kept a journal since she was 19.) There are some tidbits of news from the local village and some delightful quotes. There are also some interesting facts about things like the teacup handle and why we start our year with January. And, oh, the illustrations! Some of that may sound dull, but this book is anything but!
   
   I adored this book. The drawings are beautiful and I found myself poring over every detail in them. The best thing about this book, though, is the fact that it reminds us to take delight in and be thankful for the small, everyday things in life - things like a bird's feather, an animal's tracks in the snow, or a shady spot in the summer. This book was published by Bloomsbury on October 28.



2. Some books to do not fall easily into a category and When Wanders Cease to Roam is one of those books. Part memoir, part travel diary, part daily observations of a calendar year in a small town on Long Island Sound, part amusing insights on things past, present and future from the mundane to the poetic, it is a tome filled with a wonderful variety of delightful nuggets.
   
   After traveling around the world from the time she was 19, holding a wide variety of jobs and having a number of fascinating...and not so fascinating experiences...Ms. Swift decided when she was about forty to take a pause in her travels. A ten year pause along the coast of Long Island Sound; a pause that in her hands proves to be just as interesting as some of her more exotic adventures. To quote the author, "I bummed around the world for twenty years before I suddenly decided to unpack my duffle bags once for all. On a whim I chose a small village on the Long Island Sound to be my happily-ever- after address. Little did I know that home would be the most extraordinary place I'd ever visit."
   Well, in her hands and through her eyes it is.
   
   The book is illustrated with about 300 of Ms. Swift's works of art, from her wonderful watercolors, to pen and ink line drawings and illustrations of everything from her cats to her neighbors. There is a page of her painting of eight varieties of snowflakes, another of 19 lost mittens she found over the ten years in her walks in the snow, two pages devoted to lovely colorful drawings of her collection of tea cups, many with a story.
   
   We travel with her from January, when we learn how to 'winterize' our minds, through March, which is both Tea Time and the time of 14 types of mud...all illustrated...May, the season of Secret Gardens to September, when she proposes The Acre of Earth Theory of Life. "Everyone gets an acre of Earth when they're born... If you ever feel crowded into a corner by your life, you need to take a better look at your acre of Earth. It's bigger than you think." Her 'acre' has extended from Zen Buddhist boyfriends in Paris to rainy days in Dublin and mornings in the Sahara. The book ends when we have come full circle, back to the short, cold winter days of December. Along the way, we have brief visits with Thoreau, Dickinson, Willa Cather and Scooter, the ugly kitten. Every step is beautifully illustrated and it those illustrations that make this book so special.
   
   Don't get me wrong; the text of this book is very good. At time it is poetic, at time philosophical and at times just very, very funny... and always entertaining. But the book is really just so attractive to look at and I absolutely love the watercolors.
   I totally recommend this absolutely charming book.



3. Perfect for : Personal reading, Gift book, Great coffee table book
   
   In a nutshell: I really enjoyed this delightful book. The author has a way of sharing things she observed or thought, causing me to look at my surroundings differently. She has grouped thoughts, experiences, facts, etc into the months of the year (as opposed to chapters). In January, there are some great facts associated with the calendar and the month, thoughts about dressing warmly, journal entries, and some good examples to help you look at things through a new perspective. The drawings done by the author are charming, and her thoughts expressive and captivating. I found myself lost in the new world surrounding me as I looked at things more closely. There are so many delightful things in this book! On pages 44-45, the author shares little bits and drawings of her charming tea cup collection - it made me want to brew a cup of tea and curl up with a warm blanket to keep reading!
   
   My Review:
   Something I found very interesting - on the copyright page, there is a note that says, "The entire text of this book has been hand lettered by the author." It really gives the book that personal feeling, that you are really reading the authors personal thoughts and observations. I don't think there was a page in the book that didn't make me smile at least once!
   
   Characters: The book reads like a journal of sorts - of the author's personal thoughts and observations. As such, she is the main character, and her experiences are very enjoyable. She has a great sense of humor.
   
   Story-Line: There wasn't really a traditional story-line, but rather, groups of thoughts and observations that fit well together and flowed nicely from one month to the next.
   
   Readability: This was a very fun read. The use of different information (thoughts, diary entries, facts, charming drawings and watercolors, etc. I really liked that I could start and stop at any time without feeling I needed to complete a "chapter" first.
   
   Overall: A very delightful book! Even if you don't normally read this type of book, stretch outside your comfort zone and give this book a try! It would also make a great gift when going to celebrations or parties.



4. The author describes her book this way:
   
   "When Wanderers Cease to Roam is a quirky, hand-made, slow-information kind of book that combines a first-person narrative with over 300 illustrations. It's not quite a memoir, and not exactly a diary, it's more like a lifestyle catalog that provides a one-of-a-kind reading experience."
   
   I describe it as perhaps the most wonderful, most engaging, most entertaining, most inspiring "Artist Journal" I have ever seen! I don't know if Vivian is familiar with the art journaling genre (phenomenon actually), but she could not have done a better job of showcasing all there is to love about an art journal.
   
   The author has traveled the world for much of her life. One day, she decided to put down roots in one place and experience that one place with the same attention she would some exotic travel destination.
   
   With 300 watercolor sketches, and 208 pages of handwritten description, this book is a thing of beauty that engages you from the first moment you touch it. It is written in twelve chapters - one to celebrate each month of the year in all its glory - or not so much glory.
   
   Vivian lives in a small village on Long Island Sound, so it doesn't seem at first thought like that much exciting stuff could be going on (like many of us feel about our own surroundings.) Add to this some serious Winter weather and gloom to endure, and you might just sit there stumped for creative inspiration. Not this lady!
   
   So, one of the biggest and most valuable treasures this pretty book delivers is the "Aha!" that there is interest and beauty in everything - even mud!! - which gets a page of its own in March.
   
   And the writing is as fun as the art. The author has a quirky sense of humor and the ability to hone in on the most endearing and entertaining aspects of the smallest of village happenings - like an escaped balloon or a runaway kite, for instance.
   
   Imagine a series of drawings of a snowman's activities - like he might make a snow angel?
   
   And the "word pictures" are just as delightful:
   "February 14
   Atmosheric conditions are similar to those that produce thunderstorms in the Summer, but, this being February and frigid, there is only a ring around the moon tonight, an optical illusion from all that lightning in the air, frozen into a ring of silent thunder."
   
   And as if that weren't enough, the author reaches, on snowbound and other days, into her travel memories for inspiration. In one chapter she goes through her extensive tea cup collection and journals the stories that go with their acquisition. So, the reader gets some vicarious world adventure in the bargain.
   
   I encourage you to get your hands and your heart into this book as fast as you can. Give it a hug when you first meet, because it will soon be a great journaling "friend" who will encourage everything about why you keep an art journal, and teach you about the treasures hiding in your own "ordinary day".
   
   Jessica Wesolek



5. I loved this book. It's absolutely charming - both in the writing and in the artwork (which the author also did). She has a way of writing about common every-day things in a way that makes you look at them differently. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's really true. For instance, she has a page on mud. Yes, mud. And, believe it or not, after reading that page, I was fascinated by mud and the different kinds of mud. I wouldn't have believed that to be possible. Whenever I'm someone's houseguest, I always bring a gift for my host/hostess. I used to bring candles or baked goods. But now I'm going to give copies of this book.