3 comments about Mexican Enough: My Life between the Borderlines.

1. When she finally buried her shovel in Mexican soil she had no idea how rich the ground might be. No longer satisfied with simply being considered a Latina on applications, Griest, who learned Russian to travel in the former Soviet Union and Chinese to live in China, decided it was finally time to learn Spanish by traveling Mexico.
   
   In her best and most heartfelt book yet, Griest documents both her amazing process of embracing the wild, dangerous, loving, and enthralling calliope that is Mexico and its volatile political and social atmosphere. Along her way, Griest meets farmers and activists, gay men and macho wrestlers, revolutionaries and victims of violence. Each encounter changes both writer and reader.
   
   All the while the main question is hovers in the sky: What does it mean to be Mexican? Can a woman from Texas with roots in rural Mexico and the Kansas prairie find her reflection in brown eyes or blue eyes?
   
   Read the book. Griest's journey resonates with all of us who struggle to define ourselves in a complicated world.
   
   --



2. I found this amazing book to be very compelling. This author always gets to the very core of the people, visiting areas where tourists do not tend to tread. In Mexico, she not only does not hide the bad and ugly, but also takes us into the private lives of the good and the beautiful. Reading her book was like being her travel companion on her personal quest for the holy identity Grail. I highly recommend this book for anybody interested in Mexico. We all share in its history, its people and its culture. I also highly recommend this book to anybody wanting to take a journey of discovery into their own ancestral motherland. Stephanie inspires one to do so.



3. 
   I loved this author's other books, so I was really looking forward to "Mexican Enough." It does not disappoint. She routinely throws herself into the craziest situations (like sneaking into a prison in Oaxaca, or spending the night in a Zapatista camp in Chiapas) and finds the most amazing stories. I learned so much about Mexico, from the impact of NAFTA and immigration, to pop culture like lucha libre (think: Nacho Libre). Some of the stories are pretty heartbreaking, but there is a lot of humor as well. Even though I am not Latina, I can relate to her questioning her cultural identity, and whether or not she is "enough." It also reminds me of this ongoing debate about Obama being "black enough." That makes this an especially timely book.

5 comments about American Son: My Story.

1. Amazing story from a true mexican american. One can truly relate to this story and life. Must read for all of those who need inspiration and see an "I can do this" attitude. Truly enjoyed this one!



2. Oscar is one of the best boxers of our times or any time. He has accomplished so much in the sport. He had to go through some hard times to get where he is today. And thru it all he still manages to be a great human being. Some of the stories in the book will make you laugh, some will make you sad. Overall it will give a new appreciation of Oscar the boxer and Oscar the man. A story that is both compelling and touching.



3. The autobiography on "The Golden Boy," who parlayed his pugilistic skills into successful business and philanthropic ventures outside the squared-circle, is an informative and inspiring story on chasing and capturing a slice of the American Dream.
   
   It works because Oscar De La Hoya is candid about every facet of his professional and business careers & personal life, while co-author Steve Springer - through his award-winning reporting in the Los Angeles Times - has literally watched the champ grow up in public.
   
   The legend truly comes to life through De La Hoya's own words and honesty. Though the final chapter in boxing will be "written" later this year, this is an outstanding look into a life that is just starting to get into a top gear.



4. Thoroughly enjoyed the book. Extensively details who Oscar is and where he (and his family) came from. A truly rags-to-riches story. You cannot help but like this young man. A brisk, intelligent read for everybody especially boxing fans and people of Mexican heritage.
   
   Excellent book!



5. If you are a fan of Oscar you will love this book. It is a very short book though.

4 comments about Mortician Diaries: The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death.

1. I really enjoyed reading this quick read biographical book as I am currently working on my own book (fiction) about the life of a woman who is a funeral director. The author shows her intelligence, sensitivity and humor in the stories she relates about her career as a mortician.



2. June has a wonderful way of presenting the intriguing stories then briefly discussing the significance of the experience. Through her stories she discusses teaching children about death, forgiving the dead, forgiving yourself after a loved one has died, stages of grief, and looking at death realisticly rather than with fear. Some stories are comical, some are heart-wrenching, and others are eye-opening. My husband and I read this book together and really enjoyed it! Thanks June!



3. Excellently written book. Written with love, compassion, and a deep understanding of love, life, and death. A must read for anyone and everyone!



4. You might not expect a memoir by an eighty-year-old woman to deal with topics such as gang warfare, AIDS, racism, unplanned pregnancies, and feminism, but this one does. You also might not expect a book called Mortician Diaries to be anything but morbid, but Nadle possesses the gift of bringing her over 50-year-long career as a mortician and her lust for life to the page. She's the kind of woman who visits cemeteries when she travels, to see how different cultures treat the dead. She uses phrases like "death care industry" and urges readers to create a "dialogue on death," but never lapses into a cold, analytical account. Every page is bursting with humanity, with people who are learning how to grieve in their own way. This book is as much about psychology as it is about death.
   
   June Nadle's Mortician's Diaries offer a rare, heartfelt, and wonderfully honest insight into the "highlights" of the career of a lifelong mortician, capturing some of the most emotionally intense and interesting stories from her years working with death. The grandmotherly Nadle doesn't shy away from the subject, and encourages her readers to openly confront and discuss death, not in an obsessive, morbid way, but to gain closure and be as prepared as possible when the time comes, even though sometimes death catches us anawares. She offers case studies, such as an elderly woman who planned every detail of her own funeral to the story of a mother clinging to her newly-dead baby, unable to accept his death despite the blood soaking his tiny body, until Nadle speaks to her mother to mother and allows her to see that her older children also need her to be present for them. Nadle does not judge her clients, but offers psychological insights into why denial rears its head and how natural it is. In "The Mother Who Risked Her Life to Grieve," Nadle tells of one service, after a gang-related drive-by shooting, that's interrupted by bullets, and the following day the trip to the ceremony is made along with patrol cars flanking the mourners.
   
   Her case studies are fascinating, and showcase a wide swath of humanity, across cultures and relationships. Friends, lovers, husbands, wives, parents, and children mourn for those they've lost as well as grapple with their sometimes conflicted relationships with the deceased. Nadle allows each of them to work their way toward mourning rather than pushing a socially-approved agenda or timeline onto them. She handles each one with dignity and compassion, and clearly attempts to understand the often-painful mix of emotions the bereaved feel.
   
   As someone who's always tried to escape talking about death, especially when it comes to my most loved ones, I welcomed Nadle's approach. She has seen deaths of humans and animals, often under horrific, or simply human, circumstances, and offers a brief glimpse into her wisdom and, most of all, her heart. By reading of the many who did not appreciate their loved ones during life, whether the parents who shunned their gay sons who later died of AIDS, or the father who berated his little girl for, well, not being a boy, only regretting this when she was killed by a passing car at age four, to the father who sent his 17-year-old pregnant daughter away and made her feel ashamed, one gains an appreciation for one's own family. Nadle reminds us that it's not just life versus death, but about the quality of one's life that matters. She writes: "As humans, we have the unique ability to pause, to reflect, to acknowledge life, and to be reminded of our own mortal natures. In addition to our grief, death brings us the opportunity to reassess our own lives as well as our relationships so we can vow (maybe again) to make changes we see are needed." She offers various examples of how funerals can be conducted and the value they provided to the surviving family and friends.
   
   Though this book will most likely bring tears to your eyes, it's not solemn or overly sad, but instead is about, as she would have it, a celebration of life and all that's in it.

5 comments about ERIC LIDDELL: PURE GOLD.

1. This is wonderful and complete, and it tells the story that most people don't know, far beyond the Olympics.
   One word of warning: this is written and distributed through a Christian Publishing house in Michigan, and is highly inspirational and religiously oriented. If that turns you off, do not read. Or maybe DO read....but for sheer completeness of the Liddell story, there is nothing else that comes close to this volume.



2. 
   Outstanding book on the life of a young dedicated christian.
   Should be of great encouragement to young people who desperately need someone as an role model in this day of confusion.
   Book is well written and brings out his courage to do that which is right in the face of adversity.
   Book is written in a foremat that can be enjoyed by those of any age group.



3. Are you sure it can't be done??? well, think twice and then read this man's biography. Eric Liddell immortilized worldwide in the 1981 Hugh Hudson's motion picture Chariots of Fire in its purest form is presented in this book. A story on courage, capacity and determination. You should not miss it. You shall want to go out jogging and be a better person to say the least!
   
   From his birth on January 16, 1902 in Tientsin, China, to his unexpected death due to a brain tumor on February 21, 1945 in a japanese concentration camp in that same country, passing through his experiences at boarding school in the UK, his olympic victory, his religious commitments, his unbelievable determination, his beloved Florence ("Flo") and the beautiful love story that surrounded their relationship, the people who marked his life (his mother Mary, father James, brothers Rob and Ernest, sister Jenny, etc.). A book that brought out emotions from the beginning when I read about Florence (Eric's widow) watching Chariots of Fire and imagining her reactions, her feelings of pride... This book is a thoroughly rewarding experience!



4. I fell in love with the movie "Chariots of Fire" when I was in college over 20 years ago. I also enjoyed the paperback of the same name. Recently I became interested in this true story again and found "Pure Gold" on Amazon.
   This biography is slow-moving and tedious. I have never been to China nor do I have any interest in the Orient, so the setting of most of the book was not compelling. I was hoping that Eric's personality and dedication to Christian principles would pull me through when I was tempted to stop reading and give the book away.
   I was inspired enough to finish it but "ho hum" is my response to the writing.
   Maybe "Chariots of Fire" was a too "Hollywood-ized" version of the 1924 Olympics,(as Back Flash was to firefighting) but even if it was, I prefer it to this book.



5. Eric Liddell is an interesting & worthy subject for a biography but this one isn't it. The author did extensive research in primary documents, interviewed people who knew Liddell personally, & created an excellent bibliography. Unfortunately, the writing style is corny & some of the passages are fictionalized, particularly ones regarding Liddell's relationship with his wife Flo. The author puts thoughts in their minds that he couldn't possibly know. He so over-romanticizes his subject that he becomes almost unreal. Liddell was a great athlete & a great servant of the Lord, but the author so idolizes him that he becomes a kind of plaster saint. The main problem with this book is that it is explicitly written to be "inspirational," & so the reader is reminded over & over again what a great Christian role model Liddell was. This gets tiresome. Don't misunderstand me -- I am not knocking Liddell here at all, only the author's mode of presenting him. A less didactic book would serve Liddell better. His own words & actions speak for themselves.

5 comments about Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir.

1. I grew up in Connecticut, I no longer live there but I felt very connected when the author wrote about her neighborhood. Things were so much simpler back then, we forget that tragedies occured. Recommended reading for any age group.



2. I found this book searching for information on Hartford CT. As I read a bit on Amazon, to my surprise the memory of Mary Ann and Tyler Tirone came back to me and I had to read about this sad piece of hometown history. I found it extremely interesting, but more on a personal note. I was an infant when Irene was raped and murdered. Knowing the neighborhood in the 1950's it's difficult to understand this event had occurred. Our doors were always unlocked [until my grandmother found the paperboy in her bedroom going through her dresser] and the kids pretty well had free rein to wander about almost anywhere. The way Mary Ann brings the two stories together of Irene and her killer helps you concentrate of what makes each of them "tick". Mary Ann gave me a piece of my own history I never knew existed.



3. I enjoy reading memoirs- idk why, I just do. So, at the first chance I read Girls of Tender Age. The first half of the book was a memoir of Tirone-Smith's childhood in a silent house- her older brother, Tyler,was autistic and could not stand noise of any kind- laughing, crying, and dog barking, to name a few. If Tyler heard such noises, he would knaw at his arm. We also are told of Tirone-Smith's family history, which is quite interesting, as well as a background of a killer. The second half consists of Tirone-Smith's attempt to recall, make sense of, and write about a murder that occured when Tirone-Smith was 10. Her classmate, Irene, was strangled to death with her own scarf. Despite what the bookcover says, Irene is not Tirone-Smith's neighbor or even friend. She was only a quiet classmate, and the book falls apart after her murder. I was disapointed, because up to that point I had been throughly enjoying it. It became quite uncomprehensible.



4. No one locked their doors. Few mothers drove cars. Kids walked to school, church, and the neighborhood grocery, and played under street lights at dusk. On the surface, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's 1950's childhood was idyllic. But scratch that surface, and it quickly becomes apparent that nothing could be further from the truth. First, there was her remote mother, always on the verge of the then fashionable nervous breakdown. Then, her older brother, a manipulative, tyrannical child who never received an education or treatment because no one knew quite what was wrong with him. Mary Ann's first ten years were spent doing normal childhood activities but walking on eggshells and suppressing her own needs at home. Her description of American culture in that post war era are priceless, and she does it with humor, touches of sarcasm, and dead-on accuracy.
   
   Then, all at once. on the day of the 5th grade field trip to the electric company, a classmate of Mary-Ann is brutally murdered by a pedophile. True to the times, no one discusses the tragedy, and the kids are left to wonder about every facet of that terrifying crime. And to cope with its psychological consequences entirely on their own.
   
   Ms Tirone Smith wrote this memoir as a memorial to her friend, having summoned the courage to face the grief and the issues she had buried for decades. She traces the course of the apprehension, trial, and punishment of the killer in clinical detail. And she has succeeded nobly, writing with grace and distinction. Readers of Girls of Tender Age will long remember theheartbreaking story of little Irene with the "Loretta Young eyes."



5. just finished this book. i liked it very much. it was touching, funny, sad, tragic and a lot more. Well written. would recommend it.

5 comments about Lost In Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia.

1. My mother sent me this book for my birthday and I enjoyed every page. Very entertaining, both funny and serious, as well as making some great observations about growing up in Ridgefield, CT. I also grew up in Ridgefield in the 70s and the book is a very accurate description of life in Ridgefield back then. I amazed at how much he was able to remember, I'm not able to remember anywhere near that many details about my own childhood.



2. I have read almost every martial arts autobiography that has been published in the English language. I have put together quite a collection of them from all over the world. As proof, check out my book Martial Arts Biographies-An Annotated Bibliography (ISBN:0595348610). So I think I know a little about the subject of martial arts autobiographies. I liked Salzman's first book Iron & Silk. It is a classic to be sure. But I absolutly loved Lost In Place. It is the funniest of any martial arts biography that I have read. It is also very serious in other parts of the book. The story is great, and I recommend it very highly! Beyond being my favorite martial arts autobiography,I would put it in my top five favorite books of all. BUY IT, READ IT, AND LAUGH YOUR BUTT OFF!!!!



3. Memoir of Mark Salzman's adolescent years in Connecticut. Outrageously funny in spots, touching in others, and interesting throughout. The author's description of Sensei O'Keefe and the stories surrounding the Kung Fu Dojo are riotous. Ed, his eternally pessimistic father, adds another element of humor to the story. The novel describes an eccentric teenager's failed attempts to "change myself into something I'm not. The story of my life." He obsessively pursues first Kung Fu to become a fearless warior, then years of cello training to achieve a dream of becoming a concert celloist, and majors in Chinese at Yale because "it was the one subject I had a head start in and could therefore look smarter than I really was." The book is a good reflection back on the eccentricities of adolescence with a profound message offered in the end.



4. This book is an absolute gem. How often do you come across a martial arts book that is not just well written but genuinely, heartbreakingly funny? Mr. Salzman has already shown us he can write in his first book, Iron and Silk, the story of his two years spent in China teaching English and practicing wushu with Pan Qing Fu. The book was later made into a critically acclaimed film of the same name. In Lost in Place, the author lets us in on the secrets of his adolescence. Anyone who has ever been seized by the desire to shave his head, dye his pyjamas purple, and abandon the fast food of suburbia for the wandering life of a Zen monk will love this book.
   We follow Salzman through the perils of teenage life, goofing off at school and then frantically trying to make up, agonizing about dates, buying his first car, choosing what to study at university, and in general giving his long suffering family a hard time, and all of this while struggling between Eastern and Western worldviews. We meet some strange people he encountered in his attempts to become a Bruce Lee clone, such as the ominous Sensei O'Keefe, the rowdy and foul-mouthed master of the Chinese Boxing Institute, with his dreaded brainwave, "cemetery sparring". Apart from the stories of Salzman's various martial art experiences, some hilarious and some appalling, there are some well drawn scenes of his interaction with his father, who is described as a good natured pessimist, probably not a bad thing to be for someone forced to compete with the glamorous Bruce Lee for his son's affections. There is a lovely scene of his father listening to an outpouring of his son's existential angst. We get a picture of a gentle, mature man with a nice sense of irony. He must be proud now of how his son has turned out. Salzman has written four critically acclaimed novels, one of which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Review Award. He is a great storyteller and this book will not let you down.



5. In addition to a memoir, this book is an effective mediation on what it really means to master something. We see Salzman try to become a martial artist, and, later, a cello soloist, the first with considerable dedication, the latter with a certain amount of natural ability; in both cases, though, he eventually realizes that he just doesn't have what it takes to really master the discipline. In the case of Kung Fu, after three years of study, he encounters a drugged-out man who threatens him with a lead pipe. In spite of the fact that he could probably easily disarm him, Salzman's nerve fails him and he hands over his wallet. Later, with the cello, he gives up after seeing one performance by legendary cellist Yo Yo Ma. He ends up finding his greatest success as a mailboy for an attorney.

   One thing that struck me as interesting is that (I read somewhere) 'Kung Fu' refers to any human skill in Chinese (making a 'Kung Fu skills' redundant, like ATM machine); it's sort of a metaphor, then, for everything Salzman pursues.

   Another thing to note is that in spite of the subtitle 'growing up absurd in suburbia,' Salzman's martial arts training is astonishingly difficult. His teacher is a borderline psychopath who curses and hits his students (at one point he throws Mark against a trophy display case), and the school regularly practices full-range sparring with no protective equipment except for a cup, which is about as hardcore, comparatively, as playing the cello with the skin stripped off your fingers.

5 comments about Jesus Land: A Memoir.

1. This is just another memoir written for shock value. Just like "A Million Little Pieces" incidents are embellished and exaggerated to gain sympathy from the reader. It is not believable, and certainly not accurate. Reader Beware!



2. You will not be disappointed with this book; I was glued to it all weekend. I really admire Julia for her honesty and her courage to let the reader into her life. I can't begin to imagine how hard it was to write this memoir.



3. This book reduced me to tears at several points, probably because of my several shared experiences with the author. Jesus Land is the well written story of growing up under an oppressive, twisted, and abusive form of religion in America's Heartland. It's the story about how religion can bring out the best and the worst in people -- although mostly the latter is drawn out of the characters in this book.
   
   Scheeres story takes her from the Hoosier State to the Dominican Republic with only one constant in her life: her beloved brother, David, her adopted black brother. Not only is this memoir about the effect abusive religion can have on a young psyche, it's about the bond that develops between two people who go through that experience together.



4. Jesus Land is Julia Scheeres' memoir of her childhood, with the main theme being her relationship with her adopted brother David. It has witty prose and graphic reality, leaving you with the haunting feeling that there are places in the world where things are terribly wrong.
   
   The majority of the book is set in mid-80's rural Indiana. Julia lives with her father, who is a doctor, her stay at home mother, and her adopted brother David, who happens to be black. There is another adopted brother, Jerome, who occasionally makes appearances. Julia's parents are devoutly religious, preferring mission trips and Bible studies over their children.
   
   This is not a feel good book. Julia's father, who is absent through most of the book, beats Jerome and David. Jerome rapes Julia, yet her relationship with her parents is so bad that she feels she cannot tell them. There are frequent encounters with racism, as most people at the time were not comfortable with siblings of different races. David and Julia are shipped off to the Dominican Republic to attend Escuela Caribe, a fundamentalist school outside of U.S. government control for a reason. There they encounter more physical and psychological abuse, often reduced to animals in the way they are treated.
   
   But there is plenty of good to take away from this book. It is essentially the story of the love between David and Julia. It is hard to imagine two siblings being closer, especially considering what they had to endure. They were the same age, and nearly inseparable. They were even able to develop a code of "sign language" between them during the times they couldn't speak to each other at Escuela Caribe. There is also the opportunity to learn what a home looks like when love is absent and religious rules and traditions are used instead.
   
   I strongly recommend this book, but it is highly graphic. Be prepared to be confronted with real life, unfiltered and without apologies.



5. This is a memoir of a little girl's family that adopted two little black boys. The story is disturbing about the hatred and racism that she encountered as well as her two brothers. People were cruel to black people in the late seventies and early eighties in these small little towns in the north as well as the south. This story is set in Illinois. The family was highly religious as the mother spent most of her extra time corresponding with missionaries and her father was a doctor. The father was abusive to the little boys while he was merciful to his girl. But when the boys left home, one ran away and the other was sent away, his angry and wrath turned on Julia. The book recounts the time that her and her brother David spent months at a Christian reform camp. The book was painful for me to read. People hate with gladness. There is a big difference between being a Christian in action and appearance and being a Christian in heart. This book makes you sad at how people treat one another, how Christians treat one another, and how love of one another is the strongest bond in life. This book is a page turner, in the sense of hoping for a better result, a happy ending. The book ends, but you are left to provide happiness in your own life. You will watch how you treat people, that is where the happiness is in the book.

4 comments about My Brain is Hanging Upside Down.

1. The excruciating beauty of David Heatley's work lies in its truthfulness, both raw and tender, both harrowing and endearing. Like watching a Lars von Trier film in storyboard form, at times you'll wish you'd closed the book before it was too late -- but inevitably you won't. An astounding achievement.



2. We've watched David Heatley grow as an artist and as a person, and loved his work as he appeared in the NY Times, the New Yorker and numerous prestigious Comic Journals. His wonderful drawings - self and life-revealing - and his excellent prose invigorate and challenge, as they entertain and delight. This is Great work!! A must have book.
   
   MH



3. This graphic autobiography is a collection of David Heatley's comics that are darkly and explicitly funny. He leaves very little to the imagination as he takes us through his sex life (and eventually his love life), his relationships, good and bad, with people of other races, and his relationship with his parents and family.
   
   As an autobiography, the book gives us rare insight into the feelings and experience of another human being. It doesn't hold anything back, and doesn't let us as readers, either. You might put the book down in disgust after the first couple of pages, or read in mesmerized fascination as David alternately destroys and rebuilds his life. In neither case, will you be entirely comfortable. That is good. What David does brilliantly here is hold up the weakness and frailty of the human condition, then show us that it is possible to overcome it to be something more than what we were.
   
   The book is graphic in more than one sense. It is as much about the drawings as the text. They are simple but effective, but in many cases the subject matter is very sexually graphic-about what you would expect in a book in which one section is titled "Sex." He draws his characters as real human beings with or without their clothes. This is one comic book that you don't leave out for the children to see.
   
   As I read through My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down, a theme emerged of needing to ask ourselves the tough questions. What is sex? What is love? Why are they different? Am I a racist? Do I really know my Mom or Dad, or even myself?
   
   For those with an open mind, this book will help you ask these questions of yourself.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: Thought-provoking read.



4. 
   
   
   
   
   Biographies can be so interesting, and they run the full gamut from tragic to comic and everywhere inbetween. They can either move you, or bore you with their incessant, seemingly irrelevant details.
   
   
   That's how I find "My Brain is Upside Down". He divides the book into five sections, sex, race, mom, dad, and kin. Given the subject matter, it is probably the best way for Mr Heatley to chronicle his life. Each of the movements in the book are blunt, and to the point. However, as truthful as they are, they do not necessarily belong in a public forum.
   
   
   Graphically, the art teeters on the edge of underground. As a New York cartoonist, he is highly regarded, and his work draws raves from Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and Dan Painter. His op-ed pieces like "Thoughts on a Subway" are considered critical successes. As a long time comic/illustrated fiction reader, I would take issue with that. Largely, his panels are too small, and cluttered. Surprisingly, the clutered art matches the cluttered story telling, and that would be why this book works at the level it does.
   
   
   Mainstream comic readers will find this unappealing, while connossieurs of 'new york-underground' style will rave about it.
   
   
   Tim Lasiuta
   
   www.pantheonbooks.com
   
   

5 comments about Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family.

1. If you're ten pages in to Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family and you have not laughed out loud, then just go ahead and put the book away. You probably haven't creased it too much, and you can probably successfully re-gift it. But chances are you will be chuckling, snickering and even snorting in delight all the way through Catherine Newman's hysterically honest-to-the-bone memoir of her pregnancy with her second child.
   
   Newman relates the magical, green-tinged, anxious year before her second child's birth, as she shares her wildly contradictory feelings of motherhood ("a disorienting blur of love and crushing anxiety") and the guilt familiar to most parents that she surely is ruining her firstborn's life by having another baby. Newman's stream of consciousness writing style has a comfortable, easy effect on the reader. It's like talking to your lovingly kooky best-friend-since-childhood over tea and chocolate chip cookies (or, more likely, margaritas and, well, more margaritas). Newman is refreshingly real about the mixed bag of motherhood, warts, runny noses, sleepless nights and all. She writes, "I didn't understand that having a baby would feel like falling in love, but like falling in love on a bad acid trip. With an alarm clock - a pooping alarm clock."
   
   Newman's humor appeals to any parent who has woken with a start in the middle of the night, engaged in an internal struggle over whether it's necessary to check if the baby is breathing, decided she's crazy and should go back to sleep, and then gotten up anyway to just take one quick peek at the baby. But Newman takes checking on the baby to a whole new level as her unbridled paranoia about aneurisms, Coxsackie viruses, and the barfing flu runs rampant in a strangely self-satisfying way that makes one murmur, "At least I'm not that crazy." Yes, Newman is a worrier of the first order. She worries about leaving her son to go to the movies with her husband, she worries about her pregnancy, she worries about lackluster libidos and toxoplasmosis and fleshy arms and deadly pathogens. In other words, she is a completely typical mother.
   
   After all too many picture perfect images of mothers - from Mrs. Brady to anyone ever photographed for the magazine "Fit Pregnancy" - Newman's confessions are authentic, honest and reassuring. Throughout the seasons of her pregnancy, Newman holds up the mirror and shows us Everymother...and we just have to laugh.
   
   Quill says: Buy two copies because the person sitting next to you will want to know what's so funny!



2. Buy this book. I adore Catherine Newman and her writing. She's witty, insightful, and very candid about parenting. I've read her on-line for years now, but only just bought this book for a beach read this summer. She is more than honest, admitting more about parenting and it's highs and lows than most are willing to. She's admittedly neurotic, but in a delightful, funny, relateable way. She deals with some heavy issues in this book, and even though she is a very different parent than me, I can't help thinking she'd be a great friend to have. Her "black humor" reminds me very much of myself. This book had me laughing out loud on several occasions, and shedding a few tears too. I can't sing her praises enough.



3. This author is a riot. I love her writing- it's fantastic. I'm agast at how much her kids are like mine (or at least the older one)- its a little eerie. Here I thought my kids were unique and there they go and show up in this book! I am going to slip a highlighted version of this in my kids baby book and save myself some writing.
   
   One thing I think she touched on that I rarely see is how your feelings slighly change for your firstborn when the second comes along. Its hard to put your finger on but its so true that loving another child as you used to solely love them changes the dynamic a bit. Lets say youre suddenly diversified in your child love holdings. Plus with that second baby the first do appear suddenly giantic, loud and (sometimes) annoying. Poor kids. She is so right on.
   
   Anyway, love this book, so glad I was on a memoir kick- she rocks.



4. This book is great for anyone who is pregnant or has young children. Catherine Newman is great. She has this amazing way of taking all those tedious tasks we perform as parents and making them hysterical. She also reminds us what a blessing our little ones really are. I borrowed this book from the library, but I just had to have my own copy. I recommend this book to all my pregnant family members and friends!



5. I am seriously not even half way through this book but it has made me laugh to the point of almost falling off the exercise machine! I had to give it FIVE stars right away!
   
   Plain and simple it is a great truthful look at parenting one and than two kids. My husband told me I like this book so much because it is my voice written down - my thoughts, worries, parenting guffaws, etc... I love that I can laugh at her (which really means I am laughing at me) and I know that I am not alone in how I feel and do things at times. Personally, I need that and I love when I run across things that help me to feel that sense of there are others out there like me!
   
   I think that if you take this parenting job TOO seriously it will put you in the mad house and the people that wrote not so great reviews are missing the point which is that parenting is funny and tragic and worrisome; scary and soul searching, a growing up of sorts. This is not a HOW TO be a parent to a 2nd child book - they have those out there, buy those not this one for that stuff. This is simply just a look into a world that many of us live but do not write down (or cannot write down in such a humorous, truthful way!)
   
   Thanks for such an awesome book from a mommy due with her 2nd in August!

3 comments about Beside the Rio Hondo.

1. Phaedra Greenwood's memoir of her life in northern New Mexico. Set in an idyllic setting high over a small, gurgling river surrounded by green pasture lands and blessed by the constant sunlight in her rural landscape, she writes a moving story of a life that grew and evolved through hardship and heartbreak. It is a tribute to nature and the pleasure and peace she found in her adobe house and the extraordinary beauty that surrounds her.



2. If Henry David Thoreau had been a thoroughly self-reliant, hot-blooded woman with a taste for the Southwest instead of a chilly Yankee who went home to his mother's dinner table every night, he might have produced a book very much like this. Phaedra Greenwood's Walden is her beloved Rio Hondo in the mountains of New Mexico near Taos. Her hut is an old adobe built by descendants of the Spanish settlers who colonized Northern New Mexico starting in the 16th century.
   
   The book traces a year in Greenwood's life after she returns to the mountains following the breakup of her marriage. With no man, no income to speak of, and not yet enough homesteading skills to provide much security, Greenwood attaches herself to the land like a smudge of moss on a mountainside, and hangs on with a tenacity that is nothing short of heroic. Her whole life is a cliffhanger. It makes for a wild adventure story.
   
   But it is also a love story. Like Thoreau, Greenwood engages nature with a passion so embracing and intimate, the distance between the human and what she's observing sometimes disappears entirely. After tanning a deer hide, she writes, "I draped it over the trunk to dry; it stiffened to the rectangular shape and lay there all winter to remind me that I, too, am here to feed and nurture the land, to be consumed by it, invaded and conquered from within." The book is a work of high sensuality without having a single sex scene in it.
   
   Stylistically, Greenwood is in the minimalist tradition of the best nature writers. She just tells her story, with heart, humor, and simple but ravishing imagery. The writing never gets in the way of our getting to know her and the world she loves. She treats the reader as her friend, not her audience.
   
   "I can bear pain and loss," Greenwood writes. "What I can't bear is being imprisoned." Beside the Rio Hondo is the story of a journey toward freedom, a travelogue that takes you miles and miles without ever leaving the property. This poignant, unflinchingly honest, beautiful, and thoroughly absorbing book reminds us that if it's freedom you want, the only road that goes there is love.



3. Beside The Rio Hondo is a taut, beautifully realized work. The insightful foreword by Alexander Blackburn is a rarity. It is essential reading because it sets the tone, the sense of place and introduces the unique voice of Phaedra Greenwood.
   
   Beside The Rio Hondo is a powerful book. To try to put it in simple terms, it is the story of a woman who decided to accept her destiny, cast off the conventions of numbing social graces, to become a writer. But that is where the simplicity ends. This book is at once a biography, a historical review, a folklore guide, an environmental study and a profoundly touching text on how to survive without surrendering one's beliefs and sense of self-worth.
   
   The locus of Beside The Rio Hondo is Northern New Mexico, primarily in Arroyo Hondo, northwest of Taos. Within its magical pages, people, families and the entire community come to life. There are struggles over something so basic as water. As Ms. Greenwood writes, "Sin agua, no hay vida. Without water, there is no life."
   
   This book is rich with details about living in a rough-hewn landscape in the mountains, along side a river with cold winters, wild animals, and the comings and goings of friends and family. The darkest cloud for Phaedra Greenwood is something most people don't think about: SURVIVAL. Throughout the book she uses wit, intelligence and muscle to survive with little and at times no money.
   
   This is a uniquely honest book. Beside The Rio Hondo is written so well, with great style and insight, I often felt I was there with Ms. Greenwood as would swing over the river, go hunting with bow and arrow, splitting wood or dressing up to make an occasion trip to town.
   
   It is well worth a first read, and a second and third read, as well. It is a book you will want to keep with you for its history and its humanity.