The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose

Although you’ll have to venture into the Youth or Young Adult section of your bookstore or library to find Phillip Hoose’s The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, this narrative history of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is engaging and informative for readers of all ages. Beginning with a vivid account of ornithologist Alexander Wilson’s memorable 1809 encounter with a wounded woodpecker, Hoose chronicles how the elusive Ivory Bill became increasingly rare as its southern habitat shrank under the logger’s axe. As bird plumes came into fashion and natural history collectors clamored for exotic specimens, the Ivory Bill became increasingly rare and increasingly valuable, a species that embodied the cravings of our culture. Now that the presence of at least one living Ivory Bill has been been confirmed, Hoose’s book offers a wonderful background to the ecological circumstances that pushed the species onto such a precarious perch. Richly illustrated with black-and-white photos, artworks, and range maps, The Race to Save the Lord God Bird is a great book for youthful readers and the grown-ups who care for them.

 

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

This year’s KSC Summer Reading Program selection is Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, which recounts Dr. Paul Farmer’s quest to rid the world of infectious disease. After enjoying the nuanced portrait of Northampton, MA that Kidder painted in Home Town, I was eager to read his profile of Dr. Farmer, who divides his time between Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a non-profit clinic he established in Haiti. Three chapters into the book, I’m intrigued by Farmer’s monk-like devotion to his work as well as the adoration bestowed upon him by the poor Haitians who consider his dedication and healing art to be a mix of sainthood and sorcery. I hope next fall’s incoming freshmen will enjoy the book as much as I am.

 

Always the last to know?

Several kalpas ago (or so it seems), everyone in the blogosphere (or so it seemed) was doing this little “pass the stick” book meme. I, of course, never got passed that stick, thereby reliving both my elementary school days when I was inevitable chosen last for kickball and my high school days when, at my prom after-party, a bunch of my classmates passed around a joint but didn’t even ask if I, Little Miss Straight-A Goody-Two-Shoes, wanted to partake.

(Yes, it’s true. I’ve never smoked even a cigarette, much less a joint. The Most Outrageous thing I did at my prom after-party was steal a couple illicit sips from someone else’s beer. I’m probably the only person in America who could cleanly run for political office, the opposing party being entirely unable to find any Youthful Indiscretions to pin on me.)

Anyhow, now that the aforementioned Book Meme is so last month, I finally got passed the stick, thanks to ever-intrepid Pinko Feminist Hellcat, who mentioned Little Ol’ Me when she participated in the “Everyone’s Doing It” book meme. Now, I’ve actually met the Hellcat…in fact, I met her in person before I’d ever read her blog. (Truth be told, I decided to blogroll her site unseen after she complimented me on the sandals I was wearing to a friend’s cookout last summer. I might be a Goody-Two-Shoes…but like any girly-girl, I take pride in those shoes!) But apart from the fact that I’ve met her and she’s the one who finally picked me for the blogosphere’s equivalent of kickball, I simply love referring to someone named Pinko Feminist Hellcat. (Really, you should try it: I dare you. Try to work the name “Pinko Feminist Hellcat” three times into casual conversation today and see how fabulous it feels: “I read on Pinko Feminist Hellcat…” or “My friend Pinko Feminist Hellcat…” or “My personal savior and goddess Pinko Feminist Hellcat…” Fabulous, isn’t it?)

Anyhow, here (after kalpas of anticipation) is my contribution to the infamous Book Meme.

• You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be? I’m smart enough to recognize this as a trick question. If I were stuck in Fahrenheit 451, I would be…Fahrenheit 451. Next question?(In all seriousness, I’ve actually not read Fahrenheit 451, which is remarkable since in high school I was a great fan of Ray Bradbury’s short stories. I gather from other people doing this meme, though, that the question refers to people in the book chosing to memorize books that otherwise would be destroyed by the “Firemen” in charge of ridding the world of immoral literature. So if I had to memorize a book doomed to extinction, I suppose it would be Marilynn Robinson’s Housekeeping, which is one of my all time favorite novels. It seems I already have pieces and parts of this book woven in my head like poetry, so memorizing it would be the next step. (And no, I haven’t yet read Robinson’s Gilead…but it’s on top of my summer book pile.)
• Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? No, actually…does that mean I’m not really a dyed-in-the-wool bookworm? (sigh…)Instead of developing crushes on fictional characters, I typically am not swayed by book romances. Whenever a heroine “bags her man” and gets married at the end of a book, I’m usually woefully disappointed: in fact, one of my favorite novels goes against the usual Marriage Plot by having the female protagonist die unexpectedly rather than marrying the bland nincompoop she’d foolishly gotten engaged to. (If you’re not afraid of literary spoilers, click here to see which novel I’m referring to. Or click here to see another book-fave in which the female protagonist chooses to sacrifice herself to a hungry lion rather than continuing to live with a pompous and serially adulterous jerk. To the lions, I say!)

  In all seriousness, I think the conventional Marriage Plot is my single most hated literary trick of them all. I loved Middlemarch until Dorothea got married (twice!) to jerks who weren’t good enough for her, and of all the outrageous lines in English literature, the one that maddens me most is that doozy from Jane Eyre: “Reader, I married him!” What?!? Marrying an egomaniacal asshole who keeps his first wife locked in the attic is supposed to be a Happily Ever After ending? You won’t see Pinko Feminist Hellcat doing that!

  (See? Already I feel fabulous…)

• The last book you bought is? The last four books I bought were
  Gail Sheehy’s Middletown, America: One Town’s Passage from Trauma to Hope,

  Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue,

  Jonathan Raban’s Waxwings: A Novel, and

  Marlo Thomas’s The Right Words at the Right Time.

  All of these titles were remaindered at the Boston Buck-a-Book’s going-out-of-business sale. Even though it was a going-out-of-business sale, I had to pay a full buck for each, which seems outrageous to me: in a store called Buck-a-Book, shouldn’t on-sale books be less than a dollar? But alas, each of these hardcovers had been originally tagged at $5.00, which makes me understand, perhaps, why Buck-a-Book is going out of business, given their false advertising and all.

• What are you currently reading? I’m still reading (and loving) Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, which I’ve commented on here.
• Five books you would take to a deserted island: Okay, this is another question that is worded in an interesting fashion, since the question asks for five books, not five titles. So if I choose editions that contain several books in one volume, I can bring an entire library to that island. So after much thought, I’ve decided the volumes I’d bring would be Library of America editions of the following:
  Henry David Thoreau’s major works, including A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden, Maine Woods, and Cape Cod.

  Willa Cather’s early novels and stories, which happily includes O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia.

  Flannery O’Connor’s collected works, which includes A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge.

  William Faulkner’s 1930-1935 novels, which includes As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, and Light in August, and

  this edition of Herman Melville, which includes Redburn, White Jacket, and Moby-Dick.

  If that collection of classics doesn’t keep me busy on that deserted island, I don’t know what would.

• Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why? Well, first I need to remember who on my blogroll hasn’t participated in this meme… I think I’ll pick Shane because his entry on reading Stephen King as a youngster cracked me up, that girl because she’s well-read and is not afraid (in true Pinko Feminist Hellcat fashion) to tell you what she really thinks, and Kevin because he’s a sharp-eyed critic and a fan of Camille Paglia, whose new book I’m itching to read.

So…there you have it: my contribution to the (once) ever-popular Book Meme. “This is Lorianne’s brain, and this is Lorianne’s brain on books. Any questions?”

 

Odds & ends

Last night I went to see Kathleen at her new place of employment. If you know Kathleen, you’ll be happy to hear that this new job no longer requires bartenders and waitstaff to wear tuxedo shirts and bow-ties. Instead, Kathleen and her co-workers now wear white oxford-style shirts over colored tank tops, thereby guaranteeing extra tips when any of the ladies bends over and provides male patrons with an extra-special “view.”

Kathleen has been working an insane schedule (and working wounded to boot), so she hasn’t had much time to post any of her beloved “overheard at work” anecdotes. (And believe me, she has some doozies to share.) So in the spirit of Overheard in New York and Overheard in Dublin (both of which that girl alluded to in a recent post), here is my contribution to Overheard at Kathleen’s Workplace:

Bud-Drinker, to another bar patron several seats down: “Yeah, now that the Pope’s dead, I’m next in line, so I gotta make sure I get to church in the morning.”
Unintelligible response from Other Bar Patron.
Bud-Drinker: “Yeah, I’m gonna be the first Irish Pope!”

With this, His Irish Eminence slumped off his barstool, paid his tab and tip with pocket change, and staggered out the door.

(Earlier, His Holiness had mentioned to a newcomer that this was only his second time at Kathleen’s new work place…but she later remarked that he’s in there every night. Hmmm, I guess it’s nerve-wracking to wait for bells, white smoke, and a phone call from the Vatican.)

In other random odds & ends, lately I’ve been trying to do more pleasure reading. If you’ve skimmed my blog sidebar lately, you might have noticed that I stopped using AllConsuming for my “Now Reading” list. After many months of bewailing AllConsuming’s general slowness and frequent downtimes, I decided to hard-code my reading list with direct image links to Amazon.com. On the downside, this means you no longer can click to read the book-blurbs I used to post on AllConsuming. To compensate, I’ve decided to post occasional Book Notes in which I blog about whatever happens to be on top of the current book pile.

(You might have also noticed that I’ve added sidebar links to my Recommended Reading lists, where I’ve posted short reviews of some of my all-time favorite reads. Sometime soon–probably after the semester ends in May–I want to add a list of my favorite Zen books: think something along the line of “Zen Mama said, ‘Just Read It!”")

Anyhow, I’ve been trying to do more pleasure reading lately. At any given time, I’m partway through a handful of books: usually an odd mix of fiction, nonfiction, serious and more “light” reading. When you read for a living, it’s sometimes difficult to “downshift” into pleasure reading mode, so I usually have several books simmering on the cerebral stovetop. Depending on my mood at the moment, I can pick up whatever book fits the bill.

My current front-burner is a book I started only a couple of days ago: Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Months ago when I first visited Kathleen at her old workplace, the guy sitting next to me at the bar was reading this book and highly recommended it, so when I saw a cheap hardback copy at the Keene Public Library’s annual booksale, I thought I’d give it a go. Like Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, Sebold’s novel captivated me from the very first page, where 14-year-old Susie Salmon, narrating from heaven, quite calmly explains how she was murdered on December 6, 1973. Although I’m not far into the book, choosing to read it slowly rather than ravenously, it has held me entirely engrossed as Susie recounts the events of her murder and her experience of heaven, where she shares a duplex with a roommate and spends a great deal of time observing her family’s grief (and the authorities’ confusion) in the wake of her killing.

If you too are reading (or have recently read) something you can’t put down and think others might love, leave me a comment. I’m always looking for new additions for the reading pile, so it’s good to chat books across the blogosphere.

Lastly (and entirely un-relatedly), I snapped these pictures of a pair of pink capri pants outside a local consignment shop. Although I’m not the type to wear pink capris, if I were, I’d certainly choose a pair adorned with martini-swilling froggies. Now that spring has arrived in Keene, the spring peepers–tiny frogs about the size of this one–are calling (and breeding) in local ponds and vernal pools. It’s fun to think that this annual amphibian meet-and-greet might be fueled by lots of martinis or maybe even a couple of bought-with-pocket-change Budweisers. “Come here often, sweetheart,” says Mr. Frog to an alluring lady. “Only every spring, peep-creep!” It ain’t exactly Overheard in New York, but it’s what’s goin’ on in the ponds and puddles of southern New Hampshire, guaranteed.

 

The Strangler Fig & Other Tales: Field Notes of a Conservationist by Mary A. Hood

Mary A. Hood’s collection of ecological essays, The Strangler Fig & Other Tales: Field Notes of a Conservationist, begins with a hunting story she’d heard her father recount when she was a child. The experience of eavesdropping on her father’s storytelling while her mother cleaned the kitchen led Hood to a lifelong question: are women fated to tell stories around the sink while their husbands, brothers, and fathers are the only ones allowed and encouraged to venture out into the wild world? Hood’s collection of nature “tales” suggests that she’s followed in her father’s footsteps, exploring the world at large with the wide-eyed curiosity of a poet and the sharp attention to detail of a scientist.

 

Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life by Debbie Ford

Ever since my ex-husband and I separated last summer, I’ve seen this transition as being an opportunity for growth: a second chance. At the same time, though, I sometimes struggle with the shame of feeling like I “failed” to make my marriage work. Debbie Ford’s Spiritual Divorce posits that divorce can be a transformative experience, so I’m reading her book with the hope that all experiences–even painful ones–can be leveraged to positive ends.

 

Letters to a Spiritual Seeker by Henry David Thoreau

I just began this new collection of old letters from Henry David Thoreau to his friend Harrison Blake, who in 1848 had written Thoreau asking for spiritual guidance. As a long-time Thoreau fan, I’m looking forward to learning more about his spiritual beliefs as revealed in the 50 letters he wrote to Blake over more than a dozen years.

 

God Is My Broker: A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spirtual and Financial Growth by Brother Ty, Christopher Buckley, and John Tierney

I am, I must admit, a sucker for self-help books, my Inner Optimist being ever-hopeful that my Self can be Helped. This being said, my Inner Cynic is enjoying God is My Broker, which wryly skewers financial self-help books such as Deepak Chopra’s Creating Abundance. Although I can’t say God is My Broker is helping my bottom line, so far it’s been good for more than a couple of giggles.

 

Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

I usually don’t like books about writing: it’s too easy to waste your time reading about writing. When I decided to attempt last year’s NaNoWriMo challenge, though, I began reading Pen on Fire as a way of keeping my typing fingers moving. The chapters are short, and the emphasis is on frequent bursts of writing, with suggested exercises you can do in fifteen minutes.

 

Buddha by Karen Armstrong

After not having read Armstrong’s other theological tomes, I happened upon her biography of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. Armstong is not a practicing Buddhist, so her biography is respectful but not reverent, tracing the scant facts of the Buddha’s life while putting his teaching into its larger historical context.