Leafing Through Life is 5!

 

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away or maybe just five years ago right here, the blog you see before you now was born with an abysmal post that was filled with too many ellipses and seemed doubtful that I'd continue at this for five months, much less five years.  Now I count people I've never laid eyes upon in person to be my friends.  I've read and reviewed countless books.  I've been to BEA not once but twice and put some faces to some friends and made some new ones.  My TBR pile is out of control and filled with books I would never have picked up without some helpful nudging.  My e-mail box runneth over in a way that I could never even have imagined with messages from people who, for some reason, want me to review their books.

I have been challenged, I've read-along, and I've been totally overwhelmed by my Google Reader.  I've got a bookish wish list that could reach about to the moon and back.  I've stayed up late into the night reading and cheerleading for Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon (and will again soon!).  I've seen bloggers come and go (and stay and stay!) and the book blogosphere go from a place where, even if you didn't follow everyone, you at least knew most people's names to a community where I couldn't even dream of even being passingly familiar with half the members.   I've been exhilarated and exhausted by it all.  Such is the life of a book blogger, and it's been my pleasure to be one for five years.  Thanks so much to everybody who's stuck with me and my blog even when I haven't been uber-dependable, and thanks all for inspiring me with your own blogs, for your great tastes in books, for commenting here and generally making book blogging the best hobby a person could have

 

Enough with all the sentimental windbagging, though.  Honestly, usually I forget my blogiversary.  I think of it a few weeks too late and let it pass without fanfare.  Who wants to hear me wax poetic about book bloggerdom anyway?  But five years, though, that's major, right?  So, I figure it's time for a giveaway of a few of my favorite books.  What better way to celebrate all the great books blogging has brought my way and my fellow bloggers and friends who have helped keep me at it all this time?  A few weeks back, I wrote a Top Ten Tuesday featuring the best ten books I've read since I started book blogging.  I'd love to send 3 different winners a new copy of one of those books, so check out the post, which has links to my reviews of the ten chosen ones.  Pick one out and fill out the form (Look, I learned how to make a form!  Who says an old dog blogger can't learn new tricks?) below if you want to win. It's open internationally, as long as The Book Depository ships to your country, until 8 am EST on October 21st, when I'll announce the winners.  There are no special requirements to enter, but if you wanted to spread the word, I'd sure appreciate it.  I'd like to, you know, actually have 3 winners.  ;-)

 

 

 

The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman

The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman takes us into the 1930s world of Patience Murphy, recently certified midwife, as she attends to a growing number of mothers around her West Virginia home.  Patience's adventures as a country midwife give us a cross-section of the population: black, white, rich, poor, young, old, and even Amish.  Seeing the many ways women cope with the impending birth is fascinating.  Some scream and fight against it, others dance with their husbands, nearly carefree until the last moment.  Patience assists with all kinds of births, hurrying off to places unknown at any hour of the day or night, often receiving nothing but gratitude in return for her services during the hard times of the Depression.  Patience's frequent calls to attend at births keep up the pace of a book to brisk clip, but in between Harman is hard at work drawing out a complex character in Patience herself. 

Patience has a much richer history than at first meets the eye, and Harman slowly leads readers into the dark corners of the past that has had her on the run.  Patience is no stranger to heartbreak or to tragedy, but her experience has opened her up to viewing all kinds of people as no different than her, which makes her stick out like a sore thumb among the racist whites of West Virginia who don't take kindly to her setting up house with a black girl, her new birthing assistant, Bitsy.  As Patience faces threats and troubles from all sides, she finds herself an unexpected ally in Daniel Hester, the local veterinarian, who threatens to poke holes in the shield she has erected to fend off those who might be too curious about her mysterious past. 

Aside from some minor quibbles about the redundancy that occurs in the rhythm of the book (birth, memories, birth, more memories, birth...), I very much enjoyed The Midwife of Hope River.  Patricia Harman has knit together a community of mostly lovable yet very different characters from the well-off wife of a local coal baron to the older, wiser midwife to the black community who takes Patience under her wing.  At the center is Patience who is a strong and well-developed character in her own right but also a lens through which to view the times.  Patience's life has brought her into the paths of lesbians, flappers, workers unionizing to struggle for their rights, coal miners trying to scrape out a meager living, coal barons losing everything to the market crash, and various and sundry "ordinary" people who dot the West Virginia countryside making a living however they can.  Through Patience's lens, both the 1920s the Depression era are brought to life.

Patience is a captivating character who I easily fell in love with.  She is strong, capable, and stands up for her principles, doing what her heart tells her even when it's dangerous and possibly deadly.  The Midwife of Hope River is a quick read and absorbing piece of historical fiction.  Here's hoping that Patricia Harman has a few more historical midwives up her sleeve!

Thanks to the publisher, William Morrow Paperbacks, for providing me with a copy in exchange for my honest review.

We Sinners by Hanna Pylvainen

 You know what's great? When you sit down and write a review of a book, and looking back on it discover that you liked it even more than you thought you did.  We Sinners is just such a book.  I appreciated it while I was reading it, and read it fairly quickly, but by the end, I didn't love it, just that sort of meh feeling one gets when one doesn't have really positive or really negative feelings about a book.  Having sat down to review it, though, I can safely say that We Sinners had much more of an impact on me than I thought.  Honestly, this is one of the great things about writing book reviews, that upon further reflection you can much more out of it than you would if you just read a book and walked away.  This ever happen to you?

We Sinners by Hanna Pylvainen is the story of the large Rovaniemi clan, Warren and Pirjo, and their nine children.  More than that, though, it is the story of their faith, a fundamentalist version of Christianity that originated in Finland, Laestadianism.  (Hmm, if I'm trying to make this sound captivating, I'm failing, aren't I?  Give me a few minutes, I'll get there.)  The Rovaniemis' church is impressively strict, demanding that its congregants forgo dancing, TV watching, drinking, listening to popular music, and using birth control.  In the tradition of some evangelical churches, it relies on lay preachers rather than the formally educated and ordained.  The church community is small and insular, and rather more a main character in Pylvainen's story so central is it to her characters' lives.

In We Sinners, Pylvainen explores the Rovaniemi family member by member, from those who embrace their faith whole-heartedly to those who can't wait to escape to a world free from the narrow confines of it.  It probes the psyches of both parents who each question their dedication to God, Warren when he faces the possibility of being called upon to preach and Pirjo, when it seems like something so simple as a television set could derail her family's focus.  It follows the children as they explore the lives they've been effectively denied, dating boys outside the church, experimenting with drinking, finding themselves and being excommunicated from everything they've ever known because of the selves they find.  Some choose to leave, and some choose to embrace the church and the, strict, if comfortable way of life they have grown to appreciate.

Pylvainen's short novel is not short on profundity.  Many might choose to villify this church, but Pylvainen, instead, chooses to show a more balanced picture of the trials and rewards of faith and readers emerge on the other side of her narrative forced to decide for themselves which is the better way, if indeed there is one.  For some of the children, the comfort of living in a community with faith that they all have in common draws them in inexorably as they grow to adulthood.  For them, the longed for words of absolution become a comfort and a necessity.  Their large families rise up around them, for better or worse.  The others attempt to find solace in "worldly" relationships where it eludes them, they trade their family and faith for freedom, but find that freedom from their faith isn't all they ever dreamed.  All find themselves haunted by the faith of their childhood and, it seems, that none find exactly what they're looking for at the end of either path.

We Sinners is a quiet but powerful book that explores the vagaries of a commanding faith from inside and out.  Pylvainen's prose is stark but illuminating, shining a light on a topic that rarely gets so much balanced attention.  While Pylvainen briefly explores each of the family's members to great effect, the focus always remains on the fundamentalism that both unites and divides and how the choice to stay or to go always leaves someone standing on the other side of the glass wondering if they failed to choose the better way.  We Sinners' portrayal of faith might not be for everyone, but anyone who wants to understand what makes a fundamentalist Christian family tick would do well to give Pylvainen's thoughtful debut a look.

Thanks to the publisher (Henry Holt) for providing me with a copy in exchange for my honest revew.

Loose Leafing: All Good Things

Hola, everyone!  I have bad news, and I have good news.  The bad news, my wrists have been hurting me something fierce and making it hard to both work and blog.  Since my blog doesn't pay the bills, I've unfortunately forced to give most of my wrist endurance to my job, hence my missing the BBAW festivities of yesterweek and other assorted blogging.  The good news is, my poor, afflicted wrists seem to be getting their groove back, and I have returned to my oft neglected blog again.  (Hi, blog!)  The other bad news is I have to work more hours than normal this week, which doesn't leave an awful lot of time for my triumphant return to blogging, but I'm working with the time I've got, and I'm happy to say I've been making lemonade of my lemons lately and mostly enjoying life despite the working and the wrist problems.

For example, I've been reading and really enjoying it.  I liked The Stand, but I've gotta say, reading it all summer really started to feel like work.  It's been nice to actually start and finish a few books.  First, I read Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan for a blog tour.  I was a little nervous about it at first, but I'm pretty sure that for the moment, it's my favorite book of the year!  (P.S. There's still a little time to enter my giveaway for the book if you haven't yet.  Have I mentioned how great it is?).  Then I read The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman and really enjoyed that one, too.  Review to come.  For my current read, I randomly chose a book from my shelves (my shelves!  I remember them, there are various and sundry great books there that are even more neglected than my blog!  Horrors!) and ended up with Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg which is the type of memoir Augusten Burroughs made famous.  A train wreck memoir, if you will, wherein you are frankly disturbed by the things you're reading, but it's well-written and you can't seem to look away.  After that, I think I'll be ready to tackle Broken Harbor by Tana French which has been patiently waiting for me. 

In between all the reading, I have been enjoying an annual trip to Hersheypark with my younger cousin.  We are the only children of our respective families, and he's kind of like my fake little brother that I don't spend quite enough time with for him to be annoying to me like a real little brother, so I've been pleased to make our Hershey trip an annual tradition so neither of us have to be the "single riders" that have to load in the middle of the roller coaster trains.  ;-)  Yesterday we even (accidentally) dressed alike in bright yellow/green shirts, shorts/pants with many pockets, and grey shoes.  We rode almost all the roller coasters, him being much more daring than I was at his age (thankfully), and purchased an outlandish amount of chocolate, and I plan to be irritated for only a little while longer that I had to pay $12 simply to park my car.  Twelve dollars!  That new roller coaster must have cost them a fortune (which was totally worth it - we rode it twice!) for them to be going in for this kind of highway robbery.  Ah, but don't they know that if they charge me like four fewer dollars to park, I will then buy that much more chocolate and they still get all my money anyway, without my having to tell everyone I know how I've been so wronged.  Less parking, more chocolate!  Do you think I could get people to picket with me?  Make Kisses, not dollars!  (Um, I'll keep my day job.)

While not reading/riding roller coasters/complaining about things I have no control over, I've been pleased to watch the Bloomsburg fairgrounds being populated with all sorts of rides and food stands and awesomeness.  The last week of the month our little town plays host to the biggest fair (I'm told) in Pennsylvania.  Last year, our town played host to the biggest flood of the Susquehanna River in a century, causing the cancellation of the fair, so I am looking forward to it twice as much which is a really really really lot.  I am super-stoked that next week at this time I could very well be stuffing my face with the many delicious deep-fried things (if I am not already full of delicious deep-fried things and sitting at home contemplating my clogging arteries), ogling the largest pumpkin in the tri-county area, and hopefully winning the candy game or a gold fish or a big stuffed animal or something.  People around here live for the fair, and so do I! 

So, how's life in your neck of the woods?  Have I been missing anything exciting (excepting the obvious) during my temporary vacation from the blogosphere?

Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan (Review and Giveaway)

Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan totally took me by surprise.  When I was offered a spot on its blog tour, I took quite a while to decide in the affirmative.  Its blurb makes it sound like more of a mystery/thriller than the literary fiction I seem to prefer (actually, it's quite literary, thank you very much).  It's from a Canadian publisher that, as far as I know, is new to me (but maybe just because I live in a hole). I had no idea Newfoundland had a dialect (see above RE: hole dwelling), but apparently it does, and so, therefore, does the book (hit or miss much?).  I worried so much that I wasn't going to like it, and I was selling out my quest to take no chances with review copies.  Getting to the point, though, I need not have worried.  This might well be the best stuff of my reading year!

And Wilda considered then they weren't as fragile as she often imagined.  They weren't made of thin clear glass.  If she opened her hands, let them go, they wouldn't shatter on the floor.  Surely, they wouldn't.  In the golden moonlight, she saw that each one was just enough for the other.

In the opening pages of Glass Boys, abusive, angry Eli Fagan, discovers his stepson, Garrett, is hiding an unspeakable secret.  At the same time, Lewis Trench, the newly appointed constable of Knife's Point, Newfoundland and his brother Roy are getting drunk on potato whiskey.  The two families cross paths in one fateful, accidental moment, and Roy Trench is killed.  The incident is ruled an accident.  Eli Fagan returns to his wife and stepson and eventually has two daughters.  Lewis Trench meets a woman in a curio shop after the trial and takes her home to Knife's Point to be his wife. The couple have a pair of sons, sensitive, eager to please Melvin, and Toby, a less thoughtful but more enthusiastic boy.  Though the two families attempt to avoid each other and their shared sordid past, the past can't be escaped, and the years never seem to ease the pain and anger between the two men, until the incident's echoes reverberate into a new generation.

Glass Boys takes some getting used to.  For starters, Newfoundland has a dialect and Lundrigan has taken care to reflect it in her writing.  There are s's on the ends of words where every fiber of a sensible reader's being supposes there shouldn't be.  Lundrigan's prose relies on sentence fragments for emphasis.  The first few chapters are, as a result, confusing and a little hard to digest.

Once the first few chapters are past, however, a profound, if dark, multi-layered story emerges.  Lundrigan's characters are richly drawn and haunted by the secrets of their respective pasts which are spread out before us like a breadcrumb trail to an unexpected destination.  Lundrigan's story is undeniably gritty and doesn't shy away from the worst things the human heart has to offer, but at the same time, just the tiniest trace of magic runs through Lundrigan's tale, just a tiny trace of hope that the younger generation might just be able to untangle the knot of hate that binds the two families together, however they might try to avoid its legacy.  The feeling that redemption seems to always lie only a page away makes this literary work unputdownable.

Despite its darkness, Glass Boys is likely my favorite read of the year thus far.  Lundrigan's story is, at times, hard to read, simply because of its subject matter, but she gives voice to her characters so well that even when they are flawed and loathesome, they still attract our sympathy, except, of course, for the one that doesn't quite.  Mostly male characters figure in Glass Boys, and Lundrigan proves herself remarkably adept at portraying thoughts, feelings, and actions even from across the gender divide.  In my experience dark stories rarely have satisfying ends, but Lundrigan defied my experience ending the book in a way that doesn't trivialize the rest of her story by wrapping up too easily but also doesn't neglect the catharsis we crave after having our hearts broken along with the characters we've come to care for deeply.  Highly, highly recommended.

(Disclaimer:  I was provided with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.)

Seriously, I'm so impressed with this book, ergo I was very excited to find out that the author's publicist is providing a copy for me to give away.  This will help me get started in my quest to get everyone to read this book. ;-)

If you'd like to win a copy, and have a US or Canada address (no PO boxes), please leave a comment with your e-mail address by 9/17, midnight EST.  I'll draw a name at random, and e-mail the winner. (And next time I'll learn to use one of those fun Google Docs forms.  Promise.)