Non-Fiction: Becoming Normal by Mark Edick

If the concepts of recovery and fitting in and being normal do not resonate for you, chances are Becoming Normal (Central Recovery Press) is not a book that needs to be added to your shelves. The audience for this book is quite specific, but it’s also large and mostly under-serviced. The central theme in this personal memoir is learning how to regain your life and re-find your way after addiction. It is, in a way, beyond recovery, which is actually the very first steps.

Becoming Normal is a self-portrait of someone successfully and simply working their program day by day. The beauty comes in the poignant way Edick relates his recovery: one day at a time.

For me, normal once meant drinking and drugging. Mood- and mind-altering substances, including alcohol, brought me to my knees. My addiction had many manifestations, but a single common thread. Its power lay in what I thought of myself, what I thought others thought of me, and my reaction to what I was thinking. This is my story -- how I went from being a drunk to being someone who chooses not to drink. My story is about my old idea of normal and how, through recovery, I was able to define and re-create my new understanding of what I believe normal is.

There is a certain peaceful clarity in Edick’s voice. Those who struggle with the issues covered here might find comfort in Edick’s calm and simple telling of his personal struggle.

Cookbooks: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen by Yuan Wang, Warren Sheir, Mika Ono

You are what you eat. If we take this saying literally, it would appear that Western culture is lost. Mountains of fast food hamburgers, masses of brown food deep-fried beyond recognition. If we are what we eat, we’re in trouble.

In Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen (Da Capo) this old phrase might take on a whole new meaning. The book is predicated on the idea that not only are we what we eat, we can control our health and longevity pretty closely based on what we put in our bodies. A sidebar to one of the recipes in the book encapsulates the difference in philosophies quite clearly:

Often in the West, people are told only what foods they should not be eating -- don’t eat sugar, don’t eat beef, don’t eat saturated fat -- rather than what foods they should be eating.

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen is a complete cookbook that corrects that oversight. From the introduction:

Eastern traditions are not part of the Western lifestyle. We go to yoga classes after work, use feng shui to create a welcoming space in our living room, and consult an acupuncturist to relieve our lingering shoulder pain. Yet parts of the Eastern tradition are still to be discovered in the West. One of these is the potential of Chinese herbs to promote health and longevity through everyday cooking.

The resulting book is a revelation. Over 150 delicious and curative recipes that, considered in a deliberate way can be part of your personal health program. Or use the book to enhance your repertoire of healthful, organic foods and, though it’s not a vegetarian cookbook, a very high percentage of the included recipes are either vegan or vegetarian.

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen is a deeply interesting book. One that, given the right set of circumstances and half a chance, could change your life.

Fiction: Deloume Road by Matthew Hooten

Debut novelist Matthew Hooten’s Deloume Road (Knopf Canada) is imaginative, masterful, ambitious and occasionally cloying. It’s a startling combination and one that, for this reader anyway, never quite gelled.

Told in three time segments and one location -- the title’s Deloume Road, a Vancouver Island backroad with a community connection. While Hooten lives on Vancouver Island and was raised there, he completed a Masters in creative writing at Bath Spa University in England. While he was there, Deloume Road was awarded the Greene & Heaton Prize for the best novel to emerge from the program.

While much of Deloume Road is smooth and lovely, the artful metaphors Hooten reaches for are sometimes just a little too much and, likewise, description sometimes moves from descriptive to a place slightly beyond.

I was put on alert in the book’s first paragraph, where a child is described as having “cobalt eyes.” While an argument against the possibility of eyes that color can be made, it is the fact that the writer felt the need to include them that I found bothersome. It feels like athleticism for the sake of showing how high one can jump where, to my mind, the purpose of description is to help grow the reader’s understanding of the picture.

Aside from this quibble with Hooten’s airs above the ground, Deloume Road really is quite fantastic. A complicated arc is wound within a story that on the surface appears simple... and that I describe only in very broad terms for fear of giving some of the delight away.

Deloume Road is part of Random House Canada’s New Face of Fiction program which has, since 1996, discovered a remarkably good crop of young authors, Yann Martel, Lori Lansens, Timothy Taylor and Ann-Marie MacDonald among them. Will Matthew Hooten come to be one of the sharply remarked of this group? Time will tell.

Fiction: Unforgivable by Philippe Djian

Described by the publisher as a literary thriller, French author Philippe Djian’s Unforgivable (Simon and Schuster) is definitely more the former than the latter, especially if pace and level of introspection is anything to go by.

Skillfully translated from the French by Euan Cameron, Unforgivable brings us into the life of Francis, a 60-year-old writer dealing with the disappearance of his daughter and the possible infidelity of his wife and muses, in a sense, on the very nature of forgiveness... and where it might be lacking.

Unforgivable was first published in France in 2009, where it was awarded the Le Prix Jean Freustié. The director André Téchiné (The Girl on the Train, Les Témoins) will begin work on a film version of Djian’s novel later this year.

Unforgivable is spare and lovely, a beautifully rendered portrait of a man in despair.

Cookbooks: Atlanta Kitchens by Krista Reese

Nothing speaks as clearly about a place as the food created there. That’s one of the things both wonderful and disappointing about food writer Krista Reese’s Atlanta Kitchens: Recipes from Atlanta’s Best Restaurants (Gibbs Smith). Wonderful because the book seems to perfectly reflect the duality of contemporary Atlanta’s nature. It’s a Southern city, of course, with Southern roots and mores. But it is also a city that has become very concerned with its place in the modern world, in all ways. And so, appropriately enough, Atlanta Kitchens reflects all of that.

Reese is the perfect tour guide for this particular trip. She is an Atlanta-based cookbook author and restaurant critic who has been writing about the food and restaurants of the city for two decades. She begins with a history of restaurants in Atlanta then, in the cookbook portion of the tour, brings a really good cross-section of recipes from some of Atlanta’s top restaurants.

While much of the food in the book could come out of a good restaurant kitchen anywhere in the country, there are some things that just seem so perfectly Atlanta, their presence alone seems to make the book complete. Wahoo! Chef Scott Warren’s Grill Pork Chops with Mustard Compote and Roasted Sweet Potatoes, for instance. Or Gravity Pub’s Vandross Burger. The big secrets here? Cheese, applewood smoked bacon and a Krispy Kreme doughnut “bun.” (Here’s cookbook direction you’re not likely to see again: “Slice each doughnut and toast the halves. Place the burgers between the toasted doughnuts, with the sugar-glazed side facing the meat. Serve immediately.”) I love the beauty and simplicity of Mary Mac’s Tearoom’s Turnip Greens and Cornbread Muffins, here given a delightfully upscale presentation. And, unsurprisingly, there is a whole chapter that deals with mostly fried, but sometimes smothered chicken.

Though this is a well executed cookbook on every level, it will appeal especially to residents of Atlanta, or those homesick for the place, as well as aficionados of contemporary Southern cooking.

Non-Fiction: Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell

In 2003, a group of highly skilled Italian thieves broke into an airtight and crack proof vault in Antwerp, Belgium. It’s estimated that they got away with close to half a billion dollars in diamonds, gold and other precious and valuable loot. Estimated, that is, because none of the haul was ever recovered.

From one end to the other, Flawless (Union Square) is a remarkable story. First of all it was Antwerp, where of all the cities in the world, they take their diamonds -- and diamond protection -- pretty darn seriously. And second (though there is so much more) it’s told by a fantastically qualified duo: Harvard law school graduate and diamond expert Scott Andrew Selby and author and journalist Greg Campbell. Campbell not so coincidentally wrote the fantastic Blood Diamonds, later made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

The resulting book is breathtaking. Most fiction is nowhere near this exciting. This is a book I predict you’ll be hearing a lot about in the months to come.

A neat bonus: you won’t get the full impact here online, but Flawless sports a fantastic -- even flawless -- cover. Even if you don’t buy this book, trundle off to your favorite booksellers just to have an up close and personal look. It’s really gorgeous: and does justice to a book you won’t soon forget.

Mark Twain Anniversary Approaches

With the 100 year anniversary of the death of Mark Twain coming up on April 10, look for armloads of books to be published or republished with a Twainish theme between now and then. A couple of good ones recently became available from The Library of America.

The Mark Twain Anthology collects the work of great writers on the topic of Twain. “Several of Mark Twain’s books are bound to survive,” George Orwell opined, “because they contain invaluable social history.”

“Mark Twain put his voice on paper,” Ursula K. Le Guin said with typical elegance, “with a fidelity and vitality that makes electronic recordings seem crude and quaint.”

The book collects the words of many skilled and famed wordsmiths: Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Helen Keller, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, Erica Jong, Gore Vidal, Toni Morrison, Barack Obama and many others all under one cover and collected on this single topic by acclaimed Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin.

Also out this month from The Library of America, Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travel. The book collects some of Twain’s best loved travel writing, including A Tramp Abroad from 1880, an account of 16-months of travels in Europe with his family and includes the author’s own sketches. The work also restores passages originally deemed too provocative for contemporary audiences by Twain’s publisher and his wife. Edited by Roy Blount. Jr., the book collects some of the master travel writer’s very best work.

Non-Fiction: The Power of Half by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

The story will not be completely unfamiliar to you: you’ve heard versions of it before.

A family of some wealth and relative western privilege chuck it all -- or, at least, a bunch of it -- in order to make their lives more meaningful by giving back. The big difference in the Salwen family’s story is dad, Kevin: a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal for close to two decades. Salwen Senior knows when he’s looking at a story and knows what to do with it when he is. That’s not to take anything away from the considerations and sacrifices the Salwens have, as a family, made. Rather it’s intended to underline a significant difference between this and other somewhat similar tales: this one is well and concisely told. Here we feel the mood as the Salwen’s, unknowingly, prepare for their adventure:

As we drove from activity to activity, the TV in the back seat kept the kids entertained -- and our family from connecting. At dinner, conversations began to center on to-do lists instead of meaningful dialogue. Our sense of togetherness was beginning to erode. I can't pinpoint the moment it happened because, after all, erosion is so much harder to recognize than earthquake damage.

You see? Absolutely terrific stuff. There are many of these moments in The Power of Half (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Moments of recognition and transformation. And what begins as what Salwen calls erosion leads to change. Magnificent change. They sold their large home in Atlanta -- the one they had thought was the house of their dreams -- and gave half the money to charity. Which charities -- and how, as a family, the Salwens chose them -- make up the bulk of The Power of Half. And the subtext is key, as well: it’s a journey of giving and, long before the final page is turned, you feel the power that taking these steps together has brought to this family. It’s a thought-provoking book. One that makes you realize that very few of us ever really do enough.

Children’s Books: Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Readers 12 and up who have a taste for history and adventure will enjoy veteran children’s author Gary Paulsen’s Woods Runner (Wendy Lamb Books). Woods Runner is a boy’s eye view of the Revolutionary War.

Thirteen-year-old Samuel returns home from hunting to discover war has come to his valley: his neighbors have been killed and his parents are missing. Samuel takes to the woods to track the soldiers who have taken his family. It’s a journey that at times seems headed for sure disaster.

Paulsen is the three time Newbery award-winning author of 175 novels. “I had a wonderful time writing this book,” Paulsen wrote about the creation of Woods Runner. "So much so that, at times, I'd look up from my computer and be startled to find myself in my office. I was so much a part of the woods in my head that I could smell the pine and feel the breeze on my face and it would come as a jolt to leave Samuel's world and find myself back in my own.”

That clarity of vision comes through on every page of Woods Runner. It is easy to lose yourself in the perfectly realized past that Paulsen has here created for us.

Non-Fiction: The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr by Ken Gormley

Sometimes while reading author and professor Ken Gormley’s look at the Clinton/Starr scandals of the 1990s, I just wanted to take a shower. The Death of American Virtue (Crown) promises to be the “final word on the Clinton/Starr struggle” and while one might hope that could be true, I doubt it.

While The Death of American Virtue promises all sorts of new material, one just gets the feeling of more of the same. And, sure: many of the nuances might be new but, in the big picture, while you read you just get the feeling that you’ve been down this road before.

This is the part of this piece where I should clue you in to what “Clinton vs. Starr” was, just in case you missed it but, to be honest, I just don’t have the heart. So many miles have been covered since then, so many bridges built and burnt. How is any of this even relevant anymore? Suffice to say that, if you have to ask about it, you are unlikely to be terribly interested in this rather long-winded book. And if you do find yourself riveted or incensed once more, think again. So many miles, so much distance, a whole different page in our brand new world.

Biography: Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright

Clarrisa Dickson Wright is one half of British television’s Two Fat Ladies cooking team. When her autobiography was first published in the UK in 2007, it was met with wide acclaim. It’s not hard to see why.

The first official U.S. edition becomes available this month from Overlook Press and it’s a surprisingly complete book. In a way, Spilling the Beans has everything: fame, celebrity, addiction, heartbreak... and, of course, food. Lots and lots of food.

The only reason I can think of that it’s taken this long for Spilling the Beans to get to this side of the water is the very real possibility that a lot of people in the U.S. have never heard of Two Fat Ladies, or at least, had not until 2008 when the series that ended in 1998 after the death of Dickson Wright’s cooking partner, Jennifer Paterson, was released here.

Spilling the Beans recounts some of that time but the Fat Ladies years are only a small part of Dickson Wright’s journey to date. At its core, Spilling the Beans is a story of redemption. About the little rich girl -- Dickson Wright, of course -- with an abusive, alcoholic father. She grows to be a brilliant young woman (and ends up being the youngest woman in the UK ever called to the bar), a dilettante (she ends up partying away a significant fortune), her recovery through AA, then traveling the English countryside in the sidecar of a motorcycle with the late Paterson.

This is a well told, joyous memoir that, for me, is all about finding your way back. Even those largely unfamiliar with Dickson Wright will enjoy her humor and wit.

Cookbooks: Ciao Italia: Five Ingredient Favorites by Mary Ann Esposito

There are cookbooks that are so beautiful, so dream-inducing that you wonder if they’re really meant to be cooked from at all. Gorgeous photos. Fanciful ingredients. Complicated instructions. Books you would be happy to purchase and just spend hours reading and day-dreaming and never even opening in the kitchen. Ciao Italia: Five Ingredient Favorites (St. Martin’s Press) is not one of those books.

Author Mary Ann Esposito is well known to viewers of that other food network, PBS: the one that, arguably, made food shows happen in the first place. Esposito’s show, Ciao Italia, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. As anyone with a public television subscription will tell you, PBS cooking shows are stodgier and more of the earth than shows on other networks. That’s not a criticism. Neither is it praise. It’s simply a comment, and it’s one that certainly applies here. Ciao Italia is not a book that’s going to make anyone slip into raptures. It is, however, a earthy, absolutely foolproof and flawless cookbook. If you are a kitchen beginner who has a hankering to produce wholesome meals with a Mediterranean flair, Ciao Italia is the book for you.

The premise of the book is what makes this the perfect one for chefs low on experience, time or both. “When is less more?” Esposito asks in her introduction. “When you can turn just FIVE ingredients into something that is not only delicious but exciting, fun, and easy to make.”

And what exactly can you make with just five ingredients? As it turns out, quite a lot. My favorite from this book is Zuppa alla Pavese or Pavia’s Poached Egg Soup. Gorgeous, simple and gorgeously simple: basically toasted ciabatta bread, Parmigiano-Reggiano, chicken broth and eggs. Think French onion soup without onions, but with an egg poached in it, right in the bowl. The Parsley Gnocchi are simple and beautiful and have forever altered the way I do my gnocchi. (Fresh parsley chopped in: who knew?) And Esposito’s Mushroom Ragu is a perfect dish for those who want to entertain in simple but elegant style: some mushrooms, some cream and a handful of herbs and you have a dish that will impress anyone very quickly and simply.

New Tomorrow: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir

It is interesting to me -- yet not at all salient -- that the author photo of Alison Weir included in The Lady in the Tower (M&S/Ballantine) shows the accomplished British author looking not unlike the painting detail of her subject that graces the cover of her latest book. In these particular images, both Weir and Boleyn look attractive and mysterious and both wear just the trace of a Mona Lisa smile. As things turned out, the second wife of England’s Henry VIII had a lot less to smile about than does Weir, who has written a string of bestselling books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- that have captivated world wide audiences and shed light in dimly lit corners of some of history’s best known moments.

The Lady in the Tower is the first non-fiction exploration of the final days of Anne Boleyn whose demise may well have altered Britain’s religious make-up forever. Boleyn was charged with high treason and died not longer after, still protesting her innocence. This is an area of history that has fascinated Weir, and she has spent so much time researching various ultimately related works that is seems possible that she has made herself one of the world’s leading experts of the wives of Henry VIII. She is the author of two bestselling novels, Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth. Her historical biographies include Mistress of the Monarchy, Queen Isabella, Henry VIII, The Life of Elizabeth I and The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Unsurprisingly -- considering the expertise she brings to this era -- Weir comes up with some details others have either missed or construed in different ways, including Boleyn’s innocence of the charges she was executed for and what might have motivated Thomas Cromwell to construct such an intricate case against the doomed queen.

As always, Weir writes compellingly and well. She manages to give the impression of great scholarship while maintaining an interesting and accessible tone. The Lady in the Tower is another very good book for this impressive writer’s résumé.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncy

Issues of climate have been in the news a lot in the last few weeks, sometimes for better reasons than others. We’ve never spent quite this much time thinking about where all of this is leading. For a lot of people, the realities of global warming are difficult to accept because, if we acknowledge that the Earth is melting, then what? Where do we go from there?

While there is no shortage of books on the topic, few are both as informational and lucid as The Climate Challenge (New Society Publishers), energy maverick Guy Dauncy’s take on the topic.

Dauncy (Stormy Weather, Enough Blood Shed) is an author, speaker and futurist who attacks his topic with passion, knowledge and a surprising amount of humor.

Dauncy tackles the of topic climate change at the source: with a brief history of Man on Earth. Historic photos show blast furnaces in the forest and charcoal burner’s huts. Then we are told -- in-depth but in an entirely clear way -- about various gases and black carbon. In short: before he gets to the solution, Duancy carefully looks at the problem, A sort of “how did I get here” moment that will explain the seriousness of the situation to all but the most skeptical of watchers.

While the problem is well explained, most of the book is given over to solutions. “What then must we do?” he asks before going on to answer his own question. The answers are clear, if not always easy, but Duancy does a memorable job of getting us off the couch and into the field. As Duancy says at the beginning of Chapter 86: “Scramble! This is serious.”

Holiday Gift Guide: 12,167 Kitchen and Cooking Secrets by Susan Sampson

It seems safe to say that no one -- but no one -- is going to know all the tips in 12,167 Kitchen and Cooking Secrets (Robert Rose). That’s one of the things that makes the book a terrific gift: the would-be home chef and the kitchen star will both find things to interest them in this book. It’s the sort of tome that real food lovers will be able to spend hours with.

With 12,167 tips to choose from, I don’t even know where to start. Every time I put my nose back into the book, it’s in there for another half hour’s grazing. What’s the difference between mayonnaise, hollandaise and béarnaise? (Not a lot when you come down to it: “All three members of the ‘aise’ family are emulsions made with egg yolks, an acid and a slowly incorporated fat.”)

How to make perfect choux pastry.

How to pick a perfect avocado and -- once you’ve got it -- how to pit it.

Eight keys to cooking with sucralose.

How to choose the right cooking oil for the job at hand.

Should you use pot barley or pearl barley?

Buckwheat groats or kasha?

Block or deli cream cheese?

Food editor Sampson says she was pressed into writing this book by friends who were astonished at the little things she knew, the “secrets” that she says are never really secrets. “Just undiscovered territory. What’s obvious to one cook is a revelation to another.”

The revelations are here -- one simple “secret” at a time. A terrific gift for anyone interested in the fascinating world of cooking and food.

Holiday Gift Guide: Lakeshore Christmas by Susan Wiggs

People who love Susan Wiggs’ work really, really love it.

People who love gently soppy Christmas tales really, really love them.

And while it might be true that sometimes those are the same people, there’s something desperately engaging about Lakeshore Christmas (Mira) Wigg’s crisply engaging fictional celebration of Christmas that invites readers along on another visit -- the sixth -- to the world of Wiggs’ bestselling Lakeshore Chronicles.

There’s nothing earth-shatteringly new going on in Lakeshore Christmas. Rather, Wiggs has opted here to put a contemporary spin on a classic Christmas tale. Small town librarian Maureen wants to put the best ever Christmas pageant that Avalon has ever seen. The only thing stopping her is former child star Eddie Haven, whose misbehavior has landed him into a court ordered recovery that shows every sign ruining Maureen’s seasonal spirit. But it’s Christmas, time of miracles. And it’s no likely no spoiler at all to say that no one puts a title and cover like this together in order to give you a crash landing.

Lakeshore Christmas is not going to be everyone’s cup of nog. But every holiday season seems to bring at least one significant feel-good entry. For holiday 2009, Wiggs’ well written contribution packs all the Christmas cheer you’re going to need. Maybe some besides.

Non-Fiction: Harvard Business School Confidential by Emily Chan

It would be inaccurate and possibly even ridiculous to suggest that Harvard Business School Confidential (Wiley & Sons) distills four difficult years into one very lucid book. And yet, when you read it, that’s more or less how it makes you feel.

We get right down to business from the very beginning: there’s just no messing around:

Most parents and teachers would tell you: Study hard in school, get a good job, receive a good salary, and live happily ever after.” …. There is nothing wrong with getting a good job if you just want a stable life …. However, to most Harvard Business School (HBS) Students, “getting a good job” is a means, not an end.

HBS, author Emily Chan tells us, “teaches you to differentiate between two types of income: linear and investment” and then she goes on to explain “How Money Works” in a chapter of the same name. If you’re not a Harvard Business School Grad; if you’re just a normal schmuck, like me, some of this is absolutely mind-blowing stuff. Chapter headings offer hints as to why: “Speak So People Will Listen,” “It’s Who You Know,” “You Can Negotiate Anything,” and my personal favorite, “Plans Are Nothing.”

A year-and-a-half, maybe two years ago, I wouldn’t have cared about a whole lot of this stuff. Now, though: the world has changed. There’s things I didn’t care about then that I know I need to care about now, before it’s entirely too late. Harvard Business School Confidential gives one the feeling that understanding it all is an attainable goal.

New This Month: The Last Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger

Harlow Giles Unger is one of those authors with the talent and skill -- not to mention passion -- to breathe life into history. You don’t have to read very far in his 16th book, The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness (Da Capo) to understand this:

The world was awash with war when James Monroe was born in the spring of 1758. A dozen nations were spilling the blood of millions across four continents, and the seas between them, in what was then called the “Great War for Empire.”

In The Last Founding Father, Unger builds a case for the importance of a vastly overlooked and underrated figure, America’s fifth President, James Monroe.

Monroe’s presidency made poor men rich, turned political allies into friends, and united a divided people as no president had done since Washington. The most beloved president after Washington, Monroe was the only president other than Washington to win reelection unopposed.

There’s more, of course. A lot more. Unger delivers his material on a wave of adventure and a compelling sense of importance. You won’t ever see the early history of America in quite the same way.

Non-fiction: Good Night & God Bless by Trish Clark

Despite the weird title and the seemingly off-the-wall premise, Good Night & God Bless (Hidden Spring) is a cool little book whose time has come.

As you will not have guessed from the aforementioned weird title, Good Night & God Bless is a guide to convent and monastery accommodation in Europe. While in some cases this also means spiritual retreat, it can also just mean inexpensive and interesting accommodation in some very unexpected places.

Produced in classic contemporary guidebook form, the entries are organized by country and city. Each entry offers some history of the property, amenities, cost, local sights and travel highlights. If budget travel is on your agenda, Good Night & God Bless will make a good addition to your travel planning package.

Volume one, available now, covers travel to Austria, the Czech republic and Italy. Volume two will cover the convents and monasteries of France, Ireland and the UK and will be available early in 2010.

Children’s Books: Smudge’s Mark by Claudia Osmond

From the outset, Smudge’s Mark (Simply Read Books) is dense and meandering and at first seems quite incomprehensible. And I couldn’t put it down. If you think those things don’t seem to go together, welcome to the club and read on. I’m still not sure I understand how it happened, but I do know I’d read another book by this author.

One of the most powerful things about Smudge’s Mark is the strong and personable voice of the narrator, Simon, a.k.a. Smudge. “My grandpa was a wicked prankster,” Osmond-as-Simon begins. “Usually after working the part-time midnight shift at the mushroom farm, he’d make his way home to 49 Stone Elements Drive in the darkness of the early morning.” And the correct response would seem to be: who cares? At this point -- the beginning -- Osmond has seemingly done nothing to insure we care at all. And yet, oddly enough, we do. It is as though, with those first simple words, Simon waltzes into our lives as though he hasn’t a care in the world. And then, layer upon layer, we learn of all the dark places: all the things that are at stake and by then we realize that while we weren’t paying attention, Osmond has somehow -- magically? -- made us care.

Smudge’s Mark is, in its own strange way, a very good book. At story’s beginning, we meet Simon in a moment of quiet, almost introspection. By journey’s end, Simon has more or less preserved life as he knows it as well as Emogen, a hidden realm with a strong connection to Earth.

Smudge’s Mark is intended for older children -- what the industry likes to call young adults -- but I suspect it will find its place with the nine-to-twelve-year-old set. The book does not try to be either Harry Potter or Coraline, but young readers who enjoyed those books are likely to respond to elements of Osmond’s debut novel.

Biography: Imagine: A Vagabond Story by Grant Lingel

In 2005, not many credits shy of a college degree, Western New York student Grant Lingel knew he wanted something else.

“Nothing made me different than most people at twenty-two,” Lingel writes in Imagine: A Vagabond Story (Langdon Street Press). “I was broke, scared, clueless, and annoyed. College debt was up to my ears, and there was no clear direction down any particular path.” When a path didn’t present itself, he bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and, with $300 in his pocket, he left his life behind, trading in the safety of the life his middle class white American upbringing had assured him for a sea of question marks in parts unknown.

Lingel is no Kerouac and Imagine is certainly no On the Road but Lingel’s earnest ramblings have a certain youthful appeal. It’s good to know, too, that the more things change, the more they stay the same and even children of the high tech age (Lingel was born in 1983) can be called beyond the safety of their laptops, PDAs and entertainment consoles.

Art & Culture: Page Fright by Harry Bruce

Readers are more interested in process than product we’re told be author Harry Bruce in his vastly entertaining new work, Page Fright: Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (Douglas Gibson Books). Says Bruce:

But process, which is what this book is all about, includes not only tools but the rooms in which writers work; the number of hours, in each day or night, that they imprison themselves in those rooms; and the number of words, in each day or night, that they’ve sworn to write…. Indeed, process is everything that creative writers do to make themselves as receptive as they possibly can to what so many of them see as dictation from a forever-unknowable source.

Bruce’s strong interest in the process of making books has led to him collecting the anecdotes that contribute to Page Fright throughout his 50 year career as an author and journalist. Burce tells us that Susan Sontag wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads as do Nelson DeMille, Jim Harrison, Beverly Cleary, Toni Morrison and Wendell Barry.

Yellow legal pads had not been invented when Alexandre Dumas did his writing, but the poet and author still used yellow, though only for his poetry. Dumas wrote his non-fiction on rose-colored paper and his novels on blue. And as silly as that sounds from this distance, it probably made it easier to find what you were looking for in his office.

“Nabokov and Saul Bellow liked to soak themselves in bathtubs,” writes Bruce. (Though probably not at the same time.) Nor were they the only water babies in this crowd. Bruce includes a quote from Diane Ackerman, who does it up right:

I have a pine plank that I lay across the sides of the tub so that I can stay in a bubble bath for hours and write. In the bath, water displaces much of your weight and you feel light. When the water temperature and the body temperature converge, my mind lifts free and travels by itself.

Since Ackerman is best known as the author of 1990’s A Natural History of the Senses, all of this sort of makes sense.

Page Fright is fantastic. Writers and would-be authors will find inspiration here. And anyone who loves books will find facts worth collecting and smiles that can’t be resisted. It’s a great book.

New in Paperback: 2666 by Robert Bolaño

The book so many media outlets called the literary sensation of 2008 is likely to be one of the most awaited paperback publications of 2009.

2666 (Picador) was the book that occupied -- some have said preoccupied -- the last five years of Robert Bolaño’s life. Initially published in Spain to wide acclaim the year after the author’s 2003 death, the American edition -- translated by Natasha Wimmer -- brought the literary world to its knees. 2666 won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Translation Prize and was a New York Times bestseller. “A masterpiece,” raved Time. “Strange and marvelous and impossibly funny,” said the Los Angeles Times, while Slate said 2666 had “the confident strangeness of a masterpiece.”

A philosopher, a reporter, an author and a detective take on the mysterious disappearance of many woman over the course of many years. That is, of course, condensing the nearly 1,000-page novel quite beyond where it can be compressed. Never mind: if you wanted to read 2666 last year but couldn’t face that big ol’ hardcover, think it over again now. The book is still almost impossibly intense, deliciously convoluted and starkly unreal, but in paper, it’s much, much easier to carry around.

New This Month: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

On a recent visit to my local independent bookseller, I noticed a handsome stand-up display based on the work of Jane Austen. It was filled with beautifully bound works with lovely cover illustrations. Collectors editions of Emma and Mansfield Park were nestled in between selected versions equally beautifully produced editions of books written in the style of Austen’s work, a sub-genre that controls a huge share of the market.

And then there it was, within this unashamedly Regency display, hardly looking at all out of place with its brilliantly executed cover artwork, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Quirk), the only hint that something was amiss being the tentacles flowing down the side of the hero’s face like so many rubbery locks.

And you see this display and you can’t help but say, “What’s wrong with this picture?” It just bubbles out of you.

While it’s difficult not to ask “why” when you see all this Austen-ish loveliness lined up in this way, it’s not a question many people are asking these days. Quirk has dropped two books into the sea of Austen take-offs this year. This new Sea Monster book and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies earlier in 2009. Both have been massive hits. I can’t imagine that anyone could have anticipated how big this thing would get.

There’s a great deal I could tell you about this book, but none of it will alter what you already know and feel. You’re either open to this sort of playfulness... or you’re not and, probably, you already know into which camp you fall. The most basic information, then, can come from the back of the actual book, which sets things up quite well and which I can’t resist quoting:

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities .... It’s survival of the fittest -- and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!

Love it or hate it, ambivalence is not an option. And as far as crass spoofs go, this one is very, very good.

Biography: Marcus Aurelius: A Life by Frank McLynn

Frank McLynn is a historian of some note. The author of biographies on as historically diverse a cast as Robert Louis Stevenson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Carl Jung, Charles Stuart and Lord Stanley, McLynn was awarded the 1985 Cheltenham Prize for Literature (for The Jacobite Army in England) and is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Literature at Strathclyde University. All of this is not shorthand for saying that McLynn brings substantial credits and busloads of credibility with him to the writing desk. Which is a good thing because, despite the sparkling nature of his topic here, Marcus Aurelius: A Life (Da Capo) is a bit of a slog.

Don’t get me wrong: one gets the feeling that everything one reads in the book is correct. Everything. But -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- McLynn writes like an academic. Marcus Aurelius: A Life is dense and distant and -- perhaps as a result -- seems very, very, very long. Actually, at nearly 700 pages, it is very, very, very long. Not that I mind long books but there’s very little here that is joyous.

There is a self-contradiction right at the heart of the Stoic’s version of goodness or virtue, which is compounded when we come to discuss their conception of evil. We are constantly told that the only good is moral good and that what defines moral good is that it should conform with the law of reason and be located within the domain of humanity…

And so on. Not necessarily what one signs up for when wanting to learn about one of the original philosopher kings.

That said, one never gets the feeling that Marcus Aurelius: A Life is not perfectly researched and accurately put down -- or, at least, as much as history will allow. That is to say that, if the ride is not joyous, it is at least correct. If you want to discover all that is known about Marcus Aurelius and you only want to look in one place, this, then, is certainly it.

Fiction: A Novel by Ara 13

On the Web site for Fiction: A Novel (Covington Moore) there is a link to Wikipedia’s explanation of metafiction. It is explained thus: “Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually, irony and self-reflection.”

Somehow Wikipedia’s explanation encapsulates Fiction: A Novel rather perfectly. I’m still not sure that’s a good thing. I acknowledge that it might be, but for more sophisticated palates than mine.

I understand there are places in writing -- spots in the craft -- for work that is so self-aware it is experimental, in a way. Work, one might say, that pushes the envelope. For many of us, however, just getting through it is painful. This may just be a matter of perspective.

I’ve thought about all of this a lot since reading Ara 13’s novel and here is what I came up with: when I read, I’m looking to be filled. My life is challenging; is filled with challenges. I don’t require -- or even desire -- strongly traditional story-telling, but neither do I want to expend large quantities of energy on the books I choose. I give the reading experience time. In return, I want the book I’ve chosen to experience to reward me in some fashion. Fill me, as I said. Share knowledge, even of human nature or spirit or heart. A review from an outfit called The Trades Book Review said this about Ara 13’s book, “Fiction has a lot to say, and it takes a heady mind to process just what the message is at times,” and so I think it’s possible my own mind is just not that... er... heady. If you think yours might be, here’s what the publisher says about Fiction: The Novel:

Father Daniel journeys deep into the harsh forest, with romantic notions of converting the fierce Oquanato cannibals to Christianity, but his heroic sense of mission clashes with the farcical antics of sophisticated savages, whose beliefs originate from a peculiar source -- a source that rattles Daniel into an introspective, yet dubious narrative.

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman

Tears in the Darkness (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) is horrible, brave, compelling. In some ways it’s an awful book. And a brilliant one. You want to stop reading. You can’t look away.

The topic has been covered before. Of course it has. And it’s been covered well. But Tears in the Darkness is an expertly wrought passion play. One part history, one part journalistic retelling, one part literary non-fiction, Tears in the Darkness is likely the best account of the Bataan Death March of 1942 when more than 76,000 troops under American control laid down their arms.

“The single largest defeat in American military history,” the authors tell us. “The sick, starving, and bedraggled prisoners of war were rounded up by their Japanese captors and made to walk sixty-six miles to a railhead for the trip to prison camp, a baneful walk under a broiling sun that turned into one of the most notorious treks in the annals of war, the Bataan Death March.”

I’m quite confident that Tears in the Darkness will be among my selections for best non-fiction works of 2009.

Biography: So Long As Men Can Breathe by Clinton Heylin

A little over 400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, biographer and Elizabethan and Jacobian scholar Clinton Heylin offers up the story of Shakespeare’s Sonnet’s unauthorized and unorthodox path to publication.

It is a testament to Heylin’s art and skill that not only do we sense the presence of the living, breathing Bard in So Long As Men Can Breathe (DaCapo), we also feel the connections between a beleaguered 17th century publishing industry and the one we’re saddled with today.

Heylin’s vision is both eye-opening and entertaining. You’ve never seen the publishing industry in this light. You’ve never seen Shakespeare in quite this light. But in the same book? This is one that can’t be missed.

Fiction: A Pathless Land by Robin Porecky

It wasn’t until I was well into A Pathless Land (Austin & MacAuley) that I realized I’d never before read a novel set in Finland. And with the cultural smugness of my kind, the book brought me to some conclusions. I will acknowledge that it is possible that they are wrong but, here they are in any case: Finland is dark, cold and is scored by a fold of violence. Fins are hardy, hearty and capable of that same violent edge. A Pathless Land does not say these things, but it implies them, or such was my reading. It sketches the shape of a dark and lonely land and a great journey undertaken with high hopes and few other provisions, at least not of the kind that will prove of any use.

A Pathless Land is Robin Porecky’s debut novel. His bio material is sketchy enough to make me suspect the persona might be an alias: “Robin Porecky (pronounced Poretzki) is of Polish origin, but was born and brought up in England. He now works in northern Sweden as a knife-maker.”

So we are to believe that A Pathless Land is a Swedish knife-maker’s debut novel? Yet the book is ethereal enough and -- in a dark and experimental way -- skilled enough to make me think it could be the work of a better known writer. In either case, it’s a worthwhile introduction to a cold, dark land.

Biography: Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown by Jennifer Scanlon

If Bad Girls Go Everywhere (Oxford University Press) is not quite the sexy tell-all of author and journalist Helen Gurley Brown’s life that the cover might hint at, in some ways, it is a great deal more. Right away, it should be understood that author Jennifer Scanlon is an academic. A Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, she’s an award-winning teacher and scholar as well as the author of books with titles like Significant Contemporary American Feminists and The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader.

In some ways this authorship -- as well as Scanlon’s academia informed approach to the former Cosmo editor’s life -- makes Bad Girls Go Everywhere the definitive work on Gurley Brown. One can not imagine anyone exceeding it. Thirty-four pages of footnotes and a very good index tell that story.

All of that said, even though the book lacks the puerile tone and surface facts of biographies written with a more popular readership in mind, Bad Girls Go Everywhere is a very interesting book. Even without the author’s obvious passion and knowledge of her subject, Gurley Brown’s life provides plenty of fuel for a well-stuffed biography. Most surprising of all -- at least, for this reader -- was the fact that, despite her reputation as a tough-as-nails professional women who never ate enough, Gurley Brown emerges Scanlon’s portraiture as a second wave feminist. Someone whose contributions to the women’s movement and to her gender’s real-world emancipation are perhaps too great to calculate.

Other books on 87-year-old Helen Gurley Brown’s life may well emerge over the years, but I imagine Bad Girls Go Everywhere will remain the definitive record of this remarkable journalist’s life.

New in Paperback: A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America -- One State Quarter at A Time by Jim Noles

In 1997, the 50 States Commemorative Coin Program Act was passed into law. It meant that, beginning in 1999 and over the course of the next decade, the U.S. Mint would issue five new quarters each year. It was determined that the quarters would be issued in the order that the states joined the Union. As author Jim Noles writes in A Pocketful of History (Da Capo):

… Delaware, admitted to the Union on December 7, 1787, would lead the charge, followed at ten-week intervals for the remainder of 1999 by quarters for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut, respectively. After ten years, the program would end, forty-five quarters later, in 2008, with the issuance of quarters of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Each quarter gets its own chapter in Noles’ book, where history is shared in gentle doses. We learn a little about the history of each state, as well as the cultural and historical significance of the images the coins display.

For Noles’, history is lively and each journey is entertaining and informative. A Pocketful of History is a very good book.

New in Paperback: The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley

If you were to ask cookbook aficionados for a list of the ten most influential cookbooks of all time, I’m betting that most all of them would include Larousse Gastronomique somewhere on that list. First published in 1938, that book is much more than a cookbook. It is an encyclopedia of gastronomy from the French perspective. You don’t necessarily read Larousse, you graze it, browsing at various entries as your make your way, in leisurely fashion, from back to front, or however else you want to enjoy it. You’re safe in knowing that, every time you go in, you’re going to take something new out. It’s not so much a cookbook, then, as an amazing, never-ending literary lunch.

In many ways, all of these things also describe The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford) very well. In many ways, it’s set up just like Larousse, with two columns per page of smallish type with the entries arranged alphabetically. And so we learn about Burrida, (“… a Sardinian way of serving fish like skate…”) Burrino, (“a kind of butter of ghee”) and Butter all on a single page.

Those accustomed to glossy cookbooks featuring fashionably out-of-focus photos of food and pride in the few words required to share a recipe might take some time becoming acclimated to The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. Because this is more than a cookbook: it is, as Chef Mario Batali says in the foreword, a tour of “Italy’s rich culinary history.”

If you want to know how to make pasta, other books will likely get you there more directly. But if you also want to know how pasta came into the vernacular, how it was invented, developed and how it can variously be prepared, then The Oxford Companion to Italian Food will be the book for you.

Cookbooks: Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book by Bob Sloan

Why has our culture seemingly gone out of its way to link cooking outdoors over flaming coals with men? When looked at very carefully what, truly, does one have to do with the other? Something primal, perhaps? Something hunter to a woman’s gatherer? In his reasonably impressive new Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book (Chronicle Books) award-winning food writer Bob Sloan tries to sum things up.

Like so many Dads, I love to grill. Perhaps it’s being so close to the fire that harkens back to an earlier, simpler time -- before, say, income tax or Jerry Springer. The grill is, after all, just a man, a pair of tongs, and heat.

What could be simpler? And Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book is simple but it’s also, in some ways, quite beyond simple. Do you really think, for instance, you can dismiss “Lamb Picadillo,” “Scallops & Prosciutto on Rosemary Skewers” or “Grilled Halibut Reggio Emilia Style” as simple? They might be easy, but we’re several layers beyond grilled weenies and reheated beans.

The recipes here are uniformly terrific: well-planned, creative, original and -- based on both tests and observations -- all quite do-able. Sloan’s descriptions of the grilling experience is lucid and recommendations on necessary equipment and “must-have” materials are right on target.

Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book joins a very long line of excellent outdoor cooking books, including 2008’s excellent Patio Daddy-O at the Grill and Weber’s Way to Grill, which I talked about in this space a few weeks ago.

Art & Culture: The Artist’s Mother, introduction by Judith Thurman

Like exhibitions loosely grouped around a theme, books with a themed core seem to come in one of two categories. They’re either lame excuses to connect that which probably shouldn’t have been connected in the first place, or wonderful triumphs that have us looking at the topic in a new way.

In almost every regard, The Artist’s Mother (Overlook) falls into the latter camp. “Maternal love takes many forms,” author and journalist Judith Thurman writes in her introduction, “not all of them benign, but one of the most essential is to provide an experience of attunement.”

We don’t experience that attunement in all of the work collected here, but one does get a glimmer of what Thurman means as well, in some cases, the connections some painters maintain with where they’ve been as well as how they’re getting where they’re going.

The book opens on a fantastic portrait of Albrecht Dürer’s mother, Barbara. Painted when the artist was just 19, it is a masterwork that clearly lays the groundwork for the genius still being developed. For a later glimpse of that genius, a charcoal sketch of Dürer’s mother done just months before her death captures the woman as she was, not idealized as was dictated by the fashions of the time. Both works are remarkable, but it’s terrific to see them almost side-by-side.

Delivered chronologically, the book ends on Andy Warhol’s 1974 portrait of his mother, Julia Warhola. In between is a history of art in maternal form: John Constable, Rossetti, Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo and that most famous mother-painter of all James Abbott MacNeill Whistler whose “Portrait in Gray and Black” has come to be known as “Whistler’s Mother.”

The Artist’s Mother is a wonderful short course in art history as well a terrific tribute to one of humankind’s most lasting bond.

Biography: Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskyns

Appearances can be deceiving. For example, it is easy to look at Lowside of the Road (Broadway), veteran music writer Barney Hoskyns’ biography of music icon Tom Waits, and be impressed by the apparent breadth and depth of the work: it’s a big, fat book. However, once you delve in deeply, it becomes obvious that Hoskyns is stretching some very excellent material mighty thin. And that’s a shame because, while Hoskyns clearly has both the talent and the passion to write the definitive biography on this subject, Lowside of the Road isn’t it. And why? Because not only did Waits himself not cooperate, he instructed everyone he knew not to, as well.

Even so, Hoskyns does a credible job with what he does have: some really excellent interviews with both Waits and some of the people close to him, done, however, before work began on this biography. Hoskyns uses these along with some good old-fashioned footwork plus the view from his own not inconsiderable experience in the music industry to craft a very informative and informed view of the notoriously private Waits.

Does Lowside of the Road lack some of the depth a sanctioned biography would have had? I think so. But, in the end, this is currently as good as it gets. Want something closer to the artist himself? For that you’ll just have to wait.

Now in Paperback: Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph Marshall III

Since it was first published in hardcover in 2006, Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance (Sterling Ethos) by Joseph Marshall III has touched many people and, if the stories are to be believed, altered many lives. That being the case, it’s good to see it turn up now in a tiny and elegant paperback volume.

Marshall is the whole package: a historian, educator, motivational speaker and Lakota storyteller. All of these things come into play in Keep Going, a book so slender it could fit into the inside breast pocket of a good suit jacket, yet is so packed with storytelling punch, aspects of this message might stay with you forever.

On first reading, I was put in mind of that 1970s sensation, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It offers the same winning combination of wisdom and innocence, a sort of knowing unknowing that compels the reader on. Nor does the reader need to be compelled far: just 130 pages in a small format paperback, it’s not beyond thought that Keep Going could be finished in a single sitting. I’m not totally sure why you’d want to do that, though. This is a book that’s about enlightenment, knowledge and strength, all concepts best savored, not inhaled.

Marshall is the author of The Lakota Way and The Journey of Crazy Horse, among other books. His written voice has a soothing quality. I anticipate revisiting Keep Going many times in the future.

Cookbooks: Weber’s Way to Grill by Jamie Purviance

When it comes to cookbook excellence, Jamie Purviance’s Weber’s Way to Grill has two strikes against it coming right out of the gate: with a big name barbecue manufacturer right in the title and a big ol’ lifestyle magazine publisher right on the spine, there are a lot of people who would give Weber’s Way to Grill (Sunset/Oxmoor House) a miss before they even cracked the first page. Truth be told, that would be a shame because readers who are serious about grill cooking are in a position to learn a great deal from Weber’s Way to Grill.

Now understand the distinction I made there: this is not a book about barbecue, as in the style of regional cooking brought to high art in the Southern part of the United States. Weber’s Way to Grill focuses on contemporary grill cooking, of the type that can cook just about anything on a well-designed grill surface. “Culinary details matter,” author Purviance tells us in the introduction. On subsequent pages, he takes us through it bit by bit: working with charcoal, arranging the coals, judging the heat levels, working with a gas grill, must-have grilling tools and then many, many easy to follow and illustrated recipes for grilling probably anything you’d ever want to grill.

Weber’s Way to Grill is comprehensive, well executed and complete. If you are interested in cooking on an outdoor grill you could go a long way before finding a better book on this topic.

Biography: Triangular Road: A Memoir by Paule Marshall

As literary tales go, Paule Marshall’s is a good one. It has elements of Cinderella, with the happy fact that no one was ever required to turn into a pumpkin.

Here is the how story goes. One day in 1965, Marshall -- just one magnificent novel and a single short story collection into her young career -- received a letter from the US Department of State. Before opening the envelope, she flopped the words around in her mind -- “State Department” -- and quite naturally thought the worst. “The letter just had to be bad news of some sort,” Marshall writes in Triangular Road (Basic Civitas). “Why else would the State Department be writing me?”

When she finally gathered her courage enough to open the letter, she found not a nightmare, but a young writer’s fantasy. The world-renowned author and poet Langston Hughes would soon be conducting a month-long cultural tour of Europe and had insisted that “two young writers, of his choosing, be included on the tour.” Did Marshall wish to be one of them?

Triangular Road is not Marshall’s story of that tour. Rather it is, in some rather important ways, her own story. From a historical standpoint, it is perhaps more important to note that the book also tells the story of her stories. Or rather, it shares the experiences that fueled the literary journeys this marvelously talented writer has shared with us.

It’s a slender book; an easy read. A love song to a life well-spent, published on the 50th anniversary of Brown Girl, Brownstones, the debut novel that paved the way for Marshall’s astonishing and deeply engaging career.

Review: New Orleans 1867 by Gary A. Van Zante

Today in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton reviews New Orleans 1867 by Gary A. Van Zante. Says Blanton:

In 1867, two years after the end of the American Civil War, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal (1829-1894) was given an important assignment. Under orders from the city’s politicians and top business people, and with a desire for boosterism and image-building during the time of Reconstruction -- the German-born Lilienthal was paid 2000 dollars -- an enormous sum in post-war New Orleans -- to undertake a 12 week photographic project. The final portfolio was known as La Nouvelle Orléans et ses environs and included 150 photographs and 50 stereoscopic views of the city, which Lilienthal showed in late May of that year in his Poydras Street studio.

Lilienthal’s portfolio of New Orleans images became the first municipally sponsored photographic survey of an American city. In New Orleans 1867, Gary A. Van Zante, MIT curator of architecture and design, collects the 126 surviving images from the portfolio, studies them and places them within the various historical contexts of the Civil War, civic planning and this important -- often beleaguered -- city itself.

The full review is here.

Review: The Chainbreaker Bike Book by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton reviews The Chainbreaker Bike Book by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark. Says Blanton:

The first glance brought me nothing but confusion. The cover illustration -- of a bike shop goin’ hard -- reminds one of the soft competence of the very best of Robert Crumb’s work. Here it is reproduced in black and the shade of pink I can never think of as anything besides “bubblegum.”

The title adds another clue: The Chainbreaker Bike Book: A Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance. This combination -- title, well and garishly drawn cover plus a certain devil-may-care attitude in the execution put one in mind of another famous book that concerned itself with maintaining a two wheeled conveyance.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig’s monumental 1974 work, had little to do with motorcycles, let alone their maintenance, philosophically delving into the metaphysics of quality. Put another way: very few among the millions who bought that book actually made the purchase to help them fix their bike.

The full review is here.

Review: The First Total War by David A. Bell

Today, in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton reviews The First Total War by David A. Bell. Says Blanton:

In The First Total War, Bell suggests that though in the self-involved current age, we tend to think about the century just past as the one that caused all the trouble, it was the Napoleonic era that laid the groundwork for war as we would all come to know it. Or, as Bell himself says in the introduction:

Here, then, is the essential argument of The First Total War. The intellectual transformations of the Enlightenment, followed by the political fermentation of 1789-92, produced new understandings of war that made possible cataclysmic intensification of the fighting over the next twenty-three years. Ever since, the same developments have shaped the way Western societies have seen and engaged in military conflict.

And though that sounds as though it may a dry book make -- and if we consider the fact that the author is, after all, a scholar -- please keep in mind that the introduction intends to set things up only. The book itself… well, it often sings.

The full review is here.

Review: Art in America edited by Susan Davidson

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton examines Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation. Says Blanton:

Unlike many -- most? -- art books of this calibre, written with an educated -- even jaded -- reader in mind, Art in America intends a very different audience: a readership perhaps not without art knowledge, but without direct or certainly full knowledge of American art. Davidson has done an incredible job with this aspect of Art in America, creating, in a way, a full introduction to the history of her country. And she’s right: where we’ve been influences not only who we are (though that’s certainly an important piece) but also how we approach our retelling of who we are. That is, we are what we paint and collect, or something very like that.

The full review is here.

Review: Ibiza Style by Ingrid Rasmussen and Chloe Grimshaw

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton goes over the moon for Ibiza Style by Ingrid Rasmussen and Chloe Grimshaw. Blanton says:

Rasmussen and Grimshaw have succeeded brilliantly. I may be completely under their spell -- and though I detest a rave as much as a rant -- I simply can’t imagine the person who would not enjoy spending time with Ibiza Style, it so fulfils at every level. Those with a curiosity about Ibiza -- the would-be armchair traveler, for instance, or the reader who thinks they might like to journey there at some point themselves -- will enjoy the Rasmussen and Grimshaw’s casual insider glimpse. This is, after all, no one’s idea of a travel guide. However, brilliant color photos and well-crafted text give us a very solid look into how Ibiza lives now.

The complete review is here.