What to buy Mom for Mother’s Day will depend on her taste?  Does she like gourmet reads that require attention and reflection?   Is her life hectic so she’s looking for something that will grab her attention immediately but not necessarily stick with her?  Does she love a good story with a dollop of history on top?   Would she prefer a new and different treat?  Here are some last-minute suggestions.  If you’re lucky enough to live near an independent book store, drop in and describe your mother, tell the bookseller some of the books your Mom has loved and you’ll be rewarded with great suggestions and they’ll probably wrap your choice for free.  
For the Mom who likes a gourmet read with a strong storyline:
Temple Grove by Scott Elliott is a story of a mother’s love and a son’s quest set in Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Temple Grove is one of the last undisturbed stands of ancient Douglas firs.  It’s been protected by its location on National Park land but that’s now in dispute and loggers want it.  Enter Paul, an 18-year-old Makah (native peninsula tribe) who wants to save the trees.  Paul’s mother, Trace, faced long odds in raising him and she just wants to keep him safe.  Tribal culture, environmental concerns, and the need for work in a land where beauty won’t put food on the table lead to adventurous encounters, dangerous forest pursuits, and questions that mothers will take to their book clubs to discuss.

For the Mom who’d like a big story with a message and a little history:
Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler tells of Isabelle, a white woman in her 80’s, who asks Dorrie, her African-American hair stylist and friend, if she’ll drive her from East Texas to Cincinnati.   As the women wend their way north, Isabelle slowly reveals the unresolved pain of her teenage affair with her family maid’s brother, Robert, a black man.  Isabelle wants to return for a funeral which may uncover secrets she’s kept hidden for over sixty years.  As Isabelle divulges her story, Dorrie begins to realize that she needs to confront her own romantic and parental difficulties. This debut novel based partially on the author’s own family history is sure to please mothers with its freshly told tale.


For the Mom who wants a love story and a tear jerker:
Me Before You by JoJo Moyes is a love story not a cheap romance. Lou Clark is an acerbic, 26-year-old girl who needs a good job to support her disintegrating family.  Her boyfriend of seven years, a triathlon- obsessed pretty boy, provides no emotional support but he’s steady.  Lou accepts a position in the home of the wealthiest family in town where she’s to care for Will, a quadriplegic, former wheeler-dealer, who’s giving up on life.  Will’s mother begs Lou to stick with the job despite Will’s treatment of her.  You think you know where this is going but twists make it more than a romantic romp.  It’s a carpe diem treat.
For the mother who’d like a humorous yet poignant escape:
The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore is a bit of an African-American Steel Magnolias set in southern Indiana in the days when separate but equal was a strictly enforced rule.  It’s a tale of friendships nurtured around a big table in Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat Café.  Odette, Clarice, Barbara Jean, and their husbands gather at Earl’s every Sunday after church to swap stories and support each other. The rhythmic lilt of their conversations feeds humorous stories and underlying miseries.


For the Mom who wants a suspenseful trial novel with lots of twists and the revelation of what being a mother really means:
The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne is for any mother who likes a suspense-filled novel with intriguing characters and a trial that will make her wonder about nature versus nurture.  If your mother likes psychological thrillers and if she enjoyed the intricate plotting and devious turns in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, she’ll delight in this tale.  Daniel, a formerly troubled foster child, is now a lawyer defending an eleven-year-old boy accused of murdering his playmate. Daniel’s childhood with Minnie, a foster parent who rears him on her farm is revealed in alternating flashback chapters.  Minnie’s mothering saves Daniel until one day things fall apart. Sebastian, the defendant, is just a little boy yet he seems devious and lacking in empathy.  His mother seems too broken to care for him adequately so he turns to Daniel for emotional support. 
For the mother who loves historical fiction and reading about the role of women in history:
Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini documents the little known history of Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker and confidante. Those who love being an eye-witness to the Civil War and Mrs.Lincoln’s life after Lincoln’s death will also enjoy the aspects of fashion and dressmaking that allowed Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave, to support herself and send her son to college as well as to begin a society to support the newly freed. Chiaverini uses Keckley’s own diaries to inform the novel. This easy read will be sure to please many mothers. It also begs the question of why this woman is so little known.


For the Mom who wants to disappear into a fantastic novel that will have her contemplating her own life:
Benediction by Kent Haruf is quite simply magnificent.  Read the full review on this site: http://hungryforgoodbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/benediction-by-kent-haruf.html.

If you’re still unsure, get your Mom a gift card from her favorite bookstore earmarked for her to buy Khalid Hosseini’s new novel And the Mountains Echoed when it comes out on May 21, 2013.  Your mother probably adored The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Sons and she’d surely love this (hint, hint). 

Virginia Pye’s novel, River of Dust, opens in 1910, less than a decade after the Boxer Rebellion when Christian missionaries were massacred and foreigners were either killed or driven out of the country. Reverend John Wesley Watson and his wife Grace have lived on northwestern China’s windswept plains for four years.  Their toddler son Wesley was born in their missionary village and Grace is pregnant again after miscarrying.  They’ve just arrived with servants Mai Lin and Acho at a remote “vacation home” outside the missionary compound when two Mongolian nomads charge across their land. One of the men yells “Death to Lord Jesus!”  Grace begs the men to leave them alone and offers them the family’s cow telling them “Let us be.  Certainly, we have done nothing to harm you.”  Her words infuriate the men and the younger man snatches Rev. Watson’s handkerchief from his pocket and stuffs it into one of his many pouches where Grace notices another “strip of cloth that appeared to be of the same fine linen as her husband’s handkerchief.”  Her husband tells her to take her son inside and lock the doors but as she flees the man sweeps down and grabs her son’s arm. She holds on until “the barbarian stopped toying with Grace and simply yanked her son away.  She would never forget how easily Wesley was lost to her, as if to show that . . . They could take whatever they pleased.  And what they wanted was not her but the child.” 
Rev. Watson and Acho immediately set off to recapture Wesley. “The Reverend bore nothing except his fury, height, and stature as a Man of God in a land of infidels.  That would have to be enough.”  Their search leads them to a remote opium den where Rev. Watson is shot but saved by the book of poems in his breast pocket. To the Chinese who call him Ghost Man, this validates the legends surrounding him even after another shot injures him.In the following weeks as Rev. Watson recuperates, search parties comb the Shansi Desert looking for Wesley and the Watsons continue to believe that Wesley will be found.   Once Rev. Watson regains his health, he and Acho spend months searching for Wesley, returning to the compound only occasionally. Rev. Watson seems to others in the compound to be disturbed and the amulets, talismans, and massive fur he wears make the other missionary families uneasy.
Grace, however, never gives up hope. “There was no denying she was a cheerful Midwestern girl at heart: an American girl, synonymous with optimism.  And in so being, she understood that she must endure her greatest punishment.  She must live with the hope, the infernal hope that love could survive even out here where nothing else did. Her son would return to her.  She just knew it.”
Grace tells her husband, “It isn’t your fault. . . Please don’t blame yourself.”
“But it is, and I do,”says Rev. Watson.
This novel of retribution contains clues like Rev. Watson’s handkerchief that warn the reader that there’s a backstory behind the nomads’ actions. That backstory and the way in which the land serves as a character form something of an Old Testament-like rendering. During the Reverend’s absence, the area has fallen into a deep drought and dust covers every surface. Children are dying, no one has any hope, and Grace increasingly turns to Mai Lin’s potions to maintain “the correct balance” in her life. She sees visions and tries to find blessings in her surroundings but her faith begins to waver.
I don’t know if River of Dust was intended as a tribute to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in its exploration of savagery versus civilization and in the Reverend’s god-like appearance to the Chinese but comparing the two is inevitable.  Rev. Watson’s wearing of “non-Christian” garb and his odd associations coupled with Grace’s reliance on her amah, Mai Lin, show the not-so-subtle changes in the couple’s beliefs. The novel’s vivid imagery of the physical changes in both Rev. Watson and his wife makes the reader feel each character’s journey better than any simple telling of it might do.
Pyes’ novel is informed by the life of her grandfather, the Reverend Watts O. Pye, one of the first missionaries to return to Shanxi Province less than a decade after the 1900 Boxer Rebellion.  Her grandmother, Gertrude Chaney, had three children in Shanxi.  Her two daughters died young and her son Lucien Pye was the only one to live to adulthood.  Watts Pye died when Lucien was five and he and Gertrude Chaney remained in China even under the Japanese occupation. Lucien Pye went to college in the U.S., served as a translator for the U.S. Marines during World War II then studied at Yale under the G.I. Bill. He wrote over twenty books on China and Asia.  Watts Pye’s diaries along with stories Virginia Pye heard while having tea parties with her grandmother using her fine Chinese porcelain infuse this novel with a unique voice, perspective, and authenticity.
Summing it Up: Read River of Dust for a view of 1910 China that will inform, entertain, and enlighten you.  Savor it for Pye’s ability to show the changes in her characters through their actions and for the way she makes Acho and Mai Lin delightfully real and complex.  Choose it for your book club to discuss the influence of the culture of the time and the nature of circumstances that can alter beliefs and faith.  Note: Ms. Pye is happy to meet with book groups (http://virginiapye.com/bookclubs.html).
Rating: 4 stars   
Category: Historical Fiction, Gourmet, Super Nutrition, Book Club
Publication date: May 14, 2013
Author’s Website: http://virginiapye.com/index.html

Book Trailer: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9meL215HlDJb1lrcWZDTThadlU/edit
Reading Group Guide:  http://unbridledbooks.com/images/uploads/pdfs/RiverDust_RG.pdf
Publisher’s Website and Excerpt:  http://unbridledbooks.com/our_books/book/river_of_dust
What Others are Saying: 
"Terrific, tremendous, wonderful...a strong, beautiful, deep book." –Annie Dillard
on River of Dust by Virginia Pye“A vividly imagined and beautifully drawn picture of the life of Christian missionaries in China in the early 20th century.”—- Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China; co-author, Mao: the Unknown Story“Virginia Pye’s River of Dust is a remarkable novel in the ways that delight me the most: It has a compelling narrative voice, a dynamic story and a deep resonance into the universal human condition, all of which is inextricably bound together. This is a major work by a splendid writer.” –Robert Olen ButlerStyle Weekly: http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/book-preview-river-of-dust/Content?oid=1883320

E. L. Konigsburg, the author of two Newbury Medal winning titles loved by almost everyone born in the last forty years, has died.  She won the Newbury for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in 1968.  She won again in 1997 for The View from Saturday.  She wrote several other novels several of which could have won as well.  Her novels make great reading for adults as well as children so if you've never experienced them, try one then share it with a child. 

Another novel about the war in Iraq might not be the tasty treat you've been craving but Ben Fountain’s absurd tale, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a National Book Award finalist, is an absolute must.  The Pulitzer Prize Committee improbably chose not to award a fiction prize in 2012.  This April they’ll be hard pressed to deny a winner with titles like Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds and, yes, Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk all deserving of the prize.  
In the novel, every television in the U.S showed the Iraq "battle of Al-Ansakar Canal” via tape from an embedded Fox News crew and now the eight survivors of Bravo Squad are America’s most popular heroes. Thus the Bush administration has sent them on a two-week victory tour before they return to battle. The book is set on a rainy Thanksgiving Day at the end of that tour as the Bravos are attending a Dallas Cowboys game and will appear at halftime along with Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child. Billy Lynn, Specialist William Lynn, is a nineteen-year-old Texas kid who enlisted to avoid a prison sentence for destroying his sister’s fiancé’s car after the fiancé dumped her while she was recovering from a disfiguring accident.  Billy was an empty vessel eager to learn about the world and Shroom, his sergeant, educated him before dying in Billy’s arms.  One of the most remarkable qualities of this novel is Fountain’s ability to make Shroom such an engaging figure though we only know him through Billy’s memories.  Billy’s certain he’ll never go back to school even though he yearns to learn about the world but knows that school isn’t where he’ll find that knowledge.  “If there is real knowledge to be had in the Texas public schools he never found it, and only lately has he started to feel the loss, the huge criminal act of his state-sanctioned ignorance as he struggles to understand the wider world.  How it works, who gains, who loses, who decides.  It is not a casual thing, this knowledge.  In a way it might be everything. A young man needs to know where he stands in the world, not just as a matter of basic human dignity but as determinants in the ways and means of survival and what you might hope to gain by application of honest effort.”
In one Thanksgiving Day, Billy will learn about himself and as he learns, we’ll see through his family, the Texas elite, the people hoping to make money selling his story, a cheerleader, and his fellow Bravo brothers – that war is as much about the people “untouched” at home as it is about those who fight.   Billy Lynn’s portraits of the people he encounters at the game explode with universal truth that’s impossible to ignore. When Billy meets tanned, glamorous multi-millionaires who are nothing like anyone he’s ever encountered he thinks: “they are different, these Americans.  They are the ballers. They dress well, they practice the most advanced hygienes, they are conversant in the world of complex investments and fairly hum with the pleasures of good living – gourmet meals, fine wines, skill at games and sports, a working knowledge of the capitals of Europe. If they aren’t quite as flawlessly handsome as models or movie actors, they certainly possess the vitality and style, of say, the people in a Viagra advertisement. Special time with Bravo is just one of the multitude of pleasures available to them, and thinking about it makes Billy somewhat bitter.  It’s not that he’s jealous so much as profoundly terrified.  Dread of returning to Iraq equals the direst poverty, and that’s how he feels right now, poor, like a shabby, homeless kid suddenly thrust into the company of millionaires.  Mortal fear is the ghetto of the human soul, to be free of it is something like the psychic equivalent of inheriting a hundred million dollars.  That is what he truly envies these people, the luxury of terror as a talking point, and at this moment he feels so sorry for himself that he could break right down and cry.  I’m a good soldier, he tells himself, aren’t I a good soldier?  So what does it mean when a good soldier feels this bad?”
Billy Lynn is a good soldier but even he gets tired of it all. “He gets tired of living with the daily beat-down of it, not just the normal animal fear of pain and death but the uniquely human fear of fear itself like a CD stuck on skip-repeat, an ever-narrowing self-referential loop that may well be a form of madness. . . So these are Billy’s thoughts while he makes small talk about the war.  He tries to keep it low-key, but people steer the conversation toward drama and passion. They just assume if you’re a Bravo you’re here to talk about the war, because, well, if Barry Bonds were here they’d talk about baseball. . . Here at home the war is a problem to be solved with correct thinking and proper resource allocation. . .”
Fountain imbues Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk with a wicked sense of humor and a series of improbable events that sometimes make you laugh out loud.  Such gallows humor allows the reader to continue to take in Billy’s tale and remain sane.  You owe it to yourself and those who serve in your name to read this book.  Don’t just skim it; devour it, embody it, make it a part of you.  It deserves that attention.
Summing it Up: Read Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk because it will be one of the most important books of this decade.  Read it because you can and because you’ll savor Fountain’s skill while wondering how you might react if one day you met someone like Billy. Read it because it’s so evocative that you’ll find yourself in the bowels of Cowboy Stadium with a hangover wondering who you are.  Get on your knees and beg your book club to choose it so you can process it together.
Rating: 5 stars   
Category: Gourmet, Super Nutrition, Sushi, Book Club
Publication date: May 1, 2012
Reading Group Guide: http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/8923-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-fountain?start=3
What Others are Saying: 
Interview with the Author: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/teddy-wayne/billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk_b_1461976.html
National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/2012/11/28/165507867/a-warriors-welcome-in-billy-lynn
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ben-fountain/billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk/
Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/01/entertainment/la-ca-ben-fountain-20120701
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-088559-5

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has died.  His 1958 novel Things Fall Apart introduced a changing Africa to the world, The novel has sold more than ten million copies in fifty different languages.  Nelson Mandela called Achebe, "the writer in whose company the prison walls came down."

Using W. B. Yeats words “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” Achebe showed the falling apart of Africa while revealing the universality of humans in all times and places. Things Fall Apart is the story of Igbo warrior Okonkwo and life in an Igbo village in the late 19th century when the white men arrived.  While the novel is completely African, it speaks to all people especially in light of the last hundred years. 
If you haven’t read Things Fall Apart, honor Mr. Achebe’s memory and read it today.  Choose it for your book club for a spirited discussion. It's impossible to be culturally literate without reading this book. 

Reading Salt, Sugar, Fat is like devouring a murder mystery – only you’re the intended victim.  Yes, a book packed with chemistry and research can be a page-turner.  This book is as addictive as the foods it studies so the paradox is that readers are essentially learning about their own demise.  That may not make it seem an appetizing read but the book is also similar to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series you or your children may have read.  Based on the information the book provides, you can choose which path to follow – that of allowing the food giants to hook you or of knowing their tricks and how to avoid them thus choosing a healthier life.   This is not a diet book, a fad of the month self-help tome, nor is it an easy fix.  It is instead the careful reporting of what’s inside the foods we eat.
Some facts presented in the book will probably surprise you:
“On average, we consume 71 pounds of caloric sweeteners each year. That’s 22 teaspoons of sugar, per person, per day.”   Not me, I said to my sanctimonious self.  I rarely eat cookies, cake, pie or dessert.  Ha, little did I know of the places that the big food conglomerates hide sugar.  Campbell’s Prego spaghetti sauce is probably found on the shelves of many American homes. “The Prego sauces – whether cheesy, chunky, or light – have one feature in common: The largest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar. A mere half cup of Prego Traditional, for instance, has more than two teaspoons of sugar, as much as three Oreo cookies, a tube of Go-Gurt, or some of the Pepperidge Farm Apple Turnovers that Campbell also makes.  It also delivers one-third of the salt recommended for a majority of American adults for an entire day. Some of the meat versions of Prego have even higher amounts of sugar and salt, along with nearly half a day’s recommended limit for saturated fat.”
I also learned that I can’t rest after ascertaining that a product is low in fat or salt or whichever of the big three I’m avoiding at the time.  When the public starts clamoring for less fat, the food giants lower it but to keep us buying, they up the salt and/or sugar so the product will still taste good. Those labels on our favorites can change without us ever suspecting because the products taste the same.  The food giants use terms that sound good to make us buy.  The “2 percent” labeling (in milk) may lead you to believe that 98 percent of the fat is removed, but in truth the fat content of whole milk is only a tad higher, at 3 percent. Consumer groups who urge people to drink 1 percent or nonfat milk have fought unsuccessfully over the years to have the 2 percent claim barred as deceptive.” 
Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, is the father of two boys ages ten and thirteen so he knows that it isn’t easy to avoid processed foods.  One of the beauties of this book is that he doesn’t preach and he never makes the reader feel guilty for consuming salt, sugar, or fat.   Instead, Moss provides powerful information that will allow the busiest of us to make decisions about what we put in our bodies.
He shows us that the food industry won’t change because salt, sugar, and fat are cheap, interchangeable, and they make food taste good.  “They are huge, powerful forces of nature in unnatural food... They may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices.  After all, we decide what to buy.  We decide how much to eat. Kirkus Reviews calls this book “A shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line—one of the most important books of the year.”  I thoroughly agree and urge everyone to read it and to choose it for your next book club discussion.
Summing it Up:  Read this book to save yourself and those you love from being manipulated by the food giants.  Read it to learn how to avoid the progressively addictive attraction of the foods at eye level in our grocery stores.  Read it because it’s an addictive treat that reads more like a bag of potato chips than a bunch of raw kale.
Rating: 5 stars   
Category: Nonfiction, Five Stars, Super Nutrition, Book Club
Publication date: February 26, 2013
Author Website: http://michaelmossbooks.com/
Excerpt: http://michaelmossbooks.com/resources/salt-sugar-fat-excerpt/New York Times cover story by the author: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?_r=1&
Reading Group Guide: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/219368/benediction-by-kent-haruf#discussionquestions
What Others are Saying:
Interview on PBS NewsHour: http://michaelmossbooks.com/2013/02/watch-michael-on-pbs-newshour/
Interview on National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/how-the-food-industry-manipulates-taste-buds-with-salt-sugar-fat
Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-moss/salt-sugar-fat/
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4000-6980-4
Question and Answer with the Author in the New York Times: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/behind-the-cover-story-michael-moss-on-addictive-foods-and-what-he-eats-for-breakfast/
Question and Answer with the Author in Time Magazine: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/26/salt-sugar-fat-qa-with-author-michael-moss/

Ten Food Secrets You Need to Know: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/56249-10-food-secrets-you-need-to-know.html?utm_source=PW+Tip+Sheet&utm_campaign=f0a3593649-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

“Benediction – the utterance of a blessing, an invocation of blessedness” is the epigraph that opens Kent Haruf’s new novel.   When I read the last page of this gem, I felt the "invocation of blessedness" in getting to share in the life of the quiet community Haruf has created in Holt, Colorado, also the setting of his acclaimed novel Plainsong.  Like Plainsong, Benediction is replete with everyday characters capable of stealing your heart. 
The main character, Dad Lewis, gets the news that he has terminal cancer in the book’s opening lines:  “When the test came back the nurse called them into the examination room and when the doctor entered the room he just looked at them and asked them to sit down. They could tell by the look on his face where matters stood.”
When Dad and his wife, Mary, return from the doctor, she takes him a tray of food and a bottle of beer. “He looked at the beer bottle and held it in front of him and took a small drink.
 
I might get me some kind of better grade of beer before I go. A guy I was talking to said something about Belgian beer. Maybe I’ll try some of that. If I can get it around here.
 
He sat and drank the beer and held his wife’s hand sitting out on the front porch. So the truth was he was dying. That’s what they were saying. He would be dead before the end of summer. By the beginning of September the dirt would be piled over what was left of him out at the cemetery three miles east of town.”
Everyone in Holt calls Dad Lewis “Dad” even the employees at the hardware store he’s owned for decades.  It’s an apt moniker as hardware store owners remain among the few who listen to our problems and offer us simple solutions or force us to face the reality that we might just need a bigger fix – just like our own “Dads” or the “Dads” we wish we had. Haruf’s writing provides the gift of making us feel that a man like Dad is someone we'd like in our own lives - well, most of the time. 
Food is an essential element in Benediction. In towns like Holt, people still bring food when someone is ill, still sit down together for meals, still have potlucks at church, and still tell people they love them by bringing them a covered dish.  When Mary ends up hospitalized with exhaustion, neighbor, Berta May, arrives at Dad’s door with a plate of food and questions: “Are you sick or something? Are you going to die?”  That’s how it is in Holt, Colorado; people get to the point and they take care of one another. 
After Mary’s hospitalization, daughter Lorraine comes home to help.  She’s still not over the death of her own daughter at the age of sixteen in a long ago accident.  Her marriage isn’t strong and she’s had no recent contact with her brother, Frank, who’s long been estranged from their father.  Dad’s health fails and he begins to sit and watch the world from his window while contemplating the mistakes he’s made and savoring the love of the people around him.  That Haruf has been a hospice volunteer is evident in the care with which he depicts the process of dying, death, and the details of lovingly caring for the terminally ill.
Neighbor Berta May has taken in her eight-year-old granddaughter, Alice, after her mother’s death from cancer. Lorraine is drawn to the child but young Alice sees parallels in Dad’s condition that bring back painful memories so she tries to avoid the Lewis family. The Johnson women, an old widow and longtime church friend and her daughter, begin helping out and they take Alice on picnics, out for ice cream, and buy her a bicycle that allows her freedom and burgeoning happiness. 
The community church’s new pastor who’s been sent to Holt as a last-ditch maneuver for his “inappropriate” sermons offers companionship but then commits the cardinal sin of preaching on the Sermon on the Mount and expecting his congregation to believe it.  “People don’t want to be disturbed.  They want assurance.  They don’t want to come to church on Sunday morning to think about new ideas or even the old important ones.”  They certainly don’t want to be told to turn the other cheek and love their enemies.  They call Pastor Lyle a terrorist and can’t understand why he doesn’t hate Muslims as they do.  Only the Johnson women and a rule-bound usher stand by the pastor and the reader sees that Holt, like places everywhere, isn’t utopia.  Holt is a metaphor for the universality of cities, small towns and suburbs where everyone must deal with living, dying, and accepting the hand we’ve been dealt.
It’s easy to see that Haruf grew up as a preacher’s kid in a small town like Holt where people love and take care of each other but are often bound by the chains of small ideas, rules, and fear.  The minor characters sins loom over the landscape and provide the reader with a deeper understanding of Dad and this community he so loves.   My favorite play, Our Town, always reminds me that nothing matters more than this day.  Benediction offers the same reminder wrapped in a package that allows us to see it clearly.
Summing it Up: Kent Haruf is the master of the quotidian: celebrating and sharing the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things.  Read this novel to share in the rhythm of the land and the people and to rejoice that there are still writers who carry us with them into a world both completely familiar yet new enough to stun us into contemplating our own lives.  Haruf’s writing is grace personified.
Rating: 5 stars   
Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Soul Food, Book Club
Publication date: February 26, 2013
Reading Group Guide: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/219368/benediction-by-kent-haruf#discussionquestions
What Others are Saying:
The Boston Globe: http://bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/02/23/book-review-benediction-kent-haruf/uCct8vWp22cJh4GQ728jgL/story.htm
Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/books/ci_22592569/book-review-benediction-by-kent-haruf

Kirkus Interview: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/rural-lives-urban-problems/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=cta&utm_campaign=032013
Milwaukee Journal: http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/books/kent-harufs-benediction-once-again-brings-small-town-to-life-c38phd1-192556541.html

New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/books/review/kent-harufs-benediction.html?ref=books

“Mister hit Josephine with the palm of his hand across her left cheek and it was then she knew she would run. . . The blow came without warning, no reason that Josephine could say.”
Josephine had tried to run once when she was twelve or thirteen.  As the novel opens, she’s a seventeen-year-old house slave who tends to her mistress, an artist named Lu Anne Bell, on a Virginia plantation in 1852. Josephine’s attempted escape and the tales of the people who aided or thwarted her gird this section of the novel.
In the alternate story set in 2004, Lina, a first year associate in a New York law firm, must find a face for her historic case seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves  Lina and her artist father have lived in their Brooklyn house her entire life; it’s her rock in an uncertain world.  Lina’s father soon helps her discover that the famous, surviving paintings by Lu Anne Bell, portraits of slaves on her plantation, may actually have been the work of Josephine, the slave. 
Lina is certain that one of Josephine’s descendants would be perfect for the lawsuit so she sets off to find one.  In her quest she learns about Josephine’s life in 1852 and discovers parallels with her own complicated story including that of her mother’s mysterious death when she was very young.  
Josephine’s story is evocative of the period and Conklin’s writing soars in her descriptions of plantation life.  Her reliance on actual slave diaries is evident and she makes the characters seem real and important.   She’s less successful with Lina’s life which seems almost an afterthought and that surprised me since Conklin herself was once an attorney much like Lina.
The reviews of this novel are almost as divided as the issue of slavery was in 1852.  Kirkus loves it and Kirkus is unrelentingly tough so when it gives a book a starred review, it means it. IndieNext made it the top pick for February.  But Publishers Weekly wrote one of the most scathing condemnations I’ve read in that publication -- calling it “trite, predictable, and insensitive at its core.”  This reader believes there’s truth in all their observations and reasons galore for many to love this book and for others to find it wanting.
It seems to be a case of split personality, a tale of two eras, two house girls.  Lina can leave her house but doesn't.  Josephine wants to leave but can’t.   Who’s free?  Who’s enslaved?   
I really cared about Josephine and her quest but I didn't feel there was enough information or character development in Lina’s story. I wish the author had simply written Josephine’s story and allowed her powerful words to illuminate the horrors of slavery.
Summing it Up:  Read the excerpt.  Decide for yourself.  Enjoy learning about the life of Josephine, the artist and slave, in 1852 but don’t expect as much from Lina’s world today.
Rating: 3 stars   
Category: Historical Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Super Nutrition, Book Club
Publication date:  February 12, 2013
Author Website: http://www.taraconklin.com/
Read an Excerpt: http://www.scribd.com/doc/111935726/The-House-Girl-by-Tara-Conklin-Excerpt
Reading Group Guide: (Warning: it contains spoilers!) http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=39628&isbn13=9780062207395&displayType=readingGuide
Interview on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/10/171396947/house-girl-ties-past-to-present-in-tale-of-art-and-slavery?ft=1&f=1032
What Others are Saying:
Bookpage: http://bookpage.com/interview/dreams-of-freedom-that-wouldn%27t-die
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/tara-conklin/house-girl/
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-220739-5
Rhapsody in Books: http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/black-history-month-review-the-house-girl-by-tara-conklin/
Seattle Times:  http://seattletimes.com/html/entertainment/2020311892_bookhousegirlxml.html
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/tara-conklins-the-house-girl-reviewed-by-ron-charles/2013/02/12/681005e4-6ecd-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story_1.html

Eric Carle recently posted this delightful picture on his blog.  His new book, Friends, will be out this fall.  Till then, find a child and reread one of your Eric Carle favorites or visit Carle's blog for pictures to brighten the dreariest February day. 

With some trepidation, my book club voted to discuss Catherine the Great knowing full well that its 625 pages might present a time-management challenge.  Thus I was thrilled when all eleven who gathered for lunch had enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others.  If it hadn’t been a snowy January day, I’d have suggested heading to a Russian restaurant in Chicago where we could have savored borscht, blintzes, tea and a Napoleon torte while pretending we were dining at the Winter Palace.  Then we could have walked to the Art Institute to see paintings by Rembrandt. Rubens, Van Dyck and masterworks similar to the 4000 paintings Catherine procured for the palace and her newly created Hermitage gallery.  Our discussion of Robert K. Massie’s biography might have seemed to the waiters serving us more like gossip about the Kardashians than talk of an eighteenth century monarch.  We chatted about Catherine’s affairs, her jewels, her furs, her unconsummated marriage, her husband’s drinking and playacting, and the more expected subjects of her intelligence, her political savvy, her expansion of Russian borders and her tenacity.  
Catherine the Great, the larger-than-life Empress of Russia, began life in 1729 as Sophia, a minor German princess.  Joanna, her mother, was just sixteen when Sophia was born yet her ruthless ambition superseded her age and character.  When childless Empress Elizabeth began searching for a bride for her designated heir, her nephew, Peter, the only surviving son of Peter the Great, Joanna shamelessly pushed for then 14-year-old Sophia, noting her “freshness, intelligence and discreet, submissive manner. “  Sophia soon ingratiated herself into Empress Elizabeth and the Russian people’s hearts via her unstinting quest to learn everything Russian – language, culture and even the Orthodox religion to which her conversion was required.  Upon that conversion, the Empress christened Sophia as Catherine and her rebirth as a Russian princess resembled a fairy tale.  But, Peter, her 17-year-old husband and heir to the throne, was no knight in shining armor.  Instead he was a mentally unstable adolescent who played with toy soldiers, tortured pets, favored all things German over anything Russian, and was both unwilling and physically unable to consummate their marriage.
Still thwarted by Peter and remaining a virgin, Catherine began the first of a dozen affairs she was to have to bring love into her life and she at last gave birth to a son in 1754.  Empress Elizabeth immediately took him from Catherine not allowing her to see him for almost a week. Catherine, depressed from being denied any role in her son’s life, turned to books for solace and read Voltaire, Montesquieu, and histories of the Roman Empire that later helped her form her enlightened approach to governance.  
Massie makes Catherine real to the reader by using her own copious diaries and the letters written by famous leaders of the time.  He meticulously illustrates Catherine’s astute powers to gain what she wanted through her intense study of a subject before making recommendations.  Catherine’s rule was larger than life. When a small pox outbreak threatened her subjects, she herself was inoculated with the new vaccine so the people would see that it was safe. When Voltaire needed cash for his daughter’s dowry, Catherine bought his entire library.
Her desire for love led her to Gregory Potemkin who was ten years her junior and whom she may have married: "Their romance, their relationship, was extraordinarily passionate. Many of their letters are included in the book — "they're almost burning the page," noted author Robert K. Massie.
When her inept husband ignored a conspiracy and continued his childish pursuits, Catherine mounted a white stallion and led 14,000 soldiers to arrest and unseat him.  After the coup she ruled for thirty-four years packed with intrigue and the expansion of her empire. This book reminded me of Walter Cronkite’s “You Are There” television show of the 1950s that reenacted history by making the viewer feel a part of it.  This biography makes the reader feel “there” at the creation of a Russian port on the Black Sea, at meetings with the great leaders of the world, and in the drawing rooms of the palaces where Catherine’s acumen accomplished seemingly impossible tasks.  Lovers of historical fiction including the Philippa Gregory novels will enjoy making the leap to nonfiction as this biography proves that truth can be more exciting than fiction.
Summing it Up: When the august New York Times opens its review of a biography with “How delightful to discover that Robert K. Massie, 82 years old, hasn’t lost his mojo.” you know you’re in for something special and this book is more than special, it’s a masterpiece.  This biography will make you feel that you’ve floated across the snow in a fleet of sleighs heading south toward the Black Sea.  It will feed you with savory facts about the French Revolution, the changing boundaries of Eastern Europe and court life during the 1700s.  I challenge you to read it and to beg your book club to discuss it.  
Rating: 5 stars   
Category: Nonfiction, Five Stars, Super Nutrition, Book Club
Publication date: November 11, 2011
Reading Group Guide: http://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/index.cfm/book_number/2663/catherine-the-great
What Others are Saying:
Charlie Rose Interview: http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/12411
Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-k-massie/catherine-great/
National Public Radio Interview: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/05/141992986/catherine-the-great-first-she-read-then-she-ruled/
The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/books/review/catherine-the-great-portrait-of-a-woman-by-robert-k-massie-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-679-45672-8
TheTelegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/historybookreviews/9364528/Catherine-the-Great-by-Robert-K-Massie-review.html

After Clay Jannon loses his web design job to the ravages of the recession, he walks San Francisco’s streets in search of help wanted signs.   He spies a 24-hour bookstore sign seeking HELP WANTED Late Shift ~ Specific Requirements ~ Good Benefits.  Jannon says “Now; I was pretty sure “24-hour bookstore” was a euphemism for something. It was on Broadway, in a euphemistic part of town. . . the place next door was called Booty’s and it had a sign with neon legs that crossed and uncrossed.”  Still, he walks into the store and finds “no bodices, ripped or otherwise. . . there was a stack of dusty Dashiell Hammetts on a low table.  That was a good sign.”  He meets Mr. Penumbra, the custodian of the place and tells him he’s looking for a job.
“Tell me,” Penumbra said, “about a book you love.”
Thus Jannon becomes the night clerk, the one who rolls a ladder down the floor, climbs it, and then leans to grasp the volumes requested by a small band of seekers who visit the store. The odd visitors “arrive with algorithmic regularity. They never browse.  They come wide-awake, completely sober and vibrating with need.”  They don’t purchase; they seek and check out volumes looking for pieces to the puzzle they’re trying to solve.
Jannon’s job description also requires that he log the appearance and manner of each person entering the store.  Soon he decides to engage his tech-savvy friends in a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and the volumes they borrow and thus to solve the mystery they all seek. They take their information to Mr. Penumbra and the merry band makes a pilgrimage to New York in pursuit of clues at the underground headquarters of the group overseeing Mr. Penumbra’s work. 
Sloan imbues the novel with clever banter, just enough to keep the book light, as in his description of Jannon’s girlfriend upon their arrival: “Kat bought a New York Times but couldn’t figure out how to operate it, so now she’s fiddling with her phone.”   Occasionally the novel’s cleverness pulled me away from the storyline but my affection for Clay and Mr. Penumbra always drew me back to the fairy tale unfolding before my eyes.
This book takes Saint-Exupery’s “what is essential is invisible to the eye” and turns it slant for the 21st century.  It’s a joyful exploration of friendship, life, and work done well that reminds us that the secrets of life are there if we’ll just bend a bit and lean toward them.  
Summing it Up: If you’re looking for something new and different, yet as familiar as the tattered copy of the first book you ever loved, then Robin Sloan’s blend of bookish secrets, early fonts, and advanced Google search engines will engage your imagination.  Enigmatic Mr. Penumbra and hip, young Clay Jannon will find their way past your internet-challenged attention span and into your heart.  
Footnote: Sloan knows that book buyers today want compelling reasons to purchase books  in hardcover so Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore's cover glows in the dark. 
Rating: 5 stars   
Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Dessert, Sushi, Book Club
Publication date: October 2, 2012
Author website: http://www.robinsloan.com/penumbra/
Reading Group Guide: http://media.us.macmillan.com/rggguides/9780374214913RGG.pdf
What Others are Saying: 
I rarely quote an author in a review but Robin Sloan’s words say it all:I wrote this book because it’s the one I wanted to read, and I tried to pack it full of the things I love: books and bookstores; design and typography; Silicon Valley and San Francisco; fantasy and science fiction; quests and projects.  If you love these things too, I hope and believe you will enjoy a visit to the tall skinny bookstore next to the strip club.
The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21564531
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/books/review/mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-by-robin-sloan.html?_r=0
Los Angeles Times Interview: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/17/news/la-jc-robin-sloan-mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-20121017
NPR Interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/09/162233599/mr-penumbra-bridges-the-digital-divide