Short Review: An Important Biography of a Radical Black Feminist

I've got a new hero (not only feminist, but a fierce warrior against all forms of discrimination), and she doesn't look anything like me. I had never heard of her before reading this book, in fact (a symptom of a significant problem in itself.) She reminds me of a black Molly Ivins, although she predated her by several years. (Perhaps I should say Molly Ivins resembled a white Flo Kennedy). In any event, this is a must-read.

The author, Sherie Randolph, worked with Kennedy's remaining papers - much had been destroyed for various reasons - but there was enough to craft an in-depth biography of a remarkable woman (a lawyer by training) who fought for justice during the 1960s and '70s against insane odds. I haven't heard "Black Lives Matter" activists mention her, but they're on the same page.

Highly recommended.

I obtained a free copy of this book from Netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

Short Review: "Essential Turkish Cuisine"

The best cookbook is one from which you can learn something new, and I'm always on the lookout for cookbooks from specific cultures, so when Essential Turkish Cuisine came up for review, I grabbed a copy. Not just recipes - although there are about 200 of them - but also Turkish history, habits, traditional spice mixtures (some I'd never heard of), and food customs of both peasants and royalty. (Did you know the Turks started out as nomads in Mongolia? Me neither.)

Perfect. The author runs a cooking school in Turkey, and it shows. She explains how to make everything from homemade tomato paste to Borek (stuffed pastry).

Highly recommended.

I received a pre-release copy of this book for review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Snapshot: "Pop Sonnets"

You don't exactly read a book like this, but rather hunt around for your favorite - or at least most familiar - songs and see what kind of sonnets Erik Didriksen was able to turn them into. I think it's no accident that a number of other reviewers have found this useful in teaching classes on literature - this approach hooks 'em right in. There are dozens of titles here, from YMCA to Material Girl to Tubthumping, and they for the most part manage to capture the original content of the lyrics in semi-Shakespearean language very effectively.

Recommended.

I received a Kindle copy of this book in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: Connecting with the City

I'm not exactly this book's demographic (the author - Nora Lum - is young enough to be my granddaughter), but the information in here is insanely useful - not politically correct, not reverent, not necessarily polite (her profile of Staten Island includes the information that Ben Franklin probably pooped there) - USEFUL. Like the kid in the "Emperor Has No Clothes" story, Lum is observant, direct, unvarnished, knowledgeable, and confident. She was born in New York of Chinese and Korean parents, and grew up there, so she knows the place well. Much of the text is lists and short vignettes, interspersed with some critical street knowledge - where to pee, how to make money recycling bottles and cans if you're broke, how to eat a soup dumpling, and brief descriptions of the human characters (subway, homeless, new arrivals) -  you're likely to meet, but most of the book covers some genuinely interesting and offbeat parts of the City in ten walking tours (each includes subway directions, brief history, appropriate warnings, and sights to see). For example, the one she calls the Men in Black Tour gives directions to Flushing Meadows Park, site of two worlds fairs and some filming in the movie. I had to look up some of the urban slang (betch?) and I'd want an experienced New Yorker as a companion on most of these jaunts, but well worth a read. 

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of the paperback version in exchange for a review. (The Kindle version is much cheaper). The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "State of the World 2015"

The subtitle of State of the World 2015 by the Worldwatch Institute is "Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability," but they might as well have called it "Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic." The book describes the various environmental problems and their current (alarming) status - familiar to those of us who study these matters - but the overall theme is how weak and ineffectual our current political and industrial leaders are in addressing the problems. From disbelief to greenwashing to outright fraud, the growth-oriented champions who actually have a chance at making some of the needed changes give lip service to environmentalism, but they are very far from actually engaging in it. Worldwatch makes the case that capitalism itself (at least in its current incarnation of grow, grow, grow) is a systemic part of the problem.

Rather dry, as one might expect from a serious tome written by a committee of scientists, but very important and worth the time to read.

Highly recommended.

I obtained a copy of this book free of charge in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Thug Notes"

Greg Edwards is a comedian, actor, and writer. One of his web series is "Thug Notes," which aims to educate people about literature using street language. The character who does the educating is Sparky Sweets, Ph.D (played by Edwards). Hilarious.

A selection of Sparky's teachings have been collected in this book, and it is impressive. The street language is no more difficult to decipher than some of Shakespeare's work, but it is best read aloud to get the most meaning and full effect. I actually like this book version better than the performed version because there is more depth: character sketches, themes and plot descriptions, Several of my personal favorites are here: Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, and Fahrenheit 451.Would have liked to see Siddhartha and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the written collection, but no matter; they are available online.

This could be the new Cliff's Notes. (It's more interesting and the online version is free.) Edwards admits that this project came about in part to combat the "exclusionary" way that academics present the classics. I think he's on to something. (YouTube list of all the Thug Notes performances here.)

Very highly recommended.

I obtained a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the Amazon page for the book.

Short Review: "Seeking Surrender"

The author of this short book, Colette Lafia, had a number of trying life experiences (death of a sibling and inability to have children, among others), and she started a spiritual journey to try and make peace with herself. She first visited a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, where she made friends with one of the monks, and much of the book is their written correspondence over several years.

Although the content is written from a Christian and specifically Catholic point of view, the first thing I noticed was its resemblance to Buddhist practice. A few rituals when needed, very little dogma, but much emphasis on acceptance (the 'surrender' of the title), presence, compassion, searching, and meditative prayer.

Very simple, unadorned, and moving. Recommended.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Clockwork Lives"

Wow. Just wow. Kevin J. Anderson and Neal Peart (yes, the drummer from the rock band Rush) have written a scintillating steampunky novel - structured like the Canterbury Tales as a framework around a collection of stories told by their owners. (Apparently there is a Rush album to accompany it, although I did not obtain a copy of that to review.)

The framework takes up the story of Marinda Peake, who cares for her ailing father in an unusually regimented world. When he dies, she is forced by the terms of his will to leave her circumscribed life to seek out other life stories. Evocative, thoroughly imagined, and magical without a single dungeon or dragon, but with a very Alice Through the Looking Glass mirror. Marinda finds danger, death, love, and gold on her journey through other people's stories.

Very highly recommended.

I obtained a review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "Lingo"

Lingo - Around Europe in Sixty Languages, by Gaston Dorren, is a book on linguistics. Before you turn your nose up, however, let me tell you that it is a very well-written and interesting book on linguistics. Oh, alright, sometimes the author gets down in the weeds of some concept that's really too detailed (at least for me), but most of the time it's fascinating to see how languages have diverged from, converged on, borrowed from and competed with each other. Did you know, for example, that "if you know one Slavic language, you know a whole bunch of them - the only problem is, often you don't know which one it is that you know," or that "Turkish is a bit of an introvert," or that French has a mother fixation on Latin, or that 200 million people in India speak languages that have nothing to do with the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root? Cool.

The last chapter, aptly named The Global Headache, deals with English and Chinese. Dorren makes the case that English resembles Chinese in some respects: (1) hard to pronounce, (2) the written language gives no clue to the spoken, particularly given the various dialects, and (3) the lack of inflections (word bits added to clarify meaning, for example larger and largest) makes them  a little easier to learn than some of the other possible world languages.

Each short chapter (and there are a lot of them...the book is 304 pages long and has 60 chapters) ends with a note on a specific word that has entered our language, as well as another word that probably should because there isn't a good way of expressing it in English. The book has both a reading list and a thorough index as well.

Highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Snapshot: "The Embroidered Garden"

I'm not sure I'd bother to embroider a set of gardening gloves (which will get filthy real fast), but if you want to do so, this short book will tell you how (Kazuko Aoki's "The Embroidered Garden.") There are several dozen other embroidery projects here, too, mostly small, often practical, and all about gardening throughout the year. A lot of them would be good as gifts.

Good photographs, a tutorial on embroidery stitches, and notes on all of the projects. Very nice.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Meatless All Day"

Taunton Press is well-known for beautiful, high-end books on a variety of topics, so I was pleased to get a copy of "Meatless All Day" to review. Not disappointed. Excellent design, lovely photos, and 80 interesting recipes, some inspired by Indian and other cuisines, with emphasis on how successful they are at substituting for various meats. There is even a list of ingredients that will add meat-like flavor and texture to a vegetarian dish.

My benchmark for a vegetarian cookbook, however, is how good a recipe it has for a veggie burger. This one has three, all excellent: Black Bean Burgers with Grilled Mango-Lime Mayonnaise, Mexican Pinto Bean Burgers with Fresh Guacamole and Corn Pico de Gallo, and Veggie Burgers with Brown Rice, Fresh Parsley, and Chickpeas. There are also a number of other recipes to create cutlet-like portions that could work in a bun.

Highly recommended.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "You Don't Own Me"

Trever Tolliver is an unabashed super-fan of Leslie Gore, so I didn't quite know what to expect in his biography of the singer, but although there are plenty of superlatives about her music, it is pleasantly thorough in other ways as well. I learned a great deal about her that I didn't know: the surprisingly short tenure of her first fame (only about 4 years), her friendship with Quincy Jones, the long business relationship (ultimately exploitive) with Mercury Records, her feminist and political instincts, and her homosexuality. (She was a lesbian in a time when any orientation other than straight was fundamentally dangerous.)

After moving on from Mercury, she began to try new things, successful artistically but not commercially, for most of a decade. She did some acting and songwriting, some nostalgia tours, some duet work with other singers (notably Lou Christie) and every now and then a new album, finally finding renewed success working first with her brother Michael on the film Fame and after that on numerous television, stage and film projects.

My only criticism is that Tolliver is so exhaustive (bordering on relentless) in his description of every song, every album, and most of her live performances that some chapters are a little eye-glazing. Still, this is an important book, worth a look.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Headstrong" - Women Scientists You Need to Know More About

 

You've probably heard of Rachel Carson and Sally Ride, and maybe even Rosalind Franklin, Lynn Margulis or Grace Hopper. Scientists all, most of them when women in their respective fields were particularly scarce. But did you know that Hedy Lamarr (yes, the actress) patented technology during World War II that is still used today? Or that Lise Meitner would have shared the Nobel for discovering fission had she not been a Jew and a woman in Hitler's Germany? Or that Maria Goeppert Mayer, who did eventually win a Nobel for her research, was never paid for her work until she neared retirement? There are fifty-two women profiled in this handy book - Headstrong, by Rachel Swaby - and all of them made huge discoveries under trying conditions. Most are not well known, even today. Of necessity, the profiles are short, but punchy, and there is a substantial list of references at the end. 

Highly recommended.

I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full review: "The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919"

My maternal grandmother contracted the Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1918/1919 - when she would have been about twenty years old - and survived, unlike perhaps as many as 50-100 million others. The only thing she ever mentioned to me about it was that her hair fell out and it grew back in completely white, but there must have been a lot more to the story.

The Spanish flu (a misnomer - it was a worldwide pandemic and did not originate in Spain) killed by causing hemorrhaging and severe lung fluid accumulation (one story told of coughing up "quarts" of sputum), followed often by pneumonia, and oddly the number of fatalities among young, healthy people was extremely high. We know now that this was a result of a "cytokine storm" - a particularly severe immune system reaction. Younger people with more robust immune systems had more severe cytokine storms and were thus more likely to die.

So it was with great interest that I picked up this book, a collection of academic papers on the subject edited by Maria'-Isabel Porras-Gallo and Ryan A Davis, from the University of Rochester Press in their Rochester Studies in Medical History collection. It divides into three parts: the science of the flu pathogen, epidemiological responses to the pandemic, and the resulting cultural upheaval from these (sometimes counterproductive) activities. World War I spread it more widely than would have otherwise occurred, and along the way there were many wrong turns. At first no one knew whether it was a bacteria or virus that caused the illness, and for a time excessive aspirin dosages were even blamed for some of the symptoms. News suppression during the pandemic grew into sensationalism later as movies and books speculated not only on 1918/1919 but also whether it might happen again. A good part of the book concentrates on under-reported findings from Europe (including, paradoxically, Spain) and Latin/South America.

Some of this - particularly the scientific findings in the first part - will be difficult for the lay reader to parse, but give it a try anyway. There's a lot here, you can read around the jargon, and it's still really, really relevant.

Highly recommended.

I received a pre-publication copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "Peaceful Neighbor"

I had hoped that this book - Peaceful Neighbor, by Michael G. Long - would be a biography of the beloved children's television host, Mr. Rogers. It's more of an analysis of how the TV show itself matched up with a pacifist's view of cultural events.

Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and Long makes a pretty good argument that Mr. Roger's Neighborhood was essentially his ministry, and his flock all the children watching. Several episodes are recounted in lengthy detail, and the author spends a lot of text making connections between those episodes and news items of the time (Vietnam, the civil rights riots of the '60s, police brutality), along the way insisting how "radical" those notions were. That may be true, but some of the connections between episode beats and radicalism are exaggerated. One gets the impression at times that Long is putting words in Rogers' mouth, straining to match him with ideological pacifist purity, and he doesn't need to - that Rogers was a deep-thinking, committed pacifist Christian and innovative teacher is obvious and admirable.

The reader does get some good biographical information in the second half of the book, including clearing up some myths about him. For example, I had read numerous accounts of how Rogers had come to his point of view after serving as a bomber pilot in the war (and then horrifed, turned his back on it). Turns out he was never a bomber pilot, although he did learn to pilot a plane.

In short, flawed, but worth a read.

I received a free copy of this book frofm Netgalley in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "Airplane Rides"

The unreliable narrator is a cornerstone of fiction - the storyteller who lies, fails to fully understand, or misrepresents (perhaps unwittingly) the story he tells. The author of Airplane Rides (Jake Alexander - a pseudonym) insists his ten stories from airplane trips are true, but even so it seems early on that he doesn't fully understand either them or himself.

The prologue begins with a dinner table conversation that leads to a one night stand with a potentially underage model, introducing the lonely and appetite-driven life he leads as a road warrior.  In the first story, a mediation on his Catholic upbringing morphs into a plane conversation with an Orthodox Jew who calmly insists that disowning a daughter who married out of the faith (she would be dead to me, he says) was just as appropriate as insisting on monogamy in any couples relationship. Alexander has no meaningful response to this nonsense, and actually seems to buy the argument. In the second story he gives a hand job - under a blanket, right on the plane - to a professional woman who is unhappily married but newly excited by a couple of recent extramarital affairs. The dialogue could have come from a movie.

In the third chapter, however, he starts to glimpse outcomes of this behavior, as he chats with a famous defense lawyer who ruined a good marriage with too much high-paying work of questionable moral value. And then in the fourth chapter he plays therapist to a serially adulterous younger woman who had been sexually manipulated as a teenager, trying to convince her to not let the same thing happen to her own daughters.

Alcohol, religious guilt, transient relationships, a couple interludes of self-loathing, and a description of a neighbor (female!) who delighted in seducing naive women into his bed. Is this any way to live? Brief recollections of people who really meant something to him leak into these conversations, but in the initial stories we think that there are no roots or traditions for him to lean on, no meaning or ultimate goal.

But slowly, still interwoven with chess moves, suspicion and casual sex, his behavior starts to change. He keeps in touch with a minister he met who was having a crisis of faith. He insists that a young runaway return home. He comforts a woman who had recently escaped an abusive marriage.

I'm astonished people talked to him so candidly on plane flights, so I'm still not sure these stories are true, but the writing is skillful, evocative, eloquent at showing what a life like this must be like, and also what a transition like this must be like. (Come to think of it, would an investment banker really write so well? Hmmm...) The narrator, in short, remains unreliable, but he's beginning to wake up, and whether or not these stories are "true," they are certainly thought-provoking.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Sourdough"

I occasionally make sourdough bread, although not enough to maintain a continuously fermenting starter (it usually ends up forgotten for a couple weeks in the refrigerator and then I have to throw it out.) That may be about to change. Sarah Owens has written an impressively thorough book on using sourdough leavening not just for bread, but for many different kinds of baked goods, some with rising times and some without. There are quick breads, fried pancake-like breads (latkes), and crackers in addition to more traditional sourdough loaves.

After an exhaustive treatment of tools, pantry staples, and even a bit of bread chemistry, she presents a collection of unusual recipes in three categories: breads, savories, and sweets. Interestingly, most of the ingredient measurements are expressed in weights (grams) instead of traditional volume measurements, so you'll need a kitchen or postal scale that reads metric. First thing I'm going to try is Bleu Cheese and Walnut Crackers, followed by Apple Hand Pies with Cheddar Crust.

My only complaint is that there is no simple, plain sourdough bread recipe here - they're all fancy things like Pomegranate Za'atar Spiced Focaccia, and Candied Bacon Cornbread. Yes, yes, I know I can just look that up in another cookbook or online, but it would only have taken a page.

Gorgeous photographs, beautifully laid out.

Highly recommended, particularly in print form (the ebooks are readable, but - perhaps because of all the photos - not suitable for the Kindle, and even a little awkward on Adobe Digital Editions in epub format.)

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review. The image above links to the Amazon page for the book.

Short Review: "A Sherlock Holmes Devotional"

 Creativity often means juxtaposing unlike objects or ideas to see what new insights might arise at the intersection, so the notion of a Christian devotional inspired and clarified by a beloved fictional detective is initially intriguing. (I'm very familiar with both the Holmes stories and the Bible).

 The author (Trisha Priebe) does indeed go back and forth between excerpts from Holmes and references from the Bible, but I'm not sure it works completely, mostly because you could remove either piece and the other would still work for the devoted reader.

 For example, the first pairing presents this quote from A Study in Scarlet - "There is nothing like firsthand evidence" - alongside the author's observation that the Bible is full of exhortations to know God personally, and use prayer and Bible reading to gather facts in order to increase this knowledge. 

Well yes, but no new light comes from joining those two. Holmes is talking about knowing from physical evidence, and the Bible about knowing from religious evidence. The connection is minor. They stay separate. I found no new insight by combining them. You could take the Holmes quote/discussion out altogether and the treatment of knowing God would still make the same kind of sense without gaining or losing value. Interesting idea, but doesn't work for me.

Three stars out of five.

I obtained a free copy of this book in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Marsh Mud and Mummichogs"

 If I wanted to vacation along the Georgia coast, I might take this book with me.  It is a rigorous description of the flora and fauna (on land and in the water) in this area, including which things are poisonous and where they might be found. Very thorough - dense even, like a textbook, from bacteria to alligators to egrets, but with the occasional lyrical observation or recollection. The author is a scientist who studied the area some years ago, and she has noted not only the ecology, but also how that ecology changes as the climate does. She provides an elaborate reference list and  two useful appendices, one on "Where to Go to Enjoy Georgia Coastal Wildlife" (hiking/ birding/ beaches/ nature organizations, etc) and one on  "Methods for Collecting and Inspecting Coastal Biota."

The only thing that might put off the casual reader is the large amount of biology jargon, particularly when the author (Evelyn B. Sherr) lapses into scientific journalese and its relentless passive voice. More pictures would have been helpful as well. Still, it's a text that inspires thought about the myriad lifecycles, shapes, and interlocked lives of living creatures.

I liked it. Four out of five stars.

I received a free copy of this book in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "Young Homeless Professional"

Let me start off by saying this is an excellent premise. How much does anyone actually need to live? Particularly someone who has a decent job ought to be able to thrive much closer to nature than most of us do. There is actually a growing movement toward "tiny homes" - check out this intriguing project in that line by a science professor at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, TX, who renovated and lived for a year in a dumpster.

Granted not everyone could be homeless - consider the spectacle if Manhattan tried it - there might be enough restaurants, but certainly not enough bathrooms or parking or room in parks for sleeping bags. That's not the point, though. This is a trial run of an idea, and it's worth a look.

The first problem with the book, however, is that the author, Kenny Peavy, isn't really homeless. He has a large vehicle equipped with the basics - he just sleeps or entertains outside sometimes. The content is unfortunately rather shallow and off-topic, too. Yes, a home isn't just a house (as the author tells us), but we already pretty much know that. Yes, there are people who don't know where their food comes from, but the author tends to dine out in restaurants rather than forage or buy at local markets or grow anything in a community garden. There's too much extraneous material that doesn't illuminate the premise. A lot of text is spent talking about parties, friends, and dates, which is undoubtedly supportive and fun (everyone needs a family or tribe of some sort), but isn't really very interesting to a reader not in that group, and doesn't really dig very far into the notion of either home, homelessness, or living close to nature.

In short, lots of potential, but not enough thought in this thought experiment.

Cannot recommend.

I received a copy of this book in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "How to Get Dressed"

One of the things I've always wanted is someone to dress me in the morning, or at least lay out my clothes so I know what to wear. I do OK with colors, but combining separates and appropriately accessorizing them to create a good looking style just baffles me. (One of my college room mates was studying to be a fashion designer, and I can't count the number of times she rolled her eyes and said "my God, what do you have on??" before rooting through my closet to try and improve matters.)

"How to Get Dressed" is not the definitive book on pulling yourself together sartorially, but it's a very good start. The author, Alison Freer, is a costume designer in the movie business, and she lets us in on some secrets. Did you know, for example, that most of style is proper fit? A liberating concept, because it inverts the usual requirement for a particular weight or body type or hair color. The clothes should fit the body, not the other way around. She goes into depth on jeans as an example, showing how different "rises" best match particular shapes, and then discusses what actually makes a good fit in skirts, blouses, jackets, and even bras.

There are chapters here on dumb fashion rules and how not to follow them, laundry (including how to avoid dry-cleaning), underwear (you don't need as much as you think), and vintage shopping. Those readers who can sew will find this book particularly useful - the rest of us may need to consult a tailor or learn some alteration techniques. Most good-fitting clothes require some alteration.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this book from Blogging for Books in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Brew it Yourself"

I am an enthusiastic home brewer, and I've accumulated a large number of books on the subject, so when I saw this "Brew it Yourself" book, I wondered whether they could come up with anything new.

Yes, they did. This book goes over the fundamentals of making alcoholic beverages of many kinds (wine, beer, cider, sparkling drinks, liqueurs) from just about ANYTHING edible: dried figs to coconut to dandelions to lavender. They also have several recipes where they start with a purchased drink (whisky, for example) and add things like fruit or vegetables to it. The authors, both Brits, are avid gardeners, so this makes more sense than you might think. They note, for example, that one might get really tired of rhubarb crumble (a dessert) after harvesting a bumper crop, but leftover rhubarb makes excellent wine. Need to make sloe gin? Orange bitters? Marrow (squash) rum? Ginger beer? Boozy Dandelion Soda? Stinging Nettle Beer? This is the book for you.

Although I don't generally associate the word "brew" with all this (do you "brew" wine?), that's just semantics. It all uses yeast and it results in alcohol, so yes, it's all brewing. The explanations are clear, but if you're a first time brewer you might want to pick up a copy of John Palmer's "How to Brew," which goes over the actual process steps for the beer recipes in very fine detail.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "The Porcelain Thief"

Huan Hsu is an American of Chinese descent (an ABC - American born Chinese), so there are multiple layers of confusion when he takes a break from his career to return to China to investigate the whereabouts of a treasure his several greats grandfather Liu buried during China's upheavals in the early 20th century. Huan does not speak Chinese very well, but he does not look like a foreigner to the Chinese either, which causes problems. The grandmother he hopes will help him has her own agenda and doesn't want him raking up the past.

What struck me, however, is how very American his behavior is - brash, impatient, occasionally angry and sometimes unreasonable, but absolutely determined to figure out the mystery. In lesser hands this might have been unpleasant, but here he skillfully meshes a fascinating history of the last Chinese dynasties with his family's trials through several wars. (The porcelain is really just the McGuffin - the real story is his family's cultural history, and the tag line for the title shows this: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China - literally and figuratively.) I learned quite a bit - highly recommended.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Create, Narrate, Punctuate: How to Fashion Exquisitely Styled Sentences"

This is a non-fiction writing textbook disguised as a meditation on the use and abuse of language, and a pretty good one, too. Reminds me of Edwin Newman's "On Language," or Richard Lederer's "Less than Words can Say" but with end of chapter questions and answers. Not a dry recitation of grammar rules (although virtually all the rules are spelled out clearly), but rather an argument for good written communication, using quotes from famous writers and wry remarks on the state of English these days (poor, generally) to get his point across.

The author, Ramy Tadros, teaches at the college level (in Australia...much of the book uses British spelling) and does some editing on the side. Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from StoryCartel in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir"

Frances Mayes is well-known for her many books on Tuscany, particularly "Under the Tuscan Sun," (which was eventually made into a movie.)

A lush, evocative, perceptive writer in any event, she outdoes herself with "Under Magnolia," a memoir of growing up in the deep South. Sometimes you can go home again, even though you remember every detail of the racist, dysfunctional, eccentric, but somehow still loving and supportive family that you grew up in. We learn about her parents, her grandmother, various neighbors and other relatives, but the most moving portrayal to my mind is her close relationship with their black servant, Willie Bell, who guided her through some difficult times, took care of her, and whom she eventually lost touch with, to her continuing distress.

Mayes now divides her time between Tuscany and Hillsborough, NC, and she compares the two frequently in "Under Magnolia", noting similarities and differences of thought. She also notes that the South has improved dramatically in several respects (particularly racial relations.)

Highly recommended meditation on home and what that means.

I obtained a free copy of this book in return for a review, from Blogging For Books. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "John Shaw's Guide to Digital Nature Photography"

"What camera should I use?"

I was pleased to see the author's answer: "The one you have with you." Good man. I can learn something from him. He jokes that a frequent comment he hears is "'you must have a really good lens,' as if the lens went out all by itself and took pictures." There is very thorough information here on gear you might buy, of course, but most of the chapters will be helpful for getting the best results with just about any digital camera. The real practice of photography, Shaw insists - the art - is the "capture of optimal vision," by the photographer, not the equipment. He is a very good teacher of that art.

This is not a book for complete beginners (who would undoubtedly not want four whole pages devoted to focusing a lens, for example), but rather for people who have basic digital camera skills and want to raise their game. (Those four pages on lens focusing taught me more than any number of other texts.) There are chapters on gear, getting started, lenses, composition, close-ups, and the photographer at work, plus many dozen of Shaw's nature images.

He's been doing this a long time. Highly readable, in-depth, with a lot of advice that could only come from experience.

Highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.