I am hopelessly addicted to collecting cookbooks and food related books…and then not reading them. I don’t know why they sit unread on my shelves, but they do. I do know why I buy them…I love food, I love thinking of food, I love cooking.

My cooking skills have evolved over the years and I am happy to say I no longer religiously follow recipes. I like to take a recipe and improvise it, substitute in (or out) ingredients, and make the dish my own (which is probably one reason I am also hopelessly addicted to watching Top Chef every week…I am simply amazed at what they create, especially during the Quick Fire challenges).

I digress…back to the subject at hand.

Really what I want to share with you today are some of the fantastic food related books I’ve bought in the last year or so…and which I am determined to read before the end of 2010.

Fiction/Novels:

• Bread Alone, by Judith Ryan Hendricks – Emotionally devastated thirty one year old Wynter Morrison heals from a failed marriage by baking bread.
• The Baker’s Apprentice, by Judith Ryan Hendricks – Wynter Morrison faces more challenges in Seattle.

Memoirs:

• I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, by Giulia Melucci – A woman looking everywhere for love, and finding it on the stove.
• Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell – 365 days of cooking with Julia Child
• Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl – The coming of age of a culinary sensation
• A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure, by Marlena De Blasi – An American chef and food writer takes the reader to Tuscany…and the world’s best food.

Non Fiction:

• American Artisanal: Finding the Country’s Best Real Food from Cheese to Chocolate, by Rebecca Gray – Discover how and where food is being made the right way.

Cookbooks:

• The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider – Declare your independence from recipes and a set list of ingredients
• The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters – Eat locally and sustainably, eat seasonally, cook simply…

Have any of you read these books? They look great, don’t they?

November 22, 2009

9:30 AM

Good morning to all my readers! I’m getting a little later start this morning as Kip let me sleep in while he got up with all the animals (Raven is a very early riser). It is raining here, and the sound of the rain dripping through the trees was like a lullaby. We  had our first snow of the season – on Friday the winds howled and the temperatures dropped…and down came the snow. It was a wet snow, and didn’t really accumulate. Now it is pretty much a mud pond in the back yard (the dogs think this is wonderful).

Yesterday I went to a free-motion quilting class which was absolutely wonderful…but much harder than you would imagine. Free motion quilting is like flying a plane without a pilot. The feed dogs are dropped and instead of the machine controlling stitch length and direction, the quilter is in complete control. Stitch length is controlled by how fast or slow one moves the fabric (my stitch length left much to be desired – I would not say it is consistent in the least!). There was a lot of laughter…and by the end of the class we were starting to get the hang of things. I can see I will have plenty to keep me busy in the creative realm over the cold, wet winter months.

This past week I plowed through Wally Lamb’s latest novel: The Hour I First Believed (read my review). I was not enthralled with the book although I give Lamb credit for his ability to write and for the first half of the book which captivated me. But, I think he tried to tackle a little too much in this giant tome. Some have agreed with me, others not, so you may want to try it out for yourself.

My current read is delightful. Rosy Thornton’s novel Crossed Wires takes place in England and is a light romantic comedy of sorts. I’m half way through it and really enjoying Thornton’s writing (although it is taking a little work to sort through some of the British phrasing). I should get this finished soon, so watch for my review.

Not sure what is next in the reading pile. I have a few choices and think I’ll just wait and evaluate my mood when it is time to pick. How do you pick your next book?

Have you been following any of the controversy surrounding the top ten list for Publishers Weekly? There were no books written by women on the list, and that has gotten some attention. My library is about 55% female writers vs. 45% male writers…and many of the books I’ve read this year which are in MY top ten are by women. Florinda at The 3 R’s Blog wrote a great post about this topic and she lists some of her favorite books this year by women. The Weekly Geeks is asking for YOUR top ten books for the year, and I am eager to see how many of the finalists will highlight women writers. Finally, author Katherine Center (whose books I absolutely adore…see my review of Everyone Is Beautiful and The Bright Side of Disaster), was motivated by the Publisher’s Weekly controversy to create a fabulous You Tube video For the Girls . If you haven’t seen it yet you should. It is a trailer for the book Kirtsy Takes a Bow…a celebration of women on line (which is now on my wish list). I would be remiss not to also mention an on line magazine which celebrates women writers from around the world: Belletrista. Have you checked this out yet? It is wonderful. And I suppose this is the perfect time to once again mention the Women Unbound Challenge. Readers are already posting their reviews for this challenge…so if you want some terrific book recommendations which celebrate women, this is the place to go.

For my American readers, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this Thursday – stay safe and eat to excess! For those of you who have a mellow Thanksgiving weekend planned, don’t forget about the Thankfully Reading Weekend – a chance to relax and read next weekend along with other bloggers.

As for me, I’m having a relaxing morning and plan to read and quilt today. Kip and I will be with friends on Thanksgiving. What are your plans today? Whatever they are, I hope they involve a great book!

The Chunkster Challenge was all about reading those fat books which at times seem so intimidating. I chose the Mor-book-ly Obese option (to read 6 or more chunksters OR three tomes of 750 pages or more). My last book for the challenge was The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb…and I actually did not finish it completely until the day after this challenge ended. BUT, I did manage to finish 600 pages of it on the last day of the challenge…and since a chunkster is defined as a book longer than 450 pages, I figured I would count this one (okay, so I stretched the rules a tad…oh well!). You can see the books I read, and my ratings and links to reviews, but visiting this post. My favorite book of the challenge was Last Night In Twisted River by John Irving, with the runner up being Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. Many thanks to Dana who hosted this fun challenge.  In 2010, I’ll be taking over the hosting duties for the Chunkster Challenge – hope to see you there!

The 2009 PUB Challenge was hosted once again by Michelle…and it was all about reading books published in 2009. My goal was to 9 books – and I actually did that some time ago, but just kept going. I finished 28 books (so far) this year which were published in 2009…and although I will probably read a few more before the year is out, I have decided to wrap up this challenge. You can see the books I read and their ratings and links to my reviews by visiting this page. I read some GREAT books, including some five-star ones:

• Last Night In Twisted River by John Irving
• A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman
• The Mechanics of Falling by Catherine Brady
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Thanks Michelle for another great challenge!

The New Authors Challenge encouraged readers to read new-to-me authors. Hosted by Literary Escapism, this is one of my favorite challenges. The goal was to read 50 new authors over the course of the year. So far, I have read 57…and will probably read several more before 2009 closes out. I decided to wrap up the challenge, but will continue to add new authors to my list which can be found here. Some new-to-me authors who I am eager to read more from:

Per Petterson, Joyce Hinnefeld, Jhumpa Lahiri, Catherine Brady, Benjamin Black, Tana French, Judith Ryan Hendricks, Emily St. John Mandel, Laura Lippman, Amitav Ghosh, Kathryn Stockett, Ru Freeman, Tom Piazza, and Louise Erdrich.

Many thanks to Jackie for a terrific challenge. This one will again be hosted in 2010 – hope to see you there!

I don’t know, maybe we’re all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we’re scared shitless of explosive change. But we’re fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium – the devils let loose from their cages. “There but for the grace of God,” the faithful say. “It’s not for us to know His plan.”

Caelum Quirk and his wife Maureen both work at Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado – he as an English teacher, her as a part time school nurse. Their marriage is strained after Maureen had an affair and Caelum retaliated against the interloper and was arrested back in Connecticut… just before they packed up and moved to Colorado to start over. When Caelum’s aunt (who raised him after his mother’s death) falls ill from a stroke, Caelum boards a plane back to the east coast to see her. Little does he know that only days later two boys will open fire at Columbine, killing and maiming dozens. Maureen finds herself cowering in a cupboard in the library during the tragedy – and when she emerges, everything will have changed…for not only her, but Caelum as well.

The Hour I First Believed centers around the Columbine high school shootings. Wally Lamb uses the names of the actual shooters and victims in his book, but revolves this around the fictional Quirks and their families. The first half of this over 700 page book moves quickly, taking the reader through the events of that fateful day and the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. I found myself glued to the pages during this part of the novel. But then Lamb becomes rather tangential as Caelum struggles to deal with his wife’s PTSD and addiction to prescription medication leading to an accident that puts her behind bars. Caelum begins to look back and analyze his life, trying to understand his father’s alcoholism and suicide…and getting caught up in the history of his extended family  – all the way back to the civil war. Caelum’s search for understanding involves long chapters devoted to his great-great grandmother’s diary, his mother’s background and life, and a mystery involving two children.  The middle of the book slows tremendously because of these additional story lines. By the end of the novel, Lamb redeems his story somewhat – finally tying up the multiple loose ends and providing some closure for the reader.

Thematically, the story is about chaos vs. order, belief in a larger power vs. fate or chance, and how tragedy warps and changes a person through time. It also explores the idea of family connections and how they shape who we become.

I had a hard time rating this book. On the one hand, Lamb is an incredible writer who has a deep understanding of his characters…and is able to translate that understanding to the reader (although I will admit, I did not particularly like Caelum Quirk). On the other hand, the book was heavy with information. Even though a writer must understand EVERYTHING about his character before writing that character’s story, it is not necessary that the reader have all that information. In many ways, I believe The Hour I First Believed was overburdened with too many plot lines. What I really wanted to understand was Caelum and Maureen’s reaction and recovery from tragedy. I did not want to know all about Caelum’s family history. I actually think this novel could have been two novels… one a family saga, the other about the Quirks and how their lives collided with the Columbine shootings.

I don’t believe a lot of readers will have the patience to wade through this entire book without skimming. Even Lamb fans may find it hard to keep reading past mid-book in order to finally get to the satisfying, albeit melancholy end. The best part of the book, in my opinion, was the first half when he focuses in on the Columbine tragedy. Perhaps had Lamb more aggressively edited his tome down to a more manageable 400 or so pages, I would have walked away feeling more positive about the book. Not everyone agrees with me…so please be sure to check out the other reviews linked below.

Read other reviews:

Bluestocking Society

Booking Mama

Redlady’s Reading Room

Find Your Next Book Here

The Book Lady’s Blog

5 Minutes for Books

My Cozy Book Nook

Regular Rumination

Bibliophile By The Sea

Have you reviewed this book? If so, leave me a link in the comments and I’ll add you to the list of reviewers.

Welcome to another edition of Mailbox Monday hosted each week by Marcia at The Printed Page. Make sure you visit Marcia’s post TODAY to get links to other readers’ mailboxes.

This week I got two excellent-looking books.

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, by Gail Caldwell is due for release on February 9, 2010 through Random House. I looked and looked, but could not find a cover image to post here. My ARC (which arrived from Random House) describes Caldwell’s latest book as a ‘gorgeous, moving memoir about this Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s own coming-of-age in midlife, as she learns to open herself to the power and healing of sharing her life with a best friend, Caroline Knapp – a fellow writer, AA member, dog lover, and acute observer of life.‘ Gail Caldwell is the chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she has worked since 1985. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. Prior to joining the The Boston Globe, Caldwell taught feature writing at Boston University, worked as the arts editor of the Boston Review and wrote for the publications New England Monthly and Village Voice. In 2006 she published A Strong West Wind : A Memoir.

Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See arrived from Random House for a TLC Book Tour scheduled in January (my review will post on January 14th). I was really excited to get this book – it has been on my wish list ever since I read about it. The novel begins in 1937 in Shanghai. It is about two sisters: twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May. When their father gambles away the family’s wealth the two girls are sold as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides. Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. Read more about Lisa and her work by visiting the author’s website.

What arrived at YOUR house this week?

November 15, 2009

Good morning everyone! Can you believe we are already half way through November? The days are flying by and already the holidays are upon us. I am not even close to being ready for them, but I am trying not to stress about it.

This past week I finished reading Looking After Pigeon by Maud Carol Markson (read my review) which I really appreciated for its depth and literary style. I have been a little surprised at the mixed reviews this lovely book has been getting and it got me thinking about why that might be. I think Americans (for the most part) gravitate toward books which are fast-paced and action-filled, or those which are “light” in style…books that don’t necessarily require a lot of thought, but tend to be quite entertaining. There is nothing wrong with that…I read and enjoy those kinds of books too. But every now and then I want a book that moves slowly, that stretches my comfort level or makes me think deeply about an issue. I like to pick up a book which is heavy with theme…one that creates emotion for me whether that be anger, or sadness or joy. And that is why I love literary fiction. Markson’s book deals with a tough subject (the neglect of a child), and there is little action. The “plot” takes place inside the mind of an adult looking back on her childhood – specifically one summer of her childhood. All the “action” is internal. I believe many readers don’t have the patience for this kind of story…and that makes me a little sad because I think there is a lot of great books out there being ignored. Looking After Pigeon was not a fast read for me. It took me awhile to read it. In fact, it took me a lot longer to read it then I thought it would. Not because it was torturous, but because it was making me think. What about you? Do you shy away from books like this? Or do you sometimes really want to “go deep” when it comes to your reading? By the way, if you are interested in this book, you might also want to check out the guest post by the author on my blog.

My current read is a chunkster which I MUST finish today in order to complete the Chunkster Challenge. The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb is over 700 pages long and centers around the Columbine shootings in Littleton, Colorado. Lamb uses a fictional couple as his main characters, but also includes the actual victims of the shootings in his novel. I’ve read just over half of the book so far and am finding it engaging – although there have been moments when I thought it could have been more tightly edited and had less back story. And so far I am not loving the male protagonist (although I am willing to take the journey with him and see if he will change).  I don’t know if I will get it done by the end of the day….but we’ll see!

Have you seen all the fantastic events popping up around the holidays? There are several of which I am interesting in participating:

• The 12 Days of Christmas Cookies Virtual Cookie Swap (starts today!) hosted by Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Blog AND Julie of Booking Mama.
• Thankfully Reading Weekend (November 27-29) hosted by the crew over at the Book Blog Social Club.
• December Read-A-Thon (December 5) hosted by Bethany at Dreadlock Girl.
• 3rd Mystery Read-A-Thon (January 16-17, 2010) hosted at the dedicated blog for this event.

As usual for this time of year, there are a ton of new challenges being posted for 2010. To see them all in one place, visit A Novel Challenge blog…I’ve tried to make it easy to view pending challenges, current challenges, perpetual challenges, and events. You are also more than welcome to join A Novel Challenge Yahoo group for the reading challenge addicted. Joining the group has some advantages including getting email reminders of start dates for challenges and events…as well as being eligible for prize giveaways.

What are you planning to do today? Whatever it is, I hope it involves a great book!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but about two weeks before Thanksgiving I start craving stuffing, roasted poultry, squash, yams and pie. I think it is just  thinking of Thanksgiving that starts my mouth watering.

Yesterday I decided to kick off the Thanksgiving season with some pre-Thanksgiving fare. I stuffed a 5.5 pound chicken and roasted it; made a bit of acorn squash and gave the plate a bit of green with steamed broccoli.

My very first cookbook I ever owned was Betty Crocker’s Cookbook which my mother gave me. For many years this was my sole inspiration and reference to cooking…until I became more adventuresome. But I still use this cookbook – primarily for reference. And so when I roasted my chicken yesterday, I dragged my dog-eared, food splattered copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook off the shelf and looked up the time-frame for roasting a chicken. What I love is that any basic food information you could want can be found inside this simple cookbook (their pie crust recipe comes out perfectly). I looked up chicken, and referenced the roasting schedule (which is conveniently divided up into the SIZE poultry and whether it is stuffed or not). For my chicken, I planned on 2.5 hours of roasting time at 325 degrees.

I don’t reference a cookbook for making stuffing because I mostly improvise when it comes to that. Stuffing is one of my favorite foodie things to make at this time of year and yesterday I pretty much used what I had on hand to create it. Here it is just in case you want to give it a try (sorry about the lack of exact measurements for some ingredients…I tend to just add a little of this and a little of that as I go):

To stuff a 4-5 pound chicken…

• 4 cups of dried, cubed bread
• diced up celery (at least 1/2 cup)
• diced up sweet onion (at least 1/2 cup)
• diced up fresh mushrooms (I used about 5 large ones)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup to 1 cup of liquid (I use canned chicken broth…but you can use water or homemade chicken broth instead)
• pepper to taste
• currants or dried cranberries to taste
• pecans – crumbled into bite sized pieces to taste
• chopped up fresh parsley to taste

Melt the butter in a fry pan, add the vegetables and saute until the celery and onions are clear or just tender. Dump the butter and vegetables into a large bowl and add the bread cubes, currants (or dried cranberries), pecans, pepper, and parsley. Mix well. Add in the liquid a little at a time until you have the right level of moisture (this is completely up to you…some people like very moist stuffing, other people like their stuffing a bit drier). Taste and adjust seasonings or ingredients as needed. Then stuff that bird and pop it in the oven. The left over stuffing I add to a buttered casserole dish and bake it for about an hour at 350 degrees or until the top of the stuffing is brown and crunchy.

To make acorn squash:

Chop your squash into halves and scoop out the seeds. Place the squash upside down in a casserole dish and then add water until it comes about 1/2 way up the sides of the squash halves. Bake in a 400 degree oven until the squash are easily pierced with a fork (about 45 minutes depending on the size of your squash). Remove from the oven; drain the water and flip the squash right side up (be careful..they are very hot!). Add a dollop of butter and brown sugar into the squash halves and place under a broiler (set on high) until the sugar and butter are bubbling (they actually begin to caramelize a bit). Remove from the oven and cut into serving sized pieces. Serve hot. These also taste great leftover – just heat them up in the microwave.

Today Kip and I are enjoying leftovers. Yum!!!

What are you making this weekend? Are you already anticipating a Thanksgiving feast? Do you have a favorite cookbook for reference or basic recipes?

To read more Weekend Cooking posts, visit Beth’s blog today and check out Mr. Linky!

I was delighted to receive Maud Carol Markson’s newest novel Looking After Pigeon for a TLC Book Tour. There was something compelling to me about a five year old girl finding her way in the world after being abandoned by her father…and the book did not disappoint me (read my review). I was equally delighted when Markson agreed to write a guest post for my blog. Do you wonder where authors find inspiration for their books? I do. And so it was with great interest I read Markson’s words about how her writing seeks to find the truth in human experience and how that experience is a reflected in her characters.

A little bit about Maud Carol Markson:

Maud Carol Markson is the author of the novels When We Get Home, and Looking After Pigeon. She has taught writing at University of New Hampshire and Cabrini College and now lives in California with her husband and son, and her dog Molly, who is her constant writing companion. She can be reached at www.redroom.com and www.goodreads.com. Learn more about Markson and her work on her website: http://www.maudcarol.com.

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Guest Post: Maud Carol Markson

Some writers find it very easy to write about themselves, but I am not one of those authors—I guess that is why I write fiction. And that is why I am submitting a somewhat modified version of the guest post that I did for Meg Waite Clayton’s 1^st Books blog.

From the time I was told I would never grow up to be an elephant, I decided instead to grow up to be a writer (of course, to the adults who knew me, both probably seemed equally implausible). I wanted to be the person who wrote all those books I loved as a child, and all those books that kept my father engrossed every night so that when I talked to him he barely heard me. I wanted to be the writer of the books that filled my local library shelves. There I would walk once a week in the summer, and sit among the books, in the air-conditioned stacks, staring at their covers as if they could reveal the magic within. And then stacking up my selection of books to carry on the walk home, where they bumped against my side, reminding me with each step of what awaited me when I actually opened their covers and read their pages.

Books are still magical to me. I look at novels not as a means to escape from myself (although, happily, they often serve that purpose), but as a means to discover myself. As a young child, I discovered aspects of myself and my world in the characters of Harriet in Harriet the Spy and Julie in Up a Road Slowly, or Kit Tyler in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. As an adult, I cherished other favorites. It is not that the authors of these books are writing about me, or even about someone like me. What they are doing is finding some truth in their characters and in the human experience.

That is what I aim to do with my own writing. I wrote my first novel, When We Get Home (Bantam, 1989), when I was pregnant with my son and anxious about being a parent for the first time. It begins with the line: “In my family we are all disposable,” and it was that line that ran through my head over and over again until the character that speaks that line emerged. And then the rest of her family soon followed—the father with multiple divorces, the step-mother, the brother who flees from one relationship to another. Perhaps I felt that in writing about a family that disintegrates, I could keep my own family safe from a similar fate. And so far, it has worked.

In my novel, Looking After Pigeon (The Permanent Press, July 2009), it was another line that echoed: “My mother named her children after birds.” What kind of mother gives her children bird names? How does growing up with such a name make us who we are? In this novel, five year old Pigeon’s father disappears, leaving her to face a new life in an uncle’s house on the Jersey shore. My father never left me as a child, and I don’t even have an uncle, much less one who owns a house at the beach. My older sister never got pregnant. But like my character, Pigeon, I do find memory an “odd thing.” I call it selective memory: we remember what resonates most deeply for us. And of course, we all to some extent want someone to look after us. So although these characters are not me, the way they experience the world is me. They all in some way reveal parts of who I am. And hopefully reveal parts of my readers as well.

Pigeon is five years old – the youngest of three children – when her beloved father abandons them to the care of their eccentric and cold mother, Joan. Joan has named all her children after birds – Dove, Robin and Pigeon.

Still I believe, as I am sure our mother did, that the names we are given as children have much to do with the people we later become. Perhaps we do not really fly. It is done these days only safely aboard commercial airlines, and none of us have migrated far from home. Yet I am certain something of what our mother tried to impart in us at our birth is with us still, and always will be. - from Looking After Pigeon, page 11 -

After Pigeon’s father leaves, Joan packs up her children…with very few of their belongings…and moves to her brother’s home on the New Jersey shore. It is the beginning of summer and a new life for all of them. Each character will deal with their losses and fears differently. Joan will join a cult-like church and find a new lover; Dove (the eldest child) will look for acceptance in the arms of older men; Robin (the eldest boy) will find hope in reading the future in tarot cards; and young Pigeon will look for her father in the kindness of her Uncle Edward, and in the generosity of her mother’s lover Cary. Pigeon longs for an intact family. She misses the love of her father…and she hopes that he will one day return to her. Her habit of constructing paper families from the pictures of catalogs is heartbreaking.

I studied their faces carefully for my game; you could not just choose a person willy-nilly without consideration for their looks and disposition. For I was creating families and I did not take the responsibility lightly. All sons and daughters needed to look like their parents. They required friends of nearly the same age. Grandparents had to be older, of course, though still sprightly, attractive. And they all needed to share similar coloring and size. I had ten families already, had made clothes for them out of construction paper, and even provided them with pets – dogs and cats clipped from a pet supply firm. And although they were only made of the shiny catalogue paper, their lives were as intricate and involved as any real family’s ever were. – from Looking After Pigeon, page 102 -

Looking After Pigeon is narrated by an adult Pigeon who is looking back on that fateful summer when all that she had known and trusted disappeared. She wishes to uncover the truths of her upbringing, to gain an understanding of what happened so that she can move forward in her life and perhaps develop the trust she needs to connect with her significant other.

Maud Carol Markson’s latest novel is a look beneath the surface of a broken family through the eyes of the youngest daughter. Written in honest, simple prose…the book examines the impact of our earliest experiences on the development of our self-esteem, trust and world view. It also looks at our deepest fear – that of being abandoned and left to take care of ourselves. Who among us does not wish to be protected, cared for, and loved unconditionally? For Pigeon, security is wrenched from her suddenly and without explanation. She is often left to her own devices, to wander through the streets or along the beach alone. The adults in Pigeon’s life are mostly absent – either physically or emotionally – and are unreliable. Even Uncle Edward, who obviously loves and cares about Pigeon, is not always available to her.

Looking After Pigeon is a difficult story to read. It is not a terribly positive look at marriage, parenting or the family. And yet it is a thoughtful and intriguing book which continued to spin around in my head after I finished it. Despite its slim size (less than 200 pages), this is a deep book which I read slowly. I grew to care about Pigeon and empathize with what was lacking in her life. I found myself feeling anger toward the adults in her life who had relinquished their responsibilities and left her feeling vulnerable and lonely. Sadly, stories like this are found not only in fiction. Children often find themselves, in real life, alone or abandoned and without adults who make them feel safe. I think it takes courage for an author to tackle subjects like these in fiction. Too often readers want “feel good” novels and shy away from books like Looking After Pigeon.

Markson is a talented writer and Looking After Pigeon is an engrossing literary novel. Despite its serious subject matter, the book ends with a glimmer of hope for Pigeon and leaves the reader with a positive message – that despite flaws in our childhoods, we can choose to move forward and find joy as adults.

Readers who appreciate well-written literary fiction will want to read this book.

Recommended.

Read a guest post by the author here on Caribousmom.

Read other reviews through TLC Book Tours.

Roses, by Leila Meacham came from Miriam at Little Brown and Company (Hachette Books). It is a chunkster (more than 600 pages) and a family saga which is due for release in January 2010. Set in East Texas during the twentieth century, the novel centers around two families – one immersed in the cotton industry, the other involved in the lucrative timber business. I love family sagas and this one was hard to turn down. Kathy over at Bermuda Onion wrote a terrific post about Leila Meacham in September. Roses is Meacham’s debut novel.

When She Flew, by Jennie Shortridge arrived direct from the author (and autographed too). I accepted this book for a TLC Book Tour in December – so you’ll be able to read my review of it on December 29th. When She Flew is Shortridge’s fourth novel and was inspired by true events. The story centers around an Iraq war veteran raising his daughter in the wild, and the single mom/policewoman who is ordered to separate them. Publisher’s Weekly writes: ‘Examining people willing to sidestep the rules in pursuit of a greater good, Shortridge’s fourth novel recalls Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven…‘ Learn more about Shortridge and her work on the author’s website.

Home Repair, by Liz Rosenberg arrived direct from the author (also autographed). Rosenberg’s debut adult novel (she has previously published award-winning books for young readers) is about Eve, a middle-aged woman who first must deal with the tragic death of her first husband, and then (thirteen years later) the abandonment of her second husband who walks out on her in the middle of a garage sale. Faced with raising two kids on her own while dealing with her difficult mother, Eve just ‘might end up discovering that she’s gained much more than she’s lost.‘ Home Repair has been called compelling and immensely satisfying…it looks like my type of book. Read more about Rosenberg and her work at Harper Collins website.

The Passport, by Herta Muller arrived from Meryl Zegarek Public Relations. Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature for her body of work so I am very interested in this slim novella (it spans less than 100 pages). Translated from the German by Martin Chalmers, The Passport has been called “sparse,”brilliant,” and “poetic.” Set in a small Romanian village, the story centers on Windisch, the village miller, who wishes to migrate to West Germany to escape the hopelessness of Ceausescu’s dictatorship. Muller is a Romanian-born, German novelist, poet, and essayist who is known for her politically controversial writings (specifically about life under the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, the Soviet imposed communist regime of Romania, and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans by the occupying forces of Stalinist troups). Born in 1953, she has been an internationally-known author since the early 1990s and has won numerous literary prizes and awards. I expect we will begin seeing more of her work here in the United States.

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