Beach Reads: Fiction Edition

I love reading all the time, but the idea of the perfect book for summer days is one I cherish. I pour over the lists that pop up on Twitter like a kid dreaming of Christmas, each shiny cover holding a story that can take me away...

Here are three I've loved so far:

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan
Loved this book. I Read it on the beach, in the car, on my couch late one night when I couldn't sleep...it's that book. I didn't think I was interested in the history of diamond advertising, and yet, there I was, captivated. I'm enthralled by the way the book weaves together stories that cross decades. I'll be re-reading in dissection mode, trying to figure out, "How'd she do that?" But it's a testament to the entertainment value of this story that I didn't even try to figure it out the first time through; I just enjoyed.  (Bonus: Courtney Sullivan is on her tour right now.  Here's a list of where she'll be.)

Why Can't I Be You? by Allie Larkin
Jenny Shaw hears someone call to her across a hotel lobby and realizes that they think she is someone else. She goes with it, learning about this other person and becoming her, sort of, and realizing the kind of close friendships she'd never had on her own.  I adored this story because it does such a great job of describing the longing we all have to connect and to develop these kind of relationships--where we really know people and they know us. Also, Allie Larkin is so funny. She creates a fun world to jump into, whether you're lounging in a beach chair or huddled indoors during a thunderstorm.  (And when you're done loving Why Can't I Be You, check out her first book, Stay, about a woman who gets drunk one night and orders a German Shepherd online!)

East Hope by Katherine Davis
My Mom gave me this book when I said I was looking for something light, with a happy ending.  This delivered.  (And yes, I'm kind of a sucker for any book with "hope" in the title.)

Books!

The Muse and the Marketplace literary conference was this past weekend, and it left me feeling excited about all things writing and bookish.  One of the keynote speakers said, "If you use words to connect the dots in life, you're a writer." I love that idea, and plan to repeat it often (along with it's obvious corollary, "If you use numbers to connect the dots in life, you're an alien." :) )

The Muse left me inspired to write...and to read. In this season of feeling so ready for summer vacation, I love the way books take me somewhere else and expand my horizons in the fifteen minute increments I find to fly through a few pages. So today I'll share some of the great books I've read over the past couple of months, in case you're looking for a fun little get-away, too.

I just finished Life After Life, a novel by Jill McCorkle. It follows a group of people who live in and

around a retirement home. I expected it to be a bit sad, but it surprised me. I was drawn right into these characters and the things they share and remember about their lives: what they miss, mistakes they made, how they work to create a new life now that the old one exists only in their memories. The philosophical questions in this book about living and aging and seasons of life intrigue me.  My favorite character in the book is a former school teacher who posits that deep inside, we're all still eight years old. It's funny to see how she applies that theory and how apt it can be. And my second favorite character is part of a plot twist that caught by totally by surprise. I won't give it away, but it's worth the read just to hear him describe his life strategies. 

Before that, I sped through The Invisible Girls, a memoir by Sarah Thebarge.  This one's a heartbreaker, but in the best way. She shares her story of being diagnosed with breast cancer in her twenties (very unusual), weathering the harsh treatment along with the disappointing ways her friends react to her illness, and then moving Portland, Oregon to get a fresh start. In Portland, she meets a woman from Somalia on a bus, along with the woman's five daughters.  The author's descriptions of witnessing the struggles of this family to survive are the best part of this book. I'd never before considered how hard it is to keep milk from spoiling if you don't know that the refrigerator only works if you keep the door closed. Or how you handle bodily functions if no one shows you how a bathroom works and you now live in a crowded city instead of a rural area.  This book was tough to put down, and I was sad when it was over.

Working backwards through the list, I LOVED the new book from Chip & Dan Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.  I'm a fan of the Heath brothers: I love how they help me broaden my thinking, and this book does a really good job at pointing out how severely most of us narrow our focus when making decisions, ignoring how most things in life aren't nearly as either/or as we make them out to be.  They talk about how we tend to use a spotlight to look at a decision...which does a great job of lighting up a particular area, but leaves everything else in the dark.  They offer strategies to swing that spotlight around a bit and see what other possibilities it reveals.

And finally, I read Rob Bell's latest, What We Talk About When We Talk About God. I'm not a Rob Bell devotee: we come from very different places, and some of the rocks he's flipping over in search of spiritual answers are the same ones I was exploring awhile back and decided weren't all that helpful. But I have friends who know him personally and love him, so I try to withhold any strong opinions. (And it wasn't until I read a profile of him in The New Yorker describing him as providing a release valve or sorts in the intense conservative culture of Grand Rapids, Michigan where he founded a church that I understood why he's such a big deal in certain Christian circles.) I liked this book more than expected, but with one caveat: as a writer, I think he needs to step up to the plate and reveal what these ideas mean to him. His writing is quite cerebral, but all the artful phrases don't land anywhere because he doesn't share about himself. He hints at an intense spiritual crisis but never tells us what that looked or felt like, or how he's working through it, or even what it looks like for him to look to his faith in mundane circumstances wondering what to do next and whether life has meaning.  It would be interesting to read an "applied faith" book from him.

Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist

I have been waiting for WEEKS to tell you about this book! It is beyond lovely, and you should go to your favorite bookstore and buy/order a copy right now. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

I am not the target market for this book. It's giggle worthy that I felt so blessed by a collection of essays centered on cooking.  If you've read my second book (chapter three) you know that meal production is not my strong suit, and that Steve and I launched our marriage with a 40 pound weight gain, a borderline case of salt-poisoning, and this persistent a-hem sound we'd make from the backs of our throats due to my belief that "saute in butter" was the best way to prepare all food.  Things have improved since then, but I still don't collect recipes or wake up dreaming of dinner, and neither of us is what you'd call a foodie.

But here's the thing: Shauna Niequist writes in a way that suggests that even though she & I don't share this passion, we could still be friends. We might laugh about my lack of culinary curiosity, and perhaps we'd find something I love that she thinks is equally baffling (I'll just bet she can't twirl a baton! Oh wait, she's from the Midwest. I bet she can...)  She's a fun person to spend a few hundred pages with.

A favorite moment came on page 37, where she says:

"I believe every person should be able to make the simple foods that nourish them, that feel familiar and comforting, that tell the story of who they are."

I laughed out loud, imagining inviting her to my house for a baloney sandwich with mayonnaise, mustard, American cheese & four slices of cucumber.... my favorite food since I was nine years old. I'd pair it with a chocolate martini :) I don't think this is what she had in mind, and yet the idea of a baloney sandwich party sounds like so much fun, I'm inspired to give it a try. Thank you, Shauna.

The book is about more than food. It's also about friendship and marriage and parenting, and the hard times we all go through wondering if/how life will work out. She's candid about her struggles with shame and body image, and the temptation to believe that everyone's online persona is the truth about them and that you're the only one who hasn't yet mastered life.  So even though she talks about "dressing greens" like something everybody does, she makes me feel safe admitting that my greens tend to run naked across my plate.

And if you ARE a foodie? You will love this book even more. She includes recipes for everything you can imagine, and even has a chapter toward the end where she admits that not every night in her house is a gourmet extravaganza--that the weeknight stress of getting dinner on the table requires a plan and some easy go-to options.

For all my reluctant protests, I might try the risotto recipe (pray for me!) It involves the top of the stove (my comfort zone), a process that is sort of sauté-like, and wine.  If I pull it off and everyone survives the experience, I'll let you know.  In the meantime, I'll be giving this book to my foodie friends, with the chapter on Bacon-Wrapped Dates strategically highlighted.

Book Recommendation: News From Heaven

I was up late last night reading Jennifer Haigh's new collection of interconnected short stories, News From Heaven.  So good. I'm astonished by how she writes about struggling people without making them pitiful or off-putting. That's tough to do. And even though the stories so far (I'm halfway through) are about people trying to move beyond the geographic & emotional confines of the small coal mining town where they were raised, it makes me nostalgic for small town life, where people have roots and know each other over the course of generations.

My husband Steve has those roots here in Cambridge. We live a few doors down from the house where he grew up, and he runs into someone he knows...or who knows his mother or sister, or bought candy at his grandfather's corner store back in the day...almost everywhere we go.  So I have roots-by-marriage, which is a nice thing in such a transient city.  I get to claim Tip O'Neill as my local hero (it was so fun explaining who he was to a wide-eyed Princess Peach as we looked at the new mural tribute to him on the side of our library) and appreciate the wonder of a resident parking pass (that might be the most valuable part of Cambridge property).

These stories made me think about how most of us long for roots. To be known, to have a support system to hold us firm when storm after storm rolls in. But even more that that, the title had me thinking about how I long for news from heaven. It's a brilliant title, tapping into something so many of us are looking for when we admire a huge full moon, or stare out across the ocean.  Or even when we sit with bad news we didn't see coming, struggling to make sense of our new reality. The possibility of news from heaven seems enticing, indeed.

I knew from past reading that a new book from Jennifer Haigh would be worth the wait, and this does not disappoint.  Highly recommended, both for the stories and the things they make you ponder as you turn each page :)

Who Do You Think You Are?

I'm an unlikely fan of Mark Driscoll's preaching & books, but I'm a fan. He's thoughtful about the Bible and I appreciate his candor.  (As I said last year when I reviewed his book Real Marriage, I like his "straight/no chaser" approach.)  When his publisher offered me a review copy of his latest, Who Do You Think You Are?, I was excited to check it out.

Driscoll is with a new publisher and I suspect he's getting more editorial input than before.  The results are great: reading him now feels like you're in a conversation, rather than a fight.  That's a good thing :)

The center of Who Do You Think You Are? is our search for identity. I think this would be an especially good read for anyone going through a tough patch.  Driscoll reminds us of who God says we are in blunt, factual way (rather than the sappy "hug yourself because you're so wonderful" junk that exacerbates hopelessness).  The encouragement is solid because it's based on something real you can lean into.

I get tripped up on a few of Driscoll's word choices -- I'm not sure about the use of "image" as a verb.  But that's stylistic.  Substantively, this is a really good book, and it gets better as it goes on.  One of my favorite sections makes this point about prayer:

"The true test of your theology is not just what you say, but how you pray.  If others listened in on your prayer life, would they hear you praying the kind of prayers that could only be answered if God really showed up in a big way? Do you truly believe down deep in your gut that God can do more than you can ask or imagine?"

A real strength of this book is Driscoll's skill in setting out provocative questions, then following them with points to help readers improve our answers.

And a note for those put off by Driscoll's hyper-conservative theology and extreme take on gender roles: there's not much of that in this book. (Again, hooray for good editing!)  I may not agree with everything Driscoll says, but I don't thing that's necessary to get a lot out of a book.  Four stars.

*Thanks to Thomas Nelson for providing the review copy - there was no obligation to post a positive review.

Memoir: old, new, borrowed, one blue

I've read three fab memoirs over the past few weeks:

First, With or Without You by Domenica Ruta.  This is the story of a girl growing up in Danvers, MA with a mother who was a drug addict, eccentric, and (at one point) surprisingly brilliant business woman.  While nothing in this story is quite so outlandish as to put it in the Jeanette Walls/Glass Castle category, this makes it more accessible and real.  Ruta could be the kid at the end of your street, the one  you wonder about with the mother who screams and smokes a lot. And the writing is so good that the author feels like a friend sharing her story over coffee.  This belongs on your TBR pile when it comes out in March!

Then came Brain on Fire.  I'm squeamish about medical stories, but this was captivating: New York Post writer Susannah Cahallan began having strange symptoms--forgetting things, personality shifts--that eventually led to a seizure, hospitalization, and an mystery brain illness that left her a shell of her former self.  This is the story of the miraculous series of discoveries and bold decisions that led her back. Again, great writing.  This one is available in November.

And finally, a book I'm reading for the third or forth time: Heather King's Redeemed.  This is King's second memoir (the first, Parched, is about her recovery from hard-core alcoholism, and the third, Shirt of Flame, is a chronicle of the year she spent following the teachings of St. Therese of Lixieux).  I love all three, but Redeemed is my favorite because she covers so much ground: her faith life, her struggles in love, the death of her father, why she declined chemotherapy when diagnosed with breast cancer, the loneliness of writing (the loneliness of life).  Do yourself a favor and get a copy now (along with an extra to give to a friend.  Trust me on this!)

I'll leave you with this bit I underlined twice, a funny reflection about life as a writer:

"It's an impossible line of work.  Nobody but a pathological martyr, loner, alcoholic, drug addict, sexually conflicted, chronically depressed social misfit and/or religious fanatic could possibly stay with it long enough to write a single decent page."

Her candor cracks me up and reassures me, all at the same time.  It makes me want to write.  Thanks to Domenica, Susannah & Heather for reminding me why it's worth it to wrestle with all those words.