Pam Webb

a writer's journey as a reader

Archive for the tag “reviews”

Die(t) Trying


Once upon a time, wasn’t really that long ago, there lived a woman who possessed  a healthy, if not robust appetite.  This robust appetite possessing woman could match pizza slices bite for bite with high school dates, defied the fatal fifteen during college days, and prevailed flabby Mum Tum after baby days; however, once our heroine entered the dratted, scurrilous midlife sector, weight gain became a nuisance.

For instance, our once quick metabolism inclined heroine found out the following:

1.  Thinking about cheesecake earned .5 lb on the scaleometer.

2.  Eating two bites of actual cheesecake added a full 1.5 lbs–sans any topping.

3.  The expression, “if I ate that slice of cake I might as well apply it to my hips” suddenly had real meaning, and actuality

4.  The rule of consuming calories in relationship to burning them became a science rather than a magazine article to simply pass over for something more interesting

5.  bikinis are not meant to be worn outside the confines of the backyard

Our heroine also found an increased interest in “success” stories that graced pages of national magazines and bestsellers.  An almost morbid fascination and momentary inspiration to also obtain “results not usual” would overcome her desires for Haagen-Daz, Dove Bars, and cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing.  That is, they would be tackled momentarily.

The truth, our heroine discovered, is that once born with the propensity to eat quantity, albeit not always quality, and not suffer for it, is a beastly habit to break.  Skinny jeans and crop tops were not initially the chief incentive.  It was the pursuit of gravity defiance that finally convinced said heroine to act responsibility towards food intake, because she noticed over the years body mass had begun sliding at an appalling rate.  Our heroine calculated at the rate of weight slide she would be the owner of hefty ankles by the time she reached retirement if the midsection weight slide were any indication of the future.

Hence, the DIET BOOK phase entered her life.  She would indeed enact the age-old saying, “Die(t) trying to lose weight.”

Books and magazine article began to lay about the house; yet, as these pound-shedding puntives increased in propensity in the library bag, the desired effects of weight dropping did not transpire on the bathroom scale.  This produced “major bummer syndrome” resulting in “what the flip?” rhetorical countersuit and freelance calorie consumption.  Midlife is not for sissies.

Studio publicity portrait of the American actr...

Studio publicity portrait of the American actress Elizabeth Taylor. Français : Portrait publicitaire pris en studio de l’actrice américaine Elizabeth Taylor. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is no totally happy ending for our heroine.  She has not dropped the desired twenty pounds (a compromise weight); however, she is much more wise in terms of menu and choice.  After all, it is a well-known fact that Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor were curvaceous and not svelte with power abs.  There is something to be said for padding.  The heroine learned to say sagaciously, “Why yes, I’ll have the sorbet, and could I have a box, please.”

Our heroine recommends the following diet books–not so much for the results attained, rather because the before and after photos of those who have actually adhered to the content’s regimes are impressive, and have proved useful in terms of thinking about exercise and caloric abstinence with more serious thought:

#3: Picture Books Are for Any Age!


“What do you write?” is a question often traded at a writer’s conference.  My answer is usually an embarrassed “everything.” It’s true.  I write middle grade, YA, adult, poems, non-fiction, plays, book reviews–I like to write!  My favorite genre, the one I no doubt have spent the most time on, is picture books.

There is something incandescently, transcendentally, most amazingly wonderful  when it comes to experiencing a picture book.  They are even better when shared with a child.  I don’t mind reading them on my own.  Oh, picture books are only for kids?  Is that a bona fide rule?

Moving on with my Cricket List: Musings of a Voracious Reader, I decided to tackle my #3: Picture Books.This is a tough one because it could go on from here until next Tuesday because I have so many favorites.  I could probably start entire blog about picture books.  So instead of a list I am posting thumbnail covers of picture books read, admired, reread, find timeless, find amazing, and want to share with the world. Barnes and Noble supplied the images.

Enjoy!

Click, Clack, Moo Tacky The Penguin If You Give A Mouse A Cookie The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate The Wash The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales Sheep In A Jeep Book Cover Image. Title: On the Night You Were Born, Author: by Nancy  Tillman Book Cover Image. Title: The Story of Ferdinand, Author: by Munro  Leaf Book Cover Image. Title: Make Way for Ducklings, Author: by Robert  McCloskey Book Cover Image. Title: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Author: by Eric  Carle Book Cover Image. Title: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Author: by Judith  Viorst Book Cover Image. Title: The Quiet Book, Author: by Deborah  Underwood

 Goodnight Moon (Board Book) Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? Happy Birthday to You! Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business Chicka Chicka Boom BoomOpposites Frog and Toad All Year (I Can Read Book Series: Level 2) One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish Harold and the Purple Crayon (50th Anniversary Edition) The Runaway Bunny   Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel  Corduroy  Guess How Much I Love You Moo, Baa, La La La! The Little Engine That Could Mouse Paint I Am a Bunny It Looked Like Spilt Milk Little Bear's Friend (I Can Read Book Series: A Level 1 Book) Leo the Late Bloomer Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? Blueberries for Sal (Picture Puffin Books Series) Stone Soup Little Gorilla Lap Board Book Harry the Dirty Dog Good Dog, Carl (Classic Board Books Series) Prayer for a Child Whistle for Willie

Tree Is Nice Andy and the Lion Windows with Birds The Snowy Day

This is only a thimble’s worth in the sea of picture book reads.  I stopped at page 15 of Barnes and Noble’s picture book list.  Feel free to browse on your own.  And  make sure to pop a couple of picture books in your basket when shopping at your local library or bookstore.  Picture books are forever.

Hungry for Another Series?


After reading the Hunger Games series I cast about for something else as a continuous read.  Fortunately I found Divergent by Veronica Roth.  Although the next book is not due out until May I am set to move on to the further adventures of Tris.

What is it about getting involved in a series?  Is the lost-in-a-plot feeling?  Is it the invested interest in characters?  Perhaps it is the convenience of not having to find and audition yet another book (hmm, shades of dating and staying in a monogamous relationship).  Anyway, here are some suggested series, tried, true, and some still new to me:

1. Divergent by Veroncia Roth(next up will be Insurgent in May)

2. Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

3.  Enders Game by Scott Orson Card

4.  Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

5.  The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

6.  Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

7.  The Giver by Lois Lowry

8. The City of Ember by Jeanne Du Prau

9.  The Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert

10. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

11. Sisterchicks by Robin Jones Gunn

12. Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart

13. Redwall by Brian Jacques

14. This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti

15. Dragon Riders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery

16. Janie Johnson series by Caroline Cooney

17. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

18. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

19. The Zion Chronicles by Bodie Thoene

20.  Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

21. The Outsiders, That Was Then This is Now, Rumblefish by S.E. Hinton (shared characters)

22. Ramona by Beverly Cleary

23.  The Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman

23.  Constable  Evans series by Rhys Bowen

24. The Mars Diaries by Sigmound Brouwer

25. Chronicles of Fairacre byMiss Read

26. Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny

27.  Horatio Hornblower by E.M. Forester

28. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

29. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

30.  Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald Sobol

31. Little Britches by Ralph Moody

32. Diary of a Teenage Girl by Melody Carlson

33. Stonewycke Triolgy by Michael Phillips

34. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachan

35. Paddington Bear by Michael Bond

If these don’t work for you, or if you’ve already devoured them, try the GoodReads link.  There are over 1200  entries and over 100 pages to browse through.  Book Boosters need their choices, ya know.

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/series?page=1128

I’m interested in your thoughts.  Try out my first Polldaddy attempt:

Spring Came on Forever


Spring Came on Forever by Bess Streeter Aldrich

From the book:

This is the story of two midwestern families and the starnge way in which their paths crossed. It begins in Illinois in the year 1866, and end in Nebraska in the present one [1935], severed from all that went before and all that will continue beyond a thing of incompleteness.

Aldrich blends together a portrait of the harshness of prairie pioneer life and that of an unconventional love story.  Amalia Holmsdorfer, a sweet young girl of seventeen, finds herself attracted to twenty-one year Matthias Meier, the young clerk who sold her stern German father the soap-making kettle.  Matthias also finds himself attracted to Amalia and begins secretly courting her–even though she has been pledged in marriage to a man of her father’s choosing.  Amalia and Matthias plan to run away together, yet their plans meet up with the fury of flooded roads and even though Matthias attempts to meet her in Nebraska before she marries, he again meets up with one of nature’s blockades.  Matthias and Amalia miss each other by mere hours and she marries the wrong man.

So goes the begins a love story that will span three and four generations.  Aldrich, writing in the style prevalent of her time, reveals the story in an omniscient narrator fashion.  It’s as if we are sitting in a cozy living room and listening to a tale of long ago.  While the “tell” style of yesteryear may not got over well with the current “show” method of today, I have to admit I became so involved in the plot that by the last chapter I clutched the book and actually cried.  And I am not a crier when it comes to literature.  Movies, on occasion can induce some sniffling, but rarely can a book get me to sob.

The story is mainly about Amalia; her hopes and dreams of romance are forever changed when she is forced to leave with the rest of her family and the other members of her German community to build a new settlement in Nebraska. Though she appears complacent on the outside, she keeps her inner thoughts and desires to herself.  Aldrich captures this wonderfully:

pp. 9 & 10

But thoughts are acrobats, agile and quite often untrustworthy.  So now, with impish disregard of the command, they hopped about quite easily.  They asked Amalia innocently why the nice young man wanted to know where she lived.  They suggested with subtle art the possibility that he would try to find out.  And then when the gruff person at her side questioned their activities they urged her quickly to answer, “Nein.”

My interest in pioneer started long ago with the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books. There is a fascination in reading about how people created homes and towns out of the rough lands of prairie and wilderness, and through all this tremendous effort they had their own personal stories.   For the last five years I have labored on a novel about a family who follows the Oregon trail to turn off and make their claim in Idaho.  Historical novels require plenty of research to make the time period, setting, and characters come alive.  Aldrich’s Spring Came on Forever reminded me how moving pioneer stories can be.   I am also encouraged to someday write something that induces tears.

Sufficient Grace


Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult

Listening to the voices in her head Gracie Hollman takes off her wedding ring, snips her credit cards, jumps in her car, and leaves everything behind.  Her husband Ed, a solid, everyday kind of guy who owns a tire shop, is at first concerned about her absence, thinking foul play at first, but the abandoned credit cards and wedding ring make him think she’s left him for another man.  He didn’t see that one coming, especially after thirty years of marriage

The story centers on Gracie and how her decision to leave everything behind causes a ripple through several families.  Each family, and each person will find that things have a way of working out because grace truly is sufficient.

Darnell Arnout has created a mesmerizing work which explores grief and healing with sensitivity, insight, and humor. Arnoult masterfully mixes together a variety of characters, who at first have separate stories, yet by the end of the book they are all connected.

One of Arnoult most distinguishable style attributes is taking the everyday and spotlighting it into something  of phenomenal clarity.    For instance, Mattie is becoming increasingly handicapped by her inability to get past her husband’s death. At her family’s insistence she begins to clean out his closet. During the process Mattie tries on her husband’s shoes, reminicsing about much she misses how their feet would lightly rest together at night when they slept.

p. 162:

Mattie will give up the clothes.  She can do that.  She’ll let Sammy put them in some bin and let some other needy soul have them.  but she needs to walk in Arty’s shoes for a while.  Feel her skin slide over the place where his feet have been.  Just for a while longer. She’s got to keep those feet.

This book gave me encouragement to take a batch of people and tumble them together to get a kaleidoscope of character mixing.  I also gained an insight on how levity lightens serious topics.  And food. Writing about food somehow makes painful stiuations like grief, discord, and mental duressl seem so much more palatable.

The Magic of Ordinary Days


The Magic of Ordinary Days by Ann Howard Creel

Olivia Dunne’s dreams of becoming an archaeologist are irrevocably changed after a brief interlude with a solider shipping out overseas. Her father arranges a marriage with a reputable bachelor farmer and Livvy accepts this arrangement. Leaving her married sisters behind in Denver, Livvy arrives in rural Colorado to become the wife of a man she does not know.

The book explores many topics: grief, betrayal, loneliness, trust, forgiveness, acceptance, and love. Livvy shows the readers her situation and how she adjusts to it in a voice full of angst. She mourns the recent passing of her mother, as well as the changes her mother’s death has brought her father. She stoically accepts the arranged marriage, for her baby needs a name. Ray, her new husband, knows Livvy carries another man’s child, yet he does not judge or resent Livvy for it. He patiently waits for Livvy to love him as he has come to love her.

Within this main plot is Livvy’s friendship with two Japanese-American sisters, Rose and Lorelei, who are residents of a local interment camp. Readers see the affects of WWII on Americans through Livvy’s eyes and through Rose’s and Lorelei’s.

As a reader I relished Creel’s use of imagery. I could feel the isolation Livvy suffered: the expanse of the fields, the lack of neighbors and family to break up the monotony, the need of useful purpose. Found on page 41: A clay-colored tumbleweed wedged between rows of green leaves caught my eye. Thorny, trapped, and out of place, it let me know the insignificance of any one, distinctive thing caught in a place so mapped with sameness. Aunt Eloise and Aunt Pearl had once accused me of hiding out in school. Instead Father had sent me into hiding here, where the openness of land and sky made hiding out about as unlikely as finding clover among the sage.

As a writer I appreciated Creel’s ability to use the first person narrator in such a way that all the characters were given dimension. The narration flowed so effortlessly that I often forgot the story was told from Livvy’s point of view. Another aspect of Creel’s writing is her use of prologue. Not being much of a prologue fan, I find myself inadvertently cringing whenever a book begins with one. Why not just start the story? Why the compunction to have extra exposition? However, Creel’s prologue is perfect; it reads as a visual movie trailer. It sets up the plot, the initial conflicts, the intrigue. It hooked me as a reader.

The Magic of Ordinary Days is far from ordinary. A compliment to Creel is that her book became an inspiration for a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, which I had actually watched many years ago. As always, the book is better.

The Magic of Ordinary Days

The Magic of Ordinary Days (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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