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Oct
22
Just Read It: YOU HAD ME AT WOOF by Julie Klam
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Set for publication October 28, 2010 by Riverhead
Julie Klam’s You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness is part memoir, part how-to guide, and one hundred percent a love letter to pets. Sure, in Klam’s case, the pets in question are adorably bug-eyed Boston terriers, but you need not own a Boston terrier or even a dog to appreciate the warmth, humor, and unflinching candor with which Klam remembers the dogs who made her life busier, her apartment more crowded, and her heart bigger.
Klam’s story begins when she is in her early thirties, living alone in New York and almost convinced she will never find “the one.” Then she has a dream about a dog named Otto and takes it as a sign (she confesses to being easily swayed by apparent omens at that stage of life) and, after some internet research and the discovery of a Boston terrier rescue group (“I sort of figured it had to do with rescuing Boston terriers in peril. You know, stuck up in trees, stranded on ice floes.”), begins her first solo adventure in dog ownership. Read more
Classic Bitches I Have Loved (The Bare Necessities—Erin Blakemore)
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which writers and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Erin Blakemore is the author of The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder.
We all know her: the antagonist we love to hate, the protagonist we publicly decry but secretly admire for her lack of tact, compassion, or both. As I researched the classic heroine/author pairs that would become The Heroine’s Bookshelf, I was reminded of the lingering power of the literary bitch. At once pariahs and powerhouses, these women are difficult, unnerving, and endlessly entertaining, whether we embrace the term or shy away from it. Here are a few of my favorites:
Scarlett O’Hara – Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Best to start at once with the queen B. Ready to lie, steal, and sleep her way to every goal, Scarlett is unimaginative and utterly terrifying. Bad mother? Check. Mercenary? Yup. Yet we follow her through 1,000 plus pages, panting as if we were the ones too-tightly laced, hanging on her every bad decision and backstabbing move. Simply put, Scarlett shows other bitches how it’s done. Read more
Book Review: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published October 5, 2010 by William Morrow.
In 1979, Larry Ott took a girl on a date to the drive-in, and she was never seen again. Despite the fact that no evidence connecting Larry to the disappearance—which was quickly assumed to be a murder—was ever found, his oddness and eccentricity (i.e. a fondness for Stephen King novels and a mind for unusual scientific facts), combined with his being the last to see her alive, were enough to establish his guilt in the minds of the people of Chabot, Mississippi. Known widely as “Scary Larry,” Ott has been living with the stigma of this accusation for the last twenty-five years, and when another young girl goes missing, fingers begin to point in his direction.
Silas “32″ Jones, now the constable of Chabot, had a brief friendship with Larry the same year that girl went missing, but it was complicated. Silas and his mother lived in a cabin on Larry’s family’s property (it bears mentioning that Larry is white and Silas is black), and race relations in the deep south weren’t exactly comfortable at the time. Then the girl went missing, and Larry was ostracized as Silas became the high school’s star baseball player.
Tom Franklin’s brilliant Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (which takes its title from a rhyme used to teach children how to spell Mississippi) presents, in alternating chapters, Silas’s investigation of the recent disappearance and his revisiting of the secret that has haunted and defined him for the last twenty-five years(“Letting himself off the hook had been his way of life.”), and Larry’s struggle to, once again, prove his innocence and go on living the quiet if lonely life of a small-town mechanic who is all but out of business. But this book is much more than a whodunit, and calling it a thriller misses the point. Read more
“A moment with a book is basic self-care.”
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published October 19, 2010 by Harper Books
When our lives are turned upside down in moments of tragedy, pain, and struggle, opening a book can seem like the last thing we should be doing. But Erin Blakemore says that isn’t so.
When the line between duty and sanity blurs, you can usually find me curled up with a battered book, reading as if my mental health depended on it. And it does, for inside books I love I find food, respite, escape, and perspective. I find something else, too: heroines and authors, hundreds of them, women whose real and fictitious lives have covered the terrain I too must tread.
With the thesis that every woman is the heroine of her own life’s story, Erin Blakemore remembers twelve heroines of classic literature who, along with the authors that created them, teach us about character traits and virtues that, when well-cultivated, can allow us to move through even the most difficult moments with grace and courage. These twelve books form the foundation of The Heroine’s Bookshelf and, Blakemore argues, deserve a spot on our individual bookshelves as well, where they can be consulted for wisdom and guidance time and again. Read more
