KOTV Book Reviews Archive

Monday, December 20, 2004

Two religious books  by Marcus Borg, Jesus scholar: "Reading the Bible for the First Time" and "The Heart of Christianity." He looks at the Bible stories as sacred text and--this is the interesting part--metaphors for another meaning. Very intersting.

Two fabulous Indian art books:  "Art of the Osage" by Garrick Bailey (professor of anthropology at the Univeristy of Tulsa) and Daniel Swan.  "Native Universe: Voices of Indian America" produced for the opening the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indan and named one of the top books of the year by the New York Times.

Monday - Nov 29, 2004

Just in time for holiday fashions, a couple of books about clothes and colors.

What Not to Wear by Trinny Woodall and Suzannah Constatine is a good basic rule book for dressing the bodies we have (hiding our flaws, emphasizing our strong features) and not using ourselves as hangers to show off the clothes we have. The point is to show off ourselves. The book is divided by problem area: bosom too big, round tummy, wide hips, etc. The rules are good but this British book makes too much use of fashions I never see around here, such as wrap around sweathers or dresses.

What Not to Wear for Every Occasion (same authors) is less usefule, in my opinion, and too hip and Brit. What to wear to summer and winter weddings and what to wear on the slopes, didn't interest me.

Tony & Tina Color Energy: How Color Can Transform Your Life by Cristina Bornstein and Anthony Gill is based on a fascinating that color has energy and can heal, energize and transform our lives. The colors we surround ourselves with (rooms) and the colors we wear, but especially the amount of colors we are drawn to.  Rather new age, focusing on what color connects with which body chakra. Yellow, for example, is a clor of self--self esteme and self acceptace. A person with too much yellow can be egocentric, a workaholic and demanding. With too little yellow--depressed, insecure and afraid to be alone. Just the right amount of yellow, however, reflects a person who is happy, relaxed, intelligent and charismatic.

You'll probably have to orde the color book, but the What Not to Wear books are availabe in book stores.

Monday, Sept. 20, 2004

One of the most popular genres of fiction is the mystery novel. Today I am talking about four acclaimed mystery writers:

1. Boris Akunin is a Russian mystery writer who lives in Moscow. He is almost a legend in Russia and one of the most widely read authors in that country. His detective series featuring young, idealistic Erast Fandorin first appeared in 1998. Nine books have appeared to date and two more are coming. Critics and other mystery writers love him, call him the Russian Ian Fleming and the Pushkin of detective fiction. His book "The Winter Queen," set in czarist Moscow and London of 1876, is as Russian as vodka and caviar. My book club is reading this book for September.
2. Val McDermid is a Scottish writer--award-winning and best-selling. A friend recommended "The Last Temptation" to me. It is a psychological thriller with European locales. The Los Angeles Times Book Review named it A Best Book of 2002. However. I found it too strong meat for my taste--too much violence, mutilation, rape and murder.
3. Deborah Crombie is a Texas writer whose police procedure books feataure Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincate and Sergeant Gemma James. I have not read her books, but a retired English teacher has recommended them to me and loaned me "Dreaming of the Bones," a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. I'll start with this. Ms. Crombie will be in Tulsa Oct 2 for the Celebration of Books at OSU-Tulsa.
4. Donald E. Westlake is one of the most popular mystery novelist in the country. As the San Francisco Chronicle said, "Westlake has no peer in the realm of comic mystery novelists." His series featuring John Dortmunder is classic. Many of his caper books have been made into movies. Even his books' titles are funny: "What's the Worst That Could Happen?" "Don't Ask," "Why Me," (all Dortmunder series) and from his other comic crime novels "Baby, Would I Lie?" "Trust Me On This," "Somebody Owes Me Money."  He may be best known for "The Hot Rock," "Bank Shot," "Jimmy the Kid," and "Cops and Robbers." Mr. Westlake will also be in Tulsa Oct 2 for the Celebration of Books at OSU-Tulsa.

          The Celebration of Books is one of my favorite events. Read the line-up of authors who will be here at www.poetsandwriters.okstate.edu.  Or call OSU-Tulsa 918-594-8215. It opens Friday night, Oct 1, with appearances by Amy Tan and S.E. Hinton. Donald Westlake, Deborah Crombie and Val McDermid all have websites where you can read more about these authors.

          And for mysteries, my favorite discovery is the delightful best-selling series by Alexander McCall Smith "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" featuring Precious Ramotswe, the Miss Marple of Botswana. This is my top pick.

Monday, August 9, 2004

Books for the August doldums:

Three novels: "When the Elephants Dance" by Tess Uriza Holthe, set in Phillipines during the Japanese occupation of WWII, natives hiding in a basement tell stories of Spanish, Mexican and Phillipino culture. Dark but likened to Isabelle Allenda;

"The Curious Incicent of the Dog in the Night-time" by young English author Mark Haddon, is a beautifully written, uplifting story told from the perspective of a teenage autistic boy trying to solve the mystery of the death of a neighborhood dog;

"The Patron Saint of Liars," first novel by Ann Patchett ("Bel Canto") is a compelling story of a young pregnant woman in the 1960s who arrives at St Elizabeth's, a Catholic home for unwed mothers in Tennessee, and does not leave. I loved this novel.

Mystery series by Laura Lippman starring Baltimore journalist-turned-detective Tess Monaghan. So gripping--not heavy but fun--I could not stop reading until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

Monday, April 19, 2004

Two best-selling, award-winning, much ballyhooed novels I have resisted reading until now--to my loss--are Life of Pi by Yann Martel and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

I thought Life of Pi,  described as a story of a 16-year-old boy adrift on the ocean in a raft with a Bengal tiger, sounded like an outlandish story. I was amazed by the lyrical beauty and wisdom of this book. I loved the central charater, a young man who "attracts religions the way dogs attract fleas." His time on the raft may be a bit gory for animal lovers, but read this book all the way to the end where a great mystery awaits us, and it is a joy. The author cleverly leads us into the story by saying he was in India to write a book when he met an old man in a coffee shop who told him, "I have a story that will make you believe in God."

The Lovely Bones opens with this line: "My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." The character's rape and murder are handled at the book's beginning and the rest of the novel is told from her vantage point in heaven, which is different for everyone, she tells us. I thought the book would be maudlin, or too sad, and there is sadness in it, but mostly it is a book bursting with love of life. Beautifully, beautifully written.Author Sebold was herself raped when she was 17 and told by a policeman that she was lucky because she had not been killed and dismembered like the previous victim. She wrote about that episode in her life, her post traumatic stress and heroin addiction and the jury trial of her attacker in her non-fiction book Lucky. Now she has taken the straw of that horror and spun it into fictional gold. A couple of points late in the book did not ring true for me, but overall, it is a wonder of imagination.

Monday, March 29, 2004

Natalie Wood by Gavin Lambert is a gossipy Hollywood biography that details every movie Ms Wood made from a child star and every love affair until her death at age 43. Classic Hollywood story--stage mother, alcoholic father, struggle for good movie roles, and, at the end, too much alcohol and toomany pills. So badly written I could barely understand some sentences but very very thorough.

Brenda's Wardrobe Companion by Brenda Kinsel--just in time for new spring and summer clothes--is a workbook that helps us discover how we want to dress, how we want to be seen and how to achieve the look we want. Good advice: dress the body you're in now and don't wait until you lose 15 pounds. Get out of a rut. Identify the look you want--creative, dramatic, feminine, professional, etc. Love the person you are and dress like the person you want to be. Subtitle of book is informative: A Guide to Getting Dressed from the Inside Out.

Monday, March 15, 2004

We all love a big, juicy novel, but sometimes short pieces are better suited for our rushed lifestyle. Besides--I love the essay genre.

One of my favorites, just out  in paperback, is a collection of personal essays The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilley The subtitle is: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd. Funny, honest, insightful look at contemporary spirituality.

A literary collection I just discovered, and a book my book club loved, is The End of the Novel of Love by Vivian Gornick. A well-read feminist re-examines the literature we grew up on. Read the last essay first--it gives her premise and begins this way: "When I was a girl, the whole world believed in love." 

So many people have asked about the title and author of a book both Glenda and I admire, that I repeat it again: Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston.

I asked Borders on 21st Street to order copies of all three of these books and they have. Remember, too, that any bookstore should be happy to order any book in print for you without charge. That's their business. I ask bookstores to order books for me frequently.

Monday, February 23, 2004

Do dogs and cats have intellect or instinct? Do they understand our communication better than we understand theirs? Are cats social animals? Two books by anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas exzplore these and other questions about our favorite household pets. The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture is the better of the two in my opinion. She discusses domesticated cats as well as a pride of lions and tigers in a circus. I learned, among other things, why my cat puts toy mice and balls beside the dog's dish. The Hidden Life of Dogs was based on observation of her own five dogs, how they learned from one another and from humans, and how their preferred company was other dogs.

Monday, February 9, 2004:  The two books I reviewed today are,

1.  Bleeding Hearts: Love Poems for the Nervous & Highly Strung, compiled by Michelle Lovrie,   St. Martin's Press.

       Includes this poem (which I quote entirely:)

        "Poem About Heartbreak That Go On and On" by June Jordan

        bad love last like a big
        ugly lizard crawl around the
        house
        forever
        never die
        and never change itself
        into a butterfly.

2.  Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, by Karen Kingston, Broadway Books. The theory of this book is that clutter is stuck energy that affects us phyically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and by clearing out this clutter, we release negataive emotions and generate energy. This allows space for new things to enter our lives. I really like this book

Monday, Januaray 26, 2004:

My Time: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life by Abigail Trafford

At some time we all must--or should--change our lives. Divorce, retirement, grown children, empty next, loss of job, change of health are all opportunities to create a new life for ourselves. Since we live longer and healthier now, we have several active decades after the age of 50. This book is a guide for "making the most of the rest of your life." Although I found the author's style and language too breezy and casual at times--Isn't there a better term for the transition than "second adolescence?"--the information and advice are sound.

Since "loss" is a frequent theme in life changes, a nonfiction book I highly recommend is Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst, a valuable manual for understanding all the phases of life.

Monday, January 12, 2004:

Do we have to like the characters to like the book? That's the question of these two books.

1. The House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier (author of the classic Rebecca.) A London professor, his wife and two step children rent an ancient house on the Cornish coast where he finds a way to time travel and slip through time to the same place but in the 14th century. Is he seeing a life he led back then? Is is foreseeing his destiny in this life? Will he be caught in time past and unable to return to the present? The professor is such a disagreeable character, so unkind to his family, that I don't care what happens to him. Fascinating look at England in the 14th century but that's about the only redeeming value.
2. Three Junes, National Book Award Winner by Julia Glass. I knew this was about several generations of a Scottish family, but I thought it was another women's book about three women named June. Wrong. Nobody is named June in this terrific book, but it is about three summer seasons, a Scottish family and spans a couple of decades. The oldest son, Fenno, is gay and feels misunderstood and alienated from his family. Much of the time in the book he is a brooding or angry young man and I was right on the edge of finding him tiresome, but the book is so well written and the characters so deeply developed that I loved seeing their different perspectives. At one point Fenno receives a note of thanks from a relative that says simply, "You will never know." That is the heart of the book, I think, that we never know all the secrets and mysteries of this Scottish family or of our own family. That is what makes it such a powerful book and close to the bone.

Reviewed Earlier--A a viewer reminded me of a non fiction book I revewed earlier that I highly recommend. Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde by Brad Dimock  A great and true 1928 adventure and a mystery of a honeymoon couple that disappeared on the river. Then, 40 years later, an olderr woman on another Grand Canyon river trip announced around the campfire that she was the missing Bessie Hyde. The author, a praofessional river guide, finally solves the mystery of Glen and Bessie Hyde.

The three books reviewed Monday, Dec. 29, 2003:

1. Anne Tyler - Four Complete Novels (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Morgan's Passing, The Tin Can Tree, If Morning Comes.) Pulitzer Prize-winning Tyler writes novels of messy, sprawling families living in big, messy, sprawling houses and trying to sort out love, loneliness, eccentricity and happiness. I love her novels and this collection is a good way to discover them. I got this copy for $10 at Oak Tree Rare and Used Books.
2. Her Husband: Hughes and Plath - A Marriage by Diane Middlebrook is a compelling, new dual literary biography of American Sylvia Plath (committed suicide at age 30 in1963) and England's Poet Laureate Ted Hughes ( died in 1998) who met as Cambridge students in their 20s, formed a passionate and fiery six-year marriage and a literary partnership that allowed them to develop as poets. Without this partnership, Hughes said, she would have become a college professor and he would have wandered off to Australia. To literature's loss. This is a fascinating look at the world for women writers in the 1950s and one of the best literary biography I have read. I could not put it down. Or forget it. I dreamed about it.
3. Farmer's Almanac for the year of our Lord 2004. That's the title! Published since 1818, the Almanac is chock full of charts (best time to plant, bake, cut your hair or castrate animals; tides and frost dates), information (the names of the full moons of the year, how to remove ticks, why apples are healthy), recipes, advice and corny jokes. Such as: Why did the turkey go to the movie? To see Gregory Peck. Available at bookstores. I got mine at Border's.

Top Picks of 2003

Here is a summary of my top selections of the year. Post-holiday, treat yourself to a book. You deserve it.

• Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life, Caroline Moorehead's biography of Martha Gellhorn, third wife of Hemingway and legendary war correspondent. Glamorous, ambitious, selfish, successful and not very likeable. Fascinating reading
• Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, Deborah Davis's brilliant dual biography of the painter and his model who caused such a scandal with the famous portrait in Belle Epoque Paris. I love this book. Bright, breezy and informative.
• Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct, by P.M. Forni of Johns Hopkins. A beautiful little book about behaving decently to one another. Ought to be required reading for most people. After Professor Forni spoke at Holland Hall a couple of years ago, Borders could not keep this book in stock.
• The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris. Betsy Blair (first wife of Gene Kelly) has written one of the best entertainment memoirs ever. Enormously appealing.
• Wide as the Waters, Benson Bobrick. In the beginning was the Word and it was in Hebrew. Then in Greek, then Latin and finally--in the 14th Century, a mighty struggle ensued to translate the Bible into English. This is the exciting and heroic account of that struggle in England.  A great book about 14th and 15th Century authors, printers and readers who became matyrs who died for their faith--all to produce a Bible in the English language.
• The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd's wonderful and inspiring novel set in South Carolina in the 1960s. The heroine is 14-year-old Lily Owen, but the book is full of strong and colorful women characters. It is fundamentally a story about mothering and it is rich with gentle spirituality. Publisher's Weekly says it is "honey-sweet but never cloying." I highly recommend it.
• Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine, by Mark Fuhrman. Yes, that Mark Fuhrman, former LAPD detective of the O.J. Simpson trial. A fascinating nonfiction investigation of Oklahoma's death row. I like Fuhrman's hard-hitting,  non-traditional investigative books.
• Five Quarters of the Orange by Chocolate, novelist Joanne Harris. Edgy family in WWII French village when "collaborator" and "Resistance" were grave issues. Well written.
• While I Was Gone, suspenseful novel by Sue Miller. What happened at that college house in 1969? And how unraveling that mystery affects the current happy life of Jo, a successful veterinarian with a satisfying marriage? A book about how our past, and our misreading of our pastm or our obsession with our past, can undo us.
• Peace Like a River, a sweet novel by Leif Enger. The story of a family's search for a brother wanted for murder as told by an 11-year-old boy. Set in 1962 in Minnesota.
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, by Margaret MacMillan. Nonfiction and powerful--the Paris Peace Treaty set the stage for the current world situation. With thumbnail profiles of Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Lawrence of Arabia and others.
• Take Time for Your Life, a good self-help book with a sappy title by Cheryl Richardson, a "lifestyle expert," whatever that is. With advice about maintaining financial health, spiritual well being and kicking the adrenaline habit. Everybody I know needs to read this, me included.
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, classic Christmas book by Barbara Robinson. Considered a children's book, but I discovered it as an adult and love it. I think it's a funny family book. Perfect for tucking in with a Christmas card. Opens this way: "The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and set fire to Fred Shoemaker's old broken-down toolhouse." And they teach us the true meaning of Christmas.