January 7, 2008
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell
Iris, a single young woman with relationship problems, discovers that she has a great aunt who has been locked away in a mental institution for 60 years. Esme Lennox is the great aunt and because the institution is shutting down Esme is handed over to the care of Iris, her one remaining, functional relative.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Continue reading "The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell"
Review by elise | Posted to Fiction | Permalink
| Comments (0)
May 20, 2006
Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky
Who would have thought that something as unassuming as salt could provide the basis for such a fascinating tour through time? In Salt: A World History author Mark Kurlansky gives us a history of the world, from the perspective of the salt trade. Although we take our table salt completely for granted these days, in the not so distant past the ability to access salt was critical for a society's survival. The main use was for preserving food - cod, herring, cabbage, meat. Those countries who had an ample supply of salt could equip armies, live through winters, and engage in the profitable trade of food that would otherwise spoil without salt. Empires have been built, massive fortunes have been made and lost, all to do with controlling the salt trade. Even in nature, where there are salt licks, there are animals, taking in this simple compound so necessary for physical survival.
Kurlansky starts us off in China four thousand years ago where the act of drilling was first invented to access brine from salt wells, and takes us up all the way to the present with the Morton and Cargill companies dominating salt production worldwide. The book is extremely well researched and filled with interesting detail. A must read for any lover of history or of food.
Review by elise | Posted to History, Non-fiction | Permalink
| Comments (2)
July 6, 2005
Who Are We - Samuel Huntington
If the Mexican Army attempted to infiltrate 1,000,000 soldiers per year into the United States and successfully placed 150,000 of them here, the citizens and Congress of the US would be in a unanimous uproar of outrage. Yet, 150,000 Mexicans, mostly young men, DO successfully enter this country each year. And the Mexican government does, in fact, spend 10s of millions of dollars on programs that encourage them to do so as well as stay here after they arrive.
Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity by Samuel Huntington clearly frames this controversy among several critical issues facing the US. These choices will determine our country's course in dramatic ways over the coming decades and beyond. I can't recommend it strongly enough for any concerned citizen.
Many academics fail to maintain a clean distinction between the descriptive and the prescriptive in their writings, Huntington successfully avoids this classic trap. His point of view on the issues is fairly clear, but he does not let his own views contaminate a crisp analysis of the problems.
Continue reading "Who Are We - Samuel Huntington"
Review by mvestrich | Posted to Non-fiction | Permalink
| Comments (1)
June 23, 2005
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner turn a spotlight on to some touchy areas - abortion, crack dealers, parenting, the KKK, cheating by school teachers, guns in homes. They present a view that if you remove the lens of morality and how things "should be", many phenomena can be explained through basic economic principles. I couldn't agree more. Yet the book is in a word, lightweight. A little over 200 hundred pages and presented in large, easy-to-read print, Freakonomics can be read in a couple of hours. And if you understand anything about economics that you could pick up in a college survey class, you won't be that surprised by their analysis. I can only think that the reason this book has been on the NYT best seller list is because most people don't understand the basic tenets of economics.
Continue reading "Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner"
Review by elise | Posted to Non-fiction | Permalink
| Comments (4)
June 20, 2005
Handling Sin - Michael Malone
If you like rolicking, picaresque novels, you will love Handling Sin. Written in the '80s(?), it remains one of my favorites.
A mild mannered insurance agent is sedately approaching middle age, living out his comfortable life in a small No. Carolina town. He receives news that his vagabond father has passed away, but to receive his inheritance he has to track down his father's trumpet, last seen in the possession of a young, attractive black woman who may or may not have been his father's mistress.
The hero rounds up his S. Panza-like sidekick and off they go on a madcap quest across the South. After many hilarious adventures they also absorb a few life lessons. Can't really describe many details without giving away a few surprises. So give it a try.
Review by mvestrich | Posted to Fiction, Humour, Summer Reading | Permalink
| Comments (3)
June 13, 2005
The Dream of Scipio - Iain Pears
Iain Pear's The Dream of Scipio follows the lives of 3 men, all men who are deeply thoughtful and philosophical, all who must face terrible decisions which try their deepest beliefs, and all men who lived in France's Provence in three different centuries of great upheaval. Manlius Hippomanus, a wealthy Roman aristocrat, suppresses his own Greek philosophical training to become a Bishop in the mid to late fifth century AD, the period during which the Roman empire is collapsing and Gaul is abandoned to the Visigoths. 900 years later Manlius' writings are studied by Olivier de Noyen, a poet in the service of Cardinal Ceccani, during the brief historical period in which the pope resided in Avignon - the mid 1300s, and during which time the great plague decimated a third of Europe. 600 years later again, Julien Barveuve, a classics scholar unearths de Noyen's writings in the Vatican. Like the men before him, Julien's life is turned upside down as his world collapses during the Nazi invasion of France. Each man is also passionately in love with a powerful woman, and each passion leads to disastrous results.
Continue reading "The Dream of Scipio - Iain Pears"
Review by elise | Posted to Historical Fiction | Permalink
| Comments (0)
May 30, 2005
On the Water - Nathaniel Stone
On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat - In the spring of 1999, Nat Stone set out in a row boat from near the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan to row his way around the Eastern half of the United States - up the Hudson through the Erie Canal, down the Alleggheny and then the Mississippi, around Florida, and back up to Brooklyn and up the coast of Maine. The trip was motivated by a lifelong love of the water and boats, and by the need to fulfill a dream of following the route of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman. (Blackburn had lost his fingers after the froze to his oars while he rowed for 5 days straight to come in from the sea in a storm. Blackburn subsequently taught himself how to sail and rigged a boat that took him up the Hudson, down the Mississippi, and around Florida.) Nat's trip included one 9 mile stretch of portage, in which, hooked up to a harness, Nat pulled the boat over land. The trip was also broken up into two parts. The first part took Nat all the way down to the point that the Mississippi empties into the sea, begun in April 1999 and completed in August 1999. To complete the ocean journey Nat would need a boat that wouldn't so easily capsize in ocean swells. He returned to the Bayou in January 2000 and picked up his journey again.
Continue reading "On the Water - Nathaniel Stone"
Review by elise | Posted to Non-fiction | Permalink
| Comments (0)
