Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Gumbo Tales, by Sara Roahen

I have never been to Louisiana (as well as Oklahoma, Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Alaska, and Hawaii). But I love food writing, I love spicy food, and some of my more interesting ancestors lived in Louisiana back in the 1700’s and 1800’s. So, after Gumbo Tales received rave reviews, I put it on my list to read once it was a paperback.

Having read it now, my feelings are mixed. Roahen, formerly a reporter for a New Orleans weekly newspaper, sometimes writes with a strong sense of place. Her chapters focus on particular dishes, their origins and evolution, the different ways they’re served and, ultimately, her favorite restaurants. The timeframe for the book includes the year just after New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. As she notes the changes in the community and expresses concern and relief about various neighbhors, Roahen frets over whether her favorite eateries will return and rejoices when she sees signs of life inside their walls.

However … sometimes she rubbed me the wrong way. This didn’t happen often, but I will confess that when she was preparing her first crawfish boil, I was rooting for the crawfish. She also violated my rule of allowing food animals that escape to stay free. Still, her focus on particular food and drink, from sno-balls to po-boys, from pho to red beans and rice, gave the book a nice structure and is a model I’d like to see more food writers adopt. This framework gave Roahen an opportunity to weave in stories about the communities that make up New Orleans, including long-established Italian families and relatively recent Vietnamese enclaves. If you enjoy food writing, read this book.

This blog exists primarily to review books for readers with animals, and with that in mind, I will call the book SAFE despite the fact that Roahen retrieved the escaped crawfish.  She tells of parrots in trees, there’s a brief mention of chickens and turkeys prepared for slaughter, a half sentence about a hermit crab that died in her childhood, and those crawfish, but nothing extensive.

Review and Giveaway: Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos starts out like this: 

“My fall from suburban grace, or, more accurately, my failure to achieve the merest molehill of suburban grace from which to fall, began with a dinner party and a perfectly innocent, modestly clever, and only faintly quirky remark about Armand Assante.” 

It begins as a fish out of water story about Cornelia Brown, a character from de los Santos’ debut novel, Love Walked In, which I did not read.  No matter.  I didn’t even realize this was a continuation of another book until after I’d read it.  It was great all by itself!

Cornelia and her handsome doctor hubby, Teo, move to suburbia from the city, and pretty soon they are getting to know people.  Teo, by the way, is Handsome with a capital H.  The frequent reminders of his hotness made me think of the way Stephenie Meyers described Edward in Twilight.  He’s attractive; very, very attractive, and doesn’t seem to know it.  Mr. Modest.  

We don’t get to know Teo that well, although he plays a pivotal role in the story.  Belong to Me is more about women, and their relationships with each other.  Ok, about their relationships with men, too.  But it’s more a book about women.  Piper from across the street is a snooty beyotch (did I spell that right??); a married stay at home mom who is critical of everyone.  Right off the bat, she makes comments about Cornelia’s name, hair, and yard.  Pipe’s BFF Elizabeth, sadly, is battling cancer, which is awful but really brings out the human side of Piper.  Cornelia befriends a waitress named Lake who seems smart and blissfully normal (and nicknames Piper “Viper”- ingratiating herself to Cornelia instantly).  But Lake has a secret- a big one.  She also has a son, 13 year old Dev, with a genius IQ.  And Clare is a frequent guest at Cornelia and Teo’s house, who Dev falls for, hard.  Ah, first love. 

It was interesting to see the transformation that takes place in the characters, especially Piper. All her perfectionism and controlling behaviors mask an inner self doubt and lack of confidence, and when things beyond her control threaten her carefully constructed life, it forces her to take a closer look at the things that truly matter- love, friends, family- not the manicured lawn or the perfect crease in the sleeve of her blouse.  Even Cornelia likes her by the end of the book.  

The story is told from 3 points of view in alternating chapters- Cornelia, Piper, and Dev.  De los Santos did a great job of keeping their voices unique- I could easily tell who was telling the story.  Cornelia had such an interesting vocabulary, Piper was really into appearances and denial, Dev was teenage-awkward and brilliant in the best possible way.  The characters had a depth that made them very realistic to me. 

There’s money, private schools, cancer and death, secrets and lies, inappropriate relationships, affairs, and children- legitimate and otherwise.  Does it sound a bit like a soap opera?  I guess it does, but Santos is able to intertwine these characters and their stories in such a way that the reader truly cares about them.  The book is filled with hope and friends, laughter and tears, and the warm feeling that comes from knowing we belong to the ones who love us.  My emotions were all over the map while reading Belong to Me, and the unexpected ending was a real treat.  De los Santos is a truly gifted writer.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.  

Please visit Marisa de los Santos at her website, and come back here tomorrow to read the wonderful guest post she wrote for me about balancing family life with writing and working from home.

Oh!  OH!  I almost forgot!  Harper Collins is generously offering copies of Belong to Me to 3 lucky readers!  Leave a comment by Monday, May 25th, for a chance to win!!

“The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God – Getting Beyond the Bible Wars” -- N.T. Wright

In this short book, N.T. Wright outlines a visionary model dealing with the term “the authority of Scripture,” and its role within the Church, a role he seems convinced the Bible is not being allowed to properly play.  The implicit claim seems to be that the so-called “Bible wars,” in which conservatives and liberals resort to name-calling and “guilt by association” tactics rather than relying properly on charitable dialogue, unpacking the shorthand “authority of Scripture” to examine what that concept really means, have inhibited a view of the Bible in all its richness.  He writes,

Shorthands…are useful in the same way that suitcases are.  They enable us to pick up lots of complicated things and carry them around all together.  But we should never forget that the point of doing so…is that what has been packed away can then be unpacked and put to use in the new location.  Too much debate about Scriptural authority has had the form of people hitting one another with locked suitcases.  It is time to unpack the shorthand doctrines, to lay them out and inspect them. (pg. 24-25)

The term “locked suitcases” is particularly apt, and plays implicitly on the unwillingness of many Christians to think deeply about what is meant by the “authority of Scripture.”  The threat of liberal Christianity, in the mind of the Evangelical, is so great that the absolute inerrancy of the Bible must be asserted for Christianity to survive in any meaningful capacity.  On the other side of the fence, the parts of the Bible that seem incompatible with postmodern concepts of justice, and the narrow dogmatism that those passages occasionally engender in the more conservative members of the faith lead some to reject the usefulness of the entire Bible in guiding the Christian to a moral life. 

            Wright does not explicitly tackle issues of inerrancy, which seems a wise decision in a book that seeks to transcend the Bible wars: assertions of total inerrancy alienate “non-fundamentalists,” while anything but such assertions makes enemies of conservatives.  Instead he undertakes a detailed “unpacking” of the term “authority of Scripture” and, in a fascinating and gripping chapter, outlines the attitudes towards the Bible of the Church historically, and attempts to point out “where we went wrong.”  For Wright, narrative is the key concept, and the Bible, for him, is predominantly a narrative of human history, God’s role in it, and where we hope to end up.  As a first step, he points out that a proper understanding of the Bible’s authority is as a vessel through which God’s authority is exercised: “scripture itself points – authoritatively…away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God himself, now delegated to Jesus Christ.  It is Jesus, according to John 8:39-40, who speaks the truth which he has heard from God” (24).  The Bible, then, is not a list of rules or a reference book of true doctrines (though Wright does not ignore that it contains both), but an authoritative story, which must be understood in its proper historical and cultural context and recognized for the rich narrative that it is before its authority can be properly recognized in the Church.  This is a vast over-simplification of a much richer book that cannot but compel one to agree with the endorsement of it given by Open Source Theology: “anyone interested in the discussion on the authority of Christian Scripture should read and discuss this book.”  Wright’s prose is lively and compelling, and the clarity of insight secures Wright’s place as one of Christianity’s most essential voices.  Here we have a unique diagnosis of the problem, and the most helpful prescription yet for restoring vibrant faith in effective churches, based on a correct understanding of the authority and role of the Bible.  In line with neither John MacArthur nor John Shelby Spong, Wright’s clear vision should strike readers as the most obvious and effective way forward, freeing us of the strict literalist dogmatism of the one, and the “toothless Christianity” of the other.  This is truly an essential book.

Just ASK

These four cute books are jam packed with so much information you will just love them.  They look so cute on my bookshelf and sometimes that’s all I’m after – is anyone else like that?    Trying to recreate an aspirational ‘ideal’ from a magazine? Anyway, I do digress and these little books are filled to the brim with 1000 of the most asked questions about Beauty, Love, Gardening and DIY.

Ask Beauty by Bella Blissett – This little beauty (haha) will help answer the countless questions in our everyday lives on our constant pursuit of youth and beauty.  The beauty industry provides a never-ending stream of miracle products, but how do we know which ones really work?  Not only does it cover lotions and potions, it also covers nutrition advice and fashion tricks to flatter your body plus ancient beauty rituals to the latest in anti-aging technology.  Full of home remedies, quick-fixes, sneaky tips and strange myths (do pores really open and close?).  Find out if toothpaste really does help banish spots or or how many hairs on our head we have (and blondes have more, go figure!) and find out Vicky B’s ‘keeping it thin’ secret … seriously is there anyone who wants to be that thin?  But this book is perfect for when you’re experiencing a Sassi Moment of having Nothing to Wear or experiencing a Bad Hair Day!

Ask Love by Jenny Hare – Argh, the art of love, love, love, love, love! The concept of love is so simple but boy it can turn out to be extremely complicated and I myself need all the help I can get in this department!  I love lots of things, but for all matters of the heart I’m in need of some help, boo   Even the author commented when she was asked to write 1000 questions about love in relationships, surely there can’t be that many!  Well she admits she was very wrong.  She advocates that Love is the most important dimension in our lives generally and in any happy relationship.  I was discussing the subject of Love with a friend not so long ago and I think the premise of love is much more challenging these days, we can get caught up in the romance of love, what we think it should be like from the movies, and it’s much easier to walk away than to work through ’stuff’.  Being in a relationship is a ’skill’ and it needs both sides to be committed to it.  This little book really is bursting with loving tips and sometimes that’s all we need as a gentle reminder from being too caught up in the day-to-day busyness of life.

Ask Gardening by Daphne Ledward – Hands up who has a green thumb? Yep me neither, I need all the help I can get in this department too.  I do love my little garden on my balcony that I have created, I have wisely (I like to think so) planted succulents so that when I forget to water them they don’t suffer too much.  I also have two Frangipani trees, a yellow & white one and a pink & white one (of course) and the pink & white one has NEVER flowered much to my constant disappointment.  So this cute little book is broken down into the seasons and although the questions will often remain the same from the era of our grandparents, the answers for the 21st gardener demand to be simple, inexpensive, ergonomic, understandable and ‘green’ and the author hopes this little book will achieve that!  Seeing as we are in Autumn, I decided to jump to that section to see what I should be doing to care for my well behaved succulents.  I learnt that many plants die in wet soil during autumn and winter because the water replaces the air in the soil and so effectively the roots suffocate – makes sense!  I’ve always wanted to buy some tulip bulbs and now is the perfect time to plant them!  So that’s it for me, I’m off to Flower Power to be some bulbs for Spring!

Ask Home by Julian Cassell & Peter Parham – I am so not a DIY person, that’s what my Dad is for (he loves to feel wanted you know and the book’s intro does state that those with clever hands get asked lots of DIY questions and they  do really feel wanted, so there we’re clear).  The book is broken down into easy sections; Maintenance, Renovating, Decorating & tiling, Finishing touches and Outside.  None of those are for me, noooo!  But let’s have a look and see if there’s anything in there that I could do.  Here we go, even I knew the answer to this; My smoke alarm keeps beeping, is it broken? Noooo, it needs a new battery silly!  Okay next one; this is hilarious!  My ceiling light won’t work, why?  Try replacing the bulb, seriously!  They do go onto explain how to figure it out if it’s not the bulb.  Oh wow, they now have digital tape measure, now that is really cool!  Seriously, this book looks like it has great DIY advice, just not for me but I’ll definitely show my Dad

Available now from Hachette Australia; RRP $14.99

Love,

Sassi

Your Pop Culture Gossip Girl

Brooklyn: A Novel

by

Colm Tóibín

rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn gracefully bespelled me. He did it with ease, less prone to showy flair than to subtle intimation. After finishing the novel, letting this Irish immigrant to Brooklyn in the 1950’s perambulate in my thoughts, I realized that her naiveté should have stricken me at some point as annoying or distracting or hand-wringing at the very least. Eilis Lacey never evokes a negative response from me however. Instead Tóibín manages to usher me in as a confidant to Eilis, following her bildungsroman as if learning details from a close friend. However even the best of friends reach a place of frustration at times with each other, but Eilis and I never quarreled. I never found her snappish or irritating or, that teetering abyss of the maturing protagonist, whiny. She has a composure and quietude, not born from confidence, though that she slowly develops, but rather from a simplicity of spirit and purpose. The machinations and hyperactivity around her do not seem to cultivate a similar responsive blossom; her Irish roots continue to send up calmly swaying green shoots even amidst the hustle of burgeoning Brooklyn.

Perhaps to say that her blossom does not hybridize with her surroundings is erroneous; rather, we might say we are altered in the same sun as she, drinking the same newness of place and peoples and earth, moving at such a pace that the changes that actually do unfold – a slight change in petal color and fragrance – are so natural and unhurried that it is not until a return trip to her home of Enniscorthy that the comparative growth can be witnessed.

Mayhap too contributing to this obnubilated sense of change is the knowledge that Eilis did not seek out this uprooting relocation to Brooklyn. Her sense of order and the path of her life never enfolded a replanting in America; indeed, her Enniscorthy roots were quite well grounded, entwined with her mother’s and her friends’, not seeking out new ground like a free-wheeling and voracious nettle. Yet, new ground Eilis was given, and part of the beauty of this book comes at the very end, when her choices are arrayed before her, not so dissimilar in isolation, yet contextually divergent, like a rose graft taken from its home and grown in different terroir.

Behind the friendship with Eilis that Tóibín elicits from me there is also a sense of historicity that nudges me on a deeply personal level. When Eilis meets and begins an affectionate courtship with the boyish Italian-American Tony, I felt recalled to the stories that my grandparents told of their own courtship, as if I was reading a more inclusive narrative from one of them, reliving with them the sensations and joys they would have experienced.

That Tóibín crafts a patient and tender maturation for Eilis, compelling and believable without treading within angst, and the sense of familial remembrance he evokes left me rather awed and with a lingering feeling of peace, like I’d just put my nose in a rose bloom and inhaled deeply, forgetful of the thorns that usually await, but, finding none, return to inhale once more.

View all my verbose reviews.

It's OK, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers - Rating 5

It's Ok I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers

Title: It’s OK, I’m Wearing Really Big Knickers (US Version is called: On the Bright Side, I Am Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God)

Author: Louise Rennison

AR Quiz No. 50413 EN

ATOS Book Level: 4.7 Interest Level: Upper Grades (UG 9-12) AR Points: 6.0 Word Count: 40727 Fiction/Nonfiction Fiction Topic – Subtopic: Award Winners-ABA Kids’ Pick of the Lists; Family Life-Growing Up; Humor/Funny-Funny; Interpersonal Relationships-Dating; Recommended Reading-YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant YA; Series: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson

Description: (Excerpt: From Amazon)

5:35 p.m.

Oh yippee.

This is my gorgeous life:

1. I haven’t been kissed for a month; my snogging skills will be gone soon.
2. I have a HUGE nose that means I have to live for ever in the Ugly Home. Address: Georgia Nicolson,Ugly Home, Ugly Kingdom, Ugly Universe
3. My Red Herring plan has failed.
4. I am the Bummer Twins’ armchair.

Georgia Nicolson is back! The irrepressible heroine of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging has just started dating the Sex God ( aka Robbie). So life should be perfect …. except in Georgia’s life, nothing is ever perfect. Readers will be laughing ( and groaning!) out loud all through this “fabbity-fab-fab” sequel!

Librarian’s Review:

This series continues to make me laugh! The second book picks right up where the first book left off and Georgia is as usual being quite meladramatic. What’s funny is that even though I think Georgia is very juvenile and immature at times I can completely relate to her and can think of many grown women who exhibit similar behavior. Your friends will wonder what is WRONG with you for using all the British slang in everyday conversion.  Funny, funny, funny!

Three Global Temptations

Three Global Temptations (May 8, 2009)

 

            At this junction of human development, the global problems we have to face attest to the successes and accomplishments of man, his mental scientic genius, his legitimate ambitions for acquiring what he can afford to, his quest for liberty and the reward for a comfortable life after a hard day work.  The global problems we have to resolve attest to man ethical and moral failures to catching up to his mental agility.  Man has proven his individual instinct capability for survival in a sustainable earth; man has now to prove that he developed enough collective instinct to survive an earth on the way to depletion.

            It is appropriate to consider the example of a team of rock climbers.  The team has the appropriate equipments tested scientifically and the proper training physically.  There are three main risks for the team to fail in his mission of reaching the top.

            The first temptation is that a member of the team to go bereck and take a dive and thus carries the rest of the team with him. A few people have this urgent temptation to dive, and when available, they would try dangerous acrobacies.  Luckily, the two populous nations of China and India have taken off; they have the tools, the technology, and the means to care for their over 2 billion citizens if they don’t try to catch up in a few decades what took centuries for the USA, Europe, and Japan to reach in stable governments, and legitimate desires for comfort.  There are many more millions who have been humiliated for centuries and robbed of their basic dignity; they are not going beserck because of pauverty and means for survival as individual; they are dangerous because of a collective sense of insignificance and desperation toward the policies of the colonial powers of resuming this process of humiliation and denying them even diplomatic respect as recognized States.  Not all Moslem States feel this desperation: Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey have taken their destinies in their hand.  What the European Union and the USA have to focus on, right now, is to salvage the remnant of dignity among the Arab populations.

            The second temptation facing the team of climbers is the wall, the rock face. Most team members might have the techniques of sheltering from falling rocks, slippery sections, brittled portions, and blowing winds.  Human kind has learned to take shelter until the danger passes over.  Most of us have developed the instinct of prudence, not interference, and keeping low levels. We are at a junction where danger is not to pass over on its own volition and no sheltering behavior can protect us for survival. Human kind has to move as a team of bold activists and turn out heavily to put their words and opinions at work.  We may hold to our tribal customs, our illusory identities, our comfortable life styles, our chimerical convictions and all is lost.  The team has to support the weakest member as difficulties surge and be confronted collectively.

            The third temptation braving the team is deciding on the target of the mission and it has to be a collective goal. There are no tops to reach in human progress but there are defining phases.  We are at the dawn of Prehistory and a new kind of history has to be achieved and written. Tribal history has done its function but it is of use for our current global problems. National wars, religious wars disguised as ethical values, ideological wars, cultural wars, or war of “civilization” have been tried and they all failed to bring reprieve and salvation. A new adventure for human kind is facing us boldly and we have to invent a new kind of history more appropriate to our survival. The new history should be focused on resuming our medical successes, eliminating pain and diseases, eradicadin weapons of mass destruction, keeping us functional in old age, overcoming illiteracy, investing on continuing education, creating opportunities for various skills, desires, and achievements, preserving dieing languages and literature, managing human rights, and salvaging the dignity of every human being.

 

            Frankly, The European Union is actually the main laboratory for confirming that “Tribal History” is exhaling its last breath; that human dignity is not measured by fictitious apartheid scales based on color, religious affiliation or ethnic origins; that humiliating man is not a point of view or can generate any temporary benefit. If God has been angry for milennia then He has an opportunity to feel proud of his Creation.