Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Green Books Campaign: Bayou Underground: Tracing the mythical roots of American popular music, by Dave Thompson

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Bayou Underground
Bayou Underground: Tracing the mythical roots of American popular music
Dave Thompson
Paperback, 256 pages
ECW Press, September 1, 2010
Printed on FSC-certified paper that is 30% recycled/post-consumer waste product
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Live in CANADA? Buy this book from Indigo

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco- friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on “green” books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

Product Description (from the publisher):
Permeating the shadows and the darkness of the bayou—a world all its own that stretches from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama—this study of marsh music leaves New Orleans to discover secret legends and vivid mythology in the surrounding wilderness. The people and the cultures that have called the bayou home—such as Bob Dylan, Jerry Reed, Nick Cave, Bo Didley, and a one-armed Cajun backwoodsman and gator hunter named Amos Moses—are unearthed not only through their own words and lives but also through a study of their music and interviews with visitors to and residents from the region. The interviews with Jerry Reed and Bo Didley, who both died in 2008, are among the last, emphasizing the book’s importance as a piece of cultural preservation. Part social history, part epic travelogue, and partly a lament for a way of life that has now all but disappeared, this is the gripping story of American music’s forgotten childhood—and the parentage it barely even knows.

Bayou Underground doesn’t come with a digital download code or CD of all the music it references – it couldn’t possibly offer ALL the tracks anyway, but from the very first page of the introduction, I was wishing that at least the tracks being used as chapter titles were available for me to listen to while I read, because while I’d heard of some of them, others were new to me. Despite this, however, Thompson’s book, which is part music history, part memoir, part Americana, had me instantly hooked.

Partly, I suppose I fell into this book after picking it from the list offered for this year’s EcoLibris Green Books Campaign because the combined forces of HBO’s two Louisiana-based series, True Blood and Treme – and especially the latter with it’s special devotion to the music of New Orleans – have had me on a personal mission to better educate my musical ear with respect to blues and jazz this year, and partly it’s because Thompson is an amazing writer, and knows how to hook an audience with a strong opening chord. In this case the first chapter, or “track one” opens with an exploration of Elvis Presley and “swamp rock,” but even though the author leads with a headliner, the book only gets better from there.

Like me, Thompson was inspired by literature. He specifically cites Anne Rice’s first vampire novel Interview with the Vampire (a favorite of mine since I read it when I was 17) and Barry Jean Ancelet’s Cajun and Creole Folktales as the two books that drove him toward a deeper exploration of the music of Louisiana – and I mean ALL the music. He dissects the differences between Cajun and Creole tunes, talks about jazz, blues, and rock, and turns this book into, not just a guided tour, but almost a seance, calling the great musicians – some famous, others less so, into the reader’s presence.

While the music history was fascinating (and sent me to iTunes and / or Napster more than once while I read this book, which I’m going to have to re-read, because I think I missed bits) it was the mythology, folklore and culture that I most appreciated. From local in-jokes about needing directions to a chapter that references Swamp Thing, alligator changelings and the Loup-Garou, not to mention those vampires (both the Rice and Charlaine Harris (Southern Vampire Mysteries) versions), this book is murky, moody, and marvelous, and if you’re anything like me you’ll find your toes a-tapping and your spine a-shivering, often at the same time.

Bayou Underground is a must-read for any serious scholar of American pop music, or American pop culture, as well as for anyone who just wants to know where Louisiana music got it’s distinctive sound.

Goes well with crawfish po’boys and cold beer, or beignets and cafe au lait…or both.

Review: Getting the Pretty Back, by Molly Ringwald

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Getting the Pretty Back
Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick
Molly Ringwald
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Summary (from Publishers Weekly):
Famous for her roles as an angst-ridden teen in John Hughes classics like Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, Ringwald, now a 40-year-old wife and mother living largely outside the celebrity spotlight, seems a credible source of advice for young women and a likely fount of behind-the-scenes Hollywood anecdotes; unfortunately, she provides little of either in this uninspired self-help memoir. Like a well-meaning but distant friend, the actress shares advice and observations on topics like love, clothes, and food, often focusing on the inane and obvious (souvenir t-shirts are both ugly and ill-fitting; rushing into sex is usually a mistake) rather than the personal or perceptive: “When you’re a teenager, you’re forever thinking: Do they like me? When you’re a grown-up… the question becomes: Do I like them?” Ringwald occasionally involves her personal history, including the fact that the early stages of her romance with husband number two were mostly conducted over email, but she skimps on the details that her fans are probably looking for, with surprisingly little reference to the movie work that made her an icon of suburban youth in the 1980s. Color illustrations.

When my friend Deb told me she had a copy of Molly Ringwald’s book, I immediately asked if I could borrow it when she was through. I finally had a chance to read it earlier this week, and I loved it.

First, let’s be clear, in this book Ringwald gives advice on health, fashion, self-esteem, love and any number of things we women need advice about, without claiming to be an expert in any of those. In fact, she freely admits she’s sharing her own experiences in the hope that others will gain from the life lessons she’s learned. Also? She’s the kind of person – at least as presented here – that you’d be instantly comfortable meeting for a cappuccino, or hanging out with at the bookstore. For an actor, she’s incredibly real and accessible. So, don’t expect her to wax rhapsodic about hoodia gordonii or plastic surgery. She’s all about small, common sense changes.

As to my impressions of the book – I loved it! She’s not telling us anything that Tim Gunn doesn’t tell women every day, but she’s filtering it through her own experiences – especially where turning forty, having children later in life than the current trend, and marrying a younger man are involved. She’s candid in the way that someone you grew up watching in cool movies but isn’t actually someone you know seems candid. She’s playful. She’s self-deprecating.

She’s a thoroughly engaging writer, and this is a thoroughly engaging book.

If you’re over thirty-five, you NEED this book. If you’re under thirty-five, go rent Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and For Keeps and then go buy this book.

Because it really is a wonderful compilation of whimsical turns of phrase and really good advice.

Goes well with French onion soup and a glass of wine.

Review: When Life Throws You Lemons, Make Cranberry Juice, by Shari Bookstaff

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When Life Throws You Lemons...
When Life Throws You Lemons…Make Cranberry Juice
Shari Bookstaff
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Product Description (from Amazon.com):
When my kids were learning to walk, I remember walking behind them, ready to catch them if they stumbled backward. I never dreamed that thirteen years later my kids would be walking behind me, ready to catch me if I stumble backward. I was 42 years old when I was diagnosed with a benign, operable brain tumor in July 2006. Doctors predicted a short hospital stay followed by a speedy recovery. Complications arose, giving me lifelong obstacles that I never could have prepared for. A divorced mother of two beautiful, talented, wonderful children, I had high hopes for a bright and happy future. I tried online dating, which got me a few cups of coffee, but no real dates. A couple of dating disasters later, my dating karma was beginning to change when my brain tumor was diagnosed. My life since that fateful day has been focused on regaining basic human functions: breathing, swallowing, walking, etc. I am working again, and trying to be a good mother to my two beautiful, talented, wonderful children. Putting a positive spin on life’s disasters doesn’t always work, but looking for, and accepting, positive things in spite of life’s disasters works. Instead of making lemonade out of lemons, I add life’s sweet sugar and cranberries to my lemons. This makes life much more palatable.

First I have to say that the title When Life Throws Lemons…Make Cranberry Juice, is perfect. It completely conveys author Bookstaff’s feisty attitude. She’s been through a hellish experience and is still dealing with it, but she’s retained her sense of humor, and that’s admirable.

What I really loved about Bookstaff’s book was that she’s really candid. She talks about how her brain tumor affected her life, her work, her family and while she isn’t bringing us into the bathroom with her, we still get a really good picture of her life, with situations that probably everyone with any kind of disability foes through – friends not knowing how to act, or merely drifting away, having to re-learn to do some of the things most of us don’t even think about, and having to be a support system for her children while needing support herself.

While I enjoyed Bookstaff’s voice in this book, however, there were times when the structure felt a little uneven, as if she’d taken us from point A to point R and then we were backtracking to point C and heading for point W, before getting to the end.

That aside, however, I found this book to be entertaining, educational, and enlightening.

Also, it made me want cranberry juice, with lime.

Goes well with a tall glass of cranberry juice and a slice of lemon pound cake.

Review: Cybill Disobedience, by Cybill Shepherd

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Cybill Disobedience
Cybill Disobedience
Cybill Shepherd
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I have to confess: I really only read Cybill Shepherd’s autobiography, Cybill Disobedience, because I saw it listed as a free digital download on KindleIQ.com, and while I do have standards, I’ll read anything from the backs of cereal boxes to eye wrinkle cream reviews if I’m doing it to test out a new toy. Or at least, the fact that it was a free download was why I began reading Shepherd’s book. She’s so honest and engaging, and funny, however, that very soon I was reading it for its own sake.

The thing about celebrity memoirs is that they’re more interesting if you have a decent working knowledge of the author’s body of work. In the case of Ms. Shepherd, I knew her from Moonlighting and the later sitcom that bore her name – Cybill, and liked both. I also remember her Loreal commercials (for hair color, not for eye wrinkle cream), and sometime in the last year she was in a Hallmark movie (or maybe it was a Lifetime movie?) about a divorced empty-nester who resumes her college education, which movie I quite liked. I knew nothing about her career in film from the decades before Moonlighting, nor had I any clue of her politics or her relationship history.

After reading the book, I was left awed by how very cool Cybill Shepherd is, politically and personally. She’s the kind of person I’d love to have as an ‘affectionate’ auntie, or stand next to in a protest march, and her book was entertaining, interesting, as candid as possible without jeopardizing the semblance of privacy her family needs, and really sort of compelling.

Goes well with sweet tea and barbecue.

Review: Fixing Freddie, by Paula Munier

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Fixing Freddie
Fixing Freddie
by Paula Munier
Visit Amazon.com for a copy of your own.

When I was offered the opportunity to review Paula Munier’s wonderful book, Fixing Freddie: a true story about a boy, a mom, and a very, very bad beagle, I was excited. I’ve been in a non-fiction mood lately, and I love dog stories, so this seemed like the perfect match for my tastes.

Like someone already skinny who is taking clinicallix to lose weight, I was not disappointed. Munier’s first person account of her marriage, divorce, cross-country move, and first foray into home ownership and puppy parenthood is told with a blend of candor and humor that felt as if she was sitting in my living room telling me about her life. I could see her son playing video games, smell the roasted chicken that the dogs (Freddie had an older friend named Shakespeare), and see Freddie’s cute face. In fact, I was so caught up in the book that I brought it into the bath with me, despite my personal policy against reading hardcovers in the tub. It was that gripping.

Maybe it’s because I have three dogs of my own, at ages 10, 3 and 1.75, two of which I’ve had since they were eight weeks old (the oldest and the youngest) that I could sympathize when Freddie escaped from the yard, got caught on a frozen lake (my dogs have all done the former; my oldest dog has fallen into the swimming pool several times), or eaten something he shouldn’t (Miss Cleo and my chihuahua, Zorro, now at the Rainbow Bridge have eaten things as diverse as an entire t-shirt, the backs of my suede shoes while I was wearing them, the string from a roast, half a London broil, a stick of butter, and, once, all the topping from a pizza, though they left the crust and closed the box when they’d finished), or maybe it’s just that in Freddie we see the lost puppy in all of us – the part of our human selves that wants someone to direct us where to go, feed and bathe us regularly, and let us curl up in a warm bed, in exchange for mere affection and coming when called.

Or maybe it’s just that any woman who’s ever dated (or married) a man can understand Munier’s frustration with that species.

Or maybe it’s because Munier’s story is universal, and boils down to the search for a safe haven and a cozy home.

Fixing Freddie may be essentially a “dog story,” but it’s also a memoir about life and love and growing up, and letting go.

Even if you’re a cat person – even if you don’t even have a pet rock – you will enjoy this book, and come away from it with a new perspective.

Goes well with: roasted chicken, and a begging dog.

Review: My Fair Lazy, by Jen Lancaster

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My Fair Lazy
My Fair Lazy
by Jen Lancaster

I’ve been a great fan of Jen Lancaster’s memoirs since before she published them, and was just another snarky blogger. I mean, even though our politics would never mesh, we’re pretty close in age, and have similar cultural landmarks because of it. It is with some regret, then, that I say I found her latest offering My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict’s Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or, a Culture-Up Manifesto less sparkly than her previous offerings.

Maybe it’s because we’re both getting older, or maybe it’s just because Jen is funnier when she’s playing her shallow consumer act (it is an act, right? Right??) but some of this book just seemed sad to me. I mean, her voice is still as sharp as ever, but I think I’m losing interest in her version of the world.

On the other hand, I did turn into a prune while reading this book in the bath, using my toes to add alternate doses of hot and cold water. I’d have preferred to be reading it while seated on my new-this-year outdoor chair cushions, but even the best Jen Lancaster book isn’t worth sacrificing oneself to the mosquitoes for.

But yes, I will buy her next book.
Whatever that is.

But it will probably be the Kindle edition.

Retro-reading: Warped Factors by Walter Koenig

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Warped Factors

Warped Factors
by Walter Koenig

There are some celebrity autobiographies that make you kind of want to bitch-slap the authors. There are some celebrity autobiographies that make you think you should be curled up in a library with a crackling fire, smoking endless tatuaje cigars. Then there are the celebrity autobiographies that perfectly balance the behind-the-scenes, name-dropping dish we all claim to hate, but secretly crave, with the relatively candid story of a person’s life that makes them seem like a real person.

Walter Koenig’s autobiography is one of the latter kind.

I first read it several years ago when it came out, but when I was up in the Word Lounge a few weeks ago, looking for something entirely different, it caught my attention, possibly because I’d just re-read a Star Trek novel featuring the character he played. I sat down on my old blue couch to read just a few pages, and found myself, hours later, reading the last of it via booklight in bed, while my husband snored blissfully beside me.

As autobiographies go, this one, Warped Factors is free of major scandal. Instead, it’s a wry, sometimes self-deprecating glimpse into the life of a man who has a far larger body of work than most of us probably realize, and while there are some moments of bitterness in regard to his career, they’re not without provocation.

Reviewing an autobiography feels sort of like judging an actual person, which is silly, because it’s still just a glimpse. A peek.

But as glimpses and peeks go, especially if you’re any kind of classic Star Trek fan, Warped Factors is pretty good reading.

Review: Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard

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Lunch in Paris
Lunch in Paris: a Love Story, with Recipes
by Elizabeth Bard

When I picked up Elizabeth Bard’s wonderful foodie memoir, Lunch in Paris, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I mean, I knew the story of a young American woman in Paris wasn’t going to be about the side effects of diet pills or overspending with credit cards, but I think I was expecting something more like Julie and Julia.

What I got was sort of Adam Gopnik with food. This memoir begins at lunch, quickly moves to the author’s then lover’s (now husband) flat, and then into the kitchen before going back to bed. As I do, she associates food with highs and lows in her life, and has a recipe – familiar or French, sometimes both – for every milestone in her life. Her tales of going to the market are completely envy-inspiring, and her description of standing in her tiny kitchen licking the knife after making a flourless chocolate gateau are drool-worthy.

Bard is a journalist, by trade, of course, so it helps that she already knows how to hook a reader. I’ve never read any of her magazine writing, but I love her writer’s voice in this book, and really hope she does more like it. Soon.

And yes, I have tried at least one of the recipes.

Goes well with: a dry cappuccino and a single square of dark chocolate

Review: Three Cups of Tea

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Three Cups of Tea
Three Cups of Tea
by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

I initially picked up Three Cups of Tea some time last year, in the same shopping trip that included picking up a couple of different anti aging creams for my mother, having my hair done, and spending some time alone with a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich at Barnes and Noble. I didn’t actually read it until recently, however, because it got lost in my house – so lost, that I actually picked up a second copy thinking I’d never purchased the first!

I’m glad I finally read this book though, because the story is beautiful. I mean, I disconnected a bit in the first third of the book when author Greg Mortenson, whose story this is, was living in his car to save money so he could get back to Pakistan, but by the time I got to the end of his book – which is really just the beginning of his legacy – I was completely invested in the man and his mission.

For the five people who haven’t read it, Three Cups of Tea is the story of an American mountain climber who fails to reach the summit of K2, becomes severely ill during his descent, and gets lost in a remote corner of Pakistan, where local villagers take him in, help him recover, and essentially adopt him. As thanks, he promises to return and build a school where the young women of the village can be educated. He eventually makes good on his promise, first building a bridge, then the first school, then heading a foundation with a mission of building more schools in Pakistan, all for educating women and girls, while still being respectful of local religion and customs.

And to top it all off, this is all taking place at the very beginning of the Taliban’s rise to power.

While, at times, my not-so-inner snob found her skin crawling at the less-than-pristine conditions of Mortenson’s living arrangements, I finished the book with tears in my eyes. I feel this book should be required reading for everyone, everywhere.

Goes well with: Tea and flat bread.

Review: Passage from England, by Frank Zajaczkowski

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Passage from England
Passage from England
by Frank Zajaczkowski
CreateSpace, 378 Pages
Get it at Amazon >>

When author Frank Zajaczkowski contacted me about reading and reviewing his memoir I was flattered – as I always am. Then I went to his website and read the excerpts posted there, and immediately I was hooked, not just by his story – his journey from a small boy in post-war England to southern California, and his other journey, less prominent in the book, but still relevant, from California to the Virgin Islands, as an adult – but also because his descriptive paragraphs have some of the best imagery I’ve read in years, though, granted, a lot of what I’ve been reading this summer is beachy novels about women with designer houses, SUVs, strings of kids, and the ability to either summer or just live on the island of Nantucket.

So Mr. Zajaczkowski’s book served as a palate cleanser, of sorts, but also as a glimpse into the recent past. That the author is the same age as my mother, who is also the child of a war veteran, also an American living abroad (in her case, Mexico, which, I suspect, shares more similarities than differences with St. Thomas, despite the long distance between them), made the story resonate with me. I felt his trepidation at being put on a train, then on a boat to America, at a young age, and cowered with him when his alcoholic father grew violent. I felt his sense of loss, and even betrayal as his brother left the family to become an actor (I won’t share what he’s done, but I confess I looked him up on IMDB after I finished the book), and even more so, at the end of the book, when the high school aged Frank and his sister are abandoned again, by their mother this time.

In between those two events – the ocean crossing and the final betrayal, there are a series of coming of age stories – seeing the Tarzan house, kissing a girl for the first time, first jobs, first cars – all seen through the slightly filmy lens of memory, but with no less impact than if they were happening now.

Interspersed among the memories are a fresher set of memories, that of the adult Frank’s move from L.A. to St. Thomas with his wife, and the frustrations tied to that process – delayed shipments of belongings, hurricanes and other storms, where to spend holidays when you no longer have a home “back home…” the list goes on.

If there are any flaws in Passage from England they are limited to a few typos that got missed in editing (it happens at all levels of publishing) and my own desire to find out what happened after the last scene – but that, I hope, will be in Zajaczkowski’s next memoir.

As to this one, I’d recommend it to anyone who is part of the “baby boomer” generation, and to those of us who are their children, to ex-pats, immigrants, and the spouses and friends thereof, and to anyone who wants to know what life was like just a few decades ago. It’s a compelling story, and a great read.

Goes well with: fish tacos and cold beer.