A Snapshot of Summer Reads

Summertime offers a plethora of places to read. You can tote your books to the beach, patio, outside for a lunch break in addition to the indoor couches, coffee shops and libraries. And the longer daylight hours encourage reading later into the evening. I've had the pleasure of watching my younger cousins a few weekdays this summer. I took them to the newly renovated Roseville library. Our favorite hangout spot was the set of green benches near the windows in the kids section. Between the three of us, we could easily sprawl on the length of the benches. It was great to see them plow through books on Vikings, duck billed platypus and several joke books.

Here are some of the books I've enjoyed this summer:

The Case of the Missing Servant and The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing. These are two Indian mystery books by Tarquin Hall. A friend from work recommended these. The series features Vish Puri, India's Most Private Investigator. I don't usually seek out mysteries, but I thoroughly enjoyed these two books. A glossary of terms is helpfully contained at the back of the books. Hall is a very descriptive writer, so the reader can readily picture the sights, smell the aromas and be transported across the world to India. Even though many of the food and beverage terms were unfamiliar, I found myself craving and then enjoying a nice cup of chai while reading these.

Delicious Memories by Anna Boiardi. I often browse the featured books in the main entrance of the library. One of the recommended summer reads was this cookbook from a grand-daughter of the "Chef Boyardee" family. Anna shares family recipes, in addition to her family's history. Each chapter has a thorough introduction, and each recipe has a memory associated and written down with it. I'm only halfway through this book, and I have some recipes flagged, including: roasted peppers, grilled party vegetables, grape tomato bruschetta, Italian style potato salad, penne rigate and rigatoni with roasted tomatoes.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Like the mystery books featuring Vish Puri, Snow Flower transported me to a different world. In addition to other customs and rituals during this time in rural China, it describes the process of foot binding. It is a touching tale of two girls growing up and apart through the various stages of life. I really had a hard time reading the descriptive pages of the process of foot binding. I didn't realize what a lengthy process it was and how the result could really define your lot in life.

Travel Books. In September, I'm headed out to Washington D.C. The library offers plenty of guidebooks, so I've been using these to plot out destinations. Between those and the Metro, there should be no shortage of places to see. Feel free to offer suggestions!

A Tale of Two Pacific Northwest Cities

This month my Love and I celebrated our anniversary in the Pacific Northwest, spending time in Seattle, the Olympic Peninsula, and Vancouver. We had a fantastic time and I was able to pick up two books along the way:

Seattle’s Market Ghost Stories by Mercedes Yaeger is a sweetly written memoir of the more haunted side of Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The Market is, of course, one of Seattle’s more famous landmarks and is absolutely, overwhelmingly fantastic. The Market hosts the original Starbuck’s, the Millionaire’s Club (they’re even better live), every kind of sea food one can imagine, and brimming with people from all corners of the globe. We had a great time strolling through all the stands for an afternoon before heading out of town to climb mountains in Olympic National Park.

Yaeger runs the Market Ghost Tours. I had the opportunity to meet her as we passed by on our way to the Gum Wall. She is full of great information about Seattle’s history and Pike’s Place Market, and clearly has a passion for the city. We didn’t have a chance to attend her tour, but I purchased this book as a souvenir and enjoyed reading it on the train to Vancouver two days later.

The book pauses at different places in the Market and alternates between bits of Seattle’s history and stories of people who have passed through the Market and now spend their time haunting the spaces they used to frequent. In a particularly personal verse, Yaeger tells the story of Princess Angeline and then of the Battle of Seattle, addressing the injustices done to the First Nation people with candor and dignity. With straightforward prose, Yeager tells the stories of the people who built the Market with a voice that betrays the fondness she has for them and weaves in her own experiences without pretense or agenda. It is clear that she is writing not only the history of the Market, but of her own Seattle city.

The Raven Steals the Light by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst is a collection of Haida myths accompanied by beautiful drawings by Haida artist Bill Reid. I purchased the book in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The museum was something I was really looking forward to on our trip and I wasn’t disappointed. Full of a wonderful collection of pieces from various periods in the history of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, it was the first place I was able to glean real appreciation for the culture of the First People there. I thought the totem poles, in particular, were fantastic.

The Haida are one of the First Nations bands who live along Alaska’s southernmost and Canada’s western coasts. Their spiritual home is called Queen Charlotte Islands in our language and Haida Gwaii in theirs. The book is full of great stories of the trickster Raven: how he created the sun, moon, and stars by stealing the light from an old man and his granddaughter and spilling it as he escaped from them; how he lost his beak, quite painfully, by tricking a hunter away from his home so he could have some personal time with the hunter’s wife, and then of how he regained the beak again, and so on.

The illustrations by Bill Reid mirror the artistic style he applies to his sculpture, jewelry, painting, and printing pieces. He artfully combines traditional Haida imagery and style with modern techniques and mediums to create pieces that celebrate the Haida culture. It was very neat to see his statue of the Raven and the First Men in the Museum and then see a drawing in the book as well. The last chapter in the book refers to a missing story called The Dogfish Woman and leaves the reader with a heavy sadness for all the pieces of life that so many First Nations people are missing as a result of European imperialism and, more recently, US and Canadian policy toward First Nation and Native American people. It makes one really treasure the ten little stories and the lovely artwork that illustrates only a sliver of the Haida culture.

Is there a perfect book for book club?

I promise, I've been reading this summer, even if the blog posts do not reflect this. As I've been reading for fun and for book club, I was wondering - is there such thing as a perfect book for book club?

Currently, I am reading "Cleopatra: A Life" by Stacy Schiff for one book club. It seemed like a good choice: getting to the historical fact of one of the richest and most intriguing females of all time. It has been on the best seller lists for a bit, and there is talk of a movie being made based on it. We should all love it and find it hard to put it down, right? In all honesty, it has taken me the longest time to read compared to anything else this year. My method was to read a chapter or two, pick up another book for fun, and return to it for another chapter or two. Some of the other book club members put it down and moved on to something else. I think the main reason is that it is written more as a history text, and less as a novel. It is not a quick read.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book immensely as it separated out probable falsehood from what may be closer to the truth. Schiff uses the premise of how history is written by the winners, and so much of what has been said about Cleopatra via the Roman writings should be taken with a grain of salt. Her Cleopatra is a cunning politician, who relied much more on her brains than beauty to rule one of the richest empires in an Egyptian society that was ahead of its time in gender equality.

So we had a good recipe for a book club book with "Cleopatra: A Life", yet not everyone in the group was a fan. With this, I have good reason to believe we will have a spirited discussion while enjoying some great Mediterranean food. I doubt there is the "perfect" book club out there, especially if your club has more than one person. So what makes a great book club selection? Does everyone have to love it and gush about it? If one person doesn't like it or doesn't finish it, does that ruin the selection? From two formal and one informal book club, here are my musings on what makes a great book club book:

- Let everyone have a say in the book selection. Whether it is rotating by person, or creating a list in advance, it will keep your group on target. I appreciate the fact that in the Riverview Bookclub, we have the opportunity to have a say in each choice.

- Avoid things on Oprah's book club list. I don't have a great reason for this, and nothing against Oprah. But if you avoid things on best sellers lists, you won't have to be on a huge waiting list for a copy at the library. If you plan to borrow from the library, also avoid things being made into movies.

- Have a healthy dose of respect for the person choosing the book. If it is a book no-one has read, the group is going out on a limb. I haven't seen any finger pointing or blame in my book clubs, and I think that helps keep the groups running smoothly.

- Consider something relevant to the interests of the groups. Our Riverview Bookclub tends have a focus on books with women as main characters. Its been anywhere from Lizzy Bennett, to Alice in Wonderland, to Laila in Kabul.

With that said, does anyone disagree and is there really the perfect book club book out there?