Monday, December 14, 2009
Sex holds a universal fascination. From our basic limbic drive of "preservation of self and species" to the furthest extremes of sexual practice, everyone wants to know how it works and where they fit into the spectrum. Starting from our first sexual stirring and tracking behavior to the oldest fornicators, researchers are gathering information to determine what stimulates our sex drive, the mind-body connection and social-cultural differences for normal and abnormal behavior. In 1998 when Viagara came on the market for men, the push was on to discover the pink pill equivalent for women. Female sexuality, these studies show, is even more complex and nuanced than male sexuality. Researchers Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss, both psychology professors at the University of Texas at Austin discovered some fascinating new information, which is contained in Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between). I am particularly interested to read the section talking about the sex practices of young women today. What are these third generation feminists up to? You'd be surprised to see the frank level of experimentation and use of sex, almost as a tool in their armanentarium to get what they want. Seems like a good book to purchase for anyone who wants to understand the sexuality of women better. (Uh... who doesn't that include?)
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
What if you were the head of a struggling non-profit that was working for the good of humanity, to stop global hunger, and a top executive at a food conglomerate offered you $50K as a public relations gesture to counter some bad press his company had received lately. Would you accept the check? Fast forward to a meeting in Harlem you are holding that same night where a group of significantly less privileged people have gathered because of your appeal for help for the hungry people in Africa. A tear-choked woman dressed very plainly listens and then, with barely any hesitation, comes forward from the back of the room and joyfully gives the $50 she earned that day doing housework for a white woman. This sets a stream of people in the room to come forward with shouts of glee as they toss their their dollar bills and change into the basket. The gifts that evening total $500.
Remarkably Lynne Twist was that struggling non-profit representative realized at that moment in time that money has a soul. She returned the food executive’s check to him the very next day with a note that went something like, “Dear Sir, I am returning your check to you. Please use it toward a charity that has meaning for you.” Years later when the executive retired, he contacted Ms. Twist, this time to give a far more substantial monetary donation from his own personal funds toward her cause, with the comment “In all my years of business, nothing stuck with me more than your act of returning our donation. Please accept this now, from the bottom of my heart.”
That point illustrated to me the very essence of, The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources. Money can be used for good, or it can be used to destroy hope, integrity and incentive. It doesn’t matter how much you have, it is our attitude surrounding money that determines which way the balance tips. We have the power to choose.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Ian McAllister’s latest book, The Last Wild Wolves: Ghosts of the Rain Forest is a collection of photographs and stories from the Great Bear Rainforest about a family of elusive Coastal Wolves. Ian and his wife Karen live on Denny island, where they have been working tirelessly to preserve BC’s threatened forest and its inhabitants.
The book is a testament of patience as well as an urgent call to action. McAllister spent days, weeks and years building the trust of the pack and waiting for the intimate photo opportunities that read like a family album of portraits from a bygone era of raw wilderness. The Great Bear Rainforest is in fact the last remaining temperate rainforest, relatively inaccessible and therefore retaining its rare magnificence—for now.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
When I was first given this book the subject matter made my heart skip as I watched my grandmother deteriorate with Alzheimer’s and it could not have been more heartbreaking. She recounted full stories about her childhood, how her school had a netball court that was slanted, how my granddad sent letters when he was in the war which she posted in sequence all over the kitchen. At other times, in contrast, she couldn’t remember who my family was and would shout and scream, when she had previously never in our whole time together raised her voice. Alzheimer’s changes not only your memory but your behaviour and personality, and at times neither one of us recognised the other.
The Wilderness: A Novel (published by Nan A. Talese 2009) throws the reader into a tangled web of memories and emotions as we follow the protagonist into the uncertain depths of Alzheimer’s disease. An architect by trade, Jacob Jameson is a Lincolnshire born, half-Jewish widower in his 60s. We follow him as he delves into the puzzle of his past, trying to decipher fact from fiction.
"In amongst a sea of events and names that have been forgotten, there are a number of episodes that float with striking buoyancy to the surface. There is no sensible order to them, nor connection between them."
Thursday, June 18, 2009
New out in paperback this month, Miriam Toews fourth novel, The Flying Troutmans (Vintage, June 2009) follows along the author’s well-worn path of funny-sad books about misfits who experience loss and misfortune, but somehow manage to deal with it. It is the story of two sisters, one functional, and the other eccentrically dysfunctional. All their lives the younger sister, Hattie has lived a mix of awe and dread for what spectacle or catastrophe her older sibling, Min would concoct that would either embarrass or frighten her. When Min carries the behavior over into adulthood and relinquishes her hold on life and motherhood to a paralysing depression that requires hospitalization, Hattie returns home to look after her sister’s two kids aged 14 and 11. Logan is a confused pubescent basketball-obsessed young man who writes precocious rants and his younger sister Thebes is a savant eccentric with purple hair, appalling hygiene and a penchant for quoting the dictionary and doing crafts like making giant novelty checks. Instead of facing their pathetic domestic non-routine with the spectre of their mother’s illness hanging over the household, Hattie packs the kids up for a road trip through the United States under the auspices of finding their long lost father who’d been driven out by their mother years earlier. What ensues is a poignant journey of discovery with frequent laugh-out-loud moments as they establish their fundamental bond and accept each other’s insecurities, deficiencies, and quirks. Ultimately they connect through their abiding love for Min. For anyone who doubts that an awesome road trip can't help but connect people, this book is for you. The insights into US-Canadian quirks is bonus.
Monday, April 20, 2009
How Water Marks
The news brings horrifying reports of floods in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, New Orleans and many other places. We are hit with images of people standing on top of their homes waiting for rescue while their belongings are swept away. In need of food, shelter and safety these people become refugees at the mercy of others. But what happens next? What happens to the survivors whose lives have been torn apart by this act of nature? James Runcie’s third novel Canvey Island (2006, The Other Press, NY) explores the aftermath of such a tragic event focusing on the struggles of one family over a forty-year time span in postwar England. It shows how a sound bite on the public's radar compares to the lifelong effect a tragedy evokes in the lives of the victims. It's also a book about uncommunicated truths. Secrets, both personal and political were handled differently in the '50s. Find out how. Runcie’s spare lyric style of writing makes this simple story a quiet thunderstorm on your weather map. Prepare to open the flood gates.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
The 19th Wife: A Novel, by David Ebershoff (2008)
What in the world does polygamous community in the early Mormon Church (and the persistent remnants of the practice in modern renegade cults which refuse to banish the practice) have to do with having it all, today? This anwer is, a great deal and very little. At first glance, we are mystified by these communities. Recent and recurring media fascination with polygamist cults in the West reveals that the allegedly private exercise of religion often includes the underage 'marriage' of girls as young as 14 to men in their forties and fifties, and the teen pregnancies that inevitably follow. We cannot understand how the women in these communities can defend so staunchly a way of life that sentences their own teen daughters to such marriages. We see a concept of community gone awry—where admirable tenets of sisterhood and faith are twisted into a practice where women are often emotionally abused and where children hunger for scraps of a father's love and attention together with dozens of siblings, resulting in mass neglect. We can only assume that the women and girls in this community know no alternatives, and have been brainwashed into believing that their eternal salvation and, perhaps more significantly to a child, that their reunion in heaven with everyone whom they hold dear, depends upon their compliance.
Monday, March 16, 2009
What if? In his extraordinary book, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press 2007) Alan Weisner asks the question, "What if?" Imagine a world where suddenly humans didn’t exist, where we had suddenly vanished leaving the world as it is now. What would we leave behind? What would the world inherit from our existence? How quickly would nature take back the land we have borrowed? Do you think the Eiffel Tower would still be standing one thousand years from now, would the Panama Canal still be intact, would the Euro Tunnel have caved-in? Weisner takes the reader all over the world exploring different places and the effects we have had on them, and what effects we have set in motion for the future.
Monday, February 23, 2009
It's almost a cliché—mention heart transplant and we imagine dramatic deathbed scenarios with life-altering passion at their core. What is striking, and frankly somewhat surprising given its title, is that Stephen Lovely couches his heart-transplant story, Irreplaceable, in the lives of very ordinary and occasionally unlikeable characters. This is the February book review from the good folks at www.thenewhavingitall.com website, a source for consulting, speaking, training and mentoring women at all stages of balancing education, career, family and life.
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Groom to Have Been, Saher Alam’s first novel has been lingering in my head ever since I opened its bright cover. In essence it is a story about finding love, but with a twist that makes the modern world meet a much more traditional ideal. It poses a lot of questions that are sometimes hard to debate or formulate a good argument for or against. How does traditional religion fit in with our everyday lives? Are we shifting in such a way that these ideals no longer transcend along with our modern culture? What is love and how do we decide to stay with the same person for the rest of our lives? This book intertwines the lives of several very different characters all held together by the bond of family, religion and wanting to do the right thing.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Models of Yesteryear, this week:
The Best of Everything, (Reissued by Penguin, 2005) Rona Jaffe (1958)
When The Best of Everything was published in 1958 it was considered revolutionary. The book chronicles a shift in the social dynamic even as it was occurring, as young women began to enter the workforce in droves. Jaffe writes in her 2005 foreward to the reissue of the book, "I had the vision of the beginning of the book, which is all the hundreds and hundreds of girls walking to work."
Monday, December 01, 2008
Following upon the American holiday of giving thanks, we bring to you two books recommended not only for their messages of gratitude but for the very differences in perspective that make them a forceful combination. At the core of these two writings is a belief in embracing one's reality that perhaps can resonate for each of us at a time when so many are anxious and fearful and experiencing the pain of dramatically altered lives. Here is the review of To Love What Is, Alix Kates Shulman Loving What Is: Four, Byron Katie
Monday, November 17, 2008
There have been many books about the value of a good road trip. From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) where the author finds spiritual enlightenment to his troubles and which has been a manuel to people since, to Jack Kerourac's, On the Road(Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) from the 60s Beat generation when wanderlust was a Life Skill 101 class field trip and required reading. A new book has emerged to join them. Written by Doreen Orion Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own (Broadway Books, New York 2008) pretty much says it all. And BookBuffet reviewer Dee Raffo reports that it is "One of the best feel good books [she's] read all year." So if the financial crisis has got you down and you can't quit your job because that mortgage underwater, pick-up a little escapism and start planning your next - ROAD TRIP!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Harper) by Deborah Tannen.
Lunch with your girlfriends whizzes by as you update each other on work, kids, schools, and husbands, and it feels like you barely scratch the surface. You know the names, sports and personalities of your female colleagues’ children, and where they are applying to college. You discuss their dating challenges and your mutual concerns about recent losses in your 529 and 401k accounts. The sole male in the conference room seems to dominate the discussion even though he is not leading the meeting. Your boss banters with male colleagues about NBA playoffs and free agents in baseball, but your efforts to connect with him on a personal level wither because you are not a sports fan. Your husband reads the paper over breakfast and watches the evening news when he gets home. He doesn’t ask about the details of your day, but is quick to interrupt your story before you finish telling it to offer “solutions.”
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Donigan Merritt is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and the author of seven novels. He lives in Washington, DC. A world traveler who has lived a rich life, Merritt imbues his novels with the same variety and intensity. He writes of love and loss and adventure in many different settings. The Common Bond is set in Hawaii in the '80s. The protagonist, Morgan Cary is a s a commercial fishing boat captain, who trolls the Pacific for yellowfin tuna and blue marlin. After a decade of life spent in California, Morgan flies home to Hawaii arriving with a broken heart and an overwhelming sense of guilt surrounding the death of his wife, Victoria. He finds comfort in the wet green mountain slopes, the pearl-colored volcanic haze, and the tropical perfume of gardenia, plumeria, and eucalyptus, but he cannot escape painful and persistent memories. "Resonant with human emotion and insight, The Common Bond is an exquisite novel of precision and grace that captures the depths of the human capacity for guilt, and the traps of compassion and hope in redemption."—Other Press. Join BookBuffet reviewer, Dee Raffo who untangles the unconventional story line of this novel, and follows with her interview with the author over SKYPE.
Monday, July 28, 2008
BookBuffet reviewer, Dee Raffo enjoys the historical fiction genre. Here is her July book review: "As I pick up Karen Essex’s fourth novel, Stealing Athena: A Novel (Doubleday 2008) I am struck by its beautiful cover. It is an 18th century self-portrait by French painter Marie-Genieve Bouliard, as she envisioned herself as the Greek courtesan and philosopher, Aspasia. The cover certainly does match the dual narratives of the book, where two characters 2300 years apart, one in ancient Greece, the other, 18th century Scotland, find themselves inexplicably linked with the Elgin Marbles, and the controversy and passion that surround them."
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Jackfish, The Vanishing Village (Inanna Poetry & Fiction) is not a regular fish story—but it will hook you. Clemance-Marie Nadeau is haunted by memories unraveling from a traumatic past. Her story begins as she boards a train bound for Sault Ste. Marie and falls under the spell of a charming stranger who promises her a life of adventure. Nothing she will experience could be further from that promise. Based on her own life and stories from the trauma/torture survivors that Sarah Felix Burns has counseled over the years, Jackfish will mesmerize and invoke a gamut of emotions. Not since, Bastard Out of Carolina will you be so moved by a book of this kind. Don't let your group miss Jackfish. The author writes, “This book is dedicated to all those people who battle with the demons of guilt, shame addiction, and mental illness.” Take a look at BookBuffet Reviewer Dee Raffo's review.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
"In Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living, Doug Fine writes about his hilarious adventures in green living and some surprising facts he discovered about energy consumption; such as, it takes several thousand gallons of jet fuel to fly an organic banana from Honduras to Silver City, NM, or three times the amount of fuel he uses in his car each year. After graduating from Stanford, Doug Fine strapped on a backpack and traveled to five continents, reporting from remote perches in Burma, Rwanda, Laos, Guatemala and Tajikistan. He is a correspondent for NPR and PRI and the author of Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Wired, US News and World Report, Christian Science Monitor, and Outside magazine. A native of Long Island, he lives in an obscure valley in Southern New Mexico alongside many goats and coyotes. Visit his web site at www.dougfine.com
Thursday, February 14, 2008
It’s the variety that makes Joe Hill’s collection of 20th Century Ghosts, (William Morrow, 2007) stand out from the crowd of horror novelists. The stories range from the grotesque, to unnerving, even poignant and nostalgic.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
A poet from the age of fifteen, Xiaolu Guo first came to London in 2002 as an experienced novelist and filmmaker from mainland China. Her observations led to her third book, the first in English, a remarkable mix of eastern and western ideals with a clever, funny, often profound and engaging writing style. Titled A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers: A Novel (Published by Nan A. Talese, September 4, 2007), The novel explores a subject that many people can relate to, the acquisition of a new language. This book was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for fiction. Read the review then listen to the interview, and view clips from her filmography. Xiaolu Guo is a talent we will see and hear more.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
"Prometheus stole fire and gave it to men."
-Apollodorus, The Library, book 1:7, second century B.C.
"My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It is a pity that they can't be combined." So wrote J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic and mystic genius who managed to do just that at Los Alamos following his appointment as Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project.
The father of the atomic bomb was a unique polymath who can justifiably be credited with founding the foremost school of theoretical physics in America. Moreover, in contrast to many gifted mathematicians and physicists, Oppenheimer's intellectual curiosity extended well beyond the limits of his chosen career. He was a prolific reader and loved the arts, especially poetry. He was also fascinated by mysticism and with his remarkable facility to acquire languages with astounding ease, he learned Sanskrit so that he could study the ancient Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The End of the Alphabet
by CS Richardson (Doubleday, 2007) is a one-hundred-and-nineteen-page gem coming out in paperback that you can read in one sitting. Be prepared to be taken on a roller coaster of emotion. It is the story of a couple, one of whom has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness and told will not live past one month. It is a story of love, of courage, and of loss. It is a story you will read and pass on to friends, because we all admire this kind of love; we all fear this kind of devastation and find ourselves compelled to look into their abyss. The End of the Alphabet has just been awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize for First Novel. Congratulations Charles!!
Monday, February 05, 2007
BookBuffet's political books review editor, Loree Fahy tackles the latest book by CNN anchor and managing editor, Lou Dobbs. Read this review of War on the Middle Class (Viking, Oct 2006) and weigh-in with your comments.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
As Barack Obama ponders the presidential bid, our new political books editor, Loree Fahy has chosen a timely review of this US Senator from Illinois' book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
(Crown, Oct 17, 2006)
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
One of my favorite writers and critics, Francine Prose, has published a new work directed toward just about anyone interested in books. It has the unwieldy title, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write. (Harper Collins 2006) An excellent interview of the author appears in The Atlantic today.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Growing up with Dyslexia and ADHD, Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea learned to become an expert at reading people. He used these skills, 'learning opportunities' as he calls them, to build a $2 billion dollar empire.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Dan Brown's bestselling book, The Da Vinci Code has gone down in history as one of the most popular novels. Translated into 40 languages with over 40 million copies sold and garnering the author an annual income of $76 million dollars. But another book combining a plot to threaten the foundations of the church with stolen artifacts and Templars is out. The Parchment (Lindisfarne Books) by Gerald T. McLaughlin. Lovers of The DaVinci Code should take a look.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
I consider myself a reasonably fit person; I've done a couple marathons, I play tennis, bike and jog regularly, and I put in about 30 days of skiing a year. I've always had an inch or so of unwanted "padding." You know—that little bulge beside the bra strap, and spillage around my low-rise jeans. Well, it's gone -- all gone! I have an emerging abdominal six pack, and arm definition a 20 year-old would be proud of, and I am in my mid-forties. How? The Boot Camp Workout, by Cat Smiley.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Zadie Smith's first novel White Teeth (Penguin) set critics on the edge of their seats. Now that she has reached the ripe age of thirty she is once again back on track and solidly claiming her place in the literary firmament with her third work, On Beauty: A Novel.(Penguin) This work gathers narrative steam from the clash between two radically different families, with a plot that explicitly parallels Howards End. (E.M. Forrester is a favorite)
Sunday, April 24, 2005
If you're looking for a book you, your husband, boyfriend or co-worker might like, look no further than Malcolm Gladwell. The wunderkind writer for NewYorker magazine is influencing all the hip-intellectuals with his first two books... (photo by Brooke Williams)
Friday, January 21, 2005
It is Paris 1854 and Ella Lynch, a broke and beautiful courtesan, decides to take-up with the dashing and wealthy Francisco Solano—the future dictator of Paraguay—and move to his isolated country to become his mistress. Taking with her a servant, her possessions and a horse called Mathilde, she reports the news in letters back to Paris of her experiences in an exotic new world of isolation and adventure, power and wealth, fraught with harrowing challenges of war, disease, and her own spiral into her husband's cruel ambition.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Ann-Marie MacDonald's second novel, The Way the Crow Flies tops bestseller charts in the paperback edition in her home country. It portrays the Canadian Cold War perspective as experienced by the McCarthy family, who live in a small Ontario border town on an RCAF military base.
Thursday, August 12, 2004
If you are not inclined to air guitar while listening to your favorite rock riff, and playing in a Rock & Roll band was never your secret fantasy, then you must certainly go out and buy Jake Slichter's new book because you are missing-out on an interesting perspective of life.
Monday, August 02, 2004
In this technological age, statistics show reading is down. What individual and societal effect does this fact imply? Why should we care? Beyond all we are taught in school, the morals we learn from family while growing up—only reading, Edmundson argues, can shape our thoughts, opinions, actions as adults.
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Betsy Prioleau is author of The Seductress (Viking Press, 2003), about women who ravished the world through the lost art of love. Reviewed by David Bowmanat Salon.com.
