Three Must Read Summer Books

My spring and summer fever really affects my reading. As the temperature finally begins to rise, I start to crave fun summer books, page turners that are impossible to put down, books that grab me from the first page. My summer reading fever kicked in three weeks ago, and I've been completely consumed by three very different, but equally captivating books. So consumed that I just realized it's been weeks since my last book review! Before I get caught up in the next book on my nightstand, I wanted to take a few minutes to recommend some must reads whether you're at the pool or packing for the beach.

The Passage by Justin Cronin is pure adrenaline from the first chapter. It's a futuristic story of a science experiment gone terribly wrong that ends up putting the fate of the entire world in the hands of a very special young girl. To say that it is gripping is an understatement. This is a Michael Crichton type of thriller, the type of book that not only captivates you but also makes you think. I couldn't put it down and haven't stopped thinking about it since I finished it last night. The characters are well developed and its impossible to keep yourself from rooting for them. Stephen King said, "Read this book and the ordinary world disappears." I couldn't agree more. The fact that the author came up with the novel idea while biking with his 9-year old daughter only made me love it more.

I stumbled upon the Magicians by Lev Grossman on the sale rack at my local Borders, and the financial challenges of the bookstore chain was my gain. The Magicians is like a Harry Potter for adults. Quentin is a brilliant but miserable high school student in Manhattan who is invited to apply for an secret magical college. The magic in the novel is a dark force that only a few of the most intelligent human beings are able to tap into. Quentin spends his four years of college learning how to harness that power, but after graduation, the real world of adulthood seems drab and pointless until he finds a portal into another incredible adventure, even more amazing than when he discovered that the world of magic was real. I found the Magicians to be incredibly creative, a very adult take on the powers of magic. It was a thoroughly entertaining read, and I can't wait for the sequel to come out this summer.

I can lose myself in a good read in a variety of genres and The Roses by Leila Meacham couldn't be more different than the first two books I've reviewed today. The novel is a sweeping Gone with the Wind type of Southern family saga. The founding families in a small town in East Texas make difficult choices across three generations, choosing land over love with devastating consequences. The choices made by some of the characters in Roses can be as torturously painful to read as watching the heartbreak of Rhett and Scarlett. By the end of the novel, the drama was almost too much for me, but overall, I found Roses to be a thoroughly entertaining read. If you're a fan of historical fiction or Southern literature, you'll love Leila Meacham's debut novel.

Confronting the Unthinkable with Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott

My kids are 9, 7 and 4 and every day they give me more glimpses of the terrible teenagers they'll soon morph into. Bella rolls her eyes at me like a pro, Juju dances to Party in the USA, and Jack recently requested a balloon sculpture in the shape of boobies. Yes, boobies. We're laughing now, but I'm terrified of what will come all to soon, terrified that my kids will turn into strangers who despise me and count the days til they fly the coop to the freedom and kegs of college.
 
I just finished Anne Lamott's latest novel, Imperfect Birds, and it rocked me to my core by making me face one of my greatest fears: teenage drug addiction. The novel features the same characters in Lamott's two previous novels Rosie and Crooked Little Heart: Rosie, her mother Elizabeth, and her step-father James. She alternates between the mother and daughter viewpoints, describing each of their flaws poetically and unflinchingly, in her signature style, yet creating characters with whom it is easy to empathize.

I found the novel particularly shocking when Lamott speaks in Rosie's voice. Rosie is a straight-A student with a 4.2 average, described by her science teacher as a star, one of the ones he didn't have to worry about. She loves her parents, yet coldly calculates how to manipulate their emotions to hide her dependence on being high. She's not addicted to a particular drug, but is high most days on speed, cocaine, ecstasy, ADD medication and valiums bought off of other students, shrooms, and even cough medicine. In one scene, when Elizabeth confronts Rosie and makes her take a urine test, Lamott paints the firestorm of her complicated emotions:
"Rosie faced her mother, eyes narrowed with disdain even as she felt the ground beneath her turn to sand. Her heart pounded the way it did after the cheapest cocaine, going so fast that she felt like she might be having a stroke, and yet she still sneered with disbelief at such bald-faced foolishness, at her stupid, stupid mother who stood there in the bathroom holding a cup of pee like it was plutonium. Rosie's mind churned as she desperately tried to figure out the angles. If she went ballistic, she could beat her mother down, deflate the story into something more manageable, and continue her life as it had been."

Imperfect Birds is about more than the struggles of a teenager with drugs, it's also about relationships, and marriage in times of extreme hardship. I loved how well Lamott described the constant fine tuning a relationship requires for two individuals to stay in sync, to continue communicating even as careers and identities change. In one paragraph, she described the music of marriage so perfectly by saying, "She knew every single personal noise James made - grunts when he got up, light snores when he went to sleep, medium snores throughout the night, groans from repositioning, occasional farts, all part of the marital soup."

This is by no means an easy read, but it delivers an important message and it delivers it in Lamott's beautiful prose. I have a good friend who is an ER doctor who recently shocked me by telling me how often she treated overdosing high schoolers who came from well-off two-parent homes. Kids whose parents had no idea were doing drugs. Kids who began getting high by taking prescription medications from their parents' bathroom.

I heard Anne Lamott speak a few weeks ago, and she said, "The stakes are high with our girls and that's why we need to be their lighthouses. We need to show them that the respect they are so desperate for can only come from within." My kids are still little, but middle school and high school are just around the corner, and I feel a little more prepared from having read Imperfect Birds and having confronted the unthinkable.

Russian Winter: Part Black Swan, Part Revolutionary, Fully Captivating

The greatest novels break the mold, stepping out of familiar formulas, keeping you hooked and completely unable to predict where the author will take you next. That is definitely the case with Russian Winter, Daphne Kalotay's debut novel which is part Black Swan, part Russian revolution novel, and fully engrossing.
 
A Russian prima ballerina named Nina Reskaya is the mysterious center of the story. She defected to the West as a principal dancer in the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet Company, leaving behind her husband and friends in Communist Russia. After her escape, she had a long successful career in Europe and the US, surrounded by lovers, friends, and admirers. But the story begins long after her days on the stage, when she is crippled by arthritis, a cruel end for a graceful ballerina. Troubled by a visit from a stranger, a younger college professor, she decides to sell all her jewels at a private auction. Each subsequent chapter opens with the description of one of her exquisite jewels and reveals through flashbacks a portion of her hidden past.

Kalotay paints life in revolutionary Russia vividly and it is clear that she researched the novel thoroughly. In one scene, soon after becoming one of the principal dancers of the Bolshoi, Nina is asked to perform for a group of visiting foreign dignitaries and Communist party members. As soon as the dance is over, she rushes over to the buffet to stuff as much food as will fit in her purse. These crisply described scenes of the smallest details of daily life really brought the harshness and fear of the Russian people under the Stalinist regime. Even famous ballerinas are hungry and terrified of being labeled as a counter-revolutionary spy.

The mystery is really Nina's life before she moved to the West, all the secrets left behind the Iron Curtain. Kalotay reveals them slowly as she paints the picture of her life and fully reveals her character. I was equally fascinated by the plot as by the conditions she described and was glued to the pages of the novel until the end.

I highly recommend Russian Winter. It would be a wonderful book club read, filled with morality questions to discuss as well as interesting details about the Russian Communist revolution. It's a great read and a great discussion piece. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for my review copy and bringing this great novel to my attention. It's been added to my shelf of favorite books.

Yogurt Cake Brings Back Memories of Growing Up in France

Posing like a tourist with the kids in Paris.

Immediately after college, when career, love, and life were still somewhat up in the air, people always asked me why on earth I was living in New York. As soon as they heard I was from France, they'd ask with this envious and confused look on their face, "Why aren't you in Paris? Why would you choose to live here? I would kill to live in France." I'd try to answer them, but they were never listening, their eyes were far away, no doubt dreaming of walking on cobbled streets arm in arm with a French lover, eating baguettes.


Even though the often repeated conversation frustrated me, I understood. Why would someone who had such romantic memories of France from a vacation or a few months studying abroad want to hear about unemployment rates, cost of living, and limited opportunities? It was much more romantic and pleasant to dream of biting into a croissant than to imagine yourself not being able to afford one.

Last week, I read a memoir that captured life in Paris so honestly and vividly that I wish I'd had it in my hand to give to everyone who ever asked me why I chose to make a life in the States. Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard is the story of how she fell in love with a Frenchman and came to live in Paris. There's plenty about the markets and the amazing food you'll eat in Paris. But she also talks about how cold many apartments are in the winter and how difficult it is to make friends with French people who have had the same group of friends since high school. It's all told in a straightforward, thoroughly entertaining manner, and I alternated between laughing out loud and nodding in violent agreement throughout the book.

Elizabeth Bard met her prince in Paris and made her home there. She gave him some of her American optimism and entrepreneurial energy while adapting to making small portion meals without leftovers and a bikini-wearing mother in law. By taking France in her heart, she became a American-French hybrid, something she makes peace with through cooking. I met my prince in New York and my home here. I gave him some of my French palate and relaxed attitude towards time while adapting to strip malls and my mother in law's matzo ball soup. I too became a hybrid, a Franco-American hybrid with my own set of recipes and memories. My home is here now, and I experience France as a visitor, stuffing all the tastes of my childhood in a week or two each year. I look forward to those food-filled weeks all year. I'm a tourist in France, a tourist with a treasure trove of childhood memories.

Each chapter of Lunch in Paris closes with recipes, wonderful recipes. I made the yogurt cake the other day, a simple cake to throw together that makes a perfect breakfast or snack treat. Its moist crumbs are pure comfort, and with one bite, I transported back as a little girl with a page boy haircut home from school in Paris, having my 4-heures snack with my mom, sisters, and our many dogs.

You should make the yogurt cake your own, with whatever fruit you happen to have on hand. I used strawberry kefir drinkable yogurt to make this and it gave the cake a pleasant strawberry flavor. Next time, I'll try it with plain Greek yogurt.

Strawberry Yogurt Cake (Gateau au Yaourt) - adapted from Lunch in Paris
Ingredients:
1 cup plain or flavored yogurt
1 cup sugar
a large pinch of kosher salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/3 cups of vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 2/3 cups of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 cup of sliced supermarket strawberries
optional: zest of 1 lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Butter a round or bundt pan thoroughly.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the yogurt, sugar, salt and vanilla. Whisk until smooth.
3. Add the oil in a steady stream, whisking as you pour, feeling like a kitchen rockstar. Now add the eggs one at a time, whisking to blend after each one.
4. Sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Add to the yogurt mixture. Mix with a spatula or wooden spoon until blended. If you're going with the lemon zest, add it in now.
5. Transfer the batter to the cake pan. Top with the strawberries. 
6. Bake in the middle of the oven for 45 minutes. Will be golden brown and will have risen. The cake is done when a knife comes out clean.
7. This cake is delicious warm, or saved for breakfast for the next morning (or two). It's moist and keeps well. Top with a little confectioner's sugar for fun.

Special thanks to the From Left to Write book club who provided me with this wonderful memoir to read. I'm really looking forward to the Pot Luck lunch I'll be hosting next week with the other Chicago members who also read the book. If you're in the area and have an appetite for French food - let me know!

The Other Life: the Thinking Woman's Beach Read

On Spring Break with the kids, I love a good beach read, something that gets my pulse racing but nothing so embarrassing that I would be embarrassed to show the cover at the pool. There's nothing like vacation and freedom from cooking and car pooling to settle in to a great escapist read. I packed the Other Life in my suitcase along with my sunscreen and bathing suits, and was so happy with my choice. It has been called "the thinking woman's beach read" and I couldn't agree more.

The Other Life blends together the ordinary struggles of a happily married suburban woman with a touch of magic. Quinn Braverman lives in Long Island with her husband Lewis and their son Isaac. Although her life seems perfect on the surface, she is haunted by the suicide of her mother soon after her wedding. When she learns that she may be carrying a seriously disabled child in her womb, she discovers a portal to another life in her basement, filled with the choices she didn't make.

In this other life, Quinn's mother is still alive and Quinn is married to her daredevil boyfriend Eugene. Although she loves her husband and son, she is inexorably drawn to the portal to escape her problems and uncover the mystery of her mother's suicide. But the portal keeps shrinking with every visit, making every transition more dangerous.

Life is filled with choices, big and small, every day: what to make for dinner, what to wear, or whether to reconnect with an old friend. Some choices are inconsequential, but others are life-changing and through the powers of social media and Facebook we're constantly teased by what could have been. I loved that The Other Life plays with this notion and gives this suburban housewife the power to view the road not taken. It was an interesting premise and I enjoyed the novel, a thoroughly entertaining read in my lounge chair by the pool.

The Other Life is Ellene Meister's third novel. She lives on Long Island with her husband and three children. It is available in paperback and is currently $10.20 at Amazon. I received a review copy from TLC Book Tours where the novel is currently being reviewed by other book lovers throughout the world.

Why You Simply Need to Read Devotion by Dani Shapiro

It's not every day that I pick up a memoir and find myself hooked to its pages as though deep in conversation with a good friend, but that's exactly what happened as I read Devotion by Dani Shapiro. She wrote so honestly, and so beautifully about her life and her questions about faith that I simply could not put the book down. I found myself nodding as I read, at times hearing echoes of my own thoughts, disagreeing other times, but still completely understanding where the author was coming from. I spoke about the book to my husband, to my sister, to my friends, to anyone who would listen.

Dani Shapiro is a novelist and magazine writer. She lives in rural Connecticut with her husband and elementary aged son. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Elle, Vogue and O, just to name a few. Her childhood was spent in the rhythms of Orthodox Judaism, but, after living through 9/11 with a toddler in Brooklyn, she flees to rural Connecticut, to a house on 10 acres surrounded by pretty white churches.

As her son enters elementary school, she fields an increasing amount of "mommy-needs-to-get-it-right questions" about God. Increasingly, Shapiro feels ill-prepared to answer them, and finds herself in a mid-life existential crisis. "Even as the words came out of my mouth, they felt inadequate. I was a phony. Play-acting the part of the spiritually inclined, or at least Jewishly-inclined, wife and mother."

Her feelings of inadequacy begin to color her life, tainting the most perfect moments. "Nothing, absolutely nothing, I could put my finger on was the matter. Except that I was often on the verge of tears. Except that it seemed that there had to be more than this hodgepodge of the everyday. ... Inside each joy was a hard kernel of sadness, as if I was preparing myself for impending loss."

Having wrestled to define our family's relationship with faith and organized religion, I strongly identified with Shapiro's self-doubt, and I appreciated her honesty. She lays out the memoir like a mosaic of her life. Interweaving beautifully written chapters about her childhood, her son's terrifying illness in infancy, her relationship with her father's large Orthodox family, and the horror of the collapse of the Twin Towers with her adult explorations of mediation and Judaism.

Although the comparison to Eat, Pray, Love is tempting, I found Devotion to be much more personal, and relatable. In fact, when Shapiro is offered a dream assignment to travel to India to write a feature on meditation, she declines the assignment, explaining to the editor that her personal journey is close to home. And so, instead of delighting us with tales of bowls of Italian pasta, stark prayer in India, and lush landscapes in Bali, she takes the reader on an intimate and no less fascinating journey through her life, finally embracing the beauty of change and the joy of living in the moment.

This review of Devotion is part of a TLC book tour. My review is much later than many of the others because I wanted to take my time and really digest this special book. My copy is already ear-marked and covered with underlined passages. This is a book that I want to keep near me as I know I'll be referring back to it often.

Small Wars, a Thought Provoking Novel about Marriage and Guerilla Warfare

Sadie Jones' latest novel, Small Wars, is aptly named. Jones vividly describes two small, yet intense conflicts: the Cyprus war of independence against the British in the mid 1950s and the slow deterioration of the happy marriage of Major Hal Terhune and his wife Clara. The tension builds in both conflicts masterfully and makes for an absorbing read.

I knew little about Cyprus before picking up this novel, beyond a vague notion of its location close to Greece. I learned that in the aftermath of World War II, England was very motivated to maintain control of the island due to its strategic position near the Suez Canal, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Greece. Most of the islanders are of Greek descent although there is a minority Muslim population as well that are of Turkish descent. The Cypriots used basic terrorism techniques to retaliate against the British occupation in an increasingly violent conflict.

Smith does a great job of illustrating the terror of guerilla warfare in this idyllic island on the Mediterranean. In one particularly difficult scene, Major Terhune treats himself to a morning swim at the local beach only to witness the horrific deaths of two of his soldiers and their horses when they step on a landmine."The sand had settled and, with it, pieces of man and horse, huge splashes of blood that were like spilled pots of bright paint and hard to connect with reality."

Major Terhune's wife Clara moves to Cyprus with her twin 18-month old daughters to be with her husband. As she struggles with the typical issues of a new mother in a foreign outpost (uncomfortable accommodations, isolation, limited activities), she becomes increasingly distant from her husband. He wrestles with his growing moral conflict with the British role in Cyprus while she tries to hide her fear of the violence. It is painful to watch a close, loving couple become strangers to each other in a time of great need.

Bottom Line:
I found Small Wars to be a provoking and interesting read. The characters Sadie Jones created are complex, each placed in difficult moral situations. Reading the novel gave me a better appreciation of the horrors of war, and the compromises it forces everyone into. If you're looking for suggestions for your next book club pick, Small Wars would be rich with discussion topics. At a time of similar conflict in Afghanistan, and such unrest in the Middle East, it is of particular relevance.

I received my review copy of Small Wars as part of a TLC Book Tour.

Wench Makes Slavery a Reality for Readers of all Ages

Last year, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a Katie Couric interview with Kathryn Stockett, author of the Help, a beautifully written novel about race relations in Mississippi in the 60s. The Help has resonated with so many that it has been on the NY Times Bestseller list for 96 weeks. I just finished reading Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, a powerful novel about slavery that is destined to sweep the nation in the same way.

Wench is set earlier in time than the Help, over three hot and humid consecutive summers on the cusp of the Civil War. The setting of the novel is Tawawa House, a resort in Ohio where plantation owners liked to vacation with their mistresses, the favored house slaves with whom they were sleeping and fathering children. Tawawa House existed but the characters in the novel are fictional.

In Wench, slavery is portrayed at its most cruel, most personal, and most insidious level because it shows long-standing sexual relationships between master and slave. Two of the four main characters in the Wench hate their abusive masters who essentially rape them nightly, and offer them up to other men who express interest, but the other two have a more loving relationship based on years of intimacy. It is those relationships that are the most disturbing because even though the men show signs of affection for their mistresses, they never stop thinking of the women as their property.

As Ohio is part of the North, these Southern slaves are surrounded by free black servants, and they wrestle with the temptation to escape, even though it would mean abandoning their children back on the plantation. Nothing belongs to the slave women: not their children, not their hearts, and not even their children. But even though they have been denied everything, these women still form a community and support each other as they make the most important decisions of their lives.

I can't recommend Wench enough. Perkins-Valdez brings slavery to life and pushes the reader to really consider what it must have been like to live at the whim of someone else. Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet, and Mawu are beautifully drawn characters with unique voices and points of view. Their choices will haunt you long after you finish the book.

Wench just came out in paperback last week, always a pre-requisite for my book club picks. I received my copy thanks to TLC Book Tours as this review is part of their campaign.

Drinking Closer to Home: a Book Review

The blizzard this week gave me an unexpected gift. It slowed life down. Way down. For two days we were free of afterschool activities and school pick up and drop offs. We ate when we wanted to eat. We played board games. And we spent many delicious slow hours reading under blankets on the couch in the snow muted daylight. Ironically, amidst all of this quiet domesticity, I was reading about a very unorthodox family, the characters at the heart of Drinking Closer to Home by Jessica Anya Blau.

The Novel in a Snapshot
Anna, Portia and Emery fly home to California when their mother Louise has a massive heart attack. While they sit with her and their father at the hospital, wondering whether she will live or die, each sibling has vivid flashbacks to their traumatic childhoods, including when Louise announced to 10-year old Anna and 8-year old Portia that she is quitting being a housewife and leaving them in charge of cooking, cleaning, and caring for their baby brother. The family continued living together in relative harmony but in a growing state of filth.

It would have been easy for the novel to turn hard and bitter, but Blau manages to weave in a great deal of love in this highly disfunctional family where no one has qualms about pointing out the others' faults, but still loves them for who they are.

Bottom Line:
I expected to be depressed by this novel, but experienced a polar opposite reaction. I loved Blau's brutally honest prose and her dry sense of humor. I also loved the characters she created, and got more attached with every page with this wacky family. Drinking Closer to Home really celebrated the concept of family, a place where people catalog every mistake you've ever made, where people know exactly who you are, and love you in spite of it all.

I can't recommend Drinking Closer to Home enough. As you get to know Portia, Anna, Emery, Buzzy and Louise, you'll go through a full range of emotions. You'll laugh. You'll be shocked. You may even cry. And somehow this crazy family will make you more tolerant of your own family dynamics. Drinking Closer to Home is a thoroughly entertaining read, but it's also a little bit like therapy.

I read Drinking Closer to Home as part of a TLC Book Tour. See what other reviewers like Write Meg and Sara's Organized Chaos had to say about the novel.

Snowbound? Settle in for a Cozy Read with Under the Mercy Trees

Over the next few days, most of the US will be blanketed by snow. The weather map on the evening news was a gorgeous riot of reds, purples and orange to announce the coming white-out. Instead of worrying about shoveling, I prefer to plan for a peaceful read on the couch, snuggled under a blanket with a good book.

Under the Mercy Trees is the perfect book to snap up before the snow traps you indoors. Heather Newton's lyrical and quintessentially Southern prose has been compared to the prose of eminent Southern writers including Pat Conroy and Carson McCullers. This is Newton's first novel and she is full of promise. Her voice will charm you and transport you into another world. Our book club frowns on hardcovers, so you'll be happy to know that this novel recently came out in paperback.

Synopsis:
Martin Owenby left the poetically-named Solace Fork, North Carolina to become a writer in New York City. Twenty years later, instead of being heralded as a successful writer, his life is filled with alcohol and easy men. When he is called back home to help find his missing brother, he must return to small town life and face a life of regrets.

Bottom Line:
Some novels take ahold of you from the first page, haunting you with their desperately human characters. Under the Mercy Trees is one of those novels. The rhythm of Newton's voice has lingered with me since I put it down, leaving me in a pseudo-daydream. It's impossible to read Under the Mercy Trees and remain unaffected by Martin's struggles. I recommend this powerful read for your book clubs or your snow days.

This review is part of a TLC Book Tour. I received a review copy of Under the Mercy Trees to write this post.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Book Review

Some books are pure escapist reads, plunging the reader into a dream situation or other world. Other books force you to confront your worst nightmare, not necessarily a bad thing if the process makes you grow. I just finished reading Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough by Ruth Pennebaker, a novel that definitely falls in the second category.

Novel Summary:
Joanie is a divorced woman in her early 50s living with her mother and her daughter. She's falling apart under the strain of financial stress, anger over her divorce and the fact that her ex-husband and his new young girlfriend are expecting a baby and the tension in her home. Her mother can't speak to her without criticizing her and her daughter won't speak to her, period. Her divorced women support group are the highlight of her week.

Conclusion:
Although I can't say I enjoyed reading about such stark, depressing lives, I'm still glad I read Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough. Taking a peek at Joanie's lonely and difficult life made me appreciate all the joy in mine. As the three generations of women struggle to come to terms with each other, the book made me better appreciate the bonds of family. I can definitely relate to the difficult, yet empowering message of the book: sometimes life has to reach rock bottom before soaring to new, unexpected heights.

This isn't a beach read, but if your family sometimes drives you crazy, you should definitely read Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough. It will inspire you to endure all that your family throws your way.

This book review is part of a book tour coordinated by TLC Book tours. I received a review copy of the novel to write this post.

Taking a Hard Look at our Culture of Excess with We Have Met the Enemy by Daniel Akst

Been to the bookstore lately? Just walking in is enough to make you feel like Superman. The rows and rows of diet books and self-help books make me feel like I can do anything. But few of these books about gimmicky diets, de-clutter solutions, and new exercise regimens will do much more than collecting dust in our clutter piles.

This January, reach for a different type of book to inspire the change you crave, a book that gets to the real issues and makes you think about how our society came to be plagued inherit the focus in the hope that we can turn the tide around.

We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess by Daniel Akst is a brilliant yet easy to read book that examines the origins of our biggest problems today: obesity and drug and alcohol abuse.

Akst argues that although we seem to be obsessed with safety "with our helmets and lawsuits and regulations... But as a people, we've embarked on a campaign of slow-motion suicide." Suicide by indulging in all the excesses available to us: food, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Akst also argues that if we were to eradicate these excesses, we could radically improve the mortality rate in the US as over a million people die in the US every year as a result of smoking, eating the wrong things, drinking too much, or having high risk sex.

We Have Met the Enemy is filled with interesting observations and conclusions. Akst ties the widespread adoption of microwave ovens to the rapid rise in obesity. But instead of urging housewives to chuck their nukers out the window, he concludes that it is "an apt metaphor for the real story, the plummeting effort and coordination required per calorie ingested."

What keeps this non-fiction book from being dry and dull is the many references to literary and popular characters. Akst weaves in David Duchovny's sex addiction a few paragraphs before quoting John Stuart Mill's definition of character before contrasting the failings of Huck Finn and Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

Grab a copy of We Have Met the Enemy at your library or bookstore. You'll take longer to digest it than you would a donut or a full-proof diet plan, but the reward will be that much sweeter.

My review of We Have Met the Enemy is part of a TLC Book Tour. I was provided with a complimentary review copy to write this post.

Stay with Me, an Entertaining Vacation Read

Other than quality family time, the best part of Christmas break is cuddling up on the couch with a great book. That's just what I've been doing for the last few days with Stay with Me, a novel by Sandra Rodriguez Barron that just came out in paperback this month from Harper Collins. It's the type of story that makes you look up every few chapters and appreciate the loved ones around you.

The novel begins mysteriously. A boat is found at the dock of an abandoned Puerto Rico development by two policemen, aboard are five toddlers dressed in fancy clothes each bearing the same starfish drawing on their left hand. They're all alone. The press goes wild with speculation but no one claims the children. Eventually the mysterious stowaways are adopted by different families both in the US and in Puerto Rico, but the children remain connected, and consider themselves as siblings even though they are not raised together.

Their bond remains strong even as adults. Adrian is a Latin rock star. Ray is a line cook. David works for the forest service. Taina is a clothing designer, and Holly is a soccer mom. But under the surface, they're all haunted by the mystery of their origins. When David is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, their bonds are tested anew as his tumor gives him flashbacks with vivid clues of their true identities.

Although Stay with Me juggles a lot of different viewpoints, the story is captivating and heartwarming. I felt for those orphans, even as adults, as they struggled to make sense of their mystery. Stay with Me is an entertaining read that I'm sure you'll enjoy as much as I did.

I received my review copy as part of a TLC book tour for Stay with Me. Feel free to read what other reviewers had to say about the book.