The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics, John Pollack
I love a good pun, and this book presents the history of punning while slipping dozens of puns into the text. Pollack has competed in (and won) pun championships, so he’s the perfect person to wax eloquent on the joys of punning. As one review said, this little book was “punderful.” Funny, punny and quite informative.
Helen Keller in Love, Rosie Sultan
I’ve long been fascinated by Helen Keller, but didn’t know she’d ever had a love affair. Rosie Sultan takes that one known fact and spins a tale of several breathless months in 1916, when Helen’s finances and Annie Sullivan’s health were both teetering, and her new secretary, Peter Fagan, proved captivating. Helen and Annie were both well drawn, but Peter’s character felt rather two-dimensional. But Sultan pulled me into Helen’s world through her experience of scents, touch and taste – the only three senses available to her.
Miracles on Maple Hill, Virginia Sorensen
Mitali reminded me of this book recently, so I picked it up again, and discovered all the delights of a New England spring (especially making maple syrup) along with Marly and her family. Sorensen’s writing is quiet and lyrical, and each new miracle is a pleasure, from spring flowers to autumn leaves to foxes in the fields. The greatest miracle is Marly’s father: deeply scarred by his time in a prison camp during World War II, he is able to heal, slowly and steadily, at Maple Hill.
Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, Lauren F. Winner
I love Winner’s work, and I savored her new collection of reflections on the middle of the spiritual life. This book is quieter, slower, less declarative than Winner’s earlier memoirs (she wrote it in the wake of her mother’s death and her divorce). She is fumbling her way through grief and emptiness and deep weariness, and yet she is not quite willing to walk away from the God she once knew. Her words resonate deeply with where I am right now: lots of questions, few answers, reliance on friends and ritual and the deep-down knowing that defies reason. Spare and quiet and beautiful.
Sweet Treats and Secret Crushes, Lisa Greenwald
I enjoyed Greenwald’s debut, My Life in Pink & Green, and her second middle-grade novel made perfect fluffy, before-bed reading. It follows three seventh-grade girls in Brooklyn who decide to make fortune cookies and distribute them to all their neighbors on a snow day. The teenage angst, drama and silliness were all totally believable, and it was a cute premise. Good fun.
The Table Comes First: Family, France and the Meaning of Food, Adam Gopnik
I love Gopnik’s work – Paris to the Moon and his book on winter are both lovely, witty, thoughtful and well written. This book has those attributes, but is much longer and more complicated, and it bogged down at times in long discussions of specific aspects of French food and/or “foodie” cuisine. It was still interesting, and I appreciate his point that most of our tightly held doctrines about food stem from trends, which change with the generations. He does sometimes laugh at his own rarefied tastes (his two children help keep him honest). And I certainly learned a lot about the origins of French (and thus Western) foodie culture.
The Expats, Chris Pavone
Ex-CIA agent Kate Moore moves to Luxembourg with her husband and kids, and quickly realizes that a) she is bored with being an expat housewife, and b) her tech-geek husband isn’t just working in banking security. The plot zooms from Washington, D.C. to Central America and back to Luxembourg again. The two narratives – one happening “today” and one beginning two years back – twine and twist toward one another till they meld in the last few chapters. Really fun.
Breadcrumbs, Anne Ursu
Based in part on The Snow Queen and set in modern-day Minnesota, this is half fairy tale, half contemporary middle-grade story. The fairy-tale parts were a bit of a stretch for me – as Felicity noted recently, I like fictional worlds to follow their own rules, and this felt like a random hodgepodge of various stories. But I loved the relationship between Hazel and Jack, who are best friends – so much so that when Jack disappears, Hazel plunges into the woods to bring him back.
Shooting Kabul, N.H. Senzai
I read about this book on the NPR website. It’s the story of an Afghan family who immigrate to San Francisco in the summer of 2001, but lose their youngest daughter as they leave Jalalabad. Eleven-year-old Fadi blames himself, and enters a photo contest to try and win a trip back overseas to search for his sister. A fascinating perspective on 9/11, and a family story with lots of heart. Wonderful.
Way Down Deep, Ruth White
A fun, folksy middle-grade story set in West Virginia in the 1950s. Ruby June, who showed up in the town of Way Down Deep as a toddler, has always wondered who and where her parents are – and when a new family moves to town, they might have the answers. Full of quirky, lovable characters and entertaining details.
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, Madeleine Albright
Albright examines the 1930s and World War II from the Czech perspective, weaving her family’s story and her own childhood memories together with the story of her home country. This is a fascinating, complicated book: part history, part biography, part memoir. She explores the difficult choices faced by many Czech and Slovak leaders (including her own father) in the years before, during and after the war, and the compromises inherent in being a small, landlocked nation surrounded by more powerful nations. Fascinating.
(NB: I am an IndieBound affiliate. This post contains affiliate links, and I make a small commission if you purchase a book through one of them.)
WOW, you’re on a tear this month! MIRACLES ON MAPLE HILL and WAY DOWN DEEP sound particularly good; might have to add them to my TBR…
I want to read Winner’s latest effort so badly.
I am always so jealous of how much reading you get to! That list is intimidating!