Tag: Penguin Books

Books, NonFiction

Motherland by Elissa Altman

RaeAnna

Worth A Read Absolutely
Length 272
Quick Review Elissa Altman and her mother have always had a trying relationship. Altman explores their history in order to come to peace with and understand it. 

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Reading Motherland by Elissa Altman in downtown Houston. | Skirt | Watch | Top | Shoes |
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Motherland by Elissa Altman | Watch

Mother daughter relationships are hard under even the best of circumstances. When someone puts pen to paper about it, you know it is even more fraught. And usually the mom is dead, but Elissa Altman writes while her mother is still living. Motherland is, at its essence, an exploration of addiction and recovery and living with it.

Moms are hard. I probably have a skewed perception because I have struggled with the mom relationship since I became a cognizant person. Motherland resonated with me on a very visceral level. I finished it in a few hours without getting up to even refill my teacup. 

Elissa Altman is a lesbian woman raised by starlet mother in New York City. (Her father was supportive and present and seems like a really good dad and person, but this story isn’t about him.) Her mother had a career in entertainment before meeting her first husband and having a child, Altman. For the rest of her life, she would remind everyone of who she used to be, all while reminding her daughter what she had given up for her. 

From the start, it is wildly apparent the relationship between Altman and her mother is unhealthy under the best of circumstances. Her mother never made the shift in her mind that her days on TV were no longer. She lives as if the idea of her past self is all she was, is, and ever will be to the point Altman states, “She was a myth I searched for and never found.” Oh my god that sentence cuts me to the quick.  

  • “It was not the alcohol to which I was addicted; it was she…” About going to AA without an alcohol addiction.
  • A lot of I loved you the most did everything for you what has anyone else done that I didn’t and couldn’t do for you
  • It feels like my mother 
  • “The belief that whatever she was dishing out. I somehow deserved.”

Memorable Quotes
“Like the Centralia Mine fire, my mother and I have been burning for half a century.”
“It had been a choice: my mother’s life, or my own.”
“No family likes having a writer in their midst, says a close friend. … No family ever says Yay. A writer.”

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Title: Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing
Author: Elissa Altman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780399181580

Books, NonFiction

Zero Sugar Cookbook by David Zinczenko

RaeAnna

Worth a Read Meh
Length 272
Quick Review Sugar is really yummy, but cutting it out of your diet doesn’t have to mean you feel like you’re eating cardboard. 

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Zero Sugar Cookbook by David Zinczenko | Cast Iron Skillet | Paw Print Mug

When I was 25, I went through a few health ordeals, which made me completely change how I eat. Since then, I have had a very healthy diet. I’m always on the lookout for new recipes to change things up. Zero Sugar Cookbook by David Zinczenko is informative and inspirational. 

I love cookbooks. I don’t actually follow recipes because I know what I like and what I don’t like. I love looking through cookbooks for inspiration. I take the recipes and add and adjust where I see fit. 

Zinczenko gives a bunch of information about sugar and the health effects it has on the body and the mind in the beginning of the Zero Sugar Cookbook. Sugar is addictive. It is also added into so many foods. The book teaches how to read nutrition labels and ingredient lists. Food can be confusing, but it shouldn’t be. There are different kinds of sugars in food. Some sugars are added; some sugars are natural. There are good sugars and bad sugars. The book claims a person can lose up to a pound a day on the diet. I don’t know about that, but there are tons of great tips and information. 

I love looking through recipes. There are some really good ones in Zero Sugar Cookbook ranging from appetizers to entrees to snacks to dessert. I’m kind of a child, so I love looking at the pictures in cookbooks. These pictures don’t disappoint. Being sugar free doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy food. I took a recipe on page 44 and tweaked it, but it still sticks to the sugar free diet. It was delicious.    

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Title: Zero Sugar Cookbook
Author: David Zinczenko
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9781984817334

 

Books, NonFiction

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

RaeAnna

Worth a Read YES
Length 400
Quick Review Eight pieces previously written by Ta-Nehisi Coates are combined with observations and opinions he has looking back while We Were Eight Years in Power.

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We Were Eight Years in Power at Oak Alley Plantation | Shirt | Jeans | Shoes | Sunglasses

I am ashamed to say I had not read a Ta-Nehisi Coates book until We Were Eight Years in Power. From the very first page, I was hooked. The majority of Coates’ writing has focused on race in the U.S, and he has become known as a “black writer” for better or worse. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, Coates wrote a great deal. Looking back over that time, he chose eight pieces to document those eight years. Before each, he included addendums, thoughts, opinions, hopes, and more.

From the very first page, I was a little in love with Coates’ style. There is some tongue-in-cheek phrasing throughout We Were Eight Years in Power to subversively emphasize the all too present hypocrisy, blindness, and iniquity within American society. I love reading simultaneously intelligent and accessible works. Coates is like your favorite professor who is really smart but also swears a little. He has a truly remarkable knowledge base spanning classics, science, pop culture references – I absolutely looked up 96.92% of the latter – and everything in between. Reading this was overwhelmingly stimulating in the best kind of way.

One of the most fascinating pieces was “The Case For Reparations.” It was amazing and chilling. Coates brings a light to the haunting realities black Americans live with on a daily basis. Americans (read that as white Americans) need to read it. We cannot be a country divided. To survive, we need to face history. Ruins are not just in Rome, they are all around us. We live in the ruins we created centuries ago. Chicago comes up a great deal throughout We Were Eight Years in Power for good reason. It is a prime example of what we have yet to overcome, “Today Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a fact that reflects assiduous planning.” If we refuse to even acknowledge the reality of Chicago, how can we possibly move forward?

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We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Obama was the first black president. The progress was followed by a giant side step/fall/catastrophe. Trump won the presidency. (Sadly.) Coates is a realist, but there is an optimist underneath. Like many others, Coates did not believe it was possible for Trump to win, but win he did. Coates was wrong. (Sadly.) The optimist helped him believe in America, even though his career has focused on the stubborn and insidious white supremacy rooted in American tradition, society, and legal institutions. Hope helped so many believe Trump was impossible. Fear made it possible.

I love We Were Eight Years in Power. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a master of words and insight. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. His pen is not a sword. It’s a scalpel cutting precisely to dissect society and humanity to see the reality our country faces. As I was reading Coates’ words, I wondered if he ever reads his writing and thinks ‘damn, I am a magician with words.’

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*By the way, I decided to take the pictures for this book in front of slaves’ quarters at Oak Alley Plantation. Our history and current success is due to the thousands and thousands of people who were never considered people at all. They were stolen from their homes, owned, beaten, raped, murdered, and more. America needs to start recognizing history as it happened not how it has been taught or recorded for generations.

Memorable Quotes
“All my life I had watched women support the dreams of men, hand over their own dreams to men, only to wonder, in later years, whether it was all worth it.”
“America had a biography, and in that biography, the shackling of black people – slaves and free – featured prominently.”
“White people are, in some profound way, trapped; it took generations to make them white, and it will take more to unmake them.”
“I would like to believe in God. I simply can’t.”
“The essence of American racism is disrespect.”

Title: We Were Eight Years in Power; An American Tragedy
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher: One World (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780399590573

Books, Fiction

One Day in December by Josie Silver

RaeAnna
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One Day in December is the must read Christmas book of the year. | Dress (it’s perfect for all occasions) | Heels (they go with everything | Belt (It’s a great pop of color) | Watch (so dainty!)

Read Yes
Length 416
Quick Review One Day in December was a surprise. It has the happy ending you want in a winter/Christmas novel, but it was complicated the way life and feelings and friendship are. Josie Silver didn’t simplify it.

Happy December!!! It’s officially Christmas month, which means it is the month of all good and happy things. At least for me. If it’s not so good and happy for you, you should pick up this book. It’s the must read winter book of the year. One Day in December was picked by Book of the Month and by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. All month long, I’m reading winter and Christmas inclined novels because I can.

One Day in December is a great place to start with the Christmas novels. It’s not too cheesy, even though it is truly just a love story. I knew exactly what the ending would be from the very beginning, so it won’t leave you speechless.

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I took pictures at Levy Park in Kirby because there are iconic London phone booths! It’s fitting.

Laurie and Sarah are best friends living in London. One December, Laurie is on a bus when a beautiful man catches her eye and she his. They aren’t able to make a connection, but they can’t stop thinking about each other. Laurie and Sarah spend a year looking for bus-dude until Laurie finds him as Sarah’s new boyfriend, Jack.

The story of One Day in December follows Laurie through pivotal moments over the next ten years. The narration is mainly told by Laurie, but Jack tells his side of the story occasionally throughout the novel. The characters are all well developed. None of them come off in a bad light. They’re easy to empathize with because Silver does a good job laying the foundation and explaining the situation and the motivation behind their actions or lack thereof.

The novel is written with British spelling and cultural references. I like that the editors kept this style for American publication. The references were hard to understand sometimes because they aren’t necessarily relevant to the American audience. I love it because it reminds us there are cultures outside of our own.

I really enjoyed that One Day in December is set in London. It’s hard not to enjoy a winter novel when you’re imagining you’re in London. I wouldn’t say it’s a great novel, but it is perfect for this time of year.

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Memorable Quotes
“But I love you,” he says, as if it’s a magic phrase that trumps any other.”

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Title: One Day in December
Author: Josie Silver
Publisher: Broadway Books (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525574682

Books

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

RaeAnna

Read Sure
Length 352
Quick Review Through the Victorian language of flowers, a newly emancipated foster girl finds acceptance and forgiveness.

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I love my flowers from Amanda Bee’s Florals!

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh was loaned to me by my friend, Amanda of Amanda Bee’s Florals. It’s a great easy read combining a few things I love: language, flowers, and books. I needed something light to interrupt the maelstrom of books I’m reading to catch up after vacation.

Victoria Jones is newly emancipated from the foster system. She had always been a problem child and felt no reason to change. Homeless, she found a job in the one place she could: a flower shop. Her only good foster home taught her about the Victorian meanings for flowers. Her years of challenging everyone and everything combined with the foster system and constant changes, she lacked social skills. Flowers were her only means of feeling whole and communicating with the world.

Diffenbaugh demonstrates a deep understanding for the struggles foster kids endure in the system. She and her husband adopted a son out of the foster system, and the co-founder of the Camellia Network. It is an endemic close to her heart. The Language of Flowers is deeply touching and heartbreaking. Victoria yearns for the universal human desires of connection, acceptance, forgiveness, and love. Flowers help her find everything she is looking for from within and the outside world.

The meanings of flowers have always intrigued me, so this was fun to read. At the end of the novel, there is a short dictionary of flowers and their meanings. The writing is well-done and compelling. The plot is well thought out and supports the underlying theme that the foster system repeatedly and continually lets children down every step of the way. It wraps all the loose ends up nicely into a happy ending. The foreshadowing throughout the book is subtle, but still obvious enough the plot lays itself out in the first 87 pages.

I enjoyed reading The Language of Flowers in an afternoon. It was a pleasant surprise from what I thought it would be: a sappy love story. It has much deeper themes with an underlying call to action.

Memorable Quotes
“Mothers must all secretly despise their children for the inexcusable pain of childbirth.”

Title: The Language of Flowers
Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780345525550
Books

The Forty Rules of Love

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 358
Quick Review When an unhappy, Jewish mother in Massachusetts begins reading a novel by a wandering, Sufi man, she embarks on a personal journey for love, self, and truth.

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This was suggested to me by one of my followers, and I was hesitant to say the least. I am not into romance or mushy-gushy love stories. This one has love in the title. I was pleasantly surprised. The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak is not so much about romantic love as it is about being a good person and walking through the world with love in your heart.

Ella is newly 40 with a romantic daughter in college, tweenaged twins with troubles, and a dallying husband, but if she ignores it and focuses on her new job, maybe it will all go away. Ella focused on her family for many years, but now she has a new job as a reader for a literary agent. She must read Sweet Blasphemy and submit a report. The book is so drastically different from her own life, and, yet, she is drawn in to the story and the author, who she begins a correspondence with.

Sweet Blasphemy is about the friendship between Shams of Tabriz and the exalted poet Rumi. Told from many perspectives, it is a tale of friendship, love, trust, wandering, destiny, and mysticism. Shams of Tabriz is a wandering dervish, who enters Rumi’s life and Konya, Turkey changing both forever. Shams has forty rules for the religion of love. Although, I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, there are a lot of truly poignant moments and quotes.

Several people told me the ending is heartbreaking. Honestly, I thought it was the most appropriate ending. It isn’t shocking, but any other ending would be a disservice to the novel and the meaning.

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Shafak writes a novel within a novel. It’s not a new story framework, but she does it exceedingly well. Everytime the story would shift from one to the other, I would always be wondering what would happen next. Shafak has an incredibly deep belief in love and humanity as she explores prejudice and malice and blind religiosity among other things. The narrators are not always good people, but they all have a perspective that bolsters the main theme.  

Elif Shafak is a Turkish author, and her native language is Turkish. However, she writes her novels in English. As a linguist who has learned several languages, I CANNOT imagine writing novels in another language. It is incredibly hard, and she does it so well. I would have never been able to tell from reading The Forty Rules of Love that she is not a native speaker.

Memorable Quotes
“When you speak the truth, they hate you. “
“Finally I understood that whenever people heard something unusual, they called it a dream.”
“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of the process.”
“These codes of honor had less to do with the harmony God created than with the order human beings wanted to sustain.”

Title: The Forty Rules of Love
Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Penguin Books
Copyright: 2010
ISBN: 9780241972939