Casualties of War

I thought Memorial Day would be an appropriate time to read       When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka.

I believe it is important to learn the lessons history teaches us.  Understandably, our perspectives of war are often one-sided.  Otsuka’s book provides an opportunity to learn about the experiences of Japanese Americans living in the U.S. during World War II.

This is a sorrowful story about a Japanese family who find themselves torn apart when they are forced to live in internment camps in New Mexico and Utah. After the father is taken away in the night by the FBI, his wife and two children are left on their own to survive without him throughout the war in a camp in the desert in Utah.

The book is very well written.  I wanted the ending to be different and was a bit disappointed in the last few paragraphs.  However, the story brings home the plight of the innocent imprisoned people and the reader can feel their enforced hardships.  I learned about fear from this novel and one of the unfortunate ways our country responded to it after Pearl Harbor.  How ironic it is that FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”in his first inaugural address.

Please Listen:  http://youtu.be/JiCCXImRpeA

http://www.julieotsuka.com/

http://www.children-of-the-camps.org/history/timeline.html

The Garden is a Mirror of the Heart

I gratefully thank fellow blogger “The Persnickety Reader” for guiding me to a wonderful old novel entitled Old Herbaceous: a novel of the garden by Reginald Arkell.  I loved this short book about a retired gardener in England.

Perhaps I loved the book because I enjoy gardening.  Over the weekend I planted flowers and potted vegetable plants in our backyard.  For me, summer is incomplete without the opportunity to feel the earth beneath my fingers.

This story takes place in the early to mid 1900′s and the author has done a capital job of capturing the changing times and painting pictures of glorious English gardens for the reader.  This is a quick read and a lovely story all the way around.

Thank you Persnickety!  http://thepersnicketyreader.com/category/book-review/

Home

Toni Morrison’s new book Home can be read in a matter of hours.  The book is short, but very powerful.  I have always loved Morrison’s work and this novel about an African-American veteran returning from the Korean War reinforced my admiration of her masterful literary skill.

The main character, Frank Money, returns home from the war with deep emotional scars.  As hard as he tries to bury the past, the violent memories invade his daily existence.  When he receives a note telling him his younger sister is dying, he travels through a racist nation to the small town in Georgia where he grew up.

This is a very powerful story of redemption and salvation.  I just love the way Morrison tells it.  I hope you will as well.

Apple, Blueberry, Cherry …..Banana Cream

Making Piece by Beth M. Howard has a mouth watering picture of a heart-shaped cherry pie on the cover.  Little did I know, the book would be about grieving and the author’s belief in the healing goodness of pie.  I am not a huge fan of pie. When given a choice, I prefer cake over pie.  Pecan pie is my favorite, but I make it once a year at Thanksgiving and that’s it.

The author of this book earns her living selling pies at her pie stand (Pitchfork Pie Stand) outside of the American Gothic house in Iowa where she currently resides.  Making Piece is  a story about loss and recovery. Howard’s soon to be ex-husband Marcus passed away unexpectedly on the day he was to sign their divorce papers and her memoir recounts her healing process and the pivotal role pie played in it.

Even though I’m not a fan of pies, I do encourage people to read this book.  I think that anyone who has lost a loved one can identify with its message of hope and healing.  The end of the book contains several pie recipes which I will attempt to make with hopes of turning myself into a person who enjoys pies more often than once a year.

I invite my readers to add a comment to this post with the name of their favorite pie.

http://theworldneedsmorepie.com/

Twig Girl

About a week ago, I received a Facebook message from Rasana Atreya, the author of Tell a Thousand Lies, asking me if I would review her novel.  It was a first for me and I gladly accepted.  This is Atreya’s debut novel and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

The story is about a young girl in India named Pullamma who lives with her older sister, her twin sister, and widowed Grandmother.  The family lives a meager existence in a small village.  As the story opens, the grandmother, Ammamma, is arranging a marriage for her oldest granddaughter.  As fate would have it, the bride viewing is interrupted by an occurrence which changes the course Pullamma’s life forever.

What I really liked about this book is that the author did a wonderful job of writing it in a way which helped me to connect emotionally with the characters in the story.  Every day, I  could not wait to open my Kindle to continue reading the book.  I also like the fact that I learned a great deal more about a culture I am only somewhat familiar with.  Prior to reading this story, I was unaware that skin color made any difference in India.  Truly, this story opened my eyes and I am grateful to have read it.

Thank you Rasana for sharing your literary talent with me and the followers of Bookwinked!  I will look forward to reading your future novels.

http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Thousand-Lies-Rasana-Atreya/dp/1466340371/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336237743&sr=8-2

Sewing Lessons

Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons From My Grandmothers by                Adiana Trigiani has been on my list of books to read for a long time. The last book I read prompted me to move this book to the top of my list.  The title of this book is what caught my attention in the first place because I heard the expression “don’t sing at the table, you’ll marry a crazy husband” countless times in my youth.  Trigiani’s relatives had a slightly different version, but basically, it meant the same thing.

I found this biography to be a well-written, thoughtful, loving tribute to Trigiani’s Italian grandmothers.  Their wisdom, faith and work ethics are shared with a dash of humor.  I particularly enjoyed the latter part of the book which imparted their views on relationships.  What they believed made a lot of sense to me.

You don’t need to be Italian to appreciate this story.  Trigiani’s grandmothers were seamstresses, as was my grandmother, providing me an added affinity for their stories. I plan to send a copy of the book to my mother and my daughter knowing they will enjoy it as much as I did.

Don’t Sing at the Table was recently nominated for a 2012 Audie Award.  Trigiani’s most recent novel, The Shoemaker’s Wife, is on the NY Times Bestseller list.  I’m looking forward to reading it.

If you’d like to know more about Trigiani’s work, here is a link to her website:  http://www.adrianatrigiani.com/home

This Is How It Was…

My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner by Meir Shalev caught my attention when I noticed it on a friend’s Goodreads list.  Am I glad it did!

The memoir is written by a man who was born in Nahalal, Isreal in 1948.  I loved the delightful story about Shalev’s grandmother Tonia, a Russian immigrant who marched to the beat of a different drummer.  Obsessive cleanliness ranked high on her list of priorities, and the telling of her life on a moshav and the vacuum from America is very funny and loving.  I think the story is one most can relate to as it is about familial relationships and the embellishments which accompany the stories told by relatives about each other.

Read this book.  I highly recommend it.  It is wonderful!