For The Love Of Dogs

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. —Mark Twain

We're launching our Holiday Gift Guide posts with books for those charmed by the chien. And really, who isn't? Put your hand down, Tracy.

Tray isn't what I'd call a dog lover—more like a dog tolerate-r; something about all that fur stops her well short of love. She is, however, easily charmed by a lovely read, and these books are guaranteed to leave even a dog tolerate-r enchanted.

If you have yet to meet Maira Kalman's books, prepare to fall in love—with her illustrations as much as her prose. Maira Kalman is the quirky, delightful aunt everyone wants to be seated by at the Thanksgiving table. She is also the author of one of my favorite children's books: Ooh-la-la (Max in Love). She deserves a post of her own, but for now, here's a snippet from Beloved Dog:

There are Trees.

Glorious and Consoling.

Changing with the seasons.

Reminders that all things

Change. And change Again.

There are Flowers, Birds,

Babies, Buildings.

I Love All of these.

But Above All, I Am Besotted

by DOGS.

My brother, who was a beautiful poet himself, introduced me to Mary Oliver years ago and I've been a fan ever since. Her poems are lovely—the kind you don't need a study guide to understand. And now that I know she loves dogs as much as I do, she's officially joined the list of people I'm best friends with in my mind. Here's one of my favorites from Dog Songs:

HOW IT IS WITH US, AND HOW IT IS WITH THEM

We become religious,

then we turn from it,

then we are in need and maybe we turn back,

We turn to making money,

then we turn to the moral life,

then we think about money again.

We meet wonderful people, but lose them

      in our busyness.

We're, as the saying goes, all over the place.

Steadfastness, it seems,

is more about dogs than about us.

One of the reasons we love them so much.

Anna Quindlen's Good Dog. Stay. is an oldie, but so good it warrants mentioning here. I'm thinking the whole kindred dog-loving thing may give me a leg up in the imaginary friendship Tracy and I have with her. Not that it's a competition... This book is especially comforting to anyone who has recently lost a beloved dog. Here's a little of what she says about her own sweet dog, Beau:

“...there came a time when a scrap thrown in his direction usually bounced unseen off his head. Yet put a pork roast in the oven, and the guy still breathed as audibly as an obscene caller. The eyes and ears may have gone, but the nose was eternal. And the tail. The tail still wagged, albeit at half-staff. When it stops, I thought more than once, then we’ll know.”

Posted by Rachel...in honor of Scout. Who, due to me working on this post, missed his walk today. The irony, I assure you, is not lost on him.

Le Petit Prince

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

I’m a fan of the intangible. And I’m rarely rocked by the unseen. In fact, faith feels comfortable to me, like the skin I’m in.  Sometimes I think with all of our modern advancements, we miss out on the simple stuff that helps us feel.  That helps us remember.  So I make it a point to wrap myself up in nostalgia often.  Books are a means to a nostalgic end.  Years ago, I lapped up I Capture the Castle and felt myself back in England again.  I made sure Rachel read a copy, so she was there with me too.  Seemed like old times.  When Rae gave me 84, Charring Cross Road that warm, shimmering feeling returned.  Jane Austen is guaranteed comfort.  

Few books feel more nostalgic to me than The Little Prince.  I can no longer remember when my mom introduced me to the curly toe-headed boy who hails from another planet and never answers direct questions.  A boy who captured even my young heart.  Aptly called a prince, he reminds me that being an adult may be a bit over-rated: “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”  It seems reasonable then that the boy teaches the novella’s narrator, a pilot who has crashed his plane in the Sahara Desert with only a week’s supply to survive, to hear laughter in the stars.  The pilot and I remember our inner child.  We reminisce about the wonder of childhood and long to return—if only to worry less about life’s utilitarian concerns and focus more on finding harmony.  To watch more sunsets.   

My favorite lesson from the philosophical fairy tale is about love.  From the very beginning, the pilot’s drawings of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant—from the inside out—hints that everyone conceals within themselves a treasure.  Every person possesses a secret goodness that can only be discovered with the heart.  The fox, like a hundred thousand other foxes, recognizes that if the prince tames him, they will have a unique relationship.  (I imagine Rachel and I have tamed one another.) It is the fox who perceptively says, “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  

That is the secret isn’t it—the one that children seem to understand and adults often forget.  So we need reminders that our hearts should be in charge. That is why I come back to this gem often.  (The pictures speak to me too.) It’s small like the prince’s planet complete with 3 volcanoes, some plants, and a rose with 4 thorns.  This charmer is well worth 60 minutes of your time. There are ample reasons this book has sold over 140 million copies worldwide.  It will melt your heart—it does mine every time.

More nostalgia coming our way in March of 2016:

Posted by Tracy

The Power of Strong Roots

...I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother’s love, a child’s smile—a life that’s less bitter than sweet.

I once had a friend declare she never reads fiction; she only reads book that teach her something. I looked her squarely in the eyes and said, "I'm not sure we can still be friends." I was kidding. Sort of. Novels, after all, have been and continue to be some of my greatest teachers.

I learned right along with Scout and Jem that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." Through literature, I've done just that: I've found hope through words on a trash heap in Cambodia; become a young book thief trying to make sense of the cruelty in my own country; felt the sting of poverty in a place where only one tree grows; and been haunted by the child I loved enough to kill in order to save from a fate I considered worse than death.

Now, in the pages of The Pearl that Broke Its Shell, I have shared in the betrayal felt by Rahiba, a thirteen-year-old Afghan girl, whose drug-addicted father sells her into marriage with a warlord for opium—while her mother looks on in horror, powerless to save her. Rahiba, who spent four years as a bacha posh (an ancient custom allowing girls to pass as boys until they reach a marriageable age), finds strength in the freedom she felt as a boy and the education it afforded her. She finds hope in what seems a hopeless situation from the stories told to her by her aunt, and fiercest ally, Khala Shaima, about her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, who found strength in passing as a boy as well.

The story interweaves the tales of these two women, who despite living a century apart, face the same plight—the very one many Afghan women face today. I won't lie, there are passages in this book that are hard to read. Imagine living them instead. At the heart of it though, is hope. Hope that women—who so often turn against, rather than to, each other—do at times find refuge and rescue in one another and realize they are at their strongest together. Hope in the knowledge that strong roots can sustain those who dare to risk changing the course of their lives. Courageous roots run deep.

*To my fellow listeners out there: this is a beautiful listen. I especially love listening to books where the names our foreign to me; it saves me from stumbling over the pronunciations. I am in love with the Afghan language.

Posted by Rachel

Look For The Helpers

If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that.

WHAT WE LOVE THIS WEEK

We're smitten with the latest trend in beautifully illustrated editions of some of our favorite tales. We especially love the Puffin in Bloom Collection, Anna Rifle Bond's Alice in Wonderland, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

The Wright Brothers. Raving review coming next week.

Book recommendations. A friend of a dear friend recommended Home of the Brave. We've placed it on top of our stack of books.

New readers! Welcome—we're so glad you found your way here. Here are some top reviews from a while back you may want to check out:

A Man Called Ove

The Book Thief

The Happiness Project

The Snow Child

The Rent Collector

Wonder

THOUGHTS

We, like all of you, are deeply saddened by the terrorists attacks in Paris yesterday.  Our thoughts and prayers are with that lovely city and its even lovelier people, who upon hearing that the chaos was preventing many from returning to their own homes last night, opened their doors and took them in.

Let's Be Friends

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. —Mark Twain

@2at27

As the late, great C.S. Lewis once said, "Friendship is born at that moment when one man [or woman] says to another: 'What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .'” And friendships born from a mutual love of good books, well, those are the best kind of friendships. We're so glad you're here.

We'd love to be friends on social media too. You'll get a daily dose of book love and alerts when we've posted reviews. You can either scroll to the bottom of the page and click on those cute icons, or because we like you so much, we've saved you the scrolling and posted the links right here: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Thank you! We feel closer already.

Never Let The Truth Get In The Way Of A Good Story

I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story.

Throwback Thursdays are a favorite of mine. Scanning my shelves for books I've read (and reread) in the past, feels like reconnecting with old friends. I'm an ardent fan of rereading. Oscar Wilde was as well: “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

Ruth Reichl had me from her first chapter of Tender at the Bone. Wait, that isn't true. She had me at her first lines of her Author's Note at the very beginning of the book: "Storytelling, in my family, was highly prized....If this required minor adjustments of fact, nobody much minded: it was certainly preferable to boring your audience." So while this book is true, she explains, it "may not be entirely factual." Sounds like the creed a couple of my brothers live by: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

And Reichl, one of the world's leading food writers, does tell a good story. Regaling us with tales of her manic-depressive mother, otherwise known as "The Queen of Mold," who was "taste-blind and unafraid of rot" and "had an iron stomach." At ten, Reichl appointed herself the "guardian of the guests" at her mother's dinner parties: "My mission was to keep Mom from killing anybody who came to dinner." Her constant vigil led her to the discovery that "food could be a way of making sense of the world....if you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were."

While her mother's culinary catastrophes will have you laughing out loud, at the heart of this memoir is a young girl traveling into adulthood, trying to navigate life with a mom suffering from mental illness, and a loving father, caught between doing right by his daughter and protecting the woman he adores.

Reichl is unflinching in her detail, yet never self-pitying nor grandiose. She approaches writing like she appears to approach life: pragmatic with a healthy dose of humor. If you haven't yet read Tender at the Bone, I wholeheartedly recommend it. If you read it years ago, a reread is long overdue.

Posted by Rachel

An Eye For An Eye

With sincere apologies to the Thanksgiving purists among us, let's talk Christmas. I hear you, purists, and when it comes to malls decked with boughs of commercialism, I'm right there with you. But Christmas music? Well, that's where we part ways. Ingrid Michaelson's Snowfall is serenading me as I type.

Chalk it up to research, if you must. You see, Tracy and I take our Christmas music as seriously as we do our book gifting—churning out a new compilation of favorite tunes to friends and family every year. Tracy started the tradition years ago and, in true friend spirit, I hitched my wagon to her Christmas star. Any excuse to combine two things I love—holiday tunes and time with Tray—I'm all in.

Research aside though, I've always been an early listener. If only I were an early gift buyer as well. My holiday shopping habits look an awful lot like my college essay-writing habits: all-nighters fueled by caffeine and sugar. Last-minute shopping is my modus operandi. I don't recommend it.

For those of you smart enough to start early, thus avoiding the crowds and the tendency to consume colossal amounts of gingersnaps and Coke Zero, we're here for you. For those who need a little nudge, or in my case, a shove, we've got your back too. Starting next week, we'll post gift-giving ideas for all the book lovers in your lives, leading up to the launch of our Holiday Gift Guide on November 27th.

In the meantime, we'll let you get back to feeling thankful, and leave you with George Costanza, who isn't feeling thankful.

Posted by Rachel

Only Ivan

 It’s hard to put into words.  Gorillas are not complainers.  We’re dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.

What does an easygoing silverback, a stray Chihuahua mix, and a wise old elephant have in common?  They all live in the Exit 8 Big Top Mall in Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan.  You’ll be hard pressed not to fall in love immediately with Ivan who says initially, “People call me the Freeway Gorilla.  The Ape at Exit 8. The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.  The names are mine, but they’re not me.  I am Ivan, just Ivan, only Ivan.  Humans waste words.  They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot. Everyone knows the peels are the best part.” At this point, on page two, the Silverback had me.

Ivan copes with his isolated life in a cage (inside of a mall no less) by making friends with the other animals on display.  The night janitor’s daughter seems to intuitively understand that the urban gorilla is an artist at heart. He also has an affinity for American television.  Truth is, Ivan just seems human at times. Poignant friendships are the hallmark of this touching, award-winning book best suited for 8-to 11-year-olds. Please be warned: you’re gonna fall for Ivan’s unforgettable first-person (first-primate?) narration.  You’ll enjoy how Applegate blends humor and emotion in a story about friendship and hope.

If you are a fan of Charlotte’s Web, Ivan will definitely draw you in.  

*It is interesting to note that this fictionalized story is based on a true account of a baby gorilla named Ivan who was kidnapped from a jungle in Africa. He spent 27 years walled up inside a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington. Fortunately, he was relocated to the Atlanta Zoo.  A few years back, Ivan died after turning 50 years old.

Posted by Tracy