Le Spy

Spy novels, spy manuals, Othello, Edith Wharton, and the Koran supply the cryptic quotes introducing each chapter of Diane Johnson’s Lulu in Marrakech. Lulu is in Marrakech ostensibly to research female literacy programs. But her covert mission as a CIA agent is to keep an eye on the expats (including her new boyfriend Ian) and other donors who may be funding terrorist networks.

Lulu is drawn to Ian as husband material, but she suspects he isn’t telling her everything. When Gazi Al-Sayad shows up on the doorstep after leaving her Saudi Arabian husband, Lulu’s suspicions are unveiled…in a few more chapters. (Lulu is a novice after all.) With the help of her secret contact, Colonel Barka, Lulu eventually unravels the clues. Which leaves this reader to wonder, didn’t she read the epigraphs?

"Quirky Situations, Action, and Mild Language"

So reads the ratings warning on the back of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory DVD.

So, too, should read any label regarding the following five "quirkiest" reads o' mine of 2009.

My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum

Confessions of a Window Dresser by Simon Doonan

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer

When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale

Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon

No, Virginia

There is no such thing as Santa Claus or your father’s law degree.

Laurie Sandell grows up believing her father’s stories…grenades and diamonds, stints on the National Security Council, and hobnobs with the pope. But her suspicions arise when as a teenager, she watches her father build a bomb shelter in the basement and stock an attic arsenal. Finally as a college student, her image of her father as a Rushmore-size personality begins to shrink when she discovers he’s been racking up debt in her name on ill-gotten credit card accounts.

In her “true memoir” The Imposter’s Daughter, Sandell has broken her life into graphic novel blocks illustrating her disillusionment with her adored father. While she is investigating her father’s true identity, she’s jetting around the country writing celebrity profiles for Glamour and pursuing a long distance relationship with Ben, a screenwriter she met on the Internet.

Sound fascinating? Indeed. You’ll speed through this one as fast as the author goes through her prescription for Ambien. And you'll sleep just as soundly knowing you could never write such a book about your father. Or could you?

Candy, Nuts and Ladies Underwear

I would have posted yesterday, but I was up late finishing a real find.

It’s the 1930s in Middle Swan, Colorado. Hennie, who was made a young widow by the Civil War, doesn’t want to leave her mountain home, but her daughter Mae wants her to come live with her. As she enters her last seasons in Middle Swan, Hennie meets Nit, a young woman seeking to buy a prayer. Through coffee cake and quilting, Hennie helps the new arrival acclimate to life in the small gold mining town.

Through Hennie’s recollections and reflections, Sandra Dallas pieces together bits of romance, loss, and retribution in Prayers for Sale. Her language more than anything creates a sense of time and place. Nit’s husband fears being hoovered from his tenuous job on the dredge but looks forward to a tasty hereafter (dessert). Middle Swaners take leave of one another with “tap ‘er light.” The final leaving is referred to as a planting.

Should you read this one? As Nit likes to say,“Hello yes!” This one's sound as a dollar.

Going up?

Blythe Young is on the lam from the IRS, numerous creditors, and a vindictive Austin socialite named Kippie Lee. After a rags-to-riches marriage unravels, Blythe seeks refuge with Millie, her former roommate who is still living in the Seneca House co-op they inhabited in college. Millie, now an un-ordained minister, spends her days feeding the homeless, the unemployed day laborers, and teen runaways that panhandle on the Drag.

No longer able to rely on the drugs and alcohol she needs to get through her day as a bankrupt extreme events coordinator, Blythe turns to her far worse habit of manipulation. After alienating Millie by forcing a love confession from her already-spoken-for-in-an-arranged-marriage-sort-of-way crush Sanjeev, Blythe is kicked out of the house. Blythe, and the novel, finally finds her groove when she successfully coordinates a last-minute retreat for Kippie Lee’s gang at the Seneca “Spa.”

Sometimes silly, sometimes trite, sometimes funny, sometimes not, How Perfect is That by Sarah Bird isn’t. What it is, however, is entertaining. Like its characters, the novel is over-the-top at every possible moment. In it you’ll find at least one characterization of every person you’ve ever met living in Austin from the Whole Foods bagger/bassist to the Westlake malpractice lawyer who hires Lyle Lovett to entertain at parties.

With reading, “sometimes you get the elevator, sometimes you get the shaft” (to borrow a line from the novel). But Bird’s writing, as evidenced in her other books I’ve read (The Mommy Club and The Flamenco Academy), never fails to give you a lift.

Find Bird's writing for Texas Monthly here.

Humbug

Can't find your copy of A Christmas Carol? Click here to read a classic.

"There’s no turkey in it."

This was my four-year-old’s assessment after sitting down with the first Thanksgiving book in our stack - Nickommoh! - and flipping through the pictures. Then as soon as I began reading the first page (“Kautantawwitt, the Creator…”), my listener exclaimed, “English please!” After stumbling through the pronunciation of “Taqountikeeswush” and “Qunnekamuck” I too was thinking, “English please!” Unfamiliar language aside, Jackie French Koller weaves together an intriguing story of a Narragansett harvest celebration. We watch as they build the lodge, prepare the nasaump pudding, swim in the river, and dress in paints for the singing and dancing in the Sacred Circle. The illustrations by Marcia Sewall are a pleasure to look at – from bold black lines outlining photorealistic features on one page to the rough figures sketched around a bonfire on another.

The other book we were able to procure from the library two days before Thanksgiving was Word Bird’s Thanksgiving Words by Jane Belk Moncure and illustrated by Chris McEwan. Despite the inclusion of a turkey, my (picky) listener decided this one is “not really cool because that turkey’s not cool.” Cool?

We decided to stick with this week’s Pre-K issue of the Weekly Reader for our Thanksgiving reading. Gobble up some fun Thanksgiving Facts here.