CANNONBALL REVIEW #52!!! Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

http://www.amazon.com/Packing-Mars-Curious-Science-Life/dp/0393068471/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288562720&sr=1-1

I was so excited when I finally got this book.  ALSO!  THIS IS MY FINAL CANNONBALL REVIEW!  52 BOOKS IN 52 WEEKS, I DID IT! 

I'm not one to stumble at the finish line, so I timed this very carefully, especially because my reading and reviewing lagged back there in the late spring and again in the late summer.  So here it is.

I've read Mary Roach's book Stiff and thoroughly enjoyed how she could take such a morbid topic and make it so incredibly engaging.  It wasn't even depressing, just fascinating--what happens to your body after death at the cellular level?  The organ and tissue level?  The body level (as it what's done with it)?  What DOES happen in cremation, exactly?  In decomposition?  All those questions were answered with insight, a lot of great research, and even humor, so I was really looking forward to her take on life in space, and I was NOT disappointed.

It's like she knows exactly what I like.  I like tons and tons of trivia on a subject.  Check.  I like old backstories with details most people don't know about (in this case, astronauts).  Check.  Humor, check.  Intelligence, check.  And of course she has researched it to a meticulous level. 

It gives you an appreciation for just how fragile these bodies are--WE are the biggest problem in space.  We have to eat and go to the bathroom and sometimes we throw up (that's a huge problem in space, as you can imagine).  Sometimes we die when we catch on fire.  Also a problem. 

Go get this book.  I'm going to see if our upper level English teachers (11th and 12th grade) want to use excerpts because we're always looking for well-written, engaging expository text and this satisfies all three of those requirements and then some.

Cannonball Review #51: Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

http://www.amazon.com/Something-Rotten-Thursday-Next-Mystery/dp/0670033596

This is the fourth in the Thursday Next series, one I have reviewed and loved, but am needing a break from.  Thursday has had the child she was pregnant with in the third book and named him Friday (get it?  Now he's Friday Next) and the kid is two years old in this installment.

We find out pretty quickly that Landen, her husband who was eradicated by the Goliath Corporation, still isn't back.  By eradicated, I mean that the Goliath Corporation found a corruptible (thought to be impossible, but apparently not) ChronoGuard member and the ChronoGuard guy (who can time travel) had Landen die at the age of two.

So although in ONE reality, he was Thursday's husband and father of her child, in THIS reality, he never existed.  Except that he does have a child.  Got it?  Ok.

Anyway, Thursday has done all she can do in the book world and has grown weary of book adventures.  She decides to come back to the real world after a nearly three year long absence.  Of course she runs into all sort of troubles with her former employers (Spec-Ops 17) who have a warrant out for her arrest, Hamlet, who has come into the real world with her, her dad who is ALSO ChronoGuard, but was thought to be gone by now and isn't, oh I can't even list it all.  Her biggest issue is that her husband is still eradicated.  She spends this book trying to find a way to get him back. 

A strange sub-plot emerges about a form of croquet that is so hardcore people DIE playing it and THAT ends up becoming one of the main thrusts of the end of the book.  (She gets Landen back, did I ruin it for anyone?)

I have enjoyed all four books, but with this one, I found myself hurrying through the pages, willing it to be over.  Not that it's not a good story, it is.  But I guess it's lost the novelty, it seems like it's dragging at this point.  I found it hard to believe there's actually a fifth.  Fforde is an incredibly imaginative writer, but I need to take a break for a while.

All in all, I highly recommend at least the first three books for some good, solid, page-turning fun!

Cannonball Review #50: The Market by J.M. Steele

http://www.amazon.com/Market-J-m-Steele/dp/B003IWYI0U/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287864003&sr=1-1

This was another hardcover YA book we found for a couple of bucks at Garden Ridge.  Unfortunately, this one was not as good as An Abundance of Katherines, not even close.

In this book, the protagonist is Kate Winthrop, a high school senior.  She accidentally (sort of) finds out about this "social stock market" at her high school in which the 140 senior girls are all rated like stock depending on their popularity and looks.  She finds out she's pretty far down on the list (a "junk bond") and is shocked, because she thought she would have been higher.

She and her friends decide to do everything they can to raise her stock, including makeovers and a lot of mean girl behavior until she realizes very close to the end of the book that doing all this has made her forget THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE and she realizes this is all just silly and she shouldn't be doing this or caring about it and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........................

Don't bother.  Cute concept, I guess.  The writing is shlocky and the plot too contrived.  If you are super bored and stuck in a cell, read it I guess.

Cannonball Review #49: The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

http://www.amazon.com/Well-Lost-Plots-Thursday-Next/dp/0143034359/ref=pd_sim_b_1

In the third Thursday Next book, Thursday actually goes to the book world to stay.  Well, temporarily.  Her husband is still eradicated in time (he exists--well, he doesn't--I mean, he CAN again--IF--it's hard to explain, but a good part of the plot).  She's awaiting their baby.  And she's got to do battle with Acheron Hades' sister, who is a mnenomorph--someone who can get into and mess with your memories.  Thursday killed Acheron, so now his sister is out for revenge. 

She's hiding out in the book world, specifically the Well of Lost Plots, where Generics (minor characters who don't need much personality) and major characters from unpublished, out of print, or unread books go to languish.  For all eternity, if need be.  But it's not a hell, just sort of a....holding area.  She becomes a Jurisfiction agent and learns all about book travel from her mentor, Miss Havisham (yep, the very one). 

This particular book in the series feels almost like a valentine from Fforde to his book nerd readers, since it's almost entirely consumed with bookish references and fun.  It's probably my favorite so far, although the problem of getting bogged down in a lot of subplots seems a bit worse in this one here and there.  I wish I didn't have SO much to keep up with all at once--it takes away a bit from enjoying the narrative.

Still, definitely worth my time and then some.  The fourth in the series, Something Rotten, is sitting on my kitchen table waiting, so I'm diving in.  I want to find out about infant Next.

Cannonball Review #48: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Good-Book-Thursday-Novel/dp/0142004030/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287863123&sr=1-5

This is the second in the Thursday Next series by Welsh author Jasper Fforde.  (I reviewed The Eyre Affair below.)

Second books in series are often pretty hit or miss, so I was worried about this, especially since the first one ended on such a satisfying note, I was almost hesitant to go any further.  But I'm glad I did:  Lost in a Good Book just gave me MORE of what I loved in The Eyre Affair--the evil Goliath Corporation, Next's work as an operative in the real world (what I would soon think of as the Outland), and even better--she finally figures out how to book jump in this one!

(That excited me a lot. I've always thought it would be amazing to really be able to do such a thing.)

I think I said something similar in the first review, but it's as if Fforde looked into my head and wrote a series custom-designed to include everything I ever wanted in a book:  thrilling mystery, a touch of science fiction (including time travel, my favorite), a strong and capable female protagonist, and total book nerd fun.  The references to different books, characters and authors are half the fun of the Thursday Next series. 

Anyway, in this one, she saves an unknown work of Shakespeare from being exploited BUT loses her husband.  AND finds out she's pregnant.  I know, right?  The only complaint I have about these books--and it's fairly minor--is that sometimes there's SO much going on, it's hard to keep everything straight.  I mean, I'm not even mentioning the dozen or so sub-plots.  I can't remember them all!

But like I said, that's a minor complaint.  I love what Fforde has done too much to stop reading now, and I've finished the third book now, as well.

Get these books from your library and read them.  You'll love them.

Cannonball Review #47: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

http://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Katherines-John-Green/dp/0525476881

I found this delightful YA book for two bucks at Garden Ridge, of all places, and decided to take a chance (my daughter's name is Katherine and we thought the premise sounded cute).

Colin Singleton is a recent high school graduate, former child prodigy, would-be genius, and lover of Katherines.  In fact, the nineteenth Katherine has just dumped him right after graduation, and he sets off on a cross-country road trip with his best friend, Hassan, to try to get over her.

Along the way, he comes up with a mathematical theory of love in his attempts to figure out why Katherines always leave him and not the other way around.

When we bought the book, my own Katherine, being grounded, devoured the book in a few days.  I had to wait my turn.  It was worth it.  Colin Singleton might have seemed a bit whiny and self-indulgent to me here and there, but the warmth and strong personality of this character won me over before I reached the halfway point.

The book kept reminding me how fervently I wish there were more YA books like this:  the protagonist is smart, funny, and real.  (Languages are his thing--including the languages of math and love.) Not only that, but you don't find many YA books with a big romance angle and a guy as the lead. 

The author won a Printz award for his first book, Looking for Alaska, and I'm going to read that next.  An Abundance of Katherines was well worth two bucks--for the enjoyment the two of us got out of it, I would have paid much more.

Cannonball Review #46: The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

Would it be alright if I started a book review with, "holy CRAP, this was good?"  Because holy crap, this was good.  I read all 300 pages in just two days.  When I had to set it down, I was constantly thinking about it.  When I could pick it up, I did.  I read entire sections aloud to my husband, who loves audio books anyway, and has read quite a bit about the ill-fated Donner party.

But to the meat of the book, pardon the expression:  Daniel James Brown did an impressive job researching what happened to a little over forty people who traveled from Illinois to California from May 1846 to February 1847.  Most of us have heard off-color jokes about the Donner party and most people know they did end up eating each other after death.  But Brown spent years synthesizing all known sources on the entire saga, including the backgrounds of everyone involved, and spun it into a well-written, intriguing book.

The bride of the title refers to Sarah Graves, 21 years old when she started out with her parents, new husband Jay, and eight younger siblings.  They were actually separated from the Donner party for most of the trip, though they suffered similar fates and were going the same direction.

A very human element is present in this book, which is not written as historical fiction, but as a nonfiction narrative:  Brown is distantly related to Sarah Graves.  He became fascinated by what she and her fellow travelers must have gone through and so set out to research and write this book.

I'll just share some of the things I learned and a few things he did with the text that I liked:

--whenever possible, Brown related what we now know about the kinds of things the travelers experienced, including the causes and effects of snow blindness (sheesh, that stuff's hardcore), PTSD, the almost feral nature of humans after long periods of trauma and survival, the unusual weather patterns that settled over the northern hemisphere that fateful winter, etc.  I loved this background information, because it helped me better understand what they experienced and Brown wove it in so seamlessly, it didn't seem like a postscript or unnecessary distraction

--a guy had written a guide to traveling to and living in California, then still part of Mexico, and in it he described a shortcut that could save a lot of time and energy.  This is the path the Donner party took, influenced solely by this book.  The Graves had read the book, as well, and agreed it was a good way to go.  Unfortunately, the douchebag who wrote the guide had never taken that path at all and local Indians and old fur trappers warned him the way he described was nearly impossible to get through, definitely impossible with wagons and teams of oxen.  The Sierra Nevada mountains are granite and extremely difficult to pass through even for the most seasoned of survivalists.  Huge families with everything they owned being pulled behind them?  No way.  Add one of the freakiest winters on record and well, we all know what happened and it wasn't good.

--the eating of the dead was, I guess, worse than I imagined.  I had failed to realize, somehow, that at some point they were actually eating their own relatives.  Fathers, mothers, children, brothers, and sisters.  I also did not know they ate the hearts, livers, kidneys, and brains of the dead.  Hell, at one point things got so desperate they were eating bones, sucking out marrow, roasting skin and eating that.  Sarah's husband Jay died on the journey and, while she refused to eat him, her fellow travelers were so malnourished and deranged at that point that all sense of discomfort about the issue had vanished and they were upon him before his body had cooled, roasting his heart over a pine bough fire in front of her.  I...don't even want to imagine what that was like for her, but Brown did an excellent job telling the story.

--boys were reduced to hunting mice and once they were near starvation, started eating them alive.  They also ate acorns, shoestrings, and pieces of scalp. 

--in one detour, Brown reminds the reader that 1846 was not the Dark Ages.  He tells us what Sarah could have been doing and seeing in New York City at that time, for instance, and it's startling to realize how civilized and relatively modern a city was on the other side of the continent from her.  And there she was gnawing on the bones of a five year old boy.

---they did eventually take to murdering each other specifically to eat each other, but fortunately this was very limited in scope and occurred only at the very end, before everyone was rescued, which took five or six long trips.

I do need to read something now that is light and fun, but I highly recommend this book.  In fact, I know some high school teachers who are looking into the possibility of using excerpts in their American Literature classes.  It's fairly new, 2009, but your library should have it by now.  If you want the whole story of the Donner party, or at least as much as we can know, this is the book.

Cannonball Review #45: They Went That-A-Way: How the Famous, the Infamous, and the Great Died

I'm honestly not morbidly occupied by death.  But this book and the next book I will review have death as their main theme, so I will forgive anyone who comes to that conclusion.

This one, believe it or not, was fun.  That was due in no small part to the approach and attitude of the author, Malcolm Forbes, who seemed to delight, believe it or not, in dispelling myths about the deaths of famous people and shedding light on just how precarious life can be.

After all, Atilla the Hun was set to destroy Western civilization, literally he was on the eve of it, when he drank too much to celebrate the adding of a new wife to his harem and experienced a NOSEBLEED in the middle of the night.  A nosebleed.  But because he was so incredibly hammered, he didn't realized the blood was pooling in the back of his throat, choking him to death.  And without their brilliant and ruthless leader to bring the charge, the half million Huns ready to invade Italy sort of...fell apart.

Hooray for drunken nosebleeds, right?

I was a little disappointed to learn that Catherine the Great did not die in the incredibly twisted and sordid way I thought she did, and I was surprised to learn that Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back.

With other people, even when you know how they died, Forbes crafts a larger picture of their death using details most people don't know.  Since the entire short autobiography is focused mainly on their death, he has that luxury.  And all's the better for the reader!

Both historical and contemporary figures are explored, from Pliny to Janis Joplin.  If you have ever wanted to know more about famous figures' deaths other than the one or two sentences you typically get in a biography or biographical sketch, pick this up.  Believe it or not, it's great fun and you might find yourself reading bits aloud to cooperative family members and friends.

Cannonball Review #44: The World According to Garp by John Irving

The World According to Garp

I always feel as if I've read John Irving.  I suppose it's because his works have become such a part of popular culture--this one, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany.

But I hadn't.  When I saw The World According to Garp at a thrift store for a buck in good shape, I knew I had to get it.  Most people are familiar with the film starring Glenn Close and Robin Williams, and I did see it several years ago.  But the book is always better.

And it was.  This one is a great edition, because it has an afterward by Irving written 20 years after the book was published.  The main question he attempts to answer is what Garp is about.  People have guessed it's about fear, what war does to us, the life of boys, the sexual revolution, lust.

I'm getting ahead of myself.  We start with Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, and the very unusual way she manages to have a baby without having a husband.  Garp grows up in a boy's private school, where his mother is a nurse.  After his graduation, mother and son set off for Europe so that he can become a writer, but she begins to write as well (your hints that she is unhealthily close to her son come earlier than this).

It's an entire span of life novel, as we watch Garp get married, have his own children, struggle with his marriage, then struggle with the tragedies that befall him.

In the afterward, Irving admits the book is mostly about lust, but when he really thinks about it, underneath that surface theme of lust is fear, mostly a fear of what might happen to your children.  That gave me chills as I read.  If you've only seen the movie and liked it, give the book a go.  I think I'll move on to more of this fantastic author.

Cannonball Review #43: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair

No joke, I once said this to a friend several years ago:  I wish someone would write a novel that has time travel, a murder mystery or some sort of crime elementand also has a lot of fun literary allusions.  Almost to the point that it's a major plot point.  And a female protagonist who's kind of kickass.

I remember my friend laughing and saying that was awfully specific and maybe I should just write it myself.

Being a lazy ass, I never did.  Fortunately, a Welsh writer named Jasper Fforde did.  And thanks to my lovely friend Brian Prisco, the Best Book Recommender Ever, I discovered the book I wished for.

Cannonball Review #42: A Corner of the Universe by Ann M. Martin

http://www.amazon.com/Corner-Universe-Ann-M-Martin/dp/0439388813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280010305&sr=1-1

This is another young adult book that started off slow and ended up being pretty fantastic.  I did a quick check on Amazon after I finished it to see what others have said about it, and saw that the age level given (12 and up) is not thought to be old enough for the content of this book.  I disagree.  There was nothing in this book that a 12 year old does not know about.  One reviewer said her daughter's class read it in third grade.  Well, IF that is true, then I'd agree it's not appropriate for kids that young.  But the age it is marketed to is fine.

With that out of the way--this is set somewhere in the northeast in 1960.  The main character is 12 year old Hattie Owens, an only child who lives with her parents in their boarding house in a small town.  Her grandparents, very well-to-do and stuffy, live nearby. 

We see all the usual angsty stuff (though the protagonist is not a drama queen by any stretch):  a lack of friends, feeling misunderstood and left out, wondering if she's normal.  Then her uncle shows up.  Adam is 21 years old and has mental issues.  To me, he resembles the rain man character in the movie of the same name.  He's been living in a special school (really a group home, I'm sure) all his life, but it's closing, so he's had to move back home with Hattie's grandparents until they find him a spot in a new school.  Adam brings wonder, mystery, excitement and happiness to Harriet's previously boring life.  But of course, he's got those "issues," so there's that.

The book didn't really demand much of me, and it wasn't gripping, but wasn't boring either, so I kept reading.  It's only 188 pages long, so what the heck, right?  However, the climax was unexpected and grim.  I was surprised by that, to be quite honest.  I really didn't think this book would take such a turn.  At that point, of course, I couldn't stop reading and was fully invested in the story.  If the climax hadn't been as compelling as it was and the denoument handled as well as it was, I couldn't really recommend this book very highly.  There was nothing wrong with it before that.  It just felt about as substantial as one of those wafer cookies that seems to be mostly air.  But because of how the story turned, I can recommend this without reservation, especially for girls about 12 and up. 

Cannonball Review #41: Desserts by the Yard by Sherry Yard

http://www.amazon.com/Desserts-Yard-Brooklyn-Beverly-Sweetest/dp/0618515224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279677596&sr=8-1

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. A cookbook?  A COOKBOOK for the Cannonball?

But it's really not just a cookbook. It's also an autobiography.  Or maybe a memoir.  Stick with me a sec.  When I saw this at Half-Price Books, I noticed the subtitle right away:  From Brooklyn to Beverly Hills--Recipes from the Sweetest Life Ever.  I thought "oh how precious, she tells her life story through desserts."

And I flipped through it.  The recipes looked amazing and bonus:  they actually looked like things I could do!  I was getting kind of excited.

Then I took at look at the other part:  she wove her own life story into the cookbook.  No, she doesn't tell it through the desserts as I originally thought.  She divided each part based on where she was and what she was doing when she developed those particular recipes.  Now that's fascinating.  Not only that, but her story really is intriguing.

She starts with her childhood in Brooklyn and the food memories she shared with her parents and three sisters.  The recipes that follow this section are desserts she has developed as a tribute to her childhood.  Her rainbow cookies are a little valentine to the originals she ate at Leon's Bakery.  They're pretty popular at her current gig, Spago.  And just try not to drool when you look at the recipes and photos.  Absolutely impressive.

Each recipe even has a very short back story attached, which I loved.  Zeppolis, Brooklyn Blackout Cake, they're all amazing.

She moves on to her time as a cigarette girl (really) and then pastry chef in New York's celebrated Rainbow Room.  She had these experiences while attending culinary school, so she was cooking and baking round the clock.  It must have been amazing to be part of the New York restaurant scene in the 1980s.

Baked Alaska was hot at that place and time and I got so excited when I saw the recipe for it, I jumped.  I've always wanted to know how to do a classic baked Alaska and here it is.  I don't care if they aren't "in" anymore, I want to say I made one before I die. 

She spent a semester interning in London and that story and chapter includes recipes for classic English fare such as scones, crumpets and Devonshire cream.  I CANNOT wait to try those.

Her story of how she got to San Fransisco is pretty gripping (the job she was promised fell through literally hours before she was to get on the plane--everything she owned had been sold and she had nowhere to stay in San Fransisco with no job).  Then the fateful call from Wolfgang Puck, who had heard of her great work and wanted her for Spago (she originally thought it was a prank call!). 

It doesn't stop with just Spago, though.  She has chapters on what it's been like to cater the official dinner for the Oscars, the Emmys, and a few other awards shows.  One thing that struck me were the brutal hours pastry chefs put in:  when she was working for a hotel in San Fransisco, her shift began at 3 am six days a week and because she was still learning the business, she would stay until the last dishwasher went home at 9 PM.  18 hour days.  For months on end.  And the Oscars involved a sit-down dinner for 1800 people.  I can't even wrap my brain around that.

The funniest bit to me was when she was suddenly informed that Julia Childs had shown up to Spago.  She decided to make a special dessert for her and go out to chat with her.  But she had zero notice.  She took the sourdough starter she had and made incredible donuts and then whipped up some from-scratch coffee ice cream.  Coffee and donuts! It was a brutally hot summer that year, so she figured the coffee in the form of ice cream would be appreciated.  Julia loved it. 

And I loved this memoir cum cookbook.   I had no idea how good it would be when I bought it for the bargain price of $5 (new!).  I checked out the original retail price and it was $36. I never pay that much for books, but with as enjoyable as this was and how much I'll use the recipes (I've already made her no-bake tiny cheesecakes, but I used raspberries instead of strawberries and, well, they're gone), I would have paid that much.  I wouldn't buy it just for the memoir, but if you love baking and a good life story, seriously, get it.  You won't be sorry.

Cannonball Review #40: I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne

http://www.amazon.com/I-am-Ozzy/dp/184744346X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

First of all:  review #40 WHOOOO!  I'm pretty excited about that.  12 books to go before November. 

Secondly:  if you have even the slightest bit of interest in Ozzy Osbourne, please check out this book.  I've never been a huge fan (but also never disliked him), but after reading this, I really feel as though I know the guy.  That's crazy, I realize, but he and his co-author did such a great job capturing his life and his voice, that you feel all cozied up to him by the end.

Before I get ahead of myself, a bit about the autobiography:  yes, he had a co-author.  Osbourne is profoundly dyslexic.  He can read, but has read only a few books in his entire life.  He isn't a writer, either, obviously.  He quit school at 15 and by his own admission has spent most of his life turning his brain to jelly with alcohol and drugs.  So yeah, Chris Ayres did the actual writing.  Which worried me at first.  Ghost writers can be horrible or they can be terrific.

But I didn't have any reason to worry.  Every single word absolutely sounded like Ozzy Osbourne.  Completely.  The co-author did a bang-up job crafting all of Ozzy's incredible stories into some great writing.  So that concern is put to rest.

The pacing is great, too.  One of the pitfalls of any story, real or imagined, is getting too bogged down in a particular part or parts.  Doesn't happen here.  There's just as much detail about his pre-Black Sabbath days as there is about his Black Sabbath days as there is about his most recent decade, and everything in between.  And it never feels like too much with names, dates, and places.  I was easily able to keep track of who was who as the autobiography went on.  I appreciated that.

He seems very down-to-earth and though he acknowledges his material wealth, it really doesn't seem to have changed him the way it does to many other people.  He's still amazed he has an indoor "bog" and not a bucket outside, which is how he grew up.  He's mature and philosophical about his addictive behavior (he's been sober for a while now).  He describes how emotionally torn to bits he was when his father passed, then his mother, how terrified he was during Sharon's cancer treatment, and it's clear how devoted he is to her and his kids.

One thing I found amusing was how Black Sabbath came to be Black Sabbath, with all their dark magic, "Satanistic" stuff.  They were just a blues-type group trying to get gigs, when one of the band members thought they'd get more attention if they had a bit of a darker edge.  The Manson family was in the news, there was starting to be the tiniest bit of rebellion against all the flower power hippie love fest crap that had been going on for years, and they capitalized on that, strictly as a guess.  As we all know, it worked, but I loved reading how Ozzy never failed to be amused and annoyed by the fans who took it all very seriously and would conduct rituals outside their hotel room doors. 

Ozzy's a clown, a bit of a lunatic (the biting of the dove head was done after being totally annoyed during a long meeting with CBS and of course while doped up on everything under the sun), and really a very anxious sad guy inside most of his life, but mostly he's a good guy.  The fact that someone who couldn't write music or play an instrument ended up the front man of such a successful band and then such a successful solo artist is amazing.  He even claims he should have ended up in prison and not in the life he did.  But you like him because he's so damn thankful for everything that's come his way.  Read this.  It's nearly 400 pages, but it only took me about 8 hours to read it, and when I finished, I wish it had been longer. 

First Morning in Georgia

This is for Jason and anyone else interested, speaking of local news.

I moved to western central Georgia about 24 hours after graduating from college.  My husband was stationed there.  I had never lived outside of Texas and figured how different could Georgia be?

Well, I think it wasn't so much that the states were so incredibly different, but that I was going from an urban/suburban background to a little place in the South.  THAT is what made the difference, but I didn't know it then.  The north-south interstate literally ended after the Army installation and the town itself had seven exits.  I found out later it was considered a pretty big place by most people outside of Atlanta.

We pulled in at about 4 am, lugged our mattress and a few other things up to our apartment and fell out.  Bill had plugged in the TV (on the floor) and set up the rabbit ears after I fell asleep.  When I woke up around 9 am, I found a note from him--he had gone to the store.

Here I was, in a brand new place.  Of course, I turned on the TV.  To this day, I can hardly believe that what I saw was real.  You have to picture me, sitting on mattress with no sheets, jaw in my lap, staring at this thing.

It was a local access show.  A white couple in their mid to late 50s were sitting in what appeared to be someone's kitchen.  They were both fairly overweight and were of the older generation that still had that thick deep South dialect.  The very first thing I heard was the man cackling and yelling about "COON HUNTIN'!"  I kept thinking "what the hell is coon huntin'?  Does he mean raccoons?"  I seriously had no idea.  But he swore up and down it was REALLY GOOD RIGHT NOW and the woman just tittered and looked as if she would fall out of her chair at any moment.  Like she was sipping whiskey with her breakfast.

Then the touch tone phone on the table rang.  He got excited and answered it.  You COULD NOT HEAR THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END.  He just sat there having this long discussion with whoever it was about some other type of huntin'.  At a quiet moment, I heard what I thought was--but couldn't believe--someone passing gas.

The woman giggled, covered her mouth, and said "EXCUSE ME!" and the man laughed, too. 

Dear God.  Imagine.  This is my first morning--my first 12 hours--in the deep South.  And I'm watching a man yell and spit about coon huntin' and the woman seems drunk and is farting.  On the worst, most amateur thing I've ever seen on TV.  I actually, legitimately, no joke felt a bit scared. 

I turned it off, afraid of seeing anything else.  I decided not to judge an entire place based on a local show.  But things didn't get much better when I found out the only grocery store around was a Piggly Wiggly (I didn't know they still had those!).  They didn't get better when I found out going out in public with bare feet was a normal, common occurrence.  Things didn't get better when I saw men occasionally blowing their nose on the street with no tissue or handkerchief.  (Just press on the other nostril, lean over while still walking and BLOW.  It's both startling and disgusting to witness.)

I did not like boiled peanuts.  I did not enjoy the claustrophobic manner of the people who lived there.  The only option for Tex-Mex was the one Taco Bell in town.  I spent a lot of time crying.

There are other stories from my time there, but I'll stop there.  I never loved the place, but in three years, I got....used to it.  Even had my only child there.  But when she was 18 months old and the opportunity came to move back to Dallas, we jumped without a second thought, packed everything back up and got the hell out.  I never bothered to see if that couple were still cackling and farting on TV.

Cannonball Review #39: Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer

http://www.amazon.com/Hope-Here-2001-Newbery-Honor/dp/0698119517

It's part of my job to keep up with Young Adult novels and I've been falling behind a bit, so I've recently been lost in a sea of them.  Just like with any other book, the bad ones are really bad and the good ones stay with you.

I'm happy to say this is one of the good ones.  It's a rare book that gets actual tears out of me and this one did.  And not just at the end, either, but many times before that--happy tears, poignant tears, sad tears, you name it.  Bauer has created such a strong protagonist voice in her character of Hope, a 15 year old diner waitress, that you can't help but feel what she's feeling.

Hope lives with her aunt, Addie, because her mom gave her up while she was still a premature infant struggling for her life.  Her mother still flits in and out of their lives, always with a new boyfriend, always irresponsible.  Addie is not just a diner waitress like Hope, but an accomplished chef, and the two move from place to place in search of a great diner to run.

We find them just as they are leaving Brooklyn for Wisconsin, Hope convinced she is going to hate this particular move, but of course it's the best one of all.  They meet G. T. Stoop, the owner of their new diner and his character is one of the most likable--no, lovable--I've ever read.  Bauer managed to write him as lovable but human, not all sickly sweet perfect and I appreciated that.

There's a political and health-related drama at the center of the story, with a couple of sweet romances on the edges.  In all, I wish more YA novels were written this well.  The author never attempted to preach, she showed the reader instead of telling the reader, and she crafted realistic characters you could feel emotionally invested in just a few chapters into the book. 

Adult or teenager, you'll love this one.  Hope learns how to live up to her name and deal with anger and loss and abandonment with the kind of aplomb most adults don't possess.