Wildoak LivingTM Connection
Wildoak LivingTM Connection
Monday, December 19, 2011
Still looking for last minute gift ideas?
Or a good book to curl up with during the holidays?
Once a year around the holiday season, we devote a full hour of WildOak Living
to book recommendations. In 2011, editor Jill Hannum was guest host of a program where listeners, local book sellers and Jill herself offered this list of recommendations:
LOCAL AUTHORS:
--Listen to the Silence: Lessons from Trees and Other Masters Jan Alegretti In stock at Dragon's Lair (paper and hardcover) and Mendocino Book Company (paper only), or available to order online or directly from Jan at jaa@pacific.net
--Hello Chiropractic, Goodbye Colic: Gentle Adjustments Give Happy Babies by Steve Kooyers. Ukiah Chiropractor explains why chiropractic can eliminate colic, describes baby’s visit to a chiropractor and gives lots of back-up/background information. Readable, straightforward, useful.
--Walking Tractor and other Country Tales and Turned Round in my Boots Bruce Patterson of AV. The first offers his Mendo stories of logging and tractoring and such; the second is a memoir with VietNam at the core.
--Notebooks from the Emerald Triangle by Bill Brad. “Tales of pot production hell.”
--The Sword and the Rose: A Swiss-American Dervish in Egypt by Tara Sufiana. The author’s life and travels in Egypt; the title says it all.
--FUP by Jim Dodge. Need to laugh a lot? Join 91 year old Jake, his adopted grandson and their 20 pound mallard, Fup, for a wee drink.
FOR CHILDREN/YOUNG ADULT
--The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. The journey of a lost china rabbit. Ages 7 and up. Many other excellent books by this author.
--Stargirl series by Larry Spinelli. The perils of being the new girl at a new school. Young Adult.
--The Crown on your Head by Nancy Tillman. How each child is unique in her/his own way. Beautifully illustrated. For young children.
--The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck by Brian Selznik. The first (Caldecott Award winner) about an orphan who lives in the Paris train station, the second weaves two intertwined stories (a boy’s and a girl’s) 50 years apart, one in words, one in pictures. Both with fine illustrations. Recommended by Cheshire Books. Ages 9 and up.
--The Apothecary by Maile Maloy. A mystery with a Pharmacopeia, Russian spies and a kidnapping. Well illustrated. Ages 10 and up.
--Simon and the Orange Scarf by Katherine Lewis. A magical tale lavishly illustrated by Lewis, an Elk native. Recommended by Gallery Books. For younger children.
NON-FICTION
--Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A memoir of friendship, by Gail Caldwell. “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything and then she died, so we shared that, too.” Two women, two dogs, two sports (swimming and rowing), one profession-journalism-, one braided life…and exquisite prose.
--Pack of Two by Caroline Knapp. Knapp is the “friend” who is the focus of Caldwell’s book. The pack is Knapp and her dog.
--Zeitoun by David Eggers…An Arab-American with a very good heart enters a world even Kafka would have found hard to believe in post-Katrina New Orleans. A true story compiled by a fine journalist.
--A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil McGregor. Recommended by staff of both Gallery Books and Cheshire Books as “the perfect gift book”. “What we make defines us”…the author traces human history using objects from the British Museum.
--The Fever by Sonia Shah. A “wonderfully readable” history of malaria.
--The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman’s Rights and Abolition by Gerda Lerner. Born on a Southern plantation the sisters eventually stoked the fires of abolitionism in New England.
--Outlaws of America: the Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity by Dan Berger.
--Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time and the Deadliest Storm in History by Eric Larson. The “drowning” of Galveston in September 1900.
--Endgame by Derek Jensen. A “critique of civilization, a difficult read” but worth it.
--Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Caller “realized Jobs was an enlightened jerk” after reading it.
--The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. The first of a trilogy, and by far the best of the three volumes.
--The Mutiny Trilogy by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Mutiny on the Bounty, Men at Sea, Pitcairn’s Island tell of ill-fated voyage of His Majesty's armed transport Bounty . . . under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh.
--Trinity, Leon Uris. The “troubles” in Ireland.
--George Harrison: Living in the Material World by Olivia Harrison. Harrison’s personal archive of photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia illuminate the “quiet Beatle”. “A great gift book” says Cheshire Books.
--Mourad: New Moroccan by Mourad Lahlou. A new cookbook by the chef of Azizza. Gallery Books has signed copies of what will be “a new classic”.
NATURE AND GARDENING
--A Nature Company Guide to Natural Gardening by Erica Glasener et al. 1996. Well illustrated, information by climate zone, comprehensive, how to garden with nature.
--A Californian’s Guide to the Trees Among Us by Matt Ritter. How to ID and appreciate most every street tree in California. Well illustrated field guide to urban trees.
--The Resiliant Gardener: Food Production and Self-reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe. Caller says it changed his perspective on gardening as he realized that his garden was designed for the good times and times have changed.
--Conifers Around the World, a comprehensive color encyclopedia of all the temperate-zone conifers. 2 vols, 3700 color photos, most of them full size plates of the trees in their native habitats. Extensively annotated, scientifically rigorous. A textbook worthy of the coffee table, or vice versa. Available in January through www.dendropress.hu.
FICTION
--- March Violets by Philip Kerr. The first of six in the Bernie Gunther series about a German detective in Berlin during Hitler’s rise, rule and aftermath.
--A Moment in the Sun by John Sales. “955 pages in the EL Doctorow style.” One reviewer calls it “a tour of American oppression and misery” at the end of the 19thcentury (Cuba, the Philippines, the US South). The observations remain timely.
--The Zookeeper’s Wife: a war story by Diane Ackerman. WWII, the Warsaw zoo, the family that cares for it and shelters hundreds of Jews. A novelized true story of the Zabinski family.
--What I Was by Meg Rosoff. A child, a recluse he befriends, the seacoast of East Anglia, elegiac prose.
--The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. The story of the woman whose cancer cells became famous as they were used, and continue to be used, without her permission, in medical experiments.
--The Rules of Civility by Amor Towels. 2011, but reads like a classic from an earlier era. Set in 1938 New York. “The perfect novel” says Gallery staff.
--I Married a Communist by Philip Roth. Hfiction about the McCarthy era.
--Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. Historical fiction focused on John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Beautifully written. 758 pages.
--The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart. A novel about the future of books and bookstores takes place in Eureka and features federal agents and corporate spies trying to find out why the last bookstore is still a success (only available in digital format),
--El Sereno by Jay Frankston. Story of a bellringer in Spain in the 15thcentury.
--A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre. “Brilliant use of English prose.”
--Fortress of Solitude by John Lethem. Life in Brooklyn in the 1970s, and escaping it.
--Garden of Eros by Dorothy Bryant. 1979. A blind woman’s journey through pregnancy and birth. Caller says, “I give it to all my pregnant friends.”
--The Submission by Amy Walkman. An anonymous contest for a 9/11 memorial is won by a Muslim.
--East of Eden by John Steinbeck
--Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. A reworking of his three “Watson” novels into a single work.
--A Star Called Henry by Roddie Doyle. Ireland in the early 20thcentury, an impoverished 14 year old boy, the “troubles”.
--The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. “A baseball-centric coming of age story the blends the literary world and the game.”
POETRY
Jane Hirschfield: Come Thief, Lives of the Heart
Joy Harjo: How We Became Human
Billy Collins: Sailing around the Room
Billy Collins, ed.: Poetry 180, turning back to poetry and 180 More (Collections)
Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, 2 vols. 2005
Marilyn Sewell: Cries the Spirit, Spirit Within
Rita Dove, ed.: Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry
Jay Frankston: Chapbook poems
Book a listener thought ought to be good, but found disappointing:
--1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Online source contributed by a listener: the Internet Archive, archive.org, has millions of public domain contributed books available for download in a variety of formats for PC, laptop, mobile phone, table, printing, etc.
Several more recommendations reached us by email:
-- Preventing Alzheimer's: Ways to Help Prevent, Delay, Detect, and Even Halt Alzheimer's Disease and Other Forms of Memory Loss by William Rodman Shankle, Daniel G. Amen
-- The Ecology of Commerce Revised Edition: A Declaration of Sustainability (Collins Business Essentials) by Paul Hawken
-- Entre Nous; The Goosefoot Chronicles by local author Lydia Riantee Rand - Fictionalized memoir set in France and Italy. Available on Amazon, at the Gallery Bookstore and City Lights.
-- Along the Way Travel Stories by 3 local authors James Maxwell Lydia Rand and Skip Wollenberg. Available on Amazon and the Gallery Bookstore
2011 Holiday Book Recommendations
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