Foodie Friday: I Need to Brush My Teeth Just Looking at This

I'm sorry I have no foodie book recommendation for you today. I'm still busy marveling at the New Jersey cake assembled and decorated by my son's fourth grade class yesterday. It was the culmination of a year of studying New Jersey in social studies. I baked and my husband cut out Ocean County, home of the Jersey Shore. Aaron decorated it with brown sugar sand, Swedish fish, drink umbrellas, and more. Parents were invited into the school to go on a "cake walk" from classroom to classroom admiring all the cakes. When I was baking and transporting Ocean County I was a skeptic and may even have referred to it as "that bleepin' cake." Perhaps I used somewhat stronger language, but I am a convert. I was so impressed by the organization of all those fourth grade teachers and the creativity of the students that this is all I've got for you this Foodie Friday. Inhale deeply and you might still be able to catch the scent of lots and lots of sugar!

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie's young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, has been out and winning awards for several years now, but I just finally got around to reading it this week. On the one hand, I feel badly about that. I have loved Sherman Alexie's writing ever since reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (for my money, the best book title ever crafted) back in the early 1990s. I really should have gotten to this semi autobiographical book, his first for young adults, sooner. On the other hand, I'm glad I waited. It made several long waits I had this week go much more enjoyably, and it will be fresh in my head when the sequel, The Magic and Tragic Year of My Broken Thumb, soon comes out.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of Arnold "Junior" Spirit, a Spokane Indian living on a reservation in Washington State. Arnold wants to be a cartoonist and escape the alcoholism, poverty, and hopelessness on the reservation. His first step is to leave the reservation high school and enroll at an all-white high school in a nearby farming town, joining the school's mascot as the only other Indian. Alexie, through Arnold's diary, broke my heart and made me laugh several times over in this fantastic book. Ellen Forney provides artwork in the form of Arnold's cartoons which add to the humor of the book. This is really a great one for teenagers.

Don't You Love a Good Pick Up Line?

It's All About Me Today

The kids have been doing plenty of reading lately, and we are all enjoying John D. Fitzgerald's The Great Brain as our nightly read aloud, but today I'm going to write about two adult books I've just finished. Somehow, when I type "adult book" it sounds funny to my ear, as if I'm writing about a smutty book purchased at an "adult bookstore." These two certainly aren't smut, but they aren't for kids either.

I recently finished Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle. I picked it up on the recommendation of my sister-in-law. Lucky for me, I take her book suggestions (and all others, of course) quite seriously. I loved this book. It was very different from anything I had ever read. Or maybe it was more like a number of very diverse things I've read beautifully woven together. The narrator is a bitter and acerbic pornographer who gets in a car accident while drunk and high. While in a burn ward being treated for horrible burns all over his body, a woman named Marianne Engel arrives from the psych ward claiming to have known him ever since she treated him for burns when she was a nun in Germany seven hundred years earlier. It is a story within a story book which combines mysticism, mystery, and romance. It is one of those books you stay up late reading even though you are tired and ought to get some sleep.

The other book I completed this weekend was Elizabeth Buchan's Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman about a 48 year old London book editor who loses her husband and her job to her assistant. I think it is the sub genre of chick lit known as "life after wife." I know I plucked it from the library shelves based entirely on its title. I did just celebrate a birthday and am very aware of my middle aged status. While it's not deep, thought provoking literature, The Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman is certainly a satisfying read.

Enough about me, what have you read lately?

Cake Will Be Consumed, I Assure You

My little blog is one year old today, and I have a job interview, my first in years. There won't be much time for reading or writing about books today, but I guarantee you I'll manage to make time for some baked goods. Thank you to anyone who has read or commented over the last year. The Book Bench has been great fun for me.

Max Quigley: Technically Not a Bully

I first picked up James Roy's middle grade book Max Quigley: Technically Not a Bully for my son because the cover reminded me of the The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. I'm a marketing departments dream come true. I read Max Quigley and it it reminds me of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid inside the covers in a few ways. It too has a highly unreliable and unsympathetic protagonist telling his own story. Both books are funny. Both books make use of sketches my the narrator. The actual stories, however, are quite different.
Max Quigley is a sixth grader at an elementary school in Australia. James Roy had me at the first use of "Mum," and kept me with his "cheeky," "mate," "posh," and "crosses." I think I clapped my hands when he referred to a school field trip as an "excursion." Back to Max. He's a bully even though he rationalizes that he isn't because "Bullies wait behind lunch sheds and steal kids' Twinkies. I've never stolen anything in my life. Bullies beat people up. I've never actually punched anyone in my entire life." Nevertheless, Max is a bully and his parents are at the end of their rope when he turns his attention on an extremely shy and awkward classmate named Triffin Nordstrom, "Nerdstrom" to Max. When the boys' parents arrange that Triffin will tutor Max and Max will spend time playing with Triffin on the weekends, it is interesting and funny to watch Max take baby steps towards compassion and reformation. The ending reminds me a great deal of the film version of Nick Hornby's About A Boy when Hugh Grant's (rather cheeky)character accompanies the very awkward Simon onstage at a school talent show to sing "Killing Me Softly."
I'm sure my ten year old son will enjoy Max Quigley: Technically Not a Bully as it is a good choice for third through sixth grade readers.

I Couldn't Have Said it Better Myself

After hugging and tickling, reading aloud to my children has been the single most pleasurable aspect of parenting for me. From Good Night Moon to The Hobbit (we've only 13 pages left), the moments we've spent together with books have been immensely enriching and enjoyable. It's no surprise that I read this editorial piece , "Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud," in the New York Times with a head nodding up and down in agreement. It considers reading aloud from its social implications whereas I usually think about it in terms of education and parenting. And it's got some Jane Austen thrown in for good measure.