Category: Books I Want

The Asylum

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Considering on any given day I’m wandering around in a Lands’ End cardigan with a plain white t-shirt, black pants/black skirt/grey skirt (depending on the season), maybe a silk scarf and a strand of fake pearls from Macy’s  (what Blacklight calls my “librarian look” and my coworkers call “Manager Blank Jr”-I don’t have the money to for trends and splashy patterns and the like), it might come as a surprise I devour every single Simon Doonan book I can get my little undead raccoon hands on. And I mean everything from his memoir Nasty: My Family And Other Glamorous Varmints to Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women to even why does my local library even have this Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales from the Life of Fashion. Finding The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences…and hysteria at the library and shoving it into my bag, looking around like someone was going to snatch it away from me? Perfect understandable right?

You would think between his books and Slate column, Simon Doonan might not have anything more to say or reveal about the fashion industry. But Simon Doonan has more stories than oddly flowered shirts (and the man has oceans of oddly flowered shirts) and The Asylum was read in one great big swoop once I got home from the library. If Blacklight hadn’t figured out he has opposable thumbs and not made himself an English muffin for breakfast and come into the bedroom to rouse me to make an egg sandwich? I would have been standing at the damn stove with The Asylum in one hand and assembling an egg sandwich with the other and wishing I had a free hand to flip him the bird for disturbing me. Reading a Simon Doonan book is almost as good as spa day (and a damn straight cheaper).

The Asylum isn’t the biggest book or the most scholarly (waves to Tim Gunn and his epic Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible) and I certainly don’t find Kate Moss a goddess (ughh, Kate Moss, just ughhhh) but damn if Simon Doonan can’t write in a gossipy way that makes me forget the sight of Kate Moss makes my teeth start grinding madly. Note: if you were looking at the Rimmel display in Target and heard what sounded like Tic-Tacs getting chomped into dust? Sorry…but blame Target for having the NYX and E.L.F displays so close to the Rimmel display. Note 2: I don’t like Rimmel even if Kate Moss isn’t their spokesface, Team NYX/Team E.L.F. forever!

Now to finish this review, “The Asylum is awesome and if you like fashion buy it already, really don’t waste your money on Nina Garcia books because ughhhhhhhhhh”, and watch Beautiful People (the TV series based on Nasty)on YouTube before Blacklight lurches into the living room, a Vicodin zombie demanding his egg sandwich breakfast…

On Tour

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

The Noel Streatfeild kick? Still going strong…once this review is done? Off to e-Bay to see if any of her Susan Scarlet romances are available for a decent price! First, let’s take a look at volume two of Noel Streatfeild’s semi-autobiographical series, On Tour: An Autobiographical Novel of the 20’s.

Published in the UK as Away From the Vicarage, On Tour: An Autobiographical Novel of the 20’s shows us Victoria Strangeway as an adult. World War I has ended. It’s been a very rough time but the vicarage has survived. Victoria, Isobel and Louise have returned from their war work, younger brother Dick has been wounded but will be headed to university soon. The vicar is still a walking saint and Mrs Strangeway? She still can’t manage her household for beans even though the vicar has inherited property from his late parents. And there’s a new Strangeway, littlest sister (totally a surprise baby) Theodora. Who knew the vicar and Mrs Strangeway were still…well…you know…Theodora is charming, clever and wonderful and thanks to the age gap between her and the others, is almost an only child. Louise has dropped a bombshell, she’s getting married and moving abroad with her new husband. Is there a place for Victoria in all this change?

Turns out the answer is NO. So Victoria summons her courage and goes to train as an actress. Because of the general family reaction (actress=scarlet woman) Victoria decides to take the name Victoria Sonning. Her theatrical training is hard and she has little money but Victoria is determined to live life as much as possible and shake off the vicarage shackles. A reader used to Streatfeild’s children’s novels might get a little shock when you realize that Victoria is pretty much prostituting herself to get money and clothes from her suitors. She never goes the full nine yards but you get the feeling she’s come awful close a few times. And is it that much different from Louise marrying so young? But sisters are doing what they have (and who they have) to do to escape the confines of the vicarage. Their parents aren’t horrible people but vicarage life is confining and narrow for the eldest Strangeway children.

Victoria manages to survive her stage school and then plunges into the world of a professional actress. She gets work and travels all over but you get the feeling that her stage work doesn’t truly fulfill her. And she certainly doesn’t care for the narrow and grimy life in theatrical digs and the constant moving around. Africa is enchanting but being thought of a Jezebel and a man-eater thanks to a some less than brilliant behavior and two male members of the theater company dying casts a cloud and stain on her acting career. People will always remember the scandal over how good her performances are.

On Tour is such a sadder book than A Vicarage Family. The younger Victoria had a fire and a zest that not even the wartime death of her beloved cousin John could quench. The older Victoria? The rough patches in life really send her skidding. The spark that got her to pursue a theatrical career vs life as an unpaid curate/domestic slave to her parents dims the farther she gets from school. Her longing for a home and love leaps off the page and when she realizes her so called love isn’t truly “in love” it’s a cut that almost destroys her more than the scandals that plague her acting career.

The other issue that makes On Tour a much different experience than A Vicarage Family is how closed off Victoria is. In A Vicarage Family you feel all the injustices and joys of Victoria’s life. She crackles and blazes and jumps off the page. You understand exactly why Annie is drawn to her and defends her. Maybe it’s because of the upheavals of the war or the changes in society but On Tour Victoria holds back and only gives us glimpses into her life. Was Noel Streatfeild ashamed of her life and feelings then? What was so awful that she makes Victoria a pale shadow of the girl that intrigued us so? Is it because S-E-X rears it’s head?

You can almost feel the squirming when Streatfeild writes about the appearance of Theodora. Yes, Noel/Victoria was a product of a very Victorian upbringing (Her sister Louise had no clue why she was getting sick every morning only weeks after being married. Just how much if any talk did Mrs Strangeway have with her daughters?) You might be tempted to think what keeps Victoria from actually jumping into bed with her suitors during her training isn’t the consequences (Theodora/the village girls illegitimate babies) but the actual act of sex itself. She is certainly repelled by Louise’s husband Him. Maybe it’s this disgust of sex that keeps her with her “we shall have a white farmhouse” suitor for so long because it seems crystal clear to me that this suitor might be happier with Dick Strangeway than Miss Victoria Sonning. Then again I could just be having one of my Gwen’s Crazy Literary Theories. Because I find Victoria Strangeway an interesting character I want to read more about no matter who or what she loves.

Even with it’s issues, On Tour is a must read. Even if many things are white-washed it still gives an interesting look at leaving a very moral and upright world for one with looser boundaries. And it makes you want to track down more of Streatfeild’s adult works. And exploring an author’s full writings is never a bad thing.

 

 

 

Princesses Behaving Badly

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Back in the glory days of living at Expensive Acres, when Blacklight was well enough to work, we went to the bookstores every weekend. Once the other person was done, we knew we could check certain sections and find the other one. For Blacklight? Just head to the graphic novels and science sections? For me? History. Even better, General European History (RIP Borders, much love). And it was unusual weekend when we didn’t stroll out of Borders with at least one bag and another Borders Reward 40% off coupon gone to Coupon Heaven. I had a bookshelf devoted to Eleanor Herman, Leslie Carroll, Karl Shaw, Michael Farquhar and their ilk. So any wonder while zipping past the New Non-Fiction at the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library on a mission to get the entire Naked Gun series for Blacklight I slowed down only long enough to snatch up Linda Rodriguez McRobbie’s Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings on my way to the DVD section?

Now once I was home and curling up on the bed with Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings, I had a moment of wariness. I’ve read a lot of these real royal stories over the years. And sometimes? They’re not quite good. Even if they’re well researched. Because well, research does not always compelling writing.

Case in point. I found the wait for Kris Waldherr’s Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di was much better than the actual book. I’ve read Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di more than once just to make sure I was giving the book a fair shake. It’s okay but it’s like a bag of classic Hershey’s Kisses when you really want to savor a handful of Lindt Almond truffles. Chocolate yes, but not what you need to really satisfy your craving. On a scale of Sex With Kings/Sex With the Queen (bought them in hardcover brand new from Borders= excellent) to oh…Doomed Queens (interlibrary loan first read, picked up for a $1 at a library sale just because later on=meh) would Princesses Behaving Badly fall?

Even though I had two true crimes meets history books on the nightstand, the adventures of Leland Stanford and his pet photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the Hall-Mills murder and F. Scott Fitzgerald did not exist once I opened Princesses Behaving Badly and started to read. I have Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion, 1878 framed at my Company X work desk right next to my HPLHS membership certificate. And Netflix knows I’m a sucker for true crime shows like Deadly Women. That night, I turned off the bedroom light with the greatest reluctance.

Why? I was plunging into well written and researched mini-biographies of women, some who I know from reading or Stuff You Missed In History Class podcasts to ladies I had never encountered before. As a person who has read a vast number of true royal stories, mad props to Linda Rodriguez McRobbie for not just going down the easy path of “Pauline Bonaparte? She could give  Santa Ho Ho Ho lessons” and “Caroline of Brunswick was so nasty…”. It was so refreshing to see both these ladies treated with respect and not just meat holes for poking. Crass yes, but most people think of them as just sluts. Sure, I might have rolled my eyes at mentions of Princess Diana and her daughter in law the Duchess of Cambridge because that comes as naturally to me as breathing, but I was reading about princesses who actually did something besides get on the cover of every darn tabloid in existence. Don’t believe me? Read about Sarah Winnemuca and then we’ll talk about who did the greater good. <crosses arms and raises eyebrow at the People’s Princess cult> And who knew the Punk Princess I used to read about in Vanity Fair became an accomplished business woman who could teach fellow 1980s icon Donald Trump a thing or thirteen.

If I hadn’t just spend a hoarded Amazon gift card on Blacklight’s birthday present (damn you Police Squad: The Complete Series DVD), Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings would have been snapped up for Mr Kindle in a heart beat. For full price. And given my tight book budget and love of a good bargain? I can’t give any other recent real royal stories books that high a praise.

 

Skating Shoes

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It’s January and the parking lot at Moderate Income Apartments is a bit tricky when it snows as you lug a trash bag to the dumpster. If I fall would I be as graceful as Skating Shoes‘ Lalla Moore? Or would I go smack splat smash on my butt like something out of a Keystone Kops flicker? Given my natural grace (none) I say the latter would be true.

As you might have guessed the Noel Streatfeild kick continues. Nothing like a cozy book on a cold New England January afternoon. And on the chopping block (or shall I say skating rink?) is the charming 1951 tale Skating Shoes (aka White Boots in the UK). Little Harriet Johnson is all wobbly and bobbly from being sick. Her family, a good one but not in the best financial state what with a shop filled with substandard offerings and four children to support, will do almost anything for her to be strong and well again. Enter the family doctor who pulls a few strings and gets Harriet free skating time at the local ice rink. But you need ice skates and well, the Johnson family certainly doesn’t have the money for those. But eldest Johnson child Alec gets a paper route and gives the bulk of his earnings for Harriet to rent ice skates. You know it can’t be easy for the Johnson parents to agree to this but they are in desperation mode. Harriet means just as much to her parents as her three brothers. And Alec is happy to help, he’s not being forced into his decision. Now before you die from the wholesome, who does Harriet meet on her first day at the rink? Only budding future star Lalla Moore. Do the two girls hit it off and become fast friends? Did I eat Utz Sour Cream and Onion chips for lunch yesterday (come on…of course I did!).

The two girls not only become fast friends but lonely orphan Lalla who has everything her rich uncle David’s money can buy gets absorbed into the Johnson family. The children let her join their secret society and plans to turn the shop around, mother Olivia regards Lalla as another daughter and is more than happy to try and helpful Lalla when she gets into a sticky patch. Basically, the Johnson family (except for George’s horrid older brother Uncle “Guzzle”)? Awesome.

Skating Shoes is from the Golden Age of Noel Streatfeild and hits all the classic Streatfeild tropes. Orphaned character? Lalla. Big but loving poor family? The Johnsons? Distant but actually quite awesome and reasonable father figure? Lalla’s Uncle David King. Fame hungry brittle woman who shouldn’t be a mother figure? Hello Lalla’s Aunt Claudia! Talented child getting too big for their boots? Waves to Lalla post skating exhibition. Look into a creative field? Duh…skating. Technical performer vs the popular performer? Harriet might have championships in her future. Lalla? Total Queen of the Ice Capades. Annoying, gorgeous and knows it snot of a younger sibling who needs a good smack? Come here Edward… Snippets from Noel Streatfeild’s childhood? The Johnson family estate and how they’ve declined in the world. Child planning for its future/learning a trade? Alec deciding to how turn the family shop around. Devoted servant? Nana and her everlasting knitting and Miss Goldthorpe the tutor.

Skating Shoes may not be in the first Shoe book you think of (quick! Noel Streatfeild book! you know you want to say Ballet Shoes) but it’s worth the read and you need to snap up a copy when it’s in print.

A Vicarage Family

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I’m on a Noel Streatfeild kick so let’s look at the first volume in her semi-autobiographical series, A Vicarage Family.

Our Noel character is Victoria, the second eldest of the Strangeway children, the misunderstood child of the local vicarage. Poor Victoria can’t seem to do anything right in most people’s eyes with the exception of the maid Annie and her beloved cousin John. Without these two wonderful people? Victoria’s very soul would be crushed. Her father comes from a good family with some land but it’s a narrow living compared to his other siblings. Granted, looking at this Edwardian vicarage life with 2014 eyes, having servants, sending your children off to private school and the like seems pretty sweet indeed and not too bad even if the children can’t eat cake and ices at a birthday party because it’s Lent. A life with servants, even the skeleton crew that runs the vicarage is pretty darn awesome when you’re the person who has to do all the housework.

Reading A Vicarage Family, you see how Noel Streatfeild was able to make her books so true to life for her readers. Whenever you encounter a little girl whose growing out of her clothes and there just isn’t the money to replace them with something better, those velvets that have been let out and patched and have the velvet nap going in all directions (the Fossil girls, Harriet Johnson, etc) it’s something the Strangeway girls experienced. The feeling of horror and disappointment and shame the Streatfeild characters feel is so real, so vital that you can feel in your bones that the Streatfeild sisters endured this too. And if you’ve read the Bell family series (if you can get your hands on them? Do it. Seriously.) you’ll know why out of all the perfect Bell siblings, imperfect stocky Ginny jumped off the page and into your heart. Both Ginny and Victoria fight to be understood and loved for their talents in the same way the world showers love and attention on their siblings.

And A Vicarage Story gives something not found in the Shoe books. In the Shoe books, the parents/parent figures are loving and care deeply about their children. In Ballet Shoes, Garnie is willing to take in boarders to give her charges a decent life. Given the circumstances she has been raising the Fossil sisters in, taking boarders is a step down on the social ladder but it’s a step Garnie takes. Skating Shoes‘ Olivia and George do everything possible to restore their beloved Harriet back to health even if it means accepting financial help from their son Alec. The money for Harriet’s skates is found and Olivia extends her maternal care and love to Lalla Moore without a thought.  Sure Rachel and her adopted sister Hilary end up in the clutches of Cora Wintle after their mother dies but their mother scraped and scarified to make sure her adopted daughter could dance. And Pursey and their tutor are willing to stand up to Cora Wintle for Rachel. And even when Ginny messes up? Mrs Bell loves her.

Reverend Strangeway does care about his troubled daughter and tries his best to understand her. But Victoria is just one member of the extended flock he ministers to. And the elder Strangeways love Victoria and understand her life isn’t easy and try to give her both love and the tools to make her way easier. Victoria’s mother? Mrs Strangeway? If Victoria fell down a well or disappeared? Not a problem. It’s not that Mrs Strangeway doesn’t want to be a mother, she doesn’t want to be Victoria’s mother, yes she comes to have a better relationship with Victoria as she gets older but that’s as a confident or companion not as a mother.

Just try reading about Victoria’s birthday dessert or what happens when the family gets the flu. In Annie we understand why the loving and devoted servant is so important in the Shoe books. When you haven’t received love from your parent, a person who doesn’t have a blood tie can still love and cherish you no matter what.

If the Deaccession Squad came a’calling at the local library and I couldn’t convince the librarians to sell me A Vicarage Family and it’s sequel On Tour? I would combing Awesome Books UK, hoping against hope that they had copies of A Vicarage Family available even if it was a 1970s paperback reprint. And given the prices for the trilogy on-line? Would some kind publisher (coughcoughBloomsburyGroupViragoPersephone Classicscoughcough) please please please talk to the Noel Streatfeild estate and put out the Strangeway books in an omnibus? Pretty please?

 

Merry Christmas! Now Let Me Read…

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It’s Christmas morning. Blacklight is trying to get some sleep before we go to my father’s house for Christmas lunch. The kitchen wants cleaning from last night’s snack fest. Upstairs? Go ahead, play Christmas songs at full blast all day long. But me? Getting ready to curl up on Mr Couch with a Christmas read and losing myself between the covers until Blacklight’s alarm goes off.

  1. The Christmas scenes in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. Don’t care if it’s the Big Woods, the Prairie or the surveyors house in the embryo De Smet, love them all.
  2. Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas stories. Better make sure I have a stack freshly ironed vintage hankies at hand because “The Quiet Little Woman” and “What Love Can Do”? Make me cry and want to be a better person every time I read them.
  3. Miss Read’s Village Christmas and No Holly for Miss Quinn
  4. Maeve Binchy’s This Year It Will Be Different And Other Stories
  5. Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather
  6. Nancy Mitford’s Christmas Pudding
  7. Sharon Krum’s The Thing About Jane Spring. We should all pull up for Christmas in a vintage white convertible with the top down!
  8. David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice

The hardest thing?  Deciding which to read first! 🙂

Counting My Chickens

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Out of the marvelous Mitford sisters, it’s no big secret my absolute favorite Jessica “Decca”. But Nancy? The baby sister you nicknamed “Nine” for her presumed mental age? She’s closing in on your perch as my second favorite Mitford.

Now just in case you don’t know who the Mitford sisters are (which is okay, I forgive you, not everyone’s personal book collection spans Lovecraft/King/Bloch/Jackson to Louisa May Alcott to Jacqueline Susann/Grace Metalious to the Mitford sisters) these six lovely ladies were the daughters of David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and the granddaughters of Thomas Gibson Bowles (founder of The Lady and the UK Vanity Fair). Eldest sister Nancy wrote wickedly sharp novels, second sister Pamela took up the country life, third sister and family beauty Diana become a political prisoner in World War II, fourth sister Unity was entranced by Hitler and Nazi Germany, fifth sister Jessica ran away and became the infamous muckraker who made the funeral industry shake in its black boots and sixth sister Deborah aka Debo? She grew up and married a sweet young man named Andrew Cavendish and became the Duchess of Devonshire.

Along with helping turn the family seat Chatsworth House from a financial sinkhole into one of the premier stately homes to visit in the UK (all you Jane Austen fans? Chatsworth House is used as Mr Darcy’s Pemeberly in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice), Debo has inherited the literary gene turning out charming books about her beloved Chatsworth House and memoirs. Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts, is a slight book, only a 192 pages of Her Grace’s thoughts and observations of her life, family and being the mistress of Chatsworth House but what a wonderful 192 pages.

You might think a Duchess would be snotty, aloof and beyond writing a book for the masses. Maybe. But Her Grace The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (her husband, the 11th Duke of Devonshire died in 2004) is a down to earth lady who buys her clothes at agricultural fairs and shows because they’re comfortable and wear well. She’d rather grow a lettuce by the front door than the finest rare orchid. When asked if she’d rather have tea with Elvis or Hitler, she chose Elvis. One of her favorite books of all time is Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Ginger and Pickles.

How could you not love this lady? Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts makes me want to save up my pennies, go to Chatsworth House and hope I run into Her Grace in the grounds. And you know just how very much I “love” Outside. Closing Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts made me very glad I’m snapped up Wait for Me!… Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister and In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor at the Friends of the Ferguson Library Book Shop to add to my Mitford collection. Now off to see if the Central Connecticut library system has any more of Her Grace’s books!

 

 

 

Private Demons

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

There are biographies that make Blacklight scream in terror when he stumbles in the living room and finds me curled up on Mr Couch reading (i.e. Eric Myers’ Uncle Mame: The Life Of Patrick Dennis but I think it’s because Blacklight is terrified of the Patrick Dennis in the tub picture on the back cover). And then there are biographies I’ve checked out of the local library so many times that the darn book spends more time at my house then on the library shelf, the ones I would own if only they weren’t out of print and didn’t cost more than a tank of gas or a month’s groceries or even <shudder> the electric bill. Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer is firmly in the second category.

So what makes Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson something that has me seriously wondering if Blacklight would object to me feeding him spaghetti and baked ziti for dinner for a month vs his usual boneless loin pork chops so I can buy the like new hardcover copy from Amazon? Judy Oppenheimer has done the hardest trick in the biographer’s tasks, she not only makes Shirley Jackson come to life but makes you want to visit the house with the pillars and spend an evening with the Hymans circa 1954. Anything could and did happen with Shirley. Imagine being at the Hyman’s on a night when Shirley got up from the table, went into the study, pounded out a story and then read it to the group, took the editing suggestions and had said story ready for submission by morning?

But Shirley Jackson was more than a machine for cranking out perfect tales to chill your soul or warm your heart. Oppenheimer draws back the facade that Shirley Jackson constructed through her writing to the public, friends and family to reveal the different facets making up such a creative soul. There’s the ungainly girl who never could win her mother’s approval even to her dying day. A devoted mother. A wife who almost waited on her literary critic/professor spouse hand and foot while supporting the household on her writing fees. A women who didn’t seem to care about her appearance but spends oodles of time tracking down a pair of elegant shoes. A mother who fiercely loved her children but didn’t seem to notice when they needed bath time and a good long shampoo.

Some of the very best parts of Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson are when Oppenheimer steps back and allows Jackson’s children to speak about their mother. It’s interesting and very heartbreaking to know how Jackson’s older daughter felt like she was an offering to her grandmother and how the younger daughter felt pressured into being her mother’s shadow/double. Did the pressure of being Jackson’s daughter rob us of another literary light? Do Jackson’s sons feel like their mother loved them less or more than their sisters?

So if you hear Blacklight wondering why baked ziti or pancakes or scrambled eggs are on the menu every night, be assured I’ve broken down and ordered Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson from Amazon or Thriftbooks. Track down Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson from your library, spend some time curled up on the couch reading and you might find yourself doing the same.

 

 

 

God Bless America

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Let’s set the scene.

It’s about 4:30pm in mid-October. I’m on the couch checking my e-mail and IM’ing friends. Blacklight has finally lurched out of the bedroom and into the living room so I don’t even have to ask if it’s a high pain day. Every day is a high pain day for Blacklight. Reaching for his sweatshirt, which is flung over a chair, he notices a stack of library books on the dining room table and starts poking around to see what I checked out. Then he holds up one book, looking puzzled.

“God Bless America?  Is this about crazy Tea Party Republicans or something?”

“What? No. It’s the book Dr Karen from Monster Talk wrote about different religions in America. Do you want me to make your nasty eggy sandwich now or after you’ve gotten pretty?”

Now even though I’m a well-read adult (Blacklight: “But you refuse to read Richard Dawkins…” Me: <gives death glare>), there are gaps in my knowledge of the religious world. I did get baptized, made my First Communion and was confirmed in the Catholic Church but was because it was my parents choice and even then I grew up in the laxest of Catholic households. I have picked up things here and there but there are still things I can’t wrap my head around when it comes to the different religions and their beliefs. But religion doesn’t interest me enough to make a deep study of it like my father-in-law. What I need? Something to give me the basic facts so I don’t ask my Mennonites, New Age and Christian friends ignorant questions.

Luckily a person like me can turn to Karen Stollznow’s God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States.  Yes, that title is certainly a mouthful. But the book itself is easily digestible with chapters covering everything from Fundamentalist Mormons, Amish and Mennonites, New Agers, Satanists, Quakers and more. Each chapter blends a history/breakdown of said religion’s beliefs and experiences Karen Stollznow and her husband Matthew had in interactions with the believers. There is a part in Signs, Wonders and Miracles chapter (about Charismatics and Pentecostals) that had me darting into the living room and re-enacting Matthew’s session with the Charismatic “healers” complete with a stuffed cat filling in for Matthew.

Thanks to God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States, I now know what an Anabaptist is and sorry Conradin from Saki’s excellent and chilling short story “Sredni Vashtar”, an Anabaptist isn’t as thrilling and wicked as it sounds. I’ve also found out the differences between Amish and Mennonites. No stupid questions about why some Mennonites use computers and others doesn’t from me! <cue my Mennonite friends sighing in relief>

Would I recommend God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States? Certainly! God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States isn’t Religions for Dummies. And it’s not a skeptic and her fellow skeptic spouse bashing every religion they encounter. The author’s willingness to explore the different religions even if she might find them or some of their practices silly or foolish or unbelievable is admirable. What God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States is a concise and well research look at various religions and beliefs that many people might not know about or only think the wildest and most crazy ideas about. It doesn’t talk down to the reader. You might not agree with each religion or it’s beliefs after learning more about them but you will come away with a better understanding of each religion and be more informed when you encounter it in the future.

Would I recommend God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States? Certainly!

The Poisoner’s Handbook

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Things you shouldn’t Google at work unless you have a Very Understanding Boss and Department Head: Poisoner and Handbook.

Let me explain. So I’m at Company X, innocently laying waste to my work drawer and listening to scary episodes of Stuffed You Missed in History Class like you do because it’s late October. And I’m listening to the “Who Was America’s Lucrezia Borgia?” episode and they mention a book and of course my brain is all “Ooohhh must read book” but I’m busy cranking out the work and don’t have time to write down the title and can only remember it had the words “poisoner” and “handbook” in it once my work day is almost over. And of course, just as I’m checking the library system for the book, that’s when Boss Lady and Department Head walk past my desk…

But like I said, I have a very understanding boss and department head. And if anyone is going to get poisoned it’s me with my bad habit of “well the date on the cheese says X but it’s been in the fridge the whole time and cheese is just spoiled milk so sure I’m going to eat this”. And you don’t need the amazing and dedicated people under the leadership of Charles Norris circa 1918 to figure out why I’m going to be very sick after eating said cheese.

What do you need Charles Norris and his staff for? Well, that’s exactly what Deborah Blum explores in her brilliant The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Who needs CSI and it’s ilk when you can read about how one man (Charles Norris) and his dedicated staff turned the lackluster medical examiner’s office into a lean, functioning and crime solving machine. Add in different poisons and cases the medical examiner’s office handled and I am in HEAVEN. It’s all the things I loved in Caleb Carr’s fictional forensic detective novels without the Teddy Roosevelt cameos and John is a drunkalunka LOSER bits. There’s unsolved murders (just who poisoned the dough at the lunchroom? Still unsolved to this day), guilty as heck people, people who might have gotten away with murder (Mary Frances Creighton but don’t worry…she doesn’t learn and gets her eventually), innocent people (the bookkeeper whose family is decimated by poison, you want to give him a hug and better life) and the men who managed to try and solve all these cases of the leanest of budgets in a corrupt city.

If you’ve gobbled up Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul (a most excellent book), The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck and Midnight in Peking: The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China, stop reading this review and read The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York ASAP!