Baby Jesus Pawn Shop by Lucia Orth has the amazing power to transport you to the Manila of 1982 and introduce you to those who suffered under the Marcos rein, and the author beautifully captures the lives of the Filipino people. I read this book with a mixture of desperation and helplessness and hope, feeding off the emotions of both Doming and his friends, as well as those of Rue, who “felt a dread, unnamable, that by not objecting she was also part of the farce and the horror.” I couldn’t help but get caught up, and this novel was certainly hard to put down.

The book is broken down into five sections, beginning with the chapter entitled ‘What is Real Food?’ that starts with a basic explanation of, you guessed it, what the author calls ‘real food’: the old and the traditional. Foods that were eaten long before food became part of an industry, foods that aren’t processed within an inch of their life, and foods that haven’t been enhanced and added-to before they’re sold are the staples of the ‘real food’ diet. Planck then moves on to chapters covering ‘The Fertility Diet’ [what to eat when you’re trying to conceive, and what foods best prepare your body for the rigors of pregnancy], ‘Forty Weeks’ [how the foods you eat can influence your baby’s development], ‘Nursing Your Baby’ [championing the benefits of breastfeeding over formula use], and ‘First Foods’ [introducing your child to something a little more solid]. The back of the book also provides a list of resources for further reading on a range of topics, from postnatal depression to autism and allergies and various birthing techniques.

Overall, this is a stellar book. Like I said, I’m nowhere near ready for the baby-specific information, but I read this book cover to cover, and it’s now full of post-it flags for easier future reference. I’ve found myself returning to the first chapter on foods basics more than once. A lot of what Planck presents just makes sense, and with so much information and misinformation floating around in the media – eggs are bad! no, wait, eggs are good! – it’s great to have something to fall back on when everything gets confusing. I’ve even broken it out when having baby-related discussions with friends and plan on presenting a copy or two as gifts to friends in the future. And, yeah, maybe I do look forward to using the information for my own personal use some day.

Jesse’s story begins shortly after she loses her family when they drop her off at an animal control shelter, but her life turns around when she is adopted by Ruth and her husband Hugo. She soon discovers a love for squeaky bones, being dried off after a bath, and new friends[both the two-and four-legged kind]. Ruth’s dream for Jesse was to become certified both as a Canine Good Citizen and as an International Therapy Dog, and with both love and work, the dynamic duo reached their goal. Shortly after, they began to aim for something new: Ruth would like to develop a volunteer-based group for adopted children and rescued pets where the two could interact and support each other. A few of Jesse’s friends get them started with the donation of a small play wagon so that Jesse can pull children around the neighborhood, and Ruth and Jesse hope to raise awareness of their Kids ‘n’ Kritters project.

This little book is a fun read, and the end of each chapter features a “paws” for lessons learned: Jessie tries to highlight the main points to take away from her story. Everyone can appreciate little reminders such as let go of the past; make good use of today! Jesse’s story is a lovely one, and demonstrates the healing power of love.

10% of sales of Bark Up The Right Tree go to Open Doors, an Amazing Grace Foundation’s Kids ‘n’ Kritters project.

There’s a clever aspect to this book – chapters of the story Lockwood is writing are interspersed with his adventures in trying to get them written, and so the reader has the opportunity to ‘meet’ Señora Casals and understand Lockwood’s motivation for making sure her story is told properly. George Rabasa does such a wonderful job of bringing Señora Casals to life – I regret that she is a fictional character, for I would have loved to hear her sing, or to lear more about her. One chapter from the ‘autobiography’ stuck with me, as it detailed a dark period in the Señora’s life. She was infatuated with the prince of a small, defunct European country, and to please him she changed everything about herself for him: her hair, her makeup, her wardrobe, her body. She sang only what and when he wanted her to, and she became a shell of her former self. After five years of starving herself and canceling her recitals and rarely singing in public, she snaps and leaves the prince, and returns to her former glory when she is out from under his thumb. And from that point on, she lives her life as she wishes to live it, not according to anyone else’s standards.

I have to say, this is such a great book. Lockwood’s character is a little irritating, but I think he was supposed to be, for by the end of the novel he’s being transformed by his efforts in telling the Señora’s story. The Señora herself is such a strong woman, full of strength and joy, even after her death, even as someone else is telling her story.

• Revise The World by Brenda W. Clough
• Dirty Little Angels by Chris Tusa
• Baby Jesus Pawn Shop by Lucia Orth
• The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist’s Memoir of Death and Redemption by Kamal Saleem
• Roastbeef’s Promise: When Your Dad’s Dying Wish Is to Have His Ashes Sprinkled in Each State, What’s a Son to Do? by David Jerome
• The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa
• Secrets Unveiled by Sheshena Pledger
• The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by C. M. Mayo
• Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat by Hank Cardello
• Palace Circle: A Novel by Rebecca Dean
• Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby’s First Foods by Nina Planck
• Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz
• Shanghai Girls: A Novel by Lisa See

Update August 26: Have finished the crossed-out books, and working on more! Reviews soon!

• The Textile Planet by Sue Lange
• Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town by Warren St. John
• Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman
• Bark Up The Right Tree: Lessons From a Rescued Dog by Jesse & Ruth Tschudin
• Living Dead In Dallas by Charlaine Harris
• Papillion by Henri Charriere
• Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown by Adena Halpern
• Pretty In Plaid by Jen Lancaster
• Tender At The Bone by Ruth Reichl
• Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
• Spiced by Dalia Jurgensen

Books that I’ve read but won’t be reviewing — but that I will include toward my yearly total / donation — because I’ve already read them at least once previously include:

• Queen Of Babble by Meg Cabot
• Bitter is the New Black, Bright Lights, Big Ass, and Such A Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster
• Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

I’m sure there’s something that I’ve forgotten, though; there almost always is. Coming up tomorrow: a list of what’s on my to-be-read-in-the-immediate-future pile.

“Lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller toils away in a physics lab until one day he makes an odd discovery. A sensitive quantum calibrator keeps disappearing and reappearing moments later when he hits the reset button. With a little tinkering, Matt realizes that the device functions as a crude, forward-traveling time machine. With visions of Nobel Prizes dancing in his head, he latches it to a car and leaps into the future. The interesting wrinkle here is that each jump ahead is 12 times longer than the last. Matt’s successive futures involve jail time, unwelcome celebrity, and assorted holocausts in the earth’s climate. He begins to long for his native era.”

This book was a fun, quick, and easy read.  Not the deepest or most profound book out there, just something interesting to pass the time.

Next we have Timescape by Gregory Benford.  Amazon’s synopsis states:

“It’s 1998, and a physicist in Cambridge, England, attempts to send a message backward in time. Earth is falling apart, and a government faction supports the project in hopes of diverting or avoiding the environmental disasters beginning to tear at the edges of civilization. It’s 1962, and a physicist in California struggles with his new life on the West Coast, office politics, and the irregularities of data that plague his experiments. The story’s perspective toggles between time lines, physicists, and their communities. Timescape presents the subculture and world of scientists in microcosm: the lab, the loves, the grappling for grants, the pressures from university and government, the rewards and trials of relationships with spouses, the pressures of the scientific race, and the thrill of discovery.”

This one was a little longer and, imho, drier.  It’s chock full of scientific theory and physics jargon.  I normally enjoy this sort of thing, but this book was just plain boring.  I never really cared for any of the characters and nothing seemed to happen throughout the story.

Glenna is the manager of the Whispering River Lodge in Oregon — so named for the high-pitched noise that can be heard throughout the town as the wind blows through a nearby canyon — and she’s doing her best to keep the lodge running smoothly and her guests from a major laceworker’s convention happy when her ex-husband shows up with a group of foreign investors. Shortly after he threatens to have her fired from the Lodge, her ex-husband turns up dead, and a length of silk stolen from the convention is found to be the murder weapon. The evidence begins to mount, and Glenna finds herself at the top of the suspect list, so she turns to the Lodge’s brand-new chief of security to help her clear her name.

I have to say, I loved the cast of characters in this book. Glenna’s best friend, Joy, the former owner of the lodge, George, who ‘haunts’ the resort, the new security chief, Craig — and even Glenna’s dogs — make this a really enjoyable read. I’m usually a little wary of mystery novels because my tendency to figure out whodunnit long before the last pages (I’m not sure if that is more a product of my mental skills or my bad luck in choosing mysteries to read) but this one kept me occupied and guessing and entertained until the very end. Lacing Up For Murder is billed as the first in the Whistling River Lodge mystery series, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to be in store for Glenna in the future.

Lacing Up For Murder will be available at www.bookviewcafe.com.

Being that Goliath has eradicated her husband, Landon — Thursday and her grandmother are the only two people who remember that he ever existed — and also being that she is pregnant, she decides to temporarily hide out in BookWorld — more specifically, in the Well of Lost Plots, where all unwritten books hang out until they are written and published. Thursday becomes an apprentice of Jurisfiction, the BookWorld’s policing unit, and is under the supervision of Great Expections’s Miss Havisham as they try to uncover who is behind the murders of other Jurisfiction members. Thursday also takes it upon herself to train a couple of Generics — backup book characters who can be trained to fill just about any role — as well as to save the book in which she is seeking refuge before it is demolished. As this while trying to hang on to the memories of her husband and learning enough to become a full-fledged Jurisfiction agent.

While I certainly enjoyed the usual bit of wordplay and all of the literary references (both the obvious and the not-so-obvious ones, which I tend to enjoy a little more), I don’t think this third book quite stands up to the first two. Everything felt a little jumbly, and to be quite honest, I had a heck of a time keeping some of the lesser characters completely straight. Thursday’s struggles with Aornis over the memories of Landon feel like they were an afterthought, and that subplot got wrapped up a bit too easily. There are a couple of inconsistencies that I can’t address without giving too much away, but those are quite possibly the result of being slightly too picky. Even with all the minor grumbles I have about The Well of Lost Plots, I still think it’s a great read and will definitely be continuing on with the series.

After Dawn’s boyfriend leaves her to pursue a job in another city, she’s stunned to hear her pit bull, Chuck, consoling her. While at first she thinks she may be crazy, she comes to accept the voice she’s hearing -– which also makes her job a little more interesting, because Dawn works at a dog day care facility, and she can understand all of those dogs, too. Chuck offers his sometimes questionable -– he is a dog, after all — guidance as Dawn attempts to survive her over-helpful sister, her ridiculous mother, the loss of her job, and the return of her sketchy ex-boyfriend.

As someone who talks to my dog on a regular basis -– and, okay, as someone who has been known to ‘speak’ for her dog more than I’d like to admit -– I got such a kick out of this book. Dawn’s story is told in a stream-of-consciousness, rambly, tangential fashion that could easily have been the most annoying aspect of the book, but Markoe pulled it off wonderfully. [It’s also possibly that I loved this style so much because I tend to tell stories in the same rambly-type fashion.] And Chuck is one fantastic little canine character. Highly recommended if you’re a dog lover or just looking for a fun little read. I’ll certainly be looking for more of Merrill Markoe’s work.