Outside A Dog

[Yes, I know! Finally! I'll be backdating this one, though, so it fits in 'properly' with the rest of the February stuff.]

Here’s the pile o’ books at the end of February:

The little pile on the left? That’s what I read — 13 books in that one.

The little pile on the right? Those are the books that snuck into my house when I wasn’t looking. [No, really!] But there’s only seven of them, so that’s a good thing, right?

This month’s reads — again, the ones in bold will be find a permanent spot on my shelves:

• Peony In Love by Lisa See
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Zoe Lucky and the Green Gables Mystery by M. Carol Coffey
• Dream When You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
• Finding Happiness by Abbot Christopher Jamison
• The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
• What Does Your Doctor Look Like Naked?: Your Guide to Optimum Health by Dr. J. Warren Willey, II
• The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
• The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
  [Not to say this wasn't a great book -- I'd gladly collect all of her work if my shelves would allow me to do so.]
• Walking in Circles Before Lying Down by Merrill Markoe
• The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

I’m hoping to get a flurry of reviews posted by Monday — I’m about three and a half books behind at the moment. Thank you, work.

Last book for February, hooray! The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde is the third in the series of novels about Thursday Next, a literary detective in an alternate version of 1985. After battling the evil Goliath Corporation in her version of England, she learns that she has a special ability to enter books themselves, and finds herself in — ta da — BookWorld.

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.

I’m a dog person, so it’s really no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed Walking In Circles Before Lying Down by Merrill Markoe. I was admittedly surprised by how well the premise – a woman who has been dumped by her boyfriend is suddenly able to understand what her dog is thinking – worked out.

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.

I’ll admit to having a bit of a weakness for Jodi Picoult’s work. I hadn’t read anything by her until sometime last year, but purchased two of her books on a whim. It’s a good thing that I did buy two that day, because only a few chapters into the first book I was hooked, and I had finished the second by the end of the weekend. I’ve most recently devoured The Tenth Circle, about high school freshman Trixie, her comic book author father, Daniel, and her Dante scholar mom, Laura. Daniel is in the middle of one of those awkward parenting stages – the one where he’s watching the little girl he’s devoted the last fourteen years of his life to as she’s turning into a difficult, rebellious teenager and not really knowing how to deal with it all – when Trixie tells him that her ex-boyfriend has raped her at a friend’s house. And with that, everything changes. Stories are told and secrets are kept and exposed and everyone’s life is turned upside down, but at the heart of it all, Daniel does what any father would: whatever it takes to take care of Trixie.

Admittedly, this is only the fourth or fifth of Picoult’s books that I’ve read, but it very well may be my favorite. There always seem to be a couple of twists in her stories that manage to completely blindside me, and The Tenth Circle was no exception. I love the family dynamics that she is able to create and explore. I’m often shocked by the actions her teenage characters take, but I’ve also come to learn / realize that Picoult does extensive research before putting pen to paper. She also manages to leave little clues that you almost don’t even notice until the very end, where they hit you like a ton of bricks and make you say “Oh! That’s why…”

In the first chapter of The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther, Sara loses her unborn baby in an accident, and as a result, she also loses her mother, Maryam. Unable to handle what has happened to her daughter and her part in the tragedy, Maryam flees London for her native Iran and comes to terms with the events of her childhood — the ones that forced her to escape Iran in the first place. In an effort to understand her mother’s actions, Sara follows Maryam to Iran, and comes to understand how hard it is to turn your back on the past that shapes you.

The Saffron Kitchen flows nicely between Sara’s point of view and Maryam’s, between London and Iran, between the past and the present. It’s a great story about love, independence, and family. I’m a sucker for books about differences in culture, and as a result I’ve read some terrible attempts, but I really did enjoy this one. The only thing that irks me is the ending — I understand it and support it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. But not all endings in life are happy — or at least, not for everyone.