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Entertainment Weekly either gave the movie The Feast of Love a good review or listed it in its top ten things for one week. Whichever it was, the reviewer went on to say that although the movie was good, the book upon which it was based was even better. So a paperback copy of The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter took its place on the shelf of to-be-reads. I finished it last night. I wasn't that crazy about it, but I am looking forward to the movie. It appears to be well cast. Greg Kinnear is on the cover, and there's a role I can see him playing. Ditto for Morgan Freeman. Thus, I anxiously await.

But back to the book. I'm a traditionalist. I like books where characters do things and talk to each other. Such scenes are rare in The Feast of Love. Love is often talked about and we see what characters who are "in love" do to each other. That's all okay. The author, however, does occasionally soar in his expression of an idea. Five pages are dog-eared.

1) Three characters are named Bradley, two dogs and the character I'm pretty sure Kinnear is playing. At one point the human Bradley is thinking about the two canine Bradleys and comes up with the following: "Their Bradley is smarter than this Bradley, but I don't care about that at all, not really, because at least with pets and for all I know with people, too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have noting to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing." (page 62) I think he has nailed a Truth there, indeed I do.

2) Power goes out in a shopping mall. Baxter writes, "Down at the center of the mall, the fountain has stopped surging water into the de-ionized air, and the water sits there, gathering dust." (page 121) Does still water gather dust? Can it? Why? Why not? And here we have a whole bunch of ideas and questions I've never thought about before. Can any science majors help me out?

3) Regarding a seedy neighborhood where fortune tellers ply their trade: "Anyway, you gotta drive over there on a sunny day. Otherwise it doesn't work. You get bad head colds in your psyche if you go there on a cloudy day. Then your psyche sneezes your good karma out into the ozone layer, where, of course, it burns away." (page 157) I'll heed the warning. I'll also use this sentence to point out something Baxter does very well. The book is all first person, switching among four speakers. Each voice is unique, and it's fun when each chapter starts to pick out who's talking.

4) "Girls leave home every day, set up house, buy dish drainers, colanders and garlic presses, thus bringing a version of themselves into existence." (page 287) I love the specificity; I love the idea. For me it was a nutmeg grater.

5) "We're constantly getting bulletins from the future, in case you haven't noticed, but mostly we ignore them because of the unsightly messengers, the slobby crackpots who get the information and have to pass it on with their bad breath and missing teeth." (page 296) Again: specificity and idea. When Baxter expresses an idea so clearly, to me that's poetry.

As I said earlier, I'm anxious to see the movie. But I'm also afraid that the things I liked best about the book aren't going to translate well into film. I hope I'll be surprised.

As many of you know, books get bought and come to reside on my to-be-read shelf for a variety of reasons. Some do so on an annual basis. For example, I read The Best American Short Stories yearly. Also each year I check to see what won the Newberry Award, and if the subject interests me at all, I buy and read it. About four years ago a book called Walk Two Moons won. If I remember right, it was an American Indian based story. I wasn't all that interested, but the name of the author, Sharon Creech, sounded familiar. A quick check of Hiram College's yearly At a Glance, that school's answer to a yearbook, proved my memory right. A Sharon Creech had attended school there at the same time I did. The picture in At a Glance was clearly a younger version of the woman whose picture was on the dust jacket. Now knowing a Newberry-winning author, however casually, is certainly a reason to buy and read a book. So I did. It was okay.

This fall on my first Barnes and Noble outing after my hospital stay, I saw she had another book out. Into the shopping cart it went. On the shelf it resided, and yesterday it rotated into being read. Entitled The Castle Corona, it's a tale of kings, princes, peasants who become tasters, and queens who do well-meaning things in the wrong way. It ends well and everyone lives happily ever after. Physically the book is delightful—lush, heavy pages with lush-but-stylized illustrations. All the way through it, I kept thinking it would be a great book to read nightly, a chapter at a time, to a four or five-year-old. If anyone reading this review has a family which includes such a child, I strongly recommend giving The Castle Corona a try.

Last year, several days after Christmas, a friend gave me Dean Koontz's Robot Santa: The Further Adventures of Santa's Twin. Since it was after Christmas I waited until this year to read it. (All Christmas books must be read before the actual day. It's a rule.) Today I read it. And didn't like it. IMHO an author has to be really, really clever to mess around with Santa Claus and make it work. Dean Koontz isn't that clever. Also, IMHO.

ONE MISSISSIPPI by Mark Childress

I had not read Martha’s review of this book. I had just seen that she recommended it and it was available for loan.

I admit, to a prejudice that led me toward assuming I would not like the book. A family moves to Minor, Mississippi from Indiana. The middle son comes with his set of prejudices against the south. The year was 1972 and the schools had just been ordered to integrate.

I have only a few things to add to Martha’s excellent review of this book.

I laughed the first time on page 41 when Daniel Musgrove and his friend Tim picked up the Frillinger twins for their first prom.

Mrs. Frillinger grabs the girls and fairly yells, “Oh honey, I just can’t let you go! Don’t leave me like this—whatever you do just don’t please leave me alone in this house.”

Daniel felt pity until he remembered the monster in his own house. “I guess lots of families have monsters.” It is an old Southern expression that all families have “secrets.” In the South we just put them on parade.

I was reminded of the first generations who left the farm to work for corporations. On page 225 Daniel’s father: “That’s how it worked in those days, if you were lucky enough to get a job with a good company, give’em all you got, they’ll look after you the rest of your life.”

Page 321: “Coach Adkins was no longer teaching driver’s ed, since someone informed the school board of his habit of buying a six-pack of Miler bottles at the beginning of each driving session.” Some things never change: My son, Alex’s driving ed teacher, packed four students into the student car and they drove around town. He actually parked the students and left them to cool their heels while he went into Spry (yes we have a funeral home in Huntsville named Spry Funeral Home) to arrange for his own father’s funeral. Mr. Stitcher (sp) has now gone on to the great highway in the sky.

Favorite moments in the book for me: Dad blowing up the house that was owned by the Chemical Company from which he was dismissed. Dad purchasing a drive-in theatre just as the days of the drive-in was dying and moving the family into the house attached to back of the giant screen.

Best descriptions of the human condition that brought familiar sorrow: descriptions of forbidden love and love lost, the horror of high school and the need to fit in at any cost.

I recommend ONE MISSISSIPPI but then I liked CRAZY IN ALABAMA also.

Kathy Albers

Two last comments on ONE MISSISSIPPI

1. The shooter tells the main character that he (the shooter) could have "exposed" Red. Did that mean that Red too had participated in some same-sex activities?

2. I have a similar hatred of the use of "between you and I." I just never realized that Martha is right. "Me" is not a four letter word but is avoided much more than some of the four-letter kind. Of course, I am on such a high horse against that particular spoken mistake that I especially hate it when, I, myself, slip up and the dreaded "I, we, she, or he comes uttered out of my mouth after a preposition.

And the gymnastics I will go through to never write a sentence ending in a preposition. Sometimes it's just easier to break that rule. Can't do it though. Just can't. won't. Don't know what I'm doing myself with!!!!

Oooh, I just started a good one...but I owe it to you to be further into it before I post it. This is just a teaser. I should be back with a verdict by the time y'all are done with Christmas.

Well, I finished both of these books, and the first one The Septembers of Shiraz was quite wonderful, especially for a first novel. It is about a Jewish family in Tehran after the coup, when the Revolutionary Guards are in power and the Shah is flying around the world trying to find a country that will accept him. I do highly recommend this book...it is beautifully written and quite suspenseful.

Pass on Once in a Promised Land. It was a poorly written romance novel, and I griped and groaned all the way through the reading of it.

Must go eat Christmas eve treats that the neighbors have brought!

EmmaG

Okay, couldn't sleep last night so I finished the book at about 4AM. It wasn't quite as good as I had hoped, but still well worth reading.

The book is "Shade," by Neil Jordan (author of "The Crying Game",) and according to the cover it was the #1 Irish bestseller.

The book begins with a brutal murder; the opening sentence is "I know exactly when I died." Nina, the 'shade' in question, describes her own murder, then recounts her life growing up with three other children - a half-brother, and two neighboring children of a different social class. World War I makes an appearance and makes its mark on the four, among other events.

The book is well written, I think, and maintains the somber mood required for a good ghost story, although I can't say for certain that "ghost story" really describes what it is.

It's an easy read and well worth adding to the stack.

My husband read "T is for Trespass" and also "One Mississippi." He really, really enjoyed "T," but he confessed that it disturbed him as much as I confessed it disturbed me. He said he can read about nuclear disasters all day and they just don't have the personal impact of the mistreatment of the helpless. "Miss'ippi," he said he 'sped read....but enjoyed a great deal.

He is tonight staying with my daughter and the newborn. (S-O-B-S-I-L had to go back to work on a 12-hour shift from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM.) I STRONGLY ENCOURAGED BMama, (BM if you abbreviate) to do this. He never before felt the compulsion but I, let us say, encouraged him). Martha.....somewhere maybe you understand.....I feel joy and sadness.

K.

Just ordered Shade and Septembers of Shiraz. Sade was REALLY on sale.

Kathy,
In the spirit of the season, and perhaps anarchy, I'm violating my rules--AARGH!--and reading T Is for Trespass next. I think you're a bad influence.