At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman’s Journey of Discovery. Rebecca Otowa. Tuttle Publishing,  2010.

Rebecca Otowa married a Japanese man in 1982, and has lived the life of a Japanese wife for nearly thirty years.  It seems to have been a happy life. although some details jar.  (He… Read full post »

Cheerful Money:  Me, My Family and the Last Days of WASP Splendor. By Tad Friend.  Little, Brown and Company. 2009.

The essence of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture is reserve, hiding one’s feelings.  Tad Friend’s parents encouraged this demeanor by giving their c… Read full post »

Bucket Nut. Liza Cody. Isis Publishing. 1997

Eva Wiley is a woman wrestler – a villain - in London.  She’s tough, big, a survivor.  But she may have taken on more than she handle when she takes in a backup singer who has run into trouble.    

One of the pleasures… Read full post »

I Have Lived a Thousand Years. By Livia Bitton-Jackson.  Simon & Schuster. 1997.

Young adult.  Memoire.

Very few children survived the concentration camps.  Most of them were sent to the gas chambers immediately, of course, because they couldn’t work as hard as an adult.&nbs… Read full post »

Catching Fire. By Suzanne Collins.  Thorndyke Press, 2009.

A young adult novel. Book two in the Hunger Games trilogy.

The leaders of the Capital have decided that one way to spike a revolution in the enslaved districts is to destroy the natural leaders of that fight.  So Katn/… Read full post »

“The Dreaded Feast: Writers on Enduring the Holidays.” Abrams Image, 2009.

If you dread Christmas, or just like to read really funny essays, this is a collection you should check out.  John Waters writes about his collection of really bad Christmas presents for kids, including a/… Read full post »

Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown. By Edmund L. Andrews.  WW Norton,  2009.

I usually have a lot of sympathy for people who lost their houses in the mortgage crisis. I know several people who have had to sell, or been foreclosed on, and for the most part, they weren&… Read full post »

American Nerd: The Story of My People.  By Benjamin Nugent. Scribner, 2008.

Nugent defines nerds this way:

·         They are either nerds because they are socially excluded (Page 7) and/or

·        … Read full post »

The Sweet Life in Paris.  By David Lebovitz.   Broadway Books, 2009.

After his partner unexpectedly died, David Lebovitz moved to Paris.  He’s a writer of several cookbooks – this book includes several wonderfully tasty recipes – and an excellent reporter. … Read full post »

True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women in Paris.  By Lucinda Holdforth.  Greystone Books, 2007.

The author visits places in Paris that were important to the historic French women she admires.   Some of them, like Nancy Mitford and Gertrude Stein, were French by choice rather than by bi/… Read full post »

Lost Japan.  By Alex Kerr.  Lonely Planet Publications, 2009.

Rarely do I read someone’s book and think “I want that life!”  But I’ll admit to more than a touch of envy when I read Alex Kerr’s “Lost Japan”. 

Kerr moved to Japan in the 197… Read full post »

Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith.  By Deborah Heiligman. Henry Holt And Company, 2009.

Young Adult Non-fiction.

Charles Darwin’s father urged him to lie.  Marriages between the religious and the non-religious always resulted in pain for the religious spouse, he said,/… Read full post »

Nature Girl.  By Carl Hiaasen.  2006. Random House.

I take my current book with me everywhere I go.  Other book lovers will often comment on what I'm reading.  More people gave me spontaneous assessments of Carl Hiaasen’s work than any author I’ve read in the las… Read full post »

Everyday Life in Traditional Japan.  By Charles J. Dunn.   2008. Tuttle Publishing, Rutland VT.

I’m not one of those people who dreams about “living in a simpler time.”  I like living in an age of antibiotics and birth control and central heating.  (I’/… Read full post »

The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong.  By Matthew Stewart.  2009.  WW Norton.

The writer spent several years as a management consultant.   He wasn’t hired for his business expertise – he’d just finished a PhD in Philosophy.  He was/… Read full post »

Alexandria (Minotaur, 2009) & Saturnalia (St Martin's Minotaur, 2007). By Lindsey Davis.

I enjoy historical mysteries, and Lindsey Davis is a particular favorite.

In "Saturnalia", Marcus Didius Falco tries to find the escaped foreign priestess Veleda, during the feast of Misrule in Rome.&nb… Read full post »

 City of Thieves. By David Benioff.  Thorndike Press, 2008.

Two young men are sent to find a dozen eggs.  Not usually such a very hard task, but this is 1942, during the famous siege of Leningrad. The supply of dogs, cats, and rats having been exhausted,  the citizens are reduced… Read full post »

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death In Order. By Joan Wickersham.  Harcourt, 2009.

Joan Wickersham's father committed suicide some 15 years ago.  The Suicide Index is about the aftermath of his death and its effect on her and her family.  The title comes from the chapter headi/… Read full post »

Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me.  By Lisa Fineberg Cook. Downtown Press, 2009.

Terrible title, well written, interesting book.   A spoiled newlywed Jewish American Princess moves to Japan to teach English with her new husband.   She runs up against the hard corners of living/… Read full post »

Terrier  (Random House,  2006) and Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce.  Young Adult novels.

Beka Cooper is a Puppy - that is, a trainee in the Tortall city police force nicknamed "the Dogs".  The book "Terrier" covers her first six weeks on the job.  Beka comes to the force with adv/… Read full post »

Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartaches in the American Elsewhere. By Hank Stuever.  (Henry Holt and Company:  2004.)

After I read "Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present" I went looking for Stuever's other work.  Off Ramp is his only other full-length book. (I hope that changes/… Read full post »

The Language of Bees.  By Laurie R. King (Bantam Books: 2009.)

I generally don't read pastiches: if I'm reading about Jane Austin's characters, I want Jane Austin's take on them.   I make an exception for Laurie R. King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes books.  They are just that/… Read full post »

Well, after a couple of months of roof-related trauma, Christmas, and the start of a new school program, I'm back. 

I'd decided that, with 15 credits of coursework, I wouldn't be blogging my reading any more.   "Tinsel" changed my mind.  Some books are so go… Read full post »

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen. By Janet Evanovich.

Series mystery.  Sleuth: Stephanie Plum.

Japanese Frames of Mind: Cultural Perspectives on Human Development.  Edited by Hidetada Shimizu & Robert A. Levine.

This book was written to describe psychology studies that had been done in Japan, so that they could be compared to western studies on similar subjects. 

Psychology look… Read full post »