Teaser Tuesday: The Journal of My Broken Life by Carolee J. Horning

If and when I filed a case, I wanted to use my real name.… I knew it wasn't a normal practice. Victims like me typically use an alias or Jane Doe. But I wanted to use my real name… I didn't want to be ashamed anymore.

-- The Journal of My Broken Life by Carolee J. Horning.  Available in paperback or a Kindle edition.

Carolee Horning is an inspirational and now-fearless woman who broke decades of silence about how her Catholic priest seduced and sexually molested her when she was an immature teenager.  When she was 40, she came forward to bring a claim against the Portland Archdiocese and tell the world about her experience.

While victims of sexual abuse have the right to sue without disclosing their names, Carolee wanted to use her own name and to get her story out in the hopes it would help other victims have the strength to come forward and talk about what happened to them.

This book is Carolee's first-person account of her abuse, her lawsuit, and her path from victim to survivor. It is an honest, straight-from-the-heart story that deserves a wide audience.

I recommend this book for anyone who works with or supports child abuse victims, any victims working on their own healing, or anyone looking for greater understanding of how child sexual abuse affects adults even decades later.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

What books came into your house last week?

I got one book last week from OSU Press that looks terrific. It is a much-appreciated reprint of collection of essays by award-winning nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore.



Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World by Kathleen Dean Moore.

This is available on amazon or direct from OSU Press.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION
  

Naturalist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore meditates on connection and separation in these twenty-one elegant, probing essays. Using the metaphor of holdfasts—the structures that attach seaweed to rocks with a grip strong enough to withstand winter gales—she examines our connections to our own bedrock.

Kitchen Remodel, Week Nine: The Highs and the Lows

All the cupboards are in, upper and lower, and work has begun on the trim and mouldings.  It is finally starting to look like a kitchen again.  Better yet, the trim work makes it look like a kitchen that goes with the rest of the house.

Our beloved builder is keen on old house details.  He made the wall baseboards match those in other parts of the house.  And the crown moulding and cupboard trim is a scaled down replica of the crown moulding in the dining and living rooms. 

When we get counter tops this week, we will finally be at the beginning of the end. 

 

This is the island. I love how the base trim wraps all the way around the foot, back into the toe space on the front.
 

This is the trim work on the tops of the cabinets.  This is a cupboard in the pantry. In the kitchen, the cupboard trim will tie into the crown moulding.  I can't wait to see it all done.

Despite Portland's first week of beautiful spring weather, I managed to finish my review of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee.  The review is here.

Big thanks to everyone who has left comments and good wishes on these kitchen remodel posts. It has been particularly interesting to hear about other people's remodeling projects. Thanks!

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: The Journal of My Broken Life by Carolee J. Horning

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

It was one of those perfect, still, almost too hot, summer days. It was so quiet out on the lake in our boat that it felt like we were the only ones alive.

-- The Journal of My Broken Life by Carolee J. Horning.  Available in paperback or a Kindle edition.

Carolee Horning is a wonderful, brave woman who came forward and brought a claim against the Portland Archdiocese for the sexual abuse she suffered as a young teenager at the hands of her priest.

Horning drew on journal entries and work with her counselor to write this book -- a first-person account of her abuse, her lawsuit, and her path from victim to survivor. It is an honest, straight-from-the-heart story and she should be commended for telling it.

I recommend this book for anyone who works with or supports child abuse victims, any victims working on their own healing, or anyone looking for greater understanding of how child sexual abuse affects adults even decades later.

2013 European Reading Challenge: Wrap Up Page

2013 European Reading Challenge

January 1, 2013 to January 31, 2014

THIS IS THE PAGE FOR WRAP UP POSTS.

TO LIST YOUR REVIEWS, GO TO THIS PAGE.

TO SIGN UP, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE, HERE,

OR CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVE.

If you have finished the challenge at whatever level you signed up for, and if you did a wrap up post, please enter a link to your wrap up post here.  Please link to your wrap up post, NOT the main page of your blog.



Participants complete the challenge by finishing the number of books they signed up to read. But participants are encouraged to keep reading because there is a Jet Setter prize for the person who reads the most books, each from a different country.

Review: Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee

 

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee

Thomas McNamee took on a yeoman's task with his biography of Alice Waters and her iconic Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse. So many people move in and out of Water's life and the Chez Panisse story – as friends, advisors, business partners, lovers, chefs, collaborators, and enablers – and there are so many near misses, splashy successes, headline grabbers, and petty squabbles, that the book could have been buried under lists of names and dates.

Instead, McNamee concentrates on Water's personal development arc from the starry-eyed, Francophile hippie who opened Chez Panisse in 1971 to America's cultural leader on local food sourcing, sustainable agriculture, and the Slow Food ideal. He uses the restaurant's history for context and color, including menus, recipes, and interviews with Panisse intimates.

While it includes unflattering details, the book is not intended as hard-eyed criticism of Water's business efforts or policy ideas.  Instead, McNamee gives an entertaining, insider's view of a famous restaurant and its charismatic, influential star.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse counts as one of my books for the Foodies Read Challenge (hosted by Vicki at I'd Rather be at the Beach), the Mt. TBR Challenge (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block), and the Off the Shelf Challenge (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Teaser Tuesday: On the Level by David Edgar Cournoyer

 

House lust tended to make me blind to the faults of old buildings and Steve usually provided a much-needed reality check. My goal in this visit was to pump Steve for information about Joe's death, but I found myself focusing more and more on the old house.

-- On the Level: A Mystery of Suspense, Romance, and Home Improvement by David Edgar Cournoyer. I like the expression "house lust"! This passage is a hinge in the story between the mystery and the home improvement themes.

David Cournoyer sent me his new novel at the suggestion of mystery author Carolyn J. Rose because I am in the middle of remodeling the kitchen in our 100-year-old house.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

What books came into your house last week? I got one, from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I can't wait to read it!




The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese by Kathe Lison.  What a fun choice for the 2013 Foodies Read Challenge!

As appealing as the cover on my copy is, I think it may be the ARC cover. The official cover looks like this:



Which cover do you like better?

Kitchen Remodel, Week Eight: Stairway to Kitchen Heaven

Progress inside the new kitchen was slow this week.  There was some more cabinet work, not much.  But enough to see what the upper cupboards will look like.

The heavy hauling was on the outside, where they tore out the old, crumbling staircase and set the stage for the new, as seen in the rebar jungle above.  The plan is for a new series of stairs, retaining walls, and garden beds that will connect the street-level garage doors (to the bottom left of the photo) to the terrace on the garage roof (top left in the photo, with the black railing) and a large stoop outside the kitchen door (top center in the photo). 

Now that I see it in progress, the whole outside part of this kitchen remodel seems like a far bigger undertaking than when I saw it on paper.

Since it is still chilly and drizzly here in Portland, I spent some time yesterday finally finishing Independent People, the novel about WWI-era Iceland sheep farmers by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness.  There was nothing food-related in that book. The people were often half-starved through the Iceland winters. They ate grass.

I also finished Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee.  That book was all about food -- cooking, eating, and changing the way America thinks about food.  I hope to get a review written and up soon. 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: On the Level by David Edgar Cournoyer

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Joe Simpson's last minutes were filled with ocean breezes, the call of herring gulls, and the smell of newly mowed grass. A younger man might have survived the two-story fall but Joe hit the ground like a crab dropped on the rocks.

-- On the Level: A Mystery of Suspense, Romance, and Home Improvement by David Edgar Cournoyer. Great beginning! The twist from a peaceful passage -- Oh, what a pleasant way to go -- to the shocking abruptness of a crab smashing on rocks pulled me straight into the story. I must know more.


The author sent me this at the suggestion of Carolyn J. Rose because I am in the middle of remodeling the kitchen in our 100-year-old house. This mystery (as the clever title suggests) involves restoring an old house -- a Queen Anne on Long Island Sound.

Review: The Gun Seller

 

Hugh Laurie is best known as an actor – the volatile but brilliant Dr. House or Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves – but he occasionally branches into other creative arts, like jazz music and writing. In 1996 he published a just-this-side-of-spoof espionage thriller called The Gun Seller.

Part Wodehouse, part Robert Ludlum, Laurie's only novel finds ex-soldier Thomas Lang bamboozled into infiltrating a terrorist group in order to short circuit an embassy attack orchestrated by an evil munitions manufacturer as a marketing stunt. The plot is complicated enough to stay interesting and internally consistent enough, just, to stay acceptable.

Best of all, it is funny. It is really funny, which is really hard to do. Laurie definitely channels his inner P. G. Wodehouse, but through a spy thriller filter, so it comes out like a James Bond story written by Mark Steyn.  Pure fun.  Too bad Laurie hasn't come out with a sequel.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I bought this on a whim and finally read it for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Teaser Tuesday: Sea of Regret

Police Chief Sam Lowell scratched the gray whiskers on the blade of his jaw. The whisk of sound, like insects in dry grass, made Kate glance at her bare toes to make sure nothing was crawling toward them.

-- Sea of Regret by Carolyn J. Rose.  I love how this short passage evokes so many sensory images and reactions. Great stuff.

Sea of Regret is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, also set on the Oregon coast and featuring Kate Dalton.

Rose also sent me Through a Yellow Wood, set in the Catskill Mountains and the sequel to Hemlock Lake, a series starring Dan Stone.

Rose has written several mysteries set on the Oregon coast or in the Catskill Mountains where she grew up. She and her husband, Mike Nettleton, are both authors and have written a couple of books together.  They also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

If anyone is in Washington State this weekend, Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference. 


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

Three books came to me out of the blue last week:



On the Level: A Mystery of Suspense, Romance, and Home Improvement by David Edgar Cournoyer.  The mystery involves restoring an old Queen Anne on Long Island Sound. It looks great!

The author sent me this at the suggestion of Carolyn J. Rose because we are in the middle of remodeling the kitchen in our 100-year-old house.



Direct Hit! How Facebook Destroyed My Marriage and How I Healed by Caroline Sutherland.  Sutherland is the popular author of The Body "Knows" books.  This book is the story of how her husband betrayed her, stole her identity, and tried to ruin her life.  Timely and riveting!


 

On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak by Jon Bell.  This is the new paperback edition, just in time for graduation of Father's Day gifts. It's the nicest feeling paperback I've ever come across because it has a wonderful, suede-like, thick cover. 

Jon Bell will be reading and signing books at Powell's on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 7:30.

What books came into your house last week?

Kitchen Remodel, Week Seven: Cupboards and Kitchen Revitalization

The cupboards are here. They are not installed yet, just crammed into the kitchen space all higgledy-piggledy. But they are here so we can see them for the first time.

We went with natural-stained fir, a less-expensive option than oak, which had been my first choice.  Fir is also an appropriate choice for a 100-year-old Oregon house because they most likely used fir in the original kitchen. 

My favorite bit is how our builder matched the inside moulding of the doors and drawers with the moulding in our dining room paneling. Kind of hard to see here, but cool in real life.

I am still reading Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee and am just at the part where Chez Panisse burned almost to the ground in 1983.  Alice Waters used the tragedy as an opportunity to rebuild with a better and more beautiful design more suitable to her evolved vision for the restaurant. 



Although our kitchen remodel was, thankfully, not necessitated by tragedy, I am trying to channel Water's optimism about a better, more harmonious, future kitchen.

Sadly, Chez Panisse suffered another fire last month and is closed for renovation until mid-June.  Hopefully this recent misfortune will also result in improvements for this California icon.

 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Sea of Regret

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

When it was over, Kate Dalton vowed to abolish the phrase "if only" from her vocabulary and make peace with what they did to survive.

-- Sea of Regret by Carolyn J. Rose.  That opening sentence gives me chills!

This is the second of the Carolyn J. Rose books I got a couple of weeks back.  This one is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, set on the Oregon coast and starring Kate Dalton.

The other book I got was Through a Yellow Wood, set in the Catskill Mountains and the sequel to Hemlock Lake, a series featuring Dan Stone.

Rose and her husband, Mike Nettleton, are both authors and even have written a couple of books together.  Rose has written several mysteries, set on the Oregon coast or in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  She and Nettleson also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference. 

Teaser Tuesday: Through a Yellow Wood

 

I noticed she made no mention of where Luke, the handyman she hired in early March, slept.… If Priscilla found comfort with the bowlegged, balding, taciturn man stranded in Hemlock Lake when his rusted pickup gave up the ghost in a cloud of radiator steam and scorching oil, then more power to her.

-- Through a Yellow Wood by Carolyn J. Rose. What a description!

This mystery is the sequel to Hemlock Lake, both set in the Catskill Mountains and both featuring Dan Stone. I want to read the first one too, although this one does just fine as a stand-alone.

Rose is half of a prolific Pacific Northwest writing duo, along with her husband, Mike Nettleton.  She has written several mysteries, many set on the Oregon coast, some in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  She and Nettleson also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference.



Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

I only got one book last week, a hand-me-down from my mother. But she liked it and it looks .like it could be pretty good.



Too Easy by Phillip DePoy.  It is the second book in a series of five mysteries set in Georgia and featuring a "Zen private eye" named Flap Tucker.

DePoy moved on to another series that also sounds promising.  Also set in Georgia, but in the Appalachian Mountains instead of the gulf coast, the Fever Devilin series is up to seven volumes.  The named hero is a folklorist and former professor.

I am definitely going to look for more of DePoy's books.

Kitchen Remodel, Week Six: Green is the Color of Spring

In anticipation of the arrival of cupboards later this week, we got some color in the kitchen.  The walls were painted the same green as our old kitchen because I love that murky, yellowy green shade. The ceiling is the same pale khaki color as the ceilings in the rest of the house.

We also have a door to the new powder room. Tiny! Here's James Builder demonstrating its diminutive proportions. 

I've been reading food and cooking books during the kitchen remodel to buoy my spirits while cooking in a toaster oven.  But my current book is grim when it comes to food.  It sure makes me count my blessings!

Independent People secured Halldór Laxness his Nobel Prize, but his characters do not eat well.  Bjartur of Summerhouses and his family are early 20th Century "crofters" -- subsistence sheep farmers who live in a sod house in Iceland, with the sheep on the ground floor and the family huddled in the upper level.

With the cadences and vocabulary of Icelandic epic poetry, Independent People reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.  The semi-literate characters starve through the winter and spring until they can grow a few meager vegetables in the home field and sell their scrawny sheep in the fall.


Other than a few batches of doughnuts or pancakes for celebrations, the only cooking described in the book was when the first wife -- about ready to give birth alone in the hut while her husband was lost in a blizzard -- killed and butchered a ewe, salted down the meat, and then gorged herself on a pot of offal stew.  The cognate, while false, is apt.




Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 490 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Through a Yellow Wood

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Another April.

A year since I returned to Hemlock Lake in a vain attempt to disrupt the agenda of destruction and death set by a man once my friend.

-- Through a Yellow Wood by Carolyn J. Rose.  This mystery is the sequel to Hemlock Lake, both set in the Catskill Mountains and both featuring Dan Stone. The opening sentence makes me want to read the first one too, although this one does just fine as a stand-alone.

Rose is half of a prolific writing duo based in the Pacific Northwest.  Rose and Mike Nettleton have written a number of mysteries together, many set on the Oregon coast, some in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  They also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Among her other writing adventures, Rose will be presenting a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference.

Teaser Tuesday: Independent People

It was an incredible blizzard. It was one of those peculiar gales when the mountain sang above the croft as if the trolls that inhabited it had gone demented and taken out their drums; the dog hung whining about the trapdoor, shivering in every limb.

-- Independent People by Halldór Laxness, first published in 1946, is the story of subsistence sheep farmer Bjartur of Summerhouses.  It is like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 470 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.