NON-BOOKISH NEWS -- NEW JOB!

It’s official! The Dumas Law Group will open its doors for business on March 31, 2014.  (April 1 would have been more logical, but I didn’t want anyone thinking it was an April Fools prank!)  My new contact information is below. The website isn’t up yet, but soon, we hope.  We are based in Portland, but handle cases across the country.

After seven years of working with Kelly Clark on sex abuse cases – starting with his very first case against the Boy Scouts that we took to trial and won a $20 million verdict – it is time for me to move on to my next challenge.  When Kelly passed away rather unexpectedly before Christmas, the loss of him as my partner made me really think about the work I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.

The answer was a smaller firm, focusing only on litigation.  My associate attorney, Ashley Vaughn, and I will continue to represent survivors of child abuse – those who are now adults as well as those who are still under 18 – in cases against the perpetrators and the trusted institutions that allowed the abuse to happen.  We will continue to work on cases across the country, working closely with our network of skilled attorneys in other states.

Drawing on my 22 years of experience with commercial litigation, we also will continue to represent small businesses and individuals with civil lawsuits, employment claims, real estate matters, and other business disputes.  We also have the flexibility to handle certain personal injury and professional malpractice claims.

Both Ashley and I will be marketing like crazy to get this enterprise off the ground.  We appreciate your referrals and are open to associating with other attorneys on cases.

Gilion C. Dumas

Dumas Law Group, LLC

Weatherly Building, Suite 309

516 SE Morrison Street

Portland, OR  97214

www.DumasLawGroup.com

503-952-6789

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Book Beginning: Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

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.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

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

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

The years before the war forced everyone in Shanghai to choose: Nationalists or Communists? Resist the Japanese invaders or collaborate with them?

-- Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones.  Great beginning for setting the scene in pre-WWII Shanghai. But it doesn't hint at the terrific premise, which is how black American jazz musicians expatriated to Shanghai in the 1930s to avoid prejudice in the US.

Mones put meticulous research into this sliver of fascinating history.  But the historical details never bog down the exciting, sexy story of an American pianist falling in love with a Chinese spy. Great stuff!

Night in Shanghai is the fourth novel by Nicole Mones, following Lost in Translation, A Cup of Light, and The Last Chinese Chef.

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. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

Last week was a banner book week for me. Four books came into my house. They are as different as can be but all look great!



Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones. I love her books! This one is a romantic adventure set in 1930s Shanghai. The hero is a black American jazz musician; the heroine is a young Chinese woman bonded into servitude to pay her father's gambling debts.  Their lives collide when the Japanese invade Shanghai.



 The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba by Julia Cooke.  Cooke is a journalist who spent five years "embedded" in Cuba after Fidel Castro stepped down as President.  By focusing on the lives of young adults -- the "last generation of Cubans raised under Fidel Castro" -- Cooke offers a fresh and timely look at real life in Cuba.



 Small Town Trouble by Jean Erhardt.  This is the first in a new mystery series featuring Kim Claypoole, a restaurateur and amateur sleuth with her home base in the Smokey Mountains.



The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast by Bonnie Henderson, published by OSU Press.  Henderson mixes science, history, and first-hand accounts to explain how the next mega-quake under the Pacific Ocean will generate a tsunami "likely to be the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States."

Book Beginning: The Rich are Different by Susan Howatch

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

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.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

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

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

I was in London when I first heard of Dinah Slade. She was broke and looking for a millionaire, while I was rich and looking for a mistress. From the start we were deeply compatible.

-- The Rich are Different by Susan Howatch. This is one of those sprawling, intergenerational sagas that were so popular in the 1970s. I ate them up in Junior High, including this one, although I don't remember anything about the plot now.

Howatch knows how to weave a yarn. This one starts in the 1920s, when the heroine -- a 21-year-old, precocious, bluestocking with a Cambridge degree and a moldering Norfolk mansion -- charms a New York banker into her bed and out of a loan sufficient to pay the debt on her mansion and launch her cosmetics company. I love these big, shaggy stories.

It's My 6th Blogiversary!

If this wasn't a crazy busy week for me, I would ponder what's it's been like to have a book blog for six whole years and share some thoughts. I'll have to save them for my 7th blogiversary!

Teaser Tuesday: Meander Scars by Abby Phillips Metzger.

. . . [I]slands form in all kinds of ways, sometimes because of high water or at a confluence where the force of one river meets another. . . . Some last a few decades, others centuries, which in the sceme of a river is not a long time. 

-- Meander Scars: Reflections on Healing the Willamette River by Abby Phillips Metzger, published by OSU Press.

Metzger grew up alongside Oregon's Willamette River.  In her essays, she explores how Oregon's now-tame river could reconnect with its wild history.  She relies on her own keen observations as well as stories from farmers, scientists, and conservationists to share her vision for this beautiful river.

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

Mailbox Monday: Neighborhood Book Gleaning

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. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

I have a couple of great books heading my way (including Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones), but the only books that came into my house last week are those I gleaned when out enjoying the gorgeous early spring weather.

Little Free Libraries have sprouted up in my neighborhood like daffodils.  There are at least three within six blocks of my house.  Most of them look like little peaked-roof houses with two shelves, like this one:

But my favorite pre-dates the brand name Little Free Libraries.  It is just an old, oversized black mailbox with BOOKS stenciled on the side.  I have great luck with this one.

I've taken to keeping a bag of finished books handy and grab one when I head out for a walk, so I always have a contribution ready for the first LFL I pass by.

The books I found last week are:



The Butcher's Boy by Thomas Perry (an Edgar winner)



No Uncertain Terms: More Writing from the Popular "On Language" Column in The New York Times Magazine by William Safire



Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman

Book Beginning: Meander Scars by Abby Phillips Metzger

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

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.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

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

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

I live by a river that floats through a broad valley between two mountain ranges, a river called the Willamette.

-- Meander Scars: Reflections on Healing the Willamette River by Abby Phillips Metzger.

Metzger has spent her lifetime exploring Oregon's Willamette River up close.  This book, with it's gorgeous cover, contains essays on her observations and impressions.

I can't read a book all about the Willamette River without taking the opportunity to remind my non-Oregonian friends that we don't pronounce the name of our main river with a French accent. It's not will-uh-METT, it's will-A-met, rhymes with damn it.  And, while we're on the subject, we pronounce Oregon just like an organ in a church.

Teaser Tuesday: The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman

If he thought about it – and he rarely had – he would have allowed the possibility of something Almighty-ish: some sort of vague and unfathomable field of enormous but inscrutable power. He thus understood divinity the way most people understand Wi-Fi.

-- The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman. 

Young Manhattan attorneys aren't likely candidates for biblical visions, which is what makes Feldman's modern retake on the Jonah Bible story so fresh and wonderful.

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

Review: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry

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.  

An unexpected career crisis leads a former corporate exec to the legendary Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, while her perfect boyfriend puts his career on hold to hang out with her.  

If The Sharper Your Knife were a novel instead of a memoir, it would verge on too adorable to tolerate.  Not quite Eat, Pray, Love, but getting there.  Yes, Flinn has plenty of anxious moments in the classroom and out.  These range from the enviable (the crisis of having to buy a wedding dress off the rack in Paris) to the seriously sympathetic (her new husband suffers a life-threatening accident).  But mostly she shares the joy and excitement of veering off a chosen career track to live in a magical place, fulfilling a life dream.

The whole American in Paris/cooking school/Julia Child redux schtick works because it hits many notes on everyone's fantasy scale. Best to simply indulge.

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

The Sharper Your Knife counts as my first book for the 2014 Foodies Read challenge.  It is also going on my French Connections list.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginning: The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

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.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

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

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Jonah knew the 59th Street subway station well enough that he did not have to look up from his iPhone as he made his way among its corridors and commuters to the track.

-- The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman.

Jonah is a promising young Manhattan attorney whose life is about to become unrecognizable to him. Feldman's debut novel is a contemporary re-imagining of the biblical book of Jonah.

Teaser Tuesday: The Gods of Second Chances by Dan Berne

I reach into my pants pocket and pull out the note from Sitka's mom. Jenny. My drugged out, ex-con, now-I'm-ready-to-come-home-and-be-forgiven-once-again daughter

-- The Gods of Second Chances by Dan Berne, the first novel published by Forest Avenue Press.

That sets up the story in a nutshell. 

The Gods of Second Chances is available now.  This is a book worth asking for from your local bookstore or library.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Family means everything to Alaskan fisherman Ray Bancroft, raising his granddaughter while battling storms, invasive species, and lawsuit-happy tourists. To navigate, and to catch enough crab to feed her college fund, Ray seeks help from a multitude of gods and goddesses—not to mention ad-libbed rituals performed at sea by his half-Tlingit best friend.

But kitchen counter statues and otter bone ceremonies aren’t enough when his estranged daughter returns from prison, swearing she’s clean and sober. Her search for a safe harbor threatens everything Ray holds sacred. Set against a backdrop of ice and mud and loss, Dan Berne’s gripping debut novel explores the unpredictable fissures of memory, and how families can break apart even in the midst of healing.

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

Mailbox Monday: The Book of Jonah

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.  Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

I got one book last week that caught my eye because of its intriguing premise.



The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman.  This is a modern retelling of the Jonah bible story, with a Manhattan lawyer cast in the starring role.  The whole idea really grabs me.  I want to see how Feldman turns such a religious story into contemporary fiction.

2014 Challenge: Foodies Read -- COMPLETED!

COMPLETED!

Margot from Joyfully Retired started the Foodies Read Challenge a couple of years ago, before passing the torch to Vicki from I'd Rather Be at the Beach, who is hosting the challenge on its own site, Foodies Read 2014.

This is always one of my favorite challenges.  I'm signing up again this year for the Pastry Chef level to read four to eight food books in 2014.

BOOKS FINISHED

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 (reviewed here)

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." There's more to it.)

French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes, & Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano (maybe she should have left off with French Women Don't Get Fat)

The Pearl Diver by Sujata Massey (a mystery set in the Washington, DC restaurant world)

Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor (an ambitious, creative novel about a Vancouver, BC chef seeking gastronomic authenticity)

BOOK POSSIBILITIES

There are several possibilities on my TBR shelves, including:

The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David E. Gumpert

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family by Patricia Volk

The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley by Elizabeth Romer

Epicurean Delight: The Life and Times of James Beard by Evan Jones

A Cordiall Water by M. F. K. Fisher

The Feasting Season by Nancy Coons

Dumas on Food: Selections from Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine by Alexandre Dumas

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano

NOTES

Last updated November 1, 2014.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads