News from Duck's Cottage

Seems to be a month for ex-politicos: Jimmy Carter's out with the personally annotated White House Diary and Condoleeza Rice has a family memoir- Extraordinary Ordinary People. Chris and I saw Carter on the Bill Maher show the other night. He is a truly brilliant man. Former Brit PM Tony Blair's Journey is still selling well, too. Two books that can be seen on the big screen right now are Kazuo Ishiguro's kinda creepy Never Let Me Go and Social Network, the adaptation of Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook which Charlie just started. Am anxious to see what he thinks as I really liked Mezrich's Busting Vegas and Bringing Down the House. Ben seems to like uber-intelligent social misfits as subjects. Out in mass market this month- Lee Child's 61 Hours (and, in hardback, the follow-up Worth Dying For); Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, James Patterson's I, Alex Cross and Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton. Just read This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper- a pretty funny story about an extremely dysfunctional (but still loving) family who comes together to sit shiva when the patriarch dies. Lots of crazy subplots and story lines, not to mention wacko characters but Tropper does a great job of capturing the disdain generations often have for one another and I can't help but wonder if that disdain isn't borne out of fear (on the part of a younger generation knowing that they too will one day be old) and anger (on the part of the older generation knowing why the younger generation holds them in disgust and that, in their opinion, youth is wasted on, well, the youth). Oops, sorry for the tangent. I've gone and gotten myself confused, though because then I immediately picked up Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. From the dysfunctional frying pan and into the pot. Unfortunately Franzen lacks the humour that I needed and got from Tropper that turns a sad, sorry family saga into a sad but funny family story. I'm only half-way through Franzen, though, so anything can change. Also just finished John Grisham's Ford County, a short story collection that is this month's Duck's Cottage Reading Group selection. Didn't do much for me. He should probably stick to lawyer lit which he does in The Confession, just out last week. Just got a cool albeit odd little book in- Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky. Subtitle: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On And Never Will. Schalansky gives each of these incredibly remote islands two pages, including a map,

some basic geographical information, population and then either a brief modern day description, an historical account or a summary of life on the island. Pretty quirky but for anyone ever mesmerized by thoughts of Pitcairn or Vanuatu it will make a great gift. Sharon Draper has been big amongst Dare County middle-schoolers of late including my Sarah (12). She read Forged by Fire, then insisted I read it. Draper's books have inner-city settings and juggle a lot of heavy issues like child neglect, abuse, addiction, and more but also more common school-age topics like making good choices. I actually found it to be a refreshing respite after reading several of the more popular middle school series like Pretty Little Liars and The Ashleys where every tween is wealthy, has a driver and the latest D & G satchel. Sarah has since moved on to Tears of the Tiger. Her English class is reading Tangerine by Edward Bloor which both she and Charlie pronounced 'weird'. Lydia Taylor was in the other day and was raving about Donna Leon. Leon has written a string of mysteries set in Venice, Italy, that feature Commissario Guido Brunetti. I almost booked a one way ticket the last time I read a book set in Venice so I had better tread carefully here. Mandy's been reading Dorothy Koomson's Goodnight, Beautiful- an intriguing story about a woman who agrees to serve as a surrogate mother for her married best friend but who is then (along with the baby) banished from their lives when the wife becomes unduly suspicious of her husband's texts. Piper recommends The Bells from Richard Harvell, which has been showing up on bestseller lists. Another swift seller in paperback right now is Jeannette Wall's Half Broke Horses 'a true-life novel'. Wall's documented her own dysfunctional family in The Glass Castle and her jumping off point for this book are the stories about her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Just out in paper this week is Beth Hoffman's wonderful debut novel, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Greg Mortenson's Stones Into Schools.