A Place to Lay My Head

A Place to Lay My Head
by Joe Moreland

Writing this review has a challenging new twist to it compared to any other review I've ever written.  That is the fact that it will most likely be read by the author of the book.  Yikes!  Never had that happen to me before!

A Place to Lay my Head is Joe's memoir of life in rural Oregon in a very poor family.  He's just a few years older than me and his story brought back the days when our best "toys" were our imaginations and our playgrounds were simply undeveloped outdoor landscape.  Computer games and fancy playground equipment didn't exist and consequently we explored and used our imaginations and created worlds so much larger than reality.  We also took a lot more risks and no one got sued by our parents if we were dumb.

But I digress.  This is Joe's story.

The story revolves around the "homes" and jobs his family found.  Their longest residence described in the book was at the dump.  They started with a broken down school bus and developed it into a maze of rooms consisting of structures built from items salvaged from the dump.  Crude and elementary even by the standards of that time, it was fascinating to read how this family thrived in conditions that are unimaginable to me.

The story spans from Joe's earliest memories to his latter years in high school and the family grows from five to seven. This family was poor but in no way lazy or dumb. The book is filled with stories of Joe's father designing, building and/or fixing things to use in their home or on their "farm."  He was rarely without a paying job as well.  I suspect their financial situation was more due to the way these parents viewed the world than anything else. 

Although their home was at the dump, they were also on the edge of Forest Service land. The family worked hard discreetly scraping a little farm out of that land and raised chickens, cows, and vegetables at one time or another. Their playground was a swimming hole and an entire forest.

The children were also hard workers.  They were expected to go to school as well as come home to chores. In the summer they cut, hauled & piled wood for the coming winter and found an assortment of jobs to earn cash.  I suspect their mother was a victim of some severe post partum depression and this family of boys also hand washed much of their clothing and cooked many of the meals.  Indeed, living their life was much harder than most of their contemporaries.

I was struck by some of the seeming lack of respect by the parents.  I don't like my choice of words in this case... maybe lack of concern?  The incident I am thinking of involves a time they were living in one of the nicest homes they'd had.  Yet Mom was unconcerned when her young boys chose the walls as a canvas for their art work. In fact she may have even encouraged them to use the cowboy wallpaper for such.  And when Dad brings an entire engine into the house so he can avoid the rain while he works on it, the oil spilling from it causes no reaction.  None of this is malicious, it just doesn't seem to concern or bother them.

While I found the story very interesting and such a contrast to my own childhood, I also felt the book was in need of some serious editing.  Along with a very nice narrative and occasional photos of the family, there was dialog tossed into the mix. I felt the dialog was unnecessary and dumbed down the text by being too contrived.  The story could have been told equally as well without it.  I'm not sure if the dialog actually got better as I went along or if I just got used to it, but it wasn't as detracting by the end of the book as at the beginning.

My other complaint was that the book seemed to just stop.  The family eventually builds a real home (although the county deemed it not fit to live in) and at that point the story ends.

Huh? 

We are told that the house was home to several families over the years and remains standing to this day, but what about the family?  I became vested in the lives of these five children and their parents and suddenly they were just gone, with a little hint that the parents and youngest child eventually moved to Washington.

This book needs an epilogue.  I  know that Joe went on to college, obviously winning a scholarship, but I have no idea about his siblings.  Did Ed find his career in fishing?  What about the younger children?  Why did Mom & Dad leave Oregon?

I need a tidy little bow to wrap up the story.  I give this book three of five shots.  It's an easy read and quite enjoyable.

Homer's Odyssey

Homer's Odyssey
by Gwen Cooper

Homer was a kitten, found only a few weeks old, with eyes so infected they had to be removed to save his life.  Of course an eyeless kitten is hard to find a home for so he was in danger of being euthanized.  Gwen Cooper rescues him and adopts him into her family which consists of herself and her two feline fur children adopted previously.

I adore this story of Homer's life.  He is truly an amazing cat.  His story ranges from out loud funny to tear streaked face to pure amazement.  And his Mom's telling of the story is perfect. Like everyone (almost) who meets Homer, I fell in love with him, too, and also wanted to be "Homer's buddy."

Okay, to be honest, I didn't want to just be his buddy, I wanted to be his new mommy and take him for myself.

 The things an eyeless cat, at least this eyeless cat, can do are amazing.  Like blind people who use echolocation to navigate their world, Homer has super sharp hearing and sense of smell to offset his "disability."  Indeed, "disability" can almost hardly be used in describing Homer. He is fearless and determined to make the world his own on his terms.

Homer enters Gwen's life when she has newly broken up with a live-in boyfriend.  As Homer's story unfolds, so does Gwen's, although hers is definitely the background story.  The most poignant part of the story was the telling of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center from the author's perspective as the resident of an apartment only a few blocks from ground zero.  Forced out of the area with no notice, the despair of not being able to get back to her apartment or her cats was unbearable. I witnessed 9/11 only through news coverage and was enthralled with this personal account.

I am a cat lover and related to this book in many ways with tales and memories of my own roaming through my mind as I read.  I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever been owned and loved by a pet.  And just one little *SPOILER ALERT* that you probably won't mind...  no cats die in this book, of old age or any other cause.  I think that would have made it unbearable!

Five shots of five from me.

I Am Nujood

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced
Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui

Nujood is a Yemeni girl, probably around 10 years old.  She is born in a very small village in the countryside where no records are kept of births. In a large family with illiterate parents no one is entirely sure of her age, but probably between eight and ten years.

As a young girl with older siblings there are many things happening around her that she doesn't understand.  She is interested in things children are.  Adult concerns are beyond her interests and understanding.

Nujood's family is cast out of their small village and go to Sana'a, the capitol of Yemen.  They arrive as a poor family.  Her father loses interest in supporting his family and spends his time chewing khat with his friends as his family loses their home and begin begging on the streets.  Eventually he agrees to marry Nujood off to a man three times her age in exchange for a dowry of about $750 (US value).

Understandably, Nujood is very upset by these circumstances and even more so as she learns what marriage means to a woman. Her husband forces himself on her night after night and beats her when she fights his advances. Her days are spent in dread of the coming night and the nightmares that follow. Somehow she finds the strength to go to the courts and ask for a divorce.  In her naive mind she believes it will be that easy.

Nujood was fortunate in connecting with judges and a strong female lawyer, Shada Nasser, who were outraged by her circumstances and fought for her divorce.  Although she was far below their legal age of marriage, her lack of birth records and the popular practice of marrying girls off this young was not in her favor of being granted a divorce. 

This book is Nujood's story and is told as simply as she tells it from the perspective of a child.  Her life and struggles are detailed but in its simplicity it failed to elicit the emotional response I expected of myself.  I am outraged that her story is one of many and that young girls are simply family possession in too many instances, but I felt detached from the story. For instance, Nujood was told by everyone in the legal system, her attorney and the judges, that her divorce would be very hard to get and she would likely fail.  However, it seemed to be granted very easily. Few details of the legal battle are shared.

I do feel it's a good "jumping off" point to learn more. I googled Nujood and Shada trying to find updates on either of them.  Nujood is doing well, the royalties from her book helping her family and her education.  Shada continues to help young girls in similar circumstances and lobbies for the legal age of marriage in Yemen to be raised.  There are more heartbreaking stories that parallel this one, indeed even in Nujood's own family.

I give the book three of five shots.  It's a story that needs to be told, but I would have liked more depth.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Ranson Riggs

Here I present another selection from the young adult or children's section of the book store or library.  There are some fun stories to be found there!

Within the pages of this story you will find many vintage photographs, such as the one on the cover of the book.  I couldn't help but think as I read the story that the author must have come across this collection of photos and decided to create a story around them. At the end of the book there is a small blurb along with the photo credits and I do believe the story was indeed conceived while pondering the "photographic evidence."

Jacob is a young child taken with his grandfather's tales of his life in an idyllic, happy home for children where he was sent after his family perished in the war.  The children were all "peculiar," each having some strange ability or characteristic. His grandfather shares strange photos of the odd children as he tells his stories. 

As Jacob grows older he comes to realize his grandfather had been making up stories to entertain him as a child and he easily sees through the gimmicky photography.  The days of boyhood fantasy are now behind him and he helplessly watches as his grandfather slowly loses his hold on reality. 

When Jacob's grandfather dies a violent death, Jacob begins to feel his own grasp on reality is slipping.  That is until he discovers all of his grandfather's stories are actually true and that he himself is an important ingredient in a story that continues on. 

Because I don't want to issue a spoiler alert I'll leave the synopsis of the story at that. Ranson Riggs spins a tale where past and present come together and Jacob has to make the decision of his lifetime.  And through it all we meet a cast of quirky characters that I found quite charming, and really not so odd.  There will surely be a sequel to this book.  I don't think the story can be left where it ended.  I only hope we have more peculiar photos to go along with it.

I give this novel four shots of five. 

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safran Foer

This is a story of Oskar, a young boy trying to make sense of his father's death two years after 9/11.  He finds a key in his father's things and decides if he can find what the key opens it will bring him closer to his father in some way.

As he searches for the mysterious lock that the key must fit we learn some about his ancestors and his past.  His grandmother lives alone in the apartment building across the street from him.  We learn about the grandfather he never met and the war and bombings his grandparents survived in Europe years earlier.  We meet the elderly man who lives in the apartment above Oskar but never leaves his apartment.  We meet people all around the city named "Black" as Oskar believes that name is a clue to finding the lock the key fits.

While looking for the key the stories are intertwined and the horrors of 9/11 are presented side by side with the horrors of World War II, the senselessness and human suffering.

I found parts of this book absolutely wonderful and captivating in detail, description and story telling.  However, I found even more of the book tedious to read due to the way it was written.  The author writes much of the story from Oskar's perspective, that of a ten year old boy who has suffered through a terrible tragedy, has secrets that are tearing him up and can't stop imagining the horrible scenarios his father may have died in. Some of the book is written as letters to people who will never read them, and other parts as conversation between a mute and a speaking person.  None of the conversation in the book is written in correct grammatical form, but in long paragraphs with only quotation marks separating one speaker from another.

I can appreciate what the author was doing in making his style actually a part of the story telling, but I found it difficult and distracting to read.  Part of my rating system for books is questioning myself as to whether I would read the same book again.  This book almost begs to be read a second time, but I honestly don't think I could.  How do I rate a book like that?

I'm going to give it two shots of five.  I think this is one of those books you will either love or hate and I feel less inclined to love it.

As a side note, this author also wrote "Everything is Illuminated."  I didn't read that book but saw the movie based on it and thought it was quite odd, too.  I suspect I just don't 'get' this author.     

The Firefly Dance

The Firefly Dance
Various Authors

I picked this one up specifically for the Sarah Addison Allen story since I was needing a "Sarah fix."  But like most compilations I was a bit disappointed.  I don't know if it's that the stories are too short to get into or just not entertaining enough... or perhaps I was rushing through them trying to get to Sarah's selection.  Yes, I think that's more probable now that I think about it.

Each story is about childhood and the sometimes painful path leading out of it into adulthood.  

Sarah's work was several little vignettes that followed a family through 3 or 4 phases of their lives.  Each could stand alone and together were interesting but almost like reading a diary of someone's "every day life."  I missed her usual touch of magic.

My favorite was the selection by Phyllis Schieber that was a portion of her novel, The Manicurist.  I found myself ready to read more after the three chapters included in this book and I am sure I'll do so eventually.  The author grabbed me with the exchange between a manicurist and her odd customer, followed by her husband's aversion to her intuition. There is so much more I want to know about the story.

Don't you hate it when authors end one book with the "free peek" at their next?  In the form of the first couple of chapters?  Um, yeah, that's what happened here.

I'm giving this three and a half shots of five.

Firefly Lane

Firefly Lane
Kristin Hannah

I read this book some time ago and recently found that I had shared my review on a friend's Facebook page.  My original review was on Visual Bookshelf which was an app that no longer exists.  I'm taking advantage of finding this copy to add it to my book blog where all my reviews are written now days.  Please read on:

(Date of original review unknown)

I immediately had a connection with this book. It starts in the 70's in Washington State with the two main characters just a few years younger than I was at that same time. Their girlhood experiences were similar to mine, in practically the same setting, and in this book we grew up together into the present day.

The story began to pull away from my interest in the adult years. I had problems finding Tully to be a completely believeable character and wanted to slap Kate for her lack of spine. Eventually I did get pulled back into the story as their lives continued to mature.

Despite Tully's ambition and singlemindedness I did find her involvement in Kate's family to be honest and well written. Again, Kate's lack of spine annoyed me in that she never drew a clear line between her daughter and her friend, nor did Tully ever try to understand Kate, but fed into Kate's daughter's teen angst and nourished it.

Finally, this is the 2nd book within a month that dealt with the horror of breast cancer. A subject that is just a little too close to home for me, but in the end a very important part of this story.

I recommend this story. It's good chic-lit and should be ingested with a box of tissues handy.