The Book Blawg

Passionate Housewives Desperate for God, by Jennie Chancey and Stacy McDonald.

This is sort of the anti-feminist manifesto. I found the book inspiring, but didn't really give me anything new. The back of the book says, "Do you wrestle with cultural messages that demean the homemaker's calling and exalt instead the emotionally androgynous power-woman?" Um, no, not really. I'm pretty secure in my role as a lawyer-turned-stay-at-home-mom.

The Autism Answer Book: More Than 300 of the Top Questions Parents Ask, by William Stillman.

The ADD & ADHD Answer Book: Professional Answers to 275 of the Top Questions Parents Ask, by Susan Ashley, Ph.D.

I found both these books to be too general to be of much use. In addition, they are written from a very mainstream perspective, and ignore or only briefly mention alternative therapies and even dietary changes which have been helpful to so many people.

Disclaimer: I received complimentary review copies of these books.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters.

Jessie Kunhardt at Huffington Post summarizes the monster mash-up craze (" 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' Spin-Offs are Out of Control!").

I enjoyed Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, but not as much as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or its prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls. I just couldn't get past the fact that no rational society, when faced with giant malevolent sea creatures, would willingly choose to live near the ocean, on islands, or in a giant undersea city. What, there's no place to live inland? Also, I love, love, love, the movie version of Sense and Sensibility - the one with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant. It's a rare instance of my liking a movie more than the book, and I don't like where the book deviates from the plot of the movie. You know, Alan Rickman is pretty hunky and I don't like him made ugly, whether by Austen's writing or by squid-like tentacles.

The Milk-Free Kitchen: Living Well Without Dairy Products, by Beth Kidder.

I have been trying to eat dairy-free lately, due to my son's eczema, and I thought this book would help. However I was a bit disappointed when I looked for a dessert recipe - most involve substituting margarine for butter. First, I don't want to eat margarine, either. And second, if I did I wouldn't need a recipe book to make those substitutions.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, by Ree Drummond.

After reading quite a bit of buzz about The Pioneer Woman on my friends' blogs, I decided to check it out for myself. This book is beautiful to look at, fun to read, and full of meat-and-potatoes recipes (and a few others, too). A winner all around.

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.

Wuthering Heights is supposed to be one of the classics of English literature, but after reading it, I can't see what all the fuss is about. All of the characters are immoral if not downright evil. In tragic fiction one often finds a hero/heroine with a fatal flaw, or a sympathetic villain. Heathcliff has been wronged, but he takes revenge on the guilty and the innocent alike. Cathy has few qualities that would make Heathcliff or Edgar Linton love her. It will be interesting to watch a movie version of the book, and see how these characters are portrayed.

Says a New York federal appeals court (AP via law.com). Jessica Seinfeld was sued for trademark and copyright violations after her book, Deceptively Delicious (reviewed here) was published about the same time as Missy Chase Lapine's The Sneaky Chef. Both cookbooks involve sneaking vegetable purees into kid's foods. Lapine also sued Jessica's husband, commedian Jerry Seinfeld, for defamation based on comments he made on The Late Show with David Letterman.

I have a stack of books on my desk. Some need to go back to the library; all are taking up space. Several of them deserve a whole review to themselves - but I don't have time to write them. So I'll just give you a summary. If you are interested in what I'm reading, leave a comment and maybe I'll give it a more in-depth treatment.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith. I think I liked this prequel even better than the original PPZ (which I reviewed here). While adding zombies to Austen's prose was, though delightful, unwieldy at best, this book is an entirely original piece of writing.

The It Factor: Be the One People Like, Listen to, and Remember by Mark Wiskup. Not what I was expecting, this book deals mainly with tweaking the way you talk and ask questions. Didn't do much for me.

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton; completed By Marion Mainwaring. It's interesting reading this Regency-era book (published posthumously in unfinished form in 1938) alongside other Regency-era novels written over a century before, such as Pride and Prejudice.

The Telling (Seasons of Grace, Book 3) by Beverly Lewis - a satisfactory end to Lewis' latest three-book series.

Now I don't Tweet, or follow people on Twitter - I'm on information overload as it is - but I came across this list of the 50 Best Book People to Follow on Twitter. Looks good.

Since I last blogged about Jane Austen, I've read Emma (and watched the movie); watched Sense & Sensibility for about the tenth time; and read Austen's Northanger Abbey and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I also watched Becoming Jane, the fictional biography staring Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen.

Next up: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I did consider reading Austen's books Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, but I plan to read Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
and Mansfield Park and Mummies. After my recent Pride, Prejudice and Zombies experience, I learned that reading an original and its monster mash-up back-to-back can be a bit repetitive.

Not everyone likes the Austen monster mash.

Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys, by Lucinda Scala Quinn.

As the mom of four boys, I was of course highly interested in the subject matter of this book. On a daily basis, sometimes right after dinner, I hear cries of "mom, I'm still hungry!". And they're not even teenagers yet. I found the first part of this book, with discussion and ideas and cooking tips, quite interesting. However, the recipes aren't always kid-friendly. There are some basics here, like fried chicken and beef stew. But others would work great for a family that's a bit more "into" food than ours. Still worth checking out, though.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.

This is a fun book, short, easy to read. It gives a basic overview of philosophy, illustrated with a lot of really funny jokes.

Interesting review of Ralph Nader's novel "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" by Newsweek's Seth Colter Walls.

Like it? My last one (besides being a standard dull blogger template) was, I thought, hard to read. This one is simple and clean.

Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child's Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days, by Kevin Leman.

As parenting books go, this one's pretty good. It is similar in approach to Jim Fay's Love and Logic approach - though Love and Logic seems better suited for younger children; Have a New Kid for older children and teens. Sometimes when reading this book, however, I felt like it was directed toward completely permissive parents with completely spoiled kids. The basic principle is something that any parent with two kids and half a brain has figured out - that sooner or later, your children are going to want something from you, or need you to do something for them. And if they haven't cleaned their room or taken out the trash, you need to make it their problem, not yours. No nagging required.

There is another book in the series, Have a New Husband by Friday, which I plan to read, though I'm wary of the application of child-raising techniques to the marital relationship. Is there going to be a book How to Have a New Wife by Friday? I'm not sure that one would go over so well.

Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin.


I almost stopped reading this book in the middle. I have better things to do with my time. Seriously, unless you are a huge Kathy Griffin fan, or are trying to catch up on your celebrity gossip, just skip it.

Love Comes Softly, by Janet Oke.

I read this book years ago and decided to give it a re-read. I think I'll work through the whole series.

Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series) , Rebecca Housel (Editor), J. Jeremy Wisnewski (Editor), William Irwin (Series Editor).

This book is a collection of essays by different authors connecting the insanely popular Stephenie Meyer series with various schools of philosophical thought. It is part of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, which includes titles such as Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, 24 and Philosophy, and, naturally, Lost and Philosophy.

Frankly, I was a bit disappointed. Although there are a few sparkly gems among the essays, most either pose questions that are obvious and trite (i.e. "Do vampires have souls?" "Is Bella a feminist, or an antifeminist, heroine?") or try, like an undergraduate college paper, to apply deeper meaning where the author intended none. Students of philosophy will be bored by the lack of substance, while Twilight fans will be annoyed by writers who are less familiar with the books than they.