Educated
Tara Westover

WOW. I’m a sucker for Mormons-gone-awry stories, especially the fundamentalists. However, this memoir is more about isolation and mental illness than religion and I still loved it. Tara grew up in a family that lived in the mountains of Idaho. Her parents opted not to send their children to public school. (It wouldn’t be accurate to say the children were homeschooled because very little education of traditional subjects occurred.) Tara’s dad made a living doing a variety of things, including salvaging scrap metal and selling it. He was opposed to anything he deemed a directive from the government, such as wearing seat belts. This may or may not have been because he had undiagnosed bipolar disease. Tara was the seventh and youngest child in the family. I’ll warn you that if you’re squeamish, you may squirm from time to time when inevitable accidents occur. The real harm, however, not physical but mental. The reader aches to see Tara long to be connected with her family after she miraculously attended school on her own and learned about all sorts of things that one usually would learn growing up, such as The Holocaust or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading this book made me realize that separating from your family is not like cutting off a hand or foot, but more like being halved down the middle. I listened to the audio book from libro.fm and the reader is good. I recommend either reading this book in print or listening to the audio.

Stray City
Chelsey Johnson

After I finished listening to Educated, I started listening to Stray City by Chelsey Johnson Fun fact, recently learned from Amy Thielen: the reader of Stray City, Natalie Moore, is a former classmate of Amy’s! See Sally’s review of Stray City below, but I’ll tell you I’m enjoying this well-written, original story and looking forward to hosting Chelsey on Independent Bookstore Day!

How to Stop Time
Matt Haig

You may know I can be a little fangirly over British author Matt Haig. We always stock Haig’s non-fiction book, Reasons to Stay Alive; I follow him on Twitter, where he is very active; and often speak of him.

Haig’s latest book is a novel called How to Stop Time. The protagonist, Tom, is a man who is not immortal, but he ages very slowly, approximately one year for every fifteen that you and I age. He appears to be 41 years old, but in fact is over 400. This means Tom’s not worried about what a lot of humans are worried about, death, but he also can’t stay in one place too long, lest someone notices he doesn’t seem to be aging. The book is well-written and includes all the best themes from vampire books without any of the blood sucking. Tom’s latest adventure is moving to London and working as a high school history teacher. While Tom doesn’t need to brood about death, he does think a lot about what many of us brood about—love and romance. This book is filled with heart and nostalgia and I’m loving every word.

Stray City
Chelsey Johnson

Part of our celebration of Independent Book Store Day will be hosting the hometown launch of Stray City, the wonderful new book by Park Rapids native Chelsey Johnson. (And yes, Chelsey is the daughter of Jill and Deane Johnson, who founded Beagle Books.)

Stray City is a book about the families we come from and the families we create. All the characters, even the dog and the cat, are strays seeking family.

When Andrea Morales leaves rural Nebraska for college in Portland, Oregon, she discovers a world of new ideas, and is able to live openly as a lesbian for the first time. When her parents discover her sexual orientation, they withhold their financial support, hoping Andrea will return to their home and family, and to the mold they envision for her life.

Instead of returning to Nebraska, however, Andrea stays in Portland and builds both a new life and a new family, composed of her friends. This section of the book is a love letter to Johnson’s life in Portland in the late 1990s, a time and place when strays and misfits migrated to the city in search of home and created a vibrant sub-culture.

After a series of romantic disappointments, Andrea develops a friendship with a man named Ryan and, against her better judgment, sleeps with him. She’s careful to hide this relationship from her friends—until she becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby. We follow along as Andrea and Ryan negotiate their future, and as Andrea continues to build a family for herself and for her baby. The final section of the book is set in Bemidji!

Johnson writes beautifully, and the book is full of gentle humor. For some readers, the book will give a glimpse into a community which is new to them; other readers may find their community depicted in literature for the first time.

Please join us in welcoming Chelsey and her book back to Park Rapids and to the bookstore!

Note: this review, in a slightly different form, will appear in the Park Rapids Enterprise.

The Punishment She Deserves
Elizabeth George

We all have favorite authors and celebrate each new book by them. One of my favorites is Elizabeth George, who has written a lengthy series of mysteries featuring Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers of New Scotland Yard. In this, the latest book in the series, Havers and their boss, Isabelle Ardery, are sent to the small town of Ludlow after a member of Parliament requests Scotland Yard to look into a death there. It was ruled a suicide, but the father of the dead man does not accept that as a possibility. Ardery and her boss are hoping that Havers will make a mistake egregious enough that they can justify transferring her to another (and remote) jurisdiction. However, Ardery is preoccupied by issues in her own life and rushes the investigation, overlooking several important factors. When Havers returns to Ludlow, this time with Lynley, their investigation uncovers a great deal of information. The book is vintage George, and it was a pleasure to be again in the company of old friends.

Give a Girl A Knife
Amy Thielen

I was fascinated by Amy's description of the time she spent working in some of New York City's finest restaurants. She persevered through long hours, little pay, unreasonable expectations and at the same time made me believe that, for her, working as a chef wasn't just a job.

In some ways, it was a dream come true. The memoir takes us back to the years when Amy was growing up in Park Rapids and the lessons that she learned about food and cooking from her mom, grandma, and extended family. These lessons she would blend with the knowledge gained in New York City and the vegetables from her own garden to create her own style.

However, this memoir is not only about cooking. It is about family, love, and much more. We learn how Amy, her husband, and their young son eventually make their way back to their acreage north of Park Rapids, making it their year-round home. Give a Girl a Knife validates the belief that with determination it is sometimes possible to create a life that is a unique combination of our dreams. I found Amy's writing to be very honest and descriptive and Give a Girl a Knife to be a very enjoyable read.

This Idea is Brilliant
John Brockman

There’s a new book out that just blows me away and it’s NOT Sci-Fi….and you know it’s pretty hard to drag me away from Sci-Fi (unless, of course it’s Unicorn Sci-Fi.) The first thing I noticed when this book showed up in my in-basket was that it’s 500+ pages long. For me that’s not a good sign, and second it was a collection of ideas, also not making points. But I thumbed through it and was surprised. The author, John Brockman, asked the question “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?” and he asked this of 206 (actually probably more) sharp minds in 2017. OK, I know, your first reaction is “Keep walkin’. Nothing to see here.” But you would be wrong. The responses people had were amazing and you don’t have to be a nerd to appreciate or read them. The best part is the ideas these brilliant people wrote up only took 2-3 pages apiece to explain (500 pages; 200 ideas = 2.5 pages /idea). So you can pick the book up, quickly read something and then go off to a dinner party and casually drop Synaptic Transfer as a good conversation starter (If the dinner party is in a bar you may want to reconsider your topic.) The biggest problem I had was that after each idea I had to stop and ponder it for a bit (You can really do that? Wow that’s cool. I need to find out more!) Alas, there is no index for further reading, but the source/person for the idea is provided with each section. I really liked this book, even though it took me forever to get through it (see above.) If you do get the book and happen to like ‘The Universe of Algorithms,’ email me and we’ll talk.

American Heiress
Jeffrey Tobin

This is the story of Patty Hearst from the time of her kidnapping to after her trial as a revolutionary with the Symbionese Liberation Army. Alongside her story is the history of California in the 1970's. This was on our list for the library book club here in Arizona. I wasn't very interested, but they say book clubs give you a chance to read something you wouldn't ordinarily read, which was true in this case. I did learn who Patty was, what her story was about, and also some about the Hearst family. There was a lot of action to keep one interested. The mystery remains today: was Hearst brain-washed into committing crimes or did she truly believe she was a revolutionary?

The Last Runaway
Tracy Chevalier

Honor Bright accompanies her sister, setting sail from England to America. They are Quakers and Ohio is their destination. When her sister dies of yellow fever. Honor is forced to move in with her sister's fiancée's family who are as unwelcoming as the land. She becomes involved in the underground railroad, which is another interesting facet to the story. Chevalier is one of my favorite authors and she didn't disappoint me with this great historical fiction. She is the bestselling author of the Girl with the Pearl Earring which was made into a film. Chevalier throws in some interesting facts about American and English quilts to add to the story. A most enjoyable read.

Taking Aim:
Daring to be Different, Happier, and Healthier in the Great Outdoors
Eva Shockey

Knowing that we have female deer hunters in our area, I thought it would be interesting to read and review this book. Eva and her dad, Jim Shockey, are co-hosts of Jim Shockey's Hunting Adventures on the Outdoor Channel. Eva always thought she would follow in her mom's footsteps and be a dancer. However, after graduating from college she decided to follow her dad and learn how to hunt. It became her passion. In her book, Eva not only tells about her thrilling hunting trips but why she hunts. She also encourages women to face the challenges in whatever they do. Men will find this book full of adventure and I think will enjoy it too.

The Changeling
Victor LaValle

I couldn't put this book down. It starts out as a sweet, rather quirky New York love story between a Jamaican woman and a man named West. But soon West deserts his wife and young son Apollo. The boy has nightmares about his father in a mist. He grows up to become a rare book dealer and the lover of a librarian who spends a year in Brazil before accepting him. Apollo has a boy of his own (the birth scene is memorable) and is a loving, involved father. But gradually you realize something is off with these people. What's causing this? Is it psychosis? Technology? Magic? Maybe all the above?

If you are a fan of Sendak's Outside Over There you absolutely must read The Changeling.

The Uncommon Reader
Alan Bennett

The Queen (have you watched The Crown?) follows her alarmed yapping dogs and discovers a mobile library parked outside the Buckingham Palace kitchen. She steps into the library to apologize for the dogs, and checks out a book just to be polite. That book leads to another, and another, and soon she becomes an obsessive reader (to the alarm of her ministers and much of her public). Bennett, who gave us The Madness of King George, uses this delightful little book to extol the transformative power of reading.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J.K. Rowling

I read it again. The whole series. I didn’t exactly plan to: late one night I picked up the first book because I was too tired to start a new novel and just want to read myself to sleep with an old friend book. But I got caught: these books are just so good! And I found reading them this time surprisingly soothing. There are many parallels to our time. For example, Voldemort deniers are like climate change deniers. If your political beliefs are unlike mine, I bet you’ll find metaphors in the Harry Potter books, too. The things that scare us about today are not unique, they are part of the human condition. We shall survive! There will be terrible set-backs, but the arc of history shall climb.

Circe
Madeline Miller

Last month I found myself, quite unexpectedly, in a serious ‘reading slump’. This has never happened to me before, so I was a little bewildered and yes, maybe even a little depressed. By accident, maybe even desperation, I mentioned my predicament to Sally, here in the shop, and she directed me to Laurie Hertzel’s article in the Star Tribune about this very thing.

To effect a cure I read Circe, by Madeline Miller. It’s the story of the goddess who is famous, in Homer’s Odyssey, for changing visitors to her island into animals. It’s the perfect blend of myth and fantasy to work a cure on winter doldrums. Not to mention posing some interesting thoughts on what exactly it means to be immortal. What are the effects of an adolescence that lasts for a couple of millennium, rather than maybe a mortal’s decade? Interesting stuff!

The book will be released April 10.

Leopard at the Door
Jennifer McVeigh

This book was recommended at the Beagle and Wolf Night-in. At the time I placed it in my "A" list of books I wanted to read, and I'm glad I did. It's one of the best I've read this year. McVeigh, has a gift for fleshing out her characters so well that the minute they appear, you have a visceral reaction to them. The story takes place in mid-1950's Kenya. It's sort of a later Out of Africa, if you remember that story. If you have a bent for adventure, with a good dose of introspection, here's a book you will not be able to put down.