Book: Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? by Rhoda Janzen

A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right and Solves Her Lady Problems

Rhoda Janzen is the author of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, which was NYTimes best seller. She teaches Creative Writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

This is a good book with a not so good title. In fact, I think it's an awful title. But getting past that, Rhoda's life continues in this interesting and humorous account. I definitely recommend it. I was surprised by the content but don't want to say much for fear of taking away the pleasure of reading it. 

She writes about some pretty important life events in spite of her jaunty prose. I'm still thinking on her religious choice, for instance. It just now struck me that there are similarities to Eat, Love and Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert, which book I didn't like as much as this one. She does meet a man and she does find a new church. 

The other big thing is not eating and it's bigger than food, although there IS this scene:

"When Mitch and I first got together, we had dinner with a nice Christian couple who referenced the Jonah story in casual conversation. The husband and wife were citing the story as a metaphor, telling us of a time when they had been reluctant to answer God's call in a matter of service to their church. Something in their tone lay submerged under the current of general conversation. It pressed up from the deep and into my mouth, 'Hey,' I said brightly, 'do you guys believe in the literality of the Jonah story?' An uneasy silence descended--you'd have thought I had asked how much their new couch cost, or what they thought about Obama. I instantly realized the severity of my faux pas. Apparently, in Christian circles, unlike academic circles, one did not discuss where literality leaves off and metaphor begins. The wife set down her fork and looked at her husband, who nodded faintly. 'We do believe that big fish swallowed Jonah whole,' she said to me gently. She chose her words with clipped care, as if she had just discovered that she was dining with a heretic who deserved a good stoning. "

Just read the whole book; you won't be disappointed. 

Book: The Highway by C. J.Box

I picked this book up because it takes place in Montana. It's a so-so zu-zu book about a serial killer truck driver who delivers his victims to an old ranch near Yellowstone.

I always compare this genre to John Sandford's writing and, so far, I haven't found another author who comes close to Sandford when writing about criminals and cops.

This book / author would be about a C on the Sandford Scale. Still, there were some good passages and dialogue, the characters were credible and the venues worth the story for me. I've driven all those highways in southern Montana and know those mountains and rivers and little towns.

I'd probably try this author again.

Book: The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte

A book of short stories. I read all but one. (I did not read The Dungeon Master.) Wasted my precious time. Like who wants to read about creepy people who do lots of drugs and lie and have casual sex and are so clever and edgy and nuts and go nowhere and nothing real happens. 

Not that the author can't write well. He can. I read The Ask which was a NYTimes Notable Book.

This seemed to me like words written under the influence of some speedy drug...by a pretty smart guy.

Book: Double Double by Martha Grimes and Ken Grimes

A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism

Martha Grimes is the well known writer of mysteries and Ken is her grown son. They write alternating chapters about their respective lives, pre and post alcohol.  The book would be of interest to anyone who knows, who lives with, who is, or who is wondering if he is an alcoholic. Which would include 99% of Americans, I think.

Ken respects and endorses Alcoholics Anonymous while Martha went to a clinic. Both are now clean and sober and have been for years....or at least they were when this book was published. Alcohol always lurks and beckons, especially for Martha. Her honesty about her life with and after alcohol is refreshing. She misses drinking every single day. She writes as though she had a love affair with alcohol...a tender, sweet, comforting, almost passionate love affair, and on reflection, this might not be the best book to read if one is looking for a testimonial on the improved quality of life sans alcohol.

Martha: "I remember a movie in which the daughter of wealthy parents had come for dinner. There was no alcohol served because the father was a recovering alcoholic. Afterward, the girl and her mother were talking about the father, and the mother said ruefully that she had liked him better when he was drinking. That was a shocking admission, she knew, about herself. But he had lost a spark, something that made their lives more enjoyable. Since he'd stopped drinking, he was sad a lot of the time. In my clinic, I think they would come down hard on this woman; they'd call her an enabler. But she wasn't: She had never done anything to undermine her husband's earnest effort to stay sober. I thought she was being devastatingly honest."

For Martha, the enemy is not alcohol but the inability to regulate intake..."drinking uncontrollably every day..."

She says, "There's no recipe for ending an addiction. Unless you consider this one: Here is a glass. It has vodka in it. Do not pick it up."

"The blessed first drink that goes down like fire stolen from the gods...the deliverance, the relief from the sharp-edged day, from party anxiety, from boredom outside and in-, from the empty night."

Ken: "At the age of seventeen, all I wanted to do was drink pints and pints of Guinness...I loved Guinness more than anything....The dark, rich, bitter beer that slid down my throat like ice cream. Guinness was a spiritual experience."

"I graduated with the worst hangover I ever had in my life and was desperate for the ceremony to be over and for them [parents and relatives] to leave so I could start partying again."

The book will help the reader understand the problem.

Book: The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

The boys are Bob and Jim. They both now live in New York City. They, however, grew up in Shirley Falls, Maine, where their sister, Susan, still lives with her son Zach.

One day Zach throws a pig's head into a Somali mosque. The novel begins with this incident. Susan, a worried, crabby, rather unlovely woman calls her brothers for help. Bob and Jim live very different lives. Jim is rich and successful with a devoted, confident wife and three grown children. Bob gets by but is content with far less. He has no children and is single again. Their differences in character are slowly revealed as the novel progresses. But they are also family and they do what they can, in their own ways, to help Susan and Zach. As the story progresses, we also learn more of the lives of Bob's ex-wife, Jim's wife, Susan's elderly renter, a Somali man named Abdikarim, a Unitarian minister. There are the big city chapters and the small town in Maine chapters with themes of what families do for each other, how they care (or don't care) for each other and how the past (though seldom talked about) is the elephant in their lives.

So a fine stew of families, prejudice, love, deceit, youth, middle-age and morality is served up by an author with a mastery of the ingredients that make a wonderful story.

Ms. Strout was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Olive Kitteridge. She lives in NYC and Maine.

Book: Benediction by Kent Haruf

Benediction is a lovely novel as were Mr. Haruf's previous books (Plainsong and Eventide). The place is the high plains east of Denver in the small town of Holt, Colorado. The characters are Dad Lewis, his wife and his daughter. Dad is dying of cancer. He is a good man who owned a hardware store and worked hard his whole life; he was solid, stable...a good man. But his life was not without heartbreak.

The end of his life is a tale of days passing as he sits by a window looking out over his yard. He receives visits from a pastor, a neighbor, a few good friends. The ways of living in a small town are written in beautiful prose but simply, effectively. The author also shows us glimpses of the lives of those who visit Dad, both their present and their past. So this is also a novel also of those on the periphery, making it rich and satisfying.

But it isn't cloying or simplistic...just a fine mix of sweetness and sadness in the manner of other authors who do this so well. Wendell Berry comes to mind. To read it is a respite from the larger world of information overload, TV commercials, our devices, our restlessness.