There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout by Teri Sloat

Fine print: I found this (Pacific Northwest) book at random in the Alaska section of Title Wave.

What I’m reading now: "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya

I’m new to the children book thing. Or, rather, I’m coming back to them after devouring them as a child when we checked out as many books from the library as we could carry. (The rule still applies, though sometimes I cheat with the convenient baskets Loussac provides.)

What I do know is that it is very easy to get lost among all those tiny book spines so when I find a book I like, I want to keep getting it as presents until I’ve covered my baby shopping list.

“There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout” by Teri Sloat is one such book. I’ve already bought two copies and if Title Wave had had another the other day, I would have gotten a third because one of the women in my knitting group just had her baby and she’d have fun reading this story to little Trixie.

The story is like the song we all know about the lady and the fly, and it is just as catchy. Maybe more so. Only it has Alaska-Pacific Northwest animals like trout, salmon, otter and whales. The illustrations by Reynold Ruffins are bright and fun and you can watch the lady’s belly grow and grow until she swallows the ocean. “What a commotion! She swallowed the ocean!”

Why aren’t more adult books this silly and fun?

32 pages, Owlet Paperbacks (2002), Ages 4-8

Just Breathe Normally by Peggy Shumaker

Fine print: I bought this book expecting to like it because I like “Blaze.”

What I’m reading now: “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” by Ann Brashares.

One moment you’re enjoying Alaska life with your husband, biking on a path safely separated from motor traffic. Next moment a kid on an ATV barrels around a blind corner and almost kills you both. You’re so injured you don’t even remember the accident and must listen over and over again while your husband tells you how strangers held your head and helped save your life.

One moment you’re a sixteen year old getting the younger siblings ready for school. Next moment, your mom is dead and your dad’s crazy second wife won’t let you eat an orange from a bowl on the kitchen counter.

Like Heather Lende, another beloved Alaska writer who got struck while riding her bicycle, Peggy Shumaker, a professor emerita of English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, faced a grueling recovery after an accident. Lucky for us readers, her memoir “Just Breathe Normally” keeps the grueling moments to snapshots and drifts between recovery and prose poems about Shumaker’s family history. Like with her book of sensual poems “Blaze,” this “poemoir” is full of lyrical gems, humorous surprises, poignant insights and also pain.

The snippets look unflinchingly (and sometimes flinchingly) at childhood, the present and all that in between. The portrait of her dysfunctional family is unsentimental toward her parents yet still tender: These are my parents, this is what I got and how we dealt, I’ll tell you how I judged them then and now let you judge. Not bitter. Well, not too much.

The nonlinear telling means that some scenes a reader might expect aren’t included, but the moments we do get often inform how the more standard-fare incidents would happen. A couple of times, I’m a little lost and don’t know how we got from there to here, but mostly the shifts in time and place are nice and clear and understandable and usually the vignettes can stand alone enough or are beautiful enough to make up from any confusion.

This could have been a memoir that dwelled on snippy medical staff, unfairness (like her not being able to drive while the boy who hit her can) or growing up too soon, but it is all told poetically and with such lyrical language that it rises above each of these things (and also sits on my nightstand for a week while I indulge in page-turning fiction). The beauty of the language and the wisdom in the vignettes make up for the fact that “Just Breathe Normally” brings up a lot of memories about time spent in hospitals and my grandparents’ death, moments I don’t want to revisit.

The picture on the book flap is a stock author photo from before the accident so you missed what I and others saw at a reading at Title Wave in September. Her eye was still healing and partially closed – the slight disfiguration made her story so much more real. This isn’t fiction, this isn’t an academic musing on pain, this is something that changed her being in ways we can see, as well as read about.

University of Nebraska Press, $24.95, 267 pages. Part of the American Lives Series edited by Tobias Wolff

The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax – Review extras

Fine Print: I reviewed this novel for the Anchorage Daily News. Below is what didn’t make the article.

What I’m reading now: Still Water Saints by Alex Espinoza

Wisdom in book by (real life) Varian Fry, an American who helped artists reach safety during World War II: “You can’t take away people’s idea of themselves. Not at the last minute, when they’re facing a dangerous situation. It makes them less stable, less predictable. Everyone clings to some silly thing or other. Everyone seems to have one thing they can’t live without.”

What I don’t mention in my review is that I didn’t really want to like this book so it took me by surprise that I couldn’t put it down after I read the first line in the parking lot. It was a sunny day and the car was heating up, but I opened the door rather than go inside and finish my errands. Why didn’t I want to like this book? Nothing against Andromeda, who I’ve seen a couple times at readings and seems pleasant enough. Her book on renting public use cabins is my bible for cabin adventures and I have another book of hers on my shelf. No, it was more pure jealousy. I applied for a grant she got from the Rasmuson Foundation when I was writing my novel and needed a computer in order to work. I thought she had books already out so I deserved the money more than her. So petty, so true! I think some of the characters in her novel would appreciate it.

But I did like the novel, though the middle was a bit rough getting through and I wanted the narrator Feliu Delargo to be more political and emotional from the get go. Even death does not rattle him until it is piling up to his ears and even then he is too calm. He’s Spanish! Where’s the passion? It all goes to the cello, which we could see more of. And he could have some small victories.

I also liked that his hometown is named Campo Seco—dry countryside. And then there is the scene when the peasants take the bull. You’ll see what I mean. Ayayay.

Here are some more quotes that I want to share (all out of order and without permission from the publisher):

“ ‘Feliu,’ he (Justo) said. ‘We’re living in a time of messages, not art.’ ”

“The beast over there doesn’t know what’s coming. But we do. I recommend the middle road.”
“But you’re not middle—middle is moderate, Loyalist, prodemocracy…"
“No. The other middle."
“Which is?”
“Survival.”

“Duarte’s cello was a glossy caramel color, and the sound it produced was as warm and rich as the instrument looked. It sounded like a human voice. Not the high warble of an opera singer or anyone else singing for the stage, but rather the soothing voice of a fisherman singing as he mended his nets, or of a mother singing lullabies to her sleepy children.
“When the cellist reached a crescendo on one of the lower strings, I felt a strange sensation, both pleasurable and disturbing. It reminded me of holding a cat, feeling its purrs resonate with me. Listening, I felt the sensation strengthen, as if the cello’s quivering vibrato was actually boring into me, opening a small hole in my chest, creating a physical pain as real as any wound. I was afraid of what might fall out of that hole, and yet I didn’t want it to close, either.”

“After the cello came, my world both shrank and brightened, like a piece of wood burning down into red-hot coal. I woke, for the first time in my entire life, knowing exactly what I needed to do.”

Al-Cerraz: “I still think that motocars are the way of the future. It fascinates me. Is there any more important question, really, than what will last?”

Harcout, Inc. 560 pages. $25.

Read what the New York Times printed.

Reading Deprivation

Fine Print: No Alaska books this week. No books at all. Oh my.

What I’m reading now: Nothing. Ack! But as soon as this week is over, I’ll return to “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” by ZZ Packer, “Letters to a Young Novelist” by Mario Vargas Llosa and “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare (none Alaskan).

In a bout of energy to reconnect with my inner creative self, I picked up “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. I began the twelve-week course four or five years ago and stopped somewhere around week two or three, retaining nothing but my morning pages, which I adore and crave if neglected. It has taken me two months to get to Week 4, but that’s all right. Except, that one of this week’s tasks is reading deprivation. Are you kidding me? I know. It sounds ridiculous, but she sees it as a purging of other voices and forcing your own productivity. I have to say, I have been writing and thinking like a self-sustaining fireworks display. A constant Pop! But it is weird and out of my routine, not an easy thing to rearrange for an OCD person like me. No newspaper, no fiction, no internet, no magazines. However shall I eat my breakfast and lunch? (Quickly, it turns out.) I’m only writing emails and checking them if necessary. Also little or no TV and radio because they too can poison the well.

I’m restless and have trouble concentrating on talk radio. And it’s only Tuesday.

Beluga Days by Nancy Lord

Fine Print: I have not finished. I’m sorry, dear blog reader. I know I let you down. And if this was for some publication that paid me enough to buy this week’s groceries or at least some fresh veggies for dinner, then I would have slogged through. I do intend to pick it up again because the fate of the Cook Inlet beluga is the fate of all animals in Alaska.

What I’m reading now: Affinity by Sarah Waters

Quoted in the book: “The beluga can act like the canary in the coal mine, as an indicator of ecosystem health.” –Bob Shavelson of Cook Inlet Keeper

If belugas are your favorite animal, then please pick up this book as soon as possible. In “Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale,” Nancy Lord travels all around—outings to tag and track the whales, meetings on belugas and trips to aquariums—and interviews all sorts of people to learn as much as she can about this creature. In her often elegant prose, she presents different sides of the whale debate, careful to tread respectfully around Native Alaska hunting and culture. The book also extends beyond belugas to a side of Alaska tourists (and residents) miss and teaches about how political the endangered species listing is. In the paperback version, she has a new preface about recent developments.

But, really, whose favorite animal is the beluga? They are not as cool as killer whales or big enough to swallow a fishing boat and inspire legends. They might make nice meals for those that enjoy that sort of thing. And it might be fun to spot their white and gray humps when kayaking, but now there are so few belugas in Cook Inlet that either activity is unlikely; an estimated 300 exist. Do you have to be a fan to turn the pages of this book? No, but it would help.

Lord has a literary, essay-like style and a subtle sense of humor (“moments stuck with me like sea lice to the side of salmon”), but she works so hard to present a balanced, fully researched point of view that sometimes it gets a little dull. Informative! Thorough! Enough to give me nightmares about whales when I made the mistake of reading it before bed, but not quite enough to stop me from reading a couple other books since starting it. The problem is: It is a lot of beluga.

You care because you know you’re supposed to care. You don’t want another creature to go extinct or politicians to manipulate the system, but after a while the most interesting thing about the beluga story are the people she interviews and they come and go.

Cook Inlet belugas made the front page April 20 when the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed to list the belugas an endangered, www.fakr.noaa.gov. In 2000, NMFS determined the belugas were not endangered, prompting a lot of controversy which Lord covers in her book. According to the Anchorage Daily News article, public comment on the listing are due by June 19. The paper quoted Sen. Ted Stevens as saying “This is being spearheaded by people who want to stop development in the Cook Inlet region.” Rep. Don Young said, “This whole thing is out of whack.”

The International Whaling Commission meets this month in Anchorage.

The Mountaineers Books, 272 pages, $16.95

David Sedaris was here

Fine Print: Not an Alaskan. Not a book about Alaska. Just a literary good time.

What I’m reading now: Beluga Days by Nancy Lord. Still. I’m probably too slow a reader for a literary blog, but I’m having fun.

David Sedaris nearly filled the 2,000-seat Atwood Concert Hall last night. It was so nice to see so many people out in support of a queer writer. All the literary liberal types replaced their fleece for slacks and put on their best square glasses for the occasion. KSKA 91.1 and Title Wave Books brought him up here, and Bede Trantina, station manager at KSKA who introduced Sedaris, got almost as much applause as the headliner. What a bunch of NPR geeks we are.

And Sedaris was just as funny, witty and observant as always. The images and juxtapositions he shared will stay with me for a long time. And the laugh therapy was worth the admission. I’m not sure about reading the zombie books he recommended though…

Read what ADN art reporter Dawnell Smith thought about the night.

What others say: Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

Fine Print: I haven’t read this book yet, but it came out Tuesday and is already number 7 on Amazon so I thought I’d include an entry. Also check a New York Times article on literary blogs and the decline of newspaper reviewers—relevant especially to me since this blog developed because I wanted to have a book column for the Anchorage Daily News but they said they didn’t have the money to pay me—for a column or reviews.

What I’m reading now: Beluga Days by Nancy Lord

Anchorage Daily News:
The ADN picked the novel as its May book club pick. There will be an author reading and book signing at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 29th at Title Wave Books, 1360 W. Northern Blvd. Free, but tickets required.

Novel involving Alaska Jewish colony is rooted in history
by Tom Kizzia
Imagine, if you please, a city of 3.2 million people on the shores of Baranof Island around Sitka. The official language is Yiddish, the inhabitants are Jews, and their lights stretch across the in...

Associated Press

Chabon creates alternate reality in `Yiddish Policeman's Union'
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - A wartime proposal to turn Alaska into a sanctuary for Jews fleeing the rising Nazi menace failed. But suppose it hadn't.

Chabon sets Jewish homeland in Alaska in new book
Michael Chabon: When did great writers quit telling great stories? That was Michael Chabon's complaint in his introduction to "McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales" ...

New York Times
Looking for a Home in the Limbo of Alaska
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
From the moment of his precocious debut in 1988 with “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” it was clear that Michael Chabon was an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist.

The Frozen Chosen
By Patricia Cohen
ASIDE from geography, Sitka, a boomerang-shaped island in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska, has very little in common with the imaginary city named Sitka conjured up by Michael Chabon in his latest book, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.”

HarperCollins. 414 pages. $26.95

Winter by Cornelius Osgood

Fine Print: This book takes place in Canada, not Alaska, and the author isn’t from here either, but the experiences mirror events here and Juneau author Nick Jans wrote the introduction.

What I’m reading now: Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

In 1928, an ethnographer name Cornelius Osgood plopped himself down in remote far north of Canada. As he admits in the forward, his documentation of the Athapaskan peoples was a failure, but in return, the chronicle of his winter makes for a fascinating read. Osgood first published this book in England in 1953. I read the 2006 publication by Bison Books and University of Nebraska Press, which includes a welcome introduction by Juneau author Nick Jans, who also wrote “The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell’s Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears.”

This book contains compelling descriptions of the day-to-day adventures of surviving in such a sparse, cold village, a village where the inhabitants are quick to help with fishing nets and proper clothing, but where friendships can be harder to maintain than a fire made of twigs in a drafty cabin.

Osgood provides great detail on winter fishing, mushing, how to warm his dwellings, buildings and other seemingly mundane aspects of winter village life. His observations bring to life the area around and beyond Great Bear Lake. One time he is on the trail, sharing a tent with a group of people. Some are sleeping as he warms his biscuits up next to the fire. One woman sits up, spits out her tobacco juice then lies back down to sleep. Some juice gets on his biscuits, but he eats them anyway because he is that hungry and the rolls are almost thawed.

The scene of him pulling fish from the frozen lake, when the icy water is warmer than the air so the fish and net freeze to his skin, is intense.

If you aren’t into dogs, fishing or man-making-it-in-the-wild, some sections might drag. If you can’t get enough of winter adventures, pick up this book.

I’m going to pass on my copy to a friend who has been reading Alaska and mountaineering tales such as “Into the Wild” and “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer. This book will provide a nice contrast to the grand adventures because while it is seemingly tame in drama, life-threatening moments are bound to happen when traveling by dog sled in isolation. The depictions of the cold have such matter of factness that you can see how it can be a nice day when it warms up to zero.

He does have a patronizing tone toward Native peoples, but given the time, language barriers and relatively limited amount of white people that had visited the area, I can forgive him. He respects the help he receives and knowledge they have, but sometimes lumps their decisions, dogs and way of life together dismissively.

“Winter” makes me have more respect and understanding of people who do the Iditarod and other winter craziness. And here I brag about running in below five weather! Hah! I have a heated shower to return to. But Bill, a white man married to a Native woman who befriends Osgood, says that up there, they appreciate winter because the fishing is better and there are no mosquitoes or sand flies.

Hunger Pangs by Cinthia Ritchie

Fine Print: Cindi is a former co-worker and current friend. She gave me a copy of the book in manuscript form for my own enjoyment, but I decided to share my reaction to the world, or at least post it on this site.

What I’m reading now: “Middlemarch” by George Eliot

Cinthia Ritchie’s agent is currently shopping “Hunger Pangs” around to various publishers. Once it hits a home and makes its way to the shelves, you should check out this literary memoir because the language is beautiful and story haunting.

Readers of the Anchorage Daily News are familiar with Ritchie’s work. She has been an award-winning features writer and columnist for several years. Ritchie has the knack to make the person she’s interviewing alive by noticing small gestures and certain phrases. Ritchie earned her MFA from University of Alaska Anchorage and has published her stories, poetry and essays in a variety of local and national publications. The Rasmuson Foundation awarded her a grant to work on “Hunger Pangs.”

When you read this lyrical work, you might want to have some food nearby. I don’t mean popcorn you can idly snack on. I mean some hardy nourishment, preferably something that will drip and stain on your clothes to remind you that you are not starving yourself like the narrator and her sister, that you are healthy and of sound mind. I craved thick hot chocolate, not the brown, powdered sugar but the kind that will scald your tongue even with whipped cream. Short of that, I ate chocolate chips.

Food plays a central role in this book. Food connects memory and family; food is a way to punish and reward; food is so much more than mashed potatoes and stolen sweets. The book makes me think about my eating habits, my images of myself and food, and my relationship to food. The book does not delve into the cliché of the woman coveting Bon Bons in the closet, but instead presents a horrific image of a girl, several girls, unable to savor food, and in some cases life, because of the stepfather’s abuse of the narrator and her sisters.

The writing is that exquisite kind that makes you realize we haven’t yet lost society to iPods. It is not a skip-through-the-pages easy read. I had to set it down, let myself breathe, read something a little more happy and come back when I was in a better place. But when I did come back, when I was ready, it was as rich and as bitter and as satisfying as quality dark chocolate.

The version I read may not be the one you find in stores, but the story and the hungry, haunting feeling will remain.

The version I read skips around and reads more like an essay than a narrative. Because the narrator is discussing her disjointed childhood and its effects on her now, I think that skipping is warranted and adds an element of craziness that connects us to the story. Not that we don’t just want to hug her, because we do.

One editor complained the book didn’t have resolution, but this is not a tidy book, a blow-dried hair and stilettos book. This is a wild, barefoot, farm-child book and a memoir of a woman who is still working on her own resolution. It would be an injustice to tie this story up with a red ribbon. It is much more satisfying to see her feet bleed in the end and have her kiss a man we may not want her to kiss.

Like with many good books that draw me into their world, I am left wanting more. I want to know more about her son and his father, about other elements in her life. I want to see each family member a little clearer, even Deena whom we know so well and whose death drives the book.

A Deeper Sleep by Dana Stabenow

Fine Print: When someone heard I was moving to Alaska, she quickly grabbed a scrap piece of paper and wrote down Dana Stabenow's name. "You have to read her books," she said. I'm generally not a fan of genre mysteries (Ladies Number One Detective Agency series an exception) so it took me a while to pick up a book of hers. Below is a review I wrote for the Anchorage Daily News. Somewhat Spoiler Alert.

Book I'm reading now: "Hunger Pangs" by Cinthia Ritchie (in manuscript form, her agent is currently shopping it around to publishers.)

Dana Stabenow’s latest Kate Shugak novel raises questions about small town ethics and justice. Though “A Deeper Sleep” starts with a murder, the book is not about finding who done it. Within a few pages, we learn about the man most believe is responsible for the killing – and several other deaths that are described in vignettes which contain the book’s best writing.

A jury finds the supposed murderer, Louis Deem, not guilty, and former assistant to the Anchorage district attorney Shugak and her love interest state trooper Jim Chopin believe Deem has again gotten away with murder. Stabenow never clarifies who killed the women, though Deem, who was dating and beating them, is the most likely candidate and an all around bad guy. The next couple of murders in the book are also unsolved until the end when the apparent truth varies from what most characters believe, and justice is not traditionally served. The unresolved ending sets up the 16^th book in the series but leaves the reader unsettled.

Plot and catching up new readers to the series create clunky introductions of characters and pat dialogue, as if Stabenow has to present the familiar faces fans expect as opposed to the people living the story.

We learn Shugak is tough and everyone is scared of her because Stabenow tells us so from Chopin’s perspective. But other than a couple planted scenes, we don’t see her as someone to be afraid of. She is stubborn, opinionated and not shy about taking control, but that’s not scary.

I’m not sure why Shugak doesn’t want to follow her late grandmother’s wishes and footsteps to be a leader in the tribal council. By all accounts, she already is a role model and just needs to hop aboard the council seat, but for whatever reason, she doesn’t. It might just be a stubborn kick she has or she has some genuine concerns. The absence of her reasons grates.

A favorite character and element that emerges is Auntie Vi and her cohorts known collectively as the aunties. They bring out the best in Shugak and don’t let Stabenow play too many author tricks with them. Still, they have flaws and can make mistakes, but their errors only make them more real and believable.

Despite the characterization imperfections and some awkward moments, I wanted to know what would happen. I read the book in three sittings in one day, pushing aside other obligations and delaying dinner. Stabenow knows how to keep the pace of the book moving forward and the reader wanting more.

One of the series’ and book’s strengths is the glimpse of Alaska life. The courtroom scene and crime investigation are not slick like on TV but more like the awkward, human and seemingly incomplete ones we read about in the newspaper. The frigid area known as the Park and the small towns of Niniltna and Ahtna are populated with Pilgrim-family look-alikes, effects of FAS, domestic violence, the tribal system, people grateful for flush toilets and aunties that can host a great potlatch.