Not sure how I missed this when it came out last year, but I found it now. Put out by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, it is much more parody than children’s book. I thought I might enjoy a little political levity while stressing out about politics but I am too far gone for this book to reach me.
WARNING: if you are a fan of the “dotty old racist”* in the White House, then this is not the book for you.
*Thank you, Jon Lovett, for this. Listen to “Lovett or Leave It, aweek in review recorded in front of a live audience. It’s great,” a podcast from Crooked Media.
From the publisher:
What do you do when you spot a wild Trump in the election season? New York Times bestselling author and comedian Michael Ian Black has some sage advice for children (and all the rest of us who are scratching our heads in disbelief) in this perfectly timely parody picture book intended for adults that would be hysterical if it wasn’t so true.
The beasty is called an American Trump.
Its skin is bright orange, its figure is plump.
Its fur so complex you might get enveloped.
Its hands though are, sadly, underdeveloped.
The Trump is a curious creature, very often spotted in the wild, but confounding to our youngest citizens. A business mogul, reality TV host, and now…political candidate? Kids (and let’s be honest many adults) might have difficulty discerning just what this thing that’s been dominating news coverage this election cycle is. Could he actually be real? Are those…words coming out of his mouth? Why are his hands so tiny? And perhaps most importantly, what on earth do you do when you encounter an American Trump?
With his signature wit and a classic picture book style, comedian Michael Ian Black introduces those unfamiliar with the Americus Trumpus to his distinguishing features and his mystifying campaign for world domination…sorry…President of the United States.
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6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
A CHILD’S FIRST BOOK OF TRUMP by Michael Ian Black. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (July 5, 2016). ISBN 978-1481488006. 32p.
This was my first time reading this author, and I intend to read more of these Butternut Lake books. This was a really good, fast fun read, perfect for summer.
Of course it probably helps that the main character, Billy, is the small town librarian – that always gets me interested. She is a single mom, the result of a one-night stand, her first time having sex, when she was 18 years old. The father was a fishing guide in Alaska, and by the time she realized that she was pregnant, he had moved on with no forwarding address. Luckily, she has wonderful parents who support her and help her raise her son, Luke.
Fast forward several years and Luke is a young teen. Billy’s dad passed away, and they are both having a hard time dealing with it, but Luke refuses to discuss it. He has made a couple of new friends and is getting into trouble with them – getting suspended on the last day of school, then getting arrested for graffiti. This is a very small town in northern Minnesota, and the cop knows Luke is a good kid so he gets off with just a warning. But Billy is worried about how to handle this new person who is living in her son’s skin.
One day at work, Billy is looking out the window and sees a man driving a Porsche being ticketed. Cal is really good looking and turns out to be staying with his sister for the summer, while going through a divorce and selling off his partnership in a Seattle architecture firm. Eventually, Billy and Cal meet and there is a strong attraction, but things move slowly for a while. Billy is dealing with Luke, and Cal has his issues but they keep bumping into one another and things progress nicely.
This was a one night read for me. I loved these characters and the small town life – an idyllic summer read. Unfortunately, my library only has digital audiobooks of her earlier books – going to have to see what I can do about that!
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE LIGHT IN SUMMER by Mary McNear. Thomas Dunne Books (September 6, 2016). ISBN 978-1250089090. 304p.
The problem with this book is that I liked the characters so much that I was truly sorry to turn the last page. I want to spend more time with them, I want to see what happens in the rest of their lives.
The title refers to identical twins, Tabitha and Harper Frost. Growing up, they were as close as you’d expect identical twins to be, but then their parents divorced. Eleanor, the tyrannical, blue-blooded mother, decreed that each parent would take custody of one child, splitting the fourteen-year-old girls apart. They both want to go with their easy going father, but a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors makes the determination and shapes the rest of their lives.
Harper goes off to live with her father in his ramshackle house on Martha’s Vinyard, while Tabitha lives in the family compound 11 miles away on Nantucket. Harper makes one bad decision after another and is often the talk of the town. But her latest peccadillo – an affair with her father’s married doctor, really pushed the Vinyard folk over the edge.
Tabitha, who also never marries, nonetheless has children with her partner. But the wedge between the twins becomes insurmountable after Tabitha gives birth to a second child, premature son, who dies a few months later. Tabitha blames Harper, but her grief is neverending, chasing away her daughter’s father, who eventually marries and has his own family.
Eleanor, the family matriarch, is a fashion designer, somewhat reminiscent of Gloria Vanderbilt. Tabitha lives with her surly, out of control teenage daughter in the guest house on the property, and works for her mother, managing the store on Nantucket. And then her father dies.
Harper plans the celebration party her father wanted, and her mother, sister and niece all attend, but the rift is still strong. He has left the house to both girls, leaving them with a dilemma; sell it as a teardown, or invest beaucoup bucks and renovate, selling for much, much more.
Meanwhile, Eleanor gets a bit tipsy at the funeral celebration and ends up falling down the stairs when she gets home, breaking her hip. Tabitha leaves her daughter alone, goes with her mother to Boston, where they will have to stay while Eleanor recuperates from surgery.
Harper goes to Tabitha’s house to take care of her niece and run the store. Eventually Tabitha goes to their father’s house to try her hand at renovating, so in effect, the women trade lives for a summer. And what a difference a summer can make.
Once again Hilderbrand has created a world I long to visit. This is another terrific read from one of my favorite authors.
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE IDENTICALS by Elin Hilderbrand. Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (June 13, 2017). ISBN 978-0316375191. 432p.
You can bury the story . . . but you can’t hide the truth
*One of Publishers Weekly and Bustle’s Most Anticipated Books of 2017* *A TIME “Top 10” Summer Thriller* *Pre-publication exclusives featured by Entertainment Weekly and theSkimm* *Praise from Lee Child, Shari Lapena, and Clare Mackintosh * *Starred Reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal* *A June 2017 Library Reads Selection*
This summer FIONA BARTON is back with a second novel that proves lightning can strike twice.
Barton’s 2016 debut, The Widow, was an instant global bestseller, captivating readers around the world and setting the publishing industry abuzz.
The highly-anticipated release of THE CHILD (Berkley Hardcover; June 27, 2017) reaffirms Barton’s growing reputation as a writer of rich, character-driven suspense novels. Like Tana French, Louise Penny, and Megan Abbott, Barton’s stories do more than thrill: they explore the complexities of a changing world.
The Widow delved into the secrets that exist within a marriage and the reporter’s role as voyeur. Here Barton continues to mine those themes. THE CHILD tackles the 24/7 news cycle, and lays bare the intricacies of a different but equally fascinating relationship—mother and child.
Says Barton: “The emotions, responsibilities—and the pain—of motherhood are unique to each of us with children. Ask any woman and she will have her own story to tell.”
From the publisher:
The author of the stunning New York Times bestseller The Widow returns with a brand-new novel of twisting psychological suspense.
As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby?
As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss.
But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn—house by house—into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery. And she soon finds herself the keeper of unexpected secrets that erupt in the lives of three women—and torn between what she can and cannot tell…
credit Jenny Lewis
In fact, it was the allure of a hidden story that propelled Barton to her long-time career in news. A journalist and British Press Awards “Reporter of the Year,” she has worked at the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, and brings that experience to bear in her novels.
In THE CHILD she details how Kate’s lengthy investigation into Building Site Baby’s death represents a perilous breach of the newsroom’s new culture of 24/7 online news. Says Barton: “The danger for Kate is that she risks becoming one of the dinosaurs—sidelined because she is unable and unwilling to be part of the revolution. And I feel for her.”
Though THE CHILD delivers an evocative look at the changing face of journalism, and a delicious plot twist, it is the characters’ haunting and rich emotional lives that set Barton apart and confirm her stature as a crime novelist of the first order.
“Tense, tantalizing, and ultimately very satisfying…definitely one of the year’s must-reads.”—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Startling twists—and a stunning, emotionally satisfying conclusion.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Clever and compelling. You’ll love The Child.”—Clare Mackintosh, international bestselling author of I See You
One of Publishers Weekly and Bustle’s Most Anticipated Books of 2017
“Barton’s second well-plotted outing, with its sustained tension and believable characters, is an excellent addition to the popular psychological thriller genre.”—STARREDLibrary Journal review
“Immersive, heartbreaking, and addictive”—Crime By the Book
Visit Fiona Barton online at fionabartonauthor.com and
on Twitter @figbarton.
Join the conversation using #TheChild
To win a copy of THE CHILD by Fiona Barton please send an email to contest@gmail.com with “THE CHILD” as the subject.
You must include your U.S. street address in your email.
All entries must be received by July 25, 2017. One (1) name will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States only. Your books will be sent by the publicist.
One entry per email address. Subscribers to the monthly newsletter earn an extra entry into every contest. Follow this blog to earn another entry into every contest. Winners may win only one time per year (365 days) for contests with prizes of more than one book. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone.
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE CHILD by Fiona Barton. Berkley (June 27, 2017). ISBN 978-1101990483. 384p.
Finder takes a step outside his usual corporate thriller zone into political & suburban territory when there is a computer mixup at the TSA line at LAX. I have to say I loved the premise of this book; it seemed so believable.
Michael Tanner owns a small, wholesale elite coffee business that is not doing terribly well. In fact, he’s close to closing the doors. On a return trip home to Boston from L.A., he barely gets through security in time to catch his flight. Eventually he realizes that he must have grabbed the wrong laptop. This one has a little sticky note on the bottom with the password, and he quickly finds out it belongs to a powerful U.S. Senator. Curious, he pokes around and discovers some highly classified information, which he promptly shares with a Boston Globe reporter friend. When his friend commits suicide a couple of days later, Tanner is alarmed.
Meanwhile, back in Washington D.C., the senator’s chief of staff , Will Abbott, is in a panic. He’s the one who illegally downloaded the top secret documents onto the senator’s laptop so she could peruse them on her flight home from L.A. She knows the password is available, and they both are extremely worried – this could end her career, and Will could end up in prison.
It’s a fairly simple matter for the D.C. powers that be to determine whose computer they have and where the Senator’s computer should be, but when Tanner is confronted, he denies he has the Senator’s computer – and things go rapidly downhill from there.
There are a lot of bad – and often unbelievable – decisions made along this journey, and it often seemed repetitive. The characters weren’t really fleshed out enough to make me care what happened to them and I constantly had to think about who was who – who had the crying baby? Whose wife took off? So while I loved the beginning of the book, in the end, the premise was better than the actual story. This was a disappointment from one of my favorite authors.
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE SWITCH by Joseph Finder. Dutton (June 13, 2017). ISBN 978-1101985786. 384p.
Last year I heard an interview with this author on NPR and she was fascinating. The book sounded really interesting, but I never did get around to looking at it.
I was fortunate to be able to attend the Florida Library Association’s annual conference this year. The opening keynote speaker was Toni Tipton-Martin, and once again, she was completely mesmerizing. I didn’t want to put this on the back burner again so as soon as I got back to the library, I checked out her book.
When someone researches then writes a book that they are passionate about, it shows on every page, as is the case here. Martin has a collected hundreds of African American cookbooks over a number of years, and puts that collection to good use, sharing info from 150 cookbooks, dating back to 1827. The New York Times review stated,
“The Jemima Code” is no ordinary book. It’s a heaping helping, a long overdue acknowledgment of African-Americans who have toiled in this field since the country’s beginnings.
All I can add is that it is truly inspiring and despite the sometimes scholastic tone, very readable and interesting. I kept this book for four weeks, taking my time going through it. There is a lot of information to digest here, and there are some interesting recipes as well. It is laid out chronologically, starting with Nineteenth Century Cookbooks including Mrs. Malina Russell’s “A Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen” (1866) then moving through about twenty-five years in each chapter. Some of the cookbooks included:
How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, by George W. Carver (1925)
Cookbook “Work and Serve the Home,” compiled by Mamie Cook, chairman of Ways and Means Department, New Jersey State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (1928)
A Date with a Dish: A Cook Book of American Negro Recipes by Freda De Knight (1948)
Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook: From Chicken n’ Ribs to Buttermilk Biscuits and Blackeyed Peas – A Mouth-Watering Treasury of Afro-American Recipes from Manhattan’s Most Spirited Chef, by Princess Pamela (1969)
The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis* (1976) *Top Chef, season 14, started out in Charleston, SC. This was the first time I ever heard of Edna Lewis, who was called the “Julia Child” of Southern cooking.
The Presley Family Cookbook by Vester Presley (Elvis’s uncle) and Nancy Rooks (Presley family maid and cook since 1967) (1980)
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From the publisher:
Winner, James Beard Foundation Book Award, 2016
Art of Eating Prize, 2015
BCALA Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation, Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 2016
Women of African descent have contributed to America’s food culture for centuries, but their rich and varied involvement is still overshadowed by the demeaning stereotype of an illiterate “Aunt Jemima” who cooked mostly by natural instinct. To discover the true role of black women in the creation of American, and especially Southern, cuisine, Toni Tipton-Martin has spent years amassing one of the world’s largest private collections of cookbooks published by African American authors, looking for evidence of their impact on American food, families, and communities and for ways we might use that knowledge to inspire community wellness of every kind.
The Jemima Code presents more than 150 black cookbooks that range from a rare 1827 house servant’s manual, the first book published by an African American in the trade, to modern classics by authors such as Edna Lewis and Vertamae Grosvenor. The books are arranged chronologically and illustrated with photos of their covers; many also display selected interior pages, including recipes. Tipton-Martin provides notes on the authors and their contributions and the significance of each book, while her chapter introductions summarize the cultural history reflected in the books that follow. These cookbooks offer firsthand evidence that African Americans cooked creative masterpieces from meager provisions, educated young chefs, operated food businesses, and nourished the African American community through the long struggle for human rights. The Jemima Code transforms America’s most maligned kitchen servant into an inspirational and powerful model of culinary wisdom and cultural authority.
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE JEMIMA CODE by Toni Tipton-Martin. University of Texas Press (September 15, 2015). ISBN 978-0292745483. 264p.
IMHO, there are some movies that were at least as good as the book; most of the Harry Potter films, The Lord of the Rings films, Gone with the Wind, The Godfather (1 & 2, don’t even mention 3 to me!) There is at least one film that was much better than the book – The Devil Wears Prada. I’m sure there are some more. But even so, these are infinitesimal is the world of films based on books. I’d love to hear some comments on this!
Signature Views Mini-Doc – If the book is always better than the movie, why bother adapting a book? Consider some of these reasons.
Comments Off on The case for book-to-film adaptations | Ramblings | Permalink Posted by Stacy Alesi
A delicious read filled with magical realism, pie and wishes fulfilled – what’s not to like?
Rachel Monroe has a special gift, or a curse as she thinks of it. She can fulfill wishes. She first learned she had this as a child when her younger brother was annoying her and she wished him gone. He disappeared along with everyone’s memories of him – except her. Her parents took her to one psychologist after another, and eventually she was hospitalized until she agreed that he never existed.
While hospitalized, she met her best friend, the only one who really understood. As she got older she refused to wish for anything and refused to hear wishes, but nonetheless, as people around her wished for things, little pieces of paper, like the fortunes from fortune cookies, would float into her orbit. If she read them, the wish was granted so she tried very hard not to. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore and by the time she was 26 years old, she knew she had to escape.
Rachel takes off in her car until it breaks down in the small town of Nowhere, North Carolina. The car dies in front of an old Victorian home and the owner comes out, offers to call for help and invites her to stay until her car is fixed. Her name is Catch.
Catch also has a gift. She’s a terrific baker and supplies pies for the town’s restaurants and residents, but her real gift is the ability to make people keep secrets. A neighbor will appear at her back door and ask for help and Catch bakes them a special pie and the secrets are kept.
These two women forge a friendship based in understanding one another. Rachel is attracted to Catch’s neighbor, a young, good looking man who befriends her. But as the town learns about Rachel, things take an ugly turn. Rachel has to decide if this is where she belongs after all.
Fans of Amy E. Reichert or Menna van Praag will love it. I did.
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE SECRET INGREDIENT OF WISHES by Susan Bishop Crispell. Thomas Dunne Books (September 6, 2016). ISBN 978-1250089090. 304p.
Lucy and Gabe met as students at Columbia University in New York City – on September 11, 2001. Yes, that September 11th. There was that shared trauma, but something more and Lucy was upset to find out shortly thereafter that Gabe had a girlfriend. But she moved on.
Until they met again. And it didn’t work out again. Or the next time. Star crossed lovers? Perhaps. And then finally the time was right.
By then Lucy was a successful children’s television producer and Gabe had found his calling in photojournalism. They quickly moved in together and were deliriously happy. At least Lucy was. They were in love, but Gabe was feeling stifled in his career. He wanted to go to where there were wars, where he thought his photographs might make a difference. And without telling Lucy, he arranged for such a job. Until he had to tell her because he was leaving. She was crushed.
Lucy eventually moved on. She met a man and slowly, very slowly, he wooed his way into her heart and eventually they married. But Gabe kept popping up every few years or so. At a reunion. On a stopover in NY. Lucy’s husband wasn’t a fan, but he dealt with it as best as he could. And Lucy was happy, for the most part. But Gabe was always there in her heart and after thirteen years, their history would finally catch up with them in a devastating way.
This book was unputdownable and I loved it, despite shedding tears along the way. The writing reminded me of Rainbow Rowell and especially Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, so if you are fan of those authors, try this one.
A terrific, terrible modern romance.
6/17 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE LIGHT WE LOST by Jill Santopolo. G.P. Putnam’s Sons (May 9, 2017). ISBN 978-0735212756. 336p.
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