Saturday Snapshot -- Summer Garden

Join West Metro Mommy for this weekly meme of photos people have taken and share on their blogs.

This week, we spent some time digging up two strips of grass in front of our stone wall and planting it with flowers.
I mostly considered this an unimportant job because I thought the grassy area was fine, but apparently it always bugged my husband. And truthfully, I didn't do very much.
I did go to the store to buy plants, manure and mulch, which subsequently spilled in my car and I'll need to vacuum it now.
After one side was planted, I realized we didn't buy enough flowers, so I went back to the store for more and spent one steamy afternoon digging holes to add the extra flowers. But my eldest son discovered me in the act and came to help.

He also dug up the grass on the other side so my husband could plant, manure and mulch there. So mostly, I'm a bystander in this project.
Even though I didn't think it was necessary, it does look nice.

The morning glories come back up each year around our porch. Usually I take a picture to show how they cover the railings, but I wanted you to see one up close. They look silky and velvety.

And each year, I buy a flat of zinnias to plant. I don't know why sometimes they look like this. One or two simple stems and flowers.

And other times, they outdo themselves, like these.

Hope your summer and your gardens are doing well too.
Hope you'll also visit French Village Diaries today where she posted a review of Paris Runaway, my latest novel. There's a giveaway too, so be sure to enter.

World War II Saga Plus Giveaway

I love to hear from authors who want me to read their books. I suppose someday I might get tired of it, but not when I receive a book like The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein.
Truthfully, from the title and the description, it's not a book I might have picked up, but I'm so glad I did.
From the very beginning, the writing is beautiful. Ahh, so this is a well-written literary novel, I thought. Not one that tries to impress people with its words, but one that lets the story slowly unfurl as the reader connects to each character.
The author is obviously someone who loves Japan as much as I love France. The details about Japanese homes, culture, and customs are definitely intriguing.
The novel begins, both in New York and Tokyo in 1935, introducing us to characters who are not yet affected by the coming war. The saga continues through the midst of the war, focusing on attempted attacks and the devastation in Japan. Most of us probably know the results of the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I was unaware that Tokyo was firebombed and largely destroyed along with thousands of residents killed.
But that isn't what this book is about either. It's about the people and how they survive and whether love can grow in spite of evil deeds.
I can't possibly explain why I loved this book, so let me share a couple of passages. Anton, an architect who lived in Japan for more than a decade was asked to help the U.S. government figure out how to best bomb Tokyo. He built a Japanese village using authentic materials. When he couldn't get the floor mats the Japanese used, the U.S. government supplied them from an unknown source.

Anton had tried not to think about the mats'"lenders" as he inspected each of the units individually. Like the ghosts of his flaming oboji, though, they came to him anyway, their former lives whispered from the scars and nicks etched into the rough weave: dents from a low table, laden with food or books. Nail varnish from a careless pedicure. A sickle-moon scuff mark, the approximate shape of a toddler's sandaled heel. They haunted him, these small marks left by lives upended. But as Anton repeatedly reminded himself, he had taken the job. He had to agree to the rules.  

What details. What a way to delve into this character's ghosts as he helped fight war against a people and architecture he loved.
 Here's a passage from a lunch betweem Anton and Hana, another main character who is a glamorous Japanese woman raised in Great Britain.

"I can't eat when I'm nervous."
"Nervous?"
She exhaled a lazy plume of smoke, studying him as though trying to decide something. Finally, she said: "Certain people -- certain men -- have that effect on me."
At first Anton wasn't sure he'd heard correctly: she'd said it in the same way she might casually bring up a food allergy. When he did register her meaning there was a moment of disorientation. She's not well, he thought, as he had two weeks earlier. It occurred to him that it might be a good time to reemphasize the fact of his marriage.

In spite of loving the writing in this book, something happened, a plot twist in the third chapter, that almost made me put it down. Even now that I'm finished, I see so many possible ways the plot could have been changed so that readers wouldn't have that jarring, book dropping occasion. And that occurrence does taint my view of the novel. I'm very intolerant of violence and cruelty. Still, the rest of the war atrocities throughout the book didn't affect me as deeply as this one event, which I'm not revealing because it would be a spoiler.

I would probably give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. I hope you'll give it a try.

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First Paragraph, Teaser Tuesday -- Family Pictures

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.

I have so many good books I'm trying to get to. This week, I'm starting Family Pictures by Jane Green. I've read nearly everything by her and I'm rarely disappointed. Hope this one is just as good. Here's the intro:

Back then, when life seemed so simple, before she knew what life was capable of throwing at her, Sylvie was a natural worrier. Anxiety followed her around like a small, dank cloud, convincing her that something terrible was just about to happen. As a child, she worried about her mother's rages, which didn't stop them coming. As a young woman, she worried about making enough money as a textile designer, which meant she had to supplement her career by painting houses. As a young mother, she worried Eve would roll onto her front and never wake up, and when Jonathan was late home from work, she worried something had happened to him.

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays. Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's mine from page 7:

After years of knowing exactly where she stood, Sylvie finds that insecurity has pushed its way in the door. Who is she supposed to be if not a mother? 

 This sounds good to me. What do you think?

Dreaming of France -- French Illusions memoir

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.
I'm always on the lookout for fun books and especially books set in France.
Emma at Words and Peace blog alerted me to a new book about an American au pair in France.

Of course, since I've written 25,000 words of my own non-fiction account as a nanny in France, I had to read this one.
I'm only a couple of chapters into reading this memoir, which is called French Illusions. The author, Linda Kovic-Skow, tells the story from the late 1970s when she wanted to be a flight attendant and was turned down because she didn't speak another language. She determined to learn French by going to France as an au pair. Of course, she pretended she already spoke French to get the job as an au pair.
I'll let you know what I think when I finish.
I'm looking forward to your Dreaming of France posts today.

Review -- Farewell, Dorothy Parker

Truthfully, I haven't read a lot of Dorothy Parker. I've only read her pithy quotes, but who wouldn't fall in love with those?
"If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you."
or
"This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."
or
"You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
Her words are like fine chocolates that shouldn't be gorged on, but instead tasted and savored individually or they could lead to a stomachache.
Author Ellen Meister, in her new book Farewell, Dorothy Parker, brings Parker to life as a mentor from death to her timid character Violet Epps. Violet is a movie critic with big opinions who can't seem to speak up for herself in her own life.
At the beginning, I didn't like Violet very much. She stood in front of a maitre'd and was overlooked without a peep. That bugged me. She didn't have the gumption to break up with her mooching boyfriend. In fact, not very much about Violet was likeable. Luckily, she was immediately plunged into interacting with Dorothy Parker. Violet meets Parker when she's asked to sign the Algonquin Hotel guestbook. Somehow, she ends up taking the guestbook home only to learn that Parker's ghost is attached to it. That's how Dorothy Parker ends up in Violet's house on long-term loan, ready to give advice and prod Violet into having a backbone.
I would have to say the first part of this novel dragged a bit, but then it captured me and I finished it in one afternoon.
Meister, of course, had to channel Dorothy Parker in order to portray her wit, and I think she did quite well. Here's a passage in the book that made me chuckle. Violet is showing the ghost Dorothy Parker how computers work and allowing her to write an email. The Parker character speaks first:
"In my day, cc stood for carbon copy."
"Now it stands for nothing."
"Like your politicians..."

When Violet learns that she can carry the guestbook around allowing the ghost of Dorothy Parker to travel with her, the two of them encounter a neighbor going for a run and Parker asks if Candy, the neighbor, knows of a nearby smokeshop:
Candy blinked. "Smoke shop?" she said again. 
Mrs. Parker shrugged. "Vile habit. I used to say, 'I'll quit when I die,' but it turns out even that was harder than I thought."
Meister imagines a Parker who would banter about her current state -- dead.

An entire novel can't be built around a few clever phrases though, and Meister didn't rely on the presence of Parker alone. Her character was in a situation where if she didn't grow a backbone, she was going to lose things she loved, like her job and the care of her niece. So Parker's appearance was fortuitous in helping the character change her life.
And, in turn, Violet helped Parker face things that she might be avoiding after death, the idea of crossing over to be with loved ones. The novel deals with Parker's painful childhood and whether her mother, who died before she turned five, would love her in the afterlife. Meister could have stayed on the surface and dealt only with the wisecracking Parker, but she dug into some of the true emotions that the larger-than-life woman might have dealt with.
This is definitely a book worth picking up.
I received an ARC from Putnam to review the book and the quotes may change in the final version. The free book didn't slant my review. The book will be available in February and can currently be pre-ordered on Amazon.
I enjoyed this novel and was a little bereft at the end when I had to close the book on the characters.

Review -- They Eat Puppies, Don't They?

Christopher Buckley has been hit or miss with his novels of satire about government and society. I loved Thank You For Smoking, but didn't finish No Way to Treat a First Lady. Still, I was willing to give his latest They Eat Puppies Don't They? a try, and I'm glad I did.
He sucked me in right away with the main character Bird, a lobbyist for a weapons company. Suddenly Bird's job is to drum up hatred toward China so the weapons company can sell a new communication blocking system. When Bird tries to find something connected to China that Americans will be passionate about, all he comes up with is the Dalai Lama and pandas. Luckily for him, the Dalai Lama becomes ill right around that time, and the outrage with China begins to grow
Buckley's characters are not limited to the lobbyist and a militant woman named Angel who makes the news show rounds. He also takes the reader inside the Chinese cabinet as it struggles with a noble president who doesn't want to escalate and war mongering generals who don't fear conflict with the U.S.
The description makes it sound wonky, but Buckley tells the story to make all of look ridiculous as we go about our consumption, ignoring the direction our government is headed.
One exception I'll take with the book is that the end didn't seem to have much use for the main character. He was kind of allowed to drift off. And I'm not sure whatever happened with the weapon system that set off the entire situation.
By the way, for people put off by the title, there's only one brief mention of whether the Chinese eat puppies, so it definitely was not something dealt with in the book.

Paris in Love -- Review

Continuing with my obsession for all things French, I picked up the book Paris in Love by Eloisa James. I'm not sure why it was called Paris in Love unless it's because the author writes romance novels.

The book was mostly like a series of tweets on Twitter. I mean, not that I'm on Twitter, but it was made up of a series of short snippets about the author's life as she and her Italian husband, plus two kids, a 15-year-old and 11-year-old live in Paris for a year. Okay, first we have to get over the resentment that they have the kind of jobs that allow them to simply take a sabbatical and move to Paris. They both teach at American universities. The author also tries to make us not feel so bad about her lucky life by beginning with her breast cancer and her mother's recent death. It's hard to begrudge someone a year in Paris after they've been through those hardships.
I enjoyed the book, even though I'm usually a plot person. It was nice to be able to pick it up for a few minutes and get through several tweet-sized paragraphs without commiting to the suspense of a whole chapter. Here's one example:

It's night, after a day of rain...the windows are open and the strains of a glorious opera pour from the conservatory down the street.(p. 14)

Many of the "tweets" just set the mood in Paris.

Mirabile dictu! Anna has found two things she likes in Paris. The first is chocolate, and the second is the rat catcher's shop, which has four big rats hanging upside down from traps. We detour to gawk at them before grocery shopping.(p. 14)

Well, I enjoy chocolate and I have stood in front of that exact window. Isn't it funny how we love finding things we know in a book?
So, I enjoyed the book and seeing Paris through Ms. James' eyes. The book cover and title bugged me though. The title, I already explained. The cover problem. The family doesn't have a dog. Well, it had a chihuahua but the Italian mother now has it, and the dog on the cover is not a chichuahua anyway.
Don't let these little details get in the way if you want a vicarious year in Paris.