It’s a new year, if you can believe it. Honestly, I feel kind of shorted on 2011. There’s no way that was 12 whole months. 2012 just seems so rich by comparison – and already riddled with such delights as stolen credit cards, recalled automobiles, assorted family and friend-related mishegoss. But things are actually pretty good overall, and I’m just doing some wholesale Winter Whining.

So – as we look towards a couple of months of dark, cold, probably wet and/or icy days, let’s get a little lost in a nice, shiny, new novel that takes place in Florida (Unofficial Motto: The Sun-Damaged Décolletage State).

I selected Swamplandia! because it’s new, looked like fun, got good reviews, and is charmingly inexpensive. What can I say, in these trying economic times, it makes good sense to support the trade paperback industry.

Here’s the review in the New York Times, which mentions that author Karen Russell has “honed her elegant verbal wit and fused it with the nightmare logic that makes Swamplandia! such an eccentric yet revelatory family story.” Despite the fact that Ms. Russell is infuriatingly young and talented, I do like a lot of the adjectives in that sentence, and also a couple of the nouns, so let’s do this.

The novel unfolds in a failing gator-wrestling Everglades theme park, where the 13-year-old protagonist is trying to keep things afloat at the family theme park in the face of a pretty comprehensive list of crises. I’m making it sound wacky, and some of the ingredients are just that, but the review emphasizes that the story and its telling are also haunting and suspenseful.

I’ll ask for comments in mid-February and plan to post something shortly thereafter.

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or…
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? Exciting typos? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases of anything made through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).

I was a little reluctant to read this one. No good reason for that. It was highly and widely praised (effusively, in the comments on Amazon), and all kinds of best-selling. Lord knows I love a good novel, and even a sensational one, and there is something I think almost organically compelling about a tale of captivity and redemption – the more sordid, the better.

Next Stop: Spoilers

Not that this was sordid. The more ghastly details of captivity are mostly lacking, and it’s this dignity that - I felt, anyway – made the captor less terrifying. In the notes at the end of the book, Donoghue said that she wanted this most of all to be a story of Jack and his mother. And maybe it’s that overriding sympathetic starting point that takes some of the horror out of an otherwise horrifying situation and leaves the captor kind of flat. And also, since 5-year-old Jack is the narrator, how horrible can it all be? His mother protects him as best she can, and this – after all – is the only world he’s ever known. A child’s home is, well, home.

The aspect I thought was most inspired is that so much of the narrative takes place “after.” The details of rescue were a little muddled for me, but I zipped through it so fast because I had to know what came next, so I can’t complain. I was mesmerized by this new beginning – The medical and security precautions, the pragmatic and social issues that arise when a long-time prisoner (who went in as a teenager and came out a woman and a mother) and a child who is essentially an alien are brought into the light. And how that big a transition is not likely to be a simple, happy, sashay into a bright future.

Here are some thoughts from B, another reader:

“I thought the portrait of the mother was excellent. She had such a crazy/anxious/bitter edge, having poured every bit of her humanity into her son. The author’s imagined world of one small room rang very true, as did her view from a child’s eyes: he saw the room as very, very big. And I agree with you that having half the book be about life after the room was a good move.”

B is very sympathetic to the mother (small wonder, B’s been one for almost 38 years), and I love the analysis about pouring her humanity into Jack. B is also a mental health counselor, so she may have some insight here.

P didn’t get that far, which I can also totally respect:

“I tried reading it, but had a very had time with the pace. I guess that’s maybe the point – to see how painfully slow time is for the kid and his mom. I feel obligated to try again some time, but right now I’m absorbed by The Hunger Games, which if you haven’t read it, is horrifying and awesome – everything I look for in a book.”

So all in all, I call it a win. What did you think?

• Pretty gushy New York Times review.
• A longer NPR dealio with an excerpt, if you’re into that sort of thing.
• Here’s the website for Room
• And here is the floor plan of, well, the room.
• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or join us on Facebook.

Not entirely sure if I’m up to it, but I’m going with Room for our November-ish book. With one online and a couple of offline recommends, it sounds like a good read, even if the premise (raising a child in captivity) is disturbing. Maybe it’s the laryngitis I’m battling now (daycare is a petri dish), maybe it’s the fact that I have become a total, abject wuss since the advent of Offspring, but I’m not champing at the bit to rip this one open.

But what do I know? The reviews are great, it’s a best-seller, and the whole point of this book club exercise is to read new things.

And isn’t that one of the dangers of the Internet? The ability to totally sequester yourself with those of like mind, limiting the diversity of influence in your own life, and failing to learn new things? I think this has a lot to do with the current state of political discourse in America. And also maybe the state of the workforce and disenfranchisement of the younger generations – when you have the world at your fingertips, sometimes real life disappoints. But I digress.

So let’s do it! I’ll ask for comments on the book towards the end of November.

• Here’s the website for Room
• And here is the floor plan of, well, the room.
• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or join us on Facebook.

Okay, show of hands, who vowed to change their shopping habits after reading this book? I sure did. No more mealy, unsatisfying tomatoes from the supermarket for me. Now I can glare at the ubiquitous stacks of tasteless salad decor and know that behind them are deformed babies, slavery and the agricultural cartel they call the Florida Tomato Committee.

“When I asked Molloy [chief assistant US attorney in Fort Myers, FL] if it was safe to assume that a consumer who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store, fast food restaurant, or food service company in the winter has eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a slave, he corrected my choice of words. ‘Its not an assumption. It is a fact.”

What else do you need to know? I found Tomatoland to be a gripping read. Estabrook does a great job of weaving together all of the many failings of this industry, and then closes (spoiler alert) with the story of a farmer who has decided to take another tack, and found success producing tasty, healthful produce, without poisons, and while paying his employees a livable wage that allows them to take care of themselves and their families. Given, it’s clear that Tim Stark, the founder and owner of Eckerton Hill Farm is maybe a little intense, it takes that kind of intensity and single-mindedness of purpose to build a game-changing business literally from the ground up.

I’m kind of hoping that he doesn’t go after strawberries next. I anticipate that there is nothing good to learn there. And blueberries are almost certainly tiny, delectable fruits of the devil.

Barry Estabrook’s blog, Politics of the Plate, confirms my abiding suspicion that I just don’t think deeply enough about anything.

I think it’s really interesting that this book is making the rounds just as the #Occupy movement is getting more serious. The themes of corporate greed and omnipotence, as well as profiteering off of the most vulnerable people, ensuring their ongoing impoverishment – are clearly illustrated here with neither jargon nor hysteria. Pregnant women being sprayed with pesticides and threatened with eviction from their homes if they dare to call in sick. Clusters of babies born with multiple, devastating defects – some unsurvivable. People held in actual slavery with beatings and chains and stuff. These are not small things.

It’s not all bad news, though. Estabrook also writes about the bright spots. Organizations that are working to improve the lot of workers and large-scale produce buyers (grocery and fast food companies) pledging their support for workers and safety. Small but growing businesses that are making it even as they treat workers fairly, are good environmental stewards and produce a superior product.

Hey kids, it can be done.

The coverage has been great, and here are some selections.

Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes: The 1999 article in Gourmet magazine that started it all.

How Industrial Farming ‘Destroyed’ The Tasty Tomato: Estabrook’s Fresh Air interview, and an excerpt from the book.

That Perfect Florida Tomato, Cultivated for Bland Uniformity: New York Times review, that calls it an “angry new book,” that “simmers like a big, bright kettle of heirloom tomato sauce.” Hyperbole much, NYT?

Barry Estabrook’s ‘Tomatoland,’ an indictment of modern agriculture: The Washington Post’s review goes straight for the slavery. And why not?

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or e-mail me at thea [at] nutgraf dot net.
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? What’s not to like?

It’s been a busy summer in a lot of ways. Professionally, personally, meteorologically and – God help us – geologically. Too much work, not enough time, way too much weather and a bonus earthquake later, and I’m feeling pretty good about not picking an August book. But as Labor Day and all of its attendant deadlines approached, I started looking for a good read to share for September. Here’s what I was looking for:

• Nonfiction – to help get back in the groove of serious work.
• Perhaps economics-related – after the redonkulous showdown on Capitol Hill this summer.
• Gripping and not too chewy – Too much math and I start stuttering. I’m not proud of this.
• Something recently released – Let’s get current!

As I was flapping around, I asked the group on Facebook for recommends, and they totally came through. Freakonomics,The Thank You Economy, Nudge, The Big Short, This Land is Their Land… All fantastic suggestions. None of which I decided to take.

I was sitting here at Nutgraf HQ (my workstation set up on the kitchen counter), tweeting on behalf of a client and half-listening to Science Friday where they were talking about Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, and I was interested in reading more.

I don’t know about you, but the way I grew up, summer was when you grew tomatoes. My grandmother was famous for her tomatoes in Great Neck, NY, and my grandfather told stories of her going into the yard and individually killing any bug that dared land on them. My mother grew them religiously, and so did I – compulsively – until last year when I finally saw the light and realized that I much prefer the walk to the farmer’s market, and that even at Bethesda rates, it is far more economical to go pick one up than to invest in the infrastructure needed to successfully produce your own. Which is all only to say how prominently they featured in my mid-Atlantic life.

But this book looks interesting because it is about the life and impact of the tomato industry. It looks like a really comprehensive and… terrifying examination of the lifecycle of the ubiquitous and virtually tasteless supermarket tomato, and I am looking forward to reading it.

Work/life being what it is when things really get rolling in September, let’s give this til mid-October. I’ll ask for comments on Facebook and post the review shortly thereafter.

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or join us on Facebook.
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? Exciting typos? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).

In a fit of pants-antsiness, I wrote a tiny children’s book. And by tiny I mean that it is written for tiny children, and also a tiny book. Since spawning, I’ve been trying to read her books of all kinds, but find myself fighting my gag reflex in the bookstore an awful lot. Either sickly sweet, or having nothing to them, there are a metric fuck-ton of weak children’s books on the market. That I now have to read endlessly over and over.

So I wanted to make a little book that parents would enjoy, too. Nothing too saucy, though I do think that Go the Fuck to Sleep is a work of beautiful genius. And I have a low nightmare index in a lot of ways, so it had to be unimpeachably pleasant. For example, who the heck approved the plot of Toy Story? That movie gives me a complex about the feelings of the heretofore inanimate items in my house.

So, here we are. I wrote a tiny book about a slightly dandy-ish sock monkey: Watson On The Move

I’ve made no secret of my affection for sock monkeys. We go way back. I used to make them (poorly), and was super excited to introduce the concept to my kid. When I was massively pregnant and people gave me seats on the metro (mostly out of fear that I might fall and crush the life out of them if they didn’t), my darling office mates gave me one as a baby shower kind of a gift. This was, of course, just before I went on maternity leave. A leave from which I utterly failed to return. Thanks guys!

I named our sock monkey Watson. Because Spouse and his family have a long and legitimate background in genomics, and Watson and Crick are popular in these parts. Yes. We’re nerds. That will only be news to you if you’re just tuning in. But I’m really proud of the name – I think it suits the monkey perfectly. It’s wacky, but earnest. Friendly and old fashioned. A little too formal, which makes it even cuter. I call it a win.

So, in what was effectively a nervous tic, I wrote this tiny children’s book about the monkey and his day. And it was crap. And I inflicted it on you all a while ago in a ridiculously expensive print format (see: I just accidentally wrote a children’s book). Ridiculously, because the final product is full of crappy low-res photos (trust me, I took them), and small and flimsy. My cat ate through the cover of my only copy in mere moments.

And then in a moment of lunacy, I sent it to an agent. A very kind agent who did eventually return my emailed query with a thoughtful and kind response, telling me all of the very fine reasons why he would decline to discuss the book further with me. Surprisingly none of which were that I am obviously a dangerous lunatic.

So I put on Kindle. Which sounds easy, but wasn’t because I was determined that it look well on the iphone, and the “preview” function on Amazon is kind of wonky. And we have no functioning Windows computers in this house (of roughly 12 computers) and you need Windows to make whatever crack-addled format Amazon prefers, so I had to do about a dozen versions of Word documents, while weeping gently, upload and test.

And now the rave reviews are just pouring in!

“Nice job. More Offspring photos, please.” - Mom

“What, no iPad version?” – A Friend

“I’ll wait til it’s out on Nook.” – A-nother friend

“Hey, are you done with those fries?” - Spouse

“[actual child's name] said her favorite part was when Watson takes a bath in his rain jacket. She had fun with it…kudos Thea! Great idea.” – Super Awesome Friend – your check is in the mail!

But here we are! It published cleanly and looks great on my iPhone and Xoom! The prose is still clunky (but much improved from version 1, promise), and the pictures are small and poor. But I think it’s adorable. And it’s cheap. I’m cooking up new things for Watson to do – thinking of taking him to the museum, to the firehouse, to the grocery store. Definitely taking him to the beach. With any luck, I’ll make the next ones more interesting.

• If you’re so inclined, you can check out Watson On The Move on Amazon.
• If you hate that idea, but want to check him out anyway, write to me and we’ll work it out.
• And if you’re into books, check out BookGraf on Facebook. We’re low-impact.

It was with zero hesitation that I selected ‘Spoiled‘ as June’s reading, and I’m not sorry I did. Authors Heather and Jessica do such a very, very fine job on their own blog that I was sure that any book they collaborated on and put their names to would be a well-constructed, cleverly written bundle of energy. And I was not wrong.

I may have mentioned once, twice, or a dozen times that Go Fug Yourself is one of the treasures of the Internets. It is at once classic and fresh every day. Zesty and classy (wouldn’t that be a great phrase to have on a business card?), the writers will skewer a bad outfit freely and cheerfully. Even breezily. But never meanly.

And that tone is perfect for Young Adult fiction. This is the story of two teen sisters from different planets (Molly, Indiana; Brooke, Hollywood) being thrown together under one roof for the first time. Neither knew the other existed, and now they have to share one (mostly absent) parent, a room and a car. The road is mined, and gets bumpy, then the battle lines are drawn, and war is waged. As friend Denise aptly summed up when asked for her thoughts: “Like, omigod, life is HARD (I think that counts as both a synopsis and a review).” And I think she’s right. But we all get wound around our own axles over things that are Way Totally Life Or Death To Us, and the Most Humiliating Thing Ever. For one, I’ve tortured myself with the same half-dozen events for literally decades. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t quite a few more candidates, but some got stuck when others thankfully faded into the swirling mists of time. But where was I…

The dialogue is snappy, and I would have loved to get to know the long-suffering assistant way better. Oh, the things he must have seen. In fact, I was left thirsting for more Hollywood excess. I’m sure it’s significantly more dire and delicious than portrayed here, and that kind of discretion is… is… totally appropriate in a Young Adult novel. You got me there.

BookGraf business: I think I’ll let August pass us by without suggesting something to read. Which isn’t to say that I don’t want your suggestions. What are you reading now? Anything recently tickle your fancy? Anything I mustn’t miss? Anything I must?

• Cover Your Bits: Fashion advice from Go Fug Yourself
• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or e-mail me at thea [at] nutgraf dot net.
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? What’s not to like?

It’s summer. We’re all stressed out, overheated, and failing to extract a sufficient amount of leisure from this allegedly leisure-full season. And so I propose a little mind candy for the group. This month we’re reading Spoiled, the newly released young adult novel by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, authors of the stellar GoFugYourself blog. In fact, they are so awesome, that they once and very graciously submitted to a brief interview by yours truly.

• Cover Your Bits: Fashion advice from Go Fug Yourself

If you don’t know Heather and Jessica, you don’t know what you’re missing. Their blog is pretty great and a reading staple for me. As a writer, I get to chalk up any amount of enjoyable reading to “research,” and “filling the well,” which is one of the best perks of the job. Actually, I can’t describe it as a perk. My irresistible compulsion to commit acts of enjoyable reading made this profession pretty much my only option. If this weren’t my job, I wouldn’t have time to do my job.

But back to this month’s selection. Spoiled was released on June 1st to great fanfare.

• The LA Times describes it as “Not just for kids.” In the headline, no less.
• This Associated Press piece says that Heather and Jessica have the right formula.
• And here’s a really lovely interview with the authors in The Atlantic. This piece also notes that they’re writing a sequel!

So, let’s read this one by mid-July?

As ever, all purchases made through Amazon links on Nutgraf result in a small but meaningful contribution to the American Cancer Society – per my Cancer is an Asshole campaign.

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or e-mail me at thea [at] nutgraf dot net.
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? What’s not to like?

As I may have mentioned once, twice or a couple of dozen times, Tina Fey kind of rocks my world. I was vaguely aware of her on Saturday Night Live (er, I haven’t much cared for the show for the last 20-ish years. Nothing personal), but knew generally who she was and that she was funny and in a lot of movies, and generally featured in a lot of media about Funny Women because Funny Women are such an anomaly, don’t you know, since women are riddled with ovaries and stuff that are so totally humorless…. But where was I? And then I became a big fan of 30 Rock only to be dragged back into the SNL universe by the brilliant, some might say mystical, alignment of the planets that produced her Sarah Palin impression.

So, it was with great pleasure that I read the excerpts from Bossypants that were published in The New Yorker. And I actually read them, too. I totally didn’t just skim the first couple of paragraphs, look for cartoons, and then move on. And I was really happy when the book came out more or less just as I was starting to flail around for a new thing to assign the BookGraf group.

And so I downloaded and burned through Bossypants at a rapid clip, found it to be totally enjoyable, and like a great rant from your best friend. Fey sounds so personable, self-deprecating, hardworking and empathetic. In a world full of mean, she is sharp.

The essays may not come together as one coherent book, but I don’t really give a crap. They are each enjoyable, and her writing is very cinema verite. Without giving me full-frontal Tina as it were. We are so used to overexposure, seeming to feel entitled to knowing the smallest, most personal detail about the people we admire. Who did they kiss? What did they eat? What was she thinking when she left the house wearing that? Fey keeps a little personal space here. This may come more easily to someone with a background in comedy – it always seemed to me that one of the hardest skills to learn is when a joke is enough, and when it is too much. Dancing on that line is the difference between greatness and tragedy. And let’s not even talk about the Like Watching a Train Wreck school of celebrity – where it’s awful and raw and bloody and you can’t look away because you might miss the moment when it all comes crashing down. Let’s not give the most spectacular current cases even one more Google result by  mentioning them by name here, ok? But I’m rambling.

The stories Fey shares here are sweet and sharp and dorky and tough. For some reason, it feels much more intimate to read a book she wrote than an article about her, or to even watch her perform on TV. And it’s so much fun to see someone so damn likeable have such success.

And I was just going to include it in the links below, but this is way too good not to embed in all its glory.

• New York Times review of Bossypants
• “Confessions of a Juggler” in The New Yorker
• “Lessons from Late Night” also in The New Yorker
• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or join us on Facebook.
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).

It’s not complicated, my love for Tina Fey. And so – with some small modicum of encouragement from friends – I have chosen Bossypants for the April/May BookGraf book.

TMI
Amazon, darling though they are, changed how I can create beautiful links to images of their products, and I couldn’t figure out how to make Bossypants work with WordPress. The Internets can be confounding, and I have a short attention span. So, no handsome cover in this post for your visual pleasure.

But Back to the Book
If your winter has been anything like mine, your brow is all scrunched up, your eyes all squinty and your shoulders all wedged up under your ears. Let’s unwind a little and enjoy the little things. Like how much Tina Fey rocks.

So, I’ll read it and do a more significant post about the book around the middle/end of May.

• Here is a New York Times review of Bossypants.
• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or e-mail me at thea [at] nutgraf dot net.
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).