Java Davis's Blog, page 6
July 19, 2016
Book Review: Wildflower, Drew Barrymore
http://theroadtripwriter.com/book-rev...
Book Review: Wildflower, Drew Barrymore (4 coffee beans)
This collection of autobiographical stories by Drew Barrymore definitely qualifies as a travel book. She has traveled around the world, literally, more than once. Drew Barrymore seems to use every major experience in her life as a teaching/learning experience. One of my favorite of her frequent phrases is: “my heart grew.”
This is not a Hollywood gossip bio. Each chapter explains one area of Drew’s growth to become an adult and a mother. She keeps lifelong friends and adores her in-laws. But, here I was, reading in this book how important family is, and the next day, she and her husband announced their divorce. Another teaching/learning experience? I hope so.
My favorite part of Drew’s life experience was how her messed up childhood gave her a blueprint of how not to be a parent. She certainly presents a wonderful picture of happy mothering.
July 16, 2016
Book Review: My Million Dollar Donkey, Ginny East (4 coffee beans)
Starting with a bit of back story here, Ginny East lived in Florida, running a successful dance studio, as well as owning property. She married Mark, handsome and six years her junior, who became her partner and fellow dance instructor. Two areas of unhappiness eventually collided. Mark was resentful that he was a junior partner in the business, dependent upon Ginny for every dime, and Ginny began to feel that her family was splintered into separate directions, what with the business to run, the kids’ school and their after-school activities. Ginny crunched the numbers and realized that they could cash out everything and retire as millionaires. Ginny and Mark decided to do just that, moving the family to a dilapidated cabin in a tiny town in the state of Georgia. Years earlier, Ginny had met a donkey, and it was partly this meeting that fueled the idea of living in the country and buying herself a donkey. The connection to that donkey long ago triggered the story that eventually became My Million Dollar Donkey: The Price I Paid to Live Simply.
Embarking on their new life in the country, Mark, always peevish, demanded that he become the man of the house and take over the finances. Ginny was tired of that responsibility and gladly signed everything over to him. Mark’s true levels of selfishness were free to come out and play, backed by a huge bankroll. The more Mark spent on himself, the more Ginny hoped that her marriage to a younger gigolo would somehow work out. Whenever it was time to revisit this fantasy, Ginny developed another farming hobby or bought a different species of animal to tend. The family’s ignorance about farm life was terrifying.
Ginny East tells her own story, documenting her twenty-year marriage and its eventual train wreck, in her memoir My Million Dollar Donkey: The Price I Paid to Live Simply. The book is a sad story, but like every other train wreck, I couldn’t look away. Ginny East’s desperate loves for her children, her animals, Mother Earth, and above all, her husband, were the driving forces of My Million Dollar Donkey. Ginny’s story is unforgettable.
July 7, 2016
Definition: Psychobabble
The Merriam-Webster dictionary tells me that the word “psychobabble” galloped into pop-culture lingo in 1975. Here is their quick and dirty definition: language that is used by people who talk about mental and emotional problems and that is seen as silly or meaningless : psychological jargon.
The world of independent authors and self-publishers is beginning to sound like a great pool of psychobabble. Or is it the Tower of Babel?
July 3, 2016
Recipe: Oatmeal Blueberry Cookies
My husband was overzealous in planting blueberry bushes, and we’ve been drowning in several varieties of blueberries. Here is one way to rid yourself of those pesky blueberries.
Oatmeal Blueberry Cookies
1 cup flour
1/2 tspn baking soda
1/2 tspn salt
1/2 tspn cinnamon
1-1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
2 Ts honey
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
Mix dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream butter and sugars. Add egg and honey, mix well. Stir in dry ingredients. Stir in blueberries. Crop by rounded TSPNs on parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake at 350 dgrF for about 8-10 mins, until golden on the edges and just set.
Cook them too long and they will be hard. MUCH better chewy. Cool on racks, store airtight.
3-4 dozen (or 2 dozen bigger ones).
NOTE: These cookies can stand more sugar than the recipe calls for.
June 23, 2016
Road Trip Tomorrow
Tomorrow is the road trip to Lewes, Delaware, USA, for the annual Coastal Arts and Sea Glass Festival this weekend. As much as I’m looking forward to getting away for the weekend and attending this festival, there’s another side to this coin.
My mother-in-law is in the hospital and is quite sick. We adore each other, but she’s currently not aware of anything. Hopefully, when she feels better, I can go and actually have a visit with her. That, and my sister-in-law hates me.
All of this anxiety makes me head to the kitchen to make a banana blueberry coffee cake.
Recipe and photos to come later.
June 20, 2016
Guest Blogger Patti Phillips
http://wp.me/p51aKx-nL
Guest Reviewer Patti Phillips
I’m pleased to introduce Patti Phillips to everyone. She belongs to Facebook’s Road Trip Writers group, and she has chosen to give us all two book reviews — two books from Alexander McCall Smith’s series about The #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The fictional detective agency is in Botswana, Africa, and Smith obviously has a great love for this part of the world. Thank you, Patti, for sharing a fresh travel perspective with us.
The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency & Double Comfort Safari Club, by Alexander McCall Smith
Reviews by Patti Phillips
Smith has written a series of much-admired bestsellers based in Gaborone, Botswana, where life is enjoyed most when sitting on a porch sipping red bush tea, enjoying the view of acacia trees, listening to Go-Away birds calling, and watching people from the village stroll past. The ‘No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency’ in the fourteen books, is run by Mma Precious Ramotswe, a sensible woman of traditional size (translation: big woman), so no slinky, svelte types will be found between the pages, unless they happen to be up to no good. Makeup is more or less dismissed as unnecessary (or mostly for those women who are up to no good).
Ramotswe guarantees satisfaction for all parties, and as the clever owner of the first detective agency in Botswana run by a woman, that’s a standard she is happy to apply as a matter of personal principle. In “The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” she must find a missing husband, follow an errant teenager, and search for a missing child, while keeping her clients happy and herself safe – not easy when witch doctors and cobras might be involved.
The feel-good mystery series has been a worldwide phenomenon and has inspired a BBC TV series, as well as a movie. Smith writes from his experience of living and working in Botswana. His descriptions of the countryside make the reader feel that looking for the hippos around the next bend of the river is the natural order of things, where going to the next town is a really big deal and making a 97 on a final exam is cause for endless celebration. Smith has successfully conveyed his love of Africa through Ramotswe’s unabashed pride in her beloved Botswana, whether speaking of snakes or diamonds or witch doctors or the cattle used to buy her business.
Happily, the main supporting characters are well drawn, and we as readers are pulled into the relationships as Ramotswe makes her decisions. I was angered, dismayed, touched, and ultimately quite pleased by the behavior of the men in her life.
A later book in the series (from 2010) “The Double Comfort Safari Club,” is not quite as successful as the earlier titles because of one case involving an inheritance to be delivered to the correct person. The resolution seemed to be an odd stretch and made me question whether I could trust Mma Ramotswe’s usually sound judgment. Perhaps it’s a cultural disconnect, but I kept re-reading that section of the book to see if I had somehow misunderstood the issues surrounding the choices.
With that exception, “Double Comfort…” is pleasant and often demonstrates Mma Ramotswe’s loyalty to the people in her circle. Having been in difficult situations herself, she helps and encourages those in need. Another case, involving a trusted employee whose fiancé has a tragic accident and afterward becomes virtually imprisoned by an aunt, is resolved rather deliciously, underlining Ramotswe’s basic decency. She isn’t always correct in her assessment of the clients, but she is fiercely protective of the ones who need her the most.
No shoot-outs, no car chases, no bloody murders, just enjoyable reads about a woman with common sense born out of an abusive early marriage and a knack for understanding the quirky bits of human nature – important characteristics for the head detective in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
For more information about Alexander McCall Smith and his other famous series, please visit www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk
All the best,
Patti Phillips
http://www.kerriansnotebook.com
http://www.nightstandbookreviews.com
Twitter: @pattiphillips
http://facebook.com/paphillips20
June 17, 2016
Book Review: Cygne Rouge
http://theroadtripwriter.com/book-rev...
Book Review: Cygne Rouge by FV Pires (4 coffee beans)
In Cygne Rouge by F.V. Pires, we follow the exploits of Mimi, a socially clumsy but lovable engineer. She enjoys her job and is well-liked there. She has close friends who love her; Tammy, her best girlfriend, and Tanner, her best gay-guy friend. She’s dating Andy, for whom she feels a vague sort of love. Mimi feels content except for a certain wanderlust longing to visit Brazil.
Pires has rather choppily broken up the story lines into three almost completely separate segments. The first third is a description of Mimi’s job and home situations. The second is an exploration into her love life where she exchanges Andy, whom she feels she “should” love, for Paolo, the exotic, foreign-born Tango instructor, with his impeccable Old World manners. The third story line discusses in depth Mimi’s accidentally falling into a lawsuit over corporate espionage. The nature of the lawsuit and its complexities are explained well by her attorney, Ned. Mimi is the lynch pin in a multi-national suit that could have a cascade effect into big money.
I liked all three plot lines and all the characters, both major and minor. The book’s title, Cygne Rouge, refers to an annual secret Balkan Tango event. Paolo is invited to be someone’s partner, so he cannot choose to take Mimi with him as a partner. During Paolo’s brief absence, Mimi is jealous and feeling abandoned, but she is also in Brazil on business, fulfilling her dream travel destination on the company’s nickel. Although this book is heavy on technical descriptions of visits to manufacturing plants, Tango dance steps, and legal machinations, the author is obviously passionate about and experienced in these things, and they are described with authority.
