The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig

This is a somewhat sweet, old fashioned story.  We start out in 1950 with Paul Milliron, a school superintendent charged with the duty of closing down the old one-room schoolhouses out in the countryside of Eastern Montana.  As Paul worries over this onerous task, he flashes back in time to when he was a 13-year-old boy, and just such a schoolhouse meant the world to him.  His mother had died not too long ago, and his father Oliver was now raising Paul and his two brothers on their homestead.  Oliver, overwhelmed with raising his three sons alone and running a dryland ranch,  spies an advertisement in the newspaper.  A housekeeper looking for work has written a witty ad that starts with "Can't cook, won't bite."  They of course hire the writer of this ad, Rose.  Rose is full of surprises, beginning right from the moment she steps off the train, resplendent in a satin dress.  Rose has inexplicably brought along her brother Morrie, who eventually becomes the sole teacher of the one-room schoolhouse.  This book is really the adventure of childhood in the turn-of-the-century West, complete with horse races, revival meetings, Sunday suppers with the family and hunting for Indian arrowheads.  Rose and Morrie bring flash and excitement to the Milliron family, arriving in tandem with Halley's Comet.  Paul is mature for his age and perhaps this is why he's asked to keep secrets that trouble his dreams at night.  He literally learns a new language, helps his Dad navigate being a widow, mentors his younger brothers and comes of age in doing so.  The only parts I thought were overdone were Paul's nightmares; a little would have gone a long way on that front.  But if you want to saddle up and ride back to 1909 Montana, to a simpler place and time, this might be the book for you.   If you end up liking this book or this genre, I also recommend Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck.  Also, the PBS docu/reality series Frontier House (available on netflix).  And, The Wilder Life, Wendy McClure's memoir of trying to understand her childhood obsession with The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.   Finally, for a starker look at life on a Montana dryland ranch (this one is set in the 1940's), Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I could tell you that this book is an historical account of cell culture, but that's too confining, and too boring for some.  It's the story of how a woman unknowingly helped catapult science forward, and save millions and millions of lives.   It's about family and irony and ethics, and it's set in the most modern laboratories in the world of today, and the tobacco fields of Virginia in the Jim Crow era.   Henrietta Lacks is our heroine; a beautiful young Black woman with five children, and a fatally philandering husband.  The promise of work brings Henrietta and her family to the bustling Baltimore of the 1940's, and within the vicinity of Johns Hopkins Medical Center.  Due to Jim Crow era laws, Johns Hopkins was one of the few places African Americans could get medical care, and there our story begins in earnest.  One of the biggest ironies here is that Henrietta's children and grandchildren could not afford medical care or medical insurance.  The author, Rebecca Skloot, spent about 10 years writing this book, and got very involved with Henrietta's surviving family, especially the daughter, Deborah.  One of the other characters in the book that is not so often mentioned in the written reviews is the remarkable and brilliant scientist who discovered the perpetual growth of HeLa cells, George Gey.  He had a true love of science and could have become very rich for his efforts, but all his energy went to proceed ever on with his work, spending his and his wife's own modest incomes to build their laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, and at the end of his life, submitting his own body to torturous experimental cancer treatments.  In the interest of science, he gave away HeLa cells to other scientists and laboratories all over the world, and they were often carried in the breast pockets of airline pilots from one country to another.  The ethics of this book are incredibly complicated and many laws have since been established to protect patients.  These laws grew out of fascinating cases of modern-day patient exploitation that are also encapsulated in this book.  I couldn't believe what I was reading sometimes!  So, you've got everything;  science and family and race and ethics and history and greed and poverty and despair and politics, and love and betrayal of the deepest order.  The author, Rebecca Skloot, has a science background that no doubt helped her write this wildly popular book.  She's a contributing editor for Popular Science Magazine but also writes on other subjects, including food.  This book has been translated into 25 languages and is being made into an HBO movie produced by Oprah Winfrey.  There are good photos on the amazon page, as well as a great little author video, and I also enjoyed quite a few good podcast interviews on itunes.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

The Art of Racing in the Rain is one of those books where the author has somehow struck a nerve with a lot of people, and I've been meaning to review this book for over a month.  A decade before this book came out, the author (who was a screenwriter at the time) saw a film set in Mongolia called "State of Dogs."  This film showed the Mongolian belief that a dog will return in its next reincarnation as a man.    Enzo is our dog, a mixed-breed with some wiry hair that possibly indicates a bit of terrier.  Enzo is also our narrator, so we see everything through his innocent eyes.  Enzo loves to watch TV, including the National Geographic channel.  Enzo wishes he had opposable thumbs, and so, so wishes he could talk.  He wants to be human even though it would mean adopting the inferior human body, and he is consumed with love for his people, especially Denny, his racecar-driving owner, and Denny's little girl Zoe.  There's a lot of racecar driving trivia in this book.  While i don't like car racing, I still loved this book, and this sentiment was repeated many times by other readers in my book club.  There are tragedies compiled on top of each other in this story, and this bothered some members of our book club.  But the Buddhist principals are all here, and they are part of the author's belief system;  the suffering in life, and the stripping away of material things, for example.  Denny must practice patience, have faith, forbear the wrongs of others, be tolerant and most importantly, accept his own role in and responsibility for his circumstances, all part of the basic Buddhist tenet.   Although the Buddhist principals are not explained outright, we travel through many of them in this book.  Enzo himself goes through a transformation and finds ways to help his circumstances.  He also has his own personal demons, including some of his own making (as we all do).  Yes, he is on watch for crows and a certain stuffed zebra.  It made me think of other reincarnation-related novels and short stories, such as "Breakfast with Buddha" and "You Are not Here" although this book is unique until itself, and possibly the best of them.  Several people in book club said they looked differently at their dogs after reading this book.  There are lots of good author interviews on itunes, by the way.  p.s.  The author was a race car driver years ago, who also wrecked while racing in the rain.

Yarn: Remembering the Way Home by Kyoko Mori

I'll say right up front that you might not enjoy this book as much as I did, if you are not a knitter.  My Dad gave me his old kindle, because he upgraded to an ipad, and this was the first book I ever bought and loaded onto it.  And it just stayed on there, unread for many months while I went vegan in the meantime.  You see, this book does involve knitting using animal hair.  That being said, i did enjoy this book.  The author wrote it several years ago and she was vegetarian (I was still eating meat at the time), and she was concerned enough about animal welfare to buy two rabbits to spin from.  Yes, the bunnies sit on your lap and you spin from the fur that they're shedding.  It's all very fairy tale.  And so, I was able to read this book and really get into the story, despite the contradictions that exist.  I'm sure the author had not made the dairy connection yet, and that she is a humane person.  She obviously loves her rabbits, adores her cat, and wants to find a source for non-factory-farm sheep wool.  While I'm more of an abolitionist regarding animal welfare, I already owned the book, and I am a knitter, and I was sitting at an airport and getting ready to fly (two of my least-favorite activities).  So, I began reading, and and I fell down the rabbit hole.  If you are a knitter, you'll like reading about the different patterns, and how she comes to knit them.  I learned how to highlight things on the Kindle device so I can go back and look up those patterns.  Maybe I can knit one of them on some organic cotton yarn someday.  As for the story, it's a memoir.  Kyoko Mori has some traumas in her childhood in Japan, and years later she goes to college in America.  She is seriously dating an American man and ends up staying here, living in Wisconsin.  I have vacationed in Wisconsin and so I enjoyed this part of the book also.  Not since reading "The Fourth Hand" by John Irving have I been able to revisit Wisconsin in this way.  Kyoko takes up her new life, but several things keep her from real joy.  Her childhood history is still haunting her, and she's very reserved, both in her relationships and her social life.  She is lonely, but knitting begins to help her as she navigates her new world, as it has helped women cope for hundreds and hundreds of years.  She takes a sweater workshop, she meets some new friends.  She spices her book with knitting trivia, such as the Knitting Madonna paintings of the middle ages, and St. Sebastian the patron saint of knitters.  She mentions patterns and pattern books and vegetarian recipes.  She creates a pattern for a scarf in the shape of a fox with silver bugle beads sewed on the feet that click like claws.  She knits her man socks made of rabbit fur.  She weaves in wonderful fairy tales, and she made me care about her and hope that all would work out well.  As her story moves back and forth from Japan to America, the mood is a bit dour, but as she hones her handwork skills, she begins to make friends, to connect and let go of the past and other fetters.  She even wisely lets go of something many people won't--money.  She takes a weaving workshop and weaves the colors of the world around her into her  scarf.  There is a slow, meditative quality to this book, and to knitting, so it was all simpatico for me.  I see on Amazon that her other two books are not as well reviewed, but don't let that stop you from reading this one.  p.s.  I want the pattern for that fox scarf!

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

OK, I'm going to weigh in on this book. Let me start out by saying I was not fond of Franzen's first big book, The Corrections.  However, Freedom is a brilliantly written and constructed book.  Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed lots of other books more, but this is a great book too.  I listened to the free library audio version of it (Overdrive) and it made housework fly; it's very well read.  That being said, I don't understand the mediocre reviews on amazon.com.  Our main character is Patty Berglund, but there are two other very alive, prominent characters; Patty's husband Walter, and her son Joey.  This book is a family saga of the good old-fashioned variety from the '70s and '80s, but it's very up-to-date with lots of current topics.  It's very intimate because the characters are fleshed out so finely that their thoughts, motivations and their very psyches seem to be laid bare.  The detail is intense and it's no wonder, since it took Franzen nine years to write this book.  And it's so HUMAN, with all it's ridiculousness.  When I began listening, I immediately emailed my girlfriend Chris (who had already read this book and liked it) and spelled out one word . . . . Schadenfreude!  We start out with Patty as a young mother and then through some slight of hand, we're whisked back to Patty's high school years and college days and then before you know it, Joey's grown up and in trouble, and Walter's trying to save the world and it's all so seamless that I wasn't really conscious of the transitions.  My other girlfriend Judy said she just wanted to punch Patty in the face, but then I remembered that Patty had a couple of traumas when she was young (one being the constant belittling by her father and siblings, and some neglect by her mother), and that she also had a clinical depression, so I forgave Patty.  And some of Joey's stupid stunts are just universal youthful follies familiar to us all in one form or another.  And then Walter kind of stole my heart because he just CARES so much about the important things in life, despite all his bumbling.  So then I listened to a few podcasts on itunes and it turns out that the author is quite the conservationist himself, and is passionate about saving wild songbirds in particular, as you can hear on this New Yorker Out Loud podcast.  It's almost like Walter IS Jonathan Franzen, in a way.  Except for one big difference--Walter is almost ego-less, and Franzen is, well . . . not.  And that could account for some of the mediocre reviews, and it definitely accounted in part for the whole Oprah fiasco ten years ago.  I just think the reviews for Freedom should be a little better because this is a smart, smart book.  Oh, and along the way, you'll find yourself immersed in topics of the day (things like energy and war), and family drama, etc.  Anyway, I liked it, and I think it's a wonderful encapsulation of modern-day America.  I imagine some young person reading this book 20 years from now and really being able to get a sense of the previous 3 or 4 decades.  In the meantime, you can hear several free podcasts like this one, or this one, if you want to delve deeper into the motivations behind this book.  Or you can just open the book and go along for the ride.

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Little Princes is a surprisingly entertaining memoir, and it's also heartwarming, of course.  In some ways, I liked it better than "Three Cups of Tea."  I know this was written better, and whereas this author is self-deprecating and funny, Greg Mortenson was not portrayed as such by his ghost writer in 3COT.  I listened to the free audio download of Little Princes through my library and I feel it really enhanced the experience of this book.  It was read aloud by the author and so he was able to mimic the voices of the sweet children as he remembered them and parts of it were really funny, despite the dark circumstances of poverty and child trafficking.  I don't want to take away from Three Cups of Tea, because I believe that Greg Mortenson is doing amazing work, possibly even bigger work in that he truly believes the world will not change until girls have equal education and opportunities.  However, I just want to say that Little Princes was more enjoyable in some ways.  Set in Nepal, Conor Grennan brings it to life, and especially makes the images of the darling children come alive off the page.  If you have a choice of whether to read or listen to it, and you enjoy audio books, i would recommend listening to this one, but either way, it's a good read.  Conor Grennan really wants to trek and travel, but he does end up doing a brief stint as a volunteer in Nepal.  Part of his motivation was that he noticed girls would "sort of swoon" when he told them he was thinking of volunteering at an orphanage.  His youthful motivations turned into a sometimes-harrowing quest, however, to literally save helpless children, and along the way, he sort of saved himself and found love in the offing.  I wish we could all get along as well as the Christians, Hindus and Buddhists do in this adventurous memoir.  If you ever wanted to trek across a foreign land, or join the Peace Corps, you might really enjoy this book.  Two of my favorite previous memoirs include "Nine Hills to Nambonkaha" and "The Bookseller of Kabul" and now I can add this one to my list.

Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr

I can't quite remember how I heard about the book "Crazy Sexy Diet," but I'm glad I did.  I've been a fan of Kris Carr since I saw her on Oprah a few years ago, talking about her TLC  documentary "Crazy Sexy Cancer."  I did watch the film a little while later and really enjoyed it.  I loved the way she did not just accept her cancer diagnosis, but got up and tried to figure it out and save her own life.  My take on this new book is that it's for anyone who wants to be healthier and to live in a way that helps prevent cancer.  One of the main principles in the book is to eat in such a way that your system PH is more alkaline, so your body is less acidic and inflamed.  And of course, the other health benefits are myriad and ideal.   One would think that fruit is acidic, and it is, until you eat it.  I have read a bunch of books on health over the last 20 years and I still learned a lot from this book.  Do you know what the best anatomical position is for your body when you eliminate, the truth about amalgam fillings, that there's a best way to juice?  How to do a one-day juice fast, and what to expect (a lot!).  There are many suggestions for exercise, chemicals to avoid, what type of salt to avoid, which vitamins are best absorbed, product recommendations and recipes in the back of the book.  There's a questionnaire, and a 21-day cleanse guide also.  Health gurus such as Dr. Mehmet Oz, T. Colin Campbell, Dean Ornish and Neal Barnard chime in as well.  This is a book I'll go back to again and again, as I learn to live just a little bit healthier every day.  p.s.   There are about ten pages of recipes on her web site, but I haven't tried any yet.