Curious Nature and NH Women Farmers in the Mindful Reader column

This week’s column covers two books that celebrate what’s all around us: The Curious Nature Guide: Explore the Natural Wonders All Around You by Clare Walker Leslie and New Hampshire Women Farmers: Pioneers of the Local Food Movement by Helen Brody, photographed by Leslie Tuttle.

Here’s a bit about each – read the rest here.

Clare Walker Leslie’s gorgeous “The Curious Nature Guide: Explore the Natural Wonders All Around You” is designed to help grown-ups reconnect with nature. Leslie writes, “Consider this book a companion. Leave it by your window to remind you to look outside. Take it to work for when you need a break.”

Author Helen Brody and photographer Leslie Tuttle collaborated on “New Hampshire Women Farmers: Pioneers of the Local Food Movement.” This is another visually pleasing book, celebrating farms around the state and the women who work on them. Many places and faces will be familiar if you frequent markets, farm stands, or pick-your-own orchards, but the stories behind these women and their family enterprises may be new to you. Brody and Tuttle also shed light on the growing importance of agritourism in New Hampshire and the movement to teach younger generations not only where their food comes from, but how they can produce their own.

Read Full Post »

Ana of California by Andi Teran

Yes, bookconscious readers, I finished a book! For fun!

Ana of California, which is “inspired*” by Anne of Green Gables is both familiar and fresh. Ana Cortez is an orphan from Boyle Heights in East L.A. She’s almost 16, the age when she can “emancipate” out of the foster system. In the meantime, she’s in trouble for telling off her latest foster mother. Her social worker suggests Garber Farm in northern California, owned by brother and sister Emmett and Abbie. Ana knows nothing about plants, and has never been out of Los Angeles, but she’s willing to go to avoid a group home.

What Ana learns on the farm goes beyond how to tell parsley from weeds, make compost, and pick beans. In the small rural town of Hadley, she finds it hard to explain the violence that has defined her life. But she connects with new friends and coworkers, and with Emmett and Abbie, over music and books, food, and art, and humor. There are enough nods to Anne to please fans of L.M. Montgomery’s heroine, but Ana is her own unique character, feisty and strong, vulnerable and big-hearted. Teran renders her setting richly, making Hadley, with its funky shops, redwood forests, harvest festival, and quirky inhabitants, a character in its own right. Her writing is evocative: “They drove toward town, sunshine machine-gunning through the pines. Ana closed her eyes and let the light ricochet off her forehead. ‘Gorgeous day,’ Abbie said. ‘I’ve lived in perfect weather all my life-doesn’t fool me for a second,’ Ana replied.” Ana of California isn’t just about surviving a terrible childhood, it’s about the ways people misunderstand each other, and how little it takes to overcome those deficits. 

Much to think about and to enjoy, in a book that carries readers back to pre-texting adolescence.

*Note that doesn’t say it’s an adaptation — some reviews I read were critical of perceived inaccuracies in the novel, but it isn’t supposed to be a remake.

Read Full Post »

The Hummingbird by Stephen Kiernan and Different Roots, Common Dreams in The Mindful Reader column

Two weeks and no posts about pleasure reading? See my previous entry on not finishing books . . .  maybe I’ll write soon about applying the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (sort of) to my cookbook collection.

In this week’s Mindful Reader column I review two books: a beautiful photography collection by Becky Field about New Hampshire’s newest Americans, particularly our refugee neighbors, and Stephen P. Kiernan’s latest novel, The Hummingbird.

Here’s a bit about each; read the entire column here.

Vermont author Stephen P. Kiernan’s new novel, The Hummingbird, is about Deborah, a hospice nurse whose husband, Michael, has severe post-traumatic stress disorder after three deployments to Iraq. Their marriage is suffering and she not sure what to do. Her latest patient is Barclay Reed, a grouchy former history professor whose career ended over accusations of academic dishonesty.

and

“I love the American people because they respect all people and give them their rights without exception.” That’s a quote from Nakaa Nassir, an Iraqi woman in Manchester, which appears in photographer Becky Field’s new book, Different Roots, Common Dreams.

Read Full Post »