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Dispatches from the new front lines of parenthood

When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, "among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia."

Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. She's been praised for her "historian's urge for accuracy," her "sociologist's sense of social nuance," and her "writerly passion for the beauty of language."

But Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. "We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didn't want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers."

When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalist's eye upon events at home. Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs; out on the porch, a squirrel was sitting on Jesse's head; vulgar posters had erupted on bedroom walls; the insult niftam (the Amharic word for "snot") had led to fistfights; and four non-native-English-speaking teenage boys were researching, on Mom's computer, the subject of "saxing."

"At first I thought one of our trombone players was considering a change of instrument," writes Greene. "Then I remembered: they can't spell."

Using the tools of her trade, she uncovered the true subject of the "saxing" investigation, inspiring the chapter "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Couldn't Spell."

A celebration of parenthood; an ingathering of children, through birth and out of loss and bereavement; a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening--No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy.

• Sales Rank: #799169 in Books
• Published on: 2011-04-12
• Released on: 2011-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.27" h x 1.20" w x 6.36" l, 1.29 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. With four children of their own, Atlanta journalist Greene (There Is No Me Without You) and her husband, a criminal defense attorney, gradually adopted five more—one from Bulgaria and four from Ethiopia—to create a roiling, largehearted family unit. In her whimsical, hilarious account, she pokes fun at her own initial cluelessness regarding the adoption process, which the couple began after Greene suffered a miscarriage in her mid-40s; they procured an "adoption doctor" to advise them on the risks of adopting institutionalized babies from Russian and Bulgarian orphanages (e.g., the baby's head measurements and appearance in videos might indicate developmental problems). After several trips to a rural Bulgarian orphanage, they brought home a four-year-old Roma boy they renamed Jesse; Greene writes frankly about her own moments of "post-adoption panic" and doubts about attachment. Subsequently, as her older children headed out to college, new ones arrived: the humanitarian HIV/AIDS crisis in Ethiopia resolved the couple to adopt healthy, five-year-old Helen, orphaned when her family was decimated by the disease; then nine-year-old Fisseha, and two brothers, Daniel and Yosef, whom Greene's older biological son Lee befriended while working at another Ethiopian orphanage. The family often felt like a "group home," as Greene depicts engagingly, yet despite periods of tension and strife, such as the discovery of living parents and sibling rivalry, Greene captures the family's triumphant shared delight in one another's differences. (May)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review
Love knows no bounds--and no borders--in journalist Greene's ebullient valentine to her family of nine children . . . 'Who made you the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe?' a friend quips, but Greene doesn't apologize. Instead, she shows what it means to knit together a family that 'steers by the light . . . of what feels right and true.' (Caroline Leavitt, People (four stars))

Readers . . . will find plenty of hilarity in this romping account of [Greene's] boisterous brood . . . [she] brings her well-honed research and reporting skills to this very personal story . . . this joy--experiencing it and conveying it to readers--is her greatest success. (Suki Casanave, The Washington Post)

No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is [Melissa Fay Greene's] sprawling, imperfect, courageous and joyful account of the adoption process, warts and all--the heart-wrenching trips to orphanages, frustrating delays, visits with living relatives, and the way her family welcomed and made room for each child, as well as the inevitable homesickness and culture clashes and sometimes rocky emotional terrain . . . The moral of her story? Just the opposite of the title's warning. Don't be afraid to break the rules, to 'steer by the light of what makes us laugh, what makes us feel good'--especially if it means biking in the house, with or without a helmet. With deep compassion, sparkling humor and an unshakable faith in the power of the whoopee cushion, she leads the way. (Gina Webb, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Moving, enlightening, and surprisingly funny ... No Biking in the House Without a Helmet ... folds an adoption primer into a meditation on family. (Sara Nelson, O, The Oprah Magazine)

Joyful and big-hearted . . . This funny and frankly personal book is a departure for Greene, whose previous work has been sober and measured. The title sounds like a madcap domestic comedy in the tradition of Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck, which it sometimes is. But Greene's humor is less acerbic, her persona less addled . . . Greene is such an open and self-deprecating narrator she makes every addition to her family seem like the most natural and beautiful move in the world, 'each child--whether homemade or foreign born--a revelation, a treasure.' The ability to write brilliant books with a houseful of children is clearly the least of Greene's gifts. (Jennifer Reese, NPR.org)

There are funny parenting books and wise parenting books. Rarely a funny and wise parenting book. Melissa Fay Greene really does have nine children, five of whom were adopted from foreign orphanages--but this book isn't a treacly, multicultural 'Brady Bunch.' Neither moralistic nor preachy, this memoir is about what it's like to have heart, and grow children with heart. In another writer's less deft hands, children who herded goats in Ethiopia and then relocated to a big old house in Atlanta could have become a Southern Jewish version of Brad and Angelina. Greene captures the wild vicissitudes of her family's life and how individual difference enriches them all. (Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune)

For the past 21 years Melissa Fay Greene has been raising nine children, both biological and adopted. In her memoir No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, she writes of the many parenting obstacles she has encountered, overcome, and met again as the rules change completely for her second wave of children. Talk about a story for the ages. (Town & Country)

A truly heartfelt memoir . . . [Greene] resists the urge to be cloying, however, infusing each chapter with a strong dose of humor and not shying away from the difficulties presented by adopting older children . . . It's all one big, happy family but also a very real one. Call them the twenty-first-century Waltons, and revel in the joy they have found and brought home for keeps. (Colleen Mondor, Booklist (starred review))

Greene is a writer of emotional impact . . . Her words are flush with humanity and all the messiness and comedy that humanity trails in its wake. She goes the distance, which is a beautiful thing to behold . . . Eventually, an enveloping sweetness and involvement swept away all but what is elementally grand about being a parent and nursing a child. An upbeat chronicle of a life that has been lived on the bright side of the road, its ruts beveled by naked love. (Kirkus Reviews)

Joy to the world. Line by glorious line, with raw honesty and unforced hilarity, Melissa Fay Greene tells the story of the true mega-family of the millennium, which is not some reality-show curiosity shop, but her very own nine children: those who came home from the hospital and those who came home from the airport. People often assure me that I'll laugh and cry reading a book. I may smile; I may feel a lump in my throat. But I wept a dozen times reading No Biking and woke my own kids up with my laughter, as I stayed up all night with this, the Cheaper by the Dozen for a new planet. Melissa Fay Greene never set out to raise the world, only to raise her children. With this book, she raises the bar, wherever the word 'family' is spoken, for every single one of us. (Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Second Nature: A Love Story)

The funniest part of this book is not the fact that several of Melissa Fay Greene's nine children were once Ethiopian goat herders. The funniest part is that she has nine children. She not only loves and appreciates every one, she brings them all to vivid life with affection, exasperation, candor, and (indispensable, under the circumstances) humor. I went from Are you kidding? to I love these people! in four pages flat. (Marilyn Johnson, author of This Book Is Overdue!)

Brimming with humor and love, the story of Greene's ever-expanding family is both unique and universal. Not everyone watches a son spear a Frisbee in mid-flight or weave a bullwhip out of the suburban shrubbery. But everyone at some point asks what it means to be a parent, a sibling, a family. Greene answers these questions with wit and wisdom. I finished her book with a renewed conviction that it is possible to shrink this wide world and to begin to bridge the chasms that have opened between us. (Geraldine Brooks, author of People of the Book and March)

About every five years, we get a book from Melissa Fay Greene. I've learned to wait for them eagerly, always excited to know what this thoughtful, sensitive writer is going to do next. Now--No Biking in the House Without a Helmet. That title tells you in no uncertain terms that you will laugh, but there's a lot more in these pages than humor, including Melissa's trademark generosity, optimism, winning self-deprecation, and high spirits. As a writer, a reader, and--like Melissa--the parent of an adopted child, I'm glad to know that this book will soon be out, and I hope it finds a very large audience. (David Guterson, author of The Other and Snow Falling on Cedars)

About the Author

Melissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for Sheetrock, The Temple Bombing, Last Man Out, and There Is No Me Without You. Two of her books have been finalists for the National Book Award, and New York University's journalism department named Praying for Sheetrock one of the top one hundred works of journalism in the twentieth century. She has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, Newsweek, Life, Reader's Digest, Redbook, and Salon, among others. She and her husband, Don Samuel, have nine children and live in Atlanta.

Most helpful customer reviews

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
Life on the bright side
By Judith
As the Kirkus Review so aptly put it, this is "an upbeat chronicle of a life that has been lived on the bright side of the road, its ruts beveled by naked love." Having known and loved this family for 20 years, having been along with them for the ride, I have to admit to a certain partiality. So I leave it to others to be objective and I think their reviews give credence to my not-impartial enthusiasm for this author and her remarkable abilities as a story teller. It comes naturally to her -- conversations on walks around the neighborhood, on breezy screen porches, over makeshift dinners or gala Passover seders over the years, have been full of tears and laughter -- mostly laughter -- as Melissa has shared the stories of her parenting journey, many of which are beautifully captured in this book. My son, an only child, had the remarkable good luck to be great friends with Melissa's #3 Lee. We lived just down the street so his younger life was lived between the quiet of our household and the raucous fun at the Greene-Samuel's. Even our lone pet, Lulu the huge Golden Retriever, knew where to find the party when she was so inclined, and considered little Frannie, the Rat Terrier, to be her best friend. Somehow, the concept of overwhelm hasn't made it into Melissa's or Donny's consciousness. There was always time to work on science projects, put together Halloween costumes, write amazing books, cook dinner, visit with friends, cheer at soccer games, soothe hurts, do the laundry -- lots of laundry, care for aging parents, and pick up the phone to call me whenever Lulu wandered over to let me know not to worry. Being privy to this way of living has the potential to make a regular person feel inadequate! But the good-humored, big-hearted humanity that earnestly radiates from this family always leaves me inspired and hopeful and encouraged that there are people like this on this earth. For years I've been hoping Melissa would take her own extraordinary life and family as the subject for her writing, understanding that she would need to strike a balance between candor and delicacy. Now she's done it and she's done it respectfully, thoughtfully and brilliantly. You are in for a treat!

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Michael G
Fantastic book! I've started giving this as a gift now.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Hilarious, Wise, Inspiring
By KLreader
This book is an absolute treasure. I couldn't put it down. It is that rare combination of laugh-out-loud humor and profound wisdom delivered in fresh, sparkling prose. I don't have adopted kids or a large family but I found it richly relevant and inspiring. Greene is an astute observor and nudges the reader into paying more attention to the small lively details of ordinary life. Her love and enthusiastic enjoyment of her family, even when things aren't going well, and her exuberant love of life is infectious. I didn't want the book to end. Tolstoy once wrote that the highest purpose of art is to help people love life. This book offers that gift page by page, along with valuable insights about how to love those closest to you.

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Major Andre, by Anthony Bailey

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A look at Benedict Arnold's conspiracy to surrender West Point to the British, told from the point of view of a leading participant, the charming and talented professional military man, amateur actor, and poet John Andre, who is compelled by his code of conduct to rise above his own shortcomings.

• Sales Rank: #2409113 in Books
• Published on: 1987-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.40" h x .90" w x 5.40" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Spanning six days in the fall of 1780, this modest but affecting novel is an absorbing tour de force. The narrator is Major John Andre, liaison between the British Crown and the American traitor Benedict Arnold in the conspiracy to attack West Point. In a restrained monologue, Andre relates the details of the espionage plot, the circumstances of his arrest (with incriminating papers from General Arnold in his boot) and Arnold's part in the ill-fated plan. Cultivated, intelligent and urbane, he reveals the past events of his life, his motivations in accepting this mission and the deepening of his awareness of the seriousness of his plight: that this botched venture will end in his death. Andre emerges as an appealing though not falsely heroic figure, a man who engages the reader's sympathies. Bailey has empathy for both parties in the conflict. He makes us aware that this was a civilized war, in which the participants were often cognizant of the bonds uniting them in kinship. The small contrivances in the narrativemost of them due to the fact that we hear only Andre's voice as he addresses his interlocutorsare minor flaws compared to the quiet power this slim novel conveys.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Major Andre was the British officer whose fortunate capture prevented Benedict Arnold's betrayal of the West Point garrison. Arnold fled safely to a British ship, but Andre was tried as a spy, convicted, and hanged. In this novel, set in the days just prior to his execution, Andre tells his story to the different American officers who are guarding him. Bailey succeeds admirably in bringing Andre, a minor name from history, believably alive. But while he creates sympathy and respect for Andre, he fails to provide a more universal significance to his situation. Readers interested in the American Revolution will find this a credible reconstruction, but the novel's lack of narrative propulsion or suspense will not sustain the interest of more general readers. Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
An original way of describing the unfortunate circumstances culminating in ...
By Amazon Customer
An original way of describing the unfortunate circumstances culminating in Major Andre's tragic fate, being sacrificed by Arnold's greed. For anyone interested in the very complicated and human way of war.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
One of the best on Major Andre.
By Penny
I'm fascinated by Major Andre and this book is one of the best available. The story of Major Andre still captivates us nearly 240 years after his execution for "spying." His story moves us. It forces us to look beyond "sides" to the humanity of Andre and the contrasting characters of Andre and Benedict Arnold. Washington had to grapple with his decision to order Andre's execution. Some say he regretted it greatly, that it haunted him all his years, but that he felt he had no other choice. The British had hung Nathan Hale. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the events involving Benedict Arnold and Major Andre. The folklore around Andre continues to expand and evolve. It's still a dynamic story centuries later.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
One of the most underrated books I've ever read. ...
By Peter Neofotis
One of the most underrated books I've ever read. If you can get your hands on a copy, read it!

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Ali G: How many words does you know?

Noam Chomsky: Normally, humans, by maturity, have tens of thousands of them.

Ali G: What is some of 'em?

—Da Ali G Show Did you know that both mammal and matter derive from baby talk? Have you noticed how wince makes you wince? Ever wonder why so many h-words have to do with breath? Roy Blount Jr. certainly has, and after forty years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, he still can’t get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the electricity, the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies, of letters and their combinations. Blount does not prescribe proper English. The franchise he claims is “over the counter.”

Three and a half centuries ago, Thomas Blount produced Blount’s Glossographia, the first dictionary to explore derivations of English words. This Blount’s Glossographia takes that pursuit to other levels, from Proto-Indo-European roots to your epiglottis. It rejects the standard linguistic notion that the connection between words and their meanings is “arbitrary.” Even the word arbitrary is shown to be no more arbitrary, at its root, than go-to guy or crackerjack. From sources as venerable as the OED (in which Blount finds an inconsistency, at whisk) and as fresh as Urbandictionary.com (to which Blount has contributed the number-one definition of alligator arm), and especially from the author’s own wide-ranging experience, Alphabet Juice derives an organic take on language that is unlike, and more fun than, any other.

• Sales Rank: #825014 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-14
• Released on: 2008-10-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.30" h x 1.31" w x 6.31" l, 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Blount (Long Time Leaving) is a contributing editor to the Atlantic Monthly, a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! quiz show and a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary. He displays his pleasure in words with his subtitle—The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; with Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory—as he dishes up an alphabetical array of verbal reverberations, weasel words and linguistic acrobatics from aardvark to zoology (Pronounced zo-ology. Not zoo-ology. Look at the letters. Count the o's). Along the way, he compares dictionaries, slings slang, digs for roots, posts ripostes and dotes on anecdotes. The format is nearly identical to Roy Copperud's still valuable but out-of-print A Dictionary of Usage and Style (1964). Blount's book is equally instructive and scholarly, but is also injected with a full dose of word play on steroids. Quotes, quips, euphemisms, rhymes and rhythms, literary references (Lo-lee-ta) and puns: The lowest form of wit, it used to be said, but that was before Ann Coulter. Throughout, the usage advice is sage and also fun, since the writer's own wild wit, while bent and Blount, is razor sharp. (Oct. 21)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Ever since Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation took the 2004 best-seller lists by storm, publishers have been casting about for their next dark-horse language book. Farrar may have found it in Blount’s latest title. Much more garrulous than Truss, a shameless name-dropper, and a purveyor of endless anecdotes always casting himself in the starring role, Blount is supremely entertaining here and more than matches Truss’ spirited tone. Laid out in A–Z dictionary format, the book ranges from the pointed critique of conjunction dysfunction to the hilarious diatribe under tump, which finds Blount spending weeks looking for his own name in the new edition of American Heritage Dictionary. Feeling that he is long overdue to be cited for word usage, Blount envies “Hunter Thompson for booger, Jimmy Breslin for boozehound, and William Safire for hoohah.” He is, however willing to concede snob to Tom Wolfe. Although some entries are only tangentially connected to his ostensible subject (see TV, on being on), many others provide Blount with ample opportunity to wax eloquent on the joys of language; his perfect parsing of the allure of the phrase “wonky exegeses” will elicit smiles from fellow language lovers. A knowledgeable handbook that is also chock-full of funny, colorful opinions on marriage, movies, and Monet. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review
“Alphabet Juice is pure Roy Blount Jr. amusing, bemusing, and smart as hell.” —Fortune  “Gracefully erudite and joyous.” —Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe “If everybody's first English teacher were Roy Blount Jr., we might still be trillions in debt, but we would be so deeply in love with words and their magic that we'd hardly notice.” —The Dallas Morning News “If your eyes have only skimmed over the long subtitle of Alphabet Juice and just vaguely registered that the book has something to do with words, please go back and read the entire subtitle again, slowly. This time listen to the syncopation of the clauses, as well as the alliterative music of the p’s and t’s, then note the juxtaposition of high and low style (‘combinations thereof,’ ‘innards’), the punchy yet unexpected nouns (‘gists,’ ‘pips’), that touch of genteel sexual innuendo (‘secret parts’), and the concluding flourish of the gustatory. Like Roy Blount Jr. himself, his new book's subtitle neatly balances real learning with easy-loping charm.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Quotes, quips, euphemisms, rhymes and rhythms, literary references (‘Lo-lee-ta’) and puns: “The lowest form of wit, it used to be said, but that was before Ann Coulter.” Throughout, the usage advice is sage and also fun, since the writer’s own wild wit, while bent and Blount, is razor sharp.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A knowledgeable handbook that is also chock-full of funny, colorful opinions on marriage, movies, and Monet.” —Booklist “Roy Blount Jr.’s Alphabet Juice—a relatively short encyclopedic compendium of English usage—pretends to be a practical guide a la Strunk and White or Lynne Truss. But it has more in common with Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.  The author might prefer a comparison to Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. Blount shares with Bierce and Twain a gift for misdirection, an inclination to pull off the fanciest of tricks right in front of us, all the while decrying fanciness. Alphabet Juice pegs knowledgeable as “one ugly word.” But Blount is one of our most deeply and broadly knowledgeable writers, and his new book is a personal document, a neo-Platonic manifesto exalting the natural music of language (“Doesn’t dog sound like what the English expect from a dog?”). Blount’s bull’s-eye, which he hits unerringly, is the ecstatic center where talking, writing and singing meet. . . . So Blount has figured out a way to have his fancy cake and eat it, too, with a plastic fork like a regular joe. And guess what? He’s sharing the cake, and it’s the best cake you ever tasted.” —Paste “I love Roy Blount. I think you should, too. He makes you laugh out loud—a lot (every couple of pages in this book). Human laughter comes in all sizes, colors, flavors and states of emotional dress, from outraged ("The Daily Show") to infantile (Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck) to raunchy and lowdown ("Californication.") Blount elicits the laughs of generosity and enlightenment; it's the spectacle of a fellow citizen maintaining benevolence while still remaining better and more straightforward than the rest us. (How exactly did our three candidates for Twainhood—Blount, Vonnegut and Keillor—get to be such decent chaps, given the darkness of their inspiration?)” —The Buffalo News “Roy Blount Jr. is a famous American humorist. But that clipped description is kind of like saying that Paris is simply an inland French city: The outline is accurate as far as it goes, but it leaves out all of the captivating details. ” —The Boston Globe "A book that’s as much fun to read backward as forward, Alphabet Juice is also a one-of-a-kind work of literature that will help you write better. It’s like The Elements of Style, only updated and hilarious." —Ian Frazier, author of Lamentations of the Father  "Roy Blount Jr. is one of the most clever [see sly, witty, cunning, nimble] wordsmiths cavorting in the English language, or what remains of it. Alphabet Juice proves once again that he’s incapable of writing a flat or unfunny sentence." —Carl Hiaasen, author of Nature Girl "A few words about Alphabet Juice: Hilarious! Brilliant! Provocative! Okay, one more—Suaviloquent!" — Daniel Klein, co-author of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar "Alphabet Juice is the book Roy Blount Jr. was born to write, which, considering his prodigious talent, is saying a lot. Did you know that the word laugh is linguistically related to chickens and pie? This is the book that any of us who urgently, passionately love words—love to read them, roll them over the tongue, and learn their life stories—were lucky enough to be born to read." —Cathleen Schine, author of The New Yorkers

Most helpful customer reviews

60 of 62 people found the following review helpful.
Engaging, entertaining, and even educational
By R. M. Peterson
ALPHABET JUICE is a potpourri of comments on words and the English language, arranged in alphabetically-ordered entries and presented with Blount's characteristic good humor. It is somewhat akin to books on the proper use of words and language, but it should not be pigeon-holed as simply a user's guide. While it does contain a fair measure of advice and commentary on usage (Blount is not particularly uptight, but he does have a prescriptive bent), it also has generous doses of etymology, word play, jokes, and personal experiences and anecdotes. It appears likely that Blount has been collecting material for this book over many years of his career as a writer and somewhat populist man-of-letters.

Blount does push one particular thesis in the book. Contrary to those scholars who hold that the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary, Blount insists that the sound of many words "somehow sensuously evoke[s] the essence of the word." To characterize this quality, he coins the word "sonicky." A few miscellaneous examples (out of hundreds) of sonicky words from the book: "crunch," "gallop," "grunt," "mum," and "squelch." Blount: "If linguisticians can't hear any correspondence between sound and sense in those words, they aren't listening. Even when words aren't coined with sound and sense conjunctively in mind, the words that sound most like what they mean have a survival advantage." And throughout the book, Blount marshals plenty of evidence for this thesis.

But please don't get the idea that ALPHABET JUICE is some sort of high-brow, academic tome. To fully appreciate it, one certainly needs to be generally literate and to care about words and language, but one does not need to hold a graduate degree in English or in linguistics. Indeed, ALPHABET JUICE may put off many who do hold degrees in those fields.

To give you a better idea of the wide and eclectic range of the book, here are several of my favorite entries or discussions: Bushisms and Berraisms; book blurbs; "hopefully" (Blount convinces me that the common usage of "hopefully" as a sentence-modifying adverb is unacceptable, even execrable); French movies from the Fifties starring Brigitte Bardot; "nosism" (the delivering of one's opinions in the royal or editorial or corporate "we"); "what-if history"; and Wilt Chamberlain. There also is a modest dose of moralizing, much of it on the mark. For example: "Walt Whitman boasted of his 'barbaric yawp,' and good for him. Now America has got itself backed into the corner of claiming to be defending civilization, of all things. Not our strong suit."

By its very nature, ALPHABET JUICE does not readily lend itself to being read straight through, cover to cover. Because I feel that I should not review any book that I have not read in its entirety, I pushed myself to read ALPHABET JUICE cover to cover, though it took me two weeks of off-and-on reading. I sensed that the quality of the book began to decline a tad around the letter "Q", although that impression may well have been due in part to a certain measure of tedium. On the other hand, much that is of interest would be missed if one read only selected entries more or less at random. The best approach might be to read a letter a day. However it is read, to a literate reader ALPHABET JUICE should prove to be moderately engaging, entertaining, and educational.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Sweeten l'eau
By Jon Hunt
Juice is apt as this book squizzles around the mouth. Could Roy Blount Jr. write a sequel? Not fast enough.

"Alphabet Juice" reaches readers on two levels, I would guess. There are the appreciative mavens of wordom (worddom....word-dom?) who will chuckle and te-hee but the hardcore wordies (of the latter am I) revel in this kind of thing. Ya gotta give Blount credit when, regarding bow-wow, he can't imagine a dog forming a "b". And the last entry on "hip", referring to the guy who had a double hip operation, is one of his best.

Much of the reader's particular interest in this book might be found in how Blount exposes words knowing we may see them differently. I loved "wrought". He dwells on the "ugh" of the word while I wondered how many words in our language could add a letter to both the beginning and the end of "rough" and still come up with a word. The author is a good teacher in that he reminds us of jots and tittles but also adds "clitic" without fear of an "r"-rating.

This is a book to be savored. The narrative sometimes wanders but keep your eyes peeled for the moments when he is spot-on. This is the best book on language to come out in years and I highly recommend it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Enthusiasm from a Word Fan
By Rob Hardy
People usually don't regard reference books as very much fun. Useful, sure, but as Mark Twain said when he looked up the dictionary's definition of an inflammation he suffered, "The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of place in a dictionary." Twain, though, didn't know Roy Blount Jr., but I think even he would have appreciated the fun in Blount's _Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory_ (Sarah Crichton Books). It's not really a dictionary, but it partially is, with definitions and comments on plenty of words Blount likes and some he does not; and it is in alphabetical order. It's long on etymology, too, but it also emphasizes the feel of words as they are formed by our organs of diction, and it has plenty of funny stories, puns, hilarious doggerel, history, social commentary, and movie recommendations. Blount obviously loves words (and it's a good thing, too, since there is a long list of books opposite the title page headed "Also by Roy Blount Jr.") and his enthusiasm is catching. Your reviewer had to start with the A words and read through the Zs, but this is not easy, because most of the words here have references to other words here, and only by a zig-zag course was the end achieved.

Take, for instance, _zigzag_, which Blount finds is from the French _ziczac_ and German _zickzack_. "I have to say, ours is better. Those _ck_ or hard _c_ sounds are hitches that hold too long; our _g_ takes just long enough to evoke a change in direction that's marked but quick." This is a theme that Blount takes throughout this book, the way some words can feel right, and advises that there ought to be a word that applies to terms like _zigzag_ which "are kinesthetically evocative of, or appropriate to, their meaning, without necessarily involving imitative noise." He proposes _sonicky_, and of course you may find it in the S section. You get the idea that he tastes the voicing of his words the way other people might taste wine, enjoying the play of tongue, teeth, and palate. "The word _nausea_ comes from the Latin for "seasickness," which came from the Greek for "ship" [as did _nautical_] - but even if it didn't have that pedigree, it would _sound_ right." There are many lovely and surprising etymologies here. _Lava_ was originally a word of dialect from Naples, and it meant a deluge of rain. Then Vesuvius sent out a deluge of molten rock, and the word took on a meaning specifically for that. Blount's eagerness to dispense information is a delight. Under "Great one-word sentences," he reminds us that "... the actual last line of _The Maltese Falcon_, which is not, as most people believe, Bogart's "This is the stuff that dreams are made on," but Ward Bond's response: "Huh?"

This is an amiable book by a funny and thoughtful man who obviously loves language, and wants us to use it expressively. Of course Blount comes down on the pedant's side to advise against how we almost always use _hopefully_ wrong, or how we must not modify _unique_, or how there should be no such word as _thusly_, which he says was first used by humorists. ("So why don't we all go around with fake arrows through our heads? Why don't we all carry rubber chickens? I believe we may say categorically that words first used by humorists are to be avoided, especially by other humorists, but also by everyone else.") This is not, however, a book of proscription, but of encouragement and delight. Writing, he tells us, "needs to be quick, so it's readable at first glance and also worth lingering over." His book is full of just that sort of writing.

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!! PDF Ebook The Nightmare: A Novel (Detective Inspector Joona Linna), by Lars Kepler

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Lars Kepler returns with a piercing, bestselling sequel to The Hypnotist

After spellbinding audiences in The Hypnotist, Detective Inspector Joona Linna is back in The Nightmare, an internationally bestselling Swedish thriller published to critical acclaim in dozens of countries. As the Swedish newspaper Arbetarbladet put it, “The reader is ready to sell his own soul for the opportunity to read this book without interruption, in one sitting.”

On a summer night, police recover the body of a young woman from an abandoned pleasure boat drifting around the Stockholm archipelago. Her lungs are filled with brackish water, and the forensics team is sure that she drowned. Why, then, is the pleasure boat still afloat, and why are there no traces of water on her clothes or body?

The next day, a man turns up dead in his state apartment in Stockholm, hanging from a lamp hook. All signs point to suicide, but the room has a high ceiling, and there’s not a single piece of furniture around—nothing to climb on.

Joona Linna begins to piece together the two mysteries, but the logistics are a mere prelude to a dizzying and dangerous course of events. At its core, the most frightening aspect of The Nightmare isn’t its gruesome crimes—it’s the dark psychology of its characters, who show us how blind we are to our own motives.

 

• Sales Rank: #851181 in Books
• Published on: 2012-07-03
• Released on: 2012-07-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.33" h x 1.53" w x 6.41" l, 1.62 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Review

“Mark Bramhall follows his success with Kepler's THE HYPNOTIST to envelop listeners in another thriller featuring detective Joona Linna…Bramhall is a maestro of the musical cadences of endless Swedish proper names and locations. The unfamiliar words, definite tongue-twisting challenges, are rendered perfectly, or at least perfectly believably to American ears. Bramhall orchestrates the highs and lows of both inflection and emotion, as well as tenderness and error. He carefully sorts dozens of characters with simple vocal and emotional color, including the teams of police officers. The challenges of this narration are all met – brilliantly.” ―AudioFile Magazine, AudioFile Earphones Award Winner

“This is a crime fiction with real depth, multifaceted characters and a relentless, pounding pace.” ―BookPage

“Narrator Mark Bramhall smoothly handles tongue-twisting Nordic names, and sets a pace that allows the listener to properly process the often-perplexing events without diminishing their chilling effect.” ―Publishers Weekly

About the Author
Lars Kepler is a pseudonym for a literary couple who live and write in Sweden.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
foreboding
 
 
A cold shiver runs down Penelope Fernandez’s spine. Her heart beats faster and she darts a look over her shoulder. Perhaps she feels a sense of foreboding of what’s to come as her day progresses.
In spite of the television studio’s heat, Penelope’s face feels chilled. Maybe the sensation is left over from her time in makeup when the cold powder puff was pressed to her skin and the peace-dove hair clip was taken out so they could rub in the mousse that would make her hair fall in serpentine locks.
Penelope Fernandez is the spokesperson for the Swedish Peace and Reconciliation Society. Silently, she is being ushered into the newsroom and to her spotlighted seat across from Pontus Salman, CEO of the armaments manufacturer Silencia Defense AB. The news anchor Stefanie von Sydow is narrating a report on all the layoffs resulting from the purchase of the Bofors Corporation by British BAE Systems Limited. Then she turns to Penelope.
“Penelope Fernandez, in several public debates you have been critical of the management of Swedish arms exports. In fact, you recently compared it to the French Angola-gate scandal. There, highly placed politicians and businessmen were prosecuted for bribery and weapons smuggling and given long prison sentences. But here in Sweden? We really haven’t seen this, have we?”
“Well, you can interpret this in two ways,” replies Penelope. “Either our politicians behave differently or our justice system works differently.”
“You know very well,” begins Pontus Salman, “that we have a long tradition of—”
“According to Swedish law,” Penelope says, “all manufacture and export of armaments are illegal.”
“You’re wrong, of course,” says Salman.
“Paragraphs 3 and 6 of the Military Equipment Act,” Penelope points out with precision.
“We at Silencia Defense have already gotten a positive preliminary decision.” Salman smiles.
“Otherwise this would be a case of major weapons crimes and—”
“But, we do have permission.”
“Don’t forget the rationale for armaments—”
“Just a moment, Penelope.” Stefanie von Sydow stops her and nods to Pontus Salman, who’s lifted his hand to signal that he wasn’t finished.
“All business transactions are reviewed in advance,” he explains. “Either directly by the government or by the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products, if you know what that is.”
“France has similar regulations,” says Penelope. “And yet military equipment worth eight million Swedish crowns landed in Angola despite the UN weapons embargo and in spite of a completely binding prohibition—”
“We’re not talking about France, we’re talking about Sweden.”
“I know that people want to keep their jobs, but I still would like to hear how you can explain the export of enormous amounts of ammunition to Kenya? It’s a country that—”
“You have no proof,” he says. “Nothing. Not one shred. Or do you?”
“Unfortunately, I cannot—”
“You have no concrete evidence?” asks Stefanie von Sydow.
“No, but I—”
“Then I think I’m owed an apology,” says Pontus Salman.
Penelope stares him in the eyes, her anger and frustration boiling up, but she tamps it down, stays silent. Pontus Salman smiles smugly and begins to talk about Silencia Defense’s factory in Trollhättan. Two hundred new jobs were created when they were given permission to start production, he says. He speaks slowly and in elaborate detail, deftly truncating the time left for his opponent.
As Penelope listens, she forces aside her anger by focusing on other matters. Soon, very soon, she and Björn will board his boat. They’ll make up the arrow-shaped bed in the forecabin and fill the refrigerator and tiny freezer with treats. She conjures up the frosted schnapps glasses, and the platter of marinated herring, mustard herring, soused herring, fresh potatoes, boiled eggs, and hardtack. After they anchor at a tiny island in the archipelago, they’ll set the table on the afterdeck and sit there eating in the evening sun for hours.
*   *   *
Penelope Fernandez walks out of the Swedish Television building and heads toward Valhallavägen. She wasted two hours waiting for a slot in another morning program before the producer finally told her she’d been bumped by a segment on quick tips for a summer tummy. Far away, on the fields of Gärdet, she can make out the colorful tents of Circus Maximus and the little forms of two elephants, probably very large. One raises his trunk high in the air.
Penelope is only twenty-four years old. She has curly black hair cut to her shoulders, and a tiny crucifix, a confirmation present, glitters from a silver chain around her neck. Her skin is the soft golden color of virgin olive oil or honey, as a boy in high school said during a project where the students were supposed to describe one another. Her eyes are large and serious. More than once, she’s heard herself described as looking like Sophia Loren.
Penelope pulls out her cell phone to let Björn know she’s on her way. She’ll be taking the subway from Karlaplan station.
“Penny? Is something wrong?” Björn sounds rushed.
“No, why do you ask?”
“Everything’s set. I left a message on your machine. You’re all that’s missing.”
“No need to stress, then, right?”
As Penelope takes the steep escalator down to the subway platform, her heart begins to beat uneasily. She closes her eyes. The escalator sinks downward, seeming to shrink as the air becomes cooler and cooler.
Penelope Fernandez comes from La Libertad, one of the largest provinces in El Salvador. She was born in a jail cell, her mother attended by fifteen female prisoners doing their best as midwives. There was a civil war going on, and Claudia Fernandez, a doctor and activist, had landed in the regime’s infamous prison for encouraging the indigenous population to form unions.
Penelope opens her eyes as she reaches the platform. Her claustrophobic feeling has passed. She thinks about Björn waiting for her at the motorboat club on Långholmen. She loves skinny-dipping from his boat, diving straight into the water, seeing nothing but sea and sky.
She steps onto the subway, which rumbles on, gently swaying, until it breaks out into the open as it reaches the station at Gamla Stan and sunlight streams in through the windows.
Like her mother, Penelope is an activist and her passionate opposition to war and violence led her to get her master’s in political science at Uppsala University with a specialty in peace and conflict resolution. She’s worked for the French aid organization Action Contre la Faim in Darfur, southern Sudan, with Jane Oduya, and her article for Dagens Nyheter, on the women of the refugee camp and their struggles to regain normalcy after every attack, brought broad recognition. Two years ago, she followed Frida Blom as the spokesperson for the Swedish Peace and Reconciliation Society.
Leaving the subway at the Hornstull station, Penelope feels uneasy again, extremely uneasy, without knowing why. She runs down the hill to Söder Mälarstrand, then walks quickly over the bridge to Långholmen and follows the road to the small harbor. The dust she kicks up from the gravel creates a haze in the still air.
Björn’s boat is in the shade directly underneath Väster Bridge. The movement of the water dapples the gray girders with a network of light.
Penelope spots Björn on the afterdeck. He’s got on his cowboy hat, and he stands stock-still, shoulders bent, with his arms wrapped closely about him. Sticking two fingers in her mouth, she lets loose a whistle, startling him, and he turns toward her with a face naked with fear. And it’s still there in his eyes when she climbs down the stairs to the dock. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing,” he answers, as he straightens his hat and tries to smile.
As they hug, she notices his hands are ice-cold and the back of his shirt is damp.
“You’re covered in sweat.”
Björn avoids her eyes. “It’s been stressful getting ready to go.”
“Bring my bag?”
He nods and gestures toward the cabin. The boat rocks gently under her feet and the air smells of lacquered wood and sun-warmed plastic.
“Hello? Anybody home?” she asks, tapping his head.
His clear blue eyes are childlike and his straw-colored hair sticks out in tight dreadlocks from under the hat. “I’m here,” he says. But he looks away.
“What are you thinking about? Where’s your mind gone to?”
“Just that we’re finally heading off together,” he answers as he wraps his arms around her waist. “And that we’ll be having sex out in nature.”
He buries his lips in her hair.
“So that’s what you’re dreaming of,” she whispers.
“Yes.”
She laughs at his honesty.
“Most people … women, I mean, think that sex outdoors is a bit overrated,” she says. “Lying on the ground among ants and stones and—”
“No. No. It’s just like swimming naked,” he insists.
“You’ll have to convince me,” she teases.
“I’ll do that, all right.”
“How?” She’s laughing as the phone rings in her cloth bag.
Björn stiffens when he hears the signal. Penelope glances at the display.
“It’s Viola,” she says reassuringly before answering. “Hola, Sis.”
A car horn blares over the line as her sister yells in its direction. “Fucking idiot.”
“Viola, what’s going on?”
“It’s over. I’ve dumped Sergei.”
“Not again!” Penelope says.
“Yes, again,” says Viola, noticeably depressed.
“Sorry,” Penelope says. “I can tell you’re upset.”
“Well, I’ll be all right I guess. But … Mamma said you were going out on the boat and I thought … maybe I could come, too, if you don’t mind…”
A moment of silence.
“Sure, you can come, too,” Penelope says, although she hears her own lack of enthusiasm. “Björn and I need some time to ourselves, but…”


 
Copyright © 2010 by Lars Kepler
Translation copyright © 2012 by Laura A. Wideburg

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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
So good, you'll never want it to end.
By Bookreporter
Short version: THE NIGHTMARE is one of those books that is so good, you never want it to end.

Long version: Lars Kepler is the pen name for the Swedish husband and wife writing team of Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril. Both have had works published separately, but have attracted particular attention worldwide with THE HYPNOTIST, their debut novel that introduced Swedish police investigator Joona Linna. THE NIGHTMARE is Kepler's sophomore effort (a third installment has already been published in Sweden), and it is even better than its predecessor. Unforgettable characters dip and swirl through a complex and chilling plot, which in turn is loaded with suspense and action. There is something for everyone here.

Linna is the smartest person in the room at any given point, a legend within his own department, to the consternation of some and the adoration of others. So it is that his skills and talents are in demand for the more bizarre law enforcement investigations, those that match the DLR (Don't Look Right) criteria. Two of those are introduced within the first few chapters of THE NIGHTMARE. The first involves the discovery of the body of a young woman, sitting dead in the cabin of a yacht. Her lungs are filled with water, yet her clothes and body are dry. The reader knows a little, but certainly not all, of how this came to be, and witnessing how Linna puts things together is worth the price of admission all by itself.

The second concerns an apparent suicide by hanging. The dead man, who holds an important position in a Swedish oversight committee, is found in the middle of his living room, hanging from a high beam. The question is raised as to how he got there. Linna figures it out, but something still is not right. And when the investigation into the young woman's death slowly but inexorably intersects with the lonely suicide, things become quite interesting.

Did I say interesting? Wrong word. Try riveting, astonishing, whatever adjectives you wish to use. Everyone in the book is just a little off, and when they all start bouncing against each other, the results are anything but predictable. Linna himself is an odd duck, seemingly uncomfortable with personal relationships that involve anything other than figuring out the perplexing puzzles that involve his work, but by no means is he the book's only offbeat character. There is a retired television host who is as mad as a peach orchard boar, a relentless killer who is pursuing a pain-in-the-rear pacifist, and a failed musician who improbably supplies the key to the whole puzzle (and who is involved in a very strange relationship with a 15-year-old girl). By no means is that an exhaustive list. By the time you finish reading the novel, you will be exhausted, though satisfyingly so, and wishing for another 400 pages, not least because of the teases provided in the closing paragraphs.

Kepler utilizes the present tense narration to great effect in this seamless collaboration that takes the complex and makes it comprehensible while providing a fast-paced and wild ride. THE NIGHTMARE is one book that surely will be a candidate for "best of" lists at the end of the year.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Cannot get through it
By Julia M.
I was really enjoying this book until one of the plot elements spun out of control. The pursuit that occurs in this story stretched my credulity too far. The couple on the run in this book seem to only run into a--holes as they flee through the archipelago. The first nasty people who won't help them are not impossible to believe, but the psychopath they subsequently encounter is a bit much. And the death of the helicopter pilot who is lifting one of them to safety pushed me too far. I had been really wrapped up in the story previous to this, and was trying to skim through the pursuit portions of the book, but each event gets more and more absurd. I will not be able to finish it, it is irritating me too much. I know I am an excessively persnickety reader, but one abysmally unlucky encounter after another is just too much--not to mention their complete inability to get access to a working telephone of any kind. If you think you won't be bothered by such a series of implausibilities, then you might like the book. Some of the characters are interesting--I particularly like the politician who can't sleep without his human sleeping pill (it sounds sexually perverse but it isn't at all). I gave four stars for how much I liked it at the beginning, and subtracted two for how ridiculous the chase scenes became.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Even better than the first in the series [4.5 stars]
By Debra Hamel
The Nightmare is the second book in Lars Keplar's series featuring Swedish detective Joona Linna, a smart, sometimes almost prescient policeman who, this book hints, is haunted by some sort of tragedy. This time around Joona is investigating the murder of a young woman on an abandoned boat, a crime that winds up having connections to a much larger complex of crimes. The book is a page turner, and Joona is a very likeable protagonist. I enjoyed this book a bit more than The Hypnotist, the first book in Keplar's series, which lost its focus, I think, by telling the story from too many different perspectives. The one thing that bothered me about The Nightmare was the character of Saga Bauer, a policewoman who winds up working with Joona. She's a competent female in a man's world and she's very sensitive about misogynstic slights, to the point of throwing quite unprofessional hissy fits now and again. I found that hard to believe. But this series started well and got better: I look forward to reading more from the author.

-- Debra Hamel

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~~ Ebook The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading, by Phyllis Rose

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Phyllis Rose, after a career of reading from syllabuses and writing about canonical books, decided to read like an explorer. She "wanted to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature." Casting herself into the untracked wilderness of the New York Society Library's stacks, she chose a shelf of fiction almost at random and read her way through it. Unsure of what she would find, she was nonetheless certain "that no one in the history of the world had read exactly this series of novels."
What results is a spirited experiment in "Off-Road or Extreme Reading." Rose's shelf of roughly thirty books has everything she could wish for―a remarkable variety of authors and a range of literary ambitions and styles. The early-nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside tales about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a novel from an Afrikaans writer who fascinates Rose to the extent that she ends up watching a YouTube video of his funeral.
Curious about the life of writers across a broad spectrum of time and space, with a keen interest in the challenges for literary women, Rose occasionally follows her reading with personal encounters. One of her favorite discoveries is the contemporary American novelist Rhoda Lerman, in whom she believes that she has found an unrecognized Grace Paley―"another funny feminist humane earth-mother Jewish writer." But Lerman, who becomes a friend, turns out to be not "another" anything: in addition to writing she now raises prizewinning Newfoundlands and "talks of champion canines with the reverence I reserve for Alice Munro."
A joyous testament to the thrill of engagement with books high and low, The Shelf leaves us with the feeling that there are treasures to be found on every library or bookstore shelf. Rose investigates her own discoveries with exuberance, candor, and wit while exploring and relishing the centripetal nature of reading in the Internet age. Measuring her finds against her own inner shelf―those texts that accompany her through life―she creates an original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.

• Sales Rank: #1218460 in Books
• Published on: 2014-05-13
• Released on: 2014-05-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.48" h x 1.05" w x 5.77" l, .89 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Literary critic and biographer Rose, author of The Year of Reading Proust (1997), takes us on another mind-revving reading escapade. This time she designed a literary expedition in which she read each and every book found on a shelf in the fiction section of the venerable New York Society Library, recording her adventures in “Extreme Reading” in a richly entertaining and enlightening chronicle. Among the many titles on her century-spanning, literarily diverse library shelf are the Russian classic, The Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Lermontov; Alain Le Sage’s early eighteenth-century picaresque novel, Gil Blas; several books by Gaston Leroux, including The Phantom of the Opera; detective novels by the Edwardian novelist William Le Queux and today’s John Lescroart, and the canny and funny novels of Rhoda Lerman. Each book is a catalyst for provocative inquiries, inspiring Rose to consider the crucial truths gleaned from fiction, the lives of writers, the status of women writers past and present, the distinctions (or lack thereof) between popular and literary fiction, how libraries acquire and “weed” books, the value of reviews and literary criticism, and the many joys of reading in the digital age. A seasoned, open-minded, and passionate reader, inquisitive thinker, and delectably lucid and witty writer, Rose rallies readers to affirm our love of literature and libraries. --Donna Seaman

Review

“Simple but radical.” ―Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune

“Rose is consistently generous, knowledgeable, and chatty, with a knack for connecting specific incidents to large social trends.” ―Christine Smallwood, The New Yorker

“Immensely appealing . . . In encouraging us to be more independent thinkers, less swayed by convention and the critical consensus, more empathetic and open-minded, her book teaches us much about how to approach life as it does about how to read books . . . Irresistible.” ―Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe

“Readers of ‘The Shelf' will feel befriended.” ―John Williams, The New York Times

“It's thrilling to see, in The Shelf, the happenstance and whimsy that sprang from a random grab bag of books. And the vastness of possibility those books (good or bad) possess is a terrific match for the vastness of Rose's intelligence, which swerves from scholarly to oddball, and from sophisticated to fun.” ―Diane Mehta, Bookforum

“A seasoned, open-minded, and passionate reader, inquisitive thinker, and delectably lucid and witty writer, Rose rallies readers to affirm our love of literature and libraries.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“If the world's greatest librarian held hands with the greatest English teacher you ever had and they led you into the middle of the Forest of Literature, Phyllis Rose's The Shelf would be right there, waiting for you. The Shelf is an exceptional, goofy, erudite, deeply thoughtful, and completely enchanting foray into the world of books. As Grace Paley said in another context, you'll learn something.” ―Amy Bloom, author of Away

“Phyllis Rose calls her irresistibly charming journey through the LEQ–LES shelf an experiment in Off-Road Reading. But the lesson I drew from it was that no matter what bookish road you take, whether it's a superhighway or a bumpy track that requires the literary equivalent of four-wheel drive, you're bound to enjoy the scenery if you're as interesting a reader as Rose.” ―Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris and At Large and At Small

“In her brilliant and original The Shelf, Phyllis Rose proves how much you can learn about yourself and the world just by reading any book you come across and thinking seriously about it.” ―Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Foreign Affairs

“The Shelf is a surprising and wonderful book--a magnificent treat!” ―Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

“It's always a pleasure to read Phyllis Rose. She ignites our imagination with her own intellectual curiosity, encouraging us to read widely and take chances.” ―Judy Blume, author of Summer Sisters

“Exhilarating, adventurous, original--Phyllis Rose's The Shelf is a reminder of what reading and writing are all about.” ―Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

About the Author

Phyllis Rose is the author of A Woman of Letters: The Life of Virginia Woolf; Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages; Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time; The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time; and two collections of essays.

Most helpful customer reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Reading Without a Net
By takingadayoff
In The Shelf, literary critic Phyllis Rose is on a somewhat ridiculous enterprise -- she wants to read her way through a random shelf of her library's fiction section. She makes it slightly less outlandish by setting a few rules about the contents of the shelf she eventually settles on -- it has to include at least one classic that she wants to read and hasn't yet, there have to be several women authors, and if there is a run of works by the same author, she only has to read three of them.

Still, the shelf she settles on is a pretty arbitrary collection of books, ranging across a couple of centuries, world views, topics, and literary styles. If faced with that particular shelf of books, I would admit defeat and move on. Phyllis Rose is made of sterner stuff, and plugs away, proving that what the reader brings to the book is at least as important as what the author contributed. She finds something of interest and even of value in practically every book, no matter how poorly written, or bizarre, or just boring.

Even more remarkable, she can take these books, of varying quality and interest, and converse about them, in a very entertaining way. In fact, this is exactly the sort of book that would have been a good blog. As a book, it's excellent. Rose is constantly curious about the books she's reading, so she researches the authors, sometimes contacting them if she has a burning question about something. She makes her way through three or four different translations of the Lermontov book she tackled, and talks about the differences. She also contacted the book designer of one of the editions, which was unexpectedly revealing.

Rose, with her background in academia, literary publications, and the publishing world, has a lot of insights to divulge, and uses the project as an excuse to find out even more. Her discovery of exactly how libraries decide which books to weed out when space is a problem was quite interesting.

Five stars without question. It's the sort of book I couldn't stop sharing as I read it and it started several good discussions along the way.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
I wanted to like this book a lot more...
By Helen
This is a great idea - a book about reading. There's considerable promise at the start that we're going to be taken on a journey of prose. And not just the usual prose you'd expect to read about from a literary critic, but a much more randomised version as Rose elects to read the books in a New York library on the LES - LEQ shelf. She sets herself various sensible sounding rules - she doesn't have to read the books in order; if there happen to be several books by the same author then she only has to read three of them, and so on. There's even an element of real-life drama with storms as the opening backdrop.

Indeed, there are many lovely parts. I was fascinated by her descriptions of the impact of different translations of the same book. I learnt a great deal also about the process of 'library weeding' where old books are discarded to make room for the new. Towards the end, I also loved her take on how difficult it can be for writers to create their own 'voice', while the conclusion was simply charming.

However, there were many sections I really disliked. Somehow her own voice often came across to me as that of a sneering reviewer's (which is maybe why so many professional reviewers seem to adore this book...). This is curious considering that she also writes, "Negative reviews are fun to write and fun to read, but the world doesn't need them". Even when Rose describes the books she read that she enjoyed, I found nothing to encourage me to also go and seek them out for my own shelf. She states that literary critics wrongly favour the famous and canonical and then peppers her writing with constant reference to, you guessed it, the famous and canonical. There's a whole chapter decrying the gender inequality in prose, but she compares Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner to Jonathon Franzen. To me, that's almost like comparing Lee Child to Hillary Mantel. I have nothing against any of these writers (don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading them all) but in an argument about pervasive sexism in literature, I can't see how they can be considered comparable texts.

Rose is an excellent writer herself. In particular, I loved her phrase about a bad review becoming the 'death of the book baby' and I would suggest that if you want to expand your ideas on reading, then give this one a shot. There are parts to love: I just wish there weren't so many parts that I personally hated.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Inspiring!
By Rituleen
Phyllis Rose is the author of several nonfiction books including her biography of Virginia Woolf, A Woman of Letters and Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time. In The Shelf, Rose focuses on a quest to read a library shelf, LEQ-LES, in an Upper East Side Lending Library. As she reads Leroux, Lerner, Lermontov, and more, she details the paths these novels took her on, detailing her search to learn more about, and in some cases contact and befriend, the authors and their inspirations.

I finished reading my copy of The Shelf while on the train home from work one sunny summer Friday (meaning I was home earlier than usual). I immediately drove into the public library near my house and, going into the adult fiction section, checked out their LEQ-LES shelf. I was surprised to find In God's Ear, one of the books Rose commends, available, as well as shelves and shelves of John Lescroart, evidence of Phyllis Rose's description of the man as a prolific mystery fiction writer. I didn't pick up any of the books (I have enough of my own to read at the moment) but I did walk through the stacks I haven't visited in a while, remembering when I had time to visit the public library instead of growing my own private one. Rose made me appreciate how hard librarians work, and described a few ways to protect the books that are forgotten but important--by simply taking them out, you're showing the library that this book is still wanted, and protect it for another few years.

Moving from feminism to protecting libraries to fighting against parents who want certain books banned from school to showing appreciation for books in so many different ways, Phyllis Rose offers a wide range of books and their importance in society. I hope that more people read The Shelf and glean tips on reading well and protecting books. And maybe someone will go to their library right after readi

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