On The Nightstand

For a reading addict, it's a bit dangerous working in the library.  I read book review magazines to find out the latest and greatest, I talk with coworkers about books and then folks coming in to the library gush about the wonderful book they just read and I "must" read it too, and let's not forget about the serendipity of walking in the shelves when a book cover catches your eye.  Which is why I have over 1500  books on my to-read bookshelf on Goodreads.  Of course, many of those books I actually check out with plans to read and then they are on my nightstand just waiting for the right moment.  Below is a random sampling from the nightstand:

The Voodoo Wave by Mark Kreidler and Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad - it's impossible for me to pass by a new surfing book.  I'll never surf myself, but I love to watch and read about it whenever I can.

Deaf Sentence

Poor Professor Bates! The hero of David Lodge's Deaf Sentence won't see sixty again and, in a synergistic purgatory that may seem familiar to aging boomers, he's uncomfortably sandwiched in between the needs of adult children, concerns about his ailing father, a domestic role reversal prompted by his wife's business, and an infirmity of his encroaching old age that drives the action of this hilarious novel: after years of swimming against the tide of hearing loss, Desmond Bates must accept the fact that he is all but deaf.

It's a problem, all right. Weary of the constant professional humiliations posed by his deafness, Bates throws in the towel and retires from his teaching position at a university in Northern England. But, retirement simply presents its own set of hearing challenges. Hearing aids provide little relief so he tends to just wing it in social situations. Pretending he can hear when he actually has no idea what's just been said is frequently funny and occasionally catastrophic,

The $64 Tomato

Critters are destroying my garden. I've replaced the tomato plants three times but I know it's futile. My humble little plot is barricaded so completely I can barely get to it, but these critters are unstoppable. I think they're airlifting themselves in.

Man vs. the enemies of cultivation is the subject of The $64 Tomato, a memoir sure to hit a responsive chord with frustrated farmers like me. If your attempts to grow your own salad have been thwarted by the superior forces of Mother Nature, you'll appreciate William Alexander's account of adopting the life of a gentleman farmer in New York's Hudson River Valley.

To Manhattan transplant Alexander the plan seemed simple enough: put in a kitchen garden and some fruit trees, weed a little, water a little, then sit back and enjoy nature's bounty. But instead of apples and corn he got all-out war, with contractors, plant diseases, bugs of every variety and (of course) deer, ground hogs, rabbits and all sorts of hungry, determined fauna.

Alexander's response to his negative gardening karma is hilarious. When organic solutions don't work he moves on to the hard stuff, including dreaded pesticides, traps, and a 10,000 volt-electric fence. Outsmarting Mother Nature takes up all of his time and most of his money. When he harvests the fruits of his efforts--his glorious heirloom beefsteak tomatoes--and figures the production cost per tomato, the result is an astonishing $64 each.

Still, Alexander's passion for gardening in spite of the odds is endearing, and his responses to horticultural adversity are a hoot. If you're struggling with mealy bugs and javalinas, or even if the local Safeway is as close to a garden as you want to get, this laugh-out-loud book is sure to delight.

--Helene

The Great Typo Hunt - Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson

I am a fan of correct spelling. I used to run a middle school spelling bee, and now I run a spelling bee for adults. Many people care about correct spelling, not just your 3rd-grade teacher. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson took their love of correct spelling to the extreme - and I applaud their nerve. Jeff and Benjamin had a cross country adventure and decided to correct spelling errors in stores, restaurants, billboards and basically wherever it was needed. Sometimes they used stealth, but often they let the owners know about the spelling error. There's even a certain amount of angst about correcting errors in locally owned business' since they are fans of small stores. My favorite part of the book: I found a spelling error in the last chapter!

Find The Great Typo Hunt at the public library!

More Books

Him Her Him Again the End of Him by Patricia Marx

There's no question about where the plot's going in this tale of free-range narcissism and devotion unrequited -- the title tells it all. She is an American graduate student studying (apply this term loosely) in Cambridge, he is a bounder and a cad majoring in Ego Studies. She's obsessed with him. So is he. She realizes it's not working out when he marries someone else (it takes her that long!) so she jettisons her aimless studies and returns to New York and an equally aimless career writing for television. He reappears, with a wife and child. She's not as over him as she thought. It doesn't go well. But hang on: as the title implies, this is where it gets interesting.

Patricia Marx is a contributor to the New Yorker, a former writer for Saturday Night Live, and a funny, funny author. Her characters bristle with eccentricity and her descriptions will make you laugh out loud. Don't read this book for deep insights or intricate plotting, but if you're up for a satirical, witty and very entertaining quick read you won't go wrong.

--Helene

Find it at your library

The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death

If I could spend an hour inside Laurie Notaro's brain I would turn into a puddle from laughing so much. Her views on the world are so incredibly hilarious it's hard to imagine her capable of holding a serious conversation. From stairmaster repairs to a family of spies hanging out at the lodge in the White Mountains to getting carded at the grocery store on her birthday, Ms. Notaro takes her hilarious mean streak right to the edge, and keeps you laughing there the whole time.

Please note that if this book were a movie, some scenes and language would give it an R rating. Find it at a library!