Book Review: How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway

""Once you leave Japan, it is extremely unlikely that you will return, unless your husband is stationed there again or becomes wealthy.

Take a few reminders of Japan with you. If you have room. Or make arrangements to write to a caring relative who is willing to send you letters or items from your homeland. This can ease homesickness.

And be sure to tell your family, "Sayonara." (from the chapter, "Turning American" )

(The book later tells you that "Sayonara" doesn't mean just "goodbye," but "goodbye forever.")

Comments: This novel tells the story of a young Japanese woman who marries an American soldier after WWII and comes to live in America, becoming estranged from her brother Taro who remains bitter over the results of the war and the American bombing of Nagasaki.  In America, the young wife Shoko struggles to live among strangers in a different culture, and is given a book of advice by her American husband Charlie - How to Be an American Housewife. The story and the book are from the 1950s and the advice reflects the times.

Shoko's story is sad because of the estrangement from her brother, the hard time she has with English and raising her son and daughter in an environment unfamiliar to her, and also sad because of a secret she carried from Japan with her that she has told no one about. Redemption comes in the second part of the novel, when Shoko's adult daughter Suiko or Sue agrees to return to Japan for her mother, who has suffered a stroke and is unable to travel. Sue meets Shoko's cousins and reunites with Shoko's brother Taro, seeing Japan for the first time.

The novel is well-written and the characters, especially Shoko, realistic and sympathetic. The author based her book on her Japanese mother's experiences and the book that her father had given her mother to help her adjust to American society - How to Be an American Housewife.

Title: How To Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Berkley Trade; Reprint edition (August 2, 2011)
Genre: fiction, historical fiction
Objective rating: 4.5/5

This book was sent to me by the publisher through Shelf Awareness. My review and rating were in no way influenced by my receiving a complimentary copy.

Submitted to Japanese Literature Challenge V and  Immigrant Stories 2011 Challenge.

Book Review: Thick as Thieves by Peter Spiegelman

"I know who they are, Howie, and what they're capable of. You get your money back, you can afford to go somewhere else. To be somebody else."

"What -an alias? A new identity?"

"You're really happy with the old one?" (ch. 22)

Comments: A fast-paced thriller with twists and turns in the plot, up to the very end, kept me surprised at every turn. A delight to read.

Book description: Ex-CIA Carr is the reluctant leader of an elite crew planning a robbery of such extraordinary proportions that it will leave them set for life. Diamonds, money laundering, and extortion go into a timed-to-the-minute scheme that unfurls across South America, Miami, and Grand Cayman Island.

Carr's cohorts are seasoned pros, but they're wound drum-tight - months before, the man who brought them together was killed in what Carr suspects was a setup. And there are other loose ends: some of the intel they're paying for is badly inaccurate, and one of the gang may have an agenda of her own. But Carr's biggest problems are yet to come, because few on his crew are what they seem to be, and even his own past is a lie. (Goodreads)

Title: Thick as Thieves: A Novel by Peter Spiegleman
Hardcover: 320 pages, Knopf, July 26, 2011
Objective rating: 4.75/5
 
A copy of this book was sent to me by the author through Shelf Awareness. My opinions are objective and not influenced by my receiving a complimentary copy.

Book Review and Teaser: Little Black Dress by Susan McBride

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"Did you bring the dress?" Her voice was so soft I could barely her. "Do you have it?" she said, this time more loudly, and her dark gaze stared across the room at me, unflinching.

"First, tell me why."

Comments: Not to be confused with Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, this novel, Little Black Dress is a story about two sisters who are very different in temperament and whose lives are influenced by revelations from a little black dress that tells the future. The book is firmly in the category of magical fantasy. I thought the novel could have been written well and the story of the sisters could have been more compelling if the author hadn't used this device.

Book description: Two sisters whose lives seemed forever intertwined are torn apart when a magical little black dress gives each one a glimpse of an unavoidable future.

Antonia Ashton has worked hard to build a thriving career and a committed relationship, but she realizes her life has gone off-track. Forced to return home to Blue Hills when her mother, Evie, suffers a massive stroke, Toni finds the old Victorian where she grew up as crammed full of secrets as it is with clutter. Now she must put her mother’s house in order—and uncover long-buried truths about Evie and her aunt, Anna, who vanished fifty years earlier on the eve of her wedding. By shedding light on the past, Toni illuminates her own mistakes and learns the most unexpected things about love, magic, and a little black dress with the power to break hearts...and mend them. (Goodreads)

Title: Little Black Dress by Susan McBride
Paperback, 320 pages
Published August 23rd 2011 by William Morrow
Objective rating: 3.5/5

A copy of this book was sent to me by the publisher for possible review. My opinions are in no way influenced by my receiving a complimentary copy.

Sunday Salon: Winter Reading

Welcome to the Sunday Salon. Click on the logo to join in.

Found some good books for my "Want to Read" list through Goodreads' Recommendation system for books, thanks to suggestions on a blog post by Aths at Reading on a Rainy Day, who discusses mechanical versus personal ways of having books chosen for you. I liked the books Goodreads threw up at me based on the books I've read.

I've also decided that I'll no longer let my "To Be Reviewed" list be my exclusive reading, and that I'll add more books to my list based on other suggestions, mechanical or otherwise!

I've gotten some very good books for review, however, some I won, others sent by the publisher. Among them are

I love that they are in different genres as I no longer restrict my reading to mysteries. But would you believe it, I'm now reading a book from the library, The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder by Mary Jane Maffini, having rushed through another mystery, The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen. But I can't wait to get to those books, some of them non-mysteries, from the Goodreads recommendation system. Among those are

Some Prefer Nettles
Wild Ginger
The Road of Lost Innocence
The Last Will of Moira Leahy
Ship Fever

Let me add that LibraryThing also has a long list of Member Recommendatons as well as suggestions based on books you have logged into their system.

A comment by C.B. James on gautami tripathy's blog let us know that the University of Chicago Press gives away a free e-Book each month. This month it's a mystery novel from the 1960s. I was also reminded by Laurel Rain-Snow's Sunday Salon that Banned Books Week is here. Are you reading any banned books? I hope so!

What have you been doing or reading this past week?

Two Book Reviews: Naughty in Nice; and The Tale of Castle Cottage

These two cozies are English though written by authors in California and Texas. Naughty in Nice, A Royal Spyness Mystery by Rhys Bowen and The Tale of Castle Cottage: the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert are both nostalgic mysteries, one set in the 1930s when the British vacationed on the Riviera and hobnobbed with the rich and famous, and the other in the very early 1900s, when children's author Beatrix Potter lived and wrote about animals in the English countryside.


The Tale of Castle Cottage is a very cozy cozy, set in the English countryside, with various animals representing the inhabitants of a village in the English Lake District. Here Beatrix Potter spends her summer of 1913 working and renovating Castle Cottage, the place where she and her fiance William Heelis will live after they marry. Theft from the construction sites and the death of a carpenter are the meat of the mystery novel, and the romantic aspect is supplied by Beatrix's engagement, which is frowned on by her parents.

This cozy is for readers who have nostalgia for all things British and especially for Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other children's stories. (My favorite character in the Potter stories was the hedgehog in The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle!)

In Naughty in Nice, a novel set in 1933, the main character is Lady Georgina (Georgie) Rannoch, a descendant of Queen Victoria. Georgie is a favorite of the current Queen Mary, wife of King Edward, who sends her to the Riviera to recover a valuable snuff box stolen from her by one Sir Toby Groper, an unscrupulous character living in Nice.

Famous persons of the day crop up on the Riviera. The Prince of Wales and Mrs. Simpson appear, and Georgie stays in her mother's villa with the famous designer Coco Chanel, who grooms her as a model for the Chanel collection of the season. When Sir Toby is murdered, however, Georgie finds herself a suspect.

I read eagerly through three-quarters of the book but balked at the spot where Georgie is arrested. This change in the plot didn't sit well with me for some reason, and I flipped through the rest of the mystery just to find how the book would end. I knew of course that the true criminal would be found and charged with the murder. Overall, though, I enjoyed the period setting, descriptions of the Riviera, historical tidbits, and the lively characters of Georgie and her mother.

The books were sent to me by the publisher, The Berkley Publishing Group, for possible review. My opinions are in no way influenced by my receiving complimentary copies of the books.

Feature: A Marked Heart, a Memoir by David George Ball

Title:A Marked Heart by David George Ball
Paperback, 240 pages
Published March 28th 2011 by iUniverse, Incorporated
Genre: Memoir



In looking back, I understand now what an incredible force my missionary mother was in my life. As a child in wartime England, I thought she was just like everybody else's mother. Although she frequently reminded me she had dedicated me to the Lord's service, at first I didn't grasp what she meant. Gradually I began to realize she was different. She seemed to think her will and God's will were the same. If I didn't obey her, I wasn't pleasing the Lord. (from the Introduction)

Publisher's description: "The son of a missionary and a Baptist minister, seventeen-year-old immigrant David George Ball was following his destiny to become a pastor. . But when he met the then relatively unknown Martin Luther King Jr., the course of Ball's life changed forever.

In this memoir, A Marked Heart, Ball narrates his journey: beginning with growing up in wartime England; immigrating to the United States in 1954 to take the pastor's course at Chicago's Moody Bible Institute; attending Yale University as a scholarship student; and, most importantly, meeting King. Later, he worked on Wall Street as a lawyer, started a family, championed the 401(k) plan, and served as assistant secretary of labor.

A Marked Heart describes how Ball's encounter with King inspired the rest of his life's work, and it provides a multifaceted look at his immigration, education, family relationships, career, and his commitment to public service.  Ball never became a minister, but his story tells how his commitment to God and prayer guided his life."

Source: A copy of this book was sent to me by the author/publicist.

Book Review: Sanctus by Simon Toyne

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"So," he said at length, "we have a renegade monk standing on the very summit of the Citadel, forming a deeply provocative symbol, one that has probably already been seen by hundreds of tourists and the Lord only knows who else, and we can neither stop him nor get him back."

"That is correct." Atannasius nodded. "But he cannot talk to anyone while he remains up there, and eventually he must climb down, for where else can he go?" (ch. 10)

Comments: The renegade monk, Brother Samuel, has escaped confinement in the Citadel after balking at the ceremony of the order, where he had witnessed "awful scenes" and learned "terrible secrets." We are later told of the existence of a heretic Bible and an ancient relic called the Sacrament that the Citadel and the order of monks are protecting with their lives. The secrets of the Citadel are jeopardised when Brother Samuel jumps to his death from the top of the mountain, in full view of television media, tourists, and the world.

The book made me think of the DaVinci Code, which had secret groups and secret religious rites. Sanctus seems to take this further, with a new version of religion whose symbol is the sign of the tau.

Described as an "apolacyptic conspiracy thriller", this is a book for those who didn't want The DaVinci Code to end, another book of suspense based on religion.

Title: Sanctus by Simon Toyne
Hardcover, 400 pages
Published March 31st 2011 by HarperCollins
An ARC of the novel was provided by the publisher.