Ruby by Cynthia Bond... A Review

What did I think of Ruby by Cynthia Bond? I immediately enjoyed Cynthia Bond's style of writing. She captured me right from the start. Visually stunning in parts, an amazing weave of beauty and pain, and a sad story that could have weighed the book down, but is sprinkled with enough hope and compassion that the reader is pulled in for more.

For the most part, the story takes place in a small Texas town named Liberty, where our characters struggle to exist in the racial inequality of the 1950's. Funny name for a town that is anything but Liberty. After years of violent abuse, Ruby finally escapes her small, gossipy, rural town surroundings for New York, the place her mother disappeared to years before, only to be summoned back years later to get sucked back into what everyone surely thinks is her legacy. She quickly transforms from sophisticated to crazy, as she deals with the guilt and the memories of her sordid past. In walks Ephram, who has loved Ruby Bell from the moment he saw those pigtails she wore as a child. He sees beyond the dirt and crazy; he knows her soul. It is his compassion that becomes the root of Ruby's salvation as the whole town tries to destroy her.

 The story is built with layers, characters and their connections, until finally halfway through I had the "aha" moment. Things started fitting together, and then it was OMG!

The ending? Well, I liked it and I didn't like it. I liked the way it left so many possibilities, and I could imagine what I wanted. BUT, I wanted to have a finale, and I was left with an opening. I have since read that Cynthia Bond had trimmed down Ruby for this first publication, but her intent is to have a trilogy and she's shopping around. I hope she finds that publisher because I definitely want more.

Open the pages of Ruby and meet Ma Tante, who can conjure some powerful black magic with her jars filled with who-knows-what; the Reverend Jennings who preaches in the shadows of the piney woods late at night; Celia Jennings, whose goal in life is to be Church Mother and who can bake up the best Angel food cake this side of Texas; and of course the other men and women of Liberty, who make up an unforgettable town in the wake of lynchings and dark spirits, superstitions and religion.

Should you read it? Yes. You'll be taking a walk into the piney woods with great characters, dialogue and moments. Just remember not to step in the red dust... (you'll understand after you read Ruby!)

The Tenth of December by George Saunders… A Review

Satire is irony, it's sarcasm, it's George Saunders, who wrote Tenth of December. This book of short stories, Tenth of December, is filled with the ironies of everyday life, sometimes existing in a futuristic world, and a wry sense of humor. Not everything is humorous in Tenth of December, but George Saunders has an incredible gift of language that makes for some great reading even in the wake of some disturbing narrative.

The short story itself needs to be a taunt, never veering without purpose, kind of writing. A good short story needs to takes us from A to Z in a brief period of time without wasting words, and George Saunders is a master of that. These stories in his newest collection, pack an emotional punch, almost slapping, with their sometimes gritty, urban settings and stripped down humanity. But you can see the truth in what he writes and appreciate the honesty in the way he writes it.

In Tenth of December we meet Kyle, who's parents have created a kind of pacifist and who now must make a choice to abandon what they drilled into him to save the life of the little girl next door. Two Mothers who are similar, yet not; A shop owner who fantasizes about making that one decision that will make his life perfect; And a criminal who volunteers for pharmaceutical testing only to have it create a battle with his moral character, that "they" created in him. And even a maintenance kid in a Medieval Times job who aspires to move up the ladder to make life better for his family, but witnesses something that changes those plans. In all there are ten stories, all with their own special quality.

My Thoughts… Tenth of December is a great collection of stories. At first I was struggling with reading these stories. I wasn't "getting it" or why the author was lauded for being the reincarnation of Mark Twain. I watched George Saunders give a talk at Google about his writing. I liked him; I liked the passage he was reading from this book. Then I realized that my normal reading definitely wasn't satire, and I had to take a breather from the literary fiction I was reading to give Tenth of December a chance. And it worked. In each of these stories, George Saunders gets to the heart of his characters, no matter how flawed they are, to show us what makes us human. I laughed, I felt pain, I felt sadness.

Favorite stories? The Semplica Girl Diaries, My Chivalric Fiasco, and Tenth of December.

If short stories are something you've wanted to try and you enjoy good satire, Tenth of December by George Saunders is a great choice. I really enjoyed the time I spent in George's world. ..

About the Author…

"I was born in Amarillo, Texas, grew up in Chicago, and (barely) graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in exploration geophysics.  There was an oil-boom on, which meant that even someone like me could get work in the oil-fields.  So after college I went to work in Sumatra, as a field geophysicist.  We worked four weeks on and two weeks off, in a jungle camp that was a forty-minute helicopter ride to the nearest town – so this is when my reading life really started.  The game became filling up an entire suitcase with books sufficient to get me through the next two weeks of camp life.  About a year and a half at this job, I got sick after going swimming in a river that was polluted with monkey shit (I remember looking up at about 200 of them, sitting on our oil pipeline crapping away, and thinking: “I wonder if swimming here is okay?”) and came home to try and be Kerouac II.  I worked as a doorman, a roofer, a convenience store clerk, and a slaughterhouse worker (a “knuckle-puller,” to be exact), and all of this contributed to my understanding of capitalism as a benign-looking thing that, as Terry Eagleton says, “plunders the sensuality of the body.

I’d always been interested in reading, ever since a nun I was secretly in love with turned me on to “Johnny Tremaine” in third grade.  But I’d never met a writer and so it took me awhile to realize that a person could actually write for a living."

*P.S. Want to read one of his stories? You can get a sampling of his writing at openculture.com, where you can read 10 of his stories! Including The Semplica Girl Diaries and Tenth of December.

The Importance of Reading... Alexander McCall Smith

Welcome to Sunday and The Sunday Salon! Sit back and relax; grab a cup of Joe and let's talk books! It's the first time in a while that I've been able to sit back and relax, but I've always made sure to grab a cup of Joe and have a book in my hand!

This week I've received a copy of Alexander McCall Smith's The Importance of Being Seven. I just love that title! What it refers to is Bertie turning seven, and if you're unfamiliar with the 44 Scotland Street Series you may be scratching your head. Today I thought we'd take a look at 2 series (and a mention of the other 2) that Alexander McCall Smith writes...

I first met Alexander McCall Smith with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency... "Meet Mma Ramotswe, the endearing, engaging, simply irresistible proprietress of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the first and only detective agency in Botswana. With persistent observation, gentle intuition, and a keen desire to help people with the problems of their lives, she solves mysteries great and small for friends and strangers alike." I liked the writing and the book itself was charming. The setting was different, but the Alexander McCall Smith made it seem familiar. But for some reason, the series didn't quite capture my need to read further. Sometimes we read books at the "wrong" time. We may need an entirely different kind of book to quench our thirst, and I think that this may be what happened here. But I wasn't giving up on Alexander McCall Smith because I did like his easy going style of writing.... And then it happened- a new series by Alexander McCall Smith that did hit the mark....

The 44 Scotland Street Series... "Welcome to 44 Scotland Street, home to some of Edinburgh's most colorful characters. There's Pat, a twenty-year-old who has recently moved into a flat with Bruce, an athletic young man with a keen awareness of his own appearance. Their neighbor, Domenica, is an eccentric and insightful widow. In the flat below are Irene and her appealing son Bertie, who is the victim of his mother’s desire for him to learn the saxophone and italian–all at the tender age of five." The characters were fun and fresh, and I was able to peak into their inner soul. I liked the setting of rooming house and the story revolving around the characters more so than a "who dun it". And of course Alexander McCall Smith's writing has that wonderful British wit. The book reminded me of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, which was the fictional saga of life at 28 Barbary Lane, an apartment house in San Francisco, with young single Mary Ann Singleton opening the door for her and the reader to experience life there. I LOVED that book. I could relate to the era, the "innocence", and the characters in that novel. It was like I was visiting an old group of friends each time I opened the pages of that book. The saga of Mary Ann Singelton and 28 Barbary Lane continued on for 6 books plus a new stand alone novel Maupin wrote in 2007, Michael Tolliver Lives, revisiting one of the characters in the series. But about Alexander McCall Smith and his series...

There may be a reason that 44 Scotland Street reminded me of Tales of the City - Smith's series was the result of a conversation Alexander McCall Smith had with Armistead Maupin about the type of serial fiction that Tales of the City was, which was a story written in segments in a newspaper. That is how 44 Scotland began, as a chapter a day serial running in the local paper. It definitely works. The characters are quirky and Alexander McCall Smith knows how to endear the characters to the reader. I wouldn't call this series a cozy, but it has the feel of a cozy. It's a relaxing, humorous look at what makes people tick. He has the most amazing ability to put down on paper, what we would simply identify as human nature, but somehow we just never thought about it in that way. There are 5 previous books in the series, so it's not too late to get acquainted. And even if you've never read any of the other books in the series, you would enjoy the writing and the characters non-the-less. Just open the first page of The Importance of Being Seven, book 6 of the series, and tell me you just don't love that first line.

Which brings us to the next saga Alexander McCall Smith has written - The Corduroy Mansion novels.... "A delightful new setting—London—a wonderful new cast of characters and one incredibly clever dog. Corduroy Mansions is the affectionate nickname given to a genteel, crumbling mansion block in London’s vibrant Pimlico neighborhood and the home turf of a captivating collection of quirky and altogether McCall-Smithian characters. There’s the middle-aged wine merchant William, who’s trying to convince his reluctant twenty-four-year-old son, Eddie, to leave the nest; and Marcia, the boutique caterer who has her sights set on William." Here, Alexander McCall Smith leaves Edinburgh and travels to London and an old neighborhood in a section of London. The characters are different, but have the same endearing qualities that I'm getting use to in all of McCall Smith's books. Courtesy of Pantheon Books a division of Random House I have a copy of A Conspiracy of Friends, book 3 of that series waiting for me to dive in. Dive in is exactly what I'm going to do too! Love Alexander McCall Smith's writing and most importantly his characters. Not too late to go back and start from the beginning in this series as well. And I'll be reviewing this book soon.

There are two other series that Alexander McCall Smith has written. First, The Isabel Dalhousie Series, is about female sleuth Isabel Dalhousie with the setting in Edinburgh. 9 books in that series now. And The Portuguese Irregular Verbs, where we meet  Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philolog, and experience his foibles at life. I have not picked up either of these series, but based on the author's writing I'm sure they would be well worth a turn of the page.

About his books, Alexander McCall Smith writes, "Like any saga, there is a story--but it is not a complicated one. These stories are character-based: what interests me is what makes the characters tick rather than intricate and potentially confusing plots." I think that really sums it up quite nicely!

Other bookish notes for this week... Mingmei Yip has published her 4th book! I really enjoy Mingmei Yip's writing. Her stories are usually set in places such as China and Hong Kong, which fascinates me. I reviewed Song of the Silk Road April of 2011, which at the time I called "Bridgett Jones Diary meets Memoirs of a Geisha." Loved that book! You can still read my review of Song of the Silk Road, and get a glimpse of what I thought about her writing. Her latest, Skeleton Women, is about a young orphan girl in Shanghai and how life changes once she is adopted. But those changes are not quite the stroke of good luck one thinks at first blush. This book will be available August 21st! Keep your eyes open, I'll be reviewing Skeleton Women this week...


Hope you give Alexander McCall Smith a turn of a page, or at least have learned a little more about this prolific writer. What's been on your nightstand these days? Share what great reads you've had so we can all enjoy them! And as usual, let me know how you are doing!

Happy reading... Suzanne