Durable Goods & Joy School by Elizabeth Berg

In Durable Goods we meet Katie who is 12 years old and lives on an Army base in Texas. While the year is never specified, from references to clothing, hairstyles, etc., it seems to be the early 1960's. The books are written from Katie's viewpoint and that is what makes them so enjoyable. While at the basic level the books are about what it's like to be a young girl growing up, Katie's voice (Berg's really) and perspective are what take them beyond the ordinary. Her outlook one life is often hilarious and frequently very wise.

Katie lives with her father, a colonel, and her older sister Diane. Her mother died sometime in the recent past. Katie misses her mother greatly and spends a lot of time fantasizing conversations with her mother. Her father is distant and, at times, abusive. Katie and Diane have each developed their own ways of dealing with this. One of Katie's is to hide under her bed. At 14, Katie's best friend and next door neighbor, Cherylanne, is a couple of years older and wiser. Something she never lets Katie forget. Cherylanne spends all her time reading magazines that advise her on the best techniques for attracting boys. She generously shares all her makeup, wardrobe, and general behavior tips with Katie. While the books are dated in the era in which they take place, they are timeless in many ways as what it's like to be a pre-teen girl on the verge of adolescence transcends time.

Towards the end of Durable Goods, Katie's father informs them that they're being transferred to a base in Missouri. While the family has moved many times, this will be the first move since the death of Katie's mother which makes it more difficult. Joy School picks up a few months after Katie and her father have moved. Her sister Diane is no longer living at home. Now in addition to missing her mother, Katie also misses Diane. Katie is having difficultly adjusting to her new environment and has not made friends at her new school. She meets a priest at the local Catholic church and frequently stops by for chats with him. (Don't worry, he's not that kind of priest!) Her first friend is Cynthia, an odd girl with an even stranger mother. Katie likes Cynthia's Italian grandmother best of all.

Katie's second friend is an older man (23), Jimmy, who she meets when she falls through the ice while ice skating on the pond behind the gas station he manages. She quickly develops a crush on him, and fueled by long distance advice from Cherylanne (the 14 year old relationship expert), begins planning their future together. Soon another new girl, the worldly Taylor who is a fashion model, chooses Katie as a friend. It is interesting to watch Katie navigate these new and challenging relationships and very amusing to listen to her thoughts.

At about 200 pages each, the books are quick, light reads. I plan to look for more of Elizabeth Berg's books. (She's written a number of books.) I really like her writing style and voice.

A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz

I am a great fan of Tony Horwitz (loved Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes, and Baghdad Without a Map) so I was excited when I heard that he had a new book on the market. This one is about early explorers in North/Central America (prior to the Pilgrim's arrival in 1620). I happened to read the book shortly after the Haitian earthquake while on a cruise to the Panama Canal (with stops in Cartagena, Columbia; Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico) so it was interesting to read about Columbus, Coronado, etc. Like he did in his other books, Horwitz debunks local legends through research and presents this information in an entertaining way. Good book for anyone interested in history (the stuff you didn't learn in school).

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos

I really enjoyed her first book (Broken For You) and this one is every bit as good. Kallos has a talent for creating unusual characters dealing with unique circumstances. In this book, she introduces the reader to the adult children of a woman who "went up" in a tornado and never came down - Larken, a college art professor who gorges herself on junk food; Galen, a TV weatherman who is obsessed with body-building and Arnold Schwarznegger; and Bonnie, the child who survived the tornado and spends her life looking for remnants of their mother. The story also tells about life and the people in a small Nebraska town, their customs and relationships. The reader also becomes acquainted with Hope, their mother, through her diary, an interesting look into the past. "With breathtaking lyricism, wisdom, and humor, Stephanie Kallos offers up a magnificent tapestry of lives connected and undone by loss, lives poised--unbeknownst to the characters themselves--for redepmtion." This is one of those books that is hard to put down once you start reading!

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

This is one of the best books I've ever read...and that's saying a lot! It should be required reading for everyone! The book is set in Jackson, Mississippi. It begins in August 1962. It alternates between the viewpoints of three women. Skeeter is a young white woman who recently returned home after finishing college. She begins to question all the things she's taken for granted all her life, including the fact that "colored" people are treated as inferior individuals. The other two women are two of the colored maids in town whom Skeeter gets to know over a period of time.

I was born around the time the book took place, so don't have a first hand memory of all the situations that are referenced, such as segregated facilities for blacks and whites, but I've certainly heard a lot over the years. This book really brought things into focus. Apparently Jackson, MS (where the author grew up) was one of the worst places in the South when it came to treatment of blacks at the time.

Throughout history humans have displayed the need to establish often arbitrary distinctions between two groups of people that make one party better or worse than the other. One of the issues that is central to the book was that many white employers had separate, often outdoor, bathrooms (I think we call them outhouses!) for the colored help so they wouldn't "contaminate" the toilets used by the household. Attitudes such as this, that the color of your skin makes you less intelligent and a carrier of diseases, simply boggle my mind.

According to the notes from Stockett at the end of the book, many of the situations that the different characters experience were based on her own upbringing. She does an exceptional job of allowing the reader to understand the dynamics of the changing times. The book is extremely thought-provoking. There are many scenes that are very poignant, many more that enraged me, but she also manages to weave in some truly funny and ironic moments as well. Amazingly, this is her first book. I look forward to more books by her.