Russka
Edward Rutherfurd, 1991
Random House
945 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345479358
Summary
The author of the phenomenally successful Sarum: The Novel of England now turns his remarkably vast talents to an even larger canvas.
Spanning 1800 years of Russia's history, people, politics, and culture, this grand saga is as multifaceted as the country itself, as it chronicles the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—Salisbury, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge University and Stanford University.
• Currently—lives in the USA and Europe
Edward Rutherfurd is primarily known as a writer of epic historical novels. His debut novel Sarum set the pattern for his work with a ten-thousand year storyline.
Educated locally and at the universities of Cambridge and Stanford, he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983, and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge and Salisbury. Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international bestseller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Since then he has written five more bestsellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum, and two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century. His books have been translated into twenty languages. Rutherfurd settled near Dublin, Ireland in the early 1990s, but currently divides his time between Europe and North America.
Rutherfurd’s novels chronicle the history of settlements through their development up to modern day, mixing fictional characters and families with real people and events—a kind of historical fiction pioneered by James Michener.
Known as a James Michener disciple, Rutherfurd invents four to six fictional families and tells the stories of their descendants. Using this framework, he weaves them in and out of historical situations, having them interact not only with each other, but also with significant historical figures. Rutherfurd's novels are generally at least 500 pages and sometimes even over 1,000. Divided into a number of parts, each chapter represents a different era in the area of the novel's history. There is always an extensive family tree in the introduction, and each generational line matches with the corresponding chapters. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Spanning 1800 years of Russia's history, people, poltics, and culture, Edward Rurtherford, author of the phenomenally successful Sarum: The Novel of England, tells a grand saga that is as multifaceted as Russia itself. Here is a story of a great civilization made human, played out through the lives of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land. Rutherford's Russka succeeds....[He] can take his place among an elite cadre of chroniclers such as Harold Lamb, Maurice Hindus and Henri Troyat.
San Francisco Chronicle
Sarum, to the rich foreign soil of Russia. Though the structure and style mirror that of his first saga, Rutherfurd's close observation of Russia's religious and ethnic diversity give this epic a distinctive flavor. Focusing on the changing fortunes of the small town of Russka and its controlling families, Rutherfurd moves from the tribes of the steppes in the second century A.D. through Cossacks, Tatars, Tsars, revolution and Stalin to touch on a contemporary Russian emigre community near New York City. He weaves an expansive tapestry of Russian lore with a vivid exploration of the historical influences on the modern Russian psyche. Though thoroughly researched, the novel is diminished by occasional soap-opera twists in the narrative thread and present-day phrasing ("pin money," "red tape," "heads or tails") used in distracting asides to the reader.
Publishers Weekly
In his newest novel, Rutherfurd does for Russia what his last novel, Sarum, did for England. Focusing on a small farming community in the Russian heartland between the Dnieper and the Don at the edge of the steppes, he traces its growth through its inhabitants from the first Tatar raid on the Slavs through the Cossacks, aristocrats, and an emigre's recent return. These interconnected lives present a vast panoramic portrait of Russia and its history. However, abundance of historic detail, fascinating though it is, intrudes and overwhelms. Transitions from intertwined stories of succeeding generations are abrupt and the reader longs for more character and plot development. Recommended for devotees of James Michener and Sarum.
Library Journal
A well-written, episodic, dense, at times infuriatingly complex historical saga of Russia by the author of the similarly massive Sarum, which tries—often quite successfully—to re-create the evolution of a mysterious and backward nation riddled with war, political confusion, and religious upheaval. Crammed with exhaustive and obviously well-researched historical, geographical, and cultural detail, this epic novel traces Russia's quest for freedom and identity from A.D. 180 to the present. The primary storyline that finally emerges depicts three rival families who have ties in the quintessential village of Russka: the Bobrovs, gentried noblemen who ultimately lose their precious land to the very serfs they once owned; the cunning Suvorins who amass great wealth as merchants and industrialists; and their distant relations the Romanovs, peasant farmers-cum-revolutionaries. Through the intricacies of marriage, accidents of birth, and other twists and turns of fate, the ancestors and descendants of these proud people move from one century to the next, turning up as warring Alans, barbarous Tatars, bloodthirsty Cossacks, and eventually the more familiar Socialists, Bolsheviks, and Marxists. Rutherfurd's immense canvas allows a fictional cast in the hundreds to populate the same world as Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Pushkin, Lenin, Stalin, Shevchenko, Rasputin, etc., as they grapple with catastrophic events—such as ritual self-immolation, torture by knouting, cholera, and the pogroms. Despite the preponderance of names that repeat themselves from one generation to the next (the plot is littered with very old or very young Arinas and Maryushkas, for example)—a circumstance that may befuddle the casual reader—Rutherfurd's opus extraordinaire may captivate readers of the genre as well as serious history buffs.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Russka:
1. Do you feel more knowledgeable about Russian history as a result of reading Rutherfurd's book? Did you come away with a deeper understanding of what makes Russia unique, particularly its violent and brutal history?
2. Rutherfurd uses stories of three families—the Bobrovs, the Suvorins and the Romanovs—to bring history to life. Did you find his characters compelling or fully developed as complex individuals? Were you able to follow the tangled family lineage through 1800 years? Did you find yourself referring frequently to the family tree diagram at the front of the book?
3. Were there particular characters with whom you identified more than others? Any who fascinated you more than others?
4. Which era(s) in Russia's history did you find most interesting or engaging? The era of the nomadic tribes? The rise of Moscow? The reign of Ivan the Terrible or Catherine the Great?
5. Some readers have complained about the number of pages devoted to historical events. Others felt that the historical writing is what makes the book so rich. What do you think? And are 945 pages too long...or just long enough?
6. Many have commented on the fact that Rutherfurd stops his novel after the revolution in 1917. Do you wish he had continued, covering Russia's horrific losses in World War II...or the cold war years and eventual fall of the Berlin Wall? Or was that not Rutherfurd's purpose? Why do you think he ended the book when he did? Did he just...peter out?
7. In this book, how does Rutherfurd develop the three major strains of Russian culture—orthodoxy, authoritarianism, and mysticism. What role does each of those influences play in the unfolding of Russian history?
8. Talk about the Old Believer peasants and their martyrdom during the reign of Peter the Great. What gave them strength?
9. The Russian people and their history have been described as backward and slow developing. The book shows Russian women, for instance, swinging their sickles from the 2nd century into the 20th. In what other ways has Russia been slow to develop?. And what factors kept the country from developing as rapidly as the cultures and nation states of Europe?
10. Talk about Russia's particularly violent history—the warring Alans, Tatars, and Cossacks; as well as self-immolation, torture and pograms. How have those events shaped Russia's identity?
11. What role does fate play in history, according to Rutherfurd's novel? Do individuals act upon events...or do events act upon individuals? Who or what shapes history?
12. What thematic and symbolic meaning might the opening chapter have with little Kiy's wandering through the forest searching for the bear cub his uncle promised him?
13. Did you enjoy this book? Does it deliver as a novel in terms of engaging its readers and a creating a level of suspense? Did it keep you turning pages? Was the ending satisfying?
14. Rutherfurd is frequently compared to James Michener. If you've read any of Michener's books, do you find a similarity, or not.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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My Life in France
Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme, 2006
Publisher
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 0307474852
Summary
Julia Child single handedly awakened America to the pleasures of good cooking with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she didn't know the first thing about cooking when she landed in France.
Indeed, when she first arrived in 1948 with her husband, Paul, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever. Julia's unforgettable story unfolds with the spirit so key to her success as as a cook and teacher and writer, brilliantly capturing one of the most endearing American personalities of the last fifty years. (From the publisher.)
The film version of this memoir has been combined with Julie and Julia by writer/director Nora Ephron.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 5, 1912
• Where—Pasadena, California, USA
• Death—August 12, 2004
• Where—Santa Barbara, California
• Education—B.A., Smith College; Le Cordon Bleu
• Awards—Emmy Awards, 1965, 1996 and 1997; George
Foster Peabody Award, 1965; Ordre de Mérite Agricole,
1967; Ordre de Mérite National, 1976; Chevalier of the
Légion d'Honneur, 2000
If leeks, shallots, and sea salt are available at your local supermarket, you probably have Julia Child to thank for it. At a time when many home cooks had nothing more ambitious in their repertoires than Jell-O salad, Child revolutionized the American kitchen, demonstrating that with good ingredients and a few French techniques, even the novice chef could turn out bistro-worthy dinners of boeuf bourguignon and tarte Tatin.
Child's interest in teaching techniques, rather than simply listing fancy recipes, was evident from her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which took years of collaboration (with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle) and experimentation to write. Craig Claiborne, reviewing the book for the New York Times in 1961, wrote: "Probably the most comprehensive, laudable, and monumental work on [French cuisine] was published this week, and it will probably remain the definitive work for nonprofessionals." He was right—it's been a top seller ever since.
To promote the book, the Cordon Bleu–trained Child made an appearance on WGBH in Boston. Not content merely to talk about cooking, she brought along eggs, a hot plate, and a whisk, and demonstrated the proper way to make an omelette. The station producers recognized a potential star, and Child's first television show, The French Chef, was born. Soon thousands of viewers were tuning in to watch Julia flip crepes, blanch beans, and sear steaks. Each show ended with her signature sign-off: "Bon appétit!"
Since then, Child has hosted hundreds of television episodes, and her cookbooks have continued to be both inspiring and practical. Volume two of Mastering the Art of French Cooking was followed by titles like The Way to Cook, Cooking with Master Chefs and Julia's Kitchen Wisdom. Child also co-founded the American Institute of Wine and Food, an educational organization devoted to gastronomy. Many top-flight professional and celebrity chefs—including Alice Waters, Emeril Lagasse, and Thomas Keller—have cited Julia Child as an inspiration. "My own copy of volume one [of French Cooking] is so worn that the duct tape holding it together looks natural," chef Jasper White once noted.
Still, Child remains best known for bringing good food into the home, where she championed "food as an art form, as a delightful part of civilized life." And though she's expanded her range to include American, Mediterranean, and Asian cuisines, she hasn't been influenced by fad diets or fat phobias. She still cooks with butter and cream. As she told Nightline, "Small helpings, no seconds, a little bit of everything, no snacking and have a good time. I think if you follow that, you're going to be healthy, wealthy and wise."
Extras
• During World War II, Julia McWilliams served in the Office of Strategic Services—the forerunner of the CIA—in Ceylon and China, where she met Paul Child. After the war, the two married and moved to Paris, where Julia Child fell in love with French food. Years later, she could still recount her first meal in Paris, which included oysters, scallops in cream sauce, and duck.
• After Child moved from her Cambridge, Massachusetts, house to a retirement community in California, she donated her famous kitchen—where three of her television series were taped—to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
• Child stood tall at a statuesque 6' 2". (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The result is a delight. On one level, it's the story of how a "6-foot-2-inch, 36-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian"—her words —discovered the fullness of life in France. On another, it recounts the making of "Julia Child," America's grande dame of French cooking. Inevitably, the stories overlap.
Alan Riding - New York Times
Famed chef Child, who died in 2004, recounts her life in France, beginning with her early days at the Cordon Bleu after WWII. Greenberg, an actress for radio and commercials, does a fine job capturing Child's joie de vivre and unmatched skill as a culinary animateur. We hear Child's delight and excitement when she discovers her calling as a writer and hands-on teacher of haute cuisine; her exasperation as yet another publishing house rejects her ever-growing monster of a manuscript; and her joy at its publication and acclaimed reception after more than a decade of work. Child's opinionated exuberance translates remarkably well to audio, from her initial Brahmin-like dismissal of the new medium of television (why would Americans want to waste a perfectly good evening staring into a box, she wondered?) and frustration at her diplomat husband being investigated in the McCarthy-driven 1950s to her ecstasy about roast chicken and mulish insistence on the one correct method to make French bread at home. The seamless abridgment has no jarring gaps or abrupt transitions to mar the listener's enjoyment. Potential listeners should beware, however: this is not a book to hear on an empty stomach.
Publishers Weekly
Lovingly cumulated from letters written by Child and her diplomat husband, Paul, as well as interviews with the author in her later years, My Life in France recounts the formative years of her development into a world-renowned chef. The book captures her unique voice in its elaborate descriptions of the sights and sounds of postwar France and its sumptuous and memorable meals. The title is deceptive, however; this recollection is much more than the story of Child's years in France and her time at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. Much of this memoir is dedicated to the years that followed, her experiences as she moved about Europe and finally settled in Cambridge, MA. One significant episode is Child's work with Simon Beck and Louisette Bertholle and their numerous failures and ultimate success at writing a French cookbook for an American audience, the critically acclaimed and classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Recommended for general audiobook collections. —Dawn Eckenrode, Daniel A. Reed Lib., SUNY at Fredonia
Library Journal
In seamlessly flowing prose, the text follows Child's growth as a cook into one of the best and most influential teachers of the twentieth century. Like Child herself, this memoir is earnest but never pedantic. Her eye for the ironic, her sense of humor, and her sharp sensitivity to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and colors that surround her make lucid, lively reading.
Booklist
"Ooh, those lovely roasted, buttery French chickens, they were so good and chickeny!" Anyone who remembers the iconic, deceased Julia Child (1912-2004)—or perhaps Dan Aykroyd's affectionate imitation of her—will recognize the singular voice. It's employed in this memoir to full advantage, and to the reader's great pleasure. As relative and writer Prud'homme recalls, at the end of her long life, Child was busily recording her years as a budding chef. In 1948, newly wed, she moved to Paris with her diplomat husband Paul, whom she had met while on wartime duty for the OSS (now there would be a story) in Asia. The first meal she cooked for him, she recalls, was "a disaster," and she arrived in France "a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian," but in every aspect of her life, she was determined to do better. With self-effacing humor, Child recalls her efforts at learning French, finding an apartment and coping with life in a different culture. No matter how embarrassing or baffling the course of her learning curve, Child's francophilia and zest for life shine through, and nowhere more than in the pages devoted to her sentimental education at the Cordon Bleu, the world-renowned culinary institute, in whose cramped basement she "learned how to glaze carrots and onions at the same time as roasting a pigeon, and how to use the concentrated vegetable juices to fortify the pigeon flavor, and vice versa," among other talents. Matching her growing skills with a formidable armada of kitchen gadgets that will make cookery-loving readers swoon, she then recounts the difficult conception and extremely difficult birth of her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking,which brought her fame. Charming, idiosyncratic and much fun—just like its author, who is very much alive in these pages. A blessing for lovers of France, food and fine writing.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for My Life in France:
1. Julia Child was an exuberant personality. How does that exuberance reveal itself when she first moves to France with husband Paul, a country many Americans have found unwelcoming? Why was Julia's experience so different?
2. Talk about Julia's ability to overcome self-doubt and rejection as she pursues her career...both as chef and later as writer.
3. What role does Paul play in Julia's development? How would you describe the quality of their marriage?
4. Trace the process of how Julia comes to fall in love with French food—the fact that it was not just to be eaten but to be experienced. Talk about that first meal in France where she had her epiphany? Anything similar in your own life?
5. Discuss some of the interesting side stories: Julia's relationship with her father, McCarthyism and Paul's subsequent disillusionment with the U.S. government.
6. Consider, too, some of the ironic or humorous moments: language missteps or Julia's initial thoughts about TV.
7. How important was Julia Child's role in introducing America to French food and classical cooking? Has her influence lasted, given the culture's affection for (or addiction to) fast food and convenience cooking, as well as our emphasis on low-fat diets?
8. If you have visited France (or live there), how do Julia's reminisces compare to life in France today? What has changed...and what has remained the same?
9. If you have cooked with any of Julia Child's cookbooks, especially her most famous, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, what were your experiences with her recipes? Difficult? Easy? Delicious? Too rich? Which are your favorite recipes of hers? Do you, in fact, enjoy French cuisine?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
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My Horizontal Life
Chelsea Handler, 2005
Bloomsbury USA
213 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781582346182
Summary
In this raucous collection of true-life stories, actress and comedian Chelsea Handler recounts her time spent in the social trenches with that wild, strange, irresistible, and often gratifying beast: the one-night stand.
More
You've either done it or know someone who has: the one-night stand, the familiar outcome of a night spent at a bar, sometimes the sole payoff for your friend's irritating wedding, or the only relief from a disastrous vacation. Often embarrassing and uncomfortable, occasionally outlandish, but most times just a necessary and irresistible evil, the one-night stand is a social rite as old as sex itself and as common as a bar stool.
Enter Chelsea Handler. Gorgeous, sharp, and anything but shy, Chelsea loves men and lots of them. My Horizontal Life chronicles her romp through the different bedrooms of a variety of suitors, a no-holds-barred account of what can happen between a man and a sometimes very intoxicated, outgoing woman during one night of passion. From her short fling with a Vegas stripper to her even shorter dalliance with a well-endowed little person, from her uncomfortable tryst with a cruise ship performer to her misguided rebound with a man who likes to play leather dress-up, Chelsea recalls the highs and lows of her one-night stands with hilarious honesty. Encouraged by her motley collection of friends (aka: her partners in crime) but challenged by her family members (who at times find themselves a surprise part of the encounter), Chelsea hits bottom and bounces back, unafraid to share the gritty details. My Horizontal Life is one guilty pleasure you won't be ashamed to talk about in the morning. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 25, 1975
• Where—Livingston, New Jersey
• Currently—Los Angeles, California
Chelsea Handler is an accomplished stand-up comic and actress, as well as the bestselling author of My Horizontal Life. She is the star of her own late-night show on E!, Chelsea Lately; was one of the stars of Girls Behaving Badly; has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman; and has starred in her own half-hour Comedy Central special. Chelsea makes regular appearances in comedy clubs across America and lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)
More
Chelsea Handler is an American stand-up comedienne, humorist, television host, actress, and best-selling author. She currently has her own late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately, on the E! Cable Television Network. In 2009, she won a Bravo A-List Award. She also has her own column in the UK celebrity magazine Now.
Handler was born in the suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey to Rita and Seymour Handler. The youngest of six children, she was raised Jewish by her Mormon mother and Jewish father. Handler has said that while growing up, she felt like an outsider, telling a reporter, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood.... Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto." Her mother died of cancer.
Handler has performed nationwide as a stand-up comedian, appeared as a regular on the Oxygen Network series Girls Behaving Badly and on other shows, including Weekends at the D.L., The Bernie Mac Show and The Practice. She is a regular commentator on E! and Scarborough Country as well as a correspondent on The Tonight Show. She hosted the first episode of the reality TV show On the Lot, but quit before the second one was aired, as she later said, "because I smelled the disaster happening before it did." Chelsea Handler hosted The Chelsea Handler Show in April 2006, which lasted two seasons. She was a guest on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld and The View; she co-hosted The View on August 2, 2007, and again on September 5, 2008. On January 25, 2009, Handler was on the CBS gameshow Million Dollar Password as one of the celebrity players. On April 15, 2009, Handler won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for "A-List Funny."
Handler has authored two books on the New York Times Best Seller List. Handler wrote My Horizontal Life as her memoir. Handler also wrote Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, a collection of humorous essays. Are You There, Vodka hit the New York Times non-fiction best seller list on May 11, 2008; it has already had a print run of over 350,000. She released her third book titled Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang in March of 2010.
In 2007, Handler performed with the Hour Stand-Up Comedy Tour across the U.S.. Her stand-up has been televised on Vh1's Love Lounge, Comedy Central's Premium Blend, and HBO's broadcast of the Aspen Comedy Festival. Chelsea Handler was the host of the Fox show On The Lot. The show, produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, is a competition for aspiring filmmakers who are vying for a chance at stardom. She was replaced after one episode by former Robin & Company entertainment anchor, Adrianna Costa.
In July 2007, Handler began starring on her own half-hour late-night comedy series on E! titled Chelsea Lately. This series places Handler against a slew of male-dominated talk shows, and adding a considerable amount of sarcasm and ridicule to the format. On the show's 100th episode, Chelsea revealed to viewers that E! had picked up Chelsea Lately for another 150 episodes. The show has proved a hit and averaged more than a half-million viewers since its premiere (much more than the average for a late night cable program) and has clips on Youtube with more than a million views. All this success is despite the fact that Handler's guests often are not A-list celebrities. In a 2008 interview Handler said, "The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is.” The New York Times reported that Chelsea Lately has been renewed by E! to run until December 2009; Handler received another contract extension in March 2009 to keep Chelsea Lately on the air through 2012.
Since 2007, Handler has appeared in the Internet based program In the Motherhood with Leah Remini and (since January 2008) Jenny McCarthy. The comedic series is "about moms, by moms and for moms". On September 8, 2008, it was announced ABC would be turning In The Motherhood into a series starring Jessica St. Clair, Megan Mullaly, and Cheryl Hines. Handler decided to drop out of the project due to her scheduling commitments to her show Chelsea Lately. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Where have I been all of Chelsea Handler's life? I had no idea how funny, how brilliant she is. She is too clever for words.
Liz Smith - New York Post
Chelsea just might be funnier than David Sedaris.
Dallas Observer
Opening with a cute story from when she was seven and photographed her parents having sex, stand-up comedian Handler goes on to discuss the virtues of the one-night stand, which amount to having sex early enough so you're not months into a relationship before you discover he's into "anal beads and duct tape." She discusses her quest for sex with a "black man," which doesn't work out because the date she finds on ChocolateSingles.com has a penis so large, she "would have had to be the size of the Lincoln Tunnel to accommodate that thing." After him, there's a "little midget," but she sobers up before sleeping with him. Next come a number of would-be partners with penises too small to consider. Finally, there's a guy Handler does sleep with, only an embarrassing incident involving a "giant skid mark" prevents her from seeing him again. By the end, Handler considers settling down with one man, which might actually net her more sex than these mostly unconsummated one-night stands. Anyone who laughs at the mere mention of vaginas and penises may find Handler's book almost as much fun as getting drunk and waking up in some stranger's bed.
Publishers Weekly
Handler, a stand-up comedienne and featured prankster on the television show Girls Behaving Badly, now adds author to her resume. Chronicling her often wild sex life, this collection of offbeat and laugh-out-loud-funny essays includes a tale of waking up naked with a midget and a narrative of an affair with a Vegas stripper. Though the book seems to rely on the humor of the actual one-night stand, the standout pieces occur near the end, as Handler's attempts at casual sex become less successful and she begins to consider adopting a slightly more conservative lifestyle. In fact, the most entertaining essay concerns not sex but her substance-abusing gay friend's antics at her sister's wedding. Drawing on a supporting cast of hilariously well-drawn family members and friends, Handler succeeds in penning a smart, funny, and quick read. The booze-fueled tales of sex, however, are most likely inappropriate for school and academic libraries or more conservative communities. Recommended for the Sex and the City crowd in public libraries.—Amanda Glasbrenner, New York
Library Journal
Disjointed, lackluster musings on her promiscuous social life, by directionless if cheerful Handler. The L.A.-based standup comic here relates the meandering story of her many sexual misadventures. She starts with a not-very-amusing incident: at six years old, she was persuaded by her sister to take a picture of her parents having sex. (Dad was pissed: imagine that.) Moving on to her teenaged adventures at the Jersey shore, Handler invites us to find it hilarious that she picked up a good-looking man, had sex with him immediately, and dated him for months despite the fact that she couldn't stand talking to him. The joke in the next section is that while her father was a racist, she personally dated a wonderful black man, and it inspired her to want to sleep with many more of them. Next comes what's supposed to be an entertaining misunderstanding involving her sisters and the fact that Handler did not in fact have sex with the naked midget they found in her hotel room. In one genuinely funny moment, the author was dismayed to find that the handsome stripper she picked up wanted to tell her his real name and discuss the fact that what he really wanted to do was act—it figures that she would get stuck with the guy who wanted a real relationship. There is more: the one-night stand who showed up at the restaurant where she worked and was seated in her section, with his girlfriend (Handler pretends she is her own identical twin and has never seen him before); the friend who plays a practical joke on her by telling Handler's date that she has a terminal disease and just wants to cuddle; the gay friend invited to be her date for a wedding who terrorized her family. It might work as standup, but when transferred to the page this shtick is a groaner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for My Horizontal Life:
1. Start with Chelsea Handler herself. Why does she pursue her quest for one-night-stands? What is she looking for? What does sex mean to her—or what do the encounters mean to her? In fact, do they have meaning?
2. Consider your reactions to Chelsea. Do you find her open approach to sex funny...appealing...depraved...misguided...or do you see her as a woman who has taken charge of her own sexuality? Do you approve or disapprove of what she's up to? Or do you take a neutral stance, believing it's not for readers to pass judgment?
3. Some readers have complained about Chelsea's lack of compassion or shallow hedonism. Others have found her refreshingly frank. What do you think? (Basically, the same as question #2, just worded differently.)
4. Do you have any favorite encounters in the book? Which do you find most humorous? Which episodes are the least appealing or most disturbing? What do you think of the various men she attempts to have sex with—any favorites...least favorite?
5. Talk about Chelsea's myriad friends and family members, and their reaction to or even participation in Chelsea's exploits.
5. Does My Horizontal Life play into stereotypes in terms of African-American and gay men or midgets?
7. Does Chelsea undergo personal reflection or growth throughout the book? What eventually makes her decide to pursue a more conservative lifestyle, perhaps to settle down with one man? Is there an inner life that Chelsea reveals so that you come to know her as a rich, complex character?
8. Some have compared Handler's book to Sex and the City. If you've seen either the TV show or movie, how does My Horizontal Life compare? Is there a particular character in SATC that Chelsea reminds you of?
9. Does My Horizontal Life deliver or disappoint?
10. Okay, readers: time for some personal revelations on your part. Anything in Chelsea's life similar to your own?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Who Moved My Cheese? An A-mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
Spencer Johnson, 1998
Penguin Group USA
96 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399144462
Summary
With over a million copies in print, the #1 New York Times bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life has grown from a guide and training tool for America's top corporations and organizations to a cultural phenomenon that is changing people's lives. While a few analytical or skeptical people find the story too simple on the surface, the vast majority of readers' responses reveal it is the clear simplicity that makes it so easy to understand and apply to changing situations at work or in life.
This amazing bestseller, written by Spencer Johnson, M.D., the co-author of The One Minute Manager, the world's most popular management method, is reaching beyond the business community, where it has been the #1 Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller for more than 30 consecutive weeks. It is now being embraced by hundreds of thousands of readers-from community leaders and college coaches to parents and children-helping them to adapt to change.
Whether it's the challenge of a changing relationship, or moving to a new neighborhood, or the downsizing and merging of corporations, people are finding that the basic lesson of Who Moved My Cheese? is an unthreatening and invaluable source of comfort and advice. It is no wonder that this diminutive tome has become a runaway bestseller! (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 1, 1940
• Where—South Dakota, USA
• Raised—in Hollywood, California
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.D.,
Royal College of Surgeons (Ireland)
• Currently—lives in Hawaii and New Hampshire
Spencer Johnson is an M.D. who has become better known for fixing ailing corporations than healing the sick, first with his 1982 business classic The One Minute Manager (coauthored with psychiatrist Kenneth Blanchard) and then, unforgettably, with Who Moved My Cheese?, a word-of-mouth sensation that eventually remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years and has been translated into 11 languages.
Word had slowly built up about Cheese, based on the strength of recommendations from heavy-hitter executives at Procter & Gamble, GE, Hewlett-Packard and others. Businesses, hit by the downshifting economy, began ordering copies by the thousands; by 2000, it was a national bestseller. The book sets up a story about four characters who live in a maze: Hem and Haw, who are little people; and Sniff and Scurry, who are mice.
Johnson, who based the story on the fact that mice rarely go back to the same place to look for cheese and felt that humans might benefit from the example, created the story for himself as a way of helping himself get through a divorce. Urged by former writing partner Blanchard to set the story down in book form, Johnson finally did – and nothing happened, at first. But over two years, the book picked up momentum, not only among companies who were trying to deal with everything from sales downturns to massive layoffs, but among individuals who found the book helped them gain a new perspective on personal situations as well.
Johnson’s forte is to create allegorical stories that present simple, digestible solutions (or paths to solutions) for seemingly huge challenges. The approach is far from immune to criticism from those who complain that Who Moved My Cheese? is simplistic and silly; Johnson doesn’t argue with either barb (though he might prefer "simple" over "simplistic"). His message is that being simpler and sillier makes us better adapters and decision-makers, and all of his books boil down to opening oneself to possibility and better communication. The ideas aren’t revolutionary: As Johnson said in an ABC News chat, “The challenge always for me and for others is to live the story and not just read about it.” (From Barnes & Noble and Wikipedia.)
His own words:
My five year old son told me a cheese joke: "What do you call cheese that's not yours?" When I gave up, he laughed and said, "Nacho Cheese!" It made me smile and reminded me to keep having fun with Cheese.
I've just seen a new software product that also made me smile. It's called the "Who Moved My Cheese? Change Survival Kit. It has an electronic game with animated prompts and reminders showing the characters running around inside a maze, reminding us to laugh at ourselves and discover how to do well in changing times.
Many years ago, when I was struggling with a difficult change in my life, I created the story of "Who Moved My Cheese?" to help me take my changing situation seriously, but not take myself so seriously. When my friends noticed how much better life had become for me and asked why, I told them about the "Cheese" story. Several friends said, sometimes years later, how hearing the story helped them to keep their sense of humor, change, and gain something better themselves.
Two decades after the story was created, it was published as a book, and to my amazement and almost everyone else's, within two years of publication, more than three million people had read it. Many have reported that what they discovered in the story has saved their careers, businesses, health and marriages. It has spread around the world in many foreign languages. It's appeal seems universal.
Critics on the other hand think the story is too cheesy and do not understand how so many people could find it so valuable. They say it is so simple a child could understand it and it insults their intelligence, as it is just obvious common sense. They get nothing out of the story. Some even fear it suggests all change is good and that people should mindlessly conform to unnecessary changes imposed by others, although that is not in the story.
It seems to me that both fans and critics are "right" in their own way. It is not what is in the story of "Who Moved My Cheese?" but how you interpret it and apply it to your own situation that gives it value. The challenge however is to remember to use what you discover in the story. So I thought it was great when I learned that the new entertaining piece of software has animated characters from the book prompting and reminding us to use what we find most valuable in the story to change and win and enjoy it.
Some people who have seen the "Change Survival Kit" say that it is "better than cheddar!" Let's hope the way you interpret Who Moves My Cheese? and act on it, will help you find and enjoy the "New Cheese" you deserve. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This quick read of simple ideas will provide at least one character to relate to and some advice to hold on to during a busy day.
Christy Ellington - Christian Science Monitor
I'm giving this book to colleagues and friends. Spencer Johnson's storytelling abilities and unique insights make this a rare book that can be read and understood by everyone who wants to succeed in these changing times.
Randy Harris - Former Vice-Chairman, Merrill Lynch, Intl.
(Audio version.) This is a brief tale of two mice and two humans who live in a maze and one day are faced with change: someone moves their cheese. Reactions vary from quick adjustment to waiting for the situation to change by itself to suit their needs. This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid. Listeners are still left with questions about making his or her own specific personal changes. Capably narrated by Tony Roberts, this audiotape is recommended for larger library collections. —Mark Guyer, Stark Cty. Dist. Lib., Canton, OH
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points—and activities—to help get a discussion started for Who Moved My Cheese:
1. In Johnson's book the cheese is a metaphor. What does it represent?
2. What does the maze represent?
3. Identify both the cheese and the maze in your own life. Then consider what might happen if someone moved your cheese. Imagine the ways you might have to cope with the changes.
4. What changes have you already experienced in your life? How did you react to the changes? Were you threatened, angry, frightened, disoriented, or excited by the challenge (come on...be honest!)? After reading Who Moved My Cheese? do you feel you dealt as well as you could have with those changes?
5. Has Johnson's book helped you see how change can be beneficial...in life in general, as well as in your own work or personal life?
6. If you read "A Discussion," the book's third section, what did you learn from the way others interpreted the book? Were any situations similar to your own?
7. Do you wish Johnson had offered concrete answers to the question of dealing with change? Would you have preferred a "how-to" approach, say, a step-by step guide? Or do you appreciate the way in which readers are free to interpret and apply the parable for themselves? Which approach is more helpful to you?
8. In the parable, Johnson says the four characters represent the four parts of ourselves, from the simple to the complex. What does he mean: which character represents which part of ourselves? Is there one character you relate to more than the others?
9. Why is it so hard for most of us (all of us?) to accept change?
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Activities
1. For the hostess or leader of the discussion: without telling members ahead of time, change the format of the book club meeting— perhaps where you sit, when you discuss vs. when you socialize, the manner in which you discuss... whatever changes you can think of (and only for this meeting). This is an experiment to see how members deal with the changes facing them in the here and now.
2. Invite members to write down on a sheet of paper an aspect of their own lives that could be—or is in the process of being—affected by change—a move, new job, a child off to college, a divorce...whatever. Then pass around a basket or hat holding folded pieces of paper with the names of the characters from the parable (Hem, Haw, etc.). Make sure there are enough papers for everyone. Each member should draw one of the folded papers and talk about how that parable character would approach the change he/she wrote on the sheet of paper.
3. Pass around paper and pencils for each member to write down and describe his/her personal maze. Fold the paper. Appoint a moderator to collect and read out loud each member's maze—anonymously. The group tries to guess which maze belongs to which member. (This requires a high degree of trust among members.)
4. Divide up into teams of 2-4 people. Each team begins working on its own project—a jigsaw puzzle, or solving a riddle, or writing a group story—anything that involves teamwork. After several minutes, a moderator rings a bell and chooses a member from each team to move to another team. Let everyone begin working on their team projects again, this time with a new member. Wait for another interval, ring the bell, and shuffle members around again. Keep this up as long as you can stand it. The idea is to replicate how difficult it is to change— both in terms of disrupting group coherence and having to fit into a new group.
(Questions and activities by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman who Bound Them Together
Ron Hall, Denver Moore, Lynn Vincent, 2006
Thomas Nelson
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780849919107
Summary
Meet Denver, a man raised under plantation-style slavery in Louisiana in the 1960s; a man who escaped, hopping a train to wander, homeless, for eighteen years on the streets of Dallas, Texas.
No longer a slave, Denver's life was still hopeless—until God moved. First came a godly woman who prayed, listened, and obeyed. And then came her husband, Ron, an international arts dealer at home in a world of Armani-suited millionaires. And then they all came together.
But slavery takes many forms. Deborah discovers that she has cancer. In the face of possible death, she charges her husband to rescue Denver. Who will be saved, and who will be lost? What is the future for these unlikely three? What is God doing?
Same Kind of Different As Me is the emotional tale of their story: a telling of pain and laughter, doubt and tears, dug out between the bondages of this earth and the free possibility of heaven. No reader or listener will ever forget it. (From the publisher.)
Authors Bios
Denver Moore grew up on a plantation in Red Parish, Louisiana, where he lived in a shotgun shack as a modern-day slave until he escaped to freedom at the age of thirty. Freedom brought the uneducated and financially destitute Denver the gift of homelessness, which eventually led to ten years in the legendary Angola Prison for armed robbery. After his release, he ended up back on the streets, as a hardened criminal who frequented the Ft. Worth, Texas, Union Gospel Mission.
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Ron Hall grew up in Haltom City, outside Fort Worth, Texas. He attended college, earned an MBA, got married, had kids, became an international art dealer selling million-dollar Picassos, and volunteered to help serve dinner once a week at Ft. Worth's Union Gospel Mission, with his wife Deborah. (Both bios from WittenburgDoor.com)
Book Reviews
An international art dealer and a modern-day slave from Louisiana become friends after the art dealer is roped into volunteering at a homeless shelter by his saintly wife. Sounds like it's got to be fiction, but that's the true story told in Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.
"I really wrote the book to honor my wife and honor Denver, who both deserved a place in history," Hall explained. Moore told his half, and Hall wrote it and his half, rewriting the manuscript 14 times before he got up the nerve to take it to agent Lee Hough at Alive Communications.
Co-writer Lynn Vincent was brought in to help craft the story and also to vet the events of the true story. The controversy over author James Frey's embellished memoir cast a long shadow over the book during its preparation. "It made us be much more rigorous than we otherwise would have been," said Greg Daniel, v-p and associate publisher at W. "It looks like we're as clean as we can possibly be."
The authors' profits from the book will go to the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth, which now includes the Deborah L. Hall Memorial Chapel. —Marcia Z. Nelson, Religion BookLine
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Same Kind of Different As Me:
1. At the beginning of the book, what kind of person is Ron Hall? How would you describe him (how does he describe himself)? Why does he agree to volunteer at the homeless shelter, and what is his initial reaction in doing so?
2. Talk about the trajectory of Denver Moore's life. What events have landed him in the homeless shelter? Discuss the differences between his life and Ron Hall's. What is Denver's world view?
3. Talk about Deborah Hall? What inspires her life? What does she think of Denver Moore?
4. Eventually, Denver and Ron, two men who have lived vastly different lives, become close friends. What do the two see in one another? What draws them together?
5. What are the symbolic implications of the conversation about how white men fish, especially their catch-and-release method? What does that conversation say about each man, and what is the underlying message that Denver is trying to pass onto Ron?
6. What is the meaning of the book's title, "Same Kind of Difference as Me"? What does it refer to?
7. How do both men change by the end of the book? What do they learn from or teach each other?
8. This is a story about how hate and prejudice can be overcome by love and grace. How difficult is that achievement in most of our lives? What can this book teach us?
9. Does this book inspire you? If so, in what ways?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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