Mother's Day: What are new moms reading?

With Mother's Day coming up this Sunday, Jacket Copy wanted to find out what new moms and moms-to-be are reading. Maybe because every mother we asked is a writer herself, the reading list is wide, varied and very interesting: Turns out it's not just Dr. Spock and "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

Janelle Brown, author of the novels "This Is Where We Live" and  "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything" and the mother of Theo, age 5 days, and Auden, age 2 years: "I'm reading 'Mirror, Mirror' by Gregory Maguire. A friend gave it to me when I asked her for hospital-friendly reading material for the sleep deprived. Haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to read, though. It's a dark and twisted adult version of the Snow White fairy tale, from the author of 'Wicked.'"

Dana Goodyear, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of the poetry collection "Honey and Junk," is expecting her second child soon: "I'm reading 'Beyond the Beautiful Forevers' by Katherine Boo and, in the middle of the night, the Huffington Post on my phone.

Journalist Claire Zulkey, expecting her first child Sept. 4: "Right now I am reading Susan Orlean's "Rin Tin Tin" book and also listening to Michael Ian Black's book 'You're Not Doing It Right' (which is actually semi-about parenting)."

Edan Lepucki, author of the novella "If You're Not Yet Like Me" and mother of Dixon Bean Brown, 10 months old: "I'm reading a lot these days. I'm currently re-reading 'Stone Arabia' by Dana Spiotta, one of my favorite books of last year. I'm doing a lecture on it next Friday for a private arts and reading group in Pasadena called Inside the Story, so the reading is partly for work...but mostly for pleasure since it's such a lovely and beguiling read. I just finished the bestselling thriller 'Before I Go to Sleep' by S.J. Watson; I chose to read this because we were headed to Palm Springs for a family vacation and I wanted something deliciously readable to suck down along with my pool-side margarita. I wasn't taken with the style or the first-person narration but lord I could not put that sucker down!  Next on my shelf: Jonathan Lethem's 33 1/3 book on the Talking Heads album 'Fear of Music.'"

Grace Krilanovich, selected as one the National Book Award's 5 under 35 authors for her novel "The Orange Eats Creeps" is the mother of Ondine, 5 months: "I just got the new Brian Evenson novel, "Immobility," so I'm  looking forward to starting that in a day or so, after I finish reading the manuscript of Tom Hansen's new novel, 'This Is What We Do,' which will be out in August/September."

Claire Bidwell Smith, author of the memoir "The Rules of Inheritance," whose child is due June 12: "I just finished 'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Green, which I found to be kind of perfect. I'm now going back and forth between 'Bringing Up Bebe,' which I think illuminates the many flaws in the American parenting model in a really important way, and Diane Keaton's memoir 'Then Again,' which is such an incredible book about mother-daughter relationships."

If you're thinking of getting your mom a book, keep these mothers' reading lists in mind.

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Mom's bookshelf, in the Kellogg house

Mom's bathroom reading, in the Owchar house

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Reading, with baby. Credit: Lynn Friedman via Flickr

Happy 200th birthday, Charles Dickens!

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago today in the town of Portsmouth, England. According to Claire Tomalin's 2011 biography "Charles Dickens: A Life," his childhood home was happy and comfortable, but his father tended to live beyond his means, and the family was uprooted more than once. On the worst of these occasions, 12-year-old Charles was sent to work in a boot-black factory. He didn't like it. But it became material -- there was a boy there named Fagin, a name that will ring familiar to readers of "Oliver Twist."

Dickens was remarkable in that he created characters and stories that have become permanent fixtures in our cultural landscape. How many times has "A Christmas Carol" been adapted for stage, film, or sitcom holiday episodes? Too many for me to count. But that lasting cultural presence is paired with something else that sets Dickens the writer apart: He was stunningly prolific.

During the three years he worked full time as editor of the magazine Bentley's Miscellany, for example, he wrote and published two books -- no less than "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" and "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby." By the time of his death in 1870 at age 58, he'd written 14 hefty novels ("The Mystery of Edwin Drood" was published posthumously) and many other works.

To celebrate Charles Dickens' 200th birthday, then, here is a list of his published works.

Charles Dickens' novels:

The Pickwick Papers    
The Adventures of Oliver Twist        
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby    
The Old Curiosity Shop        
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty'
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit      
Dombey and Son     
David Copperfield    
Bleak House    
Hard Times: For These Times    
Little Dorrit
A Tale of Two Cities    
Great Expectations    
Our Mutual Friend    
The Mystery of Edwin Drood

It continues after the jump.

The anti-Valentine's book: 'Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love'

Just because you like to take long walks in the woods, it doesn't mean you'll find someone to walk beside you. Henry David Thoreau, born in 1817, was one of the most important writers and thinkers of his generation, penning "Walden," a seminal work about man and nature, not to mention "Civil Disobedience," about political engagement. But when it came to love, he struck out, proposing marriage to a woman who'd already turned his brother down (Henry did no better). "Love and lust are far asunder," he wrote. "One good, the other bad."

The sad tale of the loveless Henry David Thoreau is in "Great Philosophers Who Failed At Love," a paperback original by Andrew Shaffer, out now for those haunting bookstores for the perfect Valentine's Schadenfreude.

There are 37 unlucky philosophers included. And while Thoreau's plight is not one to be envied, at least he didn't strangle his wife to death by accident.

That dubious honor goes to Louis Althusser, a leftist French philosopher born in 1918. In 1980, he was "massaging" his wife Helene's neck and "accidentally" strangled her. Judged mentally unfit to stand trial, he was institutionalized for three years before writing a memoir, "The Future Lasts Forever."

In short vignettes, the anti-Valentine's inclined can read about the love-life problems of Albert Camus (twice-married, many affairs, yet still he claimed he had "no gift for love"), Martin Heidegger (his own affairs, including one with Hannah Arendt, distracted him from his wife's dalliances, which resulted in a child) and Ayn Rand (when her affair with a man 25 years her junior ended, he left her with only her husband for comfort).

In explaining the conundrum of great minds being unlucky in love, Shaffer cites another philosopher, Bob Dylan, who sang, "You can't be in love and wise at the same time."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: An undated Daguerrotype of Henry David Thoreau. Credit: Associated Press

Forget the romance: 'The Science of Kissing' is a bit dry

To celebrate Valentine's Day, Jessica Gelt takes a look in our pages at the book "The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us" by Sheril Kirshenbaum. The conclusion, she finds, is that "despite its exalted status as one of the world's most passionate activities, the kiss has evolved for a single blind purpose: to get you into bed so you can propagate the species."

Gelt continues:

Although the information in part one about the kissing, sniffing and licking practices of our ancestors is interesting, it falls flat compared with part two.

It's when Kirshenbaum slogs through saliva, looking for clues to human attraction in tastes, hormones and smells, that she gets to third base....

When Kirshenbaum embraces the titillating subject matter with an earthy Henry Miller sense of sexual joie de vivre, "The Science of Kissing" shows flashes of greatness, but all too often she veers back into family friendly territory. And sadly, for such wet subject matter, the book reads a bit dry.

Read more about Kirshenbaum's scientific investigation of lip-locking romance in Gelt's review of "The Science of Kissing" here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

 

Love is... back

The story goes something like this: it's 1967, and Kim Grove, a New Zealand-born waitress living in California, begins a relationship with a dashing Italian, Roberto Casali. According to one account, she was too shy to express her feelings directly and left him little love cartoons; in another, she sent him the cartoons in letters. Either way, those cartoons began to stack up -- an image of a cartoony version of Kim or Roberto or the two together with the words "Love is..." followed by another thought or idea or moment.

In 1971, Roberto got the message and married Kim; in 1974, he thought her cartoons might resonate with others. He brought them to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, which snapped them up. Kim Casali continued to create her "Love is..." cartoons, which were  printed here at the paper, syndicated nationally and appeared in more than 60 countries.

The cartoons, of two usually naked figures (sometimes they wear overalls) were omnipresent in the '70s. "Love is... when he only wants to dance with you," "Love is... wearing something that turns his head," and "Love is... when you call a truce" are some of those that have made it into the new anthology "Love is... all around" from Abrams, all of which feature the cute cartoon couple. Depending on your point of view, they're adorable or sickly sweet, too much or entirely true. "Love is... weatherproof," "Love is... finding a rainbow in every shower," "Love is... more precious when you're far away."

Having differences of opinion on the "Love is..." cartoons has an actual legacy. In 1974, The Times ran a story titled, "Love is... Stirring up a Hornet's Nest." Reader Edith Zaslow had written in, finding one of the cartoons sexist and offensive to women -- including one which read, "Love is... cleaning the coffee table after him several times a day." We asked other readers to tell us what they thought, and most of the responses were along the lines of, "It really does put down women," and "I've always thought the cartoon one of the most insipid I've ever read." A few, however, stood up for Casali, writing, "The cartoons have always seemed to me to be a wonderful representation of what true love and marriage is all about."

Roberto Casali died of cancer in 1976; Kim Casali died in 1997. They had three sons; the eldest, Stefano, brought this book to publication. The youngest son, Milo, was born 17 months after his father's death -- Roberto, knowing he was ill, had banked his sperm for artificial insemination. That might be hard to explain in a cartoon, but it seems like it surely is love.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

 

 

Books for Christmas?

The good news: Mom and dad wrapped up books as Christmas gifts for their son. The bad news? He doesn't think it's such a good idea.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Rene Lynch on 'Oogy,' a dog so ugly he'll run off with your heart

When this book landed on my desk last month I quickly glanced at the cover, scanned the back and shoved it beneath a pile of papers. The subject matter just seemed too disturbing, and struck too close to home: I'm still grieving the recent death of my 15-year-old shepherd mix, Buster, a happy-go-lucky dog that I adopted as a puppy after he was found abused and abandoned in East L.A., strung to a fence by a wire.

"Oogy" is the true story of a puppy who was used as "bait" for fighting dogs when he was just a few weeks old, and was so badly mauled and disfigured that he was nearly put down when he was discovered abandoned outside Philadelphia. But the staff at the Ardmore Animal Hospital, which sees this kind of thing all too often, immediately noticed something special about the white dog whose left ear had been torn off, his jaw smashed, the side of his head torn open. Despite everything that had happened to him, he showed absolutely no malice to other dogs or hospital employees. Instead, he eagerly dispensed licks and wag, offering thanks to his rescuers in the only way he knew how. Against all odds -- or common sense, it would seem -- the animal hospital spent hours operating on the dog and fostering him through his recovery. When they were certain he did not pose a threat, the one-eared pup with the lopsided face was given a second chance, and adopted out to the Levin family.

I'm glad I also gave this book a second try, and I suggest it for someone who might be facing Christmas without a beloved pet.

The book is written by Larry Levin, an attorney who, along with his attorney wife, were on the treadmill of attorney life when they received a call that would forever change their lives: It was the "stork," delivering the news that the couple had been approved to adopt two newborn boys, twins they would later name Dan and Noah. With parenthood comes introspection for Levin about what it means to be a father, and what it means to be a family.

In our pages: 13 cookbooks for the gifting

Today's food section features cookbooks that are great for the gifting. That's not just because the food writers are thinking about cookbooks -- some say that as many as 75% of cookbooks published each year come out in the months before the winter holidays.

The cuisines are all over the map, literally, from Norway to India to Mexico. And they're not just regional: One book is devoted to meat, another to pie. The list of 13 great cookbooks to give as gifts is:

"Heart of the Artichoke," by David Tanis
"One Big Table," by Molly O'Neill
"My Calabria," by Rosetta Costantino with Janet Fletcher
"Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine" by René Redzepi, photographs by Ditte Isager
"Southern Pies" by Nancie McDermott
"The Lost Art of Real Cooking" by Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger
"Primal Cuts" by Marissa Guggiana
Tartine Bread," by Chad Robertson
"Around My French Table" by Dorie Greenspan
"Bake!" by Nick Malgieri
"At Home With Madhur Jaffrey" by Madhur Jaffrey
"My Sweet Mexico" by Fany Gerson
"Ethan Stowell's New Italian Kitchen" by Ethan Stowell and Leslie Miller

Read more about each of the cookbooks here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

 

Hip lit Wednesday: Granta's best young Spanish-language novelists

Two of Granta magazine's best young Spanish-language novelists will be in Los Angeles on Wednesday night for a discussion and holiday party. It'll be the snazziest literary event of the evening.

Wednesday night, writers Carlos Yushimito and Carlos Labbé will have a discussion at the Granta event/holiday party with David Kipen, whose tenure at the National Endowment for the Arts included a partnership between literary Los Angeles and the Guadalajara Book Fair. There also will be a game involving scissors and words and glue. And prizes. And, of course, drinks.

Chilean author Carlos Labbé is, Granta writes, "a pop musician, literary critic and editor and has a particular talent for recognizing the songs of Chilean birds." Peruvian writer Carlos Yushimito, who is studying for his PhD at Brown, told the New York Times, "I'm the kind of writer who has always circulated in small editions by alternative presses.  This puts me in a different sphere."

Granta's semiregular "best young novelist" issues have, like the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list, been reliable predictors of future literary success. This is the first time Granta has focused on authors writing in a language other than English; it features 22 young novelists. (Eight are from Argentina -- what's up with that?)

It all starts at 8 p.m. in the Ghost Bar inside the Crocker Club in downtown L.A. If you have time beforehand, you might read Carlos Labbé's story "The Girls Resembled Each Other in the Unfathomable," online at Three Percent.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

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The Reading Life: Rediscovering Vonnegut

The rental house on Cape Cod where I've spent part of nearly every August since I was 9 years old has an amazing library. It's one of the appeals of the place: the opportunity to dig around in all those books, familiar and unfamiliar at once. They're not my books -- and yet, after all this time, I know them so intimately that it almost feels as if they were.

I discovered Georges Simenon in this house, one rainy afternoon when I was in my teens, and also P. G. Wodehouse, read Steinbeck's "Burning Bright" and "The Moon Is Down," worked my way through Bellow and Dickens and the collected writings of JFK. Many of these authors I've come to gather on my own shelves, but there is something about the randomness, the serendipity, of what a friend calls the guest house library, a way of simultaneously getting outside of and coming closer to oneself.

This summer, I found myself drawn to Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel "Slaughterhouse-Five," which I hadn't read in at least 20 years. As a kid in this house, I nurtured a Vonnegut fixation, devouring his books in their uniform Dell mass-market paperback editions: "Cat's Cradle," "The Sirens of Titan," "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," "Welcome to the Monkey House." I spent decades hunting for his out-of-print collection  "Canary in a Cat House," and even made a few tentative adolescent efforts to track him down.

Vonnegut, I knew, had lived in Barnstable, Mass., just a dozen or so miles down Route 28 from where we were; by the time I started reading him, he had already left for New York, but his ex-wife was listed in the phone book, and I used to look her up on occasion, marveling at the closeness, the proximity this brought me, although I was always too polite, or too intimidated, to call.

"Slaughterhouse-Five" was one of those transformative books, the kind that shook up everything I thought I knew. Inspired by Vonnegut's experiences in World War II -- where, as a POW, he survived the firebombing of Dresden, Germany -- it is a cry from the soul, an anti-war book that understands itself to be a futile gesture, even as it makes the effort all the same.

"You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?" someone asks early in the novel. "I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'" What this means, Vonnegut explains, "was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too."

So why write the novel? The answer resides in the simplest truth. War, Vonnegut means to tell us, is not ennobling or honorable; it is terrifying, chaotic, the expression of an absurd universe, and even more, of the absurdity of humankind. Soldiers are children, sent to fight by "glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men." It is for this reason that he subtitles the novel "The Children's Crusade," promising a friend's wife that, should he ever finish it, "there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra and John Wayne."

Such promises, of course, were made many years ago -- in another country, another world. Sinatra and Wayne are long dead, and Dresden has been relegated to the mists of history. We have new wars now, new children's crusades, yet reading "Slaughterhouse-Five" again, with its story of Dresden juxtaposed against that of Billy Pilgrim, a survivor who later finds himself "unstuck in time," I felt myself connecting to Vonnegut's phantasmagoria in a whole new way.

I first read the novel, after all, in this very house, when I was 12 or 13. To return to it 36 years later was to confront viscerally the central point of the book, which is that time is not a continuum but a collection of simultaneous moments, that everything we have ever done and everything we will ever do co-exists within us all at once.

In that sense, the experience was much like that of a Tralfamadorian novel; Tralfamadore is the planet on which, throughout "Slaughterhouse-Five," Billy spends much of his time. There, books are written “in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. … [E]ach clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message -- describing a situation, a scene. … There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

The same, it might be said, was true for me re-reading Vonnegut, in a summer rental that has always felt a lot like home.

-- David L. Ulin

Photo: Kurt Vonnegut at his home in New York in 1985. Credit: Oliver Morris / Los Angeles Times