Parenting Book Review

Central Oregon has a new parenting magazine: True North Parenting. It is online now, but will also have quarterly print issues. Check out my book review of When Your Kids Push Your Buttons by Bonnie Harris in the latest online issue. I have read a number of parenting books over the past few years, and this is one that really makes you think about your (not your kids') behavior.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

I heard about this book long before I picked it up to read. Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite fiction authors. I think The Poisonwood Bible is a great read and it is one of my favorite novels of all time. I have been disappointed in the past, though, with fiction authors’ memoirs. I also was not too thrilled with the subject. It did not sound that exciting to me to follow a family as they lived on a farm eating local food for a year.

However, once I started reading this book, it seemed to be on my mind a lot. I wondered if I had ever actually had fresh asparagus. I had no idea there was really only a two-week window for eating it. I found myself mentioning the book to friends, some of whom had already read it. I started thinking a little more about the basic premise behind the book and if it would be feasible to do where I live; that is, could my family eat only items that had been grown or made within a 100-mile radius? I got inspired to think about planting a vegetable garden, although here the planting season does not begin until June.

The Kingsolver-Hopp family consists of the mom, Barbara Kingsolver, her husband, Steven Hopp, and two daughters. Barbara describes their year on the farm while Steven contributes to the book with insights from a biologist’s point-of view. Camille, the oldest daughter, contributes recipes that use their home-grown products and are available at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Recipes.html. I tried the eggplant papoutzakia, but unfortunately, I was the only one in my family that liked it. I am hoping to try the 30-minute mozzarella recipe. There are some other great recipes in there, but after reading the book I am going to wait until the vegetables and/or fruits are actually in season.

The Kingsolver-Hopp family did not completely eliminate all non-local food from their diet. Each family member got to pick an item they did not want to live without for a year. The choices are telling: coffee, dried fruit, hot chocolate, and spices. They were lucky to live in an area (southern Appalachia) where they were able to grow quite a lot. I think one of the hardest items to forego as a mother would be fresh fruit in the fall, winter and spring, since really not much grows here in Central Oregon. To eat locally it seems you have to pick where you live very carefully. It would be a lot easier to do in California than in climates further north.

I have heard recently that eating locally is the latest food trend. I think I’ll try to at least focus on fruits and vegetables from the Pacific Northwest and in the right season. I highly recommend this book if eating locally is something you are considering, or even if you just want to know what all the fuss is about.

Don’t Miss This Mystery Series

Sometimes I get caught up in reading the newest and latest mysteries and forget there are excellent mysteries that were written decades ago. I thought I’d share my favorite series from the first half of the 20th century in hopes that would inspire other people to share their favorite authors from long ago. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a four-book series between 1930 and 1937 featuring her well-known sleuth at the time, Lord Peter Wimsey. The books are, in order, Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon. I’d highly recommend reading them in order, although if you are short on time, I think Gaudy Night is one of the best mysteries ever written and it can stand alone. Sayers’ mysteries are all well-thought out, intricate puzzles.

In this particular series she introduces Harriet Vane, a mystery author, who initially is on trial for killing her ex-lover. Lord Peter Wimsey steps in, as he often does, to disentangle her from this mess. In the process he falls in love. She does not. The next three books each have a mystery at the core, but also follow the Wimsey-Vane relationship. It is a remarkable series for the time, especially with the inclusion of a strong, independent woman as a lead character. It is also remarkably undated, although I think there are some academic quarrels with how Sayers represented servants. Sayers was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford University and was possibly trying in this work to imagine how two highly educated people would work out the issues of love and work. I think this is timely today as the women I know struggle with raising a family and a career simultaneously.

Gaudy Night deserves special mention. It is a mystery set at Oxford, where Harriet Vane, a former student, is asked to help. Here is a portion of the author’s note to help set the tone, “Certain apologies are, however, due from me: first, to the University of Oxford, for having presented it with a Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of my own manufacture and with a college of 150 women students, in excess of the limit ordained by statute.” Someone is harassing the students and teachers of this women’s college and early on it becomes evident it must be an inside job. Sayers lays a trail of clues that upon further readings of the book make the identity of the perpetrator clear, but I had no idea the first time I read it. Lord Peter Wimsey appears only at brief intervals to advise Harriet Vane, but those scenes are some of the best-written emotional scenes, which involve hardly any physical contact, that I have ever read.

Feel free to send me your suggestions for great mystery authors over the years at escapetobooks AT gmail DOT com, or leave them as comments.