Making Piece

Author: Beth M. Howard
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Harlequin, 2012
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: "You will find my story is a lot like pie, a strawberry-rhubarb pie. It's bitter. It's messy. It's got some sweetness, too. Sometimes the ingredients get added in the wrong order, but it has substance, it will warm your insides, and even though it isn't perfect, it still turns out okay in the end."

When journalist Beth M. Howard's young husband dies suddenly, she packs up the RV he left behind and hits the American highways. At every stop along the way—whether filming a documentary or handing out free slices on the streets of Los Angeles—Beth uses pie as a way to find purpose. Howard eventually returns to her Iowa roots and creates the perfect synergy between two of America's greatest icons—pie and the American Gothic House, the little farmhouse immortalized in Grant Wood's famous painting, where she now lives and runs the Pitchfork Pie Stand.

Making Piece powerfully shows how one courageous woman triumphs over tragedy. This beautifully written memoir is, ultimately, about hope. It's about the journey of healing and recovery, of facing fears, finding meaning in life again, and moving forward with purpose and, eventually, joy. It's about the nourishment of the heart and soul that comes from the simple act of giving to others, like baking a homemade pie and sharing it with someone whose pain is even greater than your own. And it tells of the role of fate, second chances and the strength found in community.

Review: This memoir started out strong. Howard's writing and the plot sucked me right in. It did get slow somewhere in the middle of the book, but quickly picked back up again.

I have been inspired to try baking a pie. Making the crust intimidates me, but there are some simple recipes included at the end of the book.

The Last Lecture

Author: Randy Pausch
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Hyperion, 2008
Pages: 224
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture". Professors are asked to consider their demise and ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was aboutliving.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Review: This is a must-read. Here are a handful of my favorite quotes from the book, and yes, I post noted these as I was reading.

Throughout my academic carer, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in a computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the seven dwarfs.

When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

Never make a decision until you have to.

Just because you're in the driver's seat doesn't mean you have to run people over.

A Field of Buttercups

Author: Joe Hyams
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Muller, 1969
Pages: 220
Rating: Recommend


Synopsis: By the age of 30, Janusz Korczak gave up a successful medical practice and the possibility of family of his own to open the Our Children's Home orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the orphanage was forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto. Three years later Treblinka II death camp was opened and every week thousands of Jews were deported to die there. Even when news of the genocide filtered back into the ghetto, the Jewish population there refused to believe what was happening and preferred to shut out this reality grasping for hope.  

On August 5, 1942, the orphanage was evacuated from the ghetto to the death camps. Dr Korczak was given the option of abandoning the 200 Jewish children in his care, but chose to die together with the children. This cruel act helped to ignite the Warsaw ghetto uprisings, fueled by the cry "Remember Dr Korczak's orphans".

Two weeks after the evacuation of Dr Korczak's orphange to the death camps, the first blows were struck in the Warsaw Ghetto uprsising. 

This book is a moving novelization of Dr Korczak's work in the orphanage and the story of the children who lived there, dealing with the stories of some of the children there. It ends with a description of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Review: The depth of goodness in human spirit and the very worst of human spirit meet once again as it always does in books about the life and times surrounding World War II. 


Chapter 12 is the most moving and horrifying in this book.


The subject matter isn't easy to read, but it's necessary. We must never perform the atrocities that the Jews experienced and we can only hope to prevent ourselves from becoming victims of such horror by being educated and remaining vigilant.

The Girls Who Went Away

Author: Ann Fessler
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Group, 2007
Pages: 368
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out in the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe vs Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail. 

Review: I pondered what to write in this review from early on in this book. Since I wasn't born until the late 1970s, there's much about life / culture in mid-century America that I just don't know. Sometimes history is watered down and altered over time. My perception of life in the 1950s and 60s was clearly not everyone's reality.

As a mom, I cried for the women and their babies in this book. The injustices are unspeakable. It was an eye-opening and necessary read. I also have a better sense of how we've gotten here, our culture in 2012.

This book also caused me to reflect upon the human race over thousands of years. We are flawed and our experiences are flawed. We merely survive and live by the ever-changing "rules" of society.

The Washingtonienne

Author: Jessica Cutler
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Hyperion, 2006
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend


Synopsis: The blog that scandalized Washington, D.C., is not a sharp steamy, utterly unrepentant novel set against the backdrop of the nations' capital....

"Just between us girls, Washington is an easy place to get laid. It's a simple matter of economics: supply and demand. Washington lacks those industries that attract the Beautiful People, such as entertainment and fashion. Instead it has the government, also know as 'Hollywood for the Ugly.' Without the model-actress population to compete with, my stock shot up when I moved to DC."

When Jacqueline Turner's fiancée gives her two days to move out of his apartment, she has no choice but to leave New York City and crash with her best friend in Washington, DC. (She can't be expected to keep herself in cute clothes while paying New York City rent, after all.) She needs a new, exciting life-not to mention real employment. Where better to get a fresh start than the nation's capital?

Alas, DC turns out to be a lot more buttoned-up and toned down than she'd hoped. It's a town where a girl has to make her own excitement-and Jacqueline Turner is just the woman for the job. From the married presidential appointee who gives her cash after each tryst, to the lascivious Georgetown lawyer who parades her around like something out of Pretty Woman, Jackie's roster of paramours grows so complicated her friends ask her to start a blog so they can keep up. But in a small town like Washington, the line between private and public blurs very easily. Just as one of her beaux takes a lead in the race for her heart, Jackie realizes this blog idea may be more than she bargained for....

Deliciously gossipy and impossible to put down, The Washingtonienne is every bit as outrageously scandalous as the real-life exploits that inspired it.

Review: Despite the characters' sexual exploits which were not all that graphic in nature, the language (the F bomb is mentioned several times on every page), was a turn-off to me. It was too much too often.

I'm not sure why I kept reading it. Nothing much happened, the plot plodded along, and it's not well-written or compelling. I think I was just in awe that people actually live like this.

This isn't a memoir, but definitely based on factual events, as the synopsis says. The author clearly had her 15 minutes of fame and the book was a weak attempt to capitalize on it. A memoir might have been more interesting.

Getting the Pretty Back

Author: Molly Ringwald
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Harper Collins 2010
Pages: 229
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: To her millions of fans, Molly Ringwald will forever be sixteen—having defined teenage angst, love, and heartbreak as the endearing star of the John Hughes classics Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. Facing a completely new, angst-inducing time in her life—her forties—Molly is embracing being a woman, wife, mother of three, actress, and best friend with her trademark style, candor, and humor.

Getting the Pretty Back is Molly's unforgettably personal, refreshingly outspoken take on life, love, and, of course, finding that perfect red lipstick. Whether she's discussing sex and beauty, personal style, travel and entertaining, motherhood, or friendship, Molly embodies the spirit of being fabulous at every age—and she encourages every woman to become "the sexiest, funniest, smartest, best-dressed, and most confident woman that you can be."

Review: This isn't a memoir, which was disappointing to me. This is Molly's take on how to "get the pretty back". No matter your age you owe it to yourself to look your best and presentation does matter.

At times it was a bit preachy and I never really thought of Molly as a fashion icon so tips on how to dress seemed a little strange to me.

At times she came across as obnoxious, but other times likeable. She is easy to relate to as a married woman and as a mom, but it's obvious that she lives in another world. 

This isn't a book I would buy, but a good one to check out from the library. It's just a fun read.

Just a note - Molly Ringwald is a talented writer, and the illustrations (by Ruben Toledo) are a wonderful addition to the book.