How exciting! I finish a book and decide to share my thoughts with you within less than a week! Shocking!

Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern

From the jacket: [Okay, I’m revising the book blurb because otherwise it gives away the whole novel] “… Best friends since childhood, [Rosie and Alex] separate as teenagers when Alex and his family relocate from Dublin to Boston. … Rosie and Alex stay friends, and though years pass and weddings, funerals, and baptisms take place, the two remain firmly attached via e-mails and letters…”

My take: Steph sent me this novel last December as part of the 2009 Book Bloggers Holiday Swap. I started it right away and immediately was pulled into the story. An epistolary novel, Love, Rosie gives us a glimpse into the relationship of Rosie and Alex, who met as children and stayed best friends through their whole lives, despite a trans-Atlantic move for Alex as a teenager. Their correspondence (with each other and with relatives, other friends, and significant acquaintances) matures from misspelled notes to letters, emails, and IMs sharing their biggest challenges and deepest thoughts.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Each of them has a secret they’re keeping from the other.

And it’s the combination of those secrets and the eavesdropping intimacy of Rosie and Alex’s correspondence that made me put this book down in fuming frustration precisely halfway through last winter.

When I was telling Grey Kitten about this novel over the weekend, I shared that the friends who know me in real life would find it hilarious that I put it down because I couldn’t stand one more minute of the main characters’ inability to enact positive changes on their own lives, that their choosing to remain stuck in their ruts had just driven me crazy. Sound familiar much?

I’m so glad I picked it back up last week, though. Both Rosie and Alex are characters that you care about, a sense heightened by knowing them only through their letters. You want them both to be happy and you appreciate that theirs is a long-term friendship that has weathered many storms, albeit sometimes just barely. Reading their notes reminded me of those I’ve shared with Karen and Grey Kitten over the years and our own ups and downs. It made me appreciate all the good times we’ve had and how they’re both always there for me, regardless of the stupid mistakes I make (sometimes repeatedly). Our friendships can now be discussed in multiples of decades and, like Rosie’s and Alex’s, make life so much richer.

So, if you have a friendship like that, I’d recommend reading Love, Rosie. You’ll be glad that you did.

Pages: 447

The second part of this week’s Weekly Geeks meme, asks participants to give their readers some book recommendations.

Since I asked you for your holiday book suggestions yesterday, I thought I’d share five of mine today, with a focus on those that will appeal to the child in all of us:

As many of yesterday’s commenters noted, Let It Snow!, which is a trio of interconnected stories/novellas by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle, is a great modern book for fans of well-written young adult fiction. The overarching premise: A blizzard strikes the mid-Atlantic on Christmas Eve, stranding a train heading to Florida just outside Gracetown, Virginia. Included on the train are a horde of high school cheerleaders headed to a competition and two other solitary teenagers, Jeb and Jubilee. Independently, they all head to the Waffle House they can see from the train window through the night’s snow. The stories are what happens next on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. (My review is here.)

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson is older than I am, but it still resonates. Told from the perspective of a young girl whose mother is suddenly recruited to direct the church Nativity play, this is the story of the Herdman family, six mean, tough, bullying siblings growing up on the wrong side of the tracks. The Herdmans learn of the pageant and decide they want to be involved. And by involved they mean take over the lead roles. But because no one has ever told them the story of the first Christmas, the Herdmans interpret it on their own terms.

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg is a beautiful picture book that tells how a young boy beginning to doubt the true spirit of Christmas catches a ride on a magical Christmas train heading to the North Pole.

The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggins is a melodramatic children’s book about young Carol Bird, who is born on Christmas day. Beloved by all around her, she is especially idolized by her young, poor neighbors, the Ruggles children. Bed-ridden and ailing, the beatific Carol asks her parents to bow to her whim of throwing a Christmas party for the local kids. This one always makes me weep and I can’t see how it wouldn’t have a similar effect on anyone whose heart is not made of icicles.

Babar and Father Christmas by Jean de Brunhoff follows the world’s favorite elephant king as he attempts to locate St. Nick and bring him to Celesteville after his children learn he traditionally brings presents on Christmas Eve.

In anticipation of an upcoming readalong challenge, and in the spirit of this week’s Weekly Geeks meme, which instructs participants to poll their readers for book suggestions, I’d like to ask you for your favorite holiday* reading material. Novels, nonfiction, short story collections, children’s books, all are welcome.

I’ll stop back tomorrow with some suggestions of my own for what to read in the next two months as we lead up to and through the winter holiday season.

And, in the meantime, I hope you’ll leave me a comment with some of your favorites.

*Ultimately, I’m looking for materials relating to Christmas and other December holidays. But if your favorite holiday is Flag Day and you’ve got an awesome book related to it, feel free to share it.

Hat tip to Jenn for this meme:

The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and [who] will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

Here’s what popped into my head at the end of the workday:

1. Richard Scarry
2. Dr. Seuss
3. Louisa May Alcott
4. L.M. Montgomery
5. Emily Dickinson
6. William Shakespeare
7. “Carolyn Keene”
8. Barbara Kingsolver
9. J.K. Rowling
10. Jane Austen
11. Jasper Fforde
12. C.S. Lewis
13. Mary Oliver
14. Beatrix Potter
15. J.D. Salinger

Play along in the comments if you’re so motivated.

Today’s Booking through Thursday question is:

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)

I’m at an odd moment right now, because although my brain would tell you that I currently have four books in progress, really, I’m only reading one of them actively. Usually I have a couple on the go at once, but after a summer of finishing several books a week (no, you wouldn’t know it from the pace of my review writing), I seemed to have slowed down.

The one book that’s being picked up on a regular basis is M.M. Kaye’s Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England, which Karen gave me for Christmas two years ago. I’ve been dabbling in it all summer (hot days=India, in my mind, apparently), but hope to finish it in the next week. I am enjoying it and would definitely recommend it, even if I do sometimes find the author a bit crotchety.

A book I need to get back to soon is Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, which is at the end of its library renewals. This novel got great reviews, which led me to pick it up at the library when I saw it last month, but it’s slow in its first hundred pages and I’m not entirely feeling the love. I’ll probably give it another couple of chapters to see if it grabs me. (Since reading Michael Chabon, I’m now much more inclined to keep reading past my usual 50-page test phase if something’s gotten good reviews. Some people just aren’t really good at openings.)

My bathroom book was inspired by a spring swap package that included a canister of Zingerman’s tea. I recalled that I’d bought Ari Weinzweig’s Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating: How to Choose the Best Bread, Cheeses, Olive Oil, Pasta, Chocolate, and Much More for Rudi a couple years back and his chapter on tea inspired me to read the rest of the book. I’m about to embark eagerly upon the cheese chapter, but having a resident in my bathroom has slowed the time I spend in there reading.

And, finally, an advance reader copy of A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz, is what’s being read at work. He’s woven a number of retellings of the authentic (and, thus, dark) Grimm stories into a cohesive whole (making Hansel and Gretel stand in for any number of main characters), with entertaining asides by the narrator, à la Lemony Snicket. The published version isn’t due out until November, so it’s okay that I’m taking my time with it (due more to my recent lack of lunch breaks than anything else). I think the book is clever and a nice addition to the fairy tale genre, so look for a review as we get closer to its launch date.

That’s it for me. What are you reading? Anything you’d recommend?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

From the jacket: “On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites in her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother — her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother — tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.”

My take: We’re constantly asking people how they’re feeling. “How are you? How’ve you been?” We say it dozens of times a week. And while sometimes we want to know, usually the answer we’re seeking is the equally familiar, “Fine. And you?”

Imagine if every time you rotely inquired about someone’s emotional state, they told you in raw and intimate detail. Everyone, every time. You’d stop asking in short order.

Now imagine you didn’t even have to ask. People just randomly sprung this information on you each and every time you turned around. This is what happens to Rose one afternoon just before she turns nine. Suddenly, with every bite of food, she is privvy to the food handler’s most intimate emotions. Desperately sad? She can tell. Bored with your life? She knows. Furious with the world? Got it.

For an unknown reason, that is now Rose’s unfortunate special gift. She can tell from the smallest nibble of sandwich that her mother feels lost and that her best friend’s mother is full of overwhelming love. It’s just too much to handle and she starts forgoing homemade food in favor of vending machine fare and processed food — although she can eventually distinguish where the ingredients are grown and manufactured, usually there is little human contact to rub off on it — and raw fruit and vegetables.

She tries to explain to her family, but her parents write it off as a random oddity (maybe she has the flu?) and her odd, distant older brother has difficulty processing anything emotional, instead preferring the hard facts of science. The only person in her life who is sympathetic is her brother’s friend, George, who does some experimentation to validate her experiences.

Rose is going to have to figure out how to deal with this for the rest of her life — and how to deal with the secrets she learns about those closest to her.

This was a compelling read, although I won’t go so far as to say I liked it. Don’t get me wrong, the author was brilliant, the story was taut, and the novel deserves every single accolade it’s received. But its eventual ending took me to a dark place and that’s just not where I want my fiction to leave me. I recommend it, but caution those who, like Rose, ingest emotions to tread carefully.

Pages: 292