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Raising Raffi

Review by Kelly Blewett

As a mother of three, I can attest that parenting often feels like it comes at you fast: the meals and snacks, bedtimes and books, laundry and more laundry; the hat-straightening, screen time-monitoring, play date-booking and chore-reminding whirlwind of it all. That’s why it’s fantastic when someone thoughtful manages to hit pause on the relentless motion and reflect on what it all means. In Raising Raffi: The First Five Years, Keith Gessen does just that.

Covering everything from the surprises of a home birth to the days of desperately reading parenting manuals through a sleep-deprived haze, Gessen’s essays are at once intensely specific (he lives in New York, is the son of Russian immigrants and works as a literary writer and editor) and deeply relatable (even to me, a woman who lives in a suburb in the Midwest). For instance, he writes that fatherhood opened up heretofore unexamined aspects of his personality. Why, he wondered, did he want to speak to Raffi in Russian, even though all of their relatives are able to speak English? It is a mystery, more of a gut instinct than a bilingual regimen, that prompts his wife (the novelist Emily Gould) to nickname him “Bear Dad.” Throughout Raising Raffi, Gessen’s profound ambivalence over his Russian heritage feels pressing, heartfelt, sad and real. He also writes about the COVID-19 pandemic with a clarity that parents who have been raising young children during the last few years will appreciate and remember.

Gessen’s book raises the big questions: Who am I as a parent? What exactly am I passing down to my kids? And can I even really control what I pass down to them? Gessen’s essay about sports, for example, gently probes the pros and cons of getting Raffi to play hockey, eventually folding back and looking at itself as Gessen realizes that his own attachment to hockey wasn’t the best thing for him. Other essays, like his one on picture books, demonstrate the deep, abiding connection one can feel with a child through repeatedly reading poetry and stories.

This book is thoughtful, companionable, funny and memorable. Readers will return to it again and again—and will hope, like I do, that Gessen publishes a follow-up about Raffi’s next five years.

Read more: Keith Gessen brings a sense of reassurance to the audiobook for Raising Raffi.

In his companionable, funny, memorable memoir, Keith Gessen hits pause on the relentless motion of parenthood and reflects on what it all means.
Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine’s Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine’s heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The Random House Treasury of Favorite Love Poems (Random House, $10, 0375707689), and you won’t need a card. Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, and Browning pretty much say it all. Categorized by themes like New Love, Lifetime Love, Enduring Love, and Passionate Love, this classic collection is the perfect size to pack into a picnic for two. Writers have compared love to everything from an eiderdown fluff to a universal migraine. Whether you consider relationships a headache or heaven, or you are single, sappy, or cynical, Oxford Love Quotations (Oxford University Press, $7.95, 0198602405) proves somebody has felt the same as you. Here you’ll find more than 2,000 quotes on everything from affairs to virtues, from chastity to seduction. From anonymous sources to famous lovers come lines that have been spoken, sung, or written in the name of love, lust, or loss. Some are fascinating for what they say and who said it, like Brigitte Bardot’s declaration, I leave before being left. I decide. Others leave you humming, like Cole Porter’s I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. Perhaps best of all are the many insights from comedians and satirists, like Dorothy Parker, who quips, That woman speaks 18 languages, and can’t say no in any of them. Words of wisdom also abound in William Martin’s The Couple’s Tao Te Ching (Marlowe ∧ Company, $13.95, 1569246505). Basing his work on the ancient writings of Zen master Lao Tzu, Martin presents a spiritual collection of simple yet profound thoughts on loving. They are presented with lovely little brush paintings that stay true to the book’s authentic Asian origins. Martin says he hopes that readers will have an experience that will touch the heart each time they open the book. Your beloved’s life is precious, he writes. A natural wonder, a shining jewel. Don’t tamper with it. It does not need polishing, improving or correcting. Neither do you. Of course, some relationships could use a little polishing, improving, and correcting. An exotic method of relationship repair is found in T. Raphael Simons’s The Feng Shui of Love (Three Rivers Press, $21, 0609804626). Based on the ancient Chinese art of placement, this ethereal manual explains how rearranging your home can help you attract and hold love. The idea is that a comfortable, balanced living space presents the kind of harmony and peace that people want to be around. The design elements that work best for you personally, says Simons, depend on your Chinese astrological sign, your yin-yang style of relating, and your animal sign compatibility. Sound a little out there? The enjoyment and usefulness of The Feng Shui of Love definitely depends upon open-mindedness. But the book also has plenty of common sense suggestions for fixing difficult home designs and making the most of where you live. If consulting the stars in the search for eternal love isn’t lofty enough for you, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggests you look to a higher power. His Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments (Doubleday, $21.95, 0385496206) is full of the kind of pithiness and wit that made his book Kosher Sex such a bestseller. This time around, he references everything from Monty Python to Monica Lewinsky to drive home his point that romance is next to godliness. Take two tablets and find your soul mate, he says in his typical double-entendre humor. Boteach finds modern applicability not just in the words of the Ten Commandments, but in the way they are presented. For example, the first commandment starts, I am the Lord, your God. The rabbi’s take on it: Hell of an introduction, isn’t it? If only we could all be so cool and confident on a first date, he suggests, half the awkwardness of dating would be squelched.

Why do we bother anyway? For all the trouble relationships bring, why do we search for that special someone to call a Valentine? In her book Dating (Adams Media, $9.95, 1580621767), Josey Vogels says, Let’s face it, it’d be nice to have someone to feed the pigeons with when the eyesight starts to go. Vogels, a syndicated sex and relationship columnist in Canada, gathered the best anecdotes from her many straight, single, twenty- and thirty-something readers to write what she calls, a survival guide from the frontlines. The result is a funny and honest look at the world of boy-meets-girl, from Dates from Hell to The Science of Attraction. There are tidbits to help both men and women get through the whole soulmate interview process with minimal embarrassment. For instance, Vogels’s first-date conversation no-no’s include exes, bodily functions, and how much you hate your family. She also includes advice from relationship experts and matchmakers along with her own insightful viewpoint. Most importantly, Vogel admits that you can indeed be happily single. Then you can spend Valentine’s Day with the most low-pressure date of all: a good book.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

More to Love.

21 Ways to Attract Your Soulmate by Arian Sarris (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186114). Learn how to find a life partner that clicks with you instead of clanks.

The Mars Venus Affair: Astrology’s Sexiest Planets by Wendell and Linda Perry (Llewellyn, $17.95, 1567185177). A guide to finding that starry-eyed mate.

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner (Broadway, paperback $14, 0767904575). Goes well with a heart-shaped box of the real thing.

Get Smart with Your Heart: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Love, Lust, and Lasting Relationships by Suzanne Lopez (Perigee, $13.95, 0399525793). For the gal who knows what she wants (well, sort of), but doesn’t know quite how to get it.

Agape Love: A Tradition Found in Eight World Religions by Sir John Templeton (Templeton Foundation Press, $12.95, 1890151297). Explore the principle of unconditional love.

Love and Romance: A Journal of Reflections by Tara Buckshorn, Glenn S. Klausner, and David H. Raisner (Andrews McMeel, $12.95, 0740700480). A journal, a keepsake, a place for all of your passionate scribblings about your love life.

Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love compiled and edited by Wendy Maltz (New World Library, $14, 1577311221). Essential bedside reading to be sure.

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine's Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine's heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The…

Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine’s Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine’s heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The Random House Treasury of Favorite Love Poems (Random House, $10, 0375707689), and you won’t need a card. Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, and Browning pretty much say it all. Categorized by themes like New Love, Lifetime Love, Enduring Love, and Passionate Love, this classic collection is the perfect size to pack into a picnic for two. Writers have compared love to everything from an eiderdown fluff to a universal migraine. Whether you consider relationships a headache or heaven, or you are single, sappy, or cynical, Oxford Love Quotations (Oxford University Press, $7.95, 0198602405) proves somebody has felt the same as you. Here you’ll find more than 2,000 quotes on everything from affairs to virtues, from chastity to seduction. From anonymous sources to famous lovers come lines that have been spoken, sung, or written in the name of love, lust, or loss. Some are fascinating for what they say and who said it, like Brigitte Bardot’s declaration, I leave before being left. I decide. Others leave you humming, like Cole Porter’s I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. Perhaps best of all are the many insights from comedians and satirists, like Dorothy Parker, who quips, That woman speaks 18 languages, and can’t say no in any of them. Words of wisdom also abound in William Martin’s The Couple’s Tao Te Ching (Marlowe ∧ Company, $13.95, 1569246505). Basing his work on the ancient writings of Zen master Lao Tzu, Martin presents a spiritual collection of simple yet profound thoughts on loving. They are presented with lovely little brush paintings that stay true to the book’s authentic Asian origins. Martin says he hopes that readers will have an experience that will touch the heart each time they open the book. Your beloved’s life is precious, he writes. A natural wonder, a shining jewel. Don’t tamper with it. It does not need polishing, improving or correcting. Neither do you. Of course, some relationships could use a little polishing, improving, and correcting. An exotic method of relationship repair is found in T. Raphael Simons’s The Feng Shui of Love (Three Rivers Press, $21, 0609804626). Based on the ancient Chinese art of placement, this ethereal manual explains how rearranging your home can help you attract and hold love. The idea is that a comfortable, balanced living space presents the kind of harmony and peace that people want to be around. The design elements that work best for you personally, says Simons, depend on your Chinese astrological sign, your yin-yang style of relating, and your animal sign compatibility. Sound a little out there? The enjoyment and usefulness of The Feng Shui of Love definitely depends upon open-mindedness. But the book also has plenty of common sense suggestions for fixing difficult home designs and making the most of where you live. If consulting the stars in the search for eternal love isn’t lofty enough for you, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggests you look to a higher power. His Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments is full of the kind of pithiness and wit that made his book Kosher Sex such a bestseller. This time around, he references everything from Monty Python to Monica Lewinsky to drive home his point that romance is next to godliness. Take two tablets and find your soul mate, he says in his typical double-entendre humor. Boteach finds modern applicability not just in the words of the Ten Commandments, but in the way they are presented. For example, the first commandment starts, I am the Lord, your God. The rabbi’s take on it: Hell of an introduction, isn’t it? If only we could all be so cool and confident on a first date, he suggests, half the awkwardness of dating would be squelched.

Why do we bother anyway? For all the trouble relationships bring, why do we search for that special someone to call a Valentine? In her book Dating (Adams Media, $9.95, 1580621767), Josey Vogels says, Let’s face it, it’d be nice to have someone to feed the pigeons with when the eyesight starts to go. Vogels, a syndicated sex and relationship columnist in Canada, gathered the best anecdotes from her many straight, single, twenty- and thirty-something readers to write what she calls, a survival guide from the frontlines. The result is a funny and honest look at the world of boy-meets-girl, from Dates from Hell to The Science of Attraction. There are tidbits to help both men and women get through the whole soulmate interview process with minimal embarrassment. For instance, Vogels’s first-date conversation no-no’s include exes, bodily functions, and how much you hate your family. She also includes advice from relationship experts and matchmakers along with her own insightful viewpoint. Most importantly, Vogel admits that you can indeed be happily single. Then you can spend Valentine’s Day with the most low-pressure date of all: a good book.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

More to Love.

21 Ways to Attract Your Soulmate by Arian Sarris (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186114). Learn how to find a life partner that clicks with you instead of clanks.

The Mars Venus Affair: Astrology’s Sexiest Planets by Wendell and Linda Perry (Llewellyn, $17.95, 1567185177). A guide to finding that starry-eyed mate.

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner (Broadway, paperback $14, 0767904575). Goes well with a heart-shaped box of the real thing.

Get Smart with Your Heart: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Love, Lust, and Lasting Relationships by Suzanne Lopez (Perigee, $13.95, 0399525793). For the gal who knows what she wants (well, sort of), but doesn’t know quite how to get it.

Agape Love: A Tradition Found in Eight World Religions by Sir John Templeton (Templeton Foundation Press, $12.95, 1890151297). Explore the principle of unconditional love.

Love and Romance: A Journal of Reflections by Tara Buckshorn, Glenn S. Klausner, and David H. Raisner (Andrews McMeel, $12.95, 0740700480). A journal, a keepsake, a place for all of your passionate scribblings about your love life.

Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love compiled and edited by Wendy Maltz (New World Library, $14, 1577311221). Essential bedside reading to be sure.

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine's Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine's heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The…

Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine’s Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine’s heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The Random House Treasury of Favorite Love Poems (Random House, $10, 0375707689), and you won’t need a card. Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, and Browning pretty much say it all. Categorized by themes like New Love, Lifetime Love, Enduring Love, and Passionate Love, this classic collection is the perfect size to pack into a picnic for two. Writers have compared love to everything from an eiderdown fluff to a universal migraine. Whether you consider relationships a headache or heaven, or you are single, sappy, or cynical, Oxford Love Quotations (Oxford University Press, $7.95, 0198602405) proves somebody has felt the same as you. Here you’ll find more than 2,000 quotes on everything from affairs to virtues, from chastity to seduction. From anonymous sources to famous lovers come lines that have been spoken, sung, or written in the name of love, lust, or loss. Some are fascinating for what they say and who said it, like Brigitte Bardot’s declaration, I leave before being left. I decide. Others leave you humming, like Cole Porter’s I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. Perhaps best of all are the many insights from comedians and satirists, like Dorothy Parker, who quips, That woman speaks 18 languages, and can’t say no in any of them. Words of wisdom also abound in William Martin’s The Couple’s Tao Te Ching (Marlowe ∧ Company, $13.95, 1569246505). Basing his work on the ancient writings of Zen master Lao Tzu, Martin presents a spiritual collection of simple yet profound thoughts on loving. They are presented with lovely little brush paintings that stay true to the book’s authentic Asian origins. Martin says he hopes that readers will have an experience that will touch the heart each time they open the book. Your beloved’s life is precious, he writes. A natural wonder, a shining jewel. Don’t tamper with it. It does not need polishing, improving or correcting. Neither do you. Of course, some relationships could use a little polishing, improving, and correcting. An exotic method of relationship repair is found in T. Raphael Simons’s The Feng Shui of Love. Based on the ancient Chinese art of placement, this ethereal manual explains how rearranging your home can help you attract and hold love. The idea is that a comfortable, balanced living space presents the kind of harmony and peace that people want to be around. The design elements that work best for you personally, says Simons, depend on your Chinese astrological sign, your yin-yang style of relating, and your animal sign compatibility. Sound a little out there? The enjoyment and usefulness of The Feng Shui of Love definitely depends upon open-mindedness. But the book also has plenty of common sense suggestions for fixing difficult home designs and making the most of where you live. If consulting the stars in the search for eternal love isn’t lofty enough for you, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggests you look to a higher power. His Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments (Doubleday, $21.95, 0385496206) is full of the kind of pithiness and wit that made his book Kosher Sex such a bestseller. This time around, he references everything from Monty Python to Monica Lewinsky to drive home his point that romance is next to godliness. Take two tablets and find your soul mate, he says in his typical double-entendre humor. Boteach finds modern applicability not just in the words of the Ten Commandments, but in the way they are presented. For example, the first commandment starts, I am the Lord, your God. The rabbi’s take on it: Hell of an introduction, isn’t it? If only we could all be so cool and confident on a first date, he suggests, half the awkwardness of dating would be squelched.

Why do we bother anyway? For all the trouble relationships bring, why do we search for that special someone to call a Valentine? In her book Dating (Adams Media, $9.95, 1580621767), Josey Vogels says, Let’s face it, it’d be nice to have someone to feed the pigeons with when the eyesight starts to go. Vogels, a syndicated sex and relationship columnist in Canada, gathered the best anecdotes from her many straight, single, twenty- and thirty-something readers to write what she calls, a survival guide from the frontlines. The result is a funny and honest look at the world of boy-meets-girl, from Dates from Hell to The Science of Attraction. There are tidbits to help both men and women get through the whole soulmate interview process with minimal embarrassment. For instance, Vogels’s first-date conversation no-no’s include exes, bodily functions, and how much you hate your family. She also includes advice from relationship experts and matchmakers along with her own insightful viewpoint. Most importantly, Vogel admits that you can indeed be happily single. Then you can spend Valentine’s Day with the most low-pressure date of all: a good book.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

More to Love.

21 Ways to Attract Your Soulmate by Arian Sarris (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186114). Learn how to find a life partner that clicks with you instead of clanks.

The Mars Venus Affair: Astrology’s Sexiest Planets by Wendell and Linda Perry (Llewellyn, $17.95, 1567185177). A guide to finding that starry-eyed mate.

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner (Broadway, paperback $14, 0767904575). Goes well with a heart-shaped box of the real thing.

Get Smart with Your Heart: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Love, Lust, and Lasting Relationships by Suzanne Lopez (Perigee, $13.95, 0399525793). For the gal who knows what she wants (well, sort of), but doesn’t know quite how to get it.

Agape Love: A Tradition Found in Eight World Religions by Sir John Templeton (Templeton Foundation Press, $12.95, 1890151297). Explore the principle of unconditional love.

Love and Romance: A Journal of Reflections by Tara Buckshorn, Glenn S. Klausner, and David H. Raisner (Andrews McMeel, $12.95, 0740700480). A journal, a keepsake, a place for all of your passionate scribblings about your love life.

Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love compiled and edited by Wendy Maltz (New World Library, $14, 1577311221). Essential bedside reading to be sure.

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine's Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine's heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The…

Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine’s Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine’s heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The Random House Treasury of Favorite Love Poems (Random House, $10, 0375707689), and you won’t need a card. Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, and Browning pretty much say it all. Categorized by themes like New Love, Lifetime Love, Enduring Love, and Passionate Love, this classic collection is the perfect size to pack into a picnic for two. Writers have compared love to everything from an eiderdown fluff to a universal migraine. Whether you consider relationships a headache or heaven, or you are single, sappy, or cynical, Oxford Love Quotations (Oxford University Press, $7.95, 0198602405) proves somebody has felt the same as you. Here you’ll find more than 2,000 quotes on everything from affairs to virtues, from chastity to seduction. From anonymous sources to famous lovers come lines that have been spoken, sung, or written in the name of love, lust, or loss. Some are fascinating for what they say and who said it, like Brigitte Bardot’s declaration, I leave before being left. I decide. Others leave you humming, like Cole Porter’s I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. Perhaps best of all are the many insights from comedians and satirists, like Dorothy Parker, who quips, That woman speaks 18 languages, and can’t say no in any of them. Words of wisdom also abound in William Martin’s The Couple’s Tao Te Ching. Basing his work on the ancient writings of Zen master Lao Tzu, Martin presents a spiritual collection of simple yet profound thoughts on loving. They are presented with lovely little brush paintings that stay true to the book’s authentic Asian origins. Martin says he hopes that readers will have an experience that will touch the heart each time they open the book. Your beloved’s life is precious, he writes. A natural wonder, a shining jewel. Don’t tamper with it. It does not need polishing, improving or correcting. Neither do you. Of course, some relationships could use a little polishing, improving, and correcting. An exotic method of relationship repair is found in T. Raphael Simons’s The Feng Shui of Love (Three Rivers Press, $21, 0609804626). Based on the ancient Chinese art of placement, this ethereal manual explains how rearranging your home can help you attract and hold love. The idea is that a comfortable, balanced living space presents the kind of harmony and peace that people want to be around. The design elements that work best for you personally, says Simons, depend on your Chinese astrological sign, your yin-yang style of relating, and your animal sign compatibility. Sound a little out there? The enjoyment and usefulness of The Feng Shui of Love definitely depends upon open-mindedness. But the book also has plenty of common sense suggestions for fixing difficult home designs and making the most of where you live. If consulting the stars in the search for eternal love isn’t lofty enough for you, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggests you look to a higher power. His Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments (Doubleday, $21.95, 0385496206) is full of the kind of pithiness and wit that made his book Kosher Sex such a bestseller. This time around, he references everything from Monty Python to Monica Lewinsky to drive home his point that romance is next to godliness. Take two tablets and find your soul mate, he says in his typical double-entendre humor. Boteach finds modern applicability not just in the words of the Ten Commandments, but in the way they are presented. For example, the first commandment starts, I am the Lord, your God. The rabbi’s take on it: Hell of an introduction, isn’t it? If only we could all be so cool and confident on a first date, he suggests, half the awkwardness of dating would be squelched.

Why do we bother anyway? For all the trouble relationships bring, why do we search for that special someone to call a Valentine? In her book Dating (Adams Media, $9.95, 1580621767), Josey Vogels says, Let’s face it, it’d be nice to have someone to feed the pigeons with when the eyesight starts to go. Vogels, a syndicated sex and relationship columnist in Canada, gathered the best anecdotes from her many straight, single, twenty- and thirty-something readers to write what she calls, a survival guide from the frontlines. The result is a funny and honest look at the world of boy-meets-girl, from Dates from Hell to The Science of Attraction. There are tidbits to help both men and women get through the whole soulmate interview process with minimal embarrassment. For instance, Vogels’s first-date conversation no-no’s include exes, bodily functions, and how much you hate your family. She also includes advice from relationship experts and matchmakers along with her own insightful viewpoint. Most importantly, Vogel admits that you can indeed be happily single. Then you can spend Valentine’s Day with the most low-pressure date of all: a good book.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

More to Love.

21 Ways to Attract Your Soulmate by Arian Sarris (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186114). Learn how to find a life partner that clicks with you instead of clanks.

The Mars Venus Affair: Astrology’s Sexiest Planets by Wendell and Linda Perry (Llewellyn, $17.95, 1567185177). A guide to finding that starry-eyed mate.

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner (Broadway, paperback $14, 0767904575). Goes well with a heart-shaped box of the real thing.

Get Smart with Your Heart: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Love, Lust, and Lasting Relationships by Suzanne Lopez (Perigee, $13.95, 0399525793). For the gal who knows what she wants (well, sort of), but doesn’t know quite how to get it.

Agape Love: A Tradition Found in Eight World Religions by Sir John Templeton (Templeton Foundation Press, $12.95, 1890151297). Explore the principle of unconditional love.

Love and Romance: A Journal of Reflections by Tara Buckshorn, Glenn S. Klausner, and David H. Raisner (Andrews McMeel, $12.95, 0740700480). A journal, a keepsake, a place for all of your passionate scribblings about your love life.

Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love compiled and edited by Wendy Maltz (New World Library, $14, 1577311221). Essential bedside reading to be sure.

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine's Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine's heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The…
Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

(good and bad) luck o’ the Irish Many Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays. From the hammering heels of Lord of the Dance to the manic comedy of Waking Ned Devine, books, films and Broadway extravaganzas portray the children of the Emerald Isle (both natives and their descendants) as devout but hard-drinking, sentimental but hard-bitten and colorful to the point of gaudiness. Several new books alternately confirm and refute this national stereotype. Among the more comprehensive recent accounts is Patrick Bishop’s The Irish Empire: The Story of the Irish Abroad. The stories range through the Dromberg stone circle in Cork, New York politicians, the English invasion and oppression of Ireland, lyrical poetry, prison uprisings, shipboard squalor, urban exploitation, religion and political activism. The scope is surprising, for such a brief and comprehensible and well-illustrated book. It’s beautiful to look at, but also rich in anecdotes.

Bishop tells, for example, the fascinating Bonnie-and-Clyde epic of Ned Kelly, an Irishman in Australia. Kelly imbibed stories of oppression and outrage at his mother’s knee and grew up contemptuous of authority and particularly scornful of Irish policemen, whom he considered traitors. Inevitably he clashed with the abusive, nationalist, class-obsessed rulers. Next, turn to two books that address the American experience. A good place to start is Greatest Irish Americans of the 20th Century, edited by Patricia Harty. At one point the Irish made up 10 percent of all immigrants into the United States. In these 200 oversized pages, you find out some of the consequences of that influx. Included are labor and religious leaders, actors, writers, politicians, gangsters. Everyone is here: Michael Flatley and Grace Kelly, Margaret Bourke-White and Georgia O’Keeffe, John McEnroe and Mark McGwire. No other designation besides “fellow Irish” would corral both Dorothy Day and Andrew Greeley in the same subset.

On the same theme is Maureen Dezell’s Irish America: Coming Into Clover, with the second subtitle “The Evolution of a People and a Culture.” A staff writer for the Boston Globe, Dezell writes entertainingly and provides rather more historical perspective than Harty does in her browser book. She also goes further back than the recently departed century. Dezell gets into some surprising and fascinating topics. These even include an analysis of the ways the Irish rib each other about everything, comparing the habit to certain aspects of humor among African Americans. She also looks at how female purity and passivity were drilled into the new young Irish Americans after the Famine, and how stereotypes became scapegoats in all sorts of situations. She even thoughtfully critiques anti-Irish attitudes in E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime. Not surprisingly, Ireland has produced an array of wonderful writers. You can find the ultimate sampler of them in a new book edited by Susan Cahill, For the Love of Ireland: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers. In a nice original touch, these poems, essays, stories and excerpts from novels are grouped by county and province. Naturally, you will find Sean O’Faolain and James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and Samuel Beckett. But you may be surprised to run across Lorrie Moore, Edna Buchanan and Joyce Cary. There are fine later poets such as Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland, too, providing an almost musical accompaniment to the beautiful, textured prose around them. For the Love of Ireland has the virtue of following each author’s contribution with a note entitled “For the Literary Traveler.” These detailed asides get you out to the sites described, warn you about ways in which they have changed and provide lovely cultural footnotes to the main entries. By now, of course, you will have called your travel agent. Before you go to Ireland yourself, however, read Pete McCarthy’s first book, McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in the West of Ireland. Then take it with you. McCarthy is a journalist and performer well known on radio and TV in Britain. His book is along the lines of Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island. To discover the roots and test the validity of his fascination with his mother’s homeland, McCarthy travels throughout Ireland. One of his travel rules is Never Pass a Bar That Has Your Name on It. This is a smart and funny book, and not just because McCarthy learns that there are a great many pubs in Ireland named McCarthy’s Bar. He has to plan elaborate strategems to escape the convivial habituŽs. Along the way he encounters, and recreates for us, some hilarious conversations. Consider this response to his desire to eat an actual meal rather than continue to subsist on fermented liquids: “You’re on holiday. You can eat when you’re at home. Have a bag of nuts, why don’t ya?” And now for the dark side of this famously hospitable land. Ireland’s critically acclaimed and popular novelist Patrick McCabe is back with a scary new book, Emerald Germs of Ireland. No quaint, cheerful volume, this although McCabe is certainly darkly humorous, in a Hitchcockian way. The author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto tells the story of Pat McNab, who definitely murders his mother and who possibly, just possibly, becomes a serial killer. This particular Irish outing is unlikely to become a dance anytime soon, although it would make a good movie. Although this book is in helpfully distancing third-person, its dark psychology may remind you of the twisted narrators of McCabe’s fellow Irishman John Banville. If, after this survey course, you’d like to get in touch with your own Irishness, you can turn to a helpful book by Dwight A. Radford and Kyle J. Betit, A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your Irish Ancestors. While not exactly sparkling with scintillating prose, it supplies advice, methods and highly specific references, including a number of fruitful research avenues you would never think of on your own. Replete with case studies and bibliographies, this book seems like the last word on its topic.

Like most history books, these new volumes remind us of the quirks of fate that shape the daily lives of future generations. As a historian once pointed out, if not for the potato famine of the 1800s, John F. Kennedy would have been born an Irishman, not an American.

Michael Sims is fond of Irish coffee and greatly admires redheads.

(good and bad) luck o' the Irish Many Irish women and men probably tire of the official version of themselves that is packaged for export nowadays. From the hammering heels of Lord of the Dance to the manic comedy of Waking Ned Devine, books, films…
Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

For anyone wanting a deeper and stronger love life, Thomas Moore’s new book, The Soul of Sex, is essential reading. In it, Moore, best-selling author of Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, examines sex and love and their relationship to all aspects of life. He explores the meaning of sex and asserts that being a part of a healthy sexual relationship can lead to a balanced, fulfilling life. According to Moore, today’s society puts less value on beauty, which affects our feelings about sex and love. Moore argues, “But to the soul, beauty is more important than almost anything, and so it plays an important role in our desires and cravings. It lies at the heart of sexuality and is responsible for a good portion of the pleasure we find there.” Moore draws on several sources, including mythology, celebrity portraits, and case studies to illustrate his point. He cites the story of Aphrodite and Anchises early on in the book as “the key” to keeping the human aspect of sexuality alive. In the story, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, desires a relationship with a mortal man something she achieves with the young shepherd Anchises. Moore illuminates the deeper meaning in the story’s details, and its relevance to our lives now.

Moore urges readers to cultivate an awareness and appreciation of the body, and explores how both imagination and physical sensation play crucial roles in enhancing the sexual experience and creating more soulful relationships. Referring to the body as an “erotic landscape,” Moore guides readers on a journey to the body’s different areas, from the face and hair, to the sexual organs, and explains how each part has sexual significance. Moore also, of course, emphasizes the connection between sexuality and spirituality. Referring to Greek mythology, ancient Eastern religions, and Christianity, he illustrates how different belief systems continue to inform our sexuality, and how they have in the past affected our sexual psyche in both positive and negative ways. Moore also provides examples, through stories of religious and sexual imagery, of people of various faiths who have successfully combined sexuality and spirituality.

In a culture in which many bristle at the mere mention of the words “eroticism” or “sex,” Moore affirms that embracing sexuality is both natural and healthy. By bringing sensuality and joy back into our relationships, he advises, we can achieve more satisfying and well-rounded lives.

Reviewed by Paul Ladd.

For anyone wanting a deeper and stronger love life, Thomas Moore's new book, The Soul of Sex, is essential reading. In it, Moore, best-selling author of Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, examines sex and love and their relationship to all…

ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

e’ve come a long way, baby Women’s History Month is a good time to reflect on the journey, on the many and varied trips some wilder than others that women have taken to get us where we are today. Who were the female characters to pave the way? And what are the issues still before us? While there are as many journeys as there are individuals, there are roles that we share, roles that (like it or not) define us and connect us through history.

A month is hardly enough time to tell our tales, but at the very least, Women’s History Month gives us reason to explore a few new and interesting books.

One of the most complicated roles women play is that of wife. Marilyn Yalom examines the Judeo-Christian tradition of marriage in A History of the Wife. To answer the question “what does it mean to be married at the turn of the century?” Yalom focuses on major changes in the marital status quo over time, ending with an intriguing analysis of a role that is still evolving. This book is made much more interesting by its focus on the wife, rather than the couple. What’s more, it’s an engaging, good read. Though clearly well researched, it is not filled with numbing statistics. The author spends ample time on that more contemporary aspect of marriage which can’t be quantified: love. Love, after all, “has become synonymous with marriage in the Western World.” But before we see too rosy a picture, Yalom reminds the reader that less palatable aspects of the married state still exist, even in our own society. Throughout, Yalom’s savvy and lively narration keeps the reader entertained.

The author is a distinguished cultural historian who is, by the way, married. Valuing motherhood It is said that mothers do this planet’s most critical work. If raising a child is America’s most important job, how can it simultaneously be the most undervalued? Ann Crittenden tackles this complicated issue in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued. In the introduction, Crittenden explains why she had to write this book. She describes a personal moment of truth that came a few years after she resigned from The New York Times and a few months after the birth of her child, when someone asked her, “Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittenden?” Her description of suddenly “vanishing” upon becoming a mother probably hits home for many women, but there are many more reasons why we should all read The Price of Motherhood. I found myself alternately impassioned and discouraged by what I learned from Crittenden. She describes with passion and clarity how our society pays tribute to Mom in words while in reality systematically disadvantaging her (indeed, putting her at risk). Working women may have been liberated, she argues, but mothers were not. Perhaps most importantly, Crittenden challenges the argument that women’s liberation is responsible for devaluing motherhood. And finally, she includes as her closing chapter important and reasonable means to bring about the change mothers deserve. Crittenden aims her recommendations specifically at employers, government and husbands, but this is truly recommended reading for us all.

Crittenden is an award-winning journalist and author (including a Pulitzer Prize nomination) but in my mind what really qualifies her for the accomplishment of this book is what compelled her to write it in the first place. Writing from her own experience as professional woman and mother, Crittenden’s words are accurate, heartfelt and imminently readable.

Setting sail Many women will be wives and mothers. Far fewer will adventure in a pirate ship on the high seas, in solo flights across the Atlantic or on horseback in the Arabian desert. Author David Cordingly gives us a lesser known piece of women’s history in Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women. Cordingly writes of women and the high seas in the 18th and 19th centuries, a subject about which there’s a surprising amount to tell. It is generally acknowledged that when men went to sea in the Great Age of Sail, women were left behind. In reality, however, a fair number of the fairer sex were aboard. Some openly so: wives of navy officers who mothered warship crews or wives of merchant captains who sometimes took command. The presence of others was kept secret: women disguised as men to serve their ship or country.

Even women left ashore had prominent parts to play in our seafaring history lighthouse keepers, for example, and the wives and prostitutes whose real lives in the ports-of-call are surprising in their own right. Cordingly also examines the place of women in legends and lore of the seas (figureheads, sirens, mermaids). But I found the most fascinating tales to be those of the ruthless female pirates like Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot. Cordingly is also the author of an acclaimed history of piracy and for 12 years was on staff at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. He clearly knows something of the lives of sailors; his knowledge, interest and good research are evident. He includes first person accounts from ship records and journals which makes the stories of Women Sailors ∧ Sailors’ Women vivid and fun.

Unconventional women Women’s History Month wouldn’t be complete without paying a visit to some of history’s most memorable female characters. That’s exactly what Barbara Holland does in They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades. In this celebration of unconventional and adventurous women, Holland tells the stories of rebels such as Joan of Arc, George Sand, Mata Hari, Queen Jinga and my personal favorite, Amelia Earhart. Though most of these women are familiar, Holland’s portraits of them are carefully researched and categorized in interesting fashion. Chances are you’ll discover something new about these outlaws, grandstanders, seekers and radicals. Holland doesn’t hold out much hope that such figures will reappear anytime soon; she suggests that the 1960s saw the last of them, that “careers . . . keep women in line more effectively than policemen or repressive husbands.” But as hard as it is to imagine a modern-day Belle Starr our obstacles and environment may not be as dramatic this doesn’t have to make the Marion Joneses, the Madeleine Albrights and even the Madonnas any less inspiring. I’m willing to wager that in Women’s History Months to come, the 21st century will have contributed tales of our own female pioneers. The adventures continue.

Danica M. Jefferson is a new mom living in Baltimore.

e've come a long way, baby Women's History Month is a good time to reflect on the journey, on the many and varied trips some wilder than others that women have taken to get us where we are today. Who were the female characters to…
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The anticipation and excitement surrounding the arrival of a baby can be felt to some degree by all ages. However, younger children’s expectations may quickly turn to disappointment when the newborn infant does not walk, talk, or play games. Expectant parents find it challenging, trying to educate and prepare themselves; how can children be taught to appreciate, at some level, the accomplishments of a baby? Penny Gentieu’s latest book, Grow! Babies! encourages younger readers to appreciate and understand babies by photographing and chronicling 19 different babies’ benchmarks of growth during their first year of life. The concise, informative sentences can hold even the shortest attention spans. The varied use of color and size in the adorable photographs, as well as the printed text, appeals to the curiosity in readers of all ages. The babies photographed in the book represent a cultural cross section of our society.

Since babies are a source of fascination for both younger and older readers, Grow! Babies! is truly an ageless book that can be shared and enjoyed by the entire family. It is easy to imagine a child picking out one of the babies and flipping through the pages, paying attention to that particular baby’s growth and changes. The expressions on each of the babies’ faces are priceless. It is impossible to look through this book without smiling, or oohing and ahhing. Grow! Babies! is a wonderful addition to any collection of children’s books, or for any expectant parents. Penny Gentieu has once again captured cherished moments in the development of children for all to see and enjoy.

Alicia D. Wall is an elementary school teacher and, at press time, an expectant mother of triplets.

The anticipation and excitement surrounding the arrival of a baby can be felt to some degree by all ages. However, younger children's expectations may quickly turn to disappointment when the newborn infant does not walk, talk, or play games. Expectant parents find it challenging, trying…

NonfictionMemoirFamily & Relationships

Where the Children Take Us

Review by Alice Cary

When Zain Ejiofor Asher was 5, her father—a larger-than-life personality who was training to be a doctor—was touring his Nigerian homeland with his 11-year-old son, Chiwetel. Not long before they were expected home in London, Asher’s pregnant mother, Obiajulu, received a life-changing phone call: The pair had been in a car accident, and only one had survived. Obiajulu had to fly to Nigeria to find out it was her husband who had died.

As Asher writes, “There is tragedy in my story, but my story is not a tragedy. It is a story of grit, grace, and perhaps above all, an extraordinary story of extraordinary triumph that I want to share with the world.” Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable is an ode to her parents—who both achieved success despite facing civil war and famine—and especially to her mother. Asher is a master storyteller as she interweaves both of her parents’ life stories with her own upbringing. Thoughtful emotion and striking immediacy fill every scene, making for a mesmerizing read from start to finish.

Asher’s parents owned a small pharmacy in London, which Obiajulu continued to run after she became a widow. Meanwhile, her life’s work became ensuring her children’s success, following her firm belief that formal education was key to survival. She began a family book club, requiring each child to read and discuss a book every week. She plastered their walls with inspirational photos of “uplifters”—successful Black people, especially Nigerians. When 9-year-old Asher experienced racism from her peers, her mother sent Asher to live with relatives in Nigeria for two years, a common practice among Nigerians known as “shipping back.” There, she had to walk a mile to a river to fetch water for her family. Electricity was rare, and discipline was omnipresent. As Asher reminisces, “Nigeria, for all its faults, was the perfect place to toughen me up. It was an elite training ground for resilience; the West Point academy of perseverance. Survive in Nigeria for ten years and you can survive anything. Thrive in Nigeria and you can change the world.”

Thanks to Obiajulu’s determination, Asher and her three siblings are doing just that. Asher is an Oxford-educated news anchor for CNN International. Her sister is a physician; her oldest brother, an entrepreneur. And Chiwetel Ejiofor is an actor who received an Oscar nomination for his role in 12 Years a Slave.

It’s important to note that Obiajulu, for all her single-minded focus on achieving excellence—and her sometimes shocking strategies—doesn’t come off as overbearing. She empowered her children to believe in the seemingly impossible and to focus on personal achievement, not competition. Where the Children Take Us is an enlightening and entertaining read that will likely challenge readers to reexamine their views on child rearing and education.

Where the Children Take Us is an ode to Zain E. Asher’s determined, driven mother, full of thoughtful emotion and striking immediacy in every scene.
NonfictionSocial ScienceFamily & Relationships

Essential Labor

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Consider all the universal mundanities of caregiving: the endless feedings, diaper changes, cleanups, sleepless nights and confining days, not to mention all the laundry. What if, with the help of journalist, activist and mother Angela Garbes, we could radically reconsider the incredible value of this work? In Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, Garbes swoops from the universal to the personal to the downright intimate, offering an all-encompassing vision of a more socially and economically just way of caring for one another that, de facto, would improve our individual and collective lives.

The author of the hybrid memoir Like a Mother, a 2018 NPR best book of the year, Garbes serves up her own experiences as a first-generation Filipina, daughter, wife and mother in her second book. She calls Part I of Essential Labor “A Personal History of Mothering in America” and uses it to delineate her social relationship to motherhood, including her own family’s complicated origins in the U.S., beginning when her parents emigrated from the Philippines in 1970. Part II, “Exploring Mothering as Social Change,” expands into the kinds of activism that mothering can and should inspire to create a more equitable world.

Garbes wants so much more for her mixed-race children than the racialized, gendered immigrant experience that her parents endured—yet there is more to mothering than personal circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic, Garbes says, changed how we care for each other, revealing that “mothering is some of the only truly essential work humans do.” She also identifies child care as a political issue—a kind of infrastructure for families that needs bipartisan government support.

At the same time that workplaces gave way to home “offices” during the pandemic, nursing homes became off-limits, schools and child care centers closed, and families were left with the work of finding other ways of caring for young people, elderly people and themselves. The myth of a self-sustaining family was no longer viable, Garbes observes; mothering needed the support of communities and multiple generations. The work of mothering, taking care of ourselves and others, became more essential than ever.

There is a great deal to digest here, and Garbes’ analyses will certainly resonate with people whose caregiving responsibilities increased during the pandemic. Yet by identifying the inherent power of mothering as a force for change, Garbes makes her message relevant to a broader audience. Indeed, as Essential Labor makes clear, all our fates are intertwined.

Angela Garbes swoops from the universal to the intimate as she offers a vision of mothering that would improve our individual and collective lives.
NonfictionMemoirFamily & Relationships

Tasha

Review by Alice Cary

To say that Brian Morton’s mother, Tasha, was “a woman of stubborn energy” is an understatement; from start to finish, she was a bona fide contrarian. For instance, after agreeing to a short trial stay at an assisted living residence in Teaneck, New Jersey, she literally did an about-face on move-in day. “I’m not going in there,” she said. “Take me home instead. Or take me to the city dump. Just dump me with the chicken bones. Or better yet, take me to the cemetery. Save yourself a trip later on.” Refusing to even step inside, she simply walked away, and Morton later found her sitting on someone’s porch, eating a banana.

Such are the myriad confrontations Morton describes in his hilarious yet tender memoir, Tasha. A novelist and professor at Sarah Lawrence College, he had spent much of his life trying to maintain distance from his mother, whose concept of boundaries could generously be described as “loose.” In junior high, if he was late for dinner, she would begin calling friends, hospitals and the police to search for him. Once he became an adult, she had little inclination to loosen the reins. However, once her health began to fail in 2010, after a stroke and the onset of dementia, Morton knew he had no choice but to step in.

At the age of 60, Morton was already juggling the demands of both his career and his family, including two sons in middle school. He is wonderfully honest about his hesitation to take on additional responsibilities for a parent or navigate the duties of the sandwich generation. He’s also careful to paint a complete picture of his mother’s life, including her nonstop educational activism and excellence as a pioneering elementary school teacher, particularly with disabled students. When Tasha’s husband suddenly died in 1984, she retired and sank into a despondency (likely undiagnosed depression) that she never overcame. Hoarding ensued, and in one memorable scene, Morton can’t convince his mother to throw away even one of five swizzle sticks—the mere tip of a true iceberg.

Morton excels at bringing his novelist’s eye to many such standoffs, including picking up his mother at the police station on more than one occasion. As he addresses the harsh realities of taking away a parent’s independence, trying to make that parent happy and trying (and failing) to procure adequate care, his superb storytelling skills add a helpful dose of levity. As a result, Tasha takes a difficult topic and transforms it into a soulful and often funny memoir about spirited mothers, refreshingly told from a son’s point of view. The book’s unique ending, which gives Tasha the last word, is an absolute tour de force.

Brian Morton’s hilarious yet tender memoir of caring for his aging mother takes a difficult topic and transforms it into the soulful tale of a spirited woman.
NonfictionHumorFamily & RelationshipsEssays

I’ll Show Myself Out

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Jessi Klein’s second essay collection, I’ll Show Myself Out, finds Klein in her 40s, parenting a toddler and trying to regroup in unfamiliar Los Angeles, a world away from her beloved New York City. “I constantly feel like I’m a leaky raft in open water,” she writes in “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City.” It’s a thoughtful essay that laments the changes of midlife and motherhood; it also had me laughing out loud, wishing I could share it with a friend.

Some of Klein’s essays are light—the one about her love for designer Nate Berkus, for instance, or learning to live with her ugly feet—while others dig a little deeper. She builds one essay around the “underwear sandwich,” a contraption postpartum moms wear to cope with bleeding and birth injuries, somehow managing to make fresh, feminist points in the process (and, yes, making me laugh out loud again). These voicey, funny essays give unexpected dimension to familiar topics, such as how widowers remarry faster than widows or that the mommy wine-drinking trend is out of hand.

One of the collection’s themes is anxiety—Klein’s, her partner’s and her child’s—and how it can rear up in the most innocuous-seeming moments. Another is Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey, which Klein muses on to marvelous effect throughout the book. She turns the narrative template on its head, positing that pregnancy, birth and early motherhood are full of rigors and pitfalls, as difficult and life-altering as any masculine adventure. “We just feel the guilt of being terrible monsters, ironically, at the exact moments that we actually, as mothers, become the most heroic,” she writes.

Klein, who has produced and written for TV shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” “Inside Amy Schumer” and “Big Mouth,” fills in the picture of a woman at midlife who’s beginning to make sense of it all. This collection is as entertaining and heartfelt, personal and comic as they come.

Jessi Klein’s second essay collection is full of voicey, funny pieces that give unexpected dimension to the familiar topics of motherhood and midlife.

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