The Oregon Book Report - Book News from Oregon

Oregon moms pen Eco-nomical Baby Guide

By Erika Weisensee

Welcoming a new baby into one’s home can cost a pretty penny. Baby gear can quickly take over one’s home. Stores market a whole lot of cute, color- coordinated things that we become convinced baby needs. We want our children to get off to a great start, but do we really need all of this stuff? The answer is no. And, two Oregon moms, Joy Hatch and Rebecca Kelley, have written a new book to help parents save money by parenting the green way. The book is called “The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down to Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet.”The authors focus on reduce, reuse, and recycle in a writing style that is humorous and straightforward. The safety and happiness of one’s baby top Hatch and Kelley’s agenda as they offer tips on shopping for new and used green goods, blending homemade organic food, and limiting the piles of baby gear that threaten to overtake the living room.

Tempted by an art forger

Book reveiw by Michelle Barnhart,

Review of “The Art Forger” by B. A. Shapiro. Published 2012 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

It isn’t a crime to paint a copy of the Mona Lisa. It’s only a crime if you paint a copy of the Mona Lisa and then sell it as Da Vinci’s own work.

Claire Roth is an artist who makes a bare living painting and selling very good reproductions of famous works of art. She would much rather make a living selling her own original work, but she’s been black balled by the Boston art scene. But at the start of the novel, a gallery owner offers her a deal even the Devil would think twice about: create a forgery of a stolen painting for a buyer he knows, and he’ll stage a one-woman show of her paintings at her gallery, plus pay her handsomely.

Bestseller sets new tone on God for skeptical world

By Michal Ann McArthur, Bend
Author of Choking on a Camel
Her blog

Book Review: “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism” by Timothy Keller

Being an apologetics enthusiast, I have read countless books on the topic of the existence of God, but I think Keller’s “The Reason for God” is the best. One of the qualities of the book that I most appreciate is its tone. Keller writes with respect for skeptics and those who hold opinions that differ from his own. His tone is friendly and humble, never abusive or strident. I’m not at all surprised that the book became a New York Times bestseller.

Three Southern sisters inherit family misfortune

Book reviewed by Lynn Leissler
Eagle Point

“Friday’s Daughter” by Patricia Sprinkle

I used to think when someone mentioned the sins of the fathers being visited on future generations that some divine zap targeted innocent children on down the line. Now I believe those children are the unwitting heirs of poor choices and neglect bestowed by ill-informed or don’t-give-a-rip parents. And so it is in Patricia Sprinkle’s Friday’s Daughter. Three sisters have to deal with the mess left by their recently deceased father, King MacAllester, a man who cared more about power and image than about his children.

Amazing story unfolds over my book cover

Welby O’Brien, Oregon writer
Love our vets blog

When we attempt a daunting task and huge undertaking, such as writing a book to help others, sometimes it is the miracles along the way that keep us going. One such miracle just happened!

The day after I signed on with the publisher for Love Our Vets: Restoring Hope for Veterans with PTSD, we were challenged with a 24 hour deadline to find and design the book cover. Yikes! This urgency sent us all into a flurry of viewing thousands of stock photos and images searching for just the right one. Nothing was right. I wanted the cover to exude hope, support, love and encouragement.  Hard to depict in most military-theme graphics. I prayed and prayed, and then went to bed exhausted with no results.

Race, culture & love in early America

Sherry Meyer,
Milwaukie writer
Her blog, Found between the covers

Book Review of “The House Behind the Cedars” by Charles W. Chesnutt

Helping my husband locate a book on an adjacent library shelf, I saw this book and loved every page of “The House Behind the Cedars” by Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932). The subject matter, for me personally, is linked with my interest in Southern history and African-American slavery.

Chesnutt tackles the issue of “passing” in the post-Civil War South. “Passing” was the tradition among light-skinned or mulattos to pass for white, although ethnically they were considered to be Negroes.

The main characters in “The House Behind the Cedars” are brother and sister, John and Rena Walden. The novel is set in Patesville (most likely Fayetteville, NC). It is interesting to note that Chesnutt’s family moved to Fayetteville when he was small. This may have a great deal to do with setting. Chesnutt’s descriptions are clear and crisp. The reader can sense the house John and Rena grew up in, where their mother sits in the evening in the small town of Patesville.

Rethinking how we see ourselves aging

By Michal Ann McArthur, Bend
Author of Choking on a Camel
Her blog

Book Review: “The Gift of Years” by Joan Chittister
Genre: Self-Help/Spirituality

For an attitude adjustment on aging, read Joan Chittister’s “The Gift of Years.” Before I read this book, aging was something I dreaded. I worried about all the negatives—failing health, not feeling useful, being boxed in by growing limitations and narrowing opportunities, wrinkling and fading away. Bah, humbug! says Chittister. Her book focuses on the positives of aging and outlines how to grow old gracefully. As soon as I started reading, I was hooked.

The book is a series of 40 short chapters on various topics related to aging. The chapters are meant to be read and considered thoughtfully one at a time, much the way a daily devotional book should be read. Chittister considers such topics as regret, fear, ageism, joy, fulfillment, forgiveness, and letting go.

Invisible girls novel based in Portland

By Michelle Barnhart

Reviewing the book, “Invisible Girls”, by Sarah Thebarge.

The Invisible Girls is a double helix of a memoir, two stories spiraling around each other. One strand relates her struggle with breast cancer which she contracted in her 20’s, and the other narrates her relationship with a Somali immigrant family.

Although raised in a strict Christian home, when cancer struck, Thebarge struggled to find answers to the questions “Why?” and “Where is God in all of this?” These chapters were raw and honest to the point of making me uncomfortable, but no one had any answers.

Needing a fresh start, she moved to Portland and one day met a mother from Somalia with five young daughters but no money and limited English. These chapters detailed how utterly unequipped the family was for life in the US (for instance, they didn’t know to close the refrigerator door after they put food in), how quickly she fell in love with the girls, and how she worked to help them acclimate to a new culture. This family was “invisible;” living in plain sight, nobody noticed their situation or offered help.

Oregon: Then & Now—A Review

Audrey Sauble
Lake Oswego
check her blog

Review of book “Oregon: Then & Now”

Even the permanent changes sometimes—trees grow up, roads change, old buildings disappear and new ones take their places.

Often, after the landscape changes, the old view vanishes completely. “Oregon: Then & Now” restores some of that lost past from Oregon’s history.

I happened to stumble across “Oregon: Then & Now” while browsing the history section at my library. The book is a history of sorts, and a coffee-table album, but s a photo album only, “Oregon: Then & Now” might be a trifle dull—Gifford’s photos are black-and-white, without the stark contrasts that make Ansel Adams’ images so famous, while Terrill imitates the originals closely, though in color.

So, why spend time on yet another photo book? I picked it up out of curiosity, but decided to look deeper when I realized its unique claim. This book is a collection of images taken by two Oregon photographers in two different centuries.