Erica

Erica enjoys playing with words whenever and wherever a willing word is found. She loves reading them as well, and besides the pleasures of eating, dancing, playing music, and the company of a certain short person and a small cat, she lives for the moment when a few words strung together open whole worlds and produce profound emotions and revelations.

The Girls
by Lori Lansens
One of my favorite novels of the year, this would still be an absorbing, lyrical story of two girls adopted by a kind nurse and her immigrant husband, without the added dimension of their being conjoined twins, connected at the head and unable even to look at one another.
Told as a joint autobiography by the dominant, more intellectual twin Rose, and her frail, but emotionally vibrant sister Ruby, their account of growing up in beautiful rural Canada, with all the complexities of familial and community relationships, will find you looking back to the title page, not believing that this is indeed fiction.
At first drawn by curiosity about the unimaginable challenges of the girls’ situation, I was won over by their immensely likeable personalities, and by the courage and fierce love that is evident in each character.

Flora Segunda
by Flora Segunda
Welcome to the enchanting, adventure-filled, completely believable but totally magical world of 13 year-old Flora Segunda.
In the amazing many-roomed house she lives in, owned by her mother, the Commander General, she discovers a banished house-butler who needs help restoring his special powers, and thus begins a series of challenges she must face by the time her important 14th birthday celebration takes place.
This exceptionally bright heroine, who has a sort of female Robin Hood as her mentor, and refreshingly witty, unconventional friends, will captivate you as she maneuvers her way, with brains and the occasional magic-making, through some really unusual adolescent dilemmas!

Show Way
by Jacqueline Woodson
In telling the story of her maternal ancestors, slaves for four of the seven generations, Jacqueline Woodson has shared with us a sort of love letter for her daughter.
This unique depiction of a tragic time shows us the cherishing of the baby girl, born into each generation, who would be taught how to make quilts. The "Show Way" quilts, sewn during the slave years, contained hidden symbols; guides to finding escape routes to freedom.
Stunningly beautiful illustrations, by Hudson Talbott, inlaid with historical detail and luminous with emotion, help focus the story on a sometimes joyful legacy of courage.
We see how love, and colorful scraps of material gathered during dark times, kept hope alive for one African-American family.

Love in the Driest Season
by Neely Tucker
When Washington Post journalist Neely Tucker and his wife moved to Zimbabwe in the early 1990s, they began volunteering at one of the country's many orphanages, where alarming numbers of children were ill or dying. Their decision to adopt one abandoned baby is the basis for this tremendously poignant memoir; the gripping account of their struggle first to keep tiny Chipo alive, and then the bureaucratic battle they embark on, to become her legal parents.
This is the story of the emergence of the AIDS crisis at the end of the last century, a glimpse at the intense work of international journalism, as Mr. Tucker is intermittently sent to cover volatile political situations, and is about love's capacity to break seemingly impenetrable barriers.
With candor and humor this former Mississippian takes us to the heart of his remarkable biracial family, and shares the emotional journey taken in creating it.

Crude
by Sonia Shah
The cost of oil is rising, the debate continues about exploration in Alaska's wildlife refuge and elsewhere, and reports of war in oil-rich regions dominate the news. What has made this substance such a volatile topic, literally and figuratively?
Millions of years ago, there were trillions of plankton and diatoms and other single-celled creatures in the sea. When they died, they sank to the bottom to slowly build a carbon-rich layer of organic rubble. Only as recently as the 1800s was it discovered that when the carbons in this oozy black stuff were properly split apart, a very useful combustible or lubricating material could be produced.
So begins the story of crude oil, from its creation, to its myriad uses in modern society, to the havoc and tragedies that have occurred due to its value and scarcity. From its development during World War II to the current omnipresence of oil in products and manufacturing, this highly readable history of oil will illuminate your understanding of modern society and the balances of world power.

Cooking for Mr. Latte
by Amanda Hesser
Witty, charming and unpretentious, considering Ms. Hesser is a New York food writer, these are a series of pieces written for the New York Times magazine chronicling her romance with and eventual marriage to writer Tad Friend.
In each chapter recipes are included for the sometimes exotic but often ordinary foods that are prepared and consumed. Partly the story of a developing love affair, with its attendant adjustments and experiments in tastes and desires, this is also about how eating can be a key to loving each other, ourselves, and life itself.

Good Women
by Jane Stevenson
The combination of witty, naughty, and British is usually a winning one for me when choosing fiction.
These three novellas, each with the theme of a woman taking destiny in her own hands through inventive, if not diabolical methods, are also fabulously well written.
From gardening-for-revenge, to an adulteress with a change of heart, to an unfulfilled housewife visited by spirits, each vivid character will delight and scandalize in this absorbing, elegant trio of stories.

Eve Green
by Susan Fletcher
Full of the rich, rough imagery of its setting in rural Wales, this is the story of a young woman recalling her childhood and being sent, after her mother's death, to the windy rock-strewn farm of her grandparents. It is about alliances, as she befriends the village outcast, and about the mysteries of love, as she deciphers the nature of her parents' relationship and her father's identity, and of loyalties, as she grapples with the death of another village girl.
As lyrical and exotic as some of the Welsh place names: Caetresaint, Llangollen, Aberystruth and Tor-y-Gwint, and as sweet and wrenching as adolescence inevitable is, this first novel is an absolute jewel of a find.

Too Much Tuscan Sun
by Dario Castagno
When I was in Italy I bought this very book, and reading it afterwards prolonged and greatly enhanced my experiences in the Siena region. As a native-Italian tour guide, the author leads interesting and sometimes unbelievably strange or demanding people on custom tours in Tuscany. Alas, many are Americans, but Mr. Castagno does develop an affection for them! The humor, history, and candor of this book give it a refreshing perspective on a subject that has been oft-written about.