Category Archives: book reviews

The Monday Book: THE WIFE’S TALE by Lori Lansens

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monday bookThis book landed in the shop a few week ago and one day I picked it up as a potential bedtime book because I liked the cover photo.

It’s not true, that old saying; you can TOTALLY judge a book by its cover.

This story circles Mary Gooch, a 25-years-married 304-lb. woman whose husband walks out on her just before the Silver Anniversary celebration. My friend Carolyn Jourdan often talks about “Queenagers,” and the character of Mary is something between an indictment and a celebration of that concept.

But it’s not a typical “he done her wrong” or one of those “my weight problems started with my mother” sagas. Nope. Gooch (as the husband is known) leaves Mary quite a bit of money in the bank before splitting, and leads her on a bit of a trail through history as she tries to find him. Mary travels as much through her own heart and memories as she does from Ontario to California, and from heaviness to light in more ways than one.

Don’t get the impression that this is a simple book about losing weight to gain everything else. The book has subtle language, simple ways of packing meaning into compact phrases, and of twisting assumptions just a little bit to keep actions from devolving into stereotypes.

I’d love to offer you a quote to show you what I’m talking about, but I hand- sold the book to someone who was visiting the shop after reading Little Bookstore, who said how much she’d liked the Monday Book posts, and asked what was coming up. And of course I grabbed The Wife’s Tale and started talking fast in enthusiastic tones, and now I don’t own the book any more.

But I bet your local bookshop or library has a copy. And it’s a lovely read, a beach book for the literary set, perhaps, but not even so easily pinned down as that. The writing is magnificent, the subject interesting and not dealt with in any trite way, and the outcomes are …… lively. You won’t regret the time you spend with Mary Gooch.

EDIBLE BOOK CONTEST SATURDAY, JUNE 21

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  Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. —Sir Francis Bacon, English author (1561 – 1626)

We’re holding our first ever EDIBLE BOOK CONTEST here at Tales of the Lonesome Pine, and we’re really looking forward to it!

What is an edible book, you ask? Well, it is a clever and consumable representation of a book that you liked. For example:

twilight

or

humpty dumptyor

20000 leaguesor one of my personal favorites:

grapes of wrath

All of these are edible book contest entries from other places, and they’re all lovely. (I suppose Twilight was inevitable, yes?) Anyway, bring your edible book to Tales of the Lonesome Pine’s Second Story Cafe  Saturday, June 21 for 2 pm and join the fun. Judging will be done by our guest shopsitter JanelleJanelle Bailey (a staff member of the Wisconsin Book Festival and high school English teacher). Janelle and her two youngest daughters will be minding the shop for a week while Jack is in Scotland. She will be joined in judging by Second Story’s official dessert Erinbaker Erin Dalton, who is pretty much Emily Dickenson reincarnated.

Still confused about how to make an edible book? You can google the concept – there are lots of great pictures out there – and here are the rules:

  1. Everyone can participate: the young, the old, the professional and non-professional, residents and non-residents, and even groups.
  2. Entries must be book-related. Examples of this can be found online.
  3. Entries can be made out of anything, as long as it is edible.
  4. Entries must be family-friendly.
  5. Entry is free and does not require pre-registration. Just bring your edible book to the shop for display at 2 pm. (If you’re going to need to assemble it here, come earlier. We regret that you may not enter the cafe kitchen, but we can loan you some basic tools or heat something if you need us to. You’re not allowed in the kitchen. Health stuff.)
  6. Winner will receive either a free weekend trip to a mountain cabin, or a $100 gift certificate to the bookstore – winner’s choice. All entries will receive a $10 gift certificate to the bookstore.

So get cracking and make us an edible book of such tastefulness as will set Big Stone Gap talking – not that that takes much, but you get the idea. Come one, come all, and let’s have some fun.

edible book