“Plan Z by Leslie Kove” by Betsy Robinson – Review & Giveaway

09. April 2008 · 35 comments · Categories: Book Review and Giveaway · Tags: , , ,


Nothing makes for a more absorbing story than a great main character. Leslie Kove is as entertaining as a protagonist can hope to be. A funny, self-conscious girl who sees herself as ordinary (you certainly will not!), Leslie is plopped right in the middle of the ’60s. Living in an era that was already turbulent enough, she has the added stress of a hippie sister, a brother killed in Vietnam, and parents who set new lows for dysfunctional families everywhere.

In “Plan Z by Leslie Kove“, Leslie goes from her teen years into adulthood, finding herself bouncing from job to job, even country to country. Robinson’s writing style is very entertaining and fun to read, but there’s also a subtle underlying depth to her main character. In between all the laughs and unusual situations, the reader gets to see there’s more to Leslie than meets even her own eye.

Robinson spent a lot of time developing the character of Leslie, who first appeared in Darleen Dances, a one-woman, one-act play Robinson wrote in 1986. She was so attached to the main character of the play that she decided to use her as Leslie Kove in Plan Z. It proved to be a good move – the book has even won a First Series Award for the Novel.

I’m happy to say I have an extra copy to give away to one of you. As always, subscribers are automatically entered to win this and all future giveaways. Or leave a comment telling me what intrigues you about the book. You can put a link to this giveaway on your blog for an entry as well. Do all three, and you’ve got three chances to win. A winner will be randomly selected on Saturday, April 12, 2008, 12noon EST.

Published by Mid-List Press.

Winter Diary by Károly Bari

08. April 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Book Reviews, Hungarian Literature · Tags: , ,


I’ve spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe. I’ve long been fascinated with the gypsies and their wild and nomadic ways, living as though in some parallel universe to everyone else. They’re held so separate, often discriminated against or ignored. For me, I often think it’s as if their passionate and colorful lifestyle is an attempt to wring any pleasure they can obtain from an otherwise difficult and dreary life. Last time I was overseas, I mourned the loss of the gypsies who left my favorite city in droves. I hardly saw any at all. It didn’t seem right, and I for one missed the distinct and vivid cultural flavor they gave the city streets.

Károly Bari is a Hungarian poet whose gypsy blood flows through every poem in his collection Winter Diary. His transient upbringing permeates every page, giving the reader a taste of the love and fear of nature when you’ve grown up under the sky, playing by the rules of the unforgiving elements. Each poem sees nature as a living, breathing thing that constantly shifts and moves; Bari’s nature is not the warm and embracing Mother Earth, but rather a phantom that gives and takes without warning. His writing sweeps you into the feeling of a dark Gothic fairy tale.

Accompanying Bari’s poetry are colorful plates of his artwork, which merge nature and human together, further building a sense of the Old World ancient tale. Throughout the book, readers will notice the constant intertwining of life and death, blazing color and darkness of night.

Once again we have a book of poetry meticulously designed by the publisher, in this case Mercury House. This book is special – only 500 in print, each book hand numbered. Even the paper stock is something you’ll run your fingers over and appreciate. Mercury House tells me they don’t have a lot of these left, so if you’re interested visit their site and order a copy. Poetry lovers will want to keep this one in a special place – in their hearts and on their bookshelves.

“Herds of whitewashed houses graze by the roadside
and nibble at stars with window teeth.”
(page 20, Night.)

“My gypsy village, with its starving smoke
crumbling walls, wind-ripped roofs
wrapped in trouble up to here,
dangled its raw poverty into the world.”
(page 33, Suffering Set Me on the Road)

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop

06. April 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Argentinian Literature, Book Reviews, Travel · Tags: , , , ,


All us booky types talk and blog about traveling by book all the time. We’d like to read around the world, see faraway islands, climb Mount Everest, dive to the bottom of the sea and fight giant squids. But I’ve never once said, “Gee, I wonder what it would be like to live on the freeway for a month?” Not until I heard about Autonauts of the Cosmoroute. When I learned that once upon a 1982, a favorite writer of mine, Cortazar, and his wife, Dulop, set sail for the Paris Marseilles freeway, I had to read it.

Let me tell you a little about me and Cortazar. Although Julio passed away in 1984, I didn’t meet him until the late ’90s. My husband brought me the novel Hopscotch, Cortazar’s first book back when he was a young Argentinian with a strange sense of humor. (The strange sense of humor stuck around, by the way.) I wasn’t sure I was up to reading this book. You start out on page one okay, but then you’re bouncing all over. Page 82, page 12, back to 83. But I loved it. And I got hooked onYerba Mate tea, the drink of Argentinians everywhere. I still can’t get up in the morning without one.

Cut to present. Autonauts of the Cosmoroute is an unusual and playful experiment by Cortazar and Dunlop, whereas they hop into their red VW van named Fafner and drive from rest area to rest area along the stretch of expressway between Paris and Marseilles. Two stops a day, staying overnight in the second, about 10 – 20 minutes of driving daily. Turns out they had a lot to discover about the freeway and themselves, in the process making their readers laugh a whole lot. Loaded with snapshots of their travels and their beloved Fafner the VW , the book is wonderfully entertaining. Much of the book is written as if they are embarking on a great adventure to find a new world, even listing their meals and which direction Fafner faces. And speaking of Fafner, he is a major character of the book. I loved that van so much I considered naming my own red car Fafner, but I think it would upset him. He’s been Fenry Honda for too many years now.

So if you’re looking for a unique and humorous book to read that flies faster than a Fafner, Autonauts of the Cosmoroute is well worth the time. You may just start getting the urge to hit the open freeway yourself; visit a few rest areas, eat goat cheese and pommes frites, and sit under a tree in a gaudy French lawn chair watching the traffic go by.

It’s published by Archipelago Books who is responsible for bringing it to us in English.

March Winners

04. April 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

There are more and more book giveaways here all the time. I thought it would be fun to share the winners with you monthly, rather than as each contest concludes. So here are the March book giveaway winners:

The High Heart – Susan

A Cartload of Scrolls – Jill

Eight Dogs Named Jack – Angela

Ticket to Exile – Leah

The Edge of Europe – Michele and Lynn

Home Among the Swinging Stars – Jeanette

If your name is posted here and you have a blog or website you’d like me to link to your name, please email me at themommyspot(at)gmail(dot)com and I’ll do that for you. Thanks to everyone for your great comments! I love reading them, and so do the authors and publishers.

Voice of Ice by Alta Ifland – Review & Giveaway

02. April 2008 · 57 comments · Categories: Book Review and Giveaway, Goldfish Award Books · Tags: , ,


One of my purposes with carp(e) libris reviews has been to help you as a reader stretch out and discover literature you otherwise may not have found. I can’t ask you to try something out of the ordinary if I’m not willing to do it myself. For me, this reach is poetry – something I’ve always known I should grasp for, that it would fulfill a reading need of my own. And I have begun to search out poets to share here, in an effort to expand the horizons of my own bookshelf, along with yours.

Voice of Ice did something for me I cannot quite explain. So often with the craft of writing, pain is beauty. Voice of Ice by Alta Ifland is the perfect example. I can only imagine the poet being stopped by her own words as she wrote, just to weep. Alta Ifland is originally from Eastern Europe, and her feelings of being stuck between two worlds which are both and neither her own, is transcribed into her poetry.

Ifland’s poems hover in a dreamlike state, and I felt as though reading her words, I was reading my own half thoughts I’ve never dared express aloud. She’s made a beauty of what we have all struggled to understand about ourselves, trying to figure out where we fit into this very imperfect world. Her words are so personal that I hesitate to share with you how they touched me because if you read it (as I hope you do), you may learn too much about who I am. That, as I am learning, is good poetry.

Not only is this a stunning work to read, it is wonderful to hold and look at. The care with which Les Figues Press put the book together is apparent. It’s slender and a little weighty with a glossy cover and a beautiful work of art on the back. Danielle Adair has done the artwork for each book in the TrenchArt series of which Ifland’s is a part. I don’t always talk about the appearance of books, but I’ve noticed that independent presses have an artistic way of putting together a book that I appreciate. This one gets an A from me!

(Later Note: Alright, alright. P.J. Grath is correct – in the comments she mentions I’ve really raved about this book. This one really deserves the Goldfish Award, so I’ve come back and bestowed it upon this very worthy book. It’s been making me itch that I didn’t put it there in the first place. Carry on, dear readers.)

Now that I’ve got you wishing you could have your own copy, I do have one here for a giveaway. As always, subscribers are automatically entered into this and all future giveaways. Or you may leave a comment telling me what intrigues you about this book. Posting a link to this giveaway on your blog enters you as well. Do all three, and you have three entries. I’ll randomly choose a winner on April 5, 2008, at 12noon EST.

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