I just finished Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell and I am now both disgusted and totally freaked out. Ed is hosting a round table discussion on this one in the coming weeks which I am a part of so I won't go into too much detail here but really, Shell has done an outstanding job of bringing together all the facets of our need to buy cheap: food, clothing, furniture, etc. She doesn't just talk Wal-mart (in fact she doesn't talk much about Wal-mart at all) but she does talk IKEA and Red Lobster and China and the history of discount shopping in our country (Woolworths, etc.) which is truly fascinating. Beyond all the info though, Shell's writing style is utterly and completely top notch. This is popular history/culture at its finest and after you read it, you will approach every single purchase you make with a high level of suspicion.

We have been roundly manipulated folks, for our entire lives. And while we all kinda know it, you have to read Cheap to really appreciate it. Staggering stuff.

I read a lot of biographies where I think the subject is interesting and wished that I could have been the one to research their life, read their letters, peek behind all the dusty corners of their secrets and mysteries. (I'd give you some examples but the list would be ridiculously long.) It is rare that I read one where I wish the person was my friend however - where I really want to just live down the road, have an occasional burger and maybe take a weekly walk with him. But that's exactly what I thought as I read Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life's Song. It's the coolest book about the coolest artist and I just loved it and I love him. And I want Ashley Bryan to be my friend.

Unfortunately he lives on the other side of the country but maybe we could be pen pals or something.

Ashley Bryan is an award winning illustrator who has had a life of loving art. He has written this book both as a memoir of growing up and as an invitation to visit his current life. It's a very unusual mesh of past and present but it works - and the photos of his puppets and stained glass along with reproductions of his illustrations are fabulous. But mostly it is the joy in which he lives that made me like him so much. It's a picture book bio (58 pgs) but works for any audience interested in the lives of artists, African Americans, and all around cool people. There aren't enough cool people in the world; we should make celebrating them a national priority. (My formal review is up in the new issue of Eclectica.)

Cricket Man by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor strikes me as a book that might not have been published if it was written by a less known author. Don't get me wrong, it is well written and has a compelling protagonist in young Kenny but it just doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be about and then there is such a massive curveball thrown in the final pages that the reader is left more than a bit shocked. It's one thing to figure out the truth about Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense - which just makes perfect sense in retrospect - and it's a whole other deal to think you're reading a sweet coming-of-age story about a boy learning to follow his instincts and buck authority and then...well....let's just say we've very nearly got a dumpster baby involved and leave it at that.

Cricket Man (the title refers to Kenny's determination to save crickets from drowning in his backyard pool) is for MG readers but it really doesn't do anything to help them with the very issues raised by the ending. And also, having known a family quite closely who went through a similar situation, the emotions of everyone involved don't ring true. It's just too pat for lack of a better word and it also doesn't fit with everything that came before it. I felt like I read the ending for an entirely different book - it's just too suddenly intense. I'd love to hear from anyone else who read it to see what they think.

In other reading news, Dara Torres apparently had bulimia when she first went to the Olympics but managed to medal anyway. She is also very competitive (which makes sense) but I wish her book had been more detailed about her life rather than just her Olympic career and decisions. It's actually pretty short when you consider it covers 25 years. HerStoria sounds like excellent history for girl geeks. The bummer is that it is from Britain so the sub cost is steep ($48 for 4 issues).But there is some decent content on the web site as well. ("Women and Madness" is certainly worth a look.) Andrea Barrett is interviewed in the last Believer - haven't read it yet, but plan to soon.

Anila's Journey is a sweet story set in historic India that is a slightly more grown-up companion to fans of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Girl naturalists are certainly a good thing to writer about. (Anila will be in my August column.) And in the pantheon of woman travelers to Africa, I somehow missed Kenyan conservationist and filmmaker Joan Thorpe Root but will be seeking out the book on her life and death after reading Donna Seaman's review in Booklist. Wildflower by Mark Seal sounds amazing:

In this riveting portrait, Seal incisively tracks Joan’s affinity for the wild from her birth in Nairobi in 1932 to helping her intrepid father manage Kenya’s first photo safaris, to her risky work with her husband, the innovative filmmaker and infamous daredevil Alan Root. Lovely, shy, and unflappable, Joan did everything from organizing their ambitious expeditions to dancing in front of a spitting cobra so Alan could film an attack. The messy end of their marriage was devastating to Joan, as was the environmental nightmare that engulfed her cherished home and animal refuge on Lake Naivasha, as Kenya’s flower industry consumed and polluted the landscape and poachers decimated fish and wildlife. Joan struggled heroically to protect this precious ecosystem but became ensnared in a net of social crises and crime.

She was murdered in her home in January 2006.

Finally, be sure to check out Amy's book drive for Beth Kephart's new book, Nothing But Ghosts. The drive run through Friday and is in support of a lovely YA title. My formal review of Ghosts will appear in my July column.

[Let's see, I received Cheap from the pub for the round table discussion which is not really a review but still came from the pub. Ashley Bryan, Cricket Man, Anila's Journey and Nothing But Ghosts all came from the pubs. All others are personal acquisitions/or borrowed or books I don't have and have not read but read about!]