Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination: Helen Fielding

By: Helen Fielding
List: $14.00

My Review:

In 1999, Helen Fielding debuted the bestselling Bridget Jones. (And defined chick-lit.) Since then we have been given a sequel, two movie adaptations, and one thousand weak rip-offs (See: Nanny Diaries; the wretched Shopoholic series).

The marketing for the book and even some reviewers describe this book as a new genre for Fielding: a thriller or a post 9-11 political satire.

This is not a shift for Fielding: the spy element is just a new context for what Fielding does best: exposing the inner neuroses of so many women who despite their external success are internally filled with anxiety and self-consciousness.

What I particularly enjoy about all of Fielding's novels is that her characters generally have a list of rules that they follow. (We all have these rules, although we may not be so neurotic as to sit down and number them.)

Okay, actually I AM THAT NEUROTIC, so here you go...

My Rules Regarding Books:

1. If you are not engaged after 50 pages, toss it. I know it is painful. You spent good money on the book. But now you are just wasting your time too.

2. When in doubt, choose the Trade paperback over a mass market paperback.

3. Never watch a movie adaptation of a book you loved.

4. Never buy a book with the movie poster on the cover.

5. Never re-read a book you loved.

I am sure I have more, but do you? Let me know!

Other Media Reviews:

Publishers Weekly:

"Considering the number of writers who've tried, and generally failed, to do plummy Bridget Jones one better, it only makes sense that Fielding should take a vacation from the genre she spawned and seek (sort of) greener pastures. Her new inspiration? Think Ian Fleming... What's wrong with the book: two-dimensional characters, dangling plot threads, the questionable taste of al-Qaeda bombings in an escapist, comic spy novel. What's right: girl-power punch, page-turning brio and a new heroine to root for.


The Telegraph (London):
"Fielding is an extremely skillful and engaging writer. The book works as a fast-paced thriller — I gulped it down in one reading. But it also has great charm and, in its shy fashion, a moral theme."

Taming the Beast

Taming the Beast
by Emily Maguire
List Price: $13.95

Book Description:

Sarah Clark is seduced by her English teacher, Daniel Carr, and becomes entangled in an illegal and violent affair. Mid-semester, Carr splits leaving Sarah ripped to pieces. Devastated, Sarah has as many one-night-stands she can. Then, seven years later, Carr unexpectedly returns and Sarah is drawn again into a destructive relationship. Lolita meets Wuthering Heights meets Nine and a Half Weeks (yes--really).


Media Reviews:

Sydney Morning Herald Review: "Emily Maguire embodies the great romantic myth of the writer who emerges from nowhere, fully formed."

Kirkus Reviews: "Powerful and compelling."

My Review:

What if Humbert Humbert left Lolita mid-mind-fuck--what would happen to little Lo? Would her definition of love always involve pain? Would she try to recreate that obsessive passion with every dick she met to fill the gaping hole Humbert left inside her? What would she do if he came back? Would she rip herself in two to be with him? This book explores the questions Nabokov asks us in Lolita and explored throughout his literary career.

The ending was a bit pedestrian but overall a strong meditation on the power of our first relationships and how they can destroy us.

Books to Share??

So fellow blogger MJ suggested that we start a book swap on-line here. Which is an excellent idea. Do you have some books you are willing to part with--or just send them on a lengthy vacation: post them and switch!

I personally like to keep the fiction books I enjoyed hanging around the bedroom like little corpses that I decimated in a late night reading rampage. They get dropped in the bath and usually have coffee or food spilled on them from me trying to eat and read at the same time. Alas, I am very mean to my poor little books.

Here is another idea: reccomend you own books for us to read and perchance review... However be sure to note that any books sited as "uplifting" will never be read by the blogger. Uplifting is for bras, the Lifetime for women channel, and Hallmark.

The Reasons I Won't Be Coming

The Reasons I Won't Be Coming
by Elliot Perlman

List Price: $14.00

Summary:
Nine melancholy stories about the boring lives of lovers, poets, lawyers, immigrants, students, and murderers.

Media Reviews:
Boston Globe: "[T]he simple truth is that even when it's wanting, Perlman's work surpasses that of many writers at their best."

New York Times: "Perlman's plots seem effortless, which makes his surprises all the more affecting."

Washington Post: "At their best, these stories are like walking down the hallway of an old hotel and eavesdropping on sad confessions."


My review:

I feel like I should be nice to this guy, a lawyer who wrote a book, he is what I aspire to be... But I am not going to be nice. This book sucked. The characters are miserable people who never manage to be interesting.

The ONLY thing I liked about this book was the title. I think it is funny. It is why I bought the book. I think I am going to write a book with the same title, except it will be one of those coupon books you would make in class for Mother's Day--they would say something like: "This coupon is good for one cleaning my room without throwing a fit." "This coupon is good for one day of not hitting my sister." Blah Blah Blah.

The coupon book is also a cheap and easy go to on Valentine's Day for the assholes who forgot about the holiday until they are on the commute home and manage to steal a red marker from a third grader...

But I digress...

This is for a coupon book when you need to explain to that very special someone "the reasons I won't be coming". We have all been there: one of you is really giving it (or you) the good old college try and you...just...can't...come. How do you tell that person that you are done, and convey the very right amount of appreciation and directness? That is where my coupon book comes in:

The reason I won't be coming #1: I feel fat. No, seriously, even my vagina feels fat, really fat. We both just need some space.

The reason I won't be coming #2: We have been going at this for half an hour and it is just not going to happen. You are doing everything right. You are wonderful. But I am just not going to come and would really like to see the new episode of Lost.

The reason I won't be coming #3: The kitchen is dirty. I know you don't get it. But the kitchen is directly connected to my G-spot. And I just can't come when the kitchen is dirty. Deal with it.



What do you think? Am I a marketing genius? Post your reasons for the couple book below:

February Reading: Pretty Little Dirty

Pretty Little Dirty
by Amanda Boyden
List Price: $13.95

Summary:
A coming-of-age story that depicts the pressures and inner turmoil of being a teenage girl and the intensity of life as a teenage. Inventively told, we watch as two girlfriends enter the a world '80s punk rock, sex and drugs, and violence all in the name of becoming an adult.

Other Reviewers Take:

Booklist Review: "This is the fictional equivalent of the highlight reel from the Girls Gone Wild videos....All the debauchery feels a bit forced, but the girls' intense, symbiotic bond is drawn with precision."

Kirkus Reviews: "A coming-of-age story that never quite comes into its own....Page by page, an evocative collection of scenes, but taken as a whole, a frustratingly incomplete work."

San Francisco Chronicle: "[A] great beach read for an 18-year-old who cares more about sunscreen than Daniel Defoe....Boyden is poetic with her prose, without being purple, and her short sentences read like stab wounds, puncturing opportunities for pretense."

My Review: Ouch, those other reviewer were probably never adolescent girls... Did they ever know any teenage girls?

Remember those years of faux adulthood, where EVERYTHING was so intense, where you wanted to TRY and DO EVERYTHING and ANYTHING just to to see if you can be an adult?Friendships were intense and raw and felt soooo important--this novel gets the complexity of friendships among coming-of age women right on--and not from a moralistic high horse--but with a direct, unflinching voice--which is so rare in fiction. I really liked this book.

February Read: Bitter is the New Black

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office
by Jen Lancaster
List Price:$13.95

Summary:

This is the story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she's gone from six figures to unemployment checks, has applied for every imaginable job and then starts a blog.

Publishers Weekly:
"It doesn't take Lancaster long to live up to her lengthy subtitle ('Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office'): in just one chapter, she gloats over cheating a homeless man, is rude to a waitress and passes judgment on all of her co-workers (including her 'whore' best friend). She's almost gleeful about lacking 'the internal firewall that keeps us from saying almost everything we think,' but she doesn't come off as straightforward, just malicious. (Of course, it's possible she's making up much of her dialogue, which is a little too clever to be believable.) Lancaster expects sympathy for her downward slide after getting fired from her high-paying finance job in the post-9/11 recession, and chick lit fans may be entertained watching life imitate fiction, but just when you start to feel sorry for her, the snotty attitude returns. In later chapters, Lancaster increasingly relies on entries from her blog (www.jennsylvania.com) and caustic replies to criticisms, and though things start looking up — her husband finds a job, she lands a book deal — it's not clear that she's been as chastised by her experiences as she claims."

Review:

Okay, I give up! I have spent two months trying to read books that are less dark and I can't take it anymore!!! I admit it--I am a dark, dark, bleak person. The upside of this book was that everyone has been through those painful job searches where you can just not get a fucking break. It is nice to read that even bitchy prima donnas had a tough time in the job market post 9-11. (My first legal job interview was scheduled on 9-11. I didn't get it. And that is why I support the war. If I couldn't get that damn job, than we should kill thousands of Iraqis, right?)

February Reading: Everybody into the Pool

Everybody into the Pool: True Tales
by Beth Lisick
List Price: $13.95

Summary:

Berkeley author Beth Lisick was a high school cheerleader, a homecoming princess, and a star athlete...(Just like me! uh...kinda...) Somehow, Beth grew up to become one of San Francisco's foremost chroniclers of alternative culture, touring as the only straight woman with a band of punk rock lesbian poets and living in illegal warehouses. Among Lisick's true tales are "My Way or the Bi-Way," set at UC Santa Cruz where she confirm her suspicions that she's just a straight girl with a positive attitude; "The Lowly Hustle," in which she takes on a litany of odd jobs to make ends meet ("I was like a college student designing my own major, except I was thirty-five and designing my own minimum-wage job"); and "Brokeley," her tale of buying her first house on the Berkeley-Oakland border (and my favorite story.)

What the Reviewers are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: "Lisick offers bright, funny takes on her square upbringing....Exaggeration in the interest of a good story is no sin, and Lisick is above all an accomplished storyteller. Light, flippant and savvy."

Library Journal Review:"Readers who like their memoirs with loose ends neatly tied will not necessarily appreciate Lisick's breezy style; a number of one-time references are left unexplained....Still, these stories most definitely entertain." "Fizzy and delightful... The tales veer from razor sharp to hilarious, and it's a voice — both offbeat and upbeat, wised-up yet curiously wholesome — that you're going to want to hear a lot more of."

Special Feature, because she is local...
About the Author: Beth Lisick
Beth Lisick is a writer, performer and native of the Bay Area. She has published poems, essays, a short fiction collection, and also wrote a weekly nightlife column for SF Gate for eight years. The comedic short film she made with Tara Jepsen, Diving for Pearls, has played at film festivals around the country this past year and makes its Brazilian premiere next month in Sao Paulo. She also co-organizes the Porchlight Storytelling Series, a monthly show for amateur storytellers in San Francisco.

My Review:

A quick weekend read! Listick approaches life in San Francisco, Berkeley, and greater Bay Area like a modern Margaret Mead, chronicling the quirks of the area without escaping into broad generalities and cliches. Instead, Lipstick gives us quick, fast-paced stories that are fun and original.

February reading: Working Stiff

Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert
by Grant Stoddard
List Price: $13.95

Summary:

Grant Stoddard didn't know what to do with his life in America-until he won an X-rated online contest, the prize being intercourse with an infamous married sex columnist. He consequently wound up delivering mail at Nerve.com but accidentally found his calling as a gonzo sex reporter who would try any and every lurid activity his crafty coworkers devised-from offering himself up as man-bait at a hard-core gay bar to attending an elite orgy, to being a hapless participant in a sexual home invasion.


From The Critics:

Publishers Weekly:
Stoddard would probably balk at the suggestion that he has a "typically English" sense of humor, but whatever he'd choose to call it, his self-deprecating style and wonderful appreciation of the absurd serves him well, whether he's describing his highly unusual university flatmate (an octogenarian named Mrs. Montague) or a more recent stint as a terrified extra in a pornographic movie. If the book has a weakness it's in the pacing: toward the end the narrative threatens to stall, and an over-long description of Stoddard's failed attempt to woo a visiting French teenager falls flat.

Kirkus Reviews:
Although the meat of the book involves Stoddard's almost accidental hiring at the sex website Nerve.com at the height of the Internet boom-and his misadventures as the site's wacky columnist-his low-key writer's voice is better suited to the sad-sack persona he develops early on. Stoddard's descriptions of his increasingly edgy sex misadventures (bondage summer camp, public orgies, working out a closetful of kinks with an apparently endless stream of ready-and-willing New York girls) are enjoyable for their geek-out-of-geekdom charm. But the appeal here winds down as his career amps up. This odyssey of luck is often charmingly relayed. However, by the time the formerly mousy Brit findshimself in California shooting a pilot for VH1 and sleeping with teenagers, it all loses its luster.

My review:

This book reminds me of an old boyfriend: one awkward sexual scenario after another. After awhile you just get...bored...and tired...and maybe, on occasion, a little sore...

Stoddard has some interesting tales but overall I would skip it, save $14.00 and just read Stoddard' blog.

January Reading: Water for Elephants

By Sara Gruen
List Price:$16.29

Set in 1932, a veterinary student is put in charge of caring for a menagerie of animals in a second-rate circus during the Great Depression. He meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, an untrainable elephant. He falls in love with one of them...


Review:

Publishers Weekly Review:
"With a showman's expert timing, [Gruen] saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale."

New York Times Book Review:

"Gruen has done her homework...lively with historical detail and unexpected turns....[A] delightful gem springing from a fascinating footnote to history that absolutely deserved to be mined."

Denver Post Review:

"One of the many pleasures of this novel is the opportunity to enter a bizarrely coded and private world with its own laws, superstitions and vocabulary....The pleasures of that world were so compelling, so detailed and vivid, that I couldn't bear to be torn away from it for a single minute."

My review:

First, let me share a reader review from another site:

"When I saw the reviews for this book I was tempted to read it but did not do so because I thought "I don't care about circus books!" But, I kept seeing it reviewed favorably and then a friend recommended it (we give each other tips on books so she knows my tastes) and I said "Ok, I'll try." WELL!!!! I am so glad I did. It is NOT a circus book."

WTF? There is a whole world of fiction called "circus books?" Are they in the Science Fiction or Romance?

I really liked this book. It is a fast read with emphathetic characters and a solid story line. Gruen took a lot of effort into researching this novel without making the book a belabored history lesson (a la Margaret George)--or a "circus book" for that matter.

January Reading: I'm Not the New Me

I'm Not the New Me: A Memoir
by Wendy McClure
List Price: $14.00

Summary:
Wendy McClure chronicles losing weight, or failing to lose weight, on her website, Pound. The best part: there are real life pictures of Weight Watchers recipes circa 1974--which she has compiled into another book "The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s." See mackerel pudding now at Candyboots.

Review:

Kirkus Reviews: "Bridget Jones-style endearing self-deprecation."

Jennifer Weiner, author of "Good in Bed": "A brave, bittersweet look at weight, loss, and elusive happy endings."

My review:

A story about a blogger who gets lucrative book deal--I like it!

Ever read a book, fall in love with the characters, finish the book and miss your new friends? (No--then why the fuck are you reading this website?) Now you can read a book without the fear of losing a friend at the end--you are just switching media!

Plus, I like this trend of books spun off of websites. They have an honest and sarcastic quality that you don't find in your standard memoir. (However, if you are currently curled up with any book by a presidential nominee, or any book that has the word "hope" in the title, you may want to skip this book.)

But if you find yourself so engaged in self-help, self-improvement, "self-love" (ahem...) projects that you no longer identify as yourself--instead as the new and improved self you just know you can and will *be* this book is for you. Not so that you--or even the future you--will change, but just so the two of you can laugh at this book together and have at least one thing in common.

January Reading: Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
by Koren Zailckas
List Price: $14.93

In January, I wanted to turn a new leaf and stop reading books that were so dark, so I picked up a memoir about how a young woman almost drinks herself to death...

Summary:

Twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas describes her experience binge drinking in high school and college.

Media Reviews:

From Publishers Weekly
This isn't just one girl's story of sneaking drinks in junior high, creeping out for night-long keg parties in high school and binge-drinking weeknights and weekends through college—it's also a valuable cautionary tale. At 24 (her present age), Zailckas gave up drinking after a decade of getting drunk, having blackouts and experiencing brushes with comas, date rape and suicide. She weaves disturbing statistics (from Harvard School of Public Heath studies and elsewhere) into her memoir.


From Booklist
Zailckas muses about the societal factors that contribute to the astonishing rise in women's drinking. Most unnerving, though, are her honest, detailed accounts of her own profound abuse, which was accepted, encouraged, and chillingly commonplace; thousands of young women share her story.

My review:

Rating: Most girls will have their first drink by age 12, and will have the experience of being drunk by 14; teenage girls drink as much as their male peers, but their bodies process it badly (they get drunk faster, stay drunk longer and are more likely to die of alcohol poisoning); and date rape and booze go hand-in-hand... Blah, Blah, Blah...

I thought this was a quick, amusing weekend read that brought me back to the college life I didn't have. (I missed out on the sororities, binge drinking, frat parties and the like... I spent undergrad being too socially awkward to go to parties... But I saw other girls go to those things, I "heard" about frat parties so it was like I went, Right? kinda? Sorta? No??)

Zalickas tells a relatable story about the awkwardness of becoming an adult--whether or not you were on a liquid diet while doing so--with some public health tidbits thrown in.

Let's just admit it: growing up is a series of awkward situations punctuated by mood swings and heavy petting. Some people choose to numb the pain with alcohol or drugs...some people find other ways to escape like hobbies, sports, or, let's say...reading... or the internet...pick your poison.

But reading about someone else's awkward situations from the comfort of your bedroom, decades after high school and college, that's some good reading!

January reading: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
List Price: $14.00


I normally don't read books that would appeal to the "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the NBC Today's Book Club...but it was the first week in January, I was low on cash, so I had to hit my Book Reserve*.

Summary:

In 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, Norah Henry delivers twins. The doctor and father of the children sees the baby girl has Down's syndrome. He instructs his nurse to dump her in an institution. The nurse disobeys and runs away to raise the baby herself. The father-doctor tells his wife that the little girl died. The book proceeds to follow the twins until they become adults. The moral here is: secrets are bad for families.

Media Reviews

Publisher's Weekly
"This neatly structured story is a little too moist with compassion."

Booklist - Carolyn Kubisz
"Unfolding the plot over the course of 25 years, Edwards tells a moving story of two families bound by a secret that both eats away at relationships and eventually helps to create new ones."

The Washington Post - Ron Charles
Some ominously saccharine moments indicate that Edwards can slip into the treacly trade -- "The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away" -- but these gaffes are relatively infrequent, especially considering the presence of a handicapped character, who would, in less disciplined hands, be used to generate a waterfall of sentimental tears.

My review:
Rating: ehhh....

This book was ooookkkkaaayyy--especially since I did not pay for it. The prose was simple and thoughtful but the story line was, well, trite. (The tied-up-in-a-bow ending was hackneyed and predictable.) But having seen daytime tv and a few too many Lifetime for Women movies, I can see why this book has had considerable market success. For me, I prefer it when authors don't BEAT ME OVER THE HEAD with some moral for me to learn. (I don't read to become a better person. I read to escape--get it, people!)

*Laura's Book Reserve consists of books that I somehow managed to get for free but are not appealing to me but so I keep them as a secret stash in case of an emergency when I don't have access to (or the cash to buy) a book I would prefer to read.