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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
date
 |
date purchased | owned | purchase location | added to swap | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0451232070
| 9780451232076
| 3.74
| 159
| Jan 04, 2011
| Jan 04, 2011
| 
| this is one of the better pregnancy memoirs i have read, for sure. & i have read quite a few, because they have been my favorite thing to read for the...morethis is one of the better pregnancy memoirs i have read, for sure. & i have read quite a few, because they have been my favorite thing to read for the last few years as i come to terms with my baby rabies. strasser won me over right off the bat with an intelligent, darkly humorous writing style, & her very first chapter was about how she convinced herself (for no real reason other than being 38 years old) that she would be incapable of conceiving. she got pregnant pretty quickly anyway--within two or three months. (lucky duck...i've been trying for right months & i'm only 32.) she writes a lot about how people are always cautioning women who want to conceive not to think negative thoughts lest they make themselves barren. seriously, this happens SO MUCH & she punctures this myth & takes no prisoners in doing so. she is also refreshingly straightforward & honest about having an STI & how that informed her conceptions of her own fertility & reproductive health. the rest of the book carries on in a similar vein. so many "mommy memoirs" out there are really goofy & bouncy & make a lot of references to wine (because wine is what people drink when they don't want anyone to think they may have alcoholic tendencies). they can be fun to read, but strasser writes like a girlfriend giving you the straight talk on how sometimes things suck. sometimes things really, really suck. but i didn't feel that she ever really devolved into self-pity or the kind of narcissistic complaining that can be very off-putting in a pregnancy memoir when the person reading the memoir is not, but desperately wants to be, pregnant. as the book progresses, strasser worked more & more entries from her blog into the story, which was disappointing, but i understand the impulse. you're working toward a deadline, you are pregnant &/or have a baby eating up all your time & energy, you already have some topical writing that you can just drop into the manuscript to boost the page count, who's it hurting? luckily her blog posts are still pretty good. not quite as interesting & nuanced as the other stuff, but okay. the only one that bothered me was about how strasser wants to punch pregnant women who don't want people touching their bellies. her argument is that a pregnant belly is just irresistible to people--it signifies the very mystery of life & people shouldn't be expected to keep their hands off. i could not possibly disagree more. but that was one quibble over the course of 300+ pages, so...well done.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
| 1
| not set
| Feb 2012
|
Feb 22, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0141014083
| 9780141014081
| 4.48
| 17,148
| Jan 01, 1986
| Oct 01, 2003
| 
| i read this for only one reason. a few months ago, i was chatting with someone about graphic novels & they said, "oh yeah, graphic novels are gre...morei read this for only one reason. a few months ago, i was chatting with someone about graphic novels & they said, "oh yeah, graphic novels are great. have you read maus?" it was enraging because maus is arguably the most well-known graphic novel of all-time. it is practically impossible to have a conversation about graphic novels (not that i do that too often, i'm not really a big fan of graphic novels) & not have someone mention maus. it's like if it was 1994 & you were trying to have a conversation with someone about out-of-wedlock pregnancy. go ahead, build yourself a time machine, initiate this conversation, & see if someone doesn't mention "murphy brown". it's impossible. then i realized that i have never read maus, despite feeling like i must have, considering how well-known it is. everyone knows it's a graphic novel representation of art spiegelman's father's experience surviving the holocaust. the jewish people are represented as mice, the nazis are cats, the polish non-jews are pigs, the french are frogs, the americans are dogs, etc. apparently it's a great book that english teachers often use to get reluctant teens to invest in learning about history. works like a charm. i thought i had read it in high school, but i must have transferred schools before we got to it (i transferred schools a lot as a teenager). so now i've read it. i wasn't totally in love with the drawing style, or the contemporary accounts of art's troubled relationship with his father & his father's even more troubled relationship with his second wife. i'm not entirely sure what any of that stuff was supposed to lend to the story. representing people as animals also didn't necessarily work that well for me because it made it a little more difficult to keep the characters straight. since they were all drawn as lookalike animals. but if you are the kind of person who expects to ever have any kind of conversation that touches on graphic novels, you should probably read this just to have a working knowledge. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
| 1
| not set
| Feb 17, 2012
|
Feb 20, 2012
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0061938343
| 9780061938344
| 3.78
| 383
| 2012
| Jan 03, 2012
| 
| a middle-aged woman who immigrated from india to the u.s. for college has been diagnosed with an inoperable terminal brain tumor. she decides that she...morea middle-aged woman who immigrated from india to the u.s. for college has been diagnosed with an inoperable terminal brain tumor. she decides that she wants to see her three best friends from her youthful days as a socialist revolutionary again before she dies. two of the friends are easily found. one is a successful, if closeted, architect. the other seems to have no job other than a weekly volunteer gig at a women's shelter, but she is all feisty & independent & leading a very comfortable life of privilege with her husband, whom everyone calls mr. fixit because he can fix any problem. the big problem the women have is tracking down the fourth friend, nishta. they know she married her revolutionary boyfriend iqbal, & it was a big deal because iqbal was muslim (although secular) & nishta was hindu. but no one has heard from nishta in years. the two women still in bombay, kavita & laleh, visit nishta's parents' house to ask if they have heard from her. nishta's parents were very disapporiving onf her marriage to iqbal & when they say they cut off ties, they really mean it. but nishta's mother does give them an envelope nishta sent her, with a return address. they find nishta living in a muslim slum, living with a muslim name (zoha), still married to iqbal, who has become extremely religious. he makes her wear a burkha & adhere to muslim customs. they explain about the sick friend, but nishta says iqbal would never allow to her to go. lelah decides it is their duty to help free nishta from iqbal so they can all go to the united states & see their friend. she sends her husband to convince iqbal to let nishta go, but instead iqbal explains why he has become so pious & protective (some might say abusive) toward nishta. it has to do with all the discrimination he faced as even a secular muslim, & i guess i am missing something big about religion & indian culture because i don't understand how someone would know someone was "born muslim" unless they said so. i mean, it's a religion, right? maybe names are a signifier? i don't get it. a lot of what iqbal describes as "unbearable abuse" he suffered for being muslim doesn't really sound like that big a deal either. mostly people saying stuff like, "hey iqbal, did you sacrifice a goat before you came to work today?" i mean, that's definitely not cool, it's really ignorant, but it doesn't really seem worth quitting your job & moving your entire family, including parents & siblings, to a slum, forcing the women to wear burkhas, & forcing your sister into an arranged marriage with a man fifteen years older than her. iqbal was apparently also traumatized by riots in which many muslims were slaughtered by hindus. that is a lot more understandable...but everyone else in his family was also traumatized by the riots & they weren't forcing anyone to live in slums as a result. he keeps harping on how he was just trying to keep everyone safe, & everyone is alive, so i guess he accomplished his mission, but... the bottom line here, i think, is just that the writing isn't that good. the whole narrative hinges on the fact that iqbal has made a remarkable transformation, from a freewheeling young revolutionary to a pious & controlling islamic stereotype. this is contrasted against the transformations other characters have made, from determined & idealistic young activists to wealthy, privileged middle aged liberals, i guess. iqbal's tranformation was supposedly triggered by the fact that he was of a marginalized identity that couldn't be overcome through sheer force of will, while the others were able to drift back into their safe, comfortable lives because they were privileged already. i totally get what the author was going for; i just don't think it was entirely earned. the way iqbal treats his wife & his sister is justified again & again by the discrimination he has faced as a muslim, but...his wife & sister are muslim as well (nishta converted) & are arguably facing the same degree of discrimination on that front, plus they're putting up with iqbal's rather breathtaking levels of abuse. at the end of the book, when laleh's husband invokes his privilege in order to thwart iqbal in pretty much the most fucked up possible way, i found myself less taken with the contrast & death of idealism among these characters & more just kind of disgusted with everyone & all out of sympathy. & although the book starts with the premise that a woman has a brain tumor & wants to see her friends one last time (with many asides about how kavrati was always secretly in love with this friend & may finally admit it & see what happens), the book ends before the friends are reunited. in fact, many loose ends are left dangling, which makes it even more difficult to invest in the characters & their journeys. & the writing...oof. i haven't read metaphors this labored since the last time i checked out some of the bulwer-lytton fiction contest entries. it reads rather like an undergraduate creative writing assignment before the first round of workshopping. give this one a pass.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
| 1
| not set
| Feb 18, 2012
|
Feb 19, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1593696582
| 9781593696580
| 4.05
| 41
| Mar 01, 2010
| Mar 01, 2010
|
| i read this a couple of weeks ago, & it was so ridiculously confusing even while i was reading it, i don't have a lot of confidence that i'll be able ...morei read this a couple of weeks ago, & it was so ridiculously confusing even while i was reading it, i don't have a lot of confidence that i'll be able to recap it sufficiently with all the time that has passed. i guess it starts when ivy's grandmother donates a bunch of old clothes to julie's mom for her shop. it seems like julie's mom's shop oscillates between being a high-end hippie couterie, a general store for plastic hippie junk that will be out of style in three years, & a curated thrift store. make up your mind, books. as usual, julie's mother presses her daughters into slave labor for the store, requesting that they go through the pockets of every garment & inspect everything for stains & tears, & set aside the red & pink items for a valentine's day window display. julie is inspecting a small red dress. she sticks her hand in the pocket & finds an old piece of paper covered in tiny chinese writing. she saves it to ask ivy about it later. her chance comes swiftly, as it's her weekend to spend at her dad's, & he lets her have a sleepover at ivy's. julie & ivy's family go to the happy panda for dinner. the place is packed with pretty much every remotely chinese american person ever mentioned in any of these books--ivy's entire family, a bunch of kids from her chinese school, her chinese school teacher, plus some other chinese folks from the neighborhood. everyone hangs out in a big group. julie shows ivy the paper, which ivy attempts to translate. ivy's chinese teacher looks it over & praises ivy's translation skills. a boy from ivy's class also looks at it & laughs, saying it doesn't make any sense. he guesses it might be some kind of poem. then ivy's grandmother sees it & explains that it was a crib sheet her mother wrote for her when she immigrated from china as a teenager. her father was living in san francisco, but there were strict laws about how many & which chinese people would be allowed into the country. new immigrants were held on an island in the bay & put through grueling interviews designed to prove who they really were & that they really were related to the people already living in the united states. ivy's grandmother really was who she said she was, but she made a friend on the boat who was immigrating as a paper daughter. she was given a sheet of paper full of facts to memorize, which would help her fool immigration officials into believing that she was really the daughter of a couple living in oakland. ivy's grandmother had a similar paper, which made no sense to her, because it included a line about how ivy's grandmother needed to keep her doll, which she couldn't sleep without. the doll was brand new gift from a neighbor & ivy's grandmother was not especially attached to it. ivy's grandmother helped drill her friend on her crib sheet, but misplaced her own. she assumed it had blown overboard at some point. she thanks julie for finding it, as her mother died shortly after ivy's grandmother left china & she had nothing to remember her by. even the doll she brought from china had been given to the paper daughter friend. one weird thing is that the note said the doll would bring ivy's grandmother "treasure". & when ivy's grandmother was reunited with her father, he asked if she had anything from her mother. she said she didn't & her father seemed crestfallen. but they made their new life work & ivy's grandmother had forgotten all about it. julie & ivy have their sleepover at ivy's grandparents' place that night, an apartment above the restaurant. when they enter, the place has been ransacked & ivy's & julie's matching chinese dolls are missing. the grandparents call the police, but obviously the police are not real worried about some missing dolls. the girls find ivy's doll in the trash the next day, with her head popped off. ivy can fix the doll, but the girls don't get why someone would steal the dolls & break them, just to throw them away. a mystery begins to unspool. the girls go looking for julie's doll & eventually find it in the trash behind the chinese school. they start to wonder if maybe whoever stole the dolls took that bit in the note about ivy's grandmother's doll "bringing treasure" literally, & broke into the apartment to look for the doll. ivy's grandmother was holding the entire restaurant in thrall with her story, but whoever went looking for the doll might have missed the part about how she gave the doll away to her friend. they compile suspects: a little girl at the restaurant who had whined for a new toy & acted all wild. the chinese teacher, who always wears a green scarf. a young man who seemed to know an awful lot about the history of paper sons & daughter immigrating through angel island. the girls start canvassing everyone they can think of in chinatown, looking for clues. they interview all the oldsters. the little girl is eliminated as a suspect because the girls don't think she would go to all the effort of stealing dolls just to throw them away. but they start to notice the chinese teacher & the young man everywhere they go. they even start to wonder if they are being followed. they deduce that the key to solving the mystery is probably to find the doll, & therefore they have to find ivy's grandmother's friend from the boat. they pore over the grandmother's old papers, photos, & correspondence, & narrow the field down to three likely candidates. then they use the old newspaper records at the library to figure out which old lady they are looking for, & they just start making cold calls. they luck out pretty quickly & call the old lady's son, bill. he confirms that his mother came from china as a paper daughter & grew up in oakland. he says that she's in the hospital right now recovering from a fall, but that they are welcome to bring ivy's grandmother to come see her. they organize a big expedition & everyone is all excited about seeing the old friends reunited & trying to solve the mystery of the doll. they swing by the old lady's house first...just in the nick of time to thwart an intruder. someone was ransacking the old lady's bedroom, which is full of dolls. whoever it is escapes out a window & into the forest, but before s/he disappears, julie sees a flash of green. she begins to suspect the chinese teacher in a major way. at the hospital, everyone is all smiles. they tell the old lady that an intruder was in her house, which...i've gotta say, is not exactly news i'd want if i was stuck in a hospital bed. they lament that whoever it was probably made off with the doll, but the old lady explains that she always keeps that doll with her & it is in the hospital. she retrieves it & after they explain their suspicions that something may be hidden inside it, she slits it open & finds an expensive jade necklace. ivy's grandmother realizes that the doll was a hiding place for the necklace all along, & that she was supposed to give the doll to her father so that he could sell the necklace & ease their way in the united states with a little extra income. but she was never told that the necklace was there, so she gave the doll away. her friend also never realized the necklace was there. she offers it back so it can be sold now, but ivy's grandmother declines. her restaurant is doing fine & she doesn't need the money. i have no recollection of what, if anything, happens with the necklace, or if the doll is repaired. & then somehow julie puts it all together: the kid from julie's chinese school is good at translations. he saw the original paper & must have seen the bit about the doll & the treasure. he was horsing around with his friends & missed the bit about ivy's grandmother giving the doll in question away. he guessed right away that the treasure was in the doll & snuck upstairs to look for it. he stole ivy's & julie's dolls because he didn't know what an old chinese doll would look like. he ripped off the heads but didn't find anything, so he threw them out. they kept seeing him everywhere they went while they interviewed old people & looked for ivy's grandmother's friend, but they didn't think anything of it because he lived in the neighborhood (which doesn't explain why they suspected the young guy & the teacher, who also lived in the neighborhood). somehow he was always two steps ahead of them & figured out the friend must have the doll, & then he figured out where the friend lived. he was the one who broke in to steal the doll. his favorite color is green & he often wore a green sweater. his family is hurting for cash & julie guesses he thought he could get the treasure & help his family with it. & somehow a green lantern action figure helps julie figure all of this out. confusing enough for you? yeah, it made no damn sense to me either.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
| 1
| not set
| Jan 31, 2012
|
Feb 13, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0465022324
| 9780465022328
| 3.58
| 117
| Jun 30, 2008
| Jan 04, 2011
|
| we read this one in my feminist book club, & i think it probably earned two & a half stars from me. when will goodreads get with the program & start o...morewe read this one in my feminist book club, & i think it probably earned two & a half stars from me. when will goodreads get with the program & start offering half-stars? i really wanted to like this book! i was even prepared to shell out & pay full-price for it new, but the independent bookstore in my town didn't have any copies & couldn't get a copy to me before my book club meeting. a word to the wise for those of you who live in towns with well-stocked independent bookstores: never take that for granted. although i routinely sang the praises of the harvard bookstore when i lived in boston & spent hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars there over the course of eight years, i am now feeling like i didn't cherish it enough. because i couldn't get a hard copy in time for my meeting & the public library copy (copies?) was (were?) checked out, i had to settle for an ebook. this may have influenced my perspective on the book. i have even gone so far as to read e-versions of books i've already read as actual books, & i did not like them as much in the e-version. i don't have an ereader, so i have to read ebooks on my computer. even with the screen light turned down, it makes my eyes tired, the interface is clunky, & i find myself racing to finish the book just so i can end the torture of reading on an electronic device. the actual text of this book is skimpy--only about 180 pages. it's not a biography of friedan, who wrote the feminine mystique so much as it is a mash-up of a social history examining the influence of the feminine mystique & a sociological overview of women's rights fifty years later. if you have ever read any inter-disciplinary-ish sociological non-fiction, especially that published by an academic press, you will be familiar with the way that these books always start with a really detailed introduction that functions as a kind of annotated table of contents. pretty much all the talking points the book is going to focus on are summarized briefly in the intro. well, a strange stirring basically read as a 180-page introduction. i kept waiting to get to the meat & potatoes part of the book, the part that would can it with the endless statistics & survey results for two seconds & really get into some nitty gritty stories about how the feminine mystique influenced its readers, or how it was marketed, or how it shaped a second wave feminist legacy that is relevant to women today. but it was just a ceaseless parade of facts, figures, percentages, survey results, & rehashing of other scholars' research. the whole thing felt a little bit sloppy & lot derivative. about halfway through the book, i found myself thinking, "this is a book about a book, & the author has failed to make any compelling argument about why in the fuck i should care about the feminine mystique." i mean, that is kind of an oversight. even though the other women in my book club had been excited to read this book, we kept it on our agenda for three weeks & never managed to talk about it even once. all three of our meetings were just gossip sessions. which says a lot more about the book than us. it just didn't compel us or inspire us at all. even our few attempts to relate our gossip topics to something in the book were belabored & shallow. & today, i read an article in the "new york times" written by stephanie coontz, about educated women & marriage. her argument was basically that women are now earning more than half of all advanced degrees in the united states, & by the time an educated women is 35-40, she is just as likely to have been married than her less educated counterparts. um...fascinating? there were lots tawdry details about how men that are less educated than their wives experience more erectile dysfunction, which coontz suggests is a function of a man feeling inferior to his wife. it was like the feminist version of yellow journalism. i don't know. it just felt like a throwback to 1992 or something, like the next article was going to be about gennifer flowers. i guess that if you are really pining for feminist scholarship that has not progressed beyond the clinton administration, this might be just the book you are looking for, but the rest of us are a little disappointed.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
| 1
| not set
| Feb 09, 2012
|
Feb 12, 2012
| ebook
| |||||||||||||||
| 1593694768
| 9781593694760
| 4.01
| 76
| Feb 01, 2009
| Mar 01, 2009
|
| there is a new student in julie's class. she tells everyone that she has a twin brother named tim who attends a private school for pianists, as does h...morethere is a new student in julie's class. she tells everyone that she has a twin brother named tim who attends a private school for pianists, as does her high school-aged brother, tom. she also has a brother in college, named todd, a sister in kindergarten named nancy, & a baby sister named debbie. i like that i can remember all the names of this girl's fake relatives, but i can't remember her name, & i already returned the book to the library. she also tells everyone that she lives in one of the big fancy painted ladies in a neighborhood that is kind of far away from the school. julie is really impressed. she feels resentful that she, her mom, & her sister are all crowded together in a small apartment, & that she doesn't have a bunch of baby siblings running around, or a fancy dog that knows lots of tricks. she thinks her new friend has the best life. until she & ivy run into the new friend at the farmer's market. she's working one of the booths & julie recognizes the skinny, haggard-looking woman working beside her as a woman she saw picking through trash cans not long ago. the new girl explains that the skinny woman is barb & that she's bad news. she's a "thief" & the new girl claims that she is working "undercover" to keep an eye on the woman & report back her findings to her father, who is a successful doctor/private detective. julie becomes very concerned when the new girl returns to the booth & barb seems to menace her with a knife. because i know that when i am an evil villain who is being investigated for thieving out of trash cans, i always make sure to menace children with knives in full view of the public. especially at the farmer's market. it's really difficult to get sucked into the mystery when julie & ivy are being so fucking dense. allow me to add that the new girl is introduced & gives everyone her incredible backstory within the first twenty pages of the book. at that point, i was like, "oh. i bet she's an only child who doesn't have a dog at all & lives hand-to-mouth in some depressing apartment with her mother, who was the woman shown trash-picking in the first chapter." & seriously, the way that julie freaks out & "gets chills" upon seeing someone picking through trash is really fucked up. she acts like she saw the woman administering a speedball to an infant or something. the new girl does do a pretty good job of fooling julie at times. julie bumps into the new girl out walking a dog that fits the description of the dog she says she has & can do lots of tricks & stuff. julie then pressures the new girl into allowing julie to walk her home. the new girl goes to a painted lady & invites julie inside. julie is pretty wowed by how huge the house, but is confused about the lack of kids' toys or other signs that a big, boisterous family full of professional-grade teen pianists & detective/doctors lives there. then a man comes home & the new girl hustles julie outside in a panic. julie is concerned that her new friend seems to be so afraid of her father. at this point, i was like, "duh. new girl is a dog walker & this is the dog walker's house." & this was confirmed a few chapters later when the new girl misses school. julie stops by the fancy house to drop off her homework & just lets herself inside. no one is home & julie takes the opportunity to wander all over the house & peek into every room. i wouldn't do that even at the home of my dearest friend. julie needs to learn some manners. then the gray-haired dude comes home & is like, "who the fuck are you? oh, you're friends with my dog walker?" he gives julie the new girl's real address & of course it's a depressing walk-up & the new girl lives alone with barb. she tries to convince julie for a second that all her stories are true & that she's actually just deep DEEP undercover spying on barb, or that the door to a linen closet actually opens into a hallway filled with bedrooms for all her other siblings (which is swiftly debunked when julie opens the door & discovers...linens). finally she admits everything & says she just wanted to feel what it was like to have a great life. blah blah blah. we all saw that coming from the third page. the one surprise is that an especially cranky & sullen disabled vet that hippie hank helps out with down at the veteran center is the new girl's older brother, whose name really is todd. julie convinces todd to join the other veterans at her place for thanksgiving dinner, & she invites the new girl & barb. the family is really excited to spend the holiday together, & julie's older sister describes todd as "dreamy," even though he's in a wheelchair. they spend a good part of the day flirting over what records what they like. julie gets a brainstorm to ask the guy with the dog & the huge fancy house to hire barb as a live-in housekeeper. he has enough bedrooms for barb, the new girl, & todd, & he has an elevator, to accommodate todd's wheelchair. ~*~happy endings~*~ pretty saccharine stuff.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
| 1
| not set
| Jan 31, 2012
|
Feb 06, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1593697554
| 9781593697556
| 3.61
| 23
| Mar 01, 2011
| Mar 01, 2011
|
| this book made no goddamn sense at all. it was almost on the level of a babysitters club mystery, with all the plot contrivances & children jeopardizi...morethis book made no goddamn sense at all. it was almost on the level of a babysitters club mystery, with all the plot contrivances & children jeopardizing their safety for no good reason, without any adults noticing. so, somehow julie & her family are acquainted with a wealthy couple who seems to love to host auctions. they host an auction to raise money for local school sports programs & it's very successful. julie's mom donates a hand-beaded dress, which is purchased by a hollywood starlet. after the auction, the rich dude who owns the house offers julie, TJ, & a few other people a guided tour of his famous collections. he has all kinds of crap, including abraham lincoln's stovepipe hat (which really ought to be in the smithsonian or something, & not in some rich guy's private collection) & a bunch of guitars that once belonged to famous rock stars. the jewel of the guitar collection is a silver fender stratocaster that once belonged to bobby kendricks. yeah, that's right, i said bobby kendricks. no relation to jimi hendrix...even though bobby kendricks is described as a left-handed player who strung his guitar upside down (just like jimi hendrix), had thick curly hair (also like jimi hendrix), & was known for playing his guitar behind his head & setting it on fire (just like...well, you get the picture). jared said this book should be called julie gets familiar with copyright law. haha. bobby kendricks recently died in a motorcycle accident (which i guess is more child-friendly than choking to death on his own vomit after a drug-fueled bender). TJ is wowed by the guitar. he's a big bobby kendricks fan. when the rich dude's spoiled cat mr. precious takes a shine to TJ, he asks TJ if he'd be interested in cat-sitting while the rich folks are out of town. they'd ask their shiftless teenage nephew, who lives with them while he figures out what he wants to do with his life, to take care of it, but he'd rather hang out with no-goodniks & sponge off his wealthy relatives than make himself useful. TJ agrees to the job, while i wonder why rich people with a spoiled cat don't just pay to put the cat up in a posh kennel while they're traveling, or even take the cat with them. surely they can afford it & it would afford more peace of mind than leaving an 11-year-old in charge, right? on TJ's first day on the job, he is overcome by a desire to touch bobby kendricks's silver guitar. he has to climb up on a chair to reach it & just as he is taking it off the wall, mr. precious jumps on him & he drops the guitar, breaking the neck. he smuggles the guitar out of the house & into the recently vacated apartment upstairs from julie's place. a couple named the ogilvies used to live there, but they recently moved out. a new family is moving in soon, but for now the place is empty. it's unclear to me how TJ knows that or why he would take the guitar there instead of hiding it at his own house or something. actually, it's unclear to me why he couldn't just be happy with breaking the guitar, but had to steal it as well. he's kind of just making a bad situation worse. he tells julie he wants to get the guitar fixed before the rich people come back. together they take the guitar to a local shop. the shop manager looks the guitar over & says he can probably fix it for them. then they mention that it once belonged to bobby kendricks. um...WHY would they tell him that? he doesn't need to know that in order to fix the guitar, & if i was the manager, i would wonder why the fuck a couple of 11-year-olds were running around town with a broken collectible guitar worth hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. the manager becomes very interested when he hears bobby kendricks's name, but then suddenly turns on them & is all, "this guitar did not belong to bobby kendricks. you're a couple of liars & i can't fix the guitar for you." dude. even if the guitar didn't belong to some dead rock star, i don't see why that suddenly means you can't fix it. even if it really was just a crappy knock-off & some kid made up a lie about it to seem cool, that doesn't mean that the guitar might not be valuable to that kid & he might not want to get it fixed. what the fuck? anyway, julie notices that the guitar is strung right side up, the silver paint is flaking off of it, & that the scratches where it had been set on fire are gone. she realizes the manager is right & it is a knock-off--but then, where's the guitar she & TJ saw just the other day? really boring hijinks ensue. julie hears weird noises in the empty apartment upstairs from her place. a kid on a skateboard who happened to be in the shop with julie & TJ brought in the broken guitar suddenly keeps popping up all over town. TJ & julie discover that the rich people's housekeeper, who recently asked for time off because her mother was in the hospital, lied & in fact has a dead mother. they also start keeping tabs on the rich people's busybody neighbor (because i know when i commit crimes, i like to continually butt into every detail of the lives of the folks i'm stealing from). they also begin to suspect the shiftless, lazy nephew, especially after julie suspects that he is hiding an accomplice behind the drapes one day. the shit really hits the fan one day when julie & TJ are supposed to meet up after school. the rich folks are home & TJ has to tell them that he broke the guitar, & that he suspects that it's a fake. but TJ doesn't show up to the meeting spot. instead, the kid on the skateboard cruises over & tells julie that TJ is waiting for her at his (skateboard kid's) house. he also refers to TJ as julie's brother. when he mentions "something silver," julie follows him. when they get back to skateboard kid's house, he stuffs both TJ & julie into the garden shed & bolts the door. he says that "their grandparents" asked him to do it because they have a surprise for TJ. they told skateboard kid that if he basically abducted & imprisoned TJ & julie, they'd give him money, which would go a long way toward him buying himself a guitar. julie & TJ escape out a pet door & bolt to the rich people's house, with skateboard kid in hot pursuit. once there, TJ explains about the broken guitar, & how they figured out that it's a fake. julie says that she thinks some of the other pieces of the collection have also been stolen & replaced with fakes. she leads the gang to lincoln's hat, which is indeed looking very fresh & new, & lacks the authentic hat maker's tag on the inside. just when rich dude is about the blow his fucking top, julie puts the pieces together. the ogilvies are leaving san francisco, they still had a key to their old apartment, they were the official photographers for the auction & hence had access the collection...it all makes sense! (i guess.) somehow the whole gang catches up with the ogilvies (i think they called the cops), & sure enough, they'd been spiriting away collectible antiques to sell & replacing them with fakes. they were about to take the proceeds & run off to mexico (hey, just like in "hey joe"! except without any murder). they'd been stashing the stuff they stole in a hidey-hole in their former apartment. if you're wondering why the fuck they'd move out of their stolen goods warehouse without leaving town or removing the stolen goods, you're not alone. bit of a plot hole, if you ask me. but the stolen stuff, including the guitar & the top hate, are all recovered & auctioned off to raise money to clean up the bay after a recent oil spill. there's also a bunch of stuff in here about julie learning that even evil-seeming people are maybe just people who made mistakes or were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but i didn't really get what that had to do with the plot & it was written in a pretty heavy-handed manner.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 31, 2012
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Feb 06, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 0062002732
| 9780062002730
| 3.28
| 137
| Oct 18, 2011
| Oct 04, 2011
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| i didn't expect to love this book, but i did expect it to be kind of a cute, fast read that would amuse me for an hour or two. instead i got a poorly-...morei didn't expect to love this book, but i did expect it to be kind of a cute, fast read that would amuse me for an hour or two. instead i got a poorly-designed pile of girl hate packed to the gills with pop culture references that were out of date before the book was even published!
each chapter represents a different kind of geek girl, from sci fi/gaming nerds to bookworms to film geeks to "domestic geeks". this was the first time i ever heard that taking a page from martha stewart made one a kind of "geek," but by the time this chapter rolls around, the entire premise of the book has kind of fallen apart, so let's go with it. once simon pulls out the big guns for explaining world of warcraft, "dr. who," & "tank girl," she doesn't seem to have a lot of juice left for making a compelling argument that having an interest that shapes your life choices (ie, enjoying cooking so you end up having a fair number of dinner parties) qualifies a person for "geekdom". she also attributes the famous "i only know that people call me a feminist whenever i express opinions that differentiate me from a prostitute or a doormat" quote to daria morgendorffer, when it was in fact coined by rebecca west. not that i magically expect people to just know that, but a quick google search would clear it up, & seriously--that quote has been around for decades. surely simon knew that the writers of "daria" didn't come up with it, right? (plus, prostitutes can be feminists too!) simon spends a lot of time tearing down other women in this book. each chapter includes a (supposedly funny) quiz that the reader can take to see if she fits the mold of the geekdom in question. the quizzes are multiple choice & each question includes an answer that amounts to, "OMG, this is gross & i don't know what you're talking about!" if you repeatedly choose that response, your descriptive score at the end refers to you as one reality TV starlet or another (paris hilton, heidi montag, etc) & includes comments like, "i know your body is 70% plastic," or, "stick with what you do best...remind me what that is again?" it's just unnecessary. i don't like girl hate even under the best of circumstances, but when it is woven into what basically amounts to a handbook for how insecure, pretentious girls with poor social skills can feel superior to people less obsessive than themselves, it's especially off-putting. simon uses the word "poseur" over & over & over again, if that gives you any indication how relevant this book is going to be to anyone over the age of 15. each chapter also closes with a list of attributes each geek girl should look for to find her perfect man. because we're all single, right? & looking to remedy that? via heterosexuality? & we'll put potential suitors to a test to make sure they have the same geeky interests we do? don't get me wrong--clearly, i can be obsessive. i guess my main obsessions are harry potter & the babysitters club. & yet, not only do i draw the line at any & all forms of cosplay, i really don't need my boyfriend to know who madamoiselle noelle is before i can date him (she's jessi's ballet teacher). i have my interests, he has his, & believe it or not, the relationship functions even though we have never partaken in a "dr. who" marathon (thank god). simon also falls down on the job by trying to be all things to all women. she includes a section about how awesome "sassy" magazine was, like she's trying to appeal to women my age, & then she turns around references all this teenage culture stuff (complete with dating tips specifically for teens) that was totally foreign to me. i imagine that the stuff about "sassy" & references to, say, the movie "kids", were equally foreign to the average 14-year-old reading the book. & please, don't even get me started on the essay about how paul feig's TV & film projects are downright revolutionary for turning schlumpy dudes like seth rogen into heartthrobs. yes, she actually says that it is "revolutionary" for a less-than-perfect male specimen to be cast as the lead in a movie that will include a romance. as if this isn't something that dates back to the dawn of humanity. as if it isn't actually a huge problem called a DOUBLE STANDARD that women always have to be thin, perfectly groomed, well-dressed, smart & successful without being intimidating, etc etc etc, before they can be seriously considered as romantic material, while dudes can be schlubby as all get out. i could probably write ten more paragraphs about everything that's wrong with this book. ultimately, it's not like i hated it or thought it was the most offensive trash i'd ever read or anything. it was just obviously written for a paycheck & therefore it lacked any semblance of internal consistency regarding the message, the audience, or even the theme. simon seemed to go to great lengths to not take sides when it comes to politics (suggesting that "political geek girls" will surely thrill to the message delivered by meaghan mccain--right, not so much), & therefore took it for granted that the best way to appeal to a female readership was to tear down your traditional "pretty" girls & make a fuss over how OMG megan fox is so vapid & dumb & tina fey is so smart & amazing! i think this book is kind of the encapsulation of everything that is wrong with pop culture. i also wonder how embarrassed she was over writing a paragraph about how steve jobs is hotter than bill gates, only to have steve jobs die literally the day after the book was published. well done. (less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Feb 05, 2012
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Feb 05, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1593697538
| 9781593697532
| 3.75
| 16
| Mar 01, 2011
| Mar 28, 2011
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| the more of these american girl mysteries i read, the more ludicrous they seem. i guess it must be challenging to come up with a plotline that is trul...morethe more of these american girl mysteries i read, the more ludicrous they seem. i guess it must be challenging to come up with a plotline that is truly mysterious but also age-appropriate for a child. & at least this book involved more of a mystery than, "there's a polio epidemic & the girl in the next bunk over at sleepaway camp seems to have some health issues. wonder if it's polio?" (ie, secrets at camp nokomis). rebecca is concerned about a rash of kidnappings sweeping new york city. someone is stealing babies left unattended outside shops & other such places (apparently this was a pretty common practice back in ye olden days) & ransoming them for thousands of dollars. the babies are often from poor families who have to beg friends & neighbors for donations to raise the ransoms & get their babies back. rebecca becomes even more suspicious when she realizes that her older brother snuck out of the apartment on the night that one baby was returned to its family. but she is swiftly distracted when a new family moves into her building. they moved from a nearby tenement & the mom in the family developed an eye infection that is imperiling her vision. the father works two jobs to pay for her medical care, & they have a little baby named nora, who is screaming her head off when rebecca meets the family. various cousins & aunts & whatnot are also milling around, as well as another woman who lives in the neighborhood & offers to look after the baby while the family gets settled in. mrs. rubin takes the baby instead & she & rebecca notice the baby has a bad diaper rash & needs her nails trimmed. rebecca guesses that nora's parents didn't have time for these things, or maybe even didn't notice, with the mom's eyesight failing & everything. they get the baby all spruced up & rebecca takes her to a nearby park. she makes the acquaintance of another young girl there, named francesca. francesca is also looking after a baby, her little sister. rebecca is spooked by a slightly older boy with a thick italian accent who looks a little too closely at nora & asks rebecca some mundane questions about her. rebecca thinks it's strange that a boy that age would pay any attention to a baby. she even wonders if he might be involved with the kidnappings that have been happening. when she sees her brother running around with the boy, she gets even more concerned. then the boy's dog runs off with nora's rattle & rebecca chases after it. the next day, rebecca stops by to visit with the new family again. she notices that nora is cheerful & happy as a clam, compared to all the screaming & fussing she was doing the day before. she remembers that the baby that was with francesca was very calm & sweet. she checks nora's dress & finds a little embroidered horn on the hem, the same as the embroidered horn on francesca's little sister's dress (an italian charm to ward off the evil eye). she realizes that the babies must have been switched while she was chasing after the dog. she rushes out to find francesca & get her help to switch the babies back. she discovers that francesca is the little sister of the boy who seemed so interested in nora the day before. when she finally finds francesca & tells her that the babies have been switched, francesca insists that it's not true & won't listen to rebecca. rebecca becomes concerned that francesca switched the babies on purpose--that maybe she is mixed up in the kidnappings as well (although switching babies is not really the same as kidnapping them & holding them for ransom). she also unearths other odd or unsettling information: her brother is running around in a "gang" of "bad boys". rebecca sees them steal lollipops from a local ice cream vender. she also sees the local woman who has offered to look after nora. she sees the woman drop a package of brand-new baby clothes in the trash, & she realizes that a stern-looking man in a hat saw rebecca remove them from the trash. rebecca tells her mother about the babies being switched, hoping that she can lean on francesca to switch them back. mrs. rubin dismisses this, insisting that a mother always knows her own child, even if her eyesight isn't the best. but rebecca knows the sweet, quiet baby the neighbors have now is not the same fussy, screaming baby she took to the park. the new baby's nails need to be clipped again already & her diaper rash is completely gone. (i guess they needed this kind of actual physical evidence to forestall arguments that sometimes babies cry & sometimes they're cheerful & it doesn't mean they are different babies.) finally rebecca tracks down francesca's mother, who is sitting outside bouncing a fretful, crying baby. she confirms that the baby is her own daughter. rebecca starts hooting & hollering about how the babies have been switched. by this point, she thinks francesca's entire family is running some kind of very confusing baby-switching/kidnapping ring & she bolts over to a cop & requests his assistance in switching the babies back. francesca appears & seems very determined in her insistence that the babies have not been switched & that rebecca should drop it. then nora's father turns up & he knows francesca's family. apparently they live in the tenement building that he & his family just moved out of. rebecca is even more confused but she drops her kidnapping assumptions when she sees nora's father greeting the italian baby with no recognition that it may be his own child. finally francesca explains: her brother likes to play pranks. while nora's family was moving out of the tenement, they asked francesca to look after nora for a little while. she was also looking after her little sister. something happened to nora's dress, so francesca dressed nora in one of her sister's spare dresses. then she was called away & asked her brother to keep an eye on the babies for a minute. he did, & thought it would be a funny prank on francesca to place their sister in nora's pram & nora in their sister's bed. unfortunately for him, nora's aunt & uncle came to pick her up & take her to the new apartment before francesca realized the babies had been switched. they weren't familiar with nora & didn't realize they were taking the wrong baby, & francesca didn't realize it until it was too late. she machinated a meeting with rebecca & nora in the park (using her older brother as a look-out, hence his strange interest in the baby) & switched them when rebecca's back was turned. but because rebecca was introduced to the impostor baby as nora, she didn't realize that francesca was switching the babies BACK. they decide not to tell anyone what happened because the babies are back with the right families & that's what counts. i think francesca & her brother are pretty lucky that nora's family wasn't moving to, like, des moines. switching babies is no joke! rebecca is walking through the park when she suddenly realizes that the woman who had offered to look after nora & the stern man in the hat are the real kidnappers. she happens to run into them almost immediately & they grab her & try to hustle her out of the park. at first she goes meekly, rememering what her mother says about how "ladies don't draw attention to themselves". then she remembers what her grandmother says about how ladies are loud if they need to be & she starts hollering. francesca's brother helps catch the kidnappers, earning the goodwill of the police for once, & rebecca breaks the kidnapping case (via that old chestnut, deux ex machina, basically). her brother admits that he's been sneaking out at night to build the family a sukkah on the roof of their building. rebecca came across as a bit of a meddlesome drama queen in this book. she could have saved herself a lot of trouble if she just stayed out of other people's business. there was also a weird scene in which francesca's mother is holding a baby, nora is in her pram, & rebecca "looks at the baby in her arms". i was super confused by that because i couldn't figure out how a third baby came on to the scene. i read it like ten times before i concluded that it was just an especially egregious editing/continuity error.(less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Jan 30, 2012
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Feb 05, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1593696590
| 9781593696597
| 3.85
| 39
| 2010
| Mar 01, 2010
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| kit's mother accepts a new boarder who cannot stand dogs. the new tenant insists that kit's basste hound, grace, sleep outside for as long as she is r...morekit's mother accepts a new boarder who cannot stand dogs. the new tenant insists that kit's basste hound, grace, sleep outside for as long as she is renting a room. kit's explanation that grace sleeps in the attic with kit makes no impression. & the very first night that grace sleeps outside, she disappears. kit has a few suspects in mind, specifically a couple of local bullies that had ridiculed kit & grace the day before. she, stirling, & ruthie stop by the home of the one of the bullies, but he says he has no idea where kit's dog could be & that he didn't take her. kit gets a little weepy & he softens & says he really doesn't know where her dog is. kit wonders if the other bully acted alone, but she doesn't know his address so she can't go ask him. the kids go to a park, thinking maybe the other kid stole grace & took her to the park & set her free. the park is far enough away that grace would have had a hard time finding her way home again. they meet a man walking a basset hound, which he explains is an expensive purebred show dog, & a woman who says she saw a blond boy sitting on a bench with a basset hound that morning, but they don't find grace. this mystery is incredibly convoluted & i can't exactly remember how the characters get from point A to point B to figure everything out, but it goes something like this: * kit starts writing down clues, suspects, & theories. * the kids visit a pet shop & are informed that a destitute-looking family made up on a man, a pregnant woman, & very blond boy had stopped in with a basset hound & purchased lots of supplies for it. they had german accents. * a woman at the local soup kitchen tells the kids that a family named the muellers fits the description of the family in the pet shop. they'd been living in the hobo jungle by the river, & they haven't been by the soup kitchen in several days, which is unlike them. * the hobos tell the kids that a man in a bowler hat offered mr. mueller a job & they left the camp. one of the hobos gives them a street name. * kit sees a house with cloth diapers hanging on the clothesline out back on the muellers' new street. a very blond boy who answers to "sunny" (the nickname the hobos had used) comes to the door but denies having a dog. * kit starts seeing more reports of missing/stolen basset hounds in the paper, including the show dog she met in the park. * kit visits the man with the show dog & he says he got the dog from a nearby breeder famous for award-winning basset hounds. * ruthie's aunt takes the kids to visit the breeder, who is closing up shop. he sold all of his equipment to his former trainer. * kit sees some photos of the trainer, in which he is wearing a bowler hat & leaning against a cadillac like the one the hobos said the bowler hat man drove. * kit realizes the trainer is stealing dogs that the breeder had sold for his new operation, with the hopes of breeding them again & making a killing on the puppies. or...something? this honestly made very little sense to me. * kit presses sunny into a sting operation after sunny confesses that mr. mueller had accepted the job before he knew it involved stealing dogs. he admits that he helped steal grace, & says that the mueller family is being blackmailed into stealing dogs. (o....kaaaay.) kit explains that if the catch the trainer, the muellers won't get in trouble with the police. * ruthie's aunt is dating a cop who helps with the sting. basically, the kids are just sipposed to sit tight & let the trainer sell one of the stolen dogs. when they find him in possession of a stolen dog, they can bust him. * but instead, kit sees the trainer with grace & blows the whole thing up by calling grace over to her. * it's enough for the cops though & they arrest the trainer & retrieve all the stolen dogs. * kit learns that grace is a purebred show-quality dog who was abandoned when her owner fell on hard times. because when a dog is worth thousands of dollars & you're broke, it definitely makes more sense to abandon the dog on the street than to try to sell it. the american girl mysteries are head & shoulders above the babysitters club mysteries when it comes to quality of writing & actual mysterious content, but they're still not great. i guess they can't be too wild because they're for kids, but they still rely a lot on hackneyed coincidence. ps--that boarder who made grace sleep outside is pretty much just pure evil. i'd kill anyone who precipitated my cat getting catnapped.(less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Jan 30, 2012
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Feb 05, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1593691629
| 9781593691622
| 4.03
| 118
| Feb 20, 2007
| Mar 01, 2007
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| after addy saves a wealthy man named mr. radisson from being trampled by a horse, mr. radisson offers mr. walker a job doing woodwork & carpentry with...moreafter addy saves a wealthy man named mr. radisson from being trampled by a horse, mr. radisson offers mr. walker a job doing woodwork & carpentry with his crew. mr. radisson has just moved into the fancy society hill home of his recently deceased uncle, & extends the invitation for the walkers to move into the carriage house in the backyard. the walkers are over the moon--it will be their first ever real private family home in freedom.
but it doesn't take long for addy to realize that racism is alive & well on society hill, even though the walkers have been invited to live there. they're stopped by police as they walk to their new home for the first time. the police don't think black people have any business in society hill & say they will be checking up on the walkers' story of living in mr. radisson's carriage house. addy notices strange lights in & around mr. radisson's house in the dead of night, even though mr. radisson is out of town. he's in virginia collecting his mother so she can attend his upcoming wedding. mrs. radisson (the mother) ends up being a rather vicious old racist. she wants mr. radisson to put the walkers out & hire european servants, even after mr. radisson explains that mr. walker works for his carpentry crew & is not a servant. there's trouble at work when the white members of the crew refuse to work as equals with mr. walker. they'll only work with him if he serves as a gofer, even though he is a skilled woodworker. while mr. radisson is in connecticut collecting his fiancee, elizabeth, mrs. radisson notices a basket of food on the back porch & accuses the walkers of trying to steal it. they deny it, & addy finds the basket in the trash the next day, the food gone. she's worried that mr. radisson's house is haunted & that's why there are strange lights & missing food. she stays up late to keep watch & sees someone sneaking into the house. she follows the person--a black woman--& peers at her in the shed. she's writing something & has a lemon. later addy finds what the woman wrote--& it's a note with addy's name on it. addy rather quickly figures out that the note is written with lemon juice & that she'll be able to read it if she warms the paper. she was totally unfamiliar with this trick & i think it's a damn lucky (read: unlikely) break that she figured it out in like 30 seconds. anyway, the note is a riddle that shows addy how to locate a trap door that will allow her to enter mr. radisson's house & come to the woman who wrote the note. addy does so & the woman explains that she was a spy for the union army during the war. she pretended to be an illiterate slave & sent word of the confederate army's plans north. even though the war is over now, there is a bounty of her head. mr. radisson's uncle was putting her up & helping her escape to a safer place, but when he suddenly died, she had to hide in the hidden room & sneak food. now that mr. radisson is filling the house with his mother & his fiancee, she's worried that she won't be able to sneak around as easily & she asks addy to help her. because somehow it will be easier for addy to sneak around mr. radisson's house, where she doesn't live? kind of weird, but okay. when mr. radisson returns with his fiancee, elizabeth, things are great--at first. addy has a pretty easy time sneaking food for the spy, & elizabeth really takes to her & the rest of the walker family. she gives addy & her mother tickets to see a famous black opera singer perform, & even gives addy a beautiful dress she has outgrown, with the thought that mrs. walker can fix it up & make it something special for addy to wear to the opera. but things get weird when elizabeth invites addy over to try on the dress. she offers to let addy try on a ruby & pearl choker as well, which necessitates removing the necklace that addy's brother gave her--a protection stone fashioned by uncle solomon, the old man who helped look after esther after addy & mrs. walker escaped the plantation. elizabeth gets an eyeful of the protection stone & practically shoves addy out the door. addy thinks she did something to offend or upset elizabeth. soon after, elizabeth accuses addy of stealing her choker. addy specifically remembers putting the choker on elizabeth's dresser before she left the room, but elizabeth claims that it's missing. addy denies it, but when the choker is discovered in the shed, where addy often goes to play, pretty much everyone thinks she's guilty. elizabeth begs mr. radisson to put the walkers out & hire europeans instead. addy is confused because elizabeth had talked such a big game about how not-racist she was. addy wonders if elizabeth is being influence by mrs. radisson. addy asks the spy for insight but it's not much help. she even wonders if maybe the spy stole the choker & left it in the shed to make addy look bad. the spy tells addy that things aren't always as they seem & that she needs to dig deeper. addy decides to dig deeper by following elizabeth. addy follows elizabeth all the way to a very poor part of town, where elizabeth enters a boarding house & embraces an elderly black woman. she gives the woman some money & after a brief conversation, she leaves. addy asks a man nearby about the boarding house & he explains that everyone in the neighborhood is destitute & recently freed from slavery. most of the folks in the boarding house are from plantations in north carolina, near where addy was enslaved. addy then sneaks into mr. radisson's house while everyone is out & rifles through elizabeth's bedroom. she finds the choker safe & sound, & opens elizabeth's trunk. inside she finds a quilt that looks a lot like her own family album quilt (a design created by slaves). she also finds a protection stone necklace with uncle solomon's mark on it, & a leather medicine pouch, also made by uncole solomon. before addy can wonder too much about why elizabeth has these things, elizabeth comes home & finds her. addy's family is told in no uncertain terms to get out before the night is through. but esther falls sick. in fact, she is dying. addy races over to mr. radisson's to ask for help & elizabeth rushes over with solomon's medicine pouch. she makes an herbal poultice that revives esther & addy begins to put two & two together. she retrieves the spy & then has it out with elizabeth, confronting her about the fact that she had to have known uncle solomon somehow. the spy speculates that elizabeth may have owned slaves before the war, & is hiding it because she knows that hardcore abolitionist mr. radisson would never marry a slaveowner, not even one that had seen the error of her ways. but addy knows uncle solomon would never make a protection stone for even the kindest slave owner on earth. which leaves only one alternative... addy suggests that elizabeth had been a slave herself. elizabeth starts crying & confirms that it's true. her aunt had been uncle solomon's sister & she was enslaved at the next plantation over from where the walkers were in north carolina. she escaped when she was 16 years old & made her way north with the help of quakers. she was very light-skinned & one day a shopkeeper, thinking that she was white, offered her a job. elizabeth began to live as a white woman. eventually she met & fell in love with mr. radisson, & presented herself as a white woman to him as well, thinking, of course, that even the biggest abolitionist on the block isn't going to want to marry a black woman. she apologizes to the walkers, &...i guess they can stay? it's kind of unclear. also unclear is how elizabeth & mr. radisson are going to work out their interracial romance. but i guess mr. radisson is willing to help the slave, so there's that. this book was kind of crazy. & far-fetched. i mean, seriously, what are the chances that an escaped slave passing herself off as a white woman would become engaged to a man who is employing & housing a former slave family from the next plantation over? & that they'd piece it all together via one quilt & a necklace? kind of crazy. i don't know what to think of this book.(less) | Notes are private!
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| 0767916948
| 9780767916943
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| i guess it's obvious that i kind of loaded up in one particular area the last time i went to the library. all i've been wanting to read lately are mom...morei guess it's obvious that i kind of loaded up in one particular area the last time i went to the library. all i've been wanting to read lately are mom memoirs. this was another humorous take on new motherhood that actually hit its marks without coming across as either labored or saccharine. well done! if only teitell could have brought so much creativity to the title. there are at least six mother books out there called from here to maternity, & it's also the name of a series of baby-themed romance novels--you know, the ones where a woman gets pregnant accidentally & is staring down the barrel of single motherhood until the untamed cad who knocked her up is overcome by her fertile charms & they make a little family. because, you know, that happens. no better way to cement a foundering new romance than to add a baby to the mix. teitell lives in boston (brookline, specifically), & i was stoked about the possibility of some boston flavor in the book. unfortunately, teitell does a fantastic job of casting boston as just another generically posh urban backdrop filled with well-appointed hospitals (her husband is a pediatri ER doctor at one of them) & maclaren strollers. i mean, i guess that does kind of sum up brookline, which is a pretty dull part of town unless you make at least six figures annually. oh well. i was scared when teitell mentioned her job as a journalist (lifestyle columnist) at the "boston herald". fellow bostoners will know that that is the scariest newspaper in town--a shrill right wing rag. i feared that i was inadvertently reading the mommy memoir of a grizzly mama. but whatever politics teitell actually subscribes to are shrouded in secrecy as she instead focuses on the trials & tribulations of breastfeeding, keeping her nanny happy, organizing playdates around cold season, & being caught out not knowing the words to popular children's songs. it's nothing groundbreaking, but i've read so many shitty supposedly funny books of personal essay in the last few years that reading something by a halfways competent writer was a breath of fresh air. i think teitell's apparent class privileges prevent this book from being particularly relatable to a lot of moms, but it could have been so much worse. sometimes i feel that the bar for new memoirs has gotten so low, even an earthworm would lose if the bar were used in a game of limbo.(less) | Notes are private!
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Feb 04, 2012
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| 1416915060
| 9781416915065
| 3.63
| 1,079
| Mar 28, 2006
| Mar 28, 2006
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| this is that rare breed: a book of humorous essays that are actually funny! they have punchlines that don't even try too hard! are you hearing this, l...morethis is that rare breed: a book of humorous essays that are actually funny! they have punchlines that don't even try too hard! are you hearing this, laurie notaro & lisa scottoline? it actually is possible to be amusing in print! though wilder-taylor may have had an edge, because it doesn't appear that this book is a compilation of newspaper columns or blog entries. it seems that she actually--imagine this--sat down & wrote a book. it's a slim book with a nice big font & plenty of breathing room along the margins, but it's still a book. it's all about that endless spring of humor & terror, new parenthood. wilder-taylor addresses everything from choosing a pediatrician to meeting other moms at the playground, from traveling with children to picking a decent name. none of it is necessarily prescriptive--this book doesn't really tell you HOW to do any of these things. but it does take the edge off the constant panic a first-time mom may feel while confronting these pressing issues. the whole book has kind of an amateur self-published ebook vibe, but i will overlook it because it's so goddamn refreshing to FINALLY read a book of humorous essays that were actually funny! i was starting to think it just couldn't be done!(less) | Notes are private!
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Feb 04, 2012
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| 0618463518
| 9780618463510
| 3.79
| 173
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| May 08, 2007
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| i was stoked to read this book because i have an incomprhensible obsession with reading about people spending money they don't really have on baby stu...morei was stoked to read this book because i have an incomprhensible obsession with reading about people spending money they don't really have on baby stuff & making crazy helicopter parent decisions. but the book was so tedious that i could barely finish it. it was a big disappointment.
the main problem with the book is that thomas grounds her thesis & research in her bizarre obsession with contrasting gen X parenting styles against baby boomer parenting styles. this was a major theme in her memoir in spite of everything as well, & a major reason why i had a hard time getting into the memoir. thomas herself is a classic gen Xer raised by boomer parents who, to hear her tell it, destroyed her life by getting divorced. thomas was pushing 40 by the time she started having kiddos, around ten years ago. had a book examining gen X parenting strategies & styles been published in 2002 or so, perhaps it would have been very timely, capturing the zeitgeist & all that. but this book was published in 2007. let's do a little math. thomas herself adheres to the traditionally accepted definition of gen X as folks who were born between the mid 1960s & the late 1970s/early 1980s. (full disclosure: i was born in 1979 & don't feel any kinship with gen Xers, who largely seemed to be in college/in the workforce already by the time i was in junior high in the early 90s.) that's about a fifteen-year spread. thomas shares one story in her book about how boomer/X parenting styles were so radically different that they necessitated completely different advertising approaches. boomer parents seemed to be more concerned with gender equity in child care & attending to their own needs even with a new baby in the house, while X parents were more concerned about putting baby first & making sure baby is being properly stimulated & learning new things. the story thomas shares involves a company that developed a TV commercial for a crib mobile based on market research among new moms, who wound up being the tail end of the boomer generation. by the time the ad was ready to roll, a new breed of mom had taken over & they didn't respond well to the ad at all. more market research was done, the ad was reconceptualized & reshot, & X moms loved it. this incident took place in the early 90s. so. thomas acknowledges that gen X moms suddenly dominated the baby stuff marketing share fifteen years before her book was published...& that the gen X generations spans about fifteen years. wouldn't it then stand to reason that by the time the book was published, the generational torch had been passed & gen X moms had ceded dominance of the new mom category to women my age & younger? i mean, this even assumes that obsessing over generational differences & how they affect parenting & consumer trends isn't ridiculously hacky & embarrassing in the first place. my feeling is that thomas just completely whiffed it when it comes to catching the zeitgeist of "baby culture" as a marketing phenomenon. entire chapters of the book were devoted to the rise & market dominance of baby einstein products--you know, the same products that were the subject of a class-action lawsuit within the last few years? she writes a bit about the disney princess phenomenon, which was covered in much more detail & care in peggy orenstein's cinderella ate my daughter. she writes at length about "teletubbies," a program that hasn't even been on the air in the united states since 2001--six years before thomas's book was published. i walked away feeling like everything in the book was probably covered in more detail, & in a more timely & relevant fashion, by someone else. the title also really bothered me. it is literally punctuated as "buy, buy baby". why? if the baby is being exhorted to buy, it should be "buy, buy, baby," because the baby is being addressed. if the baby is instead being described as a baby that likes to or is compelled to buy things, shouldn't it be something like "buy-buy baby"? there would be no comma is "buy buy" was being employed as an adjective. i can't think of any possible meaning that would necessitate thomas's punctuation choice. how did an editor not catch this? the title is in huge letters on the cover of the book, with a comma as big as a silver dollar. come on, people. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 31, 2012
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Feb 02, 2012
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| 4.04
| 72
| Oct 11, 2011
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Jan 29, 2012
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| 1439183341
| 9781439183342
| 4.04
| 72
| Oct 11, 2011
| Oct 11, 2011
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| quick question: how is it that every other book i've reviewed lately does not have a cover image scan? it's kind of weird. like somehow i fell down th...morequick question: how is it that every other book i've reviewed lately does not have a cover image scan? it's kind of weird. like somehow i fell down the rabbit hole into a world of books so forgotten that no one has even scanned in their covers.
it doesn't make sense because this book is pretty good! it's ALMOST gift book-adjacent. a few years ago i read this goofy book (totally gift book-adjacent) called why do men have nipples?. i kind of expected this book to be like that, only less general interest & more baby/pregnancy-specific. it was indeed baby/pregnancy-specific (& cunningly divided into chronological sections, starting with conception & ending with infant development & post-partum effects on a woman's body), but more science-y & less gimmicky & silly than why do men have nipples?. so that was a pleasant surprise! there was a lot in here about epigenetics (for more on this subject, see my review for origins). if you're only going to read one book about epigenetics this year, i suggest origins--it seemed a bit more rigorous, less gift book-adjacent. but if you're willing to read numerous books on the subject, this one isn't bad. especially if you're looking for a rather light-hearted romp. about epigenetics. & if you like your 200-page books split up into about one hundred separate bite-sized mini-topics. you're not too likely to learn anything particularly HELPFUL from this book, but it's not bad. especially if you can keep your wits about you & not flip out every time the author suggests that we may be causing birth defects by taking TOO MANY vitamins (i hope no one threw out their pre-natal vitamins after reading that). i read this book when i had a cold & was stuck in bed. i think that's a good circumstance in which to read it. i wasn't at the top of my game so i didn't want anything too taxing, but i wasn't so sick that i couldn't appreciate the wit. (less) | Notes are private!
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Jan 29, 2012
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| 0312651635
| 9780312651633
| 3.63
| 144
| Nov 02, 2011
| Nov 22, 2011
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| go read my review for my nest isn't empty, it just has more closet space. go ahead. i'll wait. are you back? okay. well, this book is exactly...morego read my review for my nest isn't empty, it just has more closet space. go ahead. i'll wait. are you back? okay. well, this book is exactly the same book as that one. sure, the words are different, but it's still trying to be funny without ever really getting there, vaguely woman-hating, inconsequential, substance-less, & confusing. i read this book for two reasons: it was already on my bookshelf before i read the first book by these two so i figured "why the fuck not? i have a half hour to kill," & it has kitty cats on the cover. the kitties are the best part of the book.(less) | Notes are private!
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Jan 29, 2012
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| 0061711462
| 9780061711466
| 3.85
| 149
| Sep 21, 2010
| Oct 01, 2010
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| well, of course i had to read this because the library search engine told me it was about infertility. that is like my favorite thing to read about no...morewell, of course i had to read this because the library search engine told me it was about infertility. that is like my favorite thing to read about now. but it was only maybe one-third about infertility. it was 1/3 infertility, 1/3 living with depression, & 1/3 being jewish. not being religious at all, let alone jewish, it was really difficult for me to get into the author's descriptions of joining a new synagogue, & it was especially tough for me to become invested in her sudden desire to become a rabbi. she details meeting with five rabbis & asking them all about their rabbinical journeys. she seems surprised when every single one of them informs her that she will have to learn hebrew if she wants to be a rabbi.
this dovetailed nicely (which is to say, obnoxiously) with her earlier accounts of being a liberal do-gooder who wants to help the less fortunate. she really wants to get a job working for justice for janitors, because she thinks they do such awesome things & have the most successful & energetic union campaigns. the feeling that the author particularly wants to work with justice for janitors because then she'd be helping not just poor people but also brown people is overwhelming. when she swings by the office & asks for a job, the director explains that she needs to be fluent in spanish to organize the largely spanish-speaking populace that the organization serves. um...duh? on the one hand, it's refreshing that the author didn't leave this out, so as to make herself look a little better (smarter). on the other hand, leaving it in seemed to indicate that she thought it was kind of a dumb rule. like the rule that a rabbi needs to know hebrew. there was this unspoken, "why can't i just do what i want without having to learn this hard thing?" feeling. i wasn't into that. i also wasn't real into her tying her infertility journey to her history as a liberal do-gooder. she writes, "i worked for the poor! where's my baby?" YUCK. "hey guys, i did this noble thing, now where's my prize?" she also writes a few times about how angry it makes her that teenagers & crackheads can get pregnant but she can't. it's like, dude, i hear you, i'm in the same boat, being a reasonably financially stable 32-year-old with no drug addictions & a loving relationship with a partner who cannot seem to get pregnant, but i hope i get struck by lightning before i start saying that somehow i am more "worthy" of a baby than someone else who is younger than me or suffering from addiction issues or whatever. getting pregnant has nothing to do with being "worthy" of a child. yes, it's depressing to see 15-year-olds being all, "OMG i got pregnant the first time i ever had sex, how do i tell my mom?" but...it's not a competition. i'm not "losing". deep breaths. this was kind of hammered home in the scene where potts suffers from a relatively early miscarriage. before she even swings by the ER to ask about the blood, she calls everyone she knows & is like, "so, i'm having a miscarriage. yeah, it's a total bummer. man, don't you feel bad for me?" i am ALL FOR people being honest & open about their infertility journeys & getting support from their loved ones. but there was this really unseemly "feel bad for me, guys, that's what i really want more than anything" vibe to...so much of the book, actually. it was off-putting. this includes potts's descriptions of being diagnosed with & learning to live with depression. i was pumped at first, because most of these stories transpired in east somerville. holla! that was totally my stomping grounds before i wound up in godforsaken kansas. but i mean, she writes about moving into a collective house based solely around the fact that everyone living there is in therapy. what the fuck? who does that? she gets very defensive about being on SSRIs. i mean, i get that she was diagnosed with depression & puts on drugs in the early/mid-90s, when maybe this shit was a little more taboo & unusual. but this book was published in 2010. she had fifteen years to climb down off the metaphorical cross, you know? A LOT of people are in therapy (including me). A LOT of people are on psych meds (including me, until a few years ago). it's not that big of a deal. i really felt for potts at the end of the book when her insurance coverage for IVF ran out & she still had not managed to get pregnant. i hope that potts & her husband find a way to become parents, i really do, because i'm in the infertility boat & i know that it's so unbelievably hard. even hearing about strangers that i don't know getting pregnant...it's tough. & i think that anyone who has gone through that journey & finally emerged a parent is going to cherish the parenting experience so much & be the most incredible parent...i just wish i had liked this book more.(less) | Notes are private!
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Jan 29, 2012
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| 1400068827
| 9781400068821
| 3.22
| 87
| Jul 12, 2011
| Jul 12, 2011
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| i didn't hate this book, or even dislike it. but i did find it mind-bogglingly solipsistic. it's supposedly a memoir, so i guess i shouldn't be surpri...morei didn't hate this book, or even dislike it. but i did find it mind-bogglingly solipsistic. it's supposedly a memoir, so i guess i shouldn't be surprised. & i probably wouldn't have minded at all had the book truly been a straight memoir. but the text is peppered with references to studies on divorce & its impact on child development, how sexual attractions helps & hinders the success of marriage, the psychology behind the housing bubble, etc. it's as if thomas hopes that the book will work as a sociological examination of the personal failings of generation X if it doesn't work as a memoir. the result is that it doesn't really succeed as either.
thomas goes into excruciating detail about the breakdown of her own parents' marriage & how growing up a child of divorce with an absent (alcoholic) father predisposed her to being preyed upon by older men. this leads to her theory that all marriages are in some way incestuous--that we seek to extract the kind of parental love & attention from a spouse that we didn't get from a parent. perhaps this is true for thomas, but i think it's quite the leap to assume that it's remotely true of everyone else, even other adult children of divorce! i mean...jesus christ! when thomas offers her incest theory, she also starts writing a lot about how she started going to therapy in her 20s, & realizing the emotional scars she was carrying around from her parents' divorce & feeling abandoned due to her father's alcoholism & her mother's depression, etc etc etc. listen. not that it' a contest, but in the Great Revue of Fucked Up Childhoods, i've got thomas beat in every category. i'll see your alcoholic & raise you a speed habit. i'll see your depression & raise you some paranoid schizophrenia. i'll see your divorce & raise you three children pleading with you to get divorced every day for at least ten years, before the marriage finally dissolves when one parent keels over dead on the couch one day. okay? i started therapy in my early 20s & am still at it in my early 30s. the difference is that i can look at all this fucked up childhood stuff & say--so the fuck what? i'm 32 now & my life is my own. i don't especially feel the need to write a memoir in which i basically hash out my therapy so that it can be printed & placed on a bookshelf for my children to read when they get old enough. i guess i don't know how to put it into words, but it sounded to me like thomas had made some kind of rotten decisions in her life, done some things for the wrong reasons, & was looking to blame it all on someone else. divorced parents looked like a good choice. maybe even tie it in with the "epidemic" of divorce affecting generation X children & portray an entire generation of people as fundamentally incapable of having healthy relationships & making smart choices! it's not us, it's the environment! or maybe it's you. i mean, there comes a point where maybe you need to stop blaming mom & dad. there also comes a point where maybe you consider what you learned from being a little too well-informed about the details & emotional maelstrom of your parents' divorce & you don't write an even more detailed & confessional account of your own divorce. thomas repeatedly explains how she & her ex-husvand worked together to shield the children from some of the potentially more traumatizing elements if the divorce, but she doesn't hold anything back in this memoir. which her kids could conceivably read someday. i mean, hopefully by the time they do, they'll also be old enough to handle it, but it all seems a little counter-intuitive to me. there were a million little things in the book that just made me feel like thomas isn't the most self-aware person in the world. she remarks that she & her husband bought a BMW & felt kind of shame-faced over it, but it was a really good choice because they have two little children & needed a safe, reliable car. personally, i think my second-hand saturn from 2002 is pretty safe & reliable & it only cost $2800. bear in mind that thomas & her husband live in new york city, where you don't even need a car--not even if you have children! it seemed obvious to me that they bought the BMW as a status object & were using the kids to justify it. just like they used the kids to justify a six-figure remodel of their kitchen. just like they used their kids to justify taking out an ARM for a multi-story brooklyn brownstone they couldn't actually afford. they keep saying they want the kids to have a place that feels like a real home, a place that is comfortable & safe & warm. well, guess what? trust me when i tell you that a two-year-old doesn't give two fucks about whether you have a viking range in your kitchen. or marble countertops. or seatwarmers in your luxury sedan. don't use the kids to justify & excuse your own desire for things that you can't really afford. after her divorce, thomas moves into an apartment in a neighborhood that she "wouldn't have felt safe walking around in five years before". i think that says a fuck of a lot more about thomas than it does about the neighborhood, especially in light of the fact that there has been an 80% reduction in violent crime in new york city over the last thirty years (compared with a 40% reduction in the rest of the country). she says the kids had to stay with her ex because they wouldn't be safe in her new place. well, guess what, lady? a whole shitload of other kids grow up in "bad neighborhoods," not because their parents don't love them, but because their parents don't have the money to buy a co-op in park slope. sometimes you live within your means & everything works out okay anyway. thomas's attempts to portray something that was surely personally catastrophic & traumatizing, but is not actually at all uncommon, as some kind of weird crippling epidemic that accounts for everything from helicopter parenting to the housing bubble to misogyny (seriously, thomas theorizes that maybe the reason men say sexist things about women is because they're angry with their moms for getting divorced...so explain to me why misogyny isn't just this random thing that started happening in like 1975?) are really labored & honestly not at all relatable. maybe i'm biased because i'm ten years younger than thomas (ie, not really generation X at all--but also not a millennial) & my divorce was just no big whoop. maybe there's a whole swath of the population that would read this book & be like, "wow, i totally get where she's coming from!" i just hope i never meet any of those people. 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Jan 29, 2012
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| 1593696647
| 9781593696641
| 3.88
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| Aug 30, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
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| boy, am i ever relieved that this is the last book in this series. i am not wild about these characters. this one is all about how some folks...moreboy, am i ever relieved that this is the last book in this series. i am not wild about these characters. this one is all about how some folks in new orleans decided to organize a benefit for the local orphanages, which are housing more children than ever since the yellow fever epidemic. everyone is excited & wants to contribute. mme oceane has been invited to sing a song & cecile suggests that marie-grace sing a duet with mme oceane, as marie-grace has such a pretty voice. armand wants to paint backdrops, mrs. rey is going to contribute some pies or something, & of course cecile wants to help out as well. but how? a children's choir is performing, but cecile is pretty self-aware about the fact that she doesn't have a great voice. all she really wants to do is a recitation. she loves to recite. um. i know it was a different time & everything, maybe recitations by nine-year-olds were the height of world-class entertainment in 1853, but this sounds totally, totally boring to me. cecile works with someone down at the theatre to choose the perfect recitation. she wants to read something that will really speak to the children in the orphanages--something that captures the fear they felt losing their parents, but also the hope they have for the future. she finds a poem about a thunderstorm & thinks it checks all the boxes. she works her ass off memorizing it & learning how to recite it with just the right emotion. then she screens it for an audience of one: a little girl who is temporarily staying at the orphanage after her brother (her only family) collapsed in the street from yellow fever. (incidentally, i really wonder how realistic it is for people to be repeatedly described as just keeling the fuck over one day from the fever, while they're out living their every day lives. if i wake up one day with even a whisper of a sniffle, i dive right back into bed & stay there until i feel 100% better. you won't catch me keeling over with yellow fever in the cracker aisle at the local grocery store!) the little girl does not get the thunderstorm poem. cecile is crushed. marie-grace suggests that cecile write her own poem. because if there's one thing that's even worse than listening to a ten-year-old recite some abstract poem about a thunderstorm, it's listening to a ten-year-old recite a poem she wrote herself. that cloud of dust you see is me booking it for the nearest exit. cecile is non-plussed. she thinks her talent is in recitation (HOW IS THAT A TALENT?), not writing. but she gives it a whirl & is surprised when the words start flowing. she has no trouble writing a lovely (to her) poem that perfectly captures her assumptions about how the orphans must feel. because this entire series of books is basically about how a couple of privileged, relatively spoiled little girls save the less-fortunate with their amazing powers of empathy. *puke* the book even includes cecile's poem in full. it's not good. i know it was written by the author of the book & not cecile, & maybe she made it purposefully kind of rotten so it would seem more like a young girl wrote it, but...suffice to say, not everyone can or should write poetry. cecile decides that her gift is her ability to put the orphans' feelings into words. because god forbid that poor children be allowed to speak for themselves, amirite?(less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Jan 19, 2012
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Jan 29, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 1593696558
| 9781593696559
| 3.78
| 23
| Aug 30, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
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| another problematic book in which someone close to the main character comes down with yellow fever, which pushes the main character over the edge into...moreanother problematic book in which someone close to the main character comes down with yellow fever, which pushes the main character over the edge into giving a shit about the epidemic. in this book, it's marie-grace's music teacher, madamoiselle oceane. marie-grace is particularly distressed because madamoiselle oceane & marie-grace's uncle are in love & planning to get married. marie-grace is excited to be able to start calling her teacher "aunt oceane".
but unfortunately, mme oceane gets sick & is taken to an infirmary. marie-grace's uncle isn't allowed to attend to her because only girls & women are allowed inside. marie-grace is all, "oh no! who will take care of mme oceane? if only we knew a girl or woman who wasn't up to anything important right now!" this goes on for quite some time before marie-grace is all, "wait! I'm a girl! i'll attend to her!" & so she does. this mainly consists of giving mme oceane ice chips. it's worth noting that marie-grace bumps into the snooty rich girl with whom she attends school, who explains that one of her little siblings got yellow fever & her mother promised god that if the baby recovered, they would donate supplies to the infirmaries. the baby got better, so the snooty rich girl is there to donate ice. this is the ONLY reason marie-grace knows there is ice on the premises. when she asks the nurse for ice, the nurse says there isn't any. marie-grace goes to the lobby & finds the ice stuffed in a corner somewhere & brings some to mme oceane. which means that everyone else in the infirmary is suffering without ice, possibly without proper hydration, & possibly dying because of mismanagement at the infrmary & marie-grace does nothing to address the problem because she's in such a rush to get some ice chips back to mme oceane. um, marie-grace could have made WAY MORE of a difference from where i sit. anyway, marie-grace's ministrations, which last for all of about five hours, bring mme oceane back to health, but dr. gardner freaks & wants to send marie-grace to the country to live with her cousins to wait out the epidemic. at the last second, he arranged for her to live at the orphanage instead so she can help take care of the gazillions of new orphans showing up there every day--kids whose parents died of yellow fever. i fail to see how living at the orphanage attending to children who lived in homes infected by yellow fever is going to keep amrie-grace safe from the fever. i also fail to see how it's a victory for marie-grace to be essentially pressed into the role of orphanage matron at the tender age of ten years old, or why she can't help with the kids & still live at home. one book to go! i'll be relieved to be done with this series.(less) | Notes are private!
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Jan 28, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 1593696639
| 9781593696634
| 4.03
| 36
| Aug 30, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
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| cecile's brother armand comes down with yellow fever & the rey family is quarantined. everyone is shocked because they were under the impression that ...morececile's brother armand comes down with yellow fever & the rey family is quarantined. everyone is shocked because they were under the impression that people who had been in new orleans for a long time were somehow immune to the fever. the fact that armand got sick is seen as evidence that the yellow fever outbreak is progressing into a full-blown epidemic.
cecile somehow gets in touch with marie-grace & asks her to please ask her father, dr. gardner, to come check in on armand. cecile thinks dr. gardner is one of the best doctors in the city, & that if anyone can save armand, it's him. even though my understanding is that there was no real medicine for yellow fever & whether you lived or died depended on how strong you were before you got sick, how tough your immune system is, & getting the proper care in terms of staying hydrated. while they wait on dr. gardner, the rey's maid, ellen, also falls ill with the fever. she tells cecile that she emigrated from ireland to have a better life for herself, & that she has ten brothers, including two that live in boston. her father didn't want her to leave ireland, but she wanted to be free to explore her potential. by...being a maid? i don't know. i felt really bad for ellen in this book. there's no shame in being a maid, i myself have worked as a hotel maid, but if the reader was supposed to get the sense that ellen is following her dreams, i'm not really hearing that. & in contrast, cecile seems very spoiled. even moreso when dr. gardner shows up. he attends to both patients, but while armand begins to improve, ellen gets worse & eventually dies. there's a scene in which is cecile is attending to ellen's bedside & feels guilty because she finds herself distracted with worry over armand. you should feel bad, cecile! not that it's her fault ellen died, but hello, pay attention to the person dying in the bed next to you! the reys are thrilled when armand recovers, but sad about ellen. to assuage their grief, they send ellen's wages to her brothers in boston with a note explaining that she died. i bet the brothers were THRILLED to get that letter! oh wait. i think the problem with these books being so character-driven is that i rather dislike the characters. especially cecile. she seems really self-involved to me.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 19, 2012
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Jan 28, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1593696531
| 9781593696535
| 3.91
| 43
| Aug 30, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
|
| marie-grace finds an orphan of indeterminate ethnicity on her doorstep one evening. it's just a tiny baby & she thinks she sees a woman in a head scar...moremarie-grace finds an orphan of indeterminate ethnicity on her doorstep one evening. it's just a tiny baby & she thinks she sees a woman in a head scarf of the variety often worn by women of color in new orleans lurking around the corner, waiting to make sure the baby is brought inside. but she can't leave the baby alone to go chasing after the woman. when dr. gardner gets home, he speculates that the baby has been abandoned at their house because he is a well-known doctor & people assume the baby will safe with a doctor. he wonders if the baby may be mixed race. the woman marie-grace saw could have been a family servant...or a slave. marie-grace is horrified by the possibility that the baby's mother could be a slave. that would mean that, by law, he is a slave as well & that his owners could come to claim him. dr. gardner places an ad in the paper to try to find the baby's family, & just as he & marie-grace feared, a man from a plantation shows up, claiming that one of the slaves ran off with her new baby & that the baby fits the description of the baby the gardners found. dr. gardner presents the man with a large bill for the baby's care & the man gets angry & storms off. dr. gardner suggests turning the baby over to a local orphanage for white children. he's light enough that the priest that vets the children might be fooled, & the plantation owner would never think to look for an escaped slave in an orhphanage for white people. marie-grace hates the idea of giving the baby up--she has named him philip--but she's hopeful that he'll be safer there. she arranges to borrow fancy baby clothes from cecile's family so that the baby will appear rich & less likely to be a slave child. astonishingly, the fancy clothes work. the priest is all, "this is so sad. this baby is obviously from a very wealthy family." seriously, dude? you're not even going to ask if the baby showed up in such fancy duds or if they were maybe from the gardners? anyway, philip is accepted into the orphanage & marie-grace starts visiting all the time to see him & the other children. then the yellow fever epidemic strikes. the common wisdom is that only newcomers are likely to get ill. one of the nuns at the orphanage tells marie-grace that a local woman has become quite taken with philip & wants to bring him to chicago to be placed in an orphanage there so he won't catch yellow fever. she will do so if dr. gardner thinks it's wise. dr. gardner tells marie-grace that he thinks it's a great idea--slave owners would never think to go all the way to chicago to look for the baby. & he'll be far away from the yellow fever. but marie-grace tells the nuns he said no because she doesn't want to risk never seeing philip again. it's not until marie-grace learns that her music teacher, madamoiselle oceane, is sick with yellow fever, that she agrees to let philip go to chicago. these books are really character-driven, but in a weird way that doesn't appeal to me. i'm just not wild about this series & i can't quite figure out why.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 18, 2012
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Jan 24, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 1593693214
| 9781593693213
| 3.97
| 97
| Sep 01, 2007
| Sep 01, 2007
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| hmmm. i think this book is predicated on a faulty premise. the kittredges are informed by their bank (at which ruthie smithens's father works) that th...morehmmm. i think this book is predicated on a faulty premise. the kittredges are informed by their bank (at which ruthie smithens's father works) that they are going to be evicted "after the holidays" if they don't scare up some of the money they owe on their mortgage. they're $200 behind, which was a lot in 1934 or whenever. they think they have it in the bag because mr. kittredge has accepted a job driving some of the family's boarders to florida to winter, & then he'll be driving someone else's car back to cinncinnati. was this a thing that happened back then? i know people sometimes hire strangers to drive their cars across the country now, but cars are also far more prevalent now, & people are far more peripatetic. something about this story seems...off. anyway, mr. kittredge will be back, money in hand, by january 2. the kittredges assume this is what the bank means by "after the holidays," as january 2 is after both christmas & the new year. & this is the faulty premise. really, guys? you didn't maybe, i don't know, get something IN WRITING from the bank that says, "pay this much money by this date or else"? you're just guesstimating about what "after the holidays" means? good thing ruthie is around to meddle. she visits her father's office & finds him frowning over the kittredges' file. i bet it's not at all awkward for them to be friends with someone who knows all their intimate financial business like that. the file clearly states that the kittredges will be evicted if they don't have the money by december 28. ruthie sees this on december 26. she runs off to inform kit & they hatch a harebrained scheme befitting lucy & ethel. they will sneak out of their houses & catch a train to kentucky, where they will track down kit's aunt millie & beg her for the money. then they will spirit the money back to cinncinnati & present it to mrs. kittredge so she can make the payment before everyone gets evicted. the whole plan hinges on kit convincing charlie to do her chores for her. so ruthie is like, "awesome, see you tomorrow!" she's in for a surprise when charlie shows up at the train station instead of kit. he says kit spilled the beans to him & he thinks the whole plan is doomed to failure so he prohibited kit from coming & is only there to convince ruthie to go home. instead, she convinces him to go to kentucky with her. he calls her "goofy ruthie" & ruthie chafes at being constantly dismissed as goofy head-in-the-clouds ruthie who is obsessed with fairy tales & thinks that every story is fated for a happy ending. she wants to get the money from aunt millie to prove that she can do something helpful & practical for once. can i just insert here that hitting up someone else's relative, who you've never even met before, for money that the family you're begging for has already rejected several times over, doesn't strike me as especially helpful or practical? so there's another faulty premise. ruthie decides that she will get the money from aunt millie & give it to mrs. kittredge & make sure that everyone knows exactly what she did & why so that she can be a hero. because i know that whenever i am poised on the precipice of eviction & am so desperate that strange children i'm not even related to have to go begging on my behalf, my first priority is definitely to hale those children as conquering heroes. basically, everything comes up ruthie. she is kind & generous to people on the train, & it pays off when one of them suggests a shortcut. some others run & retrieve their father & his wagon so that ruthie & charlie can ride to the crossroad they need. ruthie recalls a story one of the passengers told which causes her to speculate that aunt millie might be at church in town instead of at home. charlie & ruthie find millie & she is happy to give them the money. & she's such a brassy big shot in her town that she forces the banker to open the bank then & there so she can get it. then she marches all the townspeople down to the railroad tracks to stop the train so ruthie & charlie can make it back to cinncinnati that night. ruthie reconsiders her plan to present the money herself & instead has charlie do it & leave her name out of it. fast forward a week or two & mr. kittredge is back & still crowing about how charlie saved the day. charlie asks ruthie's permission to tell the family the truth about her involvement & she acquiesces. he frames it as a fairy tale & ruthie is pleased. the book ends there, so we don't see how mr. & mrs. kittredge react to the news that a random child from the neighborhood was meddling in their bank paperwork & risked life & limb to beg their elderly relative for cash. this book was weird. i'm not real shy about my financial situation, but i still really wouldn't want random people to whom i have disclosed nothing trying to solicit donations on my behalf. i guess the depression was a different era.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 17, 2012
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Jan 23, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0399157530
| 9780399157530
| 3.54
| 3,734
| May 03, 2011
| May 03, 2011
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| a must-read for serious, unstoppable betty white fans! a total snooze for everyone else. unless you have really been thirsting for juicy tidbits of in...morea must-read for serious, unstoppable betty white fans! a total snooze for everyone else. unless you have really been thirsting for juicy tidbits of insider info related to betty's determination to be saccharine sweet & never have anything but a gushing, complimentary word to say about anyone involved in her banner year of 2010 (when she hosted "saturday night live" & starred in a weekly sitcom again for the first time in 25 years), you can very safely give this a miss. wish i had. (& yes, it does pain me to be disappointed in betty white, but seriously. i read this book in about 45 minutes & literally all it is is betty saying, "my friend sandy bullock is such a sweetheart. here's a photo of us together. also, i love animals." that's it.)(less)
| Notes are private!
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| Jan 13, 2012
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Jan 22, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0312662297
| 9780312662295
| 3.75
| 465
| 2009
| Oct 26, 2010
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| this book made me sad. it made me sad because lisa scottoline is apparently a best-selling author (of mysteries--i'm not sure how her humor collection...morethis book made me sad. it made me sad because lisa scottoline is apparently a best-selling author (of mysteries--i'm not sure how her humor collections stack up in terms of sales) who makes enough of a living from her writing that she is able to afford an embarrassingly gargantuan house, if the numerous photos in this book are to be believed. i love my little bungalow, but i'm pretty sure scottoline's kitchen is bigger than my entire house.
scottoline has a weekly column in the "philadelphia inquirer," & as far as i can tell, this is a compilation of said columns. some of them are written by her 24-year-old daughter francesca, who has the exact same writing style as her mother. their essays are indistinguishable except that francesca writes a little bit more about going to the gym & wanting a boyfriend. there was a sad essay in which she wrote about the difficulties of making close female friends as an adult (i can relate) & then said, "if there is one thing unites all womankind, it's body insecurity, so i joined a gym, thinking i'd meet all kinds of women to befriend there." i get that these are just cute, fun essays that are designed to appeal to a very broad readership, but it makes me sad when i read books in which women are like, "all women hate their bodies, right? la la la!" as if we are living in a "cathy" cartoon strip & there's nothing wrong with that. i also did not care for the writing style employed. it's a lot of very short paragraphs, & about 75% of them are written to set up a joke, the punchline to which is delivered in a single sentence that makes up its own paragraph. the joke is funny less than 1% of the time. i guess if someone out there has spent the last 25 years yearning for the good old days of dave barry's syndicated newspaper column circa 1987, but thinking, "it would be even better if it was written by a woman who is obsessed with cavalier spaniels & HD TV," that person is having a very lucky day. but for the rest of us...we're wondering how this kind of thing gets published.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 14, 2012
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Jan 15, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0307267679
| 9780307267672
| 3.66
| 2,709
| Nov 01, 2011
| Nov 01, 2011
|
| well. this was a huge disappointment. i loved the year of magical thinking, didion's memoir about the unexpected & sudden death of her husband, to whi...morewell. this was a huge disappointment. i loved the year of magical thinking, didion's memoir about the unexpected & sudden death of her husband, to which blue nights will inevitably be compared. the most positive thing i can say about blue nights is that its length (around 180 pages) & ginormous font make it a quick read. this book is a mishmash memoir about the death of didion's adopted daughter quintana & didion's inability to come to terms with her own aging. the two topics don't mesh well & the incomprehensible leaping back & forth saps each story of its own momentum. didion also employed this weird writerly device of obsessive repetition--stories about her daughter's early years, something the doctor said as quintana was dying in the ICU, didion's observations of what quintana wore to be married in--which functioned to drain the emotional resonance from the story. if an editor excised every repetitive phrase from the book, you might seriously be left with about twenty pages. that's not even an exaggeration. it's so constant, it almost reads like a picture book for infants. & personally, i was very put off by the passage in which didion goes on & on & ON about a mansion that she & her husband bought in brentwood when quintana was twelve years old. this segued into reminisces about quintana's adoption, & how the couple's wealthy friends showered them in sixty various linen infant dresses, each of which had to be washed & hung out to dry by hand by their capable undocumented spanish-speaking maid. in this turned into flashbacks about vacationing in a villa in the south of france, attended to by natasha richardson, & that turned into didion's recollections of natasha richardson's death from a head injury while skiing. didion writes over & over again, "tasha didn't deserve this," which may be true, but the corollary to such a statement is that someone out there DOES deserve to die from a head injury while skiing. it's just one of those facile, bland things people say when faced with an unexpected death, & while i can perhaps give a person a pass on not knowing what to say while they are actually standing in the ICU staring down the barrel of the death of a loved one, i do expect a bit more from a professional writer who has been publishing consistently for over forty years & had a whole team of editors at her disposal while putting this book together. back to the mansion & the linen dresses, etc. didion remarks that some people might hear this story & assume that quintana's childhood was one of privilege. didion flips out at this point & writes, "privilege is an accusation. privilege is an insult. how dare you suggest that my family is privileged? how dare you suggest that my daughter's childhood wasn't normal?" i got into a HUGE ARGUMENT with a friend about this, because i think that this passage was incredibly tone-deaf & narcissistic, & that it also functioned to use grief & mourning to justify the normalcy of what is indeed a very privileged lifestyle. & i thought that was actually an insult to quintana's memory. after all, this is joan didion. there is NO WAY that suggestions that the topics she writes about tend to reflect a privileged & inaccessible lifestyle are new to her. she's been writing about swanning around europe on yachts & posh dinner parties with movie stars on the beaches of malibu for decades. why attempt to argue the point that somehow, because this is mornal for her, that it is by definition not privilege, & especially why try to cloak it in the disingenuous mantle of protecting the innocence of one's dead daughter? it struck me as incredibly tacky. my friend (the child of two wealthy lawyers, i should note--class-privileged enough himself to have all kinds of snippy remarks to level at german opera & oxfords from joseph a. bank) railed against my lack of "empathy" & basically insisted that i was a terrible person for having an ideological worldview that didn't crumble at the first sign of someone going through a rough time. i insist that who we are when we are angry or grieving or otherwise not at the top of our game is who we ACTUALLY are, & if we're going to expose ourselves as classist snobs then, then we are classist snobs & no amount of grief will change that. & that even the wealthy would do well to remember that EVERYONE (if they are fortunate enough to form close human bonds & stay alive for a while) experiences the death of a loved one. i have, & i hope that if i started getting up on my high horse about how no one knows the suffering i've seen, someone would have taken me aside & said, "dude, i know you're hurtin', but you're getting a little tacky. dial down the desdemona routine a little." & i won't even get into didion's fears of aging, which mostly revolve around refusing to gain weight & lamenting a pair of four-inch stack heels that she's unlikely to ever wear again due to balance/nerve issues. dare i say that more than a few people who died young would have been more than happy to trade the glamorous shoes for a few extra decades of life. perspective? it's never been didion's strong suit.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 13, 2012
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Jan 15, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0701176970
| 9780701176976
| 3.13
| 1,395
| 2010
| 2010
|
| this book started off with some promise. it follows two primary characters, petra & bill. petra is a 13-year-old girl growing up in wales. it's 1974 &...morethis book started off with some promise. it follows two primary characters, petra & bill. petra is a 13-year-old girl growing up in wales. it's 1974 & she is OBSESSED with david cassidy. she is striving to be integrated into the popular clique at school, which is headed by a queen bee named gillian. petra is not yet confident & popular enough to be gillian's BFF so she has become close to another girl in the group, sharon. all of the girls like david cassidy, but petra & sharon are bonded by their all-consuming obsession. petra is also a cellist & the daughter of a rather stern german mother who does not approve of pop music, so the whole david cassidy thing is kind of covert.
bill is in his early 20s & after graduating from university with a degree in english literature (specializing in the romantic poets), he is having trouble finding work. he finally lands a gig writing for "the ultimate david cassidy magazine". it's a bit fancier than all the other fan rags & its claim to fame is a new personal letter from david cassidy himself in each issue. bill's job is to write these letters. in a rather labored bit of plotting, bill's girlfriend, ruth, loathes david cassidy with an all-consuming passion, so bill "has" to lie to her about what he does for work. he leads her to believe that he writes for a regular rock magazine, interviewing non-embarrassing musicians like john lennon & led zeppelin, but that he writes under a pseudonym so she can never see what he writes. or something. this plotline didn't make a lot of sense to me because you'd think ruth would just be relieved that her boyfriend had a job--any job. & a gig at even an embarrassing teen rag focusing on david cassidy has potential to turn into something bigger & better. are we supposed to think she would have broken up with him if she knew the truth? would that have been so bad, considering that ruth wasn't really a very important character? was her hatred of david cassidy supposed to illustrate bill's shame about his job? i feel like pearson had a thousand other avenues to explore that rather than attaching this manufactured bit of trouble to the bill/ruth dynamic. anyway, like i said, this first half of the book isn't too bad. i think pearson does a really good job exploring the phenomenon of teen girl celebrity crushes. it all builds up to a big climax in which petra enters "the ultimate david cassidy fan quiz," sponsored by the fan magazine for which bill writes. the grand prize is an all-expenses paid trip to california for the winner & a friend to actually meet david cassidy on the set of "the partridge family". bill's boss asks him to make the quiz really difficult, full of questions that only a real super-fan could answer correctly, to weed out the girls who are taking a time out from their obsession with donny osmond to try to score a free trip to california. petra & sharon spend every spare moment laboring over the quiz...& then gillian invites petra over for some one-on-one time, something that has never happened before. after gillian butters petra up by giving her clothes & inviting her to go to the beach with some boys, she asks to be listed as petra's friend on the quiz entry. petra has been dreaming of the day that gillian would cast her in the role of BFF, but she can't stand the thought of betraying sharon. she stammers & says that she will enter gillian's name instead...but she can't go through it. nonetheless, while the girls are on the train en route to actually see david cassidy live in concert in london, gillian tells everyone that petra said she'd enter gillian instead of sharon & sharon is very hurt. the concert ends up being a disaster. one girl actually dies from a heart condition or being crushed by the crowd or something. sharon is trampled & breaks a rib. petra gets in ENORMOUS TROUBLE for lying to her mother about the concert. bill is at the concert as well, with a press pass. he even interacts with petra & sharon. he found a lost shoe, & noticed that petra is missing a shoe. it's not the same shoe. he encourages sharon to get medical attention, but the girls insist that they need to stay in case david cassidy resumes the concert. fast forward 25 years. petra's mother dies on the same day that she finds out that her husband has a mistress. this is where the book begins to completely unravel, because the writing about the modern-day characters is far worse than the writing about the younger characters. when you first read that petra's husband is having an affair, & that she just found out when the mistress called & confessed, you're like, "oh my god, how awful." but through a series of extremely tedious flashbacks, you learn that petra's husband has in fact been cheating on her with all kinds of women for the last thirteen years. he started when their daughter was in the NICU after being born eleven weeks premature. & petra has known about it the whole time. given that, having a mistress call you up & confess wouldn't necessarily seem like THAT big of a deal. i mean, if you're going to tolerate bad behavior for thirteen years, don't expect me to clutch my pearls when it happens again, you know? but of course we had to get the husband out of the picture for the romance to unfold. petra discovers the letter from "the ultimate david cassidy fan magazine" (they really couldn't have come up with a better title than that?) in her mother's closet. she won the contest all those years before, & her mother didn't tell her because i guess she didn't approve or something. seems like you should have had to get your parent's permission BEFORE entering the contest, but what do i know? in a fit of despair, petra calls the publishing company that bought the company that had once published "the ultimate david cassidy fan magazine". a woman named marie answers, & the writing starts to get REALLY sloppy. we learn so much about marie. she's hungover. she's young. she's catholic. she's the editor of a lighthearted teen magazine for girls. she is in competition with another magazine for girls that writes about sex & blow jobs. marie prefers her magazine, which respects the youth & naivete of the readership. she has to get to the editorial meeting with "the boss" who runs the whole company & assigns stories & what-not. &...we can all see where this is going, right? amoebas everywhere are like, "oh, bill is totally the guy who runs the company, right? & this whole chapter with marie calling him 'the boss' non-stop is a really lame attempt to throw us off the scent by not using his name." it did not escape MY notice that the entire book is written in omniscient third-person but that we only ever really get inside the heads of petra & bill (save for one sentence that is inside ruth's head, but it was so jarring that i chalk it up to bad editing). so of course this whole chapter in marie's head is shitty writing building up to a climactic reveal that fell totally flat for anyone who actually knows anything about writing. dreadful. yes, bill runs the company & when marie mentions petra's phone call, he decides that they should award petra the prize now. bring her in for a make-over, fly her & sharon to las vegas to see david cassidy perform one of his revival shows, & then arrange a meeting. write it up for one of the magazines as a kind of fin de siecle nostalgia piece. &...we all see where THIS is going, right? raise your hand if you don't think bill & petra are going to fall in love. okay, you, that guy who raised his hand...you fail. get out of my classroom. the writing falls apart completely with the introduction of adult sharon. as a teen, she was written as cheerful & confident. she seemed like a realistic, bubbly, optimistic teenage girl. pearson tries to write adult sharon in pretty much the same way & she comes across as suffering from some kind of brain damage. she routinely jumps up & down in glee, she has loud inappropriate conversations with strangers because she is just so damn lovable, she makes randy off-color jokes in front of people she doesn't know because of her irrepressible joie de vivre...she sounds like she needs some kind of full-time health aid to make sure she doesn't get into the van with the guy brandishing lollipops, seriously. it's ridiculous. & i really wish pearson would have run the manuscript by an american. she has americans saying things like, "it's about 100 yards down the hallway." no. we don't do the metric system here. the only time americans talk about yards is when they're talking about football. she has an american refer to a "moving walkway". again, no. we call them "sidewalks". she has david cassidy say that he imagines his fame will eventually "pass on". again, not something an american would say. there are just a lot of little mistakes like this & they're jarring. oh, & the whole bill & petra falling in love thing? just dreadful. i mean...why? just because they're both single? the timeline was fuzzy to me, but it seemed like only about a month had passed since petra's marriage dissolved. i guess we're supposed to think that bill created this false david cassidy character that petra fell in love with as a 13-year-old, so of course she would fall in love with bill as an adult...& there was also a weird belabored bit about petra feeling betrayed when she learns that bill wrote the david cassidy letters she loved so much as a child. um. did she really think they were real? i am reminded of my mom's grandfather telling her, when she was five years old, that if you pick up a newborn calf every day starting on the day that it's born, eventually you'll be able to pick up a full-grown cow. obviously that's not true. instead, there will just come a day that you can't life the calf anymore. but she believed it for over thirty years. realizing the truth & getting MAD about it is the equivalent of petra being informed that david cassidy didn't really write those letters & getting mad about that. it's just stupid. okay. i'm done.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 10, 2012
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Jan 11, 2012
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| 1592406599
| 9781592406593
| 3.89
| 677
| 2011
| Oct 27, 2011
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| this was just a small, fun book about human psychology. specifically, it is a brief examination of 48 ways humans delude themselves into thinking they...morethis was just a small, fun book about human psychology. specifically, it is a brief examination of 48 ways humans delude themselves into thinking they may be smarter than they actually are.
most people who have taken an intro psychology class or gotten into an argument on an internet forum are probably familiar with at least a few of the topics this book addresses, such as ad hominem arguments, the straw man fallacy, self-fulfilling prophecies, & the bystander effect. some of the others may be new. all are covered in very brief chapters (generall four or five pages each) full of rather witty examples & psychological case studies. some of the chapters even included little psychological tests so you can actually subject yourself to an examination of the fallacy under review, which i thought was a fun touch. i added a new bookshelf for this book (something new i am trying), which i'm calling "gift book-adjacent". that means this is the kind of book you might pick up in the airport bookstore when you are flying to see relatives you don't actually know that well & it suddenly occurs to you that maybe you should bring a gift. it's the kind of book you might see in the bathroom of a friend who subscribes to "the new yorker". it's the kind of book that says, "why, hello. i am interested in neuroscience. but you know. not TOO interested. not interested enough to actually read a book about neuroscience." but it's great for what it is & i will certainly be somewhat more reflective about my own cognitive biases for...oh, the next week or so. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 08, 2012
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Jan 08, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 1593696612
| 9781593696610
| 3.89
| 65
| Aug 30, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
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| this is the second book in the marie-grace/cecile historical new orleans book set. full disclosure: i want to like this character & this book because ...morethis is the second book in the marie-grace/cecile historical new orleans book set. full disclosure: i want to like this character & this book because i think the doll is so pretty. so that could influence my judgment a little. this book is essentially meet marie-grace told from cecile's perspective. it is written by a different author & some of the events from marie-grace are slightly different (somewhat expanded dialogue scenes, for example), but it's mostly the same events all over again. we get cecile's perspective of her first meeting with marie-grace during her singing lesson; cecile's version of running into marie-grace in the french market; cecile's experience sneaking into the white children's mardi gras ball. the book is fleshed out with a contemporaneous story about cecile's family. cecile has an older brother named armand (who looks exactly like morris day from the time in his illustrations). he is studying art in paris & cecile misses him very much. when the family receives word that he is coming home to new orleans three months early, they can barely contain their excitement. cecile's father, mr. rey, has been talking non-stop about how much he is looking forward to having armanda back to pitch in with the family business. mr. rey is a rather wealthy & well-known sculptor who is often hired to fashion fancy staircases & ornamental sconces & what-not from marble. cecile observes that her father made the decorative fireplace mantles in the fancy building where the children's mardi gras balls are held. but when armand comes home, he confides to cecile that he really wants to pursue painting. he gives her a doll he made to look like her, with a delicately painted bisque face. & then marie-grace races up to cecile as she is standing by the docks, digesting her brother's news, & informs her that she has found a baby. really, book? foundlings? that's where this book ends, so i guess i have orphan babies to look forward to as this series progresses. this is why i wish cecile & marie-grace were not co-leads. because the books are trying to impart events that feature both characters prominently, they have to come up with some real flights of fancy (see also: sneaking into each other's mardi gras balls). because marie-grace is white & cecile is a free person of color (which is explored in this book in a scene where cecile & her grandfather go to a local candy shop & are racially abused by some ignorant white men from up north who assume that all black people are slaves), they aren't going to be featured attending school together, for example. i really miss the old american girl formula of breaking the stories up with a meet book, a school story, a holiday story, a birthday story, a book in which something terrible or dramatic happens, & a book that wraps up some of the long-standing conflicts in the story--all of which were designed to showcase the historical details of the time. the way the marie-grace/cecile books are written, things seem more character-focused, at the expense of historical interest, & the characters are not all that interesting, aside from serving as founts of information concerning the unique culture of new orleans. & there are far superior adult books i could read if that was something i really wanted to learn about. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 02, 2012
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Jan 07, 2012
| Paperback
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