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January 18
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New comment on Jessica's review of
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
reply to this comment
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January 01
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Becky
gave
 
to:
Under the Duvet: Shoes, Reviews, Having the Blues, Builders, Babies, Families and Other Calamities (Paperback)
by Marian Keyes
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my rating:
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read in December, 2007
Becky said:
"I love Marian Keyes. My friends Kathy and Jenn would call her stuff "pink books" (i.e. frothy chick lit), and they definitely all start out that way: oh no, I'm getting married in three days and I'm too fat! Oh no, I woke up in some strang...more
I love Marian Keyes. My friends Kathy and Jenn would call her stuff "pink books" (i.e. frothy chick lit), and they definitely all start out that way: oh no, I'm getting married in three days and I'm too fat! Oh no, I woke up in some strange guy's house after a night of heavy drinking!! Oh no, I have nothing to wear to the party!!! Pretty standard Pink-ness.
But then, somewhere along the way, Keyes' books turn your expectations on their ear. She writes about alcoholism, or loneliness, or having an adult relationship with your parents, and she does it with truth and depth. I think I've read every one of her novels now and each one has (pleasantly) surprised me in this way.
So I was eager to read this collection of essays about the author's real life. It's good! Some of the stories--like the time she lost her passport two days before a trip to see her brother get married and had to plead her case to the bureaucrats at the Irish embassy--are standard Keysian comedy. Others, like when she recounts her recovery from addiction, are quietly moving.
I confess that my favorite is the one where she somehow winds up as a beauty product tester for a magazine and gets daily shipments from all the cosmetics companies. Her description of her long-suffering husband's reaction is hilarious. But c'mon, doesn't that sound like a dream job to you, too? Free girly stuff in the mail?! In this essay more than any other, Keyes feels like a good girlfriend, the kind who gets to do things you've always wanted to do...and then loyally reports back, full of gossipy details....less
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December 30, 2007
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Becky
gave
to:
Fortunate Son: A Novel (Paperback)
by Walter Mosley
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in December, 2007
Becky said:
"This was a toughie to read. Tommy, a young African-American boy, and Eric, a young white boy, are raised as brothers...then traumatically separated when Tommy's mother dies and his real family comes to claim him. Mosley skims fairly quickly over th...more
This was a toughie to read. Tommy, a young African-American boy, and Eric, a young white boy, are raised as brothers...then traumatically separated when Tommy's mother dies and his real family comes to claim him. Mosley skims fairly quickly over the boys' resulting lives--drug-dealing and crime for the sensitive Tommy, college, girlfriends, and an All-American charmed path for the heartless Eric. The story picks back up when the young men reunite and try to make sense of their intertwined history.
Fortunate Son is a powerful allegory of America's race and class divides. Frankly, it's depressing as hell. I was saddened by the casualness with which Mosley relates the horrors of street life that Tommy endures. This felt deliberate to me: "Wake up, reader," Mosley seems to say, "Poor black men like this get beat down. Rich white men succeed, sometimes without deserving it. This is what I see around me every day. What else is new?"
Having said that, the book's stuck with me--a compelling warning or parable, or perhaps both....less
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Becky
gave
to:
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (Hardcover)
by Steve Martin
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my rating:
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read in December, 2007
Becky said:
"Fascinating, as promised in its reviews. Steve Martin tells the story of his years as a stand-up comedian (the 70's and early 80's), dissecting with scientific precision the way he taught himself exactly what makes people laugh. I'll never look at ...more
Fascinating, as promised in its reviews. Steve Martin tells the story of his years as a stand-up comedian (the 70's and early 80's), dissecting with scientific precision the way he taught himself exactly what makes people laugh. I'll never look at comics the same way again.......less
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Becky
gave
to:
American Band: Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland (Hardcover)
by Kristen Laine
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in December, 2007
Becky said:
"As a former high school band geek, I was inclined to like this book even before I read it. But even without this bias, I'd give "American Band" five stars.
This books follows the Concord High Marching Minutemen, from tiny Elkheart, Indi...more
As a former high school band geek, I was inclined to like this book even before I read it. But even without this bias, I'd give "American Band" five stars.
This books follows the Concord High Marching Minutemen, from tiny Elkheart, Indiana, as the Class of 2005 leads their peers to the state marching championship competition. There are times reading this book that you can't believe it's nonfiction--Laine does such a great job of capturing the drama, joy, and heartache of an incredible year in the lives of some pretty incredible teenagers. I laughed AND cried at the ending!
I loved that Laine tracks many different characters throughout her story: several kids with varying experiences within the band juggernaut, their director, Max, his staff, the band parents, the school superintendent. Each character was so fully drawn that I identified with all of them. I particularly liked Grant, the lead trumpeter and the one kid that everyone in the band looks up to, who experiences a major crisis of faith even as the band is helping him discover himself during his senior year.
But my favorite character is Max, the teacher. I saw in Max both of my own high school band directors, their charisma and their ability to create unity among a highly disparate bunch of kids. I also saw myself as Laine described Max's early years, facing strong parent resistance simply because he was new, and struggling to negotiate the unique, intense relationship that fine arts teachers have with their students. And I also saw a man to be pitied, someone so consumed with creating champions that it becomes his family, his whole life. "What price victory?" Laine asks us through Max's character...and the answer isn't clear-cut at all.
...less
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December 15, 2007
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Becky
marked as to-read:
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Hardcover)
by Bill Buford
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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November 25, 2007
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Becky
gave
to:
Away (Hardcover)
by Amy Bloom
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in November, 2007
Becky said:
""Away" is a sad book. It's the story of Lillian Leyb, a Jewish immigrant who comes to New York after seeing her entire family violently murdered in their Russian village. When she discovers that her daughter may still be alive and in hidin...more
"Away" is a sad book. It's the story of Lillian Leyb, a Jewish immigrant who comes to New York after seeing her entire family violently murdered in their Russian village. When she discovers that her daughter may still be alive and in hiding in Siberia, she sets off to find her, literally crossing the globe on foot. She survives however she can: by befriending a superstar family in the New York theatre scene, by kissing up to the matron of a women's prison, by throwing in her lot with a rich prostitute, by caring for a family of orphaned Eskimo boys in the Alaskan wild.
"Away"'s narrative style parallels Lillian's journey. At the beginning, it's very stream-of-consciousness, very fragmented: we get little flashbacks of the day Lillian lost her family, but nothing that we understand, just glimpses of color and shards of story we can't yet piece together. As Lillian starts to heal and her purpose becomes more clear, the story starts to take shape. The narrator's sentences become simpler, less fuzzy. It took me a while to figure out what was going on--I tend to be an impatient reader, and will sometimes give up on a book if I don't get the style right away. I'm glad I hung in there with this one.
My only gripe about "Away" is that the ending felt abrupt. After following Lillian thousands of miles, through one deeply-felt tragedy after another, I needed more time to process the fact that one day she gives up her search and settles down to live a long and relatively happy life. Um, what?! Instead, Bloom gives us a couple pages in a voice that sounds different from the rest of the book, almost like she as author (like her main character?) ran out of steam and just decided to stop where she was....less
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November 04, 2007
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Becky
gave
to:
Can't Wait to Get to Heaven: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Fannie Flagg
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Becky said:
""Can't Wait to Get to Heaven," like all of Fannie Flagg's books, gets the characters of small-town life just right. This is the story of the last day in the life of Elner Shimfissle, resident "auntie" and eccentric old lady of El...more
"Can't Wait to Get to Heaven," like all of Fannie Flagg's books, gets the characters of small-town life just right. This is the story of the last day in the life of Elner Shimfissle, resident "auntie" and eccentric old lady of Elmwood Springs, Missouri. I loved the chapters that describe what happens when she gets to heaven and meets her maker--makers, actually, as there are two! She even gets and answer to her lifelong burning question: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Not a must-read, but a sweet book that I'll come back to when I need a little reminder about what's really important in life.
...less
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October 11, 2007
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Becky
marked as to-read:
Humble Pie (Paperback)
by Gordon Ramsay
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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