What I Read This Month

I read a lot of books. Each month I spotlight a bit of what I read here on this blog. If you have any suggestions for books I should read, send me an email and I’ll take a look.

Watson and Holmes by Karl Bollers and Rick Leonardi

There are so many takes on the Sherlock cannon but this one is a nice twist. Set in Harlem, it follows an eccentric PI and his accidentally partner, ex-special forces doctor Watson. The characters are black and the stories have an urban appeal. If you have any kind of knowledge of the cannon, you’ll recognize every familiar beat. And if you’re not a Sherlock Holmes fan, this might be a nice way to introduce you to it.

The art is great. No complaints there. However, there were quite a few typos in the text and because it’s a graphic novel, there aren’t THAT many words to begin with. So it stood out even more than it would have in a traditional novel.

Overall, I’d recommend this for anyone who can’t wait until there are new episodes of BBC’s Sherlock or CBS’s Elementary.

A Belle in Brooklyn: Advice for Living Your Single Life and Enjoying Mr. Right Now by Demetria L. Lucas

I was introduced to Demetria Lucas through her blog and her TV show. She also has an AskFM channel where she answers relationship questions that I like to read sometimes. Reading this book was like having meeting someone your friends have all told you about but you’ve never met yourself.

There is a knack to writing about your life to be sold to others. You have to write about the interesting stuff while drawing a line at what is private to you. And personally, I just don’t think that telling a bunch of stories where you are almost always in the right is storytelling. It seems more like cherry picking. I want to hear about when she was crazy and wrong and how she got from there to here. There wasn’t much of that in this book.

Also, I didn’t really find a lot of advice in this book. Although I am not single and not in need of dating advice, I thought there would be sections of actionable dating advice. There weren’t any and I’m actually glad for that because I really just preferred reading the essays.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

These are the facts: Alice wakes up on the floor of gym thinking it’s 1998 when it’s really 2008. She has forgotten her three children, her life, and the fact that she is in the midst of an ugly divorce. For some reason, it takes Alice a long, long time to realize that no one is playing a practical joke on her and she really has lost her memory. I’d like to believe that if any of this had happened to me, I would have grasped the concept on the second time someone told me. Yeah, I’d be freaked out but I still wouldn’t be saying “Oh this must be a joke.”

This book could have been about 100 to 150 pages shorter. There was a lot of establishing the amnesia early in the book and just how Alice realizes that she has forgotten 10 years of her life. And that dragged a bit, I thought. If I had been less patient, I would have given up on the book.

There were great bits of insight and emotion about marriage, relationships, and infertility in this book. Great stuff that is so true that you can’t help but believe in the characterizations that follow them. From about page 200 or so, it moved fast.

In the end, we reached the ending you expect within the first 70 pages or so, but not the way you expect. And that’s always a welcome surprise.

Unbreak My Heart by Toni Braxton

I’ll admit it: I’m nosy.

Or rather, I’m the type of person who enjoys knowing what goes on behind closed doors and why. Celebrity biographies can answer all the small questions you’ve always had or they can be fluff machines where the author–ok, the ghostwriter–two steps over anything that might make them look bad.

This was a combination. It really does spend a lot of time talking about her upbringing. There were a lot of questions about how she started out that she answered. She goes over the two bankruptcies and how she got there. She also discusses her complicated relationship with LA Reid and Babyface, which lead to her suing them yet still working with them for a long time.

The title is cheesy. I know she chose it because it’s the name of her most famous song. But in relation to this book, it doesn’t really fit. I think the most interesting parts were about her son and understanding his autism. I also enjoyed that she spent some time talking about her sisters and their reality tv show but didn’t focus too much on them.

This is a good (quick) read for anyone who is a fan of Toni, her music, or her reality show with her sisters.

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