Review: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of "chick-lit".  Which probably meant that my POV regarding this book doesn't count.  But.  I'm going to give it anyway.

I don't think I really need to give much of a summary, do I?  The premise of The Jane Austen Book Club is fairly straight-forward, and unfortunately, it's been done before.  A group of people who seemingly have nothing in common except their one singular passion (in this case, the novels of Jane Austen) come together to explore their interest together, when in reality, they're all really trying to come to grips with the unspeakable tragedy or unhappiness in their lives.  

The whole thing just felt so played out.  The idea of people coming together to forget previous tragedies through their hobby has been done to death (re: The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood or The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs), and it doesn't seem that Fowler has anything new to add, except for the plot twist of involving a male character.  This piqued my interest; unfortunately, the characters never flesh out.  Fowler chooses to divide the book into a series of vignettes about each character, leaving little room to explore each personality and providing little to no character development.  Just when I would start to get involved in a character's personality and story, WHAM!  The chapter is over, we've moved on to the next character...and I'm left wondering what the hell just happened.  So little time was spent exploring each personality, that I could not bring myself to care about any of the characters.

Then I am forced to ask: why Jane Austen, again?  Don't get me wrong, Jane is a phenomenal writer, as I've written before.  HOWEVER, today, nearly 200 years after her death, it seems that everyone is jumping on the Jane Austen (or Mr. Darcy) bandwagon.  The author (presumably an Austen-aficionado herself) sprinkles references to Jane's famous works throughout the book...but they don't tie in very well, and when they do, the transition is sloppy at best.

I could not relate to the characters and due to the quick transitions, I found it hard to even develop an interest in any of them.  I didn't care who was romancing who and whose marriage was ending and who was dating who by the end of the book.  I think if Fowler had chosen to flesh out the book a little more, spend more time on her characters, developing their personalities, and put in a little more action...I might have enjoyed the book more.

Oh, and if she had provided a translation for the character that consistently (and obnoxiously) speaks in French phrases.  I can read a little French, but the content was beyond my scope, and I constantly felt that I was missing something.  Very unfortunate.

Rating: * and 1/2

Review: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Please Note: There will be spoilers here in this review.  I don't know if I can adequately review it without putting in some spoilers.  So.  If you haven't read this book yet, and plan to in the future (and I HIGHLY recommend you do!), then I would close your browser and skip this review for now.

In 1995, freelance writer and adventure-seeker Jon Krakauer was selected by Outsider magazine to travel to the slopes of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and write a feature article about the "consumerization" of mountain climbing, along with its effect on the world's tallest mountain.  This mission would require Krakauer to leave his home and travel to "Base Camp", the lowest of the camps on Everest, and observe guides and their "clients", the wealthy men and women who were paying dearly ($26,000  per head) to be helped up to the summit.  Outsider magazine, sensing a story among the hype of the wealthy elite to climb Everest (even the ones who were grossly unsuited for it, except for the small detail that they had the cash to blow), asked Krakauer to report on it.

Krakauer, a mountaineer himself who had dreamed of Everest since childhood, asked if the magazine would pay for him to "take the story to the top", so to speak, and climb the mountain to the summit, following the paths of his guide, famous Everest mountaineer Rob Hall, and the other "clients" who would be summitting from all over the world.  Outsider accepted his proposal, and Krakauer set out with a team of climbers (guides, professional mountaineers, rookie mountaineers who were paying out the nose to be guided up Everest, and the Sherpas who were employed to help) to spend six months acclimatizing and summitting Mt. Everest, in early spring of 1996.  The "final summitting" happened on May 10th, 1996.

What happened in the twenty-four hours in which these men and women summitted Mt. Everest has become famous as one of the greatest tragedies to ever happen in mountain-climbing history.  A hurricane-force storm came upon them, and through a series of incidents that, taken separately, would have not been much cause for alarm, together caused an unspeakable tragedy that haunts some of them to this day.  Eight climbers died in a single day on the mountain, fifteen in all in the month of May, 1996.  Those who survived were left stunned and reeling, wondering how such a thing could have happened.

Into Thin Air is a large expansion on the article that Krakauer wrote (read it here; I did before I read the book), was largely published, as he explains, in an attempt to get some closure on what had happened.  Krakauer wrote his original article when he still did not have all the facts about what had happened to people he had considered teammates and friends, and he apologizes for the gaps and errors in the original article.  Attempting to set the record straight, he gives a blow-by-blow account of what happened in the weeks leading up to the disaster, and the great tragedy of May 10-11, 1996.  His feelings of guilt (however justified or misplaced is left up to the reader to decide) are difficult to read at times.  I could tell as I read that he was writing while still dealing with an incredible sense of futility and guilt regarding the accident, when as a "client" and not a guide, it was not technically his responsibility to be out saving lives.  However, Krakauer illustrates that he possesses a sense of morality and obligation to his fellow man that some other mountaineers (such as those who left climber David Sharp to die on Everest ten years later) seem to desperately lack.

I finished Into Thin Air with a sense of hopelessness that I had not expected.  Krakauer's original mission in writing the article for Outsider was to create commentary on the booming business of experienced guides charging wealthy clients (most of whom had almost zero experience and no business whatsoever climbing the highest mountains on earth) to literally drag them up to the summit.  Krakauer argues that the use of bottled oxygen (without which, only the most experienced climbers could manage to summit) creates a "security blanket" for those who are not experienced enough to go without it, and keeps them flocking to and paying guides to bring them up to the top.  Without experienced people to lead them, and without the use of bottled oxygen, Krakauer argues, those who have no business being on Everest would more than likely get discouraged and quit the climb far before they reached the so-called "death zone" (altitudes higher than 8,000 meters where it is impossible to sustain life for long periods of time).  But with the high marketability of Everest and its location between two of the poorer nations of the world, Krakauer reports sadly, it is unlikely that either of these rules will be implemented any time soon.  Until that time, any rookie climber (and indeed, some of the more experienced ones) will still remain in danger every time they attempt to conquer Everest.

I put this book on my poll on The Nest Book Club, asking which of five books I should read next, and it was the clear winner.  I would like to thank those fine ladies for recommending it to me, as well as my father for loaning me his copy with the assurance that "It is one of the best books that (he has) ever read."  It is an amazing, although horrifying at times, tome, really driving home the point that human failing and mortality is nothing versus the elements of this world.

Rating: *****

EDIT: After three days of being unable to get this book out of my head, I have changed my original rating of four-and-a-half stars to five stars.  This was not a decision lightly made (I'm not in the habit of giving out five-star reviews), but I think it is only fair to Krakauer and to his book that I give the rating I feel it more than deserves.  Phenomenal.

Review: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Religious fiction isn't really my thing, but somehow this book piqued my interest when it came out, oh, ten years or so ago.  I put myself on the waiting list at the local library, and was so far down the list that by the time my name was called, I wasn't even interested anymore.  But I found a copy at GW, and my interest was renewed.  I finished it in three days.

The Red Tent is author Anita Diamant's depiction of the life of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob from the Bible, the father of twelve sons and of Joseph (he of the "Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat").  Jacob has four wives, and through those four wives, thirteen children -- twelve sons and a single daughter, Dinah.  As the only daughter of four mothers, Dinah is spoiled, pampered, and beloved.  Her "mothers" (who all treat her as their own) raise her in their belief system (polytheistic, unlike the monotheistic Jacob) and teach her the arts of spinning, weaving, and her specialty, midwifery.  As Dinah becomes a women, she is brought into the "red tent" -- the place where women go to birth their babies -- and finds herself overjoyed with belonging to this unique inner female circle where she instinctively feels she belongs.  But when Dinah falls in love with an Egyptian man, inducing the wrath of her older brothers, tragedy splits her life and family in two, leaving her wondering how she will ever pick up the pieces and retain anything she once possessed.

Many people are familiar with the book of Genesis, the passage known as the "Rape of Dinah".  In the story, Dinah is taken by force by Shechem, a prince of Egypt, and made to be his wife.  In an interesting twist, Diamant chooses to portray Shechem and Dinah's love as mutual and consensual, which makes the consequences therein that much more terrible.  The reader, even knowing what is going to happen, genuinely feels for Dinah.  It was also surprising to me that the Diamant chose to make the women of Jacob's tribe polytheistic, worshiping the cult of the ancient goddess Inanna, rather than worshiping the early Jewish God.  It was a surprising twist, but probably accurate if one takes into account the history of ancient religion.

All in all, the story sends a powerful message about the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters, and the importance of the sacred feminine.

Rating: *** and a half. 

Review: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

I had a "frenemy" in high school.  Her name was Kim.  Kim and I were, for all intents and purposes, almost exactly alike.  We even looked the same (except I wore glasses 24/7 back then and she did not).  We both had long brown hair, we were both tall for our age, we were both readers...we both liked the same guy.  Hence our status as "frenemies."  Even though we knew (and acknowledged) that we could have been best friends if we didn't both like the same guy, we insisted upon having a love-hate relationship from sophomore to senior year of high school.  She dated him, and then I dated him, and he was a jerk to both of us.  

In early spring of 2000, when Kim and I were in the same English class, she told me that she had just read an amazing book, and wanted to loan it to me, since she knew that we had similar literary preferences (to this day, I will take her book recommendations over everyone else's, she knew me that well).  That book was Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.

Sakamoto Chiyo is only nine years old when she and her sister are cruelly ripped from their parents'  home in the little poverty-stricken village of Yoroido, Japan, and taken to Kyoto -- a city rich in culture and famous for its geisha ("artisans"), ladies who are trained in the arts of dance and entertainment, who are mistresses of some of the most famous and powerful men in Japan.  Little Chiyo, noticeably beautiful (especially for her blue-gray eyes, unlike any other eyes in Japan), is sold to the mistress of an okiya, where she is expected to begin training in the arts of being a geisha.  Poor Chiyo is homesick for her parents and her older sister, and tries desperately to return to Yoroido for years, before a chance encounter with a wealthy businessman alters her life -- and her dreams -- forever.

Years later, she is the beautiful geisha Sayuri, caught between the life she is expected to live -- that of the obedient geisha -- and the man she has fallen in love with.  Set against the backdrop of Japan during the Great Depression and World War II, Sayuri must learn to balance the flow with the tide that her life has become, and to find a way to be both a successful geisha and not give up on her dreams.

The writing in this book is, in my humble opinion, what makes it so fabulous.  I don't know what an American writer has to go through, or how much he has to immerse himself in the culture, to make his writing style sound like that of a Japanese geisha writing down her life-story, but somehow Arthur Golden succeeded.  Even now, eleven years after the first time I read Memoirs, I still feel transported to Kyoto, Japan, every time I read it.  I can see the beautiful kimono, hear the bells ringing at the Shinto shrines, and imagine the cherry blossoms swaying in the breeze as Sayuri so beautifully describes each detail.  The writing style is almost lyrical, and so beautiful that I never grow tired of reading it.

Although it has come to light that Golden's story about the lives of geisha in Japan in the 20th century is not completely accurate (Mineko Iwasaki, the geisha whom Golden interviewed for his research, was reportedly furious because she felt Golden portrayed geisha as little more than prostitutes), the reader who chooses to indulge him or herself with Memoirs purely for the beauty of the writing will not be disappointed.  Those who are better-versed in the history and lifestyles of the Japanese geisha will certainly see more inaccuracies than I did.  To me, it's just a beautiful story.

And (for those of you who really care and might be wondering) -- what happened to Kim and I?  I'm pleased to say that after three years of being "frenemies", we put aside our differences right before graduation, became best of friends...and years later (in 2004 and 2010, respectively) were bridesmaids in each other's weddings.  Kim has now been happily married for nearly seven years and is the mother to three little girls (ages three, one, and with another one due later this summer), and lives in Rhode Island.  We still talk on the phone several times a week, and she is one of my best friends.  So our story had a happy ending as well.

Kim (left) and me on my wedding day, Nov. 5, 2010

Read, Knit, Bake: Banana Bread

Occasionally, I like to try my hand at cooking.  I'm not a great cook, or even really a decent one, by any stretch of the imagination...but I like to bake.  And my husband likes baked items of all kinds.  Last week, when he was away visiting a friend in MA, I thought I'd try my hand at making banana bread.

I have always considered myself anti-banana bread.  This was mainly because I've never had banana bread that didn't include walnuts.  No offense to the walnut-lovers out there, but I am not a fan.  I think they taste like dirt.  But we had several overripe bananas in our fruit bowl last week...and David loves banana bread the same way I love chocolate...so I found a recipe online sans walnuts, and I gave it a whirl.

And I discovered that I actually LOVE banana bread, when it doesn't include walnuts.  Poor David wasn't quick enough, and I ended up eating about half of the loaf myself for various breakfasts last week.  I'm sure he's learned and will be quicker with this batch.

I used this recipe to make my bread.  It comes out really moist, and yes, for you walnut fans, I'm sure it tastes just as good (to you) if you throw in a cup of walnuts.  Right now my kitchen smells like deliciousness, vanilla, and bananas, and I can't wait to have a slice for breakfast tomorrow!

AW: My "new" bookshelf, loaded, and GW scores!

After David came home last night, he was so kind as to drag out my three huge boxes of books, so I could put them on the "new" bookshelf.  It took a little finagling to get it organized the way I wanted it, but here is the final product!

Top Shelf: Fiction, historical fiction, and memoirs
Second Shelf: Non-fiction histories (including my Alison Weirs -- all nine of them and counting!), and in the corner, Dan Brown illustrated editions beneath my pile of theology books.
Bottom Shelf: Writing manuals (mainly from college), Harry Potter, and my knitting books.

Survey says?  I need another bookshelf if I'm going to keep buying books.  On the top left-hand corner of the bookshelf, you can see my Kindle, wrapped in its little blue quilted travel case that my mother made me a few weeks ago.  David says I can just buy books for my Kindle, instead of paperbacks, which is true, but most of the paperbacks I buy are on ridiculous sale!  I don't want to give them up.

Speaking of which, I ventured out to GW again and scored some good ones yesterday.

Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden.  I bought this one for a two-fold purpose -- I loved it and I haven't been able to find my copy in about two years, and I want to use it for the Spring Book Challenge (SBC).  I figure it can count towards "read a book you loved as a child or teen", since I became obsessed with this book back in 2000 when my friend Kim loaned it to me.  The "true" story about little Chiyo, the child who was sold by her family to an okiya (geisha house) in Gion, Japan, and the path her life takes as she trains to become a geisha herself, is a really beautiful piece, although it garnered some negative criticism after Mineko Iwasaki, the geisha whom Golden interviewed and whose life he based Memoirs off of, claimed that he embellished her stories.  Still, it is one of my favorites.

Me: Stories of My Life by Katharine Hepburn.  Most of us are familiar with  actress Katharine Hepburn, who was really the grande dame  of Old Hollywood and one of the most famous actresses of all time.  She starred in such hits as The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, The Lion in Winter, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, and On Golden Pond.  She is the only woman in history to have won not one, but four Best Actress Oscars, and she lived only twenty minutes away from me in Connecticut.  She passed away a legend in 2003 at the age of 96.  Famously mum about her life, Hepburn published Me, her memoirs, in 1991, when she was 84 years old.  I have always wanted to read this book, and now I have a copy of my own.  Still not sure where I'm going to fit it in on the SBC, but I'll figure something out.

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, as retold by Joseph Bedier.  This was $.50 at GW, and I'm a sucker for a good historical romance, so I nabbed it.  The movie Tristan and Isolde came out in 2006, based on the legend of the knight Tristan and the beautiful love of his life, Iseult (I don't know why they changed the spelling of her name for the film, but there you go).  That was the first time I heard of it, and I've wanted to see the film and read the book ever since.  I saw it and snatched it up.  It's a short piece (only 224 pages, paperback), so I think this "original Romeo and Juliet" tale will probably be a quick, light read over this Easter weekend.

How was your weekend?  Did you get any reading done or pick up any new books?

Review: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

A Million Little Pieces may be, at this point, one of the most famous contemporary American novels.  Its cover (the hand coated in sprinkles in front of a Tiffany-blue background) is easily as recognizable and famous as the  Twilight hands holding a red apple.  At this point, is there anyone who hasn't heard of James Frey's "memoir" of drug rehabilitation and the ensuing chaos that followed after the Smoking Gun revealed that he had fabricated some of his story?  Especially after Oprah brought him on her show and rolled him over the coals for "conning" her?  

I must admit that it was partially the drama that piqued my interest when it came to A Million Little Pieces.  Yet, having finished it, I have to say that I'm in no way interested in the possibility that Frey embellished his memoirs.  Because at the end of the day, it didn't change my opinion of the book, one way or the other.

James is 23 years old when he wakes up on an airplane, his face beaten and some of his teeth broken and missing, on his way to drug and alcohol rehabilitation.  He has been drinking since he was a child and doing drugs since his early teenage years.  He is, as he puts it, "an Alcoholic and an Addict and a Criminal" -- addicted to booze and drugs of all kinds (especially crack cocaine) and wanted in three states.  He is told that his body is in such rough condition that, if he chooses to use drugs or alcohol again, he will be dead in a matter of days.  Faced with the choice of death or attempting rehab, but having little to no faith in the AA "Twelve-Step Program", James begrudgingly agrees to give sobriety a chance.

This is not light reading.  Not even close.  James' story is gritty, and it's raw, and it's really tough to read at parts.  The chapter about his oral surgery (performed without any anesthesia or painkillers, since he is in rehab) was particularly graphic, and I had to skim those pages to keep my stomach from flipping over.  The writing style is..."different", I guess, would be a good word.  Like Frank McCourt, Frey chooses not to use quotation marks (or any punctuation, at times), which can make reading difficult at times, particularly when he's describing conversations between multiple people.  Yet, although the subject matter is tough at best, it is not a difficult book to read, and it does go relatively fast.

And though I think as a memoir (real or embellished) it's well-done...I can't really understand the huge buzz around the book.  I never personally felt the "can't put it down" pull to finish it the way I do with many books that I love.  Pieces gets easier to read, the more progress James makes, and towards the end I was finding it easier and more enjoyable to read.  I can't say I ever felt the obsession that Oprah and millions of other people claimed to have over this book -- which may be the reason why I can't understand what the big deal was that James Frey embellished the truth.

The Bookshelf

Unfortunately, I'm home today again.  Since this upcoming week is a busy one for me (being Holy Week), I skipped out on going to NY with my sister and friends today because calling in sick to work tomorrow is NOT an option, and I'd rather be fit for work (or somewhat fit) than be in agony on the busiest week of the year.  I do have a story for you today, and it involves a rather ugly secondhand bookshelf.

I acquired this Rather Ugly Secondhand Bookshelf back in 2008, after my sister moved out of our apartment and took my piece-of-crap plywood bookshelf, leaving me with the RUSB.  It was, as she told me rather proudly, something she found for free, and it was a sturdy, good bookshelf, other than being supremely hideous.  This bookshelf was yellow, or had been once, and sponged over with a pinkish-gray sponge paint, and then covered with those trashy metallic stickers that you find in coin machines outside the grocery store or pizza places (KWIM?).  Since 2008, I've been dragging it from pillar to post, always saying that "someday" I'd get to work on it.  

Fast forward to last week, Move-In Day.  My friend Lyndsey, crafter, seamstress, and all-around Master of DIY, saw the bookcase and decided to make it her project.  She came over yesterday, realizing that I was in pain with sore ribs and severe roadburn, and assured me that she would have fun with it.

The original plan was to use a handheld sander to sand the wood down to its original grain, but after five minutes of sanding, we realized that the ugly yellow paint was layer upon layer of acrylic paint, and since we were on a tight schedule, it wasn't going to work.  SO.  Plan B.

Lyndsey sanded the wood down to give it a flat surface.

Then we went to Home Depot and picked up some flat Rustoleum black spray paint and some polyurethane.  Came home, and Lyndsey spray-painted the bookshelf.

Goodbye, ugly yellow paint!

After it dried, we took it into the house and into the spare room (which is kind of a junk room for now) and painted a thick layer of polyurethane over it, which gave it a really nice glossy look.  And just like that, I had a whole "new" bookshelf.  

Unfortunately, I don't have a "final" picture for you yet, because although it's in my bedroom I can't lift the boxes of books out of the closet to fill the bookshelf, so that has to wait until David comes home from work later.  So for now, I'm just chilling, taking my Vicodin and ibuprofen and hoping to feel better by tomorrow.

I'm thinking of buying this Kylie bag from Etsy.  My old purse is getting a trifle beat-up, and I'm in the market for a new one that's pretty, functional, and not too expensive.  This fits the bill (except for the international shipping, ugh).  I think I like the gray, but I'm going to sit on it a day or two more to think.  The shipping is what's killing me.  Shipping should never be so expensive, dammit.  But it's pretty much exactly what I want -- large, roomy, with a shoulder strap (easier for biking) and tons of pockets.  I think this will probably happen in the next couple of days.  I really like most of the colors it comes in, but I'm drawn to the gray.  Figure if I really want to, I can clip pins or something to it to gussy it up.  I like the teal and the rose red colors as well...but I want something practical that's going to go with almost everything I wear, so I think this is really a better plan.

I hope everyone has a relaxing and happy Sunday!

PSA: Bike safety

Taken from Voga.org

I am such a klutz.  No, really.  My mom told me yesterday she's nervous about me having kids, because at 27, I am just as accident-prone as I was twenty years ago.  *sigh*

On my way home from work, I took a wipeout on my bicycle.  In EPIC fashion.  I didn't know what happened, but I told the story to my dad (a really veteran biker) and he said I took the curb coming up my driveway at too sharp of an angle -- a rookie mistake.  This makes the wheels of the bike go sideways and fall down.  He says he still does it now, but it always irritates him, because he "should know better".  But he didn't chastise me.  I haven't ridden my bike seriously since I was 21, I guess that's enough of an excuse for him.

Anyway.  The damage.  I went down on my left side and got my left leg caught under the bike.  The first thing to hit the ground was my ribcage, which was about the most disgusting sensation I've had in awhile.  It felt like my ribs were made of Styrofoam peanuts.  I felt a weird crackling sensation.  Then I hit my head on the pavement.  THANK GOD, I was wearing a helmet.  The helmet cracked, which my dad says destroys the integrity of a helmet, so I have to get a new one.  David said later he could actually push the helmet into a concave position after it was over.  SWEET.

I got the wind knocked out of me and I tried to stand up, but I couldn't.  Fortunately a neighbor was sitting on his front porch across the street from us and saw it all happen.  He came over and asked if I needed help.  I managed to gasp out that I wanted my husband, and I lived in "that house", which still confused him.  But somehow he found David, who saw me and freaked.  That was when I realized that the leg that had been caught under the bike was skinned from ankle to knee, and there was a LOT of blood coming out of the knee.  Apparently knee cuts are like head wounds -- they're not very serious, but they bleed like MAD.  There were two rivers of blood coming down my leg.  I wanted to just mop up the blood and go inside but David was all "Hospital.  We're going to the ER now.  You might have broken your ribs."  They didn't feel broken at first but after I stood up they were DEFINITELY hurting, so David managed to get me into the car.  Another neighbor brought us a first aid kit and David used his EMT skills (he was so cute, taking charge of everything) to mop up the blood and bandage the knee.  Then we drove to the ER.  My mom and Christina called at about that moment and found out what happened, so they met us there.

The wait at the ER was predicted at 3 hours (so amazing), but it didn't take that long.  Mainly because I looked like a mess.  They gave me x-rays, and good news: no breaks, just some bad rib contusions and maybe small hairline fractures that the machine couldn't pick up, because I had injured my "floating ribs" (the ones that move when you breathe).  They gave me some Vicodin, and a very nice young man mopped the remaining blood off of my leg, put some Bacitracin on it (which made it feel fantastic), and then bandaged me up.  And I'm good to go.

I feel like complete crap this morning but very lucky -- I got off pretty easy.  I thank God that I was wearing that helmet.  I can't imagine what the damage would have been if I hadn't been wearing it.

Lesson, kids -- no matter how old you are, or how stupid you think it looks, always, always, ALWAYS wear a helmet.

Review: The Devil Wears Prada by Laura Weisberger

Sometimes, you just need a trashy chic lit book.  I usually abhor chick lit, but this was one of my favorites in college, and after finding it for 99 cents at GW, I had to give it another read to see if I still loved it as much as I did six years ago.

In Laura Weisberger's dishy The Devil Wears Prada, our heroine, Andrea Sachs, is a Jewish post-graduate trying to break into magazines when she scores the job "a million girls would die for" working as the junior administrative assistant to Runway magazine's editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly.  Upon hearing the rumor that working one year for Miranda guarantees her lackeys their pick of positions at virtually any magazine they desire, Andrea decides she'll endure any sort of abuse and hand her life over to the tyrannical Miranda, in hopes that next year, she'll be working for The New Yorker.  What unfolds is a nightmarish tale of one horrible year working for the Boss from Hell, and the decision that Andrea must make between attaining the job of her dreams or becoming the sort of person she hates.

I loved this book when I was 20, a junior in college, and going through a rough breakup (during my aforementioned "summer of reading" after one of only two serious boyfriends I had before David broke my heart and I lost myself in reading anything that wasn't nailed down).  I thought that, seven years later, I'd love it just as much.  It's amazing how six years post-graduate and four years working as an office manager, secretary, and personal assistant all-in-one will do to change your outlook.

It's true.  Miranda is the boss from hell.  She's anal-retentive, demanding, rude, selfish, obsessive, and doesn't have a single thought to spare for anyone other than herself.  I am not excusing her behavior (or Anna Wintour's, since it's obvious that's who she is modeled after).  But Andrea's attitude throughout the book makes it impossible to identify or sympathize with her, let alone root for her.  I am sure that schlepping around NYC in freezing cold or rainy weather to grab lattes, dry cleaning, takeout lunch, etc. is a pain in the ass.  I wouldn't want to do it.  However, that is what a personal assistant does.  I am not saying that Andrea had to like enduring all sorts of verbal abuse and punishment at Miranda's hands.  But her whining, her complaining, and her attitude towards a job she felt she was much too good for, leaves me cold.  Also: this isn't prison.  Andrea was not sentenced to work in a labor camp for a year.  At the crux of the story, she could leave any time she wanted to.  She stays for purely self-interested reasons -- she wants the job at The New Yorker, she has to put in the time.  

(I have to add that this book came out before the Great Recession, and that today, there is no way that even working 10 years as a personal assistant is going to get you a job working at The New Yorker -- or any magazine -- no matter how "powerful" or "important" your boss is.)

After the book's great success, and its virtual skyrocket to the New York Times' bestseller list, an article was printed in the Times, exposing Prada for what it was: a thinly-veiled expose about its author's year working as an assistant for Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. Kate Betts, who wrote the article in the Times, worked for Vogue and for Anna Wintour herself, and stated that Weisberger had apparently learned nothing in her one-year tenure with the "boss from hell", saying that she "had a ringside seat at one of the great editorial franchises in a business that exerts an enormous influence over women, but she seems to have understood almost nothing about the isolation and pressure of the job her boss was doing, or what it might cost a person like Miranda Priestly to become a character like Miranda Priestly." (Betts, 2003)  Betts also begs the question, "if Andrea doesn't ever realize why she should care about Miranda Priestly, why should we care about Andrea, or prize the text for anything more than the cheap frisson of the context?"  Nicely put.

The book is fun when taken at face-value.  Finding out what it really is -- a tell-all, revenge book on an unfair boss -- really disappointed me.  And it doesn't make me any more sympathetic for the heroine.  Like I said, it's amazing what seven years and a little employment experience can do to change you.

Rating: ** and 1/2

Review: The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

I'm tearing through books as quickly as I pick them up, which is a nice change from the slow, tedious slog that was the past few months.  I'm also really enjoying contemporary literature more than I have in years.  Plus, the faster I read these, the sooner I can justify spending money to get more books, right?  Right.

Bernhard Schlink's The Reader is told in three parts from the POV of Michael Berg, a young man growing up in the tumultuous 1950s in post-war Germany.  Michael is fifteen years old when he becomes desperately ill en route to his home, and he is rescued by the kind help of station employee Hanna, a woman in her mid-thirties.  When Michael goes to Hanna's house to thank her for her assistance, the two begin a long, passionately obsessive love affair.  Then one day, Hanna disappears, without leaving a forwarding address.  Years later, while in college and taking a seminar on the legal system, Michael encounters Hanna again -- this time, while she's on trial for a terrible crime connected to the Holocaust.  As Michael watches the trial unfold, and witnesses Hanna's silence and refusal to defend herself, he begins to discover that there's a deeper secret that Hanna's been hiding -- from her legal team, from the prosecution, and from Michael himself.

This is one of those books where I thought I could predict the ending before even reading it.  I haven't seen the film adaptation that gave Kate Winslet her long-awaited Oscar, but after hearing enough about it, I figured I had the story adequately summed up.  Still, the way that the story unfolds sets you up, and when the ending that I was expecting did happen, I had already been lulled into a false sense of security, of thinking that I'd been wrong.  NOPE.  It hit me like a full-on slap in the face.

The story is sad, it's dark, and it can be slow at times, but that is in its nature.  Schlink is writing a story illustrating the general reaction of the German people to the Holocaust, years and years after it happened.  While Hanna struggles with what she has allegedly done, and Michael attempts to come to grips with his emotions regarding their defunct love affair, post-war Germany struggles with its identity.  How to react to a crime so large and unimaginable?  How to preserve your face as your reputation shreds itself at your feet?

Rating: ***

Review: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I don't know how I managed to finish a book in between moving furniture into our new place, but I'm happy to say that we are finally "all moved in" and that the only (rather large) task left for us to do is unpack everything.  And find some living room furniture, but that's another story.  We have several wonderful friends who were willing to help us move in yesterday.  Exhausted today, I spent the majority of my Sunday resting, reading, and eating Asian food.  Perfect Sunday.  And somehow, I managed to finish book #27 for 2011 -- Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat, Pray, Love.

When writer Elizabeth Gilbert finds herself sobbing on her bathroom floor in the middle of the night, overcome with the realization that she no longer wants to be married, she knows that she is missing something very fundamental in her life.  Upon concluding her very messy divorce, she takes a year-long trip around the world, spending three months each in Italy, India, and Indonesia -- the three I's, as she puts it -- to find God, seek enlightenment, and rediscover the joy in her life.

As a woman who has struggled with anxiety disorder and religious conviction for the past six years, I felt a kinship with Liz as she fought against her problems with opening up her consciousness and letting go of her guilt.  I found myself cheering for her as she learned to indulge herself again in Italy, to meditate and enlighten herself in India, and to flirt again in Bali.  Her whirlwind year of re-learning to express herself, and looking for God in all things, was really a treat to read.  I agree with a lot of reviewers on the Goodreads page, that the Italy chapter (the book is divided into three segments for the three countries she visits) is really the one that is the most forgettable -- India was my favorite part.  But still, good.  

My one complaint about the book is that the ending can read as a little trite and unbelievable.  I realize that it is Liz's life, and it did happen...it's just a little too predictable, you know?  (Or maybe you don't know, you'd have to read the whole thing to really relate).  Still, I enjoyed the book, and that's two memoirs in the past week finished.

Rating: ****

Friday post and GW scores!

I can't remember the last time I have blogged this consistently!  But it's been a good, albeit busy, week.  David and I are FINALLY moving the large furniture into our new place tomorrow, with the help of some amazing friends of ours who are willing to move us for the nominal fee of beer and pizza.  We've been moving things little by little the past week, and although we have MOST of the small stuff in our new place now, we have almost no furniture still.  Not after tomorrow!

Last night, my task was to bag up and get ready some things to donate to Goodwill.  I managed two bags and a box (and I have some more stuff to go today that I discovered later on), and so I packaged these up and took them over to GW...and treated myself to a trip around their book section again.  Why is it that whenever I donate to GW, I come out with more stuff?  But in my defense, I got an AMAZING deal!

(Forgive me once again for the terrible picture quality)

For all four of these, I paid...$3.67.  YES.  So can you blame me for buying them??  I think not.

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink.  "As a 15-year-old boy in postwar Germany, Michael Berg had a passionate affair with a mysterious, guarded woman twice his age that ended suddenly when she disappeared. Years later, Michael sees her again -- when she is on trial for a terrible crime." (Goodreads)  I've wanted to read this since Kate Winslet won her Oscar for playing the female lead in the film based on it. 

The Devil Wears Prada, by Laura Weisberger.  I read this book summer before my senior year of college when I was drowning my heartbreak over being dumped in as many books as I could get my hands on.  It's not a great book, but it's fun, and I love it.  My sister stole my copy and I haven't seen in since 2008, so now I have another copy of my own.  For $.50.

Vanishing Acts, by Jodi Picoult.  "Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiance, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it. In shock and confusion, Delia must sift through the truth - even when it jeopardizes her life and the lives of those she loves." (Goodreads)  I read Picoult's My Sister's Keeper (during that same ironic summer) and I loved it, but I've never read another book by her.  So I really couldn't pass this one up for a price as low as it was.

A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey.  Most of us are familiar with the controversy this book caused between James Frey and Oprah Winfrey, when news broke to the literary world that there was no proof behind some of the claims that Frey made in his so-called "memoir" about his stint in drug and alcohol rehab.  I know about it, but regardless, I want to read this book.  I started reading it after spending the night at a friend's house a few years ago (I had to put it down when she woke up) and I've wanted to finish it ever since.  So I nabbed it.

I doubt I'll get much reading done this weekend, but I'm hoping to finish the book I'm currently reading, and to unpack the rest of my collection!  I realized, after I went to GW and I was back at my old place packing up my books, that I don't have enough boxes.  I'd say I have too many books...but that's just ridiculous.  There's no such thing.

Review: Testimony by Anita Shreve

Moving really does wonders for my reading and nothing for my knitting.  I haven't picked up a knitted object in three weeks...but I'm tearing through my books.  All three of the books I picked up at Goodwill last Thursday are things of the past now.  And I've loved every single one of them.  I'm dropping off some donations at GW tonight, and you bet I'll be checking out the book section again.

Testimony, by Anita Shreve, reads like a Quentin Tarantino film.  When you begin the book, the main event has already occurred.  A Vermont prep school is at the center of a sex scandal that has spiraled out of control.  Worse still are the teenagers at the center of it -- three basketball players, one the quiet child of a local farmer, and an underage girl.  The story is told by the points of view of those involved -- the teenagers involved, their roommates, their parents, their teammates, and even the headmaster of the school, who has had his own part to play in the scandal that has torn the school, and the town of Avery, Vermont, into pieces.

As I stated in my Book-Related Pet Peeves post a few days ago, I'm not usually a fan of books where there are multiple first-person POVs.  But Anita Shreve does this masterfully, like Jodi Picoult in My Sister's Keeper.  I didn't have too much confusion with the characters.  The book also shows, not tells, the bleakness of the main characters following the events chronicled in Testimony, but in a surprising twist, not in the way I expected at all.

This is my first Anita Shreve book, but I plan on reading some of her other work in the future.  Definitely good contemporary literature.

Rating: ****

Review: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

As I wrote previously, my goal for my "100 Books in 2011" was to reach 25 books by the end of March.  I'm a few days late, but only six!  Technically five, because I finished my 25th book yesterday evening while David was at class.  Twenty-five percent down, seventy-five percent to go!  (When you put it that way, it doesn't seem like I'm too far done!)  And here I'll sum up my 25th book for 2011: Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Francis "Frank" McCourt is an odd case.  Born in New York City in 1930 to Irish immigrants (a father from Northern Ireland and a mother from Limerick), he moves with his family back to Ireland following the unfortunate death of his baby sister, Margaret.  The McCourts are a sad, pitiable family, comprised of Frank's alcoholic father, his emotionally-fragile mother (the titular Angela), and his younger brothers, Malachy (named for his father), Oliver, and Eugene.  After being spurned by his paternal grandparents in Northern Ireland and rebuffed by his maternal grandmother's family, the McCourts finally settle in Angela's hometown of Limerick, in the hopes that their new life in Ireland will bring better fortune.

Good fortune is hard to come by, unfortunately.  Malachy McCourt Sr., Frank's father, is in and out of work, and spends what little he makes at the pubs.  Angela McCourt can hardly scrape the family by on her husband's meager earnings "on the dole" (the Irish term for welfare) and is forced to resort to begging at times to keep her children fed.  She is also constantly pregnant -- the family is ever-expanding, which only adds to their financial woes.  Frank finds what little solace he has in his Catholic religion, which runs every aspect of his life, and in school, where he discovers he is incredibly intelligent.  His one, all-encompassing dream is to finish school, get a job that pays a little money, and save enough to move back to America, what he and everyone else considers his homeland.  But over the years, Frank discovers that Ireland is more in his blood and soul than he ever imagined it would be.

Angela's Ashes has a reputation for being depressing, and is it ever.  I gave up on the hope that the McCourts would eventually have some good luck about a third of the way into the book.  But the rawness, the reality, is so complete, I could picture Frank's life in rainy, cold Limerick as easily as if I had been there myself watching it.  Rarely have I ever been so transported by a book.  

Frank's interesting penchant for not using quotation marks took some getting used to, but by the second chapter, I was acclimated and on my way to eating the book up.  My one complaint was that the ending came too soon, and left too many unanswered questions.  Frank McCourt wrote two sequels to his Pulitzer-prizewinning novel, 'Tis and Teacher Man, that apparently continue the story (and maybe answer some of those questions), so I may pick those up in the future.  On a whole, one of my favorite memoirs, and I will definitely be reading this again.

Rating: ****

Goodwill scores!

I took a trip to Goodwill this past week, to see if I could score any cheap furniture (I did not).  But the trip wasn't a total loss!  I managed to score a couple of great books from their bookshelves.  Apparently, a lot of people donate classics to Goodwill, when they're finished reading them (for school or otherwise), and I made out like a bandit.  Three books (one a hardcover) for $3.50!

The first was The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, which I already re-read and reviewed on Saturday.  The other two, I am in the process of reading for the first time.

Testimony, by Anita Shreve.  At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.  (Description from Goodreads)

I started reading this on Saturday morning.  It's good so far, although it unfortunately breaks my rule about "no more than one person's POV", which has gotten a bit confusing at times.  But so far, I like it.

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt.  ...the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.  Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.  (Description from Goodreads)

WOW.  People weren't lying when they said that Angela's Ashes was depressing.  I have to say, from the start, I got into this book quicker than Testimony, but it is hard to take at times.  Depressing, rough, and without hope...but incredibly raw and real.  If it keeps up at this rate, this could be one of my new favorites.

Did you score any good new books this weekend?

Review: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

I'm coming to you today from our NEW APARTMENT!  We got cable in this morning, and in a little while my father's coming over with his truck to help me move the bed and other pertinent pieces of furniture, so we can spend the night here.  I am so ridiculously happy to finally be in the new place...well, as much as we are, which isn't much (we have a TV in here, and a cable hook-up, and our bathroom articles, and that's...about it).

I'm irritated with myself, that I never checked out the bookshelves at our local Goodwill before.  I scored three books (all bestsellers) the other night, for $3.50 (and one was hardcover)!  I'm definitely going to be doing that more often.  Cheap (practically free) books that I love?  Hell yes!  One of these is a re-read from high school, and I'll be reviewing it today.

The Joy Luck Club takes place in San Francisco in the late 20th century.  Four Chinese women, who all emigrated to the United States as young women, have formed friendships over the years and created what is called the "Joy Luck Club".  On evenings they meet, play mah jong, and tell stories, to laugh in the face of tragedy, to forget the unspeakable pain they've endured.  When one of their number passes away unexpectedly, the elder ladies of Joy Luck band together to help her misfit daughter, Jing-Mei (or "June"), return to China to realize her mother's long-cherished wish of being reunited with the twin daughters she was forced to leave behind.

The story is not Jing-Mei's and her mother Suyuan's though.  The book is not so much a novel as a series of sixteen vignettes, told from the points of view of each mother (Lindo, Ying-Ying, An-Mei, and Suyuan -- through Jing-Mei's eyes), and each daughter (Waverly, Lena, Rose, and of course Jing-Mei).  Their vignettes chronicle the ongoing struggles between mothers and daughters -- the mothers' desire to raise their daughters with proper Chinese pride, motivation, and respect, and the daughters' struggle to find their own identities, separate from their families and their heritage.

Amy Tan focuses on the Chinese heritage and family, but she might as well be writing about any mother-daughter relationship.  The crux of the message is always the same.  The daughter needs to fly.  The mother needs to hold.  The mother-daughter relationship is tenuous, heartbreaking, difficult, and precious.  This isn't Gilmore Girls; it's real life, within these pages.  The struggle between love and independence is a tale as old as history itself, and Amy Tan's work is beautifully real.

Rating: ****

Review: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Apologies to my (few) readers, but right now I've developed a wicked case of "re-read-itis", and I'm tearing through books I've read several times before.  Not that it will make any difference to you, really.  Maybe it's because we're moving and I'm falling back on the old, comfortable, and known.  Whatever the reason, this book (and the one I'm currently reading) are both well-read favorites.

For me, there are certain children's stories that never get old.  My favorite of these is The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I read this for the first time when I was in fourth grade, and I can't count the number of times I've read it since.

The story of solemn little Mary Lennox, orphaned at 10 by a cholera plague in her homeland of India and sent to live with her widowed uncle on the moors of Yorkshire in England, has become a classic.  Mary is lonely, friendless, and disagreeable, and sees absolutely no benefit to her living in her uncle's lonely old manor until her cheeky maidservant, Martha, boots her out-of-doors to play.  During her walks about the grounds, Mary discovers an abandoned, walled-up garden -- the former property of her deceased Aunt Lilias -- and the buried key that unlocks it.  Within the walls, Mary realizes the joy of helping what has been abandoned and left to die, come back to life -- and in doing so, comes to life herself.

Frances Burnett is best-known for her tales of young children who persevere in difficult situations -- her other popular children's book, A Little Princess, focuses on the same theories of self-worth and belief in one's own personal "Magic" as The Secret Garden.  But Secret Garden is much gentler than Princess is.  While it still deals with the sensitive topics of parent death and abandonment,  the overwhelming message of The Secret Garden is the idea that the simplest, smallest things in life can help reawaken the beauty inside us all.  To a child, the story is as magical as a fairy tale...and for me, after 18 years, it's really no different.

Rating: *****