Reading Roundup: Adult Edition

Today is our fourth snow day from school, our sixth total day with snow on the ground. The amount of culture I have consumed on this little unplanned break is substantial; I've binged books, knocked movies off my Netflix queue, and thrown in lots of PBS programming to feel especially productive. Since it's been over a year, at least, since I was all caught up with posts on this blog, I've also decided to try and play catch up with the backlog of books I've needed to write about! If I keep reading at the rate I'm going without writing, this queue is going to back up forever!

Two great reading related things happened over winter break:

1. I got a new Kindle (I lost my Kobo back in October...so sad), which allows me to once again checkout random eBook purchases from the library on a whim. I didn't realize til it was gone how much I depended on it for actually broadening my reading horizons, being able to check out whatever I was in the mood for instantaneously and all.
2. Back in Colin's hometown for the holidays, we visited the library's book barn and got a serious STACK of books for something absurd, like $10. Once again, I was able to grab whatever looked appealing, bringing my reading outside of my 'to-read' list. 

Lately I've kind of mourned the fact that I rarely roam the shelves of the public library, bringing home whatever possible hidden treasure catches my eye. But I've also just realized that maybe I branch off my purposeful reading more than I think; the method is just different!

David Lodge's Deaf Sentence is my most recent instance of choice based on shelf appeal. It's one of those books that looks the right size, with the pages feeling good, and the cover piquing interest. Plus, the review snippets on the front and back covers even helped! This seemed like a charming, sort of sardonically humorous story.

That story is the one of Desmond Bates, a retired linguistics professor that's slowly losing life as he knew it to deafness. By now, he's used to the new daily annoyances of adjusting his hearing aids to the situation—though it's still an annoyance and not second-nature; he still turns it on or off at the wrong time, forgets to replenish batteries, etc. Likewise, he's struggling with the realization that he's actually becoming a nuisance to those around him; his special needs require others to adjust their own habits and instincts, and that's a burden he doesn't want to others to bear. Mostly, though, it's the unreliability of communication that's most bothersome, especially when it leads to accidental involvement with a seemingly personable graduate story who increasingly proves to be quite unhinged.

Deaf Sentence is definitely British. It's a great blend of quiet, situational humor—the kind that is funny as you experience but not funny enough to retell to an audience. We, the reader, are the ones experiencing here, so we can chuckle along with Desmond and sympathize with his plight. This is the kind of story that seems almost too simple to be anything, yet, you realize, is actually so universal that it seems entirely necessary to be written. A true take on the human experience, in all its frustrating glory.

Shannon Hale's Austenland is the last book I read on my Kobo, back on that fateful October flight. After leaving my Kobo on the plane the first go-around, I had to finish this book on my iPhone on the way home—not an enjoyable reading experience! This was, though, the perfect light book for a short weekend trip, one that I'm pretty sure has been in my queue since the Everything Austen Challenge back in 2010!

Jane Hayes is a young woman living in New York who's been dating for a decade and has nothing to show for it. She's grown frustrated with relationships and is on the verge of giving up entirely. Okay, so maybe she doesn't have the most realistic expectations; she's entirely obsessed with the ol' Pride & Prejudice hero, Mr. Darcy, and pretty much compares all men to him and all her relationships to his and Elizabeth's. (Surprise: her actual life falls short of that standard and continues to disappoint.) When a wealthy aunt dies and leaves Jane a fully-expensed trip to a unique English resort, Jane finally gets to live her dream of Regency living. Is it enough to kick the obsession for good, or will it only fuel the flames of unrealistic expectation?

I'll gloss over the fact I find this woman mostly crazy and more than a little pathetic, holding her life to a 19th-century English standard, because I guess that's looking at it with a little too critical, jaded eye. In actuality, Austenland is just a fluffy piece of enjoyable chick-lit; it doesn't try to be anything more, and rightly so. If you're an Austen fan, or just need a bit of light reading, this will do just fine.

I'd never heard of Issa Rae, and I'm pretty sure I was introduced to her memoiric (I am making up this word) essay collection, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, through a Goodreads ad. Chalk this one up to another random eBook read, but I'm glad I ran across it; she's got a humorously observant voice.

So Issa Rae is known in pop culture from her various web series, the most well-known being the titular basis of this essay collection. In Awkward Black Girl (ABG) and her other web projects, Issa reflects mostly on the cultural stereotypes that exist for people of color, particularly her own inability to fit into that mold. She is critical but never aggressive; her observations are more enlightening—like "Ha! Did anyone else notice that this exists??? How ridiculous!"—and doused with a lighthearted sense of incredulity. In these essays, she chronicles her life as an ABG, navigating through middle school insecurities, workplace relationships, and adulthood realities, among others.

I realized quickly that the author and I are very close in age, particularly as she shares her middle school experiences with early Internet culture and chat rooms. I thought, "Yes! Finally another female who also had that weird early intrigue with world wide connectivity!" This is just the kind of episode that highlights her humor—it often comes from her self-deprecating voice. She walks us through the important episodes of her life, usually the ones that made her feel a bit like an outsider, but it's never somber; she's a comedian, not a victim. She is able, though, to connect these universal feelings of misplacement to her broader identity as a woman of color, reflecting on the disparities between the woman she is and the woman society says she should be. This essay collection is not only comedic, it carries a lot of substance beyond the humor.

Reading Roundup: Women's Fiction

I remember how huge Adriana Trigiani's Big Stone Gap was when it first came out; this was a book that women came to Sunday School talking about, read during the week, and passed along to another reader the next Sunday. I maintain that in the year 2000, word of mouth had spread Big Stone Gap through women's circles of probably many southern church communities. Well, I guess I was just 14 years behind schedule.

Ave Maria Mulligan is our unconventional narrator—at least, unconventional by the standards of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. She's 35 and unmarried and is such a part of the town that, as the pharmacist, knows just how to handle everyone's little eccentricities. Her life never seemed unpredictable but suddenly it's like the stars are out of line and everything new is happening at once, offering Ave Maria new opportunities she never even imagine. I guess I have to go with the church ladies on this one; wonderfully quirky and lighthearted with a main character to root for—I can understand the mass appeal, because you just want to see where Ave Maria's life leads her. Fortunately for me now in 2014, the success of this one did lead to three more in the series!

So Beth Patillo's Jane Austen Ruined My Life is one I would maaaaybe consider more as "chick-lit" than "women's fiction," because it's really just a romance at its root. But hey, we're a judgment-free zone on this blog, and chick-lit is definitely fine by me! (Although, I will complain if some of their premises are just ridiculous!!) Also to note, this book is the first in Patillo's series of Austen-inspired novels, but they're each an independent story, not a continuous series.

In Jane Austen Ruined My Life, Emma is an English professor that has just been discredited both personally and professionally—her god of a professor husband has just cheated on her and subsequently that "other woman," formerly her own TA, has accused Emma of stealing work and calling it her own. To escape, Emma heads to a cousin's in the London suburbs to regroup and try and find the famed but elusive lost letters of Jane Austen. If you've read any amount of chick-lit, you can probably figure out how the plot is going to go, but it's quick and enjoyable, and the extra mystery of Jane Austen letters is intriguing. Plus, Patillo has a nice, conversational writing style that is lighthearted and not obnoxious.

My favorite of this batch was an NPR-featured book, The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore. This story follows three friends—Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean—from their adolescent life in the 60s to their middle-aged present. They've always lived in their same Indiana town with the one constant in their life being Earl's diner, where you can find them in their same booth every Sunday for lunch.

Though I wasn't very impressed with this at the beginning, I got so into it that I read the whole thing in about a day. The characters are wonderful; Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean are so incredibly different from each other, and Moore, thankfully, treats them equally, giving life to all three of his characters in vivid detail. The storytelling is compelling with perspective hopping from past memory to present-day, giving the reader the insight needed to understand the depth of Moore's "Supremes." It's obviously a character-driven, rather than plot-driven, story, and the best kind where you barely care what it is that happens because the entertainment is in reading how your characters deal with it. I find it amazing how well this male author voiced three very distinct women characters! The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat tells the story of very normal things happening to very normal (but extraordinary, lovable) individuals with humor, wit, and a lot of heart—much more than just a "fun" read.

What I've Read Lately

Library school has begun, and I am a busy little bee day-in and day-out. I can barely find time to go to the grocery store, so I certainly haven't found much time to blog about what I've been reading lately (which, actually, has been a lot, thanks to my 2.5 hour total commute to and from class on Mondays and Tuesdays!).  Here's a quick rundown. I have more to come:

Carolina Moon by Jill McCorkle — It's been a while, Jill. Colin had me read a story from an F. Scott Fitzgerald collection called "The Ice Palace," which features a girl from the South. After that, I knew it'd been too long since I'd read some Southern lit, and McCorkle is my go-to. Carolina Moon is about a small town in North Carolina and the eccentric folk whose lives seem to all intersect at a "cigarette rehab" called Quee's Place. McCorkle is so good at storytelling—weaving the lives and histories of these people together, overlapping yet creating unique stories. Even a murder mystery is thrown in to spice things up a notch. The characters are always the best part of McCorkle books, because they're so detailed. One section was so beautifully written that I completely teared up. Overall, not as good as Ferris Beach, my McCorkle fave, but still satisfying.

I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk — I was looking for something lighthearted and sorta mindless before I embarked upon the massive Wolf Hall for my February World Reading choice. This is the story of a Londoner, Angela, who gets jilted by her longtime fiancee at her best friend's wedding and escapes to the Big Apple to find herself and put her life back together. I do like chick-lit, but I'm a little critical when it's about New York. Chick-lit always plays up the stereotypes of the city, when I think it should be more realistic. Exhibit A) Angela gets a cab from the airport and asks the driver to take her to "any hotel," at which point he rudely screams obscenities at her with what was some sort of New York accent. For one, cab drivers are usually on their hands-free device speaking to someone in their native tongue to bother speaking to their passengers. Secondly, in 2000, 84% of cab drivers were foreign-born. The chances of getting a stereotypical guy from Queens as your cab driver are incredibly slim if not completely unrealistic. Exhibit B) Angela goes shopping on Broadway in Soho midday and it's described as relatively calm. FALSE. Broadway in Soho is hell 24/7. I have strong feelings about that street, which was why I found it necessary to point out.

But anyway, like every chick-lit novel, I totally got sucked in and ended up really enjoying it. I find the whole "New York as mecca to find yourself" theme to be total crap, because this city is pretty rough; nothing happens as easily in real life as it happened for Angela. (Seriously, she didn't have to do a thing; life came to her.) But, I can understand why people would enjoy it. I was starry-eyed about NYC before I lived here, too. However, I liked Angela. She wasn't too ridiculous of a human being (except for her obnoxious spending habits. What 26-year-old freelance writer can pay for a week-long stay at an $800/night hotel room and daily shopping sprees that total in the thousands? Yeah right.). And Kelk built the anticipation in the story making me want to know what happens next.

Review: A Roman Holiday

One summer in high school, I don't think I read anything but chick-lit. And now, I don't even remember the last time I read it. But, I went to the beach and what could be more perfect, especially for someone like me who frequently dozes off and therefore can't read anything that requires a lot of focus?

Kristin Harmel's Italian for Beginners is another one of those books that has been sitting on my shelf since I won it in a giveaway last summer. It's about a 30-something woman named Cat who is single, living in Manhattan, and has absolutely nothing exciting in her life. I mean, from the start you want to like this character but you quickly realize she is BORING; she's done nothing interesting since she studied abroad in Rome thirteen years ago. At her younger sister's wedding, Cat gets humiliated by Grandma and, with a push from her nearest and dearest, decides to take a four-week long vacation to Rome and reunite with her former Italian flame.

Well it's no surprise that Francesco turns out to be a dud (I'm not spoiling anything; it's on the back of the book), and Cat must now find her own way in a city all alone for four weeks. Enter a cast of eccentric characters and a setting fit for a movie (oh wait, it is...it's called Roman Holiday), and we have a story about woman who finds herself taking risks for a life she never expected.

When I started reading this, I said to myself, "Oh dear god, I don't know if I'm going to make it." It's not that I'm criticizing chick-lit, it's just that it has a language of its own. I'm sure it is a more accurate interpretation of my verbal skills on a daily basis than, say, Faulkner, but it is not a language I have encountered in a novel in quite a long time. However, chick-lit did what it always does...and it sucked me in. And for a genre I usually find predictable, I was actually anticipating and guessing how it would end.

Italian for Beginners is good for a quick, enjoyable read [perfect for that SPRING READING I have been talking about]. I'm adding Harmel to my list of go-to fun authors because sometimes, you just gotta get lost in some chick-lit. Right Sal and Colin?

Review: Murder in the 'Burbs

When I read Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner a few months ago, I had needed a nice, fun read after a horrible book I'd just read. This pretty much hit the spot. It has all the standard features of a chick-lit novel: New York City, passionate love (affair), job in some media or fashion field, problems are overly-dramatized but suck you in. While the chick-lit checklist is complete, this one takes a bit of a turn by becoming a mystery.

New-York-City-girl-turned-Connecticut-housewife Kate Klein discovers a dead neighbor with a knife in her back. This small glimmer of excitement leads her to start a full-on private investigation, digging up suburban affairs that eventually lead her to the passionate lover-that-never-was from her days as a city girl [go figure]. Typically, chick-lit novels are pretty damn predictable [which, of course, never stops me from reading them], but I like that this one had the mystery element to keep me engrossed. It had plenty of humourous scenarios and one-liners, particularly from the obligatory best friend, rich-girl-in-a-funny-way, sidekick character, Janie. An Amazon.com review calls Weiner an "endearing contemporary voice." Agreed. I saw the movie version of In Her Shoes, which actually had substance as well. I should read some more of her books, because she doesn't write total predictable, sappy, girly crap.