2014 Summer Reads

I know summer isn't technically over yet, but the Summer Reading Program at my library wrapped up on Friday. The past couple of years I've only finished about 3 books during SRP, but in my defense, I was in grad school at the time. This year I was able to rack up a lot more reads by listening to audiobooks at work and in the car. My goal was twelve and I'm stupidly proud that I reached that goal.

I didn't really think too much about what books I was going to read, but I ended up with a nice mix of fiction and non-fiction, young adult and adult novels. Here's a quick run-down of my summer reads:

1- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. 
This is a sweet romance between two outcast teenagers growing up in the '80s. I felt like it pretty accurately captures the physical feeling of falling in love as a teenager. Nothing graphic, don't get me wrong. One moment that has stuck in my mind is the first time that Eleanor and Park hold hands, and Eleanor wonders if her hand has sprouted extra nerve endings or if she has always been able to feel so much. Definitely recommend.

2- Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead. 
Astonish Me really seems to pull back the curtain on the inside world of the ballet. It's a work of fiction, but it seems very real. Rusakov has to be based on Mikhail Baryshnikov. The book is the story of ballerina Joan, who helps world-famous Russian dancer Arslan Rusakov defect. Joan later retires when she becomes pregnant and marries her high school sweetheart. Okay, my description sounds kind of boring, but the book is very good, I promise.

3- Just Kids by Patti Smith.
Patti Smith makes New York in the '60s seem like a magical place, where one could run into Jimi Hendrix in a stairwell or Allen Ginsberg at an automat. I kind of wish I had a time machine. My only complaint about this book is that I listened to the audiobook. Smith reads the audiobook herself, and I think the book could have benefited from having a professional narrator. Occasionally, Smith's emotions come to the surface and the audiobook takes on a certain quality, like you're hanging out with Smith and she's telling you stories from her youth. But for much of the book, Smith's narration barely rises above a monotone. I would definitely recommend checking out the print version of the book though.

4- Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink. 
Holy moley. This was a difficult one to get through. There was a point in the prologue where I thought "there's no way I can make it through this book." But I did make it through, and it is a fascinating story. Fascinating in the way that car crashes are fascinating. This is the true story of a hospital in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, where everything that can go wrong goes wrong. They lose power, and with it the air conditioning. Then the generators fail. Rescue efforts are slow to materialize and inefficient. And then the doctors start euthanizing patients. YEAH. Honestly, this one was hard to get through, so I would totally understand if you want to skip it. I did recommend it to a cousin who is in nursing school, since this book is full of questions about medical ethics.

5- Stardust by Neil Gaiman. 
This is a sweet fairytale romance. I saw the movie years ago and really enjoyed it. This was a really quick read (or "listen" in my case) so I would definitely recommend this one as a nice summer read.

6- Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn. 
I first saw the late '60s film version of Bonnie and Clyde's life of crime sometime in high school. I was on an old movie kick, because I thought being into old movies made me cool. I was never very good at recognizing what made people cool in high school. Anyway, I found the movie fascinating. And then a couple years ago there was a made-for-TV movie. It struck me as odd that we're still portraying B&C in such a glamorous way. It's weird. Gritty reboots are so popular now, I thought someone would tackle the Bonnie and Clyde story in a more realistic way. Then I heard about this book, and I knew I had to read it. Honestly, I found the real story more fascinating than the glamorous version. From the societal factors that lead to Clyde's criminal career to Bonnie's deep embarrassment over the incorrect notion that she smoked cigars (photos had been discovered of her posing with a cigar in her mouth). Bonnie was more worried about people thinking she smoked cigars than people thinking she was a murderer. Anyway, highly recommend.

7- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. 
Another fairytale novella from Gaiman. Honestly, I wish this had been longer. I would love an expanded version or a sequel where we learn more about the Hempstock women. They're fascinating characters and I would love to know more about their mythology.

8- Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. 
This was another hard one to get through. I love love loved Code Name Verity. LOVED. This book was also fantastic, but the gritty descriptions of torture experienced in the Ravensbruck women's camp was difficult. I had to take a break from it for a little while. It gets dark.

9- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. 
I read this book because I enjoyed Anderson's Wintergirls. Not sure which I liked more. This book describes high school freshman Melinda's slow recovery after she's raped at an end-of-the-summer party. Oh, spoilers I guess. Melinda doesn't actually describe what happened to her until about half-way through the book. At the start all you know is that she's now a social outcast for calling the cops to said party. But I knew the secret going into it, and it didn't disrupt my enjoyment of the book at all.

10- Paper Towns by John Green. 
I liked it better than Looking For Alaska. But this book is basically Looking for Alaska plus a scavenger hunt. And manic-pixie-dream-girl Margo is barely in the book, so she didn't get on my nerves nearly as much as Alaska did. So if you've read The Fault In Our Stars and you want to read more Green, skip LFA and just go right to Paper Towns.

11- Notes To Boys by Pamela Ribon. 
Oh man. If I hadn't been too shy to even talk to boys in high school, I'm sure I would have written some notes like this. The overly-dramatic, somebody-love-me-please attitude definitely reminds me of me in high school. Reading this book a single thought kept popping into my head: "I am SO glad I'm not a teenager anymore!"

12- In Between by Kate Wilhelm.
This was a weird one. It's a mystery about two ghosts who solve their own murder. Ghost detectives. Doesn't really sound like my usual thing, right? It's not. I listened to this audiobook specifically because it was only three discs long and I knew I could finish it before SRP ended. I mean, I'm sure if ghost mysteries are your thing you'd like this book more than I did. But I prefer my ghost stories to be more haunted house horror.

The Novels of Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl, Sharp Objects, and Dark Places

Gillian Flynn likes to write dark, weird stories. And I love her for it.

Last year I read Gone Girl because, well, who didn't read Gone Girl last year. I'm not usually one to read something just because everyone else has, but my mom kept telling me to read it so I eventually gave in. I was not disappointed. I spent my formative years staying up late reading my mom's copies of Stephen King and VC Andrews novels, and my fondness for those authors is probably all you need to know about why I've become a big Gillian Flynn fan. Recently I went back and read Flynn's earlier novels, Sharp Objects and Dark Places.

These mini-reviews are in the order in which I read them. Also, some very minor spoilers.

Gone Girl
I read this book almost a year ago, so my memory is a little foggy. What I do remember is that this book has a super dark ending. The bad guy wins! Several of my coworkers who have read this book complained that they didn't like the ending because they felt that the characters deserved some sort of comeuppance for all the terrible things they do in the book. To which I say, eyeroll. Okay, I guess that's not really something that gets said. My library's book club read Gone Girl this month and a coworker had to cover the meeting despite not having read the book. She told me that the only thing she knew about the book was that it had a bad ending. My response was that the ending wasn't bad, it was perfect. It just wasn't a happy ending. If you're looking for a happy ending where justice is served and everyone lives happily ever after, it's probably  a good idea to just stay away from anything Gillian Flynn has written.

Sharp Objects
I don't think this was my favorite of Flynn's novels, but it is a super fast read. I tend to get distracted really easily and not finish what I started reading, so any time I breeze through a book in a week's time I have to give the author credit. Sharp Objects is the story of a Chicago journalist returning to her hometown in Missouri when a girl goes missing just a few months after another girl was murdered. Serial killer in a small town, you know the drill. This was Flynn's first novel and I don't think it's as well structured as her other two. The big reveal isn't that surprising and happens sort of abruptly. But it is a good read and I would recommend it if you're in the mood for a mystery with disturbing family dynamics.

Dark Places
Speaking of disturbing family dynamics, this book pretty much takes the cake. You'll have to read the book yourself, to say more would be way too spoilery. In January 1985, Patty Day and two of her young children are brutally murdered in their home. The youngest child, Libby, manages to escape through a window and survives. Patty's teenage son Ben is arrested and convicted of the murders. This book is told from alternating viewpoints, Patty and Ben in 1985 and Libby in 2009. In the present day, Libby is realizing that the testimony she gave in 1985 when she was 7-years-old may have been coerced, and maybe her brother didn't kill her family after all. The book then shares Patty and Ben's viewpoints on the day leading up to the murders. It's a really interesting way to tell the story, and I really like the way the exact same event is interpreted differently depending on who is the viewpoint character for that chapter. However, I think this alternating structure is why it took me longer to finish this book. When a chapter ends on a cliffhanger, I'll often pull the "just one more chapter" thing to find out what happens next. But when a chapter ends on a cliffhanger and I know I'll have to read at least one additional chapter about completely different events before I can find out what happens, it's a lot easier to say "whatever, I'll just pick this up tomorrow night." It's especially bad if the cliffhanger is at the end of a Patty 1985 or Ben 1985 chapter. The book is essentially structured as Libby 2009, Patty 1985, Libby 2009, Ben 1985, Libby 2009, Patty 1985. If I want to find out what happens next to Patty, I have to read three more chapters. I mainly read in bed, so that's a lot to ask of someone who is falling asleep. This is a complaint that's really specific to me and my reading style, I still highly recommend this book. I think I actually like it better than Gone Girl.

Quarter Life Crisis (Literary Coping Mechanisms)

New Year’s Day found me watching football with my husband, sister, and parents in my aunt’s (recently renovated) basement. Surfing 2013 best of/worst of lists on the web brought me to this reading list for your quarter-life crisis . At 29 I may be a little late for my crisis, but I’d hate to miss it. And of the 29 books on the list I’ve already read (and liked or loved) seven. Seven!! How random, no? So I added the whole lot to my goodreads list and jumped in. Here’s progress as of the last day of January:

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayer  Loved this. Strayer is the no-longer-anonymous “Sugar”, advice columnist atThe Rumpus. The book is a collection of her articles slash sort of a memoir? Anyway, she totally reaffirmed my faith in humanity, in myself, in the kindness of strangers and the possibility of transcendence. But, like, without being too squishy about it. Basically it made me feel like the movie I Heart Huckabees makes me feel which is really nice. A super lucky first pick from the list, it made me hungry for more.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn  Captivating. Everything and everyone in this novel is so f*cked up. I think I’d been held back a little in my fiction consumption, sticking to older classics and favorites from younger years. The brutal description of grown people with grown (granted highly unlikely) problems was refreshing and reassuring. I’ve got a sense now what the “quarter-life crisis” book list is bringing to the table and I like it.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri  Pretty good read about a first-gen American with Indian parents straddling old world expectations and new world dreams. Spoke to my need to please my family in a sort of blind, subconscious loyalty way. Apparently teen rebellion is just a detour on the way to still not establishing your own identity. Or maybe that’s just me? I don’t know, blame it on the quarter-life crisis.

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut  Memoir about a perpetual traveler’s early adventures. The author speaks about himself in both the first and third person in a way that really added to the narrative – how he both identifies with his younger self and also doesn’t even recognize that young man. I didn’t love this one, but the suspense in the last third of the book pulled me through it. The author’s struggles to save a suicidal friend cut pretty close to home, and made the book feel really honest to me. Maybe too honest? A bit painful really.

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke  Literally a handful of letters Rilke wrote to a young poet who struck up a correspondence with him in 1903. Loved, loved this collection. Rilke is like the mentor you’d always want. Distant and objective but almost unbelievably compassionate. A strong proponent of solitude. Which I think I could use more of. The introduction was probably 20% of the book, but valuable to set the scene. I read the whole book in an evening and am considering putting it into some kind of annual rotation. Maybe a nice book to read every New Year’s Day? Or a birthday tradition? After 15+ years of watching Sixteen Candles on my birthday it may be time to step it up. 

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollingsworth  Enjoyable novel about a young, middle class gay man in London in the early 80′s. He’s found lodging in the home of a wealthy MP, the father of a school friend. The book intimately follows his first romances, his inevitable spiral into the coke-fueled, secretive gay life of the young and rich at that time. Then AIDS. Because that’s the 80′s. In a way it was all a bit predictable, but the up-close experience of the protagonist keeps it from feeling stale. I liked the book, but I was kind of depressed by the end. Which did not put me in the right frame of mind for…

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy  The blurb made this sound like a sort of self-help book spoof full of surprisingly helpful insights. Unfortunately it seems to be… philosophy. Not my genre. Like, at all. I’m about 2 chapters (not that it seems to have chapters?) and I’m going to put it to the side. On principle I want to finish the entire list honestly, but this one might have to provide filler in half-hour segments between the rest of the selections. Unless it really turns around. I think I may not be deep enough for this kind of self-evaluation. Or perhaps I just haven’t had enough therapy. Regardless this one isn’t doing it for me.

And so, onward!

p.s. I’ve previously read Hyperbole and a Half, Let’s Pretend this Never Happened, The Marriage Plot, Love is a Mix Tape, Of Human Bondage, The Good Earth, and The Joy Luck Club. Interestingly the first three in the last 18 months, the fourth and fifth roughly seven years ago and last two over ten years ago. If I’m still enjoying the quarter-life crisis project after I’ve finished the others I may reread the last four with older eyes more wisdom.

p.p.s Full disclosure, this entire thing was also posted at Go Mighty. With which I've finally initiated contact after 4 months of thinking about it.

Catching Up

I don't know if you know this, but working full-time while also going to grad school is pretty time-intensive. Add a commute and trying to have a life and basically all my blogging time is gone. I wish I had more time to sit and write about what I've been reading, because I have a lot to say about the Hunger Games trilogy and The Great Gatsby and Chopsticks, but I just don't have the time or the brain power to dedicate to writing good reviews. If you want to keep up with what I'm reading, follow me on goodreads.

Here are some recent books I've read:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
The Walking Dead vol 1 (graphic novel)
Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing proper reviews. Probably not.

Catching Fire mini-review

I'm planning to do a review of the whole Hunger Games trilogy soon, but for now here's a conversation I had with my cousin Morgan about the second book:

Me: I'm warning you ahead of time, what I'm about to say is really nerdy.
Morgan: Okay...
Me: I kind of feel like Catching Fire is the Empire Strikes Back of the Hunger Games Trilogy. It has the darker, cliffhanger-y ending where you have to go on to Mockingjay, just like you have to go on to watch Return of the Jedi. And Empire is my favorite Star Wars movie and Catching Fire was my favorite Hunger Games book, so they have that in common too.
Morgan: You know, you said it was gonna be nerdy, but you really outdid yourself there.

Floating Staircase by Ronald Malfi

I'm a sucker for a haunted house story. I love nothing more than curling up with a book that makes me quiver at every strange bump in the night. A marker of a good horror novel is if you have to stay up late watching sitcoms on Netflix in order to take your mind off the scary stuff so that you can get some sleep.

Floating Staircase is the story of Travis Glasgow, a horror writer who moves into an old, run-down house with his wife. Haunted hijinks ensue. Malfi truly has a talent for describing those creaks and thuds that could just be the house settling... or could be something more sinister.

Throughout the course of the book, Travis investigates the death of a young boy who drowned (or did he??) in the lake behind their house the summer before the Glasgows moved in. Through his investigations Travis also has to confront his guilt over the death of his younger brother, who drowned in a lake when they were kids. So not all the ghosts of this book are of the paranormal kind, there are the more common ghosts of human memory as well.

For the most part, I would recommend checking out this book if you're a fan of the horror genre. But, be warned that most of the best spooky stuff is concentrated in the earlier chapters of the book. At some point the book shifts away from straight-up horror to a more standard murder mystery. I would have preferred a little more intense spookiness at the climax of the book, but really, when wouldn't I prefer a little more spookiness? I liked this book, but I wish I would have just rented the library's copy, because I don't feel this is going to be a re-read a la 'Salem's Lot.

I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle

I know what you're thinking. "I thought Abby was dead or struck illiterate or something. Isn't she a workaholic who's busy neglecting her family and friends? Where does she find time to read?!?!"

Good question. I blame Meg of A Practical Wedding. I went to her book talk (for a completely different book, obviously) last Thursday in Atlanta and took the following day off work. Thus I had an entire Friday with nothing to do other than nurse a hangover. And read as it turns out.

Now, if you've ever consumed more Jack Daniels than is strictly advisable, you know that heavy thinking is not on the agenda for the following day. I wandered around the house avoiding eye contact with my Kindle (home of 2/3rds finished The Count of Monte Cristo) and hoping to find a copy of People Magazine. Instead I snuck up to the "To-Read" shelf and noticed I Love You, Beth Cooper. My husband had purchased and enjoyed it some years ago and I have been not reading it ever since.

So I read it in a day while sipping Perrier and eating an entire loaf of dry french bread. (What? That's a doctor recommended hangover diet.) A quick googling reveals that the author, Larry Doyle is a former writer for both Beavis & Butthead and The Simpsons. This comes as no surprise. The book is quite funny and the teen characters are both angsty and awkward in the best way. Ever chapter starts with a sketch of the protaganist, Dennis Cooverman (The Coove!), who becomes more beaten and brutalized with every scene, and a quote from a classic teen movie. Any book that quotes Lloyd Dobler is okay by me.

It's beyond easy to see why this book was made into a movie. Doyle's television sensibility comes through with vivid action sequences that I imagine translate well to film. I'll definitely be adding this to my Netflix queue. After I saw the movie poster I remembered that the movie stars Hayden Panettiere, but while I was reading I couldn't stop picturing Dianna Agron. Same diff?

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

I wanted this book to be better than it is. When I first heard about this feminist science-fiction novel, I knew immediately that I had to read it. And, yes, I actually read the book instead of listening to the audiobook. This was my winter vacation read.

This book is a retelling of The Scarlet Letter, although I haven't actually read The Scarlet Letter so I can't get too detailed about the similarities between the tale.

In the world of When She Woke, most criminals are not kept in prisons, but instead go through a skin-dying process called chroming. Different crimes get different colors, misdemeanors get yellow, murderers get red, etc. The chroming isn't permanent, it depends on the length of the sentence. Hannah Payne is sentenced to 16 years as a red for having an abortion and refusing to name either the father or the doctor who performed the procedure. Roe v. Wade was overturned after a STI epidemic left a huge portion of the population infertile and extreme right-wing Christians had taken over the government. It cannot possibly be a coincidence that the "Sanctity of Life" laws in the book are constantly referred to as the SOL laws, an acronym that more commonly means "Shit Outta Luck." Pregnant with a married pastor's child? Sorry, you don't have any options because of the SOL laws. It's actually a quite believable plot, and except for a few incidents late in the book, I can totally see this type of future unfolding.

We follow Hannah from the time she first wakes up as a red in the Chrome ward, through her time at a rehabilitation center, then we see her try to reconnect with her family. After that, the plot starts to go off the rails a bit. There is a definite difference in tone between the early chapters and the latter. The first chapters are slowly paced, drawing you in to this story and this world. The last few chapters are really quick, and the characters start acting in ways contrary to their previous actions. I don't want to spoil much, because I would still recommend checking this book out, but I'll just say that there's a sexual relationship in the second half of the book that I have trouble believing. And the ending seems to be resolved a little too quickly and neatly. Those are my biggest complaints about this book.

If you like feminist literature and are looking for a short, quick read, I recommend picking up When She Woke at your local library. It's only 240 pages (according to my Nook), and I read it in under three weeks. And those three weeks encompassed Christmas and New Years, so that's pretty impressive. Had it been a real vacation, where I didn't have work or anything, I probably could have finished this in a day or two.

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns makes The Help look like a piece of shit.

I finished this book the week of Thanksgiving, but with the semester wrapping up and the holidays I haven't had a chance to write about it until now. I had to read it as my "context book" for my Intro to Library and Information Science class. I had 6 options, and this was the only one available as an audiobook, so it won. I'm so glad this is the book I chose, because it is a fantastic book. Because I don't feel like writing it all out again, here's what I wrote about Warmth for my context book discussion (You can ignore the last two paragraphs if you want, that's where I had to talk about how the book related to libraries):

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabelle Wilkerson tells the story of the wave of Southern African-Americans who moved out of the South to cities in the North and West. Between 1910 and 1970, the African-American population of cities such as Chicago and Detroit grew by 40%. Wilkerson interviewed hundreds of people about their experiences during the “Great Migration.” She includes many stories from her various interviewees, but the majority of the book focuses on three: Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, who moved from Mississippi to Chicago in the ‘30s, George Swanson Starling, who left Georgia for New York in the ‘40s, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, who moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the ‘50s. Every story is different, but there are definitely common themes. Each person in the migration was looking for better opportunities than what they could find in the south.

The Warmth of Other Suns only mentions libraries explicitly once, when Wilkerson notes that it was illegal for African-Americans to use the “White” libraries in the Jim Crow-era South. However, there are other connections to library science that can be made. In addition to the segregated libraries, Wilkerson mentions how a popular weekly African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender, had to be smuggled into the South, because it was not freely available. Limiting the access of information by banning the Chicago Defender and having separate libraries would clearly be a violation of today’s ALA Bill of Rights.

While not nearly as significant as access to information, there is also the simple fact of changing demographics. I can’t find the exact numbers, but Wilkerson mentions that the demographics of Chicago went from around 1% African-American at the beginning of the Great Migration to 33% at the end of the migration. This is a huge change in demographics in just a few decades. Public librarians at the time would have had to adapt to provide services to a large number of patrons coming from the rural South, which was a different culture than that of large Northern cities. In the library where I work I have occasionally helped people who are new to the area find resources they need, from the best ice cream shop and playgrounds for their kids to where to find good job resources. Rural Southerners fresh to the big cities would have needed similar assistance, and a library could have been a good resource.

So that's a general overview of the book, but I guess I should explain my opening statement. Two weekends ago I watched the movie The Help with my parents (we have semi-weekly movie nights). I'd already seen the movie when it was in theaters (I took my mom and grandma to see it, because we're a ridiculously cute family). The thing that was different this time watching The Help was that I had read The Warmth of Other Suns. Since Warmth is about the migration of black Americans from the South to the North and West, it understandably contains many stories about inequality and brutality in the South to explain why so many were fleeing. Some of the stories are absolutely horrifying. I find the phrase "necktie parties" profoundly disturbing. What does this have to do with The Help? Neither the book nor the movie really gives any idea of the danger the maids were in by speaking out against their white employers. Watching the movie now after having read Warmth just makes The Help seem somewhat dishonest. The Help wishes it was as profound as The Warmth of Other Suns, but it's just a watered-down, cartoonish version of American history. The Help is designed to make you feel good because you're not racist like Hilly; Warmth makes you feel bad that your ancestors were white Southern farmers. Does that make any sense?

I don't really know how to end this review, so I guess I'll just leave you with the Richard Wright poem from which Warmth takes its title:

“I was leaving the South
to fling myself into the unknown . . .
I was taking a part of the South
to transplant in alien soil,
to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains,
bend in strange winds,
respond to the warmth of other suns
and, perhaps, to bloom”

Grammys? I thought this was a book blog!

Two of the books I reviewed this year have been nominated for Grammys. Abby may have thwarted my attempt to completely dominate the homepage with my own reviews, but she can't take this one away from me! I've reviewed 100% more Grammy nominees than she has! That may have something to do with the fact that this is a book review blog and not a music review blog, but whatever.

Between Bossypants and If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't), I'm going to have to root for Betty White. Yes, I enjoyed Bossypants so much that I listened to the audiobook after having already read the book (and then I asked for the book for Christmas so that I could read it again), but I have to be honest and say that Betty White's performance is just better. I love Tina Fey with all my heart, but all the whispering asides in the Bossypants audiobook didn't really work.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent:

Snippet of Amazon's summary: Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax.

That should give you an idea of the range of this book. Okrent leaves no rock unturned in this detailed history of the Prohibition era. The book starts with the political manueverings and personalities that got the 18th amendment passed. All fascinating. It moves on to describe the legal, political, judicial, economic and social impacts of Prohibition's enactment and enforcement, not just in the United States but in Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. Finally it tackles the rather fast fall from favor and repeal of Prohibition and closes with a short reflection on how the movers and shakers of the time have been essentially erased from our cultural memory.

In individual paragraphs and sections, the book is great. The stories are carefully researched and detailed and the individuals and events are really interesting. When taken in portions of more than a couple of pages however, it's just dense. Especially the first half where the movement is kind of gelling from different sections of society. There's no overarching narrative, so it's hard to stay engaged. I ended up reading it in 15 minute stints on my lunch break (thus, it took 4 months to finish). The actual Prohibition-era sections were much more fun, a lot of Baptists & Bootleggers type stuff.

Fans of history will enjoy this book, especially those that are amazed by the power of lobbyists (hint: Prohibitionists invented modern lobbying). It may be dense, but the individual stories are fascinating and often amusing. I recommend the book and intend to check out the PBS miniseries that is it's companion.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I finished The Book Thief on Saturday, and I've been trying to figure out how to write about it ever since. I enjoyed the audiobook immensely. Allan Corduner's performance is fantastic, and listening to his performance may actually have made me more emotional than had I read the paper version of the book.

I wanted to include some quotations from the book in my review, because Markus Zusak's writing is very lyrical. Some could argue that it's overly-flowery, but I think it works, especially considering our narrator. However, since I listened to the audiobook, it's hard to actually remember the quotes I liked, since it's not like I can just bookmark the page and come back to it later. I tried googling for quotes, but most of the good quotes I found were all super spoilery. So you'll just have to live without examples of Zusak's prose.

The Book Thief is told from the perspective of Death. An appropriate narrator for a book that takes place in Germany during World War II. Death is a compassionate and actually quite witty narrator. Death tells the story of Leisel Meminger, the titular book thief. The first book Leisel steals is The Gravedigger's Handbook, which she finds in the snow next to her little brother's grave. She later goes on to steal a book out of a fire at a Nazi book burning, and a bunch of books from the wealthy mayor. Books are the most important things in Leisel's life, next to her best friend and next-door-neighbor Rudy, and her foster parents Hans and Rosa.

I don't want to spoil any of the plot of the book, but should you choose to read The Book Thief, I would recommend keeping a box of kleenex nearby. I'm just saying. I know it's hard to believe, but a book narrated by Death in Nazi Germany has some sad parts.

How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

The blurb on the back of the book is so apt I'm just going to copy it here.

1913 – Suffragette throws herself under the King’s horse.
1969 – Feminists storm Miss World.
NOW – Caitlin Moran rewrites The Female Eunuch from a bar stool and demands to know why pants are getting smaller.

There’s never been a better time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven’t been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain…

Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should you get Botox? Do men secretly hate us? What should you call your vagina? Why does your bra hurt? And why does everyone ask you when you’re going to have a baby?

Part memoir, part rant, Caitlin Moran answers these questions and more in How To Be A Woman – following her from her terrible 13th birthday (‘I am 13 stone, have no friends, and boys throw gravel at me when they see me’) through adolescence, the workplace, strip-clubs, love, fat, abortion, TopShop, motherhood and beyond.

So there's that. I picked up this book as part of the A Practical Wedding Book Club and loooooved it. Moran talks about feminism the same way I feel about it. And she's fiercely feminist without giving up the fun things about being a girl (bitching, dressing up, sleeping with musicians).

Moran is terribly funny and the book is a very well put-together memoir/manifesto. Each chapter starts with a (usually traumatizing) episode on Moran's road to womanhood (getting her period, falling in love, having a baby) and segues into a discussion of the effect of the kyriarchy on modern women. Only not as boring as I made that sound. It hilarious. I lol'ed out loud. Several times.

I'm trying to think of a particularly funny passage to share, but it's hard to pin one thing down. The time Moran and a friend were thrown out of a strip club accused of being hookers? Her night with Gaga in a BDSM club? Discovering that even with professional stylists and designer duds, she still didn't look like a model in 98 out of 100 photos? Life's tough out there for a girl.

As a warning, Moran writes very conversationally and is British. I had a bit of difficulty following some of the celebrity references (other than those about Jennifer Aniston) and I had no idea what TopShop is. Not a big deal really, the context comes across. Additionally the book was only published in Britain so Amazon shipping is slow and $$$. I bought my copy used on alibris.com and got it faster and cheaper.

So basically everyone should read this book. Its amusing, affirming, it made me fall in love with Lady Gaga and finally, finally gave me a simple litmus test for detecting sexist bullshit - "Is it polite? Are the boys doing it?" Yay for feminists having fun :)

Bossypants by Tina Fey (audiobook)

I know what you're thinking. "Wait a tick, hasn't Miranda already reviewed Bossypants? What is this, a 'Best of UBC' week?"

Yes, I already reviewed Bossypants. No, this is not a "Best of" thing, because that would pretty much consist of this because it lead to this. This is actually a review of the audiobook version of Bossypants. It was just as good as the print version, maybe even better if you take into account the fact that included is the actual audio of the Sarah Palin/Hilary Clinton SNL bit.

The only problem I had with the audiobook was with sound quality. This is the first time I've tried a downloadable audiobook from the library, so I don't know if it was this specific book or if this is how all downloaded audiobooks sound. Or maybe it's my iPod, which is almost 6 years old. Or maybe it's my car stereo, which is 10 years old. At times during the book Tina would say things sort of under her breath, which didn't really work in my situation because I was listening while driving down a loud interstate in a car whose stereo has basically no volume control. And the whole time Tina sounded a little muffled. But the book itself was great.

There was one section that I had forgot about from the print book that apparently I didn't talk about in my first review. It's the only part of the book I don't like. It's a part where Tina responds to her online critics. This section is not nearly as clever as the rest of the book and really seems kind of unnecessary.

But, all in all, this is still one of my favorite memoirs. I recommend the audiobook just as highly as I recommended the print version.

If You Ask Me by Betty White

So I still haven't gotten the audiobook copy of The Warmth of Other Suns that I ordered from another library. Hopefully it'll get here next week after I get back from my Georgia vacation. I needed something that I could listen to on my way to and from class last night, but not something that was going to be more than a couple of discs, because I don't want to have to put off listening to Warmth (I have to read it for school, and I'd really just like to get it over with). So I looked over the list of audiobooks I had on hold, and one of them happened to be just two discs (about 2 hours and 15 minutes) long: If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't) by Betty White.

If You Ask Me is a collection of stories from Betty's life. Did you realize that Betty White is 89 years old? I mean, I knew she was old, but I didn't know she was almost ninety. I guess I didn't realize she was so old because my great aunt Betty B. was about Betty W.'s age when she died, and Betty B. wasn't nearly as fun or spunky as Betty W. One of my favorite stories in the book was when Betty is talking about how she doesn't want to be a cougar. She often meets men she finds interesting but she doesn't want to go out with them because usually they're all younger than she is. "He might be only 80!"

This is the first time I've listened to an audiobook read by the author. For a memoir like this, it really adds to the story because you feel like Betty White is just talking to you, telling you stories about Saturday Night Live and her pets. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who needs a quick, fun read.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Read by Debra Wiseman and Joel Johnstone

After my last audiobook, which was violent and difficult to listen to, I decided to pick a cheerier subject for my next listen. I picked Thirteen Reasons Why, which is about a teenage girl who commits suicide. I'm awesome at picking books.

In Thirteen Reasons Why, our protagonist is Clay Jensen. Two weeks after one of his friends, Hannah Baker, commits suicide, he receives a package in the mail (no return address) with 7 cassette tapes. When he plays the first tape he is shocked to hear the voice of Hannah Baker. Hannah made these tapes as a sort of suicide note. Each side of each cassette is about one person who directly or indirectly contributed to her decision to shuffle off this mortal coil. The first person mentioned on the tapes was the first to receive them, and when he's done he sends them on to the next person. Basically, if you receive the tapes, it's partially your fault. Well, sort of. Clay receives the tapes, but he didn't really do anything bad to Hannah. I was wondering how Jay Asher was going to keep the protagonist of his novel sympathetic after we find out how he contributed to a teenage girl's suicide. But since this is a YA novel, I wasn't really surprised to find out that Clay is a super good guy instead of an anti-hero.

It's an interesting book that focuses a lot on bullying, rumors, peer pressure, that sort of thing. There's a short discussion about what is or isn't rape that I found interesting. The phrase "victim blamer" is used at one point, which was awesome. My biggest problem with the book was the performance of Debra Wiseman, who performs Hannah's tapes in the audiobook version.

I'm not sure how it comes across while reading the book, but for several discs I had myself convinced that Hannah was punking everyone and didn't really commit suicide. I mean, it's specifically mentioned that there wasn't a funeral, so it wasn't impossible for her to have faked her death. (Yes, I was raised on Soap Operas, why do you ask?) The whole theme of rumors getting out of control actually could have contributed to my version of the story. But, no, Hannah really did die. Debra performs Hannah as being damn near cheerful on the first few "tapes," which was disconcerting when you consider that you're supposed to be listening to the voice of a girl who commits suicide just after finishing the recordings. The performance just didn't fit into what I imagine a depressed, suicidal teen sounds like. Also, she sounds kind of old. Maybe they wanted Hannah to sound like an old soul, I don't know. And she says "repercussions" in a way that sounds weird to me, and as you can imagine in a novel like this, "repercussions" is said quite often.

In case you're wondering: Audiobooks are pretty much going to dominate my posts for the foreseeable future. I'm in grad school, so all my reading time is dominated by book-learnin'. But, since I have a little over an hour commute each way to class, I can use that time to power through audiobooks for fun. I can pretty much knock out one disc each way. It's great.

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer

The full title for this book is Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, and I really feel that the subtitle is the least superfluous subtitle in the history of books. Or at least in the history of books that I have read. If I had to choose one word to describe this book, I would have to go with "violent."

Under the Banner of Heaven tells the story of a double murder committed by two fundamentalist Mormons because, essentially, God told them to. But instead of just focusing on the murder and the trial, Krakauer delves into the violent history of Mormonism. The short history (the religion was founded under 200 years ago) of Mormonism has been colored by bloodshed, both committed by and against Mormons. I am not a Mormon, so the history of the religion was new to me. I had read the memoir of a former polygamist before, but she didn't really go in to the history of the church the way Krakauer does. I picked up this book after seeing it recommended several times in the comments section on Jezebel articles about the trial and conviction of Warren Jeffs.

Well, I didn't pick up the book. I picked up the audiobook, and that may have been a mistake. I've been in the car a lot the last few weeks, so I grabbed the audiobook to listen to during my drives. Now, I am no stranger to violent fiction. I started reading Stephen King novels when I was in 9th grade. However, listening to the description of how an 18 month old had her throat slashed to the point that she was nearly decapitated.... I almost vomited in my car. I'm not sure if it was the fact that this is a true story or if it was actually hearing the words out loud.... but it was very unsettling. I guess if I was reading the physical book I could have just skimmed that paragraph, but in the car I didn't have that option. I just turned the radio off and drove in silence until I had worked up the courage to turn it back on.

If you're not so much interested in all the blood and guts, but you are interested in legal proceedings, I would check out this book in order to read about the trials of the murderers. They truly believed they were acting out the word of God (one of the foundations of Mormon beliefs is that all believers have the ability to communicate directly with God). There is a really interesting debate on whether this kind of belief is a delusion. If the belief is a delusion, is the believer then incompetent to stand trial? Does this mean that all religious zealots would automatically be ruled incompetent? Could no person of faith be held responsible for their own actions?

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is a great book. Check it out if it's something you're interested, but you've been forewarned: it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

Stupid History by Leland Gregory

I really feel like I need to start out this review by stating that I did not pay for this book. I downloaded it because it was Barnes and Noble's Free Friday selection a month or so ago. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

This book had real potential. Stories about people being stupid? Sign me up! However, most of the stories aren't really about people being stupid, but about how somewhere along the way we twisted history so that we believe something that isn't actually true. This book sets out to tell the truth, but I can't actually attest that it does so, because there doesn't seem to be any footnotes or sources listed by the author. He could be making all this up for all I know. I wanted to tag this review as "Non-Fiction?" but I don't think we can have question marks in tags. And I haven't actually finished the book, so maybe there is some sort of bibliography at the end. I don't know.

But the absolute worst part of this book, pardon my French:

THE MOTHER FUCKING TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. There are so many typos in this book, I can only assume the author wrote the whole book while drunk, didn't spell check, and then skipped the editing stage and went straight to publishing. I started out highlighting errors I came across, but it became too tiresome after a while.

The stories themselves are fairly amusing, but I just can't deal with the typos. I'm glad I didn't spend money on this book.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

"It's not fair! She's the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can't we get health insurance?"

Henrietta Lacks is responsible for the polio vaccine. She helped create the HPV vaccine, and numerous other medicines and cancer treatments. And she did it all after she died in 1951. While she was at Johns Hopkins Hospital receiving treatment for cervical cancer, a sample was taken from her tumor that never died. The cells are still growing and reproducing today. And her family had no idea until decades later.

Reporter Rebecca Skloot tells the amazing story of Henrietta's life, her death, and her family. While people were making millions selling HeLa cells (named for the first letters in Henrietta's first and last names) to labs around the world, her children were struggling to get by. This is a remarkable story and one I think everyone would benefit from reading. It's not just the story of one woman's incredible legacy, it's also the story of what it was like to be a black patient in Baltimore in 1951. Henrietta's cousins believed that doctors from Johns Hopkins were kidnapping black people off the sidewalks at night to do medical experiments on them. It's the story of a family coming to terms with the fact that their mother was possibly the single most important person in medical science in the last century.

For a good part of the book Skloot tells about trying to get to know the Lacks family so she can include their perspective in the book. She meets a wall of distrust from the Lackses, until she is able to befriend Deborah Lacks, Henrietta's only living daughter. Once Deborah begins to trust Rebecca, the story really starts to come together. Deborah begins to move from being angry over the fact that her mother's cells were taken without permission, to just wanting people to know who her mother was. That's this book.

Abby read this book before, but I don't know if she ever wrote about it because I couldn't find her post in the 3 minutes I looked for it before I started writing. But I picked up this book mostly because she recommended it so highly, and I'm glad she did. When we got the book in at my library I thought it sounded kind of science-y, but most of the book was focused on Henrietta's family. I would recommend this book to anyone. It's a great read, and a fascinating true story.

Peep Show by Joshua Braff

Braff's Peep Show is a strange read. I didn't love it, it left a bit too much unresolved. Not in that "it makes you think" way but in a "and then he stopped writing" way. But it is an interesting story full of bizarre, flawed characters and it definitely dropped me into unfamiliar territory. I think this one sentence from Amazon's summary pretty much sums it up: In the mid 1970s, 16-year-old David Arbus is caught between his mother, whose Hasidic faith is becoming more and more central to her life, and his father, who runs a Times Square porn theatre.

So basically young David is thrashed back and forth between these two strange and polar opposite worlds, neither of which seems like a healthy environment for a young man. He's essentially unwelcome in his mother's life because he's refused to join the Hasidic faith, but he's not sinner enough to want to jump into the family business on dad's side either. David and his father cause a bit of a rukus and David is unceremoniously ousted from his mother and sister's new life and forced to take up with his father and his father's stripper/former porn star girlfriend. The book sticks pretty closely to the major events in the father's life over a 3-year period, but only as they're experienced by David, which feels odd. There's a lot of insight into changes in the porn industry in the mid-70s and also into the lives of Hasidic Jews. A jarring comparison to say the least, and an interesting one.

I was disappointed with the ending which resolved nothing (even negative resolution would have been more satisfying), but it's an interesting read from a young author. Braff has a good voice and an enjoyable writing style. His characters are well-developed and believable in their strengths and flaws. I'm thinking of picking up his first novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green.