Bossypants by Tina Fey

So, basically, Tina Fey sat down and wrote a book about her life. Hilarity ensues. (Full disclosure: I listened to the audiobook. I have found that the best vehicles for memoirs are the authors reading their own words. I feel like I get more from it.)

I labeled this as "edutainment" because it is full of life lessons, and if I were starting out in the world I would turn to it as inspiration for not letting presumptions about my gender keep me from succeeding. After all, if not for her persistence, SNL would NEVER have aired the hilarious Kotex Classic commercial.

She covers everything from her scar (questions about which say more about that asker than they do about her) to what it's like to say, in front of your father whom you admire so much, that your wonky little show has been picked up for a full season. Her prayer for her daughter is poignant and hilarious and true, and the images she includes for our viewing pleasure are honest and relatable.

This is one of those books that I'm telling all the ladies in my life to read, and if I had the funds, I would just buy everyone copies. (If you're a person who spends a lot of time in your car, get the audio. Trust me. But beware: at time I was laughing so hard I cried. That could be problematic.)

Enjoy!

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

So I was really reluctant to read these bad boys. I'm still not sure why I held off, but let me tell you that I'm a little glad I did - the first book will be fresh in my mind when it hits the theater. Because I will be seeing it in the theater. (I hope.)

I finished The Hunger Games in a day.
I finished Catching Fire in a day.
I finished Mockingjay in two.

This is not an easy task when your two-year-old wants to read what Mommy is reading. And trust me - I did not read these out loud to him. At any part.

What I did do was inhale them. And cry, several times. Not at the deaths - most of those happen off-screen, although there was one that I bawled through - but at the other moments. The moments that made Katniss and her fellow Tributes (those who are sent to the Games in order to fight to the death) seem like human beings. Not even that - Collins masterfully reminded us that these are children being sent to battle to their deaths. Children who have been forced (through war, a truly oppressive government, and circumstance) to grow up entirely too quickly and who have too much responsibility on their shoulders.

Hunger Games is a page-turner. Collins level of suspense is up there in the circles of the legends, and her restraint is just enough so that those of us suffering from constant morning sickness didn't need to put the book in the freezer. It ends with the perfect wrap-up/set-up. I honestly believe you could put the book down, smile at yourself for a nicely wrapped story, and go on your way.

But if you did that you would miss out on Catching Fire, which picks up a few months later and is chock full of tension and exposition and suspense. I have heard that it is not as good as the first, but I'm going to go on record and say that is true in the way that The Two Towers was not as good as The Fellowship of the Ring. It is the middle book of a trilogy - there to arc you from book one to book two. This one has the added bonus of a great story and it leads very nicely into Mockingjay.

Mockingjay wraps it up. It even has a nice epilogue at the end of the Harry Potter twenty-years-later variety. I was told that it felt forced, but I didn't see it. I did see a bit of Collins reminding herself that she needs to go out as strongly as she came in - and I feel that she succeeded. There is action and exposition and maturation...it's delicious.

To summarize: read these. They are awesome.

PS: I totally want this song to appear in the movie somehow:



and this one (but maybe a later movie?)








****spoilerish: there's a really great love triangle. It makes the Bella/Edward/Jacob triangle look ridiculous. It's resolved really well, too. Meyer could take a few lessons. Many, many, many lessons.****

Heat by Bill Buford

So I tagged this "reader recommendation" even though not a soul actually told me to read it. I found it listed on my Sister-In-Law's Amazon wish list and thought to myself "hey - that goes perfectly with my food memoir streak! AND it's Italian food, which I haven't read, yet. Excellent!" So then I checked it out from the library, thinking if it is good then I'll pluck it off her list and send it to her for Christmas.

Well, it is that good. (It's no longer on her list, though, and not due to me!)

In fact, I have only two complaints about this book: firstly, there are no recipes. NO RECIPES, BILL! Way to hold out. There are descriptions of techniques, and a little insight into why restaurant food never tastes as good as it does in your home kitchen (batch size and measurement techniques, for starters) and that's all well and good...but throw us a bone, man! On the other hand, I must now go to Italy, find a grandmother, and convince her to teach me how to make pasta. So it's not all for nothing.

The second one - he referenced so many texts, and listed some of them in the acknowledgements, but I'm going to have to give this a re-read to truly retain all of the information. Which might have been his plan, because re-reading is really the best excuse ever for buying a book. So now I'll buy one for myself, and that means I'm more likely to buy it as gifts...I'm on to you, Buford.

So basically - he starts off as a journalist who decides he wants to learn how to cook - a lost art, in his opinion (mine, too.) He calls up his good friend Mario Batali (how has HE been off my radar?) and becomes a slave in the Babbo kitchen.  Amongst these adventures, he gives us Batali's backstory, and then follows his footsteps to Italy. In two distinct small towns he learns the lost art of pasta making (no machine!) from a Grandmother and butchery from The Maestro. No kidding, that's what he calls his mentor. Divine.

So if you're into food, Italian food, culture, food history, or just a good read - this Buford's for you. If you're a vegetarian (&etc) be warned: beef cheeks are just the tip of the iceberg. He does reflect a little on eating animals, mentioning that Vegetarians are the most aware that the bacon on your plate was once a pig in someone's pen, and he speaks of all of them with the utmost respect. So it's not gross...but I'm a carnivore.

I could go on and on filling your head with spoilers but I won't do that to you. You should read it. Because it is very good.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I resisted reading this one. I have a thing - if a bunch of people say "oh it's so great!" and they likely heard about it on Oprah...I just can't. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, so...sue me.

Anyway. Another blog I follow reviewed the audio and let me in on the tidbit that pushed me into the "listen to this" turf: Octavia Spencer, who voices Minny, will be playing her in the movie. So to the library I went.

Now, I've got more than just that one bias: I HATE multiple first-person point of views. Hate them. If I get into a book and I start liking the character and then I turn the page and I'm suddenly in the head of another character...I close it. Listening to this, though, solved that. I was hearing voices...and the actresses did such a good job I could have sworn I was just listening to them tell their stories. I became addicted. (even now, I miss them a little.)

So this story - what's so great about this story? It is not the story of a revolution. It is not the story of great sweeping change. It's not even a good love story...really.

It's a story that could be true. It's a story you could hear from your grandparents, if they lived in the South in the 60s (mine did.)

Stockett's breadth of imagination is impressive - not only for events but for reactions and emotions. Each character, even those who are merely satellite characters - are fully formed and believable. You could live next door to them. We all know how much I'm a sucker for that kind of development.

She also has her finger on the pulse of Civil Rights in Mississippi in the 60s. Events are happening to change the rest of the country...but that's the rest of the country. In Mississippi, things are just fine, thank you very much.

But Skeeter - I identified the most with Skeeter. Awkward, with dreams of being a writer. She comes home from college and realizes that she may not like her lifelong friends. She has the most obvious rite of passage here, although Aibileene and Minny come out the other side of their little adventure stronger women as well.

It really is well worth reading. I loved every minute - I can't even tell how many times I paused in whatever I was doing while listening so I could just listen...and how many times I teared up. I'll even admit (spoiler) that when the Skeeter got the phone call in January, I jumped up and did a little happy dance for her.

From what I can tell, the movie stays true to the story...but I have plans to see it in August, so I'll let you know. CJ Cregg is in it, though, so it's bound to be amazing.

Sleep is for the Weak - edited by Rita Arens

    Sleep is for the Weak is a collection of blog entries and essays by some of the most prolific Mommy Bloggers (and one dad.) They are funny, poignant, and true. This book showed up in my Christmas loot and I dove in happily.

    I would have read it in one sitting, but baths are increasingly more and more uncomfortable. It’s a quick read - each entry is shorter than your average People Article - and it is a complete page turner.

    Every topic is covered: sleeping, potty training, the endless advice from the outside world, illness, time management, and personal growth (which “blows”.)

    I’m having a hard time writing a review, here. Because the book is awesome, but it’s not plot driven - unless you consider pages and pages of anecdotal advice to be a plot. There are few recurring characters, and no real sense of time passing.

    Sometimes, however, that’s exactly what you need - little snippets of insight into the lives of other parents so that you know you’re not alone (or will be joining the other side, rather than wandering into the great unknown, as it were.)

    So I’m going to leave it at that. If you’ve got kids or want kids - and regardless of your gender - this book is well worth the read. If only so that you can say “whew! It’s not just me!”

    Also there are a few essays that will make you laugh so hard you cry (for me they were always about poop…) and that alone makes this book well worth the price of admission.

The Color of Law by Mark Giminez

    It is no secret from the moment you crack the cover on this book that it was inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird. As far as inspiration for a debut novel goes, one could do significantly worse than the illustrious Harper Lee.  Giminez, himself a lawyer, has set this modern-day Lawyer’s tale in Dallas...Murder Mystery + Dallas = Win in my book. Add to that equation fully rounded characters (not all of them likable), a thought-out plot with a nice set of curves, and a working knowledge of the law and you get what appears to be the recipe for a Very Good Read.

    And it is a Very Good Read. A. Scott Fenney (two guesses what the “A” stands for...and his daughter is called Boo…) is a hot shot young attorney working for a snazzy law firm in a downtown Dallas skyscraper. He over bills his clients, eats and works out in exclusive clubs, lives in Highland Park (think Beverly Hills but with really old money and even more of a superiority complex), and regularly trades on the fact that he was - at one point - a football star for Southern Methodist University. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps and never looked back.

    And then...the son of the next Presidential Hopeful candidate is murdered one night. He’s home from Washington for the weekend (he likes to do his whoring in Highland Park where the family’s deep pockets have some sway) and the circumstances surrounding his death could prove fatal to a presidential campaign. He was with a black hooker...and it turns out he has a history of abuse.

    In a case of what can only be Very Bad Timing (or Very Good Timing depending on how you look at it) Fenney is giving a speech on the virtues of being Atticus Finch to a group of lawyers and local judges - one of whom decides that he has finally found a decent lawyer and assigns Fenney to the Defense of the poor (heroin-addicted) black woman who is charged with the murder of the Senator’s Son.

    Yes, Giminez wades through predictable racial (and neighborhood) stereotypes to try and prove his point - that the color of law isn’t black or white anymore: it’s green. He often falls flat, but the growth of the character alone is worth the read. And did I mention the curves? This plot has curves. Because what do you do when you’re abandoned by the very people who forced you into the situation to begin with? You re-examine. And you regroup...and if you’re A. Scott Fenney, you stick to your guns and make your six-year-old daughter (who is a much more interesting character than your wife, by the way) proud, regardless of the outcome of a very stacked trial.

Reader Recommendation: Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Matilda Cook lives in Philadelphia when it was the nation’s capital and home to an historic epidemic: Yellow Fever. In a time when basic hygiene included weekly baths and deciding if a dead mouse is worse thrown onto high street or into the back garden. Water came from wells, the outhouse was referred to as “The Necessary” and the best way to rid someone of “pestilence” was to bleed them. You read that right. BLEED THEM. Historically accurate, yes, but appalling nonetheless.

I read this book in a single day. I couldn’t put it down. I was moved to tears at points and at others found myself truly pulling for the characters whose basic personality traits made them feel already familiar from the first page.

Like any good Historical Fiction writer, Anderson did her research and imbued the novel with it. Historical figures were sprinkled in amongst the imagined characters, and the geography of Philadelphia and the surrounding towns was portrayed accurately enough that the reader can follow Mattie through town without getting lost. The facts of the fever, the panic, and the restoration are outlined in an appendix at the back of the book. The charity group of freed slaves is one of the unsung heros of this tragedy: while the rest of society turned its collective back on the infected (to the point that some who might have lived starved to death instead) The Free African Society rolled up their sleeves and went to work.

As I read, I drew parallels between the fear of Yellow Fever in the book and the fear of various modern diseases now (SARS and H1N1, most notably) and the way people react. If an epidemic were to sweep through the countries most dense cities now, would we react the way the Philadelphians did? Would we barricade ourselves in our houses and send our children to the country? Would help be available and would it come in time? So much has advanced in the past two hundred years, but so much has stayed the same.

When the first signs of Yellow Fever were popping up, life outside of it went on - Mattie helped her widowed mother, grandfather, and their servant Eliza (A freed African Woman) run the family coffeehouse. She sucked on hard candy and flirted with boys at the market. But as the tragedy got closer and closer to home (literally, as it moved inland from the river) life slowly changed. As the panic and illness spread, Mattie is forced to grow up and becomes a very good example of what a young lady can do when she puts her mind to it.

I would not be surprised to see this book turn up on curriculum lists alongside Johnny Tremain - it would do our young girls a great service to know that not just young men helped make this country what it is. That even in a time when girls needed a decent dowry and husband to be considered worth much (and even still needed to produce more boys) these same girls were also truly inspirational.