Week 15: Why I’m Like This – Cynthia Kaplan

It was going to be a bit of a crazy week; and I knew this going into week 15. So, I took some time to find what I hoped would be a perfect book to serve as a welcome distraction to all the Have-to, Must-do, Can-you-also, and We-really-need-you-to responsibilities of the week. When I saw USA Today’s “Knee-slapping hilarious.” on the back of WHY I’M LIKE THIS: TRUE STORIES by Cynthia Kaplan, I was sold.

WHY I’M LIKE THIS chronicles milestone moments in Kaplan’s life that have shaped her into the woman she is today: her loss of virginity and the succession of Mr. Wrongs who followed until she met her husband, the relationships she shared with her grandparents and the impact their deaths had on her, and her struggle with infertility. I felt a connection with Kaplan in the opening stories. Her love of the arts, the admiration she felt for her grandparents, and challenges with dating felt familiar. I mean, I almost felt a sisterly bond with her when I read:

 

“I gave the guy a second chance but it ended anyway when I came to the realization that his grammatical errors would eventually drive me out of my gourd.”

A perfect match, right?

 

Wrong.

 

For whatever reason, Kaplan couldn’t sustain my interest. Perhaps it had something to do with the busy week I mentioned above. The reality is, WHY I’M LIKE THIS was easier to put down than it was to pick up. I really believe that timing–just like with meeting the right guy, landing the perfect job, or even nabbing the perfect parking spot (a shout out to Tepper!)–can be crucial with how we take to the books we pick. Where we are and what’s going on in our own worlds can certainly impact our impressions. But I also know that a really good book will keep you turning the pages, no matter what’s going on.

 

So, while I liked a few passages and loved the title of these stories, at the end of the day WHY I’M LIKE THIS was just okay.

 

Rating: 2 stars

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 240

By |April 19th, 2010|2 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Memoir|1 Comment
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Great News (aka A Reader’s Ramblings)

I am interrupting the usual posts of my book reviews with a pretty awesome story.

So back in the high school day, I was a big ‘ol drama geek. I hung around with other creatives who liked to act and sing, design sets, sew costumes and watch just about every movie ever made. It was during that time of my life that came out of my shell and met really cool people, some of whom I can still call friends today.

Enter, stage left: Allan (one of the really cool people).

Like me, Allan was a lover of the arts and was also in the theater program. We worked on countless shows together (okay we could probably easily count them, high school is only 4 years for most of us), hung out in the large groups of hip-to-be-square kids that the drama geeks were and then we both went off to separate colleges and into the whole wide world.

Fast forward 20 years and Allan and I have more than inhabited whole wide world, we were now residents of the World Wide Web. Through the advent of this tiny little social networking site called Facebook, we bumped back into each other. Turns out that Allan graduated with a degree in English Lit (a course of study I attempted and fault Herman Melville and John Milton for my change in direction and subsequent five-year undergrad run) and made his way to California to do great things in the world of entertainment. Such great things that he had started his own pop cultural-themed Web site and was seeking content contributors.

I was more than flattered when Allan, who knew I was a huge bookie … wait, that doesn’t sound right. It works for foodies, but not book lovers … asked if I would like to contribute book reviews to his up and coming site. Heck yes I was interested! I just wasn’t sure how much I could commit to reading and reviewing, with a demanding work schedule and life as a single mom. Allan was super flexible and was willing to take what I could offer, whenever I could offer it.

So, I submitted a few book reviews and even wrote my first-ever movie review and then life got busy for the both of us. The holidays were here which took me out of commission for a lot of things and at the height of the holiday hooplah, I decided to pile just a little more on. Yep, that was just about the time that my partner in project crime and I decided that we would read a book a week, every week, for all of 2010.

If you are still with me, you are so very kind or I caught you on a Wednesday night and you don’t have the stomach to watch the American Idol results show which could be handled during a commercial break versus “after the next 2o commercial breaks”. Whatever the reason, I am so very flattered and will try to get to the exciting point I promised at the beginning, because there really is one.

So, Allan and I were briefly out of touch and then were suddenly back in the swing of communicating about a week ago. His site has grown and is really taking off, garnering some great interest and readership and he’s seen my little old blog here and wants to know if he can set up a Lara’s Reading Room area of his own site, where all my reviews will also be featured and possibly read by some cool people like all of you who read me here and maybe even some people in the actual business of books. BREATHE and yes I know that was the biggest run-on but this is kind of exciting for me. Actually, though, I have no idea what that all means beyond my reviews being in more than one place. But it’s pretty stinkin’ cool in my book.

I will tell you this, though. My blog is staying put for now. I don’t have any plans to delete it. My reviews will appear here and on on his site, which I encourage you all to check out:

http://www.popcultureworldnews.com/


It’s really an entertainment junkie’s paradise. I don’t think that’s how Allan is officially marketing it, you know. But, if you love entertainment, you just need to bookmark his site. Wasn’t that a hot plug? He probably won’t be hiring me to do any real site promotion after that sorry “just bookmark it” push. Thankfully, I have a day job and this little slice of reading books and sharing my opinion of them on the side.


Happy reading, surfing or pop culture site bookmarking!

I will be back in seven days…

By |April 12th, 2010|Ramblings|3 Comments
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Week 14: Official Book Club Selection – A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin

Disclaimer

If you don’t like Kathy Griffin, you aren’t going to like this book. It doesn’t matter how many stars I give it or what I say about it, although, how flattering if it would! If you are reading this and don’t know who she is, I will just say she’s hysterically crass (that’s Rated-R) and most celebrities fear her. Or should.

I saw Kathy Griffin perform on tour this past January and her show, a 2-hour rant against celebrities and their crazy antics, had the audience roaring from start to finish. My sides were actually hurting so much that I counted the outing as my ab workout for the day. I definitely had a blast at her show; yet I am not a big celebrity memoir person. I did not rush out to buy the book that Kathy herself said she named OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION in hopes that consumers would think Oprah had chosen it. Imagine my delight, however, when my gal pal Cynthia loaned me her copy and said, “You will cruise through this. I bet you can knock it out in four hours.” Confession time: I don’t read as fast as Cynthia thinks I do, but it was definitely a cruiser and I cleared it within the week.


OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION chronicles Griffin’s upbringing as the youngest of four children to John and Mary Griffin of Oak Park, Illinois. A self-proclaimed “… kid who needed to talk. All the time.”, Griffin loved television and storytelling more than anything else (maybe not as much as cake, but they surely ran a close second). After high school she decided to take her gift of gab and love of Hollywood to the City of Angels with dreams of breaking into the biz.


Griffin does a great job detailing the road to stardom – it’s full of hard work, paying dues (unless you are John Corbett or Heidi Montag, one of whom she loves and the other she loathes), lots of rejection and definite double standards. She maintains a highly conversational tone and I felt as if I was following her around to auditions and growing up with her as she struggled to find her niche. As a member of the Groundlings (picture LA’s version of Second City) she worked day in and day out attempting to perfect her craft but had her share of failures, like when she blew the audition with Lorne Michaels to secure a spot on Saturday Night Live (Groundlings member Julia Sweeney nabbed it).


While the book is certainly funny, Griffin does a good job covering the not so funny stuff: a brother with many secrets, her volatile friendship with Andy Dick, and her failed marriage. I admit that prior to reading OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION, I thought anyone was fair game for her, yet she does have boundaries. Also revelatory, she hasn’t pissed off everyone in Hollywood (and there’s even a key group of folks with whom she strives to stay in the best of graces). I thought she handled the serious sections well and they exposed a side of Kathy Griffin outside of the brash and off-color that most don’t ever get to see.


But let’s face it. Griffin’s job is to find the funny and make people laugh at almost anyone’s expense. And, laugh I did. The most, in fact, during the last two pages of the book. It was her hilariously written Reading Group Guide Questions that had me bump my final rating up a star. Yes, the questions are that funny.


Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 357
By |April 11th, 2010|4 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Memoir|2 Comments
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Week 13: The Help – Kathryn Stockett

It’s a milestone week! By completing this book, I have officially read more in the first three months of this year than I did all of last year. That’s a bit crazy to me and yet, I am feeling really good after the first quarter of this project to read a book a week for an entire year. I still have momentary flashes of my bookshelves caving in on me or having the super ability to read multiple books at once, the words flashing through my eyes like all the images scrolling across an iPad. But I consider these minor psychological casualties and onward I press.

THE HELP came to me courtesy of my book club and was mandated by one of our original members–and my bestie–Claudia. Claudia has wanted to read THE HELP for the past six months and was eagerly anticipating her month to host. And, why not? The book has been quite the talk of the town: A Today Show “10 Must Read Books for Spring”, it currently sits at number 2 on the New York Times Hardcover Best Seller list and in the number 14 spot on amazon.com’s Top 100. And, a gazillion people have given it rave reviews.

All of this, of course, is good news; but it’s also kind of bad. It reeks of hype and overselling and all that, “You have to read this great book–you’ll love it! Everyone loves it! My sister and her friend and her friend and her friend, well, I mean just everyone’s reading it but you, so just read it, okay? You’ll love it; I just know you will. I mean, have you read it already? MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?”

Ugh. So, I cracked open my Kindle version of the book and started reading, hoping it hadn’t been ruined by, well, everyone.

I am here to officially report that nobody ruined it. Kathryn Stockett’s novel lives up to the hype machine and she’s delivered a knockout the first time out.

Set in Jacksonville, Mississippi in the early ’60s, THE HELP concerns Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a college graduate returning home in hopes of embarking on a career in journalism; but she’s not quite sure where to start. Unbeknownst to her, there’s a wealth of story brewing right under her very own nose. Skeeter grew up, as did her privileged white friends, with hired help. The maids were brought in and entrusted with a woman’s children, but not the family silver. The racial, socioeconomic and hierarchical lines were strong and clear and become more strained when Skeeter’s best friend spearheads a community effort encouraging white families to build separate, external bathrooms for their help.

Outraged by the notion and sensitive to stepping outside her social boundaries, Skeeter goes underground and slowly gains the trust of maids Aibileen and her best friend Minny to share their stories of what it’s really like to work for a white family. This is extremely tricky and risky, with a number of implications if any are found out. As Skeeter gains the trust of Aibileen, a multi-layered story unfolds. A story that had me cringing and outright disgusted with the actions and attitudes of Skeeter’s friends, and enlightened by the relationship between a family and their help, which is a complicated one, fraught with many different emotions.

Stockett tells her story from the perspectives of its three main characters, using a first person narrative that alternates across the chapters. She is able to capture Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny’s different voices and, because it’s done so effectively, she keeps the story progressing at a rate that I didn’t want to put it down. I actually read the book in just two marathon sittings! I was most impressed with how well developed all of the characters were. Stockett brings their lives to life, showing them as individuals with hopes, dreams and desires, but also with talents and abilities well outside of what others–or they themselves–may expect.

Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 464

By |April 4th, 2010|5 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Fiction|6 Comments
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Week 12: The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care – T. R. Reid

It has been a monumental week, no matter what side of the political fence you sit on. This week, the President of the United States signed healthcare reform into law. Now, I am not here to debate arguments, the situation or the yet-to-be-seen outcomes. I think we can all agree that our system is not a perfect one and it’s one that could benefit from some form of redesign. So that’s what I took a look at this week, turning to a non-partisan, highly informative and tremendously fascinating book: THE HEALING OF AMERICA: THE GLOBAL QUEST FOR BETTER, CHEAPER, AND FAIRER HEALTH CARE by T.R. Reid.

Ried, a former Princeton graduate, naval officer, reporter having covered four presidential campaigns and chief of the Washington Post’s Tokyo and London bureaus is taking on the U.S. healthcare system and attempting to find solutions–by looking at the World Health Organization’s top-ranked countries for health care (we aren’t one of them). He hits the road with his bum shoulder and the knowledge that we have the highest percentage of deaths that are cureable with medical intervention and some 22,000 Americans die annually due to lack of medical coverage. How will treatment and cost differ between the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, Japan and Canada, and what best and worst practices will he identify in the process?


I found the individual country case studies fascinating. France has successfully converted to a completely digitized medical record all contained on a microchip that is affixed to a credit-card sized piece of plastic (a system, ironically enough, that was created by Americans). Preventive care is the focus of many of our European counterparts. Japanese citizens have access to over 2,000 health plans and can see a specialist immediately – often without an appointment.

Now, I am touting the pluses; but Reid goes into an objective analysis showing the successes and failures of each country’s system. He speaks to top health officials, health reformers and providers along the way creating a full picture of how other comparable nations are managing and providing health care. He breaks down a number of different models (of which the U.S. uses a little bit of every kind), myths (it’s not all socialized medicine outside of our contiguous 50 states) and realities (we are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t hold health care as a basic right for all its citizens).

Reid’s research found that American’s aren’t cold hearted. When polled, the vast majority are in favor of everyone having access to health care and think that most do. Unfortunately, there is a significant number of Americans who are uninsured, underinsured and unable to obtain health care. There is so much we can learn when looking at how others not just provide health care, but finance its delivery. There is tremendous opportunity to arm ourselves with information and knowledge to understand what we really have available and use that information to create a better, cheaper and fairer system.

I think Reid’s book is one tool to do just that.

Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 288

By |March 27th, 2010|5 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Non-fiction|5 Comments
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Week 11: She Got Up Off the Couch – Haven Kimmel

I read Kimmel’s first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana during one of my annual girls’ trips to Mexico a couple years back. While taking in the sun, tasty margaritas and enjoying the simple things, I was enamored with this quirky small-town girl and her cleverly down-home way with words. She made childhood in a town of just 300 (THAT’S small!) a bit romantic. Living where everyone knows your name (forget that they all know your business, too) and where life seems less complicated or harried than that of the big city. I found her book utterly delightful, as did the friends with whom I shared it.

After that first book, Kimmel’s mother, Delonda, became as popular or intriguing as Zippy herself. One to sit firmly planted on the family couch, surrounded by books or knitting, Delonda did nothing much more than that – parenting from old, upholstered sofa cushions. Kimmel was repeatedly asked, “So did your mother ever get up off the couch?” And, so, a follow up was born.


SHE GOT UP OFF THE COUCH is really a story of Delonda Jarvis and her transformation from couch potato to college graduate at 40 (much to her husband’s disbelief), told from Zippy’s childhood perspective. It covers a time of significant change in the Jarvis household, when Zippy’s beloved brother marries and moves away, her sister starts her own family, and Delonda steps out of her comfort zone to go after her own dreams. It’s a time when Zippy begins to see her parents no longer as superheroes, but human and just as capable of achieving greatness as they are of falling from it.


Kimmel weaves her stories with both compassion and humor that left me laughing out loud and pausing for reflection. One of my favorite passages involved Delonda’s recent acquaintance with a foul-mouthed friend, “Big Fat Bonnie” a woman who would play a small but significant part in Delonda’s newfound independence:
“Well, I’ll be &*@! if I can’t teach you how to drive, and I will, too, you can bet your &*@!” Bonnie was saying. “No man would keep ME from driving a car, forget it! What is this, a Turkish prison? What do you do all day, just sit around watching the %*#^TV?!”
 
Mom blushed, but also looked a bit sheepish, then noticed me. “Bonnie, this is my daughter.”
 
I just continued to stand frozen in the doorway. I wanted to raise my hand and wave, but I was afraid I’d break the spell and miss a whole stream of good swears.
It’s clear that Kimmel has immense respect for her mother and the journey she took off the couch and into the classroom. Following her dreams, however late in life she did, largely influenced Kimmel herself to go after her own as a writer. Interestingly enough, her memoirs were never intended to be published, just documentation of her family for her family.


Fortunately, she too did what may not have been expected of her and shared them with all of us.



Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 336

By |March 21st, 2010|4 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Memoir|1 Comment
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Week 10: A Three Dog Life – Abigail Thomas

I scooped up several copies of Abigail Thomas’ memoir, A THREE DOG LIFE, after hearing her read at a local, indepdendent bookseller a couple of years ago. The seal of approval on the cover by Steven King noting it as “The best memoir I have ever read.” was certainly intriguing, but I was more taken by her and the glimpse she gave us into her life.

Simply told, in April 2001, Thomas’ husband Rich took their dog Harry for a walk and was hit by a car. The accident shattered his skull and the life that he and Abigail once shared. Not so simple was the reality of what would happen next. All were left traumatized by the event that permanently altered Rich, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury and a sketchy recollection of the world he once inhabited.

Thomas’ memoir is a love letter to her husband and the one, then two, then three dogs that ultimately helped her through the emotionally painful and unpredictable moments that followed Rich’s accident. She imparts so many lessons learned on the value of living in the moment, appreciating what you have right now, and wasting no time worrying about the future.

That’s not to say her road to these realizations was an easy one. Thomas regularly struggled with guilt about what happened and her husband’s eventual placement in a skilled facility that could better manage his volatile emotional state and physical limitations than she ever could.

Her writing is simple without being simplistic, authentic and just plain good. One of my favorite passages is when she realizes that life can go on and she can even expereince moments of joy and happiness:

“If only life were more like this, you will think, as you and the dogs traipse up to bed, and you realize with a start that this is life.”

I was certain this book could have the possibility of wrecking me, sucker punching me when I least expected it, or even when I did. Thomas’ story is such a tragic one, but one that is offset by her sheer commitment to her husband and herself. It’s so beautifully told that I actually came away not with feelings of sadness but admiration for her, her perspective and her expertly and seemingly effortlessly crafted words.

Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 208

By |March 14th, 2010|5 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Memoir|1 Comment
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Week 9: The Complete Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

Week 9 was finished just time with Marjane Satrapi’s coming-of-age memoir, THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS, about growing up in Iran in the early 80s, at the height of social change, opression and war. What’s unique about her story, aside from the fact her story is in itself very unique, is the medium through which it’s told–graphically.

A graphic novel was a first for me. My knowledge of graphic novels was limited and had me thinking of superhero stories geared at teenaged boys. Never would I have guessed that the same technique could so effectively tell a story of a young girl navigating her way through a world where freedoms are being stripped from everyone and newer, harsher rules are being placed on Iranian women, simply because they are women. Satrapi was a rebellious, spitfire of a young woman. Raised by parents who questioned the world around them and bucked convention, they helped raise a woman who did the same, all the while respecting herself and others in the process. But the world they live in, under conservative and opressive religious fanatacism, proves to be too much, Satrapi’s family must decide whether the teenaged Marjane should stay in Iran or continue her education in another country.

In addition to telling a compelling story, Satrapi is a talented graphic artist. Her “comic book” drawings were exceptional and able to convey the moments of fear, anger, sadness and true happiness that she, her family and her friends felt and, in turn, I felt when reading it. Her personal story resulted in the making of a motion picture that has garnered much critical acclaim, and one I am looking forward to adding to my Netflix queue. I am also looking forward to another turn at this emerging genre.

Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Graphic Novel
Pages: 352

By |March 7th, 2010|4 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Graphic Novel|1 Comment
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Week 8: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

I’ve had a secret: This week’s book was actually attempted last week and I made an executive decision to put it down and hold until another time, a less busy week, a week when I would have more time to devote to what I could tell was going to be a wild ride of a book.

I’ve got a another secret: It won’t do you any good to save this book until you have several days available to read. You will need a nice solid block of time because once you dig in, you won’t be able to put it down. The dishes, facebook, e-mail and maybe even meals will have to wait.

Okay, so maybe those weren’t the bombshells you were expecting. I will leave the juiciest secrets to the masters, the late Stieg Larsson being one of them. A former Swedish journalist, Larsson wrote three unpublished books–the first being THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (TGWTDT), before his untimely death of a massive heat attack at age 50 in 2004. According to sources at wikipedia.org, Larsson had no intent of publishing the books, it was how he filled is leisure time at the end of the day serving as editor-in-chief of Sweden’s Expo magazine.

But that’s where he’s wrong.

Quickly, Blomkvist finds himself mired in the details of the contentious Vanger family history; a history that when further researched turns up far more questions than answers. It seems as though the mystery will never be resolved. Further complicating matters is the young, heavily tattoed researcher with multiple piercings he’s forced to partner with to decode the secrets, all the while maintaining a host of her own.

Larsson’s work strikes all the right notes of a perfect freaky-deaky-ultra-creepy thriller and he kept me guessing up until the end. In creating two lead characters that so effectively work together, despite their glaring differences, he’s also elicited enough intrigue to make me want to pick up his subsequent novels involving Blomkvist and the curious girl with the dragon tattoo: THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE and the soon-to-be-released THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST.

Perhaps you’ll do the same.

Rating: 5 stars
Pages: 480 pages
Genre: Thriller

By |February 28th, 2010|5 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Thriller|4 Comments
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Week 7: August: Osage County – Tracy Letts

[blockquote]”I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be.” Douglas Adams[/blockquote]

Week 7 started out very strong. With the President’s Day holiday on Monday, I got a solid start on this week’s book. However, it quickly got blown out of the water with the busy-ness of life and work. Complicating matters was that by Thursday night, I knew there was no way I could possibly finish the 360+ pages I still had to read (and that was with my having already knocked out 130 pages). Furthermore, I was enjoying this book so much that I didn’t want to jam it into two days–too reminiscent of the college cram and not the goal of this project at all.

 

So I made an executive decision: I put the book on hold so that I could keep reading it at an enjoyable pace at a later date, and so I picked up something smaller. More to come on the on-hold book in a future post.

 

The something smaller book was an amazon.com recommendation that was a slim and interesting 240 pages that I was certain I could read in a couple of days.

 

WRONG.

 

There’s something very special about the amazon-recommended book that I had downloaded in just a few moments to my Kindle. It was also one that needed time for focused reading and reflection.

 

CRAP.

 

This challenge is not getting the best of me in week 7!

 

Executive decision number 2: I scanned my bookshelves and picked up an even smaller book (a play, actually) August: Osage County by Tracy Letts.

 

Letts is the son of novelist Billie Letts (Where the Heart is and The Honk and Holler Opening Soon) and a native of Oklahoma. His play, which in addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, ran on Broadway from 2007-2009 and picked up a Tony in the process.

 

I haven’t read a play since my high school acting days; and never before have I read a play like this. Letts pulls together in three acts a multi-layered tragicomedy with dialogue that is so spot on I felt like I was overhearing a real-life conversation unfolding. The play centers around the Westons, a family forced back together by the death of one of their own. As is common with these types of reunions, when families have been separated for some time, old wounds are opened and new ones form as the family struggles with funeral arrangements and the getting on of getting on. It’s like family dysfunction on overdrive and Letts deftly balances the awkward silences and vicious verbal spars with moments of comic relief and clarity that propel both the story and the reader forward.

 

This was another gift from my folks, and having been signed by the playwright himself it’s a bit extra special. I never would have heard of this or thought to pick it up, but his talents are obvious and his words worth reading. Especially after two extremely worthy but ultimately false starts that will have to join this reading challenge later in the process.


Rating: 4 stars
Pages: 138
Genre: Play
By |February 21st, 2010|4 stars, 52 Books in 52 Weeks of 2010, Play, Pulitzer Prize Winner|1 Comment
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