When Lonesome Doves Cry

My personal soundtrack to "Lonesome Dove"

Last Wednesday I finished "Lonesome Dove," which I haven't been able to write about because all of my free time has been devoted to lessening the nine-book lead Kerry suddenly holds. But after she left several voice messages and texts that I can only describe as "abusive," I decided to finally put finger to keyboard and sum up the experience.

First of all, Larry McMurtry pretty much pulls off a master class in storytelling. The first 400 pages* he causally envelops you into the tale, introducing you to a disparate group of characters he draws with broad but precise strokes. Then he spends the next 500** pages walloping you with emotional suckerpunch after suckerpunch. It's a cliché, but you do fall in love with the characters.*** I found myself bartering with a higher power over the fates of my favorites, promising to clean my apartment/volunteer/donate to the Gulf if only they survived the Indian attack/found true love/admitted their paternity. I was worn out by the end, and can now understand the need for forgettable fiction where you aren't invested in the character's lives.

For me, one of the great joys in reading a book set before 1900 is trying to figure out when I would have died in that time period. I have a delicate immune system and no discernible manual skills, so I'd be pretty easy pickin' for all predators, human and viral. And McMurtry proves time and time again that I don't have the mettle to last long in the open West. Would I have gotten crushed in a cattle stampede? Besieged by water snakes during a river crossing? Casually shot down by horse thieves? The answer is probably a combination of all three. I found myself emphasizing with Roscoe Brown, the hapless deputy who sets out to find his sheriff only to be continually told by everyone he meets that he should turn around and find work as a clerk. I don't want to ruin anything by telling what happens to him, but I am grateful to live in a time with Mapquest and GPS.

*400? I know what you're saying, but trust me, you get lulled into the gentle rhythm and they go by fast.

**500?!? But it's a fast 500.

***Except for Ellie.

Every Last One, Anna Quindlen

Yup. I read a sad book. A terribly, horribly, intensely sad book. So far, the world continues to turn on its axis, but my eyes may forever be tinged red.

It's Anna Quindlen, so of course I knew she'd have some nice woman go through torturous grief, something that was both unbelievably unrealistic yet utterly possible at the same time. Quindlen's writing always brings the reader right in, so far in that you're shouting, "No! Stay away from him!" or "Slow down! Slow down! The roads are terrible!", even though it's the middle of the night and the kids and your husband are sound asleep and your screams (or sobs) will scare them. My mother warned me when I borrowed this book from her. "Are you sure about this?" she said, and I assured her that I could handle it.

By the third page, I began to have my doubts. Happy family (like me). Three kids (like me). Daughter the oldest (check). Twin boys (ditto). I started my internal chant, "Please, don't do anything to the kids."

Reading "Every Last One" is like opening a Jack-in-the-Box. Duh nah duh nah duh na-na-na-nah. OK, that chapter done, no one hurt yet. Duh nah duh nah duh na-nah. Potential dark things lurking, but everyone still fine. Duh nah duh nah duh na-na-na-nah. POP! Page 154 jumps out at you.

154 pages of waiting...for the monster under the bed, the creaking door, the shower curtain being pulled abruptly away. Oh Anna, you didn't. Oh Anna, you did.

Quindlen, as always, is a masterful storyteller with such strong writing that I was pulled along into the plot, feeling pain and relief for the characters as they struggled with their tragedy. I just hope that her next novel doesn't strike so close to home (hers, yours, or mine).

Chick-lit Gets Serious: Infidelity

I should have campaigned more strongly for a separate category for typical chick-lit authors who occasionally tread in more somber waters. Our official rules require me to balance a light and fluffy book with something more serious, but what about when a Cool Whip book suddenly turns serious? When I'm shuddering, not laughing? When bad things happen to children? What is this genre coming to?

I love to loathe Jennifer Weiner. I didn't mind her first books so much, but at some point she just plain began to bother me. I can't be the first person to think it just wrong that Weiner is shelved right next to Elie Wiesel. But, anyway, she just published "Fly Away Home" and I, lemming that I am, bought it. (In Target. I apologize to all the small, independent booksellers in my area). For some reason, Weiner decided the world had not yet tired of real political sex scandals and thought we'd might like to read a fictional account of one. Yet, she drops names like Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford into the plot (are we really going to remember these details of hookers and hikes in 2020?). For me, Weiner committed an unpardonable sin by killing off a child 2/3 of the way into the chick-lit story. Granted, said child was not a main character and was just a blip in the storyline-- but then why did you need it, Jennifer, why??? You let little Joy survive and thrive in those Cannie Shapiro books. As my son would say, "I'm mad at you."

Emily Giffin appears to be trying to leap from chick-lit fame to (slightly) more serious fiction with "Heart of the Matter". The arrogance of some of the central characters kept me from settling into the book. I wanted repercussions, consequences, and punishment for the blatant infidelity (come on, isn't someone going to report this to the Board of Ethics??). I wanted to support the single mom, but she kept insisting on making ridiculous decisions (hey, how about being there for your son instead of texting away to his doctor?). I simply wanted everyone to be on better behavior. If Valerie had just followed her gut and not allowed her six-year-old son to go to a sleepover birthday party at the house of adults she didn't know, none of this would have happened. Cowboy up, Val; it's time to start pointing the finger of blame at yourself.

Sigh. Why can't authors write the plots I want them to follow? I want my chick-lit to be light, sweet and airy, a nice literary dessert.

(I wonder how much longer I can avoid "The French Lieutenant's Woman"? Didn't I read it in college or something?)

Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris

Sometimes it's good to live under a rock.

"Then We Came to the End" was published when my twin sons were eight weeks only. I didn't read much of anything in 2007. I missed any buzz about Joshua Ferris, which allowed me to see this book at my parents' house this summer and think, "Ooh, cool yellow book with bubble writing on the cover". The National Book Award emblem legitimized it as a worthy balance to my summer reading to date.

Every once in a while, one of my reading quirks pay off. Take my need to finish any book that I start. Sure, there are plenty of books that I plugged through, sighing happily when I finished the final page. But then there are books that start to pick up for me 100, 200, even 300 pages in, and those final pages make up for the laborious first.

So it is for "Then We Came to the End". Based on the cover blurbs alone hyping the humor, I expected this to be a funny, you're-going-to-laugh-out-loud book. I had read one review likening it to "The Office", so I had Michael, Dwight, Jim and Pam in mind. I had expectations of greatness, given the literary accolades. After a few pages, I got into the quirky rhythm of the narrator. 50 pages later, I was wondering when the action would happen. I'll admit, I read while I also reminisced about life before the dot.com bubble burst, my fun work friends from then, my work colleagues who provided the material for our banter, and that whole life-before-kids time. Suddenly, I was on page 197.

I must need a traditional story at some point to reel me in, and Lynn is the character that brought me back (even after the narrator regained control). Her struggle of maintaining her professional standing in the office, keeping her company afloat, and dealing with personal battles all injected a dose of reality. While it took several nights to plod through the first half, I flew through the final half (pausing only once to google the whereabouts of a former colleague who is most likely to play the role of Tom in this book).

PS to Brendan: Ferris' follow up book, "The Unnamed", looks to be one that should go on my books-that-Kerry-can-never-read shelf on Goodreads.

Kerry's Cringe-worthy Summer Reading Program Confession

Confession time has come, as per official rule #9.

No, it's not the time when I crawled under booths at the Hanover Mall's Friendly's Restaurant to greet my favorite librarian. I was four or five, and it was not summer, and that was probably more endearing than crippling (not counting the waitstaff and other customers that I bumped into).

It's also not the fact that, as an elementary school student, I regularly participated in two summer reading programs, at the local Duxbury Free Library and our other family favorite, the Tufts Library in Weymouth. That I did not allow myself to "double dip" books (marking them as read on both library's logs) is more obsessive than embarrassing.

It's not even that time four years ago when my then 4 1/2 year old daughter refused point blank to sign up for the summer reading program and I signed her up and did all the recording for the summer simply because it's what I wanted to do.

No, to truly experience my monumental summer reading program fail you have to go back to the Summer of 1982 when I was 9 1/2 years old and entering fifth grade. The theme had to do with pirates and seeking treasure. Each participant wrote his/her name on a brown paper ship that hung all summer long in the children's library. Every time you brought your reading log to the librarian, she would count the number of books you had read since the last visit and staple the corresponding number of gold paper coins to your ship.

As luck (!) would have it, my ship hung smack dab in the middle above an aisle of books. As the summer continued, I realized that adults had to duck under my cascade of coins to enter the stacks. My luck continued, as there were several mustard yellow foam cushions at the end of each aisle, including "mine". By the end of July, my favorite thing to do in the library was to sit on those foam loungers and "read" (aka, wait for adults) and listen in to what adults said when they'd pass under the S.S. Kerry. "Wow, look at all the coins", "That kid must love reading", "What a lot of books!". By early August, I had visions of having such a long trail of coins that even kids would have to duck. I was in gold coin ecstasy. I was ridiculous.

Fortunately, no one (parent or child) took me behind the library to give me the trimming down that I deserved. I never witnessed anyone grabbing streamers of coins off my ship, but I am certain (and even, in retrospect, hope) that it happened. While I have the utmost respect for children's librarians, and especially those who worked then at the DFL, I suspect (and, again, hope) that when they realized my sinister plot, they failed to credit my ship with the correct number of coins.

Instead of being forced to walk the literary plank, the 1982 reading program ended, peacefully, with the customary ice cream party. By the start of school, the children's room was stripped of pirate ships and coins...and I returned to being a regular reader at the library once again.

With "Franny and Zooey," Brendan achieves a pitiful Two

The song that played on my life soundtrack as I finished my second book

As my sister continued her Herculean effort to read every hastily written book about a zany-gal-who-just-can't-figure-it-out-but-nonetheless-wears-expensive-shoes, I strategized and selected a bunch of slim books to burn through while “Lonesome Dove” lumbered on. Various works by Sandra Cisneros, Woody Allen, and Daniel Woodrell begged to help staunch Kerry's onslaught. But Larry McMurtry pulled a fast one on me and all of the sudden “Lonesome Dove” became unputdownable. Gunfights, grueling journeys, abductions, revenge, finding inner reservoirs of strength – what more could I ask from a summertime read? At the same time the supposedly “fast” read I had chosen, “Franny and Zooey,” seemed plodding and dense. Why would I want to untangle Zooey’s theories on theology when I HAD to find out whether July Johnson was ever going to realize Ellie* was just no good for him?

But I chipped away at “F&Z” and finally finished it last night. At times it seemed like I was reading a play - all of the characters speak in long soliloquies where they espouse their different points of view and not an awful lot “happens.” Maybe I felt this way because Zooey, with his world-weary misanthropy at age twenty-five, wouldn’t seem out of place in a Neil LaBute or David Mamet production. And I also had the disconcerting experience of playing “spot the reference” where books and movies I had enjoyed in the past were overshadowed by the debt they owed to Salinger (“The Royal Tenenbaums” took a severe hit on this front, what with its family of geniuses, suicidal brother, and significant use of bathroom smoking). But in the end, I was glad I read it, and it only strengthened my hope that J.D. Salinger (as well as Harper Lee) has a vault full of completed manuscripts that will all be published as soon as the legal paperwork has been completed by his estate.

*Oh, man, I know she’s had a tough life and not a lot of opportunities, but I really hate Ellie.

The Lure of the Bargain Book: Maneater, Gigi Levangie Grazer

I am a sucker for the bargain bookstore (as is my credit card). My first job in Boston was located across the street from a Buck-a-Book store, and I hauled many a heavy bag laden with books all the way to my apartment behind the last stop on the B Line. I was a charter member of the PaperBackSwap, until I wearied of receiving smoke infused paperbacks that had taken a spill in the tub. Building 19 is great for children's picture books. I've browsed through most of the bargain bins in my area, but had never looked in the book aisle at Ocean State Job Lot...until now.


Since most of my pop culture references are pre-1990, when I read the title, "Maneater", my brain immediately backtracked to Daryl Hall and John Oates. (I recorded it off the radio onto a mixed tape. It probably took me a whole afternoon of circling the dial to finally hear it. Now, I could find and download the song in about 3.2 seconds). The author, Gigi Levangie Grazer, rang no bells. I almost kept walking, but then spied the $1.99 price tag. The cashier exclaimed that it was "freakin' funny", all her friends liked it, and "like the only book she, like, ever read that, like, the teacher didn't make her"...and asked if I had seen the movie?


So then I learn that this book, known (apparently) to all 18-year-old girls in the greater Kingston, MA area, was made recently into a Lifetime movie starring Roseanne's Second Becky (ok, Sarah Chalke from Scrubs, but she'll always be the replacement to me). A bargain book that was made into a straight-to-DVD movie, loved by teen girls? Aren't these all signs telling me that this will be the worst chick-lit book ever??

Never one to run from a challenge, I bought the book and read it. Guess what? I smirked a few times and laughed out loud once. The hours that I was awake that night waiting for my kids to settle down and fall asleep just flew by (or perhaps the absence of a working clock kept me ignorant). I am neither a better nor a worse person for having read "Maneater". I am, however, up a book in the log. As an apology for such an easy read, I ordered the movie from Netflix and will lose at least two nights of reading time in order to watch all 172 minutes (falling asleep while viewing it and waking up hours later will also suffice).

(Is anyone else wondering if Brendan's latest strategy involves stockpiling read books in an attempt to race ahead in the final day of our countdown?)

American Music, Jane Mendelsohn

"American Music" is on all the Summer 2010 must read lists (despite having been published only in June), so I happily grabbed it at the library. Having lived near the Zildjian Company for most of my life, I was intrigued by how the story of the company and its mystique would be incorporated into the fictional tale.

I'm not a book club kind of person, but every once in a while I read something that I really want to dissect with someone else. Jane Mendelsohn's "American Music" is precisely that kind of book. Flowing between characters living across 400 years of time, each glimpse into their story is like correct fitting a piece into a 5000 piece puzzle. (And, like starting such a large puzzle, starting to read this book is a bit tedious, until you get into the rhythm of the plot).

While I knew these stories had to intersect eventually, Mendelsohn's writing is so strong that it makes the reading of a somewhat obvious plot still enjoyable. The ending wasn't quite what I expected (or wanted), but that in itself only emphasized the underlying (unpreachy) message of the book, that life isn't always what we want or expect, but the act of living that life matters.

Start Reading, Brendan!

The reading challenges have begun! I've already checked to make sure "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is available at the library and, instead of placing it on hold, am playing it cool in the hopes of finding it in the stacks tomorrow. I'm counting on my local readers not to rush the doors tomorrow morning to check out the only copy. (I think I'm safe. I'm sure the librarians there have my back.)

Brendan and I have actually discussed the reading challenge quite a bit (despite Verizon's insistence on dropping most of our calls). Strategically, of course it makes sense to give him something wordy; attack his weakness. I'm so comfortable with my lead, however, that I think the other obvious choice is appropriate: chick-lit.

So, Brendan, welcome to my world away from reality. Chick-lit is total escapism for me (the fact that I even use the term "chick" says it all). Honestly, I was once the most high-brow of high-brow readers. I didn't read for pleasure, I read to be better. Otherwise, what was the point? Then, I hit a bit of a rough patch in life and, somehow, bought my first fluff book. It was the perfect antidote for what I needed. Life was complicated enough, why not indulge once in a while?

I will be the first to admit that I'm more than a bit addicted to chick-lit. I'm annoyed that Meg Cabot hasn't written more "Heather Wells" mysteries. I've signed up for email alerts for new titles by Julie Kenner. I'm also a bit embarassed by my fall from literary grace. My "good books" are in bookcases in our bedroom (shelved appropriately by fiction, non-fiction, British lit, poetry, short stories, anthologies, and plays). You have to make your way up to our office to find my secret collection. I may be out of the chick-lit closet, but only by a step or two.

Now it's time to sully my brother. Tonight he told me that he's read chick-lit before, "The Devil Wears Prada" and hated it. Well, guess what? So did I! He also claims that we're polar opposites on the reading spectrum, but I know, deep down, that there's a part of him that is ready for my genre (ask him about Agatha Christie and Martha Grimes).

Brendan has made Chicago his home for the past 12 years, living his dream. As such, it's only fitting that I suggest that he read "Bitter is the New Black", the first in a series of memoirs by Jen Lancaster, a fellow Chicagoan. I, unapologetically, love Jen Lancaster. Like Brendan, she has chosen Chicago to be her home. She loves movies and television-- even dogs (I'm sure they've passed each other by at the dog park). She's even funny, like my brother. Jen (I think I can call her Jen) isn't traditional chick-lit; she's all about self-deprecating humor, which fits my brother to a T. Quite honestly, I don't understand why their lives haven't crossed paths yet. I mean, she thinks things up like this. Shouldn't they be friends?

In true older sister fashion, I've gone ahead and ordered Jen's first book for Brendan (because it's not enough to suggest it, I've gone ahead and made the book appear in Amazon magic at his door). I suspect that in September, we'll be scooping ice cream together while he begs to borrow the rest of her work.

So, B, while you wait until the book arrives at your door on Friday, take a sneak peek at Jen. I know you'll laugh.

Are You Kidding Me?

On Saturday, I was beset by an attack of food poisoning. As I crouched by my toilet, my stomach being rooted through as thoroughly as if it were Franny's purse and the lox and muenster sandwich I had eaten for lunch was her elusive Kleenex,* I couldn't help but be buoyed by the thought that being sick would give me more reading time to catch up to Kerry. Well, I might as well have wished for time to stop. Apparently, my sister's competitive streak has pushed her to maintain the punishing pace of two books a day. Meanwhile, like a sap, I stick with my beloved behemoth "Lonesome Dove," which, let's be honest, I won't be finishing any time soon.

So this leads me to change my strategy. I have decided to parse out "LD" in the hopes of reading shorter books in the interim. As my sister none-too-delicately said to me last week, "I want to win, Brendan, but I don't want to win in a landslide." Well, Kerry, I don't want to be covered in the rubble of chick-lit that you're tearing through (or, as my father described them, "Tillie the Divorcee Meets A Dentist," which sounds like a movie Ginger Rogers forgot to make). So that leads me to my first selection for Kerry this summer, "The French Lieutenant's Woman," by John Fowles.

Let's be honest, my main reason for picking this book is its length and the density of its language (mere stumbling blocks for my workhorse sister). But I didn't want to pick a book as punishment (in that case, I would have picked "An American Tragedy" or "A House for Mr. Biswas"), and I loved the intricate plotting and characterizations when I read it a few years ago. Plus, it has a dual love story as its center (chick lit!) and part of it takes place in England (Austen! Brontes!), so I consider that an olive branch to Kerry and hope that she remembers I at least tried to pick a book she would enjoy when she makes her selection for me.

*This is a highbrow reference to "Franny and Zooey," one of the shorter books I'm cheating on "Lonesome Dove" with in order to catch up to my sister.

In Defense of Reading (The Bachelorette Party, Karen McCullah Lutz)

You'll all be happy to know that my daughter is finally on antibiotics, so chances are high that she (and I) will sleep soundly tonight. Besides, I didn't make it to the library today and am all out of a fresh supply of chick-lit.


But, really, why the fuss over whether I'm reading high- or low-brow literature? Last night, my husband watched "Ice Road Truckers". I read 100 pages of "The Bachelorette Party". What's the difference? It's not as if either of us made the world a better place through either choice.


Before settling on a channel, I noted that we could have selected "10 Things I Hate About You" or "Legally Blonde", or even streamed "The Ugly Truth" via Netflix. (God Bless America) In honor of these myriad entertainment options, all in which Karen McCullah Lutz shares screenwriting credit, of course I had to finish her book.

I love when screenwriters decide to write a novel (I'm sure Brendan will chime in with several examples). The book reads just like the movie would, with just a little extra description. The pace is fast, the story moves along quickly and, even if you're not really into the plot, you know you're just racing toward closure. "The Bachelorette Party" is completely unapologetic and never once attempts to be any more than a quick, fun read. Really, with jacket blurbs from Heather Graham and Selma Blair, how could you possibly take it seriously?

Don't Even Think About It, Lauren Henderson

Starting in the late 1970s, my whole extended family gave my grandparents (the heads of a family of nine children) a week on Cape Cod. I use the word "gift" loosely, as we ultimately all joined them in this small cottage for a week of family frenzy. Summer after summer, we returned to this same cottage that, eventually, began to feel like our own. Nothing changed about the cottage (until it practically tumbled into the sea, but I'm ignoring that part), except what books you'd find on the shelves. The titles were rarely anything a 12 year old would recognize and fell heavily in the Rosamunde Pilcher and WWII varieties, neither of which held my interest. Every summer, however, once I depleted those in my own stack, I'd find at least one book that could help pass the time once the sun went down and the card playing started. There's something to be said about books you choose simply because they are there for the taking as opposed to books for which you have some set expectations.

Brendan reading on the deck, 1980 or 81, Dennis, MA

This little vignette has little to do with "Don't Even Think About It", other than it was within my reach early yesterday morning when my daughter finally fell back to sleep after a long night of being sick. I didn't want to risk waking her by leaving to grab my book from the other room, and this was what was available. By the time my daughter was in a deep sleep, I was halfway through, and managed to finish all but the final pages before my younger boys woke up. (Have you realized now that I am the world's most finicky sleeper?) Other than the presence of air conditioning and adult responsibility, it was just like those summer nights on the Cape. Well, almost. Honestly, I really have nothing to say about "Don't Even Think About It", other than the fact that I read it. I apologize in advance for the next book on my log, because my daughter didn't sleep well last night either.

A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents, Liza Palmer

A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents: how can you not read a book with this title?

I usually don't browse the new release section in the library. Part of the reason for this is that in the old library building, new releases were shelved in a small room behind the main circulation desk, requiring a slick side move around the cart full of book returns. It felt a little too clandestine for me. Nowadays, with my significant Amazon.com addiction, I've usually already purchased and read the new books of interest to me. Choosing library books means that I sit my daughter in her favorite chair in the adult fiction section, tell her to stay and read right there, not to move, then spend 90 seconds doing the library version of "Supermarket Sweep".

However, I'm trying to limit my expenses, so yesterday afternoon I did a quick perusal of the new releases and wound up with Liza Palmer's latest title. After doublechecking that I was, in fact, in the fiction new releases (because, otherwise, ick), I grabbed it before the man next to me could get to it first (just in case his browsing in the large print section was a complete ruse).

I'd never read Liza Palmer until now, but with a cover blurb from Meg Cabot and a cutesy cover image (replicated not once, but twice, on the rest of the jacket; maybe marketing will splurge on a future edition), I had already cast some judgment. By the second chapter, Palmer had left the traditional chick-lit outline (girl meets boy, girl meets ex-boy, girl chooses 200 pages later) and turned the focus to family relationships. After their father abandons the family following years of infidelity, Huston, Abigail, Grace and Leo form a tight circle around their mother, who later dies in a freak car accident. Grace, 30 at her mother's death, abruptly severs all contact with her siblings only to reunite with them five years later, around their estranged father's deathbed.

Despite some weak writing and loose ends that tied all too neatly together, I found myself really drawn to the characters. Huston's need to do the right thing as the oldest child resonated with me. I related to Abigail's frantic multitasking of being daughter-wife-mother, especially when plans didn't go as intended. I just plain liked Leo. And while I couldn't understand why Grace made certain choices, I still wanted a happy ending for her (delivered no fuss, no muss).

Most of us won't have to deal with the extremes presented in "A Field Guide", but neither are we immune to the complexities of mourning a sudden death or grieving a loss with mixed emotions. Palmer addresses what it's like to be do this in your 30s, when you have adult responsibility but have not yet lost the knee jerk reaction to childhood angst--but with enough lightness and fluff to keep the reader out of therapy.

My Summer with Julia, Sarah Woodhouse

Honey.
Molasses.
Turtles.
A still pond.
My daughter cleaning her bedroom.

These are all things that move faster than the plot of "My Summer with Julia".

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't like the book; I felt for Annie and had some curiousity about whether she would ever resolve her feelings about her childhood friend, Julia. We all have best friends from growing up from whom we've drifted; we can imagine how it might feel to suddenly be informed that this person has died and has left a locked box to you in the will. I simply wanted more to happen in the 10-15 minute increments that I have to read. I needed to feel like I had made some progress in the story, something that would make me want to pick the book up a few hours later. The central secret of the plot-- what did child Julia do-- is obvious to the reader in the early pages, yet not officially revealed until the final chapters. As I turned each page, I wondered if we were finally going to get to the meat of something. Would Annie share the contents of the box with anyone? Would she learn more about Julia's life after their friendship ended so abruptly? Would she track down Alain? Would she pay attention to her kids? Her sister? Her husband?

Ultimately, "My Summer with Julia" is about precisely that: one specific summer. For those readers who like to live in a character's mind, this one's for you. Otherwise, keep browsing.

Seven Year Switch, Claire Cook

All hail, the summer beach read. I raise my sunscreen and tip my SIGG of water to you.

Seven Year Switch did not disappoint me as a fun summer read. You can read any number of reviews here, here and here, so I'm going to jump straight to my favorite character: T-shirt Tom. Tom is a student at a "Lunch Around the World" class held at the community center (and led by the story's main character, Jill). His t-shirts sport messages like, "TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR A DIFFERENT SHIRT" and "I'M NOT GETTING SMALLER, I'M BACKING AWAY FROM YOU". All we know about Tom is that he wears these t-shirts and has thick glasses always smudged with fingerprints.

Although most of his classmates are senior citizens, my image of Tom is that he's a first generation gamer, now in his 40's, and works at night in his basement office testing new video games and sharing trade secrets with other RPG players in chat rooms. Tom probably rolls out of bed around 11:45 each morning, giving him plenty of time to make it to this noontime class that includes lunch (and leftovers, so dinner too). He doesn't know it yet, but a few months from now he's going to realize that his new friends, the seniors, are tired of playing Wii at the senior center but have no interest in expanding their own gaming to Mortal Kombat or Grand Theft Auto. Tom will work with this small test group and produce "Boomer Games" with the tag line, "it's not your grandchild's video game". He'll make a bundle, allowing him to make a substantial, yet anonymous, donation to the town to renovate their aging senior center and housing project. Tom's good like that.

Brendan Finally Read a Book: The Help

My sister's children, the poor things, haven't learned any swear words* yet. The cruelest insult they can hurl at each other is "meanie," which leads to some pretty toothless exchanges in my opinion. I think, however, if they were to read "The Help" they would upgrade "meanie" to "Hilly Holbrook," a character of such unrelenting cruelty that her name should equal a swear word.

Hilly is the villain of "The Help," a book that every woman in America has been mandated to read by 2012 under "The Lovely Bones Act" recently passed by Congress. Hilly casually ruins lives with the same coolness with which she runs her Junior League meetings, and she's so over-the-top despicable you fear her and wish for her downfall with equal measure. Ultimately, I found her too broadly drawn to seem realistic. Stockett mentions a redeeming quality every seventy pages or so (loves her kids, can be a good friend occasionally, slow reader) but by the end her wickedness is so cartoonish that I had a hard time taking her seriously. But then again I didn't grow up in 1960's Mississippi, so maybe the Hilly's of the world are far more prevalent and petty than I care to believe.

The rest of the book is extremely readable, and Stockett does a great job of frontloading the plot with lots of unanswered questions that keeps you turning the page (What happened to Constantine? What was the Terrible Awful Thing Minnie did to Hilly? What's the deal with Celia?) The three main characters are all well-drawn, even if they seem overly familiar. Minnie sometimes comes across as a greatest-hits compilation of Miss Sophia from "The Color Purple" and Skeeter is a more fleshed-out version of the main character in that movie where Ally Sheedy started the Civil Rights movement. But I did get sucked into the story, and while Stockett flirts with clichés she also provides lots of surprises, particularly with the supporting characters. The last hundred pages are especially satisfying, as all of the various characters either overcome or succumb to the limitations of their time, and there are plenty of Oscar-Winning moments for the inevitable movie version (okay, I teared up at the final church scene). Hilly even gets a form of comeuppance, although it is nowhere near as good as the all-time best mean-girl-comeuppance in literature, which is of course found in Zilpha Keatley Snyder's "The Changeling."** But Stockett's restraint is appreciated and implies that while these women have accomplished much, they have many more challenges to face in their life.

*The exception is my eight year-old niece, who confessed last summer that she had learned one from the Harry Potter books. When I asked her what it was, she whispered "damn," only she pronounced it "dam-na." I realized then that she had inherited our family's reading vocabulary gene, which causes us to mispronounce words - such as "mauve" - which we only encounter on the page. I was also surprised that a child who spends as much time with my father as she does had never heard that word pronounced out loud.

**This might not entirely hold up if I were to read it today, but I do remember the final car wash scene being so fantastic I wanted to throw the book across the room and applaud when I read it in 1985.

Let's Be Honest: Why My Sister Will Win

Kerry graciously enumerated the reasons why I had a "fighting chance" to win this contest, and while I appreciated her support, it struck me as being composed in the same tone my grandmother used when she complimented an unattractive woman for having "beautiful skin and lovely eyebrows." Let's not pretend this contest is a Clash of the Titans. This is less Bird vs. Johnson and more Bird vs. That Kid With the Stigmatism Who Is Pretty Good at HORSE When He Plays It With His Church League. Here is why:

• My sister's extreme competitive spirit. When we were young, we used to play Parcheesi (aka "Poor Man's "Sorry!"). This consisted of Kerry immediately setting up a blockade in front of my four pieces so that she could skip her remaining two players around the board while I fruitlessly tried to roll doubles (the only way you could jump over a blockade in Parcheesi. This analogy now strikes me as being too dated to resonate with modern audiences. Oh well, it is all I have.)
• My lack of said competitive spirit. During my brief tenure as a cross-country runner in high school, whenever I got passed during a race (a common occurrence), my thought was never to kick it into high gear and catch up but rather, "Wow! They're really fast. I should - hey, look! Clouds! Wait, am I going the right way?"
• My love of sleep. Kerry has already mentioned how birds (aka the alarm clock she set the night before) woke her up at 4 in the morning, allowing her to finish "Ship Sooner." I love sleep too much for that to ever happen. I have slept through turbulence, roommates' dance rehearsals, and fire alarms. I am not about to ruin such a productive relationship for the sake of reading.
• I don't like seeing my sister lose. The one time I ever beat Kerry in "Monopoly," somewhere around 1983, I felt so terrible about her slowly evaporating funds that I tried to sneak money into her bank. She swatted the money away and mortgaged another property, which so devastated me that we soon ended the game. But don't think Kerry is oblivious to my devotion to her success. In fact, she is already exploiting it, brazenly breaking one of her rules on only her second book. She knows I'm not going to challenge her. I have decided her reading "Ship Sooner" allows me to read one YA book under 300 pages during the course of the contest, unless of course she doesn't think that's okay.
• Kerry has read everything and read it with ease. Kerry is the kind of person who, when you ask her if she's read "Ulysses," narrows her eyes and says, "Yeah, senior year in high school. Didn't you?" No, Kerry, I had to take a class with a roomful of retirees in order to make it through the literary masterpiece of the twentieth century, and even then I almost didn't finish it. It wasn't something I picked up when I was seventeen EVEN THOUGH YOUR TEACHER DIDN'T EVEN ASSIGN IT, ONLY CASUALLY MENTIONED THAT IT WAS A BOOK YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ SOME DAY.
  

Kerry knows I don't have the ruthless streak necessary to win this thing, even offering up her sole reading weakness - books where bad things happen to children - fully aware that I would never exploit this Achilles' Heel. I'm not sure which two books I'm going to have her read, but in the meantime, here are some excellent literary works where bad things happen to kids, if you're so inclined:

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
The Little Friend, Donna Tartt
The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
In the Woods, Tana French
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Macbeth, William Shakespeare

Ship Sooner, Mary Sullivan

This post is dedicated to the birds who have awakened me at 4AM the last two mornings, providing me ample time to read this book.

*****
I'm a sucker for alliteration, so "Ship Sooner" immediately caught my eye while I browsed the library stacks. Jacket blurbs by Andre Dubus (the son, not the father), Jodi Picoult and David Mamet sealed the deal (kind of an odd assortment of fans, don't you think?).

My own daughter lives with a hearing loss, so it was interesting to read about a character who lives with the exact opposite problem: exceptional hearing. Ship can hear sounds from very far away (handy for eavesdropping), but also extremely high-pitched sounds, similar to a dog's hearing (distracting to the point of incapacitating). Counter to my daughter's hearing aids, Ship wears specially designed ear caps that help muffle sounds. As the story unfolds, Ship discovers the ways in which her hearing is useful, and not just a burden she endures.

I spent the better part of this book mentally begging the characters to make different choices (which made returning to sleep pretty much impossible). I wanted the mother to spend more time with her daughters. I wanted her best friend to see what the mother failed to observe. I wanted the older girl to be nicer to her younger sister, but also grow herself a spine. I wanted everyone to stay away from the neighbor's father. Fortunately, the bad things I expected to happen never did, but neither did the book's conclusion bring the closure I was seeking.

ADDENDUM: I just realized that this book is also cross-listed as being a young adult novel and doesn't meet the requirements of our Rule #4. However, at the Duxbury Free Library it was shelved only in the adult fiction stacks, so I'm counting it. Challenge me if you want, Brendan, but you might find your time better spent reading.

Smart Girls Like Me, Diane Vadino

Admission: I judge books by their covers. Some people select books by author, by recommendation, by awards won. I am a marketer's dream: I select by cover color, font type, book blurbs, buy one/get one stickers.





"Smart Girls Like Me" grabbed my attention with its light pink cover (always a good sign), stock photo image of clothes on hangers (bonus points for creativity), and use of CAPS and lower case (how e.e. cummings of you). The cover blurb by John Hodgman sealed the deal (otherwise known as the PC, but I love him most on The Daily Show). I recognized the author, Diane Vadino, from her blog. Chick-lit, with a dose of humor. How can you go wrong?

Well, first you'd start with a main character who you want to throttle for her outrageous whininess. Add the minor characters of the bridezilla BFF, token gay friend, lying boyfriend and parents having a retirement crisis, and you've got...still nothing. I didn't care about any of the characters and frequently wanted to put the book away, away, away (but that would break my rule requiring me to finish every book I start, a rule that has remained unbroken since I was 10. My other rule is that I can never turn off any song by The Police. I promise, those are my only weird rules.).

Next, add in the fact that each time I turned the page, I wondered if I had actually read the book last summer. I'm still not sure if I did or not (and, alas, the library does not offer a list of books you have checked out previously). Fortunately, this blog will allow me to remember the next time that this pretty pink book catches my eye that I've been there, done that before.

My only take away from this book occurred early on, when the main character talks about a coworker: "As smart as she is, and we all know she is the smartest person in the office, she probably wouldn't have gotten all of what she has if it weren't for her glossy black hair and green eyes and the way she manages to turn a pile of rubber bands sitting in a desk drawer into a bracelet we are meant to infer was casually yet artfully constructed." This line made me flip to the front to find out the copyright date: 2007. Did Diane Vadino invent Silly Bandz? I immediately turned to Google, my trusty comrade, and learned that no, that title belongs to Robert Croak. But she could have been on to something good, had she only capitalized on that thought.

But still, I finished this book, which brings my book count to 1!

Leaving on a Jet Plane: Advantage, Brendan?

Here's a little known secret about my brother: he is a thoughtful reader. That is my nice way of saying that for every page he reads, I read 14 of chick-lit's finest. Now, I've already admitted that my retention of what I've read is minimal, but that doesn't matter when the plot lines revolve around single girls out on the hunt in New York, London, Dublin, etc. On reading speed alone, you'd think I'd be the clear winner (I love to win!).

Not so fast, loyal readers. (We have four followers! Not including our mother!). Here's why I think Brendan has a fighting chance to win this thing:

1. I wake up each morning to spend some time with Tony Horton before the kids get up. I could try holding a book while doing Plyo, but I'm fairly certain the insurance company would refuse to cover any injuries incurred doing that.
2. My three kids...unless I can convince Brendan that reading aloud children's books can count toward our totals (and if I read "Rhinos Who Surf" seven times in one day, does that count as seven individual reads or just one?).
3. I pretty much only read at night, after the kids are in bed. It's impossible for me to fall asleep without reading, so that's what I do every night. So that means each time I pick up a book, I'm nodding off soon afterward.
4. Brendan travels a lot for work, giving him some prime reading hours in the sky (too bad that consistent motion lulls him to sleep in an instant). His big trip in August could score him some serious points.
5. Brendan's dog, Josie, just loves it when he reads out loud to her. She can't wait to find out how Lonesome Dove concludes.
6. For the recommendation challenge, Brendan will probably hone in on my weakness (reading books where terrible things happen to children) and make me read "Sophie's Choice" instead of Sophie Kinsella. I may lose on a technicality.

Get ready, folks. I'm a day or so away from posting on my reading log for the first time, but Brendan was on the 6AM flight from Boston to Chicago today and may beat me to it. The race is on!