Another Twofer: brief reviews

taken from Goodreads.com

Sequel to Al Capone Does My Shirts, Al Capone Shines My Shoes continues the story of Moose Flanagan. As the middle school-aged son of a prison guard at Alcatraz during the 1930s, Moose and his family live on the island, along with all the other guards' families. Things are finally going so much better for the Flanagan family, until Mr. Capone himself decides it's time to cash in on a favor he secretly did for Moose in the first book. Just as cute as the first one, Shines My Shoes is full of great historically accurate fiction and fun characters. Definitely recommend it (and the first one, and I'm guessing the third one although I haven't read it yet...stay tuned).

taken from Goodreads.com

Going into this one, I had read two Rainbow Rowell books, Fangirl and Eleanor & Park. One of them I liked and one of them I didn't like. So I was curious about how I'd feel about this one (one written for adults and not for young adults, and one that's about a failing marriage, which is the kind of topic I would have very strong opinions about), and I was pleasantly surprised. I listened to it through audiobook, which was also much better than I expected once I realized a lot of the book is dialogue over the phone. I wasn't sure how that would play out via audiobook, but it worked. Much more importantly, though, is that the book was good. It was very interesting. The commentary on marriage was one I didn't agree with start to finish, but it brought up some very good (and, to my surprise) very conservative principles. Rowell provided quite the discussion about why this particular marriage went downhill, and the very common and simple actions that were taken (or not taken) to avoid such a downfall. I wouldn't go out of my way to demand that people read it, but I did enjoy it and thought it was interesting. I'm curious to keep reading Rowell's work (or just Attachments, I guess, because I think that's all I have left at the moment).

This is Where I Leave You: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com

And just like that, all of the books that I had intended to read during the calendar year are crossed off my list. I meant to set the bar a lot lower this year to give myself some grace post-first baby, but it seems I set the bar just a tad too low. (Although I should point out that I read most of these by having them read to me while I did my chores, fed my daughter, and drove all over the place, so it's possible I still would have been working on getting them read in December otherwise.)

This is Where I Leave You (recently turned into a movie that I'm really excited to see, especially given the cast list) tells the tale of an extremely dysfunctional family that comes together to sit shiva following the death of their father. For seven days, these adult siblings and their mother must sit in chairs and mourn while everyone they've ever met comes to bring them food and share in their grief. They all have their own (fairly severe) issues and all of those issues come out in full force when the family is stuck in close quarters for over a week.

Good things about this book: it made me laugh a lot. I really enjoyed almost all of the characters, and I enjoyed how the author gave each of them a considerable amount of depth as the book progressed. I thought the overall plot was sweet and addressed many real-life issues that people have (although I sure hope no single family has all of those real-life issues at once like this one does). Bad things about this book: good gracious I did not need to read about that much sex. I get it...I'm an adult and I am fine with reading about adult things. But I think I've just read way too much adult things recently and I need to cleanse my pallet with some Young Adult for a while. Also, the sex in this one was specific. And detailed. But enough about that...I also thought that a lot of the life-changing, reevaluate your life moments in the book were still a very wordly version of shallow. Most of those moments were really disappointing to me; I just didn't think the characters made much progress even though they had all kinds of deep, serious talks and deep, serious moments. And that's kind of a bummer, I think. Also, I hated the end.

With this book behind me, I'm excited to start a new group of books. I do have a list of books I want to get to soon, but it's not a firm list like this one was. Even though I had made that list of books I genuinely wanted to read, I always kind of felt bummed when I finished a book and knew the next one I would read had already been picked. I like being a little more free with what I'm in the mood for. So you and I will both have to wait and see what I end up reading this summer.

The Girl on the Train: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com

The subtitle of this post should actually be: a super brief review because this is a book club book and I'm saving all my talking for book club because OHMYGOSH do I have a whole lot of talking to do about this book and actually talking about it would spoil the plot for you so just read it.

That should be the subtitle. But I figured maybe that's a little too long.

It's true. This is indeed a book club book and our meeting isn't for several weeks so I'm going to respect that and keep any specific opinions and OHMYGOSHs to myself. Here's the basic plot though, told in a super choppy way in an attempt to leave all spoilers out:

Rachel rides the same train to and from London every day. On her ride she sees the same couple outside their home and has a little made up version of who they are that plays in her head as she passes them every day. In her fantasy they're Jess and Jason, but in real life they're Megan and Scott; when Megan shows up everywhere on the news because she's disappeared, Rachel becomes obsessed with figuring out what happened. Meanwhile, Rachel's ex-husband Tom and his new wife Anna are bugged that Rachel keeps drunkenly calling and harassing them...but it also quickly becomes a little more complicated than that.

The short story: I freaking loved this book. Ate it up. Did all kinds of guessing and trying to figure it all out. In the end, I did kind of figure it out but I didn't even care because it was still super good. I'm not the first person to make this comparison at all, but it's a little Gone Girlish, but as Shauna Niequist said, "in a good way." Translation: it has all the crazy (well, slightly less crazy actually, because Gone Girl is just straight up bananas) and all the mystery and thrills and sociopaths but I wouldn't feel bad recommending it to someone. If you want the long version of my thoughts...read it and then grab coffee with me sometime. I've got lots to say. (But in all honesty it's mostly just a bunch of "OHMYGOSHTHISPART".)

Oh and P.S., they're already starting to work on the movie and I have several casting suggestions. I'm waiting for the phone call.

Wild: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com

Like many of the books I'm reading right now, this book was added to my Books-to-Movies list last year sometime, and I challenged myself to read it before I saw the movie. It was one of those books that just kept showing up everywhere, and every time I saw that hiking boot on the cover I got more excited and intrigued to finally read it. Well, I've read it now, and I didn't love it nearly as much as I'd hoped. I didn't hate it, and I'm still interested in watching the movie, but...I had some issues.

After Cheryl's mother dies and her marriage falls apart (due almost entirely to her multiple affairs and heroin usage), she decides to escape to the Pacific Crest Trail, hiking from southern California to Oregon. If you read many of the negative reviews on Goodreads, there are a whole lot of people who are upset with her complete lack of knowledge prior to her starting her journey; she bought books about the trail but didn't read them, didn't go on any hikes to prepare, and didn't even practice lifting or wearing her pack before the morning she set out. I wasn't as annoyed with that, although it does hurt her credibility quite a bit. It could be argued that she is that much more impressive because she did it and survived despite her lack of research....but...it could also be argued that a lot of the issues she had along the way (severe dehydration due to a lack of proper planning, a pack that was far too heavy, boots that were too small and therefore destroyed five of her toe nails) could have all be avoided if she had even the slightest clue of what she was doing.

The parts that really bothered me centered more around who she is as a person and the decisions she made along the way. When I read Mindy Kaling's book last week, all I could think about the whole time was how much I would love to sit and have a conversation with her in person; when I read this book, all I could think about was how I just don't like her. I'm deeply impressed with the fact that she hiked as much of the PCT as she did, and by herself at that, but that's about where it stops. The incredible selfishness with which she lives her life is infuriating. (Unavoidable spoilers ahead...) The scene in which Cheryl and her husband are meeting with the notary to finalize their divorce, she cries and pleads with the notary to believe that she still loves her husband. She chose to cheat on him (many, many times), she chose to spiral completely out of control, she chose to tell him and then spend months trying to decide whether to stay together or get divorced, but never once said anything about the marriage counselor they talked to or the work they put into fixing their problems...and then she cries and wants everyone to know how much she loves him? I just don't understand this. I don't understand calling it quits with someone, who you claim to still love, without doing any work at all to fix the problems first.

The part of her story that bothered me much, much more, though, was the abortion she decided to have right before beginning her journey on the PCT. Getting pregnant wasn't part of her plan and she thought she needed this time in the wilderness to discover herself and grow, I get it. She's probably right in her assessment that she was not in a great place to become a mother. But what if her journey to self-discovery and growth wasn't supposed to take place on the PCT? What if it had happened through an unplanned pregnancy that turned into a life changing opportunity to raise a beautiful son or daughter? Or what if, even better still, that unplanned pregnancy was supposed to be her opportunity for change and self-awareness while also providing a loving couple the chance to raise the child they couldn't have on their own? She could have chosen this incredibly self-sacrificing journey in place of hiking the PCT or just delayed her trip by a year (and actually spent that year doing some homework on backpacking and getting a little more prepared for her trip), but she chose instead to eliminate the problem and move on with her life. It was barely even a thought; there was one sentence stating her discovery of her pregnancy and one half sentence mentioning the abortion. "I got the abortion, and..." It was mentioned as an afterthought, and I almost stopped reading the book at that point. I just...it just makes me sad. The lack of consideration or respect for this incredibly huge thing just breaks my heart. And honestly, it made me really, really mad.

When I was in high school, my brother and I talked a lot about how we were going to hike the whole Appalachian Trail together sometime. We said it casually, as if we'd be able to wake up one morning and say "let's do that thing we're always talking about today." At that point, we'd never hiked more than a handful of miles at a time and had never camped overnight anywhere other than our own backyard, but it seemed totally doable to us. If I've learned anything from reading Wild, it's that my brother and I were complete idiots back then. I enjoyed her writing style, I enjoyed the things I was able to learn about backpacking, I didn't enjoy the language or sex (seriously...if you can't get your point across without the f-word showing up so many times, maybe you should just try again), but overall I'm glad I read it. I don't know that I can say with confidence that I liked it, but I also can't say that I hated it. I'm just glad I read it, have an educated opinion about it, and can cross it off the list.

Here's my updated 2015 reading goals list:

• Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
• Monster, by Walter Dean Myers
• Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
• The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion
• Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, by Mindy Kaling
• Yes Please, by Amy Poehler
• A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby (currently reading)
• This is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper
• Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
• Serena, by Ron Rash
• Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
• Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling
• Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
• Half Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling (currently listening on audiobook)
• Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

Labor Day: a brief review

taken from Goodreads.com

I finished the last book I read, Someone Like You, in the middle of the night, and clearly needed to decide right that second what book I would read next. Since I'd already bought Labor Day a little while ago and it was just sitting waiting for me on my Kindle, it seemed like a logical choice. And here we are.

Joyce Maynard's Labor Day was written in 2009 but really made a splash this past spring and summer when it became a movie starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. (I only first heard of this book, actually, when it showed up on a Books Turning to Movies list back at the beginning of the year and thought the plot looked good; I made my own little list of books I want to read before I see the movies and this one made the cut.) Young teenage Henry lives with his reclusive mother after his father left them for a new family that lives across town. Henry's mother has been beaten down by the experiences in her life and has developed a fear of everything outside of their home. They make trips to town every couple of months to stock up on frozen and nonperishable foods, and it's during one of those trips that they cross paths with Frank. Recently escaped from prison and in need of medical attention, Frank asks for a ride home and soon finds himself the house guest of Henry and his mother for the entire Labor Day weekend. Henry has a front row seat to the transformations in his mother as she opens up and softens in the presence of Frank, their instant romance defying typical reasoning. The longer Frank stays in their home, the more complicated Henry's feelings towards him become as he sees the danger in letting him stay as well as the incredible impact he has made in the lives of both Henry and his mother.

I've been excited to read this one for a long time, but it just kept getting pushed farther down the road. I tried to put it on hold from the library a couple of times but was never able to get it read when it would actually appear on my Kindle so it kept disappearing. I finally just broke down and bought it (I think it was like $4) and it sat waiting for me. Along the way I heard many positive reviews from friends who had read it, and my excitement for the day I would finally read it kept building. All of that being said: here are my thoughts. It's honestly a little bit off-putting, the way Frank and Adele instantly fall in love. I'm not someone who can really point too many fingers (married within seven months of meeting each other? Yeah, that's us) but with these guys it's from the very first scene in the department store. Once you get past that small detail, though, I have to say that this book is wonderful. Beautifully written, Maynard weaves the reader through so many character elements in a mere 250 pages it's almost hard to emotionally digest it all. Such simple characters upon first impression, all three provide so many opportunities for social commentary and discussion. Henry's struggles with identity as a high school boy without much of a relationship with his father is my favorite; it's heartbreaking to read his deeply honest thoughts and confessions about everything he is missing out on by not having that male role in his life to talk through his tumultuous time of life. As a small disclaimer I must say that there is a shocking amount of sex in this book (shocking because I wasn't really expecting any at all for whatever reason), but it doesn't actually go into graphic details. Just comments on the fact that it's happening. I would definitely recommend this book, though, and can't wait to see the movie at some point.