This One is Mine (Maria Semple)

Oh Ms. Semple you little minx, I just took in some of the most guiltiest of pleasures as far as reading goes. And I didn't think I would. I adored Where'd you go Bernadette? and I was kind of looking for the same voice in her debut but was turned off by the beginning. I thought oh jeeze. This is kind of cheesy and racist and snotty but something in the writing- the unique snobbery that Semple nailed brilliantly in Bernadette was still there a little in Violet. Basically it's a tale of the Boo Hoo rich white lady bored in her life as a once writer of television in Hollywood but now is a stay at home mom who is more just stay at home than mom since she shuffles little Dot (i just love that name for the baby) with LadyGo the nanny. Anyway, Violet is married to David Parry, an uberfamous band manager or something like that. They have millions but Violet isn't happy. But there is some saving grace in her eliteness that is splashed on each page. There is some likability and so much humor not unlike Bernadette. Violet has an affair and David finds out and all the while parallel to Violet's story is Sally's story, David's diabetic sister who marries a guy for money and later finds out he has asbergers. It was definitely candy for my brain and I enjoyed 99% of it. The tiny 1% being a did wince at a couple parts of the more raunchy bits concerning abortion but I would recommend it to anyone who liked Bernadette and isn't afraid of some vulgarity.

Wild (Cheryl Strayed)

This is one of those times I wish there were half star options. (goodreads) I would give it 3.5. I loved Tiny Beautiful Things. It was raw, real, dark, funny, insightful and empathic. Wild was.... I still haven't been able to come up with anything to describe. Part of me loved certain parts (the last quarter for instance). And part of me was just trudging on through out of loyalty to the author and my love for her Dear Sugar book. I felt reading it was akin to hiking the PCT. But without the small boots. I did feel as if it was an effort and I sweat turning the pages. Okay it wasn't that bad. But I was disappointed. I felt for Strayed losing her mother. I was raised by my grandmother and lost her at the same age. I grieve to this day. I feel lost and maybe I need a good thrill seeking experience to get me out of my funk. I am glad she did what she did and think it was book worthy but something seemed to be missing. Maybe i'm just a nature-hiking-woodsy person so I couldn't identify with all the descriptions of the hike. I do think that she was probably a little stupid for doing something so dangerous but at the same time it was that danger and unknowing that pushed her beyond what she had ever experienced. And from that stupidity came a crusty layer added on her being that allowed her to discover some things about herself and come into her own.
That's why a book I would have tossed away after the first 65 pages stayed a foot from my eyes and merited the turning of the pages. I am glad I read it. Understand why Oprah had an orgasm over it. And why Ms Strayed is being compared to Ms. Gilbert.

The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson)

This was a very cute book. I loved the absurd humor and the cast of characters, many of whom you'll recognize from history 101; Churchill, various prime ministers, Stalin, Einsteins retarded brother Herbert, Truman, etc. the North Korean leader guy, Kim something. I'm horrible with history as you can tell. So we have this book written by this Swedish Journalist and it's wonderful. It's a riveting tale about a guy named Allen who is 100 years old on the day when he decides to slip out the window of the nursing home. He does not want to celebrate his life. He in fact feels it is his time to leave the world. So in this mind state he goes to the train station with nothing but the clothes on his back and slippers. It didn't seem important at the time to have shoes. Also unimportant is the fact that he decides to take a suitcase belonging to another man whom we learn is a thug and this thug asks him to keep an eye it while he goes to take a dump. Allen takes it for fun and the adventure begins. What is inside the suitcase is a case load of some obscene number of crowns and the reader gets treated to the people Allen meets on the way to wherever it is that Allen is heading. He doesn't really know but that's not important either. What is important is Allen's life story that we get to know as it is alternated between the present time; he's on the run from the police with a local thief, a hotdog stand operator who also have like 50 unfinished degrees, a woman with an elephant and the head of a gang- and Allens past. How he was involved with explosives as a kid. How he blew up his house (twice) how he came upon learning how to build a nuclear bomb, how he worked for Stalin. How he had dinner with president Truman and a whole host of slightly altered historical facts that put our protagonist at front and center. Really the book is silly. It reminded me of the lovechild of : Monty Python, Mr. Bean, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and John Irving. I have to say the ending was slightly off but not so much that it made it bad or anything. I really liked it.

The Dangers of Proximate Alphabets (Kathleen Alcott)

         I was taught that if I couldn't say something nice then not to say anything at all. I'm kidding. I was never taught that- but have heard it so I can just ignore it.  This book was something that I had heard of and took what I heard and the summary and painted this picture of what to expect.  I thought I would immediately relate to it having grown up with a couple boys that I was really close to. I thought it would be a childhood tale of what it means to be friends or lovers or whatever. It was kind of that. And it kind of wasn't. What it was was a very poetically written account of a girl Ida and two brothers Jackson and James. They are very close and Ida and Jackson are together and you get little tidbits of things you might be able to understand, concrete things like living together, having sex and making art. What always frustrates me is the all the stuff that I don't get, vast lacy descriptions of things that I'm sure are very Literature-like and important but come across to this reader as just fancy speak.  It was okay. I'm glad I read it. But I'm afraid I can only liken it to a really good meditation teacher. Someone who has a very soothing voice that can lull you to another state but you forget it as soon as it's over. But that's just my opinion of course.

When It Happens To You (Molly Ringwald)

      
  I was unexpectedly surprised at how good this book was. I mean I'm not a good judge of the short story but I am working on it. When I read about the book it didn't occur to me that it was THE Molly Ringwald but it was the one and only sixteen candles, pretty in pink and breakfast club 80's icon and she clearly has other talents.

What I enjoyed most was that it was like a novel but not really. It was loosely linked stories about a family, a husband and wife who are in the midst of separation. The husband had been cheating on her. We get to see through the eyes of the wife and various other characters that are linked in the strange ways that people are when they try to piece together who knows on facebook comments.

Anyway the writing flowed and I couldn't put it down once I got the first one underway. I love how it was subtitled, A novel in stories because it was. When it happens to you is such a broad statement. It says so much and Molly has broken it down in a way that only an author can who has a keen eye and a way with words. Topics include: adultery, widowhood, children's gender dislike, new boyfriends and children's adjustment.

Where'd you go, Bernadette? (Maria Semple)

      
  This book ROCKED. It was wonderful. It was hilarious. It was on point. It was glorious. Okay maybe glorious isn't the correct word but it was so good. I swallowed it whole. I wish I took my time to savor it but I'm an addict in most respects and I have control issues; like I'm out of control when I'm in my feeding frenzy.

   So this book.  It's a little different layout, but I have a feeling that the format of the story is something we're going to be seeing a lot more of in the future. It is told through the eyes of Bernadette Fox and her daughter Bee and also through email and letters and transcripts. 

   What we have is a family that was uprooted from LA to Seattle and a woman who we find out was a prize winning architect who designed a house years before called the 20 mile house because it was designed from materials within 20 miles of the house. It was bought and then demolished. Bernadette moves her family to get away from the area and basically hates all of Seattle and the people in it. Her husband Elgin works for Microsoft and we get a fictional account of what that may or may not be like. He ends up... well you'd have to read it. 

   She hates Seattle. She hates the people, her neighbors, the mothers of the school she sends her daughter to. She calls them gnats.
For instance, in a letter to an old colleague Bernadette writes,
"Paul, Greetings from sunny Seattle, where women are "gals," people are "folks," a little bit is a skosh," if you're tired you're "logy," if something is slightly off it's "hinky," you can't sit Indian-Style but you can sit "crisscross appllesauce," when the sun comes out it's never called "sun" but always "sunshine," boyfriend and girlfriends are "partners," nobody swears but someone occasionally might "drop the f-bomb," you're allowed to cough but only into your elbow, and any request, reasonable or unreasonable is met with "no worries."

 She has a brilliant daughter who has promised to get straight A's if she gets a trip to antarctica. She has done so and is now looking for the trip. Bernadette has fears of interacting with people and also crossing Drake Passage and how she gets motion sickness. She is trying to avoid going on the trip. She has a virtual assistant from India who does things for her like get a prescription for the strongest motion sickness meds available. She doesn't know that the assistant isn't who she thinks it is. 

   I've not done justice to what the book is about. It's just a funny romp and I'm so glad I read it.  

Happily Ever After (Harriet Evans)

      
  It was a okay book. I liked it  enough to keep reading but it seemed to drag on in some parts. Happily Ever After is about a girl Elle who is wondering about life and how things work out the way they do. Specifically with love. Her parents divorced and she immersed herself in the kind of thinking that comes with losing yourself in piles of romance books. The fairytale ending is just that: a fairytale. 

  What I liked most about the book was that Elle was in publishing. I love books about books and Harriet Evans seems to know her stuff when it comes the publishing world.  

  The underlying story has to do with drinking and how her mother was a drunk and she was in denial about it. Elle's brother and father seem to have nothing good to say about her mother and she's always defending her. And drinking herself.  Elle comes to terms with her own drinking and deals with losing her mother and it all comes to a head kind of rather neatly that was annoying.  Also, the book, like a lot of other 'brit lit" books refers to Bridget Jones. I love BJ but the references to her and the very likeness of the Girl about Town and "shagging" her boss etc. is tiresome. 

  But overall it was okay. I loved the quotes from the books splitting up the sections and think that Evans is worth another read so i'll try one of her others. 

The Bartender's Tale (Ivan Doig)

      
  A good read most definitely. It wasn't faced paced though. Neither was life during the fifties and 1960 when the bulk of the book took place in the mid west. This was my first Doig and I'm confident it won't be my last, a copy of the Whistling Season is on my to do list. 

What we have here is a very knowledgeable and experienced writer who handles the characters of man and son in a way that makes you long for the old times before everything went all Facebook on us and Reality TV took over using your "swuft" imagination.

Tom Harry is a bartender like no other. He plays his part perfectly and owns the Medicine Lodge in a small town of two bars and he knows how to keep his customers happy. They run from the ornery sheephearders to editors of the paper and five times divorced women. His son, Rusty, comes into Tom's life at age 6 and what the reader witnesses is how a six year old processes what it means to live with a bachelor of a man who might not know all there is to know about having a kid.

Fast forward 6 years where most of the story takes place, that of the summer where Rusty is 12 and a girl named Zoe comes into his life as the best gift summer could offer as the two hide out in the bars back room to spy on the place. 
A woman, Proxie comes into Tom's life and we find out they had a fling way back when that produced a daughter. This daughter, 21 year old Francine, is to help Tom out with the bar- he was about to sell the place. And then there's Del. He's a historian in the making.

There are a few minor twists but nothing too crazy. The novel definitely has a 50's sitcom feel.  It's swell and has a few "ess of a bee's" in it. I liked the descriptions of the land and I'm always a sucker for narratives told through the eyes of a precocious kid. 

Doig is good. Real good. I do have to admit it was a little bit slow at times but I think that's because so many books these days have spoiled us with "riveting text" each outdoing the next with crazy plot turns and over the top situations. Sometimes you just want a plain cup of coffee, no syrups or foaming milk or fancy names. Just coffee. 

Signs and Wonders (Alix Ohlin)

This is the second short stories book I've read in a row and it's been a delicious treat. These snack sized bits to burrow into without the commitment of an entire novel. Of course I'm reading a novel right along side the stories so as to round out nutritionally.

Aliz Ohlin has managed to captivate me. It's as if I'm reading a whole story but in 10-15 pages or so. She has drawn characters, male and female and set the tone and various histories and situations that are so captivating and real yet as simpistic as they sound, each of them, they are wholly complex and diverse just like life.

There are 16 in all and I could go through and describe each one (I won't, you'll just have to pony up and read it) but I will say that some leave you a little forlorn, a little wanting for more and a little questioning. Ohlin takes life and turns it slightly on end therefore you might even be like, "what?" when the ending comes because it's there is no real ending, just little scenes of life involving relationships. children, divorces, blended familes, the city, a cruise and general sh*t that happens and how you deal with it.

Totally recommend this treat from a gifted story teller. I've gone from Don't do short stories to fully appreciating the form when done by the right writer.