January: In which I am surprised that I'm on target for my reading list!

Happy January, ya'll. 
I hope everyone's reading challenge, craft challenge or life challenge is going well. With all the snow we've had this month (like the entire winter dumped on us in a single day), you would think I would only have time to read...but I spent most of the weekend knitting. Not ashamed. 

Even if I'm on track for my challenge (yay!) I'm going a little slow with the reading. I'm trying to get lots of knitting done during the winter months because when summer comes around I can't even think about touching yarn. That puts reading on the back burner for a bit. Even so, I managed to get four books read so let's talk about that. 

Luther: The Calling (Neil Cross) was the first book I read finished this year. I almost didn't finish it because even though it was really good, it was kinda creepy and gory. Not really my cup of tea, but the story was so engrossing and strange that I had to finish it. In a remarkable turn of events, this book was written AFTER the BBC series Luther because it had done so well. I find that interesting but doesn't really change the way I feel about the book. The TV series was a little violent and very dark, but intensely engaging. I'm behind on the series (I think I'm just missing season 3) but eventually I will catch up. Let's be honest--Idris Elba is my main reason for watching. Hubba Hubba. I mean, the story is written really well...

Blame (Michelle Huneven) was an office share book. It showed up in my mailbox with a post it saying "Is this yours?" It wasn't but I read it anyway. I didn't love it but it was interesting. What really threw me was the last chapter. Our protagonist gets locked in a gas station bathroom and is stuck for hours. When she gets out, though, nothing really changes. It could have been one of those scenes that gives the protagonist an opportunity to re-evaluate her situation and make changes. But she doesn't. As a reader it really bothers me. As a person, I think, maybe it bothers me more. It was a good vehicle for change and it is completely ignored. 

I am still slogging through The Bright Empires series. I had a hard time getting through book 3. There was a big gap between #2 and #3 for me so maybe that played into it. And even though halfway through each book I promise myself that I won't keep reading the series, that it is taking too much of my time, that there are too many books out there that I want to read...and then for some unknown reason, I request the next book from the library. So I currently have book #4 waiting for me. This is why I usually avoid series. Anyway...

I finished And Furthermore by Judi Dench this month too. It was very conversational, and it made me think that maybe the audiobook of it would have been a better choice. I wonder with autobiography/memoir type books if audio isn't the best way to go. Reading stories are one thing but hearing the author tell their personal stories? Possibly better. I never realized how much theatre Dame Judi was a part of. She is so much more than M (even though I love M) and so much more than any of her movie roles. 

The office is passing around the book Stiff (Mary Roach) about human cadavers. It has been on my reading list for three years so I'm excited to finally get to it. I'm not in love with it yet, but another coworker called it hilarious so I'm still hoping things will improve. 
I GUESS I'm still working on finishing the Bright Empires series. I haven't touched my Hamilton biography in ages. Sigh. Sorry A.Ham.

But the Ravenclaw house scarf I'm working on is looking A++ fabulous. 

How are your new year goals coming? Let me know in the comments! 

Seating Arrangments by Maggie Shipstead

I know I know. I read this book in January and I STILL haven't got a review up for it!
This was another Goodreads find and honestly, I wasn't thrilled with it. Not everyone on Goodreads is thrilled with it either. One commenter recommend picking up The Paris Wife instead, which I would not recommend, however. 
It is called a satire in the publisher's description, but I'm not sure that is a good enough excuse for how vapid and selfish the characters in this story behaved. The story is about a family, led by the tiresome Winn Van Mete (who seems to care more about his own social standing than supporting and loving his family.) on the verge of a wedding. Winn's eldest and very pregnant daughter is marrying up in the world (much to the joy of her father) and their socialite wedding is take place at the family's vacation home on a pristine island in New England. Being surrounded by his daughter's beautiful friends, Winn can't seem to keep it in his pants, but discovers his self control at a very odd moment. While the wedding planning is wrapping up, his youngest daughter is making some rash and unwise choices to make her recent break up (she is a bit of a social climber too) not hurt so badly.
What some people praised as detailed and rich descriptions, in my mind were tiresome and stiff sentences. Like the author was trying to hard to be "great."
I know this is a bit of an odd review for me, but I just didn't like the book. I finished it. That is probably the best thing I can say about the book. 

Have you read it? Am I way off here? 

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

You see them every morning at a quarter to nine, rushing out of the maw of the subway tunnel, filing out of Grand Central Station, crossing Lexington and Park and Madison and Fifth avenues, the hundreds and hundreds of girls...They carry the morning newspapers and overstuffed handbags. Some of them are wearing pink or chartreuse fuzzy overcoats and five-year old angle strap shoes and have their hair up in pin curls underneath their kerchiefs. Some of them are wearing chic black suits (maybe last year's but who can tell?) and kid gloves and are carrying their lunches in violet-sprigged Bonwit Teller paper bags.

None of them has enough money.

 New York. January 1952. Caroline Bender is heading uptown to Fabian Publications for the first day of her very first job. If things had gone according to her plan, Caroline would be home now, instead of just getting off the subway, cleaning up the breakfast dishes after kissing her husband on the cheek and sending him off to work. However, things had not gone according to plan and so she finds herself in the city, painfully single and heading for a job that is now "more than an economic convenience." She is to be a secretary in a typing pool at Fabian Publications but she really just wants to forget the pain of losing her fiancé to another girl. 

As you guys know, last year I got sucked into AMC's Mad Men. I love it. I love the characters, the costumes, the ad business, Donald Draper... One thing that just fascinates me about the show is the business and gender politics of the 1960s office. I have 3 or 4 books in my desk at my office about advertising, sex, and the office. It is interesting to watch a group of creatives (all men, of course) sit around a table and try to figure out how they are going to market panty hose. Hilarity ensues and of course, an office girl or two is pulled into a focus group to help the fellas out.
In season one, Don Draper is reading a book about office politics and women in the workplace called The Best of Everything. Once I learned that this wasn't just a prop book, I knew I needed to get my hands on it immediately. On the first page you meet Caroline, the heart broken graduate who needs the job as a distraction. You meet four other girls throughout the story, each of them running from something, finding an odd solace in work. The story is good and still, to a point, relevant. It includes everything that modern books have - work, books, magazines, boyfriends, lovers, husbands, nights out, nights in, weddings, divorce - just written in much different way. It kind of changed the way I thought about the 1950s & 1960s. It was a time where public image was everything, even if it wasn't the truth. People made poor choices then, just like they do now. Choices are made sober, drunk, or on impulse. Good, bad or otherwise, this is life. 
I think what I loved best about this book is how genuine Rona Jaffe makes her characters. You understand Caroline's need to forget that her fiancé left her. You understand April's (a girl with a "one and a half" apartment and a desire to never go back home) desire to be loved and needed by people of means. And poor Brenda, a mother and divorcee just wants someone to spend her life with...and would love it if her mother moved out of her apartment...

Girls, we have complicated minds. As the Dowager Countess of Grantham says, "I'm a woman...I can be as contrary as I choose." Well said, Lady Grantham. Well said. It might not be true all of the time, but there it is. We over think and over analyze to the point of completely missing the point of things...

That is, I think, vital to understanding the beauty of Rona Jaffe's novel. It is about work, yes. What does it take for a woman to succeed in a male's world? What injustices do they have to suffer, do they think they have to suffer, in order to keep their jobs or get promoted to jobs they want? 
But at the end of the day, the story is about women. What they want, what they need, what they think they need, and how they plan the achieve the success they dream about. 

As an interesting note, there are a few reviews from the original publication (1958) that made me pause and thank God that I am not living in the 1950s. Or 1960s, for that matter.

“Rona Jaffe will have you believing that very shocking things do happen in New York bars and apartments. This is a story that should be read by girls with dramatic ideas about New York, parents with qualms about their daughters’ ideas, and men with baffling questions about girls’ minds.” --The Cleveland Press

And to that I say, "What?!" Oh, Cleveland Press. 

"An exuberant and readable book. Miss Jaffe is an artful and persuasive storyteller. It almost will certainly ruffle many a male ego.”  --The Spokane Chronicle

Because nothing ruffles a man's ego like a beautiful woman turning him down, I suppose...

“Any employer reading these pages will make a mental note to check up on what the girls in his office do after lunch, and with whom.” --The New York Post 

I know this might not be my best review of a book. The year is young so there is a chance I'll have a lot more that are way worse than this one. If we would meet up for coffee to talk about this book I would probably say something to you about how strong the characters are, even in the weak moments. That sometimes I wish I could be more like them, adventurous even if it meant some heart break. Because, even though these stories of women are fiction, they are and have great stories, heartbreak and all. 

"Such is the author's skill that this story of five girls is unmistakably the story of someone you know." --The Boston Globe 

success!

I did it! 

I finished three books in January! I totally didn't think I was going to make that goal. (And have to admit that I wasn't even thinking about my book goal when I crammed those last few pages in before bed last night...)

You will notice something missing from the blog: reviews of all the books I've read so far. Funny, that was meant to be the whole reason for this blog! 


I'm still deciding if I'm going to do a month long review (all three in one blog entry) or reviews as I finish the books (which obviously did not happen this month...). Any suggestions or preferences from my readers? 


I'll leave you with a teaser to the review with the list of books I've read for the month of January:

• The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Vow by Kim Carpenter 

And no, A Clash of Kings is NOT on the list. I hope I can have it done sometime before the summer. Man, that books is LONG!

january reviews

This took way longer than planned. For that, I apologize.

I got the final kick in the pants when a friend emailed me about "The Story of Beautiful Girl" and I realized I needed to get this review up. 
My mom was reading this book and I assumed, incorrectly, that I wouldn't like it if my mom was interested in it. We have totally opposite opinions on books. Completely opposite. She's stopped asking to borrow my books because she says that I don't have "her kinds" of books. Whatever, Mom. 
But. The Story of Beautiful Girl is a book we both agree on. (Actually, now that I think about it, my mom & I read all three of the books I will be reviewing for January. I guess our taste in books isn't so different...) 

I really loved this book. I hesitated to type those words because there is so rarely a book that I don't like (there IS one that is coming for February that will get a poor review, I promise). How to go about reviewing this book without telling everything? The story opens on a dark and story night. Novel gold, if ever there was. Martha Zimmer, a retired school teacher, widow, and almost complete loner opens the door to her farm house to a rain soaked Lynnie and Homan, escapees from the Pennsylvania State School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. Wrapped in stained and rain-soaked rags is a newborn baby. 
The book breaks into three different story lines, following how Martha, Lynnie and Homan's lives change after their fateful night in the rain.
I feel like I'm leaving out so much in my description here, but I don't want to give it away! It is a story of love, choices, hope and chasing love wherever it takes you. 
Some of you might recognize the author, Rachel Simon, from her first novel "Riding the Bus with my Sister."  I haven't read or seen the movie based on the book, but if it is anything like "Beautiful Girl," I'll have to put it on my list.

I am NOT going to apologize for this, however: run, do not walk, to your nearest book place and pick up The Help by Kathryn Stockette. Seriously. There is hardly much more I can say about this book. I have heard some reviews about the book, commenting that it is just one more book by a white woman trying to understand and explain the life of black women. I don't know how I feel about that. I know it was written truthfully. My mom got the book that Stockette used for research and she was amazed by some of the stories. Will we ever really get the true and honest stories? Maybe. Maybe not. But the stories that are out there, if they contain even mostly truth, they are shocking and eye-opening. Just like The Help. And maybe after you read it, I can have Minny bake her famous Chocolate Pie so we can chat about the story.

The last book I read in January (and finished right under the wire!) was The Vow by Kim and Krickett Carpenter. I am very excited to see the movie that is coming out the end of this week (Channing Tatum. Need I say more?) and like the good book reader that I am, wanted to finish the book before the movie. 

I wish I had nothing but good things to say about this book. The story is romantic, sad and everything in between. Kim & Krickett Carpenter were married three months before a horrible car accident changed their lives forever. While Kim (the husband) had pretty serious injuries, his wife suffered much more. Krickett came out of her comma missing the last year and a half of her memories. Unfortunately for Kim, that year and a half included the first time they met and the romance that led them to their marriage. 
All of that said, I had trouble reading this book. I was looking at it like a novel. For a novel, the writing is poor, unclear at times and not very good at drawing the reader in. BUT. (And it took me a while to realize this.) It isn't a novel. It isn't fiction. It is written by the man who found the love of his life, lost her in a car accident and kept loving her. Even through her bad days, days when he could have given up and left, he stayed by her side. And that makes it worth it in the end.
*Update* I finally got to see the movie! And sadly, I was not impressed. So much of the story had undergone changes, as I expected Hollywood to do, that it was hardly recognizable. 

Well, I'm sorry this is so late. I really am. And I realize that now I'm three months behind. I hope you have no high expectations for the upcoming posts. I am looking forward to sharing with you what I've been reading.