melair

This is not meant to be a “latest and greatest” works cited page, just a glimpse into what I’m reading, like my whole site is about what I’m doing.  If you have read the book too, I’d love to hear what you think.  Or maybe this will just give you some ideas about what to read next…Enjoy!

Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster 2006

In a nutshell: A memoir of a VP who gets laid-off from her job just after 9/11 and has to modify her out-of-control spending habits drastically as well as give up her dream apartment.  Her husband also gets laid-off and they find themselves in serious financial straights.

Hilarious.  Since I started with her third book and went back to read the first I expected to be disappointed or find the writing to not be so great.  I was wrong.  This author has a really strong voice and is just as witty as ever.  My only complaint is that the reading goes too quickly.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max 2006

In a nutshell- Drunken frat boy (wait- was he in a fraternity?  If not- he may as well have been) tells all his stories about getting drunk, throwing up, sleeping around and running from the cops.

I picked this book up at the airport Borders based on the controversial reviews on the back.  It looked amusing enough.  The stories themselves were okay.  If you drank in college (as most of us have) you likely have similar stories of seedy hook-ups and embarrassing drunkenness.  The stories didn’t offend me so much as disappoint me.  The author continually comments that the women he sleeps with are stupid (and trust me, they are) while imagining himself so much smarter.  If he is, he’ll have to write a different book to prove it, because this one is no indication of his intelligence or his writing ability.  If I had to give credit in some form it would be that he’s likely got a large following of fans who otherwise would not read a book at all.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards 2005

In a nutshell- Set in the 60’s at the onset, a doctor’s wife goes into labor on a snowy night.  Not able to make it to the hospital in time, he drives to his office, calls his trusted nurse and delivers twins that the couple was not expecting.  One boy and one girl, the girl, obvious to the doctor and nurse, has Down’s Syndrome.  The doctor has the nurse take the child to … I’m not sure I got this part … a place where you can just drop retarded children off and leave them?  She can’t do it however, so she takes the child, skips town and raises the baby herself.  The novel then focuses on her raising the child and how the lie the doctor told his wife (he tells her the baby died) destroys him and his family.

Depressing?  Yes.  Well written.  Yes.  Well, it is well written, but it is not my style.  The author’s writing is extremely flowery and stylized.  I felt more like I was reading an older, classic novel, and less like I was reading a contemporary one.  Some people really like that I realize.  If you do, this book’s for you.  If you don’t, it might take you a while to get into the writing and language, but much like Spenser and Shakespeare, if you can focus on the story rather than the style, you’ll be thoroughly entertained.  Don’t forget the tissue though.

Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster 2007

In a Nutshell-Non-fiction/Memoir-about a self employed author, living in Chicago who to write a book challenges herself to lose 50 pounds.  Not only  to lose 50 pounds, but to grow up and start living a healthier life and making “adult” choices about food and exercise.

It’s easy to see why the author is able to make a career out of writing.  She’s spunky, she’s sassy and at the conclusion of the book you really want to be friends with her and her husband.  Although you may not want to hang out at their house because their dogs sounds like beasts.  This is a great, quick read for anyone who has ever tried a diet and failed, repeatedly.  It was really frustrating for the first half when ever chapter seemed to be an endless cycle of her starting the diet and failing.  You wanted to just reach through the pages and shake her already or tape her mouth shut with the same duct tape she used to tape her bra.  If Skinny Bitch made me loath myself for everything I eat, Such a Pretty Fat made me feel a little guilty about being a size 6 and whining about my hippy love chunks all the time.  Plus, my laugh out loud moments during this book weren’t immediately followed by a stabbing guilt about eating dairy products.  I’d love for this author to read Skinny Bitch and either try to follow the diet or just write a commentary about it.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

In a Nutshell-Graphic Novel- actually listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Novels, quite a feat for its genre.  A group of vigilante crime fighters, long retired reunite after one of their old group is violently murdered.  Attempts are made on another couple of their lives, and so the mystery of who is killing of the costumed superheroes.

I’m actually a terrible person to review this book as I never read one comic book growing up.  I love the superhero stories and movies (most of them) and I once had a 30 minute conversation with my friend`and sat fascinated asking hundreds of questions about the X-men series.  What a great story.  Well, I suppose this is a great story as well.  It’s full of symbolism and the whole good v. evil in the world, and why can’t we all just get along thing I really go for.  But reading it, to me, was a real chore.  Mainly because, let’s face it- it’s a soap opera.  There are love stories, unbelievable characters and circumstances, really cheesy one-liners.  At 32 I finally conclude that men were always just into soap operas as women.  Only in their soap operas, the men wear tights and masks and the women beat up men.  Funny, maybe we are all alike in the end anyway.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

In a Nutshell-Non-fiction account of the author’s attempt to read the Bible and for a year to live the Bible as literally as possible.  He does this for two reasons: 1) As a statement/To express concern over the growing movement of fundamentalists 2) Because he has a two-year-old son and wants to instill some type of religious pedagogy into said son’s upbringing.

I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, mostly because I assume it’s all boring.  But the premise of this book appealed to me on a few levels 1) Having grown up in a highly rigorous Southern Baptist upbringing I have a bad (dare I say horrible) taste in my mouth about organized religion 2) I too am increasingly concerned about the growing number of fundamentalist in the world 3) I was so happy to see that someone was actually going to read the Bible and try to come to some conclusion about what it said rather than the way most people do it, which is to leap blindly into a faith they no little or nothing about, preach to others that they are going to hell, and never even read the Book they’ve dedicated their life to following.

The book was very well written, and I think reading it one concludes with a sense of knowing the author.  I really appreciate that when I’m reading something like a memoir.  After I read it, I felt like I wanted to call A.J. up and talk about some of the finer points and/or console him about his neighbor and congratulate him on his kids.  Then I remembered that we aren’t friends, and that a call from me might not brighten his day the way that reading his book brightened mine.  Too bad.

I did have some frustrations while reading it which parallel my frustrations with religion as it were.  In several sections I wanted to stop and ask, “Why this verse?” or “Why choose this interpretation?” Similarly while growing up in a church I often wondered why we were putting more emphasis on some teachings than on others.  Who were we to say that God cares more about homosexuality than not working on the Sabbath.  And who decided that our Sabbath was Sunday?

This book also found me at a good time since Jim and I have constant and vague conversations about whether we might one day raise our children up in a form of organized religion.  While we admit there are some good things about the basic moral lessons and the fellowship and the ready answers, we also agree that there were many, many bad things about our church experience.  Not to mention how exclusive and elitist the idea of heaven and hell and good and evil are.  Nothing good in my life came from seeing the world or my experience as black and white.  So, this quandary for me is still a quandary unfortunately.

Overall, I think this book is a must-read.  I’m glad especially that the author consulted with so many different groups and people because it gave me insight into denominations I didn’t know existed, which will help in the long run if we do have kids some day.  This review is turning into it’s own little novella, so I’ll wrap it up and say: Read the book.

Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin 2005

In a Nutshell-Non-fiction book on dieting and nutrition that is short, sweet, to the point, and funny too.  No indication on the cover that this outlines a vegan diet, but once you start reading, you realize your screwed.

One must give up nearly everything that makes like worth living.  Not only meat, but dairy too, booze.  Well, all the other stuff…fake sweeteners, caffeine, I can understand.  I do feel a little duped, because I have to say if I’d known the book was going to try to coerce me into a vegan diet, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.  That being said, I’m glad I read it.  Though I’ll never go to the extremes outlined in the book, I’ll admit it had made me mindful about the amount of meat and dairy I consume.  Especially dairy, because meat is one of those things I could always take or leave.  The book also appeals to my affinity for government conspiracy theories, although they actually offer proof and evidence to back it up.  So- I’ve decreased my dairy consumption drastically.  And while I still eat seafood, I rarely to never eat any other living organism.  And after a few weeks of low to no dairy I just pigged out on lasagna I made this weekend and I’ll admit I’m not feeling so hot as well as getting a bit phlegmy.  Gross.  My main criticism is that the book never addresses all the recent (and I guess the book is 3 years old) negative press that too much soy is getting.  I’ve seen the negative health effects of too much soy in ladies, and I think that it bears some mention when considering a vegan diet and how much soy is acceptable.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer 1996

In a Nutshell-True Story- This trust-fund hippie kid graduates college from Emory, takes his little crappy car cross country, burns his money, hops from town to town making other hippie friends, decides to take on Alaska ill-equipped and dies of stupidity.

I saw the movie before I read the book.  And had the movie projector not completely crapped out just before the end of the movie, I may not have even read the book, but I did, and this is what I thought: The author is obviously very attached to his subject.  He sees this kid as a version of his former self so he writes very passionately about the subject.  All of this is fine and good until about three quarters of the way through when he goes on this long tangent about a trip he took to Alaska, and I couldn’t help but to keep thinking, I’m reading this book to find out about Christopher McCandless- not you, Jon, so get to the point! That being said, the book really, really made me want to wander the West coast.  Maybe not Alaska- you’d have to be insane for that.  But quitting a job and living off the land was made to seem a really romantic notion.  I felt pretty detached from the subject until the last chapter when we meet Chris’ parents in a very intimate scene, and at that point I was glad I suffered through the authors mind-numbing adventure as well.

Wrack and Ruin by Don Lee 2008

In a Nutshell-Fiction-This guy is a big-time artist in NY, disillusioned about all the philosophical arguments plaguing art: Art for self-expression, or for money, and whether anyone else need be exposed to it, blah, blah.  So, the artist guy (you aren’t going to remember his name anyway) moves from NY to South California to become a brussel sprout farmer.  He’s recovering from a recent bad love affair when his B-movie producing brother shows up with a drunk, Hong Kong action movie has-been to wreck his life and create the necessary tension for a novel.  In the meantime, a bad guy is trying to take over the brussel sprout farm to build a golf course on it.  High jinx ensue.

I heard about this on NPR in a discussion about summer reading.  It was touted as a fun, easy read, and I guess that’s about right.  I have to admit, I don’t read a lot of these easy-reading type novels.  I’m a snob by training having been groomed in my undergrad career for the upper echelons of fine fiction writing.  It is light, easy and succinct.  The author is Asian American and until I moved to Souther California I wasn’t aware of how significant that is.  The Asian population here far outweighs any other minority population.  And because the character is Asian American, albeit 2nd or 3rd generation, I still had a hard time connecting or visualizing.  I think spending more time here may make me want to go back and read it again. I felt like I was missing some of the jokes- or maybe- it just wasn’t all that funny.  Only time will tell for this one.