Review: Paris Was Ours edited by Penelope Rowlands

Paris has long exerted a hold on the American imagination. It is the glamorous and enticing and haughty. It draws people, ex-pats and students and others, as practically no other city does. Many of our very best writers throughout the last century spent time in the city of light, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Stein, Miller, and many more. And their Parisian experience molded them and molded their writing.

In the collection of 32 essays, both previously published and original works, Rowlands has collected the Paris experiences of a new generation of writers who have lived in this most intriguing of cities. Their experiences are not all of a kind but their varied writings serve to create a rounded portrait of the multi-faceted city and its inhabitants. Tackling subjects as different as fashion, food, and their famed intolerance of the etranger (among other topics), all of the writers in this collection share their Parisian experience in ways such that anyone who has him or herself visited Paris will recognize truths and swim in their own memories, good and bad, of the fabled city.

As is generally the case, certain of the essays are more poignant or better written or simply more enticing to individual readers but overall, the collection is quite strong. It is diverse enough to cover many aspects of life in the city but also specific enough to draw a detailed view of the different arrondissements and the various people who inhabit them. It was fascinating to hop from essay to essay, dipping into life as a writer researching a book, as an African-American student frustrated by the fact of her Americanness defining her, as a homeless mother speaking of the cost to live in Paris and the need for a solution, as a witness to French parenting, and so on. Because of the nature of the book and the length of most of the essays, this was the perfect choice to read intermitently, in the car, at kid events, and the like. It was a small bit of escape in an otherwise mundane task.

Thanks to the lovely folks at Algonquin for sending me a copy to review.

Review: Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog by Lisa Scottoline

Mostly culled from Scottoline's Chick Wit column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, these brief essays are collected under the subtitle of The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman. And they are indeed ordinary adventures as most women readers will recognize the situations that Scottoline has written about, having experienced them themselves at some point. She uses her family and her own life as the basis for these very short (they were published in a newspaper after all) life pieces. While they provided some entertainment during the reading, they have been, unfortunately, very forgettable since then. And while I'm certain that I must have chuckled at least once, I cannot for the life of me pin it down and be certain of that. These are probably best for a "woman of a certain age" combined with those sitautions where you want to have a book in hand but must be capable of putting it down at a moment's notice. In other words, this would be perfect while standing in line at the DMV (which, come to think of it, she doesn't write about despite it being a place rife with comedic potential). Obviously not my favorite read of the month but others have found it hysterically funny so perhaps we just don't share the same sense of humor.

Essay Reading Challenge

Essays are not terribly prevalent in my personal library but I have found some wonderful books when searching them out for previous Essay Reading Challenges so I wanted to play along again this year. I'm shooting for 10 essays but I might bump it up to more depending on what I find on my shelves.

Carrie lays out the rules for the challenge:

~ Join anytime, but don’t start reading until January 1, 2010. The challenge ends November 30, 2010.
~ If you read a book of essays, that book can also apply to any other challenges you are working on.
~ Choose a goal of reading 10, 20, or 30 essays, and then write a challenge post, linking back to this post. Feel free to copy and paste the above image into your challenge post.
~ Copy your challenge post’s link into Mr. Linky below.
~ You don’t have to list your essays ahead of time – just have fun reading throughout the year.
~ I will put up a page for the challenge in my left sidebar, and add a Mr. Linky for essay reviews and wrap-up posts as the year goes on.
~ Everyone who completes the challenge and writes at least one review will be eligible for the giveaway prize: A copy of Best American Essays 2010.
~ New for 2010: You can earn extra credit – and an extra entry in the giveaway – by writing an essay of your own and leaving the link at the challenge page.
~ I will put up a wrap-up and giveaway post sometime early in December – that’s why the challenge only runs through November.

Review: Openly Bob by Bob Smith

Smith was the first openly gay comic to appear on The Tonight Show. Given that I am long asleep before the show comes on, I did not see him on there and had few expectations of this book beyond hearing from a friend years ago that it was hilarious. And you know what? It absolutely was hilarious. This is a memoir of sorts in the form of essays that Smith has written dealing with being gay and being a grown-up. He takes on all sorts of topics like needing couples counseling, coming out to his parents, taking his boyfriend home to meet his quirky family, working as a comic, auditioning for roles as the stereotypical gay man, and so much more. The tone throughout these connected essays is humorous and amusing and while a few pieces have bits that might date them, it is also instructive that some of his politically relevant jibes are still, unfortunately, relevant, 12 years after this book won a Lambda Literary Award. Smith has a biting humor and a sharp wit and those who enjoy word play, will find much to admire here. Although the essays were certainly polished over time, it is clear that Smith must be a pretty darn funny stand-up comic off the cuff as well. He's insightful and observant and quirky and the book stands as an entertaining testament to the ups and downs in one gay man's slightly offbeat life. Read this one when you want to laugh, a lot.

Review: Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell

If you were a girl growing up in the 1980's, chances are you read Judy Blume's books. And if you read Judy Blume's books, chances are even better that you still remember one or more of them better than many books that you have read subsequently. Who doesn't remember Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? And of course, everyone passed Forever around to read the juicy bits. I personally identified with Iggie's House although I was always the kid moving, not the one left behind to befriend the new family in the house. I still have my original Judy Blume books and have passed them along to my older children (and it's about time to pass the less girlish ones along to the small boy as well). And really, the way that these books captured a generation is unique and the very thing that this collection edited by Jennifer O'Connell celebrates.

This is a collection of essays written by current YA and chick lit writers is nostalgic and familiar. Their essays on the work or works that meant the most to them as they developed as girls and young women could have been written by your best girlfriends. As Blume's books are pretty universal, so are the essays in this book. The authors have chosen a wide range of the Blume canon about which to write. The ways in which these stories have impacted their lives, the extent to which they remember the stories, and the breadth of the debt some of their own writing owes to the stories varies but it's likely that you'll find yourself nodding your head in agreement with most, if not all, of them. It is amazing how this shared cultural experience still forms us so many years later. This is very much a love letter and a thank you note to Ms. Blume and I admit that I read it with a huge smile on my face. I might be an adult now, but just reading about others' Blume experiences as preteens and teens had the power to take me back to that more innocent time in my life. And we can all use a little more innocence these days.

Review: Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

I should preface this review by admitting that I am totally in love with Nick Hornby. I have never met the man, or even seen him in a picture (unless the stylized guy on the covers of the three collections of The Believer essays is him) but I have a raging crush on him anyway and it's all because of books like this one.

This is the third in the collection of essays Hornby wrote for The Believer magazine, following The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping Versus the Dirt. They all start off with a list of books he's bought and books he's read that month. The lists never match up, which is true for most reading addicts I know and is endearing as get out to this addict, who loves to know she is not alone. Then the essays range over the books he's read that month, sometimes touching on their connections to life and other times entertaining digressions from the world of books entirely. As per magazine policy, he only discusses books he's enjoyed but occasionally mentions, without identifying features, books he's set aside as unreadable. The essays read like a conversation you might have with Hornby while walking down a street together, easy and comfortable, smart and engaging. This is truly a wonderful book for other book lovers, and especially those of us who take some measure of enjoyment from writing about what we've read. Unfortunately, this is the last of the collections of this type as Hornby has left the magazine to spend more time with his family. A sad event for his readers although probably a happy one for his family (darn them anyway). Highly recommended.

Review: How to Prepare for Your High-School Reunion and Other Midlife Musings by Susan Allen Toth

As I was (still) busily cataloguing my books on LibraryThing, I came across this one and pulled it out to dive into immediately. I can't really even say why. Perhaps it was the title combined with the knowledge that my 20th high school reunion is rapidly approaching. Add in that Toth lives almost in the shadow of my high school, in a city I've never been back to since I graduated, and that made it seem sort of ordained that I would stumble across it now. It is not all about high school reunions but instead is a collection of essays just musing about life in general. Some of the essays are a bit dated; ironically, many of the essays, written in Toth's middle-age, were indeed written when I was a high-schooler and therefore just a hop, skip, and jump away from her. But most of them are still pertinent, thoughtful writings on the minutia of everyday living. The essays are almost entirely domestically set or concerned--including one that takes on the pre-conceived view that domestic writing is worthless--so they come off as being about small subjects but for those of use who live those small subjects, they are satisfying indeed.