Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott. The book is being released by Riverhead Hardcover on March 20, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: In Some Assembly Required, Anne Lamott enters a new and unexpected chapter of her own life: grandmotherhood.

Stunned to learn that her son, Sam, is about to become a father at nineteen, Lamott begins a journal about the first year of her grandson Jax's life.

In careful and often hilarious detail, Lamott and Sam-about whom she first wrote so movingly in Operating Instructions-struggle to balance their changing roles with the demands of college and work, as they both forge new relationships with Jax's mother, who has her own ideas about how to raise a child. Lamott writes about the complex feelings that Jax fosters in her, recalling her own experiences with Sam when she was a single mother. Over the course of the year, the rhythms of life, death, family, and friends unfold in surprising and joyful ways.

By turns poignant and funny, honest and touching, Some Assembly Required is the true story of how the birth of a baby changes a family-as this book will change everyone who reads it.

Review: The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

I've read a few books written entirely in dictionary entry format and thoroughly enjoyed them so was curious to read this one about love and relationship. Just what words can explain love, make it knowable to people beyond the two involved together? Written alphabetically, the story is not presented in a linear fashion and the main characters are not named. The assumption is that the lovers are a man and woman (a pregnancy is mentioned once although whether facetiously or not is debatable). There are other small clues scattered throughout the text about the realities of the relationship as it develops, endures, stumbles, and ultimately ends. Some of the words Levithan uses to describe the couple and their life together are mundane while others are emotional. And the definitions illustrating each word can be surprising, truthful, and clever.

The writing here is well done and smart but there's a distance in the narrative that makes it hard to connect viscerally with the tale being told, to share in the giddiness of new love or to share in the outrage of betrayed love or to experience any of the mountains or valleys between these two. The focus is entirely on the two unnamed characters together, not on history and so a complete picture of either of them never quite gells. And without a completeness in character portrayals, there can't be a completeness about their relationship either. A slight, quick read, this is very much a private rumination, thoughtful, and reflective but there's something missing, some part of the heart that would have elevated it from good to great.

Review: Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

When my bookclub chose to read Ender's Game for this month, it was the culmination of at least 3 1/2 years of lobbying by one member with back-up by a couple of us who had also read it before. Of course, once we had finally pushed it through as our sci-fi choice, I decided that I wans't going to re-read it even though I had thoroughly enjoyed it the first time around. Instead, I took the opportunity to read Ender's Shadow, the parallel novel to Ender's Game that I had long wanted to get around to reading.

Ender's Shadow tells the same story that Ender's Game tells instead telling the tale from Bean's perspective. Starting when Bean is a small boy starving in the streets of Amsterdam, the novel delves into Bean's background to explain what created the uber-intelligent child who is slated to be Ender's back-up, his lieutenant, in the final battle to save Earth from the Buggers. Bean's early life is one of deprivation and the fight for survival and the only thing that keeps Bean alive is his almost supernatural intelligence. He spends time observing and deducing and then impliments a plan designed to protect himself even though he is years younger than the rest of the street children. Discovered by a nun who is searching for children who might be fit for Battle School, Bean presents a challenge to her and as he is pushed forward to the school and to his inevitable meeting with Ender Wiggin, the good Sister goes on a quest to find Bean's origins. Interspersed with Bean's story are meetings amongst the adults in charge, the Sister, the Commander, teachers at Battle School, as they discuss this preternaturally smart child and his position in the upcoming battle and their understanding--or their lack thereof--of how his brain works.

Although it is not strictly necessary to have read Ender's Game to appreciate Ender's Shadow, having read the first in the series does make the parallel novel a richer read. And already knowing the story and the resolution does not detract from the enjoyment here either. Bean's perspective is wholly new, more clinical than Ender's, and ultimately more informed. He is perhaps not as easy a character to know and less sympathetic but for all that, the story is just as engaging the second time around. Card has managed to tell the same tale twice but still keep readers fascinated, not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. The writing is fairly simple and straightforward and the character and curiousity of Bean really drives the story forward, especially for those who already know the basic ins and outs of the plot. A great addition to the wonderful read that was Ender's Game.

Review: Fitzwilliam Darcy Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

I imagine that Jane Austen would be astounded at not only the continued popularity of her own Pride and Prejudice but also at the plethora of modern retellings of her perennially popular novel. Rigaud enters that fray here with her updated version positing Darcy as the lead guitarist of a wildly successful rock band called Slurry, with band mates Charles Bingley and Richard Fitzwilliam, and Elizabeth Bennet as the lead guitarist of the up and coming rock band Long Bourne Suffering chosen to tour with Slurry. Of course, sweet Jane Bennet and Charlotte Lucas are Elizabeth's bandmates.

The tale opens with a television interview giving the history of Slurry and their current troubles finding and keeping an opening act. After the interview, the story itself starts as Darcy, Charles, and Richard meet with manager Caroline Bingley to preview a new band to whom they plan to offer the opening act on the North American portion of their tour. That band is Long Bourne Suffering and it seems poised on the verge of making it big. Darcy does worry that the women of the band, Lizzy, Jane, and Charlotte, will do anything and everything in their power to get and keep the fame they'll be exposed to on Slurry's tour but he is realistic enough to know that they need an opening band and they need it now. So while he warns Charles away from the women, which Lizzy overhears, he swallows his misgivings and the two bands connect. As they practice and tour together, Jane and Charles fall for each other, Charlotte and Richard can't keep their hands off of each other, and Darcy and Lizzy irritate each other even as the sparks fly between them.

Despite the similarities though, this is no Pride and Prejudice. This is definitely an updating with sex, drugs, and rock and roll running rampant through the novel. I'm not really a Pride and Pejudice purist so this edgier take wouldn't have fazed me in the slightest if I hadn't found so many other problems with it. The framing technique (the story both opens and closes with televised interviews functioning as both prologue and epilogue) did nothing to draw the reader into the story. In fact, it made me want to put the book down again immediately. And while it provides the reader with enough history to jump into the story, there was a real deus ex machina feel to it.

Rigaud re-imagines several of the characters who gave real depth to the original. There is an almost complete absence of Lady Catherine, Caroline Bingley is nice, Anne de Bourgh is snotty, Charlotte Lucas isn't the practical girl who settles, and so on. Given her willingness to change the characters to suit her updated vision, Rigaud hews very closely to the plot points of the original, which turns out to be an awkward stretch. These misunderstandings and situations should not have been considered sacrosanct to the detriment of the current book and unfortunately this is the case.

The characters, including those whose basic characters she didn't change, came off as bland rather than dimensional. Their stilted dialogue (they only use contractions on rare occasions, which frankly draws even more attention to the general lack of them as one would expect in normal dialogue) is hard to read and there is a fair amount of dialogue in this tale. Most of the latter half of the book seems to be one sex scene after another (and it's never good when graphic sex scenes get repetitive and boring) rather than anything that pushes the plot forward, causing the narrative tension to flatline entirely. I was quite disappointed with the novel, even moreso since it came highly recommended and it had such potential. It's a bad sign when I am happy enough to return a copy to the friend to whom it belongs and I reminded her more than once last night to take it home. Not one of the better re-imaginings I've read.

Review: Spin by Catherine McKenzie

Reading about alcoholism and addiction can be depressing. It destroys people and lives. And for some reason, we as a society have a prurient interest in people, specifically celebrities, who cannot fight their personal demons without a bottle, a pill, a pipe, or a needle to help them. In Spin, McKenzie has tapped into both the heavy, serious topic of addiction and society's unhealthy obsession with celebrity but she's managed to do so in a lighter fashion that makes for a fun and entertaining read.

Kate Sandford is on the verge of turning thirty. She's barely making ends meet writing occasional articles about bands locally but when she lands an interview with The Line, her favorite national music magazine, she knows she's finally about to break into the big time. Unfortunately she goes out to celebrate her birthday the night before and turns up at the interview some combination of still drunk and hungover all at once. Not surprisingly, she does not get the job. Several weeks later, when she has determined that she must buckle down and be an adult, change the direction of her life and get a consistent job, even if it isn't one she'd like, she gets an unexpected call back from The Line. Having pegged her as having a drinking problem but being a good writer nevertheless, they want her to go undercover and enter a rehab program to collect info on a troubled star currently in treatment, Amber Sheppard, also known to the media as The Girl Next Door. The assignment is not with The Line, however. It is for its sister magazine, a successful gossip rag. If Kate can deliver the story, she'll be reconsidered for the job at The Line.

Determined not to blow her second chance, Kate agrees even as she worries how she's going to pull off pretending to be an alcoholic, without ever considering that she might in fact actually have a problem with alcohol. Rehab carries with it some big surprises for Kate as she struggles to understand the grip that alcohol has on her and the effect it has had on her life, her relationships, and her family. As she works through all of this (and the denial so common to addicts), she gets close to Amber. At first, she does it because she has to in order to write the story. But then she finds herself really liking Amber personally. How can she still write a story about her new friend's addiction battles and the private and personal things she's discovered about this young woman? With her dream job and a lot of money riding on the story, how can she not?

Kate is a funny, naive, struggling main character. In short, she's very human and her struggles to know herself and to learn honesty, not only with others in her life (how ironic given the enormous lie she is perpetuating simply by being in rehab for a story) but with herself as well, are authentic and real. While she may have many issues to address, they don't come off as navel-gazing and self-help inspired but are leavened with humor and comedic moments that lighten the tone of the entire book. Certainly fighting an addiction is dark and terrible stuff that can make for a hard and depressing read but that darkness is the polar opposite of what readers will find here. Adding a potential love interest for Kate and the ubiquitous toxic celebrity relationship with the "It" boy for "It" girl Amber lightens the mood still further and allows for some appealing plot twists.

While Kate is the main character, most of the secondary characters are entertaining as well and fleshed out enough to make it clear how they fit into's Kate's life. My biggest quibble with the novel is with how easy overcoming her urge to drink seems to be for Kate in the end, especially given her interior thoughts at the beginning of rehab. The ending of the story is never in doubt here and there are some plot threads given a bit of short shift but over all, the novel is a fun, appealing one that makes for a fast, light-feeling read even as it delivers some hard truths.


For more information about Catherine McKenzie and the book visit her webpage, her blog, Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Monday Mailbox

Another collection of books that makes the question of "what should I read next" a more difficult one as they all beg to be read next! This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale by Lynda Rutledge came from Megan at Amy Einhorn Books.
The richest woman in a small Texas town decides to sell all of her worldy possessions, including priceless heirlooms for a pittance. How can this not be intriguing?!

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan came from Picador because I won their Facebook fan page giveway.
A tale of love told entirely as dictionary entries? I completely and totally love these unusual sorts of narrative when they are well done and Levithan should be able to pull this off.

The Receptionist by Janet Groth came from Algonquin Books.
A memoir written by a longtime New Yorker receptionist who dreamed of being a writer herself one day, the story of her time there and the literary lions she knew so well sounds completely fascinating.

A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez came from Algonquin Books.
A very personal work about Alvarez's relationships with her parents, her husband, and a Haitian boy she meets and to whom she makes the promise that she will attend his wedding, I believe this one will be a tour de force.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Metroreader as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This past week was a sort of lazy one for me. My to do list stayed as long as it started out. I read very little. I reviewed even less. I did manage to do more exercise than usual but that's about all (not a small feat though, I might add). So not much to report here. (I wrote this intro last week and it is sadly still true this week!) This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Fitzwilliam Darcy Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
Spin by Catherine McKenzie
The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

Reviews posted this week:

Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir
The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Fitzwilliam Darcy Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud