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This week in…: Volume 38

October 30, 2015 by Jana 22 Comments

Slow news week:

Finished Hate List and Galveston. Started Gangerland. Picked up Maybe in Another Life and The Financial Lives of the Poets. Next Show Us Your Books is November 10 and I’m hoping to have a few more finished to review for you guys by then.
Restarted the podcast Welcome To Night Vale. I listened to it for a while last year and then stopped and now it’s a book which is crazy awesome so I figured I’d catch up on the podcast happenings.
Watched season 2 of Fargo (well, the episodes that have aired). I heart Jesse Plemons which is why I even decided to watch this season even though I’ve heard amazing things about season 1. I figure it’ll make it onto Netflix eventually and I’ll watch it then. Verdict: it’s quite excellent. Even Kirsten Dunst who generally annoys the fuck out of me.
Baseball. Sigh. My boys better pull it together this weekend.
Beamed with pride at some of the decisions my child made this week. They were difficult, especially for a kid, but she did good. And her maturity surprised me, especially for an almost 9 year old.
Read this internet stuff: I like salad but it’s nice to have options: 39 healthy recipes for people who hate salad. I call this list hope for my book when it eventually is finished: 10 bestsellers that were originally rejected. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like to be there: A restrospective on the 80s Sunset Strip, featuring all the hairbands.
Got these funnies from the husband:

Have a great Halloween weekend! Maybe it be filled with all the Reese’s!

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Judging Covers with The Husband, third edition

October 22, 2015 by Jana 25 Comments

This entry is part 2 of 11 in the series Judging Covers

You know what you do when you’re fumbling around for content and you have a pile of books on your nightstand and a husband who loves to tell you what the books are about soley based on the covers? You write the third edition of Judging Covers two weeks early (make sure you read the first edition and second edition if you haven’t. My husband is…something else).

Book #1: Hate List by Jennifer Brown

The Husband says: This bitch (seriously, we need to have a discussion about his calling every girl on the cover of a book “this bitch”. Didn’t realize until now how much that actually bothers me) is gonna kill somebody. They’re scary. Those are hate eyes.

Goodreads says: Five months ago, Valerie Leftman’s boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

Jana’s note: Pretty decent accuracy on this one. Then again, it’s not like the title or the cover took pains to hide the topic of the book.

Book #2: Bream Gives Me Hiccups & Other Stories by Jesse Eisenberg

The Husband says: Is this Jesse Eisenberg the actor? (after running through references to Sunbeam bread and former baseball player Sid Bream and me yelling at him to stop being ridiculous and actually tell me what he thinks the book is about), I’ve got nothing. I don’t even know what “Bream” is. It’s a nonsense cover.

Goodreads says: Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary L.A. to the dormrooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by the man’s sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (she didn’t have “one” of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I’ve been calling Mabel all day, she doesn’t pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number – 2!).

Book #3: Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott

The Husband says: It’s about Qbert’s house because the game never ends and he just keeps jumping from square to square. Otherwise I have no clue what that cover means. It’s the only possible thing.

Goodreads says: Edith is a widowed landlady who rents apartments in her Brooklyn brownstone to an unlikely collection of humans, all deeply in need of shelter. Crippled in various ways—in spirit, in mind, in body, in heart—the renters struggle to navigate daily existence, and soon come to realize that Edith’s deteriorating mind, and the menacing presence of her estranged, unscrupulous son, Owen, is the greatest challenge they must confront together.

Faced with eviction by Owen and his designs on the building, the tenants—Paulie, an unusually disabled man and his burdened sister, Claudia; Edward, a misanthropic stand-up comic; Adeleine, a beautiful agoraphobe; Thomas, a young artist recovering from a stroke—must find in one another what the world has not yet offered or has taken from them: family, respite, security, worth, love. The threat to their home scatters them far from where they’ve begun, to an ascetic commune in Northern California, the motel rooms of depressed middle America, and a stunning natural phenomenon in Tennessee, endangering their lives and their visions of themselves along the way.

Book #4: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Husband says: It’s a video game with some little guy who’s the character in the video game.

Goodreads says: In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. When Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

Jana’s note: again, he was sort of close on this one. But he likes video games and it’s a pretty obvious title.

For the next edition, let me know if you are reading a book with a cover you’d like my husband to judge, especially if you read different types of books than I do. That should make for some interesting stuff.

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Show Us Your Books–Anniversary edition

October 13, 2015 by Jana 73 Comments

I cannot believe it’s been a year since Steph and I started this little linkup! It’s giving me all the feels how supportive you all have been and how many of you have been involved and stay involved and it really is a testament to the power of books. And as a thank you, Steph and I have a little giveaway of bookish presents so after you read through my reviews, make sure you enter (or, skip to the end, enter the giveaway and then go back and read my reviews. Either way works for me).

I have many mushy things to say but Thursday’s post is an emotional gut punch so I’ll refrain from most of my comments and simply say I appreciate everyone who joins us, regularly or irregularly, and thank you for your books and your comments and your love of reading.

On to what I read last month.

Dietland by Sarai Walker. A story about an obese woman whose sole purpose in life was to stay hidden and lose weight until she starts being stalked by a stranger who gets her involved in an underground group trying to change beauty standards in strange, often bizarre, quasi-militant ways (which, truth be told, got annoying after awhile). The point the author was trying to make–that we can love ourselves regardless of size–is a good one but the story was kind of all over the place, I hated the main character’s name, and it left little room for the mindset that if you want to change how you look that’s okay, too, as long as it’s on your own terms. Body positive books are important but this one, for me, was not the one to lead the charge.

Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes by Jules Moulon. This was a fun little book. I read it in a couple of hours, on my flight from Philly to Charlotte. Ally Hughes is a college professor, has a short fling with one of her students that maybe was more than a fling, they don’t speak for 10 years until he shows up at her house with her daughter and throws her already messy life into even more disarray. It has the makings of a Lifetime movie, and it’d probably be a great one, and there’s a little mystery plot thrown in and you really want Ally to get over herself and be with this guy who clearly never got over her. This book will not rock your world or change your life but I do recommend it because it’s pure entertainment.

$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Katherine Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. So, this was an interesting follow up to Ally Hughes. A study of families living at the lowest income you can imagine, with no cash flow at all, and how they survive. And what they do is survival in its basic form. From selling plasma to selling their food stamps to using whatever free services (think library, parks) they can find to doubling and tripling up in homes that should essentially be condemned, the families highlighted in the book show just how dire the poverty in our own country can be. They use the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 as the foundation of their thesis, and the solutions that they propose are practical yet most likely not going to happen in the near future. Which is pretty freaking sad.

Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille. I did not finish this one. Not even linking to it because it doesn’t deserve the link. This book was absolutely terrible and the only reason I even made it 100 pages in is because I like John Corey as a character. The plot was ridiculous, the writing was lazy, the characters were horrible, and everything else was atrocious. I recommend the John Corey series but do yourself a favor and avoid this one. Negative 400 stars.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari with Eric Klinenberg. My sociology nerd heart skipped many beats reading this book. It was equal parts hilarious and smart and well researched and also, it made me so, so happy I don’t have to date. I’m grateful I met my husband in the dark ages. I cannot even begin to imagine what dating is like in the texting and Tinder age (you can visit my friend Ali for lots of insight about that) and this book was very eye opening to me. Aziz is hysterical, the book was definitely written in his voice, and whether you’re in the midst of dating or are on old married hag like me, I definitely recommend picking this one up.

Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt. I had been looking forward to this book since I learned that Patrick deWitt wrote another book because The Sisters Brothers is one of my all-time favorites and I did a little happy dance when I got the notification from the library that it was ready for pick-up. And maybe I built the book up in my head too much but I was disappointed. It did not blow me away like I’d hoped it would. He’s a phenomenal writer but this story, for me, was too bizarre. Not only that, it felt like there were gaping holes in some of the plot. Like, it was half-plots or half told stories for some of the characters. And there was a disturbing, pretty fucking gross sex scene that had the husband say to me “you look horrified by what you’re reading”. I definitely was. And I made it through the whole 50 Shades trilogy. So that says a lot.

Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy. Far and away my favorite book of the month. Probably in my top 10 of the year. THIS is the body positive book people should be reading and talking about. And one of my favorite part of the book was Willowdean herself. Sure, she’s kind of bitchy and judgmental and confident and insecure and moody but she’s a 16 year old girl. Those are the characteristics that made her feel real and relatable (honestly, I’m 38 and I’m still bitchy and judgmental and insecure and occasionally confident). She is exactly what you’d expect a teenage girl to be, especially one who’s overweight with a very unexpected admirer (two, actually) and a former pageant queen mother and who’s still mourning the sudden (but not unsurprising) loss of her aunt and role model. She makes some questionable choices that both help and backfire on her but in the end, you realize what a badass this teenage girl really is. I wish she existed when I was in high school. I would have maybe felt a little less lonely. Oh, and I feel obliged to add that Dolly Parton plays a big role in the story so that was like the sequins on the cherry lollipop (once you read the book, you’ll get that reference).

Definitely add: Dumplin’, Modern Romance, Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes

Now let us know what you read! Then keep scrolling for the giveaway entry form.

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Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of the post which means it’s giveaway time! To say thank you for a year of bookish awesomeness, Steph and I are giving away a $50 gift card to Amazon and some swag from Bookworm Boutique (see above). Complete the entries below for your chance to win one of those prizes (how commercially did that sound?). Winners will be pulled on October 19:

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Authors I’ll never quit

October 8, 2015 by Jana 31 Comments

I recently had a disastrous encounter with Nelson DeMille’s latest book, Radiant Angel. I’ll say it again on Tuesday for Show Us Your Books but this was a big fat DNF and I actually hated the book. It made me angry to read it. This is the second time in all my dealings with Mr. DeMille that I’ve put down a book without finishing it (the first was about 15 or 20 years ago and it was By The Rivers of Babylon. I’ve been reading him a looooooong time). But you know what? I’ll still read the ones I missed and I’ll read what he writes in the future because Mr. DeMille, I just can’t quit you.

He’s not the only author I can’t quit. There are a few that, not matter how much I’m disappointed in a particular book, I’ll still read what they write. Authors like:

Jodi Picoult. I’ve read all of her books and I’ll continue to read all of her books. Sure, they’re formulaic and predictable but they’re quick, easy, and she does churn out some good ones. I mean, The Pact and The Storyteller and Nineteen Minutes are all wonderful books and her research skills are on point. I have to give her props for that.

Emily Giffin. I won’t talk about her latest because it sucked balls but she’s chick lit and sometimes, in between all the literary fiction and nonfiction and memoirs, my brain needs a break. Brain sorbet, if you will. She provides that. And the movie adaptation of Something Borrowed has John Krasinski in it so that wins.

So I know this is not from the movie but when you find a picture of Matt Damon and John Krasinski, YOU POST IT.

Jennifer Weiner. Her newest is on my nightstand (I won’t get to it in time for October but it’ll be on my November list) and she’s another one I’ve been reading for years. Her books, to me, have gotten better as time has passed and I think the fact that she’s such a champion for women writers and for giving her daughters a healthy sense of self makes me love her that much more.

Dean Bakopoulos. I’ve been pretty clear how I feel about him and his books, even if My American Unhappiness was not my favorite (if you’re going to read him, don’t start with that one. Do it last that way you realize how great he really is before you get to it). Not giving him up any time soon. See also: Rainbow Rowell (even if I have no plans to read Carry On any time soon, I will read it)

Joshua Ferris. His books are weird and bizarre and sort of circular in their storytelling but I am a huge fan of his and anxiously await his next book. See also: Wally Lamb.

I’m also currently enjoying reading the entire catalogs of Jojo Moyes and Liane Moriarty. Sarah Dessen and Matthew Quick are on my binge read list for 2016.

I feel that maybe at some point, I’ll stop enjoying what these ladies (and couple of gentlemen) have to offer but I don’t imagine that’s anytime soon. Because as I’ve learned being a reader for longer than I can remember, one book is not always indicative of what an author can do. And it’s also nice to have a list of authors I can count on to add to my TBR.

How about you guys? Who are some authors you always read, no matter how bad of an experience you have with one of their books?

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Judging Covers with The Husband, second edition

October 1, 2015 by Jana 31 Comments

This entry is part 3 of 11 in the series Judging Covers

It’s time once again for Judging Covers with The Husband! I mean, how can you not want to know his opinions after the last time and also from the man with whom I recently had this conversation:

Husband: What do you think are my chances for becoming the leader of a country?

Me: I think you have a better chance of leading a cult.

Husband: I *am* persuasive.

Exactly.

This time, we reviewed four books (well, eight, but I’m splitting it up into two posts mostly to protect your sanity because trust me). The first four, the ones we’re looking at today, are books I am ecstatic to read, especially Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt who also wrote The Sisters Brothers, one of my all-time favorite books. So of course he had some things to say about that.

Let’s explore. Same as last time, I’ll show the cover, tell you what he said, and then give the Goodreads summary and let you judge for yourself how close he came (hint: not even close, bud. Also, points for me for throwing in a Breakfast Club reference because what goes better with books than one of my most favorite movies?)

Book #1: Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt

The Husband says: It’s about fun at a nighttime castle. (Jana’s note: I don’t really know what the difference is between a nighttime castle and a regular castle)

Goodreads says: A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, international bestselling author Patrick deWitt’s new novel is about a young man named Lucien (Lucy) Minor, who accepts employment at the foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as undermajordomo, he soon discovers the place harbours many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux.

Book #2: Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

The Husband says: It’s about a fat, rich bitch who likes to be taken care of. Or it’s about the love of Chinese food. (Jana’s note: We had a small tiff about his choice of words for this one)

Goodreads says: Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

Book #3: Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

The Husband says: What the fuck is this? I’m not even sure what this cover is! It’s like the last words a serial killer says to you.

Goodreads says: On the eve of her daughter’s wedding, June Reid’s life is completely devastated when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter’s fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke—her entire family, all gone in a moment. And June is the only survivor.

Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak.

From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding’s caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke’s mother, the shattered outcast of the town—everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.

Book #4: Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner

The Husband says: It’s about an office romance. Because of paperclips.

Goodreads says: Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she’s intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy’s taken back to the emergency room and Rachel’s sent back to her bed, they think they’ll never see each other again.

Rachel, the beloved, popular, and protected daughter of two doting parents, grows up wanting for nothing in a fancy Florida suburb. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent that will let him become one of the best runners of his generation.

Over the course of three decades, through high school and college, marriages and divorces, from the pinnacles of victory and the heartbreak of defeat, Andy and Rachel will find each other again and again, until they are finally given a chance to decide whether love can surmount difference and distance and if they’ve been running toward each other all along.

Bonus conversation re: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Me: Do you know anything about this book?

Husband: No.

Me: Do you know who Harper Lee is?

Husband: Yes. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird. It says so on the cover.

P.S. Don’t forget the anniversary edition of Show Us Your Books is October 13 and Steph and I have some surprises in store. So make sure you read and link up!

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This week in…: Volume 38

Judging Covers with The Husband, third edition

Show Us Your Books–Anniversary edition

Authors I’ll never quit

Judging Covers with The Husband, second edition

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