You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, Jen Sincero

Olga Shvartsur, Unicorn Rainbow Watercolor, 2016

(August 21) Sydney Poulton on Instagram recommended this on her Stories; when I looked up the title at the library in March, there was a huge queue for it -- so I jumped on that bandwagon.

I quite liked it ...looked forward to reading it whenever I wasn’t, which I don’t usually experience with non-fiction. It’s a life-coaching book, intended to help you find your power in your uniqueness & etc.

There’s an interview with Jen Sincero on the Daily Mail online in which she says:

“To be honest, I don’t think I’m saying anything all that brand new. I think I’m just saying it in a new way. You know, one of the motivations for me writing this book. I’ve read like 10,000 self-help books. There was nothing that was kind of funny and curse-y and irreverent, and I was like, man, that’s what this industry needs.

 “You can read the same thing a hundred times but somebody can say it in a certain way and suddenly everything changes. That’s sort of what I wanted to do with this book, was to not only make it entertaining but to give somebody who wasn’t quite getting it the opportunity to get it from a different voice….”

She is absolutely right in assessing her own work in this way… and that’s why I like her: she is honest and she is right, and although the concepts were familiar, this book opened up some new reading interests for me.

The unicorn drawing above is not there to make fun of the book or Sincero -- she herself jokes about unicorniness several times throughout the book and she would laugh her ass off at this illustration for a review (and the rainbow is oddly inaccurate anyway).

Life's Work : From the Trenches, A Moral Argument for Choice, Dr. Willie Parker

Graffiti from El Salvador

(August 24) I read this because of Gloria Steinem’s Instagram: ‟His book, Life’s Work, will change you.ˮ

I have always supported the right to abortion and never had any moral qualms about it, but Parker lays out all the reasons why abortion must be legal in a humane society and all of the reasons why anti-abortion activists do not have any claim to higher moral ground, so logically and serenely, so incontrovertibly, that I felt actively proud to be pro-abortion.

He points out what’s really going on with anti-abortion activists… they are not just blind but actually evil (not his word but the ultimate goals of anti-abortionism are pretty harrowing).

And you think -- wow, if a guy as righteous and spiritual as this can take this position and moreover argue it so persuasively… how can any of us have the slightest qualm?

So it was a very interesting and empowering read.

The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy Schumer

Tom Labaff, Amy Schumer: Sadlarious, 2016

(June 14) Overall, I really liked it… I laughed out loud or at least guffawed out loud quite a few times. But when I look at my notes, they’re all complaints… and this is often what I do with a book I do like… I start going, “it was great but …” and enumerating all my issues with flaws.

But in truth, although I liked this book and laughed along with Schumer in the same way I did with Kathy Griffin or Miranda July, there was just something a little… (the word for when you’re gross and insulting and ignorant in order to make people laugh but you are trying to be meta about it so that everyone knows that what you really value are tastefulness, kindness and sensitivity… you’re not really that gross girl, you just know what makes people laugh and deep down you are the angel girl).

So that was very palpable… she is very careful to show how much she cares about the girls who were killed at a showing of her movie, for example, and to emphasize that while she can do a cheap joke she supports all the right causes and understands political correctness…

What it amounts to, though, is an undercutting of her humour… she isn’t that proud of herself.

She makes all the right noises -- she claims to be body-positive and not to care that people might think she’s overweight… but she mentions this so often that it becomes “the lady doth protest too much”...

And she gets very serious and repetitive about all the right causes -- the need to make women equal, the need to reduce domestic violence, the need to keep children safe, etc., etc. -- they’re all good causes but it’s like she invented them… it’s like she really really really needs to make us see she is a fine upstanding woman.

I mean, I like that she is using her platform to support good causes… I just don’t need the constant reminders that she is someone who supports good causes. “I’m a good girl.”

Anyway -- I just want to quote “Uptown Funk” to her: “If you freaky then own it.”

Also -- she gets gross and she can get really gross… sometimes it’s too much for me… and in one particular case (actually more than one -- two similar stories) I wonder at her taste AND ethics… this is related to the artist’s rendering above… he thought Amy’s stories of her dad shitting in public were “sad and hilarious” at the same time… I didn’t see the humour, and I think it really should be her dad’s prerogative to get laughs from talking about shitting his pants… they’re not her stories.

Also, she “cancels” her mother -- probably for very good reasons -- but with all of these elements it’s like you can feel this river of molten lava flowing aggressively under the charming surface landscape and it’s a little distracting..

But I’m focusing unfairly on weaknesses -- I loved reading the book overall.

A Short History of Gardens, Gordon Campbell

Lodewijk Toeput, Pleasure Garden with a Maze, 1579-84

(September 13, 2019 ¬_¬ ) Gah, I can't believe how long it took me to struggle through this book! I chose it initially because of its shortness (184 pages, pages the size of a mini iPad) and thatʼs why I didnʼt just give it up -- I kept thinking SHOORLY I could get through it.

But it was awful reading, both physically -- the type is small and tightly spaced, there is maybe one paragraph indent per page, the pages are dense grey -- and literally -- the prose is dry and academic, and the organization is nothing more than grocery-listing.... and you could tell that space was at a premium by the content as well as by the printing, because Campbell is at pains to fit a lot in. It covers all the gardens in the world, from the beginning of time, in 184 pages! Put together for us by an old-school scholar who merely marshals the facts and dully regurgitates them.

Also, for a book on gardens, which are after all a visual art, there is almost no illustration -- there are a few tiny colour plates tucked in the middle of the book, and a few black-and-white photos throughout the text, but really it is all a bit of an insult to the topic.

I just kept renewing and renewing this library book, putting it aside till the next renewal in favour of more interesting books, knowing that I would never not have access to it. No one else would ever want to borrow it.

But this past spring (2019) I was introduced to a few of the Monty Don garden series on the BBC (French Gardens, Italian Gardens, Around the World in 80 Gardens, The Secret History of British Gardens, Big Dreams, Small Spaces, etc.) and was fully blown away by the beauty and interestingness of the topic -- it was like enjoying my old fine arts courses.

So then I came back to the Gordon Campbell book, thinking surely he will at some point mention Monty Don, since Don was so obviously an expert on the history of gardens and on the importance of certain gardens, and all of his books and series predated Campbellʼs book.

But he never mentions him once, nor includes any of his books or films in the reference section. He only comments at one point that the British people are very fond of gardening and armchair gardening to the tune of an important number of GNP pounds per year, alluding to shows like Monty Donʼs (and thereby echoing Monty himself who several times mentions in various series how big an industry gardening is in the U.K. GNP-wise and how beloved).

So I realized what was going on here -- Gordon Campbell saw how scholarly and art-historical the topic could be thanks to Monty Don and his ilk, and decided to stake a claim to it as the bona fide academic (professor at Oxford) and therefore more credible expert. Heʼs “discoveringˮ the topic as far as serious academics are concerned.

Then, he couldnʼt get a lot of money together to support a big book with lots of colour illustration (and maybe, as an academic, would not have wanted to produce anything too showy anyway), so he put out what he could -- a tiny, crammed pocket dictionary of a book.

I say “Yuckˮ to you, sir.

Why do I give it even 2 stars then? Because it's acceptable academics and, though dull, the prose is error-free and understandable. And, obviously, he recognized a good topic.

The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben (translated by Jane Billingshurst)

Patricia Kozowyk, Winter Woods, 1993

(April 14) I really loved this book -- the things trees are doing and going through are amazing... It gets to be a cliché in the book, but it’s like finding out that animals have emotions or that foreign people “are just like us.”

I have always liked and anthropomorphized trees and I like to project compliments and mental support at them when travelling but now I am in absolute awe of them, and feeling very maternal about them.

The fact that they communicate with each other, and with other plants, and look after each other, and raise their children -- it’s all quite stunning and beautiful.

And Wohlleben has such a lovely way of writing about them -- he is so gentle and loving in his descriptions of them, you can’t help but feel he’s talking about another kind of human being -- for example, he calls tree seedlings “tiny conquistadors” when describing their efforts to conquer new worlds.

Wohlleben may also have referenced Suzanne Simard’s TED talk since she was the one who discovered that trees and fungi use each other to share information and nutrients, but I seem to have heard about both the book and the talk around the same time separately.

Really makes you want to be an eco-warrior.

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brené Brown

Melysa G., Cowardly Lion, 2011

(March 9) My note on the book in the library system says: “recommended by Jillian Michaels on Instagram,” which kind of surprises me now because I thought I got the urge to read it from the Glennon Doyle Melton book, as well as Facebook or Instagram posts by Elizabeth Gilbert… they are all interwoven, these women… they reference each other in their books, they regram each other’s Instagrams, they support each other’s causes… and they like to quote Leonard Cohen lyrics and some specific poems that I didn’t enumerate as carefully... It’s interesting there’s this cabal... there’s probably an official name for them, but I call them the “self-improvement memoirists”… Brené Brown is not so much a memoirist, but she frequently tells stories about herself to illustrate a point, and you can tell it’s because she knows that self-revelation helps people buy a concept (and, initially, identify with and like an author).

Pages 36-37 caused a lot of anguish for for me… tears streamed down my cheeks as I read these stories of people’s shame and humiliation… not because the stories were so terribly horrific (and anyway they are about events that everyone experiences in one form or another)… but just because in that moment it hurt so much to think of people going through all this sorrow and pain all the time, all over the world…

However, although there were passages that were very strong for me and I agree with every insight Brown offers and every recommendation she makes, I couldn’t rate the book above 2.5. Brown tries to rally respect and scientific cred for her conclusions about human behaviour by constantly using academic terms -- she uses the word “research” a lot, and loves buzzwords like “evidence-based” and “research-based.” She reminds us repeatedly that she has master’s and doctoral degrees and that she consults with a lot of people who have degrees as well...

From my point of view though as a lapsed academic, she stretches the meaning of “research” quite a bit. What her work has really been is talking to people (“research subjects”) to find a comment that proves a psychological barrier or condition exists, then interpreting the cause and cure for the problem using the big-picture wisdom of a leading expert in psych stuff (consulting them is more “research” as well).

I think what she’s saying is so great, so insightful and so useful, that it doesn’t need this propping up... but, so, because she props so hard I have to feel suspicious about it.

She is even worse with this in Braving the Wilderness.

Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle Melton

Medici Venus (wax anatomical model), 18th century

(December 26, 2016) Recommended by Elizabeth Gilbert on her Instagram; I brought it along to read in Lachine over the holidays since it’s relatively short (250ish pages) and (I thought) an easy read: spiritual / personal development stuff and all that… easy, right?

I was then totally surprised and amazed at how powerful this book is. This woman is some writer. At first it was compelling just because Doyle Melton was so open and so vulnerable, and you felt like you were meeting a real woman and making a good friend

But then she begins to talk about every fear and dislike and worry, etc., I’ve ever had, and removes all the shame and disgust from them, and that was so welcome and such a relief.

And she is so relatable -- discovering the wonder of yoga, bonding with the seaside, fussing about her weight / looks, and so on and so on. So then I stalked her all over the place on-line, liking her and identifying with her more and more, unable to believe I had never heard of her before now.

Will I read her first book, Carry On, Warrior? Not right away probably -- her wisdom is somewhat exhausting and I need a wee rest from this. But I was basically blown away by this book. (Also, everything she says and reveals for you is in line with Abraham-Hicks.)

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondō

A Bijin-ga by Shimura Tatsumi (1907-80)

(December 2) I really liked this -- it definitely speaks to a need I have, and makes it seem like tidying up in the Marie Kondō way would solve all the problems in life -- the income tax, the house insurance, the how-much-more of that to buy or get… and the method is fascinating… and Kondō treats it spiritually, which is so interesting but so much in line with Abraham-Hicks that it’s scary.

The book (the philosophy) gives you a lot of hope.

Marie Kondō’s voice is so sweet and pure, a joy to read even if you didn’t like her tidying-up philosophy one bit (but, as she says, you wouldn’t be reading the book if you were messy and didn’t care).

I want to follow the plan properly -- I`m pretty sure it will bring the magic she talks about. I will probably buy this one. (ETA: I did buy this book, but I have not followed the plan in the two and a half years since I read it, because I haven’t found the time to do it “properly.” Kondō warns that if you don’t execute the sorting properly and completely the first time, you will never achieve the magic part.)

I can’t find a note about why I wanted to read this or where I heard about it -- I am pretty sure it was recommended by someone I follow… I can’t remember who… but I’m glad I was directed to it…

I identified closely and tenderly with Marie Kondō’s interpretation of the psychology of her interest in tidying -- she feels like she never trusted people, but could always trust things. To her, things never deserve anything but tenderness and gentleness. I totally get that.

The only negative vibe for me in all of this was: where is all this stuff going? Kondō often boasts that clients she works with will have 30 - 45 trash bags full of items they are discarding after just the first day, and they will have dozens more over the course of the subsequent stages. She’s had thousands of clients. Is it all just being moved around Japan?

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud, Elizabeth Greenwood

Noémi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto, Hide and Seek, 2012

(November 25) I forget how I heard about this book, but the topic is of course interesting.

The book begins with Elizabeth Greenwood talking to a lot of people who investigate death fraud and it was mildly interesting to learn all the telltale signs of not being dead and how people can track you down thereby… and about how the age of the internet works against you because of digital footprints but also can work for you if you know how to fake up a lot of websites and false digital trails.

But Greenwood starts off her non-fiction book with the premise that her research journey was all intensely personal -- she had $60,000 in student debt and wanted to be free of it, so that’s why she looked into faking one’s death. Also, she likes the romance of death-faking.

This would have been OK as a starter and with one or two additional mentions throughout the book… it’s standard practice in books of this kind… the having of a personal reason for launching an investigation of a topic.

But this girl never lets it go! And it becomes tedious af, especially when shored up with little anecdotes about other aspects of her life, particularly “humorous” stories about how clumsy she is or what a loser she is.

Argh, it feels like so much padding…. A feeling that gets starker when you consider the length of the book (244 pages) and the size of the pages (very small).

Why do people do that, or why do people’s editors allow them to do that? The topic is super interesting on its own and she has so many good interviews with would-be death fakers that you think she surely could have expanded those stories and done without the “I-too-want-to-escape-my-(small)-debt” posture.

And then you realize her editors probably encouraged the personal business….. WHY?????

That put me off quite a bit.

But then Greenwood went for a little while into the death-hoax conspiracy believers, the groups that think Elvis, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Princess Di, and many others (all beloved celebrities) faked their deaths and are either coming back soon or are currently being portrayed by a look-alike. This blew me away.

So: kind of an interesting little book, significantly spoiled by an identity crisis, when it decided it wanted to be a humorous memoir as much as an investigative research piece.

The Woman I Wanted to Be, Diane von Furstenberg

Eric Pattee, Sketch Loosely Based on Diane von Furstenberg, c 2015

(February 10, 2017 -- i.e., 3½ months later) I saw this recommended on several fashion Instagrams I follow, and noted that it was short, and committed to it.

However, I don’t understand how those Instagrammers liked it enough to recommend it… I mean, it’s not a horrible memoir… but it feels a little sanitized ...or a little too polished… or something. DVF doesn’t whitewash unflattering or unhappy moments in her life, but they all “help her learn something” or they open a door to something else that turns out well… she is not someone to dwell on miseries (or she realizes misery doesn’t make a good memoir)... (and of course being someone who doesn’t dwell on unhappy events is a good thing to be, so why am I kvetching???).

The material that sounds true and honest, unpolished, uncurated is when DVF describes a great passion -- like admiring her mother, loving her father, wanting to prove herself over and over.

The rest of the time the stories are pretty managed and everything is glossy-magazine level -- her daughter is “beautiful,” her granddaughters are “beautiful,” everyone she loves is “beautiful” or “handsome,” etc.

It’s almost as if her flaws and disappointments are included calculatingly to offset the glossiness.

She drops a lot of names but doesn't give us insight into anybody, or even much description of anybody other than to say she loved them and, WAY MORE IMPORTANTLY, they saw her talent and gave her career boosts.

You get a little bit of a sense of how a designer sets up a business, and a bit of an understanding of how a business fails even when it looks publicly like a raging success, so that was interesting.

Interesting in a totally minor way was the organization… DVF went through a number of different themes of her life from beginning to end, and along the way would re-showcase all of her relationships and homes in terms of where they were at that time. It’s like: she didn’t just tell the story of her and Egon beginning to end, done and dusted, then move on chronologically. She would tell new stories about Egon or Barry Diller or one of her many lovahs when she got to the appropriate moment in the history of the first wrap dress, or each of her companies, or each of her major home locations..

It was a strangely good way to flesh stuff out.

I never found out what exactly DVF meant by “the woman I wanted to be”.... It changed constantly throughout her life, like it does for us all. I thought by the title that she maybe had a childhood vision that she made into reality in a dramatic, inspiring way, but she…. didn’t.

The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee

François Flameng, Equestrienne Au Cirque Fernando, 1890

(November 13, 2017) It took me over a year to finish this, but I don't know why, because I liked it a lot, right from the start. It is long, but mostly it lingered because it is a story easy to put down and pick up, being picaresque, and my other library books at the time had more relentless deadlines.

As I look at reviews I see the exact words I would use to describe it -- lush, sweeping, rags-to-riches, picaresque, "all the glorious elements of great operas of the era: love at first sight, disguise, intrigue, grief, betrayal, secrets, scheming aristocrats, a besotted tenor, dramatic escapes, grand settings, fabulous costumes, murder, fallen women, sacrifice -- the follies of humans at the mercy of Fate."

The plupart of the appeal for me is that it is a collection of interesting stories about interesting women.

But I also loved the details about Victorian life and particularly Victorian life for people in opera (or music in general) in the second French empire... Chee takes up so many fascinating tangents just to enjoy late 19th-century things, and his joy is contagious.

The ending was surprising, and great.

I learned of this book through The Toast, when the author, Alexander Chee, was interviewed for his advice to young writers.

The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, Joel F. Harrington

Lukas Mayer, Execution of Peter Stumpp, 1589

(October 13) I got interested in this book because of Daniel Mallory Ortberg's review on The Toast, which is a great piece because ...yeah… that’s not how I pictured “being broken on the wheel.”

So I read the book for that but enjoyed it for much more than the small issue of the wheel… it’s a lot of good research, which is always a pleasure to read, and it is quite eye-opening on a number of the conditions of living in the 16th century…I felt quite grateful to be living in modern times early on and more so as the book developed.

But the book is pretty gruesome… Harrington doesn’t belabor the grisliness but you can’t help describing a lot of punishments and torture mechanisms when writing a biography of an executioner ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nonetheless, I was really taken aback by the descriptions of life in a big city in the 16th century and, maybe because of our current times, sensitive to how racist and classist people were. The caste system I would have only ever expected to see in India was completely intact in 16th-century Nuremberg and so presumably throughout Europe. Life was brutal and difficult just on the most practical level but on top of that people really tried to take advantage of other people (or at least it seems so through the executioner’s eyes).

So the century seems so foreign and far away, and yet -- this was the most striking thing -- people were doing exactly the same things to be cheeky, to play jokes, to have fun as people do today… and they used the same swear words and “dirty” words and phrased them the same way.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose… only I should be quoting this in German.

To sum up: fascinating and eye-opening

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait, 1790

(September 22) I’ll never forget how much I liked Eat, Love, Pray, mostly because I went into it thinking I would be sneering and catcalling the whole way. But it was great, and I loved EG’s writing style.

Nevertheless, I forgot all about her for about six years, till a week or two ago when there stories about her interesting relationship with Rayya Elias.

Two recent Gilbert titles mentioned in these stories, The Signature of All Things and Big Magic, came to me from the library almost immediately; I started reading Big Magic first, and just inhaled it, finishing it off in two and half days.

I liked this book a lot because it is about the writing process, and EG likes thinking about the writing process as much as I do.

She has a really interesting theory about creativity and inspiration that I’m not sure I buy into totally, but what’s enchanting about it is that it’s compatible with Abraham-Hicks doctrine and even kind of supports A-H stuff in little micro ways that give me shivers when I see them from this perspective.

She is giving advice to would-be writers, and you can see the genesis of the book -- “Hey, Liz, you’re a big mega-successful writer now -- how about a how-to guide for the jillions of people who think they could have a career like yours???”

And she probably said -- YASSSSSS! ...because it’s obvious she likes this topic and she probably felt she had a lot of new stuff to add to it, because she really does.

The artwork above is meant to illustrate a talented Elizsabeth demonstrating what she does in the form she uses to do it.

The Hero's Walk, Anita Rau Badami

Lalu Prasad Shaw, Babu Resting, 2012/13

(August 15) I heard about this on the CBC one night driving back from the hospital after visiting Mom. It was one of the books in the Canada Reads “competition,” during which the proponents of different books as the year’s “best book” advocate for their choice in a debate format.

As I was listening for that hour one night (rainy and cold) it was down to The Hero’s Walk and The Illegal by Lawrence Hill. I had read neither nor even heard of either, but the advocates for the two books (low-level celebrities of various kinds) made me want The Hero’s Walk to “win.”

It didn’t -- in the end the audience voted The Illegal the winner by a narrow margin. I wonder now (not yet having read The Illegal) if that was possibly because The Hero’s Walk was only glancingly about Canada (I don’t know if the books that make it to the competition have to be set in Canada or only just be written by a Canadian or only just be published by a Canadian publisher or what). The Hero’s Walk takes place mostly in India; the role played by Vancouver could have been played by any North American city, the point being to contrast the two cultures clashing for wee Nandana. Maybe the The Illegal seemed to the audience more “Canadian” although none of the celebrities said that in their comments?

I can’t remember now if the Hamilton Library had The Hero’s Walk or not, but it was easily obtainable from Mills. The Illegal, on the other hand, was not available through Mills and there was a long waiting list for it at HPL.

I liked The Hero’s Walk from the start -- it had all the elements of the Indian novels I have read and loved in the past, like by V.S. Naipaul, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Kipling: the endearing charming Indians, the crazy crowded spectacle of Indian life, the heart-breaking contrasts between tragedy and comedy.

For a long time while reading it I was wondering why it was called The Hero’s Walk… there were mentions of Hindu tales and myths referencing the Indian hero, and of course Indian movies, but it was all very subtle for the longest time. Eventually it’s clear that the title highlights Nirmala’s dancing school above all the other traditional stuff, and that Nirmala is really the hero the men wish to be -- steady, loving, positive. So that is a nice feature, because when we are introduced to her through Sripathi’s point of view at the beginning, when he is still mean and pinched and haughty, she comes off as silly and cowlike, another mistake he made in his youth.

But eventually you realize that that was just a bad point of view.

Sripathi transforms -- and at a late stage of life, too!! Yay for the late 50s! -- and does become a hero, or more of one.

Anyway, it’s a nice little book, with, as I say, that affectionate capture of Indian psychology whereby everything is ironically or sarcastically loving.

Thank heavens not so searing as Mistry’s A Fine Balance, which made me decide never to read another Indian novel since they were too harrowing. But here there is a lot of loss and sorrow and floating in shit water, too, as always.

The Happiness Makeover: How to Teach Yourself to Be Happy and Enjoy Every Day, M.J. Ryan

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Seated Clown (Mademoiselle Cha-U-Kao), 1896

(July 6) This was recommended by the Utne Reader... the excerpt suggested that it might be like Law of Attraction stuff… and that’s why I read it… I am always testing LoA against other theories… it’s never been completely contradicted by any other point of view I’ve read, but different people piece it together blindly, not seeing the freedom and agency of LoA, just the “truth” that being positive results in positivity… here in a similar vein the recommendations for happiness are consistent with LoA, but lack understanding of it… and I’m so happy to “get" LoA, because, otherwise, I would have to conclude that this is a book for really sad people, and it’s sad to think there are people who are this sad and who are glad for the morsels of comfort offered by this vague an approximation of LoA…

I’m giving it 2.5 stars because it’s a bit formulaic in construction… 1, 2, 3, a, b, c, anecdote from real life; analysis; solution… all these books are like this but you shouldn’t feel it happening with each chapter… in this book there were quite a few “anecdotes from life” that really didn’t suit the problem they were meant to illustrate, so those passages made you conscious of the formula grinding along, and then once or twice Ryan used her own situation of having to work on her books while others are lounging as an example of a happiness problem ...and so you think -- ugh, sorry you had to do this unhappy work for us

So that was odd

I think Ryan’s advice for gaining happiness is very good… I just feel it would help everyone more if she had the whole picture... there’s a reason gloom brings more gloom

[Added a year later (August 11, 2017): I was reading the Utne newsletter today and saw this title… and wondered, “Have I read this? It seems like the kind of thing I would enjoy.” So I didn’t remember I had read it at all and I had to come here to check. I see why I didn’t remember it.]

The Stench of Honolulu, Jack Handey

Salvador Dali, Ship With Butterfly Sails, 1937

(April 3) Jack Handey is so surreal but so hilarious… all I want to do is quote from this book over and over till I’ve copied out the whole thing.

OK, here are five random book openings:

I’ve always wanted to be an inventor. But the “powers that be” have decided the world doesn’t need things like the cardboard canoe, for when you only feel like canoeing for an hour or so and you’re too lazy to drag your canoe out of the water.

I littered for miles. I was starting to get bored when, out of the blue, a patch of bright green appeared. I was tickled pink. It was a golf course, with a big clubhouse set in the middle. Finally, something in Hawaii that was pretty.

The red boat chugged past us upriver. My plan had worked. I turned to Leilani. I wanted to gloat, but as a man I had other desires. I wanted to tell her how I had been right and she had been wrong. Wait, I guess that’s gloating.

Don and I nodded agreement. Is it wrong to lie because you’re planning to steal something? That’s a question probably only the philosophers can answer. One thing I knew for sure: The Golden Monkey did not want to be gawked at. He wanted to be melted down into smooth little ingots and smuggled to America inside someone’s rectum.

He twisted, just in time to get another volley of sticks in the back, then twisted again to get some more in the front. He lurched back and forth. A couple of late sticks bounced off his head. He looked like a porcupine, only not a regular porcupine -- a porcupine of sticks.

Completely random, but to me all completely hilarious.

Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person, Shonda Rhimes

D.B. Merlin, Shonda Rhimes, 2010

(March 26) Never watched her shows (any of them) but you cannot help knowing about them if you spend any time on the internet. Why did I put my name in for this book? Was it because Lena Dunham recommended it (and likes her a lot? ...because I was all Lena all the time there for a while and maybe still am).

Anyway, girl took a long, long time to get to the point of the “year of yes” title… like, much longer than I needed in order to be persuaded. Then, having set this all up, she goes ahead and dismantles it step by step…. and you realize this “year of yes” stuff was backfitted onto an existing desire to grab glory that she felt was perhaps too arrogant in itself.

It’s like she’s saying -- “I never celebrated myself on the way up and now I want to because after all I am talented and it’s not wrong to recognize one’s own talent and we should all do that and if we all did that I wouldn’t look so arrogant! But anyway -- it’s OK to be arrogant!”

She has a lot of energy. But her writing style. Her writing style is very stylized. So stylized I don’t know if I like it. I am imitating it now. How do you like it?

Anyway -- although Shonda Rhimes clearly has talent and it was not a huge burden to read this book, I am less interested than I ever was to watch Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Scandal, or How to Get Away with Murder. I developed some retroactive sympathy for Katherine Heigl’s issue back in the day, even.

There is so much misdirection and multiplicity going on here that the bullshit alarm goes off more than one likes.

Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham

Megan Pryce, Lena Dunham, 2014

(March 9) I found myself really liking this book… but it was strange… it didn’t make me heh-heh like Tina Fey would; it didn’t make me laugh like Miranda July, Nora Ephron or Mindy Kaling would… but I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it.

Sometimes I just thought, bah, this entitled girl of the new millennium -- she just has the same problems as every girl in history has ever had and the same self-fixation …. her problems are just a little more pathetic than usual… which she is somehow “fixing” or “rationalizing” or “moving on” from by being ironic???? I’m not sure; "kids today!"

I mean, I wouldn’t want people to know that men had treated me the way some men have treated Lena Dunham…. but I can’t think why it helps anything to keep such things private, either.

Though she and every new young thing in the world (cf. Holden Caulfield) like to be blasé about everything, they are shocked by the same things that shock all of us, and they like to haul them out and give everyone a good blast of trauma every once in a while. (I was going to say “old people don’t do this” but then thought of Jerry Saltz.)

Mostly, though, it’s that every once in a while Dunham, whose problems we all share and are so banal, is very profoundly insightful…. e.g., about her body and that tiny man’s body… about feminism… “it would be easy to just be a jerk like a man but what a great honour it is to have to try to behave like a woman.”

The wisdom of her mother was compelling: “you don’t gain respect by….”

Dunham made me think about a lot of things, and especially a lot about feminism… I feel like I haven’t been feminist enough now ...and I was never shy about it.

If I ever had the chance to ask her a question about the book, though, it would be about whether Pepper, the little hamster whose fused hind legs were snipped apart with manicure scissors by Nathan the pervert teacher, went on to have a normal hamster life.

A hamster is a huge part of Tiny Furniture, come to think of it.

Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

Deng Ming-Dao, Being Chinese American Series 2011: What We Expect of Women

(January 20) This was recommended by Nicole Chung at The Toast last fall (September 2, 2015), and was in hot demand at the library, so off I went.

I really liked it… it was fun to read “real fiction” again for some reason… I guess I've been reading so much nonfiction lately: Kate Hepburn’s biography, how-to books, and spiritual books (and Alexander McCall Smith, who’s so stylized in some ways as not to be “normal” fiction).

This mystery reminded me of Gone Girl or John Green’s books, but so much gentler. Good suspense, though, nonetheless.

The story is so touching in a racial-tension way, anyway, to begin with... at first you feel it’s “one of those aching stories about which the reader knows so much more than any of the characters,” which is fine in itself, but which makes what you actually are going to get so unexpected... the story becomes so much more complicated than you've been led to suspect, turning an apparently plausible narrative slowly over onto its head so that it means completely the opposite of what it first appeared to… there is very clever back-and-forth-ing in time, creating new and profound layers of meaning so that each scene is all the more wince-making when you re-encounter it … it's not heavy-handed, either… it doesn't wrench the story around… each new point of view is just a subtle shift … (it’s not like Rashomon or something).

Yeah -- I liked it… but I guess I did not lurve it… it took me till the library's drop-dead return date to finish it.

“Drop dead,” heh.

The Novel Habits of Happiness, Alexander McCall Smith

Francis Cadell, Iona, Looking North, ?1912-30

(December 28) Loved it, as always with Alexander McCall Smith… I love the way Isabel thinks.

This one was about open-mindedness often, explored in a variety of ways.

Really interesting: the rehabilitation of one of Isabel’s enemies (conributes to the open-mindedness theme, obvi)

As usual: an ambiguous problem “solved” ambiguously (= not solved)

Interesting: Cat is going to marry Jamie’s doppelgänger??? (McCall Smith is surprising and creative)

I want to spend all my time reading about what Isabel and Jamie do during a routine day... how they prepare their meals and open their bottles of New Zealand wines and bathe their adorable son, sit in their back garden and later sing a few “old” songs to each other at the piano… so peaceful and civilized… ::big sigh::

Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling

Raja Ravi Varma, The Goddess Saraswathi, 1896

(December 17, 2015) I loved this book as much as or more than her first one… just so great.

I laughed out loud so much.

Pages 47-48: laughed out loud then choked up within the space of a half-page:

One very gratifying compliment I sometimes hear is that women want to be my best friend. This endlessly amuses my actual best friend, Jocelyn, because in her estimation I’m “a good friend, but not that great” 

... And all that stuff I do to “appear” better has actually made me a better person. I wish I had always acted like I was a little bit famous.

P. 116:

The Emmy announcements take place at 5:30 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, because when we are finding out the top six contenders for best miniseries, movie, or dramatic special, it’s important that the whole nation watch as one.

So many lines like that throughout … this is her comedic specialty.

It was interesting that on p. 123 she alluded to Catcher in the Rye, because she does sound exactly like Holden Caulfield sometimes … and she is making fun of her own pretentiousness … but, in fact, she does have the kind of wisdom you find in literary works.

Love Style Life, Garance Doré

Réné Gruau, La Cigarette, 1983

(December 11) I liked this quite a bit and am surprised by that!

First, I was surprised that this book was so popular… I was always kind of “meh” on Garance Doré's blog… I liked her aesthetic but didn’t register how well done the writing was… now that I've read a whole book of it at once, I've fallen for the charm and can see the appeal… but initially it surprised me that the library already had copies circulating when I looked it up, whereas Alyson Walsh’s Style Forever and Lisa Eldridge’s Face Paint hadn’t been ordered yet. So Garance Doré is incredibly popular. So I lined up for the library copy.

Charming: even though I read a lot of these blogs and these kinds of books, this book had a few great little tips I’d never heard before and am glad to have,* and I learned a few more details about different fashion-related things, like the names of the various Ray Ban sunglasses, e.g. I knew “Aviator” and I knew “Wayfarer”... but I never knew “Clubmaster.”

I like Garance Doré's take on “being French” or dressing like a Parisian, which is such a hot topic right now: she doesn’t exalt either the French or the Americans but she does find both funny and she identifies the points of view that are completely opposite -- useful to know.

But mostly I fell in love with her voice and her perspective, which had never impressed me that much before from the blog. She’s kind of wise. She pays lip service to fashion and beauty, but mostly she wants to talk about manners, etiquette, social elegance, strength of character… good topics for real human beings.

I love the way she draws… I always liked that about her… the clean, spare sexiness of her lines… but I eventually realized it’s a style she stole a bit from Réné Gruau.

* I no longer have these, three years later when I actually post the review.

Style Forever, Alyson Walsh

Dean Marsh, Camila Batmanghelidjh, 2008

(November 18) I keep reading these style guides looking for the Holy Grail nugget of advice that will make me stylish or at least make old-age dressing interesting …. but hmm.

I have followed Alyson Walsh’s blog for a while and quite enjoy her aesthetic… this book offers a little more detail about her aesthetic ...and I notice with all these style "guides" that, really, you’re being offered the details of one individual aesthetic… even though the premise of these guides is to find the reader's style. So -- ::shrug::

This book had a few proofing and copy-editing errors, and was printed in teeny-tiny type. There were no photos, just illustrations (beautiful, but impressionistic).

It was very British, too…. references, language, media, “style icons”....

Odd, a bit formulaic (a few pages of notes on a topic then an interview with a “style icon,” repeat), but likable, like Alyson Walsh herself.

She Always Knew How: Mae West, A Personal Biography, Charlotte Chandler

(October 15) This was good biography in that it was almost all direct quotes from Mae West herself …. or those who knew her (maybe 10 per cent the latter). She was very smart and a feminist, and the creation of her signature persona was interesting.

The Knockoff, Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza

Yiying Lu, Anna Wintour with a QR Code Top, 2011

(September 16) I really didn’t think much of this novel from early on, and was disappointed since it was touted by Nick Wooster and a few other fashion bloggers / experts I follow… but now I realize they probably know the two authors personally and wanted to use their powers to help their friends.

And everyone is always hoping for another The Devil Wears Prada, which made such a good movie (I haven’t read the book).

But it was kind of cheesy and predictable on the one hand, and implausible and tacky on the other. 

Here's a sample sentence: “A band, one that was fairly well known among hipster yuppies in gentrifying Brooklyn, was setting up on the stage.” (p. 314)

I have to agree with the 1- and 2-star reviews on Amazon:

The characters were over the top, but not in a fun, whimsical way like in Bergorf Blondes, which I enjoyed. A 42-year-old who has been on a brief medical sabbatical reacts to this brave new world like a caveman being unfrozen from a glacier, befuddled by the concept of internet traffic and bemoaning the demise of the floppy disk. A graduate of Harvard business school who lands a prestigious position at an important fashion magazine tweets that she is “bringin da pinky swear back. Booya!” Because that's how adult women talk in 2015. Nailed it.

More at this link.

No One Understands You: And What to Do About It, Heidi Grant Halvorson

(August 18) This book was recommended by Jezebel's Tracy Moore, whose teasers made it seem like the book would teach you that when you say “x,” people hear “y,” so say “z” instead to make sure you're understood.

There was a little bit of that, but the whole perspective of the book was from the other direction: it was about the lenses perceivers wear, and how to identify and offset these. This will help you avoid making a bad first impression or reduce any misperception you struggle against (mostly in the workplace it seems), plus show you how to reverse such situations.

So some of that is what most people do in life -- you figure out people around you and engineer your comments and intentions to work with them. But this is a much more in-depth version of that, helping you with people you have no way of interpreting otherwise.

Tracy Moore does offer a good summary.

Betsy-Tacy, Betsy and the Great World, and Betsy's Wedding, Maud Hart Lovelace

Émile Vernon, Best of Friends, 1917

(July 14, July 25, August 3) Got Betsy-Tacy out of the library because Mallory Ortberg was rhapsodizing about Betsy and the Great World and I realized I had read those books as a kid.... had read them and really loved them, because I can remember naming paper dolls and other “people” we had “Tacy” and “Tib”... and I just remember being really fond of the stories and nodding in approval whenever I saw societies and reading groups devoted to them.

Re-reading Betsy-Tacy was a bit of a shock -- I had to wonder how drab my life was at the time that I loved those stories so much: they are the plainest vanilla stories ever... sweet, but too young for anyone who can read for herself. The Bobbsey Twins books were way more inventive and absorbing it seems to me even now.

However, the grown-up Betsy books redeemed Maud Hart Lovelace for me. They are totally enjoyable. The two later books are not profound, and the plot lines are a little predictable… but Lovelace always puts a little twist into things that keeps them interesting.

They're sweet, like Anne of Green Gables books without literary pretensions, and they have that travel-to-a-different-time effect that I like…. full of strange daily activities and customs taken for granted then (early 1900s), completely forgotten now.

I’m missing them now…. wishing I had the outcome of a little luncheon party or a letter to Somebody Significant or such like to look forward to reading.

You Can Heal Your Life and Heal Your Body, Louise Hay

Bill Morrison (art director), "Godfellas" episode of Futurama, 2002

(July 6) You Can Heal Your Life contains Heal Your Body, as probably do most of Louise Hay’s books, which I didn’t realize till I bought both. :} But I don’t mind investing in a guru.

This does not contradict Abraham-Hicks thinking -- but it seems to offer different routes to finding feelings of happiness which are perfectly in keeping with A-H, yet different. More general, and more “your mind controls everything anyway”... A-H is more about reducing resistance (although they do recommend fantasizing everything into place)... well, whatever… they are different, but mutually inclusive.

I think Hay even kind of answers the question of why there is the resistance… something that has always nagged at me and is still not perfectly clear as a context, even with Hay’s explanations of early deep-seated grudges. Why do we go for grudge-bearing?

It’s like A-H, her thinking, but it’s a little more woo-woo somehow. It’s definitely complementary, though. It’s like: A-H tells you to get rid of resistance, but Hay knows exactly what your resistance is and gives you a way to get rid of it permanently.

She has definitely focused on physical health more than anything and I thought at first she was appealing a little more directly to the victim point of view… but I realize from reading her that I do have a victim point of view, to my surprise.

How did I come to this book? I saw the movie enthusiastically recommended by a trusted blogger and got it out of the library (had to wait a long while since it was in heavy demand). The movie made me want to read her books, and I bought them, I was in such a hurry.

[The episode of Futurama illustrated above contained a godhead figure who was the wisest, most benevolent godhead figure you could ever imagine.]

No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July

Tina Mammoser, Intertidal, 2014

(June 22) Funny -- I heh-heh’d aloud throughout as I did through the novel (The First Bad Man).

So interesting -- many of the same themes as TFBM -- love, female identity, language jokes: “the dynamic had moved down the block and was serving others” is one of many, many, funny little metaphors… I could quote every page.

The First Bad Man, Miranda July

Miranda July, from Kids Activity Pages for Apartamento Magazine, 2011

(April 20) I loved this book. I laughed helplessly on every page.

It’s all crazy and improbable stuff but it’s, like, that never matters, fundamentally.

Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity, Edward Slingerland

Woman Playing Polo, 8th C. CE

(April 3) Really liked this subject, wu-wei and de -- basically, Taoism (Daoism?) compared and contrasted with other ancient Eastern philosophies.

It is styled to be about the modern desire to "get in the groove," an angle that feels like it was foisted on Slingerland by his editors so that this otherwise scholarly / academic study would appeal to a lay public (I always resent it that these topics are not considered interesting enough their own, and resent it almost as much that the imposed "hook" never gets full shrift either).

Got the title from the Utne Reader e-newsletter .

I was interested because all I had ever heard about Eastern thought beyond the clichés of Chinese aphorisms was in those Xena episodes where she falls in love with Lao Tze's wife, who was the real author of the Tao texts (lol). Loved those episodes and always swore I'd read more about this mystical power the Tao texts seemed to have for Xena.

Despite this interest, the book's briefness and Slingerland's very readable style, I took forever to get through this -- had to renew it twice (the maximum at the time).

The A-H index: sometimes it supported Abraham-Hicks thinking; sometimes it didn't.

Hot and cold cognition were fascinating concepts at the time, but now, lo, these two years later, I can't remember a thing about them.

Paper Towns, John Green

Eoin, Endlessly Slipping, 2013

(February 19) I wanted to read Paper Towns because I enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars so much. This seemed slow at first, perhaps because TFiOS was so great and started off so grippingly right from the beginning, and I was maybe worried that this was going to fall A LOT short if it didn't get right down to business.

I also gave it a little side-eye at first because it felt like Green was doing a Manic Pixie Dream Girl story, but then it got very good with a well-done plot point and the story became quite suspenseful. At that point it seemed superior to TFiOS.

It features many, many interesting literary allusions and tropes and many profound insights into how we see and don't see ourselves and each other, and I enjoyed all this very much. Like TFiOS, Paper Towns somehow interweaves literary / philosophical references with down-in-the-dirt teenage crudeness, creating a nice combo of comic lows and lofty, intellectual highs.

The resolution, though? :/ I thought it kind of undermined the suspense that was so beautifully built… and it got too mushy right at the end -- this causes it to lose some power.

So I'm reading along like this… just loving Paper Towns and thinking I'm going to give it 3.5 stars… and then I read some online reviews, to see if anyone else was disappointed like I was by the ending… and I get lost in the vortex of the_whittler’s trenchant observations… and I begin to hate John Green and both his books…

Never experienced such a 180 about a book in my life.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, Michael A. Singer

J.M.W. Turner, The Morning After the Deluge, ca. 1843

(January 31) I am untethered re The Untethered Soul -- I read it 22 months ago and cannot remember a thing about it, and when I read my notes on it they spark nothing.

I read it because Jennifer Scott, the Madame Chic author who captured a bit of my fancy back in 2015, scheduled it as a “virtual book club” read. I hadn’t heard of it before but I always like to sample "spiritual books" to see if they jive with or contradict Abraham-Hicks stuff. And so off I went. I may even have purchased this one.

It definitely jived with Abraham-Hicks and maybe promises even more than A-H does.But none of it has stuck with me.

The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café, Alexander McCall Smith

Peter Clarke, Fish and Wine, late 20th C.

(December 21) Interesting and likable as always… it’s the first of this series imho that could pass easily for an Isabel Dalhousie set of situations… that is, the stories are not mysteries so much as peeks into troubled lives, some of which get sorted out. Mma Potokwane is a substantial deus ex machina in this one.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling

Aurora Starita, Mindy Kaling, 2012

(December 18)

Dear Mindy Kaling,

I love your book and I wish to ask you for its hand in marriage.

Sincerely, Susan W.

The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish, Linda Przybyszewski

(December 4) Read this because it was mentioned on Erin McKean’s A Dress a Day and sounded interesting.

McKean described it thusly:

"The Lost Art of Dress is a history of (and paean to) the women who invented the field of home economics, and who taught hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of women how to dress beautifully, healthfully, economically, and practically during most of the twentieth century, only falling out of favor during the youthquake movement of the 1960s. Przybyszewski calls them the 'Dress Doctors' and outlines how they used principles from art to guide women’s dress choices.

"It’s a fascinating read, and whether or not you agree with the premise of the book (that women today are largely not stylish because they have abandoned these classic principles of color harmony, symmetry, and graceful line) it’s certain that you’ll enjoy the vast amount of largely forgotten and entirely charming advice the Dress Doctors gave their 'patients.' For instance, women were advised that, when traveling, they should remain efficient and anonymous by choosing 'no emotional colors, no revelatory designs, or fabrics, no temperamental hats or shoes.'" 

This description is what made me want to read the book, but I didn’t find the premise of the book to be about stylishness -- I found The Lost Art of Dress to be a feminist tract and I floved it for that reason.

This statement on page 148 is the whole story in a nutshell:

“The sewing demonstrations and clothing clubs organized by extension work made a difference in women’s lives.”

It’s a great read if you don’t mind getting angry all over again about the marginalizing of women through every means available throughout all of history.

In fact, it was so incensing it made me wonder: Was Przybyszewski hyping the feminist angle or was it undeniable?

And then all that righteous indignation is offset by outfit judginess, which is always fun to read for its own sake, but a totally different philosophical register. Near the end is a section of advice for dressing as an older lady.

To sum up: surprising and sometimes strange, but very interesting.

Mentioned and made me want to read Art in Everyday Life by Harriet and Vetta Goldstein.

Landline, Rainbow Rowell

Levon Avagyan, Girl with a Phone, 2014

(November 4) Loved it -- she is so funny -- such good one-liners, in a TV-sitcom way.

There’s always one technology-related linchpin in a Rainbow Rowell novel -- Walkmans, laptops, e-mail, fanfic environments, etc. -- and now cell phones vs. landlines.

There’s a kind of cute magic-realism flavour to this one, too, unlike any of the others, with the old-fashioned landline phone serving as a time-travel device in an interesting way.

I enjoy Rowell’s writing. My only problem now is that I’ve read four of her books, and they’re all love stories. And none of those love stories will ever be as epic as Eleanor and Park. Sigh.

Quotes:

Georgie's mother had spectacular cleavage. Tan, freckled, ten miles deep.

"Genetics," her mom said when she caught Georgie looking.

Heather shoved a bowl of green beans into Georgie's arm. "Were you just staring at Mom's breasts?"

"I think so," Georgie said. "I'm really tired--and she's kinda begging for it in that shirt."

"Oh, sure," Heather said. "Blame the victim.”

“Right.” Neal nodded. “The network guy. I thought he was giving you the cold shoulder.” “We thought he was giving us the cold shoulder,” Georgie said. “Apparently he just has cold shoulders.”

And why was she only attracted to guys who were sleeping with somebody else?

If Georgie were a wild animal, she'd be a genetic dead end. 

What if Georgie could give Neal the chance to start over? What would he do?

Would he join the Peace Corps? Would he go back to Omaha? Marry Dawn? Marry someone even better than Dawn?

Would he be happy?

Would he come home from work every night, smiling? Would Dawn or Better-Than-Dawn already have dinner on the table?

I Feel Bad About My Neck, and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, Nora Ephron

Gustav Klimt, Judith and Holofernes, 1901-02

(October 6) Really, really liked this -- in addition to frequently laughing out loud while reading, I really related to what Ephron says and how she thinks. I see old-ladyhood the same way.

The FastDiet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting, Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer

Mary Pratt, Sun Slanting Over Breakfast, 2005

(August 31, 2014) Heard of this through Imogen Lamport's Inside Out Style blog: she had lost a lot of weight by way of a fasting diet featured in a BBC documentary... I watched the whole thing, intrigued by Michael Mosley's real quest, which was to find ways to increase longevity.

According to this research, a little bit of fasting, even the minor amount you do through Mosley's 5:2 diet -- is apparently enough to unleash all kinds of health benefits: so many studies show fasting increases longevity, reduces levels of a hormone called IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) which burns you out young, "switches on" gene-repair processes, improves insulin resistance, improves metabolism, reduces blood glucose levels, mitigates against cancer, reduces bad cholesterol, etc., etc., etc.

By the time I was done the book, I felt like I couldn't NOT fast.

Attachments, Rainbow Rowell

Nick Gentry, Lander, 2010

(July 27) At least 3 stars, because I really liked it and really looked forward to getting back to it in between readings (unlike some other recent books that I shall leave nameless).

But I found with this book -- and with other Rowell books -- and maybe with all books????? -- that the premise starts out at a leisurely pace with lots of detail and complication, and then the problem(s) get(s) solved lickety-split and without the tender care that the set-up got. Or, at least in this book, the climax did not seem as special as the storylines leading up to it.

I really like in all her books how there is some kind of cultural anchor to real time… and usually a technological one, too… this one had the Y2K issue, which is hilarious, kind of. Fangirl had Harry Potter fandom and the ubiquity of laptops; Eleanor and Park had punk and Walkmans; this one has late '90s romcoms and Y2K.

But she is a wizard when it comes to hilarious dialogue.

p. 84: When Lincoln realized he was rewriting the theme song to Cheers, he decided to stop thinking and just play.

p. 94: I don’t even go to the adult Gap anymore. Once you’re an imaginary mother, it’s hard to take time for yourself. 

The premise was so, so good, but Rowell didn't want to make the ejected boyfriend unlikable (I guess), because he does nothing unlikable and yet none of the characters in the novel like him. He’s too cute, too immature, too much a musician? See, these are all reasons to like a fella. And he’s totally unrealistic for telling Beth straight out that he was never going to marry her, especially since he wasn’t under any pressure to set that record straight. A guy like him (immature and maybe irresponsible??) would not want to rock his happily sailing boat, I would think… would lie about his intentions… would try to keep the girlfriend hoping.

I don’t enjoy Rowell’s making-out scenes so much. Her style with these worked with Eleanor and Park, but doesn't seem quite right with late-20s people.

The label “enjoyable light read” was made for this book.